Introduction
The East is full of mysteries
and they have they mysterious feel because of the kind of thinking that they
have. In the long run it is eve hard to understand some of their philosophical activities
because it really stirs that mysterious element to the point that one is lost
in thinking. But that is the point of it all is it not? To not crystallize
thinking be making it come to halt to absolute conclusions but to make one
continuously ponder until something dawns in him and only then to find out that
it can be wrong or there is something otherwise. There is this difficulty in
understanding Eastern thoughts because of the kind of understanding they use,
and not only such, but also they themselves permeates with this kind of
understanding.
I am not offering a kind of
answer to give a finality to direct a course in absolutizing a understanding of
Eastern thought, but the point of this paper is to expose the dialectics behind
Eastern thoughts. What then is use if the dialectics is present in Eastern
thought? If we then understand what is Hegel’s dialectics then we can parallel
it with the Orient and can gain a further insight in how we could tackle them.
I will be limiting this paper to
some oriental thoughts namely Confucius, Lao Tzu, the story of Svetaketu, the
story and the philosophy of Buddha, and Jalal-al Din Rumi. In turn I will be
exposing their dialectical nature.
Hegel’s Dialectics
The dialectics of Hegel is his
attempt to describe the phenomenon of everything. In which there is interplay
of opposites and the opposites as being one. As Hegel says that “the True is
the Whole” [1],
and within the whole are its parts. But also there is also this element of the
universal having an interplay with the particular[2],
that is then the universal includes within itself the particularities. The part
and the whole and the universal and the particular are opposites or
contradictories of which they are complementary, that is, one cannot be thought
of without the other and also one implies the other or one is standing in equal
power with the other.
Hegel then extends this to the
relation of the positive and the negative or the true and the false. Wherein
the contradictories in ordinary logic tends to cancel out each other, but here
in Hegel’s logic, they are what is implied. “Truth thus includes the negative,
that is to say that which it negates” [3]
and this too can be seen as when Hegel goes into the anti-thesis and the thesis
creating a synthesis.
Hegel observed that this is how
everything goes and even made an illustration of the bud’s becoming to a flower
of which the bud undergoes a lot of negation process of which it becomes
something in the next and the next changes into another until it becomes a
flower. The truth of the flower contains its negatives, of what was prior and
even what is otherly than the flower. Nature moves in such manner, and
everything is Nature. Everything moves accordingly, everything follows the
dialectic principle.
As nature progresses especially
it moves in the dialectical manner, it consummates itself in the end as the
Absolute, but not that Absolute is the end, but it already what is already is,
it is just that it is already in the state of totality of which even in the realization
of it is already it manifesting itself.
And also Hegel pointed out in
the early part of the preface to his Phenomenology
of Spirit that philosophy too dialectically moves and the next point is to
show also that the Philosophies of the East have this dialectical nature.
Confucius
So as Hegel’s famous example of
the bud but Confucius has a different evolution in terms of being a well
rounded man. Or the gentleman as he speaks or the superior man.
“The Master said, At fifteen I set my heart upon learning.
At thirty, I had planted my feet firm upon the ground.
At forty, I no longer suffered from perplexities.
At fifty, I knew what were the biddings of Heaven.
At sixty, I heard them with docile ear.
At seventy, I could follow the dictates of my own heart; for what I desired no longer overstepped the boundaries of right.”[4]
At thirty, I had planted my feet firm upon the ground.
At forty, I no longer suffered from perplexities.
At fifty, I knew what were the biddings of Heaven.
At sixty, I heard them with docile ear.
At seventy, I could follow the dictates of my own heart; for what I desired no longer overstepped the boundaries of right.”[4]
Here
follows an evolution of the character of man in time of which at first his
youth is geared in curiosity and to where when he goes further he begins to
settle down and gain maturity. That every stage is a development and even what
is in the relation of the prior to the posterior is something outside of it,
negatives because simply of it as not it in the other sense.
