Asian Philosophy: Zen & the Koan Collections

Bodhidharma & the Birth of Zen

Because the Chan (Chinese) or Son (Korean) or Zen (Japanese) school continued to thrive in Japan, I will consistently use the Japanese names and terms in this lecture, even though Zen started as Chan in China.  Zen means ‘sitting’, and the school concentrates not on the chanting of sutras or the support of deities but on meditation and study.  It is known for using radical and unorthodox means, such as shouting, slapping, joking, and any other way of breaking through rigid understandings to achieve insight and enlightenment.

In Zen, we can see a mix of Indian abstract psychology with Chinese concrete analogy as we discussed last week.  In particular, Zen is heavily influenced by Daoism and uses its teachings and metaphors regularly.  Unlike Pure Land Buddhism and other schools of the Mahayana tradition, Zen originated in China and had no precedent in India according to modern scholarship.  The Zen tradition, however, traces an unbroken chain of an “inexpressible transmission, outside the sutras” all the way back to the Buddha himself.  It is considered the first koan, the first case, It serves not only as a historical record of the lineage but as an object of study for students.  It appears in many koan collections, including The Gateless Gate, the most popular collection.

Once the Buddha came before the assembly to lecture, but instead of speaking held up a lotus flower.  Everyone was silent, but Mahakashapa smiled.  The Buddha said, “I have the eye of the true teaching, not expressible in words, but transmitted beyond teaching.  I have given it to Mahakashapa.

According to the tradition, after Mahakashapa there were twenty six patriarchs who received the inexpressible transmission before Bodhidharma left India and traveled to China to spread the inexpressible there.  Though this makes him the twenty eighth patriarch, he is called the fist patriarch of the Chinese tradition.  In fact, it is quite likely that he was the first and the twenty six were invented after the tradition spread to link his own focus on sitting meditation to the original Buddha.  In much of what follows, we will learn from the tradition as taught while remaining aware that modern scholarship has called much of the historical accuracy of each event into question today.  

Bodhidharma came to southern China and is said to have arrived at the palace to speak with Emperor Wu, a great patron of Pure Land and other schools of Buddhism.

The emperor asked Bodhidharma, “I have built many temples, copied many books, and supported many monasteries of monks and nuns.  What merit have I gained?”

Bodhidharma replied, “None whatsoever.  These things are shadows.  Real merit is wisdom.”

The emperor, taken aback, asked, “What is the principle of the sacred dharma?”

Bodhidharma replied, “Everything is empty.  Nothing is sacred.”

The emperor, enraged, asked, “Who is this who stands before me?”

Bodhidharma replied, “I do not know”, and left the palace.

Bodhidharma is said to have practiced wall-sitting, staring at a wall while meditating, which he did in caves and at the Shaolin monastery where he is also said to have started Kung Fu as a set of physical exercises for the monks there.  Shaolin is known today to have been a Daoist god who became a Buddhist goddess, and it could be that Kung Fu is derived from earlier Daoist Tai Chi exercises, which may have been influenced by Indian yogic postures.

After Bodhidharma, Hui Neng (638 - 713 CE), the sixth patriarch, is the most revered in the tradition.  He was an illiterate wood cutter from Canton who became enlightened on hearing a passage from the Diamond sutra and decided to join a monastery.  Hongren, the fifth patriarch and master of the monastery told him that he was a southern barbarian, and could not expect to achieve buddhahood.  Hui Neng replied that north and south make no difference with regard to buddha-nature, and the master accepted him.  Hui Neng was ridiculed by other monks, but he continued to practice and achieve understanding.  When the time came for Hongren to appoint a successor, he asked that monks write a verse to show what understanding of Zen they had achieved.  The head monk, who was expected to become the successor, wrote:

The body is the Bodhi Tree

The mind is a clear mirror on a stand

Take care to wipe it continuously

Never letting dust cling

Late at night, Hui Neng had a boy read the verse to him and write the following reply:

There is no Bodhi Tree

Nor is there a stand with a mirror

All things are originally empty

Where can the dust cling?

According to the tradition, Hongren gave the lineage to Hui Neng, who went on to found the Southern School, the school that survived to become the tradition today.  Modern scholarship has revealed that Hui Neng founded the school, but he may never have known Hongren.  Hui Neng is said to have taught:

No permanence, no impermanence

No arrival, no departure

No exterior, no interior

No origination, no extinction

Another famous even in Hui Neng’s story that is found as a koan for study in The Gateless Gate:

Two monks were arguing about a flag as Hui Neng was passing by.  One monk was argued that the flag was moving, while the other argued that the wind was moving.

Hui Neng replied, “It is your minds that are moving.”

Koans of The Gateless Gate

The Gateless Gate (Mumonkan in Japanese) was compiled by Wumen in 1228 for teaching at a monastic retreat.  He claims that the collection, including the title, were thrown together without much thought.  Along with The Blue Cliff Record, it is the most popular collection of koans in the tradition for hundreds of years.  It contains many of the central moments of Zen.

A monk asked Joshu, “Does a dog have Buddha-nature or not?”

Joshu replied, “Not” (mu, ‘empty’ or ‘non-being’)

Gutei raised one finger whenever asked about Zen.  A boy began imitating him, and when anyone would ask him about Gutei’s teaching he would raise one finger.  Gutei saw him doing this, and cut off the boy’s finger.  As the boy ran off screaming, Gutei called out to him.  When the boy turned around, Gutei raised one finger, and the boy was enlightened.

