This is an important book; a comparative study which explores convincingly and in detail the rema... more This is an important book; a comparative study which explores convincingly and in detail the remarkable similarities and areas of philosophic agreement between Nietzsche and Buddhism. Morrison suggests that Nietzsche was completely unaware of the extent of the confluence of his views with Buddhism. While he was struck by the historical parallel between the rise of nihilism in his own day, and that of India in the time of the Buddha, he thought of himself as pointing the way beyond a crippling acceptance of a nihilism which appeared to accept the meaninglessness and hopelessness of life as a result of the utter collapse of traditional belief. Nietzsche's early reading of Schopenhauer served as his introduction to Indian thought, as well as to a pessimistic outlook on a European culture which had lost its faith in traditional values and institutions. Nietzsche soon began to move away from Schopenhauer's pessimism, and eventually 'arrived at a position diametrically opposed to it-life is not to be denied but unconditionally affirmed' (p. 4). The 'irony' in the title of Morrison's book refers to the fact that Nietzsche's own overcoming of nihilism took the form of a philosophical outlook remarkably in line with that of ancient Buddhism. The Buddhist sources available to Nietzsche hid this from him, however, for they were almost unanimously interpreted as espousing the view that Buddhism was world-denying and escapist, nothing more than a yearning for a nirvana of total (self) obliteration. Nietzsche's anthropological sources in particular underscored this interpretation. Even human action, however noble, was thought to further enmesh one in karmic entanglements, leading to a doctrine of inaction. The danger of Buddhism for Europe, which had somehow taken to this esoteric pessimism, was an epidemic of belief in an utterly nihilistic anarchy. Morrison convincingly shows that while Nietzsche advocated an active rather than a passive nihilism, it is clear from contemporary scholarship that Buddhism, too, is on the whole life-affirming and 'active'. The actual
Hollywood's fascination with Tibetan Buddhism. Yet it is becoming clearer that Buddhism's main po... more Hollywood's fascination with Tibetan Buddhism. Yet it is becoming clearer that Buddhism's main point of entry into Western culture is now Western psychology, especially psychotherapy. This interaction is all the more interesting because psychoanalysis and most of its offspring remain marked by an antagonism to religion that is a legacy of the Enlightenment, which defined itself in opposition to myth and superstition. In spite of that-or because of it?-this interaction between Buddhism and Western psychology is an opportunity for comparison in the best sense, in which we do not merely wrench two things out of context to notice their similarities, but benefit from the different light that each casts upon the other. While contemporary psychology brings to this encounter a more sophisticated understanding of the ways we make ourselves unhappy, it seems to me that Buddhist teachings provide a deeper insight into the source of the problem. What is that problem? For the most part "I" experience my sense-of-self as stable and persistent, apparently immortal; yet there is also awareness of my impermanence, the fact that "I" am growing older and will die. The tension between them is essentially the same one that confronted Shakyamuni himself, when, as the myth has it, he The third chapter, The Renaissance of Lack, addresses some of the changes that occurred around the time of the Renaissance. It argues that three particular types of delusive craving, which today we take for granted as natural, are in fact historically conditioned ways of trying to resolve our lack: the desire for fame, the love of romantic love, and the money complex. These three tendencies are not bound Reformation, which led to a new understanding of our lack and eventually to new secular ways of handling it. Luther and Calvin eliminated the intricate web of mediation between God and this world that had constituted, in effect, the sacral dimension of this world. On the one hand, God was booted upstairs, far above the sordid affairs of this world; and on the other hand the principle of a direct and personal relationship with God became sanctified. Religion became privatized. Without a truly catholic church to take the role of God's Vicar, who would assume the mantle of His authority on earth? The void became filled by charismatic rulers of the developing nation-states with Chapter 6, Waiting for Something That Never Happens, takes a closer look at what might be called the means/ends problem in modern life: the way that contemporary culture has become so preoccupied with means that it loses ends. More precisely, they have become inverted: our means, because they never culminate in an ends, in effect have come to constitute our ends. It begins by considering what Max Weber wrote about the instrumental rationality (Zweckrationalitat) of the modern world, and, in reaction to that, our flights into hypertrophied subjectivity
