Masao Abe: A Zen Life of Dialogue 0804831238, 9780804831239

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AO

ABE

a

ZEN

LIFE of

DIALOGUE

Edited by Donald

W.

Mitchell

CMCCEHTER.

k*

JVlasao Ave

A TjCU Life of

philosophy

Hisamatsu for the is

no

tea ceremony. In

fully manifested. Those

who

can-

not see the philosophy of Awakening in that flower will fail to see it

in his philosophical works as well.

The same can he

said of an

ordinary word of greeting spoken by Hisamatsu. Containing the

philosophy of Awakening, his greeting of directly into the

foundation of the

"How

are you?" inquires

other's existence,

and turns him

towards the Awakening of himself. Only someone able to the

last

3 .

statement applies to Masao Abe and his philosophy as well.

Whether speaking

slowly in his careful English, laughing, knitting his

brow, asking an unanswerable question that unquestionable

patiently his debt.

respond

question contained in such a greeting can comprehend

Hisamatsu's philosophy of Awakening

This

to

answer

and calmly doing

—

—and then

waiting, waiting for

or simply chatting with students,

his religious philosophy.

We

Abe

is

are forever in

chapter Two

THE FIRE IN THE LOTUS Steven Antinoff

Walking through the grounds

of the Shokoku-ji, the monastic

compound where I lived in a three-mat room five minutes from his home, Masao Abe let out one of the occasional pieces of autobiography he would divulge when he thought it might help me advance. "In my late thirties

and

early forties,

near collapse, and

was pressed

I

me

impelled

it

practice immediately after the

during the sesshin

midday meal and

going supper, until the meditations concluded

problems with there

was an

my

knees."

With

this last

infinity of difference in

was a

to the wall. It

to sit

1

to

resume zazen

without respite, Later

at nine.

we both

sentence

situation of

I

for-

had some

laughed, but

our laughter: his nonchalant in

relaxed recollection of a hardship borne and long since cast

off,

mine

its

ner-

vous, apprehensive at the abysmal difficulty before me.

This was one of those fascinating glimpses of the Abe of a previous incarnation,

when

age had not yet blended with compassion to give him

the tinge of the grandfatherly friend (and

my

It

was rather the Abe of the

teacher) Richard DeMartino,

American who appeared

in the circle

who

him outside the

Lion's

ripped from his

mouth and thrown back

It is

at

fire

as

he stood opposite

Columbia University only

to

have the pipe

in his face.

said that the lotus born in water

the lotus bloomed. in

told the story of an

surrounding Suzuki in the 1950s and

who, "thinking he had something," challenged Abe

Den

tales of his

can be destroyed by

cannot be burned.

Abe

told

how

fire,

but

during a talk

~'

chapter Two

1 1

on the Pure Land the words "Amida Buddha

him clawing

to the ground and had

him

nition that

how

it

is

not far from here" pressed

at the tatami in anguished recog-

was he who would not permit Amida conversion that he

in the after years of a

embrace the whole world, the nihilism

felt

to enter.

He

recalled

had empowered him

to

that at the depths of his religious

experience had been dissolved through Amida's grace had broke forth

anew

second,

in a

now

God-resistant strain; how, in the midst of a

ditch effort during a winter sesshin to achieve the

which he sought

to

undercut the force of

the meditation hall and, tearing the

'

this disclosure,

kimono from

last-

no-mind" through he had run from

his shoulders,

doused

himself repeatedly with the freezing water of the temple well, only to hear the words "Everything

from

his

Above

a

is

there

all,

who had

Abes all-encompassing

word had rejected Abe's simply,

"No

posture,

is

a lie!"

pour unexpectedly

the nembutsu into their nihilating caress.

was Hisamatsu, the great

the one being in the world elusive to

Everything

lie!

mouth and draw even

lay

Zen master and

faith

and who

in existence as well as in

realization as not thoroughgoing,

noise in the zendo,"

was so absorbed

when Abe, though

in the

his teacher,

remained, of course without intent,

reprimanding

formally in the zazen

nembutsu that he unwittingly blurted,

"Namu Amida Butsu" Hisamatsu himself had been reared see his faith give

way

to the

demands

in a

of a

Pure Land milieu, only

human

reason that at length

likewise proved powerless against the crisis of being

ing double impotency, of

human

human. The

"I,"

atheistic in that this

any divine agency. Short of avail.

result-

existence and of God, stood at the root

of his insistence on a "religious atheism," religious in that

the

to

breakthrough was obtained this radical position,

"Whether walking, standing,

it

broke through

in the

absence of

nothing could be of any

sitting, or lying,

whatever you do

will

not do. Then, what do you do? Absolute negation; death. But this at the

same time

is

absolute affirmation." This, a few seconds of talk once thrust

before a student,

is

the core of Hisamatsu's existence as well as his

reli-

gious teaching; and a chronicle exists, in the writings of fellow disciple

Ryutaro Kitahara, of an episode to

in Abe's

attempt during the postwar years

contend with both:

Following Hisamatsu's lecture [during a sesshin at Reiun-in

Temple in

195/],

when

the chanting of the sutras had also been

—

"

1

Z

Steven Antinoff

completed and the group in

san, seated in one of the spots

gate

entirety

its

was

on the row

sitting together,

to the left

Abe-

of the front

and diagonally opposite Hisamatsu, suddenly shouted, "Sennot do, what do you do?"

sei! If sitting will

was the very koan

/

I

was astounded. This

had been struggling with day and night for the

past seven days, in fact, for the last three years. Hisamatsu engaged

him

in

an

aggressive exchange:

"That's "I

am

your problem."

asking you.

"You're the

one with the problem."

"Deceiver!

I

am

asking you. If sitting

will not do, "In

your doing

it,

what do you do?" I

do

it."

Without warning Abe burst from

and was about

floor in the center of the room,

Hisamatsu.

I

was

how

the situation

when

second slow in reacting. But

seized hold of Asano 2

no suke. The

oldest

man who

as he slashed Kira

in danger, trampling the fallen

temple. Reiun-in

Abe just

evil spirits in the

Kozuke

sitting in the

saw him

furthest corner, dashed towards Hisamatsu as soon as he

vana stomping out

was a

what was happening

Tokuho Nishitani,

us,

in the

unfold,

his arms, like the

Takumi no kami

among

pounce on

would

I realized

grabbed Abe from behind, pinning

to

and caught up

sitting next to Sensei,

bystander's curiosity as to

I

his seat onto the area of wooden

like the statue

ofVaisura-

Sangatsu Hall of the Todaiji

was now unexpectedly transformed

to

a scene of

sheer chaos.

Abe, trying grip

to

writhe free, at the same time maintained his

on Hisamatsu and could not be made

Finally Hisamatsu shook an

arm free, and

against Abe's forehead, watched Self?"

Abe shouted

replied solemnly.

him

at him. "This

Abe bowed, and

is

to relinquish his hold.

pressing his

hand

intently. "Is this the

the True Self,"

said,

True

Hisamatsu

"Thank you very much,"

then darted off somewhere.

That evening, as we were drinking reappeared, staring fixedly at

tokonoma

tea in the shoin,

Hisamatsu —who had

with a strange look. Suddenly with

his

his

Abe

back

to the

open palm he

slapped Hisamatsu's balding skull. Sekuin Koretsune, sitting next

3

ckcipter Two

to

Hisamatsu,

Abe then

Hisamatsu

said, "Is that all?"

him with

struck

1

all his

replied, "More, more."

power, hut Sensei was just smil-

ing calmly. Later,

cannot

when

came

I

across the

Z^n

phrase: "An angry fist

strike a smiling face," I thought, "So that's it!"

and remem-

bered that scene, strange even for this world. i

Close

to three

decades

same room, this same Koretsune, now we drank tea during a sesshin break, for the action. Abe simply laughed. "You don't under-

later, in

the

over seventy, criticized Abe, as

inappropriateness of his stand.

I

had no choice.

The Masao Abe

I

was completely cornered."

I

first

met

in 1972 seemed kalpas removed from

Two monks brought me to his home the day of my entry into Shokoku-ji. He explained the monastery routine to me in English. There was about him an intimation of ripened virtue, very much the man who when asked how he was doing would respond, as he appeared at the gate in his kimono, "Always very busy; always very free.'' One remark from these struggles.

—

that first occasion especially intrigued

me

the goal of the Shokoku-ji

roshi's life.

This was a man,

would not

a

yield

to

I

was

thought,

also

who

Zen master, an impression subsequently

when Abe confirmed an account

strengthened no:

even

that enlightenment

I'd

heard from DeMarti-

He'd been barred from the monastery where he trained

for accusing

the roshi in a sanzen interview of acting.

My own

first

tenure at the monastery turned out to be a failed one.

Within three months

I

was down

to 107

pounds. Life hitherto had been

too devoid of suffering, of persistence, to be readied for the physical and

psychic shock that was abruptly to ensue.

me

out.

I

could not

kimono were

it

Only you can Later tery but

destroy

I

bow

them

If so,

Abe

"It is

one cannot

plants but not animals

Abe noted

simply,

I

could not fold a

"The forms are dead.

life."

learned that for

by compassion. life.

visited frequently to bail

properly or even dress myself.

to cost the world.

give

Abe

is

this "life"

was engendered not by mas-

the law of the Buddha," he said, "not to eat.

The notion

that

it

is

justifiable to

an illusion of anthropocentricism. But

if

kill

we do

Steven Ant inoff

14-

not eat,

we

destroy ourselves,

violating the Buddhist law. This

still

is

the

significance of the gassho, the pressing together of the palms, before par-

taking of a meal.

One

destroys

so as not to destroy

life

life,

but one does

so only at the ultimate heartfelt limit."

What to create

my

beauty of man, what ferocity of inner struggle was requisite

such simple beauty of phrase! And thus the gassho, formed by

hands before each

sitting,

each bow, each meal and

from an ultimate heartfelt

itably far

limit

I

after,

dead, illim-

had not the humanity

achieve, became, as with every other form of this universe, a wall. that,

soon became

it

clear,

would have

somewhat distanced from those

to

even as

when

I

succumbed

me

to

if

know

to persist in zazen alone.

it

in its

spare piece of advice: "You must

He seemed

to

later,

a

And he

be testing

kill

few days

in his insistence that

failure

I

own undertaking with

I

had arranged

arrangement. Abe, too, seemed

—

to

must

I

a cliff that at once

my return, met him

monks and moving

the phrase kendo jural o kisuru

me

set before

the week-long sesshins several times per year. to this

my

a

yourself at every instant."

after

my resolve.

the nightly hours with the

ed

instilled

in

depths turned the breath to

gave partial illumination to the austerity of his

Three years

regrouped

presence of others as his friend,

champagne. He had been uncompromising be able

He had

I

my downward spiral. He had been able, at a time thwarted me in my most critical aspiration, to con-

beauty, as

its

in the

as

Still,

to

the pain of zazen

vey to

me

One

be scaled from an encampment

of the monastery.

America, something of Abe seemed to abide. with dignity, always referring to

to

a

new

satisfied.

for

had already acced-

roshi

emerge from

strategy, sitting

monastery only

into the

The

in his study.

He

described

me

with

a setback with redou-

bled effort.

But the Zen path has

its

own

inevitable logic, "inevitable" in Abe's

sense of the word meaning an existential necessity that one might not

come

to,

edge of

yet

life

must come

to if

one

is

to prevail.

and death?" he demanded, patrol

"What

will

you do

at the

stick poised over his shoul-

der amid what Hisamatsu called "the murderous tension of the meditation hall" at a sesshin of the F.A.S, Society, in

participant.

But

how does one

which an answer

which

achieve the edge of

to the challenge

sition of the "right aspiration" of

is

I,

life

too,

had become

a

and death, without

impossible? DeMartino, in an expo-

Gautama's Eightfold Path, had

said, "It's

The

disparity

not enough to want Enlightenment. You've got to need

it."

chapter Two between the two

tore at

my

1

5

heart and legs with dramatic force, and the

thought of dying without Awakening generated an anguish matched only

by the bewilderment that the force of

this

anguish could not be convert-

ed into anything more than a hopscotch between sporadic

One may

sion.

the

volunteer for the Zen quest, but one

is

and eva-

effort

conscripted into

Zen wars. I

was, then, as

I

suppose must always be the case, pulled into the

vacuum

in spite of myself.

became

for

me

The abandonment

of the half for the

full lotus

the personal symbol in the struggle against the impulse to

shrink back from the edge, resulting in an unintended asceticism that

me

bared

to the grid of

my

ambivalence. As

clasped hands, the realization that the

maintain

my

thought that the

last

was

to

last

thing

thing

I

could do was to waver.

the struggle with pain and the doubting of

wanted

I

onto

in this

its

Abe observed

validity

was

a

my

world

only that

problem that

Zen must confront. He assured me

that the

my mind as long as had the luxury to raise He would say, "Ordinary education is to add on. Zen education is to away" And he knew well the paradox that an ever increasing honing

question would remain in

power of the

of the

itself to

will

exhaustion. At

sified effort

could bear

my

it.

I

fruit

only

when

this

power expended

explanation in the back of a trolley that inten-

had merely brought greater awareness of

he was almost incredulous: "You is

sat tears fell

posture even one more period clawing against the

every serious practitioner of

take

I

still

my

powerlessness,

think you have power! Self-negation

the only ultimate power."

Presenting

he inscribed seeking

in

me

with an English translation of the Record of Rinzai,

Chinese characters the phrase "Seeking Buddha and

Dharma is only making hell karma." He remarked that at the life when he came upon this sentence, it had brought him to

point of his

the verge of collapse. Intrigued, of that encounter. But letting

barren where

it

really counts,

I

asked what had transpired

me know once and

he responded

coolly,

for

all

in the

wake

that curiosity

is

"Find out for yourself."

^^ During my at the

initial stint in Kyoto, when

monastery,

which was

Abe met my

far less transient,

dejection and,

I

would not persevere

more important, my

with ajuzu, or Buddhist "rosary,"

fear,

made from

1

6

Steven Ant in off

Bodh Gaya, where Gautama, unable

dried fruit of the Bodhi tree in

marshal a further step, was brought

symbol of

a

gift,

mation so

in the

my

capacity to carry

absence of any warranting

worn around

arm, to

my

his faith in

my

bicep. Eventually

a

now

see that

is

planted where a person

around which human existence

on

was

it

quest to

to slip

consum-

its

my

wrist

my

without form and does not planted, the contradiction

is

it

recoils.

juzu that with each addition shrank the circumference of

choking off the possibility of escape. Inexhaustible until

I

was

satisfied

how

its circle,

in his unwillingness to

next to proceed, that he

held finally that one was to be deprived of every way of proceeding to

and

of Abe's offerings were the fruit of this tree, beads

all

renounce discussion

to

a precious

unnoticed from

and from which

coiled

is

my

was

sign, too large for

great regret. But the Bodhi tree

slip off so easily. It is

I

to the final impasse. It

is

not

be doubted. This, regarding what might be called "method" in Zen, was

the jewel of his inheritance from Hisamatsu.

change; where there

would

later

is

a change, there

encounter with frequency

is

"When

cornered, there

a passing through"

is

—words —

in Hisamatsu's writings

I

a I

first

And though of course it was not his style to press me knew that and anyone else who sought to win out in the battle for Awakening would have to come that way, just as Hisamatsu knew Abe would have to. It was only in response to my overt indicaheard from Abe.

with this method, he

tion that

I

I

might no longer have the option not

to bear

up

to its

much

mandate

that he held out "You

must

When showed

could not, there was not the slightest trace of

I

that

I

try to

appointment or disapproval. To

been reduced

corner yourself as

my

to the duality of confronting the

he merely remarked, "You need not

need only I

that tial

to get to the

mean

to

life

dis-

had

Zen quest and evading

some

third position.

it,

You

that the attempt to achieve a "pure effort"

would eliminate the impulse by contrast was

try to find

my whole

bottom of that opposition."

understood him to

oscillation

confession that

as possible."

to

evade was vain, that what was essen-

be deadlocked

between the two

in the

depths of the inescapable

poles. This deadlock, the final cornering,

was

the "great-doubt-mass" in Hisamatsu's meaning of the term, which he

describes in the autobiographical account of the situation immediately prior to his

open

own Awakening

as "black,

and with no means of escape

in the entirety of his existence, not

even one the

left

size of a hole in a

--

chapter Two

1

7

needle ... as though one were to climb to the

and then find oneself unable one's position."

own

still

I

tip of a

pole 300 feet

the napkin on which

Abe scrawled

wherein he argued that zazen alone, while approaching achieve the crown of that pole, that cut

could never

it,

would have

sitting, too,

the diagram

to

be under-

"doubt," in Hisamatsu's sense of absolute contradiction, absolute

if

and absolute dilemma,

agony,

home ed

tall,

advance, to descend again, or to maintain

to

most emphatically.

this point

me

to

in his study. "I said to

be achieved. Hisamatsu had driven

to

is

"I

was

at

an extremity," Abe recount-

many

Hisamatsu, Tor

years

I

have strug-

gled for a place to stand but have not been able to find one.' His reply, as usual,

was without

hesitation: 'You

must stand where there

is

no place

to stand.'"

This was in thorough consonance with Hisamatsu's strong advocacy of a cherished phrase from The Gateless Barrier: "In order to attain the

wondrous Awakening, to

be brought

way

to bring

is

it

necessary for

to the extremity

my

all

routes of

and extinguished."

I,

mind [and body]

who

could find no

paths to an end, ran forward but could not get free of

the starting blocks, ran away but could not get free of the need to run forward.

Abe made

a gift of a calligraphy

he had

in his turn

been given

by Hisamatsu, "Extinguish-in-sitting the dusty world," and a year copy of the painting, attributed

hidharma

his severed arm.

later a

to Sesshu, of Hui-k'o presenting to

But these affirmations of

my

Bod-

exertions were

invariably countered by the insistence that they be brought to a standstill

cusp of

at the

ma

maximum

deadlocked

at the

said, adding, before

I

effort

Bodhi

and the impossibility of advance. "Gauta-

tree

is

the negation of Buddhist practice," he

could respond, "Gautama

at the

Bodhi tree

is

the

fulfillment of Buddhist practice." I

found myself increasingly pulled

ry forces thrusting the

apart: a tautening of contradicto-

mouth open and

the eyes dangerously shut as

I

bicycled from English lessons to the interview with the roshi; an inexorably expanded balloon

ward

in

Still,

I

God,

whose

anguish in zazen; neck lashing back-

hundreds of paroxysms during

a

three-month season of

remained what characterizes, contrary

a tangle of

to Exodus,

sesshin.

man and

not

branches that burns and burns but cannot burn out. Lay-

ing this "intensity" before in,

air is

he dismissed

it

Abe

mid-sesshin outside the gate of the Reiun-

with singular indifference: "Psychological, not onto-

l

logical."

my

part to exhibit a resolution I

—

had none. Rather,

I

took to be the Zen path,

attempt to express even the problem

no recourse, tly,

Steven AntinofJ

This was disturbing, not because he was rejecting any attempt on

heartache on what

my

8

after so

had been confiscated

I

at the first

move. Feeling

enough between the shoulder and heart

for

me

I

me

challenged his characterization. To this he pressed

I

just firmly

much in

had gen-

to fall back-

ward, and said, as he turned to other business, "What are you going to do

with that?"

Thus does one touch

render impossible an entire world, though

And when ask myself why was worth his bother on so many occasions over so many years, know it is because he honors a man in what he calls his "burning problem." My inability to one touch

sure to

is

redeem

it.

I

I

I

up

as yet face

be a concern. I

believe he

He responded

knew

I

to

whatever was brought before him.

the mondo:

The

"What

first

And yet

was thoroughly aware of the nature of those implica-

kind of reverse Indian rope trick whose

tions: a is

burning seemed never to

to the final implications of that

is

Zen?" "Boiling

time Abe visited

me

oil

moment

over a blazing

in the

of final descent

fire."

monastery he had said that

zazen must be without either bodily or mental tension, though a "spiritual"

tension was imperative. But these are not so readily separated.

remember ed

to the

set

me

da.

The

that

once when the

bell

marking the transition from the

walking form of meditation rang, the release from the

into uncontrollable laughter as

next afternoon as

lient.

"Last night

sion.

.

.

.

I

we

we were both

sign!" Later, inquiring

ment made concentration on the koan

Yet

but it

would have

it:

if

"You

may

if

difficult

Abe was

it

come

to

when

ebul-

the physical tor-

was better

become one with

to

abandon

the pain, he

not be able to achieve this oneness before the

you throw yourself into the koan,

was without words to

full lotus

and recircled the veran-

rinsing our hands,

the koan and try until the periods end to

bell rings,

seat-

heard you laughing during the walking. That's the ten-

Oh, very good

advised against

circled

I

that

mean. The

Abe gave initial

it is

sure to be intense."

portent of what intensity

block of the evening sitting

chapter Two

3

1

periods had terminated, and the bell rang for the walking meditation.

Abe

fronted the queue, and

line.

I,

on the cushions next

As we stepped barefoot along the inner thick line of icy slush along

from a recent snow.

It

side of the veranda,

ing the path a foot to the inside. Since

my mind

cold,

noticed a

I

we turned

directly in our course as

Abe could have

third leg of the circle, but

him, was second in

outer edge parallel to the garden, remnants

its

was

to

I

easily avoided

it

into the

by establish-

was highly susceptible

to the

urged him on to the dry wood. Instead, he accelerated,

trampling right into the slush, and there was no choice but to follow.

Coming back from Palms pressed

the bathroom,

in the gassho,

I

the veranda, for as soon as he

knew then he had

I

blowtorched

prepared to resume

watched him

was

past,

I

steadily as

was obliged

Two seconds from me

step in behind him. visage.

I

my

bow

quickly and

full

force of his

not simply stomped into that snow; he had

it.

As an episode

it

is

inconsequential, but

some decisions Abe had obviously made

it

me

gave

a long time ago.

a glimpse of

Such things can-

not be settled by another. Nonetheless, in response to a letter ten

him

retreat.

at Princeton,

he made

it

had

I

quite clear that in the end there

writis

no

reads, in part, as follows:

It

It is

line.

he stormed round

to

caught the

I

place in

true that

Gautama

undergoing pain for itself

its

rejected asceticism.

own

sake, or

But asceticism means

enduring the pain as

were the means of attaining Awakening. This

is

if that

simply a

form of morbidity. The unintended pain which may accompany hard zazen practice in the quest for the True

Self,

on the other

hand, was never rejected by Gautama.

Enclosed with the Ta-hui, I

marked

was locked

letter

in red.

was

When

a photocopy, I

read

it, I

one passage, a reference

knew

that

I

was boxed

out.

The postmark

dates from

more than

a

decade ago. Though other

discussions ensued, mostly toward the preparation of lish,

me

I

consider

it

makes

Abes work

in

Eng-

our last critical exchange. Perhaps there will be from

a response, but

the letter

to

in, just as

none could be made now

clear, to

be valid

my

that

I

would accept. For

as

rejoinder will have to be spawned,

ZO

Steven Antinoff

from where "one returns home and

as in the verse of Tung-shan,

among

prefer not to repeat what

I

day Abe took in I

what Zen

believe

I

me

to

have elsewhere written about the

I

meet Hisamatsu, who, having

and universe

slain self

Great Death, stood where there

no place

to stand.

learned that afternoon what Rilke must have meant

when he

calls the

wrote that beauty deigns

me

is

though not his design, the

to destroy us; for

encounter with Hisamatsu tore ic

sits

the ashes."

me

reducing

to shreds,

to a

spasmod-

wailing of unprecedented intensity and duration. At the time,

meaning

of

my

coming face

with Hisamatsu's Great Peace and the terrifying

to face

dread of the path that loomed before

But subsequently

attained.

I

came

always maintained as

its

if

it.

he

were

that peace

know

in fact to

be

that those tears possess an

certitude

to

reality."

is

Those

Jesus says to lose yourself

accusers that

if

brought me of what Abe had the —They "Compassion That the supreme inner

embodiment but

does not diminish

me

to

additional meaning.

was not

saw the

I

reaction in the cross formed through the intersection of

is

as

tears

is

its

negation that

I

found

it

this certainty

remain the rare "ocular proof that when

to find yourself,

when

Socrates replies to his

put to death, "you will hurt yourselves more than you

hurt me," they spoke truth. It

silence.

where to

me

interests

Neither

at

that Abe's direct

comment on

Hisamatsu's house nor in the

my sobbing perdured

unabated, nor

at

talk, as if

those tears was

back

I

Gifu station, train

we

rode

to a

we both

question as

resided did he finally

unwilling to intrude on what had transpired for

he said only that

to

any point on the return

Kyoto did he offer a word. Only in response

the bus toward the neighborhood where

taxi

me

alone.

Then

confessed fright of being plunged into the abyss, "Today you met a

who

leapt into that abyss.

Look

at the result!"

But though he made no mention of them,

knew

those tears even before

parable of doves ardently

I

is

I

am

convinced that he

had wept them. Abe once

told the sutra

in love with a forest that they discover desper-

ately ablaze. Their sole remedy, soaking their

by lake,

my man

had experienced a "great encounter," and in reply to

wings

in the

water of a near-

hopeless, the water evaporating in the air en route.

The doves

~'

repeat the process

— again

chapter Two

Zl

without effect

—and

droplet douses a flame, no more. But love

repeat

own

again.

it

A

rare

destiny,

and the

doves are impelled to the perpetual recapitulation of virtually

doomed

passion. This, without

sentiment,

its

the

is

Sixteen years have evaporated since

members

vow

of the bodhisattva.

Abe voiced those words

to the

of the lay group (of the retired, absent Hisamatsu) circled on

the tatami of the Reiun-in stillness of zazen.

I

am now

hidden

hisattva's tears,

Temple on of the

or "lofty dryness," It is

and

that the lake consists of the bod-

hidden even from the bodhisattva

in the flames,

this that

I

explains to

it

first

evening infused with the

a lovely

mind

himself. This, in Hisamatsu's explication of

silence.

its

is

me

Zen

art, is

meaning

the

of tears

beheld in the passage "As we go

bamboo

stands by the gate;

farewell"

and sensed the pierced heart of the master,

who would

'austere sublimity"

its

leaves

stir

met with

to part, a tall

the clear breeze for you in his task completed,

never see again his greatest disciple; this that

I

was honored

to witness in the

unshaven countenance of DeMartino the afternoon he

made

mondo

his farewell

in the

a small so

to his

departed friend Bernard Phillips, comrade

pioneering American quest for Zen, as he sat cross-legged in

well,

room

of students

common

though from an

to

them both;

distance,

infinite

in

response to his long-struggling disciple Fu-kuo

this that

I

have loved

Wu-tsu Fa-yens at the

moment

sole

of his

Enlightenment, and in which can be traced the imprint of Abe's utter-

most

"The great

aspiration:

and patriarchs

to

inferior vessels.

I

affair of life that

appear among us

am

glad to have

is

has caused the Buddhas

not meant for small characters and

been a help

to

your delight."

chapter Three

MY ENCOUNTERS WITH MASAO ABE IN JAPAN

AND

THE WEST VaLdo H. vlgUelrno

I

am both honored and delighted

memorate Masao Abe's achievements But

at the outset

fer considerably

tributors,

I

am

should state that

I

from the others

to

have been asked

in his life of dialogue in the

my essay will, am I

in that, unlike

com-

to

West.

fairly certain, dif-

most of the other con-

not a specialist in the area of comparative religion, com-

parative East-West philosophy, or the philosophy of religion. Rather, field of specialization is

(post- 1 868) period,

and

Japanese

my

literature, especially that of the

involvement

in the study of

my

modern

modern Japanese

philosophy, particularly that of the Kyoto School, has been peripheral to that specialization. Nevertheless,

tremendous personal small measure from the Kyoto School,

Indeed, although marily upon

in

a source of

me, a satisfaction deriving

in

no

my encounter with many of the prominent figures of among whom Masao Abe must surely be counted.

my

teaching and research continue to be focused

modern Japanese

philosophy has

such involvement has been

satisfaction to

literature,

my

interest in

no way waned over the past

profoundly grateful for

my

pri-

modern Japanese

thirty-five years,

and

I

am

association with those figures of the Kyoto

School and for the influence of their writings on me.

Z3

chapter Three To

trace the stages of

my

encounter with Masao Abe,

appropriate to give a brief account of

my

I

think

it

encounter with the aforemen-

tioned Kyoto School prior to actually meeting him. For one year beginning

summer

in the

literature at

Fellowship,

happened

of 1954, as a Harvard graduate student studying Japanese

Tokyo University and the Gakushuin University under a Ford

was boarding

I

home

at the

be a professor of philosophy

to

Kyoto School, Yasumasa Oshima. through him that

I

later

We

struck up a friendship, and

became acquainted with

own

ures of the Kyoto School, especially his abe.

woman whose son-in-law and younger member of the

of a

Tanabe had succeeded

to the

was

it

the major surviving

fig-

revered sensei, Hajime Tan-

mantle of Kitaro Nishida, by consen-

sus of both Japanese and Western authorities the acknowledged founder

and principal exponent of the Kyoto School. in

the area of

obtained

my

modern Japanese

I

did not then intend to

philosophy, because

Ph.D. from Harvard in Japanese

was piqued and

I

literature,

work

had not yet

I

but

was gradually persuaded by Oshima of the

my

curiosity

intrinsic sig-

members of that school. It summer of 1957 after a two-year

nificance of the philosophy produced by the

was during

my

absence, that

I

next

visit to

bought the complete works of Nishida and actually began

which

to explore his philosophy,

And

Japan, in the

at the

time

I

found extremely

difficult.

summer as well as during my subsequent trip to Japan, resumed my friendship with summer and fall of 1958,

during that

in the

late

I

Oshima, discussing with him various aspects of modern Japanese philosophy.

Thus

it

was

that

Oshima,

as a

Commission, became instrumental

in

member

my

of the Japan

being nominated to translate

Nishida's Zen no kenkyu, the second major

work

in a series of

philosophical works to be translated into English.

with considerable trepidation since the fact that

my own

I

UNESCO

I

Japanese

accepted the task

did not feel truly competent, given

formal academic background in philosophy was

tually nil. Nevertheless,

I

vir-

persevered and in the process developed a deep

admiration for Nishida's philosophy as well as a determination to intro-

duce

it,

through translation, to the Western world, although

tinued to specialize in Japanese literature.

my own

inadequacies, but

no other Western scholar

I

vowed in

to

I

German

still

con-

recognized only too keenly

continue

my work

because almost

Japanese studies appeared interested

studying the philosophy of the Kyoto School Schinzinger, a

I

at

that

time.

in

(Robert

scholar and philosopher teaching in Japan, with

vaido H.vicjliclmo

Z4-

whom

also

I

already published a

German

This discussion it is

may appear

ble for

my

A

title

and was already being used

was

it

my encounter with Abe,

my

translation of Nishida's

Study of Good, that was largely responsi-

meeting with Abe.

first

from

to digress

actually quite relevant in that

maiden work, under the

sity

in a

My

translation

was published

seminar conducted

at

in i960

Columbia Univer-

during the 1961-62 academic year by another philosopher of the

Kyoto School, the renowned Yoshinori Takeuchi.

and since

I

was teaching Japanese language and

University at the time,

it

was

learned of this fact,

I

literature at Princeton

Columbia and meet

a simple matter to go to

down

Takeuchi. Thus began a close relationship extending day.

and

translation of several of Nishida's essays

published an English translation of those same essays.)

later

but

He had

developed a friendship, was a notable exception.

We

later

embarked on an ambitious

to the present

project of helping each other in

our respective tasks of translating Tanabe's immensely difficult major

postwar work Philosophy as Metanoetics (Takeuchi had been asked undertake

it

by the same Japan

UNESCO

to

Commission) and Nishida's

equally difficult second major work, Intuition and Reflection in Self-Consciousness,

which

I

own. Takeuchi and ly

over

mer still

had somewhat foolhardily decided I

worked together on these

many years, and

of 1966, to

it

was during one of

work with him on them

sum-

to Japan, in the

home

Kyoto

(he was then

teaching philosophy of religion at Kyoto University, continuing in the

direct tradition of Nishida

and Tanabe) that he informed

me

that a Kyoto

School colleague, Masao Abe, had just returned from teaching bia University, I

my

on

translations intermittent-

my trips

at his

to translate

recall,

where

he, too,

had used

Takeuchi kindly arranged

A

my first

Study of Good

at

Colum-

in a seminar.

meeting with Abe

As

at the latter's

home. I

vividly recall that first

becoming acquainted with who,

like

I

my

asked him

in general

translation in doing so.

many

to translate

of Abe's

A

felt in

—

to Nishida's

—and

philosophy and

The time passed extremely

the

who

rapidly as

questions about his particular philosophical interests

while he in turn inquired about

come

I

yet another scholar of the Kyoto School, one

Takeuchi, sought to introduce American students

American academic world had used

meeting because of the exhilaration

my own academic work and how

Study of Good. Already

deep involvement

in

at that first

meeting,

I

I

had

learned

— indeed, commitment —Zen Buddhism, to

Z5

chapter Three

D. T. Suzuki and Shin'ichi Hisamatsu, both of

in the line of

considered to be his teachers.

dhism

(in

which

too,

I,

was happy

I

had developed

and practitioner because Takeuchi,

somewhat

urally tion.

