Buddhism Series 1: Not-a-yana Buddhism, and Resolving Inscrutable Paradoxes

I oftentimes joke that my personal perspective and telling of Buddhism is “Notayana” Buddhism. For those who aren’t in on the joke, “yana” means a “vehicle” of Buddhist practice (typically for achieving enlightenment). There are many yanas, like Mahayana and Vajrayana and Ekayana. In the Khuddaka Nikaya, it is said that there are 84000 doors to enlightenment. 

I call my practice “Notayana” because, even though much of it is informed by Buddhism, I am also very much inspired by non-Buddhist sources.1 But perhaps more to the point, it’s kind of a disclaimer that I am not enlightened so my personal explorations should not be taken to be an official Buddhist yana towards enlightenment.

That said, I still find something deliciously and meaningfully fun about the name “Notayana.” The name literally says, “Not a vehicle (for enlightenment).” The “seeming” paradox of taking “Notayana,” something self-declaring to not be the vehicle for enlightenment, seriously, resonates loudly for me; for me this tension is the seed of my Buddhist practice and understanding.

In Chinese, I translate “Notayana” as 非常乘。 In vernacular Chinese, this means “very vehicle.” But in ancient Chinese, it means “not the vehicle.” This translation of “Notayana” is inspired by the first few lines of the Tao Te Ching 道德經:

“道可道，非常道，

名可名，非常名“

The literal, basic pattern of the above two lines is:

“The X that X is not X” (ancient Chinese)

and

“The X that X is X” (vernacular Chinese)

Somehow, eccentric/mystical Chinese thinkers love to come off as inscrutable! (The inscrutability may be frustrating to the layperson, but one does have to concede that from meme-ability perspective it’s wildly successful). In a contextless world, the first two lines of the Tao Te Ching seem like gibberish. It is tantamount to saying “X is not X.” How can that possibly make sense? Certainly, in a clean, idealized, well-defined world, “X is not X” can’t possibly be true. 

However, you don’t have to look very far to know that life is complex and language often leaves a lot up to context. A better translation of the first two lines of the Tao Te Ching is:

“The tao (path) that can be walked, is not The Path,

The name that can be named, is not The Name.”

Note that, written out more verbosely, each occurrence of the character 道 and 名 refer to a slightly different idea, which can be indicated via different words or capitalizations. That is, in a full-flesh world, full of context,

The pattern of the Tao Te Ching is not:

“X is not X” and “X is X” (instinct: “this doesn’t make sense! X is X!”)

It’s something more akin to 

“x is not X” and “x is X” (“oh, of course, I can see how both are true.”)2

Notice the capitalization of the letter providing context. In the real world, it is supremely obvious how a statement that sounds like gibberish can actually make perfect sense, or how two opposite sounding statements can both make sense. In some sense, “x” is “X.” And in some sense, it isn’t, either. Part of the “apparent paradox” is in the woeful underspecificity of the word “is.”3

Another example: are you your name? I think you’d agree that the answer is both yes and no. Yes, your name refers to you. But no: you are much more than just your name, much more than just a collection of letters and sounds. There is no fundamental contradiction, but simply the observation that reality is much more rich and complex than words can express.

And in the same vein, “Notayana” for me says:

“This is not the solution (but it kind of is).”

“Notayana” is a reminder of the seeds of insight — “x is not X, but it kind of is.” It is a reminder that oftentimes a senseless world begins to make a lot more sense once we start engaging in its richness, instead of collapsing it into “X is not X”. 

Naturally, this insight is vitally important but by itself not the total solution. But just because it’s not the whole shebang, does not mean it’s not valuable. But what is valuable does not need to be THE full solution, and the full solution is not the only thing that’s valuable, as much as we might default to an all-or-nothing fashion of thinking.

From the comforts of our philosophical armchairs, this insight probably seems super obvious. Yet everyday we go on living otherwise. The fun thing is to take this observation and follow it through to our daily lives, arriving at some interesting conclusions that we may not have appreciated at the outset of the journey. 

Take-away:

“Notayana” and “x is not X” are mnemonics and reminders to revisit context and uncover creative new insights. When faced with puzzles and contradictions, oftentimes the interesting question to ask is, “In what sense would it be true? In what sense would it be false? Is there meaning-overload in how words are used? Are there lower-case and upper-case meanings of the words that one could distinguish?” 

In an echo of the journey to multidimensionality, many inscrutable “paradoxes” that confuse stem from projecting ideas onto a lower-dimensional space, leading to bit collisions or namespace clashes. The solution is to remind ourselves to allocate more mental capacity.