This is not so much an essay at the moment as it is a jumble of ill-formed thoughts seeking expression. I am writing this in the hope of disentangling the threads a little, and will probably completely re-write this after my first attempt.
One moral stance says that ends do not justify means i.e. a beneficial outcome does not justify the harm done en route. Another moral stance is that the morality of an action can be measured by the expectation of the outcome, and also by the intended outcome of the action. So in that sense the end (or anticipated end) is justifying the means (if 'means' is taken as 'action'). Sometimes the only way of achieving an end is by a circuitous route. Like climbing a mountain, the most direct route on the map (straight line from where you are standing to the summit) may not be a route at all. It may be completely unclimbable. In other fields of activity, it may be that a direct assault on the goal may not allow you to achieve the goal. So we have the expression 'work smarter, not harder'. In some activities smarter is the only solution, as harder does not get you further.
From a vipaka ('kamma-result') point of view each volitional choice along a path is significant and carries 'fruit'. So in heading towards a goal each intermediate end-point (mile-stone on the path) must justify the action leading to it. As in the Tibetan 'Game of Rebirth' the world is like a huge game of snakes and ladders, and it is important to avoid treading on the karmic snakes even if they appear to lie directly on the path to a karmic ladder.
Another aspect to all of this is appreciating that in many activities in life, the journey is as important at the goal. Perhaps when sitting in a traffic jam on the M25 it is hard to see that the journey has any value, but when seeing a film or reading a book the whole experience is not equivalent to just seeing the last frame or reading the last page. Nor is it equivalent to getting the Readers' Digest version.
The case for this is even clearer in love making. Simply achieving immediate climax is not the object of the exercise. The path leading there is part of the experience and of the pleasure.
This came out even more jumbled than I had anticipated, so watch this space for the edited, rearranged and more lucid version some day soon.
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Sunday, March 26, 2006
Systems Theory and Buddhist Emptiness
Part of the art of effective communication is to take a subject or proposition that is unfamiliar to the listener and guide them step by step from the familiar to the unfamiliar. The same could be said of presenting the unacceptable. Unfortunately the present essay deals with the two relatively unfamiliar ideas, and its goal is to show the relationship between them. This is a more dangeous quest because it is easier either to accept or to reject the relationship simply based on a lack of familiarity with the subjects, rather than based on a sound conviction that the subjects have something to say about each other.
This relationship came to mind from a particular passage in a Buddhist text. It is actually quite a well known passage, much used in the basic teaching of Buddhism:
What struck me about this was its similarity to 'partitioning' in systems theory. 'Partitioning' is the process of decomposing a system into relatively self-contained subsystems, such that interactions between subsystems are less or narrower (in a certain sense) that within the subsystems themselves. To give a simple example, suppose you have two people in conversation. Those two people could be viewed as a system. One obvious, intuitive partition would be to view each person as a subsystem and their communication as the flow or interaction between them. This decomposition is natural and appealling, especially since we already have words and concepts to label the parts of the decomposed picture ('person', 'communication'). Each person is already viewed as an independent entity. They can move apart without any damage to their integrity. However this is just one of the infinitely many partitions we could create. We could just as well decompose the couple based on their chemical, radiational and vibrational subsystems. Certainly this would be less intuitive but it might also be more revealing in that it is looking at the familiar from an unfamiliar angle.
I originally became interested in systems theory from the angle of statistical queuing theory. Statistical queuing theory often talks of arrivals processes and servers processes. If this sounds too abstract just think of it like this: think of the checkout queue at your local supermarket, the till and operator (considered together) is the server process and the intermittent flow of people joining the queue is the arrivals process. The point at which systems thinking has a bearing is this: the divide between server process and arrivals process is arbitrary and contained in the mind of the analyst. So you may ask: "is the standing queue part of the server or of the arrivals?" The answer is that it doesn't matter, so long as the same definition is retained throughout the analysis. It might matter in terms of ease and tractability of the mathematical queuing problems, but that is a question of tactical ease, not ontology. How many people would be happy saying that one analysis is 'true' and other 'false' simply because the 'true' one is mathematically tractable? (Perhaps some kind of Platonist Theist with mathematical leanings, but I suspect that is a rare breed).
Consequently a queuing system can be split into a chain of concatenated queuing subsystems with the input ('arrivals process') of one subsystem being determined by the server process of the preceeding subsystem in the chain. The fundamental point is that partitioning will be done in a way to suit analysis, and so long as the 'counting' (ie maths) is done in a consistent way, the partition chosen does not change the characteristics of the system. The partition might well change our ability to analyze and predict the characteristics, but will not change the answers. (In fact a measure of whether a partition has been correctly performed is that it does produce the same answers).
Just as a system can be partitioned into subsystems with interfaces, so a system itself can be viewed as subsystem within an encompassing supersystem. So a system might be characterized as having certain inputs and outputs, but within the context of the supersystem the outputs might be related to the inputs by virtue of their effect on the context within which the system is embedded.
In essence the mind of the analyst/observer creates the partitioning. Sometimes this is explicity as when a mathematical model is established to analyse and predict behaviour. Sometimes it is implicit as when a human learns to turn its sensory input into objects with labels.
To return to the other strand of this essay, what is 'Buddhist emptiness'? 'Emptiness' is the conventional translation of the term 'sunyata'. This term is also translated as 'voidness'. The 'emptiness' in questions is an emptiness of inherent existence. What this means is that the things with which we find the universe populated (everything from galaxies to garters) are mental constructs. This is not to say that 'galaxies (to take just one example) are simply imaginary or made up (like the the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow). There is a base of sensory evidence on which we can reliably build the construct 'galaxy'. The point is that this attribution is neither absolute on the one hand, nor arbitrary on the other. It is convenient. However that convenient construct does not imply that before galaxies formed there was a 'soul' of a galaxy, or an 'archetype' of a galaxy trying to find expression. It simply means there is an aggregate of phenomena which it is convenient for us as humans to give a name to. There was no essence trying to become a galaxy but there were forces which shaped a relatively stable pattern.