Moreover,

I

less

be able

the two had delivered lectures there, so

had presented

the process

it

carefully with

it

I

symposium

at a

very kindly agreed to read

went over

nat-

meet both Suzuki and Hisamat-

to

my memory does not fail me, at that first meeting of my lengthy biographical article "Nishida Kitaro: The I

was

knowledgeable about Zen, despite his vast erudi-

If

copy

Zen Bud-

to discuss

was happy

I

experiences with Abe.

to share those

which

he

a strong interest) with a specialist

as a priest of the Shin sect,

had been fortunate

when

su at Harvard

to

whom

and

at a

life

gave

Abe

a

Early Years,"

Puerto Rico that January.

He

subsequent meeting that summer

me, making several valuable suggestions. In

was impressed with

cern that Nishida's

in

I

his

meticulousness and with his con-

and work be presented

Western world as

to the

accurately and fairly as possible. (Such concern was undoubtedly responsible for his later retranslation,

under the tion

title

more

or,

An

with Christopher Ives, of Zen no kenkyu

Inquiry into the Good.) In this

aptly, dialogue,

ing

Abe an

him

I

culture.

And

warmth and understanding

many

of

my

—

so

in philoso-

in addition to find-

extraordinarily stimulating person intellectually,

could share with him that

broad range of topics

to a

and comparative East-West

great personal

associa-

focusing primarily on Nishida's philosophy

and Zen Buddhism but extending phy, religion,

way began our

much

I

sensed in

so that

I

felt

personal and family concerns in a

have done with very few of

my

I

way

academic associates, even fellow

Americans. Yet another important aspect of my first meeting with Abe that warm summer day (only those who have experienced Kyoto summers can know how hot and humid they can be!) was his mentioning to me the work of one of his American graduate students who had participated in his Nishida seminar, David Dilworth. He lent me a copy of one of Dil-

worth's papers in the seminar, a study of the religious thought of Nishida as expressed in

A

Study of Good.

Little did

I

realize at the time that

I

was

then being introduced to the American scholar of the Kyoto School with

whom

I

would

also have a long

and

fruitful association.

only in January 1968, during yet another the bitter cold of a Kyoto winter!), that

visit to I

Kyoto

actually

However, (this

it

was

time during

met him. Abe accom-

Z6 VdLdo H.vigllelmo

me

panied

to Dilworth's

temporary

home where he was

on Nishida's philosophy.

ing his Ph.D. dissertation

(I

living

while writ-

cannot but reflect

on the strange chain of "coincidences" mediated by the philosophy of the Kyoto School

my

1954 by

— Oshima

happening

shima.

Is it frivolous

link in

all

of

to

Takeuchi

to

board

me

to

Abe

at the

to say that

I

Dilworth

to

home

—which began

in

of the mother-in-law of

seem

to

O

have discerned a karmic

of this?)

My friendship with Abe

deepened during the next

correspondence and in several meetings with him

six

years through

both Japan and the

in

United States. The spring and early summer of 1972, however, clearly rep-

my

resent the period of that time not only roshi

vide tice.

closest association with him, for

my sensei

in the area of

Nishida studies but actually

during intense sessions of zazen. But here, too,

some background I

had arrived

in

why I came

as to

Japan with

and daughter, Emily)

I

think

summer

Japanese literature and philosophy during

I

at

my

should pro-

such zazen prac-

to participate in

my family (my wife,

in the late

he became

Frances; son, Marc;

of 1971 to do research in both

my

sabbatical year.

(I

was then

teaching at the University of Hawai'i.) But our living arrangements in

Tokyo were so unsatisfactory that

would be best

that she

finally

continue on alone in Japan to pursue

February 1972, translation

my

I

that

home

made another

was able

I

to

wife and

make

to

I

decision: to

move

to

The major reason

they

Kyoto

had not

I

agreed that

Honolulu and that

my research. After

work with Takeuchi even though

literature project in Tokyo.

was

my

and the children return

to

for this

my

completed

change of plans

the excellent arrangement of boarding at the

of Presbyterian missionary friends, very near Kyoto University.

was happy

to

be able

to

I

left in early

continue

really

it

I

continue working with Takeuchi in pleasant sur-

roundings and also to enjoy the more relaxed atmosphere of Kyoto, with its

many Buddhist temples and

theless, I

I

had not

was

my

missed fully

my wife

gardens, for an extended period. Never-

and children, and

my

health was not good since

recovered from a major operation the previous year. Such

mental and physical state when

I

learned,

Takeuchi, that Abe was then conducting zazen sessions ji,

a

famous Buddhist temple

in

again at the

through

Myoshin-

western Kyoto, the very place where

Nishida had himself done zazen precisely three-quarters of a century earlier,

during the

summer

of 1897.

chapter Three

I

made

rather quickly

Z7

the important decision to ask Abe's permis-

sion to participate in those sessions at Myoshin-ji because

was

me, unencumbered

a splendid opportunity for

family responsibilities, actually to practice it.

I

also

deepen

was

my

in the

frame of mind that

Zen

Christianity

and Buddhism primarily from an active

in

broader sense

many

was then an

member

it

moment by

rather than merely to study

in the

religious experience after so

that

felt

I

for the

of the well-known

wished

I

to

years of considering both intellectual standpoint.

Church

I

of the Crossroads

Honolulu, a church of the mainstream Protestant denomination the

United Church of Christ. Of course, Abe kindly acceded

and

I

that

I

began

go once a

to

week

to the sessions

was not the only Westerner

a dozen people, mostly I

tion. (Philip

but

many

he conducted.

in the group,

women

a detailed

Kapleau's The Three Pillars of Zen

and moving account of

Buddhism.)

wish merely

I

tions

on which

I

had

On

ses-

Zen medita-

mind

to

as a par-

a Westerner's experience in

I

when

built

comes

me and how appreciative was for me to participate. found them

those weekly sessions were to

ered zazen to be easy.

account of those

Zen

emphasize how extraordinarily important

to

conducting them and for allowing a spiritual oasis at a time

request,

discovered

which consisted of about

excellent accounts of the practice of

ticularly vivid

I

also.

burden the reader with

shall not

sions; there are

men

my

to

my

I

I

Abe's to

be

was questioning many of the assump-

life.

This in no way means that

the contrary,

consid-

I

found even the half-lotus

I

sitting

posture extremely painful and could not begin to achieve the full-lotus position. Also,

months was

because of

my

poor health the

damp

cold in the early

especially hard to bear. Moreover, as Kapleau

and others

have described, a thousand extraneous thoughts obtrude as one concentrate on counting breaths; often

But while clearly sion.

I

I

felt

myself to be a

was under Abe's expert guidance, something

happening

to

me, and

I

tries to

total failure.

significant

was

never considered canceling a single ses-

(The only major interruption

in

my

attendance came

when

I

had

to

go to the city of Kamakura in the Tokyo area to attend the funeral of Yasunari Kawabata, Japan's

recipient, in 1968, of the

Nobel

Prize for

who committed suicide in mid-April. His death saddened me because had come to know him very well during his lengthy stay Honolulu in the spring of 1969. But his self-inflicted death also made

literature,

greatly in

first

I

—

ZS Valdo H. vialiclmo .

me more

determined than ever

grapple, as best I

I

been lacking

in

my

me my

to

experience toward the end of

glimpse of the Zen goal of satori.

—

to

it

because somehow now, as

it

I

and may even wish

was

I

I

to

at the time,

felt

my I

a brief

nor have

I

mentioned

hesitant to do so, but

I

should

it

like

almost three decades of association

may

think he

comment on

find this episode to be of

it.

sitting in the prescribed half-lotus position (as

I

have indicat-

could not possibly manage the full lotus) and looking out through

I

roshi,

was

as

sitting facing

me

—and the

rest of us

my

was concentrating on counting

I

Honolulu home, looking out the closed glass lanai doors. at least

my conscious minds

was removing

a faint

But as soon

As

And

it

—

I

felt that

my

was aware

I

was back

my

on the

glass doors

in

my

it

—

or

unseen hand

from being

and was

removed. This process continued without interruption, as

me were

willing

that an

that prevented the glass

else

right.

backyard through

one smudge was removed, another yet

smudge appeared somewhere within

my

gradually lost con-

I

then, utterly without

willing

Abe, as

recall,

I

diagonally to

at the green lawn of

smudge

as that

—

breaths,

sciousness of being there in Kyoto and instead

ble.

me

more appropriate

is

half-closed eyes at the beautiful Myoshin-ji garden.

But

did have one

I

stay in Kyoto that gave

Abe

on

reflect

with him. As he reads this essay, interest

during those sessions,

or perhaps simply "state"

did not mention

I

since,

to describe

ed,

be

truly startling or dramatic (or at least observable

such by others) happened

him

after the long meditation sessions to

life.

Although nothing

to

existence.)

although, of course, intellectual discussion about Zen had not

fruitful,

as

human

could, with the deepest problems of

found the discussion period

also

continue with the zazen sessions and

to

if

invisi-

fainter

similarly

some power

absolutely intent on removing every single smudge, how-

ever faint, so that the glass in the doors would be perfectly invisible and

could see the lawn without the slightest impediment. long this trancelike state continued four minutes

—but

it

was

—

joy,

Kyoto

in

to

me anywhere

at

any time,

it

and gave

me

a feeling of

memory

of

which has

the

remained with me. And, of course, although

happened

do not know how

probably not more than three or

extraordinarily vivid

heightened awareness, and intense

I

I

this

experience could have

actually

happened

to

me

in

1972 under the direct guidance of Abe.

One

might very well think that with such an experience, however

I

Z9

chapter Three behind me,

brief,

would have been impelled

I

my

even greater fervor and that

my

pursue

to

association with

Abe

zazen with

even

thereafter,

though we might be separated geographically, would have deepened precisely in this area of "discipleship" to

do so

him

as a

no reflection whatsoever upon

is

Zen master. That

his skill or

wisdom

teacher but almost wholly because of the particular course after

my

return to Honolulu in August 1972. For

the interior religious

life

zen and as a thinking, feeling

community. By

this

I

my

mean, quite

early

as a

Zen

life

took

my

interest in

summer

of that year

even as

I

in

my

throughout the 1970s, ments.

I

I

Vietnam, causing immense

in political develop-

Vietnam War from

to the

many

role in the

inception, but

I

ral-

opposition was largely limited

to writing in the "Letters to the Editor" section of the ironically,

its

antiwar demonstrations and

My

of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

newspapers. But

itself.

United States, and increasingly

the

to

found myself caught up

had been opposed

had not taken an active lies

return

to

fact that

suffering there as well as intense social turmoil in the United States

Thus, after

citi-

was going

was keenly aware of the

United States-initiated war was raging

Zen and

late-twentieth-century world

specifically, that I

did not

consciousness as a U.S.

member of the

the weekly sessions at the Myoshin-ji, a

and

in the spring

occurred within the broader context of

my

it

two Honolulu daily

with Watergate, Ford's pardon of Nixon, and

the events leading up to the final debacle in Vietnam in the spring of 1975

—

in fact, just as the

became much more

broad antiwar movement was subsiding

U.S. government and in opposing imperialism throughout the world.

was

as

if

I

wanted

to

compensate

for not

more

height of the Vietnam War.) This

came

to affect

my

—

active in expressing myself against the actions of the

academic

life

having been active enough

at

(It

the

active political stance inevitably

as well,

which included my continuing

involvement in the study and translation of the works of the Kyoto School. (In 1973 David Dilworth and tion of an important

My

I

published a joint English transla-

work of Nishida's middle

and Morality.)

years, Art

made me look at modern Japanese history in a different light, and gradually became more critical of the political activity and philosophical writings of the members of the Kyoto heightened

political

consciousness I

School

—even of Nishida—

in the

This important change in in

my

relationship with

Japan of the 1930s and early 1940s.

my

Abe during

thinking had manifested several conversations

I

itself

already

had with him

30 Valdo U.vialielmo mid- and

in the

engaged

in free-ranging discussion

One meeting

tioned.

doing research

at

on the various topics

with him that

Princeton University in

we

both in Japan and the United States, as

late 1970s,

November

I

have men-

especially vivid took place at

is

1978, while

I

was on the East Coast

Columbia University during my second sabbatical from

the University of Hawai'i. William LaFleur,

who was

teaching

Prince-

at

ton at the time, was with us during the early part of the meeting. But

was when Abe and

some all its

I

my political

of

were alone together that concerns, especially

my

forms, as well as

I

felt

thetically, as

recall,

I

conviction that religion,

even commenting on his

man

thought as a young

could share with him

I

my opposition

involve itself with important political problems.

in the 1930s.

He,

may have been

it

later,

to

if

imperialism in

genuine, should

He listened most sympaown interest in left-wing

too, felt that religion

should

was

at that

address pressing contemporary political issues, and

time (but

it

when he was

think

I

it

teaching at the University

of Hawai'i) that he told me, with a touch of justifiable pride, that his

Zen

study group (which was the same group that had met at the Myoshin-ji six

years earlier) had sent a telegram to the French government protest-

ing nuclear testing in Tahiti. Nevertheless, existed

between

his

summer

suikin, the

I

still

sensed that a large gap

emphasis on the more formal aspects of

my own pressing need to participate ing that

I

had gone

to

actively in the

religion

peace movement (dur-

Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the Gen-

Japanese antinuclear group loosely

affiliated

with the then-

bomb-

Socialist Party, to observe the thirty-third anniversary of the atomic

ing of both cities)

and

work

to

the Third World. In sum,

where, while cially of his

I

was

still

in solidarity

my own

life

with the liberation struggles of

trajectory

had moved

greatly appreciative of his

life

me

to a point

— espe-

and work

pioneering in the area of the Buddhist-Christian dialogue

and, of course, of his personal guidance in Zen

my religious

express

and

—

I

felt

that

I

had

to

convictions primarily by working for peace and social

justice.

With our life, it is

down

differing

emphasis on the

role of politics in the religious

perhaps not surprising that our relationship

to the

in

subsequent years,

time of this writing (September 1993), should have become

primarily one of friendship and mutual respect on a horizontal basis,

although

still

retaining

many

aspects of the uniquely Japanese sensei-deshi

(teacher-disciple) relationship. For example, in the spring of 1983

I

was

1

^

chapter Three

3

he was coming to teach

utterly delighted to learn that

Hawai'i and was happy to try to be of assistance to

and

in finding a place for

which housing

One admired

and

life

in

Abe, for

my mind

him

workaday world merged.

a particularly

And

that

muggy day (Honolulu,

thanks to the tradewinds)

house

I

where

I

when he comment on it,

certain that

I

am

their

Abe and

trying to

make.

On

his wife to the ware-

many boxes

their inspection

major construction in the area

have

unlike Kyoto, has few of them,

offered to drive

in the airport district

had arrived and required

I

must seem the most natural

precisely the point

is

Honolulu,

his personal religious

am

I

should bother to

I

his behavior at that time

thing in the world.

arrival in

as epitomizing everything

showed me how thoroughly

it

reads this he will be surprised that for

in getting settled

Honolulu, a city in

notoriously difficult to obtain.

his life in the

because

him

to stay in

episode that took place shortly after their

1983, stands out in

June

in

is

him and Mrs. Abe

at the University of

had great

of personal effects

and clearance. Because of

difficulty in finding the correct

warehouse, and there were further complications in finding someone let

a

us enter the warehouse and to supervise the clearance process.

most

trying time,

sion in the

had

to

too,

was

and Mrs. Abe was

justifiably distressed at the confu-

numbering of the boxes and

be conducted

in

what was

feeling the heat

it

for her a foreign language, English.

I,

hoped every-

I

gave no indication whatsoever of doing).

But Abe, about a dozen years older than exertion of the trip to Hawaii, as

I

and surely

still

tired

from the

was Mrs. Abe, showed not the

composure

until everything

slightest

behaved with

sign of impatience or irritation at the situation. In fact, he

perfect equanimity and

process

at the fact that the entire

and undoubtedly showed that

thing would end soon (which

to

was

It

was completed

satis-

factorily.

The above episode may seem it)

an extremely minor and

tive of the spirit of

Zen

— and indeed

erudite lectures and treatises I

have come

I

be (and actually

one, but for of

all

me

it

is,

on the face of

was more

genuine religion

instruc-

— than

all

the

on the subject. Thus, even though Abe and

to differ in the area of politics

undoubtedly strayed from the realm,

to

mundane

and even though

I

have

role of his faithful deshi in the religious

must acknowledge how deeply

I

admire those personal qualities

he manifested so elegantly and so eloquently that muggy June day ten years ago.

3Z During

many more

Vdido U.Vlallclmo

his two-year stay at the University of Hawai'i,

I

naturally

occasions to meet him, but because of the factors

had

have

I

already mentioned and also because departmental lines are ridiculously

sharp here

teach in the Department of East Asian Languages and Lit-

(I

eratures, not in either Religion or Philosophy),

we had

not have as close an association as

But

earlier.

do remember that he showed

I

in the course of those

two

years,

when my

in

me

sympathy

great

wife and

were undergoing. Indeed, there

ter

area of

modern Japanese philosophy

easier for

ume,

I

I

must touch upon another

me

to avoid. In fact,

me

feel

upon being asked

cannot avoid

it,

it is

and how

because

easily

so

it is

bond

strong

concerns

in the

it

years.

would be so much

it

to contribute to this vol-

pondered precisely the question, Should

sensitive a topic I

a

and daugh-

many

over

which

topic,

mention what

I

has become a burning issue, especially in the past

how

at a time,

or even that of the Buddhist-Chris-

tian dialogue, a topic of the greatest interest to

But

been

clearly has

common academic

that far transcends our

did

were experiencing

I

great distress at the severe personal difficulties both our son

between us

we

regret to say that

I

Kyoto more than a decade

five years,

for

me

knowing

can arouse controversy? Yet

germane

to

my

I

entire almost-four-

decade-long involvement in the study of the writings of the Kyoto School,

and thereby germane to the

to

"My Encounters

as "the

now

in the

as well.

Emperor

refer

Showa Emperor) renunciation

tution before the

members

even other conone, especial-

Hirohito's (since his death

of his "divinity" on Janu-

no way cancels out

1946. But, of course, Hirohito's renunciation in

the views of the

of the Kyoto School toward the imperial insti-

end of the

Pacific War, particularly during the fourteen-

year period beginning with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria

Moreover,

this topic

is

its

new

postwar, "symbolic" guise. Indeed, as

emperor and empress are

in Italy,

emperor

is

I

is

thriv-

write, the present

performing various "symbolic" duties,

including having an audience with Pope John Paul say that the prese-nt

in 1931.

not unimportant even now, in the 1990s, for a

glance at the daily newspaper shows that the imperial institution ing in

I

referred to in English

in the field,

may seem an unimportant

postwar period after

referred to as the i,

more commonly

emperor system." For many scholars

tributors to this book, this topic

ary

Masao Abe"

vexed question of the stance of the Kyoto School members toward

the Japanese imperial institution,

ly

with

no longer merely

a

II.

(One might even

symbol but rather has

33

chapter Three

become

"divine" by cohabiting with the spirit of the

ceremony of November

erasu, during the Daijosai

During the Kyoto School,

Sun Goddess, Amat-

1990.)

my

approximately twenty years of

first

was of minimal

too thought the imperial institution

I

study of the

importance to an understanding of the writings of the school's members.

But since the

and increasingly throughout the 1980s,

late 1970s,

convinced that

it

was not only important but its

during the

life

I

last fifteen

years of his

important to an

most prominent member, Nishida,

understanding of the writings of

raphy,

critically

became

I

As

(1930-45).

I

worked on

his biog-

perceived that what at the turn of the century was a relatively

benign interpretation of the role of the imperial institution became by the 1930s total acceptance of

its

Even more

divine role.

Nishida

to the point,

articulated in sophisticated philosophical terms a justification for the

unique mission of the imperial institution

much

world

in

untouched by

of Nishidas philosophical legacy remains

modern

ticular interpretation of

and by

history,

history.

Although this par-

his obvious espousal of

nationalism through such absolutizing of the imperial institution in his later years,

stand

it.

it

That

would be wrong not is

what

alluded

I

address

to

to, in

it

and

to

attempt to under-

a very cursory way, toward the

end

of a review article on David Dilworth's translation of Nishidas last major

philosophical work, "Nishidas Final Statement"

Autumn

1988).

Although

from Michiko Yusa

—

phy

—

in a later issue,

my

(Monumenta Nipponica,

statements prompted a vigorous rebuttal

herself a distinguished scholar of Nishidas philosoI

continue to believe that the question of Nishidas

nationalism and exaltation of the imperial institution requires much,

much more

How

study and cannot be dismissed so

this

problem

relates to

Abe

is,

easily.

of course, a matter of

how

he

assesses Nishida s writings on the imperial institution and other aspects of the "national polity" (kokutai, in Japanese) and

how he

himself view

s

the Japanese imperial institution, both in the prewar period and in the present.

As

I

continue

my

ask him these questions.

because

I

him through

dialogue with I

especially

hope he

will

this essay,

respond

to

I

must

them

find his statement in the introduction to his and Christopher

Ives's translation of

Nishidas

first

work,

An

Inquiry into the Good, to be

quite enigmatic: "Nishida was, however, neither anti-nationalistic nor nationalistic" (xxv).

I

am

perplexed also that he does not mention Nishi-

das views on the imperial institution

at

all,

despite extensive references to

L

34-

it

is

by Nishida in his

somehow

Abe

later writings.

Thus,

I

cannot but think that the topic

taboo; and in keeping with everything

to

break

all

taboos. For surely,

seek the truth and overcome I

all

if

religion has

have learned from

I

himself, both from his writings and in person,

finally to is

VaLdo H. Viaiicimo

I

think

it

any function

obstacles on the road to

realize, in conclusion, that this essay is a

is

proper

at

all, it

it.

most curious melange of

personal anecdotes, impressionistic descriptions, and polemical state-

ments. But

which I

can

it

somehow

was

I

am

confident that

written, as both a tribute to

truly affirm to

be one of the most

Abe

will

him and fruitful

read

it

in the spirit in

as an extension of

encounters of

my

what

life.

ckcipter Four

THE IN

F.A.S.

ACRONYM

MASAO

ABE'S LIFE

TRAJECTORY Felix E. Vricto

M a sao

This essay, offered to in

American

which

universities,

Abe

as

an appreciation of his work

structured according to the three stages in

is

Hisamatsu (1889-1980) encapsulated

his teacher Shin'ichi

his

human existence in his use of the acronym F.A.S. show how Abe's life trajectory represents an outstanding

basic understanding of I

shall try to

embodiment

of the development of the selfless Self,

which

foundation of Hisamatsus philosophy of Awakening, of which

most

brilliant

Let

me

example

in the

lies at

the

Abe

the

is

academic arena.

begin with a brief description of what F.A.S. means.

F

stands for an Awakening to the Formless Self, which refers to the dimen-

human existence, i.e., the True Self as the fundamental ground of human existence. A stands for this Formless Self as the standpoint of all-humankind and refers to the width of human existence, which sion of depth in

also includes

all

beings in their entirety.

The dimension

for the activity of creating history supra-historically

chronological length of

human

existence as

Masao Abes main academic

efforts

of the S stands

and

refers to the

awakened human

were

first

directed at a provi-

sional synthesis of Christianity as a religion of faith or grace

dhism

as

a

religion

of

self-awakening

or

history.

and Bud-

self-realization.

Both

36 religious trends coexist in

expression in Pure

Felix E. Vricto

Japanese Buddhism as well, where they find

Land Buddhism and Zen Buddhism. As

a devoted fol-

lower of Pure Land Buddhism in his younger days, Abe was directly confronted with the tension represented by the two contrasting ways of realization: the

efforts at

one based on the other power

human emancipation

(tariki),

the seeker relies exclusively on his or her

human

which

one's

prove totally ineffective without the help-

ing grace of Amida, and the other based on self

from the

in

self-

own

power

(jiriki),

efforts to obtain

condition. This dialectical tension took for

which

in

freedom

Abe

at that

time the shape of an existential impasse leading to a genuine philosophical aporia that his

remarkable dialectical power was not able to overcome.

Abe

In a conversation with John Cobb,

painful one,

which he was able

refers to this transition as a very

to solve only

under the guidance of

his

teacher Hisamatsu.

Upon

the resolution of the contradictory tension inherent in the

tariki-jiriki existential conflict,

Abe undertook

to apply consistently

an

analogous methodology regarding the Buddhist-Christian contrast:

Through

that experience I was, in a sense, forced to

Land Buddhism and Zen — not

intellectually,

compare Pure

hut existentially.

This problem overlaps comparative studies of Buddhism and Christianity.

Thus my personal

these two religions,

interest

Buddhism and

is

not merely

to

compare

Christianity, hut rather to find

the deeper root for the two types of religion the}' embody. To realize

such a deeper truth

main motif of my

The

is

a very urgent task for us today. This

failure of reason to solve the vital

intellect points to the reason's inherent

damental contradiction

between

a relative

is

the

interest in the Buddhist-Christian dialogued

in

human

antinomy

in the

problems created by the

weakness

to solve

any truly fun-

existence. Hisamatsu distinguishes

process of rational activity and an

ultimate or absolute one that points to a fatal limitation in the structure of reason in which there appears the extremity of reason

itself.

This

absolute antinomy characterizes the unavoidable limitations of the per-

son as a rational being.

Humans

and continue to rely on

this

are not aware of this fact themselves

antinomic standpoint. But without the

chapter Four

„.

and solution of

realization

this

37

problem, one cannot help falling into

anxiety and desperation.

When who

become one with

the fundamental antinomy has

wrestles with

it,

the person

there appears the great-doubt-mass (dai-gi-dan), an

ultimate negation of the thinking

itself.

However, a great-doubt-mass that

remains a particular doubt mass can yield only a particular form of satori,

one that

greater tering

still

has form, and as such cannot really be called Great Awak-

The great-doubt-mass

ening.

effects.

The

and more thoroughgoing the doubt, the more exhaustive and

shat-

its

results.

its

worth emphasizing, however, that a theoretical description of

It is

the process does not at of self-discover\'.

only

stands in proportion to

when

I

It is

all

provide the real problematic to start the quest

not that in doubting myself

have become a

I

am

truly doubting, but

doubt myself. The overcoming of the

total

great-doubt-mass cannot be undertaken only by reading a literary description of

it,

become

unless one has previously

the very doubt mass

itself.

This existential problem, as Abe says, overlaps the comparative study of

Buddhism and

Christianity.

Upon

resolving the initial antinomy

eventually transformed into the great-doubt-mass,

Abe would

not start

digging up relics and bones of the Buddhist tradition as a heritage for the future.

On

the basis of his awakening to the Formless Self, and working

in the present historical situation,

he would now undertake the task of

finding and working out the deeper roots of the two types of religious realization

embodied

in his initial problematic.

A religious

experience should,

be grasped in terms of reflective thought. Philosophy and

in his view,

reli-

gion ought to build a strict and inseparable unity, inasmuch as a religion

without philosophy out religion

West both

is

is

blind to

its

own

articulation,

and philosophy with-

an abstract endeavor with no transforming power. In the

are strictly separated departments,

which explains why

at pre-

sent there are so many religious movements based on simply emotional reasons, blind to any philosophical articulation, and philosophies that are

powerless because they are limited to a positivistic approach. ing

is

between philosophy and tural

Abes

think-

not only concerned with establishing the necessary demarcations

and

religious

religion either in the East or the West. If the cul-

meeting of both hemispheres

creatively developing their religious

is

now

taking place and

and philosophical standpoints,

it

is

38 because of people of Abe's

come

another have

Felix E. Vricto

who by one way

those of us

The meeting

ers are greatly indebted to him.

overcoming of the

And

stature.

or

within his personal world as friends or devoted read-

historical preconceptions

of East

and West,

an

as

between the Buddhist and

Christian antagonism hitherto firmly entrenched,

one of

is

a processual

character meant to be accomplished in time, as mutual love and under-

standing develop.

in this sense that Abe's dialogue has

It is

been

a

model

coming generation.

for the

Throughout

thinkers,

through his remarkable books and

his teaching career,

Buddhist thought with the West's most outstanding

articles confronting

and through

book on Japans foremost

his interpretative

gious philosopher-priest, Dogen,

Abe has

reli-

offered us a truly penetrating

view of the so-called Kyoto School of philosophy, of which he has been its

living representative in the

do

qualified can

Nor

that.

West. The nature of

Masao Abe's

for a critical evaluation of is

this essay

output. Others

how

here the place to assess

does not

who

are

call

more

far his possible

development of the Kyoto School's conception of Nothingness has succeeded

to

advance

tion. In the

case of

its

articulation after Kitaro Nishida's initial formula-

Masao Abe, we

dhist thought that in

my view had

are offered an interpretation of

already attained

its full

Bud-

development

in

the foregoing generation. Abe's task has been the formulation in straight-

forward language of a process of Buddhist speculation far from easy to assimilate

and

been voiced of his use of Western

follow. Criticism has

minology when submitting Western thinkers

to a

paramita dialectic, espe-

regarding the process thinking of Whitehead or the onto-theology

cially

of Heidegger. But since this criticism

is

only external,

aim

mon way

is

to establish a

to East

for a

But

of thinking that

is

in

no way

understanding of their

inval-

as his ini-

truly universal

and com-

and West. To note the separations and differences

to a better

ments

way

it

inasmuch

idates or calls for a radical revision of Abe's position tial

ter-

common and

is

but a

fundamental agree-

world philosophy.

this philosophical task

important to him

is

not Abe's ultimate concern.

the discovery of our

focus on F.A.S., this stressed here.

is

is

common

More

humanity. Given our

the aspect of Abe's thought that needs to be

Humankind

is

today a scattering of individuals, an aggre-

gate or conglomeration of single entities, windowless

monads wandering

„

chapter Four

39

aimlessly in a world without meaning. This a whole" does not exist at

nation-states with

all.

that

"all

humankind

The world today should aim

which people

upon us the urgency of

means

to abolish the

Abe

identify themselves.

as

is

pressing

investigating the religious reasons to take as our

destiny the state of being persons belonging to a single and united world. It is

because there

world

history.

is

When

no true humankind that there

is

at

present no true

the individual transcends the ego-centered structure

of the nation-states and thereby creates the universal sovereignty of

humankind, true history may begin

we need most

mate, what cosmology.

Human

at

existence

in a

present is

now

is

postmodern world.

in great

need of

a

threatening the world in a blind alley of ing a self-awakened

Formless

nihility,

cosmos based on the

and

new

clarifying authentic

with the aim of overcoming the antireligious ideologies

religiosity

in

now

need of establish-

realization of Emptiness, the

Self.

Now Masao Abe

returns to Japan and concludes his teaching career

Western academic world, thus entering

in the

In Abe's esti-

new humanism but

not a

into the length

of his trajectory, the dimension of the extension of

life in

dimension

which the awak-

ened individual embarks on the creation of history supra-historically For the creation of true history, a third dimension of called

nent

for,

in

created ated.

human

(S).

existence

is

because true history cannot be created by any means imma-

conventional history. History

anew

When

is

something that should always be

rather than being the record of

what has already been

own

becomes mere

fettered by our

creation, history

cre-

scholar-

ship. Living without continuously creating the future belongs already to

the past and, as such,

is

historically worthless. Therefore, after

awaken-

ing to the Formless Self (F) and having helped to form the world on the

standpoint of All-Humankind (A), Abe's concluding stage of supra-historically creating history at all

liant actualization of its

times (S)

now opening

is

up. After the bril-

previous stages, without being fettered by the

already created history, the last stage for the completion of the F.A.S.

acronym now looms

large in Abe's trajectory as the actualization of the

ultimate postmodern

Mahayana

I

sory

career.

have ventured, perhaps somewhat

way Abe's

trajectory with the

by Hisamatsu's notion of F.A.S.

scheme

If

arbitrarily, to establish in a cur-

of spiritual development traced

Abe's work

is

read under this

light,

we

4~0

Felix E. Vricto

can find implicit an evaluation, both

ment

as well as in terms of

qualifications, the F.A.S. al

in

terms of

acronym thus exemplified

challenge to every one of us to be worthy of the

ously poured with sphere.

its

potential develop-

what has already been achieved. With some also throws a person-

Dharma

rain so gener-

wisdom and compassion upon our parched hemi-

ckciptcr Five

THE ZEN ROOTS OF

MASAO ABE'S THOUGHT nichard

In his

foreword

ern Thought,

1

to

J.

