Dōgen and the Deconstruction of Concepts
In the second half of the twentieth century, a tendency among English language scholars of comparative theology and philosophy emerged in portraying Buddhist philosophy, and Japanese Zen 禪 Buddhist philosophy in particular, as a “philosophy of nothingness.” In Zen and the Western World, Masao Abe (阿部正雄 1915–2006) makes the claim that the Kyoto school developed a philosophy based on a (in Abe’s words, “the”) Buddhist perspective and contributed to world philosophy the concept of “absolute nothingness” (zettai mu, 絕對無) (1985, 128, 158–159). Leaving aside the fact that the prevalent East-West rhetoric has become completely untenable and that Buddhist philosophy and even the philosophy of the Kyoto school are not monolithic, Abe still makes a valuable observation. Two of the three main thinkers of the Kyoto school, Kitarō Nishida 西田幾多郎 (1870–1945) and Keiji Nishitani 西谷啓治 (1900–1990), did indeed develop philosophical systems based on the conceptions of “absolute non-being” (zettai mu, 絕對無)2 and “emptiness” (kū, 空), respectively. Both claimed that the sources for these philosophical conceptions lay in the Buddhist tradition, particularly in the texts of the Prajñāpāramitā literature, and the Chan as well as Zen Buddhist traditions. In addition, they agreed that a philosophy that takes “absolute non-being” or “emptiness” as its basic paradigm is well suited to solve some of the fundamental problems created by Cartesian dualism. However, there are also differences between them: Nishitani suggested that “emptiness” is the better suited concept for the paradigm of a philosophy that eschews the traps of dualism, including the dualism between “being” and “non-being.” Nishida, on the other hand, argued that a monistic philosophy that resolves the tension between the opposites constitutes an implied dualism. Using a phraseology that connects opposites with the character for soku 即, literally “is,” but more appropriately translated as “and-yet,” he expresses an existential ambiguity and suggests that while difference should not be essentialized, it should not be abolished either.3 Both philosophers identify as their inspiration a variety of Buddhist texts and especially the writings of Zen Master Dōgen 道元禪師 (1200–1253). I believe that Dōgen provides the blueprint for such a non-dualistic philosophy. In this paper, I will attempt to demonstrate how Dōgen’s overall non-dualistic worldview affects his philosophies of language and practice.
In The Treasury of the True Dharma Eye (Shōbōgenzō 正法眼藏), Dōgen develops what some of the Kyoto school philosophers will later call a “philosophy of nothingness” based on his examination of the records of the Chinese Chan masters and other Buddhist texts. However, Dōgen, like Nishitani later, seems to privilege the term “emptiness” over “non-being.” The term “emptiness” constitutes the central concept of Madhyamaka Buddhist philosophy while Chan thinkers tend to employ the terms “nonbeing,” “being-and-non being (youwu, 有無),” or various derivations thereof. The reason for this is that, while many Mahāyāna Buddhist philosophers that emphasize “emptiness,” also known as śūnyatāvāda, critique the dualistic structures inherent in conceptual language from a third perspective, many Chan Buddhist texts directly aim at the deconstruction of language itself. This deconstruction can be linguistic or non-linguistic and performative in nature. Dōgen inherits from the Chan tradition a deep distrust of conceptual structures and from śūnyatāvāda, a method to destabilize language. This paper will read Dōgen’s conceptions of “nothingness” and “emptiness” in the context of his predecessors in order to explore in what way his philosophy can shed light on the nature of language and its relationship to non-verbal communication.
At this point in the book, the reader will be quite familiar with the philosophies of the Madhyamaka school, especially with that of Nāgārjuna. The philosophy of emptiness emerged around two thousand years ago in the Prajñāpāramitā (Perfected Wisdom) literature. According to Paul Williams (1989), “wisdom” (prajñā, 般若) “is said to be a state of consciousness which understands emptiness (śūnyatā), the absence of self or essence, even in dharmas” (43). This wisdom, however, is depicted in the large and philosophically diverse body of the Prajñāpāramitā literature as either “conceptual” or “non-conceptual” (44). The Heart Sūtra (Mahā-prajñāpāramitā-hrdaya-sūtra, 般若波羅蜜多心經) (T 8.253), which is falsely identified as the nutshell version of what is mistakenly held to be the shared teaching of the vast body of the Prajñāpāramitā literature by texts in the Japanese Buddhist tradition, gives us, nevertheless, a quick glimpse at the key concepts of śūnyatāvāda.
The Heart Sūtra, portrayed as a dialogue between the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara and Śāriputra, roughly divides into two sections: a litany of negations of everything important to the teaching of early Buddhism and a section that introduces the mantra “gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhisvāhā” as the means to “unsurpassed awakening” (anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhim, 阿耨多羅三藐三菩提, 無上菩提). Huayan thinkers will later classify “unsur-passed awakening” as the highest of the “five kinds of enlightenments” (wuputi, 五菩提) (T 35.1733.412). A closer look, however, reveals that this extremely short text, which has become famous for its formula “form is emptiness, emptiness is form” (sejishikong kongjishise, 色即是空, 空即是色) (T 8.253.849), introduces three basic usages of “emptiness.” In short, “emptiness” 1) negates all essences; 2) rejects the major early Buddhist teachings such as the “four noble truths” (āryasatya, 四聖諦), the “five aggregates” (pañcaskandha, 五蘊), the “eighteen sense worlds” (āyatanadhātu, 十八界), as well as the notion of a transcendent world of bliss, nirvāṇa (niepan, 涅槃), conceived of in contrast to an immanent world of suffering, saṃsāra (shengsi, 生死); and 3) implies that detachment functions as a soteriological means. The phrase “form is emptiness, emptiness is form, form is not different from emptiness, emptiness not different from form” (T 8.253.849) expresses these three dimensions of “emptiness”: because “form” (rūpa, 色) and “emptiness” (śūnyatā, 空) do not have an essence, they are not essentially different from each other. Therefore, any ideology privileging one over the other is meaningless, and attachment to either one is a trap that obstructs wisdom. This threefold dictum of no essence, no ideology, no attachment, while still in a rather rudimentary form in the Heart Sūtra, provides the basis for the “theory of emptiness” in Mahāyāna Buddhist thought.