A galaxy is a useful case to consider because it is so clearly a grouping of active objects within a bounded region of space. It is perhaps easier to see as a construct than a human being (for instance). This idea of emptiness directly relates to partitioning in systems thinking. We partition for convenience and in like manner we impute 'objectness' for convenience. The clear difference is that in systems thinking the partitioning is explicit whereas with imputation it is generally implicit.
So Buddhist emptiness teaching would have us reflect on the nature of existence and see our own role as observer in the process of object creation. We encode in the process of object creation. We encode what we perceived but then we project the encoding onto the world and believe we are see our mental encoding in the world around us.
Just to finish on a controversial thought. The process of imputation onto a base seems to be exactly what the start of Genesis is talking about. In the beginning all was chaos and without form - and then the 'creator' within the mind imposed form and gave birth to conceptual thought.
This relationship came to mind from a particular passage in a Buddhist text. It is actually quite a well known passage, much used in the basic teaching of Buddhism:
"Just as if a skilled butcher or butcher's apprentice, having killed a cow, were to carve it up with a sharp carving knife so that -- without damaging the substance of the inner flesh, without damaging the substance of the outer hide -- he would cut, sever, & detach only the skin muscles, connective tissues, & attachments in between. Having cut, severed, & detached the outer skin, and then covering the cow again with that very skin, if he were to say that the cow was joined to the skin just as it had been: would he be speaking rightly?"
What struck me about this was its similarity to 'partitioning' in systems theory. 'Partitioning' is the process of decomposing a system into relatively self-contained subsystems, such that interactions between subsystems are less or narrower (in a certain sense) that within the subsystems themselves. To give a simple example, suppose you have two people in conversation. Those two people could be viewed as a system. One obvious, intuitive partition would be to view each person as a subsystem and their communication as the flow or interaction between them. This decomposition is natural and appealling, especially since we already have words and concepts to label the parts of the decomposed picture ('person', 'communication'). Each person is already viewed as an independent entity. They can move apart without any damage to their integrity. However this is just one of the infinitely many partitions we could create. We could just as well decompose the couple based on their chemical, radiational and vibrational subsystems. Certainly this would be less intuitive but it might also be more revealing in that it is looking at the familiar from an unfamiliar angle.
I originally became interested in systems theory from the angle of statistical queuing theory. Statistical queuing theory often talks of arrivals processes and servers processes. If this sounds too abstract just think of it like this: think of the checkout queue at your local supermarket, the till and operator (considered together) is the server process and the intermittent flow of people joining the queue is the arrivals process. The point at which systems thinking has a bearing is this: the divide between server process and arrivals process is arbitrary and contained in the mind of the analyst. So you may ask: "is the standing queue part of the server or of the arrivals?" The answer is that it doesn't matter, so long as the same definition is retained throughout the analysis. It might matter in terms of ease and tractability of the mathematical queuing problems, but that is a question of tactical ease, not ontology. How many people would be happy saying that one analysis is 'true' and other 'false' simply because the 'true' one is mathematically tractable? (Perhaps some kind of Platonist Theist with mathematical leanings, but I suspect that is a rare breed).
Consequently a queuing system can be split into a chain of concatenated queuing subsystems with the input ('arrivals process') of one subsystem being determined by the server process of the preceeding subsystem in the chain. The fundamental point is that partitioning will be done in a way to suit analysis, and so long as the 'counting' (ie maths) is done in a consistent way, the partition chosen does not change the characteristics of the system. The partition might well change our ability to analyze and predict the characteristics, but will not change the answers. (In fact a measure of whether a partition has been correctly performed is that it does produce the same answers).
Just as a system can be partitioned into subsystems with interfaces, so a system itself can be viewed as subsystem within an encompassing supersystem. So a system might be characterized as having certain inputs and outputs, but within the context of the supersystem the outputs might be related to the inputs by virtue of their effect on the context within which the system is embedded.
In essence the mind of the analyst/observer creates the partitioning. Sometimes this is explicity as when a mathematical model is established to analyse and predict behaviour. Sometimes it is implicit as when a human learns to turn its sensory input into objects with labels.
To return to the other strand of this essay, what is 'Buddhist emptiness'? 'Emptiness' is the conventional translation of the term 'sunyata'. This term is also translated as 'voidness'. The 'emptiness' in questions is an emptiness of inherent existence. What this means is that the things with which we find the universe populated (everything from galaxies to garters) are mental constructs. This is not to say that 'galaxies (to take just one example) are simply imaginary or made up (like the the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow). There is a base of sensory evidence on which we can reliably build the construct 'galaxy'. The point is that this attribution is neither absolute on the one hand, nor arbitrary on the other. It is convenient. However that convenient construct does not imply that before galaxies formed there was a 'soul' of a galaxy, or an 'archetype' of a galaxy trying to find expression. It simply means there is an aggregate of phenomena which it is convenient for us as humans to give a name to. There was no essence trying to become a galaxy but there were forces which shaped a relatively stable pattern.
A galaxy is a useful case to consider because it is so clearly a grouping of active objects within a bounded region of space. It is perhaps easier to see as a construct than a human being (for instance). This idea of emptiness directly relates to partitioning in systems thinking. We partition for convenience and in like manner we impute 'objectness' for convenience. The clear difference is that in systems thinking the partitioning is explicit whereas with imputation it is generally implicit.
So Buddhist emptiness teaching would have us reflect on the nature of existence and see our own role as observer in the process of object creation. We encode in the process of object creation. We encode what we perceived but then we project the encoding onto the world and believe we are see our mental encoding in the world around us.
