Inner and Outer

Two people converse. They see and hear each other. They also see their surroundings and hear other sounds. Thus, they share a publicly accessible, empirically discernible, objective, material realm. Each also accesses a private, inner, subjective, mental realm of memories, imaginings, thoughts, emotions, motives, apprehensions and anticipations. Thus, experience has two layers or levels which, however, are not ontologically equivalent.

Objects pre-existed subjects which generate their individual subjectivities. Despite its lack of objectivity, the inner realm is powerful, full of ideas, reasons and motives. We need to understand both realms, reducing neither to the other. We exist where they intersect. The entire content of the inner world is derived from natural and social environments. Language is social before it is internal. However, it is with the inner powers of intellect and imagination that we understand and set out to change the external world. Mind is creative, not passive; a god, not a mirror. It developed with manipulation, not as mere cognition.

The inner world includes dreams. Because, when dreaming, we seem to leave the body and to enter a realm where we can meet (dream about) the dead, it was thought that:

the inner world was inter-subjective or objective;
it touches the visible world;
we enter it temporarily in sleep and permanently at death;
it has other inhabitants. 

In fact, it is still inhabited by myths and fictions.

We understand the inner world through meditation, psychology and literature, the physical world through physics, chemistry and cosmology, the biological world through Darwinian analysis of natural selection underlying species diversity and the human world, I suggest, through Marxist analysis of economic realities underlying social appearances.    

Practice and Experience

When we meditate, we engage with the kind of practice and experience from which the rishis derived the "Atman is Brahman" teaching and the Buddha derived the "anatta" teaching, although the latter was backed up with philosophical analysis and argument. Thus:

practice and experience are more basic than teachings;
teachings are guides to meditative practice, as Marxist theory is a guide to political practice;
both experiences and teachings derived from them differ.

However, we can synthesise apparently contradictory teachings. "Atman is Brahman" means that each individual soul is identical with the transcendent whereas "anatta" means that there are no individual souls. However, the Upanishadic teaching can mean instead that each individual self is identical with the one universal self whereas the Buddhist teaching can mean that there are no separate selves. In that case, the teachings agree.

Buddhists do not refer to a universal self and rightly if this were taken to mean that the universe is a single person. However, it need only mean that the universe is conscious of itself through many individual selves and this formulation is consistent with materialism.  

Is Compassion the Nature of Reality?

Yes, according to a passage read to the Lancaster Serene Reflection Meditation Group. However, reality pre-existed consciousness whereas compassion requires it. I suggest that: 
 
someone who is one with reality is compassionate;
therefore, he simultaneously experiences both reality and compassion;
therefore, he tends to identify them, especially if he is influenced by idealist belief in the primacy of consciousness.
 
Meditation on reality shows us our karma (action and consequences) and how to cleanse it. Thus, reality resembles a compassionate teacher but is not a conscious teacher. Although most religions (responses to the highest transcendence) personify or idealise the transcendent, the most basic Buddhist concept is emptiness, not consciousness. "The nature of reality is emptiness" might be more appropriate. The realisation that every subject and object of consciousness is empty of permanent, independent substance may generate compassion for those whose suffering is caused by desire for permanence and fear of impermanence. However, mere emptiness, equally present both in conscious subjects and in unconscious objects, is not itself identical with compassion.

When a group of workers engages in conflict with an employer or manager, any of the workers who practises Buddhist meditation may also practise compassion towards the person with whom they are in conflict but should not let this obscure either the issues involved in the conflict or the need for solidarity with fellow workers whose attitudes may be far from compassionate. Compassion may be a kind of solidarity, with all conscious beings, but, if so, it must be differentiated from solidarity in a more specific sense. Compassion, "suffering with", motivated the Buddha to teach meditation to individuals of all castes whereas class solidarity is a common interest which, when fully realised, will put workers in control of production, thus ending the economic conflict of interest between buyers and sellers of labour power.
 
