Scientific Enlightenment, Div. One. Book 2: Human Enlightenment of the First Axial 2.B.3. Chinese Philosophy Chapter 3: The passage of Being into non-Being in Chinese philosophy ACADEMY | previous section | Table of Content | next section | GALLERY

copyright © 2003, 2005, 2006 by Lawrence C. Chin. All rights reserved.

Although in Daodejing Being is passing into non-Being -- as it should to complete the philosophic enlightenment, according to a thermodynamic reading -- the passage is not complete. Dao is characterized negatively as nothingness, but this nothingness most of the time means that Dao is indeterminate, not nothing, and sometimes it seems to mean that it is really nothingness, as in the line "All ten thousand things under heaven are born from Being (yu), and Being from Nothingness (wu)." For the passage to non-Being to be complete, the articulation of Being has to go through three more stages and only with the help of the introduction of Buddhism into China.

The first stage: Neo-Daoism. The principal work here is the commentary on Zhuangzi by Hsiang Hsiu (向秀, 221 - 300 A.D.) and Kuo-Hsiang (郭象 died ca. 312 A.D.), both of Jin period, when Daoist philosophy was gaining ascendancy again after the pre-eminence of Confucianism in the later Han. For the sake of simplicity we shall refer to the commentary as solely the work of the latter. (For details, c.f. Fung, A Short History of Chinese Philosophy, p. 220. The textual references of the discussion in this section are mostly based on Fung.)

"The first [revision by Kuo] is that the Dao is really wu, i.e. 'nothing' or 'nothingness'." (Fung, ibid., p. 220) In chapter 6 of Zhuangzi (大宗師), there is again the immediate articulation of Dao as eternity.

Self-founding, always there, the source of being (of heaven and earth), omnipresent, eternal -- so Dao is the eternal as the source of being, despite the rather mythical tone in the description here characteristic of Zhuangzi. Kuo comments on this description:

Here eternity is not clearly differentiated as to whether it means lasting forever or, like the Parmenidean Being, not-lasting at all, being all-of-itself all-at-once. Similarly undifferentiated with the meaning of omnipresence (present everywhere or not-present spatially at all). But the more important question is: is the characterization of Dao as nothingness ("wherever it is there is nothing") derived from the consistency of the memory of the first law of thermodynamics so that nothingness is literally the source of being and eternity; or rather simply from its indeterminacy and un-namability? Fung leans toward the former, as we have seen.

This is how Kuo deals with the memory of the first law: 誰得先物者乎哉, "which is the 'prior-to-things' [the origin -- arche -- of things]?" 吾以陰陽為先物者  而陰陽者既所謂物耳 "I take yin and yang to be the 'prior-to-things' [to be their origin], but yin and yang are just what are called things." (That is, they are things because they are the elemental constituents of things.) "And which is prior to Yin and Yang?" (誰又先陰陽者乎) The question of origin (like the question of the first cause) still poses itself. "I take 'nature' [literally, 'self-accord'] to be prior to it, but nature is just things themselves [lit. how things call themselves]." 吾以自然為先之 而自然既物之自爾耳 (自然, zi ran, translated as "nature" here, means literally "self accord"; zi means "self" and ran means "thus", "thus so", i.e. the way something is. So self-accord means, "the way something is of its own accord": auto kata auto. The way something is of its own accord is its "nature".) "I take the highest Dao to be prior to it, but the highest Dao is the highest nothingness."吾以至道為先之矣  而至道乃至無也 Now Dao is literally nothingness. And so the problem: "If it is nothing, then how can it be prior?" 既以無矣 又奚為先 Now it is not meaningful to speak of "nothing being prior to something", for nothing is nothing and so neither prior nor after nor in between but just nothing. This seems to be Kuo's point. But thermodynamically speaking, it couldn't be "prior" either, for nothing can come out of nothing.

