Why would I of all people, someone barely literate, try to write something fairly technical about religion unless

out on insane arrogance or some other delusion. The answer is out of necessity. I had to think a lot about religion because being someone who embodies religious pluralism I experienced some of the many kinds of pain that can result from selecting an inferior religious or spiritual path. By embodying religious pluralism I mean someone who has a functioning religious impulse but no strong identification with a particular tradition or sect within one. The problem is that we have no justifiable way to determine the relative values of the religions. Although this does not mean that we cant make some valid distinctions. But if we know that kind of pain it can lead to an impasse. Moreover, religious leaders cannot really speak to this issue since they cannot, for structural reasons, admit that their religion might be inferior. That is, from a certain point of view a second best religion must be a contradiction in terms since no religion admits to being one. If John Hicks metaphor for describing religious pluralism, the great supermarket of religion, is useful it would follow according to the logic and language of commercialism that the customer is king. What does that mean? I mean by it that there must be a discourse written from the point of view of the follower or potential follower of religion although I dont know what to call it. This discourse will amount to saying that in addition to getting salvation from religion we also need salvation from religion but this is also through religion. And while we cant determine what the best religion is we can determine the best type of religion. I am confident this is right since one we reject Tillichs claim that Christianity is the best religion it is a very minor extrapolation from his work. The parts of this essay labeled as an exercise and a corollary may be, and as far I know are, a new way to illustrate the key Buddhist term emptiness. The advantage, if it is an advantage which will be discussed below, is one of clarity compared to the traditional explanations. Emptiness means that the structure of experience does not consist of the two independently existing elements of the subjective self and the object. The word object stands for any thing and every thing (the world) that the subject is or can be aware of. Although Im not a Buddhist and certainly cannot speak as a Buddhist it is useful to use Buddhist terminology to explain what could be called generically and more properly given the topic of religious pluralism, non-duality, since it is the most accessible and familiar. Of course if the structure of experience is not dualistic this fact does not belong in principle to Buddhism or in practice. Still the Buddhist literature is the only elaborated discussion of non-duality that I personally know of. Even if the upcoming illustration, the exercise is actually a demonstration, is as clear as I think it is it would have little meaning except possibly for someone like me who struggled unsuccessfully for years to understand the standard explanations of emptiness. Consequently it will have to be put in some kind of context. Part of this contextualizing will be to show that emptiness can provide answers for the contemporary religious problems not just of religious pluralism but also corruption. Emptiness can also shed light on the confused relationship of religion and post-modernism.

So what is emptiness, broadly speaking? According to the theologian Paul Tillich emptiness is an example of a type of religious philosophy of which he said there are two that he called the cosmological and the ontological. Emptiness is an example of the latter. What did he mean by a philosophy of religion? He meant fundamental explanations internal to a religion and not the musings of an outside philosopher; but explanations of what? Whatever else a philosophy of religion might contain it would have to explain the problem that religion proposes to treat and the remedy for it. The religious problem is in general the chronic negative emotionalism the religions detect in the normal adult, sin or samsara for example, and its consequences. And a religious philosophy would also have to explain the resolution of the problem, at least initially, in what John Hick called the core mystical experience that he says is the basis for all of the so called world religions. A little more descriptively this might be called nonvisionary ecstatic experience. This raises the question of what Tillich, a Christian theologian meant when he used the word God which will be dealt with later. Tillich described the cosmological philosophy as the view that religion is mans relation to divine beings. And he said that the ontological philosophy is held by those who refuse to accept the cleavage between the subject and object as final. Given that these two philosophies are competing explanations, at least for anyone raised in a theistic culture, this is an astonishing equation. How could the relationship between the omipotent creator of the universe, his son, or perhaps his messenger possibly be equated with what must mean correctly accessing the fundamental structure of experience? This is not quite so astonishing if we understand that the ontological philosophy can be encoded in mythological stories. Even so the question remains. Perhaps the most fundamental point of comparison is this: While there are many implications of saying that the structure of experience is not dualistic, that are to say the least not immediately apparent, we can easily see even at the level of even a rough schematic that if there are not two elements that need to brought into an optimal alignment through self-conscious reflection then there is no need to self-consciously control our experience which is surely a central theme of religion regardless of philosophical type. That is, there is no imperative rooted in the fundamental structure of experience that we self-consciously control our experience through imagining and choosing between alternative courses of action in order to achieve the best possible quality of experience. It should be noted that Tillich told us Christianity was originally an ontological religion and ought to be again because that type of philosophy is justifiable. It should be and is readily apparent that experience is not structured dualistically.. Assuming that it can be easily demonstrated that experience is not dualistically structured what is the significance of just knowing that? As has been implied the religious problem lies in our efforts to self-consciously control our experience. (Self-consciousness and subject-object dualism are more or less synonymous). This is pretty straight forward but if I had to give evidence it would be two of the foundational stories of what could be called the two proto-world religions Hinduism and Judaism. In the story of Adam and Eve humanity is said to fall from acquiring the knowledge of good and evil. We must apply a two valued scale of measurement when we evaluate imagined alternative courses of action which also requires a self-image. And in Hinduism the name of the Goddess Maya is usually translated from the Sanskrit along the lines of she who measures; If we

