This essay is Part Four of a revision of the pedagogical essay, “Writing Under the Bodhi Tree,” published in Academic Exchange Quarterly, Summer 2005.
Four principles constitute Interbeing: nonattachment from views, direct experimentation, appropriateness, and skillful means.
I will round out this four-part essay series arguing that Thich Nhat Hanh’s “Charter of Interbeing” – being in touch with the present moment for better communication and co-existence –is an ideal set of guidelines for fostering and maintaining civil society.
Hanh breaks down Interbeing into four principles. Nonattachement from views, direct experimentation, and appropriateness were discussed in the previous three essays, respectively. However, the final principle is the one that aligns most with the actual practice of rhetoric. In fact, Upaya, translated as “skillful means,” or “expedient means,” could be considered a synonym for rhetoric.
Hanh writes, “Skillful means consist of images and methods created by intelligent teachers to show the Buddha’s Way and guide people in their efforts to practice the Way in their own particular circumstances.” The fourth and last principle of the Charter of Interbeing is, basically, a definition of rhetoric: the skillful means of communication.
Skillful Means (Upaya)
Consider Aristotle’s definition of rhetoric as "an ability, in each [particular] case, to see the available means of persuasion" (Aristotle 36) and its importance to the Buddhist purposes. In other words, “skillful means” denote the tactics that best convey information in a given circumstance. Though we must stay open-minded (nonattachment), be present in the here and now (direct experimentation), and prudent regarding the values of a particular audience (appropriateness), without skillful means, i.e., rhetorical tactics, our words may still miss the mark.
Rhetoric is so important, the Buddha sang its praises, explicitly. The Lotus Sutra has a chapter that is actually titled “Expedient Means.” In it, the Buddha says that he must “teach the law with accordance with what is appropriate, but the meaning is difficult to understand.” Because of this difficulty of understanding something as profound as Buddhahood, the Buddha himself must “employ countless expedient means, discussing causes and conditions using words of simile and parable to expound the teachings.” He did so because, in order to reach as many people as possible, he had to be able to talk to as many different people as possible.
This is where the spirituality of Buddhism meets that of rhetorical theory. In classical Greece, Gorgias, a teacher of rhetoric, famously said “Nothing exists; if it does exist, it cannot be understood; if it can be understood, it cannot be communicated.” Gorgias was saying that a direct understanding of how we each see and experience the world is impossible. The best we can do is reach an approximation of that seeing and experiencing. Even Socrates, the famous philosopher and contemporary to Gorgias, admits something similar, though he saw rhetoric as a dangerous tool in the wrong hands. In Plato’s Phaedrus, when explaining the necessary considerations for effective communication, says,
you must understand the nature of the soul . . . you must determine which kind of speech is appropriate to each kind of soul, prepare and arrange your speech accordingly, and offer a complex and elaborate speech to a complex soul and a simple speech to a simple one. Then, and only then, will you be able to use speech artfully, to the extent that its nature allows it to be used that way, either in order to teach or in order to persuade.
According to Socrates, the ability to adjust words to particular “souls” is “the whole point” of effective communication. Getting back to the Buddha, we see that explaining to humans the viewpoint of a consciousness that transcends humanity necessitates skillful means in communication. It necessitates rhetoric.
For Hanh, these skillful means can and must be acquired. Hanh writes that “the lack of communication always brings separation and suffering,” and that “words can create suffering or happiness.” Thus, we have to embrace communication as a tool of societal compatibility and that whether words cause suffering or happiness depends on the “soul” to whom they are directed.
Upaya is really the encapsulation of nonattachment from views, direct experimentation, and appropriateness; all three, put together, create the foundation for skillful means.
In order to live together, in order to “inter-be” we would do well to read Hanh’s work, but we can get the same message from rhetorical theory put forth around the same time Buddha walked this Earth. Rhetoric may not just be a tool of spirituality. In a sense, it may be a kind of spirituality in itself.