lin chen-kuo - metaphysics, suffering, and liberation: the debate between two buddhisms - p. 298

7/31/2019 LIN Chen-kuo - Metaphysics, Suffering, and Liberation: The Debate between Two Buddhisms - p. 298

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school and Malcolm David Eckel contend that the Critical Buddhists fail

to see the limits of logocentrism or to give difference its due. Whileboth sides agree in criticizing the metaphysics of identity for its lack ofsocial conscience, the Topical Buddhists insist that religious or socio-

political liberation must be achieved through the critique of self-centered

rationality.

In a third and concluding section I will argue that the unnished pro-ject of modernity can be carried on through negative dialectics in the

Buddhist sense. In line with the Mahayana clich that there is no nirvana

without samsara, we need to see that modernity cannot be achieved

without suffering. If samsara and suffering are ontologically part ofmodernity, as Adorno points out in his Dialectics of Enlightenment, then

metaphysics will not be eliminated or overcome completely. The prob-

lem is rather how to engage in more joyful and deconstructive forms of

metaphysics.

THE KARMA OF MODERNITY

Even though we now recognize Hegels announcement of the coming

of world history as a Eurocentric myth, the fact is, the encounter

between European modernity and other traditions continues to take place

on all sides. Historically, the Buddhist encounter with modernity beganwith European colonial expansion to Asia prior to the eighteenth century.

The Western discovery of Buddhism not only brought about the so-called

Oriental Renaissance in the West, but also changed the self-understandingof Buddhist traditions.1 Under the shadow of colonialism, Buddhists wereled to view themselves through the lens of another culture, or even to

rewrite their own traditions with alien categories, thus effecting a kind of

reverse Orientalism from within. The irony and ambivalence of the situa-

tion is only further complicated when Buddhists now turn around and tryto confront the complexity of modernity in its present-day forms. From

the very outset, we seem to be trapped in a hermeneutic circle of

(mis)understanding.

Accordingly, it seems apropos to begin with a brief digression onrecent philosophical reections on modernity since the 1980s. The debate

between Habermas and the young conservatives like Lyotard, Derrida,

and Rorty offers one way into the question. We could also look back toHeidegger and his reading of Nietzsche in the early 1940s or, as both

METAPHYSICS, SUFFERING, AND LIBERATION

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Habermas and David Kolb suggest, back to Hegel.2 For the sake of brevity,

I will restrict my remarks here to Habermas in the attempt to track theshifting horizon of modernity in terms of attitudes toward metaphysics.

For it is here, in the critiques of metaphysics, that the pathology of

modernity witnessed in all radical critics is most visible.3

Some may question whether the assumption of such a relationship

between modernity and metaphysics is legitimate. To the social scientist,

Western modernity is manifest in the structures of industrial society, in

capitalism, technology, and liberal democracy.4 Weber, as is known,

attributed the dynamism behind these structures to rationalization, but

just how this works out in the concrete for modern civilizations is far from

self-evident. Philosophically and historically, we need to look to a deeper

understanding of beingthat is, of the world and human beingsin thethought of gures like Descartes and Kant. In order for society to be

rationalized in the form of modernity, there must be some sort of

underlying metaphysical mind-set at work.

In the modern age, the processes of rationalization are carried on

within an epistemological framework of the subject-object duality. This

framework measures and certies our knowledge of the external world.

The foundation of epistemic certainty is therefore located on the side of

the subject: for Descartes, in the ego of the cogito; for Kant, in the

autonomous self as law-giver and world-viewer. The subject, in particular

the thinking subject, becomes the center of being, while the object is

reduced to something external to and represented by the subject. This

mind-set functions not only in the epistemic realm, but extends to theethico-political realm as well, where things and persons are objectied and

represented by the thinking subject. They become items of reason,

objects for rationalizaton. This mode of thought lies behind the great

achievements of the Enlightenment. As Heidegger has observed:

Western history has now begun to enter into the completion of that peri-od we call modern, and which is dened by the fact that man becomesthe measure and the center of beings. Man is what lies at the bottom ofall beings; that is, in modern terms, at the bottom of all objecticationand representability.5