Two of the śūnyatāvāda texts that are important to the current discussion are Nāgārjuna’s (second/third century CE) Mūlamadhyamakārikā, and the Diamond Sūtra (Vajracchedikā-prajñāpāramitā-sūtra 金剛般若波羅蜜經) (T 8.235). In the former, Nāgārjuna introduces his tetralemma as the method, literally a “medicine,”4 to destabilize the conceptual language of early Buddhist discourses, while the latter constitutes the bridge between śūnyatāvāda philosophy and Zen thought. The twenty-fifth chapter of the Mūlamadhyamakārikā argues that “there is no distinction between saṃsāra and nirvāṇa. There is no distinction between nirvāṇa and saṃsāra.” This is so because nirvāṇa is neither an “existent” (bhāva), nor an “absence” (abhāva), nor “both an existent and an absence,” nor “neither an existent nor an absence” (Siderits 2013, 293– 302). Nāgārjuna suggests here that, since saṃsāra and nirvāṇa are devoid of “self-existence” (svabhāva), the difference between them cannot be essential either. The method he employs systematically reveals the inability of conceptual language to express reality in a sufficient and appropriate way.
The Diamond Sūtra picks up the same theme of the insufficiency of conceptual language even though its context is a soteriological project rather than philosophical discourse. The text is constructed as Śākyamuni’s answer to Subhūti’s question inquiring how to walk on the bodhisattva path. In his response, Śākyamuni elaborates on the notion of “wisdom” (prajñā). Even though the Diamond Sūtra’s full name identifies it as a member of the wisdom literature, the text itself uses the term “wisdom” rather sparsely and, even then, mostly in the two compounds “eye of wisdom” (prajñācakṣus, 慧眼) and “perfected wisdom” (prajñāpāramitā, 般若波羅蜜). The term “emptiness” (śūnyatā, 空) does not occur at all.5 Rather, the goal of Diamond Sūtra is to juxtapose various sets of opposites in order to question the sufficiency of conceptual language as a guide to religious practice. Kumārajīva’s (鳩摩羅什 344–413 CE) translation (and for the discussion of “emptiness” in Zen Buddhism, the Chinese translation is of more relevance than the Sanskrit original) facilitates this juxtapositions by what D. T. Suzuki 鈴木大拙 (1870–1966) will later call the “logic of sokuhi” (sokuhi no ronri 即非の論理). As Suzuki has pointed out, Kumārajīva’s translation of the Diamond Sūtra uses the Chinese phrase “is not” (jifei 即非) to construct phrases of the form “A is not A.” The full formal expression of this logic of sokuhi Suzuki provides us with is, “We call A ‘A’; however, A is not A; therefore we call it A” (SDZ 1968–1971, 5: 380–1). While many scholars, such as Shigenori Nagatomo (2000), follow Suzuki’s suggestion and interpret these phrases to indicate a “logic of the religious experience,”6 Rein Raud (2003) and I (Kopf 2005) believe that the intent of these kinds of phrases is to destabilize conceptual language and to suggest that the method for bodhisattvas to “control their thoughts” is non-conceptual.
As I have discussed elsewhere (Kopf 2005), it is possible to identify five kinds of conceptual constructions using the phrase “jifei” (is not) in Kumārajīva’s translation of the Diamond Sūtra. The prototypes of these five formulations are 1) “Buddha said ‘the perfected wisdom is not the perfected wisdom’” (T 8.235.750); 2) “the world-honored one said ‘the views of self, person, sentient being, and life are not these views; therefore, we call them the views of self, persons, sentient beings, and life’” (T 8.235.752); 3) “what we call the Buddha dharma is not the Buddha dharma” (T 8.235.749); 4) “what we call ‘all dharma s’ is not all dharma s, therefore we call them ‘all dharma s’” (T 8.235.751); and 5) “the Tathāgatha said ‘totality is not totality, therefore we call it totality; Subhūti, totality is incomprehensible’” (T 8.235.752). If we were to translate these phrases into formulas the way Suzuki did, they would read as follows: 1) “A is not A”; 2) “A is not A, therefore we call it A”; 3) “what we call A is not A”; 4) “what we call A is not A, therefore, we call it A”; 5) “A is not A, therefore we call it A, because A is incomprehensible.” It is really important to note that, for the most part, these phrases do not establish a logical contradiction, but rather contrast concepts with reality.7 In the two instances where the formula could be interpreted to indicate a contradiction (prototypes one and five), the terms in question constitute concepts signifying transcendence, “perfected wisdom” and “totality,” and not particular objects. Both are, by definition, beyond opposition and thus beyond contradiction. The point Kumārajīva’s translation of the Diamond Sūtra seems to make is that concepts and positions do not have a one-to-one correspondence with the reality they suggest and are thus insufficient. The wisdom of the bodhisattvas is nonconceptual, and its attainment requires a systematic deconstruction, as we would say today, of conceptual language. It is for these reasons that the Diamond Sūtra, and more specifically Kumārajīva’s translation thereof, enjoyed quite some popularity among Chan thinkers and practitioners.
The Platform Sūtra (Liuzudashifabaotanjing, 六祖大師法寶壇經) (T 48.2008), which is attributed to the sixth Chinese patriarch of Chan Buddhism, Huineng 慧能, directly takes up the legacy of the Diamond Sūtra. Huineng’s name roughly translates into “the possibility of wisdom” and the main theme of the Platform Sūtra is “wisdom.” Not only is Huineng himself said to have decided to join the Buddhist community (sangha) upon hearing a recitation of the Diamond Sūtra, but also the Platform Sūtra declares explicitly that “the heart of anyone who hears or explains the Diamond Sūtra will open up to awakening” (T 48.2008.350). Most of all, however, the text takes “wisdom” (bore, 般若) as its central focus. The well-known poetry competition, the focal point of Huineng’s biography that opens the Platform Sūtra, introduces his teaching as the “medicine of emptiness” that negates the sense of reification if not essentialism in Shenxiu’s 神秀 poem: “The body is the bodhi tree/the mind is like a standing, clear mirror/always keep on wiping it/do not allow the dust to cling” by responding with “the bodhi is not a tree/neither does the clear mirror stand/originally there is not a single thing/where to should the dust cling” (T 48.2008.348). Huineng’s poem accomplishes nothing short of a thorough negation of Shenxiu’s statements. Philosophically, it aims to reject any kind of essentialism. Accordingly, the text defines “wisdom” (bore, 般若) negatively as “no-thought” (wunian, 無念) (T 48.2008.351) and positively as prajñā (zhihui, 智慧), that is, the knowledge that “all is one and one is all” (yiqiejiyi yijiyiqie, 一切即一, 一即一切). While “the deluded person explains, the wise person practices. There even are deluded people who quietly sit with a heart of emptiness.” And again, “the deluded person utters a thought, the practitioner practices wisdom” (T 48.2008.350). Finally, “having no thoughts is correct, having thoughts is evil” (Y 48.2008.355).