WWW. T I K KUN . O RG T I K KUN 51 D owefailtoseethenature of the liberated mind, not because it ... more WWW. T I K KUN . O RG T I K KUN 51 D owefailtoseethenature of the liberated mind, not because it is too difficult to understand, but because it is too obvious? Maybe we cannot find what we are searching for because it is in plain sight, like the spectacles that rest unnoticed onmy nose. According to the seventeenth-century Japanese Zenmaster Hakuin, the difference between Buddhas and other beings is like that between water and ice. Without water there is no ice, without Buddha no sentient beings—which suggests that deluded beings are simply “frozen” Buddhas. “Let yourmind come forthwithout fixing it anywhere,” says the most-quoted line from the Diamond Sutra, prompting the great awakening of the sixth Chan patriarch Huineng, whose Platform Sutramakes and remakes the samepoint. “Whenourmindworks freely without any hindrance, and is at liberty to ‘come’ or to ‘go,’ we attain liberation.” Such amind “is everywhere present, yet it ‘sticks’ nowhere.” Amind that dwells upon nothing is the unborn Buddha-mind itself, according to Chan master Huihai: “This full awareness in yourself of a mind dwelling upon nothing is known as having a clear perception of your own mind, or, in other words, as having a clear perception of your own nature.” These teachers are pointing to the same realization: Delusion (ignorance, samsara): attention/awareness is fixated (attached to forms) Liberation (enlightenment, nirvana): attention/awareness is liberated from grasping Although the true nature of awareness is formless, it becomes trapped when our attention is conditioned—that is, when we come to identify with particular forms. Such Consciousness Commodified: TheAttention-Deficit Society
Much of the Western tradition can be understood in tenns of increasing self-consciousness about t... more Much of the Western tradition can be understood in tenns of increasing self-consciousness about the difference between culture and nature. The problems that anthropology has recently discovered about culture parallel what Buddhism claims about the problem of the individual self. We alternate between the promise of technological progress (freedom through self-grounding) and yearning for a return to nature (security through regrounding). Since both are impossible for us, the conclusion considers whether there is any third alternative.
Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy? (Tolstoy)... more Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy? (Tolstoy) Why was I born, if it wasn't forever? (Ionesco) YAKSHA: What is the greatest wonder in the world? YUDISHTHIRA: Every day men see others called to their death, yet those who remain live as if they were immortal. (The Mahdbhdrata) One can no more look steadily at death than at the sun. (La Rochefoucauld) All of life is but keeping away the thoughts of death. (Samuel Johnson) The king is surrounded by persons whose only thought is to divert the king, and to prevent his thinking of self. For he is unhappy, king though he be, if he thinks of himself. This is all that men have been able to discover to make themselves happy. And those who philosophize on the matter, and who think men unreasonable for spending a whole day in chasing a hare which they would not have bought, scarce know our nature. The hare in itself would not screen us from the sight of death and calamities; but the chase which turns away our attention from these, does screen us. (Pascal) All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than the animals who know nothing. (Maeterlinck) Death is easier to bear without thinking of it, than is the thought of death without peril. (Pascal) He who most resembles the dead is the most reluctant to die. (La Fontaine) "I had to die to keep from dying." (Common schizophrenic remark) By avoiding death, men pursue it. (Democritus) Man has forgotten how to die because he does not know how to live. (Rousseau) It is true: we love life not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving. (Nietzsche) History is what man does with death. (Hegel) Madness is something rare in individuals-but in groups, parties, people, ages it is the rule. (Nietzsche) Men are so necessarily mad that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness. (Pascal) The struggle for success becomes such a powerful force because it is the equivalent of self-preservation and self-esteem. (Kardiner) For life in the present there is no death. Death is not an event in life. It is not a fact in the world. (Wittgenstein) The artist carries death in him like a good priest his breviary. (Boll) To live in the face of death is to die unto death. (Kierkegaard) Art has two constants, two unending concerns: it always meditates on death and thus always creates life. (Pasternak) Only the man who no longer fears death has ceased to be a slave. (Montaigne) As long as you do not know how to die and come to life again, you are but a poor guest on this dark earth. (Goethe)
... terminal and final, opening up ''the incredible possibility of a '... more ... terminal and final, opening up ''the incredible possibility of a 'civilization of forgetting', a live (live-coverage) society that has no future and no past, since it has no extension and no duration, a society intensely present here and there at once in other words, telepresent to the ...
