The Doctrine of Awakening: Difference between revisions

The Doctrine of Awakening is a book by Julius Evola, first published as La dottrina del risveglio in 1943, and translated into English by H. E. Musson in 1951. The book was based on translations from the Buddhist Pali Canon by Karl Eugen Neumann and Giuseppe De Lorenzo. Evola was not a practicing Buddhist, but the topic had personal significance to him, since a passage from the Majjhima Nikaya had dissuaded him from committing suicide in 1922. It was the first of Evola's works to be translated into English.

Contents

Julius Evola

The Doctrine of Awakening is divided into two main parts. The first part covers the principles of Buddhism, while the second part follows successive stages of Buddhist monastic practice, and takes up the majority of the book's length. Both parts combine summaries of doctrines taken from the Pali Canon with Evola's own analysis.

Part I

Evola begins the book with a discussion of the notion of ascesis, noting that its meaning has diverged from its etymology in the Ancient Greek άσλέω lit. 'training' or 'discipline.' In the West, ascesis has instead become associated with mortification of the flesh under the influence of Christianity. Evola compares the original meaning of ascesis with the Indian practice of tapas. He argues that eastern forms of ascesis should not be seen with the negative connotations of Christian asceticism. Setting out to discuss an alternative to the prevailing Western view of ascesis, he selects Buddhism, particularly early Buddhism, as an example of an ascetic system that is "in tune with the spirit of Aryan man and yet prevailing in the modern age." He translates "Buddhism" as the "Doctrine of Awakening," stressing that Buddha is a title referring to an "Awakened One," not merely the name of the founder of Buddhism.

Having set out his intention to discuss Buddhist ascesis in the first chapter, Evola dedicates the second chapter to arguing that Buddhism is Aryan in nature. He notes the appearance of ariya in Pali Buddhist terms including ariya magga and ariya saccāni. Evola believes that this term has "spiritual, aristocratic, and racial significance" in Buddhism that cannot be translated. Evola further argues that Buddhism shares a common origin with other "Aryan" and "Olympian" forms of spirituality such as Platonism, Stoicism and Meister Eckhart's mysticism. According to Evola, the Ārya for whom Buddhism was intended were an aristocratic caste opposed both to the native "demoniacal" races conquered by the Indo-Europeans, and to the "plebeian masses" within Indo-European societies. As further evidence, Evola takes the Prince Siddhattha's birth as a Khattiya of the Sakya clan, the 32 attributes of a the superior man, comparisons between Buddhist practice and physical battle in Pali texts, and the royal funeral rites performed after the Buddha's death.

The third chapter considers the historical context in which Buddhism arose. Evola begins by expressing his view that "objective" and valuable elements appear in all worthwhile spiritual traditions. He explains that no one tradition can be called original, but each arise from a combination of historical context and elements "rooted in a superindividual reality." Evola divides "pre-Buddhist Indo-Aryan traditions" between the Vedas and the later Brahmana and Upanishads. He argues that the Vedas represent neither a religion nor a philosophy, but a "sacred science." They correspond to the "Olympian-Homeric phase" in Greek culture, when humanity saw itself as being in close contact with the Gods. The Vedas describe humanity entering communion with divinity through sacrificial rites. According to Evola, the Brahmana texts and Upanishads from around the 10th century BC represent developments in the tradition, the Brahmana demonstrating a turn from ritual as direct form of interaction with supersensible forces, to a theological and formalised rite performed by members of a priestly Brahmin caste; while the Upanishads philosophised the concept of the ātmā. By the time of the Buddha in the 6th century BC, speculative theology, pantheism, and belief in reincarnation had become prominent, trends Evola identifies as "decedent." Evola states that a distinction did not originally exist between a sacerdotal Brahmin caste, and the warrior and royal castes, and that it was the warrior nobility of the Kshatriya caste who were responsible for reactions against speculative and sacredotal Brahmanism, through Jainism, Samkhya, and Buddhism. Evola considers Buddhism a revolt against the contemporary Brahamin caste, whose "representatives no longer preserved its dignity and had lost their qualifications." Regarding the problem of caste, Evola stresses that the Buddha recognised the value of the caste system for the majority of society; only the "spiritual apex of the Aryan hierarchy" needed to be revised on the merits of individual cases, so that the true ascetics could be found among the various castes. This is explained through a metaphor from the Assalāyana Sutta: "as one who desires fire does not ask the type of wood that in fact produces it, so from any caste may arise an ascetic or an Awakened One."

The remaining chapters of Part I comment on key doctrines contained in the Pali Canon. Evola describes the doctrine of the acinteyya or "unanswerable questions" as a means against speculative thought and the "demon of dialectics" in favour of a "superior type or criterion of certainty" acquired through "immediate vision." He likens the acinteyya to Kant's antinomies in Western philosophy. He contrasts the Brahmanical doctrine of ātma-samsāra with the Buddhist doctrines of anattā and impermanence, and likens the Buddhist understanding of samsāra to the Hellenic ideas of the cycle of generation and the wheel of necessity. He then explains the ideas of khandha, santāna, nāmarūpa, dukkah, taṇhā, and upādāna with reference to the Pali Canon. According to Evola, Buddhism rejects belief in reincarnation, but teaches the existence of an impersonal samsaric continuity in the form of craving. He distinguishes two degrees of "samsāric consciousness," one that is bound to belief in an individual "I," and another wherein awareness stretches out in time and space. He accuses Western commentators of confusing the second kind of samsaric consciousness with "what is really unconditioned and extra-samsaric." Next he explains paṭiccasamuppāda, and each of the 12 nidanas, considering them as forming both a "samsaric, temporal, and horizontal chain", and at the same time a "transcendental, vertical, and descending series". He describes the conjoined role of samatha and vipassana–serenity and clear perception–in the Buddhist path. Since arousing vipassana is the beginning of the process of ascesis, Evola argues that original Buddhism is not universal, but aristocratic in nature. He justifies this view with reference to the Ayacana Sutta, in which the Buddha is reluctant to share his knowledge until he is shown the existence of "beings of a nobler kind" who have the capacity to understand it. In the last chapter of Part I, he reiterates the difference between Christian asceticism and Buddhist forms of renunciation, saying that the former is a painful practice born from resentment, while the latter is detachment brought about by awareness of the contingency of the world. One who follows this "Aryan" kind of renunciation rejects life not through self-mortification, but on the basis that life and death are "inadequate to his real nature."

Reception

Ñāṇavīra Thera

The translator of the work, H. E. Musson stated that "the author has, it seems to me, recaptured the spirit of Buddhism in its original form, and his schematic and uncompromising approach will have rendered an inestimable service even if it does no more than clear away some of the woolly ideas that have gathered round the central figure, Prince Siddhattha, and round the doctrine that he disclosed." Musson was inspired to become a bhikkhu from reading The Doctrine of Awakening in 1945 while hospitalised in Sorrento, and was later given the monastic name Ñāṇavīra Thera. In El Commino del Cinabro "The Path of Cinnabar" (1963) Evola refers to Musson's conversion: "The person who translated the work, a certain Mutton (sic), found in it an incitant to leave Europe and withdraw to the Orient in the hope of finding there a centre where one still cultivated the disciplines that I recommended; unfortunately, I have had no further news of him." Harry Oldmeadow described Evola's work on Buddhism as exhibiting a Nietzschean influence, but Evola criticised Nietzsche's purported anti-ascetic prejudice. Arthur Versluis described Evola's book as "far from accurate, being more a vehicle for his own theory of personal immortality." Sandro Consolato has written a sympathetic overview of Evola's approach to Buddhism