THE SOCIAL IDEAL of BUDDHIST PRACTICE Peter D. Hershock

RELATIONAL VIRTUOSITY: THE SOCIAL IDEAL OF BUDDHIST PRACTICE

Peter D. Hershock (East-West Center)

ABSTRACT

In this paper, early Buddhist ideals of practice, the bodhisattva ideal and Chinese Chan valorizations of responsive immediacy are conceptually blended to develop a contemporary understanding of relational virtuosity as the defining achievement of Buddhist practice. This understanding of the meaning of Buddhist practice is then used to raise concerns about contemporary popularizations of mindfulness meditation, but also to open prospects for integrating Buddhist contributions into contemporary conversations of freedom and social justice.

KEYWORDS

Chan, Meditation, Buddha-nature, Responsive Virtuosity, Freedom

Buddhist meditation is often depicted as a deeply personal activity aimed at “inner” transformation. This depiction is seemingly well-grounded in early Buddhist depictions of the eight stages of meditative absorption as journeys, first, into the realm of subtle materiality or embodied presence (rūpadhātu), and then into the realm of immateriality or formless presence (arūpadhātu). Yet, in reading both the spare conversational teachings of the Pali Nikāya and the much more sumptuously imagined narratives presented in Mahāyāna sutras, it is difficult to square this depiction of Buddhist meditation as a purely “inner” endeavor with the richly and resolutely interpersonal nature of the work done in Buddhist teachings and by Buddhist teachers. In what follows, early Buddhist ideals of practice, the bodhisattva ideal and Chinese Chan valorizations of responsive immediacy will be conceptually blended to develop a contemporary understanding of relational virtuosity as the defining achievement of Buddhist practice.1 This understanding of the meaning of Buddhist practice will enable a clarification of concerns about current popularizations of mindfulness meditation, but also a greater appreciation of the potential relevance of Buddhist contributions to contemporary conversations of freedom and social justice.

PRACTICING METITATION IN CONTEXT; BUDDHIST ORIGINS

The origin accounts of religions are often founder-centered. And in this regard, Buddhism is no exception. By the 2nd century BCE, the origin of Buddhist traditions was framed in terms of the life story of Siddhartha Gautama: his privileged childhood and early adulthood; his fateful encounter with the four sights (of an aged person, a sick person, a corpse, and an ascetic) that inspired a six-year quest for the roots of conflict, trouble and suffering (duḥkha); the culmination of that quest in his solitary realization of enlightened liberation; and his subsequent commitment to the life of an itinerant teacher. Set in this frame, Buddhist practice originated in an individual’s yearning for true and lasting peace. That is a good story. But the origins of Buddhism can also be viewed through the much broader aperture of historical circumstance. During the Buddha’s lifetime and over the course of subsequent centuries, major trade crossroads rapidly grew into manufacturing hubs and centers of regional political power, fueling dramatic rural-to-urban migration throughout the Indian subcontinent. Those who left their ancestral villages to seek better lives in these new urban centers necessarily left behind highly-localized matrices of linguistic, religious and cultural practices, and were effectively compelled to make decisions about which of their religious and cultural customs to retain and which to relinquish. They thus found themselves compelled to confront what anthropologist James Clifford (1988) has termed the “predicament of culture”: the profoundly disconcerting experience of being in a culture while also having to look critically at it, making conscious and often uncomfortable decisions about which familiar customs and identities to abandon and which new and often strikingly unfamiliar ones to adopt. Given this broader context, and the absence of anything like the modern division of the public and private spheres, it is perhaps unsurprising that early Buddhist teachings were

