The God is No-Thing An Apophatic Assertion: An Introduction for Humankind’s Transpersonal Actualization– revised
Copyright Rodger Ricketts Psy.D.,2023. All rights reserved. Protected by international copyright conventions.
Chapter 4 The Unanswerable Questions
The apophatic tradition emphasizes the unity, wholeness, interdependence, and interconnectedness of all things. In distinction from the dualism of the answerable questions, there are intuitions and experiences about realities that transcend the cognitive systems of categories expressed in our human thought and language. They are matters which, in St Paul’s words, “no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived” (I Corinthians 2:9). Instead, apophatic theology refers to the subject matter of these unanswerable questions as mysteries, as real matters that are beyond human comprehension and expression. Also, they recognize that the endless pursuit of logical and rational thinking about these mysteries is useless, creates suffering and makes it impossible to attain sublime awakening. In the Majjhima-Nikāya Sutta no. 63, the monk Malunkyaputta decided to ask the Buddha questions: “These theories have been left unexplained by the Lord.” He asked them all dualistically. He expressed them this way: “Is the world eternal, or not?” With the questions almost binary in its dualism, the answers must be dualistic. As they speak to relative reality, one reason often cited as to why the Buddha would not answer these questions is that any answer, regardless of what those answers were, would reinforce dualism: meyou, space-time, object, and subject. So, Buddha not only left his answers “undeclared” (because, otherwise, they would be obstacles in the monk’s path and practice) but also because they have no validity in a non-dualistic perspective. Believing in the certainness and verity of relative reality and duality is one of the dispositions that hinders the ability to “awaken” (to understand the true nature of life and consciousness). While the sciences are left to do their own legitimate study of finding out about the compositions of, and the workings of, the known physical universe, the Buddha would not have endorsed any attempts of physics or scientific cosmology as a new form of natural theology leading “from science to God.” In his book Tao of Physics (1975), the physicist Fritjof Capra says, “Both the physicist and the mystic want to communicate their knowledge, and when they do so with words, their statements are paradoxical and full of logical contradictions” (Chapter 3, Beyond Language). Nor would the Buddha have supported the endeavors of theologians over the centuries, who have developed complex cataphatic systems of doctrine about many unequivocal attributes of God. For the Buddha, all such dogmas come under the heading of speculative views, the pursuit of which is unsuitable to a final understanding of our immanent relationship with No-Thing. It is remarkably difficult for human beings to overcome the fixation on the illusion of dualism. Mostly because very little is promoted to transcend the dualistic mindset, which is detrimental to interior, mystical, and experiential faith. As Fritjof Capra explained, In ordinary life, we are not aware of the unity of all things but divide the world into separate objects and events. This division is useful and necessary to cope with our everyday environment, but it is not a fundamental feature of reality. It is an abstraction devised by our discriminating and categorizing intellect. To believe that our abstract concepts of separate ‘things’ and ‘events’ are realities of nature is an illusion. Instead, the Transcendent is conceptually unknowable and beyond the scope of the human cognitive apparatus. The non-dual state of awareness or emptiness ceases to make artificial distinctions. And yet, non-dualistic awareness subtly enhances feeling, experiencing, and loving with unconditional kindness, truth, wisdom, and compassion. Being, living, and experiencing without cognitive discrimination is pure awareness. It is a transcendent awareness, an understanding, a transformation of consciousness. When we know transcendent reality deeply, all is a seamless unity, despite the appearance or teachings to the contrary of the commonly held assumptions and the mindset insisting that we live in a dualistic creation. The challenge is to allow pure awareness in the present moment, to allow the “simple” presence of the now, the only place where we can be in the truth, immersed and infused with discovering how to be fully embodied in life. Ancient Buddhist philosopher and poet Ashvaghosha gave the name “sunyata” to “the void” or “emptiness” when the futility of all conceptual thinking is recognized and reality is experienced as pure “suchness.” As Bahá’u’lláh, the founder of the Baháʼí Faith, explained in the Tablet to Hashim: Immeasurably exalted is His Essence above the descriptions of His creatures… Far be it from His glory that human pen or tongue should hint at His mystery, or that human heart conceives His Essence.” (GWB XCIV:192)
