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Causation and Telos: The Problem of Buddhist Environmental Ethics
By Ian Harris
University College of St. Martin
Abstract:
Environmentalist concerns have moved centre stage in most major religious traditions of late and Buddhism is no exception to this rule. This paper shows that the canonical writings of Indic Buddhism possess elements that may harmonise with a de facto ecological consciousness. However, their basic attitude towards the causal process drastically reduces the possibility of developing an authentically Buddhist environmental ethic. The classical treatment of causation fails to resolve successfully the tension between symmetry and asymmetry of relations and this has tended to mean that attempts to inject a telos, or sense of purpose, into the world are likely to founder. The agenda of eco-Buddhism is examined in the light of this fact and found wanting. Published material relating to Buddhism and environmental ethics has increased in a moderate fashion over the last few years and may be divided into four broad categories:
1. Forthright endorsement of Buddhist environmental ethics by traditional guardians of doxic truth, of whom HḤḌalai Lama [1] is perhaps the most important representative.
2. Equally positive treatments by predominantly Japanese and North American scholar/activists premised on an assumption that Buddhism is blessed with the resources necessary to address current environmental issues. Generally this material limits itself to identifying the most appropriate Buddhist doctrinal bases from which an environmental ethic could proceed, e.g. the doctrines of interpenetration, tathāgatagarbha, etc. (e.g., Aramaki [2], Macy [3], and Brown [4]).
3. Critical treatments which, while fully acknowledging the difficulties involved in reconciling traditional Asian modes of thought with those employed by scientific ecology, are optimistic about the possibility of establishing an authentic Buddhist response to environmental problems (e.g.. Schmithausen [5]).
4. Outright rejection of the possibility of Buddhist environmental ethics on the grounds that the otherworldliness of "canonical " Buddhism implies a negation of the natural realm for all practical purposes (e.g., Hakamaya [6]).
In this paper I shall move backwards and forwards between positions 3 and 4 - my heart telling me that 3 makes sense with my mind more in tune with position 4. Category 1 material mainly relates to dialogue with other religions and aims to paint Buddhism in a favourable light. I shall have nothing further to say on this. I hope to show that work belonging to the second category, while superficially attractive, falls some way short of providing an adequate and rigorous basis for the erection of a thorough-going Buddhist environmental ethic. The minimum qualification for an authentic Buddhist ethics is that it is able to construe causation in such a way that goal-oriented activity makes sense. In other words Buddhist causation must be shown to be teleologically meaningful. In our context a positive moral stance towards the environment is premised on the idea that one state of affairs can be shown to be preferable to another; for instance, that the world will be demonstrably worse if the black rhino becomes extinct. Now, I would not wish to argue against this in general terms but I shall contend that it is difficult to ground such a view on a sound Buddhist footing, most importantly because any activity of this kind presupposes a certain teleology and an accompanying belief in the predictability of cause/effect relations.
Let us now examine the idea of causation in more detail. Yamada, in an article that draws on a very substantial body of prior Japanese scholarship, shows that the pratītyasamutpāda formula can be read in two significantly differing ways - the so-called "reversal" and "natural" sequences. The first he believes to be a characteristic of the Abhidharma, with the second more closely associated with the Buddha himself.[7] The reversal sequence, beginning with ignorance (avijjā) and ending with becoming-old and dying (jarāmaraṇa), is said to describe elements causally related in temporal succession. In this manner the time-bound and soteriologically meaningful, concepts of karma, bhava, bhāvanā, etc., so crucial to the whole idea of Buddhist praxis are made comprehensible. The natural sequence, by contrast, beginning with jarāmaraṇa and ending in avijjā, stresses non-temporal relations of interdependence, simultaneity, or mutuality. In this way:
The twelve a"ngas are not so much causal chains, in which the cause precedes the effect in rigid succession, but the factors of human existence which are interdependent upon each other simultaneously in a structural cross-section of human life.[8]
This typically Mahāyānist rendering, then, associates chronological causation with the Abhidharma of the old canon, while simultaneous relations (akālika) represent a complementary position implicit in the teachings of the Buddha yet only made explicit in the Mahāyāna. The implication here seems to be that the natural sequence, while obviously present in the writings of the old canon, was either consciously or unconsciously neglected.
