BUDDHIST STUDIES I PHILOSOPHY

t h e formless self

Joan Stambaugh
Gathering and interpreting material that is not readily available elsewhere, this book dis­
cusses the thought of the Japanese Budd.hist philosophers Dagen, Hisarnatsu, and
Nishitani. Stambaugh develops ideas about the self culminating in the concept of the
Formless Self as formulated by Hisarnatsu in his book The Ful/nm ofNothingness ·and the
essay "The Characteristics of Oriental Nothingness/ and funher explicated by Nishitani in
his book R.e/igion and Nothingnm. These works show that Oriental nothingness has noth­
ing to do with the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Western concept of nihilism. Instead,
it is a positive phenomenon, enabling things to be.

"I confess that this work-&om the perspective of exposition, analysis, interpretation,
application, and stimulation-is, I believe, just about as good as it gets. This book is an
unexcclled example of comparative philosophy. Starnbaugh's uses of Kant, Nietzsche,
Heid egger, Tillich, etc. to illwnine Buddhist sensibilities is discreet, even-handed, and
nuanced to a degree that comparativists seldom achieve. My greatest concern about this
book is that it might not be followed by another one from the same hand."
-David L. Hall, co-author with Roger Ames of Thinking.from the Han

"So much of contemporary Western thought is in a deep struggle to reinvent a more pro­
found sense of'sel£' And Stambaugh's narrative strikes right at the core of this effort, bring­
ing the most advanced thinking in East and West into a creative synthesis. She brings out
how the nondual discourse of the Selfis profoundly different from any tradition that situ­
ates its hermeneutic within the dualistic patterns of Subject/Object thinking. At this point
in our evolution it is panicularly important for thinkers in the Western traditions who
struggle to reach a 'postmodern' vision ofthe Subject or Selfto have a direct encounter with
the classical powers of nondual thinking about the Self-the Formless Self."
-Ashok Gangadcan, Haverford College

Joan Stambaugh is Professor of Philosophy at Hunter College ofthe City University

of New York. She has published extcnsivdy and is the author of The R.eal is Not the
Rational:, The Finitude of Being-, The Other Nietzsche-, and is the translator of Martin
Heidegger's Being and 1ime, all published by SUNY P=s.

State University of New York P�

V1Sit our web site at
http:l/www.sunypress.edu
 JDbe Formless SdL

Joan Stambaugh

State U niversity of N e w York Press

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Library o f C ongress C ataloging-in-Publication Data

Stambaugh, Joan, 1932-

The formless self / Joan Stambaugh.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-7914-4149-0 (hardcover : alk. paper). — ISBN 0-7914-4150-4
(pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Self (Philosophy) 2. Philosophy, Japanese. 3. Religion—
«i.!i------ u., ± Oncrpn. 1200—1253. 5. Hisamatsu, Shin'ichi,
For Roy Finch
 ( fffo n te n fC )

Preface ix
Introduction xi

i. DoQen i
The Question of the Self l
Activity of the Self
The Self as Illusion and Enlightenment 14
The Self as Buddha-nature 21
Temporality and Impermanence 28

2. Hisamatsu 55
Dialogues w ith Tillich 55
Oriental Nothingness 71
The Formless Self 81
"Critique of the 'Unconscious'" 92

3. Nishitani 99
The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism 99
Religion and Nothingness 101

Conclusion 165
Notes 167
Index 1 73
Property was thus appall'd
That the self was not the same;
Single nature's double name
Neither two nor one was call'd.

Reason, in itself confounded,

Saw division grow together;
To themselves yet either neither
Simple were so well com pounded,

That it cried, 'H ow true a twain

Seemeth this concordant one!
Love hath reason, reason none,
If w hat parts can so remain.

From "The Phoenix and the Turtle"

Shakespeare
 CfPrejaceff>

This study attem pts to probe into the m eaning of the self as set
forth by three Japanese Buddhist thinkers: Dogen, Hisamatsu,
and Nishitani. Dogen lived in the thirteenth century—Hisamatsu
and Nishitani in the twentieth.
Dogen's main work, Shobogenzo, Treasury of the True Dharma
Eye, has received considerable attention and may be considered
one of the most profound and challenging philosophical works of
Buddhism in any period. H isam atsu is perhaps less well known
in the West; his m ain w ork in English is Zen and the Fine Arts. In
addition, he has authored some articles available in English, most
notably "The Characteristics of Oriental Nothingness" and the di­
alogues with the Protestant theologian Paul Tillich. Nishitani en­
gaged in extensive studies of Western philosophy and religion;
the book Religion and Nothingness is his attem pt to put Buddhist
concepts in a form also accessible to Western thinkers.
W hat these three thinkers have in common is, among other
things, a concern w ith the problem of the self. Formulated by
H isam atsu as the Formless Self, the resultant concept of self d e­
velops in a way that merges self and world w ith a total lack of ob­
jectification or reification of either.
In this work, I have tried to pursue some questions raised in
my earlier book, Impermanence is Buddha-nature. That w ork cen­
tered almost exclusively on Dogen and the question of time. This

IX
X Preface

study again is concerned with Dogen and then goes beyond the
thirteenth century to consider a less well-known Buddhist
thinker, Shin'ichi Hisamatsu, in his own essays as well as in dia­
logues with the Protestant theologian Paul Tillich. Finally, atten­
tion is focused on Keiji Nishitani, a Buddhist scholar who
devoted himself to the study of Western philosophy and theology.
Thus, the far-reaching implications of impermanence for the
question of the self are pursued in an attem pt to reach an under­
standing of nonsubstantialized self that has nothing to do with a
reified ego.
This can hardly claim to be the work of a scholar of Bud­
dhism. The only credentials the author can lay claim to are some
years of Sanskrit study, an all too short period of study with the
German scholar of Indology and Buddhism, Erich Frauwallner, as
well as an equally short period of study w ith Masao Abe, plus a
lifelong keen interest in the East and in Buddhism in particular.
However, the lim itations in comprehension are decidedly my
own and no one else's responsibility.
This study is an attem pt to present Eastern ideas, or at least
one Western interpretation of Eastern ideas, to Western readers in
a meaningful way. Now that philosophers have to a large extent
exhausted their fascination with substantialist metaphysics, the
opportunity to explore Buddhist thoughts may be welcome.
 (w tr o d u c tio p )

One of the many Buddhist nam es for ultimate reality is the Form­
less Self. The term "self" is not w ithout its problems in the context
of Buddhist thought. One of the few utterances traceable to the
Buddha himself involves the statement that all things are w ithout
self. Early Buddhism (Theravada, Hinayana) was exceedingly con­
cerned w ith uprooting this firmly entrenched and m uch cher­
ished view of the self that w e cling to so tenaciously. That view of
the self is inextricably bound up w ith the B uddha's tw o other
statements that all things are suffering and all things are im per­
manent. We ultimately "suffer" because there is no such thing as
a perm anently enduring self. In fact, one of the lasting insights of
the Buddha is that there is no enduring self in anyone or anything
at all.
On the other hand, a perhaps even more fundam ental and
comprehensive utterance traceable to the Buddha is that we must
at all costs avoid the two extremes of permanence (sasvata) and ni­
hilism (uccheda). We all w ant to be able to say either that there is a
perm anent self or an immortal soul or else that there is nothing at
all b u t physiology, nerves, ganglia, blood and so forth, destined to
rot in the ground to which they are eventually entrusted. But any­
one m aking either of these two statements is, according to the
Buddha, sim ply dead wrong. So there is no neat conceptual an­
swer to this suprem e existential question of the self. But there are

XI
xii Introduct ion

many fruitful indicators pointing the way to a soteriological, not

a conceptual, "solution"/"answ er."
Most thinking people, not just the philosophers, have always
been concerned with the question of the self, with the question of
who they are—of the reality of who or w hat they are. This is nat­
ural, inevitable, and perfectly wholesome. A problem arises w hen
the emphasis comes exclusively to focus, not on the reality of who
they are, b u t on the reality of who they are, of w ho I am. Then, to
employ a useful distinction m ade by C. G. Jung and others, the
self, an initially neutral term, becomes the ego, a term im plying
blind and insistent preoccupation w ith m y self accompanied by a
determined rejection of any other reality at all costs.
But the true search is not just for my self which then tends to
degenerate into narcissistic ego-infatuation, but for reality, w hat­
ever that may be. And reality is going to lie beyond the dimension
of the ego w ithout therefore necessarily being anything transcen­
dent. This study attem pts to probe into w hatever some Buddhists
m eant by the som ewhat enigmatic phrase: The Formless Self.
The study will concentrate selectively on aspects of Dogen, Hisa-
matsu, and Nishitani.
 i

The Question o j the Self

Perhaps the clearest access to the question of the self in Dogen lies
in the fascicle of Shobogenzo entitled "Genjo-koan." Because all is­
sues are so intimately and inextricably interwoven in Dogen's
thought, it is difficult and even artificial to isolate one question
from all the rest. Yet we m ust choose the m ost direct inroad avail­
able to us to the question of the self.

To 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 verified
by m yriad dharm as; and to be verified by m yriad dhar-
mas is to drop off the body-m ind of the self as well as the
body-m ind of the other. There remains no trace of en­
lightenm ent, and one lets this traceless enlightenment
come forth for ever and ever.1

If one wishes to study the Buddha-way, the only place to

start, the only initial access, is one's own self; one cannot search
for it som ewhere outside the self. When one studies the self, re­
ally studies the self, one does not encounter an enduring sub­
stantial thing called "self." What, then, does one encounter? One
encounters the m yriad dharm as, the ten thousand things of the
w orld and thereby forgets the self that one did not find. These

i
2 T h e Formless Self

m yriad dharm as verify and confirm one's activity and this al­
lows body-m ind to drop off. W hen one's body-m ind drops off,
the notion of the body-mind of the other drops off as well. Drop­
ping off body-m ind (Shinjin datsuraku) allows the transparency
of enlightenm ent to enter. Enlightenment leaves no trace, as this
would imply a dualism between the dropped off body-m ind and
enlightenment. This traceless enlightenment, absolutely free from
any kind of dualism whatsoever, is then free to come forth and
continue for ever and ever.
Only when the self gives way to allow the myriad dharm as to
enter, does the self become w hat it truly is. Its true function is to
become utterly transparent to the myriad things of the world, be
they other people, realities of nature, man-made things or w h at­
ever. In the words of D. T. Suzuki:

It is the H eart indeed that tells us that our own self is a

self only to the extent that it disappears into all other
selves, non-sentient as well as sentient.2

The self is never some kind of substantial object, something

over against us that we can find. In his Traktatus Logico-Philo-
sophicus , Ludw ig W ittgenstein illustrated this graphically by
draw ing a picture of the eye and stating that this is not what we
see w hen we look.3 The eye (or the self) is at best that w ith
w hich w e see; it is never what w e see. Jean-Paul Sartre, in a to­
tally different context, and from a totally different perspective,
stated pretty m uch the same thing in The Transcendence of the
Ego. W hat w e get is always the me, the object, never the I, the
subject or self.
Going back to the beginning of Genjô-kôan, we have three
paragraphs of which Hee-jin Kim states that they "express the gist
of the entire Genjô-kôan fascicle and, for that matter, of the whole
Shôbôgenzô."4 We need to take a prolonged look at these para­
graphs to see w hat the implications of that statement are.
Dogen 3

W hen all dharm as are the Buddha-dharm a, there is illu­

sion and enlightenment, contemplation and action, birth
and Death, buddhas and sentient beings.
When myriad dharm as are of the nonself, there is no
illusion or enlightenment, no buddhas or sentient beings,
no arising or perishing.
Because the Buddha-w ay intrinsically leaps out of
plenitude and dearth, there is arising and perishing, illu­
sion and enlightenment, sentient beings and buddhas.
Still do flowers fall to our pity and weeds grow to our dis­
pleasure.5

The first paragraph states the duality and differentiation of il­

lusion and enlightenment, m editation or contemplation and ac­
tion in the world, birth and death, buddhas (enlightenment), and
sentient beings (illusion). Differentiation is the case w hen dhar­
mas are of the Buddha-dharm a. This may be cautiously com­
pared to a "thesis," a positive statement.
The second paragraph negates the first in that it asserts the
nonduality and nondifferentiation of illusion (sentient beings) and
enlightenment (buddhas) and arising and perishing. Now, non­
duality is the case w hen dharm as are of the nonself. This can be
compared to a negation of the thesis, to an antithesis. The first para­
graph asserts "is"; the second paragraph asserts "is not." But the
second paragraph is not the simple negation of the first. Illusion
(sentient beings) and enlightenment (buddhas) are common to
both paragraphs; contemplation and action are absent from the sec­
ond paragraph and are thus never explicitly negated. The first
paragraph speaks of birth and death, whereas the second negates,
not precisely birth and death, but arising and perishing. Whereas
the affinities between birth and arising and between death and per­
ishing are obvious, its remains questionable whether they can sim­
ply be "equated." All of this is mentioned in order to point out that
the second paragraph is not simply a global negation of the first.
4 The Formless Self

The third paragraph is no "synthesis" of the first two. The

Buddha-way "leaps out" of plentitude (form, differentiation, and
duality, "is" first paragraph) and dearth (emptiness, nonduality,
"is not," second paragraph). W hat does Dogen mean by "leaping
out?" Instead of synthesizing the first two paragraphs, the third
dynamically transcends them (neither "is" nor "is not"). Yet the
final sentence of that paragraph indicates that form, duality, and
em ptiness (nonduality) are still present, are included as well
(both "is" and "is not"). Flowers w ither and die while weeds
flourish. Things do not conform to w hat we want; they are not
just the w ay we w ould like them to be. They simply are as they
are (suchness).
It should finally be noted that birth and death and contem­
plation and action are never specifically negated as such. Thus,
there is subtle differentiation w ithin Dogen's "dialectic."
We shall consider the next two paragraphs of Genjo-koan, sav­
ing the remaining paragraphs for a later discussion w ith a some­
what broader focus.

To exert and verify m yriad dharm as by carrying forth the

self is illusion; to exert and verify the self while myriad
dharm as come forth is enlightenment. Those w ho apply
illusion to great enlightenm ent are buddhas; those who
have great illusion am id enlightenm ent are sentient be­
ings. Furtherm ore, there are persons w ho attain enlight­
enment upon enlightenment; there are persons who have
more illusion w ithin illusion.6

The focus of this paragraph is clearly illusion and enlighten­

ment. Illusion consists in carrying forth the self, in asserting the
self and attem pting to force exertion and verification of myriad
dharm as or things. This is deluded activity, the very opposite of
w hat the Taoists called "wu wei ," noninterference or letting be
(Meister Eckhart's Gelassenheit), which is nothing passive. W hat
should come forth is not the self, but the myriad dharmas. What
Dogen 5

should be exerted and verified are not the dharm as, but the self.
The self is to be exerted, not asserted.

A c t iv i t y o j the Self

We need to pause in our interpretation of the beginning of

Genjo-koan and consider briefly the three related terms "total ex­
ertion" (gujin ), "activity-unremitting," "ceaseless practice" (gyoji),
and "total dynam ism" (zenki). Kim broaches the extremely subtle
differentiation between total exertion (gujin) and total life force/
dynam ism (zenki) as follows:

Thus, the principles of the total exertion and the total

function or dynam ism are two aspects of the one and
same reality of subjectivity in Dogen's metaphysical real­
ism. Loosely speaking, the former addresses itself pri­
marily to the self, whereas the latter (the total dynamism)
speaks to the w orld. Both refer to the undefiled freedom
and liberation of the self and the world as the self-expres­
sion of Buddha-nature.7

The expression "tw o aspects of one and the same reality of

subjectivity," I believe, m ust be taken to mean that, w hether the
emphasis is on self or on w orld, the "place" w here Buddha-
nature expresses itself is ultim ately localized in the self which is
inseparable from world. Otherwise we are back in the dualism of
subject and object, which cannot be Kim's intention.
If w e provisionally accept for now this "loose statement" that
exertion refers more to self and dynam ism more to world, where
does that leave our third term, activity-unremitting? Again refer­
ring to Kim, activity-unremitting is "the universal dynamics in­
herent in all reality."8 Thus, activity-unremitting w ould seem to
be the most comprehensive of the three terms. Certainly the fasci­
cle on activity-unremitting constitutes one of the longer and more
substantial of the Shobogenzo, whereas the fascicle on total
6 T he Formless Self

dynam ism is quite short and there is no separate fascicle on total

exertion at all.
H aving made this general statement, w e w ant to briefly ex­
amine each of the three terms. The following cursory discussion
can hardly exhaust the matter.

T o ta l exertion ( c j u j i n )

Although no separate fascicle is devoted to it, total exertion

certainly pervades the whole of Shobogenzo. Exertion often
seems to be roughly equivalent to self-obstruction and is insepa­
rable from a dharm a-situation (juhoi). Exertion and a continuous
flowing on of tem poral activity preclude each other. In other
words, in order for a thing to totally exert itself or to obstruct it­
self, it m ust achieve a certain stasis , a dwelling where it abides in
its dharm a-situation. For example, the act of dropping off the
body-m ind (Shinjin datsuraku) cannot take place in any kind of
horizontal transition, b u t "dropping" definitely implies a vertical
dim ension where body-m ind can actually be let fall. As long as I
drag body-m ind along w ith me, which is w hat I habitually do,
body-m ind cannot drop off.
Since this is for the mom ent to be a brief excursion into our
three terms, we can say for now that w hat is perhaps most distinc­
tive about exertion is its inseparability from a dharm a-situation
and its ultim ate identity w ith self-obstruction and penetration,
both terms that we have not yet had the opportunity to discuss.
In a brief discussion Francis Cook gives an interesting inter­
pretation o ig u jin in his book How to Raise an Ox.

Looked at from the angle of the person who experiences

the situation, it means that one identifies one hundred
percent with the circumstance. Looked at from the stand­
point of the situation itself, the situation is totally mani­
fested or exerted w ithout obstruction or contamination.9

The person experiencing a situation totally becomes it. He is

not thinking about it; he is it. When he does this, the situation is
Dogen 7

completely revealed and manifested. This much is reasonably

clear. W hat does it m ean to say that a situation is totally exerted?
Normally we associate exertion prim arily w ith hum an beings, in
a secondary sense w ith some animals. A student exerts himself
cram ming for an exam. A football player exerts himself running
for the touchdown. A husky m ight exert him self pulling a
dogsled w ith a heavy load. We w ould not ordinarily speak of a
flower exerting itself. How can a situation which is supposedly
som ething "inert and lifeless" or "nonliving" exert itself? We
need a viable example here. Suppose a person sensitive to the
beauty of nature takes a walk in the forest. Dogen could have said
that the person responding w ith all of his sensibilities is exerting
himself. Here exerting himself does not m ean straining or forcing
himself, but rather opening him self up. Responding is never any­
thing passive, b u t can even be quite strenuous. W hat about the
forest? The response of the person allows the forest to become
manifest. This becoming manifest does not m ean simply putting
in an appearance in some static manner, but entails a dynamic
presencing. The forest manifests itself actively, that is, it exerts it­
self and presences fully.
This situation is an "exam ple" of "the whole being of em pti­
ness leaping o u t of itself" (konshinchoshutsu).10 The term "exam­
ple," however, is, strictly speaking, inappropriate here since we
are not talking about a particular situation exemplifying some
universal. The particular situation is the whole. Totality presences
in it with nothing left out.
We did not discuss the phrase "w ithout obstruction or conta­
m ination." A discussion of "obstruction" will be saved for a later
context. "No contam ination" simply means that nothing extrane­
ous leaks into the total situation.

T otal D ynam ism (zenki)

What seems to stand out most about total dynam ism is that it
is prim arily related to birth and death, which certainly constitute,
after all, an im portant p art of the m ost basic structure of exis­
tence. Like the dropping-off of the body-mind, birth and death for
8 The Formless S elf

Dôgen are in no way transitions, birth being ordinarily conceived as a

transition into life and death as a transition and passage out of it. Birth
and death never obstruct each other, nor does one birth obstruct any
other birth or one death any other death.

This dynamic working (kikan) makes birth and death what

they truly are
The present moment's birth exists in this dynamic working;
dynamic working exists in the present moment's birth. Birth
is neither a coming nor a going; birth is neither a
manifestation nor a completion. Nonetheless, birth is the
presence of total dynamism, death is the presence of total
dynamism. (Kim, 242)

Although the present moment's birth exists in this dynamic

working and dynamic working exists in the present moment's birth,
Dôgen unambiguously asserts the priority of dynamic working over
birth and death (it makes them what they truly are). He makes a similar
statement in the Gyôji fascicle:

We should study that we see birth-and-death in the enactment

of the Way; we do not enact the Way in birth- and-death
(195)

Conditioned arising is activity-unremitting, because activity-

unremitting is not caused by conditioned arising. (193)

Whatever else Dôgen intended with these kinds of statements,

he is attempting to eliminate "humans' petty views" (245). One of the
most tenacious of these views is that of a stretch of time between
birth and death in which things occur. Birth and death thus constitute
a static, extended framework within which various things can happen.
A careful study of the u/i-fascicle should help to undermine our
traditional, hopelessly narrow views. There is no temporal duration
and, consequently, no
Dogen 9

stretch of time in which things occur, no transition from one thing or

period to another. Spring is spring and summer is summer; spring
does not become summer. Birth is birth and death is death; birth does
not become death.
However, we do not wish to become too involved with the
question of time at this point. That subject pervades everything that
Dogen wrote, and we shall return to it after investigating the activity of
the self as far as we can.
Oddly enough, the meaning of moon (tsuki) in the tsuki fascicle
is nearly identical to total dynamism (zenki). Our metaphysically
conditioned minds immediately want to construe "moon" as a symbol,
a metaphor for total dynamism, or at least an example of it. But this
will not do. In Kim's words,

Since its first ideographic component tsu or to means

"all," "total," etc., and the second component ki is as in
zenki ("total dynamism"), we may well conjecture that
Dogen is here alluding to zenki by way of the moon
metaphor
Dogen here relates nyo ("like") to ze ("this"), evoking the
familiar Zen association nyoze ("like this," "thusness"). He
goes on to draw the implication that "like this" signifies not
mere resemblance but the nondual identity of symbol and
symbolized. He thus rejects any dualistic notion of
metaphor or simile (hiyu)f whereby an image points to,
represents, or approximates something other than itself.
Rather, for Dogen, the symbol itself is the very presence of
total dynamism, i.e., it presents. (250-51)

Total dynamism is not some kind of universal that is exemplified

or symbolized by the moon. Such a universal does not exist for
Dogen. Rather, moon together with clouds scudding by or moon and the
myriad forms it illuminates constitute a dharma situation that utterly lacks
a causal structure. For Dogen, it is not the case that clouds scudding
by cause us to believe that the
iO T h e Formless Self

moon is moving. There is no hierarchy here or, for that matter,

anywhere else in Dogen's thought. Hierarchy is just another
rem nant of metaphysical thinking, another form of an arche or
principle.
As in the fascicle on total dynamism, in the moon-fascicle
Dogen takes up the dharm a-situation of a boat in water. It is sig­
nificant that both fascicles present this situation; this attests to
their cohesion. The situation of the boat in w ater explicitly
includes the hum an being sailing the boat, whereas the situation
of moon and scudding clouds does so less explicitly. Without
explanation "m oon" suddenly becomes "m ind-m oon." Dogen's
em phasis is always predom inantly cosmological; it is never an-
thropocentric. W hen speaking of hum an beings, he is mostly
concerned w ith getting his listeners to distance themselves
from the narrow -m inded and petty views of hum ans, and even
of gods.
The common theme of the three activities focused on here:
total exertion, total dynam ism , and activity-unremitting, is the
kind of "m ovem ent" involved. Words like "activity," "dy­
namism," and "exertion" indicate that something is "going on."
"Dynamism" is too abstract to provide a concrete sense of what
Dogen is trying to convey. We can, however, bear the Greek sense
of dynamis in m ind if w e extract it from the Aristotelian schema of
dynamis-energeia, potentiality-actuality Potentiality or potency in
Dogen is not geared to actualizing itself. Potency is actual. Every­
thing is right now (nikon), not off in the future "somewhere."

The Tathagata's statem ent that "The moon moves when

clouds scud, and the shore passes w hen a boat sails" is
such that the "clouds scudding" is the "m oon's moving,"
and the "boat's sailing" is the "shore's passing." Cloud
and moon w alk and move together, at the same time, on
the same path, and have nothing to do w ith beginning or
end, before or after; boat and shore w alk and move to­
gether, at the same time, on the same path, and have noth­
Dogen

ing to do w ith starting or stopping, flowing or return-

ing."(248-49)

We m ust face and grapple w ith the question of w hat potency

is if it is not geared to actualization as its "not yet." W hat kind of
"m ovem ent" is involved in potency? We ordinarily think of
movement as something that starts and stops, that begins and
ends. We ordinarily think that all m ovement goes somewhere,
makes a transition. This kind of m ovement presupposes a conti­
nuity and a substratum that Dogen absolutely rejects. Thus, he
can state that "'C louds' scudding is not concerned w ith east,
west, south or north" (249). We are not talking about any kind of
direction or local motion in general. Dogen presents another situa­
tion w here our custom ary w ay of thinking m ovem ent simply
cannot apply. That situation is the m ountain's walking. Anyone
knows that a m ountain is not about to pick itself up and trudge
in some direction. The m ountain's "walking" m ust be of a differ­
ent sort.

Those w ho doubt the m ountain's w alking do not yet

know their ow n walking. It is not that they do not walk
but that they do not know or und erstan d their ow n
walking. (296)

Because we do not understand our ow n "walking," w e can­

not conceive of w hat it means to say that a m ountain walks. And
yet we still do walk even though w e do not understand this.
Thus, we are speaking of some sort of "automatic" or at least non-
conscious or non-deliberate activity here. Dogen also uses the
term "working" to describe w hat the m ountain does. This seems
som ew hat less paradoxical, also less forceful. If for "walking"
and "working" we try to substitute "presencing," this might help
to facilitate our understanding. A m ountain has a definite pres­
ence, as does a person w ithout making a conscious effort. There is
a distinct kind of "pow er" in this presencing that links it to the
12 The Formless Self

dynamis or potency we were trying to bring out. We shall return to

this absolutely central issue later.

Activity-unr e m ittincj (g yd ji)

Like uji, being-time, which takes place constantly regardless
of the enlightened or unenlightened state of things and persons,
total dynam ism and activity-unremitting w ould appear to be
constantly at work, whereas total exertion seems at times to be
less "automatic," seems to require some kind of concerted "ef­
fort." Thus, whereas the w ord "total" in total dynamism w ould
appear to refer to the "universality" of that dynamism, "total" in
total exertion appears more to indicate the entirety and whole­
ness of a single dharma. This is most evident in the phrase "ippo-
gujin," the total exertion of a single thing, a favorite expression
of Dogen's.
This is not to say that total exertion is a m atter of someone's
"will" or forcible doing; none of these three terms has anything
to do w ith that. Rather, exertion has to do with enactment. Enact­
m ent is the taking place (kydryaku) or, if you like, the em bodi­
m ent or bodying of absolute emptiness. Any ordinary everyday
position or situation of time (uji) takes its place as a dharm a-
situation through the total exertion enacting absolute emptiness
(sunyatd).
To return to activity-unremitting, the w orking of gydji is the
nonsubstantial "foundation" for everything: self, other, the cos­
mos. Yet we are not merely passive "products" and puppets of
this activity; our own working works along with it. "Because of
our activity-unremitting the ring of the Way is possessed of its
power" (192).
If, as we have asserted, activity-unremitting is constantly ac­
tive, w hether we are aware of it or not, then w hat is its relation­
ship to the now, to the present moment? A striking parallel can be
found here between activity-unremitting and Buddha-nature in
their temporal constitution.
Dogen 13

Thus ("all existence") is not a being originally existent be­

cause it fills the past and present; not a being arising for
the first time because it does not receive a single particle of
dust; not a being in isolation because it appropriates all;
not a being existing w ithout a beginning because "the
What presents itself as it is/' not a being existing with a be­
ginning because "One's everyday m ind is the W ay" (68)

All existence cannot be equated with or restricted to an origin;

it has not always been there because it is open-ended w ithout any
final limit. All existence does not now originate for the first time
because it already contains all that can be. All existence does not
exist in isolation because it is interdependent. All existence is not
w ithout a beginning because it simply is as it is (suchness). All ex­
istence does not have a beginning since everyday m ind, which is
the Way, has always existed.

The present of activity-unremitting is not an original

being abiding prim ordially in one's self nor is the present
of activity-unremitting something going from or coming
to, entering or leaving, one's self. W hat we speak of as the
present does not exist prior to activity-unremitting; it is
called the present in which activity-unremitting realizes
itself. (193-94)

The present of activity-unremitting is not something that we

inherently possess; nor is it something extraneous to us that en­
ters the scene at some appropriate moment. It does not exist prior
to activity-unremitting; it cannot be separated and isolated by it­
self. This presents something of a dilemma to our m inds accus­
tomed to Aristotelian logic. We w ould like to seize upon one of
two alternatives: either something is innate in us, always w ith us,
or we acquire it at some point as it happens to us. But the present
of activity-unremitting cannot be bifurcated into a present m o­
14 The Formless Self

ment and an activity-unremitting, both tenuously held together at

times by a nebulous "self." There is no present mom ent that lacks
activity-unremitting, whether we are aware of that activity or not.

The Self as Illusion and Enlightenment

We now return to the last two sentences of our passage from

Genjo-koan.

Those who apply illusion to great enlightenment are bud-

dhas; those w ho have great illusion am id enlightenm ent
are sentient beings. Furthermore, there are persons w ho
attain enlightenm ent upon enlightenment; there are per­
sons who have more illusion within illusion. (51)

The phrase "those w ho apply illusion to great enlighten­

ment" refers to buddhas who know how to use illusion and make
it w ork for great enlightenment. For Dogen, illusion is not noth­
ing and is not useless; it has its own status in reality.

Thus, while encountering this discourse on dream s in

dream s, those w ho try to eschew the B uddha-w ay think
that some nonexistent phantasm s are unreasonably be­
lieved to exist and that illusions are piled u p on top of
illusions. This is not true. Even though delusions are
m ultiplied in the m idst of delusions, you should cer­
tainly p o n d er upon the p ath of absolute freedom
(tshushi no ro) in which absolute freedom is apprehended
as the very consum m ation of delusions (madoi no ue no
madoi)}1

It is not the case that there are two mutually exclusive states:
enlightenment and illusion. Enlightenment and illusion cannot be
separated. Dogen reinterpreted the statement in the N irvana
Sutra: "all beings have the Buddha-nature" to mean: "all beings
Dogen 15

are the Buddha-nature." We are all fundam entally enlightened.

This was Dogen's own "personal" koan. If we possess the Buddha-
nature already, w hat need is there for practice? To give a some­
w hat limping analogy, the Buddha-nature m ight be compared to
a great talent or gift. Suppose that Mozart had decided to become
a banker and had never received any musical training or even ex­
posure to music. M ozart undeniably had one of the greatest of
musical gifts, and yet it is conceivable that he m ight never have
had the opportunity to develop that gift. Without practice and re­
alization the gift remains dormant. We w ould be left with a tragic
waste.
Now, w hat does it mean to have great illusion am id enlight­
enment? It goes w ithout saying that the reflections offered in this
study at best point out one of many possible interpretations of
Dogen's rich text w hich can never be exhausted by some non-
indigenous contemporary effort.
To have great illusion am id enlightenm ent could mean that
someone is deluded about their supposed enlightenment, that
someone is convinced that he is enlightened, whereas, in fact, he
is not. Probably Zen m asters' experience abounds w ith such ex­
amples. The expressions "Zen sickness," "the stink of Zen" con­
firm the fact that there has been an ample supply of such cases.
The most poisonous kind of ego-pride is spiritual pride.
This might also be applicable to the last statement in our pas­
sage: There are persons w ho have more illusion w ithin illusion.
To have more illusion w ithin illusion might well mean that a per­
son has no idea that he is deluded. A person who realizes that he
is deluded is no longer completely within the realm of illusion. As
Socrates remarked, he knew that he knew nothing. In part this re­
m ark was ironical. N obody ever got the best of Socrates in an ar­
gum ent or a discussion. But on a more profound level, Socrates
m eant this seriously. After all, w hen it comes to ultim ate ques­
tions none of us ordinary mortals knows anything.
Finally, w e come to the last rem aining statement: there are
persons w ho attain enlightenment upon enlightenment. The basic
16 T h e Formless Self

sense of this w ould appear to be that of no attachm ent to enlight­

enment, ultim ate freedom from the idea of something labeled
"enlightenment."
Attaining enlightenment beyond enlightenment is also char­
acterized as going beyond the Buddha. In the fascicle bearing that
title (Bukkôjôji) Dôgen writes:

This one who goes beyond the Buddha is the "non-

Buddha." W hen you are asked what the non-Buddha is
like, just consider: We do not call h im /h e r the non-Bud-
dha because s /h e exists before the Buddha, nor do we call
h im /h e r the non-Buddha because s /h e exists after the
Buddha; nor is s /h e the non-Buddha because s /h e out-
reaches the Buddha. S /h e is the non-Buddha only be­
cause s /h e goes beyond the Buddha. This non-Buddha is
known as such because s /h e drops off the Buddha's coun­
tenance and because s /h e drops off the Buddha's body-
m ind.12

"Going beyond" is not to be considered as any kind of tran­

scendence in the traditional sense. The whole import of Dôgen's
key term "dropping off" is diametrically opposed to "climbing
over" (trans-cendere) and refreshingly obviates meta-physics,
trans-meta-physics, meta-meta-meta-physics and the whole busi­
ness of "meta" of which it is to be fervently hoped we have truly
had our philosophical fill. Kim's footnote is helpful here.

The process of going beyond the Buddha is not a matter

of temporal sequence any more than it is one of spatial
juxtaposition. The "beyond" defies any static spatial or
temporal analogies. This view is quite consistent with
Dôgen's notion of temporal passage (kyôryaku). Else­
where in this fascicle he writes: "This process of going be­
yond the Buddha is to reach the Buddha while advancing
to meet the Buddha anew.13
Dogen i7

Again, we postpone discussion of temporal passage (kydryaku)

until a later point w hen we shall take up the question of being­
time (uji) pervading all of Dogen's writings.