T)eJ\dartino

Masao Abes award-winning book, Zen and

John Hick, with much

ures, Nishida,

Abe (who

justification, described

"belongs to the vigorous Kyoto School and

is

a successor of

its

West-

greater

fig-

2

Hisamatsu, and Nishitani") as "the leading philosophical

exponent of Zen 4

to the

since 1958, Abe's

many

West since the death

of D. T. Suzuki.

M

Indeed,

years of translating, lecturing, and publishing in

English concerning Zen carry on a long-standing interaction of Zen w

Western thought and Western expression that goes back

in fact

Suzuki to Suzukis teacher Shaku Soen (1859-1919). For the

first

ith

through serious,

probing engagement between Zen and Western thought began, from the side of Zen, possibly as early as 1885. ly

having received his

final

Kosen (1816-92), decided

—

It

was then

Zen approval from in a startling

lished about

patently

in

Tokyo. This was

two decades

discernible

earlier

influences

his

Shaku Soen, recent-

Zen

teacher, Imagita

departure for a Zen

time (and over the objections of his teacher)

Keio University)

that

s

—

monk

of his

to enter Keio-Gijuku (later

an upper-level school formally estab-

by Yukichi Fukuzawa (1835— 1901) under of

Western thought.

expressly "in order to study Western science."

6

Soen entered

Hickard

4-Z

J.

'DeJttartino

Perhaps as an offshoot of his experience

Shaku Soen States. ji

in

Having

1893

became

in 1892

to

first

Kita-Kamakura, south of Tokyo), Soen

(in

America

Religions, held the following

by D. ly

T. Suzuki.

as a delegate to the

month

in

An

in

World Parliament of

Chicago. At that conference his

a result of friendships

stemming

from that conference, Soen was once again

ing 1905-06. in

As

United

to visit the

paper was read in an English translation prepared back 7

same

at that school, this

Zen master

succeeded Imagita Kosen as head of the Engaku-

monastery compound

August of 1893 went

the

in

Japan

initially

directly or indirect-

in the

United States dur-

assemblage of some of the verbal presentations he made

America, translated into English and edited by Suzuki (who, through

was published

Soen's contacts, had been in America since 1897),

The

topics dealt with in this collection

cial interest for

what

shall

is

8

were wide-ranging. Of spe-

be a major focus here (since

of Abe's primary concerns)

in 1906.

it

came

be one

to

that in explaining the central or pivotal

dhist notion oiSunyata, or "Emptiness," great care

was taken

to

Bud-

prevent a

dualistic or exclusively one-sided negative or nihilistic misunderstanding.

That

is,

not only was Sunyata presented and discussed along with the

companion Buddhist notion

oitathata,

equivalent 'philosophical terms for tence,"

10

and bhutatathata, 9

Dharmakaya

or "suchness," as

or the "totality of exis-

but further spelled out were the implications of

Awakened the brim,"

Self (or "Mind"): that 11

and, because of

finds itself located"

of-no-place."

12

—

i.e.,

"it is

perfectly

this, that "it

that

it

this for the

empty when

it is

Zen

filled to

has no abode whatever where

occupies what

it

could be called a "place-

13

This same theme of the non-nihilistic, nondualistic nature of

Emptiness

(particularly in

treated by Suzuki in his

its

relation to suchness)

own way

in

some

was taken up and

of his early works in English,

Acvaghosha's Discourse on the Awakening of Faith in the

and Outlines of Mahayana Buddhism

15

(1907).

Mahayana

Although the emphasis

the Acvaghosha treatise, supposedly one of the earliest dhist texts,

(1900)

14

in

Mahayana Bud-

was not on Emptiness, but on suchness, Suzuki,

in the intro-

duction to his translation of this work, commented: "Whatever the origin of the idea of suchness might have been,

its

'absolute aspect' evidently

foreshadows the Qunyata philosophy of the Madhyamika school." glossary he supplied at the

of "emptiness

[or]

cunyata

end of [as]

his translation,

1

"

In the

Suzuki explicitly spoke

an aspect of suchness."

1

chapter Five

4-3

This position was disclosed more fully

Suzukis footnote

in

to a por-

which the position was apparently

tion of Agvaghosha's Discourse (on

based), which stated that

there as

.

a twofold aspect in suchness.

is

.

.

(cunyata) in the sense that

.

it is

.

completely

the attributes of all things unreal, that

second

is

trueness as

.

.

.

The first

.

it is

is

trueness

from

set apart

the real

The

reality.

(acunyata) in the sense that

.

.

it is

.

self-existent.^

The

footnote Suzuki gave to this was "Acvaghosha here states that

bhutatathata all

is

at

once cunya and acunya.

acunya because

all

Thus,

particulars)."

all

." 20

an ontological term.

.

.

privation."

22

is

is,

emptiness

"Emptiness ... is

is

is

Emptiness.

"Emptiness

is

His rationale

24

synonymous with suchness

is

for this

2 "

Hence,

2

It is is

ness, Siinyata

is

"Emptiness is

for Suzuki, "Sunyata,

another

name

emptiness."

(tathata)

," 26

2

for Tatha-

Inasmuch

'

because

had

perfect emptiness. is

as

"in reality

Suzuki maintained, "Buddhist

its

being spoken of as an aspect of such-

a basis in all

—

or even equated

—with such-

Acvaghoshas Discourse, which reports:

things in the world

w ithout exception

tathata or

gunya

"'

Actually, the text goes

beyond

suchness empty, but "the truth

in its

nature."

30

A

similar

is

this,

"It

are per-

emptiness [ctyantacwiyata), that even Nirvana or suchness

also void

in fact

the philosophy of Suchness, or philosophy of

also used interchangeably

said in the Sutras that

alone

it

-

ness. This, too,

fect

21

not sheer nothingness."

suchness and suchness

With Suzuki, then, besides

is

it (i.e., it is

not a negative idea, nor does

is

Tathata, and Tathata Sunyata,"

philosophy, therefore,

is

it

Suchness or Bhutatathata

Being perse."

the reservoir {alaya) of infinite possibilities."

Sunyata

emanate from

conceptually liable to be mistaken for sheer nothingness

is

that

transcends

Yet in one of his last published books, Suzuki

properly speaking, has no negative connotation. ta,

it

nonparticular);

is

19

was, as he wTote elsewhere, "Emptiness

mean mere

it

for Suzuki, "philosophically speaking,

announced: "Ontologically, Emptiness

which

cunya because

(i.e.,

possible things in the world

the font or source of

is

It is

forms of separation and individuation

is

also

holding that not

that

pronouncement

Prajnapdramita tomes. Rendered by Suzuki, "Emptiness

.

.

is

.

cuinatd

found

itsell

is

in

is

the

empty'

ULckard

4-4-

(sunyatasunyata) ." "

quoted by Abe,

31

It

T>eJ\dartcno

J.

Madhyamika

likewise appears in the

'Emptiness too

empty

is

.

.

sunyata-sunyata.'"

.

further amplified by Abe, "In other words, true emptiness

of emptying

Since

which empties everything including

avowed

it is

that suchness

is

literature.

is

32

And,

33

itself."

empty, that Emptiness

itself is

prevail solely

if

suchness

Suzuki's .

.

.

assertion

emptiness

"sunyata-sunyata."

"Buddhism

that

itself (fiinyata)'";

than the concreteness of reality

35

and

'nothing' nasti,

being and non-being

which

is

and

am

that

dhist parallel,

it

This would account

[would

that

alike.'

transcended."

is

to his translation of Agvaghosha 'I

36

a self-

This

say,]

"it is

is

for

universe

in truth

no

less

only possible in Empti-

'Something' here

is

Buddhist

and true Prajna obtains only when the dualism of 3

In addition,

Hinduism

explain his including a reference to

ter IX, p. 84:

34

that "Emptiness

itself';

ness to see 'something and nothing asti,

—which

each bespeaks equally a self-emptying emptying, or

emptying-self-emptying:

is

a self-

is

emptying suchness, and Emptiness a self-emptying Emptiness if

all

"sunyata-sunyata." For the contended relation

this, clearly, is precisely

between suchness and Emptiness can

solely

as

pure activity

empty, and that suchness and Emptiness are synonymous, the key in

means

As

in

is

not.'"

may be noted

would serve

Discourse: "Cf. the Bhagavadgita,

s

immortality and also death; and

which

it

38

In

to

another of the footnotes

I,

Chap-

O Arjuna! am

what might be considered

a

that

Bud-

that in his characterizing a bodhisattva

what could be called the Self-awakened-Self-

of "the eighth stage" (or

actualization of this "ontology" of the self-emptying-self-emptying or

nondualistic-duality of suchness and Emptiness), Suzuki exclaimed, is

nature herself,"

personified."

This

is

39

or,

he was

as

ter

put

it,

"The Buddha

is

Nature

40

the reason Suzuki started to emphasize, as early as he did,

that "bhutatathata (suchness) [dualistic]

later to

"He

.

being and non-being.

.

.

XV):

To think

'it

is,' is

To think

'it

is

eternal ism.

not,'

is

nihilism:

Being and non-being.

The wise

cling not to either.

does not

.

.

.

fall

under the category

of

Says iNagarjuna in his Qastra (Chap-

chapter Five

•»•

4-5

Again,

The dualism of

be and 'not to

'to

be,'

The dualism of pure and not-pure: Such dualism having abandoned, The wise stand not even

in the middle."

41

"So the Mahayanists generally designate absolute Suchness as Qunyata or void."

42

Hence, "absolute Suchness

[also

designated as Qunyata]

and not empty, cunya and agunya, being and non-being, Expressed otherwise:

"When

sat

empty nor not-empty, neither cunya nor agunyd, neither

it

defines

43

asti

nor nasH."**

Thus did Suzuki,

neither void

as

back

(cunya)

nihilistic

nor not-void

decade of

this cen-

elucidate "the nature of Suchness [and Emptiness] or the

'Dharma

(agunyd)}"^ tury,

absolute

the

empty asat."

considered absolutely [they] can neither be

This prompted Suzuki to query, "Could a doctrine be called

when

is

and

of Non-duality,' as

it is

as far

termed

as the first

in the [Vimalaklrti] Sutra."

46

Shortly thereafter (in 191 1), there was published in Japan, in Japanese,

the

first

really

sustained religio-philosophical treatment of Zen

thought under the perceptible influence of Western thought. This was the intellectually groundbreaking Inquiry into the Good, by Kitaro Nishi-

Suzukis lifelong intimate friend. In the view of Masao Abe, as

da,

forth in his introduction to his joint translation of this work: into the

Good stands upon

losophy.

As both

Zen

[the]

a philosopher

set

"An Inquiry

mutual transformation of Zen and phi-

and

a

Zen Buddhist, Nishida transformed

into philosophy for the first time in the history of this religious tradi-

tion and, also for the first time, transformed

Zen-oriented philosophy."

47

Western philosophy into

As Abe went on

Nishida clearly [took what he] regarded

[to

be Zen's] pure experience as

the sole reality and wanted to develop his philosophy on this basis."

At the outset, then, Nishida's

own

a

to explain, "At this time,

48

distinctive use of "pure experi-

ence" was the vehicle through which he sought to explicate what the Vimalakirti Sutra epitomized as the

"Dharma

spoke of "the state of pure experience

in

of Non-duality" Nishida

which there

is

no separation of

subject and object and no distinction between the self and other things." In

Abes

explanation, "Pure experience

is

44

realized prior to the distinction

Richard

4-6

between subject and rience

.

.

"De^Marttno

object. ... In Nishida's understanding of pure expe-

knower and the known

the

.

J.

are not two."

50

Though

and changed somewhat over the

explication developed

Nishida's

Abe, after

years,

examining the complete corpus of Nishida's writings, concluded, "Given Nishida's philosophical

work

that his entire philosophy

notion of pure experience.

after

is

Inquiry into the Good,

we can

development and deepening of

a

An

Aw

Inquiry into the

argue

his initial

Good provided not only

point of departure but also the foundation of his philosophy."

the

51

Unquestionably, there can be found in Nishida's overall maiden

such rudimentary statements that were germinal

effort

philosophy

as,

"When we

assert that 'there are

no

things'

for his future

—from the

per-

spective of intuition that transcends the distinction between subject and object

—

ingness

a consciousness of nothingness lies

is

not merely a word:

certain qualities

and

behind our assertion. Noth-

concrete meaning indicates the lack of

its

also the possession of certain positive qualities.""

This means "absolute nothingness ...

"Non-being separate from being

is

is

not

.

.

.

mere nothingness." 53

not true non-being."

2

So,

54

Concerning Nishida's ensuing developed thought, Abe has observed, "Realizing the uniqueness of the Eastern

way

of thinking,

Nishida [eventually] took absolute nothingness as ultimate tried to give

it

a logical foundation

ern philosophy." culture less

.

.

.

and

through his confrontation with West-

As Nishida himself professed, "At the

basis of Asian

something that can be called seeing the form of the form-

lies

and hearing the sound of the soundless. Our minds are compelled

seek for

this.

demand." 56 losophy ical

55

reality

I

I

would

"[In this undertaking,] through the mediation of

developed

my

base for

.

.

.

ideas."

the idea of place.' In this 57

Working out

idea of place," Nishida evolved

which, as Abe saw

it,

I

began

this "logical base" in

what he came

was linked

way

to

foundation to this

like to give a philosophical

Greek

phi-

to lay a log-

terms of "the

to call "the logic of place,"

to Sunyata. "[Nishida's] logical founda-

tion for ultimate reality [was] formulated in terms of the logic of place or

the logic of absolute nothingness. ... (sunyata)

and

is

essentially different

It is

a logic of Oriental nothingness

from Western

logic.

"' s

While Nishida evidently did not make too much use term Sunyata in

—

or, for

that matter, of the term suchness

ol

—Abe

the specific is

not alone

associating Nishida's use of nothingness with Emptiness oiSunyata. For

"

"

~-

this

chapter Five

•

coupling of Nishida 's Eastern

yata or

—

4-7

or absolute

Emptiness can be discerned as well

in the writings of Keiji Nishi-

tani, one of the

more well known of Nishida's

ern

intuitive as well as active. This

spirit is

.

.

.

—nothingness with Sun-

direct disciples.

"The East-

the standpoint of noth-

is

ingness or emptiness. Nishida's philosophy was also based on the standpoint of an absolute nothingness, but here nothingness and emptiness do

not al

mean

that there

form of

all

a 'nothing'

is

which

On

nothing.

dharmas.'"

59

the contrary, nothingness

Similarly,

absolute 'nothingness.'"

is

the 'actu-

is

Suzuki once stated: "Sunyata. ...

is

60

This commingling the notions of a non-nihilistic Emptiness and nothingness apparently goes back, in the Zen tradition, at least to the Fifth

Chinese Zen Patriarch, Hung-jen. As Abe has brought

to light in

another connection, "With Hung-jen, Dogen emphasizes: 'Since the Buddha-nature relation

empty

is

it

is

mu

called

(no-thing).'

61

Actually,

between these two notions going back much

Abe

sees the

further. For

him,

already "in the doctrine of dependent co-origination expounded by the

Buddha, the notion of absolute Nothingness was Nagarjuna

who

explicitly

2

of Sunyata"*' That or

Emptiness by

enunciated

is, "It is

who

It

Nothingness

this absolute

Nagarjuna

implicit.

in

was

terms

established the idea of Sunyata

clearly realizing the implication of the basic ideas trans-

mitted by the earlier Buddhist tradition."

63

Again,

Abe

presses the crucial

point:

It

must be emphasized

nihilistic.

.

.

.

.

.

.

which

.

.

.

denounced the

insisted that true reality

Therefore, his idea of Emptiness

ness as opposed to fullness. is is

Nagarjuna s idea of Emptiness

In fact, Nagarjuna

"nihilistic" view,

existent.

that

.

Fullness and Fullness as

.

.

is

is

not

so-called

empty and non-

not a mere empti-

Thus, in Sunyata, Emptiness as

it is is

Emptiness.'"

it

4

Suzuki has been equally emphatic: "Absolute fullness absolute emptiness.

is

is

the

same

as

6S

Although Nishida did allude

to "the sunyata logic of the Prajna-

paramita Sutra tradition," 66 instead of Sunyata or Emptiness, he rather accentuated, besides "absolute nothingness," the notion of "absolute negation,"

which he alternately formulated

self-

as an absolute "self-contra-

Hickard

4-S

diction.''

Thus, for example, in his

there can be nothing at

absolute must relate to

negation."

69

he argued, "Since

essay,

that objectively opposes the absolute, the

all

itself."

absolute self-negation within 68

complete

last

form of self-contradiction.

itself as a

express itself by negating

absolutely nothing."

J. T)cJ\da.rtino

67

"The absolute must

.

.

possess

must be

In this respect the absolute

itself.

"A true absolute must possess

must

It

.

through

itself

self-

"The true absolute must be an identity of absolute contradic-

tion in this sense."

Because

.

.

.

Furthermore,

°

the absolute stands to itself in the

dictory identity

—namely

as

its

own

possessing self-negation within itself

through being. It

itself.

Because

because of

is

and absolute being

it is

this

that

form of a contra-

absolute self-negation, or as

—

and

exists

it

absolute nothingness,

expresses itself

it is

absolute

coincidence of absolute nothingness

we can speak

of

.

.

.

divine omniscience

and omnipotence.^

So

it is

itself. It is

ing."

2

that "the true absolute possesses absolute negation within

by negating

For Nishida, then,

through

its

own

With respect is

it is

4

Given

7

'

"the

not true nothingness."

is

infinitely self-affirm-

it is

is

quoted often

has no abiding place!"

I

—

to

what

it

may be

—

He

"logic of nothingness,"

7"

absolute nothingness,"

8

Nishida,

in his

"the logic of the place of nothingness,"

said to be at in

identity,

6

the

"the logic of absolute nothingness," "the place of

ply "the place of nothingness."

and yet everywhere,

or a logical

did so in what he denominat-

ed variously "the logic of place," the "logic of contradictor)'

may be

said that

could be called this self-negating or self-emptying

place-less-place, or place of no-abode.

a place

Sutra,

Zen: "Give rise to

in

believe

Diamond

Nishida sought in effect to give a logical formulation

grounding

"nothingness

73

to Nishida's "logic of place," in the

[or Self] that

own

affirmation

absolute's

this sort of delineation,

a celebrated injunction that

Mind

that

consistently a matter of "the Absolute's

self-negation,"

negation."

separated from being

the

own nothingness

through

self-affirmation

there

its

80

Regardless of

how

it

is

or,

sim-

designated, such

once no-place and yet every-place

an "absolutely contradictory

9

— nowhere

self-identity.''

usage of the term God, could make reference

to

Hence, what he

"

chapter Five

--

God God

characterized as "the old phrase that in this world.'"

where God

81

That

not."

is

"because

is,

4-3

nowhere and

is

yet everywhere

no-thing, there

is

no place

is

82

Addressing his understanding explicitly

to

notion of kenosis (self-emptying), Nishida held that

empty

Saint Paul's words,

himself. ... If

it

"God must

said that

is

and

Christianity

God

its

always, in

creates the

world out of love, then God's absolute love must be essential to the creative act as God's

empty himself, negation,

is

a

own absolute self-negation." 83 For "a God who does not God who does not express himself through his own self-

not the true absolute."

own

paradox of God, of God's

On

84

To Nishida,

this constituted "the

self-affirmation through self-negation."

8'

the other hand, this paradox, for Nishida, was not limited, restricted,

or exclusive. Anything that "stands in relation to itself

But by negating

itself

Nishida meant by

it

is

paradoxically one with

—and gave voice

to as

—an

must negate

itself."

86

This

itself.

what

is

"absolutely contradictory

self-identity."

As Nishida learned from Suzuki paradox through the dialectic of Daisetsu Suzuki for showing

'is'

me

and

that

'is

"Buddhism expresses

not' (soku hi).

I

am

this

indebted to

Diamond

the following passage in the

Sutra:

Because

dharmas are not

all

Therefore they are called

Because there

all

all

dharmas,

dharmas.

no Buddha, there

is

is

Buddha:

Because there are no sentient beings, there are sentient beings." 8.

when Suzuki

In fact,

first

heard from Nishida of the

latter's

now famous

phrase "zettai-mujun-teki-jiko-doitsu" (herein translated as "absolutely contradictory self-identity"), to

88

Suzuki informed Nishida that this was akin

what Suzuki, under the influence of the aforementioned Diamond

tra,

was

u

calling

soku-hi-no-ronrf

H9

("the logic of soku-hi,"

Sil

which could,

accordingly, be translated as "the logic of even-as-it-is-it-is-not").

Suzuki's

own

English articulations: "A

not-A, therefore

meant, "To be God";

93

is

it

God

In his

just as "Being

is

is

A

because

employment

not to be God";

is

Suzuki, "To be itself

A."

91

is

92

that

"God

Being because Being not to be

—

itself

this

is is

it is

not A";

90

or,

In

"A

is

of the term God, this is

God when God

Not-Being."

94

is

not

In brief, for

the logic of Zen.

9S

—

SO

TLichard

J.

DeJttartino

(

In this understanding then, these contradictory dualities are neither

simply contradictory nor simply dualities. As each component of the duality is a

component

of a self-emptying or self-negating duality

—

or perhaps

—

better, a self-emptying-self-emptying or a self-negating-self-negating is

once

at

dualistic

itself

and

not-itself,

and so

itself

and the other

in a

it

non-

exact-

It is

what may comparably be deemed

of Zen," logic of soku-hi, or

of the nondualistic paradox that undergirds Suzuki's seemingly

logic

quizzical statements: "Emptiness

same time

ness."

9

it

is

not."

"Perfect poverty

fect fullness."

98

96

perfect emptiness 99

be everything." 100 In sum, "Emptiness

no other than

A world

is

of rupa

this rupaloka,

and

It is

the emptiness of

Sunyata, and Sunyata

Emptiness.

for Nature."

.

is

ness and Suchness

is

.

.

to

"Tathata

is

is

when

recovered only

is

is

and sunyata

not sheer emptiness. ...

is

"Zen emptiness

be absolutely nothing

ta,

once

and therefore noncontradictory-contradictory-duality

ly this "logic

the

at

Tathata."

is

is

at

full-

per-

Hence, "To Such-

is

no other than sunya-

which

Buddhist term

a

is

101

Consequently, with Suzuki, a truly thorough self-emptying, kenosis, self-negation, "dying," or "being killed"

Son emptying himself of

ter of the

a

human

servant.

On

the contrary,

is

his divinity

it

there

is

no

half-killing.

The

killing

ourselves to affirm ourselves."

This

prominent

call for

what

in

human

matter of the

a

resuscitated."

102

will

be

"We must negate

103

Zen

is

known

as the Great

Death was equally

in Nishida:

The method through which we can know self-attainment of the

acquire this power after dying

again"]

is

the true self

.

.

power of the union of subject and to kill

once [and for

our false

all] to

gain

.

is

our

object.

To

self [or "ego completely"] and,

new

life

[by being "born

l04 .

This makes intelligible Nishidas exclamation: "Those without those

total

person Jesus. "[In Zen]

be so complete that there

to

is

The half-dead can never be

mat-

and taking on the form of

would rather be

spiritual coincident death-rebirth of the

a rebirth.

not, in Christian terms, a

who have Tendering

—

extinguished the self his

are the greatest."

own comprehension

a self

105

of this self-emptying, kenosis, or

^

chapter Five

51

"making oneself empty," Nishitani has proposed that

"making oneself empty,"

[as for]

[in] the case of Christ,

man and becoming

taking the form of

with the will of God,

who

may

himself.

.

.

the Father

What

.

a servant, in accordance

the origin of the ekkenosis or

is

"making himself empty" of Christ. of self-emptying

.

.

.

meaning

Accordingly, the

God

he said to he contained within

ekkenosis for the Son

is

is

kenosis for

W6

God where God

For Nishitani as well then, there "must be a point within is

not God."

107

more

In Nishitani's

When

strictly

Buddhist

the standpoint of emptiness

corresponding orientation

emptied

—

this

.

.

true emptiness

is

Zen) perspective,

radicalized

is

—and

one in which emptiness

point at which emptiness

.

the very point at

is

(or

is

possession of

to

become

U) *

of the very Emptiness

a self-emptying of the self-emptying), this

own suchness"

its

itself is also

which each and every thing

Convng about through an emptying other words, through

the

emptied

becomes manifest in possession of its own suchness.

in

meant

it

terms of "being so of

itself,"

(or, in

being "in

has been further elaborated by Nishitani

or of being "what

it is

of

its

own

accord"

both of which are revealed to be characteristics of "nature."

word "nature"

In [Japanese], the meaning of the is

said to be

being so of itself, being what of] it

something

to

be what

.

.

.

is

it is.

accord. This "of

its

of-itself

Or we can own

.

it is

.

.

.

of itself that

shizen [or

ji

Moreover, "this

— [means that the being

no power from outside forced

say that

it is

what

ji

'

own

o/jiko ("self), or the shi of

of jinen] ("nature"). This character "of itself

of its

it is

accord" (hitorideni) corresponds to the

meaning of the Chinese character

meaning of

(jinen, shizen)

being so of itself Nature (jinen),

onozukara shikari

(onozukara) and

latter [being "of itself

fjij

has both the

"for itself (mizukara).

and

"for itself]

is

109

the great stand-

SZ point of the true verse.

""°

That

JLLchard

the standpoint of no-ego, of the Life of the uni-

self,

the standpoint of no-ego

one stands

Life of the universe, of nature.

reality that they are

as the

same

to these

human

self- consciousness

dilemma and break through

the truth of their

.

.

the

.

.

.

human

dilemma which

Awakening

to

is

This viewpoint

is

is

declared:

[its

ego-self falls into

that

one face

this

in order to realize Emptiness or

it,

is

existentially rooted in

Emptiness, which

the liberation

human

from

that

consciousness.

disclosed through the death of

is

the ego, you realize your "suchness.

of suchness

through

It is essential

.

Abe

interrelated themes,

suchness. This realization of Emptiness

"

This

is

because the realization

the positive aspect of the realization of Emptiness.

u2

the basis of Abes claim that "'Emptiness' and 'suchness'

are simply different verbal expressions of

Alternately conveyed, "'Emptiness' is

—

self tries to grasp itself

an ever-deepening dilemma.

Emptiness

become the

there, all things, just as they are,

and actual

Turning attention

ordinary]

one that smashes that pattern we

" U]

suchness.

As long

is

become one with the

actual form "

no

is,

call [ego] to

When

J. VeJVlcirtL

is

one and the same

Reality."

also called as-it-is-ness or suchness.

not a mere emptiness, but rather fullness.""

4

In another

statement, "Buddhism advocates Sunyata (Emptiness), which

Zen (and

Nothingness' or 'Emptiness,' which drous Being' or 'Fullness.'"

ness.""

7

is

8

116

is

Always

in

Buddhism)

ty"

is

.

.

.

'absolute

dynamically identical with won-

to

be remembered

"in true

and "precisely because

Emptiness the it is

is

that "the real

.

.

This, for him, is/'the

.

'emptying'

is

Emptiness which 'empties'

Emptiness, true Emptiness (Absolute Nothingness) 9

indi-

and without mutual

not the nothingness as distinguished from something-

Quite the reverse,

'emptied,'""

not

3

So, for Abe, "the ultimate in

Nothingness

is

and

a nihilistic emptiness but rather a fullness of particular things

vidual persons functioning in their full capacity

impediment.""

113

is

also c\

en

absolute Reali-

dynamism of 'Emptiness' which

is

simultane-

— ously Fullness." is,

—

Reformulating

this

self-emptying-Emptiness

—

or

what

also a self-emptying-fullness, or a self-full-filling-Empti-

in effect,

ness

120

53

chapter Five

•

-

Abe has

in yet other terms,

absolute negation

we may

ventured, 'Thus

say that

absolute affirmation and absolute affirmation

is

is

absolute negation. This paradoxical statement well expresses the dialectical

and dynamic structure of Sunyatd

and Fullness

What

which Emptiness

in

especially notable in Abe's explication

is

is

Fullness

Emptiness." 121

is

his interpretive

is

application of this view of Emptiness to the Christian notion of kenosis. In his provocative

and challenging essay "Kenotic God and Dynamic Sun-

which became the centerpiece of two volumes of responses by

yata,"

Western

we

religious thinkers,

122

Abe proposed

that

should understand the doctrine of Christ's kenosis to

that Christ as the

Son of God

is

essentially

—because of Christ—

self-emptying or self-negating nature, the that the

Son of God

is

that

Son of God became

is,

at

one and the same time in

of self emptying.

From

this, in

Abe s

and fundamentally

this

fundamental

the Messiah.

It is

not

a person through the process of his

self-emptying hut that fundamentally he

God

mean

his

is

true person

and

dynamic work and

true

activity

]2i

view,

it

follows that

the problem of the kenosis of Christ inevitably leads us to face the

problem of the kenosis of God. In other words,

God God

Is it

the

empties himself, shoidd

—

that

is,

the kenosis of the very

Son of God — has

God? Without

the self-emptying of the

—

origin in

its

of the

The God who does Son of God,

that

is,

Christ the Son of

God? ]2A

that

God

is,

the self-emptying of

—

"the Father"

the self-emptying of

Son of God

therefore insists, "This kenotic

Christ.

if

not consider the self-emptying of

not that the kenosis of Christ

kenosis of

Abe

we

is

God

inconceivable.

God

not cease to be

is

that

is,

the

"the Father," I2S

the ground of the kenotic

God even

the kenosis of Christ,

is

in the self-emptying

not the true God."

12 ' 1

nichard

54-

By

Abe

this

J.

"contending that through the kenosis of God, 'God

is

is

127

truly God.'"

Relating his interpretation to

Only when the understand

Buddhism

who

the kenotic

God

is

is

and what God's

God

truly

is

it is

.

.

.

—Abe has argued: come

it

not, self

is

truly self."

to

total self-

statement,

"God

not a self-affirmative

God," can he properly grasped [only]

parallel existential realization that "self

because

Zen

or to

to the self. Accordingly, the

not God, and precisely because

God, God

—

ego-self negates itself completely does

emptying means is

"DeJViartino

not

is

self,

h)'

and

the

precisely

i2S

Or, once more:

God as ly

.

not God; precisely because of

is

.

emphasized

.

understood without our

"Self

not

is

self,

and

However, recapitulating

Abe

is

God

this,

before, this statement of

own

God. And,

truly

be proper-

parallel existential realization that

precisely because

in

is

God cannot

it is

not, Self

is

truly Self."

n-

question

whether

is

position he represents.

this sort of dialogue

Is

between irreducibly

or dialogue as an encounter

thought

itself a typically

is

appropriate to the

not the model of comparative philosophy different systems of

Western, rather than Asian, model for under-

standing interreligious encounter? While such a model might be appro-

coming from

priate

dering a bit too to

Western philosopher of dialogue,

a

much

Western modes of thought

to

adopt such a model?

On

in the East

is it

model of

traditional

Asian experience

—

interreligious

example, in the inter-

for

weaving of Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, or Shintoism Japan. By adopting

it

is

in

China

or

Western rather than an Eastern model of dialogue,

a

Abe's Zen "dialogue" with Western thought

and

not surren-

an Asian thinker

the surface, at least, this model of dialogue

seems quite different from the encounter found

for

not clear that

Abe

or

may be

over before

it

starts

—

Zen comes out the "winner." Perhaps the

tentative conclusion of Heidegger's conversation with the Japanese pro-

fessor

more

approach

closely approximates the spirit

in

not the substance of a Zen

to dialogue.

My question, phy

if

therefore,

is

whether, in formulating his Zen philoso-

Western metaphysical concepts and

structured system of thought,

Western form of a

in the

Abe has compromised

the possibility "of

saying what the dialogue was about," of "saying the essential nature" of the

Zen experience.

philosophy However,

agree with

I

it is

Abe

that

Zen experience needs

only by keeping close to

its

a

Zen

"root-source" in

Zen

experience that Zen philosophy will find language that enables that experience.

It is

this root-source, rather

concepts and structures, on which Zen philosophy must draw logue with the West. Remaining close to this root-source

importance since, as Abe himself contends,

it

to "say"

than Western philosophical

it is

Zen

is

in its dia-

of particular

as religion that

is

the

source of the fundamental differences between Zen as philosophy and

Western thought. As Abe lectual traditions

human and

life

states,

and Buddhism

"The difference between Western in their

intel-

understanding of negativity

in

involves not only an ontological issue but also an existential Mt

soteriological one.'

Therefore, the dialogue between Zen philosophy and Western

Z8Z Thomas

"Dean

thought must not proceed simply on the level of comparative ontology but requires a step back to the fundamental "experiences of Being" (and

Nothingness) that underlie their respective ontologies. this task,

to Abe's

I

in

in service of

have suggested, that Heidegger offers an important corrective

approach

to dialogue.

