Scientific Enlightenment, Div. One Book 2: Human Enlightenment of the First Axial 2.B.3. Chapter 4: Non-Being in Chinese Buddhism ACADEMY | previous section | Table of Content | next section | GALLERY

copyright © 2003 - 5 by Lawrence C. Chin. All rights reserved.

Before we go into Chan Buddhism, let us consider another of Fung's examples, the student of the famous Kuramajiva (鸠摩罗什), who was of Indian descent but born in Chinese Turkistan in the fifth century. The student in question is Seng-Chao (僧肇 384-414 AD), who was therefore earlier than Chi-Tsang. (The following is based on Fung, ibid., p. 246 - 8; *p. 276 - 7)

Of the compendium of his thinking, edited posthumously, the second chapter is entitled "The Discourse on Not Real Emptiness" (不真空論). Here it is said: "All things have that in them which makes them not be [yu, 'have'], and also have that in them which makes them not not-be [wu, nothing; i.e. not nothing]." 然則萬物果有其所以不有, 有其所以不無 This is very Guerrièrean-sounding: beings have both the presence and absence of Being in them. Thermodynamically, this says that things are manifestations of the eternal substrate which is the source of being (Being), but only partial manifestations: i.e. they are temporal and spatial, that is, temporally and spatially limited, rather than eternal or omnipresent as is the substrate. From the context (see below) this line is derived from the fact that things come to be at some time before and end at some time later; this should not be if their existence is "real".

And so: "Since [things] have that which makes them not be, although they are, they are not; and since they have that which makes them not not-be, although they are not, they are not not." (有其所以不有, 故雖有而非有; 有其所以不無, 故雖無而非無) In Guerrièrean terms, this means that the (slight) absence of Being in beings makes them, though still be-ing, not totally be, and the (not totally) presence of Being in them makes them, though not be-ing totally, not totally nothing. In thermodynamic terms, this says that the incomplete (i.e. temporal and spatial) manifestation of the substrate (eternity) in beings makes them, although existent, not totally, i.e. not non-spatially and non-temporally, existent, and it also makes them, though not totally existent in the same manner as the substrate itself, not totally non-existent nonetheless. Again, although the existence of things -- judging from the fact of their genesis and destruction -- is not real (not total), it is not totally un-real either, since they do exist to some extent. "This is so because if existence [yu, 'have', i.e. be-ing there] were real existence, it would be eternal existence; why would it be dependent on [lit. wait for] cause and then be existent? And if it were real nothingness [wu, 'none'], nothingness would be eternal nothingness, why would it be dependent on [wait for] cause and then be nothingness?" (所以然者, 夫有若真有, 有自常有, 豈待緣而後有哉? 譬彼真無, 無自常無, 豈待緣而後無也?) Thermodynamically, this means that since something equals something eternally and immutably, in keeping with the law of Conservation, being-there of things should necessarily be eternally so and nothing could have caused what is there to be there, i.e. caused what was originally not there to be there later on: for nothing can come out of nothing. And since nothing equals nothing eternally, what is there can never later, because of some causes, cease being there, for the law of Conservation dictates that nothing can ever be destroyed but only transformed. Only the eternal (and omnipresent) existence of the substrate, therefore, is "real", i.e. total. (We should compare this expression of the first law with Parmenides' correspondent expression: pwV d'an epeita peloi to eon; pwV d'an ke genoito; ei gar egent'ouk est'oud'ei pote mellei esesqai. 8, 19-21. "How can Being have come to be? How can it have been generated? If it were generated, then it is not; and neither is it if it should later come to be.") Hence: "if existence [or be-ing there, again, yu, 'have'] cannot be existence-out-of-itself [be-ing there out of itself, lit. 'self-have'], but must depend [wait] on cause and then be existence [be-there; again, 'have'], then [such] existence is not 'real' existence"; (若有不能自有, 待緣而後有者, 故知有而非真有.) "But if all things were really non-existent [nothing, wu], then they should not have emerged; if they had, then they are not really non-existent [nothing]." (萬物若無, 則不應起, 起則非無) Again, not anything should have come out of nothing. "We want to say that things exist, and yet they are not really existent [lit. 'not really born']; we want to say that they do not exist, yet there are these shapes and features [meaning that they do exist somehow]." (欲言其有, 有非真生,  欲言其無, 事象既形) "These shapes and features mean that things are not totally non-existent, but they are also not real and not actually [really, fully] existent." (象形不既無 非真非實有) "Hence the theory of not-real-emptiness [i.e. not total non-existence of things] becomes clear here." (然則不真空義 顯於此矣) The point is that beings are half way between total Being (substrate, eternal conservedness of everything) and total nothingness. We are here at the beginning level of metaphysics, and this beginning level is roughly the end point of the first level, arrived at through some sort of dialectics: commoners say, "things exist"; but upon reflection (on the genesis and destruction of things and the underlying conservation -- i.e. the thermodynamic structure of the Universe) one should say, first, "they do not really exist", and then, thinking a bit hard, "they exist in a way but not exist in a way".

