KNOWLEDGE, ACTION, AND THE ONE BUDDHA-VEHICLE

·期刊原文

KNOWLEDGE, ACTION, AND THE "ONE BUDDHA-VEHICLE"
A COMPARATIVE APPROACH

By warren G. frisina

Journal of Chinese Philosophy v.28 n.4 (December 2001) pp.429-447

Copyright 2001 by Journal of Chinese Philosophy

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This article will draw the Lotus Sutra into an ongoing comparative project exploring the relationship between knowledge and action. I have argued in other publications that the tendency to view knowledge and action as separate and sequentially related is misguided and a contributing factor in many of the confusions that have bedeviled contemporary philosophy and theology.1 To counter this tendency I appeal to epistemological implications in the neo-Confucian, pragmatist, and process philosophical traditions in an effort to make the case that knowledge and action really are one thing. This article will examine the Lotus Sutra with an eye toward how it handles the relationship between knowledge and action. Specifically, I will argue that the Lotus Sutra presents the "one Buddha-vehicle" as a dynamic, open-ended, and spontaneous form of human responsiveness rather than as a purely mental awakening that corresponds to the "true" nature of things.

The relationship between knowledge and action is clearly not a front-burner issue in the Lotus Sutra. From what I can see, there are no explicit arguments designed to counter an overly intellectualized approach to Buddhist self-cultivation. I assume this is the case because a purely cognitive view of the boddhisattva path was not an extant option at the time the text was compiled. The Lotus Sutra is, of course, engaged in a strong polemic against the vehicles of learning, realization (Hinayana), and Boddhisattvahood (early Mahayana). If we squint hard, it is perhaps possible to see some of the issues I am concerned with in the Lotus Sutra's efforts to supplant these three earlier forms of Buddhist spiritual practice. In chapter 2, for example, the text reads: "It is not by reasoning, Sariputra, that the law is to be found; it is beyond the pale of reasoning, and must be learnt from the Tathagata."2 Such statements could be read to mean that the one Buddha-vehicle goes beyond mere learning about the four noble truths or simple realization of the implications in the twelve-linked chain of dependent causation. I suspect, however, that the line dividing earlier Buddhist spiritual practices from those found in the Lotus Sutra has more to do with the universalism of the one Buddha-vehicle than with the separation of knowledge from action.

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The above admission may lead readers to ask: "If the quest to demonstrate the unity of knowledge and action is not an issue for the Lotus Sutra, then why try to draw this text into the larger project mentioned above?" The short answer is that we have something to learn by examining a text where the bifurcation of knowledge and action is simply not present at all. For example, those who approach the Lotus Sutra with Platonic, Aristotelian, or Cartesian assumptions about the relationship between knowledge and action are likely to engage in one of two illegitimate interpretive moves. Either they view the Lotus Sutra's notions about the one Buddha-vehicle as a quest for the purely cognitive knowledge, which sets the stage for nirvana, or they find the Lotus Sutra's description of the one Buddha-vehicle oddly incomplete, and something of a challenge to our traditional understanding of what it means to become "enlightened." By pushing beyond these initial confusions, and allowing the text to assert its own presuppositions, we learn something from the way the Lotus Sutra quite naturally links knowledge, action, compassion, and selflessness into a single coherent vision of the optimal form of human existence.

Some might think it paradoxical that I begin this analysis of the Lotus Sutra with a discussion of neo-Confucianism, pragmatism, and process philosophy. The paradox should be lessened, however, by recalling the extent to which these three traditions share certain ontological and cosmological assumptions with the Lotus Sutra. All promote a relational ontology that rejects the notion that any one thing can be defined apart from how it is linked to everything else. Moreover, each makes some use of an organismic cosmology that characterizes the relations that bind things to one another as instances of value. When a relational ontology is coupled with an organismic cosmology it becomes very difficult to justify an epistemological position that separates cognition from a fully embodied responsiveness to the world's promptings. In these three traditions and in the Lotus Sutra, insight (or knowledge) is always understood in functional terms as a fully embodied responsiveness to the world's promptings. Knowledge is never merely an accurate representation of some external reality. To say we know something means that we are capable of relating to it successfully.

