Heidegger

From: THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO HEIDEGGER
P240ff

9 Heidegger, Buddhism, and
deep ecology

Many commentators have remarked on the affinities between Heidegger’s
thought and East Asian traditions such as Vedanta, Mahayana
Buddhism, and Taoism.= In this essay, I shall examine critically
some aspects of the apparent rapport between Heidegger’s thought
and Mahayana Buddhism.. One reason for recent interest in Heidegger’s
thought and in Buddhism is that both are critical of and claim
to offer an alternative to the anthropocentrism and dualism that
some critics say is responsible for today’s environmental crisis.3
According to such critics, Western humankind is particularly
anthropocentric.
Regarding humanity as the source of all meaning, purpose,
and value, humans justify doing anything they want with the
natural world. Western humanity also thinks in terms of dualisms
and binary oppositions, such as mind versus body, reason versus
feeling, man versus nature, male versus female Those possessing
the “privileged” properties (mind, reason, man, male) allegedly have
the right to dominate those possessing the “inferior” properties
(body, feeling, nature, female). In an attempt to gain godlike security
and power for humankind, modern Western ideologies call for transforming
the earth into a titanic factory, thereby threatening to destroy
the biosphere on which all life depends.

In my critical examination of the presumed similarities between
Heidegger and Mahayana Buddhism, I shall focus particular attention
on the claim advanced both by Heidegger and by Buddhism:
that humans can learn to “let beings be” only by gaining insight into
the nothingness that pervades all things. Such insight, we are told,
spontaneously leads to the overcoming of anthropocentrism and dualism.
In what follows, I first touch on the mystical origins of
Heidegger’s idea of nothingness; then I examine, in turn, his early
Heidegger, Buddhism, and deep ecology 241
and later accounts of the role of nothingness in authentic human
existence. After some preliminary remarks about Heidegger’s interest
in Eastern thought, I examine the Buddhist conception of the
relation between enlightenment and the revelation of nothingness.
Then I compare what Heidegger and Mahayana Buddhism have to
say about the relation between authenticity or enlightenment and
insight into one’s own “nothingness.” Finally, I explore briefly the
extent to which these Heideggerean and Buddhist ideas are congruent
with the claims advanced by deep ecology, a version of radical
environmentalism.

EARLY HEIDEGGER ON NOTHINGNESS

The reader may be wondering how there can possibly be any philosophical
importance to the idea of nothingness. For the most part,
when we think of nothingness, we simply think of . . . nothing at all!
Nothingness, to our minds, is merely the absence of anything: sheer
lack, emptiness in a negative sense. Western thinkers who emphasized
the importance of nothingness have been primarily mystics
such as Meister Eckhart, the latter of whom greatly influenced
Heidegger’s writings. Eckhart insisted that “God” is far beyond our
conceptual categories, which are appropriate only for understanding
creatures. Instead of speaking of God in positive terms, it is better to
speak of Divine Nothingness.4 The Divine cannot be regarded as a
super entity existing somewhere else, but instead constitutes the
unconditioned openness or emptiness in which all things appear.
Meister Eckhart argued that humans are at one with this openness.
So lacking is any distinction between one’s soul and the Divine, in
fact, that one who is awakened to Divine Nothingness forgets all
about “God” and lives a life of releasement (Gelassenheit), moved
by compassion to free things from suffering.

Heidegger’s interest in mystics such as Eckhart was reflected in
his hopes of becoming a priest. After these hopes were dashed for
health reasons, Heidegger became a professional philosopher. Although
increasingly antagonistic toward Christianity, he nevertheless
continued to draw upon the insights of Christian mystics in his
philosophical writings. In particular, his notion that human existence
is the openness, clearing, or nothingness in which things can
manifest themselves is deeply indebted to mysticism. For mystics,
the “self” is not an entity that stands opposed in a dualistic way to
other entities. Instead, it is the clearing in which entities (including
thoughts, feelings, perceptions, objects, others) appear. The idea that
humans are not entities but the clearing in which entities appear
eventually helped Heidegger overcome not only dualism, but also
anthropocentrism, the attitude that humankind is the source of all
value and that all things must serve human interests. By maintaining
that humans are authentic only when they let a thing manifest
itself in ways consistent with its own possibilities, not merely in
accordance with its instrumental value, Heidegger countered the
anthropocentrism of much of Western thought. In examining his
conception of nothingness, let us turn first to his early writings,
particularly Being and Time (1927). Later, we shall consider the role
of nothingness in his later (post- 935 ) writings.

The mystical notion of nothingness is at work in Being and Time,
despite the fact that it is disguised in the complex vocabulary of
philosophers like Kant. Following Kant, Heidegger asked the following
sort of question: How is it possible for humans to understand
entities as entities? To answer this question, he distinguished between
the human understanding of things and the understanding we
ascribe to animals. Birds are clearly able to apprehend entities; otherwise,
they could not build nests or feed their young. But, so
Heidegger argued, birds and other animals are not able to notice
explicitly that things are.5 Presumably, birds don’t step back from
their work to say, “Now that is a fine nest I’m building!” Moreover,
we assume that birds don’t have identity crises ; they don’t ask,
“Why am I here and what will become of me? Who am I?” We
humans understand ourselves and other things as entities, that is, as
things that are. Early Heidegger concentrated on the human capacity
for understanding the being of entities, a capacity revealed in our
ability to use the verb “to be” in so many different ways.

Normally, philosophers conceive of understanding as a faculty of
the “mind,” the “thinking thing” that attempts to comprehend extramental
“things.” Heidegger, however, sharply criticized the Cartesian
epistemological tradition, which conceived of humans as selfconscious
substances, or as worldless subjects standing over against
objects. Drawing on his study of Eckhart and other mystics, as well
as on Kant, Heidegger maintained instead that the human being is
not a thing but rather a peculiar kind of nothingness: the temporal-
linguistic clearing, the opening, the absencing in which things can
present themselves and thus “be.” If humans are not things, then we
have to define “knowing” in a different way than before. Knowing is
not a relation between two things, mind and object. Rather, knowing
occurs because the openness constituting human existence is configured
in terms of the three temporal dimensions: past, present, future.
These dimensions hold open the horizons on which entities
may manifest themselves in determinate ways — for example, as instruments,
objects, or persons. Heidegger’s talk of the a priori character
of the temporal horizons of human existence is analogous to
Kant’s talk of the a priori categories of the human understanding.

Human understanding, then, does not take place inside a mind
locked in the skull. Instead, understanding occurs because human
temporality is receptive to particular ways in which things can
present or manifest themselves. Here it is important to emphasize
that what we ordinarily take to be the ultimate constituents of
“thind” — thoughts, beliefs, assertions, and so on — are for Heidegger
phenomena that occur within the temporal clearing constitutive of
human understanding. Hence, minds do not make thoughts possible;
rather, a priori human understanding of being makes it possible
for us to encounter and to conceive of ourselves as “minds” with
“thoughts” separated from the “external world.” For Heidegger,
“thoughts” are not radically other than allegedly external entities,
such as trees, cars, and books. Thoughts and cars are both entities
manifesting themselves within and thus being understood as entities
within the temporal clearing of human existence.

Just as in the case of “understanding,” Heidegger defined “being”
in a different way than most other philosophers. Traditionally, philosophers
have defined the “being” of an entity as its ground or
substance, that which provides the “foundation” for the thing. Plato
called this foundation the eternal form of things; Aristotle, their
substance; medieval theologians, their Creator. Refusing to conceive
of being as a kind of superior entity, an eternal foundation, ground,
cause, or origin for things, Heidegger argued that for something “to
be” means for it to disclose or to present itself. For this presencing
(Anwesen) or self-manifesting to occur, there must be a clearing, an
opening, an emptiness, a nothingness, an absencing (Abwesen). Human
existence constitutes the openness necessary for the presencing
(being) of entities to take place. When such presencing occurs
through the openness that I am, I encounter an entity as an entity;
that is, I understand what it is. Heidegger used the term “Dasein” to
name this peculiar receptivity of human existence for the being
(selfmanifesting)
of entities. In German, da means “here” or “there,”
while sein is the German verb “to be.” Hence, Dasein means the
place in which being occurs, the openness in which presencing transpires.
For Heidegger, neither temporality (absencing, nothingness)
nor being (presencing, self-manifesting) is an “entity.” Rather, they
are the conditions necessary for entities to appear as such. We never
“see” time or “touch” the presencing of things ; rather, we see and
touch the things that manifest or present themselves.