Kyogen said, “Zen is like a man hanging in a tree by his teeth, asked ‘Why did Bodhidharma come to China from India?’  If the man does not answer, he fails, and if he does answer, he falls and loses his life.  Now what shall he do?”

Joshu went to see a monk and asked him, “What is, is what?”  The monk raised his fist.

Joshu replied, “Ships cannot remain where the water is too shallow” and left.

A few days later Joshu returned and asked him the same question.  The monk raised a fist.

Joshu said, “Well given, well taken, well killed, well saved” and bowed to the monk.

Zuigan would say to himself every day, “Master”, and answer, “Yes, sir””

“Become Sober”, “Yes Sir”, “And do not be deceived by others”, “Yes, sir.  Yes sir.”

When Joshu was still studying with Nansen (Nanquan), Nansen saw the monks of the eastern and western halls fighting over a cat.  

He took the cat and said, “If any of you can say a turning word, you can save the cat.”

No one answered, and Nansen cut the cat in two.  Later Joshu returned to the monastery and Nansen told him about it.  Joshu removed his sandals, placed them on his head, and walked out.

Nansen said, “If he had only been here, he could have saved the cat.”

Hyakujo decided to test the assembly and put a water vase on the ground.

He asked, “Who can say what this is without calling its name?”

The chief monk said, “No one can call it a wooden shoe.”

Isan, the cook, kicked over the vase and walked out.

Hyakujo smiled and said, “The chief monk loses.”

A monk asked Kembo, “All Buddhas of the universe enter by one road.  Where is it?”

Kembo drew the number one in the air and replied, “Here it is.”

The monk went to Ummon and asked the same question.  Ummon said, “This fan will reach to the 33rd heaven and hit the nose of the presiding deity there.”

Koans from The Blue Cliff Record

The Blue Cliff Record was compiled in the Song Dynasty in 1125 CE.  It is the second most popular koan collection after The Gateless Gate, containing 100 koans, 82 of which were taken from the earlier koan collection, The Transmission of the Lamp.  It has extensive commentaries written by generation after generation of Zen roshi (masters).  The commentary is always amusing, as whenever someone seems to win, the commentary calls him the loser, as if to keep the student from ever settling down in conceptions.

Joshu said to the assembly, “The ultimate way is without difficulty.  Just avoid picking and choosing.  As soon as there are words spoken, ‘this is picking and choosing’, ‘this is clarity’.  This old monk does not abide in clarity.  Do you still preserve anything or not?”

A monk asked, “Since you do not abide within clarity, what do you preserve?”

Joshu replied, “I don’t know either.”

The monk asked, “Since you don’t know, why do you say that you do not abide in clarity?”

Joshu said, “It is enough to ask about the matter.  Bow and withdraw.”

A monk asked, “What is the meaning of the patriarch coming from the West?”

Hsiang Lin said, “Sitting for a long time becomes tiresome.”

The hermit of Lotus Flower Peak held up his staff before the assembly and said, “When the ancients got here, why didn’t they agree to stay here?”

No one answered, so he replied, “Because they gained no strength on the path.”

He then asked, “In the end, how is it?”

No one answered, so he replied, “With my staff accross my shoulders, I pay no heed to people.  I go straight into the endless mountains.”

A monk asked, “The many things return to the one.  Where does the one return to?”

Joshu said, When I was in the state of Chou, I made a hempen shirt.  It weighed 7 pounds.”

The Recorded Sayings of Zen Master Joshu

Zhaozhou (778 - 897 CE), Joshu in Japanese, is my favorite Zen master of ancient China and the koan tradition.  He trained with Nanquan (709 - 788 CE), and both appear in prominent positions in the Gateless Gate and Blue Cliff Record koan collections.  The famous koan about Nanquan killing the cat with Joshu walking out was one of the most discussed koans in monasteries of China and Japan.  In the Gateless Gate, Joshu’s famous koan about the dog’s buddha nature is the first koan of the collection and he is featured in five of the 48 of the collection.  Joshu’s koan about “not picking and choosing” is the second case of the Blue Cliff Record.  He is not in the official line from patriarch to patriarch, but he is one of the most famous Zen masters of the tradition in spite of this.

Joshu is a trickster, and it is debated whether he was inspired by Daoist sages.  Many of his koan cases sound like jokes.  In two he seems to say sexually suggestive things to nuns.  He sometimes bursts out laughing as his final response to monk’s questions.  His koan collection is by far one of the most entertaining to read.

A monk asked, “What is the Buddha’s true experience of reality?”

The master said, “Is there anything else you don’t like?”

A monk asked, “What is Joshu’s master?”

The master shouted, “You hooped barrel!”

The monk answered, “Yes?”

The master said, “Well done, hooped barrel.”

A monk asked, “What is an imbecile?”

The master said, “I’m not as good as you.”

The monk said, “I’m not trying to be anything.”

The master said, “Why are you being an imbecile?”

A monk asked, “How can you not lead the multitudes of the world astray?”

The master stuck out his foot.  

The monk took off one of the master’s sandals.  

The master brought back his foot.  