Just to finish on a controversial thought. The process of imputation onto a base seems to be exactly what the start of Genesis is talking about. In the beginning all was chaos and without form - and then the 'creator' within the mind imposed form and gave birth to conceptual thought.
Sunday, February 26, 2006
Sources of Truth
We often ask for 'the truth'. We demand that someone should 'tell us the truth'. It is considered very bad form for a politician to be found out in a lie. In theory it is bad form for a politician to actually lie to his electorate (assuming some form of 'democratic' government) but in practice the fall from grace accompanies being caught, not committing the act. Equally, the crowds rarely accuse a politician of falsehood when that politician is telling people how wonderful they are. Can you picture the scene: the candidate stands up and roars to the crowd what wonderful people they are, and there is an echo of boos and cat-call as members of the audience make public the sins that have been belabouring their individual consciences. We are selective about when we want 'the truth' and selective about what we accept as 'the truth'. Sometimes the 'truth' is simply what we want to hear.
We allow ourselves a multitude of loopholes through which subtle distinctions of truth can be distinguished (or invented) by reference to its sub-species: scientific truth, artistic truth, legalistic truth, religious truth and personal truth. So, is there an underlying entity, 'truth', which all these notions are related to, and to which any concept must pay homage in order for it to be granted the honour of joining the family of 'truth'? An equally intriguing question is the degree to which a writer must be 'true', and what sense of truth is invoked in that quest.
Whilst naive notions of truth are good touchstones to which one must return to test out deliberations on the notion of truth they can't really cope with the subtleties with which we infuse the concept. The idea of 'truth' as being 'in agreement with reality' or 'according to the facts of the case' requires a lot of unpacking to be generally useful. Suppose you read a work of fiction, and it explicitly states that the events and characters contained therein are not based on real events, and that any similarity is co-incidental. Does that give the author complete freedom to write anything? In a sense the answer is 'yes': an author can always write whatever he wants - and then simply accept the consequences (which given the time and place can range from praise and acceptance, through ridicule, to imprisonment, torture and death). If the author writes to make a living or convey a message then there has to be a certain sense of truth to the work even though all that it contains came entirely from the imaginative mind of the author. Even if what the author is trying to do involves pushing the boundaries of the medium in some way, it must be in such a way that the work communicates with an audience. In that sense there must be a basis of shared truth. If it is so opaque that no reader (outside of the author) can access the meaning, emotions or dynamic then some basic 'truth' has been lost.
Suppose, in contrast, another writer creates a work of fiction avoiding all recognisable characters and events, but it is an allegory or modern myth. In that case, if it is well-crafted, then many readers would see a profound element of truth in the writing which relied neither on reference to 'reality' nor on any particular report of a viewpoint. One could say that what was being described was 'reality' in some deeper sense, but it would be the sort of truth which would confuse and confound the literal minded. It would not be the sort of 'truth' to please an empirical scientist or a practitioner of jurisprudence.
Although it would not be truth of an empirical scientist, perhaps it would be similar to the truth of theoretician. In mathematics there is a powerful notion: the isomorphism. Literally the word means 'equal form'. If two mathematical structures can be put into a certain relationship to each other (I am deliberately avoiding going into the details) then one can say that even though the two structures have differently named components and operations, they behave as the same entity. In slightly more poetic language it is as though the one was a metaphor for the other - a metaphor so close and so evocative, that it completely captures the behaviour of the other.
What makes the notion of 'truth' as a record of 'reality' so very difficult is that all we ever have is any number of parallel and competing records purporting to be of 'reality', but no communicable access to the reality itself. (Religious truth does allow for direct access to reality, but by the very fact of accepting that such access is only available in certain states of religious ecstasy one rule out the possibility of the experience being communicated through language). This puts the terrible onus on the reader, on each of us, to take responsibility for judging what is true and what misleading.
If we were asked to judge a book on car-maintenance then the final test of the usefulness of the book would be whether it allowed a mechanic with the appropriate basic skills to complete a particular job of work on a car. We would be happy to use the 'proof of the pudding is in the eating' rule: a car maintenance manual that does not enable you to maintain a car simply isn't a maintenance manual. In a fairly basic sense, it is not true. Would there be anybody inclined to blame the car? Even if the car did not conform to the pictures, diagrams and text of the manual, the frustrated would-be mechanic would blame the manual. The mechanic's concern is to get the car working and the manual is just a (potential) help in doing that - if its not helping then you don't look for a car to fit the manual. In this circumstance we have a simple intuitive grasp of what is 'real'. The reputation and authority of the author of the manual might have induced you to buy it in the first place, but that authority would not induce you to accept as true what the evidence of your own senses was telling you was wrong.
In many other situations, paradoxically, we take the 'manual's' version of reality over the evidence of our own senses. We can be overawed by the power of rhetoric, authority or reputation and then convince ourselves that the evidence of our own senses is wrong. This is not the same as accepting that we are misinterpreting a situation. Because of the impenetrability of 'reality' we never (with the exception mentioned above) have direct access to reality. All we perceive is twisted and manipulated by the content of our mind (and mostly unconsciously at that). By the process of reprogramming our unconscious mind, or over-riding by conscious control, we see old things in new ways. However when we simply accept the content of the manual, even though we cannot see how to apply it to our experience, then we are denying what we intuit to be truth in favour of what a source of authority of some kind is telling us. There is all the difference in the world between accepting that we see is probably illusion, and denying that we see it at all.
What we are faced with are alternative versions of reality. We are faced with these in everything from day-to-day experiences, to political accounts of events, to religious truths, through to theoretical accounts of the nature of the universe. It's not even as though we maintained perfect internal consistency within the private sanctuary of our own mind. It is perfectly possible to believe two mutually incompatible things at the same time and to feel no discomfort thereby, until circumstances force us to square the circle of their incongruence. This thrusting of truths to the surface can cause great pain, if the incompatible truths held are of the nature of: 'my father loves me', 'my father abused me'. Even on such an emotionally raw canvas the nature of the human mind is capable of holding truths which cannot co-exist in consciousness.