In the light of these remarks, the significance of the title of
Heidegger’s major work, Being and Time, becomes comprehensible.
His aim here was to study the internal relationship between being
and time. Because being and time, presencing and absencing, manifestness
and nothingness lack any phenomenal or empirical properties,
they seem to be “nothing” in the merely negative sense of an
“empty vapor” (Nietzsche). For Heidegger, however, presencing and
absencing “are” that which is most worthy of thinking.

What evidence, we might ask, is there for the claim that humans
are really this temporal nothingness through which entities can
manifest themselves and thus “be”? To answer this question, Heidegger
appealed in part to an argument taken from Kant: the best
way of accounting for the possibility of our understanding of entities
is to postulate that we humans simply are the temporal openness or
nothingness in which entities can appear as entities. In addition to
such an argument, however, Heidegger maintained that the mood of
anxiety reveals the nothingness lying at the heart of human existence.
While contending that anxiety is perhaps the most basic human
mood, he also observed that it is such a disquieting mood that
we spend most of our lives trying to keep it from overtaking us. Our
unreflective absorption in the practices of everyday life — family
relations,
schooling, job activities, entertainment — keep us distracted
enough that we manage to conceal from ourselves the weirdness of
being human. Anxiety tears us out of everyday absorption in things ;
it reveals them to be useless in the face of the radical mortality,
finitude, and nothingness at the heart of human existence.

Why is human existence weird? Because humans are not things,
but the clearing in which things appear. Although we are not fixed
things, we define ourselves as if we were simply a more complex
version of the things we encounter in the world: rational animals.
Ordinarily, we identify ourselves with our thoughts, beliefs, feelings,
attitudes, memories, bodies, material possessions, and so on. Such
identification gives us a sense of stability and permanence, which
covers up the essential groundlessness and emptiness of human existence.
There is no ultimate “reason” for our doing what we do. We
have to postulate our own reasons for doing what we do ; we invent
our own identities, although those identities to a great extent are
determined in advance by social practices and norms that have
evolved hiytorically. Moreover, as groundless nothingness, humans
are essentially dependent and receptive, finite and mortal. The mood
of anxiety is so disturbing because it reveals that “at bottom” we are
nothingness, that our existence is ultimately groundless, and that
we are essentially finite and mortal. In the face of such disclosures,
little wonder that most people flee from the mood of anxiety.

Early Heidegger claimed, however, that if we submit resolutely to
what the mood of anxiety wants to reveal to us, we become authentic
(eigentlich) in the sense of “owning” our mortal existence. As
authentic, we assume responsibility for being the mortal openness
that we already are. Assuming such responsibility is essential to
human freedom. Instead of existing in a constricted manner — as
egos with firm identities — we allow the temporal openness that we
are to expand. This expansion allows things and other humans to
manifest themselves in more complex, complete, and novel ways,
rather than as mere objects or instruments for our ends. 6 Conversely,
by fleeing from anxiety into everyday practices and distractions, we
conceal the truth about our own mortal nothingness and are thus
incapable of allowing things to manifest themselves primordially.
What early Heidegger says about authenticity may be compared to
the famous Zen story about the “stages” of enlightenment. Before
enlightenment occurs, mountains are mountains ; at the moment of
enlightenment, mountains cease being mountains ; but then mountains
become mountains once again. Zen enlightenment, satori, involves
direct insight into one’s radical groundlessness and nothingness.
In the light of such a revelation, everyday practices (including
working and eating) lose their meaning. Afterward, however, one
reenters these practices, but in a way no longer burdened by ignorance
about what it means to be human. Likewise for Heidegger,
before becoming authentic one exists in accord with everyday practices
; upon allowing anxiety to reveal one’s utter groundlessness and
nothingness, everyday practices slide away into meaninglessness ;
afterward, one takes up everyday practices once again, but not in a
merely conformist manner.7

Instead, being authentic means being free to invigorate and to
transform practices in light of the realization of their utter
groundlessness.
As groundless, things could be otherwise than they are at
present. It is important to note, however, that for Heidegger freedom
did not mean boundless license for the ego, but instead the capacity
for human Dasein to “let things be” in ways other than as mere
instruments for the ego. As the Zen tradition puts it, being enlightened
means chopping wood and carrying water — but in a manner
attuned to the presencing of things as it occurs beyond the dualism
of “mind” and “body.”

Heidegger’s notion that humans are most free when they “let
beings be” has been taken up as a slogan by some radical environmentalists,
who object to treating nature merely as an instrument
for human ends. Early Heidegger suggested that the instrumental
disclosure of things played a primary role in human existence. 8 Later,
however, he concluded that such instrumentalism was in fact a
historical feature of Western history that began with the Greeks and
culminated in the technological disclosure of things as nothing but
raw material for human ends. Moreover, his early instrumentalism
was intimately bound up with his twofold attempt to overcome the
mind—body dualism that — especially in its scientific version — gave
rise to the alienation at work in modern society.

One phase in this attempt involved conceiving of humans not as
minds in skulls but rather as the temporal clearing or nothingness in
which thoughts and trees, beliefs and cars can appear as entities. The
other phase in overcoming dualism involved challenging those who
privileged theoretical assertions and abstract knowledge over against
pragmatic activity. Instead of conceiving of humans as worldless intellects
making abstract assertions about external objects, Heidegger
defined humans as being always already involved in myriad practices
that utilize many different things. These things do not manifest themselves
abstractly as “objects,” but instead as tools involved in a complex
set of relationships that constitute the “world” of human existence.
Human existence, temporally oriented toward the future, is
Heidegger, Buddhism, and deep ecology 247
always pressing forward into possibilities opened up within the
world. The practical involvements and practices of everyday life precede
and make possible the theoretical knowledge so prized by philosophers.
Heidegger emphasized the practical dimension of human
existence by defining the very being of Dasein as “care.” To be human
means to be concerned about things and to be solicitous toward other
people.

While early Heidegger sometimes spoke as if the “objectifying”
tendencies of modernity were a result of humanity’s intrinsic tendency
to conceal deeper truths, he later concluded that the objectifying
scientific view did not result from any human decision or weakness,
but was instead a proper part of the technological disclosure of
entities, a disclosure that was itself a dimension of the “destiny of
being.” The famous “turn” in Heidegger’s thinking occurred when
he concluded that he could no longer conceive of being in terms of
human understanding, but instead had to conceive of human understanding
as an aspect of being itself.

LATER HEIDEGGER’S CONCEPTION OF
NOTHINGNESS

Following Kant, early Heidegger sometimes spoke of Dasein’s temporal
openness as if it were a faculty or capacity of humankind. And he
often spoke as if the being of entities were somehow a function of
human Dasein’s understanding. Moreover, he depicted anxiety primarily
as a personal phenomenon that called individuals to a less
constricted way of understanding things. Later Heidegger altered
these views. Ceasing to speak of temporality or nothingness as a
dimension of human existence, he made clear that human temporality
arises within a more encompassing “openness” or “region” that
cannot be reduced to anything merely human. Later Heidegger emphasized
that human existence is appropriated as the site for the
self-disclosure or “being” of entities. Instead of conceiving of being
from the perspective of human Dasein, then, Heidegger began
“thinking” being in its own terms. This move was central to his
attempt to abandon any remaining anthropocentrism discernible in
his earlier work. In this connection, he concluded that “inauthenticity,”
that is, understanding things in a superficial and constricted
way, was not a problem of individuals, but a widespread social phenomenon
resulting from the self-concealment of being. The technological
disclosure of entities, then, arose not because individuals
were unable to endure anxiety, but instead because, since around
Plato’s time, being as such had increasingly withdrawn itself from
human view. Correlatively, Western humanity was blinded to the
fact that human existence is the clearing for the being of entities.
Hence, Western humanity increasingly came to understand itself as
a peculiar entity — the clever animal — driven to dominate all other
entities for the sake of gaining power and security. Heidegger argued
that the emergence of the technological age in the twentieth century
was the inevitable result of the clever animals’ craving for power.