In the first chapter, "The Immutability [lit. Unmovability] of Things": "What people mean by 'movement' [Bewegung i.e. change] is that things of the past do not reach the present; hence they say there is movement [Bewegung or change, mutability] but no rest [Ruhe, permanence]." (夫人之所謂動者, 以昔者不至今, 故曰動而非靜) Things are never permanent through time, hence people call them "movement." Again, this expresses the germ of philosophic thinking in humans, the concern with the arrow of time and the associated disintegration of order in keeping with the second law of thermodynamics. "But what I mean by rest, is also that things of the past do not reach the present. Hence I call them rest and no movement." (我之所謂靜者, 亦以昔者不至今, 故曰靜而非動) "Movement but no rest, because past things do not come to the present. [That is, for commoners, impermanence of things, their 'not coming hither', means that they have changed, i.e. moved, bewegt] But [according to me] rest and no movement, because past things do not go away [i.e. vanish from the past -- they stay in the past]." (動而非靜, 以其不來,  靜而非動, 以其不去)

"If we seek after past things in [or by following them to] the past, [we find that] in the past they were not not-there [i.e. they did exist in the past]; but if we seek after past things in [or by following them to] the present, [we find that] in the present they are not there [they do not exist in the present]." (求向物於向, 於向未嘗無, 責向物於今, 於今未嘗有) "Therefore we say past things are in the past, and are not things that have receded from the present into the past." (是謂昔物自在昔, 不從今以至昔) "Likewise present things are in the present, and are not things that have come down from the past to the present." (今物自在今, 不從昔以至今) Note that -- we finally come to this point -- this sort of Buddhist conception of temporality, of the flux of being, as merely a succession of independent instantaneous "nows" that cannot be taken as a continuation of a lasting "now" is somewhat similar to the sub-atomic world revealed by quantum physics: when the electron moves from A to B we do not know if it is the same electron that is at B as at A -- identity through succession of time is a theoretically meaningless concept at the subatomic level -- and we cannot ascertain the particular path it took to go from A to B with exactitude: it took all possible paths at the same time until we look (Feynman's path integral). So the Buddhist continues: "The effect is not the cause, and because of cause, there is effect. Since it is because of cause that there is the effect, cause, tarrying in the past, is not extinguished [but subsists there]. But because effect is not the cause, the cause does not come down to the present. The cause not extinguished but not coming hither either, the conclusion of the un-movability [immutability, i.e. eternal permanence, Unbewegtheit or Ruhe] is clear." (果不具因,  因因而果, 因因而果, 因不昔滅, 果不具因, 因不來今. 不滅不來...) So the cause, insofar as it is causing the present, exists, but insofar as it is only causing the present, is not here; the cause -- past thing --, never moving, never continuing through time, is permanently fixed in an eternal and eternally stable moment of the past. Such conclusion is arrived at through an analysis of the perception of change. "The idea here is that things undergo constant change at every moment. Anything existing at any given moment is actually a new thing at that moment and not the same as the thing that has existed in the past." (Ibid., p. 248) A man we see now and whom we knew from the past only looks like that man in the past, but is not that man from the past. "Judging from the fact that everything changes at every moment, we say that there is change [movement, Bewegtheit] but no permanence [rest, Ruhe]. And judging from the fact that everything at every moment remains with that moment, we say that there is permanence but no change." (Ibid.) This is related to the requirement, by the consistency of the memory of the first law, for existence to be non-existence. "This is Seng-Chao's theory to substantiate the double truth on the second level. On this level, to say that things are yu and permanent, and to say that things are wu and mutable, are both common sense truth. To say that things are neither yu nor wu, neither permanent nor mutable, is the higher sense truth." (Ibid.)

