Kierkegaard and Japanese Thought

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Kierkegaard and Japanese Thought Edited by

James Giles

Kierkegaard and Japanese Thought

Also by James Giles THE NATURE OF SEXUAL DESIRE NO SELF TO BE FOUND: the Search for Personal Identity A STUDY IN PHENOMENALISM KIERKEGAARD AND FREEDOM (editor) FRENCH EXISTENTIALISM: Consciousness, Ethics, and Relations with Others (editor)

Kierkegaard and Japanese Thought Edited by

James Giles

Editorial matter, selection © James Giles 2008 Chapters © their authors 2008 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published in 2008 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN-13: 978–0–230–55283–8 hardback ISBN-10: 0–230–55283–8 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kierkegaard and Japanese thought / edited by James Giles. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0–230–55283–8 (hardback: alk. paper) 1. Kierkegaard, Søren, 1813–1855. 2. Philosophy, Japanese. 3. Philosophy, Comparative. I. Giles, James, 1958– B4377.K45525 2007 198⬘.9—dc22 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

2007051188

Contents Preface

vii

Notes on the Editor and Contributors

x

Editorial Note

xiv

1. Introduction: Kierkegaard among the Temples of Kamakura James Giles 2. A Short History of Kierkegaard’s Reception in Japan Kinya Masugata 3. Japanese Pure Land Buddhism and Kierkegaard Hidetomo Yamashita

1

31

53

4. A Zen Understanding of Kierkegaard’s Existential Thought Eshin Nishimura

71

5. To Practise One Thing: Kierkegaard through the Eyes of Dōgen James Giles

87

6. Aeterno Modo: the Expression of an Integral Consciousness in the Work of Kierkegaard and Dōgen Ian Mills

106

7. Truth, Paradox, and Silence: Hakuin and Kierkegaard Archie Graham

124

8. Living with Death: Kierkegaard and the Samurai Adam Buben

141

v

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Contents

9. Kierkegaard and Nishida: Ways to the Non-Substantial Eiko Hanaoka

159

10. The Religious Thought of Nishida and Kierkegaard Shudo Tsukiyama

172

11. Kobayashi’s Spirit of Unselfishness and Kierkegaard’s Faith Makoto Mizuta

185

12. Mori and Kierkegaard: Experience and Existence Mime Morita

201

13. Otani: a Kierkegaardian Fellow of the Dead Kinya Masugata

219

Index

231

Preface This is a book with several purposes. First, it is a book on the philosophy of Kierkegaard. It involves the exploration of his ideas, arguments, and approach to the perennial problems of philosophy. Equally, it is also a book on Japanese thought. It is concerned with Japanese ways of understanding reality and the human condition, and also with Japanese ideas surrounding Eastern practices like meditation. Japanese thought in this sense, which involves more than what is usually seen in the West as philosophy, encompasses a diverse range of traditions, each of which is blended together with the others to be given a unique expression within Japanese culture. The Japanese expression of these traditions is a major theme throughout the following pages. Because, however, the main focus is on the ideas of historical figures and on historical schools of thought, it is also a book on the history of philosophy. As a result, it is at the same time a book on philosophy. This is because to grasp fully the ideas of a thinker or a tradition, one must also critically evaluate those ideas. And to engage in such an evaluation of ideas within the history of philosophy is, at the same time, to engage in philosophy itself. That is, it is an attempt to explore fundamental questions about the nature of existence, to do so in a careful and critical way, to discover where the problems lie, and to arrive at some understanding of ourselves and the world in which we live. This is the essence of philosophy. Further, this is a book in comparative philosophy. Comparative philosophy is a method of enquiry in which philosophy is practised from within an intercultural perspective. All philosophical enquiry starts from the background assumptions and concerns of the culture in which it is pursued. As a result, it is often difficult for a philosopher to be fully aware of his or her culture’s influence on his or her way of pursuing philosophy; for this influence is everywhere. It is much like not noticing the air through which we move about in our day to day lives. We do not notice it because we are seemingly forever immersed within it. In comparative philosophy, however, the philosopher attempts to loosen the grip of his or her culture by entering a new one. In doing so, the philosophical traveller is presented with new ways of understanding and new ways of seeing old problems. Previously unnoticed assumptions and concerns are often thrown into stark relief simply because the vii

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Preface

newly entered culture does not make them or have them. Or perhaps the culture has contrasting assumptions and interests. All of this can serve to give insight not only into one’s own and different philosophical traditions, but also into the problems being pursued. This sort of comparative approach to philosophy is especially important in trying to understand someone like Kierkegaard. This is because both Kierkegaard’s philosophy and ways of thinking seem to reach beyond the strictures of his own nineteenth-century European culture. Kierkegaard, however, knew nothing of Japanese culture or even any non-Western culture, and so was forced to interpret his own insights from within a purely Western and Christian perspective. But if he had known of Japanese Buddhism, Shintō, or Taoism, would he have continued to see himself as being a Christian thinker? This is a significant question to ask, especially since Kierkegaard – just like the contributors to this volume – would obviously have noticed the links and connections that elements in his work bear to the philosophical traditions of the Far East. It is also a vital question to ask since Kierkegaard was far from having a traditionally accepted understanding of Christianity. Moreover, he himself unleashed an ‘attack on Christendom’, and thus sought to distance himself in some sense from Christian thinking. Contemporary philosophers and scholars are, or at least ought to be, less limited in their awareness of other cultures than Kierkegaard was. Consequently, even though Kierkegaard was constrained in his knowledge of non-Western cultures, and thus in his ability to see his own ideas in terms of other cultural ways of understanding, we are not. By ignoring other traditions the interpreter of Kierkegaard is restricting himself or herself in essentially the same way that Kierkegaard did. The problem, however, is that to comprehend Kierkegaard in what might be called a Japanese way, the Western scholar must first make the effort to know something about Japanese thought (just as the Japanese scholars in this book have, through their study of Kierkegaard, made the effort to know something about Western thought). Unfortunately, not only does this require work, and therefore enough of an interest in other cultures to do the work, but it also goes against the ethnocentricity of many Western scholars, especially Kierkegaard scholars, many of whom have a vested interest in seeing Kierkegaard as essentially a Christian thinker. Kierkegaard says that one of his goals is to make things more difficult for people. This also points to another purpose of this book; for this book is presented in the same spirit, namely, to make it more difficult for Western philosophers and scholars to continue to pretend that Japanese

Preface

ix

ways of reading Kierkegaard do not exist. The difficulty this book creates for such people is, of course, only a small one. But if one is lucky (or in their case unlucky), small difficulties can lead to big problems. Most of the chapters that follow are based on papers that were presented at the First International Conference of the Kierkegaard Society of Japan, which was held at the University of Melbourne, Australia in December 2005. I therefore want to thank the officers of the Society, especially Kinya Masuagata and Shin Fujida for their work in organizing the conference, and also for helping me to bring the ideas presented at the conference to publication. JAMES GILES

Notes on the Editor and Contributors

James Giles studied at the University of British Columbia and the University of Edinburgh. He is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Guam and Tutor at Madingley Hall, University of Cambridge and has travelled widely through India, East Asia and the Pacific. He is author of The Nature of Sexual Desire, No Self to be Found: the Search for Personal Identity, A Study in Phenomenalism, and editor of Kierkegaard and Freedom, and French Existentialism: Consciousness, Ethics, and Relations with Others. Adam Buben is a Presidential Doctoral Fellow in the philosophy department at the University of South Florida. He holds Master’s degrees in philosophy and liberal arts from the University of New Mexico and St John’s College respectively, and his undergraduate degree, also in philosophy, is from Arizona State University. He is the author of ‘Kierkegaard and the Norm (MacDonald) of Death’ (forthcoming, 2007, as a chapter in Family Guy and Philosophy: a Cure for the Petarded). Adam is also a long-time instructor and student of various Japanese martial arts. Archie Graham received his PhD from the University of Ottawa where he came to the study of Zen through the work of Nishida while completing a dissertation on the process metaphysics of A.N. Whitehead. He has taught at the universities of Guelph, Ottawa, and British Columbia as well as the Ontario College of Art and Design. His philosophical writing can be found in international academic journals, the Journal of Chinese Philosophy, Asian Culture Quarterly, Process Studies, and two anthologies, Ethics and Technology and Rethinking the Future. Graham’s poetry and art writing have appeared in a wide variety of Canadian magazines and newspapers. Eiko Hanaoka (née Kawamura) was born in 1938 in Tokyo and studied the philosophy of religion at Kyoto University, from where she received her D.Lit., and systematic theology at Hamburg University, from where she received her Doctorate in Theology. She was Associate Professor and Professor (in 1982) at Hanazono University, and Professor of the x

Notes on Contributors xi

Philosophy of Religion at the Graduate School of Osaka Prefecture University (1982–2002). She is now Professor Emeritus of the Graduate School at the same university, and also Professor in Nara. She has published many books and articles including Christianity and Nishida’s Philosophy, Zen and Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Absolute Nothingness, and The Problem of Self and World. She is now a member of the directors of the Japanese Association for Religious Studies, the Japan Society for Christian Studies, and Vice-President of the Japan Society for Process Studies. She is also an international adviser and editor for the Society for Buddhist Christian Studies in the USA. Kinya Masugata was born in Japan in 1947, studied at Kyoto University, and is the Executive Vice-President of Mukogawa Fort Wright Institute, the American campus of Mukogawa Women’s University, Japan, where he is also a professor. In addition he is Professor Emeritus at Osaka University of Education. He is President of the Kierkegaard Society of Japan and is the editor of Kierkegaard and Language and Kierkegaard: a Trial of New Interpretation and translator of Kierkegaard’s Dømmer Selv! [Judge for Yourselves!] into Japanese. He was the President of the Japanese Association of Philosophical and Ethical Research in Medicine (2000–02). Ian Mills is a poet, now working as an independent scholar and an academic research consultant. He completed his PhD at the University of Wisconsin, taught at that university, at La Trobe University, Melbourne, the University of Western Sydney, and at the Foreign Language Institute, Shanghai, China. He has written a number of books, his major publication being A Divine Ecology: the Infinite Potential of our Between, chapters in books within a variety of disciplines, for example, ‘Pulpit Drama’ in The News in Focus, and numerous articles, for example, ‘Dwelling in No-Place: Our Ethical Between’, in Environmental Ethics. He is at present researching the work of thirteenth-century mystics, writing a novel, and preparing a volume of poetry for publication. Makoto Mizuta, PhD, is former Professor of Philosophy and Medical Ethics at Fukuoka Dental College. He has also taught at the University of Kyūshū, the University of Kumamoto, Fukuoka University of Education, and Tōkai University. He now teaches at Kyūshū Sangyō University and Fukuoka Medical Junior College. He specializes in existential philosophy, mainly Kierkegaard, and also in medical ethics, and studied Kierkegaard at the Søren Kierkegaard Library, University of Copenhagen (1983–1984). He is author of Jituzon to ai – Eˉrihhi Furomu no jissen tetugaku [Existence and Love: the Ethics of Erich Fromm], Kyerukegoˉru

xii Notes on Contributors

to gendai no jitsuzon – hikaku shisoˉ to taiwa no seishin [Comparative Studies of Kierkegaard] with Martin Buber, Viktor E. Frankl, and others, Shisaku to jinsei [Existential Ethics] and several collaborations including Kyerukegoˉru to nihon no bukkyoˉ, tetsugaku [Kierkegaard, Japanese Buddhism, and Philosophy]. Mime Morita (née Ikeda) is Associate Professor of Philosophy, Ethics, and Women’s Studies at Osaka Christian College in Japan. She has also taught at the Konan University (ethics and moral education) and Doshisya University (philosophy). She is a co-author of Ethics in Postmodern Age, The Subject of Ethics in the 21st Century, For the Beginner in Kierkegaard, and co-translator of Religion and Ethics: Existence and Language in Kierkegaard. She is now the vice-president of the Kierkegaard Society of Japan in Kyoto. Eshin Nishimura was born in Shiga-ken, Japan in 1933. He graduated from Hanazono University, majoring in Zen Buddhist studies, in 1956 and received his doctorate in the philosophy of religion from Kyoto University in 1970. He also received a Doctor of Letters Degree from Aichigakuin University, Nagoya, Japan. He embarked on Zen training at Nanzen-ji Monastery in Kyoto under Zenkei Shibayama Roshi from 1956 to 1958, and studied Christianity and Quakerism at Pendle Hill, Pennsylvania, USA, 1960–61. He was Abbot of Kōfuku-ji Rinzai Zen Temple in Shiga-ken from 1959 to 1986, Professor at Hanazono University, 1970–2005, and President of the same University from 2001–05. He is now Professor Emeritus of Hanazono University and also Director of the Institute for Zen Studies in Kyoto. His research interests include the philosophy of Zen Buddhism and the comparative study of Buddhism and Christianity. He has participated in various kinds of religious dialogue between Buddhism and Christianity, both within and outside of Japan, for the past 40 years. Shudo Tsukiyama is Professor of Intercultural Studies at the University of Otani. He has been president of the Society for the Study of Nishida’s Philosophy, which began over 30 years ago under the leadership of the late Keiji Nishitani and Shizuteru Ueda. He has also been a member and director of the Kierkegaard Society of Japan. In 1994 he was a visiting scholar at the University of Cambridge where he worked with George Pattison on the comparative study of Japanese religious thought (especially the Kyoto School) and Kierkegaard. His main work on Nishida and Kierkegaard includes ‘The Fundamental Form of Existence and Religiousness in Kierkegaard’, ‘The Religious Thought of Inquiring into

Notes on Contributors xiii

the Self in East and West: Nishida and Kierkegaard’, ‘The Philosophical Views of Nishida and Tanabe on Kierkegaard’s Existential Philosophy’, ‘Tanabe’s Metanoetic Philosophy and Kierkegaard’s Religious-existential Thought’, and ‘Kierkegaard’s “the Moment”’. Hidetomo Yamashita is Professor of Philosophy of Religion at the University of Shizuoka in Japan. He is the author of Kyoˉ gyoˉ shin shoˉ no sekai [The World of ‘Teaching, Practice, Faith, and Attainment’] (3 volumes) and Shu¯kyoteki jitsuzon no tenkai [The Development of Religious Existence]. He is also the Japanese translator of Kierkegaard’s Sygdommen til Døden [The Sickness unto Death]. He has studied Buddhism and existentialism at Kyoto University and has recently become interested in modern Japanese philosophy, especially Nishida and Tanabe.

Editorial Note In order to avoid confusion for the English reader Japanese personal names have been written in the English tradition of the given name appearing first and the family name appearing last. Japanese words have been transliterated into English using the long stroke or macron over the vowel to indicate a long vowel where appropriate. This has also been done with Sanskrit words, though other diacritical marks have been omitted. Chinese words have been transliterated according to the Wade-Giles system of Romanization.

xiv

1 Introduction: Kierkegaard among the Temples of Kamakura James Giles

The writings of the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813–55) are among the more enigmatic in Western philosophy. Kierkegaard’s poetic style, the density of his texts, the incompleteness of his arguments, along with his use of pseudonyms, all conspire to render his philosophical positions frequently unclear. Yet behind this enigmatic approach it is not hard to discern the insights of an original thinker deeply engaged with the problem of human existence. These features of Kierkegaard’s writings – both their cryptic quality and insightfulness – have led to much scholarly research. One of the fascinating things about this research is the way in which scholars from diverse fields and cultural traditions have been able to read Kierkegaard in such distinct ways. One cultural tradition that has added much to the understanding of Kierkegaard is that of Japanese philosophy. Yet oddly enough, this tradition has been all but ignored by Western Kierkegaard scholars. A good example of this can be found in a chapter in The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard that purports to be an examination of the ‘twentiethcentury receptions’ of Kierkegaard. Here the author describes in detail the Danish, German, French, British, and American receptions of Kierkegaard’s writing, while apparently oblivious to the fact that there was also a large Japanese response to Kierkegaard in the early twentieth century (with even some Japanese awareness of Kierkegaard before that). Indeed, Japanese translations of Kierkegaard appeared several years before English translations did. There is, of course, the odd exception to this lack of awareness of the relations between Japanese thought and Kierkegaard, the most notable being Mortensen’s Kierkegaard Made in Japan. But then this book was also ignored. It is not, for example, mentioned anywhere in the Cambridge Companion, even though it was published three years earlier. 1

2 Kierkegaard and Japanese Thought

In a way, this ignoring of Japanese thinkers is part of a larger tradition in Western philosophy that disregards Eastern philosophy in general. Although this is changing, it is still commonplace to see books or university courses that claim to be on the history of philosophy, and yet never mention a word about significant Asian philosophers, Asian views of epistemology, metaphysics, or ethics, or the debates among the various Asian schools of thought. Thus, in the popular text book The Enduring Questions: Traditional and Contemporary Voices (2002), not one of the voices, traditional or contemporary, is an Eastern voice. Confucius – probably the most influential philosopher in history – is not even mentioned. This neglect of Eastern thinkers is all the more amusing because, although Berkeley’s dialogues on idealism and Hume’s writings on the no-self theory are given, no writings from Astanga or Vashubandhu (founders of the Mind-Only school of Buddhism) or dialogues of the Buddha (originator of the no-self theory) are given, even though these philosophers presented essentially the same theories hundreds of years before Berkeley or Hume. Likewise, in S. Morris Engel’s 2002 textbook, The Study of Philosophy, it is confidently asserted that ‘philosophy began here, in the coastal city of Miletus, southeast of the Greek island of Samos’1 in full contradiction to the fact that the ancient authors of the Vedas and Upanishads were doing philosophy in India at least 1000 years before Thales first got the idea that everything might be water. Yet this ignoring of Eastern (and other non-Western) traditions by Western philosophers comes at a great cost. For not only does it hinder Western understanding of, and thus interaction with, non-Western cultures, it also denies Western philosophers the use of non-Western arguments and concepts, many of which have been intricately refined through centuries of debate. New understanding, it seems, frequently comes when a philosopher is able to step back from the usual approach to a problem and see it in a different way. For the Western philosopher one of the immense values of Eastern philosophy is that it can provide this ‘different way’ of approaching a problem. This is true because although Asian thinkers have developed their own traditions, which differ from Western thought, any Western philosopher who cares to spend time with Eastern texts will quickly see that Asian philosophers are dealing with basically the same ‘enduring questions’ as Western philosophers are. It is in just this way, then, that an examination of Japanese thought and its relation to Kierkegaard’s ideas can provide us with new approaches to understanding what Kierkegaard is saying.

Kierkegaard among the Temples of Kamakura

3

But what is it about Kierkegaard’s philosophy that suggests a comparison with Japanese thought? To answer this question, let us first get a picture of Kierkegaard’s overall philosophical approach and interests. One of the most prominent features of Kierkegaard is his focus on humanistic concerns. What interests Kierkegaard are those philosophical issues that have an immediate relevance to an individual’s life. Thus, Kierkegaard pays little attention to philosophical issues like the existence of universals, the nature of mathematics or logic, or the philosophy of history. Rather, his concern is with issues like subjectivity, death, freedom, anxiety, self-deception, and despair. These problems, he argues, are directly relevant to the existing individual. Someone will no doubt want to protest that by listing these topics as issues for Kierkegaard, I am ignoring the fact that much of what he says here is written under different pseudonyms and, consequently, should not be seen as being the ideas or concerns of Kierkegaard himself. However, as I have argued elsewhere, the consistency of interests and philosophical positions across Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous works is enough to discount this view.2 Let us now look at how Kierkegaard’s philosophy is related to these issues. A good place to start is with Kierkegaard’s well-known assertion that truth is subjectivity. On the face of it this is an odd claim; for truth is supposed to be something that is objective and contrasts with the notion of subjectivity. But Kierkegaard is not denying that there is such a thing as objective truth (though he is unclear what this would consist of). Instead, he is saying something about the meaning that different truths have, or ought to have for us. He says that ‘the crucial thing is to find the truth that is truth for me, the idea for which I will live or die. And what use would it be for me to discover so-called objective truth ... if it had no deeper meaning for me and my life.’3 Truth only takes on this meaning when it is experienced subjectively as a ‘truth for me’. In this sense ‘truth is subjectivity’ must mean for Kierkegaard ‘crucially meaningful truth is experienced in subjectivity’. This view provides the basis for his attack on Hegel’s world-historical perspective of human existence. From Hegel’s perspective, individuals, their subjectivity, choices, actions, and purpose are lost in the grand scheme of things. Kierkegaard says, ‘what makes the ethical the deed of the individual is the intention; but this intention is precisely something that can not be found in the world-historical, for what is important here is the intention of the world-historical’.4 Further, one need not turn to the world-historical account to see this happen. This loss of our own subjectivity is something that occurs in all spheres of our daily lives: love, faith, and what it means to die, says

4 Kierkegaard and Japanese Thought

Kierkegaard, are determinations of subjectivity, yet real lovers, persons with real faith, and those who know what it means to die are rare. To take the example of what it means to die (which ties into Kierkegaard’s concerns with death), Kierkegaard says, ‘concerning this I know what people in general know; that I shall die if I take a dose of sulphuric acid, just like I shall die if I jump into water or go to sleep in coal gas, and so forth’ (p. 138). Yet, he continues, ‘despite this nearly unusual knowledge or proficiency in knowledge, under no circumstances can I regard death as something I have understood’. In all this objective knowledge about death the deeper understanding that death really will come, indeed, that it may come tomorrow, has been forgotten: ‘Merely this one uncertainty, when it is to be understood and held fast by an existing individual, and hence enter into every thought, precisely because it is an uncertainty entering into my beginning upon universal history even, so that I make it clear to myself whether if death comes tomorrow, I am beginning upon something that is worth beginning – merely this one uncertainty generates inconceivable difficulties’ (pp. 138–9). In this sense one might say that the person who has not fully grasped the inevitability of his or her own death, or the uncertainty of when it might arrive, has not fully grasped the truth that he or she will really die. This is so, Kierkegaard would say, because truth is subjectivity. This leads into Kierkegaard’s discussion of human freedom; for only in our subjectivity do we fully experience our freedom. As long as we try to view our lives from an external, objective point of view (a view which, being in fact unachievable, is a form of self-deception), we will think that our actions and choices are merely links in a long chain of cause and effect. And, consequently, we will think we are determined and so lack free will. When, however, we turn inward and view ourselves subjectively, then we see that nothing causes our choices and, as a result, we are fully free. Here, says Kierkegaard, we experience the instant of choice as a ‘qualitative leap’ which ‘no science can explain’. The idea of a leap is supposed to show that, subjectively or experientially we feel our making of a choice as a leaping towards our desired action, rather than being, say, pushed from behind by a cause. This leap is qualitative because it is something completely new, something which is born in the moment of choice and has no causal or deterministic ties to what came before. A significant feature of this qualitative leap of freedom, something which we are recreating at every moment, is anxiety. The reason why anxiety appears at this juncture, says Kierkegaard, is because in the

Kierkegaard among the Temples of Kamakura

5

moment of choice we are both drawn to and repelled from the option we do not wish to choose. Thus, in any choice there will be an option I want to choose and various options I do not want to choose. Yet, even though I feel I definitely do not want to choose a particular option, ‘anxiety maintains a subtle communication’ with this option.5 This ‘subtle communication’ is the birthplace of anxiety. To take an example, imagine you are standing on a street corner waiting to cross the road. Imagine further that the road is clear except for a large lorry that is racing towards you at 70 kilometres per hour. Now one option that you can choose is to wait until the lorry has passed and then cross the road. And further imagine that this is the option you want. But another option is that you could wait until the lorry is only a few yards away and then, leaping out in front of it, attempt to dash to the other side without being hit and killed, an attempt that will almost certainly fail. This, imagine, is the option you definitely do not want. Yet, even though you do not want this option it might be, as it is for many people, that you maintain a ‘subtle communication’ with it and even, as the point of no return approaches, begin to wonder if you might not make this terrible choice. In this instant anxiety appears. And it is not just in cases like this (where a choice might make you lose your life) that anxiety appears, but in all cases of choice. Thus, rather than paying the restaurant bill after a meal, you might choose to run out without paying; rather than sitting quietly to hear a distinguished speaker, you might choose to jump up and scream mindlessly; or rather than getting out of bed in the morning, you might simply choose to stay there for the entire day. In every instant of choice, says Kierkegaard, anxiety in its various degrees and varying types is constantly present. This is one of the places where the theme of self-deception works its way into Kierkegaard’s writings. This is because in experiencing the anxiety over the awareness of being drawn to and thus in potential danger of choosing the purportedly unwanted option, the individual exists in a dissonant or noxious state. One way to attempt to escape this discomfort is for the individual to deceive himself or herself into believing that he or she is not really free to make such a choice even though, at another level of awareness, the wish is to keep the option open. Or, if the individual does make the ‘unwanted’ choice, then there remains the option of trying to deceive oneself into believing that it had to happen, was the only option, was someone else’s fault, or some such thing. Self-deception, says Kierkegaard, can also take place on a grander scale, where it might underpin a person’s entire life. In The Sickness unto Death, for example, Kierkegaard discusses the idea of how people try to

6 Kierkegaard and Japanese Thought

deceive themselves about their own despair by living an illusion. He then rejects the belief that illusions are something people typically grow out of: ‘People overlook the fact that illusion has essentially two forms: that of hope and that of recollection. Youth has the illusion of hope and old age has that of remembrance. But just because the older person is under an illusion, he also has the one-sided idea that there is only the illusion of hope.’6 This is why, says Kierkegaard, the older person can imagine that he or she has grown out of his or her illusions: he or she is no longer young with naive hopes about the future. But there is also the illusion of recollection and it is here where an older person’s self-deception can often lie. Thus, says Kierkegaard, ‘an older woman, who has apparently given up all her illusions, can often be found to be just as fantastic in her illusions as any young girl, with regard to how she remembers herself as a young girl, how happy she was at that time, how beautiful, and so on’ (p. 192). This theme of self-deception fits naturally with another major theme in Kierkegaard’s writings, namely that of sorrow and despair. This is because, as he puts it in Either/Or, ‘if this deception does not involve anything external but a person’s whole inner life, his life’s innermost core, the probability of the continuance of the objective sorrow becomes greater and greater’.7 But why should Kierkegaard have such an interest in despair? One answer is because of what he sees as the universality of despair. That is, Kierkegaard sees despair everywhere. Sometimes people are openly aware of their own despair, but more often it lies hidden from their own view. It is because of the pervasiveness of its hiddeness that despair can be found far and wide: The ordinary view of despair holds to appearances and is a superficial view that is no view at all. It means that every person can best decide for himself whether or not he is in despair. The person that says he is in despair is seen to be in despair, and the person that feels he is not in despair is seen not to be in despair. It follows from this that despair is a rare phenomenon rather than an ordinary one. It is not rare that a person is in despair; no, it is rare, it is very rare, that a person is in truth. (pp. 81–2) For Kierkegaard, the frightening thing about despair is that there often seems to be no way out. In many forms of suffering, the idea of death can present itself as a possible comfort: if nothing else can save the sufferer, at least death offers a way out. But with despair, argues Kierkegaard, things are different. Here, ‘to be delivered from this sickness by death is

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an impossibility, for the sickness and its torment – and death consists in not being able to die’ (p. 80). What does Kierkegaard mean by this? How could death not deliver one from despair? Does not death end all suffering? To understand Kierkegaard’s point, I think, it is necessary to assume the subjectivity of the person in despair. And at the root of despair is the complete lack of hope. Especially in deep despair, the individual has sunk to the bottom of a fathomless pit from which there seems no way out. All options seem equally fruitless and every course of action seems equally pointless. In such a state of darkness not even death presents itself as a viable option. Thus, there is no reason to seek death and the despairing individual is stranded in life. This might well explain the peculiar phenomenon of suicide during recovery from depression; for when the sufferer begins to emerge from depression, once again it becomes clear that death will end his or her suffering. Despair, for Kierkegaard, can take various forms. Each of these, however, results from the fact that what we call the self is a synthesis of infinity and finiteness and, further, that this synthesis or relation is one that is freely chosen. Despair, then, develops out of the way in which the person chooses to make these relations occur: ‘the development must consist in infinitely moving away from oneself in the process of infinitizing (Uendliggjørelsen in Danish), and infinitely returning to oneself in the process of finitizing. If the self does not become itself, then it is in despair’ (p. 88). In other words, despair occurs when I imagine the sort of person I want to be and thus move my hopes and desires away from the person who I really am. Kierkegaard calls this ‘infinitizing’ because it is carried out by the imagination, the faculty by which we conjure up a near infinite amount of possibilities. Once this desired imaginary self has been conjured up, I then compare it back to reality (the process of finitizing). If the person I am in reality does not become, or perhaps even match up to, the person I want to be, then I am in despair. Another important feature of Kierkegaard’s writings are the frequent discussions of Christianity, theism, and passages from the Bible. Because of these, and because Kierkegaard himself holds Christian beliefs, it is often held that he is foremost a Christian writer, a theologian, or a biblical apologist. To this it can be replied that Kierkegaard clearly did see himself as a Christian in some sense and several of his devotional works (prayers and hymns) attest to this. However, when it comes to his philosophical and psychological writings, the Christian and theistic elements recede into the background and play little role in his philosophical view of things. Indeed, what Kierkegaard seems to do

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is to take an idea or passage from the Bible and then re-interpret it in such a way that it becomes more broadly symbolic of features of human existence. This is why he is often said to be a humanist or existentialist; for his main concern is with the human condition and how we live out our existence. For example, in Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard analyses the biblical story of Abraham’s attempt to sacrifice Isaac in terms of what it means to have faith or to make a choice, while in The Concept of Anxiety he re-interprets the story of Adam and Eve and original sin as symbolic explanation for the experience of freedom and anxiety. Likewise, in The Sickness unto Death he takes a passage from the New Testament concerning Lazarus rising from the dead and uses it as a basis for his account of despair. Further, in ‘An Occasional Address’, he cites another verse from the New Testament, the injunction for the doubleminded to purify their hearts, and explains it in terms of overcoming self- deception through the willing of one thing. In each of these, and several other such cases, the Christian concepts of God, Christ, or heaven play little or no philosophical role. To see this, consider the case in Fear and Trembling. Here Abraham is presented as the knight of faith who has no evidential basis for his belief that it is God who has told him to kill his only son Isaac. How does Abraham know that it is God that has spoken to him? How does he know it is not rather an instance of his own bewilderment (Kierkegaard’s word), or perhaps an attack of acute psychosis? Kierkegaard’s answer is that he does not; for ‘all human calculation had long since closed down’.8 The only thing Abraham can do here is either choose to believe it is God or choose not to believe. Further, in his choosing to believe it is God who speaks to him he can avail himself of no arguments or reasons, he can only turn to faith. This is all the more true because what he believes God requires of him is ‘absurd’, namely, that he should sacrifice his son, and also that he should be happy in this world. But in all of this, it should be evident, God plays no role. Kierkegaard does not try to establish that there is a God, and his concern is not with God at all. Rather, his sole concern is with Abraham and Abraham’s faith in God. What Kierkegaard admires here, and wants to understand, is the psychological and phenomenological state of faith. And this is something that has no dependency on the existence of God. It is possible to have faith in God, or in what one believes he requires, whether or not God exists, which is why God’s existence is here irrelevant for Kierkegaard’s philosophical position.