understand the religious problem and feel it to be a problem and especially if this understanding results in some kind of religious practice then knowing experience is not dualistically structured can be regarded as salvation. By the word salvation I mean the initial conversion from a mundane to a spiritual life even in the absence of what would be considered a conversion experience. That is, the more natural resolution of the core mystical experience If there is no need to self-consciously control our experience how can it be reconciled with practice? There can be reconciliation because in general no need to control our experience is the practice. Or at least certain kinds of practice may be preliminary to, and thus under the auspices so to speak of no need to control our experience. Practice is necessary because our control efforts are compulsory and more or less unceasing. And there are numerous kinds of practice because there are multiple aspects of our control efforts, for example personality type. How are we compelled to control our experience? Once the dynamics self-consciousness are established in the course of our socialization we could not simply decide to stop, after considering the situation, since that would just be a continuation of it. Another reason is that we cannot control our minds. Religious teachers who teach concentration, which means to focus on a single thought or sensation for an extended period, tell us that without considerable practice we are unable to concentrate for more than a few seconds. But the most compelling reason in the sense of being the most difficult to see any way around is that if we think experience is dualistically structured it seems that we are compelled to self-consciously control our experience due to the fundamental structure of reality itself .If the trajectories of independently existing objects are to an extent predictable, and if experience is more or less determined by the objects with which we are in contact with through the senses then it seems like we must consider alternative courses of action for their effect on the quality of our experience. Why is any of this a problem? Imagining ourselves in pleasant or painful situations it the associated (respective) pleasant and painful emotions that motivate us towards the former and away from the latter. And experience shows that if there is some aspect of our experience that we cannot control the negative motivating emotions do not just go away. In fact if we see our emotions and associated thoughts as independently existing, which of course we do, they can in principle, and obviously do in practice, become topics of self-conscious reflection and additional control efforts. And this process again can obviously in theory, and I think does in practice, become a self-reinforcing spiral that necessitates the formations of the defense mechanisms. At every turn of such a spiral we would become more fragmented, tense, and symbolically oriented which is a pretty good description of the average adult in a general way. Consequently a tremendous resistance to thought develops which is only truly apparent in the resolution of the core mystical experience that is frequently called a flow state. This self-reinforcing spiral also operates when things go well. This can lead to such emotions as complacency and arrogance. The mechanism of the self-reinforcing spiral while probably too simplistic nonetheless captures important features of or chronic negative emotionalism. And it can explain the following kind of instruction for practice. Not doing, not constructing, not fabricating, not altering or manipulating your mind while remaining undistracted this is the heart

essence of meditation. A more succinct version from the same Buddhist school is to leave the mind in its uncorrected state. Another consequence of subject-object dualism is that a significant meaning of the word meaning is knowledge sufficient for some purpose. And it appears because of subjectobject dualism that our essential purpose is controlling our experience. But unless we have certain knowledge of some desirable final outcome for our control efforts, which of course we do not, then in an overall sense our lives are meaningless, that philosophically is called nihilism. If there is not an imperative rooted in the fundamental structure of experience to self-consciously control our experience then the problem of nihilism is dissolved. The ontological philosophy of religion also bears on another aspect of meaninglessness. An important part of religious discourse has become meaningless under the condition of religious pluralism. Pluralism is certainly the present culmination of the historical development of religion. The problem is how to determine the best religion from among the available options. This is not a trivial concern. From a certain point of view a second best religion is virtually a contradiction in terms since no religion presents itself as such. Most religions make explicit claims of superiority and in that context even if a religion does say the religions are equal it is an implicit claim of superiority. An easy way to describe the difficulty is to point out that the person with ordinary perceptions has no justifiable way in principle to choose between conflicting supernatural doctrines These doctrines include the rejection of the supernatural from religion altogether. Apparently if we acquire a strong identification with a certain religion or a tradition as part of our social conditioning the claims of superiority by the religion in question seem intuitively correct and allow us to proceed. Lacking such identification can lead to an impasse since the implication of choosing an inferior religion will be that we will experience unnecessary suffering compared to one that is first rate since our spiritual growth will be delayed or even prevented. As far as I know religious pluralism was not a major concern of Tillichs. Yet there is an answer for it implicit in his work. Consider: Anyone who is open to the Holy Spirit is a saint despite their lack of saintliness. This is quite similar to Dogens To sit in meditation is to be completely enlightened even though it may take thirty years to fully manifest. Both of these non-dual philosophers point to there being a qualitative and a quantitative or functional aspect to the ontological philosophy of religion. The first temporally, the qualitative aspect or salvation, can be said to be knowing that there is know need to control our experience which then becomes the basis for practice. And while in most cases our control efforts will continue with all of their suffering it is not a fundamental problem. The reader will note that the upcoming exercise and corollary are given in visual terms. Is there a special significance to visual phenomena or ism vision merely another sense field? In at least one school of Buddhism that is currently prominent in the west (Nyingma/ Dzog-chen ) visual space is equated with experience in general and even with being. It is worth noting that Martin Heidegger tells us that for the ancient Greeks visuality was also integral to being. I can think of a few reasons why this might be so. First of all I can think of no way that subject-object dualism could be described without reference to visual space even if it is in some way a corruption of non-duality. Secondly