When you have unsurpassed w isdom , you are called

buddha. W hen a b u d d h a has unsurpassed wisdom, it is
called unsurpassed wisdom. N ot to know w hat it is like
on this path is foolish. W hat it is like is to be unstained. To
be unstained does not mean that you try forcefully to ex­
clude intention or discrimination, or that you establish a
state of nonintention. Being unstained cannot be intended
or discriminated at all.
Being unstained is like meeting a person and not con­
sidering w hat he looks like. Also it is like not wishing for
more color or brightness w hen viewing flowers or the
moon.14

Being unstained is not something that can be consciously

willed or brought about; any intention simply precludes it. Dogen
says that being unstained is like meeting a person and not con­
sidering w hat he looks like. Mostly w hen we meet someone, par­
ticularly for the first time, b u t also subsequently in a different
way, we "take stock" and "keep score." W hat strikes us are cate­
gories and above all numbers: how old the person is, w hether
thin or fat, w hat color hair and eyes, plus ensuing informational
data such as profession or job, how m uch his or her salary is,
w hat kind of house he or she lives in, m arried or single, children
ad infinitum malum. We should just m eet a person as he is in his
suchness w ithout considering all the categories and num bers
which have little or nothing to do w ith w ho that "person" is.
After all, person comes from personare, to sound through, whence
comes the idea of persona or mask. We w ant to meet "what sounds
through."
Similarly, we should not wish for more color in the flowers or
more brightness in the moon, This "more" is our idealized cate­
i8 T he Formless Self

gory, and misses the flowers and the moon in their suchness, their
as-it-is-ness. O verpainting the landscape ruins the painting. Or
one can perhaps see this as-it-is-ness in a small child before it has
become self-conscious. It just is, and that is its utter charm.

Spring has the tone of spring, and autum n has the tone of
autumn; there is no escaping it. So when you w ant spring
or autum n to be different from w hat it is, notice that it can
only be as it is. Or w hen you w ant to keep spring or au­
tum n as it is, reflect that it has no unchanging nature.15

Dogen chooses the most volatile and transitional seasons of

the year, the seasons where we are most apt to notice nature. Win­
ter and sum m er seem to be more stable, even som ew hat static.
But if I w ant autum n to be spring and not autum n, I am simply
deluding myself and lose the reality of w hat is. And if I w ant to
hang onto spring, keep it and not let it give way to summer, I
have failed to realize that nothing can have an unchanging n a­
ture. Impermanence is Buddha-nature.

That which is accumulated is without self, and no mental

activity has self. The reason is not that one of the four great
elements or the five skandhas can be understood as self or
identified as self. Therefore, the form of the flowers or the
moon in your m ind should not be understood as being
self, even though you think it is self. Still, when you clarify
that there is nothing to be disliked or longed for, then the
original face is revealed by your practice of the Way.16

Here Dogen eliminates both the physical and mental compo­

nents (the four great elements and the five skandhas—that which
is accumulated) and also specific mental activity such as repre­
senting images of flowers or the moon as envisioned by some­
thing like the self. This is a more detailed and explicit way of
describing the dropping off of body and mind. Whereas Plato had
Dogen i9

singled out the im m ortal soul as w hat is real, as w hat is the self,
and had denigrated the body to being "the prison of the soul"
(Phaedo 81 e), Dogen w ants to free one from both body and mind.
What we think of as our m ind, the mental activity and represen­
tation going on more or less automatically in our heads is not
w hat w e truly are, is not the self. It, too, m ust be dropped off.
Take, for example, James Joyce's Ulysses . This enorm ous book de­
scribes w hat w ent on in one m an's head during a period of
twenty-four hours. Can we therefore say that this is w hat the
man is?

Also leam that the entire universe is the dharm a body of

the self. To seek to know the self is invariably the wish of
living beings. However, those w ho see the true self are
rare. Only buddhas know the true self.
People outside the w ay regard w hat is not the self as
the self. But w hat buddhas call the self is the entire uni­
verse. Therefore, there is never an entire universe that is
not the self, w ith or w ithout our knowing it. On this m at­
ter defer to the w ords of the ancient buddhas.17

Dogen is keenly aware that he is w riting for students of the

Way, not for enlightened buddhas. He is concerned with w hat
those students understand and do not understand, and adm on­
ishes them again and again:

Yet the ancient b u d d h a's w ord cannot be mistaken. Even

if you do n o t understand it, you should not ignore it. So,
be determ ined to understand it. Since this w ord is al­
ready expounded, you should listen to it. Listen until
you understand.18

Any performing musician knows that he has to practice until

he "gets it right." H ow m any students of philosophy and religion
realize that they ought to do the same?
20 The Formless S e lf

The self is the entire universe. Is this not an outlandish, far­

fetched and trum ped-up statement? N ot at all. We all begin by
thinking that this particular being that I myself am is the self. But
the true self is formless. Thus, it cannot be a being. This is extremely
difficult to fathom because all we know and talk about are spe­
cific beings. This was M artin H eidegger's gargantuan difficulty
w ith regard to the question of being. He knew that being can
never be a being (ontological difference), he also brought being
very close to nothingness (the veil of being) on various occasions,
but he was never able to follow the radicality of the Buddhist
approach—to present a "positive" dimension of nothingness, ad­
mittedly a very difficult thing to do.
W hat is not the self is this particular being that I think I am.
Even the Upanishads say that the Self is neti, neti, not this partic­
ular being, not that particular being, not a being at all. And, of
course, the Buddha himself taught that all beings have no self
(anatman). But this does not mean that the self is nothing, which
would commit the sin of nihilism, just as the opposing statement
that the self is a real, perm anent being commits the sin of perm a­
nence or eternalism.
After explaining that fish always know one another's heart,
unlike people w ho do not know one another's heart, and stating
that a bird can see traces of hundreds and thousands of small
birds whereas beasts have no conception of w hat traces in the sky
are, Dogen goes on:

Buddhas are like this. You may w onder how many life­
times buddhas have been practicing. Buddhas large and
small, although they are countless, all know their own
traces. You never know a buddha's trace w hen you are
not a buddha.
You may w onder why you do not know. The reason is
that, while buddhas see these traces w ith a buddha's eye,
those w ho are not buddhas do not have a buddha's eye,
and just notice the buddha's attributes.
Dogen 21

All w ho do not know should search out the trace of a

buddha's path. If you find footprints, you should investi­
gate w hether they are the buddha's. On being investi­
gated, the buddha's trace is known; and w hether it is long
or short, shallow or deep, is also known. To illuminate
your trace is accomplished by studying the buddha's
trace. Accomplishing this is buddha-dharm a.19

In contrast to the usual m eaning of "trace" as residue, some­

thing left over or behind, a kind of defilement, to know the Bud­
dha's trace is to know his path, to know where he has gone. After
all, Dogen's examples of fish know ing where fish are going and
birds knowing one another's traces do not constitute "traces" that
any of us can discern.
We cannot see the B uddha's traces because we see the Bud­
dha from the outside. All we see are attributes, not traces. This
should remind us of the passage previously discussed about
meeting a person and not considering w hat he looks like. This is
to be unstained.
"Traces" m ay also rem ind us of the O xherding pictures in
which a boy first catches sight of the footprints of the ox and
thus begins his quest for the true self. Before he saw the foot­
prints he m ight well have not know n that there was anything to
look for.

The Self as Buddba-nature

Concentrating mainly on the Buddha-nature fascicle w ith oc­

casional passages from elsewhere, we now w ant to explore to a
certain extent w hat Dogen says about the self as Buddha-nature.
Probably the most obvious thing about Buddha-nature is the fact
that it does not coincide w ith the individual ego-self. But the tra­
ditional Western and H indu alternative, that is, to say that the
Buddha-nature is a Universal Self will not do either. The matter is
far more subtle and more difficult.
22 T h e Formless Self

They [many students] think vainly that the Buddha-

nature's enlightenment and awakening is the same as the
conscious m ind which is only the movement of wind and
fire. But w ho has said that there is in the Buddha-nature
enlightenm ent and awakening! A lthough enlightened
ones and awakened ones are buddhas, still the Buddha-
nature is neither enlightenment nor awakening in the or­
dinary sense.20

If the student attempts to look into his mind, and this is what
he is instructed to do if he is not to search for the Buddha-nature
outside of himself, w hat he encounters is the ordinary m ind's re­
actions to w hat is going on around him. In other words, in spite of
his attem pt to "turn w ithin," he is still "outside." Actually, the
very fact that he is representing an "outside" and an "inside" du-
alistically, shows that he is getting nowhere. He is trying to enter
w hat Heidegger called "the cabinet of consciousness." However,
as Heidegger showed throughout Being and Time, we are always
already "out there" (in the world). This is the meaning of ek-sis-
tence and ek-stasis. The cabinet of consciousness is a Cartesian
construct.

It has often happened that . . . those who have been

teachers to men and devas . . . have, many of them,
thought that the w ind and fire movement of m an's con­
scious m ind is the Buddha-nature's enlightenment. It is to
be pitied, that such a blunder occurred because they have
not paid sufficient heed to the study of the Way.
Advanced students and beginners in the Buddha
Way m ust not make this mistake now. Even though you
may study enlightenment, enlightenment is not the wind
and fire movem ent of the conscious mind. Even though
you study movement, it is not w hat you think it is. If you
can understand movement in its truth, then you can also
understand true enlightenment and awakening.21
Dogen 23

A kind of "everyday" koan is the question: Who am I? In Zen

this is often expressed as: Where do you come from? This, of
course, is not a question about geography; it is a question about
the self. Even in contem porary slang w hen someone says: I know
where you are coming from, this means basically that he knows
"where" and w ho the person is.

W hen the Sixth Chinese Patriarch Ta-chien Ch'an-shih of

Ts'ao-hsi shan first w ent to practice under the Fifth Patri­
arch of H uang-m ei shan, he was asked, "Where do you
come from?" He answered, "I am a m an of Ling-nan."
The Fifth Patriarch said, "W hat have you come for?" "I've
come to become a Buddha," he replied. The Fifth Patri­
arch said, "People of Ling-nan have no Buddha-nature.
H ow could you attain B uddhahood?"22

Dogen interprets this to mean, not that people from Ling-nan

have no Buddha-nature, but that the Sixth Patriarch is no-
Buddha-nature. This is similar to his interpretation of the Nirvana
Sutra's saying, "All sentient beings w ithout exception have the
Buddha-nature," to mean all beings or whole being is the Buddha-
nature. Buddha-nature is nothing that w e possess already or that
we acquire through practice; the Buddha-nature is manifested at
the very m om ent of attainment. The categories of our logical, con­
ceptual thinking compel us to ask: either we always possess it or
else we first acquire it through attainment. M any of the koans, es­
pecially the one about polishing a tile, stress the impossibility of
acquiring or becoming the Buddha-nature. It just flashes up at the
mom ent of our seeing. Seeing and flashing up are one sudden, in­
stantaneous "event." We shall return to this crucial point in a dis­
cussion of form and emptiness. Emptiness is not an entity; it is
manifest only in form. Similarly, the Buddha-nature is no entity
whatsoever; it manifests itself only in seeing.
A nother w ay of asking w ho someone is or w here he comes
from is to ask his name.
24 T h e Formless Self

Then, w hen he [the Fifth patriarch] was seven years old,

while on the w ay to Huang-mei mountain, he met the
Fourth Patriarch Ta-i, who saw that although he was still
a child, his physiognomy was excellent and unusual, dif­
ferent from that of ordinary children. The patriarch asked
him, "W hat is your name?" The boy replied, "There is a
name, but it is not an ordinary name." The master said,
"W hat nam e is it?" "It is Buddha-nature," said the boy.
The patriarch said, "You have no Buddha-nature." The
boy replied, "You say no (Buddha-nature) because
Buddha-nature is emptiness."23

When asked for his name, the boy does not reply that he has a
name, but states that there is a name, that is, Buddha-nature. The
master flatly retorts that the boy has no Buddha-nature. But the
boy, instead of being rebuked or defeated by that remark, replies
that he "has" no-Buddha-nature because Buddha-nature is empti­
ness. Here again "no-Buddha-nature" m ust be understood to
lie beyond the opposition of Buddha-nature versus no-Buddha
nature.
Dogen continues:

You m ust w ithout fail devote yourself to the truth of "no-

Buddha-nature," never remitting your efforts. No-Bud-
dha-nature has to be traced perplexingly, yet it does have
a touchstone: "What." It has a time: "You." There is enter­
ing into its dynamic functioning: "Affirmation." . ..
The Fifth Patriarch said, "You say no (Buddha-nature)
because Buddha-nature is emptiness." This clearly and
distinctly articulates the truth: that is, em ptiness is not,
"no." But in uttering "Buddhanature-emptiness," one
says "no." One does not say "half a pound" or "eight
ounces." One does not say emptiness, because it is empti­
ness. One does not say no because it is no. One says no
because it is Buddhanature-emptiness.
Dogen 25

Thus, each piece of no is a touchstone to articulate

emptiness; emptiness is the pow er articulating no.24

Dogen is asking how w e can understand no-Buddha-nature.

The basic structure here is already familiar to us: we m ust trace
the no-Buddha-nature that is beyond the opposition of Buddha-
nature and no Buddha-nature. That can be expressed as Buddha-
nature-emptiness. This B uddhanature-em ptiness is not just some
kind of em pty space or gaping abyss. It articulates itself. It has a
touchstone, that is, What. W hat could be any specific occasion.
But Buddhanature-em ptiness can never be equated with any spe­
cific What. Buddhanature-em ptiness has a time, that is, you, any
hum an being w ho is open to it. Finally, we can enter into the dy­
namic functioning of Buddhanature-emptiness. We participate in
or, more exactly, we are that dynamic functioning. In that we are
it, we affirm it and this affirmation, again, is beyond the duality of
affirmation and negation.
Emptiness is not "no"; it cannot be equated with any specific
thing or w ith that thing's negation. But w hen we come to express
it, we say "no." This is preferable to saying something particular
such as half a pound or eight ounces. Neither em ptiness nor no
can be expressed directly in ordinary language. Thus, w e do not
say no, because it is no. We do not say emptiness, because it is
emptiness. A lthough em ptiness is not no, each piece of no is a
touchstone to articulate emptiness. Emptiness is the pow er artic­
ulating no.
The "pow er" of em ptiness m ust not be understood as some
kind of potentiality or dynamis in the Aristotelian sense of part of
the structure of dynamis-energeia or an entelechy. There is no con­
tinuous process involved here. Strictly speaking, emptiness does
not become form. N o-thing cannot become some-thing in any or­
dinary sense.
In an article entitled "The Characteristics of Oriental N oth­
ingness," Shin' ichi Hisamatsu, w ho was the one to centrally use
the expression "Formless Self," states that the characterization of
26 T h e Formless Self

empty space, while applicable, is not of itself sufficient to express

oriental nothingness. Oriental nothingness is not only alive,
which em pty space is not, but also and above all aware. It has
nothing to do w ith w hat we normally take to be the subject, but is
fundamentally a seeing.

Thus, the True N ature is always free, and further, because

"seeing into one's True N ature," not being any-thing, is
every-thing, and being every-thing, is not any-thing. It is
in this sense that the true meaning of "absolute negation
is in itself absolute affirmation and absolute affirmation is
in itself absolute negation" is to be understood.25

Hisamatsu also repeatedly stresses the fact that it is of the ut­

most im portance to negate the usual state of hum an being, all
vestiges of the anthropocentric idealism prevalent in the m odem
age and especially psychologism that will never escape anthro-
pocentricism, but will flatly reduce anything holy or divine to a
wish-fantasy or a pathological state of consciousness.

Above I m entioned Zen as being a religion of "m an sim­

ply being Buddha" which negates the "holy" and tran­
scendent and does not search for the Buddha separated
from or external to m an's self. In speaking these words,
however, it is not w ith the intention of affirming the no­
tion that m an in his usual state is Buddha, the view of an­
thropocentric idealism prevalent in the m odem age, or
that the idealized form of m an is Buddha. Zen's affirma­
tion of m an is not so simplistic. It is the position of Zen
rather to negate absolutely the usual state of man. . . .
Both of them [Po-chang Huai-hei and Lin-chi] stress
strongly the absolute negation of the usual state of man.26

The usual state of hum an being is to be negated, not because

hum ans are sinful or evil, b u t because they are not awake. They
Dogen 27

are not even fully and truly alive. H isam atsu brings out the
unique feature of Zen that seeks to overcome the view of the
holy or divine as som ething transcendental and objective com­
pletely outside of hum an being. Thus, H isam atsu accepts nei­
ther the view that the usual state of hum an being as such is holy
nor the view that the holy is som ething objective and transcen­
dent absolutely separate from hum an being. The antidote to the
first view could be found in N ietzsche's bitterly sarcastic re­
mark: "All m en godlike!" H um an being in its usual state is not
automatically som ething to be proud of. One has only to take a
look at the w orld as it is today or, for that matter, as it often has
been. On the other hand, the idea of the holy as som ething u t­
terly unattainable is hardly satisfying for the religious seeker
here and now.

O n the other hand, Zen takes up neither the deification of

man, a position naively assum ed in m odern times, nor
the position of a transcendent God insisted upon by Di­
alectical Theology. The crucial position of Zen is to affirm
the "sacred in m an" by retrieving the sacred from the
reaches of transcendent views or objective forms and re­
turning it to the folds of hum an subjectivity.27

To return to the more specific issues in Dogen, the im portant

thing is not w hether one speaks of Buddha-nature or no-Buddha-
nature. Such discussions get tangled up in the question of exis­
tence or nonexistence. A Western counterpart can be found in the
disputes about theism versus atheism. They focus solely on exis­
tence versus nonexistence and fail to inquire into w hat is meant
by the word "god" or even by the word "existence." They assume
that everyone knows who or w hat a god is.

He [the Sixth Patriarch] should have set aside the noth­

ingness of "being and nothingness" and asked, W hat is
this Buddha-nature? He should have sought, What sort of
28 T h e Formless Self

thing is this Buddha-nature? People of today as well,

w hen they hear "Buddha-nature," never question what
this Buddha-nature is. They seem to speak only about the
m eaning of such things as the existence or non-existence
of Buddha-nature. That is rash and ill-considered.28

One should not get into long disputes about w hether Bud­
dha-nature exists or does not exist, but rather ask w hat kind of
thing that could be. How can one argue w hether something exists
or not w hen one doesn't know w hat it is? Is it Mind? It is perm a­
nent or impermanent? W hat does it "do?"
Near the beginning of this chapter we touched upon the ques­
tion of activity, dynamism, and exertion. We now continue that
scrutiny, focusing on the question of impermanence and tem po­
rality. "Temporality" indicates how dynam ism takes place or
comes about. The term "dynam ism " by itself is too general to
convey a concrete meaning.

Temporality and Impermanence

Even though you study movement, it is not w hat you

think it is. If you can understand movement in its truth,
then you can also understand true enlightenm ent and
awakening.29

W hat does m ovem ent have to do with awakening? We have

already been told that the w ind and fire m ovem ent of hum an
being's conscious m ind is not movement in its truth. Movement
in its truth is neither motion in the ordinary sense nor stillness in
its ordinary sense. It is not a m atter of quelling motion and be­
coming quiescent.

Buddha said, "If you wish to know the Buddha-nature's

meaning, you should watch for temporal conditions. If the
time arrives, the Buddha-nature will manifest itself." . . .
Dogen 29

If you wish to know the B uddha-nature's meaning

m ight be read, "you are directly know ing the Buddha-
nature's m eaning." You should w atch for tem poral con­
ditions means "you are directly know ing temporal
conditions." If you wish to know the Buddha-nature, you
should know that "it is precisely tem poral conditions
themselves."30

Dogen removes the hypothetical and imperative character

from this passage. Instead of saying: if you w ant this, you should
do that, he states: you know it right now. A nd instead of saying: if
you wish to know this, you should watch for tem poral condi­
tions, he states: look at the tem poral conditions right in front of
you or even the tem poral conditions that you yourself are. N oth­
ing is postponed to the future. It is not a m atter of w aiting and
watching for som ething to arrive. It has to be right here now, or
else it doesn't "exist" at all. "There has never yet been a time not
arrived. There can be no Buddha-nature that is not Buddha-
nature manifested right now."31
Either Buddha-nature is manifested right now, or "there is"
no Buddha-nature. But the latter alternative w ould not be an al­
ternative for Dogen; it w ould just be the deluded pronouncem ent
of an ignorant mind.
The last issue to be discussed in the fascicle on Buddha-
nature before turning to the fascicle on being-time is that of per-
manence-impermanence.

The Sixth Patriarch taught his disciple Hsing-ch'ang, "Im­

perm anence is in itself Buddha-nature. Permanence is, as
such, the (dualistic) m ind which discriminates all dhar-
mas, good or bad."32

The central topic here is impermanence. Here again, however,

w e m ust get beyond the traditional dualism of static, persistent
being (permanence) and evanescent becoming (impermanence).
30 T h e Formless Self

To assert permanence is tantam ount to asserting etemalism; to as­

sert impermanence in its usual sense is tantam ount to asserting
nihilism. It is safer to err on the side of impermanence; any asser­
tion of perm anence m ust proceed with extreme caution. Until
about the last hundred years, philosophers, at least in the West,
have been prone to falling prey to etemalism.
If "permanence" cannot be understood as static persistence
and also cannot be understood apart from impermanence, how is
it to be conceived? It presences right in the m idst of im perm a­
nence, yet it itself has nothing to do with traces of coming and
going. Permanence is unchanging in the sense that it does not go
anywhere or become anything. Its concretization is to be found in
juhoi, dwelling in a dharma-situation, which embodies the aspect
of difference and individuality preventing everything from melt­
ing together in a "night in which all cows are black."

"Do you know," said Hui-neng, "if the B uddha-nature

were perm anent, w hat w ould be the need on top of that
to preach about all dharm as good and bad? Even in the
elapse of an entire kalpa there w ould not be a single p er­
son w ho w ould ever raise the m ind in quest of enlight­
enment. Therefore I preach impermanence, and just that
is the way of true perm anence preached by the Buddha.
On the other hand, if all dharm as were im perm anent,
then each and every thing w ould merely have a selfhood
and w ould take part in birth and death, and there would
be areas to which true perm anence did not reach. There­
fore I preach perm anence, and it is just the same as
the m eaning of true im perm anence preached by the
B uddha."33

It is the impermanence and emptiness of Buddha-nature that

makes it accessible. If it were perm anent and eternal in the sense
of a Platonic Form, one could do no more than vainly strive after
it. And if everything were hopelessly mired in birth and death
Dogen 3i

w ith no possibility of a respite, again, Buddha-nature w ould be

inaccessible. Dogen is on the trail of a sense of perm anence and
impermanence in which they are ultimately nondual. This sense
obviously differs from the ordinary meaning of permanence and
impermanence.

Temporality

We turn now to the fascicle on being-time. "We set the self out
in array and make that the whole w orld."34
W hat does it m ean to set the self out in array? "Array" seems
to im ply a positioning of the self in the things of the world. This
means that the self is fundam entally "outside" of itself in the
world; it is not an encapsulated subject. This self has nothing to
do w ith an isolated subject confronting objects. The eight state­
ments w ith w hich the fascicle begins articulate how the self sets
itself out in array.

For the time being, I stand astride the highest m ountain

peaks.
For the time being, I move on the deepest depths of
the ocean floor.
For the time being, I'm three heads and eight arms.
For the time being, I'm eight or sixteen feet.
For the time being, I'm a staff or whisk.
For the time being, I'm a pillar or lantern.
For the time being, I'm Mr. Chang or Mr. Li.
For the time being, I'm the great earth and heavens
above. (116)

The self sets itself out as various things (staff, whisk, pillar,
lantern), as various people (Chang and Li) and as earth and
heaven. Hence, this self is not psychological, but cosmological.
However, Dogen then goes on to say that all these "things" are
basically so m any different times. This completely distances
"things" (a neutral term that can include people and the cosmos)
32 T he Formless Self

from any kind of substantial objects. Time is the most volatile

thing imaginable. As Im m anuel Kant rem arked, it yields no
shape. Yet for Dogen it is not simply volatile, but also contains
within itself the possibility of abiding. But abiding has nothing to
do w ith any kind of substance.
Instead of being content w ith the w ord "nonsubstantial," we
need to ask w hat that means concretely. If things are time and
time is nonsubstantial, this means that things can interpenetrate;
they do not obstruct or im pede one another. The fact that things
can interpenetrate means that they are not necessarily separate
and distinct from each other. Dogen presents the ordinary (de­
luded) view of time that has its own limited validity.

He imagines it is like crossing a river and a mountain:

while the river and m ountain may still exist, I have now
passed them by and /, at the present time, reside in a fine
vermilion palace. To him, the m ountain and river and I
are as far distant as heaven from earth. (119)

This view separates the subject from the various places that
he traverses and also separates the present time in which he re­
sides in a fine vermilion palace from the time w hen he crossed the
river and mountain. This common sense view is not totally
wrong, but it does not exhaust the matter.

But the true w ay of things is not found in this one direc­

tion alone. At the time the m ountain was being climbed
and the river being crossed, I was there in time. The time
has to be in me. Inasmuch as I am there, it cannot be that
time passes away. (119)

W herever the subject is, time, the present, has to be in him.

No m atter where he is, time is there w ith him. This present does
not exclude, but rather includes past and future. It is not the case
that, when I have crossed the river and climbed the mountain and
Dogen 33

now reside in a fine palace, the river and m ountain are separated
and far aw ay from me. They are there w ith me, too. Where I am,
time does not just pass away.
Dogen does not explicitly deny the aspect of time that passes
away or flies by. But since that aspect of time is the sole one that
everybody is aware of, he presents the abiding aspect of time,
juhoi, dwelling in a dharma-situation, in uncompromisingly para­
doxical statements.
Dogen is dealing w ith time in its two aspects: the one that
everyone is aware of, coming and going, passing away, and the
one that he seems to be the first to em phasize in this way, abid­
ing in a dharm a-situation. It is true that thinkers in both the West
and the East have spoken of an eternal now, b u t their conception
was prim arily that of a timeless m om ent, a mom ent lifted out of
time. Dogen's abiding in a dharm a-situation is unique in that it
does n o t lie outside of time. O n the contrary, the present m o­
m ent (nikon) affirms itself while negating past and future and at
the same time negates itself w hile affirming past and future
time.
It seems logically com prehensible enough to say that w hen
the present mom ent affirms itself, it negates past and future; and
that w hen it negates itself, it affirms past and future. But we m ust
ask: W hat does it m ean existentially to say that the present m o­
m ent affirms or negates itself? The mom ent is not a hum an
agency. How, then, can it affirm or negate? Obviously not by any­
thing like an act of will. The pow er of affirmation or negation
m ust be structurally inherent in the mom ent itself.
Of course, Dogen does not use abstract terminology like af­
firm or negate; for negation he uses " swallow dow n" and for af­
firmation "spit out." This is not only concrete and pictorial
language; it is actually visceral.

So doesn't the time climbing the m ountain or crossing the

river swallow dow n the time of the fine vermilion palace?
Doesn't that time spit out this time? (119)
34 T h e Formless S elf

The "dialectic" at stake here takes place between the absolute

present (nikon) and dwelling in a dharm a-situation, and taking
place or passage (kydryaku). The ordinary, deluded view of time
as merely flying by is, so to speak, a kind of degeneration of pas­
sage. W hen the absolute present affirms itself, a kind of "stasis"
or abiding is achieved and dwelling in a dharma-situation results.
Past and future are negated, cut off, excluded, yet in some way
also included. If they were not in some sense included, the pre­
sent w ould be a dimensionless point. What is excluded and
negated is the flying by; w hat is affirmed is dwelling.
Yet time also moves and passes. This is an undeniable fact
that everyone and everything experiences and undergoes. In that
(one cannot say "w hen" here) the present negates itself, it opens
the gates of the stasis, so to speak, and the past and future em­
braced in it are freed to move and pass.

You should not come to understand that time is only fly­

ing past. You should not only learn that flying past is the
property inherent in time. If time were to give itself to
merely flying past, it w ould have to have gaps. You fail to
experience the passage of being-time and hear the utter­
ance of its truth, because you are learning only that time
is something that goes past.
The essential point is: every entire being in the entire
w orld is, each time, an (independent) time, even while
making a continuous series. (120)

Here Dogen explicitly states that to think that time is merely

flying past is to fail to experience the passage of being-time. Thus,
passage cannot be equated with flying by. If I experience time as
merely flying by, I posit myself as something stationary "w atch­
ing" time flying past me. I am stationary; time is flying away. The
main error here is that I conceive time as something separate from
me, as something "in which" I somehow am. This is not Dogen's
understanding at all.
Dogen 35

Most people are preoccupied with time's rolling away into the past.
They are less aware of the fact that it unfailingly arrives in the present
again and again.

You reckon time only as something that does nothing but

pass by, and do not understand it as something not yet arrived
There has never been anyone who, while taking time to be
coming and going, has penetrated to see it as a being-time
dwelling in its dharma-position. What chance have you then
for a time to break through the barrier [to total
emancipation?] Even if there were someone who knew that
dwelling-position, who would be able truly to give an
utterance that preserved what he had thus gained? And even
were someone able to give such utterance continually, he still
could not help groping to bring his original face into
immediate presence. (123)

Dogen points out two aspects of time unobserved by most people.

These two aspects are dwelling in a dharma-position, which has been
discussed here to some extent, and not yet arrived. Not yet arrived is
obviously the opposite of flying by or passing away, and refers to some
kind of "future." What is the aspect of time that is not yet arrived? It could
be related to that future of which Plotinus spoke when he said
something like: take away the future and human being could not survive.
By this Plotinus did not mean the literal truism that if there will be no
tomorrow, humans will be physically dead. Rather, like any great mystic,
he meant this in an existential sense. Plotinus was not a Christian, so he
also did not mean this teleologically or eschato- logically. He rather
meant something like time in general is something that incessantly
comes again and again. What is being emphasized is not the element of
the future as something outstanding, but its incessant coming. This is a
subtle, but crucial distinction.
36 Th e Formless Self

Left entirely to the being-time of the unenlightened, both

bodhi and nirvana would be being-time which was noth­
ing more than a mere aspect of going-and-coming. [But]
no nets or cages long remain—all is the im mediate pres­
enting here and now of being-time. (123)

Again Dogen em phasizes that seeing only the going-and-

coming aspect of being-time is the unenlightened person's view.
In spite of the unenlightened person's turning even bodhi and
nirvana into a mere aspect of going-and-coming, w hat really is,
w hat is real, is the immediate presencing here and now of being­
time. W hatever categories, constructs, and limitations the unen­
lightened m ay impose upon being-time, they remain w hat they
are, that is, delusions fundamentally unable to affect the im medi­
ate presencing of being-time.
Passages following again center on the kind of movement in­
volved in the passage of time. Not only is that m ovem ent not a
going-and-coming; it does not go anywhere at all.

In speaking of a "passage": if you imagine the place of

passage lies somewhere outside, and the dharm a of the
one doing the passage moves tow ard the east [like the
spring] through a hundred thousand worlds over a hun­
dred thousand kalpas of time, that is the result of your
not giving your singleminded devotion to the sole prac­
tice of the Buddha Way. (124-25)

The passage in question is an internal passage. It does not pass

locally from where it was to where it will be. This already pre­
supposes a conception of time as statically extended, affording a
track or road on which passage occurs.

Both "reaching" and "not-reaching" are "existence-time."

Even w hen the time of "reaching" is not yet over, the time
of "not-reaching has come. . . . The "reaching" does not
Dogen 37

mean coming, nor does the "not-reaching" m ean not yet

[coming]. Existence-time is like this.35

N othing can possibly be excluded from being-time. If some­

thing is not being-time, it simply doesn't exist. Thus, not-reaching
as well as reaching is being-time. This passage emphasizes the in­
terpenetration of the modes of time. When reaching or presencing
is still going on, not-reaching or coming is arriving in that pres­
encing. Not-reaching expresses the incessant coming of time, its
"endlessness." But this not-reaching cannot be equated w ith a
not-yet since it is arriving in presencing. This m eaning of the fu­
ture is better expressed in the French and German, avenir, Zukunft,
both of which mean literally "to come" or "coming to."
W hen Dogen states that a thing im pedes itself, he is stressing
the self-affirmation and differentiation of the thing. N othing ever
im pedes anything else; it only im pedes itself. W hen he speaks
of things interpenetrating each other, he is stressing their self­
negation and identity w ith each other. Here there is difference in
identity, identity in difference, an idea later developed exten­
sively by the so-called Kyoto school.
We now turn back to the rem ainder of Genjo-koan and a
somewhat more general discussion of the question of the self.

To leam the Buddha Way is to learn one's ow n self. To

learn one's self is to forget one's self. To forget one's self is
to be confirmed by all dharm as. To be confirmed by all
dharm as is to effect the casting off of one's ow n body and
mind and the bodies and minds of others as well.
All traces of enlightenm ent then disappear, and this
traceless enlightenm ent is continued on and on en d ­
lessly.36

Someone decides to learn about Buddhism and the Buddha

Way. In so doing, he discovers the seeker, his own self. Since the
Buddha Way is not external to him, this is the inevitable path he
38 The Formless Self

follows: He did not set out to study himself, but that is initially
w hat he finds w hen he seeks to learn about the Buddha Way. The
deeper he goes into himself, the more he fails to find anything en­
during and substantial. Gradually he "forgets" his self and in this
process the things of the world confirm him.
As stated in a previous passage of this fascicle, things have to
come to us; we cannot move toward them. Suddenly body and
mind drop off, and the person is free. At the same time all others
are freed of their bodies and minds as well. W hen body and m ind
have thoroughly dropped off, he is not preoccupied w ith or at­
tached to body-mind or to the dropping off of body-mind, and all
traces of enlightenm ent disappear. He then does not "have" en­
lightenment, but is it. This traceless enlightenment continues on
endlessly.

W hen a m an goes off in a boat and looks back to see the

shoreline, he mistakenly thinks the shore is moving. If he
keeps his eyes closely on his boat, he realizes it is the boat
that is advancing. In like manner, w hen a person tries to
discern and affirm the m yriad dharm as with a confused
conception of his own body and m ind, he mistakenly
thinks his own m ind and his own nature are perm anent.
If he makes all his daily deeds intimately his own and re­
turns w ithin himself, the reason that the myriad dharm as
are w ithout self will become clear to him.37

The man moving along in a boat looks at the shore and mis­
takenly concludes that it is moving. In reality, of course, it is he
w ho is moving along. His error is due to the fact that he doesn't
understand the impermanence and "movem ent" of his own body
and mind. If he will b u t observe attentively his daily living, he
will realize not only that he is by no means perm anent, but also
that nothing at all is.
We shall consider two further passages from "Genjo-koan,"
and then move on to other fascicles. The first concerns the ques­
Dogen 39

tion of transition from one state to another which Dogen, contrary

to all common sense views, flatly denies.