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The same sort of thing can be seen in The Sickness unto Death. As mentioned, this is a work in which Kierkegaard seeks to understand despair. He also seeks to find its remedy. To this end he states that ‘the self is the conscious synthesis of infinitude and finitude which relates itself to itself, whose task it is to become itself, a task which can be performed only by means of a relationship to God’ (p. 87). Reading this quickly, and considering it apart from the rest of the text, one might be led to the conclusion that, in Kierkegaard’s theory, despair can only be alleviated by God. But Kierkegaard does not say ‘only by means of God’, rather he says, ‘only by means of a relationship to God’ (emphasis added). It is therefore the relationship to God that is important, not God. Someone might want to remonstrate that a relationship to God presupposes God and therefore it is, after all, only by means of God that one can overcome despair. Such a claim, however, can only be made by isolating this passage from the rest of the text. If we read further, we see that the reason why God is supposedly important is because of the idea that with God all things are possible, and thus that God can lift one out of despair. But Kierkegaard’s philosophical point is not that such a lifting out of despair depends on the actual existence of a god for whom all things are possible. It is rather that the way out of despair depends on the belief that there exists such a god. This is why he says a bit later ‘the decisive point is first when someone is brought to the outermost so that, humanly speaking, there is no possibility. Then it depends on if he will believe that for God all things are possible, that is, on if he will believe’ (p. 95, italics in original). And as I have said, one can believe in God whether or not he exists. It is, of course, a bit silly to assert that only through a belief in God can one come out of despair. Not only does it sound like the desperate rhetoric of an evangelist who has no real arguments to offer, but it is also obviously false. For it does not take much observation to see that many people who have no belief in God still come out of despair. Kierkegaard is aware of this and at one point pays lip service to it by saying, ‘sometimes the inventiveness of human imagination can suffice to acquire possibility, but, in the end, when it depends on to believe, the only help is this, that for God, all things are possible’ (p. 96, italics in original). Kierkegaard seems to allow that the inventiveness of one’s own imagination might help in overcoming despair, but then quickly discounts such a view. Unfortunately, however, he gives no legitimate reason why it should be discounted. All he says is ‘when it depends on to believe, the only help is this, that for God, all things are possible’. Or,

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in other words, ‘when the point is to believe that with God all things are possible, the only help is the belief that with God all things are possible’. This, of course, is true, but like all tautologies says nothing. This is not to say that, for some people, the belief that with God all things are possible is essential for escaping despair. Plainly, there are people whose religious beliefs operate in this way. Kierkegaard was apparently one of them. He tells us in his biographical work The Point of View for my Work as an Author how, while working on his writings, he was ‘alone in dialectical tensions that – without God – would drive insane anyone with my imagination, alone in anxieties unto death, alone in a meaninglessness of existence, without being able, even if I wanted it, to make myself understandable to a single person’.9 The fact that there are those who require such beliefs does not, however, mean that all, or even the majority of people need such beliefs. Further, it is not even clear that someone with Kierkegaard’s imagination (supposedly he means something like the depth of his imagination) would be driven insane without God. Sartre, for example, had a brilliant imagination, was ‘without God’, and did not go insane – though he, of course, had Simone de Beauvoir (sort of). Perhaps if Kierkegaard had kept Regine (the girl he left for God) he would have not felt so alone in his ‘dialectical tensions’ and thus been able to keep his sanity without having to believe in God. Does this mean that Kierkegaard’s work on despair should be dispensed with? Not at all. For the central point that Kierkegaard is making is not about God, or even a belief in God. It is about the importance of the belief in possibility. For in the depths of despair what the sufferer lacks is precisely the sense of possibility: there seems no possible way out of an unendurable situation. What the person has need of then is the sense that there is a viable way out. This is something, however, that can be gained in various ways: psychotherapy, meditation, the support of family and friends, religion, and so on. Each of these, in its own way, can give rise to a sense of possibility. None of them has an exclusive claim. There are, I am well aware, scholars who will strongly disagree with this view of Kierkegaard and assert, to the contrary, that the essential aspect of Kierkegaard’s thought is its Christian elements. And this is understandable because the majority of Western scholars writing on Kierkegaard seem to be Christians themselves and thus want to see Kierkegaard as primarily arguing for Christian doctrine, albeit in his unique Kierkegaardian way. And it is just such people who will, no doubt, fail to see the relations between Kierkegaard’s ideas and Japanese thought; for in Japanese thought Christianity, and the assumptions on which it is based, also play no essential role.

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Let us then turn to Japanese thought to get an idea of where these relations lie. One of the more prominent features of Japanese thought is its extreme syncretism. That is, Japanese thought is a distinctive blend of numerous traditions and ideas that, over the centuries, have entered Japanese culture, mixed with the ideas then present, and subsequently been expressed in new ways. Thus, Japanese thought is a mixture of at least Shintō, Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. In Japan, each of these thought-traditions has both influenced and been influenced by the other traditions, such that each one becomes expressed in a uniquely Japanese way. Although Shintō itself, at least in its early versions, is often thought to be a religion indigenous to Japan, parts of even early Shintō appear to have been imported, sharing as it does elements with shamanistic and animistic practices from north-east Asia.10 Also, some aspects of Shintō seem to have Indian or Greek origins. We can start, then, by having a look at each of these traditions to get an overview of the nature of Japanese thought. The expression ‘Shintō’ is normally said to mean ‘kami no michi’ or ‘the way of the kami’. The kami are the gods and goddesses or spirits. Shintō is the ancient Japanese practice of acknowledging and venerating these kami. Many of the kami are described in the earliest Japanese texts, the Kojiki or Record of Ancient Matters and the Nihongi or Chronicles of Japan (both from the eighth century). Having many deities Shintō is, in one sense, a form of polytheism. Yet the word kami does not refer strictly to the idea of a god or goddess in the Western sense; it has vagueness to it that gives it a far wider sense than the Western notion has. As Norinaga Motoori, the eighteenth-century Shintō scholar puts it: I do not yet understand the meaning of the term kami. Speaking in generalities, however, it may be said that kami signifies, in the first place, the deities of heaven and earth that appear in the ancient records and also the spirits of the shrines where they are worshipped. It is hardly necessary to say that it includes human beings. It also includes such objects as birds, beasts, trees, plants, seas, mountains and so forth. In ancient usage, anything whatsoever outside of the ordinary, which possess superior power, or which is awe-inspiring was called kami.11 Thus, although kami refer to supernatural beings, such as the primordial deities Izanagi and Izanami or their daughter the sun goddess, Amaterasu, it can also refer to awe-inspiring human beings, great sages,

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warriors, or emperors. However, it is not just these renowned persons who are kami; it can also be less known people who also inspire awe in some way. According to Motoori, ‘in each province, each village and each family there are human beings who are kami, each one according to his own proper position’ (p. 23). It can also refer to the dead; for there is something awe-inspiring about them: once they were full of sound and movement, now they are silent and still. This is more than likely where the Japanese reverence for the ancestors comes from; because they possess that same feature which makes supernatural beings into gods, namely, their ability to inspire awe. Further, it is not just personified gods or human beings that can be kami, but also non-human creatures, ‘birds, beasts, trees, plants’, and even non-living things in nature – ‘seas, mountains and so forth’. As Motoori puts it, ‘this does not have reference to the spirit of the mountain or the sea, but kami is used here directly of the particular mountain or sea. This is because they were exceedingly awe-inspiring’ (p. 24). It is this seeing of kami in nature that gives Shintō a quality of nature veneration, tying it in with a reverence for the natural beauty of the world that is often expressed by the placing of Shintō shrines in places of natural beauty. Here the kami of the shrine is present in the simple awe-inspiring quality of the surrounding nature. This further gives Shintō a ‘this-worldly’ quality, making it a religion that focuses on the world as we experience it. It is true that Shintō recognizes personified kami who are not merely aspects of nature. But still they are not transcendent gods from beyond this world or from beyond nature. Rather, they dwell quite firmly in the world we experience. This can be seen in the traditional Shintō account of the world as existing in three levels, the takamanohara or the plane of high sky, nakatsukuni or the middle land, and yomi or the underworld. On the first level are the gods, on the second are human beings, and on the third are the dead. Now although these levels are arranged in a hierarchy, it is strictly a physical hierarchy. That is, there is nothing transcendent about the plane of high sky or the underworld. They do not, like heaven and hell in the Christian tradition, exist in other dimensions or in a realm that is somehow beyond our spatio-temporal world. Thus, the kami that are the personified gods or the ancestors exist firmly in this world. It is just that the plane of high sky is high above this middle land as the underworld is deep below it. (However, the distance above the human level of the plane of high sky is debatable; for throughout Japanese history at least 40 different ‘down to earth’ locations have been suggested, with the most common being a tract of land in Shikoku, south of Mount Tsurigi.)12

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It is worth noting here that a later Shintō scholar, Atsutane Hirata (1776–1843) rejected the idea that there was a separate underworld that was physically below the middle land: ‘The view that after men die their souls go to Yomi is part of a tradition that was introduced to Japan from abroad for which there is no attestation whatsoever in our ancient past.’ Speaking of his departed teacher he continues that ‘the place where my teacher’s spirit dwells is Mt Yamamuro [a mountain in Japan] ... He lived there during his life and fixed upon this mountain as his eternal resting place. How then can it be doubted that his spirit dwells there? How can we imagine that it has gone to the filthy land of Yomi?’13 Shintō’s ‘this-worldliness’ and veneration of nature is related to another system of thinking that has heavily influenced Japanese culture. This is the ancient Chinese philosophy of Taoism or do¯kyo¯ in Japanese. Taoism was first put forward by the philosopher Lao Tzu (604 BCE –?) in the work known as the Tao Te Ching. Here he presents the interrelated concepts of the Tao or the way, kuei-ken or returning to the root or the source, and wu-wei or non-action. Because of the sparely worded and poetic style of this book, exactly what Lao Tzu means by these concepts is unclear. Several passages suggest, however, that the Tao refers to a pre-discursive state of awareness where our mind, when allowed to work of its own accord, exists in harmony with nature. That the Tao is such a state of awareness is suggested, for example, by Lao Tzu’s claims that although we continually experience the Tao and employ it in our activities, ‘if desire within us be, its outer fringe is all we shall see’.14 Thus, although this state of awareness is continually with us – a state in which our actions seem to flow of their own accord – if we become filled with and thus distracted by desires, we will lose sight of the core of this awareness. We lose sight of it because distraction interferes with the state of stillness in which the mind is able to flow naturally with the world about me. As Lao Tzu puts it, ‘Who can make the muddy water clear? Let it be still, and it will gradually become clear. Who can secure the condition of rest? Let movement go on, and the condition of rest will gradually arise’ (p. 58). Here awareness, symbolized by water (a common symbol for the Tao), becomes muddied by the activity of desires. Emptying oneself of desires lets the stillness of the primordial awareness (the Tao) appear. This does not mean that awareness ceases activity; for this stillness is achieved only in activity, only when we ‘let movement go on’; that is, when we do not interfere with ourselves. Lao Tzu employs other symbols from nature to indicate the activity of the Tao. Thus he tells us ‘all things alike go through their activity and then we see them return to their original state. When things in the

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vegetable world have displayed their luxuriant growth, we see each of them return to its root. This returning to the root is what we call their stillness; and stillness may be called a reporting that they have fulfilled their appointed end’ (p. 59). This idea of ‘returning to the root or source’ (kuei-ken) is the idea of returning to the Tao. This is returning to the primordial state of awareness where we are in harmony with nature. But how is this done? It is done by non-action (wu-wei). Non-action, for Lao Tzu, is the allowing of awareness to pursue its natural course. Non-action is achieved through letting the principles of water and the vegetable world apply to oneself. This is why he says ‘the sage manages affairs without doing anything, and conveys his instructions without the use of speech’ (p. 48). This does not mean that the sage simply sits and does nothing. It rather means he acts effortlessly by not interfering with his own awareness. Therefore, says Lao Tzu: The sage holds in his embrace the one thing of humility, and manifests it to all the world. He is free from self-display, and therefore he shines; from self-assertion, and therefore he is distinguished; from self-boasting, and therefore his merit is acknowledged; from selfcomplacency, and therefore he acquires superiority. It is because he is thus free from striving that therefore no one in the world is able to strive with him. (p. 65) These Taoist philosophical concepts, which were developed further by later Chinese Taoists like Chuang Tzu and Lieh Tzu, have an obvious affinity with Shintō notions of nature. Further, these concepts were incorporated by later Taoists into religious versions of Taoism which tended to deify Lao Tzu and other historical figures, and involved rituals and magical practices. These practices, and the Taoist concepts on which they were based made their way to Japan and were integrated into Shintō at an early time. Ueda, for example, argues that by 701 CE, during the period of the Taihō reforms, Shintō rituals performed at the imperial Japanese court were already incorporating Chinese practices and ideas, especially those based on Taoism.15 Taoist ideas also have an impact in later Shintō thinking, both on their own and through the medium of Buddhism. For example, the medieval Shintōist Yoshida Kanetomo claims that there was an original spirit or kami ‘pre-dating the diversification of energy’ and that ‘all phenomena return to that single source’, which is basically the Taoist concept of kuei-ken. Then taking a phrase directly from Lao Tzu, he

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claims that the spirit’s divine function was ‘softening the glare’.16 This phrase comes from Chapter 4 of the Tao Te Ching and refers to what we must do in order to bring ourselves into harmony with the Tao. In Kanetomo’s version of Shintō (‘Prime Shintō’ as he calls it) it is clear that this original kami is being equated with the Tao. Another Chinese tradition that had a strong impact on Japanese thought is Confucianism, or jukyoˉshugi in Japanese. This tradition grew out of the ideas of the sixth-century BCE philosopher Confucius and his followers, particularly Mencius. What distinguishes Confucianism from Taoism, is that while Taoism focuses on living in harmony with nature, Confucianism is mostly concerned with social ethics and the human being’s relation to others. What Confucius is interested in is the achievement of interpersonal harmony. To this end he advocates the study of the Chinese classics, books that dealt with history, rites, music, divination, and odes or poetry. In this sense Confucius saw himself as merely being a transmitter of tradition. Yet his purpose in advocating this was because he believed it had beneficial effects on the character. He says in the Analects, for example, ‘it is by the odes that the mind is aroused, by the rules of propriety [the rites] that the character is established, from music that the finish is received’.17 Or again, ‘without the rites, respectfulness becomes laborious bustle, carefulness timidity, boldness insubordination, and straightforwardness rudeness’ (p. 8). In following these rites or rules of propriety a person follows the proper order of things which, for Confucius, mainly refers to the social order. In a way this proper social order is also thought to reflect the universal order of things. Confucius, however, keeps silent on metaphysical questions, whose pursuit will not lead to what is of true importance, namely, following tradition and establishing character. This is achieved by keeping one’s boldness from becoming insubordination, straightforwardness from becoming rudeness, and so on, and having music add the finishing touch. But in pointing to the effects of such study on character, Confucius is in fact doing more than merely transmitting tradition. He is justifying such transmission by basing it on a theory of character formation, and herein lies his originality. Confucius pursues his theory of character formation in the Analects by describing various sorts of ideal characters and discussing the virtues related to each. It is the discussion of these virtues and their mode of cultivation that makes up the major part of Confucius’ teachings. Among the virtues discussed by Confucius are humaneness, reliability

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in word, reverence, filial piety or love, brotherly love, and loyalty to one’s superiors. One obvious connection that Confucianism has to Japanese thought is its ‘this-worldly’ quality. Confucianism turned its focus to human beings and their interpersonal environment and, like Shintō, avoided discussions about transcendent objects, realms, or concepts. Confucianism and Japanese thought are further related in their reverence for and veneration of ancestors. I have already mentioned how ancestor veneration in Japan was connected to the Shintō belief that the dead were kami. This fits well with Confucius’ ideas about the importance of filial piety and devotion towards parents and grandparents. For Confucianism, as for Shintō, this devotion and piety carries over to the dead. When asked about filial piety, Confucius replied, ‘When parents are alive, serve them according to the rules of propriety. When they die, bury them according to the rules of propriety and sacrifice to them according to the rules of propriety’ (p. 23). Although the exact early relation between Confucianism and Shintō is unclear, as the Shintō scholar Holtom suggests, ‘Confucianism strengthened, if, indeed, it did not actually create, early Japanese ancestor worship and gave greater definiteness to the more vague and original conception of kami.’18 Part of the problem is in determining the dates when Confucian ideas entered Japan (Holtom suggests that 405 CE is the likely date for the introduction of the Analects). Confucian and Taoist texts were being studied at the imperial court by at least the eighth century. By the Heian period (794–1185 CE) Confucian ideals seem well established in Japan. For example, in the writings of the esoteric Buddhist thinker Annen (841–889 CE) we find his ‘Do¯ jikyo¯ ’ or ‘Maxims for the Young’. Here numerous Confucian prescriptions, blended with Buddhist and Shintō ideas, are given. Thus Annen says: In the presence of a superior, do not suddenly stand up. If you meet such a person on the road, kneel and then pass on. Should he summon you, comply respectfully With hands clasped to your breast, face him directly. Speak only if spoken to; if he addresses you, listen carefully. Further, he says, ‘when the writings of the [Confucian] sages are being read, do nothing indecorous’.19 The Confucian virtue of loyalty to superiors finds dramatic expression in the Japanese tradition of the warrior, a tradition which in later

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centuries became enshrined in bushido¯ or the way of the warrior as practised by the samurai. About a century before Annen was writing, the Japanese emperors were seeking to gain more political control by establishing a system of feudal armies throughout Japan (an idea which they imported from China). With the evolution of this military system there gradually appeared the idea that the warrior should show absolute loyalty to the emperor or local lord. This loyalty of the warrior to his lord, even to the point of dying for the lord, is recorded in the various gunki mono or war tales. In one such tale, Taiheiki or Chronicle of Great Peace, the warrior Nitta, who is fighting for the emperor, considers his options in the forthcoming battle: ‘If now, upon learning that the enemy has a great army, I should withdraw to Kyoto without fighting even one battle, it would be a humiliation I could not bear. Victory or defeat do not concern me. I wish only to display my loyalty.’20 The depth of the Confucian influence is underlined by the fact that Nitta’s comrade-in-arms, Masashige, challenges Nitta’s thinking here by directly quoting from the Analects. Thus, Masashige replies that Nitta should not be influenced by what people will think of his retreat, but should only consider whether the situation is right for battle. Masashige says, ‘thus Confucius admonished Zilu with these words, “Do not follow the lead of one who would fight tigers with his bare hands and ford great rivers on foot, regretting not that he may be killed” ’ (p. 289). Nevertheless, Masashige, himself a great hero in Japanese culture, dies fighting for his emperor in a battle he knows he cannot win. Here we are told, ‘Masashige, a man combining the three virtues of wisdom, benevolence, and courage [all Confucian virtues], whose fidelity [also a Confucian virtue] is unequalled by anyone from ancient times to the present, has chosen death as the proper way [a Japanese warrior virtue based on Confucian loyalty to one’s superiors]’ (p. 291). A peculiar blend of the Confucian virtue of loyalty and the Shintō idea of kami made its appearance in the Second World War with the kamikaze or suicide pilots. The kamikaze or ‘kami from the wind’ showed their absolute loyalty to the emperor by dying for him while being proclaimed as kami for their awe-inspiring sacrifice. A further and major influence on Japanese thought is Buddhism. Buddhism has its origins in northern India where Siddhā rtha Gautama, the Buddha (563–483 BCE) first presented his account of human existence. Central to his view are the ideas of the four noble truths, the chain of dependent origination, and the no-self theory. The four noble truths start with the claim that all life is suffering. Thus, says the

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Buddha, ‘Birth is suffering; ageing is suffering; sickness is suffering; death is suffering; grief and despair are suffering; association with the unpleasant is suffering; dissociation from the pleasant is suffering; not to get what one wants is suffering.’21 The second truth is that this suffering is caused by craving and selfish desire, while the third truth is that to stop suffering one must stop craving and vanquish selfish desire. The final truth is that in order to vanquish such desires one must follow the eightfold noble path, which encompasses a list of practices such as holding right views, making a right resolve, and entering the right states of concentration and mindfulness (that is, meditation). By partaking of the eightfold path one is, the Buddha says, able to break the chain of dependent origination, a chain that shackles us to suffering. This chain starts with ignorance, which leads to the idea of self, to craving, and thence to suffering. Through following the eightfold path one is able to overcome the ignorance that gives rise to the idea of self, accept the non-existence of the self, and thus become enlightened and overcome suffering. These early teachings of the Buddha were preserved in the later Mahāyāna wing of Buddhist thought, but were elaborated and reinterpreted in new ways. Central to Mahāyāna thought is the idea of the bodhisattva, the compassionate individual, who while practising to become a Buddha and thus to overcome suffering also seeks to help all beings to gain enlightenment. In doing this the bodhisattva or Buddha may use upa¯ya or expedient means, that is, claims that are not fully true, but nevertheless aid a person to achieve enlightenment. These teachings of the Buddha, especially as given in Mahāyāna texts like the Miao-fa lion-hua ching or The Lotus Su¯tra, eventually spread to China and Korea and from there to Japan (the earliest extant version of The Lotus Suˉtra is a Chinese translation). While in China, however, they were blended with Confucianism and Taoism and in due course evolved into distinctly Chinese forms of Buddhism. It was these Chinese forms of Buddhism that were finally introduced into Japanese culture. Although Buddhism first arrived in Japan in 552 CE, it was not until the Nara period (709–784) that Buddhism began to take hold. During this time six schools of Buddhism became established in Nara, the home of the Japanese court. Yet these schools, mainly representing the early Hıˉnayaˉna form of Buddhism, tended to the exclusionist view that enlightenment in this life was only possible for monks who followed an arduous regime of study and meditation. Others would have to wait for rebirth in another life. This, along with their strong connections to the imperial court, hindered the spread of Buddhist ideas in Japan.

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Nevertheless, there were several aspects of Buddhism that fitted well with already accepted Japanese ideas. The Buddhist idea that all life is suffering appealed to Japanese sensitivities about the way that sorrow permeates life. This idea is well expressed by the Japanese word aware, a word that refers to an emotion of poignant sadness. Early Japanese poets would use this word to express a gentle sorrow over the fleetingness of existence: the changing of the seasons, the falling of a leaf, or the flying away of a bird. A few years after the close of the Nara period, the schools of Tendai and Shingon Buddhism were founded by Saichō (767–822) and Kūkai (774–835), respectively. It is here that Buddhism began to take its place in Japanese thought. Both Saichō and Kūkai argued for the view that enlightenment in this life was possible for everyone. Saichō did this by simplifying the precepts for those taking Buddhist training and by arguing for the Tendai doctrine of original enlightenment, namely, that all beings are originally endowed with enlightenment. Kūkai did likewise by presenting a variety of esoteric meditative techniques, each of which, when taught by an authentic master, will lead to enlightenment. Such views as these resonated well with what the Buddhist scholar Tamura calls ‘the Japanese tendency to affirm life and this world’.22 Although Tendai and Shingon Buddhism made the Buddhist concept of enlightenment more acceptable for Japanese ways of thinking, it was in the Kamakura period (1185–1333) that Buddhist thought first became widely disseminated in Japanese culture. This is because the three main schools of Kamakura Buddism – True Pure Land, Zen, and Nichiren Buddhism – not only affirmed the Tendai and Shingon views of the immediate availability of enlightenment but, further, had a rigour and simplicity to their teachings that made them broadly accessible. The success of these schools gave rise to a flurry of activity at Kamakura – the seat of the Sho ˉ gunate – that transformed Kamakura into a centre of Buddhist thought. Pure Land Buddhism, which had its roots in India and expanded greatly in China, centres around the idea of a Pure Land which is free from delusion and in which one can be reborn by having faith in the original vow of one of the Buddhas, namely Amida Buddha. Amida Buddha, or the Buddha of infinite light as he is also called, is claimed in the Indian su ˉ tras to have vowed to save all beings from suffering. He is an ‘other power’ in which people must put their faith. Yet, according to the Japanese Pure Land Buddhist, Eikan, Amida Buddha is really just ourselves. As he puts it, ‘this mind is the Buddha’.23 But how does one have faith in an ‘other power’ when there is no difference between

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oneself and that other power? A possible answer, suggested by Humphreys, is that the other power of Amida can be seen as an ‘objectivised or projected version of the Buddha within’.24 Here we can see the Mahāyāna idea of expedient means at work. Although a Pure Land practitioner might think that there really is an Amida Buddha, a separate being or ‘other power’ in whom she has faith, such a story is in fact just a device or expedient means to get the practitioner to stop interfering with her own awareness and thus liberate herself from her own delusions. In Lao Tzu’s words – and here is the connection with Taoism – it is to return to the source. Originally, Pure Land Buddhism taught that there were several meditative practices that could enable one to be reborn in the Pure Land. But for the Japanese Pure Land master Hōnen (1133–1212), the sole practice was the calling of Amida’s name in the mantra ‘Namu Amida Butsu’ or ‘Praise to Amida Buddha’. For Hōnen, constant effort was essential in the chanting of the mantra. Hōnen’s student Shinran (1173–1262) (founder of the True Pure Land sect) diverged from his teacher in asserting that not even constant effort was necessary. Indeed, because of the depth of craving and evil desires, it was not even possible. If one simply had one moment of faith in Amida’s vow, said Shinran, one was guaranteed birth in the Pure Land. Further, although many Pure Land followers before Shinran interpreted the Pure Land as something like the celestial kami’s plane of high sky – another land in which they would be reborn after death – Shinran argued that there was no difference between the Pure Land and this world. This is because that moment of faith is the Pure Land. Thus, says Shinran, ‘when a person realizes shinjin (faith), he or she is born immediately. “To be born immediately” is to dwell in the stage of no retrogression. To dwell in the stage of no retrogression is to become established in the stage of the truly settled. This is also called the attainment of the equal of perfect enlightenment.’25 When Zen Buddhism first came to Japan from China in the Kamakura period, it presented itself as being distinct from other forms of Buddhism. It was hailed as a separate transmission outside the sˉutras. That is, the Chinese Zen (Ch’an in Chinese) masters rejected the authority of the Buddhist sˉutras and instead advocated direct experience. This feature of Zen is well expressed in Liang K’ai’s famous painting (c. mid-twelfth century) of the Sixth Patriarch of Zen tearing up a sˉutra. The major figure in Kamakura Zen Buddhism is Dōgen (1200–53). Dōgen argued for this ‘direct experience’ feature of Zen Buddhism by

Kierkegaard among the Temples of Kamakura

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stressing the importance of zazen or sitting meditation. It is in meditation, says Dōgen, that we directly experience the nature of reality, which is none other than enlightenment itself. This is experienced as a ‘casting off of mind and body’ (Japanese: shinjin datsuraku), in which we see that there is no enduring self or mind (Dōgen’s word shinjin is written with different characters than Shinran’s word shinjin and thus has a different meaning). Some people, however, think that although the bodily form is temporary, the mind is permanent and somehow persists beyond the body. In his ‘Bendo¯ wa’ or ‘On the Endeavour of the Way’ section of his major work Dōgen replies to this idea by saying, how can you say body perishes but mind is permanent? Is it not against authentic principle? Not only that, you should understand that birth-and-death [that is, life in this world] is itself nirvāna. Nirvāna is not explained outside birth-and-death. Even if you understand that mind is permanent apart from the body, and mistakenly assume that the Buddha wisdom is separate from birth-and-death, this mind still arises and perishes and is not permanent. Is it not ephemeral? (Translation modified)26 It is evident that, despite some divergence, there is a strong connection between the ideas of Shinran and Dōgen. Both thinkers reject the notion of transcendence and affirm that ultimate reality – the Pure Land or nirvāna – is to be found in this world. Another significant thinker who has to be mentioned is Nichiren (1222–82), the founder of Nichiren Buddhism. Nichiren differs from Shinran and Dōgen in that, while they focused their concern on the individual, Nichiren expended much of his energy on social concerns. This was a result of his concern about the several natural and social disasters that were afflicting Japan at the time. He thought that the disasters were occurring because people had fallen away from the true teachings of Buddhism. Thus he attempted to unify Japanese Buddhism by returning people’s focus to The Lotus Su¯tra. This su ¯tra, he felt, was the final teaching of the Buddha, with all other su ¯tras being provisional teachings, and he advocated reciting passages from The Lotus Su¯tra, especially the mantra incorporating the su ¯tra’s full title, ‘Nam myoho renge kyo¯’ or ‘Praise to the lotus of the wondrous law’ – as the path to enlightenment. However, beneath these differences from Shinran and Dōgen’s view, there lay an essential agreement concerning the nature of enlightenment. The Buddha’s teachings, in Nichiren’s words, ‘mean that earthly desires are enlightenment and that the sufferings of birth and death are

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nirvāna. When one chants Nam-myoho-renge-kyo even during the sexual union of man and woman, then earthly desires are enlightenment and the sufferings of birth and death are nirvāna. Sufferings are nirvāna only when one realizes that life throughout its cycle of birth and death is neither born nor destroyed.’27 The ties between these three major schools of Buddhism – schools that came fundamentally to affect Japanese thought – were appreciated by many subsequent Japanese thinkers. For example, the eighteenthcentury Zen Master Hakuin argued that what is essential to gaining enlightenment is seeing into one’s own nature. This is only to be achieved by overcoming the grand delusion that one has a self. Hakuin taught the method of koan study, that is, the study of an illogical puzzle or word that rational thinking cannot solve. By persisting with the koan the student eventually breaks through his or her delusions to arrive at enlightenment. There are, however, numerous ways of overcoming this delusion. Hakuin therefore says, ‘so it is with the Way. Whether you sit in meditation, recite the su ¯tras, intone the dha¯ranı¯ [magical incantations], or call the Buddha’s name, if you devote all your efforts to what you are doing and attain the ultimate, you will kick down the dark cave of ignorance ... The content of the practices may vary but what difference is there in the goal that is reached?’28 In addition to the influences of Shintō, Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism on Japanese thought, there were also the influences of Christianity and Western philosophy, although these were both latecomers to Japan and were never widely assimilated. Christianity, for example, which first arrived with missionaries in the late sixteenth century, was seen by the Tokugawa Shōgun as a covert attempt by the West to colonize Japan and after an initial brief expansion, in 1612 Christianity was banned. Shortly afterwards the Christian missionaries were driven out of Japan and the Shōgun made a determined effort to eradicate Christianity. Finally, in 1629 Japan established itself in near total isolation from the rest of the world, cutting itself off from the impact of Christian and other Western ideas. This remained the situation for almost 250 years, until, under pressure from the West, the Meiji government once again opened Japan to foreign contact. At this point, Western ideas began steadily to enter Japan, but what is now known as Japanese thought had, for the most part, already been firmly established. Thus, although Japan again allowed Christian missionaries to seek converts, Christianity never spread widely through Japan – as Confucianism and Buddhism had done earlier – and Christian thinking did not alter or add much to Japanese thought.