Chapter 2 The God is No-Thing An Apophatic Assertion: An Introduction for Humankind’s Transpersonal Actualization– revised -. Copyright Rodger Ricketts Psy.D.,2023. All rights reserved. Protected by international copyright conventions. No part of this chapter may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever, or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, without express permission of the Authorpublisher, except in case of brief quotations with due acknowledgement. Publisher CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Chapter 2
Via Negativa and Via Positiva
In this chapter, I will highlight what more I learned about apophatic theology or apophaticism. Those new readings introduced me to Western and other apophatic writers, resulting in my defining the Buddha’s teachings as an example of an apophatic perspective. There are clear similarities between the Buddha’s writing and those of Angelus Silesius and other apophatic theologists. While there is already some scholarship about this similarity, it is, unfortunately, rarely discussed in mainstream Buddhist or theistic literature. This lack of discussion prompted me to integrate relevant aspects of my previous writings on the Buddha’s teachings with fascinating apophatic perspectives and to highlight what I believe are important parallels. In the past, I read some works of Christian mystics like Meister Eckhart and the book The Cloud of Unknowing, but I was never specifically introduced to the apophatic tradition. This past year, as I read the apophatic works of Angelus Silesius and Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, I realized that the Buddha’s teachings could be correctly considered apophatic. This realization opened a new dimension of comprehension and relevance for me about what I had written in my previous books and essays on the Buddha’s teachings. First, let us understand the differences between cataphatic and apophatic theology or via positiva and via negativa–
An Introduction for Humankind’s Transpersonal Actualization
Revised
Apophatic Considerations about Language
Can Human Language Define the Transcendental?
Using a primarily Buddhist and modern linguistic perspective, I will highlight traditional apophatic considerations about language in this chapter. Apophatic theology teaches that the transcendental is ineffable or ultimately beyond description. Negative theology states that since the human mind cannot grasp the infinity of existence, then all words and concepts will fail to adequately describe it. Therefore, human languages provide, at best, a hint of a description of transcendence. Negative theology espouses the avoidance of making affirmations about “God” so as to prevent placing “God” in a “cage of concepts,” which not only limits humanity’s vision of the transcendental but easily becomes an abstracted, dualism-based ignorance of believing in permanence and separateness. Nevertheless, cataphatic theologians make definitive statements about the nature of God, such as God is omniscient, omnipotent, all-loving, all-good, glorious, all-powerful, great, almighty, and so on. However, in doing so, problems of theodicy and logic arise. For example, if God is all-powerful, can “He” make a mountain which is too heavy for Him to lift? In contrast, negative theology recognizes the limits and failings of human logic to understand the sheer dimension of transcendence. Therefore, in the assumptions of negative theology, it is better to say what transcendence is not rather than to say what it is because this places fewer limits on describing what (X) is. Yet, clearly, negative theology is not a denial. Rather, it is an assertion that whatever transcendental reality may be, when we attempt to capture it in human categories and words, we inevitably fail. Some theologians, like Saint Anselm, the eleventh-century Christian theologian, famously wrote, “God is greater than anything that we can conceive.” He also recognized that since human beings cannot fathom the essence of God, then all descriptions of God are ultimately insufficient, and conceptualization is useless. As the non-dualistic, mystical experience cannot be stated in an abstract understanding, apophatic theology maintains that one can never truly define the transcendent reality in words. In the end, the believer must avoid the dualism of words and concepts to best appreciate and experience the nature of emptiness of non-dualism. An awareness of the transcendental is possible, yet this awareness is not based on cognitive constructions and dualistic logic. Being or (X) is No-Thing, non-dualistic, prior to the subject-object division and, instead, can be intuitively understood. While (X) is conceptually and linguistically unknowable, and transcends all human conceptualization, knowledge through silence, or negation of the definitive, is intuitively possible in the silent and empty mind. As the seventeenth-century German Catholic priest and physician Angelus Silesius wrote, “God is a pure no-thing, concealed in now and here; the less you reach for him, the more he will appear.”
