4 Data Acquisition in an Open Universe: Bauddha Metaphysical Methodologies
In the developmental processes of Bauddha[4] historicization, there arise three generic quasi self-referential classifications. These are Theravāda, Mahāyāna, and Tantrayāna. Each has its characteristic relationary approach to gaining favor, i.e. data, from its a priori "open" universe. In this way 'Jaino-Bauddhic' Theravda watches it; faith-driven Mahāyāna travels to it; Tantrayāna yogically becomes it. The school of the theras or five-hundred "elders"[5] accepts a rather dry, spectatorial tact and objectifies the highly analyticised facets of its emotional impinging universe. But with the dawn of Mahāyāna the universe unfastens and ignites and 'explodes in all dimensions' (Gombrich 1996: 38). Here Mahāyānic science turns phenomenological and launches deep probes in the purity and faith of its now revivified and redescribed expanse. Tantric methodology adapts to this alterity[6] with the hyperthetic reach of its corporeal-perceptive instrumentation. Such extensive retoolings compel its researchers to dilate the ontologic vein of eclipse and don, as it were, the body of the universe.
And so despite the sustained attempts in its primitive texts to stratify the heavens, and to specify and catalogue everything knowable, there remains 'a gaping vagueness at the top – in fact, there is no top at all' (38) – but a vast expansiveness, immeasurable and ineffable. Thus the Bauddha universe is plainly open-ended, in very marked contrast to its cousinly Jaina conception, which likes to represent the cosmos by closed-in diagrams (38). But more than unbounded by 'all spatial dimensions' (38), the Bauddha universe is unrestrained by 'time.' And so in vivid contrast to the Shemitic sense of temporal eternity, Bauddha apperception of its spatial dimension is rather one of timelessness and infinity.
Can deeper implications be brought to light through sustained transcultural examination of our growing catalogue of ontological archetypes? Transculturally mapping ontological archetypes ought to be an essential project of comparative religious and philosophical studies. This could well hold answers to the cultural formulation of variant conceptions of being-in-the-universal, their influence on social manipulation and formation.