In sum, the Lotus Sutra contributes to an analysis of the relationship between knowledge and action by urging us to see how the highest form of human self-realization is only achievable by acting in concert with other sentient beings. In the Lotus Sutra, the boddhisattva path is not a mere cognitive awakening to the fundamental character of oneself or the universe at large; it is, rather, an initiation into a mode of activity that is perfectly suited to the needs of others.

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Knowledge and Action in Confucianism, Pragmatism, and Process Thought: Wang, Dewey, and Whitehead

Early in the sixteenth century the Chinese neo-Confucian Wang Yang-ming (1472-1529) coined the slogan chih hsing ho-i (the unity of knowledge and action).3 Chih hsing ho-i summarizes Wang's attempt to overcome epistemological errors that he believed were embedded in the then-contemporary understanding of the relationship between knowledge and action. At the time, Wang's colleagues were following a course of study outlined some 300 years earlier by the neo-Confucian scholar Chu Hsi (1130-1200). Chu Hsi had argued that knowledge ought to precede any attempt to act. Specifically, he urged his students to begin their efforts at self-improvement by cultivating a cognitive appreciation for the basic patterns, li, that give individual things their definite character. Ultimately, after learning to appreciate the li in many individual things, Chu Hsi was convinced that scholars could become true sages by cultivating an understanding of the basic patterning process underlying all things. A person who was thus enlightened could then act securely in the knowledge that the dictates of her heart would not overstep the boundaries of right.4

Wang's complaint against this interpretation of Chu Hsi's position5 is that it seems inevitably to lead scholars into spiritual dead ends. Wang's colleagues tended to substitute erudition for true understanding, and study never seemed to issue naturally into a specific course of action. After his own attempts to put Chu Hsi's system into effect failed miserably, Wang rejected the very idea of a purely cognitive state that precedes and directs our actions. Knowledge, for Wang, could not precede action because the hsin (heart-mind) is a dynamic organ, one that is always engaged in the process of constructing and reconstructing our relationships with the ever-changing components of our world. Thus, according to Wang, hsin does not mirror the world as a precursor to acting. It is the seat of the will that is itself always involved in determining how we respond to the world's promptings,

Three centuries later, and half a world away, the American pragmatists (e.g., Peirce, James, and Dewey) initiated their own campaign to reconstruct our understanding of the relationship between knowledge and action. These thinkers saw in the unprecedented success of the scientific method evidence that traditional descriptions of knowledge were inadequate. They concluded that knowing had more to do with interacting with the world than apprehending it in some purely cognitive, timeless way.

Like Wang, the pragmatists had trouble communicating their insight regarding the relationship between knowledge and action to their con-

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temporaries. But the pragmatists' situation was more difficult than Wang's. In making his case that knowledge and action are really one thing, Wang could appeal to a relational ontology and organismic cosmology that was commonly held by all of Chu Hsi's followers.6 Wang had only to point out that in a dynamic world where all things are internally related, there simply could not be a "state of mind" that transcends the process and precedes the action. Peirce, James, and Dewey could not depend on similar assumptions among their contemporaries. Instead, they found themselves struggling against their colleague's faith in a dualistic ontology that presumes an unbridgeable chasm between the cognitive and material realms. Cartesians, for example, posited the existence of a mental realm where some things are knowable with certainty because they are not subject to change. The Cartesian mind is capable of entertaining these fixed immaterial ideas that represent (in some unexplained way) aspects of the always-changing material realm. Though the relationship between minds and bodies was always something of a paradox for Descartes (witness his discussion of the role of the pineal gland), he and all his followers considered the linkage between knowledge, certainty, and fixedness simply a given.

Unlike Wang, then, the pragmatists needed to posit and argue for an alternative ontology, one that would be consistent with their claims about the unity of knowledge and action. The pragmatic alternative is an ontology that emphasizes continuity (synechism for Peirce) and internal relatedness. Peirce, James, and Dewey each present slightly varying portraits of the world as a dynamic, pluralistic matrix of internally related entities.