For Yamada, Abhidharmic scholiasts deviated, for some inexplicable reason, from an atemporal understanding of causation to the extent that they came to adopt a theory of strict one-to-one cause-effect relations "along the flow of time"[9] known in Japanese as gookan engi setsu (=karma activated dependent origination theory?) I shall now suggest that the Abhidharmic adherence to asymmetry, i.e., to a strict temporal sequencing of dharmas, is not quite as strong as may have been expected from Yamada's treatment of the subject.
The Sarvāstivāda accepts six basic kinds of relation (hetu) between entities. Of these six, two - the simultaneous relation (sahabhūhetu) and the associated relation (samprayuktahetu) - suggest a roughly similar character of mutuality. In fact, the Sarvāstivāda came under attack from a variety of other Buddhist schools [10] under the suspicion that these two interrelated hetu undermined the basis of temporal causation understood as essential to the efficacy of ethical and soteriologically meaningful activity. It is clear, for instance, that Sa"nghabhadra was perfectly happy with the notion of mutuality in relations to the extent that he derives his simultaneously produced relation (sahotpannahetu) from the ancient "when this..ṭhat" formula.[11]
Some scholars [12] have attempted to show that simultaneous and temporal theories of causation are complementary. While the latter represents a unidirectional flow of causes and effects, the former points to the spatial relations that must also hold between co-existent entities. Sahabhūhetu, then, concerns relations in space, not in time. It indicates a principle of spatial unity or aggregation. Of the twenty four modes of conditionality (paccaya) recognised by the Pali Paṭṭhāna, the sixth and seventh, in their traditional order, are closely related. These are, respectively, the co-nascence condition (sahajātapaccaya) and the mutuality condition (aññamaññapaccaya). The former condition occurs in four basic kinds of relation, i.eṭhose between mentals and mentals, mentals and physicals, physicals and physicals and physicals and mentals. So exhaustive is this list that we could be forgiven for thinking that the vast majority of the possible relations between the entities envisaged by Theravāda Buddhism may be found under this heading. In fact, relations of the first type, i.e., mentals to mentals, are acknowledged, by a range of Theravāda thinkers, to be:
. . ṣymmetrical. That is, the relation between the two terms A and B holds good as between B and A.[13]
Karunadasa accepts that, under certain circumstances, a relationship of pure reciprocity can apply, specifically in what he regards to be a special case of sahajāta defined in the traditional list of paccayas as no.7 - the mutuality condition (aññamañña). Indeed, Ledi Sayadaw happily conflates these two paccayas and there is a widely held view, endorsed by Karunadasa, among others, that the aññamañña condition is "the same as the sahabhūhetu of the Sarvāstivādins."[14]
Buddhaghosa in his Vibha"nga commentary, Sammohavinodanī, distinguishes between a strictly sutta-based, temporal form of causation extending over many thought-moments (nānācittakkhaṇika) on the one hand, and an abhidhammic, non-temporal version said to occur in a single thought-moment (ekacittakkhaṇika), i.e. to all intents and purposes, instantaneously.[15] According to Buddhaghosa then, the suttas favour asymmetry with the abhidhamma plumping for a spatio-symmetric view of relations. This categorisation differs sharply from Yamada's understanding of an Abhidhamma unequivocally promoting uni-directional causation, and, in my opinion, his less than enthusiastic support for non-Mahāyānist positions tends to make him uncritically conflate a great range of sources. In fact, the true situation on sutta and abhidhamma readings is probably somewhere between the positions of Buddhaghosa and Yamada. It seems that the Pali commentarial traditional never successfully managed to reconcile these two radically divergent readings and in the final analysis, elegant solutions to complex textual traditions are impossible to achieve. Nevertheless, it is obvious that akālika relations i.e. those not bound by time were not entirely overlooked by the Theravāda even though some modern apologists have been reluctant to admit this fact.[16]
The Sautrāntika school seems to have offered four basic objections to the Sarvāstivādin position on mutual relations not least because it seemed thoroughly imbued with a spirit of symmetry. The Sautrāntika also advanced a more radical theory of momentariness (kṣaṇavāda) by denying any element of stasis. For the Sautrāntikas, dharmas disappear as soon as they arise though this response to the problem of true causal efficiency is no more satisfactory than the position it sought to replace. Nagao's rather flimsy defence of kṣaṇavāda fails to come to terms with this fact. He argues that the doctrine:
does not mean the total extinction of the world; on the contrary, it is the way by which the world establishes itself as full of life and spirit (my emphasis)."[17]
Now, though irresolvable differences remain, all three early schools of Buddhism exhibited a tendency to view causation in spatial/horizontal terms, even though this tendency was often obscured behind the lush vegetation of temporal/vertical thinking.
