A New Buddhist Dialectic - Introduction to the Buddhist Dialectic

The start of a new essay series.

I have, on several occasions, been asked to explain why I zeroed in on Nichiren Buddhism as my theological framework of choice. The answer is complicated. Outside of the sophisticated scriptural systemization inherited from the Chinese Tiantai and Japanese Tendai schools, the appeal of Nichiren Buddhism also lies in what could be termed a “Buddhist dialectical view.” Explaining what exactly constitutes this “dialectic”, however, is no easy task.

Yet the more I consider the concept, the more I feel that it is integral in understanding both how Buddhism got to its current point and how it could be pushed towards new frontiers. Buddhist Modernism is, after all, the biggest game in town, and it is itself a product of the dialectical movement of inherited religious traditions in the context of a technologically-inclined modern world.

But let’s take a step back. What exactly is a “dialectic” and why do I feel the need to appropriate such a term?

The thinker most heavily associated with the term is Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, a 19th century German philosopher. While the concept of a “dialectic” predates Hegel, most notably in the teaching methods developed by Plato in his Socratic dialogues, Hegel pushes the concept further, characterizing it as not a conversation between a man and his interlocutor, but a process for theoretical evolution.

“As in Plato’s dialogues,” writes the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “a contradictory process between ‘opposing sides’ in Hegel’s dialectics leads to a linear evolution or development from less sophisticated definitions or views to more sophisticated ones later. The dialectical process thus constitutes Hegel’s method for arguing against the earlier, less sophisticated definitions or views and for the more sophisticated ones later.” This process starts when contradictions arise in a conceptual understanding, causing an instability which inevitably leads to what is called a “self-sublation.” Stanford explains:

The English verb “to sublate” translates Hegel’s technical use of the German verb aufheben, which is a crucial concept in his dialectical method. Hegel says that aufheben has a doubled meaning: it means both to cancel (or negate) and to preserve at the same time.

This seeming definitional contradiction between negation and preservation is representative of the Hegelian dialectical process as a whole, for what emerges from a concept’s self-negation is neither the same concept as before left intact, nor is it simply “nothing.” Per Hegel’s book “Science of Logic”:

Because the result, the negation, is a specific negation, it has content. It is a fresh Notion but higher and richer than its predecessor; for it is richer by the negation or opposite of the latter, therefore contains it, but also something more, and is the unity of itself and its opposite. It is in this way that the system of Notions as such has to be formed −− and has to complete itself in a purely continuous course in which nothing extraneous is introduced.

This means that older concepts are preserved in the newer, similar to how DNA is perpetuated in an animal’s offspring. Thus the simplified version of the Hegalian dialectic is often presented as a “thesis-antithesis-synthesis” pattern, although we should be careful to note that this particular triad was not posited by Hegel himself, but rather thinkers who came after him and attempted to further systematize and simplify his thought.

But because of its simplicity, the “thesis-antithesis-synthesis” formula can be a bit misleading, especially considering that what set Hegel’s use of the term “dialectic” apart from those who came before and after him is his insistence that a notion’s refutation and subsequent perpetuation is a function of its own organically-evolving nature, meaning a simplified model of his dialectical process could look less like a triad and more like a straight line. He clarifies in the introductory chapter to “Science of Logic”:

That which enables the Notion to advance itself is the already mentioned negative which it possesses within itself; it is this which constitutes the genuine dialectical moment. Dialectic in this way acquires an entirely different significance from what it had when it was considered as a separate part of Logic and when its aim and standpoint were, one may say, completely misunderstood... Dialectic is commonly regarded as an external, negative activity which does not pertain to the subject matter itself, having its ground in mere conceit as a subjective itch for unsettling and destroying what is fixed and substantial, or at least having for its result nothing but the worthlessness of the object dialectically considered.

The end-point of this continuous process is a theoretical “absolute” notion in which none of the prior iterations are excluded; all having been “sublated” into an absolute truth. And one would be remiss to relegate Hegel’s idea of “absolute truth” to the realm of philosophy only. To him, there was a spiritual aspect to it all: the dialectic was an unfolding all-encompassing “absolute spirit” which would unveil “the inner nature of mind and the world, the truth.” It was, in Hegel’s own words, the “exposition of God as he is in his eternal essence.” He stated in an 1805 lecture on the subject of religion:

The content of religion is probably true – but this being-true (Wahrseyn) is an assurance without insight. This insight is philosophy – the absolute science. Its content is the same as that of religion, but its form is conceptual.

Of course, not all of those who went on to adopt Hegel’s concept of the “dialectic” would attribute to it the same numinous quality. In fact, the only figure who could be said to rival Hegel in popular association with the “dialectic,” Karl Marx, rejected it entirely, as he saw the dialectic as a component of his materialist analytical framework, which had no room for such metaphysical speculation. Marx plainly outlines the differenced between his conception of the dialectic and Hegel’s in the 1873 afterword to Vol.1 of “Capital” as follows:

My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life process of the human brain, i.e., the process of thinking, which, under the name of “the Idea,” he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of “the Idea.” With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought…

The mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel’s hands, by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell.

