[In the following essay, Griffin explores parallels between Whitehead's thought and the doctrines of Buddhism.]

The idea behind this paper is that both Buddhist and Christian thought and existence can be enriched by appropriating elements from each other, and that the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead can serve as the basis for this mutual enrichment by providing a “higher synthesis” of traditional Buddhist and Christian modes of thought.¹ However, the focus of the essay is primarily on Buddhism's relation to Whitehead, both because of limitations of space, and because Christian thinkers have already for many years been employing Whiteheadian categories to reformulate Christian thought and thereby reform Christian existence.

The paper is composed of two parts. In Part I some central Buddhist notions are discussed in four sections. In Part II the related Whiteheadian ideas are explicated, with a view towards suggesting how Buddhism might use them to overcome what seem to be some inherent problems.

“Buddhist thought” is, of course, much too complex and diverse to characterize in summary form. There are few if any doctrines shared by all schools of Buddhist thought. Hence some estimation of the “essence” of Buddhist thought must be followed. In this paper I have relied primarily upon the interpretations of Edward Conze. This means that the sketch of some central “Buddhist” doctrines will seem biased to all those Buddhists who do not share Conze's views as to essential Buddhism. This reliance upon Conze will be especially seen as misleading by many in regard to the question of Buddhism and society, since Conze is concerned almost exclusively with Indian Buddhism, and Buddhism in India was by and large more world-rejecting than the forms that have developed further east. Nevertheless I assume there has been some continuity in Buddhist thought, so that the ideas used here to represent “Buddhist thought” will not be completely alien to contemporary Buddhist philosophers of various schools of thought.

I. SOME CENTRAL BUDDHIST DOCTRINES

1. Anatman

Many have suggested that the doctrine of anatman is the one doctrine that all Buddhists share, at least verbally. However, its meaning is ambiguous. It can mean any or all of the following: (a) persons neither are nor have an underlying, uncaused, permanent substantial soul; (b) material things also lack substantiality; (c) nothing should be thought of as “belonging to” the person; (d) no composite entities are more than the sum of their dharmic parts. Whitehead agrees with both (a) and (b). Point (c) presupposes both (d) and the issue to be discussed in section 3 below. The focus here will therefore be on (d), with which Whitehead disagrees.

The major ontological focus in early Buddhism, aside from the contrast between Nirvana and samsara, is on the contrast between dharmas and composite things. The latter have no real existence. The word “chariot” is just a convenient way of referring to a conglomeration of dharmas, which are the simple ultimates of this world. The major characteristics of these worldly dharmas are: (1) They are real: to use the technical term, they have their own-being (svabhava). (2) They are momentary: each dharma is an event, occurring in an instant or at most a moment of very brief duration.² (3) They are qualities, and yet they “carry themselves,” i.e., they are impersonal, and do not inhere in any substances. (4) They are agents, they co-operate, and they arise out of conditions.

What the dharmas never do is co-operate to produce a real unity. Just as the chariot is merely an aggregate of qualities, this same phenomenalistic reduction is applied to persons. Although they seem to have a real unity, they too are simply conglomerations of impersonal dharmic agents. Those constituting the person are divided into five skandhas. Through study and meditation the person is to learn that he can account for all his experiences in terms of these five types of entities without inventing a “self” over and above them.

However, this reductionism is not materialistic. Four out of the five skandhas are psychic in nature, i.e., feelings, perceptions, emotions and impulses, and conscious acts. Furthermore, the person's sense of individuality through time is allowed some basis in reality. That is, “series” of these sets of momentary dharmic events are formed. What is insisted on is only that there is not some greater unity above these skandhas. Each moment of experience is simply the combination of five sets of impersonal agents, each conditioned by its predecessors and each other.

The purpose of this reductionistic analysis is to overcome all desire for worldly things. By seeing other people and material things “as they really are,” one recognizes that they have nothing of real value to contribute to oneself. They are devoid of any substantiality or selfhood; and the realities composing them are impermanent. Hence persons and things cannot be relied upon for security. By seeing oneself as a mere aggregate of fleeting impersonal events, one overcomes the illusion that he is a self that is permanent and distinct from others. Accordingly it makes no sense to worry about his self or to desire things for it, especially to compete with other “selves” for apparently desirable things. All desire for worldly things leads to suffering, for even if one obtains them, anxiety and then grief will result from their possible and then their actual loss. Desire is in turn rooted in ignorance; hence wisdom (knowledge of the truth about dharmas) extinguishes all desire.

Conze sees the essence of Buddhism to lie in doctrines and methods designed to overcome one's separated individuality, especially by overcoming belief in it by the above “method of dharmas,” or of wisdom. But he points out that the “method of the Unlimited,” introduced in early Buddhism and increasingly important in Mahayana, achieves the same goal in an opposite, even contradictory, way. The method of dharmas is a contraction of the self, emptying it of everything. The method of the Unlimited is an expansion of the self in the sense that one identifies oneself with more and more sentient beings: “We diminish our sentiment and love of self by widening the boundaries of what we regard as ours. By inviting, as it were, everybody's self to enter our personality, we break down the barriers which separate us from others.”³ Cultivating the social emotions of friendliness (metta), compassion (karuna), and sympathetic joy (mundita), in an unlimited way is for “reducing the boundary lines between oneself and other people” (B 102; cf. 126-28).

Besides the contradiction between a contraction or an expansion of one's own self, there is a contradiction between the attitudes implied toward others: the method of wisdom sees no persons at all, but only bundles of cold, impersonal dharmas, while the method of the Unlimited cultivates relations to people as persons (B 129). Far from trying to soften these contradictions, Conze says Buddhist philosophers are “delighted” by them, and believe they should be stated in uncompromising form. For example: “A Bodhisattva is a being compounded of the two contradictory forces of wisdom and compassion. In his wisdom, he sees no persons; in his compassion he is resolved to save them” (B 130). Both contradictory methods need to be practiced at once, Conze says, since wisdom alone leads to aloofness, a lack of human warmth (B 129; BTI 81).

Even aside from these contradictory paths to salvation, the doctrine of anatman has been the most controversial one in Buddhist thought. It is widely rejected by laymen,⁴ and philosophers have “felt obliged to introduce the notion of a self more or less furtively in a disguised form, though the word `self remained taboo at all times” (BTI 132). The denial of a self raised the question as to how the person could break free from the karmic chains, and who it was that would experience Nirvana (insofar as Nirvana was not thought to be pure extinction).

2. Conditioned Co-Production and Emptiness

Early Buddhist philosophy saw composite things as empty of self or substantiality and in that sense unreal; later Buddhist philosophy, especially as influenced by Nagarjuna and the Madhyamika school, regarded even the dharmic events as empty of substantiality, and in that sense unreal. This later development can be regarded as an outworking of the inner logica of the earlier position, as Nagarjuna himself claimed.