The monk could say nothing more.

A monk asked, “What is that which is spiritual?”

The master said, “A puddle of piss in the Pure Land.”

The monk said, “I ask you to reveal it to me.”

The master said, “Don’t tempt me.”

A monk asked, “‘The Great Way has no root’, how can it be expressed?”

The master said, “You just expressed it.”

The monk said, “What about ‘no root’?”

The master said, “There is no root.  Where is it that you are being bound up?”

A monk asked, “The solitary moon is in the sky.  From where does its light emanate?”

The master said, “From where does the moon emanate?”

The master said, “I can make one blade of grass a sixteen foot golden Buddha, and I can make a sixteen foot gold Buddha into one blade of grass.  Buddha is compulsive passions.  Compulsive passions are Buddha.”

A monk asked, “For the sake of whom does Buddha become compulsive passions?”

The master said, “For the sake of all people Buddha becomes compulsive passions.”

The monk asked, “How can they be escaped?”

The master said, “What’s the use of escaping?”

A monk asked, “What about it when the three-pronged sword has not yet fallen?”

The master said, “Densely packed together.”

The monk asked, “What about after it has fallen?”

The master said, “Wide open spaces.”

A monk asked, “What is the fact that I accept responsibility for?”

The master said, “To the ends of time you’ll never single it out.”

A monk asked, “I have just come here and know nothing.  What are my duties?”

The master said, “What is your name?”

The monk said, “Hui-han.”

The master said, “A fine ‘knowing nothing’ that is.”

A monk asked, “It’s not yet clear to me, who is the patriarch of this land?”

The master said, “Bodhidharma has come, so here we are all patriarchs.”

The monk said, “What number generation are you?” (What position in the Zen lineage?)

The master said, “I do not fall into any position.”

The monk said, “Where are you?”

The master said, “Inside your ears.”

Doctor Ts’ui asked, “Does an accomplished person go to hell or not?”

The master said, “I entered at the head of the line.”

The doctor asked, “You are an accomplished person.  Why do you go to hell?”

The master said, “If I had not gone, how could I have met you?”

A monk asked, “The second patriarch cut off his arm, what sort of act is that?”

The master said, “He was throwing his whole self into it.”

A monk asked, “What is the perfect question?”

The master said, “Wrong!”

A monk asked, “What are honest words?”

The master said, “Your mother is ugly.”

A monk asked, “Two mirrors are facing each other.  Which is the clearest?”

The master said, “Your eyelids hang over Mount Sumaru.”

A monk said, “I don’t have a special question.  Please don’t give a special reply.”

The master said, “How extraordinary.”

A monk asked, “What is the unending depth of the deep?”

The master said, “Your questioning me is the unending depth of the deep.”

Hoju asked Koteiko, “Aren’t you Koteiko?”

Koteiko said, “You’re too kind.”

Hoju asked, “Can you nail up the sky or not?”

Koteiko said, “Please try to nail up the sky.”

Hoju slapped him and said, “After this some jabbering scholar will explain this for you.”

Koteiko told the master about this.  The master said, “Why did you make him hit you?”

The master and an official were walking the the garden and saw a rabbit run away.

The official said, “You are a great and accomplished person.  Why did the rabbit run away?”

The master said, “Because I like to kill.”

The master found the two sages Kanzan and Jittoju on Mount T’ien-tai.

The master said, “For a long time I have heard about Kanzan and Jittoju, but having come here I just see two water buffalo.”

The sages put their fingers on their heads like horns.

The master said, “Shoo!  Shoo!”

The sages gnashed their teeth and glared at each other.

When asked about this later, the master laughed heartily.

The master came to Po-chang’s monastery.  Po-chang asked, “Where have you come from?”

The master said, “From Nansen.”

Po-chang asked, “What has Nansen been saying to instruct people?”

The master said, “One time he said, ‘One with no attainment should be strict and solemn.”

Po-chang scoffed at this, and the master looked startled.

Po-chang said, “That’s a fine ‘strict and solemn.”

The master did a little dance and left.

Tales from Zen Flesh, Zen Bones

This book, compiled by Paul Reps, was one of the first I encountered in grade school.  After reading some of these stories, I knew that there was something extraordinary in Zen.  He has collected some of the most striking stories from over 700 years of the tradition.

An old woman in China had supported a monk in a hut in her yard for over twenty years.  She decided to test his progress.  She told a young girl to embrace and caress him.  When she did, the monk replied, “An old tree grows on a cold rock in winter.  Nowhere is there any warmth.”  When she heard this, the woman was outraged that, while he had done nothing passionate, he had done nothing compassionate towards the girl either, and she promptly burned down the hut.

Notice that an old woman trumps a monk in this story, and that if there is no warmth anywhere then the monk must not mind if his hut is on fire.

Two monks were traveling in the rain down a muddy town road.  Around a bend, they found a beautiful girl in a kimono unable to cross.  One offered his help, picked her up and carried her over the mud.  After the monks had reached an inn later, the second turned to him and scolded him for dangerously becoming involved with the girl, and the first replied, “I left the girl back there.  Why are you still carrying her with you?”

Mokusen was approached by a villager who was upset with the stinginess of his wife.  Mokusen visited her, clenched his hand in a fist and asked her, “What if my hand were always like that?”  She replied that it would be deformed.  Then he stretched out his open hand and asked the same question again, and she replied again that it would be deformed.  Mokusen nodded and left.

