The
Lotus Sutra and Whitehead's Last Writings
By Grange, Joseph
Journal
of Chinese Philosophy v.28 n.4 (December 2001) p.385-398
Copyright 2001 by Blackwell
Publishers on behalf of the International Society for Chinese Philosophy
Oxford, England [UK] (http://www.blackwellpublishers.co.uk/default.htm)
p385
Physicists
speak of world lines of energy, by which they mean the various ways that vectors
of energy weave patterns of force that converge, diverge, and intersect
throughout the process of the universe. Philosophers ought to follow this image
as they begin to grapple with the cultural changes brought about by the global
communications revolution. I believe that the beginning of this millennium
offers an opportunity to reflect on just what shifts in cultural world lines
might be occasioned by this unprecedented mixture of modes of consciousness.
I begin with the opening words of Modes of Thought: "The first chapter in
philosophic approach should consist in a free examination of some ultimate
notions as they occur naturally in daily life,' [1]
Among the general ideas I wish to explore are consciousness and values; the good
as the non-contentious, emptiness, process, and immortality; and these in turn
will lead to other important concepts. This is, to be sure, a daunting project,
but I take comfort in Whitehead's recommendation that this first step be free
(and easy in the sense of nonsystematic). The occasion offered by this
conference is most conducive to such an "approach." My resources will
be the third chapter of the Lotus Sutra on "Expedient Devices," and
Whitehead's lectures on "Mathematics and The Good" and "
Immortality." [2]
I
It
is now some twenty-five years since the appearance of Robert Pirsig's Zen and
the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Its brilliant narrative devices, somber
recital of the pains of mental illness, vivid discussions of the difference
between the "Romantic" and the "Classical" approaches to
life, and its exquisite analysis of "Quality" made it a cultural
landmark. But what few people know is that three years after its triumphant
publication, Pirsig suffered another searing experience, the murder of his son
Chris (his companion on his road story across America) outside
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a
Zen center in the Haight district of San Francisco. I begin my article with
Pirsig's account of how he eventually recovered from this trauma:
[What]
had to be seen was that the Chris I missed so badly was not an object but a
pattern and that, although the pattern included the flesh and blood of Chris,
that was not all there was to it. The pattern was larger than Chris and myself
and related us in ways that neither of us understood completely and neither of
us was in complete control of. [3]
So
despite his hard-won understanding of the world of form, proportion, and limit,
and all the fame and fortune, Pirsig needed to learn one more lesson—that he
was part of something bigger than himself. And like his other knowledge this,
too, would have to be wrung from the deepest level of his being. It is this
dimension of his "An Inquiry into Values" [4]
that accounts for its remarkable power as a work of literature that mixes
together autobiography, philosophy, and social commentary on that crazy time
called the '60s. His work breathes forth a felt intelligence that can only be
accounted for by some remarkable fusion of the heart and mind working at a
serene but white-hot level of intelligence. Like all works of genius it is
probably at bottom not open to rational explanation. I find it at its best
moments analogous to Spinoza's amor intellectualis Dei.
It is this kind of heart-mind thinking that is needed if the beginning of this
new millennium is to witness the birth of another Axial Age. What saps
contemporary thinking and keeps it from a wholehearted embrace of reality are
the paralyzing dualisms that continue to affect our way of looking at the world.
Among these are two great disconnects: the fissure between the mind and the body
and the rift between the individual and the community, and they in turn, as
Whiteheadians know, are the outcomes of the fallacies of misplaced concreteness
and simple location. What is required is a wider vision that gives us synoptic
breadth and the healing energy that goes with such a theoretical reformulation.
As said earlier, this is not the place to offer such a system. [5]
We can, however, spot the places where these dualisms do the most harm. We can
then seek ways in which to heal these divisions in our culture.
