Author: Bin Song

Dynamic Harmony (和, he) as a Principle of Civil Disobedience

On By Bin SongIn Confucianism History & PhilosophyLeave a comment

(An earlier version of the article was firstly published in Huffington Post: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/a-catechism-of-ruism-conf_2_b_10449592)

Hallo, this is Dr. Bin Song teaching and researching at Washington College. As we have learned from previous units of the course, students may already have a sense of the significance of “harmony” or “harmonization” for the Ru tradition. As the character of Ru implies, being a Ru is to utilize one’s cultural knowledge and skills to harmonize all involved beings in a civilization. But what does the Ru tradition mean by “harmony”? Is there any distinction of the Ru conception of “harmony” from other traditions? In this unit, we’ll focus upon these questions. As a conversation starter, I’ll use political philosophy as an example, but please do keep it in mind that the implications of harmony is far-reaching in the Ru lifestyle, and we’ll discuss these implications later.

By all commonsense standards, which may of course be lacking in academic sophistication, the mainland of China is not democratic. The appointment of the General Secretary for the Chinese Communist Party is similar to the selection of the Pope in Roman Catholicism: a small circle of high bishops hold a closed meeting, white smoke rises up, and a new Pope marches out. Accordingly, everyone begins to cheer! In China, the people can’t vote for local magistrates beyond the village level. People can’t openly criticize any governmental malfunction unless ‘the criticisms are of good will.’ I am here quoting the words recently used by China’s foreign minister to berate a Canadian journalist after she had challenged the lack of essential human rights available to people in mainland China ( please click here). There are no television debates, there are no campaigns; often people even know who will be the No.1 political leader, and sometimes also the No.2, almost a decade before he or she actually steps ‘unto the throne.’

Primarily for this reason, I am infinitely sympathetic with the protest carried out by Hong Kong’s young people in 2014, the so-called ‘umbrella revolution,’ when they realized their right of universal suffrage could be ‘cashed out’ by being required to vote only for candidates for chief executive who have been either approved or assigned in advance by China’s central government. This reminds me of my own experience of voting for a ‘deputy of the people’s congress’ (人大代表) when I was in college. China has the strangest ‘congress’ in the world. Although it is called ‘the people’s congress,’ and its main functions are, like other congresses around the world, to pass laws and oversee the functioning of the government, the deputies making up the congress are almost all elitists from various areas of the country: they are city or province magistrates, high governmental officials, directors of giant corporations, presidents of universities, famous entertainers such as singers, film stars or presenters on TV talk-shows, etc. As I said, what is most ludicrous is that citizens can only vote for those representatives who have already been assigned from ‘above.’ I can never forget that in 2000, my sophomore year in college, I was called up to vote for the deputies of congress on behalf of my university. There was only one candidate and I didn’t even know who she was, what her political beliefs were, or how or whether she would fight for the people’s rights and interests. Even so, a label with her name was stuck to a voting box waiting for everyone’s ballots. When I realized how ridiculous this was, I quit, and never voted again.

This gloomy picture of contemporary Chinese politics poses a special challenge for Ruism, the most political of the traditions of ancient China, which always strives to realize ‘humane government’ (仁 政). The question for modern Ruists is: where does the tradition stand today? Actually, a western political observer has noticed a discouraging phenomenon in China’s various democratic movements, such as the umbrella revolution in Hong Kong: a Ruist voice is lacking (click here). When people search for ideological resources to back up any appeal to democracy, they are more than likely to appropriate ideas and slogans from the West, such as Victo Hugo’s, ‘When dictatorship is a fact, revolution is a duty.’ Nevertheless, in my view, Ruism is a tradition deep enough to provide an indigenous ideological resource to back up the contemporary Chinese people’s appeal to democracy, and the only remaining job for contemporary Ruists is to let people know what these ideas are, and then to try to help put these ideas into practice. In the remainder of this essay, I will argue that the spiritual, ethical and political goal of Ruism, ‘dynamic harmony’ (和, he), is the sort of democratic idea that can point to the correct direction for political reformation so badly needed in China and in all other related places in the world.

