I. ANTISTHENES was an Athenian, the son of Antisthenes. And he was said not to be a legitimate Athenian; in reference to which he said to some one who was reproaching him with the circumstance, "The mother of the Gods too is a Phrygian;" for he was thought to have had a Thracian mother. On which account, as he had borne himself bravely in the battle of Tanagra, he gave occasion to Socrates to say that the son of two Athenians could not have been so brave. And he himself, when disparaging the Athenians who gave themselves great airs as having been born out of the earth itself, said that they were not more noble as far as that went than snails and locusts.

II. Originally he was a pupil of Gorgias the rhetorician; owing to which circumstance he employs the rhetorical style of language in his Dialogues, especially in his Truth and in his Exhortations. And Hermippus says, that he had originally intended in his address at the assembly, on account of the Isthmian games, to attack and also to praise the Athenians, and Thebans, and Lacedaemonians; but that he afterwards abandoned the design, when he saw that there were a great many spectators come from those cities. Afterwards, he attached himself to Socrates, and made such progress in philosophy while with him, that he advised all his own pupils to become his fellow pupils in the school of Socrates. And as he lived in the Piraeus, he went up forty furlongs to the city every day, in order to hear Socrates, from whom he learnt the art of enduring, and of being indifferent to external circumstances, and so became the original founder of the Cynic school.

III. And he used to argue that labour was a good thing, by adducing the examples of the great Hercules, and of Cyrus, one of which he derived from the Greeks and the other from the barbarians.

IV. He was also the first person who ever gave a definition of discourse, saying, "Discourse is that which shows what [218] anything is or was." And he used continually to say, "I would rather go mad than feel pleasure." And, "One ought to attach one’s self to such women as will thank one for it." He said once to a youth from Pontus, who was on the point of coming to him to be his pupil, and was asking him what things he wanted, "You want a new book, and a new pen, and a new tablet ;" — meaning a new mind. And to a pen who asked him from what country he had better marry a wife, he said, "If you marry a handsome woman, she will be common ; if an ugly woman, she will he a punishment to you." [There is a play on the similarity of the two sounds, ,koinê, common, and poinê, punishment.] He was told once that Plato spoke ill of him, and he replied, "It is a royal privilege to do well, and to be evil spoken of." When he was being initiated into the mysteries of Orpheus, and the priest said that those who were initiated enjoyed many good things in the shades below, "Why, then," said he "do not you die?" Being once reproached as not being the son of two free citizens, he said, "And I am not the son of two people skilled in wrestling; nevertheless, I am a skilful wrestler." On one occasion he was asked why he had but few disciples, and said, "Because I drove them away with a silver rod." When he was asked why he reproved his pupils with bitter language, he said, "Physicians too use sever remedies for their patients." Once he saw an adulterer running away, and said, "O unhappy man! how much danger could you have avoided for one obol!" He used to say, aas Hecaton tells us in his Apophthegms, "That it was better to fall among crows [The Greek is, es korakas, which was a proverb for utter destruction.] than among flatterers; for that they only devour the dead, but the others devour the living." When he was asked what was the most happy event that could take place in human life, he said, "To die while prosperous."

On one occasion one of his friends was lamenting to him that he had lost his memoranda, and he said to him, "You ought to have written them on your mind, and not on paper." A favourite saying of his was, "That envious people were devoured by their own disposition, just as iron is by rust." Another was, "That those who wish to be immortal ought to live piously and justly." He used to say too, "That cities [219] were ruined when they were unable to distinguish worthless citizens from virtuous ones."

On one occasion he was being praised by some wicked men, and said, "I am sadly afraid that I must have done some wicked thing." One of his favourite sayings was, "That the fellowship of brothers of one mind was stronger than any fortified city." He used to say, "That those things were the best for a man to take on a journey, which would float with him if he were shipwrecked." He was once reproached for being intimate with wicked men, and said, "Physicians also live with those who are sick; and yet they do not catch fevers." He used to say, "that it was an absurd thing to clean a cornfield of tares, and in war to get rid of bad soldiers, and yet not to rid one’s self in a city of the wicked citizens." When he was asked what advantage he had ever derived from philosophy, he replied, "The advantage of being able to converse with myself." At a drinking party, a man once said to him, "Give us a song," and he replied, "Do you play us a tune on the flute." When Diogenes asked him for a tunic, he bade him fold his cloak. He was asked on one occasion what learning was the most necessary, and he replied, "To unlearn one’s bad habits." And he used to exhort those who found themselves ill spoken of, to endure it more than they would any one’s throwing stones at them. He used to laugh at Plato as conceited; accordingly, once when there was a fine procession, seeing a horse neighing, he said to Plato, "I think you too would be a very frisky horse:" and he said this all the more, because Plato kept continually praising the horse. At another time, he had gone to see him when he was ill, and when he saw there a dish in which Plato had been sick, he said, " I see your bile there, but I do not see your conceit." He used to advise the Athenians to pass a vote that asses were horses; and, as they thought that irrational, he said, "Why, those whom you make generals have never learnt to be really generals, they have only been voted such."

A man said to him one day, "Many people praise you." "Why, what evil," said he, "have I done?" When he turned the rent in his cloak outside, Socrates seeing it, said to him, "I see your vanity through the hole in your cloak." On another occasion, the question was put to him by some one, as Phanias relates, in his treatise on the Philosphers of the [220] Socratic school, what a man could do to show himself an honourable and a virtuous man; and he replied, "If you atttend to those who understand the subject, and learn from them that you ought to shun the bad habits which you have." Some one was praising luxury in his hearing, and he said, "May the children of my enemies be luxurious." Seeing a young man place himself in a carefully studied attitude before a modeller, he said, "Tell me, if the brass could speak, on what would it pride itself?" And when the young man replied, "On its beauty." "Are you not then," said he, "ashamed to rejoice in the same thing as an inanimate piece of brass?" A young man from Pontus once promised to recollect him, if a vessel of salt fish arrived; and so he took him with him, and also an empty bag, and went to a woman who sold meal, and filled his sack and went away; and when the woman asked him to pay for it, he said, "The young man will pay you, when the vessel of salt fish comes home."

