Living Metaphysics: Process Thought, Buddhist Philosophy, and the Impact of Ontology

Abstract

In this contribution, I explore the idea that reality is best understood as fundamentally dynamic and interdependent, i.e., processual, bringing together resources from process thought, phenomenology and the Madhyamaka school of Buddhism. I furthermore explore how this view shapes the ways we speak about, investigate, and understand the natural world. What is novel in my approach is that I bring a phenomenological reading of process in dialogue with Buddhist thought. My paper unfolds in two stages: first, I map key points of convergence between phenomenologically clarified process philosophy and Madhyamaka; second, I consider the broader epistemological and practical consequences of viewing reality as impermanent and dependently arising by looking at Whitehead’s and Nāgārjuna’s views in dialogue. Engaging with Buddhist philosophy alongside phenomenological process thought enables a deeper investigation into the ethical, and lived dimensions of metaphysical inquiry, which are dimensions often sidelined both in Western metaphysics and in some versions of phenomenology, because metaphysical and phenomenological analysis can remain stuck on the conceptual level, detached from both lived experience and practice. By contrast, Buddhist traditions explicitly link philosophical reflection with lived experience and embodied practice throughout. For this reason, sustained dialogue with Buddhist views and practices can expand Western methodology as such and can enrich process-based phenomenological approaches in particular by showing ways to reconnect speculative metaphysics, observation, and the concrete in practical ways.

1. Introduction

I consider process philosophy to be a phenomenological or descriptive endeavour grounded in the experience of lived reality, i.e., to be a form of living metaphysics. The main premise shaping my work is that process ontology is not a project seeking to be revisionary in the sense of overturning the elemental status of sense perception in favour of abstract ideas, or to replace empirical scientific categories with purely speculative constructions. Instead, process ontology focuses on descriptions of direct experience, and it is this focus on direct experience that grounds a revised framework of understanding. It is here that, in my reading, process thought is fundamentally phenomenological.1 Process thought merely seeks to articulate systematically what our lived experience and the natural sciences already reveal to be true about the world (when phenomena are investigated closely and over a sufficiently long period of time): in final analysis, there is no substantiality. In advocating for the ability of experience to reveal nature as impermanent and interdependent, Buddhist views of reality and nature can serve as strong allies, and it is unsurprising that I am neither the first nor the only one to point out that many Buddhist philosophies describe a processual view of nature ([2], p. xii).

In what follows, I will first introduce process philosophy as a descriptive/phenomenological approach and introduce the three points of connection between Whitehead’s process philosophy and Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka2 Buddhism. These have (i) a similar view of the interdependent and impermanent nature of reality, (ii) a similar view on the role of direct experience for understanding this nature, and (iii) a deep scepticism about the ability of language and conceptual thought to adequately reveal or grasp this reality. In the second part, I will bring these traditions into dialogue with the aim of further developing the possibility of a genuinely dynamic understanding of reality.

A quick disclaimer before I begin is as follows: I do not intend to argue that Whitehead is a crypto-Buddhist or that Buddhism is a form of process philosophy; rather, I intend to highlight the similarities and overlaps between these approaches to illuminate resonances and create space for novel ways of thinking to emerge. Consequently, I will not emphasise the differences between these traditions, which I do not deny, but do not engage with, nor will I be able to do justice to the vast wealth that is Buddhist thought—even trying to engage only with Nāgārjuna’s reading of the Buddha’s teaching in such a short text as this one means to oversimplify and overgeneralise thousands of years of tradition.

The outcome of this dialogue may merely demonstrate how process metaphysics (and speculative thought in general) can be relevant in fostering a human experience that is less burdened by conceptual overlay and how this view can impact our understanding of the world as well as our suffering. This is not to replace Buddhist wisdom, practice, or view, but to learn from it, while remaining within a Western philosophical and scientific framework.

2. Process Philosophy as a Descriptive Practice

Let me begin by explaining why I am emphasising the idea of process philosophy as a descriptive or phenomenological endeavour and why it is relevant for our purposes. I hold this to be a crucial move in adequately understanding process philosophy, as I will argue below, but also in allowing process philosophy to step into dialogue with Buddhist thought and practice. Buddhism is not interested in pure speculation. Just like process philosophers and phenomenologists, Buddhists are interested in reality as given in direct experience. Its main views, like interdependence and impermanence, are not merely understood as abstract axioms or logical principles but as descriptions of reality and instructions for the exploration of this reality in experience. Thus, all three approaches I use (Buddhism, process philosophy, and phenomenology) share the experimental ethos of the more observation- based, inductive empirical sciences like biology.

Furthermore, process philosophy does not easily align with rigidly axiomatic or prescriptive accounts as it tends to avoid rigid, exclusionary system-building of the type reality is x and x only. In my understanding, process ontology does not aim at developing a set of ultimately valid metaphysical furniture to adorn our ideal universe; instead, it aims at continuously developing and re-developing concepts and ideas that allow us to describe and engage the concrete, dynamic, and complex world we live in. Thus, we do well to always remember Whitehead’s admonishment against taking any results of conceptual analysis too seriously:

There remains the final reflection, how shallow, puny, and imperfect are efforts to sound the depths in the nature of things. In philosophical discussion, the merest hint of dogmatic certainty as to finality of statement is an exhibition of folly.

([3], p. xiv) (in what follows referenced as P&R)

A common empirical objection to the view that process philosophies are descriptive is that we can clearly perceive stable objects, but we seem not to be able to see processes directly in the same way: There are tables, chairs, and buildings that appear as relatively unchanging individual entities. This observation, however, confuses unexamined perception, a glance at an instant, with examined experience that observes the phenomenon closely and over a sufficient timespan. This is a distinction that is central to phenomenological practice. Perception is a quasi-instantaneous ‘seeing as’ as Heidegger called it, seeing something as something, i.e., as belonging to a certain category3—I perceive this phenomenon ‘as a table’ at a glance, which means that I immediately overlay the experience of this phenomenon with concepts, associations, memory, language, propositional knowledge and judgements as to what tables are, whether it is a good table and so on. This happens so fast, it is almost unnoticeable for an unpractised perceiver. Phenomenological or meditative practices allow us to somewhat disentangle the direct experience of the phenomenon from the conceptual overlay that shapes perception—at least to a degree.

The stability of the table in front of me is thus only an apparent stability, a result of unexamined experience (‘perception’), and is fundamentally shaped by the timescale, spatial dimensions, and the quality of human attention. The objects we perceive at a glance are relative meta-stabilities that only appear stable at a human scale. Neither at the subatomic level, nor on a cosmological scale, can fundamental permanence or absolute independence be found. If we look deeply into the nature of matter, we do not find unbreakable atoms; instead, we uncover mostly empty space and particles that behave like waves at times, depending on the environment. And even our mid-sized objects reveal their interrelated transience when experienced carefully over time with sufficient attention. We have, for example, discovered that the natural world, including trees, mountains, and continents change constantly —the whole universe is in flux. We are furthermore discovering how deeply interrelated physical nature and living beings are: they stand in fundamentally co-constitutive, reciprocal, evolving relations4. The chair, table, or house that appear as static individuals in our daily lives are continuously transforming in engagement with and in response to their respective environment, albeit at a slow enough pace to be easily overlooked.