>From Heidegger’s viewpoint in the thirties, Western humanity
could be saved from technological nihilism only if Germany were
granted another encounter with being and nothingness that was as
powerful as the beginning granted to the ancient Greeks. Such an
encounter, so he mistakenly believed, would be made possible by
National Socialism, which revealed that the highest obligation and
possibility of humanity were not to be the master of entities, but
instead to be the historical clearing necessary for entities to manifest
themselves in ways other than merely as flexible raw material.9
Heidegger insisted that such a new beginning would require that
humanity cease regarding itself as the lord and master, or the
“ground,” of entities. A transformed humanity would acknowledge
its radically receptive, dependent, mortal, and finite status, thereby
allowing itself to be appropriated (ereignet) as the site required for
the presencing or being of entities to occur. Only in this way could
humanity learn to “let beings be,” that is, to allow things to manifest
themselves in accordance with their own limits instead of in
accordance with the limits imposed on them by scientific constructs
and technological projects. Heidegger eventually concluded that the
historical reality of National Socialism betrayed its “inner truth and
greatness” by promoting a particularly virulent version of the technological
disclosure of things, instead of opening up a new phase of
Western history. Heidegger’s lifelong refusal to renounce unambiguously
his own “authentic” version of National Socialism is a source
of concern for students of his thought.

The fact that modern humanity came to regard itself as the ground
or foundation for entities resulted not from human decision, Heidegger
maintained, but instead from the self-concealment of being itself.
Plato conceived of being not as the dynamic presencing of entities,
but rather as the eternally present, unchanging blueprint,
form (eidos), or model for things in the realm of becoming. By conceiving
of being as the permanently present grounding for entities,
Plato initiated the 2,500-year history of metaphysics. Heidegger
sought to transform this history by revealing that there is no eternal
or final “ground” for things, that in fact what we mean by “being” is
always shaped by historical factors.

The Romans gave a crucial twist to the metaphysical tradition by
depicting the metaphysical ground as that which “causes” things to
come into being. Henceforth, metaphysics became concerned primarily
with telling the story of where things came from, how they were
produced or created. Appropriating the metaphysical tradition, medieval
theologians argued that for something “to be” meant for it to be
created (produced) and preserved by the supreme entity, the Creator of
biblical faith. In early modern times, human reason arrogated to itself
the divine role as the ground of entities. Beginning with Descartes,
Western humanity began to encounter entities as objects for the selfcertain
rational subject. For something to be meant for it to be capable
of being represented — measured, quantified, known — by the subject.
Modern science forced entities to reveal themselves only in accordance
with theoretical presuppositions consistent with Western humanity’s
ever-increasing drive to gain control of everything. While
during the industrial age the achievement of such control could be
described as a means for the end of improving the human estate,
during the technological era — which may be said to have commenced
with the horrors of World War I — humanity itself has become a means
to an end without purpose: the quest for power for its own sake, which
Heidegger described as the sheer “Will to Will.”

Later Heidegger differentiated his own meditations on being from
theological and scientific accounts that search for the “causes” of
things. He focused instead on the manifestness by virtue of which
entities can first be encountered and only subsequently interpreted
in terms of theoretical categories such as cause and effect, ground
and consequent. He insisted that human reason cannot “ground” or
“explain” the sheer presencing of things. Following the German
mystic Angelius Silesius, he spoke of such acausal origination by
saying, “The rose is without why; it blooms because it blooms” (SG
101-2). Moreover, later Heidegger also concluded that the “clear
ing” necessary for the self-manifesting of entities cannot be understood
in terms of the Kantian model of the “temporal ecstases” of
human existence. Rather, he argued that the clearing is constituted
by a “thing” — whether natural or artifactual — that gathers mortals
and gods, earth and sky into a kind of cosmic dance which frees up
the inherent luminosity of things. The “world” constitutes itself by
virtue of the spontaneous coordination or mutual appropriation of
the appearances that arise — un-caused, from “no-thing” — moment
by moment. Later Heidegger used the term logos to name this mutual
coordination of appearances ; hence, his claim that language
(logos) lets things be. This account of the self-organization of uncaused
appearances, which is close to Taoism, also provides the key
to Heidegger’s proximity to Mahayana Buddhism.

HEIDEGGER AND EASTERN THOUGHT:
PRELIMINARY REMARKS

We know of Heidegger’s debt to Meister Eckhart, whose writings
reveal many congruences with Buddhism and other East Asian traditions.
,. And Heidegger himself was interested in Buddhism and Taoism.
In one essay, for example, he noted the resonances between the
Chinese term tao and his own notion of Ereignis, the “event of
appropriation”
that claims humanity as the site for the self-manifesting of
entities. Such appropriation would change the course of Western history
by freeing humanity from its compulsion to dominate things
through technical means and by freeing humanity to adhering to the
self-concealing “way” of things themselves (OWL 92; US i98). In fact,
so intrigued was Heidegger by Taoism that he spent most of the summer
in 1946 working with a Chinese student, Paul Shih-yi Hsiao,
translating portions of the Tao Te Ching. 11 Otto POggeler, one of
Heidegger’s ablest commentators, reports that as early as 1930, to
help settle a dispute on the nature of intersubjectivity, Heidegger
cited a famous passage from Chuang-Tsu.12 And William Barrett reports
the possibly apocryphal story that upon reading one of D. T.
Suzuki’s books on Buddhism, Heidegger exclaimed that Suzuki
voiced what Heidegger had been trying to say all along.’3 The fact that
the Japanese have published seven translations of Being and Time
gives credence to the idea that there is an important relation between
Heidegger’s thought and Buddhism.’14

Those skeptical of the East Asian influence on Heidegger’s
thought point out his insistence that the “new beginning” that he
envisioned for the West could arise only from the West itself, since
it was in ancient Greece that there arose the “first beginning,”
which culminated in the technological disclosure of all things —
including humans — as flexible raw material. In 1966 Heidegger
said that the transformation of the technological impulse “cannot
happen because of any takeover by Zen Buddhism or any other
Eastern experience of the world. . . . Thinking itself can only be
transformed by a thinking which has the same origin and calling”
(OGSU 281 ; Sp 214-17).

In making such a distinction between East and West, Heidegger
not only tended to downplay the impact of Eastern thinking on the
German philosophical tradition (beginning with Leibniz and continuing
through Nietzsche), but also seemed to be thinking metaphysically
in accordance with a binary opposition between “East”
and “West,” an opposition that seems to privilege the West as the
origin of the technological disclosure of things that now pervades
the planet.15 Nevertheless, in calling for another beginning that
would displace the Western metaphysical quest for the ultimate
ground of things, Heidegger questioned the validity of the West’s
claim to cultural superiority. Belief in such superiority hinges on the
conviction that Western rationality, especially as manifested in science
and technology, constitutes the ground for things: to be means
to be a representation for the rational subject. In deconstructing
metaphysical foundationalism, however, Heidegger revealed the
groundlessness not only of rationality, but also of the historical project
of mastery based on such rationality.