One night Shichiri was meditating when a thief broke in and demanded money.  Shichiri replied that the money was in the drawer and he was not to be disturbed.  As the thief was taking the money, Shichiri asked that some be left, as he had taxes to pay.  As the thief went to leave, Shichiri added that he should be thanked for the gift.  Later, after the thief was caught, Shichiri told the officials, “This man is no thief.  I gave him the money and he thanked me.”  After getting out of prison, the thief became Shichiri’s student.

A samurai came to Hakuin and asked whether there was in fact a heaven or a hell.  Hakuin replied that the man was as ugly as a beggar, and when the soldier raised his sword to kill Hakuin, Hakuin said, “Here open the gates of hell.”  The samurai understood, and put his sword away.  Hakuin said, “Here open the gates of paradise.”

Hogen was visited by traveling monks who were arguing about subjectivity and objectivity.  He asked them about a large stone in the yard, and whether it was inside or outside the mind.  One said that from a Buddhist viewpoint the stone was inside the mind.  Hogen replied that his head must be very heavy to carry around a stone like that around in his mind.

Sengai was asked to write calligraphy for the prosperity of a rich man’s family.  On a large sheet of paper, he wrote, “Father dies, son dies, grandson dies.”  The rich man became angry, but Sengai explained that if each generation passes away in the proper order, it would be the happiest course for the entire family.

Basho, Master of Haiku

Basho (1644 - 1694 CE) was not a Zen monk, but he did practice Zen meditation and Zen influenced his haiku poetry.  He is revered as the greatest haiku master, and many of his poems reflect the natural simplicity of the Japanese Zen tradition.  His most famous poem, the first below, reflects this well, as well as the others that follow.

The old pond

A frog jumps in

The splash of the water

In the morning dew

Dirtied, cool

A muddy melon

A day when Mount Fuji

Is obscured by rain

How interesting

The glory of the dawn

This too cannot be

my friend

Let my name

Be traveler

First rains

You are the butterfly

And I the dreaming heart

Of Zhuangzi

Greek Philosophy: Anaxagoras & Empedocles

ANAXAGORAS

Anaxagoras (500 - 428 BCE), who is neither Anaximander nor Anaximenes, no matter how frustratingly close their names are to each other, was born in Clazomenae, another of the ancient Ionian city states in what is today Turkey that rebelled against Persia together with the help of Athens.  Anaxagoras may have fought on the side of the Persians, against the independence of Ionia.  Many Greeks did, both those loyal and connected to the Persian empire and those who were merely paid as mercenaries.  After Anaxagoras’ considerable property was destroyed, sources say he gave up on possessions and turned to seeking knowledge and wisdom.  Anaxagoras is said to have been the first to bring philosophy to Athens, where he arrived in 465 BCE.  Athens was becoming the wealthy center of Greek culture, which is how they were able to support the rebellion of Ionia at the time.  It would have been in Athen’s interests to dominate Greek trade and not give a cut to Persia.  Anaxagoras taught Pericles, the famed Athenian general, and was admired by Euripides, the Athenian poet and playwright.  Anaxagoras stayed in Athens for thirty years before returning to Ionia.

Many scholars today note the similarities between Anaximenes and Anaxagoras, suggesting that Anaxagoras, like other Anaxa-whoevers we have studied, is continuing in the Ionian tradition.  Agreeing with Anaximenes but disagreeing, Anaxagoras thought the earth was flat and a strong current of air supports it, and disturbances in the air under the earth cause earthquakes.  Like Thales, Anaxagoras believed that plants have minds/souls and purpose.

Like Pythagoras and Parmenides, Anaxagoras believed that male children are born from the right side of the uterus, and females from the left.  He also theorized further that male children come from the sperm of the right testicle, and females from the left, which is why they attach to either side of the uterus.  Thus, “I would give my right testicle”, would mean, “I would give my unborn sons”.

Anaxagoras did cosmology, explaining meteorites and eclipses.  Plutarch says that Anaxagoras predicted the fall of a meteorite in 467 BCE, by ancient standards proof of his cosmological views but by modern standards impossible.  He argued that the sun was a mass of heated metal, like that worked by a blacksmith.  He said the Moon reflects the light of the sun (correct), that the moon has mountains (correct) and that they were inhabited (incorrect as far as we know).  The sun and stars are masses of stone kicked off from the earth, ablaze by rapid rotation, in line with the Pythagorean account of the cosmos for the stars but not for the Sun.

Strangely, Anaxagoras also argued that egg whites are bird’s milk.

Like Socrates, he was charged with impiety, with irreverence to the gods for these explanations (of the Sun and Moon, not bird’s milk).  Athens was not as accepting of a place as Ionia for cosmological speculation, as Anaxagoras discovered.  Saying that the Sun was a rock on fire was apparently acceptable in Ionia but heresy in Athens.

In Plato’s Apology, Plato’s account of Socrates’ trial which we will study soon, Socrates is asked by the prosecution whether or not he thinks the Sun is stone and Moon is earth, and Socrates responds by wondering if he is being confused with Anaxagoras.  Socrates says that neither the jury nor his young students are stupid enough to believe that he would hold such absurd views.  Clearly, the Athenian assembly has Anaxagoras’ impiety in mind as they prosecute Socrates for the same crime, and Socrates is aware of this and distances himself from Anaxagoras.  Socrates was not concerned with cosmology, arguing instead about ethics and our ability to acquire knowledge and wisdom.

