Engaging Eastern philosophy can be a little disconcerting for those of us in the West who, using those like Socrates and Descartes as starting points for our philosophical inquiries, are accustomed to a linear and discerning way of thinking. This has led many to put Eastern philosophy into a kind of separate category outside from the rest, where it's entertained largely for amusement and either omitted from severe analysis and scrutiny or allowed a generous margin of error for that which may have been lost in translation. My own meandering efforts to get courses in Eastern philosophy accredited if not taught at the University of Iowa (whose philosophy department doesn't teach anything east of Greece) have been met with skepticism and dismissive statements like "but it embraces contradiction" or "that's not analytic philosophy."
In the West, where logic is king, we enjoy finding fallacies, inconsistencies, and pitfalls in each others' theories and then championing our own, daring others to return the favor. While I am in no way opposed to this delightful practice, I think it has so accustomed many of us to a certain mode of thinking and banter that it becomes difficult to step outside of it. But there is another half of the world that thinks too, and in ways comparably profound to any of your favorite Western thinkers. In order to learn anything at all from or about the Eastern worldview we have to take care to deconstruct our own philosophical frameworks, noticing in each step what it takes to do so, in order to uncover the forgotten assumptions of the Western philosophical tradition. Only then will we here be able to engage Eastern thought on a level playing field and take it more seriously, allowing us to see how far reaching its implications might run into our modern philosophical issues.
Different Forms
Philosophy in the West has traditionally been and still largely is largely concerned with discernment and definitions; those of the self, of the world, and of God. In the metaphysics of these views there can be traced a common thread that goes from Plato and Aristotle to Wittgenstein; this being a metaphysics which assigns to each thing a fixed essence or form. This is their notion of the substance which underlies reality, allowing for the possibility of its existence. It is beyond being made, unmade, or altered.
"“…what is called a form or a substance is not generated.” (Aristotle's Metaphysics Z.8 1033b13)
"2.026 There must be objects, if the world is to have unalterable form.
2.027 Objects, the unalterable, and the substantial are one and the same.
2.0271 Objects are what is unalterable and substantial; their configuration is what is changing and unstable." (Wittgenstein, Tractatus)
(In the Greek philosophy it was firstly Heraclitus alone who posed anything having what we know today to resemble the characteristics of Eastern philosophy. Even before Socrates, Heraclitus posited radical and seemingly counter-intuitive ideas to the people of that time and place. He said that things in the sensible world did not have natures of their own, independently of which they can be named and conceived, and that the world as we know it is really just a flux (or change, or flow) of a great Oneness. However, in Europe and Asia Minor it was the diametrically opposed idea (that of fixed forms) that gained more sway and became ingrained in the language.)
Oneness and its primacy is generally the crux of the biggest disparity between the Eastern and Western metaphysics. People often adopt a superficial reading of Eastern Philosophy as generally supporting a metaphysical dualism (and by extension pluralism), citing Yin and Yang as an obvious example. (We hear Yogis, Tai-chi practitioners, and new Buddhist converts talking about everything having an opposite, inhalation and exhalation, Samsara and Nirvana, masculine and feminine etc.) But a closer examination of Daoism and its famous Yin-Yang symbol, which I believe we can here safely take to be our Eastern paradigm, you see that it is used to point to an underlying metaphysical view in which this apparent duality does a sort of disappearing act. This could be supported ad infinitum by citing any Daoist and most Buddhist or Confucian texts but I'll spare you a long account and just here try to briefly show what I mean.
The Daodejing has a sort of creation myth that reads, "From the One came the Two, From the Two came the Three, and from the Three came the ten thousand things" (Daodejing, 42). Here there is no attempt to deny the apparent plurality in the universe. This passage rather seems to affirm the existence of the myriad objects of the sensible changing world as actual and tangible; they are what can be seen and touched. However, this metaphysical view of objects can be contrasted with the Western version above in generation and flexibility and identity. (Anything that could be understood as Form here, was generated, and can be altered further, making it not a Form at all. This will be clearer in a moment).
For our Eastern view, the substance (in the Aristotelian sense) of any thing, any object, is the same as the substance of the One. Or to say it another way, the substance of the One contains all essences. The "ten thousand things" each have their own essence or nature, but that essence is to be understood as highly relative. Essence is relative in that it is determined not only by the object, but also by that which surrounds the object, and even a potential observer's perspective. Therefore essence and the whole substratum it names, unlike the static form of the Western paradigm, is dynamic. This eternal and perpetual process of substantial change is what I call Flow.
What Flow Means For Philosophy
Flow as a concept shows itself every step of the way in Eastern philosophical teachings. Whereas in Western philosophy the goal is to grasp, in Eastern it is to let go; in the former we seek fulfillment, in the latter emptiness; here we're guided by duty, there by freedom; here we have elements, and there they're just phases. This sounds simple enough, and it's easy to say things like "substance is not static," but harder to really know what that means for philosophy, or to show how our current way of thinking will not do to work with it, for it undercuts even our most basic logical assumptions.
Take a look at the Yin-Yang again. We begin with a circle, the space inside of which we can here allow to represent the entire world (by world here I mean space-time, matter, forms, facts and all). There is just One thing, the empty space. Now, we add something. This can be represented by shading an area for the sake of contrast. In another sense the first thing added to this space is the principle of separation, one part of the circle from the rest. Either way we take our new shaded area and give it a border. (Noteworthy here is the fact that the area is of exactly half the space and that a curved line is used rather than a straight one, which points to the relativity of things and the importance of context etc. but we'll bypass those points for now). Ask yourself now how many things there are. Are there two? There is a black side and by contrast a white side, but did the entirety of the space inside the circle cease to exist as an object when we made them? Surely not; if it could be named and conceived before, it can too presently. So before separation we had One thing, and now by adding another thing we have three nameable things. So, in some sense here 1 + 1 = 3!
If you add Yang, Yin comes with it like baggage, and by extension innumerable combinations of these and that from whence they came. Anything you can name or conceive is the same: it came with baggage, and that baggage is everything else our human minds, our 'form of life', has the ability to discern/name/conceive.
Surely Eastern and Western thinkers all find 1 + 1 = 3 absurd on some basic level. But, whether or not this idea of the sum of two ones totaling three fits into some schema or breaks the rules of some system, the fact that you the reader were able to follow the reasoning leading up to it, and understand it (I hope), shows that there is at least a sense in which the statement is meaningful. (Wittgenstein would agree, no?) So what does it mean? I will not try to explore this at length now. I'll just say that for many Eastern philosophies, it is the degree to which we are able to keep this temporal, transient, dynamic nature of Yin and Yang present in our minds that is most directly related to our success as people. To get too attached to anything, (even non-attachment) and depend on it will cause you suffering. Forget permanence and life will not overwhelm you. Let go of discernment and language will not confuse you. Let go of yourself and death will not worry you. To forget to do these things is to inhibit the natural flow of the world and its true nature in your mind; this stoppage will cause cognitive dissonance and inhibit your happiness.
Sources:
- Aristotle's Metaphysics: © 1979 by H.G. Apostle Peripatetic Press. Des Moines, Iowa
- An Outline of Metaphysics Z: Copyright © 2000, by S. Marc Cohen http://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/zetaoutl.htm
- Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: (Tractaus) Ludwig Wittgenstein Seven Treasures Publications, 2009
- Philosophical Investigations: (P.I.) Ludwig Wittgenstein 4th Ed. Hacker, Schulte, Anscombe Blackwell Publishing, 2009
- Meaning as Language Use: (Bahm) Ken Bahm SCA Paper, 1990
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