This somewhat lengthy discussion of the role of “emptiness” in the Prajñāpāramitā literature and its continuation in the Platform Sūtra has identified the main themes that will become formative for Chan ideology as it developed in late Tang and mostly Song China: 1) a distrust of conceptual language as an adequate means to attain awakening but even to describe reality; 2) a relatively systematic destabilization of language; 3) the use of what can be called a dialectical method to break out of a dualistic framework of language and thought; and 4) an emphasis on practice over words. These themes become the building blocks for the Chan discourse that favors a rhetoric of silence and immediacy over what was referred to as doctrinal Buddhism. This rhetoric of silence is most visible in the four principles of Chan and the so-called flower sermon. The four principles of Chan, as introduced by the Records of Linji (Zhenzhou linji huizhao chanshi yulu, 鎮州臨濟慧照禪師語錄) (T 47.1985), summarize the teaching of Chan Buddhism as follows: “There is a tradition outside of the scriptures; it does not rely on letters and words, just point to the heart of the person, see your nature and become a Buddha” (T 47.1985.495). Here, Linji explicitly juxtaposes “doctrinal” (jiao, 教) and “meditation” (chan, 禪) Buddhism and identifies introspection and self-awareness as the sole methods for becoming a Buddha. The phrase “see your own nature” (jianxing, 見性) later becomes the key slogan for many Japanese Rinzai Zen Buddhist teachers.
The sixth case of the Gateless Barrier (Wumenguan, 無門關) (T 48.2005) introduces the rhetoric of silence in a narrative from. Written in the Song dynasty, it recalls a story from the Buddha’s life that had not made it into the scriptures in the first 1,500 years of Buddhism. When the disciples gathered around Śākyamuni on Vulture Peak, he simply held up a flower and his student Mahākāśyapa smiled. Asked by his students to explain, he famously replied,
I possess the treasury of the true dharma eye; it is the heart of nirvāṇa, and the mysterious dharma gate without form. It does not rely on letters or words but constitutes is a special tradition outside of the scriptures. I have just transmitted it to Mahākāśyapa (T 49.2005.293).
This quote is important for our present discussion because it locates the first two of the four principles of Chan Buddhism in the life of Buddha and thus provides the highest possible authority for the rhetoric of Chan, which permeates a lot of Chan teaching and especially the Zen thought of D. T. Suzuki, who popularized Zen Buddhism in the English language.
On the other hand, Chan texts inherit the Mahāyāna conception that “saṃsāra is not different from nirvāṇa and nirvāṇa is not different from saṃsāra.” This non-dual position is expressed in sayings such as “this mind is the Buddha” (jixinshifo, 即心是佛) (T 48.2005.296). The Wumenquan locates this phrase in a conversation between Daoyi Mazu 馬祖道一 (709–788 CE) and Damai Fachang 大梅法常 (752–839 CE). It is one of many Chan phrases, including Linji’s infamous “[t]he Buddha dharma is not useful nor does it accomplish anything; it constitutes nothing but the everyday and the ordinary; have a shit take a piss; put on your clothes, eat and drink, retire when tired” (47.1985.498) that collapse the distinction between the Buddha and sentient beings. These kinds of sayings are iconoclastic, on the one side, and deeply philosophical, on the other, since they leave, as I will argue below, no room for either dualism or monism. I cite Mazu’s phrase here because Dōgen wrote a commentary on it and Nishida quoted it to develop his concept of the “self-identity of absolute contradictories” (zetai mujunteki jiko dōitsu, 絕對矛盾的自己同一) (NKZ 8: 516). Even the Platform Sūtra declares, despite its clear distinction between those adhering to words and those engaging in practice, “ordinary people are Buddhas, desire is the awakened mind” (T 48.2008.350) and thus collapses the carefully constructed distinction between the “deluded mind” (wangxin, 妄心) (T 48.2008.354) of ordinary people and the “no mind” (wuxin, 無心) of “wisdom” (T 48.2008.357).
This tension between the rhetoric of silence that permeates the Chan Buddhist traditions and the non-dualism of immanence and transcendence, “this mind” and the Buddha, enabled thinkers in the Sŏn and Zen traditions to come up with a creative solution to how to reconcile these seemingly opposite positions. Pojo Chinul 普照知訥 (1158–1210) facilitated a synthesis between doctrinal and meditative Buddhism to make his Chogye 曹溪宗 order the strongest Buddhist force in the Chŏson dynasty in Korea.8 To Chinul, samādhi (sanmae, 三昧), the highest meditative state, constitutes the function and prajñā the essence of the mind. In short, samādhi and prajñā are two paths to and descriptions of the same cognitive state. As Robert Buswell explains,
Samādhi, in its guise of calmness, accords with the noumenal voidness; it is used to counter distraction. Prajñā, in its guise of alertness, accords with phenomenal plurality; it is used to stimulate the mind out of its occasional dullness, which obscures its natural penetrative quality. In their relative forms, samādhi and prajñā are instruments for counteracting ignorance and defilements; they are used until enlightenment is achieved (1983, 63).