He it was who appears to have been the cause of Anytus's banishment, and of Meletus’s death. For having met with some young men of Pontus, who had come to Athens, on account of the reputation of Socrates, he took them to Anytus, telling them, that in moral philosophy he was wiser than Socrates; and they who stood by were indignant at this, and drove him away. And whenever he saw a woman beautifully adorned, he would go off to her house and desire her husband to bring forth his horse and his arms; and then if he had such things, he would give him leave to indulge in luxury, for that he had the means of defending himself; but if he had them not, then he would bid him strip his wife of her ornaments.

V And the doctrines he adopted were these. He used to insist that virtue was a thing which might be taught; also, that the nobly born and virtuously disposed, were the same people; for that virtue was of itself sufficient for happiness, and was in need of nothing, except the strength of Socrates. He also looked upon virtue as a species of work, not wanting many arguments, or much instruction; and he taught that the wise man was sufficient for himself; for that everything that belonged to any one else belonged to him. He considered obscurity of fame a good thing, and equally good with labour. And he used to say that the wise man would regulate his conduct as a citizen, not according to the established laws of the state, but according to the law of virtue. And that he would marry for the sake of having children, selecting the most beautiful woman for his wife. And that he would love her; for that the wise man alone knew what objects deserved love.

Diodes also attributes the following apophthegms to him. To the wise man, nothing is strange and nothing remote. The virtuous man is worthy to be loved. Good men are friends. It is right to make the brave and just one’s allies. Virtue is a weapon of which a man cannot be deprived. It is better to fight with a few good men against all the wicked, than with many wicked men against a few good men. One should attend to one’s enemies, for they are the first persons to detect one’s errors. One should consider a just man as of more value than a relation. Virtue is the same in a man as in a woman. What is good is honourable, and what is bad is disgraceful. Think everything that is wicked, foreign. Prudence is the safest fortification; for it can neither fall to pieces nor be betrayed. One must prepare one’s self a fortress in one’s own impregnable thoughts.

VI. He used to lecture in the Gymnasium called Cynosarges, not far from the gates; and some people say that it is from that place that the sect got the name of Cynics. And he himself was called Haplocyon (downright dog).

VII. He was the first person to set the fashion of doubling his cloak, as Diocles says, and he wore no other garment. And he used to carry a stick and a wallet; but Neanthes says that he was the first person who wore a cloak without folding it. But Sosicrates, in the third book of his Successions, says that Diodorus, of Aspendos, let his beard grow, and used to carry a stick and a wallet.

VIII. He is the only one of all the pupils of Socrates, whom Theopompus praises and speaks of as clever, and able to persuade whomsoever he pleased by the sweetness of his conversation. And this is plain, both from his own writings, and from the Banquet of Xenophon. He appears to have been the founder of the more manly Stoic school; on which account Athenaeus, the epigrammatist, speaks thus of them :—

O ye, who are learned in Stoic fables,

Ye who consign the wisest of all doctrines [222]

To your most sacred books; you say that virtue

Is the sole good; for that alone can save

The life of man, and strongly fenced cities.

But if some fancy pleasure their best aim,

One of the Muses ‘tis who has convinc’d them.

He was the original cause of the apathy of Diogenes, and the temperance of Crates, and the patience of Zeno, having himself, as it were, laid the foundations of the city which they afterwards built. And Xenophon says, that in his conversation and society, he was the most delightful of men, and in every respect the most temperate.

IX. There are ten volumes of his writings extant. The first volume is that in which there is the essay on Style, or on Figures of Speech; the Ajax, or speech of Ajax; the Defence, of Orestes or the treatise on Lawyers; the Isographe, or the Lysias and Isocrates; the reply to the work of Isocrates, entitled the Absence of Witnesses. The second volume is that in which we have the treatise on the Nature of Animals; on the Pro-creation of Children, or on Marriage, an essay of an amatory character; on the Sophists, an essay of a physionomical character; on Justice and Manly Virtue, being three essays of an hortatory character; two treatises on Theognis. The third Volume contains a treatise on the Good; on Manly Courage; on Law, or Political Constitutions; on Law, or what is Honourable and Just; on Freedom and Slavery; on Good Faith; on a Guardian, or on Persuasion; on victory, an economical essay. The fourth volume contains the Cyrus;. the Greater Heracles, or a treatise on Strength. The fifth volume contains the Cyrus, or a treatise on Kingly Power; the Aspasia.

The sixth volume is that in which there is the treatise Truth; another (a disputatious one) concerning Arguing; the Sathon, or on Contradiction, in three parts; and an essay on Dialect. The seventh contains a treatise on Education, or Names, in five books; one on the Use of Names, or the Contentious Man; one on Questions and Answers; one on Opinion and Knowledge, in four books; one on Dying; one on Life and Death; one on those who are in the Shades below; one on Nature, in two books; two books of Questions in Natural Philosophy; one essay, called Opinions on the Contentious Man; one book of Problems, on the subject of [223] Learning. The eighth volume is that in which we find a treatise on Music; one on Interpreters; one on Homer; one on Injustice and Impiety; one on Calchas; one on a Spy; one on Pleasure. The ninth book contains an essay on the Odyssey; one on the Magic Wand; the Minerva, or an essay en Telemachus; an essay on Helen and Penelope; one on Proteus; the Cyclops, being an essay on Ulysses; an essay on the Use of Wine, or on Drunkenness, or on the Cyclops; one on Circe; one on Amphiaraus; one on Ulysses and Penelope, and also on Ulysses’ Dog. The tenth volume is occupied by the Heracles, or Medas; the Hercules, or an Essay on Prudence or Strength; the Lord or the Lover; the Lord or the Spies; the Menexenus, or an essay on Governing; the Alcibiades; the Archelaus, or an essay on Kingly Power.