Heidegger maintained that, despite pretensions to the contrary,
Western humanity never had control over its own destiny, including
the rise of planetary technology. If such technology arises from
trends in Western history, one might well make the case that it can
best be “thought” in terms of Western discourse. While Heidegger
himself believed that his own thinking could be enriched by his
encounter with Eastern thinking, he also maintained that radically
different kinds of languages forced Western and Eastern peoples to
live in different “houses of being.” His dialogue with the Japanese
thinker and his incomplete translation of Tao Te Ching were efforts
to bridge this linguistic gap. Before moving further into our examina
tion of the Heidegger—Buddhism relation, we must pause to consider
major features of Mahayana Buddhism, especially its idea of absolute
nothingness.

THE BUDDHIST CONCEPTION OF NOTHINGNESS

Buddhism is a cosmological, psychological, and religious system
which maintains that salvation arises from insight into the truth
about reality. According to Mahayana Buddhism, the truth is that
all things — including humans — arise moment by moment without
causation, hence from absolute “nothingness” or emptiness, sunyata.
Despite the apparent “solidity” of the phenomena we encounter,
they are impermanent and “empty.” So long as humans conceive
of themselves as permanent things (such as egos), suffering
ensues from the craving, aversion, and delusion associated with
trying to make the impermanent permanent. Insight into the play
of phenomena-arising-in-nothingness reveals that the ego, too, is
impermanent and empty, merely a series of transient phenomena to
which we assign the names “I” and “me.” We suffer because we
attempt to make the nothingness or emptiness that we “are” into a
solid and enduring thing (an ego) that needs defending.

As opposed to the usual Western conception of nothingness as the
absence of being or as mere chaotic negativity, Buddhists speak of
absolute nothingness, sunyata. The Sanksrit word “sunyata” is derived
from a term meaning “to swell.” Something that looks swollen
is hollow or empty on the inside. One commentator has noted that
“this relationship is made still clearer by the fact that the mathematical
symbol for zero was originally none other than the symbol for
sunyata. ” “Swelling also calls to mind pregnancy, a fact that suggests
reading sunyata in some sense as a generative source that, because it
transcends all categories that apply to ordinary phenomena, cannot
be said either to cause or not to cause anything. Commentators sometimes
speak of absolute nothingness — which transcends the polarities
of being and nonbeing, cause and effect, subject and object, time
and eternity, finitude and infinity — as the groundless ground, the
unconditioned “origin” of all phenomena. This view of sunyata became
important in Chinese Buddhism, influenced as it was by the
notion of the Tao as the groundless ground of things.

However, a crucial Indian Buddhist thinker, Nagarjuna (c. 400
A.D.), warned that conceiving of absolute nothingness as such a
transcendental origin would lead to a metaphysics of sunyata and,
inevitably, to a new kind of dualism.’? According to Mahayana Buddhism,
overcoming all forms of dualism is a necessary condition for
emancipation from the suffering brought about by experiencing the
world as divided into ego-subject and objects. In combating such
dualism, Nagarjuna emphasized anatma, the doctrine that there is
no essence, core, or substance to things. According to this doctrine,
all things arise together simultaneously and are radically codependent
in the sense of mutually defining one another. This insight
regarding internal relatedness or interdependent causation (pratitya
samutpada in Sanskrit) not only undermines the notion of individual
“substances” or “selves,” but also rejects the dualistic idea that
“sentience” is a capacity enabling some entities to “perceive” others.
Entities are not perceived “by” the mind, but instead “perception”
and “entity” are different ways of describing a unitary cosmic
event of luminosity or self-manifesting, an event that cannot be
understood as merely “mental.” When we no longer experience the
world dualistically as a collection of separate objects perceived by
the mind, but instead as a moment-by-moment manifestation of
interrelated phenomena, then we experience the whole universe as
sentient, as inherently luminous.. 8

The most famous metaphorical expression of this insight, advanced
by the Hua-yen school, is the jewel net of the god Indra. Into
this infinite net, representing the universe, are set an infinite number
of perfect gems, each of which reflects the light given off by all the
other gems throughout the expanse of the net. The play of reflected
light is codetermined simultaneously by all the gems, no one of
which stands in a “superior” or “causal” relation to the others. Mahayana
Buddhism holds that the phenomenal world is akin to such an
interplay of reflected appearances, in which each thing is aware of its
relation to all other things. These appearances have no ground ; there
is nothing “behind” what appears, no substantial “ground” or “essence”
to cause them. All things arise together in an internally cosmic
event of reflection, which is sentient though not usually selfconscious.
Based on the insight that all appearances are ultimately
empty, Mahayana Buddhists draw the conclusion that form is emptiness
and emptiness is form, a paradoxical conclusion whose “proof”
demands direct insight, which argument alone cannot provide.

The doctrine of the radical emptiness of all forms, derived from the
doctrine of dependent coproduction, suggests that every form, every
phenomenon, has equal worth. Since there are no essences, there is no
hierarchy of phenomenal reality ; hence, no one thing is subordinate
to or lesser than any other. Each thing is uniquely itself, like a
particular
jewel reflecting the play of all other jewels in the cosmic phenomenal
play arising as temporary-form-within-absolute-emptiness. Insight
into the interdependency of all things reveals the falsehood of
anthropocentrism: humans are not radically different from or better
than other beings, but instead are moments in the play of phenomena.

If all things are internally related, there is no internal “substance”
or “core” of entities, including humans. Human suffering
(dukha) arises because people posit and identify with a substantial,
unchanging ego at the core of the flux of experience. By identifying
with this supposedly permanent self, we enter into the state of
ignorance known as subject—object dualism. Such dualism is characterized
by craving, aversion, and delusion, which combine to produce
suffering. From one perspective, of course, there do seem to be
individual things (including the ego) that are apparently connected
by causal relationships. Hence, we speak of the laws of cause and
effect at work among entities. From another perspective, however,
as David Loy points out, “every moment and experience is momentary,
uncaused because an end in itself, complete and lacking nothing.”
i9 Nothing “here” causes something else to happen “there.”
Attempts to explain how anything — including the self or the cosmos
— “originates” fails to comprehend the radicality of dependent
co-production. There is not even a “process” that “causes” one to
enter into illusion and suffering, nor can one “do” anything to free
oneself from illusion, for illusion already is enlightenment. There
is no better “place” at which one should hope to arrive. Ultimately,
there is no difference between nirvana and samsara: the nothingness
of the phenomenal world of suffering is the same as the nothingness
of nirvana. That is, form is emptiness, emptiness is form.
Recognition of this fact is said to be the source of the extraordinary
laughter that often accompanies satori, laughter that occurs when
one apprehends that all attempts to “transcend” the phenomenal
world in order to become “enlightened” are profoundly misguided.
The longed-for nirvana is not other than the world of everyday life,
although theoretical constructs prevent us from directly apprehending
this liberating insight.

According to Mahayana Buddhism, Gautama Buddha opposed the
traditional doctrine of the Upanishads and Vedas, according to
which eternal Atman, the unchanging Divine Self, permeates and
sustains things by constituting their ultimate essence, their true
“self.” For the Vedantic tradition, suffering ends only when one
overcomes dualism by ceasing to cling to the illusory ego and identifying
instead with the Absolute Self ; for Mahayana Buddhism, suffering
ends only when one overcomes dualism by ceasing to cling to
the illusory ego and recognizing that there is no Absolute Self either.
The conception of Buddhism as a life-denying tradition may be attributed
to those adherents of Hinayana Buddhism who conceived of
nirvana, the cessation of suffering, as being possible only for those
few individuals who followed the arduous process of deconstructing
the ego, encountering its emptiness, and thereby transcending the
illusions of the world of appearance. Mahayana Buddhism affirms
the possibility of and the need for saving all beings, since all “beings”
are internally related — hence, the increasingly active role
played by Mahayana Buddhists in the movement to protect nature
from human abuse.20

THE RELATION BETWEEN HEIDEGGER’S THOUGHT
AND MAHAYANA BUDDHISM

Heidegger’s thought is close to that of Mahayana Buddhism, particularly
Zen, in several respects. First, both maintain that inauthenticity
or suffering arises from conceiving of oneself in a constricted manner
as an isolated ego craving security, avoiding pain, and seeking distraction.
Both maintain that the “self” is not a thing, but rather the
openness or nothingness in which the incessant play of phenomena
can occur. Both criticize the dualistic view of the self as a cogitating
ego standing apart from the “external” world. Both emphasize that
the un-self-conscious nature of everyday practices reveals that people
are not separate from things, but are rather directly involved with
them. Human hands, diapers, the baby being cleaned up, the mixed
feelings of aversion and affection — all these are moments of the same
phenomenal event. No particular moment is privileged.