1 On the notion of conceptual blending, see Fauconnier and Turner, 2002. 28 originally presented, not as theory, but as therapy aimed at addressing social, political and economic, as well as, personal ailments. Buddhism emerged, in other words, as what might be called a “total care” system (Reader and Tanabe, 1998) for authoring our own freedom from conflict, trouble and suffering. In keeping with this, the merits (anuśaṃsa) of engaging in Buddhist practice were said to include not just a peaceful death and good rebirth, but also self-confidence, a good reputation and material wealth. This rather mundane characterization of the merits of Buddhist practice might be dismissed as a means by which Buddhist monastic communities promoted more robust donations from the lay communities on which they depended for their sustenance. But, in an important sense, even this potentially cynical perspective on merit-making supports, rather than supplants, the fact that the benefits of Buddhist practice were traditionally understood as relational. As a canonical case in point, consider the Buddha’s responses to questions about the meaning of faring well on the path of Buddhist practice. In speaking about the meaning of practice to a group of monks and nuns (Sāmaññaphala Sūtta, Digha Nikāya 2), he maps out spiritual itinerary of deepening equanimity, mindfulness and clarity, with each stage culminating in a “suffusing, drenching, filling and irradiation of the body until no single spot remains untouched”—a progression from delight and joy to insights into the human condition, the operation of karma, the interdependence of all things, and ultimately to freedom from all conflict, trouble and suffering. The attainments of Buddhist practice are not visionary, purely psychic phenomena; they are embodied. Taken by itself, this account might be interpreted as support for the essentially personal nature of the benefits of Buddhist practice. But early Buddhist accounts of consciousness or cognition (vijñāna) are relational. Consciousness emerges as a function of mutual and dynamic engagement among sentient organisms and their lived environments. In the midst of all that is occurring, visual consciousness emerges as the presencing of a realm of visual correlations. Rather than being an internal locus of representations of things “out there” in the world, consciousness is “world-involving” and is thus (in at least some minimal sense) always both responsive to and responsible for its own conditions of possibility. In contemporary terms, sentient presence is enactive. 2 The ramifications of being bodily suffused or irradiated by joy or insight are as environmental as they are personal. Thus, in responding to a heated debate about right and wrong paths to liberation (Tevijja Sūtta, Digha Nikāya 13), the Buddha begins by critiquing those who would embark on such a path blindly, based only on a vague idea of where they are headed. That is like building a royal staircase at a crossroads rather than within a palace. How could you know how high to build or in which direction to have the stairs turn? Or is it like determining to marry the most beautiful woman in the country and setting off without knowing her name or village or even the color of her hair or eyes. That, the Buddha insists, is not the path of Buddhist practice. The Middle Way is a path of valiantly applied effort (vīrya) to live in ways that progressively demonstrate the realization of moral clarity (śīla), attentive mastery (samādhi) and wisdom (paññā). As one fares well on this path, purified by equanimity and mindfulness, one dwells in such a way that one suffuses one’s entire situation with the relational qualities of compassion (karuṇā), equanimity (upeksā), loving-kindness (mettā), and joy in the good fortune of others (muditā). These, the Buddha makes clear, are not

2 For a recent account of enactivism, see Hutto and Myin, 2013. 29 inwardly or privately felt phenomena. Those faring well on the path of Buddhist practice suffuse their circumstances with compassion, equanimity, loving-kindness and sympathetic joy like “mighty trumpeters” issuing proclamations that radiate without difficulty in all directions. Just as the melody played by a trumpet will set every other instrument nearby vibrating in sympathy, the benefits of devoted Buddhist practice resonate throughout one’s situation, transforming from within the patterns of interdependence that are ultimately constitutive of all that is present.

THE BODHISATTVA AS IDEAL PRACTITIONER

The personal ideal in early Buddhist texts is the arhat or “worthy one” who has realized freedom from rebirth and from the mental afflictions (kleśa) that prevent virtuosic (Skt: kuśala; Ch: shan 善) conduct: that is, freedom from being habitually or compulsively present. As we have just seen, while meditatively-achieved realizations of key teachings were certainly important indices of exemplary personhood, socially-manifest capacities for being present with others as a generative nexus of positive relational transformation were deemed no less important. Nevertheless, it is in the somewhat later strata of texts associated with early Mahāyāna traditions that there emerges a clear ideal of not only reproducing the Buddha’s realization of freedom from duḥkha, but of personally emulating his intention to help all sentient beings author their own liberation from conflict, trouble and suffering. This is the ideal of the bodhisattva: the enlightened or enlightening being. As is depicted in a wide range of Mahāyāna sutras, embarking on the bodhisattva path is initiated by vowing to refrain from entering nirvana until no beings remain subject to conflict, trouble and suffering. But, since there are countless sentient beings embroiled in infinitely-varied kinds of duḥkha, the only way to keep this vow is if bodhisattvas enjoy limitless upāya or responsive virtuosity—limitless skill in responding as needed to realize liberating relational dynamics. And, just as musical virtuosity is the result of diligently sustained music-making practice, the responsive virtuosity of the bodhisattva is understood as an achievement of relationally-liberating practice. Perhaps the most succinct formulation of the bodhisattva path is that of striving to be continuously and compassionately present in ways that exemplify generosity (dāna), moral clarity (śīla), patience (kṣānti), valiant effort (vīrya), poised attentiveness (dhyāna) and wisdom (prajñā)—the so-called six pāramitās or “perfections” of emancipatory presence. These six modalities or dimensions of personal presence work together systemically. But for our purposes, it is useful to focus on the three that are most often associated with meditation: valiant effort, poised attentiveness and wisdom. Valiant Effort (vīrya). While vīrya can be translated simply as “effort”, its etymological links to the English words “vitality” and “valor” suggest that vīrya connotes effort that is so zealously energetic as to be heroic. In terms of the bodhisattva ideal, vīrya refers to enthusiasm for virtuosic engagement: a vigorously embodied commitment to both advancing and spurring advancement along the path of enlightenment. The stereotypical image of the Buddhist practitioner is of someone seated in motionless meditation—someone immersed in “inner” work. But as the lay bodhisattva