The early view, as summarized above, held that each dharmic event was real, and yet that each was conditioned by predecessors (and, some schools held, by contemporaries). Furthermore, this conditioning was taken (by many dominant thinkers) to be total determination. Conze quotes the Russian authority Stcherbatsky: “The effect is nothing over and above the presence of the totality of its causes” (BTI 149). In other words, not only is every event an effect conditioned by a multitude (infinite, or at least indefinite in number) of causes (BTI 146); also the new event has no iota of self-causation or self-determination.⁵

Now, many thinkers have agreed that to be “real,” or better, “actual,” is to have power. Nagarjuna was one of these. The technical term for actuality or positive reality was svabhava, which meant to have self-existence, or own-being. But if every dharmic event is totally determined by others, it has no own-being; rather, it is totally parabhava, other-being, i.e., its being is totally that of others (BTI 239). In short, if “actual” means “independent,” then there is a contradiction in early Buddhism's position that dharmic events are both actual and dependent,⁶ especially since the dependence is total. In Conze's words, being “entirely dependent on the co-operation of other events … the own-being of a thing is then dissolved into the conditions of its happening. … Neither produced nor maintained by itself, a thing by itself is nothing at all” (BTI 240).

Furthermore, the logic of this position, as worked out by Nagarjuna, led from the notion of universal causation to the complete denial of causation. For if an event has no power of its own, it does not have any power to exert on others.⁷ In such a chain of events A-B-C-D-E, one cannot really say that E is caused by D, since D had nothing of its own to contribute. It was a link, and merely a link, between C and E. But the same is true for C, and then for B, so that one must conclude that A caused E. But if there is no beginning to the chain of events, then ultimately one must say that E simply was not caused! Of course, this does not mean that something has arisen out of nothing—it has already been established that E is not an actuality, or what Nagarjuna would call a “positive existent.” In light of these considerations, Nagarjuna's famous motto becomes understandable: “Not by itself, nor by another, nor by both, nor without cause, do positive existents arise in any way whatsoever” (quoted in BTI 274). The first possibility, “by itself,” is clearly excluded by the denial of svabhava. The second, “by another” (the position of some early Buddhists), is excluded by what was just said, i.e., the “other” has no ownbeing and hence no power by which it could produce anything. Also, by definition a “positive element” is for Nagarjuna that which is unconditioned by others. The third possibility, “by both itself and another” (Whitehead's position), is excluded both by the total determinism of the early Buddhism which Nagarjuna inherited and by the assumption of most Indian (and, for that matter, most Western) thought that genuine, “substantial” reality entails total independence. Being “partially svabhava” would not suffice, and would seem self-contradictory. Finally, the fourth possibility, “without cause,” is excluded as irrational: ex nihilo nihilo fit.

Besides denying the reality of things and causation, Nagarjuna claims the absolute sameness of all things. Again it seems that his position is valid, given his premisses. The sameness of all things can be deduced two ways. The simplest is to point out that the only characteristic or “mark” of all things is emptiness. Since they are identical in respect to their only characteristic, they are simply identical (BTI 221).

There is a more complex procedure which points not only to the sameness but to the oneness of all reality. As we have seen, some early Buddhism held to total determinism of the present by the past, and hence of the future by the present. Hence the present event implies not only the totality of the past (as in modern relativity theory, wherein the “past” for a given event is defined as “everything that influences it”), but also the totality of the future. In philosophical language, this means that the present is “internally related” to (i.e., constituted by) the future as well as the past. In short, every event in the universe—past, present, and future—is internally involved in every other one. Furthermore, this mutual influence (if we can provisionally speak of causal influence, in order to deny it ultimately) is eternal. Hence, A has been influencing B forever, and B has likewise been influencing A, so the A influencing B is A-as-always-influenced-by-B, and vice-versa. With this mutual, eternal, internal relatedness obtaining among all events in reality, it is impossible that any uniquencess could be retained by any of them, since each one is eternally influenced by exactly the same factors.⁸ Any iota of individuality one might suppose to remain by virtue of the fact that each one could make a slightly different response to the totality is eliminated by remembering that the events have no power of self-determination at all (otherwise the past would not imply the present, and the future would not yet be completely decided, so it could not be constitutive of the present).

The Madhyamikas tried to stay in between assertion and denial. Hence they would neither simply say the world was real or unreal. “Emptiness” referred to something mysterious in between assertion and denial, and between existence and non-existence. Yet the predominantly negative language, and the use of similes for the world such as magical illusion, mirage, dream, and imagination (BTI 223-25) clearly weighted the balance in favor of an affirmation of the world's ultimate unreality. The result is a monism, or at least a non-pluralism—all discrimination and multiplicity are rejected (BTI 204, 205, 220, 225). All that remains is the absolute: the one unconditioned fact is that everything is conditioned (BTI 158 n.). Given the equation of real with own-being, “the (absolute) own-being is a negation of (pluralistic) own-being” (BTI 220).

This ontological development has soteriological implications. The sameness of all meant there was ultimately no difference between the wise and the ignorant, and that the merit of one became the merit of all. These two implications largely account on the theoretical side for how early Buddhism, which offered salvation to the few who became enlightened through meditation, could turn into later Buddhism, in which salvation is offered to all, sometimes for the slightest sign of faith.⁹ Furthermore, the non-difference between purity and non-purity provided the theoretical rationale for much of the practice of Tantric Buddhism.

3. Affective Neutrality and Evenmindedness

The various philosophico-religious traditions focus on different dimensions of human experience. The Greeks largely focused on the objective data of experience, especially vision. The Hebrews were concerned largely with action, and then the motive of action, in the presence of a righteous God. The Indians concentrated primarily on the affective dimension, the subjective form of one's response to objective data. Accordingly, for Buddhism (insofar as it is an Indian religion) the most important ontological doctrines would be those conducive to the affective state of mind deemed best. Given the centrality of craving in the analysis of man's basic problem, it is no surprise that the highest state of mind is evenmindedness. Defined as regarding all things the same way, it is the opposite of craving, since craving can be either positive, i.e., to attain something, or negative, i.e., to avoid something. Evenmindedness is beyond attraction or repulsion.

The centrality of this attitude is witnessed by many factors. Conze says: “At the end the Buddhist struggles bring forth the fruit of evenmindedness” (B 96). As examples, he mentions that one should overcome being greedy for food and sex, and being miserable due to hunger and cold (B 96). One practice is called “guarding the sense organs,” for sensory experience becomes the “occasion” for unwholesome reactions (B 99). The eight Dhyanas or stages of trance are for the purpose of “transcending the impact of sensory stimuli and our normal reactions to it” (B 100). Also, evenmindedness is the highest of the Unlimiteds, or “four stages of Brahma.” It involves overcoming all adverting and averting, all gladness and sadness. Although Conze had termed these Unlimiteds the “social emotions,” he says that in reaching their perfection in this fourth one they seem to become “distinctly a-social” (BTI 90).

If the goal is to overcome all affective reactions to objective data, it would be most helpful if these data had no inherent affective qualities which tended to reproduce themselves in the perceiver. And this is what some forms of Buddhism teach. Accordingly all affective reactions are totally volitional, self-willed. They are not at all a conformal response to what is really there, i.e., the affectively neutral dharmic facts (BTI 62, 63, 70).

