If we have understood the archaeological and textual record correctly, man has had his entire history in which to imagine deities and modes of interaction with them. But man, more precisely western man, has had only the last few centuries in which to imagine religion. It is this act of second order, reflective imagination which must be the central preoccupation of any student of religion. That is to say, while there is a staggering amount of data, of phenomena, of human experiences and expressions that might be characterized in one culture or another, by one criterion or another, as religious--there is no data for religion. Religion is solely the creation of the scholar's study. It is created for the scholar's analytic purposes by his imaginative acts of comparison and generalization. Religion has no independent existence apart from the academy. For this reason, the student of religion, and most particularly the historian of religion, must be relentlessly self-conscious.
- From Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown by Jonathan Z. Smith, page xi.I had the good, but nonetheless unfortunate luck to have been exposed to the ideas expressed by Smith as an undergraduate. I say unfortunate, because I found that as a seminary student, it was almost impossible to make the very simple claim that religion is something we invented in order to think about things like Christianity and Buddhism, an intellectual category, rather than something that exists within the actual practice of these things, a historical category. Certainly Christianity exists, and Buddhism exists. But to say they are both "religions" in the historical sense is to claim that they are, in a sense, the same thing. That they developed for the same reasons. That they answers to the same set of questions. My response, if Buddhism were Christianity, it wouldn't be Buddhism. To think otherwise risks making judgments about the superiority of one over the other. Judgments, in this sense, being a euphemism for xenophobia, and in extreme cases, fascism.
But I don't want to talk about Religion. Before you go about bringing up characteristics like believing in a deity, morals, sacred stories, rituals, or doctrine of salvation, I would like to point out that you are indeed talking about the intellectual category. What does it mean to use these characteristics to "define" religion when they are applied to something like Buddhism, or Confucianism, neither of which expresses belief in one supreme deity? If you want to argue further than that, and I do realize that there are argument against this, let me know. I want to get on to what I am really trying to write about. Differences.
While religion is a good example, what I have really learned from Smith is how to respect that sometimes similarities are deceptive, and sometimes differences are not as significant as they seem. There are connections between ideas. Historically and otherwise. There are no clear, clean lines between philosophies just as there are no real lines on the earth separating countries. Still, it is silly to think that there is no difference between the US and Mexico, Germany and France, India and Pakistan, Florida and every other place on the globe. It is popular to think that or differences are not what matter, that all religions lead to the same truths (as if all religions are about getting to a truth). And the appeal of this idea is obvious. If we want to accept other cultures, and not abandon our own parochial commitments, then it is easier if we think that all those other cultures have the same validating central ideas. But what if those ideas are not really the same? Should we forget about accepting other cultures? Are we all cursed to incommensurability, never really able to communicate with each other? Always in conflict?
This is a much larger philosophical problem that I wanted to address. Hopefully by the end of the post, I will have done it some justice. To achieve that, I'll comment on a couple of ideas, deceptively similar, and we'll see how much of a problem the difference is.
One of the basic tenets of the Tao Te Ching is the concept of inner peace. This is what is meant by "Zen." Passages like this a spread throughout it:
The nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth
The named is the mother of myriad things
Thus, constantly without desire, one observes its essence
Constantly with desire, one observes its manifestations
- Tao Te Ching, chapter 1And this:
The Tao is constant in non-action
Yet there is nothing it does not do
If the sovereign can hold on to this
All things shall transform themselves
Transformed, yet wishing to achieve
I shall restrain them with the simplicity of the nameless
The simplicity of the nameless
They shall be without desire
Without desire, using stillness
The world shall steady itself
- Tao Te Ching, chapter 37The idea, essentially, is that zen comes from accepting your place in the world, and not struggling against it or desiring that which you do not have. Being a part of the world is what gives you inner peace.
The Stoic philosophers also sought to escape desire, which they too associated with suffering. This is how Epictetus begins the Enchiridion:
Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions.
The things in our control are by nature free, unrestrained, unhindered; but those not in our control are weak, slavish, restrained, belonging to others. Remember, then, that if you suppose that things which are slavish by nature are also free, and that what belongs to others is your own, then you will be hindered. You will lament, you will be disturbed, and you will find fault both with gods and men. But if you suppose that only to be your own which is your own, and what belongs to others such as it really is, then no one will ever compel you or restrain you. Further, you will find fault with no one or accuse no one. You will do nothing against your will. No one will hurt you, you will have no enemies, and you not be harmed.
Aiming therefore at such great things, remember that you must not allow yourself to be carried, even with a slight tendency, towards the attainment of lesser things. Instead, you must entirely quit some things and for the present postpone the rest. But if you would both have these great things, along with power and riches, then you will not gain even the latter, because you aim at the former too: but you will absolutely fail of the former, by which alone happiness and freedom are achieved.