Anaxagoras was put on trial in Athens.  According to some sources, Pericles spoke in his defense, but Anaxagoras was still sentenced to death, after which Pericles helped him to flee to Lampsacus in Northern Ionia.  According to others, Pericles sent Anaxagoras to Lampsacus before he could be put on trial as Pericles was himself losing favor in Athens.  Either way, Anaxagoras left Athens with the help of Pericles for Lampsacus to continue his work until his death there less than ten years later.

Only fragments of his philosophical work survive (sound familiar?).  Diogenes Laertius, who we hear from constantly, said that Anaxagoras composed one short work which could be purchased for one drachma.  Socrates in Plato’s Apology says that the youth would not come to him for answers if he held the foolish views of Anaxagoras, as they could purchase these ideas for a single drachma at the market.

According to Anaxagoras, the cosmos has always existed, but originally it consisted of tiny fragments of elements mixed up.  Even as everything separated, each thing contained traces of everything else, which is how transformation is possible.  Anaxagoras wrote that “All things are in everything”.  Originally, everything was a homogenous mass, and out of this things developed into what they are while still containing traces of every other thing.  Anaxagoras noted that if food becomes various parts of animals and humans, becomes skin and bone and hair and muscle, food (as well as matter in general) must already be these other things.  There were seeds of things (spermata, a strange yet familiar term), of humans, animals, and plants, but these were undeveloped, intermixed into everything before they separated and developed.

This is Anaxagoras’ response to the Eleatic challenge.  Being always was, as Parmenides argues, but the differentiation of things is not an illusion but a slow transformation that does not categorically or entirely remove any particular thing from any other thing.  Anaxagoras would agree with Parmenides that fire is one and the same as everything that is not fire, and that fire as a component of being always was and always will be, but Anaxagoras argues that fire is relatively distinct from everything that is not fire.  Fire became more distinguished, but all things contain fire and fire contains the seeds and components of all things.  Through the process, fire became much more fiery than everything else, which remained far less fiery.

Anaxagoras here seems like Melissus in negotiating with Parmenides’ Eleatic challenge.  While Anaxagoras disagrees that distinction is an absolute illusion, distinction is a relative illusion insofar as we perceive fire as simply not water and water as simply not fire.  Fire is water, but much more so fire, and water is fire, but much more so water.  Being is one and the same thing without a particular character in that it has all character, just as Melissus argues to make sense of Parmenides, but particular beings are relatively what they are and relatively not what they are opposed to.  Difference is an illusion, but only relatively, as all things are relatively different, not completely different.

Anaxagoras said that the cosmos is ordered by mind, ‘nous’ in the Greek.  It is mind that separated the like from the unlike, the similar from the different.  Mind was pure and independent, strikingly like God above the chaotic waters in the book of Genesis.  Anaxagoras noted that mind clearly rules animals and humans, the higher and more developed forms of life.  Mind is in some things, such as plants and bears and humans, but not in others while it still directs the process of all things, including rocks and sand.  Anaxagoras uses the metaphor of human beings, who carry inanimate objects such as honey and milk, and lead the lower animals such as cows in the direction we wish them to go.  Likewise, the cosmic mind moves the inanimate and leads the animate through the cycles of things.  Mind is alone, by itself, ‘self-ruled’.  Like Xenophanes, it does not seem to be affected by things but knows all things and moves all things.

Plato was influenced by both Heraclitus’ Logos and Anaxagoras’ Nous.  While Heraclitus already implied that the cosmic fire was a great mind that speaks order downwards, Anaxagoras explicitly refers to the highest ruling component of the cosmos as the element ‘mind’.  This is identical to the Indian philosopher and logician Kanada of the orthodox Hindu Vaisheshika school, who considered both mind and void to be basic elements of the universe.

Mind rotated the chaotic mixture, just as the sun and celestial bodies move in circles and the processes of life and the elements work in cycles on earth.  Things gradually were separated out into what they are today, not sharply or immediately divided.  This follows Anaximenes in condensation and dissipation as basic dynamic of the elements.

First were separated the cold mist from the warm aether, a primal cold mixture of water and earth from a hot mixture of air and fire.  The cold further separated into water, earth and stone, and the hot and seeds of things mixed into the earth, producing warm clay, in which spawned first plants, and then animals and humans.  While Anaxagoras was not an atomist, his theory paved the way for later atomists’ theories and the passage of philosophy from Ionia to Athens.

Anaxagoras criticised Empedocles for saying there were four root substances of fire, water, earth and air.  Anaxagoras argued that skin and hair are just as real and basic as fire and water, and there are no root substances other than matter itself.  While skin and hair do have fire and water in them, or at least the seeds and components of fire and water, so also do fire and water have the root components of skin and hair within themselves.  Anaxagoras says that things are not “split apart with an axe”, are not categorically and totally separate from each other.  He specifically states that hot is not split from cold with an axe, like Heraclitus saying that even opposing elements are one and the same and only relatively, not categorically, distinct.  Against Empedocles, Anaxagoras argued that there are no primary and secondary substances, as being is the only primary thing and all other substances are equally secondary to it.