By taking

a fresh

hermeneutical, even "deconstructive" look

ways

It is

which they have been

at

phenomenological and

those experiences and the

traditionally expressed,

perhaps Zen think-

ing on Nothingness and Western thinking on Being will discover guistic terms

and structures

for bringing to language

remains an "indefinable" source or mystery.

new

lin-

what ultimately

chapter Twenty -Seven

MASAO ABE ON NEGATIVITY IN THE EAST AND THE WEST Joel &.

In 1984 losophy

participated

I

at the University of

in the

Smith

N.E.H.

Institute for

Comparative Phi-

my formal

Hawai'i at iManoa. This was

intro-

duction to comparative philosophy, and the faculty in the institute stimulated

me

to

philosophy.

encounter

my

my

teaching and research toward doing comparative

Masao Abe was one

the institute. al

change

What I

I

remember

had with him

whom

of the teachers is

not so

much

in the hallway

one

day.

was

I

and asked, "What does Nietzsche mean by the Will

Abe asked

comparing Western

effect.

to

Abe turned

to

I

writings

Abe almost always

me

to

I

deeply indebted to him for unsettling

my

continued

my

research

and this

previous interpretations of

can see them

me

my

begin thinking

and lectures have often had

unsettles

Western and Buddhist ideas so that

me

Power?" In the con-

existential philosophers (especially Nietzsche)

Mahayana Buddhism, Abe's same

but a person-

just beginning

the question unsettled

previous interpretation of Nietzsche and provoked

about Nietzsche from a very different angle. As

at

Abe something about

study of Keiji Nishitani then and had asked

our conversation, the way

encountered

his lectures

Nishitanis criticism of Nietzsche. At a certain point

text of

I

in a

new

light.

I

am

so often!

Abe's depth and breadth of knowledge about both Western and

Z84-

Joel

7L.

Smith,

Asian philosophy allow him to make insightful comparisons of a general

some

nature that avoid

One

strokes. titled

of

of the pitfalls involved

Abes most

"Non-Being and

East and the West."

1

I

paints in broad

stimulating comparisons occurs in an article

Mu — the

Metaphysical Nature of Negativity

think this

is

ous discussion by philosophers.

Abe

by arguing that while

when one

I

an important

Abes

will offer a brief analysis of

correctly

in the

article that deserves seriarticle

shows that Buddhism helps us see a

dogmatic ontological bias in Western thought in favor of positivity over negativity,

he

fails to

show

that

Buddhism

avoids a complementary onto-

logical bias in favor of negativity over positivity.

clarifying the respective ontological

Abe has succeeded

commitments and

dhism and Western thought, but he has not succeeded

in

biases of Bud-

showing that

in

the former resolves the antinomy between negativity and positivity any better than the latter does.

Using ancient Greek and Christian thought ples,

2

Abe claims

as his primary

the following about Western thought:

That being has

priority over,

is

somehow

superior

to,

and more

fundamental than, non-being, had been assumed, perhaps cally

.

The Wests

.

.

uncriti-

for quite some time by the West in general.*

assertion of the ontological priority of being over non-being

dogmatic because

in reality there ty

is

no ontological ground on which being has

over non-being.

It is

assumed that being embraces both

and non-being. But the very

being nor non-being."

priority of

justifiable lar.

7 his

is

priori-

itself

basis on which both being and non-

being are embraced must not be "Being" but "that which

The

exam-

is

neither

4

u (being) over

with regard

mu

to things in

the position held by

(non-being)

is

general and

humans

not ontologically

Buddhism. Herein, we

in particu-

see the

essential difference in understanding the negativity of beings,

including

human

existence,

between the West and the East,

especially as exemplified in Buddhism.''

is

"*"

While certain Christian mystics such

as

Eckhart and

Bohme and West-

Nietzsche and Heidegger begin to overcome

ern philosophers such as this ontological bias,

Z8S

chapter Twenty- Seven

6

only Taoism and

it is

Buddhism

that truly provide

an alternative ontology.

Abe holds

Buddhist ontologies

whether or not ly

among to

mu

relative

life is felt

(non-heing)

to relative

more

seriously

is

understood as complete-

u (being). The negativity of

and deeply

in

Buddhism than

the followers of Western intellectual traditions. This

such an extent that

positivity.

Abe

lies in

equal and reciprocal

human

between the Western and

that the crucial difference

it is

true

is

not considered inferior hut equal to

7

elaborates:

Only when the

and negative

positive

and are mutually negating possible.

.

.

relation to

mu

mu

is

.

.

relative, complementary',

one being impossible without the

other. In other

not one-sidedly derived through negation of u.

the negation of u

and vice

priority to the other. is

.

[non-being] are of completely equal force in

one another. TJtey are entirely

reciprocal,

words,

the dialectical structure of Sunyata

Unlike Western ideas of being and non-being

.

u [being] and

and

is

principles have equal force

versa.

One

Mu

is

has no logical or ontological

Being the complete counter-concept

to u,

mu

more than a privation of u, a stronger form of negativity than

"non-being" as understood in the West. Further, u and

mu

are

completely antagonistic principles and therefore inseparable from

one another, and thus constitute an antinomy}

Negativity in the

West

is

mere

a

privation, while in

Buddhism

it

is

logically equal to positivity:

Negativity in this [Western] view

overcome by tivity (or

u)

positivity

and

On

negativity

is

no more than something

the contrary, [in

to

Buddhism] when

(mu) are equal and reciprocal

it

be

posi-

is

the

onto-

Z8e

iloaUC: A HeSpoUsc

CHAPTER

38S

15:

Heinrich Ott, "The Experience of Neighborhood" Quoting Heidegger's concept of neighborhood, which especially sugneighborhood of poetry and thinking, Heinrich Ott under-

gests the

stands "this image of neighborhood as a powerful language-symbol for the essential relation of religions to one another."

He means

experience of neighborhood an experience in which each other, reaching out to the other,

ther states,

"I

believe

and

different worlds of partners

same

hardly ever with the to I

which

am

this

by

open

self to the other.

this

to the

He

fur-

experience again and again with

in differing

degrees of intensity, yet

intensity as with the Buddhist Kyoto School

and Masao Abe belong." Reading these words,

Keiji Nishitani

clearly

and entrusting

have had

I

is

reminded of the refreshing openness of Heinrich Ott, the

whom

successor to Karl Barth, with

I

had an enriching theological

dis-

cussion in 1978.

There are a number of theological and in Ott's essay.

topic of a

However,

ing. It

Zen,

I

is

my comments

Zen discourse by Ch'ing-yuan Wei-hsin

a favorite of

mine

that

I

to the

of the

I

began the study of

'Mountains are mountains, waters are waters.' After

'Mountains

Zen through the

are not mountains, waters are not waters.'

really

mountains, waters are

is,

these aspects, entire depth."

He

sin.

.

.

'forgets'

we could Here we

.

And

it,

as

this discourse

yet he does annihilate if it

I

But now,

Zen Awakening],

I

say,

when

dis-

sin:

"God

in the

event

cussing the Christian problem of faith in the forgiveness of

of forgiveness.

got an

really waters.'"

Heinrich Ott says that he also often cites

does not annihilate

I

instruction of a good master,

having attained the abode of final rest [that

'Mountains are

Tang

often cite to elucidate Zen Awaken-

goes as follows: "Thirty years ago, before said,

insight into the truth of said,

religious issues to discuss

like to restrict

Chinese Zen master's discourse and the Christian notion of

forgiveness. This

dynasty

would

I

it

had never been. Without both of

not understand the event of forgiveness in

its

see a kind of "neighborhood" between Zen

Awakening and Christian forgiveness whereby we can better understand the depth of each other's experience.

386 JA&sao Abe m

CHAPTER Langdon It

was

me

a great joy for

Roshi. "'

'Prophetic

16:

Gilkey, "A Tribute to a 'Prophetic Roshi'"

to read

Langdon

"A Tribute

Gilkey's essay

As an eminent Christian theologian, he

describes his encounter with

me

in the

touched the core of F.A.S. in

I

still

remember

Nara when we, together with Mrs.

of Japan.

hope

I

and the United

He

United States and Japan.

ticipated vigorously in the F.A.S. Society meeting in Kyoto

to a

vividly

par-

and seriously

we

the enjoyable time

spent

Gilkey, toured that ancient capital

continue our Buddhist-Christian dialogue in Japan

to

States.

CHAPTERS Eugene

B. Borowitz,

Modern Jewish

&

17

18:

"Masao Abe's Challenge

Theology,"

and Richard

to

L. Rubenstein,

"Emptiness, Holy Nothingness, and the Holocaust"

Since the essays by Eugene B. Borowitz and Richard L. Rubenstein

somewhat overlap respond

to

them

in

terms of the issues discussed therein,

let

me

together.

my

Borowitz takes

articles, especially

"Non-Being and Mu: The

Metaphysical Nature of Negativity in the East and the West," as a challenge to the basis of the Western philosophical tradition. In particular,

Borowitz confesses, 'Abe's challenge forced

two major aspects of about them. The

my

first

religious heritage

of these

and

to think

to ask just

God

seems

sefirot,

Sof, the

is

I

now

God

as

En

Bounds. Jewish mysticism also asserts that these two under-

God

nial point of

contact between Judaism and Buddhism.

—

are, in fact, inextricably one.

work and

ate Borowitzs in his essay

as,

both the

the energy centers of the divine self-manifestation, and the

No

felt

One." Yet Borowitz recognizes that

standings of

relation

how

at least

utterly incompatible with the

Jewish mysticism, especially the kabbalah, understands ten

through

was the Jewish understanding of God

so to speak, Nothing. Offhand, that

central Jewish affirmation that

me

I

in

my

Here

dialogues with him

have profoundly deepened

I

find a I

most conge-

greatly appreci-

—which he discusses

my own

understanding ot the

between Judaism and Buddhism.

Turning now

to

Rubenstein, he

tells us,

"My

theological position

-

—

had developed as ogy.

.

.

EpilocjUe-.

387

A Response

a result of a progressive liberation

Having turned away from theism,

.

Nothingness

the

is

Ground and Source

of

came

I

from rabbinic theol-

comprehend

to

that

that exists, a view not unlike

all

the Buddhist teaching about Sunyata." Rubenstein sees a close resem-

blance between his Holy Nothingness and Buddhist Sunyata. However,

Rubenstein also raises a very crucial problem logue

when he

Buddhist-Jewish dia-

for

have some reservations concerning the tendency

says, "I

of Buddhist thinkers to diminish the significance of the sociohistorical

dimension of

human

Reading

this,

existence." got the impression that Rubenstein deals with the

I

dimension and the

sociohistorical

dimension of human

religious

tence on the same plane, just with a quantitative difference. But that these

two dimensions of human existence belong

The

ferent planes.

and thus

relations

sociohistorical

dimension

and thus

and space, whereas the

latter is the

to qualitatively dif-

human-human human existence;

divine-human relationship

a

The former

refers to the vertical plane.

exis-

think

refers to

refers to the horizontal plane of

whereas the religious dimension indicates

I

is

conditioned by time

place of the trans-spatial and trans-

temporal. These two dimensions are essentially and qualitatively different

from each other, yet they are inseparably connected with each other the living reality of

working

and the

human

existence.

We

are dialectical existences always

at the intersection of the horizontal sociohistorical

vertical religious

dimension

dimension. Without the religious dimension as

the ground, the sociohistorical dimension

the religious dimension does not manifest

groundless and rootless;

is

whereas without the sociohistorical dimension

I

in

as a condition or occasion,

itself.

Rubenstein says that

ascribe a lesser significance to the sociohistorical dimension than to

Sunyata.

If this is

the case,

it is

because the sociohistorical dimension

neither the "Ground" nor "Source" of

human

existence.

Rubenstein also expresses surprise about caust:

"The Holocaust

is

is

my

not a religious problem for

interest in the Holo-

Buddhism

Judaism and Christianity. For Jews and Christians

alike,

as

it is

for

the decisive

events of Jewish history are part of Heilsgeschichte. As such, they have a religio-mythic significance." Since geschichte,

my

it

is

of

HetU-

quite understandable that Rubenstein was surprised by

in the Holocaust. But my interest stems from my human being as such, particularly from my interest in karma of human being. The Holocaust is a diabolical event

Buddhist interest

concern with the the collective

Buddhism has no notion

38$ JAasao Abe that

simply cannot deal with objectively. So instead,

I

my own

depth of tive is

karma

that

is

being, where

innate in

I

look into the

painfully realize the universal or collec-

I

human

existence and in which the Holocaust

also ultimately rooted.

my

Referring to

avowal of responsibility for the Holocaust

of this collective karma, Rubenstein states,

in

terms

find Abe's explanation of

"I

the 'responsibility for the Holocaust in terms of karma and avidya ahistorical.

.

.

That idea

and the

trators

remarks

karma

.

it

as

the distinction between the actual perpe-

trivializes

mention the victims." From these

rest of the world, not to

seems that Rubenstein distinguishes individual and

He

two separate categories.

and

tains to specific historical events,

human

karma pertains

collective

inseparably united in the depths of avidya

rance of our

karma per-

believes that individual

versal trans-historical reality. In fact, individual

collective

and

to uni-

karma

collective

—the innate fundamental

condition. Therefore, both types of

are

igno-

karma

are

involved in specific historical events such as the Holocaust.

To address the Holocaust roots ... in the collective that responsibility

is

properly,

karma innate

shared by

all

does this realization of collective ultimate level of

human

such a realization

historical level?

problem basis

—

as

I

hope

people, not just the perpetrators. But

karma and shared

responsibility at the

existence reduce the uniqueness of the Holo-

caust and obscure the particular reject

we must also look at its deepest human existence. This means

in

at

evil

of the Nazis?

I

think not. Should

we

the ultimate level and stay only at the socio-

not,

because

if

we

do,

how can we

solve the root

of the Holocaust? Is not religious realization the only legitimate

opposed

to condition

the Holocaust and

—on which we can

work cooperatively

solve the

to build a better

problem of

world in the

future?

CHAPTER

19:

S.J., and Wolfhart Pannenberg, "The Abe-Pannenberg Encounter"

Joseph A. Bracken,

Joseph A. Bracken beautifully summarizes Pannenberg, which appears

in the

my

dialogue with Wolfhart

book Divine Emptiness and

Historical

"'Epiloaue-.

Fullness: this

of

A

Buddhist-Jewish-Christian Conversation with Masao Abe. In

response

my

I

shall go right to

am

kenosis of

God

in the

God

New Testament I

no

is

and that

Son of God became

be God. Nevertheless,

himself.

aware that there

certainly well

ology states that the to

an examination of Pannenberg's criticism

understanding of the kenosis of I

383

A Hcsponse

a

literal

traditional Christian the-

human

have argued for the kenosis

est spirituality

even

arbitrary but should

"God

is

being challenged

urgently required to elucidate

its

deep-

by reinterpreting traditional formulations of doctrine and

practice. Second,

question.

is

God ceasing of God himself for

without

the following two reasons. First, in our society religion

by antireligious ideologies and

evidence for the

is

if

reinterpretation

be rooted

Love" (John

is

necessary,

it

should not be

in the authentic spirit of the religion in

1:4, 8, 16) is

a basic tenet of

all

Christiani-

God is really love, God does not remain God while having the Son of God empty himself. A God who fully empties himself to become comty.

If

pletely identical with

humanity

emptying, or kenosis,

is

the truly all-loving God. Therefore, self-

nature of God. While the kenosis of the of God, in the case of

God but the fundamental Son of God is based on the will

not an attribute of

is

God

the Father, kenosis

is

implied in his original

nature.

The Buddhist

common

essence of the three persons does not have any separate

them but

prior to

highly appreciates that, as Pannenberg says, "the

exists only in their interrelationship." In

this notion of perichoresis, the

common

connection

Buddhist may ask the Christian,

essence of the three persons does not have any separate

prior to them, then are

we

reality

If

to

the

reality

not here speaking about Absolute Nothing-

ness? Absolute Nothingness indicates the deepest ground or the creative

source in which

which

all

all

things, positive

things, positive

and negative, are rooted and from

and negative, are generated. The

realization of

Absolute Nothingness makes the interrelationship clearly possible. Without the clear realization of Absolute Nothingness (Sunyata) there realization of true interrelationship,

interrelationship, there

On

is

and without the

is

no

realization of true

no clear realization of Absolute Nothingness.

the other hand, Buddhists

must appreciate the Christian notion

of perichoresis and the divine dynamics of love realized therein.

By so

we Buddhists can

better

doing,

I

think that, as Pannenberg suggests,

explore the manifestations of Sunyata in interpersonal relationships.

390

JAclsao Abe

CHAPTER Ruben

L. F. Habito,

On Through

"Hans Kilng Questions Masao Abe:

Emptiness and a Global Ethic"

and accurately

carefully

Ruben Habito

mind

"reacting the

commitment

a

Habito raises two reasons for answering

sumes

all

history in an Eternal

engagement because overcomes

distinctions

all

First, in

following

global ethic?

me

is

one that sub-

Now. This removes the need Emptiness as presented by

between good and

for violence, injustice, exploitation,

continually

a

to

for social

come up is

my

it is

is

one

This makes an

evil.

and oppression

—

realities that

we

against."

Buddhist response

above criticisms.

to the

the Buddhist view of time and history, time

entirely without beginning

ningless and endless,

me

and blunts one's moral "sense of abhorrence

objective ethic impossible

The

Kiing,"

social transformation necessarily seeks for a "better

future." Second, the standpoint of

humans

Hans

question in the negative.

this

the standpoint of Emptiness as presented by

First,

of

elucidates the crucial points of Kiing's question to me:

Can Buddhist Emptiness ground

that

20:

understood

is

and without end. Inasmuch

as time

is

be

to

begin-

not considered to be linear, as in Christianity,

or circular, as in non-Buddhist Vedantic philosophy. Being neither linear

nor circular, time

is

understood to move from

moment embracing

each

and

—

moment, with

and death

as

two different

we

is

and death. Buddhism

life

one

entities but

grasp our

indivi-

life

not objec-

from the outside, but subjectively from within, we are

fully living

sible reality tively

life

to

the whole process of time. This view of time

inseparably linked with the Buddhist view of

does not regard

moment

fully

that

is,

"living-dying." For

if

dying in each moment. According to Buddhism,

moving from

life to

clearly realize the beginninglessness

living-dying at this trated in this

we

are not

death but are in the process of living-dying.

If

we

and endlessness of the process of

moment, the whole process of living-dying

is

concen-

moment.

Buddhism can develop

its

view of history

if

we

take seriously the

compassionate aspect of Sunyata. In the wisdom aspect, one realizes that the beginningless and endless process of time

each moment. This

is

why

in

is

totally

concentrated

Buddhism each "now" moment

as the Eternal Nov\T in the sense of the absolute present.

is

in

realized

However,

in the

391

Epilogue-. A He Sponse

compassion aspect, also realized still

one beholds many beings

in Sunyata,

considering themselves unenlightened and deluded. Such persons

are innumerable

at

awakened one

task for an

is

we can

ment

persons "awaken" to their

to help these

suchness and interpenetration with history toward the future

dhism, and

comes

all

other things. Here the progress of

have a positive significance

to

Bud-

see that Buddhist Emptiness can ground a commit-

in their

good should conquer

view of ethics, Buddhists clearly realize that

However, based on the experience of their

evil.

inner struggle, Buddhists cannot say that good

overcome

evil.

Good and

evil as

is

strong enough always

completely antagonistic principles

each other with equal force. However imperative

resist

the ethical point of view, in Buddhist experience

overcome

is

it

may be from

impossible to

are always mutually negating principles with equal

evil

power, the pure ethical effort to overcome ceeds.

it

with good and to attain thereby the highest good. Since

evil

good and

evil

with good never suc-

only results in a serious existential dilemma. Realizing this

It

existential

dilemma

as innate to

human

terms of the doctrine of original

in

in

to a global ethics.

Second,

to

The

present and will appear endlessly in the future.

through faith

in

God

that

humanity

is

existence and characterizing

Christians believe that

sin,

it

it

is

freed from sin by God's redemp-

tive activity.

On

the other hand, in

Buddhism what

is

essential for salvation

be emancipated from the very existential antinomy of good and to

awaken

tial

by,

to

Emptiness, which

awakening good and

for true

to

evil.

is

of,

In this way, the realization of true

the true ethical

rather than enslaved

Emptiness

is

the basis

life.

This Buddhist realization of Emptiness does not indicate a state of

Emptiness but rather

including Emptiness

itself.

a

to

and

prior to this opposition. In the existen-

Emptiness, one can be master

human freedom and

is

evil

dynamic

activity of

Self-emptying

activity

is

static

emptying everything, a

Grand Affirmation

realized through the negation of negation. In the realization of the negation of Emptiness, the distinction

substantial

and empty. But

distinction of good

and

in the

between good and

Grand Affirmation

evil is reestablished

can see that the standpoint of Emptiness

ment

to a global ethics.

and is

evil is

made non-

of Emptiness, the

reaffirmed. Here, too,

able to ground a

we

commit-

332,

.J^iciscio

Abe

CHAPTER Harold H.

21:

Oliver, "Fritz Buri's Assessment of

Masao Abe's

Religious Thought"

As one of the outstanding Christian theologians of our time,

Fritz Buri

is

deeply interested in Buddhism and the philosophy of the Kyoto School.

Der Buddha-Christus

In 1982 he published

als

(The Buddha-Christ as the Lord of the True

on the Kyoto School and sonally acquainted with

Christianity.

him

in

I

der Herr des wahren Selbst

Self),

am

which

is

a classic

work

fortunate to have been per-

Germany, Japan, and the United States

since 1957.

Harold Oliver,

who

has been acquainted equally with Buri and me,

elucidates vividly and insightfully the Buri-Abe encounter in terms of

both appreciation and sincere criticism. For example, Buri states that

compare East-West responses following way. sublates al

what

The West "responded is

I

world" in the

to the "insufficiency of the

... by the erection of a Being that

lacking in beings" in a

way

that

makes use of conceptu-

thinking "whether by appealing to natural reason or to a supernatural

revelation."

The

on the other hand, responded "by an extinction of

East,

this thinking that

is

directed toward [objective] Being."

In response, let

does not establish

me

itself

discuss the

on the basis of either thinking

but rather non-thinking, which

When

not-thinking

becomes rampant.

is

meaning of Zen's non-thinking. Zen

is

or not-thinking,

beyond both thinking and not-thinking.

taken as the basis of Zen, anti-intellectualism

When

thinking

is

taken as the basis, Zen loses

its

authentic ground and degenerates into mere conceptualism and abstract verbiage.

Genuine Zen, however, takes non-thinking

ground, and thus can express

itself freely

as

its

ultimate

through both thinking and not-

thinking as the situation requires. However, precisely because of

standpoint of non-thinking, Zen

its

has in fact not fully realized the positive

and creative aspects of thinking and

their significance,

especially developed in the West. Logical and scientific

which have been

modes

of thought

based on objective thinking, and moral principles and ethical theory based on subjective thinking, have been very conspicuous

Because Zen has thus aspects of

human

thought,

in the

far not fully realized the positive

its

West.

and creative

position of non-thinking always harbors the

danger of degenerating into mere not-thinking. That Zen today lacks the

— 3 33

-Epilogue: A Response

method

to

cope with the problem of modern science, as well as with

vidual, social, this fact. In

the

and international ethical problems, may be based

Buddhism

order for

modern world,

it

to

become

indi-

partly

on

a formative historical force in

must place objective and subjective

which

thinking,

have been so refined and firmly established in the Western world, within its

own world

internally

of non-thinking. However, to carry out this task,

Zen must

embrace the standpoint of Western "Being" and "ought"

order to concretize and actualize

its

non-thinking in the present

in

moment

of historical time.

CHAPTER A

atic

two propositions

The

ontic plight of the person, that

self-estrangement and anxiety.

found commonality

characterized as love. like to

s

Accordingly to is

Therefore, the existential

God

that

answer

is

and power

and

my

analy-

problem that can be

God; yet

it is

is,

to the

the nature of love.

problem of personal

itself." Tillich

is

resolution

by God's love is

explains that

the being and

movement toward

initiated

that "for Tillich the Christian resolution

participation with

Buddhist view of the

that Tillich's

is

the second, that

defined as "Being

love so that God's Being

love toward

great

accept both propositions as adequate and would

I

is

my

analysis of the problem-

my

in resolutions to this

Alldritt, Tillich's

God who

to explain

the problem of duality as realized in

is,

The second

make some remarks about

existence is

that Tillich

first is

nature of personal existence resonates with

ses have

Tillich:

Dialogue Toward Love"

Leslie Alldritt offers the following interest in Paul Tillich.

22:

"Masao Abe and Paul

Leslie D. Alldritt,

is

power of a

love.

movement

itself. Alldritt

one that

God oi

concludes

results in a personal

not a complete identification with

God

there remains always an 'otherness' in the love relationship."

But the Buddhist resolution of the human predicament sonal participation with

God

but nirvana, which

ing the realm of transmigration and

samsara. However, throughout

its

is

is

not a per-

realized by transcend-

impermanence,

that

long history, Mahayana

is,

the realm of

Buddhism has

always emphasized "Do not abide in nirvana," as well as "Do not abide in samsara."

If

one abides

in so-called nirvana

by transcending samsara,

it

3 94must be nirvana

—and

samsara. one's

On

one

said that

own

is

Abe

not yet free from attachment

—an attachment

to

thus confined by the discrimination between nirvana and

must

It

is

JVIclsclo

be said that one

also

selfishly

still

is

concerned with

salvation, while forgetting the suffering of others in samsara.

Mahayana Buddhism thus

the basis of the idea of the bodhisattva,

teaches true nirvana to be the returning to samsara. Therefore, nirvana in the

Mahayana

ization of

sense, while transcending samsara,

samsara as samsara, no more no

returning to samsara

itself.

In the returning

is

we

nothing but the

real-

through the complete

less,

see that true nirvana

is,

according to Mahayana Buddhism, the real source of both vrajna (wis-

dom) and karuna (compassion). returning to the world one

ment.

It is

is

It

all

sion), in

is

also unselfishly

others in samsara through one's

to samsara. In true nirvana, prajna

called

any sense of attach-

entirely free without

the source of karuna because one

with the salvation of

is

the source of prajila because by

is

concerned

own

returning

and karuna are dynamically one.

It

Mahaprajna (Great Wisdom) and Mahakaruna (Great Compas-

which

justice

is

and love

realized through love

is

supported by

justice.

CHAPTER James

L. Fredericks,

On

Traces of

"Masao Abe and Karl Rahner:

Dualism and Monism"

At the suggestion of James Fredericks,

Rahner and came

was

also

read

I

to appreciate Rahner's

dualism and his deep understanding of I

23:

many

of the writings of Karl

deep concern

God

for the

problem of

as "unobjectifiable mystery."

impressed with his theological position concerning kenosis,

namely, that the self-emptying of the Son has

its

origins in

God

the

Father.

But Rahner's notion of kenosis, as applied damentally different from

Rahner maintains and

infinite

in so doing,

One God

my own

to the Incarnation,

fun-

understanding of kenosis because

"traces of dualism." For Rahner,

can, by dispossessing himself,

God

as the absolute

"become the

other."

But

"always preserves" his infinite unrelatedness. (See Karl

Rahner, The Foundation of Christian Faith:

An

Introduction to the Idea of

Christianity [New- York: Seabury Press, 1978], 220-22.) for

is

Here we see

that

Rahner, God's infinite Being has priority over God's self-emptying, so

335

tjpiloaue: A Hesponse

traces of dualism are maintained. For

understood as

total.

This

tional love. For this love to

be realized

me, God's self-emptying must be

especially the case

is

God

if

is

really

uncondi-

be truly complete and unconditional,

in the total self-emptying of

it

must

any "unrelatedness" into the com-

plete fullness of loving relatedness.

As

for traces of

monism

in

my own

ing of Emptiness

And

have always tried to pre-

I

affirming the self-empty-

This complete self-emptying

itself.

Grand Affirmation

view,

monism by

sent a "nondualism" that avoids any

that reaffirms

dualism

all

since this nondualism of Emptiness

is

its

broader nondual horizon. (For an analysis of

my

me

even more

to think

32.)

about

On

P.

my

intrafaith

dualistic factors in this intrafaith dialogue with

the other hand, Fredericks has given

in this regard.

CHAPTER Thomas

expressed as the

fundamental,

dialogue with Jodo Shin-shu always places

Jodo Shin-shu, see Chapter

is

boundless openness.

in its

Kasulis,

24:

"Masao Abe as D.

T.

Suzukis

Philosophical Successor"

Reading Thomas understands

P.

Kasulis's essay,

my work,

ideas,

my work On

is

had the impression that he deeply

my work

elucidates well the significance on of

I

and intentions through in the

his

keen insight and

West. His evaluation

very encouraging to me. For example, he states:

one hand, [Abe] carried on the tradition of Suzuki and

brought other.

to

it

a new, distinctively philosophical, element on the

Furthermore, by drawing inspiration from the writings of

Dogen, he has brought a

less

sectarian perspective to the West's

understanding of Zen Buddhism. the intellectual worlds of Japan

pher in

his

own

right,

.

and

.

By bridging

the West

.

.

.

the

he

gap between

is

and through the stance he takes,

nicative lines between Japan

Toward the end of

.

and the West have been

his essay, Kasulis sets

groups of the Japanese thinkers

in question:

up

a philoso-

commu-

established.

a contrast

between two

Suzuki/Hisamatsu/Abe and

Nishida/NishitaniAVatsujiAanabe. According to Kasulis, "the

first

group

advocates [the experience of Emptiness] as beneficial to the resolution of

JAasao Abe

3 9jo

philosophical problems." However, for the second group, "the experience

needs

to

be explained and located in relation to more mundane, more

more everyday types of experiences."

secular,

find Kasulis's classification

I

of these Japanese thinkers to be very significant

and extremely suggestive

our future studies.

for

CHAPTER

25:

John E. Smith, "Kitaro Nishida, William James, and Masao Abe: Some Comments on Philosophy East and West" John Smith carefully examines the philosophies of Kitaro Nishida and William James with regard to the notion of pure experience and discusses

my

Smith

role in their encounter. In the first half of his essay,

clearly

expresses his agreement with Nishida and myself concerning the following:

J

believe that Nishida

that there

comes

to

confined

is "first"

know

and Abe are

right in attacking the idea

an individual who

objects in

some

to that individual

.

incorrigible

way

that

is

.

.

and

as a subject experiences

ultimately

alone so that the problem becomes that

of "transcending" this individual to reach an intersubjective truth.

In the second half of his essay, however, to

Smith declares,

conclude that Nishida and Abe are mistaken

assumes pure experience to be individual

we must

at

"It is

reasonable

in the claim that

the outset." This

James

a question

is

consider carefully.

According

to

Smith, for William James "pure experience"

is

prior to

any distinction, including the distinction between subject and object: pure experience for James includes relations, conjunctions, transitions, tendencies,

etc.,

because he did not

start

with the individual, but with

the "stream of thought." For James, therefore, any distinction between subject and object

is

always consequent and not primordial.

pure experience has such a special feature, rect in saying

da and

I

however,

it

cannot be said

to

strictly

be individual

at the outset.

assumed James's pure experience to be individual

we took pure

If for

speaking, Smith

When at

James is

cor-

Nishi-

the outset,

experience to be fundamental to the individual

without the slightest attention to

its

features.

~£j>LlocjiLe:

A Hesponsc

3 37

Therefore, to return to the transindividual features of James's fun-

damental idea of pure experience ject

and object are merely

vidual difference this

— Nishida

order "direct experience."

When

rience exists not because there

because there is

an experience,

is

more fundamental than the Experience

vidual a

is

—

self

is

I

an individual, but an individual too, arrived at the idea that

I,

is

A

indirect.

realized only

is

exists

experience

also the self or the indi-

whereas experience that

him

is

experienced by

is

direct experience goes

the notion of pure experience enabled true directness

indi-

read where Nishida says that expe-

fundamentally transindividual. This

it is

and the

individual.

direct,

is

between sub-

called a primordial experience of

which not only things but

experienced

presupposed

vidual

in

distinction

ancillary to primordial experience,

not basic

is

—where the

beyond the

why Nishida

indi-

says that

to avoid solipsism. In the end,

from within the actual

living reality of

experience prior to the separation of subject and object. To grasp pure

experience in rience that

its strict

we must

sense,

return to the root source of expe-

and yet transindividual and

individual

is

horizon of pure experience a

new metaphysics

CHAPTER

is

universal.

On

this

possible.

