On Tue, 26 Sep 1995, Tane Akamatsu wrote:
> On Mon, 25 Sep 1995, virtanen wrote:
>
> >
> > i'm sometimes teaching philosophy at the university of jyvaskyla. The
> > course which i'm teaching at present is about buddhist thought and
> > especially buddhist thinking about human activity.
>
>
> I wonder if you could comment further on this? As a practicing Buddhist,
> but also as "culturally" buddhist, I never really put the two ideas
> together. For me, Buddhism is a way of life as much as a religion, and
> what I do at work (the theorizing part) is entirely a separate "thing."
>
>
> Tane Akamatsu
> Toronto Board of Education
> takamatsu who-is-at oise.on.ca
>
>
1)
I think that it is a really common problem that 'what I do at work is
entirely a separate "thing", from 'the way of life i live'.
That is for me a problem i'm trying to solve... i'm trying to teach such
ideas, which i'm personally interested in. I think that this is one of
the problems most of people on this list are trying to solve?
2)
a)
To say something about the connection between buddhism and activity
theory. I would like to say first that there are very sophisticated
theories about human beings and their activities formulated by buddhist
thinkers in India, China, Japan and elsewhere. One of best books to start
exploring the ideas of buddhist thinkers in this respect is T.P. Kasulis:
'Zen Action Zen Person' (1981, University Press of Hawaii), i think.
Especially remembering the talk about the concept of 'context' on this
list some time ago, i would like to borrow some generalizing remarks by
Kasulis about Japanese culture (, which has been heavily influenced by
buddhist thinking):
'... This brief investigation of Japanese linguistic and communicative
modes leads to the conclusion that in Japan the context is given primacy
over the individual: the context defines and elaborates the individual
rather than vice versa.' (page 8)
'... In Japan, personal significance always occurs in medias res, it
arises out of the demands of the social, linguistic, or philosophical
framework. The individual becomes meaningful insofar as she or he is an
outgrowth of the relationships established by the operative context,
not vice versa.' (page 9)
This remarks by Kasulis tell something really basic about buddhist culture
in general. One of the best known theories by Indian buddhism (especially
compared to their fellows, other schools' thinkers) was the critical
theory of no-self (anatman), to say that there isn't such a thing as
'self' or 'individual' at all... I feel those 2000 years old theories
still interesting. Nowadays i've beem reading Nagarjuna, who was one
of the most influentical buddhist thinkers. (He lived sometime between
100 and 200 AD somewhere in India.)
b)
Secondly for example Kasulis has read his Bateson quite well. (i doubt, if
he ever read his Engestrom...)
And Bateson had read his Zen-stories well as well. In his well-known
article 'Toward a Theory of Schizophrenia' G. Bateson borrows his basic
example of 'double-bind' from Zen-Buddhist lore. (The story about the
master holding a stick over the pupil's head; compare this to the Zen Koan
called 'Shuzan's Shippei', Mumonkan case 43, in 'Two Zen Classics', John
Weatherhill Inc, 1977, p. 124) (Bateson, G. 'Steps to an ecology of mind',
Ballantine Books, 1989, pp 201-228)
I feel that Bateson's theory about double-bind and Engestrom's theory
about 'Learning by expanding' were much more influenced by buddhist
thinking about social relationships' role in building up the concept of an
'individual' than by Russel's theory of types, which Bateson uses to
logically describe the practice to solve double-binds. The practice itself
he compares to Zen-Buddhist training...
(I had been interested in some buddhist theories long before i read
Engestrom's 'Learning by Expanding'. I recognized at once the story he
uses to describe learning. The Bateson's story about a stick over a
pupil's head. Engestrom tells only that the example comes from Bateson,
but i had seen the 'original' story many times in books about zen koans.
That led me to read more Bateson, whose name i had seen many times in the
books by A. Watts for example, but didn't remember. (A. Watts was one of
the pioneer-scholars of buddhism in America; the maybe most interesting
book by him for the people on this list is 'Psychology on the East,
Psychology in The West. About Engestrom's theories about learning i was in
the beginning interested in some other reasons. I was very surprised when
some of my interests suddenly joined together.)
virtanen