Mind as Mirror and the Mirroring of Mind:

·期刊原文
Mind as Mirror and the Mirroring of Mind: Buddhist Reflections on Western Phenomenology. (book reviews)

by John Schroeder
Philosophy East and West

Vol.47 No.1

Pp.91-95

1997.01

Copyright by University of Hawaii

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Although there have been many recent comparisons between Western
phenomenology and Buddhism, much of it has remained either
apologetic or philosophically pedestrian. Steven Laycock's Mind as
Mirror and the Mirroring of Mind is an attempt to move beyond the
limitations that often accompany comparative philosophy by proposing
a critique of Western phenomenology from a Buddhist perspective. Its
main point is to show that while Western phenomenology commits
itself to describing the contents of experience, assuming that this
will tell us something about the nature of consciousness, Buddhism
deconstructs the mind, showing us the futility in trying to grasp
its nature through philosophical reflection since there is nothing
there to know.
The book begins with the famous gathas by Shen-hsiu and Hui-neng,
which were written to see who would become the sixth patriarch of
Chan Buddhism. While the two gathas seem to contradict one another
on whether the mind is or is not mirror-like in nature, Laycock sees
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something else at work. He views the contradiction as only apparent,
since Shen-hsiu's "The mind is a stand of mirror bright" and
Hui-neng's denial of the mirror metaphor entail similar positions
about the nature of consciousness. Laycock says that even if we
accept Shen-hsiu's verse, which considers the mind as analogous to a
mirror that collects "dust," the mirror itself, as a pure reflecting
surface, is nevertheless without any trace of visibility, presence,
or definable characteristic. That is, he says that behind the "dust"
that collects on its surface, and independent of its reflected
images, the mirror's essential nature remains inherently pure.
Moreover, the mirror deflects its images, and cannot reflect on
itself without opening up into further images and reflections.
Hence, no matter how much "dust" is collected on the mirror, or how
many images are reflected on its surface, the mirror, says Laycock,
remains "flawlessly pure," since what is on the surface or "in" the
mirror is not the mirror itself.
This conception of a pure mirror is then used by Laycock to explain
Hui-neng's position. An untainted mirror turns out to be no mirror
at all, since, phenomenologically speaking, it is impossible to
distinguish between a mirror and its reflections, or to know whether
the image we see reflected is "in" the mirror or "in" the world. The
two views are phenomenologically indistinguishable, says Laycock,
since a pure mirror does not offer itself in its own reflection.
Hui-neng's denial is thus no rejection of the mirror itself, but
only a certain conception of the mirror: as something that can be
known by reflecting on its images or wiping away the dust . The two
positions of Shen-hsiu and Hui-neng are resolved by Laycock "in a
relativity of respects or standpoints" (p. 6), since both assume
that the "original nature" of the mirror is inherently pure and
unmediated.
The use of the metaphor of the mind as a mirror is the guiding theme
of the book and is what allows Laycock to critique Western
phenomenology. The insight he takes from the Buddhists is an
understanding of a mirror-like mind, which is metaphysically
"indifferent" to its reflections; this means that it escapes
phenomenological description. No matter how many objects we place
before a mirror, says Laycock, we can learn nothing about its
nature, since neither the reflection nor the mirror in which it
appears instantiates or manifests the properties of the object. The
objects are not "in" the mirror, and though the mirror freely
reflects whatever we happen to place before its surface, it
nevertheless remains "empty" of its reflections. This leads Laycock
to say that "nothing is gleaned of the intimate nature of the mirror
by cataloguing the qualities of its reflections," and hence, "we
learn nothing of the mind by considering the objects which it
entertains, including, as a crucial instance, those
self-objectifications and objectivities which it offers itself in
reflection" (p. 124).
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The book uses this idea of an "empty" mirror to critique the
phenomenological method of Husserl, Sartre, and, to some extent,
Merleau-Ponty. The phenomenological commitment to describing the
objects of consciousness "precisely as and only as they appear" is
based on the assumption that this will tell us something about the
nature of the mind. The Husserlian epoche, for example, supposedly
suspends all commitment to theoretical and metaphysical
presuppositions in order to describe existence as it appears. The
lack of theoretical commitment is obviously similar to Zen, yet
Laycock views Zen as a more radical "holistic transformation of
experience" since, unlike Husserl, it does not view the epoche as
"the beginning of a life of rational self-responsibility" in which
the transcendental structure of subjectivity is elucidated (p. 155).
Husserl's phenomenological reduction is criticized by Laycock on the
grounds that it mistakes the description of what is given in
self-reflection with the inner nature of consciousness itself. The
Buddhist depiction of the mind as like a mirror, however, resists
this tendency to objectify what is given in self-reflection, since
the mind continually "deflects" or eludes self-presence.
Sartre and Merleau-Ponty come under similar scrutiny in the book.
Though both reject what Laycock calls Husserl's "positivistic
approach" to phenomenology, their methodological commitment to