The core empirical claim of process thought is thus that any object, if observed closely enough and over a sufficient period of time, reveals its changing nature. This dynamic nature of reality can be confirmed or disproven by direct (i.e., phenomenologically examined and clarified) engaged experience5 (which is substantially distinct from the kind of perception that we practice on a daily basis). This phenomenological clarification is necessary because, on a daily basis, we mostly perceive the past instead of experiencing the present, which distorts our view of reality: ‘Mahayana Buddhism, like process philosophy, relates perception to past events. Existence is a flow of instances of becoming, and the experience of perception is caught up in this flux. What is perceived ‘now’ is related to prior instances which no longer exist’ ([9], p. 305).

However, grappling with the complexity of these continuous, interrelated changes in direct experience is quite impractical for most human concerns and purposes. Thus, we tend to generalise, idealise, and abstract to simplify our objects of investigation—reduce complex, dynamic phenomena of experience to clear, static objects of perception based on past experience. The ceteris paribus assumption at the core of experimental sciences, which allows us to exclude what, in the past, has proven to be relatively irrelevant information6, is an excellent example of the power of this practice to generate stabilised and pragmatically useful knowledge.

What we do in these practices is to create maps and models to render reality knowable, instead of attempting to know reality itself in its dynamic complexity. And while all models are fundamentally flawed, some can indeed be very powerful and useful (like the substance–attribute model, for example). And while these models allow for and enable great theoretical, practical, and technological advancement, they distort our view of the nature of reality, especially if they are taken too literally7—which they all too often are. Here, a supplemental view that focuses on describing how reality is and not on how to best model or conceptualise it might provide a useful corrective lens. Process ontology provides this corrective lens and does so simply by not minimising or excluding the dynamic and interrelated aspects of reality.

The language of process, therefore, does not deny the apparent stability of things but shows how, on careful examination, such stability reveals itself as both impermanent and dependently arising within a broader field of change. In this sense, process ontology does not so much correct our ordinary or scientific understanding as it makes explicit the temporal, developmental, and relational structures that are always present in direct experience (and in empirical data), but usually considered noise, or otherwise excluded for the sake of scientific progress or other forms of efficiency and expediency.

And while it is undeniable that knowledge-organising processes like generalisation, modelling, and mapping reduce complexity and are powerful tools for the generation of scientific and propositional knowledge, there is also a clear psychological human preference for stability over change that is central to Buddhist thought but generally not addressed philosophically in the West. As humans, we tend to prefer the safety of stability, clarity, and precision that self-contained identities, precise concepts, or stable substances afford us, over the complex messiness of interrelated processes. As human beings, we tend to experience change, complexity, and interrelatedness as unsettling.

The world is thus faced by the paradox that, at least in its higher actualities, it craves novelty and yet is haunted by terror at the loss of the past, with its familiarities and its loved ones. It seeks escape from time in its character of ‘perpetually perishing.’ (P&R, p. 340)

Thus, to escape from the passing of time and with it suffering, confusion, and uncertainty, we tend to construct a fictive but stable ‘Hinterwelt’ (a world behind) of divine laws, substances, and idea(l)s,8 as Nietzsche astutely points out in his Zarathustra:

At one time Zarathustra too cast his delusion beyond the human, like all believers in a world behind. The work of a suffering and tortured God the world seemed to me then.

[…]

This world, eternally imperfect, image of an eternal contradiction and imperfect image—a drunken pleasure for its imperfect creator:—thus the world once seemed to me.

[…]

Suffering it was and incapacity—that is what created all worlds behind; and that brief madness of happiness which only the greatest sufferer experiences.

([11], §3)

For Buddhists, however, the acknowledgment of change as a source of dissatisfaction or suffering is a fundamental aspect of reality to be understood:

We, however, cannot find satisfaction with this changing world because, if everything is changeable and perishable our life is quite unstable, uncertain, and restless, with nothing solid upon which to rely.

([12], p. 82)

In contrast to Buddhists’ tendency to accept the reality of change and the resulting suffering, Western thinkers tend to stave off this suffering through a focus on stability. The aim was to render the world safe and stable by thinking of it in terms of essences and substances, by creating sufficiently stable maps or models, and transforming change into a secondary—either negligible or merely ephemeral/apparent—phenomenon, a phenomenon that merely hides the true reality of the imperceptible; it is transcendent but somehow fully knowable, with certain and stable essences, substances, or other stable structures: Plato, for example, argued that our senses only reveal change, so to ground knowledge, we could not rely on our senses or experience, and we need to instead rely on an imperceptible world of stable essences9. Plato convinced the Western world that change and direct experience can merely ground opinions, not certainty. Apparent change merely distracts from and thus ‘hides’ a world of stable, reliable structures accessible to the intellect that we can fully know. It is these structures that can ultimately ground certainty and guarantee safety.10 However, while extremely powerful in helping to develop Western culture, technology, and science, this way of conceiving reality neither reflects our experience nor the empirical and experimental data. It does not reflect how the world actually is, but how we would like it to be.

3. Alfred N. Whitehead’s Experiential Account

So far, I have used the term ‘process thought’ in a very general sense, as a way of understanding the world that considers it to be fundamentally processual, interdependent, and impermanent. Now I will focus on Whitehead’s understanding of process philosophy, to render this investigation more concrete, but also because Whitehead himself acknowledges the affinity between his philosophy of the organism and a general East-Asian tendency to emphasise impermanence:

In this general position the philosophy of organism seems to approximate more to some strains of Indian, or Chinese, thought, than to western Asiatic, or European, thought. One side makes process ultimate; the other side makes fact ultimate.

(P&R, p. 7)

I have argued elsewhere that Whitehead’s approach to metaphysics might be best characterised as a form of radical empiricism (á la William James) or a non-standard form of phenomenology [1], as Whitehead is quite explicit in his aim to ground his philosophy on the most concrete elements of experience:

In the three notions actual entity, prehension, nexus an endeavour has been made to base philosophical thought upon the most concrete elements in our experience.

(P&R p. 18)

But since these most concrete elements of direct experience are usually not at the heart of philosophical investigation, at least within the Western philosophical tradition, there is a distinct lack shaping Western academic vocabularies when it comes to expressing these experiences. Whitehead, in line with other thinkers attempting to describe direct experience like Husserl and Heidegger, found himself in the position of needing to develop a new vocabulary to point towards these elements of experience, leading to a philosophy that appears quite abstract and technical. However, notions like ‘actual entity’, ‘prehension’, and the like are merely notions that should point us toward the most concrete elements of experience; what they name is ultimately available in the experience of actual occasions prehending11 each other.