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It is interesting to note that even among Japanese who consider themselves Christians their idea of being a Christian does not necessarily exclude the possibility of their also practising Shintō or Buddhism. Thus, Mortensen refers to a Japanese student of Kierkegaard he met who ‘came from a nonreligious environment, but had attended one of the traditional Buddhist temples in Nara. After which he was baptized and lived as a student in a hostel owned by the congregation of the United Church of Japan. Despite his deep involvement in Christian religious philosophy, he supported the erection of a Buddhist pagoda in his home town with pride.’ Reflecting on this, Mortensen says, ‘One can ask oneself what the concept of faith really means in a society where each individual can believe such a variety of things and where, in many instances, he or she belongs to a certain sect out of considerations for ancestors.’29 Why Mortensen asks himself this is because from the usual Christian perspective, Christianity is the truth and other views that contradict it – for example, views that are atheistic, reject the idea of heaven, or do not see Jesus as the son of a god – are false. Thus from a conventional Christian perspective it does not make sense for someone to claim to be a Christian while at the same time supporting Buddhism and ancestor veneration. In other words, the core of Christianity, which sees itself as being the sole road to salvation, is lost upon the majority of Japanese. As for Western philosophy, this too made little impression on Japanese thought in general. It did, however, affect Japanese modern philosophy. This is because Japanese universities with philosophy departments – which were both modelled after the West – only began to appear during this period of renewed contact. It is here that Kierkegaard played a decisive role. The reason, as we shall see, is because of the numerous links between Kierkegaard and Japanese thought. From the overviews just given it should now be evident where these connections lie. For example, subjectivity, a major theme in Kierkegaard’s works, is a theme that appears throughout Japanese thought. For Kierkegaard, truth is found in subjectivity because of the meanings that certain events have for us. These meanings are lost when one attempts to take the objective point of view. Likewise, in Shintō thought, the kami are often felt in the subjective awe-inspiring quality of various experiences. The experience of the kami is lost when the observer takes an objective view. Thus, were I to try to observe the bamboo grove surrounding a shrine in a detached objective way I would fail to experience the kami. However, turning inward and becoming subjective, as Kierkegaard would say, I become aware of the awe-inspiring feature of these entities. I see the

24 Kierkegaard and Japanese Thought

peculiar and almost life-like swaying of the bamboo while the wind gently moves through the grove. (Is this swaying something that the kamakiri or praying mantis, itself a kami, tries to imitate as it creeps up the branches?) I see the shimmering play of light on the rustling leaves which creates a dance of colour and shade, a dance whose infinite complexity pulls me into a whirlpool of meanings. My sense of the kami is only to be found in the subjectivity of my experience. Here truth is subjectivity. In just this way the experience of aware is only felt when one becomes subjective, that is, when one turns to the way in which the world presents itself to one’s own subjectivity. The tinge of sadness that I see in watching the blossom fall from its branch is nothing that would enter into an objective account of this event. I only find aware when I focus on the meaning that this event has in my subjectivity. Further, as Eshin Nishimura points out in Chapter 4, the notion of human subjectivity is one that lies at the heart of Zen Buddhist thought. This feature of Zen Buddhism provides the basis for several connections with the ideas of Kierkegaard, connections that are also explored in Chapters 5, 6, and 7. It will be recalled, for example, how in Kierkegaard’s account Abraham had no basis on which to decide from whither came the voice that commanded him to kill his child. Was it God? Was it a hallucination? All he could do was choose in faith. This is especially true since the command is an ‘absurdity’ and, for Abraham, ‘all human calculation had long since ceased to function’. This has an obvious link to the Hakuin’s notion of koan study; for a koan, just like the question of whether it really is God who commands Abraham to kill his only child, is an unsolvable problem, a puzzle with no definite solution. The connections between Kierkegaard’s idea of absurdity and paradox and Hakuin’s idea of koan study are examined further by Archie Graham in Chapter 7. The idea of subjectivity also ties Kierkegaard into a central feature of Shintō (and thus Japanese thought generally), namely, its ‘this-worldly’ quality. For, as I have tried to show, Shintō’s focus is on nature and the empirical world of experience. Kierkegaard’s philosophical concerns are also with this world and how it presents itself to us. All of his major areas of inquiry have to do with human experience. Even in the recurring theme of death, his concern is not with death itself, but with the meaning that death has for us or the appropriate way to remember the dead, and so on. Likewise, although Kierkegaard refers often to God, his philosophical concern is always with the belief in God, not with God as something existing beyond the belief. This aspect of Kierkegaard, which

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brings him into harmony with Japanese ways of thinking, is nicely expressed by the philosopher Kazuo Mutō who says of Kierkegaard, ‘his thought amounts to God without God’ (p. 146). Or again, in line with the ‘this-worldly’ quality of Shintō and of seeing the kami in nature, there are Japanese philosophers who understand Kierkegaard’s idea of God in just this way. Thus the philosopher Satoshi Nakazato says, ‘many researchers claim that Kierkegaard is extremely Christian and does not find God in nature, but that is incorrect in my opinion: on many occasions he has seen or experienced God in nature’ (p. 129). The relations between Shintō, especially the modern Shintō thinker Kobayashi, and Kierkegaard, are explored in detail by Makoto Mizuta in Chapter 11. Kierkegaard’s theme of freedom is also one that appears in various places in Japanese thought. In Taoism, both in itself and as it appears in Japanese Buddhism, freedom plays a fundamental role. In the Taoist view of things I experience my freedom by liberating my awareness from the obscuring desires that impede its natural activity. The opaque waters of awareness become clear and my actions now flow of their own accord. Here I experience my freedom in wu-wei or non-action. This idea of freedom is, however, somewhat different from Kierkegaard’s; for in the Taoist picture I find freedom by letting things happen of their own accord, not by actively moving towards a chosen goal. Although there is this difference, there is also a deeper relationship. This is because there is an important sense in which the qualitative leap also happens of its own accord. No science can explain what makes the leap take place; for there is nothing that causes it. This is why it is free. In the moment of choice, choice simply takes place. It also happens of its own accord. In this sense, the qualitative leap is wu-wei. What happens, however, is that the waters of awareness become muddied with self-deception as we try to interfere with our choices. This does not mean that in self-deception we are not free, but only that we are trying to deceive ourselves into thinking we are not free. As Lao Tzu would put it, we only see the outer fringes of the Tao. A similar account could be made for Buddhism. In Pure Land Buddhism, for example, one enters the Pure Land when one gives oneself over to the ‘other power’ of Amida Buddha. What one is doing is simply not interfering with the operation of natural awareness. One gives oneself over to the other power by letting non-action take over. In this sense, Kierkegaard’s qualitative leap is none other that Shinran’s ‘other power’; for the qualitative leap is also an ‘other power’. It is something which, having no causal or deterministic ties to previous events, happens of its own accord. Yet just as Amida Buddha is really my own

26 Kierkegaard and Japanese Thought

mind, so is the qualitative leap really my own choice. Where Kierkegaard differs from Shinran, is that Kierkegaard did not have a fully developed notion of a Pure Land, or did not seem to see that the qualitative leap leads to something like the freedom of the Pure Land. This is because his discussion of the leap, especially in The Concept of Anxiety, is tied in with the idea of sin and guilt. Shinran is also concerned about evil desires, but he is not concerned with the idea of an ‘other power’ as something which leads us to have these desires. This, however, is Kierkegaard’s concern, and so their paths diverge. Anxiety is also a theme in Japanese thought, although it appears in a different way. With Kierkegaard, as we have seen, anxiety is something that attends freedom and thus is always there in some form and to some degree. In Japanese thought, however, anxiety is not something that is inevitable in this way. This is because anxiety is not seen as an experience that accompanies all choices. Rather, anxiety is seen, as is usual in the Buddhist tradition, as a form of suffering. And suffering is something that is to be overcome. That a major goal of Buddhism is to rise above anxiety is attested to by the fact that the Buddha is often depicted as holding his hand in the Abhaya mudra, a hand gesture that means ‘Have no fear’ (fear and anxiety are not typically distinguished in Buddhism). We find an important difference in the way that Kierkegaard and Japanese thought approach the problem of anxiety; for while Japanese thought offers a way to be free from anxiety, Kierkegaard does not. It is true that in the closing chapter of The Concept of Anxiety, Kierkegaard gives the appearance of offering a way of escaping anxiety. He cryptically refers to the idea of atonement. But as I have argued elsewhere, no such solution is really given and, further, it goes against his entire theory.30 As Ian Mills observes in Chapter 6, there is an anguish present in Kierkegaard’s writing that contrasts with the calmness evident in Dōgen’s writings. In the same way, death, which is a mutual and major concern for both Kierkegaard and Japanese thinkers, is dealt with in related ways. Kierkegaard, as we have seen, feels that death can only be fully understood from within the individual’s subjectivity. What this involves is experiencing a fear of death in the awareness of the inevitability of death. Further, this awareness has to be accompanied by the thought that death could come at any time. As Adam Buben shows in Chapter 8 the samurai also feel that one should be aware of death and, in deep subjectivity, accept that it could come at any time. There is an obvious connection here, yet as Buben demonstrates, while Kierkegaard thinks the fear of death should, to a certain degree, be kept in our awareness,

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the samurai see the fear of death as something to be prevailed over. This would seem to be a point of divergence. It is also worth noting that Kierkegaard’s concern with death, especially with the idea of how we are to treat the dead, has deep connections with Confucian and Shintō thinking. This is strange because, if there is one particular strand in Japanese thought that would seem to be most distinct from Kierkegaard, it would appear to be Confucianism; for Confucianism is concerned, in a basic way, about the harmony of interpersonal relationships, a concern that seems distinct from Kierkegaard’s. Yet even here one can find a connection. As I mentioned earlier, Confucius sees filial piety as being an important virtue, and one that should be cultivated. This piety, he thinks, should also carry over into the realm of the dead. Thus, he tells us that when our parents die we should, ‘bury them according to the rules of propriety and sacrifice to them according to the rules of propriety’. This reverence for one’s deceased parents also carries over in Confucian thought to a general reverence for the dead ancestors. In like manner, it is also the practice of Shintō to revere the dead and ancestors as awe-inspiring kami. There are several places in Kierkegaard’s writing where the dead take on this awe-inspiring quality. In Concluding Unscientific Postscript, for example, Kierkegaard describes his walk through a graveyard and the awe that he feels for the dead. Their tombstones are inscribed with ‘We shall meet again’, and yet they remain quietly in their graves. For Kierkegaard this becomes symbolic of passionate inwardness: to hold fast to your course in spite of having everything against you.31 This idea is also expressed in Kierkegaard’s idea of the fellowship of the dead, a society of the living who are like the dead in that they are inwardly entombed and cut off from fellowship with the living. In Chapter 13 Masugata explores this idea and its relation to the Japanese Kierkegaard scholar Masaru Otani; someone who saw himself as part of Kierkegaard’s fellowship of the dead. Though in both cases the dead become symbols, they are nevertheless venerated by Kierkegaard in a not completely un-Confucian or un-Shintō way. This link to Japanese ideas about the dead is even more striking in Works of Love in the chapter entitled ‘The Work of Love in Remembering One Dead’. Here we find Kierkegaard reflecting on the proper way to show love for the departed. As Kierkegaard points out, unlike other forms of love, this is a situation in which there is no possibility of reciprocation. One can only love with unconditional respect and reverence. Kierkegaard no longer sees the dead as symbolic of something else, but here describes feelings for the dead as themselves, and the duty that one has to remember them in this way. Much of what he says is not unlike

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the Japanese practice of bowing to the family butsudan – a small altar with pictures of the family dead – each time one enters the house. Turning now to Kierkegaard’s theme of despair, the connections with Japanese thought are unmistakable. For Kierkegaard despair is universal; for Buddhism all life is suffering. According to the Buddha, sickness, ageing and death – three of the sights that made him leave home and seek the answer to suffering (the fourth being the sight of a wandering yogin) – are among the unavoidable features of existence that sink us into despair. We grasp at and cling to health, youth, and life and can never accept their loss. But they will be lost. And as we watch the approach of their inevitable impermanence we descend into despair. Here, Kierkegaard presents essentially the same story: despair arises from the inability to become the self the individual longs to become. Translated into Buddhist terms this suffering arises because it is not possible to become the so much desired healthy, young, and deathless being. The divergence between Kierkegaard and Buddhism would seem to appear when Kierkegaard goes on to claim that the way out of despair only comes through the belief that with God all things are possible. Yet, as I showed, Kierkegaard offers no support for this claim, which is obviously false. However, elsewhere Kierkegaard does suggest another way out of despair. And here his suggestion is supported with argument. Thus, in an article entitled ‘One Lives Only Once’ Kierkegaard reflects over the fact that people commonly have a wish that they long to fulfil. A person in this circumstance often believes that the fulfilment of this wish would bring happiness. But, says Kierkegaard, ‘imagine such a person on his deathbed. The wish was not fulfilled, but his soul, unchanged, clings to this wish – and now, now it is no longer possible. Then he rises up on his bed; with the passion of despair he once again states his wish, “Oh, what despair, it is not fulfilled; what despair, one lives only once!”.’ Then, says Kierkegaard, ‘it seems terrible, and it truly is, but not as he thinks; what is terrible is not that the wish was unfulfilled, what is terrible is the passion with which he clings to it. His life is not wasted because his wish is not fulfilled, not at all; if his life is wasted it is because he refused to give up his wish.’32 On this point Kierkegaard is in agreement with Buddhism. What Kierkegaard states here is essentially the third noble truth given by the Buddha, namely, that to stop suffering one must give up craving and selfish desire. With this it should be clear why Japanese philosophers, with their blend of Shintōist, Taoist, Confucian, and Buddhist ideas, would find significance in Kierkegaard’s ideas. Indeed, Kierkegaard would have fit in remarkably well among the temples of Kamakura. The Japanese

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thinkers at Hasedera and Kenchoji temples, would have felt an affinity with his ideas and Tōkai Shōshun, the master at Engakuji temple, might even have accepted him for Zen training. At the very least he would have no longer had to complain, as he did, about being a ‘genius in a market town’. How later Japanese philosophers came upon his ideas, and their responses to them, are the subject of the next chapter.33

Notes 1. S. Morris Engel, The Study of Philosophy (San Diego, California: Collegiate Press, 2002) p. 20. 2. James Giles, ‘Introduction’, in Kierkegaard and Freedom, ed. James Giles (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2000). 3. Kierkegaard, Søren Kierkegaards Papirer [Papers of Søren Kierkegaard] 1, ed. P. A. Hieberg and V. Kuhr (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1968) pp. 53 and 55. All translations from Kierkegaard’s works given in this chapter are my own. 4. Kierkegaard, Afsluttende Uvidenskabeligt Efterskrift [Concluding Scientific Postscript] in Søren Kierkegaards Samlede Værker [Collected Works of Søren Kierkegaard] 9, ed. A. B. Drachmann, J. L. Hieberg and H. O. Lang (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1963) p. 129. Further references to this edition are included in the text. 5. Kierkegaard, Begrebet Angest [The Concept of Anxiety] in Kierkegaards Samlede Værker, 6, p. 189. 6. Kierkegaard, Sygdommen til Døden [The Sickness unto Death] in Kierkegaards Samlede Værker, 15, pp. 113–14. 7. Kierkegaard, Enten-Eller [Either-Or] in Kierkegaards Samlede Værker, 2, pp. 171–2. 8. Kierkegaard, Frygt og Bævan [Fear and Trembling] in Kierkegaards Samlede Værker, 4, p. 189. 9. Kierkegaard, Synpunktet for min Forfatter-virksomhed, in Kierkegaards Samlede Værker, 18, p. 123. 10. Sources of Japanese Tradition, 1, second edition, compiled by Wm Theodore de Bary, Donald Keene, George Tanabe, and Paul Varley (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001) p. 17. 11. Norinaga Motoori, Motoori Norinaga zenshuˉ [Complete Works Norinaga Motoori] excerpted in D. C. Holtom, The National Faith of Japan: a Study in Modern Shintoˉ (New York: Paragon, 1965) p. 23. Further references to this excerpt are from this edition and are included in the text. Translation is by D. C. Holtom. 12. Jean Herbert, Shintoˉ: the Fountain Head of Japan (New York: Stein and Day, 1967) p. 236. 13. Atsutane Hirata, ‘Life after Death’, in Sources of Japanese Tradition, 2, second edition, compiled by Ryusaku Tsunoda, Wm Theodore de Bary, and Donald Keene (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958) pp. 45–6. 14. Lao Tzu, The Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu, in The Texts of Taoism, 1, trans. James Legge (New York: Dover, 1962). Further references to this edition are included in the text. 15. Kenji Ueda, ‘Contemporary Social Change and Shintō Tradition’, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 6 (1979) 303–27. 16. Yoshida Kanemoto, ‘Yoshida Kanemoto: Prime Shinto’, in Sources of Japanese Tradition, 1, p. 348.

30 Kierkegaard and Japanese Thought 17. Confucius, Confucian Analects, in Confucius, trans. James Legge (New York: Dover, 1971) p. 23. Further references to this edition are included in the text. 18. D. C. Holtom, The National Faith of Japan: a Study in Modern Shintoˉ (New York: Paragon, 1965). 19. Annen, ‘Annen: Maxims for the Young’, in Sources of Japanese Tradition, 1, pp. 193–4. 20. Anonymous, ‘Chronicle of the Great Peace (Taiheiki): the Loyalist Heroes’, in Sources of Japanese Tradition, 1, p. 289. Further references to this edition are included in the text. 21. The Buddha, ‘Setting in Motion the Wheel of Truth’, in A Sourcebook in Asian Philosophy, ed. John M. Koller and Patricia Koller (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1991) p. 195. 22. Yoshiro Tamura, Japanese Buddhism: a Cultural History, trans. Jeffery Hunter (Tokyo: Kosei, 2000) p. 59. 23. Cited in Tamura, Japanese Buddhism: a Cultural History, p. 82 24. Christmas Humphreys, The Wisdom of Buddhism, ed. Christmas Humphreys (London: Curzon) p. 154. 25. Shinran, The Collected Works of Shinran, 2 (Kyoto: Jodo Shinshu Hongwanji-Ha, 1997) p. 455. 26. Dōgen, Moon in a Dewdrop: the Writings of Zen Master Doˉgen, trans. Kazuaki Tanahashi (San Francisco, California: North Point Press, 1995) p. 154. 27. Nichiren, Selected Writings of Nichiren, trans. Burton Watson and others, ed. Philip B. Yampolsky (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990) p. 345. 28. Hakuin, The Zen Master Hakuin: Selected Writings, trans. Philip B. Yampolsky (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971) p. 126. 29. Finn Hauberg Mortensen, Kierkegaard Made in Japan (Gylling, Denmark: Odense University Press, 1996) p. 18. The following two citations in the text come from interviews in this book. 30. James Giles, ‘Kierkegaard’s Leap: Anxiety and Freedom’ in Kierkegaard and Freedom, pp. 69–92. 31. See James Giles, ‘From Inwardness to Emptiness: Kierkegaard and Yogacaˉraˉ Buddhism’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 9 (2001) 311–40. 32. Kierkegaard, ‘Man kun lever een Gang’, in Kierkegaards Samlede Værker, 19, p. 275. 33. I should like to thank James Sellmann for his helpful comments on an earlier version of this chapter.

2 A Short History of Kierkegaard’s Reception in Japan Kinya Masugata

The relationship between Kierkegaard and Japanese thinking may be viewed from three standpoints. The first considers what influence Kierkegaard may have had upon the development of Japanese thinking or Japanese philosophy. This is to investigate critically Japanese thinking from the standpoint of Kierkegaard’s ideas. The second takes the opposite view, which considers how Japanese ideas can contribute to an understanding of Kierkegaard, or how it is to study and criticize Kierkegaard from a Japanese perspective. This can also involve attempting to discover the influence that Japanese thought had on Kierkegaard. Because Kierkegaard had little or no direct knowledge of Japanese or Asian philosophy – despite the fact that his contemporary Schopenhauer was steeped in Asian thought – many people never bother to consider the possibility of an Eastern influence on his writing. But as Ian Mills suggests in Chapter 6, there might well be an indirect influence here through the works of other thinkers. Finally, to synthesize these two views, we may consider both sides impartially, not using one to judge the other, but dealing with both on equal terms. This approach does not stop at interpretation, but deals with living issues in philosophy or religion. Kierkegaard’s ideas first appeared in Japan during the Meiji period (1868–1912) when Japan was opened to foreign influence for the first time after centuries of self-imposed isolation. We can divide the history of Kierkegaard research in Japan in the following way: First period: the dawn (late 1880s–1906) Second period: the spreading of Kierkegaard’s ideas (1906–14) Third period: from Watsuji’s Kierkegaard to Mitsuchi’s Drunken Songs (1915–23) 31

32 Kierkegaard and Japanese Thought

Fourth period: assimilation and Kierkegaard renaissance (1920–45) Fifth period: existentialism becomes popular (1945–70) Sixth period: declining interest (1970–present) Let us look at each of these periods.

First period: the dawn Kierkegaard’s two routes to Japan Kierkegaard’s name was known in Japan by the late 1880s. But how did this come about? Japanese intellectuals got their information on Kierkegaard through two main routes. The first was through the Danish philosopher Harald Høffding whose works constituted a major source of Western philosophy for Japanese intellectuals, and the second was through the Danish historian of literature Georg Brandes, whose works were sources of Japanese understanding of occidental literature. Modern Japan opened up to European culture in philosophy and literature at the same time that the writings of Høffding and Brandes were dominant. Western philosophy began to be assimilated into Japanese thought in the 1880s, and at the same time Japanese philosophers started to develop their own style of philosophizing in the modern Western sense. Logic, philosophical psychology, and ethics were especially popular, and there was also some interest in the history of philosophy. Høffding’s works in particular gained wide readership. In turn this awoke a special interest in Danish philosophy. Indeed, in 1911 Ichiro Kobayashi wrote the article ‘Denmaku no kinseitetsugaku’ (‘Modern Philosophy of Denmark’), which he based on Høffding’s 1889 article ‘Die Philosophie in Dänemark im 19. Jahrhundert’ (‘Danish Philosophy in the 19th Century’). In 1889, Inoue Tetsujiro, Professor in Philosophy at Tokyo Imperial University – and the first philosophy professor in Japan – was invited to speak at the International Eastern Conference in Sweden. On his way to Sweden, Tetsujiro visited Høffding at his home in Copenhagen. By this time, Høffding’s reputation as an astute philosopher was already established. The German translation of his Psychology had been published in 1887, and the translation of his Ethics was published the following year. It was this reputation that brought Tetsujiro to visit Høffding. Another philosopher through whom Høffding’s works came to be known in Japan was Hajime Ohnishi (1864–1900), the founder of Kyoto Imperial University’s Philosophy Department. While still a postgraduate studying under Tetsujiro at Tokyo Imperial University, Ohnishi lectured on ethics, psychology, and logic at Tokyo Senmon Gakko (later to become

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Waseda University). For his classes, he used Høffding’s psychology text. In 1892, Ohnishi completed Høffding’s introduction to Japanese thinkers with his translation into Japanese of Knud Ibsen’s 1891 article ‘Die dänische Philosophie des letzten Jahrzehnts’ (Danish Philosophy of the Last Decade). The German translations of Kierkegaard’s Øjeblik (The Moment) and Høffding’s Søren Kierkegaard som Filosof (Søren Kierkegaard as Philosopher) were published in 1896, and reviews of these books appeared in several German philosophical journals. It is clearly possible that Japanese philosophers – who also contributed to these journals – learned Kierkegaard’s name through such reviews. Indeed, it was in this period that Ohnishi started his study of Høffding’s Søren Kierkegaard als Philosoph (the German title). In 1895 the first five chapters of Høffding’s Psychology were translated into Japanese by Shintaro Ishida, and a revised edition, which included a sixth chapter, was published in 1897. This was the first time that Kierkegaard’s name appeared in print in Japan, albeit in a translation into Japanese of a foreign work. The other route through which Kierkegaard’s thought came to Japan was through Brandes’ writing on Ibsen. By the late 1880s, the Japanese were already aware of Ibsen. One of the leaders of the literary movement in the Meiji Era, Shōyō Tsubouchi (1859–1935), who hired Ohnishi at Tokyo Senmon Gakko, wrote on Ibsen twice in 1892 in Waseda bungaku (Waseda Literary Magazine). From his readings of Brandes’ works, Tsubouchi concluded that Ibsen was an angry pessimist and that individualism was the best protection against the malaise of society. In 1893 Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People and A Doll’s House were translated into Japanese by Gekko Takayasu, and in 1894 Chikusui Kaneko, a disciple of Ohnishi, gave a detailed introduction to Ibsen in his article ‘Shinbungo’ (‘New Great Man of Literature’) in Waseda Literary Magazine. From the mid-1890s Ibsen became a popular topic of conversation in Japanese intellectual circles, and his work was prominent around 1900, when notions of self and individualism were of great general interest. After the Japanese victory in the Sino-Japanese War (1884–95), Japan not only experienced an upsurge of nationalism, but also saw the emergence of ideas of capitalism and socialism, and a widespread individualism. The emergence of these disparate ways of thinking shattered the previously existing sense of national unity. Young people, sensing a kind of spiritual starvation, turned their attention to their core values and inner life and, as a result, ethics became popular in the world of philosophy. In 1901 Chogyu Takayama, famous as an ultranationalist, published an article entitled ‘Bunmeihihyōka toshiteno bungakusha’ (‘The Writer as Critic of Civilization’) in Taiyō (The Sun). This was influenced by

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Theobald Ziegler’s 1899 work Die geistigen und sozialen Strömungen des Neunzehnten Jahrhunderts (The Spiritual and Social Currents of the 19th Century). In this article Takayama considered Ibsen (as well as Nietzsche) as a propagator of individualism. He characterized Ibsen’s poems as ‘poems of will’, ‘poems of ideals’, and thought of Ibsen’s hero, Brand, as an incarnation of the individualistic will. He claimed that should Japanese novelists read Brand and understand the main character, they would no longer be able to write as they had done before. Takayama also showed great sympathy for Brand’s catchphrase: ‘All or nothing’, which was influential on many Japanese intellectuals of the time. Some months later, in 1901, Takayama published a paper in Taiyo entitled ‘Biteki seikatsu wo ronzu’ (‘Treating Aesthetic Life’), in which he defined the aesthetic life as one of satisfying instinct. Given his popularity as an ultranationalist and outspoken critic of the day, the radical individualism he espoused in this article drew a lot of public attention. This theory of aesthetic life was perceived as drawing on Nietzsche and as a result, Nietzsche’s thought rapidly drew public notice. Against the tide of this growing popularization of Nietzsche, Shōyō Tsubouchi criticized both Takayama and Nietzsche. Tsubouchi was conscious of the necessity of introducing a more balanced picture of Ibsen to Japanese readers. He therefore dedicated the second volume of his series of Waseda Literary Magazine to ‘Ibusen saku shakaigeki’ (‘Ibsen’s Social Drama’), as translated by Gekko Takayasu in 1901. Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People and A Doll’s House were included in this translation, as were a general introduction to Scandinavian literature and translation of selected passages from Brand and Peer Gynt. Tsubouchi wanted to introduce Ibsen to Japanese readers without tying Ibsen’s works to Nietzsche’s thought. However, Ibsen, as well as his character Brand, was generally considered a Nietzschean individualist. The first Japanese reference to Kierkegaard In response to the debate over the aesthetic life, Yasuji Ohtsuka, the first Japanese professor of aesthetics, published an article in 1902 entitled ‘Romanchikku wo ronjite wagakuni bugei no genkyo ni oyobu’ (‘A Look at Our Current Literature through the Romantic Movement’). In this article he criticized followers of ‘the new romanticism’, as the new spiritual trend in Japan was called. In particular, Ohtsuka attacked those who recommended Nietzscheism. According to Ohtsuka, these thinkers neglected

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to develop the proper literary spirit of romanticism. He summarized the origin, nature, and meaning of romanticism in the history of literature. In the course of this summary he made reference to Kierkegaard: A romantic trend has been popular for ten or fifteen years. The principle of almighty science ... which flourished in the early 19th century has gradually been declining. The study of psychology became much more popular than physics, and philosophy, which was previously out of fashion, has now come to raise its head. Moreover, the spirit of reaction reflected even in the sphere of religion; in particular, in the Catholic reaction against Protestantism and in the increasing number of Catholics themselves. In addition to these trends in the field of thought concerning the world and life, there were also Schopenhauer’s pessimism, Nietzsche’s extreme individualism, the thought of Kierkegaard (who believed in a principle similar to Nietzsche’s), not to mention the thought of Tolstoy, a great man in Russia who, in contrast to Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, eagerly advocated philanthropy. These thoughts or principles have become increasingly popular. They have been enthusiastically accepted by some people and have both developed and become central to new trends in literature.1 So far as I am able to establish, this is the first time that a Japanese thinker, in the context of his own work, made reference to Kierkegaard. In contrast to the 1890s, the character of this new romanticism was divisive and destructive, both socio-politically and philosophically. The mainstream of intellectual thought at this time was individualism, with Kierkegaard coming to be considered as one of its main proponents. What is more, an entry on Kierkegaard appeared in 1905 in Tetsugaku jiten (Dictionary of Philosophy) which was edited by Sanjuro Tomonaga (1871–1951), a philosophy professor at Kyoto Imperial University. This entry was a translation by Tomonaga from The Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology (1901) edited by J. M. Baldwin. Further, Tomonaga claimed that the entries he wrote for ethics and psychology were based on Høffding’s works. Tomonaga’s personal library also contained the first German edition of Høffding’s Søren Kierkegaard als Philosoph. I have described this period as the dawn of Kierkegaard’s reception in Japan. The following period involves his wider introduction.