These then are the names of his works. And Timon, rebuking him because of their great number, called him a universal chatterer,

X. He died of some disease; and while he was ill Diogenes came to visit him, and said to him, "Have you no need of a friend?" Once too he came to see him with a sword in his hand; and when Antisthenes said, "Who can deliver me from this suffering?" he, pointing to the sword, said, "This can;" But he rejoined, "I said from suffering, but not from life;" for he seemed to bear his disease the more calmly from his love of life. And there is an epigram on him written by ourselves, which runs thus

In life you were a bitter dog, Antisthenes, Born to bite people’s minds with sayings sharp, Not with your actual teeth. Now you are slain By fell consumption, passers by may say, Why should he not, one wants a guide to Hell.

There were also three other people of the name of Antisthenes. One, a disciple of Heraclitus; the second, an Ephesian; the third, a historian of Rhodes. And since we have spoken of those who proceeded from the school ot Aristippus and Phaedon, we may now go on to the Cynics and Stoics, who derived their origin from Antisthenes. And we will take them in the following order

This essay will attempt to apply certain general principles and ideas deriving from the Tiantai Buddhist tradition to the classical mind-body problem, an issue that is not posed as such in the tradition but that nonetheless is given an implicit solution there. It is my contention that this implicit solution can provide us with a new and exceptionally useful insight into this old riddle.

The Tiantai tradition is a complicated phenomenon, both historically and philosophically. It reached its first full flowering in the works of Tiantai Zhiyi (538-597), was developed along new lines by Jingxi Zhanran (711-782) partially in response to the ascendancy of the Huayan and Chan movements in the mid-Tang, and became the site of a bitter but philosophically fruitful schism in the Song. Tiantai is generally considered the first truly "sinicized" school of Buddhism, laying the theoretical groundwork for all later developments of East Asian Buddhism in one way or another, either as inspiration or as foil. Its Japanese form, Tendai, shaped the mainstream of traditional Japanese Buddhism, in the bosom of which Kamakura reformers such as Honen, Shinran, Nichiren, and Dogen were nurtured and against which, to some extent, they proposed their reforms. Its influence on other forms of East Asian Buddhism, then, has been extensive and multifarious; but its own internal development also represents a broad array of positions developed in the course of intricate ideological struggles, most notably the so-called Shanjia-Shanwai debates of the Song dynasty already mentioned. It is perhaps no exaggeration to say that Tiantai represents the most comprehensive and intricate system of thought, played out in the richest and/or most prolix technical vocabulary, of any indigenous East Asian school of thought, Buddhist or otherwise. From among the leavings of this whirlwind of intellectual and spiritual activity, particularly as interpreted by the Song Shanjia school, represented by Siming Zhili (960-1028), I have chosen one or two strands that I find useful in considering the present question, that is, the mind-body problem.

In particular, I will be focusing on the implications of two central Tiantai notions. The first of these is the doctrine of the Three Truths, usually considered the central pillar of the Tiantai edifice. These are the Truths of Emptiness (kong), Provisional Positing (jia), and the Mean (zhong ), and are understood most straightforwardly as the claim that all determinacies that appear in experience -- let's call them quiddities -- are, since they invariably arise conditionally, without self-nature, without any characteristic independent being -- hence "empty." In spite of being empty, however, quiddities appear qua temporary and conventional designations -- hence "provisionally posited."

p. 585

To this standard Madhyamikan observation, Tiantai adds a decisive twist: there is no hierarchy of reality between these two contrary statements. The first is not more true than the second; it does not indicate a deeper or even spiritually more important aspect of reality. Moreover, the first implies the second, and the second the first. To be empty is to be provisionally posited and vice versa. This consideration is what is referred to as the Mean. Of this there are, in Tiantai thought, several types. An "Exclusive Mean" (dan zhong ) reestablishes the hierarchy of levels of reality in a new register: the Mean is more true than its two forms of appearing. The truth is that something that is neither Emptiness nor Provisional Positing appears as these two alternate aspects and thereby underwrites their identity to one another. On the other hand, a Nonexclusive Mean, characteristic of the Integrated Teaching of the Tiantai school, eliminates this hierarchy as well. The Mean -- the identity between the two opposed terms -- is no longer any more real than the terms, and the "reduction" of the apparent to the real here proceeds in all directions at once: the Mean is nothing but the identity between Emptiness and Provisional Positing, but likewise Emptiness is nothing but the identity between Provisional Positing and the Mean and, mutatis mutandis, for Provisional Positing.

It is important to note here that this final elimination of levels of reality is not understood to mean that the gesture of reduction of appearances to realities is now made illegitimate, but rather that it is the more firmly established in the structure of all experience -- is structurally "inherent" -- but is now seen to proceed equally in all three directions at once. The interfusion of the Three Truths here means that it is exactly as true to say that any one of these underlies the other two -- that, say, Provisional Positing is the ultimately real level to which the others can be reduced, appearing sometimes as Emptiness and sometimes as the Mean, or that Emptiness is the deepest level, appearing sometimes as Provisionally Positing and sometimes as the Mean, and so on. When any one of the three appears, it is the other two appearing as this one; the mention of any one implies all three.

For a quiddity to exist is for it to be Provisionally Posited qua Empty and the Mean, Empty qua Provisional Positing and the Mean, and the embodiment of the Mean qua Provisional Positing and Emptiness. This notion is the cornerstone of all Tiantai thinking, and, as we shall see momentarily, the implications of this simple idea are extraordinarily far-reaching.

