2022/08/02

[[Terence McKenna "I Ching" Interview - the history and power of the I Ching



Terence McKenna "I Ching" Interview
25,425 viewsMay 21, 2021


We Plants Are Happy Plants
150K subscribers

The I Ching, usually translated as Book of Changes, is an ancient Chinese divination text and among the oldest of the Chinese classics. Terence McKenna talks about the history and power of the I Ching as a personal tool for getting in alignment with the Tao.
Paul O'Brien interviews Terence McKenna from the Oracle of Changes CD-ROM.
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165 Comments

1 year ago (edited)
Sometimes people ask me how I get so much McKenna content, and how I got this video is a great example, just extrapolate it to 10+ years: So, while reading the transcript of this interview I've noticed that the interviewer Paul O'Brien mentioned that this audio interview used to have a video version but it was only available on the Oracle Of Changes CD-Rom that Brian created in the 90's, the problem, he said, was that the CD would only run on Windows 95 or 90's Macs. So I searched for this CD-Rom on eBay and as fate would have it, found a single copy. While it was shipping I looked up how I could save data from a CD that would only run on those systems, called a few companies, each asking for an orbital price to save the data, so I also started to look for old PC's and Macs. Long story short, the item arrived and it wasn't encrypted or anything, the video files were right there in a folder to be downloaded. That's all, another video archived!
Anyway, let's thank Paul O'Brien for the great interview!

223


InfamousMedia
InfamousMedia
1 year ago
The elf king himself delivering the gospel of the cosmic circus

171


74th
74th
1 year ago
This an interview I have never seen before. How much is there out there that we haven't seen or heard? I have every book and and tape I could find yet you still manage to find these hidden gems for us! :-D

40


Sarah May
Sarah May
1 year ago
I followed synchronicity and found this awesome video today. Recently, I have been diving so deep into learning as much as I can about the I Ching. What a gift to hear Terence speak about it since he is a big inspiration to me. Yesterday I bought 3 more books by William Douglas Horden, who has written many books about the I Ching, including the Toltec I Ching which is my favorite version. Then earlier today I was watching the Antiques Roadshow only because my brother had it on at his house and I spotted a quote from the I Ching for Hexagram 16 which was featured on one of the Woodstock programs which you can Google to read. The quote is so beautiful and strikes the bullseye in my heart. I've been deeply pondering what William Horden writes about in regards to the I Ching as being "A Lifeway of Flower and Song." Thus, it was also a synchronicity to see that an I Ching quote was featured on the Woodstock program which also has flowers on it. I had no clue about this. The way I learned of William Horden and his books was actually through the woman shaman who I have received shamanic healings from. Shamanism saved my life and continues to save my heart and soul during these crazy times. The I Ching is speaking to my soul so deeply. I'm eternally grateful to have discovered its wisdom.

7


mattattack2u
mattattack2u
1 year ago
Anyone else low-key pretending material Terence is still here in 2021 on this quasi-Zoom call?

65


Savitur
Savitur
1 year ago
Great information. Of course Terence was doing Webcam meetings before anyone else😀

40

We Plants Are Happy Plants

theinkbrain
theinkbrain
4 days ago
I can never tire of listening to Terrence. Wish he was still in our realm.



dmyra
dmyra
1 year ago
fell in love and formed a lifelong relationship with this time less classic 15 years ago. love it. never looked back

2


Moon Watch
Moon Watch
6 months ago
The core of the I Ching (Lo Shu) is the same as the magic square for Saturn. The 64 hexagrams match to the magic square of Mercury. Ba Gua (or Pa Kua) is the martial art application of the I Ching. The changes that make up reality are best described as mercurial in nature - difficult to grasp. I believe that all the planetary magic squares are included in the I Ching also. Terence McKenna found that the King Wen sequence related to lunar phases, and the Moon is the 9 x 9 magic square.

1


Psychedelic Actualization
Psychedelic Actualization
1 year ago
Now I'm really inspired to finally sit down and study the I-Ching 💕🌌

5


Homatsu Z
Homatsu Z
1 year ago
Been practicing I Ching for several months already; a great guide since the beginning n 100% accurate. I recommend it to everyone, even if it doesn’t resonate with you, it’s advices are always helpful.

3


john johnson
john johnson
1 year ago
I love it. You guys pump out TM content I’ve never seen or heard. Pretty awesome



Ryan Nichols
Ryan Nichols
1 year ago
This guy seems like the only genuine shaman type I've ever came across, he's immensely knowledgeable too!

2


Katman Dew
Katman Dew
1 year ago
Thank you much. Spot on. A rare example of a very clear exposition on this subject. NOT A "cosmic CIRCUS" exactly. The Tao  is A great subject for extensive study to further self realization. The I ching is not  "sine quo non" , as regards the practical use of inculcating taoism in daily life, which rocks for me. I wish to assist this truly expansive compact and correct explanation by adding that you will benefit from any taoist study. He is speaking the truth about the mind bending , hard core reality of living with the I ching. So go slow a lot regarding this precious heritage of humankind. Have a great "Cosmic Circus?"........why not eh?.



Sal Manuel
Sal Manuel
11 months ago
I owned a copy of McKenna's TimeWave Zero which utilized the King Wen Sequence.  It wasn't perfect, but it appeared to reveal the influence of novelty on the expression of reality. That's a point.



AK Post
AK Post
1 year ago
The puzzle or challenge he refers to near the end is the Labyrinth we all must navigate.  Some of us make it halfway, others give up right before breaking through, some of us truly get "there" -- we make it to the center, only to realize the whole thing was a return trip home that we made more complicated than it had to be.

3


Anton Ackermann
Anton Ackermann
6 months ago
When you learn so much that you reach a moment of realization that you already know all this stuff and that you are in fact learning it all for the first time again.



Anton Ackermann
Anton Ackermann
6 months ago
Your efforts are greatly appreciated, fam. You have my gratitute and my sub.


We Plants Are Happy Plants

TiggerKnowsBest
TiggerKnowsBest
1 year ago
The first podcast, of course it was Terence

19


Blake Meisinger
Blake Meisinger
1 year ago
it's like a quarantine style podcast

12


ClR
ClR
1 year ago
Great questions, great answers!

3


The Sane realist
The Sane realist
10 months ago
Through and through out my life the e chain has been a rudder that has helped me to guide my path



Psych369Delicious Delicious
Psych369Delicious Delicious
1 year ago
1:46 hear the tropical bird in mckennas hawaiian abode😂 this is great

9


Kevin Orosz
Kevin Orosz
1 year ago
The I Ching is a quantum computer more accurate than any in Apple or Google’s repertoire

2


bobobooey69
bobobooey69
1 year ago
so amazing man.

1


Sir Prancelot
Sir Prancelot
2 months ago
Fascinating, thank you.



Landry Prichard
Landry Prichard
1 year ago (edited)
I too am an archivist, Peter. Great job as always. Sooooo unbelievably important, that which you do. Cheers from North Carolina. ❤

(Also, was this an early Internet video chat?)

2


måns semla
måns semla
9 months ago (edited)
What is needed in physics is the understanding of Poincaré stress and Mach's principle. Given a resonator confinement (i.e. assuming the existence of Poincaré stress), it has been shown recently that quantum mechanics follows from special relativistic beating patterns caused by a mismatch between this resonator and its resonance (i.e. that the de Broglie waves can be understood as beating patterns caused by a Lorentz boost of the Compton oscillations [Zitterbewegung], where the latter are responsible for mass through E=mc^2). This proves that quantum mechanics is a relativistic phenomenon, provided Poincaré stress.

1


misaghi33
misaghi33
1 year ago
Would be interesting to read his school report x )

2


josef2012
josef2012
1 year ago
In glorious 144p! Thanks for the upload!

6


Reza Nouri
Reza Nouri
1 year ago
I'm sure that one person who disliked this video was a fan of 4K videos.

6


John
John
1 year ago
A weird thing happened to me. About a week ago I tried to change the youtube reverse/forward feature (left/right arrow) to 5 seconds  from 10 but couldn't figure out how. Today I find it changed to 5 automatically. Could my intention/thoughts have been premeditatedly aligned with the time?



Not Applicable
Not Applicable
3 months ago
The best videos are always a little harder to find



Diego Salazar
Diego Salazar
8 months ago
A question.

What does he says? Half shamman half scientist, and then?

-thanks for uploading this gem!



FTWRoguE
FTWRoguE
1 year ago
I kept waiting to hear Terence talk about the "I Chong"

6


Sterling Riebling
Sterling Riebling
1 year ago
So weird that I was just watching how rogan and Tommy Chong talk about the I Ching and how Terrence was involved with it.

3


Navdeep Singh
Navdeep Singh
8 months ago
I love Terrance. I would have married him. <3<3<3

1


KR1989
KR1989
1 year ago
Thank you.



Jan Budin
Jan Budin
1 year ago
We should gather together. Found a community or many communities, so we refund what was taken away by the western society to make us slaves of consumerism, make us week, unprotected by the community in our nuclear families, to completely buy and control our lives at the end of the day. Here is the simplest of all solutions. Decentalization, location where the community knows the people and the land that are involved, an open community based on the laws of Nature, or divine laws and not on some social rules imposed by some random people that "hold the power". We don't need. The centering would come through internet and technology itself that has reached a level of complexity that is almost matching the one of Nature, so that is becoming an independent conscious mirror. And there we are. Free to be what we are, supported by our fellows and technology, by peace love and gratitude to be alive. Bless you all



Jose David Vargas
Jose David Vargas
1 year ago
The shirt of the interviewer looks incredibly psychedelic thanks to the low quality of the recording. Felt like I was tripping while staring at it.



Moon Watch
Moon Watch
1 year ago
The I Ching drove the Jesuits mad. It's basis is the same as the magic square for Saturn.

2


Theo Lux
Theo Lux
1 year ago
Perhaps an AI-enhanced video or at least the original size would be better than Terence McPixels?

1


Novaki
Novaki
1 year ago
Decades ahead of his time.



TheCatfishCheese
TheCatfishCheese
1 year ago
Terence McKenna is the smartest human to ever speak.

7


Charles Rivera
Charles Rivera
1 year ago
who the fuck would dislike this?



Ty
Ty
1 year ago
lmao the host got straight to it

2


KyleG
KyleG
1 year ago
Nice!



161157gor
161157gor
1 year ago
Coincidence or A Cyclic Expression of the Universe ?



jinsugarbrown
jinsugarbrown
1 year ago
Thanks for thé new material
====

Terence McKenna

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Terence McKenna
Mckenna1.jpg
BornNovember 16, 1946
Paonia, Colorado, U.S.
DiedApril 3, 2000 (aged 53)
San Rafael, California, U.S.
OccupationAuthor, lecturer
LanguageEnglish
NationalityAmerican
EducationBSc in ecology, resource conservation, and shamanism
Alma materUniversity of California, Berkeley
Period20th
SubjectShamanismethnobotanyethnomycologymetaphysicspsychedelic drugsalchemy
Notable worksThe Archaic RevivalFood of the GodsThe Invisible LandscapePsilocybin Magic Mushroom Grower's GuideTrue Hallucinations.
SpouseKathleen Harrison (1975–1992; divorced)
ChildrenFinn McKenna & Klea McKenna
RelativesDennis McKenna (brother)

Terence Kemp McKenna (November 16, 1946 – April 3, 2000) was an American ethnobotanist and mystic who advocated the responsible use of naturally occurring psychedelic plants. He spoke and wrote about a variety of subjects, including psychedelic drugs, plant-based entheogensshamanismmetaphysicsalchemylanguagephilosophyculturetechnologyenvironmentalism, and the theoretical origins of human consciousness. He was called the "Timothy Leary of the '90s",[1][2] "one of the leading authorities on the ontological foundations of shamanism",[3] and the "intellectual voice of rave culture".[4]

McKenna formulated a concept about the nature of time based on fractal patterns he claimed to have discovered in the I Ching, which he called novelty theory,[3][5] proposing that this predicted the end of time, and a transition of consciousness in the year 2012.[5][6][7][8] His promotion of novelty theory and its connection to the Maya calendar is credited as one of the factors leading to the widespread beliefs about 2012 eschatology.[9] Novelty theory is considered pseudoscience.[10][11]

Biography

Early life

A 2006 photograph of Paonia, Colorado, where McKenna was born

Terence McKenna was born and raised in Paonia, Colorado,[5][12][13][unreliable source?] with Irish ancestry on his father's side of the family.[14]

McKenna developed a hobby of fossil-hunting in his youth and from this he acquired a deep scientific appreciation of nature.[15] He also became interested in psychology at a young age, reading Carl Jung's book Psychology and Alchemy at the age of 14.[6] This was the same age McKenna first became aware of magic mushrooms, when reading an essay titled "Seeking the Magic Mushroom" which appeared in the May 13, 1957 edition of LIFE magazine.[16]

At age 16 McKenna moved to Los Altos, California to live with family friends for a year. He finished high school in Lancaster, California.[13] In 1963, he was introduced to the literary world of psychedelics through The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell by Aldous Huxley and certain issues of The Village Voice which published articles on psychedelics.[3][13]

McKenna said that one of his early psychedelic experiences with morning glory seeds showed him "that there was something there worth pursuing",[13] and in interviews he claimed to have smoked cannabis daily since his teens.[17]

Studying and traveling

In 1965, McKenna enrolled in the University of California, Berkeley and was accepted into the Tussman Experimental College.[17] While in college in 1967 he began studying shamanism through the study of Tibetan folk religion.[3][18] That same year, which he called his "opium and kabbala phase",[6][19] he traveled to Jerusalem where he met Kathleen Harrison, an ethnobotanist who later became his wife.[6][17][19]

In 1969, McKenna traveled to Nepal led by his interest in Tibetan painting and hallucinogenic shamanism.[20] He sought out shamans of the Tibetan Bon tradition, trying to learn more about the shamanic use of visionary plants.[12] During his time there, he also studied the Tibetan language[20] and worked as a hashish smuggler,[6] until "one of his Bombay-to-Aspen shipments fell into the hands of U. S. Customs."[21] He then wandered through southeast Asia viewing ruins,[21] and spent time as a professional butterfly collector in Indonesia.[6][22][23]