I am happy and proud that this reviewer found my book to be of high value and worthy of high recommendation.
Reviewed in the United States on April 1, 2023
“God is No-Thing; An Apophatic Assertion” by Rodger R Ricketts is an outstanding work on apophaticism and how it relates to various religions or philosophies around the world and across time. At the heart of the discussion is the apophatic nature of “God,” Buddhism as a philosophy, and the clear benefits of an apophatic approach in life, both for the individual and for society. The author backs up his claims and observations about the apophatic way with references to scientific research as well as quotes from celebrated mystic and religious people from across time and from different backgrounds. In addition to providing a large body of proof for the validity and benefits of an apophatic way of knowing God, this book also provides a helpful guide to meditation itself and how to go about it.
I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Buddhism, meditation, apophatic philosophy, and working for the betterment of themselves and humanity.
The Magic of the Mind … an Exposition of the Kalakarama Sutta
The famous magician whose miraculous performances you have thoroughly enjoyed on many an occasion, is back again in your town. The news of his arrival has spread far and wide, and eager crowds are now making for the large hall where he is due to perform today. You too buy a ticket and manage to enter the hall. There is already a scramble for seats, but you are not keen on securing one, for today you have entered with a different purpose in mind. You have had a bright idea to outwit the magician – to play a trick on him yourself. So you cut your way through the thronging crowds and stealthily creep into some concealed corner of the stage.
The magician enters the stage through the dark curtains, clad in his pitchy black suit. Black boxes containing his secret stock-in-trade are also now on the stage. The performance starts and from your point of vantage you watch. And as you watch with sharp eyes every movement of the magician, you now begin to discover, one after the other, the secrets behind those ‘breath-taking’ miracles of your favourite magician. The hidden holes and false bottoms in his magic boxes, the counterfeits and secret pockets, the hidden strings and buttons that are pulled and pressed under the cover of the frantic waving of his magic-wand. Very soon you see through his bag of wily tricks so well, that you are able to discover his next ‘surprises’, they no longer surprise you. His ‘tricks’ no longer deceive you. His ‘magic’ has lost its magic for you. It no longer kindles your imagination as it used to do in the past. The magician’s ‘hocus-pocus’ and ‘abracadabra’ and his magic-wand now suggest nothing to you – for you know them now for what they are, that is : ‘meaningless’. The whole affair has now turned out to be an empty-show, one vast hoax – a treachery.
In utter disgust, you turn away from it to take a peep at the audience below. And what a sight! A sea of craned necks – eyes that gaze in blind admiration; mouths that gape in dumb appreciation; the ‘Ah!’s and ‘Oh!’s and whistles of speechless amazement.
Truly, a strange admixture of tragedy and comedy which you could have enjoyed instead of the magic-show, if not for the fact that you yourself were in that same sorry plight on many a previous occasion. Moved by compassion for this frenzied crowd, you almost frown on the magician as he chuckles with a sinister grin at every applause from his admirers. “how is it,” you wonder, “that I have been deceived so long by this crook of a magician?” You are fed up with all this and swear to yourself – “Never will I waste my time and money on such empty shows, Nev-ver.”
The show ends. Crowds are now making for the exit. You too slip out of your hiding place unseen, and mingle with them. Once outside, you spot a friend of yours whom you know as a keen admirer of this magician. Not wishing to embarrass him with the news of your unusual experience, you try to avoid him, but you are too late. Soon you find yourself listening to a vivid commentary on the magic performance. Your friend is now reliving those moments of the ‘bliss-of-ignorance’ which he had just been enjoying. But before long he discovers that you are mild and reserved today, and wonders how you could be so, after such a marvellous show.
“Why? You were in the same hall all this time, weren’t you”
“Yes, I was.”
“Then, were you sleeping?”
“Oh! No.”
“You weren’t watching closely, I suppose.”
“No, no, I was watching it alright, may be I was watching too closely.”
“You say you were watching, but you don’t seem to have seen the show.”
“No, I saw it. In fact I saw it so well that I missed the show!”
We are all Interconnected even with the Universe 