It looks likely that, as Buddhism developed, a gradual radicalisation of the concept of impermanence occurred with rather more emphasis placed on symmetric relations between entities. The common sense view, perhaps related to the introspective/empirical observations of an early meditator's tradition that set a radically impermanent mental flux against the relative permanence of non-mental entities, was in time reformulated and rationalised by an emerging scholastic tradition.[18] These scholastic traditions, then, begin a process that results in the severing of links with common sense asymmetric causation to the extent that the temporal flow of a single chain of causes and effects was eclipsed by the space-like aspect of symmetry. In my view, the increasing dominance of symmetry in Buddhist thought provides a fertile breeding ground for the development of the Avataṃsakasūtra doctrine of the radical interpenetration of all things and this, in a circuitous manner, undoubtedly has come to influence the writings of many contemporary environmental thinkers.
Mahāyānists in general wish to preserve a time-like asymmetry of causation in its common-sense form, while negating it from the ultimate perspective. Nāgārjuna holds that four alternative positions, the tetralemma or catuṣkoṭi, logically exhaust the possible connections between causally related entities. Now, the dominant view within the Mahāyānist exegetical tradition is that Nāgārjuna's negation of the four alternatives is absolute. In other words, relations between entities can never be meaningfully articulated in terms of any of the four positions of the catuṣkoṭi. Indeed, no other position is possible. Absolute negation (prasajyapratiṣedha) in this case results in the total denial of causal relations between substantial entities. Using this as a starting point, Nāgārjuna moves on swiftly to propose that entities engaged in causal relations must be empty ("sūnya). Of course, he has already underlined the centrality of pratītyasamutpāda as the bedrock, the central authority from which all Buddhist thought must flow. This being so, the affirmation of causal relations leads inexorably to a negation of substantiality. Now, an empty entity has no distinguishing mark, its value is zero ("sūnya). Furthermore, all conditioned entities must share this same null value and in this sense they are equivalent. If this is accepted Charles Hartshorne's intuition[19] that Nāgārjuna exhibits a prejudice in favour of symmetry is confirmed and we shall expect Nāgārjuna to experience some difficulty in accounting for any purposeful directionality of change, or "emergence into novelty" to use the jargon of process theology.
The earliest extant commentary on the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, the Akutobhayā[20], is traditionally ascribed to Nāgārjuna, though this attribution tends to be rejected by modern scholarship. Interestingly, the use of absolute negation (prasajyapratiṣedha) of the four positions of the catuṣkoṭi is not one of the obvious features of this early text. In its treatment of MMK.XVI I I.8, the four koṭis are said to represent a series of graded steps related to the spiritual propensities of those engaged on the Buddhist path. This reading, in part confirmed by the later commentaries of Buddhapālita and Bhāvaviveka [21], singles out the fourth and final koṭi as the closest approximation, given the constraints of language, to the true nature of things. If we relate this to our earlier discussion of the four possible modes of production, it is apparent that the "neither different nor non-different" position, if is legitimate to invoke the law of the excluded middle here, reflects a rejection of both symmetric and asymmetric accounts of causation - a deeply puzzling notion. We might have expected a more satisfactory resolution of the problem, assuming of course that anyone in the early Madhyamaka was aware of, or indeed interested, in the matter. If so, we shall be disappointed, for the early Madhyamaka transcends, rather than resolves the tension. By retaining his strong adherence to the Buddha's teaching on pratītyasamutpāda, i.e. by insisting on the objectivity of the causal process, Nāgārjuna and his followers adopt a view of reality that, in so far as it can be articulated, is constituted by causally related and empty entities that are neither different nor non-different one from another. Elsewhere I have termed this outlook "ontological indeterminacy."[22] Naturally Ruegg is reluctant to accept that the Madhyamaka would have countenanced such an irrational depiction of reality as coincidentia oppositorum but what strikes one forcibly here is the parallel with the doctrine of symmetric interpenetration characteristic of some of the later phases of Buddhism, such as the Chinese Hua-Yen school.[23] In the Yogācāra again we find some evidence of a distinction between akālika and unidirectional relations, even though the precise form of the distinction does not fully harmonise with that observed in other strands of the Buddhist tradition. As we would expect of a philosophical tradition with a specific interest in the mechanics of consciousness (vijñāna), the Yogācāra treatment of causation gives priority to the non-temporal factors that, as we have already seen in the Pali literature, apply to relations between mental entities.