26:

Thomas Dean, "Masao Abe's Zen Philosophy of Dialogue:

Thomas Dean concerning

on

my

A

Western Response"

generates a

number

approach

Asian-Western dialogue

his penetrating

to

myself to one of his questions. is

dard: "[In

my

Dean

response must be short, asks whether

my

I

limit

comparative

judgmental of other philosophical positions from a Zen stan-

Abes

effort] there

between maintaining that one

would seem is

to

be a logical inconsistency

not engaged in judging which system

superior while noting that one's judgments are being

standpoint of one's rion of

based

in philosophy

understanding of cross-cultural encounter in the realm

of philosophical thinking. Because

method

of incisive and important questions

how

own

made from

is

the

tradition, particularly with reference to the crite-

closely that other tradition approximates one's

own presum-

ably normative answers.'' In

my

comparative approach,

I

seek to clarify the differences

between various philosophical ways of thinking without compromise.

398 However,

this

emphasis on

clarifying differences does

exclude or reject the other systems.

beyond the

It is

not intend to

rather an invitation to dialogue

essential differences. Critical questioning of the other tradi-

tions will not destroy but rather

welcome open

The

Abe

JW.&SCLO

criticism

deepen those

from other

basic standpoint of

my

traditions. Likewise,

I

also

traditions.

comparative work

is

but Sunyata, or

Emptiness, which indicates the complete interdependent co-arising and co-ceasing of everything in the universe. Being stantial,

Sunyata

lets

empty and nonsub-

every other position stand and work just as

Zen Buddhism does not exclude other

urally,

itself

faiths as false

starts to

work critically and

relative truths

life.

Nat-

but recognizes

the relative truths they contain. This recognition, however, point, not the end, for Buddhist

it is.

is

Properly speaking, Zen

a starting

Buddhism

creatively through this basic recognition of the

contained in other positions, hoping for productive dia-

logue and cooperation with other faiths.

CHAPTER Joel R. Smith,

"Masao Abe on Negativity in

the East

Joel R.

27:

Smith sharply analyzes

and West"

my essay "Non-Being and Mu

—The Meta-

physical Nature of Negativity in the East and the West" and criticizes

understanding of the issue discussed therein. In that essay, ify

what

I

I

my

tried to clar-

think to be the most fundamental difference between the East-

ern (particularly Buddhist) and Western ways of thinking and to propose a basic standpoint

To show

my

that while in the

common

to

them

both.

basic position, Smith quotes

West

my

statement to the effect

positive principles (such as being,

life,

and the

good) have ontological priority over negative principles (such as nonbeing, death,

and

evil), in

the East the negative principles are coequal to

the positive principles and "even

then

may

he said to he primary and central.

states:

The

crucial point here

is

that in the passage just cited,

cedes, perhaps unintentionally, a point he

whole thrust/)/ his argument has been

had denied

Abe con-

earlier.

The

to assert that the positive

"

He

399

"'EpiloaUC: A TLcSjsonsc

and negative

Buddhism

principles are coequal so that

logically biased

toward either positivity or

preceding passage,

Ahe acknowledges

But in the

negativity.

that in

not onto-

is

Buddhism negative

principles are not only coequal to positive principles hut "even

may

He

he said to he primary and central."

ultimate

is

West in terms of positivity." Ahe seems

Buddhism does not

ing both that that

it

explicitly says that the

and

"realized in the East in terms of negativity

in the

to contradict himself, claim-

give priority to negativity

What

does give priority to negativity.

are

we

to

and

make

of

this?

me with a serious challenge that touches the central When emphasized that in Buddhism the positive and

Smith presents point of the issue.

I

negative principles are coequal, that or negative, tion.

On

I

was

Buddhism

is

not ontologically positive

clarifying the ontological structure of the

the other hand,

when

I

said that the ultimate

is

Buddhist posi"realized in the

East in terms of negativity and in the West in terms of positivity,"

concerned more with the practical and That

is

to say, in

Buddhism

I

was

existential aspects of the issue.

the deep realization of negativity

crucial to the revelation of ultimate reality.

Herein

is

practically

the "primacy" of

lies

negation.

For example, the ultimate reality in Buddhism

beyond any tivity.

To

distinction, including subject

existentially realize Sunyatd,

and

it is

Silnyata,

is

which

is

and nega-

object, positivity

crucial to realize not only the

negation of positivity but also the negation of negativity. This latter double negation, that

is,

the negation of negation,

is

not a logical negation but

an existential negation through which one can return of both positivity and negativity.

ultimate reality

world and tian

is

history,

mysticism

God. God

is

and therefore

God

Buddhism, only the

is

On

to the root-source

the other hand, in Christianity

creator and redeemer, the ruler of the a "positive principle."

However,

in Chris-

undefinable and unnameable. Therefore, as

via negativa provides a

way

to

in

reach this ineffable

God. Smith

offers

two other important criticisms of

my

discussion. First,

he points out, "Abe has not given an adequate account of the ontological nature of relative

mu

to

show how

it

can be more than

a privation of u.

Until he provides this ontological account of relative mu,

his entire

—

J^Aasdo Abe

4-OQ

position

is

weak."

My response to this criticism is that mu is the complete u; therefore, mu is more than just a privation of u —

counter-concept to is

it

form of negativity than "non-being"

a stronger

West. Further, u and fore inseparable tradiction.

The Buddhist notion

relative

Mu

of Sunyata presents a standpoint that

point of Smith's criticism

is

bears "traces of negativity" in that

u that

is

is

overcoming of that antinomy, of the self-contradic-

u and mu.

The second Absolute

mu are completely antagonistic principles and there-

from each other; they constitute an antinomy, a self-con-

realized through the tory oneness of

understood in the

as

absolutized in Sunyata. To this

I

that

my

it is

relative

would

presentation of

mu

like to

and not

respond by

arguing that in his understanding Smith somewhat objectifies Absolute

Mu. Here, Absolute Absolute ity

Mu in its

Mu

is

understood as a

authentic sense

is

static state of

not a static state but dynamic activ-

of endless self-negation in which any negativity

into positivity tion

Only through the

Emptiness. But

constantly turned

is

realization of this absolute double nega-

Emptiness realized as Fullness.

is

CHAPTER

28:

Joan Stambaugh, "Masao Abe and Martin Heidegger" Referring to

A

my essay "The Problem

of

Time

in

Heidegger and Dogen,"

in

Study of Dogen: His Philosophy and Religion, Joan Stambaugh discuss-

es three issues: (1) the degree of transanthropomorphism, involving a dis-

cussion of thinking; (2) the ontological difference; and (3) the priority of

time over being. Since these three issues are closely linked,

respond

to

them not

let

me

separately, but together.

For Heidegger, "Being

is

determined as presence by time." This

is

a

key point to his thinking concerning the problem of being/time. Even in his notion of Ereignis, in er,

which being and time

are said to belong togeth-

—and not time

time has priority over being. For example, only being

disappears in Ereignis. This Heideggerian priority of time over being

maintains an implicit anthropocentrism because whereas being can be

thought of without beings, time cannot be thought of apart from the

human

self.

Therefore,

identity of being

we

and time

see that Heidegger's understanding of the is

not universally applied to

all

beings. In

Dogen's thought, on the contrary,

all

beings are time, and

moments

all

time are being. This can be seen in his notion that "impermanence

is,

of as

such, Buddha-nature" (mujo-bussho). For Dogen, the notion of Buddha-

nature does not indicate a special supernatural

nature of everything, the Thusness (tathata) of

Also for Heidegger, real thinking

is

beings.

all

.

generated because in

is

Heidegger's attempt to discover this origin, he finds

Unandenkliche). Thus, Heidegger's thinking It is

another origin"

a "recollection of

(Andenhen an den anderen Anfang) This thinking

beyond "metaphysical" thinking.

but the original

reality,

a

is

it

"unthinkable" (das

new way

of thinking

a thinking of this other origin (den

anderen Anfang) as the ground of metaphysics. For Dogen, on the other hand, true thinking

is

a "non-thinking" that

is

them

ing and not-thinking and yet includes

their resemblance, Heidegger's thinking

is

beyond the duality of thinkboth. Consequently, despite

different

from Dogen's notion

of non-thinking because the former does not reach the unthinkable as the true origin of thinking. For Heidegger, the unthinkable

is

always encoun-

tered from the side of thinking. But for Dogen, true non-thinking

is

realization of the unthinkable origin of thinking itself. Further, for this

unthinkable origin of thinking

is

the True Self that

is

a self-

Dogen

realized by

breaking through life-and-death.

CHAPTER

29:

Robert E. Carter, "Diagramming the Ultimate: Conversations with Masao Abe"

Robert Carter's essay

is

an impressive record of a Western

struggle with the Buddhist notion of Emptiness.

was the Buddhist notion of ultimate God, but Sunyata, which

is

which

first is

barrier he faced

neither Being nor

entirely unobjectifiable, unconceptualizable,

and unattainable by reason or ly

reality,

The

intellectual's

will.

Buddhism, especially Zen,

is

certain-

practice and immediate experience rather than intellectual thinking.

Zen

koans,

strive to

ever,

Zen meditation, and the ordinary

life

of the

Zen Buddhist

break the iron grip of conceptualizing and intellectualizing.

Zen

is

not mere anti-intellectualism.

thinking and not-thinking.

It

is

It

is

all

How

-

beyond the duality of

non-thinking that, being free from the

opposition between thinking and not-thinking, makes them alive and able

4-OZ

J^iCLsao

to

work

al

understanding cannot be a substitute

freely according to

each given

Abe

situation. for Zen's

true that intellectu-

It is

Awakening. But practice

without a proper and legitimate form of intellectual understanding often misleading, and intellectual understanding without practice

is

is

cer-

tainly powerless.

Buddhism, especially Zen, instance: "True Emptiness

full

is

of paradoxical expressions. For

Wondrous

is

Emptiness, Emptiness must empty

Being." In order to attain true

Emptiness must become non-

itself;

Emptiness. In true Emptiness, being becomes empty and emptiness

become

being;

this reciprocal

and

and yet being emptying

is

is

being and emptiness

also emptied.

self-contradictorily identical.

that Carter

take

him

mate

is

to

True Emptiness

Glancing

as close as the language

at the

paradoxically feel

I

and thinking of paradoxicality can

moon

of

ulti-

reality.

30:

William Theodore de Bary, "Buddhism and Referring to

my talk on "Buddhism

versity in 1955, in

which

I

human

and

Human

Human

Rights" at

Rights"

Columbia Uni-

proposed that Buddhism could make important

contributions to building a rights are respected,

more unified and peaceful world where de Bary raises the question

compatible with Buddhist tradition and history?"

T

is

above summary,

an expression of the finger pointing toward the

CHAPTER

D.

emptiness. Even

is

De

"Is

Abe's claim

Bary then mentions

Suzukis emphasis on prajnd, wisdom, as freedom from

illusion

and

the importance of upaya, liberative technique, which the Virnalakirti Sutra insists

upon

as the necessary

Bary understands that

to higher

wisdom. De

through upaya, Mahayana Buddhism "accepts

and stages of consciousness

states

complement

as relatively true

and none

all

as irreme-

diably false or totally unredeemable." This attitude of acceptance offers a basis for Buddhist religious tolerance. However, de Bary culties involved in rendering this implicit belief in the

science into an explicit doctrine of I

human

Buddhism and appreciate

tion of the issue in question.

diffi-

freedom of con-

rights.

human

rights in the

his insightful analysis

and elucida-

generally agree with de Bary's discussion of

history of

shows the

To me, however, the most fundamental

standpoint for a Buddhist view of

human

rights

is still

not clear enough.

my

In

Response

Epilogue-. A

--

4-03

understanding, insofar as the theme "Buddhism and

be discussed, the fundamental standpoint of the Buddhist

Rights"

is

view of

human

to

must

rights

be

first

clarified.

This

especially important

is

because an exact equivalent of the Western phrase "human not be found anywhere in Buddhist literature.

human In

West has an anthropocentric view of human

Buddhism

the

human

person

homocentric and cosmological

basis.

is

rights" can-

The Western notion

humans, excluding other

rights pertains only to

fore, the

Human

of

creatures. There-

rights.

understood on a broader trans-

Buddhism views human beings

as

all beings, sentient and nonsentient, because both human and nonhuman beings are equally subject to impermanency. The problem of human rights in Buddhism is to be grasped in the context of this transper-

part of

sonal, cosmological ly,

Dharma

the

it is

dimension

or the

common

Suchness

also true that only

human

humankind and

to

beings,

who

alone in the universe have

CHAPTER niscences from a

in

31:

spirituality,

Buddhism but

restrict

Remi-

warmth

strongly sense a special

that

dialogue at

its

and delicate thoughtfulness! Deeply rooted

in

Sharma

for other

is

It

is

an excellent dialogue partner not only for

world religions.

number

of issues in his essay to be discussed. But let

my comments

to the question of the "indistinguishability" of

There are

me

I

Stalk:

Perspective"

communicating with Buddhism.

best, full of sensitivity

Hindu

essay,

Hindu

self-

beings.

all

Arvind Sharma, "A Chrysanthemum with a Lotus

Hinduism holds

name-

(tathata) of everything in the universe. Yet

consciousness, can define and defend these rights of

Reading Arvind Sharma's

nature,

a

Hinduism and Buddhism. Sharma confesses

"What do Hindus think

of Buddhists?" that

"it

when

that

took

me

I

asked him,

[Sharma] some

time even to comprehend the question, for modern Hindus barely differentiate

between the two."

Hinduism and Buddhism.

It is

quite easy to point out the affinity between

In the

phenomenal and

dimension,

historical

these two religions have developed through a long intermingling with

each ty

other.

However, a question must be raised as

comprises

to

whether

this affini-

real identity or not.

Emphasis on the

similarities

between two

religions

is

certainly

^Mdsao Abe

4-04t

important, but

it

On

does not necessarily create something new.

hand, an attempt to disclose the differences,

if

the other

properly and relevantly

done, not only promotes and stimulates mutual understanding but also inspires both religions to seek further developments. In the case of Hin-

duism and Buddhism,

duism

isn't

there a fundamental difference beyond their

on the phenomenal and

affinity

historical

dimension? That

is,

while Hin-

based on the notion of atman, Buddhism clearly denies

is

based on anatman.

How can

Hinduism and Buddhism overcome

it

and

is

this fun-

damental difference and attain deeper developments within themselves?

And

developments create an even deeper unity between them?

will these

Therefore, for the sake of the future of both religions,

between the present views of each

tant to differentiate

Mahayana Buddhism as a false sameness.

tradition. In fact,

severely criticizes equating without discrimination

is

possible because

it is

nonsubstan-

through a negation of negation. To use the above example, the Bud-

dhist notion of

anatman

is

not a mere negation of atman, but being com-

pletely nonsubstantial, true

same

time.

With the

dhism and Hinduism will

impor-

True interfaith unity dynamically includes sameness

and difference. This dynamic unity tial

it is

atman and true anatman are

realization of in

mind,

at

one and the

an even deeper unity between Bud-

hope, Arvind Sharma, that our dialogue

I

develop further in the future.

CHAPTER

32:

Steven Heine, "Between Zen and the West, Zen and Zen, and

Zen and Pure Land:

On Masao Abe's

Sense of Inter- and

Intrafaith Dialogue"

With deep and thoroughgoing understanding clarifies

my

dialogue in the

deeply.

ciate

makes

West

in a quite

of

my

work, Steven Heine

unique manner that

I

Referring widely to Christianity and Buddhism,

a clear distinction

interfaith dialogue

and

between two dimensions of dialogue,

intrafaith dialogue.

plement, reinforce, and enhance each In this regard,

Heine indicates

appre-

Heine that

is,

These two dimensions com-

other.

that

my

involvement with intrafaith

dialogue divides into two main levels, both intertwined with interfaith

concerns. To him, the the Pure

first level

deals with the dialogue

Land Buddhism; the second

level

is

between Zen and

between the two main

•*

Epiloalie: A Hesj>onsc

4-OS

branches of Japanese Zen, namely, Rinzai and Soto. Heine's discussion of

my work on

both of these intrafaith levels

is

insightful

have no particular disagreement with, nor criticism Rather,

I

and

of, his

correct, so

I

presentation.

appreciate his analysis and hope to continue to promote these

important dialogues within Buddhism.

CHAPTER Christopher

my most

Christopher Ives points out that one of to interfaith

of

and cross-cultural dialogue

Zen Buddhism. However,

Zen Buddhism and by the is

is

warning

the clarification of the nature

Ives then questions

whether

my

portrayal of

will take

to myself.

I

work. Ives warns that

my

"Zen"

heed of these remarks with appreciation and

believe, however, that

I

cal construct created

my

"Zen"

is

my own

in

as a

not a philosophi-

through dialogue with Western thinkers.

an existential outcome of

Buddhism and my

which

from the actual Zen of the average Zen Buddhist

in fact different I

is

important contributions

a rather abstract philosophical "composite," created for

dialogical context in

Japan today.

33:

"Masao Ahe and His Dialogical Mission"

Ives,

It is

rather

long-term research of the history of

actual concrete practice of

Zen Buddhism

in Japan.

At the very end of his essay Ives expresses his strong desire that

produce

own

"a systematic

statement of [my] religious philosophy."

It is

long-cherished desire to produce a systematic presentation of

religious philosophy

developed through East-West dialogue. As

be a systematic work on the basis of Sunyata,

it

it

I

my my

would

could be called, as Ives

suggests, "Sunyatology."

CHAPTER

34:

Stephen C. Rowe, "A Zen Presence in America: Dialogue as Religious Practice"

I

am most

who

favorably impressed by the words of Stephen Rowe's student

"proclaimed that reading Abe's Zen and Western Thought and then

seeing Abe at Notre

Dame had changed

situation wherein religion antireligious ideologies,

I

is

do

his life."

Given the contemporary

being challenged by secular materialism and in fact value, as

Rowe

points out, interfaith

J^idSdo Abe

4-Oe-

dialogue as a

way toward meeting

this challenge

and changing peoples

lives.

must go beyond the goal of better

In this regard, interfaith dialogue

mutual understanding

mutual transformation of people's

to achieve the

Because the criticisms by antireligious ideologies are today so deep

lives.

and so

fatal,

to

assumptions of

achieve mutual transformation, the prevailing basic

all

religions

must be

drastically

changed and new para-

digms created. Thus, Rowe suggests mutual radicalization. In Buddhist terms this means the radicalization of Emptiness and compassion. In

such

a radicalization,

Emptiness manifests

itself.

itself.

compassion. At

Emptiness negates not only everything else but also

When

Emptiness

itself is

emptied, Wondrous Being

Radicalization oiSunyata also entails the radicalization of this point,

John Cobb's criticism that

Buddhism com-

in

passion has not generally been applied to ethics and history must be kept clearly in

mind.

Rowe

correctly perceives that this kind of radicalization

He

form of religious practice.

then raises a crucial issue: "And yet

where he addresses

tice to

directly

Certainly dialogue

is

The

F.A.S.

movement

a

I

is

a form of religious practice."

know

and on

which he has contributed

of

its

nowhere

He

in his [Abes] writ-

own terms

form of prac-

this

to so greatly."

form of religious practice

my

ried out in the context of

a

states that since this radicalization takes

place through dialogue, "dialogue itself

ings

is itself

for

me, but

religious practice in the F.A.S.

it is

car-

movement.

originated as a student group in 1943 under the

guidance of Shin'ichi Hisamatsu (1889— 1980), the foremost Zen personality

of contemporary Japan. This group sought the ultimate

Way for human

existence through the motto "unity of practice and learning."

What

is

F.A.S.?

F

stands for "Awakening to the Formless Self,"

referring to the depth of

ground of of All

human

human

human

existence.

Humankind,"

A

existence,

i.e.,

the True Self as the

stands for "Standing within the standpoint

referring to the breadth of

beings in their entirety

And

human

existence,

S stands for "Creating history

Suprahistorically," referring to the chronological length of

Awakened human

i.e.,

F.A.S.

indicate a threefold structure of

self,

world, and

his'tory.

human

exis-

history. Accordingly, the three aspects of

tence,

breadth, and length of

i.e.,

human

human

existence: the depth,

existence, or speaking

more

In the notion of F.A.S., these three

concretely,

dimensions of

EpiloaUC: A Response

-"

human

4-07

existence are grasped dynamically and, though different from one

another, are inseparably united.

Hisamatsu once stated that al

if,

been the case with

as has

tradition-

Zen, the so-called wondrous activity starts and ends only with the so-

compassion involved

called practice of

in helping others to reach

Awak-

ening, then such activity remains unrelated to the formation of the world

Thus

or the creation of history.

end

in the

turns into a forest

isolated

from the world and

history,

Zen

Buddhism, temple Buddhism,

at best a

becomes "Zen within

a ghostly

monastery Buddhism. Ultimately,

this

cave."

In the F.A.S.

world is

movement, the questions of what the

and what history

is,

cannot be resolved

—

is

in

are

its

all

related.

true sense

The problem

—

if it is

self

of

is,

what the

what the

self

investigated indepen-

dently of the problems of the nature of the world and the meaning of history.

On

lished

—

clarifies

the other hand, world peace, for example, cannot be estabin the true sense

— nor can

history be truly created unless

what the True Self is. These three problems

ed and united

at the root of

one

are inseparably relat-

our very existence.

CHAPTER

35:

Stephen Morris, "The Roar of a Lion: Reflections on a Life Dedicated to

What

Is

Ultimately Real"

my interfaith dialogical work in the West. Particularly referring to one of my key notions, "the Absolute Present," he states that the Absolute Present both defines my "existential stance" and provides "the pivot and the focus" for my philosophical position. He suggests that from within the Zen perspective, my Stephen Morris elucidates the form and content of

scholarship

from

"is itself

an expression of the Absolute Present."

this stance in the

Absolute Present, or Emptiness, that

interfaith dialogue seeks, as Morris says, to crystallize

and

It is

indeed

my work

in

clarify the real

spiritual project of religion.

Regarding the depth of

spirituality in religion,

with Meister Eckhart and Emerson, but

such

a

I

am

afraid

comparison. However, Morris argues that

are united in our "stance," that

is,

we

rely

Morris compares

we

on our

I

am

me

not worthy of

are similar in that

we

spiritual experience.

JVl&s&o Abe

4-OS

While

may be

we must

and

dif-

ferences between these experiences. As for himself, Morris argues as

fol-

ity

so,

"Committed myself

lows: tive,

this

I

am,

carefully scrutinize the affinities

to neither the

Buddhist or Christian perspec-

frankly, less interested in religions per se

than in the

spiritual-

they hope to foster."

Morris makes here a distinction between religion and spirituality

and takes

than religion (which

spirituality rather

is

often identified as

an institution) as his own stance. Here we are facing the following question: How can we individually and socially foster spirituality? Can we truly foster spirituality without religion? What is the role of religion? What form of practice is appropriate for people today individually and

—

socially?

To answer these questions, Morris introduces "education." argues that gion, then

if

transformed. ity in

a

fundamental

we no

We

spirituality

can be developed outside of

He reli-

longer have to wait for religion to be radicalized and

do not have

to wait for religion to "catch up." Spiritual-

education can "develop people intellectually and socially in the

soundest way."

temporary

I

myself well realize the importance of education in con-

But however important education may be,

society.

not sufficient to cope with the current

human

to

me

it is

predicament. In the mod-

ern world, because of the remarkable advancement of science and tech-

nology and the complexity of social and political systems, spirituality has

been

largely neglected.

Why and how has

this neglect of spirituality

place in religions?

Why and how have religious

foster spirituality?

These are important questions. Without

institutions failed today to

sideration of these questions, education will not be

painful condition of In the end,

he

a serious con-

enough

to heal the

modern humanity.

we cannot

can religion be revitalized

humankind?

help but face a most serious problem:

to

meet the contemporary

In this connection

I

al

seriously

change will

torn up.

own

wonder

trickle

And what

is

if,

completely agree with Morris

in the long run, widespread spiritu-

from the top down, or sprout from the advanced here

vision of supplying a spiritual

is

all in

How

spiritual crisis of

says,

One must

taken

hot-

keeping with Abe's

ground for the modern world;

his very participation in the philosophical religious process

is

an

when

„.

attempt

to

Epilogue-. A

Hesponsc

4-09

push the highest good within reach of the greatest num-

ber of people. Everyone deserves to he provided the wherewithal to retrieve the pearl.

i

NOTES CHAPTER ONE 1.

Masao Abe, "Toward tian Pilgrimage:

the Creative Encounter Between Zen and Christianity," in

The

Fruits of the

Annual Colloquia

A

Zen-Chris-

in Japan, ig6y—igy6 (privately print-

ed, 1981), 43. 2. Ibid. 3.

Masao Abe, "Hisamatsu's Philosophy

of Awakening,"

The Eastern Buddhist

14,

no.

1

(spring 1981): 27.

CHAPTER TWO 1.

2.

A

week-long period designated for intensive Zen meditation.

Kira

Kozuke no suke (1641-1703) was an forty-seven samurai of the

Ako

official of the

Tokugawa shogunate, assassinated by

clan in the celebrated episode of the Forty-Seven Ronin.

On

the occasion of a reception for imperial messengers at Edo castle in 1701, Kira, commonly disliked for his arrogance, received a slight wound in the forehead at the hands of Asano Takumi no kami (1667-1701), daimyo of Ako, who believed that Kira had intentionally withheld from him the fine points of court etiquette needed to avoid error in matters of protocol. In consequence for drawing his sword, Asano was immediately deprived of his domain and ordered to commit suicide. Kira escaped even reprimand, though he was later foi zed to leave office. Asano's retainers vowed vengeance, which they achieved in 1703, executing Kira in his own home. 3.

Ryutaro Kitahara, "Makujikiko [Straight Ahead!]," Zen Bunka 97 (June 1980): 35-36.

CHAPTER FOUR 1.

Masao Abe and John Cobb interviewed by Bruce Long, "Buddhist-Christian Present and Future," Buddhist-Christian Studies

CHAPTER 1.

Masao Abe, Zen and Western Thought (Honolulu:

1

Dialogue: Past,

(1981): 20.

FIVE University of Hawai'i Press, 1985).

2. Ibid., ix. 3. Ibid.

from Kitaro Nishida, "The Problem of Japanese Culture," in Ryusaku Tsunoda, W. Theodore de Bary, and Donald Keene, eds., Sources oj the Japanese Tradition, vol. 2 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958), 350-365.

4.

See

5.

See Shokin Furuta, "Shaku Soen: The Footsteps of a Modern Japanese /en Master." Philo-

his translation of excerpts

sophical Studies of Japan 8 (1967): 70. 6. Ibid., 69.

Notes to chapter Five

4-1 Z.

See also Soen Shaku, "The Law of Cause and Effect as Taught by Buddha," transT Suzuki in The Eastern Buddhist 26, no. 2 (autumn 1993): 134—37; and the Rev. John Henry Barrows, ed., The World's Parliament of Religions, vol. 2 (Chicago: Par-

7. Ibid., 77;

lated by D.

liament Publishing Co., 1893), 829-31. 8.

Soen Shaku, Sermons of a Buddhist Ahhot (Chicago: Open Court Publishing Co., 1906).

9. Ibid., 33.

10. Ibid., 47. 1

1.

Ibid., 144.

12. Ibid.

13.

See the discussion below of Nishidas

logic of place.

on the Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana Co., 1900). Hereafter referred to as Aqvaghosha s

14. Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, Aqvaghosha's Discourse

(Chicago:

The Open Court Publishing

Discourse. 15. Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, Outlines of

16.

Aqvaghosha

s

Mahayana Buddhism (London: Luzac and Co.,

1907).

Discourse, 43.

17. Ibid., 152. 18. Ibid., 58-59. 19. Ibid., 58.

20. Daisetz T. Suzuki, Outlines of Mahayana All further quotations

21. Daisetz

T

from

this

work

Buddhism (New York: Schocken Books, are

from

1963), 295.

this edition.

Suzuki, Sengai the Zen Master (Greenwich, Conn.:

New

York Graphic Society,

1971), 186.

22. Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki,

The Zen Doctrine of No-Mind (London: Rider and Co.,

1949), 59.

T Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Buddhism (Tokyo: Japan Travel Bureau, 1958), 60. Daisetz T Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), 298. Daisetz T Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism (Third Series) (Kyoto: The Eastern Buddhist Soci-

23. Daisetz 24.

25.

ety. 1934),

296.

26. Ibid., 228. 27. Ibid., 250. 28. Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, Mysticism: Christian

and Buddhist (New York: Harper

&

Brothers,

1957)' 69.

29. Aqvaghosha's Discourse, 107-108.

30. Ibid., 60. 31. Suzuki, Essays in

Zen Buddhism (Third

Series), 250.

"Double Negation as an Essential for Attaining the Ultimate Reality: Comparing Tillich and Buddhism" (unpublished paper), 8. Hereafter cited as "Double Negation."

32. iYIasao Abe,

33. Alasao

34.

May

Abe, "Substance, Process, and Emptiness," Japanese Religions

11

(September

not such a nondualistic self-negating-negation, self-negating-negating,

or,

1980): 32.

therefore,

self-negating-self-negating be detected as well in Hinduism's neti-neti ("not-this-[very-] not-this,"or"not-[even-]this-not-this"),

and

in the

Chinese Taoist Chuang-tzu's wu-wu

("self-

naughting-self-naughting")? 35. Suzuki, Outlines of 36. Suzuki,

Mahayana Buddhism,

115.

Zen and Japanese Culture, 300.

37. Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, Essays in

Zen Buddhism (Second

Society, 1933), 298.

38. Aqvaghosha's Discourse, 61.

39. Suzuki, Outlines of Mahayana Buddhism, 322-324.

Series) (Kyoto:

The Eastern Buddhist

""Notes to chapter Five 40. Bernard Phillips, ed.,

The

Essentials of Zen

Suzuki (London: Rider

T.

&

Buddhism,

4-13

An Anthology of the

Writings of Daisetz

Co., 1963), 25.

41. Suzuki, Outlines of Mahayana Buddhism, 100-101. 42. Ibid., 102. 43. Ibid., 105. 44. Ibid., 96. 45. Ibid., 22.

46. Ibid., 106.

An Inquiry into the Good, Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), xii.

48. Ibid.,

Masao Abe and Christopher

Ives

(New

Hisamatsu, one of Nishida's leading direct disciples, has spoken of

this in

47. Kitaro Nishida,

trans.

xiv.

49. Ibid., 164. 50. Ibid., xvii. 51. Ibid., xxv. 52. Ibid., 46.

53. Ibid., 82. 54. Ibid., 168. 55. Ibid., xxv. 56. Ibid., x. Shin'ichi

terms of "the paradox of sound negating sound." See Jerome S. Bruner, "The Art of Ambiguity: A Conversation with Zen Master Hisamatsu," Psychologia 2 (1959): 104. 57. Nishida, 58. Ibid.,

An

Inquiry into the Good,

xxii.

xxiii.

59. Keiji Nishitani, Nishida Kitaro, trans. Seisaku

Yamamoto and James W. Heisig

(Berkeley.

University of California Press, 1991), 49-50. 60. Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki,

The

Field of

Zen (New

York:

Harper

&

Row, 1970),

93. In

Hisamat-

sus view as well, the "Self-Awakening" of the Self "where mind and body have fallen away" has been "conveyed by such expressions as Emptiness, Nothingness, Suchness, the Dharmakaya, not-a-single thing" (Shin'ichi Hisamatsu, "The 3,"

61. Abe,

translated by Christopher Ives in

Zew and Western Thought,

FAS

Society Journal

Vow

[autumn

of

Humankind,

Part

1987]: 2).

45.

62. Ibid., 158. 63. Ibid., 126.

64. Ibid., 126-127. 65. Suzuki,

The

Field of Zen, 100.

66. Kitaro Nishida, Last Writings: Nothingness

and the Religious Worldview,

trans.

David A. Dil-

worth (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987), 89. 67. Ibid., 68.

68. Ibid., 69. 69. Ibid. 70. Ibid. 71. Ibid. 72. Ibid., 71. 73. Ibid., no.

74. Ibid., 117.

J

4-1475.

Notes to chapter

Quoted from Hans Waldenfels, Absolute Nothingness,

Ft ve

trans.

J.

W. Heisig (New

York: Paulist

Press, 1980), 41.

76. Nishida, Last Writings, 125. 77. See ibid., "Introduction"

by David A. Dilworth,

20.

78. See Nishitani, Nishida Kitaro, 162.

79. See Nishida, Last Writings, "Introduction,"

5.

80. See ibid., "Postscript" by David A. Dilworth, 127. 81. Ibid., 70.

An

82. Nishida,

Inquiry into the Good, 82.

83. Nishida, Last Writings, 70. 84. Ibid., 118.

85. Ibid. 86. Ibid., 68. 87. Ibid., 70. 88.

That

is,

Nishida's notions of absolute nothingness, absolute self-negation, absolute self-con-

tradiction, the logic of the place of nothingness, etc., could also, in language already sug-

gested, be understood

emptying or

—and

so expressed

—

a self-negating-self-negation.

neously negating

its

own

self-negation

is

in

terms of a nondualistic self-emptying-self-

For only through negating

itself

and simulta-

there self-negation-affirmation that veritably

constitutes an "absolute contradictory self-identity"

—

or, in this

sense, a "self-identity of

absolute contradictories." 89.

