Hyatt Carter
A controversial topic in philosophy is the so-called mind-body problem.1
For the materialist, who claims that matter is the only reality, the mind can be reduced to chemical or electrical processes of the brain. The pure idealist, on the other hand, turns in exactly the opposite direction, with his claim that the ideal realm—the realm of ideas, mind, or spirit—is the true reality.2
The middle way suggests that a tentative answer to this problem is to be found somewhere between these two extremes.
And, since the middle way is a Buddhist concept, what is perhaps the central concept of Buddhism—dependent co-arising—provides a way of shedding light on this issue. The doctrine of dependent co-arising says, first, that all things are momentary events,3 and second, that they arise, and almost as quickly cease, within an extensive web of mutual relationships.
With this in mind (or in body), we can say that mind and body co-arise, one dependent of the other, in complex unity or, better, nonduality. Complex because, whereas a simple unity would be sheer identity—mind and body are one, period—the complex unity of nonduality means that their relation can be described as:
Not one. Not two.
To say this means that neither can stand alone, nor can they totally merge; they stand in mutual requirement, one requiring the other for completion.
“Not one. Not two.” Does this sound like a Zen koan? If so, then so much the better, for koans are expressions of true reality. It also sounds like poetry.
The beauty of “not-one-not-two” finds expression on all levels of reality:
light: particle and wave
magnet: + and − poles
DNA: double helix
brain: right and left hemispheres
Space-Time
. . . and symbolically in the yin-yang and the I Ching hexagrams.
And, if it is true that ultimate reality can best be so characterized,4 then not-one-not-two is a universal theme.
This theme finds beautiful expression in the following allegory, which I read for the first time only a few days ago:
“Walking along a mountain path in Japan, we come upon a rustic Zen hermitage with a large temple bell suspended from a simple wooden pagoda. Unlike Western carillon bells, the Japanese bell has no clapper and is struck on the outside much as one might strike a gong (in this case by a small log suspended from the pagoda by two ropes). Admiring the excellence and obvious age of the engravings on the casting, we hear the footsteps of the temple priest and turn to ask, ‘How old is this extraordinary bell?’ Touching his palm to the massive casting, he responds, ‘This is about five hundred years old, but’ (removing his hand to point into the black void within the bell) ‘the emptiness within—that’s eternal.’ He then proceeds to swing the striker gently back and forth, holding it lightly, but firmly, with his two hands. Almost indiscernibly he releases it, letting it swing freely so that it strikes the metal casting. The even tone permeates the area from the distant mountains across the valley, beyond the tops of the cedars, back to the very foundations of the hermitage. It seems as if the bell had rung itself, as if even the leaves stopped rustling in the wind to attend to its music. Smiling, the priest looks at us and asks, ‘Now please answer my question. Where did the sound come from—from the metal casting or from the emptiness inside?’ Taken aback, we are dumbfounded. Still smiling, the monk turns, walking back to his hermitage.”5
Not one. Not Two.
Notes
1. This problem has been so difficult to untangle that Arthur Schopenhauer called it the “world-knot.” With regard to our era, philosopher John Searle has said that, “contrary to surface appearances, there really has been only one major topic of discussion in the philosophy of mind for the past fifty years or so, and that is the mind-body problem.”
2. A third perspective on the mind-body problem is dualism, which affirms both body and mind, but holds that they differ in kind, that is, they are completely different categories of existence. The problem then becomes, how can they interact? How can the strictly mental interact with the strictly physical, and vice versa? Process thought offers a solution with its doctrine of panexperientialism: that experience goes all the way down. Although the experience of an proton or an electron may be negligible compared to ours, it is still there. “Mind” is a variable, not a constant. Alfred North Whitehead states this in technical terms by saying that all actualities have both a physical and a mental pole. And so not-one-not-two shines forth even in quarks.
If experience at this level did not exist, then how explain the evolutionary advance from electrons and protons to the first hydrogen atom, from atoms to molecules, and from molecules to the first living cell? There was astonishing creativity in pre-biotic evolution, although “pre-biotic” is a bit of a misnomer. To not see this is to commit what Charles Hartshorne calls “the prosaic fallacy.”
3. The Buddhists have seen for millennia what quantum physics “discovered” in modern times.
4. The process doctrine of divine dipolarity holds that God has two natures: abstract essence and concrete actuality.
5. T. P. Kasulis, Zen Action—Zen Person, pp. 34-35.
And, to end these notes on a musical note, Ottmar Liebert, of flamenco fame and also a Zen Buddhist, has recorded a piece for solo guitar that he calls —
Not One, Not Two
Listen to Not One, Not Two by clicking Play button below:
HyC