【Editor’s Note: The following essay is a revised version of the author’s presentation to the First International Conference in Sinology, 1980, Academia Sinica, Taipei, published in its Proceedings, Section of Thought and Philosophy, Vol. I, pp. 117-182, 1981.  It in turn was an expanded version of his paper presented to the First Conference on Whitehead and Chinese Thought, 1976, co-sponsored by the Center for Process Studies, Claremont, CA. and Colorado Women’s College, Denver, CO.  Grateful acknowledgement is due to Dr. John Cobb, Jr. and Dr. Antony Yu in USA and to the late President Chen Lifu and Professor Hua Zhonglin of the Confucius-Mencius Society, for their invitations to attend the Conference, respectively.】

 

A SUMMIT MEETING IN

METAPHYSICS, RELIGION, AND PHILOSOPHICAL

ANTHROPOLOGY:

THE CHINESE-INDIAN-WESTERN ENCOUNTER ON

CREATIVITY

 

從大易生生之理看中西印思想在形上學

宗教與哲學人性論上之

高峰統會

Suncrates^a

Thomé H. Fang Institute, Inc.

Mobile, Alabama, USA

 

 

Originally Presented to

The First International Conference on Sinology

Academia Sinica, Taipei

1980

 

Prologue

 

“To Be? or Not to Be?” That is the question for Hamlet and men of the West in general;

“To Become? or Not to Become?” That is the question for the Indians, Hinduists and Buddhists alike;

“To Be is To Become!”  That, for the Chinese, is not a question at all, but a conviction, inspired by the “Vision of the Whole.”

 

Much of this study results from reflections upon three theses of Charles Hartshorne and one from Max Scheler, all to be critically clarified in the pages that follow.  In both comparative philosophy and religion it is necessary to realize that due recognition of similarities and sympathetic appreciation of differences are equally important.  As Plato once said, even the wolf deserves a hearing; for Whitehead, contrast is the mode of synthesis.  Mere difference in details, however, should not blur our vision of unity of experiences and aspirations, nor obscure our insight into the most feasible meeting ground for the East and West which can be located in the multi-dimensional concept of Creativity and surveyed from metaphysics to religion, and from religion to philosophical anthropology in light of a world perspective.  Many of our findings will focus attention on a rich and precious common heritage of mankind which we hope will serve as a solid basis for the construction of what Scheler calls “a spiritually exalted world community”[1] for ages to come.

When, after climbing a mountain in a mist, one reaches the summit, the mist suddenly clears, the vista of the vast area below becomes visible, and the commanding view all-around is identical in every direction.  At the beginning of this century the well-known travelling philosopher Herman Keyserling had already strongly advocated the importance of “Getting beyond the East and West.”[2] 

But, “How?” One wonders.  That is the question -- for all of us today!

I.                  Introduction

 

1.         The Hartshorne Thesis Revisited:  It’s Time to Complete the Circle!

Perhaps the best approach to the main contentions of this paper is by way of a brief review of the Hartshorne thesis as enunciated in two of his essays, “The Development of Process Philosophy” and “Personal Identity from A to Z.”[3]  Such an attempt, I believe, will yield illuminating results that will justify both the theses maintained in this study and the calling for such a “summit meeting.”

In the first essay, Professor Hartshorne has treated the process tendency in human thought in a historical perspective, hence providing as an excellent point of departure for our discussions at this Conference.

It is universally recognized that Hartshorne has not only distinguished himself as an eminent Whiteheadian scholar, but has also played a leading role in the initiation of a new thought movement since the 50s known as the “process movement” in theology and philosophy.  It is impacting areas such as sociology, anthropology, aesthetics, comparative religion, psychotherapy, ecology, futurology, postmodernism, etc.  It just may create a new intellectual climate in the West.  His unique contribution to this movement deserves high credit and commands our heartfelt admiration and appreciation.  This whole movement of process thought, through further development, may be a great step for-ward towards what the late Professor Charles Moore has justly called a “world philosophical synthesis.”[4]  Of such a great prospect few process philosophers in the West have become fully aware.

