Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory: The Dharma of Natural Systems (Suny Series, Buddhist Studies) F First Edition Used Edition

On the plus side, this book was chock-full of scholarly information, including lovely etymological asides (I assume she has done a good bit of Pali study) which I found quite edifying. The sutta quotes she used were mostly integrated and selected skillfully, and many of them I had not read before, tho I wish she would have made an attempt at labeling which suttas were from the oldest textual stream rather than lumping together the credibility of the whole Pali canon.

But the reason I give this book 3 stars is because Dr. Macy does not understand the dharma, nor science, nor logic well enough to purport to teach them, in my opinion. (If you can't be bothered to read the whole review, skip to the end as I will give a summary/concluding statement.)

There are many small problems:

At one point she even misstates the second law of thermodynamics, saying that energy is "lost." (The second law merely states that entropy [disorder, useless energy] in the universe as a whole, closed system, will always increase, never decrease.)

Starting on p. 70, she states that science has moved away from determinism toward a theory of random action, which I assume was a reference to quantum physics and the standard model of it, which is probabilistic. But probabilistic is not the same as random, and the standard model is just one model that happens to have the math worked out well enough to be useful in practical applications. Other models exist that are not probabilistic, such as the recently bolstered Pilot-wave theory, but the math for that needs more research.

On p. 96, Dr. Macy seems to implicitly support the idea that anti-entropic forces of negative and positive feedback correlate to agape or universal love, which to me seems a very new-age, non-Buddhist, non-scientific hypothesis with absolutely no explanation given.

Also, the book is highly repetitive--I estimate about 50 to 100 pages could be removed by a good editor.

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But the big problems are what I will discuss below:

1. Dr. Macy presents a false dichotomy between determinism and systems theory. Although this dichotomy is sometimes presented weakly and sometimes strongly, overall, and especially in the beginning and at the end of the book, it is presented so strongly that she even states clearly on page 195, that "the human cognitive system, possess[es] free will." And on page 174 she quotes systems theorist Laszlo (with implicit agreement) as saying, "When a man acts on the basis of his empirical and meta-level reflective cognitions he could always have acted otherwise than he did, for his constructions and cognitions of his environment are not dictated by his environment, but by his present cognitive (=cortical) organization."

This is faulty logic. Dr. Macy and the systems theorists she quotes are making an unfounded conclusion that greater complexity of the cognitive apparatus somehow allows decisions to be made outside of the realm of causality. If causality is maintained as a law of nature (which it must be unless we posit random actions), all decisions are automatically made due to conditions and can never be made otherwise given the same set of conditions. Chaos theory, complexity theory, and systems theory do not offer any alternative to this position. They merely state that it is nearly impossible to predict outcomes from conditions due to the recursive nature of the calculations (in other words it would take a quantum computer the size of the universe to predict the life of the universe, some say).

Indeed, Dr. Macy equates determinism with the *practical* (vs. theoretical) ability to predict outcomes from conditions. That is absolutely not the definition of determinism. Determinism simply means that everything happens due to conditions and cannot happen any other way.

Then, drawing on the Pali canon, Dr. Macy quotes the Buddha in support of her attack on deterministic philosophy. But the Buddha did not attack determinism--just the opposite. What he attacked was the philosophical position that present actions are unimportant since everything is caused by past actions. In fact, the Buddha was trying to teach determinism, not rail against it. Logically, if everything is determined by conditions, then present actions, although they are happening due to past actions, are of critical importance to future conditions. On the ultimate level, since everything is already perfectly predetermined, there is actually nobody here, and thus Nibbana (or the Great Natural Perfection as Tibetans say) is that which is always already the case (please see the Bahiya sutta--thankfully quoted in Dr. Macy's book). But at the relative level, we must remember that it takes practice (8-fold path) to penetrate the ultimate understanding deeply.