Vimalakīrti makes clear (Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa Sūtra, Chapter 1), we should not confuse meditation with sitting silently crossed-legged in a state of introspection. Instead, he declares that bodhisattvas should meditate so that they are emancipated in motion as well as stillness, in daily routines as in religious rituals, in the midst of worldly passions and not just apart from them. Perfecting vīrya consists in being vigorously, valiantly and virtuosically engaged, moment-by-moment, outwardly as well as inwardly, socially as well as spiritually. Bodhisattva practice is not a sequential process of first cultivating private experiential insight and then later to applying it publically for the benefit of others. It is a process of embodied effort in which growth either occurs at once in both of these directions/domains or in neither. Because growth of this kind takes place in response to ever-changing environments of relevance and concern, it can be seen as evolutionary—a creative or generative process rather than one of discovery. Sustaining such an evolutionary process of growth requires a courageous readiness to confront our own shortcomings, fatigue and laziness, but also to overcome our own predispositions and habits (vāsanā) of thought, feeling and action as we proceed into the unknown. The perfecting of vīrya thus implies both great flexibility of response and the absence of doubt—the embodiment of unshakably confident poise. Attentive Poise (dhyāna). Although dhyāna can be translated as “meditation” in the broad sense of being wholly absorbed in thinking about something, its most basic use in Buddhism is to refer to processes of progressively calming and centering the mind (śamatha) that are understood as the necessary precursors for practically useful insight (vipaśyanā/vipassanā) into how things truly are and how they have come to be as they are. Especially in the early Buddhist Abhidharma literature, a great many levels or depths of dhyāna are enumerated in connection with distinct spheres of attentive engagement. These include, for example, physical sensations and desires; feelings of anger or ill will, laziness, restlessness; and such still more subtle spheres as those of infinite space and consciousness. As one of the dimensions of perfecting an emancipatory personal presence, however, dhyāna consists in cultivating and sustaining clear and unwavering attentiveness: realizing a fully and resolutely poised presence. The most basic technique for doing so is the practice of mindfulness (Pali: satipaṭṭhāna; Sanskrit: smṛtyupasthāna): simply attending to whatever is happening in and about us without judgment or bias. In the classic early Buddhist formulation, this consists in being so wholly present that in seeing, there is only seeing; in hearing, only hearing; in feeling sadness or grief, only sadness or grief. It is being present without-self, without internal dialogue, without a perceiving or narrating subject, without any “me” who is present in addition to the seeing, hearing or feeling that is occurring. This is nothing like entering into a trance. It is not an abstraction of awareness from our immediate environs, a withdrawal into pure self-experience. Entering into mindfulness is reentering lucid continuity with things, wholly aware, unhooked by passing events so that awareness is no longer dragged this way or that, remaining just here, just now. This is not indifference, however. It is interest freed from both attraction and aversion, a releasing of attention from habitual tendencies. Dhyāna is abiding in utterly alert and poised readiness. Wisdom (prajñā). Wisdom dawns in vibrantly poised attentiveness. The more common view is that wisdom results from gradually accumulating experientially-derived knowledge so that one is eventually afforded an elevated or more encompassing view of things. This understanding of wisdom suggests that it is an attribute of the middle-aged and 31 older. Wisdom is partially a cumulative function of knowing-that various things are true, but also one of knowing-whether to act in certain ways and knowing-how best to do so. This commonsense conception of wisdom is not at odds with the Buddhist concept of prajñā, but there are significant differences between them. The most basic is that Buddhist wisdom emerges with the progressive achievement of attentive poise (dhyāna) rather than being a function of gradually accumulated experience. That is, Buddhist wisdom depends much less on the quantity of knowledge or experience we have acquired than it does on the quality of enactive presence we realize. This implication that wisdom entails a certain kind of immediacy is, in fact, evident in the etymology of the Sanskrit word, prajñā, which combines pra- (an intensifying prefix) and jñā, which can be translated directly as “awareness” but which also carries the connotation of “investigative” awareness or insight. Wisdom is not a result of epistemic closure, but of penetrating openness. Thus, early Buddhist texts describe wisdom variously as the result of calmly and yet intently practicing “insight meditation” that confirms the Buddha’s enlightening realization of the dynamic interdependence of all things; as the result of realizing freedom from all the habitual fetters (Pali: samyojana) that usually bind sentient beings; and, as freedom from polluting or distorting influxes/outflows (āsava; āśrava). Wisdom ultimately has less to do with knowledge than with action. Prajñā is pragmatic intimacy with reality of the kind that enables liberating conduct. Rather than an inductive application of experience-gained knowledge, prajñā is a capacity for undertaking the unprecedented, improvisational “work” of engaging in virtuosic (kuśala) conduct and realizing superlative relational dynamics. Although the term kuśala is often translated as “skillful” or “wholesome,” the concept implies much more than simply getting things done in a practically and morally acceptable manner. In the Sakkapañha Sūtta (Digha Nikāya, 21), for example, the Buddha identifies conceptual proliferation (prapañca) as the root cause of conflict and, as a means of cutting through it, enjoins the practice of evaluating our physical, communicative, emotional or cognitive conduct in terms of whether it leads to kuśala or akuśala patterns of engagement and eventuality. Dissolving the conditions for conceptual proliferation and conflict involves conducting ourselves in ways that both decrease akuśala outcomes and opportunities and increase those that are kuśala. That is, alleviating and eliminating duḥkha (conflict, trouble and suffering) cannot accomplished by merely refraining from actions that are conventionally regarded as ‘bad,’ or by doing what is ‘harmless’ or ‘mediocre,’ or even by doing or being ‘good.’ These are all akuśala. Ending duḥkha involves sustaining resolutely superlative, qualitatively-enriching conduct. The penetrating insights with which wisdom emerges transform who we are personally present as. Yet, our presence is irreducibly relational. Personal transformation is thus also necessarily relational transformation. Insight into the interdependence and interpenetration of all things is ultimately an interpersonal realization of caring and emancipatory mutuality. That is, Buddhist wisdom implies compassion (karuṇā). But here, compassion is not reducible to a subjective attitude of caring about or for others, or to a self- elevating pity for others and their suffering. The bodhisattva’s compassion is an expression of unwavering co-implication in the qualitatively-enriching process of enacting nonduality. Practicing the six pāramitās is “perfecting” how we are present as one, thoroughly embracing how much we differ-from each other as the basis of more effectively and appreciatively differing-for one another. 32