A Buddhist employer might:

accept pro-capitalist economics, therefore disagree with the political analysis presented here;
reason that the capitalist role, extracting surplus value from living labour, is essentially uncompassionate, therefore cease to be an employer;
reason that we must continue to act within the existing economic system until it is overthrown while avoiding both personal greed and an overtly oppressive or exploitative approach to employees.

Idealism is multifarious:

one conscious being pre-existed matter (theism);
many co-exist with it (Jainism);
the idea of goodness pre-existed instances of goodness (Platonism);
shared ideas, not economic relationships, determine social institutions (common sense);
greed, hate and delusion are beginningless whereas compassion is timeless (Buddhism).

Dialectical materialists, affirming that materially based consciousness generates psychological dispositions and that ideas reflect societies, not vice versa, can value consciousness and compassion without reifying them.
Although Buddhist teaching includes "no soul" and the transience of mental states, it also attributes a perennial robustness to basic motivations. The materialist view is that desire and fear begin anew in each conscious organism and end when the organism dies but that no empirically discernible medium transmits such motives from the last mental state of any dying organism to the first mental state of a particular later organism. The complex of attachments and aversions comprising a human psyche seems to end when the brain dies unless the individual realises enlightenment before death. Between realisation and death, there is consciousness without attachments and aversions. After death, I think, there is neither consciousness nor a potential psyche, unless Spiritualists can prove otherwise.

Barring an ecological catastrophe or thermonuclear war, many people will be born after I have died. Let us consider one of them. He will think of himself as "I", will not remember having been me and will not be regarded as identical with me but can be affected for good or ill by my present actions. These propositions seem to exhaust the entire karmic and moral point of the rebirth teaching. Between my death and that future person's birth, human beings will continue to interact. Some interactions will be direct or indirect effects of my actions. Some will be causes of his birth. It is unlikely that a linear causal sequence will directly link me to him but he and I are indirectly connected as parts of a single empirically discernible reality.

Other, supernatural, realms are the subject matter of religious teachings but are neither verifiably real nor mutually compatible. Catholic priests talk about Heaven, Hell and Purgatory. Zen monks talk about rebirth. Individuals receive these ideas from their traditions, not from their own experience. Catholic practice presupposes Catholic belief whereas Zen practice need not presuppose rebirth. For a Buddhist-materialist synthesis, I suggest recognition of: 
 
the value of meditation;
the possibility of enlightenment;
impermanence;
no soul, but also no rebirth;
materialism that is neither reductive nor mechanical but dialectical and historical.
 
This last aspect incorporates actions that are not only individual and moral but also collective and political. The only negation of traditional Buddhism is "no rebirth" but this is a logical extension from "no soul".

The Cause and End of Suffering

Medicine, economic reform and Buddhism address aspects of suffering. Suffering can occur only because consciousness exists. Consciousness is a by-product of natural selection. For mobile organisms, pleasure and pain have greater survival value than merely unconscious sensitivity to environmental alterations. For conscious beings, consciousness is not a by-product of another activity but an end in itself. However, conscious beings are the only kind of beings that can have ends in this sense.

"Mind" means either intellect in particular or consciousness in general. In the general sense, we contrast, for example, the "mind" of an ant with that of a man and Buddhists mean by "Buddha Mind" the faculty of intuitive wisdom, not of intellectual comprehension. Meditation discloses, first, that mind in general is not a visible, tangible object and, secondly, that its states are even less permanent than those of external objects. Mental states succeed each other with great rapidity. This reflects their physical basis. Organisms maintain their form actively, not passively. They continually change their composition by exchanging matter with their environments. Cells change their states as bodies adjust to environmental alterations. Multiple brain cell linkages change while processing changing sensory inputs and respond differently according to their past experience.

Mental flux reflects this psychophysical flux. Not mere complexity but complex organism-environment interaction generates consciousness and action on the environment generated human consciousness. Increasing complexity causes mental suffering by adding memories, anticipations and imaginings to immediate sensations. Buddhists seek the cause and end of suffering within. On different levels, Buddhists and Marxists see and do what needs to be done without requesting questionable divine help.