Some scholars today dispute how different the two are, as Anaxagoras in some ways seems to posit relatively primary substances that emerged earlier in the slow separation of many beings out of the whole.  Anaxagoras says that air and aether dominated at first, the largest elements in size, became relatively distinct first as part of the process, but he is not saying that aether is the primary element.  Rather, it is the first element that emerged from the whole to be what it is now.

Anaxagoras, unlike Parmenides but somewhat like Zeno, says that things are infinitely divisible.  He considers a grain of rice, which he believes has the components of hair and muscle within it.  There is no limit to cutting the grain into pieces, just as there is no limit to matter separating out into various substances.  While Zeno found this to be a paradox, Anaxagoras states the infinite regress as a matter of fact.  The atomists we will study soon disagree with Anaxagoras, and argue that atoms are indivisible and there is no infinite regress of divisibility in answer to Zeno.

There remains, however, a problem for Anaxagoras’ view.  How can uniform being separate into many substances that are more so themselves?  What is the motor or motive of the differentiation if being is originally uniform?  Anaxagoras adds mind as an additional force guiding the process, designing the differences between things and their relationships to each other.

We still today use the expression ‘deus ex machina’, the god/spirit in the machine/design.  The expression is usually used as a criticism of adding in additional elements as an afterthought to close holes in an argument or plot holes in a story.  While Anaxagoras makes mind the highest thing, it is separated from the physical processes, which the Athenians found to be impious.  The gods are involved with things, not simply the detached highest characterless thing.

The Roman Horace brings us the Latin phrase, saying that Greek actors portraying gods in the tragedies were lowered onto the stage when required.  Today, in argument, ‘God did it’ or ‘People know that’ or ‘Science says’, any mental presence that simply enters the picture to explain all too simply (Pyramids? Aliens!) can be criticized as employing a ‘deus ex machina’.

Aristotle argued against Anaxagoras, saying he put mind in as a final thought to start the whole thing, just as the French philosopher Descartes did to give consciousness and freedom to human beings.  Descartes, like Anaxagoras, said that mind/soul determines the physical but is separate and above, which is why humans have free will.  This creates a duality of mind and body for which both Anaxagoras and Descartes were criticized.  This is still an issue for philosophy today.  What is the relationship of mind to body?  The American (Berkeley) philosopher John Searle believes saying “there is no problem” solves the problem, but this is hardly satisfying.  The British philosopher and early computer scientist Alan Turing argued that machines can be said to understand things (with the famous example that a light switch understands only ‘on’ and ‘off’), so if a robot can behave like a person we may treat it like a person, but this seems equally problematic.  While Searle and Turing attempted to get rid of the hard dualism of Anaxagoras and Descartes, the opposite attempt at simple identity of mind and body leaves problems we are still dealing with.

Fans of Japanese animation know that Ghost in the Shell is one of the original two great Anime classics, concerned with the existence of mind as all becomes cybernetic and genetically modified.  Anaxagoras and Turing remain the two poles we are faced with as we encounter more complex forms of bioengineering and artificial intelligence.

Euripides, great admirer and possible student of Anaxagoras, was ridiculed by his critics for often employing the device of god-lowering crane, particularly to end a play with a quick resolution.  Characters, often women who tragically accept their fate, are taken away by a god to safety.  Aristophanes, another famed playwright, mocked Euripides by making Euripides himself a character in one of Aristophanes’ plays and lowering him into scene on a crane.

Aristotle criticized Euripides for overusing the device, and said that plots should resolve due to their internal elements and not by an external element in the end.  This parallels his criticism of Anaxagoras, who Aristotle says places a pure mind atop the whole to explain it without giving an account in terms of the elements themselves.  Aristotle believes in a living and teleological universe, but mind and purpose are physically involved in the process, not separate above.  Aristotle criticized Anaxagoras for bringing mind into the picture as the driving force, but then failing to adequately describe what purposes are driving to what ends.  In a sense, Anaxagoras is saying that things developed because, “Mind has a plan”, and Aristotle replies, “Yes, but what is the plan, man?”.  Aristotle’s work in physics is primarily an attempt to work out the teleological forces and purposes at work in the cosmos, as things work towards their final ends.

Anaxagoras’ work drove both materialism and teleology forward, paradoxically.  He accounted for the world in largely elemental processes, like the earlier Ionians, but also left a mind in charge without filling in the details, which Plato, Aristotle and other thinkers were happy to supply.  In Plato’s dialogue The Phaedo, Socrates says that he was joyful on hearing Anaxagoras at first, but then found that Anaxagoras did not make much use of mind in his system at all.

EMPEDOCLES

Empedocles (490 - 430 BCE) was from Agrigentum, a Greek colony in what is today the Italian Island of Sicily.  As Italy looks like a boot, Sicily looks like a triangular rock being kicked into the Mediterranean by the toe of the boot.  Both Empedocles’ father and Empedocles worked to overthrow the government of Agrigentum, which had grown abusive.  Empedocles was said to have been a champion of the poor and an enemy of the oligarchs, the powerful who dominated politics.  Like Heraclitus, he is said to have been offered the throne, and refused.

