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Hay's Buddhist Philosophy of Gestural Language Asian Philosophy An International Journal of the Philosophical Traditions of the East ISSN: 0955-2367 (Print) 1469-2961 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/casp20 Hay’s Buddhist philosophy of gestural language Joshua M. Hall To cite this article: Joshua M. Hall (2017) Hay’s Buddhist philosophy of gestural language, Asian Philosophy, 27:3, 175-188, DOI: 10.1080/09552367.2017.1350334 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09552367.2017.1350334 Published online: 11 Jul 2017. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 54 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=casp20 ASIAN PHILOSOPHY, 2017 VOL. 27, NO. 3, 175–188 https://doi.org/10.1080/09552367.2017.1350334 Hay’s Buddhist philosophy of gestural language Joshua M. Hall Department of Philosophy, The City University of New York, Bayside, NY, USA ABSTRACT KEYWORDS The central role of gestural language in Buddhism is widely dance; Buddhism; Deborah acknowledged, as in the story of the Buddha pointing at the Hay; gesture; compassion; moon, the point being the student’s seeing beyond the finger gender (as object) to its gesture (as act). Gesture’s role in dance is similarly central, as noted by scholars in the emerging interdisciplinary field of dance studies. Unsurprisingly, then, the intersection of these two fields is well-populated, including the formal gestures (called “mudras”) Buddhism inherited from classical Indian dance, and the masked dance of the Mani Rimdu Festival. In this investigation, I will articulate a new Buddhist philosophy of gestural language, based on a new conception of emptiness that I locate in the work of contemporary U.S. choreographer Deborah Hay, as influenced by Nāgārjuna and Zen. And this, finally, suggests that contempor- ary Western philosophy should incorporate this compassion as a normative dimension to its own theorizing and practice. The mudra [gesture] of the dance is a reflection in the mirror of enlightenment. -Lochen Dharmashri Dancing and singing are the voice of the Dharma [sacred duty]. -Zen Master Hakuin Ekaku In this article, I will articulate a new Buddhist conception of emptiness that I find in the dances and writings of contemporary U.S. choreographer Deborah Hay, whose elements I trace back to Nāgārjuna’s(1995) Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (MMK) and Senzaki’s(1998) Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. In short, emptiness in Hay’s work can be parsed as playful embodiments of situated theorizing, inflected by compassion for bodies as gendered linguistic vehicles. Put differently, we generate and revise our theories as needed in specific sociohistorical contexts, are constantly engaging in the practice of performing those theories in improvisational ways. And the goal of both theory and practice is to enact compassion for the vulnerable, impermanent bodies that serve as the vehicles of language, where language is recognized—with the help of dance’s nonverbal languages —as consisting of empty, impermanent, interdependent physical motions. The structure of these analyses is as follows. First, I will utilize dance as a lens through which to interpret Nāgārjuna’sclaimsinMMK about the emptiness of CONTACT Joshua M. Hall [email protected] Department of Philosophy, The City University of New York, Queensborough, Medical Arts Building, Room 125, Bayside, NY 11364, USA. © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group 176 J. M. HALL language (and emptiness) itself. The upshot of this reading is that what Jay Garfield calls Nāgārjuna’s reductio ad absurdum undermines not only emptiness as metaphy- sical principle, but the very notion of a timeless and transcendent theory or discourse. What survives, though, are socio-historically situated theoretical encounters.1 Second, I turn to the school of Buddhism most adept at illuminating the emptiness of language, namely Zen. Guided by interpretations of the Zen koan form by Steven Heine (2014), Isshū Miura (1965), and Masao Abe (1985), I will turn to Nyogen Senzaki’s populist compilation, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, which suggests that we are obligated to show compassion toward language and its gendered embodied vehicles. Third, I will turn directly to the choreographic ‘koans’ (her word) of Hay’s(2000) My Body, The Buddhist, which constitute situated discourses facilitating gendered com- passion through embodied playfulness. More precisely, Hay’s Buddhist-informed the- ory-infused practices undermine consciousness’ tyranny over bodies’ many ‘voices,’ and give rest and credit to bodies for co-creating the linguistic productions misat- tributed to ‘the self.’ 1. Nāgārjuna: emptiness as situated theorizing It is worth noting, in connection to Hay, that she has been directly exposed to Nāgārjuna, through Trungpa’s(2002) discussion of the latter’s work in some detail in Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism (190–191). And to repeat, the