The two levels of dialectics are to establish the equivalence between existence and non-existence as implied by the law of Conservation, but the steps taken here -- first through the recognition of the incompleteness of existence of temporal and spatial existence, then through the equivalence between the existence and non-existence of the "past" thing -- are torturous, not through necessary conservation that rules out something coming from nothing. Nonetheless, equivalence is to be completely established by the third level and existence of everything around is to be affirmed as illusory and in fact non-existent.

On the third and highest level, Seng-Chao proposes his "Theory on Prajna [Buddha Wisdom, i.e. Enlightenment] being non-Knowledge [or knowledge of Nothing]" (般若無知論). Since the goal is to know "nothing", to think "nothing" -- to not think, in a word -- the Wu "transcends shapes and features" and has no qualities; hence it can never be the object of knowledge, and the goal, salvation, Prajna, or Enlightenment, is not-knowing. "To have knowledge of wu is to be one with it. This state of identification with wu is called Nirvana [i.e. consciousness of non-Being is non-being of consciousness]. Nirvana and Prajna are two aspects of one and the same state of affairs." (Ibid.)

This is the exact inversion of Parmenides: here Nothing is the only and true object of thinking and thinking and Nothing is one and the same, but there Being is the only and true object of thinking and thinking and Being is one and the same.

Fung emphasizes that for the Buddhist Prajna/Nirvana -- Not-thinking -- is not to leave this world to see another world or to see behind this world another world, but to see the truth of this world as "nothing": disengagement from the illusion of the everyday thinking mode. "But Nirvana is not something external to and altogether different from the Wheel of Birth and Death, nor is the reality of the Buddha-nature external to and altogether different from the phenomenal world. Once one gains Sudden Enlightenment [the Chinese Buddhists of the tradition of Emptiness -- the Southern tradition -- thought that enlightenment could only be sudden, rather than slowly and piece-meally built up through study and meditation as it was for the Northern tradition of the Universal Mind], the latter is at once the former" -- i.e. the truth of the former, what the former really is. (Ibid., p. 251-2) Hence, Dao-Sheng (道生), the other student of Kuramajiva, said: 夫大乘之悟, 本不近舍生死, 遠更求之也 "The enlightenment of the Mahayana does not consist in abandoning the life and death near us and seeking after what is farther there." (Ibid., *p. 281)

"In an essay titled 'The Treasure House'[寶藏論], which has been traditionally attributed to Seng-Chao but seems to be a forgery, it is said: 'Suppose there is a man who, in a treasure house of golden utensils, [always] sees the golden utensils, but pays no attention to their shapes and features [i.e. to the individual utensils]. Or even if he does pay attention to their shapes and features, he still recognizes that they are [all] gold [i.e. he only sees one big chunk of gold instead of many golden things]. He is not confused by their varying appearances [i.e. their individualities]. He always sees that their underlying substance is gold, and does not suffer illusion [lit. he takes these distinctions between golden things to be mere illusions and their oneness, their goldness to be the true reality]. This is an illustration of what [the enlightened one] is." (Ibid., p. 252. 譬如有人, 於金器藏中, 常觀於金體, 不賭眾相, 雖賭眾相, 亦是一金, 既不為相所感, 即離分別, 常觀金體, 無有虛謬. 喻彼真人,  亦復如是. *p. 281) As one can clearly see, the foundation of Nirvana is the same consubstantiality which leads, among the Greeks, to the insight of the substratum as the source of being, as the ultimate reality, the upokeimenon or upomenoush (the "goldness" underlying "all gold things"). The same: all things are no more than partial and temporary manifestations of the underlying substrate of existence. The difference is that this substrate is to pass into nothingness with the Buddhists.

The third stage: Chan Buddhism (禪宗). Chan is the Chinese transliteration of Dhyana, "which is usually translated in English as Meditation." (Ibid., p. 255) When introduced into Japan it was known there as Zen, the standard designation of this strand in the contemporary English-speaking world. The founder of this school was Hui-Neng(惠能 638 - 713).