Modernity is therefore the triumph of a human-centered or subject-

centered world view in which everything is reduced to the status ofrepresentation.6

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Heideggers critique of modernity and Western metaphysics calls to

mind Hegels articulation of the oppressive character of a reason univer-sally grounded in the structure of self-relationship, that is, in the relation-

ship of a subject that makes itself an object.7 In this regard, Hegel may

be regarded as the rst thinker to discern this negative dialectic in the

Enlightenment. The solution he proposed to this impasse of modernity

was to restore the primordial innocence and harmony of nature and his-

tory by revitalizing the unitary, reconciling power of reason. In the face of

the one-dimensional mind-set of modernity, Hegel never lost his opti-

mistic condence in the mediating, unifying power of reason in history.

But the dialectical hopes for the realization of universal history we

nd running through the pages of the Phenomenology of Mindwere not

matched by events in the real world. Quite the opposite. In the twentieth

century we nd thinkers like Heidegger and Adorno typifying the strong

sense of the suffering and helplessness of reason in the tide of events. In aourish of despair over the possibility of a logocentric philosophy,

Heidegger asserted that only a god can save us.8And for Adorno, the

practice of metaphysics becomes a mockery in an age stained by the mem-

ory of Auschwitz.9 Instead of philosophizing, Heidegger says, what

human beings need to do is open themselves to the presence (or the

absence) of a god who promises them liberation from their fallibility in

the midst of beings. The fallibility of modern persons is evidenced in the

age of technology as enframing (Gestell). The essence of man is

framed, claimed and challenged by a power which manifests itself in the

essence of technology, a power which man himself does not control.10

For Heidegger this is the discloser of modernity itself.11 The Being of

individuals is enframed by their very attempt to frame the world in which

they live, and this oblivion of Being is their saddest fate.

For Adorno, the melancholy and suffering of modernity is not merely

a matter of ontological pathology. It is a mourning reduced to silence in

the ashes of the spirit. All post-Auschwitz culture, including its urgent

critique, is garbage.12 Even after half a century, the agony and despair

are still discernible. Suffering can never be kept in silence: The need to

let suffering speak is the premise of all truth.13 The objectivity of suffer-

ing, in contrast, belongs to the systematic coercion of a metaphysics of

identity for which nonidentity is experienced as negativity. In Idealist

thinking, the power of suffering has been relegated to the transcendentalsubject, with the result that nonidentity is, in the nal stage of the dialec-


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tic, totally assimilated and wiped away. Adorno saw it as his vocation to

rescue the element of nonidentity from the control of this Idealist way ofthinking.14

In the face of negative metaphysicians like Heidegger, Adorno, and

Derrida, Habermas defends the need for a unity of reason to remain

perceptible in the plurality of its voices in our times.15 Granted reason

can no longer be perceived in terms of transcendental subjectivity, and

granted, too, the coercive nature of reason that Adorno and Heidegger

warn of, Habermas yet believes that reason-in-communication is still

required for our ongoing project of modernity. He insists that we should

recognize the signicance of the Enlightenment project out of which

objective science, universal morality and law, and the liberation of art

from the esoteric have emerged. It has enabled modern human beingslike us to live a rational everyday life.16 Habermas warns that the nega-

tive metaphysicians are in fact secret accomplices of the metaphysical

Idealism they seek to overcome:

Negation, which opposed the many to the one as Parmenides opposednonbeing to being, is also negation in the sense of a defense againstdeep-seated fears of death and frailty, of isolation and separation, ofopposition and contradiction, of surprise and novelty. This same defen-siveness still betrays itself in the idealist devaluation of the many to mereappearances.17

Habermas rejects negative metaphysicians and metaphysical Idealism as

extremes. In the latter, empirical individuals are conceived of merely asduplications of an Idea; in the former, reason is degraded for its oppres-

sion and refuge is found in a totaliter aliter.18

THE UNFINISHED PROJECT OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT

Whether they take a positive or a negative attitude toward modernity,

Western thinkers are clearly aware of the intrinsic relationship, theoretical

and practical, between the modern world and metaphysics. Heidegger

makes the eschatological claim that only through the destruction of

metaphysics is Being capable of disclosure, while Adorno diagnoses

metaphysics of identity as the cause of historical catastrophe. For his part,

Habermas, too, recognizes the necessary transition towards post-metaphysical thinking, although as a defender of modernity he must