Although some contemporary philosophers tend to downplay it, pragmatic ontological, and metaphysical claims are intimately linked with their epistemological discoveries.7 With this alternative ontological position in mind, the pragmatists were in a position to jettison Descartes's assumptions about the link between knowledge, certainty, and fixedness. In the place of Descartes's clear and distinct ideas, they described knowledge as a pattern or habit regulating the way we formulate the relationships that define who/what we are. Knowledge is not a re-presentation or mirroring of the world. It is never certain, or the product of some purely cognitive "god's-eye point of view," Instead, for the pragmatists, knowledge is located in the very patterns of our actions, patterns that are our responses to the world's promptings.

This description of knowledge shifts the ground on a great many issues. For example, the tendency to divide the world into knowing subjects and known objects is completely undercut. Instead, Dewey (for example) argues that we operate within a continuous transactional field that is only secondarily analyzable into separate subjects and objects.

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Put simply, for Dewey, we must all be together before we can be separated from one another and the things we "know." Where Descartes posited an ontological chasm between knowing minds and the known world, the pragmatists presume a felt-continuity rooted ultimately in the fundamental relatedness at the base of all things. As pragmatists describe us, we don't stand apart from the world like spectators―we engage it directly. Thinking (or "inquiry," as Dewey prefers to call it) occurs when our habitual ways of interacting with the world are unsuccessful relative to some specific goals or expectations. To fix such problems we literally must change our world and ourselves. To be successful, we must change the habits or patterns that structure our relationships. These newly successful patterns are rightly labeled "knowledge."

To those who know the neo-Confucian and pragmatic traditions, much of what I have said will be familiar even if my particular take on the importance of the relationship between knowledge and action is somewhat novel. It may seem strange to some, however, that I am willing to lump Whitehead's process philosophy in with those who reject the separation of knowledge from action. Whitehead's Platonism, his tendency to talk about "eternal objects," and his quasi-rationalistic tone, all could be described as incompatible with the neo-Confucian and pragmatic theories of knowledge.

My reading of Whitehead's theory of knowledge is clearly influenced by the neo-Confucian and pragmatic traditions. Although I acknowledge that it is possible to read Whitehead differently, I tend to downplay his discussion of eternal objects and focus more on Part 3 of Process and Reality where he presents a detailed description of how the activity of individual actual entities builds to full-scale human cognition. Viewed from that perspective, Whitehead's theory of knowledge resonates quite nicely with the pragmatic and neo-Confucian positions outlined above. Whitehead's relational ontology is as thoroughgoing as the others are. In Whitehead's case, each individual actual entity becomes what it is through the relationships that it forms. This process of "coming to be" is described as a kind of creative engagement with the world, where each entity literally creates itself in the process of determining how it will be related to everything else. Human cognition, or knowledge, is best understood as a special subset of these very same actions. Cognition is achieved via the complicated movements of an indeterminate number of entities, all acting in concert to achieve some coordinated objective. In this sense, the human "self" is distributed throughout an organism that is itself constituted by the multilayered activities of its subprocesses. Whitehead sometimes talks about the "person" being located in some indeterminate subset of the actual entities that are located somewhere in the interstices of the human brain. But I do not

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find that to be a particularly helpful analogy, and prefer instead to see the individual human self as one outcome of the organism's overall coordinated activities.

In sum, then, it is fair to say that the unity of knowledge and action is a position that fits comfortably within the neo-Confucian, pragmatist, and process contexts. Put simply, for all three, existence is inherently dynamic because entities are patterns of interactions rather than independent substances. Experience is a specific kind of interactional pattern within the wider interactions constituting individual entities and the universe at large. Knowledge is a species of experience, and, therefore, also a specific kind of interactional pattern. Thus, existence, experience, and knowledge, are first and foremost modes of interaction. This is the common denominator, or line of continuity, that enables thinkers such as Wang, Dewey, and Whitehead to avoid the dualisms that have haunted Western philosophy since the Greek period.

