Platonic Dialectic and Zen Buddhist Koan Practice

You asked: Is the goal of Platonic dialectic to bring about a non conceptual or non dualistic experience? Is the technique similar to Tibetan Buddhism's use of analysis to exhaust the conceptual mind?

I will begin by saying, yes, the goal of Platonic dialectic, or elenchus as it is called in Greek, is to bring about an experience that is beyond concepts. At least this is the way I have always approached and understood it, despite the fact that most Platonic scholars would not agree. There is a passage in one of Plato’s surviving letters that speaks to this.

The study of virtue and vice must be accompanied by an inquiry into what is false and true of existence in general and must be carried on by constant practice throughout a long period, as I said in the beginning. Hardly after practicing detailed comparisons of names and definitions and visual and other sense perceptions, after scrutinizing them in benevolent disputation by the use of question and answer without jealousy, at last in a flash understanding of each blazes up and the mind as it exerts all its powers to the limits of human capacity, is flooded with light (Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, Plato: The Collected Dialogues, Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ, p. 1591) (Plato’s Seventh Epistle, 344b)

I believe that Plato, speaking in his own voice unlike in the dialogues where he does not appear as a character, in the passage above, has given us a clear explanation of the purpose and ultimate end of the dialectic he demonstrates in this dialogues. The “benevolent disputation by the use of question and answer,” is clearly the Platonic elenchus. And although he does not say, “I am talking about a breakthrough to an experience beyond concepts,” I believe this flash of light he describes is just that. Many, if not most of Plato’s dialogues end inconclusively on the conceptual level. Perhaps the dialogue that most clearly indicates the limits of concepts is the dialogue that most scholars consider the most dense and difficult to penetrate. I speak here of the Parmenides. After a long discussion, the Parmenides ends this way:

Whether there is or is not a one, both that one and the others alike are and are not and appear and do not appear to be, all manner of things in all manner of ways, with respect to themselves and one another.

Now, do we really think that an intellect as sharp as that of Plato could not have come to a clearer conceptual conclusion if such a conclusion was truly reachable? What is going on here? This is the rock upon which conventional Platonic scholarship breaks. I submit that Plato’s goal here was not to demonstrate a clear, conceptual position, but to show more clearly, perhaps, than anywhere else in his dialogues, the limitations of concepts and the impossibililty of reaching a consistent and complete conceptual resting place.

No, the state of mind portrayed in this passage from the Parmenides very much resembles the state of Great Doubt described in the Zen Buddhist tradition. The koan practice of Zen Buddhism seems to resemble in some ways the elenchus of Plato. There are differences as regards the subject matter, but the process seems very much the same. Describing the experience of a koan practitioner who has almost reached the goal of enlightenment. Alan Watts in The Way of Zen says,

By such means, the student is at last brought to a point of feeling completely stupid – as if he were encased in a huge block of ice, unable to move or think, He just knows nothing: the whole, including himself, is an enormous mass of pure doubt. Everything he hears, touches, or sees is as incomprehensible as ‘nothing’ or ‘the sound of one hand. At sanzen he is perfectly dumb. He walks or sits all day in a ‘vivid daze’, responding mechanically to circumstances, but totally baffled by everything. (Alan Watts, The Way of Zen, p. 165-166)

Now, I think there are striking similarities between the state of mind of the interlocutor at the conclusion of the Parmenides and this student of Zen described by Alan Watts. These passages seem to describe a mind which is either on the point of becoming totally unhinged or else is on the verge of breaking through the limits of the conceptual mind. It is well-documented that the state of mind described above can be the precursor of what is termed satori or enlightenment in the Zen Buddhist tradition. So why shouldn’t we think that a similar result can be produced by the Platonic dialectic?

This is not exactly what you asked for. I didn’t really write about the analytical meditation in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. It just so happens that the parallels between Platonic dialectic and the koan practice of Zen seem clearer than in the Tibetan tradition.

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