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Second period: the spreading of Kierkegaard’s ideas (1906–14) The spiritual atmosphere of the early 1900s in Japan The early years of the twentieth century were times of frustration for young people in Japan. The country seemed unlikely to attain unity in a situation where despite two generations of cultural and political achievement, society was still characterized by significant socio-political division. We can gather a clearer picture of the times from Tetsuro Watsuji (1889–1960), at the time Japan’s sole systematical ethical philosopher and author of the first exhaustive Japanese text on Kierkegaard: It was as a model of Ibsen’s Brand that I first heard Kierkegaard’s name. When Ibsen’s works appeared in our country, I was a secondary school student. I found Brandes’ Ibsen and Bjørnson in English and read the part on Ibsen. It was after the Russo-Japanese War (1906–09). There was a fairly discernible religious strain among the youth, so I was keenly conscious of and intensely fascinated with Kierkegaard’s name as the model of Brand’s ‘Either/or’ dilemma ... When I read Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, as above mentioned, the world of Christianity was more discernible than now, and because of this the thought of the Anti-Christ or of an attack upon Christendom gave us young people a considerable shock.2

Ibsen’s death and the dissemination of Kierkegaard’s name Ibsen died on 23 May 1906. When news of his death reached Japan, there was an upsurge of interest in Ibsen, and in July of that year the literary world witnessed the publication of several articles on his works. In these articles we find a number of references to Kierkegaard’s thought. Only one of these articles, Bin Ueda’s ‘Ibusen’ (‘Ibsen’), has previously been discussed by other scholars. This article appeared on 1 July 1906 in Waseda bungaku. But my own research has uncovered two formerly unrecognized references to Kierkegaard’s thought. One reference occurred in Shin shosetsu (New Novel) in the article entitled ‘Henrikku Ibusen’ (‘Henrik Ibsen’) by Iwaya Sazanami, and the other in ‘Ibusen towa ikanaru hito zo: 19 seiki no bunmei to Ibusen’ (‘Who is Ibsen: Ibsen

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and Civilization in the 19th Century’) by Shinsaku Saito. Both of these articles were also published on 1 July 1906. It would not, therefore, be inaccurate to claim that Ibsen’s work was of considerable importance in introducing Kierkegaard to Japanese thinkers. Now, one of the main sources of Ibsen’s works at this time was the 1899 English translation of George Brandes’ anthology Henrik Ibsen, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson. Critical Studies. In his ‘First Impression of Ibsen’ (1867), Brandes advanced the view that Kierkegaard was the model for Ibsen’s Brand. Pursuing this idea, the two articles mentioned above argued that Kierkegaard’s thought formed the background of Ibsen’s work, and that Kierkegaard himself was a champion of individualism. Finally, in the 1906 September issue of Waseda Literary Magazine Kierkegaard’s name appeared for the first time in the title of a published article. Chikusui Kaneko’s article, entitled ‘Kiyakegorudo no jinseikan’ (‘Kierkegaard’s View of Life’), afforded a detailed treatment of Kierkegaard’s thought, based on Høffding. In the November issue of Waseda Literary Magazine, Kaneko followed this with ‘Shu¯kyo¯ teki shinri’ (‘Religious Truth’) in which he criticized Høffding and William James: ‘In short, it must be said that the proposals of Høffding and James have not yet freed themselves from the religious subjectivism of Feuerbach and Kierkegaard: the proposals are a kind of version of pure subjectivism.’3 Kaneko’s views did not go unnoticed at the time: his first article was reviewed in a Christian newspaper, Fukuin shinpo¯ (Evangelist) in September 1906 and his November article was criticized by the philosopher Ryosen Tsunajima in Waseda Literary Magazine, also in 1906. Tsunajima was a disciple of Ohnishi. In November of the same year, Japan’s most famous contemporary philosopher, Kitaro Nishida (1870–1945) (who I will discuss more fully below) referred to Kierkegaard and Ibsen in a remarkable short essay entitled ‘Jikaku shugi’ (‘The Principle of Self-Awareness’). Here, Nishida argued that the Schopenhauerian thought prevalent in Europe at that time reflected his principle of self-awareness. Nishida thought that the truth of this principle of self-awareness went deeper than epistemology and regarded it as the kind of truth for which the Buddha and Socrates had searched. He said that ‘Kierkegaard, in the vanguard of this principle, regards only knowledge about personal existence as true.’4 Nishida regarded Ibsen’s Brand as a proper example of one who followed this principle. He commented that if there were no clear ideal to take the place of old morals, pessimism would result. Nishida’s principle

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of self-awareness, however, was neither mere egoism nor sentimentalism nor pessimism, but was based on pure and direct religious experience. The principle of self-awareness was always Nishida’s starting point and was directly connected with his first work, An Inquiry into the Good (1911). Despite Nishida’s reference to Kierkegaard, however, it does not seem that Nishida was genuinely interested in Kierkegaard’s thought at this time. The religious introduction of Kierkegaard by Uchimura Another route by which Kierkegaard was introduced to Japan was through the religious thought of Kanzo Uchimura (1861–1930), the founder of Mukyokai undo or the Christian non-church movement in Japan. Uchimura’s article, which became widely known, was entitled ‘Dai yashin’ (‘The Great Ambition’) and appeared one month before Ueda’s article on Ibsen. One of the best-known passages of Uchimura’s article concerns Kierkegaard’s critique of so-called followers of the Christian faith: The Danish thinker Kierkegaard says: ‘Christianity is the most difficult religion to understand. I have never seen a true and genuine Christian in this world. But the difficulty in understanding Christianity does not mean that Christianity is mistaken. The fact that there are no true Christians should not prevent us from believing in Christianity. Though there is no Christian anywhere in the world, I merely want to attain certainty in the Christian belief.’ This is indeed true. I also, a native of the Far Eastern country of Japan, have never seen a believer worthy of the name. Following Kierkegaard, I also fervently desire to be such a true Christian.5 In short, Uchimura was affirming his recognition in Japan of the same disparity that Kierkegaard had noted between the doctrine of Christianity and its so-called believers. To Uchimura, Kierkegaard was essentially an opponent of the church and thus could be regarded as a forerunner of his own non-church movement. However, while Uchimura referred to Kierkegaard over ten times, there is no historical evidence that he ever actually studied Kierkegaard’s texts. For example, it is still unclear where the quote from Kierkegaard cited by Uchimura in the extract above was taken from. My own suspicion is that Uchimura learned about Kierkegaard from his

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German friend, the missionary Wilhelm Gundert. The issue of the source of Uchimura’s knowledge of Kierkegaard is still being investigated. But throughout his life, he never lost interest in Kierkegaard, and it could be said that he duplicated some of Kierkegaard’s principles. In 1884, Uchimura went to America in search of the solution to his religious difficulties. He entered Amherst College and was ‘converted’ by President Julius Hawley Seelye (1824–95) in 1886. As Uchimura himself tells us, ‘I believe I was really converted, that is turned back, there [at Amherst], some ten years after I was baptized in my homeland. The Lord revealed Himself to me there, especially through that one man [that is, Seelye].’6 After graduating from Amherst, he entered Hartford Seminary in 1887, but after only four months he left because of the behaviour of his classmates and the general attitudes expressed towards theological study. In Uchimura’s own words: ‘Spiritless Theology is the driest and most worthless of all studies. To see students laughing and jesting while discussing serious subjects is almost shocking. No wonder they cannot get at the bottom of the truth. It requires the utmost zeal and earnestness to draw life from the rock of ages.’7 Or, again, he says: And the fear that I had entertained about the bestowal of this new privilege upon me grew more as I observed its benefits talked about within the walls of my seminary. ‘One thousand dollars with parsonage’, ‘twenty dollars sermon upon Chicago anarchy’, and similar combinations of such words and phrases sounded very discordant to my ears. That sermons have market-values, as pork and tomatoes and pumpkins have, is not an Oriental idea at least – with us, religion is not usually convertible into cash. Indeed, more religion, less cash.8 Two years after he returned to Japan saw the promulgation of the imperial rescript on education. In the same year, 1890, Uchimura got a job at Daiichi ko¯to¯ chugakko¯ (later Daiichi Secondary School) but was fired in 1891 because of his ‘demonstrative disrespect’ for the Emperor. This loss caused him tremendous financial and spiritual hardship and was followed soon afterwards by the death of his wife. In this poignant situation, in 1893, he completed in English his book How I became a Christian. In 1895, this book was published in America under the title, The Diary of a Japanese Convert. It did not, however, do well. In 1904, in contrast, it was released to wide acclaim in Germany by the publishing house managed by Wilhelm Gundert’s father. Indeed, the royalties from the book were sufficient to relieve Uchimura from his poverty. In the following year, 1905, the book was published in Finland and Sweden,

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and finally in 1906, it was published in Denmark. But why was Uchimura’s book so popular in these particular countries? The answer seems to lie with the influence of Kierkegaard at that time. Maria Wolff, the Danish translator of the German edition, wrote in her preface, ‘It has been said that his [Uchimura’s] thought is very similar to Søren Kierkegaard’s, whose books he is finally about to read. Therefore, it would be a great pleasure for him that his little book will be read in Thorvaldsen’s, H.C. Andersen’s, and Henrik Ibsen’s language.’9 In 1912, Rudin, author of the book, Søren Kierkegaads Person och Forfattarskap (Søren Kierkegaard’s Person and Authorship), compared Uchimura to Kierkegaard in a letter to Uchimura.10 Carl SkovgaardPetersen, a minister visiting Japan at the time, having met Uchimura described him as a Japanese Kierkegaard.11 Also, a German publisher wrote to Uchimura saying that Kierkegaard’s Christianity was the same as that of Uchimura.12 The title of Uchimura’s How I became a Christian seems to have reminded its readers of Kierkegaard. Indeed, Kierkegaard’s professed religious task was how to become a Christian. People were moved by the fact that there was someone who pursued this task in a distant Eastern land. Uchimura himself explained not why, but how he became a Christian. His explanation provides a view of the content of Christian doctrine which is strikingly similar to Kierkegaard’s. In Uchimura’s words: What is Christianity? Certainly it is not the Bible itself, though much of it, and perhaps the essence of it, is contained in it ... We say Christianity is truth. But that is defining an indefinable by another indefinable ... The true knowledge of Life comes only by living it ... We come to know it only by keeping it ... The very fact that it grows more to me the more I confirm myself to its teachings, shows its close relationship with the infinite truth itself.13 In this context, it is not insignificant that Uchimura followed Kierkegaard in publishing his book under a pseudonym, Jonathan X. In 1894 he wrote to the publisher in America saying, ‘I like to send it out anonymously, without any introduction by a favored author or dedication to any of my friends, but solely upon its own merits.’14 We can see in this book the struggle of the would-be Christian soul of a man from a non-Christian, non-Western land; he met Christianity and tried to appropriate it with the earnestness of a true Kierkegaardian. Uchimura’s Christian spirit was exceedingly pietistic. Indeed, Uchimura introduced the standard Japanese translation of the word ‘piety’ (‘keiken’).

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It is worth noting here that Seelye, who converted Uchimura, studied at Halle University. This university was founded by Phillip Jacob Spencer (1635–1705) and August Hermann Franke (1663–1723), the initiators of Europe’s pietistic movement. What is more, Uchimura’s conversion found a spiritual context in New England at that time: Uchimura often memorized Emerson’s poems and was fond of quoting the words of Carlyle as his personal mottoes. For example: ‘ENCOURAGEMENT: Veracity, true simplicity of heart, how valuable are these always! He that speaks what is really in him, will find men to listen, though under never such impediments’ (from the front cover of How I became a Christian). Uchimura wanted to appropriate Christianity in ways fitting the Japanese: as he tells us: ‘The best of Christian converts has never given up the essence of Buddhism or Confucianism. We welcome Christianity, because it helps us to become more like our own ideals ... “I came to fulfil, and not to destroy,” said the Founder of Christianity.’15 Uchimura’s aspiration to appropriate Christianity for the Japanese provoked him to radical criticism of established Christianity in both Japan and America. This led him towards a Christianity simpler even than that proposed by Luther. As Uchimura wrote: ‘In forming any right estimate of Christendom, it is essential for us first of all to make a rigid distinction between Christianity pure and simple, and Christianity garnished and dogmatized by its professors.’16 Uchimura was not only interested in Kierkegaard but also in his country, and he used Denmark as an example to Japan. After the RussoJapanese War, Japan seemed to him to be a country ‘which gained victory, but at the expense of its own property’. This aroused his own patriotic sentiments and impelled him to write in 1911 the somewhat comically titled article, ‘Denmarukukoku no hanashi – sinko¯ to jumoku towo motte kuni wo sukui shi hanashi’ (‘A Story of Denmark or a Story of how Faith and Forestry Saved a Country’). This presents a theory of the ideal state for a small country and argues that Japan must develop itself accordingly rather than expanding abroad. Following Uchimura’s references to Kierkegaard, several articles were written about Kierkegaard, but all of them were based on either Høffding’s or Brandes’ accounts. In accordance with the prevailing intellectual atmosphere of the time, Kierkegaard was still generally regarded as an extreme individualist. For example, in 1910 Umenosuke Bessho (1871– 1945), a famous translator of hymns, relying on Martensen’s Christian Ethics (English translation of vol.1 in 1891), wrote ‘Kutsu no hukuin, Vine to Kiyarukegorudo’ (‘The Gospel of Suffering, Vigny and Kierkegaard’) in Uchimura’s journal Seisho no kenkyu¯ (The Biblical Study). Though Bessho

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read Kierkegaard only indirectly through Martensen, he showed great sympathy for Kierkegaard’s thinking and emphasized Kierkegaard’s sincerity: ‘Kierkegaard was not, as Høffding said, a person who solved problems and helped others, and he did not empirically expand the world of thought; rather, Kierkegaard sincerely examined the essence of matters and awakened self-deceived minds of the world.’17 The last years of the Meiji era (around 1910) saw the rise of the neo-Kantians in the sphere of philosophy; both Nietzsche and Kierkegaard were virtually forgotten. It was at this time that Nishida published his An Inquiry into the Good. In this book, Nishida argued against the subjectobject dualism that was widely accepted in Western philosophy, basing his argument on certain elements of Zen Buddhism. The book was widely read and proved extremely influential. Although Kierkegaard’s ideas have much affinity with Zen Buddhism (see the chapters in this volume by Nishimura, Giles, Graham, and Mills), at no place in the book was Kierkegaard’s name mentioned. While intellectuals of the Meiji era may often have referred to Kierkegaard – primarily as an individualist – their understanding had inevitably narrow limits, and within this context, the personal commitment to Kierkegaard’s view of life expressed by such thinkers as Uchimura becomes more admirable. For philosophers who took Kierkegaard’s thought as their starting point Japan had to wait until 1915.

Third period: from Watsuji’s Kierkegaard to Mitsuchi’s Drunken Songs (1915–23) October 1915 marked the publication of a landmark volume in Kierkegaard studies in Japan, namely, the book Søren Kierkegaard by Tetsuro Watsuji (1889–1960). This represented the first original Kierkegaard research in Japan, although it was still fundamentally based on Høffding. In 1946 Watsuji acknowledged the role that assumptions had played in his book, saying, ‘As for Kierkegaard’s thinking, I did not stress his attack upon Christians or his faith in Jesus, but I was equally interested in every moment, so I ended up assuming that Kierkegaard’s philosophy was ethical.’18 It is indeed astonishing that Watsuji was able to grasp Kierkegaard’s thinking in its entirety despite his limited access to Kierkegaard’s complete works, which were just then beginning to be published in German. In later years, Watsuji, who, as noted above, became Japan’s first systematical ethical philosopher, recalled that his starting point as an ethical philosopher lay in this pioneering study of Kierkegaard. Yet, contrary to what one

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might expect, there is not even a trace of Kierkegaard’s influence in the later development of his ethical thought, which can be characterized as ethics as the science of human beings or the ethics of aidagara (the relations between human beings). This contrasts starkly with Kierkegaard’s concept of relations in The Sickness unto Death. Watsuji’s understanding of Kierkegaard in his early work is based on the introspective non-political Taisho humanism of Japan at that time. In the course of refining his own ethics, the influence of Kierkegaard gradually lessened. Despite the publication of Watsuji’s book, there were few articles written about Kierkegaard in the following years. It would be true to say that Kierkegaard’s thinking at the time was still far from fully appreciated in Japan. At the end of 1923, the appearance of Suika (Drunken Songs) by Kozo Mitsuchi (1898–1924) was greeted by one reviewer saying, ‘This is a historic occasion. For the first time in our country, we have something which conveys the real spirit of Kierkegaard with deep emotion.’19 The ideas in Drunken Songs were influenced by the thinking expressed in Fear and Trembling. Mitsuchi posited the following problem as the single and most important one: ‘When we are compelled to resign that which we cannot (or should not) resign, which kind of dialectic should appear for our spirit?’ He developed the thought of a ‘dialectic of wish or hope’. Mitsuchi had a promising future as a student of Nishida, but soon after writing ‘Kami no ai’ (‘The Love of Kami’) in 1924 he committed suicide at the age of only twenty-six. Drunken Songs caused Watsuji to declare that his own work was now worthless.

Fourth period: assimilation and Kierkegaard renaissance (1923–45) The case of Miki At the beginning of the 1920s there was a so-called ‘Kierkegaard renaissance’ in Germany. This had an effect in Japan on numerous intellectuals, especially the major thinkers of the Kyoto school. This school was named after a group of intellectuals from Kyoto who during the first half of the twentieth century attempted a synthesis of Japanese and Western thought. Among the first to introduce this renaissance to Japan was Kiyoshi Miki (1897–1945). Miki studied in Heidelberg during 1922 and the next year he moved to Marburg to study under Heidegger, who was then absorbed in the study of Kierkegaard. In 1924 Miki wrote to his teacher, Hajime Tanabe, saying that Hegel merely plays with concepts, but

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Kierkegaard is much more dialectical. Such a criticism of Hegel is repeated in his ‘Ontological Explanation of Dialectics’ (1931), where he says that Hegel’s dialectic is aesthetic, but Kierkegaard’s is qualitative. This difference, he says, arises because Kierkegaard grasps religious ideas correctly. Miki later recalled that along with his careful reading of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche (in which he was greatly influenced by Karl Löwith), Heidegger’s philosophy is an expression of anxiety following the end of the First World War. After returning to Japan, Miki wrote ‘Contemporary Thought’ (1928), ‘Kierkegaard and the Present Age’ (1931) and ‘The Thought of Anxiety and its Conquest’ (1933). He regarded Kierkegaard as a forerunner of Heidegger, Jaspers, and dialectical theology. In 1935 Miki supervised the publication of Selected Works of Kierkegaard, the first work of its kind in Japan. This translation, which was much praised by Nishida, was collected in three volumes: Volume 1 containing The Concept of Anxiety, The Present Age, and The Sickness unto Death; Volume 2 containing Practice in Christianity, Fear and Trembling and ‘Diary of a Seducer’; and Volume 3 containing The Concept of Irony, Repetition, and The Moment. Miki wrote only one article in which Kierkegaard’s name appears, namely, the above-mentioned ‘Kierkegaard and the Present Age’. In the first half of this article, Miki emphasizes the relationship between human beings and the transcendent and criticizes Heidegger’s philosophy from this viewpoint. Miki finds the meaning of Kierkegaard’s understanding of Christianity in Kierkegaard’s exploration of the anthropology of the human being with hereditary sin. He then attempts to explain the relationship between Kierkegaard and dialectical theology. In the second half, Miki criticizes Kierkegaard’s thought as lacking the phases of sociality and history and ends by describing Kierkegaard as a ‘subjective thinker’. Also apparently under the influence of Kierkegaard, Miki wrote a few articles on anxiety, a topic which seems to have played an important role in his philosophy. He diagnosed widespread unease among Japanese intellectuals at that time as being feelings of anxiety. Nevertheless, he did not further analyse Kierkegaard’s understanding of anxiety, and Kierkegaard’s thought remained only one resource for him. Some people consider Miki’s ideas to be similar to Kierkegaard’s. For example, at the age of 23, Miki writes in his Inexpressible Philosophy that ‘inexpressible philosophy searches for a truth that the whole person can with great pleasure affirm and obey – a living truth’.20 Or, again, he says, ‘What is important in our lives is not what we experience but how we experience it.’21

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In the summer of 1924, Miki moved to Paris and, in line with his interests in existential thought and humanism, studied Pascal. His main work from this period is ‘A Study of Humanity in Pascal’ (1926). After returning to Japan in 1925, he became involved in a debate concerning the interpretation of a historical view of Marxist materialism. This led him to develop an interest in religion. While he was engaged in writing his final work, on Shinran – the medieval founder of True Pure Land Buddhism (see Hidetomo Yamashita’s chapter) – he was arrested and put in jail. He died in prison just after the end of the war. The case of Nishida Kierkegaard was also mentioned during this period by Nishida in a discussion of Hegel’s dialectics. His comments were made against the background of the Kierkegaard renaissance in Germany and appeared in 1931 in the articles ‘My View of Hegel’s Dialectics’, ‘Absolute Nothingness as Determined through Self-Consciousness or Self-Determination through Self-Consciousness of Absolute Nothingness’ and ‘SelfDetermination of the Eternal Present’. It is in this period that Nishida’s philosophical system was established and that his philosophical principles began to be applied in many spheres. His idea of the logic of place, which was established in the article ‘From that which Acts to that which Sees’ (1927), developed into the idea of self-determination through the self-determination of absolute nothingness. These ideas found support in Kierkegaard’s concepts of paradox and the moment. Kierkegaard’s concept of paradox is reflected in a particular expression that appears repeatedly in the three articles mentioned above: ‘the self-determination of absolute nothingness as the self-determination of the eternal present’. Nishida’s thinking, developing through ideas such as act-intuition and the historical-corporeal self, crystallizes two years later in what Nishida himself regards as his fundamental idea, namely, the idea of absolute-contradictory self-identity. Nishida applies this thought concretely to the sphere of practice and develops this application in ‘Introduction to Practical Philosophy’ (1940). In this article he analyses the self as the subject of practice, during the course of which he wholly appropriates Kierkegaard’s argument in The Sickness unto Death that the self is a relationship. He even presents this as his own idea. This close relationship between Nishida and Kierkegaard is also seen in Nishida’s last article, ‘Place-Logic and the Religious World View’ (1945). This article contains two key concepts. First is the concept of ‘inverse correspondence’, which, Nishida tells us, refers to the

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absolute-contradictory self-identity of the self and the absolute. This self-identity has two phases. One is self-denial on the part of the absolute when confronted with the individual, and the other is self-denial on the part of the individual when confronted with the absolute. An example given is of God and Abraham confronting each other in Fear and Trembling. Here, Abraham’s denial is grasped as the single individuality of the individual or as the death of the individual, and God’s denial is grasped as the death of God or God’s appearance as ethical evil. The other key concept is that of ‘the ordinary or everydayness’, which is prominent in Zen Buddhism. Nishida’s purpose in presenting this concept is to develop a logic of religion which will include Christianity. In this way, as Keiji Nishitani puts it, ‘Kierkegaard had an important influence on the development of Nishida’s view of religion. Despite this influence, though, Nishida’s view of religion which describes an inverse correspondence between humanity and God is different from that of Kierkegaard, and is fundamentally linked with Nishida’s earliest view of religion.’22 Fuller discussions of Nishida and his relation to Kierkegaard are given in Chapter 9 by Eiko Hanaoka and in Chapter 10 by Shudo Tsukiyama. The case of Tanabe The last two of Nishida’s three 1931 articles, in which Nishida appropriates Kierkegaard’s thought into his own philosophical system, were written as a response to a criticism from Tanabe (1885–1962), Miki’s teacher, in ‘An Appreciation of Professor Nishida: a Response to his Teaching’ (1930). Nishida gave his final answer to this criticism in ‘Place-Logic and the Religious World View’. Tanabe’s criticism of Nishida arose from a stalemate in Tanabe’s own thinking and Kierkegaard’s thought played an important role in it. Thus, Kierkegaard also had a great influence on the progress of Tanabe’s original philosophy, formed, as it was, in the midst of attacking Nishida. In his preface to Hegelian Philosophy and Dialectics, written in 1931 and published in January of the following year, Tanabe describes his escape from his own intellectual deadlock: For me, what became a positively new idea was the dialectics of corporeality (bodilyness), which has developed from the problem of the mind-body relation that became the object of my personal interest since last year. I tried to understand the thesis of dialectical materialism, that existence determines consciousness, not causally but ontologically, to recognize it well, and to teleologically establish moral

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practice on that basis. For me, the phenomenon of corporeality is the fundamental basis for dialectics. Here for the first time, absolute negativity appears which is truly concrete and conscious of unifying both ideas and matter while transcending particulars of each. I criticize Heidegger’s ontology from this standpoint, and set forth a new dialectical anthropology. Along with the self-evidence of dialectics in this corporeality, my slight knowledge of the ethico-religious existential dialectics of Kierkegaard eventually determined my present attitude towards Hegel’s philosophy.23 The point of Tanabe’s criticism of Nishida was that Nishida dissolves philosophy into religion. In the course of his rejection of Nishida, Tanabe developed his own ‘logic of species’, arising from a contemporary debate with nationalism and Marxism. Tanabe tried to remain true to his philosophy, but he was obliged to be silent under pressure from the militarists (who were ascending to power in Japan) and finally he was forced totally to repudiate his philosophy. In this way Tanabe comes to resemble Kierkegaard. In his Philosophy as Metanoetics, written in 1944 but not published until 1946 after Japan’s defeat in the Second World War, Tanabe used such Kierkegaardian concepts as ‘the moment’ and ‘repetition’. He further claimed that his concept of metanoetic way fits well with Kierkegaardian faith. He even endorses Kierkegaard’s view of the teacher or master by saying that ‘as Kierkegaard has remarked, a true master exists only in religion’.24 Tanabe’s encounter with Kierkegaard led to several articles, each of which could be said to be existential-dialectical interpretations of Kierkegaard. Two that ought to be mentioned are ‘The Individuality of Existence and Sociality of Nothingness’ (1946) and ‘Obligations of Love and Social Practice’ (1946). In these writings the significance of the popularity of Kierkegaard’s philosophy is clarified, and a ‘trinity of love’ (God as love, the love of God, and the love of one’s neighbour) is argued for. At the same time Tanabe is critical of the way in which while Kierkegaard’s obligations of love set a foundation for cooperative existence, they also lack the viewpoint of social practice. Thus, he strove for a synthesis of Kierkegaard and Marx. In his later years Tanabe wrote ‘Memento Mori’ (1958) and ‘Either Ontology of Life or Dialectics of Death’ (1962), while developing a ‘philosophy of death’. These articles explain love and what he calls the communion of existence. The ideas developed here are probably related to the death of his beloved wife Chiyo in 1951; the arguments are associated with Kierkegaard’s ‘The Work of Love in Remembering One Dead’

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in Works of Love. The inscription on Tanabe’s tombstone reads: ‘I search for nothing other than truth’. The case of Nishitani In the case of Keiji Nishitani (1900–90), who took over the debate between Nishida and Tanabe and developed his own religious philosophy, the relation to Kierkegaard is very deep. Nishitani’s fundamentally critical consciousness, in contrast to Nishida and Tanabe, clearly tends toward the problem of nihilism. In probing the essence of nihilism to the limit and overcoming it, Nishitani is engaged in the study of Christian mysticism from the standpoint of Zen Buddhism. His fundamental concept here is the realization of reality (see Chapter 5 where this idea is discussed from Dōgen’s point of view). It should, however, be noted that realization here does not mean only a philosophical cognition, but also has the meaning of actualization. This in turn is related to Kierkegaard’s idea of appropriation or apprehension (Danish: Tilegnelse). In analysing the structure of this appropriation (Japanese: mi ni tuku, which also means embodiment), Nishitani makes use of Kierkegaard’s existential analysis of human beings in The Sickness unto Death. He also uses this idea of appropriation in the explanation of Nishida’s concept of ‘pure experience’. We can see the same thing in Kierkegaard when he argues that the standpoint of existence is that of the single individual. He emphasizes the kind of thinking that is recognized only when it becomes one’s own through appropriation and that which gives birth to such thought. Such a standpoint initiated a confrontation with Hegel’s view and had a deep influence on contemporary philosophy, religion, and literature. The importance of this problem has been realized in the East since antiquity.25 In this section on the third period I have traced briefly Kierkegaard’s influence on the philosophers of the Kyoto School. We can discover many interesting relations between them, but we cannot find any concrete influence from Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Anxiety. At most, Nishida and Tanabe used the concept of moment in order to explain some aspect of the synthesis of absolute contradiction. This forms a striking contrast to the case of Heidegger. Nishida and Tanabe were not as ‘pathos-filled’ as Kierkegaard. Although Miki was very concerned with pathos, he still wanted a synthesis between pathos and logic. Nishida and Tanabe showed a great interest in Kierkegaard because their style of thinking was not existentiell (Heidigger’s term for possibilities of being), but existentiall (Heidigger’s term for the revealing of being itself). In short, the fundamental tendency of their

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thinking was based on ‘absolute nothingness’, which, as Tanabe puts it, is ‘not only thought itself, not only theoretical idea or concept. Rather, we are aware of it in the process of realizing the fact that we are living and we meet it in the basis of existence. When we posit “absolute nothingness” as a foundation of philosophy, at the same time the character of philosophy as itself becomes changed.’26

Fifth period: the rise of existentialism (1945–70) Defeat in the Second World War also brought about the destruction of the pre-war system of values in Japan. Japanese philosophers reflected on the failures of totalitarianism and a discernable trend emerged, aimed at emphasizing individual subjectivity. From 1946 to the beginning of 1949 a very heated controversy concerning the relation between the subjectivity of the individual and society took place. Kierkegaard was often read in connection with this controversy, and it was in this context that the Selected Works of Kierkegaard was published in Japan (1948–49). Approximately fifty articles on Kierkegaard appeared in the latter half of the 1940s. The Kierkegaard centenary year, 1955, was marked by special editions of two journals, and the publication of more than forty-five articles relating to Kierkegaard (including translations of foreign monographs) in Japan. Shinji Saito (1907–77), a non-church Christian, published his work Socrates and Kierkegaard: the Concept of Irony in the same year. In 1939 Saito had published a Japanese translation of The Sickness unto Death. In the 1960s, Heidegger scholar Eiichi Kito (1908–69), published The Philosophy of Possibility (1964), a brief introduction to Kierkegaard’s concept of anxiety. Kito had also shown an earlier interest in Kierkegaard when, in 1938, he translated a section of Concluding Unscientific Postscript. At this period a number of Japanese intellectuals also began to use the contrasting ideas of Kierkegaard and Marx as a frame of reference for the idea of a fundamental choice between existentialism or Marxism. In the midst of this debate Kierkegaard’s Writings (21 volumes) were published (1962–67) and in Osaka in 1963 the Kierkegaard Society sprang into renewed life. The first issue of the society’s journal, Kierkegaard Studiet, was published in 1964. Under the influence of Diem’s critique of Hirsch and others, a new debate began as to the appropriate methods for studying Kierkegaard. The debate took place in, among other publications, Keiji Ogawa’s ‘The Problem of the Interpretation of Kierkegaard’ (1964) and Keizaburo Masuda’s ‘The Meaning and Method of Kierkegaard Study: one Apology’ (1965).

