Note: This piece was originally published in the Journal of South Texas English Studies
This article is the Part Four of a four-part essay series by Dr. Erec Smith on The Lotus Sutra as a Rhetorical Doctrine
Nietzsche’s On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense, an early essay that exposes tradition and societal “truth” as arbitrary and often impractical, also exposes rhetoric as a means to justify this condition and hide the utter arbitrariness and eclecticism of interpretation that seems to be the human condition. Rhetoric is an inevitable and inherent aspect of life because of the existence of so many potential interpretations of a word, a full text, an incident, etc. A defining passage in the essay reads,
“What, then, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonymies, anthropomorphisms, in short a sum of human relations which have been subjected to poetic and rhetorical intensification, translation, and decoration, and which, after they have been in use for a long time, strike people as firmly established, canonical, and binding; truths are illusions of which we have forgotten that they are illusions, metaphors which have become worn by frequent use and have lost all sensuous vigour, coins which, having lost their stamp, are now regarded as metal and no longer coins.”
Compare this to a defining passage in the Immeasurable Means Sutra, the preface to the more substantial Lotus Sutra, which sets the stage for the world’s need of expedient means. This passage expounds the duty of an enlightened being once he or she has gained an enlightened “perceptions.” It reads,
“Once [Bodhisattvas] have gained this perception, then they must turn to the capacities, natures, and desires of living beings. Because such natures and desires are immeasurable in variety, the ways of preaching the Law are immeasurable; and because the ways of preaching the Law are immeasurable, its meanings are likewise immeasurable. These immeasurable meanings are born from a single Law, and this Law is without aspect. . . . When [bodhisattavas] rest and abide in this understanding of the true aspect of all phenomena, then the pity and compassion that they put forth will be based on clear understanding and not groundless, and they will be truly capable of rescuing living beings from the sufferings that they undergo.”
This passage, an iteration of Nietzsche’s lamentable description of the world, is what causes the compassion and empathy necessary to be a Bodhisattva. The rhetorical condition is the condition that necessitates Buddhism and the existence of a saviorfigure like the Buddha.
What is referred to as “the Law,” “the true aspect of all phenomena,” is actually without aspect. Since we can only detect things—be they corporeal, abstract, existent or nonexistent—through their manifest aspects, we are stuck in Nietzsche’s “mobile army of metaphors, metonymies, anthropomorphism” and must rely on the imperfection of language and symbolism. This is a pitiful and pathetic situation from which we must be saved. Rhetoric, inevitable rhetoric, is the primary symptom of this world’s sickness. Only be taking this into account can bodhisattvas be of benefit.
Although the above juxtaposition presents Buddhism as metonymical with neosophistic rhetoric and post-structural thought, I believe nothing could solidify Buddhism’s place in the rhetorical tradition like showing salient parallels to a canonized rhetorical text. Of course, Buddhism’s role in rhetorical theory, as I propose it, is meant to give a new perspective to rhetorical savvy as the utmost arête—a divine virtue that is an inevitable tool of any upright citizen, leader or sage-like figure who needs to be heard and heeded.
Yet, this new perspective may be easier to glean if one were to see the parallels between a text like the Lotus Sutra and Plato’s Phaedrus. Both have strong similarities in both their implicit and explicit treatments of rhetoric and both end with the thought that it takes self-knowledge and wisdom to be exceptional, but it takes rhetoric to prove such exception to others, especially when one’s purpose is to benefit and improve those others.
What’s more, a comparison with the Lotus Sutra can bring Phaedrus out of its designation as a dialogue that lacks unity and purpose. When looked at through the eyes of the Lotus Sutra and through the lens of rhetoric-as-expedient means—meant to lead the less capable into full capability—any perception of Phaedrus as a haphazardly written text melts away, representing the text as necessarily disparate in its topics, for such disparity was necessary in the place, time and situation of the dialogue.
Both texts display the necessary malleability of the canons of classical rhetoric. That is, a comparison of these two texts will show that, to be a sage, a guiding intellectual, is to utilize the appropriate (not proper) invention, arrangement, style, delivery and memory for a given purpose. By speaking about rhetoric, the Lotus Sutra exemplifies the use and necessity of rhetoric. The Phaedrus does the same.
First of all, each text is driven by a palinode (the Phaedrus has that which is retracted within its content; the Lotus Sutra only refers to the retracted material). Both the Lotus Sutra and the Phaedrus involve their main characters retracting something they’d said earlier and with strong conviction. This retraction takes place, in both cases, because both protagonists believe the listener is now ready to hear the truth. Thus, the prior works (whether sutras, dialogues, or speeches within the Phaedrus) were merely expedient means to get the pupil a bit closer to the truth. Prior stories are inferior, but were necessary at the time. The prior explanations were inferior, but necessary for each particular audience.