Soseki Musō 夢窓疎石 (1275–1351) sees doctrines and meditation equally as the cure for the “illusion and ignorance” (2000, 110). However, he approaches the division between doctrinal (kyō, 教) and meditative (zen, 禪) Buddhism as an abnormal state and considers it pathological. He even uses the terms “doctrinal sickness” (kyōbyō, 教病) and “meditative sickness” (zenbyō, 禪病) to describe this state of dissociation:
In the original place of people the pathological aspects of delusion and awakening, ordinary being and saints, do not exist. The dharma gate corrects teachings and mediation. Therefore, if you start with the pathological aspects, there will be many kinds of suffering based on inaccuracies…. If people unearth illusion and ignorance, they will not see the reincarnation of birth-and-death, past-and-future. There is no distinction between ordinary people and saints, delusion and awakening (109–110).
This passage is saturated with concepts and imagery. What is important for us, however, is that, like Chinul, Musō also sees doctrinal and meditative Buddhism as two means to the same goal. In addition, Musō suggests that the difference between delusion and awakening, words and silence, is not one of essence but, as Nishida would say, “only one of degree.” Specifically, Nishida says, “if we think about it thoroughly, in the end even unity and non-unity are but different by degree” (NKZ 1: 16). To Nishida, “pure experience” (junsui keiken 純粋経験) and the “impure” (fujunsui, 不純粹) are not essentially different from each other. For thinkers like Chinul and Musō, neither are words and silence, study and meditation, different in essence. So how do both accomplish the same goals? The answer to this question, I believe, lies in Dōgen’s deconstruction of the mainstream interpretation of the flower sermon.
The fascicle in which Dōgen explores Śākyamuni’s famous, albeit not necessarily historical, flower sermon at Vulture Peak is the fascicle “Esoteric Words”9 (Mitsugo, 密語) in his collection The Treasury of the True Dharma Eye (Shōbōgenzō, 正法眼藏).10 In this fascicle, Dōgen uses the term “esoteric words (mutsugo, 密語),” a term used in Mahāyāna texts such as the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra (Da banniepan jing, 大般涅槃經) (T 12.374) and the Avataṃsaka Sūtra (Dafangguang fo huayan jing, 大方廣佛華嚴經) (T 10.278–279) to refer to the teaching of Śākyamuni not explicated in the sūtra s. Specifically, Dōgen interprets the flower sermon through the lens of Chan Master Yunju’s 雲居禪師 (?-902 CE) observation that “if you don’t get it, you possess the World-honored-One’s ‘secret explanations’, if you do get it, you manifest Kāśyapa’s not keeping things to himself” (SBGZ 4: 146). As hinted at above, traditionally, thinkers such as Zenkei Shibayama 柴山全慶 (1894–1974) declare that only ignorance misunderstands the “[t]alk of no talk” (1974, 61), the “transmission of the untransmittable,” and the “ever unnamable” as “secret talk” (62), while the awakened mind realizes it as the “true dharma,” the “dharma of as-it-isness,” and the “truth that transcends space and time” (63). Shibayama adds that even Śākyamuni’s explanation, “I posses the treasury of the true dharma eye, it is the heart of nirvāṇa, and the mysterious dharma gate without form. It does not rely on letters or words but constitutes a special tradition outside of the scriptures. I have just transmitted it to Mahākāśyapa,” falls short of describing the “talk of no talk.”
Dōgen radically disagrees with this position when he sarcastically remarks that “if The-World-honored-One hated using words but loved picking up flowers, he should have picked up a flower at the latter time [instead of his explanation] too.” And he adds, “how could Kāśyapa not understand, how could the people not hear?” (SBGZ 4: 153) Dōgen emphasizes that Śākyamuni used words to explain “picking up flowers” and asks rhetorically “are these words, or are these not words” (SBGZ 4: 153). Dōgen’s reasons for emphasizing the linguistic character of Śākyamuni’s explanation are threefold. First, Dōgen argues that delusion is not to be understood in terms of “esoteric words” but as ignorance about “esoteric words.” As Musō suggested, this ignorance is caused by a dual-istic worldview that distinguishes between “others” who “don’t know” and the “self” that “knows,” between “people who don’t know” and “people who know” (SBGZ 4: 155). Such a worldview attributes “esoteric words” (mitsugo, 密語) to the “unlearned” (gakugyō naki mono, 學業なきもの) and claims that “dharma eyes” (hōgen, 法眼) and “dharma ears” (hōji, 法耳) are devoid of “secrets.” Dōgen corrects this position and asserts that, “at the time of the Buddha-patriarchs, secret words and secret actions are presenced” (genjō 現成). He further confirms this rejection of dualism when he observes that, “when I know myself, I know secret actions” (SBGZ 4: 155). Later he adds that “secret action does not exist in the place where self and other know each other but only the secret self knows itself, outside of the secret it is not known” (SBGZ 4: 156). These passages are reminiscent of Dōgen’s observations in The Mountain and Water Sūtra (Sansuikyō, 山水經). In this fascicle, Dōgen explicates the epistemic problem of the dualistic attitude, which is symbolized as the attitude of “people outside the mountains” (sangenin, 山水外人), when he observes that “people outside the mountains do not experience. People, who don’t have the eyes to see the mountains, do not experience, do not know, do not see, and do not hear” (SBGZ 1: 407). On the other hand, “in the mountains … there is not one person who meets another” (SBGZ 1: 427). Second, Dōgen argues that Śākyamuni’s speech qua mitsugo comprises the non-dualism of individual and universal, form and formlessness. Dōgen reprimands those who follow the traditional interpretations of the flower sermon à la Shibayama. Śākyamuni’s words do not comprise merely “form” (meisō, 名相) but simultaneously form and “formlessness” (meisō naki koto, 名相なきこと). Dōgen continues that both the “picking up of the flower” and the “words” equally constitute “formal” expressions of the formless. Third, similarly, Dōgen argues that both “knowledge” and “ignorance” constitute manifestations of the “secret,” and thus both function as “paths” “to study the buddha-dharma.”11 Dōgen concludes that even “the moment when the buddha-dharma is not understood constitutes one aspect of secret talk” (SBGZ 4: 150).