all of the other senses and their objects can be located within visual space while the reverse is not he case. For example we cannot smell the sun but we can locate the source of smells. I am well aware of the value of the practice in religious writing of what could be called tactical obscurity that engages, and forces a reader to think, more than they otherwise might. The problem is that what is to be transmitted is well outside our habitual and automatically functioning frames of reference. So clarity and brevity might be precisely the wrong approach. This mainly is a problem with reading. What will be read will just go by too quickly. So the illustration of emptiness should be done as an exercise, can and should become a topic for meditation and can serve as a framework for contemplation. A succinct definition of the key Buddhist term emptiness is that phenomena do not inherently exist. Since we already know if were at all sophisticated that phenomena exist nowhere else but in the brain or perhaps the mind how is it that we perceive phenomena as inherently, or synonymously, independently existing? That is, existing independently of the mind or brain although we will have to expand this list a little. An exercise: If you pay close attention as you move your focal point in tiny increments over say a wall you can easily see that you are not in fact moving your gaze over single phenomenon. Put another way you are not shifting your gaze from one part to another of the original phenomenon as we usually assume because subsequent views are not contained in prior ones. If that usual assumption were correct it would mean that phenomena do exist inherently, separately from the brain or mind and we must add the position of the eyes. A corollary: If we cannot shift our gaze over a phenomenon we cannot bring it to rest on one either. Is there principle or doctrine in Buddhism that explains the example and corollary? Yes, it is and must be pratiyasamutpada which is frequently translated from the Sanskrit as dependent arising and which is considered synonymous for emptiness. Its meaning, best understood in relation to the above definition of emptiness, is that something that exists in dependence on something else cannot exist independently of those elements or element. Something that exists dependently has no capacity to exist on its own or put another way under its own power.. A good example of this type of existence is the image of say a car on a television screen. The image depends on the screen, the electronics in the set, the transmitter, antennas and so on. So when we turn off the television or the picture is interrupted for any number of reasons the image of the car no longer appears. The above example may be a little misleading because the image of a car on a television screen is doubly dependent. It is dependent on the elements described but it is also a phenomenon. The phenomena in our brains or minds also depend on a number of elements such as the eye, nervous system, parts of the brain and so on. The reason we cant scan a visual phenomenon in the way described in the initial example is because when the relationships upon which visual phenomena depend change a new phenomenon results. And we cant rest our eyes on a phenomenon because it does not exist independently but is produced by a certain position of our eyes. We are now in a position to make a few more points. One of these is that we cannot move towards or away from phenomena. Another is that no phenomenon could skim across a

visual scene. And no phenomenon could exit from or enter to an outside of a scene. Theses few points result in some structural changes to our ordinary views. This undermining of the objectivity of phenomena also undermines the subjective self understood as a point of view at the center of the phenomenal field that we somehow inhabit. The only way such a thing as a point of view could be established is if it could move in relation to phenomena or vice versa. In the initial example our unexamined assumption is something like that our point of view is rotating and connected to our focal point, in effect, by a radial line. In this way the pure or pristine nature of consciousness is maintained as it logically must be in the sense that it is not tainted with objective elements. Thus subject-object dualism, the philosophical opposite of emptiness, is overcome. Also affected is our usual understanding of time. Usually we measure time as the movement of a variable part or parts of a scene relative to a fixed part or parts. For instance the sun moves across the fixed bowl of the sky, the suns shadow moves around the face of a sundial, or the hands of a clock move over its face. And a typical representation of time is that the subjective self fixed viewing the present moment is located in an infinite series of past and future moments that transit from the former to the latter. But if phenomena cannot move within a scene how can our usual understanding of time be accurate. And if there is no outside of a scene we could not place the present moment within an infinite series of past and future moments. And if no phenomenon can skim across a scene no scene could undergo modifications because of the displacement of its parts. But then it would seem like time would be completely static. How then can the dynamism of experience or essentially of time be accounted for? The answer to this apparent dilemma is surely one of interpretation. With the initial example where we ordinarily would think that we were moving our focal point over a phenomenon upon closer examination we were not. And while no phenomenon can skim across a scene, the image of a car on a television screen for example, they can provide the illusion and indication of movement. There is no doubt that we can enmesh ourselves very precisely, without calculation, and with accurate prediction, in temporal sequences such as in a game of table tennis. And our survival depends on this capacity. If we see a speeding car bearing down on us the thing is not to reflect that no phenomenon is moving. The thing to do is to get out of the way. To say that there is very good evidence that the world is made up of independently existing moving parts seems to be a gross understatement. But the Buddhists say that this is not the fundamental structure of experience and that this has profound existential significance. If we have performed the initial illustration and understood the subsequent points are we enlightened? Unfortunately were not going to function like an advanced practitioner or a saint. Subject-object dualism, the philosophical opposite of emptiness is too entrenched for that.