After his mother's death[24] from cancer in 1970,[25] McKenna, his brother Dennis, and three friends traveled to the Colombian Amazon in search of oo-koo-hé, a plant preparation containing dimethyltryptamine (DMT).[5][24][26] Instead of oo-koo-hé they found fields full of gigantic Psilocybe cubensis mushrooms, which became the new focus of the expedition.[5][6][12][24][27] In La Chorrera, at the urging of his brother, McKenna was the subject of a psychedelic experiment[5] in which the brothers attempted to bond harmine (harmine is another psychedelic compound they used synergistically with the mushrooms) with their own neural DNA, through the use of a set specific vocal techniques. They hypothesised this would give them access to the collective memory of the human species, and would manifest the alchemistsPhilosopher's Stone which they viewed as a "hyperdimensional union of spirit and matter".[28] McKenna claimed the experiment put him in contact with "Logos": an informative, divine voice he believed was universal to visionary religious experience.[29] McKenna also often referred to the voice as "the mushroom", and "the teaching voice" amongst other names.[16] The voice's reputed revelations and his brother's simultaneous peculiar psychedelic experience prompted him to explore the structure of an early form of the I Ching, which led to his "Novelty Theory".[5][8] During their stay in the Amazon, McKenna also became romantically involved with his interpreter, Ev.[30]

In 1972, McKenna returned to U.C. Berkeley to finish his studies[17] and in 1975, he graduated with a degree in ecology, shamanism, and conservation of natural resources.[3][22][23] In the autumn of 1975, after parting with his girlfriend Ev earlier in the year,[31] McKenna began a relationship with his future wife and the mother of his two children, Kathleen Harrison.[8][17][19][26]

Soon after graduating, McKenna and Dennis published a book inspired by their Amazon experiences, The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens and the I Ching.[5][17][32] The brothers' experiences in the Amazon were the main focus of McKenna's book True Hallucinations, published in 1993.[12] McKenna also began lecturing[17] locally around Berkeley and started appearing on some underground radio stations.[6]

Psilocybin mushroom cultivation

Psilocybin: Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide (1986 revised edition)

McKenna, along with his brother Dennis, developed a technique for cultivating psilocybin mushrooms using spores they brought to America from the Amazon.[16][26][27][31] In 1976, the brothers published what they had learned in the book Psilocybin: Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide, under the pseudonyms "O.T. Oss" and "O.N. Oeric".[12][33] McKenna and his brother were the first to come up with a reliable method for cultivating psilocybin mushrooms at home.[12][17][26][27] As ethnobiologist Jonathan Ott explains, "[the] authors adapted San Antonio's technique (for producing edible mushrooms by casing mycelial cultures on a rye grain substrate; San Antonio 1971) to the production of Psilocybe [Stropharia] cubensis. The new technique involved the use of ordinary kitchen implements, and for the first time the layperson was able to produce a potent entheogen in his [or her] own home, without access to sophisticated technology, equipment, or chemical supplies."[34] When the 1986 revised edition was published, the Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide had sold over 100,000 copies.[12][33][35]

Mid- to later life

Public speaking

In the early 1980s, McKenna began to speak publicly on the topic of psychedelic drugs, becoming one of the pioneers of the psychedelic movement.[36] His main focus was on the plant-based psychedelics such as psilocybin mushrooms (which were the catalyst for his career),[12] ayahuascacannabis, and the plant derivative DMT.[6] He conducted lecture tours and workshops[6] promoting natural psychedelics as a way to explore universal mysteries, stimulate the imagination, and re-establish a harmonious relationship with nature.[37] Though associated with the New Age and Human Potential Movements, McKenna himself had little patience for New Age sensibilities.[3][7][8][38] He repeatedly stressed the importance and primacy of the "felt presence of direct experience", as opposed to dogma.[39]

In addition to psychedelic drugs, McKenna spoke on a wide array of subjects,[26] including shamanismmetaphysicsalchemylanguage; culture; self-empowermentenvironmentalismtechno-paganismartificial intelligenceevolutionextraterrestrials; science and scientismthe Webvirtual reality (which he saw as a way to artistically communicate the experience of psychedelics); and aesthetic theory, specifically about art/visual experience as information representing the significance of hallucinatory visions experienced under the influence of psychedelics.[citation needed]

It's clearly a crisis of two things: of consciousness and conditioning. These are the two things that the psychedelics attack. We have the technological power, the engineering skills to save our planet, to cure disease, to feed the hungry, to end war; But we lack the intellectual vision, the ability to change our minds. We must decondition ourselves from 10,000 years of bad behavior. And, it's not easy.

— Terence McKenna, "This World...and Its Double", [40]

McKenna soon became a fixture of popular counterculture[5][6][37] with Timothy Leary once introducing him as "one of the five or six most important people on the planet"[41] and with comedian Bill Hicks' referencing him in his stand-up act[42] and building an entire routine around his ideas.[26] McKenna also became a popular personality in the psychedelic rave/dance scene of the early 1990s,[22][43] with frequent spoken word performances at raves and contributions to psychedelic and goa trance albums by The Shamen,[7][26][37] Spacetime ContinuumAlien ProjectCapsulaEntheogenic, Zuvuya, Shpongle, and Shakti Twins. In 1994 he appeared as a speaker at the Starwood Festival, documented in the book Tripping by Charles Hayes.[44]

McKenna published several books in the early-to-mid-1990s including: The Archaic RevivalFood of the Gods; and True Hallucinations.[6][12][22] Hundreds of hours of McKenna's public lectures were recorded either professionally or bootlegged and have been produced on cassette tape, CD and MP3.[26] Segments of his talks have gone on to be sampled by many musicians and DJ's.[4][26]

McKenna was a colleague and close friend of chaos mathematician Ralph Abraham, and author and biologist Rupert Sheldrake. He conducted several public and many private debates with them from 1982 until his death.[45][46][47] These debates were known as trialogues and some of the discussions were later published in the books: Trialogues at the Edge of the West and The Evolutionary Mind.[3][45]

Botanical Dimensions

Botanical Dimensions ethnobotanical preserve in Hawaii.

In 1985, McKenna founded Botanical Dimensions with his then-wife, Kathleen Harrison.[22][48] Botanical Dimensions is a nonprofit ethnobotanical preserve on the Big Island of Hawaii,[3] established to collect, protect, propagate, and understand plants of ethno-medical significance and their lore, and appreciate, study, and educate others about plants and mushrooms felt to be significant to cultural integrity and spiritual well-being.[49] The 19-acre (7.7 ha) botanical garden[3] is a repository containing thousands of plants that have been used by indigenous people of the tropical regions, and includes a database of information related to their purported healing properties.[50] McKenna was involved until 1992, when he retired from the project,[48] following his and Kathleen's divorce earlier in the year.[17] Kathleen still manages Botanical Dimensions as its president and projects director.[49]

After their divorce, McKenna moved to Hawaii permanently, where he built a modernist house[17] and created a gene bank of rare plants near his home.[22] Previously, he had split his time between Hawaii and Occidental, CA.

Terence McKenna during a panel discussion at the 1999 AllChemical Arts Conference, held at Kona, Hawaii.

Death

McKenna was a longtime sufferer of migraines, but on 22 May 1999 he began to have unusually extreme and painful headaches. He then collapsed due to a brain seizure.[27] McKenna was diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme, a highly aggressive form of brain cancer.[7][12][27] For the next several months he underwent various treatments, including experimental gamma knife radiation treatment. According to Wired magazine, McKenna was worried that his tumor may have been caused by his psychedelic drug use, or his 35 years of daily cannabis smoking; however, his doctors assured him there was no causal relation.[27]

In late 1999, McKenna described his thoughts concerning his impending death to interviewer Erik Davis:

I always thought death would come on the freeway in a few horrifying moments, so you'd have no time to sort it out. Having months and months to look at it and think about it and talk to people and hear what they have to say, it's a kind of blessing. It's certainly an opportunity to grow up and get a grip and sort it all out. Just being told by an unsmiling guy in a white coat that you're going to be dead in four months definitely turns on the lights. ... It makes life rich and poignant. When it first happened, and I got these diagnoses, I could see the light of eternity, à la William Blake, shining through every leaf. I mean, a bug walking across the ground moved me to tears.[51]

McKenna died on April 3, 2000, at the age of 53.[7][8][17]

Library fire and insect collection

On February 7, 2007, McKenna's library of over 3000 rare books and personal notes was destroyed in a fire at the Esalen Institute in Big SurCalifornia. An index of McKenna's library was made by his brother Dennis.[52][53] His daughter, the artist and photographer Klea McKenna, subsequently preserved his insect collection, turning it into a gallery installation, and then publishing it in book form as The Butterfly Hunter, featuring her selected photos of 122 insects – 119 butterflies/moths and three beetles or beetle-like insects – from a set of over 2000 he collected between 1969 and 1972, as well as maps showing his collecting routes through the rainforests of Southeast Asia and South America.[54] McKenna had intensively studied Lepidoptera and entomology in the 1960s, and as part of his studies hunted for butterflies primarily in Colombia and Indonesia. McKenna's insect collection was consistent with his interest in Victorian-era explorers and naturalists, and his worldview based on close observation of nature. In the 1970s, when he was still collecting, he became quite squeamish and guilt-ridden about the necessity of killing butterflies in order to collect and classify them, and that's what led him to stop his entomological studies, according to his daughter.[54]

Thought

Psychedelics

Terence McKenna advocated the exploration of altered states of mind via the ingestion of naturally occurring psychedelic substances;[5][32][43] for example, and in particular, as facilitated by the ingestion of high doses of psychedelic mushrooms,[26][55] ayahuasca, and DMT,[6] which he believed was the apotheosis of the psychedelic experience. He was less enthralled with synthetic drugs,[6] stating, "I think drugs should come from the natural world and be use-tested by shamanically orientated cultures ... one cannot predict the long-term effects of a drug produced in a laboratory."[3]

McKenna always stressed the responsible use of psychedelic plants, saying:

"Experimenters should be very careful. One must build up to the experience. These are bizarre dimensions of extraordinary power and beauty. There is no set rule to avoid being overwhelmed, but move carefully, reflect a great deal, and always try to map experiences back onto the history of the race and the philosophical and religious accomplishments of the species. All the compounds are potentially dangerous, and all compounds, at sufficient doses or repeated over time, involve risks. The library is the first place to go when looking into taking a new compound."[56]

He also recommended, and often spoke of taking, what he called "heroic doses",[32] which he defined as five grams of dried psilocybin mushrooms,[6][57] taken alone, on an empty stomach, in silent darkness, and with eyes closed.[26][27] He believed that when taken this way one could expect a profound visionary experience,[26] believing it is only when "slain" by the power of the mushroom that the message becomes clear.[55]

Although McKenna avoided giving his allegiance to any one interpretation (part of his rejection of monotheism), he was open to the idea of psychedelics as being "trans-dimensional travel". He proposed that DMT sent one to a "parallel dimension"[8] and that psychedelics literally enabled an individual to encounter "higher dimensional entities",[58] or what could be ancestors, or spirits of the Earth,[59] saying that if you can trust your own perceptions it appears that you are entering an "ecology of souls".[60] McKenna also put forward the idea that psychedelics were "doorways into the Gaian mind",[43][61] suggesting that "the planet has a kind of intelligence, it can actually open a channel of communication with an individual human being" and that the psychedelic plants were the facilitators of this communication.[62][63]

Machine elves

McKenna spoke of hallucinations while on DMT in which he claims to have met intelligent entities he described as "self-transforming machine elves".[3][8][64][65]

Psilocybin panspermia speculation

In a more radical version of biophysicist Francis Crick's hypothesis of directed panspermia, McKenna speculated on the idea that psilocybin mushrooms may be a species of high intelligence,[3] which may have arrived on this planet as spores migrating through space[8][66] and which are attempting to establish a symbiotic relationship with human beings. He postulated that "intelligence, not life, but intelligence may have come here [to Earth] in this spore-bearing life form". He said, "I think that theory will probably be vindicated. I think in a hundred years if people do biology they will think it quite silly that people once thought that spores could not be blown from one star system to another by cosmic radiation pressure," and also believed that "few people are in a position to judge its extraterrestrial potential, because few people in the orthodox sciences have ever experienced the full spectrum of psychedelic effects that are unleashed."[3][7][18]

Opposition to organized religion

McKenna was opposed to Christianity[67] and most forms of organized religion or guru-based forms of spiritual awakening, favouring shamanism, which he believed was the broadest spiritual paradigm available, stating that:

What I think happened is that in the world of prehistory all religion was experiential, and it was based on the pursuit of ecstasy through plants. And at some time, very early, a group interposed itself between people and direct experience of the 'Other.' This created hierarchies, priesthoods, theological systems, castes, ritual, taboos. Shamanism, on the other hand, is an experiential science that deals with an area where we know nothing. It is important to remember that our epistemological tools have developed very unevenly in the West. We know a tremendous amount about what is going on in the heart of the atom, but we know absolutely nothing about the nature of the mind.[68]

Technological singularity

During the final years of his life and career, McKenna became very engaged in the theoretical realm of technology. He was an early proponent of the technological singularity[8] and in his last recorded public talk, Psychedelics in the age of intelligent machines, he outlined ties between psychedelics, computation technology, and humans.[69] He also became enamored with the Internet, calling it "the birth of [the] global mind",[17] believing it to be a place where psychedelic culture could flourish.[27]

Admired writers

Either philosophically or religiously, he expressed admiration for Marshall McLuhanAlfred North WhiteheadPierre Teilhard de ChardinCarl JungPlatoGnostic Christianity, and Alchemy, while regarding the Greek philosopher Heraclitus as his favorite philosopher.[70]

McKenna also expressed admiration for the works of writers including Aldous Huxley,[3] James Joyce, whose book Finnegans Wake he called "the quintessential work of art, or at least work of literature of the 20th century,"[71] science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, who he described as an "incredible genius,"[72] fabulist Jorge Luis Borges, with whom McKenna shared the belief that "scattered through the ordinary world there are books and artifacts and perhaps people who are like doorways into impossible realms, of impossible and contradictory truth"[8] and Vladimir Nabokov; McKenna once said that he would have become a Nabokov lecturer if he had never encountered psychedelics.

"Stoned ape" theory of human evolution

McKenna's hypothesis concerning the influence of psilocybin mushrooms on human evolution is known as "the 'stoned ape' theory."[16][43][73]

In his 1992 book Food of the Gods, McKenna proposed that the transformation from humans' early ancestors Homo erectus to the species Homo sapiens mainly had to do with the addition of the mushroom Psilocybe cubensis in the diet,[26][73][74] an event that according to his theory took place in about 100,000 BCE (which is when he believed that the species diverged from the genus Homo).[22][75] McKenna based his theory on the main effects, or alleged effects, produced by the mushroom[3] while citing studies by Roland Fischer et al. from the late 1960s to early 1970s.[76][77]

McKenna stated that, due to the desertification of the African continent at that time, human forerunners were forced from the increasingly shrinking tropical canopy into search of new food sources.[6] He believed they would have been following large herds of wild cattle whose dung harbored the insects that, he proposed, were undoubtedly part of their new diet, and would have spotted and started eating Psilocybe cubensis, a dung-loving mushroom often found growing out of cowpats.[6][7][43][78]

Psilocybe cubensis: the psilocybin-containing mushroom central to McKenna's "stoned ape" theory of human evolution.