Yet knowing all this, we - most of us, for most of the time - also hold the view that there is 'the truth' which can be stated. If the nature of that view was that the 'truth' we sought was like a scientific hypothesis or model, then there would be no problem, and it could be discarded like a worn out socks when the holes became intolerable. Sadly we don't. We hold on to 'truth' and our view of 'truth' with considerable emotional investment. The truth is not something held on to outside of ourselves, but is a part of our being. This use of the word 'hold' is probably stretching its meaning beyond snapping point. 'We' cannot be said to 'hold' truths in any way similar to holding a hammer, a spoon, or a ball. That which we cling to as 'self' is woven on the truths that inhabit us.
When we look for the truth we look for ourselves. In seeking the truth in writing we seek ourselves whether it be as reader, writer or critic. The source of truth is in our power to seek it.
We allow ourselves a multitude of loopholes through which subtle distinctions of truth can be distinguished (or invented) by reference to its sub-species: scientific truth, artistic truth, legalistic truth, religious truth and personal truth. So, is there an underlying entity, 'truth', which all these notions are related to, and to which any concept must pay homage in order for it to be granted the honour of joining the family of 'truth'? An equally intriguing question is the degree to which a writer must be 'true', and what sense of truth is invoked in that quest.
Whilst naive notions of truth are good touchstones to which one must return to test out deliberations on the notion of truth they can't really cope with the subtleties with which we infuse the concept. The idea of 'truth' as being 'in agreement with reality' or 'according to the facts of the case' requires a lot of unpacking to be generally useful. Suppose you read a work of fiction, and it explicitly states that the events and characters contained therein are not based on real events, and that any similarity is co-incidental. Does that give the author complete freedom to write anything? In a sense the answer is 'yes': an author can always write whatever he wants - and then simply accept the consequences (which given the time and place can range from praise and acceptance, through ridicule, to imprisonment, torture and death). If the author writes to make a living or convey a message then there has to be a certain sense of truth to the work even though all that it contains came entirely from the imaginative mind of the author. Even if what the author is trying to do involves pushing the boundaries of the medium in some way, it must be in such a way that the work communicates with an audience. In that sense there must be a basis of shared truth. If it is so opaque that no reader (outside of the author) can access the meaning, emotions or dynamic then some basic 'truth' has been lost.
Suppose, in contrast, another writer creates a work of fiction avoiding all recognisable characters and events, but it is an allegory or modern myth. In that case, if it is well-crafted, then many readers would see a profound element of truth in the writing which relied neither on reference to 'reality' nor on any particular report of a viewpoint. One could say that what was being described was 'reality' in some deeper sense, but it would be the sort of truth which would confuse and confound the literal minded. It would not be the sort of 'truth' to please an empirical scientist or a practitioner of jurisprudence.
Although it would not be truth of an empirical scientist, perhaps it would be similar to the truth of theoretician. In mathematics there is a powerful notion: the isomorphism. Literally the word means 'equal form'. If two mathematical structures can be put into a certain relationship to each other (I am deliberately avoiding going into the details) then one can say that even though the two structures have differently named components and operations, they behave as the same entity. In slightly more poetic language it is as though the one was a metaphor for the other - a metaphor so close and so evocative, that it completely captures the behaviour of the other.
What makes the notion of 'truth' as a record of 'reality' so very difficult is that all we ever have is any number of parallel and competing records purporting to be of 'reality', but no communicable access to the reality itself. (Religious truth does allow for direct access to reality, but by the very fact of accepting that such access is only available in certain states of religious ecstasy one rule out the possibility of the experience being communicated through language). This puts the terrible onus on the reader, on each of us, to take responsibility for judging what is true and what misleading.
If we were asked to judge a book on car-maintenance then the final test of the usefulness of the book would be whether it allowed a mechanic with the appropriate basic skills to complete a particular job of work on a car. We would be happy to use the 'proof of the pudding is in the eating' rule: a car maintenance manual that does not enable you to maintain a car simply isn't a maintenance manual. In a fairly basic sense, it is not true. Would there be anybody inclined to blame the car? Even if the car did not conform to the pictures, diagrams and text of the manual, the frustrated would-be mechanic would blame the manual. The mechanic's concern is to get the car working and the manual is just a (potential) help in doing that - if its not helping then you don't look for a car to fit the manual. In this circumstance we have a simple intuitive grasp of what is 'real'. The reputation and authority of the author of the manual might have induced you to buy it in the first place, but that authority would not induce you to accept as true what the evidence of your own senses was telling you was wrong.
In many other situations, paradoxically, we take the 'manual's' version of reality over the evidence of our own senses. We can be overawed by the power of rhetoric, authority or reputation and then convince ourselves that the evidence of our own senses is wrong. This is not the same as accepting that we are misinterpreting a situation. Because of the impenetrability of 'reality' we never (with the exception mentioned above) have direct access to reality. All we perceive is twisted and manipulated by the content of our mind (and mostly unconsciously at that). By the process of reprogramming our unconscious mind, or over-riding by conscious control, we see old things in new ways. However when we simply accept the content of the manual, even though we cannot see how to apply it to our experience, then we are denying what we intuit to be truth in favour of what a source of authority of some kind is telling us. There is all the difference in the world between accepting that we see is probably illusion, and denying that we see it at all.
What we are faced with are alternative versions of reality. We are faced with these in everything from day-to-day experiences, to political accounts of events, to religious truths, through to theoretical accounts of the nature of the universe. It's not even as though we maintained perfect internal consistency within the private sanctuary of our own mind. It is perfectly possible to believe two mutually incompatible things at the same time and to feel no discomfort thereby, until circumstances force us to square the circle of their incongruence. This thrusting of truths to the surface can cause great pain, if the incompatible truths held are of the nature of: 'my father loves me', 'my father abused me'. Even on such an emotionally raw canvas the nature of the human mind is capable of holding truths which cannot co-exist in consciousness.
