Empty
Vision: Metaphor and Visionary Imagery in Mahayana Buddhism.
By David L. McMahan. London: RoutledgeCurzon,
2002, x + 227 pages, ISBN 0-7007-1489-8 (hardcover), £65.00.
Reviewed by
Natalie Gummer
Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies
Mouat Professor of International Studies
Beloit College
gummern@beloit.edu
In
this tremendously ambitious and wide-ranging textual study, David
McMahan argues for the centrality of vision in Buddhist thought,
literature, and practice, with particular focus on South Asian Mahayana.
McMahan proposes that vision is the "root metaphor" for
knowledge, a metaphor that lies at the heart of numerous discursive
and meditative practices of Mahayana Buddhist communities. He seeks
thereby not only to illuminate the ways in which this metaphor is
both constitutive and generative of Buddhist thought and practice,
but also to contribute a Buddhist perspective to contemporary conversations
about ocularcentrism, which focus on the modern West.
The central argument
is developed in five quite distinct chapters, each of which examines
a different context in which the predominance of the visual, McMahan
argues, is clearly manifest. The first chapter, "The Devaluation
of Language and the Privileging of Perception," posits a rupture
between the Vedic conception of the tremendous power of language
and subsequent Indic conceptions of language, especially Buddhist
conceptions. From the earliest period, the Buddhist tradition evinced
an extreme skepticism about language, viewing it as "constitutive
of a falsely constructed lifeworld" (p. 22). McMahan traces
the development of this negative conception of language through
Abhidharma literature and into the early Mahayana. Of particular
significance to the larger argument of the book is McMahan's examination
of the use of dialectical paradox in Perfection of Wisdom texts.
In its most simple form, the paradox is constituted first by asserting
a (linguistic) category, then negating it, and finally reasserting
it qua category, a dialectic that McMahan encapsulates in the formula
"A, ~A, 'A'" (p. 38). This dialectic serves both to negate
the apparent reality of merely linguistic distinctions, and to reestablish
the utility of language in the much more restricted sphere of conventional
designation. As McMahan notes, the function of this paradox is primarily
performative, attempting to evoke through language a recognition
of the linguistic construction of the illusory world. The chapter
concludes by contrasting the devaluation of language with the valorization
of direct perception — a form of perception that McMahan argues
is fundamentally visual.
The second chapter,
"Buddhist Visuality in History and Metaphor," drawing
on the work of cognitive linguists George Lakoff and Mark Johnson,
argues for the central role of the root metaphor "knowing is
seeing" in Mahayana literature. McMahan begins by surveying
the strong association of knowledge with vision in Indo-European
languages and history, then turns to examine the range of visual
metaphors for knowing in Buddhist literature, drawing primarily,
but not exclusively, on Mahayana texts. From the root metaphor "knowing
is seeing," he derives a number of subsidiary metaphors that
depend upon it for their power and significance. Of these, McMahan
examines in greatest depth "knowledge is space" (p. 73-81).
Again he contrasts the spatial realm of vision with the temporal
realm of (oral/aural) language. Despite Buddhist teachings on impermanence
(more obviously manifest in the evanescence of sound than in the
stasis enabled by vision), McMahan argues, Buddhist literature privileges
space, even to the extent that time itself is represented in spatial
terms. Since metaphors not only express but also constitute the
cognitive resources for interpreting phenomena, the representation
of knowledge in visual terms shapes "the primary possibilities
and most likely choices for construing various phenomena" (p.
82).
Chapter three, "Orality,
Writing, and Authority: Visionary Literature and the Struggle for
Legitimacy in the Mahayana," an earlier version of which was
published in History of Religions, examines how the shift
from oral to written modes of text production, preservation, and
dissemination shaped the legitimizing strategies employed in Mahayana
Buddhist sutra literature. McMahan maps the previously posited hierarchical
dichotomy between language and vision onto the distinction between
orality and writing, arguing not only that writing functioned to
perpetuate and legitimate Mahayana Buddhism and to foster devotional
practices focused on the sutra as material object, but also that
"writing contributed to a restructuring of knowledge in such
a way that vision, rather than hearing, became a significant mode
of access to knowledge" (p. 89). The latter claim, bolstered
by the theories regarding orality and literacy set forth by scholars
like Walter Ong and Jack Goody, is of greatest relevance to the
larger argument of the book. This writing-induced shift in modes
of knowing in turn is represented as contributing to the development
of visual metaphor and visionary imagery introduced in the preceding
chapter.