McKenna's hypothesis was that low doses of psilocybin improve visual acuity, particularly edge detection, meaning that the presence of psilocybin in the diet of early pack hunting primates caused the individuals who were consuming psilocybin mushrooms to be better hunters than those who were not, resulting in an increased food supply and in turn a higher rate of reproductive success.[3][7][16][26][43] Then at slightly higher doses, he contended, the mushroom acts to sexually arouse, leading to a higher level of attention, more energy in the organism, and potential erection in the males,[3][7] rendering it even more evolutionarily beneficial, as it would result in more offspring.[26][43][74] At even higher doses, McKenna proposed that the mushroom would have acted to "dissolve boundaries," promoting community bonding and group sexual activities.[12][43] Consequently, there would be a mixing of genes, greater genetic diversity, and a communal sense of responsibility for the group offspring.[79] At these higher doses, McKenna also argued that psilocybin would be triggering activity in the "language-forming region of the brain", manifesting as music and visions,[3] thus catalyzing the emergence of language in early hominids by expanding "their arboreally evolved repertoire of troop signals."[7][26] He also pointed out that psilocybin would dissolve the ego and "religious concerns would be at the forefront of the tribe's consciousness, simply because of the power and strangeness of the experience itself."[43][79]

According to McKenna, access to and ingestion of mushrooms was an evolutionary advantage to humans' omnivorous hunter-gatherer ancestors,[26][78] also providing humanity's first religious impulse.[78][80] He believed that psilocybin mushrooms were the "evolutionary catalyst"[3] from which language, projective imagination, the arts, religion, philosophy, science, and all of human culture sprang.[7][8][27][78]

Criticism

McKenna's "stoned ape" theory has not received attention from the scientific community and has been criticized for a relative lack of citation to any of the paleoanthropological evidence informing our understanding of human origins. His ideas regarding psilocybin and visual acuity have been criticized as misrepresentations of Fischer et al.'s findings, who published studies about visual perception in terms of various specific parameters, not acuity. Criticism has also been expressed because, in a separate study on psilocybin-induced transformation of visual space, Fischer et al. stated that psilocybin "may not be conducive to the survival of the organism". There is also a lack of scientific evidence that psilocybin increases sexual arousal, and even if it does, it does not necessarily entail an evolutionary advantage.[81] Others have pointed to civilisations such as the Aztecs, who used psychedelic mushrooms (at least among the Priestly class), that didn't reflect McKenna's model of how psychedelic-using cultures would behave, for example, by carrying out human sacrifice.[12] There are also examples of Amazonian tribes such as the Jivaro and the Yanomami who use ayahuasca ceremoniously and who are known to engage in violent behaviour. This, it has been argued, indicates the use of psychedelic plants does not necessarily suppress the ego and create harmonious societies.[43]

Archaic revival

One of the main themes running through McKenna's work, and the title of his second book, was the idea that Western civilization was undergoing what he called an "archaic revival".[3][26][82]

His notion was that Western society has become "sick" and is undergoing a "healing process": In the same way that the human body begins to produce antibodies when it feels itself to be sick, humanity as a collective whole (in the Jungian sense) was creating "strategies for overcoming the condition of disease" and trying to cure itself, by what he termed as "a reversion to archaic values." McKenna pointed to phenomena including surrealismabstract expressionismbody piercing and tattooingpsychedelic drug use, sexual permissiveness, jazz, experimental dance, rave culturerock and roll and catastrophe theory, amongst others, as his evidence that this process was underway.[83][84][85] This idea is linked to McKenna's "stoned ape" theory of human evolution, with him viewing the "archaic revival" as an impulse to return to the symbiotic and blissful relationship he believed humanity once had with the psilocybin mushroom.[26]

In differentiating his idea from the "New Age", a term that he felt trivialized the significance of the next phase in human evolution, McKenna stated that: "The New Age is essentially humanistic psychology '80s-style, with the addition of neo-shamanism, channeling, crystal and herbal healing. The archaic revival is a much larger, more global phenomenon that assumes that we are recovering the social forms of the late neolithic, and reaches far back in the 20th century to Freud, to surrealism, to abstract expressionism, even to a phenomenon like National Socialism which is a negative force. But the stress on ritual, on organized activity, on race/ancestor-consciousness – these are themes that have been worked out throughout the entire 20th century, and the archaic revival is an expression of that."[3][18]

Novelty theory and Timewave Zero

Novelty theory is a pseudoscientific idea[10][11] that purports to predict the ebb and flow of novelty in the universe as an inherent quality of time, proposing that time is not a constant but has various qualities tending toward either "habit" or "novelty".[5] Habit, in this context, can be thought of as entropic, repetitious, or conservative; and novelty as creative, disjunctive, or progressive phenomena.[8] McKenna's idea was that the universe is an engine designed for the production and conservation of novelty and that as novelty increases, so does complexity. With each level of complexity achieved becoming the platform for a further ascent into complexity.[8]

The 64 hexagrams from the King Wen sequence of the I Ching.

The basis of the theory was originally conceived in the mid-1970s after McKenna's experiences with psilocybin mushrooms at La Chorrera in the Amazon led him to closely study the King Wen sequence of the I Ching.[5][6][27]

In Asian Taoist philosophy the concept of opposing phenomena is represented by the yin and yang. Both are always present in everything, yet the amount of influence of each varies over time. The individual lines of the I Ching are made up of both Yin (broken lines) and Yang (solid lines).

When examining the King Wen sequence of the 64 hexagrams, McKenna noticed a pattern. He analysed the "degree of difference" between the hexagrams in each successive pair and claimed he found a statistical anomaly, which he believed suggested that the King Wen sequence was intentionally constructed,[5] with the sequence of hexagrams ordered in a highly structured and artificial way, and that this pattern codified the nature of time's flow in the world.[28] With the degrees of difference as numerical values, McKenna worked out a mathematical wave form based on the 384 lines of change that make up the 64 hexagrams. He was able to graph the data and this became the Novelty Time Wave.[5]

A screenshot of the Timewave Zero software (written by Peter J. Meyer) showing the timewave for the 25 years preceding a zero date of December 21, 2012.

Peter J. Meyer (Peter Johann Gustav Meyer) (born 1946), in collaboration with McKenna, studied and improved the foundations of novelty theory, working out a mathematical formula and developing the Timewave Zero software (the original version of which was completed by July 1987),[86] enabling them to graph and explore its dynamics on a computer.[5][7] The graph was fractal: It exhibited a pattern in which a given small section of the wave was found to be identical in form to a larger section of the wave.[3][5] McKenna called this fractal modeling of time "temporal resonance", proposing it implied that larger intervals, occurring long ago, contained the same amount of information as shorter, more recent, intervals.[5][87] He suggested the up-and-down pattern of the wave shows an ongoing wavering between habit and novelty respectively. With each successive iteration trending, at an increasing level, towards infinite novelty. So according to novelty theory, the pattern of time itself is speeding up, with a requirement of the theory being that infinite novelty will be reached on a specific date.[3][5]

McKenna believed that notable events in history could be identified that would help him locate the time wave's end date[5] and attempted to find the best-fit placement when matching the graph to the data field of human history.[7] The last harmonic of the wave has a duration of 67.29 years.[88] Population growth, peak oil, and pollution statistics were some of the factors that pointed him to an early twenty-first century end date and when looking for an extremely novel event in human history as a signal that the final phase had begun McKenna picked the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.[5][88] This worked out to the graph reaching zero in mid-November 2012. When he later discovered that the end of the 13th baktun in the Maya calendar had been correlated by Western Maya scholars as December 21, 2012,[a] he adopted their end date instead.[5][94][b]

McKenna saw the universe, in relation to novelty theory, as having a teleological attractor at the end of time,[5] which increases interconnectedness and would eventually reach a singularity of infinite complexity. He also frequently referred to this as "the transcendental object at the end of time."[5][7] When describing this model of the universe he stated that: "The universe is not being pushed from behind. The universe is being pulled from the future toward a goal that is as inevitable as a marble reaching the bottom of a bowl when you release it up near the rim. If you do that, you know the marble will roll down the side of the bowl, down, down, down – until eventually it comes to rest at the lowest energy state, which is the bottom of the bowl. That's precisely my model of human history. I'm suggesting that the universe is pulled toward a complex attractor that exists ahead of us in time, and that our ever-accelerating speed through the phenomenal world of connectivity and novelty is based on the fact that we are now very, very close to the attractor."[95] Therefore, according to McKenna's final interpretation of the data and positioning of the graph, on December 21, 2012, we would have been in the unique position in time where maximum novelty would be experienced.[3][5][27] An event he described as a "concrescence",[12] a "tightening 'gyre'" with everything flowing together. Speculating that "when the laws of physics are obviated, the universe disappears, and what is left is the tightly bound plenum, the monad, able to express itself for itself, rather than only able to cast a shadow into physis as its reflection...It will be the entry of our species into 'hyperspace', but it will appear to be the end of physical laws, accompanied by the release of the mind into the imagination."[96]

Novelty theory is considered to be pseudoscience.[10][11] Among the criticisms are the use of numerology to derive dates of important events in world history,[11] the arbitrary rather than calculated end date of the time wave[26] and the apparent adjustment of the eschaton from November 2012 to December 2012 in order to coincide with the Maya calendar. Other purported dates do not fit the actual time frames: the date claimed for the emergence of Homo sapiens is inaccurate by 70,000 years, and the existence of the ancient Sumer and Egyptian civilisations contradict the date he gave for the beginning of "historical time". Some projected dates have been criticised for having seemingly arbitrary labels, such as the "height of the age of mammals"[11] and McKenna's analysis of historical events has been criticised for having a eurocentric and cultural bias.[6][26]

The Watkins Objection

The British mathematician Matthew Watkins of Exeter University conducted a mathematical analysis of the Time Wave, and claimed there were various mathematical flaws in its construction.[26]

Critical reception

One expert on drug treatment attacked McKenna for popularizing "dangerous substances." Judy Corman, vice president of Phoenix House of New York, a drug treatment center, said in a letter to The New York Times in 1993: "Surely the fact that Terence McKenna says that the psilocybin mushroom 'is the megaphone used by an alien, intergalactic Other to communicate with mankind' is enough for us to wonder if taking LSD has done something to his mental faculties."[17]

"I suffered hallucinatory agonies of my own while reading his shrilly ecstatic prose," Peter Conrad wrote in The New York Times in a 1993 review of McKenna's book True Hallucinations.[17]

Harvard University biologist Richard Evans Schultes wrote in American Scientist, in a 1993 review of McKenna's Food of the Gods, that the book was "a masterpiece of research and writing" and that it "should be read by every specialist working in the multifarious fields involved with the use of psychoactive drugs." Concluding that, "[i]t is, without question, destined to play a major role in our future considerations of the role of the ancient use of psychoactive drugs, the historical shaping of our modern concerns about drugs and perhaps about man's desire for escape from reality with drugs."[97]

John Horgan, in a 2012 blog post for Scientific American, also commented that Food of the Gods was "a rigorous argument...that mind-expanding plants and fungi catalyzed the transformation of our brutish ancestors into cultured modern humans."[8]

"To write him off as a crazy hippie is a rather lazy approach to a man not only full of fascinating ideas but also blessed with a sense of humor and self-parody," Tom Hodgkinson wrote in The New Statesman and Society in 1994.[17]

Mark Jacobson said of True Hallucinations, in a 1992 issue of Esquire Magazine that, "it would be hard to find a drug narrative more compellingly perched on a baroquely romantic limb than this passionate Tom-and-Huck-ride-great-mother-river-saga of brotherly bonding," adding "put simply, Terence is a hoot!"[6]

Wired called him a "charismatic talking head" who was "brainy, eloquent, and hilarious"[27] and Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead also said that he was "the only person who has made a serious effort to objectify the psychedelic experience."[17]

Bibliography

Spoken word

  • History Ends in Green: Gaia, Psychedelics and the Archaic Revival, 6 audiocassette set, Mystic Fire audio, 1993, ISBN 978-1-56176-907-0 (recorded at the Esalen Institute, 1989)
  • TechnoPagans at the End of History (transcription of rap with Mark Pesce from 1998)
  • Psychedelics in the Age of Intelligent Machines (1999) (DVD) HPX/SurrealStudio
  • Conversations on the Edge of Magic (1994) (CD & Cassette) ACE
  • Rap-Dancing into the Third Millennium (1994) (Cassette) (Re-issued on CD as The Quintessential HallucinogenACE
  • Packing For the Long Strange Trip (1994) (Audio Cassette) ACE
  • Global Perspectives and Psychedelic Poetics (1994) (Cassette) Sound Horizons Audio-Video, Inc.
  • The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge (1992) (Cassette) Sounds True
  • The Psychedelic Society (DVD & Video Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • True Hallucinations Workshop (Audio/Video Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • The Vertigo at History's Edge: Who Are We? Where Have We Come From? Where Are We Going? (DVD & Video/Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • Ethnobotany and Shamanism (DVD & Video/Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • Shamanism, Symbiosis and Psychedelics Workshop (Audio/Video Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • Shamanology (Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • Shamanology of the Amazon (w/ Nicole Maxwell) (Audio/Video Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • Beyond Psychology (1983) (Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • Understanding & the Imagination in the Light of Nature Parts 1 & 2 (DVD & Video/Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • Ethnobotany (a complete course given at The California Institute of Integral Studies) (Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • Non-ordinary States of Reality Through Vision Plants (Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • Mind & Time, Spirit & Matter: The Complete Weekend in Santa Fe (Audio/Video Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • Forms and Mysteries: Morphogenetic Fields and Psychedelic Experiences (w/ Rupert Sheldrake) (DVD & Video/Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • UFO: The Inside Outsider (DVD & Video/Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • A Calendar for The Goddess (DVD & Video/Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • A Magical Journey: Including Hallucinogens and Culture, Time and The I Ching, and The Human Future (Video Cassette) TAP/Sound Photosynthesis
  • Aliens and Archetypes (Video Cassette) TAP/Sound Photosynthesis
  • Angels, Aliens and Archetypes 1987 Symposium: Shamanic Approaches to the UFO, and Fairmont Banquet Talk (DVD & Video/Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • Botanical Dimensions (Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • Conference on Botanical Intelligence (w/ Joan Halifax, Andy Weil, & Dennis McKenna) (Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • Coping With Gaia's Midwife Crisis (Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • Dreaming Awake at the End of Time (DVD & Video/Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • Evolving Times (DVD, CD & Video/Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • Food of the Gods (Audio/Video Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • Food of the Gods 2: Drugs, Plants and Destiny (Video Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • Hallucinogens in Shamanism & Anthropology at Bridge Psychedelic Conf.1991 (w/ Ralph Metzner, Marlene Dobkin De Rios, Allison Kennedy & Thomas Pinkson) (Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • Finale – Bridge Psychedelic Conf.1991 (Audio/Video Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • Man and Woman at the End of History (w/ Riane Eisler) (Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • Plants, Consciousness, and Transformation (1995) (Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • Metamorphosis (w/ Rupert Sheldrake & Ralph Abraham) (1995) (Video Cassette) Mystic Fire/Sound Photosynthesis
  • Nature is the Center of the Mandala (Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • Opening the Doors of Creativity (1990) (DVD & Video/Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • Places I Have Been (CD & Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • Plants, Visions and History Lecture (Audio/Video Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • Psychedelics Before and After History (DVD & Video/Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • Sacred Plants As Guides: New Dimensions of the Soul (at the Jung Society Clairemont, California) (DVD & Video/Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • Seeking the Stone (Video Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • Shamanism: Before and Beyond History – A Weekend at Ojai (w/ Ralph Metzner) (Audio/Video Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • Shedding the Monkey (Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • State of the Stone '95 (Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • The Ethnobotany of Shamanism Introductory Lecture: The Philosophical Implications of Psychobotony: Past, Present and Future (at CIIS) (Audio/Video Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • The Ethnobotany of Shamanism Workshop: Psychedelics Before and After History (at CIIS) (Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • The Grammar of Ecstasy – the World Within the Word (Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • The Light at the End of History (Audio/Video Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • The State of the Stone Address: Having Archaic and Eating it Too (Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • The Taxonomy of Illusion (at UC Santa Cruz) (DVD & Video/Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • This World ...and Its Double (DVD & Video/Audio Cassette) Sound Photosynthesis
  • Trialogues at the Edge of the Millennium (w/ Rupert Sheldrake & Ralph Abraham) (at UC Santa Cruz) (1998) (Video Cassette) Trialogue Press

