I tend to say that both Process and Buddhist traditions are relatively self-sufficient, and therefore they have no inherent deficiency that would require synthesizing them both in a co-dependent way. They come together in my synthesis of Process Buddhism as relatively autonomous partners in solidarity, integrated yet differentiated based on the functional roles they can play in fulfilling their complimentary aims — both, in different ways, aim to de-reify our knowledge and experience of reality in order to better relate to it as it really is.
But there are key dimensions in each which indirectly refer to the other, and which the other has done a much better job in elucidating. This would be: the “extensive continuum” or “plane of immanence” in Deleuzo-Whiteheadian process philosophy which approximates the principle of open/emptiness in Buddhism, and “prabhāsvara” (luminosity) or “‘od gsal” (clear light) which approximates the principle of inclusive-transcendence in process philosophy. I believe that the profound significance of the “extensive continuum” is that it is the infinitely potent space of open/emptiness, which is not really disclosed in process philosophy whereas its realization is the consummate aim (and basis) of the Buddhist path. And I find that the vast qualities of prabhāsvara are seldom ever clarified by the Buddhist tradition in the same great detail that the Process tradition does. These two blind spots or “ignorances” are the constitutive exclusions required to give each system its own identity in contrast to the other. These are also places where each system finds itself of being wayward from its own principles: the “extensive continuum” or “plane of immanence” could be easily misread or misemphasized in substantialist or monistic terms, and “luminosity” or “clear light” is sometimes relegated to “provisional” status or misapprehended as a kind of Buddhist Ātman or Self.
From the more comprehensive perspective of Process Buddhism, we can shine light on these two ignorances or blind spots, disclosing the open/emptiness of each system (by recognizing that each system depends upon its blind spots in order to function) and thereby inclusively-transcending the depth of Buddhist insight with the breadth of Process semantics, increasing both aesthetic intensity and ethical efficacy due to the massiveness of their integrative contrast. This greater comprehensive perspective increases clarity and discloses more deeply the significance of the twin ultimates of open/emptiness and inclusive-transcendence.
Does Process Buddhism escape its own principles of open/emptiness and inclusive-transcendence? Is it an exception to these rules? Perhaps Process Buddhism is an exemplification of these principles, and reflexively so. This would not mean that it believes itself to be free of any constitutive ignorance, but rather it is paradoxically aware of its own ignorance. Process Buddhism is constitutively ignorant of the real which it thinks and to which it is asymmetrically interdependent (thought depends on its real but not the reverse). It is the self-awareness of its own constitutive ignorance that allows Process Buddhism to be metabolically open and engaged with its real conditions, and perhaps it is this self-awareness of ones own constitutive ignorance that is the “foundation” of awakened gnosis itself.
When you mix the fire of ancient deconstructive Buddhist analysis with the water of speculative Process abstractions, you get steam-power. Time to do some real work and keep turning this wheel of dependent becoming and creative advance!
Holopoiesis 