Evil and/or/as The Good: Omnicentrism, Intersubjectivity, and Value Paradox in Tiantai Buddhist Thought (review)

Transcription

1 Evil and/or/as The Good: Omnicentrism, Intersubjectivity, and Value Paradox in Tiantai Buddhist Thought (review) David Loy Philosophy East and West, Volume 54, Number 1, January 2004, pp (Review) Published by University of Hawai'i Press DOI: For additional information about this article Access provided by National Taiwan University (7 Sep :54 GMT)

2 of one who desires enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. There is, in these three characterizations, some semblance to Brassard s categories of the metaphysical (ultimate), functional (aspirational), and ethical (practical). And, as with Brassard, there is some understanding that these three aspects are interdependent. Evil and/or/as The Good: Omnicentrism, Intersubjectivity, and Value Paradox in Tiantai Buddhist Thought. By Brook Ziporyn. Harvard-Yenching Monograph no. 51. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Pp. x þ 482. Hardcover $ Reviewed by David R. Loy Bunkyo University Does Mahāyāna Buddhism have a problem with evil? Buddhism generally focuses on ignorance (a problem of understanding) rather than evil (Abrahamic sin is more a problem of the will). Early Buddhism does have a lot to say about the three roots of evil, which need to be transformed into their positive counterparts greed into generosity, ill will into loving-kindness, ignorance into wisdom. But the Mahāyāna emphasis on śūnyatā puts a different slant on saṁsāra. The focus on realizing emptiness seems to work better for ignorance/delusion than for evil: wisdom/prajñā involves realizing that everything is śūnya. Then how are we to distinguish good from evil deeds, if from the highest point of view they are equally śūnya? We can get another angle on what is at stake by using the metaphor of Indra s net, which implies paradoxes for knowledge and value. Every node is a jewel that reflects all the other nodes but that means deluded nodes manifest all those others as much as enlightened ones do. We may want to distinguish between those nodes that are aware of the true nature of the net and those that are not, but every node is an effect (and cause) of all the others. One cannot adopt a bird s-eye view that observes the whole objectively, because the net does not allow for sub specie aeternitas; any perspective we might take is nothing more than one more interdependent node. There is the same problem with distinguishing between good and evil activities. We want to say that there is a significant difference between a selfish action and a compassionate one, but Indra s net gives us no criterion to discriminate between them, inasmuch as every node manifests the whole as well as every other node, whether or not it knows it or intends it. We can play word games about what is truth and what is delusion, but when we turn to good and evil the stakes become very high. Are we really willing to accept that from the highest point of view crashing a hijacked airliner into a skyscraper is no better or worse than the compassionate acts of a Buddha? In 1016 the well-known Tiantai master Siming Zhili ( ) publicly announced he intended to do something that he acknowledged was evil. He defended himself by asking What difference is there between the Buddha and the devil?... [S]ince the original natures of the two are merged together from the beginning, how could their manifestations be any different from one another?... [O]ther than the devil there is no Buddha, and other than the Buddha there is no devil. Philosophy East & West Volume 54, Number 1 January > 2004 by University of Hawai i Press

3 Brook Ziporyn s monograph Evil and/or/as The Good is a detailed exposition and subtle defense of Zhili s argument identifying value and anti-value, with ample reference to Western ethical theory as well as to the Chinese Buddhist context for his position. Ziporyn elaborates Zhili s claim that good and evil are nothing but two names for a single entity, which means that each term alone is a way to denote all that exists. For Zhili the perfect man is capable of both good and evil (p. 74). Ziporyn reflects on how the Chinese tradition provides an alternative to the usual antithetical way we understand the relationship between good and evil. The Tiantai school, in particular, was known for attributing Buddha-nature to evil. He begins by explaining omnicentric holism. Indra s Net is an example (although one not much used in this book): any point in the system can be the center to which everything else is subordinated and which everything else supports and explains. Since this includes all subjectivity, any subject s misapprehension of the whole also becomes a complete and adequate apprehension of that whole. Value paradoxes arise because omnicentrism implies a different epistemology: every possible apprehension is not only valid but self-validating, neither an illusion nor a distortion of reality, and not subject to invalidation by a privileged perspective (p. 62). The holism of good and evil results in the claim that since either good or evil by itself contains the other and the whole, we do not need to transcend either one; each is sufficient to embrace the whole. The basic issue is the relationship between that ultimate truth and the provisional truth. For Nāgārjuna that relationship is fixed and one-directional: ordinary language practices are necessary for expressing the highest truth. For Tiantai, however, the provisional ends up being equal to the ultimate truth: all statements are both provisionally true and ultimately false, and to be provisionally true is itself a form of being ultimately true (p. 107). Delusion does not obscure an implicit enlightenment, it expresses an intrinsic enlightenment; and enlightenment can also be read as an expression of delusion. All views can now be seen to be provisional posits: each one false if taken literally as the only true perspective, but all are true if they are taken as heuristic claims leading to a realization that every possible view includes all the others, and that each is therefore a valid center and starting point. The same point applies to good/evil. Because intent/action is not owned by anyone, everything that happens Hitler s deeds as much as Śākyamuni s works as upāya for creating Buddhahood. That any one starting point ends up revealing all the others, that whatever is always reveals itself as (caused by and effecting) something else these are important implications of omnicentric holism. But I have difficulty accepting (or following) the next move: that this implies that good and bad are identical. That they imply each other and depend on each other, yes, but to assert that they are the same negates too absolutely the necessary function that duality serves within ordinary discourse and life. Perhaps that is Zhili s point, where he is more enlightened than the rest of us, but if so it seems dangerously one-sided, to say the least. And it is not completely clear that this one-sidedness adequately reflects Zhili s considered position. Ziporyn mentions that Zhili emphasizes two levels pertaining to practice: one 100 Philosophy East & West