"But what is 'the prior-to-things'? What is "as if it were a thing" is nothing. [i.e. the origin has to be nothingness; c.f. below]" (然則先物者孰乎哉? 而猶有物 無也) Having identified the Dao, the arche, as literally nothing, Kuo feels bound by logic to not regard nothingness as the source of being. "Know that things are of their own accord [i.e. they simply come to be and come to be the way they are of their own accord], nothing else causes them to be [and to be] as they are." 明物之自然  非有使然也 Things are "thus so" of themselves: outoV kai autoV kata autoV. No more prior, no more aitia. (Ibid., p. 221; *p. 247)

Kuo made this commentary in regard to Chapter 22 of Zhuangzi, 知北遊. In this chapter, Shi-Quo asks Confucius: "Can we know about the time when there were not yet Heaven and Earth?" To which replies Confucius: "We can. That time was just like this time." Here Confucius is posed as expressing the first law: what is here today has to have always been there because of the necessity of Conservation. When Shi-Quo asks the same again days later, apparently confused again, Confucius replies: there was no antiquity and no present; no beginning and no end. That is, still the first law. "There are not yet descendants and yet there are descendants, can this be?" When Shi-Quo could not reply, Confucius says:

Here Zhuangzi (speaking through "Confucius") is compelled to admit that the origin of things has to be nothingness: Being is passing into non-Being. The reason for this is the problem of the first cause: things cannot have originally come from just another thing -- because that merely postpones the question and also -- more likely the thinking here -- the intuition of the origin (Dao) is that it is indeterminate, i.e. not a thing, in accordance with the memory of the first law. There are two paths open from here on: either to admit that things themselves are nothing also, for only nothing can come out of nothing; or -- and this is the path that Kuo has chosen -- to admit that there is no origin, but that things just are there of their own accord and without cause. (More like Hawking's no-boundary model of the Universe.) This is an impasse, for although it preserves the memory of the law of Conservation in one way (that only nothing can come out of nothing, hence something cannot come out of nothing), it does not in another (for, now, how can things come to be without reason, without cause, without aitia?). The memory of the first law causes us to ask where things come from (for if nothing can come out of nothing and therefore something must have come out of something, what is that from which they came?). That from which things came is the Dao. Now Dao is literally nothingness -- in accordance with the memory of the first law -- not just "nothing" (wu) in the sense of being indeterminate and nameless, but "nothing" as in "Being came from nothing" (有生於無). This accepted, the origin (Dao) is cut off of the chain of cause and effect as meaningless and things are taken to be just there. There is no longer a connection between Dao and things of today. The impasse then is the function of Kuo's inability to see things as really nothing.

"People say pneumbra depends on [i.e. is the effect of] shadow, shadow depends on shape [objects], and shape on the creator [of objects]." (世或謂罔兩待景﹐景待形﹐形待造物者。) "Let us ask: the creator, is it something [lit. "has", i.e. be-ing] or nothing [non-being]? if nothing, how can it create things?" (夫造物者, 有耶, 無耶? 無也, 則何能造物哉?) "If be-ing ['has', i.e. existing, 'there is', il y a] then it cannot, with thing, make many shapes [i.e. make many beings out of beings, or it cannot create things by thing-ing]." (有也, 則不足以物眾形) This is in keeping with the Daoist admission that the origin of things cannot itself be a thing. Thermodynamically this means the substratum as the source of being must be indeterminate and distinctionless (c.f. our thermodynamic reading of Anaximander); and it can also mean that to derive things from another thing is merely postponing the question: i.e. tracing the cause backward ad infinitum: the problem of the first cause. "Therefore there is no particular creator, but things come to be of themselves [lit. each creating itself]. Things each create themselves and so depend on [are caused by] nothing else. Such is the right way of the Heaven [i.e. of the cosmos]." (故造物者無主, 而物各自造. 物自造而無所待焉,  此天地之正也) This conclusion -- sui genesis -- is the result of the impasse that Kuo got himself into by affirming the non-Being of Dao but being as yet unable to affirm the non-Being of things. (Ibid.)