In this way, Dōgen radically reinterprets the flower sermon as well as Master Yunju’s commentary. Dōgen explains that the true dharma transcends the dichotomy between language and silence and encompasses both “secret words” and secret actions. The true dharma qua mitsugo remains transcendent and irrelevant and, subsequently, has to be manifested in a concrete form, in either language or silence. Even the “picking up of a flower” constitutes a form. The very term mitsugo indicates the non-dualism of linguistic and non-linguistic expression. Dōgen, however, goes one step further and implies, in words reminiscent of the phrase “this mind is the Buddha” that the buddha-dharma requires a non-dualism of, and subsequent manifestation in, both understanding and ignorance. This conclusion not only undermines the dichotomy between language and silence, ignorance and awakening inherent in the rhetoric of silence, but also discloses far-reaching implications for the conceptions of emptiness and language themselves. In the following sections, I will explore the conceptual framework for Dōgen’s non-dualism and what its implications are for a philosophy of language and practice.
Today, Dōgen is seen as one, if not the, representative of Japanese Buddhist philosophy in general. But that has not always been the case. Even though he was a contemporary to Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) and was regarded the founder of Japanese Sōtō Zen Buddhism, his work remained in relative obscurity until he was “discovered” for the thinkers of the Sōtō school by Dōhaku Manzan 卍山道白 (1636–1715) as well as Zuihō Menzan 面山瑞方 (1683–1769) in the Edo period (1603–1867) and introduced to the larger intellectual community of, first, Japan and, then, the world by Tetsujirō Watsuji 和辻哲郎 (1889–1960) and Uno Kimura 木村卯之. What makes Dōgen a figure of interest for us is that he developed a philosophical non-dualism that is probably unrivalled in its consistency and took the core features of the “philosophy of emptiness” as introduced by the Prajñāpāramitā literature as well as the Madhyamaka philosophers to heart. In short, he followed this line of thought implied in śūnyatāvāda to its radical conclusion. As I have tried to show in the previous section, Dōgen applies the non-duality of nirvāṇa and saṃsāra expressed by the Heart Sūtra’s dictum that “form is emptiness, emptiness is form,” and by Chan master Mazu’s assertion that “this mind is the Buddha” to the rhetoric of silence pervasive in the Chan Buddhist traditions, and arrives at the conclusion that silence and discourse are equally instances in which Buddha’s dharma is “presenced” (genjō, 現成). The keys to this conception are the four key characteristics of a philosophy of emptiness as discussed above: 1) a distrust of concepts; 2) a methodic destabilization of language; 3) a method that anticipates dialectics insofar as it engages playfully in the juxtaposition of opposites; and 4) the emphasis on practice. What distinguishes Dōgen from many of his predecessors, though, is that he actually makes room for what we could call today a “linguistic practice.” It is this acknowledgement of the soteriological efficacy of linguistic practice that brings him closer to Jacques Derrida’s (1930–2004) deconstruction than any of the other thinkers and texts discussed here. And as Derrida (1982) anchors his theory and practice of deconstruction in the term différance (11), Dōgen grounds his subversive philosophy in his own creative understanding of “emptiness.”
Early in his career, Dōgen wrote one fascicle each on the Heart Sūtra and on Mazu’s observation that “this mind is the Buddha.” In the former fascicle, Dōgen reminds the reader of the non-duality as expressed in the Heart Sūtra in the formula “form is emptiness, emptiness is form.” Concretely, he suggests that
the five skandhas are body, perception, emotion, volition, and consciousness. They are the five aspects of prajńā. Their illumination12 is prajńā. When these meanings are presenced and performed, form is emptiness, emptiness is form, form is form, emptiness is emptiness. There are one hundred leaves of grass, there are ten thousand phenomena.” (SBGZ 1: 78)
Saṃsāra and nirvāṇa are not different from each other; they do not mark two separate realms. But they are also not identical. They each reside, as Dōgen says, elsewhere, in their own “dharma-position” (hōi, 法位). In his fascicle “Presencing the Kōan” (Genjōkōan, 現成公案), Dōgen observes that “dharma-positions” “cut off” and “possess” “before-and-after” (SBGZ 1: 96). This means that each dharma-position is at the same time individual as well as complete, and yet, each resides in a larger continuity and causal web of infinite dharma-positions. To put it differently, the relationship among individual dharma-positions is one of ambiguity: they are neither the same nor separate: they are without an essence.
The key to this understanding of reality is the notion of “emptiness.” As Dōgen observes in the last paragraph of the fascicle on the Heart Sūtra: “Therefore, the Buddhas Bhagavats are perfected wisdom, perfected wisdom is all dharma s. All dharmas reveal the mark of emptiness. They neither appear, nor disappear; they are neither defiled nor pure; they neither increase nor decrease” (SBZG 1: 89). Each phenomena is devoid of an essence. Thus, it is unique, and yet interrelated with and reflective of the whole universe. Seven hundred years after Dōgen, Nishida will call upon Leibniz’s monads to express this ambiguity of Dōgen’s dharma-position, even though Leibniz’s own substantialism prevents him from articulating the ambiguity of individual phenomena appropriately and sufficiently.13 In the fascicle “This Mind is the Buddha,” Dōgen gives us a glimpse of how this vision of reality can be conceived. Ranting against what he calls the “Senika heresy” (senni gedō, 先尼外道), Dōgen suggests that “the Buddhas pick up and throw away one hundred leaves of grass” and that “this triple world … is not mind-only, but that the mind constitutes fences and walls…. Therefore, practice ‘this mind is the Buddha’”14 (SBGZ 1: 141). Because emptiness is the fundamental nature of reality, each phenomenon, or as Dōgen says, each “dharma-position,” constitutes an individual expression of the whole universe. As Dōgen famously says elsewhere: “to forget the self is to be actualized by the ten thousand dharma s” (SBGZ 1: 95).
The lesson to be learned here is a very important one. The theory of “emptiness” rejects the notion of essence, not the notion of existence. “Essence” or “self-nature” implies the causally independent existence of a permanent being. The theory of “emptiness” pronounces that reality is impermanent, interconnected and, most of all, ambiguous. To avoid the traps of essentialism and dualism, Dōgen devises a sophisticated conceptual strategy. In the good tradition of Buddhist philosophy, Dōgen provides his own heuristic device on how to interpret various philosophical positions as well as epistemic states during the process of self-cultivation. While his model is not as historically or doctrinally accurate as the panjiao 教判 systems of, for example, Fazang 法藏 (643–712 CE) and Kūkai 空海 (774–835 CE), it is not only conceptually precise and consistent but also continuous with the philosophical traditions of śūnyatāvada and Chan Buddhism. In this section, I will first examine Dōgen’s heuristic model and then explore its implication for his theories of language and practice in the final section.