Ⅱ
The
second chapter of the First Roll of the Lotus Sutra bears the title
"Expedient Devices." I find the word "expedient"
distracting, for it brings to my mind connotations of crass relativism and a
cheap form of pragmatism. No doubt these are my own reactions to years of debate
about the meaning of the pragmatic method in general and in particular James's
unfortunate phrase "the cash value of an idea." I therefore
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prefer
to translate the title of this chapter as "Skillful Means." With this
slight shift in meaning a wide field of understanding begins to emerge, one that
can connect Mahayana Buddhism with some of the more provocative themes in
Whitehead's last writings.
In this part of the Sutra the Buddha says
Though
I preach nirvana,
There
is no true extinction. [6]
And
with these words the Sutra pushes the meaning of Buddhism to its most extreme
limits. Here we have the identification of samsara and nirvana and the deflation
of all the dreams of a refuge in some golden world of eternal bliss. In fact
earlier, he told us
...
Knowing that the beings have various desires and objects to which their
thoughts are profoundly attached, following their basic natures, by resort to
the expedient power of various means, parables and phrases, I preach the
Dharma to them. [7]
So
there is one truth, but many ways to it. Now I find in this passage a remarkable
similarity to what can be called "normative thinking," by which I mean
the intention to find in the varied situations of life the right fit between the
truth and the existential circumstances within which we find ourselves. The
world of concrete experience is at all times both one and many. This is what
Robert Neville means by the axiology of thinking and truth as the carryover of
value from the past into the present and the relevant future. [8]
Upaya, the term translated as "devices" or "means," comes
from the Sanskrit verb meaning "to approach." This notion of coming
close can be understood as gaining the proper perspective on particular human
affairs. Thus, the adoption of "skillful means" depends on gaining the
right angle of vision. And so we are led back to the importance of theory as the
ground of width of vision and clarity of insight. Consciousness is the crucial
carrier of all such theoretical visions. The second chapter of the Lotus Sutra
has as its core element the necessity of gaining the right awareness of things.
Without the proper theoretical foundations there is little hope of understanding
the Dharma that saves.
It is precisely here at the level of consciousness and its structural form that
the link between Whitehead's last writings and the doctrine of the necessity of
adopting skillful means in all human situations can be made. Recall that for
Whitehead, consciousness is the subjective feeling that accompanies the
experience of the affirmation of negation. What is affirmed and denied in this
act of selective interpretation is the result of the felt presence of the
contrast between what is and what ought to be. The possible meets the actual and
a mode of awareness is felt that measures up or down the success or failure of
the situation in meeting its ideal aim. Or put the other way, the actual is felt
in the degree to which
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it
approaches its ideal possible realization. What is affirmed is the feeling that
spans the actual "is," the "can be," and the "what
still might be," each of which is a factor in the relevant experience.
Consciousness always feels what is there as well as what is not there. It thus
opens up wide ranges of contrastive feeling, regions of experience and value
that make possible effective future choices and actions.
Thus, the theoretical stance assumed by the conscious one is all
important. Depending upon the
quality of the fusion of sense of the ideal and the actual and the feeling
arising from that contrast, a sense of the worth and possibility of human
experience is made available. Because contrast always increases intensity of
experience, the tension felt between the ideal and the actual is crucial for
driving the creative process forward. Without this mixture of the ideal and the
actual, the world falls into the tedium of repetition, which inevitably,
according to the laws of physics, will run downwards toward entropy. Loss of
order spells loss of goodness. This attenuation of intensity spells doom for any
aspirations toward sustained acts of goodness.
The
necessity of adopting skillful means shows itself as soon as the existential
structure of consciousness is understood. Both sides—the ideal and the
actual—are needed if skillful means are to be made available in different
moments of experience. The doctrine of expedient devices is no invitation to an
easy relativism or a manipulative opportunism. Rather, the successful pursuit of
"skillful means" requires the most intense appreciation of the
relevance of appropriate ideals within real occasions of experience. The term
"normative thinking" is meant to remind a culture self-satisfied with
the easy dualism of fact and value that a prior, more important distinction lies
behind such empiricorational distinctions, [9]
That distinction is not a dualism but a contrast, a fusion between what is
ideal, what is actual, and what is possible within given circumstances.