intentionality forces them to adopt a semi-dualistic view of
consciousness. Sartre's claim that the mind is transparent is
coupled with his conception of consciousness as being nothingness:
it is completely directed toward what it is not, it excludes all
things from itself, and is nothing in and of itself. To see
consciousness, for Sartre, is to see through it. And yet, as Laycock
notes, Sartre drives a "realist distinction" into his theory by
viewing pre-reflective consciousness as necessarily "engaged"--that
is, it is committed to the existence of objects and mediated through
"position-taking" activities. Hence, it is unable, as is a Buddhist
phenomenology, to move beyond "existence and non-existence."
Merleau-Ponty is cited in the book as the Western phenomenologist
who most resembles the Buddhist position. He rejects the Sartrean
dualism between a consciousness that is fully transparent and the
objects of the in-itself, which are fully opaque, and elevates the
"indeterminacy" of the "lived body" as the locus of intentionality.
Merleau-Ponty's view of the body is subtly woven through Laycock's
book and brought to life in connection with the "three body"
(trikaya) doctrine in Mahayana Buddhism. However, Merleau-Ponty's
adherence to a view of phenomenology as rooted in the perception of
being is surmounted by the Buddhist view of mind in which no "trace"
of intentionality is left, and in which any distinction between
being and nonbeing, existence and nonexistence, immanence and
transcendence, and subject and object are deconstructed.
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Laycock devotes almost the entire book to an analysis of Western
phenomenology, and traces its conceptual roots through Plato,
Descartes, Kant, Brentano, and Heidegger. It is therefore primarily
a book for those interested in this tradition. Aside from the
preface, where he mentions the two gathas of Shen-hsiu and Hui-neng,
and a brief chapter on vipassana meditation, Buddhism plays a
marginal role, and is generally explained in reference to Western
philosophers. For readers interested in learning about the specifics
of Buddhist philosophy, the book will be disappointing.
The extensive use of the mind-mirror metaphor is never seriously
questioned by Laycock, and his quick dismissal of the problems that
Richard Rorty has with looking at the mind in this way is puzzling.
It is obviously true that many Buddhists and Western philosophers
share this metaphor in relation to the mind, and it is also true
that some Buddhists, such as those in the Yogacara and Zen
traditions, use the metaphor to refer to a pure, unmediated form of
consciousness. The book promotes this view of the mind as like a
mirror, but fails to question whether it is a valid way of
understanding the nature of consciousness. Even more problematic is
Laycock's claim that a flawed, dusty, or clouded mirror is in fact
no mirror at all. What this is supposed to mean is never fully
explained in the book and can leave the reader confused.
Another problem is the lack of detail given to Buddhist philosophy,
which results in treating Buddhist thought as a unified set of
beliefs about the nature of consciousness. The first two sections,
devoted to a deconstruction of the "logical space" of phenomenology,
are supposed to be about Buddhist dialectics and meditation. As it
turns out, however, we learn more about the view of analytic logic
of Zeno, Spencer Brown, Derrida, and Laycock than we do about
Buddhist dialectics. The Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna plays a
minor role in these sections, and is explained through Heidegger,
Zeno, or Alan Watts. There is no lengthy analysis of Nagarjuna's
texts, Candrakirti's commentary, or other specifically Madhyamika
philosophers in the history of Buddhist thought, many of whom were
explicitly critical of the pure, untainted consciousness that is
promoted in this book.
The extensive use of a uniquely Zen metaphysic to critique
phenomenology has many problems as well. The book tends to create a
dichotomy between Zen and Western phenomenology, and tells us that
the difference here is choice between enlightenment and
intentionality (p. 43). We are told that Zen enlightenment goes
beyond intentionality in that it points to a "pre-logical"
experience in which all vestiges of analysis, linguistic categories,
and the distinction between subject and object are overcome, since
the pure mind-mirror remains "flawlessly indifferent" to the
analytic distinctions that it entertains in reflection. This
metaphysical view of Zen was of course made popular in the West
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through the texts of D. T. Suzuki, but nevertheless assumes that we
can coherently make sense of Buddhist views apart from the
soteriological and pedagogical context in which they developed. That
is, although the Zen masters may have held certain views regarding
the nature of mind, and although they may have believed that
enlightenment is realized only by abandoning our attachments to
conceptual, linguistic, and logical categories, these views are
always expressed within the concrete practices and discourses that
take place in a pedagogical context, primarily between a master and
his disciple. Promoting a Zen metaphysic independent of this context
is highly questionable. Although Laycock's distinction between
enlightenment and intentionality is an attempt to reveal an implicit
dualism in Western phenomenological conceptions of consciousness, it
relies on a deeper rift not found in Buddhism: between theory and
practice.
Aside from these problems, the book is well-documented and
philosophically engaging. Western phenomenologists and comparative
philosophers will find it both useful and interesting.