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bringing Buddhism back to the modern world as the only place where

the problems of theory and sociopolitical praxis can be properly tested. Intheir view, insensitivity to the theoretical roots of monistic metaphysicson the part of Sino-Japanese Buddhism lies at the root of an uncon-

sciousness of, or even complicity with, sociopolitical injustices like military

imperialism, ethnic discrimination against aboriginal Japanese or foreign-ers, Japanese ethnocentrism, and so on. In other words, they contend that

monistic metaphysics or dhtu-vda(a neo-Sanskritism coined by Matsu-

moto) are to be blamed for individual and social sufferings of this sort.

The monistic metaphysics in Sino-Japanese Buddhism, exemplied inthe doctrine of original enlightenment, appears for the rst time in The

Awakening of Mahayana Faith. According to Hakamaya this doctrine has

three characteristics:

1. All existents are grounded in a singular, changeless toposthat is, inan original enlightenmentas an ultimate reality or substance. Thestructure of this metaphysics is the same as the Brahmanist doctrine ofatman or Taoist naturalism. In contrast to topical metaphysics, trueBuddhism teaches the doctrine of dependent arising, that all beingsare in the groundless ux of temporal becoming.

2. Since the doctrine of original enlightenment presupposes transcen-dental subjectivity, it contradicts the Buddhist notion of no-self andsubjects people to egocentric authoritarianism.

3. As a kind of experientialism, the thought of original enlightenmentalso leads Buddhists to indulge in belief in an ineffable Suchness or

Nature, which contradicts the spirit of true Buddhism without recog-nizing the priority of intellect, logic, and language.21

This same critique of metaphysics is visible in Matsumotos criticismofdhtu-vda, in which the doctrine oftathgata-garbha(the matrix of

Buddhahood) is singled out as a main target. As a metaphysics of origin

or locus (dhtu), dhtu-vdapresupposes a One, a Real, or a Self

(atman) underlying all existents (dharmas) as their common ground. Incontrast to the permanence and substantiality of the One, all existents are

reduced to illusory appearances. The presupposition of sameness in this

metaphysics in turn conceals social discriminations and injustice in thesense that all differences are reduced to representations of an unchanging

sameness.22

Compared to Heideggers critique of logocentrism or self-centeredrationality, the Critical Buddhists are more concerned with the authori-

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tarian character of Idealist ontology. The philosophical and practical con-

sequences of their position are clear in their attempts to reclaim the valid-ity of reason, which they consider to have been lost in Sinicized forms ofBuddhism. They insist that both the Cartesian tradition and trueBuddhism lead to pluralism and individualism through the emancipatorypower of reason. In the encounter with modernity, they take a rm stanceagainst postmodernism or deconstruction, which they see as a direct off-

spring of topical thinking.23 Like Habermas, the Critical Buddhistschoose to carry out the project of modernity because they see that boththe West and Buddhism share the same idea of enlightenment, namely asa quest for liberation from ignorance and domination. In this sense, theircritique ofhongakuand tathgata-garbhametaphysics must not be dis-

missed too quickly as no more than sectarian ravings or a longing for fun-damentalist certainties.

CRITICAL BUDDHISM IN MODERN CHINA

While the voices of Critical Buddhism from Japan have provoked heatedcontroversy on both sides of the Pacic, attention has yet to be given toanother movement of Critical Buddhism in modern China. In broaderperspective, Critical Buddhism is merely one local case in East Asia of a

variety of responses within Buddhism to the challenge of modernity. Inthis regard, we cannot pass over developments in areas like China andTaiwan without risking the confusion of a few trees for the whole forest.

Critical Buddhism in modern China is best represented by O-yangChing-wu, the founder of the Chinese Institute of Buddhist Studies, andhis successor, L Cheng. From the 1920s to the 1940s the Institute haddevoted itself to the return to Indian Buddhism through promoting thestudy of Abhidharma, Prajpramitthought, Madhyamika, Yogacara,

Vinaya, and Buddhist logic, in the hopes of reforming false Buddhism

and reinforcing true Buddhism. This new Buddhist movement wasbased on three tenets:

1. Mind is quiescent by nature, but it is deled byklea.

2. The proper model for Buddhist practice is cognitive conversion(parvtti-sraya) from the deled mind to the quiescent mind.