CHAN, BUDDHA-NATURE AND THE VOLORIZATION OF RESPONSIVE VIRTUOSITY

Implicit in this characterization of the bodhisattva life is a normative shift from the primacy of individual freedoms-of-choice to capacities for relating-freely. The life of kuśala engagement with others is not a life of exercising control, demarcating in ever-proliferating detail what will and will not be, or what is and is-not acceptable. It is a life of freely valuing and adding value to whatever is presently occurring—a life of ever-evolving appreciative and contributory virtuosity. This does not imply a denial of the importance of having choices. A life without choice is quite likely a very “bad” life. Having some choices rather than none is certainly movement in the direction of having a better life. But a life of ever-proliferating options for making choices—a life of the kind valorized by market liberalism—may not be an exemplary one. The virtuosic life is one of resolute value generation and refinement. Rather than an innovative life devoted to making the “right” choices or developing new techniques for arriving at already anticipated goals or ends, it is an improvisational life of continually expanding our horizons of anticipation in surprising and qualitatively enhancing ways. The responsive virtuosity (Skt: upāya; Ch: fangbian 方便) demonstrated by bodhisattvas is not just an instrumental “skill in means.” Bodhisattvas are capable of “unconstrained conduct” (wu’ai xing 無礙行) that may run counter to social expectations and cultural norms, but that does so in ways that bring benefit to others. In the words of Bodhidharma, the putative fifth-century founder of the Chinese Chan Buddhist tradition, the virtuosic life is one of “going beyond the boundaries of the norms” to manifest how—whether we are walking, lying down, sitting or standing—this place at this very moment is the place of enlightenment (bodhimanda) (see, e.g., the Bodhidharma Anthology, 36).3 This might be understood as a modest claim that it is possible to realize liberation in the midst of daily activities: a claim that enlightenment can be experienced anywhere, not just in the sacred precincts of a temple or meditation hut or mountain retreat. But the Chan conviction goes much further: walking, lying down, sitting, standing and engaging in even the most mundane tasks, in and of themselves, can be enlightening, precisely because our own true nature is “buddha-nature” (foxing 佛性). This conviction seems to have emerged out of a powerful embrace of the central dramatic thesis of the Lotus Sutra, blended both with a distinctively Chinese Buddhist understanding of nonduality (advaya) and with the South/Central Asian Buddhist concept of the “womb/embryo of the thus come” (tathāgatagarbha). The radical thesis forwarded by the Lotus Sutra is that, regardless of appearances, we are all already on the path to Buddhahood. Over the course of the narrative, one after another of the Buddha’s interlocutors—each one linked to him karmically as part of an ensemble of characters that have been moving forward together through many lifetimes—is granted a prediction of future enlightenment. Perhaps as a function of being understood in terms of Confucian and Daoist affirmations of the primacy

