The Dialectics of Nothingness

·期刊原文
The Dialectics of Nothingness: A Reecamination of shen-hsiu and Hui-neng

Steven W. Laycock
Journal of Chinese Philosophy

Vol.24 (1997)

Pp 19-41

Copyright @1997 by Dialogue Publishing

Company,Honolulu,Hawili,U.S.A

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P.19

I have long been intrigued by the facing gathas of Shen-hsiu(a)
and Hui-neng(b),the one an apparently inverted"image"of the other.As
legend has it.Shen-hsiu stole into the quarters of the aging
master,Hung-jan(c)(c.601- 675),at night and affixed the following
poem to the wall:

Body is the Bodhi tree,
Mind is like a bright mirror-stand.
Take care to wipe it continually,
And allow no dust to cling.(1)

The next night, Hui-neng, described no doubt apocryphally as a
barely-literate rice pounder from "the South"(prerhaps
Vietnam(2)),tacked the following rejoinder on the Fifth Patriarch's
wall:
There never was a Bodhi tree.
Nor bright mirror-stand
Orginally,not one thing exists
So where is the dust to cling?(3)

The two gathas seem to fit hand-in-glove,the one denying precisely
what the other affirms.And,indeed ,my initial impressiong of the
diptych went lottle farther than this.The two verses merely stood in
a relationship of logical contradiction.If one was true,the other was
false.And the point of the Hui-neng legend was simply to demonstrate
the doctrinal

P.20

superiority of Hui-neng's position over that of Shen-hsiu. Since
Hui-neng had clearly won the mantle and begging bowl of Master
Hung-jan, Shenhsiu's view was by the principle of bivalence, flatly
false.

While my earlier interpretation was, as it now appears to me,
gravely naive, I am nonetheless somewhat comforted to have found
myself in the company of no less illustrious an exegete as D. T.
Suzuki, according to whom the practice of "dust-wiping" sponsored by
Shen-hsiu lent itself to a dissociation of the innately integral and
inseparable conscious functions of dhyana (meditation) and prajna
(wisdom):

..Dhyana became the exercise of killing life, of
keeping the mind in a state of torpor and making
the Yogins socially useless; while Prajna, left
to itself, lost its profundity, for it was
identified with intellectual subtleties which
dealt in concepts and their analyses.(4)

Thus separated, meditational ''dust-wiping" was seen to be a necessary
prerequisite for wisdom. Dhyana and prajna were sequentially ordered, the one
required before the other could arise. Hui-neng's portrayal of this
relationship appears to conflict with the stepwise attainment of wisdom
which Shen-hsiu maintained. In Hui-neng's address:

Good friends, how then are meditation and wisdom
alike? They are like the lamp and the light it
gives forth. If there is a lamp there is light,
if there is no lamp there is no light. The lamp
is the substance of the light; the light is the
function of the lamp. Thus, although they have two
names, in substance they are not two.Meditation and
wisdom are also like this.(5)

Only by overcoming the conflictual duality of meditational practice
and the profound "seeing"(which is "theory''(theoria) in a sense akin
to that which this term held for the Greeks) could the transaction of
ordinary

P.21

life(samsara) be rendered consistent with the attainment of supreme
insight (nirvana).

An important aspect of the story which, at that time, escaped my
notice and which Suzuki seems to have neglected as well, is that when
the master awoke and discovered Shen-hsiu's gatha, he is reported to
have called his disciples to him and to have burned incense before
the verse, saying that anyone who put Shen-hsiu's words into practice
would surely attain enlightenment. The difference between the two
poems was not, then, simply that of straightforward contradiction.
Both, in fact, were accorded the master's approval. The verses
differed, rather, in "level" or "standpoint," and, as I then thought,
were no more inconsistent than the "duck" and "rabbit" aspects of the
celebrated Wittgensteinian duckrabbit.Shen-hsius gatha is not simply
the poetic articulation of an egregious doctrinal error, a doctrinal
falsehood in contrast with Hui-neng's doctrinal truth,but expresses,
rather, the standpoint of practice. Huineng' s gatha expresses the
standpoint of attainment. "Body,'' "mirror" and "dust" belong to 'the
ontology of the means. The "ontology" of the end is, in consonance
with Nagarjuna's profound insights, a non-ontology. Originally, not
one thing exists.(6)Practice, like Wittgenstein's ladder, is of no
use once the ascent has been made, and, indeed, turns out to be
indistinguishable from the elevated vision itself. Still, as it then
appeared to me, one could entertian only one perspect at a time, and
the view articulated in Hui- neng's poem, if not endowed with an
elevated alethic status, was at least preferable precisely because it
was given voice from the very standpoint of enlightenment.