Whitehead thus grounds his philosophy in direct experience (or prehension), not to be confused with conscious perception12, which, for Whitehead, is not merely experience, but is a ‘seeing as’ and thus constitutes ‘the most primitive form of judgment.’ (P&R, p. 162) Thus, he is grounding his philosophy in experience and not in perception, because perception implies consciousness, and thus, judgement. It selects for familiarity and stability and thus obscures the dynamic complexity, which also shapes direct experience. This is why the average human cannot readily perceive actual occasions:13

Consciousness is only the last and greatest of such elements by which the selective character of the individual obscures the external totality from which it originates and which it embodies. […] The task of philosophy is to recover the totality obscured by the selection. It replaces in rational experience what has been submerged in the higher sensitive experience and has been sunk yet deeper by the initial operations of consciousness itself.

(P&R, p. 15)

The view that emerges from this focus on direct experience, which seeks to recover ‘the totality obscured by selection,’ reveals reality as a cumulative and creative process of interrelated, perspectival, felt experiences called ‘actual occasions’ or ‘actual entity’. It is on this level of non-conceptual awareness that ‘actual entity’, ‘prehension’, and ‘nexus’ become ‘experientable’.

But what about the mid-sized, individual objects we seem to perceive as stable on a daily basis? These, according to Whitehead, are the result of acts of perception. They emerge because repetitive processual patterns named ‘nexus’ and ‘societies’ create sufficient continuity to create the appearance of stability. A nexus is a loose collection of actual entities related through mutual prehensions: ‘A nexus is a set of actual entities in their interrelatedness, and is as ‘real, individual, and particular’ and ‘factual’ as its member actual entities. As such it is itself an object for prehension’ ([14], p. 301). Thus, nexūs (plural of nexus) are patterns or qualities, like molecules in this room, the colour of the book, leaves on a tree, a forest eco-system or my immune response right now, that can be taken as a unit or a set and thus perceived as appearing to remain relatively stable over time.

In contrast, ‘societies are the ‘enduring objects’ of our experience. Although actual entities do not endure or change, a society has an essential character, making it the individual society it is, and accidental qualities that vary in different circumstances’ ([14], p. 301). A society is thus a type of nexus that has developed an emergent, self-sustaining social order through the repetition of forms. These repeated forms together appear as singular entities due to repetition and continuity: ‘For many purposes a society can indeed be treated as a unity and does indeed possess a degree of self-sustaining “individuality,” but in fact any such “continuity” must […] ultimately be thought in relation to the “discontinuities” (atomic occasions) that compose it’ [15]. In my discussion, I will mainly focus on nexūs, as all relevant information will also hold for societies, while allowing myself to evade issues of emergence and of self-sustaining order.

So how precisely does a nexus generate ‘unity’ or ‘stability’?

A nexus is a set of actual entities in the unity of the relatedness constituted by their prehensions of each other, or—what is the same thing, conversely expressed—constituted by their objectifications in each other (14th category of Explanation, P&R, p. 24).

A nexus refers to a set of actual occasions (moments of process) interrelating through experiences (prehensions) of each other, forming an interrelated and functional, repeating pattern which leads to unities of sufficient coherence to appear as a stable pattern over time. Any nexus is a public matter of fact, thus neither being arbitrary nor the result of merely subjective selection; however, it does not have substantial or independent existence.

On an ontological level, a nexus is not just a collection of random processes, but a patterned unity, continuously being prehended (experienced) and expressed again over time. The members of the nexus belong to one another through the concrete ways they prehend each other, that is, through the experiences or feelings that each actual entity integrates in its own becoming. But this stability of a nexus itself remains without concrete ontological grounding. This also holds for societies: ‘We must remember the extreme generality of the notion of an enduring object—a genetic character inherited through a historic route of actual occasions.’ (P&R, p. 109) To define a nexus (or a society) as a set of actual entities whose unity is grounded in their relatedness, which in turn is constituted by their prehensions of each other, is to ground ‘thingness’ or ‘objectivity’ in becoming and relation. The nexus is nothing over and above this system of unfolding reciprocal prehensions (experiences or feelings).

4. The Two Fallacies and the Limits of Language

According to Whitehead, we lack insight into the interrelated and dynamic nature of reality, even though it is available to us, because we do not actually investigate direct experience; instead, we focus on analysing perceptions and the concepts that we use to talk about the contents of perception and their nature. Furthermore, many languages (especially the Indo-European language family) are structured in a way to suggest units of meaning (a nature or essence), which we then project onto the interrelated, dynamic plurality we live in to create objects or substances. Stability, while having some grounding in repetitive processual relationality, largely results from using concepts to ultimately stabilise and reify these relational continua:

Most neutrally, we can start from this broad understanding: all phenomena are dependent for their identity as the kinds of objects they are on the conceptual structure that contributes to our experience. For something to be a single thing, or to be a thing of a particular kind, is for us to take it as falling under a sortal, and sortals are our conceptual constructions.

([2], p. 27)

Different conceptual mechanisms can be used to generate identity determination or reification. These processes of stabilisation and reification give rise to two fallacies that, according to Whitehead, distort our ability to understand reality: the fallacy of misplaced concreteness and the fallacy of the perfect dictionary.

The fallacy of misplaced concreteness points to our tendency to equate concepts with reality. It names the fallacy of taking abstract or ideal concepts, or general linguistic accounts, to be concretely real and act accordingly: instead of encountering the fluid nature of reality, we engage with abstract, static representations (concepts, ideas, or conceptualised/idealised experience), or we analyse concepts instead of engaging with phenomena at all. This, for example, happens when we begin an investigation with a definition instead of beginning with the phenomenon itself.

To a degree, this step of abstraction and generalisation via language is unavoidable as direct experience is far too rich and too complex to yield useful insights directly—we need to select what to pay attention to: ‘[w]e experience more than we can analyse. For we experience the universe, and we analyse in our consciousness a minute selection of its details’ ([16], p. 89). Thus, these processes of selection and reification as such are not problematic, as long as we do not confuse the ontological status of the resulting abstracta with that of concrete reality, i.e., as long as we do not commit the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.

In addition, Whitehead also talks about the fallacy of the perfect dictionary. This fallacy describes the way that conceptual language can tend to insulate us from novel experience. When (conceptual) language guides the investigation, as is generally the case, then the phenomena for which we do not have names yet cannot readily influence the discussion.

There is an insistent presupposition continually sterilising philosophic thought. It is the belief, the very natural belief, that mankind has consciously entertained all the fundamental ideas which are applicable to its experience. Further, it is held that human language, in single words or in phrases, explicitly expresses these ideas. I will term this presupposition, ‘The Fallacy of the Perfect Dictionary.’.

