In Buddhism there is a critical emphasis on the cessation of craving due to its inextricable link to “duḥkha” or suffering, but there is no direct correlation in Whitehead’s thought pointing to the necessity of ceasing appetition.
In fact, appetition is built into the processive universe, for according to Whitehead “all physical experience is accompanied by an appetite for, or against, its continuance” (Process and Reality). Whitehead gives the example of “thirst” as an appetition which is “an immediate physical feeling” that is also “integrated with the conceptual prehension of its quenching.” Whitehead’s account of appetition as at once a physical feeling and a conceptual valuation “combined with the urge towards the realization of the datum conceptually prehended” does however seem to offer a rough analogy to the concept of tṛ́ṣṇā or craving (sometimes even translated as thirst) as it functions in the twelve-limb cycle of pratītyasamutpāda or dependent origination.
In the serial presentation of dependent origination, craving immediately succeeds the condition of vedanā or “feeling” (but feeling here is understood precisely as the valence or hedonic tone of a given sensory experience, not quiet like Whitehead’s use of “feeling” in terms of prehension). Craving in turn is the condition for upādāna or “clinging” and therefore follows from and leads to transmigratory becoming through the realms of Samsaric existence. Both Whitehead’s account of appetition and the Buddhist notion of craving point to a motivated urge immanently compelled to resolve itself and functioning as a kind of energetic basis for becoming. But beyond these superficial similarities, if we remained strictly within the purview of early Buddhist accounts of dependent origination where craving is invariably based upon and leads back to ignorance and suffering, then it would seem like this difference in orientation to appetition or craving between Buddhism and Process proves to be an irresolvable aporia for any potential Process Buddhist synthesis.
But if we look towards the analogy of the lotus in the Ratnagotravibhāga (considered by some to be a textual bridge between sutric and tantric Buddhisms), we might be afforded a different, more inclusive perspective: for just as a lotus emerges, pure and pristine, from the muddy waters, so Buddha-nature emerges pure and pristine from the afflictions that obscure it. The point is that Buddha-nature emerges like the lotus, not in spite of but precisely because of, the muddy waters of the afflictions, as a kind of nutriment and support for the seed. Craving, and the suffering that attends it, are themselves afflictions, but if we take on the injunction in Vajrayana Buddhism to take afflictions not as obstructions to the path to awakening but as the path itself, then we can see that it is actually part of the feeling of suffering (itself a kind of immediate physical feeling) to want to be rid of it, and this immanent drive to rid itself (perhaps itself a conceptual valuation of that suffering) is an urge or appetition to go beyond it.
So if the feeling of suffering also holds within itself the urge to go beyond it, it makes a great deal of sense why the historical Buddha would base the entirety of his teachings around the problem of suffering; for suffering is not a speculative or dogmatic matter of opinion entertained by some, but a very real matter of fact felt by all. So in a sense, if craving and suffering — as well as the knowledge that effectuates their cessation — can all be included as necessary constituent components of the “megaprocess” of awakening, then in a sense the cessation of craving is the consummate fulfillment of its appetition. If we reflect on this, it’s quite a simple and straightforward truth: the fulfillment of a craving leads to its end. The real question is, can we fulfill it in a way that does not lead to more craving?
The cessation of craving in Buddhist soteriology and the fulfillment of appetition in Whitehead’s process philosophy may be two “extremes” that coincide at when taken to their ultimate limits. For Whitehead, in the movement of the becoming of the world and the Divine, “The revolts of destructive evil, purely self-regarding, are dismissed into their triviality of merely individual facts; and yet the good they did achieve in individual joy, in individual sorrow, in the introduction of needed contrast, is yet saved by its relation to the completed whole.” With this account we have an image (“and it is but an image”) of the Divine nature as operating with “a tender care that nothing be lost.” (Process and Reality, 346) Compassionately responsive and caring Bodhisattvas, intimately knowing that afflictions “have no real foundation” and “do not enter the natural luminosity of the mind of sentient beings”, “teach the dharma in order to remove the adventitious afflictions.” (Ratnagotravibhāga, 382-3).
Yet being open/empty and without foundation, there are no afflictions that are ultimately removed; the process of obscuration by and removal of the afflictions are themselves part of the luminous display of the inclusively-transcending play of Buddha-nature, ultimately non-arisen yet miraculously arising contingencies performing the role of “necessary” steps on the path to awakening. Hence the paradoxical Bodhisattva Vow to liberate all beings even though ultimately there are no beings to liberate.
Holopoiesis 