Recently, however, I have come to see the two gathas as standing,
not in a relationship of frontal contradiction, nor simply in an
hierarchical relationship of doctrinal superiority, the "theoretical"
vision preferable to the "practical" postulation, but rather, in a
relationship illustrated by the perennial paradox of the coincidentia
oppositorum. Confronted by a static two-dimensional photograph of our
planet, one might readily hypostatizen " East" and ''West, "
identifying them, perhaps, with the right and left equatorial
extremities, and assuming them to be determinate

P.22

punctal locations in an absolute space. Yet the three-dimensional
globe allows the familiar and unsurprising recognition that one can
arrive at the "East" by going "West, '' and conversely. In
two-dimensional space, a second point may be arrived at from a first
only by approaching it directly. In global space, any point on the
globe can be arrived at from a given point either by proceeding
directly toward it or directly away from it.Taking "'toward" and
"'away'' as representing, respectively, truth and falsehood relative
to some given "point" (proposition) as formulated within a local,
two-dimensional "logical space," we could not, on pain of forfeiting
the principles of bivalence and non-contradiction, admit the
possibility of arriving at a given "point" circuitously.(7)For this
would amount to regarding a given proposition as at once both true
and false. Understood thus "two-dimensionally ,'' Shen-hsiu and
Hui-neng do quite flatly contradict one another. Assuredly, if there
never was a Bodhi tree, the body could bear no resemblance to one.
And if, from the first, "not one thing exists," then, surely, there
could be neither mirror nor dust.(8) Thus my initial interpretation,
and that of Suzuki, is unobjecctionable insofar as its relativization
to a L'natland" logical topology is clearly understood.Nonetheless,
it seems to me that, in order to comprehend the relatedness of the
two insights, we must abaondon the "flat" logic of analysis in favor
of a certain dialectical logic which will enable us to see both their
simultaneous contradiction and reciprocal entailment. I shall argue
respectively in the following two sections (1) that Shen-hsiu's
position entails that of Hui-neng; and (2) that Hui-neng's position
likewise entails that of Shen-hsiu. But more than simply this, I wish
to show that the dialectical interinvolvement of the two contrasting
insights has serious ramifications for contemporary occidental
phenomenology.

I

Let us confine our attention for the most part to the second
lines of both poems: "The mind is like a bright mirror-stand," and
"there never was. .. a bright mirror-stand." And let us suppose that
Shen-hsiu

P.23

is right. The mind, on this supposal, is, indeed, like a mirror. But
in eliciting the tacit implications of this view, we must carefully
note that an ideally flawless mirror is itself utterly devoid of
visible properties. An ordinary mirror betrays itself as an object in
virtue of its imperfections. A slight discoloration of the glass,
light refracted from its surface, barely perceptible ripples and gaps
in the silvering, make manifest the mirror itself as one object among
others. Yet it is precisely such features as these, features which
lend objectivity to the mirror, which are to be accounted " flaws."
And to the extent that a mirror is thus flawed, it is not, properly
speaking, a mirror at all. Hence, an ideally flawless mirror is in no
way manifest as an object.

Moreover; if a red apple is set before the mirror, the mirror
does not itself become red, nor is the reflection in any literal
sense itself red. The mirror serves merely as an "occasion" for the
appearance of a reflection-of-red.(9) Generalizing, then, the mirror
does not instantiate any of the visible properties of its object.(10)

Suzuki offers the following alternative metaphor on Shen-hsiu's
behalf:

The mind... is like a crystal ball with no colour of its own. It
is pure and perfect as it is. But as soon as it confronts the
outside world it takes on all colours and forms of
differentiation. This differentiation is in the outside world,
and the mind, left to itself shows no change of any character.
Now suppose the ball to be placed against something altogether
contrary to itself and so become a dark-coloured ball. However
pure it may have been before, it is now a dark-coloured ball, and
this colour is seen as belonging from the first to the nature of
the ball. When shown thus to ignorant people they will at once
conclude that the ball is foul, and will not be easily convinced
of its essential purity.(11)

Ignoring objectifying imperfections, an ideally transparent crystal
ball

P.24

placed against a red surface would be phenomenally
indistinguishable from a crystal ball made of red glass. And
likewise, an ideally flawless mirror set against a red surface
would be phenomenally indistinguishable from a red surface. It
could, it seems, be no part of a strictly phenomenological
investigation to discriminate such cases. The task of discernment
would belong to "metaphysics" of the sort deplored by serious and
consistent practitioners of phenomenology. Phenomenology aspires
to "presuppositionless" insight. And this can only mean the
assumption of an absolute equipoise,the vigilant treading of the
via media, the way of the valley, between metaphysical summits.
Already, in what I take to be the more consistent phenomenology
of Hui-neng, we find the admonition to "separate yourselves from
views."(12)

These insights achieve fuller articulation and resonate with
greater significance when the "fallacy" (if I might avoid the
opprobrium of designating by this term a position with which I wish
to take issue) of assuming the visibility of the reflecting medium is
located within the setting of occidental phenomenology and the
deleterious consequences of this "fallacy" for phenomenological
philosophy clearly noted. Accordingly, I wish to propose, as notable
counterparts of the planar "Shen-hsiu" and "Hui-neng," the luminary
Western phenomenologists, Husserl and Sartre.Both are culpable of the "
fallacy" in question, and both, by committing this error, thereby
abandon at crucial points the very methodology which would make
their views genuinely "phenomenological.'' Western phenomenology,
even as represented by the patient, rigorous and minutely
painstaking efforts of Edmund Husserl, or by the less sober but
perhaps more sobering, pronouncements of Sartre, lapses into
"metaphysics" at just this crucial juncture.Intentionality, as
Sokolowski suggests, is the "dimension" in which the world and
its objects present themselves.(13)Yet in the very act of
intending an object, it is impossible to discriminate, in terms
of purely phenomenal and descriptive features, between the
objectual referent as it presently presents itself and features
of the "medium" of intentionality itself. To take up the one side
of the issue is utterly to "evacuate" consciousness, to make of
it a