3. The achievement of conversion results in a quiescent life-world madeup of the interpenetration of the minds of sentient beings and theBuddhas, all of whom share the quiescent, perfected mind.


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Obviously, this model is based on the Yogacara system.24

Taking these tenets as normative, O-yang and L denounced theideas of original enlightenment and Origin Returning (fan-pen huan-

yanB), the ideological core of Chinese Buddhism (Tien-tai,

Hua-yen, Chan, and Pure Land).25 They argue that these notions, as

inventions of the Chinese apocryphaThe Awakening of Mahayana

Faith, the Leng-yen ching, and Yan-cheh chingin particularare to be

rejected as totally heterodox.

L Cheng stresses the conceptual incompatibility between original

enlightenment and the quiescence of mind. In addition to the historical

unreliability of the foundational texts, the doctrine that mind isalready

enlightened by nature is not coincident with the doctrine that mind ought

to bequiescent. In Ls view, the doctrine of original enlightenment pre-

supposes an Idealist ontology, while the notion of quiescent mind can be

understood merely in terms of epistemological conversion. L goes fur-ther to point out that the doctrine of original enlightenment is necessarily

coincident to conservative ideology because it implies no intention to

change the real world. If one accepts this doctrine, then every effort

should be expended to rediscover original enlightenment as a dynamic

subjectivity, since it is only in this sense that ones religious journey can be

said to have been completed. Focus on the quiescent mind, in contrast,

sees cognitive conversion and progress (transformation, parvtti-

sraya) as a function of the mirror-like nature of mind in the episte-

mological sense (the light of reason). L Cheng takes this latter,

epistemological stance in refuting the ontological position of originalenlightenment.

It is also worth noting here that L Cheng stresses the importance of

cognitive conversion as the foundation of sociopolitical reform and

progress. In an article written in 1954, most likely under the inuence of

Marxist theories of the sociology of knowledge, L reinterpretedparvtti-

srayaas the radical change of cognition that leads to a better knowledge

of social reality, which in turn prompts social action in the direction of

true social reform.26 Not surprisingly, L saw the ontology of original

enlightenment and its practice of Origin Returning as inclined to sup-

port the status quo and to reject calls for social change.27

Ls approach implies further that the ideological distinction between

Conservative Buddhism and Progressive Buddhism is drawn in terms of acontrast between ontology and epistemology. In this regard, it must be

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said that L favors logos over mythos, logic over rhetoric. He concludes

that, under the shadow of the doctrine of original enlightenment, all theSinicized forms of Buddhismincluding Tien-tai, Hua-yen, andChanhave been corrupted into forms of anti-intellectualism, panthe-

ism, mysticism, and conservatism.28As if foreseeing the coming contro-

versy between modernity and postmodernity, L never questioned the

adequacy of rationality.

THE PLACE WHERE AN ABSENCE IS PRESENT

According to the Topical Buddhists, the story needs to be rewritten com-pletely. Modernity cannot simply be imported from the West to the East

as is. Its underlying reason-centered or subject-centered worldview needs

to be brought into question. In contrast to the Critical Buddhists uncrit-

ical acceptance of reason, Topical Buddhists are more skeptical of ratio-nality. They view Western modernity as still ensnared in the metaphysics

of identity. On this point they would consider themselves more critical

and self-reective on the problem of modernity than the CriticalBuddhists.

In his critique of modernity, Nishitani Keiji, one of the most promi-

nent Topical Buddhist philosophers, traces the roots of modernity to

Cartesianism. According to Nishitanis analysis, Descartes conceived bodyand mind as two separate substances, belonging to two different worlds.

The whole natural world, including the human body, becomes the cold

and lifeless world of death, the world of mechanism, in which each indi-vidual ego is like a lonely but well-fortied island oating on a sea ofdead matter.29 This destiny that seems to have befallen modern men and

women is Nishitanis concern.