The second key Tiantai notion of concern to us here is that of the Opening of the Provisional to Reveal the Real (kaiquan xianshi). This was originally a hermeneutical tool used in Zhiyi's "classification of teachings," that is, an ordering of the relation between conventional and ultimate truths in the Buddhist canon. According to this schema, the Lotus Sutra, by revealing all previous teachings to have been part of the larger project of revealing the One Vehicle (ekayana), has made these previous teachings, just as they are and in their precise provisional incompleteness, identical to the complete and ultimate doctrine of the Lotus itself. Simply by appearing, the Lotus redefines all other teachings as versions and expressions of itself; simply by being recontextualized in this manner, the meaning, significance, and indeed the very identity of all the other teachings has been changed, without changing one jot or tittle of the teachings themselves. Here we have another deployment of the notion of "reduction" of appearance to reality, which melds nicely with the one just discussed. In this case, too, the final issue is for the reduction to proceed in all directions at once: all teachings end up being expressions of each other, not only of the Lotus.
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This doctrine, like that of the Three Truths, also generates an unexpectedly broad set of insights when applied as a paradigm outside this original concern, for example to more general ontological matters -- a move that is itself characteristic of Tiantai thought, and which will be explored more fully below.

Before developing and applying these particular fruits of Tiantai doctrine, however, a few remarks should be made on the exact status of our present inquiry concerning the mind-body problem, in the context of this tradition. Although this is an issue that is arguably peripheral to the Tiantai edifice, it is useful to show that I will not be departing all that far from the sources into flights of purely fanciful speculation. The basic ingredients for the mind-body doctrine of Tiantai thought are quite explicit in the traditional dogmatics. Three primary sources come to mind in this connection: first and foremost, Zhanran's "Form and Mind are Non-dual," the first of his "Ten Gates of Non-duality"; [1] second, the correlation of the "Track of Contemplation" with the Truth of Emptiness, among the Three Tracks and Three Truths, respectively; and third, the direct statement that mind is emptiness and that body is Provisional Positing in post-Song Tiantai works such as the "Sanqian youmen song" of Chen Guan , [2] a fifth-generation dharma descendent of Siming Zhili. Let us briefly examine these three sources one by one before allowing ourselves to draw out their implications.

Zhanran's famous text on the non-duality of form and mind (se and xin ) is notorious for its ambiguity, which indeed was one of the dominant causes of the Shanjia-Shanwai debates of the Song. This ambiguity is due not only to the exceptional terseness of the text and the alternate versions that had come down even to the Song, but also to the ambiguities of Zhanran's own thought, as developed elsewhere, on the topic of the status of mind and its relation to matter. For our present purposes, however, a few uncontroversial points can be noted. First, when considering the relation of the Three Truths to body and mind, Zhanran states that the Truth of Provisional Positing pertains to both body and mind while that of Emptiness and the Mean is exclusively mental. This is to be recalled when we consider Chen Guan's direct equation of Provisional Positing with the body and of Emptiness with the Mind, while characterizing the Mean as neither-mind-nor-body. But what Zhanran seems to have in mind here is that Emptiness and the Mean are pure conceptual or mental conclusions about reality, while Provisional Positing is meant to refer to the immediate appearances of both mental and physical phenomena, prior to any analysis of disconfirmation of appearances. Zhanran quickly retracts this neat division, however, in classic Tiantai fashion. He states:
All dharmas [both the apparently physical and the apparently mental] are the nature of the mind. This one nature is also no nature, and the Three Thousand quiddities are replete therein. It should be known that mind includes both itself and form [rupa, matter]; precisely mind is called transformation and transformation is called the creation [of determinate physical and mental forms].

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This is what is meant by a substance having [various] functions. Thus in the end it is neither form nor mind, and yet at the same time both form and mind -- and in the end, can be described either as exclusively mind or as exclusively form... [3]

Allow me to attempt a dejargonized paraphrase of this dense passage, in accordance with the interpretation of it that emerged in Zhili's school, and henceforth became Tiantai orthodoxy: "All phenomena can be categorized in many different ways. For present purposes, let us adopt the common distinction of body and mind. Of all observable phenomena, some are placed in one of these categories, some in the other, some in both. But our Tiantai analysis of the nature of the mind, via the Three Discernments, as the Three Truths, reveals that this nature, namely the Three Truths, is in fact shared by all dharmas whatsoever, even those initially categorized as matter. In a sense, then, they all share one nature or essence, but this essence is no particular essence, and is equally describable in any of Three Thousand alternate ways. That is, the essence of mind is to be not only mind, both mind-body, and the essence of body is to be body-mind. Either way, you have a picture of some unseen substance manifesting in various ways -- either mind is the substance that functions as both mind and body, or body is the substance that functions as both body or mind. Either way of describing the case will be equally adequate. So we could say that it is ultimately neither matter nor mind, but functions as both, or that there is nothing but mind, functioning as two opposite manifestations, or that there is nothing but matter, functioning as two opposite manifestations."

The classic formulation of the principle involved in this turn of thought, marking a sea change in all Buddhist metaphysics, comes in Zhiyi's Sinianchu , in a critique of the unidirectional reductionism of the "consciousness-only" school, and by the same token, of any unilateral foundational metaphysic:

In Vasubandhu's theory of consciousness-only, there is only the one consciousness, but it is divided into the discriminating and the undiscriminating forms of consciousness; the discriminating consciousness is what we usually call consciousness, while the undiscriminating consciousness is "consciousness appearing to be an object" (sichen shi ). All the physical objects in the universe, vases, clothing, carts and carriages, are all this undiscriminating form of consciousness... But since they are all one nature, we can equally say that there are two forms of matter, the discriminating and the undiscriminating... It is in this sense that mind and matter are non-dual. Since he [Vasubandhu] is able to say there are these two different forms of consciousness, we can equally say they are two different forms of matter... In the Integrated Teaching, we can also say that all things are matter only, or sound only, or scent only, or flavor only, or tactile sensation only, or consciousness only. In sum, every dharma inherently includes all the dharmas throughout the dharma-realm... [4]
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"Discrimination" is, initially, the characteristic feature of consciousness that distinguishes it from matter, which is "undiscriminating." However, as soon as we say that all is consciousness, we have to allow that what appeared to be matter, be-cause it performed no discriminations, was in fact just a deceptively undiscriminating "form" of consciousness. The meaning of the term "consciousness" has thereby been expanded; but if the meaning of this term can thus be expanded to include what was precisely its opposite, in distinction to which it was defined, why can't any other term also be so expanded That is, if we can say that matter is really just a deceptive form of mind, we can equally say that mind is just a deceptive form of matter. As soon as we admit the principle of "one thing expressed in many forms," or the possibility of explaining any one thing in terms of another, interpretability as such, whatever X we happen to posit as this center will be emptied of its specific meaning by the very fact that it is, by this very hypothesis, also something that appears as its opposite.

This way of viewing matter is, of course, a direct consequence of the two central Tiantai doctrines (Three Truths and Opening the Provisional to Reveal the Real) discussed above. Once the notion of reducing some quiddity to another dissimilar quiddity is allowed, there is no nonarbitrary reason to keep from pushing it to its limit, whereby it ceases to be unidirectional; it works in all directions, among all the terms adduced, just as happens with the relations between the Three Truths and the relations between the various teachings of the Buddha. "Consciousness" turns out to mean "everything that appears, either as consciousness or as matter." But then, says Zhiyi, matter can also have two forms of appearing, qua consciousness or qua matter; it can also mean "everything that appears, either as consciousness or as matter." Hence matter and consciousness are non-dual. But the real import of this theory is just that anything can be used to explain anything else, that all things interconnect and transform into each other such that any particular quiddity may be read as pervading everywhere. When any "all is X" theory is taken seriously, it implies that "X really means everything we formerly called X as well as everything we called non-X," and thus "non-X also means just this same X, which really means X plus non-X," and therefore ends up meaning equally that "all is any X" and, moreover, that "X is therefore identical to anti-X." The extent to which any form of explanation of one thing in terms of another, any interpretation of phenomena at any level whatsoever, inevitably brings with it some kind of "all is X" claim, at least for a particular designated field of reference, is well worth considering. [5] The consequences of this distinctive Tiantai turn of thought will be the central concern of the pages that follow.

What all this boils down to, in the context of Tiantai's triadic systematics, is that the relation between mind and body is analogous to that between the truth of Emptiness and the truth of Provisional Positing. In fact, they are more than analogous: the relation between body and mind is, in fact, a special case of the relation between these first two of the Three Truths. This is best expressed in the Tiantai doctrine of the Three Tracks. These are the "tracks" of Contemplation (guanzhao gui ), Practico-inert Support (for Contemplation) (zicheng gui ), and the Real Nature (which is Contemplated) (zhenxing gui ), which are related to one another exactly as the Three Truths are -- indeed they are merely another name for the Three Truths, within the context of a particular set of concerns. [6] As we have seen, the Tiantai tradition claims that all things have a triadic structure, with three discernible aspects, which may be analyzed as Emptiness, Provisional Positing, and the Mean, although these are not to be considered ultimately separable. In terms of human praxis, however, Emptiness pertains to various forms of Contemplation (including subjective states ranging from deluded passions to meditational trances and insights), while Provisional Positing pertains to the Practico-inert Supports thereof (ranging from deluded physical and volitional actions [karma] to advanced forms of Buddhist praxis).
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The Mean pertains to the real nature, the truth that is realized by means of these practices and contemplations, which turns out to be none other than the identity between these Practico-inert actions and subjective passions as determined by the structure of the Three Truths. In other words, Practico-inert aspects of reality, such as the body, its functions and practices, and the physical environment, are the concrete conditions that make possible subjective states (Contemplations) that reveal the True Nature, which in the end is revealed to be just this identity between the mental states and their physical conditions, on the principle of mutual reducibility that is characteristic of the Three Truths, as discussed above. These three aspects are really one and three: the subjective apprehensions of reality and the material conditions that make them possible are all part of the reality that is being apprehended. The principle reveals itself through the physical conditions and mental states that are identical to itself and that are at once the revealed and the revealer. The exact nature of this relation of identity between material conditions, subjective states, and the object apprehended by these subjective states is the main topic to be explored in this essay.

At the climax of his main work, the Song Tiantai layman Chen Guan provides a simplified formulation of the Tiantai position: "Emptiness is mind, Provisional Positing is form, and what is neither form nor mind is called the Mean. Where mind and form are both cut off the essence of the Mean is manifested; this essence is inherently included in every dharma without exception." [7] His Ming commentator, Zhenjue, is quick to point out that the Mean here should indicate the fact that mind and form are neither the same nor different and, in the next line, that it can be described equally well as "neither mind nor form" or as "both mind and form" [8] -- in line with the Zhanran passage discussed above and, needless to say, the whole Tiantai tradition as already described. But this unembellished equation of Provisional Positing with matter of body and Emptiness with mind should give us pause. After all, one of the main points of contention between the Shanjia and the Shanwai, of course, was the relation of body to mind. The Shanjia, whose position was to become orthodox and which we follow here, claimed, in line with the Sinianchu passage just quoted, that either was reducible to the other and that all things are reducible solely to either one, while the Shanwai claimed that all things were reducible to matter only in the sense that matter itself was wholly reducible to mind, but not vice versa. The Shanjia position would seem to entail that all Three Truths would have to apply to any dharma at all, and hence to both body and mind equally. But the apparent simplicity and radical symmetry of the Shanjia notion of mutual reducibility is deceptive; it must be understood against the background of Zhanran's work, quoted above, and the omnicentric understanding of the Three Tracks qua the Three Truths.