The basic meaning of ‘harmony’ is ‘being together,’ and the etymology of both its Chinese character, 和, and its English translation, harmony [Gr. άρμονία], relates to music. However, there is a significant difference between the ancient Greek philosophers and the ancient Ruist thinkers in regard to their understanding of musical harmony. For the Pythagoreans, musical performances furnish great occasions to ponder those perfect mathematical laws, such as the calculable proportions among notes and pitches within instrumental performances. In this way, playing music is a way of applying universal laws to particular performances so that an intended harmony is produced. For Ruists, I think they would not disagree with Pythagoreans’ conception of harmony, since being harmonious in general requests a certain set of rules to follow in order to counteract disharmonies. However, the tendency of embodying and practicing abstract ideas makes the Ru tradition distinctively more emphasize the bodily and participatory dimensions of harmonization. For Ruists, playing music (樂, yue) is like joining a magnificent banquet comprised of a variety of factors: performing instruments, singing, dancing, reading, ritual-playing, drinking, eating and so on. In this way, the pattern-principle (理, li) governing the performance of one single element, such as how to correctly play a harp, will be analogically adopted by the other elements even though it may be manifested in completely different ways, such as by the dancers who must translate musical notes into body language in order for the dance performance to unfold together with the playing of the instruments. Here, the key to harmony is not one of pondering universal mathematical laws beyond particular performances, but the creative inter-play among each human participant in accordance with each different situation. Understood in this way, playing music is a dynamic process leading to endless novelty while simultaneously manifesting a recognizable set of pattern-principles. It is not a matter of applying static, universal mathematical laws onto concrete instrumental performances, but rather one of engendering novel expressions of recognizable pattern-principles which have been played out by other co-players or earlier exemplary musicians. Because of this dynamic and diversifying essence of the Ruist idea of ‘harmony,’ I always suggest translating 和 as ‘dynamic harmony’ in order to distance it from its Pythagorean cousin. In Ruism, this distinct understanding of ‘dynamic harmony’ is nicely summarized by Confucius in Analects, 13:23: ‘The exemplary person searches for harmony without uniformity, but the petty-person searches for uniformity without harmony’ (君子和而不同，小人同而不和).

Clearly, this idea of ‘dynamic harmony’ is what sets the foundation for the peoples’ conception of good politics. It requires a humane government that does not do what the current Chinese government has done to the people of Hong Kong and the citizens of mainland China, that is, to ignore appeals from minorities and other under-represented groups of people, and then to impose uniform laws from above. An harmonious process of governance ought to be based upon an all-encompassing process of negotiation and compromise, participated in by all relevant groups of people, which then allows all the people to live and flourish together in the same society. We find references that this is the Ruist understanding of humane governance in some of the earliest Ruist classics.

In the Zuozhuan (Zhaogong 20 昭公二十年), a scholar-minister, Yanzi 晏子 (?-500 B.C.E), whose later thought had a great influence on the Ruist tradition, is recorded to have remonstrated with the Duke of Qi when the duke praised a minister whose ideas always coincided with his own. First, said Yanzi, the process leading to dynamic harmony in governance is like cooking a delicious soup using diverse ingredients, or playing pleasing music using varying instruments. Additionally, Yanzi argued that a harmonious and good government must also be based upon a creative tension within diverse factors:

“When the duke says, ‘Yes,’ Ju (據, the minister whom the duke of Lu had praised) also says ‘Yes’; when the duke says ‘No’, Ju also says ‘No’. This is like mixing water with water. Who can eat such a soup? This is like using the same kind of instruments to produce music. Who can enjoy such music? This is why it is not all right to be uniform (同, tong).”

