Sightings from the Road
According to some strands of Buddhist philosophy, there are two truths. First is the truth of nirvana, of awakening, a truth that recognizes the phenomenal world in its true suchness, just as it is. Second is the truth of samsara, of the mundane world, the world of everyday normal existence.
From the point of view of awakening, a recognition of the world as true suchness is beyond words. Or, rather, it is beyond the realm of language as we ordinarily understand it. Part of the path to awakening is the realization that it is our discriminative language that is part of the problem; by labeling these things as “good” and those other things as “bad,” we create attachments to these “good” things and have deep aversions to those “bad” things. Attachments and aversions inevitably lead to suffering, and isn’t the undoing of this mass of suffering the whole point?
If language is part of the problem, however, then you can’t really talk about awakening. Once you start talking about awakening, you set up a dichotomy between “awakening” and “not-awakening,” thereby creating more discriminative thinking, a desire for “awakening,” an aversion to “not-awakening,” and we’re right back to where we started.
It is in this context that the Sanskrit word prapañca has a special meaning. Prapañca refers here to how we use language to describe the world around us — indeed to describe awakening itself. In some Buddhist contexts, prapañca simply refers to the ever-expanding set of language and concepts all rooted in a false idea of the self that tries to make sense of the world. But since it’s rooted in a fundamental delusion, the idea of a permanent self, this language is itself deluded. In other words, because we’re not enlightened, our language is, by definition, deluded. It is imperfect.
But does that mean that language, because of its inherent imperfection, cannot be meaningful? Is it not worth using language to describe the world, to describe awakening? After all, what choice have we got? To borrow a metaphor, while we certainly shouldn’t confuse the finger pointing at the moon with the moon itself, we still need to point to the moon. Otherwise, how would we know to look for it?
So prapañca refers to our superficial understanding of the world. Our words are superficial — deluded, imperfect, imprecise — because we’re not enlightened. Just because we’re Buddhists doesn’t mean we’re Buddhas. We’re simply on the path and along the way we’re going to make some mistakes. Using language, using prapañca is one of those mistakes. But it’s all we’ve got. We have to use language in our attempt to transcend language.
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It is in this unenlightened, deluded, and imperfect spirit that we launch Prapañca: a buddhist journal, a new online journal dedicated to Buddhists using language — through the written word, through poetry, art and photography — to express their own places along the path, their own furtive pointing at the moon. Imperfection seemed to us a perfect theme to get things started. After all, no matter how grand our intentions, beginnings are rarely as lofty and perfectly executed as we’d like. No matter how hard we try to be good Buddhists (or, in this case, Buddhist publishers) sometimes we come up spectacularly short.
I am struck in reviewing the pieces in this issue by the sense of connection between the writers and the mundane world, the world of prapañca. It seems clear to me that our imperfection is always highlighted the most in our interactions with the world, with other people, even with other Buddhists. Would that we could all retreat to a mountain hermitage, free to work our way toward awakening without the distractions of others, of work, of friends. But we can’t really. As contradictory as it sounds, because of our interdependence with the world, we can’t really let go all our attachments. We’re going to have to work our way toward awakening right here in the mundane world. We’ll do the best we can. And while we try to be mindful companions, good Zen students, and avoid temptation, inevitably, we’ll come up short. The trick, of course, is in recognizing that the coming up short is itself a part of the path.
Think of this journal as a collection sightings from the road, postcards from along the way.
Scott Mitchell
Scott is the Editor-in-chief of Prapañca: a buddhist journal. He is also a practicing Shin Buddhist and Buddhist scholar living in Oakland, California. He teaches courses on Buddhist history, Buddhist modernism, and Buddhism in the West at the Institute of Buddhist Studies in Berkeley.
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