Then at the last part where
there is already the realization of a final state of which there is already in
it the truth of the gentleman and that he has an experience of what is prior to
him of which he was yet at the time of development, a step by step realization
until he becomes seventy but in his being seventy carries everything what is
prior to him. Therefore, again, the truth of the seventy covers the wholeness
of it, that is, from whence he was fifteen onwards.
Lao Tzu
One of the
most difficult to understand but popular Chinese philosophy is Taoism especially
pertaining to Lao Tzu’s Dao De Jing. Taoism
has this mystical feature of which it escapes common understanding and even in
its expression is a transgression to common language and ordinary logic. Unlike
Confucius who was focusing on the morals of man, Lao Tzu was focused on
revealing the mystery of Being or everything or as what scholars say as
‘nature’. He dubbed nature as the way
in which everything goes through.
But Lao Tzu’s manner of exposition
on nature is in a poetic form or he thus uses less words and he thus open a
level of understanding by assimilating contradictions.
“The way that can be spoken of
Is not the constant way;
The name that can be named
Is not the constant name.
The nameless was the beginning of heaven and
earth;
The named was the mother of the myriad
creatures.
Hence always rid yourself to have desires in
order to observe its secrets;
But always allow yourself to have desires in
order to observe its manifestations.
These two are the same
But diverge in name as they issue forth.
Being the same they are called mysteries,
Mystery upon mystery –
The
gateway of manifold secrets.”[5]
Here presented is Lao Tzu’s way
of relaying to us the meaning of the Tao as that unnameable name, or that which
is spoken but cannot be spoken. There is now a kind of understanding that is
privately revealed to one due to the contradictory statement. Lao Tzu’s
language is dialectical in the sense that there is the play of contradictories
of which it guides man into a mystery due to its seemingly incomprehensibility
but the kind of understanding as suggested by Lao Tzu himself is deep in the
sense that it demands a transcendence of ordinary logic, by combining
contradictions, by combining both thesis and anti-thesis thus forming a
synthesis but yet there is yet a suspension of the capturing of thought due to
yet not comprehensible.
Jalal-al
Din Rumi
To speak of the Orient we then
should not forget the Islamic side of the Orient. To pick one I chose Jalal-al din Rumi and he
is tied to Sufism to which it is one of the mysterious groups in Islam. He
shares the mystic element and imbued in that element is also the dialectical
language of which it engages in the play of contradictions or of opposites.
“I once had a thousand desires,
But in my one desire to know you, all else
melted away.
The pure essence of your being has taken over
my heart and soul.
Now there is no second or third, only the
sound of your sweet cry.
Through your grace I have found a treasure
within myself.
I have found the truth of the Unseen world.
I have come upon the eternal ecstasy.
I have gone beyond ravages of time.
I have become one with you!
Now my heart sings,
“I am the soul of the world.”[6]
Here in
Rumi’s description of the way to mystical union with the divine he speaks of
firstly of a distinction between subject and God as an other. Of which due to
that other, everything else melted away and he is thus transformed into someone
who has he himself with the divine in him. There is now a melting of two
different horizons into one, of which even in the last part that the world
is an other to an individual but he has
become one with the world. A fusion of something which is inherently contradictory
and that is the other and the self, a fusion of God and man as Rumi puts ‘I
have become one with you’.
Buddhism and the Life of Buddha
Buddhism shares also the
dialectical language and that I found in the story of a prince becoming the
Buddha plus in relevance to some of their teachings. First let us know the
overview of the story of the Buddha.
Before being the Buddha, he was
just prince Siddharta Gautama and by being a prince he was born into a royal
family. His family is overly protected inside their palace and also they
conditioned young Siddharta when he was yet a child to only see the pleasures
which the palace has in abundance and never did the prince had the chance to go
out. The prince was so enmeshed in the lavishness of his family’s richness and
he knew no suffering. But when he was at a certain age, he had a chance to go
outside and saw three kinds of people that have changed his view in life and
for that he went to the extremes of being a hermit trying to live the life
opposite to that of his princehood days. He went to the extreme by practicing
asceticism, meditating in the forest until he came into enlightenment and thus
he became the Buddha.[7]
Here is a clear example of the
dialectics within Buddha’s life that lead him to realizations that had become
the pillars of Buddhist thought. There is even the so called Middle Path that
results from the Buddha’s experience of the two extremes. That in itself is a
dialectics of experience that lead him to a synthesis resulting the so called
truths and noble paths. The two extremes collided in his being that lead him to
results, and even these two extremes are contradictory and obvious opposites,
that is being in plenty and being in scarcity.