In its mystified form, dialectic became the fashion in Germany, because it seemed to transfigure and to glorify the existing state of things. In its rational form it is a scandal and abomination to bourgeoisdom and its doctrinaire professors, because it includes in its comprehension and affirmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time also, the recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up; because it regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence; because it lets nothing impose upon it, and is in its essence critical and revolutionary.

In other words, Marx saw his “dialectic” as a dialectic in actuality, i.e. how it played out in the history of human civilization and its eventual future, while Hegel’s was confined to the intangible realm of “the idea.” This is, of course, the ever-present Marxian contention between Materialist understanding and that of Idealism, the latter championed in this particular divide by Hegel, who stated in the preface to “Science of Logic” that “the indispensable foundation, the notion, the universal which is the thought itself… cannot be regarded as only an indifferent form attached to a content.”

This Idealism, in Marx’s view, was problematic in that philosophy not firmly grounded in the material would be used to reify the imposed values of the bourgeoisie; a category in which he placed religion (“Man makes religion, religion does not make man”). Instead Marx, surveying the increasingly technological nature of his era, utilized a Materialist concept of the dialectic to predict the eventual “negation” of Capitalism through its contradictions, with Communism being the proposed eventual result.

What I will be calling the “Buddhist dialectic” indeed has some overlap with the above described examples; quite a lot with Hegel’s understanding and maybe a bit with Marx’s. However, it is still fundamentally different from both, as the foundation for it was conceived in medieval Japan, separated from both Hegel and Marx by time and space. The term “dialectic” was only applied to it in the early 20th century by the Nichirenist thinker Kishio Satomi, who used it in relation to Tendai and Nichiren Buddhist thought in his book “Discovery of Japanese Idealism”:

Hegel’s Dialektik, Tendai’s Threefold Truth, Nichiren’s Enlightenment with the Three Great Laws, and so forth, are indeed the logics and ethics of the reconstruction of relative thought which the people of today must take into account.

As is implied by the book’s title, he also characterized ancient Japanese thought, as well as the ideas introduced to the Japanese via Buddhism and Confucianism and integrated into the domestic milieu, as a form of “Idealism,” writing:

… idealism of the Japanese nation was influenced by the doctrine of Confucianism, though such idealism had originated in the thought of the ancient Japanese. In respect of doctrinal systematization it was doubtlessly influenced by Confucianism as well as by Buddhism.

Considering some of the book’s sections had originally been published in German under the title “Altjapanischer Idealismus und seine Entwicklung,” it’s reasonable to assume that Satomi had employed these references as a way to relate Nichirenist thought to philosophical concepts Germans would have been more familiar with. Yet the comparison is more than skin deep. Indeed, his use of the term “dialectic” touches upon an underdiscussed aspect of how the Japanese perceived Buddhist belief and practice.

In opposition to Hegel’s proposition of an unfolding “exposition of God,” Japanese Buddhists have historically considered the supreme truth as having been already proclaimed by Shakyamuni Buddha (aka Siddhartha Gautama, sometimes called “the historical Buddha” by scholars) thousands of years ago. In the cases of Chinese Tiantai and Japanese Tendai (and later Nichiren) schools, this “truth” takes the form of the combined Hinayana and Mahayana Buddhist canons, beginning with the alleged first proclaimed scripture, the Flower Adornment Sutra (Jpn: Kegonkyo), and reaching its apotheosis with the last two: the Lotus and Nirvana Sutras.

However, the dialectical component comes into play with the clarification and elaboration of the meaning and implementation of this scriptural canon over time; Buddhistic understanding evolving both within Buddhist monastic circles and through Buddhism’s encounters with domestic beliefs and rival theological and philosophical perspectives. Nichirenists like Satomi and General Kanji Ishiwara saw this exemplified in the works of figures like the Kamakura-era priest Nichiren and Satomi’s father, Chigaku Tanaka, but they also believed that the process had already begun long before Buddhism’s arrival in the Japanese archipelago (for reasons that will be explained in the next essay).

This can be seen as an analogue to Hegel’s view of divine revelation, but we can also glimpse a shimmer of Marx’s “dialectic” in the Nichirenist critique of the systems of secular modernity and their myriad of contradictions. Likewise, “Buddhist Modernism” (which will also be explored in depth in a later piece) as an umbrella of contemporary Buddhist belief also must, out of necessity, wrestle with the modern condition, which manifests in a wide variety of ways. Yet even considering these similarities, I must emphasize this Buddhist dialectic as a perspective peculiar to certain strands of Buddhist thought; one that always centers the Buddha-dharma first and foremost.

With this essay series, I want to explore both the Japanese beliefs which comprise what I have been referring to as the “Buddhist dialectic,” as well as how this particular conception of the “dialectic” can be applied to more recent developments in American Buddhism, from the 19th century up to now. Through this endeavor, I hope to not only explain, at least in part, my affinity for Japanese Buddhism (especially of the Nichiren variety), but to also offer a new way for those of us in the modern West to view Buddhism as a whole; one that may, if we’re fortunate enough, prompt a new Buddhist dialectic which will shake the religion from its current stagnancy.

Until next time, thank you all very much for reading.