([16], p. 173)

The often-voiced critique against Whitehead of constructing an abstract philosophy using a very obscure vocabulary, which I addressed above, is directly related to this problem. Whitehead saw philosophers as either belonging to a ‘critical school’ that stayed within a dictionary’s limits, aiming at analysing its concepts critically, or to a ‘speculative school’, whose members tended to expand the dictionary in response to novel phenomena or experiences, and to whom he considered himself to belong. If there are no words to express a specific phenomenon, the introduction of new concepts in order to point out the phenomenon in question is necessary. A phenomenon directly experienced has to be accorded more reality than logical analysis, conceptual rigour, or other linguistic intuitions.

Whitehead’s fallacy of the perfect dictionary now describes the belief that the meaning of a phenomenon or experience can be fully captured by a dictionary or verbal definition, which Whitehead criticises as a way to evade the deeper, more complex aspects of reality. Wittgenstein ultimately makes a similar point in his Tractatus, arguing that what cannot be clearly expressed via the atomic propositions and names that he reduces language to simply does not exist. There is nothing ultimately unsayable, and even if there was, we could not ask after it, as we would not have the language to do so: ‘For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannot be expressed. The riddle does not exist. If a question can be put at all, then it can also be answered.’ (Wittgenstein, Tractatus, 6.5) However, this simply eliminates the problems and questions of life, not by answering them, but by rendering them unsayable:

We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all.

Of course, there is then no question left, and just this is the answer.14

(6.52)

If Wittgenstein stopped here, it would look like the Western philosophical penchant for conceptually eliminating phenomena (in this case, questions) that do not fit the system would rear its ugly head again.

Wittgenstein builds the ‘perfect dictionary’ in the Tractatus by developing a logical language able to ‘picture’ the world, and thus ‘resolves’ philosophy. However, his own conclusion points toward the ‘fallacy of perfect dictionary’ by showing that such a dictionary is limited and cannot encompass what we likely care most about (the problems of life), thus forcing one to move beyond it to a realm of experience: ‘[t]here is indeed the inexpressible. This shows itself; […]15’. The inexpressible ‘shows itself’; it can be experienced, even if we cannot speak about it (6.522). In 6.54, Wittgenstein further states that what shows itself might actually be of more importance and relevance for seeing the world correctly than what we can speak about using a ‘perfect dictionary’:

My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognises them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.) He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly.

We can only see the world rightly if we discard the propositional, linguistic ladder of conceptual rigour that helped us realise that Wittgenstein’s propositions are ultimately meaningless for life and instead follow Whitehead in focusing on what reveals itself in experience, even if we need to invent a new language and logic to do so. To say this is to say that language is infinitely malleable and to say that is not directly connected to the actual, while experience is. This is not to accuse Whitehead (or Wittgenstein, for that matter) of anti-intellectualism, but to point out that both authors highlight that, while there is a lot that can be done with language, there is a limit to the power of language. And while the fallacies of misplaced concreteness and the perfect dictionary can be suspended or overcome, this can only be done temporarily, not ultimately. Propositions, one of the eight categories of existence that Whitehead introduces in Process and Reality, take the role of negotiating the distance between eternal objects and actual occasions. They play a fundamental role in the unfolding of reality as lures for feeling, but they are not ultimately actual. A similar view of the relative worth and, at the same time, ultimate emptiness of propositions and concepts (indeed of all meaningful utterances) present in both Whitehead and the early Wittgenstein shapes a prominent school of Mahāyāna Buddhism, namely the Madhyamaka (Middle Way School). This middle way interpretation of the Buddha’s words was developed by Nāgārjuna (ca. 150–250 CE) and will inform my engagement with Buddhism in what follows.

5. Nāgārjuna’s Middle Way

But before I discuss Nāgārjuna’s middle way interpretation of Buddhism, I want to provide a minimal general outline of the Buddha’s teachings on the nature of reality, to give a very general sense of what Nāgārjuna was responding to. The oldest sutras detail that the Buddha taught that there are three fundamental marks of existence, i.e., three characteristics of all existence and beings. These are: (a) anicca (impermanence); (b) anattā (without a lasting essence, no-self), i.e., there is no form of independent self-grounded existence, however it might be conceived; and finally (c) dukkha (commonly translated as ‘suffering’ or ‘cause of suffering’, ‘unsatisfactory’, and ‘unease’)16.

In his work, Nāgārjuna expanded and systematised this early view. Nāgārjuna famously develops these ideas in his Mūla-madhyamaka-kārikā (root verses of the middle way). He explains the concept of no-self (anattā) in terms of emptiness (lack of inherent substance), thus expanding the idea of ‘no-self’ to apply to everything (not only the self) and referring to this as suññatā or ṡūnyatā in Sanskrit (i.e., emptiness or nothingness17). Yielding the claim that things are empty of own-being. He furthermore shows how impermanence (anicca) can be more precisely understood as the ‘dependent origination’ or ‘co-dependent arising’ of all phenomena (pratītya-samutpāda)18. This explains impermanence as dynamic, interrelated, and dependently arising. This connection is traditionally expressed as ‘When this is, that is; this arising, that arises; when this is not, that is not; this ceasing, that ceases.’ Thus Nāgārjuna ‘clarified that co-dependent origination and emptiness are synonymous, [thus he] was the first one to throw light on the ‘co-dependent originational’ structure of the thought of pratītya-samutpāda’ [17], p. 98.

While ontologically, the idea of this causing that and thus nothing existing without cause might seem more intuitively plausible to Western minds, it might be helpful to use some everyday examples to illuminate how meaning and concepts also arise dependently: a ‘husband’ exists only in relation to a ‘spouse’, just as a ‘teacher’ is intelligible only in relation to a ‘student’; neither role possesses intrinsic identity apart from the relational context that constitutes it. Likewise, the apparent properties of objects, such as ‘bigness’ or ‘smallness’, emerge only through contextual comparison. As the traditional formula of dependent origination suggests, the arising of ‘bigness’ makes ‘smallness’ possible and vice versa; each is intelligible only through the other. In all such cases, what appears as a determinate nature of one thing dissolves upon analysis into relational dependence, demonstrating that all phenomena, as well as concepts, lack inherent essence or stable, self-grounded definitions. All attributes and definitions are ultimately merely conceptual designations conditioned by context, experience, and difference, which leads followers of the middle way to the conclusion that no positive claims can be made about ultimate reality. Using language, we are only able to show the ultimate emptiness of whatever claim we are encountering, so if we are interested in the ultimate, we need to relinquish language (throw away the ladder) and engage in practice or rest in experience.