This is expressed frequently in the Lotus Sutra and, perhaps, is best explained in its seventh chapter: Parable of the Phantom City. It is here where the sutra’s palinodial nature is justified. The Parable of the Phantom city involves a leader who is guiding a group of weary travelers over a treacherous and uninhabited stretch of road on their way to a veritable Shangrila full of treasure.
At one point, the travelers express their fatigue and fear; they obviously want to give up and turn back. The leader, a man with some supernatural ability and an appreciation of expedient means, conjures up a phantom city in the near distance and tells the followers that they can rest there, where it is safe, clean and comfortable. Overjoyed, the travelers make it to the city. When they are fully rested, the leader wipes out the illusory city and tells the people that they must continue on the bad and dangerous road to the true city of treasure. Since they are rested and relaxed, the followers can handle a bit more of the trip and proceed to follow him.
After telling this story, the Buddha states that he is in a similar situation to the leader in the parable, equating the bad and treacherous road to birth, life and the distraction of earthly desires. He then states that if people knew how far they’d have to go to get to pure enlightenment, they’d give up and remain where they are. Thus, expedient means are used. That is, the Buddha had to preach “lesser doctrine” to keep his pupils moving in the right direction, knowing they were not ready to understand him, outright. The Buddha states, speaking of himself in the third person:
The Buddha knows that the minds of living beings are timid, weak, and lowly, and so, using the power of expedient means, he preaches two nirvanas in order to provide a resting place along the road. If living beings choose to remain I these two stages, then the thus come one [enlightened sage, Buddha] will say to them, “You have not yet understood what is to be done. This stage where you have chosen to remain is close to the Buddha wisdom. But you should observe and ponder further. This nirvana that you have attained is not the true one. It is simply that the thus come one, using the power of expedient means, has taken the one Buddha vehicle and, making distinctions, has preached [several].
The Buddha is like that leader who, in order to provide a place to rest, conjured up a great city and then, when he knew that the travelers were already rested, said to them, “The place where the treasure is is nearby. This city is not real. It is merely something I conjured up.
Like the Buddha, Socrates claims to have conjured up ideas in the Phaedrus to keep Phaedrus present and interested. In fact, Phaedrus is even more of a flight risk than any of the disciples the Buddha addresses in the Lotus Sutra; Socrates seems to be stringing Phaedrus along until he is ready to listen to Socrates’ strongest point: the nature and construction of “true” rhetoric.
Socrates’ first speech can be seen as his first “expedient,” something to hook Phaedrus into what he thinks is a deferred contest between Socrates and Lysias, whose speech Socrates claims he can improve upon.
The next speech, Socrates’ main and apparently honest speech, is told not merely as a palinode to his prior improvement upon Lysias, and not merely as a speech to keep Phaedrus present. It also serves as a catalyst for Socrates’ final points about true rhetoric, for the palinode serves as an example of what can happen when true rhetoric is utilized.
The palinode which, like the previous speeches, starts as a small treatise on lovers and nonlovers, turns into a speech about the soul—for one must understand the soul before he can understand the benefits of love. It happens that Socrates believes that the soul is also the major and fundamental consideration for any true rhetorician (as opposed to what he would call a sophist). In fact, he defines rhetoric in a way that smacks of religious indoctrination, the kind the Buddha also takes on. Socrates writes “Well, then, isn’t the rhetorical art, taken as a whole, a way of directing the soul by means of speech, not only in the lawcourts and on other public occasions but also in private?”
Without having much knowledge of Phaedrus outside of his presence in Platonic dialogues, I think it might be fair to say that he may not have responded eagerly to a lecture on rhetoric from the very beginning of his correspondence with Socrates. Phaedrus had to be lured into such a speech through his already apparent interest in lovers, nonlovers and good speechmaking. Socrates met Phaedrus, analyzed his audience, and acted accordingly. Thus, Plato’s Phaedrus is just as unified in itself as the corpus of Buddhist doctrines is unified with the Lotus Sutra. Both texts not only utilize rhetoric as a means to retain and persuade others; they also express exactly how the use of communicative lure is imperative to do so.
I attempt to show the interaction of rhetoric and Buddhism to show that there is potential for secular academic pursuits and spirituality to enjoy a kind of symbiotic relationship. The common conception that spirituality and secularity are categorically inimitable is questioned a shaken when we present the Lotus Sutra as a text exemplifying the highly secular concern of rhetoric. The fact that there is a text in Buddhism that focuses intently on rhetoric may open the eyes of the religious and the secular in ways that could produce innovative and fecund pursuits powered by the double-engines of spirituality and intellectuality. At the very least, perhaps this can serve as a spark that ignites a paradigm shift in academia.