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Let us return to the latter concept, the Three Truths, to tease out a more extensive and detailed set of implications from it. In this process we can distill the insights into the mind-body problem we are seeking.

The Omnicentric Mean: Provisional Positing and Emptiness as Local Intelligibility qua Global Ambiguity The position to which we are brought by the traditional Tiantai dogmatics about the "Three Truths," described briefly above, can be reformulated in a contemporary idiom in the following manner: Any determinate form or quiddity -- let's call it X here -- that exists or is imaginable, anything experienceable or conceivable, has a fundamental triplicity to it.

Its appearance "as" X occurs only in some specific context, but it is always in some context and is always appearing as some particular X -- that is, it is experienced as some particular determinate qualitative quiddity. That is, it will never appear as anything, as having any identity or determinacy at all, unless it is presenced in some particular context; its appearance is always necessarily accompanied by the presence of some particular, determinate, restricted context. This "context" must be construed broadly, to begin with. It means here any obligatory relationship with an otherness, with non-Xness in some form. According to the traditional account, this may consist either of (a) elements into which it can be analyzed, (b) prior and subsequent states in a temporal sequence, or (c) the conceptual contrast to "non-Xness" that enables its phenomenological appearance. In any of these dimensions, it must be viewed in connection with at least one other, or otherness, per se, in order to establish an identity. At every moment of experience, there is always some X, and this X is always appearing in some "context" in the sense described above.

But in this case, by the same assumption, its Xness will not be self-sufficient; it will be, in a word, context-dependent, which is to say, brought about by a relationship to a specific configuration of non-X quiddities. This means that the same token, unchanged, seen in another context will no longer be experienced as X, but as some non-X. In other words, any X that may appear to any form of consciousness will be locally established and globally disestablished. This establishment of a quiddity relative to a particular local context we will call Provisional Positing, while the disestablishment of the same quiddity when recontextualized, its fundamental ambiguity as a semiotic token of experience, we will call Emptiness. It will be noted again that these are not to be construed as two separate claims, but as two ways of stating the same claim, namely that all identity is context-dependent. This being the case, both the local establishment and the global disestablishment are simultaneously implied, and accomplished, as it were, by the same gesture.

The point, which is merely an expansion of what was said earlier about the function of reducibility and contextualization in the doctrines of Three Truths and Opening the Provisional to Reveal the Real, can be put as follows: all terms of experience are fundamentally ambiguous until connected to some "ultimate value," some final independent variable, of which they are all then seen to be partial expressions. Considered in themselves, it cannot be said that they simply are one thing or another; they get their meaning, content, and identity from their relation to a grounding, explanatory other.
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An example, posed in terms of the relation between apparently differing belief systems, may make this more clear. [9] In any system of terms, there will be one master term by reference to which all the other terms have their content fixed. For example, if I am a feminist, I may also support Marxist and ecological movements, because I see them as aspects of the general problem of patriarchy and as contributing to that struggle for equal rights for women; in that case, I would believe that, once the real problem, patriarchy, has been solved, the ecological crisis and capitalist exploitation will automatically also be solved, for the feminist problem is the real root of the others. "Feminism" in this case is the ultimate value, the "center" of my system. However, if I am a radical Green ecologist, I will feel on the contrary that only a solution to the ecological crisis can solve the problems of patriarchal and capitalist exploitation; man's warped relation to nature is the real root problem, the "center," the ultimate value. A Marxist, of course, will feel that feminism and ecologism are just epiphenomena of the root problem of capitalist exploitation and class struggle. Similarly, if my ultimate value resides in egotism, I may support feminism, Marxism, of ecologism if I think they will benefit me personally. My personal interests, in that case, form the center of the whole of value signifiers that I employ. Feminism is good to the extent that it furthers my interests as a woman; Marxism is good because I am a proletarian, and so on. In this case, feminism and Marxism will merely be forms, indirect expressions, of my egotism, which is what they would be revealed to have always actually been when analyzed to the bottom.

This means that the "noncentral" terms are always fundamentally ambiguous until tied to some center in a particular context. Their identity and contents are not otherwise fixed. As Slajov Zizek points out:

Ecologism['s] ... connection with other ideological elements is not determined in advance; one can be a state-oriented ecologist (if one believes that only the intervention of a strong state can save us from catastrophe), a socialist ecologist (if one locates the source of merciless exploitation of nature in the capitalist system), a conservative ecologist (if one preaches that man must again become deeply rooted in his natural soil), and so on; feminism can be socialist, apolitical...; even racism could be elitist or populist..." [10]

It is the connection to a center that fixes or stabilizes these terms in any particular case, bestowing on them a definite content or identity.

Here we must distinguish between two possible understandings of this situation, corresponding to the Exclusive and Nonexclusive Mean discussed above. The first of these may be called the unicentric or foundationalist approach. This view would hold that there is among all terms one unique term, no more and no less, that is to be granted the ability to fix the meanings of all the others. If the feminist in our previous example has a unicentric underlying conceptual system, she will have to claim that feminism truly occupies a special and privileged place among signifiers, that is, that it is the real and true root of all the other problems, the uniquely adequate way of regarding the problem as a whole. Ecologism and Marxism are merely parts, or partial, indirect expressions or forms of feminism. If properly analyzed, they will reveal themselves to have always been nothing but local and limited forms of feminism. The same will go, mutatis mutandis, for the other examples.
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If we are outside observers, if we are unicentrists ourselves, we will have to believe that one and only one of these three contesting views is correct. Only one of these terms truly and adequately represents the whole; the others are just partial representations, limited expressions of this real essence, and they have mistakenly elevated their own status to the central position.

