Essential Nature in Confucianism, Marxism, and Buddhism
“the constancy of Heaven and Earth is that their mind is in the myriad things so that they themselves have no mind’
This is a statement from the Confucian philosopher Chen Hao which encapsulates a very Confucian position; that the world (Heaven and Earth, including humanity) is immanently sacred, or we could say that Nature is sacred. For the Confucian, Heaven ‘TIAN’ is both divinity as principle (with a personal aspect) and embodiment of divinity, both creation and creativity itself. The Heavenly principle is the producer of the myriad things (the phenomenal world) and immanent in the myriad things. It is the source that is not separate from the flow. This principle is embodied in humans, and other sentient beings, as a continuity of awareness that we can call the ‘heart-mind’. Continuity, in that in each particular instantiation it forms as a node in a dynamic web of interconnectedness with the rest of the myriad things. Heart-mind in that the awareness, or consciousness, is not purely intellectual, but also affective, meaning it engages emotionally and morally as well as logically, analytically etc. That ‘Heaven and Earth have no mind of their own’ points to the immanent, or intrinsic and involved nature of the sacred principle, as opposed to a wholly other, or a wholly transcendent being. In human beings, this original heart-mind awareness can be developed in a virtue-ethic practice to achieve what is called ren, the humaneness of humanity. Ren, developed as benevolence is Heaven’s endowment in humanity. It is human essence as such.
For Marx, human essence such as it is, lies in production. But not merely in the Aristotelian sense where the human subject embodies the ideal, and has its meaning in working the objective world through production. Marx speaks rather of ‘metabolism’: the human and nature are originally non differentiated. They become subject and object only insofar as the human faces nature as an object and engages in productive work from it. It is a thoroughly immanent, even internal relationship to the living world. And, with due regard to this living whole, it would be committing a suicidal act of willful misunderstanding to argue that to follow Marx must be to ignore the dangerous imbalance of the planet’s life supporting processes. We are in a time of acute danger in this regard with the phenomenon of human induced climate collapse,
According to Marx (and I’m taking this reading from Yang Guorong, a modern Chinese marxist philosopher) the specific feature of the primordial form of social development was personal dependence. Individuals in these primitive social systems belong to other people, or to hierarchical structures, and therefore lack authentic personality and autonomy. The human being's attainment of independence by overcoming relationships of personal dependence is essential for the development of free individuality. Related to such personal dependence is something Guorong calls objective dependence, wherein the human being is subjected to ‘things’, ie, products and the capitalist mode of production, which smothers the intrinsic worth of the individual and degrades it to becoming merely a means.
In keeping with both Marx and a Confucian concept of self-development, Guorong suggests that the disorder be rectified by acknowledging that the development of the free individual is predicated on their ability to engage in meaningful productive work. This, contra positivist analytical philosophy, entails seeing the individual human person as a concrete unity of an internal world of meaning and an external world of objects which they can transform through work, in the context of a society of people, and in so doing concretize the historical process.
By contrast, Buddhism (I am here discussing the view of East Asian Mahayana, particularly the Yogacara/Hosso school with which I am familiar, but I think at least some the following positions could be extended to Buddhism generally) insists on essenceless as the characteristic of all things, including human beings. This pertains to ultimate truth. In relative truth, the practical and common sense view of the world, things can be identified and accorded essences. This is called the doctrine of the two truths.
Any individual thing we can point to in the world, (including our individual body) has the dual characteristics of being unique and yet dependent. The ‘thing’ is unique in that it is provisionally identifiable in abstraction from it’s circumstance. And yet since any one thing can be shown to be dependent on all other things for it’s existence- that in fact, to identify and abstract this one thing from it’s circumstance is only relatively possible- means that it is both unique and yet has no self-sufficient, or independent existence. It is both unique and empty.
Paradoxically then, the character of not just this one thing, but every thing has this duality of aspects; emptiness and uniqueness.
If things were not dependent on other things, if each thing that comes into existence had a self-sufficient, independent essence, then change would be impossible. How could a thing with an independent essence be a subject of change? If we want to say that changes have a gradient of significance, we will find that the significance we ascribe to a change is itself dependent on everything else. It goes on and on in this ever expanding and ever more intricate web of relationships and dependencies with no more than arbitrarily defined boundaries of significance. If things change, they must have no independent essence.
But because change is possible, it is because every unique thing is dependent on everything else, and therefore is empty of independent self-essence (or substance in western philosophical terms).
The appearance of a thing is it’s uniqueness. A thing is nothing more than an appearance. But it is not an appearance of something else hidden behind the thing; the nature of being a thing is exhausted in it’s being an appearance.
The whole world, including ourselves, has the character of being an appearance; a flux of change where each appearance depends on the web and pattern of all other appearances.
Of course, even the term ‘appearance’ does somewhat imply perception or awareness; that for which an appearance appears. This implication directs us to recognising something about consciousness itself; in itself, consciousness is empty. Consciousness is always consciousness of something.
