Entry into the Inconceivable (Thomas Cleary)
The Deification of Dependent Origination
[My 2-star Amazon review (NDA) of “Entry into the Inconceivable: An Introduction to Hau-Yen Buddhism†by Thomas Cleary.]
This is the third book on Hua-Yen Buddhism that I have read – and probably the last. I began my study of Hua-Yen with Garma C.C. Chang’s “The Buddhist Teaching of Totality†(see my three-star review), continued it with Francis Cook’s “Hua-Yen Buddhism†(see my two-star review), and am finishing it with Thomas Cleary’s text.
Thomas Cleary is yet another pointy-headed Buddhist scholar who doesn’t get Buddhism. Instead of recognizing Mind as the fundamental principle of Buddhadharma (including Hua-Yen), in this text he egregiously only considers Hua-Yen in the context of Madhyamika (meaning emptiness and dependent origination), and entirely ignores the Yogacara (Consciousness-Only) point of view.
Cleary provides four lengthy essays on Hua-Yen, each by one or more of the five patriarchs of the tradition. One of these is by Cheng-Kuan in conjunction with Tu-Shun. But if Cleary were interested in an objective consideration of Hua-Yen, he would have included Cheng-Kuan’s “A Prologue to Hua-Yen,†which emphasizes Mind as the basis of Hua-Yen philosophy. Here’s a paragraph from Chang’s book regarding Cheng-Kuan:
“Cheng-Kuan in his ‘A Prologue to Hua-Yen’ gave ten reasons fror the all-merging Dharmadhatu. The first reads, ‘It is because all things are merely manifestations of Mind, that all dharmas can all merge through and through in the realm of Totality.’ He comments on this in the same volume. ‘This is to say that all things are projected by True Mind. As the water of the great ocean manifests itself in waves with its total body, so that the small and large forms of things are all transformed by the Mind; this is possible, because all dharmas are identical with the One Mind.’â€
According to Chang, the Mind-Only doctrine “is held by many scholars to be the cardinal argument of the Hua-Yen philosophy.†But again, Cleary entirely ignores this argument, and opts only for a Madhyamika perspective. And since I have next to zero regard for Madhyamika, I have little interest in the essays in this text. These essays are teeming with one illogical statement after another, and if I had nothing else to do with my life and someone gave me a large grant, I’d deconstruct them one by one in a massive tome.
I’ll just take a couple of statement by Cleary, in his his Introduction, and comment on them.
“The Hua-Yen doctrine shows the entire cosmos as one single nexus of conditions in which everything simultaneously depends on, and is depended on everything else.â€
Although this sounds so cosmically cool, it’s not reality. For example, though you depend on the Sun and air for your life, the Sun and air don’t depend on you in the least. If you die tomorrow, it won’t affect the Sun or air one iota, but if either the Sun or air disappear, you will die very quickly.
“Thus it is said that the existence of each element of the universe includes the existence of the whole universe and hence is an extension of the universe itself.â€
When scientists tell me that a cockroach’s existence includes the existence of the whole universe, then I’ll start to take Madhyamika Hua-Yen seriously.
After having read Cleary’s, Cook’s, and Chang’s books on Hua-Yen Buddhism, I rate Chang’s book the best of a bad bunch.
[My 2-star Amazon review (NDA) of “Entry into the Inconceivable: An Introduction to Hau-Yen Buddhism†by Thomas Cleary.]
This is the third book on Hua-Yen Buddhism that I have read – and probably the last. I began my study of Hua-Yen with Garma C.C. Chang’s “The Buddhist Teaching of Totality†(see my three-star review), continued it with Francis Cook’s “Hua-Yen Buddhism†(see my two-star review), and am finishing it with Thomas Cleary’s text.
Thomas Cleary is yet another pointy-headed Buddhist scholar who doesn’t get Buddhism. Instead of recognizing Mind as the fundamental principle of Buddhadharma (including Hua-Yen), in this text he egregiously only considers Hua-Yen in the context of Madhyamika (meaning emptiness and dependent origination), and entirely ignores the Yogacara (Consciousness-Only) point of view.
Cleary provides four lengthy essays on Hua-Yen, each by one or more of the five patriarchs of the tradition. One of these is by Cheng-Kuan in conjunction with Tu-Shun. But if Cleary were interested in an objective consideration of Hua-Yen, he would have included Cheng-Kuan’s “A Prologue to Hua-Yen,†which emphasizes Mind as the basis of Hua-Yen philosophy. Here’s a paragraph from Chang’s book regarding Cheng-Kuan:
“Cheng-Kuan in his ‘A Prologue to Hua-Yen’ gave ten reasons fror the all-merging Dharmadhatu. The first reads, ‘It is because all things are merely manifestations of Mind, that all dharmas can all merge through and through in the realm of Totality.’ He comments on this in the same volume. ‘This is to say that all things are projected by True Mind. As the water of the great ocean manifests itself in waves with its total body, so that the small and large forms of things are all transformed by the Mind; this is possible, because all dharmas are identical with the One Mind.’â€
According to Chang, the Mind-Only doctrine “is held by many scholars to be the cardinal argument of the Hua-Yen philosophy.†But again, Cleary entirely ignores this argument, and opts only for a Madhyamika perspective. And since I have next to zero regard for Madhyamika, I have little interest in the essays in this text. These essays are teeming with one illogical statement after another, and if I had nothing else to do with my life and someone gave me a large grant, I’d deconstruct them one by one in a massive tome.
I’ll just take a couple of statement by Cleary, in his his Introduction, and comment on them.
“The Hua-Yen doctrine shows the entire cosmos as one single nexus of conditions in which everything simultaneously depends on, and is depended on everything else.â€
Although this sounds so cosmically cool, it’s not reality. For example, though you depend on the Sun and air for your life, the Sun and air don’t depend on you in the least. If you die tomorrow, it won’t affect the Sun or air one iota, but if either the Sun or air disappear, you will die very quickly.
“Thus it is said that the existence of each element of the universe includes the existence of the whole universe and hence is an extension of the universe itself.â€
When scientists tell me that a cockroach’s existence includes the existence of the whole universe, then I’ll start to take Madhyamika Hua-Yen seriously.
After having read Cleary’s, Cook’s, and Chang’s books on Hua-Yen Buddhism, I rate Chang’s book the best of a bad bunch.