All volitional-emotional reactions can be cut off at the root if we will learn to see only “that which is really there,” before “any ‘superimpositions’ have distorted the actual and initial datum” (BTI 65). As the sensory data are thus isolated from all accretions and associations, “they are placed into an emotional void,” and there is “nothing in them desirable or to be sought after” (BTI 65). Contemplating the dharmas as they are deprives objects of all basis for any affective response; any value and significance attributed to them are the “pure gifts of the spectator's mind” (BTI 103).

Early Buddhism often insisted that nothing was attractive, but that many things, such as the human body, were repulsive. But being repelled by some things is just as arbitrary as being attracted by others. The distinction between repulsive and attractive is fictitious, not based on the factual, dharmic constitution of things. “The offensiveness of entrails is no more an ultimate fact than the allure of swelling breasts seen through silk in the sun” (BTI 206).

This doctrine, which asserts the essential autonomy of the mind from external conditions, has obvious implications. It is “of the essence of Buddhism” that “the world of ‘hard facts’ has not been brutishly imposed upon us. … Mind-training alone can therefore improve our circumstances, inward or outward” (BTI 113). Worldly events cannot really cause unwholesome reactions in us; they can at most serve as the “occasions” for unhappiness.¹⁰ Everything depends upon our self-willed attitudes to them (BTI 147, 149, 190, 209):

The regulation of these subjective factors promises greater rewards than the manipulation of objects. We are constantly reminded that it does not matter what the world does to us and that everything depends on how we react to its challenge. To reform the outside world is regarded as a waste of time. Once we have reformed our own minds, nothing can harm us any longer

(BTI 110).

There are two problems with this doctrine that the subjective form of our response to objective data is purely antonomous, not at all conditioned by any affective qualities in the data themselves. First, it makes it impossible to account for our “normal reactions” to things, especially the fact that we largely agree upon which things are attractive, and which are repulsive. Almost all people, and even most dogs, would prefer donuts to dung. Second, this doctrine stands in blatant contradiction with the doctrines of the previous two sections, namely, that there is no (even partially) antonomous self, and that all the dharmas are determined by their environments. It seems that what Buddhism needs is a doctrine of partial determination and partial self-determination. This would allow for karmic influence, as well as the possibility of overcoming it, and for the (only) partial ability to overcome likes and dislikes, and the influence of circumstances upon one's psychic well-being.

4. Worldly Suffering and the Absolute

Correlative with the early Buddhist contrast between samsaric transitoriness and nirvanic permanence is that between suffering and absolute freedom from suffering.

This world of transitoriness, passion, and desire is said to be essentially dukkha. Lama Anagarika Govinda says, “there exists no experience which is equally universal.”¹¹ Conze states the thesis as unequivocally: “Suffering is the common lot of life in all its forms. … Men have much sorrow and little joy” (B 51). Since suffering is universal, it is an illusion to think that “some happiness can be found in the world” (B 45). And the implication is clear: since the world is seen as “wholly ill, as wholly pervaded by suffering,” it is “to be rejected totally, abandoned totally, for the one goal of Nirvana” (B 21).

Matching these statements are equally absolute affirmations of the possibility of freedom from all suffering. It is often pointed out that, far from being an ultimately pessimistic religion, Buddhism is supremely optimistic, for the third and fourth holy truths announce the possibility of, and the path to, the complete cessation of suffering. Nor is this, according to most interpreters, a purely negative extinction of all experience, but something positive: “The Buddhist seeks for a total happiness beyond this world” (B 22). “Nirvana means the end of all ill”; it means “absolute permanence, absolute bliss, absolute freedom” (BTI 26, 44).

The combined effect of these notions and those in the previous section have had pervasive effects on Buddhists' attitudes toward society. Conze says that despotic rulers have generally regarded Buddhism as a blessing, for it “hands over the world to those who wish to grab it. In addition, the belief that this world is ineradicably bad and that no true happiness can be found in it, would tend to stifle criticism of the government” (B 73). This is not the whole truth, of course. Buddhism has inspired much benevolent activity directed toward improving temporal conditions. Yet its ontology does not provide much justification for world-transforming activity. And contemporary Buddhists evidently find this a chief, if not the chief, problem in trying to revitalize and reform Buddhism to make it responsive to current needs.

II. SOME CENTRAL WHITEHEADIAN DOCTRINES

The preceding sketch of some Buddhist concepts necessarily involved much oversimplification, but hopefully not too much distortion of some central tendencies. Some problems associated with them were indicated. The purpose of this latter part of the paper is to suggest that the philosophy of A. N. Whitehead could support the central intentions of Buddhism, and in a way that would avoid the problems of inconsistency and inadequacy to widely-perceived needs involved in more traditional ways of supporting them. This is very audacious, of course, and especially for an outsider to claim ability to distinguish the “central intention” from the “non-essentials.” Accordingly, the following is written in the spirit of a question to Buddhists.

1. Prehensions, Actual Occasions, and the Soul

Parallel to Buddhism's generalization of the denial of an atman is Whitehead's rejection of enduring substances. He says there is no actual existent which is independent from others, or which endures through time.¹² Rather, apparently-enduring actualities, such as electrons, atoms, molecules, and cells, are really constituted by series of events termed “actual occasions.” The series as such is called a “serially-ordered society.” Whitehead does also call it an “enduring object,” but never an enduring subject, or enduring substance—for what endures is not a concrete thing, but merely an abstract form that is transferred from occasion to occasion.

Each actual occasion is a synthesis of innumerable “prehensions.” Prehensions can be compared with Buddhist dharmas. However, and this is the first major point, “actual occasion” is not simply a term for an aggregate of prehensions. Rather, it refers to the process and result of synthesizing the prehensions. It is a unity arising out of multiplicity, and as such is more than the sum of its elements (although it is not independent of them).

Furthermore, and this is the second major point, just as an actual occasion cannot (to use Tennyson's terms) be dissected without murdering it, neither can a human being be reduced to an aggregate of serially-ordered societies, be they at the level of electrons, molecules, or even cells. There are two basic ways for serially-ordered societies to be ordered spatially. These two types of serially-and-spatially-ordered societies are termed “democratic” and “monarchical.”¹³ In democratic societies there is a multiplicity of the highest type of serially-ordered societies. For example, in a plant the highest type is the cell. There are myriads of these serially-ordered societies, each of which has approximately the same degree of power within the total society (although they have different functions)—hence the term “democratic.” In the rock or chariot the molecule is the highest kind of serially-ordered society, and there are myriads of them. Thus the plant as such and the rock or chariot as such are not true individuals, but only aggregates. They have no overall unity of action and reaction. Since they manifest no unified response to their environments, there is no reason to ascribe to them a psyche or soul that would make them into true individuals.