In a certain sense, “The Development of Process Philosophy” may well be regarded The Processist Manifesto of our century, because its author has quite impressively presented the case of process thought in human history as a whole, bringing to light its full philosophico-religious imports for our modern age.  His scope of vision stretches from the ancient times down to the present and from the East to the West.  The essay reveals the tendency of process thought as a common theme and heritage for all humankind; it has been, and will continue to be, shared by thinking people the world over. According to Hartshorne, process philosophy is nothing new; or, as William James put it, but “a new name for some old ways of thinking.”  It is a grand old idea whose origin can be traced way back to the ancient Egypt, India, and Medieval Europe, with Ikhnaton, Heraclitus, the Buddha, and Fauto Sccino as its chief representative respectively.  Excellent and admirable as it is in many other aspects, his account nevertheless suffers from one important defect:  While maintaining that Ikhnaton of Egypt (ca. 1275-58 B.C.) is “the earliest theist of all who has conceived God as fashioning Himself”and that Buddhism is “the earliest great tradition which espoused a philosophy of Becoming,”[5] he seems to have totally forgotten another equally great yet far earlier tradition in human history which in its five to seven millenia of continuous development has created independently a system of process philosophy par excellence, -- a tradition that is no less time-honored than the Egyptian civilization, and no less impressive than Buddhism, whether in terms of its achievement in the past or its significance for the furture.

I refer, of course, to the leading philosophical tradition of China which I have elsewhere chosen to characterize as a tradition of “Creative Humanism.”[6] It has every legitimate right to a prominent position in the world history of process thought.  For it is a long great tradition that has been continuously developed out of the original insights as embodied in I-C’hing: The Book of Creativity, the authorship of which can be dated back to Fu Hsi (ca. 2852 B.C.); its germinating ideas were further elaborated by King Wen (ca. 1172-1122 B.C.) and Duke Zhou (d. 1094 B.C.); it received the philosophically most sophisticated and suggestive interpretation from Confucius (551-479 B.C.); and his school; it developed later into its idealistic and naturalistic wings in Confucianism and Taoism respectively and culminated, as a result of confluence with certain congenial strains of Buddhist thought, in the form of Neo-Confucianism of the Song and Ming periods from the 12th century onwards.   It still remains a living force and an inexhaustible source of inspiration for the best of Chinese minds today, and is capable of developing into greater intellectual heights in concrescence with certain most congenial as well as challenging elements from Western sources.  It is towards such an essentially creative process of a world philosophical synthesis that we are seeking the second phase of florescence of a philosophic wisdom of the Hua Yan type which was once so brilliantly exhibited in the Hua Yan (Avatamsaka or “Flowery Splendor”) School of the Mahāyāna Buddhism in China proper.  This school teaches the importance of viewing the flux of passing events “under the aspect of eternity”(sub species aeternitatis) in light of cosmic sublimity and orients towards what the Chinese call the world of “Tai He”-- equivalent to the Whiteheadian concept of “Peace”as “Harmony of Harmonies.”[7]

That Hartshorne has neglected such a great tradition of process philosophy in the East despite its striking similarity with the Whiteheadian system is unfortunate and regrettable.  Recently, Hartshorne had spoken on “Some Process Themes in Chinese Thought” at the Conference on “Whitehead and Chinese Philosophy,” Denver, Colorado, USA, in 1976. As he told me later in 1979, had he known more about Chinese philosophy, surely he would have included it in his important historical account.  It is now time to complete the circle!

It is noteworthy that both Indian and European traditions are characterized notably by a substance-oriented tendency that has preceded and accompanied process themes for thousands of years; whereas Chinese thought, on the contrary, has from time immemorial persisted most impressively as a grand tradition of typical process philosophy, through and through, beginning with I-Ching: The Book of Creativity, notwithstanding that it also has as Prelude an archaic ontology in the form of a proto-philosophy of eternity as embodied in the symbolism of “The Great Centricity” (“f” hence the symbolic character “中”) in The Book of Ancient History. 

