(Updated May 2021)
As expressed in the previous section, Zen's studied and sophisticated engagement with the paradoxes of existence have a compellingness about them. So wherein would a Calvinist find fault? Not, certainly, in the refusal to allow one polarity to eclipse the other. The Calvinist certainly agrees that singularity and diversity, universal and particular, are mutually irreducible realities. And in fact, the Calvinist framework of 'sphere sovereignty' developed by Abraham Kuyper [but see here] and taken to a high degree of refinement in the thought of Herman Dooyeweerd (among others) views reality as consisting of a multiplicity of mutually irreducible law-spheres. Dooyeweerd, for example, sees fifteen (F/B) of these, namely, the quantative, spatial, kinematic, physical, biotic (F/B), sensory (F/B), analytical (F/B), formative (F/B), lingual, social, economic, aesthetic (F/B), juridical (F/B), ethical (F/B) and faith (F/B) spheres. Dooyeweerd demonstrates how human thinking repeatedly errs by attempting to consolidate all of reality on the basis of one of the spheres taken as an absolute. Such consolidation is doomed from the outset because reality resists it.
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| List of the 15 experiential Aspects/Modalities/ Law-spheres/ Modes of Consciousness in their fixed temporal order. |
No law-sphere (aspect) can be reduced to another. Infringements of 'irreducibility' are behind all 'isms'. These 'idolatries' show the human heart attempting to integrate entire reality around a single aspect (or 'law-sphere'). There is a plausibility to this because each aspect is present as an analogy in every other aspect. This gives each aspect an omnipresence, which Dooyeweerd designates 'sphere-universality'. Interestingly, the absolutization of any given aspect of reality invariably throws up its 'counter-absolute’ (something like an after-image), leading to a dualism.
Dooyeweerd calls the irreducibility feature of each aspect 'sphere-sovereignty'. Without getting a handle on the terms 'sphere-sovereignty' and 'sphere-universality' it will be impossible to fathom Dooyeweerd's explanations on just about anything!
It is key to Dooyeweerd to appreciate his insistence that there is no thinking without a thinker ("the hidden performer on the instrument of philosophic thought" (Prolegomena, New Critique). The thinker ALWAYS functions in ALL aspects, but transcends them all above time in the concentration-point of his or her deepest selfhood ('heart'), which is directed towards or away from the Living God who alone gives meaning to temporal reality. In refusing God as only source of meaning, a substitute ultimate focus is sought by the selfhood within the temporal cosmos by absolutising a law-sphere (or combination of law-spheres). Hence idolatry.
It should always be borne in mind that, however inadequate the above diagram, what is being referred to is the fabric of actual cosmic reality within which all aspects structurally combine, as spectrum colours combine to form clear daylight. Dooyeweerd sees the Divine call of civilization as a historical “opening-process”. Each succeeding aspect is "unfolded” towards the light of our Creator. Reactionary societies attempt to close down such burgeoning differentiation.
(Chart & notes by FMF and added to essay in May 2021)
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As mentioned above (section 7), in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" Robert M. Pirsig clearly perceives reality's refusal to be reduced to a mere segment of itself. Pirsig's influential book is essentially a valiant quest to heal the rift between classical rationalism and romantic irrationalism by an appeal to a higher reality ("Quality") which informs, and therefore unifies, both. What is engagingly "Zen" about his whole presentation is that he continually grounds his metaphysics with references to the mechanics of his motorcycle, on which he is touring part of America:
"Quality is the Buddha. Quality is scientific reality. Quality is the goal of Art. It remains to work these concepts into a practical, down-to-earth context, and for this there is nothing more practical or down-to-earth than what I have been talking about all along - the repair of an old motorcycle." (Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values Vintage 1999, p 276)
In rereading Pirsig, I am struck with how reminiscent of Dooyeweerd's thought much of it is. Apart from the matter of "irreducibility" just alluded to, Pirsig also echos Dooyeweerd's emphasis on the crucial importance of what the latter calls "pre-theoretical" or "naive" engagement with reality. Pirsig uses the terms "nonintellectual" and "preintellectual":
"...at the cutting edge of time, before an object can be distinguished, there must be a kind of nonintellectual awareness, which he (ie "Phaedrus", the narrator's alter ego) called Quality... "The past exists only in our memories, the future only in our plans. The present is our only reality. The tree that you are aware of intellectually, because of that small time lag, is always in the past and therefore is always unreal. Any intellectually conceived object is always in the past and therefore unreal. Reality is always the moment of vision before the intellectualization takes place. There is no other reality. This preintellectual reality is what Phaedrus felt he had properly identified as Quality. Since all intellectually identifiable things must emerge from this preintellectual reality, Quality is the parent, the source of all subjects and objects" (Ibid p 247)
