Some Madhyamaka Buddhists — particularly Prasaṅgikas of Sakya persuasion — can be suspicious or even hostile to the very possibility of something like “Process Buddhism” because they make the same error that the critical “targets” of Process Buddhism (i.e. substantialist and dualistic frameworks) do, which is to conflate ontology with cosmology, rendering them as basically identical or co-dependent projects.
But if they were identical or co-dependent, then this would mean that any talk of “how” something appears to be the case (cosmology) presupposes assumptions pertaining to “what” that case ultimately refers to in reality (ontology). But we are regularly able to explain how things appear to be the case and how they work without ever knowing exactly what they are, and the fact that fundamental ontology seems to be a live option again in contemporary philosophy just reiterates the fact that we can know how things work without knowing exactly what they are. Our explanations of what things are does not ground our explanations of how they operate — the exact opposite is the case: our accounts of “what” are embedded in larger accounts of “how”, not just in theory but in actual practice. If this were not so, then I would have to know exactly what a car is, every ultimate fact about it, before I could ever drive one; that is absurd. In order to avoid this absurd consequence, we need to relinquish the operating assumption that cosmology and ontology are identical or co-dependent.
So not only is it possible, but actually necessary, to think cosmology and ontology separately. But they need not be considered to be ultimately different or mutually exclusive either, but understood asymmetrically: ontology is a special, limited case of a wider cosmology that is ontologically non-committed (and this non-committal attitude is not born out of agnosticism about the ontological question but one of indifference to such a question at the ultimate level). The science of ontology perhaps shines in its role as an ancillary support for techne, but cannot function as a ground for poiesis, which is the higher purview of the cosmological sciences.
Once we understand that Process Buddhism is not engaged in the theoretically lucrative but practically impoverished enterprise of “fundamental ontology”, and that it is engaged more directly with questions of cosmological import for the purpose of practical engagement with our existential predicament on a relational, rather than merely individual, level — then the Prasaṅgika Madhyamika would have no qualms at all with Process Buddhism. Instead, real will recognize real: both see each other clearly as expedient frameworks ruthlessly breaking down deceptive illusions in order to clear up space to fully unleash our core potential with utmost skill, free of all impediment.
Holopoiesis 