Second, both Heidegger and the Zen tradition maintain that once
one is released from the constricted self-understanding associated
with dualistic egocentrism, other people and things in the world no
longer appear as radically separate and threatening, but instead as
profoundly interrelated phenomena. Surrendering one’s constricted
ego-identity, and thus moving beyond dualism, enables one to become
the compassion (Buddhism) or care (Heidegger) that one always
already is. “Authenticity” (Heidegger) and “enlightenment”
(Buddhism), then, result from the insight into nondualism, the fact
that there are “not two,” neither an “ego-mind” here nor “objects”
there.

There is a difference between Heidegger’s early and later idea of
authenticity. Early Heidegger maintained that the moment of authenticity
required resoluteness, a decision to allow human temporality
to transform itself into a more radical openness for the selfmanifesting
of things. Later Heidegger, however, played down the
voluntaristic dimension discernible in resoluteness and conceived of
authenticity in terms of Gelassenheit, releasement from will. Interestingly,
similarities between these two ways of conceiving of
authenticity — as resoluteness and as releasement — are detectable in
the Rinzai and the Soto Zen traditions, respectively.21 Rinzai Zen
emphasizes resoluteness in the face of the ego’s resistance to
transformation,
while Soto Zen maintains that enlightenment can never
be willed but can only be cultivated by learning to “let things be” in
everyday life. The differences between the voluntarism of early
Heidegger and Rinzai Zen, on the one hand, and the “letting be” of
later Heidegger and Soto Zen, on the other, should not obscure their
shared belief that “authenticity” or “salvation” involves becoming
the nothingness that we already are, such that we are open for and
responsive to the phenomena that show up moment by moment in
everyday life.

While maintaining that one can never resolve to become authentic
or enlightened, however, both later Heidegger and the Soto Zen
master suggest that spiritual practices may help put one in the position
of a paradoxical “willingness not to will,” thereby preparing one
for the releasement that brings one into the world appropriately for
the first time… While we may be familiar with the Zen emphasis on
sitting meditation, proper breathing, and working with paradoxical
koans, we may be somewhat less familiar with later Heidegger’s
claim that releasement may be cultivated by meditative practices,
by proper breathing, and by contemplating paradoxical questions
(Heideggerean “koans”). All of these practices are designed to bring
one to the utter silence and stillness needed to become attuned to
the openness or nothingness pervading all things.23

Third, later Heidegger and Buddhism both discount the primacy of
causality in their account of “reality.” For Heidegger, the selfmanifesting
or presencing of entities cannot be explained in causal
terms. We can describe things in causal terms only after they have
first manifested themselves as things. Likewise for Buddhism, causality
is a conceptual scheme for relting phenomena, but these
phenomena themselves are not “cawed,” for all phenomena arise
simultaneously in mutual coproduction. Heidegger’s account of the
dance of earth and sky, gods and mortals, the dance in which things
manifest themselves in the event of mutual appropriation, bears
remarkable similarities to the Buddhist account of the moment-bymoment
coproduction of self-luminous phenomena. To some extent,
later Heidegger’s thought and Buddhism alike are both versions
of what we might call “phenomenalism.” For them, there is “nothing”
behind the appearances that constitute the furniture of our
worlds.

Fourth, later Heidegger’s cosmic dance is similar to Buddhism’s
cosmic coproduction. Mahayana Buddhism manifests cosmocentrism
by noting that enlightened humanity exhibits compassion
equally for all beings, not just for humans. Later Heidegger moved
closer to the cosmocentrism of Mahayana Buddhism and away from
his earlier anthropocentrism not only by calling for humanity to let
all beings be, but also by no longer conceiving of the “clearing” as a
human capacity or faculty. As I mentioned earlier, for later Heidegger,
it is not human existence that gathers together a world ; instead,
the “thing” gathers together the “Fourfold” of earth and sky, gods
and mortals. Dasein is a partner in a dance in which things impart to
one another their appropriate place.

Fifth, both Heidegger and the Zen master suggest that, when authentic
or enlightened, the “individual” exists beyond dualistic constraints,
including those imposed by the distinction between “good”
and “evil.” In many different traditions, mystics have said — in
effect — “Love God, and do what you will.” The danger here, of
course, is that a person may transgress moral boundaries when under
the illusion that he or she has become “enlightened” or “authentic.”
Heidegger seems to have been gripped by such an illusion during
his period of fascination with National Socialism.24 Zeal for the
mystical ideal of anarchy,25 which allegedly brings forth boundless
compassion, must be tempered by insight into humanity’s enormous
capacity for self-delusion.

Despite similarities, there are also important differences between
Heidegger’s thought and Mahayana Buddhism. Members of Japan’s
famous Kyoto school, such as Keiji Nishitani2 6 and Masao Abe,27
have offered the most extensive Buddhist discussions of the limits of
Heidegger’s thought. Nishitani and Abe are interested in Heidegger
partly because his rigorous meditation upon nothingness may help
to galvanize a Zen tradition that has become intellectually flabby. If
Zen practitioners are willing to learn from Heidegger, however,
Nishitana and Abe also suggest that Western proponents of his
thought learn from Zen experience regarding the futility of metaphysical
speculation.

Masao Abe argues that Heidegger, despite his interest in nothingness,
never arrived at “absolute nothingness” because even his
“meditative thinking” was still too connected with the metaphysical
tradition.2 8 Presumably, in the Zen Buddhist tradition someone
truly “enlightened” would no longer “think,” even in Heidegger’s
meditative manner, but would instead live a life without “goal” or
“purpose,” although a life of profound compassion as well. Heidegger’s
continued insistence on the importance of thinking also differentiates
him from Meister Eckhart. As Reiner Schiirmann points
out, “For Meister Eckhart geldzenheit as an attitude of man refers to
thought only secondarily. Primarily it is a matter of a way of life — a
life without representation of ends and purposes.”29

According to Masao Abe, what follows the direct experience of
absolute nothingness may be called Non-thinking to distinguish it
from the usual opposition between thinking and nonthinking Despite
his critique of Heidegger’s adherence to thinking, Masao Abe
warns that
***
because of its standpoint of Non-thinking, Zen has in fact not fully
realized
the positive and creative aspects of thinking and their significance which
have been especially developed in the West. Logic and scientific cognition
based on substantive objective thinking, and moral principles and ethical
realization based on Subjective practical thinking, have been very
conspicuous
in the West. In contrast to this, some of these things have been vague or
lacking in the world of Zen. [Hence, Zen’s] position in Not-thinking always
harbours the danger of degenerating into mere not-thinking.30
***
Masao Abe charges that in spite of Heidegger’s talk of nothingness,
his emphasis on human existence “does not necessarily lead
him to the completely dehomocentric, cosmological dimension
alone in which the impermanence of all beings in the universe is
fully realized.”3= Heidegger’s own student, Karl LOwith, also argued
that his mentor remained trapped within an anthropocentrism that
blinded him to the cosmocentrism of ancient Greek thinkers such as
Heraclitus.32 Nevertheless, later Heidegger’s notion of the “event of
appropriation” (Ereignis), which gathers mortals together into the
luminous cosmic dance with gods, earth, and sky, bears important
similarities to Buddhism’s mutual coproduction and Lao Tsu’s tao,
both of which are regarded as nonanthropocentric. Ereignis, sunyata,
tao: these may be different names for the acausal, spontaneous
arising and mutually appropriating play of phenomena. In suggesting
that Ereignis “gives” time and being, Heidegger opens himself to the
criticism that he is inventing a “metaphysics” of nothingness. Nevertheless,
Dogen (1200-5 3 A.D.), founder of Zen’s Soto sect, analyzed
the temporality of absolute nothingness in a way that has
significant affinities both with early Heidegger’s notion of temporality
as the “clearing” for presencing and with later Heidegger’s notion
of the mutually appropriative play of appearances.33

While both Heidegger and Mahayana Buddhists criticize anthropocentrism,
both acknowledge that humanity is in some way special.
If Buddhists regard human existence as sunyata brought to selfawareness,
and if Heidegger conceives of human existence as the
mortal clearing that allows things to manifest themselves, both also
argue that this fact brings with it a distinctive responsibility: not to
dominate or to constrict the appearing of entities, but rather to let
things be.