Normative thinking demands the real presence of standards that must be publicly
declared and self-consciously owned. It therefore stands apart from all thinking
that rests upon hidden agendas and covertly smuggled principles. Needless to
say, such standards are to be articulated and defended within a theoretical
perspective that makes logical and existential sense. In "Mathematics and
The Good," White-head lays out some important dimensions of the normative
structures lying at the base of all human judgments.
Ill
Mathematics is the discipline that brings together that which can be connected.
It does so by creating patterns that enlarge our understanding of
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both
the individual natures of things as well as their relative status to other
dimensions of the universe. This is the art of composition by means of contrast,
for every equal sign signifies that something has been brought into a right fit
with something else. Thus, mathematics studies the ways individual events are
connected to the unbounded background of experience that lies behind them. Plato
saw this intuitively when he made a knowledge of geometry (the study of spatial
pattern) a prerequisite for study in his Academy.
"Mathematics and The Good," a lecture delivered at Harvard in December
of 1939, brings out these and other aspects of the relation between goodness and
patterned existence. What makes mathematics so relevant to the study of the good
life is that in our very first exposure to it, we are taught to recognize what
things are in themselves and what they are in their relation to others. Now
Plato tells us in The Republic that the Good is the very last thing that we
learn, [10] It is
therefore the result of a long, arduous effort. It is the reward of maturity.
Goodness lies in the art of construction whereby what now is, is better than
what was. Likewise, evil lies in the destruction of experience whereby what was
once effectively together now falls apart. Sex with an appropriate other is good
but it is a loathsome evil with a four-year-old because it destroys that young
person's growth.
There is more to mathematics' contribution to our understanding of the Good. It
also insists on the infinitude of possibilities of relation that stand open to
finite particulars. It announces that we are as bound to the infinite as we are
to the finite. In Whitehead's words: "There is no entity which enjoys an
isolated, self-sufficiency of existence. In other words, finitude is not
self-supporting." [11]
This is the fundamental error carried forward by doctrines of substance, be they
Aristotelian or Cartesian, for: "The superstitious awe of infinitude has
been the bane of philosophy. The infinite has no properties." [12]
It would seem that we are once again at the edge of a dualism; indeed, the most
profound dualism of them all—the separation of the finite and the infinite.
But it is right here in this ultimate dualism that "we find the essential
clue to the study of the good, and the study of the bad." [13]
Whitehead writes
All
value is the gift of finitude which is the necessary condition for activity.
Also activity means the origination of patterns of assemblage, and mathematics
is the study of pattern. [14]
This
is what Pirsig realized in coming to terms with his son*s death. But he did more
than solve an abstract mathematical formula. He felt this intelligently. How was
he able to carry out this intense fusion of the abstract and the concrete? He
was able, I believe, to feel the relation between concrete finitude and abstract
infinity because he sensed that somehow they belonged to each other. His
intellect expanded so as to
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make
possible the fusion of his feelings of loss with the permanent character of the
universe as open to a variety of patterns of goodness (including that of Chris).
What made this alloy of the finite and the infinite possible is the goodness of
the Good. In line with Plato, I believe that the goodness of the Good consists
simply in the fact that it gives. The chief characteristic of the Good is that
it is noncontentious. And its fundamental gesture is generosity. It does not
oppose and it does not insist. It is simply there and available for use. The
human task is to gain sight of it. This is why theory and perspective are so
important. Reason can put us in a position to catch sight of the Good. Force can
never take it by storm. What is required for the good life (and the consistent
acquisition and application of skillful means) is the power to envision a good
way to be. The phenomenology of the Cave reveals this basic truth: We are blind
until we stand up, turn around, and look in the right direction.