Pirsig later finds a correspondence between this "preintellectuality" of Phaedrus, and the views of the French thinker Jules Henri Poincaré:
Poincaré then hypothesized that this selection is made by what he called the "subliminal self", an entity that corresponds exactly with what Phaedrus called preintellectual awareness. The subliminal self, Poincaré said, looks at a large number of solutions to a problem, but only the interesting ones break into the domain of consciousness. Mathematical solutions are selected by the subliminal self on the basis of "mathematical beauty", of the harmony of numbers and forms, of geometric elegance. "This is a true esthetic feeling which all mathematicians know," Poincaré said, "but of which the profane are so ignorant as often to be tempted to smile." But it is this harmony, this beauty, that is at the center of it all. (Ibid pp267, 268)
Interestingly, in his "New Critique of Theoretical Thought", Herman Dooyeweerd welcomes this selfsame insight of Poincaré:
Intuition cannot be isolated from analysis. Conversely, analysis can never function without intuitive insight. This has been convincingly proved by Henri Poincaré, in his La Valeur de la Science, and in his Science et Hypothèse, to refute the idea of a "pure analysis" in the mathematical sciences. ("New Critique of Theoretical Thought", II 483)
So we are now glimpsing a fascinating confluence of ideas, centering on the role of "intuition", which Dooyeweerd sees as the "bottom layer" of logic. We will return to this key consideration later in Section 14 "Between Two Insanities".
If the suite of fifteen spheres previously listed are understood in some sense as an incremental hierarchy, it seems that an antipathy towards the theorising which is a feature of the analytical (F/B) sphere may result in Zen's reserve regarding the "post-logical", or "normative" (F/B) modalities and its preferential focus on the earlier "natural" realms. The latter tendency involves a "pre-theoretical" mode of analysis which reminds us of Dooyeweerd's insistent endorsement of the validity of everyday experience (F/B), and brings us back also to Pirsig's discussion (above) of our apprehension of a tree. Dooyeweerd also draws our attention to a tree: “This tree in front of my house…”. The thoughtful Calvinist, it must be said, would only take qualified issue with the Zen antipathy towards abstract theorisation. As already mentioned, Cornelius Van Til in fact insists that the Calvinist should think 'concretely' rather than 'abstractly', which Zen echos (though the definition of common terms would be very different in the two camps). Again, let us bear in mind that the key to what Van Til means is that God is not an abstract speculation, not a "possibility", not a "probability". He is. ("I AM WHO I AM").
With reference to the normative modalities, it is not that they are not dealt with at all in Zen, but that they seem more likely to be dealt with obliquely as analogies ("anticipations" in Dooyeweerd's terminology) of the earlier "natural" modalities. In other words, Zen will talk about stones and water and bamboo and clouds to explain something social, economic, aesthetic etc, rather than use abstract critical/scientific vocabulary. I say "talk" about stones, but then I recall of course how we have already noted that Zen's complex engagement with the normative lingual modality means words tend to be used sparingly. But insofar as they are used, they typically, intriguingly for the Christian, take the form of parables - stories about the 'actual' world, rather than abstract, or "metaphysical" registers. (We can compare Christ's parable-approach, and eg, His conversation with Nicodemus "I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I talk of heavenly things?" John 3:12. We also note again the "concrete" register of Ecclesiastes - "A time to cast away stones, And a time to gather stones..."). Thus in Zen, for instance, the aesthetic modality perhaps features as natural harmony and equilibrium (rock and water, seasons, etc). [See also Dr J. Glenn Friesen’s 2006 article ‘Dooyeweerd’s Philosophy of Aesthetics: A response to Zuidervaart’s critique’ (PDF) The economic modality in the sparing, restrained ("frugal") nature of Zen communication and art. As for the acceptance of paradox in the analytical (F/B) modality ("Not one, not two, not both, not neither") this might be seen to at least comport with harmony and balance (of opposites). However, when it comes to the ethical (F/B) modality, acceptance of opposites becomes extremely alarming:
"Good is not different from bad. Bad is good; good is bad. They are two sides of the one coin."Shunryu Suzuki" Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" (quoted by Grigg)
"In the landscape of Spring, there is neither better nor worse." (quoted by Grigg)
As to the ethical modality, it is not at all clear to me yet on what Zen bases its ethics - its moral imperatives. No doubt wider reading on my part is required, but my misgivings are not allayed by what Alan Watts, for example, has to say in his book "The Spirit of Zen" -
"After all this the Western student will naturally be wondering where ordinary morality comes into Zen. Every religion has had its moral code, and the Buddha summed up his teaching in the words:
“Cease to do evil; Learn to do well; Cleanse your own heart - This is the way of the Buddhas.”