The prototype of Dōgen’s heuristic model can be found in the opening paragraph of the fascicle “Presencing of the Kōan”:
When all dharmas have Buddha nature, there is delusion and awakening, there is practice, there is life, there is death, there are all buddhas, there are sentient beings. When neither dharmas nor self exist, there is neither delusion nor awakening, there are neither buddhas nor sentient beings, there is neither life nor death. Because the Buddha-way is originally beyond fulfillment and lack, there is birth and destruction, delusion and awakening, sentient beings. Nevertheless, flowers fall in regret, grass grows in dismay (SBGZ 1: 94).
To general readers, this passage can be confusing on a first reading, and even scholars do not necessarily agree on its interpretation. However, a second look clearly reveals a fourfold structure. Each line commences with a condition, a description of a mental or cognitive state, which is followed by a position or belief characteristic of this particular state. The positions described in the second half of each sentence are about Buddhist themes such as delusion, awakening, life, death, sentient beings, and buddhas. This passage, then, seems to imply that, even in Buddhism, there are a variety of beliefs about these rather central matters. At stake is the process of progressing from delusion to awakening and the relationship between these stages. While he does not identify the various beliefs by schools or thinker as Fazang and Kūkai do, this passage does imply a ranking of these beliefs, and hence a subtle criticism of certain positions within Buddhism. As a reading of his fascicle “This Mind is the Buddha” reveals, his main target is the so-called Senika heresy, which he accuses of advocating the “belief in a permanent self” (ātmavāda, 計我論). In the same fascicle, he also accuses certain interpretations of Mazu’s “this mind is the Buddha” and by implication certain theories of “buddha-nature,” also referred to as the tathāgatagarbha doctrine, of essentialism. The first line of the passage reiterates this criticism. But what does this passage aim at? How can these positions be interpreted?
The first three lines are reminiscent of the famous Chan saying from the Record of the Transmission of the Lamp (Xu zhuangdeng lu, 續傳燈錄) (T 51.2077):
Thirty years ago, when I had not yet started meditation, I saw that mountains were mountains, waters were waters. After I had begun meditating and gained some knowledge, I saw that mountains were not mountains, waters were not waters. But now as I have achieved a place free of desire, I see that mountains are just mountains and waters are just waters (T 51.2077.614).
The similarities between both models are striking, and Dōgen’s reference to this saying in the “Mountain and Water Sūtra” indicates that he had knowledge of it. The structure of the three levels introduced in the first three lines of Dōgen’s “Presencing the Kōan,” and the famous saying from the Records of the Transmission of the Lamp is affirmation, negation, and what D. T. Suzuki calls “higher affirmation” (Suzuki 1964, 66). Dōgen adds to this structure three elements: First, while the Records of the Transmission of the Lamp locates the various cognitive stages in the very process of meditation itself, Dōgen assigns to them ideological positions: a) positivism, that is, the belief that “dharmas have a nature”; b) nihilism, that is the belief that there are “neither dharmas nor self”; and c) a third position, best called “non-dualism,” that is beyond easy juxtapositions and describes the primary condition, literally, “originally” (motoyori, ȗǽȝȟ) of any kind of knowledge. Dōgen also structurally distinguishes the third position from the former two, and seems to indicate that the third position mediates between the first two, especially since it said to be “beyond dichotomies.” The first two lines commence with the phrase “when there are (not) dharma s,” while the third one starts with the phrase “because” and implies an “original” standpoint. Second, Dōgen is definitely interested in the interplay between dualities in addition to the aspects of affirmation and negation. Finally, and most importantly, Dōgen added a fourth line.
How are we to understand Dōgen’s heuristic model? He very clearly incorporates aspects of the “two truths” (erdi, 二諦) developed in Madhyamaka philosophy, “mundane truth” (saṃvṛti-satya, 世俗諦) and “ultimate truth” (paramārtha-satya, 勝義諦), as well as Zhiyi’s 智顗 (538–597 CE) “three truths” (sandi, 三諦): “emptiness” (kong, 空), “provisionality” (jia, 假), and the “middle” (zong, Ё). However, in some sense Dōgen’s model seems to have more in common with Nāgārjuna’s tetralemma.15 Let us recall Nāgārjuna’s discussion of nirvāṇa where he rejects the notion that nirvāṇa constitutes being, nonbeing, both, or neither. Similarly, Dōgen suggests, not with regard to a term, but to the relationship between two terms, that there is a duality, there is no duality, there is the coexistence of both terms of the duality, and the duality disappears. This comparison lacks in four obvious ways: 1) Nāgārjuna talks about terms, Dōgen about the relationship between opposites; 2) Dōgen does not actually say that the duality both exists and does not exist, but rather hints at this predicament by expressing that phenomena exist in relationship to their opposites and, thus, opposites are, simultaneously, separate and connected; 3) Dōgen avoids the phraseology of the fourth line of the tetralemma altogether by employing poetical terminology; 4) Nāgārjuna rejects the four possibilities of being, nonbeing, both, and neither, while Dōgen seems to affirm them by locating them in different epistemic contexts. What makes this analogy interesting, however, is that the quarternity of “is,” “is not,” “both,” and “neither” actually informs Dōgen’s model if it is applied to the relationship between opposites rather than to terms themselves.