And what do we experience as a result of the agon of the Cave? It is here that I
would insist on the importance of comparative philosophy for the future. I take
the noncontentiousness of the Good to be directly analogous to the quality of
emptiness discussed within the Mahayan Buddhist tradition. Sunyata is the freely
flowing field force that allows the various particular goods of this world to
come to be, express themselves, and then perish into the karma of objective
immortality. This nothing is not an abstract Emptiness. Sunyata is the fact that
reality really is process. It is the field of being that, though marked by
insistent particularity, also moves forward forever into difference. Goodness is
the outcome of the limitations imposed by skillful patterns. The Good is a
profound emptiness that through its generosity makes room for what is seemingly
so different, so interruptive of our lives. The Good's generosity is one cause
of the impermanence of the universe and its pilgrimage through the transitions
wrought by dependent coorigination. Plato, Mahayana Buddhism, and Whitehead
converge at this place of emptiness where the human mind appears to falter and
fall back on forms of dualism so as to keep its equilibrium. Our finite, limited
intelligence staggers under the weight of this knowledge.
But
what about the fact that the above analysis defines value as form or pattern
achieved? How can such limitation produce such goodness? Whitehead answers this
way:
[Every]
abstraction derives its importance from its reference to some background of
feeling, which is seeking its unity as one individual complex fact in its
immediate present. In itself a pattern is neither good nor bad. But every
pattern can only exist in virtue of the doom of realization, actual or
conceptual. And this doom consigns the pattern to play its part in the uprush
of feeling, which is the awakening of infinitude to finite activity. Such is
the nature of existence: It is the acquisition of pat-
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tern
by feeling, in its emphasis on a finite group of selected particulars which
are the entities patterned.[15]
What
brings various forms of the good to expression as particular values achieved is
the fact that "our exact conceptual experience is a mode of emphasis. It
vivifies the ideals which invigorate the real happenings. It adds the perception
of worth and beauty to the mere transitions of sense experience." [16]
Thus, the ideals we spy out in the flowing, generous emptiness of the Good are
the bridge between the felt expressions of the finite world and infinite
universe awaiting realization. The way between the ideal and the actual is a
two-lane highway. On one side there is the actual world seeking value and worth
but passing in time; on the other, there are the permanent ideals seeking life
and influence but requiring realization in the actual world:
All
characteristics peculiar to actualities are modes of emphases whereby finitude
vivifies the infinite. In this way Creativity involves the production of value
experience, by the inflow from the infinite into the finite, deriving special
character from the details and the totality of the finite pattern. [This] is
the abstraction involved in the creation of any actuality, with its union of
finitude with infinity. But consciousness proceeds to a second order of
abstraction whereby finite constituents of the actual thing are abstracted
from that thing. This procedure is necessary for finite thought, though it
weakens the sense of reality. It is the basis of science. The task of
philosophy is to reverse this process and thus to exhibit the fusion of
analysis with actuality It follows that Philosophy is not a science. [17]
We can see in a glance the importance of meditation and why philosophy is closer
to religion than it is to any science. How else can the right ideals be spied
out if our minds are not clear and open to the generous emptiness of the form of
the Good? In fact, as argued earlier, all consciousness is the
contrast felt between the ideal
and the actual. The importance of the Buddhist insistence on the practice of
meditation asserts itself. For the quality of the particular ideals we select as
important for realization is proportionate to the clarity attained within the
existential structure of consciousness. That structure participates in two
realms at the same time. It feels the actual and the ideal and is made more
intense by the quality of that contrast. To the degree that it refuses to slip
back into an easy dualism, to that same degree it feels the fusion of
intelligence and feeling that has always marked great philosophy in its moments
of highest attainment. Whitehead's description is to the point: 'It is the
transformation of the real experience into its ideal limit;' [18]
A deeper
analysis of this metamorphosis of the real that uses contrast to intensify
experience is to be found in the lecture on immortality. We have now put into
effective dialogue three of the great traditions of
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philosophy—Platonism,
Mahayana Buddhism, and contemporary process metaphysics. This global gathering
represents the kind of convergence of lines of world culture that I spoke of at
the beginning of this article. What better way to continue the conversation than
through the concept of immortality.
