Beyond language and reason_ Mysticism in Indian Buddhism

Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate the meaning of mysticism in Indian Buddhism. This task is accomplished through a religion-phenomenological analysis trying to relate the ideas expressed in Buddhist texts to certain human ways of experiencing one's being-in-the-world. Underlying this approach is a view of religious texts as "tracks" of various kinds of human experiences, mystical and otherwise. Mystical experiences are here understood against the background of Heidegger's and Gadamer's idea of a linguistic basis of human reality. In mystical experience, this basis is transcended, and reality is experienced without the boundaries of language and discursive thinking. The specific characteristics of mystical experience have been adopted from Paul Griffiths' division of mystical experience into three types: 1) an experience of pure consciousness, 2) an unmediated experience, and 3) a nondualistic experience. The presence of any of these characteristics allows us to regard an experience as mystical.