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ISSN 1076-9005 Volume 10, 2003
Review of The Monk and the Philosopher
The Monk and the Philosopher: East Meets West in a Father-Son Dialogue
By Jean-Francois Revel and Matthieu Ricard. Translated from French by John Canti. London: Thorson, Harper Collins 1998, and 1999. 310 pages, ISBN 0-8052-4162-0 (paperback), US $14.00
Reviewed By Seyed Javad
University of Bristol
seyedjavad@hotmail.com
For those interested in political philosophy or social
philosophy, Revel is not an unfamiliar voice. Those who have read his
Pourquoi des philosophes? (Why Philosophers?) or contemplated
his tireless concern with the underlying mechanisms of democratic systems
and his profound explication and explanation of the notion of the "decline"
of the democratic ethos as explained in How Democracies Perish
will meet the same man of high intellectual acuity and sharpness. Although
he has traversed far away from socialism as his favorite politics, nonetheless
it is not hard to detect a Revel who is committed to the metaphysics
of modern socialism. In other words, readers are confronted with a man
who takes "agnosticism" as his onto-epistemological point
of departure, and this in turn colors and underpins his existential
Weltanschauung. However, it is undeniable that readers also
encounter a man who is critical of current philosophical modes and soberly
reevaluates the history of Western philosophy. He does so, not in the
light of fads and foibles (like those that Aleksandrovich Pitirim Sorokin
told in relation to social theory and philosophy), but in the light
of the inherent merit of philosophyas a way of life:
an outlook that might, should or must lead to Sophia.
On the other hand, readers will encounter a son, Matthieu Ricard, who
is well-versed in modern science and who has "lived" Buddhism
as a way of life. In other words, in this work we are confronted
with two poles of reflection and thinking that, in the final analysis,
are based on "life-experience": one as a monachus
and the other as a philosophos. The themes of this dialogue
are as wide-ranging as the geographical locations from which these two
people originate and inhabit. Old and New, East and West, Ancient and
Modern, Greek and Pali, Latin and Tibetan, Plato and Lamas: all come
in one enlightening dialogue by two great minds from each world tradition.
And the most significant aspect of this dialogue is the manner of presentation
in which the philosopher asks and the monk replies and in turn puts
a question to the philosopher and so on and so forth.
The book is composed of nineteen chapters, one lucid introduction in
which the philosopher opens up his heart as a father and talks about
his own son, and two conclusions. The first conclusion is by the philosopher,
who sums up his own intellectual odyssey after encountering Buddhism
from his own horizon. I hasten to add that the philosopher demonstrates
in a pedagogical manner what a true and enlightening dialogue really
is. A dialogue is not something that allows you to lose yourself or
to loosen up the other, but rather is conducted in a poetical dimension
in which men of discernible understanding and intellectual acuity attempt
to meet each other at the meta-level of horizons. The last conclusion
is the monk's, in which he reaffirms the value of spiritual tradition
and, most importantly, the significance of "metaphysical choice," from which even those so-called natural sciences are not exempt.
Although one has come to understand that in modern times one should
make a choice between "scientific pursuit" and "spiritual
quest," nonetheless the monk argues otherwise. His increasing attraction
to Buddhism should not be understood as a renouncing of his scientific
reasoning, but rather a rejection of the scientific ethos. That is to
say, if to be a scientist entails that one should spend a whole life
finding solutions for grand issues within the narrow paradigm of normal
science and relegating the individual quest for wisdom, then that attitude,
which has become so deeply institutionalized, should be renounced.
Another important aspect of this work is what one might in sociological
parlance call "operationalization" of grand issues within
both Buddhism and wisdom philosophy. Although Revel has a hard time
understanding how Buddhism is different from a religious tradition since
ordinary Buddhists in Katmandu behave as any pious Catholic or Hindu
would do, nevertheless it is not hard to discern how Ricard takes the
teachings of Buddhism into the realm of politics and the philosophy
of the Dalai Lama's non-violence at an international level. In other
words, the discussions are not just conducted at the metaphysical level,
but instead the whole dialogue is a metaphysically oriented approach
to the phenomenal world. Although Revel has a hard time comprehending
the non-self philosophy of Buddhism due to his commitment to individualism,
nevertheless one should credit the monk when he takes issue with the
founding fathers of modern social theory such as William James and Sigmund
Freud by putting forward the notion of the "Contemplative Science
of Mind."
As a student of social sciences, I could not help being excited when
the monk critically assessed the essential aspects of modern social
theory in general and William James in particular. In examining the
current debates within social theory in particular those where one
thinks of identity and self as a social construction and where the very
ideas of "consciousness" and "streams of consciousness"
are accepted at their face value one can see how the monk takes us
to a higher level of understanding. The lack of proper understanding
of the functioning of the mind on the part of analytical philosophers
or scientists is not of an "analytical" nature, Ricard states.
