Review of Nothing: Three Inquiries in Buddhism

2016

To link the artists' works, exhibition curator Linda Michael has focused on the Buddhist concept of 'Emptiness' or Sunyata. Unlike the negative connotations this concept often carries in Western contexts, 'Emptiness' in a Buddhist milieu connotes a space rich in possibility and spiritual liberation. As Michael explains, the concept emerges from an understanding that, ' ... all entities are part of an ever-changing causal chain of growth and decay. All things emerge as "dependent arisings" from a matrix of conditions, in turn becoming part of another momentary cluster of causes and effects and so on to infinity. All dharmas (every mental and physical entity, even the Buddha) are interconnected and therefore without essence .. . Emptiness is thus the unbroken ground of being that is egoless, conceptless and unobjectifiable ... Things exist, yet without endurance or inherent substance.'[1]

This essay examines the relationship between Nishida's foundational notion of absolute nothingness and the classical Buddhist idea of emptiness. I reflect on the possibilities and risks of using Buddhism as hermeneutic paradigm in approaching the complexities of a modern Japanese philosophy with its alleged, but philologically ambiguous, references to a premodern Buddhist context.

As we have discussed in a number of posts on this blog, emptiness (Pāli: suññatā, Sanskrit: śūnyatā) is a fundamental Buddhist teaching that refers to the fact that phenomena do not intrinsically exist. This empty characteristic of phenomena relates as much to animate objects such as a flower, a car, or the human body, as it does to inanimate constructs such as the mind, space, or the present moment. In essence, emptiness means that nothing exists as a discrete entity and in separation from everything else. For example, a flower in the garden manifests in reliance upon numerous causes and conditions, without which, it would not exist. Amongst countless others, these causes and conditions include the water in the earth and atmosphere, nutrients in the soil, respiratory gases carried by the wind, heat of the sun, and so forth.

Interpreting “non-self” as no subject (or mental entity) of “awareness” by regarding the five aggregates as “awareness”, leads to an original three-tier structure (“subject”, “be aware of” and “object”) to summarize the progressive stages of “emptiness”, bridging various Buddhist schools in a unified analytical framework.

A variety of crucial and still most relevant ideas about nothingness or emptiness have gained profound philosophical prominence in the history and development of a number of South and East Asian traditions-including in Buddhism, Daoism, Neo-Confucianism, Hinduism, Korean philosophy, and the Japanese Kyoto School. These traditions share the insight that in order to explain both the great mysteries and mundane facts about our experience, ideas of "nothingness" must play a primary role.

Comparative Philosophy: An International Journal of Constructive Engagement of Distinct Approaches toward World Philosophy, 2010

Parmenides expelled nonbeing from the realm of knowledge and forbade us to think or talk about it. But still there has been a long tradition of nay-sayings throughout the history of Western and Eastern philosophy. Are those philosophers talking about the same nonbeing or nothing? If not, how do their concepts of nothing differ from each other? Could there be different types of nothing? Surveying the traditional classifications of nothing or nonbeing in the East and West have led me to develop a typology of nothing that consists of three main types: 1) privative nothing, commonly known as absence; 2) negative nothing, the altogether not or absolute nothing; and finally 3) original nothing, the nothing that is equivalent to being. I will test my threefold typology of nothing by comparing the similarities and differences between the conceptions of nothing in Heidegger, Daoism and Buddhism. These are three of the very few philosophical strains that have launched themselves into the wonderland of negativity by developing respectively the concepts of nothing (Nichts), nothing (wu 無) and emptiness (śūnyatā). With this analysis, I hope that I will clarify some confusion in the understanding of nothing in Heidegger, Daoism and Buddhism, and shed light on the central philosophical issue of "what there is not".

Théologiques, 2012

Abe Masao’s contribution to late twentieth-century Buddhist-Christian dialogue was important in opening new avenues of interfaith understanding. However, some clarity in this dialogue was sacrificed when Christian participants were given to believe that they encountered « the Buddhist view » in Abe’s presentations. The present article contends that in significant ways Abe represented only the Kyōto School philosophy that drew on earlier Japanese philosophers of Absolute Nothingness and their appropriation of Zen enlightenment as the locus for all religious understanding, a place where all negation and affirmation are simultaneously affirmed and denied. The present article contends that Abe’s Kyōto School philosophy does not represent the broad classical traditions of Mahāyāna Buddhism, wherein emptiness does not mean absolute nothingness, but the dependent arising of all places and all philosophies.

"This is an essential work of Tibetan Buddhist thought written by an influential scholar of the twentieth century. Drawing upon the Nyingma tradition of the great Tibetan visionary Mipam, Bötrül provides a systematic overview of Mipam’s teachings on the Middle Way. Presenting the Nyingma school within a rich constellation of diverse perspectives, Bötrül contrasts Nyingma views point by point with positions held by other Tibetan Buddhist schools. Bötrül’s work addresses a wide range of complex topics in Buddhist philosophy and doctrine in a beautifully structured composition in verse and prose. Notably, Bötrül sheds light on the elusive meaning of “emptiness” and presents an interpretation that is unique to his Nyingma school. Distinguishing the Views and Philosophies exemplifies a vigorous tradition of Tibetan Buddhist scholarship that is widely practiced in contemporary monastic colleges in Tibet, India, and Nepal. Douglas Samuel Duckworth’s translation will make this work widely available in English for the first time, and his thoughtful introduction and annotations will provide insight and context for readers."