Work, therefore to be able to say to every harsh appearance, "You are but an appearance, and not absolutely the thing you appear to be." And then examine it by those rules which you have, and first, and chiefly, by this: whether it concerns the things which are in our own control, or those which are not; and, if it concerns anything not in our control, be prepared to say that it is nothing to you.
- Epictetus, The Enchiridion, paragraph 1This is a straightforward case of two cultures, two philosophical systems producing the same truth, right? It seems that way, but it is not. Implicit in Epictetus's advice is that the way to achieve peace is to hold yourself apart from the world. To accept that trying to influence things not in our control, everything but our own actions, "hinders" us, and say to those things that they are nothing to us is to remove ourselves from the world. Yes, both systems are trying to achieve similar things, but they do so by opposite means. One asks us to give up resistance to the world, the other urges us into vigilant resistance.
Once could imagine a zen master arguing with Epictetus about the true nature of the world. That by attempting to reject the suffering of the world, he dooms himself only to see manifestations of the truth, never the real thing.
Augustine makes an interesting comment on Stoicism in his discussion of suicide. But before I get to that, I should cover a Stoic attitude about suicide. This is from Seneca's letters:
You can find men who have gone so far as to profess wisdom and yet maintain that one should not offer violence to one’s own life, and hold it accursed for a man to be the means of his own destruction; we should wait, say they, for the end decreed by nature. But one who says this does not see that he is shutting off the path to freedom. The best thing which eternal law ever ordained was that it allowed to us one entrance into life, but many exits. Must I await the cruelty either of disease or of man, when I can depart through the midst of torture, and shake off my troubles? This is the one reason why we cannot complain of life; it keeps no one against his will.
- Seneca, letter 70I should state that the situations in which it is acceptable to commit suicide, according to Seneca, all seem pretty straightforward. It would be hard to argue against any of them. And, from a certain point of view, what he is saying is coherent. The freedom to commit suicide would seem to be the ultimate power one can exercise over destiny. It is something we can control, and something that gives us the final authority to reject anything that is out of our control. Augustine has a different point of view though, and one that is worth of consideration both as an interesting criticism of Stoicism, but also something that helps clarify the difference between the Stoic point of view and the Tao Te Ching. In The City of God he states:
...that virtue whose name is fortitude, however great the wisdom with which she is accompanied, bears most unmistakable witness to the fact of human ills; for it is just those ills that she is compelled to bear with patient endurance. I am astounded at the effrontery of the Stoics in their contention that those ills are not ills at all, when they admit that if they should be so great that a wise man cannot or ought not to endure them, he is forced to put himself to death and to depart from this life. Yet so great is the stupefying arrogance of those people who imagine that they find the Ultimate Good in this life and that they can attain happiness by their own efforts, that their 'wise man' (that is, the wise man as described by them in their amazing idiocy), even if he goes blind, deaf, and dumb, even if enfeebled in limb and tormented with pain, and the victim of every other kind of ill that could be mentioned or imagined, and thus is driven to do himself death -- that such a man would not blush to call that life of his, in the setting of all those ills, a life of happiness!
- Augustine, The City of God, Book XIX ch 4In essence, Augustine is challenging the Stoic notion that no matter what the world brings, a wise man can be happy. Of course this is not the case. Sometimes, according to Augustine, in fact often, if we truly understand the world and or place in it, it is impossible to claim that we are happy.
So you can see how the Stoic differs from the Zen. No response that a Stoic can give Augustine involves passive acceptance of these ills, because the Stoic response to them is suicide. I don't know if it was necessary to go so far to make it clear that there are differences between these ideas. But in my experience, people who want to believe that "it's what we have in common that's important" and that "differences are only superficial" are willing to argue that these ideas really are the same. That there is some unifying common core that underlies all truths. Or that all truths point to the same central, universal truth. I admire these ideas. They are motivated by a desire to embrace other ideas, other people. I am not trying to claim we shouldn't do that. I am only observing that universal truths, and common cores don't really respect other people. It finds a justification for respecting them, yes, but that justification isn't much more than claiming that other people are acceptable because underneath, they are really just like us. In some ways they are, sure. But what about real differences? Another thing that I have observed, when faced with choosing between accepting or rejecting diverse peoples and ideas, people who want to do so can, despite philosophical problems. It is really only people who don't want to do, who cling to differences.
As a final note, I want to make it clear that I have a great deal of respect for the Stoic tradition. Stoics like Cicero wrote beautifully about topics like friendship. Stoics developed the Natural Law theory of jurisprudence. We can place Grotius's development of International Law in order to bring peace to Europe, and Martin Luther King Jr.'s "long arc of history" in the Natural Law tradition. Still, just because I admire an idea does not mean that I cannot appreciate criticism of it.
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