3 For an edited version in English translation, see Broughton, 1999. 33 of lived relationality, this thesis seems to have been implicated in an important shift that took place from seeing tathāgatagarbha teachings as answering questions about the possibility of enlightenment to seeing them as establishing the promise of enlightenment for all. The Tathāgatagarbha Sūtra equates the embryonic Buddha within each of us with our possession of Buddha-awareness (Skt. jñāna; Ch. zhi 智) and a Buddha-body (Skt. kāya; Ch. shen 身). In contrast with an individualist or essentialist interpretation of this equation, the resonances of the classical Chinese terms chosen to translate the Sanskrit Buddhist originals are manifestly social or relational. For example, while the Sanskrit jñāna connotes individual and objective cognitive awareness, zhi 智 has the connotation of pragmatic and socially- productive knowing; whereas the Sanskrit kāya refers to the anatomical body, shen 身 refers to the procreative, social body. 4 Thus, once projected into Chinese conceptual space, asserting that all sentient beings are endowed with Buddha-awareness and a Buddha-body is to assert that all sentient beings share the Buddha’s way of being present—the “same” nature (xing 性), the same enlightening complexion of socially-embodied dispositions.5 Understood in this context, the Chinese neologism, “buddha-nature” (foxing 佛性), does not imply a common and intrinsic essence, but rather an original and responsive propensity for Buddha-like conduct: an unwavering inclination toward realizing enlightening patterns of relationality. It was arguably the resonance of this appropriation of tathāgatagarbha teachings as affirmations that we all have buddha-nature with teachings on nonduality and upāya that set the stage for the Chan conception of freedom as relational virtuosity—a freedom, not from, but within the interpersonal circumstances of human becoming. According to the strong interpretation of emptiness and nonduality forwarded by the Huayan thinker, Fazang (法藏; 643–712), interdependence is an internal or constitutive relationship. In short, interdependence entails interpenetration.6 Rather than a reduction of all things to some common essence, the realization of nonduality consists in realizing complete continuity with the world as an ecological matrix within which each particular (shi 事) at once causes and being caused by the totality—a world in which each thing ultimately is what it contributes functionally to the patterning articulation (li 理) of that totality. That is, all things are “the same” precisely insofar as they differ meaningfully from and for one another. Each thing is, ultimately, what it means for others. Thus, within the dharmadhatu or realm of truth/ultimate reality there can be no obstruction (wu’ai 無礙)—neither within the realm of experiential matters ( 事法界, shi fajie) nor between it and the realm of informing patterns/coherences (理法界, li fajie).7 The events (shi) that make up our lives as sentient beings are no impediment to our expressing the coherence-generating principle (li) that we all share buddha-nature. The immensely influential apocryphal treatise, the Awakening of Mahayana Faith (Dasheng Qixin Lun, 大乘起信論), similarly presents the relationship between mind (xin) as Suchness (Skt: bhūtatatathā; Ch: zhenru 真如) and the constantly fluctuating minds of

