Philosophical, historical and spiritual inquiries

There are many difficulties with the interpretation and practice of Buddhism as well as with trying to recover original Buddhism. This is well-known. It would be wonderful if we could find an ancient, prehistoric and living tradition which is identical to the highest essence and goal of philosophy - with TPC and TPP, that fully developed leads to the fulfillment of philosophy and vice-versa. It would allow one to consolidate and integrate different philosophical systems and perspectives and to disclose their highest meaning and value. And also it will furnish a basis to discern the scientific, psychological and ethical value of certain systems despite certain fundamental philosophical errors. It is Ariadne's thread that allows us to clarify, diagnose and resolve all confusions and errors in the history of Buddhism. But such a holy grail is not easy to find. What we have are a different distinct parallel ancient traditions and most importantly situations in which pure teachings are misappropriated and integrated into fundamentally antagonistic cultural life-forms. The Upanishads do not represent any kind of single spiritual-philosophical doctrine and practice but a heterogenous plurality of them (a thicket and jungle indeed). Moreover in the Upanishads we find what appears to be an adulteration and appropriation of pure TPC/TPP-oriented teaching in the direction of  proto-Hinduism with its caste system (a complex subject wherein we must be aware of British colonial influence in current perceptions; some argue that the caste system does not correspond to the fluid social division of labor based on qualities rather than birth said to have been present in the Vedic period), ritualism, the cult of procreation, family and material wealth, anthropomorphic and naturalistic religion and a spiritual legitimizing of warfare (notably in the Gîtâ - with parallels in the Kyoto school).  Nowhere is this more evident than in the doctrine of the four ashramas. However this does not rule out that there are ancient portions of both the Upanishads and the Gîtâ which furnish valuable material and information about ancient higher spiritual practices.  We must not overlook the extreme antiquity and importance of texts in Old Avestan.

There can be no doubt that in original Pali Buddhism as well its flowering into the great philosophical Mahâyâna systems of the Yocara and Madhyamaka, represents, together with the parallel traditions of the Samkhya (Burley has vigorously argued for its close affinity to Kant and Husserl and not to naive realist cosmology),  the sister schools of Nyâya and the Kanada's original Vaisheshika,  Râja-Yoga and Jainism, the most pure, profound and beautiful root and fountain that arose in Indian soil and its supreme expression of TPC and TPP. The best aspects of the Vedanta are completely indebted to it, though Advaita Vedanta represents an orthodox Hindu appropriation  of Buddhism (an artificially idealized version of the Vedanta has been presented to Western audiences). Just compare the Pali suttas concerned with caste with what over a thousand years later Shankara writes in his commentary on the Brahmasutras.

These supreme flowering of TPC and TPP  provide the clue to understand what is best in the Western spiritual and philosophical tradition, for instance the Platonic, Pyrrhonic and Plotinean schools, the texts of the Corpus Hermeticum, the ultimate meaning of Hume, Kant, Schopenhauer and Hegel.

It also presents us with a significant challenge and project: the enigmatic gnostics and gnostic texts, for instance the Pistis Sophia and the Nag Hammadi library. One view is that the gnostics and the gnostic texts represent a rare and fortunate survival of very ancient traditions cast in a 'Christian' form. This is the view of G.R.S. Mead in the introduction to his translation of the Pistis Sophia: gnostic texts represent a rare and unique survival of very ancient higher spiritual traditions pertaining to Egypt, Syria (and Phoenicia) as well as Persia and Babylonia. It is also important to study the 'Chaldean Oracles' and their commentaries. A very important place must be occupied by the study of Manicheism and Mandaeism.  Also the investigation of how far the medieval Sufi texts (including those of the Iranian esoteric traditions) represent a a transmission or more-or-less veiled continuation of much earlier neoplatonic, hermetic, manichean, mandaean, zoroastrian, gnostic traditions (the gnostic traditions seen in turn as Egyptian, Syrian, Phoenician and Chaldean). It would also seem that certain more philosophical Sufi texts contain already all the essential ideas of Leibniz and Spinoza (a fact which is historically not that surprising if we consider the possible influences on both these philosophers). It seems plausible that Sufism had a huge overlooked role and influence on all other medieval spiritual traditions (not only Christian but also the medieval Zohar).