On the contrary, he argues that for the last two centuries, the West
has taken very little interest in contemplative science. In other words,
the road to liberation is not via analysis alone. One, as Rumi states,
is in need of gnosis or as the monk puts it: the science of mind. As
Ricard time and again argues, Buddhism's choice is based on experience
through contemplation. This is because the ultimate nature of reality
which ultimately informs our epistemology, constitutes the very basis
of our ontology, and at the end colors our very personal ethos cannot
be comprehended through mere discourse analysis. Although the philosopher
is aware that within the Western philosophical tradition the very idea
of theory, before its modernization, did mean a "direct vision"
of reality, nevertheless he cannot commit himself to the idea of a non-material
consciousness. And it is at this point that the monk puts forward what
he calls the "metaphysical choice." By this the monk means
that if the very nature of consciousness within a neurobiological model
is considered to be "material," that is not established by
hard scientific proof. On the contrary, the neurobiologists assume that
this approach would shed more light on the functioning of mind as a
brain than the contemplation of sages or hermits does. By arguing that
Buddhism, like all other sacred traditions, holds that nothing conscious
could arise from something that was inanimate, the monk neutralizes
the "argument by empiricality" put forward by the philosopher.
Could one think of a morality that is not based on any sacred tradition?
And how would such a morality encounter the current waves of violence
in the modern city? These questions lead to the problem of modern policy
and politics and the role of spiritual traditions. The philosopher argues,
in contrast to Buddhism, that the majority of intellectuals over the
last three hundred years have accepted that making man more moral and
achieving justice can only be done by creating a new society that is
more just, more balanced, and more egalitarian. But the monk would not
agree that a healthy communal life is possible without the pursuit of
wisdom by all the members of the community, regardless of the degree
of attainment.
Within a postmodern frame of thought, issues such as "progress,"
"secularism," "ideology," "religion,"
"public," "private," and so many other aspects of
modernity have come under severe attack. But so far, one cannot find
any coherent thread of thought that could shed a light on the life of
man as a temporary resident on this planet. As a matter of fact, some
have made public that the very creed of postmodernism is its declaration
of "fragmentalism" as the real fate of man. One of the major
issues, which necessitate that one consider both postmodernism and modernism
as similar expressions of secular ontology, is the notion of human nature
as presented by psychoanalysis. Here again the monk objects to the philosopher's
perspective by stating that Buddhism does not agree with Freud's notion
that spiritual method cannot reach the inner realm of man. Buddhism's
approach diverges from that of psychoanalysis in terms of the means
used to attain liberation. I hasten to add that the very idea of liberty
is different in Buddhism and psychoanalysis, because the latter does
not identify the basic causes of ignorance and inner enslavement that
are the main concerns of Buddhism.
The idea of science is what the philosopher refers to time and again.
As a matter of fact, it is the basis of his metaphysical agnosticism.
But the assumption by the philosopher in relation to science is worth
considering. It seems that Revel defines "science" as an act
of "knowing" about the mechanism of life, but calls "religion"
a way of "being" in life. To say the least, this categorical
distinction between knowing and being (and referring the former to the
cognitive aspect of man and the latter to the emotional or metaphysical)
is more of a recent secular ethos than a universal and absolute category.
And one more unconvincing aspect of Revel's argument was that he keeps
forgetting one tremendously essential aspect in Buddhism (as in all
sacred traditions), namely to "live" the teachings of Buddha
and not theorize about that teaching. Or as the monk puts it very eloquently:
. . . no dialogue, however enlightening it might be, could ever be a
substitute for the silence of personal experience, so indispensable
for an understanding of how things really are. Experience, indeed, is
the path. And as the Buddha often said, 'it is up to you to follow it,'
so that one day the messenger might become the message.
This is the wisdom shared by all sacred traditions wherein man is not
an insignificant accident but rather a cosmos in miniature. Hence the
experiential dimension cannot be dispensed with due to either sociopolitical
engineering or utopian projects. On the contrary, as long as man is
a man, he is in need of spirituality, and the spiritual path as the
monk advises us begins with a period of retreat from the world, like
a wounded deer looking for a solitary, peaceful spot where it can heal
its wounds.
However, I would like to sum up this review by noting that at the
end of the dialogue, I came to realize that the father surely met his
son. However, I am doubtful about any "meeting" between East
and West having taken place, in particular when these terms are taken
more in terms of metaphorical designations rather than geographical
locations. Could the East meet the West? Maybe!