Thus, even concepts like ‘emptiness’ or ‘process’ remain an abstraction; ultimate knowledge arises only when we let go of the need to grasp reality through concepts at all and remain with direct experience: ‘ultimate truth lies beyond the expression of thought and word and is known only when the mind has transcended every conceptual extreme, whether of existence, nonexistence, both, or neither (this is the famous tetralemma)’ ([18], pp. 7–8). This is not to suggest that language cannot enrich our relative understanding of experience. Theoretical knowledge about wine, art, or other areas of direct experience allows us to engage with qualia and phenomena more deeply, but the phenomena are still necessary for the experience. A conceptual grasp cannot replace experiencing, and a practice of cultivating awareness is necessary to move us from thinking of experience as perception to actually experiencing said experience.

Nāgārjuna develops this clarified view of the middle path in order to avoid the extremes of eternalism (Tib. རྟག་ལྡ་,rtag lta), the belief that all things exist due to a form of self-existence or eternal essence (substance view), and nihilism or annihilationism (Tib.ཆད་ལྟ་, chad lta), the belief that nothing exists. In Pali, eternalism is sometimes referred to as bhava-ditthi (belief in being), while annihilationism is referred to as vibhava-ditthi (belief in non-being). For Mādhyamikas (followers of the middle way teachings), both positions are to be avoided in the following way: Everything is empty, but that does not imply that nothing exists. ‘Emptiness’ just highlights that things do not exist in a substantial manner; there is no self or self-grounded existence. Through consequentialist (Tib.ཐལ་འགྱུར་, thal ‘gyur) reasoning, i.e., through reductio arguments that expose the incoherence of essentialist views, he reveals the emptiness (Pali: suññatā; Sanskrit: ṡūnyatā) of all phenomena, including language and concepts, thereby articulating the middle way view that avoids both substantialism and nihilism. Nāgārjuna thus systematically dismantles the assumption that phenomena possess inherent existence (Tib. རང་བཞིན་, rang bzhin) by showing that any attempt to ground things in an independent, self-subsistent nature leads to contradiction.

A brief aside is as follows: Another way to navigate both extremes of eternalism and nihilism might be to describe it as process, which has neither a stable essence nor self (being), nor is it merely nothing. However, this stance may not satisfy Mādhyamikas (particularly those practising prāsaṅgika-madhyamaka), as it merely replaces the old concept of ‘emptiness’ with another concept, namely that of ‘process’, rather than resting in the experience the middle way approach ultimately points to. Using the term ‘process’ to enter the middle way remains an abstraction; it reifies (like all concepts), and we would commit the fallacy of misplaced concreteness if we believed that the concept ‘process’ could fully encapsulate what is pointed to by using the term ‘emptiness’. Nonetheless, it may serve as a skilful means relevant to the modern Western mindset and enable listeners or readers to conceive of a middle way between being and non-being more easily.

Let me now return to the question of language, concepts, and their role in understanding the world. Nāgārjuna argued that concepts can be conventionally valid and used for pragmatic purposes, but they become absurd under thorough logical examination. Thus, concepts are merely provisional ways of structuring experience and not ultimately valid; they do not describe or grasp ultimate reality. This is why Buddhists argue that mental abstractions or mental images (concepts or words) are, at least to a degree, delusional; they suggest the existence of something (a stable or self-grounded nature, essence, quality, or property) where there is none.19 This delusional nature of concepts and language causes us to commit the fallacy of misplaced concreteness and leads us to confuse our concepts with reality. However, this does not mean that all concepts are deceptive or that inference is to be entirely disregarded as a tool to attain knowledge. Therefore, Buddhists cannot simply be labelled as ‘anti-intellectual’. Especially the Gelukpas, for example, the most academically oriented school of the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism, also hold that

“inference—even though it is indirect—is incontrovertible, in the sense that it does bring valid knowledge concerning the object on which it is focused […]. In this system, inference is viewed as a necessary interim stage between wrong understanding and direct valid cognition. Inference is indeed mistaken, but in only one sense: that what appears to it is not an object’s true nature. What appears to the well-trained mind (the good ‘path of reasoning’) is still a mental construct, but it is utterly correct and a true reflection of the phenomenon, and thus it enables one to experience that phenomenon’s true nature. A person who has developed a good path of reasoning can attain clear knowledge of all phenomena”.

([20], p. 23)

Some concepts are helpful or pragmatically useful; they can help the knower attain ‘clear knowledge’, and they might possibly be utterly correct, but as they are not ultimately the same thing as the phenomenon, they are not ‘real’ in the sense of having a self or a nature—they remain empty imputations of the mind. Since concepts are therefore (sometimes) relatively useful, but not ultimate, even the concept of ‘emptiness’ is a distortion (as the concept of ‘process’ would be). This is often expressed as ‘emptiness of emptiness’:

“(22,67) ‘Emptiness of emptiness’ means that the imputation made in the mind of someone seeing the correct mode of emptiness—that the object is empty of its own name—is also empty of its own identity.

(22,68) How is it seen? Seeing it to be ultimate, which is also empty of its own identity, is the ‘emptiness of being ultimate’.”

[21]

This emptiness of all phenomena, including the imputation of ‘emptiness’ or of an ‘ultimate’, is the reason why, according to Madhyamaka Buddhists, one cannot make positive claims about what is ultimately true—Nāgārjuna argues that even the Buddha could not do so:

“(70) What is shown conventionally to the world appears to be without disintegration, but the Buddha has never actually shown anything with true existence. Those who do not understand what is explained by the Tathāgata to be conventionally existent and empty of the sign of true existence are frightened by this teaching.”

This does not, however, negate the relative truth and the relative usefulness of the teachings of the Buddha:

“(71) It is known in the way of the world that ‘this arises in dependence on that.’ Such statements are not refuted. But whatsoever arises dependently does not exist inherently, and how can that non-inherent existence itself have inherent existence? In fact, that non-inherent existence must definitely not exist inherently!

(72) Those who have faith in the teaching of emptiness will strive for it through a number of different kinds of reasoning. Whatever they have understood about it in terms of non-inherent existence, they clarify this for others, which helps others to attain nirvãna by abandoning grasping at the apparently true existence of cyclic existence and non-cyclic existence.”

[22]

Ultimately, Nāgārjuna’s critique and analysis of conceptual understanding serve as a therapeutic approach in Wittgenstein’s sense, clarifying the confusion that arises from holding that concepts and meanings possess inherent meaning or that they would imply some self-grounded existence in their referent. Language is not the way to the ultimate. However, what is ultimately true is available for experience to a suitable consciousness, such as that of an experienced practitioner.

6. Process Encounters Buddhism

In what follows, I will use Nāgārjuna’s understanding of the three marks of reality that the Buddha introduced and bring these into dialogue with process philosophy.