The second interpretation, which I will call "omnicentrism," holds on the contrary that we may in fact take the part for the whole, since any part, simply considered in itself, in its own characteristics, already implies the whole of which it is a part. The part, in other words, is the whole, and any part can thus adequately stand for the whole. An omnicentrist, observing the disagreement above, would not have to insist that one of these three combatants was correct and the other two mistaken; he would say, instead, that the whole field of phenomena and the questions to which they are all referring can be described equally in these various ways or any other, that the master signifier can in fact be located anywhere at all in the whole. This is the way the Tiantai tradition understands this situation. The entire complex functions meaningfully in all these ways at once; feminism can indeed be seen as the unifying thread running through capitalist and ecological exploitation. On the other hand, class struggle can also be viewed as the unifying thread -- or ecological exploitation, or my personal interests, or anything else.

The holistic mutual dependence of the parts, established by the insight into Emptiness and context-dependence outlined above, is so thorough that the system of causality cannot be conceived of simply as one-way, with one unique root that causes all the other parts of the whole. The concept of root or cause here is only provisional. And yet it is not illegitimate; the claim here is not that we must forget about having any master signifier or center at all, that nothing is the root of anything else and all are simultaneously present, but is rather a both/and position. The categories of cause and effect or of root and branch are unavoidable if there is to be any meaning at all, but it always works in both directions at once. It is not that there is no real center (and "centrality" is therefore a mere ideological invention); rather, "centrality" is an indispensable category, such that all points are center, all points are periphery. [11] What is ideological distortion, if anything, is just the claim that some one of these centers is the sole point over which centrality can be asserted. In short, omnicentrism holds that the identity and significance of any entity is so thoroughly and completely a function of its relations to others -- so completely "holistic" -- that every identity is a sliding identity whose significance is always susceptible to grounding in something else, always ambiguous, revisable, changeable, and instrumental. However, since this is also true of all the other entities in which it is so grounded, every entity equally can and must itself serve as a ground, as a master signifier from which everything else attains its significance and identity as a center. It is this insight that, in Tiantai tradition, is described as the Nonexclusive Mean, the unique relation of neither-identity-nor-difference that is said to obtain between provisional and ultimate truth -- and thus, as we shall see below, between matter and mind.

We can perhaps understand this better by recalling the comment above about the ambiguity of the identities of all noncentral terms prior to their connection with a determining center (in Tiantai terms, their emptiness). At first glance, this seems to suggest that the center is the one entity that is definite, fixed, "full," unambiguous, that is, which has a fixed meaning or identity that need not depend on the connection to something else. This is true, but for omnicentrism it is only part of the truth. In omnicentrism, the holistic premise is pressed to the point of rendering this center at the same time completely empty of its own meaning or identity as well. For example, to use the ideological example of meanings cited above (in which context it is perhaps easiest to grasp this point), if "class struggle" is the center of my meaning system, it will seem as if all other particular issues get their meaning just from class struggle; they all end up to be nothing but particular expressions of class struggle. The meaning of class struggle seems to remain constant and prior, while the meaning of terms like "feminism" is transformed by the connection to this center. But if this mode of interpretation succeeds to the ultimate extent, it will come to explain everything as forms of class struggle, and when this happens, "class struggle" will turn out to be not the most meaningful term in the system but the one term that is completely devoid of meaning, since it means literally everything. It will have come to be so modified by its use as the one term that explains all these disparate phenomena, of which the others are various forms of expression, that it will end up being no more than a null point in the system with no specifiable content. When this happens, it is the dependent peripheral terms that actually provide the content and meaning for what had been the center. Thus, when any one of these centerings (interpretative systems) succeeds to the utmost point, the center in question comes to mean both nothing and everything.

At this point, any given term in the system can function equally well as the center -- all the terms explain each other, and the starting point can be anywhere, as long as its function is thought all the way through, pushed to its ultimate, which in this context means "applied in every possible context." When "class struggle" completely succeeds as a center, it can be seen even in quiddities that appear to be precisely the opposite, that can be seen as expressed even in all forms of apparent class harmony, or in patriarchal oppression and ecological irresponsibility. At this point, this term has become non-disconfirmable and therefore strictly meaningless; it ends up revealing in all things not just the character or quiddity of "class struggle" but simply the fact of interconnection itself, the fact that one thing can be used to explain another -- that, indeed, when its work is complete, any term can be used to explain all others. It reveals omnicentrism.

Similarly, when "feminism" completely succeeds as a center, it shows that gender issues are everywhere, which similarly empties the term "feminism" of meaning and ends up revealing most centrally just interconnection itself. When they succeed fully, these two opposite centers end up revealing the same thing; their meaning  ends up being one and the same -- the fact of interpretability from all perspectives, omnicentrism. However, this "sameness" of their ultimate meanings does not strip them of their specific validities as starting points. In terms of feminism, all is feminism, and in terms of Marxism, all is Marxism, and these two characteristics are maintained in both their identity and their difference to the very end of the inquiry. Marxism always ends up meaning "Marxism expressing itself in a multitude of varying forms, including feminism, ecologism, and so forth," while Feminism also ends up meaning "Feminism expressing itself in a multitude of varying forms, including Marxism, ecologism, and so forth." In each case, the distinctions between the varying forms are included in the final meaning of the master term rather than being destroyed by its universal application and identity in contrary master terms.

To put the same point in a "classical" rather than a "postmodern" idiom, let us suppose that I say, with Thales, that "all is water." That is, "water" is the center, that all other things -- fire, air, and earth -- are to be understood in terms of water, that they are "really" water, that they are all identical to water. Initially, this term "water" means the wet element as opposed to the fiery, earthy, or airy elements. But if this theory is really taken seriously, then the explicator changes along with the explicated; that is, by my own theory, "water" refers not only to the wet element, but also to all things that appear to be fiery, earthy, of airy. "Water" no longer means that which appears as wetness, but rather that which appears sometimes as wetness, sometimes as fieriness, sometimes as earthiness, and sometimes as airiness. In effect, the term "water" now really means "water-fire-air-earth," with an emphasis on the central term "water." So, in saying "Water, fire, air, and earth are all water," I am just saying, "Water, fire, air, and earth are water, fire, air, and earth." But actually I am asserting a little more: I am saying that when I name one of these four, I am really referring to something that includes all four. I may think that I am saying, at the very least, that the wet is the uniquely most direct manifestation of this something, while the hot, airy, and earthy are all derivative or indirect expressions of it.