Once firewood turns to ash, the ash cannot turn back to

being firewood. Still, one should not take the view that it
is ashes afterward and firewood before. He should realize
that although firewood is at the dharm a-stage of fire­
wood, and that this is possessed of before and after, the
firewood is beyond before and after. Ashes are in the
stage of ashes, and possess before and after. Just as fire­
w ood does not revert to firewood once it has turned to
ashes, m an does not return to life after his death. In light
of this, it being an established teaching in Buddhism not
to speak of life becoming death, Buddhism speaks of the
unborn. It being a confirmed Buddhist teaching that
death does not become life, it speaks of non-extinction.
Life is a stage of time and death is a stage of time, like, for
example, w inter and spring. We do not suppose that w in­
ter becomes spring, or say that spring becomes summer.38

A lthough firewood "turns to" ash, it does not turn into or be­
come ash. This instance of transition is one everyone takes for
granted. Less accessible w ould be the kind of transition epito­
mized in the koan about tile-polishing.39 No one would accept the
idea that polishing a tile w ould turn it into a mirror. By analogy, it
is not clear to the average person how zazen can transform some­
one into a Buddha. Dogen questions every kind of transition, the
kind people take for granted and also the kind that is problem­
atic, and ultim ately rejects them all. Firewood is not firewood
before and ashes afterwards. Firewood is firewood at the dharm a-
situation of firewood and is possessed of before and after which,
so to speak, keep it in that dharm a-situation from which it does
not pass. Firewood is "beyond" before and after, a highly enig­
matic statement, at least in the sense that it does not pass through
them. Similarly, and far more importantly, life does not become
40 The Formless S e lf

death nor death become life. (Plato's argum ents in the Phaedo to
the effect that to the universally accepted fact that w hat is bom ,
dies, there belongs the complementary idea that w hat dies, is re-
bom , w ould not be convincing to Dógen). Most people who have
watched someone die w ould surely adm it that there is something
utterly incomprehensible involved here. Even the birth of a baby,
which is, after all, not an absolute beginning, always has some­
thing astonishing and miraculous about it. On a more m undane
level, w ho has ever observed when winter became spring?

Fish swim the water, and however much they swim, there
is no end to the water. Birds fly the sky, and how ever
much they fly there is no end to the sky. Yet the fish and
the birds from the first have never left the w ater and the
sky. When their need is great there is great activity; when
their need is small there is small activity. In this way none
ever fails to exert its every ability, and nowhere does any
fail to move and turn freely. Yet if a bird leaves the sky it
quickly dies; if a fish leaves the w ater it immediately per­
ishes. We can realize that w ater means life [for the fish]
and the sky means life [for the bird]. It m ust be that the
bird means life [for the sky], and the fish means life [for
the water]; that life is the bird and life is the fish. A nd it
w ould be possible to proceed further [in this way]. It is
similar to this with practice and realization, and with the
lives of the practicers. Therefore [even] were there a bird
or fish that w anted to go through the sky or the w ater
after studying it thoroughly, it could in sky or w ater make
no path, attain no place.40

Always distancing himself from any kind of anthropom or­

phism, Dógen here considers the perspectives and ways of life of
fish and birds and elsewhere of gods, hungry ghosts, demons. It
is unthinkable that a fish w ould try to leave the w ater or a bird
leave the air. Fish and water, bird and air absolutely belong to­
Dogen 4i

gether. If m an can attain the "place" that belongs to him as w ater

belongs to fish and air to birds, his life and actions will then m an­
ifest and em body absolute reality.

Nonantbropological Perspectives

In keeping w ith his complete lack of anthropocentrism ,

Dogen investigates not only the perspectives of fish and birds, but
also inquires into the "activity" of m ountains and waters. He
does not relegate m ountains and waters to the dubious status of
picturesque "landscapes," b u t considers them thoroughly alive in
a m anner not identical w ith hum an life, yet at the same time non-
dualistic w ith it. Again, the categories of identity and difference
alone are not sufficiently subtle to encompass w hat Dogen w ants
to convey. Nor is anything gained by attributing to Dogen some
kind of prim itive "anim ism " or "panpsychism ." N othing could
be further from the incredible subtlety of his thought.41
In the "M ountain and Waters Sutra," Dogen devotes exten­
sive discussion to "walking." We norm ally think of walking as
motion from one place to another. Since the initial discussion of
walking focuses on m ountains, this cannot be Dogen's meaning.
What, then, can he m ean w hen he says that m ountains always
walk? To w alk is to go somewhere, b u t not necessarily in the
sense of m oving from one place to another. Surely w alking is
some kind of motion. But I can "go som ew here" w ithout physi­
cally moving. This does not m ean a fantasy trip of the im agina­
tion. In a sense, I am constantly going som ewhere, moving,
w alking because I am alive. We are all constrained by Cartesian
categories so that by now the indignant objection is raised: b u t
m ountains have no im agination, no m ind; they cannot think.
But w e do not know that. A nd as M artin H eidegger has pointed
out, we do not know w hat thinking is and as yet we do not
think.
As a point of departure, let us try to acknowledge the possi­
bility that m ountains are something more and other than dead
objects in a landscape. Thus, they "walk."
42 The Formless Self

M ountains do not lack the quality of mountains. There­

fore they always abide in ease and always walk. You
should examine in detail this quality of the m ountains'
walking. M ountains' walking is just like hum an walking.
Accordingly, do not doubt m ountains' walking even
though it does not look the same as hum an walking. The
buddha ancestors' words point to walking.42

Dogen is not proffering some idiosyncratic experience of his

own, but appeals here as well to the traditional authority of the
buddha ancestors. In spite of the boldness and often barely intel­
ligible originality of his thought, he never goes against the spirit
of Buddhism and the buddha ancestors. He expands upon and
develops it in the most unforeseeable ways imaginable. Instead of
complaining about unintelligibility and sinking back into our re­
stricted, familiar and w orn out ways of representing, thinking,
and experiencing, it should begin to daw n upon us how incredi­
bly limited our experience is. It need not be.

Because green m ountains walk, they are perm anent. Al­

though they walk more swiftly than the wind, someone in
the m ountains does not realize or understand it. "In the
m ountains" means the blossoming of the entire world.
People outside the mountains do not realize or under­
stand the m ountains' walking. Those w ithout eyes to see
m ountains cannot realize, understand, see, or hear this
as it is.
If you doubt m ountains' walking, you do not know
your ow n walking; it is not that you do not walk, but that
you do not know or understand your own walking. Since
you do know your ow n walking, you should fully know
the green m ountains' walking. (98)

Green m ountains are said to be "perm anent" because their

walking, their activity, is not restricted to a limited span of time.
Dogen 43

In a sense, their activity is in principle endless. Someone in the

m ountains is unable to realize m ountains' walking. He is so close
to m ountains' walking, he is right in the m iddle of it; thus, he is
unable to be aware of it. It is similar to the average person's
breathing. He breathes constantly; yet he is unaw are of breathing.
However, people outside the mountains do not realize or under­
stand the m ountains' walking either. Their senses and their
m inds both fail to perceive even m ountains, let along m ountains'
walking. There are people w ho "see" mountains, yet do not really
see m ountains at all. At best they perceive m ountains as one ob­
ject am ong many. They note that something is objectively there
called "m ountain." This cannot be called seeing, hearing, realiz­
ing, or understanding m ountains as they really are.
These people, both those in the mountains and those outside
the m ountains, doubt m ountains' walking. Actually, the idea that
m ountains w alk probably never even occurs to them. In this
sense they do not even doubt. However, if we fail to understand
m ountains' walking, we do not know our own walking. The two
cannot be separated. If I cannot understand m ountains' walking,
then I cannot know m y ow n walking. This does not mean that I
do not walk; it just means that I do not understand my walking.
But since, after all, I do know something of my ow n walking, I
should study and penetrate the green m ountains' walking.

Green m ountains are neither sentient nor insentient. You

are neither sentient nor insentient. At this moment, you
cannot doubt the green m ountains' walking. (98)

This passage simply emphasizes w hat was already said.

M ountains and our selves are not separate. It is not the case that
we are sentient whereas m ountains are insentient. How could we
ever know such a thing? At this moment, right now, we cannot
doubt the green m ountains' walking.
We m ight pause to ask an obvious question: w hy does Dogen
speak specifically of m ountains' walking ? As we stated before, or­
44 T he Formless Self

dinarily no one w ould doubt the green m ountains' walking be­

cause the very possibility of m ountains walking w ould never
occur to him in the first place. However, if someone asserted that
m ountains walk, then he w ould doubt it. The ordinary person
thinks that a m ountain "does" nothing. To counteract this atti­
tude, Dôgen describes the mountains' activity in the most specific
terms possible: he states that mountains walk. He does not just
say that something is going on in the mountains; that is so
vaguely expressed that no one w ould either doubt or believe it.
Thus, he states unequivocally: mountains walk. This totally
blocks the average person's understanding. He cannot even mis­
understand.
Green m ountains are neither sentient nor insentient. At this
moment, you cannot doubt the green m ountains' walking (98).
Again, this passage seeks to undercut the difference between
sentient and supposedly insentient beings. Aristotle carefully dis­
tinguished between the inorganic (insentient) and the organic
(sentient), and further in the realm of the organic between vege­
tative, sentient, and rational levels of soul. His true interest lay
with the rational level of soul, thus w ith the hum an being. The
Buddha enlarged upon this interest in and preoccupation with
the hum an by including all sentient beings. All sentient beings
were to be saved. Now Dôgen pushes the scope of interest even
further, one might say far enough to include anything that is.
Once these divisions between sentient and insentient are left
behind, possibilities open up to understand green m ountains'
walking.

If walking stops, buddha ancestors do not appear. If

walking ends, the buddha-dharm a cannot reach the p re­
sent. Walking forward does not cease; walking backward
does not cease. Walking forward does not obstruct w alk­
ing backward. Walking backward does not obstruct walk­
ing forward. This is called the m ountains' flow and the
flowing mountains. (98)
Dogen 45

The m ountains' w alking can also be called the "m ountains'

flowing." It is w hat the m ountain does. What the m ountain does,
its walking or flowing, enables the Buddha-dharm a to reach the
present and continue on. The m ountains' walking or flowing pre­
serves the Buddha-dharm a; w ithout such activity the Buddha-
dharm a w ould die out. W hether the walking is forward or
backw ard does not m uch matter. Both are inevitable. Similarly,
w hen a hum an being practices, sometimes he advances, some­
times he regresses. This is the w ay things are. W hat is im portant
is the practice, free from overpreoccupation w ith forward or
backward.

Green m ountains master walking and eastern mountains

m aster traveling on water. Accordingly, these activities
are a m ountain's practice. Keeping its own form, w ithout
changing body and m ind a m ountain always practices in
every place. D on't slander by saying that a green m oun­
tain cannot walk and an eastern m ountain cannot travel
on water. W hen your understanding is shallow, you
doubt the phrase, "Green m ountains are walking." W hen
your learning is immature, you are shocked by the words
"flowing m ountains." Without fully understanding even
the w ords "flowing water," you drow n in small views
and narrow understanding. (98-99)

Walking and traveling on w ater are a m ountain's practice.

Paradoxically, a m ountain keeps its own form, does not change
body and mind, and yet always practices in every place. This
means that, while not changing its form, a m ountain is not bound
to that form. Otherwise it could not practice in every place. A
m ountain's practice can manifest itself everywhere and in every
thing. Rationally, we cannot grasp this. But then Dogen goes on to
say that w e do not even understand the w ords "flowing water."
We speak of w ater flowing since that is ordinarily w hat w ater is
supposed to do. This in no w ay means that we truly understand
46 The Formless S e lf

w ater's flowing. The fact that we think we do only blocks any

possibility of questioning w ater's flowing. All of our narrow views
can be compared to looking through a bamboo tube at a comer in
the sky
Dogen continues this discussion of the various perspectives
for seeing waters and mountains, stating that some beings see
w ater as a jeweled ornament, some as w ondrous blossoms; hun­
gry ghosts see it as raging fire or pus and blood, dragons see it as
a palace or pavilion. Depending upon their past karma that has
resulted in their present kind of birth and form, beings see water
as w hat they desire or fear.

Thus, the views of all beings are not the same. You should
question this m atter now. Are there many ways to see one
thing, or is it a mistake to see many forms as one thing?
You should pursue this beyond the limit of pursuit. Ac­
cordingly, endeavors in practice-realization of the way are
not limited to one or two kinds. The ultimate realm has
one thousand kinds and ten thousand ways.
W hen we think about the meaning of this, it seems
that there is w ater for various beings but there is no orig­
inal w ater—there is no w ater common to all types of be­
ings. (102)

With this passage Dogen wipes out all traditional ways of

viewing the world. One thing is not to be seen in many ways, nor
are we to reduce m any forms to one thing. Returning to his dis­
cussion of water, he then states that there is no original, prim al
w ater that is differentiated into various forms; there is no w ater
common to all types of beings under which they could be sub­
sumed. All our modes of classification fail us here. Dogen's ad­
vice is simple: pursue this m atter beyond the limits of pursuit.
The fact that there is no intellectual solution to those aporias
makes little difference.
Dogen 47

You should know that even though all things are liber­
ated and not tied to anything, they abide in their own
phenom enal expression. However, w hen most hum an be­
ings see w ater they only see that it flows unceasingly. This
is a limited hum an view; there are actually m any kinds of
flowing. Water flows on the earth, in the sky, upw ard and
dow nw ard. It can flow around a single curve or into
m any bottomless abysses. W hen it rises it becomes
clouds. W hen it descends it forms abysses. (102-3)

This passage is intelligible even to common sense. If we stop

to think about water, w e realize that it is not confined to rivers
and streams, but goes beneath the earth into abysses and rises to
the heavens to become clouds. O ur own bodies are largely made
up of water; here we have a different kind of "flowing." Even
though all things, all forms are not bound to anything specific,
they abide in their ow n dharm a-situations. They cannot be
equated w ith that dharm a-situation, but they abide there. Thus, a
certain stasis is achieved in the w orld of impermanence.
A final quote should suffice to convey Dogen's insistence on
leaving ordinary hum an thinking and experiencing behind. Per­
haps he is unique in this effort, not only to reach some "authentic"
kind of experience, but to abandon any hum an viewpoint whatso­
ever. We have an emphasis on authenticity in nineteenth- and
twentieth-century "existential" philosophers such as Soren
Kierkegaard, Jean-Paul Sartre, Gabriel-Honore Marcel, and Martin
Heidegger. But there seems to be no precedent, at least in the West,
for an absolutely nonanthropomorphic way of experiencing.

If you do not learn to be free from your superficial views,

you will not be free from the body and m ind of an ordi­
nary person. Then you will not understand the land of
Buddha ancestors, or even the land or palace of ordinary
people.
48 The Formless S elf

Now hum an beings well know as water what is in the

ocean and w hat is in the river, but they do not know w hat
dragons and fish see as w ater and use as water. Do not
foolishly suppose that w hat we see as w ater is used as
water by all other beings. You who study w ith buddhas
should not be limited to hum an views w hen you are
studying water. You should study how you view the
w ater used by buddha ancestors. You should study
w hether there is w ater or no w ater in the house of b u d­
dha ancestors. (104)

We have extracted for our discussion mainly passages em­

phasizing a nonanthropom orphic way of viewing the world.
There are m any other bold and baffling thoughts in this extraor­
dinary fascicle that cannot be discussed here.

Transformation o f Person Into Formless Self

H aving attem pted to follow Dôgen in his exploration of
nonanthropological perspectives, we once again turn to the ques­
tion of w hat he means by "self." To begin with, self cannot be
equated w ith person. In the fascicle entitled "Only Buddha knows
Buddha" (Yuibutsu Yobutsu), the self that Dôgen is talking about
is the self that has attained realization; it is by no means the ordi­
nary self.

Buddha-dharm a cannot be know n by a person. For this

reason, since olden times no ordinary person has realized
Buddha-dharm a; no practitioner of the Lesser Vehicles
has m astered Buddha-dharm a. Because it is realized by
buddhas alone, it is said, "Only buddha knowing buddha
can thoroughly master it. When you realize Buddha-
dharm a, you do not think, "This is realization just as I ex­
pected." Even if you think so, realization invariably
differs from your expectation. Realization is not like your
conception of it. Accordingly, realization cannot take
Dogen 49

place as previously conceived. When you realize Buddha-

dharm a, you do not consider how realization came about.
You should reflect on this: W hat you think one way or an­
other before realization is not a help for realization.43

O ur custom ary m ode of experiencing has nothing to do w ith

realization. N ot only is it not a help; it is a direct hindrance. An
abrupt break in experiencing comes about. Thus, upon realization
I cannot think; this is w hat I thought it w ould be. Even if I did
think this way, it w ould only be a delusion. Realization cannot be
conceptualized or anticipated. As Heidegger and others with him
emphasized, hum an being is future-oriented. This is particularly
the case w ith Western m an in the Judeo-Christian tradition. It
need not have anything to do w ith religion. Marx is as future-
oriented as Hegel. Sartre's example of looking for Pierre in the
café is quite apt here. I am looking for, anticipating Pierre; every­
thing else in view is phased out.
A rather pallid example of this break in experiencing can be
seen w hen we suddenly encounter someone we did not expect to
see, someone out of context. For a mom ent we are startled, and
our experiencing stops short; there is a complete breach of conti­
nuity. If we reflect upon this, the enorm ous role that anticipation
and projecting play in our experience might daw n upon us.

However, it is w orth noticing that w hat you think one

w ay or another is not a help for realization Then you are
cautious not to be small-minded. If realization came forth
by the pow er of your prior thoughts, it w ould not be
trustworthy. Realization does not depend on thoughts,
bu t comes forth far beyond them; realization is helped
only by the pow er of realization itself. Know that then
there is no delusion and there is no realization.44

The m atter at stake here is a bit tricky. In the paragraph pre­

ceding this passage, Dógen stated that past thoughts in them ­
50 T he Formless S elf

selves were clearly realization. It appears contradictory, at least

initially, to say that realization has nothing to do with past
thoughts and then to say that past thoughts are in themselves re­
alization. However, the contradiction disappears when it becomes
clear that past thoughts, all thoughts, and thinking in general, are
obscured and marred by habit; they are deluded. But for Dogen
delusion has no ultimate reality. Thus, past thoughts were actually
realization, realization that we were unable to realize. A parallel
can be found in Dogen's discussion of being-time; everything is
being-time, regardless of w hether we realize it or not.
If realization could be produced by the pow er of prior
thought, we could never be certain that it was realization. It
w ould remain forever "mental," wishful thinking. Realization
does not depend on w hat w e interpret as our thoughts; it comes
from beyond our conscious experience. This does not mean that it
comes from the unconscious. It simply does not come from us,
from the structure of our conscious or unconscious minds.
The last sentence of this passage appears more puzzling than
it actually is. If realization is all there is, it makes no sense to
speak of realization, and one certainly cannot speak of delusion.

Not to know w hat it is like on this buddha's path is fool­

ish. W hat it is like is to be unstained. To be unstained does
not m ean that you try forcefully to exclude intention or
discrimination. Being unstained cannot be intended or
discriminated at all.
Being unstained is like meeting a person and not con­
sidering w hat he looks like. Also it is like not wishing for
more color or brightness w hen viewing flowers or the
moon. Spring has the tone of spring, and autum n has the
scene of autum n, there is no escaping it. So if you w ant
spring or autum n to be different from w hat it is, notice
that it can only be as it is. Or w hen you w ant to keep
spring or autum n as it is, reflect that it has no unchanging
nature.45
Dogen 51

Dogen does not use "being unstained" in any moralistic sense

of purity. Rather, it is a state or disposition free of preconceptions
and w hat Nietzsche called "wishful thinking."46 Both preconcep­
tions and w ishful thinking block any direct experience of "real­
ity" as it is. In this passage, preconceptions are prim arily related
to meeting someone. Being unstained here means not categoriz­
ing someone or comparing him w ith others. In general, com pari­
son can be an unfruitful enterprise. For example, if I constantly
compare myself w ith others, this is actually irrelevant to w hat I
am. There is always someone "better" than I, always someone
"worse." W hat is im portant is the uniqueness of w hat I am or
w hat someone is.
Wishful thinking, not Dogen's phrase, is perhaps more w ide­
spread. We all know w hat we like and do not like. We w ant flow­
ers to have more color, the moon more brightness. We wish spring
were autum n or vice versa, or we wish that spring w ould always
remain spring. A lthough for Dogen spring does not turn into
summer, yet it has no unchanging nature and cannot remain in­
definitely. Things simply are as they are, regardless of w hat we
w ant or do not want. Being unstained cannot be intended or
wished for at all. It has to occur of itself.

That which is accumulated is w ithout self, and no mental

activity has self. The reason is that not one of the four
great elements or the five skandhas can be understood as
self or identified as self. Therefore, the form of the flowers
or moon in your m ind should not be understood as being
self, even though you think it is self. Still, w hen you clar­
ify that there is nothing to be disliked or longed for, then
the original face is revealed by your practice of the way.47

Buddhism analyzes the hum an being in various ways. The

four great elements and five skandhas are two of the classifica­
tions generated by this analysis. But whereas earlier (Theravada)
Buddhism states that the classifications are w hat we are and that
52 T he Formless Self

there is therefore no such thing as self (anatman) in the H indu

sense, Dogen is saying that self is none of these classifications,
thereby implying that there is "something else," that is, the origi­
nal face. This passage states that there are three interrelated factors
which are not self: that which is accumulated, our habitual mode
of relating to the world; our mental activity; the form of objects in
our mind. One m ight add an emphasis on the first skandha, ru-
paskandha, the sensuous or the body with which m any people
tend to equate themselves. For example, seeing is nothing that I do;
it occurs. It does not belong (exclusively) to me; it is not mine.

Also learn that the entire universe is the dharm a body of

the self. To seek to know the self is invariably the wish of
living beings. However, those w ho see the true self are
rare. Only buddhas know the true self.
People outside the way regard w hat is not self as the
self. But w hat buddhas call the self is the entire universe.
Therefore, there is never an entire universe that is not the
self, with or w ithout knowing it.48

Stated simply, the basic problem here is that people regard

w hat is not the self as the self. There exists something that can be
called the "true self," but it has nothing to do with ego, person,
mental activity, or the habitual accumulation that we normally
understand as personal identity. Dogen's true self is cosmic; it is
the entire universe. This holds true regardless of w hether we
know it or not. As Dogen states later in the fascicle, the w ay is not
a matter of our know ing or now knowing. As far as knowing or
not knowing, understanding or not understanding go, they are
like the seasons. They do not hinder each other or turn into each
other. At one time there is understanding; at another there is no
understanding.
Again turning to the nonanthropological dimensions of self,
Dogen discusses fish, birds, and beasts, stating that they, unlike
people, know one another's hearts. A bird can see traces of all sorts
Dogen 53

of birds in the sky, whereas beasts cannot even conceive of this. We

would probably be prone to classify this fact under "instinct." An­
imals have more developed senses and instincts than humans. But
the w ord "instinct" hardly clarifies how this can be so. Dogen is
speaking about some sort of eye which can see directly inside, as it
were. He then transposes this to apply to buddhas.

Again w hen a bird flies in the sky, beasts do not even

dream of finding or following its trace. As they do not
know that there is such a thing, they cannot even imagine
this. However, a bird can see traces of hundreds and
thousands of small birds having passed in flocks, or
traces of so m any lines of large birds having flown south
or north. These traces may be even more evident than the
carriage tracks left on a road or the hoofprints of a horse
in the grass. In this way, a bird sees birds' traces.
B uddhas are like this. You may w onder how many
lifetimes buddhas have been practicing. Buddhas, large
or small, although they are countless, all know their own
traces. You never know a b u d d h a's trace w hen you are
not a buddha.
You may w onder why you do not know. The reason is
that, while buddhas see these traces w ith a bud d h a's eye,
those w ho are not buddhas do not have a b u d d h a's eye,
and just notice the buddha's attributes.49

Just noticing the b u d dha's attributes is the opposite of being

unstained; it is viewing a bu d d h a from the outside. Knowing
traces, w hether this be birds know ing other birds or buddhas
knowing buddhas, is a m atter of direct, immediate "knowing" or
sensing. Traces have undeniably to do w ith the past, w ith w hat
has already been and is thus actual and real. The fact that Bud-
dhahood is possible is attested by its already being in actuality.
Dogen adm onishes us to illum inate our trace by studying the
B uddha's trace.
 2 C H is a m a t s u

Dialogues w ith Tillich

In order to facilitate understanding of ideas quite foreign to our

Western w ay of thinking, a perusal of the dialogues between Paul
Tillich and Shin'ichi Hisam atsu m ay be able to open some doors.
In these dialogues the Eastern view point is m ediated and also
often challenged by the Western one. Thus, that Eastern view ­
point is, so to speak, filtered through a w esterner's attem pt to un­
derstand it instead of simply being starkly presented w ithout that
m ediation or filter. This may not be the most "pure" approach,
but it is a beginning.

I
Beginning w ith a discussion of how to find a degree of calm­
ness in the m idst of a busy life, the dialogue moves to the ques­
tion of w h at it is that enables us to find that calm. Hisamatsu
states that this is aw akening to the "Calm" or "True Self." This
self is at w ork, for example, w hen Tillich is busily preparing his
lectures while traveling on trains. Tillich then asks w hether this
self m ust be conscious or possess a kind of psychological aware­
ness. Hisam atsu replies that this awareness is not psychological,
nor is it even a state of mind; rather, it is No-Consciousness or
No-Mind. M indful of the contemporary efforts to get beyond the
subject-object split in consciousness, Tillich asks w hether that is

55
56 The Formless Self

what is accomplished in No-Mind. Hisamatsu answers that the subject-

object split is not present in No-Mind, but that does not exhaust the
matter; nor does No-Mind entail going to some other realm. Hisamatsu
then takes up his own term for No-Mind, that is, the "Formless Self."
With that we have arrived at the source of the title of this
study. After scrutinizing the three dialogues between Tillich and
Hisamatsu, we shall try to further elucidate what kind of "self" this
Formless Self could be. It has little to do with what we ordinarily
associate with the term "self."
In keeping with the Zen rejection of metaphysical speculation and
its preference for the concrete, Hisamatsu gives the illustration of the
functioning of our eyes. When the eyes function properly and naturally,
there is not consciousness of seeing.

If the seer is consciously aware of seeing—for instance, this

glass of orange juice—then that is not pure seeing
In pure seeing, however, in which the duality between the
seer and the seen is overcome, the orange juice in a sense
"disappears." It is there; yet it is not. It is this sort of
"disappearance of mind" that is meant by "No-Mind" or
"No-Mindedness." When one is conscious of what one is
doing, you can speak of a state of mind; for the mind
remains."1

What can it mean to say that in pure seeing the orange juice in a
sense disappears? Beyond saying that the orange juice disappears as an
object separated from the seeing subject (no subject-object split), what
is the "positive" content of such a statement? What does it mean to
see a glass of orange juice not as an object? This can perhaps be better
illustrated by an example from the realm of hearing that by its nature
has less to do with objects; as in the case of music, for instance, it has
nothing to do with objects at all.
The example consists of listening to a bell, a gong, perhaps in a
Zendo. If one listens in a certain, that is, a "pure" and noncon-
Hisamatsu 57

ceptual way, one does not hear a bell; one hears vibrations open­
ing out into space, gradually receding into silence. One knows it
is a bell, but one does not hear a bell; one hears vibrations, one
hears vibrating. This is pure hearing. One is not thinking: that is a
bell; w hat kind of bell or gong is it? This cluster of questions and
opinions that usually accompany our experience is w hat is meant
by "mind" here. Therefore, pure hearing is No-Mind or the activ­
ity of the Formless Self.
Pure hearing and pure seeing are beyond the dichotomy of
hearing and not hearing, seeing and not seeing. There is a well
known precedent for this w ith regard to thinking.

After sitting, a m onk asked Great Teacher Yueh-shan

Hung-tao: "W hat are you thinking of in the immobile
state of sitting?"
The m aster replied: "I think of not-thinking." The
monk asked: "How can you think of not thinking?"
The m aster replied: "By non-thinking."2

Since seeing and hearing are m ore tangible and thus perhaps
more accessible than thinking, they might be able to facilitate our
concrete understanding of w hat it means to be beyond the di­
chotomy of seeing and not seeing, being, and nonbeing. The dia­
logue does not help us here since Hisamatsu states that there is a
consciousness beyond seeing and not seeing, and Tillich says he
understands that to a certain extent and immediately shifts back
to his existential question of how to find calm in the m idst of
busyness.
W hat could a seeing that is beyond the dualism of seeing and
not seeing be like? An initial, easy answer is that this kind of see­
ing w ould not see objects. Then w hat is seen? A presence. Not a
static object, but a dynamic, vibrant presencing. This is perhaps
most evident in certain paintings or draw ings of landscapes,
Western, and Eastern. Chinese landscape draw ings hardly depict
objects. They largely present em ptiness offset by some kind of
58 The Formless Self

marginal figure, perhaps a figure w ith a large hat crossing a

bridge, or a sprig of blossoms, or a bird perched on a branch.
Hisam atsu's book Zen and the Fine Arts has eloquent instances of
such landscapes. For him, they present the Formless Self.
In such instances one sees through and beyond ordinary see­
ing. One sees the form of the Formless Self. If the form were not
there, one could not see the Formless Self. And yet the Formless
Self cannot simply be equated w ith some particular form of an
object.
Pursuing Tillich's question about how to find calm in the
m idst of busyness, the dialogue moves to a discussion of Meister
Eckhart's Abgeschiedenheit. Tillich translates Abgeschiedenheit as
"separatedness." Actually, one could add to this the emphasis on
Abschied , taking leave of something or someone. Thus, "separat­
ing" in the sense of taking leave or bidding farewell might be
more appropriate than separatedness which can have the impli­
cation that something has always been statically separated and
distinct.
Hisam atsu shifts the emphasis in Abgeschiedenheit to a total
emptying of all things, which is closer to the verbal sense of sepa­
rating. Yet w hat separates is indeed em pty of that from which it
separates, but not yet necessarily totally empty of all things.
Tillich then describes his own meditative life which involves
concentrating on the subject m atter of his speeches, lectures, or
sermons, whether it be traveling on trains or sitting in a cafe.
Hisamatsu replies that concentration on something is still con­
centration on an object by a subject. What he means by "concen­
tration" m ust be objectless and subjectless. Both object and
subject in a sense simply cease "to be," and all there is is nondu-
alistic concentration.
The crux of the final impossibility of complete agreement be­
tween Tillich and Hisamatsu centers finally on the issue of form
versus formless. Tillich speaks of the spark, the seed, the logos that
Eckhart finds in every man of which he does not em pty himself.
This logos is basically potentiality.
Hisamatsu 59

The logos. But this is not the formless. The logos is the form
of God, w hich is bom . The actualization is often called by
him "being bom ." The logos is being bo m in us; Christ is
again bom through us, as is Mary, symbolically speaking.
This is not the Formless Self.3

The issue at stake here is w hether awakening to the Formless

Self can ultim ately be described in terms of a developm ent from
potentiality to actuality. Since there "is" no Formless Self until it
has been awakened to, strictly speaking the awakening cannot be
described as a developm ent from potentiality to actuality. This is
a subtle, but im portant point. The Formless Self in a state of p o­
tentiality does not exist. This developmental process from poten­
tiality to actuality w ith regard to Buddha-nature had already
been emphatically rejected by Dogen.
Hisam atsu then introduces the term Arm ut, poverty. The
com ponent "Mut" in the German term decidedly indicates that a
"mental" or spiritual poverty is meant as opposed to any kind of
material poverty. Tillich immediately defines complete poverty as
the em ptying of the subject-object duality. Somehow this does not
quite satisfy Hisamatsu. We need to take a look at w hat Eckhart
actually says about this m atter which is related to several similar
terms including "Gelassenheit" and "Lassen/' releasement and let­
ting go.

It is in this manner, I declare, that a m an should be so ac­

quitted and free that he neither knows nor realizes that
God is at w ork in him: in that way can a m an possess
poverty. The masters say God is a being, an intellectual
being that knows all things. But we say God is not a being
and not intellectual and does not know this or that. Thus,
God is free of all things, so He is all things.4

Poverty m eans to be unaw are that God is at work w ithin a

self. God himself is not a being and does not know this or that.
60 The Formless Self

Not being himself a being and not knowing things, he is free or

em pty of all things and is thus free to be (transitive) them.
Eckhart states that a poor m an wills nothing, knows nothing,
and possesses nothing. Then a statement follows that appears to
have escaped Tillich:

I have often said, and em inent authorities say it too, that

a man should be so free of all things and all works, both
inw ard and outw ard, that he may be a proper abode for
God where God can work. Now we shall say something
else. If it is the case that a man is free of all creatures, of
God and of self, and if it is still the case that God finds a
place in him to work, then we declare that as long as this
is in that man, he is not poor with the strictest poverty. For
it is not God's intention in His works that a man should
have a place w ithin himself for God to w ork in: for
poverty of spirit means being so free of God and all His
works, that God, if he wishes to work in the soul, is Him­
self the place where he works—and this he gladly does.5

In contrast to Eckhart, for whom complete poverty means not

simply rem oving the subject-object dualism, but being free of
everything including God, Tillich insists that the logos remains in
us and mediates everything that happens in our work. Tillich can
speak of a divine abyss from which we come, but the mediation
of the logos is always present. Hisamatsu counters that the divine
abyss is not that from which the self or concrete thing comes; the
abyss is the self or the concrete thing. Otherwise there is a duality
between the abyss and the self or concrete thing. Harboring the
characteristic Western aversion to the formless traceable back to
the ancient Greeks, Tillich tries to maintain the ultimate individu­
ality of form.

But he [Eckhart] w ould emphasize the logos and love doc­

trine, which gives to the form, to the special form—to this
Hisamatsu 61

liquid here—the pow er of being which in this mom ent is

not swallowed by the Formless Self.6

H isam atsu then states that Tillich is still m aintaining a dual­

ism between the Formless Self and the liquid. Form is not sw al­
lowed or threatened by the Formless Self. That w ould make the
Formless Self into some sort of a being. Because of the working of
the Formless Self, things with form are able to emerge.
This first dialogue concludes w ith a discussion of art, a realm
of special significance to both Tillich and Hisamatsu. Hisamatsu
states that an artist w ho has awakened to his Formless Self ex­
presses that Formless Self in his painting. If such a painting is ob­
served by another Formless Self, the experience allows the
observer to deepen his understanding of his own Formless Self.
Tillich states em phatically that this is not possible. One can only
say "deepen beyond his empirical self to the dim ension of the
other self." While not denying this formulation, Hisamatsu states
that "beyond" and "other" does not exhaustively characterize the
matter. They still contain traces of duality.

II
The second dialogue begins w ith Tillich's question to H isa­
matsu: how does he couple artistic form w ith the Formless Self?
H isam atsu's initial answer is that since it is self, the Formless Self
includes self-awareness and is active in expressing or presenting
itself through artistic form. Tillich focuses his question on the con­
tent of, for example, a particular painting. H isam atsu's reply is
that w hat is expressing itself in the painting is always the Form­
less Self. This Formless Self can express itself in anything; thus, it
m ay be said to have boundless contents. Tillich then states that
content w ould mean, for example, the sea, the m ountain or the
landscape. Hisam atsu denies this, stating that m ountains and
rivers, or flowers and birds constitute the M oment for the Form­
less Self to express itself. Zen art has nothing to do with a realistic
copying of natural phenom ena. The discussion then centers on
62 T he Formless Self

the meaning of the German word, Moment , which was crucial for
Hegel's dialectic. A Moment can be understood either temporally,
in which case its m eaning is identical w ith that of the English
w ord "m om ent," or else it can be understood structurally as a
special kind of factor or catalyst. The latter sense is prim arily in­
tended here. Tillich's conception of kairos, the ripe time, is now in­
troduced as being close to w hat is m eant by M om ent . One is
rem inded of Brutus' speech in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.

