In Williams’ 2002 book The Unexpected Way he records his ‘meditations’ (p. xiii) on becoming a Roman Catholic and breaking his tantric vows (p. 138). The book is mostly unconcerned with the above discussion196 but Williams does briefly return to it when he talks about love. His position, as I understand it, is that the Bodhisattva is incapable of love since enlightenment is ultimately nondual and deals with unconceptualisable ‘entities’. He thinks love (and by extension altruism and compassion I take it) requires a strong distinction between individuals which Buddhism, in his interpretation, seeks to dissolve:
Inasmuch as liberation in Buddhism involves nonduality and nonconceptuality it cannot in itself involve any relationship of love, and inasmuch as it involves mental transformation its primary concern cannot be with the other…
(Ibid., p. 76)
This conclusion (amongst others) is challenged by José Cabezón (in D’Arcy May 2007). Cabezón seeks to establish that it is perfectly possible for a Buddhist to love and to show acts of altruism. He echoes Pettit (1999, above p. 128) in saying that in order to point out where Williams has got this wrong, we need to
195 Including, in the case of humans (and for all I know some animals) values, wherein moral thinking - the heart of this matter - lies.
196 This comment does not do this highly interesting and personal account justice nor does it take notice of some other very important points Williams wants to make about (Catholic) Christianity vis à vis Buddhism. However, for my immediate purposes I am interested in only a very small part
distinguish between what happens in meditation (to which Williams has restricted his analysis) and what happens post-meditation. He gives the example of giving to charity – it appears that ‘he’ is giving ‘something’ to ‘someone’ but that
appearance exists at a certain level.197 The appearance is strong when the act is taking place but when giving is meditated upon it is clear that the giver, the object of giving and the recipient are empty.
As the mind focuses on the reality of these three things, it becomes ‘as if one’…with reality…And it is also true that at that moment I can cognise no ‘giving’, ‘giver’ or ‘recipient’, nor therefore can I at that moment be engaging in the act of giving.
(Cabezón, in D’Arcy May 2007, p. 112) Cabezón’s point comes in quite a different context to Pettit’s (as a response to Williams’ The Unexpected Way rather than Altruism and Reality), but his
treatment addresses the same point: Williams takes what happens in meditation to be the reality of what happens outside of it and this places an artificial and unfair restriction on the activities of Bodhisattvas and Buddhas.
ordinary beings (non buddhas) cannot have a direct, nonconceptual understanding of the reality of charity and be simultaneously engaged in charity. Ordinary beings have no choice but to alternate between the two. They spend some time in the meditative equipoise on the emptiness of (for example) charity, and then they come out of that equipoise and engage in real (or rather ‘illusory-like’) acts of charity.198
(Cabezón, op. cit., p. 112) In other words, Williams’ restriction can be removed by showing that it is compatible to believe that compassion, altruism or love requires no distinction to be made between persons, whilst at the same time distinguishing between them and also holding that there are no persons.199 What saves Śāntideva’s thesis is his claim for the existence of the two truths and the fact that compassion, altruism or love is easier to realise if we are not attached to differentiation and a way to be unattached is to understand that persons are ultimately empty.200
6.3.1 Mystical Conclusions
If we cannot rely on logic to answer the questions of existence, and rationality can only take us so far, then we are left with something mysterious. As Schopenhauer
197 This is clearly expressed in BCA 9:75f; the illusion of other people is accepted for the sake of compassion.
198 Although he points out on the next page that buddhas supposedly have a greater and unexplained ability to act charitably whilst at the same time seeing the emptiness of so acting.
199 See AP 1:22, Conze, 1995, p. 90, cf. Schmidt-Leukel, 2006b, p. 118.
200 Cabezón is attempting to establish that it is possible for the Buddhist to experience love of another person whilst holding that there is (ultimately) no self and no person. When I am on earth I believe there is gravity. I might experience pain (by falling over) if I do not. However, when I am in my spaceship there is no gravity. Gravity both exists and does not exist at the same time depending on where you are, just as love and no entity capable of giving or receiving love exists depending on whether the Bodhisattva looks from the perspective of conventional or ultimate truth.
has pointed out (above pp. 43ff), this is the only honest way to approach such questions and leaves the philosopher and logician dissatisfied. The Bodhisattva’s experience could, then, be described as something mystical and the dissatisfied logician (Williams) would find this problematic:
Paul has a problem with ‘experiences’…with ‘mystical experiences’, and especially ‘nondualistic and nonconceptual mystical experiences’…Obviously, then, Paul is going to have a problem with Buddhism.
(Ibid., p. 107) Compassion for beings which ultimately do not exist in any definable way is possible but goes beyond reason. But claims for something which is, in the end, mystical is not some odd ‘anything goes’ new-age-windchimery, it applies to the most basic questions of ontology such as ‘are you the same person now as you were when you were a baby?’, ‘is the candle flame the same thing throughout the burning of the candle?’. (See Mhp 2:40-41, Rhys Davids, 1925, pp. 63-5).201 The answer might be both yes and no at the same time. It is similar for the idea of duality and nonduality existing at the same time; it depends on what perspective you see it from:
Mādhyamakas claim that nonduality is an attribute of the experience of reality (and not of reality itself), so that one experiences subject and object vanishing, ‘as if object and subject had become one, like milk being poured into water’.
(Cabezón, op. cit., p. 113)
Williams assumes that compassion requires differentiation, but does not appear to take notice of an alternative way of looking at compassion, which is that it
requires fellow-feeling. Fellow-feeling is only possible if one breaks down the barriers against others and sees them as equal to yourself – at least in terms of their wish to avoid duhkha and to be happy. This is, I think, precisely what
Śāntideva is trying to establish in BCA 8:101-3 and it makes sense to imagine that if breaking down the barriers between self and others encourages feelings of compassion, then more compassion can be engendered by exchanging self and others completely, as Śāntideva suggests in the last half of Chapter 8. I would argue that since there is more than one way to look at compassion, there is more than one way to look at any kind of fellow-feeling, altruism or love, and Cabezón addresses precisely this last point in his response to Williams’ The Unexpected Way:
Of course, if one assumes that there is only one way to love – with real you’s and real me’s – then we can see why one might claim that the alternative, mystical versions of love found in the Buddhist (and in some contemplative Christian and Hindu) sources cannot be instances of real love…But that assumption – that there is only one way to love – is precisely what we hope to have challenged.
(Ibid., p. 114) It does seem that Buddhists are capable of love and compassion even though it
might be difficult to understand the reasoning behind it, and, hopefully, the Bodhisattva path has not been destroyed after all. Williams responds one more time to his latest critic with what might appear to be a concession.