Beyond Good and Evil? A Buddhist critique of Nietzsche
Asian Philosophy, Mar 1, 1996
Abstract In what ways was Nietzsche right, from a Buddhist perspective, and where did he go wrong... more Abstract In what ways was Nietzsche right, from a Buddhist perspective, and where did he go wrong? Nietzsche understood how the distinction we make between this world and a higher spiritual realm serves our need for security, and he saw the bad faith in religious ...
... (68, quoting Albert d'Haenens) ... The compulsion to accomplish something does n... more ... (68, quoting Albert d'Haenens) ... The compulsion to accomplish something does not need to be so dramatic. The psychoanalyst Neil Airman wrote in similar terms about his years as a Peace Corps volunteeer in southern India: ...
For Heidegger, as for existential psychology, our primary repression is death-fear. But since Bei... more For Heidegger, as for existential psychology, our primary repression is death-fear. But since Being and Time misses `the return of the repressed' in symbolic form, Heidegger overlooks how future-oriented temporality can become `a schema for the expiation of guilt'. Heidegger's authentic and inauthentic ways of experiencing time are both reactions to the inevitable possibility of death. To see how time might be experienced without the shadow of death, Heidegger's approach is contrasted with the Buddhist deconstruction of time, which denies the commonsense duality between self and time.
Part 1 Introduction Part 2 Part One: Buddhism and Deconstruction Chapter 3 1. Naming the Unnameab... more Part 1 Introduction Part 2 Part One: Buddhism and Deconstruction Chapter 3 1. Naming the Unnameable: Dependant Co-arising and Difference Chapter 4 2. Nagarjuna and Deconstruction Part 5 Part Two: Buddhism Deconstructs Chapter 6 3. Derridean and Madhyamika Buddhist Theories of Deconstruction Chapter 7 4. Indra's Postmodern Net Part 8 Part Three: Deconstructing Buddhism Chapter 9 5. Deconstructive and Foundationalist Tendencies in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism Chapter 10 6. Ji Zang's Suynata-Speech: Derridean Denegation with Buddhist Negations Part 11 Part Four: Chan/Zen Buddhist Deconstruction Chapter 12 7. The Chan Deconstruction of Buddha Nature Chapter 13 8. Sudao: Repeating the Question in Chan Discourse Part 14 Part Five: Deconstructing Life-Worlds Chapter 15 9. The Veil Rent in Twain: A Buddhist Reading of Robert Magliola's Deconstructive Chiasm Chapter 16 10. emmanuel, robert Part 17 Part Six: Questioning the Self, Questioning the Dialogue Chapter 18 11. Sartre, Phenomenology and the Buddhist No-Self Theory Chapter 19 12. Self and Self Image Chapter 20 13. Zen Flesh, Bones and Blood: Deconstructing Inter-Religious Dialogue Part 21 Afterword Part 22 Selected Bibliography Part 23 Glossary of Chinese Characters Part 24 Credits Part 25 Contributors
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
The odd thing was, no matter how much time he saved, he never had any to spare; in some mysteriou... more The odd thing was, no matter how much time he saved, he never had any to spare; in some mysterious way, it simply vanished. Imperceptibly at first, but then quite unmistakably, his days grew shorter and shorter. (Momo 65) One of the most remarkable novels of the late twentieth century is Momo, by the German writer Michael Ende. Although apparently written for children, it contains profound insights into our modern attitude toward time. Is it a coincidence that Ende later became interested in Buddhism? He visited Japan several times: the first trip in 1977 included a discussion with a Zen priest; the second time in 1989 to marry his second wife, SATO Mariko. This essay will explore the deep resonances between Ende's view of time in Momo and the Buddhist perspective on time, particularly as expressed by the Japanese Zen master Dogen (1200-1253). These resonances are of more than literary or historical interest: understanding what Ende and Dogen have to say about time gives us important insight into how we experience time today. How do we experience time? What social scientists have termed a "time-compression" effect means that today we seem to have much less time to do the things we need or want to do. This contributes a manic quality to much of life: increased stress at work and in school, sleep deprivation, up to half the
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