The case is different with animals in general, and human beings in particular. The serially-ordered societies at the cellular level are so organized, at least or especially in animals with central nervous systems, so as to evoke a higher-level series of occasions of experience. This can be termed the psyche, soul, or mind.¹⁴ The fact that the living human being has a psyche means that he is a true (albeit complex) individual. Whereas the rock or the plant cannot make unified responses to their environments, the human being can. A human corpse, of course, would be a mere democracy.

There are three types of entities that can be termed true individuals. First, there is the single actual occasion, which is an individual in the strictest sense. Second, a serially-ordered society is an individual, since at each moment there is only one occasion of that society present, so that a unified response to the environment is possible. Third, the animal is a true individual, insofar as each occasion of the psyche synthesizes the various data experienced by the cells into a unity of experience and then exerts a dominating influence over the rest of the society. “Insofar” in the previous sentence indicates that this is a matter of degree. It varies from species to species, and even within a species; it even varies within the life of a single individual. However, the main point is that, by virtue of this higher level type of actual occasion that emerges in “monarchies,” they are structurally different from “democracies.” Hence the analogy between the chariot (which is simply the sum of its parts) and the person must be rejected.

A few clarifications about the nature of the “soul” can be briefly made. First, the fact that it is described in the same terms as molecules and cells, i.e., as a “serially-ordered society of actual occasions,” indicates that it is not ontologically different in kind from other worldly entities. Hence, to make a distinction between the soul and the body is not to posit an ontological dualism, à la Descartes. But the distinction is all-important, for it makes intelligible the fact that the person can respond to stimuli in terms of a unified purpose.

Second, a society's having a soul is not simply an all-or-nothing proposition. In Whitehead's words, “The question is, How much, if any?”¹⁵ There are several senses in which there are “degrees” of soul. (A) One has already been mentioned, i.e., the degree to which the dominant occasion is really dominant. The less it really unifies all the data of the body and exerts controlling influence back on it, the more the organism is a feudal rather than a monarchical society. (B) The soul is technically called a “living person.” “Life” refers to the fact that the “mental” pole of each actual occasion in the society actualizes a significant degree of novelty. Hence a soul is more or less living, since some species manifest more novelty than others, and some individuals actualize more novelty, as opposed to a mere reiteration of the past, than others. (C) Third, and this is the most important point in relation to Buddhism, the “serial” or “personal” order can vary in strength. The “physical” pole of an occasion is that part of the occasion that simply re-enacts data it receives from others. Now these “others” can either be previous occasions of the psyche, or other occasions, such as those in the brain cells, other psyches (granting extrasensory perception), and God. These are not, of course, mutually exclusive. The physical pole of a psyche's occasion will probably involve all of these. The question is how they are weighted, i.e., which type of prehension plays the more dominant role. To the degree that the psyche's prehensions of the past experiences of its own society are dominant, to that degree he is a person, an individual through time. Whitehead's philosophy seems to suggest that some degree of this continuity is simply given in our cosmos. But the formation of occasions into personally-ordered societies is not ontologically required; and the strong sense of individuality with which we are acquainted is an even more contingent matter, not even cosmologically necessitated.

It seems that there is no reason in principle why the Buddhist could not accept this view. It does not make the soul ontologically different from other entities; especially it is not an exception to the rule that all actualities are dependent and temporary. At the same time it accounts for the sense of relative unity and differentiation from others that we experience, and even allows for the development of an extreme individualism. Yet it also suggests that, if this individuality is experienced as a source of isolation and estrangement, it could be, at least greatly, overcome by appropriating more the experiences of others.

That is, Whitehead's doctrine would support overcoming isolated individuality by the “method of the Unlimited,” expanding the self by incorporating the feelings of ever more sentient beings. Whitehead cites with approval Descartes' statement, “these hands and feet are mine,” to describe an immediate experience of the body. But Whitehead adds that the body differs not in principle but only in intimacy from the rest of the past actual world. Hence, “in principle it would be equally true to say, ‘the actual world is mine.’”¹⁶ This is at first glance the exact opposite of the early Buddhist practice of saying, “This is not mine, that does not belong to me,” which was based on the third meaning of anatman mentioned in the first part of this paper. But the two attitudes have this in common, that I do not identify a limited portion of reality as “mine.”

2. Dependent Origination and Self-Determination

The present section will hopefully answer some questions about actual occasions untouched in the previous section. There it was said that each occasion was dependent on others, and was in fact a synthesis of prehensions of others. Can the occasion's “dependence” be made compatible with its “actuality,” so that the actuality of the world would not disappear under the scrutinizing eye of Nagarjuna?

Whitehead agrees that there is no actuality which is totally svabhava. And if this notion were set up as the definition of the actual, then Whitehead could not affirm the world's actuality. But, he would ask, why set up absolute self-existence as the standard? Is that not to allow the actual tyranny of the Atman tradition that was formally rejected? The notion of “self-sufficient actuality” is a contradiction in terms, within both Buddhist and Whiteheadian ontologies, since the one absolute principle is the law of conditioned co-production, or (in Whitehead's language) the “category of the ultimate,” according to which “the many become one, and are increased by one.”¹⁷ Being self-contradictory, it should not be allowed to serve as a standard in terms of which to deny the world's full-fledged actuality.

However, Whitehead does agree with Nagarjuna that an actuality, by definition, must act. It cannot simply be the product of alien influences. Every actual occasion is partly causa sui. This limited self-determination is sufficient to ground an occasion's actuality, for it is all that is conceivable, and hence possible. Accordingly, Whitehead would say that every actual occasion is partially parabhava and partially svabhava. It arises “both from others, and itself.”

If the Buddhist will grant that partial self-existence is sufficient for actuality,¹⁸ the question becomes that of the conceivability of this view. Here a new term must be introduced, “subjective aim.” Above it was said that each occasion is a synthesis of many prehensions. The achieved synthesis is termed the “satisfaction,” for it marks the end (in both senses of the term) of the occasion's becoming. The subjective aim is both the act of aiming, and the end aimed at, in the process of synthesizing the prehensions into a unity of experience.

This subjective aim is partially self-created. It is largely dependent upon the data it receives, all or most of which involve impulses in this or that direction. But since there are a multiplicity of these impulses, there is no way that they can determine exactly how they will be synthesized. This can only be decided by the emerging occasion itself. It begins with one or more “initial aims” received from others,¹⁹ but the actual occasion as the emerging subject of its prehensions must finally determine its own subjective aim. This decision as to how to respond to the received data is the element of self-creation in the actual occasion that makes it “actual.”

This doctrine of partial self-determination is closely related to the topic of the previous section. It is because Whitehead affirms that greater wholes do sometimes emerge out of a multiplicity of lesser entities that he can affirm partial self-determination. When one is speaking of the cause-and-effect principles applying to rocks or billiard balls, he must speak in terms of a complete determinism. There is in these aggregates no locus for any free response, just as there is not in the Buddhist man reduced to a group of skandhas. But where there is a more inclusive process emerging which makes the multiplicity into a unity, it is intelligible to affirm a unified response which partially determines its own state (and thereby the influence it will have on subsequent occasions that prehend it).