It will be asked if there is not a grave danger in the Zen practice of accepting all things, both good and evil, as manifestations of the Buddha-nature, for on such grounds it might be possible to justify any form of action. Indeed this is a difficulty with which the Zen masters have had to reckon; immature disciples would frequently make the all-inclusiveness of Zen an excuse for pure libertinism, and it is for this reason that the members of Zen communities observe a rigid discipline. The solution to the difficulty is that no-one should undertake the practice of Zen without first having adapted himself to a thorough moral discipline." (Alan W. Watts, The Spirit of Zen, Mandala, 1958, p 56)
There is an entirely unsatisfactory circularity in Watts' contribution here. We are not told what the basis of any morality is. Simply that self-discipline is needed. Why? The back cover of my 1958 copy of this book asserts that it "is considered by modern Zen masters to be his finest book on the subject". But we should bear in mind, I suppose, that it was actually first published in 1936 when Watts was just 21. It was largely reflective of his reading of Shunryu Suzuki (1904-1971), quoted earlier. Of course, matters are further complicated by the question of the ultimate compatibility of Zen and Buddhism with each other.
In Zen: A Trinitarian Critique (from which we have already quoted), Rev. Ralph Allan Smith reserves his most trenchant condemnation of Zen in regard to its ethics, and he uses Suzuki's writings to illustrate moral prevarication in Zen:
In Zen: A Trinitarian Critique (from which we have already quoted), Rev. Ralph Allan Smith reserves his most trenchant condemnation of Zen in regard to its ethics, and he uses Suzuki's writings to illustrate moral prevarication in Zen:
It is remarkable that living through a [20th] century that is characterized by its political theories and atrocities, Suzuki has so little to say on the subject. What he does say, however, is important:
Zen has no special doctrine or philosophy, no set of concepts or intellectual formulas...It is, therefore, extremely flexible in adapting itself to almost any philosophy and moral doctrine as long as its intuitive teaching is not interfered with. It may be found wedded to anarchism or fascism, communism or democracy, atheism or idealism, or any political or economic dogmatism. [Daisetz T. Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971 reprint; 1959), p63]
[T]he fact remains that when confronted with concrete historical particularity Zen is unable to handle problems of paramount importance such as communism and fascism, unable to give clear ethical guidance in an issue as uncomplicated as dueling, and unable to direct the Japanese nation in political wisdom. This is what we would expect if Zen insight is pantheistic and lacking in real moral content. In spite of Suzuki's denial that Zen is pantheistic, his own example is that of a man who cannot handle historical particularity. He has gained satori...And yet, Suzuki cannot find the wisdom to condemn what deserves to be condemned, or to show the evil of what is patently vicious.
It is only with serious consideration of ethical issues -- the place where philosophy confronts historical particularity --that Zen is clearly exposed as pretense. For at this point in history, "enlightenment" is not the word we use to describe philosophies that endorse fascism and communism. (Zen: A Trinitarian Critique by Rev. Ralph Allan Smith)
The pistic (F/B) modality is the sphere of faith. It is here that humans have their convictions of certainty. All preceding modalities ought to be directed in worshipful obedience to the Creator via this sphere. The 'unbeliever' has as much faith as anyone else, except that his or her faith is misdirected and is invested in an absolutized modality (ie in an idol), rather in the transcendent Creator. Somehow, again I am not sure why, this apostate turning from the Creator leads the Zenist to believe in "Nothingness". Perhaps "nothingness" is what the "self" experiences when it attempts radically and fundamentally to replace the Creator as the focus of existence. Here again there is an echo of Dooyeweerd. Without pausing at the moment to try to unpack all that to which he is alluding (a daunting task!), we can at least sense the relevance when he writes:
"Philosophic thought as such derives its actuality from the ego. The latter restlessly seeks its origin in order to understand its own meaning, and in its own meaning the meaning of the entire cosmos!...Philosophic thought pre-supposes an Archimedean point for the thinker, from which our ego in the philosophical activity of thought can direct its view of totality over the modal diversity of meaning...The Archimedean point...may not be divorced from the concentric law of the ego's existence. Without this law the subject drops away into chaos, or rather into nothingness." (Herman Dooyeweerd, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Prolegomena, pp 11,12)
Sartre peered into a similar abyss - "le néant". Of course we must remember that the mindset of Zen would understand this "nothingness" as being simultaneously (and paradoxically) "everything"! "Nothingness" in the Zen mind is radically different from what the term denotes in a scientistic materialist mind. Take, for example, the following sentences from the internal martial arts' genius Peter Ralston's insightful (and demanding) book "Cheng Hsin: The Principles of Effortless Power"(North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, California, 1999), and bear in mind that the burden of the book is to cultivate a moment-by-moment awareness of the physical here and now -
"The fundamental principle that seems to emerge in our consideration here is Nothing. Not a negative, not a removal, not an absence, nor an exclusion of anything; simply and absolutely Nothing, inclusive of all that is and of the very heart of Being. Consider it." (p 121)In a 1978 interview included as foreword to the above book, Ralston describes an elightenment experience he had while on an intensive meditation course:
"Suddenly I was aware I was Nothing. Absolutely no thing. I directly experienced my true nature, not as thingness in any way, shape or form. The possibility that I wasn't anything had not existed for me...In the enlightenment I was just...no thing, no where, no substance whatsoever." (p xii)(It is perhaps of relevance here to note that Dooyeweerd utterly opposes the notion of "substance" as a dualism we have inherited from Plato and Aristotle, via Aquinus.)