Yet knowing all this, we - most of us, for most of the time - also hold the view that there is 'the truth' which can be stated. If the nature of that view was that the 'truth' we sought was like a scientific hypothesis or model, then there would be no problem, and it could be discarded like a worn out socks when the holes became intolerable. Sadly we don't. We hold on to 'truth' and our view of 'truth' with considerable emotional investment. The truth is not something held on to outside of ourselves, but is a part of our being. This use of the word 'hold' is probably stretching its meaning beyond snapping point. 'We' cannot be said to 'hold' truths in any way similar to holding a hammer, a spoon, or a ball. That which we cling to as 'self' is woven on the truths that inhabit us.
When we look for the truth we look for ourselves. In seeking the truth in writing we seek ourselves whether it be as reader, writer or critic. The source of truth is in our power to seek it.
Monday, January 23, 2006
Bits, Bytes and Profound Buddhist Emptiness
Bits, Bytes and Profound Buddhist Emptiness
This is an essay about how to come to some level of understanding of Buddhist emptiness (shunyata or sunyata) by reflecting on and grasping the nature of representation within the memory of a computer. The ideas presented here occurred to me quite some years ago, but since there was little point in explaining a difficult idea with one equally obscure I did not write about it then. Computers and digital representation have come a long way since then - even to the point where films like 'The Matrix' are accessible to the general public.
When you store a picture in a computer it is stored in digital form. That means it is stored, in the final analysis, in binary form i.e. as a sequence of zeroes and ones. Likewise with music, with information, fingerprints, maps and everything else that has entered the digital world. All these things can be represented as sequences of zeroes and ones. However their original quality (as picture, sound, information etc) is not inherent within the stream of bits. By this I am not referring to the debate about quality and degradation as an analogue signal is quantized into digital representation. What I am referring to is something far more fundamental. The sequence of zeroes and ones is no more than that unless a 'reader' of some kind can turn the encoding back into a form accessible to humans. Music must be heard as sound and a sequence of zeroes and ones is not sound. Some rather over-enthusiastic evangelists of the information revolution sometimes claim that all can be reduced to binary streams of zeroes and ones, but in so doing they forget an essential part of the process - the means of encoding and decoding. The code and the decoder are like the two parts of a symbiotic organism. They have separate identities but cannot live each without the other.
In the film 'The Matrix' the hero Neo eventually reaches the point where he can see the fictional world inside the Matrix as it really is. All the floors, walls, and bodies within the simulated world become visible to him simply as streams of computations. It is almost like us suddenly seeing the objects around us for their true nature, as restless packages of interacting energy. In the Matrix solid surfaces gave way to digits and symbols. In our world solid surfaces would give way to quanta and energy levels. But we must also see them as messages - they stimulate the decoder of our mind and from that we extract (or impose) sense from chaos. (To go off a slight tangent, you might see this as another interpretation of Genesis - before interpretation existence really is without form and void).
The encoding of objects, surfaces, movement and so on would be meaningless unless there existed a process for which encoding had meaning. To take a simple example, suppose you have two numbers. Those two numbers are sufficient to define any point on a surface, for instance on a map. So two numbers can be a grid reference on a map, or longitude and latude on a globe. Knowing what the system is the numbers have meaning. In the absence of that knowledge they are just numbers. Just as if you had a key but did not know the matching lock. However if all you have is two numbers without any further context, you have no idea that you even have a key (or even what a lock might look like). So the meaning given to the numbers depends not just on their values but on the context. In context you can find the right 'reader'. Without context you have an enigma.
A famous historical example of knowing only one half of such a puzzle is the decoding of Egyptian hieroglyphs and the finding of the Rossetta stone. At least in that case people were sure that the symbols constituted a language, but it was only with the finding of the Rossetta stone that it became possible to unravel the meaning of the language. A 'reader' was constructed i.e. an Egyptologist produced a vocabulatry, to interpret the code.
Let us now return to the computer. Computer memory is quantified in bytes. A byte is chunk of 8 bits of memory, so it can encode any value from 0 to 255. Even this interpretation requires decoding and it would be slightly more accurate to say that what be represented are 256 unique states. (To digress, computer memory was not always quantified so - the notion of a 'word' was predominant at one time and some computer companies insisted that a byte was 6 bits). If you looked at a sequence of bytes in the memory of your computer that held the encoding of a picture you would not see the picture. Equally (and perhaps even more obviously) if you examined the memory representing some music you wouldn't hear the music. It is said that some gifted musicians need only read a musical score to hear the music in their heads, but I have not heard of anyone who can (yet) read a sequence of computer memory and hear the music. Whether such a skill exists or not it does not change the fact that the music would only be 'heard' (albeit internally) only when the pattern was decoded by the 'reader'.
The binary pattern by itself is almost meaningless. It is only 'almost' because it would be possible to extract regularities from the data using certain mathematical techniques. There would be regularities because the encoding is designed by humans to be computationally convenient. We also design encodings which are deliberately not easy to 'read' and these we call encryptions. However, even in un-encrypted encodings the patterns are not usually obvious to human senses, and with ever more sophisticated encodings the representation becomes ever more opaque to human senses. Human senses are not best placed to directly read the significance with the data of computer memory, and they are not best placed to 'read' the underlying nature of existence. What we see is a reading within the vocabulary and language of our internal world.
