This paperback edition provides an opportunity to reflect back on the gestation of this book as well as its reception: in the light of both, how might it be different if written today? The importance of the topic, and the vast literature touching on it, continues to dwarf any attempt to provide a comprehensive overview, but the perspective of a few years allows a better understanding of how tentative the following chapters are and how they might have been improved.
It was with some reluctance that the chapter on nondual perception was placed so early, and the passage of time has reinforced those hesitations. My concern is that some readers may become stuck in the middle of that chapter and never get any further! The basic difficulty is that the epistemology of perception is notoriously and inescapably complicated, with the result that my treatment of those complications is sometimes in danger of losing the main thread of the argument. The comments I have received, however, have been more specific. Some Vedānta scholars have pointed out that there is no such thing as nondual perception in Advaita, which is true (and even emphasized within the text), but this does not obviate the main points that chapter 2 makes about Vedānta: that understanding nirvikalpa experience as involving nondual perception illuminates many of the Advaitic claims about Brahman; and that reluctance to accept this touches upon the main problem with the Advaitic system, which is its inability to understand the relationship between māyā (the locus of perception) and nirguṇa Brahman (without perception).
The main difficulty with chapter 2 is elsewhere: the search for an unconditioned Reality “behind” concepts misses the essential point (emphasized in chapter 6!) that the Unconditioned in Mahāyāna is to be found in the conditioned — more precisely, that the true nature of the conditioned is itself the unconditioned. Instead of looking for an Absolute usually obscured by conceptualization, it would be better to subject that distinction between the Real and whatever is opposed to it (thought? delusion? the phenomenal world?) to a deconstruction that inquires into why that duality has become so important to us.
To put it another way, the attempt in chapter 2 to discover nondual perception has the effect of reifying another duality: that between Reality (usually accorded a capital R) and thought/language. This problem also applies, more or less, to the other chapters in part 1. It is addressed most directly in my essay in the book Healing Deconstruction, which is informed by a deeper appreciation of what Dōgen says about language.1 Briefly, instead of rejecting language/thought (a response which is still dualistic), what is needed is an appreciation of the plurality of descriptive systems and the freedom to employ them according to the situation. As Dōgen might say, rather than eliminate concepts we need to “liberate” them! — which requires, of course, that we do not cling to any particular set.
In effect, however, this is less a critique of the arguments in Part One than it implies a more nuanced version of them.
I do not have as many reservations about any of the later chapters, and they are left to stand for themselves except for my concern to emphasize again the importance and centrality of chapter 6, “The Deconstruction of Dualism.” Although this chapter serves a key role in the larger argument, it may be read by itself without reference to any of the other chapters.
Some readers have noticed problems with a few translated passages, which are more ambiguous than I have credited them for. In a book full of so many different quotations from so many different traditions and languages, this difficulty is not easily avoided — but my own linguistic skills (or lack thereof) have not helped, since they have made me largely dependent upon others’ judgement. Nevertheless, I am not aware that this seriously impinges on any of the arguments offered. In cases where a particular translation is central — especially in chapter 3, which considers at some length the first chapter of the Tao Tê Ching — my versions have of course been discussed with scholars more specialized in those fields.
Those familiar with Lack and Transcendence: The Problem of Death and Life in Psychotherapy, Existentialism, and Buddhism, recently republished by Wisdom Publications, may wonder about the relationship between that book and this one. The two are distinct, of course, in that neither requires any acquaintance with the other. There is nonetheless a connection, for the central theme of Lack and Transcendence — the sense-of-self’s sense-of-lack — is prefigured in chapter 4 of this book, where the issue is raised why our minds seek a secure “home.” In that sense the second book may be said to have grown out of the first and the two supplement each other.
It remains to thank the fine folk at Wisdom Publications for this new edition, especially Ben Gleason, Josh Bartok, and Lindsay D’Andrea. I have resisted the temptation to rewrite portions of this book, although some typographical errors have been corrected and a few minor points are expressed somewhat differently. The only significant change is that the annotated bibliography at the end of the first edition has been removed. It was compiled more than thirty years ago, and since then there have been so many relevant new publications that a revised version would require much more space than is available. One excellent book I especially recommend, however, is Leesa Davis’s Advaita Vedanta and Zen Buddhism: Deconstructive Modes of Spiritual Inquiry, which focuses on the nondual spiritual path.
I continue to hope that what follows will encourage other scholars to improve upon it, and that it will also encourage a new generation of readers to work on overcoming their own sense of subject-object duality. Those who find this book helpful may also appreciate its two “sequels”: Lack and Transcendence (a second edition was recently published by Wisdom Publications) and A Buddhist History of the West (still available from the State University of New York Press).