Discography

Filmography

  • Experiment at Petaluma (1990)
  • Prague Gnosis: Terence McKenna Dialogues (1992)
  • The Hemp Revolution (1995)
  • Terence McKenna: The Last Word (1999)
  • Shamans of the Amazon (2001)
  • Alien Dreamtime (2003)
  • 2012: The Odyssey (2007)
  • The Alchemical Dream: Rebirth of the Great Work (2008)
  • Manifesting the Mind (2009)
  • Cognition Factor (2009)
  • DMT: The Spirit Molecule (2010)
  • 2012: Time for Change (2010)
  • The Terence McKenna OmniBus (2012)
  • The Transcendental Object at the End of Time (2014)
  • Terence McKenna's True Hallucinations (2016)

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Most Mayanist scholars, such as Mark Van Stone and Anthony Aveni, adhere to the "GMT (Goodman-Martinez-Thompson) correlation" with the Long Count, which places the start date at 11 August 3114 BC and the end date of b'ak'tun 13 at December 21, 2012.[89] This date was also the overwhelming preference of those who believed in 2012 eschatology, arguably, Van Stone suggests, because it was a solstice, and was thus astrologically significant. Some Mayanist scholars, such as Michael D. Coe, Linda Schele and Marc Zender, adhere to the "Lounsbury/GMT+2" correlation, which sets the start date at August 13 and the end date at December 23. Which of these is the precise correlation has yet to be conclusively settled.[90] Coe's initial date was "24 December 2011." He revised it to "11 January AD 2013" in the 1980 2nd edition of his book,[91] not settling on December 23, 2012 until the 1984 3rd edition.[92] The correlation of b'ak'tun 13 as December 21, 2012 first appeared in Table B.2 of Robert J. Sharer's 1983 revision of the 4th edition of Sylvanus Morley's book The Ancient Maya.[93]
  2. ^ The 1975 first edition of McKenna's The Invisible Landscape refers to 2012 (but no specific day during the year) only twice. In the 1993 second edition, McKenna employed December 21, 2012 throughout, the date arrived at by the Mayanist researcher Robert J. Sharer.[94]

References

  1. ^ Znamenski, Andrei A. (2007). The Beauty of the Primitive: Shamanism and Western ImaginationOxford University Press. p. 138ISBN 978-0-19-803849-8.
  2. ^ Horgan, John (2004). Rational Mysticism: Spirituality Meets Science in the Search for EnlightenmentHoughton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 177ISBN 978-0-547-34780-6.
  3. Jump up to:a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x Brown, David Jay; Novick, Rebecca McClen, eds. (1993). "Mushrooms, Elves And Magic"Mavericks of the Mind: Conversations for the New Millennium. Freedom, CA: Crossing Press. pp. 9–24ISBN 978-0-89594-601-0.
  4. Jump up to:a b Partridge, Christopher (2006). "Ch. 3: Cleansing the Doors of Perception: The Contemporary Sacralization of Psychedelics". Reenchantment of West. Alternative Spiritualities, Sacralization, Popular Culture, and Occulture. Vol. 2. Continuum. p. 113ISBN 978-0-567-55271-6.
  5. Jump up to:a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x Jenkins, John Major (2009). "Early 2012 Books McKenna and Waters"The 2012 Story: The Myths, Fallacies, and Truth Behind the Most Intriguing Date in HistoryPenguinISBN 978-1-101-14882-2.
  6. Jump up to:a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Jacobson, Mark (June 1992). "Terence McKenna the brave prophet of The next psychedelic revolution, or is his cosmic egg just a little bit cracked?"Esquire. pp. 107–138. ESQ 1992 06.
  7. Jump up to:a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Dery, Mark (2001) [1996]. "Terence McKenna: The inner elf"21•C Magazine. Archived from the original on November 14, 2013. Retrieved February 7, 2014.
  8. Jump up to:a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Horgan, John"Was psychedelic guru Terence McKenna goofing about 2012 prophecy?" (blog). Scientific American. Retrieved February 5, 2014.
  9. ^ Krupp, E.C. (November 2009). "The great 2012 scare" (PDF)Sky & Telescope. pp. 22–26 [25]. Archived from the original (PDF) on April 18, 2016.
  10. Jump up to:a b c Bruce, Alexandra (2009). 2012: Science Or Superstition (The Definitive Guide to the Doomsday Phenomenon). Disinformation Movie & Book Guides. Red Wheel Weiser. p. 261ISBN 978-1-934708-51-4.
  11. Jump up to:a b c d e Normark, Johan (June 16, 2009). "2012: Prophet of nonsense #8: Terence McKenna – Novelty theory and timewave zero"Archaeological Haecceities (blog).
  12. Jump up to:a b c d e f g h i j k l m Pinchbeck, Daniel (2003). Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary ShamanismBroadway Books. pp. 231–38. ISBN 978-0-7679-0743-9.
  13. Jump up to:a b c d Kent, James (December 2, 2003). "Terence McKenna Interview, Part 1"Tripzine.com. Retrieved June 29, 2011.
  14. ^ Dennis McKenna (2012). The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss: My Life with Terence McKenna (ebook) (1st ed.). Polaris Publications. p. 71. ISBN 978-0-87839-637-5.
  15. ^ McKenna, Dennis 2012, p. 115.
  16. Jump up to:a b c d e Lin, Tao (August 13, 2014). "Psilocybin, the Mushroom, and Terence McKenna"Vice. Retrieved July 12, 2018.
  17. Jump up to:a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Martin, Douglas (September 10, 2013). "Terence McKenna, 53, dies; Patron of psychedelic drugs"The New York Times. Retrieved September 12, 2012.
  18. Jump up to:a b c McKenna 1992a, pp. 204–17.
  19. Jump up to:a b c McKenna 1993, p. 215.
  20. Jump up to:a b McKenna 1993, pp. 55–58.
  21. Jump up to:a b McKenna 1993, pp. 22–23.
  22. Jump up to:a b c d e f g "Terence McKenna; Promoter of psychedelic drug use". Los Angeles Times. April 7, 2000. p. B6.
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External links



Korean Buddhist Philosophy - The Oxford Handbook of World Philosophy

 Korean Buddhist Philosophy

Jin Y. Park

The Oxford Handbook of World Philosophy

Edited by William Edelglass and Jay L. Garfield

Print Publication Date: May 2011 Subject: Philosophy, Non-Western Philosophy Online Publication Date: Sep 2011 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195328998.003.0032

Abstract and Keywords

This article provides an introduction to Korean Buddhist philosophy. Korean Buddhism is a part of the East Asian Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition. During its fifteen-hundred-year history, which began in the fourth century and continues to today, Korean Buddhism has developed in a close relationship with Chinese Buddhism and at the same time generated its own unique views. Buddhism, together with Confucianism, constitutes one of the two veins of philosophical traditions in Korea. This article discusses five Buddhist thinkers: Ŭisang (625–702), WOnhyo (617–686), Pojo Chinul (1158–1210), T'oe'ong SOngchOl (1912–1993), and POpsOng (1913–), with respect to the three themes of HwaOm (Ch. Huayan) Buddhism, SOn (Ch. Chan; Jap. Zen) Buddhism, and Buddhist ethics.

Keywords: Ŭisang, WOnhyo, Pojo Chinul, T'oe'ong SOngchOl, POpsOng, Buddhist ethics, Buddhism, HwaOm

KOREAN Buddhism is a part of the East Asian Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition. During its fifteen-hundred-year history, which began in the fourth century and continues to today, Korean Buddhism has developed in a close relationship with Chinese Buddhism and at the same time generated its own unique views. Buddhism, together with Confucianism, constitutes one of the two veins of philosophical traditions in Korea. Five Buddhist thinkers are discussed in this essay: Ŭisang (625–702), WOnhyo (617–686), Pojo Chinul (1158–1210), T'oe'ong SOngch'Ol (1912–1993), and Pópsóng (1913–), with respect to the three themes of HwaOm (Ch. Huayan) Buddhism, SOn (Ch. Chan; Jap. Zen) Buddhism, and Buddhist ethics.

Ŭisang is credited as the founder of the HwaOm school. From 661 to 668, Ŭisang studied in Tang China with Zhiyan (602–668), the designated second patriarch of Chinese Huayan Buddhism. During this time, Ŭisang also became a colleague of Fazang (643–712), who later became the third patriarch of the tradition. Ŭisang's thought on HwaOm Buddhism is well articulated in a short piece titled The Diagram of the Reality Realm of the One Vehicle of Hwaöm Buddhism (HwaOm ilsüng pOpkye to), which has had a significant impact on Korean HwaOm thought up to today.

WOnhyo, Ŭisang's contemporary, is one of the most influential Buddhist thinkers in Korean Buddhism. WOnhyo joined a monastery during his teens. Without specific teachers to guide him, he read widely and wrote

commentaries on major Mahāyāna texts, making a significant contribution to the commentarial tradition in East Asian Buddhism. WOnhyo made two attempts to travel to China, neither of which was completed. A life-changing experience during his second unsuccessful journey to China is cited frequently as the moment of his awakening to the truth that the mind is the source of one's understanding of the external world. (p. 374) Wónhyo left behind him a voluminous corpus, the themes of which include HwaOm Buddhist thought, Mind-Only (Cittamātra/Yogācāra) philosophy, the Lotus Teaching, and bodhisattva precepts, among others.

Pojo Chinul was a major figure in establishing the SOn Buddhist tradition in twelfth-century Korea and is considered one of the most important figures in Korean SOn Buddhism. Chinul joined a monastery at the age of eight (1165). Like Wónhyo, Chinul mainly trained himself without specific mentors until the age of twenty-five (1182), when he passed the governmental examination for monks. Instead of taking a governmental post, Chinul continued his own practice, traveling to different monasteries, and finally settled down at the Songgwang monastery in 1200, where he trained disciples, gave dharma talks, and wrote on Buddhism until his death. Chinul's Buddhism developed around the core SOn doctrine that the mind is the Buddha. In later days, Chinul adopted Kanhwa SOn and promoted it as the most effective way to attain awakening. The Kanhwa SOn tradition has remained the most prominent SOn tradition in Korea since Chinul's time, demonstrating his lasting impact on Korean Buddhism.

T'oe'ong SOngh'Ol is one of the most important figures in the second half of the twentieth century in Korean Buddhism; he represents a SOn absolutist and subitist position. POpsOng might not be as well recognized as the other three thinkers introduced here; however, POpsOng's Buddhist thought represents engaged Buddhism in contemporary Korea, one of the important and emerging fields in Buddhist philosophy today. We will discuss POpsOng's engaged Buddhism together with WOnhyo's discussion of bodhisattva precepts. This will offer a response to the question of Buddhism's position in social philosophy and ethical theories, as has been raised in recent years among western Buddhist thinkers.

The Universal and the Particular in the Hwaöm Thought of Ŭisang

Ŭisang discusses the ultimate vision of HwaOm Buddhism in his “Verse on the Dharma Nature” (POpsOng ke), which is included in the Diagram of the Reality Realm of the One Vehicle of Hwaöm Buddhism (HwaOm ilsuing pópkye to). The verse consists of 210 Chinese characters deployed in a diagram that demonstrates the interpenetration of all beings in the phenomenal world, the core theme of HwaOm Buddhism. In the HwaOm Buddhist tradition, the original nature of a being, frequently referred to as “the dharma nature,” is characterized by its nonsubstantiality. The basic Buddhist doctrine postulates the identity of a being as conditional. A being in Buddhism is not an owner of independent and permanent substance but exists in the milieu of conditioned causality. Buddhism identifies its causal theory as dependent-arising. The traditional definition of the concept appears in early (p. 375) Buddhist texts as follows: “Because this happens, that happens; because this ceases, that ceases.” A being's identity is possible only as a differential notion in Buddhism, which challenges the identity principle in substantialist philosophy.