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Sixth period: declining interest (1970–present) In the 1970s, following the upheaval in Japanese universities caused partly by the economic prosperity of Japan and partly by the increase in Japanese philosophical circles of interest in phenomenology, hermeneutics, and analytical philosophy, it was possible to speak of ‘the end of existentialism’. At the same time, the situation also offered the first real possibility of understanding the full depth and breadth of Kierkegaard’s thought. Here we can see three main trends in more recent Kierkegaard studies in Japan. The first looks to understand Kierkegaard in his own terms, the second is a re-appraisal of Kierkegaard in the contemporary context, and the last reflects on the meaning of Kierkegaard within Japanese culture. Included in the final category are many who study the relationship between Kierkegaard and Hōnen (1133–1212), the founder of the jo¯do shu ¯ or Pure Land sect in Japan, whose main practice consists of repeating the name of Amida Buddha, and whose chief tenet is salvation by faith in Amida. Also studied is the relation between Kierkegaard and Shinran (1173–1265), another Pure Land thinker. An example of the continuing work on the relations between these two thinkers is given in the next chapter by Hidetomo Yamashita. Of similar interest are the relations between Kierkegaard and Dōgen (1200–53), the founder of so¯to¯ shu¯, a branch of Zen Buddhism in Japan. Examples of the similarities between Kierkegaard and Dōgen, though given by scholars from outside Japan, can be found in this volume in Chapters 5 and 6 by James Giles and Ian Mills. There has also been much work on Nishida, who is discussed above. We may also mention Ishizu Teruji, who is well known in Japan as both a Kierkegaard scholar and a scholar of Tendai Buddhism. Tendai, founded by Saichō (787–822), is one of the earliest Japanese Buddhist sects and is crucial in the history of Japanese Buddhism, not only because of its direct influence on Japanese thought and culture, but also because it was in the temples on Mount Hiei near Kyoto – the centre of Tendai thought – that important Buddhist thinkers such as Hōnen, Shinran, Dōgen, and Nichiren first developed their ideas. Oddly enough, however, Teruji never discusses Kierkegaard and Tendai Buddhism together. Finally, to conclude this study, I must refer to the relationship between Kierkegaard and the Japanese man of letters, Shina Rinzo (1911–71), known as ‘the writer of despair’. Many literate men and women throughout the world have read and assimilated Kierkegaard, but in Japan, Shina Rinzo is pre-eminent. He was deeply affected by reading Miyahara’s Philosophy of Melancholy in 1941, and after reading Miki’s Selected Works of Kierkegaard, wrote that ‘Kierkegaard’s characteristic words permeated my

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very soul.’ This same influence appears in his ‘Journey in Melancholy Fog’. Recalling his literary activity immediately after the war, he goes so far as to say that, ‘my early works were much influenced by Kierkegaard ... How much agony I endured on account of Kierkegaard cannot be really known.’ Despair, melancholy, and how to overcome them, not only form the keynotes of his novels but also define their very essence, something that might be called ‘the literary method of relativity’. It should be obvious from this brief study alone that the relation between Kierkegaard and Japanese thought is vast and complex. Looking at the reception of Kierkegaard in Japan we discover a way of deciphering Kierkegaard that is different from that of his countrymen and other Westerners. It not only offers a new way of understanding Kierkegaard from the Western point of view, but also deepens our way of understanding ourselves; for to read Kierkegaard is to read about ourselves. I hope that this different way of seeing Kierkegaard will be illuminating. Still, there are many difficulties in considering the relationship between Kierkegaard and Japanese scholars and intellectuals. Unravelling these difficulties will obviously help in creating a mutual understanding between Western and Japanese thinkers. But this kind of study is not merely for the purposes of mutual understanding, it will also be useful in formulating a fundamental understanding of both philosophy and religion.27

Notes 1. Yasuji Ohtsuki, ‘Romanchikku wo ronjite wagakuni bugei no genkyo ni oyobu’, Taiyo¯, 8, 4 (April 1902): 13. This and other translations of Japanese works are my own. 2. Tetsuro Watsuji, Watsuji Tetsuro zenshu ¯ (Complete Works of Tetsuro Watsuji) 1 (Tokyo: Iwanamishoten, 1961) pp. 395 and 404. 3. Chikusui Kaneko, ‘Shukyoteki shinri’ [‘Religious Truth’] Waseda bungaku [Waseda Literary Magazine] third series, 11 (1906). 4. Kitaro Nishida, ‘Jikaku shugi’ [‘The Principle of Self-Awareness’] Hokusinkai zasshi [Hokushinkai Magazine] 45, Kanazawa (1906). 5. Kanzo Uchimura, ‘Dai yashin’ [‘The Great Ambition’] Seisho no kenkyu (Biblical Study), p. 76. 6. Kanzo Uchimura, Uchimura Kanzo zenshu ¯ [Complete Works of Kanzo Uchimura] 1, ed. with notes and comments Taijiro Yamamoto and Yoichi Muto (Tokyo: Kyobunkan 1971) p. 166. 7. Uchimura, Uchimura Kanzo zenshu¯, 1, p. 175. 8. Uchimura, Uchimura Kanzo zenshu¯, 1, p. 180. 9. Maria Wolff, ‘Preface’, in Kanzo Uchimura, Hvorledes Jeg Blev en Kristen, Danish trans. M. Wolff (Copenhagen: 1906). 10. See the Japanese translator’s comments on Uchimura’s How I became a Christian [Yo wa ikanishite kirisuto shinto to narishika], trans. with comments Toshiro Suzuki (Tokyo: Iwanamibunko, 1967) pp. 282–3.

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11. Carl Skovgaard-Petersen Aus Japan, wie es heute ist, Persönliche Eindrücke von C. Skovgaard-Petersen [From Contemporary Japan: a Personal Impression by C. Skovgaard-Petersen] German trans. H. Gottsched (Basel, 1912) p. 121. 12. See the Japanese translator’s comments on Uchimura’s How I became a Christian, p. 283. 13. Uchimura, Uchimura Kanzo zenshu¯, 1, pp. 188–9. 14. See the Japanese translator’s comments on Uchimura’s How I became a Christian, p. 275. 15. Uchimura, Uchimura Kanzo zenshu¯, 1, p. 190. 16. Uchimura, Uchimura Kanzo zenshu¯, 1, p. 187. 17. Umenosuke Bessho, ‘Kutsu no hukuin, Vine to Kiyarukegorudo’ [‘The Gospel of Suffering, Vigny and Kierkegaard’] Seisho no kenkyu, 125 (1910). 18. Watsuji Tetsuro zenshu ¯, 1, p. 404. 19. Masaaki Kohsaka, ‘Afterword’, in Kozo Mitsuchi, Suika (Tokyo: Kobundo, 1948). 20. Kiyoshi Miki, Miki Kiyoshi zenshu ¯ [Complete Works of Kiyoshi Miki] 18 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1968) p. 8. 21. Miki, Miki Kiyoshi zenshu¯, 18, p. 31. 22. Keiji Nishitani, Nishida Kitaro (Tokyo: Chikumachobo, 1985) p. 128. 23. Hajime Tanabe, Hegeru tetsugaku to bensho¯ho¯ [Hegelian Philosophy Dialectics] (Japan: Iwanami Shoten, 1971) p. 3. 24. Tanabe, Philosophy as Metanoetics, trans. Takeuchi Yoshinori (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986) p. 278. 25. See Tanabe, Hegeru tetsugaku to bensho¯ho¯, p. 142. 26. Tanabe, Hegeru tetsugaku to bensho¯ho¯, p. 211. 27. Some of the material in this chapter was previously published as ‘Kierkegaard’s Reception in Japan’, Memoir of Osaka Kyoiku University, Series 1, 38 (1989), pp. 49–66.

3 Japanese Pure Land Buddhism and Kierkegaard Hidetomo Yamashita

Pure Land Buddhism in Japan It was not until the Kamakura period (1185–1336) that Buddhism began to take firm root in Japan. While earlier Buddhism had, for the most part, been monopolized by the nobility, in the Kamakura period more popular schools of Buddhism arose. This reformation was largely a result of the great numbers of political disturbances and natural disasters that characterized the end of the Heian period (746–1185). People believed that the age of hopelessness had come. Buddhist eschatology expresses this through the idea of shoˉzoˉmatsu or the three periods of the teaching. These are the period of the shoˉboˉ (righteous law), the period of the zoˉboˉ (imitative law), and the period of the mappoˉ (last law). The period of the righteous law is the time when Buddhist doctrines, practices, and enlightenment all exist. The period of the imitative law is the time when doctrine and practices still exist, but there is no longer any enlightenment. That is why it is called imitation of the law. The period of the last law refers to the time when doctrine alone is still alive, but there is neither practice nor enlightenment. After these three periods, the doctrine itself vanishes. In the Kamakura period it was believed that the last period (mappoˉ) had begun at the end of the Heian period. In such seemingly hopeless times many Buddhist thinkers started to propagate the idea that Buddhism could save not just the noble class but all people. Thus they tried to extend Buddhism by making it accessible to ordinary people. In Pure Land Buddhism this message was spread by Hōnen (1133–1212), Shinran (1173–1262) and Ippen (1239–89), while in Zen Buddhism it was given by Eisai (1141–1215) and Dōgen (1200–53). Similarly, Nichren (1222–82), who founded his own Buddhist sect, worked hard to bring this idea to common people. The Buddhist schools 53

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which these thinkers founded are still in existence in present-day Japan. I believe that the driving force behind these Buddhist thinkers was Saichō (767–822), the founder of the Japanese Tendai sect. Saichō’s passion to uphold the Mahāyāna platform of precepts allowed a unique form of Japanese Buddhism to blossom. It is Shinran, the founder of the joˉdo shin, or True Pure Land sect, that I wish to consider here. The development of his thought can be seen in his main work Kyoˉ gyoˉ shin shoˉ or Teaching, Practice, Faith, and Attainment which is the basic scripture of the joˉdo shin sect and consists of six parts. This work largely consists of quotations from various Buddhist scriptures to support his contention that rebirth in the Pure Land is made possible only through the compassion of Amida, the Buddha of the light and life that cannot be measured. This work includes the Tannishoˉ or A Record of Lament of the Divergences, a well-known work by Shinran’s disciple Yuien (d. 1288) in which many of Shinran’s ideas are preserved. The Buddhist sūtras used as the foundation of Japanese Pure Land Buddhism are Muryoˉju kyoˉ (Suˉtra of Immeasurable Life), Kanmuryoˉju kyoˉ (Contemplation Suˉtra) and Amida kyoˉ (Amida Suˉtra). In Muryoˉju kyoˉ, fortyeight vows of Hōzō bodhisattva (which is the name of Amida Buddha before his enlightenment) are described. It is well known that the eighteenth vow forms the heart of the sutrā. It is described there as follows: ‘If, when I attain Buddhahood, the sentient beings of the ten quarters, with sincere mind entrusting themselves, aspiring to be born in my land, and saying my Name perhaps even ten times, should not be born there, may I not attain the supreme enlightenment. Excluded are those who commit the five grave offences and those who slander the right dharma.’1 Japanese Pure Land followers have been moved by the words ‘should not be born there, may I not attain the supreme enlightenment’. In order to envisage the vows, Hōzō bodhisattva had thought for five kalpas (an aeon) and practised for an immeasurably long time until at last he became Amida Buddha. Moreover, in order to save all sentient beings Amida Buddha imbued his name with all his wishes and all his virtues and directed it to them. Therefore we are liberated by the name (Namu Amida Butsu) of Amida Buddha. This is the easiest way and is therefore called ‘the way of easy practice’. According to Pure Land Buddhism only by such a name (or reciting Namu Amida Butsu) can all beings be saved. How is this possible? It is assumed in Pure Land Buddhism that people can never be saved by their own good acts of self-power (tariki in Japanese). The human being

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is ‘the one whose karmic evil is deep and grave and whose blind passions abound’ (p. 661); such a being is incapable of good behaviour or of recognizing good and evil. Thus, those who are able to know and experience the great joy of hearing the vow of Amida Buddha become aware simultaneously that ‘their karmic evil is deep and grave and [that their] blind passions abound’. This great joy and great burden is called nishu jinshin or ‘two aspects of deep faith’ by the True Pure Land sect. It is noteworthy that this awareness differs qualitatively from what a person might regard as being evil or immoral within his or her own consciousness. The former is awareness that is attained through encounter with the vow. From this standpoint the self-consciousness of immorality can be seen to derive from an arrogant attitude. Saichi Asahara Saichi Asahara (1850–1932) was born in a little harbour town called Obama in the prefecture of Shimane. He was a carpenter who made Japanese wooden footwear (geta in Japanese). He believed deeply in the vows of Amida Buddha and led the life of a follower of True Pure Land teachings. He was not a priest but an ordinary believer. Many lay persons who appear in the history of Pure Land Buddhism are called myoˉkoˉnin (a wonderful excellent person) and Saichi was one of them. Myoˉkoˉ nins practise calling the name of Amida Buddha devoutly and joyously, while being simultaneously aware of their own karmic evil. A well-known painting of Saichi can teach us many things about ‘two aspects of deep faith’. Saichi became famous as an eager and great Pure Land practitioner in the local area. Because of this an artist wanted to do his portrait. Saichi agreed on one condition, namely, that the artist was to paint two horns on his head. This portrait of Saichi with his two horns and his palms joined can still be seen in the temple connected with him. What do these horns really symbolize? There is an idea in Buddhism called ‘karman samsāra’. This holds that people exist in the six worlds of the samsāra (the everyday world of delusion) through their own actions. The six worlds – through which the souls of living beings transmigrate – are hell, the world of hungry spirits, the world of animals, the world of asuras or demons, the world of people, and heaven. I do not think that the idea of karman samsāra should be considered literally true; such an approach is likely to lead to considerable misunderstandings. Rather, it should be seen as an instance of expedient means, which James Giles refers to in the introduction. To put it another way, it is an idea that must

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be appropriated in a thoroughly existential way. However, this is not the theme that I wish to discuss in this chapter. Saichi felt like a hungry spirit full of worldly desires. The portrait shows him as a being whose karmic evil is deep and grave and whose blind passions abound. Although he was deeply aware of his immoral desires, he joined his palms together in reverence. The person who is deeply moved by the vows of Amida Buddha simultaneously realizes his own immorality. Here the simultaneousness is decisive. The proper guidance of ‘two aspects of deep faith’ is found in the Kanmuryoˉju kyoˉ sho or Commentary on the Contemplation Suˉtra by the Chinese Pure Land master Shan-tao (Zendo in Japanese) (613–681). Second is deep mind. Deep mind is the deeply entrusting mind. There are two aspects. One is to believe deeply and decidedly that you are a foolish being of karmic evil caught in birth-and-death, ever sinking and ever wandering in transmigration from innumerable kalpas in the past, with never a condition that would lead to emancipation. The second is to believe deeply and decidedly that Amida Buddha’s Forty-eight Vows grasp sentient beings, and that allowing yourself to be carried by the power of the Vow without any doubt or apprehension, you will attain birth. (Cited in Shinran’s works, p. 85) Here Shan-tao emphasizes that human beings can never leave the realm of worldly desires, but simultaneously assures devotees that Amida Buddha saves those who are most difficult to save. This seems paradoxical. In the human realization of not being saved, the power of Amida Buddha is demonstrated for the first time. Here, the paradox is that to not be saved is to be saved.

Positioning of the negative in Kierkegaard Now I want to compare the above structures of ‘two aspects of deep faith’ with Kierkegaard’s conception of faith. Generally, Kierkegaard is looking at the mark of the affirmative in the negative. In one typical text here it is said that the highest principle of thinking can only be demonstrated in the negative. More specifically, the existence-relation to the absolute good is also only able to be prescribed negatively and the relation to eternal happiness is only able to be defined by uncertainty. In Kierkegaard’s words, Just as for an existing person the highest principles of thinking can be demonstrated only negatively, and to want to demonstrate them

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positively promptly betrays that the demonstrator, insofar as he is indeed an existing person, is on the point of becoming fantastical – so also for an existing person the existence-relation to the absolute good can be defined only by the negative – the relation to an eternal happiness by suffering, just as the certitude of faith that relates itself to an eternal happiness is defined by uncertainty. 2 Here I want to examine the problem of Kierkegaard’s interpretation of the biblical concept of the thorn in the flesh, which is discussed by the apostle Paul. The words ‘thorn in the flesh’ are found in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians (12: 7): ‘And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure.’ This part is explained in one biblical dictionary as follows: Paul was taken and possessed by a certain troublesome illness. According to him, the thorn which burrowed into his flesh was a messenger of Satan given to him so that he would not become proud of his unique experience. Of course, Satan simply struck to hurt him. But it is through the blessing of God that he is struck and is made humble. God uses Satan’s action. God permits Satan to demonstrate his power. There are various views about what Paul’s illness was. Seeing it from the medical viewpoint where Satan is not related, was it not most likely an instance of mental illness accompanied by an intense convulsion?3 The nature of Paul’s illness is unclear and of course we cannot determine what it was. The purpose of this chapter is not to investigate the concrete nature and type of this illness but to show clearly what kind of meaning it had for Paul. Kierkegaard says that the thorn in the flesh is originally opposed to the highest happiness, which is replaced by pain. This is not something that seems opposed to the various glories of this world. Moreover, Satan’s messenger was not only an object of fear but also something of value for Paul. Here is how Kierkegaard explains it: When the angel of Satan darts out from his darkness, when he comes with the speed of lightning to terrify the apostle, it is indeed an angel of Satan, as the apostle says, but if he nevertheless knows that it is beneficial to him, then that terror is no longer an angel of Satan, because no one has ever heard that an angel of Satan came to benefit a human being. It is not the case, as human flabbiness might wish,

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that the highest life is without dangerous suffering, but it is the case that an apostle is never without an explanation, never without authority. (1990, p. 329) Knowing that the appearance of Satan is beneficial for him, Paul becomes qualitatively different from everyday people. A weak human being’s common-sense regards life without suffering as the highest state of existence. The apostle holds to the opposite of this. He understands that it is impossible to divide suffering from the highest and happiest life. I want to consider this interpretation according to the Christian dialectic. Salvation is the highest and strongest power in Christianity; however, before such power is demonstrated, people must suffer. Kierkegaard says that suffering should be softened, but there is no gate through which to enter heaven without suffering. ‘We must warn that no one is tried in a self-made conflict but is only cultivated in a new vanity so that the last becomes worse than the first. But then we are also reminded that suffering is a component and that no one enters the kingdom of heaven without suffering’ (1990, p. 331). Heaven is reached through suffering, and if we are fully aware of this, we will not waver in the face of unexpected trials and tribulations. These trials enable us more and more to realize the actuality of heaven, paradoxical as it may seem. And the overriding element in this suffering is the ‘thorn in the flesh’. The person who has grasped the highest happiness cannot go to heaven simply because of this. Through the thorn in the flesh as a negative opportunity (and the paradoxical correspondence with it), heaven is realized. Therefore, not entering heaven is, in a sense, the entrance to heaven.

A Record of Lament of the Divergences These paradoxical ideas are also found in Yuien’s A Record of Lament of the Divergences, especially in Chapter 17. Yuien says, On the assertion that a person born in the borderland will in the end fall into hell. In what authoritative passage do we find such a statement? It is deplorable that this is being maintained by people who pretend to be scholars. How are they reading the sūtras, treaties, and other sacred writings? I was taught that practitioners who lack shinjin [faith] are born in the borderland because of their doubt concerning the Primal

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Vow, and that, after the evil of doubt has been expiated, they realize enlightenment in the fulfilled land. Since practitioners of shinjin are few, many are guided to the transformed land. To declare, despite this, that birth there will ultimately end in vain would be to accuse Shākyamuni Buddha of lying. (pp. 676–7) What is the borderland? It was created by the Amida Buddha through miraculous power for the benefit of all living beings, and then adapted to the natures and potentialities of the various beings. It is the provisional Pure Land, made by Amida Buddha for those who do not yet have the ability to envisage the real Pure Land. After Shinran died, the idea eventually arose that those who are born to this borderland fall into hell. Against this idea, Yuien asserts persistently that most human beings are first reborn in this borderland upon death. He then asks the question of whether those who think they will be born straight away in the Pure Land know their own immorality or not. He argues that those who think that they will go directly to the Pure Land cannot go. Rather, states Yuien, the gate of the Pure Land will open to those who make up their mind to go only to the borderland. Here exists a paradoxical logic similar to Kierkegaard’s interpretation of the thorn in the flesh of Paul. This apparently paradoxical logic, it should also be noted, is mirrored by ‘the logic of identity and difference’ of Daisetu Suzuki (1870–1966), a major figure in bringing Zen philosophy to the West (he also wrote on Pure Land Buddhism). Suzuki bases this logic on The Diamond Suˉtra, one of the principle sūtras of Zen Buddhism. In this sūtra there are many expressions of the type ‘A is not A, therefore A is A’. For example, enlightenment is not enlightenment, therefore it is enlightenment. Or I am not I, therefore I am I. Based on this logic, to enter the Pure Land is not to enter there, not to be able to enter there is to enter. How can this paradoxical logic be realized? It is because expectations are the very things that keep one from achieving one’s expectations. Here expecting to achieve enlightenment stops one from achieving enlightenment. Taking this idea into Pure Land Buddhism we could say, expecting to have faith is not to have faith. Therefore, only when one stops expecting to have faith can one have faith. In other words, faith is not (to expect) faith, therefore it is faith.

The actuality of faith I have been considering the structure of faith as a unity of ‘already and not yet’. Kierkegaard investigates this idea in relation to the

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notion of the thorn in the flesh. Shinran does it in relation to various delusions. As we have seen, for Kierkegaard the thorn in the flesh corresponds to the idea of supreme happiness. Even if the doctrine of Christianity were to spread and be upheld throughout this world, supreme happiness will not be the outcome. For Kierkegaard, ‘as soon as the suffering is perceived and the thorn festers the apostle has only himself to deal with. The beatitude has vanished, vanishes more and more – alas, it was inexpressible to have it; the pain is inexpressible since it cannot even express the loss, and recollection is unable to do anything but languish in powerlessness!’ (1990, p. 336). Even if the God-relation has been accomplished once, it cannot continue, but fades immediately. However, true faith arises from here. Transient nature is the truth of this world and supreme joy is also transient. But, in fact, this brings the human being true profit: ‘The apostle declares that he knows that this variation is beneficial for him. How simple, how straightforward, how quiet these words! After having spoken of the most beatific and the most oppressive in the strongest terms, after having won and lost, and then to be so composed!’ (1990, p. 337). Suffering becomes the firewood which kindles the fire of supreme happiness. We must take notice that the thorn in the flesh is the knowledge of having been forsaken by God and the expression of the sense of radical separation from God. However, only this deep separation offers an opportunity for a relation with God for the first time. Here a person returns to the original state of self with the thorn in the flesh. This self is a sinful self, and if it is not in a state of freedom, it is not in an un-free state either. And this return forms the actuality of faith. The suffering which arises from this state of nothingness is where the true development of religious existence takes place. Kierkegaard says: Paul was brought to Agrippa in chains, and the king said to him: You are raving, Paul. What if these words – you are raving – had halted him, had given an opportunity for the confounding of recollection; what if that holy fieriness that burned in him, a well-pleasing offering to God, had again become raving; what if he had become a self-torture in order to praise God, because that also requires a great soul! (1990, p. 342) The past is never nothing for Paul. It continues to exist within the depth of his consciousness. It is unknown until it draws him into unexpected passions. Perhaps the concept of the ‘thorn in the flesh’ could refer to the past actions that have been precipitated by one’s

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unconsciousness. However, even if such a thing happens to Paul, it leads him only to deeper faith. What does this mean? If we were to interpret this from a Buddhist point of view, it could illustrate the concept that delusion is inseparable from Buddhahood. In Mahāyāna Buddhism, delusions and Buddhahood are considered to be two sides of the same coin. This is the basis of the famous Mahāyāna assertion that samsāra is nirvāna. Since all existence has the tathata¯ (‘suchness’ or ‘things as they’) as its underlying essence, delusion too must rest on this tathata¯. Once this is understood and appropriated (Tilegnelse in Danish), no matter what worldly desires may arise again, the ‘unmovable mind’ (heijoˉshin in Japanese) has already been established. Rather than simply becoming a hindrance, worldly desires will play a role in the opportunity for the experience of religious truth. Worldly desires change to the flame of the soul (that is, enlightenment) rather than becoming the firewood for the fire of supreme happiness. This is also the way to understand Nichiren’s claim that worldly or earthly desires are enlightenment. However, in order for the conversion to take place it is necessary to gaze at one’s evil karma without faltering. This instant will be the awakening of what Shinran calls kino jinshin or the deep faith of oneself. It is what is expressed in the picture of Saichi with his horns and his palms together. In Kierkegaard’s view, Paul also follows such a way: ‘The longer he looks, the more clearly he perceives that it is an emissary of God who is visiting him, a friendly spirit who wishes him well. One almost sympathizes with the poor devil, who wants to be so terrifying and then stands there unmasked, changed into the opposite, and thinking only of masking his escape’ (1990, p. 342). It seems clear then that there are some remarkable connections between the structure of faith in Shinran and Kierkegaard. Now I want to bring in another important concept about which both these thinkers have much to say, namely, the concept of love.

Faith and religious love In Western thought the concept of love has been considered in such diverse terms as eros or erotic love, philia or love within friendship, and agape or religious love. The concept of erotic love is considered by Plato as a form of divine insanity in which people begin with the erotic love of a particular individual and eventually progress to the love of the eternal forms. Love within friendship, on the other hand, is argued by Aristotle to be something that is based on human virtue. It therefore cannot reach the essence of religion. The concepts of erotic love and

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friendship are also dealt with by Christianity, but exploring the relations here lie beyond the scope of this chapter. It is rather the concept of religious love and how it appears in Christianity that I want to discuss here. Religious love is particularly emphasized in the New Testament by John and Paul. In Buddhism, love is connected with the idea of compassion. It is typically defined as that which removes pain and gives happiness. This is expressed as jihi in Japansese. Ji means giving happiness and hi means saving sentient beings from suffering. Compassion is here seen to arise from three en or conditions. The first is shujoˉen no jihi or the compassion arising from the perception of sentient beings. This is awakened in the minds of ordinary people and also in the minds of followers of Hı̄nayāna Buddhism. It is called ‘small compassion’. The second is called hoen no jihi or the compassion arising from the observation of the component elements of sentient beings. This is awakened in the minds of arhats (Buddhist sages) or bodhisattvas below what is called the first stage of enlightenment. It is called ‘medium compassion’. The third is called muen no jihi or the compassion arising from realization of the emptiness (Sanskrit: shuˉnya) of all things. This is awakened in the minds of bodhisattvas of the first stage or above and is called ‘great compassion’. This type of love, which is unconditional love, is the topic I wish to take up next. What kind of meaning does love and compassion have for human existence? I think that a fundamental sense of fulfilment for many people is based on fulfilment in love and compassion. Although the essence of humanity can be discussed from various viewpoints, in some deep sense it seems at least to consist in maturing and benefiting both oneself and others. However, the question remains: Is loving all other people and living creatures really possible for a human being? I would say that from an everyday perspective such an extent of love and compassion is impossible. By ‘everyday perspective’ I mean the perspective of a human being within whom selfish thinking is alive. Selfish thinking is the ignorance of truth, because it is accompanied by selfish love. There is nothing more difficult than to transcend selfish thinking. In Buddhism, the Yogacārā school makes an issue of the grounds of the existence of the self (the manas-consciousness). Unless this changes to the byoˉdoˉshoˉchi or non-discriminating wisdom (Sanskrit: samata jna¯na), true compassion is never realized. Non-discriminating wisdom is partially realized in the kendo (step to understanding) stage of enlightenment, as it is called, and is fully realized in the stage of Buddhahood. It is the non-discriminating wisdom that perceives the underlying identity of all things, which also means the identity of oneself and others. This makes it possible to

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overcome the feelings of separation of oneself from others. The reason, I think, why Kierkegaard distinguishes qualitatively between Christian and natural love in his Works of Love is that he perceived that there is nothing more difficult than to transcend selfish thinking. In order for love and compassion to be accomplished, selfish thinking must be exposed in its entirety. But this occurs only by the manifestation of the dharma (the Buddhist teachings) or the work of another (the Christian God). It is called faith or the heart of faith. Religious love is thus accomplished through faith. The mind to save all sentient beings and Christian love This brings us to the structure of religious love as the accomplishment of faith or the heart of faith. I should also like to note that religious love is frequently connected with the expressions ‘pour’, as in something that can be caused to flow from one place to another, and ‘pervade’, as in something that spreads in and through something else. For example, in Paul’s epistle to the Romans (5:5) we find the expression that ‘hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us’. This is explained in the following commentary on this passage: ‘As the love of God is described below, it is the work of “the Holy Spirit granted to us”. A believer’s heart is strengthened in Christ. The Holy Spirit is the living power which is poured out from God into faith and is the work of God. The heart of a human being is the place wherein this work of God is accepted.’4 The following extract is from Yüan-chao, master of the Vinaya school of Buddhism. It is cited in Shinran’s Teaching, Practice, Faith, and Attainment: Needless to say, our Buddha Amida grasps beings with the Name. Thus, as we hear it with our ears and say it with our lips, exalted virtues without limit grasp and pervade our hearts and minds. It becomes ever after the seed of our Buddhahood, all at once sweeping away a koti of kalpas of heavy karmic evil, and we attain the realization of the supreme enlightenment. (1997, p. 48) Does not the word ‘pervade’ express the nature of what has occurred in the accomplishment of our compassion or love? True compassion and love are attained with the accomplishment of faith or the heart of faith in this way. To explain this further I want to examine that which Shinran refers to as oˉchoˉ shidanru or a two-part classification sub-divided into four

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parts. It is well known that Hōnen’s Senchaku hongan nembutsu shu¯ or The Choice of the Nembutsu of the Original Vow was criticized severely by Myōe (1173–1232), a monk of the Kegon school (Kegon was one of the original six schools of Nara Buddhism). In Saijarin or Breaking the Wheel of False Teaching Myōe radically criticized Hōnen, asserting that in Hōnen’s teachings the idea of bodaishin or the aspiration to Buddhahood (enlightenment) was missing. Against this criticism some counterarguments were made by various of Hōnen’s students, but Hōnen himself left this world before being able to reply. Shinran was one of Hōnen’s students to respond to the criticism. Indeed, Shinran’s Teaching, Practice, Faith, and Attainment could be said to be written as a counter-argument to Myōe’s critique of Hōnen. The essence of this work is expressed within a four-fold classification. This involves the concepts of transcending lengthwise and departing lengthwise, and transcending crosswise and departing crosswise: Further, the mind aspiring for enlightenment is of two kinds [of orientation]: lengthwise and crosswise. The lengthwise is further of two kinds: transcending lengthwise and departing lengthwise. These are explained in various teachings – accommodated and real, exoteric and esoteric, Mahayana and Hinayana. They are the mind [with which one attains enlightenment after] going around for many kalpas, the diamond-like mind of self-power, or the great mind of the bodhisattva. The crosswise is also of two kinds: transcending crosswise and departing crosswise. That characterized by departing crosswise is the mind of enlightenment of right and sundry practices or meditative and non-meditative practices of self-power within Other Power. That characterized by transcending crosswise is shinjin [faith] that is directed to beings through the power of the Vow. It is the mind that aspires to attain Buddhahood. The mind that aspires to attain Buddhahood is the mind aspiring for great enlightenment of crosswise orientation. It is called ‘the diamond-like mind of crosswise transcendence’. (pp. 107–8) It is argued here that our aspiration to attain Buddhahood or enlightenment is based on faith in the power of the vow of Amida Buddha. Amida created the original vow of ‘to aspire to be born in my pure land’ in order to save all sentient beings. Pure Land followers who realize this vow will experience the daibodaishin or great aspiration sent by the Buddha, which is qualitatively different from the small aspiration found within our everyday frame of thinking. This great aspiration is different from the idea of aspiration considered by Myōe.