According to this passage, when the current Chinese government only allows candidates for chief-executive or deputy to the people’s congress who have been assigned from above, they are doing exactly what Yanzi criticized: they are mixing water with water and using the same kind of instruments to produce music—and who enjoys that? From this and other similar Ruist texts, we also find that the Ruist idea of ‘dynamic harmony’ does not mean that there should be no conflict during the process of harmonization. The diversity of interests expressed by different groups of people on which any form of dynamic harmony is based almost inevitably leads to conflict. But it does mean that people do not see such conflict as a source of eliminating antagonism, but rather as a great opportunity leading to change and growth. This requires that people with different interests need to listen to each other, become educated about their topic, and negotiate with one another. Furthermore, doing so constrains personal interest and requires accommodation to the ideas of others, and then, necessitates finding sustainable solutions which allow each inter-connected group to complement the others, and to thrive together in the same society.

Understood in this way, in a case in which unjustified uniform laws have been imposed from above, the Ruist idea of ‘dynamic harmony’ can be seen as a principle of civil disobedience. It urges citizen disobedience because harmony must be based upon an integrated diversity. Ruists believe that a dominant voice cannot be accepted from any authority unless it succeeds in harmonizing appeals voiced by varying groups of people all the way from bottom to top. It is ‘civil’ because the essential Ruist method for dealing with conflict is non-violent and ought ultimately to be oriented toward the establishment of a new harmony. This requires the human co-participators in this conflict-resolution process to creatively invent new forms of ritual-proprieties (禮, li), making the necessary negotiations and compromises practicable and sustainable. In a certain perspective, what Hong Kong’s young people have done in their peaceful demonstrations is a perfect example of how ‘dynamic harmony’ can be practiced in a modern situation: “I protest, I disobey, but I do this as a responsible and educated citizen. Therefore, I will respect the dignity of all involved humans, including my political enemies, using peaceful and civil manners, but I will fight for my basic human right to the death, since without taking account of other people’s diverse democratic views, there can be no humane government, and neither can there be true ‘dynamic harmony’ in human society.”

Five Approaches to Meditation in Confucianism

On By Bin SongIn MeditationLeave a comment

Five major approaches to meditation in Confucianism (Ruism) are described as follows:

(1) Attention. Technically, focusing upon breathing is, as many traditions have practiced, a very efficient way to start and maintain Ru meditation. This implies that whenever our mind feels distracted, constantly going back to breathing will keep our meditation on the track. Of course, if breathing reaches its own natural, deeply meditative pattern, that is when it becomes very slow, fine, delicate and permeating, our mind is free to be directed to something else for enriching meditative experiences. For adept meditators, however, the time used to reach this natural pattern of breathing tends to be much faster, and its effect is much more guaranteed. For example, after 7 years of uninterrupted practice, whenever I take a nap, go to sleep, or even sit quietly on a train, the feeling of this extraordinary, yet natural pattern of breathing arrives almost as a constant.

(2) Empathy. When the breathed air is permeating within our body, the boundary feeling between our body and the outside world will gradually melt away. This is when the incipient sprout of empathy, which Mencius once talks about in his famous thought experiment of falling baby, is budding and grows. Many philosophers analyze Mencius’ thought as if it intended to construct an ethical theory. However, rarely has any theorist ever noticed that what Mencius really talks about is his meditative practice, and a corresponding Ru way of living. It is in the unitary feeling of ourselves and every creatures in the universe that lies the root of the cardinal virtue of Ruist ethics, i.e., humaneness (仁, Ren).

(3) Problem-solving. This is, without any doubt, the most important and salient part of Ru meditation. The purpose of Ru meditation is not to be an escapist in any sense. Instead, it aims to confront, contemplate, and resolve tangible and touchy issues in ordinary human life without any cringe. For instances, when I need to write a term paper for a better grade in school, I meditate. When I need to complete the process of financing for purchasing my first home, I meditate. When I need to deal with the relationship among family members, colleagues, or anyones I met or will meet on my life journey, I meditate as well. During the process, the Ru meditation enables us to empathetically understand the perspectives of every involved human and cosmic being, and thus, try our best to find a way to harmonize all their needs, including our own.

(4) Therapy. Meditation understood in a Ruist term has its unsurpassable benefits in restoring our continually consumed body, and in certain cases, mitigating or curing diseases. The feeling of deep breath to permeate every nook and cranny of our body is just so therapeutic! The much lowered stress level will therefore create better opportunities to treat our diseases. In my life experience, the diseases that meditation helps to cure or mitigate include: the decade-long insomnia during my young adulthood, occasional seasonal asthma due to the mounting pressure and stress, toothache, and stomachache.