As one of the major East Asian Buddhist schools, HwaOm Buddhism emphasizes the reality of the conditioned

causality at the entire level of the phenomenal world and discusses it especially through the relationship between

the noumenal and the phenomenal. The ultimate teaching of the school is expressed frequently through the symbol of the jewel net of Indra. Imagine the universe as a net that stretches infinitely. Further envision that a glittering jewel sits in each knot of the net. The jewel itself is transparent and has no identity of its own. The identity of each jewel is constantly constructed through what it reflects. In the world of Hwaöm Buddhism, each entity in the cosmos is like a jewel in the net. All beings exist within the net of dependent-arising. In this interrelated world, the identity of the subject is not defined by the independent and permanent essence of the subject but already includes its other. Ŭisang defines a being's identity in this nature as interfusion and nondual. The nature of what is reflected in each jewel cannot be analyzed systematically because of its quantitative immensity and its fluctuating quality. In the “Verse,” Ŭisang describes the logic of Indra's net as follows: “Within the one is encompassed the

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all, and within the many is the one. / The one is the all and the many are the one.” The idea of mutual penetration reaches culmination in the signature Hwaöm statement, as Ŭisang states: “In one particle of dust is contained the ten directions [the entire world]. / All other particles of dust are the same” (HPC 2.1a). In the logic of Hwaöm Buddhism, any being, however infinitesimal it might be, is identified with the entirety of the world. Since all beings already exist within the net of conditioned causality, the one and the many are not separate. Ŭisang explains this relationship between the one and the many by using the example of the number “one” and the number “ten”:

In the teaching of the great dependent-arising, if there is no “one,” the “many” cannot be established. [Practitioners] should be well aware of this nature. What is called the “one” is not the “one” by its self-nature. [By the same token], what is known as the “ten” is not the “ten” by its self-nature; the “ten” comes to be known as the “ten” by its relation to others [or by dependent-arising]. All of the beings produced out of dependent-arising do not have definite marks or a definite nature. Since there is no self-nature, beings do not exist independently, which suggests that birth actually means no-birth. No-birth means no need to abide, and no abiding means the middle path. (HPC 2.6b)

There exists no eternal, unchanging one-ness or ten-ness that grounds the nature of either the one or the ten. Both the “one” and the “ten” (and in that sense, any being (p. 376) in the world) earn their identities through the ever-changing causal transformation.2 The logic of conditioned causality, however, does not negate the existence of individual beings on the phenomenal level: that is, the one and the ten are different. Despite the individuality that is recognized on the phenomenal level, Hwaöm thought also consistently emphasizes the noumenal aspect of the phenomenally separated existence: hence, the one is the ten. Two issues deserve our attention here: first, the paradigm of one particle-qua-the world does not indicate that a specific one is the entire world all the time on every occasion. The one is the ten when we focus on the “one” at a given moment in a given situation, and the same can be said about any other entity in the world, which is represented in Ŭisang's “Verse” as “a particle of dust.” When the notion of the one in “the one is the all” is interpreted as referring to exclusively a specific one— such as the emperor (the one) as opposed to the people (the all)—the Hwaöm vision risks supporting a totalitarian vision. Second, the phenomenal (the one) and the noumenal (the all) are nondual, and so is the particular and the universal. The phenomenal and the noumenal are hermeneutically constructed concepts, not ontologically separated realities. These two issues should be the ground to respond to the criticism that Hwaöm Buddhism is a form of a philosophy of idealism.

Ŭisang further elaborates the identity of the “one” and the “all” by using the concept of the six marks. The six marks consist of three pairs: universality/particularity (K. ch'ongsang/pyólsang), sameness/difference (K. tongsang/yisang), and integrity/fragmentation (K. sóngsang/koesang). As in the case of the one and the ten, these seeming binary opposites coexist in the identity of an entity. The first in the pairs—universality, the sameness, and

integrity—characterize the totality of the world as understood from the noumenal level. The second sets of each pair—particularity, difference, and fragmentation—characterize the individual entities at the phenomenal level like each jewel in Indra's net. The six marks making up the three pairs demonstrate the contradictory identity through which Hwaöm Buddhism understands an entity. An individual entity is characterized by the marks of particularity, difference, and fragmentation, whereas the nature of its individual identity is constructed through its relationship with others, and its identity is inseparable from the marks of universality, sameness, and integrity.

In Chinese Huayan Buddhism, the mutual interpenetration of the noumenal and the phenomenal is explained through a theory known as the fourfold worldview. The fourfold worldview consists of (1) the world of the phenomenon (C. shifajie; (p. 377) K. sabópkye), (2) the world of the noumenon (C. lifajie; K. yibópkye), (3) the world of the unobstructed interpenetration of the noumenon and the phenomenon (C. lishi wuai fajie: K. yisa muae pópkye), and (4) the world of the unobstructed interpenetration among phenomena (C. shishi wuai fajie; K. sasa muae pópkye). The first of the Huayan fourfold worldview represents the world that consists of individual existences; it is the world of the many, where diversity exists seemingly without a coherent system. The second stage of the fourfold worldview postulates a world that is understood from the perspective of the principle. However diverse existence in the phenomenal world might be, no being exists outside of conditioned causality, which is the structure of the world from the Buddhist perspective. Hence, the third layer of the fourfold worldview declares that there is no conflict between the world of diversity and the world of one principle. Considering the phenomenal diversity in light of the first three stages, Huayan envisions at its fourth level that all entities in the world are mutually influential and interconnected without conflicts.

Ŭisang explains the relationship between the noumenon (the universal) and the phenomenon (the particular) as follows: there is a mutual identity of the noumena (the universal) and the phenomena (the particular); there is a mutual identity of the noumenon and the noumenon, and there is a mutual identity of the phenomenon and the

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phenomenon (HPC 2.6a). This is the world in which the universal and the particular, and the particular and the particular, are mutually interpenetrating due to their dependently arising nature. Ŭisang identifies the nature of things arising in the law of the dependent-arising as the “middle path.” The Buddhist middle path does not indicate the meridian point of the two participating elements. Instead, it indicates that “all polarities are interfused” (HPC 2.5b). The one and the many, the noumenon and the phenomenon, the universal and the particular are interfused in the sense that neither has self-nature and that both exist in the midst of conditioned causal movements.

Language and Subjectivity in Chinul's Sŏn Buddhism

Zen Buddhism shares with Hwaöm Buddhism the idea of the mutual interfusion of beings but develops its own paradigm that addresses the main concerns of the school. The basic premise of the Zen school claims that the sentient being is the Buddha. The premise is an oxymoron: if the sentient being is the Buddha, why are (p. 378) sentient beings still not enlightened? If the sentient being is the Buddha, what is the meaning of enlightenment? Zen Buddhism challenges the traditional logic of philosophy by answering these questions with the following statement: the sentient being is the Buddha, and yet the sentient being is the sentient being.

In approaching the paradoxical nature of the existential reality of a being, Pojo Chinul underlines the importance of understanding the nature of one's mind. In his Encouragement to Practice: The Compact of the Samādhi and

Prajñā Community (Kwönsu chönghye kyölsa mun 1190), Chinul states, “When one is deluded about the mind and gives rise to endless defilements, such a person is a sentient being. When one is awakened to the mind and gives rise to endless marvelous functions, such a person is the Buddha. Delusion and awakening are two different states, but both are caused by the mind. If one tries to find the Buddha away from this mind, one will never find him” (HPC 4.698a). In this passage, one notices that the commonly held binary opposites, for example delusion and awakening, or the sentient being and the Buddha, are acknowledged but at the same time negated by attributing the ground of the existence of such dualism to the mind of a being. For Chinul, delusion arises not through a certain quality of an entity external or internal to the subject but through the subject's failure to see the nonsubstantial nature of one's ontological reality. Here one notes the fundamental difference of the focus between HwaOm and SOn Buddhism. Whereas Ŭisang's HwaOm Buddhism primarily concerns itself with the phenomenal world and understands each being within that structure, Chinul's SOn Buddhism gives priority to an individual's awakening to his own existential and ontological reality.

One way to interpret Chinul's SOn Buddhism is to understand it as an attempt to address the problem of subjectivity in the process of the individual's awareness of ontological reality, and the problem of subjectivity is closely linked to the subject's relation to language. As is well known, SOn Buddhism has been keen to the function of language in the subject's mode of thinking. However, Chinul points out that the emphasis on the limits of language and thought is not a SOn-specific feature but is found in most Buddhist schools. In explaining the meaning of SOn Buddhism, Chinul is especially aware of Fazang's fivefold taxonomy, in which Fazang placed Chan Buddhism (which he calls the Sudden school) at the fourth level, one step below the Huayan school. Fazang also characterized the teaching of the Sudden school as simply focusing on forgetting language and thoughts in an effort to create the undisturbed state of the mind. Responding to such characterizations of Chan Buddhism by Fazang, Chinul explains in his Treatise on Resolving Doubts about Huatou Meditation (Kanhwa kyOrüi ron) that all five stages of Buddhism in Fazang's fivefold doctrinal classification in their own way deal with the problem of language and of the thinking process. Chinul repeatedly emphasizes that the idea of cutting off language does not belong exclusively to the SOn school, nor is the nature of the achieved goal through SOn practice different from that described by other Buddhist schools, especially by HwaOm Buddhism. If we follow Chinul's logic here, we come to a rather interesting point. That is, the SOn school does not offer any doctrinal renovation of Buddhism; Chinul might even seem to say that the main concern of (p. 379) SOn Buddhism is not Buddhist doctrine itself, since Buddhist doctrines are all already spelled out by existing Buddhist schools. At the same time, the Buddhist teaching SOn represents is not and cannot be different from the teachings expounded by other schools. Chinul's ready admission of the identity between SOn Buddhism and other Buddhist schools at the ultimate level leads one to ask the question: if there is no difference between the two, what is the identity of SOn Buddhism? For Chinul, SOn teachings, especially SOn hwadu meditation, facilitate a state through which the subject makes a radical change in his or her mode of thinking; the doctrinal schools offer a description of the Buddhist worldview and the SOn school teaches how to activate in the mind of the practitioner what has been stated in the doctrinal schools.

Chinul does not consider the linguistic rendering as found in Buddhist scriptures deficient as it is. However, Chinul points out that the linguistically rendered reality of the objective world is not always reflected in the existential reality of the subject. What, then, are the causes of the gap between the linguistically rendered reality and the reality of the subject? In this context, Chinul cites Chinese Chan Master Dahui Zonggao (1089–1163) to point out the structural problem in one's thinking process as a major cause that is responsible for such a gap: “The influence of established thought being so strong, the mind in search of enlightenment itself becomes a barrier and thus the correct knowledge of one's mind has rarely obtained a chance to manifest itself. However, this barrier

does not come from outside nor is it something that should be regarded as an exception” (HPC 4.732c). The problems of the situation at this point become internalized and subjectivized.

At the beginning of the Treatise, Chinul juxtaposes SOn with HwaOm, equating them in terms of their vision of the ultimate reality and at the same time distinguishing them in terms of how to approach this reality. For Chinul, the investigation of one's mind is critical in this sense. The mind is allegedly the locus in which the gap between the existential reality of the subject and the hermeneutical reality represented in linguistic rendering of Buddhist teaching takes place. Hence, Chinul repeatedly emphasizes that “the mind is the Buddha,” and SOn practice toward enlightenment, for Chinul, is to be awakened to the very nature of one's mind. In the later stage of his life, Chinul was firm in proposing that hwadu meditation can facilitate the environment in which the practitioner can attain this goal, and the capacity of hwadu in achieving this goal is closely related to the way in which language functions in hwadu meditation.

Chinul argues that language in Buddhist teachings other than SOn hwadu meditation functions simply as a tool to impart meaning. The hwadu meditation employs language not to communicate meaning but to facilitate an environment in which the subject makes a transition from being a mere receptor of the described meaning to an active participator in the reality described in language—that is, hwadu as it is does not present truth, nor does it offer a way to correct the problem that individuals might have. Chinul writes, “The moment one tends toward the slightest idea that the hwadu must be the presentation of the ultimate truth or that it enables one to treat one's defects, one is already under the power of the limitations (p. 380) set by linguistic expression” (HPC 4.733b). The hwadu is like a catalyst: as it is, it is not pertinent to what is happening to the subject; it simply facilitates a transformation in the subject without itself being involved or changed by the transformation. The transforming function of the hwadu is for Chinul what distinguishes SOn Buddhism from all other Buddhist schools.

In explaining the functioning of hwadu language, Chinul employs the distinction between the “live word” (K. hwalgu) and the “dead word” (K. sagu) and “the involvement with the word” (K. ch'amgu) and “involvement with meaning” (K. ch'amüi), borrowing the concepts from Dahui. These distinctions are characterized by the language's relation to the subject rather than the specific nature of linguistic expressions themselves. Chinul criticizes passages like “In this endless world, between me and others, there is no gap even as infinitesimal as the thinness of a hair” (HPC 4.733a) as examples of dead words because “they create in the practitioner's mind barriers derived from understanding” (HPC 4.733a). As opposed to dead words, live words generate “no taste”; they create a dead-end situation to the practitioner in which the practitioner loses all of the resources to exercise his or her thinking process.

When SOn Buddhists criticize language and theorizing, it is because they are the very tools for the subject to carry out the process of domesticating the external world and tailoring it according to the mode of thinking most familiar to the subject. The hwadu meditation, especially the “live word” and the “direct involvement with word,” are tools that put a break in the familiar world created by the subject. Dead words subjugate themselves to a sign-system and habituated mode of thinking. As opposed to dead words, live words become the mediator among the practitioner, language, and the world by disrupting the preexisting order and meaning structure of these three elements established in the subject's mind. The promise of hwadu meditation, for Chinul, is that this experience by the subject of the unfamiliar territory will lead the subject to the realization of her ontological reality, which from the Buddhist perspective is existence in the milieu of the conditionally arising process.

Nondualism and Mahāyāna Buddhist Ethics

Despite the differences in their emphasis, both Ŭisang's HwaOm Buddhism and Chinul's SOn Buddhism find their basis in the fundamental Buddhist vision of nondualism. In Ŭisang's HwaOm Buddhist thought, the particular and the universal, the phenomena and the noumena, are understood as being in a state of interpenetration; in Chinul's SOn Buddhism, the mind of the subject is the source of all delusions, and delusion in this context signifies understanding a phenomenon—be it an individual being, an event, or any abstract concept—as an independent occurrence instead of the result of a multilayered, causal process. If things are by nature void of independent essence and polar opposites are to be understood according to their mutual penetration, how does one construct an ethical system from such a nondual (p. 381) philosophy? In Ŭisang's HwaOm vision of the mutual interpenetration of entities, both good and bad, right and wrong, purity and impurity are understood as being empty. In this nondual world, as Ŭisang states, “saiisāra and nirvāṇa are always harmonized together” (HPC 2.1a). The same applies to Chinul's SOn Buddhist world, as he says, “there being no purity or impurity, there is no right or wrong” (HPC 4.710c). Where do ethics stand in this antinomian world of HwaOm and SOn Buddhism? Given that Buddhism involves not only philosophical but also religious tradition, and that one of the fundamental functions of the latter is to provide practitioners with guidelines to follow in the process of Buddhist practice, the issue of Buddhism's position in ethical and moral systems makes us pause and wonder what kind of ethical paradigm it might offer.