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Moreover, this great aspiration is nothing less than the mind to save all sentient beings. The following words of Donran’s Joˉdo ron chuˉ or Commentary on the Treatise on the Pure Land express this clearly: ‘This mind aspiring for supreme enlightenment is the mind that aspires to attain Buddhahood. The mind that aspires to attain Buddhahood is the mind to save all sentient beings. The mind to save all sentient beings is the mind to grasp sentient beings and bring them to birth in the land where the Buddha is’ (p. 108). In the great aspiration to attain enlightenment Buddha’s heart is dwelling in the Pure Land practitioner, therefore it is precisely this great aspiration that can save all sentient beings. Thus, the unconditional love (compassion) which is absolutely impossible within everyday existence blossoms in the heart of the one who calls the Buddha’s name. This brings us at last to the world of Works of Love. Here Kierkegaard offers a description of true love: True love, which has undergone the change of eternity [undergik Evighedens Forandring] by becoming duty, is never changed; it is simple, it loves and never hates, never hates – the beloved. It might seem as if that spontaneous love were the stronger because it can do two things, because it can both love and hate. It might seems as if it had an entirely different power over its object when it says, ‘If you will not love me, then I will hate you’ – but this is only an illusion.5 Human beings changed and reconstructed by eternity are none other than those who realize faith. Simultaneously with this faith, we naturally appropriate the holy love to ourselves, since ‘God is love’. Thus, the materialized love is not a person’s love but primarily the love of God. The concept of true love sent by eternity into oneself is what is meant by the love of God. I think that this has the almost same structure as Shinran’s concept of the formation of the mind to save all sentient beings. In this way, Kierkegaard’s idea of Christian love, like Shinran’s idea of compassion, shows the aspect of eternal love. Attributes of love: self-negativity I shall now examine the two main attributes of love or compassion. (Kierkegaard develops further characteristics of love from these attributes.) First, love has the attribute of self-negativity. That is, the self must be negated when Christian love is materialized. Everywhere love is enclosed within selfish thinking; such is not yet true love. Conversely, selfish thinking is torn apart when a person receives faith and true love. There

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is, by definition, an unconscious attachment to self at the root of selfish thinking. Therefore the gaining of faith or love is, at the same time, the loss of unconscious attachment to oneself. Jesus’ commandment, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’ (Matthew 22: 39), is well-known. Kierkegaard interprets this passage by saying: it is Christianity’s intention to wrest self-love away from us human beings. In other words, this is implied in loving oneself; but if one is to love the neighbour as oneself, then the commandment, as with a pick, wrenches (Danish: viste) open the lock of self-love and wrests (Danish: fravriste) it away from a person. If the commandment about loving the neighbour were expressed in any other way than with this little phrase, as yourself, which simultaneously is so easy to handle and yet has the elasticity of eternity, the commandment would be unable to cope with self-love in this way. (1995, p. 17) The commandment is a direct exhortation to ‘love your neighbour as yourself’. That is, as people protect and love themselves right to the very end. We can consider this in relation to the manas-consciousness in the Yogacārā school. The commandment teaches that we should offer our neighbour the same unconditional love that we hold for ourselves. To ‘love your neighbour as yourself’ is by no means a complicated phrase, yet how can we love our neighbour? Loving our neighbour, indeed loving any living creatures truly, must mean loving right to the very end, and at the risk of our own life. This commandment contains a dialectical contradiction between unconditional self-love and unconditional neighbourly love, and the contradiction causes a complete self-negativity. Moreover, this commandment undermines the truth of self-love. This is because self-love, which is necessary and thus valid for self-preservation, cannot also contain the love of others. Such love is, in the end, based on manas-consciousness. True self-love is that which contains love for others. Everyday selflove must be destroyed by it. This love is rewarded by Jesus’ love. In Works of Love Kierkegaard says: Only for self-denying love does the specification ‘mine’ disappear entirely and the distinction ‘mine and yours’ become entirely cancelled … Then the wondrous thing occurs that is heaven’s blessing upon self-denying love – in salvation’s mysterious understanding all things become his, his who had no mine at all, his who in self-denial made yours all that was his. In other words, God is all things, and by

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having no mine at all self-denial’s love won God and won all things. (1995, p. 268) Here it is stated that a miraculous result arises from the love based on self-denial, namely, that it owns nothing but to it all are given. This situation parallels the Buddhist view that ‘nothing to cling to is an inexhaustible store’ (Japanese: muichimotu chuˉ mujinnzoˉ ). It is also tied to the Taoist idea of wu-wei or non-action, an idea that influenced Japanese Buddhism. As mentioned in the Introduction, for Taoism the sage is ‘free from self-display, and therefore he shines; from self-assertion, and therefore he is distinguished; from self-boasting, and therefore his merit is acknowledged’. This is essentially the same idea. In Christianity this idea arises from the notion that all is created by God. Moreover, as Kierkegaard states: When one thinks only one thought, one must in connection with this thinking discover self-denial, and it is self-denial that discovers that God is. Precisely this becomes the contradiction in blessedness and terror: to have an omnipotent one as one’s co-worker. An omnipotent one cannot be your co-worker, a human being’s co-worker, without its signifying that you are able to do nothing at all; and on the other hand, if he is your co-worker, you are able to do everything. (1995, p. 362) So Kierkegaard says that in self-denial one discovers God. But this also means that discovering God is simultaneous with the denial of the selfish ego. This is precisely the same as Shinran’s ‘two aspects of deep faith’. Although it is faith that is the basis of Christian love, this love is accompanied by the consciousness that the person can do nothing by himself or herself. At the same time, in the sense that the believer is a co-worker who works with God, he or she is also all-powerful. This is close to the Pure Land position given in the fourth chapter of A Record of Lament of the Divergences. Attributes of love: unchangeableness I will end this chapter by examining another attribute of love discussed by Kierkegaard. This is the unchangeableness of love. Here Kierkegaard says: Be honest, admit that with most people, when they read the poet’s glowing description of erotic love or friendship, it is perhaps the case

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that this seems to be something far higher than this poor: ‘You shall love.’ ‘You shall love.’ Only when it is a duty to love, only then is love eternally secured against every change, eternally made free in blessed independence, eternally and happily secured against despair. (1995, p. 29) The love of ‘You shall love’ is unchangeable compared with the changeableness of natural love and attachment. The first type of love is not influenced by the attributes of its object and has a non-dependability to it. ‘In other words’, says Kierkegaard, ‘since the neighbour is every human being, unconditionally every human being, all dissimilarities are indeed removed from the object, it is without any of the more precise specifications of dissimilarity, which means that this love is recognizable only by love’ (1995, p. 66). Kierkegaard says here that the neighbour is every human being, and he repeats the same assertion elsewhere: ‘You can never confuse him with anyone else, since the neighbour, to be sure, is all people. If you confuse another person with the neighbour, then the mistake is not due to the latter, since the other person is also the neighbour; the mistake is due to you, that you will not understand who the neighbour is’ (1995, p. 52). Targeting the other, Christian love is completely independent of the infinite variety found in the other’s character, and loves the other without reference to particular human characteristics. For human beings whose selfish thinking has been crushed the differences that separated people from each other become completely lost; here the neighbour is every human being. This has direct connections with the idea of the Buddha’s compassion applied, as it is said, to all beings in ten quarters. Moreover, in Practice in Christianity, it becomes the problem of the ‘all’ in ‘come here, all you who labour and are burdened, and I will give you rest’ (Matthew 11: 28). We have to understand that this universality of the neighbour does not mean the abstractness of a neighbour, but rather the most concrete neighbour in himself or herself. Using the words of Buber, it corresponds to the Thou of the ‘I-Thou’ relation. Dostoevsky says, ‘we can love a far person but cannot love a near person’. A neighbour is the person who stands before us as he or she is, and who disappears at the precise moment we begin to conceptualize or categorize him or her. From a Buddhist perspective, this has features in common with Lin-chi’s concept of ‘one true person of no rank’ referring to love that is not based on the attributes of its object. Kierkegaard says, ‘it is indeed true (as pointed out earlier, where it was shown that the neighbour is the pure category of

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spirit) that one sees the neighbour only with closed eyes, or by looking away from the dissimilarities. The sensate eyes always see the dissimilarities and look at the dissimilarities’ (1995, p. 68). However, the fact that love is not dependent on the particular attributes displayed by different objects does not mean that such love disregards them. Rather, for Kierkegaard, the aspects of actual discrimination are repeatedly (as in his concept of repetition) understood through their transcendence. This concept is expressed in his claim that ‘when the dissimilarity hangs loosely in this way, then in each individual there continually glimmers that essential other, which is common to all, the eternal resemblance, the likeness’ (1995, p. 88). He insists that we shall see them loosely. This is a delicate religious position and we can compare it with the idea that ‘Emptiness is immediately form’ as stated in Hannya shin kyoˉ or The Heart Suˉtra. By meditating on shuˉnyata¯ (emptiness) one recognizes that all is empty and has no substance. However, when this is realized, the aspects of reality are truly received again as something irreplaceable. I think that this is a momentous idea, an idea that Buddhism calls ‘the middle way’. It is the principle of reality which lies beyond existence and non-existence. Hence, it is the ‘middle’. This principle teaches that even a colour or a smell has the truth of the middle way, that is, the middle path is found in all things. In Japanese this is called isshiki ikkoˉ muhi chuˉdoˉ. I think that Kierkegaard asserts the same thing here. This is what he is saying, I feel, when he says that in Christianity everything is received as something irreplaceable. Kierkegaard expresses a keen insight here: ‘When it is a duty to love the people we see, one must first and foremost give up all imaginary and exaggerated ideas about a dream-world where the object of love should be sought and found; that is, one must become sober, gain actuality and truth by finding and remaining in the world of actuality as the task assigned to one’ (1995, p. 161). This is exactly the world of ‘Emptiness is immediately form’. Here, I think, is a feature of religious existence which both Japanese Pure Land Buddhism and Kierkegaard hold deeply in common.

Notes 1. The Collected Works of Shinran, 1 (Kyoto: Jōdo Shinshū Hongwanji-ha, 1997) p. 80. Further references to this edition are given in the text. 2. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientif ic Postscript, trans. H. V. Hong and E. H. Hong (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1992) p. 455. Further references to this edition are given in the text.

70 Kierkegaard and Japanese Thought 3. Shinyakuseisho ryakukai [Compact Dictionary of the New Testament] ed. Shogo Yamatani, Isaburou Takayanagi and Jirou Ogawa (Tokyo: Nihon kirisuto kyodan shuppannbu, 1989) p. 835 (my translation). 4. Shinyakuseisho ryakukai, p. 527. 5. Kierkegaard, Works of Love, trans. H. V. Hong and E. H. Hong (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1995) p. 34. Further reference to this edition are given in the text.

4 A Zen Understanding of Kierkegaard’s Existential Thought Eshin Nishimura

A creative encounter with Kierkegaard I am a Japanese Buddhist priest who belongs to the orthodox Rinzai school of Zen Buddhism, a school that has its roots in Chinese ch’an Buddhism. Therefore, my way of approaching Kierkegaard is essentially different from that of other Japanese Kierkegaard scholars, most of who seem to be academic scholars outside the Buddhist sangha (or community). My encounter with Kierkegaard’s existential thought came about unexpectedly during my study of Zen thought, while I was still an undergraduate at Hanazono University, the sole academic institution of Rinzai Zen Buddhism in Japan. Japanese Kierkegaard scholars, it seems to me, typically focus on Kierkegaard’s existential thought at the end of their philosophical journey through the ideas of various other Western philosophers. My case was entirely different. In fact, I had not received any training in Western philosophy until I came across Kierkegaard. At that time I was studying East Asian philosophy that was based mainly on Zen training. This philosophy does not involve the reflective speculation of rational thinking. For this reason, students who major in the study of Zen Buddhism face a difficult obstacle in graduating. For in their studies they must be able to give a rational account of a non-rational way of thinking. My encounter with Kierkegaard happened by chance one late afternoon in the autumn of 1955 when I was at a bookseller’s in Kyoto. While perusing various volumes in the philosophy section, I came upon a book that was a special issue to mark the one hundredth anniversary of Kierkegaard’s death. It was the first time I had seen Kierkegaard’s name. This book caught my interest and eventually I embarked on reading several of Kierkegaard’ works. 71

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Subjectivity as the common subject Two things that caught my attention in the book were the word ‘subjectivity’ and the title of the chapter ‘How to be a good Christian?’ One of my lecturers, Shinichi Hisamatsu (1889–1980), a leading philosopher of the Kyoto school of philosophy and a follower of Nishida, was always stressing the importance of the subjectivity of human existence in the thought of Zen Buddhism. I was thus, well before reading Kierkegaard, sensitive to the notion of subjectivity. As a Buddhist monk, my interest was also awakened by Kierkegaard’s quest to be a good Christian. I suddenly realized that I had no special concern about how to be a good Buddhist. My unadulterated heart was rocked to its foundation at that moment. I harboured deep doubts about my own religious life, being enrolled, as I was, in a merely traditional or cultural Buddhist organization. For Kierkegaard, an authentic Christian life is only possible when one stands before God as an existing individual. For this very reason, the Christian church, a traditional and cultural organization, was an obstacle for him.

How to be authentic Kierkegaard devoted himself to being an anti-church Christian: refusing his father’s wish that he be a pastor he instead spent his whole life trying to be a true Christian. ‘How can one be an authentic Christian?’ is not an objective question like ‘What is an authentic Christian?’, but rather a thoroughly existential and subjective question. It thus became a particular interest of mine to investigate the relation between subjectivity and the Christian idea of faith. This was especially so because I understood Christianity as a religion of salvation by God or an ‘other power’ (jiriki in Japanese). The question, as I saw it, was how subjectivity and the salvation by an other power could coexist. This seemed a central problem in the comparative study of Zen Buddhist experience and Christian faith. Also, the Zen subjectivity that I was learning about from Hisamatsu came into question for me as I wondered whether it was sufficient. My view of Zen Buddhism as the absolute was challenged by the realm of relativity. This opened my eyes to other religions, such as Christianity and the Pure Land faith of Shinran in Japanese Buddhism. (The relation between Shinran’s Buddhism and Kierkegaard’s Christianity is explored in Chapter 3 by Hidetomo Yamashita.)

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Hisamatsu was enthusiastic in pointing out the significance of ‘the subjectivity of no-self’, as he called it, in Zen Buddhist thought. This, he felt, was an ideal image of the human being in the contemporary world. In his latter days Hisamatsu used to call himself a ‘post-modernist’ (ko kindaijin in Japanese). Through this view he tried to overcome both the pre-modern way of being that is atheistic and the modern way of being that is nihilistic. In my undergraduate thesis, which I submitted to Hisamatsu, I argued for the superiority of the Zen concept of subjectivity over Kierkegaard’s similar concept. I criticized the weakness of his notion of subjectivity which seems to be unable to stay on the level of what he calls religiousness A (the Socratic level). Consequently, subjectivity here would move to the level of what he calls religiousness B (the Christian level). At the defence of my thesis, Hisamatsu severely criticized my understanding of the specific significance of the double structure of Kierkegaard’s Christian faith. In this way I came to see the meaning of authenticity contained in Kierkegaard’s idea of subjectivity. This is something that is admitted at the deeper level of religiousness B. Through Hisamatsu’s stern criticism of my view of Kierkegaard’s concept of faith even my understanding of Zen Buddhist thought was brought into an entirely different dimension. The more I immersed myself in Kierkegaard’s Christian existentialism, the more I came to investigate the logical structure of Zen Buddhism itself. It was through this investigation that I finally arrived at what I call the ‘creative theory of Zen existentialism’. With this background laid out, I should now like to explore the similarities between Kierkegaard’s Christian existentialist thought and Zen Buddhist thought. These similarities transcend the differences between Eastern and Western religious traditions.

The Buddha’s suffering Zen Buddhism is a branch of Mahāyāna Buddhism, which ultimately has its origins in the Buddha’s self-awakening in the fifth-century BCE. The Buddha, who was the crown prince of a small kingdom of India, was such a deep thinker in his young days that his father was concerned for the boy’s future. One day the young boy happened to see an aged man who was hobbling along the road. This shocked him into the realization that ageing was the unavoidable fate of all beings.

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In the same way he saw that disease and death were also unavoidable realities, realities which, together with ageing, constituted nothing but the ‘law of suffering’ rooted in all living beings. How to overcome these existential sufferings became the crucial subject in his life. He says: The luxuries of the palace, this healthy body, this rejoicing youth! What do they mean to me? ... Someday we may be sick, we shall become aged, from death there is no escape. Pride of youth, pride of health, pride of existence – all thoughtful people should cast them aside. A man struggling for existence will naturally look for help. There are two ways of looking for help – a right way and a wrong way. To look in the wrong way means that, while he recognizes that sickness, old age, and death are unavoidable, he looks for help among the same class of empty, transitory things. To look in the right way means that he recognizes the true nature of sickness, old age, and death, and looks for help in that which transcends all human sufferings. In this palace life of pleasures I seem to be looking for help in the wrong way.1 Under the sway of such reflections, the Buddha fled his life at the palace and, at the age of 29, entered the mountains to practice yogic asceticism. But after six years of such practice he decided to stop. Asceticism, he felt, was not the right way to overcome human suffering. Human suffering is tied to the physical suffering of disease, old age, and death. Therefore the overcoming of this kind of suffering should not, it seems, involve the infliction of more physical suffering. Rather, it should involve physical relaxation. But yogic asceticism seems to aim at just the opposite: here the yogin tries to emancipate his or her mind by afflicting the body. I believe that this might be the reason why the Buddha abandoned ascetic practice.

The self as a synthesis In other words, yogic asceticism is based upon the traditional Arian dualism in which mind and body are separate. For the Buddha, bodily suffering should be overcome through both body and mind, which cannot be separated one from the other. Bodily suffering cannot be conquered by the mind through afflicting the body. Rather, bodily suffering is only to be healed with a peaceful mind. This idea created an entirely new concept of meditation, one which had not existed before in India.

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This idea of the identity of body and mind and its relation to suffering reminds me of Kierkegaard’s concept of human existence as a synthesis and its relation to despair. Kierkegaard writes: The self is a relation which relates itself to its own self, or it is that in the relation [which accounts for it] that the relation relates itself to its own self; the self is not the relation but [consists in the fact] that the relation relates itself to its own self. Man is a synthesis of infinite and finite, the temporal and the eternal, freedom and necessity … Despair is the disrelationship in a relation which relates itself to itself. But the synthesis is not the disrelationship, it is merely the possibility, or, in the synthesis is latent the possibility of the disrelationship … if he were not a synthesis, he could not despair, neither could he despair if the synthesis were not originally from God’s hand in the right relationship. 2 (brackets in original) Kierkegaard defines the human being as the synthesis of infiniteness and finiteness, temporality and eternity, freedom and necessity. Despair is nothing but the separation of those elemental pairs. And to despair is a particularly human failing. Consequently, if someone were completely unable to despair, such a person would be lacking in what it means to be human. But this despair is the mere separation of relation of a person to himself and is not yet real despair. Authentic despair appears in the relation to the third party, namely God, who created the person’s relation to himself.

The fundamental question Among the many branches of Buddhism, each of which tries to study what the Buddha taught, the Rinzai school of Zen Buddhism is unique. This is because in their practice Zen Buddhists of the Rinzai school try to re-experience the way in which the Buddha overcame his suffering. This starts with trying to experience the great doubt about the fundamental contradictions in human existence, namely, contradictions between life and death, animal instinct and human intelligence, and so on. This idea of experiencing the great doubt, is one which, in the Japanese Rinzai school, was expounded by the Zen master Hakuin (1685–1768). Hakuin’s philosophy of the great doubt is discussed in Chapter 7 by Archie Graham.

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Hakuin’s approach, however, had its roots in Chinese Zen Buddhism. For example, the Chinese Zen master Huang-lung Hui-nan (1002–69), used to put three problems to the newly arrived student. These, which are called ‘the three barriers of Huang-lung’, are as follows: 1. Each individual has his own karmic cause to be born into this world. Show me your karmic cause! 2. Why does your hand look like the Buddha’s hand? 3. Why do your legs look like donkey’s legs?3 The first problem concerns the fundamental contradiction between what is caused by one’s karma or earlier deeds in a past life and one’s present freedom to live as an individual. In other words, it is pointing out the contradiction between necessity and freedom, a contradiction which each individual must somehow deal with. By raising the second and the third problems, Master Huang-lung is trying to draw the student back to a further paradox of human existence, namely, that all people are a ‘synthesis’ of the Buddha (enlightenment) and an animal nature. In this way, the student might be returned to his original situation and become aware of the existential root of human suffering or despair. A further example can be found in the works of Zen master Tou-shuai Ts’ung-yueh (1044–91), who inherited the teachings of Huang-lung. He raises similar problems but approaches the issue from a different direction. He would ask his students the following: 1. A purpose of Zen training is to realize the inborn nature of your existence. Now, show me your inborn nature. 2. Once you realize your inborn nature, you may be able to be released from reincarnation and the cycle of life and death. If so, how do you transcend your reincarnation and the cycle of life and death? 3. You might know the place where you go after your death. Where do you go then?4 Thus, Zen Buddhism tries to capture the individual as a temporary being existing amid the ocean of life and death, and to bring him or her to the eternal within the temporal flow. The well known line from Lin-chi (Japanese: Rinzai) (d. 866) indicates a similar reality that exists amid the inconsistencies of human existence: The Master (Lin-chi) took the high seat in the hall. He said: ‘On your lump of red flesh is a true man without rank who is always going in

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and out of the face of every one of you. Those who have not yet proved him, look, look!’5 ‘Red flesh’ here indicates the human body, which has substance within it, and yet in and out of which goes an eternal true man, within and through all the senses and organs of every body at each moment. In this way, Master Lin-chi requires students to capture an eternity within the temporality of the physical body. This contradictory structure of the ‘true self’ which Lin-chi teaches his students reminds me immediately of Kierkegaard’s definition of the ideal self which an individual has to realize as a synthesis of the infinite and the finite. Since the individual is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, to emphasize only one side of this synthesis is always wrong and is none other than despair. Kierkegaard writes of this synthesis saying, ‘the development consists in moving away from oneself infinitely by the process of infinitizing oneself, and returning to oneself infinitely by the process of finitizing. If on the contrary the self does not become itself, it is in despair.’6 In these lines, Kierkegaard emphasizes the fact that ‘moving away from oneself’ and ‘returning to oneself’ should be done simultaneously. Otherwise, the individual would remain in despair. The individual has both to transcend himself or herself and yet has to stay within himself or herself. In this way the self that is being moved towards becomes the self that one really is.

The great doubt and untruth In Rinzai Zen Buddhism the central concern to which a person is led is the realization of his true self (also called the Buddha or the awakened one) within his lifetime. This life-long task is called ‘a long path of selfenquiry’ (koji kyuˉmei no gyoˉdoˉ in Japanese). And this life-long religious procedure starts with a person’s great doubt, as Hakuin puts it, over an inconsistency in human existence. This great doubt, therefore, is not the same sort of conscious doubt which Descartes used as a method to establish the existence of the I as opposed to the existence of the world of physical things. The content of the great doubt is, in fact, nothing but the despair which people meet in their lives and by which they lose the meaning of their lives. Under the burden of this absolute frustration a person becomes no more than an animated corpse. This is known as the ‘ball of doubt’, where there is no distinction between the person who is doing the doubting and what is being doubted. This great doubt (taishi ichiban in Japanese) in the Zen procedure is similar, I feel, to the idea of the dark night of the soul

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which occurs in Catholic mysticism. Such a crisis could also be compared with Kierkegaard’s notion of ‘untruth’ in the awareness of sin before God. The Zen student tries to break free of this situation through his own effort. But the more he tries to escape his crisis, the more he loses his own power to break through it; for in Zen training there is no saving God to which the student can turn. This is a horrendous ordeal for the Zen student, a dangerous training which the student experiences as a risking of life. Hakuin refers to this through the metaphor of ‘letting go of one’s hold from a precipice’ (kengai sasshuˉ in Japanese). At this moment the student suddenly experiences a breaking through the darkness of despair and realizes his real inborn self – which is no self – for the first time. In Japanese this is called the satori realization (enlightenment in English), and it is accompanied by the joy of freedom from existential human suffering.

The jump into truth In Zen, this ‘jump’ from the suffering self (untruth) to the joyful self (truth) is achieved through the individual’s own effort, which contrasts with Kierkegaard’s case in which the help of God is instrumental. It can be seen as analogous to Kierkegaard’s concept of ‘becoming from nonexistence (a person of sin) to existence (a person of faith)’. Here we may note that ‘despair’ is the state common to both cases and is that which makes man jump up from the untruth to truth. Both in Zen experience and Kierkegaard, deep awareness of the untruth of self-existence is crucial to the achievement of truth. We may say, after Kierkegaard, that true subjectivity is achieved in Zen only through the ‘one jump into the land of Buddha’ (icchoˉ jikinyuˉ nyoraiji in Japanese) from ‘the darkness of non-existence’ (kokumanman ji in Japanese) to ‘the brightness of existence’ (koˉmei rekireki ji in Japanese). This is not the ‘recollection of truth’ in a Socratic sense of awareness of the truth, but a kind of transcendence within immanence. A Socratic realization of truth seems to be a recollection of metaphysical truth transcendentally existing within us, while realization of reality in Zen experience is not a realization of transcendental being in any sense. Zen does not involve a metaphysics which postulates the existence of an eternal being or reality somewhere beyond the physical world. Rather, it is an existentialism which has no super-physical being outside our own corporeality.

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Subjectivity as complete independence There seems to be a sharp contrast here between Kierkegaard’s subjectivity and the subjectivity of Zen. While in Kierkegaard one can be subjective only in front of God, in Zen one can be subjective only when one is independent from any other support. This subjectivity of Zen becomes clear when a Zen master demonstrates his absolute subjectivity by denying all outside authorities, such as the Buddha or Patriarchs. This is what Lin-chi tries to express in the quote above. It is interesting to see, however, that there are two different types of such denial. Typical examples of these two types of denial of authority can be found in the ideas of Lin-chi and the Zen master Chao-chou Ts’ung-shen. For Lin-chi, true subjectivity is possible only when one is completely emancipated from all bondage – internal and external – so that one may be ‘a man of complete independence who does not depend on any thing’ (dokudatsu mue no doˉnin in Japanese). Lin-chi thus directs his students to cut themselves off from all authority, saying, ‘if you want insight into Dharma as it is, just don’t be taken in by the deluded views of others. Whatever you encounter, either within or without, slay it at once: on meeting a Buddha slay the Buddha, on meeting [a] Patriarch slay the Patriarch.’7 Lin-chi describes this lack of self-confidence as a disease and says: students today can’t get anywhere: what ails you? Lack of faith in your self is what ails you. If you lack in yourself, you’ll keep on tumbling along, following after all kinds of circumstances, be taken by these myriad circumstances through transformation after transformation, and never be your self. Bring to rest the thoughts of the ceaselessly seeking mind, and you’ll not differ from the Patriarch-Buddha.8 At the extreme opposite pole to Lin-chi’s subjectivity, there is Chaochou who says, ‘I dislike to hear the name of Buddha!’ An officer, Ts’ui, once asked Chao-chou, ‘Even with great masters like you, is it possible to fall into hell after death?’ ‘Surely I will fall into hell at the very first!’ replied Chao-chou. The officer asked, ‘How is it possible for a holy person like you?’ Chao-chou replied, ‘So that I might meet you there!’9 However, Chao-chou’s dislike of hearing the Buddha’s name represents no less than a confession of his helplessness at not being able to become Buddha. (Here is a way in which Zen contrasts with Pure Land Buddhism wherein one depends on the name of the Buddha – conceived as an ‘other power’ – to gain enlightenment; see Chapter 3.)

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This is also an expression of the consciousness of shame (shikishuˉ in Japanese). Chinese Zen master Hsu-t’ang Chih-yu (1185–1269) says here, ‘be sensible to your shame, then you might understand the ultimate of Zen’.10 Thus, we can see how Zen subjectivity is in a way close to Kierkegaard’s self-consciousness of sin. Yet in Zen subjectivity it is a choice to fall into hell instead of being saved by the Buddha, not, as is the case with Kierkegaard, a matter of hope for salvation by God. Here we may see the unique characteristic of Zen subjectivity, a subjectivity which is thoroughly subjective.

The absolute subjectivity of no-self Besides the examples that we have just seen of denying outer authority, there is also the extreme example of Zen subjectivity in which one refuses even the authority of the Zen tradition on which Zen subjectivity stands. K’uo-an Shih-yuan – a Zen master of the Sung dynasty in China – added a comment to the tenth picture of his ‘Ten Ox-herding Pictures’, which reads as follows: A man (who accomplished his Zen journey) is now resting in his hermitage, closing a gate, so that even a wise man does not know he exists. No glimpses of his inner life are to be caught; for he goes on his own way without following the steps of the ancient sages. Carrying a (wine) gourd he goes out into the market, leaning against a staff he comes home. He is found in company with wine-bibbers and butchers, he and they are all converted into the Buddha.11 The subjectivity shown above typifies the ideal person in Zen Buddhism. Such a subjectivity seems to be more subjective than the socalled Socratic subjectivity in the sense that it goes beyond even consciousness of self. Therefore, it was specially called ‘the absolute subjectivity of no-self’ (zettaimu teki shutai in Japanese) by Hisamatsu. The specific terms ‘absolute subjectivity’ or ‘fundamental subjectivity’, which were used by the Kyoto school philosophers, are not meant to refer to the idea of a subject which opposes the objective world. Here, contrary to the idea of a subject, the subjectivity is something that is identified with the objective world. Hisamatsu named this kind of absolute subjectivity ‘oriental nothingness’, or ‘awakened-existence’ (kakuzon in Japanese). Such subjective being is no longer an ordinary existence which is opposed to the world but the existence of non-existence (the self of no-self), which might be

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called the universal self. Hisamatsu tells us about this Zen way of being through describing various types of persons. He says: The fourth type of person (the ideal Zen type of person) appears in the case in which the second type of person (a nihilist facing his despair) is awakened to himself in an automatic way from within himself. This is not like the third type of person (the theist who is reborn from absolute negation, which is despair, to absolute affirmation, which is salvation by the other God). In the case of the fourth type of person (the Zen type of person), the true person (true nature, original face, or Buddha-nature) existing within him or her becomes an absolute affirmation by the absolute negation. In this type of true person, self nature or Buddha-nature is not immanent any more but is rather absolutely present. Ordinarily, Buddha-nature is thought to be immanent, but the true being of the Buddha-nature is neither transcendent nor immanent, nor in between them, but the eternal present which transcends all those levels. A realization or awakening of this self nature is nothing but satori (enlightenment) awareness.12

Not wisdom but compassion In Zen Buddhism, as well as in Kierkegaard, there is a kind of procedure for the movement from the so-called religiousness A to religiousness B. Let me take an example from Hakuin. Hakuin left his home at the age of fifteen to become a Zen student. He did this because of a fear of hell which he had acquired after hearing a sermon given at the neighbouring temple. Through his study of Zen he overcame his fear by an early realization of his true self-nature (kenshoˉ in Japanese). He then began teaching and related his experience to his students. Through this he became a well-known Zen master among the Japanese people of his day. Although, Hakuin’s Zen subjectivity seemed to remain steadfast, at the age of 42 he began to feel that his early Zen experience was still imperfect. One summer evening when he was reciting The Lotus Suˉtra with his students and reflecting on the meaning of the sūtra he came to understand the severe criticism of his early kenshoˉ experience given by his master Dōkyo Etan (1642–1721). Hakuin’s biography divides his life into two parts. The second part starts in the year of what he calls his second ‘great experience of thoroughgoing awareness of true self’ (taigo tettei in Japanese).

