The Kyoto School - I and Thou

[tariki]

The Kyoto School is a name given to a group of Japanese scholars/Buddhists who seek to relate the "eastern" philosophies of Buddhism (particularly Zen) with Western Philosophy. Pretty heavy stuff and maybe a few of the books published could be prescribed by GP's to insomniacs. But there are jewels amid the turgid prose if you dive in.

One of the greatest tomes is "Religion and Nothingness" by Keiji Nishitani. Which at heart contrasts the Western preoccupation and allegiance to Being (as substance) with the eastern idea of "emptiness". All good stuff if you like that sort of thing......😀

At the moment I am ploughing through an anthology of writings by the Kyoto School, "The Buddha Eye". I have read through this a few years ago, and found a lot over my head, in one ear and out the other, but I'm giving it another try. Some good stuff, as I said.

One essay is by the previously mentioned Keiji Nishitani, "The I-Thou Relation in Zen Buddhism". Pretty deep stuff. Nishitani mentions the Jewish scholar Martin Buber, who wrote a famous book, "I and Thou", this from the Western perspective of a "self" confronting another. God, or a fellow human being? Not sure - I do have a kindle copy of Buber's book but failed to get far into it. Way beyond me.

Well, Nishitani writes that Mr Buber does not really touch the full depths of human subjectivity. Where Buber stops "is the very point at which Zen exploration begins". His claim is based upon one of the Koans from the Blue Cliff Record Collection, the one called ""Kyozan Roars with Laughter." I always find a bit of laughter attractive, but my sniggers were stiflled somewhat upon reading the koan:-

Kyozan Ejaku asked Sansho Enen, "What is your name?"
Sansho said, "Ejaku!"
"Ejaku!" replied Kyozan, "that's my name."
"Well then," said Sansho, "my name is Enen."
Kyozan roared with laughter.


Well, the joke was lost on me, but I was bolstered by Dogen's claim that where we do not understand, there is our understanding. A claim that I am beginning to understand.

Nishitani, using eastern philosophies of inter-being, internal relations and suchlike, brings forth the fruits of the koan. Individual "selves" in opposition, subject confronting subject, are morphed into a fundamental empathic relationship. The "I" is the "Thou", the "Thou" is the "I". 

Trying to reach more understanding, I was reminded of some words of Richard Tarnas in his book "Cosmos and Psyche":-

......the modern mind engages the world within an explicit experiential structure of being a subject set apart from, and in some sense over against, an object. The modern world is full of objects, which the human subject confronts and acts upon from its unique position of conscious autonomy. By contrast, the primal mind engages the world more as a subject embedded in a world of subjects, with no absolute boundaries between or among them. In the primal perspective, the world is full of subjects. The primal world is saturated with subjectivity, interiority, intrinsic meanings and purposes.

I would see Nishitani as partly speaking more of the "primal mind". Maybe I'm wrong.

Anyway, in my defence I do find myself more open to others, less judgemental. Maybe enough for now, my coffee is finished. 

[romansh]

Campbell ... where West meets East ...

On 7/24/2022 at 9:23 AM, romansh said:

But the ultimate mystical goal is to be united with one's god. With that, duality is transcended and forms disappear. There is nobody there, no god, no you. Your mind, going past all concepts, has dissolved in identification with the ground of your own being, because that to which the metaphorical image of your god refers to the ultimate mystery of your own being, which is the mystery of the being of the world as well.

[tariki]

Hi Rom, as I am beginning to understand, the "eastern" quest is more the realisation of non-duality within duality. In that sense forms do not "disappear",  and simply because no "one" is there, everything, and everybody, is there.

I agree with the "beyond concepts", even with speaking of the "ultimate mystery". If it was not a "mystery" it would be a "something", an end product, a conclusion - whereas Reality is a constant advance into novelty.

 "Not knowing why, not knowing why! That is my support! Not knowing why! That is the namu- amida-butsu!" ( Saichi)

Or Eckhart:- "Love has no why"

Keats:- "Nothing of worth is known by consecutive reasoning"

Really, it gets back to some intuitive things that I have always asserted - that life, truth, reality, can be lived but not thought. 

Non-duality is not that "all is one" but that all is not two. Another thing entirely. Edwin Arnold ended his poem of the Buddha, "The Light of Asia" with the words:- "The dewdrop slips into the shining sea" - which is wrong, more in keeping with our "self" dissolving as it unites with "our God". It is more that the shining sea slips into the dewdrop, or even better, that the ten thousand things are truly realised for the first time. 

I see that this relates to Dogen's words in his "Genjokoan" (the actualisation of reality) :-

Conveying oneself toward all things to carry out practice-enlightenment is delusion. All things coming and carrying out practice-enlightenment through the self is realization.

I realise that this can all seem like much ado about nothing, yet thinking about it, it is!

T.S.Eliot:-

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree

Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always--
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

 

Sometimes it just seems that I am just juggling words about, almost a way of no-calculation, yet sometimes there are surprises. But it does seem much like Eliots words, of "knowing the place for the first time", which relates to D.T.Suzuki who speaks of becoming once again the Tom, Dick or Harry we have always been. There is no nihilistic dissolving into an ultimate "Thou".

There is a theodicy here, but it is beyond me at the moment. I suspect that it will always be. 

[romansh]

The "problem" of why? is that it has two broad meanings.

It can mean how does something happen, eg why are the north and south poles of magnets attracted to one another? Feynman has a brilliant youtube answering this type of why? 

The other is what is the purpose? ... I am sure you Buddhists will have some sage words when it comes to purpose.

Disagree strongly with Keats.

[tariki]

1 hour ago, romansh said:

The "problem" of why? is that it has two broad meanings.

It can mean how does something happen, eg why are the north and south poles of magnets attracted to one another? Feynman has a brilliant youtube answering this type of why? 

The other is what is the purpose? ... I am sure you Buddhists will have some sage words when it comes to purpose.

Disagree strongly with Keats.

Yes, sorry, misquoted Keats....in a letter he actually wrote that he had:-

  never yet been able to perceive how anything can be known for truth by consecutive reasoning

I agree with that, in as much as ultimate truth cannot be arrived at by any accumulation of knowledge. Enlightenment isn't accumulative, and is a realisation, not an accomplishment of the rational mind. Or as I like to say, gift. Grace.

Sage or not ( 😀) as I see it both "why" and "purpose" come from the same stable. I think I waffled about ultimate "meaninglessness" somewhere else. 

Just looked for it, here, in relation to the thought of Dogen:-

To cast off the body-mind did not nullify historical and social existence so much as to put it into action so that it could be the self-creative and self-expressive embodiment of Buddha-nature. In being “cast off,” however, concrete human existence was fashioned in the mode of radical freedom—purposeless, goalless, objectless, and meaningless. Buddha-nature was not to be enfolded in, but was to unfold through, human activities and expressions. The meaning of existence was finally freed from and authenticated by its all-too-human conditions only if, and when, it lived co-eternally with ultimate meaninglessness.
 

Anyway, Rom, hope all is well.