IV
On
22 April 1941, Whitehead delivered The Ingersoll Lecture at Harvard Memorial
Church. His topic was "Immortality" and in many ways it can be read as
a final summary of his position on what Tillich called "matters of ultimate
concern." The lecture deals with many interconnected themes: creativity,
value, consciousness, personal identity and, of course, immortality. I will
concentrate on the fusion of what he calls "The Two Worlds." [19]
One world is the world of activity, origination, temporality, and becoming. The
other is the world of value, permanence, and the eternal preservation of events
of high merit and worth. If ever there was a region ideally suited for the
workings of a "good" heart-mind, it would be right here within the
intersecting boundaries of these worlds.
What crosses the limits of these worlds of experience and value? Is there a
spirit like eros in the Symposium that can ferry messages, gifts, and prayers
back and forth between these regions of experience and value? In short, does a
community exist that brings together both sides? I believe that both Whitehead
and the Lotus Sutra have much to say in response to this question. For the Lotus
Sutra it is the identification of Skillful Means and faith in the efficacy of
the Great Vehicle. All works, from reciting the name of the Buddha to following
the middle way to growth in meditation,
serve as vectors that can bring human beings across to the Buddhaworld of serene
consciousness. My own lack of expertise in this spiritual masterpiece prevents
me from saying more. Whitehead expresses his vision of the fusion of these
worlds this way:
Thus
each "idea" has two sides; namely, it is a shape of value and a
shape of fact. When we enjoy "realized value" we are experiencing
the essential Junction of two worlds. But when we emphasize mere fact, or mere
possibility we are making an abstraction in thought. When we enjoy fact as the
realization of specific value, or possibility as an impulse towards
realization, we are then stressing the ultimate character of the Universe.
This ultimate character has two sides—one side is the mortal world of
transitory fact acquiring the immortality of realized value; and the other
side is the timeless world of mere possibility acquiring temporal realization.
The bridge between the two is the "Idea" with its two sides. [20]
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Now
substitute the words "form" and "consciousness" for
"Idea" and we have returned to the theme of normative thinking and
consciousness as the felt contrast between the actual and the possible. To think
here means to feel sensibly the appropriate fit between the opportunity and the
situation. This is what I mean by "felt intelligence" and what Pirsig
meant by the felt sense of Quality.
We can now return to the essay's formal question and ask with White-head,
"Can we find any general character of the World of Fact which expresses its
adjustment for the world of Value?" [21]
The answer lies in the human experience of the formation of personal identity.
Within such a stream of experience, a series of temporal occasions acquire a
certain stability of value by reason of skillful efforts at adjustment that make
room for more and more fusions of fact and value. It is this union of the actual
with the ideal that constitutes the emergence and expression of human personal
identity over the course of a lifetime. The world of Value imparts a sense of
stable permanence to the decisions made by the person throughout his or her
lifetime. The achievement of this "identity serves the double role of
shaping a fact and realizing a value." [22]
Personality is the expression of a certain style of being. It asserts a
consistent type of emphasis on the world of its experience. It is the closest
image of eternal permanence that we are likely to meet in the fused universe of
fact and value. Through its power to sustain a certain realization of value, it
introduces into the changing world a flash of immortality and we sense what it
means to live on. But this sense of "living on" is in no way the same
as specific general temporal serial sequence. It is much closer to the spread of
a region of undeniable significance. It establishes an influence that will not
fade.
This raises the question of who or what is saved? All that can be said is that
such salvation as may be possible should be consistent with the qualities
inherent in the two worlds of Fact and Value. This means
.