 

Zen meditation is not practised in discrete stages but Zen trainees might experience: the transience of mental states; the tendency of thought to perpetuate them; the emergence of deeper dissatisfactions like guilt or resentment. We need to heed problematic feelings when they arise but not to perpetuate them by thinking about them at other times. In this case, our thinking about how to solve the problem is the problem. Heeding guilt etc means not thinking about it but watching it arise and pass. What matters is not the passing mental states but the awareness through which they pass like clouds through the sky. That awareness is the way to the end of suffering.      

Science, Spirituality and Socialism

Scientific knowledge is based on observation, measurement and experiment, thus on experience, not on authority. Much spiritual teaching is based on the authority of scriptures or gurus. If it can be established that a guru knows whereof he speaks, then it makes sense to accept his authority at least provisionally although many gurus claim more than merely provisional authority. Buddhist spiritual teaching is a guide to practice and is to be confirmed or disconfirmed by individual experience. On this basis so far, I accept the teaching of karma (action and consequences) though not of individual rebirth. Zen monks authoritatively tell us what the teaching is but we are not obliged to accept the teaching on their authority.

Utopian socialism is an idea based not on authority but on abstract reasoning. It would be good if the economy were co-operative, not competitive etc. Utopian socialists can only argue that their idea is better than the current reality whereas Marxist theory guides the kind of political practice that potentially builds socialism. Effective arguments for socialism occur in the context of struggle against aspects of the capitalist system and of its state apparatus. All such struggles potentially challenge the system and demonstrate how to overthrow it. Thus, Marxism is "scientific socialism", to be confirmed or disconfirmed by collective experience. Marxism would be disproved either by a crisis-free capitalism or by the continued oppression of social minorities in a genuinely socialist, as opposed to state capitalist, economy. Also, Marxist theory has developed in the light of subsequent experience. Such development continues to explain capitalism, not accommodate to it.

Buddhism contrasts with authoritarian and theistic spiritual traditions. Marxism contrasts with utopian and reformist socialist movements. Although neither Buddhist teaching nor Marxist theory achieves scientific precision, they are our closest approaches to scientific spirituality and socialism.

Traditions

The Buddhist tradition recognises:

a beginningless, not recently created, universe;
beginningless greed, hate and delusion, not a prehistoric fall by our first parents;
universal causation without divine interventions;
cause and effect in morality as well as in physics;
endless process and transience, even for gods;
philosophical analysis and understanding as integral to spiritual enquiry;
insights gained through meditation, not given in revelation;
our ability to create new, not just endure past, karma;
many human Buddhas, not one divine Saviour;
food for the poor as a better sacrifice than blood for the gods.

Karma is action. If action and consequence are cause and effect, then new karma not caused by previous actions contradicts universal causation. However, this problem is not unique to Buddhists. We experience both a causally ordered realm and our ability to act anew within it. We may favour determinism but must accept responsibility. Kant's antithesis between theoretical and practical reason paradoxically but accurately expresses our experience as active subjects, not passive objects. Causes affecting us are internally processed and their effects experienced as decisions or actions. Unrestrained and uncoerced actions are free. Thus, we are caused to act freely. Meditation discloses internal processes but first life must motivate us to meditate.

Greek Atomists postulated, and quantum physicists confirm, that some particles change position without causation but such microcosmic indeterminacy does not affect macrocosmic experience. Chaos, unpredictable major changes caused by initially minor events, precludes inflexibly mechanistic determinism.

The Buddha's experimental practice of asceticism and meditation and his philosophical analysis of existing religious concepts were motivated by compassion and spiritual concern. Consequently, he founded a meditative tradition that generated its own, Buddhist, philosophy. The premise of Christianity is neither compassion nor spirituality but a conviction of the believer's salvation. This conviction does not generate philosophical enquiry and can even be hostile to it. When Christians did philosophise about their beliefs, they had to adapt originally pagan Platonism and Aristotelianism. If Christianity had not been imported by missionaries, then imposed by the state, then myths, epics, philosophies, local rituals and mystery religions might have converged as a European equivalent of Hinduism.