There is a tide in the affairs of men,

Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we m ust take the current w hen it serves,
Or lose our ventures.7

The only difference, but a crucial one, is that Brutus is talking

about deciding to take action at a favorable time, carpe diem,
whereas the Moment, the right condition or occasion, triggers an
awakening in the Zen student that is not a m atter of any con­
scious decision. The student just wakes up to his Formless Self.

The m ark of Zen aesthetic appreciation, accordingly, is to

see within form w hat is formless—which means to see in
things w ith form the Self-Without-Form.8

We can only see the Formless Self w ithin form, since forms
are always w hat we see.
Tillich finds in H isam atsu's remarks an affinity with w hat he
calls "the depth of being" in things. For both thinkers art trans­
mits something beyond itself: for Tillich this leads to God as the
ultimate source of being; for Hisamatsu it leads to m an's true or
Formless Self.
Hisamatsu 63

The discussion now leads out of the realm of art into that of
religion itself. H isam atsu finds the ground of and need for reli­
gion in the fact that hum an being not only has, but is, an ultimate
antimony. The interpreter, Richard De Martino, answers for
Hisamatsu:

For Dr. Hisam atsu it is the dualistic opposition between

the positive and the negative: existentially (or, if the term
is permissible, "onto-existentially"), between being and
nonbeing; axiologically between the good and the "not-
good"—or evil—in the sphere of morals, the beautiful
and the unbeautiful in aesthetics, and the true and the un­
true in the dom inion of the cognitive.9

Tillich's own view of the ground of and need for religion, its
raison d'être, lies in the experience of belonging to the Infinite
and of being excluded from it at the same time. The goal of reli­
gion is thus reunion with the Infinite. This reunion is available to
us only in a fragm entary way; total reunion can only be antici­
pated. Hisamatsu replies:

What I w ould like to speak of, however, is not a fragmen­

tary, anticipatory overcoming, but a fundam ental resolu­
tion that goes dow n to the root. For the ultim ate
antimony can be resolved only at its root, that is w hy it
cannot be dealt w ith either by cognitive-leaming, moral­
ity, or art. Still, to solve this problem that reason cannot
solve there m ust be a solution that will nevertheless sat­
isfy reason. That is, although the problem cannot be
solved by "rationality," as it is an affliction of the "ratio­
nal" or "hum an" being, every such being has the in­
evitable desire to solve it. Thus it is that the proper
concern of religion is no other than to resolve this ulti­
mate antinomy.10
64 The Formless Self

For both thinkers there is an ultimate antinomy in hum an ex­

istence, an antinomy most fundamentally expressed by life-death
and being-nonbeing. Tillich even nonorthodoxically accepts non-
being or evil, in God, b u t only potentially, never actually. Such a
position betrays the influence of Schelling's On Human Freedom,
perhaps the philosophical treatise that most honestly attem pts to
deal w ith the question of evil.
Tillich sees reconciliation or reunion of the finite with the in­
finite by way of fragmentary anticipation in this historical exis­
tence, w ith final resolution being achieved in eternity. Hisamatsu,
on the other hand, wishes to resolve the ultimate antinomy at i\s
root, not fragmentarily and not by way of anticipation, b u t by
way of radically and existentially confronting the antinomy that
then opens up the direction toward eternity. The Moment or cata­
lyst for resolving the antinomy lies in doubting or the Great
Doubt Block which is an actualization of the ultimate antinomy
embodied in the one w ho doubts.
Tillich then asks if the resolution of the ultimate antinomy is
not by anticipation, is it in time and space? H isam atsu's reply is
that in this breakthrough there is no time and space and if it were
no more than temporal and spatial, it could not be said to be con­
clusive. Tillich then objects that the awakening happened to
H isamatsu, not to his shoemaker or to Hitler. Hisamatsu states
that the Formless Self has neither a beginning, an ending, a spe­
cial place, or a special time. Tillich immediately replies that then
it cannot happen to a hum an being. De M artino states that the
Great Death entails at once a Great Birth beyond birth and death
and that the one to w hom that happened in one sense ceases to
"be." Further discussion is basically unable to get beyond this im­
passe and the dialogue soon concludes.

Ill
The third and last dialogue begins with a brief discussion
of freedom. With regard to the painting of Dancing Pu-tai , Hisa­
matsu states that the predom inant Zen quality in this work is un-
Hisamatsu 65

attached freedom. To the inquiry what it is that the figure is free from,
Hisamatsu replies freedom from everything, and De Martino explicates:

It is, of course, not alone a "freedom from." Rooted in the

Self that is Not-of-form—or, in your designation, "Being
itself"—it enjoys the unlimited "freedom to" realize its self-
expression in any form Though I used your term, "Being
itself," actually it is not confined to being—nor, for that
matter, to nonbeing. In fact, the justification for characterizing
it as "unconditioned" is exactly that it is free of the duality of
"being- and-nonbeing." This is the reason Zen does not speak
of "Being itself," which is still in some sort of conflict with
"nonbeing."11

Here we see the difficulty Hisamatsu has with Tillich's Being itself.
In contrast to the Formless Self, which Hisamatsu asserts to be beyond the
opposition of form-formless, Being itself still stands in dualistic opposition
to nonbeing. Hisamatsu then states that Zen is unattached to anything,
including Buddha and especially unattachment itself. This is an important
point. First of all, "unattachment" is a better term for the more common
"detachment" which tends to be construed as having nothing to do with
something, as total indifference. Second, one can get insidiously attached
to the idea of unattachment, just as one can take great pride in being
humble or modest. If one is attached to the idea of freedom, one can
hardly be said to be free. Consequently, what is needed is a freedom that
is free of the duality of freedom-unfreedom.
Tillich comes back to the main objection he has been raising
throughout all the dialogue: that the specific form of Dancing Pu tai must
have an inner relationship to ultimate reality or the Formless Self.
Ultimate formlessness and the finite form must be related in some way.
Hisamatsu replies that in its self-concretiza tion the Formless Self can
assume innumerable forms. Tillich per­
66 The Formless Self

sists in thinking the Formless Self is somehow separate from the

specific forms in which it manifests itself. But the point is that the
Formless Self does not have any form apart from the specific
forms in which it manifests itself. A part from the specific forms,
the Formless Self "is" not. Tillich then says one specific form
w ould stand absolutely for the ultimate, and this would preclude
all other specific forms. De Martino then am ends Tillich's "stand
for" to read "ex-presses." A specific form does not stand for or
represent the ultimate; the ultimate is ex-pressed, literally pressed
out or injected into, the specific form.
What Tillich is unable to understand or accept is that one ex­
pression or form is not the exclusive manifestation of the Form­
less Self, shutting out any other manifestations. The Formless Self
can manifest itself in any form. And yet any one expression or
form expresses the ultim ate entirely. It is not a partial manifesta­
tion, but a total one.
Still persevering w ith his main objection, Tillich mentions
that in H isam atsu's book Zen and the Fine A rts there are over a
hundred individual representations of ultim ate reality. The fact
that he adheres to the term "representation" shows that he did
not grasp the distinction between representation and expression.
W hen something represents or stands for the ultimate, the ulti­
mate is not present in it; the ultim ate remains apart and absent.
But when the ultimate is ex-pressed in something, it is present in
it. The ultim ate is the specific form. A part from being a specific
form, the ultimate "is" not.
De M artino tries to satisfy Tillich's concern over preserving
the particular by stating that nothing is ever reduced to any other
thing. In saying "I am thou," the "I" does not cancel out the
"thou." That would be w hat Buddhism calls a "false sameness," a
flat identity in which particularity is annihilated. Thus, formless­
ness never swallows up particularity; that w ould simply be
vague, vacuous formlessness. This is not w hat Zen is talking
about. Rather, Zen aims for true individuality. Tillich asks w hat
that phrase means. Hisamatsu replies.
Hisamatsu 67

O rdinary individuals are unfulfilled, isolated, or disinte­

grated, and cannot be regarded as authentic individuals.
Authentic individuality as understood in Zen Buddhism
m ay be explained in terms of the Hua-yen concept of “jiji-
muge " (the nonobstruction between particular and partic­
ular) or the T'ien t'ai concept of "koko-enjo" (each
individual fulfilled). A particular or individual of this
order w ould be "genuinely" individual.12

As an example of the nonobstruction between or interpene­

tration of particular and particular, De M artino states, "I am the
flower." Tillich objects that such paradoxical statements cannot be
realized directly, and De M artino retorts that they can only be re­
alized directly. W hat Tillich is understandably having difficulty
w ith is how I am the flower, and yet I remain I and the flower re­
mains the flower. There is no barrier or hindrance between p ar­
ticular and particular, and yet nothing swallows up anything else.
Beginning to get an inkling, Tillich asks w hether there is no cen­
tered self that w ould be a hindrance. De Martino replies that the
barrier is created by the reflectively self-conscious ego which dis­
criminates itself dualistically from "not itself." The ego m ust die
to itself as ego and become the self that is also "Not-Itself" or the
Formless Self. This constitutes the complete fulfillment of the par­
ticular. Through the incorporation of its own negation the partic­
ular becomes a nonparticular-particular or, in a way, a kind of
"universal." This is the basic meaning of the Diamond Sutra's for­
mulations: A is not-A, therefore A is really A. When A encom­
passes its ow n negation, there is nothing that stands opposed to
it. A can encompass its own negation because ultimately it is not-
A; it is the Formless Self.
Tillich then says that he m ust try w ith his dualistic m ind to
understand how the particular or individual is simultaneously
preserved and not preserved. He could understand if the particu­
lar were said to be transparent or translucent to another particu­
lar. De M artino replies:
68 The Formless Self

Were "translucency" or "transparency" to mean "empti­

ness" or "Formlessness," that might be acceptable. Be­
cause to Dr. H isam atsu—or to Zen—it w ould not be
"transparent" or "translucent" for "anything-else," for
anything "other-to-it." Just the opposite, "transparency"
and "translucency" w ould rather denote the "nondualis-
tically ecstatic" "absence-in presence"—or "presence-
absence"—of its own "Self-Negation-Fulfillment."13

What can it mean that something is transparent, not for some­

thing other, but for itself? Instead of allowing something other to
shine through it, the thing shines out of itself so to speak. It ecsta­
tically empties itself, and in negating its own substantial form, it
fulfills itself. The "structure" of self-emptying is fundam entally
and profoundly ecstatic.
Corresponding to the false sameness that annihilates particu­
larity mentioned earlier in the dialogue, Hisamatsu now brings up
a false differentiation or a false individuality, one that absolutizes
itself existing in isolation completely separated from everything
else. Identity alone will not do; difference alone will not do either.
The discussion now turns to the question of the ordinary ex­
istence's need to reach the ultimate or Formless Self, thus com­
pleting and fulfilling itself.

"Wanting" the actualization of its ultimate ground or ful­

fillment, the ordinary has to overcome—or to "negate"
—itself; as the manifold substantialization—or "produc­
tion"—of its ultim ate ground, on the other hand, it be­
comes a positive "affirmation."14

In negating itself, the ordinary achieves a positive affirma­

tion. As long as something has not gotten outside itself, it is in­
complete and unfulfilled. Once it has achieved this, it can be
contained in itself. Once it has gotten outside of itself, negated,
and em ptied itself of any taint of substantiality, the Formless Self
Hisamatsu 69

can see itself in that thing and in any other thing that has gone
outside of itself, em ptied and negated itself.
We are now facing the limitations of these dialogues, points
on which Christianity and Buddhism cannot reach total unanim­
ity. For Zen, the claim is that m an can escape the situation of fini-
tude by himself becoming Buddha or the ultimate. In spite of the
nontraditional elements in his position, as a Christian, Tillich can­
not embrace this possibility. Tillich's "mysticism" remained w hat
he called it, a "nature mysticism"; the union was w ith nature, not
with God. Actually, union is a w ord that Tillich rejected, prefer­
ring the more cautious term "participation."
Returning to the discussion of Hua-yen, Tillich's position re­
mains on the level of riji-muge, no obstruction between universal
and particular, whereas Zen moves on to the level of jiji-muge, no
obstruction between particular and particular. The universal is
lacking. Every particular is fulfilled and every particular is com­
prehended within every other.
The formulation between universal and particular no obstruc­
tion generates the view of a universal apart from the particular.
For this reason Hisamatsu prefers the expression "nonparticular"
(negation of the particular) over universal. On the basis of the non­
duality of any thing and its own negation rests the nonduality of
any thing and any other thing. Thus, each thing "is" and is "in"
every other thing.
The discussion now centers on the meaning of this "is," a
point touched u pon previously. For Tillich, "is" indicates partici­
pation. Everything participates in and is an expression of the ulti­
mate. In contrast, for Zen each thing is a Self-ex pression of
ultimacy. Tillich's reply is that speaking for himself, he would be
shy to say this. The two thinkers seem to have come as close to
each other as they are able; of necessity a final difference remains.
For Tillich the relation of the particular to the ultimate is that of
participation; for Hisamatsu it is nonduality.
Trying to grasp the Zen point of view, Tillich proffers the
statem ent that whereas a dialectical identification of the particu­
70 T h e Formless Self

lar w ith the ultim ate is possible, a direct or immediate identifica­

tion is not. Hisamatsu replies that he is not speaking about iden­
tity. De M artino explicates.

For, to re-emphasize, it is this "nonduality of itself" and

"not itself" (riji-muge) that includes as one dim ension the
"nonduality of itself" and every "other to itself" (jiji -
muge). Jiji-muge is not, therefore, an identification of
"tw o" as "one." It is, rather, the nonduality of two that
"are" two even as they cease to be "two" because they in
a sense indeed cease to be.15

The discussion waxes more concrete again and comes to center on

a flower as an example of the particular. Tillich remarks that the
flower speaks for him w ith a magnificent eloquence. N everthe­
less, it cannot be for him anything more than a particular. He can­
not refer to it as being itself the ultimate. Hisamatsu replies that
only when the flower is seen as formless even while formed does
the full beauty of the flower emerge. Only when the person gaz­
ing at the flower becomes himself formless can the duality be­
tween him and the flower, between subject and object, be
overcome. The person becomes the flower concentrating on the
flower. De Martino elucidates.

Given your understanding of a particular in contradistinc­

tion to a universal in which it participates . . . the idea of a
particular incorporating its own negation—that is, being
"formless," and thereby incorporating every "other" par­
ticular (jiji-muge) may be somewhat forbidding. In any
case, it may make clear w hy I said before that whereas for
you the ultimate—or "God"—finally remains transcen­
dent, for Zen, as there "is" no universal besides the partic­
ular fulfilled in and through its ow n Self-Negation (which
is thus a Self-Negation-Affirmation), there isn't any such
predom inantly transcendent ultim ate.16
Hisamatsu 7í

De M artino elaborates on this by saying that w ith Zen w hat

may be spoken of as "universal" is the lack of any interposition
between particular and particular. This pretty m uch concludes
the substance of the dialogues.

Oriental Nothingness

In the hope of throw ing additional light on these difficult

questions, we now take a brief look at an article of H isam atsu's
entitled "The Characteristics of Oriental Nothingness," plus a few
remarks from some of his other writings.
In an attem pt to get at w hat is unique about oriental nothing­
ness, Hisamatsu enum erates five meanings of nothingness. Any­
one w ho finds this odd or even absurd should be rem inded that
the rationalist Kant listed four different meanings of nothingness.
"The talk of this division of the concept of nothing w ould there­
fore have to be draw n up as follows:

Nothing,
as

1
Empty concept w ithout object
ens rationis

2 3
Empty object of a concept Empty intuition w ithout
nihil privativum object ens imaginarius

4
Empty object w ithout concept
nihil negativum17

Kant, of course, investigates the question of the nothing

within the fram ework of his conception of knowledge as neces-
72 The Formless Self

sarily composed of concepts and intuitions. Given his statement

that thoughts w ithout content are empty, intuitions w ithout con­
cepts are blind,18 we are told that knowledge has to be composed
of both elements, intuition and concept. Ordered under the guid­
ance of the categories, nothing in accordance with quantity is
an entity of reason, ens rationis, an example of which is the
noumenon. I can think the noumenon, indeed for Kant I m ust
think it; but I cannot know it since I cannot intuit it. N othing ac­
cording to quality is privative, nihil privativum, examples of which
are shadow as a privation or lack of light and cold as a privation
or lack of heat. Nothing according to the category of relation is an
entity of the imagination, ens imaginarium, examples of which are
the pure forms of sensibility, space, and time. Finally, nothing ac­
cording to the category of modality is nihil negativum, negative
nothingness, examples of which are a square circle or a two-sided
rectilinear figure. Since these are contradictions, this last meaning
of the nothing cannot be said to exist at all, whereas the other
three in some sense "exist."
However, the framework w ithin which Kant investigates the
meanings of the nothing is very strict and very much unique to
him. Thus, it cannot be of much assistance in our inquiry. It was
cited in order to show that there are various possible meanings
for the nothing and various ways to think about it. It is far from
being merely a vacuous idea.
Hisam atsu's listing is quite different from that of Kant.

1. Nothingness as the negation of being

Example: There is no desk; there is no pleasure.
2. Nothingness as a predicative negation
Examples: A desk is not a chair; pleasure is not grief.
3. Nothingness as an abstract concept—this is nonbeing in gen­
eral in contrast to being or somethingness in general.
4. Nothingness as a conjecture
Example: While alive, I imagine myself as dead or nonex­
isting.
Hisamatsu 73

5. N othingness as absence of consciousness

Examples: deep sleep, unconsciousness, death.19

Hisamatsu then proceeds to state that Oriental Nothingness is

different from all these meanings. Fundamentally, Oriental N oth­
ingness is beyond the duality of being and nonbeing. It is also
beyond delimitation and predication. It is not a passive, contem­
plated state, perhaps achieved through "m editation," b u t rather
the active, contemplating mind. It is not something sought for,
but rather itself "seeking."
In an effort to get at some sort of "positive" content of Orien­
tal N othingness, a task bordering or self-contradiction, H isa­
m atsu investigates the assertion that it is like em pty space. He
lists the characteristics of em pty space as follows: no-obstruction,
omnipresence, impartiality, broad and great, formless, purity,
stability, voiding-being, voiding-voidness, w ithout obtaining.
These characteristics are mostly fairly clear and self-explanatory.
Em pty space does n o t get in the w ay of anything. It is present
everywhere. It is neutral, having no preferences. It has no limits
or form. It is pure, lacking afflictions. It is stable in that it does
not come into being or pass away. Again, it is beyond the oppo­
sition of being and nonbeing. Finally, it neither itself clings to
anything nor can it be clung to. Then follows an absolutely key
statement.

Oriental Nothingness and em pty space do have similar

characteristics, and to this extent may seem to be the same
thing. But, of course, Oriental N othingness is not the
same as em pty space, which has neither awareness nor
life. Oriental nothingness is the One w ho is "always
clearly aware." Therefore it is called "Mind," "Self," or
the "True M an."20

Unlike em pty space, Oriental Nothingness is not only living,

but possesses mind and self-consciousness. The question for us
74 T he Formless Self

now becomes: w hat kind of m ind or awareness is at stake here? It

cannot coincide w ith w hat we ordinarily m ean by the term
"mind," if we bother at all to think w hat this w ord really means.
The fact that we have a name or w ord for something by no means
entails the fact that w e truly understand it. It simply means that
something is familiar enough for us to categorize it.

I once w orked w ith a man in a legal experiment on the ef­

fects of the drug LSD. We were in a relatively barren hos­
pital room. It took me a while to discover that the m an
was going around the room quietly nam ing things. "That
is a chair," he w ould say to himself. U nder LSD every­
thing had become too lively and a little frightening. He
pinned them dow n and limited their existence by naming
them. He might as well have said, "You are only a chair."
I fear our hanging an identity on the sequential conflu­
ence of transcendent experiences does about the same
thing. N am ing implies that w e have com prehended, cir­
cumscribed, delimited, put down. Naming the chair
doesn't m ean I really understand how it is made or w hat
it is. It says, in effect, you are of the class of things I've
seen before. Of course self or personal identity is also of
the class of things I've seen before—w hatever it is.21

Probably the w ord "awareness" could be considered more

useful than "mind." Mind (Latin mens) somehow conjures u p the
image of an entity or thing whereas awareness does no such
thing. Awareness rather implies the activity of being awake and
alert, as is brought out more clearly in the term "wary." Actually,
awareness is related to the German term wahr, true.

The nature of Awareness beyond conceptual differentia­

tion is that it directly knows Itself in and through Itself. It
is not like ordinary consciousness or knowing, which is a
conditioned, object-dependent intentional knowing. It is
Hisamatsu 75

not, however, the same as a great hollow emptiness, vac­

uous and unknow ing.23

The slightest familiarity with Eastern texts will tell us that we

are not dealing with a subject-object structure of m ind here. And
in contem porary Western thought as well vast efforts are being
made to get out of the Cartesian subject-object, m ind-body split.
But merely to know w hat is being rejected is not sufficient; we
need to sense the direction in which we are moving.

The True Buddha is not w ithout mind, but possesses Mind

which is "■without mind and w ithout thought," is not with­
out self-awareness, b u t possesses Awareness which is
"without awareness"—an egoless ego, is not w ithout life,
but possesses Life which is ungenerated and unperishing.23

As is frequently the case, the custom ary meaning of a word

must be negated in order to arrive at a deeper possibility. All of
this has its roots in the well-known formula of the Diamond
Sutra: A is not A, therefore A is A. Expressed less abstractly by
contemporary interpreters:

In order to see through true green, true red, one m ust go

through a spiritual transformation, one m ust go through
the phase of negation; pasture is not pasture, red is not
red. Then one can truly appreciate the greenness of the
pasture and the brilliant redness of a flower.24

Returning to H isam atsu, he further characterizes nothing­

ness as the seeing h eart itself. H e cites the following exchange
between Ta-chu and a monk: "Tell me, how can one see (schauen)
the Buddha-nature?" "Seeing itself is the B uddha-nature."25
Hisamatsu goes on to say that seeing and the heart are not to
be separated from each other. If they are, then the true heart and
true seeing are no longer present.
76 T he Formless Self

The nothingness of Zen does not represent a space, free of

objects, outside of my person, but is rather my own state
of nothingness, namely m y self that is "nothing." (25)

Fully aware of the inappropriateness of an attem pt to con­

ceptually present the nothingness of Zen and yet at the same
time of the urgency to do so in order to help those seeking it,
H isam atsu struggles w ith the subject-object structure of Indo-
European language (in this case, German). We tend to represent
nothingness as "som ething" outside ourselves. But, of course,
nothingness is in no sense of the w ord a "som ething," and it is
not outside of us. Neither is it "inside" us. We need to get rid of
the fram ework outside-inside. But since the tendency to repre­
sent nothingness outside ourselves in more prevalent, Hisa­
m atsu takes the opposite strategic tack and brings nothingness
closer to the self.

"There is nothing in me" does not mean that nothing is in

my inside, if it is the case that my I is divided into inside
and outside; rather, it means that nowhere is there some­
thing. . . . Zen-Buddhist nothingness is the nowhere is
there something that is I, or conversely: the I that is the
nowhere is there something. If one spoke of a nowhere is
there something w ithout the I, that w ould then only be
em pty space; or if one spoke of an I w ithout the nowhere
is there something, this I w ould only be a psychological
or physical phenom enon; but neither can be designated
as the nothingness of Zen. (25-26)

W ithout the I, the nowhere is there something is just em pty

space; w ithout the nowhere is there something the I is simply en­
capsulated in its own phantasy w ith no possibility of ecstasis, of
getting outside itself. We need both factors or, rather, we need ul­
timately to get beyond both.
Hisamatsu 77

Your true nature is like the em pty space of the heavens

and if you succeed in seeing the now here is there some­
thing, that can be called appropriate seeing. (Hui-neng )

In Cheng-tao-ko and in Chuan-hsin fa-yao w e read:

"Nothingness is clear seeing. It is the now here is there

something. It is neither m an nor Buddha." (28)

Hisamatsu next takes up the w ord "emptiness" in an attem pt

to further explicate the "nowhere is there something." He cites
Shih-mo-ho-yen-lun w ho lists ten meanings in his "Dispute over
the Great Vehicle of Buddhism."

First, it is unobstructed. That means that no phenom e­

non, no m atter w hat its nature, constitutes an obstruction
for it.
Second, it is omnipresent. That means that there is no
place that it does not reach.
Third, it is w ithout distinction. That means that it
knows no distinction.
Fourth, it is open and wide. That means that there is
no limit for it.
Fifth, it is w ithout appearance. That means that it pre­
sents no appearance accessible to the senses.
Sixth, it is pure. That means that it is immaculate and
w ithout flaw.
Seventh, it is perm anent (dauernd ) and unm oved.
That means that it is w ithout becoming and perishing.
Eighth, it is em pty of being. That means that it is be­
yond all measure.
N inth, it is em pty w ithout em ptiness (leerelos leer).
That means that it does not cling to itself.
78 The Formless Self

Tenth, it possesses nothing. That means that it doesn't

possess and also cannot be possessed. (31)

The gist of all these characteristics seems to be not only that

em ptiness is empty; it absolutely tolerates no obstruction or im­
pediment. Thus, it can be present anywhere. It refuses to make an
appearance, to be accessible to the senses and to be in any way
possessed or held on to. It neither comes into being nor passes
away in any traditional sense of those terms. It cannot be mea­
sured or fathomed, and it doesn't cling to itself.
Reading between the lines, we can suggest that nothingness
does not p u t in an appearance to the senses, but this does not
mean that it is totally inaccessible. If it were, all these things could
not be stated about it. Thus, we can surmise that it makes itself
felt or "sensed" (not perceived with any of the ordinary five
senses, but sensed in the way, for example, an animal senses dan­
ger) at times to a receptive person.

But the nothingness of Zen Buddhism is by no means

something unconscious and unalive as is emptiness;
Rather, it is the subject that knows itself "clearly and dis­
tinctly." For this reason it is also called "heart," "self," or
"the true hum an being." (34)

Zen nothingness is not subhuman; it is transhuman. Nishitani

had taken this issue up in his chapter on the personal and the im­
personal in religion where he questioned the validity and limits
of attributing "personality" to God, thus reducing him to the
hum an level. At the same time, he em phasized that God m ust in­
clude and transcend the "human."
Back to the m anner of "appearance" of nothingness. Not only
does it not appear to the senses, it cannot be divided up into indi­
vidual appearances. Rather, it m ust be sensed in its unlimited to­
tality temporarily on certain "occasions." It is then not contained
Hisamatsu 79

in or identical w ith any of these appearances. It simply "makes

use" of them to let itself be known.

It is also explicable in terms of this characteristic of Zen-

Buddhist nothingness that a true Buddha cannot dwell in
nirvana; for a nirvana that can be represented as a place
does signify blissful rest as opposed to the restlessness of
the world; but it is not the true nirvana. (40)

Not even a true Buddha can dwell in absolute nothingness or

nirvana. N ot only is nothingness not a something; it is not any
"place" either. Perhaps the closest analogue to this in Western
philosophy is the "place" in Plato's Phaedo where he states that
the soul after its release from the prison of the body goes to a
"place" (topos ) which, like itself, is noble, pure, and invisible.26
Again and again H isamatsu stresses that there are limitations
to the extent to w hich Zen nothingness can be com pared to
emptiness. (N.B. He always uses the German w ord for emptiness,
die Leere, never the Sanskrit sunyata). Thus, he stresses the heart-
nature of nothingness.

For the nothingness of Zen is not lifeless like emptiness,

but, on the contrary, something quite lively (lebendig). It is
not only lively, b u t also has heart and, moreover, is aware
of itself.27

Having stated this, H isam atsu reintroduces the analogy of

liveliness, heart, and self-awareness w ith emptiness to w ard off
all familiar associations w ith these words. The liveliness, heart,
and self-awareness of nothingness all have the characteristics of
emptiness.

O ur usual heart is full of complexes and impediments, it is

limited in its reach, differentiates and classifies, it is an ap­
80 The Formless Self

pearance, it is flawed, it is subject to becoming and pass­

ing away, it knows measure, it is graspable, it has an inside
and an outside and m any other things in addition.28

W hat H isam atsu means by "heart" has little to do w ith our

custom ary associations w ith that word. We take heart to be a
physiological organ pum ping and sustaining life. Or we take
heart as the seat of sentiment. Again, we need to try to get beyond
the physiological and the psychological. To gain an inkling of that
dimension, we m ight begin by comparing it to the mood of a non­
spectacular landscape as seen or depicted by an artist, w hether a
painter or a poet. To follow this direction of inquiry, we now turn
to H isam atsu's w ork Zen and the Fine Arts.

In the case of Zen painting, then, it is not, as is so often the

case w ith other types of painting, that a consciousness not
free of form (the ordinary self) paints a concrete object;
nor is it that the ordinary self-with-form tries objectively
to depict w hat is w ithout form; nor is it that the self-with-
out-form depicts an object-with-form; nor is it even that
the Self-Without-Form objectively paints w hat is form­
less. Rather, it is always the Formless Self that is, on each
and every occasion, the creative subject expressing itself.
. . . This means, finally, that that which paints is that
w hich is painted: that w hich is painted is that which
paints.29

The key sentence here is that w hich paints is that w hich is

painted: the Formless Self. According to Hisamatsu, that Form­
less Self possesses seven characteristics. We w ant to take a look at
these characteristics as a w ay leading to a dimension beyond that
of the physiological or the psychological. These seven are: asym­
metry, simplicity, austere sublimity or lofty dryness, naturalness,
subtle profundity or profound subtlety, freedom from attach­
ment, and tranquillity.
Hisamatsu 84

The Formless Self

A sym m etry . In contrast to paintings of Pure Land Buddhism

that all show graceful figures that are perfect, symmetrical, well-
rounded, and holy, Zen paintings negate these qualities. They are
imperfect and worldly in the sense of going beyond ordinary per­
fection and holiness.

Zen is a religion of non-holiness. Ordinarily, in religion,

God or Buddha is something sacrosanct; in Zen, however,
Buddha is non-holy as the negation and transcendence of
holiness. Here also is the basis, in Zen art, of its deforma­
tion , which neither pursues nor is attached to perfection;
it is of the nature, as Lin-chi said, of "killing the Buddha,
killing the patriarch."30

Spinoza, w ho in some ways did not have much in common

with Buddhism, nevertheless is very Buddhist in his understand­
ing of perfection. He states that the most common way of speak­
ing about perfection is analogous to the w ay men talk about good
and evil. They have an ideal standard in mind, say of a house,
and according to how som ething does nor does not measure up
to this standard it is judged perfect or imperfect, good or evil.
These are merely hum an ways of thinking and feeling; essentially
they say nothing about the actual nature of w hat is being judged.
Furthermore, such judgm ents make sense for Spinoza in a limited
way only in relation to m an-m ade objects, objects of techne; they
are totally inapplicable and inappropriate to things of nature,
which just are as they are and cannot be otherwise. Here Spinoza
is close to the Buddhist theme of suchness (tathata ).
Spinoza's own use of the w ord perfection (perficere) is closer to
the nonjudgm ental quality of being accomplished, completed, in
this sense perfected. In keeping w ith his constant and vigorous
rejection of final causes, Spinoza states that things are not put in
the world by God to attain some end that they (and He) lack, but
82 T he Formless S elf

rather they endeavor to persist in and increase their being, com­

ing as close to perfectedness as possible. But reality and perfec­
tion are the same thing.31
W hat Spinoza means by "perfection7' is almost the dead op­
posite of w hat most people m ean by perfection. It has nothing to
do with "ideality." Rather, it has to do w ith the isness of things.
Simplicity. Simplicity is uncomplicated, uncluttered. It is not
ornamental.

If, as the negation of holiness results in the freedom of

non-holiness, then simplicity as the negation of clutter
may be spoken of as being "boundless" there is nothing
limiting, as in a cloudless sky.32

We begin to see that the characteristics of Zen art are precisely

those of absolute nothingness.
Austere Sublimity or Lofty Dryness. It makes little difference
w hether these w ords are being used as nouns or adjectives; they
are functionally quite interchangeable. Thus, we could equally
well say sublime austerity or dry loftiness. Two com ponents are
involved here: dryness or austerity and loftiness or sublimity.
Dryness and austerity indicate a stage of life beyond sensuous­
ness, fleshiness, immaturity, inexperience. It m ay mean a kind of
"transcendental" beauty beyond the merely sensuous, as in paint­
ing, or a culminating fruition of practical wisdom, as in a Zen
master. Sublimity or loftiness serves to intensify these qualities,
indicating that they are not on a level accessible to just anyone
and are attainable only after long practice.
Naturalness. This quality would seem to be self-explanatory,
bu t it is not. It is not found in nature, in natural objects or in chil­
dren. Again, like the preceding quality of lofty dryness, it is the
culmination of long practice. It is well exemplified in Eugen Her-
rigel's book Zen in the A rt of Archery, the first and best of the series
of Zen in . . . to come. Herrigel had to learn to stop trying to shoot
the arrow by improving his technique and just let "It" shoot. This
Hisamatsu 83

took him six years. Such naturalness cannot be forced or con­

strained. It m ust be allowed to come about "of itself/' and that is
the root meaning of the term "spontaneous."
Subtle Profundity or Deep Reserve. This characteristic means
that things are not explicitly spelled out in detail, but hint at an in­
finitude going far beyond, for example, the painted forms. Infini­
tude cannot be actually painted; it can only be hinted at, which in
m any ways is far more suggestive and powerful than any attem pt
at presenting it directly. Here, the view er's imagination will far
outstrip w hat is on paper. In addition, Hisamatsu addresses the
qualities of darkness and massive stability. This darkness is calm­
ing, not ominous or threatening. By massive Hisamatsu does to
m ean mere heaviness, but the stability and unshakeability em a­
nating from nonattachment, which leads to the next characteristic.
Freedom from Attachment. Freedom from attachm ent means
not being bound by things, habit, or rules. People with m any pos­
sessions are bound and fettered to these things: they take care of
them, w orry about their being lost, dam aged or stolen, and insure
them. But, of course, one cannot "insure" anything, least of all
one's life. Freedom from attachm ent is perhaps better expressed
by the word "unattachm ent" rather than the more common "de­
tachment." Detachment can have the connotation that I sim ply
do n 't care about a thing and w ant nothing to do with it. In unat­
tachment, on the contrary, I can very well care about the thing—
or person—and take care of it—or him or her—, b u t I am not
bound by it. I can let go of it if that is what is called for. Hisamatsu
places considerable em phasis on freedom from attachm ent as
freedom from rules, custom, and ordinary logic.
Tranquility. H isam atsu's examples are from the music in a No
play and landscape paintings. The manifestation in sound or
form is not disturbing, but rather induces calm, composure, and
collectedness. The sound or form, so to speak, "gathers" the lis­
tener or viewer into itself.
Hisamatsu is careful to stress that these seven characteristics
are all interrelated and are all to be found in any Zen art. O ther art
84 The Formless Self

works of Buddhism or the West may possess one or two of them,

but only Zen art invariably embodies them all.
In an effort to get beyond the reduction of "heart" to the
physiological or the psychological, we brought in the neutral,
mostly undeveloped term "mood." That led us into a discussion
of Hisamatsu's seven characteristics of Zen culture. Now we need
to focus back on just w hat he is talking about w ith these charac­
teristics.
H isam atsu is careful to emphasize that w hat is being ex­
pressed in the seven characteristics is not limited to art in the nar­
row sense, but extends to all spheres of hum an life. The
Fundamental Subject of expression of the Zen fine arts is basically
something that is beyond art.
What, then, is this Fundam ental Subject? We are uncertain
w hether w hat is being discussed is w hat is being expressed or
w hat is expressing itself. But, as was stated earlier, what is paint­
ing and w hat is being painted are the same.
Hisamatsu faces the question head on and states simply "Zen
is the Self-Awareness of the Formless Self."33
Probing the meaning of formlessness, Hisam atsu asks the
question w hether there can be any mental activity that is beyond
differentiation. Then he begins to show that w hat we ordinarily
consider to be "m ind" is already something objectified, thus pos­
sessing form. W hat the psychology, science, or philosophy of self-
consciousness study is precisely not true self-consciousness,
b u t an objectified self. And even w hen it is not so treated, self-
consciousness, although it has no physical form, is still differenti­
ated from all other self-consciousnesses, hence not truly formless.
Thus, Zen formlessness does not coincide with the supposed
formlessness of self-consciousness.
To further elucidate Zen formlessness, H isam atsu refers to
Dogen's expression "body and mind fallen away." "Fallen away"
is directly opposed to "transcend." We do not climb beyond
or transcend the self, b u t body and m ind drop off. It is not suffi­
cient, as in some Western and Eastern philosophies, to transcend
Hisamatsu 85

the body, the senses, emotions, and desires. There is nothing free
or formless about our m inds either. Formlessness means dis­
carding the ordinary self, the self that has form and can still be
differentiated.
Hisam atsu places considerable emphasis on the fact that he is
not talking about the idea of a formless self, but about its existen­
tial reality.