. . the World of Change develops enduring Personal Identity as its effective
aspect for the realization of value. Apart from some mode of personality there
is triviality of experience. [But] Realization is an essential factor in the
World of Value, to save it from the mere futility of abstract hypothesis. Thus
the effective realization in the World of Change should find its counterpart
in the World of Value: —this means that temporal personality in one world
involves immortal personality in the other. [23]
We are now at the extremes of what can be logically said about the relation
between God and individual souls. Do we exist as our own selves within God? Are
we transformed in the "twinkling" of an eye? And does this maximum change of
identity mean we lose our personal identity? If so, what takes its place? But at
this point reason can also proceed by
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way
of analogy and common sense. This is Whitehead's way. His God and the way of
salvation is neither Christian nor Hindu nor Buddhist. We can say that God is
"persuasive toward an ideal coordination" of values. [24]
Thus "God is the intangible fact at the base of finite existence." [25]
Also God "is the unification of the multiple personalities
received from the Active
World." [26]
Finally, this truth must be balanced by its counterpart: "God in the World of
Value is equally a factor in each of the many personal existences in the World
of Change." [27]
As should be expected in a thoroughly relational world, the question of the
intimacy between God and the human soul has many levels of depth.
The analogy guiding the question of immortality is that the traces of value in
the world of change should be mirrored by similar traces in the world of value.
This is the judgment of common sense. Enduring Personal Identity is the key
image for expressing the relation between fact and value in the temporal world.
It follows that something like that ought to take place after death. But this is
just an educated guess, for we must remember that philosophy is not a science,
and therefore; "The final outlook of Philosophic thought cannot be based on
the exact statements which form the basis of special sciences. [The] exactness
is a fake." [28]
The questions of ego identification, extinction of
self-identity, life after death, paradisiacal existences, and the meaning of
immortality remain as before. Still, there has been some clarification gained by
this analysis of the two abstract worlds of Fact and Value and their fused
unification in the concrete Universe. Among the issues to be brought before us
are the factors of memory and anticipation within the personality structure of
living human beings. How necessary are they within God's embrace? Are they
utterly transformed as factors in the pattern of personality? What kind of
existence is that? In what do bliss and glory and moksha and nirvana consist?
V
This
free examination of some ultimate notions to be found in the Lotus Sutra and
Whitehead's last writings concludes with four themes; the role of the category
of contrast in reconstructing our dualistic thinking; the meaning of salvation;
the concept of God; and the deflation of the importance of ego by reason of the
category of pattern. Each of these issues are signposts along the way toward a
new global philosophy—a future way of thinking that may emerge as the
convergence of cultural lines of value continues. What is primary in this effort
to push the curve of culture forward is the emergence and growth of felt
intelligence as a good way to carry out the intellectual responsibility of the
philosopher
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Both Whitehead and the Lotus Sutra refuse to grant dualistic thinking any
metaphysical ultimacy. They condemn it for its abstractness and the way in which
it saps intelligence of the strength needed to embrace the full range of our
worldly experience. In fact, each maintains that dualistic thinking is not
philosophy. The Lotus Sutra offers the doctrine of sunyata as the cure for
dualism and its ailments. [29]
Whitehead offers a novel existential category that he terms
"contrast." Whitehead's category of contrast first appears in Process
and Reality and is accorded the high status
of being that which "includes an indefinite progression of categories, as
we proceed from 'contrasts' to 'contrasts of contrasts' and on indefinitely to
higher grades of contrasts." [30]
In other words, human experience involves the bringing together into a felt
unity that which we would normally regard as separate. It is important to
underscore the felt dimension of this experience. The category is profoundly
aesthetic, not intellectual. I would suggest that the effective use of skillful
means always involves such contrasts.
What contrasts do is increase intensity of feeling. They do this by reason of
their function as consolidators of types of existence. They take otherness and
bring it together with that which it is not. Contrasts participate in full
measure with the basic quality of the Good; namely, non-contention. [31]
They are therefore chiefly marked by generosity. They bring into a unity that
which by itself would fall apart. Without the power and influence of contrasts,
the world would disolve into triviality. One Asiatic example of contrasts
functioning throughout a region of experience would be the yin-yang aspects of
creatures and circumstances as they play out their process of becoming and
perishing. A contrast increases intensity because it has the tolerance to bring
together into a felt tension aspects of experience and existence that normally
fly apart. It is only by feeling the novel consolidation of the contrast that
the value of this new synthesis can register on our consciousness.