Hence "according to them [Kuo and Hsian], the statement of the earlier Taoists that all things come into being from Dao simply means that all things come to be by themselves." (Ibid., p. 221) "Dao, not capable of anything." (道, 無能也) "To say that something came [is acquired] from Dao is to realize that it came to be of itself [lit. it is self-acquired]." (此言得之於道,  乃所以明其自得耳) Likewise, the statement of the earlier Daoists that all things come into being from Being and Being from nothingness means simply that Being (yu "has", il y a) comes to be by itself -- sui genesis. (Ibid.)

Despite being impasse, such conclusion is still an expression of Conservation:

Note that this line is Kuo's commentary on the reply of Confucius "there was no antiquity and no present, no beginning and no end", an expression of conservation.

So Kuo has failed to advance from Laozi, but, preserving two aspects of the memory of Conservation (that the origin must be nothingness: originally there was nothing, and that what is here now must have always existed), he has run into an impasse by proclaiming the sui genesis of things.

The second stage: the introduction of Buddhism. Mahayana Buddhism was introduced into China around the latter part of Western Han dynasty and the earlier part of Eastern Han, i.e. around the time of Christ.¹ Afterwards it diverged into two strands, the school of the Universal Mind (性宗) and the school of Emptiness (空宗). (Fung, ibid., p. 244) It is among the latter that Being, in Chinese philosophical tradition, succeeded in passing into non-Being completely. Note that these two strands are, as Fung has distinguished, Buddhism of China, the Chinese versions, which are our concern, and not Buddhism in China, that is, the pure form of Buddhism passed on directly from India, which is not our main concern here because it has had little influence in the Chinese philosophic tradition.

During the initial period of the spread of Buddhism in China it was interpreted, explained, and understood mainly through Daoist concepts: a mis-understanding.² But this in fact indicates the close proximity in thinking between Buddhism and Daoism -- after all both talk about Nothingness as the source, and both conclude in a life of little intentional actions -- which makes it natural that the comprehension of nothingness, started in Daoism, should have completed itself in Buddhism, a foreign stimulus from an Indo-European speech.

The school of Emptiness is also known as the school of the Middle Path (中道宗).

The negative description of Nirvana by the school of the Middle Path represents the beginning of the understanding of Nothingness as the truth of existence. "The school of the Middle Path proposed what it called the theory of the double truth [二諦義]: truth in the common sense [俗諦 lit. profane truth] and truth in the higher sense [真諦 lit. "real" or "true" truth]. Furthermore, it maintained, not only are there these two kinds of truth, but they both exist on varying levels. Thus what, on the lower level, is truth in the higher sense, becomes, on the higher level, merely truth in the common sense." (Fung, ibid., p. 245) With regard to the truth of existence, the example of Chi-Tsang (吉藏 549 - 623) is:³

On the first level: The common sense truth regarding existence is "all things exist." The higher ("real" or "true") truth on this level consists in the negation of this common sense truth: "all things are nothing [wu 無], emptiness [空]." This is the expression of the memory of the first law, already going into the realm of "its logical extreme": since something can only come from something, ad infinitum, there must, here and now, not be anything, really, but all these things are just nothing, insofar as nothing comes from nothing -- no problem of the infinite chain of cause and effect here.