Ralston goes on to describe a second similar experience:
"And then, quite to my surprise, I had an experience of what Zen people call the Void. That Absolute Existence does not exist. There was no distance, no time, no space...nothing" (p xiv)The question arises in my mind as to whether this kind of experience may tie in with Dooyeweerd's notion of our "supratemporal selfhood" over which Van Til took him to task (see quote in previous section). The immediate aftermath of this experience of Ralston is intriguing:
"I recognize now that I didn't have a context in which to hold that experience. I had experienced the Absolute Nature of existence, yet when I was back in 'life', I just noticed that everybody lied. That everything said and everything done was a lie. It was not the Truth. And it started to become intolerable. Then I noticed that eveything that I said was a lie. That I wasn't able to speak the Truth. I started to go crazy, so I isolated myself for two weeks and wouldn't speak. I didn't know what to do with it. I think it is invaluable to have a context in which to hold such an enlightenment experience." (p xiv)It is obviously paramount that we try to get behind the terminology - the same word can clearly denote near opposites to different people. To take another obvious example, talk in Zen of "mindlessness" or "no-mind" is alarming to Western thinking in general, forget Western Christian thinking. Yet this seems to be due, in some degree at least, to terminology. Westerners are used to "mindless" as a cliché term heard in our news, eg "mindless violence". What is meant by the latter is violence which is unjustified, disproportionate, irrational, even insane. But as anyone half-aquainted with "internal" martial arts would readily comprehend, the term "mindless" could fairly be applied in marked contrast to a mode of fighting which is utterly restrained, and which even carefully avoids inflicting damage. A key saying of the Japanese martial art aikido, for instance, is "protect your opponent". If ever there is developed such a thing as a Christian martial art (difficult to imagine, I admit!), let's hope that by then aikido's copyright on that remarkable slogan will have expired! Intriguingly, compare the following from Herman Dooyeweerd:
"In a serious dialogue we must faithfully support one another. Perhaps some are not aware of their deepest motives in life; if so, then we must bring these motives out into the open. We, in turn, must be willing to learn from our opponents, since we are responsible both for ourselves and for them." (Herman Dooyeweerd, Roots of Western Thought: Pagan, Secular, and Christian Options, Paideia Press, 2012, p 15)Martial arts was where Peter Ralston started. He was no slouch - in 1978 (the year of the above-quoted interview) he became the first non-Asian ever to win the World Championship full-contact martial arts tournament held in the Republic of China. Ralston went on to investigate further the ontological insights which had informed his own prowess. Without over-affirming these matters, I would merely share with you my own impression of further correspondences (unlikely as this might seem) between Ralston's and Dooyeweerd's explanations. I would draw attention, for example, to the constructive emphasis the Zen-influenced Peter Ralston puts on the ontic. Ralston's recurrent references to human actuality as "event" rather than as materialist or scholastic "substance" is reminiscent of Dooyeweerd. In a comment relevant also to our "one and many" consideration, Ralston says -
This entire book could be said to deal with the integrity of being as a multidimensional and many-faceted event, and at the same time as a simple and singular one.(Cheng Hsin: The Principles of Effortless Power, by Peter Ralston, North Atlantic Books, Berkely, California, 1989, 1999)Dooyeweerd calls the supratemporal self our "centre", and identifies it with references to the "heart" in Scripture, eg "Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life." (Proverbs 4:23) He also views the heart as being properly directed to God as our "Origin", or "Source". Ralston calls his own approach "Cheng Hsin" (誠心 chéngxīn) and introduces it as follows:
"Let's begin with the name: Cheng can be defined as true, genuine, real, right, correct, or exact. Hsin is often defined as being, heart, mind, will, sense, center, origin, or source. These terms have been translated in many ways. Taoist and Zen traditions use the word hsin to refer to 'ones true nature'. It is the seat of Being, the primary nature and reality of consciousness and life, the origin of self. Hsin implies a source and union between being alive and being a body - between being a conscious entity and an objective form. (p 1)Dooyeweerd refers to our body as our "mantel of functions" within time. Ralston goes on:
"In order to further our investigation of the principle that I refer to as Cheng Hsin and as springing from Cheng Hsin, I have made some distinctions within that which appears as being. The first distinction is that being appears first and foremost as some 'thing' that is; in our case, a body-being. What appears to be true about being a body is that bodily existence is formed out of the principle or principles in which Being exists as a thing. The simple object of a body, however, doesn't stand alone in this event of being; it is lived as a function of interaction." (p 3)Dooyeweerd views his suite of 15 aspects as "modes of time" within which all creation functions and is structured, and alignment with which leads to optimum functioning (see Shalom hypothesis). There seem to me to be echos of this also in Ralston, who talks of five principles which he lists as:
1. Being calm;2. Relaxing;3. Centering;4. Grounding;5. Being whole and total.
Ralston then goes on to say:
"Actually, these words do not really indicate what the principles are; it is more accurate to say that they refer to what arises out of being aligned with the principles. When the event of 'being' occurs in alignment with a principle that founds the condition in which being exists, the state 'in' which being abides shifts to its most fundamental or natural position, which is also its most workable position. This implies that it is possible to fall out of alignment with the very principles that found the event which is falling out of alignment. Yet it also indicates that the principles are in effect whether we are in alignment with them or not.I have learned a lot from reading Peter Ralston. Things like relaxing my face. Relaxing my shoulders. Aligning my skeletal frame with gravity. Poise, in other words. The soothing feeling of moving awareness from my pressured forehead to, say, my left elbow. To my right knee. To my feet. To the ground beneath my feet. (I rewatched "The Magnificent Seven" a while back there, and suddenly I became mesmerised by the grace of Yul Brynner's walk. Like a ballet dancer. Myself, in contrast, habitually hunched forward as if my body was two steps behind my head and no hope of catching up. My shoulders keeping my ears warm). And how to use my muscles properly. Not in stressed isolation but in relaxed bodily unity. As my father once said to my brother (we were young Canadians) "Let the saw do the work, son". That's Ralston. And the sense of 3-dimensional space around me. This is entirely in keeping with the way my consciousness gradually altered after focusing on Christ in my teens, trees turning from flat mist into wondrous 360 degree walkround solidity. I am almost three score years now [2008], and the 3-D actuality of trees and rocks and animals and raindrops is still miraculous to me whenever I glimpse it afresh. It is pure physical hallelujah. But I lose the edge so easily. The head takes over. The inner head. The dream factory. That workplace with the closed venetian blinds. No windows. Only monitors. Filtering, flickering, flat monitors. The static build-up. Ungrounded, film-processed, digitalised reality. Somebody told Ralston how she realized that prior to training with him she had become like "a head on a stick". Someone else had felt like "a head on wheels". I recognize the symptoms.
As an example of this, consider a hose. The hose has a particular design and function. Certain principles determine its design, and yet the hose can be twisted such that it does not fulfill its function. In this case we cannot say that the principles have changed at all, yet the state of the hose is quite different from when it is allowed to function in the way that it was designed to function. Through activities such as negation, confusion, resistance, abstraction, ignorance, suppression, lying, and the like, it is possible for the principles that found any event or being to be in discord. In other words, it is not allowed to function or 'be' simply as it was designed to be. Any activity will then arise from an aberration of the principle and not from the principle in its pure and most powerful form." (Peter Ralston,"Cheng Hsin: The Principles of Effortless Power", North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, California, 1999, p 4)
What has this to do with Calvinism [or simply, following Dooyeweerd’s terminology, with ‘Christianity’]? A lot. The escape from the mental jailhouse of Hellenistic and Thomistic dualism has been a necessary “Calvinist”/ “Neo-Calvinist”/ “Reformational” priority, but the struggle continues. Many of us have simply tunnelled into adjacent cells. For freedom Christ has set us free. So where is Christ? In your thought? In your heart? That's just your identikit photofit impression of Christ. Where is Christ in actuality? How can I encounter Him? I want to, need to, reach out and touch the Rock. ("And that Rock was Christ"). And this is why I find Dooyeweerd so helpful. Endeavouring as he does to chart the contours of this elusive frontier between theory and reality, and to lead us, poor sandblind, mind-locked refugees, back into the verdant, sparkling, magnificence of what is actual. "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being".