But the application of these terms in all possible contexts, their full thinking through, deprives this claim of any specifiable meaning by making it reversible: if tire can be a form in which water is manifested, why cannot water be a form in which fire is manifested? Once we have allowed the concept of "forms of manifestation of varying degrees of directness," we have opened the door to name anything at all as the fundament of which everything else is the expression or manifestation. By the same token, then, if I now say "fire," since tire is just water and water is just water-fire-air-earth, I can equally say "all things are fire." Any term can be the center, since each of the four really refers to all four at once. This also means that I can say "fire is identical to water." In all this, I have really just asserted that all four terms transform into one another, that they are inseparable, and that any starting point can serve as a point of reference by which to explain the others. This is omnicentrism, which can thus be viewed as simply a fuller thinking-through of the basic premises of holism per se.

To review: the identity of any token of experience is fundamentally ambiguous and dependent on a particular restricted context for its establishment. This ambiguity is what is meant here by Emptiness. The provisional, dependent identity acquired in this fashion is equivalent to Provisional Positing. However, since this same ambiguity applies also to whatever term might be chosen as the grounding center, and since, once successfully extended to explain all other parts as expressions of itself the initial grounding center loses its determinate character, obtaining all its contents and identity solely from the "expressions" of which it was posited as the ground, all points end up equally being the grounding center, and any point can be chosen as the starting point for a system of interpretative connections and groundings. This further reversal is equivalent to the Mean. The fact that any entity thus ends up being both center and periphery, the ground and the grounded, the explainer and the explained, the root and the branch, is the Nonexclusive Mean. The final effect of setting up some X as the center, the grounding term by reference to which all others are explained, is not just to show that all are expressions of this particular X, but, more importantly, to show that any X can serve to explain everything else, that all things are expressions of any chosen X, that every X pervades all times and places, because the interconnections of things are precisely what comprise each thing's identity.

But, it may be asked, is expression or instantiation the only form of contextualization? That is, when something "derives its identity from its relation to an other," that is, its context, does this necessarily take the form we have mainly been discussing in the examples above, namely the form of instantiation, as "feminism" may be seen, if contextualized in a certain way, as merely an expression or facet or instantiation of "Marxism" or "ecologism," or as "water" may be seen to be an indirect "expression" of fire? The implicit model of the situation in the slightly jargonistic postmodern idiom we have been using, speaking of "contexts," or of Gestaltist figure-ground relations, would suggest not. For in neither of these pictures do the "contexts" or "backgrounds" seem necessarily to involve the "self-emptying" of the determinate content. It does not seem to be the case, at least prima facie, that the identity of a background is changed when it serves as a background for a figure. For example, black remains black when it is used to contextualize a white figure. It is possible to argue that the context of background is itself contextualized of grounded in some larger context or ground, thus again making its identity nondeterminate. This may well be so, but it raises certain difficulties of infinite regress and the identity of the whole, as well as old ontotheological specters of first-cause arguments, in which we may not want to involve ourselves. It is also possible to assert that the identity of the context is in fact modified by the mere act of serving as context. It has at least one additional characteristic that it did not have before -- that of serving as the context for something -- and this would perhaps, on some holistic or internal-relations-only accounts, be considered a change of identity. According to this view, more or less plausibly, the content and identity of a metaphor, or any other explanatory sign, is always modified by the content of that to which it comes to be applied.
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However, I would rather suggest at this juncture that this is just the place where our metaphors of context and background break down and must be replaced by a more nuanced one. This will really account for the omnicentric properties of Tiantai speculations and allow us to pursue their implications in the realm of the question at hand, in this case, the mind-body problem. That is, it has become necessary to specify exactly what kind of contextualization we have in mind here. Contextualization of semiotic tokens in differential networks is only the general notion here, and this explicates the Tiantai omnicentrism only to a limited extent. To get us over the remaining hump, a more precise specification of the relevant subset of semiotic contextualization is especially necessary here. The new metaphor that I am suggesting is based on the uniquely Tiantai doctrine of "Opening the Provisional to Reveal the Mean"

(kaiquanxianshi). This notion is best understood by the metaphor not of figure and ground or of semiotic marker and context (although both of these are involved and, as it were, presupposed by the modified metaphor), but by the model of a joke -- in particular a joke with a setup and a punch line -- as we shall explicate presently. To understand the applicability of this concept, however, let us first take a look at the Tiantai doctrine from which it derives.

Opening the Provisional to Reveal the Real: Setup and Punch Line as the Basic Categories of Existence In these reflections I have simply adumbrated what is writ large and in another idiom in the Tiantai system of omnicentrism. The central pillar of this system, however, by the consideration of which I hope to explicate the manner in which the real meaning and content of any center ends up being just the principle of "centrality" (mutual explication) itself, is to be located in the Tiantai view of the purported Lotus Sutra teaching of "opening the provisional to reveal the real" as the ultimate truth revealed by all teachings. That is, the Lotus, a text with minimal doctrinal content, except for a meta-level consideration of the relationship between different teachings, is, in the Tiantai view, the ultimate truth. It is not some specific teaching about what the real is, but just the act of opening and revealing, of bringing teachings together so that they are revealed to be versions of one another -- one may say versions of teaching per se, that is, the ultimate teaching. Omnicentrism here is viewed not as one specific teaching among many, but as the real significance of what it means for there to be any teaching at all, what is really at stake when anyone suggests any center, any way of interpreting experience. [12]