P.25

"nothingness" in the Sartrean sense. Consciousness, for Sartre, is
"all lighteness, all translucence."(14) But it is also to promulgate
a view difficult to distinguish from a certain "naive" realism, a
view according to which the manifold perspectival "looks" of a thing
are, in whatever sense, " there" awaiting intentional revelation.
Consciousness becomes a passive " openness" to the attendant
objectual "views.'' To take up the opposite side of the issue is to
adopt the contrasting Husserlian theory of "constitution." The
profiles through which the intentional object are given are not
simply "there'' independent of the act. The object's alternative
modes of giveness are accounted for, in essential part, in terms of
certain phenomenologically describable features of the act itself.
Invoking the contrasting models suggested by Suzuki's remarks, Sartre
presents intentional consciousness as a crystal ball placed against a
colored surface, and Husserl sponsors a theory of constitution which
would tint the crystal. Sartre plays two-dimensional ''Shen-hsiu" to
Husserl's two- dimensional ''Hui-neng."

Nothing could have more profound consequences for the very
project of phenomenology itself than a decision in favor of either
"Shenhsiu'' Or " Hui-neng," Sartrean quasi- "realism" or Husserlian
quasi"idealism.'' The Sartrean portrayal of consciousness as
"nothingness, " pressed to the extremities of its implications
(farther, in fact, than the early Sartre himself had pressed it),
entirely subverts the very possibility of phenomenological
reflection. If consciousness is, indeed, "nothing, " then, in
reflection, there is nothing to see. Reflection, itself a specific
mode of intentional consciousness, would have no "object."

The story, of course, is somewhat more complicated. For Sartre,
what is subjectivity objectified in reflection becomes, in The
Transcendence of the Ego, "the psychic,'' a tertiary order of being,
neither subject nor object, "laminated," as it were, immediateiy
against consciousness. If the for-itself is, as Sartre would depict
it, a "bubble" rising in the medium of worldly being, the psychic is
the enveloping "boundary'' which belongs neither to its inner vacuity
nor to the surrounding plenary integrity of the in-itself. "The
psychic," Sartre says, "is the transcendent

P.26

object of reflective consciousness."(15)The"third-realm" ontology of
the psychic possesses the advantage of offering employment to
reflection. Yet, while reflective and prereflective consciousness
differ, expectably, in " object,"' the "object" of the former is not
subjectivity itself, but the psychic. This, however, is simply a more
sophisticated (not to say sophistical) way of denying the very
possibility of reflection. A philosophy which proceeds merely in
virtue of an investigation of the " outside"(16) of consciousness has
not advanced beyond the "realism" which Sartre, in Being and
Nothingness, claimed to have overcome. "We have," he there maintains,
"ruled out a realistic conception of the relations of the phenomenon
with consciousness."(17) Yet this is belied by the sheer
phenomenological impossibility of establishing a correlation between
the " inside" and the "outside" consciousness.Reflection can only
reveal consciousness "from the outside" precisely because, "from the
inside," there is nothing to "see" but the intentional object.
Consciousness itself is invisible.And there can be no
phenomenological warrant for positing a relationship between the
psychic and that which, in principle, cannot appear. The assertion
that consciousness and the psychic are related as " inside" and
"outside" is thus "metaphysical."

For Husserl, on the other hand, the noema is undeniably manifest
to the reflecting consciousness.Indeed, as one must say, only if
subjectivity is constitutive in the Husserlian sense can there be
anything "there" for a strictly reflective consciousness to "see."
Consciousness affects itself with different "tints," as it were, and
it is the manifold "hues" of the "crystal" which are presented in
reflection. The epoche enforces silence with regard to the existence
of the object. But no such reserve is in force with respect to the
object-as-it- appears. The noema is inseparable from constituting
subjectivity. To be thoroughly consistent, Sartre would have to claim
that the noema is " discovered." In Husserl's view, it is, as it
were, "created"-an assumption which spells phenomenological disaster
no less than Sartre's regrettable abrogation of reflection. For
Husserl here maintains a tacit and fateful presupposition. Like the
tinted crystal which can be either seen or seen- through,
consciousness functions either "opaquely"

P.27

(for reflection) or "transparently"(in its "natural" posture) as a
semidiaphanous medium of revelation. And Husserl assumes that, just
as its coloration continues to permeatre the crystal when the latter
is seenthrough, so, also consciousness is imbued with noematic
"sense" in the straightforward prereflective revelation of
intentional objects.What is " there" in reflection is equally "there"
in prereflective consciousness. This is "metaphysics, " not
phenomenology. In the natural attitude, the noema cannot be thus
"located" on one side or the other of the subjectl object divide.

