Zen vs. Episteme?

From the Hsin-Hsin Ming, by Seng-Ts'an, third Zen patriarch (sixth century):

Deny the reality of things
and you miss their reality;
Deny the emptiness of things
ad you miss their reality.
The more you talk and think about it,
the further you wander from the truth.
So cease attachment to talking and thinking,
and there is nothing you will not be able to know.

Tis a difficult thing to imagine Long Sunday without attachment to knowing, to pontificating, to ascertaining and argument...  And yet, is it possible?  Can we imagine a quiet space and mode of non-attachment when it comes to what we do here?  Is it possible that this non-attachment, this negation that is not denial, is kin to Deleuze's plane of immanence, or Derrida's differance?

Comments

[Jodi]

Kenneth,
I like these questions. My first thought was a contrast with the Socratic "the unexamined life is not worth living"--but this quickly fails because it suggests another form of examination. Still, can examination be done without another? Even if the other is not a partner in dialogue but something like a master, it seems that most traditions acknowledge the importance of commonality.

I don't know how one might use Deleuze or Derrida to get at what you are suggesting. It may be that immanence suggests that there is an extra or excess to talking and thinking, to arguing etc, that cannot be thought strictly in terms of the talking, writing, arguing, that it's an extra something, a residue or remnant irreducible to the acts of speaking and writing. Perhaps this is not too far from Derrida?

[Alain]

Kenneth, I love the quote. It seems to suggest that there is a manner of discusson and exchange not attached to "winning an argument" or demonstrating one's erudition. What I enjoy most about Long Sunday (and some of the other sites we frequent) is the playfulness and sense of shared discovery. When the discussions become too infused with ego, they seem to degenerate into assault and personal vindication. I think what this sort of meditation reminds us of is that "enlightenment" (or wisdom) usually occurs when we are not preoccupied with our own self-importance.

And I like the reference to Derrida - I believe his approach to reading and thinking suggest a certain "rthymic meditation" on difference. His vigilant assertions of denying the conceptual nature of differance, that it is not this nor that, that it is not a negative theology, etc... Some have seen this move as disengenuous but I always thought that he was attempting to describe an experience that is undescribable, or at least has not yet found its medium.

Thanks for posting this.

[Charles B.]

nevertheless, the typo irks.

[Jodi]

Alain--this is great:

"enlightenment" (or wisdom) usually occurs when we are not preoccupied with our own self-importance.

[cynic librarian]

On whether to engage in philosophical discussion or dialectic or follow the road of Zen, I think the following from Tanabe Hajime's Philosophy as Metanoetics is on point:

When Zen emphasizes the importance of faith and witness, it is in order to distinguish its standpoint of the identity of action and conetmplation from one of merely static contemplation. Faith, of course, bespeaks an attitude of trust in which one entrusts oneself to what is transcendent; and witness, a consciousness of the immanence of what is transcendent. But from its standpoint of immediacy and identity, Zen naturally equates faith with witness as the two faces of practice and discipline. In Zen, action, faith, and witness become one. But what this gives us is not the transforming mediation of a for-itself mode but the unity of an in-itself mode. For this reason, to speak of practice and discipline, of faith and belief, or of witness and satori is all the same. Each of them subsumes the others into itself. In the for-itself mode of metanoetics, however, the three elements are mediated by one another so as to form a sort of trinitarian wholeness. Here we cannot speak of any one of them necessarily subsuming any other into a unity. By being distinguished from one another, they are able to determine a relationship of mutuality.

These, then, are the differences between the in-itself and the for-itself modes of being, between the unity of identity and transforming mediation. Although the two converge in their concern with action and transformation based on absolute nothingness, Zen cannot escape its tendency to mysticism by reason of its insistence on in-itself unity. And in any event, Zen differs from the transformation by Other-power of metanoetics insofar as it agrees with self-power doctrines based on a theory of freedom. We must not overlook the difference between the standpoint of the wise and heroic and that of the ordinary and ignorant. -- pp. 191-192

[hugh]

I think that it might be productive to distinguish a couple of different things that are being grouped together in the post, namely, attachment to "talking and thinking" and attachment to pontificating.