The Mahāyāna Buddhist approach to ethics is well grounded in the fundamental Mahāyāna Buddhist position on the reality of existence. A being does not have an unchanging essence, nor do moral and ethical categories. The fact that a being exists only in the milieu of conditionally arising causal processes does not negate the individual's existence on the phenomenal level, and the same applies to moral and ethical categories. In other words, Mahāyāna Buddhism does not negate the necessity of moral values or ethical categories; however, it also underlines that precepts, moral rules, and ethical definitions exist and are acknowledged always in the context of their provisional nature. WOnhyo makes clear the double-edgedness of the Mahāyāna Buddhist position toward ethics in his discussion of bodhisattva precepts. The precepts by definition indicate rules that Buddhist practitioners are obliged to observe. When one observes a rule, what is the ground for this observation? Are moral rules and ethical categories given by the absolute power and thus to be respected in all circumstances, or are they abided by because of the beneficial consequences they promise to produce?

WOnhyo discusses bodhisattva precepts focusing on the provisional nature of the value category. Precepts are rules that Buddhist practitioners are required to abide by. However, even precepts cannot escape the dependently arising nature of the world, which means that no precepts, and in that sense, no moral or ethical categories, are to be accepted as having absolute independent values of their own. In Essentials of Observation and Violation of Bodhisattva Precepts (Posal kyebon chibOm yogi), Wónhyo discusses the three categories of observing and transgressing the foundations of bodhisattva precepts. First, he discusses major and minor offenses; second, he shows the profound and shallow understandings of observing and transgressing precepts; and third, he presents the ultimate way of observing and transgressing precepts. In the first two sections, WOnhyo offers basic concepts of precepts and how the same precepts can be interpreted differently based on the subject's intention involved in a certain action. In these two sections, as in the case of most moral teachings, Wónhyo promotes the importance of respecting the existing rules. In the third section, titled “Ultimate Observation and Violation of Precepts,” Wónhyo changes the direction of his discussion and revisits the very concepts of precepts and of observing and

violating them. The result is to underline the fundamentally provisional nature of moral rules and ethical categories. Wónhyo writes:

(p. 382) That precepts exist only based on multilevel conditional causes [and thus are empty] does not negate their existence in reality. Violating precepts is also like this; so is personal identity. In dealing with precepts, if one sees only their nonexistent aspect and says that they do not exist, such a person might not violate precepts but will forever lose them, because s/he denies their existence. Also, if someone relies on the idea that precepts do exist and thinks only on the existent side of precepts, even though s/he might be able to observe the precepts, observation in this case is the same as violation, because such a person negates the ultimate reality of precepts [which is emptiness]. (HPC 1.585a, emphasis mine)

When existence is understood through a differential notion instead of being anchored on substantial essence and the particular and the universal are intersubsuming, any attempt to create a closed value system faces a problem of appropriation. Appropriation requires an appropriator, and this logic cannot but question the validity of the created system. As Wónhyo states, the ambiguity of categorized values does not completely negate the necessity of a value system itself. Instead, the awareness of the multilayered contexts out of which a value system is constructed demands a constant readjustment of the existing system. Wónhyo's thought on bodhisattva precepts in its outlook proposes an ethical theory that challenges normative forms of ethics. It was, however, not until recent years that Korean Buddhist traditions began to seriously consider the position of Buddhism as an ethical theory. In contemporary Korean Buddhism, the issue of individual practice and awakening on the one hand and the social engagement and ethical dimension of Buddhism on the other has generated a polemic that makes the issue of Buddhist ethics more visible. Two Buddhist monk-thinkers took opposite positions: T'oe'ong Söngch'öl defined Buddhism as fundamentally based on the perfection of individual cultivation, whereas Pöpsöng claimed that individual cultivation cannot be achieved without being accompanied by social engagement. Söngch'ol's Buddhism kindled a debate known as the Sudden-Gradual debate, and Pöpsöng's Buddhism offers a philosophical paradigm for a form of engaged Buddhism known as Minjung Buddhism (Buddhism for the masses).

The idea of Buddhism for the masses first appeared in Korean Buddhism at the beginning of the twentieth century, when reform-minded Buddhist intellectuals proposed changing Buddhism to be more relevant to the life of the general public, especially those marginalized in society. As a movement, however, Minjung Buddhism began together with prodemocratic and antigovernmental movements in Korean society during the military dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s. Critical of the subjectivist and solipsistic attitudes that appear in some forms of Buddhist practice, Minjung Buddhists emphasize the social dimension of Buddhist philosophy and contend that Buddhist liberation includes liberation from all forms of suppression. In doing so, Minjung Buddhists make appeals to the bodhisattva ideal and to compassion.

The Sudden-Gradual debate was ignited by Söngch'öl along with the publication of his book, The Correct Path of the Sŏn School (Sönmun chöngno 1981), in which he criticizes the “sudden enlightenment with gradual cultivation” as a (p. 383) heretical teaching in the Sön school and defines “sudden enlightenment with sudden cultivation” as the authentic form of the Sön practice. The idea of sudden enlightenment is based on the fundamental Sön claim that sentient beings are already Buddha the way they are. On the surface, Minjung Buddhism and the Sudden-Gradual debate fall into two exclusively different categories of Buddhist thought: the former focuses on the social aspects of Buddhist philosophy, whereas the latter centers on the nature of individual cultivation. At a deep level, they cannot but reflect each other because, without a clear understanding of the nature

of individual cultivation and awakening as explored in the Sudden-Gradual debate, Buddhist philosophy cannot maintain itself. However, if the subjective world of an individual cannot be linked to the public and objective domain of the social ethical realm, as Minjung Buddhism emphasizes, such a cultivation or awakening contradicts the basic Buddhist doctrines of dependent-arising and no-self. The Sudden-Gradual debate and Minjung Buddhism, then, represent the perennial core issues of Buddhism: that is, how to relate wisdom (realization of one's ontological reality) and compassion (sharing life with others).

Questions have been raised about whether attainment of wisdom (enlightenment) will naturally facilitate compassionate actions for others. Pópsóng's discussion of sudden and gradual aptly applies to this issue. Instead of understanding sudden and gradual as a process from the former to the latter within the subject, Pópsóng relates them to the subject's realization and the social and historical manifestation of that realization, that is, noumenal wisdom and its exercise through compassion in the phenomenal world. In doing so, he incorporates HwaOm Buddhist thought into his emphasis on the social and ethical dimensions of Buddhist enlightenment. Pópsóng was not the first Korean Buddhist to resort to HwaOm Buddhism to underscore the relevance of SOn Buddhism to the social and ethical realities of the practitioner's life. From Chinul in the twelfth century to S'Ongch'Ol in the twentieth century, Korean SOn masters have frequently resorted to HwaOm Buddhist philosophy in an effort to clarify the relationship between the subject and the object in the SOn Buddhist worldview and between an individual's ontological awakening (wisdom) and its social dimension (compassion) in SOn practice.

Reminiscent of the HwaOm vision of the interpenetration of the phenomena and the noumena, Pópsóng claims that the diversities characterizing the phenomenal world require endless engagement in bodhisattva activities in daily life, which Pópsóng identifies as “history.” History of Buddhism, as expressed through his term “historicization,” is contrasted with a metaphysical or transcendental understanding of Buddhism. SOn Buddhist enlightenment, from POpsOng's perspective, cannot be related solely to individual spiritual awakening, nor can it be an asocial event, as has been argued previously. Pópsóng contends that the hwadu of SOn Buddhism are not “dead words intuiting the inner spiritual mysticism. Hwadu meditation is epistemological activity that constantly negates the reification of ideas and self-absolutization of any entity; it is historical movement that actively accepts and

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refreshes the (p. 384) nature of dependent co-arising in one's existence.” Chinul prioritized hwadu meditation in SOn practice, emphasizing the capacity of hwadu to facilitate a fundamental change in one's mode of thinking. POpsOng took this possibility of SOn Buddhism further toward the social dimension and linked the change in an individual as a path toward a social change. POpsOng thus states, “Buddhist enlightenment is not a return to absolute reality; instead, it is a sudden liberation of all the essentialist views regarding one's consciousness and existence, self and the world.” 5 This awakening or liberation of self-closure of an individual needs to take place constantly and continuously as life unfolds. This is a vision of the world in which human desire for a teleological completion needs to give way to the awakening to the openness of the world and of beings.

WOnhyo's bodhisattva precepts suggest an ethical theory that acknowledges rules but only to the degree that the moral rules and ethical categories are understood as provisional and do not have an essence of their own; POpsOng's engaged Buddhism explains the social dimension of SOn and HwaOm Buddhism, emphasizing the indissoluble nature of individual and society, or self and others in the Buddhist world. In both cases, the conventional rule-bounded moral theories are accepted only as a preliminary stage of social theory; in its place, the Mahāyāna Buddhism of Wónhyo and POpsOng proposes a context-bound ethical theory that requires a constant reawakening to one's existential and social reality as one lives in the milieu of the ever-changing causal processes of the Buddhist world.

Bibliography and Suggested Reading

BUSWELL, ROBERT E., JR. (trans.). (1983) The Korean Approach to Zen: The Collected Works of Chinul. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai'i Press.

Find this resource:

——— (trans.). (2007) Cultivating Original Enlightenment: Wónhyo's Exposition of the Vajrasamadhi-Sūtra (Kümgang Sammaegyóng Non). Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press.

Find this resource:

JORGENSEN, JOHN. (2010) “Minjung Buddhism: A Buddhist Critique of the Status Quo-its History, Philosophy, and Critique.” In Makers of Modern Korean Buddhism, edited by Jin Y. Park. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 275–313.

Find this resource:

ODIN, STEVEN. (1982) Process Metaphysics and Hua-yen Buddhism: A Critical Study of Cumulative Penetration vs. Interpenetration. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Find this resource:

(p. 385) PARK, JIN Y. (2005) “Zen Language in Our Time: The Case of Pojo Chinul's Huatou Meditation.” Philosophy East and West 55/1, 80–98.

Find this resource:

——— . (2008) Buddhism and Postmodernity: Zen, Huayan, and the Possibility of Buddhist-Postmodern Ethics. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

Find this resource:

YUN, WONCHEOL. (2010) “Zen Master T'oe'ong Söngch'öl's Doctrine of Zen Enlightenment and Practice.” In Makers of Modern Korean Buddhism, edited by Jin Y. Park. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 199–226. (p. 386)

Find this resource:

Notes:

(1) Hwaöm ilsüng pöpkye to (Diagram of the Reality Realm of the One Vehicle of Hwaöm Buddhism), Han'guk Pulgyo chönsö (Collected Works of Korean Buddhism, hereafter HPC), vol. 2, pp. 1–8, p. 2.1a. For a complete English translation of this work, see Odin 1982. Throughout this essay, English translations from Classical Chinese and Korean are mine.

(2) Fazang, the alleged Third Patriarch of Chinese Huayan Buddhism, explains the relationship of the one and the ten by employing the concepts of “the same body” (C. tongti; K. tongch'e) and “the different body” (C. yiti; K. yich'e). The one and the ten in the numerals one through ten are different entities (bodies) because the one is not the ten and the ten is not the one. However, they are the same body in the sense that the one cannot obtain its meaning without the rest of the number in the series of one through ten; the same is the case with the number ten. That the one is the same body and at the same time a different body with the number ten can be further explained through the Buddhist concept of identity known as the two levels of truth.

(3) The terms “nounema” and “phenomena” are translations of the Chinese character li (K. yi) and shi (K. sa), respectively. These terms are also translated here as the principle and the particular. Noumena and phenomena in this case are not related to Kantian philosophy or phenomenology in Continental philosophy, even though Huayan Buddhism can be understood as Buddhist phenomenology as I have discussed elsewhere. See Park 2008, especially ch. 8 and 9.

(4) Pópsóng, “Minjung Pulgyo undong ǔi silch'önjök ipchang” (The Practical Standpoint of the Minjung Buddhist Movement), in Chonggyo yön'gu (Religious Studies) 6 (1990): 223–228, p. 223.

(5) Pöpsöng, “Kkadarüm üi ilsangsöng kwa hyöngmyöngsöng” (Commonality and Revolutionality of Enlightenment.” Ch'angjak kwa pip'yöng 82 (Winter 1993): 329–340.

Jin Y. Park

Jin Y. Park is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion at American University. Park's research focuses on Zen and Huayan Buddhism, Buddhist-postmodern comparative philosophy, Buddhist encounters with modernity in Korea, and Buddhist ethics. Her publications include Buddhisms and Deconstructions (2006), Buddhism and Postmodernity: Zen, Huayan, and the Possibility of Buddhist-Postmodern Ethics (2008), and Makers of Modern Korean Buddhism (2010).

Oxford Handbooks Online


Nishida Kitarō: Self, World, and the Nothingness Underlying Distinctions - The Oxford Handbook of World Philosophy

 Nishida Kitarō: Self, World, and the Nothingness Underlying Distinctions

John C. Maraldo

The Oxford Handbook of World Philosophy

Edited by William Edelglass and Jay L. Garfield

Print Publication Date: May 2011 Subject: Philosophy, Non-Western Philosophy Online Publication Date: Sep 2011 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195328998.003.0031

Abstract and Keywords

This article provides an introduction to the philosophy of Nishida Kitarō. Nishida, widely recognized as the most important Japanese philosopher of the twentieth century and the founder of the Kyoto School, authored some twenty volumes of essays influenced by Buddhist thought and deeply informed by the Anglo-European philosophy that was just beginning to be introduced to his country. Nishida began his work with the notion of “pure experience,” the moment prior to any distinction between experiencing self and experienced object, as it founds the systematic development of our thinking about the world. After lengthy diversions into German and French dialectical thinking and Neo-Kantian philosophy to explain the nature of self-awareness, he returned to early Greek philosophy and Buddhist thinking and developed a novel alternative to the ways that philosophers have distinguished self and world and sought ultimate grounds for them.

