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Metabletics In the Light of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism
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Short Description: Metabletics and Indo-Tibetan Buddhism are quasi-phenomenological traditions ... Buddhism as a means of shedding light on metabletics through comparison ...
Content Inside: Metabletics In the Light of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism Alan Pope University of West Georgia Metabletics and Indo-Tibetan Buddhism are quasi-phenomenological traditions which examine psychological life in diametrical y opposed ways. Metabletics examines historical-cultural phenom- ena, placing its focus on the world, while Buddhism examines the mind and its workings, placing its focus inward. Although both traditions conclude that there is ultimately no separation between inner and outer, their different motivations and methods reveal varying understandings of the nature of reality. This article begins with an examination of how each approach would account for a handprint embedded in stone in a cave wall in Nepal; this image provides an avenue for articulating the underlying philosophies of each. Then methodological differences are explored, whereupon I argue that Indo-Tibetan Buddhism reveals an ontological self within which the psychological self of metabletics can be situated. Conversely, this psychological self provides a realm of imagination for which Buddhism cannot account. Together, metabletics and Indo-Tibetan Buddhism provide complementary emphases on the immanent and transcendent aspects of reality and the psychological and spiritual aspects of humanity. Outside the town of Pharping, Nepal, a cave wall famously bears the impression of a human handprint in stone. It is said that the hand belonged to the Indian Buddhist saint, Padmasambhava, who lived in the eighth- century.1 Having been summoned to Tibet to help establish Buddhism, he had stopped in this cave to meditate. Upon realizing the emptiness of all phenomenal display, he pressed his flesh into stone in defiance of conven- tional reality. Understandably, this cave is a significant pilgrimage site for Buddhists, and one that I myself ventured from Kathmandu one afternoon to see. Given that the skeptic in me assumed the alleged handprint would be unconvincing, I was quite astonished by the detail with which the im- pression in the rock actually did resemble a human hand. The artifact in question is pictured in Figure 1. While it is tempting to assume that there is a rational explanation for this phenomenon--where "rational" in this context means preserving our ordinary understanding of reality--let us, in line with the phenomenologi- cal tradition, bracket this assumption. In this paper I examine two different philosophical-phenomenological systems and consider how they would ac- commodate and account for the possibility that Padmasambhava actually did press his hand into the stone. The first is, naturally, Tibetan Buddhism, grounded in Mahayana philosophy and practice, while the second is Dutch psychiatrist J. H. van den Berg's phenomenological metabletics. Although Janus Head, 10(2), 531-549. Copyright © 2008 by Trivium Publications, Amherst, NY All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America