4 in which good is realized and evil is cut off, and another in which there is nothing to be realized or cut off (p. 271). Does Ziporyn s argument emphasize too much the latter at the cost of the former? The fundamental issue, again, is the relationship between them. The implications of identifying good and evil are startling, and Ziporyn does not hesitate to draw them out. Enlightenment means not the overcoming of evil so as to manifest good but the full manifestation and realization of both good and evil (p. 301). The problem when you hate or lust is that you do not do it thoroughly enough (p. 310). Evil must be fully realized, and this simultaneously entails its overcoming (p. 312). Zhili says that the more we dwell on an evil, the more we are free of it. To transcend it and to realize it are one and the same process. As Ziporyn glosses, the only way to handle ineradicable evil and suffering is to involve ourselves in it, by accepting it and adding additional elements that recontextualize and transform it. How does this apply if I am, say, a cannibalistic serial killer converted to Zhili s version of Tiantai? First, I should not strive to discard my tendency to kill and eat strangers; rather, I should contemplate it as identical to the Three Truths either while doing it or while wishing to do it.... At the same time, while enjoying myself gnawing on someone else s liver, I can discern in this act also the infinite sorrow of the victim, the rage of the authorities, my remorse in the electric chair, and my terror at death, et cetera (p. 374). I think we can trust our intuitions here: no, this will not do. Perhaps one confusion here results from conflating delusion with evil a confusion easier to notice from outside the Buddhist tradition. What Ziporyn describes is a meditation practice that can be valuable as a way to address many of our delusive thoughts and feelings, but that is not a satisfactory way for serial killers to resolve their own peculiar problems, much less those of a Hitler or a fanatical terrorist hijacker. Mr. Hitler, you do not need to discard your tendency to kill all Jews; rather, you should contemplate it as identical with enlightened wisdom.... The evil that Zhili himself proposed to commit was somewhat more modest: immolating himself to hasten his entry into the Pure Land something that we may (or may not) agree would be an evil but the suffering that such a deed would voluntarily bring upon himself cannot be compared with the suffering inflicted on innocents by torture or mass murder. One can argue for the interdependence of good and evil by pointing out, for example, that the antithetical duality between them sometimes contributes greatly to the world s suffering; Hitler and Stalin were trying to redeem the world by purifying it of its evil elements. Zhili s point is that, given its position within an omnicentric holism, evil nevertheless works to enlighten us but that is not likely to be convincing to someone who lost his family in the Nazi Holocaust. Ziporyn repeatedly notes that the setup of a joke must be serious for the punch line to be funny. What punch line could redeem the Holocaust? Ziporyn s own example is fortuitous since the Pāli Canon (Majjhima Nikāya II.98 ff.) contains the story of Angulimala, a serial killer converted by the Buddha. He tries to kill Śākyamuni but cannot run fast enough to catch him, even though Book Reviews 101