In support of this concern, Nishitani sets out to expose the self-

deception embedded in the ego of the Cartesian cogito. For Descartes andfor modern people, the ego of the cogitois taken as the ultimate founda-

tion of the certainty of our knowledge and existence. It is a pure and self-

evident rationality. Nishitani digs more deeply into the roots of the ego

and concludes that its self-consciousness is in fact a result of its being mir-rored in the eld of self-consciousness. That is, because this ego is seen

as self-consciousness mirroring self-consciousness at every turn and the

cogito is seen from the standpoint of the cogito, ego becomes a mode ofbeing of the self closed up within itself.30 It is clear to Nishitani that


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modernity is grounded on the self-enclosing, self-attaching egothe

same ego that Buddhism identies as the constitutive cause of the sam-saric world. Buddhism recognizes that rationality must be disenchantedand uncovered as a mere self-deception, as Hegel and Nietzsche werelater to recognize. Thus for Nishitani the rise of nihilism from within the

very bosom of modernity is a matter of dialectical necessity.In Nishitanis scheme, modernity unfolds in three stages: the eld of

consciousness, the eld of nihility, and the eld of absolute emptiness. Inthe eld of consciousness, as represented by Cartesianism, the world isstructured within the subject-object duality. The object is known andappropriated through the representation of the subject in pursuit of itsdesire.31 Representational thinking, to which Heidegger ascribes the

whole Western metaphysical tradition, characterizes the essence of

modernity.32

In the eld of nihility, a stage made necessary by disillusionment withrepresentational consciousness, things cease to be objects, and, as aresult, appear as realities cut off from representation. In other words,nihility is itself a reality, and vice versa. Nishitani goes further to explain inHeideggerian terms: the being of beings discloses itself in the nullifyingof nothingness (das Nicht nichtet).33

But Nishitani does not stop short at this Nietzschean-Heideggerianrealization of nihility. Rather, he sets out to articulate a positive andafrmative notion of nothingness as the groundless home-ground ofbeings. In his words:

Prior to the appearance that things take on the eld of consciousness,where they are objectivized as external realities, and prior to the moreoriginal appearance things assume on the eld of nihility, where they arenullied, all things are on the eld of emptiness in their truly elementaland original appearances. In emptiness things come to rest on their ownhome-ground.34

In this regard he appeals to expressions of the Zen-Buddhist-awakenedexperience of nothingness such as hills, rivers, the earth, plants and trees,tiles and stones, all of these are the selfs original nature, and all thingscome to realize themselves.35

It is precisely because of this conception of absolute emptiness thatNishitani and the Kyoto school are seen by the Critical Buddhists as the

modern inheritors ofhongaku thought.36 This prompts us to ask: DoesNishitani slip back into mystical, speculative metaphysics? Does he com-

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mit himself to something transcending language and reasoning, some-

thing not admissible in Buddhism? Again we listen to Nishitani in his ownwords:

True emptiness is nothing less than what reaches awareness in all of us asour own absolute self-nature. In addition, this emptiness is the point at

which each and every entity that is said to exist becomes manifest: aswhat it is in itself, in the Form of its true suchness.

The unity of the absolute near side is not the result of a process butrather the original identity of absolute openness and absolute empti-ness. It is the absolute one, the absolute self-identity of the absolutetwo: the home-ground on which we are what we are in our self-natureand the home-ground on which things are what they are in themselves.37

To read passages on the literal surface, we cannot but agree with Haka-maya that Nishitani does indeed assert something called the unity of theabsolute, the original identity, and the absolute one in terms that

parallel the assertions of an ontology of original enlightenment or dhtu-

vda. What is more, his frequent appeal to Sino-Japanese Buddhist terms

such as nature-origination (shki suru), reciprocal interpenetration(egoteki sny), and immediacy (genj), suggest a reliance on the Hua-

yen and Zen traditions, the most notorious examples ofhongakuthought.If this is indeed the way to read Nishitani, then there seems no way

around the criticisms raised by Hakamaya.Surely this is not the only way to read Nishitani, let alone the only

correct way. One may, for instance, consider his idea of the Absolute in

light of the Zen and Nietzschean notion of play. With the introduc-tion of the notion of play into metaphysics, the eld or topos of AbsoluteEmptiness need no longer be taken simply in the sense of a substratum

or ground of existents. The topos would rather refer to our daily life-world in which (as Nishitani himself points out) all things exist without

aim or reason outside of themselves and become truly autotelic and with-out cause or reason, a veritable Leben ohne Warum.38 This playful, self-

emptying life-world is permanentlyinvisibleas long as the things of lifeare viewed only through the lenses of self-centered reason or subjectivity.

