Review of ‘Dependent Co-Arising: The Distinctiveness of Buddhist Ethics’
In her 1979 ‘Dependent Co-Arising: The Distinctiveness of Buddhist Ethics’ paper Joanna Macy posits that the metaphysical vision of a non-autonomous self, contingent world, and transient phenomena in a casual web of dependent co-arising (paṭicca samuppāda) is what uniquely grounds Buddhist values and morality.
Macy’s key arguments
Macy refers to (1) the centrality, in the Pāli Canon, of wisdom (paññā) in perceiving the co-arising nature of things where at times it is even equated with the Dhamma itself: “He who sees dependent co-arising, sees the Dhamma” (MN 28.28); (2) a metaphor from the Dīgha Nikāya of morality (sīla) and paññā as two hands washing each other; and (3) Clifford Geertz’s (1968) argument that there is an unbreakable inner connection between the way things really are and the way one ought to live.
In the metaphysical vision of paṭicca samuppāda: (1) there is no notion of a self separate from experience; (2) perception comprises mental constructs that converge with sense organs attending to sensory signals giving rise to a highly interpretative phenomenon. Macy argues this vision leads to tolerant Buddhist ethics where perception and theories are contingent and value-laden — relative constructs that bear moral responsibility.
Seeing self as a constantly reorganising aggregate (kāya) shifts the locus of continuity and responsibility away from an autonomous immutable agent. The locus shifts toward reflexive dynamics of action (karma), dependent co-arising factors of existence (nidānas) and residues of past actions that shape responses in the present (saṅkhāras). This view is distinguished from seeing karma as deterministic and saṅkhāras immutable. Karma and saṅkhāras can both can be modified by present choice and further conditioned by other factors of existence. Thus volition and choice become crucial.
To criticisms that: (1) interdependence of past action with present action weakens cause and effect; and (2) primacy of an agent making choices threatens anattā (no-self), Macy replies these do not hold if the agent is seen not as an identity but as the process of choosing.
Macy likens the interplay of kāya and karma to the inter-determination of structure and function in systems theory where the structure is a record of past functions and the source of future ones, while the function is the behaviour of structure that at the same time enables the formation of new structures. Macy refers to Karl Deutsch’s statements (1968) that the cognitive system is never wholly subject to either past or present because it is remaking itself with each present decision based on past learning and the possibility of future learning, and the discernable limit of behaviour is the stored results of decisions made freely in the past. Macy concludes: “We cannot escape the effects of our choices, because that is what we are. [...] in dependent co-arising our acts co-determine what we become” (p. 47).
Macy further asserts that dependent co-arising of the mental and physical in paṭicca samuppāda, notably in the mutual conditioning of name and form (nāma-rūpā) with consciousness (viññāṇa), engenders a distinct feature of Buddhist ethics: validation of body and nature without assigning a higher value to the mental. The application of which shows up in: (1) distrust of asceticism; (2) respect for material need; (3) regard for other forms of life; and (4) respect for the particularities of other forms of consciousness held in loving-kindness (metta), not for their underlying sameness but for their suchness (tathatā).
Macy argues that in this co-arising vision, the self cannot be abstracted from social context because it is a process formed through sensory, affective, and cognitive interactions with the world. This notion that humanness co-dependently arises with its natural and social environment shows up in the symbolic value placed on the Sangha as a model of social ideals and social teachings in the Suttas, Vinaya, and Jātaka tales.
Macy considers the genesis story in the Aggañña Sutta as “[...] the first expression of a theory of social contract in Indian political thought, and an interpretation of the caste system which presents it as evolving from human interaction, rather than expressing divine plan or genetic predestination. All this [...] arose [...] according to the law of process, which is that of dependent co-arising.” (p. 49).
Macy refers to how social, economic and political ideals and practices in Buddhist scripture expressed, for example, in the egalitarian composition of the Sangha have been well covered by past scholarship. Macy’s addition the these would be to stress their profound connection to the doctrine of paṭicca samuppāda. The liberating power of seeing self as transient, contingent and non-autonomous equally applies to societal institutions. They co-arise with human actions thus reflect human greed. As with human dynamic processes, institutions can likewise be transformed by actions. The paper ends by describing a notable example of applied paṭicca samuppāda ethics in the success of Sarvodaya Shramadana, a rural self-help program in Sri Lanka.
Commentary
Perhaps more can be said on how the metaphysical “is” of paṭicca samuppāda becomes the “ought” of Buddhist ethics?
The is-ought problem has been a key issue in Western ethical analysis since David Hume (1793, p. 597) articulated it: “[...] I am surprised to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. [...] For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, it is necessary that it should be observed and explained; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it”.
Without succumbing to interpretation using a Western lens (Ranganathan 2016) one can ask if seeing the paṭicca samuppāda directly causes changes in the kāya and karma dynamics? Is it, for example, that there is an automatic autopoietic reconfiguration of the sensorial consciousnesses aggregate following the vision or comprehension by mental consciousness of paṭicca samuppāda? And does this reconfiguration result in a recognition of what needs to be done? Is there more to it?