The Marxist tradition recognises:

scientific cosmogony and cosmology;
an ascent from animality to humanity through collective labour;
universal causation, including economic determination of social institutions;
social determination of individual psychology;
endless process and transience with gods as myths;
philosophical, historical and economic analysis as integral to political practice;
theory guiding and tested by practice;
that men make their own history though not in circumstances of their own choosing;
the self-emancipation of the working class;
the dispossessed as agents of struggle, not passive recipients of hand outs.

Materialist Theory and Spiritual Practice

The Cosmic Perspective

Meditation is practice of consciousness. Traditionally, it was believed that consciousness had pre-existed material conditions and processes. It followed that individual subjects of consciousness were souls and that an ultimate subject, if such existed, was God. Philosophers either elaborated or questioned these ideas. Buddhists, believing neither in souls nor in God, nevertheless believed that consciousness was beginningless and that mental processes had been transmitted into current organisms from a beginningless past. Thus: 

for Plato, philosophy or reflective thought liberated souls from matter;
for Jains, meditation transcending thought liberates souls from matter;
for Hindus, meditation unites souls with God;
for Buddhists, meditation liberates present consciousness from perennial mental processes.

I accept scientific evidence that consciousness originated from material conditions and processes. Cosmically, consciousness is novel, not perennial. Its origin was a qualitative revolution. It follows that: 

organisms, not souls or God, are the subjects of consciousness;
mental processes began in a finite past;
meditation is practice of individual consciousness but not also participation in a perennial consciousness. 

  

Mobile organisms were naturally selected for sensitivity to environmental alterations. The most intense degree of sensitivity is sensation. Therefore, consciousness is a by-product of natural selection. It begins as sensation but becomes reflection: language, thought, self-knowledge, meditation etc. Reflective beings can regard reflective consciousness as an end, not a means. However, only conscious beings can have ends. Therefore, consciousness was not an end of pre-conscious processes. The universe did not intend, although it did tend, to become conscious at least once. We can treat persons as ends in themselves while recognising their accidental origin. The lotus grows from dark places.

Naturally selected reflective consciousness can either continue the struggle for which it was selected or reflect. Reflection can be either a means to survival or an end in itself. Meditation can be a relaxation technique or the supreme enlightenment. Those who engage in conflict not for self- or group-aggrandisement but because disengagement would be a greater evil can synthesise the end of contemplation with the necessity of action. However, political analysis is necessary to determine which conflicts are lesser evils and which merely perpetuate a conflictive status quo. 

The Global Perspective

Specifically:

the American war on terror does not end causes of terrorism but is one;
soldiers merely obeying orders abdicate responsibility;
when a minority resists oppression, a "peace keeping force" merely maintains the status quo, thereby perpetuating oppression;
arming the minority would help to end oppression;
assassinating dictators is less harmful than destroying cities but cannot change society;
mass action can change society, if not derailed by compromising leadership;
markets need states to enforce laws protecting property in work places and resources;
economic competition becomes military;
the global economy needs war - a new century of technology initiated not world peace but two World Wars, then nuclear deterrence therefore Cold War, then a single super-power therefore "war on terror". 

The war on terror can be prolonged indefinitely. When each enemy is defeated, another appears not because the system is good, therefore attacked by everything bad, but because the system must externalise conflict in order to deny that it is inherent. An American clergyman said, "We fought Nazis, then Communists, now terrorists", an uncritical mouthpiece of the status quo.

Many conflicts perpetuate the system but only one can end it. "The last fight let us face..." The whole Earth is now Kurukshetra, the battlefield where Arjuna fought with Krishna as his charioteer.

The National Perspective

Britain, May 2009:

a Labour Government saving global capitalism fails to address global warming;
resurgent fascism is widely opposed even by the anti-immigrant press;
economic pressure on public services causes endless re-organisation in futile attempts to quantify qualitative work.

The Individual Perspective

Obviously, each individual must do what s/he thinks is right. Few accept all the perspectives outlined above but we are obliged at least to question received values before either committing to them or seeking alternatives.

