Professor Miller has presented a most engaging and challenging paper. In the tradition of process thought, he has focused on the central concept of creativity, which Alfred N. Whitehead has called the Category of the Ultimate. But now Professor Miller has pressed further on this category and its ultimate nature. He has, I believe, come up with a refreshingly novel approach to view the total dimensions of creativity. His starting point is that inquiry into major Oriental and Western philosophies has brought us "face to face with creativity as the firstness of experience."[1] He expands: "The firstness of creativity means an all-encom-passing feeling, dynamic and undivided in its fundamental character and expression."[2]

The effort to bring Eastern and Western thought together has been done in the past, notably by F. S. C. Northrop.[3] Northrop made the famous distinction between Western concept by postulation and Eastern concept by intuition. I believe he was on the right track but somehow fell short of a comprehensive treatment of both traditions by operating basically on a scientific model. Since Northrop of course much inter-cultural exchanges have occurred and the East is ideologically much closer to us now than it was at the end of World War II.

Professor Miller has now renewed the challenge by offering a global philosophy of creativity. In the paper, he has presented three central elements of philosophy as meta-paradigm: silence of meditative thinking, the habit of generous analysis and the lure of physicianship for the whole Earth (p. 3). These elements are involved in the dynamics of paradigmatic and meta-paradigmatic thinking. His aim is to move from philosophy as paradigm to philosophy as meta-paradigm. In his book, he has argued cogently that the dominant paradigmatic inquiries had been the bane of Western philosophy from the Greeks on down to the present, although voices of meta-paradigmatic thinking had been heard from time to time. Surprisingly and contrary to accepted views, he attributes David Hume as being one of the forerunners of meta-paradigmatic thinkers. (Philosophy of Creativity, op. cit.; see especially Chapter 6.)

Professor Miller has presented a philosophy of creativity which I believe can be assigned to the general rubric of naturalistic epistemology. I say this, and I stand to be corrected, because there is a conceptual scheme, however nebulous, luring in the background at all times and this scheme functions to include the whole Earth. When he refers to the "silence of meditative thinking," for example, the underlying force or energy is still a noetic felt quality in the silence of things. Granted this and taking all three elements of silence, analysis and physicianship into consideration, the following crucial question arises: What distinction, if any, can be made between the epistemic and ontological grounds of experience? The question is posed with the assumption that both paradigmatic and meta-paradigmatic phases have both epistemic and ontological natures. One may be smaller (paradigm) and the other larger (meta-paradigm) in scope and function, to be sure, but both seem to have certain common grounds of discourse. In other words, what kind of inner dynamics, epistemically and ontologically, is taking place? For example, he says, "we must look for meta-paradigm in the midst of paradigm, but understand that meta-paradigm is the opening of creativity beyond paradigm. Meta-paradigm transcends but includes paradigm." (p .1.) He must explain more fully what he means by "meta-paradigm in the midst of paradigm," and how meta-paradigm can go beyond or transcend but include paradigm.

Put another way, the problem boils down to this: what kind of an interpenetrative involvement is taking place? If the meta-paradigm is to be sought in the midst of paradigm, can we reverse the condition to include the presence of paradigm or its "traces" in the meta-paradigm? Aren’t meta-paradigmatic phases always expanding their parameters in the creative process that involves the self, society and the whole Earth and that in the process they feed directly into paradigmatic epistemic functions? It is one thing to say, "the opening is involving just as the involving is the opening" (p. 9) but another to demonstrate how the involving and opening take place. The border between prose and poetry is indeed vague.

I have raised these questions at the outset because they are crucial to the understanding of the creative process, Eastern or Western.

The philosophy of creativity immediately recalls the Buddhist concept of dependent-origination. In Sanskrit, it refers to the hyphenated term, pratitya-samutpª da. For the Buddhist, the term has two distinct dimensions and functions. On the one hand, it depicts the dependently originating nature of our normal perceptual process. This is the realm of ordinary psycholgoical and epistemic function based on attachment to the factors (dharmas) of experience. Here I am willing to correlate this realm with Professor Miller’s treatment of philosophy as paradigm. It is conventional understanding based on perceptual and rational (logical) elements and thus limited to a set framework. In a word, it is samsāra, the way of our ordinary experience.

On the other hand, the Buddhist claims for a truly creative process functioning within the selfsame realm of ordinary experience but bereft of attachment to the factors of experience. This is the enlightened way, achievable by meditative discipline, where all perceptions are now lucid, open, wider and unconditioned. Again, there seems to be a parallel with Professor Miller’s meta-paradigmatic functions, but at this point, I hesitate to make a correspondence since we need to delve deeper into the content of enlightened nature vis-a-vis meta-paradigmatic characteristics. Yet Professor Miller seems to relate closely to the Buddhist enlightened realm when he speaks of the "as-is-ness or suchness of experience." Indeed, this is also true of the Taoist perception of things.