The most helpful key to his heuristic model, however, comes from Dōgen’s fascicle “Buddha-Nature” (Busshō, 佛性), where he reinterprets the famous line from the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra that “all sentient beings have buddha-nature” (T 12.374.522). What is of interest for the current discussion is not Dōgen’s re-reading of this line, but rather his reinterpretation of the notion of “buddha-nature” (佛性) as what has been called “being-buddha-nature” (有佛性) (SBGZ 2: 206), “non-being-buddha-nature” (無佛性) (SBGZ 2: 223), “emptiness-buddha-nature” (空佛性), and “impermanence buddha-nature” (mujōbusshō 無常佛性).16 Dōgen creates the term “non-being buddha-nature” by means of a playful reading of the Records of the Transmission of the Lamp. This text recalls the first meeting between the fifth and sixth patriarchs of Chan Buddhism, also recorded in the Platform Sūtra (T 48.2008.348). However, the Records of the Transmission of the Lamp cites the fifth patriarch as saying “people from the South do not have Buddha-nature” (T 51.2076.222). Dōgen re-reads “not having buddha-nature” (無佛性) as “non-being-buddha-nature” (無佛性). In the fascicle “Buddha-Nature,” Dōgen himself only uses the terms “being-buddha-nature” and “non-being-Buddha-nature” as nouns, and, after an idiosyncratic analysis of anecdotes from the “Zen Records” (Chanyulu, 禪語錄) and central Mahāyāna sūtra s, he concludes that “Buddha nature is originally nonexistent” (foxingbenwu, 佛性本無) (48.2008.348), “Buddha-nature is empty” (佛性空) (T 31.1589.70), and “Buddha-nature is impermanent” (busshōmujō 佛性無常), literally, “impermanence is buddha-nature” (SBGZ 2: 228; T 48.2008.359). It is, of course, no coincidence that Dōgen identifies “being” and “nonbeing” as nouns, and “empty” and “impermanence” as adjectives. Like Nāgārjuna, Dōgen uses the “medicine of emptiness” to avoid the conclusion that either “Buddha-nature” or “nonbeing” constitutes or possesses an essence. And just in case anyone is tempted to essentialize “being empty” as “emptiness,” Dōgen drives home the point that, “no,” “buddha-nature is impermanent.”
Finally, Dōgen urges the reader to “always practice” (gyōji, 行持) (SBGZ 3: 33–192). This exhortation indicates an inherent openness and it reflects his commitment to the doctrine of impermanence. In some sense, Dōgen seems to indefinitely defer “attainment,” be it cognitive, moral, or spiritual.
How are we to understand a worldview without essences? What is the relationship between individual and Buddha-dharma, between self and other in such a world? The probably most often cited quote of Dōgen is a passage from the fascicle “Presencing the Kōan,” in which Dōgen suggests that meditation is about self-awareness. He famously says, “[t]o study the Buddha-way is to study the self, to study the self is to forget the self, to forget the self is to be actualized by ten thousand dharma s” (SBGZ 1: 95). In some sense, this is just a description of meditation as a process of self-awareness. But on a closer look, it is obvious that Dōgen’s fourfold hermeneutical model applies: 1) “to study the self” constitutes an affirmation of the self; 2) “to forget the self” suggests its negation; 3) “to be actualized by ten thousand dharma s” takes the practitioner beyond the dichotomies of self and no self, individual and the totality, and suggests that in its practice the self “expresses”17 the world; 4) this “expression” is beyond the dualities of self and other, body and mind. Of course, this does not completely correlate to the notion of impermanence in the fourfold model. We have to read it in the context of Dōgen’s overall exhortation of “continuous practice.” In Dōgen’s view, even one moment of “seated meditation” (zazen, 坐禪) can actualize “all dharmas” (SBGZ 1: 35).
This brings us back to Dōgen’s philosophy of language. To explain how “esoteric words and esoteric actions are presenced” (SBGZ 4: 155), Dōgen utilizes a “commonplace expression” (Kim 1987, 67) (dōtoku, 道得). The compound comprises the Chinese characters for “way” and “to say” (dō, 道), and “accomplishment” (toku, 得). Hee-Jin Kim suggests that “[t]he term signifies simultaneously what is said and what can be said—expression and expressibility; at the same time, it means the Way’s appropriation, making and expression, the embodiment of the Way” (67). Dōgen defines “expression” as the activity of “all buddhas”: “all buddhas constitute verification” (SBGZ 3: 384) and “all buddha-patriarchs constitute expression” (SBGZ 3: 366).
At the same time, however, he points out the necessary dialectic between “expression” and “non-expression” (fudōtoku). Dōgen explains that
[w]hen we express expression we do not express non-expression. Even when we recognize expression in expression, if we do not verify the depth of non-expression as the depth of non-expression, we are neither in the face of the buddha-ancestors nor in the bones and marrow of the buddha-ancestors…. In me, there is expression and non-expression. In him, there is expression and non-expression. In the Way, there is self and other and in the non-Way, there is self and other (SBGZ 3: 368–369).
Here, Dōgen makes three fundamental observations. First, language is highly ambiguous: expressions, linguistic and non-linguistic, usurp the space between language and silence as demonstrated in the analysis of “esoteric words.” Similarly, expressions themselves imply, if not necessitate, their opposites, non-expressions, since “[e]ven when we recognize expression in expression, if we do not verify the depth of non-expression as the depth of non-expression, we are neither in the face of the buddha-ancestors nor in the bones and marrow of the buddha-ancestors.” Second, “expressions” and “non-expressions,” language and silence, presuppose the intersubjective space between self and other and thus point toward the dialogue between the master and the disciple: “In the Way there is self and other and in the non-Way, there is self and other.”
In his fascicle “Tangled Vines” (Kattō, 葛藤), Dōgen elaborates on this psychic interwovenness of self and other exemplified as master-disciple when he exhorts the practitioner, “[y]ou should know that there is ‘you are attaining me’, ‘I am attaining you’, ‘attaining me and you’, and ‘attaining you and me’” (SBGZ 4: 15). Similarly, he observes in his Mountain and Water Sūtra that “‘[t]he person sees Decheng’ means that there is Decheng, while ‘Decheng touches the person’ means that there is the person” (SBGZ 1: 431). Third, expressions are indeterminate insofar as they presuppose a minimum of four possibilities: the expression of expression, the expression of non-expression, the non-expression of expression, and the non-expression of non-expression. This multiplicity of possibilities discloses the ultimately volatile and ambiguous nature of language as well as of non-linguistic expression. Every single moment of “seated meditation” and any other activity fully “expresses” the buddha-dharma. At the same time, it constitutes a non-expression, as it fails to “express” an infinite amount of other expressions. Therefore, “seated meditation” constitutes an open-ended process that is never complete. This is “the paradox of meditation,” for it “expresses the Buddha-dharma fully but not completely.”18
As we have seen, in his writings, Dōgen uses a plethora of heuristic strategies. He employs creative readings of phrases from the Buddhist canon, as in the case of “no (non-being)-buddha-nature.” He juxtaposes opposites such as “delusion” (mayoi, 迷い) and “awakening” (satori, 悟り). He creates tripartite heuristic models that expand on the juxtaposition of “being” and “nonbeing” by including “emptiness,” to preclude any forms of dualism, as well as the fourfold models discussed above, which incorporate the moment of impermanence to ward off essentialism. With the tripartite models in particular, Dōgen introduces a deconstructive method to destabilize conceptual language that has been used by Zen thinkers in general, as well as modern and contemporary philosophers, to 1) map out the process of self-cultivation; 2) establish a phenomenology of self-cultivation; and 3) develop a modern day panjiao system.