Nagao goes on to suggest that the term pratītyasamutpāda is not intended to define causal relationships as customarily understood for it represents "..ṭhe realm of mutual relatedness, of absolute relativity [which] constitutes an absolute otherness over against selfhood and essence."[24] Chronological proliferation operates only from the perspective of conventional understanding, for, in reality, pratītyasamutpāda denotes "unity in a transhistorical realm."[25]
Returning now to Nāgārjuna's picture of causation and reality at MMK. XVI I I.9, we hear:
Independent of another (aparapratyaya) (Ruegg's [26] rendering of this difficult term]), at peace ("sānta) not discursively developed through discursive developments, without dichotomising conceptualisation, and free from multiplicity (anānārtha): this is the characteristic of reality (tattva)."[27]
This verse occurs in the context of a discussion of causal factors so we may, without doing violence to the text, conclude that tattva is inextricably related to pratītyasamutpāda. Comparison with the ma"ngala"sloka reveals a number of parallels. Tattva , for instance, is said to be at peace, or still ("sānta). The term anānārtham also occurs in MMK.XVI I I.9, although significantly tattva is not related to the usual binegation of positive and negative positions, i.e. neither without differentiation nor devoid of unity (the fourth koṭi), as one would expect by reference to the ma"ngala"sloka. A consistent reading suggests that the quiescence and non-multiplicity of causally related entities is a function of their entirely symmetrical relations and one might be inclined to term this kind of relation "interpenetration". Ruegg, of course, rejects this interpretation. However, his treatment of the passages is ambiguous for he upholds Candrakīrti's view that a reality devoid of differentiation has the value of emptiness while, elsewhere in the same important article, he also wants to maintain that the Madhyamaka understanding of causal relations is "in a certain sense indeterminate and irrational"[28]. In the less equivocal opinion of la Vallee Poussin, Nāgārjuna holds only to the conventional expression of temporal causation, for: "There is, in absolute truth, no cause and effect."[29]
To summarise, the centrality of the notion of causation is non-negotiable, located, as it were, at the heart of the tradition. This seems to have led some early Buddhist schools to emphasise spatiality as against temporality, perhaps because this was perceived as entailing fewer intractable philosophical problems. The early Madhyamaka does not follow this lead preferring instead a transcendent approach to the problem of causation.
Conclusion
The gulf between spatial and temporal interpretations of causation was never satisfactorily reconciled in early Buddhism. An obvious starting point in any theoretical construction of an authentic Buddhist environmentalist ethic must be the doctrine of causation understood in its temporal sense yet, though the doctrine allows for a highly coherent account of the arising and cessation of suffering, and in particular of the interaction of mental factors, it has rarely been invoked as the basis of a "scientific" explanation of the natural world. This is, in good measure, because Buddhism has regularly embraced chronological causation at one moment only to reject it in the next. Here is an excellent example of the corrosive character of the "rhetoric of immediacy".
