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Mus., McGill University, 1971 B.A., University of Victoria, 1993 M.A., University of Victoria, 1995 A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Interdisciplinary Studies We accept this dissertation as conforming to the required standard ------------------------------------------------- Dr. Laurie Rae Baxter, Primary Supervisor (Department o f Communication and Social Foundations) ___________ ________________________________________________________________________________ Dr. Carol Gibson-Wood, Co-supervisor (Department of History in Art) Dr.r. Harold Corned),CoWrdi, Commit!Committee Member (Centre for Studies in Religion and Society) Dr.r. Charles Tolman, CommitCommittee Member (Emeritus Fellow, Centre for Studies in Religion and Society) Dr.r David Loy, External ^<ÿ5nmëiE^ÿunmër (Faculty of International Studies, Bunkyo University, Chigasaki, Japan) ©Paul Crawford, 1998 University of Victoria All rights reserved. This dissertation may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopying or other means, without the permission of the author. Primary Supervisor: Dr. Laurie Rae Baxter ii Abstract This dissertation is a multidisciplinary exploration of the relationship between ‘being’ and ‘doing’. Because life in contemporary Western societies is overwhelmingly characterized by individualism and the use of instrumentalistic rationality, there is a naturalized tendency in the West to conceive ‘being’ as the product of personal actions and ‘doing’ as an instrument of becoming a particular self. The ideas put forward here suggest that this orientation towards defining ‘being’ in terms of observable action is, in reality, a dis-orientation and the source of personal, societal, and planetary fragmentation and suffering. Central to the view proposed here is the belief that ‘being’ is the source and not the product of actions, and that this source, although ultimately ineffable, is best understood not as a discernible self but as a display of consciousness that participates in an integral way with all of reality, which implies that all life-affirming forms of ‘doing’ are embodiments of wholeness and participatory consciousness. I elaborate this idea in two major discussions. In Part One, I explore the suggestion that what is fundamental to ‘being’ is not a certain place within a hierarchy of increasingly conscious levels of being but a participation in the fullness of life expressed in and through a wholeness of interdependent beings. In Part Two, I explore how this wholeness view of reality implies an orientation towards ‘doing’ that is rooted in a present-centered time-consciousness and how the current hegemony of past and future orientations towards time inhibit the kind of reflective awareness that facilitates ‘being’ as a way of doing. The Taoist concept wu wei, which refers to not interfering with the way of ultimate reality, reflects the kind of Ill relationship between ‘being’ and ‘doing’ I am advocating, namely, one that expresses a present-centered experience of self-surrendering to an ideal of ultimate significance in which a person’s sense of uniqueness is fused with a sense of unity with all beings. By embodying this quality of being ‘all in all’, actions that flow from such an experience affirm the spiritual nature of reality. Examiners: Dr. Laurie Rae Baxter, Primary Supervisor (Department of Communication and Social Foundations) Dr. Carol Gibson-Wood, Co-supervisor (Department of History in Art) Dr. Harold Coward, Committee Member (Centre for Studies in Religion and Society) Dr. Charles Tolman, Committee Member (Emeritus Fellow, Centre for Studies in Religion and Society) Dr. David Loy, External Examiner (FacuJty5^4«temational Studies, Bunkyo University, Chigasaki, Japan) IV Table of Contents BEING AS A WAY OF DOING: AN INQUIRY INTO THE SPIRITUALITY OF BEING Abstract ii Table of Contents iv Introduction Chapter 1. Being, Time, and Deep-Listening 1 Part One WHAT DOES IT MEAN ‘TO BELONG’, TO BE PART OF A WHOLE? IS ‘BEING’ BEST UNDERSTOOD IN THE CONTEXT OF HIERARCHY OR WHOLENESS? - Preface - 15 Chapter 2. A New Horizon: Encounters at the Junction of Reason and Mysticism 18 - The Cognitive Revolution: A New Look, Perhaps, But Not a Change of Mind 25 - Diversity-in-Unity: A New Worldview 34 - On the Spiritual Nature of Reality 54 Chapter 3. Pondering the Meaning of the ‘Particular’: A Consideration of Hierarchy as a Paradigm for Reality 56 - The ‘Great Chain of Being’ in Western Thought: Footnotes to Plato 62 - Hierarchy: The Vision of the Three Eyes 76 - Exploring the Confusion of Means and Ends 88 Chapter 4. Wholeness 98 - Notes About the Fundamental Significance of Meaning 110 - Participatory Consciousness and the Importance of Living in the Light of the Present 116 - Self-Abandonment: The Way To Be and To Belong 130 Part Two IN WHAT SENSE IS TIME A MEDIUM FOR DOING SOMETHING? IS DOING’ BEST UNDERSTOOD AS A WAY OF BECOMING, OR IS BEING’ A WAY OF DOING? - Preface - 146 Chapter 5. Images of Time and Timelessness 152 - Cyclical Time 154 - Time in the Western Tradition: Exploring the Question ‘Is Time More Apparent than Real’? 164 - Ancient Greek Philosophy 164 - Late Roman and Medieval Philosophy 168 - The Modem Age 176 - Consciousness and the Spacetime Concept 189 - Time-consciousness, Freedom, and Creativity: Exploring the Links Between Time and Timelessness 196 Chapter 6. Past, Future, and Present as Temporal Focal Points 204 - Past-Directed Time-Consciousness 206 - Future-Oriented Time-Consciousness 214 - Humanism 216 - Transcendentalism 217 - Scientism 220 - Exploring the Meaning of ‘Questing’ 221 - Present-Centered Time-Consciousness 231 - The Present As a Moment of Liberating Self-Surrender 233 Chapter 7. Living in the ‘Here and Now’: A Comparison of Pragmatism and Contemplative Experience 243 - Moral Pragmatism as a Search for ‘Something Better’ 244 - The Contemplative Experience as a ‘Call to Centering’ 251 - What is Instrumentality? Notes About the Contemplative Experience as a Matrix for Human Action 263 Epilogue Chapter 8. Music as the Spirituality of Being 278 Notes 288 Bibliography 335 Appendix: Brief Notes About People Mentioned in the Text 350 Appendix B: Poetry 389 Chapter One Introduction: Being, Time, and Deep-Listening Flow with whatever may happen and let your mind be free. Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate. (Chuang-tzu)’ All my life I have known how wonderful it is to listen intently to something. As a music lover and performer from a very early age, and later as a composer and music teacher, I have been able to appreciate again and again how ‘deep listening’ is a way of sensing that truly creative and nurturing activity flows from an awareness of being connected with the wholeness of reality. This awareness of belonging to a reality infinitely beyond the edges of an individual ‘self, and, therefore, infinitely significant, also engenders an experience that is intensely personal, and, it is this blending of unity, ultimacy, and uniqueness that gives certain musical experiences, as well as other present-centered activities, their spiritual quality. Exploring this spirituality of being is the aim of this dissertation. Perhaps because of my musical backgroimd, the organization of this dissertation displays a certain similarity to musical composition. This similarity is simply that many of the ideas I put forward tend to appear and reappear in a number of different discussions, just as in many kinds of music important themes recur in different contexts. Although this style of composition is not always associated with academic work, which is often characterized by an avoidance of repetition rather than a deliberate use of it, my rationale for embracing such a style here is that it reflects a basic animating principle that underlies the content of this inquiry, namely, that every part of an integrated whole is capable of expressing, and, in reality, does express the whole. Elaborating this idea - that to be a ‘part’ of something is to belong to it in an integral way - is the theme of Part One of this dissertation. This theme is developed in three major sections. In chapter two, my purpose is to situate the entire inquiry in the context of recent developments in several academic disciplines which suggest that there is a new worldview emerging within the Western cultural tradition, a worldview 2 no longer oriented towards the values of science and technology but towards values that are more attuned to the spiritual nature of reality.