(5) Motivation. No matter how difficult one’s life situation could be, the tiny little spark of lucidity, warmth and energy that reemerge from the depth of our body during meditation will inexorably motivate us to try our every piece of strength to make the world, where we find ourselves live in, be better. This may start from caring our children, spouse, and parents, having kind conversations with our neighbors, and furthermore, fulfilling our duties in the workplaces or as a responsible global citizen. On the one hand, Ruists believe the universe renews itself in a daily basis, and hence, it provides an inexhaustible amount of energy necessary for all beings and creatures to grow and thrive. On the other hand, how these cosmic energies are utilized by human beings to build a better family, a more livable country, or a more fulfilled personal lifestyle entirely depend upon humans ourselves. In a Ruist term, the essential meaning of human life can be encapsulated into one singular, cryptic sentence said by Confucius: it is humans that can make the Way of the cosmos extended and enlarged, but it is not the Way of the cosmos that extends and enlarges human beings.

In a nutshell, these five approaches to Ru meditation can be paraphrased by five Ruist terms: meditation of attention is to enhance our capacity of Reverence (敬, jing). Meditation of empathy is to nurture our virtue of Humaneness (仁, ren). Meditation of problem-solving is to find appropriate Pattern (理, li) for us to deal with real issues in human world. And meditation of therapy and motivation provides (養, yang) us with a healthy body to enjoy the irreplaceable opportunity of cultivating ourselves to become fully human (成人, chengren).

Enlightenment as an Incomplete Philosophy

On By Bin SongIn Western Philosophies and ReligionsLeave a comment
Audio: Enlightenment as an Incomplete Philosophy, by Dr. Bin Song.
Video: Enlightenment as an Incomplete Philosophy, by Dr. Bin Song.

(1593 words)

Hallo, this is Dr. Bin Song at Washington College. And Welcome to the course of “History of Modern Philosophy” at the spring of 2021. As modern philosophy constitutes the very foundation of so many crucial aspects of today’s human society at large, and American society in particular, let me celebrate your presence in the course and expect that we can all learn a great deal from it.

The course is organized with three major parts: Part I is called “enlightenment, war and peace,” Part II is “modern scientific revolution,” and Part III is “rationalism, empiricism and Kantian synthesis.” The rationale to organize it as such is to put the course in a narrative which answers the following three major questions: firstly, what is the most emblematic accomplishment of modern philosophy? How did modern philosophers get there? And What does modern philosophy look like in details? To put it briefly, the answers I try to furnish in the course for your own judgement and further learning are that: the most emblematic accomplishment of modern philosophy is the so-called Age of Enlightenment, and this accomplishment starts from modern scientific revolution when Copernicus decided to put the sun, rather the earth, at the center of his universe. Furthermore, continental rationalism, British empiricism, and Kant’s synthesis of both constitute the rich inner texture of what modern philosophy looks like in details.

So, in this first week of the course, let’s start to learn the narrative through reading Kant’s very famous, relatively short explanation of What is Enlightenment?

The “Enlightenment,” if understood narrowly, refers to those bunch of French “philosophes” such as Voltaire, Diderot, Montesquieu, whose philosophically provoking and groundbreaking work prepares the French revolution in 1789. However, understood broadly, the Enlightenment as a philosophical movement spans almost every major intellectual hubs of the early modern Atlantic world: Scotland, Germany, America, etc. When Kant wrote this pithy yet impactful essay, it was 1784, rightly in the heyday of the Enlightenment.