See a conversation between Dr. Suzuki and the writer {Ibyoshisoto Seiyo), Asahi Journal

90. Suzuki,

The

no.

7,

n (March

in "Oriental

Thought and the West"

14, 1965): 122.

Field of Zen, 39.

91. Ibid., 68. 92. Ibid.,

15.

93. Daisetz T. Suzuki, Living by

Zen (Tokyo: Sanseido,

1949),

2.

94. Ibid.

95. Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki,

An Introduction

to

Zen Buddhism (Kyoto: The Eastern Buddhist Soci-

ety, 1934), 48.

96. Daisetz

T

Suzuki, "Knowledge and Innocence," in

(New York: New

Appetite

Thomas Merton, Zen and

the Birds of

Directions, 1968), 107.

97. Ibid., 133-134.

98. Ibid., in.

99. Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki,

Zen Buddhism and

Its

Influence on Japanese Culture (Kyoto:

The

Eastern Buddhist Society, 1938), 28. 100. Suzuki,

"Knowledge and Innocence,"

101. Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, Studies in

109.

Zen (London: Rider and Co.,

1955), 204.

102. Suzuki, Sengai, 91.

103. Suzuki, 104.

The

Field of Zen,

An

15.

145, and Nishitani, Nishida Kitaro, 91. Shin'ichi Hisamatsu has likewise commented: "We awaken to our Self, and this awakened Self then functions. This amounts to dying absolutely and being reborn, to being reborn through death." ("The Vow of Humankind, Part 3," 4). See also the discussion below and

Nishida,

Inquiry into the Good,

.

.

.

note 147. 105. Nishida,

An

Inquin into the Good,

77.

Notes to ckcipter Five and Nothingness,

106. Keiji Nishitani, Religion

trans,

4-15

by Jan van Bragt (Berkeley: University of

California Press, 1982), 58-59. 107. Ibid., 67.

108. Ibid., 105-106. 109.

1

Quoted from David A. Dilworth, "Nishida's Final Essay: The Logic of Place and World-View," Philosophy East and West 20, no. 4 (October 1970): 364.

10. Nishitani,

Nishida Kitaro,

a Religious

50.

111. Ibid. 1

12.

Abe, Zen and Western Thought, 226.

113. Ibid., 247.

114. Ibid. 115. Ibid., 211. 1

16. Ibid., xxi-xxii.

1

17. Ibid., 165. In the

1

18.

words of Abe's Zen teacher, Shin'ichi Hisamatsu: "In Zen, negation is not mere negation. 'Not something' does not mean the negation of something" ("The Art of

Ambiguity," 104).

Abe, Zen and Western Thought,

129.

119. Ibid., 94. 120. Ibid., 131. 121. Ibid., 127.

122. John B. Cobb,

Jr.,

and Christopher

Ives, eds..

The Emptying God:

A

Buddhist-jewish-Chris-

Orbis Books, 1990), and Christopher Ives, ed., Divine Emptiness and Historical Fullness: A Buddhist-Jexvish-Christian Conversation with Masao tian Conversation (Maryknoll, N.Y.:

Ahe 123.

(Valley Forge, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 1995).

Cobb and

124. Ibid.,

Ives,

The Emptying God,

10.

13.

125. Ibid.,

14.

126. Ibid.,

16.

127. Ibid.,

18.

128. Ibid.,

17.

129. Ibid., 26. 130. Ibid., 27.

131. See Abe, "Substance, Process, 132. Ibid., 133.

and Emptiness,"

22.

31.

where Ives, The Emptying God, 28. In Hisamatsu's explanation, "The point form becomes emptiness, where one dies as form and lives in emptiness, is the place What is involved in Form just as it is, where we say, 'Form just as it is, is Emptiness.' is Emptiness' [is that] form is transformed into emptiness, changes into emptiness"

Cobb and

.

.

(Shin'ichi Hisamatsu, 27). So, "this is in the

"Vow of Humankind,

Heart Sutra

136. Abe,

FAS

Society Journal [winter 1986-87]: is

.

.

.

expressed

'emptiness in form'" (Hisamatsu, "Vow of Humankind, Part 3." 3). no mere emptiness or nothingness: it is functioning emptiness and

is

134. Abe, "Double Negation," Ives,

Part 2,"

[as]

functioning nothingness, and this

Cobb and

.

emptiness, and, moreover, existence. In other words, this

Accordingly, 'this

135.

.

.

is

what the true nature of emptiness must be

5.

The Emptying God,

Zen and Western Thought,

257.

31.

(ibid., 4).

Notes to chapter Five

4-16 137. Ibid., 251. 138. Ibid., 107.

As Hisamatsu has pointed out, "the Pure Land Buddhist expression, 'the body that and void, the self that is boundless' (jine kyomu-no-shin, mugoku-no-tai) expresses the body that is spontaneity, nothingness, complete emptiness. Self-effected spontaneity (jinen) indicates our original way of being" ("Vow of Humankind, Part 2," 28).

139. Ibid., 150. is

self-effected

140. Suzuki, Living by Zen, 86-87.

thing separate from

all

^

n another expression, the "Self

other things.

.

.

.

We

can

call that Self

we awaken

to

not some-

is

the absolute Self

.

.

.

beyond

the distinction of self and other" (D. T. Suzuki, "Kiyozawa's Living Presence," trans. Taira

Sato and W. 141. Suzuki,

S.

Yokoyama, The Eastern Buddhist

The Zen Doctrine of No- Mind,

142. Suzuki, Essays in

Zen Buddhism (Third

26, no. 2

[autumn

1993]: 7).

40. Series), 237.

and Buddhist, 153. Clarified further by Hisamatsu: "In the Tof Zen there is no opposition externally and no discrimination internally, thus it is called 'nothing' " (Shin'ichi Hisamatsu, "Zen as the Negation of Holiness," trans. Sally Merrill, The Eastern Buddhist 10, no. [May 1977]: 12). Put another way, " 'becoming nothing' is the change from the limited I to the unlimited I" (Hisamatsu, "The Vow of Humankind," FAS Society Journal [spring 1986], 4). That is, "this nothingness is the True I" (Hisamatsu, "Vow of Humankind, Part 2," 25); "the T that is reborn after death" (Hisamatsu, "Vow of Humankind," 5). So it is a "Nothingness that is Self, or Self that is Nothingness" (Shin'ichi Hisamatsu, "Talks on the Vimalaklrti Sutra, Part 1," trans. Nobumichi Takahashi, FAS Society Journal [summer 1992]: 2). As a consequence, "this Nothingness is no mere logical negation but the way of being of the Self that comes breaking out through the bottom of [what is an] ultimate antinomy" (Shin'ichi Hisamatsu, "Ultimate Crisis and Resurrection, Part I," trans. Gishin Tokiwa, The Eastern Buddhist 8, no. 1 [May 1975]: 29).

143. Suzuki, Mysticism: Christian

1

144. Suzuki, 145.

Zen and Japanese Culture,

176.

Masao Abe, "God, Emptiness, and

the True Self," The Eastern Buddhist

2,

no. 2

(Novem-

ber 1969): 28. 146. Abe,

Zen and Western Thought,

252.

147. See, for example, Shin'ichi Hisamatsu, "Teaching-Faith-Practice-Awakening," translated by Jeff

Shore in collaboration with Fusako Nagasawa and Gishin Tokiwa, FAS Society Journal 1985). In this talk, given in April i960, Hisamatsu emphasized the Zen exhorta-

(summer

—

One Great Death! Then there is Rebirth' that is Awakening to the FormSelf (p. 38). For this Awakening in which "the original self Awakens itself only "comes through the complete death of the ordinary self," "where the ordinary self dies completely," " dying the One Great Death' " (p. 36). See also Shin'ichi (p. 37), or, again, through Hisamatsu, "Ultimate Crisis and Resurrection, Part II," trans. Gishin Tokiwa, The Eastern Buddhist 8, no. 2 (October 1975): 61, and Shin'ichi Hisamatsu, "Ordinary Mind," trans. tion: '"Die the

less

Gishin Tokiwa and Howard Curtis, The Eastern Buddhist 148.

12,

no.

1

(May

1979): 27.

Masao Abe, "Man and Nature in Christianity and Buddhism," in Frederik Franck, Buddha Eye (New York: Crossroads Publishing Co., 1982), 152.

149. Abe,

Zen and Western Thought,

ed.,

The

166.

150. Ibid., 145.

151. Abe,

"Man and Nature

in Christianity

and Buddhism,"

153.

152. Ibid., 156. 153. See also Abe,

Zen and Western Thought,

220, 222-223.

154. Considered as referring to the function of Nature, pratitya-samutpdda could therefore be

interpreted as: this he-ing, that

is,

this arising, thai arises;

this not-hewing, that

is

not,

Notes to chapters Etaht

and Nine

4-17

this ceasing, that ceases;

their he-ing, a being-less be-ing, their not-be-ing, a being-full not-be-ing.

Or, stated otherwise: in the simultaneity

of their be-ing and not-be-ing, this be-ing, every-thing is, this not-be-ing,

no-thing

is.

been expressed by Suzuki as "the self-presentation of the great doubt" ("Zen in America and the Necessity of the Great Doubt: A Discussion Between D. T. Suzuki and Shin'ichi Hisamatsu," trans. Jeff Shore, FAS Society Journal [spring 1986]: 22), and by Hisamatsu as "the ultimate antinomy realizing itself ("Ultimate Crisis and Resurrection, Part II," 49).

155. In alternate terminology, this has

156.

As

articulated by Hisamatsu, "It does assume one particular form, .... Rather ... it [is] the root source of all particularity ... a source" ("True Sitting: A Discussion with Shin'ichi Hisamatsu," in collaboration with Fusako Nagasawa and Gishin Tokiwa, FAS

but

it is

not a particular

freely functioning root-

translated by Jeff Shore

[autumn

Society Journal

1984]: 27).

CHAPTER EIGHT 1.

Donald Keene,

trans., Essays in Idleness:

University Press, 1967), 2.

This

is,

of course,

what

The Tsurezuregusa of Kenko (New

gives special distinction to Abe's

Religion, ed. Steven

Columbia

A

Study ofDogen: His Philosophy and New York Press, 1992).

Heine (Albany: State University of

3.

Masao Abe, Zen and Western Thought,

4.

Probably the best-known demonstration of Class?

York:

12.

William R. LaFleur (London: Macmillan,

ed.

this theory

is

Stanley Fish,

Is

1985).

There a Text in This

The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cambridge: Harvard University

Press,

1980). 5.

As used,

for instance, in Kitaro Nishida,

Christopher Ives 6.

(New Haven:

Naoki Sakai, Voices of the

Past:

An

Inquiry into the Good, trans.

Masao Abe and

Yale University Press, 1990), 145.

The

Status of Language in Eighteenth-Century Japanese Dis-

course (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 299. 7.

I

my Karma of Words: Buddhism and the Literature Arts in Medieval Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 100. My writing about this owed much to essays by Jin'ichi Konishi

discuss this as problematized within medieval Japanese aesthetic theory in

and conversations with Masamichi Kitayama.

CHAPTER NINE 1.

Masao Abe, "The End

2.

Masao

3.

Masao Abe, "God's

of

World Religion," The Eastern Buddhist

13,

no.

1

(spring 1980): 31-45

Abe, Zen and Western Thought, ed. William R. LaFleur (Honolulu: University of

Hawai'i Press, 1985), 178. Total Kenosis

and Truly Redemptive Love,"

Divine Emptiness and Historical Fullness:

Masao Abe

A

in

Christopher

Ives, ed..

Buddhist-Jexvish-Christian Conversation with

(Valley Forge, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 1995), 253.

4.

See Neil Donner, "Chih-i's Meditation on Evil* in David W. Chappell, ed., Buddhist and Taoist Practice in Medieval Chinese Society (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. [987), 49-64.

5.

Abe's claim that the experience is

perceptively analyzed by

is

a privileged first-order viewpoint that undercuts

Thomas Dean

Thought," The Eastern Buddhist

22, no. 2

in his article

'autumn

all

others

"Masao Abe on Zen and Western

1989): 48-77.

4-18 6.

John

Cobb,

B.

Jr..

Notes to chapters Nine

and Christopher

Ives, eds.,

and Ten

The Emptying God:

ian Conversation (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Press, 1990),

A

Buddhist-Jewish-Christ-

11.

7. Ibid., 17.

8. Ibid., 15-16.

9.

See

this helpful

and revealing description

in ibid., 188.

10. Ibid. 11. Ibid.,

11.

12. Ibid., 27.

13. Ibid., 29-32. 14.

Leonard Swidler, Toward a Universal Theology of Religion (Marvknoll,

N.Y.: Orbis Books,

1987), 98. 15. Ibid., 16.

no.

Lawrence Kohlberg, The Philosophy of Moral Development: Moral Stages and tice (San Francisco: Harper 8c Row, 1981), 344-45.

the Idea of Jus-

17. Ibid., 345. 18.

See especially Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982).

19.

Abe, The Emptying God,

20.

SeeTanabe Hajime, Philosophy of Metanoetics

21. This issue of

Zen

ethics

123.

is

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).

being discussed in Zen

circles,

however, and was formulated as

the topic for group study at the Fourth International Buddhist-Christian Conference

summer of 1992 by the Zen Symposium of Hanazono University. See also Bernard Faure, "The Kyoto School and Reverse Orientalism," in Charles W. Fu and Steven Heine, eds., Japan in Traditional and Postmodern Perspectives (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995). held in Boston in the

22. See Shioiri's complete bibliography in his Shioiri

Ryodo

memorial volume edited by Muranaka Yusho, bunka no kenkyu (Tokyo:

sensei tsuito ronhunshu: Tendai shiso to To Ajia

Sankibo, 1991), 1-6. 23. In addition to the "formless repentance" advocated by Chih-i in his

Mo-ho chih-kwan,

the

Lotus Samadhi repentance ritual has confession of individual sins requiring tearful remorse. See a translation by Daniel Stevenson, "The Tien t'ai Four Forms of Samadhi and Late North-South Dynasties, Sui, and Early Tang Buddhist Devotionalism" (Ph.D. diss.,

24. For a

Yale University, 1987), 500-511.

sweeping consideration of the tensions between Zen ideology and Buddhist

morality,

see Bernard Faure 's recent book The Rhetoric of Immediacy: A Cultural Critique of Chan/Zen Buddhism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 231-57. 25. See the superb article by Luis

Gomez

that places the issues of this debate in a larger histor-

The Metaphor of Effort and Intuition in Buddhist Thought and Practice," in Peter Gregory, ed., Sudden and Gradual: Approaches to Enlightenment in Chinese Thought (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1987), 67-165. ical perspective:

"Purifying Gold:

and Wealth in Theravada Buddhism: A Study in Comparative F. Sizemore and Donald K. Swearer, eds., Ethics, Wealth, and Salvation: A Study in Buddhist Social Ethics (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1990), 59-76. I am indebted to Donald Swearer for pointing out this reference.

26. Frank E. Reynolds, "Ethics

Religious Ethics," in Russell

CHAPTER TEN 1.

Kitaro Nishida, Last Writings: Nothingness

and the Religious

(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987),

126.

Worldviexv, trans.

David Dilworth

Notes fo chapters Twelve

and Thirteen

4-13

2. Ibid. 3.

This and the next two quotations are from Logic of Absolute Nothingness

Masao Abe's

draft of his essay "Sunyata

and the

—The Logic Expounded by the Kyoto School," which he

presented to the American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division, Washington, D.C., December 27-30, 1992. Abe was kind enough to share a draft of this essay with me. This version was adapted by

Abe from

his

published essay "Nishida's Philosophy of

(December

'Place,'" International Philosophical Quarterly 28, no. 4

1988): 355-371.

4. Ibid., 8. 5. Ibid., 9.

6.

Ashok

Gangadean, Meditative Reason: Toward Universal Grammar (New York: Peter Lang

K.

Press, 1993).

CHAPTER TWELVE 1

The proceedings

of this theological encounter group have been published in various issues of

Buddhist-Christian Studies since 1985. 2.

The Purdue meeting tian Theological this

of the

Abe-Cobb

group, by then called the International Buddhist-Chris-

Encounter Group, was held on October 10-12,

encounter are published

in

1986.

The proceedings

of

Buddhist-Christian Studies 8 (1988): 45-168, and 9 (1989):

123-229. 3.

See Donald W. Mitchell, "Compassionate Endurance: Mary and the Buddha, Keiji Nishitani," Bulletin of the Vatican Secretariat for

Non-Christians

A

Dialogue with

21, no. 3 (1986):

296-300; Donald W. Mitchell, "A Dialogue with Kobori Nanrei Sohaku," Japanese ReliW. Mitchell, "Unity and Dialogue: A Christian

gions 20, no. 2 (July 1986): 19-32; Donald

Response

to Shin'ichi

Hisamatsu's Notion of F.A.S.,"

FAS

Society Journal (spring 1986):

6-9. 4.

These persons included Marcello Zago, John Shirieda, and Giuseppe Zanghi.

5.

Abe's stay at Purdue and his four dialogues were funded by a generous grant from the Lilly

Endowment, pher

Inc.

Ives, ed.,

The Rubenstein and Pannenberg

dialogues are published in Christo-

Dixine Emptiness and Historical Fullness:

Conversation with Masao Abe (Valley Forge,

Pa.: Trinity

responses to Suchocki and Egan are published in

A

Buddhist-Jexvish-Christian

Press International, 1995). Abe's

Masao Abe, Buddhism and

Interfaith

Dialogue (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1995). 6.

See Donald W. Mitchell, Spirituality and Emptiness: The Dynamics of Spiritual Life dhism and Christianity (New York: Paulist Press, 1991), 142-181.

7.

See Mitchell, "Compassionate Endurance."

in

Bud-

CHAPTER THIRTEEN 1.

Masao Abe,

in

Arvind Sharma,

ed.,

Our

Religions

2.

Masao Abe, Zen and Western Thought (Honolulu:

3.

Masao Abe,

in

John Cobb and Christopher

(New York:

HarperCollins, 1993), "4-

University of Hawai'i Press, 1985), 167

Ives, eds.,

The Emptying God:

Christian Conversation (Maryknoll, N.Y: Orbis Books, 1990), 27. 4. Ibid. 5.

Abe, Zen and Western Thought,

198.

6. Ibid., 133. 7.

Abe, The Emptying God,

32.

8. Ibid., 33.

9.

Abe. Zen and Western Thought,

211.

A

ishBuddhist -Jewish

Notes to chapters Fifteen

4-ZO

and Eighteen

10. Ibid., 223.

11. Yogava'sistha, 1:28. 12.

Yoshifumi Ueda in his introduction to the English translation of Shinran's Notes on "Essentials of Faith Alone" (Kyoto: Hongwanji International, 1979), 4.

13. Ibid.,

5.

A Human Approach

14.

The

15.

Abe, Zen and Western Thought,

Dalai Lama,

to

World Peace (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1984),

13.

189.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN 1.

2.

Japanese Religions

11,

(September

no. 2/3

On

Martin Heidegger,

the

Way

1980).

Language

to

(Pfullinger:

Neske, 1959),

i86ff.

and

209ff.

3. Ibid., 187.

4. Ibid., 210. 5. Ibid., 211.

6.

See

7.

Heidegger,

8. B. 9.

Keiji Nishitani, Religion

and Nothingness (Berkeley: University of California

Press, 1982).

211.

Buddhadasa, Christianity and Buddhism (Bangkok, 1967).

Saint Augustine, Confessions,

Book

IV.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 1.

2.

Telephone conversation between Masao Abe and the author, September home in Kyoto; I was in Tallahassee. I

11,

1993.

Abe was

at

describe the impact of that course in the chapter entitled "Tillich and Harvard" in Richard L.

Rubenstein, Power Struggle:

An Autobiographical

(New York: Charles

Confession

Scrib-

ner's Sons, 1974). 3.

The encounter

is

described in the chapter entitled "The

Dean and The Chosen People"

Richard L. Rubenstein, After Auschwitz: History, Theology and Contemporary Judaism, ed. (Baltimore:

in

rev.

Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 3-13.

4.

Richard L. Rubenstein, The Age of Triage: Fear and Hope in an Overcrowded World (Boston:

5.

Masao Abe, "A

Beacon

God:

Press, 1983), 131-133.

Rejoinder," in John B.

A Buddhist-Jewish-Christian God and Dynamic

6.

Abe, "Kenotic

7.

Rubenstein, Power Struggle:

8.

Abe, "Kenotic

Cobb,

Jr.,

Sunyata," in

Ives, eds.,

The Emptying

ibid., 60.

An Autobiographical

God and Dynamic

and Christopher

Conversation (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1990), 186.

Confession.

Sunyata," 27.

9. Ibid., 28.

10.

Abe, "A Rejoinder,"

174.

11. Ibid., 184.

12.

Eugene

B. Borowitz,

God,

"The God

Who

Fills

the Universe," in

Cobb and

81.

13. Ibid., 82.

14. Ibid. 15.

Abe, "Kenotic

16.

John

B.

Cobb,

God and Dynamic Jr.,

preface to

Sunyata," 29.

Cobb and

Ives,

The Emptying God,

xi.

Ives,

The Emptying

Notes to chapters Eighteen 17.

and Nineteen

4-Z1

According

to Abe, the religious dimension "signifies that which is neither the divine nor the human, neither the sacred nor the secular, neither the supernatural nor the natural, and that which is neither absolutely good nor absolutely evil Sunyata." (Abe, "Kenotic God and Dynamic Sunyata," 49).

—

18.

The

distinction

between the En Sof and the sefirot is one of the most complex in all of JewI merely want to draw attention to the distinction between the Urgrund

ish mysticism.

and the manifestations of divinity that are revealed to humanity. For a brief discussion of the distinction between the En Sof and manifest divinity, see Gershom Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, 1626-1676 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), 119-23. 19. Borowitz,

"The God

Who

Fills

the Universe," 84.

20. Ibid.

21. Richard L. Rubenstein, After Auschwitz, 1st ed. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966), 154. 22. Christopher Ives, ed., Divine Emptiness

and

Historical Fullness:

Conversation with Masao Ahe (Valley Forge,

Pa.: Trinity

A

Buddhist-Jewish-Christian

Press International, 1995).

23. Ibid., 93-112.

24.

It is

25. Abe,

Orthodox Jews, whose understanding of than Borowitz's.

certainly not the fashion of nonmystical

and the covenant are

"A Rejoinder,"

far

more

literal

God

187.

26. Ibid., 188.

World War II are discussed in Marvin Tokayer and Mary The Untold Story of the Japanese and the Jews during World War II (New York: Paddington Press, 1970); David Kranzler, Japanese, Nazis and Jews: The Jewish Refugee Community of Shanghai, 1935-1945 (Hoboken, N.J.: KTAV, 1988); and BenAmi Shillony, The Jews and the Japanese: The Successful Outsiders (Rutland, Vt.: Charles

27. Japanese-Jewish relations during

Swartz, The

Fugu

Plan:

E. Tuttle Co., 1992), 178-89.

28. Abe, "Kenotic 29. Abe, 30.

John

God and Dynamic

"A Rejoinder," B.

Cobb,

Jr.,

Sunyata," 50.

186.

"On

the Deepening of Buddhism," in

Cobb and

Ives,

The Emptying God,

93.

The Cunning of History (New York: Harper and Row, 1975). In addition to my research, my activities in the domain of public affairs have included serving as president of the Washington Institute for Values in Public Policy, a Washington-based

31. Richard L. Rubenstein,

policy research institution, since 1981. I also serve as editor of In Depth: A Journal of Values in Public Policy and as chairman of the Editorial Advisory Board of the Washingto)i

Times. 32.

Emil L. Fackenheim, "Transcendence and a Jewish Theology," in Herbert

in

Contemporary Culture: Philosophical Reflections

W Richardson and Donald

R. Cutler, Transcendence

(Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), 150. 33. Abe,

"A Rejoinder,"

188.

CHAPTER NINETEEN 1.

Wolfhart Pannenberg, "A Search for the Authentic Self," Christian Sjnritnalit) (Philadelphia:

Westminster Press, 2. Ibid., 97.

Cf.

1983), 93-110.

Masao Abe, "Man and Nature

in Christianity

and Buddhism," Japanese Religions

7(i97'):8. 3.

Pannenberg, Christian

4. Ibid.,

Spirituality, 99.

99-100.

5. Ibid., 101.

Cf. Abe,

"Man and Nature

in Christianity

and Buddhism,"

9.

Notes to chapter Nineteen

4-ZZ 6.

Pannenberg, Christian

Spirituality, 104.

7. Ibid., 105.

8. Ibid., 106.

9.

Cf. also Abe,

Pannenberg, Christian

"Man and Nature

in Christianity

and Buddhism,"

22.

Spirituality, 107.

10. Ibid. 11. Ibid.,

no.

12. Ibid., 108. 13. Cf.

Masao Abe, "Kenotic God and Dynamic Sunyata," Ives, eds.,

The Emptying God:

N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1990), 3-65.

A

John B. Cobb,

in

Jr.,

and Christopher

Buddhist-Jewish-Christian Conversation (Maryknoll,

A shorter,

earlier version of the

same essay was published

Roger Corless and Paul Knitter, eds., Buddhist Emptiness and Christian and Explorations (New York: Paulist Press, 1990), 5-25. in

14. Cf.

Wolfhart Pannenberg, "God's Love and the Kenosis of the Son:

A

Trinity: Essays

Response

to

Masao

Abe," and Masao Abe's rejoinder, "God's Total Kenosis and Truly Redemptive Love," in Christopher Ives, ed., Divine Emptiness and Historical Fullness: A Buddhist-Jewish-Christian Conversation with

Masao Abe

(Valley Forge, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 1995),

244-259. 15.

Pannenberg, "God's Love and the Kenosis of the Son," 246. Cf. Abe, "Kenotic

Dynamic Sunyata,"

God and Dynamic

16.

Abe, "Kenotic

17.

Donald W. Mitchell, Spirituality and Emptiness: The Dynamics of Spiritual and Christianity (New York: Paulist Press, 1991), 55.

18.

Abe, "Kenotic sis

19.

God and

28.

Sunyata," 28.

God and Dynamic

Life in

Buddhism

Sunyata," 27. Cf. Pannenberg, "God's Love and the Keno-

of the Son," 246.

Pannenberg, "God's Love and the Kenosis of the Son," 246. Cf. Abe, "Kenotic

Dynamic Sunyata,"

20. Pannenberg, "God's Love

Dynamic Sunyata," 21. Pannenberg, "God's

God and

38.

and the Kenosis of the Son,"

247. Cf.

Abe, "Kenotic

God and

32, 60.

Love and the Kenosis of the Son," 247.

22. Ibid., 248. 23. Ibid. Cf. Abe, "Kenotic 24. Pannenberg, "God's

God and Dynamic

Sunyata,"

13.

Love and the Kenosis of the Son," 249.

25. Ibid.

26. Ibid., 250. 27. Ibid.

28. Ibid. Cf. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology

I,

trans.

Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 1991), 382-384. 29. Pannenberg, "God's

Love and the Kenosis of the Son,"

250.

30. Ibid. 31.

Abe, "God's Total Kenosis and Truly Redemptive Love,"

32. Ibid.

33. Ibid., 255. 34. Ibid., 256. 35. Ibid., 257. 36. Ibid., 258. 37. Pannenberg, Systematic Theology 38. Ibid., 324.

1

,

320.

253.

Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand

and Twenty

Notes to chapters Nineteen Thomas Aquinas, Summa

39. Saint

my book

40. Cf. on this point

Theologiae

Society

and

I,

Q.

4-Z3

29, a. 4, resp.

Spirit (Cranbury, N.J.: Associated University Presses,

1991), 129-39, m which I, too, set forth the nature of God as an underlying force-field but from the perspective of a neo-Whiteheadian process-oriented metaphysics rather than from analysis of the Stoic notion of pneuma as does Pannenberg.

41. Cf. Sacred Texts of the World:

A

Universal Anthology, ed. Ninian Smart and Richard D.

(New York:

Crossroads, 1982), 246: "Form is emptiness, and the very emptiness emptiness does not differ from form, form does not differ from emptiness."

Hecht

is

form;

who

aban-

42. Abe, "God's Total Kenosis and Truly Redemptive Love," 255: "There

is

an agent

He

is

not an agent in the

doned

his

Sonship of

ordinary sense.

He

is

God and

resurrected as the redeemer.

an agentless agent: that

is,

a self-emptying

and yet

self-fulfilling

agent."

CHAPTER TWENTY Hans

1.

Kiing, "Towards a Global Ethic," paper delivered at the 1993 Parliament of the World's

Religions,

August 28-September

5,

1993, Chicago, Illinois.

"God's Self-Renunciation and Buddhist Emptiness:

2.

Roger Corless and Paul Explorations

(New York:

Knitter, eds., Buddhist

A

Christian Response to

Emptiness and Christian

Masao Abe,"

Trinity: Essays

in

and

Paulist Press, 1990), 26-43.

3.

Hans Rung, Christianity and the World Religions: Buddhism (New York: Doubleday, 1986), xiv.

4.

Hans

Kiing, Theology for the Third Millennium:

Paths of Dialogue with Islam, Hinduism and

An

Ecumenical View (New York: Doubleday,

iq88), 123-206.

220.

5. Ibid.,

6. Kiing, Christianity

Hans

10. Kiing, 1.

xiv.

Toward a New World Ethic (New York: Crossroads, (Munich: Piper, 1990)].

Kiing, Global Responsibility:

[Original: Projekt Weltethos

1

Religions,

238-239.

8. Ibid.,

9.

and the World

Theology for the Third Millennium, 227-256.

7. Kiing,

Ibid.,

Theology for the Third Millennium,

1991)

251.

253-256.

12. Kiing, Christianity 13. Kiing, "God's

and the World

Religions.

Self-Renunciation and Buddhist Emptiness," 26-43.

14. Ibid., 42-43. 15. Ibid., 37. 16. Ibid. -

17.

Western Philosophy and Theology in Taitetsu Unno, ed., The Religious Philosophy of Nishitani Keiji: Encounter with Emptiness (Berkeley Asian Humanities Press, 1989), 13-45; Masao Abe, "Will, Sunyata, and History," in ibid.. 279-304. Abe's thinking on the question of human rights and ethics is presented in his "Religious Tolerance and Human Rights. A Buddhist Perspective," published in Leonard Swidler, ed., Religious Liberty and Human Rights in Nations and Religions (Philadelphia:

Masao Abe,

'

"Nishitani's Challenge to

Ecumenical Press,

1986), 193-21

1.

He

has also delivered a paper on this question

at

the

Germany, published in Hans Kiing and Karl Joseph Kuschel, eds., Weltfrieden durch Religumsfrieden—Antworten mis den Wcltrcligionen (Munich: Piper, 1993), 109-40. (I thank Professor Christopher Ives of the University l Puget Sound for information on the above article in English and Professor Hans Kiing himself for the information on Abe's article in German.)

UNESCO-sponsored colloquium

in

4-Z4-

Notes to ckcupter Twenty -One

18.

Abe, "Will, Sunyata, and History," 269.

19.

Abe, "Kenotic God and Dynamic Sunyata," in John Cobb, Jr., and Christopher Ives, eds., The Emptying God: A Buddhist-Jewish-Christian Conversation (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1990), 3-65.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 1.

Masao Abe, "Zen

Is

Not

a Philosophy, but

.

.

."

Theologische Zeitschrift (Basel) 33 (1977):

251-68. 2.

Translated by Harold H. Oliver, Buddhist -Christian Studies

12 (1992):

83-102. Henceforth

I

refer to this essay as TS.

Der Buddha- Christus

3. Fritz Buri,

als

der Herr des wahren Selhst: Die Religionsphilosophie der

Kyoto Schule und das Christentum (Bern: Paul Haupt Verlag, 1982). Translated by Harold H. Oliver as The Buddha-Christ as the Lord of the True Self: The Religious Philosophy of the Kyoto School and Christianity (Macon, Ga.: forth, 4.

TS, 85.

5. Ibid.,

6.

I

BC,

96.

3 2 3 ff.

7. Ibid.,

324.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid., 325.

10. Ibid. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid.

326.

13. Ibid. 14. Ibid.

328.

15. Ibid.

3^9-

16. Ibid.

33°-

17. Ibid. 18. Ibid.

336.

19. Ibid.

339-

20. Ibid.

34°-

21. Ibid. 22. Ibid. 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid.

344-

26. Ibid. 27. Ibid.

345-

28. Ibid.

347-

29. Ibid. 30. Ibid.

348.

31. TS, 96 32. Ibid.

97-

refer to this

work

as

BC.

Mercer University

Press, 1997).