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We do not know what Hakuin realized at this particular moment, but I can easily suppose that in this second awareness of his true self, Hakuin was completely released from the confidence of his self-power and could transcend into a deeper level of self which is supported by the great power of the Buddha’s compassion. Further instances of this sort of movement are expressed in Hakuin’s powerful calligraphies and drawings, for which he was also well known. In one such work, entitled ‘Play for the great hell-bodhisattva’, which was made after he was eighty years old, we are presented with the idea of a movement from the suffering of hell to the compassion of the bodhisattva. These instances of transcendence within Zen subjectivity are, it seems to me, analogous with the double structure of religiousness A and B in Kierkegaard’s Christian faith. This kind of transcendence within the individual being is taught as ‘The other path left over after completing the study of Zen.’ Zen practice requires the student to ‘take one more step from the top of a onehundred meter pole’. This is a harder step for the Zen student than the process of reaching the top of the pole. To achieve the ‘other path’, the student has to forget the severity of the earlier process of training. This is necessary so that he or she can once again return to the beginning – or even to before the beginning – of the path of Zen.

Contemporariness In Philosophical Fragments, Kierkegaard discusses ‘the contemporariness’ of Jesus who is a teacher of the truth. Kierkegaard says that a disciple of Jesus from two hundred years after Jesus’ death is the equal of the disciples who were Jesus’ contemporaries. This is because the latter-day disciple still has contemporariness with Jesus. What does contemporariness mean for Kierkegaard? For Kierkegaard, contemporariness does not mean direct historical contemporariness. Rather, it means indirect contemporariness, something that is established in the subjective relationship to Jesus. In other words, for Kierkegaard, subjective contemporariness – what he calls true contemporariness – is the only condition for being a true disciple of Jesus. He writes: The genuine contemporary is the genuine contemporary not by virtue of immediate contemporaneity; ergo the non-contemporary (in the sense of immediacy) must be able to be a contemporary by

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way of the something else by which a contemporary becomes a genuine contemporary. But what the non-contemporary (in the sense of immediacy) is, of course, the one who comes later, consequently, someone who comes later must be able to be the genuine contemporary.13 For Kierkegaard, the definite condition of contemporariness is ‘one’s witness in belief’ which transcends historical distance. A person’s witness that Jesus is a teacher of truth who gave people both truth and the condition of truth (that is, he created the human being as a being in need of truth) makes it possible for a person to ‘become’ from untruth to the truth. This is not a ‘recollection’ of the truth in the Socratic sense, but the transcendental ‘becoming’ which happens in faith. In Zen experience, the same sort of experience is achieved when a person breaks through the bottom of his existence into the ground of being. He does this to get out of himself and arrive at the horizon where absolute nothingness (‘non-existence’ in Kierkegaard’s sense) is being opened. Nishitani, the Kyoto-school philosopher, often referred to this experience as ‘the openness of Sunyata or the void’.14

Breaking beyond oneself This transcendental horizon is the common ground which each individual being is trying to attain. It is the only place where a person can meet the Buddha or Patriarchs or go beyond historical distance. One technique for gaining the transcendental horizon is that of koan study, something often used in the Rinzai school. A koan is an illogical puzzle usually involving typical episodes of self-awareness gained by the ancient Zen Patriarchs and transmitted through Zen teachings. In the first koan of the well-known Zen text Wu men kuan (Mumonkan in Japanese, The Gateless Gate in English), Wu-men Hui-k’ai (1183–1260) says: In studying Zen, one must pass the barriers set up by ancient Zen masters. For the attainment of incomparable Satori, one has to cast away his discriminating mind. Those who have not passed the barrier and have not cast away the discriminating mind are all phantoms haunting trees and plants ... Those who have passed the barrier will not only see Joshu (Chao-chou, hero of this koan) clearly, but will go hand in hand with all the Masters of the past, see them face to face. You will see with the same eye that they see with and hear with the same ear.15

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To the question raised by a student; ‘Does a dog has the Buddhanature?’, Chao-chou replies; ‘No, she hasn’t!’ But when asked the same question another time, he replies ‘Surely she has!’ Between the two contradictory answers, yes and no, there is the ‘moment’ which Kierkegaard refers to. There is, of course, no possibility of uniting them by a ‘bothand’ synthesis but only by jumping from one choice to the other in an instance of ‘either-or’. Koan study used in Zen training seems to be useful for students in breaking through the rational way of understanding the self and the world that causes human suffering. By confronting the irrational subject of a koan, the Zen student tries passionately to break free of his deluded idea of self or ego. This is the same with Kierkegaard when he says that a person becomes more passionate by standing in front of ‘the absolute paradox’ that is the historical Jesus. It is fascinating to see in both Zen and Kierkegaard the idea of breaking beyond oneself by confronting a paradox.

Indirect transmission of truth Truth is not directly transferred from teacher to student. Socrates, a teacher of truth, went into the market place where he used his own method of dialogue to urge people to awaken to the truth within themselves. In this way, which he saw as a form of midwifery, he tried to persuade people back onto a dependence on themselves instead of directly presenting them with the truth. A unique method of transmission of truth used by Zen masters has resonances with the Socratic method. The master never answers existential questions raised by students and may even avoid a student who wants to ask such a question. This is designed to transmit truth indirectly to the student. Let me close this chapter by presenting some examples of indirect transmission in the Zen tradition: Once Wei-shan Ling-yu (771–853) was asked by his student Hsiangyen Hih-hsien (d. 898), ‘Teach me, Master, where can I find what should concern me most?’ Wei-shan replied, ‘My understanding is not yours. You have to find it for yourself.’ Long after that day, Hsiang-yen realized his true self at a moment of hearing the sound of a stone hitting bamboo while he was cleaning the garden … When young Yun-men Wen-yen (864–949) visited Zen master Mu-chou Tao-tsung (dates unknown) at his hermitage, the master, upon seeing him, closed the gate. On the third occasion of being

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similarly refused, Yun-men jumped at the gate and his leg was broken. At this moment Yun-men realized truth for himself.16 A similar demonstration of indirect transmission is given by the Japanese Zen master Shuhō Myōchō (1282–1337) when he asserts: Let there be just ‘one individual’, who may be living in the wilderness in a hermitage. No matter how you passed your simple everyday life in the way of eating the roots of wild herbs which are cooked in a pot with broken legs; unless you hang on your breast the words ‘A superior Truth which Buddha and Patriarchs have never taught’, I would not permit you to call yourself a descendant of my teaching.17 The transmission of Zen should therefore correctly be called the ‘untransmitted transmission’. Since the subjectivity of the individual being cannot be shared with the other, how is it possible to transmit to the other individual being? In other words, authentic transmission of the truth can only be possible through indirect transmission. This is exactly what Kierkegaard asserts when he says that only the indirect disciple of Jesus can be a true disciple. Similarly, the Zen student seeks to meet the Buddha and Patriarchs within his own subjective existence instead of seeking them outside of this. Throughout its long history, Zen Buddhism has always transmitted its universal truth in just this way.

Notes 1. The Buddha, Bukkyo dendo kyokai [The Teachings of the Buddha] 38th revised edition (Tokyo: Society for Promotion of Buddhism, 1977) p. 5. Translations from Chinese and Japanese works in this and further citations are my own. 2. Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death, trans. Walter Lowrie (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1968) pp. 146–9. 3. Aishin Imaeda (ed.), Wu-teng hui-yuan [The Arranged Issue of the Five Biographies of Chinese Zen Masters] (Tokyo: Rinrōkaku-shoten, 1971) p. 326. 4. Imaeda, Wu-teng hui-yuan, p. 339. 5. Lin-chi, The Record of Lin-chi, trans. Ruth F. Sasaki (Kyoto: The Institute for Zen Studies, 1975) p. 3. 6. Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death, p. 163. 7. Lin-chi, The Record of Lin-chi, p. 25. 8. Lin-chi, The Record of Lin-chi, p. 7. 9. Chao-chou, Chao-chou lu [A Record of Chao-chou] in Zen no goroku [A Series of Zen Classics] 11, ed. Ryomin Akizuki (Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, 1972) p. 125. 10. Chao-chou, Chao-chou lu, p. 170.

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11. Süeh-t’ang, Süeh-t’ang shih i lu [Remaining Records of Zen Master Süeh-t’ang], ed. Tao-hsing, 142 (Taipei, Taiwan: Hsü tsang-ching, 1972 [reprint of 1637 Japanese edition]) p. 955. 12. Shinichi Hisamatsu, Zettai shutaidoˉ [The Way of Absolute Subjectivity] in Hisamatsu Shinichi Chosakushu¯ [Collected Works of Shinichi Hisamatsu] 2, ed. Masao Abe (Tokyo: Risōsha, 1972) p. 343. 13. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1985) p. 67. 14. Kenji Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, trans. Yan Van Bragt (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1982) p. 119. 15. Zenkei Shibayamna, Zen Comments on the Mumonkan, trans. Sumiko Kudō (New York: Harper and Row, 1974) p. 19. 16. Record of Hsiang-yen in Ching-te ch’uan-teng lu [Records of Chinese Zen Masters] 11, ed. Tao-yüan (Tokyo: Daizō shuppan, 1990) 51, p. 284. 17. Imaeda, Wu-teng hui-yuan, p. 276.

5 To Practise One Thing: Kierkegaard through the Eyes of Dōgen James Giles

‘An Occasional Address’ is among Kierkegaard’s better known writings and was one of the first to be translated into English (it was translated under the title of Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing in 1938). It is, nevertheless, a difficult work in several ways, and it can be hard to understand what exactly Kierkegaard is saying. One way of trying to penetrate these difficulties, I shall argue, is to turn to the writings of the thirteenth-century Japanese Zen master Dōgen (1200–53). Obviously, Dōgen and Kierkegaard come from different times and cultures and thus also from different traditions with different assumptions. Nevertheless, both Dōgen and Kierkegaard are perceptive observers who are deeply concerned with overcoming self-deception and with the impact that such an overcoming has on the human condition. This provides a common ground for the interpretation of their philosophy. Indeed, anyone familiar with the ideas of these two thinkers will see some striking parallels between them. A major theme in ‘An Occasional Address’ is the attack on what Kierkegaard calls double-mindedness. Double-mindedness, he says, obscures our ability to understand what lies hidden in the depths of our souls. It can take many forms, but in each case it is a fragmenting of awareness where our thoughts, intentions, or desires work against each other by moving in conflicting directions at the same time. Thus, says Kierkegaard, to love someone for her money, to mingle envy with friendship, or to do good out of desire for a reward or fear of punishment sets the mind against itself by willing two inconsistent things. Loving someone, for example, is inconsistent with wanting that person’s money. For true love is supposed to be focused purely on the person of the beloved, not his or her possessions. 87

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Kierkegaard argues that in order to overcome this sort of doublemindedness a person must will one thing. However, even here, depending on what one wills, double-mindedness can still make its appearance. What often seems, at one level, to be one thing is really, at another level, a multiplicity of things. Thus, the person who, in willing pleasure, riches, or honour, feels he or she is single-mindedly willing one thing is in fact willing in double-mindedness. For such things are themselves a multiplicity. In solely willing pleasure, for example, a person is really willing a variety of pleasures. As each instant of pleasure is achieved, the person loses interest and so seeks out new and different pleasures. Even the person who single-mindedly wills love is not really willing one thing. This is because, we are told, although the lover can faithfully will just his love, the danger is that he ‘may swerve from his goal and swerve towards the impressive, instead of being led to the good’.1 And here we see that, for Kierkegaard, the only thing that can be willed single-mindedly is the good. The problem is that Kierkegaard never tells us exactly what the good is. He does, however, tell us various things that are related to this willing of the good. He says, for example, that to be in the state of willing the good one must explore one’s soul and confess one’s double-mindedness. He places the idea of willing one thing within the Christian context of the confession of guilt. Indeed, the purported overall purpose of ‘An Occasional Address’ is to give an account of the preparation for the Christian act of confession. Although this is proposed as a confession to what Kierkegaard calls ‘an omniscient one’ – and other places calls ‘the eternal’ or ‘God’ – since this omniscient one is supposed already to know our double-mindedness, it is really a confession to ourselves: ‘The all-knowing one does not get to know something about the confessor, rather the confessor gets to know about himself’ (1963, 11, p. 28). We are also told that silence is something that brings a person to selfexamination, and thus also towards willing the good: ‘When the wanderer comes away from the hectic and noisy highway into places of stillness, then it seems to him (for stillness is gripping!) as if he must consult with himself, as if he must say what lies hidden in the depths of his soul’ (p. 26). Kierkegaard then turns to the surroundings of the person who has, by chance, come upon this silent place and examines the way the surroundings appear to him or her. He says: the surprise expressed by the trees that inquisitively look down on the wanderer, explains nothing. And the wood’s echo explains well

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enough that it explains nothing … And the clouds hang only according to their own thoughts, dream only of themselves; with either the thoughtful view of resting or enjoying voluptuous movements. With either a transparent swiftness they move off driven by the wind, or darkly collect themselves to fight against the wind: they do not trouble themselves over the wanderer. And the sea, like a wise man, is enough unto itself. Whether it lies like a child and amuses itself with little ripples as a child that plays with its mouth, or at noon lies like a drowsy self-satisfied thinker gazing out over all, or in the night deeply ponders its own being; whether in order to observe things it inexplicably makes itself into nothing, or whether it rages in its own passion: the sea has a deep ground, it knows well enough what it knows … And the stars are plainly an enigmatic arrangement. Yet there seems to be an agreement between them to arrange themselves in just this way. (pp. 26–7) The difficulty, however, says Kierkegaard, is that the wanderer, who has only accidentally come upon the quiet place, feels he is surrounded by a nature that does not understand him ‘even though it always seems as if an understanding must be arrived at’. Therefore, he says, the wanderer can see the stars, but the stars cannot see him, ‘thus there is no agreement between him and the stars’. With the person who confesses, however, things are different: ‘the environment knows well enough what that stillness means and that it asks for earnestness. It knows that it is its wish to be understood’ (p. 28). From all of this it seems clear that the good is, for Kierkegaard, intimately related to a state of awareness, but one in which normal awareness is altered in some fundamental way. It is easy to think that he is using the term ‘the good’ to refer to a normative ethical principle or even perhaps to something like a Platonic form. This is suggested by one common meaning of the term and also by the fact that Kierkegaard sometimes uses the term ‘evil’ as a contrast to the good. However, the text, the examples, and the general structure of the argument do not support such an interpretation. Rather, it is evident that the good refers to a state of awareness and not to any particular content of awareness. It is worth looking at the argument that Kierkegaard offers against the possibility of love being something that can be willed single-mindedly. Kierkegaard’s reason for rejecting love in this instance is that the lover ‘may swerve from his goal and swerve towards the impressive’. But if the good refers to a normative ethical principle, the person willing this principle may also ‘swerve from his

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goal and swerve towards the impressive’. Therefore, if these grounds are enough for rejecting love as the object of a single-minded will, then they are also enough for rejecting ethical principles as the object of a single-minded will. But if the good is a state of awareness rather than an object of awareness, what exactly is this state and how does it fit with Kierkegaard’s other ideas? One way of answering these questions is to turn to the philosophy of Dōgen. Dōgen was a major Buddhist thinker in the Japanese Kamakura period (1185–1336), and is often considered to be one of the greatest Japanese philosophers. Like Kierkegaard, Dōgen was profoundly concerned with human suffering and strove to find ways to deal with it. He was orphaned as a young child and first became aware of the fleetingness of human existence when he watched the smoke rise from the incense during his mother’s funeral. For Dōgen, however, our suffering stems not so much from the nature of existence as from a false perception of existence. That is, it stems from delusion. This delusional awareness then leads us to form attachments to non-existent or misconstrued objects, including the idea of an unchanging self, and ties us into a cycle of suffering when the world does not fit with our misperceptions and attachments. The way out of this cycle is to see through one’s delusions and thus break these attachments. This much of Dōgen’s thought is supported by the core of the Buddha’s philosophy. For example, in the discourse known as the ‘Dhammacakkappavattana’ or ‘The Setting in Motion of the Wheel of Truth’, the Buddha argues that selfish desire is the cause of all suffering. Selfish desire is based on the delusion of a persisting self, which in turn leads to attachments to things which one misperceives as one’s own or as having the potential for being one’s own. The way out of this problem is to give up selfish desire. Dōgen’s originality here comes from his interpretation of the Mahāyāna idea that samsāra (the everyday world) is nirvāna (the world of enlightenment). This idea was expressed in the Japanese Tendai (Chinese: Tien-t’ai) school of Buddhism by the doctrine of hongaku or original enlightenment. According to this doctrine, all beings are enlightened from the start. There is thus no need to seek enlightenment. Dōgen, who had studied with the Tendai school, saw that this posed an apparent problem for the Buddhist practice of meditation. Meditation is often seen as a practice which leads to enlightenment. Yet if one is already enlightened, what is the purpose of meditation? Dōgen’s solution to this problem, which came to him while studying in a Zen monastery in China, was to argue that meditation does not

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lead to enlightenment, rather it is enlightenment. That is, in the very moment one meditates one is enlightened. Consequently, one does not have to search for enlightenment as though it were something that one lacks, something that one is working towards through the practice of meditation. Instead, it is part of everyone’s original state, that is, it is a disposition of awareness that naturally appears in the various moments throughout our everyday lives. Therefore meditation does not discover or even create enlightenment, rather it enables us to express it when we will and, from there, to allow enlightened awareness to diffuse throughout our other moments of awareness. It is interesting to note that Dōgen’s emphasis on meditation has led some commentators to conclude that he is not a philosopher. Nearman, for example, claims that Dōgen is not a ‘Buddhist philosopher’ but a Meditation Master who is attempting to help his disciples find that spiritual certainty which is the hallmark of a genuine kenshoˉ, ‘the seeing of one’s Original Nature’. Why this does not allow Dōgen to be called a philosopher, we are told, is because ‘this is not the same as having a philosophical understanding or intuition, since the experience takes place beyond those functions of the so-called “rational mind”, which are the foundation and authority of a philosopher’.2 But this is one-sided view of Dōgen’s project. If Dōgen simply meditated and never reflected over the nature of meditation or never attempted to explain or argue for an interpretation of the insights gained in meditation, then perhaps it might be true to say that he is not a philosopher. Unfortunately for Nearman, however, Dōgen is deeply engaged in just this sort of reflection and argumentation. The pages of Dōgen’s lifework, the Shoˉboˉgenzoˉ or Treasury of the Eye of the True Teaching, are chock-a-block with philosophical arguments (‘functions of the socalled rational mind’) aimed at supporting a particular view of reality. Further, these arguments are given in the attempt ‘to help his disciples’ find enlightenment. In other words, contrary to what Nearman thinks, being a philosopher is quite compatible with being a Meditation Master. For Dōgen, enlightenment appears in the instant of zazen (literally: ‘seated meditation’) because it is at this point that ultimate reality presents itself. In the fascicle or section of the Shoˉboˉgenzoˉ called ‘Zazen gi’ or ‘Rules for Zazen’, Dōgen says that in zazen one should ‘think beyond thinking and not thinking’ ( Japanese: hishryoˉ).3 To try to think or try not to think (as someone might try to do in order to calm his or her thoughts) is to divide the mind against itself. It is to interfere with a process that takes place of its own accord and so obscure our perception

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of reality or, in other words, it is to create illusions. However, in thinking beyond thinking and non-thinking one is immersed in ‘undivided activity’, as he puts it. The dualistic thought processes created by interference with our own thinking disappear. This is what Dōgen calls the Buddha way, and studying this way, that is, practicing zazen, produces a state of awareness in which distinctions between oneself and the world collapse. In the fascicle ‘Genjoˉ koˉan’ or ‘The Realization of Things as They Are’ Dōgen says: To study of the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be experienced by the myriad of things. When experienced by the myriad of things, your body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away. (p. 70, translation modified) Here we see how, in the state of enlightenment, rather than the observer experiencing the world, it is the objects of the world – the myriad of things – that experience the observer, an observer who himself or herself disappears as a distinct entity. This happens when body and mind, and even the body and mind of others, are seen to ‘drop away’. Dōgen is not saying that a person’s mind and body vanish in the state of enlightenment, but only that the mind and body are now seen to be co-extensive with the myriad of things. Because of this, says Dōgen, ‘mountains, rivers, earth, the sun, the moon, and the stars are mind’ (p. 88). Once this is seen, then the nature of the material world must be understood in a new way. For now material objects are no longer seen to be part of an external reality that exists independently of mind or awareness. Rather, they are part of our awareness and therefore imbued with our awareness, just as our awareness is part of them and imbued with them. This view of the unity of mind and its objects of awareness is already present in the metaphysics of the Tendai school, a metaphysics which influenced Dōgen. We also see this in the ideas of Chih-i (538–97), the Chinese Tien-t’ai philosopher studied by Saichō (781–822), the Japanese founder of the Tendai school. In his Mo-ho chih-kuan or Great Concentration and Insight Chih-i says, Where there is no mind [consciousness], that is the end of the matter; if mind comes into being in the slightest degree whatsoever, it immediately contains the three thousand [kinds of worlds] … One may neither say that the mind is prior and all dharmas [that is, objects] posterior nor that dharmas are prior and the one mind posterior … All

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one can say is that the mind is all dharmas and that all dharmas are the mind.4 This means that in the state of enlightenment we notice things that we did not notice before. In his ‘Mountains and Water Sūtra’ Dōgen says that mountains walk just like human beings walk, even though their walking does not look the same as human walking. ‘Green mountains’, claims Dōgen, ‘master walking and eastern mountains master travelling on water. Accordingly, these activities are a mountain’s practice. Keeping its own form, without changing body and mind, a mountain always practises in every place’ (p. 98). Also, he says that water realizes just like human beings realize: ‘the path of water is not noticed by water, but is realized by water. It is not unnoticed by water, but is realized by water’ (p. 103). This passage will, no doubt, strike many people as strange; for what does it mean to say that mountains go walking, travel on water, and practise? And how is it that water can realize its path? To interpret what Dōgen is saying, it is helpful to put this passage in its Japanese and East Asian context. Firstly, it is important to see that mountains and water are ancient Japanese symbols that exist at the core of Japanese culture. And this is understandable, for Japan is a chain of mountains surrounded by the ocean and criss-crossed by rivers and streams. Consequently, mountains and water hold a central place in the Japanese conception of the world. In an early Shintō nori or prayer, for example, we are told how to place offerings on a table ‘like a long mountain range’ so that the kami or spirits will not ravage ‘but will move to a place of wide and lovely mountains and rivers’ and will dwell there pacified.5 In this sense, Dōgen’s reference to mountains and water is a reference to what his Japanese readers would understand to be the core of the world. Secondly, although mountains and water are places where kami might dwell, their dwelling in these places is not like the ancient Greek notion of the gods and goddesses dwelling on Mount Olympus or river nymphs dwelling in their rivers. In early Shintō these kami are not, as I mentioned in Chapter 1, to be understood as anthropomorphic gods. Rather, they are thought of as an awe-inspiring presence or power that somehow fills the mountains and water. This is experienced in the awesome quality that massive mountains and endless or merely sparkling water can have for us. In a sense, then, mountains and water are not distinguishable from their awe-inspiring presence, that is, they are the kami. This view is related to early forms of mountain worship in Japan and found expression in Dōgen’s own time in the practice of shugendoˉ or

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mountain veneration, which was based on a blend of Shintō and esoteric forms of Buddhism. Thirdly, mountains and water have a special significance in Chinese Taoism, a philosophy and religion that heavily influenced Zen Buddhism. Not only are there several sacred Taoist mountains in China, but water, because of its ability to form to its receptacle perfectly, is often used as the perfect symbol of the Tao or a state of awareness achieved through a conformity to nature. In achieving this state, Lao Tzu, the ancient Taoist philosopher, says we are ‘returning to the source’.6 This is called ‘returning to the source’ because it is a natural or unconditioned form of awareness which is the foundation for all other forms of awareness. To underline the Taoist element Dōgen uses Lao Tzu’s term saying, ‘even if there is a moment when you view mountains as the seven treasures shining, this is not returning to the source’ (p. 99). This is not returning to the source because in seeing mountains as the seven treasures (typically mentioned in the sūtras as gold, silver, lazuli, moonstone, agate, coral, and amber) one still sees them as distinct from oneself. As a result one has not returned to that state of awareness where mountains walk with us and travel on water. Finally, in The Lotus Su ¯ tra, which is probably the most influential Buddhist text in East Asia, and a text with which Dogen was well acquainted, the places among mountains and water are seen to be appropriate dwellings for those who would seek the truth. In the sūtra the Buddha says, If there are persons who are respectful, reverent, with minds set on nothing else, who separate themselves from common folly to live among mountains and waters, then to persons such as this it is permissible to preach [this sūtra].7 Thus it is understandable that Dōgen chooses mountains and water as the foremost exemplars of objects in the material world that are full of awareness. When one forsakes the common folly to dwell among the kami of mountains and water, objects that are the core of the world, then mountains and water cannot help but manifest themselves as the Tao. It is not that they are ontologically unique elements. Rather, by relating his assertions to objects with important cultural, religious, and symbolic significance, Dōgen emphasizes the universality of his thought.

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Coming back now to the idea of mountains walking and practising and water realizing but not noticing its path, let us ask what Dōgen could mean by this. An answer is forthcoming when we consider that in the state of enlightenment there is no distinction between awareness and its object. Consequently, in understanding his discussions of mountains, it should be seen that there is no distinction between ourselves and the mountains we observe. Being full of awareness, just like us, they also walk and practise, just like us. This becomes part of our experience in the state of enlightenment. What Dōgen is saying is that because I can walk and because the green mountains are co-extensive with my mind, then it can be said that the mountains can also walk, though their walking is naturally different from the way in which my body walks. To see this, imagine that you are walking down a country road and, looking to one side, you can see mountains in the distance. Because of their distance from you, the mountains seem to move with you as you walk. Also, they seem to move with you in a way that the pebbles at the side of the road do not. Looking down at the pebbles, they are clearly left farther and farther behind with each step you take. Similarly, if you walk along beside a lake and turn to view mountains rising on the other side of the lake – and if you look simply to what you are experiencing – then indeed it will seem that mountains are travelling on water. That is, the mountains, which are farther away from you than the water, seem to move along with you as you walk. Both you and the mountains seem to leave the water behind. Now one way of describing this experience is to say that the mountains only appear to be moving, for they are actually still. This is the perspective that sees ultimate reality as being composed of persisting selves and material objects that exist independently of each other. In this view the mountain’s apparent movement is only an optical illusion that is experienced by an independently existing self. But this view is not one that comes from immediate experience. One night I was strolling along with some people and we were looking at the stars. A five-year-old child who was with us pointed to the moon rising above the trees and asked me, ‘Why is the moon following us as we walk?’ The child raised this question because the moon indeed appeared to be following us. That is, as we walked, the moon seemed to skim along over the tops of the trees, leaving them behind and travelling along with us. When I attempted to explain the conventional view – that the moon only appeared to move – it was plain that this was baffling for the child; for in the child’s experience the moon was clearly

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following us. In other words, the child had not yet been fully indoctrinated into the dualistic view and still had genjoˉ koˉan or the realization of things as they are. The dualistic view is one which the Indian school of Yogacārā Buddhism calls the imagined nature. Yogacārā Buddhism was represented in Japan by the early Hossō school and clearly had an influence on Dōgen. According to this form of Buddhism the imagined nature does not really exist and is just a misperception of reality or the dependent nature. When the dependent nature is seen for what it is we perceive what Yogacārins call the ultimate nature. In the ultimate nature it is the independently existing self that is the illusion, not the apparent movement of the mountains.8 When one frees oneself from the imagined nature – when one’s body and mind drops away – then one can see that ‘green mountains master walking and eastern mountains master travelling on water’. In Dōgen’s words, we realize things as they are. But what does it mean to say mountains ‘master’ these activities? The answer is that it is only in the state of enlightenment, something we achieve in single-minded practice, that we experience mountains in this way (unless, perhaps, one is a five-year-old who is in not yet in need of such practice). This is also why Dōgen says these activities ‘are a mountain’s practice’. For in their being co-extensive with one’s mind, one’s practising Zen meditation is the same as the mountain’s practising Zen meditation (although Dōgen’s view might seem to be that only in the practice of zazen does one have enlightenment, his overall position implies that enlightenment, and thus practice, can persist between instants of zazen). It is possible to understand Dōgen’s discussion of water in a similar way. He says that, ‘the path of water is not noticed by water, but is realized by water. It is not unnoticed by water, but is realized by water.’ Again, this must be understood in terms of the experience of enlightenment and its relation to unenlightened experience. In the state of enlightenment the water observed is no longer distinct from the observer. The observer’s realization of the path of the water is also, at the same time, the water’s realization of its own path. Because, however, there also exists the unenlightened or deluded state, then, in this state, water can be said to not notice its own path. The observer fails to see the essential relation between his or her own awareness and the object of awareness. In the unenlightened state water is experienced as an independently existing material object which has no essential relation to awareness. However, in the enlightened state, the path of water is not unnoticed by water. In this instant, water is

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actually seen to realize or experience its own path. Since, however, the enlightened state is the experience of things as they are, then even though one can say that in the state of delusion water does not notice its own path, in ultimate reality, to use the Yogacārā term, it does realize its own path. This is why Dōgen says that although the path of water is not noticed by water, it is nevertheless realized by water. When things are realized as they are, water is no longer mistakenly thought to be an object that exists beyond awareness. Nor is it thought to be an object that is somehow distinct from awareness but nevertheless dependent on awareness. In this instant water just is awareness. In referring to the various forms that water can take – as when water seeps into the earth, boils with heat, and disperses with the wind – Dōgen says ‘water is not just earth, water, fire, wind, space, or consciousness. Water is not blue, yellow, red, white or black. Water is not forms, sounds smells, tastes, touchables, or mind-objects. But water as earth, water, fire, and space realizes itself’ (p. 102). Water is thus not to be equated with material forms, colours or objects, nor is it to be equated with an object that exists in consciousness or the mind and thus is dependent on consciousness or the mind (in Chih-i’s words, it is not posterior to mind). Rather, water is something that realizes or experiences itself in its diverse forms. In this way, says Dōgen, ‘all things abide in their own phenomenal expression’ (p. 102). With this the parallels between Kierkegaard’s idea of willing one thing and Dōgen’s idea of practice can now be explained; for both are states that appear when the individual overcomes a division in awareness. For Kierkegaard this division is called double-mindedness, for Dōgen it is the process of trying to think or trying not to think. For Kierkegaard one achieves this by willing one thing (which is the good), while for Dōgen one achieves this by practising the Buddha way (which is to think beyond thinking and not thinking). Further, in the states that are achieved through such willing and practice the individual’s perception of the world gradually becomes radically altered. Here is a remarkable connection between Kierkegaard and Dōgen. For Kierkegaard, as we have seen, the material world seems to come alive. In the experience of silence, which is an integral aspect of willing one thing, the trees look down on the person, the clouds hang as they want, enjoying their movements, the sea deeply ponders its being, and the stars agree between themselves how they shall lie. In the ensuing state of confession ‘the environment … knows that it is its wish to be understood’. For Dōgen, the material world likewise comes alive: mountains walk and travel on water, while water experiences its own path.