To sum up Dōgen’s theory of emptiness: it is a rejection of positivism, annihilationism, dualism, and monism; in short, it is a rejection of any form of essentialism. This is why Dōgen rejects not only the rhetoric of silence, what Noriaki Hakamaya (1990) calls “dhātuvāda” (63), the tathāgatagarbha doctrine, but also even the “doctrine of emptiness” itself. It is not so much that these positions are wrong as they are insufficient and provide ample opportunities for attachment. To ward off the possibility of attachment, Dōgen systematically subverts the concepts in questions, since the simple negation of the Heart Sūtra may lead to annihilationism while Nāgārjuna’s tetralemma logic may land us in the rhetoric of silence. Dōgen is equally critical of his predecessors in the Chan tradition if their slogans fall either into the positivistic or the annihilationistic trap. Even non-dual philosophies are not immune to essentialism. This is why Dōgen always emphasizes “continuous action.” Philosophy is a practice, and an open-ended one at that. The three stages as outlined in the first three lines of the fascicle “Presencing the Kōan,” can thus be understood as three stages of the process of self-cultivation à la Takuan, as three levels of a phenomenological reduction, as Thomas Kasulis suggests, or, following Nishida, as three epistemic modalities. All these approaches can be considered extensions of Dōgen’s thought as long as one remembers his warning: “Nevertheless, flowers fall in regret, grass grows in dismay.”
1 I would like to thank Luther College for my sabbatical leave, Saitama University for my research affiliation, and the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture for their hospitality. This paper would have not been possible without the support of these three institutions. I would also like to thank the online resource of CBETA and the Digital Dictionary of Buddhism, without which this paper would have been a lot harder to complete.
2 Abe distinguishes between “non-being,” which is conceived of as opposed to “being,” and “nothingness,” which transcends this duality. Here, I follow Nishida’s lead and call the former “relative non-being” (tairitsuteki mu 對立的無) (NKZ 1988, 4: 219) and the latter “absolute non-being” (zettai mu 絕對無) (5: 176).
3 For a detailed argument on how to understand Nishida’s use of “soku” as deconstruction, see Maraldo (2003) and Kopf (2010a).
4 In verse 52 of his Acintyastava, Nāgārjuna writes that “[t]he Ultimate truth is the teaching that things are without own-being. This is the unsurpassed medicine for those consumed by the fever of svabhāva” (Lindtner 1986, 29).
5 Kumārajīva’s translation of the Diamond Sūtra shows two occurrences of “empty space” (虛空). For a more detailed discussion of this term, see Section 2 (“Emptiness” and the Rhetoric of Silence) of this paper.
6 Michiko Yusa (2014) makes this suggestion in her discussion of D. T. Suzuki’s philosophy that will appear this year in the Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy. Suzuki believed that Mahāyāna Buddhist thinkers developed this “logic of sokuhi” to express the intersection of the transcendent and the immanent in the religious experience (SDZ 1968–1971, 6: 14–15). In his Essays in Zen Buddhism, he suggests that
perhaps our so-called logic is only the ultimate utilitarian instrument wherewith we handle things belonging to the superficialities of life. The spirit, or that which occupies the deepest part of our being, requires something thoroughly non-conceptual, i.e., something immediate and far more penetrating than mere intellection. The latter draws its materials from concepts. The spirit demands immediate perceptions (Suzuki 1976, 270).
7 Despite obvious similarities, this classification does not correspond to Ferdinand de Saussure’s (1857–1913) distinction between “signifier” (signifiant) and “signified” (signifié), which conceptualizes the relationship between sign and meaning.
8 Editors’ note: see Chapter 16 by Halla Kim for a detailed discussion on Chinul.
9 Thomas P. Kasulis (2011, 16) employs the same translation of “mitsugo.”
10 The origin of the title to this collection of Dōgen’s essay is not clear. Since his departure from China preceded the distribution of the Gateless Barrier, he probably did not know of its sixth case. A possible source is Zonggao Dahui’s 大慧宗杲 (1089–1163) kōan collection with the same title.
11 Here I paraphrase Dōgen’s famous “to study the Buddha-way” (SBGZ 1: 95).
12 Dōgen employs the term, “shōken” (照見) (T 1961, 8.253.849, 8.254.850, 8.255.850) used in most Chinese translations of the Heart Sutra.
13 Nishida explains that
Spinoza goes so far as to deny the individual and arrives at a timeless world. When we get to Leibniz, we see that he thinks being in the direction of many individuals. He introduces the notion of expressive action to account for the relationship between the one and the many. From there we have to proceed to the contradictory identity of that which expresses and that which is expressed. However, Leibniz stops at the standpoint of pluralism (NKZ 1988, 10:490–491).
14 Actually, Dōgen suggest five different character combinations of “this mind is the Buddha,” all of which should be practiced.
15 Editors’ note: see Chapter 3 of this volume by Jay Garfield for a detailed discussion on Nāgārjuna’s tetralemma.
16 As I will explain below, Dōgen only uses the first two terms in this form but describes the two latter terms in such a way that even these formulations are warranted.
17 I borrow the term “expression” (hyōgen, 表現) from Nishida, who uses it to describe how the individual is determined by the world that surrounds her and, at the same time, “creates” (tsukuru, 作る) the future world through her actions.
18 I have mapped out this dynamics of expression in my “Ambiguity, Diversity, and an Ethics of Understanding: What Nishida’s Philosophy Can Contribute to the Pluralism Debate” (Kopf 2011).