We may therefore safely maintain that, ever since the founding of the Zhou Dynasty in the 12th century B.C., non-process philosophies have remained no more than a non-existence in the leading trends of Chinese thought, and that the shift from the totem of  “f” (“Great Centericity”) to that of “[” (the “Ultimate Ultimacy,” well known as “taiji”) signifies resolutely, “Farewell, Non-process philosophies!”  This predominantly process-oriented tendency in Chinese outlook Professor Thomé H. Fang has attributed to the basic difference between the Western and Oriental modes of thought.  Most Western philosophers, as a rule, seem to have inhereted from their forebearers a sort of change-phobia in their “metaphysical mood.”  Thus observes Fang:

“Philosophers in the West, whenever they speak of Being, usually posit it as some-thing given beforehand.  Anything not thus given is susceptible of falling into nothing, which is somehow a sign of dread. This metaphysical mood tends to make ontology static.  Especially the Greeks, to whom any change would be for the worse, could not tolerate any drift into nothing. This led most of them to the denial of temporality in the constitution of Being, and to the dislocation of Nothing in the world of reality together with its appearances.  Let Not-Being drop into the pit of illusion!  Even in the modern period the duration of time, reduced by mathematical physics to a series of specious successions of timeless instants, cannot really account for the continuity of change and becoming.  It is the Aristotelian shifting “now” torn into invisibly tiny bits of nothingness. Similarly the Hegelian macroscopic philosophy of dialectical history, dogmatically affirmed in the form of systematic developedness, is deprived of authentic historicity.  There is no genuine becoming in any being which has been laid out beforehand.”[8]

With regard to the process vs. non-process tendency prevailent in philosophies East and West, the case can be summed up as chiefly a matter of “rule and exceptions”:

“The reason for all this is that Western ontology has been grounded on a formal logic fixed in formulas of static identity.  Plato in later dialogues, especially in the Sophist, Bergson in Creative Evolution, Whitehead in Process and Reality, and Heidegger in Being and Time are exceptions.  These exceptions, however, prove the rule which always applies in Oriental philosophy.”[9]

In this sense, the independent development of a typical process philosophy by great Chinese minds in the past is quite a unique and remarkable phenomenon in history of human thought, in terms of homogeneity, continuity, and massiveness.  Let us take a further look into the case by reference to Hartshorne’s recent article “Personal Identity from A to Z.”  At the end of this article he concludes thus emphatically: “I repeat: it is time to join the Buddhist tradition, the most subtle of all very old international philosophical-religious traditions. Buddha’s insights were appreciated by his disciples, while Plato’s were half lost immediately.”[10]

Echoing this call of Hartshorne’s, there seems to be heard a voice as if coming from the wilderness in the image of a tender care “that nothing be lost”; “Thou shalt not forget the Chinese tradition!”  Here we have every good reason to believe that one would be just as happy to see that Whitehead’s insights, no less than Buddha’s, are to be duly appreciated by his followers.  For it is expressly stated in Whitehead’s Process and Reality:  “In this general position the philosophy of organism seems to approximate more closely to some strains of Indian, or Chinese, thought, than to Western Asiatic, or European thought.”[11]  Obviously here the connective “or” is used in the conjunctive, rather than the disjunctive, sense of the term.  In place of Hartshorne’s statement, we venture to declare forthrightly:  “For all process philosophers in the West, it is time to join both the Chinese and the Buddhist traditions, the two most impressive of all very old international philosophical-religious traditions.  Process philosophers all over the world, Unite!”

2. “Seeking the Other Half”

It is apparent, therefore, that Hartshorne’s thesis on Ikhnaton of Egypt as the earliest process theologian and on Buddhism as the earliest process tradition needs be revised.  At any rate, however, the honor of seniority must be duly accorded the Chinese philosophical tradition for its approximately five to seven millennia of continuous development, beginning with I-Ching: The Book of Creativity.

Apart from observations on the affinity between Whitehead and Eastern thought in general, I propose to point out specifically:  Firstly, that whitehead’s position of organism is closer to the Eastern than the Western; secondly, that as far as its relation with Indian thought is concerned, his process outlook is closer to Buddism than to Hinduism or Brahmanism; and thirdly, that as far as its most fundamental aspects are concerned, his philosophy as a whole is more congenial with the Chinese than the Buddhist views.  In brief, we maintain:  It is more Eastern than Western, more Buddhist than Hinduist; and, above all, more Chinese than Buddhist.

