Zen and the Art of Post-Modern Philosophy

Dustin
12/12/02
Philosophy of Religion

Zen and the Art of Postmodern Philosophy

Carl Olsen’s Zen and the Art of Postmodern Philosophy (henceforth Z&PmP) compares and contrasts the perspectives of two Zen Buddhists, with the perspective of numerous postmodern philosophers. Z&PmP is not an easy book to review, not so much because of the difficulty of the subject-matter (though it is difficult), but because of it’s structure. It does not proceed in a straightforward manner, or have much of a thesis; Olsen merely makes the claim that Zen and postmodernists have some similarities in their thought, and some differences as well. Olsen then presents these similarities and differences in diverse chapters like The Self and Other, Nihilism and Metaphysics, and Radical Skepticism and Doubt, to name a few. As a result of this, summarizing Z&PmP in a thorough way would be almost impossible, as there are simply too many positions to discuss, and the book itself is already a summation. Therefore, what follows here is more synthesis than summation.

The major difference that becomes apparent between Zen and the postmodernists is that the former are absolutists about the mind, while the later are more relative and have more diversified interests. It is not surprising that Zen Buddhists are absolutists since the idea of Zen is that there is a Buddha-nature, absolute mind, center of consciousness, etc., that exists behind the surface ego, and that it is possible to realize this mind. As a result of this position, the Buddhist thinkers are not so concerned with philosophy or even words; they are concerned with helping people realize their true mind. Therefore, they are not concerned with being logical, or not contradicting themselves; their aim is to encourage the listener to make that leap into Being. Of all the postmodernists discussed in Z&PmP, Heidegger comes closest to the Zen concern by focusing on the problem of Being; his major work is called Being and Time.

Like the Buddhists, the postmodernists have a similar distaste for abstract philosophy and metaphysics, but it is for entirely different reasons than the Buddhists. Postmodernism is defined more by what it is not then what it is: postmodernism is not modernism. Modernism is commonly defined by the Enlightenment-era-ideals of using truth, reason, and science to forge a better existence for mankind. It is safe to say that the postmodernists have been more then just a little bit disillusioned by many of the events of the Twentieth century. The fact that most postmodernists are European, specifically French, German, and Italian, should then come as no surprise. It is these countries that had an advanced intellectual tradition prior to World War II, and saw the effects of the war firsthand. The role of French and German existentialism also cannot be discounted as a precursor to postmodernism. Many of the revolutions in modern physics also provide support for postmodernism’s distrust of concepts like object truth; Einstein’s theory of relativity and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle posit an end to the understanding of objective reality that can be gained through the scientific method.

Postmodern applied to the arts says that everything that can be done, already has been, so all the artist of today can do is replicate the old forms, pastiche it is called. Postmodern philosophy also shares this view to some extent. The postmodernists are very distrustful of ‘grand narratives’, and metaphysical schemes, in essence, explanations of reality. What the average person doesn’t realize that the postmodernists do, is that our minds function to a great extent off of explanations of reality imposed from outside. Simplified, it could be said that the ego-mind functions off of dominant ideas.

Recall earlier how I spoke of the effect of World War II on creating the right conditions for postmodernism to take root. Buddhism begins with such disillusionment. One of the Buddha’s main tenets is that ‘all life is suffering’. Anyone entering into Buddhism was never attached to a notion of social progress. It is important for Westerners to be aware of how much the idea of social and personal progress dominate the mind. Both postmodernism and Buddhism share this understanding, but take it in two different directions. Zen sees an abandonment of ideals as a positive affirmation of the meaning of existence, while the postmodernists are led to nihilism, or meaninglessness. To me, this condition of the postmodernists seems a result of abandoning progressive ideals on the intellectual level, while retaining them in their hearts.

Nietzche was the first philosopher to examine nihilism, and his views on the subject were examined in Z&PmP. Many of the postmodernists can trace their intellectual roots to Nietzche, as he and Kierkegaard were the earliest Western thinkers to perceptively analyze the “decadent Christian civilization” (Olsen 181). Nietzche saw nihilism as inevitable as “the highest values devalue themselves” (ibid 181). In the case of the Enlightenment-ideals, there appears to be some truth to that statement. The Enlightenment-ideals were the progression of mankind through reason. Reason, leading to individuality, then serves to alienate man from humanity.

