Month: November 2023

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Hobbes vs. Rousseau

A favorite website Existential Comics presents in a nutshell the clash of the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) and the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). By assuming a violent and degraded human nature, Hobbes can pretend to lament summoning authoritarianism as a necessity, while at the same time presenting himself as a staunch ally of the noble-minded state. The very reality of a society persuades Hobbes to suppress human nature, human collectivity, human autonomy.

In contrast, Rousseau affirms that society, already controlled by authoritarian structures, has bludgeoned human nature, that original expression of conviviality, copoperation, and well-being, destroyed its original benignity, and replaced it with the structures that Hobbes thought indispensible. The structures Rousseau would cast off were exactly the structures Hobbes would elevate. Society with its control of the individual from cradle to schooling to livelihood, was to Rousseau an inimical force, a corrupting force. Rousseau applied his principles to every field of soceity, from educatipon, to religion, to economics, and science. He paid for his unorthodox (for the time) beliefs, shunned and hunted by all of their representatives. Eventually Rousseau retired and wrote his reflections as a selection of thoughts, not unlike famous French predecessors (such as Pascal). The Reveries of a Solitary Walker make useful reading for the solitary who needs the examplesf history to understand the course of timem to appreciate the lessons of a lifetime of struggle. But bitterness, not optimism, characterizes Rousseau’s last writings. The authoritarian premises of Hobbes eventually came to influence not only the contemporary empires but statescraft in the Western world ever since.
URL: https://existentialcomics.com/comic/525

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Hakuin and Yuan-wu

Yuan-wu (Yuanwu Keqin, 1063–1135) was an early Chinese Zen (Chan) master credited with constructing The Blue Cliff Record, probably the most representative compilation and discussion of Zen koans. The later Japanese Rinzai Zen master Hakuin Ekaku (1686-1769), whose students and disciples organized his lectures into essays, acknowledged the important influence of Yuan-wu in Hakuin’s first essay. There, Hakuin indicates that when Yuan-wu first delivered lectures he was reproached by other masters for doing so. Yuan-wu acknowledged their criticism. Chan was understood to be transmitted (as Bhodhidarma had said) not by outward teaching but in example and meditation. Here, too, Yuan-wu alludes to the Hermit of Lotus Flower Peak, as will be seen.

Thus when Hakuin’s students and disciples announced to him their interest in publishing Hakuin’s key lectures, Hakuin demurred, but eventually gave in, as long as the publication did not come to be associated with intentions to be admired. Indeed, Hakuin writes, in his first essay:

“Yuan-wu said:
After the ancients had once achieved awakening, they went off and lived in thatched huts or caves, boiling wild vegetable roots in broken-legged pots to sustain themselves. They were not interested in making names for themselves or in rising to positions of power. Being perfectly free from all ties whatever, they left turning words to their descendants because they wanted to repay their profound debt to the Buddha-patriarchs.”

Hakuin thus had intended to follow the eremitic path in at least the sense of living obscurely and quietly in the world, following Yuan-wu’s example, “on achieving awakening.” He would pursue lecturing and teaching and permit his disciples and descendents to transcribe his works as repayment to the patriarches. The decision to remain in the world through works could, however, only be the result of enlightenment, or satori, which was not the case for most Zen practitioners or teachers.

Yuan-wu himself concluded as much, realizing that he was teaching but was not himself enlightened. He models life after the hermit whom he calls the “Hermit of Lotus Flower Peak,” for like direct prajñā (wisdom) conveyed to the Buddha’s disciple Mahākāśyapa, Yuan-wu acknowledgred that a master receives the Buddha’s wisdom and insight directly, without or in spite ofinterventional reading, scripture, or teaching. This direct transmission is the teaching of Bodhidharma himself regarding what is Zen (or Chan):

“A special transmission outside the scriptures,
Not depending on words and letters;
Directly pointing to the mind,
Seeing into one’s true nature and attaining buddhahood.”

This process does not preclue or exclude study and meditation, which can, however, only confirm it later. Thus the hermit in Yuan-wu has the opportunity to receive enlightenment directly. Enlightenment later redeems use of written and oral teaching but only if that service to humanity is geniune and truth-telling, not simply an ego spreading poison, what Hakuin called “fox-slobber.”