The central argument
of the book, loosely traced through these quite disparate "case
studies," begins to cohere in the fourth chapter, "Realms
of the Senses: Buddha Fields and Fields of Vision in the Gaṇdavyūha
Sūtra." This chapter explores the instantiation in
the Gaṇdavyūha Sūtra of the dialectical paradox
examined in chapter one and the visual metaphors identified in chapter
two. McMahan argues that the verbal dialectic employed in the Perfection
of Wisdom sutras (A, ~A, "A") "informs the recurrent
imagistic pattern of the interpenetration of part and whole in the
Gaṇdavyūha, but not so much in a verbal as a visual
mode" (p. 136). In other words, visual images rather than words
are manipulated so as to provoke a recognition of the constructed,
conventional nature of phenomena. Moreover, the Gaṇdavyūha
concretizes the metaphors that represent knowing as seeing in its
description of fantastic visionary realms. Thus, McMahan concludes,
"the increasing emphasis on vision in the Mahayana played a
formative role in the development of new doctrinal positions insofar
as it entailed attempts to envision key ideas and metaphors and
to illustrate them in visionary episodes — attempts that produced
shifts in the significance and meaning of such ideas and metaphors"
(p. 141).
The fifth chapter,
"The Optics of Buddhist Meditation and Devotion," explores
the role of vision in Mahayana praxis, especially visualization.
McMahan traces such practices from non-Mahayana Buddhist meditations
through devotional practices and Tantric visualizations. The primary
focus of the chapter is a study of the role of vision in sādhana
practices, which McMahan suggests "could be considered ritual
enactments of [the] visionary episodes recounted in the sutras"
(p. 171). The sādhana involves not only visualizing
awakened beings situated in mandalas, but also entering the mandala
and merging oneself with the deity, thereby coming to embody enlightened
wisdom through the manipulation of meditative vision. McMahan relates
this practice to image consecration, in which the deity comes to
be embodied in the external image — but sādhana practices
involve instead a self-consecration, in which the practitioner herself
comes to embody the deity before finally dissolving into emptiness.
This Tantric "'somaticization' of Buddhist doctrines and themes"
(p. 175) represents "a culmination of the visual orientation
of Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism" (p. 177).
In "Conclusions
and Occlusions," McMahan presents an appropriately cautious
yet thought-provoking assessment of the contribution that the primacy
of vision in Mahayana Buddhism might make to broader discussions
of ocularcentrism in the academy. While scholars have generally
viewed the ocularcentrism of the Modern West in a rather negative
light, ascribing to this sensory predilection the tendency toward
objectification of the other that underlies Enlightenment thought
and imperialism, McMahan sees in Buddhist ocularcentrism more positive
potential. While comparable claims to universal knowledge can also
be discerned in Buddhist traditions, "the refusal of most Buddhist
schools in India to attempt to ground philosophical discourse in
supposed ontological foundations may have averted some of the problems
inherent in modern Western ocularcentrism" (p. 191). Thus,
McMahan concludes, we should avoid generalizing about ocularcentric
orientations in different cultural and historical configurations.
As should be evident
from the preceding description, McMahan seeks to weave together
a number of seemingly distinct issues and theoretical orientations
in a creative and provocative manner in order to illuminate historical
and conceptual connections among a wide range of texts and practices.
In the vast scope of this project lies both the strength and the
weakness of Empty Vision. McMahan's study offers significant
insight into visual metaphors for knowledge and their generative
applications. His attention to the possible relationships among
the paradoxical dialectic employed in Perfection of Wisdom sutras,
the visionary literature of the Mahayana, and Tantric visualization
practices enable us to see significant and mutually illuminating
continuities among doctrinal, textual, and ritual practices. McMahan
constructs an interpretive lens through which numerous Buddhist
texts can be read, and provokes a much keener awareness of the presence
and potential soteriological function of visual metaphors and imagery.
McMahan's argument that visual metaphors become concretized in devotional
and visualization practices is especially productive in its potential
to enrich scholarly appreciation both of the ritual aspects of literature,
and of the literary aspects of ritual practices.
Less compelling,
however, is McMahan's insistence throughout the study that the devaluation
of language is concomitant with the privileging of vision. He contrasts
the Vedic valorization of the word with Buddhist denigration: "Early
Buddhist reflection on language… allowed a much smaller scope
to the power of words, and this represented a significant break
with what we know of the dominant ideas on language in ancient South
Asia" (p. 18). McMahan supports this thesis by drawing on the
considerable body of Buddhist writings that present language and
conceptualization as the foundation of samsaric entrapment. Language
generates the illusion of discrete and permanent entities, of the
distinction between self and other, and thus leads to attachment,
craving, and suffering. Undoubtedly, this negative conception of
language is of critical and pervasive significance in Buddhist thought
and practice — but note that this view by no means ascribes "a
much smaller scope to the power of words." Indeed, if language
is the very basis of delusion, surely it is accorded tremendous
power: language, in a very fundamental sense, creates the illusory
world of the unawakened. What could be more powerful? And what could
be more central to Buddhist thought and practice?