Despite these similarities, we should not forget an important difference
between Ereignis and sunyata: Ereignis supposedly “sends” the
different modes of presencing that have shaped Western history in its
Greek, Roman, medieval, modern, and technological eras.34 Mahayana
Buddhism might be suspicious of the way that, in Heidegger’s
“history of being,” Ereignis seems to take on a generative, directive
dimension that threatens to transform it into a metaphysical category,
thereby undermining the nondualistic thrust of Heidegger’s
thought. Nevertheless, it is precisely because the relatively ahistorical
Mahayana tradition lacks the conceptual resources necessary to
confront the emergence of planetary civilization that Nishitani and
other members of the Kyoto school have looked to Heidegger’s
thought for insight regarding how to relate sunyata to history.35

HEIDEGGER, BUDDHISM, AND DEEP ECOLOGY

Heidegger’s notion of “letting things be” has made his thinking
attractive for radical environmentalists interested in transforming
humanity’s currently destructive attitude toward nature. Both Heidegger’s
thought and Mahayana Buddhism have influenced a radical
form of environmentalism called “deep ecology.”3 6 Unlike reform
environmentalism, which fights pollution but remains anthropocentric,
deep ecology argues that only a transformation of Western
anthropocentrism and humanity—nature dualism can save the biosphere
from destruction. Following Heidegger and Mahayana Buddhists,
as well as other nonanthropocentric traditions, deep ecologists
call on people to “let beings be.”

Heidegger, Buddhism, and deep ecology each promotes its own
version of ontological phenomenalism, the doctrine that “to be”
means “to appear” or “to be manifest.” Phenomenalism does not
have to be subjectivistic ; in other words, the event of appearing does
not have to be restricted to or dependent on human awareness. In
cosmic phenomenalism, human awareness is regarded as one mode
through which appearing can occur. Mahayana Buddhism, with its
claim that all things are empty of self or substance, but nevertheless
intrinsically luminous and totally interrelated with the play of appearance,
is an instance of such cosmic phenomenalism. Heidegger’s
thought is a more ambiguous case of such phenomenalism. A critic
of Platonic essentialism, he was an equally strong opponent of subjective
idealism. Yet if one combines his antiessentialism with his
claims ( ) that the ontological event of appearing is acausal and,
hence, incapable of being explained by any narrative (mythical, religious,
metaphysical, scientific) regarding how things may have been
produced, (2) that being and appearing are in effect the same, and (3)
that things manifest themselves in a mutually appropriative dance,
then one discovers a position that is in many ways close to a kind of
phenomenalism.

The deep ecologist Arne Naess, a noted Norwegian philosopher
and naturalist, has been influenced both by Heideggerian and by
Mahayana Buddhist phenomenalism. Naess argues that our everyday
“experience” of what it means for things “to be” is shaped by
gestalts that organize the concrete contents or phenomena. There
are no “primary” qualities, substances, or “essences” of things ; indeed,
there are no “things” at all, if by “things” we mean solid,
unchanging, isolated material objects. “Things” thus conceived are
only useful constructs for dealing with the constantly changing and
internally related phenomena constituting “experience.” Naess says
that “there is a similarity between this view and those expressed by
the Buddhist formula sarvam dharmam nihsvabhavam. Every element
is without ’self-existence.’ “37

According to Naess, insofar as all things, including persons, lack
substance or essence, there is no ultimate ontological divide between
self and nature. Growing awareness of one’s own insubstantiality
brings with it, spontaneously, a growing identification with all
phenomena. As Naess puts it, there is not “an environment,” nor are
there “people” who are placed “in” it.3 8 “People” and “the environment”
are abstract entities, functions of the discriminatory intellectual
activity that projects interpretive schemata upon concrete contents,
that is, upon the play of phenomena. For Naess and Heidegger,
the scientific idea of nature as totality of matter—energy events has
validity only so long as no absolute ontological claims are made for
it. This idea of nature results from the projection of abstract categories
such as “subject” and “object,” “space” and “time,” “matter”
and “energy” onto phenomena for which no “explanation” can ever
be given.

Reasoning vainly attempts to give ground to what is groundless:
the flux of phenomena emerging moment by moment from the inexhaustible
field of absolute nothingness. Insight into this nothingness
undermines the constricted ego-pole “in here” defending itself
against threatening others and objects “out there.” Such insight reveals
the ego and its objects to be gestalts whose contents are constituted
by an infinite number of self-arising phenomenal events. Seeing
into one’s own original Buddha nature means being simultaneously
(i) those concrete contents, (2) the organizing gestalt, (3) the awareness
of the contents/gestalt, and (4) the nothingness in which they all
(including consciousness) manifest themselves. “Awakening” means
shattering all dualisms, including the one between presencing and
absencing, being and nothingness.

It may be objected that this kind of phenomenalism includes what
seems to be two different notions of “appearing”: (i) the event of a
thing’s appearing, its presencing, its self-manifesting ; and (2) the
emergence of a thing into presence by virtue of its own capacity for
self-generation, as in the case of an animal being born or a plant
sprouting. The first kind of appearing seems to require a site, human
existence ; the second kind of appearing does not.39 For Heidegger,
Naess, and Buddhism, however, such a distinction continues to presuppose
that there “are” entities in a way that is distinguishable
from what is meant above by the “appearing” of entities. Phenomenalist
ontology holds that human existence is a specific modality of
the luminosity characterizing all phenomena.4° Human awareness
brings this cosmic luminosity to self-awareness. Buddhism, Heidegger,
and Naess all assign to human existence the special role of
apprehending the groundless, empty play of phenomena. Humans
exist most appropriately when their luminous openness is unconstricted
by dualistic ego-consciousness. Freed from such dualism,
people can enter into a new, nondomineering relationship with all
things. Humans can encounter birds and trees, lakes and sky, humans
and mountains not as independent, substantial, self-enclosed
entities, but rather as temporary constellations of appearances: selfgiving
phenomena arising simultaneously.

To support their own view that nondualism discloses the truth
about reality, deep ecologists often appeal to contemporary scientific
trends that lead beyond atomism, mechanism, humanity—nature dualism,
and reductionistic materialism and open the way for understanding
natural processes as internally related, holistic events.
Naess implies, however, that deep ecologists must keep in mind that
what scientists mean by the “internal relatedness” of events is not
necessarily the same as what Buddhism means by empty, self-arising
phenomena.4′ Moreover, scientific findings regarding the interrelatedness
of things cannot in and of themselves lead to the “compassion”
(Buddhism, Naess) or “care” (Heidegger) required for “letting
things be” in ways promoted by deep ecology. Required for such
Heidegger, Buddhism, and deep ecology 263
compassion or care is direct insight into the interrelatedness of
things, insight that transforms the very structure of the one “person”
gifted with the insight.