It's easy to attack attachment to pontificating (or, simply, to attack pontificating). Pontification can be seen as an attachment to one's own idea, which prevents one from listening to others, and maybe the dynamics of this can be addressed from the point of view of an ethics of non-attachment, as well as from other points of view.

I think, though, the quoted text aims more directly at attachment to thinking.

One critique of talking and thinking is that all talking and thinking is really (disguised) pontificating. And this seems to be a more valid critique on the net than in some other contexts. But I don't think it's really wholly accurate. ("To the man with many trolls, there is no true troll.")

And I don't think this is the Third Patriarch's argument, either. Zen doesn't deny the possibility of a valid role for talking and thinking -- as we can see, for example, in the existence of stories passed down, and in the fact that many of these stories are themselves about dialogues betweeen students and masters. But it does want to question the nature of the role of thinking, and the centrality which we presently (and in this forum) accord it.

***

I don't claim to understand the Hajime text very well at all. I'm not sure what he means by "faith", for one thing. Faith is not a central concern of Zen (so far as I understand it).

If the final paragraph means that Zen thinks of itself as wise and heroic, different from the ordinary and ignorant, then Hajime might have to confront Joshu's statement that "Zen mind is ordinary mind."

***

Below is a different translation of the passage quoted in the main post. (I included the next couplet as well, which seems to fit in.) This is (from memory) the version chanted in (some of) the centers of the Rochester Zen Center lineage.

"If you assert that things are real
you miss their true reality

but to assert that things are void
also misses reality.

The more you talk and think on this
the further from the truth you'll be.

Cut off all useless thoughts and words
and there's nowhere you cannot go.

Returning to the root itself,
you'll find the meaning of all things."

***

Thanks for posting this.

[Kenneth Rufo]

Hugh, I'm with you, I didn't understand the Hajime text either. Faith usually implies some sort of transcendental object, and there isn't any such object in Zen. As Suzuki Roshi said, "just sitting" is enlightenment, not preparation for some later enlightenment down the road.

Though there are quite a few schools of Zen thought, so perhaps faith relates to a collection of practices with which I am less aware...

Regardless, you're right about attachment. The third patriarch is making a claim about the problem with knowing/thinking one knows, not just with arguing or strutting one's stuff about what you know. Hence the post, since as someone who has spent the last decade either training or practicing as an academic, I have difficulty reconciling the two spheres of thought ... sometimes.

[cynic librarian]

Hajime was a practitioner of Pure Land Buddhism, although that categorization oversimplifies his debt to Zen and Christianity. His explication of Metanoetics is a way to show how Metanoetics is philosophy in action while at the same time retaining the spirit and essence of Pure Land. In many ways, his Metanoetics is in response to the catastrophe of fascist Japan. He had gone along with the Japanese fascists but eventually experienced a spiritual/emotional breakdown.

His conversion (metanoia, zange to Pure Land/Metanoetics was a way to counter the Zen collusion with the Samurai ethos that was involved in the support and nurturing of the Japanese fascists. Metanoetics appears to me to be an attempt to outline a socially/politically conscious way of life that addresses these abuses of the Zen spirit.

On Hajime's understanding of faith, I can't go beyond a quote and some preliminary suggestions for consideration. On what he calls "faith-witness," Hajime writes:

To be sure, insofar as the zange we have been speaking of does not belong to the performance of jiriki (self-power) but is based on tariki (Other-power), one cannot practice zange by oneself alone. At the same time, because the absolute subject of Other-power is absolute nothingness (which is, therefore, the real subject of the activity of the absolute transformation), it must be mediated by the relative self. Instead of having its ground in "the self-identity of absolute contradictories," absolute nothingness must be grounded in the absolute mediatory activity of one's religious existence through "death-and-resurrection." Hence, absolute nothingness can also be called tariki, since it is experienced through faith-witness (shin-sho) as the principle of the negation and transformation of the self. In this sense, tariki inevitably depends on jiriki as its mediatory "other."

While I do think that Hajime is talking about some kind of transcendent reality (Other-power), I am not sure that the concept of faith itself must relate to a transcendent object or reality. Indeed, when I say that I have faith in someone's coming through in a particularly dangerous or seemingly hopeless situation, it does not seem that I am referring to anything transcendent per se. It does seem that I am speaking of a trust in that person to overcome those odds and act in a way that accords with what I expect from them.