Hui-Neng's father was a government official of Tang that was later dismissed from his post and died when the son was three. Hui consequently grew up in poverty and sold chopped woods to care for his widow mother, until the age of 24, when he attended Buddhist sermons and there "received" the wisdom and joined the monastery. Unusually bright, he attracted the attention of his teachers. The legend has it that, one day, having gathered all the students, the teacher announced his impending death and asked them to compose poems regarding Buddhist wisdom in order to choose the successor according to the manifest wisdom in the poems. Most students recommended Sheng-Shuo as the brightest of them all and therefore as the rightful representative, and Sheng-Shuo accordingly composed the poem, in the middle of the night, on the wall: 身是菩提樹,  心如明鏡台,  時時勤拂拭,  勿使染塵埃 "The body is [like unto] the Bodhi tree, and the mind to a mirror bright, carefully we cleanse it hour by hour, lest dust should fall upon it."

Next morning when the teacher saw the poem, he did not think highly of this "conventional" wisdom. Hui, understanding this, composed a poem also, and had another pose it on the wall next to Sheng's:

This in direct polemic against the original of Sheng's. The teacher realized that Hui was the one who "got" it (absolute non-Being, Nirvana itself "None" -- emptiness), but kept silent. At night, however, he secretly "passed" the wisdom to Hui and had him escape (!). The irony of monks competing for ranks in a monastery, to the point of life-threatening, is probably surprising to consumers of contemporary time. Hui escaped from central (Hupei province) to south China (Guangdong) and hid for 16 or so years before starting to preach the method of "sudden enlightenment". This is the school of Chan, the Southern School, standing opposite to the Northern School of Sheng-Shuo, also known as the school of "gradual enlightenment".

Hui-Neng, coming from humble background, did not share the practice, to which many of the leaders of Buddhist sects at the time subscribed, of connecting with the governing elites of the dynasty. Once, he refused the invitation of the famed "female emperor" (武則天) of Tang dynasty. Another personal style of his that was different from the norm of other Buddhists at the time was that he wrote nothing, believing in direct, oral passing of wisdom to his followers, somewhat in the manner of Socrates. Hence, after 38 years of teaching until his death, Hui had left the posteriors only one compendium of his collected sayings, of a meager 12,000 characters, which was the notes taken by one of his students during lecture and edited posthumously, and which was discovered in the Duenghuang Cave and recently analyzed by a Japanese scholar (Kuo, ibid., p. 250 - 256).

With the school of Chan the only proper "expression" of enlightenment, of the vision of the absolute, of the source of being (like the Parmenidean vision during the transport), was silence, as expected if the source, the ultimate reality, is absolute nothingness, emptiness. Salvation, again, consists in fact in the realization that there is no salvation, no Nirvana, since there is no temporal-spatial existence to be negated and be saved from -- all the world around merely illusions fabricated by the mind: no dream and so no awakening from the dream. There is simply nothing at all: the memory of Conservation finally carried to its logical conclusion: nothing can possibly exist. Thus I-Shuang (玄義 d. 866 A.D.) says: "If you want the wisdom of Buddha and liberation, do not be deluded by others; whether inside or outside [of yourself], negate [lit. kill] whatever you encounter. See Buddha kill Buddha; see the great masters kill the great masters." There is in fact no Buddha, no Buddha state: no one has ever become enlightened, saved, and liberated, for there was never anything to be saved from or negated.

The praxis (cultivation) of "attaining enlightenment and salvation" (now only in the figurative sense) or of identification of the self with the substrate of eternal conservedness (of nothingness), i.e. of the negation of the second law with the first law of thermodynamics, consists in "praxis as non-praxis" and "sudden enlightenment". (Fung, ibid., *p. 289 - 93 "Thus according to Chanism, the best method of cultivation for achieving Buddhahood is not to practice any cultivation." p. 259) Praxis as non-praxis to attain salvation -- to not incur new Karma and to extricate the self from the wheel of birth, death, and reincarnation through the identification with the source of being -- is "doing without intentions", i.e. doing things not because of the reward that might attend upon their accomplishment -- actually not because of any reason -- and this sort of "action" will incur no consequence -- in the sense that it does not disrupt the equilibrium of things and so does not incur "retribution" (positive or negative, reward or punitive) according to the necessity of restoration to equilibrium -- and so no karma. Because any praxis itself is action, and so incurs Karma and always falls short of eternity, the praxis of salvation must be non-praxis. Praxis or cultivation that is deliberate "will... produce some good, but it will not be everlasting. The Chan master Hsi-Yun (d. 847)... said 'Supposing that through innumerable lives, a man has practiced six paramitas [methods of gaining salvation]... and attained the Buddha Wisdom, this will still not last forever. The reason lies in causation. When the force of the cause is exhausted, he reverts to impermanence.'" (Ibid.) Rather like an arrow that, being shot, will eventually fall to the ground. (Ibid.)