Keywords: Japanese philosopher, Japanese philosophers, Nishida Kitarō, Kyoto School, Buddhism, Buddhist philosophy

The Significance of Nishida Kitarō

Is there an ultimate context that encompasses not only the terms in which we conceptualize the world but also everything, every being, even the world itself? That question was a central concern of Nishida Kitarō (1870–1945) in the mature stage of his philosophy. Nishida, widely recognized as the most important Japanese philosopher of the twentieth century and the founder of the Kyoto School, authored some twenty volumes of essays influenced by Buddhist thought and deeply informed by the Anglo-European philosophy that was just beginning to be introduced to his country. Nishida began his work with the notion of “pure experience,” the moment prior to any distinction between experiencing self and experienced object, as it founds the systematic development of our thinking about the world. After lengthy diversions into German and French dialectical thinking and Neo-Kantian philosophy to explain the nature of self-awareness, he returned to early Greek philosophy and Buddhist thinking and developed a novel alternative (p. 362) to the ways that philosophers have

distinguished self and world and sought ultimate grounds for them. 1


Nishida's alternative notion of “the place of absolute nothingness” that underlies all distinctions and contextualizes all grounds has profound significance for debates concerning the questions gathered under the labels of internalism and externalism, both cognitive and semantic. Once we see through his often forbidding language, his notion suggests a way to uncover the assumptions that both sides of the debate have in common. It points to the positive role that an obscure context plays in making distinctions. The “dazzling obscurity” that he called “the place of absolute nothingness” can be understood as the ultimate context of contexts, the common ground that makes distinctions possible—although it requires a modification in our usual conception of a ground. Just as Nishida's language is clarified by an analysis of distinction making, his own account of absolute nothingness, informed by Daoist and Zen Buddhist reflections, clarifies the relation between self and world.

Distinctions and the Opposition between Self and World

Making distinctions is at the heart of teaching and doing philosophy. Think of the importance of the distinctions—and often of the challenge to the distinctions—between what is and what ought to be, or between what something is and that it is, between synthetic and analytic, passive and active, empirical and transcendental, and so forth. More specifically, recall the distinctions that underlie disputes about the relation between self and world and between mind and world. Not only are the terms of the relation (self and world or mind and world) distinguished, but so too are the types of relationship in question: is mind self-contained and solely internal to the individual experiencing subject or are its contents dependent upon the environment and the world in general?

A primary interest shared by both sides in this dispute is to resist an overbearing imposition of our fallible minds and mental contents on the world, that is, to allow for resistance from the world as a corrective to our ideas. A second shared concern is to strictly preserve the features of experience that differentiate one individual from another. These concerns in turn imply two underlying distinctions, again shared by both sides of the dispute, namely, some distinction between mind and world, however disputed the bounds of the mind may be, and some distinction between individual minds. No matter how external or internal to the individual subject the content of her (p. 363) mind and the meaning of her words may be, the mind is not thought to be wholly internal to the world; its fundamental distinction from world is maintained by both sides. These shared features conceal another, perhaps deeper, unsettled matter for both sides: the nature of the self in the background of this dispute. Is the self “self-contained” within the individual bodily subject, within one's skin so to speak, or does its extension reach beyond the body, at least the body as an object in the world? Is self rather a body-subject that reaches beyond the objective confines of the physical body? Is the “skin” of the self a perceptive organ that interacts with the environment and is not measurable by dimensions given by tape measures? Settling the dispute about the bounds of mind and its cognitions would require determining with much more precision the bounds of self and its transactions with the world. Yet again, whatever the position regarding the unsettled bounds of the self, the disputes presuppose its distinction from world. The talk of a “transaction” between perceptions, cognitions, or self on the one hand and world on the other implies this distinction. Even the most expansive notions of bodily self interacting with the world and with others, as we find in Merleau-Ponty, for example, assume a distinction between self and world. Heidegger's attempt to undermine commonplace assumptions by reformulating the terms and speaking of Being-in-the-World still differentiates between oneself and environment and between oneself and world as the ultimate context of meanings.

This chapter does not attempt to resolve these tangled issues or even describe them with more precision. Nor does it intend to question the fundamental distinction between self and world. Rather, it will present an alternative way, modeled after Nishida, to contextualize the distinctions and to understand the grounds of various levels of distinctions—both the grounds of distinctions like those mentioned above and the grounds of their various levels. It will present the ultimate “ground” as a nothingness with respect to all distinguished terms, and will thus call for a modification of the notion of ground. At the same time it will present a way to understand the meaning and function of nothingness in the philosophy of Nishida KitarO and his East Asian sources.

Self and World in Nishida's Philosophy

Nishida developed a layered set of distinctions he took to be increasingly concrete, that is, inclusive of the terms abstracted out of their underlying context, and eventually he proposed “absolute nothingness” as the ultimate context.2 Using his terms, we can begin with language and the logic of judgments and note the distinction (p. 364) between the subjects and predicates of our judgments—without deciding whether or to what degree those predicates are internal or external to the judging individual. In judgments like “John is jealous of Mary” and “Eartheans mean H O to be water,” 3 we ascribe to a particular (grammatical) subject certain qualities or attributes, an emotion

2

and a belief in these examples. The qualities or attributes “belong to” the grammatical subject. At the same time predicates name universals or at least general items not restricted to any particular subject. Judgments then are articulated states of affairs that form the context out of which grammatical subjects and predicates are distinguished. In other words, we can apprehend and then articulate a state of affairs that includes the subject and the predicate and that grounds the distinction between them—again without deciding the necessity or the degree of factors external to the individual who is judging.

Taken as the context that encompasses things and their characteristics or relations, the level of judgments leaves out the acts of mind or consciousness that formulate the judgments. Mind in the act of judging may be said to take the judgment, the articulated state of affairs (John is jealous of Mary, Eartheans think water is H O) as its proposed object for consideration—for confirmation or disconfirmation, for

2

example. For Nishida, we must move to a more concrete context that includes both judgments and the mind as judging agent that is considering them. In Nishida's view, however, the acting mind is not simply one side of the distinction; rather, it includes both the act's object, the judgment, and the mind itself. This is because mind or consciousness in act is self-reflexive; however fallibly, it is aware of itself as well as of things in the world, and can thus distinguish between itself and things in the world.4 Self-reflexive mind or

consciousness forms the context out of which mind and things with their attributes are distinguished. The move to include judgments, with their grammatical subjects and predicates, within the context of self-aware mind might seem to imply some form of internalism and suggest that the content articulated in judgments is contained within an individual mind and thus independent of external factors in the world. Nishida's move as such, however, only acknowledges that judgments are the sorts of matters that are held, entertained, or proposed by minds. To use the previous example, Eartheans' belief that water is H O may or may not depend on factors outside Eartheans' minds,

2

but the judgment about what Eartheans believe is proposed by someone and, for Nishida, belongs to the context of the self-aware mind considering the judgment. The appeal to a more inclusive context is not meant to settle the issue between internalism and externalism, but to show what both sides presuppose. We have seen how both assume a (p. 365) distinction between mind and world and between one mind and another. If self-consciousness names a demarcation between self and others and self and world, then what is the context out of which these distinctions arise? We must proceed to the next level in Nishida's scheme to see their common ground.

The next level of concreteness is that of the world—not in the sense of some extramental reality, nor of a preexistent, nonhuman universe, nor of some projection or construction of mind, but rather world that creates knowing, embodied selves and is created by them. Nishida came to call this “the historical world” to emphasize the concrete and everyday space in which we live as embodied, enculturated selves

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immersed in the histories that we make and that make us. The philosophical notions of minds as relatively isolated or self-contained units and of the world as a physical, nonhuman realm are abstracted from the historical world, as is any evidence supporting such notions. Here, too, we might ask whether the self-aware, judging mind is properly understood as a sole individual subject. To take the individual mind acting alone as the self-aware judging mind would be to abstract it from its context in a world of shared language, culture, and history—all factors that make judgments possible. Insofar as internalism and exernalism both recognize that meanings and beliefs are tied to language, culture, and history, they both can agree on this point. This is not to deny that there are individuals with their own mental features. But even to posit such individuating features requires a context of comparison that cannot be derived from any single such mind. Individual agents living in the historical world differentiate themselves from others and reciprocally are subject to differentiation; they create and are created by the historical world. The historical world thus is the context out of which actual, knowing selves are differentiated. This world displays a self-reflexive structure similar to that of self-aware minds, in that it refers to itself as including knowing, embodied selves.

If one were to understand the self-reflexive, historical world as a mind of a higher order, however, Nishida's scheme would amount to a form of panpsychism. This view either extends mind beyond individual subjects to some kind of universal mind or finds mind as a

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constitutive part of the universe. Mind in some sense is taken to be everywhere. Panpsychism would collapse the distinction between mind and world that internalism and externalism hold in common. Nishida does not take that course, but instead maintains a distinction between individual selves as self-aware minds and the world that differentiates and contextualizes them. The world is “self-aware” in the sense that whatever is “in the world” is a reflection or mirroring of the world. In Nishida's parlance, the world “mirrors itself” in all that is

(p. 366) in it, but the individual, self-aware self is a “focal point” of the world. There is no outside to this world. In this respect Nishida's conception shares the assumption common to both internalism and externalism that, whatever the bounds of mind or sources of the mind's content, “world” represents the outermost boundary. Yet if world is the broadest existing context for differentiations, if there is no further existing context out of which terms can be distinguished, then what is the basis of the distinction between world and mind, or of the very conception of world?

Nishida's answer is: nothing that exists; indeed, nothingness. This obscure and difficult topic need not conjure up metaphysical specters that would be anathema to those who debate about self and world, however. We can clarify nothingness in terms of making distinctions, and making distinctions in terms of nothingness. Nishida's implicit account of distinctions casts light not only on his own philosophy but on the working of philosophical distinctions in general, and in particular their role in debates about the relation between self and world.

An Analysis of Distinctions

We can preface Nishida's particular account with Robert Sokolowski's illuminating analysis of distinctions in general. Sokolowski notes that making distinctions is not merely a matter of opposing one thing to another. We make distinctions when some obscurity stands in the way of clarifying an issue, and to understand them we must keep in mind the particular obscurity behind them. The obscurity “lets the

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distinction occur” even when it is meant to hold everywhere and always. Making distinctions requires not merely that we separate or exclude terms, but that we first bring them together “so there is the activity of bringing together along with the annulment of their belonging together.” The nondistinction does not come before the distinction; rather, the “ability to hold two as one comes along with the ability to hold two together as distinguished” from one another. Let us take these two “holds” one at a time. “Holding two together as one is holding them precisely as not distinguishable.” Holding them together as one involves both “the possibility of their being distinguished

and the denial [or perhaps the deferral] of that possibility.” We might add that holding two together as distinguished reaffirms that possibility. Before the possibility of distinction, we have what Sokolowski calls mere assimilation, and we don't see the one as one. He

calls distinction-making the “emergence of thinking and reasoning.” 8


With some appropriate shifts, to which we will return later, we can employ a similar analysis to understand Nishida's talk of nothingness. The stage of assimilation is what early Nishida called pure experience. This is not yet thinking and reasoning in (p. 367) that it is prior to the crucial epistemological distinction between subject experiencing and object experienced. Later, Nishida abandoned the talk of pure experience but retained the same priority of a unity in at least three notions: “knowing by becoming,” where self and things in the world are seen as one; self-awareness as “a seeing without a seer”; and nothingness as a universal notion in which “there is no distinction between that which expresses and that which is expressed.” 9 In his first works, Nishida was pressed to explain how distinctions and reflective thought could arise out of a state of unity; thus, we see him struggling with the themes of “intuition and reflection in self-awareness” (the title of one of his early books; Nishida 1917). He eventually gave up the logical and temporal priority of the assimilated state and moved to a kind of interdependence of unity and plurality, or identity and difference—the one comes along with the other. Nishida tried to express this sort of holding together in the enigmatic phrase “absolute contradictory self-identity,” an identity that holds many together as one both as belonging together and as not belonging together, as bringing them together and negating the ability to keep them together.

This is part of what goes on in making distinctions: when we distinguish one thing from another, we first hold them together as being distinguishable but do not distinguish them. Then in distinguishing them we annul their belonging together. This annulment occurs in what Nishida calls the self-negation of nothingness, a negation of its nonduality. To elaborate, nothingness is not simply the initial oneness of the two, or the many, held together. And what holds them together cannot be any one thing; it cannot even be called what all things have in common, that is, “being” as the most universal concept. Nor can it be a second principle, different from being, like becoming, which would still need a third principle holding together these two, being and becoming, and differentiating them. Nothingness for Nishida is not so much a third principle (as in Hegel) as the obscurity that lets the (or any) distinction occur. Nishida calls this nothingness absolute. Literally, the Sino-Japanese term for absolute, zettai, means breaking through opposition, so absolute nothingness is not opposed to anything; it is the place where all things are held together as one, along with the negation of that oneness. As a universal, it is an attempt to name all things without opposing them. Individual things and persons emerge as the “self-determinations of nothingness” (to use Nishida's terms) just as items emerge into clarity and distinctness from the obscurity behind their distinction.

Nishida's talk of a self-determining context recognizes the impetus to clarify, which Sokolowski thinks precedes distinction and occurs within the obscurity that calls for it. But Nishida does not separately name this impetus or identify it as occurring within the obscurity. Rather, the obscurity (i.e., nothingness) is of itself infinitely determinable. In the term absolute nothingness Nishida combines the background obscurity and the cognitive impetus that give rise to distinctions. His talk of absolute nothingness brings to light the

10

fundamental obscurity precisely as obscurity, not clarifying it away, but letting it work to generate clarity and (p. 368) distinctness. Or, as he would probably rather say, absolute nothingness brings itself to light in the activity of self-awareness.

Two shifts are required to follow Nishida's moves. First, we must shift from a cognitive to an ontological account or, more precisely, a “me-ontological” account (from the Greek to meon, nonbeing). This shift is from describing how thinking itself works (by making distinctions, etc.) to how reality or the “world” works. Nishida does call his mature philosophy a “logic of place” or of “topos” (basho in Japanese), but he articulates this “logic” as a kind of ontology (or me-ontology), not as a cognitive description of how mind or reason should operate. The introduction of me-ontology into debates in the philosophy of mind and language may seem a load that such debates are not meant to bear, but Nishida's logic is relevant insofar as it questions the assumptions of those debates regarding the means by which we distinguish self and world, for example. His logic of place undermines all anthropomorphic assumptions about the locus of awareness in the individual subject's mind. Making distinctions describes logically (if not causally) the emergence of the world out of nothingness as the place of nondistinction. The second shift we must make is from thinking of obscurity as something we must by all means eliminate to considering obscurity as something we can appreciate—even if it cannot be the last word. The positive role of obscurity and negativity are familiar to us through Daoism and its echoes in Zen sayings that speak of the darkness that harbors no discriminations, the darkness that lets light appear.