There is also that one aspect in
Buddhism wherein there is the concept of the self and the no-self. Wherein
again these are two opposites that are in complementary to each other. The
no-self is the enlightened self wherein there is really no self, of which the
self is the root of desire and thus the root of suffering, but it is also from
this self having consciousness which aids one into the assistance of realizing
no-self. There is that so called Awaking or Enlightenment wherein one is not
enlightened at first but there is the necessary undertaking of firstly being a self
before achieving no-self, and that is to awaken.
There is
the necessity of one to undertake the whole process and part of that is being
at sleep in order to be awakened. A path of blindness is all but necessary to
know what it is like to see. That then is the dialectics of experience in
Buddhism. Experiencing suffering to achieve an awakening, again there is
nothing to waken up if there is no sleep at first.
Story of Svetaketu
There is this Hindu story found
in the Upanishads namely the Story of Sveaketu. The Upanishads is the
philosophical side of the Vedas compared to what is prior which was so
concerned with rituals. But the Upanishads are different and thus is also the
breeding ground of an attempt to create and exposition of the philosophical
side of Indian thought.
Here in the story of Svetaketu
there is the show of a tradition of educating one’s child in prestigious schools
and Svetaketu was under in the tutelage of the greatest school known in his
time for a number of years to learn all what he needs to know. But the story
did not stop to where he finished school but he took another kind of schooling
and now it is from his father. He have learned so much in school that we was a
little bit cocky and overly confident of his knowledge when he was facing his
father. His father dared to teach him that was never taught before and started
with the simple seed division, of which Svetaketu after the ad infinitum dividing the seed there
results nothingness. Here then he learned that underneath everything is nothing
and that from nothing came everything. [8]
Here his father taught him
something that is even mysterious and outside everyday thinking and that is by
reducing everything into nothing and making nothing as a springboard that
results to everything. His father is dialectical in the manner of relaying the
teaching to his son, that is that he has to immerse his son to formal school
only to add something to what he was schooling was something that will be
contradicted by reducing the arrogance he gained from schooling as nothing. But
nothing her is somewhat a kind of everything. The teaching in itself is
dialectical and that is that it tends to generate novel ideas from
contradictions or from opposites. In everything is nothing and in nothing is
everything.
Comment and Conclusion
Herewith is just a simple of
exposing the dialectical nature of some eastern thoughts of which by understanding
them as something dialectical, then from the understanding that they are then
we then expect a synthesis or a play of opposites from them that we need to
further think about. But even before realizing that there is Hegel and the
dialectics, we are already immersed in the kind of understanding process in approaching
the several philosophies at concern.
This paper may simply point out
the dialectical nature of these philosophies and this will be a step closer to
a further project that will focus on the dialectics being the language of the
poets or is poetry and thus the philosophies of the east are in themselves
poetic because they have a dialectical language and being poetic it is thus
something that creates, a creation of ideas or realizations. Just like the
dialectics which is also a creation process as the synthesis are two extremes
or contradictories or opposites put together.
References
Books
Hegel, G.W.F.. The Phenomenology of Spirit .Trans. by.
A.V. Miller. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1962.
________. The Philosophy of Hegel .Ed. by Carl Friedrich. New York: The
Modern Library. 1953.
Jalal-al-din Rumi. In the Arms of the Beloved. Translate by
Jonathan Star. Penguin Books. USA, 1997.
Lao Tzu. Tao Te Ching. Translated by D.C. Lau. Penguin Books: USA, 2009.
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