It becomes visibleonly when envisaged in playful samdhi. As Nishitaninotes further, the visible in playful-samadhi must be empty of the telosor

substance ascribed by the subject-as-reason. It is, therefore, neither

necessary nor legitimate to read any meaning of substance into Nishi-tanis eld of absolute emptiness. We cannot afford to overlook the


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deconstructive implications in the Idealist vocabularies employed by

Nishitani and his fellow thinkers of the Kyoto school.As for the troublesome notion of topos or eld, it is always

understood by the Critical Buddhist as something illogical, irrational, or

mystical. According to Nakamura Yjir, however, the meaning of

topos in relation to individual can be traced back to an analogy with

the role of the chorus in relation to that of the hero in Greek

tragedy.39 The Greek word tpoV means a common ground but with

rich connotations of rhetorical theme, community, and common sense.

Topos in this sense has long been restricted by logocentric tendencies

in Western philosophy to something invisible and insignicant. The more

obvious choice, particularly in the ethos of modernity, would be to place

rhetoric beneath logic and the community beneath the individual. In this

regard, the Topicalist has been at pains to note that modern men and

women can only end up alienated from their home ground if they donot realize the absurdity of the logocentric ethos. Only through the

reclaiming of the life-world can modern individuals be redeemed from

the reason-centered ethos of modernity and its nihilistic consequences.

If the thinkers of the Kyoto school are seen to be obsessed by

Hegelian and Heideggerian discourse, and to this extent not yet free of

idealistic speculation, Malcolm David Eckel presents a methodological

alternative in his 1992 bookTo See the Buddha. In an attempt to revital-

ize the context of Buddhist discourse, Eckel tries to retrieve the religious

meaning of Bhvavivekas philosophical texts by placing them within a

narrative and metaphoric context reconstructed in the light of Hsan-tsangs pilgrimage report, rather than follow other scholars in treating

him only as a logician and epistemologist.40 Eckel makes clear that his aim

in challenging the conventional assumption of the separation between

theory and practice, elite and popular, religion and philosophy, and

mythos and logos in particular is to bring the complex and abstract con-

cepts of Buddhist philosophy down to earth. In so doing, he concludes

that the logos of Bhvavivekas rational investigation is embedded in its

own mythos.41

In the course of his hermeneutic praxis, Eckel claries his own cri-

tique of modernity, arguing that the emptiness of logos as well as the

emptiness of mythos can only be perceived together through a place that

is empty. In his own words, to see a Buddha is nothing but to see aBuddha as a place where an absence is present. By appealing to Nishitani

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Keijis notion of absolute nothingness as place, Eckel expounds how

a Buddhist perceives things in their mere conventionality, which leavesno space for metaphysics of identity:

The logic of place takes on a very distinctive character when one asks, asphilosophers do, not just about the location of the Buddha but aboutthe location of Emptiness. Buddhist logicians, unlike the logicians ofother Indian schools, did not think that it was possible, however, to per-ceive such an absence directly. A perception of the absence of somethinglike a pot on a particular spot of earth had to be based on the empty spotof earth. Perception of Emptiness also had to be based on a perception ofthe thing that is empty. But if all things are empty of identity, in what doesEmptiness reside? Jnagarbha explains that it is the thing itself (vastu-matra) in its mere conventionality: merely to see a conventional entity as

it is, without superimposing on it any ultimate reality, is the same as see-ing it as Emptiness.42 (italics mine)