Granted, that power
is portrayed in many doctrinal texts as profoundly negative; the
potential of language to delude is a central problem to be overcome
in most Buddhist soteriologies. The hegemony of the word is to be
subverted in the quest for ineffable truth, truth that McMahan convincingly
argues is figured in fundamentally visual terms. But McMahan's argument
conflates a negative conception of conventional language with a
devaluation of the power of language. Moreover, McMahan
assumes an opposition between language and image belied by the very
texts he cites. These are, after all, linguistic works. The Gaṇdavyūha
is assuredly a text obsessed with vision and visions, but it remains
a text; higher knowledge may well be represented through visual
metaphors, but metaphors remain linguistic devices — devices
that, according to McMahan's own argument, not only reflect but
also help to constitute cognition. One could argue that, far from
devaluing language, the Gaṇdavyūha is a testament
to the power of language to create alternative realities,
visionary realms. If the power of language is such that it generates
the illusion of samsara, then it can also create alternative visions
— visions that have the potential to liberate rather than obfuscate.
Which is dominant in such texts: language or vision? Their relationship,
it seems to me, is extremely complex, and cannot be easily generalized
as either oppositional or hierarchical.
McMahan's third
chapter on "orality and literacy" might in part be an
attempt to address the problem posed by the linguistic nature of
his sources, although he never makes this point fully explicit.
By positing "a shift from oral/aural to the literate/visual"
(p. 109), McMahan represents the (written) text as predominantly
visual, requiring a mode of accessing and organizing knowledge fundamentally
different from that of (spoken) language. One major problem with
this theory (a problem both for McMahan and for the theorists on
whose work he draws) is that it assumes an audience of (silent)
readers — an audience that one would be highly unlikely to find
in the manuscript cultures to which McMahan refers. A manuscript
culture, in which both written texts and the ability to read them
are generally quite rare, is not in any clear-cut sense a culture
based on writing.
Moreover, some of
the sutras in which McMahan identifies visionary tendencies, such
as the Saddharmapuṇdarīka and the Suvarṇabhāsottama,
are also exceedingly articulate regarding their own tremendous oral/aural
potency and the critical role of the spoken sutra in generating
visionary, olfactory, and tactile experiences of the highest order.
The transformative power explicitly accorded to the language, oral
or written, of these sutras is too crucial to be overlooked. While
the Gaṇdavyūha provides an especially vivid and compelling
example of the visionary tendencies of Mahayana literature, it is
also a misleading example with respect to McMahan's claims about
the devaluation of the word, because it lacks the explicit and repeated
claims of linguistic potency so characteristic of other Mahayana
sutras — sutras that are similarly rife with vivid visual imagery.
McMahan's study of visual imagery and the concretization of metaphors
for knowledge thus elides the critical generative role that, according
to several sutras as well as McMahan's own theory of metaphor, verbalization
plays in making such imagery manifest.
My point is not
to call into question McMahan's many insights regarding the articulation
and function of visuality in Buddhist literature and practice, but
rather to suggest that these insights are neither dependent upon
nor in any way necessitate the concomitant denigration of the word
on which he appears to found his argument. Indeed, a greater appreciation
of the complexity of the relationship between sight and sound, between
vision and language, would only enhance his study of visual metaphor
and imagery. I wonder whether the works on modern Western ocularcentrism
on which McMahan draws have not led him somewhat astray in this
respect, since they appear to assume the necessary supremacy of
one sense modality over the others. Perhaps the Buddhist materials
that McMahan examines could not only contribute to a more nuanced
understanding of visuality, but could also help to articulate an
alternative framework for understanding the relationship among the
senses.
It is extremely
difficult in attempting so wide-ranging a study to avoid a degree
of misrepresentation and reductivism, and (despite McMahan's careful
hedging) Empty Vision can be critiqued on these grounds.
At the same time, the field of Buddhist Studies would be greatly
impoverished without scholars like McMahan who are willing to take
the risk of thinking broadly and comparatively. While I take issue
with some aspects of McMahan's argument, especially his representation
of the role of language in Buddhist thought and practice, Empty
Vision is extremely "good to think with." I would
recommend it over many more specialized studies that assiduously
avoid examination of their broader implications. We can dispute
some of McMahan's findings, but when we do so, we are simply working
to advance an area of inquiry that his work has opened up. Empty
Vision helps us to understand and relate a whole spectrum of
doctrinal, literary, and ritual practices in terms of their visual
orientation — and in that sense, like the metaphors it explores,
the book not only explicates but also generates different modes
of perception.