Peter Ralston attempts to leave the baggage of theorization on the sidewalk, while he proceeds to road-test the nature of physicality - actuality - and give feedback. An existential empiricist? An ontological mechanic, perhaps? I do go a long way with him (though I don't know how far he would travel with me. In his terms, there is clearly "baggage" I won't let go of. The Bible, for instance. Which brings us round back to a key Dooyeweerdian/Van Tillian issue, touched on elsewhere in this essay (8. Cornelius Van Til: Polarities and Paradoxes and 14. Between Two Insanities.)
I once gave a lift to my wife's aunt. She got the ferry from the Isle of Lewis in the Hebrides to the Scottish mainland port of Ullapool. I then took her by car to Inverness. As she was getting out on our arrival she announced that I drove like a "madman". I thought I was driving sensibly enough, though I did notice that she had a firm grip on the door handle for much of the jouney. I wonder how far readers will get with Ralston's driving here before their own knuckles whiten. It might tell them quite a bit about themselves and the nature of their worldview. If they are Christians, they should bear in mind that Christ is not a "belief system" under threat, but the "I am Who I am", the Creator and Redeemer of our bodies and of all physical reality. Regarding "neutrality", there is no such thing - as Van Til felt compelled to remind Dooyeweerd, and as Dooyeweerd duly denied exhibiting. Ralston himself of course cannot escape the Catch-22 that strictly-speaking "neutral" still remains a "belief-system", "non-moral" remains a moral position, etc. But you can see where, by common grace, he is at. He is championing the ontic over the epistemological (as does Dooyeweerd). Personally, I feel like the ride:
"One thing that bothers me is the pretentiousness that attaches itself to much of the martial arts and to spiritual practices. While it is not my intention to validate any belief system, I fear that perhaps too much of my writing lends itself to be interpreted in this way... I don't want people to believe what I say - I want them to experience it. I support people in challenging beliefs, not attaching themselves to them.(See, also Peter Ralston on YouTube, e.g. regarding "Ontology")
Cheng Hsin is nonmoral, nonpolitical, and nonreligious. It is not about proselytising a belief system, adhering to dogma, or following a set of rituals. It is not about pushing forward an opinion, defending against differing ideas, or engaging in idle speculations. The intent of this work is not to embrace a new belief system, but rather to openly and honestly question the nature of our event - any aspect of being alive. This often means challenging our existing beliefs.
It seems strange that we should live so abstracted from what is most near, solid, and present - the nature of our own event. This being the case, however, we tend to rely on hearsay, fantasy, and beliefs regarding what is true about our own beings as well as what is unknown about reality. For example, this is true of our relationship with our own bodies. In some respects, such as serious health matters, the aquisition of athletic skills, or the physiological microworld, advice from others may be useful. But why must we rely on hearsay or systems of belief or fantasy - which are, after all, most of what constitutes any system of "knowledge" - to tell us what's true about being in and functioning with our own bodies?
I want to encourage people to think for themselves, to take on these considerations with fresh perspectives. I suggest we repeatedly awaken a bona fide experience of ‘not knowing’ from which to investigate openly and honestly what this or any matter is all about. ‘Not knowing’ is a legitimate position from which to come; what's more, it is the truth. It is a fundamentally constant condition in which we find ourselves. To sink deeply into ‘not knowing’, to genuinely allow ourselves to experience that we do not know, is a very authentic and powerful place to be. It moves us into the truth of this moment, allows questioning to arise, and frees us from the dogma and beliefs that so plague our interpretations of everything.” (Peter Ralston,Cheng Hsin: The Principles of Effortless Power, North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, California, 1999, pp 123, 124)
Ralston aims here to nudge us out of secondhand conceptual towards firsthand actual. No Christian should be afraid of that place. It is where the burning bush resides. Where speaks the "I am Who I am". If any of us - Peter Ralston also - truly arrives at that most sacred place, we will find ourselves bowing, shedding our sandals. As martial artists are wont, before standing on the mat of ontic encounter. And if this comes across as "dogma" on my part, then one might well respond that it is no more so than is the assertion of "neutrality" vis-à-vis our Creator. The apostle Paul tells us in effect that actuality is not "out there" as self-existent brute "stuff". Rather it is exhaustively suffused with divine presence and revelation. God, says Paul, is permanently and ubiquitously "in our face" (whether we like it or not):
"What may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse" (Romans 1:19,20)This verse of Scripture is key to Van Til's view, as Jacob Gabriel Hale maintains in his essay from which we have already quoted:
According to Van Til, the natural world does not only reveal things about God, but rather reveals God. The importance of this notion cannot be overstated. According to Van Til, “All created reality is revelatory of the nature and will of God.” [Cornelius Van Til, Christian Apologetics, p 33]. For Van Til, this is far from saying that creation reveals truth about God or knowledge about God. Our knowledge of God is not based upon natural theology but rather natural revelation. According to Van Til, the world around us in infused with the personality of God. He writes, “Man’s surroundings are shot through with personality because all things are related to the infinitely personal God.”[Cornelius Van Til, Survey of Christian Epistemology Vol. II (New Jersey: P&R Press, 1977, p.78)]. Ontologically speaking, Van Til asserts that the natural world is not simply material, static and mute of meaning, but rather all things embody a certain active God-revealing quality. Therefore, the metaphysical make-up of the world is inherently revelatory, always speaking, always revealing meaning. Van Til does much to elaborate on this point through his understanding of Romans 1:18-20. ("Derrida, Van Til and the Metaphysics of Postmodernism: An Essay" by Jacob Gabriel Hale).It is interesting to bear both Zen and Dooyeweerd in mind as Hale continues:
According to Van Til, this knowledge of God that is revealed in all things is non-inferential and non-discursive. That is to say, that the knowledge of God is not derived or inferred from nature, but rather is immediately apprehended. This is a unique feature of Van Til’s epistemology, which distances him from what is termed natural theology. According to Van Til, the knowledge of God is not inferred, induced, deduced, or derived from any sort of evidence, fact or observation. Rather, the knowledge of God is immediately apprehended at the moment of consciousness. In Husserlean terms, the knowledge of God is immediately “present”, and “given.” Unlike others, who call themselves classical apologists, Van Til maintains that our knowledge of God does not come from an argument from facts and evidences. Based on Romans 1 this cannot be the case because, as Bahnsen points out, there are some who do not have the cognitive abilities to reason in this manner [Greg Bahnsen, VanTil’s Apologetic (New Jersey: P&R Press, 1999) p.181]. Yet, according to Paul, they still know God. Because the knowledge of God is immediately present to us through that which is made (both nature and self), Paul can say with confidence that in knowing God’s acts (both nature and self) we truly “know him.” Concerning Van Til’s point on this, Bahnsen writes, “Careful reading shows that Romans 1-2 does not teach men can develop a “natural theology" from the uninterpreted raw data of the natural realm, if they will rationally reflect upon it and formulate appropriate chains of argument, leading to the conclusion that God very probably exists. Rather, Van Til maintained that Romans 1 teaches a “natural revelation’ whereby the created order is a medium of constant, inescapable, clear, pre-interpreted information about God, with the effect that all men, at the outset of their reasoning, possess an actual knowledge of God and his character. [Van Til’s Apologetic, p.185]. So, Van Til does not ground knowledge in any abstract principle but rather in God who is revealed to all men in an immediate, non-inferential manner.However, the Bible does provide verbalised revelation beyond what is given in nature. Consider the following two passages on a parallel theme. The first is an extract from early Taoist writing which with wonderfully engaging humility (to the point of provoking a smile) evidences a "knowing" which is in the process of emerging from "not knowing". It is as fun as watching an egg hatch:
("Derrida, Van Til and the Metaphysics of Postmodernism: An Essay" by Jacob Gabriel Hale)
"Now, I am going to tell you something. I don't know what heading it comes under, and whether or not it is relevant here, but it must be relevant at some point. It is not anything new, but I would like to say it.What kind of bird is struggling to crack through this common grace egg? A chicken? It turns out to be an eagle. Some three centuries later we catch sight of it in awesome flight, spiralling upwards into the azure, till the sun hurts our eyes:
There is a beginning. There is no beginning of that beginning. There is no beginning of that no beginning of beginning. There is something. There is nothing. There is something before the beginning of something and nothing, and something before that. Suddenly there is something and nothing. But between something and nothing, I still don't really know which is something and which is nothing. Now, I've just said something, but I don't really know whether I've said anything or not." (Translated by Gia-feng and Jane English, from Chuang Tzu: Inner Chapters, New York: Vintage Books, 1974, p 35. Quoted by Ray Grigg, The Tao of Zen, Charles E. Tuttle Co., Inc, 1994, p23)
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it." (John 1:1-5 NKJV)So tell me. Where then does the ontic end, and dogma begin? I'm with the eagle.