Further evidence in the suttas is available to support what I am saying, but Dr. Macy ignores it. For example, in DN 26, the Buddha predicts the 5,000 year span of time after which the teachings will be forgotten, the coming of Metteyya (the next Buddha) at a time when humans have a lifespan of 80,000 years, and there are a great many other suttas in which the Buddha gives his assurances about what will happen in the future, including a map of how many lifetimes one may expect to have at maximum based upon their level of realization (referenced in many suttas including: AN 3.89, SN 55.21, SN 13.1). (Caveat: I have not yet researched whether any predictions come from the oldest textual stream, so in that I am no better than Dr. Macy.)

If the Buddha can reliably predict the future, then reality must be perfectly deterministic with no room for free will. On the other hand, this is fertile ground for understanding mutual causality as well (which Dr. Macy misses), because here we see the future influencing the past/present, which in turn influences the future--admittedly a rare occurrence since most of the time we cannot know the future except through estimation.

One might argue that at the level of experience or psychology, mutual causality is not deterministic. For example, what comes first, the knower or the known? Dr. Macy explains that these opposite poles arise mutually, not one causing the other to arise. On the other hand, meditative experience and Mahayana teachings show that it is possible to let go of the reification of a knower without yet letting go of the reification of the known, and vice versa (for example, Advaita Vedanta subsumes all of the known into the subjective pole as the knower/Self, whereas Theravadins often focus on the dissolution of the knower, but not of the known, since two-fold emptiness is a Mahayana focus--but if you have to choose which pole to dissolve first, I (and Buddha) say go for dissolution of the knower, as that is enough to liberate one from samsara).

If you want an example of a prominent Buddhist teacher who mentions about no free will, I would advise you to read "Mindfulness, Bliss, and Beyond," by Ajahn Brahm. His videos are also all over youtube.

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2. Dr. Macy explains that each level of organization of any given system (defined as a "holon") is irreducible to its component systems. In other words, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Thus, emotions cannot be understood in terms of neural network functioning. This is only true in terms of experience--in other words, if experience is at the level of the neural networks rather than at the level of the brain as a whole, emotions will not be what we are used to thinking of them as. But on the level of causality, there is absolutely no reason to imagine that emotions are not sufficiently determined by the functioning of the neural networks, and ultimately the physical laws of atoms, etc.

Indeed, Buddha was keen on describing the human experience based upon the 5 khandas or aggregates that compose the mind and body. There is nowhere that he claims that our experience can be greater than that given by the 5 khandas. And these 5 khandas can also be broken down, according to him, into further aggregates or systems. Dr. Macy quotes the Buddha as denying that the "soul and body are the same or different" (p.146), which she interprets to mean that he does not believe that the person can be reduced entirely to the khandas. If we look at the sutta in question, however, (SN 2.12.35) the Buddha was not at all implying irreducibility of person to khandas; he was pointing out that the notion of soul and the notion of body and how they relate to one another is an intellectual and soteriological dead-end. Instead, he pointed to the 12 links of dependent origination as the way to understand existence in samsara (conditioned by ignorance is craving, etc.), and ultimately the way to the "divine life" (nibbana).

In some places, Dr. Macy seems to indicate that structure and function (brain and mind) are simply different ways of seeing the same reality. This I would agree with. But in other places she seems to indicate that the mind is more than the brain, as it is a higher holon or level of integration.

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TL;DR (Too Long; Didn't Read) / Conclusion

Dr. Macy's assumption that human beings have free choice is illogical and not what Buddha taught. While Dr. Macy believes that only humans have the capacity to choose, and this is why only humans are said to have the opportunity for breaking out of samsara, the truth is actually that only humans have the logical reasoning abilities needed to realize that their choices are pre-determined. That insight is the one which ultimately liberates one from identification with one section of reality (body/mind), which in turn liberates one from the cycle of birth and death.

This is indeed a clockwork universe in which all atoms (gears) function perfectly according to the laws of nature. But whether you see one gear turning the next and so on, or all the gears turning together mutually dependent on each other, is a matter of perspective.

It is not Buddhism but Systems Theory which made me read this book. I think it offers is a very useful introduction to Systems Theory and a fine reading list for further research.

