I am sure amongst a few Buddhist scholars and followers of Buddhism some would argue that the language of transcendence, which belongs to mysticism, is foreign to Buddhism. By “transcendence” I mean, generally, lying outside of what is presented in our human experience and certainly beyond ordinary sensory experience and scientific explanation. In addition, “transcendentalism” would be the doctrine that intuitive or spiritual intuition is higher than the empirical.
I would first counter the view that Buddhism does not speak the language of transcendence by saying that it is a gross, outrageous distortion of Buddhism which is intended to fit inside the Western box of physicalism along with secularism, the latter being anti-religious in the sense that it views a first-person experience of ultimate reality to be impossible. Yet, it is unambiguously clear from the Pali Nikayas, for example, that nirvana is treated as being in the category of the transcendent or the same, the unconditioned. Nirvana is not realized within the world of the conditioned by adhering to the conditioned, and certainly not within the sphere of the five khandhas (S., skandha), namely, physical form, feeling, perception, volitional formations, and consciousness.
Along this road, the Buddha teaches us that our bio-physical apparatus: the five khandhas, or aggregates, are really not who we are, viz., ātman. Perhaps of equal importance, these aggregates are not to be identified with as being who we really are. In other words, we are not to desire and cling to what is not our ātman. Fundamentally, we are intrinsically beyond the pale of these human bodies and their limitations, although we are unaware of our transcendent nature.
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