T’ien T’ai’s Doctrines of The Middle Path and Reality – Part 2 of 2
Though T’ien T’ai distinguishes the ten kinds of existence, he emphasizes the interchangeability of their natures and the interdependence of their existence. Take, for instance, the case of Buddha. Although he is above all others, he has in no wise lost the character of the others, or he could not arouse in himself compassion for others. Even in him, the nature of the extremely vicious is still inherent, the only difference between his nature and that of others being that in him the inferior qualities are subdued, and not allowed to work. Similarly, with all others, even in the beings in the hells, Buddhahood, and humanity, and other capacities are still extant, though latent. Viewed in this way, the ten realms of existence and their respective natures are interchangeable and communicable. This point is formulated as the theory of the “mutual participation ” of all existences [Ichinen Sanzen]; and since all ten are present, whether actually or potentially, in each of the ten, the interrelations among them are hundredfold, that is, ten times ten.
To develop and explain the doctrine of the “mutual participation” [Ichinen Sanzen], T’ien T’ai formulated the conditions of existence in any realm in the ten categories of being. The classification is taken from the Lotus Sutra, in which these categories are adored as the key to Buddha’s insight into the world. They are: 1. Essence; 2. attribute; 3. manifestation or mark; 4. potency; 5. function; 6. first cause; 7. secondary cause; 8. effect; 9. retribution; and 10. the consummate unity of all nine. We can easily see that these categories are nothing but an extension and amplification of the original tenet of causality (paticca-samppāda [dependent origination]).
By causality we usually understand today the necessary connection existing between an antecedent and its consequent. But the Buddhist conception of causality is more flexible and is applied to the same kind of necessary link, to any relation of interaction, interdependence, correlation, or co-ordination, founded on an intrinsic necessity. The necessity may be a link existing between the beings or phenomena, or between the thing and the knowledge of it, or vice versa. In this respect, the Buddhist idea of causation covers the same ground as the ratio efficiens [productive reason], as formulated in Scholastic philosophy. Although all these relations may finally be reduced to the terms of antecedent and consequent, the Buddhist would not confine the causal relation within the idea of time relation.
This is a consequence of the conception that all existences are correlated by the virtue of the same dharmatā [nature of a thing], and that therefore the relations existing among them are mutual, both in reality and in thought. The cause, in the usual sense of the word, conditions the consequence, but the consequence no less conditions the cause, though the mode of conditioning differs. A cause without its consequence is nonsense, and, at least so far, the former is conditioned by the latter. In this way, the application of causality was extended, and the formula of causality, cited above in the original wording by Buddha, may be applied to the ten categories, as the mutual relations conditioning one the other. Take, for instance, the categories of “essence,” “attribute,” and “mark.” Because there is an essence, its attributes manifest themselves; because there are attributes, we know that there is the essence; because there are attributes, the marks appear; because there are marks, the attributes are discernible, etc. In this way the mutual dependence of the categories is established, and applied to the existence of every being, which is made up of a certain configuration and concatenation of the conditions, and in which the conditions of the categories are necessarily present.
It may make the position of T’ien T’ai clearer to speak, in this connection, of a division of Buddhist thought about the idea of causality. The question was whether causality should be understood as a serial causation or as a relation of mutual dependence, and the difference between the two conceptions involved the difference between a static and a dynamic view of the world.
The one school, which took the serial view of causality, traced, forward and backward, the evolution of the phenomenal world out of the primeval entity, and the involution of the former into the latter. The other school emphasized the interrelation and coordination of things, almost without regard to the questions of origin and final destiny. The latter was T’ien T’ai’s position and is known by the name “Reality-View,” in contradistinction to the “Origination-View” or “Emanation Theory,” of the other. Whatever the difference may signify, and whatever the original teaching of Buddha may have been, the “Origination View” always inclined to take the derivative phenomena more or less as illusions; while the “Reality-View” devoted its attention to a close examination of existences as they are and inclined to justify every being as a necessary phenomenon in the world of mutual interdependence. The former aims at reabsorption of the individual minds into the primeval Mind, while the latter sees in the full presentation of facts and relations the consummate realization of universal enlightenment. Thus, almost contrary to our expectation, the philosophy of the “Origination View” is static, while the “Reality-View” tends to be dynamic. The theory of “mutual participation” [Ichinen Sanzen] was a result of T’ien T’ai’s conception of causality in terms of correlation and coordination.
Another group of categories, to explain life in group (dhātu [the ultimate constituents of a whole]) is threefold: the stage on which a certain group of beings play their role and manifest their nature; the constituents which supply materials and components to the stage; and the individuals making up the realm.
Now all of these kinds of being, and the categories of existence, are essential to the consideration of reality, of the true nature of any being. The Middle Path view consists in taking up all these conditions of being, and in summing them up in one term, that is, “Reality” – the reality as it is, as it is conditioned, as it is grounded, and as it ought to be. Thus, in this view of reality is expressed the conception of Dharma as the consummation of the various views held by different schools, and as the final unification of the manifold aspects implied in the term Dharma. In fine, the T’ien T’ai Buddhist conception of reality consists in harmoniously uniting all aspects of existence, and in realizing the working of the many-sided Dharma, even in one being; even in one particle of dust, as the followers of T’ien T’ai are fond of saying.
To recapitulate, T’ien T’ai had examined the manifold views of reality, and found justification in each of them; and his ambition was to unify them, by looking at every particular existence as if it were an adequate representative of the whole cosmos (dharma dhātu). His conception of reality is equivalent to seeing everything sub specie aeternitatis [in a universal perspective], but his aeternitas [the divine personification of eternity] differed greatly from that of Spinoza in being not monistic, but “according to the three thousand aspects” [Ichinen Sanzen] – ten realms to each of ten, this hundred in the ten categories of existence, and this thousand multiplied by the three categories of group existence.