To substantiate the first claim, one needs only refer to the Eastern vs. Western contrast drawn by Whitehead himself in his statement “For one side makes process ultimate; the other side makes fact ultimate.”[12]

With regard to the second claim, the case has been well settled by Hartshorne and Kenneth Inada in two publications comparing the Buddha’s ‘anatman’ with Whitehead’s ‘actual entity’ or ‘actual occasion.’[13] Moreover, the Whiteheadian concept of God in terms of universal relativity (especially in Hartshorne’s revised version, which defines God as “divine relativity”)[14] parallels the later Mahāyānaic concept of ‘Buddha-Nature’ in terms of universal immanence via mutual ingression and mutual prehension characterizing the dharma-dhatu origination.  Both the Whiteheadian and the Buddhist conceptions stand in sheer contrast to the Hinduist view of Brahman as the Ultimate Reality in terms of eternity and permanence.  Here again, the main difference hinges on the process vs. substance contrast: for one side makes process or Becoming ultimate; the other side makes substance or Being ultimate, as acutely observes Whitehead.

But when we come to consider the third claim, that fundamentally Whitehead’s main position is nearer to the Chinese than to the Buddhist standpoint, the case does not seem to be so obvious as in the former two, and is likely to create more issues than it settles.  For instance, how is one to justify that Whitehead is found to be more Chinese than Buddhist, since all these three systems have evidently one great theme in common, in that they are all remarkably process-oriented in general outlook?  Is it true that, for Buddhism as for the other two systems, the concept of “creativity” is also one of crucial importance and has always occupied a prominent position in their respective theoretical schemes?

Here we seem to be facing a sort of the Gordian Knot, if not a deadlock.  And as such, it must be cut through -- with a sure and determined hand, such that all the seemingly baffling puzzles may be cleared up and the case seen in its true light.  A clue, however, can be found in Buddhism both as a philosophy and a religion at once.  As a philosophy, Buddhism espouses a creativity perspective in cosmology and cosmogony, while it adopts at the same time a nīrvāna perspective in ontology and meontology primarily for religious reason.  We may now proceed to distinguish one persepctive from the other.  By thus disentangling the hybrid character inherent in Buddhism and contrasting it with the homogeneity of the Chinese and Whiteheadian systems wherein the ultimate is the ground-concept of Creativity throughout, we succeed in cutting through the Gordian knot at one stroke.

Moreover, the above “creativity vs. nīrvāna” distinction provides us also with another clue to the main difference between the Chinese and the Indian Buddhist way as reflected in their value orientations and life ideals.  For typical Confucian philosophers such as Wang Chuanshan (1619-1692) and Xiong Shili (1889-1969),^b the Chinese way is characterized by (I) reverence for life as creativity in contrast to seeking for nirvāna; (2) elucidation of Being as distinct from indulgence in Nothingness; (3) dynamic mode of activity in stead of static mode of inaction; (4) following human nature rather than denial of the will and curbing of desires; added to these by Xiong is (5) great illuminancy as the alpha and the omega of creativity in contrast to avidya as the origin of things.[15] Such a fivefold characterization of two types of life ideals and lifestyles marks the Chinese way as much closer to Whitehead, one of whose favorite themes is: “Advance or decadence!”[16]

