Notes on the merits of a Process Buddhist synthesis

Here are some random thoughts I’m having while I’m finishing up an essay on the same topic:

Part of the merit of a Process-Buddhist synthesis is that it can help resolve some deep aporias or internal inconsistencies in each of the traditions when they are considered in isolation.

In Mahayana Buddhism there is a tendency to either: deny that anything can be said about the ultimate standpoint, that it is free from or empty of all elaboration, or affirm that the ultimate is free or empty of all relative things but not itself. This a basic inconsistency that has given rise to many divergences: between Sarvastivada and Sunyavada, Yogacara and Madhyamaka, Svatantrika and Prasangika, Shentong and Rangtong.

In Process philosophy there is a tendency to either: deny that creativity requires a principle of mediation to actualize potential or to affirm such a principle. Nietzsche, Deleuze, and Derrida can be understood to be part of an antinomian thread in the history of Western Process thought that resists and struggles against the more dominant tendency to affirm a principle of mediation, a tendency perhaps best exemplified by the post-Kantian thought of German Idealism, notably Hegel but also carried over in different ways by Heidegger.

The basic issue identified by Process Buddhism, disclosed by the nature of this very synthesis, is that each side gets into trouble when it transgresses outside of its appropriate domain. Though ironically the delimitation of the proper boundaries of these domains couldn’t have come about until the historical arising of Process Buddhism. It’s the exhaustion of the inconsistencies within Buddhism and Process that form the adequate basis for the origination of a Process-Buddhist synthesis; while these inconsistencies were productive for some extended period of time we are not making any more progress.

When Buddhism falls into the realm of speculative philosophy, it introduces onto-theological notions such as an intrinsically existent, luminous ultimate in spite of its own insight into emptiness. Even adherents of the “original” Madhyamaka insight, like Prasangikas or Rangtongpas, debate with their opponents on terms supplied by those opponents, thus never escaping them.

Likewise when Process thought falls into the realm of dialectical analysis, it over-emphasizes and thus reifies the conditions of creative emergence over and against that which creatively emerges. Even antinomian thinkers like Derrida or Deleuze who resist this reification find themselves overly preoccupied with that resistance, either failing to offer some constructive alternative or only construct on the basis of opposition and differentiation.

With a Process-Buddhism synthesis, we ensure that each side of the complementary unity only functions with regards to its appropriate domain: the Process side embarks on a reconstructive project aiming to describe reality in all of its elements, while the Buddhist side is consistently subjecting this reconstructive project to dialectical analysis. The result is a coherent and consistent system that is nonetheless incomplete and open-ended by design. The Process side aims to develop an abstract framework adequate for the description of experience as a means or platform to assist in direct concrete engagement with it, while the Buddhist side ensures that this framework never even gets the chance to reify any of its abstractions such ensuring the possibility of actual concrete engagement.

This bears resemblance to similar syntheses produced by the classical Indian Buddhist masters Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla, where they integrate Sautrāntika, Yogācāra and Madhyamaka in an ascending or sliding scale of more-or-less-adequate approaches to reality in one total system of thought and practice. Like Process-Buddhism, their Sautrāntika-Yogācāra-Madhyamaka synthesis involves the marriage of dialectics and reconstructive philosophy. Yet unlike Process-Buddhism, the components of their system are ordered asymmetrically into a series of perspectives, some more or less inclusive of the others, and each perspective remains more or less the same although conditioned in terms of the more inclusive perspectives. In Process-Buddhism, there is only ever one perspective in constant refinement. In this way, Process-Buddhism is able to more consistently fulfill the concept of the Madhyamaka as freedom from views, since the Buddhist dialectical component never supplies a view or perspective of its own, but only functions to eliminate inconsistencies and assumptions of intrinsic nature from the one creatively advancing perspective in-process.