He was said to have visited Athens, as well as Babylon and Persia seeking knowledge.  His oratory skill was said to be unsurpassed.  Aristotle called him the father of rhetoric.  He had Pythagorean friends, and believed in reincarnation.  He was also said to be able to cure diseases, as well as control storms like a wizard.

Empedocles had a fantastic death.  While some sources say he ascended into the heavens, others say he threw himself into a volcano, specifically Mount Etna in Sicily, to demonstrate that he had become godlike.  Perhaps Empedocles was trying to out deus-ex-machina Anaxagoras.  Diogenes Laertius says that Empedocles wanted to prove to the people of Agrigentum that he was a god or would be reborn a god, but the volcano spit back up one of his bronze sandals (I’d like to think with a burp) to show that Empedocles had been mortal and now was no more.  Diogenes Laertius was clearly not a fan of Empedocles or his philosophy.

A contemporary of Anaxagoras, Empedocles responds both to him and the Eleatic challenge of Parmenides.  More of his work survives than any other pre-Socratic philosopher.  He was the last Greek philosopher to record his philosophy in verse, as poetry rather than prose, although Plato would continue to make art, namely theater, the medium of his own work.  Empedocles seems familiar with the philosophical verses of both Xenophanes and Parmenides.

Empedocles wrote a poem, On Nature an overused title by this point. (If I had a dollar for every ancient Greek Philosopher who wrote a work called either ‘Nature’ or ‘On Nature’, I’d have at least six bucks by now).  Today we only have some of the first part of the work, called Purifications.  In the very beginning, Empedocles says that he is no longer mortal but now immortal and walks among mortals as a god, praised and decked with flower garlands wherever he goes, curing diseases and raising the dead.

Empedocles is said to have believed that the souls of all things (before inhabiting all things, as Thales originally said) were in a state of bliss before committing an unnamed crime and falling from grace into the mortal bodies of plants, animals and humans.  Through morality and living a good life, we can become gods again, as Empedocles may have believed he had achieved.  This sounds strangely like Scientology today.  Perhaps Empedocles threw himself into the volcano searching for his fellow Thetans.

Empedocles argues that the four elements fire, air, earth and water are the roots of all matter.  They are unborn and undying.  Empedocles identified fire with Zeus, air with Hera (wife and sister of Zeus, goddess of women, marriage and getting pissed at Zeus for cheating on her repeatedly), water with Persephone (who Empedocles calls Nestis, daughter of Zeus, queen of the underworld and goddess of vegetation and springtime), and earth with Hades (who Empedocles calls Aidoneus, king of the underworld).  This would be quite orthodox along Homeric lines, except that for Hesiod it was Poseidon who was king of the water, and Zeus was king of the air, not fire.  Hesiod does hold that Hades is lord of earth.  According to Hesiod, the three joined forces to defeat the titans and take over the cosmos.

Empedocles, in a Pythagorean gendering that departs from Hesiod, has fire upper male, air upper female, earth lower male, and water lower female, an opposed pair of kings and queens.  Empedocles, unlike Anaxagoras, identifies the elements with traditional gods even as he departs from the tradition.  Also, like earlier philosophers but unlike Hesiod, the gods are unborn as well as undying.  Like Heraclitus, Empedocles places fire as king on top.

Other than they are four, they are the one infinite of Parmenides, mixed together in various proportions to become particular beings we see.  This, like Anaxagoras, is on the way towards atomism while still conceiving of the elements as continuous wholes rather than particles.  Anaxagoras, as mentioned, criticised Empedocles, saying that hair and skin are just as basic and real as water and fire, as all substances are equally derivative of being.

Fire, air, earth and water are called the ‘four classical substances’ today, accepted by Plato and Aristotle, and with them the physics of European Christians and Middle Eastern Muslims.  While the earlier Ionians were debating about these four, Empedocles is the first to say that all four are equally primary, even as fire is on top.  For thousands of years, much of the world followed this formula.  It was only in 1772 when the Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele was attempting to experimentally prove Empedocles right that he accidentally isolated and discovered oxygen, which he called ‘fire air’.

For Empedocles, love and strife are the two forces that order the cosmos, the love and strife of the gods who are the elements.  Heraclitus has already said that war and strife are the “father of all things”, but he also believes that opposites are one and the same, so Empedocles is not far from Heraclitus’ position.  Heraclitus also, like Anaximander, sees emotion and injustice in the process of the elements.

Like Pythagoras, Empedocles argued that the universe was a sphere of spheres.  Like Anaxagoras, he also said that in the beginning the elements were unmixed and the cosmos was a uniform sphere.  Love and strife were in balance, with love holding the sphere together at the center and strife holding the boundaries apart from the nothing or chaos that was outside.  Then strife gained in influence, not enough to disintegrate the sphere but enough to cause the initial separation of the four elements and then the mixture and stratification of the elements that became the many levels of mortal beings.  As the cosmos works in cycles, love will again gain the upper hand and unite all things back into the original pure unmixed state, which will then again be mixed into a diverse universe by strife in the next round of the cosmic cycle.  This is quite similar to the previously mentioned kalpa system of ancient Indian thought.