Sartre betrays phenomenology by rendering its fundamental method,
that of reflective description, impreacticable. Husserl, in his very
effort to preserve reflection, thereby abandons it. The vital and
profoundly fruitful method of phenomenological reflection is thus
rendered impossible so long as the phenomenon is thought to belong
either to the realm of the subjective or the domain of the objective.
Only a phenomenology which remains rigorously faithful to the "things
themselves'" precisely as and only as they appear can hope to
navigate between the Scylla of Husserlian subjectivism and the
Charybdis of Sartrean objectivism.

The intentional act, understood as a relatively concrete
phenomenon ( the appearing-of-the-object, for Sartre, the
appearing-of-the-object-toan- egological-subject,for Husserl) is only
one of the two highest-order species of immanence which, as Husserl
would have it, together, comprise the "real" ( reel) and fully
concrete flux of consciousness. The second, an abstract aspect of the
act, is the sensation. And here we find Husserl moving, during the
course of his philosophical career, toward a position somewhat closer
to a view which Sartre himself might find felicitous. In the
relatively early theory represented by Husserl's Logical
Investigations, there is "no difference between the... conscious
content and the experience itself.What is sensed is, e.g., no
different from the sensation."(18)This does not, of course, imply
that sensations have no content, but simply that they are their
content. For the hyletic Rotempfindung,redness and the sensing of
redness are identical. The appropriateness of the colored crystal
ball model is compelling. From the beginning,

P.28

Sartre himself expelled certain crucial phenomenal features of immanence
from consciousness. He argues powerfully and cogently against Husserl's
earlier theory of sensory hyle:

The hyle in fact could not be consciousness, for it would
disappear in translucency and could not offer that resisting
basis of impressions which must be surpassed toward the object...
How can it preserve at once the opaque resistance of things and
the subjectivity of thought? Its esse cannot come to it from a
percipi since it is not even perceived, for consciousness
transcends it toward the objects. But if the hyle derives its
being from itself alone, we meet once again the insoluble problem
of the connection of consciousness with existents independent of
it.... In giving to the hyle both the characteristics of a thing
and the characteristics of consciousness, Husserl... succeeded
only in creating a hybrid being which consciousness rejects and
which can not be a part of the world.(19)

Moreover, as one might ask, how could a red-sensation differ from a
bluesensation? The relevant difference could be found only in the
manner of the sensing-event. The sensing of the red-sensation is a
"redwise" sensing. And the sensing of the blue-sensation is a
"bluewise" sensing. Husserl assuredly would not wish to maintain that
the "manner" of the redsensation, for example, quite literally
instantiates redness. And it thus becomes exceedingly difficult to
account for the "red-mannered" demeanor of a sensation except by
recognizing it as a sensation of redness. Redness must be expelled
from the sensation. The "crystal ball" must be placed against
something "contrary to itself,'' in Suiuki's words. And this, in
fact, is later acknowledged by Husserl himself in the lectures on
timeconsciousness. There the fusion of sensing and sensed is
relativized to a given framework of consideration:

Sensation here is nothing other than the inner consciousness of
the content of sensation.... Thus it is understood why in the
Logical Investigations I could identify the sensing and the
content of sensation. Since I moved inside the frame of inner
consciousness, there, naturally, we did not find any sensing,
only what is sensed.(20)

And accordingly, "sensation, if we understand this as consciousness
(not the immanent, enduring red...)... is untemporal, viz. it is
nothing in immanent time."(21)The "not" in this latter passage
carries the freight. Here Husserl tacitly recognizes a distinction
between the sensing- consciousness and "the immanent, enduring red,"
i.e., the redness which serves as its content. Sensing, far from
being imbued with the quale which serves as its content, turns out,
on a more profound analysis, to be "empty." The expulsion, while
distancing Husserl from one untenable model of sensation, serves,
however, only to rivet his commitments to an equally "metaphysical" (
and thus phenomenologically indemonstrable) position. Colored crystal
and crystal transparent to color are, as I have urged,
phenomenologically indistinguishable.

Returning, then, to Shen-hsiu: mind is like a mirror. And pulling
solidly at the inner logic of this simile, we can add that mind is
like an ideally transparent crystal ball, the presence of which is
not betrayed even by minor refraction or discoloration. The ideally
flawless mirror, the perfectly transparent crystal ball, cannot
itself be seen. It is not a manifest "form" (rupa). Visibility would
be a flaw. Thus, if Shen-hsiu's insight is to be credited, then
Hui-neng must also be right. There never was a mindmirror.
Phenomenologically considered, there is simply nothing-no thing-to
see. Thus, far from representing a denial of Hui-neng's standpoint,
Shen-hsiu's gatha clearly entails its truth.

II.

