Chapter 8: Cultivating Love
To be sure, the way I have described liberation may be hugely misleading. It is not as if one can realize emptiness by just dissolving being, free to pursue any experience hedonistically. Being and experience are, as I have repeatedly emphasized, not completely exclusive categories but merely a fruitful heuristic. This distinction gradually loses its productivity, however, as coarser layers of an intrinsically existent self are dissolved and one is faced with more subtle modes of being that are inexorably intertwined with experience. There are clearly self-centered experiences, such as esteem, that naturally encourage a reification of being and counteract, if ever so subtly, the realization of emptiness. It should come as no surprise then that our experiences too must gradually become other-centric, or, compassionate, on the path of liberation.
Karuṇā, translated as compassion, is a foundational moral value for Mahayana Buddhists[1] and the second antidote, alongside emptiness, for Girard’s modernity. As is the case with Dukkha/lack and shame, and intrinsic existence and metaphysical autonomy, Buddhist compassion and Girardian love are meaningful equivalents for they share two key structural similarities. First, a prerequisite for both kinds of care is to recognize similarity in the other. These are neither the care out of pity nor care resulting from admiration which presuppose difference. Recall, the necessity of undifferentiation for love. Girard confirms that the reconciliation of rivals will only occur: “if they recognize that they are similar, if they identify themselves with each other.”[2] Likewise, I will soon show the importance of the recognition of sameness as a prerequisite for compassion. Second, while both forms of care undoubtedly contain an affective component – a desire to help the other – they are incomplete without the motivation, actions, and continued engagement that actualize this desire. Girard describes love as “very active. It saves many people, works in hospitals, and even operates in some forms of research.”[3] Similarly, Buddhists heed that compassion is “not a mere desire. That is sloppy sympathy, and benefits nobody. Instead it is a genuine commitment manifested in thought, speech and physical action.”[4] By “meaningful equivalent” I do not imply identity: both are heavily loaded with respective religious connotations. Equivalency means that, given the role Girard needs love to play in modernity – namely, an active force of other-concern predicated on identity – compassion is a valid substitute. Of course, as is the case with emptiness, the contribution to the Girardian here is reproducibility. There are a variety of meditative techniques that systematically cultivate compassion. Loving thy neighbor is no longer, as Girard lamented, “not under our control.”[5]
I have shown compassion to be a meaningful equivalent to love and, in the previous section, that emptiness helps the subject renounce violence through the process of conversion.
But there is an even deeper synergy between emptiness and compassion yet to be explored. The rest of this section will tackle two projects: how emptiness aids in the cultivation of love; and how compassion aids in the process of conversion.
8.1 Emptiness and Love
Given the equivalency between compassion and love, we only need to uncover how emptiness is conducive to the cultivation of compassion to realize how it will, in like manner, develop love.
A central way that emptiness gives birth to compassion is by helping us recognize the sameness of the other. Recall, we project two layers of delusion upon phenomena. First, we mistake them to be intrinsically existing and, second, we attribute to them an equally non-empty label of “mine” and “not mine”. We label not only external objects but also our experiences: “my” lack, “not my” lack. The Buddhist claim is that we treat lack as “bad, per se, regardless of whose it is.”[6] So when the realization of emptiness gradually erodes the reality of this “mine”/“not mine” distinction we are simply presented with the phenomena of lack itself which we are intuitively inclined to abolish. As a result, we naturally and without conscious effort act to alleviate the lack of others as if it were our own. To be sure, realizing emptiness does not remove our capacity to differentiate between mine and your lack but transforms how we differentiate it. Before, the distinction of “not mine” appeared autonomous and abundantly real, cutting out a chunk of spacetime that was independent from my domain. After, I still recognize the subject of lack to be external but no longer treat this external subject as independent and irrelevant to me. In fact, it is their phenomenal experience rather than externality that is now the emphasis. With the dissolution of this second layer of delusion, the difference between “mine” and “not-mine” takes a backseat to the sameness of our phenomenal experience. To describe this process in a less detailed but more relatable manner: as the strength of the boundaries of “mine” and “not mine” are eroded, I become unalienated from a world filled with phenomenal experiences of joy and lack that I now have as much motivation to improve as if it were all my own.[7]
It is not surprising then, that the great Mahayana philosopher Nagarjuna claimed: “Emptiness is the womb of compassion” (sunyata-karuna-garbham). That is to say, it is through the realization of emptiness that compassion naturally arises. Compassion emerges not as a positive phenomena with the addition of something but as a negative phenomena with the erosion of the boundaries erected by misknowledge.[8] It is precisely this negative force of emptiness that is needed to cultivate love in an undifferentiated age. At a time when, Girard reminds us, “war is fed precisely by the nothing that alone remains between the adversaries and that is nourished by their very identity”[9], nothing can be added to bring about reconciliation. Instead, it is the false differences that prevent rivals from seeing their similarity which needs to be removed by the force of emptiness.