Now it seems that this is a long way from Buddhism. Computers, binary encoding and bytes were unheard of notions when the historical Buddha, Shakyamuni, taught the dhamma (dharma). There were unheard of when Nagarjuna was developing and amplifying the understanding of profound emptiness (shunyata). When they were trying to convey emptiness and 'essencelessness' (anatta) they looked for examples familiar to those around them, and so they spoke of the qualities of the banana tree - no matter how many layers you go down you never find heart wood. The banana tree merely appears to be a tree. They also spoke of space - that aspect of the world around which contains all but is unmarked by it . Nagarjuna analytically demolished the common-sense notion of an entity (a 'thing') - showing that as commonly understood the notion of 'things' did not make much sense. I believe that by adopting the model of computer representation we have an entrance into the middle way.
So let us return to the computer memory. It contains so much when interpretted. It contains nothing otherwise - a meaningless sequence of zeros and ones (and even that is an interpretation). A mind comes along supported by sufficient computing power and meaning is extracted from (or imposed upon) the sequence. It is not really true to say 'imposed' because the sequence is not random, and if the sequence were changed, the extracted interpretation would be different. Equally so tyhe meaning is not inherent in, and extracted from, the sequence because without an interpreter fitted to the data, no valid extraction would take place. In this instance 'validity' can only be evaluated by reference to other activities of the 'reader' (broadly speaking, does the interpretation make some kind of consistent sense in view of other readings). So the data and reader go hand-in-hand. Yet it is possible for there to be different readers making different, but valid, interpretations of the data.
Shunyata (sunyata), Buddhist emptiness (voidness), is rather like this. The whole of existence is like the computer's memory. It neither contains 'things' nor is it devoid of them. It has signs which guide the interpreter, but they are only signs by virtue of the interpreter. In existence there is no dichotomy between the signs and the reader. Likewise in the computer. The 'reader' (as software) resides in memory also as a sequence of zeroes and ones, but this sequence has meaning to to yet another reader. At some point all analogies breakdown or cost more than they repay. So it is with the digital analogy, and I believe that point has been reached.
Understanding the nature of encoding within a computer provides a profound model for 'shunyata'. Perhaps it is an accessible model for a world now familiar with CGI, video games and the 'The Matrix'. The world of conventional reality is simply one representation of the underlying perpetual creation of existence - a world of change where there are no things and nothing changes.
This is an essay about how to come to some level of understanding of Buddhist emptiness (shunyata or sunyata) by reflecting on and grasping the nature of representation within the memory of a computer. The ideas presented here occurred to me quite some years ago, but since there was little point in explaining a difficult idea with one equally obscure I did not write about it then. Computers and digital representation have come a long way since then - even to the point where films like 'The Matrix' are accessible to the general public.
When you store a picture in a computer it is stored in digital form. That means it is stored, in the final analysis, in binary form i.e. as a sequence of zeroes and ones. Likewise with music, with information, fingerprints, maps and everything else that has entered the digital world. All these things can be represented as sequences of zeroes and ones. However their original quality (as picture, sound, information etc) is not inherent within the stream of bits. By this I am not referring to the debate about quality and degradation as an analogue signal is quantized into digital representation. What I am referring to is something far more fundamental. The sequence of zeroes and ones is no more than that unless a 'reader' of some kind can turn the encoding back into a form accessible to humans. Music must be heard as sound and a sequence of zeroes and ones is not sound. Some rather over-enthusiastic evangelists of the information revolution sometimes claim that all can be reduced to binary streams of zeroes and ones, but in so doing they forget an essential part of the process - the means of encoding and decoding. The code and the decoder are like the two parts of a symbiotic organism. They have separate identities but cannot live each without the other.
In the film 'The Matrix' the hero Neo eventually reaches the point where he can see the fictional world inside the Matrix as it really is. All the floors, walls, and bodies within the simulated world become visible to him simply as streams of computations. It is almost like us suddenly seeing the objects around us for their true nature, as restless packages of interacting energy. In the Matrix solid surfaces gave way to digits and symbols. In our world solid surfaces would give way to quanta and energy levels. But we must also see them as messages - they stimulate the decoder of our mind and from that we extract (or impose) sense from chaos. (To go off a slight tangent, you might see this as another interpretation of Genesis - before interpretation existence really is without form and void).
The encoding of objects, surfaces, movement and so on would be meaningless unless there existed a process for which encoding had meaning. To take a simple example, suppose you have two numbers. Those two numbers are sufficient to define any point on a surface, for instance on a map. So two numbers can be a grid reference on a map, or longitude and latude on a globe. Knowing what the system is the numbers have meaning. In the absence of that knowledge they are just numbers. Just as if you had a key but did not know the matching lock. However if all you have is two numbers without any further context, you have no idea that you even have a key (or even what a lock might look like). So the meaning given to the numbers depends not just on their values but on the context. In context you can find the right 'reader'. Without context you have an enigma.
A famous historical example of knowing only one half of such a puzzle is the decoding of Egyptian hieroglyphs and the finding of the Rossetta stone. At least in that case people were sure that the symbols constituted a language, but it was only with the finding of the Rossetta stone that it became possible to unravel the meaning of the language. A 'reader' was constructed i.e. an Egyptologist produced a vocabulatry, to interpret the code.
Let us now return to the computer. Computer memory is quantified in bytes. A byte is chunk of 8 bits of memory, so it can encode any value from 0 to 255. Even this interpretation requires decoding and it would be slightly more accurate to say that what be represented are 256 unique states. (To digress, computer memory was not always quantified so - the notion of a 'word' was predominant at one time and some computer companies insisted that a byte was 6 bits). If you looked at a sequence of bytes in the memory of your computer that held the encoding of a picture you would not see the picture. Equally (and perhaps even more obviously) if you examined the memory representing some music you wouldn't hear the music. It is said that some gifted musicians need only read a musical score to hear the music in their heads, but I have not heard of anyone who can (yet) read a sequence of computer memory and hear the music. Whether such a skill exists or not it does not change the fact that the music would only be 'heard' (albeit internally) only when the pattern was decoded by the 'reader'.