Another background to understand the essay is that, as it indicates, religious matters lie at the front and center of such an essay which advocates humanity’s continuous independent use of of human reason on all human affairs. But why is religion so important here? Before this video, I post another one for you to learn the so-called Thirty Years’ war between 1618-1648. It speaks to another event which took place at the dawn of the modern world, and had such powerful repercussions over how modern society is structured. The event in question is the Protestant reformation, and the engendered religious Thirty Years’ war between varying Protestants themselves, and between Protestants and Catholics. The solution reached by the rulers of European states in the so-called Peace of Westphalia is to institutionally separate state and church, so that no matter what faith you hold on to, as an individual citizen, the state has no business to impose faith on you, and you are also hoped not to bring your faith into the state’s public business. However, this solution as implied by the Peace of Westphalia was purely strategic; European rulers at that time had to do so because otherwise, war would be endless. Intellectually and philosophically, those troubled Europeans still needed to figure out how to deal with the relationship between religion and politics as such. If we take consideration of the immense progress that natural science has made in the same period, not only the relationship between religion and politics, but religion and human reason in general becomes naturally a prominent theme for philosophers to ponder. Therefore, it would not surprise us why religious matters got such a prominent treatment in Kant’s summary of what is enlightenment. And this also speaks loudly to the central commitment made by enlightenment philosophers cross varying countries of the emerging modern world, that is, they rely upon human reason to prescribe laws to humanity themselves so as to organize an ideal human society of perpetual peace, progress and prosperity.

So, what is enlightenment according to Immanuel Kant? Kant gives the answer at the very beginning of the essay: “Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one’s own understanding without another’s guidance.” So, to put these two sentences together, and in consideration of the whole logic of the essay, we can put the answer in an even more succinct form: Enlightenment refers to the state of human mind which relies upon a courageous use of human reason in order to achieve the endless progress of human life.

Three concrete practical steps to realize this state of intellectual enlightenment are proposed by Kant: “think for yourself,” “argue in public,” and “obey in private, viz., in varying institutions.” To translate these three steps into a religious context, Kant’s appeal to the enlightenment comprises the following three guidelines: think for yourself so as to believe in the faith which you personally judge as the most reasonable, argue for your faith in public, but obey the leaders in your church. An implication of this guideline is that if you think your church contradicts your own faith to a significant extent, what you are suggested to do is either to collect public opinions in the church to reform it, or to simply leave the church. For Kant, the same practical guideline can be used to other modern institutions, such as government, school, hospitals, or even an international union of states (which will be our topic in two weeks).

Despite being short and pithy, the essay “what is enlightenment” is an exemplary writing of modern philosophy regarding the topic, and later scholars’ studies and debates about the writing are also multi-faceted and ceaseless. I attach a few recommended readings in this module of the class to give you a glimpse into the vibrant discussion of the essay and the topic of “enlightenment” in today’s scholarship. However, in the remaining part of this lecture, let me raise two points which I think particularly worth mentioning, which speak to some intrinsic flaw of the essay, and also, potentially, to why the enlightenment can be seen as an incomplete project even if measured against its own philosophical expression in Kant’s essay.

Firstly, Kant’s definition of enlightenment focuses upon the use of human reason in all human affairs. However, ironically, whether one human individual would like to use her reason, according to Kant, is determined by whether she has “courage” to do so. But “courage” is not a virtue derived from human reason, and it has nothing to do with either reaching a consistent conclusion from premises, or inferring true premises from empirical evidences, viz., two most prominent forms of human reasoning. Courage is actually about the sheer power of human will, which can be motivated by strong emotions such as love, pride, self-satisfaction, fear and hate, to channel human thought or behavior to one direction or another. Wouldn’t we think of it as being ironic that for a project to which the strengthening of human will is so pivotal, Kant almost has no concrete word to say about how to nurture the virtue of courage? As we will study later, within the entire system of Kant’s philosophy, emotions are indeed paid much less attention to compared to human reason. Understood as such, without a robust program of cultivating needed virtues or habits which lead to the courageous use of human reason, the philosophy of Enlightenment is incomplete.