6.1. Co-Dependent Arising—Interdependence and Impermanence

The idea that everything arises in dependence on multiple interrelated impermanent phenomena might be one of the strongest points of connection between process thought and Madhyamaka Buddhism. Both approaches hold that everything from concepts to objects and even the entire universe arises in dependence on other factors. Nothing in this world exists unchangingly20 or independently, i.e., everything is dependent on and is caused by multiple other factors, and thus, everything is ultimately interrelated.21 This means that there are no clear identities, and thus no clear distinction between inner and outer, between subject and object:

IF YOU ARE a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there can be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either. So we can say that the cloud and the paper inter-are. “Interbeing” is a word that is not in the dictionary yet, but if we combine the prefix “inter-” with the verb “to be,” we have a new verb: inter-be.

[23]

This is a modern explication of pratītya-samutpāda (dependent origination), which teaches that everything arises and subsides in relation to various causes and conditions coming together. Thus, things arise as causal effects of a web of interdependent relationships; they do not exist as isolated, unrelated, i.e., inert entities. This view also characterises Whitehead’s philosophy: ‘That the first analysis of an actual entity, into its most concrete elements, discloses it to be a concrescence of prehensions, which have originated in its process of becoming.’ (P&R p. 23) For Whitehead, reality is a flux of actual occasions, fleeting, interconnected events that arise in relation to and experience of each other (prehension). It is precisely this internal openness that allows for change and causation, as I will argue below. If things existed as fixed identities, they could neither be caused nor effect any change. In a world of eternal identities (eternalism), the world is frozen into place with no room for change or growth. This is why emptiness or process is the necessary condition for causation, interdependence, or relationality.

Looking at Whitehead, there are various processes that can be considered in terms of interdependent arising, for example, concrescence, prehension, and stabilisation as a nexus:

Actual entities involve each other by reason of their prehensions of each other. There are thus real individual facts of the togetherness of actual entities, which are real, individual, and particular, in the same sense in which actual entities and the prehensions are real, individual, and particular. Any such particular fact of togetherness among actual entities is called a ‘nexus’ […]. The ultimate facts of immediate actual experience are actual entities, prehensions, and nexus. All else is, for our experience, derivative abstraction.

(P&R p. 20)

This account of the various levels of interdependent becoming can be further clarified using a distinction introduced by the Tibetan Buddhist thinker and Gelug monk Je Tsongkhapa (1357–1419). He differentiates three forms of dependent origination: dependent arising, dependent existence, and dependent designation [24]. The first term, ‘dependent arising,’ indicates that all things arise from the coming together of multiple causes and conditions. Second, ‘dependent existence’ refers to how things exist in relation to their parts and wholes. Finally, ‘dependent designation’ highlights that all phenomena are imputed by conceptual thought. The first type of dependence (dependent arising) is diachronic, linking prior causes with later effects, and aligns with Whitehead’s description of the becoming of actual occasions through their prehensions of the past. The second form, ‘dependent existence,’ describes a form of mereological dependence analogous to Whitehead’s interrelation of prehensions that create actual occasions: every prehension is part of the actual occasion, while every actual occasion is part of the larger region, nexus, or society, and all levels influence each other reciprocally. Finally, ‘dependent designation’ signifies that all qualities and things arise in dependence on being conceived as stable qualities or objects (conceptual imputation), which in Whitehead’s terminology is referred to as a ‘nexus’ or a ‘society.’

Je Tsongkhapa’s distinctions can also be applied to Whitehead’s threefold understanding of prehensions (i.e., experiences). Prehensions encompass three elements that bridge the distinction between ontology and epistemology:

That every prehension consists of three factors: (a) the ‘subject’ which is prehending, namely, the actual entity in which that prehension is a concrete element; (b) the ‘datum’ which is prehended; (c) the ‘subjective form’ which is how that subject prehends that datum.

(P&R p. 23)

The subject (the prehending actual occasion) exists dependently; its existence is not self-grounded but relies on the prehensions it integrates or excludes in its becoming. Its emergence depends on the datum, i.e., the larger whole (the other occasions it prehends) upon which all becoming relies. Additionally, the way actual occasions prehend is shaped by a form of conceptual imputation, the ‘meaning’ or subjective form that the actual entity realises in its concrescence, i.e., the kind of thing (nexus/society) it is becoming a part of.

Interdependence can furthermore be explored in relation to the co-dependent arising of the one and the many:

The novel entity is at once the togetherness of the ‘many’ which it finds, and also it is one among the disjunctive ‘many’ which it leaves; it is a novel entity, disjunctively among the many entities which it synthesises. The many become one, and are increased by one. In their natures, entities are disjunctively ‘many’ in process of passage into conjunctive unity.

(P&R p. 21)

The main difference to a standard Madhyamaka view is that for Whitehead, the many, i.e., the perished, past actual occasions, remain ‘real’ as the datum for future actual occasions. Furthermore, in contrast to Whitehead’s language, which is more open to (mis)interpretation, Mādhyamikas are more careful and explicit in their rejection of all substantiality and reification. There is no substantiality, stability, or identity to be found on ultimate analysis:

For in dependent co-origination, it is not only that one and the many are dependent on each other in their arising and ceasing, but also that both one and the many are completely without substance and empty. Thus, it must be realised that although one is one as distinguishable from the many, one is not one: although the many is the many as distinguishable from the one, many are not the many. This is a realisation that there is neither one nor the many.

([17], p. 91)

Both the one and the many are ultimately empty. Some thinkers, like Masao Abe, identify this as a fundamental difference between process thought and Buddhism, whereas process is focused on the interdependence of becoming of the one and the many; he claims Madhyamaka Buddhism ultimately aims at emptiness:

Therefore, although the Buddhist teaching of dependent co-origination has an aspect of becoming, in its essence it does not, as is often misunderstood, indicate ‘becoming’ but ‘being’—‘being’ which is realised through the realisation of emptiness.

([17], p. 91)

And it is true that Whitehead’s language might lead one to mistakenly view actual occasions as a quasi-substantial foundation underlying impermanence/co-dependent arising. However, I would argue that on close examination, the present ‘actual occasion’ merely names emergent phenomena arising from interrelation (prehension) that occur co-dependently and remain without self-grounding as long as they are present and are thus fundamentally empty now. Past actual occasions, however, are a different matter. In perishing, the actual occasion automatically ‘reifies’ into objective immortality.

Thus, where Whitehead possibly remains more thoroughly entrenched within a Western framework is the idea of a fixed past in the form of unchanging past actual occasions, and in connection with the issues of the reality of time and linear temporality22. And while there are differing views on the stable nature of the past in the Whitehead literature, especially concerning God23, the contrast between the immortal past and the unfolding present needs to be preserved, as it is the engine that keeps the creative movement of the universe going. It is the immortal past that furnishes the data for the experience of the unfolding present.

In any case, the becoming of actual occasions during the time of transition from one event to the other (physical time)—in contrast to genetic time, i.e., the time of concrescence—presupposes the idea of a linear advancement from the present, through an engagement with the past, into the future. 24 This stands in contrast with standard Mahāyāna interpretations, which on the relative level tend to consider time to be symmetrical ([25], pp. 4–5) and on the ultimate level tend to consider the idea of time to be an abstract concept which, just like the mental images of past and future—like any concept what-so-ever—is merely a mental abstraction. Our clinging to the concept of objective time as an existent thing to either be discovered or disproven is thus deluded, even if the concept of time is not deceptive (i.e., it is relatively true and thus useful to navigate concrete existence). The phenomenon of time itself, the experiential datum, is empty; thus, it does not exist as an object, but it is also not nothing.

