Category: Dharma Pragmata

His disciples said to him: ‘Who are you to say this to us?’
‘Do you not realize from what I say to you who I am? But you have become like the Jews! They love the tree, (but) they hate its fruit. Or they love the fruit, (but) they hate the tree.’

— Thomas 43 (5G)

This saying may reflect the conflicts within early Christianity over its relations with the Jewish community (or parts of it), but mainly it seems to be a variation on the theme of ‘know them by their fruits’ (Matthew 7:16-20 and 12:35, Luke 6:43-45) – which Peirce identified as the core idea of pragmatism.

Jesus says: ‘Grapes are not harvested from thorns, nor are figs picked from thistles, for they do not produce fruit. A good person brings forth good from his treasure. A bad person brings (forth) evil from the bad treasure that is in his heart, and (in fact) he speaks evil. For out of the abundance of the heart he brings forth evil.’

— Thomas 45 (5G)

This is a variation on the pragmatistic theme, where ‘fruit’ stands for practice. For the ‘sons of humanity,’ including Jesus, talk is part of the walk which is an index of the ‘heart.’ Indeed, his sayings are the fruit by means of which his disciples should realize who he is. What Jesus means to you depends on what his sayings mean to you, not on the status assigned to him by convention.

(1) Jesus said, “This heaven will pass away, and the one above it will pass away. (2) The dead are not alive, and the living will not die. (3) During the days when you ate what is dead, you made it alive. When you are in the light, what will you do? (4) On the day when you were one, you became two. But when you become two, what will you do?”

— Thomas 11 (NHS)

What will you do? That’s the generic ethical-pragmatic question. As usual in the Gospel of Thomas, we’re not given much context for it here, so let’s try constructing one that will bring out its pragmatic implications.

In the synoptic gospels (Matthew 24:35, Mark 13:31, Luke 21: 33), Jesus says ‘Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words (λόγοι) will not pass away.’ The first sentence of Thomas 11, on the other hand, offers a hierarchy of heavens that will pass away, but no eternal logos. If we put a semiotic spin on this, it could be saying that living semiosis (like the evolution of life) continues into the indefinite future, as every sign falls behind, passing the torch of meaning to its interpretant. The passing away of determinate signs, or of ‘heavens’ as inhabited meaning spaces, is the pressing on of theoretical inquiry toward an ideal Truth, or in practice, living the time toward the yet-undetermined future. All signs will pass away, but there is no life without semiosis.

In her explanation of part 3 of this logion, DeConick (2007a, 79) quotes from Hippolytus a variant saying which ‘may, in fact, represent an earlier version of L. 11.3 than the Coptic translation’: ‘If you ate dead things and made them living, what will you do if you eat living things?’

When you consume what is dead as food, you incorporate it into a living system, and thus ‘make it alive.’ What would it mean, pragmatically, to consume what is alive? You do this, in a sense, when you “consume” living signs to inform the system which guides your practice. What you do next is the energetic interpretant of those signs, and you live ‘in the light’ (or in the ‘heaven’) of this interpretant – until it in turn determines another interpretant, ‘the one above it’ in the semiosic process, which will pass away in its turn, ad infinitum (as Peirce would say). In terms specific to early Christian practice, the signs would be the sacraments of baptism, anointing, and especially the eucharist, ‘eating the living body of Jesus’ (DeConick 79), which act as a purifying ‘light.’

The contrast between eating the dead and eating the living is further developed in the Gospel of Philip, which follows Thomas in Codex II of the Nag Hammadi Library. Here it is Truth which Jesus brought to this world as lifegiving food, replacing the tree of knowledge (‘the law’) which brought death with a new tree of knowledge which ‘has brought people back to life.’

This world eats corpses, and everything eaten in this world also dies. Truth eats life, and no one nourished by [truth] will die. Jesus came from that realm and brought food from there, and he gave [life] to all who wanted it, that they might not die.
[God planted] a garden, and humans [lived in the] garden. There are some [who dwell] with… God…. This garden [is where] it will be said to me, “…[ eat] this and do not eat that, [as you] wish.” This is where I shall eat everything, where the tree of knowledge is. That tree killed Adam, but here the tree of knowledge has brought people back to life. That tree was the law. It can give knowledge of good and evil, but it neither freed Adam from evil nor made him good, and it brought death to those who ate of it. For when it was said, “Eat this and do not eat that,” death began.