This partial self-determinism entails external relations and therefore multiplicity. Whitehead agrees with the Buddhist that the present implies the totality of the past: “The whole world conspires to produce a new creation.”²⁰ But the “world” for any occasion is always the past. Two contemporary occasions do not imply each other; they are externally related. And since the future occasions are still indeterminate, they are clearly not implied by the present, and are thereby not constitutive of it. (That there be a future is required; also certain abstract characteristics of the future, especially the near future, may already be settled, but never the precise details.) Accordingly, individual occasions retain their integrity and uniqueness. The basic point is that there is never mutual influence between actual occasions. One occasion never influences precisely that other occasion which influenced it. It only influences a subsequent occasion in the other's personally-ordered society.²¹

The temporal atomicity which the Buddhists were the first to articulate is probably the only basis upon which pluralism can be consistently maintained. What is ironic is that the pioneers of event-pluralism would develop some of the most consistently non-pluralistic systems the world has known. This development was caused, insofar as it was a matter of logic, by the correlative denials of emergent unities and self-determination.

Again it seems there are no insurmountable obstacles to the Buddhist appropriation of Whitehead's conceptuality. It affirms the doctrine of multiple-dependent origination, thereby denying the self-sufficiency of all actuality. It further affirms the “perpetual perishing” of all things (at least so far as finitude alone is considered), so that there is nothing in this world on which to rely for ultimate security. And yet it does this without destroying all distinctions between this and that, good and evil, the ideal and the actual. Hence, the rationale for spiritual discipline is not undercut. Nor is it necessary to speak of this world in primarily negative terms; and positive concepts and images of it are needed if people are to take seriously the idea of improving the world.

3. The Partial Conformity of Subjective Form

The previous sentence assumes that contemporary Buddhists would welcome a doctrine that gives theoretical basis for improving man's environment, while at the same time not capitulating to the position of those (e.g., some Marxists) who would say that man's weal or woe is totally a function of external circumstances. I hope to suggest in this section that Whitehead's philosophy does just this.

Buddhism has two ways of overcoming egoistic desire, as we have seen. One is to overcome all desire whatever by the method of wisdom, which involves contemplating all the objects of experience as totally devoid of inherent affective qualities. The other is the practice of the Unlimited, which involves overcoming all selfish desire by identifying with all sentient beings—wishing them well, and sharing their sorrows and joys with them. Whitehead's philosophy supports the latter method. He agrees with Buddhism that there are many degrees of sentient beings. He supports overcoming selfish desire not by regarding all things as devoid of value, but by seeing all individuals as having intrinsic as well as instrumental value, and then identifying with them, so that their welfare is one's own.

Accordingly, his procedure in regard to the data of human experience is the opposite of Buddhism's method of dharmas or wisdom. The latter begins with those data that are devoid of any affective dimension, and then generalizes this characteristic to all data. Whitehead begins with those which most clearly do have an affective dimension, and then generalizes this. And he holds that our experience of the data necessarily involves a degree of conformity to this inherent affective dimension, so that a completely non-emotional appropriation would be impossible.

This notion will now be explicated by using some technical terms. Whiteheadian “prehensions” can be compared with Buddhist dharmas, as mentioned before. However, all dharmas are simple, being identical with one “mark,” or phenomenon. But every prehension is dual, having both an objective datum and a subjective form (besides a third factor, the actual occasion itself which is the subject of the prehension). The objective datum is the object-as-experienced, i.e., other actualities are really experienced (not simply universals), but always from a certain perspective. The subjective form is the way the actual occasion prehends the datum. For example, emotions are subjective forms, and so is consciousness. (All occasions have experience; it can be treated as a synonym for creativity, and hence as the universal of universals; but only a few occasions experience some of their data consciously.) Hence, some dharmas would be classified as objective data, while others correspond to subjective forms.

However, there is a further distinction to make in regard to the notion of subjective form, and this is all-important. The “objective datum” is not purely objective, in the sense of containing only geometrical properties (the so-called “primary qualities” of dualistic philosophies). Rather, the objective datum also contains affective (so-called “tertiary”) qualities, such as pleasure, pain, anger, joy. That is, the objective data of experience have inherent subjective forms (these being the way the objectified occasions had themselves prehended their predecessors). These inherent subjective forms tend to perpetuate themselves in the occasions objectifying them. In fact, Whitehead calls the first phase of an actual occasion the “conformal phase,” since in this phase the subjective form of the new prehension conforms to the inherent subjective form of the datum. For example, when I in this moment prehend the anger of a previous moment (which was then the subjective form of a prehension of some other object), the prehension will begin with the subjective form of anger. When I prehend (indirectly, through a chain of nerve cells) the cells in my burnt finger, my own experience will tend to share their painful feelings.

Whitehead also calls this first phase of an occasion of experience the “causal phase.” This brings out the fact that the efficient causation of the world, discussed in the previous section, is first of all affective causation. Causality is most fundamentally the transfer of subjective form (although there are always geometrical forms inherent in the data as well). But in the previous section it was stated that efficient causation is never complete determination, at least where the effect is a true individual. The individual effect is always partially self-determining.

Accordingly, the conformation of subjective form is only partial. After the conformal phase in the occasion come the originative phases. In these phases (especially if the occasion is high-grade enough that they are significant) the subjective forms of the various prehensions are modified, and this in harmony with the occasion's overall subjective aim. Hence, the initially-felt anger upon remembering previous anger may change to amusement at that previous anger. The painful feelings derived from one's body might even be incorporated in such a way as to add richness to the total “satisfaction.” Contrariwise, previous pleasurable and joyful experiences might be recalled with the subjective form of disgust, remorse, or apathy.

Above it was stated that Buddhism begins with those perceptual data that are devoid of affective qualities. If a greater adequacy to human experience is claimed for Whitehead's view, how can it be that Buddhism and much Western philosophy have thought there were affectively neutral objective data, and even that these data were to be given precedence to any affective data (if any be affirmed) in seeing things “as they really are”?

Whitehead believes the two kinds of data (neutral and affective) can be accounted for in terms of two levels of human perception: (1) “Perception in the mode of causal efficacy” is a synonym for “prehension,” and hence is the mode of perception that humans share with all other individuals. It involves the direct awareness of other actualities as causally efficacious for the prehending occasion. And this is an awareness of the value (positive or negative) that the others have for oneself. This mode of prehension largely (although not exclusively)²² involves other actualities that are spatially and temporally contiguous with the prehending occasion. For example, the objects directly prehended by the psyche are primarily its own immediate predecessor, the cellular occasions just actualized in the brain, and God (who is everlasting and omnipresent, hence contiguous with all finite occasions).