Secondly, we hear much kudos given by Kant to the Frederic the Great, a monarch who reigned in the Kingdom of Prussia in the time when the essay was written. Doesn’t it sound very odd to contemporary readers that while defining the enlightenment as essentially a dissenting voice in public against varying institutional authorities, Kant’s final practical solution to how we can have that sort of needed public space of free thought and speech actually rests upon the existence of an enlightened monarch? If this is the only practical solution to how humans reach enlightenment collectively, then Kant needs to answer how we can expect to have this sort of enlightened monarch at the very first hand. Isn’t it just a random chance for a state to have its enlightened ruler, or something else can be done to guarantee the production of such leaders in the long run? However, even in a more democratic context such as ours, how the entire structure of a state can be organized so as to promote the continual realization of enlightenment among its citizens obviously remains an issue to resolve, rather than one to have been perfectly answered. In other words, without a robust practical commitment to installing a general institutional structure for sustaining the free and open public space needed for the enlightenment, the philosophy of Enlightenment is still incomplete.

Let me clarify my view before conclusion. My point is not that the philosophy of Enlightenment, as articulated by Kant’s thought, is complete, and it just needs time for human beings to figure out how to realize those noble ideals of enlightenment. Instead, according to the above analysis, the philosophy per se is incomplete, and thus, to genuinely take seriously what Kant and other enlightenment philosophers have said, we need to pass on the torch, try to make up what the philosophy per se is lacking, and then, seek a better human society based upon the enlightened state of each human individual. In my belief, we humanity as a whole obviously still have a long way to go before claiming we are in an age of enlightenment.

Is Confucianism Beneath or Beyond Ethics and Politics?

On By Bin SongIn News & InterviewsLeave a comment

This article reviews Shaun O’Dwyer’s latest book, Confucianism’s Prospects: A Reassessment (SUNY, 2019). By critiquing philosophical theories of “Confucian democracy” and their shared sociological assumption that Confucianism still functions as a cultural matrix for East Asian societies, O’Dwyer argues that visions on the future of Confucianism alternative to what the currently fixed institutional infrastructure of liberal democracy entails are flawed. This is mainly because if unconstrained by the infrastructure, the hardwired paternalism and elitism of Confucian ethics would necessarily impose morally taxing burdens upon a de facto pluralistic society. This article assesses O’Dwyer’s counterarguments to “Confucian democracy,” and proposes a different approach to estimate the prospects of Confucianism in the contemporary world.

Song, B. (2020). Is Confucianism Beneath or Beyond Ethics and Politics?. Journal of World Philosophies, 5(2), 200–205

Is-Confucianism-Beneath-or-Beyond-Ethics-and-PoliticsDownload

Hinayana or Nikaya Buddhism: A Short Introduction

On By Bin SongIn Eastern Religions and Religious StudiesLeave a comment
Audio: Hinayana or Nikaya Buddhism
Video: Hinayana or Nikaya Buddhism

Hallo, this is Dr. Bin Song at Washington College.

The teaching of the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, was transmitted orally after his demise among Buddha’s followers. It was not until the first century B.C.E that these teachings were codified in written forms, firstly in Pali and then in Sanskrit. However, through reading these codified Buddhist teachings, it is clear to today’s scholars that Buddhism evolved quite a bit after the time of the Buddha. Around the 3rd century B.C.E, there was one flourished type of Buddhist teaching and practice which had been named as “Hinayana Buddhism” by later types of Buddhism. “Hinayana” means “small vehicle,” and compared to “great vehicle,” viz., the Mahayana Buddhism which developed later, Hinayana Buddhism was thought of as one inferior form of Buddhist teaching.

Since being named by its ideological competitor, no affiliate with the so-called “Hinayana Buddhism” would be happy about this name. In fact, this earliest type of Buddhism continues to spread and propagate. It is the origin of the dominate form of Buddhism in contemporary south Asia called “Theravada Buddhism.” Therefore, in order to avoid the sectarian and derogatory word “Hinayana Buddhism,” historians are increasingly inclined to use another more neutral term, “Nikaya Buddhism.” “Nikaya” means “collections,” “groups,” or “schools,” referring to the fact that varying interpretations of Buddha’s teaching existed shortly after his death.

As mentioned, the contemporary form of Nikaya Buddhism is “Theravada Buddhism” in south Asia, and “Theravada” means “the elders.” Named as such, this lineage of Buddhism is not only literally the eldest among all, but quite “conservative” in its philosophy, moral codes and its organizational form.