Praxis that is not praxis, cultivation that is not cultivation, therefore consists in eating and defecating, etc.: nothing special. That is, no extra practices in addition to ordinary daily functions. The difference between this and ordinary people's daily functions lies in the former's non-intentionalness, which is achieved through a particular process of practice: "In the beginning one will need to exert effort in order to be without effort, and to exercise purposeful mind in order not to have such a mind, just as, in order to forget, one at first needs to remember that one should forget." (Ibid., p. 261) The "living in the present moment" of the sage is not the same as the "living in the present moment" of an ordinary mindless person: the former, through hard process to comprehend the meaning of existence, arrives at the timeless present, but the latter is merely vegetating, living in the moment because s/he could not do anything better. This latter is the undifferentiated mode of temporal existence as already noted of Heidegger: Gegenwaertigen um der Gegenwart willen. "Existing in the present for the sake of the present." Dispersion (Zerstreuung) among unconnected moments.

Sudden Enlightenment means the self-identification with Dao: no longer any distinctions between things and between oneself and things. This is the same as Parmenidean "thinking and Being is one and the same" (to gar auto noein estin te kai einai). This (understanding the truth of existence as nothingness and the self as identical with this nothingness) puts an end to all suffering, for suffering loses all its meaning, and so its hold. Recognition of nothingness as the truth of this existence is the negation of "riding the donkey in search of donkey". And the identification of the self with nothingness is the negation of "riding the donkey but unwilling to dismount". Not dismounting is the source of suffering. (Ibid., *p. 293-4)

All suffering having ceased, the sage does no more than ordinary, daily things -- "living in the moment" -- but the meaning of his "vegetating" is very different from ordinary people's vegetating in the present. (Ibid., *p. 294) "Although what he does is what everyone else does, he has no attachment to [what he does]... This is the meaning of the common Chan saying: 'To eat for the whole day and yet not have swallowed a single grain of rice; to wear cloth for the whole day and yet not have hanged a single thread of silk on the body.'" (Ibid., p. 264. Translation of the saying altered.)

Therefore, to answer the question, "What is the meaning of life?", we started with the material meaning of life, in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics: eating and defecating. From this proceeds a tangential development of the spiritual meaning of life, in accordance with the first law of thermodynamics, as the negation of the material meaning of life, of the terrible effects of the second law of thermodynamics -- to comprehend the truth of existence that is maintained by eating and defecating, to see the eternal conservedness behind the world of change of the senses, to become the point of reflexivity or self-consciousness of the Universe -- and to finally arrive at the truth of nothingness as existence. The meaning of life is: to eat and to shit in order to maintain existence, and, perchance, to understand that one does not really exist. From this one eventually returns to the material meaning of life -- in accordance with the second law: to eat and to shit. The difference is that, by now, this material meaning of life has lost all its exigency, all its force, its hold on consciousness, which hold has reached maximal height in the consumerist ethics of contemporary society, that consumption is an imperative, the maximally consuming man (the "rich" man) is the object of worship -- and together with this loss, all the happiness and suffering consequent upon this hold have also dissolved.

Our concentration on the passage of Being into non-Being in the Chinese philosophic tradition with the aid of Buddhist Nirvana, corresponding to the vision of the arche of the Hellenic philosophers, has left undiscussed the Buddhist explanations of the world of things, corresponding to the cosmogony of Hellenic philosophers. That is, we have focused on Buddhist method of salvation but skipped the Buddhist understanding of that from which we are to be saved. This is because our topic here is the coming to fruition of the insight into the truth of existence in the Chinese philosophic tradition, the maximal height of the Chinese answer to the Grundfrage, "Why are there things at all, rather than nothing?" The highest answer is, of course, "Well, there are no things." Here we will do no more than mention in passing the Buddhist view of how things are, leaving the main exposition to its proper place in the genealogy of philosophic enlightenment in India.

