Chapter 3: What Makes a Soteriology Credible?¶

Criticism must have grounds. This chapter sets out the five criteria on which this book's criticism rests, distilled from the structure of early Buddhist soteriology. They are minimum standards for evaluating any soteriology: necessary conditions, not sufficient ones. If a system fails to meet them, the point is that its theoretical claims cannot stand epistemologically, not that its practices must be without benefit.

Criterion 1: testability

A credible soteriology's core promises should leave observable traces as practice progresses during this life. It cannot defer all verification until after death or countless eons hence, or entrust it entirely to authoritative certification. Testability here does not mean third-person laboratory testing. The metalevel observations at the end of Volume 1 have already noted that “public, observable, repeatable” are conditions of admission to scientific method, not its discoveries. Under these requirements, first-person phenomena such as suffering, craving, and cessation would be expelled from reality before testing even began (Volume 1, Essay 12, Chapter 5). Within the tradition, Dharmakīrti's account of direct perception reserves epistemological standing for first-person experience. Yet this instrument cuts both ways: yogic direct perception is precisely a target of this volume's critique of Yogācāra. Expectations and doctrine shape reports of experience; the map can confirm itself. This book therefore advocates two tracks of testability: changes can be traced in the first person—the rise and fall of afflictions and craving in introspection—and behavior over long periods can provide corroboration. Those who have spent a long time with a person can partly observe actual changes in patterns of response. Introspection alone cannot prevent the map from confirming itself; behavior alone hands all authority to judge back to the third person. The two tracks must constrain each other for a faithful reconstruction of the structure of early Buddhist criteria.

Criterion 2: internal consistency

Theoretical claims must not contradict themselves. Typical problems fall into three classes. Diagnosis and mechanism fail to correspond: the diagnosis names ignorance, but the mechanism bypasses it to do something else. Metaphysical presuppositions stand in tension with one another: an intrinsically pure mind and a doctrine of nonself. Self-power and other-power are consistent on the surface but conflict beneath it: self-power is proclaimed in theory while practice relies on blessings, with “the nonduality of self and other” then used to evade further questions.

Criterion 3: connection with the cessation of suffering

However complex the system, a credible soteriology should be traceable back to a reduction in suffering and craving. Complexity itself is not the problem; the question is whether it preserves a clear connection with the cessation of suffering. After consciousness is transformed into wisdom, how specifically does suffering diminish? How does the claim that “suffering never existed in the first place” explain suffering's actual presence before awareness is recognized? If the answers remain highly generalized descriptions and cannot be traced to the actual rise and fall of suffering, this criterion has not been met.

Criterion 4: correspondence between path and goal

The path of practice should actually lead toward the promised goal, rather than secondary attainments internal to the system—victory in debate, mastery of rituals, or acquisition of institutional standing. The correspondence in the baseline is transparent: mindfulness makes one aware of craving as it arises; awareness creates a gap; the gap weakens habitual reactions. A complex system must give an equally substantive account of “how.” Saying “These profound skillful means cannot be measured by exoteric teachings” substitutes the system's authority for an argument establishing the correspondence.

Criterion 5: openness to scrutiny of the criteria themselves

A credible soteriology should submit to the test of external criticism, rather than systematically exempting itself through “This teaching is profound; you do not understand.” Language has limits, and some experiences may exceed conceptual grasp; these can be acknowledged. But if any criticism can be evaded by “insufficient understanding,” the system becomes immune to all testing. Openness is not weakness but a mark of theoretical maturity. “Taking the Dharma as refuge” already contains a simple openness: the Dharma can be understood, tested, and practiced.

In the first criterion, behavior over time can provide corroboration; the two tracks constrain each other. The second requires claims about self-power and other-power to remain consistent. The third criterion's opening qualification, “However complex the system,” comes from the accompanying paragraph. The fourth reads: the path points to the promised goal, not to secondary achievements internal to the system; the Chinese wording has no “merely.” The fifth requires openness to scrutiny of the criteria themselves, including reasoned challenges to the book's own criteria, as the final paragraph makes explicit.

Within and beyond the criteria

Parts of the Mahāyāna traditions meet these five criteria. Madhyamaka's loosening of grasping can be traced in practice; the connection between Yogācāra's observation of the activities of consciousness and its countering of afflictions is relatively clear. Chan expressions that “point directly to the present,” and interpretations within the tathāgatagarbha tradition that make a pure mind the basis of faith without staking that faith on a metaphysical reality, each accord with the criteria in certain respects. We distinguish these to find more reliable resources within the traditions. Finally, the limits of the criteria themselves must be stated. Distilled from early Buddhism, they are not the only possible framework. This book welcomes well-grounded challenges to them; that is precisely what the fifth criterion itself requires.

References¶

(This chapter's criteria are distilled from early Buddhist soteriology; the relevant analyses appear throughout the preceding six essays. For Dharmakīrti's theory of valid cognition and the metalevel discussion of thought experiments, see Volume 1, Essays 8 and 12. For the drift in certifying realization, see the Madhyamaka essay, Part II, Chapter 6. No separate notes are provided.)