Let us delve a bit further into each of these shifts. The first involves the rather strange talk of absolute nothingness bringing itself to light and evincing self-awareness, rather than reflective human minds bringing things to light through the mental activity of making distinctions. Examples may help explain this shift further. Some distinctions imply a third term (Graham 1992, 211). Binary distinctions like above/below and before/after imply a hidden term that is a point of reference and indirectly leads to the one making the distinction. Some binary distinctions, like up/down and left/right, directly imply the maker of the distinction as the point of reference. Other binary

distinctions such as between I and you or I and it do not allow for this hidden third term, “because the maker of the distinction is part of the

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distinction” (Hori 2000, 289). These types of distinctions hinge directly or indirectly on a self as the point of reference. In the right/left kind of distinction, the point of reference is an embodied self that can be moved, so that what was right becomes left, for example—or even removed and not mentioned, so that we speak simply of right/left. But in the second type of distinction, between I and it, for example, the self-reference stays put. 12 Nishida wants to move this self-reference as it is located in the individual (p. 369) to the logical space out of which it too emerges, along with its oppositions. The ultimate locus of these distinctions between self and other and between subject and object is his “absolute nothingness.” This self-negating name points to the obscurity that gives rise to and by contrast makes evident all possible distinctions.

The steps through which Nishida tried to accomplish his shift were summarized earlier as the development of his logic of place, from the context of judgments through the context of self-awareness to that of the historical world and, ultimately, to absolute nothingness. This clarifies an element of making distinctions that is taken for granted by everyone who would clarify philosophizing by starting with the self as a cognizing agent.

For example, Sokolowski notes the difference between the thinking, reasoning person who begins to make distinctions and the unthinking person. He states that making distinctions is the emergence, the beginning, of thinking and reasoning, but he also implies that it is an achievement of reasoning. We can place the obscurity behind this emergence/achievement in the properly human self, which for

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Sokolowski (in another essay) means reason naturally ordered toward truth. Such a self reaches for clarity and truth out of an inner impetus, the second element that Sokolowski must add to the obscurity in general to account for the activity of making distinctions. Although Sokolowski says this impetus is not to be differentiated from distinction in the way that identification is, so a deeper obscurity would not underlie both of them, nevertheless, we can ask what does hold the impetus and obscurity together. One might think that the impetus indicates a subjective or noetic side, whereas obscurity in general describes the noematic side or matter thought about. Both, then, are found “in” consciousness; that is, they are found as moments or nonindependent parts of consciousness.

If we recognize that obscurity is not merely a matter of the mind, not merely found in a consciousness striving for clarity and articulate speech, then we move in Nishida's direction. In his early attempts to formulate a logic of place, Nishida in fact did consider consciousness as the place or locus of the articulating subject/predicate distinction, and even called it “nothingness” (mu in Japanese) in the sense that it

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establishes the being or nonbeing of things. Nishida noted, however, that one's very act of consciousness at any one time always eludes one's own objectifying consciousness. Eventually he tried to formulate something more basic, a deeper level as it were than the consciousness within which obscurities and distinctions are placed. Nishida's absolute nothingness deliberately conflates the self's urge to clarify and the rational agent—all into a greater, perhaps darker, background. And what is (p. 370) this background without foreground or opposite? There is simply no way to say—that is, no what to indicate. Nishida's talk of nothingness gainsays the notion that the thinking self is the ultimate reference point in making distinctions.

The Light Side of Obscurity

Nishida's shift to go beyond the thinking self requires a positive assessment of obscurity. We do not understand obscurity adequately when we treat it solely as an undesirable vagueness of expression. It is precisely the absence of articulation that Nishida appreciates in his talk of nothingness. We find precedents in classical Daoist texts and Zen dialogues. The writings ascribed to the Daoist Zhuangzi are full of examples, although there is no direct evidence that Nishida drew from them. Zhuangzi dares to speak of the Way, the Dao, that “has never known boundaries” and speech that “has no constancy.” Boundaries come about when there is recognition of a “this” and a “that.” Consider this passage, undoubtedly meant to humor the logicians and the normative philosophers of his day:

Now I am going to make a statement here. I don't know whether it fits into the category of other people's statements or not. But whether it fits into their category or whether it doesn't, it obviously fits into some category [it is distinguishable]. So in that respect it is no different from their statements [it is behind such distinctions]. However, let me try making my statement.

There is a beginning. There is a not yet beginning to be a beginning. There is a not yet beginning to be a not yet beginning to be a beginning. There is being. There is nonbeing. There is a not yet beginning to be nonbeing. There is a not yet beginning to be a not yet beginning to be nonbeing. Suddenly there is being and nonbeing. But between this being and nonbeing, I don't really know which is being and which is nonbeing. Now I have just said something. But I don't know whether what I have said has really said something or whether it hasn't said something. (Zhuangzi 1964, 38–39)

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In this passage Zhuangzi playfully intimates the “dissolution of boundaries,” as he calls it, that still preserves the possibility of distinctions. He also uses the metaphor of a hinge in its socket to express the “state in which ‘this’ and ‘that’ no longer find their opposites.” “When the hinge is fitted into the socket, it can respond endlessly” (Zhuangzi 1964, 35). Although interpretations of such

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passages in Zhuangzi differ greatly, we can think of these passages as a precedent to the positive appreciation (p. 371) of the obscurity that underlies distinctions. A good hinge turns freely and takes one appropriately in this direction rather than that; it articulates the sides.

Zhuangzi actually enjoins us to swing the door and use illumination or clarity:

When the hinge is fitted into the socket, it can respond endlessly. Its right then is a single endlessness and its wrong too is a single endlessness. So I say, the best thing to use is clarity. (Zhuangzi 1964, 35)

Surely, it seems, we would want to distinguish clarity from obscurity. And out of what obscurity would that distinction arise? We are thrown back to the primordial obscurity, from which emerges the kind of clarity we ordinarily praise. Zhuangzi does an admirable job in clarifying obscurity without eliminating it.

Many Zen dialogues, which were influenced by Daoist texts and in turn inspired some of Nishida's thoughts, also show an appreciation of obscurity, often in the guise of darkness. The dark refers to a standpoint beyond or behind discriminations. Black and dark are words often used to describe the Buddhist notion of emptiness as the undifferentiated that comes to be manifest only in articulated forms. 17 Again we are reminded of making distinctions as a way of manifesting, presenting, or making present—but also of the positive role of the obscurity that underlies distinction-making. That appreciation of obscurity and the negative is what is gained from Nishida's talk of nothingness. And —to end with a distinction—what is gainsaid is the notion that clarity always takes precedence over obscurity in the practice of philosophy.

Distinctions that are crucial to discussions about the relation between self and world and mind and world refer at least implicitly to a common ground underlying the distinctions. In the philosophy of mind and of language, the intricate and often nuanced distinctions made in the debates between internalism and externalism likewise imply a common ground, usually left in the dark, that makes a debate intelligible to both sides. Nishida reflects on the role that such common ground plays in the specific distinctions at stake and in making distinctions in general, in an attempt to clarify the role that obscurity plays as a ground for making distinctions.

Bibliography and Suggested Readings

Davis, Bret W. “The Kyoto School.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2010 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL=(http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2010/entries/kyoto-school/).

Graham, A. C. (1981) Chuang-Tzu: The Inner Chapters. London and Boston: Unwin Publishers. Find this resource:

——— . (1992) Unreason Within Reason: Essays on the Outskirts of Rationality. LaSalle, IL: Open Court. Find this resource:

Heisig, James W. (2001) Philosophers of Nothingness: An Essay on the Kyoto School. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press. Find this resource:

Hori, Victor Sōgen. (2000) “Kōan and Kenshō in the Rinzai Zen Curriculum.” In The Kōan: Texts and Contexts in Zen Buddhism, edited by Steven Heine and Dale S. Wright. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

Find this resource:

——— . (2003) Zen Sand: The Book of Capping Phrases For Kōan Practice. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press. Find this resource:

Maraldo, John C. (2010) “Nishida Kitarô.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2010 Edition), Edward N. Zalta, ed. url: (http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2010/entries/nishida-kitaro/).

——— . (2006) “Self-Mirroring and Self-Awareness: Dedekind, Royce and Nishida.” In Frontiers of Japanese Philosophy, edited by James W. Heisig. Nagoya: Nanzan Institute of Religion and Culture, 143–163.

Find this resource:

Nishida Kitarō. (1911) Zen no kenkyū, translated as An Inquiry into the Good by Masao Abe and Christopher Ives. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992.

Find this resource:

——— . (1917) Intuition and Reflection in Self-Consciousness, translated by Valdo H. Viglielmo with Takeuchi Yoshinori and Joseph S. O'Leary. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1987.

Find this resource:

——— . (1927) Hataraku mono kara miru mono e [From That Which Acts to That Which Sees]. Volume 4 of Nishida KitarO Zenshū. Tokyo: Iwanami, 1987. Partial translation by James W. Heisig, “The Logic of Place,” in Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook, edited by James W. Heisig, Thomas P. Kasulis, & John C. Maraldo. Honolulu HI: The University of Hawaii Press, 2011, 647–657.

Find this resource:

——— . (1943) “Sekaishinchitsujo no genri” [“The Principles of the New World Order”]. In Volume 12 of Nishida KitarO Zenshū. Tokyo: Iwanami, 1987. Translated by Yoko Arisaka in “The Nishida Enigma: ‘The Principle of the New World Order,’ ” Monumenta Npponica 51/1 (1996), 81–106.

Find this resource:

Nishitani Keiji. (1999) “Emptiness and Sameness.” In Modern Japanese Aesthetics: A Reader, edited by Michele Marra. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 1999. This is Marra's translation of “Kū to soku,” in Volume 13 of Nishitani Keiji Chosakushū. Tokyo: Sōbunsha, 1987, 111–118.

Find this resource:

Wargo, Robert. (2005) The Logic of Nothingness. Honolulu, HI: The University of Hawaii Press. Find this resource:

Yusa, Michiko. (2002) Zen & Philosophy: An Intellectual Biography of Nishida KitarO. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press. Find this resource:

Zhuangzi. (1964) Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings, translated by Burton Watson. New York: Columbia University Press. Find this resource:

Notes:

(1) Pure experience is developed in Nishida's first major work, Zen no kenkyū (Nishida 1911). I give a synopsis of the themes and development of Nishida's philosophy in Maraldo 2010. Davis 2010 places Nishida's work in the context of the Kyoto school.

(2) My variation here of Nishida's famous “logic of place” is geared toward an explication of a theory of distinctions and represents one among many interpretations. Nishida himself offered different versions during his career; one of the first is in essays in Nishida 1927. For other accounts see Maraldo 2010 and Wargo 2005, especially 121–178.

(3) The reference of water is to Hilary Putnam's famous “twin earth” thought experiment that generated much of the externalism-internalism debate: if water played exactly the same role in the thinking of two different societies but one usage referred to H O and the

2

other to some other chemical compound, would the meaning of water be the same or not? See Hilary Putnam, “The meaning of ‘meaning,’” in Mind, Language and Reality: Philosophical Papers, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975).

(3) For a more detailed analysis of Nishida's self-reflexive structure of consciousness and world, see Maraldo 2006.

(4) Nishida expanded this notion to the political realm when he spoke of a globally realized world, the world of worlds that are oriented to the entire world, which is possible in the present age as a place of unity-in-diversity. See, for example, Nishida 1943, 427.

(5) Advocates of panpsychism are found on the side of materialism as well as idealism; for an example of the former see Galen Strawson et al., Consciousness and its Place in Nature: Does Physicalism Entail Panpsychism? (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2006). For a survey of different positions see William Seager and Sean Allen-Hermanson, “Panpsychism,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2007 edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2007/entries/panpsychism/

(6) Robert Sokolowski, “Making Distinctions,” in Pictures, Quotations and Distinctions: Fourteen Essays in Phenomenology (Notre Dame and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992), p. 56.

(7) Sokolowski, pp. 62, 65.

(7.) The quotation about the universal of nothingness is the formulation of Heisig 2001, 83.

(10) In his seminal essay “Basho” [Place] in 1926, Nishida mentions the “dazzling obscurity” (in English) of Pseudo Dionysius Areopagita (Nishida 1927, 229).

(11) The difference between the direct and indirect point of reference is my addition to Graham's and Hori's analyses.

(12) Hori's point (2000, 289) is that the second type does not allow for an “identification of opposites” that can be understood intellectually; rather, “the nonduality of I/it, of subject/object ... must be experienced.”

(13) Robert Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 206.

Husserl, whom Sokolowski is interpreting here, would call transcendental subjectivity (or the transcendental ego) the ultimate place of distinction-making; but this name would involve a similar problem, for it alone would not account for the obscurities it encounters.

(11) See Michiko Yusa's account of the first formulations of “The Logic of the Topos (1924–1926)” in Yusa 2002, 202–204.

(12) The dissolution of boundaries is also the theme of the famous butterfly passage: Zhuangzi dreams he is a butterfly, and then wakes up, but no longer knows that he isn't perhaps the butterfly dreaming he is Zhuangzi. “Between Zhuangzi and a butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things” (Zhuangzi 1964, 45).

(13) Does the Zhuangzi teach a radical relativism or perspectivism that replaces the notion of “the Dao” with multiple daos, none of which is preferable? Does it advance an asymmetrical relativism that does not reduce Zhuangzi's own speaking to just another equally dismissible dao? Does it express a dialectical synthesis of opposites? Here I would not try to adjudicate the various interpretations, but rather point out what they have in common: the positive appreciation of the obscurity behind distinctions. This is not to equate Nishida's absolute nothingness with Zhuangzi's Dao. A. C. Graham notes that Zhuangzi's sequence of statements and of beginnings and nonbeginnings “are no doubt intended to lead to an infinite regress” (Graham 1981, 56). Nishida, on the other hand, ends (and begins) with absolute nothingness. Both Zhuangzi and Nishida, however, point to the inevitable remainder that gets left out of any distinction and analysis, as Graham mentions in the case of Zhuangzi (1964, 55).

(14) According to the famous formula in the Heart Stitra, “emptiness is nothing but form, form nothing but emptiness.” The emphasis in the interpretation above is that form is necessary to manifest emptiness, just as emptiness is necessary for the existence of forms. The Indian Buddhist philosopher Nāgārjuna stressed the latter point (in chapter 24 of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikāi); Nishida's disciple, Nishitani Keiji, stressed the former point (Nishitani 1999, 180).

John C. Maraldo

John C. Maraldo is Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Florida. He is the author or editor of seven books, including Der hermeneutische Zirkel: Untersuchungen zu Schleiermacher, Dilthey und Heidegger (1974 and 1984); The Piety of Thinking: Essays by Martin Heidegger with Commentary (with James G. Hart, 1976); and Rude Awakenings: Zen, the Kyoto School and the Question of Nationalism(with James Heisig, 1995). He has published numerous articles in Japanese and English on Japanese thought. His current concern is to foster dialogue between Japanese and Anglo-European philosophy and provide alternatives in contemporary philosophical issues.

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