The teaching of Nikaya Buddhism is highly organized. It parsed out the Four Noble Truths preached by the historical Buddha in almost a Q&A format. For instance, to explain the origin of human sufferings, Nikaya Buddhism propounded two basic existential traits of all beings – impermanence and no-self. For each claim of these traits, it will furthermore provide arguments. Overall, these teachings were used to account for the reality of which human beings are alleged to keep “ignorant,” and therefore, incur a slew of sufferings to themselves.

After the diagnosis of human sufferings, how can we get rid of their causes? The answers given by the texts of Nikaya Buddhism are summarized as “Eightfold Path,” (right view, right resolve, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right awareness, and right meditation), which are furthermore divided into three categories: wisdom, moral conducts, and meditation.

If we look into the details of the prescribed moral conducts and meditation, we find that although being centered upon the very charming ethic of universal compassion, these prescriptions are very “other-worldly” oriented, since they champion the monastic life featured by celibacy, moderate asceticism, and intellectual uniformity, and hence, they also doubt the value of family and state life to individuals’ spiritual growth.

Organizationally, compared to the commitment of Mahayana Buddhism to the equal status of lay people and monks regarding their ability to achieve nirvana, the ultimate goal of Buddhist practice, Nikaya Buddhism maintains a more rigid boundary between monks and lay people. The practical ways for normal human beings to achieve nirvana, and thus, be saved from the endlessly tormenting process of samsara seems to be envisioned by Nikaya Buddhism as in such a following process: if you are a normal person in a normal household, and you want to achieve nirvana or simply get a nicer birth in your next life cycle, then, either, you use your own wealth to support a group of monks so that their merits of spiritual achievement can be transferred to your own, or you must leave the household to join them, to become a monk or nun so as to actually practice Buddhism for the purpose of ultimate salvation. Even if you really become a monk or nun, the historical Buddha is for you not a deity; you will mainly rely upon your own teacher in the religious order, the transmitted oral or written Buddhist teachings, and your own efforts to elevate your spiritual strength.

So, why were Nikaya Buddhism and its modern-day offspring of Theravada Buddhism more conservative compared to other forms of Buddhism? Ideologically, it is less speculative, more organized, and in a certain sense, more practical since many of its raised points of thought are like psychi’atric manuals to treat specific diseases of mental health. Morally, it is more stern and ascetic; and organizationally, the rigid boundary between the religious and secular worlds is very visible.

Virtually in all fronts mentioned above, Buddhism appeared to be either revised or enriched by its later development, particularly by varying Mahayana schools that flourished in countries and areas of East Asia such as the ancient China, Tibet, Korea and Japan. However, even so, some fundamental understanding of the historical Buddha’s teaching formed in the period of Nikaya Buddhism remain quite consistent throughout history, such as the starting-point of Buddhist thinking on human suffering, the veneration towards monastic life, the distance from the secular, all-too-human world, etc. In the following, philosophically, I will specify one central point of Nikaya Buddhism and its arguments for it, since beyond the initial treatment of the point by Nikaya Buddhism, I do not find much extra types of argument for it in later Buddhism, and the point is also absolutely crucial for us to understand Buddhist thought in general.

The point made is that nothing has a “self” unrelated to something else, and thus, human sufferings caused by our unfulfilled desires of things-in-themselves are misplaced, since, firstly, there is no such an independent, isolated, “selfed” thing to cause suffering, and secondly, there is no such a “selfed” human to bear sufferings.