8.2 Compassion and Conversion
To say that emptiness gives birth to compassion does not preclude the reciprocal dependency that compassion aids the realization of emptiness. In fact, we can identify three ways in which the direct cultivation of compassion through meditation accelerates the realization of emptiness and, therefore, conversion and the renouncing of rivalry and violence.
Firstly, compassion is, by definition, an increasing concern for and focus on the other. Just by virtue of directing less focus on ourselves, we pay less attention on our quest for metaphysical autonomy.
Of course, if what one focuses on is the being of the other, one can become more obsessed with metaphysical autonomy as one shifts their gaze increasingly towards the other. It is important then that compassion, secondly, changes what one focuses on in the other. During mediation, the model is reduced to their being which we aim to acquire with no regard to whatever harmful experiences we may subject them to. Compassion, on the other hand, is a direct concern for the other’s phenomenal experience with little attention paid to the being of the other. Mediation focuses on their being, treating them as a means to an end – literally, a mediator – of one’s own quest for metaphysical autonomy. Compassion focuses on their experience, treating them as ends unto themselves. This may be why Girard describes love and “identification … as a means of correcting our mimetic tendencies.”[10] The idea might be this: love pauses our mimetic tendencies by treating the other as a subject of experience and not an object of being. This ipso facto removes the possibility of mediation and, thus, of rivalry and violence because there is no being to be acquired in the first place.
Thirdly, compassion is a negative, leveling force against the games laid out by objectification. Recall, objectification manufactures games that promise intrinsic existence according to contingent standards, say, beauty. To practice compassion in the way I have described, one must do so indiscriminately; that is to say, one must perform acts of care regardless if the recipient is successful according to the contingent internal standards of one’s games. By doing so, one subverts the legitimacy of these very games. This is because, to care for another’s experience in the way I have described is to implicitly affirm that they are worthy of joy and deserving to be freed of lack not because of contingent reasons but the very fact that they are creatures who experience. This directly contradicts the logic of objectification that promises release from lack only upon the fulfilment of contingent conditions. In addition to “mine” / “not mine”, we see here another distinction losing its force: the “successful” / “not successful” distinction of games. Just as sameness gives birth to compassion, acts of compassion actualizes the realization of sameness by tearing down barriers. This dependency of truth on love did not go unnoticed by Girard who termed it an "epistemology of love."[11] Love is the “basis of any real knowledge" because "it manages to escape the hateful illusion of the doubles."[12] That is to say, it is only by loving one's rival does one tear down the false differences and see radical sameness in the other.
In the final analysis, the negative force crucial to reconciliation is present in both compassion and emptiness. Emptiness reveals the constructed nature of the distinctions we erect between self and other, giving birth to compassion. Compassion tears down these distinctions directly, making the realization of emptiness more accessible.
Footnotes
[1] For a discussion on the centrality of Karuṇā, see Garfield, Engaging, 296 – 298.
[2] To clarify, this is not Girard’s direct utterance but that of his interlocutor’s. Girard appears to agree with this observation. See Girard, Battling, 100.
[3] Girard, Battling, 131.
[4] Garfield, Engaging, 296.
[5] Girard, Battling, 100. START HERE
[6] Garfield, Engaging, 296.
[7] For a modern treatment of this classical argument on how emptiness gives rise to compassion, see Garfield, Engaging, 310 – 317.
[8] For a more detailed argument of how exactly the arising of compassion is ‘negative’ see Garfield, Engaging, 13 – 14.
[9] Girard, Battling, 48.
[10] Girard, Battling, 134.
[11] Girard, Things, 277.
[12] Girard, Things, 277.
Table of Contents
Part I: The Psychology of Spirit
Chapter 2: Acquisitive Mimesis
Chapter 3: The Rescuer of Spirit
Part II: A History of Violence
Chapter 4: Mimetic Anthropology
Chapter 6: Mimetic Eschatology
PART III: Antidotes to Apocalypse
Chapter 7: Renouncing Violence