I think that nothing is more spiritual, nor anything purer

than this Self. Further, in the ultimate or deepest meaning,
w hen compared w ith this Self of Zen, everything else falls
into the category of things—that which is objective. What
is, will be, or has been objective are all things.34

The Self of Zen or the Formless Self cannot be defined or

taught. We cannot look for it outside of ourselves or, for that m at­
ter, inside of ourselves either. For inside of ourselves is still differ­
entiated from outside. In this sense, the Zen experience does not
coincide with the "turning within" of Western philosophy which
began w ith Plotinus and was followed by a few isolated thinkers.
The Zen experience of the Formless Self occurs only through
w hat H isam atsu calls "Awakening or satori."

The attainment of satori, then, distinguishes Zen from ordi­

nary religions. To attain satori is an activity quite different
from intuiting, believing, knowing by intellect, or emotion­
ally feeling, which usually obtain with ordinary religions.35

Taking up the statem ent from the Nirvana Sutra that "all sen­
tient beings have the Buddha-nature, a statem ent that Dogen
am ended to read "all sentient beings are the Buddha-nature,
H isam atsu explains that this should not be understood to mean
that they are fundam entally Buddha but as yet have not realized
this. That w ould constitute a distinction between the Original and
the manifest.
86 T he Formless S elf

Therefore, the ultimate or true meaning of the expression

"every sentient being is originally B uddha" is that the
Formless Self that I am—the Self of No-Form—is aware of
itself. Since Self is synonymous w ith Self-Awareness, to
say that the Self of No-Form is aware of itself is redun­
dant. Accordingly, it is simply the Self of No-Form that is
m eant by the expression "every sentient being is origi­
nally Buddha."36

Buddhahood is not a matter of transcendence or immanence,

but of presence or presencing. It does not inherently exist or pres­
ence in any particular time or space; if it did, it w ould be limited,
not formless. It does not persist permanently in any time or space,
but manifests itself instantaneously. A part from this instanta­
neous manifestation, it "is" not. "Instantaneously" does not mean
briefly. This manifestation cannot be measured. Rather, it indi­
cates the sudden and abrupt nature of manifestation that ruptures
all continuity of experience.
Now Hisamatsu delves into the self aspect of the Formless
Self.

But the Formless Self is not only w ithout form; it is Self

W ithout Form. Since it is Self, its Formlessness is active;
being w ithout form, the Self is also active. Therefore Zen
uses such term s as "rigidly void" and "merely void" for
the kind of formless self that rem ains only formless.
Again, w hen the self is never active and rem ains w ithin
formlessness, this is called "falling into the devil's
cave."37

The Formless Self or absolute nothingness or Buddha not

only is alive and self-aware; it is also constantly active. It appears
through activity; w hat has no form takes on form. Only such form
is true form. W hatever innately and essentially has form is bound
and attached to that form; it is not free.
Hisamatsu 87

The form that constitutes the activity of the Formless Self,

however, is the form of No-Form. For this kind of form­
less form, Zen has the term "wondrous being." This term
signifies that, unlike ordinary being, this is at once being
and nonbeing. Here, being never remains static, but is
constantly one w ith Formlessness. So it is that the Form­
less Self is characterized as the True Void, and its appear­
ance in form as "w ondrous being"; and thus the Zen
phrase, "True Void—W ondrous Being."38

This is H isam atsu's interpretation of the H eart Sutra's "Form

is nothing other than emptiness; emptiness is nothing other than
form." Emptiness w ithout form is rigid and merely void; form
w ithout emptiness is rigidly attached to form.
Hisamatsu discerns two aspects to satori or Awakening. First,
the person gains freedom from w hat has form (body and m ind
drop off) and awakens to the Self w ithout Form. Second, through
its activity the Self w ithout Form comes to assume form. Of
course, "first" and "second" are makeshift terms here; there is no
temporal sequence. There is only one and the same activity. After
such Awakening, everything we see or hear or think is an expres­
sion of the Formless Self.
Since Hisamatsu finds that the Formless Self expressed itself
in a certain period of Oriental culture, he now goes back to the
seven characteristics he has discussed and inquires in w hat aspect
of the Formless Self they are rooted.
A sym m etry . This is grounded in the negation of every form.
Even a perfect form, and thus perfection in the ordinary sense,
m ust be negated. A sym metry is then the manifestation of No-
Form as the negation of adherence to any perfection of form.
Hisam atsu's examples for this are the preference for odd numbers
over even ones, the crooked faces with lack of proportion of the
arhats and the crooked and misshapen strokes in calligraphy.
Simplicity. Simplicity is also rooted in formlessness. The kind
of simplicity H isam atsu has in m ind embraces both the simple
88 T he Formless Self

and the complex. Thus, it is not to be confused with plainness. In

addition, it negates color even w hen colors are present. It was
Leibniz w ho stated that nothing is simpler than something.
Sublime Austerity. A basic feature of sublime austerity is that
it is w ithout sensuousness. But this does not mean that it is
sheerly rational. Even reason is not completely free from the sen­
suous. It contrasts with it and is therefore related to and depen­
dent upon sensuousness. H isam atsu adduces the two words
extremely central to Japanese aesthetic sensibility: sabi, being an­
cient and graceful, and wabi, having a poverty surpassing riches.
These qualities are likewise beyond sensuousness, and thus be­
yond beauty as we ordinarily conceive it. As the adjective indi­
cates we have here to do not w ith beauty, but with the sublime. It
is beyond all weakness and insecurity. This sublimity is eons old,
sturdy and seasoned. It embodies the dead opposite of the West­
ern aesthetic ideals of youth and beauty.
Naturalness. Briefly, naturalness refers to the original manner
of being before any artificiality or intent. This is sometimes indi­
cated by the expression "No-M ind." It does not mean uncon­
sciousness, b u t pure awareness without design or scheme.
Profound subtlety. The infinite depths of profound subtlety
can never be fathomed or exhausted. H isam atsu emphasizes its
darkness that is filled w ith calm and peace. It is bottomless, gen­
erating endless reverberations going far beyond w hat was actu­
ally expressed. Yet w ithout w hat was expressed we w ould have
no inkling of its inexhaustibility and immeasurability.
Freedom from attachment. This characteristic of the Formless
Self indicates that the Formless Self is ever free from form even
while in the world. Thus, it is free to take on any form because of
not inherently having any form. The actions of such a person em­
bodying the Formless Self are carried out at lightning speed with
unw avering immediacy. The opposite of this would be to be em­
broiled and entangled in the affairs of the world, which we
mostly are. Heidegger w ould speak of inauthenticity, Un-
eigentlichkeit , the way we are "initially and for the m ost part."
Hisamatsu 89

Tranquility. Tranquility is related to the deep calm associated

w ith profound subtlety. It is utterly free of disturbance and per-
turbability. This means that nothing appears to any of the five
senses and, above all, nothing is stirring in the mind. The m ind or
Formless Self is at rest even am idst motion and commotion. It
was Heraclitus w ho said: "By changing it rests."
The characteristics belonging to the Formless Self discussed
here constitute m an's true and ultimate m anner of being.
If one negates the custom ary meaning of m ind as subject rep­
resenting an object, one gets an immediate awareness that might
provisionally be term ed "seeing." If I "see" something w ithout
objectifying or even representing or picturing, w hat is actually
happening?
The attem pts to describe this kind of seeing or thinking are of
necessity so repetitious that one begins to take them as platitudes.
Nevertheless, they are platitudes that have never been u n der­
stood. They are encountered on a purely verbal, logical level.
They have never been penetrated.
The gist of these uncom prehended "platitudes" pretty m uch
boils dow n to the phrase: an awareness that precedes or super­
sedes the bifurcation of subject and object. We shall start w ith this
and see if we cannot penetrate a little further.
In his m ost insightful book, Toward a Philosophy of Zen Bud­
dhism, Toshihiko Izutsu distinguishes between consciousness of
and consciousness pure and simple.

Though similar in verbal form, "consciousness pure and

simple" and "consciousness of" are worlds apart. For the
former is an absolute, metaphysical awareness w ithout
the thinking subject and w ithout the object thought of.39

Actually, seeing or even thinking might be a term preferable

to consciousness since the latter is particularly strongly associated
with "consciousness of," especially since Husserl. But it is pre­
cisely the structure of consciousness of, of intentionality, that is to
90 The Formless Self

be eliminated here. Put in a vastly oversimplified fashion, for

Husserl consciousness of or intentionality was meant to establish
a link between consciousness and its intended object. It was
m eant to establish the directedness of consciousness tow ard a
w orld outside of itself. But the schema outside-inside, outer-
inner, the limitations of which Kant already pointed out in his
amphibolies of reflection, have no place in the kind of seeing or
thinking that we are trying to throw light on.
Not only thinking of, b ut also thinking about are inappropri­
ate here. In that sense, seeing is perhaps the most appropriate
term since we cannot even speak of seeing of or seeing about. See­
ing is direct and immediate. But thinking, a special kind of think­
ing, can also be direct and immediate. And just as we do not
mean by seeing simple, sensuous, empirical seeing, seeing and
thinking are much closer to each other than is normally believed.
W hat is happening, w hat is at stake, at play, in this extra­
ordinary use of seeing and thinking? To facilitate our understand­
ing, let us take a look at the Sansuikyd (The Mountain-and-waters
Sutra) fascicle of Dogen's Shobogenzo. "It is not only when hu­
mans and gods see w ater that we should study this; also investi­
gate the w ay in which water sees water."40
Initially, Dogen is saying that w ater should not be viewed ex­
clusively from a hum an or even from a divine perspective, which
is usually tantam ount to a glorified hum an one. For example, fish
see w ater a certain way; it is their life element, they cannot live
w ithout it. A bird, say, a seagull searching for a fish, sees water in
a different way. Seaweed would see water in still another way; it
grows in water.

The realm of ultimacy m ust also be of a thousand and

m yriad kinds. To further reflect upon the meaning of this
point: Although water is manifold for various beings it
w ould seem that there is no original water, nor is there
universal w ater for all beings. . . . Water liberates itself
through water. Accordingly, water is not earth, water, fire,
Hisamatsu 9i

w ind, space, or consciousness. Water is not blue, yellow,

red, white, or black, w ater is not sight, sound, smell, taste,
touch, or idea. A nd yet w ater is realized, of itself, as earth,
water, fire, wind, space, and all the rest.41

The reference to the senses and various colors is self-explana­

tory. The first listing refers to the Buddhist conception of the six
elements that constitute sentient beings. Dogen is saying that
water is not all these things, yet it is realized as them. Thus, w ater
cannot be equated w ith any particular things or qualities, b u t it
realizes itself as any and all of them. This w ater is not just the em­
pirical w ater that we use and drink. It is more akin to Thales'
water; it is, so to speak, "metaphysical" water. Ultimately, w ater
is an articulation of the non-articulated.

Water-seeing-water" means for Dogen "water" illum inat­

ing itself and disclosing itself as the prim ordial Non-
Articulated. .. . Since, however, the "w ater" at this stage
of spiritual experience is no longer seen as an object of
sight by a seeing subject, w hether hum an, heavenly, or
otherwise, and since it is "w ater" itself that is seeing
water, the ontological articulation of reality nullifies, as it
were, its ow n act of articulation. The result is a seeming
contradiction: the reality is and is not articulated into
"water." Otherwise expressed, the reality articulates itself
before the eyes of an enlightened m an like a flash into
"w ater" and then it goes back instantaneously into the
original state of non-articulation.42

W hat is Non-Articulated (emptiness) articulates itself as

"som ething" (form) for a sudden instant and then returns to its
non-articulated state. W hat is difficult for the Western m ind to ac­
cept is the fact that the N on-Articulated is only "there" in that
sudden flash as form; otherwise the Non-Articulated "is" not. We
are accustomed to thinking the Absolute as something there, stat­
92 The Formless Self

ically persisting, which then manifests itself. But the manifesta­

tion of the Absolute in no w ay negates the Absolute. In contrast to
this, the Non-Articulated is literally no thing, nothing, emptiness.
Expressed another way, "the Undifferentiated ex-ists only through
its own differentiation."43 "For from the Zen point of view, w hat
we have provisionally articulated as the 'non-articulated' can
never subsist apart from the infinitely variegated forms of its own
articulation."44
The preceding pages have been a som ew hat clumsy attem pt
to describe w hat is happening when the Non-Articulated is artic­
ulated. We m ust now try to link this description to w hat we were
saying about the seeing or thinking that lacks the structure of sub-
ject-object. The seeing or thinking in question here is not just the
activity of the individual, empirical mind. Instead, we are dealing
w ith Mind, Reality aware of itself. This mind is supersensible and
superrational without, however, being destructive of either sensi­
bility or rationality. On the contrary, sensibility and rationality
are possible only because of Mind. It will not help us to say that
Mind is "universal" as opposed to individual mind. For M ind
is absolutely non-substantial; it is No-Mind. Yet, like the Non-
Articulated, Mind can only function w hen it is at one w ith our
empirical consciousness.
The Mind is something noumenal which functions only in the
phenomenal.45
The Buddhist Absolute can only be absolute No-thingness.

"Criticjue o f the ' Unconscious'"

The Non-Articulated of No-Mind is something that has

begun to attract some attention on the p art of some innovative
schools of Western psychology and psychiatry. Their efforts to a
large extent converge in an attem pt to "deconstruct" previous
theories of the unconscious. A prim e target here is, of course,
Freud, but also Jung who was far more open to Eastern and to re­
Hisamatsu 93

ligious and nontraditional thought in general. The basic tenet of

these innovative psychologists and psychiatrists is that there is no
such thing as The Unconscious; there are quite simply facets of
awareness that go unnoticed. These facets are not hidden in some
receptacle that is in principle unavailable to us. If we can defocus
our selective attention, they are available.

The holding on of ego is som ew hat different. It is an ac­

tive, b u t intermittent grasping. It is like the grasping ac­
tion of the hand that makes a fist. If the fist remains
clenched all the time, it w ould cease to be a hand, and
w ould become a different kind of bodily organ. A fist by
definition is the action of clenching the open hand. Just as a
fist can only form out of the neutral basis of an open
hand, the grasping of ego can only assert itself out of non­
ego, out of a nongrasping awareness. Without this neutral
nongrasping ground to arise from and return to, ego's ac­
tivity could not occur. This neutral ground is w hat is
known in Buddhism as egolessness , open nondual aware­
ness, the ground against which the figure of ego's grasping
stands out.46

One could argue that the figure-ground paradigm is perhaps

somewhat less appropriate than the schema form-emptiness,
since "figure" only makes sense when set against ground, but this
is less im portant than pursuing the insights gained here.

We continually have little glimpses of egolessness in the

gaps and spaces betw een thoughts, the transitive m o­
ments of consciousness. Ego is being b o m and dying
every moment, in that every m om ent is new and open to
possibility. Ego-centered thoughts are continually arising
out of a more open, neutral awareness which surrounds
them and eludes their grasp. We continually have to let
94 The Formless Self

go of w hat we have already thought, accomplished,

known, experienced, become. A sense of panic underlies
these births and deaths, which creates further grasping
and clenching. Ego, in some sense, is the panic about
egolessness, arising in reaction to the unconditioned
openness that underlies every m om ent of conscious-
ness. 47

It should be noted that the term "transitive" used here stems

from William James who used it in the sense of "transitional."
This description not only shows the nonsubstantiality of ego
in that the ego's very foundation is a more open, neutral aware­
ness, b u t also shows that the whole of ego's activity is momentary .
This means that in a literal, radical sense ego is bo m and dies at
every moment. Not only is ego completely non-substantial, but its
impermanence is such that it is incessantly being bom and dying.
Impermanence does not simply mean that something exists for a
limited duration of time, but that nothing subsists, persists at all.
This fundam ental fact opens the door to the two possibilities of
freedom and of panic. In the w ords of R. D. Laing: "We are un­
conscious of our minds. Our minds are not unconscious."48
That is quite a striking statement. W hat is "unconscious" is
precisely the conscious m ind that blocks out or "brackets" a con­
siderable portion of its awareness. This is quite natural, since our
interest tends to focus on particular people, things, and situations.
But at some point, we should be able to become aware that there
are other possibilities.

It is im portant to note at the outset, however, that m edita­

tion can never be completely understood objectively, w ith
the categories of the thinking mind, precisely because its
nature is to transcend these categories. M editation is not
so much a particular kind of experience, but is rather a
way of seeing through experience, always eluding any at­
tem pt to pin it dow n conceptually.49
Hisamatsu 95

M editation is probably a term vastly m isunderstood by those

who do not practice it and perhaps even by some w ho do. Of
course, there are m any different forms of meditation. W hat is
being stressed here and w hat interests us is the fact that m edita­
tion is not some kind of trance or mindless blankness and qui­
etude. Rather, it is an activity of intense receptivity to openness.

This new approach to unconscious functioning is based

on a notion of the organism as already relating to the
w orld in global w ays p rio r to the articulations of think­
ing mind. The sense of being encom passed by a w isdom
greater than oneself, w hich m ay be ascribed to an "u n ­
conscious m ind," comes from this dependence of focal
intelligence on the wider, organism ic process that is al­
w ays operating beyond its range. Since w e cannot p in­
po in t focally this organism ic totality, we tend to deny
its reality, or treat it as "other," separate from ourselves.
But conscious and unconscious are not necessarily o p ­
posing tendencies, as depth psychology contends; rather,
focal attention and holistic gro u n d are com plem entary
m odes of o rg an ism /en v iro n m en t relationship. The o r­
ganism ic ground, moreover, is not truly unknow able in
that it m ay be directly contacted in w ider states of
aw areness.50

This is a paradigm for the relation of conscious to uncon­

scious material similar to the one m entioned previously. We are
dealing here w ith focal attention and a holistic ground which,
however, is not a solid ground, but very much in flux.

In m editation, awareness of an open ground breaks

through w hen one wears out the projects and distractions
of thought and emotion. Then there is a sudden gap in the
steam of thought, a flash of clarity and openness. It is nei­
ther particularly mystical or ecstatic, nor any kind of in­
96 The Formless Self

troverted self-consciousness, but a direct participation in

an egoless awareness.
Ignorance in this perspective is the lack of recognition
of this nonpersonal awareness that surrounds the objects
of thought and feeling, and the treating of the latter as
solid, substantial realities. This ignoring seems to be an
activity that is constantly re-created from m oment to mo­
ment.51

These psychologists and thinkers are not only attem pting to

get beyond the subject-object dualism; above all, they wish to
reinterpret w hat has been regarded as the dualism of the con­
scious and unconscious mind. Basically, they regard the Uncon­
scious as a hypostasization. Even Jung's Collective Unconscious,
which is far more compatible with Eastern thinking than is
Freud's Id, is rejected on the grounds that it still has the con­
scious-unconscious dualism and operates according to the model
of "inner and outer," which Kant had unmasked as one of the am­
phibolies of the concepts of reflection, along with identity and dif­
ference, agreement and opposition, matter and form.52 For this
reason, in spite of a basic willingness to consider Eastern and
other alternative ways of thinking, Jung had a basic m istrust of
m editation as a process of w ithdraw ing into introversion w ith the
possible resultant loss of being able to cope with the "outer"
world.

The unconscious is typically seen as "other"—alien, un­

knowable, even threatening. In this perspective m edita­
tion is conceived as potentially dangerous, in that it may
subject the ego to "the disintegrating powers of the u n ­
conscious." Such possible confusions led the Zen teacher
Hisam atsu after a conversation w ith Jung, to distinguish
the open ground of awareness from the depth psychology
model of the unconscious. The "unconscious" of psycho­
analysis is quite different from the "no-mind" of Zen. In
Hisamatsu

the "unconscious" are the a posteriori "personal uncon­

scious" and the a priori "impersonal unconscious,"
nam ely the "collective unconscious." They are both u n ­
know n to the ego. But the "No-M ind" of Zen is, on the
contrary, not only known, b u t it is m ost clearly known, as
it is called .. . "always clearly aware." More exactly, it is
clearly self-awakening to itself "w ithout separation be­
tween the knower and the known." "No-M ind" is a state
of m ind clearly aware.53
 3

The Self-Overcoming o f N ih ilism

In his earlier work, The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism , Nishitani

states that, if nihilism is anything, it is first of all a problem of the
self.1 From the outset he takes this problem up as an existential
matter; it is not to be dealt w ith as a problem of society in general
or as any sort of problem viewed from outside by an objective
and objectifying observer. This does not relegate the problem of
the self to some kind of idiosyncratic, personal or even patholog­
ical domain. If it but be recognized, it is common to all hum an
being now, but it cannot be "solved" sociologically.

On the one hand, nihilism is a problem that transcends

time and space and is rooted in the essence of hum an
being, an existential problem in w hich the being of the
self is revealed to the self itself as something groundless.
On the other hand, it is a historical and social phenom e­
non, an object of the study of history. The phenom enon
of nihilism shows that our historical life has lost its
ground as objective spirit, that the value system which
supports this life has broken down, and that the entirety
of social and historical life has loosened itself from its
foundations.2

99
100 The Formless Self

The existential problem of the self, always potentially present

for the individual, at times takes on a historical dim ension and
becomes the actuality of an epoch. For Nishitani, the problem of
the self has actualized itself as the problem of nihilism at the end
of the ancient period and the medieval period in the West, and in
Japan in the m appó3 thinking of the Kamakura period. Nishitani
sees the reemergence of nihilism in the m odem period in Europe
above all w ith Nietzsche and Dostoevsky. This material has been
discussed extensively in contemporary Western thought so that
further consideration is not absolutely necessary here. What is
significant for the purposes of this study is the fact that Nishitani
sets the problem of the self squarely in the center of his inquiry,
and indicates the self's ineluctable relation to nihilism and noth­
ingness. His em phasis in this work is on the crisis this problem
has assumed now historically both in the West and East. But his
basic tenet is that this relation is always there w hen one pene­
trates it existentially on a "religious" level.
After a final reference in this work to Nietzsche's conception
of the self as body, to my knowledge a unique evaluation of this
idea, we shall turn to the more m ature work, Religion and Noth­
ingness. The majority of Western interpreters of Nietzsche revel in
his rejection of reason, Platonism, and Christianity, and overlook
the undeniably spiritual dimension of his thought. This Nishitani
does not do.

The so-called "I," what we normally take as the self, is

merely a frame of interpretation added to this life process
after the fact. The true self is the source of the life process
itself, the true body of the will to power. It is w hat I have
called "the self itself" or "the self as such," and not w hat
is ordinarily called the "self." The so-called "I" is a tool of
this greater self. This I take to be w hat Nietzsche means
when he speaks of "body." Therefore, even if this stand­
point of body is one of affirmation, it is not the kind of
standpoint that can be adopted simply by abandoning
Nishitani iOi

"spiritual" things—which in any event are not so easily

abandoned—any more than it is easy to escape the con­
scious "I." The body in Nietzsche is the kind of self that is
conceived from the side of an ultimate self-awakening be­
yond self-consciousness, or w hat I referred to previously
as "Existence." The affirmation is on the same level as
that of the religious believer who can affirm a God be­
yond death.4

N ishitani clearly distinguishes between the "I," w hat is nor­

mally called the self, and the true self. The "I" is a frame of inter­
pretation that is added to experience, referring it back to a
supposed subject. It construes itself as "w ithin" and everything
else as objects "w ithout." Far from being something added to the
life process the true self is the source of that life process. This self
is conceived or experienced from an ultimate self-awakening that
is beyond ordinary consciousness and self-consciousness. It can­
not be conceptualized, imagined, or anticipated. The true self
does not coincide w ith our custom ary idea of self at all.

Religion and Nothingness

In Religion and Nothingness , Nishitani pursues his fundam en­

tal question of the self by confronting the question of nihility. Ni­
hility he defines as "that which renders meaningless the m eaning
of life."5 It is precisely consciousness and self-consciousness that
discover the threat of nihility underlying all existence. But con­
sciousness then turns aw ay from this threat and busily seeks to
find satisfaction and fulfillment in its w orldly pursuits. Its at­
tem pt is at best only partially successful. W hat consciousness
m ust ultim ately do is to become that nihility and, in so doing,
break through the field of consciousness and self-consciousness.

Consciousness is the field of relationships between those

entities characterized as self and things. That is, it is the
W2 The Formless Self

field of beings at which the nihility that lies beneath the

ground of being remains covered over. At this level, even
the self in its very subjectivity is only represented self-con­
sciously as self. It is p u t through a kind of objectivization
so as to be grasped as a being. Only when the self breaks
through the field of consciousness, the field of beings, and
stands on the ground of nihility is it able to achieve a sub­
jectivity that can in no way be objectivized. (16)

As long as we are preoccupied solely w ith beings , taking self

and things solely as beings, we can do no more than represent
beings. This was also H eidegger's insight. But, instead of pursu­
ing the question of being as Heidegger did, Nishitani seeks to
penetrate nihility itself. H eidegger was fascinated by the nothing
(das Nichts), but it never became as absolutely central for him as
it did for Nishitani. The nothing as the veil of being (Schleier des
Seins) is a different "m etaphor" from that of nihility underlying
existence.
As long as we are on the field of beings, we can only represent
and objectify, not only things, but above all the self. The subjec­
tivity lying beyond the dualism of subject-object is lost. This sub­
jectivity is existential in Kierkegaard's sense of that word; it is not
Cartesian. The nihility lying beneath the self is obscured.
The only way to get out of the field of beings is to encounter
and break through nihility. This leads one to encounter and be­
come w hat Nishitani calls the "single Great Doubt." All the scat­
tered, trivial doubts that we often entertain converge into a single
Doubt, and that is all there is. We become ourselves the Great
Doubt.

It is no longer a question of a self that doubts something

on the field of consciousness, b u t rather a point at which
the field of consciousness has been erased. . .. When we
speak of a grief "deep enough to drow n the world and
oneself w ith it," or of a joy that "sets one's hands a-flutter
Nishitani 1 03

and one's feet a-dancing," w e have this same sense of sin­

gle-mindedness or of becoming w hat one experiences. But
it m atters not w hether w e call it single-mindedness or
samadhi —it is n ot to be interpreted as a mere psychologi­
cal state. The "m ind" of "single-mindedness" is not m ind
in any psychological sense. (19)

N ishitani distances this Great D oubt not only from any kind
of Cartesian methodological doubt, b u t also from anything psy­
chological at all. He is not talking about a state of mind, but about
reality.
Through the Great Doubt the self is brought to experience the
nihility or relative nothingness lying at its ground. For Nishitani
this nihility is intrinsically present in the structure of self, but has
now erupted full-blown in the West as the crisis of nihilism in
which we now live.
Basically, N ishitani w ants to get beyond consciousness and
self-consciousness that are bound up with the structure of subject-
object. That this does not constitute a descent into the psycholog­
ical unconscious should be clear. He is not talking about any kind
of m ental state, b u t about reality. As long as we are dealing with
consciousness or self-consciousness we can only represent, objec­
tify and substantialize reality, that is, distort it.
In an effort to convey more concretely w hat he means by
a self that is not to be equated w ith consciousness or self-
consciousness, Nishitani speaks of subjectivity and ecstasis. The
subjectivity he has in mind is not part of the duality of subject-ob-
ject, b u t lies beyond this duality and, for that matter, any possible
duality. It is not the subjectivity of the ego. How then, are w e to
think this subjectivity?

W hat is more, we seem to find in Eckhart a more pene­

trating view of the awareness of subjectivity in man. This
can be seen in his reasoning that the awareness of subjec­
tivity arises out of an absolute negation passing over into
104 T he Formless Self

an absolute affirmation. The subjectivity of the uncreated

I am appears in Eckhart only after passing through the
complete negation of—or detachm ent (Abgeschiedenheit)
from—the subjectivity of egoity. (65)

W hat Eckhart calls the uncreated I am is identical w ith the

godhead beyond god, or absolute nothingness. Created in the
image of god, hum an being shares this structure of negation
yielding affirmation, or w hat Nishitani speaks of as a special kind
of ecstasy. For Heidegger, ecstasy has the same etymology as the
term existence, and means to step or stand out of oneself. This is
a negation moving from self to the ground of self.

Ecstasy represents an orientation from self to the ground

of self, from God to the ground of God—from being to
nothingness. Negation-s/ue-affirmation represents an ori­
entation from nothingness to being. (62)

Why is negation so crucial for Nishitani, and exactly w hat is

being negated? What m ust be negated is the encapsulated self-re-
flection of the ego that w ould make the ego the center of every­
thing. On an ethical plane this is quite easy to understand. As
long as someone makes himself the center, it is impossible for him
to get out of this confinement to achieve some "altruistic" act or
attitude. Even if he did achieve an altruistic act, it w ould still be
self-centered in that he w ould think, congratulating himself, I am
altruistic and unselfish.
On a "structural" level, this is a bit more difficult to realize in
Nishitani's double sense of realization as understanding and ac­
tualization. To realize one's dream means that the dream comes
true, one becomes the dream. Tillich had something quite similar
in m ind w hen he interpreted "understand" as standing under the
place of something, so to speak, as becoming its ground.
What m ust happen w ith negation on a structural level is that
it must shift from the level of mere thought to that of existence.
Nishitani 105

Absolute nothingness, wherein even that "is" is negated,

is not possible as a nothingness that is thought but only as
a nothingness that is lived. It was rem arked above that
behind person there is nothing at all, that is, that "nothing
at all" is w hat stands behind person. But this assertion
does not come about as a conceptual conversion, but only
as an existential conversion away from the mode of being
person-centered person. (70)

Nishitani distinguishes here between the existential move­

ments of ecstasy and of negation-sme-affirmation. Ecstasy is the
movement of the self's stepping out of and over itself; it is thus a
peculiar kind of "transcendence." "W here" it transcends to is
nothingness, a relative nothingness. The subjectivity involved in
this ecstasy already entails the death of ego and of consciousness
as it is commonly understood. But ecstasy for Nishitani is incom­
plete; it does not go far enough. In order to be utterly free of
person-centered self-prehension encapsulated and trapped within
itself, w hat Nishitani calls "negation-swe-affirmation" is needed.
On this standpoint, m an is not man; he is a manifestation of ab­
solute nothingness. But, as Nishitani repeatedly stresses, absolute
nothingness is not a thing manifesting itself in and as man. Man
does not manifest a thing called "absolute nothingness." He is an
appearance w ith absolutely nothing behind it to make an appear­
ance. P ut som ew hat differently, he is a form of non-Form. Or, to
use H isam atsu's phrase, he is a Formless Self. Ultimately, man is
not man, is not hum an consciousness. With this, Nishitani has left
all traces of anthropom orphism behind.

G ranted w hat we have said about person-centered self­

prehension of person as being intertw ined w ith the very
essence and realization of the personal, the negation of
person-centeredness m ust am ount to an existential self­
negation of m an as person. The shift of m an as person to
self-revelation as the manifestation of absolute nothing­
i06 T h e Formless Self

ness . . . requires an existential conversion, a change of

heart w ithin m an himself. (70)

Absolute nothingness becomes realized, actualized in a con­

crete hum an existence as a form of non-Form. W ithout the con­
crete form, absolute nothingness could not be manifested and
actualized. Without absolute nothingness, the form could not be
w hat it is. Absolute nothingness "is" only as the concrete form.
Otherwise it is not at all.
In an attem pt to get beyond the field of reason which always
apprehends things substantively as what (eidos) they disclose
themselves to us, Nishitani w ants to attain access to things as
they are apart from this disclosure. He w ants to get at the "self-
identity" of things, which does not coincide w ith their being con­
ceived as substance or a "what."

The true mode of being of a thing as it is in itself, its self­

ness for itself, cannot, however, be a self-identity in the
sense of such a substance. Indeed, this true mode m ust in­
clude a complete negation of such self-identity, and with
it a conversion of the standpoint of reason and all logical
thinking. (117)

The key to gaining access to something on its ow n home-

ground lies in the negation of the self-identity apprehended by
reason and logos. N ishitani's examples are: fire does not b u m fire,
w ater does not w et water, the eye does not see the eye. He ap­
peals again and again to the well-known, absolutely central for­
mula of the Diamond Sutra: A is not A, therefore it is A. The reason
that fire can b u m anything is that it does not b u m itself.

In contrast to the notion of substance w hich com pre­

hends the selfness of fire in its fire-nature (and thus as
being), the true selfness of fire lies its non-fire nature. The
selfness of fire lies in non-combustion. Of course, this
Nishitani 107

non-com bustion is not som ething apart from com bus­

tion: fire is non-com bustive in its very act of combustion.
It does not b u rn itself. (117)

The field beyond that of reason or logos is the field of em pti­

ness (iunyata). For Nishitani, in order to arrive at the field of
emptiness, the self m ust discover and experience its own nihility.
It m ust realize that it is absolutely nonsubstantial. N ishitani states
that such a transition from the field of nihility to the field of
em ptiness m ust take place, but does not go on to describe it in
any detail.

The m eaning of this turn to the field of iunyata has al­

ready been explained. Namely, w hen nihility opens up at
the ground of the self itself, it is not only perceived simply
as a nihility that seems to be outside of the self. It is
draw n into the self itself by the subject that views the self
as empty. It becomes the field of ecstatic transcendence of
the subject, and from there turns once more to the stand­
point of iunyata as the absolute near side where em pti­
ness is self. (151)

Once again we have the elusive transition from ecstatic tran­

scendence to the standpoint of iunyata or negation-swe-affirma-
tion. A nother w ay to state it is the transition from the self is
em pty (ecstatic transcendence) to emptiness is the self. The self's
realization that it is em pty is the necessary precondition for the
stage of em ptiness is the self to come about. Nishitani also calls
this "true-self-awareness."