On the second level: The common sense or profane truth is common or profane because it is one-sided. But, on this higher level, to say "things are nothing" is recognized to be just as one-sided as saying "things exist", so it becomes the common sense truth here. Why? because existence is nothingness, i.e. non-existence. This seems to be the function of the exigency of consistency in the memory of the first law, as we have repeatedly emphasized. (If things cannot possibly exist in violation of the law of conservation, then insofar as there are things, existence must structurally be non-existence, nothingness, i.e. existence is only possible as an illusion. Existence is a "form" of nothingness.) But according to Fung, the Buddhist himself explains it differently: through the conception of the breaking down of the (e.g. Heraclitean) flux of existence (i.e. temporality) into a series of independent quantum moments of "now" (nun). "For instance, the table standing before us need not be destroyed in order to show that it is ceasing to exist. In actual fact it is ceasing to exist all the time. The reason for this is that when one starts to destroy the table, the table which one thus intends to destroy has already ceased to exist. The table of this actual moment is no longer the table of the preceding moment. It only looks like that of the preceding moment." (Ibid. p. 245) The atomic element of time is confirmed in modern physics: Planck time 10^-43 second is the smallest possible time; but is there continuity from "now" to "now"? The Buddhist says no. The uncertainty principle circumvents the principle of Conservation and allows things (electrons-positrons) to come into existence out of vacuum through the borrowing of (i.e. virtual) energy which is to be returned after the proportioned time. The Buddhist sees the same: reality is generated out of nothing in every moment as virtual, i.e. to be returned later; then re-generated again... Because of the necessity of Conservation such virtual production of reality is the only way, and this is how the Universe comes into being in the inflationary model. Hence no matter in which way nothingness is affirmed as the truth of existence: The memory of the first law, active in consciousness as its structure, propels the thinker to think that existence cannot possibly be real -- for only nothing can come from nothing, and something only from something, so that the latter is a paradox of ad infinitum, an infinity un-normalizable, to use the language of physicists -- hence only the former is the true Way, peiqouV esti keleuqoV, alhqein gar ophdei to use Parmenides' words ("the path of persuasion, for it follows the Truth" 2.4.). Thus the thinker is prompted to see time as the negation of existence -- the immediate disappearance of the moment which carries with it what things are in it to disappearance -- and at the same time to understand the illusion that is existence -- things in the moment are as if continuous or existent because they "look like" those in the previous. Thus is time, the cancellation of existence. With the Buddhist, existence is possible because it is canceled out by "being-in-the-moment" which disappears as soon as emerging -- evened out to nothing, in keeping with the law of Conservation. The higher truth at this level is therefore: "things neither exist nor do not exist." (萬物非有非無)

On the third level: The avoidance of one-sidedness through the taking of the middle path (the middle Dao), thus affirming "things neither exist nor do not exist", is still an attempt to make distinctions (between existence and non-existence), which is therefore still tied to sidedness and so one-sided in a sense. Hence "things neither exist nor do not exist" is only common sense truth at this level. The higher (real) truth at this level would be: "things neither exist nor do not exist, but not that they not exist nor that they not not-exist; the middle path is not one-sided, but neither is it not one-sided." (萬物非有非無,  而又非非有非非無,  中道不片面, 而又非不片面) What does all this mean? The point is to think nothing, and eventually not even to think nothing: not to think. First level concludes in the negation of existence (to think that things are nothing); second level in the negation of the negation as meaningless (to think not that things are nothing, but to think nothing, i.e. not even that things are nothing); and third level in the negation of any sort of negation, or the fleeing from even negation -- to not think. This is doing precisely what Parmenides injuncted against: not just to think things are nothing, but to think nothing (no distinction between nothing and existent), but then not even this but simply not to think (i.e. so that not even the non-distinction between nothing and existent is thought or implied in "thinking" -- now anti-thinking -- in anyway). This is the destruction of consciousness as such. Such is salvation, Nirvana.