The issue of whether and how to resist the technological transformation
of nature is made more complex by the following question:
Does a phenomenalist ontology and its doctrine of anatma (no selfexistence,
no essence) provide a basis for criticizing or resisting the
technological disclosure of entities? When Heidegger spoke of the
self-limiting behavior of plants and animals, he meant that living
things organize and produce themselves in accordance with limits
that are not a function of the historical world in which trees and
bees happen to be disclosed (EP 109 ; VA 98). Presumably, modern
technology violates this self-limiting capacity, a capacity that would
seem to be “essential” or at least “internal” to the organisms in
question, by treating organisms like machines. Yet Heidegger, like
Buddhists and Naess, also rejects the notion of essence. What, then,
would be wrong with the technological disclosure of things?42
Heidegger would reply that there is a self-concealing dimension to
things, a dimension he called “earth,” which can never be brought to
full appearance, especially not by the calculating disclosure at work
in modern technology. Yet the “law of the earth” cannot be conceived
as a “ground” for things analogous to eternal essences.
Hence, the status of “earth” in Heidegger’s thought needs further
clarification. 43

Regarding the technological disclosure of things, Buddhists would
argue that even though all beings are merely temporary experiential
gestalts, they are nevertheless sentient. It is wrong to inflict pain on
sentient beings in the hopeless technological quest to make the ego
immortal, all-powerful, and permanent. Because some beings are
apparently more “sentient” than others, many Buddhists emphasize
alleviating the suffering of humans and animals Yet Buddhists also
maintain that because all beings are interrelated, sentience cannot
be restricted to a particular class of beings, especially if such
restriction
leads to a hierarchical scheme that justifies domination of some
entities by others. Clearly, issues concerning what sorts of suffering
people may inflict on nonhumans in order to feed, clothe, and house
themselves are important and thorny, though they cannot be discussed
here. Buddhism, Heidegger, and Naess argue that puncturing
the illusion of permanent selfhood would alleviate the infliction of
such suffering by freeing one from the illusory quest for total control.
Being liberated from the illusion of egocentrism also frees one
for spontaneous compassion toward other beings, human and nonhuman
alike One “lets things be” not for any external goal, but instead
simply from a profound sense of identification with all things.

In the postmodern world envisioned by deep ecologists and other
radical environmentalists, the thirst for knowledge would be tempered
and guided by the wisdom associated with loving kindness for
all things. Implementing the holistic view of life on earth fostered
by Heidegger, Buddhism, and Naess, a view that decenters humankind
and emphasizes care for all beings, however, would require an
immense transformation. The rhetorical vehemence of some deep
ecologists supporting this transformation has led critics to suspect
them of being “ecofascists” who would sacrifice individuals for the
good of the “organic whole.”44 The fact that Heidegger supported
National Socialism and that many deep ecologists are attracted by
his thought does nothing to reassure such critics. Social ecologists
have argued that the environmental crisis has arisen not because of
anthropocentrism, but rather from hierarchical and authoritarian
attitudes that started in society and were consequently projected
onto nature. Ecofeminists, in turn, charge that the real root of the
environmental crisis is not anthropocentrism, but instead androcentrism:
man-centeredness or patriarchy. Despite these important differences,
however, all radical environmentalists would agree that
humanity needs a new self-understanding that will eliminate humanity—
nature dualism as well as the kind of anthropocentrism
that justifies the heedless exploitation of nature. We must learn
what it means to let beings — human and nonhuman — be. Changing
human attitudes is fraught with political dangers, especially if utopian
visions take the place of measured judgment. In seeking to
change the humanity—nature relation, we must never forget that
the twentieth century has been scarred by movements that promised
salvation, but brought untold misery.45

NOTES

I The best collection on Heidegger’s relation to Eastern thinking is
Heidegger and Asian Thought, ed. Graham Parkes (Honolulu: University
of Hawaii Press, 1987). The following is a partial bibliography of
Heidegger, Buddhism, and deep ecology 265
works on Heidegger and Eastern thought: Chang Chung-yuan, Tao: A
New Way of Thinking (Heideggerian translation of Tao Te Ching) (New
York: Harper & Row, 1975) ; Charles Wei-Hsun Fu, “Heidegger and Zen
on Being and Nothingness: A Critical Essay in Transmetaphysical Dialectics,”
in Buddhist and Western Philosophy: A Critical Study, ed.
Nathan Katz (New Delhi: Sterling, 1981) ; idem, “Creative Hermeneutics:
Taoist Metaphysics and Heidegger,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy,
3 ( r 976): 115 -43 ; Peter Kreeft, “Zen in Heidegger’s Gelassenheit,”
International
Philosophical Quarterly, 1r (December 1971): 521 -45 ; Toshimitsu
Hasumi, “Etude comparative de la philosophie de l’existence chez
Heidegger et de la pens& philosophique du Zen,” Humanitas, 19 (1978):
59-75 ; idem, Elaboration philosophique de la pens& Zen (Paris: La
pens& universelle, 1973) ; Michael Heim, “A Philosophy of Comparison:
Heidegger and Lao Tsu,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy, 1 r (1984):
307-35 ; Carl Olson, “The Leap of Thinking: A Comparison of Heidegger
and the Zen Master Dogen,” Philosophy Today, 25 (Spring 1981): 55—
61 ; Philosophy East and West, 20 (July 197o), entire issue; John Steffney,
“Transmetaphysical Thinking in Heidegger and Zen,” Philosophy East
and West, 27 (July 1977): 323-35 ; idem, “Man and Being in Heidegger
and Zen Buddhism,” Philosophy Today, 25 (Spring 1981): 6 idem,
“Mind and Metaphysics in Heidegger and Zen Buddhism,” Eastern Buddhist,
new ser., 14 (Spring 1981): 61-74 ; Bernard Stevens, “Pratique du
Zen et pensee de l’Etre,” Revue philosophique de Louvain, 84 (1986):
45-76; Rolf von Eckartsberg and Ronald S. Valle, “Heideggerian Thinking
and the Eastern Mind,” in The Metaphors of Consciousness, ed. R.
Valle and R. von Eckartsberg (New York: Plenum Press, 1981), pp. 287-
311. The connection between Heidegger’s thought and the Vedantic tradition
has not been explored to any extent. But see J. L. Mehta’s essay,
“Heidegger and Vedanta: Reflections on a Questionable Theme,” International
Philosophical Quarterly, 51 (June 1978): 121-44, and Medard
Boss, A Psychiatrist Discovers India, trans. H. Frey (London: Oswald
Wolf, 1965).

2 Although a separate essay would be required to explore affinities between
Heidegger’s thought and Taoism, I shall on occasion mention
such affinities because of Taoism’s influence on both Chinese and Japanese
Zen.

3 Concerning the deep ecological critique of anthropocentrism, see my
essays “Toward a Heideggerean Ethos for Radical Environmentalism,”
Environmental Ethics, 5 ( Summer 1983): 99-131 ; “Anthropocentric
Humanism and the Arms Race,” in Nuclear War: Philosophical Perspectives,
ed. Michael Fox and Leo Groarke (New York: Lang, 1985), pp.
135-49 ; “The Crisis of Natural Rights and the Search for a Non
Anthropocentric Basis for Moral Behavior,” Journal of Value Inquiry, i9
(1985): 43-53 ; “Implications of Heidegger’s Thought for Deep Ecology/’
Modern Schoolman, 64 (November 1986): 19-43.

4 On Eckhart and his importance for Heidegger, see John D. Caputo, The
Mystical Element in Heidegger’s Thought (Athens: Ohio University
Press, 1977), and Reiner Schiirmann, Meister Eckhart: Mystic and Philosopher
(Bloomington• Indiana University Press, 1978). Both Caputo
and Schiirmann include comparisons of Heidegger and Zen as well. On
St. Thomas Aquinas’s mystical side, see Caputo, Heidegger and Aquinas
(New York: Fordham University Press, 1982).