To be on such a hom e-ground of our own is, for us, true

self-awareness. Of course, the self-awareness is not a self-
consciousness or a self-knowledge, nor is it anything akin
to intellectual intuition. We are used to seeing the self as
something that knows itself. We think of the self as be­
108 The Formless Self

coming conscious of itself, understanding itself, or intel­

lectually intuiting itself. But w hat is called here "self-
awareness" is in no sense the self's knowing of itself.
Quite to the contrary, it is the point at which such a "self"
and such "knowledge" are emptied. (152)

W hat Nishitani is asking us to do is subvert everything we

normally associate w ith self-awareness; it is not consciousness,
knowledge, or intuition, not even the intellectual intuition so
scorned by rationalist philosophers. The English word "aware­
ness" obviates anything like a subject-object division, and it is
also etymologically related to the German word for "true," wahr.
It is in no way representational or objectifying. Nishitani's con­
tention is that w hat we usually think of as our "self" is actually a
representation of that self. He w ants to arrive at some immediate
sense of self, even more im m ediate than intellectual intuition.
And since that self is in no sense any thing , the awareness comes
about as a merging of awareness with "world." After all, the field
of ¿unyata is a field of force. It cannot be represented or objectified.
If self-awareness is not the self's knowing of itself, w hat ex­
actly is it? Nishitani returns again and again to the examples of
w hat m ight provisionally be called, for lack of a better term, "re­
flexive" negation. The condition of the possibility of the eye's
being able to see lies in the fact that it does not see itself. If the eye
saw itself, it could see nothing else. Other examples given are that
fire does not b u m itself and w ater does not w et itself.
Similarly, whereas the ego sees and is concerned primarily
w ith itself, the true self sees not itself, but the "world," things of
nature, and other living beings. The true self's seeing of the world
constitutes its becoming that world. This is a point brought out
more strongly in Nishitani's study of Nishida. In an extended dis­
cussion of principle, Nishitani defines it as "an independent and
self-sustaining unifying pow er existing prior to m ind and m at­
ter."6 He then states that "this principle should not be restricted to
the confines of individual subjective consciousness. Anything so
Nishitani

grasped is/' in N ishida's w ords, but "a footprint of principle at

work and not principle itself. Principle itself is creative. We can
become it and w ork in accord w ith it, b u t it is not something we
can see as an object of consciousness."7
H ow can this experience of becoming something or becoming
principle be elucidated? The Western thinker w ho perhaps best
understood this phenom enon was Plotinus.

One m ust therefore run up above knowledge and in no

way depart from being one, b u t one m ust depart from
know ledge and things known, and from every other,
even beautiful, object of vision. For every beautiful thing
is posterior to that One, and comes from it, as all the light
of day comes from the sun. Therefore, Plato says, "it can­
not be spoken or written, but we speak and write im­
pelling tow ards it and wakening from reasonings to the
vision of it, as if showing the way to someone who wants
to have a view of something. For teaching goes as far as
the road and the travelling, but the vision is the task of
someone w ho has already resolved to see. . . . For that
One is not absent from any, and absent from all, so that in
its presence it is not present except to those who are able
and prepared to receive it, so as to be in accord with it and
as if grasp it and touch it in their likeness; and, by the
pow er in oneself akin to that which comes from the One,
when someone is as he was w hen he came from him, he is
already able to see as it is the nature of that God to be
seen.8

W hereas the "nature" of seeing in Plotinus is very close to

w hat N ishida describes, "w hat" is seen is quite different. For Plot­
inus, this kind of seeing is only appropriate or even possible w ith
regard to the One. A nything else seen remains on the "outside."
For Nishida, this kind of seeing can relate to anything, a flower or
a tree, for instance.
no T he Formless Self

In this work, Nishitani retains the phrase "intellectual intu­

ition" to denote N ishida's concept of "pure experience," a con­
cept that shows the influence of William James. He also uses the
perhaps more appropriate phrase "em pow ering intuition" to
show that this intuition is nothing "passive." In Religion and Noth­
ingness , he speaks of the field of emptiness as a field of force; thus,
again, nothingness is nothing passive.
Still pursuing w hat he calls "self-awareness," Nishitani states:

This self-awareness, in contrast w ith w hat is usually

taken as the self's knowing of itself, is not a "knowing"
that consists in the self's turning to itself and refracting
into itself. It is not a "reflective" knowing. W hat is more,
the intuitive knowledge or intellectual intuition that are
ordinarily set up in opposition to reflective knowledge
leave in their wake a duality of seer and seen, and to that
extent still show traces of "reflection." I call this self-
awareness a knowing of non-knowing because it is a
knowing that comes about not as a refraction of the self
bent into the self b u t only on a position that is, as it were,
absolutely straightforward or protensive.9

By "protensive" Nishitani does not mean that the self projects

itself in the sense used by Husserl or even Heidegger, but simply
that the "direction" in which the self moves is away from itself in
contrast to being reflected or refracted back into itself. The self
"stretches" forward, not back.

This self-awareness is constituted only on the field of

iunyata, on a standpoint where emptiness is self. The ab­
solutely protensive position referred to is the point at
which the self is truly the self in itself, and where the
being of the self essentially posits itself. The knowing of
non-knowing comes about only as the realization (mani-
festation-szue-apprehension) of such being as it is in itself
Nishitani

on the field of iu n ya ta . On all other fields the self is at all

times reflective and, as we said before, caught in its own
grasp in the act of grasping itself, and caught in the grasp
of things in its attem pt to grasp them .10

"In itself," of course, does not refer to a noum enon as op­

posed to a phenom enon, but simply refers to a thing as it really is
undistorted by any interference with it. The term "realization" is
im portant here. It denotes both our becoming aware of reality (I
realize that x is true), and also "reality" (emptiness) realizing or
actualizing itself in us. We become the "place" of realizing reality
and reality's realizing itself. Nishitani also uses the term "appro­
priation" to further explicate w hat he means by "realization." In
a footnote in Nishida Kitard, we are told that the term appropria­
tion is m eant to render the German Aneignung. The Japanese
word means literally "transformation into the self."11 There might
appear to be a contradiction between things being transformed
into the self and the self's moving protensively toward things, but
this probably stems from the subject-object structure of our nor­
mal thinking. Here the often-quoted passage from Dogen's Genjo-
koan can help us.

To practice and confirm all things by conveying one's self

to them, is illusion: for all things to advance forward and
practice and confirm the self, is enlightenm ent.12

For Dogen, it is not the "direction" in which the self moves

that is im portant, but how this relation of self and things occurs.
Practicing and confirming all things by conveying one's self to
them is a deliberate, intentional m anipulation on the part of the
ego. Allowing all things to advance forward and practice and
confirm the self constitutes the true self's becoming all things.
Things advancing toward the self is in no way synonymous w ith
reflection; the self's advancing toward things is in no way syn­
onymous with protention.
 T h e Formless Self

Actually, Nishitani refers to the relation between self and

things as one of "circuminsessional interpenetration" or, one
might simplify, reciprocal, or m utual interpenetration, indicating
that his main concern is not that of "direction." This field of cir­
cuminsessional interpretation is the field of iunyata as a field of
force. This field is opened up through the absolute negation of the
self-centeredness of the ego.
All things coming forward to practice and confirm the self co­
incides with the dropping off of body-mind. It is not the case that
the mind or soul gets free of its body that is its prison (Plato). The
whole dim ension of body-m ind with which we anxiously equate
ourselves m ust be cast off. Then the original face that we had be­
fore our parents were bom can emerge. This is the place of what
Nishitani calls "self-joyous samadhi" or "observance."
H akuin (1685-1768), commenting on the occurrence of the
w ord "observance" in the H eart Sutra, notes in effect:

W hat about moving one's hands and feet, or eating and

drinking? What about the m oving of the clouds, the flow­
ing of the rivers, the falling of the leaves, and the flowers
scattering about in the wind? As soon as one tries to affix
any Form to them, however slight, the result is bound to
be the same as Chuang-tsu's fable about Chaos: gouging
Chaos out and putting an eyeball there in its stead. Chaos
dies.
. . . We have no cause to inflict a w ound on this Order
by letting an act of reflective thought intervene, by fash­
ioning an eyeball for it. No sooner has the attitude of ob­
jective representation come on the scene than "Form," as
something outside the self, is generated; something that is
not of one's own treasure house and not at one's own dis­
position shows up. Chaos dies.13

W hen we represent things objectively, as is our wont, w e gen­

erate form as something external to us and fixate on that. But for
Nishitani H3

Nishitani, our moving our limbs, clouds floating in the sky, w ater
flowing, leaves falling, and blossoms scattering are all ultimately
non-Form. To adopt these forms of non-Form as the form of the
self is precisely to realize (in the double sense) the Formless Self.
We need to address N ishitani's treatm ent of reality and illu­
sion that does not coincide w ith any Western conceptions of that
relation. In the chapter on "The Personal and the Impersonal,"
Nishitani states that person is an appearance w ith nothing at all
behind it to make an appearance. How are w e to think this kind
of appearance?
The term appearance is essentially ambiguous. On the one
hand, it can be equated w ith illusion. For example, He appeared to
be healthy, but was in reality quite ill. On the other hand, appear­
ance can indicate something real. For example, He appeared in the
doorway. He p u t in an appearance at the meeting. In the first in­
stance, appearance masks something that does not appear. In the
second, no such duality is involved. Yet in a sense something can
be said to be behind the appearance insofar as the person cannot be
entirely equated w ith his appearance in the doorw ay or at the
meeting. A principal distinction between the two instances lies in
the lack of any element of illusion or deception in the second.
Nishitani's discussion of appearance lies closer to the second
instance in that it involves no duality and no illusion in the sense
that something behind it is being concealed. A nd yet it does in­
volve some kind of illusion. N ishitani speaks here of "shadow "
and "mask."

Personality is something altogether alive. Even if we con­

sider it to be "spirit," it is a mask of absolute nothingness
precisely as living spirit. Were nothingness to be thought
apart from its mask, it w ould become an idea. Were we to
deal w ith the m ask apart from nothingness, person could
not avoid becoming self-centered. The living activity of
person, in its very aliveness, is a manifestation of absolute
nothingness. (72)
if 4 The Formless Self

Nothingness cannot be realized (in the double sense) apart

from its mask. If I think of nothingness by itself, apart from its
mask, I am doing just that, thinking it as an idea. Nothingness can
become an object of thought only as an object, as a thing . But noth­
ingness is in no sense of the w ord a thing. Nothingness can only
be realized existentially.
On the other hand, if we attem pt to deal w ith the mask apart
from nothingness, we are back in the self-centered, reflexive
mode that we are trying to get away from.

"Shadow" here means the same as w hat I called "illu­

sion" above. It is the completely unreal, because all the ac­
tivities of m an become manifest as themselves only in
unison w ith absolute nothingness. And yet precisely at
this point they are seen to be the most real of realities be­
cause they are nothing other than the manifestation of ab­
solute selfhood. (73)

Considered in unison with absolute selfhood, shadow is com­

pletely real; considered by itself apart from that selfhood, it is ut­
terly illusory. Shadow and absolute nothingness cannot exist
apart from each other.
Nishitani repeatedly stresses that, in order to view things in
this manner, it is necessary to get beyond senses and reason, be­
yond consciousness, intellect, and our fixation on body-and-
mind.

Therefore, the elemental mode of being, as such, is illu­

sory appearance. And things themselves, as such, are
phenomena. Consequently, when we speak of illusory ap­
pearance, we do not mean that there are real beings in ad­
dition that merely happen to adopt illusory guises to
appear in. Precisely because it is appearance, and not
som ething that appears, this appearance is illusory at the
elemental level in its very reality, and real in its very illu­
Nishitani i 15

soriness. In m y view, w e can use the term the ancients

used, "the m iddle," to denote this, since it is the term that
seems to bring out the distinctive feature of the m ode of
being of things in themselves. (129)

N ishitani comes at the same fundam ental thought again and

again from different perspectives. "The m iddle" is a term he uses
frequently in this book w ithout m uch further clarification. N or
does he specify w hich ancients used it. W hat we have is "pure"
appearance, and not some thing that appears. The m iddle m ight
m ean that there is no thing that appears on the one side, and no
guise that it puts on on the other side. There is just the m iddle, as
in the m iddle w ay between perm anence (the thing) and nihilism
(the guise). Nishitani also designates this situation as a thing as it
is on its ow n hom e-ground, as it is in itself w ithout any regard to
our representations and judgm ents. Needless to say, the thing as
it is in itself neither coincides w ith the Kantian noumenon, nor is
it "unknowable." It can be experienced on the field of iunyata.
Each and every thing as it is in itself is an absolute center.

To say that each thing is an absolute center means that

w herever a thing is, the w orld worlds. A nd this, in turn,
means that each thing, by being in its own home-ground,
is in the hom e-ground of all beings; and, conversely, that
in being in the hom e-ground of all, each is in its own
home-ground. (As I have stated repeatedly, this relation­
ship is inconceivable except in the nonobjective m ode of
being of things w here they are w hat they are in them ­
selves.) (164)

To repeat, the expression "things in themselves" means things

as they really are, undistorted by the conceptual overlay that we
impose on them. The closest Western analogue to this idea of each
thing being in its hom e-ground while at the same time being in
the hom e-ground of all other things—an idea having its roots in
H6 Th e Formless Self

Hua-yen Buddhism—is probably Leibniz's monads. Each monad

is a world, containing everything implicitly w ithin itself while
mirroring all other monads.

A thing is truly an illusory appearance at the precise point

that it is truly a thing in itself.
As the saying goes, "A bird flies and it is like a bird. A
fish swims and it looks like a fish. The selfness of the fly­
ing bird in flight consists of its being like a bird. The self­
ness of the fish as it swims consists of looking like a fish.
Or put the other way around, the "likeness" of the flying
bird and the swim m ing fish is nothing other than their
true "suchness." We spoke earlier of this mode of being in
which a thing is on its own hom e-ground as a m ode of
being in the "middle" or in its own "position." We also re­
ferred to it as samadhi-being. (139)

This is strongly reminiscent of Dogen's juhoi, the dharma-

position or situation of a thing where it dwells.
In order to experience things as they are in themselves in the
mode of being in the "m iddle," Nishitani explains that we need
another Copem ican revolution. Kant had shown that it is not we
who m ust conform to things in order to know them (dogmatic
metaphysics or sensuous realism), but things m ust conform to
our faculties of sense and understanding. Now it is once again we
who m ust conform to things. On the field of emptiness this means
that we become the thing.

The thing in itself becomes manifest at bottom in its own

"m iddle" which can in no way ever be objectified. N on­
objective knowledge of it, the knowing of non-knowing,
means that we revert to the "m iddle" of the thing itself. It
means that we straighten ourselves out by turning to
w hat does not respond to our turning, orientating our­
selves to w hat negates our every orientation. Even a sin­
Nishitani

gle stone or blade of grass dem ands as much from us. The
pine dem ands that we learn of the pine, the bamboo that
we learn of bamboo. By pulling away from our ordinary
self-centered mode of being (where, in our attem pts to
grasp the self, we get caught in its grasp), and by taking
hold of things where things have a hold on themselves, so
do we revert to the "m iddle" of things themselves. (Of
course, this "m iddle" does not denote an "inside," as I
pointed out earlier on.) (140)

Earlier in the book Nishitani had already abolished the con­

ceptual framework of "outside-inside," w hat Kant called one of
the amphibolies of reflection. The m iddle is not inside the thing; it
is the center of the thing. O rdinary knowing positions itself at the
circumference of the thing, thereby objectifying it. The kind of rela­
tion to the thing that Nishitani is talking about involves a mind of
non-discernment.

The m ind we are speaking of here is the non-discerning

mind that is the absolute negation of the discernm ent of
consciousness or intellect. . . . In any case, the non­
discerning m ind at issue here is not something subjective
in the m anner of w hat is ordinarily called mind. It is a
field that lets the being of all things be, a field on which all
things can be themselves on their own home-grounds, the
field of ¿unyata that I have called the field of the elemen­
tal possibility of the existence of all things. (181-82)

The non-discerning mind does not single out, bifurcate or se­

lect. It lets things be as they are. This is the "m ind" after body-
and-m ind have dropped off.

Hence, w hen we say "m ind" and "life" here, we mean

mind and life on the field where body-and-m ind "drops
off," and where the "dropped off" body-and-mind is pre­
H8 T h e Formless Self

sent in full self-awareness and openness to the vitality

of life. This "body-and-m ind" does not refer simply to
"thing" and "consciousness" in their ordinary senses.
Nor is this body-and-m ind on a field where it can become
an object of study for physics, physiology, psychology,
and the like. As Dogen put it, "The dropping off of body-
and-mind is neither form [thing] nor consciousness." (184)

We need to dispense with our ordinary idea of what body and

mind are. This is enorm ously difficult to do. Western philoso­
phers, ever since Plato, have pondered over the relation between
body and mind, mostly w ith a detrim ental assessment of the
body. The fact that, since Nietzsche, the body has regained some
measure of centrality does not alter much in this state of affairs.
Nishitani takes up the Western concept of the "natural light"
and gives it a completely new twist. For him it is not the God-
given light of hum an reason.

This is w hy the "natural light" w ithin us was spoken of

earlier as the light of the things themselves coming to us
from all things. The light that illumines us from our own
hom e-ground and brings us back to an elemental self-
awareness is but the nonobjective being of things as they
are in themselves on the field where all things are m ani­
fest from their own home-ground. (164)

We receive our "natural light" not from God, b u t from things.

It is not "inside" of us. It emanates from each thing as an absolute
center.

The field of iunyata is a field whose center is everywhere.

It is the field in which each and every thing—as an ab­
solute center, possessed of an absolutely unique individ­
uality—becomes manifest as it is in itself. To say that each
thing is an absolute center means that wherever a thing is,
Nishitani H9

the w orld worlds . A nd this, in turn, means that each thing,

by being in its ow n hom e-ground is in the hom e-ground
of all beings; and, conversely, that in being on the home-
ground of all, each is in its ow n home-ground. (164)

Here we have m oved from the field of reason, the field of tra­
ditional Western philosophy, to the field of nihility, the field of ni­
hilism discovered, opened up and diagnosed by Nietzsche, to the
field of iunyatd. W hen things are at one w ith em ptiness by relin­
quishing their substantial m ode of being, they are in w hat Nishi­
tani variously terms the m iddle m ode of being, the nonobjective
(nonobjectified) m ode of being as they are in themselves, and
samadhi-being. Nishitani distances this "m iddle" from the m iddle
as it has been conceived on the field of reason as the Aristotelian
m ean or Hegelian mediation. Nishitani's m iddle is immediate, in
his expression "at hand" and "underfoot." We are, so to speak,
standing on it.

We noted earlier that the "natural light" is not the light of

reason but the light of all things. What is here called "spir­
itual light" does not mean the light of the "soul" or the
"spirit" in the ordinary sense of those words. It is rather a
"samadhi of the Storehouse of the "Great Light" out of
which the light of all things (namely, the being itself of all
things) is coming to birth; it belongs to the nature of every
hum an being. W hen we say that our self in itself is the
original and m ost elemental "middle," we are pointing to
nothing other than just this. (167)

Nishitani gives an interpretation of karma, linking it to East­

ern thought including H induism and to Western thought as well.
His interpretation, however, does not make any sharp division
between them. What interests him is the awareness of an infinite
drive w hich is at once voluntary and compulsory. We can m ain­
tain our existence in time only by constantly doing something.
120 T h e Formless Self

Even w hen we rest or do "nothing," it is only in order to resume

doing something. We are driven both to do and not to do. While
we choose w hat particular activity to pursue, we think we are
free, and to an extent we are. But it is not a true freedom and cer­
tainly not a freedom from karma. For with each debt that we pay
off, we incur a new one. We never get to the dimension of what
Nishitani calls "our hom e-ground" which provides access to real
freedom. Nishitani speaks of an infinite finitude, which is akin to
Hegel's bad infinity. It is the inability to stop, to break free of the
self-centeredness which constitutes the core of everything we do.
It constitutes the self-encapsulation of the self, from which it is
unable to break free. Actually, the self does not w ant to break free;
it does not realize the necessity to do so. The self strives to affirm
itself, and w hat could be more natural than self-affirmation?
In the West, this infinite drive took on the form of will. With
the merging of philosophy w ith Judeo-Christianity, the will of
God became decisive. Whereas the Greeks lacked any developed
concept of the will, hum an being, created in the image of God,
likewise possessed free will. Descartes stated that the cause of
error or evil lay in the fact that m an's will was infinite, whereas
his understanding was finite. The concept of the will escalated
through the seventeenth-century rationalists to German Idealism
culminating in Schelling's statement that all prim al being is will.
With Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, the will became irrational and
nonrational, that is, it deteriorated to an endless drive.
With the increasing secularization in the m odern period,
things became more and more human-centered. While the uni­
verse of the medieval hum an was God-centered, beginning with
Descartes that universe becomes increasingly human-centered
until with Marx, Nietzsche, Feuerbach, and Freud, it not only be­
comes hum an-centered in the sense of his autonom ous reason,
but no longer governed by the "rational." This is experienced as a
great freedom, a great relief.
But is it? A look at the philosophy, literature and art of this
time in general will tell us that things are not so simple. Powerful
Nishitani í21

as some of the depictions of life are, they can be pretty bleak (for
example, Beckett). But as the theologian Paul Tillich said in The
Courage To Be, the fact that these artists can express their despair
is an indication that they have in some measure transcended it.14
There is undoubtedly some truth in this, but we m ust ask: Is
this the only "transcendence" open to us, to give expression to
despair?
It is w ith problem s such as these that Nishitani is wrestling.
Following Nietzsche, he recognized the contem porary situation
of nihilism, "the uncanny guest at the door," faced it squarely and
struggled to overcome it, I believe successfully. We m ust continue
for a while longer to circle around these main "them es" of
samadhi- being, in itself (jitai ), m iddle and the logic of soku hi (is
and is not).

A lthough from N ietzsche's stance, we can say that our

self is, in fact, "that," we cannot say that "that" in itself is,
in fact, our self. In other words, although we can speak of
a "self that is not a self/' one cannot yet speak of a "self that
is not a self."15

In the first position, speaking of a "self that is not a self," the

focus is on the ego-self attem pting to deny itself. But the focus is
still on the ego-self. I can go around proclaiming that I am not-
self, and m any people do just that. But nothing has changed, ex­
cept possibly a certain pride in the supposed fact that the self is
nonself. The focus m ust shift to a "self that is not a self." Here one
forgets w hat it is that has been so forcefully denied. As Dógen
said, "To study the self is to forget the self." To get stuck in the
view that is preoccupied w ith w hat it is denying, is hopeless.
A quote from Masaó Abe condenses all of these problematic
designations into one paragraph.

He (Nishitani) designates the standpoint of emptiness as

the place where the inseparability of life and death, being
i 22 The Formless Self

and nothingness, is established; as the place where per­

sonality as reality manifests itself just as it is; as "the place
of absolute life-qua-death"; as "the absolutely transcen­
dent this-side that is identical w ith the absolutely tran­
scendent other-side; as the "in itself" (jitai) distinguished
from both substance (jittai ) and subject ( shutai); as the
place in which all things dispersed and dismantled in ni­
hility are once again restored to being; as the place of
beification or Ichtung; as "the place of great affirmation";
as the place of pow er in which all things in their "being"
are absolutely unique while arising together collectively
as one. Further, the way of being of things in the place of
em ptiness is designated as "samadhi-being" in that all
things exhibit an "in itself" w ay of being as if in samadhi;
as "m iddle" in that each thing is true being precisely as
provisional manifestation and provisional manifestation
precisely as true being; as "Position" in that all things are
self-establishing in their original position; as "circumin-
sessionally interpenetrating" in that all things stand in a
relationship in which they are simultaneously master and
attendant to each other; and also as "thus-thus" (nyo-nyo ),
"phantom-like qua true suchness (nyogen soku nyojitsu)
and "primal fact" (genponteki jijitsu).16

If we can once again say something about some of these

themes, we shall pretty much have exhausted w hat we are capa­
ble of for now.
We m ust bear in m ind that w hat is being avoided here is any
possible kind of objectification or representation. Thus, the terms
em ployed in this attem pt sound strange and unfamiliar, and we
are initially at a loss to make sense of them. Let us take as our
first term the "middle," the relation of w hat is phantom-like and
true suchness. This is a reformulation of what we are accustomed
to call the relation of illusion and reality. We are accustomed to
conceive the reality of something and of its distortion. This is not
Nishitani i 23

a sim ultaneous relation; rather, the thing appears now as phan­

tom-like and unreal, now as true being. The thing's phantom-like
and unreal character has no "value" for us, we w ant ideally to
abolish it.
But this is all seen from the "outside," from our viewpoint. It
does not get at the thing as it truly is in itself. N ot only that. Far
from being som ething that is to be abolished, w ithout the
phantom-like character of the thing it could not appear at all. In
the language of the D iam ond Sutra, form can appear whereas
em ptiness cannot. A nd yet there is no form w ithout emptiness,
no emptiness w ithout form.

Therefore, the elemental mode of being, as such, is illu­

sory appearance. And things themselves, as such, are
phenomena. Consequently, w hen we speak of illusory ap­
pearances we do not mean that there are real beings in ad­
dition that merely happen to adopt illusory guises to
appear in. Precisely because it is appearance, and not
som ething that appears, this appearance is illusory at the
elemental level in its very reality, and real in its very illu­
soriness. In my view, we can use the term the ancients
used, "the m iddle" to denote this, since it is a term that
seems to bring out the distinctive feature of the mode of
being of things in themselves.17

What we have here is a new interpretation of the relation be­

tween reality and appearance, and a highly paradoxical one at
that. It is not the case that reality is "real" and appearance is illu­
sory. Rather, because we have here to do not with some thing that
appears but with appearance; appearance is illusory in its very re­
ality and real in its very illusoriness. Reality and appearance are
not two separate "things." They are inseparable. One might say
that they are two aspects of the same "thing." No m atter how we
bend language here, it is not quite capable of exhaustively ex­
pressing w hat Nishitani has in mind.
i24 T he Formless Self

This mode of being in the m iddle cannot be approached on

the field of reason and sensation, but only on the field of ¿unyata.
Thus, we do not get the eidos, the form or outw ard appearance of
a thing viewed from the outside. N either do we "identify" with it
through intuition. Outside and inside are ruled out. If we are not
encapsulated w ithin ourselves, it makes no sense to speak this
way.

The things themselves reveal themselves to us only when

we leap from the circumference to the center, into their
very selfness. The leap represents the opening up within
ourselves of the field of iunyata as the absolute near side
which, as we pointed out earlier, is more to the near side
than w e ourselves are. The center represents the point at
which the being of things is constituted in unison with
emptiness, the point at which they establish themselves,
affirm themselves, and assume a "position." And there,
settled into their position, things are in their samadhi-
being.18

W hat differentiates this kind of "viewing" from intuition?

The fact that not only does the viewer not rem ain where he is; he
doesn't remain who he is. W hen he takes this existential leap, the
field of emptiness opens up in him as the absolute near side. Here
we have a "transcendence" that does not go beyond, but, so to
speak, back into ourselves. For we are not ordinarily that "near"
to ourselves. Who can say that he is customarily "near," present to
himself? But the point is that the leap transposes him into the
place at which things assume a "position" and settle there. Thus,
they are in their samadhi- being. Drawing on Nicholas of Cusa,
Nishitani says that the center is everywhere and there is no
circumference.

Of course, it is not, however, the case that any one thing

alone is the center. The field of iunyata is a field whose
Nishi tani 12 5

center is everywhere. It is the field in which each and

every thing—as an absolute center, possessed of an ab­
solutely unique individuality—becomes manifest as it is
in itself. To say that each thing is an absolute center means
that w herever a thing is, the w orld worlds. And this, in
turn, means that each thing, by being in its home-ground,
is in the hom e-ground of all, each in its own home-
ground. (As I have stated repeatedly, this relationship is
inconceivable except in the nonobjective mode of being of
things w here they are w hat they are in themselves.)19

This is N ishitani's m odem characterization of the Buddhist

concept of codependent origination, the interdependence and
nonobstruction of things. The closest Western analogue is Leibniz
w ith his m onads each m irroring each other. But the m onads are
self-contained "worldlets" w hereas things in the Buddhist view
actually interpenetrate each other. This is a whole complex issue in
itself that we cannot and need not go into further here. The im­
portant point is that in this w orlding the self-awareness of reality
takes place. This means both our becoming aware of reality and
reality realizing itself in our awareness.
To return to our main topic, the Formless Self is the expression
most characteristic of Hisamatsu. The full formulation that he uses
to designate the nature of hum an being is F.A.S. F. refers to the
element of formlessness, A.S. indicates the w ondrous activity of
this Formless Self, A. being the standpoint of All hum ankind and
S. referring to the suprahistorical origin of that activity. Thus, the
three dimensions of Self, World, and History are fully taken into
account. We shall discuss each of these aspects separately.
All hum ankind constitutes the "w idth" dim ension of Hisa-
m atsu's triad. This means that the formless self, which H isamatsu
also designates as Oriental N othingness, is the m ost profound
root source of hum an being. It is by no means restricted to the
East, but is absolutely universal. Hisamatsu states that it is called
"Oriental N othingness" solely because it has not yet been fully
12 6 The Formless Self

aw akened to in the West. Unlike D. T. Suzuki, Nishitani, and

Ueda Shizuteru, H isam atsu seldom refers to Meister Eckhart,
possibly because the Christian, theistic language appeared
strange to him. Be that as it may, nothingness has never been a
central theme in the m ainstream of the Western tradition. Hei­
degger may represent a move in that direction, but as long as he
insisted on the term 'b ein g / it is difficult to see more than allu­
sions to nothingness. Nothingness as the veil of being and man's
being held out into nothingness are at best suggestive and open
to the possibility of nothingness, but this is not really sufficient. In
the end, it has been the East that has thus far cultivated a sensi­
tivity to absolute nothingness. But if we consider the "character­
istics" of absolute nothingness, which H isam atsu discusses as
aspects of the Formless Self expressed in Zen art, it can hardly be
said to be anything "Oriental."
H isam atsu again discusses the seven characteristics of ab­
solute nothingness, this time formulating them in a negative way.
Asym metry becomes no rule. This means the negation of any­
thing fixed and possessing form. Thus, the negation of form be­
comes a vehicle for the manifestation of no form. This is about as
far away from classic Greek statues, which represent idealized
perfection of form, as possible. The crooked faces of the arhats, a
preference for odd over even numbers and the crooked characters
in Zen calligraphy are all instances of the negation of order, rule,
and perfection.
Simplicity becomes no complexity. Since color is something
specific, the simplest color is no color. Even w hen colors are actu­
ally present, they are negated as colors. And when complexity of
form is present, it is negated as complexity. A deep simplicity, not
a simpleness, shines beyond color and complexity. Hisamatsu
gives examples from architecture and painting, also citing various
activities of Zen masters that instantiate simplicity.
Sublime Austerity becomes no rank. This, of course, should
rem ind us of the true man w ithout rank or the uncarved block of
Taoism. One m ight think that the expression "uncarved block"
Nishitani 127

means a person of no education or refinement, someone u n tu ­

tored and uncultivated. But this is not at all w hat is meant. Nei­
ther does it mean exactly som ething like pristine. Rather, it is a
negation of the sensuous and, insofar as reason is contrasted with
the sensuous and thus to some extent dependent upon it, of rea­
son also. Seasoned and sturdy, it is beyond beauty. It is sublime, a
word of which we scarcely in this age can make any sense.
N aturalness becomes No-Mind. It might seem confusing
when Buddhism says everything is Mind, and then turns around
and speaks of No-Mind. It all depends on w hat is meant by mind.
The mind that is negated in N o-Mind is the "monkey mind," the
mind filled w ith thoughts of this and that, thoughts which for the
m ost part have nothing to do w ith anything. The incessant chat­
ter going on in our heads has nothing to do w ith Mind. A good
image for Mind is the m irror with nothing in it; it is thus capable
of reflecting w hatever comes before it. Clear and uncluttered, it
simply gives back whatever comes to meet it.
H isam atsu uses the term sabi, being ancient and graceful, to
further characterize the quality of No-Mind. It is neither a naive
naturalness nor a contrived artificiality. It is not a quality that we
begin with, but something acquired. It is something so thor­
oughly acquired that we em body it, we become it and do not
need to consciously think about how to do something. Artists and
athletes to some extent necessarily have this quality. A dancer
cannot constantly think about his footwork. Neither can a basket­
ball player. We shall return to the question of No-Mind later
which is so essential to understanding the Formless Self.
Subtle profundity or deep reserve becomes no bottom. This
derives from the fact that no form can exhaustively express the
formless. It can at best intim ate that which cannot be expressed.
H isam atsu repeatedly uses the term reverberations to describe
the intimation of the formless. When we listen to a sound, we fol­
low it as it dies away. It never stops, but gradually disappears.
Thus, no definite limit is set to our following and we enter an­
other realm, that of the formless. We need not restrict these rever­
i 28 The Formless Self

berations to the realm of hearing, however. A solitary bird or sin­

gle boat can produce a similar effect.
Darkness also characterizes the quality of having no bottom.
The darkness of the tearoom, for example, is not threatening, but
contains an atmosphere of composure and calm. Much about the
room is sensed, not exposed to any sort of glaring light.
Freedom from attachment becomes no hindrance. Nonattach­
ment is not the same as detachment. Detachment from something
means having nothing to do with it. The activity of the Formless
Self, however, in expressing itself in the m any forms of the world,
is bound to none of them. The Formless Self m ust express itself
concretely in shaping historical and artistic reality, but it never co­
incides w ith any one particular thing.

But the formless self is not only w ithout form; it is Self

w ithout form. Since it is Self, its formlessness is active;
being w ithout form, the Self is also active. Therefore Zen
uses such terms as " rigidly void" and "merely void" for
the kind of formless self that remains only formless.
Again, w hen the self is never active and remains w ithin
formlessness, this is called "falling into the devil's cave."20

This represents the very antithesis of the bodhisattva ideal, at­

taining some kind of awakening or enlightenment and regarding
this as a final goal. A part from the question of just w hat this
w ould look like, one awakens to something very alive and dy­
namic that enormously activates one and sends one straight back
to the world. This is the m eaning of compassion, karuna, apart
from which prajna, transcendental insight, is useless. It is not even
a matter of being "altruistic"; one just does w hat is to be done.
Freedom from attachment means that the Formless Self, while
entering all the concrete forms and acting there, never gets stuck
anywhere.
Finally, tranquillity becomes no stirring. This does not mean a
static, lifeless state. It is rather rest within motion. When there is
Nishitani 129

no distraction on the part of the senses and w hen the m ind is not
agitated, one is tranquil in one's activity. One acquires a steadi­
ness that is unshakeable, imperturbable. Basho's haiku about the
frog jum ping into the pond might serve as an example. There was
complete stillness before the frog jum ped. But his jum ping does
not disturb the stillness; rather, it only points it up, offsets and
heightens it. After the plop has subsided, we really hear absolute
stillness.
Hisamatsu is careful to point out that all of these seven char­
acteristics are present in a Zen art w ork or in everyday activity.
They are so close to each other as to be inseparable. They charac­
terize the expression of the Formless Self, its taking on form and
working therein. Otherwise we w ould remain at the eighth stage
of the ox-herding pictures, the em pty circle. We m ust go on to the
ninth stage showing an old m an and a younger one meeting
along a roadside. Ueda Shizuteru gives an interesting interpreta­
tion of the last three stages, eight, nine, and ten, as being no
longer, as in the preceding stages, a m atter of gradual progres­
sion, but a kind of oscillating back and forth. The direction is re­
versible, m eaning that one can move freely between nothingness,
nature, and hum an communication.