What proved to be particularly helpful is the question, whenever meeting some phenomenon to think about: "Is it a stone, or is it a flame?" A stone listens to Newtonian mechanics and, more philosophically, can be said to have a "substance". A flame is something different, something that can only exist by exchanging fuel and oxygen with the environment it burns in. We humans are rather like flames then like stones.

My interest in Systems Theory derives from René Girard's mimetic theory, which is about religion and violence. Also violence is like a flame.

Joanna Macy is a very lucid and well-organized writer, able to explain with little words what are the issues at stake. Her knowledge of Buddhism is large and I really experienced reading about this as an enrichment.

What I do regret however, is the ideological turn Macy takes - when comparing one type of logic to another. This ideology is also present in systems theory itself. The question is not what kind of logic metaphysically controls the world, but the question is is which type of logic to apply when perceiving or undergoing experiences. A billiard ball is better to be treated like stone. Certainly human being more resemble a flame. But - as Girard showed - many people desire to escape this logic and try define themselves as a steady, unchangeable object. This desire is clearly present in the work of Jean-Paul Sartre.

I first bought “World As Lover, World As Self”, so bought “Mutual Causality” in a fit of enthusiasm but barely glanced at it. Some years later, I returned first to the simpler book, and following Macy's account of paticca samuppada, turned to Mutual Causality for greater depth. Not an easy read! I'd sit out in the garden for a while, reading and pondering and re-reading. In places it's so difficult to understand, I'm not entirely sure Macy knows what she's trying to say. With one of the other reviews, I can understand why the reviewer says what he does, but I don't think it's actually what Macy is on about. So here I'll try to express what I believe Macy is saying, and the two may not be identical!
“Perception” says Macy, “is a highly interpretive process. We create our worlds, but we do not do so unilaterally, for consciousness is colored by that on which it feeds; subject and object are interdependent. The Buddha denied neither the "there-ness" of the sense objects nor the projected tendencies of the mind, he simply saw the process as a two-way street. The conditioning is mutual.”
Our subjective experience is real to all of us, but when you try to find an experiencer during meditation, you find there is no basis to the sense of “I”. There is a process, but nothing like a solid, permanent “thing” except as we continually create and reinforce it. In Buddhist parlance, there is no “self”.
Compounded objects have no “inherent self-nature”. Take a car apart, and all you have is a pile of bits and some oil. Put it back together, and it's a ho-hum collection of bits. The lack of inherent self-nature is also called “emptiness”. It's really only a “car” while it's driving, which, of course, requires roads, lane markers, traffic lights, traffic police, weather forecasts, rubber trees, steel mills, street lights, electricity – pretty much most of the infrastructure of the developed world. This process is known as “interdependent co-arising”.
So we go from the absence of a solid, permanent “self” to the emptiness of phenomena and their interdependent co-arising. The self is a process, just as the world we inhabit.
Next, there are two common ways of looking at the world: objective realism and subjective idealism. The first says that there is a real world that exists 'out there', and we absorb information about that world through our senses, perhaps via special detection equipment, and understand reality more-or-less accurately as a result.
Subjective idealism, and just about everything from Plato to psychotherapy, sees the world in terms of how we create our reality out of thoughts, ideas, images, desires and subconscious content. This view frequently enlists the support of the Copenhagen Interpretation for all kinds of metaphysical speculation.
There's another option, “mutual conditionality”, described by Shakyamuni Buddha, and it seems to have been a crucial part of Buddha's experience of enlightenment. The conditions by which things happen all have to be present. Everything that happens is interdependent and co-arising, including consciousness. It's a world-view that includes the perceiver without being solipsistic. Consciousness and phenomena co-arise, reciprocally and simultaneously.
As for quantum theory, it would be more in line with the de Broglie-Bohm pilot-wave interpretation than the intrinsic indeterminism of the Copenhagen interpretation: deterministic, but in a radically more holistic way.
I believe this is what Macy is saying, and it's a view obviously more in line with systems theory. It's certainly a book to read and digest at your leisure, following these implications for yourself, and just for that it's a mental exercise well worth the effort. Very valuable for Buddhist practitioners.