With this extended introduction into a set of conclusions drawn from neo-Confucianism, pragmatism, and process thought, I would like to turn now to the Lotus Sutra itself to explore important resonances that would lead us to conclude that the one Buddha-vehicle is a specific form of activity within the world rather than a purely cognitive representation of it.

Relational Ontology and Lotus Sutra's "One True Law"

By now, some readers may have grown impatient with this long "wind-up." I am imagining a reader who says to herself: "Well, this is nice enough for neo-Confucians, pragmatists, and process thinkers, but it doesn't really apply to the Buddhism of the Lotus Sutra. The Lotus Sutra prompts us to engage in a quest that will awaken us to what it calls the 'One True Law,' a law that transcends all material manifestations, and that has been preached and followed by Buddhas from eternity. If the one Buddha-vehicle is anything, it involves a growing awareness of the one fixed immutable truth that we all contain the Buddha nature within us. Reduced to its essence, universal Buddhahood seems to be the fixed objective reality that the one Buddha-vehicle conveys. Therefore, the Lotus Sutra cannot be interpreted to be supporting an open-ended understanding of knowledge as a form of action. There is ultimately only one truth, and any deviation from it is a result of some moral/spiritual failure on our part."
I can appreciate why my reading of the Lotus Sutra might sound a bit strange at first. Most of us quickly assimilate the Lotus Sutra's language of the "One True Law" to a transcendent understanding of law itself. It

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is typical of many philosophers to treat "ideal laws" as if they were immaterial universal principles that are written in the cosmos by some god or an anonymous moral rationality. Viewed this way, they are immutable tools for guiding and measuring our behavior. For most of us, developing a self-conscious awareness of such a law (e.g., Kant) is the first step toward ensuring that our actions do not overstep the boundaries of right.

This notion of law, however, does not make sense in the Buddhist context. In the West it is supported by Platonic and Cartesian assumptions that render plausible the notion of a purely ideal, unchanging realm that is independent of the imperfect, changing, material realm. I do not see similar ontological premises at work in this Buddhist text.8 Instead, I see a dynamic relational ontology whose "principles" or "laws" are implicit in rather than transcendent of the material realm. The whole notion of co-dependent origination seems to militate against the very idea of transcendent Buddhist laws of any kind. After all, if all things are ultimately empty (read: dependent on their causes), then why should the One True Law be given special status? This might sound paradoxical, but it should not be for close readers of the Lotus Sutra. The Lotus Sutra makes something of a habit of revealing how things that seem universally true (e.g., previous Buddha vehicles) are actually only "true" relative to the needs of a particular sentient being at a specific time and place. To "entitize" anything, including the Lotus Sutra's One True Law, is to assert an independent fixed existence. Such a move would seem to violate one of the central premises of the Lotus Sutra's relational ontology. In sum, whatever else the Lotus Sutra might mean by its references to the One True Law, it simply cannot be the same as traditional Western references to an objectively transcendent principle whose reality is independent of its instantiation within the material realm.

But the Lotus Sutra does repeatedly say that the One True Law revealed within this text is not to be supplanted by any others. What does that mean if not that the One True Law is transcendentally real? What kind of reality does it have? From where I stand, its reality seems dependent on its enactment. That is, we can only "see" the One True Law by analyzing the actions and trajectories of all sentient beings. Absent those actions, it would not be present. Viewed this way, we can better understand the linkage between the One True Law and the universalism of the one Buddha-vehicle. Whereas the Hinayana and some early Mahayana vehicles taught that only a limited number of people were destined to achieve Buddhahood, the Lotus Sutra takes the radical position that every sentient being is already on the boddhisattva path. If it were possible to truly step outside of the one Buddha-vehicle and act

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in such a way as to condemn oneself to utter and complete separation from one's Buddha nature, one would simultaneously be stepping outside of the One True Law. This would limit the One True Law's applicability. Instead, the Lotus Sutra repeatedly urges us to see that every sentient being is destined ultimately for enlightenment, and that the One True Law is manifest in the individual efforts of sentient beings as they work toward their own (and everyone else's) salvation. Viewed this way, the law is universal, and unsupplantable, because it is enacted by all sentient beings all the time.