Back to conventionality, as Eckel and the other Topical Buddhists

claim, is tantamount to saying back to the life-world, and back to the

life-world is the same as back to Emptiness. For Buddhism, there is no

Emptiness perceivable without a place in our daily world. As suggested

in Dgens verses, A leap year is met one in four / Cocks crow at four in

the morning,43 the experience of enlightenment is perceivable only in

the signs of our daily worldthe seasons, sounds, smells, touches, and so

onwhich are empty in themselves.44

SUFFERING IN A JOYFUL BUDDHISM

The controversy between Critical Buddhism and Topical Buddhism is not

restricted to its contemporary episodes discussed in the foregoing. It has

led to great ideological variety throughout the Buddhist tradition. What

makes the quarrel especially signicant in our times is that it has arisen inthe context of Buddhisms encounter with modernity. But what is the

meaning of this modern tale of two Buddhisms?

Both Critical Buddhism and Topical Buddhism agree that there is no

room for metaphysics of identity or substance in Buddhist thinking. The

reasons are obvious. The connections between metaphysics and desire

have been recognized already from the earliest beginnings of Buddhism.

In the twelve links of dependent arising we see that on account of desire(tah) there is clinging (updna). The clinging is further classied


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into four aspects: clinging to sense pleasures, to rituals, to metaphysical

theories, and to soul or substance theories. As K. N. Jayatilleke remarks,we believe in certain metaphysical theories and soul- or substance-theories

because we are impelled by our desires to believe in them.45And we are

impelled to believe in metaphysics, as Nietzsche points out, because we

are always in need of security and comfort.

But we must not overlook a more complicated relation between

metaphysics and the world-formation of life-and-death, as indicated by

the last four links of depending arising: clinging (to metaphysics), becom-

ing, birth, aging, and death. Unless this relation is fully claried, we are

not able to truly understand why the critique of metaphysics is every bit as

important in Buddhism as it is in Western philosophy. On this issue, too,

we nd that both sides of the controversy do not disagree.

The discrepancy arises rather in a difference of opinion over how

metaphysics is to be overcome. On the one hand, for the Critical Bud-dhists, it entails an uncompromising destruction or elimination of

(monist) metaphysics. Only after the complete destruction of meta-

physics can a pluralistic, liberating world be established on the basis of

pure rationality. For the Topical Buddhists, on the other hand, the modern

liberalism and individualism that characterize modernity still fall under

the shadow of subjectivism and logocentrism.46 They retain a permanent

suspicion of the project of modernity, insisting all the while that their

critique of logocentric modernity is neither a romantic reaction nor a kind

of quasi-critique as proposed by the Critical Buddhist but an uncompro-

mising absolute critique (to introduce a term coined by TanabeHajime) directed against reason itself. Without absolute critique or

great death, there will be no afrmation of great life, no return of

the life-world as the groundless home-ground.

At this point I am not inclined to arbitrate the debate. Nor do the

sectarian aspects of the question interest me. I wish merely to note that

the mutual misunderstanding seems to me to outweigh their understand-

ing of their respective positions. (For example, absolute nothingness or

original enlightenment in Topical Buddhism is never taken to mean

monistic substance.) The more pressing question concerns what stance

Buddhist thinkers will take in the confrontation with modernity and post-

modernity. Will it be a fundamentalist Buddhism, a positivist Buddhism,

a Heideggerian brand of Buddhism? Or will some of them dare, like thewandering Dionysius, to make metaphysics a playful enterprise? Perhaps

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this latter, third alternative, will take us beyond negative metaphysics or

negative theology and nudge Buddhism one step further in the direc-tion of a joyful science.

If Buddhism is viewed as a joyful science, suffering in metaphysics andmodernity can be recognized without turning it into an obsession withutopian liberation. For the joyful Buddhist, the metaphysics of identityor subjectivity that belongs to the project of modernity, as conventionalknowledge (samvtti-satya), is indispensable for ultimate knowledge(paramrtha-satya). It is also clear that the logic of either/or that is oftenemployed by both sides in the debate fails to recognize the dialecticalparadox involved in bringing metaphysics, suffering, and liberation intorelationship with one another. Only by fully recognizing and afrmingthis intrinsic paradox can one play and laugh without losing the critical

consciousness of suffering.


313

lin chen-kuo - metaphysics, suffering, and liberation: the debate between two buddhisms - p. 298

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