Is there a similar passage from Hui-neng to Shen-hsiu? If it is
the

P.30

case that "originally" (ben lai(d)) "not one thing exists" (wu i
wu(e)),(22) Then this generality must include the mind itself. Does
it follow that the mind is like a mirror? The facile response is, of
course, the negative. If the mind fails to exist, it certainly cannot
be "like" anything. There is nothing "there" to bear the relationship
of similarity. But this response misconstrues the import of the
ostensibly "existential" denial.

We must recall the path traversed from Shen-hsiu to Hui-neng. Why
does the 'non-existence" of the mind follow from its mirror-likeness?
Precisely because ideal reflectivity entails the utter impossibility
of objectual manifestation.To say that the mind mirror-in its
"original," phenomenologically clarified manifestation, undistorted
by conceptual "presuppositions''-is " not one thing" (wu i wu), is
simply to say that the mind cannot be given as a "thing." Shen-hui
contributes insightfully to the issue.

A bright mirror is set up on a high stand; its illumination
reaches the ten-thousand things, and they are all reflected in
it.The masters are wont to consider this phenomenon most
wonderful. But as far as my school is concerned it is not to be
considered wonderful. Why? As to this bright mirror, its
illumination reaches the ten-thousand things, and these
ten-thousand things are not reflected in it. This is what I would
declare to be most wonderful. Why? The Tathagata discriminates
all things with non-discriminating Prajna (chih(f)).If he has any
discriminating mind, do you think he could discriminate all
things?(23)

Fixing upon just one of the "ten-thousand things," an object (wu(g))
standing before a mirror is reflected within it in virtue of the
Gestalt duality of figure and ground. A condition of "thingly"
manifestation is the discernible difference between object and
non-objectual context. Both are reflected within the mirror. Thus,
the mirror "underlies" both, and is " indifferent" to the duality of
reflections. A "thing" is reflected

P.31

in our mirror only in virtue of the indifference of the mirror to the
difference of thing and thing-complement, figure and ground. Neither
the tenthousand things, nor, indeed, even a single thing are, in this
sense, reflected in it. To say that "originally, not one thing
exists' is not to say that the dualistic condition of manifestation
is in no case operative. It is, rather, to say of the "origin," the
primordial indifference of conscious "reflectivity,"'that the Gestalt
duality makes no difference to it, and that it, itself, is not
manifested as things are.

Once again, then, we must ask about the passage from Hui-neng to
Shen- hsiu.This time the answer is patent. If "originally" (ben(h))
there is no bright mirror-stand," if, that is, the "origin" cannot be
presented as figure upon ground, does it follow that the mind is like
a mirror? Clearly, yes.The mirror is made "present" precisely in its
ineluctable "absence.''

Hui-neng is emphatic that "When you sit quietly with an emptied
mind, this is falling into a blank emptiness,"(24) and characterizes
as a " confused notion" the assumption that "the greatest achievement
is to sit quietly with an emptied mind, where not a thought is to he
conceived."(25)Thus, Hui-neng admonishes his followers:

neither to cling to the notion of a mind, nor to cling to the
notion of purity, nor to cherish the thought of immovability, for
these are not our meditation."(26)

Indeed ,

Purity has no form, but, nonetheless, some people try to
postulate the form of purity and consider this to be Ch'an(i)
practice.People who hold this view obstruct their own original
natures and end up by being bound to purity.(27)

Hui-neng did not, of course, have at his disposal the technical
phenomenological concept of intentionality.Yet there could scarcely
be a more

P.32

decisive proclamation of the ineluctable intentionality of
consciousness. " Purity,"understood as the non-intentional, and thus
"objectless," self- luminosity of consciousness, is described as a
mere "notion," in evident contrast to a realizable experience. But
the point of Hui-neng's vivid declaration is not simply to
demonstrate that an adequate understanding of " self-nature" is
hindered by the supposition that the mind itself serves as a manifest
"form" (rupa) The real "obstruction" is our failure to discriminate
form from the formless, our failure, that is, to recognize the
difference between indifference and the differents which are
differentiated out of it"( 28) (a failure recognizably akin to the
obscuration of the "ontological difference" in Heidegger's
phenomenology). It is precisely the function of indifference to
permit the manifestation of difference.And if indifference is always
and inescapably different from its differents, then, of necessity,
the former requires the latter as much as the latter the former.The "
nothingness," the radical non-thingliness of original mind requires,
as a condition of its very being, the "ten-thousand things." Mind is,
then, ineluctably intentional.The very "essence" of mind, according
to Hui-neng, is "a state of Absolute Void, "(29) an insight
inescapably reminiscent of the early Sartrean characterization of
consciousness as "translucent." Consciousness utterly and completely
exhausts itself in its abject without remainder. It is nothing but
objectual revelation.There is no "purity" without
intentionality.Hui-neng's ostensibly ''ontic" denial (wu i wu) is, at
bottom, a phenomenological claim.Far from importing the simple non-
existence of the mind, Huineng's assertion, "There never was... a
bright mirror-stand, '' entails the being of the very
non-objectifiable " nothingness" or "emptiness" (sunyata) which
stands as the ineluctable condition for thingly manifestation. The
voidness of consciousness is "the voidness of non-void."(30)
Considered ontologically, consciousness is "non- void." It is only as
considered phenomenologically that consciousness is " void." To say
that there is nothing to "see" is not to say that there is nothing
'"there." What is "there" is precisely the revelation of the object.
But to "see" consciousness itself is to "see" nothing at all. Shen-
hsiu's ontological claim entails

P.33

Hui-neng's phenomenological claim. And, conversely, the
phenomenological claim entails the ontological.