5 Heidegger discusses the question of animal understanding in great detail
in Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik: Welt-Endlichkeit-Einsamkeit,
Gesamtausgabe 29/3o (winter semester, 1929-3o), ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm
von Hermann (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1983).

6 On the topic of authenticity, see Michael E. Zimmerman, Eclipse of the
Self: The Develop—lent of Heidegger’s Concept of Authenticity, 2d ed.
(Athens: Ohio University Press, 1986). The final chapter includes a
comparison
of Heidegger and Buddhism.

7 On this topic, see Hubert L. Dreyfus and Jane Rubin, “You Can’t Get
Something for Nothing: Kierkegaard and Heidegger on How Not to Overcome
Nihilism,” Inquiry, 3o ( 1987): 33-76.

8 See Hubert L. Dreyfus, “Between Techne and Technology: The Ambiguous
Place of Technology in Being and Time,” in The Thought of Martin
Heidegger, ed. Michael E. Zimmerman, Tulane Studies in Philosophy, 32
(New Orleans, La.: Tulane University Press, 1984), pp. 23-35. See also
idem, Heidegger’s Confrontation with Modernity (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1990), Chaps. io and II.

9 See my essays “The Thom in Heidegger’s Side: The Question of National
Socialism,” Philosophical Forum, 20 (Summer 1989): 326-65 ;
and “Philosophy and Politics: The Case of Heidegger,” Philosophy Today,
33 (Summer 1989): 3-19. Concerning Heidegger’s misguided view
that National Socialism promised to offer an alternative to industrial
nihilism, see my Heidegger’s Confrontation with Modernity.

I0 See, e.g., Rudolf Otto, Mysticism East and West, trans. Bertha L. Cracey
and Richenda C. Payne (New York: Meridian Books, 1959) ; S. Radhakrishnan,
Eastern Religious and Western Thought (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1974) ; Daisetz T. Suzuki, Zen and Japanese Culture
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970).

II Paul Shih-yi Hsiao, “Heidegger and Our Translation of the Tao Te
Ching,” in Heidegger and Asian Thought, ed. Parkes, pp. 93-103.

12 Otto POggeler, “West—East Dialogue: Heidegger and Lao-Tzu,” trans.
Graham Parkes, in Heidegger and Asian Thought, p. 53.

13 William Barrett, Introduction to D. T. Suzuki, Zen Buddhism (Garden
City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1956), p. xi.

14 In an unpublished essay, “Die Ubersetzbarkeit Heideggers’ ins
Japanische,”
Noriko Idada (Tokyo Metropolitan University) has commented
on the difficulty of translating Heidegger into Japanese.

15 On this issue, see Evan Thompson, “Planetary Thinking/Planetary Building:
An Essay on Martin Heidegger and Nishitani Keiji,” Philosophy
East and West, 36, No. 3 (1986): 235-52.

16 Hans Waldenfels, Absolute Nothingness: Foundations for a Buddhist—
Christian Dialogue, trans. J. W. Heisig (New York: Paulist Press, 198o),
p. 19.

17 The best available study on Eastern views of nondualism and how they
compare with ideas of Western thinkers, including Heidegger, is David
Loy’s excellent Non duality: A Study in Comparative Philosophy (New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1988).

18 For this point, I am indebted to David Loy.

19 David Loy, personal communication.

20 See Allan Hunt Badiner, Dharma Gaia: A Harvest of Essays in Buddhism
and Ecology (Berkeley, Calif.: Parallax Press, 1990).

21 See Zimmerman, Eclipse of the Self, Chap. 8.

22 Western philosophers, including Nietzsche, have frequently interpreted
Buddhism as preferring “nihilation” or “extinction” (nirvana) to life
itself. In Beitriige zur Philosophie ( GA 65 170—I), Heidegger spoke in a
way which suggests that he shared Nietzsche’s view, one that is inconsistent
with Mahayana Buddhism. Heidegger’s remark is somewhat cryptic:
“The more un-entity [is] man, the less he anchors himself in the
entity as which he finds himself, ever so nearer does he come to being.
(No Buddhism! the opposite).”

23 On these issues, see my essay “Heidegger and Heraclitus on Spiritual
Practice,” Philosophy Today, 27, No. 2 (1983): 8 7- 103.

24 It is worth noting that, in the Japanese middle ages, Samurai swordsmen
sometimes trained at Zen monasteries, and that even today Japanese
businessmen are at times sent to Zen monasteries to be “toughened up”
for competition.

25 In his book Heidegger on Being and Acting: From Principles to Anarchy,
trans. Christine-Marie Gros (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1987), Schiirmann draws from Heidegger’s writings the possibility of an
anarchistic life, a life led “without why.”

26 Keiji Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, trans. Jan Van Bragt (Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982).

27 Masao Abe, Zen and Western Thought, ed. William R. LaFleur (Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press, 1985).

28 Ibid., p. 119.

29 Schilrmann, Meister Eckhart, p. 204.

3o Masao Abe, Zen and Western Thought, pp. 119-2o.

31 Ibid., p. 67.

32 See, e.g., Karl LOwith, “Zu Heideggers Seinsfrage: Die Natur des Menschen
und die Welt der Natur,” Aufsiitze und Vortriige, 1930-197o
(Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 197r), pp. 189-203.

33 On this topic, see Steven Heine, Existential and Ontological Dimensions
of Time in Heidegger and Dogen (Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1985). While his book is informative, Heine sometimes promotes
Dogen’s views at the expense of Heidegger’s.

34 See Charles Wei-hsun Fu, “The Trans-onto-theo-logical Foundations of
Language in Heidegger and Taoism,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy, I
(1975): 130-61.

35 See, e.g., Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, Chap. 6.

36 See my essays “Toward a Heideggerean Ethos for Radical Environmentalism”
and “Implications of Heidegger’s Thought for Deep Ecology” ; see
also Dolores LaChapelle, Earth Wisdom (Los Angeles: Guild of Tutors
Press, 1978), pp. 8o-6. For analyses and bibliographies of deep ecology,
see Bill Devall and George Sessions, Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature
Mattered (Salt Lake City, Ut.: Peregrine Smith Books, 1985), and Warwick
Fox, Toward a Transpersonal Ecology (Boston: Shambhala, 199o).

37 Arne Naess, “The World of Concrete Contents,” Inquiry, 28 (December
1985): 417-28, p. 419. For a fuller exposition of Naess’s views, see his
Ecology, Community, and Lifestyle: Outline of an Ecosophy, trans. and
revised by David Rothenberg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1989).

38 Ibid., p. 424.

39 See my essay “On Vallicella’s Critique of Heidegger,” International
Philosophical Quarterly, 3o (March 1990): 75-100.

4o Note that in order to be true to the insight that being and nothingness,
form and emptiness, are “the same,” I should speak of the nothingness
as which things come into presence, but such an expression defies good
English.

41 For an exploration of whether modern science may contribute to the
development of nondualistic awareness, see Ken Wilber, ed., The Holographic
Paradigm and Other Paradoxes (Boulder: Shambhala, 1982).

42 For an insightful discussion of Heidegger’s nonessentialist, pragmatic
metaphysics and its relation to his interpretation of modern technology,
see Mark B. Okrent, Heidegger’s Pragmatism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University
Press, 1988).

43 For a very helpful treatment of Heidegger’s concept of earth, see Michel
Haar, Le chant de la terre (Paris: L’Heme, 1987). A translation is being
prepared for Indiana University Press.

44 See, e.g., Murray Bookchin, “Social Ecology versus ‘Deep Ecology,’”
Green Perspectives, Nos. 4 and 5 (Summer 1987).

45 My thanks to David Loy and to Charles Guignon for their very helpful
comments on earlier versions of this essay

Posted on Sunday, June 8th, 2008 at 6:07 am
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