Therefore, since we have defined every thing and any thing as being an appearance without any independent self existence, and since we have further observed that consciousness is also empty in itself, we can arrive at the rather striking conclusion that whatever exists, has the character of consciousness/appearance. That is to say, there is basically the undifferentiated from which both empty appearance and empty consciousness are abstracted provisionally but in which they are ultimately inseparable..
This is an elucidation of the Buddhist doctrines of Emptiness and Consciousness-only. That is how a Buddhist doctrine can be seen as compatible with a theistic view that the universe is the creation of one Mind and that everything is empty and depends on the consciousness (since everything and consciousness are not separate).
There is one feature in which Buddhism transcends and yet falls short of Marxist analysis, and it is an epistemological feature. While both acknowledge, in different terms perhaps, dependent origination (all things arise from causes and conditions) and the interpenetration of all things (any ‘thing’ has its being through interconnection with every other thing, and this constitutes the world), Buddhism regards the absolute complexity of this flux (and the ultimate identity of the flux) as non-understandable in terms of ordinary knowledge, and as indescribable, impenetrable to relative language. Thus, while acknowledging that there are patterns of causation and regularities of manifestation and appearance, the ultimate reality, which includes the human mind/body complex, cannot be more than situationally or provisionally pointed at from the midst of the world.
The relationship of consciousness to matter is rather cleanly stated in Marxism as one wherein the mind reflects external reality, and is one polarity with the other being a prior material world, in a progressive dynamic or dialectic. In Buddhism, or more particularly, Mahayana Buddhism of the consciousness-only school (Yogacara/Hosso), the relationship is more thoroughly non-dual. That which is (existence) is indeed a dynamic flux of dependent origination, but neither matter nor mind (ordinary, thinking consciousness) is prior. In fact, the body of reality (the Dharma-datu/Dharma Kaya when realised) is prior to even the bifurcation of subject and object. Therefore, ‘experience’ rather than either matter or idea, or spiritual or physical, or self or world, is the closest to a primary manifestation of reality. The thinking subject and the objective world rise out of what is prior to these dualities. It's referred to as the “Storehouse Consciousness” (alaya-vijnana), a dynamic receptacle of past activity’s ‘impressions’ and a conditioning force, neither an “I” nor an object of “I”, neither matter nor mind. In fact, this alaya, could be regarded in a way as an “historical dialectic”! (In it's aspect as the ultimate, the Dharma Kaya, personalised it can be regarded as Buddha Mind, or even as a Divine Mind.
It’s certainly sensible, even necessary, for humans etc to engage in a relationship with the world as if there were a real ultimate distinction between them. But this, and the subsequent way of constructing an articulated view of the world in philosophy, such as Aristotle’s, makes a presumption to regard the subjectivity of the human , and thus all other subject and object relationships, as the primary mode in which reality is constructed, and not simply the consequence of our nature as beings who need to regard the world in opposition to ourselves (eg, we look at things and decide whether or not they are edible; in other words, we need to distance ourselves from the phenomenon in order to make useful decisions about it). This is
Representative of Marxism, Engels, following Hegel said a thing is known thoroughly as it's qualities are known- quite rightly. A Buddhist would say while it may be known as a particular object for a subject, the beginningless complex of causes and conditions and the full extent of its interpenetrating relationship with everything else cannot be known to a subject as the subject, since it’s constrainedly subjective position is so limited to the interests of the human being. It’s a question of scope. What are the implications of this difference in the aspect of scope?
I think it is a very subtle yet immensely consequential difference (different emphases or views, but not mutually exclusive). It’s a question of certainty. An analysis of the forces and conditions that produce a certain character of society is practical in it’s potential power to persuade. It allows for building a consensus on a sound narrative for what has led us here, and should be done to further the progress of the society. Like a scientific analysis which includes both theory and analysis of observations, the Marxist can take an earnest attitude of certainty and present a compelling position for organized change with reference to history, to current events, and even to the present state of broader scientific understanding itself. That is it’s power.
The Buddhist understands this, and yet has recourse to foundational uncertainty and doubt – not as something to be despised, but to be embraced. The analyses and narratives of the Marxist can be supported, but there is also an awareness that these are only ever expediencies. They are not more than relative understandings and truths.
Ok, but what good use is this Buddhist doubt for, you may ask? Isn't it in the nature of humanity look askance at doubt? Didn’t Aristotle describe man as a character who longs to know? Yes. But that doesn’t mean everything is knowable, certainly not in the ordinary sense of the term. Uncertainty and the shadow of inscrutability are likely every bit as constant and constitutive for humanity as the mandated desire to know.
By embracing doubt and uncertainty we are acknowledging an aspect of the human experience. It may not be in our remit to satisfy it. But, if we don’t embrace it and rather cover it up with convenient ‘certainties’ we can become something less than humane; fanatics. The space of uncertainty makes room for those often derided ‘eternal’ virtues of kindness, compassion, empathy- and an intuition that not everything can be excused with an appeal to expediency. Cruelty is always cruelty. And we will always be aware when we are knowingly indulging in it. That is within scope of all spiritual paths, including the Buddha’s.