Hence-

Notes to chapters Twenty -One

and Twenty Two

4-ZS

33. Ibid. 34. Ibid.

98.

35. Ibid. 36.

EC,

357-

37. Ibid. 38. Ibid. 39. Ibid.

358.

40. Ibid. 41. Ibid.

359-

42. Ibid. 43. Ibid.

360.

44. Ibid.

361.

45. Ibid. 46. Ibid. 47. Ibid.

362.

48. Ibid. 49. Ibid.

363-

50. Ibid. 51. Ibid.

3 6 4-

52. Ibid.

365.

53. Ibid.

54. Ibid.

3 6 7 ff

55. Ibid.

368.

56. Ibid.

3 6 9-

57. Ibid.

37°-

58. Ibid.

372-

59. Ibid.

60. Ibid.

374-

61. Ibid.

375-

62. Ibid. 63. Ibid.

377-

64. Ibid.

379-

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 1.

Masao Abe, "Zen and Compassion," The Eastern Buddhist

2.

Masao Abe, "Zen and Buddhism," The

3.

In Abe's

2,

no.

Eastern Buddhist 26, no.

1

1

(August 1967): 64. (spring [993): 26-49.

most recent book, Buddhism and Interfaith Dialogue (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i he devotes several chapters to exploring Tillich's theology and its importance tor Christian-Buddhist dialogue. Throughout these readings, the richness of TUlich's religio-philosophy is again apparent as it enables Abe to penetratingly analyze and articulate the basic differences and similarities between the Christian and Zen Buddhist ontic positions. Press, 1995),

4.

Masao Abe, 128.

"In

This

Memory

article

was

of Dr. Paul Tillich,"

The Eastern Buddhist 1, no. 2 (September [966): Buddhism and Interfaith Dialogue, 120-123.

recent!) reprinted in Abe,

J

—

Notes to chapter Twenty -Two

4-Z6 5.

Masao Abe,

Memory

"In

of Dr. Paul Tillich,"

131.

Much

could be said about Tillich and his paper is focused on Masao Abe's

interest in interreligious dialogue; however, since the

dialogue with Tillich, the matter will have to be taken up on another occasion. 6.

Masao Abe, Zen and Western Thought (Honolulu:

University of Hawai'i Press, 1985), 171-185.

7. Ibid., 171.

8.

"Human

personal existence" indicates the ontological status of a

human

being that has actu-

alized self [personal]-consciousness. Hereafter, the term person will

be

utilized to indi-

cate this status. 9.

Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol.

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), 49.

I

(Hereafter Systematic Theology will be referred to as ST, with volume and page numbers

ambiguous ambiguous" {ST, III, 32).

following.) "Life remains

moment 10. ST, 1

1.

ST,

I,

is

as long as there

is life"

{ST,

II, 4); ".

.

.

life at

every

170.

34 (my italics). For Tillich, awareness of finitude is awareness of being. Correspondthe awareness of finitude is accompanied by the awareness of infinitude (non-

II,

ingly,

being).

only by the awareness of infinitude that

It is

we

we can

and the

our

realize

own

finitude

"Only something infinite can we realize we are finite. Only because we are Our melancholy able to see the eternal can we see the limited time that is given us. about our transitoriness is rooted in our power to look beyond it." (Paul Tillich, The Shakonly in non-being do

because we look

find the possibilities,

limitations, of being:

at

.

ing of the Foundations 12. Paul Tillich,

"What

Is

[New York: Charles

.

.

Scribner's Sons, 1950] 67.)

Man? A Symposium on

the Individual in

Modern

Society" (unpub-

lished broadcast transcript), Yale Christian Association, January 4, 1957, Tillich Archives,

407:108, p.

3.

13. Paul Tillich, Love, Power,

and

Justice

(New

York:

Oxford University Press,

1954), 33, 34.

(Hereafter referred to as LP].) 14.

Abe, Zen and Western Thought,

6.

15. Ibid., 6. 16. Ibid. 17. ST, 1,61,62. 18. ST, 19.

I,

211.

D. MacKenzie Brown, Ultimate Concern: Tillich in Dialogue

(New

York:

Harper

&

Row,

1965)- 7. 8.

20. ST,

I,

235; LP], 107.

21. LP], 109. 22. ST,

I,

244.

23. ST,

I,

272.

24. ST,

I,

279 (my

25. Paul Tillich,

italics).

The

New

Being

(New York: Charles

Scribner's Sons, 1995), 26.

26. LP], 25. 27. Tillich,

The Shaking of the Foundations,

28. ST,

I,

286.

29. ST,

I,

49.

30. Paul Tillich,

"The Importance of

New

156.

Being for Christian Theology,"

in

Man and

Transfor-

mation, ed. Joseph Campbell (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), 174. 31. For a full discussion of the kenotic quality of Jesus as the Christ, see

Buddhist-Jewish-Christian Conversation, ed. John N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1990).

The Emptying Cod:

Cobb and Christopher

A

Ives (Maryknoll,

Notes to chapters Twentu-Two a,nd Twentu -Three

4-Z7

Abe holds that for Buddhism, consistent with pratitya-samutpada, being not ontologically prior to non-being; instead, being and non-being are codependent. As

32. In terms of ontology, is

Abe

explains this difference in regard to the

Zen

resolution,

in Buddhism, since the polarity of being and nothing is a symmetrical polarity, with equal weight for being and nonbeing, the overcoming of this symmetrical polarity entails us straightforwardly to go beyond the horizon of polarity itself to a new

horizon which

is

(Buddhism and

neither being nor nothing

—

that

to a realization

is,

of Sunyata.

Interfaith Dialogue, 106, ioy)

As Abe goes on to say, this Emptiness (Sunyata) must be "emptied" as well. The Zen Awakening destroys the simple objectification of self, others, and God that is necessarily restricted to relatedness between two "others" and instead provides a consciousness that tion

is

—

complete identification with the

other, while

engaging

still

in relative participa-

As Abe states, the Awakened person one and the same time" (ibid., 107).

thus, an identification-participation.

[and originally] both being and nothing at 33. This characterization of

Awakening

as "nondualistic duality"

is

is

"now

from the writings of Richard

DeMartino. 34. Shin'ichi Hisamatsu, "Ultimate Crisis

Eastern Buddhist 35. Richard

8,

no. 2

DeMartino, ed. and

(May

trans.,

and Resurrection, Part

1," trans.

Gishin Tokiwa, The

1975): 28.

"D.

T

Suzuki, Oriental Thought and the West," unpublished

manuscript of original interview that appeared

in the

Asahi journal

36. "Love corresponds to the Buddhist ideal of mahakaruna,

no.

7,

11,

and according

to

March

14, 1965.

Buddhists the

Buddha-heart is no other than mahakaruna itself (D. T Suzuki, "Human Values in Zen," Abraham Maslow, ed., New Knowledge in Human Values [New York: Harper & Row,

in

1959]- 97)-

37. Abe, "Zen

and Compassion,"

66.

38. Ibid.

39.

DeMartino, "D. T. Suzuki, Oriental Thought and the West," 22, 23. DeMartino goes on to add that "though Buddhism has laid much formal stress on undifferentiated-differentiations, it seems not to have worked this out sufficiently as regards the specific relation between love and justice."

40.

Cobb and

Ives,

The Emptying God,

60.

41. Ibid., 61. 42. This criterion

is

one espoused by Robert McAfee Brown

ology (Louisville, Ky: Westminster/John

Knox

book Liberation TheAs indicated by such

in his recent

Press, 1993), 27.

books as Asian Christian Spirituality, ed. Virginia Fabella et al. (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1992), there is profound need by Asians for a spirituality of liberation, and Christian liberation theology is active in supporting the development of spirituality. Zen, and Buddhism as a whole, must similarly answer the spiritual needs of the poor and oppressed in Asia with much greater vivacity and urgency than in the past.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE 1.

God and Dynamic Sunyata," in John B. Cobb, Jr., and Christopher Ives, eds.. The Emptying God: A Buddhist-Jewish-Christian Conversation (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1990). 3- 6 5-

"Kenotic

2.

See Foundations of Christian Faith: Seabury Press, 1978), 63.

3.

Perhaps

in the

case of Zen,

it is

An

Introduction to the Idea of Christianit) (Nevt York

more accurate

to

Take, for example, the famous poetry contest

speak of narrative and rhetorical strategies. in

the Platform Sutra

oj

the Sixth Patriarch

("Where then is a grain of dust to cling?") or the much-quoted maxim "When reduced to one, to what is the one to be reduced?"

all

is

Notes to chapters Twenty Three

4-Z8 "Buddhism

4.

(fall

Is

Not Monistic, but Non-dualistic,"

and Twentu-Five

Scottish Journal of Religious Studies

1,

no. 2

1980): 97-100.

"Buddhism and Christianity as a Problem for Today: Part II," in Japanese Religions 3, no. 3: 8-31. Also, Masao Abe, Zen and Western Thought (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1985).

5.

6.

Abe, "Buddhism and Christianity as

7.

Abe, Zen and Western Thought, 161. Later in this text, Abe states that "Zen transcends not only dualism, but also monism and monotheism" (p. 187).

8.

Abe, "Kenotic

9.

Masao Abe, "Memories of Daisetz Suzuki Sensei," in Masao Abe, ki Remembered (New York: Weatherhill, 1986), 218.

God and Dynamic

a

Problem

for Today: Part II," 24.

Sunyata," 27-33. ed.,

A

Zen

Life:

D.

T.

Suzu-

on the relationship between Zen and Jodo Shin-sha, see "The Problem Toward a Critical Understanding," trans. James Fredericks, in the International Philosophical Quarterly 35, no. 4, issue 140 (December 1995): 419—436. Here Abe insightfully explores the intrinsic connection between Zen and Jodo Shin-shu. His standpoint remains that of Nishida's Absolute Nothingness. What if Abe were to interpret Absolute Nothingness from the standpoint of "other power?"

10. For Abe's reflection

of 'Inverse Correspondence' in the Philosophy of Nishida:

1

1.

sure, Abe has published articles having to do with Jodo Shin-shu thought. In 1963 and again in 1964, articles appeared in Japanese on Dogen and Shinran. These articles have recently been translated by Steven Heine and are included as the final chapters of Masao

To be

A Study of Dogen (Stony Brook: State University of New York Press, 1992). Of course, in these early articles no attempt is made to connect Shinran's notion of "other

Abe,

power" with a dynamic approach 12.

to Sunyata.

Jan van Bragt, "Buddhism-Jodo Shin-shu-Christianity: Does Jodo Shin-shu Form a Bridge between Buddhism and Christianity?" Japanese Religions 18, no. 1 (January 1993): 47~75-

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE Kitaro Nishida,

1.

An

Inquiry Into the Good, trans.

Haven: Yale University Press,

Masao Abe and Christopher

Ives

(New

1990).

2. Ibid., xxv. 3. Ibid., xii.

4. Ibid. 5. Ibid., xxx.

6. Ibid., 7.

xv (Abe's introduction); xxx (Nishida's preface).

William James, Essays in Radical Empiricism (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1943), The above quotation is in italics in the original.

8. Ibid., 23.

9. Ibid., 40.

10. Nishida, 1

1.

An

Ibid., xviii.

12. Ibid., xix. 13. Ibid., 135. 14. Ibid., 161. 15. Ibid., 150.

Inquiry into the Good,

xv.

-

9-

Notes to chapter Twentu-Six

4-ZS

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX 1.

Masao Abe, Zen and Western Thought (Honolulu:

University of Havvai'i Press, 1985).

2. Ibid., 152. 3. Ibid., xxi.

4. Ibid., xxii, 152, 170. 5. Ibid., 152.

6. Ibid., 186. 7. Ibid., 202. 8. Ibid.

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid., 186. 11. Ibid., 172.

12. Ibid., 169.

13. Ibid. 14. Ibid., 109.

15. Ibid., 74. 16. Ibid., 74, 189; cf. p. 31. 17. Ibid., 188-189; cf. p. 202. 18. Ibid., 120.

19. Ibid.

20. Ibid.,

xxiii.

21. Ibid.,

xxii.

22. Ibid., 210.

23. Ibid. 24. Ibid.

25. Ibid., 209. 26. Ibid., 85.

27. Ibid., 261-265. 28. Ibid., 266, 268.

29. Ibid., 192-193. 30. Ibid., 193. 31. Ibid.

32. Ibid.

33. Martin Heidegger,

Way

to

"A Dialogue on Language between a Japanese and an Inquirer," Language, trans. Peter Hertz (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1982).

in

On

the

34. Ibid., 4-5. 35. Ibid.,

5.

36. Ibid., 2-3. 37. Ibid., 8. 38. Ibid., 12-13.

39. Abe,

Zen and Western Thought,

131.

J

4-3 O

Notes to chapter Twenty-Seven

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN 1.

—

Masao Abe, "Non-Being and Mu The Metaphysical Nature of Negativity in the East and the West" in Masao Abe, Zen and Western TJtought (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1985), 121-134.

122-123.

2. Ibid.,

3. Ibid., 121.

4. Ibid. 5.

6.

Masao Abe, "Zen and Western Thought"

I

33"

I

in

Abe, Zen and Western Thought,

Mu —The Metaphysical

Abe, "Non-Being and

Nature of Negativity

109.

in the East

and the West,"

34-

7. Ibid., 130.

8. Ibid., 127. 9. Ibid.,

130-131.

10.

Abe, "Zen and Western Thought," 94.

11.

Abe, "Non-Being and West," 126.

Mu —The

Metaphysical Nature of Negativity

in the East

and the

12. Ibid. 13. Ibid., 127.

14. Ibid. 15. Ibid., 128. 16. Ibid., 130. 17. Ibid., 128. 18. Ibid., 126-127.

19. Ibid., 130.

20. Abe, "Zen 21. Abe,

and Western Thought,"

"Non-Being and

Mu —The

102.

Metaphysical Nature of Negativity in the East and the

West," 131-132. 22. Ibid., 133. 23. Ibid., 124. 24. Ibid., 125. 25. Ibid., 133. 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid., 121. 28. For the text of

and

a

commentary on the Heart Sutra

or Hrdaya Prajnaparamita, see

Rabten, Echoes of Voidness, trans. Stephen Batchelor (London:

Wisdom

Geshe

Publications,

1983), 15-45.

Madhyamakasatra in Hans Wolfgang Schumann's Buddhism: An Outline of Its Teachings and Schools (Wheaton, 111.: Theosophical Publishing House, 1974), 146.

29. For Nagarjuna's statement of this point, see the quotation from

30. Abe,

"Non-Being and

Mu —The

Metaphysical Nature of Negativity

in the East

and the

West," p 223. 31. Alan Watts, 32. Ibid.; the

The Way of Zen (New

Diamond

York: Vintage Books, 1957), 126.

Sutra or Vajracchedika Prajnaparamita emphasizes this

movement

negation of substance deepened by a second, self-emptying negation that gives is,

the positive realization of dependent co-arising.

33. Rabten, Echoes of Voidness, 35.

of

rise to, or

Notes to chapters Twentu-Eight

and Twenty-Nine

4-31

34. Ibid., 26-27. 35. Ibid., 33-34. 36. Ibid., 33. 37.

Abe, "Non-Being and West,"

Mu —The

Metaphysical Nature of Negativity

in the

East and the

132.

38. Ibid., 124 (figs.

and

5.1

39. Ibid., 128

(fig. 5.3).

40. Ibid., 129

(fig. 5.4).

5.2).

41. Ibid., 123, 128. 42. Ibid., 133.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT New York

1.

Masao Abe, A Study

2.

Martin Heidegger, Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens (Pfullingen: Neske, 1954),

of Dogen (Albany: State University of

Press, 1992), 141. 21.

3. Ibid., 15.

4.

Heidegger, Gelassenheit (Pfullingen: Neske, 1954), 27.

5. Ibid., 34.

6. Ibid., 7.

52-53.

Stambaugh, Thoughts on Heidegger (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America,

1991),

123-136. 8.

Quoted

9. Ibid.,

Abe,

A

Study of Dogen,

123.

57

Heidegger, Vier Seminare (Frankfurt: Klustermann, 1977), 104.

10. 1

in

1.

Heidegger,

On Time and

Being, trans. Joan

Stambaugh (New

York:

Harper

&

Row,

1972), 43.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE 1.

Masao Abe, "Zen

Is

Not

a Philosophy, but

.

.

.

,"

in

Masao Abe, Zen and Western Thought

(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1985), 26. 2.

God and Dynamic Sunyata," in John B. Cobb, Jr., and Christopher Ives, eds., The Emptying God: A Buddhist-Jewish-Christian Conversation (Maryknoll, N.Y: Orbis Books,

"Kenotic

1990), 27. 3. Ibid.

4. Ibid.,

from the Prajnaparamita Sutra. Taisho 8:250b.

5. Ibid.,

26.

6. Ibid., 27. 7.

See Abe, Zen and Western Thought.

8. Ibid., 24.

9.

Thomas

R.

Martland

Jr.,

The Metaphysics of William James and John Dewey (New York:

Philo-

sophical Library, 1963), 92. 10.

1 1

William James, The Principles of Psychology, [first published in 1890]), 467.

vol.

I

(New York: Dover

Publications, Inc., 1950

Masao Abe, Zen and Western Thought.

12. Ibid.

J

4-3 Z

Notes to chapters Twentu-Nine a.nd rhirtu

13. Ibid. 14. Ibid., 129.

15. Ibid. 16. Ibid., 4.

17. Ibid., 128. 18. Ibid., 129. 19.

Shizuteru Ueda, "'Nothingness' in Meister Eckhart and Zen Buddhism," in Frederick Franck, ed., The Buddha Eye: An Anthology of the Kyoto School (New York: Crossroads Publishing, 1982), 160.

20.

Cobb and

Ives,

The Emptying God,

Zen and Western Thought,

21. Abe,

29.

256.

22. Ibid., 257. 23. Shin'ichi Hisamatsu,

Zen and the Fine Arts (Tokyo: Kodansha International,

1971), 52.

24. Ibid. 25. Kitaro Nishida, Intelligibility

and the Philosophy of Nothingness,

(Honolulu: East-West Center Press, 1958), 26. Abe,

Zen and Western Thought,

trans.

Robert Schinzinger

137.

167.

27. Ibid., 49. 28. Ibid., 67.

CHAPTER THIRTY 1.

Robert A.

F.

Thurman, The Holy Teaching of

Vimalakirti, a

Mahaydna

Scripture (University

Park, Pa.: University Pennsylvania Press, 1976), 46. 2. Ibid., 47. 3. Ibid., 46.

4. Ibid. 5. Ibid., 47.

6.

W.

de Bary

T.

et

al.,

Sources of Chinese Tradition

(New York: Columbia

University Press, i960),

320-322. 7.

On

the relatively

weak position

of the Buddhist sangha in China, see Erik Ziircher,

"Buddhism

China: The Limits of Innovation," unpublished paper contributed to the Conference on the Historical Experience of Change and Patterns of Reconstruction in Selected Axial in

Age 8.

Civilizations, Jerusalem,

Kakuyei Tada, "Buddhism

in

December

China Today,"

28,

1983-January

Pacific

World

1,

2,

1984.

no. 3 (spring 1984): 28-30.

9. Ibid., 28.

10. Ibid., 29. 11. Ibid., 30. 12.

Ryusaku Tsunoda

et al.,

Sources of Japanese Tradition (New York: Columbia University Press, adapted from W. G. Aston.

1958), 50-51. Translation 13. Ibid., 53. 14. Ibid., 50.

Notes to chapter Thirty-One

and Thirty -Two

4-33

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE 1.

See D.

2.

Kitaro Nishida,

3.

Hinduism Today

4.

I

T. Suzuki, Living by

An

Zen (London: Rider

Inquiry into the

&

Co., 1972), 172, for another version.

Good (New Haven:

Yale University Press, 1990).

(March 1993): 27 reports that the Dalai Lama recently complained: "When I say Buddhism is a part of Hinduism, certain people criticize me. But if I were to say that Hinduism and Buddhism are totally different, it would not be in conformity with truth. I have always described Hinduism and Buddhism as twin brothers. The only difference is in the concept of atman [the individual soul]. Buddhism does not believe in atman." Perhaps the question of Brahman also needs to be addressed. 15,

no. 3

some of my own thoughts to begin with. Some have plausibly suggested that Hinduism and Buddhism are two distinct but complementary ways of looking at the world and its underlying reality. These ontological approaches in turn mold their soteriological approaches, but the goal of moksa or mukti remains the same for both. Both, in a sense, are unayas. The parallel from the world of science that suggests itself is that of the wave and particle theories of light as two ways of understanding the behavior of light, whose property of revealing things is not affected by these theories. The action of switching on the light is to be distinguished from that of understanding the behavior of light. Both Hinduism and Buddhism, on this analogy, are capable of switching on the light but

offer

phenomenon of light rather differently. Some have argued that the differences between

explain the

the two are minimal, that Brahand purposes can be identified as already mentioned. Other have argued that this is not so, that "Samkara differentiates his doctrine from the sunya-vada of the Madhyamika. ... If according to the Madhyamika it is impossible for thought to rest in the relative, it is equally impossible for it, according to Samkara, to rest

man and

Sunyata for

all

in absolute nothing. ...

distinction (bheda), the

Hiriyanna,

intents

Or as an old writer has Madhyamika negates it

observed, while the Advaitin negates only as well as the distincts (bhidyamana)"

George Allen

Outlines of Indian Philosophy [London:

&

Unwin,

(M.

1932],

372-373)-

One ly to

phenomena a

sometimes wonders whether Hinduism and Buddhism chose not mere-

also

phenomenon

desc.ibe the same

TV screen. As

differently but rather chose to identify different

same occurrence. Let us suppose

of the

that

one

the images disappear completely once the

is

describing the images on

TV is

switched

off,

the images

no self-existence and may be described as empty. However, if the view is entertained that no image can appear without the screen, then it will be implicated in all the images. The first description would then correspond to Buddhist nairatmya, and the second to the Hindu jivatman, the descriptions reflecting a kind of are totally empty; they possess

choice.

not be out of place. A fundamental contribution that understanding of Sunyata was by highlighting its dynamic nature, as the realization that one finally abides neither in samsara nor nirvana. By contrast, the Brahman of Hinduism is understood as immutable, as uncontradicted in all three dimen-

One

final

Masao Abe made

sions of time

change ry;

is

comment may

to

my

and therefore

want of

a better term). In Samkara's Advaita

Madhyamika Buddhism permanence

is

ultimately illuso-

however, as both admit the ultimate reality to be beyond description, are both the

descriptions illusory and 5.

as "static" (for

ultimately illusory; in

common

Tu Wei-ming, "Confucianism,"

in

in their illusoriness?

Arvind Sharma,

ed.,

Our

Religions (San Francisco: Harper-

Collins, 1993), 199.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO 1.

Masao Abe, A Study of Dogen: His Philosophy and University of

New York

Press, 1992), 167.

Religion, ed. Steven

Heine (Albany: State

Notes to chapters Thirty -Two

4-34-

and Thirty-Four

2.

See Tamura Yoshiro, Kamakura Shin-Bukkyo no Kenkyu (Kyoto: Heirakuji Shoten, 1965), and Tamura, "Critique of Original Awakening Thought in Shoshin and Dogen," Japanese Jour-

3.

Dogen, Shobogenzo Bendowa,

nal of Religious Studies,

no.

no. 2-3 (June

11,

- September 1984): 243-266.

N. A. Waddell and Masao Abe, The Eastern Buddhist (May 1971): 144 (the term realization has been changed to attainment).

1

trans.

Dogen, Shobogenzo "Gyobutsuigi," Dogen Zenji Zenshii, Chikuma Shobo, 1970), 345.

4.

vol.

I,

ed.

Okubo Doshu

4,

(Tokyo:

5.

Yoshinori Takeuchi, The Heart of Buddhism: In Search of the Timeless Spirit of Primitive Buddhism (New York: Crossroads, 1983), 135.

6.

Abe,

A

Study of Dogen,

14.

7. Ibid., 120.

8.

Cited in

ibid., 219.

9. Ibid., 213.

10. Ibid., 216.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR Masao Abe, "The Interfaith Encounter of Zen and Christian Contemplation: A Dialogue between Masao Abe and Keith J. Egan," in Masao Abe, Buddhism and Interfaith Dia-

1.

logue, ed.

Stephen Heine (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press,

1995), 171.

2. Ibid., 172. 3. Ibid.

4. Ibid. 5. Ibid., 171.

6.

Masao Abe, "Education

in Zen,"

The Eastern Buddhist

9,

no. 2 (October 1976): 66.

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid.

9.

Masao Abe, "Kenotic God and Dynamic Sunyata," The Emptying God:

eds.,

A

in

John

B.

Cobb,

Jr.,

and Christopher

Ives,

Buddhist-Jeivish-Christian Conversation (Maryknoll, N.Y.:

Orbis Books, 1990). 10.

References in this paragraph and the next four are from Abes paper, which was read and distributed informally at the Third North-American Buddhist-Christian Theological Encounter. This event was held at Purdue University on October 10-12, 1986.

1

1.

12.

orga-

Masao Abe, Zen and Western Thought (Honolulu:

University of Hawai'i Press, 1985), 274-75.

See especially John B. Cobb, Jr., Beyond Dialogue: Toward a Mutual Transformation of Christianity and Buddhism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982).

13.

Cobb and

14.

Abe, Zen and Western Tlxought, 236.

15. Ibid., 148.

16.

The

was Professor Donald W. Mitchell.

nizer

Ives,

The Emptying God,

See also Cobb and

Ives,

Abe, Zen and Western Thought,

11.

The Emptying God,

11.

126.

17. Ibid., 79.

18.

John

B.

Cobb,

Jr.,

"On

the Deepening of Buddhism," in

Cobb and

Ives,

91-101. 19.

Masao Abe, "A

Rejoinder," in

Cobb and

Ives,

The Emptying God,

178.

The Emptying God,

Notes to chapters Thirty-Four 20. In

and

4-3 S

Thirty-Five

An Inquiry into Nothingness and Relatedness (Albany: State York Press, 1994), I address dialogue as religious practice. See also David Tracy, Dialogue with the Other: The Inter-Religious Dialogue (Grand Rapids,

my

Rediscovering the West:

University of

New

Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 1990); Leonard Swidler, John B. Cobb, Jr., Paul F. Knitter, and Monica K. Hellwig, Death or Dialogue: From the Age of Monologue to the Age of Dialogue (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1990); and Donald W. Mitchell, Spirituality and Emptiness: The Dynamics of Spiritual Life in Buddhism and Christianity (New York: Paulist Press, 1991).

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE 1.

Quoted from

A

Zen

Soiku Shigematsu

Forest: Sayings of the Masters, trans.

(New York: Weath-

erhill, 1981), 87. 2.

The Complete Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (New

3.

A

4.

D.

Zen

T

Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism (First Series)

(my 5.

York:

Wm.

H. Wise

8c

Co., 1929), 144.

Forest, 37.

(New York: Grove

Press, Inc. 1961), 265

italics).

Masao Abe, Zen and Western Thought (Honolulu:

University of Hawaii Press, 1985),

161.

6. Ibid., 12. 7.

For a detailed discussion of Christianity, see

how Abe and Emerson

my "Beyond

stand side-by-side in contrast to traditional

Christianity: Transcendentalism

and Zen," The Eastern

Buddhist 24, no. 2 (autumn 1991): 33-68. 8.

Matthew

9.

Luke

10.

John

10:39.

17:20-21. B.

Cobb,

Jr.,

and Christopher

Ives, eds.,

The Emptying God:

ian Conversation (Maryknoll, N.Y: Orbis Books, 1990),

A

Buddhist-Jewish-Christ-

11.

11. Ibid., 17. 12.

Stephen Morris, "Buddhism and Christianity: The Common Ground. A Study of the Radical Theologies of Meister Eckhart and Abe Masao," The Eastern Buddhist 25, no. 2 (autumn 1992): 89-118.

13.

A

14.

See Abe's preface

Zen

Forest, 68.

itual Life in

W

to Donald Buddhism and

Mitchell's Spirituality

Christianity

15.

Masao Abe, "Beyond Buddhism and

16.

Abe, Zen and Western Thought, 274.

dhism and

17. Ibid., 224.

18. Ibid.

Interfaith

(New York:

and Emptiness: The Dynamics of SpirPaulist Press, 1991),

—'Dazzling Darkness"'

Christianity

in

x.

Masao Abe, Bud-

Dialogue (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1995), 138-139.

LIST

OF

CONTRIBUTORS Leslie D. Alldritt

is

Northland College

associate professor of philosophy and religion at

Ashland, Wisconsin. His dissertation concerned

in

the relationship between Paul Tillich and ophy. His current research interest

Thomas

J. J.

is

Zen Buddhist

Japanese

religio-philos-

religiosity.

Altizer, a retired theologian who, after completing his doctor-

ate in the history of religions at the University of Chicago, has devoted a substantial part of his

logue. This

began with

Eschatology and

work

to the Buddhist-Christian theological dia-

his first book, Oriental Mysticism

a radical Christian theologian, a crucial

been an attempt

and

Biblical

recently represented in The Contemporary Jesus. As

is

to

dimension of

work has

this

seek a genuinely Buddhist ground for Christian the-

ology.

Steve Antinoff

Eugene

B.

lives

and works

Borowitz

in Tokyo.

serves as the

Sigmund

L.

Falk Distinguished

Professor of Education and Jewish Religious Thought at

Hebrew

Union College, Jewish Institute of Religion, New York. His most recent book was Renewing the Covenant, a Theology for the Postmodern jew. In the spring of 1999, he and Francie Schwartz will publish The Jewish Moral Values.

Joseph A. Bracken, Cincinnati, Ohio. at Saint

Mary

several books

theology,

S. J.,

He

is

professor of theology at Xavier University,

previously taught at Marquette University, and

of the Lake Seminary, Mundelein, Illinois. Author of

on the relation between process theology and

Bracken

is

trinitarian

interested in the philosophical foundations of the

notion of ultimate reality in the various world religions. His most recent book in this regard

Robert

E.

Canada.

Carter is He studied

is

The Divine Matrix.

professor of philosophy at Trent University in at Tufts,

Harvard and Toronto Universities, with

List of contributors

4-3 8

degrees in both philosophy and theology.

He

has authored and jointly

authored eight books, including The Nothingness Beyond God, which a study of the Japanese philosopher Kitaro Nishida,

work

entitled

Becoming Bamboo. Carter

Watsuji's Rinrigaku (Japanese Ethics).

Japan and

Hawai'i where he

Pure

He

and

a

comparative

a joint-translator of Tetsuro

has researched extensively in

currently working on a study of Japanese ethics.

is

David W. Chappell religion.

is

is

He

is

teaches Chinese Buddhism at the University of professor and graduate chair in the department of

did his doctoral

Land

work

Tao-ch'o.

pioneer,

at Yale University

on the Chinese

His publications include T'ien-T'ai

Buddhism: An Outline of the Fourfold Teachings, and as editor, Buddhist and Taoist Practice in Medieval Chinese Society. He was the founding editor of the journal, Buddhist-Christian Studies.

John

Cobb,

B.

Jr.

professor emeritus of the Claremont School of

is

Theology. As a Christian theologian, renown for his contribution to

process theology, he has been active in interfaith dialogue, especially

with Buddhists.

He

published Beyond Dialogue: Toward a Mutual

He worked with Masao between leading Buddhists and Christian theologians especially in North America, and he co-edited with Christopher Ives The Emptying God: A Buddhist-Jewish-Christian Conversation, focusing on Abes work. Transformation of Christianity and Buddhism.

Abe

to initiate theological dialogue

Thomas Dean

associate professor of religion at

is

Temple

University. In

1989-90 and again from 1991-1994, he taught at Temple University Japan in Tokyo. His publications include "Masao Abe on Zen and

Western Thought" in The Eastern Buddhist (Part One, Autumn 1989; Part Two, Spring 1990), "Enlightenment or Liberation? Two Models of Christ in Contemporary Japanese Theology" in Fukuin to Sekai (October, November, December 1994) with the English version in The Japan Christian Review (December Religious Pluralism

1995), and an edited volume, and Truth: Essays on Cross-Cultural Philosophy of

Religion. Dean's area of research gion,

and he

is

is

cross-cultural philosophy of reli-

currently engaged in a study of Heidegger and the Kyoto

School.

William Theodore de Bary Provost

is

John Mitchell Mason Professor and He was president of the

Emeritus, Columbia University.

Association of Asian Studies 1969-70, and the

Dawn: A Plan for

The Buddhist

the Prince,

Tradition.

is

the author of Waiting for

The Trouble With Confucianism, and

List of contributors

**

Richard

DeMartino

J.

is

4-39

associate professor emeritus (religion) at

and has known Masao Abe since 1952. Besides publishing extensively in the West on Zen Buddhism, DeMartino collaborated with Abe on the English translation of Shin'ichi Hisamatsus "The Characteristics of Oriental Nothingness," pub-

Temple

University,

lished in Japan by the Ministry of Education in Philosophical Studies

of Japan

(II,

i960).