Being has clearly passed into absolute nothingness with Chi-Tsang. Kuo summarizes Chi-Tsang's idea of Prajna and the three theories as consisting in the principles of "all is emptiness" (一切皆空) and "eight not" (八不 or "four neither-nor" in translation): "[things are] neither generated nor destroyed; neither transient nor permanent; neither one [same] nor many [lit. different]; and neither coming nor going [i.e. be gone]." (不生亦不滅  不斷亦不常  不一亦不異  不來亦不去) That is to say: "Empty!" -- i.e. Nothing! or Not! as the truth of existence, the exact opposite of the Parmenidean Is!. Why is reality Nothing!? "All phenomena are caused [into being] and do not have their own [independent, permanent] substance; because their substance is nothingness, they were never generated." (以萬法皆是因緣,  無有自性,  以無自性, 是故不生) That is, what is caused to be is also to be gone soon; what is affirmed here is that only the substrate from which things come and into which things return upon their destruction is reality, since the substrate is eternal and uncaused -- in accordance with the memory of the first law of thermodynamics. The motivational base here is therefore essentially the same as in Anaximander's beginning of Western metaphysics: ex wn de h genesiV esti toiV ousi, kai thn fqoran eiV tauta ginesqai kata to crewn. "That from which came the genesis of things, and into which the destruction of things happens according to necessity." It again reminds of the generation of virtual fermions (e.g. electron/positron pair) out of nothing due to the uncertainty in energy (DE) as long as they disappear after time Dt (the time limit allowed by the uncertainty in the conjugate pair of energy-time) to return the energy borrowed in accordance with the law of Conservation. Just as these virtual fermions might as well be considered un-born, so the things that are caused to be only to disappear later are considered never born (never generated). This is what is meant by their not having "substance" (or having nothingness as their substance), i.e. their existence merely borrowed -- not independent existence -- so as to be given back in order to conserve the original amount -- which is nothing: the virtual fermions are produced from vacuum, and things from underlying nothingness, i.e. vacuum, exactly what is meant by "emptiness". If never born, then things are never destroyed, neither are they transient or permanent, one or many, coming to be or being gone later. There is but emptiness, vacuum. From this on, there is no salvation either, no enlightenment, no Nirvana -- this itself is illusion -- because there is nothing to be awakened from, nothing to be saved from. All the wheel of death and reincarnation and all existence mere illusion, fundamentally nothing, Nirvana itself is therefore illusion, fundamentally nothingness: we only speak of it as symbolic referencing. This will become the fundamental tenet of Chan (Zen) Buddhism later. (Kuo, ibid., p. 201-2)⁴

The school of "Three Theories", as a school, was not to last much beyond its founder, despite the latter's enormous prestige at the time and his immense literary production. (Kuo, ibid., p. 206) But the "thinking" of "absolute nothingness" now appearing was to furnish the foundation for the development of Chan (Zen) Buddhism later on in which we shall complete the story of the definitive slide of Being into non-Being in the Chinese philosophic tradition.

Footnotes:

1. Kuo Pun, A Brief History of Chinese Buddhism (中國佛教簡史), Fujiang People's Publishing Co., 1990, p. 3.

2. See our brief presentation of the development of Buddhism in China (here).

3. In A Brief History of Chinese Buddhism Chi-Tsang was represented as the founder of the school of Three Theories (三論宗) which was the second "school" of Buddhism founded in China and which Fung identifies as the school of the Middle Path. The reader must know that Fung's presentation of the lineages and schools of Chinese Buddhism in terms of the two opposing strands of the universal mind and emptiness is simplistic. C.f. Kuo, ibid., or our chapter on the development of Buddhism in China. Chi-Tsang's grandfather, originally from the "Western" country called Ansi 安息, fled from feud and came to south China by sea, eventually settling at the capital of Chen (557 -589 A.D.), the last of the Southern dynasties of the period of the Northern and Southern Dynasties. Here Chi-Tsang was born, and, after his father became a Buddhist monk, he did so too at the age of seven. As China was first unified under Sui and then Tang, Chi-Tsang established his scholarly prestige and was well connected with the elite governing class of both dynasties (even the founding emperor of Tang). He was recorded to have lived luxuriously, and Kuo comments on him as another one of those in the history of Chinese Buddhism that spoke "emptiness" by mouth (non-being) but practiced "having" (being) in life (口中說空,  行在有中). He was also recorded to be "Westerner in appearance, but Chinese in words", meaning either that although he had the look of a different race (South or Central Asian) he spoke no differently than Chinese, or that in his preaching, although he seemed to be speaking of Indian religiousness, it was really Sinic in substance. (Kuo, ibid., p. 196 - 201)

4. That Nirvana itself had no substantial reality and so salvation itself consisted in the dissolution of salvational hope became the standard mode of Mahayama Buddhism (even of the less influential, but more pure [Indian] form of Buddhism of Xuangzhang) in China. C.f. below.