Body and Soul?

Philosophically, I am dialectical materialist. I think that each of us is a single psychophysical organism, not two conjoined entities, a body and a soul. However, the language of "body and soul" makes some sense if it is understood that the "soul" must be mortal, not immortal. If your "body" is your visible physical social appearance and role whereas your "soul" is your consciousness, then "body" and "soul" can be differently related. Consciousness may be completely identified with physical satisfaction and enjoyment and/or with social appearance and role. Alternatively, it may be completely detached from them.

People around us treat us as if we were simply identical with the person (persona =mask) that is visible to them. We are socially trained to accept this identification but can see things differently. It is as if the soul has entered the world with a mission to stop identifying with the body by becoming more conscious of the reality underlying roles and appearances. My public persona can be a role that I play for social purposes, but not what I think I am. I think that my consciousness has grown organically with my body, not that it has entered this body from a previous life or another realm. But it is as if it has come here to learn non-attachment to the body in the sense of "body"  suggested here. This does not entail negation of the body. The Buddhist teaching of "no soul" entails a middle way between asceticism, emphasising the "body", and hedonism, emphasising the "soul".

As we meditate, we become dispassionate observers of our past social interactions. We are no longer simply the person who was in conflict with others but observers of the conflict who are more likely to avoid unnecessary conflict in future.

Is Buddhism a Religion or a Philosophy?

It is both although we would not go far wrong if we called it a practical philosophy so old that it has religious forms. We meditate before a Buddha image on an altar, bow either towards the image or towards each other and even place offerings on the altar. By contrast, we do not practise analytic philosophy before an image of Socrates on an altar. Buddhist teaching addresses philosophical issues:

the concept of souls;
causality;
the eternality or otherwise of the world;
the constituents of consciousness;
how to live rightly.

As an analysis of the cause of suffering and a way to the end of suffering, Buddhist philosophy is practical, not academic. Buddhist practice refers neither to the gods nor to a creator. The religious formulae of a temple or meditation hall facilitate the practice of meditation. They do not placate deities. So far, this makes Buddhism philosophical, not religious. In Buddhist countries, the culture incorporates both Buddhist and polytheist practices. Further, Buddhist practice does refer not to a transcendent being but definitely to a transcendent state. Since I define religion basically as response to the highest transcendence, I regard Buddhism as both philosophical and religious.

Marxism also incorporates both philosophical analysis and practical action. Both Buddhism and Marxism address the state of the world and what is to be done about it.

Understanding World and Self

World

Why is the world as it is? Why is life often unsatisfactory? What can we do about it?

Buddhist answer, formulated two and a half millennia ago:
Greed, hate and delusion turn the Wheel of Life. Human beings can end this process in themselves.

Marxist answer, incorporating modern knowledge:
Scientific cosmogony, natural selection and class conflict explain our condition. Workers collectively organized at the point of production can end exploitation and oppression and emancipate society.

Comparisons:
Buddhism assumes consciousness. Science explains it.
Social relationships transcend individual motivations. We are economically compelled to compete to survive whether or not we are individually greedy. Individually, we may patiently address our motivations but, collectively, we must urgently change the economy.

Self

Can you and I know how we appear to and affect others? (We often believe that we are reasonable, honest, helpful etc.)

Buddhist answer: Yes, through meditation.

Marxism does not address this question. By understanding society, we can overcome social prejudices and campaign for a better society but social psychology does not fully explain individual psychology. Political activists can lack self-knowledge in personal relationships.

 

Both

According to Buddhist teaching, understanding of the world and of the self are identical. The same process occurs in both.

According to Marxist theory, they are not identical. Natural processes preceded consciousness. Material forces of production determine historically developing relations of production and qualitatively differing social structures whose causes are therefore not simply reducible to the most basic attachments and aversions to be found in individual consciousness. The study of history and economics informs political activity whereas only personal experience is necessary for meditation.

Two understandings are not identical but both are necessary if we are both to change society and to know our effects on others.