3.   To Become or Not to Become?  That Is the Question for the Indians:

The overcoming of the traditional “nīrvāna vs. creativity” contrast begun in Buddhism by fusing these two perspectives into a higher (indeed the highest) unity remains a great feat for the Chinese to accomplish.  Their accomplishment in this regard was hailed by D. T. Suzuki as “one of the wonderful intellectual achievements performed by the Chinese mind” and was held to be “of the highest importance to the history of world thought.”[17]  I propose to dwell on this topic at some length for both its intrinsic importance and its direct relevance to the present study, in the hope of closing one of the greatest koans in world comparative philosophy: namely, the case of the Chinese-Buddhist-Western convergence on Creativity. To begin with, let us differentiate it into four salient points for further consideration: (I) that both the Chinese and the Western process philosophies are fundamentally alike in that they are all grounded on Creativity as the Ultimate in the metaphysical and religious sense as well; (2) that in view of the hybridness of Buddhism which, especially in its early form, has adopted a “creativity” perspective in cosmology and cosmogony while committing itself to a “nīrvāna” perspective in ontology or even meontology for religious reason, it is nevertheless the religious concern that precedes over any speculative or metaphysical interest in the system as a whole, as a matter of emphasis or value, so to speak, and noticeably there is the Buddhist tendency to transcend from the conditioned to the unconditioned, from the realm of creativity to that of non-creativity, that is, from the realm of Becoming to that of Being, thus orientating towards the ideal of nīrvāna as the Buddhist “Summum Bonum.”[18]  This marks Buddhism from the Western process philosophy on the one hand and from Chinese philosophy of creativity on the other, in spite of the process themes they share in common; (3) that since Buddhism embodies not only a philosophy of temporality, change, and becoming in cosmology and cosmogony, but also a philosophy of eternity, being, and permanence in ontology or even meontology, the question of how to bridge over the temporality vs. eternity, flux vs. permanence polarity in the evolution of Buddhism for a millenia since the death of the Buddha sheds great deal of light not only on this perennial issue itself, but also on what follows from it as a corollary thesis more radical in character to be set forth in (4), that were Buddhism to be put on equal par with the Chinese and Western process position it must be made Chinese enough! as is best exemplified in the case of two distinguished Chinese Schools of Buddhism, the Tian Tai and Hua Yan (the Shadhama-pundarika and the Avatamsaka).  This last point leads to the realization that a world philosophical synthesis as Charles Moore envisaged is possible:  The necessary groundwork for this feast is to be located in the trinity of the Chinese-Buddhist-Western insights and reinforced by other related existential-phenomenological themes in modern philosophy.  On the basis of such a solid groundwork some important break through in world philosophy is seen to be highly feasible.  Let us examine these observations each in turn.

First of all, let us focus on the category of the ultimate as involved in each of the three systems. “In every philosophical theory,” says Whitehead, “there is an ultimate. In the philosophy of organism, this ultimate is termed ‘creativity.”[19]  This is precisely the case with Chinese philosophy.  The same, however, can hardly be said of Buddhism without due qualification. Neither the Whiteheadian nor the Chinese system is a religion in the ordinary sense of the term, though profoundly religious in character and key-note, with Creativity as the supreme metaphysical principle in both.  Creativity for Chinese philosophy, as for process thought in the West, is both the ultimate category in metaphysics and the “ultimate concern” in religion, to use Paul Tillich’s language.  In the Chinese philosophical classics, because of the symbolic and flexible character of the language, it is termed interchangeably ‘sheng’ (creativity), ‘sheng sheng’ (creative creativity), ‘Tian’ (Heaven), ‘Dao’ (the Way), ‘Tian-Dao’ (the Way of Heaven), ‘Qian-yuan’ (principle of creative origination), ‘cheng’ (authenticity itself), ‘xin’ (mind), ‘xing’ (nature), and the most troublesome Confucian concept, ‘Ren,’^c which defies any literal translation and is to be grasped ontologically in terms of Creativity Itself and axiologically as the Confucian Summum Bonum, as dynamically and creatively conceived in the process view of Reality as Goodness in the making.  In sum, “Ren” represents the supreme principle of the axiological and ontological unity in Chinese philosophy, characterized by its value-centric tendency in ontology, caIled doctrine of continuation of Goodness for fulfillment of Nature (“ji shan cheng xing” in Chinese).^d

Whitehead’s view of Creativity sounds so congenial to the Chinese mind that much of what he has said about this ultimate principle may well be adopted as the fittest and finest rendering of the Chinese insights into the elegance of his Victorian English.  On the other hand, much of the great insights in Chinese process philosophy cloaked in the peculiarly “elusive, vague,” symbolic, non-technical, natural language, paradoxically, can all be rendered intelligible and explicit in light of such an allegedly “muddle-headed” system as Whitehead’s.  The task of formulating the essentials of Chinese metaphysics in the Whiteheadian terminology has been admirably accomplished by Professor Thom¾ H. Fang in his earlier book The Chinese View of Life: The Philosophy of Comprehensive Harmony (1956) to be succeeded by his posthumous opus magnum, Chinese Philosophy; Its Spirit and its Development (1981).  The Chinese-Whiteheadian affinity on Creativity, to be sure, is not a matter of parallel notions in letter, but in spirit, that is, in mentality (mind-set) and world perspective.  Cassirer seems to have underrated his case when he states that “the real difference between languages is not a difference of sounds and signs, but one of world perspectives (Weltansichten).”[20]  This enlightening remark of Cassirer’s should be borne in mind by any comparative philosophers on cross-cultural problems.