4 See Ames, 2011. 5 On the notion of nature as propensity or disposition, see Jullien, 1995. 6 See, for example, his “Huayan Essay on the Five Teachings” (Huayan wujiao zhang, T. 45, no. 1866). 7 On the richly polysemic nature of the Chinese concept of li, see Ziporyn 2012 and 2013. 34 sentient beings as one of mutual non-obstruction. But rather than appealing to the li-shi binary, the Awakening of Mahayana Faith assimilates this mutual non-obstruction to the interplay ti 體 and yong 用: a relationship between the infrastructure (ti) and functioning (yong) of buddha-nature. The Chinese Tiantai tradition takes this ti-yong understanding of nonduality to its logical limit. If, as the Lotus Sutra insists, we are all in fact always spontaneously (ziran 自然) embodying (ti) buddha-nature in our everyday functioning (yong), there is no need to change either ourselves or our circumstances in order to express our original enlightenment (benjue 本覚). With characteristic pithiness, the early Chan tradition affirms the nonduality and mutual non-obstruction of enlightened and sentient being, of ultimate and conventional truth/reality, by means of a powerfully simple metaphor: “it is no more necessary to reject samsara for it to begin to be nirvana, than it is necessary to reject a chunk of ice for it to begin to be water.” (Bodhidharma Anthology, 29) Nirvana, expressing our buddha-nature, is living fluidly; samsara, taking some fixed perspective on being human, is living rigidly. Conducting ourselves as bodhisattvas—as enlightening presences in the midst of currently ongoing relational dynamics—does not require some basic change in our nature; it requires on the readiness to awaken (dunwu 頓悟) within our immediate situation and improvise in the direction of realizing more liberating relational dynamics. Yet, adopting such a radically nondualist understanding of the relationship between our own original nature (benxing 本性) and buddha-nature—an understanding epitomized by the iconoclastic assertion by Hongzhou Chan master Mazu Daoyi (馬祖道一; 709-788) that Buddha is “ordinary heartmind” (pingchang xin 平常心)—raises thorny questions about the meaning or role of meditation in personally realizing the promise of enlightenment. These questions would become pivotal in the mid-Tang Chan adaptation of the sudden-gradual distinction used in various Sui and Tang Buddhist textual classification schemes as a matrix on which to project different ways of understanding the relationship between practice and enlightenment. But, it is worth noting that these questions were already evident in Zhiyi’s (智顗; 538-597) massive and influential treatise on meditation, the Mohe Zhiguan 摩訶止観, where the traditional Buddhist meditation techniques of calming (śamatha) and insight (vipaśyanā)—zhi 止 and guan 觀, respectively—are explained through appeal to a complex blend of Buddhist and traditional Chinese conceptual resources. The result was a denial of validity to suppositions that meditation is a means to the end of realizing enlightenment— something like the proverbial raft that could be abandoned upon reaching the other shore of liberation. The Chan tradition did not adopt the Zhiyi’s Tiantai vocabulary of “three truths,” but the Hongzhou Chan lineage passing through Huineng (惠能; 638-713) fully embraced the denial of a means-end relationship between practice and realization: the nonduality of meditation (ding 定) and wisdom (hui 慧). In the Platform Sutra (Liuzu Tanjing 六祖壇經), for example, the relationship of meditation and wisdom is explained by appeal to the tiyong binary: “meditation is the embodiment (ti) of wisdom, and wisdom is the functioning (yong)

35 of meditation” (Platform Sutra, 13).8 Meditation is an expression of wisdom, while wisdom is meditation in action. Just as there is no way of teasing apart the skeletal and muscular structure of a horse and its distinctive ways of grazing and galloping, meditation and wisdom are one, not two. For Huineng, Buddhist practice is at root the practice of seeing one’s own “original nature” (benxing 本性) and realizing “authentic heartmind” (zhenxin 眞心). It is precisely by doing so that the dualities of thought and reality, of passion and enlightenment, and of the impure and pure all dissolve. Then, “true suchness (zhenru 真如) is the embodied structure (ti) of thinking, while thinking is the functioning (yong) of true suchness” (Platform Sutra, 17). True suchness or ultimate reality is not something to be grasped intellectually or accessed only through some abstracted state of mystical absorption; true suchness can only be enacted. “It is precisely Buddha conduct that is Buddha” (ji foxing shi fo 即佛行是佛) (Platform Sutra, 42). This Hongzhou Chan ideal of conducting oneself as a Buddha was perhaps most forcefully characterized by Mazu as realizing a fluid “harmony of body and mind that reaches out through all four limbs…benefiting what cannot be benefited and doing what cannot be done” (Da zangjing 408b). In keeping with his claim that “ordinary, everyday mind is Buddha” (Da zangjing, 45.406a), Mazu makes clear that “reaching out through all four limbs” is something that can only be done in the midst of daily life, “responding to situational dynamics and dealing with people as they come” (Xu zangjing, 119.406). And yet, “doing what cannot be done” is clearly not ordinary conduct. Its possibility rests on superlatively embodied freedom. “Having realized wisdom and the excellent nature of opportunities and dangers,” he says, “you can break through the net of doubts snaring all sentient beings. Departing from ‘is’ and ‘is-not’ and other such bondages…leaping over quantity and calculation, you will be without obstruction in whatever you do. When your situation and its pattern (li) are penetrated (tong 通), [your actions] will be like the sky giving rise to clouds; suddenly they exist, and then they don’t. Not leaving behind any obstructing traces, they will be like phrases written on water.” (Da zangjing, 45.406b) Chan freedom is the embodiment of liberating intimacy: the realization of compassionate and socially-situated relational virtuosity. Seen in this light, Chan “public cases” (gong’an 公案) and the so-called encounter dialogues that were central to the Chan discourse records (yulu 語錄) compiled in the early Song dynasty present enactments of enlightening relationality and liberating sociality. The fact that later Chan uses of these enlightening encounters as part of Chan training might plausibly be derided as promoting formulaic “re-enactments” of the nonduality of practice/meditation and enlightenment/wisdom should not detract from the exhortative power of these discourse records—their brilliance in alerting us to the improvisational meaning of relating freely.