In Taoism, for example, such experience in all its concreteness is labelled as, paradoxically enough, the non-beingness of things (wu) in contrast with the beingness of things (yu). Clearly, there is a parallel here with the meta-paradigmatic and paradigmatic perception of things. Empirically, we thrive on the notion of being or beings (i.e., elemental structures of things) which are transformed into paradigms but these paradigms are suffocating in and of themselves. The Taoist of course had a way out of this bind by indicating a moment-to-moment return to the primal ground of existence, a returning phenomenon which takes on the incessant reflexive nature based on yin-yang ("negative-positive") dynamics. In brief, the yin-yang dynamics shows a constant movement between being and non-being in either direction. Thus, cosmically speaking, non-being is the primal source of all beings but expresses itself only in the beings or becomingness of things. In this respect, the Tao Teh Ching (Treatise on the Tao) cautions us: "The Tao (Way) that can be told of is not the permanent Tao." (Chapter 1) Professor Miller treats this yin-yang dynamics in his own way. For example, he states that the "complementary opposites interlace as creative field" (p. 5) and that the "light and shadow belong together in meta-paradigm" (p. 5). But would he be willing to treat light and shadow in the paradigm realm? Or, at once in both meta-paradigm and paradigm?

I really appreciated Professor Miler’s treatment of silence as the meta-paradigmatic break or opening with respect to paradigms. This is an entirely new emphasis and focus within the context of creativity. To be sure, Whitehead had suggested this but he did not pursue the matter fully, although the strains of silence permeate his aesthetics and religion.

In the past, much lip service has been accorded to silence as an aspect of human life. Many still maintain a biased view on Yoga and the like, including Buddhist and Taoist methods of meditation, and relegating those who practice them as being out of touch with reality. Nothing could be further from the truth. Ironically, the detractors have unknowingly enslaved themselves to sheer paradigmatic thinking which both blinds and binds them in unsuspecting ways.

Professor Miller’s priority on silence, I believe, has broken new grounds and, more importantly, has now placed the horse properly before the cart in empirical matters. The goods (paradigms) in the cart now belong where they belong. The so-called "mother" concept (Taoism) or source for all empirical grounds transcends silently the paradigmatic nature of things. In this respect, the Taoist had a beautiful concept that at once incorporates and effectuates all empirical grounds of existence. This concept is none other than the void or vacuity (hsu), which by the way is not a metaphysical all-encompassing Void, but one that brings together the empirical (paradigmatic) elements to function properly or naturally the way they do. For example, vacuity underlies the function of the blacksmith’s bellows which sucks up and blows out the air to activate the smoldering ashes. Or, it is the vacuum that causes the air-brakes to function. Or, it is what gives utility to the bucket. Or, it points at the seemingly insignificant interstices that make up the warp and woof of the fishing net.

In Professor Miller’s treatment of silence there is a strong evocative element awaiting at every turn of paradigmatic inquiry since meta-paradigmatic silence give vision and effort, and "Make ready the flow of burgeoning-felt qualities from the lucid awareness of the hidden but now awakened human self." (pp. 4-5.) This evocative element is also prominent in the Eastern traditions where the hidden and indeterminate rule over the seen and determinate. There is no room for dualism or dichotomy since all dualities and dichotomies belong to the paradigmatic. Indeed, the paradigmatic elements are like islands that constantly reach out to the silent sea of existence. Professor Miller has guided us to see more than the islands, to see the Taoist being in non-being, the Buddhist empirical elements of existence (dharmas) nestled in the more extensive truth of existence (Dharma), and the Confucian intercourse among human beings to nourish and flower into the highest human estate, humanity (jen). In such a way, he has replaced foundational (paradigmatic) props with non-foundational security (p. 7).

The discussion of meta-paradigmatic silence opens up automatically the realms of analysis and physicianship. Silence is the grounds in which the two realms nourish and grow. All three are intimately interrelated and indeed interpenetrate. The most difficult aspect of creativity in this scheme is to relate the ever-changing and ever-expanding parameters of the meta-paradigmatic to the ever-changing and ever-informing paradigmatic functions. In this vein, Whitehead gave us a succinct definition of creativity. He said, "The many become one and are increased by one."[4] Interestingly enough, the Zen scholar D. T. Suzuki said practically the same thing. He intimated that a most profound Buddhist thought was spawned in the Avatamsaka Sã tra or Chinese Hua-yen thought. The sutra expounded on "one-in all and all in one." Suzuki comments that Zen has given practical expression to this idea and finally remarks: "When this (idea) is thoroughly understood, there is creative genius."[5] Professor Miller has been faithful to this idea.

[1] David L. Miller, Philosophy of Creativity (New York: Peter Lang, 1989), p. 97.

[2] Ibid.

[3] F. S. C. Northrop, Meeting of the East and West (New York: MacMillan Col., 1946).

[4] Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality (New York: MacMillan Col., 1929), p. 32.

[5] Daisetz T. Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture (New York: Bollingen Foundation, Inc., 1959), p. 32.