The binary pattern by itself is almost meaningless. It is only 'almost' because it would be possible to extract regularities from the data using certain mathematical techniques. There would be regularities because the encoding is designed by humans to be computationally convenient. We also design encodings which are deliberately not easy to 'read' and these we call encryptions. However, even in un-encrypted encodings the patterns are not usually obvious to human senses, and with ever more sophisticated encodings the representation becomes ever more opaque to human senses. Human senses are not best placed to directly read the significance with the data of computer memory, and they are not best placed to 'read' the underlying nature of existence. What we see is a reading within the vocabulary and language of our internal world.
Now it seems that this is a long way from Buddhism. Computers, binary encoding and bytes were unheard of notions when the historical Buddha, Shakyamuni, taught the dhamma (dharma). There were unheard of when Nagarjuna was developing and amplifying the understanding of profound emptiness (shunyata). When they were trying to convey emptiness and 'essencelessness' (anatta) they looked for examples familiar to those around them, and so they spoke of the qualities of the banana tree - no matter how many layers you go down you never find heart wood. The banana tree merely appears to be a tree. They also spoke of space - that aspect of the world around which contains all but is unmarked by it . Nagarjuna analytically demolished the common-sense notion of an entity (a 'thing') - showing that as commonly understood the notion of 'things' did not make much sense. I believe that by adopting the model of computer representation we have an entrance into the middle way.
So let us return to the computer memory. It contains so much when interpretted. It contains nothing otherwise - a meaningless sequence of zeros and ones (and even that is an interpretation). A mind comes along supported by sufficient computing power and meaning is extracted from (or imposed upon) the sequence. It is not really true to say 'imposed' because the sequence is not random, and if the sequence were changed, the extracted interpretation would be different. Equally so tyhe meaning is not inherent in, and extracted from, the sequence because without an interpreter fitted to the data, no valid extraction would take place. In this instance 'validity' can only be evaluated by reference to other activities of the 'reader' (broadly speaking, does the interpretation make some kind of consistent sense in view of other readings). So the data and reader go hand-in-hand. Yet it is possible for there to be different readers making different, but valid, interpretations of the data.
Shunyata (sunyata), Buddhist emptiness (voidness), is rather like this. The whole of existence is like the computer's memory. It neither contains 'things' nor is it devoid of them. It has signs which guide the interpreter, but they are only signs by virtue of the interpreter. In existence there is no dichotomy between the signs and the reader. Likewise in the computer. The 'reader' (as software) resides in memory also as a sequence of zeroes and ones, but this sequence has meaning to to yet another reader. At some point all analogies breakdown or cost more than they repay. So it is with the digital analogy, and I believe that point has been reached.
Understanding the nature of encoding within a computer provides a profound model for 'shunyata'. Perhaps it is an accessible model for a world now familiar with CGI, video games and the 'The Matrix'. The world of conventional reality is simply one representation of the underlying perpetual creation of existence - a world of change where there are no things and nothing changes.
Monday, January 09, 2006
Vows, Oaths and Karma
Last Thursday I listened to a program on BBC Radio4 chaired by Melvyn Bragg about the role, significance and importance of oaths in ancient societies (essentially Mediterranean societies).
It is a particularly interesting subject for a Buddhist because of the central role of the vow in Buddhism, especially Mahayana Buddhism. You might say that the defining characteristics of the Mahayana is the Bodhisattva Vow - the personal commitment to work towards the liberation of all beings. Vows of various kinds occur throughout Mahayana Buddhism and especially in relation to Arya-Bodhisattvas who's vows can be invoked to assist in the completion of some undertaking. (For instance, calling on the Medicine Buddha in the case of illness to help bring about healing is calling on his vow to bring about healing).
In the Ancient world a vow was sacred and was the root of legality. So when a vow was taken in the name of a god (thus an oath was sworn) it was the most serious matter and all parties accepted that it would not be broken by except in the most extreme circumstances. Of course, one man's extreme is not another. The classic case from Roman history was that of the Roman general Regulus who was captured by the Carthaginians and sent as an envoy to Rome to sue for a deal between Rome and Carthage after having Regulus swear that he would return. Regulus was supposed to encourage the Romans to accept the deal in order to secure his own freedom. As a loyal Roman citizen he told the Romans to have nothing to do with the Carthaginians. He then return to Carthage to fulfill his vow in the certain knowledge of a brutal death at their hands. In the eyes of the Romans he was a hero, the sort of man of honour and duty that every mother wanted her son to grow into. (There was later debate about whether this was the right interpretation of Regulus' action and whether it was possible to make a valid vow to people so base - from a Roman point of view - as the Carthaginians).
In the British Parliament the term 'honourable' as in 'the honorable gentleman for xxxx' is supposed to imply that MPs when speaking in the House cannot have their word questioned because they are acting on their honour. Their word should be taken as an oath. It thus becomes a grave offense (in fact an issue of which ministers resign) if they knowingly lie to parliament. By the same understanding it is considered 'unparliamentary' to accuse a fellow MP of lying in the house and Winston Churchill famously invented the phrase 'terminological inexactitudinarian' as a way of calling a fellow parliamentarian a liar but not in so many words.
Socrates was sentenced to death for corrupting the youth of Athens by questioning the existence of the gods. Since oaths were taken in the names of the various gods, to question the gods was to undermine the basis of Athenian law. Oaths would become meaningless and contracts and obligations, baseless.
And there is the famous 'swearing' in court to tell the truth, mostly still done in the name of God. Certain non-conformist/puritans object to all forms of oath because a man's (and woman's word) should be sufficient in itself: 'let thy "aye" be aye and they "nay" be nay'. I believe their objection rests on the foundation that it is taking the name of God in vain.