8 The translations here are my own. For a full English translation and critically edited Chinese text, see Yampolsky, 1967. 36

MEDITATION AND THE DEMANDS OF GLOBAL PREDICAMENT RESOLUTION

The Mahāyāna ideal of the bodhisattva is realized interpersonally as an expression of unwavering, enlightening intent (Skt: bodhicitta; Ch: putixin 菩提心). And, while bodhisattvas’ actions can at times transgress social convention, this is a manifestation of resolutely-enacted and socially-situated commitment, not a fleetingly-indulged matter of individual choice. This is important in understanding the Chan assertion that liberating virtuosity is an achievement of practice, rather than some state of inner illumination that is attained through practice, and to understand the injunction to carry out Chan practice continuously, even in the midst of daily life activities. To engage in Chan practice is to engage in transforming the relational dynamics of daily life. Daily life, however, is karmically conditioned. In keeping with the bodhisattva ideal, the maverick genius for relating freely that is idealized in Chan encounter dialogues is a genius for maintaining a clear heading or direction in the midst of the dramatic turbulence of daily life, making use of the karmic currents shaping any given situation to realize more liberating relational dynamics. This is one reading of the famous “fox” gong’an, the second case in the seminal Song gong’an collection, the Gateless Checkpoint (Wumen-guan 無門關 ). The case relates how Chan master Baizhang Huaihai (百丈懷海 720-814) comes to notice an old man who, for several days, attends Baizhang’s lectures and disappears as soon the lecture is over. One day, however, the old man remained in the Dharma Hall after everyone else had left. When Baizhang asked who he was, the old man replied that, long ago, he had been abbot at a temple built on the very same spot as Baizhang’s temple. Unfortunately, at that time, he had told a disciple that those greatly accomplished in Buddhist practice are not subject to karma, and because of this had suffered five hundred lifetimes as a wild fox spirit. “So, what do you say?” he asked Baizhang. “Are people like this subject to karma?” Baizhang’s response freed the old man from any further rebirth as a wild fox spirit: “they don’t obscure/suppress cause and effect” (bumei yinguo 不昧因果). Here, “cause and effect” renders an early Buddhist term for karmic relations, hetu-phala, that invokes an agricultural metaphor of causal “seeds” (hetu) and experiential “fruits” (phala). In short, Baizhang frees the old man from his karma of leading others astray by clarifying that Chan freedom is not freedom from intention-inflected patterns of relational dynamics, but rather freedom within them. The pre-Buddhist, Vedic concept of karma was of a linear causal relation between actions and experienced consequences within a cosmic moral economy. The Buddhist teaching of karma enjoins us to pay sufficiently close and sustained attention to verify personally that a meticulous consonance obtains between the constellations of our own values, intentions and actions and the patterns of outcomes and opportunities we experience. To see this is to realize that every experienced reality implies responsibility, but also that responsibility implies responsive opportunity. Freedom from conflict, trouble and suffering is premised on the possibility of the freedom to change our karma by developing new constellations of values, intentions, and actions. And, because values are both personally embodied and embedded in social, economic, political, cultural and technological practices and institutions, Buddhist liberation ultimately involves the critically engaged and appreciative transformation of both self and society.