From the cosmological perspective Buddhism recognises an ad nauseam unfolding and dissolution of worlds that act as receptacles for countless beings yet this picture is essentially anti-evolutionary or dysteleologic. All is in a state of flux yet all is quiescent for all forward movement lacks a sense of purpose. As Faure has made clear, the gulf between these two levels is not always easy to negotiate, even given the "teleological tendencies of controlled narrative"[30] that Buddhism has generally employed to minimise the incongruence of its various building blocks.
The theory of karma is clearly crucial to any Buddhist explanation of the world. On this account the "natural realm" is, at any point in time, regarded as a direct result of Stcherbatsky's "mysterious efficiency of past elements or deeds."[31] There is, then, no magnet at the end of history drawing events inexorably towards their ultimate goal, no supra-temporal telos directing events either directly or indirectly. The narrative and soteriological structure of Buddhism appears, despite some recent attempts to indicate otherwise, essentially dysteleologic [32].
Now, this need not preclude the possibility of purposiveness altogether, yet, when other available teleologies are considered, prospects are not especially encouraging. Woodfield, in an important study, shows that only two further positions remain for the Buddhist and one of these, the animistic alternative premised on the notion that entities are directed by the souls or minds that inhere within them, cannot possibly be appropriate. We are left then with the Aristotelian idea of immanent teleology in which objects behave teleologically because it is in their nature to do so. In other words the "source of a thing's end-directedness is to be found within the nature of the thing itself, not in some external agency."[33]
It is clear that, from the Madhyamaka perspective, no entity exists that could possibly possess a nature of this kind. The fact of niḥsvabhāvatā then precludes the possibility of immanent tele. The Abhidharma position, bearing in mind our earlier discussion, is perhaps more difficult to characterise. Dharmas are the ultimately unanalysable constituents of nature but can dharmas, which are at least regarded as possessing own-natures (svabhāva), also be said to act as the source of their own end-directed movement? There is general agreement of all of the early schools of Buddhism that dharmas are simple and discrete entities. As such their capacity for internal relations with other dharmas makes no sense. Relationships must be of a purely formal kind. If this is accepted two things follow:
1. dharmas cannot mutually cooperate to bring about events on the macro scale - we may wish to compare this with process theology's [34] comparatively successful attempt to account for change, and even novelty, as the result of the prehension [i.e. serial co-operation] of internally related simples within an overarching Christian teleological structure.
2. dharmas do not possess tele though, on the level of convention, societies of such entities may be said to possess ends, though only in the most highly provisional sense.
The theory of dharmas represents a pseudo-explanation, a reformulation of the original insight of the Buddha into the fact that all things change. It gives no information on how this may occur. The theories of causation and of karma hover above all mechanical explanations and are never successfully earthed within them. In this sense we can talk about an "ontological indeterminacy" at the heart of Buddhist thought. At best all we can say is that Buddhism accepts de facto change. It cannot account for it!
If we now root our discussion in the more concrete situation of environmental ethics we begin to see the difficulty in determining a coherent Buddhist approach. There are difficulties in determining how best to act with regard to the natural world, unless that response has been specifically authorised by the Buddha. The problem here is twofold. In the first place, few of the Buddha's injunctions can be used unambiguously to support environmentalist ends [35] and in the second, the dysteleological character of Buddhist thought militates against anything that could be construed as injecting the concept of an "end" or "purpose" into the world. It is, for example, very hard to see how a specifically Buddhist position on global warming or on the decrease in diversity of species can be made, unless of course one can appeal to the supranormal intelligence of a handful of contemporary Buddhist sages. In this connection, the Far-Eastern appeal to the Buddhist notion of the "interpenetration of all entities" will not do, for I hope that I have shown that the symmetric bias of this approach cannot even satisfactorily account for the raw fact of change itself, let alone for those aspects of change deemed harmful to the natural environment.