However it is also possible that we might arrive at the conclusion that at least some 'gnosticism' does not represent a TCP/TPP directed spiritual-philosophical traditions or its reflection in the higher currents of western philosophy (recall Plotinus's critique of the gnostics). It could be that so-called gnosticism is un-philosophical and does not align with the spiritual orientation and goals of TCP and TPP. Rather so-called 'gnosticism' may represeny an essentially ritual-magical tradition, like certain aspect of later neoplatonism and very much akin to the Tantric schools of India and Tibet. Perhaps there is a kind of myth-making, magic and ritualism - for instance the presence of astrology - that is not only a perversion of science and mathematics but also of art. Maybe this is why TCP and TPP oriented India and philosophical Greece - both guided by TPC and TPP - produced such works of genius in logic, linguistics, mathematics, science and art. Does this assessment apply to Manicheism gnosis (which is of interest for its link to Buddhism) ? Perhaps such texts as the Pistis Sophia heavily indebted to Manicheism (the 'Virgin of Light' is the Manichean Kanig Roshn).

TPC unveils, skeptically analyzes and circulates among fundamental principles and structures of consciousness in absolute pristine given-ness and TPP is concerned with the path of liberation.  There could not be a greater opposition and contrast between TPC and TPP on one  hand and religious anthropomorphic mythologies and cosmologies on the other - like those of the gnostics and Manicheans. It is as if someone took the concepts, categories and principles in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and turned them into a cosmic mythology of anthroporphic eons and archons mixed with astrology and magic.  It is as if we took Kant's transcendental critical subjective idealism and turned it into the most crude dogmatic realistic anthropomorphic naturalism: for instance associating the twelve categories of the understanding with the twelve signs of the Zodiac.  It seems as if Mani did precisely this with the TPC-doctrines of  Samkhya and Buddhism and the gnostics did this with the Hermetic texts and Plato. This represents a dangerous and unfortunate human cultural-spiritual tendency and in light of this we can appreciate even better the original teaching of the Buddha as well as Pyrrho.  We add: would it be possible to take certain theories of pure mathematics and convert them into a gnostic-like mythology ? 

But we note that certain texts in the Nag Hammadi like the Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Phillip and the Gospel of Truth do appear to have a certain affinity to TPC and TPP and little in common with typical gnostic cosmologies and mythologies. Or at least they have a more philosophical, critical even Socratic-ironic bent that recalls the Zen koans.  Also we do not know how precisely the gnostic texts were read and interpreted, or who wrote them.

One of the greatest enigma of history is the relationship between such texts and Judaism and the  Old Testament.  Nothing could be more different, unrelated and even directly antagonistic.  What could the Gospel of Thomas have in common with the Pentateuch and book of Joshua ? A vegetarian, animal-rights upholding pacifist community that took the Exodus and Leviticus as holy texts ?  The same absurdities are patent in those who would wish to make the Therapeutae described by Philo  some kind of Buddhists. It seems clear what we have here is the historically pattern of borrowing (in fact plagiarism because the sources are not acknowledged) and (mis)appropriation of certain higher spiritual traditions and materials (probably taking place in Alexandria, but also among the Jewish Stoics who wrote the Pirkei Avot). The world of the Nag Hammadi scriptures is a kind of alternative reality where the only cultural-historical context is the mythology of the Old Testament: the rest of the world and history is almost entirely ignored and cancelled. What about the countless other Middle Eastern peoples (Chaldeans, Syrians, Phoenicians, etc) and Egyptians (whose traditions the Pistis Sophia appropriates) ? We must never loose sight of the pre-eminence and antiquity of the Egyptian tradition and the Graeco-Egyptian gnosis. This is what McBride writes in his book The Egyptian Foundations of Gnostic Thought:

It is in the area of Hellenistic Gnosis that the Egyptian foundations of Gnostic thought attained their greatest synthesis with the diverse strata of metaphysical thought in Hellenistic and Roman times. Here we have the beguiling and obscure phenomenon of literate Jews who were no longer Jews in any real sense of the term, Greeks who were no longer Greeks in their religious affiliations and bloodlines, Egyptians who were no longer “pure” Egyptians, and proto-Gnostic magicians and priests in the period from 100 B.C.E. to 100 C.E., all of who contributed to the evolution of Gnostic thought. Above all, there remains the essential enigma of the literate and bilingual, if not multi-lingual, “Graeco-Egyptian”. In a sense, this group represents both and neither of the scholastic categories of “Greek” and “Egyptian”, so removed were they from traditional modes of thought and even clear ethnic divisions.