Contrast is the most common way by which "the many become one and are
increased by one" in the temporal world of actuality and change. The
category of contrast brings to life the abstract formula given earlier for the
basic structure of human consciousness. The feeling created by the affirmation
of a negation is the outcome of the intense struggle to find a new way to
conjoin what has previously only been known in isolation. Dualism is a weak form
of thinking. It favors the clarity brought about by a simpleminded division of
experience. The price it pays for this superficial precision is the loss of
depth of experience. What is gained is lost through the comparative thinness
suffered by our consciousness as it meets the world of experience. The art of
raising contrasts to the level of felt intelligence is Whitehead's provisional
response to the problems that flow from the fallacy of simple location and the
fal-
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lacy
of misplaced concreteness. It is within the act of felt intelligence that the
Good stretches itself to accommodate diversity and makes it part of our
experience. This is what Pirsig experienced.
When contrast is taken seriously as a real category of existence, the question
of human salvation in Christian and Buddhist traditions finds new meaning. One
of the major differences between Whitehead's thought and Christianity lies in
the fact that Whitehead maintains that the goal of the Creator is maximum
intensity of experience for the creatures of the temporal world, Christianity
wavers on this point and appears to have two doctrines. One is the doctrine that
salvation consists in a life of glory. This approximates Whitehead's position.
The other is a rather confused notion of salvation as an endlessly prolonged
life that is much like what we now experience but without the sorrow, pain, and
frustration. This doctrine results from a misinterpretation of what eternity is.
It is certainly not endless life in the sense of life without death. That is the
rather common misunderstanding of immortality. But I believe that Whitehead
intends much more by immortality. That is one reason why he says the exactness
is a fake.
There ought to be a radical alteration in our experience of salvation if
eternity is taken seriously. First of all, eternity is outside time. It is not
mere endurance. [32]
Neither does it have the flow of past, present, and future within its structure.
This weakens the notions of memory and anticipation that are so important to our
notion of personality. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Whitehead's
concept of eternal life has as many mysteries in it as that of nirvana. I can
only highlight this problem of how we are "saved" within the Buddhist
and Christian traditions. I think that a thorough investigation of an eternal as
opposed to a temporal contrast would yield rich comparative insights into the
Buddhist doctrine of Nirvana and the Christian doctrine of "the Beatific
Vision."
Similarly, the whole question of whether the mystery of God is best expressed
and understood as a person or a quality, or an emptiness or a
"suchness," or even never to be discussed, receives new impetus from
this brief comparison of Whitehead and the Lotus Sutra. If God has
personality, then surely it surpasses anything even remotely like our human
experience of personal identity. Divine experience is the most intense because
its two roles in the worlds of Value and Fact are the deepest contrast
imaginable. Depth and width occur when narrowness is woven onto vagueness. [33]
Is such intensity what is felt on Mount Sumeru? Obviously only questions can be
asked at this point.
Finally, I conclude by noting what happens to the concept of the human ego when
it is conceived as a pattern rather than a point of individual privacy. I
believe there is great truth in the Buddhist insistence on
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the
need to dissolve the ego. The success of enlightenment thinking has forced the
West into a very narrow notion of the ego. It sees this "I" as a
moment of privacy requiring only itself in order to exist. Such an ego is
non-relational in the extreme. It is therefore ripe for the promotion of
delusional states and false modes of consciousness. If, however, one undertook
to envision the ego as a pattern rather than a space-time moment of sheer
individuality, a social side would become a necessary part of its existential
structure. [34] Every
pattern is also a contrast, which means that increasing the intensity of
becoming who we would be is also the responsibility of all those seeking a
mature and responsible way of living. We would have to become more aware of our
brothers and sisters on the planet. We would
have to provide for the welfare of others as a duty rather than an option. And,
finally, our self-interest would necessarily require enlargement to include the
rights of others. In sum, we would have to become global citizens. When
Whitehead speaks of the "spread" of personality, he is stressing the
deeply relational character of personality.