This same thing, the selfless self, is for its part only fully
real insofar as it is able to realize itself in a totally different
way in each aspect of this three-fold transformation: as ab­
solute nothingness, as the simplicity of nature, and as the
double self of communication. The final three stages por­
tray as it were the three-in-one character of the true self.
This means that the self is never "there" but always in the
process of transformation, always fitted to its circum­
stances and likewise always proceeding from out of itself,
at one moment passing away into nothingness unhindered
and without a trace, at another, blooming in the flowers as
the selfless self, and at a third, in the encounter w ith the
other, converting that very encounter into its own self.21
i 30 T h e Formless Self

The key sentence here is the self is never "there." It never per­
sists statically throughout change. Thus the prime characteristic of
the Western conception of self, its continuity of consciousness and
self-identity, is conspicuously absent. We shall return to this point
in a discussion of the length dimension, living the life of history
while transcending history, the suprahistorical living of history.
But first w e shall discuss the depth dimension. Of course,
these three "aspects" of the Formless Self are hardly separable ex­
cept for purposes of analysis. There remains of necessity a certain
artificiality in discussing them in isolation. As stated before, we
have to some extent already discussed this dim ension in our dis­
cussion of the dimension of width.
The whole Kyoto school takes religion extremely seriously.
Hisam atsu asks where in man is the "m om ent" which prevents
man from rem aining merely man? Put in a different way, where
in m an is the "moment" whereby he needs religion? "Moment" is
being used in the Hegelian sense of a crucial factor. Hisamatsu is
seeking a standpoint which is neither a theistic heteronomy nor
rational autonomy. In other words, he is seeking a standpoint
which is absolutely autonom ous but not based solely on reason,
although it includes the rational. The medieval type religions
based on theonomy have been replaced by the hum anism of au­
tonom ous reason. While affirming the element of autonomy,
Hisam atsu sees in the "m oment" in man which prevents him
from remaining merely man the necessity to get beyond rational
humanism.
W hat is this "mom ent?" It is to be found in the ultimate an­
tinomy lying at the basis of the self. Hisamatsu interprets this ul­
timate antinom y in terms of sin and death, whereby "sin" must
be taken in a qualified sense since it has not always been consid­
ered central in Buddhism. When Sakyamuni escaped his father's
palace, w hat he encountered and w hat became the "moment" for
his religious quest was not release from sin, but from sickness, old
age, and death. Nevertheless, we w ant to see how Hisamatsu in­
terprets sin, since he includes it in his discussion.
Nishitani 13i

When we speak of original sin, w hich aspect do we point

to? No mere dogm a or doctrine or w ords—arrogant as it
m ight sound to speak thus—attributed either to Sakya-
muni or Jesus Christ or anyone else, w ould ever convince
me that I have committed original sin. In this very respect
one might well insist that I have karma accumulated from
previously lives or that I have the stains of original sin on
my soul. However, I have never been ashamed or worried
that I m ight have such karma-accumulation or effects of
original sin. I rather think that because I am affected thus
the real situation of m an becomes apparent and, far from
feeling penitent, I take delight in it.22

The reason Hisamatsu takes delight in this ultimate antinomy

is that, by being aware of it, the possibility is afforded of extricat­
ing oneself from it. To take relative antinomies in the moral
sphere is to remain blind to the ultimate antinomy and thus to be
stuck in it. Sin for him extends beyond morality to the sphere of
science and art as well. It is evident in the antinomies of evil ver­
sus good, falsity versus truth, ugliness versus beauty and defile­
m ent versus purity. This he calls the "abyss of man," the deep
chasm from which he cannot escape. Most often relative reasons
are given too m uch emphasis for situations such as the num ber of
suicides or general nihilism, a problem which Nishitani also
squarely faced and dealt with. One m ust grasp the ultim ate an­
tinomy lying at the root of hum an being.
H isam atsu next takes up the question of death. Since for
him death is inseparable from life, the problem is not to be
found in death alone, b u t in the nature of life-and-death (sam-
sara). He then deepens the antinom y of life-and death to the di­
m ension of origination-and-extinction, w hich includes beings
other than hum ans. Finally, he further deepens the dim ension of
origination-and-extinction to that of existence-and-nonexistence
or being-and nonbeing. This ultim ate antinom y of life-and-
death or existence-and-nonexistence is ultim ate death or, in Zen,
i 32 T h e Formless Self

the Great Death. This m ust not rem ain a mere concept; it m ust
be realized existentially.
It m ight be said tentatively that w hat "precedes" the Great
Death is the Great Doubt or doubting-mass, although, strictly
speaking, there is no continuity of temporal sequence here, rather
a complete turn-about (pravrtti) and shattering of w hat went
before.
One reason there is such a break in continuity is that the way
of being of the Formless Self comes breaking through the bottom
of ultimate antinomy.

By the seeing of one's Nature we do not mean any objec­

tive contemplation, objective awareness, or objective cog­
nition of self-Nature or Buddha-Nature; we m ean the
awakening of the Self-Nature itself.23

The genitive is a subjective one. We do not awaken to self­

nature as an object; rather, self-nature or Buddha-nature or the
Formless Self itself awakens.
Hisam atsu stresses the fact that aw akening is no extraordi­
nary state, although it is unfortunately not very common, but the
original way of being for us hum an beings. It is a way of being,
not merely a state of consciousness or a special feeling.
Thus, the Formless Self is neither transcendent in the sense
that it is outside of us and possibly attainable at some future time,
nor is it im manent in the sense that it is simply "there." It is never
"there," which is perhaps the most difficult thing for w esterners
to understand. If we say that it is "dynamic," to use this shop­
worn word for which we have no real fresher alternative, we
mean that the Formless Self is the constantly awakening ultimate
present.
Hisamatsu broaches the subject of how such an awakening is
possible. Again taking up the subject of the ultim ate antinomy
that forms the very basis of reason, he finds it to have the two as­
pects of value-antivalue and existence-nonexistence. Herein lies
Nishitani 133

the ultim ate source of all our w orries and anxieties. This antin­
omy is insoluble. It is insoluble because w hat we w ant is pure,
eternal life, and this is impossible. It is impossible because life as
w e know and live it is fundam entally life-death. When Buddhism
states that we are living and dying at every moment, this is no
mere metaphor. O ur lives are shot through with loss, disappoint­
ment, failure, and the like. Of course, we also experience gain, ful­
fillment, and success. But they are fundam entally temporary.
N othing lasts. N othing is achieved once and for all. This is not a
cause for regret or despair. It is simple impermanence, the im per­
manence that w e are.
But that is not all. This is going on at every moment. My con­
sciousness is not, so to speak, a steady stream of thoughts and
feelings, as the expression "stream of consciousness" w ould indi­
cate. It arises and perishes every instant. Otherwise, how could
one explain the occurrence of a new idea or of any kind of cre­
ativity. The language that the Kyoto school constantly uses to de­
scribe our root source is that of bottomlessness. O ut of this
bottomlessness our awareness arises and perishes at every in­
stant. We shall return to this rather fascinating question later.
It is in terms of this ultim ate antinom y that the concept of
original sin is to be understood. The "sin" lies in the ultimate an­
tinomy that forms the basis of reason. This is not our fault, nor is
anyone else responsible. It is simply the w ay things are. Thus,
original sin is not a moral question, but an ontological one.
H ow do we get free of this antinomy? Since the ultimate an­
tinom y forms the basis of reason, we as rational beings cannot
solve it. The solution of m ost religions, Christianity and Shin
Buddhism, for example, lies in the hope of a future redem ption
by another being, be it Christ or Amida Buddha. Hisamatsu
firmly rejects this point of view.

In any case, however, such religion's time never coincides

w ith historical time; religion of this kind is isolated and is
an escape from the actualities of life. For example if be­
i34 The Formless Self

coming a Buddha or having rebirth in the Pure Land is a

m atter of a future life, since it occurs after the actual time
in which we live is completely term inated, that is, in the
future after death, then to attain it w ould be absolutely
impossible.24

This involves the question of the length dimension, the

Suprahistorical, to which we shall turn presently.
To recapitulate, neither I as a rational being nor anyone or
anything other than I can free me. It goes w ithout saying that this
is also not to be accomplished by some irrational factor in me.
There is something in me that has nothing to do with rationality
or irrationality. That is the Formless Self. But unless we realize the
ultimate antinomy that is reason, there is no "moment" enabling
such a breakthrough. That is w hy Hisam atsu could say he took
delight in being affected by the real situation of man. The ultimate
antinomy offers him the most crucial and irreplaceable m om ent
to break free.
But it is only the moment, the occasion, the kairos, the catalyst.
Of itself the ultimately antinomic self cannot overcome the antin­
omy since that is, so to speak, w hat it is. Rather, the Formless Self
emerges from w ithin the antinomy, it awakens. And this, again, is
nothing extraordinary: it is the true m ode of m an's being. We
said, and Hisam atsu said, there was a leap, a gap in continuity
here. But now he qualifies this further.

Therefore, concerning the relation between the saved-self

and the not-yet-saved-self, it is too delicate a matter to
speak of either continuity or discontinuity.25

In spite of this statement, Hisamatsu does not pursue the

m atter further. Rational autonom y becomes depth autonomy. I
believe the reason Hisam atsu says that the m atter is too delicate
to be described as continuous or discontinuous lies in his concern
that we not take the awakened self as something separate from
Nishitani 13 5

ourselves which "saves" us. After all, we are normally "saved"

by someone else, a savior or an Amida Buddha; we cannot save
ourselves.

Thus do positiveness and affirmativeness arise. That di­

rection, which is the opposite of the one toward the origi­
nal Self, brings about a positive continuity with it.
Previously there was the self-negating continuity from
the unaw akened self to the awakened self. Now, on the
contrary, there is effected the affirmative , positive continuity
from the awakened self to the unawakened self That comes to
mean resurrection or resuscitation of the self It is only here
that one can speak of absolute affirmation.26

Negation takes place in the movem ent from the unaw akened
self to the Formless Self. W hat m ust be negated is the self based
on reason and the senses. Affirmation, however, takes place w hen
the rational self is resuscitated with the Formless Self as its source.
The fact that it is resuscitated or resurrected means that some
kind of death has taken place here, the death of the rational self.
When it reemerges from the Formless Self it freely lives the ratio­
nal life while transcending reason.
We turn now to the length dim ension, that of the Suprahis-
torical. H isam atsu uses this w ord in a different sense, say, from
Nietzsche, for w hom it m eant that w hich is above time and
timeless. For Hisam atsu, on the contrary, it is the source of time
and space, that out of w hich they come. Hence it is in no w ay a
negation of time and space, nor can it sim ply be equated w ith
them.

In other w ords, the w orld which had the rational self as

its fundam ental subject is converted to the w orld which
has the aw akened self as the fundam ental subject. That
world is not differently located in time and space from the
ordinary world. Rather, it is the fountainhead of time and
136 T h e Formless Self

space, in which time-and-space is established and from

which time-and-space arises.27

H isam atsu refers to the Suprahistorical also as "religious

time." The traditional view of religious time he views as of a
completely different order from historical time, intersecting his­
torical time. One thinks of the nunc stans, the standing now lifted
out of time. This is not the kind of eternal now that Hisamatsu
means.

The Buddha-nature is neither transcendent nor, in the or­

dinary sense, actual. It is the constantly awakening ultimate
present . The awakened is the true Buddha-nature; the im­
m anent is not yet the true Buddha-nature. Therefore, re­
demption points, more than anything else, to the presence
of the saved. It is not a m atter of either the future or the
past. One's being saved at the present time is the true way of
redemption.28

Although the language is to some extent Christian (redemption,

being saved), the thought is distinctly Buddhist. Notice that
where one w ould expect H isam atsu to say the Buddha-nature is
neither transcendent nor immanent, this is not w hat he says, al­
though he denies im manence two sentences later. We know by
now that it is not transcendent in the sense that it is beyond and
outside of man. That it is not actual means that it has not become
actualized as the result of a process leading from potentiality to
actuality. It also means that it is not to be found there. Instead, it
is constantly awakening . It is, so to speak, realized in an instant,
and then gone. In an instant does not refer to any specific length
of time, b u t to the suddenness of awakening. And then the
Buddha-nature is gone, only to awaken again. It never "stays
around." Neither is it immanent. This w ould again span it into
the scheme of potentiality-actuality. The continuous substratum
for such a process is lacking. As Dogen said, we do not say that
Nishitani i 37

spring becomes summer. W hen it is spring, it is spring. W hen it

is summer, it is summer. Spring is spring and sum m er is sum ­
mer. One does not tu rn into the other. There is no transition.
This is particularly evident in the ordinary event of traveling
somewhere. One is in one place and, particularly in the days of
air travel, one is suddenly inexplicably in another. But even if the
so-called transition is slower, say, by boat, one was still in one
place and then one is in another. There is no transition.

Religious time ought necessarily to be w hat coincides

with historical time. I do not think that religious time is
established in its relation to historical time by crossing the
latter. I rather think that historical time is established with
religious time as its fundam ental subject.29

Religious time does not have to "cross" historical time be­

cause it is not "above" or outside of it. Rather, it is at the basis of
history, creating history, but not bound by history. It is always
freed from creation while constantly creating. H isam atsu sum s
up the m atter as follows.

Only bringing an individual to the Formless Self, as has

usually been the case w ith Zen, cannot be said to be the
full, w ondrous activity of the Formless Self. Leading an
individual to the Formless Self to have him awake alone
w ould leave him in the end with a Formless Self beyond
which he could not go. The great activity of the Formless
Self ought to w ork three-dimensionally so that it will not
only lead the individual to the Formless Self b u t truly
form the w orld and create history. Only then will its w on­
drous activity become full and its great Zen activity be­
come w orld-forming and history-creating. That is to say,
its Zen activity will have the three dimensions, Self,
World, and History, which constitute the basic structure
of man, closely united within itself. 30
138 The Formless Self

In a remarkable article w ith the unassum ing title "Ordinary

M ind," H isam atsu pursues the question of Suprahistorical his­
tory in a seemingly indirect way. He begins by pointing out the
contradictory elements in ordinary things of constancy and
change or being and nonbeing. This contradiction eventually re­
sults in a synthesis which again affords m an a sense of security
and ease. But he m ust not mistake this aspect of synthesis of ordi­
nary things for something perm anent or eternal.

That m an views the w orld solely in its aspect of "being"

or "nonbeing" is because he erroneously takes the syn­
thetic aspect of ordinary things for something ultimate, or
at least for something enduring. In other words, since
man assumes anything that "is" to be ultimate in its exis­
tence, in health he forgets disease, in life he forgets death,
in peace he forgets war, in order he forgets disorder.31

However, an ordinary thing is no mere synthesis. It contains

at the same time an antithesis within itself, as it does in Hegel.
But, as we shall presently see, Hegel's dialectic is quite different
from that of Hisamatsu.
W hen only the aspect of antithesis or negation is perceived,
one tends to fall into a pessimism which laments the transiency of
life. This is as m isguided as the opposite view of taking the syn­
thesis achieved in things for something perm anent or eternal. The
absolutely cardinal principal of Buddhism applies here of the
M iddle Way, the strict avoidance of the extremes of externalism
and nihilism. The Buddha discovered this ethically and existen-
tially w hen he came to reject the luxury and comfort of his life in
his father's palace (eternalism) and also found that extreme asceti­
cism (nihilism) w asn't the solution either since it led ultimately
only to death. He then deepened his understanding to the onto­
logical level, perceiving the utterly false, hopelessly ingrained
tendency to take all things as either eternal or perm anent, or ni­
Nishitani i 39

hilistic. They are both, and this forms the contradiction at the
heart of all things.

If ordinary things were merely "being" (u ), the m ovement

of history w ould not materialize, while if they were
merely "non-being" (mu), the presentness of history
w ould not make itself manifest. It is for this reason that
the historical w orld is said to be being which is none
other than non-being, non-being which is none other than
being.32

Hisamatsu is critical of scholars of ethics, philosophy, and re­

ligion w ho approach their subject in an objective way, failing to
incorporate it existentially in their lives. That this is indeed the
case is the understatem ent of the year, if not the century.
H isam atsu then attem pts to describe a kind of knowledge which
is no mere objective knowledge, but is fundam entally subjective
or existential and includes w orking or acting as an indispensable
ingredient. This sort of existential knowledge he finds best in­
stantiated by the masters and experts of the various Eastern arts
and martial arts, although by no means necessarily limited to
these.

It is thus, having become the art-itself, that they m ay be

called "incarnations" of their arts. This kind of "know ­
ing" is different from the scientific Knowledge that is spo­
ken of today, resembling, rather, w hat is called "kotsu"
(knack, lit., bone, or pith) in Japanese. It is said to be
something which is suddenly attained and self-acquired;
it is not something that can be taught. (7)

However, here Hisamatsu is also critical, although to a much

lesser extent. O utside of his art, such a person m ay encounter
unanticipated barriers. One m ust become an accomplished mas­
140 T h e Formless Self

ter in the total matter of hum an existence. Applied to philosophy,

this constitutes m an's attem pt to live in an ultimate manner.

In other words, the total being is itself the task. That the
total being, which is the task, elucidates itself in a total
manner by means of itself, is to live philosophy. (12)

To live philosophy in this sense means to overcome the total

contradiction of life in a total manner. Now we begin to see w hat
is m eant by the title of the essay "Ordinary M ind." The person
who has resolved the contradiction not merely in a special field or
art, but in his very life is considered a person of attainment. It is
only in this kind of person of attainm ent that the true ordinary
mind is to be found.
When the Zen m aster N an-ch'uan was asked by a disciple,
"W hat is the Way?" He responded, "Ordinary M ind is the Way."
Hisamatsu elaborates on this in a lengthy footnote.

The Zen Master Ma-tsu Tao-i used the term heijdshin [or­
dinary mind] in its original sense in which it is contrasted
w ith shojishin (Life-and-death mind). . . . With both Ma­
tsu and N an-ch'uan, heijoshin means the Ordinary Mind
awakened to its true Self and functioning in its everyday
activities—that is, w hat the author calls the creation of
Suprahistorical history. (18)

W hat follows is a discussion of m atter and form w hich we

need not go into in its entirety here. Form as conceived by Plato
was something transcendent which was already as "real" as it
was ever going to be. There is no positive reason for form to com­
bine w ith matter, to become "historical." M atter only serves to
distort the Forms. For Aristotle and Plato form realizes itself
through matter. But Hisamatsu rejects even this conception of
form which is im m anent and developing. It is not subjective or
existential enough to be the "subject" of history. The term "sub-
Nishitani i4i

jeetive" here lies closest to K ierkegaard's understanding of that

term, not as solipsistic or epistemologically isolated, but as w hat
I am, w hat the self is. Anything not subjective in this sense lies in
the domain of w hat is outside of me, of w hat can be objectified.
We w ant to take a closer look at this use of form which is, to
say the least, rather peculiar. But set against the background of
H isam atsu's thought in general, it is, after all, comprehensible.

The actualization of "form" is always self-limiting and fi­

nite. Form is experienced only in its self-limitation. It is
said that form is only actualized as that which is actual in
history. And yet it is thought that while form, through its
actualization in history, limits itself and becomes finite, at
the same time it transcends actuality and, being infinite,
cuts off limitation. Only w hen form is taken in this sense
can it be the form which is the subject of history. (20)

W hat Hisamatsu appears to mean by form is form actualizing

itself in matter. Form actualizes itself through its self-limitation in
matter. But it m ust again negate that limited self. Thus,
H isamatsu can equate this unusual m eaning of form w ith ab­
solute nothingness. Actually, he seems to see matter as equivalent
to being.

Furthermore, this subject of history, in that it eternally cre­

ates that w hich is historically actual, is "absolute being"
and of im m anent character, b u t at the same time, in that it
eternally negates its self-limitation, it is "absolute noth­
ingness" and of external and transcendent character. In
this, form and m atter are not dualistic. The self-limiting
aspect of the subject which lives in history is matter; the
negating aspect of self-limitation is form. (22)

Hisamatsu is aware that he is using form in a sense opposed

to the predom inant thinking of the Greeks, but he feels that the
142 The Formless Self

Greeks saw only the self-limiting aspect of form and overlooked

the negating aspect of self-limitation. However that may be, it is
clear that he wants to see a positive and creative meaning in his­
tory which was predom inantly lacking in the Greeks. But history
for him, while possessing a positive meaning, cannot be self-
supporting or be all that there is. His own standpoint after all, is
that of religion, and the fact that m an has religion is evidence that
he can never be satisfied with the view that history is everything.

To live in history w ithout being aware of the abyss of this

ultim ate contradiction, which lies at the foundation of
history itself, is just as if one were to hold a thousand-ton
bomb and stare dow n into a ten-thousand-foot pit. . . .
This explains w hy contradiction is irresolvable within the
historical dialectic, and it even explains the necessity of
advancing to w hat may be called the "religious dialectic."
(26)

Herein lies the Suprahistorical task of the Formless Self. The

religious dialectic overcomes the ultimate contradiction of history
by effecting the casting off of history. There is a parallel between
the individual, which we have been discussing, and history here.
The ultim ate antinomy present in the hum an being is necessarily
present in history itself. Just as the individual cast off body-and-
mind (Dôgen), history m ust ultimately cast itself off in order to be
free of the abyss of absolute contradiction. Yet history is not thus
considered superfluous or even as some sort of decline or corrup­
tion. The Formless Self realizes itself in wondrous, free activity,
b ut does not remain confined to history. It is free to go in and out
of history, now actualizing itself, now retreating to the root-
source.
By w ay of moving in the direction of some sort of conclusion,
we w ant to supplem ent w hat H isamatsu means by time in order
to better understand w hat he means by suprahistory and its rela­
tion to time. Strangely enough, he does not go into the problem of
Nishitani i43

time in any detail, b u t seems to assum e it as understood. Since

this is an extremely difficult question, the extent to which we can
"solve" it will be correspondingly limited, to say the least. But
perhaps we will be able to throw some light on it.

Religious time ought necessarily to be w hat coincides

with historical time. I do not think that religious time is
established in its relation to historical time by crossing the
latter. I rather think that historical time is established with re­
ligious time as its fundamental subject. In other words, w ith
Formless Self, or Self w ithout form, as its basis and fun­
damental subject historical time is established. Therefore,
the length dim ension, as I m entioned above, comes to
mean a Suprahistorical formation of history, a Supra-
historical living of history.33

By religious time crossing history, Hisam atsu means the tra­

ditional conception of transcendence and eternity as something
above time that then intersects or vertically breaks into history.
This conception he firmly rejects. We thus turn back to Nishitani,
w ho did consider the question of time at some length. Taking the
German term Dasein from Heidegger, Nishitani says that it can be
considered under three forms.

First, it is a samskrta (a being-at-doing) existence of infinite

becoming w ithin the world, coming to be and passing
away from one fleeting m om ent to the next in time w ith­
out beginning or end. It involves continually doing some­
thing.34

This infinity is w hat Nishitani calls "infinite finitude."

W hether it is understood in Western terms as will or drive, or in
Eastern term s as karma , w e are incessantly driven to do some­
thing. This situation is essentially ambiguous. On the one hand, it
implies creation, freedom, and infinite possibility; on the other
144 The Formless Self

hand, it shows the character of infinite burden and inextricable

necessity. Sometimes we see this as a challenge and welcome it.
At other times, we get overwhelmed by w hat m ust be done. Very
little of w hat we do is done once and for all. For example, you
cannot learn a language once and for all; you cannot learn to play
a musical instrum ent once and for all; you can't even take a bath
once and for all. This is infinite finitude.
W hat does Nishitani mean by "coming to be and passing
away from one fleeting m om ent to the next in time w ithout be­
ginning or end?" Time w ithout beginning or end we shall discuss
presently. For now, Nishitani's statement means that we are living
and dying at every instant. This is the Buddhist experiential "the­
ory"35 of instantaneity or momentariness. Time, instead of being a
continuous flux, is radically discontinuous, coming into being
and passing away each instant. This theory of time, while hardly
acceptable to common sense, w ould probably make very good
sense to most physicists. It is hard for us to gauge how the real­
ization of this fact w ould profoundly alter our way of experienc­
ing. Ueda Shizuteru points out that this is experienced to a certain
degree in Zen meditation.

Exhaling means continually departing from myself out

into the infinite expanse of openness. Here already a
dying takes place. Here already we may speak of a non-
selfhood. Inhaling means draw ing the infinite openness
into oneself. Here already there is a resurrection.36

H isam atsu states that m an generally has two aspects to his

experience, a sense of constancy and a sense of inconstancy. He
needs them both. Without some feeling of constancy, without set­
tling into some kind of present, he w ould find no ease. Without
some feeling of inconstancy or change, he w ould tend to get
bored. This was Schopenhauer's "insight" into hum an life, that it
oscillates between the two poles of desire, wanting w hat it lacks,
and, w hen it attains w hat it desired, boredom. But Schopenhauer
Nishitani 145

got mired in his ow n affective reaction. It doesn't m atter whether

we like or dislike this state of affairs. The reaction to it blocks the
real experience of it.

It is w rong to consider ordinary things to be exclusively

constant and "existent" (u), bu t it is also inappropriate to
see them as being exclusively inconstant and "non-exis­
tent" (mu). O rdinary things are at once constant and in­
constant, existent and non-existent. Because of his
constancy, m an has the capacity to feel always at ease; be­
cause of his inconstancy, m an also feels anxious. H ow ­
ever, anxiety pledges development into further constancy.
Thus, the structure of ordinary things is one of constancy
which is none other than inconstancy, unity which is none
other than contradiction, being which is none other than
non-being. Only in this w ay m ay we truly understand or­
dinary things.37

In this existential theory, the present does not follow the past
horizontally in some kind of succession. Rather, the present
flashes up vertically out of an infinite openness lying "beneath
our feet," w hat N ishitani calls the "hom e-ground of the present."
This is the dim ension Nishitani means w hen he speaks of "time
w ithout beginning or end."

Secondly, on the field of em ptiness as absolute transcen­

dence, a before is seen at the hom e-ground of the present
that is before any past, however far back it be traced, and
an after beyond any future capable of being projected. On
this hom e-ground of the present, Dasein is eternal: Stand­
ing at the beginning, and hence also at the end, of time, it
goes beyond time, beyond the world and its causality (the
"three worlds"). This absolute transcendence, however,
becomes manifest only in unison w ith the absolute im m a­
nence held up as the first form of Dasein.38
146 The Formless Self

Here Dasein "breaks out of" time, that is, it breaks out of the
conceptual overlay that it imposes on the sheer happening of in-
stantaneity. The present does not follow the past in continuity; it
arises out of the bottomless depth. That is w hy newness is possi­
ble: new ideas, new beginnings, new experiences. Why do we
tend to get bored w ith w hat we have, w hom w e know, w hat we
are doing? Because we fail to perceive this newness. Thus, we say
that nothing lasts. Indeed nothing does last, not even for an in­
stant. But we expect things to last horizontally, to persist through­
out time. Even should we realize this vertical dimension of
infinite openness, we w ould still to some extent continue to expe­
rience time horizontally. This is simply inevitable. Nishitani ex­
presses this fact by stating that the second form of Dasein, that of
transcendence, become manifest only in unison w ith the absolute
immanence of the first form, that of immanence.

Therefore, in the third place, in the same w ay that w e can

speak of birth qua unbirth, and extinction qua non-extinc­
tion, every instant of time can be called a "m onad of eter­
nity." Here each point of time throughout a past that
reaches infinitely back into antiquity and each point of
time in the infinite future ahead that lies further than w e
can see is likewise simultaneous w ith the present instant.
The present instant only becomes m anifest as something
that projects (reflects) in itself, as it were, every sort of
possible past and possible future. Alternatively, the pre­
sent instant only becomes m anifest as something into
which are projected (transferred) all pasts from the begin­
ning of time and all futures from the end of time. The in­
stant comes about as a dharani m aintaining all pasts and
all futures in the home-ground of the present.39

The instant occurs as a dharani gathering all pasts and all futures,
perhaps analogous to the m anner in w hich for Heidegger the
thing gathers the fourfold of earth, heaven, the godlike ones, and
Nishitani 147

mortals. However, it is more difficult for most of us to think a tem­

poral gathering. But perhaps not. A t least we know that different
times cannot impede each other.

You m ust see all the various things of the whole world as
so many times. These things do not get in each other's way
any more than various times get in the way of each other.40

N ight is night, and day is day. They do not get in each

o th e r's way. It is a w ell-established fact that in m om ents of
grave danger people's w hole lives flash before them in an in­
stant. The dharani gathering all times to itself could help to elu­
cidate this phenom enon.

The idea of the present being simultaneous w ith every

point in time past and future may sound rather farfetched
at first. But if we bear in m ind that the beginning of time is
always in the present, and investigate the point thor­
oughly, w e shall find such simultaneity to follow n atu­
rally as a m atter of course.41

Time always begins, starts from the present. In the conception

of time as a linear, irreversible flow, there is no possibility of a pre­
sent, of a presence. W hat should we do to find this, interrupt the
flow, stop it? How w ould this be accomplished? A conception of
time that cannot account for a present is simply inadequate. After
all, everyone has a sense of the present, however m uch they may
obscure it by remembering the past or by anticipating the future.
We seldom really are where we are. We need a conception of time
that is existential , that belongs to someone's life. And the present
m ust not be a "knife-edged," dimensionless present, but m ust in
some sense include the dimensions of the past and future.

But the true w ay of things is not to be found in this one

direction alone. At the time the m ountain was being
i48 T h e Formless Self

climbed and the river being crossed, I w as there in time.

The time has to be in me. Inasmuch as I am there, it cannot
be that time passes away.42

The one direction alone in which the true way of things is not
to be found is its quality of passing away, a quality that Dogen
does not deny, b u t feels that it is all that people see in time. In ad­
dition to the quality of passing by, and even that Dogen under­
stands differently from w hat most people think, Dogen sees the
crucial aspect of dwelling in a dharm a-situation or a dharm a-
position.

You reckon time only as something that does nothing but

pass by, and do not understand it as something not yet ar­
rived. Although our understandings are time, there is no
chance for them to be draw n in by time. There has never
been anyone who, while taking time to be coming and
going, has penetrated to see it as a being-time dwelling in
its dharm a-position. W hat chance have you then for a
time to break through the barrier to total emancipation?
Even if there were someone w ho knew that dwelling-
position, w ho w ould be able truly to give an utterance
that preserved w hat he had thus gained? And even were
someone able to give such utterance continually, he could
still not help groping to bring his original face into imme­
diate presence.43

Time is something not yet arrived (mito ). To is also translated

a bit later on as "reaches." Waddell adds a footnote to the effect
that to can also mean "coming to fulfillment or attainment." Thus,
to seems to mean something like "getting there," and the state­
m ent that "you do not understand it as something not yet ar­
rived" w ould appear to mean that there is a dim ension of time
that does not arrive in the present and pass away in a horizontal,
Nishitani 149

linear fashion. In other w ords, there is an inexhaustible dim en­

sion to time. This is w hat Nishitani calls its "bottomlessness." Al­
though the imagery is som ew hat different, the thought is
basically the same.
Even if one knows of that dwelling-situation, how can he pos­
sibly express it in such a w ay as to preserve it? A nd even if he
w ere able to express this continually, w hich is unlikely, it still
w ould not exhaust the m atter at all and he w ould still have to
grope to somehow bring his original face to immediate presence.

For an instant is ever a present now; each point of time

past and future, w hen it is constituted as time, can do so
only in an instant. In this way, the present, while inex­
orably the present of time, is nonetheless simultaneous
w ith each and every point of time past and future. The
past never ceases to be before the present, and the future
after the present; the order of before and after in temporal
sequence is never abolished. That is, while each and every
point of time is itself—the past inexorably as past, the fu­
ture inexorably as future—they are also simultaneous
w ith the present. In this simultaneity, the present encom­
passes all pasts and futures and maintains a collective
hold [dharani] over them.44

How is such simultaneity possible? Obviously it is not possible

if time is conceived as a horizontal, linear flow. It is possible only if
the present is the originating source for the past and future and if at
the base of the present there is an infinitely open bottomlessness.

The infinite openness of time in both directions is nothing

other than an introjection into time of the transtem poral
openness or ecstatic transcendence lying directly beneath
the present, and introjection achieved on each occasion of
karmic activity.45
 The Formless Self

The transtem poral openness lying directly beneath the pre­

sent is the source for the infinite horizontal openness in both di­
rections of past and future. This occurs through karmic activity
introjecting the depth dimension of that transtemporal openness
onto a horizontal plane. At this point, the transtemporal openness
that is reached and introjected onto a horizontal plane is encoun­
tered as nihility. The being of the self that comes about in that
karma is at once voluntary and compulsory. That self is pro­
foundly self-centered, caught, and trapped w ithin itself, forever
fated to transit endlessly through time in search of the home-
ground of the self. Nishitani compares this to Kierkegaard's sick­
ness unto death, the many-faceted forms of despair that he so
masterfully laid bare in the work of that name.
A further step is necessary, the step from the field of nihility
to the field of em ptiness and the corresponding move from the
self-encapsulatedness of the self to the selfless, em ptied self that
can enter into "circum insessional" interpenetration w ith all
other things. "Circuminsessional" w ith its imagery of "circum,"
around, m ight tend to be a bit misleading. In fact, circuminses­
sional and interpenetration alm ost seem to contradict each
other. Either things go "around" or else they go "into." Perhaps
"circum insessional," a term taken from speculation on the di­
vine persons of the trinity, is not the best term to characterize
this interpenetration ultim ately having its roots in H ua-yen
thought.
In this transparency and emptiness of the non-ego or true self,
activity from one mom ent to the next originates from the begin­
ning of time. In other words; each moment is a m om ent of eter­
nity appearing in time.

