Casual Thoughts about Buddhism and the Paranormal

I only stumbled into the weird, wacky world of the contemporary Western paranormal because I love ghost stories and am apparently easily led by internet links. In real life, while I have some interest in esoterica and the paranormal, I have way less interest in those areas than I do in, say, deepening my understanding of Buddhist practice. At the same time, I recognize that for some people the necessity for understanding what paranormal thing happened to them or what UFO they saw is as fundamental as is my need for a Buddhist practice. Amidst the swathes of the paranormal world that I view as entertainment, there is that contingent who, insistent with their questioning, exhaustive with their research and/or dedicated to effective communication, make it an intellectually intriguing and rewarding arena for thought.

That’s what I think when I wear my Former Academic hat. Wearing my Buddhist hat, I indulge my longstanding interests in esoterica, etcetera by searching through various Buddhist scriptures for any reference to Others – ghosts, aliens, demons, gods – in search of an (unlikely) answer.

On account of the religious and political institutions of monotheism, in the West we have a long history rigorous dualism. There is one true god and one true church; the rest is evil, Other. The pattern was repeated even after the Enlightenment came and was followed by the Industrial Revolution and then the flourishing of big-S Science. Scientism replaced God, spirituality became superstition, and myth and folklore became epistemological slurs instead of words describing meaningful social competencies. Buddhism, however, comes from the half of the world that didn’t fuss with drawing those particular distinctions and positively bristles with gods, demons, snakes and monsters. (Some of whom, of course, are us.)

So can Buddhists answer questions about the paranormal, UFOs, big feet and more? Can becoming a Buddhist turn you into someone who can get the paranormal answers that no one else has? Such questions come up because it’s known that intensive training (meditation, yoga, qigong etc.) can result in various powers or abilities thought of in the West as supernatural, including chatting with Others. However, Westerners tend not to have the personal discipline to train so intensively or the structure of social institutions that could support such an effort. Moreover, special powers are traditionally held to be mere epiphenomena of training – something of no intrinsic importance that just happens along the Way. While they may seem magical, they can be misused just like love and loyalty, for example. They pose a real question to Science, but as experiences are just another bubble in the boiling pot of water that is a human life.

Yet there’s no doubt that in Buddhism the world is full of Others of various shapes and sorts. Because of the long history of Buddhism and of literacy in China and because I’m writing this in 2016, we have fantastic access to great scholarship and translations from original sources that allow English only speakers like me to understand various sutras (scriptures) and mantras (spells or prayers) in a way that was not previously possible. I don’t mean that we should understand this aspect of Buddhist literature to be empirically descriptive in an ontological sense. But it does reflect the centuries-long heritage of training by Buddhists. When I say that, I am thinking of my martial arts teachers who have trained much longer and harder than me. I have learned to listen to what they tell me; the consequences of not doing so are usually painful.

One traditional Buddhist teaching is that of the six realms a being may find itself born into, according to its karma: humans, animals, hell, gods, hungry ghosts or titans. Another I’ve already mentioned is that superpowers exist and can be obtained, but they're sort of like Kim Kardasian’s butt – fascinating, but not for more than a few minutes.

The Thai Forest Monk Ajahn Mun in the 20^th century regularly talked dharma with devas (some kind of disincarnate or non-human being) during meditation. His biographer, Ajahn Maha Bua, explained that there were terrestrial devas and celestial devas, differentiated by how far above the ground they lived. Reading all this made me wonder about spook lights and UFOs and the story of the Sky-Walkers from The Tower of Myriad Mirrors, a 17^th-century Zen spinoff from a classic of Chinese literature, Journey to the West. Recently I’ve been reading about the Shurangama Sutra, which in part goes into the various delusions one can have even in deep meditation. I’ll just leave you with Monkey in Chapter Three of The Tower of Myriad Mirrors:

Just as [Monkey] jumped up to go search for his master, he heard voices in the sky and quickly looked up to see four or five hundred people swing axes and using chisels to dig holes in the sky.

Monkey thought, “They don't have the look of celestial workers or ominous or evil stars. They are obviously people from earth, but why are they doing this sort of work here? They aren’t monsters disguised as men because I see no evil aura about them. Come to think of it, maybe heaven has grown extra bones and has asked a surgeon to remove them. Or maybe heaven is too old and they are chiseling it away so they can put in a new one. Or maybe heaven has been covered by a screen, and they are removing the false heaven for the real one. Or maybe the Milky Way is flooded and they are channeling away the excess. Or maybe they are rebuilding the Palace of Magic Mists and this is an auspicious day to break ground. Or maybe Heaven likes elaboration and asked people to carve a thousand and ten thousand lines to make a beautiful scene. Or maybe the Jade Emperor is thinking about this world and they are opening an imperial road so he can come down often.

"I wonder If Heaven's blood is red or white. Or If Heaven's skin is one or two layers thick. Or if there will be a heart or not when Heaven’s chest is opened. Or if Heaven's heart is slanted or straight. Or if Heaven is young or old or if it's male or female. Or maybe they want to open Heaven and let Heavens mountains hang down and surpass earth's mountains. Or maybe they are opening the mouth of Heaven to swallow the Underworld. But even if any of these things are true, no one on earth could have such power. I'll just go up and ask them then I'll know for sure."

I love how Monkey – think a Buddhist Wiley Coyote – wildly ratiocinates a la an Andrew Basiago or Grant Cameron while still desperately grasping after the keel of rationality. He comes up with all sorts of unlikely post hoc explanations for selectively chosen data sets in a way that people who follow ufology are all too familiar with. Yet in the end, he seems to rein himself in and decides that he should just find out, instead of speculate.