5 the Buddha is walking at his usual pace. Astonished, he calls out Stop! I have stopped, Angulimala you stop too, responds the Buddha, who then explains: I have stopped forever, abstaining from violence towards living beings; but you have no restraint towards things that live. This impresses Angulimala so much that he renounces his evil ways and asks to join the sangha, and the Buddha welcomes him as a new bhikkhu. We are not told anything about his meditation practice (which quickly leads to nirvāṅa), but clearly it does not involve continuing his earlier practice of killing strangers to collect bones for a necklace. Myth or not, this story contains nothing to support Zhili s position on how to deal with such evils, and much to challenge it. Yet none of this contradicts Ziporyn s basic point about the paradoxes built into omnicentric holism, the fact that from the highest point of view every possible apprehension including evil ones is neither a distortion of reality nor subject to invalidation by some other more privileged perspective. The solution to this paradox, I suggest, involves realizing that this ultimate point of view is insufficient by itself that it always needs to be supplemented by the provisional. We need only to remember the original thrust of Śākyamuni s teaching: ending dukkha was his only concern. From the highest perspective, dukkha is ended by realizing that it has always been śūnya (Nāgārjuna s shorthand heuristic term for interdependent/lacking self-being), as are sentient beings, delusion and enlightenment, good and evil, et cetera. But that end to dukkha is not enough by itself. If it were, Śākyamuni would not have bothered to teach after his awakening. We must also address the provisional dukkha involving many types of physical and mental pain which evil increases. Moreover, these two approaches to dukkha reinforce each other. We should not give a Dharma talk to someone who is starving, but focus first on repairing that dukkha. The more enlightened we are, the less self-preoccupied we will be and the more able to devote ourselves to redressing both aspects of dukkha in the world. Ziporyn says that for Zhili evil is not overcome in the sense of transforming into something else; the deluded aspect is never lost because it unifies and redeems by expanding to include other perspectives. From the highest perspective, again, no such development is any improvement. As a lower truth, however, this captures the transformation that is needed without in any way rationalizing a serial killer s tendencies to continue his killing. The important point is that some perspectives are indeed more open, unifying, and encompassing than others; the classical Buddhist example is the lives of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, which are models for that reason. Yet one does not become a Buddha by continuing to act on evil impulses with the intention of contextualizing them. Rather, when such impulses arise in the mind one lets them go. In other words, the highest point of view is not really the highest point of view at least, not by itself. It does not work for us without a lower truth according to which we can distinguish between evil and good acts, between delusion (perceiving Indra s net as a collection of separate things) and wisdom (realizing nonself and the interdependence of all the net s nodes). One needs the provisional positing of a 102 Philosophy East & West

6 distinction between good and evil in order to work for the reduction of the world s suffering a dukkha that from the highest point of view is already complete and perfect, lacking nothing. But that point of view is insufficient by itself. This is not Nāgārjuna s perspective that the lower truth is needed to point to the higher truth. Rather, each truth needs the other. To adopt an image that Ziporyn employs in a somewhat different way, the relationship between them is like the two sides of a Mobius strip. The two truths or levels of reality constitute one life. The lower truth is interdependence, to be realized and integrated into the way we live. The higher truth is the empty thusness of each phenomenon, a just this! -ness that interdependence (paradoxically) implies. Did Zhili in fact commit his great evil and immolate himself? I won t give away the plot if only to encourage others to read this book. My critique does not convey its riches (nor the denseness of its arguments). For example, Ziporyn almost casually provides the most convincing explanation I have read for why the natural sciences didn t develop in China: things were understood as social beings rather than objects to be analyzed (pp ). He notices that the Western tradition considers value as another kind of fact, whereas the Chinese tradition subordinates fact to value, so that the value theories we extract from Chinese texts are better understood as evocations of affect meant to incline one towards a specific type of behavior (p. 89). And (my favorite): The implication is perhaps that a sentient being is a Buddha spending all his time trying to find his Buddha-nature (his true self, his true value), whereas a Buddha is a sentient being who realizes that the apparent lack of his buddhahood is the proof of his buddhahood and thereby goes about freely using that buddhahood for the sake of all beings (p. 181). To sum up, although I think Ziporyn s main thesis is problematic, this is an immensely stimulating work that deserves attention because it raises the important issues in fruitful ways. Varieties of Religion Today: William James Revisited. By Charles Taylor. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Pp Reviewed by Ralph Weber University of St. Gallen, Switzerland In 1999, the Canadian philosopher and political scientist Charles Taylor delivered the prestigious Gifford Lectures in Edinburgh. He dedicated them to the question of what it means to call our age secular. While preparing these lectures he engaged with William James The Varieties of Religious Experience which itself had been based on the Gifford Lectures presented by James in 1901 and Taylor was inspired by the continuing argumentative force and contemporary relevance of James work and felt impelled to ask himself, in confrontation as well as conversation with James, where the locus of religion is today. Taylor s Varieties of Religion Today: William James Revisited is the short yet very rich result. In taking account of the complexity and richness of James book as well as of the broad range of meaning that is covered by the term religion, Taylor is engaging in Philosophy East & West Volume 54, Number 1 January > 2004 by University of Hawai i Press