Why it Matters

There was a distinct moment in my early Abhidharma research when I perceived a detailed correspondence between a Buddhist and a materialistic neuropsychological description of minute steps of human perceptual processes. Specifically, 17 steps of a full visual perception in Abhidharma commentary lined up almost exactly with 10 steps portrayed in a diagram from a brain scan of a visual discrimination event. I have told the story of this moment so many times that I barely remember it. I’m not sure now if the two charts were on a kitchen table or a desk. I can’t remember if I already owned the book about biological psychology or bought it to investigate the Abhidharma description.

I do remember the feeling though. It kind of clicked around the steps that are termed “receiving,” “investigating,” and “determining” in the Abhidharma translation, and areas of cortex that take in, then blend, and then assemble fragments of perception. There was more but I felt a rush of discovery where the specifics did not continue to matter. There was a magic in the match, the sameness of the communications pulling the ground out from under me and the scene out from around me. They were saying the same thing.

I also remember telling friends about this, discussing it over dinner with my patient family, and telling a cab driver about it in Chicago before there were rideshares. I was temporarily obsessed. Looking back at that time, I feel an edge of being chagrinned at my engrossment in a worldly dharma explanation, and yet a joy persists in the naïve enthusiasm of feeling what is below diverse languages.

Every dharma door opens onto the same space; every poem cranks the same human heart open wider. There are so many ways to experience something that is in common yet incommunicable directly. As people of the twenty-first century, we have a wealth of languages and media to explore. We drift towards the ones that somehow express our nature most readily. When correlations jump out, there is a distinct feeling of confirmation.

The confirmation is not proof, validation, or a stamp of approval from outside. It is more like the sound of a click or the feel of shoes that fit well. It is like shadows conforming to the lit surface on the other side. It is a moment of faith. The wonderful Zen poem of Sekito Kisen titled Sandokai is often translated as “the merging of difference and unity.” In a moment of pulling from our most remote resources and landing in one place, this is felt.

Since this time, causes and conditions have led me to become a teacher of Abhidharma and I usually tell this story at some point in some class. It is a sentinel event and reminds me to never study a list or matrix or commentary without checking in with the language of my own experience, especially the language in experience that never breaks the surface of words.