The goal of all philosophies and testamental religions is salvation from the limited existence in the temporal and spatial empirical world, effected through the second law of thermodynamics, via the return to the eternal conservedness (in accordance to the first law of thermodynamics) that is the source of this empirical world. The effectiveness of the second law, that is, temporal and spatial existence, entails suffering. The differences among all the philosophies and religions are their slightly different presentation of this effectiveness and of the "return". The cause of suffering, i.e. the limitation of temporal existence, is presented in the Buddhist way as karma and rebirth, somewhat similar to Plato's presentation in the Phaedo. The conception of karma has the same experiential origin as sacrifice to the ancestral ghosts, justice, Anaximandrean justice, and Plato's retribution in the next reincarnated life for souls not having attained philosophic enlightenment. Samsara, the wheel of death and rebirth, is not exactly the same as the reincarnation of the soul in Phaedo, due to the Buddhist conception of time as succession of independent quantum "nows" that do not form an actual continuity. "Reincarnation is the doctrine that there is a transmigrating soul or spirit that passes on from life to life. In the Buddhist view we may say, to begin with, that that is merely what appears to happen, though in reality no such soul or spirit passes on in this way... in reality a new consciousness arises at rebirth dependent on the old. Nevertheless there is an illusion of continuity in much the same way as there is within this life. Rebirth from life to life is in principle scarcely different than rebirth from moment to moment that goes on in this life." (Maurice Walshe, in the Introduction to his translation of The Long Discourses of the Buddha, p. 36) The never ending existence in the empirical, temporal world from life to life, ad infinitum is the source of suffering, because sufferings and happiness inextricably appear in these lives according to the principle of equilibrium (karma). Do not be deceived by happiness: it is the sign that suffering awaits you too. Happiness and suffering are functions of temporal existence and always come together, just as is asserted in Daodejing: where there is beauty, there is ugliness; where there is good, there is evil. To be released from suffering therefore requires release from temporal existence, which is always identified as illusion because it is the effect, shadow, or dependent (of the eternal source of being), and the return to the source which is non-temporal and eternal, is always identified as the true reality because it is the cause, source, and independent. With Buddhist, all these endless things in the empirical, temporal world of sense perception are more illusory than even this sense, in that they are all fabrications of the mind. Ignorance, avidya, is what prompts one to take these illusions and fabrications to be real and to hold on to these -- as has also been described in the Phaedo, the rule of the body causes one to take the illusory temporal things to be real -- and so to be subject to the law of karma and to suffering. Acquisition of the boddhi, i.e. enlightenment, is to awake from these illusions and to realize that they are illusions, and once that done, illusions disappear, precisely because they are just fabrications of the mind, and so the continuation in these illusions necessitated by karma ceases as well. Endless empirical existence through the wheel of death and rebirth is cancelled once and for all. In general outline this salvation from temporal existence is in structure no different than Platonism, i.e. it is the salvation of the second mode, the reunion with the source of being which is within through work, the acquisition of knowledge (wisdom). It should be noted that samsara, though not a doctrine of reincarnation, is derived from the latter and modified thereof because of the particular Buddhist conception of temporality; that the doctrine of the transmigration of the soul is the relics from the intrawordly religious (often, shamanistic) consciousness preceding and somehow persisting into philosophy; and that even samsara therefore is an archaic remnant in the new philosophic consciousness from the old mythic consciousness. Also that avidya, the hold of consciousness, due to illusion, onto the multivarious and fascinating world of sense perceptions and their pleasures ("riding the donkey but unwilling to dismount"), is the ancient equivalent to the attachment of modern people ("consumers") to consumer products due to ignorance, the worship of consumption, i.e. not just living as open dissipative structure according to the second law of thermodynamics, but actually believing that such living has some sort of important value to it: attachment. As we have seen, in Chan Buddhism the enlightened one, although still dissipating, attaches no value to such function.

Footnote:

1. We follow Fung's version here, which is more in line with our presentation. However Kuo notes that the version which Fung cites is a later version of the story, and that the collected sayings of Hui which his (to be mentioned) student first edited have it, for the third line of Hui's, like this: "the Buddha nature is forever clean" (佛性常清凈) instead of "originally there was nothing."