In the familiar strategic transition which Sartre effects,
consciousness is no-thing," since it is-not (nihilates) and, in
principle, cannot be, any of its objects-even those immanent
objectivities encountered in reflection. Sartre's argument cuts even
deeper then the expulsion of hyletic content. It is not simply that
consciousness is "nothing" inasmuch as it nihilates the entire realm
of positional objectivity. Consciousness is subject to " the absolute
law of consciousness for which no distinction is possible between
appearance and being."(31)The for-itself is-not itself. The very
being of consciousness, its very non-positional immanence, is itself
nihilated. There are, of course, no objects "in" consciousness. But
neither is there any " consciousness" in consciousness. Consciousness
is utterly vacuous, utterly devoid even of itself. And this
realization must inform any consistent reading of the doctrine of
nonpositional (self-) consciousness articulated in Being and
Nothingness. Sartre affirms that

if my consciousness were not consciousness of being consciousness
of the table, it would then be consciousness of the table without
consciousness of being so. In other words, it would be a
consciousness ignorant of itself, an unconscious-which is
absurd.(32)

Yet the very vacuity of consciousness ensures that reflectively to
look "at" consciousness is thereby to look "through" it. There is
nothing "in" consciousness to see--not even "consciousness of the
table." Thus, a nonpositional consciousness of "being consciousness
of the table" must be phenomenologically indistinguishable from the
positional consciousness of the table itself. The very distinction
between "positional" and " nonpositional' consciousness thus turns
out to be "metaphysical." The transition from The Transcendence of
the Ego to Being and Nothingness is marked by a shift in the sense of
"being'' which consciousness enjoys.

P.34

In the earlier work, consciousness simply is the appearing of the
object. In the later, consciousness becomes non-positional
self-presence. The dialectic of Shenhsiu and Hui-neng dispels the
later Sartrean error. If there is an 'gbsolute law of consciousness"
endorsed by the two masters, it must not be understood as the claim
that the being of consciousness is indistinguishable from its
appearing.

III.

If successful, our reflections have shown that, while "Shenhsiu"
and " Hui-neng" do, like cymbals, clash resoundingly when interpreted
within the " flat" logic of metaphysics, the two positions
nonetheless reciprocally entail one another within the "global" logic
of a consistent phenomenology. Yet it cannot be denied that Hui-neng
did inherit the Master's mantle. And we cannot not rest content until
we have accounted for this fact. One path is blocked by the preceding
considerations: the supersession enjoyed by Hui- neng is not alethic.
Hui-neng's view is not to be preferred because it is " true" (or
"truer") in contrast to the purportedly "false" (or "less true")
assertions of Shen-hsiu. Where, then, shall we look for the basis of
preferability?

Shen-hsiu's claim, "Mind is like a bright mirror-stand," leads to
Huineng's view only when the logic of the "mirror" is relentlessly
pursued to its very end. It is doubtful, however, that Shen-hsiu
himself pressed these imqlications to their limit. Mind is
represented as a "mirror-stand" (ching t'ail) And the ambiguous
suggestions which this expression holds may well have mislead the
scholarly and respected monk. Is mind to be conceived on the model of
a stand (t'ai~), and thus as one "thing" among many? Or is " mirror"
(chin$) to receive the emphasis, and "stand" to recede from primary
significance as a merely pleonastic complement? The latter, as I have
assumed throughout, represents the best of Shenhsiu. Yet Shen-hsiu
seems also to have fallen prey to the former. Mind seems not simply
to be "mirror-like, " but also "stand-like." And possessing ontic
status, mind-pure mind~ould serve as a locus of attach-

P.35

ment, the practitioners of meditational "mirror-wiping" thus earning
Hui- neng's epithet. "purity-bound." It is exactly this supposal,
that mind is " ontic," a "being" among others, and thus visible to
introspection, which would effect the logical collision with
Hui-neng. Falling prey to the " ontification" of mind, Shen-hsiu
thereby seems to have assumed the very "two- dimensional" logic of
contradiction in which his view could conflict with Hui-neng's. It is
not that Shen-hsiu failed utterly to recognize the passage to
Hui-neng. This recognition no doubt subsisted in semine. But at least
one important sense of "confusion" (and the "mirror"/"stand"
ambivalence is surely a case of such) involves the simultaneous, and
perhaps unwitting, commitment to contradictory points of view.