central point I wish to emphasize from MMK is that its skeptical reduction of emptiness itself leaves us with an understanding of theorizing as necessarily socio-historically situated. For my analysis, I will utilize Jay Garfield’s English translation of a Tibetan translation of the original Sanskrit text. In both content and form, Chapter 2 of MMK necessarily addresses contemporary dance. In content, this is because the chapter has been interpreted as focusing on (1) change in general, (2) physical motion specifically, and even (3) the physical motion of walking in particular.2 Correspondingly, (1) all dance involves change, (2) most dance involves physical motion, and (3) much postmodern dance (including some of Hay’s dance works) even concerns mere walking. Moreover, dance is even suggested by Nāgārjuna, via his repeated use of the phrase ‘a city of Gandharvas,’ the latter being the invisible, flying demigods worshipped by the temple dancers, from the name of which demigods (Devas) the dancers get their name (devadasis).3 And in form, Chapter 2 connects to dance in that Nāgārjuna’s method of reductio ad absurdum (etymologically, ‘off of the absurd’) resonates with Deborah Hay’s dances insofar as the latter are famous for their riddles, paradoxes, jokes, and other content which, in a professional dance context, is absurd. Also dance-resonant is Garfield’s description of Nāgārjuna’s reductio method as ‘a logical tightrope act,’ since it calls to mind Nietzsche’s(2006) tightrope walker—in German, literally, ‘rope-dancer’—in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (89). In other words, both the philosophical position toward which MMK gestures, and also these delicate gestures in themselves, constitute a kind of dance by Nāgārjuna, through which he joins the devadasis as they weave their fingers dancingly round the invisible flying limbs of their Devas. On a related note, Hay also evokes the Nietzschean rope-dancer ‘on the high ASIAN PHILOSOPHY 177 wire,’ not long after concluding a chapter with a verb form of the word and concept ‘emptiness’ (60, 76). When Garfield turns his focus to MMK Chapter 2, he explains that it concerns the implication, lingering from Chapter 1’s denial of essentialist causation, that constant motion is the only reality. And in doing so, Chapter 2’s first stanza (as follows) also resonates with dance: Neither form itself nor from another, Nor from both, Nor without a cause, Does anything whatever, anywhere arise (I.1). To see the dance connection here, consider the numerous failed attempts, across Western history, to establish a causal foundation for dance as an independent art. The original such failure concerns dance’s origins as a dependent art within the operatic theater, in which dance was reduced to (1) being caused by ‘something else,’ as a representation of the world (as in classical and Romantic ballet). Second, in the early twentieth century, dance was reduced to (2) being caused by ‘itself,’ as the expression of the dancer-subject (as in Martha Graham’s modern dance). Third, in the mid-twentieth century dance was reduced to being caused by ‘both’ the world and itself, as the interaction of representation and expression found in the moody abstractions of George Balanchine’s modern ballet. And finally, in the post-WWII era, dance was reduced to being ‘without a cause,’ in that dance lacked music, formal structure, and/or move- ment (as in the minimalist ‘chair dance’ of the Judson Theater group, in which Hay trained). In short, each of these historical movements reified dance into an essential thing that it is not, claiming to identify the true cause of the best kind of dance. It is thus not a stretch to understand the opening of MMK as applying directly to dance. Returning to Chapter 2 of MMK, it begins with the apparent implication (from Chapter 1) that all is constant flux and motion, and that this constant activity must itself be the only real and essential thing in the world. But this leads to logical problems, Nāgārjuna’s solution to which (as summarized by Garfield) is that motion depends on movers and movers depend on motion. That is, movers and motion are co-dependent in order to bear the descriptors ‘motion’ and ‘mover.’ To take another example from dance, for Nāgārjuna, there can be no absolute identity of the dancer, nor is there an absolute identity of the dance. Instead, dancer and dance co-arise with each performance. Consequently—and this is directly expressed in Deborah Hay’s choreography, as I will relate below—we can create dances anywhere, and in anything—from out of the flux, and into (temporary, strategic and conventional) focus. The most important implication of this point for contemporary theories of language, finally, is that language, too, is co-dependently arising, even at the level of physical motion. My argument for this conclusion is as follows. (a) All motion is empty qua co-dependently arising. This is simply a restatement of the outcome of Chapter 2 (as interpreted by Garfield).
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