Lived experience perhaps shows prima facie that on many occasions seeing the situation does not automatically reveal what ought to be done. It seems that there’s more to it. Perhaps that’s why the Yogācāras hypothesised two deeper consciousnesses in addition to the five sensorial and sixth mental superficial, and interruptible. A seventh, covert “I-making” consciousness (manas) that mistakenly and ceaselessly attaches itself to the notion of an unchanging, reified self. An underlying eighth store consciousness (ālaya-vijñāna)—continuous, though still impermanent, out of which comes a sense of a changing-but-unchanging self (Shun’ei 2009, pp. 52 –55).
Perhaps there’s more to be said about a re-habituation of habitual conduct. A process the Yogācāras propose as the creation of seeds from manifest activity, production of manifest activity, and perfuming by the manifest activity of seeds already in the ālaya-vijñāna (Shun’ei 2009, pp. 91–92).
Then there’s the question about how the process for individuals percolates up to the level of institutions. Are institutions simply intersubjective saṅkhāras between individuals? Are they a sixth aggregation to be appended on Five Skandhas (Lusthaus 2002, chap. 3)? Or is that transformed individuals cause a ‘tipping point’ (Gladwell 2000) of change in institutions?
Geertz as quoted by Macy in the paper looked at the contrasting development of Islam in Indonesian and Moroccan civilisations through deep anthropological fieldwork. He found that in contrast to the West, the religious phenomena in these places are less of what to believe but more of how to believe it: “religiousness is not merely knowing the truth, or what is taken to be the truth, but embodying it, living it, giving oneself unconditionally to it” (p. 17). Further: “What sacred symbols do for those whom they are sacred is to formulate an image of the world’s construction and a program for human conduct that mere reflexes of one another (p. 106)”; and “What happens to a people generally happens also to their faith and to the symbols that form and sustain it (p. 65). Perhaps here lies pointers to processes by which transformation in individuals percolates to collective institutional change.
Macy’s dissertation for her Doctor of Philosophy in Religion (1978) provides a deeper dive into how the mainstream linear view of causality is challenged by a coherent alternative of circular or reciprocal causality articulated by the meta-discipline of general systems theory. Since then Macy has published thirteen books including a book on mutual causality in Buddhism and general systems theory (1991) and a book on the Sarvodaya self-help movement (1985) the success story of applied paṭicca samuppāda ethics in her 1979 paper. At 92 years of age, Macy continues her work presently highlighted by her offering of “The Work That Reconnects”— “a ground-breaking framework for personal and social change, as well as a powerful workshop methodology for its application”. Macy is described on her website as “a scholar of Buddhism, systems thinking and deep ecology. A respected voice in movements for peace, justice, and ecology. She interweaves scholarship with learnings from six decades of activism” (Macy n.d.).
It appears that no other than Macy herself is the supreme exemplar of how one who has a metaphysical vision of paṭicca samuppāda has one's values and morality in action grounded by it—evidenced by the last 43 years and counting of scholarship and activism she has and continues to gift the world. Perhaps the answer to Hume’s is-ought problem is not a problem of deduction but reciprocal conditioning of impetus to action. The “is” and the “ought” co-arise in actions as they are taken.
References
Escher, M.C. 1948, Drawing Hands, lithograph, M.C. Escher Foundation, viewed 23 August 2021, <https://mcescher.com/gallery/back-in-holland/#iLightbox[gallery_image_1]/32>.
Deutsch, K. 1969, ‘Towards a cybernetic model of man and society’, in Walter Buckley (ed.) Modern Systems Research for the Behavioral Scientist, Aldine Publishing Company, Chicago.
Geertz, C. 1968, Islam observed: religious development in Morocco and Indonesia, electronic book, Scribd, San Francisco.
Gladwell, M. 2000, The tipping point: how little things can make a big difference, electronic book, Scribd, San Francisco.
Hume, D. 1739, A Treatise of Human Nature, 2015 edn, electronic book, Scribd, San Francisco.
Lusthaus, D. 2002, Buddhist Phenomenology: A Philosophical Investigation of Yogācāra Buddhism and the Ch’eng Wei-shih lun, electronic book, ProQuest Ebook Central, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Macy, J, n.d., Joanna Macy & Her Work, viewed 29 August 2021, <https://www.joannamacy.net/main#work>.
Macy, J. 1978, ‘Interdependence: mutual causality in early Buddhist teachings and general systems theory’, PhD dissertation, Syracuse University.
Macy, J. 1979, ‘Dependent Co-arising: The Distinctiveness of Buddhist Ethics’, The Journal of Religious Ethics, vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 38-52.
Macy, J. 1983, Dharma and development: religion as resource in the Sarvodaya self help movement, Kumarian Press, West Hartford, Connecticut.
Macy, J. 1991, Mutual causality in Buddhism and general systems theory: the Dharma of natural systems, State University of New York Press.
Ranganathan, S. 2016, ‘Moral Philosophy: The Right and The Good’, in S. Ranganathan (ed.), The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian Ethics, Bloomsbury Publishing, London.
Shun’ei, T. 2009, Living Yogācāra : an introduction to consciousness-only Buddhism, trans. C. Muller, electronic book, Scribd, San Francisco.