In following this way, the pursuit of excellence would become a planetary
project. The goodness experienced by any member would become potential
excellence for the growth of any other. Your goodness is my treasure-house and
vice versa. My article has ended with a series of questions and suggestions. But
that, I believe, is the purpose of our meeting: to gather new insights through
comparative thinking. Felt intelligence and contrastive patterning expressed in
consistent normative thinking form the basis of good global philosophy.
Normative thinking begins with the assemblage of general ideas.
ENDNOTES
1.
Alfred North Whitehead, Modes of Thought (New York: The Free Press, 1968).
White-head's emphasis.
2.
Scripture of the Lotus Blossom of the Fine Dharma (The Lotus Sutra), translated
by Leon Hurvitz (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), Roll One, chapter
two, "Expedient Devices," pp. 22-47; hereafter cited as LS. Alfred
North Whitehead, "Mathematics and The Good" and
"Immortality" in The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead (The Library
of Living Philosophers), 2nd ed., edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp (New York: Tudor
Publishing Company, 1951); hereafter cited as MG and IMM. [back]
3.
Robert Pirsig, "An Author and Father Looks Ahead at the Past," The New
York Times Book Review, 4 March 1984, p. 11.
4.
This is the subtitle of Pirzig's, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (New
York :Penguin, 1975). [back]
5.
I have attempted such a task in two recent books. Nature: An Environmental
Cosmology
398
(Albany: The State University of New York Press, 1997), and The City: An Urban
Cosmology (Albany; The State University of New York Press, 1999).
[back]
6.
LS.p.37.
7.
LS,p.31.
8.
I owe a great debt to Robert Neville for my understanding of normative thinking.
See Robert Neville, The Cosmology of Freedom, new edition (Albany: The State
University of New York Press, 1995), chapter three, "A General Theory of
Value."
[back]
9.
I have built my two works, Nature and The City, around the concept and method of
normative thinking; see both passim.
[back]
10.
The Republic (504 ft.) [back]
11.
MG,p.670.
12.
MG,p.674.
13.
MG,p.674.
14.
MG, p. 674. [back]
15.
MG, p. 679.
16.
MC,p.674. [back]
17.
MG,p.681.
18.
MG,p.674. [back]
19.
lMM,p.683. [back]
20.
IMM,p.688. [back]
21.
IMM,p.688.
22.
IMM,p.690. [back]
23.
IMM.p.693.
[back]
24.
IMM,p.694.
25.
IMM,p.694.
26.
IMM,p.694.
27.
IMM,p.694. [back]
28.
IMM,p.694. [back]
29.
The best analysis of the therapy afforded dualism by sunyata remains David
Loy's, Non-dualism; A Study in Comparative Philosophy (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1988).
30.
Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, corrected edition by Griffin and
Sherburne (New York; Free Press, 1978), p. 22.
31.
It was Ellen Chen's outstanding translation of the Too Te Ching that made me
aware of the similarity between Plato's Good and Lao-Tse's Too. See Ellen M.
Chen, The Tao Te Ching (A New Translation and Commentary) (New York: Paragon
House, 1989). [back]
32.
See Robert Neville, Eternity and Time's Flow (Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1993). Also see Elizabeth Kraus's outstanding essay, "God The
Savior" in New Essays in Metaphysics, edited by Robert Neville (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1987), pp. 199 ff.
33.
See my Nature, for a functional development of these aesthetic types of order, [back]
34.
Steve Odin has already done this—see his authoritative study, The Social Self
in Zen and American Pragmatism (Albany: The State University of New York Press,
1996). [back]