Schmithausen has observed that Buddhist spiritual and everyday practice may contribute to a sort of de facto environmentalism, though he his careful to point out that this does not, in itself "establish ... nature ... as a value in itself"[36]. It is worth pointing out that even in the realm of interpersonal relations, and in relations between humans and the higher animals, "commitment to extrapersonal welfare" is found only in a "highly qualified and rather paradoxical sense."[37]. In this light Schmithausen's programme for a reformation of Buddhism through de-dogmatisation of the inconvenient Buddhist teachings on animals, etc. is little more than a bit of tinkering around on the margins. I hope that I have beenable to show that it is the dysteleology deeply rooted within Buddhism that is the essential problem for any future Buddhist environmental ethic, not a bit of local difficulty with animals. It is not so much that Buddhism has a difficulty in deriving an ought from an is, it is that it faces the more fundamental difficulty of defining an "is" in the first place. On the theoretical level, then, the best Buddhism can offer at the moment is an endorsement of those aspects of the contemporary environmentalist agenda that do not conflict with its philosophic core. The future development of a coherent and specifically Buddhist environmentalism, assuming that this is indeed possible, will be fraught with many difficulties.
Notes
[1] For example, Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama "A Tibetan Buddhist Perspective on Spirit in Nature" in Rochefeller, Steven C. and John C. Elder (eds.) Spirit and Nature: Why the Environment is a Religious Issue (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992), pp. 109-123. Return
[2] Noritoshi Aramaki, "Shizen-hakai kara Shizen-sasei e - Rekishi no Tenkai ni tsuite" ( From destruction of Nature to Revival of Nature: On a Historical Conversion) Deai, 11, 1 (1992), pp.3-22. Return
[3] Joanna Macy, "The Greening of the Self" in A. Hunt-Badiner (ed.) Dharma Gaia: A Harvest of Essays in Buddhism and Ecology (Berkeley: Parallax, 1990), pp. 53-63. Also, Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory: The Dharma of Natural Systems (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991). Return
[4] Brian Brown, "Toward a Buddhist Ecological Cosmology" Bucknell Review, 37,2 (1993), pp.124-137. Return
[5] Lambert Schmithausen, Buddhism and Nature. The Lecture Delivered on the Occasion of the EXPO 1990 (An Enlarged Version with Notes) (Tokyo: The International Institute for Buddhist Studies, 1991 [Studia Philologica Buddhica, Occasional Paper Series VI I]). Also, The Problem of the Sentience of Plants (Tokyo: The International Institute for Buddhist Studies, 1991 [Studia Philologica Buddhica, Occasional Paper Series VI]). Return
[6] Noriaki Hakamaya, "Shizen-hihan to-shite no Bukkyoo" (Buddhism as a Criticism of Physis/Natura) Komazawa-daiguku Bukkyoogakubu Ronshū, 21 (1990), pp.380-403. Also, "Nihon-jin to animizmu" Komazawa-daiguku Bukkyoogakubu Ronshū, 23 (1992), pp.351-378. Return
[7] I. Yamada, "Premises and Implications of Interdependence" in S. Balasooriya, et al (eds.) Buddhist Studies in Honour of Walpola Rahula (London: Gordon Fraser, 1980), p. 279f. Return
[10] The main opponents to this apparent notion of simultaneous causation were the Dārṣṭāntikas (cf. Mahāvibhāṣā [Taishoo 27, p.79c7-8]) and the Sautrāntikas (Vasubandhu Abhidharmako"sa 83.18-84.24). The Sautrāntika objections to the notion of mutual causality were fourfold. Return
[11] See Nyāyānusāra [Taishoo 29.419b7-8] quoted in K.K. Tanaka, "Simultaneous Relation (Sahabhū-hetu): A Study in Buddhist Theory of Causation," Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, 8, 1 (1985), pp. 91-111; p.95. Return
[13] Ledi Sayadaw "On the Philosophy of Relations I I," Journal of the Pali Text Society, (1915-16), pp. 21-53; p.40. This reading is confirmed by W. M. McGovern's discussion of this matter in A Manual of Buddhist Philosophy Vol. 1 - Cosmology (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1923), pp. 194-195. Return