To indicate the similarity between the Chinese and the recent Western process views of Creativity, I may paraphrase in the Whiteheadian language some archaic key notions in the Confucian Commentaries on Appendices to I-Ching and compare them to statements in Process and Reality as follows: For the ancient Chinese sages, Reality is seen “in light of the perpetually Creative Creativity, which manifests Itself in the alI-encompassing process of cosmic transformation in due measure and proportion”; and is to be conceived “under the image of a tender care,” “enabling all things to complete and fulfil their own nature, such that nothing be lost”; thus functioning as the supreme unifying principle of all existences in the universe in dynamic operations.”(“sheng sheng zhi wei yi”; “fan wei tian di zhi hua er bu guo; qu cheng wan wu er bu yi”; “tian xia tong gui er shu tu, yi zhi er bai lu”; or “tian xia zhi dong zhen fu yi”; or with Wang Pi, “Tong zhi you zung; hui zhi you yuan.”)^e  The same ideas can be found in Whitehead’s words as follows:

“Creativity is the universal of universals characterizing the ultimate matter of fact. It is that ultimate principle by which the many, which are the universe disjunctively, become the one actual occasion, which is the universe disjunctively. ... The ultimate metaphysical principle is the advance from disjunction to conjunction, creating a novel entity other than the entities given in disjunction.”[21]

“The process of creation is the form of unity in the universe.”[22]

While maintaining that “Creativity is without a character of its own,”[23] Whitehead, without realizing it, is stating a typically Chinese theme as emphasized in the forementioned Confucian Commentaries: “Creativity is without a substance of its own, of no simple location in space, its functioning is confined to no particular directions whatsoever”; (“shen wu fang; yi wu ti”; “yi wu si; wu wei.”)^f  While describing the nature of God as an exemplification of Creativity to be conceived only under the images of (l) “a tender care that nothing be lost”; or (2) “infinite patience.” “He does not create the world, he saves it; or, more accurately, he is the poet of the world, with tender patience leading it by his vision of truth, beauty, and goodness”;[24] again unaware to himself perhaps, Whitehead is restating the Chinese conception of the Way of Heaven as embodied in the I-Ching, and the Book of Odes, for instances, “qu cheng wan wu er bu yi” in the former case, and “wei tian zhi ming, wu mu pu yi”^g in the latter.  In neither case is there any need for translation, for the same ideas have already been excellently “translated” by Whitehead himself, and could not be put any better otherwise.  The grasp of the nature of Heaven in light of the image of a tender care or infinite patience, rather than that of a creator, is a great poetic vision from which derived all the Confucian metaphysical wisdom,[25] charged with religious imports crystallized into profound insights, e.g., insight into the “creatively creative creativity”as the “really real reality” in face of the “mysteriously mysterious mystery,” the mystery of Creativity Itself.

So much for the Chinese-Whiteheadian comparison in respect of the concept of Creativity and its fundamental status both as the ultimate metaphysical principle and the ultimate concern in its full religious implication.  May this clarification serve as a clue to the claim made above as regards the Chinese-Whiteheadian similarity in the most fundamental aspects.