6.2. Emptiness and No-Essence

So how precisely are we to understand this ‘way of being’ as empty, that does not imply existence, but also not non-existence? To clarify what emptiness is, it is helpful to first outline what emptiness is not. I am here following an outline of Zen Buddhist scholar and Philosopher Hisamatu Shin’ichi25, who provides a contrast between ‘oriental nothingness’ and five kinds of nothingness familiar to Western philosophers. He makes clear that he

“seeks to differentiate clearly Oriental Nothingness from other possible kinds of nothingness in order that it not be confused with them. Oriental Nothingness thus conceptualized and discriminated from other kinds of nothingness is, of course, not the true, concrete, living Nothingness. That it cannot avoid being simply a shadow of the true Nothingness must be said to be a fate which a conceptual explanation cannot escape.”

[26]26

These Western forms of nothingness with which Oriental Nothingness27 should not be confused are:

• It is not a negation of being (negating the existence of a specific being or of being as such)—this would lead to the extreme of nihilism that Buddhists seek to avoid.
• It is also not simply a predicative negation (negation of a property).
• It is not an abstract concept (reification)—there is no emptiness as its own entity.
• It is not a mere conjecture (speculation—i.e., not given in experience); emptiness can be experienced directly.
• Emptiness is also not simply the absence of consciousness (mere non-awareness).

To say ‘this is empty’ does not imply that the object referred to is a phantom, an apparition, or simply pure illusion without any reality. Claiming that something is empty does not deny the object’s sensory and phenomenal identity. The appearances we encounter in perception remain and are acknowledged. What is denied is that this appearance signifies some deeper existence or indicates an underlying, substantial identity that exists apart from this phenomenal appearance.

Buddhist tradition provides a helpful distinction between two levels of self-identity to help clarify this issue: (i) the self-identity of marks or form (Tib. མཚན་ཉིད་, mtshan nyid) and (ii) the self-identity of nature (Tib. ཁམས་, khams). The first ‘self-identity’ of marks (signs, words, or concepts) or form (phenomenal appearance) refers to the perceived conceptual features by which we recognise something as a book, a desk, or a person. From this, we can distinguish the self-identity of nature, which would signify a deeper, ontological, independent essence belonging to or grounding this appearance. ‘Then, we may say that this desk undoubtedly has a self-identity in terms of ‘form’ called a desk, but that it does not have a self-identity in terms of ‘nature’ named a desk. This is what we mean when we say that this desk is empty’ ([17], p. 99). Any Buddhist analysis affirms the appearance of self-identity: there is, indeed, a recognisable object as a configuration of form and marked by a name. The existence of an independent, self-sustaining nature or a single, independent, permanent self ‘causing’ or grounding the appearance is, however, denied:

[…] the assertion of a lack of self is not a theory of nihilism, that phenomena do not exist at all, but an identification that phenomena lack certain qualities that they are incorrectly assumed to have. It is precisely these misapprehended, non-existent qualities that constitute the self the Buddhists deny in the theory of selflessness.

([28], Chapter 9)

This account seems strikingly similar to Whitehead’s critique of reification, expressed in the fallacy of misplaced concreteness and his account of apparent permanence or continuity being the result of loose repeating patterns (nexūs—plural of nexus) or self-organised repeating nexūs (societies). Both generate forms of self-identity of marks or form, without possessing a substantial identity or unchanging essence. Still, they are not nothing: they are real patterns and thus objects for prehension, without, however, being substantially grounded. They co-dependently arise and are thus characterised by ‘inter-being’ in the sense introduced above. Applying this insight to Whitehead’s thought and even process approaches in general, we can argue that apparent stability can thus be explained as a self-identity of mark or form.

It is precisely this lack of a stable essence that makes causation, movement, change, and process possible at all, while it is the self-identity of mark or form that makes it possible to speak about an interrelation between different phenomena:

If each individual thing has its selfhood in terms of nature it comes to possess a self-sufficient independence by its own nature. As a result, its mutual dependence with other individual things becomes impossible. However, since every individual thing has its own ‘selfhood in terms of form’ respectively, so far as the form is concerned, the interdependence between individual things is quite possible—because a form can be one form only in distinction from or in correlation with other forms.

([17], p. 99)

If things existed as substantial, fixed, and individual, there could be no change, no becoming, and no creativity; neither could there be cause and effect relations, or any internal relationality at all—everything would be fixed eternally, frozen in complete independence. This is why Buddhists name the stance that holds there to be a stable ground of being ‘eternalism’. In contrast, only a philosophy that is truly open to change can accommodate genuine novelty and creativity, but it relies on the self-identity of marks or form to be able to speak about the presence or absence of these qualities.

6.3. The Truth of Suffering

Let me now move on to a topic that is usually not focused on in the context of metaphysics, namely, the experience of suffering that results from impermanence that I introduced at the beginning of this paper. ‘Suffering’, by which I mean a general sense of unease or dissatisfaction, arises because, and here Whitehead and Buddhism agree, all beings are inherently oriented toward satisfaction and thus attempt to hold onto or maintain what creates satisfaction. According to Whitehead, the striving for satisfaction shapes the becoming of every actual occasion. He even names the final stage of concrescence, when the actual occasion emerges as the result of a process that integrates prehended influences from the past and now moves toward a new synthesis, ‘satisfaction’. As soon as this satisfaction is achieved, however, the actual occasion perishes as a subject to become ‘objectively immortal’ (i.e., an unchanging datum for future actual occasions).

This unending impermanence Whitehead relates to what he calls ‘evil’, and I interpret it as suffering in the sense of being unsatisfied: ‘The ultimate evil in the temporal world is deeper than any specific evil. It lies in the fact that the past fades; time is a ‘perpetual perishing’’ (P&R, p. 340). This aligns with the Buddhist view that existence is marked by transience, which in turn is interpreted as the main source of suffering, because it is the nature of sentient beings to desire that good things remain unchanged and bad things do not arise. We cling to positive experiences and ‘suffer’ their loss. What is overlooked in our clinging to the positive or our aversion to the negative is the emptiness or dynamic dimension of all phenomena. Therefore, this suffering is the result of our ignorance. In our commitment to what should be (or what we would like to remain the case), we ignore what is currently unfolding.

Whitehead only references Buddhism explicitly three times in P&R, but the most interesting instance appears in the last chapter (God and the world), and relates to the idea that life is suffering and whether there is a way out of suffering:

[…] the best that we can say of the turmoil [the suffering of this world] is, ‘For so he giveth his beloved-sleep.’ This is the message of religions of the Buddhistic type, and in some sense it is true. In this final discussion we have to ask, whether metaphysical principles impose the belief that it is the whole truth.