Karma, however, is a topic on which contemporary discussions of mindfulness are generally silent. Mindfulness practices are now being promoted for purposes that range from reducing stress to improving health resilience and healing, enhancing learning capacities and emotional intelligence, and developing an agile and flexible mindset as a basic asset for business leadership. 9 Strikingly, in these “secular” applications of mindfulness training, meditation is presented as a means to individually-achieved personal benefits, even in cases when improved relationships are cited as a potential target outcome. No less strikingly absent in these instrumental uses of meditation is any acknowledgement of the need to balance calming and centering practices with meditations affording insight into karma and into the interdependence, interpenetration, emptiness and nonduality of all things—insights that are essential to the emancipatory and ultimately interpersonal and relational work of Buddhist practice. In the contemporary mindfulness movement, meditation is delinked from the sociality of Buddhist practice. That is, it is disembedded from the constellation of values, intentions and actions that distinguish Buddhist practice and that qualify its emancipatory promise. Meditation is, in other words, being used as a tool or technique to achieve aims that have little or nothing to do with realizing conditions for sustainably resolving conflicts, trouble and suffering. This need not be problematic, of course. Using mindfulness practices to help cancer patients realize better treatment outcomes is consistent with Buddhist commitments to reducing suffering. However, these practices can and are being applied to improve performance in certain business and military contexts in which they have the potential for yielding very bitter karmic fruit. Traditional accounts of the Buddha’s enlightenment affirm the importance of insight into the operation of karma as preparatory for liberating insight into the interdependence of all things. Together, these insights warrant confidence in our abilities to improvise ways of being present, personally and socially, that are progressively less conflicted, troubled and fraught with suffering. They also confirm that there is no need to separate personal/inner and social/outer transformation. Like the apparently different sides of a Mobius strip—a three- dimensional object formed by folding a strip of paper so that has only one side and one edge—the personal and the social are ultimately one, not two. While the teaching of karma was crucial to all forms of premodern Buddhism, it must be admitted that its ramifications for societal transformation were variously understood and seldom in ways consistent with contemporary leanings toward liberal, democratic conceptions of freedom and justice. Yet, in my own view, just as Chinese Buddhist traditions productively blended the conceptual resources of Indian and Central Asia Buddhist thought with those afforded by the Chinese Confucian and Daoist traditions, generating a distinctively new “ecology” of enlightenment, a blending of the conceptual resources afforded by Asian Buddhist traditions and by Western liberalism has considerable promise as a way of generating the kinds of conceptual clarity and intercultural resolve needed to address such global challenges as climate change and the persistence of hunger in a world of food excesses. These challenges are not technical problems; they are ethical predicaments that evidence conflicts among our own values, intentions and actions.10 They are, in short,

9 For a brief discussion of business applications of mindfulness, see Seppala, 2015. 10 For a concise framing of the problem-predicament distinction, see Hershock 2012, pp. 6-7. 38 karmic challenges. Resolving them will require us to be present and to work together with sustained lucidity and profound compassion, free of bias, habit and fixed perspectives. This karma-transforming relational virtuosity is, I believe, both the signal achievement of Buddhist practice and the key to a more just and equitable global future.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ames, Roger T. (2011). Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Broughton, Jeffrey L. (1999). The Bodhidharma Anthology: The Earliest Records of Zen. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Clifford, James (1988). The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Digha Nikāya (1995). translated by Maurice Walshe as The Long Discourses of the Buddha. Boston, MA: Wisdom Publications. Fauconnier, Gilles and Mark B. Turner. (2002). The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind's Hidden Complexities. New York: Basic Books. Fazang, “Huayan Essay on the Five Teachings” (Huayan wujiao zhang, T. 45, no. 1866). Hershock, Peter D. (2012). Valuing Diversity: Buddhist Reflection on Realizing a More Equitable Global Future, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Hutto, Daniel D. and Myin, Erik. (2013). Radicalizing Enactivism: Basic Minds without Content. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Jullien, Francois. (1995). The Propensity of Things: Toward a History of Efficacy in China, translated by Janet Lloyd. NewYork: Zone Books. Reader, Ian and George J. Tanabe, Jr. (1998). Practically Religious: Worldly Benefits and the Common Religion of Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Seppala, Emma. (2015). “How Meditation Benefits CEOs,” Harvard Business Review, December 14, 2015 (accessed 2/23/2017 at https://hbr.org/2015/12/how-meditation- benefits-ceos). Ziporyn, Brook. (2012). Ironies of Oneness and Difference: Coherence in Early Chinese Thought: Prolegomena to the Study of Li. Albany: State University of New York Press. ———. (2013). Beyond Oneness and Difference: Li and Coherence in Chinese Buddhist Thought and its Antecedents. Albany: State University of New York Press. Yampolsky, Philip B. (1967). The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch: The Text of the Tun- Huang Manuscript. New York: Columbia University Press.

BIOGRAPHY

Peter D. Hershock is Director of the Asian Studies Development Program at the East- West Center in Honolulu, where he designs and conducts faculty and institutional development programs and engages in research that applies Buddhist conceptual resources to address issues of global contemporary concern.