4.     An Archimedian Point in Comparative Philosophy

The translation of “I-Ching” into “The Book of Changes” indeed is quite as unfortunate as the labelling of the typically Whiteheadian position as “process philosophy,” because in either case the title fails to convey the full import as intended and creates instead the somewhat misleading impression that is often associated indiscriminately with all process philosophers.  For example, I have heard it said in the academics that the process philosophers are those for whom everything comes and goes, and nothing stays and holds, hence no “Truth” in the sense of what is permanent and holds always.  This may be said of process philosophers of the Heraclitean type, certainly not of the Whiteheadians, nor even of Plato in his later Dialogues.  The inadequacy of labels in this particular case is due to “deficiencies of language” rather than “weakness of insight.”[26]  For the moment, suffice it to point out that, properly understood, “I-Ching”should be rendered by “The Book of Creativity,” just as Whitehead’s Process and Reality, should read “Process as Reality.”  Get rid of this ugly word “and” and replace it with the beautiful “as.” “And,” “and,” how many evils (e.g., vaious kinds of vicious bifurcations) have been done in thy name in the entire history of Western thought!  Whatever reservations this may provoke, let us bear in mind above all that one of Whitehead’s great insights lies in the notion of “prehensive unification”in terms of ingression of “eternal objects” into actual occasions in the realm of events and the superjective aims of each actual individual entity towards the realm of reason (and from there towards the Most High).  This parallels the Chinese doctrine of interpenetrative unification by mutual prehensions. (“xiang ji xiang ru, hu che jiao rong, pang tong tong guan.”) ^h  With the titles of the I-Ching and Process and Reality thus clarified so as to suggest the central notion of Creativity as Reality for one and Proces as Reaslity for the other, we will be in a better position to appreciate what Professor David Hall meant by “the meeting of the twain,”[27] to rid of the cliche of Kipling’s, which has been resounding in the Western ears for almost a century.  But, in my opinion, such as encounter on Creativity between the East and West could be further dramatized as “the seeking for the other half” in the Platonic sense (The Symposium), though “the meeting of the twain” indicates an experience that indeed is thrilling enough in itself, yet nevertheless it may not be so productive or inducing as the Platonic metaphor with all its suggestiveness.  We have now located for the first time perhaps an “Archimedian Point” in the world of comparative philosophy.

 

 

II.       The Status of Creativity in The Chinese, Indian, and Western Traditions

In approaching Buddhism one must, as hinted earlier, adopt two distinct yet related perspectives: the creativity perspective and the nīrvāna one.  Also we have mentioned that were Buddhism to be put on equal par, in terms of degrees of similarity, with the Chinese and Whiteheadian process philosophies in the most fundamental aspects, it must be made Chinese enough.  In this section we attempt to justify this claim by reference to the status of Creativity in these three grand traditions.  Needless to say, the sinicization of Buddhism is a story far too long to be retold here, and we must cut a long story short.  A clue, however, is available: How can the creativity perspective and the nīrvāna one be fused into one seamless whole?  And this is precisely what has actually happened in China, to the effect that Buddhism is made not only to speak Chinese, but even with a Chinese accent and, in addition, with a Whiteheadian accent if rendered properly into English!  

In fact, the problem of the polarity between the two perspectives, or put differently, between the one and many, temporality and eternity, flux and permanence, becoming and being, etc., is a moot problem in the philosophical traditions of the East and West alike (e.g., the problem of Chorismos for Plato).  But, Have we been aware that, if thought out and thought aright, it proves at most a pseudo-problem of one’s own making!  Let us first take a closer look at the case of Buddhism in its early development.

The multifarious nature of Buddhism is well recognized in the West: it has been differently characterized by different viewers.  For instances, Whitehead sees in Buddhism “a most colossal example in history of applied metaphysics.” “Christianity took the opposite road.  It has always been a religion seeking a metaphysics, in contrast to Buddhism which is a metaphysics generating a religion.”[28]  In the words of Theodore de Bary, Buddhism is “essentially a metaphysical system linked to a method of applied psychology.”  For Edward Conze, it is “dialectical pragmatism with a psychological turn.”[29]  Its great psychotherapeutic insights have impressed Western psychologists, such as Carl lung, Erich Fromm, and Abraham Maslow, etc., to mention a few.[30]  Each of the above characterizations throws light on our understanding of certain essential aspects of Buddhism in general.  But it is important to recognize that Buddhism persists primarily as a religion.  It is a religion, but more than a mere system of rituals and dogmas; a philosophy, but more than a mere system of concepts.  It is the embodiment of both, thus making poasbile the way of self-fulfillment by self-cultivation, that is, self-education, par excellence.  It aims primarily and ultimately at the teaching of a certain way of life, an enlightened way of life, so to speak, inspired by compassion and love and guided by wisdom and commitment.  The ethical motivation, psychological insights, philosophical outlook, dialectical method, the paradoxical and even “bizzare”