Hui-neng's pronouncement, "Originally, not one thing exists,'" is
not, as I have claimed, an existential denial. Indeed, consciousness
is to rise "above existence and non-existence."(33) "There never was
... a bright mirror(- stand) " has both ontological and
phenomenological implications: Mind, though not ontic," is assuredly
not precluded from ontological status; but the very being of mind is
such that to "see'' it is to "see through" it. These insights were
merely implicit in Shen-hsiu's text, tacit in his understanding. But
they were entirely explicit to Hui-neng. It was thus Hui-neng who
fully comprehended the "global" and dialectical logic in which the
two positions circularly entail one another. To say, however, that
"originally" there is no "mirror" is to say that "originally" there
is no mind. "Mind'' is the fundamental deliverance of reflection. And
the very sense of mind, lucidly and properly understood, entails its
(self-) effacement before the object. Once again, we must return to
the strictly phenomenological impossibility of discriminating
"colored crystal" from "crystal transparent to color," mind- as-seen
from mind-as-seenthrough. It is mind itself which underlies the two
"speculative" views. Or if I might hazard an interpretation of a
crucial operative concept of Buddhist phenomenology, it is "suchness"
(tathata) which "grounds" the ostensibly opposed perspectives.
Suchness is the " ground"-indeed, the "globe"-which makes possible
the global-logical passage from Shen-

P.36

hsiu to Hui-neng, and conversely. Without suchness,, we have lost the
dimension of reconciliation, the dimension of depth. Without
suchness, we find ourselves with only a "flatland" logical geography.
Phenomenology becomes metaphysics. And it may be simply this, the
lucid experiential realization of tathata, the very "ground" whereby
reconciliation with Shen-hsiu becomes possible, which won for
Hui-neng the transmission from Hung-jan.

THE UNIVERSITY OF TOLEDO

NOTES

1.In the Wade-Ciles transliteration:

Shen shih p u t'i shu.
Hsin ju ming ching t'ai.
Shih shih ch'in fu shih,
Mo shih jo ch 'en ai.(m)

2. In an address delivered in Los Angeles on June
12, 1985 , the Venerable Thich Man-Giac,
President of the Congregation of Vietnamese
Buddhists in the United States, remarked:

In the books it's always related that the sixth
patriarch, Hui Neng, was Chinese, but I know he was
Vietnamese.... Before he became the sixth
patriarch, when he first came to the fifth
patriarch to ask for the teachings, do you remember
what the fifth patriarch said? He said,''You
barbarian from the south, what do you know?' The
sixth patriarch replied, "Buddha nature is in
everyone, so what's the difference if I live in the
south?"

"The Branch That Gleams in the Dark: An
Introduction to Vietnamese Buddhism' (Los Angeles:
The First American-Vietnamese Buddhist Monastery,
1985) pp. 10-11. The word "Nam" appearing in
'Viet-Nam" meaning "south," the compound,
'Yiet-Nam," bears the dual signification of
"southland of the Viets" and "transcendence [vuot]
toward the south."

P.37

3. Again, the transliteration:

P'u t'i pen wu shu,
Hsin ching i fei t 'ai.
Ben lai wu i wu.

He ch u jo ch 'en ai.(n)

4. Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, The Zen Doctrine of Nc-Mind: The
Significance of the Sutra of Hui-Neng (Wei-Lang) (York
Beach: Samuel Weiser, 1981), pp.32-3.

5. Philip B. Yampolsky, The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), p. 136.

6. In Suzuki's view,

What distinguishes Hui-neng most conspicuously and
characteristically from his predecessors as well as from his
contemporaries is his doctrine of....from the first not a
thing is'----this was the first proclamation made by Hui-neng.
It is a bomb thrown into the camp of Shen-hsiu and his
predecessors.

Suzuki, op. cit., p. 22.

7. The conditional with a true consequent holds under the supposition
of either a true or a false anteceedent. Our altogether rudimentary
model would, of course, require an additional "dimension" to
accommodate both possibilities. We have here assumed a logical
cartography locating "false' to the East and "true'' to the West
of a given proposition, ignoring the implication of the true by
the true. But an alternative map can be given, ignoring the
implication of the true by the false, by stringing truths along
the equator. For our simple purposes, the former option seems
preferable.

8. No discussion of mind as mirror could be complete without
reference to Rorty's significant (if erroneous) claim that

[w]ithout the notion of the mind as mirror, the notion of
knowledge as accuracy of representation would not have
suggested itself. Without this latter notion, the strategy common
to Descartes and Kant-gctting more accurate representations by
inspecting, repairing, and polishing the mirror, so to
speak-would not have made sense. Without this strategy in mind,
recent claims that philosophy could consist of "conceptual
analysis" or "phenomenological analysis' or "explication of
meanings" or examination of

P.38

the "logic of our language" or of "the structure of the
constituting activity of consciousness' would not have made sense.

Richard Rorty Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princetor:
Princeton University Press, 1981), p. 12. Phenomenology is quite
certainly not a form of representationalism. Intentionality, is
not the activity of re-presenting, but rather, the activity of
presenting. To intend is to be immediately in the presence of the
intended object, not to dwell upon some metalogical stratum of
ghostly simulacra. More than this, however, it is, and can in
principle be, no part of the task of phenomenology to compare
appearance with reality.