— Gospel of Philip 73, 19 – 74, 12 (NHS)

As for Part 4 of Thomas 11, ‘becoming two’ when you were originally one can surely be taken as a reference to the Fall (from unity into division). Many commentators associate this with the division of the sexes in the Garden of Eden, and DeConick argues that a ‘return to the prelapsarian condition of singleness’ is enacted through celibacy. (This is a classic example of polyversity, since other texts of the time take marriage, or the consummation of marriage, as a primary symbol of reunion!) A pragmatistic interpretation (less symbolic but more general) could take ‘becoming two’ as “being of two minds” about what to do in some situation, i.e. having to make some practical choice. What will you do? You will have to decide, and then your practice becomes a conscious practice. This adds another layer, another dimension (another ‘heaven’?) to living semiosis.

In this part of Thomas, at least, Jesus seems to value questions over answers. The answer killeth, but the question giveth life. The tone here bears a certain resemblance to that of Dogen‘s dharma talks, and so does the emphasis on impermanence, on becoming, on being-time (Dogen’s ‘uji’).

When one phrase or one verse permeates your body and mind, it becomes a seed for illumination for limitless kalpas, and this brings you to unsurpassable enlightenment. When one dharma or one wholesome action permeates your body and mind, it is also like this. Moment by moment a thought appears and disappears without abiding. Moment by moment a body appears and disappears without abiding. Yet the power of practice always matures.

— Dogen (Tanahashi 2000, 83)

You can never be sure that your intentions will be realized in practice.
You can always be sure that your actions will have unintended consequences.
From those you may yet learn something.
If there’s nothing to learn, it’s the end of learning.
And the end of intention?
To carry it out
is to let it go.

You can’t grasp (apprehend) one thing without letting go of another. But you can’t really let go of an idea that you haven’t pragmatically grasped.

‘Intentions (or real-time goals) prepare for actions, and actions dissipate intentions’ (Lewis and Granic 2000, 49). Marc Lewis suggests that moods are established, and may become entrenched as personality traits, when intentional states persist ‘because no action can be taken to resolve them’.

The way to reverse that entrenchment, then, would be the intentional practice of dropping (letting go of) intentions which have become habitual.

Living the time is not “living in the moment.” The moment is one of many; the time is one of one.

As each action is discovered in real time, it uses components that have a dynamic history. Similarly, as the action is performed, it becomes part of the dynamic history of the organism and contributes to the morphology of future actions.

— Thelen and Smith (1994, 74)

Peirce’s pragmaticism anticipates this aspect of dynamic systems theory in its logical (semiotic) form:

The rational meaning of every proposition lies in the future. How so? The meaning of a proposition is itself a proposition. Indeed, it is no other than the very proposition of which it is the meaning: it is a translation of it. But of the myriads of forms into which a proposition may be translated, what is that one which is to be called its very meaning? It is, according to the pragmaticist, that form in which the proposition becomes applicable to human conduct, not in these or those special circumstances, nor when one entertains this or that special design, but that form which is most directly applicable to self-control under every situation, and to every purpose. This is why he locates the meaning in future time; for future conduct is the only conduct that is subject to self-control. But in order that that form of the proposition which is to be taken as its meaning should be applicable to every situation and to every purpose upon which the proposition has any bearing, it must be simply the general description of all the experimental phenomena which the assertion of the proposition virtually predicts. For an experimental phenomenon is the fact asserted by the proposition that action of a certain description will have a certain kind of experimental result; and experimental results are the only results that can affect human conduct. No doubt, some unchanging idea may come to influence a man more than it had done; but only because some experience equivalent to an experiment has brought its truth home to him more intimately than before. Whenever a man acts purposively, he acts under a belief in some experimental phenomenon. Consequently, the sum of the experimental phenomena that a proposition implies makes up its entire bearing upon human conduct.

— Peirce (EP2:340, CP 5.427, 1906)

When all habits (embodied in all systems) express themselves in practice without obstructing each other, indeed by providing context for each other, then Truth is embodied.

Evolution and development take time. A comprehensive model of development typically begins with an account of the origin of the universe – in mythic terms, a creation story; in scientific terms, a cosmological model. “Constructing” such a model also takes time, and begins with the experience of living the time.

In building a model we seem to build from the bottom up, but as I will keep pointing out, we can in fact begin only from our human process.