(2) “Perception in the mode of presentational immediacy” is largely equatable with conscious sense experience. The mode is unique to the psyches of animals with sense organs. The data here are sense-qualities, therefore universals, not actualities. These sense-qualities, or “secondary qualities,” are derived from the value experiences (“tertiary qualities”)²³ experienced in the mode of causal efficacy. But they involve an accentuation of the inherent geometric aspects of the objective data, and a corresponding elimination of the inherent value dimensions.²⁴

For example, the inherent geometrical properties derived, say, from a yonder tree (if one's body has not deceived him), and transmitted through a series of photonic and nerve-cellular occasions, are lifted into prominence by the psyche, so that a “green patch” is immediately present to the mind as “qualifying that region over there,” and not as qualifying the brain cells, from which the psyche received the greenness. At the same time, even though “green” is essentially a subjective form,²⁵ in conscious experience this affective side is almost if not totally lost. In Whitehead's words:

The perceptive mode of presentational immediacy is in one sense barren. So far as … it discloses a contemporary world, that world, thus objectified, is devoid of all elements constitutive of subjective form, elements emotional, appreciative, purposive. The bonds of the objectified nexus only exhibit the definiteness of mathematical relations.²⁶

Both because it is much easier to become conscious of, and because of pragmatic reasons, sense perception (the mode of presentational immediacy) tends in human experience to overshadow sense reception (the mode of causal efficacy). Therefore it is possible, especially by giving visual experience precedence over visceral, to conclude that all data of experience are inherently devoid of subjective form, so that all affective qualities are arbitrarily and falsely conferred by the psyche.

Whitehead rejects this Buddhist-Humean “sensationalist principle,” i.e., that “the primary activity in the act of experience is the bare subjective entertainment of the datum, devoid of any subjective form of reception,” so that all emotional, appreciative, and purposive response would be derivative and therefore totally autonomous and arbitrary. The most revolutionary feature of Whitehead's epistemology is that he reverses this order. He believes philosophers have confused the order in which elements dawn clearly and distinctly in consciousness with the order in which they actually emerge in experience.²⁷ Actually,

The primitive form of physical experience is emotional—blind emotion—received as felt elsewhere in another occasion and conformally appropriated as a subjective passion. In the language appropriate to the higher stages of experience, the primitive element is sympathy, that is, feeling the feeling in another and feeling conformally with another.²⁸

Therefore, “the separation of the emotional experience from the presentational intuition is a high abstraction of thought.”²⁹

As indicated above, Whitehead does not deny that we are not completely victims of the subjective forms received from outside. Besides simply reacting “naturally” to them, we can play down, accentuate, modify, even drastically reverse these received qualities. What he does deny is that to regard the direct objects of experience as inherently devoid of a value dimension is to regard them “as they really are.” The data that are devoid of subjective form are not given data, but data that have been abstracted out of the given and projected through a complex process of simplification and transmutation.

Hence, Whitehead's epistemology corresponds with his ontology. Since values or “tertiary qualities” are those which sentient beings can have, the position that all direct objects of experience donate value to the experiencer is consistent with the proposition that all individuals are sentient. Therefore his epistemology supports the appropriateness of exemplifying friendliness, compassion, and sympathetic joy for all individuals. The contradiction between “wisdom” and “compassion” is overcome.

But what about the highest of the “four stages of Brahma,” i.e., uppekkha, equanimity or evenmindedness? In some Buddhist interpretations it involves a higher stage in which the first three would be seen as rather inappropriate. It is based on perceiving the neutrality, unreality, and necessity of all things. One would no longer be moved either by the sufferings or joys of other beings. If this were the only possible interpretation of evenmindedness, no higher synthesis reconciling the essentials of Buddhism and Christianity would be possible. However, there is a kind of “Peace” that could be accepted as an ideal by both Buddhists and Christians, for it would combine evenmindedness with the first three Unlimiteds. This point can only be explained after establishing one more set of ideas.

4. Intrinsic Value, Suffering, and the Divine Reality

Whitehead might be able to agree with the Buddhist notion that suffering is universal. But he would not agree that it is the only, or even the most basic, experience. Rather, intrinsic value has this privileged position. To be actual is intrinsically good. Evil is a by-product of the universal striving to achieve value. Of course, there is some agreement on this, as Buddhism sees evil as resulting from desire.

The basic difference, as already suggested, is the conclusion that is drawn from the fact. Should one try to enlarge the scope of one's desire, or try to extinguish it altogether? The different answers depend partly upon different estimations as to the relative balance of good and evil in the world. Conze lists as one of the “perverted theories” the view “that the sum-total of good in the world outweighs the suffering there is in it, and that life as we find it is worth living” (BTI 41). Whitehead's philosophy supports the contrary view. Charles Hartshorne, whose doctrine does not differ from Whitehead's on any point relevant to this question, explicitly affirms the preponderance of good over evil in the universe. That at least a great amount of the evil in the world is a contingent matter, not necessitated by the conditions of temporal existence as such, is a view which Govinda seems to support:

Out of the 121 classes of consciousness which are discussed in Buddhist psychology, sixty-three are accompanied by joy and only three are painful. … How deluded is man, that he mainly dwells in those three painful states of consciousness, though there are overwhelmingly more possibilities of happiness.³⁰

The importance of the distinction between the two attitudes is clear. If one sees suffering as the essential fact about existence, there is no point in trying to overcome it within this existence. But if intrinsic value is seen as primary, then at least much of the evil of the present mode of existence will be seen as a non-necessary obstacle that should be removed.

The different attitudes toward suffering also largely derive from different visions of the sacred. There are three major points of difference. First, Whitehead sees deity as purposive. God has an eternal subjective aim, which can be described as unlimited friendliness, or metta: “The purpose of God is the attainment of value in the temporal world.”³¹ God wishes the best possible for all creatures, and influences them toward that good. There is no tension in God between his own good and that of others. Since he includes within himself both the sufferings and joys of all individuals (thereby exemplifying unlimited karuna and mundita), their good is his good.

This provides a drastically different ideal for human life than those views which see the sacred reality as finally impersonal, and therefore nonpurposive. Rather than trying to extinguish all desire, the goal is to universalize it, since one wants to be “perfect” as God is perfect. And Whitehead suggests that our experience of God pulls us in this direction:

God is that function in the world by reason of which our purposes are directed to ends which in our own consciousness are impartial as to our own interests … He is that element in virtue of which our purposes extend beyond values for ourselves to values for others. He is that element in virtue of which the attainment of such a value for others transforms itself into value value for ourselves.³²

Since deity has desires, desires as such are not inherently evil. It is only the selfish desires of rational beings that are to be transcended. “Evil is the brute motive force of fragmentary purpose, disregarding the eternal vision.”³³

The second relevant fact about deity has already been mentioned in passing: he exemplifies universal compassion. Whitehead thereby goes against the dominant ideas of both Eastern and Western philosophy in holding that even the sacred reality is not exempt from suffering. It is partly this vision of the greater universality of suffering (there is not an absolute God, heaven, or Nirvana completely exempt from suffering) that lies behind his attitude toward it. That is, since even the sacred reality suffers, the goal of life cannot be to transcend suffering altogether!