9. Reginald Allen's incisive comments are to the point
here:

The very being of a reflection is relational, wholly dependent
upon what is other than itself: the original and the reflecting
medium.... The reflection does not resemble the original rather,
it is a resemblance of the original. Reginald E. Allen,
"Participation and Predication in Plato s Middle Dialogues,' in
Gregory Vlastos, ed., Plato= A Collection of Critical Essays, I=
Metaphysics and Epistemology (New York: Doubleday, 1971), p. 174.

10. I owe a certain hesitation regarding this claim to Professor
Sandra Wawrytko. In a previous paper, "Sartre and the Chinese
Buddhist Theory of No- Self," I had remarked that ''vacuity..
seems little more than a three-dimensionalization of mirroring.
And the additional dimension is conceptually otiose." In her
response to the paper, Professor Wawrytko wisely and helpfully
pointed out that, whereas light travels through a crystal ball, it
is remitted, turned back, by the mirror. Metaphors are notoriously
limited in their application, and it is best to specify from the
outset that the course of illumination is a metaphysical ' issue.
As I shall claim, both the perfect mirror and the perfect crystal
ball. are invisible, and thus, in this trivial sense,
indistinguishable. The usefulness of either metaphor extends no
farther than its visibility.

11. Suzuki, op cit., p. 17.
12. Yampolsky, op. cit.,p.136

13.For Sokolowski, "meaning," in the phenomenologically significant
sense reflected in the German "meinen, "is a "dimension''' or
"slant" upon perceptible objects, present or absent, not by any
means a fleshless specter haunting the equally spectral chambers
of the mind. Robert Sokolowski, ''Exorcizing Concepts," The Review
of Metaphysics 15 (1987) p. 458. Indeed,

P.39

One of the most destructive effects of the tendency we have to
psychologize or mentalize meanings is the withdrawal of the formal
possibilities of presentation from beings and the confinement of
these possibilities to our mental and psychological makeup, as
though our minds were something else besides the presentation of
things.

Ibid, p. 459.

14.Jean-Paul Sartre, The Transcendence of the Ego: An Existentialist
Theory of Consciousness, Forrest Williams and Robert Kirkpatrick,
trans. (New York:Farrar, Straus and Giroux), p. 42.

15. Ibid, p. 71.

16. Ibid, p. 84.

17.Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness. An Essay in
Phenomenological Ontology, trans. Hazel E. Barnes (New York:
Washington Square, 1971), p.26.

18.Edmund Husserl, Logical Investigations, J. N. Findlay, trans. (New
York: Humanities Press, 1970), V. section 3, p. 540. 19. Sartre,
Being and Nothingness, op. cit., p. 20.

20.Edmund Husserl, The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness,
Martin Heidegger, ed., James S. Churchill, trans. (Bloomington:
Indians University Press, 1971), Appendix XII, 176-7.

21.Edmund Husserl, Zu Phanomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins,
Rudolf Boehm, ed. (Husserliana X). The Hague: Nijhoff, 1966, no.
50, pp. 333- 34, n. I, as cited in Robert Sokolowski, Husserlian
Meditations: How Words Present Things (Evanston: Northwestern
University Press, 1974), p. 133. 22 While I view the philosophy of
the Platform Sutra in a somewhat different light since its
publication, I still maintain, as I suggested in ''Hui-neng and
the transcendental Standpoint," that

The operator, "originally'' (pen lai) determines the way in which
the statement "Not one things exists" is true." "Originally'' is a
mode of truth, but riot, obviously, for the Ch an tradition, a
mode of propositional truth. "Originally" is more faithfully
understood as a mode of conscious revelation, a way of being
conscious, an attitude or stance of mind. Whatever stance
"originally" may refer to, it must be such that, for consciousness
engaged in that mode of conscious life, "not one thing exists."

P.40

23.Suzuki, op. cit., p. 51.

24.As quoted in Suzuki, op. cit., p. 26.

25.Ibid., pp 26-7.

26.Ibid., p. 27.

27.Yampolsky, op. cit., pp. 139-40.

28.In Prufer's tightly-worded characterization,

[t]he differentiated (those which are different, the differents)
are different from each other and from the undifferentiated or
indifferent matrix out of which they are differentiated and
which they cover over and hide. The matrix, however, is by
anticipation the matrix of the differents, but as matrix it
itself is different from them by its indifference. The
differents, as differentiated, are still indifferent by
recapitulation, by remaining being different out of the matrix
from which they were not different and in which they were not
different from each other.

Thomas Prufer, 'Welt, Ich und Zeit in der Sprache, " in
Philosophische Rundschau 20(1973) p. 226.

29.A F. Price and Wong Mou-Lam, translators, The Sutra of Hui Neng
(Boulder.Shambhala Publications, 1969), p. 26.

30.Price and Wong, op. cit., p. 26.

31.Sartre, The Transcendence of the Ego, op. cit., p. 63.

32.Sartre, Being and Nothingness, op. cit., p.11

33.Price and Wong, op. cit., p. 27.