In the conversion from the standpoint of karma to the

standpoint oi&unyata, Dasein achieves a true and elemen­
tal spontaneity, but this spontaneity is at once an earnest­
ness in its elemental sense and a play in its elemental
sense. Compared with that earnestness, the earnestness
Nishitani 151

of any occupation on the standpoint of will prior to that

conversion is mere time-killing divertissement, or Zer-
streuung. However deep the concentration one invests in
such occupation, to the extent that it is not perform ed in
samadhi, the m ind engaged in the doing is essentially dis­
tracted or " scattered."46

The "burden" im posed on us by our very existence, the fact

that we are constantly driven to be doing something, and this
doing constantly creates new karma , hence, the infinite need for
m ore activity; this burden now ceases to be something im posed
from outside of us as fate to something freely accepted as voca­
tion or task. One might call this true "self-centeredness," a "gath-
eredness" keeping a collective hold (dharani) on all things. This is
not the isolated self, cut off from the things of the world, but the
self giving to all things their being.
Nishitani related the second form of Dasein, on the field of
em ptiness as absolute transcendence, to Nietzsche's philosophi­
cal position of the activity of the will on the field of atheistic ni­
hility. Here time takes on the form of eternal recurrence. This time
is reversible. Instead of a time w ithout beginning or end, we have
a time whose beginning and end are the same. Nothing new can
come about. Eternity is perceived as eternal nihility. It has no con­
tact w hatever w ith history. This represents a mere dehistoriciza-
tion of time. It is only w ith the third form, where every instant of
time is a m onad of eternity, that the true standpoint of emptiness
is reached.

But how ever it be interpreted, so long as it includes the

sense of a synthesis of time and eternity at the home-
ground of the present, the horizon of simultaneity opens
up there. On the horizon of eternity, things that are before
and after w ithin time are projected (reflected and trans­
ferred) into the hom e-ground of the present, even as the
present is projected into the past and the future.47
152 T h e Formless Self

Just as w hen forms one and two, absolute immanence and

absolute transcendence, come together and the transtem poral
openness lying directly beneath the present is projected on a hor­
izontal plane as the infinite past and the infinite future, now that
infinite past and infinite future are transferred back into the
hom e-ground of the present. We have now reached the third
form of Dasein, the intersection of time and eternity, and the pos­
sibility of a simultaneity of the whole of time in an instant. Nishi-
tani says that the totality of time can only exist in a single instant.
Otherwise, there is not possibility of a totality being "together,"
being all at once, that is, being a true totality.

As the time right now is all there ever is, each being-time
is w ithout exception entire time. A being-grass and being-
form are both times. Entire being, the entire world, exists
in the time of each and every now. Just reflect: right now,
is there an entire being or an entire w orld missing from
your present time, or not?48

Nishitani calls the three forms of Dasein the "forms of illusion,

emptiness, and the m iddle." The forms of illusion (karma) and
emptiness (¿unyata) should have become reasonably clear by
now. What, then, does Nishitani mean here by "middle?" We
have touched upon this before, but take it up now again briefly,
since it is perhaps the most elusive of the three forms. Illusion and
reality are familiar to us as categories. Again we ask, w hat is the
"middle?" Once again Nishitani refers to samadhi.

While the w ord refers in the first place to a mental state, it

also applies to the mode of being of a thing in itself w hen
it has settled into its own position. In that sense, we might
call such a mode of being "samadhi-being." The form of
things as they are on their own home-ground is similar to
the appearance of things in samadhi. (To speak of the fact
Nishitani 153

that fire is burning, we could say that the fire is in its fire-
samadhi).49

A thing in samadhi is a thing as it is on its own home-ground,

not at all seen from the outside or represented.
It is not the case that we can just "get rid of" illusion once and
for all. Illusion is there to stay. Only now we understand just what
it is. It is illusory because it is one w ith emptiness. It is real because
it is the manifestation of absolute selfhood. In the chapter on "The
Personal and Impersonal in Religion," Nishitani discussed this in
terms of the Tendai school of Buddhism, saying that man comes
into being as the "middle" between "illusion" and "emptiness."
Ever trying to elucidate further the m eaning of the middle,
Nishitani states repeatedly that the field of sunyata has no cir­
cumference. Since we are accustomed to viewing things from the
circumference, our "viewing" on the field of reason and the
senses drops off. Thus, the center of this "circle" has no circum­
ference; the center is everywhere.

But on a more essential level, a system of circuminsession

has to be seen here, according to which, on the field of
sunyata, all things are in a process of becoming master
and servant to one another. In this system, each thing is it­
self in not being itself, and is not itself in being itself. Its
being is illusion in its truth and truth in its illusion. This
may sound strange the first time one hears it, but in fact it
enables us for the first time to conceive of a force by virtue
of which all things are gathered together and brought into
relationship w ith one another, a force which, since ancient
times, has gone by the name of "nature" (physis ).50

Whereas Leibniz had simply stated, cryptically enough, that

the m onads reflected one another as living mirrors of the uni­
verse, Nishitani tried to describe this interpenetration of all things,
154 T h e Formless S elf

a nearly impossible task. The field of iunyata is a field of force.

This force enables things to interpenetrate, thus w orlding world.

In its being, we m ight say, the w orld "worlds." Such a

m ode of being is the m ode of being of things as they are
in themselves, their non-objective, "m iddle" mode of
being as the selfness that they are.51

Speaking of the "natural light," Nishitani states that, contrary

to Western thought, it is not the light of reason, but the light of
each and every thing.

The light that illumines us from our ow n hom e-ground

and brings us back to an elemental self-awareness is but
the nonobjective being of things as they are in themselves
on the field where all things are manifest on their own
hom e-ground.52

On this field all things settle into their ow n "position" or

samadhi-being. Originally a term reserved for a kind of mental
concentration, samadhi as Nishitani uses it is an ontological term
designating the ultim ate reality of all things.
By way of conclusion, we return to Hisam atsu for some final
remarks on the Formless Self. After a section entitled "The Nega­
tive Clarification of Zen-Buddhist Nothingness" in which he once
again lists w hat nothingness is not, Hisamatsu has a section enti­
tled "The Positive Clarification of Zen-Buddhist Nothingness."
Here he attem pts to show that nothingness is not insentient or a
blank lack of awareness. In the words of Hui-neng:

The heart is so w ide and great like the em pty space of

heaven; it is w ithout limit and border.
Your true nature is like the em pty space of heaven,
and w hen you are able to see the Not-something, this can
be called right seeing.53
N is hitani i 55

What is so difficult for us to grasp is the fact that this absolute

nothingness is in no sense a something, and yet it is alive, active
and has the characteristics of heart and self. Actually, we are not so
inclined to think of heart or self as a something. They are to the ex­
tent "specific/' as is also absolute nothingness, that one can say
certain things about them. After all, the seven characteristics be­
longing to absolute nothingness and found inseparably in Zen art
are definite characteristics. Whereas they remain somewhat vague
as to "w hat" is being characterized, "moods" perhaps, but moods
belonging more to w hat is being looked at than to someone look­
ing at it, yet mood is perhaps not totally inappropriate here.
"M ood" is related to "mode," way, and perhaps we can speak of
the modes or ways of the Way. These moods or modes really do
seem to belong to w hat is being depicted. Asymmetry, for exam­
ple, is not a feeling aroused in someone looking at a painting. Yet
these moods are not at all "subjective." We need another kind of
"aesthetics" to be able to speak about this kind of Zen art. It really
will absolutely not fit into a subject-object framework.

In this kind of manifestation of Zen, I think there is some­

thing unique, something both extraordinary and artistic.
W hen in the raising of a hand or in a single step some­
thing of Zen is present, that content seems to me to pos­
sess a very specific, artistic quality. A narrow conception
of art m ight not accept that such manifestations contain
anything artistic, but to me it seems that they possess an
artistic quality that ordinarily cannot be seen. In fact, in
such vital w orkings of Zen, I believe that something not
merely artistic b u t also beyond art is involved, something
toward which art should aim as its goal. Besides this con­
crete manifestative aspect, however, Zen also has an as­
pect that is "prior to form."
This "prior to form" quality is far more basic than the
concrete expressions of Zen activity, for only w ith the
presence of the former is the activity given meaning.54
i 56 T he Formless Self

Zen activity, Zenki, is a term composed of two elements. Zen

means whole, together, entire and ki means possibility, capacity,
response, function, working. Thus, Zenki can m ean entire w ork­
ing, an activity in which the whole is present with nothing left out.
Not unlike Nietzsche, H isam atsu finds this undivided activ­
ity not in art proper alone, but in any activity of daily life, a ges­
ture, the use of various utensils, the perception of aspects of
nature. It is art moving in the direction of transcending itself,
since it is form giving expression to w hat is prior to form, the
formless. Nietzsche was close to this conception of art transcend­
ing itself when he characterized the world as a w ork of art giving
birth to itself or w hen he thought of the artist as shaping himself
and others. Yet the element of the formless was lacking in Niet­
zsche. A nd his conception of the Will to Power or of will in gen­
eral is absolutely incompatible w ith w hat Hisamatsu is getting at.

W hat is of greatest significance in this literature, however,

is not so much that it gives objective expression to Zen, as
that Zen is present as a self-expressive, creative subject. In
other words, that which is expressing itself and that
which is expressed is identical.55

Awakening is thus not awakening to the self, but awakening

of the self. The self is w hat awakens. This is, of course, not the or­
dinary self. The ordinary self is the body-mind that has dropped
off. As long as we have not dropped off body and mind, there is
absolutely no possibility for the Formless Self to awaken.

But Zen-Buddhist nothingness is by no means something

unconscious and inanimate, as is emptiness, but it is the
subject that knows itself "clearly and distinctly." There­
fore one calls it "heart," "self," or " the true m an."56

Following a genuine religious impulse, one is strongly in­

clined to take this Formless Self as a object of w orship, as some­
Nishitani f 57

thing "other" than myself. W hether Christian or Buddhist of the

Pure Land sect, one is strongly averse to setting oneself in the
place of "God." Of course, to consider m y ego as god am ounts to
the w orst form of religious delusion or megalomania. That is
w hy the Great Death is absolutely essential. I m ust really let go
not only of m y body w ith its dem ands, needs, and desires, but
above all of my insidiously grasping m ind w ith its obsessions,
fixations, and delusions. The Buddha found this out w hen his at­
tem pts at asceticism got him nowhere. H ow ever m uch we may
w eaken and enfeeble the body, the incessantly clinging m ind
remains.
To get a sense of w hat it means that Buddha or the Formless
Self is to be sought nowhere outside of oneself, that we neverthe­
less have no conception of w hat that Formless Self is, we return in
conclusion to the thinker w ith w hom we began, to Dôgen. This
fact of having no conception, no inkling of w hat the Formless Self
is, even though it can be found now here outside of us, is most
likely the reason w hy we do search outside of ourselves. We think
that we can know ourselves, and that this cannot be "it."

B uddha-dharm a cannot be know n by a person. For this

reason, since olden times no ordinary person has realized
B uddha-dharm a; no practitioner of the Lesser Vehicles
has m astered Buddha-dharm a. Because it is realized by
b u d d h as alone, it is said, "only a b u ddha and a buddha
can thoroughly master it."
W hen you realize Buddha-dharm a, you do not think
"this is realization just as I expected." Even if you think
so, realization invariably differs from your expectation.
Realization is not like your conception of it. Accordingly,
realization cannot take place as previously conceived.
W hen you realize Buddha-dharm a, you do not consider
how realization came about. You should reflect on this.
W hat you think one w ay or another before realization is
not a help for realization.57
{58 The Formless S elf

This reminds us of the koan about the person sitting in order to

become a Buddha. Someone picked up a tile and began polishing it.
When asked what he was doing, the tile-polisher answered that he
was trying to make a mirror out of the tile. The person sitting said it
was impossible to turn a tile into a mirror. Similarly, no amount of
sitting can turn an ordinary person into a Buddha. And yet there
have been Buddhas, persons who have attained realization.
Only a Buddha can become a Buddha; an ordinary person
cannot do so. Yet Dogen tells us that all sentient beings are the
Buddha-nature. They do not have it; they are it. This was the
quandary that set Dogen out on his search for an "answer" to the
question: if we are already the Buddha-nature, w hy is it necessary
to practice?
Realization absolutely cannot be anticipated. When you real­
ize Buddha-dharma, you do not think, "This is realization just as
I expected."58 Even if you think so, realization invariably differs
from your expectation.
This passage, which we cited before, is crucial. Actually, it is
difficult for us to really anticipate anything. Ordinary, everyday
occurrences and activities can be more or less anticipated, but gen­
erally I take them so much for granted that I take them as a matter
of course w ithout bothering to anticipate them to any appreciable
degree. It is otherwise with something with which I am affectively
involved. I may dread something. It weighs on m e as a burden,
and is all I can think about, for instance, an examination, an oper­
ation, an im portant appointment. But even this dread often turns
out to have little to do with w hat actually happens. What happens
may not be bad at all, or it may be just terrible. The case is similar
when I look forward to something. The Germans have a word for
this, Vorfreude, the joy before. This can be a wonderful feeling, un­
marred by any reality. When the event actually occurs, it may be
totally insignificant. At any rate, it, too, soon passes.

Although realization is not like any of the thoughts pre­

ceding it, this is not because such thoughts were actually
Nishitani 159

bad and could not be realization. Past thoughts were al­

ready realization. But since you were seeking elsewhere,
you thought and said that thoughts cannot be realization.
However, it is w orth noticing that w hat you think one
w ay or another is not a help for realization. Then you are
cautious not to be small-minded. If realization came forth
by the pow er of your prior thoughts, it w ould not be
trustworthy. Realization does not depend on thoughts,
b u t comes forth far beyond them; realization is helped
only by the pow er of realization itself. Know that then
there is no delusion, and there is no realization.59

H ere Dogen states that the past thoughts preceding realiza­

tion were already realization. This is in accord with his conviction
that all beings are the Buddha-nature. But the point is that we
were seeking, looking for and anticipating something elsewhere.
The key statem ent here is that realization does not depend on
thoughts. W hatever it is, realization is not thoughts. We do not
think realization. We ask immediately: w hat else can it be? But we
cannot ask in this way. Realization comes forth far beyond
thoughts. Awakening, or realization, is not a thought. I can only
realize something that is already there.
The questions centering around the "before" and "after" en­
lightenm ent are to an extent crystallized in the controversy over
original and acquired enlightenment. Dogen states conclusively
that all beings are, not have, the Buddha-nature. But if they do not
realize this, it is useless. We are immediately confronted w ith a
mass of aporias. But we m ust work through them, since this is the
only way w e have to get beyond conceptualizing.
We already are the Buddha-nature. A lthough this statement is
"true," the implications w hich it suggests are not. So conceived,
the B uddha-nature is something static in all of us, a view border­
ing on eternalism.
On the other hand, polishing a tile in order to m ake a mirror
or sitting in order to become a Buddha is not possible. The tile is
 The Formless Self

already a mirror, sitting itself is already being a Buddha. But tile-

polishing and sitting are crucial. The hitch lies in stating that the
title becomes the mirror, the sitter becomes a Buddha. We cannot say
this, no m atter how strongly common sense dictates that we
should.
We should not isolate and absolutize this question, b u t con­
sider it in the context of Dogen's thought as a whole. The idea of
becoming, so familiar to us all, is denied by Dogen. Just as winter
does not become spring, firewood does not become ash, birth
does not become death, an ignorant person does not become or
turn into a Buddha. This is also the reason why Dogen will con­
sistently change a construction traditionally read as "If x happens
in the future or you should do x" to read "x is happening right
now."

By way of illustration, if you wish to know the Buddha-

nature's meaning might be read, "you are directly knowing
the Buddha-nature's m eaning." You should watch for tem­
poral conditions means "you are directly knowing tem po­
ral conditions." If you w ish to know the Buddha-nature,
you should know that it is precisely temporal conditions
themselves.
The utterance If the time arrives means "The time is al­
ready here, and there could be no room to doubt it.60

In the fascicle entitled "Awakening the Buddha-seeking

Mind" Dogen delves further into the question of how this "transi­
tion," which is no transition, is possible. He distinguishes three
kinds of mind: citta, the discriminating mind; karit, the m ind of
grass and trees; and irita, the m ind of truth. Karit , the m ind of
grass and trees, is "innocent," it does not discriminate; nor can it
become anything other than what it is. It is citta, the discriminating
mind, which can awaken to the Buddha-seeking mind. It is not the
same as the Buddha-seeking mind, but we cannot awaken to the
Buddha-seeking m ind w ithout it. The Buddha-seeking mind
Nishitani

is not innate nor does it arise through recent experience,

neither is it singular nor plural, definable or indefinable,
w ithin ourselves or universal. It bears no relation to the
future or past, and neither can we say it "is" or "isn't,"
nor is it the essence of ourselves, others, or both, nor does
it suddenly occur, b u t it arises as the gradual result of a
spiritual link between ourselves and the Buddha. This
m ind cannot be transm itted by the B uddhas and Bod-
hisattvas nor can it be induced through our own efforts.
Only a spiritual link betw een ourselves and the Buddha
can awaken the Buddha-seeking m ind.61

Dogen almost outdoes N agarjuna in the kinds of statements

one cannot make about the Buddha-seeking m ind. He comes up
w ith a sort of Omnilemma; The Buddha-seeking m ind is not in­
nate; we do not already have it. Nor does it arise through our ex­
perience, past or future; w e cannot acquire it. It is the result of a
spiritual link between ourselves and the Buddha. This does not
tell us very much. But Dogen elaborates a little on this w hen he
states several times that we should undertake to assist all sentient
beings to attain enlightenm ent before w e consider our own.
When w e do this, the discriminating m ind turns into the Buddha-
seeking mind.

When w e awaken the Buddha-seeking mind, even if only

for a moment, all things become conducive to its growth.
Awakening the Buddha-seeking m ind and experiencing
enlightenment may occur and perish momentarily. If this
were not so m om entary past wrongs could not disappear
and subsequent good could not appear. The Tathagata
alone understands this fully, for it is only he w ho can
utter an entire w ord in an instant.62

This idea of the possibility of past wrongs being able to dis­

appear ("forgiveness of sins," repentance) is later in the tw enti­
16 2 The Formless Self

eth century developed by Tanabe as zange or metanoetics (mind-

conversion).

With the passing of each instant we undergo the incessant

action of existing and non-existing. In the time it takes an
average middle-aged m an to "click" his fingers, sixty-five
such instants pass, and over the space of twenty-four
hours, 6,400,099,980 take place. The ordinary person,
totally unaw are of these facts, in unable to awaken the
Buddha-seeking m ind.63

What is meant here by "instant" by no means coincides with

our ordinary conception of it. The radicality of this conception of
impermanence is scarcely conceivable to most of us. Dogen repeats
the exact same "fantastical" (in Kierkegaard's sense of that word)
num bers in a fascicle entitled "Shukke Kudoku," "The Virtue of
Renouncing the World," and states there that although there are
many enlightened people, only Shakyamuni and Sariputtra were
able to realize the change which occurs in one instant.64 But it is
precisely through this constant activity of death and rebirth, this in­
credible "dynamicity" of impermanence, that awakening to en­
lightenment is possible. In a continuity of static persistence, there is
no "room," no occasion, no kairos for anything to happen.
We have again and again returned our focus to the question
of time. It remains in conclusion to try to clarify the relation of the
self to time and, finally, to ask in what sense the Formless Self is a
self. Broaching the question of how the self came historically to be
related to time in Western philosophy, we can perhaps begin with
Kant who moved the focus on time away from the realm of na­
ture and the concomitant em phasis on time measurement. Actu­
ally, he did not move it away from the realm of nature, but
redefined "nature" as the totality of appearances {Inbegriff der Er-
scheinungen). Thus, time becomes the form of inner sensibility, the
form of our awareness of all internal experience and indirectly the
form of all experience whatsoever. When he states that the "I
Nishitani 163

think" m ust be able to accompany all consciousness, he estab­

lished the definitive link betw een time and consciousness w ith­
out specifying just w hat the nature of this "accompanying" was.
It was Husserl w ho in the lectures entitled "The Phenomenology
of Internal Time Consciousness" gave phenomenological descrip­
tions of time not as the form of consciousness, b u t as the actual
occurrence of consciousness. These lectures were edited by H ei­
degger w ho then w ent on to establish the link between time and
being. The question of the m eaning of being thus usurped the
place of the question of the self which then never became and
never could become a separate issue for him. H um an being was
being-there (Da-sein), replaced in the later thought by the term
"mortals."
In Buddhism, there is no alignm ent of the self w ith time nor
can the self be considered as a separate entity. Self is no-self (anat-
man, muga). Thus, neither time nor the self mean w hat they do in
Western thought. In m odern Western thought, both in literature
as well as in philosophy, the concept of a stream of consciousness
comes roughly to stand for both time and the self. If time is not
conceived objectively as time measurement, as clock time, it
moves closer to our subjective, psychological "sense" of time.
Buddhism has no such bifurcation of the subjective and the objec­
tive. Thus, time cannot be thought in those terms either. Nor can
the self, strange as that m ay sound. The self is nothing subjective.
How is such an outrageous assertion possible?
Because it is fundam entally no-thing, the self may be said to
be the boundless possibility to become all things. H um an being is
this possibility to an em inent degree.

We set the self out in array and make that the whole
world. You m ust see all the various things of the whole
w orld as so many times.65

What does it mean, to set the self out in array? The self has no
form; it is no-thing. Thus, it is intrinsically capable of ecstasis, of
i64 The Formless Self

getting outside itself, of opening itself out to become all things.

This is the dead opposite of re-flection, of bending back into itself
and so encapsulating itself. This is also ultimately the fundam en­
tal meaning of exertion and also of impeding. I cannot exert any­
thing but myself. And Dogen states that a thing only im pedes
itself, never anything else.

Reaching is im peded by reaching and is not im peded by

not-reaching. Not-reaching is im peded by not-reaching
and is not im peded by reaching. M ind im pedes m ind
and sees m ind, w ord im pedes w ord and sees w ord, im ­
peding im pedes itself and sees itself. Im peding impedes
im peding—that is time.66

W hen a thing impedes itself, it takes a form and becomes

manifest. Before it took on form, it was formless. Formlessness or
em ptiness can only become manifest in unison w ith form. Time
is, so to speak, the dynamic ''functioning" of emptiness, its pow er
of articulating itself into form.

On a Portrait of Myself
Cold lake, for thousands of yards, soaks up sky color.
Evening quiet: a fish of brocade scales reaches bottom, then goes
first this way, then that way; arrow notch splits.
Endless waters surface moonlight brilliant.67
With regard to the question in w hat sense a Formless Self can be a
self, we would in conclusion be able to reply that if selfhood is not
to be conceived egotistically as a separate self opposed and hos­
tile to everything other than itself, formlessness offers an eminent
possibility of rethinking selfhood. Overcoming and abandoning
its anxious sense of itself as an encapsulated separate "I," the self
gains the w ondrous freedom and openness to emerge in joyous
compassion from the shackles of its self-imposed boundaries.

165
 \N o te s

C h a p t e r 1: Dögen
1. Hee-Jin Kim, Flowers of Emptiness, (Lewiston, NY: The Edwin
Mellen Press, 1985).
2. D. T. Suzuki, The Essence of Buddhism (Kyoto: Bunko, 1948), p. 65.
3. L udw ig W ittgenstein, Traktatus Logico-Philosophicus (London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958), p. 150.
4. Wittgenstein, Traktatus, p. 56.
5. Ibid., p. 51.
6. Ibid.
7. Dogen Kigen, Mystical Realist (Tucson: University of Arizona
Press, 1975), p. 221.
8. Kim, Flowers of Emptiness, p. 197.
9. Francis Cook, How to Raise an Ox (Los Angeles, CA: Center Pub­
lications, 1978), p. 55.
10. Kim, Flowers of Emptiness, p. 201.
11. Muchu-setsumu (Dreams within Dreams), quoted in Kim, Mystical
Realist, p. 113.
12. Ibid., p. 273.
13. Ibid., p. 276.
14. Kazuaki Tanahashi, ed., Moon in a Dewdrop (San Francisco:
North Point Press, 1985), p. 162. "Only Buddha and Buddha" (Yuibutsu
Yobutsu).
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid., p. 164.

167
i68 Notes to Chapter 1

18. Ibid.
19. Ibid., p. 167.
20. Norman Waddell and Abe Masao, trans., "Buddha-nature," The
Eastern Buddhist 8, no. 2:100-1.
21. Ibid., p. 101.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid., p. 108.
24. Ibid., pp. 111-12.
25. Philosophical Studies ofJapan, vol. Ii, 1960, p. 93.
26. Eastern Buddhist, 10, no. 1:10.
27. Ibid., p. 12.
28. "Buddha-nature/' Eastern Buddhist, 9, no. 1:90.
29. Eastern Buddhist, 7, no. 2:100.
30. Ibid., pp. 102-4.
31. Ibid., p. 105.
32. Ibid., p. 91.
33. Ibid., p. 104.
34. "Uji," Eastern Buddhist, 12, no. 1:116.
35. Kim, "Uji," in Flowers of Emptiness (see n. 1 above), p. 229.
36. Norman Waddell and Abe Masao, trans., "Genjo-koan," Eastern
Buddhist 5, no. 2:134-35.
37. Ibid., p. 125.
38. Ibid., p. 136.
39. D iscussed in "Koky," (The Primordial Mirror) (Tokyo: Naka-
yama, 1983), vol. 3, p. 45.
40. Ibid., p. 38.
41. As a college student, I w as assigned to read Levy-Bruhl. When I
read that for primitive man everything w as alive, my first thought was:
one could never be alone.
42. Tanahashi, ed., "Mountains and Waters Sutra," in Moon in a
Dewdrop, pp. 97-8.
43. Tanahashi, ed., "Only Buddha knows Buddha," in Moon in a
Dewdrop, p. 161.
44. Ibid., pp. 151-52.
45. Ibid., p. 162.
46. Wiinschbarkeiten.
47. Ibid.
Notes to Chapter 2 (69

48. Ibid.
49. Ibid., p. 167.

C h a p t e r 2: Hisamatsu

1. Eastern Buddhist 4, no. 2:94.

2. Dögen, "Admonitions for Zazen" (Zazenshin), in Hee-Jin Kim,
Flowers of Emptiness, p. 157.
3. Jbirf., p. 98.
4. Meister Eckhart, Sermons and Treatises, vol. 2, M. O'C. Walshe
trans. (Dorset: Element Books, 1987), p. 273.
5. Ibid., pp. 273-74.
6. Ibid., p. 99.
7. Julius Caesar (N ew York: Macmillan, 1949).
8. Richard De Martino, interpreter, Eastern Buddhist 5, no. 2:110.
9. Ibid., p. 119.
10. Ibid., p. 120.
11. Martino, Eastern Buddhist 6, no. 2:89.
12. Ibid., p. 95.
13. Ibid., p. 99.
14. Ibid., p. 102.
15. Ibid., p. 108.
16. Ibid., p. 111.
17. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Norman Kemp Smith, trans. (N ew
York: St. Martin's Press, 1965), p. 295.
18. Ibid., p. 93.
19. Hisamatsu, "The Characteristics of Oriental Nothingness," in
Philosophical Studies ofJapan Ii (1960):67.
20. Ibid., p. 32.
21. Wilson Van Dusen, "The Mystery of Ordinary Experiencing," in
The Meeting of the Ways (N ew York: Schocken Books, 1979), p. 68.
22. Hisamatsu, Oriental Nothingness, p. 83.
23. Ibid., p. 87.
24. Kogetsu Tani and Eido Tai Shimano, Zen Wort Zen Schrifl
(Zürich: Theseus Verlag, 1990), p. 156.
25. Hoseki Shin'ichi Hisamatsu, Die Fülle des Nichts, Takashi Hirata
and Johanna Fischer, trans. (Pfullingen: N eske Verlag, 1984), p. 19.
 Notes to Chapter 3

26. 80 d. Phaedo (Plato)

27. Hisamatsu, Die Fülle des Nichts, p. 40.
28. Ibid., p. 41.
29. Shin'ichi Hisamatsu, Zen and the Fine Arts (N ew York: Kodansha
International, 1974), p. 19.
30. Ibid., p. 30.
31. Ethics 11, def. 6; IV, Preface.
32. Hisamatsu, Zen and the Fine Arts, p. 31.
33. Ibid., p. 45.
34. Ibid., p. 48.
35. ibid., p. 49.
36. /bid., pp. 49-50.
37. Ibid., p. 51.
38. /bid.
39. Toshihiko Izutsu, Toward a Philosophy of Zen Buddhism (Boulder,
CO: 1982), p. 153.
40. Kim, Flowers of Emptiness, p. 298.
41. Ibid., p. 299.
42. Izutsu, Philosophy of Zen, p. 141.
43. Ibid., p. 171.
44. Ibid., p. 131.
45. Ibid., p. 212.
46. John Welwood and Ken Wilber, "On Ego Strength and Egoless­
ness," in The Meeting ofthe Ways (New York: Schocken Books, 1979), p. 109.
47. Ibid.
48. Quoted in John W elwood, "Meditation and the Unconscious,"
in The Meeting of the Ways, p. 15.
49. Ibid., p. 151.
50. Ibid., p. 160.
52. Smith, trans., Critique of Pure Reason, B316, A 262.
53. Welwood, The Meeting of the Ways, p. 169.

Chapter 3: N ish ita n i

1. Nishitani, The Self-Overcoming ofNihilism, trans. Graham Parkes
with Setsuko Aihara (Albany: State University of N ew York Press, 1990),
p .l.
Notes to Chapter 3 i 71

2. Ibid., p. 3.
3. Traceable back to Indian thought, m appo is the last and worst in
the series of world epochs.
4. Ibid., p. 97.
5. Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, Jan. Van Bragt, trans. (Berke­
ley: University of California, 1982), p. 4.
6. Nishitani, Nishida-Kitaro, Yanamoto Seisaka and James W.
H eisig, trans. (Berkeley: University of California, 1991), p. 112.
7. Ibid., p. 114.
8. Ennead VI, 4, Loeb Library, vol. 7, p. 317.
9. Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness (see ch. 3, n. 5), p. 154.
10. Ibid., p. 155.
11. Nishitani, Nishida Kitard, p. 102.
12. Eastern Buddhist 5, no. 2:133.
13. Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, pp. 199-200.
14. Paul Tillich, The Courage To Be (N ew Haven: Yale University
Press), 1959.
15. Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness (see ch. 3, n. 5), p. 216.
16. Eastern Buddhist 25, no. 1:61-62.
17. Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, p. 129.
18. Ibid., p. 130.
19. Ibid., p. 164.
20. Hisamatsu, Zen and the Fine Arts, p. 51.
21. Eastern Buddhist 15, no. 1:22.
22. Hisamatsu, "Ultimate Crisis and Resurrection," in Eastern Bud
dhist 8, no. 1:21-22.
23. Hisamatsu, "Zen: Its Meaning for M odem Civilization," in East
ern Buddhist 1, no. 1:32.
24. Eastern Buddhist 8, no. 1:14.
25. Eastern Buddhist 8, no. 2:50.
26. Eastern Buddhist 8, no. 2:52.
27. Ibid.
28. Eastern Buddhist, ibid., p. 40.
29. Eastern Buddhist 8, no. 2:14.
30. Eastern Buddhist 8, no. 2:64.
31. Eastern Buddhist 12, no. 1:4.
32. Eastern Buddhist 12, no. 1:5.
33. Eastern Buddhist 8, no. i:14.
17 2 Notes to Chapter 3

34. Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness(see ch. 3, n. 5), p. 266.

35. Theory in the sense o f "therein to see."
36. Eastern Buddhist 16, no. 1:55.
37. Eastern Buddhist 12, no. 1:4-5.
38. Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, p. 266.
39. Ibid.
40. Dogen, "Uji," Eastern Buddhist 12, no. 1:117.
41. Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, p. 267.
42. Dögen, "Uji," p. 119.
43. Ibid., p. 123.
44. Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, pp. 266-67.
45. Ibid., p. 245.
46. Religion and Nothingness, p. 259.
47. Ibid., p. 269.
48. Dogen, "Uji," p. 118.
49. Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness (see ch. 3, n. 5), p. 128.
50. Ibid., p. 149.
51. Ibid., p. 150.
52. Ibid., p. 164.
53. Ibid.
54. Hisamatsu, Zen and the Fine Arts, p. 12.
55. Ibid., p. 16.
56. Hisamatsu, Die Fülle des Nichts, p. 34.
57. Tanahashi, "Only Buddha and Buddha," p. 161.
58. Ibid.
59. Ibid., pp. 161-62.
60. Eastern Buddhist 8, no. 2:104.
61. Nishiyam a et al., trans., Shöbögenzö, vol. Ill (Tokyo: Nakayama,
1983), p. 89.
62. Ibid., p. 91.
63. Ibid.
64. Ibid., p. 91.
65. Dogen, "Uji," p. 117.
66. Ibid.
67. Tanahashi, ed., Moon in a Dewdrop, p. 127.
 C ^ In äex^ )

Abe, Masao, 181 Heidegger, 20,22,41,47,49,102,

Aristotle, 119,140 104,110,143,146,163
Articulation, 91-2 Herrigel, Eugen, 82
Hitler, 64
Beckett, Samuel, 121
Husserl, 89-90,110,163
Buddha-dharma, 45
Izutsu, Tashikiko, 89
Cartesian, Descartes, 22, 41, 75,
102-3,120 James, William, 94,110
Chuang-Tsu, 112 jijimuge, 67,69, 70
Cook, Francis, 6 Joyce, James, 19
Cusanus, 124 juhoi, 6,30, 32,35,116
DeMartino, Richard, 63—4, 66-7, Jung, ii, 92, 96
70-1 Kairos, 62
dialectic, 4 Kant, 32, 71,89, 96,115-6,162
Diamond Sutra, 67, 75,106,123 Kierkegaard, 47,102,141,150,162
Dostoevsky, 100 Kyöryaku, 12,16-17, 34
Eckhart, 4,58, 60,103-4,126 Laing, R.D., 94
F.A.S., 125 Leibniz, 116,125,153
Feuerbach, 12
Marcel, Gabriel, 47
Freud, 92, 96,120
Marx, Karl, 49,120
Gelassenheit, 4,59 Mozart, W.A., 15
gujin,5
Nagarjuna, 161
gyoji, 5 ,8 ,1 2
Nietzsche, 27,100-1,118,120-1,
Heart Sutra, 112 135,151,156
Hegel, 49, 62,119-20,130,138 nihilism, xi, 20,99-101,138

173
i 74 Index

nikon, 10,32,34 skandhas, 18,51

nirvana, 36 Socrates, 15
Nishida, Kitaro, 108-111 Spinoza, 81
no-mind, 55-7, 92,96-7 suchness, 4,18, 81-2
Suzuki, D.T., 2,126
ox-herding pictures, 21,129
person, 17,113,153 Tanabe, Hajime, 162
Plato, 18,30, 40,79,100,109, Taoism, Taoist, 4,126
118-140 temporality, 28
Plotinus, 35,109
Pure Land, 81,133,157 Ueda, Shizuteru, 126,129
uji, 8,12,17,31
Sakyamuni, 130,162 Upanishads, 20
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 2,47,49
satori, 85 Waddell, Norman, 148
Schelling, F.W., 64,120 Wittgenstein, 2
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 120 wu wei, 4
Shakespeare, 62
shinjindatsuraku, 2, 6 Zenki, 5, 7, 9,156