Process Metaphysics and Hua-yen Buddhism

·期刊原文
Process Metaphysics and Hua-yen Buddhism;
A Critical Study of Cumulative Penetration vs. Interpenetration

By David Applebaum

Philosophy East and West

V.34 (1984) P107~108

Copyright 1984 by University Press of Hawaii

Honolulu, HI [US] (http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/index.html)

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P107

Process Metaphysics and Hua-Yen Buddhism. By Steve Odin. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1982. Pp. xx + 242. $10.95. Paper.

Odin's work undertakes a major project in comparative philosophy: to explore analyti­cally the claim that Hua-Yen Buddhism (Kegon in Japanese) is metaphysically indis­tinguishable from the process philosophy of Whitehead. The book is important, both because of Odin's energetic pursuit of his investigation, and because of the metho­dological questions it raises with regard to comparative studies in general.

Odin's main thesis is that Hua-Yen Buddhism, as developed in Priest Uisang's Ocean Seal , posits a metaphysics in which all events interpenetrate (yung-t'ung) completely, whereas Whitehead's thought allows for a more conditioned penetration. Part I ex­pounds, often with deep insight, the Hua-Yen vision of nonobstructed interpenetration. Its twofold aspect li-shih-wu-ai (interpenetration between universal and particular) and shih-shih-wu-ai (interpenetration between particular and particular) yields a universe in which dialectical interspersal has reached its completion. Subject and object, many and one, particular and universal interfuse nonobstructively (wu-ai), the result being a "block universe" in which time's arrow does not take flight. Radical nonobstructiveness, in the Hua-Yen sense, has the effect of denying a necessary condition for efficient causation: temporal antecedence. As Fa-tsang puts it, "Because an instant has no substance, it penetrates the infinitely long periods, and because the periods have no substance, they are fully contained in a single instant" (p. 22). Influence between events is established a la Leibniz, by recourse to internal relations, or mutual identification (hsiang-chi), which becomes the basis for Hua-Yen's positive reinterpretation of nonsubstantiality (nihsvabhāvata) and dependent origination (pratiītyasamutpāda.)

The linchpin of Odin's processual critique of Hua-Yen seems at first to turn on his rejection of its symmetrical theory of causation. For Whitehead, causal inheritance implies a transmission from past to present to future. As such, it is asymmetrical, positing the cumulative penetration of events in events. But, in fact, his real contention is normative: that Hua-Yen gives no account of freedom, or novelty, in the way Whitehead allows when he says, "The many become one and are increased by it" (Process and Reality, p. 21). The emergent synthesis of novel actuality, as analyzed in Part II, shares all the basic ontological commitments of Hua-Yen, such as śunyatā (understood as universal relativity) and dharmadātu (cosmic matrix of suchness). Importantly, however, its primacy of causal interpenetration spells creative advance into the future. Specifically, concrescence, or creative synthesis, Odin contends, gives a more adequate account of our primordial feelings of creativity and causal immanence, as well as their metaphysical systematization, than does Hua-Yen's thought of interpenetration. This point is reinforced by Whitehead's theory of feelings as the vehicle of causal transmission. This theory implies that contemporary events do not necessarily share the same cosmic remembrance. As Whitehead says, 'The causal independence of contemporary occasions is the ground for the freedom within this Universe" (Adventures in Ideas, p. 198).

Odin is at his best in Part I when he elaborates Hua-Yen's rejection of Nāgārjuna's negative dialectic. Its restatement of súnyatā in terms of "fulness, togetherness, and interdependence" (p. 23) gives him the grounds for developing Guenther's views on the Tantric perceptual field. Súnyatā becomes the

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descriptive profile of 'horizons-phenomena' encircling the focal core of the perceptual field at the noematic object pole, whereas prajña correlates with the 'non-focal' or 'decentered' act of perceptual awareness achieved through a radical reversal at the poetic or constituting subject pole. (p. 33)

Noetic reversal, Gelassenheit (Heidegger's phrase), or openness then becomes the perceptible counterpart of the ontological state described by both Hua-Yen and Whitehead. There is a brief but useful discussion of praxis, referring to Merleau-Ponty's work on primary and secondary attention, and to Husserl's writings on imaginative variation.

In contrast. Part II lacks a clear focus. In critique, Odin soon finds the interrelatedness of Whitehead's categories an obstacle to succinctness. After making the point that creative synthesis is "but a momentary production of novel togetherness" (p. 73), Odin is forced into a detailed exposition of the theory of prehensions, including negative prehensions (chapter 8), What the reader misses is a straightforward account of how Whitehead’s impressive conceptual apparatus comes into play in defeating the Hua-Yen position.

Or, returning to the methodological issues raised by Odin's study, if it does. What are, for instance, the criteria of validity for any ultimate metaphysical position. East or West? Are there any, short of those internal to any system organizing the results of primordial experience? If there are, do systems converge, or diverge, or run parallel? Some attention to this dimension of research might have led Odin to the Hegelian position that Hua-Yen is entitled to its dialectic rejoinder. Odin has asserted that Hua-Yen leaves out any account of metaphysical freedom, and, by the way, vitiating its own theory of karma (p. 108). Why couldn't Hua-Yen claim, as it would, that the concept of freedom flies in the face of reality, that it lacks all soteriological value, and that (as Hegel would have it) freedom is necessity? Put another way, if Whiteheadian freedom consists in synthesizing a "newly emergent element," how does this transcend the Hua-Yen position of allowing what is to stand forth as it is and must be? It is one of the values of Odin's work that it provokes such questions.

The book also contains a highly suggestive essay relating process thought to Tantric trikāya theory, with reference to the collective unconscious (both Jung's and the ālaya consciousness of Buddhism). In addition, Odin provides an original translation of Uisang's Autocommentary on the Ocean Seal, a valuable piece of work. There is no bibliography; one would have been useful.