Third, and closely related, the divine reality preserves both the joys and sorrows of the world everlastingly. Hence, although everything in this world is “perpetually perishing,” there is a sense in which nothing is lost. All attainment is permanent. Apart from this vision the zest for experience would be eroded by the reflective awareness of the perishing of all things. This vision of a divine experience in which “there is no loss, no obstruction,” refreshes the zest for existence “by the ever-present, unfading importance of our immediate actions, which perish and yet live for evermore.”³⁴ Whitehead and Buddhism seem to agree that the ultimate evil of this world is that time is a “perpetual perishing.” Whitehead's affirmation of the significance of temporal existence is based on his conviction that this is not “the whole story.”³⁵

I have already suggested that deity exemplifies the first three Unlimiteds, so that they are sanctioned as ultimate ideals for human existence, not to be overcome in a higher attitude. But I have also suggested that the fourth one, evenmindedness, could also be appropriated. Although God experiences compassion and sympathetic joy for each creature, a quality of evenmindedness or serenity must also be affirmed of his experience. For just because his love is universal, i.e., neither competitive nor limited in scope, there will not be violent ups and downs in his overall experience of reality. For the balance of good over evil will remain relatively stable. Thus, although the traditional doctrine of impassibility is to be rejected, there is an element of truth in the doctrine that God's “bliss” is constant.

Accordingly, the highest ideal for man would be to learn to imagine the universe from the cosmic perspective. From this all-inclusive perspective, one would still wish others well, suffer with them, and rejoice with them; in fact, these virtues would be expanded indefinitely. But the suffering of one part of the world would never incapaciate one, and lead him to despair of the value of life itself. Nor would his joy over the good fortune of one part of the universe lead him to forget the sufferings elsewhere. Nor would he unambiguously wish one individual or group well, to the detriment of others. In this way, by learning to imitate the divine impartiality, serenity can indeed be combined with compassion and sympathetic joy.

Again, Govinda has already suggested this type of attitude as Buddhist. He notes that both joy and sorrow are said to be annihilated in the higher states of meditation, and yet that happiness is said still to be present. He reconciles this by distinguishing selfish happiness of “personal satisfaction” from happiness of a universal character, which shares the joy of others and involves an all-embracing love.³⁶

Whitehead's statements about the crowning quality of the soul, “Peace,” are quite similar. It is close to “Impersonality,” but that is “too dead a notion.” Also it is different from “its bastard substitute, Anaesthesia.”

It is a broadening of feeling due to the emergence of some deep metaphysical insight, unverbalized and yet momentous in its coordination of values. Its first effect is the removal of the stress of acquisitive feeling arising from the soul's preoccupation with itself. Thus Peace carries with it a surpassing of personality. … It results in a wider sweep of conscious interest. It enlarges the field of attention. Thus Peace is self-control at its widest,—at the width where the ‘self’ has been lost, and interest has been transferred to coordinations wider than personality. … It is the barrier against narrowness. One of its fruits is that passion whose existence Hume denied, the love of mankind as such.³⁷

Perhaps Christian love and Buddhist tranquility can meet in Whitehead's “Peace.”³⁸

Although this issue is more complex than the previous ones discussed, it does not seem that it would be wholly impossible for Buddhists to accept some such vision of deity. This view does not see all laws and causality as coming from God alone, as most Western doctrines have. And perhaps the dipolar conception of God as having an eternal, unconditioned nature, on the one hand, and a sympathetic, compassionate actuality, on the other, could be regarded as an explication of the insights behind the notions of the Buddha's Dharma-body, on the one hand, and the celestial Boddhisattvas, on the other.

CONCLUSION

Rather than summarizing the paper, I will try to make its basic intention clearer. It is my impression that, while Buddhism has been quite effective in producing warm, joyous, and compassionate individuals, and even sometimes effective in generating programs for social improvement, these successes have been achieved more in spite of Buddhism's central metaphysical doctrines than because of them. To put it differently, Buddhism's metaphysical doctrines and its social teachings have not formed a self-consistent whole, and this lack of consistency has been the major source of weakness in regard to inspiring wide-range and long-run movements for social betterment. This weakness has created a vacuum into which could come doctrines and programs based on the assumption that human well-being is a function of material conditions alone. If Buddhism could modify its own metaphysical doctrines so as to emphasize the equal importance of inner and outer factors, it could perhaps generate that depth of commitment to improving man's physical and social environment that can only come from a conviction as to its importance in the ultimate scheme of things.

Notes

1. Some writers on the subject of “the convergence of religions” evidently believe that this will not come about through doctrinal reconception, but only through personal contact and sharing in religious practices. I agree with the emphasis on the necessity for first-hand experience, but also hold that doctrinal reconception is a necessary part of the total process.

2. This is an example of the types of oversimplification involved in this sketch. For a discussion of the varieties of an outright denials of this theory of instantaneousness, see Edward Conze, Buddhist Thought in India (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1967) (henceforth cited as BTI), pp. 122-144.

3. Conze, Buddhism: Its Essence and Development (New York: Harper & Row, 1959) (henceforth cited as B), p. 62; cf. p. 129.

4. Cf. Melford Spiro, Buddhism and Society (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), pp. 84-91.

5. Stcherbatsky sees that this denies all human freedom; BTI 149, ref. to Buddhist Logic (New York: Dover, 1962), I, 131-134. The determinism of one major school of thought, the Sarvastivadins, is shown by their pan-realism, according to which each dharma exists in essence not only after but also before its brief moment of activity; BTI 138f. I should stress here that I am not claiming that most early Buddhist philosophers explicitly affirmed total determinism. That would be inconsistent with their central claim, that it is possible to break free from the karmic cycle of causation. I am only maintaining that the implications of some of their metaphysical principles were inconsistent with their religio-ethical assumption of freedom, as pointed out by many, e.g., Stcherbatsky (op. cit.). Furthermore, one can contend that their view was no more inconsistent than that of Western philosophers and theologians, who have affirmed freedom along with divine omnipotence or mechanistic materialism. This is true. But it is still inconsistent.

6. Cf. Frederick J. Streng, Emptiness: A Study in Religious Meaning (Nashville: Abingdon, 1967), p. 214.

7. See the discussion by M. Taube in Causation, Freedom, and Determinism (London: Allen & Unwin, 1936), pp. 17-34.

8. The Hua Yen or “Flower Garland” school in China, based on the Avatamsaka Sutra, worked out these ideas most fully. Cf. B 164, BTI 228f., and C. C. Chang, The Buddhist Teaching of Totality: The Philosophy of Hwa Yen Buddhism (Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 1971), esp. pp. 121-40.

9. Conze has argued that one should not ask how Theravada turned into Mahayana—it didn't. Rather, Mahayana developed out of the most liberal of the early sects, the Mahasanghikas (Thirty Years of Buddhist Studies [Oxford: Cassirer, 1967], p. 16). My point is only that some doctrines held by some early Buddhist schools, if carried out to their logical conclusions, lead to Mahayanist notions.