— Gendlin (1998, note 4)

Referring to theoretical model-making as “construction” is just one more of the feats and faults of imagination. The same metaphor that can mislead us can also bring home important truths. The construction metaphor is useful to emphasize that embodiment in practice consolidates meaning and saves it from vanishing unrealized.

Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you? Every one who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like: he is like a man building a house, who dug deep, and laid the foundation upon rock; and when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house, and could not shake it, because it had been well built.

— Luke 6:46-48

Any actual practice which involves adapting some means to an end, whether the end be deliberately adopted or not, is a case of activity being guided by a final cause. In nature, things which perform the same general function, live the same kind of life, or fill the same niche in ecological or meaning space (despite individual differences), belong to the same class because they share a common final cause. Peirce explains the difference between final and efficient causation in his 1902 ‘Classification of the Sciences’ (EP2:120). In this passage he is

engaged in tracing out the consequences of understanding the term “natural” or “real class” to mean a class the existence of whose members is due to a common and peculiar final cause. It is, as I was saying, a widespread error to think that a “final cause” is necessarily a purpose. A purpose is merely that form of final cause which is most familiar to our experience. The signification of the phrase “final cause” must be determined by its use in the statement of Aristotle [Metaphysics 44 b1 and 70 b26] that all causation divides into two grand branches, the efficient, or forceful; and the ideal, or final. If we are to conserve the truth of that statement, we must understand by final causation that mode of bringing facts about according to which a general description of result is made to come about, quite irrespective of any compulsion for it to come about in this or that particular way; although the means may be adapted to the end. The general result may be brought about at one time in one way, and at another time in another way. Final causation does not determine in what particular way it is to be brought about, but only that the result shall have a certain general character. Efficient causation, on the other hand, is a compulsion determined by the particular condition of things, and is a compulsion acting to make that situation begin to change in a perfectly determinate way; and what the general character of the result may be in no way concerns the efficient causation. For example, I shoot at an eagle on the wing; and since my purpose,—a special sort of final, or ideal, cause,—is to hit the bird, I do not shoot directly at it, but a little ahead of it, making allowance for the change of place by the time the bullet gets to that distance. So far, it is an affair of final causation. But after the bullet leaves the rifle, the affair is turned over to the stupid efficient causation, and should the eagle make a swoop in another direction, the bullet does not swerve in the least, efficient causation having no regard whatsoever for results, but simply obeying orders blindly.

Why is obedience blind? Because it doesn’t allow for learning from experience. When orders can’t be questioned, the meaning cycle at the heart of the guidance system is short-circuited. Of course there are situations where obedience is more ethically appropriate than learning, but one has to learn to recognize situations in order to choose the ethical response to them. Absolute certainty or trust in authority is likewise blind. Knowledge that can’t be tested can’t be trusted. A model that can’t be modified is not reliable.

Any practice undertaken consciously must have a telos, a final cause, but the practitioner’s attention has to be on the momentary current of actual events in order to flow with them and carry them forward in real time. The immediate sense of forward, of directedness (and not conscious awareness of a goal set in the projected future) is the feeling of flow, of living the time. So the ideal practice is not atelic but autotelic; it is alive to both final and efficient causes. Peirce explains how these complement each other:

Efficient causation is that kind of causation whereby the parts compose the whole; final causation is that kind of causation whereby the whole calls out its parts. Final causation without efficient causation is helpless; mere calling for parts is what a Hotspur, or any man, may do; but they will not come without efficient causation. Efficient causation without final causation, however, is worse than helpless, by far; it is mere chaos; and chaos is not even so much as chaos, without final causation; it is blank nothing.

EP2:124

Ancient Hindus ‘thought that the purpose of religious practice was to release the atman from the prison of the physical body’ (Okumura 2010, 189). Mahayana Buddhism, on the other hand, regards the life of the bodymind is an expression of the buddha-nature. Okumura (2010, 152) says that ‘our bodhisattva practice takes place within the world of desire, walking with all beings.’ Continue reading Sauntering to the Pole

Practice makes polyversity. As you get into the habit of using a term for a more or less definite purpose within a range of situations, its connection to its object seems so natural that it requires a real effort to see that it is only one of many connections that could become habitual. This tends to blind us to the fact that someone else may be “used to” using the same sign for a different purpose, or using a different sign for the same purpose.

In a story told by Ta Hui (J.C. Cleary 1977, 4) and Dogen, a famous elder statesman and poet visited the Zen Master Dorin and asked him, ‘What is the great meaning of Buddhism?’ Continue reading Do good