What separates the ancients and all members of theistic religions from Buddhists when it comes to the taking of vows is this: by what power is the vow taken. In the ancient world a broken vow would exact the fury of one or other of the gods - sometimes not just on the vow breaker but his family and as-yet unborn generations. To break a vow was to bring down a curse on the family so that their every move would result in misfortune. To break a vow taken in the name of one supreme being would be something that the person would have to answer for in eternity. The responsibility would be that of the individual, but could have eternal consequences.
But a Buddhist vow is taken with the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas as witnesses - not as avenging powers. I must admit I couldn't see the ontological significance of vows in Buddhism for a long time. Obviously they have psychological significance - making a promise in the name of your most cherished and closely held beliefs doesn't require much explanation. However, it seemed to go well beyond that. A broken Tantric vow has such karmic repercussions as to be beyond considering - it is a gateway to the deepest and most demented hells for an unimaginable space of time. The clue to this puzzle is in the nature of daemons who come to terrify the mind-stream of the recently dead ('bardo of death' experiences). These daemons appear real to the mind, but are constructions of the mind itself. They are the deeper tormented layers of the mind taking on a form which has emotional immediacy. Since these hell-beings are mental constructions, but of such apparent reality that they are almost impossible to deny, then their root is also found in mental constructions. So this suggests that the Buddhist vow has its nature in the mind shaping the universe. All karmic action shapes the universe and the mind-stream, but a vow is a sort of 'complete action', a specially deep karma. The person is fully mindful of what they are doing, and draws on the psychological well-springs to give the vow power. So the breaking of the vow is really throwing a spanner into the very heart of the 'works'. The vow is not in the words but in the mind that shapes the words and in so doing shapes the future of existence.
It is a particularly interesting subject for a Buddhist because of the central role of the vow in Buddhism, especially Mahayana Buddhism. You might say that the defining characteristics of the Mahayana is the Bodhisattva Vow - the personal commitment to work towards the liberation of all beings. Vows of various kinds occur throughout Mahayana Buddhism and especially in relation to Arya-Bodhisattvas who's vows can be invoked to assist in the completion of some undertaking. (For instance, calling on the Medicine Buddha in the case of illness to help bring about healing is calling on his vow to bring about healing).
In the Ancient world a vow was sacred and was the root of legality. So when a vow was taken in the name of a god (thus an oath was sworn) it was the most serious matter and all parties accepted that it would not be broken by except in the most extreme circumstances. Of course, one man's extreme is not another. The classic case from Roman history was that of the Roman general Regulus who was captured by the Carthaginians and sent as an envoy to Rome to sue for a deal between Rome and Carthage after having Regulus swear that he would return. Regulus was supposed to encourage the Romans to accept the deal in order to secure his own freedom. As a loyal Roman citizen he told the Romans to have nothing to do with the Carthaginians. He then return to Carthage to fulfill his vow in the certain knowledge of a brutal death at their hands. In the eyes of the Romans he was a hero, the sort of man of honour and duty that every mother wanted her son to grow into. (There was later debate about whether this was the right interpretation of Regulus' action and whether it was possible to make a valid vow to people so base - from a Roman point of view - as the Carthaginians).
In the British Parliament the term 'honourable' as in 'the honorable gentleman for xxxx' is supposed to imply that MPs when speaking in the House cannot have their word questioned because they are acting on their honour. Their word should be taken as an oath. It thus becomes a grave offense (in fact an issue of which ministers resign) if they knowingly lie to parliament. By the same understanding it is considered 'unparliamentary' to accuse a fellow MP of lying in the house and Winston Churchill famously invented the phrase 'terminological inexactitudinarian' as a way of calling a fellow parliamentarian a liar but not in so many words.
Socrates was sentenced to death for corrupting the youth of Athens by questioning the existence of the gods. Since oaths were taken in the names of the various gods, to question the gods was to undermine the basis of Athenian law. Oaths would become meaningless and contracts and obligations, baseless.
And there is the famous 'swearing' in court to tell the truth, mostly still done in the name of God. Certain non-conformist/puritans object to all forms of oath because a man's (and woman's word) should be sufficient in itself: 'let thy "aye" be aye and they "nay" be nay'. I believe their objection rests on the foundation that it is taking the name of God in vain.
What separates the ancients and all members of theistic religions from Buddhists when it comes to the taking of vows is this: by what power is the vow taken. In the ancient world a broken vow would exact the fury of one or other of the gods - sometimes not just on the vow breaker but his family and as-yet unborn generations. To break a vow was to bring down a curse on the family so that their every move would result in misfortune. To break a vow taken in the name of one supreme being would be something that the person would have to answer for in eternity. The responsibility would be that of the individual, but could have eternal consequences.
But a Buddhist vow is taken with the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas as witnesses - not as avenging powers. I must admit I couldn't see the ontological significance of vows in Buddhism for a long time. Obviously they have psychological significance - making a promise in the name of your most cherished and closely held beliefs doesn't require much explanation. However, it seemed to go well beyond that. A broken Tantric vow has such karmic repercussions as to be beyond considering - it is a gateway to the deepest and most demented hells for an unimaginable space of time. The clue to this puzzle is in the nature of daemons who come to terrify the mind-stream of the recently dead ('bardo of death' experiences). These daemons appear real to the mind, but are constructions of the mind itself. They are the deeper tormented layers of the mind taking on a form which has emotional immediacy. Since these hell-beings are mental constructions, but of such apparent reality that they are almost impossible to deny, then their root is also found in mental constructions. So this suggests that the Buddhist vow has its nature in the mind shaping the universe. All karmic action shapes the universe and the mind-stream, but a vow is a sort of 'complete action', a specially deep karma. The person is fully mindful of what they are doing, and draws on the psychological well-springs to give the vow power. So the breaking of the vow is really throwing a spanner into the very heart of the 'works'. The vow is not in the words but in the mind that shapes the words and in so doing shapes the future of existence.
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