10. Lama Anagarika Govinda says that when one grasps the four holy truths, “suffering is no longer felt as coming from outside, from a hostile world, but as coming from within” (The Psychological Attitude of Early Buddhist Philosophy [New York: Samuel Weiser, 1969], p. 52). “All suffering arises from a false attitude. The world is neither good nor bad. It is solely our relationship to it which makes it either one or the other” (ibid., p. 80).

11. Ibid., p. 48.

12. Whitehead's own doctrine of God seems to be a violation of the principle that actual entities do not endure through time, for he spoke of God as a single, everlasting actual entity. But many Whiteheadians agree with Charles Hartshorne that it is more consistent with Whitehead's own principles to define God as a “living person,” i.e., a serially-ordered society of occasions. In this view the divine essence (God's “primordial nature”) is eternal and independent of all particular events, and the series (and hence God himself) is everlasting; but each divine occasion is momentary and partially dependent, being a unifying synthesis of the previous moment of finite happenings. For the reasons why this view is more “Whiteheadian,” see the chapters entitled “Whitehead's Doctrine of God,” and “A Whiteheadian Doctrine of God,” in John B. Cobb, Jr., A Christian Natural Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1965).

13. Two minor divergences from Whitehead's own terminology should be mentioned. First, he was hesitant to consider cells serially-ordered societies, whereas I have thus classified them for convenience, and because I believe there to be sufficient reason to do so. Second, Whitehead himself used the term “democratic” only for living non-hierarchical societies; i.e., plants, whereas for simplicity I have extended it to the non-living non-hierarchical societies which he called “corpuscular.”

14. Whitehead's view of the mind is an example of what C. D. Broad has termed the “central-event theory,” in distinction from the more common centre theory of a Pure Ego, and from all non-centre theories. Herbert V. Guenther says the Vaibhashikas had a central-event theory, but “were still counted as Buddhists because they, too, rejected a Pure Ego or Atman theory. Moreover, their conception of the centre as an event did not contradict the general Buddhist conception of the transitoriness of everything determinate” (Treasures on the Tibetan Middle Way [Shambala Publications, 1969], p. 47f). He also says: “The Buddhists, on the whole, have rejected Pure Ego theories and gradually have arrived at favouring a non-centre theory” (Buddhist Philosophy in Theory and Practice [Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1972], p. 40). These comments support my interpretation in Part I of the dominant tendency of Buddhist thought, and also my contention that there is no reason why Buddhists could not accept Whitehead's view of the mind or soul. The Whiteheadian view is, of course, similar to the notion of personal “series” or “continuities” developed not only by the Pudgalavadins but also many other schools (BTI 132). My suggestion is only that these Buddhists might find in Whitehead's conceptuality a helpful way of formulating their central intentions, and a context in which to correlate their views of the person with contemporary knowledge about the rest of reality.

15. A. N. Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas (New York: Macmillan, 1933), p. 267.

16. Whitehead, Process and Reality (New York: Macmillan, 1929), p. 117.

17. Ibid., pp. 31f.

18. Govinda has explained the early Buddhist doctrine of cause and effect in a way that is fully compatible with Whitehead's view. He says: “Mechanical laws are applicable only to inert ‘things’ or to conceptual units, i.e., mental abstractions, but not to living, i.e., growing, organisms. … The law of dependent … origination is, in fact, the Middle Way avoiding the extremes of rigid necessity—with which the free will would be incompatible—and blind chance” (op. cit., p. 56f.) It would be in harmony with this interpretation to affirm with Whitehead that “creativity” is the ultimate abstraction. As discussed in Part I, it was largely the deterministic interpretation of dependent origination that led to the Mahayana doctrine of “emptiness” as the essence of all events. Systematically opting for “creativity” in favor of “emptiness” as the “material cause” of all events would have more than merely verbal ramifications. For if creativity is the ultimate abstraction, then each embodiment of it has something unique of its own to contribute, to itself and to others (whereas precisely the opposite is implied if emptiness is the absolute). And this allows events not only to be distinct numerically, but also aesthetically, morally, spiritually, and intellectually.

19. Whitehead used the term “initial aim” exclusively for the aim or impulse received from God. But John Cobb has suggested that the sharp distinction between this datum and the other “initial data” of the occasion should be modified (op. cit., pp. 182f.). Although Cobb does not speak of “initial aims” in the plural, this would not be out of harmony with his thought.

20. Whitehead, Religion in the Making (New York World Publishing Co., 1960), p. 109. The sentence preceding this one shows the similarity of Whitehead's view of causation with that of early Buddhism: “There is not one simple line of transition from occasion to occasion, though there may be a dominant line.”

21. Accordingly Garma C. C. Chang (op. cit., pp. 122-24) is not quite accurate in saying that “what Whitehead was trying to say … is exactly what Hwa Yen calls simultaneous-mutual-containment. … The existence of event A depends on events B, C, and D, and vice versa.” It is true that Whitehead sometimes speaks of “mutual immanence,” such as in the passage Chang quotes from Modes of Thought (New York: Macmillan, 1938), pp. 225-27. But the mutual immanence is always between serially-ordered societies, never between actual occasions. This is implied in the statement quoted by Chang, “The whole antecedent world conspires to produce a new creation” (ibid.; italics added).

22. The prehension of other actualities is called “physical prehension” (as opposed to “conceptual prehension,” where the object is an abstract possibility). Physical prehensions are of two types: (1) A “pure” physical prehension objectifies the other occasion in terms of its physical pole, i.e., the aspect of it which involved no novelty. In this type of prehension the transference of energy is involved. These prehensions are always of contiguous occasions. (2) A “hybrid” physical prehension objectifies another occasion in terms of its mental or conceptual pole, i.e., the aspect of the occasion that actualized something novel. Whitehead says these can be of non-contiguous occasions (Process and Reality, p. 469). Hence one can directly prehend one of his own past occasions (memory) or an occasion of someone else's experience (telepathy).

23. In Whitehead's non-dualistic philosophy, some of the qualities considered “tertiary” in dualistic thought are actually primary; e.g., all actual occasions enjoy at least a primitive form of value experience.

24. Process and Reality, pp. 262, 273. For a more thorough discussion of this point, see my “Hartshorne's Differences from Whitehead,” Two Process Philosophers: A Companion to Hartshorne's Essays on Whitehead, ed. Lewis Ford (AAR Studies in Religion, 1973), pp. 35-7.

25. Ibid., p. 246.

26. Ibid., p. 498.

27. Ibid., pp. 239, 246.

28. Ibid., pp. 246f.

29. Ibid., p. 247.

30. Govinda, op. cit., p. 63.

31. Religion in the Making, p. 97.

32. Ibid., pp. 151f.

33. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (New York: Macmillan, 1926), p. 276.

34. Process and Reality, pp. 524, 533.

35. Ibid., p. 517.

36. Govinda, op. cit., pp. 61-64.

37. Adventures of Ideas, pp. 367f.

38. Adventures of Ideas, Chs. VII, VIII; Religion in the Making, pp. 66-71, 86-96.