As the world mixed and stratified, Empedocles said that there were cases of human arms and heads unjoined to bodies, and monsters of various sorts, part animal and part human.  Like Anaximenes, Anaxagoras, and like Plato who borrows from both as well as Empedocles, the form of the human is pre-designed and latent, waiting for the cosmos to figure itself out such that it can emerge.  The historian Herodotus believed that there were dog-headed people and cyclops living in parts of India, explaining the various monsters encountered by Odysseus on his odyssey.  Empedocles’ physics explains the homeric monsters of the traditional mythology.

Empedocles argues that human beings were formed from pre-human dual beings of both genders, much as the gods and goddesses were undifferentiated in the pure unmixed sphere.  In Plato’s dialogue The Symposium, we will read that Aristophanes, the playwright as a character of Plato’s play, the same who lowered his own Euripides as a character into scene to mock the overuse of deus ex machina, argues that love feels like completion because early in the cosmos human beings were joined in pairs before being separated by Zeus, which is why heterosexual men and women find completion in each other and gay and lesbian people find completion in each other.  This follows Empedocles’ theory, as love is integration of what was originally united but later separated, while further attempting to explain homosexuality.  

Buddhist thought also endorses the idea that all binding together in union is love, and all separation into division is hate, as our minds are the cosmos.  To this day, psychology is still puzzling over the relationship between emotion and the basic cognitive acts of association and disassociation.  It may seem odd to say that emotion may be at the root of doing all thinking and conceptualization, even supposedly ‘objective’ hard mathematics and physics, but consider that association (cuddling up to the familiar) and disassociation (Ahhh!  Get it away from me!) dominate the animal mind and emotions were basic to the mammalian mind long before humanity evolved our complex problem solving minds.

For Empedocles, like the Pythagoreans, souls reincarnate, and plants, animals and humans are linked in chains of life.  For this reason, Empedocles promoted vegetarianism.  Wicked people become animals (so, maybe we SHOULD eat them?) and good people become divine, much as Empedocles believed he had before hurling himself into the volcano.  According to sources, Empedocles said that he had once been a daimon, a divine spirit, much like the daimon that Socrates told others he spoke to when philosophizing.  As Christianity spread into ancient Greece, the traditional spirits were seen as evil, and so ‘daimon’ became the root of ‘demon’.

Empedocles said that because he had eaten meat for decades in a previous life, he had been banished to the animal kingdom, but as Empedocles he was about to become immortal in the next life, having made up for his sins.  If so, he believed that he would be reborn a god after emerging from the volcano.  One Roman source says that Empedocles was reborn from the volcano, was shot into the heavens and now lives on the moon, subsisting on dew.  If true, this would confirm the theory of Anaxagoras that the moon is inhabited.

Similarly, Empedocles was a critic of animal sacrifice to the gods, which he believed was human sacrifice.  He argued that in the glorious past, before the strife of his own day, people were wiser and gave the gods offerings of honey and grain, knowing well that reincarnation would bring terrible rebirths on those ignorant of reincarnation.

Empedocles argued that a warm uterus produces a male child, and a cool uterus produces a female.  This explains why males are larger, darker in skin and harrier.  The connections here remain unclear.

Empedocles argued that light emerges from our eyes, presumably from the fire of the mind by which we imagine and conceptualize, and that this touches things and allows us to see them.  For thousands of years, many bought this until Avicenna, the Islamic philosopher and doctor, demonstrated that light comes into the eye but not out of the eye around 1000 BCE.  Avicenna questioned Empedocles’ theory, speculating that if it were correct, then we should be able to see things in the dark.

Empedocles argued that we can learn about things through perception, but we can only see one side of things at a time.  With thought, we can put together the various sides of things to ‘see’ them as they fully are.  Much as Heraclitus says about wisdom, which sees beyond the divisions of things by experts, Empedocles says it is the job of philosophy to integrate things into wholes, rather than merely carve them into parts.  This corresponds to his cosmology, as everyone can see the differences between the four elements but only the philosopher can speculate about their origin and union.

Recently, the French philosopher Badiou has argued a similar position, that the task of philosophy is to metacritique systems of thought and culture by integrating what is often disassociated.  For example, seeing science as political, asking where the money comes from or who in our society benefits from the funding, is the job of a philosopher of science, not a scientist.  This is because the philosopher sees beyond the merely scientific and the merely political to ask questions about how the two are interrelated.  While philosophy in medieval Europe was called the “queen of the sciences”, the most important science for understanding the others, most science majors today graduate without ever taking a history of science class or a philosophy of science class in addition to their science classes.  This is good insofar as the biologist should concentrate on frog DNA rather than worrying about politics or finding new donors, but bad insofar as the members of the system are cogs in a machine that does not ask much critical oversight from them.

Richard Dawkins, the scientist, author and prominent New Atheist, has argued recently that because science is quite accomplished today, we no longer need philosophy.  I side very much with Badiou, noting that for decades far more has been spent on weapons than on hunger.  Consider that Einstein and Oppenheimer created nuclear weapons for the American military, believing them to be so horrible that they would never be used.  After America used them on Japan, Einstein and Oppenheimer became two of the most prominent critics of nuclear weapons.  While science is excellent at supplying us with knowledge and technology, Heraclitus says that wisdom is the act of the mind that unifies all things, just as Empedocles says it is philosophy, the love of wisdom, which gives us the greater conceptions, the farthest views, the greater similarities and unities of things beyond their differences and distinctions.