The Buddha and Similarities in Western Philosophy, Research Paper Example

Philosophy is a discipline that often leads to an examination of broad topics that affect the human condition. These topics can often be examined in different ways without either method being incorrect. This differs from hard sciences which can often establish concrete theories rather quickly. For this reason, philosophers end up discussing similar topics in completely different contexts both temporally and geographically. If it is a question about a universal human experience, it is going to be a topic of philosophical discussion throughout human history. The observation and sensing of the world turning into understanding of that which makes up the environments human beings live in, perhaps our most common experience,. has therefore been a topic of Eastern and Western philosophers of various times during history.

One of the most prominent Eastern philosophers, Guatama Buddha was one such figure to discuss the idea of human understanding of the world. He taught approximately twenty-five hundred years ago on the Indian subcontinent. The Buddha was born into a royal family, but came to reject the material wealth such a life necessarily provides. After a trip outside of is familial palace where he saw the level of suffering other humans went through, he gave up all possessions and relied on charity to support himself for the rest of his life. After a time studying from others, Buddha went on to teach himself and spawned a religion with hundreds of millions of adherents.

With such a high level of devotees to his religion, there is naturally a great deal of influence for Buddha’s teachings. While not all originally proposed by Buddha, the tenets he taught are followed by a large portion of the world’s population and have influence on thought outside of the religion named for him. He taught of life and the universe as going in cycles, driven by the force of Karma which governs our actions throughout this life and in to the next one. Another key belief was the Middle Way, in which Buddha encouraged people to strive for moderation as opposed to living life according to any extreme.

Buddha said that human beings were composed out of five different parts called aggregates. Four of them regarded sensory perception or the understanding of events, while the other was of matter, which was not directly of that sort, but was the source of all the other aggregates. These aggregates were the aggregate of sensations, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. This shows a clear progression from basic levels of activities like hearing or sight, to higher levels with the capability of explaining the universe. Each level of aggregates was in some way built of the previous ones showing interdependence along with their progression (Boisvert, 1995).

The first level immediately above matter was that of sensation. It included each of the traditional five senses each of which was done through a physical organ consisting of the aggregate of matter. On top of that was the sensation of the mind which was the sensory organ for mental objects. In Buddha’s viewpoint, the mind was a material object as well. These combine each to help us observe phenomena, which the higher level functions can begin to turn into actual knowledge. For example, the next aggregate was perception which too had six faculties experiencing the outside world. Perception took the things humans were sensing and managed to recognize these things, allow human beings to recognize individual objects as larger concepts.

The next aggregate was that of mental activities, the first one where it could be said that the human mind is consciously aware of. This differs from sensing and perception both of which are done so constantly that they become such a part of life that it is difficult to even take notice of them. For Buddha, mental activity was where humans took what they had recognized about the world and began to act in a certain way in response to it. As it was with both sensation and perception, there were six external factors that influenced this aggregate. Essentially this is where logical motive based decision making is achieved under this teaching of our form. Due to this, it is where karma is produced because of the control shown over this aggregate. Buddha lists fifty-two mental activities, most of which are done with volition and these are the ones that have karmic effects. The activities that produce these karmic effects include hate, ignorance, wisdom and energy.

The final and highest level aggregate was the aggregate of consciousness. Consciousness is once again of the six external types of stimuli and internal organs that come from the aggregate of senses. This level is what the factors of the each of the first four aggregates come together to create. Despite the presence of the external factor, Doctor Walpola Rahula stresses that there are no objects of consciousness, but that it simply becomes aware of the external objects without having to recognize it. For this reason, consciousness tends to focus less on the individual objects as it is several steps removed. It is centered on universals and their forms as opposed to the single entities which are observed immediately by the sense aggregate. Buddha saw consciousness as something that could occur through meditation and help someone enter a level of consciousness not normally seen as possible even in modern Western psychology (Goleman, 1984).

There is a progression and a hierarchy to the aggregates, with each allowing a higher level of functioning than the ones before it. The first aggregate that of matter, is incapable of anything that counts as thought on its own. Yet, it makes up the mechanisms that allow the six senses to process things going on around us and giving an understanding about what there is. Perception is where these observations become the higher level of concepts, where what is being sensed can be recognized along with the other parts of reality that it shares characteristics with. Mental activities provide a way to act in response to the forms that are recognized through perception. Finally, mental activities are the basis for consciousness, where a state of true awareness on the outside world is achieved.

What is interesting about this account of human knowledge and understanding is its similarity in scope and conclusion to a separate account from Greek philosophy. The account comes from Socrates and his allegory of the cave. Socrates was a philosopher who tutored Plato who in turn taught Aristotle. The three of them were dominant forces of ancient philosophy in the West. When the Renaissance in Western Europe brought this type of philosophy back to the foreground, Socrates became the dominant figure in the region. This included Christian scholars, who began to see their religion through the Greek teaching ultimately stemming from Socrates. The power of this region of the world and the spread of Christianity meant that he became one of the most influential thinkers of the Western World.

The allegory comes through the writings of Plato, from where the teachings of Socrates have been passed through history. The allegory traces the plight of a man who is initially a prisoner who can only look at a single cave wall with shadows projected onto it that is in front of him. Eventually he is freed and sees that the images on the wall were made by a fire and puppets. After this, he leaves the cave and sees the figures that the puppets were based on. Finally, he manages to look at the sun and sees the source of life for all of these things. This progression in the allegory is from imagination to belief to thought and finally to understanding (Heidegger, 2002).

The way to understand this metaphor is through the idea of forms often argued for by Plato through Socrates. Each individual object in the realm humans inhabit is given its form and properties from universal forms in a different realm. The shadows on the wall represent individual objects, and if someone only knew of those they would see them as the truest of realities. Further along come the forms where the shadows ultimately derive from. Then it is when the sun is seen that the initial prisoner comes to understand how the entire mechanism for this can work.

There are key differences between the two accounts of the knowledge building process, but remarkable similarities considering how far apart their teachers lived. Both see the basic process of sensing as the lowest area of cognitive processes, and that the information gotten from those senses ultimately can turn into a larger understanding. This, in both cases, took progressively higher tiers of functioning before coming to the ultimate goal of the process.

However, there are differences between the two men’s accounts of the similar methods at work. For Buddha the final goal was consciousness while for Socrates it was an understanding of the forms. Yet, for Buddha it was only at the level of perception where the universal concepts that were analogous to the forms that for Socrates were the highest level. Also, for Socrates, this higher understanding required one to work at the progression. A person could be living like the prisoner in the cave, simply sensing objects with no sort of understanding. Through philosophy he could then go through the other stages. While to Buddha, the aggregates must all exist together. The higher level functions may not be fully developed at younger ages, but ultimately these were things that usually existed together temporally and did not have to develop through concerted effort.

There is probably no function human beings must undertake more often than processing what is around us into some kind of understanding. This is what makes it a topic picked up in such disparate areas of teaching. Socrates taught about a century after The Buddha, but across a wide distance that in such a time period left the two completely isolated from one another. Yet, they see how one must start with basic empirical observation before coming to the final goal. For Buddha that means consciousness and for Socrates it means understanding. However, both of these final stages show a way of experiencing the universe that gives one the highest amount of knowledge and true pleasure.

References

Boisvert, M. (1995). The five aggregates: Understanding theravada psychology and soteriology. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.

Goleman, D. (1984). The Buddha on Meditation and Higher States of Consciousness. Aldine Transaction.

Heidegger, M. (2002). The essence of truth: On plato’s cave allegory and theaetetus. Athlone.

Ruhala, W. (1974). What the buddha taught. New York, NY: Grove Press.