 A somewhat similar situation is found in the Pali suttas where other ancient Indian philosophical and spiritual practices is are strangely ignored (except the Jains). It seems pretty clear that the authors of the Nag Hammadi library are supposed to be Jews (or descendents of Jews) who converted to a radically 'heretical' (allegorical, gnostic) form of Judaism.  

Already in the 1st century CE Epictetus was preaching a philosophical, spiritual and ethical doctrine which equals if not far surpasses anything we find in the Bible or the Gospel of Thomas. Along with the strong presence of Pythagorean, Middle Platonic, Hermetic,  Neoplatonic, Stoic and Pyrrhonic schools there are strong arguments for a pervasive transmission of the Buddhist, Jain, Samkhyan and Yogic doctrines in the ancient world. TPC and TPP were both ancient and widespread. Thus there is no spiritual, philosophical or cultural-historical excuse or justification for the Old Testament centric world-view implicit in the New Testament or part of the Nag Hammadi scriptures. Other parts of the Nag Hammadi library furnish radically distinct 'evil demiurge' interpretations of the Old Testament which are even more bizarre (the Old Testament remains central but now for a different reason: offering unique intel into the doings of a bad deity). Docetic Christology (such as found in Manicheism, Marcion, the Acts of John) is also bizarre. It would be interesting the compare this with mythicist views regarding the historical Jesus (which for some reason, which has nothing to do with new evidence, have fallen out of favor). In the Docetic-Manichean view Jesus is a cosmic being and principle (much like the Mahâyâna Bodhisattva) who manifested via a spiritual body in ancient Palestine. It us curious that many aspects of Manichean Christology were adopted by Wagner in the libretto of Parsifal. 

The Aramaic dialects: one of the oldest and most important of the languages (both spoken and written) of ancient Palestine (including Syria).This ancient language was adopted by the inhabitants of Palestine (and Syria) before and during the Roman era (one might call it the semitic counterpart of koinê Greek). A common word for God was Alaha ܐܲܠܵܗܵܐ .  A version of the (cursive) Syriac script was used by the Nestorians and is very similar to the Arabic script. Ancient authors sometimes referred to Aramaic as 'Syrian'. The term derives from the place-name 'Aram' (supposedly in Northern Syria). A common view is that the Aramaic square script, also called Ktav Ashuri (i.e. Assyrian writing), basically the modern Hebrew alphabet, was adopted by Jews after the Babylonian exile (c. 6th century BCE) from Imperial Aramaic, a cursive script used during the Achaemenid Empire.There followed a decline of Aramaic as the spoken language of the Jews which parallels the subsequent domination of Arabic in Egypt and Palestine.There were many important Aramaic speaking currents of early Christianity and the Pesshita is widely used in NT studies. It is possible that some of the neoplatonist philosophers like Porphyry spoke Aramaic. Some Manichean scriptures are in Aramaic.

Finally we address the fundamental question: what criterion do we have that allows us to judge whether a given person, spiritual practice, spiritual school, etc.  has attained TPC and genuine spiritual realization? The answer is simple: we have one perfect criterion which is perfect in the negative sense, it allows us to eliminate false claims of enlightenment. This perfect criterion involves testing the alignment of the person with universal moral principles applicable unconditionally to all human beings (human rights) as well as universal moral principles regarding the treatment of animals and indeed all life forms. For example any philosopher and spiritual teacher who accepted or tolerated things like a caste system, slavery, torture, the mistreatment of animals, cannot categorically be considered as having achieved complete or a higher TPC-enlightenment. The universal moral law is a revelation of the absolute and a path to the absolute. Another infallible criterion is that TPC is inseparable from the scientific spirit and the spirit of criticism and free inquiry.