Interestingly, Nietzche had a perspective on Buddhism: he saw it as a “passive kind of nihilism” (ibid 187). The charge has been levied by Westerners who fail to understand Eastern religions, specifically Buddhism and Taoism, that those religions are ‘quietistic’. Nietzche’s view corresponds to this claim. This opinion, I think, comes from a misunderstanding of Eastern views. For example, a Buddhist may say, “everything is emptiness”. Or a Taoist may talk about how the Tao is like water and how therefore, if one wants to follow the Tao, one must ‘go with the flow’. These ideas have clashed with the prevailing Western notions of progress, materialism, and consumerism. But a non-nihilistic interpretation of these Eastern statements is easy to make. On emptiness, one can say, “the world of senses has no meaning because truth is found within your mind only”. On the Tao being like water, one can say, “it is better to accept reality than to fight it, because reality always wins”. While that does indeed still smack of quietism, one solution is to say that it is necessary to accept reality in our hearts, and if it is still necessary to fight the prevailing conditions, then go ahead, but just don’t be devastated when things go wrong.

Along different lines, Derrida’s idea of deconstruction also correlates to the Zen-sphere very well. One can look at enlightenment from two perspectives: shedding all the ‘mental-rubbish’ away and coming to understand who one really is, or enlightenment could simply be the realization of the true mind, which would therefore eliminate the rubbish. I think that both processes are needed, but that it is the second step that is mandatory. Derrida’s idea of deconstruction focuses on that first step. It is deconstructing all the ridiculous ideas about ourselves and the world that have been constructed through society and culture. Derrida does this by attempting to find the underlying assumptions responsible for a position. Personally, I find the idea of deconstruction very easy to accept, as I commonly come across questions stemming from faulty perspectives. Such questions cannot be answered because in answering it, one validates the faulty premises. Instead, all one can do is attempt to deconstruct the question, in the hope of coming closer to the truth.

The second chapter of Z&PmP is titled, Language, Disruption, and Play. It is the disruption aspect of the chapter that comes closest to Zen. Some of the popular lore of Zen contains stories of Zen masters shouting at their pupils, hitting them with sticks, and behaving in ways seemingly unbecoming of an enlightened person, i.e. crouching on the ground and roaring like a tiger. All of this is with the idea of disruption in mind. What is being disrupted is the unenlightened mind’s expectations of reality.

The Zen koan also serves to disrupt the mind, but in a different way. Koan means problem, but the koan is not a problem can be solved using rational means. The koan most widely known in the West is: what is the sound of one hand clapping? The idea is to put all of ones rational efforts into solving the koan, and since it cannot be solved through reason, the mind finds another way, and a greater understanding of the self is achieved. By creating a practical method for overcoming Reason, the Koan takes the postmodernist’s distrust of it to a higher level.
One postmodern conception that I think corresponds particularly well to Eastern ideas, is the notion of Deleuze and Guattari that human beings are “desiring-machines” (ibid 85). Deleuze and Guattari see humans as having fragmented minds, full of various thoughts, ideas, and desires, many of them contradictory. Of the schizophrenic, Olson summarizes the pair by saying, “the schizophrenic is a fragmented, divided, and false person because such a person can only become him/herself by being totally foreign to oneself” (ibid 86). I find that statement particularly useful because it encourages a closer examination of who we in fact are. Of interest here is what Ted Hughes, Britain’s former poet laureate, and husband of poet Sylvia Plath, has to say about her shaking off her fragmented selves:

Sylvia Plath was a person of many masks…some were camouflage cliché
facades, defensive mechanisms, involuntary. And some were deliberate poses, attempts to find the keys to one style or another. These were the visible faces of her lesser selves, the minor roles of her inner drama…
Her real self had showed itself in her writing, just for a moment, three years earlier -the self I had married, after all, and lived with and knew well- in that brief moment, three lines recited as she went out through a doorway, I knew that what I had always felt must happen had now begun to happen, that her real self, being the real poet, would now speak for itself, and would throw off all those lesser and artificial selves that had monopolized the words up to that point, it was as if a dumb person had suddenly spoke.
A real self, as we know, is a rare thing. The direct speech of a real self is rarer still. Where a real self exists, as a rule, it reveals itself, only in the quality of the person’s presence, or in actions. Most of us are never more than bundles of contradictory and complementary selves. Our real self, if our belief that we have one is true, is usually dumb, shut away beneath the to-and-fro conflicting voices of the false and petty selves. As is dumbness were the universal characteristic of the real self. When a real self finds language, and manages to speak, it is surely a dazzling event. (Plath, xii)

Delueze and Guattari, all of the Buddhist discussed in Z&PmP, and many other postmodernists, would praise Hughes’ lucid statement in its concordance with their views.

It is easy to draw parallels to Zen Buddhism because the only thing that Zen is saying is that it is possible to go deeper into one’s mind. As a result, Zen has an affinity with literally every single brand of mysticism and esoteric philosophy. But is postmodernism an esoteric philosophy? Esoteric is the antonym of exoteric; they mean inner and outer. So to the extent that postmodernism encourages increased thought and subjectivity, it is indeed an esoteric philosophy. And much postmodernism is firmly centered on topics that promote introspection. So I do feel that it is fair for Olson to write a book such as Z&PmP.

I have several criticisms of Z&PmP, some of them fair, and some not fair. One unfair criticism is that Olson spends too much examining the differences between the positions, without trying to look deeper to find to commonalities that exist. This is not a fair because a good work of comparative philosophy should try and set the positions as far apart from each other as possible, so that each position can be seen fully in its own light. And Z&PmP is a good work of comparative philosophy.

Another unfair charge is the omission of the French existentialist/absurdist Albert Camus, and other existentialists in the discussion. It could be said that an existentialist is not a postmodernist, and therefore outside of the realm of the book, but Heidegger is much more commonly associated with existentialism than postmodernism, and his positions were discussed at length. Camus’ absurdist philosophy, particularly what he explicates in The Myth of Sisyphus would have been very useful in bridging the gap between the postmodernists and the Buddhists in regards to nihilism. Sartre, likewise, was mentioned only a few times. Overall, I find existentialism much more closely associated with Buddhism because existentialists tend to fall on the absolute side of that absolute-relative divide.

Many times I found Z&PmP tedious, but that was probably a result of the fact that I am much more interested in the comparative philosophy of similarity, rather than of difference, and much of the book is spent explicating the differences between the various thinkers. Z&PmP was however a very stimulating book because it did promote thought and introspection, and I tend to enjoy any such ‘disturbing’ material. The book has also renewed a plan I once had to read Heidegger, and spawned a desire to read Nietzche as well. Because Z&PmP has the potential of introducing the reader to so many foreign thinkers and ways of thinking, it is a valuable book. I do however feel that some knowledge of both Buddhism and postmodernism is probably required before taking up Z&PmP. I feel this because it is important, at least for me, to have a feel for the overall structure of someone’s thought in order to understand it. I argue that two people can say the exact same thing and one of them can be right, and the other one wrong. The lack of beforehand knowledge of many of the various postmodernists discussed, prevented me from making such distinctions. One warning though, Z&PmP is for the serious minded individual who is capable of introspection. As Sylvia Plath says speaking about two men in her life:

“I was too serious for Peter, but that was mainly because he did not participate in the seriousness deeply enough to find out the gaiety beyond. Richard knows that joy, that tragic joy” (Plath 107).

Olson’s Z&PmP certainly has the subject-matter capable of producing that “tragic joy”, and bringing us to the “gaiety beyond” our egos.

Bibliography
Olson, Carl. Zen and the Art of Postmodern Philosophy: two paths of liberation from the
representation mode of thinking. Albany: State University of New York
Press, 2000.

Plath, Sylvia. The Journals of Sylvia Plath. Edited by Francis McCullough. New York:
Anchor Books, 1982.