Durwood Foster

professor emeritus of Christian theology at Pacific

is

School of Religion, where he was also dean. Methodist, he earlier taught

York and

at

Duke

University.

at

An

ordained United

Union Theological Seminary

Among

in

New

various writings he has authored

Who Loves on the theology of Paul Tillich. The wider ecumenism of interfaith dialogue, especially with Buddhism, has been a main commitment for some years.

The God

James

L.

Fredericks

ological

studies

at

is

associate professor in the department of the-

Loyola Marymount University,

Los Angeles,

where he teaches comparative theology. He is a specialist in the area of Christianity and Japanese Buddhism, and is a member of the Los Angeles

Buddhist-Catholic

known Masao Abe graduate student

since

at the

1984

dialogue

when he

group.

has

Fredericks

Abe

studied with

as a

University of Chicago. His topic for his doc-

was the Kyoto School. Since that time, he has translated a series of Abe's more technical articles on the philosophy of Kitaro Nishida for the International Philosophical Quarterly, and has edited several of Abes papers. They have appeared frequently on panels together. Currently Fredericks is editing a book by Abe on toral research

the Kyoto School.

Ashok Gangadean

is

professor and chair of philosophy at Haverford

College where he has taught for the past twenty-nine years. first

He was

the

director of the Margaret Gest Center for Cross-Cultural Study of

Religion at Haverford, and has participated in

numerous

professional

conferences on interreligious dialogue and East-West comparative philosophy.

He

seeks to

embody

is

founder-director of the Global Dialogue Institute which the dialogical powers of global reason in

all

aspects of

His book, Meditative Reason: Toward Universal Grammar, attempts to open the way to global reason; and a companion volume, cultural

life.

Between Worlds: The Emergence of Global Reason, explores the dialogical common ground between diverse worlds. His forthcoming book. The Awakening of the Global Mind, further develops these themes for the general reader.

List of contributors

4-4-0

Langdon Gilkey was Theology

for

many

at the Divinity

years the Shailer

from the Japan Society

a grant

Mathews

Professor of

School of the University of Chicago. Through in the spring of 1976,

he was

a visiting

professor at Kyoto University. There he and his wife, Sonya Gilkey-

Weber, became friends with Masao Abe and participated under watchful but kind direction in zazen. This

an interest both

and

trip inspired

Naming

the

others

Gilkeys publications

Whirlwind and Society and the Sacred.

Habito completed

L. F.

among

with Buddhist thinkers such as Abe,

the philosophy of the Kyoto School.

in

include:

Ruben

in interchange

his

doctoral studies in

Buddhism

at

Tokyo

Tokyo (1978— 1989), Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist

University. After teaching at Sophia University in

he took

a position at

University, ty.

He

is

where he

is

now

professor of world religions and spirituali-

the author of Total Liberation: Zen Spirituality and the Social

Dimension, Healing Breath: Zen Spirituality for a Wounded Earth, Original

Enlightenment:

Tendai

Hongaku Doctrine and Japanese

Buddhism, as well as many other volumes

Steven Heine

is

in Japanese.

professor of religious studies at Florida International

University. His recent publications include

The Zen

Poetr)'

of Dogen,

Japan in Traditional and Postmodern Perspectives, and Dogen and the Koan Tradition. His current research is on the relation between philos-

ophy and

folklore in

John Hick was

Zen Buddhist koan

a colleague of

School, of which he

is

literature.

Masao Abes

now an

at the

Claremont Graduate

emeritus professor, and a

member

with

Abe of the International Buddhist-Christian Theological Encounter. The author of a number of books on the philosophy of religion, Hick is currently a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Research in the Humanities

at

the University of Birmingham, U.K.

He

gave the Gifford

Lectures in 1986—87, and received the Grawemeyer Award in Religion for the

book resulting from them,

entitled

An

Interpretation of Religion

in 1991.

Christopher Ives

is

associate professor of religion at the University of

Puget Sound. Author of Zen Awakening and Society, Ives edited Divine

Emptiness and Historical Fullness:

A

Buddhist-Jewish-Christian

Conversation with Masao Abe, and, with John B. Cobb,

The Emptying God:

A

scholarship focuses on Japanese relationship

Jr.,

co-edited

Buddhist Jewish-Christian Conversation. His

Buddhism and

between Buddhism and the

state in

ethics, especially the

Japanese

history.

^Ltst of contributors

Thomas

Kasulis

P.

4-4-1

professor of comparative studies in the humanities

is

Ohio State University, where he teaches courses in religious studies, philosophy, and East-Asian studies. He has written or edited five books, including Zen Action/Zen Person and Self as Body in Asian Theory and Practice, and published over three dozen articles in scholarly journals, books, and encyclopedias, including the article "Japanese at

Philosophy" for the forthcoming Routledge International Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

William

R.

LaFleur

Glossberg Term Pennsylvania.

He

is

professor of Japanese studies and the Joseph B.

Professor of Humanities

the

at

University

of

received degrees from the University of Michigan

He has taught at Princeton, U.C.L.A., He was the recipient of the Watsuji Tetsuro

and the University of Chicago. and Sophia University.

Prize for scholarship in 1989. His books include The Karma of Words: Buddhism and the Literature Arts in Medieval Japan, and Liquid Life: Abortion and Buddhism in Japan. He edited Masao Abe's Zen and Western Thought, and Dogen Studies.

Donald W. Mitchell at

is

professor of comparative philosophy of religion

Purdue University where

He

gram.

is

Studies, and associate editor of

Mitchell

is

also chair of the religious studies pro-

has been active in the its

Buddhist-Christian

Society for

journal, Buddhist-Christian Studies.

author of Spirituality and Emptiness: Tlae Dynamics of

Spiritual Life in

Buddhism and

Christianity,

and co-editor of The

Gethsemani Encounter: A Dialogue on the Spiritual Life by Buddhist and Christian Monastics.

Stephen Morris

graduated from Harvard's Program on Religion and

Education and taught

in various public schools in the

United States

and Japan. He also studied comparative philosophy and received his doctorate from the California Institute of Integral Studies. Today he lives

and writes

in

North

Billerica,

Massachusetts.

Harold H Oliver is professor emeritus of philosophical and comparat e theology and New Testament at Boston University School of Theology. i\

.

He

is

author of Relatedness: Essays

translator of Fritz Buri's

in

Metaphysics and Theology, and

The Buddha-Christ

as the

Tlie Religious Philosophy of the Kyoto School

Heinrich Ott has been successor

to Karl

and

Lord of the True

Self:

Christianity.

Barth as Ordinary Professor

Systematic Theology at Basel University since 1956.

He was

of

appointed

4-4-Z

of contributors

Li.st

chair of systemic theology at Basel University in 1962. Ott has

From 1979

to 1990,

Among

many

his

been a

vis-

Europe, the United States, and East Asia.

iting professor at universities in

Ott was also a

member

of the Swiss Parliament.

publications are books on Rudolf Bultmann, Dietrich

Bonhoeffer, and Martin Heidegger. His work in

ecumenism includes

Glaube und Behennen: Tin Beitrag zum kumenischen Dialog.

Wolfhart Pannenberg, Heidelberg,

Church

in

with

degree

doctor's

a

theology from

in

became an ordained minister of the Evangelical-Lutheran 1955, the same year he became dozent in the field of sys-

tematic theology at Heidelberg. In 1961, Pennenberg accepted the chair in systematic theology at the University of

visiting professor several times at

University of Chicago,

Mainz. Since 1963, he was universities, such as the

American

Harvard University, and the Claremont

Graduate School of Theology. In 1967, he accepted the chair in systematic theology at the University of Munich, where he also served as director of the Institute of until

he became

Ecumenical and Fundamental Theology

a professor emeritus in 1994.

Most

of Pannenberg's

publications are available in English, the most important of his Systematic Theology in three

Felix E. Prieto ed

many

is

Stephen C. Rowe at

Grand

now

retired

is

and

living in

Masao Abe

of the works of

them being

volumes. Spain where he has translat-

into Spanish.

professor and chair of the department of philosophy

Valley State University, and coordinator of the liberal studies

His

program.

books

previous

Rediscovering the West:

An

include

Leaving

and Returning,

Inquiry Into Nothingness and Relatedness,

and The Vision of William James

Richard

L.

Rubenstein is president and CEO of He is professor emeritus of religion

Bridgeport.

the University of at

Florida

State

University where he worked in the fields of theology and the history of religion.

Rubenstein

is

the author of eight books and editor of five

books. His most recent book

is

Contemporary Judaism. During visits to

Rubenstein has made fifteen

Japan, and has maintained a strong interest in Buddhism.

Arvind Sharma

received his early education in India, where he served in

Gujarat as an I.A.S. States,

After Auschwitz: History, Theology and

his career,

and obtained

cializing in

officer.

higher studies in the United

his doctorate in Sanskrit

Hinduism,

in Australia .at

He resumed

at

and Indian Studies, spe-

Harvard University. Sharma began

his career

the University of Queensland in Brisbane and also

-'

List of contributors

4-4-3

taught at the University of Sydney before moving to McGill University in iVIontreal,

Canada.

He

is

currently Birks Professor of Comparative

Religion in the faculty of religious studies at McGill.

Sharma

author of several books as well as the editor of a

on

religion,

and Our

Jeff M. Shore

trilogy

is

the

women and

Religions.

associate professor of English and

Zen Buddhism at the Hanazono University in Kyoto, Japan. Originally from Philadelphia, he has undertaken Zen study and practice for over twenty-five years, the last seventeen in Zen monasteries in Japan. Shore has translated, written, and lectured extensively on Zen Buddhism and the F.A.S. Society, and has edited the FAS Society is

Rinzai Zen-affiliated

Journal for the

Huston Smith

last fifteen years.

is

Thomas

Watson Professor

J.

of

and

Religion

Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, Syracuse University. For fifteen years he

and

for a

Saint Louis.

gious

Most

studies,

include

was professor of philosophy at M.I.T., at Washington University in

decade before that he taught

recently he has served as visiting professor of

University of California,

The World's

Religions,

The

World's

Illustrated

Forgotten Truth, Reyond the Post-Modern Mind, and

reli-

His eight books

Berkeley.

Religions,

One Nation Under

God: The Triumph of the Native American Church.

Joel R. Smith

is

associate professor of philosophy at Skidmore College

Saratoga Springs,

New York. He

received degrees in religion and

losophy from Vanderbilt University. His work

phy of religion includes

articles

New York

comparative philoso-

comparing Nietzche and Nishitani, and

comparing Kierkegaard and Shinran. ber of the

in

in

in phi-

He

is

co-founder and board

mem-

State Independent College Consortium for Stud)

in India.

John

Smith is Clark Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Yale University. He is a past president of the American Philosophical E.

Association,

Eastern Division, and general editor emeritus of

Worlzs of Jonathan Edwards. His books include Experience

The

and God,

Purpose and Thought: The Meaning of Pragmatism, and Quasi-Religious:

Humanism, Marxism, Nationalism. Joan Stambaugh University of

is

professor of philosophy at Hunter College of the C

New

York.

She

is

author of Impermanence

and other works on comparative philosophy. She

numerous works by Martin Heidegger, including

is

On

is

it\

Buddha Nature

also translator ot

lime and Being.

4-4-4-

Valdo H. Viglielmo

List of contributors

received his advanced degrees from the department

of Far Eastern languages of Harvard University.

He

has specialized in

the field of Japanese literature and thought, with emphasis on the erature and thought of the

modern

lit-

and especially the philosotranslated numerous works by

period,

phy of the Kyoto School. He has also such authors as Soseki Natsume, Yasunari Kawabata, Kitaro Nishida, and Hajime Tanabe. He has taught at Harvard University and Princeton University as well as at Meiji Gakuin University, Tokyo University, Tokyo Women's Christian College, and International Christian University in Japan.

He

is

currently professor of Japanese

Hans Waldenfels

is

lit-

Manoa.

erature at the University of Hawai'i at

professor of fundamental theology, theology of non-

Christian religions, and philosophy of religion in the faculty of

Catholic theology, University of Bonn.

He

is

a

member

Roman

of the Society

of Jesus, and has twice been dean of the faculty at the University of

Bonn.

His

many

publications

include Absolute Nothingness:

Foundations for a Buddhist-Christian Dialogue.

A MASAO ABE BIBLIOGRAPHY: PUBLICATIONS IN ENGLISH BOOKS Zen and Western Thought, William

R. LaFleur, ed. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i

Press, 1985.

A

Zen

Life:

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T Suzuki

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Remembered, Masao Abe,

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Study ofDogen: His Philosophy and Religion, Steven Heine, ed. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992.

Buddhism and

Interfaith Dialogue: Part I of a Two-Volume Sequel to Zen and Western Thought, Steven Heine, ed. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1995.

Zen and Comparative

Studies: Part II of a

Two-Volume Sequel

to

Zen and Western

Thought, Steven Heine, ed. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1997.

CHAPTERS "The Idea of Purity

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IN

Mahayana Buddhism,"

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"A Buddhism of Self-Awakening, not a Buddhism of Faith," in J. Tilakasiri, ed., Anjali: A Felicitation Volume Presented to Oliver Hector de Alwis Wijesekera on his Sixtieth Birthday. Peradeniya, Ceylon: University of Ceylon, 1970, 33-39.

"The Buddhist View on Inter-Religious Dialogue,"

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C. Das, and

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'Non-being and Mu: The Metaphysical Nature of Negativity in the East and the West," H. Das, C. Das, and S. Pal, eds., Buddhism and Jainism. Cuttack, India: Institute of Oriental and Orissan Studies, 1976, 52-60.

'Man and Nature

in Christianity

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George

F.

McLean,

Nature. Calcutta: Oxford University Press, 1978, 165-172.

ed.,

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Man and

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George

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'Religion

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Global Age: Their Essential Character and Mutual Rela-

tionship," in International Conference of Scientists

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Leaders on Shading the Future of Mankind, 1978, 24-29.

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Annual Colloquia

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A

in japan,

Zen-Christian Pil-

1967-1976. Tokyo:

Zen-Christian Colloquium, 1981, 36-44. 'Zen and Nietzsche," in Nathan Katz, ed., Buddhist and Western Philosophy.

New

Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1981, 1-17.

'God, Emptiness, and the True Self," in Frederick Franck, ed., The Buddha Eye:

Anthology of the Kyoto School.

'Man and Nature

in Christianity

dha Eye:

An

New York:

and Buddhism,"

An

Crossroads, 1982, 61-74.

in Frederick Franck, ed.,

Anthology of the Kyoto School.

New

The Bud-

York: Crossroads, 1982,

148-156.

'Emptiness

is

Suchness," in The Buddha Eye:

An Anthology

of the Kyoto School.

New

York: Crossroads, 1982, 203-208.

'Zen in Japan," in H. Brinker, R.

P.

Japan, and East Asian Arts.

Kramers, and C. Ouwehand, eds., Zen in China, New York: Peter Lang, 1984, 47-72.

'The Oneness of Practice and Attainment: Implications for the Relation between

Means and Ends,"

in

William R. LaFleur,

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Dynamic Unity

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The Experience of Religious Gower, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Co., 1985, 163-190. Askari, eds.,

'The Problem of Evil in Christianity and Buddhism," in Paul O. Ingram and Frederick

J.

Streng, eds., Buddhist-Christian Dialogue,

Mutual Renewal and

Trans-

formation. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1986, 139-154. 'Religious Tolerance

and

Human

Rights:

dler, ed., Religious Liberty

and

A Buddhist Perspective," in Leonard SwiHuman Rights in Nations and in Religions.

Philadelphia: Ecumenical Press, 1986, 193-211.

"A Buddhist Response

to Dr.

Persective,"' in

Mohamed

Talbi's Paper, 'Religious Liberty:

Leonard Swidler,

ed., Religious Liberty

and

A Muslim

Human

Rights in

Nations and in Religions. Philadelphia: Ecumenical Press, 1986, 189-193.

"The Problem of Time in Heidegger and Dogen," in Alistair Kee and Eugene Thomas Long, eds., Being and Truth: Essays in Honour of John Macquarrie. London: SCM Press, 1986,200-244.

""

"The Problem of Evil

BLbUoarcLpky

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and Buddhism," in G. McLean and H. Meynell, Washington, D.C.: University Press of America,

in Christianity

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eds., Person

Society.

1988, 125-142.

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and History: Nishitani's View of History and its Examination," in Unno, ed., The Religious Philosophy of Nishitani Keiji: Encounter with Emptiness. Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1989, 279-304.

'Will, Sunyata,

Taitetsu

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and Christian

Trinity: Essays

and Explorations. Mahwah,

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and

Faith:

Zen and

Christianity," in Paul Griffiths, ed., Christianity

through Non-Christian Eyes. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1990, 171-180. 'Kenotic

God and Dynamic

Sunyata," in John B. Cobb,

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A

and Christopher

Jr.

Ives, eds.,

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NY: Orbis Books, 1990, 3-65. 'A Rejoinder," in

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Jr.

and Christopher

Ives, eds.,

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A

Books,

1990, 157-200. 'Preface," in

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Mitchell, Spirituality and Emptiness:

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'The Self in Jung and Zen," in Robert L. Moore, ed., Self and Liberation: The JungBuddhism Dialogue. Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1992, 128-140. 'Negation in

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and Theology.

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in Tillich." in R.

ed.,

Negation

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'Kenotic

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Sunyata," in Christopher Ives, ed. Divine Emptiness and A Buddhist-Jeunsh-Christian Conversation with Masao

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Ahe. Valley Forge, PA.: Trinity Press, 1995, 25-90. 'A Rejoinder," in Christopher Ives, ed., Divine Emptiness

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Living-Dying Life," Pacific Philosophy Forum

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4

1965): 96-102.

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2

Review Article: Paul Tillich's Christianity and the Encounter of the World Religions," The Eastern Buddhist, n.s. I, no. 1 (September 1965): 109-122. Reprinted in Indian Philosophy and Culture 19, no. 2 (June 1974): 107-124. In

Memory

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of Paul Tillich,"

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I,

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128-131. Professor Abe's Reply to the Debate," Japanese Religions 4, no. 2 (March 1966): 2657.

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Mahayana Buddhism," Numen 13, no. 3 (October 1966): 183Way 42, no. 4 (February 1968): 158-162.

189. Reprinted in T7ie Middle

Zen and Compassion," The Eastern Buddhist,

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1

(August 1967): 54-68.

Christianity and Buddhism: Centering around Science and Nihilism," Japanese Reli-

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God, Emptiness, and the True

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2

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1969): 15-30.

Zen and Western Thought,"

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ber 1970): 501-541.

Man

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I

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MasaoAbe and John Cobb

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and Buddhist Personal Transformation,'" Buddhist-Christ-

ian Studies 2 (1982): 45-49.

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FAS Zen

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of Truth," Japanese Religions 14, no. 3

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Religions in Japan,"

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Scottish Journal of

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BibLCoarcipku

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1987): 41-66. 'Nishida's Philosophy of 'Place,'" International Philosophical Quarterly XXVIII, no. 4

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Nishida Bibliography," with Lydia Brull, International Philosophical Quarterly XXVIII, no.4 (December 1988): 373-381.

'Transformation in

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to

John Cobb," Buddhist Christian Studies

8,

(1988): 65-74.

Buddhist Christian Conversation: A Buddhist Perspective," Horizons: The Journal of the College Theology Society 1 5 (fall 1988): 350-354, 358-364.

'Spirituality

and Liberation:

A

'The Concept of Self as Reflected in Zen Buddhist Literature,"

Wind

Bell XXII, no.

1

(spring 1988): 3-9. Spirituality

and Liberation:

A

Buddhist-Christian Conversation with Paul

Knitter,"

F.

Horizons 15, no. 2 (1988): 347-364.

'Dogens View on Time and Space," The Eastern Buddhist XXI, no. 2 (autumn 1988): 1-35.

The Problem

of Self-Centeredness as the Root-Source of

Human

Suffering," Japan-

ese Religions 15, no. 4 (July 1989): 15-25.

There

is

no

Common

Denominator

for

World

Religions:

The

Positive

Meaning

Negative Statement," The Journal of Ecumenical Studies 26, no. 1989): 72-81.

The Impact

my

of Dialogue with Christianity on

Buddhist Christian Studies

9,

1

of this

(winter

Self-understanding as a Buddhist,"

(1989): 62-70.

'God and Absolute Nothingness," Studies in

Interreligious Dialogue

1,

no.

1

(1991):

58-69. 'Nishitani Keiji 1900-1990,"

The Eastern Buddhist XXIV,

no. 2

(autumn 1991): 149-

152.

"Inverse Correspondence' in the Philosophy of Nishida:

The Emergence

of the

Notion," International Philosophical Quarterly XXXII, no. 3 (September 1992): 325-344.

'What 'Zen

is

Religion,"

The Eastern Buddhist XXV, no.l (spring 1992): 51-69.

Buddhism and Hasidism

—

Similarities

and Contrasts," Religious Traditions 15-

17 (1992-1994): 6-13.

'Response to Eugene B. Borowitz," Buddhist Christian Studies 13 (1993): 227-231.

Zen and Buddhism," The Eastern Buddhist XXVI

Two Types

,

no.

1

(spring 1993): 26-49.

of Unity and Religious Pluralism," The Eastern Buddhist XXVI, (autumn 1993): 76-85.

A

no. 2

Report on the 1993 Parliament of World Religions," The Eastern Buddhist XXVI, no. 2

(autumn 1993): 73-75.

--

BibLioaraphu

'Suffering in the Light of our Time,

4-

Our Time

51

in the Light of Suffering,"

The Eastern

Buddhist XXVII, no. 2 (Autumn 1994): 1-13.

The

Logic of Absolute Nothingness, as Expounded by Nishida Kitaro," The Eastern Buddhist XXVIII, no. 2 (autumn 1995): 167-174.

'The Problem of 'Inverse Correspondence' in the Philosophy of Nishida: Toward a Critical Understanding," International Philosophical Quarterly XXXV, no. 4 (December 1995): 419-436.

TRANSLATIONS Nishida Kitaro, "The Problem of Japanese Culture," trans, with Richard DeMartino, in Sources of the Japanese Tradition. NewYork: Columbia University Press, 1958, 350-365. Shin'ichi, "The Characteristics of Oriental Nothingness," trans, with Richard DeMartino, in Philosophical Studies of Japan 2 (1960): 65-97.

Hisamatsu

Dogen, Bendowa,

in

The Eastern Buddhist,

n.s. IV, no.

1

(May

Dogen, Shdbdgenzo Ikkamyouju, in The Eastern Buddhist,

1971): 124-157.

n.s.

IV,

no. 2 (October

1971): 108-118.'

Dogen, Shdbdgenzo Zenki and Shoji,

in

The Eastern Buddhist,

n.s. V, no.

1

(May

1972):

70-80.

Dogen, Shdbdgenzo Genjdkdan,

in

The Eastern Buddhist,

n.s. V, no. 2

(October 1972):

129-140.

Dogen, Shdbdgenzo Zazengi and Furkanzazengi, (Octouer 1973): 115-128. Dogen, Shdbdgenzo Sammai-d-Zammai,

in

in

The Eastern Buddhist,

The Eastern Buddhist,

n.s. VI, no. 2

n.s. VII, no.

1

(May

1974): 116-123.

Dogen, Shdbdgenzo Buddha-nature, Part I, (October 1975): 94-1 12; Part II, no. 2 (October 1976): 71-87. Kitaro Nishida,

An

in

The Eastern Buddhist,

IX, no.

1

(May

n.s. VIII, no. 2

1976): 87-105; Part

III, IX,

New

Haven:

Inquiry into the Good, trans, with Christopher A. Ives.

Yale University Press, 1990.

INDEX

Abba School, 136, 138, 139 Abe, Masao, on Awakening, 7, 9; on Dharma, 378; on education, 408409; on Emptiness, 92-100, 382384, 398-400, 401-402; on ethics, 71, 229-230, 316, 387, 390-391, 402-403; and F.A.S., 35-40, 406-

Blake, William, 158

Bohme, Jocob, 145 Eugene B., 189-190, Bragt, Jan van, 246 Borowitz,

Buri, Fritz, 220-231,

Chappell, David, 69

and Heidegger, 274-275, 278-282, 298-302, 400-401; on Hinduism, 403-404; and Hisamatsu, 4-7, 11-13, 20, 129, 362; on the Holocaust, 73, 98, 177-180, 189-195, 387-388; on James, 396-397; on jinen, 374-375; on kenosis, 52-55, 62, 72, 133-135, 380-381, 384, 389, 394; on Nishida, 260-268, 372-373, 378-379; and Pope John Paul II, 139, 381; and process thought, 66-68; and Pure Land Buddhism, 3-4, 5, 36, 68, 118; on Rahner, 394-395; and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, 137, 139; on Tillich, 393-394; on Whitehead, 375-376; and Zen, 350-352, 405

Chih-i, 93, 341

group, see

The

International

Buddhist-Christian Theological

Encounter

392-393

Chan-jan, 93

407; and the Focolare, 135-138, 381

Abe-Cobb

191, 195

Ch'ing-yuan, 290, 385

Cobb, John

B.,

61,91,96, 117, 119,

128-129, 177, 194, 359,

Coda, Piero, 138-139 compassion, 99, 217-219, 238-240, 406 Confucianism, 316, 320, 323-325, 333 Dalai Lama, 149, 316, 322 Dallapiccola, Natalia, 138

deconstruction, 157, 158

DeMartino, Richard, 10, 14, 239 Dharma, 96-100, 344-346 Dilworth, David, 26, 29 Dogen, 79, 86, 226-227, 252-254, 261, 297-298, 301, 303, 339-343; on impermanence, 306-307; and Shinran, 337, 343-347; and Soto, 338; andTendai, 340-341

agape, 134-135, 153-160, 203, 204,

207, 236-238, 393-394 anxiety,

234-236

Augustine, 166

Awakening,

5, 7, 9, 57, 232, 238, 241, 244, 301, 340-341, 357,407

Balthasar;

Hans Urs von, 138

Barth, Karl, 152, 154, 155, 212, 223

Berthrong, John, 70

Eckhart, Meister, 145, 152, 154, 155,

367 Egan, Keith, 133 Emptiness, 42-47, 52-56, 92-100, 108113, 134, 244-245, 279-282, 304312, 358-360, 401-402; and Being, 284-295, 398-400; and compassion, 239-241. 406; and Dharma, 96-100, 378; and ethics, 215-219; and God,

J

4-5+ 144-150, 152-160, 201-210, 389;

•

and Holy Nothingness, 187-188, 387; and other religions, xix-xx; and unity, 382-384

ind ex Kung, Hans, 70,91, 128, 211-219, 390391 Kyoto School, 23, 32-34, 77-78, 90, 104, 106, 114, 119, 128, 130, 144,

163-164, 222, 225-226, 252-259,

FAS.

Society, 5, 129, 130, 168-169;

and Abe, xvi; 35-40, 336, 406-407, Fackenheim, Emil, 190, 195 Focolare, 135-138, 140 Fondi, Enzo, 138, 139

269, 296, 336

Lubich, Chiara, 136, 137, 381 Luther, Martin, 152, 200, 201,

great-doubt-mass, 16-17, 37, 57, 355

mahakaruna, see compassion Mitchell, Donald, 74, 192, 202, 371 Moltmann, Jurgen, 98

Heidegger, Martin, 152, 154, 161-162,

Nagarjuna, 44-45, 47

Great Death, 20, 50, 56-57, 349, 355

167, 274-275, 278-282, 297-302,

Niebuhr, Reinhold, 233

385,400-401 Hinduism, 148, 329-334, 403-404

Nietzsche, Friedrich, 153-160, 283,

Hisamatsu, Shin'ichi, 4-7, 11-13, 16-17,

Nishida, Kitaro, 77, 82, 252; and Abe,

357-358

and kenosis, 49-51; and the 105-114,311, 378-379; and pure experience, 4546, 263-268, 396-397; and national polity, 32-34, 372-373; and Western philosophy, 260-268

20, 35, 88, 117, 129, 136, 226, 246,

xv; 23;

255, 258, 297, 362, 406-407

logic of place, 46-48,

Holocaust, 73, 98, 132-133, 177-180, 189-193; and karma, 183-195, 387-

388

HuShih, 316 Hui-neng, 55 Hui-yuan, 319-221

Nishitani, Keiji, 47, 128, 130, 162-163;

on kenosis, 51; and Chiara Lubich, 136

Hung-jen, 47 Husserl,

Edmund, 263 other power,

4, 36,

245-247

Inada, Kenneth, 96 International Buddhist-Christian

Con-

ference, 118, 119-120, 128,220-221 International Buddhist-Christian Theological

Encounter,

xvii,

69-71, 73-74,

91, 117, 119, 124, 128, 130, 143,

242,329, 331, 356-357 Ives, Christopher,

71-72

James, William, 263-266, 306, 396-397 jinen, 51, 55-57,244, 374-375

Pannenberg, Wolfhart, 132, 199-210,

388-389 Parliament of the World's Religions,

211-212 Council

Pontifical

for Interreligious

Dialogue, 137, 139, 381

Pseudo-Dionysius, 133

Purdue Interfaith Project, xvii, 192, 354 Pure Land Buddhism, 4, 5, 36, 68, 71, 72, 133-135, 147, 226, 245-247; and Zen, 343-347

kabbalah, 178-180, 386 kenosis, 49-55, 62, 72, 94, 96, 132,

133-135, 367, 380-381; and compassion, 240; and Emptiness, 138-139,

Rahner, Karl, 94, 242-247 Rubenstein, Richard, 132-133, 178

Kobori, Nanrei, 130

245-247 138-139 Shinran, 147, 246, 337, 343-347

Kohlberg, Lawrence, 97

Shirieda, John, 139, 381

Kosen, Imakita, 41

Shotoku, Prince, 322-324

152-160, 201-210, 384, 395 koan, 18

self

power,

4, 36,

Servais, Jacques,

index Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies, xvii,

Trinity, 132,

134-135, 200, 204, 206-

207. 208-210

120

Socrates,

4-55

356

Soen, Shaku, 41-42 Staal, Frits,

Ueda, Shizuteru, 221, 231

331-332

suchness, 42-45, 50, 52, 55-56, 239, 293, 309, 311, 365,401

Suchocki, Marjorie, 131-132

Watsuji, Tetsuro, 77, 252

Whitehead, Alfred North, 67-68, 224225, 375-376

Sunyatd, see Emptiness

Suzuki, D.T.,

xii,

41, 43-44, 239, 252,

Yusa, Michiko, 33, 373

255,258, 316-317,402 Zen,

xii,

52, 143-144, 156, 177, 226; as

Takeda, Rvusei, 71

practiced by Abe, 6-7, 11-13; and

Takeuchi, Yoshinori, 24, 26, 315, 343 Tanabe, Hajime, 4, 23, 24, 77, 98, 252,

ethics,

296, 343

Tan

Luan, 147

394 Tokiwa, Gishin, 136

and non-thinking, 392; and the present moment, 365-368, 407; and Pure Land, 343-347; Rinzai and Soto, 339-343 logic of, 50;

practice, 168-170;

tathata, see suchness. Tillich, Paul, 119, 185,

215-219, 239, 390-391; and rights, 316-325, 402-403; interpreted by Abe, 350-352, 405;

human

232-241, 393-

L

BUDDHISM

".

.

.

who know Masao Abe have come

all of us

to recognize

.

.

.

the signatures of his distinguished career: sincerity, generosity, diligence,

and single-minded dedication

moving Zen Buddhism to

plumb

the

in

spirit

human

—from

and give

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efforts

larger play

history.

the Foreword by

Masao Abe: A Zen Life of Dialogue life

mainstream of humanity's

into the

human

task of

to the

is

Huston Smith

a compilation of essays that cover the

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communicators of the twentieth century. Masao Abe has opened up logue between Japan and the West. in the

He

is

considered the leading living

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early mentor, as the foremost

Through

stories

and

a rich dia-

Zen

figure

T. Suzuki, his

exponent of Zen Buddhism in the West.

recollections, thirty-five leading intellectual figures

explore Abe's encounter with the West, including his

work on

interfaith

dialogue as a basis for world peace as well as his comparative philosophical scholarship over the past thirty years. This book

ordinary step ahead in the encounter between

"The contributors bring

to life the

is

a retrospective

Zen and

thought

and an extra-

the West.

and work

of one of

the greatest religious teachers of the contemporary world."

— Donald W. Mitchell at

Purdue University

is

a professor of comparative

in Indiana.

The Dynamics of Spiritual Life

Publishers Weekly

in

He

is

philosophy of religion

the author of Spirituality and Emptiness:

Buddhism and

Christianity.

U.S. $24.95

CHARLES Boston

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TUTTLE CO., VT Tokyo

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