Betty Edwards in her book "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" makes use of a popular model of the brain in which the two hemispheres apparently tend to specialize, the left (usually) on the verbal, analytical, symbolic, abstract, temporal, logical, linear, and the right on the nonverbal, synthetic, concrete, analogic, nontemporal, spatial, holistic, intuitive. (Now that latter list is remarkably "Zenish" is it not? Neither, it seems to me, is it far removed from the Eastern understanding of the term "mindlessness"). It is recognized that this left-right model is an over-generalization. In cases of brain trauma, healthy areas can apparently sometimes take over the specializations of damaged areas. For our purposes here, though, the precise anatomy is not the point. What is relevant is the discussion of two contrasting ways our brain, or mind, can engage with reality. Betty Edwards points out the fact, confirmed by any art teacher, that it is difficult to draw and talk at the same time. When an artist is really "into" a drawing he or she has entered a wordless timeless zone. Is this a kind of "Zen zone"? Is Zen at its most innocuous simply a cultural bias towards the (so-called) right-hemisphere "intuitive" mode of apprehension? Put in those terms the "no-mind" (non-verbal mind?) parlance is far less threatening and indeed already well within Western experience (eg in the arts), although as Betty Edwards points out, Western culture and education have been overwhelmingly "left-hemisphere". The aesthetic does seem to me to play a significant role in Zen. The aesthetic (by and large) seeks holistic harmony, generally involves concrete encounter, and is irreducible to the "logical", as is well expressed by the following quote from the Russian Constructivist sculptor Naum Gabo:
It is impossible to comprehend the content of an absolute shape, absolute line, or form, or color, by reasoning; they can only be known by our experience of them, and their influence on our psyche is unique - it can break or mould it. Shapes, lines, forms, can exalt or depress, elate or cause despair; they can bring order or confusion into the state of our minds; they are able to harmonize our consciousness or disturb it; they possess a constructive power or a destructive danger. In short, lines, shapes, forms, colors have all the properties of a real force with a positive and negative direction.
(Naum Gabo, "Of Divers Arts", Princeton University Press, 1962)
So the paradox is that the wayfarer in "Zenland" notices that the native inhabitants focus (in an intuitive, aesthetic manner) on concrete particulars - and on nothingness. Is it that in tending to make an absolute of the particular, the counter-absolute of Universal Oneness suddenly demands attention (and vice-versa)? The oak-panel in the cosmic wall alarmingly swivels in a Zen-blink to replace the Buddha idol (absolute universal undifferentiation) with the anti-Buddha idol (absolute brute particularism). As noted above, Cornelius Van Til points out that resolution of this philosophical "One v Many" enigma is only possible in the Person of the Triune God, in Whom singularity and plurality are equally ultimate and equally personal. To quote again from his book "Common Grace and the Gospel" (Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, Phillipsburg, New Jersey, 1972) -
“The ontological Trinity will be our interpretative concept everywhere. God is our concrete universal; in Him thought and being are coterminous, In Him the problem of knowledge is solved. If we begin thus with the ontological Trinity as our concrete universal, we frankly differ from every school of philosophy and from every school of science not merely in our conclusions, but in our starting-point and in our method as well. For us the facts are what they are, and the universals are what they are, because of their common dependence on the ontological Trinity. Thus, as earlier discussed, the facts are correlative to the universals. Because of this correlativity, there is genuine progress in history; because of it the Moment has significance." (p 64)"
The Moment has significance". How Zen is that!
And yet, we must surely be wary of Van Til’s reductive description of the “ontological Trinity” as an “interpretive concept”. Is Van Til exhibiting here what we heard Dooyeweerd call:
“a typical rationalistic scholastic tendency in your theological thought. This tendency reveals itself first in your objections against my distinction between theoretical conceptual knowledge, and the central religious self-knowledge and knowledge of God.” ?
I do find myself more comfortable these days with Dooyeweerd’s outlook, summarised here by Dr J. Glenn Friesen as being a “nondualism” or “advaita”:
The word ‘advaita’ does not appear in Dooyeweerd. It means ‘nondual.’ I believe that Dooyeweerd’s philosophy can best be described as ‘Christian nondualism.’ Dooyeweerd’s philosophy is neither a dualism nor a monism. And it is in this sense that I refer to it as ‘nondual.’ Advaita means “not-two.” And “not-two” is not the same as “merely one.” Thus, nondualism is not a monism, although Westerners often interpret it this way, because they have no other categories of thought. […] Dooyeweerd emphasizes both unity and diversity; but he is adamantly opposed to any dualism. Therefore the word “advaita” is certainly applicable to his thought, in its meaning of “not-two.” […] For Dooyeweerd, dualism is a result of our fallenness – of our turning away from God. When our heart is directed towards God, there are no ultimate dualisms. But when our heart is directed away from God, we are ruled by what Dooyeweerd calls dualistic Ground Motives, and we then fail to experience reality as it really is. When we turn away from God, we absolutize parts of our temporal reality. This is the cause of all the dualisms and indeed of all the –isms in our thinking, such as materialism, psychologism, logicism, or aestheticism, to name a few. But nondual mystical experience returns us to the true experience of reality, in which both unity and diversity are real.
Friesen’s full glossary article can be read HERE.
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