There are three major arguments made by the texts of Nikaya Buddhist (as indicated by the assigned reading) to argue for the idea of “no-self”:

  • Firstly, nothing is impermanent, and therefore, no way to define a “self” for anything since all things constantly change.
  • Secondly, each thing comprises of components, and thus, on top of these components, there is no self of this thing. Among the most frequently evoked examples are that apart from parts of a chariot, such as the wheels, yokes, straps, etc., there is no such a thing called “chariot,” and that if you continue to peel away the layered petals of a cabbage, there is really no such a “cabbage” to remain, and therefore, apart from those layered petals, there is no such a selfed thing called “cabbage.”
  • Thirdly, there is a distinctively Buddhist idea called “co-dependent origination,” to imply that all things derive from a process of co-dependent emergence. Therefore, apart from those conditions that originate a thing, the thing cannot exist; in other words, there is no such a “selfed” thing which can exist apart from those conditions upon which it depends. This argument can be thought of as a further development of the second one, since all components of a thing can be seen as belonging to the cluster of conditions that originate a thing.

In a metaphysical approach, these three arguments are actually not that difficult to refute.

  • Firstly, things indeed constantly change. However, for the period that one thing exists, viz., from its birth to death, there is always one way to define its stable character in distinction from other things. For instance, no matter how a tree changes from a seed to a full-shaped being, there is a way to distinguish the tree from other plants during the time when it is alive. Therefore, it is not a legitimate inference from perpetual changes of all beings to the conclusion that one thing cannot be distinguished from another, and thus, cannot have a self.
  • Secondly, components cannot account for the whole existence of a being, since a being is quite often more than the sum of its parts. This is particularly true for organic beings, since beyond all visible parts that comprise a being, it needs an invisible principle, power or simply structure to integrate these components as a whole. A tangible example is a soccer team. Stripped of his or her connection to the team as whole, no soccer player can be a soccer player; however, even if we call on all the needed players to stand in line, this is still not a soccer team, which, in the final analysis, is exactly about how something beyond the discrete soccer players can organize them as a whole. Sometimes we use the phrase “the spirit of a soccer team” to designate the organizing principle or power, which is surely beyond the lump-sum of a bunch of separate players.
  • Thirdly, the fact that all conditions originate the birth of a being does not entail that apart from those conditions, there is nothing new about the generated being. In other words, the generation of a being cannot be reduced entirely and without any remainder to its originating conditions; otherwise, the world is just a repetition of pre-existing conditions, and nothing new will ever take place, which, prima facie, is absurd.

The reason I enumerated my counterarguments above is not intended to deny the value of the Buddhist idea “no-self” all together. Instead, I just want to remind my readers that among traditions of world philosophies and religions, there are varying views of “self.” The Buddhist one may be correct, but in order to defend it, Buddhist thinkers need to confront possible critiques, such as the ones I just raised.

However, according to my knowledge of Buddhism, why it can be so appealing to many practitioners is not mainly because of its sophisticated philosophical arguments. Through the history of Buddhist thought, the practical commitment to releasing humans from suffering is always favored over philosophical sophistication; more importantly, the experiential, salvific approach to meditation is quite often thought of by Buddhists as being more thorough and effective than any philosophical speculation.

Seen from this perspective, it may be up to individuals to decide whether the Buddhist wisdom on “no-self” works; and I would conclude that the teaching may indeed work in the area of individuals’ inner psychology so that the philosophical entanglement with concepts and arguments would be seen by Buddhist practitioners as too off-the-track to be heeded. If this is the case, then, as what many religious traditions in the world turn out to be, the tension between religious practice and philosophy would become, again, visible.

Quiz:

1, what is the language that is the earliest one used by Buddhists to codify Buddhist teachings?

A, Pali
B, Sanskrit

2, Historians today agree that hinayana Buddhism is inferior to Mahayana Buddhism, and hence, it is called “small vehicle.” Is this statement true of false?

3, What are the three categories into which Nikaya Buddhim’s teaching on “Eightfold Path” can be grouped:

A, Wisdom.
B, Moral Conducts
C, Meditation
D, Literature.

4, For what reasons can we see Nikaya Buddhism, the origin of modern Theravada Buddhism, as a more conservative form of Buddhism?

A, it is ideologically more organized and practical.
B, it is morally stern and ascetic.
C, it is organizationally rigid regarding the boundary between lay and monastic people.

5, All aspects of Nikaya Buddhism have been changed by Mahayana Buddhism. Is this statement true or false?

Recommended Reading:

The Development of the Buddhist Canon.