A Western thinker might grumble that a moral law that is enacted all the time by everyone―a law that really cannot be violated―could hardly be called a "human" law. But that, of course, is the point I have been trying to make. The Lotus Sutra's understanding of the One True Law simply cannot be subsumed under the general Western understanding of transcendent moral laws. It seems to point to something more fundamental in the character of all sentient beings. Put one way, the One True Law's relation to sentient beings is closer to the way the law of gravity is related to physical objects. All physical objects exhibit gravitational properties, even when they do not seem to be. When gases rise and airplanes fly, they are not violating gravity. They are, in fact, exhibiting it, albeit in an apparently paradoxical manner. Viewed this way, then, the Lotus Sutra seems to be trying to lift up an aspect of sentient life that is universally present, and that seems to ensure that we make progress in our lives, even when it seems that we are not making any progress at all.

At this point, all I have tried to do is convey the point that the Lotus Sutra's understanding of the One True Law is different from what we may typically mean when we use the term "law." It is best seen as a description of a characteristic embedded in the actions of sentient beings. It has no independent being, or regulatory power. Why this is important will become clearer after we have had a chance to look closely at what the text means by the one Buddha-vehicle.

The One Buddha-Vehicle: Successful Actions

The one Buddha-vehicle is, of course, the alternative posited by the Lotus Sutra to earlier Hinayana and Mahayana spiritual practices. One of the Lotus Sutra's great accomplishments (from its own point of view) is the way that it manages to explain and reconcile the different Buddhist practices. It subsumes them all under a broader framework, arguing that each is valuable in itself but that they are all only valuable relative to the needs of a specific group of people at a specific time. In

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short, all other vehicles are useful as provisional vehicles and to be supplanted by the Lotus Sutra's final revelation.

As we begin to analyze the Lotus Sutra's characterization of the one Buddha-vehicle, I think it is interesting to note how the text goes about unveiling it. Instead of listing a series of doctrines to be learned or memorized, it presents us with descriptions of things people, boddhisattvas, or Buddhas have done. When push comes to shove and the text needs to explain what the one Buddha-vehicle is, it routinely tells a story of how people act in specific circumstances. In fact, as one commentator pointed out, taken as a whole the Lotus Sutra tells us the story of the events on Vulture Peak that (among other things) communicate what it takes to lead boddhisattvas toward enlightenment.9 It is true, of course, that readers can distill from the stories and parables a set of ethical principles or "rules" to guide our actions. But the Lotus Sutra does not take that route. Instead, it leaves its anecdotes, parables, and legendary tales relatively unadorned by explicit morals other than the occasional explanation of who the main characters represent.

The main stories are too familiar to bear detailed repeating. I will start with the rich father who rebuilds his relationship with a wayward, destitute son. In this story, the father acts in such a way as to draw his son away from poverty and into a fuller life. He does not offer direct instruction. Instead, he sensitively responds to his child's needs in a way that leads the boy to spontaneously follow a path toward recovery and reassimilation into the community.

As in many of the Lotus Sutra's other father/child stories, the father represents the Buddha and the son represents the rest of us. Like the son we are often mired in confusion, lost to temptations, ashamed of ourselves, and stubborn to boot. Quite simply, we get confused over what is really good for us, and resistant to the idea of letting go of our delusions. Given our state of mind, telling us what to do is almost never effective, as the rich father discovers when he first asks to have his son brought before him.

It takes extraordinary sensitivity to be capable of feeling and responding appropriately to someone else's needs. By putting on rags and adapting himself to his son's lifestyle, the rich father displays the well-known Buddhist virtue of compassion. More important than compassion, however, the father demonstrates extraordinary skill in human relatedness. Using "skillful means,"10 the rich father, like the other fathers in the Lotus Sutra, does rescue his son. The skill, however, is not located in the father's cleverness (as is arguably the case with the father who saves his children from the burning building). Rather, the father's skill is located in the appropriateness of the actions that he undertakes in light of his son's particular needs. It does not take much technical skill

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