[14] Y. Karunadasa, Buddhist Analysis of Matter (Colombo: Dept. of Cultural Affairs, 1967), p. 131. Funnily enough Kalupahana takes a rather different line. For him, sahajātapaccaya, not aññamaññapaccaya is the correlate of sahabhūhetu while, on the authority of Haribhadra, aññamañña is said to be the correlate of the Sarvāstivāda sabhāgahetu. See David J. Kalupahana, Causality: The Central Philosophy of Buddhism (Honolulu: University Press of Hawai'i, 1975), pp. 167-168. Return
[16] It is certainly curious that Ledi Sayadaw (op cit) fails to make any specific reference to aññamañña in his treatment of the paccayas. Again, Nyanatiloka is extremely cautious in treatment of simultaneity in causal relations; see Nyanatiloka Mahāthera, Guide Through the Abhidhamma-Pitaka: Being a Synopsis of the Philosophical Collection Belonging to the Buddhist Pali Canon (Kandy: Buddhist Publication Society, 1971), p. 156. Return
[17] Gadjin Nagao, "The Logic of Convertibility" in Madhyamaka and Yogācāra: A Study of Mahāyāna Philosophies: Collected Papers of GṂṆagao [Edited, collated and translated by LṢ.Kawamura in collaboration with GṂṆagao] (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), p. 130 [first appeared as "Tenkan no Ronri" in Tetsugaku Kenkyu (Journal of Philosophical Studies), 35,7 (1952), p. 405ff. Return
[18] This distinction between cadres of spiritual praxis and philosophical reflection builds on the distinction first made by Lambert Schmithausen in "Spirituelle Praxis und Philosophical Theorie im Buddhismus," Zeitschrift fur Missionswissenschaft und Religionswissenschaft, 57,3 (1973), pp. 161-186 [Republished & translated into English as "On the Problem of the Relation of Spiritual Practice and Philosophical Theory in Buddhism" in German Scholars on India, Vol.I I (New Delhi: Cultural Department of the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany, 1976. pp. 235-250]. Return
[19] Charles Hartshorne, Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method (London: SCM Press, 1970 [The Library of Philosophy and Theology]), pp.205-226. Return
[20] On the authorship, etc., of Akutobhayā, see C.W. Huntingdon, Jr., The Akutobhayā and Early Indian Madhyamaka, unpublished dissertation, University of Michigan, 1986. Return
[21] See David S. Ruegg, "The Uses of the Four Positions of the Catuṣkoṭi and the Problem of the Description of Reality in Mahāyāna Buddhism", Journal of Indian Philosophy, 5 (1977-8), pp. 37ff. Return
[22] Ian Charles Harris, The Continuity of Madhyamaka and Yogācāra in Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism (Leiden: E.J.Brill, 1991); especially see chapter 7. Return
[23] See my "An American Appropriation of Buddhism" in T. Skorupski (ed.), Buddhist Forum, Vol. 3 (Tring: Institute of Buddhist Studies, 1994), forthcoming. Return
[24] Gadjin M. Nagao, The Foundational Standpoint of Madhyamika Philosophy [translated by John P. Keenan] (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), p. 8. Return
[28] Ruegg, "The Uses of the Four Positions of the Catuṣkoṭi and the Problem of the Description of Reality in Mahāyāna Buddhism," p. 11 n. 44. Return
[29] Louis de la Vallee Poussin, "Identity (Buddhist)" in J. Hastings (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1914), Vol. VI I, p. 100. Return
[30] Bernard Faure, The Rhetoric of Immediacy: A Cultural Critique of Chan/Zen Buddhism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), p. 4. Return
[31] Th. Stcherbatsky, The Central Conception of Buddhism (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1974), p. 31. Return
[32] The term "dysteleology" seems to have been coined by the Protestant theologian E. Heckel to denote the "purposelessness of nature". Return
[33] Andrew Woodfield, Teleology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), p. 6. Return
[34] For example, David Ray Griffin, "Whitehead's Deeply Ecological Worldview," Bucknell Review 37, 2 (1993), pp. 190-206. Return
[35] See my "How Environmentalist is Buddhism?" Religion, 21 (1991), pp. 101-114. Return
[36] Lambert Schmithausen, "How can Ecological Ethics be Established in Early Buddhism", p. 15 (forthcoming). Return
[37] David Little and Sumner BṬwiss, Comparative Religious Ethics: A New Method (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1978), p. 240. Return