(P&R, p. 342)

Apart from the fact that this is a quite inadequate rendering of Buddhism as a form of karmic fatalism and quietism in the face of suffering, it more interestingly seems to suggest for Whitehead’s own position, that a deeper understanding of metaphysical principles might lead to a deeper understanding of truth. A deeper truth that might show that there is more to this world than just suffering. Most Buddhists themselves, in contrast to many Western quietist or nihilist readings of their view, take Buddhism to be fundamentally optimistic. Buddha’s teachings acknowledge the truth of suffering and its causes, but they also show us the possibility of a way out of suffering and how to find this path—the third noble truth is the truth of cessation (of suffering and, indeed, of karma), and the fourth noble truth is the truth of the path that leads to cessation. There is no need to deny the truth of suffering (or of change) within this framework, because the Buddha has already shown a way out of suffering.

An important element of this way out is a correct view—a thorough understanding of the nature of reality and an acknowledgement of its empty inter-being. This can be achieved through wisdom, which includes philosophy and especially epistemological engagement, as well as practice. Buddhists take

“epistemological analysis (a purely philosophical discipline for Western minds) as inseparable from, and being most relevant for, soteriological concerns (a religious matter for Western minds). In other words, the delusion about a truly existent self and phenomena and its resultant suffering are basically taken to be a cognitive error, while liberation or buddhahood is nothing but the removal of this error”.

([28], introduction)

As the Mahāyānasūtrālaṃkāra28 VI.2 says,

In itself, the view about a self lacks the characteristic of a self, As do its deformities—their characteristics differ [from a self]. Nor is there another [self] apart from these two, so it arises as a mere error. Therefore, liberation is the termination of this mere error.

(quoted from [29], introduction)

Once we fully realise the fleeting, processual, or empty nature of all phenomena, there is nothing to be attached to. Failing to terminate this mere error and perceiving a substantial self or identity where there is none is the ultimate cause of suffering. Similarly, for Whitehead, maintaining substance thought, believing in an independent and unchanging self or essence, can produce ‘evil’: ‘The evil produced by the Aristotelian ‘primary substance’ is exactly this habit of metaphysical emphasis upon the ‘subject-predicate’ form of proposition.’ (P&R, p. 45) This is the ‘evil’ of presupposing that ‘the ‘subject-predicate’ form of propositions embodies the finally adequate mode of statement about the actual world’ (loc. cit). It is ‘evil’ because this presupposition leads to an inadequate view of reality and leads us to misunderstand its nature. It keeps us trapped in ways of thinking and acting that are fixed and thus ultimately unresponsive to the dependently unfolding of reality.

I do not think we need to take Whitehead’s use of the term ‘evil’ too literally here. The term simply points to the suffering caused by substantial ways of thinking if they are confused with actual existence, which is to commit the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. Substances, their predicates, and the propositional structures used to express their relation are merely conventions that have proven pragmatically useful. It is simply our failure to recognise them as abstractions, in contrast to actual reality, that leads to distress, both individually and socially. This is what I take to be the ‘evil’ caused by Aristotelianism (not by Aristotle himself) that Whitehead refers to.

7. Conclusions

Whitehead (just like Husserl29) considered the bifurcation of nature—the division of reality in what can be experienced subjectively and what can be measured or discovered objectively, the absolute division into subjective experience and objective knowledge—the fundamental issue of modernity. In the words of Wilfried Sellars, the contemporary

“philosopher is confronted not by one complex many dimensional picture, the unity of which, such as it is, he must come to appreciate; but by two pictures of essentially the same order of complexity [namely the manifest and the scientific image], each of which purports to be a complete picture of man-in-the-world, and which, after separate scrutiny, he must fuse into one vision” ([31], p. 4).

To overcome this bifurcation of nature, (scientific) concepts and experientially encountered reality need to be brought into some form of dialogue. On the first pages of Process and Reality, Whitehead proposes a methodology that might be able to accomplish such a dialectical back and forth between experience and conceptual knowledge. Whitehead frames his speculative philosophy as ‘the endeavour to frame a coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas through which every element of experience can be interpreted’ (P&R p. 4). To him, it is not the concrete, directly experienced phenomenon that warrants questioning; it is the abstract, imputed conceptual rendering of the world that needs to be questioned, explained, and expanded in terms of the concrete: ‘In other words, philosophy is explanatory of abstraction, and not of concreteness.’ (P&R p. 20)

So how does Whitehead propose that we might overcome the bifurcation between the world as experienced and the world as conceptualised? He does so by developing our cosmology in a way that combines three distinct but related elements: (1) to describe the physical universe in a way that (2) also explains how knowledge of that universe is possible and (3) how this knowledge is part of the universe. This is possible because the ‘sharp division between mentality and nature has no ground in our fundamental observation. We find ourselves living within nature’ ([16], p. 156). We are co-dependently arising with the world and thus have immediate, direct access to it when considering our direct, phenomenologically clarified experience.

A defining methodological commitment necessary to fulfil this task is that nothing given in experience may be excluded from this cosmology—every phenomenon has to ‘have its say’. To disregard or devalue any element directly experienced, like life, subjectivity, or feeling, is to potentially replace reality as it is with an idealised abstraction that only partially represents the world. Buddhism shares this same outlook: to understand the world, we need a view rooted in direct engagement with all aspects of reality. Its core insights, emptiness and dependent origination, are descriptions of how phenomena unfold, if observed closely and without prejudice. What Buddhist tradition offers that is missing in process thought as well as in the phenomenological tradition is a deep engagement with and a rich history of experiential practices that help the thinker to directly discover their interrelated co-arising with the unfolding that is. Engaging with Buddhism can aid Western thinkers to develop in this task. Using insights gained through epistemic–meditative practices can help overcome a merely abstract understanding of the bifurcation of nature, that both Husserl and Whitehead diagnosed, by providing tools to directly or experientially realise the nature of reality—and its relation to concepts—by bridging speculative ontology with meditative experiential practices. The aim is the realisation of engaged or direct experience and aiding Western thinkers in cultivating non-reifying, creative ways of seeing, thinking, and acting in the world:

Yet emptiness not only evokes something to be known but can include and impel an orientation to the world, which includes a performative, phenomenological dimension. Emptiness in this light, inclusive of an orientation, encompasses embodied participation and cognitive comportment toward the world. It can be akin to knowledge of the environment or nature; that is to say, it is not known as something one can stand apart from and observe in a ‘spectatorial epistemology,’ but only (and necessarily) can be seen from within it. Here we can see why emptiness can be understood not simply as a propositional or representational truth, but as what calls for attunement and performance. Also, knowing emptiness in this way entails transformation.

([32], p. 23)