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The difference between Kierkegaard and Dōgen is that while Dōgen has a philosophical basis for the explanation of this coming to life of the material world, Kierkegaard does not. Because of this it is difficult to understand why, according to Kierkgaard’s view, trees, clouds, oceans and stars should look down, enjoy, ponder or agree, or why the environment should, in the process of willing one thing, know that stillness is its wish to be understood. Indeed, the idea of a material world literally wishing to be understood seems altogether out of place in the traditional view of the Christian context of confession to God. Christianity, as it is normally understood, does not contain the idea that all things realize themselves or abide in their phenomenal expression. Neither the Christian God nor the Christian heaven, for example, abide in their phenomenal expression; for they are supposed to be transcendent and so exist beyond the phenomenal realm. This is why neither God nor heaven can be seen and why one can travel forever in any direction and yet never encounter them. But this distinction between the transcendental and the phenomenal – that which presents itself to experience – has no place in Buddhist thought. In Buddhist thought there is no such thing as transcendence. There are only our senses and their objects. There is nirvāna, but it is only samsāra correctly perceived. Or, in Dōgen’s words, the realization of things as they are is enlightenment. Furthermore, a fundamental doctrine in Christianity – especially Christianity as formulated by Paul – is that Jesus was the only ‘son of God’, that is, he was a unique semi-divine person or, in Kierkegaard’s words, a God-man, and therefore that he has some special status that all other beings lack. In this view, although other beings can seek to emulate Jesus in certain ways, they can never hope to achieve the same status he has; that is, they can never become semi-divine beings who are also sons (or daughters) of God. This doctrine radically segregates Christianity from Buddhism, which is why it makes little sense to say that Christian doctrine could accept that all dharmas are mind or the Buddha-nature. For the point of this assertion is that there is a fundamental equality among all beings, that all beings can attain Buddhahood, and that beyond Buddhahood (or the realization of things as they are), there is nothing else. No being, neither Jesus nor the Buddha, has any special status that puts him or her in principle above the possible achievement of other beings. In Buddhist thought the Buddha was simply a person who achieved enlightenment and taught others how they could do the same. In Christianity Jesus is seen as being far more than this. And this remains true in Kierkegaard’s version of Christianity,

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which is why Kierkegaard never suggests that we should aim at becoming a Christ. Archie Graham makes this point in Chapter 7 when he says that for Kierkegaard the aim is ‘to become an existential contemporary of Christ’, while for Zen master Hakuin the goal is ‘to become no less than a Buddha himself’. In Kierkegaard’s view, the most a Christian can hope for then is to become existentially contemporary with Christ. Returning to Kierkegaard and his assertions about the living material world, we should perhaps consider that rather than wanting himself to be understood literally he is merely using poetic licence. That is, he is simply using the poetic device of personification and does not intend to imply that the world actually wishes itself to be understood. Kierkegaard himself refers, for example, to the wanderer’s desire to be understood by the stars as a ‘poet’s longing’ (although he also says that the confessor is not like the poet). However, I think that the fact that his description is both extensive and is presented within the context of an altered state of awareness – the way in which the world presents itself in the moment of stillness – suggests that there is more to it than just poetic licence. This view is also supported by the obvious connections between Kierkegaard’s description and Dōgen’s account of enlightenment. A further difficulty in ‘An Occasional Address’ is that Kierkegaard gives no account of the one thing that is supposed to be willed, namely, the good. This is a problem because the idea of ‘the good’, at least as an idea of an objective value, is at odds with Kierkegaard’s overall philosophy: no arguments are ever given that suggest that there is one value or set of values that can be labelled ‘the good’. Such an idea plainly goes against Kierkegaard’s ideas of freedom, choice, subjective truth, and the teleological suspension of ethics. As I have argued elsewhere, for Kierkegaard there are no objective values that can guide us in our actions, there is only our passionate inwardness and the unsupported decision to act, there is only what he calls, in The Concept of Anxiety, the qualitative leap.9 Kierkegaard uses the metaphor of a leap to show that there are no objective standards or ethical considerations which can compel us to act. This is especially evident in Fear and Trembling where Abraham has no reason for his faith. Nobody, says Kierkegaard, can understand him. But why then does he refer to the one thing we are supposed to will as ‘the good’? Obviously, it would seem, because he wants his discussion to fit with Christianity, and the idea of an objective concept of ‘the good’ seems to fit with Christianity’s notions of God’s eternal will, the ten commandments, or some such thing. As Alastair Hannay and

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Gordon D. Marino suggest, when dealing with ethical and religious issues, Kierkegaard makes every effort to be consistent with the Bible.10 Yet Kierkegaard is most likely aware that such a view does not, as I have just argued, sit well with his own view of existence. It is this awareness, I suggest, that probably lies behind his silence over what he means by the good. Consequently, the problem here, along with the problem of an out-of-place discussion of a living material world, would seem to come from Kierkegaard’s attempt to make his ideas consistent with Christianity. This is where the comparison with Dōgen becomes useful. For Dōgen, who has similar ideas to Kierkegaard, has no imperative to render his ideas consistent with Christianity. Of course, Dōgen is working within the Buddhist tradition, but then Buddhism is consistent with Dōgen’s insights. Buddhism is an empirical discipline that does not require its practitioner to accept any claims about the existence of things that lie beyond the realms of the senses. This empirical bent of Buddhism is made explicit in an early Buddhist dialogue entitled ‘Sabba’ or ‘The All’ that appears in the Samyutta Nikāya or The Connected Discourses. In this discussion the Buddha tells his monks that everything in the universe is constituted by awareness and its objects – the five senses and their phenomenal objects and the mind and its mental objects. ‘This is called the all’, says the Buddha. Explaining further he states, ‘If anyone, bhikkhus [bhikkhu: a Buddhist monk], should speak thus: “Having rejected this all, I shall make known another all” – that would be a mere empty boast on his part. If he were questioned he would not be able to reply and, further, he would meet with vexation. For what reason? Because, bhikkhus, that would not be within his domain’11 (which is exactly why Kant meets vexation and is unable to tell us anything about his noumenal world that purportedly exists beyond all experience). This empirical basis of Buddhism remains true for Dōgen’s form of Zen Buddhism. As a result, Dōgen is continually asking his reader to investigate a matter for himself or herself and to examine his or her own experience. Only in so doing will we see what he means. In his discussion of mountains and water he tells us ‘therefore investigate mountains thoroughly. When you investigate mountains thoroughly, this is the work of mountains’ and ‘when you investigate the flowing of a handful of water and the not flowing of it, full mastery of all things is immediately present’ (p. 107). In other words, mountains walking and water realizing its own path are events we experience when we practise one thing, that is, when we let things present themselves as they are. This is something we can only see through the investigation of our own experience.

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Is this a way of making sense of Kierkegaard’s trees that look down on the wanderer or the environment that wants to be understood by the person in confession? In the moment of stillness things begin to present themselves as they are to the wanderer. In other words, trees, clouds, the sea, and the stars are no longer distinct from his awareness of them or, in Dōgen’s words, ‘mountains, rivers, earth, the sun, the moon, and the stars are mind’. For the person in confession this awareness takes a firm hold and he or she actually experiences the environment as wanting to be understood by him or her. As Dōgen would put it, it is the myriad of things that experience us. It might well be objected at this point that an essential difference between Kierkegaard and Dōgen is that, for Kierkegaard, confession is something that is done before God, while for Dōgen zazen has nothing to do with God. As a result the two states of awareness are fundamentally different. The difficulty in sustaining this objection is that it is far from clear how essential the concept of God is to Kierkegaard’s overall philosophical position. It is plain that Kierkegaard himself believes in God. This belief is expressed at various points in his philosophical works and especially in his religious works. However, the ontological status of Kierkegaard’s God is unclear: is God an objectively existing being, or is he only something that we create within our own subjectivity through passionate inwardness? Evidence for both views can be found in Kierkegaard’s writings (see Giles, 2001), although as Eiko Hanaoka argues in Chapter 9, the idea of an objectively existing God seems to go against Kierkegaard’s own view that truth is subjectivity. Yet even though Kierkegaard himself believes in God (whatever his ontological status), when he is putting forward his philosophical views he focuses on the individual’s passion or faith, and the meanings that these hold for the individual, not on the thing in which the individual has faith (see Chapter 1 where I argue for this view). This has the interesting result that the thing in which one has faith, say, God, becomes superfluous for the topic under discussion. That is, Kierkegaard’s arguments or insights typically do not depend on the existence of a god. The case of confession as discussed in ‘An Occasional Address’ is a good example of this. Although Kierkegaard tells us that the confession is made to ‘an omniscient one’, he also tells us that since the omniscient one already knows the confessor’s double-mindedness, the confession is really something that the confessor makes to him or herself. But if this is the nature of confession, that one is confessing to oneself, then God is superfluous to the act of confession. That is, God plays no essential

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role in the act that Kierkegaard is describing. Or, to put it another way, God’s non-existence would in no way undermine the process of confession as Kierkegaard describes it (just as God’s non-existence would in no way undermine Kierkegaard’s account of Abraham’s faith). This enables Kierkegaard to sidestep any theological elements that a theist might feel essential to the act of confession and to give an account in purely existential or humanistic terms. Another objection could be that, with Dōgen, this view depends on the Buddhist idea that the self is an illusion. For with Dōgen it is only once we ‘forget the self’ that there is no longer any ontological distinction to be drawn between the self and the myriad of things that surround us. In Kierkegaard, however, there is no similar idea and, consequently, Dōgen’s explanation behind the notion of water realizing itself cannot help to explain Kierkegaard’s notion of the sea knowing well enough what it knows. The problem with this is that although Kierkegaard does not explicitly hold a no-self view, numerous things that he says imply such a view.12 For example, Kierkegaard says, ‘You must die from your selfishness, or from the world; for it is only through your selfishness that the world has power over you. When you die from your selfishness, you also die from the world. But there is naturally nothing that a person holds so firmly to – yes, with his entire self! – as to his selfishness’.13 Of course Kierkegaard seems to be speaking about giving up selfishness rather than giving up (or forgetting) the self. But then why is it that there is nothing a person holds so firmly to as his or her own selfishness? And why does one do it with the ‘entire self’? Kierkegaard does not tell us. Dōgen’s answer, however, would be that the very sense of having a self is selfishness. Therefore, to give up selfishness completely must involve giving up the self.14 All of this suggests that there is perhaps not too much difference between Kierkegaard’s notion of willing one thing and Dōgen’s notion of practice. The problem is that Kierkegaard is constrained by his Christian presuppositions and so lacks the conceptual tools to account fully for the experience of someone who wills one thing. Because of this he cannot give an adequate explanation of his insight. Similarly, if we turn to Kierkegaard’s notion of the one thing that is supposed to be willed, we also find a parallel with Dōgen’s notion of the object one is to pursue in practice. In much the same way that Kierkegaard tells us nothing about the content of the one thing, calling it only ‘the good’, Dōgen also tells us nothing about the content of practice, calling it only thinking beyond thinking and not thinking. Of

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course, he gives us clear instructions on how we are to sit, breathe and so on in zazen. But as to what exactly we are to think about (beyond thinking and not thinking) he says nothing. Clearly, Dōgen does not want the practitioner to think of any particular thing, but rather to let his or her awareness arrange itself in such a way that things present themselves as they are. Might this not also be a way of understanding Kierkegaard’s notion of the good? In giving us no content for his idea of the good, Kierkegaard has plainly left open the question of what is to count as good. Could it be that this is because what is the good for Kierkegaard is, as for Dōgen, a way of doing something rather than any specific thing to be done? This makes sense because such a view would enable Kierkegaard to remain consistent with his overall philosophy. This is not to say that Kierkegaard had precisely this idea of the good in mind, but such an interpretation does allow one to make sense of his position. It does this by giving a viable explanation for something he does not explain and by not forcing us to understand his use of the word in terms of an objective ethical law, which conflicts with what he says elsewhere. But what could that way of doing something be? Again, Dōgen’s account provides some insight. In Dōgen’s state of thinking beyond thinking and not thinking things present themselves as they are. As a result, the individual is liberated from the delusions of a divided thinking that impairs the awareness of ultimate reality. Therefore, to think beyond thinking and not thinking is, in Dōgen’s sense, a way of achieving freedom. And to have freedom or to act freely is not to do any particular thing. It is rather to do something in a particular way. Therefore, to will the good is to will to have freedom. This interpretation is supported by what Kierkegaard says elsewhere. In The Concept of Anxiety Kierkegaard directly addresses the question ‘What is the good?’ And the answer he gives is ‘the good cannot be defined at all. The good is freedom. The difference between good and evil is only for freedom and in freedom.’15 Consequently, to will the good is to will freedom. The reason why the good, which is freedom, cannot be defined is because freedom is a way of doing something, not any particular thing that must be done. As a result, one cannot define the content of the good. It might be objected here that since The Concept of Anxiety is written under a pseudonym and ‘An Occasional Address’ is written under Kierkegaard’s own name, notions in the former work should not be used to explain notions in the latter. This is because, the complaint might go, only the so-called ‘signed’ works express Kierkegaard’s own ideas while

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the pseudonymous works are used by Kierkegaard to express ideas that are not his own. However, as I have argued elsewhere, I do not think that there is any major philosophical differences between the pseud– onymous works and those written under Kierkegaard’s own name.16 This is especially true of The Concept of Anxiety since Kierkegaard’s notes make it plain that it was only after the book was finished that he decided to publish it under a pseudonym. Understanding the good to mean freedom would explain why in ‘An Occasional Address’ Kierkegaard never defines the one thing we are supposed to will. For what we are to will, if we would will one thing, is simply our own freedom. This would also explain his attack on doublemindedness. For double-mindedness is a state in which we deceive ourselves and so fail to act in a way in which we are fully aware of our freedom (though in another sense we are still fully free, we are just trying to avoid the awareness that we are). The problem with this interpretation of Kierkegaard is that it dispenses with the Christian and theological elements that seem to be a major part of his work. If, however, this interpretation is correct, then such elements are foreign to the insights that Kierkegaard is giving in ‘An Occasional Address’. One must be careful of course not to make ‘An Occasional Address’ into more of a Buddhist work than it is, but perhaps, as Ian Mills suggests in the next chapter, Kierkegaard is more of a Buddhist than he knows.17

Notes 1. Søren Kierkegaard, ‘En Leiligheds-Tale’, in Opbyggelige Taler i Forskjellig Aand [Upbuilding Discourses in Diverse Spirits] in Søren Kierkegaards Samlede Værker, 11, ed. A. B. Drachmann, J. L. Heiberg and H. O. Lange (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1963) p. 39. Further references to this edition are given in the text. All translations from Kierkegaard’s works given in this chapter are my own. 2. Hubert Nearman, ‘Translator’s General Introduction’, in Great Master Doˉgen, The Shoˉboˉgenzoˉ or The Treasure House of the Eye of the True Teaching, 1 (Mount Shasta, California: Shasta Abbey, 1996) p. xvi. 3. Dōgen, Moon in a Dewdrop: the Writings of Zen Master Doˉgen, trans. Kazuaki Tanahashi (San Francisco, California: North Point Press, 1995) pp. 29–30. Further references to this edition are given in the text as page numbers. See also Dōgen, Zen Master Doˉgen: an Introduction with Selected Writings, trans. Yū hū Yokoi (New York: Weatherhill, 1981) pp. 45–7. 4. Chih-i , ‘Zhiyi, Calming and Contemplation’, in Sources of Japanese Tradition, 1, second edition, compiled by Wm Theodore de Bary, Donald Keene, George Tanabe, and Paul Varley (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001) p. 139, translation modified. 5. ‘Shintō Prayers (Norito)’ in Sources of Japanese Tradition, 1, pp. 37–8.

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6. Lao Tzu, The Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu, in The Texts of Taoism, 1, trans. James Legge (New York: Dover, 1962), p. 42. 7. The Lotus Sutra, trans. Burton Watson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993) p. 78. 8. See James Giles, ‘From Inwardness to Emptiness: Kierkegaard and Yogacārā Buddhism’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 9 (2001) pp. 311–40. 9. See James Giles, ‘Kierkegaard’s Leap: Anxiety and Freedom’, in Kierkegaard and Freedom, ed. James Giles (Basingstoke: Palgrave / New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000) pp. 69–92. 10. Alastair Hannay and Gordon D. Marino, ‘Introduction’, in The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, ed. Alastair Hannay and Gordon D. Marino (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 11. The Buddha, The Connected Discourses of the Buddha: a Translation of the Samyutta Nikaya, trans. Bhikkhu Bodhi (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2000) p. 1140. 12. See Giles, ‘From Inwardness to Emptiness: Kierkegaard and Yogacā rā Buddhism’. 13. Kierkegaard, Til Selvprøvelse, Samtiden Anbefalet [For Self-Examination: Recommended for the Present Age] Kierkegaards Samlede Værker, 17, p. 115. 14. See James Giles, No Self to be Found: the Search for Personal Identity (Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1997). 15. Kierkegaard, Begrebet Angest [The Concept of Anxiety] in Kierkegaards Samlede Værker, 6, p. 111. 16. See James Giles, ‘Introduction’, in Kierkegaard and Freedom, pp. 1–27. 17. I should like to express my gratitude to Kinya Masugata and the Kierkegaard Society of Japan for kindly inviting and funding me to present an earlier version of this chapter at their First International Conference, Melbourne, Australia. Thanks are also due to James Sellmann for his helpful comments.

6 Aeterno Modo: the Expression of an Integral Consciousness in the Work of Kierkegaard and Dōgen Ian Mills

The affinity between Kierkegaard’s thought and Japanese thought has often been commented on; but there has been less emphasis on how this affinity manifests itself historically. It is obviously not simply a matter of Japanese thought having discovered Kierkegaard since the Danish philosopher’s works appeared. The previous chapters in this book, along with the following two chapters on Hakuin and the samurai, show clearly that comparisons can be made with Japanese writers and traditions from well before Kierkegaard. In the preceding chapter James Giles drew comparisons between Kierkegaard’s idea of the purity of heart and Dōgen’s idea of the realization of things as they are. In this chapter I will also draw comparisons between Kierkegaard and Dōgen, although in a different way. My concern here is with Kierkegaard’s attempt to resolve the perceived duality of the personal life and the ethical life and the relation that this bears to Dōgen’s depiction of non-duality. What I should like to suggest, as a brief preface and background to my own comparison of Dōgen’s and Kierkegaard’s writing, is that perhaps there was an initial inheritance of thought, including Japanese thought, that made its way, through at least a partly identifiable path or lineage, into Kierkegaard’s thought. In other words, I am suggesting that, historically, the affinity may well be lineal, cyclic, and interactive rather than idiosyncratic or coincidental. In the thirteenth century of the Christian era, there was an unprecedented flourishing of writings within the major spiritual 106

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traditions – Buddhist, Islamic, Jewish, Christian – resulting in what are arguably the greatest poetic masterpieces of each of those traditions – Shōbōgenzō, Masnawi, the Zohar, The Divine Comedy. There was also at that time an intense and focused transformation of Islamic, Jewish, and Christian thought in Europe, and a quite remarkable concordance, not experienced before or since, between the thought of those three spiritual traditions, all openly acting as teachers to each other. This phenomenon corresponded with the infusion of Eastern thought during the invasion of Mongol armies from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries. Dōgen’s own stay in China was indicative of the exchange and dissemination on a multinational scale of a new way of thinking, an emphasis on personal transformative experience. Mark L. Blum speaks of ‘a multi-national Buddhist world-view’,1 a way of thinking that prevailed during the Kamakura era in Japan and was spread to Europe by the Mongols. What can be documented is the widespread adoption in Europe at this time of a Buddhist-type dialectic, for example, by Ibn al-‘Arab¯ı (dubbed by all three European traditions, ‘Dr Maximus’, the greatest scholar), the transference to an a-theism whereby ‘God’ becomes identified as, for example, ‘reality’, ‘nature’, or ‘existence’, the importation of Buddhist stories (for example, by Rumi and other sufis), shifts of meaning given to notions of ‘nothingness’ and ‘emptiness’ (for example, in the sermons of Eckhart), and more intense focusing on concepts such as ‘being’ and ‘existence’ (for example, the ayin of the Zohar) and the ‘infinite’ and the ‘eternal’ (for example, the ein sof of the Zohar, ‘timeless-place’ in Rumi’s poetry). What is being referred to here is not the ‘taking-up’ of any particular thinker or ideology, but a more symbiotic transformation into a more integral, comprehensive and sophisticated mode of viewing and thinking about and experiencing reality. The nature of this transformation of Western thought towards an ‘integral consciousness’, and its congruence with Eastern thought, can be illustrated by an examination of the notion of ‘aeterno modo’, the practice of ‘viewing things from the perspective of eternity’, as a way of knowing. In Europe, Ibn al-‘Arab¯ı described this integral consciousness kind of knowing as ‘scientia intuitiva’, ‘intuitive understanding’, and stated that it was beyond even rational knowledge, in fact, ‘beyond the boundaries of both thought and sense’.2 At the same time, in Japan, Dōgen, in his essay, ‘Actualizing the Fundamental Point’ or ‘The Realization of Things as they are’, explained the integral consciousness kind of understanding, using similar phrases: ‘The boundary of realization is not distinct … Although actualized immediately, the inconceivable may not be apparent. Its appearance is beyond your knowledge.’3

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In Europe, the Christian church countered the advocacy of this integral consciousness way of perceiving reality, not only with excommunications and imprisonings, but also with an insistence on a rational mode of perception-analysis, as exemplified in the writings of Thomas Aquinas, based, as they were, on the thinking of Aristotle. This system of dualistic, rational thought came to fruition in the philosophy of Descartes and continued on to Hegel. But there was one notable exception in European philosophy. In the seventeenth century, Spinoza, the contemporary of Descartes, produced a comprehensive and compelling body of work sympathetic to thirteenth-century mystical traditions. ‘God’ became ‘nature’; ‘reality’ was seen as the perfection of the infinite ‘one substance’. He deliberately grounded his thought in thirteenth-century precedents, particularly the Zohar and the work of Ibn al-‘Arab¯ı. He copied whole passages of the latter’s writings, word for word, including the discussion of aeterno modo, which, as touched on above, has distinct similarities to Dōgen’s explication of non-duality. So when Kierkegaard begins his book, Either/Or, with a statement that he is identifying his perspective and practice with that of Spinoza’s aeterno modo, he is, unwittingly, making Spinoza pivotal as a link between his own writing and that of Dōgen; he is choosing a path which comes from the integral consciousness of thirteenth-century thought. What I find most powerful in my reading of Kierkegaard’s Either/Or is the presence of a third party, in which both the apparent alternatives are immersed. Flowing always through and between the Either, as the subjective-aesthetic, and the Or, as the ethical-universal, is the eternal. The reader is, perhaps, made most aware of the primacy of this third party in two specific places: in a short section, ‘Either/Or, an ecstatic lecture’, at the end of a ‘Diapsalmata’ at the beginning of the first part of the book, and in the last section of the second part of the book, ‘The Edifying in the Thought that Against God we are Always in the Wrong’. The either/or options are enfolded, as it were, between the beginning and end covers of the eternal. In the first piece, ‘Either/Or, an ecstatic lecture’, Kierkegaard succinctly summarizes his aeterno modo approach, how he sees and exists with all things, from the perspective of eternity, a process which is simultaneously both his method and his message: ‘It isn’t just in single moments that I view everything aeterno modo, as Spinoza says; I am constantly aeterno modo. Many people think that’s what they are too when, having done the one or the other, they combine or mediate these options. But

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this is a misunderstanding, for the true eternity lies not behind either/ or but ahead of it.’4 The first assertion I focus on as being important for me in that quotation is Kierkegaard’s insistence, in the last two sentences, that he does not have in mind either a combination or mediation of the Either, as the subjective-aesthetic, and the Or, as the ethical-universal, but rather a viewing of them in the context of an already established consciousness of the eternal. It is as aspects of an already existing integral consciousness of reality as the eternal, that the either/or are considered; a lived nondualistic consciousness of reality as eternal precedes, lies ‘ahead of’, is the ground for, the integration of the apparent either/or contradiction. Here Kierkegaard is proposing a non-dualistic viewing of reality, which challenges the inescapable dualism of Hegel’s thesis-antithesissynthesis model as virtually a ‘combination’ of ‘either-or’. It is significant that Kierkegaard refers back, as an alternative, to Spinoza’s aeterno modo theory and practice as his model because, in so doing, he is setting up an ineluctable resonance with the non-duality mode of Dōgen. In his essay, ‘Actualizing the Fundamental Point’, Dōgen’s first three sentences discuss the notion of non-duality with three stages similar to those suggested by Kierkegaard. First, he refers to our possible perception of things, including the individual self, as separate and different: ‘As all things are buddha-dharma, there is delusion and realization, practice, birth and death, and there are buddhas and sentient beings’ (p. 69). This is the equivalent of the emphasis on subjectivity in Kierkegaard’s Either discourse. But Buddhist teaching affirms that there is, in reality, no permanent, unchanging self. So Dōgen adds his second sentence, ‘As the myriad things are without an abiding self, there is no delusion, no realization, no buddha, no sentient being, no birth and death’ (p. 69). Ironically, it is only by realizing the difference between delusion and realization, that one becomes aware that there is ‘no delusion, no awakening’; and it is, ironically, only by detachment from self that one finds ‘true self’ and realizes what is common to oneself and others – Kierkegaard’s Or. In the process, Dōgen has reminded us that the irony, so often commented on as if a stylistic device of Kierkegaard’s, is actually inherent to the process of the aeterno modo dialectic, is part of the process of practising it. Having moved from an affirmation of separateness (Either) to a negation of separateness (Or), one has arrived at an awareness of the timeless interdependence of all things; so Dōgen can move into a negation of the second sentence’s negation to conclude with a final positive

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affirmation: ‘The buddha way is, basically, clear of the many and the one; thus there are birth and death, delusion and realization, sentient beings and buddhas’ (p. 69). There is discrimination; there is denial of discrimination; there is beyond both discrimination and denial of it. Unlike Hegel’s thesis-antithesis-synthesis, there is not a development from a lower to a higher level in Dōgen’s elucidation of the Buddhist non-duality perspective but, as in Kierkegaard’s Either/Or, each step is given its own intrinsic value and each step is seen to be, aeterno modo, inclusive of the others. But there is, in Kierkegaard’s reference to how he sees himself implementing Spinoza’s aeterno modo, not only an assertion of the nonduality aspect of the aeterno modo, but also an emphasis on his practice of it; he is also constantly being eternal: ‘It isn’t just in single moments that I view everything aeterno modo, as Spinoza says; I am constantly aeterno modo’ (p. 54). Not only do those words of Kierkegaard echo closely words of Dōgen on the notion of the eternal as the timeless: ‘Each moment is all being, is the entire world. Reflect now whether any being of any world is left out of the present moment’ (p. 77), they assert that he practises his way of viewing, that he actually lives aeterno modo. Similarly, having begun his essay, ‘Actualizing the Fundamental Point’, with an elucidation of non-duality, Dōgen concludes it with an illustration about the practising of it: ‘Zen master Baoche of Mt Mayu was fanning himself. A monk approached and said, “Master, the nature of the wind is permanent and there is no place it does not reach. Why then do you fan yourself?” “Although you understand that the nature of the wind is permanent” Baoche replied, “you do not understand the meaning of its reaching everywhere” ’ (p. 72). And Kierkegaard, a few paragraphs after mentioning, ‘I am constantly aeterno modo’, has his own metaphor to illustrate how he practises it: My sorrow is my knight’s castle, which lies like an eagle’s eyrie high upon the mountain peaks among the clouds. No one can take it by storm. From it I fly down into reality and seize my prey; but I do not remain down there, I bring my prey home; and this prey is a picture I weave into the tapestries in my palace. Then I live as one dead. In the baptism of forgetfulness I plunge everything experienced into the eternity of remembrance; everything finite and contingent is forgotten and erased. Then I sit thoughtful like an old man, grey-headed, and in a low voice, almost a whisper, explain the pictures; and by my side a child sits and listens, even though he remembers everything before I tell it. (p. 56)

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Just as Kierkegaard here emphasizes the aspect of eternity in his practice, so does Dōgen: When you practice intimately and return to where you are, it will be clear that nothing at all has unchanging self … The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in dewdrops on the grass, or even in one drop of water … Each reflection, however long or short its duration, manifests the vastness of the dewdrop, and realizes the limitlessness of the moonlight in the sky. (pp. 70–1) The poetic use of metaphor by both writers illustrates a similarity in the feeling content as well as in the thought content of the non-duality movement of their aeterno modo dialectic; their metaphors convey a similarity of experience on both an aesthetic and intellectual level. But, as well as illustrating any principal idea, in this case non-duality, with a number of poetic images, what both also do is use ancillary ideas as illustrations, as a means of elaborating, extending, or shedding light on the central idea. Such an additional idea is that which Kierkegaard uses to round off Either/ Or, ‘The Edifying in the Thought that Against God we are Always in the Wrong’. Such is the aeterno modo dialectic: if I think and live only as if I am separate and different from other beings, I am in the wrong; if I think and live without discrimination between my self and other beings, I am also in the wrong; in both cases I’m acting against the eternal perspective, which is to go beyond both the many and the one. I am here reminded of the all-pervasive, though often delicious, irony in the novels of Murakami where there is, on the one hand, a trenchant satirizing of the absurdity of society, against which the central character is always in the wrong, yet, at the same time, there is an abiding sense within the anti-hero’s mind that he is also continually, absurdly, acting in the wrong against himself, always about to cause his own destruction. In this fictional world, survival is a matter of the skill with which one can hold the paradox, even while, and by means of, living in an essentially unidentifiable domain beyond, yet always somehow in touch with, both society and self. Yet I think it is precisely in that willingness or unwillingness to accept the unidentifiable nature of the ultimate domain into which the aeterno modo non-duality dialectic leads one, to either simply dwell with it, or insist on naming it, that identifies the eventual difference between Dōgen’s essay and Kierkegaard’s Either/Or. For Dōgen, the end result of the aeterno modo process, that which follows the third step, what both Ibn El Arabi and Spinoza call ‘the third

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kind of knowledge’, is that one is left with ‘no trace’ of realization. ‘No trace of realization remains, and this no-trace continues eternally’ (p. 70). But for Kierkegaard, instead of ‘no trace’, what remains is the indelible presence of God: ‘if you were not only to forgo your wish but in a sense be unfaithful to your duty, if you lost not merely your joy but honour itself, still you are glad: “Against God” you say, “I am always in the wrong”’ (pp. 607–8). And, in this respect also, in the outcome of the aeterno modo dialectic, Kierkegaard is continuing faithfully the tradition of Spinoza: ‘From that kind of knowledge follows the greatest possible contentment of mind, that is, pleasure arises, and that accompanied by the idea of oneself, and consequently accompanied by the idea of God as the cause.’5 Indeed, to whatever degree there has been the adoption of an aeterno modo perspective or a transformation towards a more integral consciousness from the thirteenth century to the present day, Western mystical thought, even when putting aside its notion of God, has felt obliged, for the most part, to replace it with the presence of some entity which, however vague, is given a capitalized proper name (‘Reality’, ‘Nature’, ‘Gaia’), as if it is in some sense sacred, and spoken of as if it is continually exerting some kind of overall influence. The dominance of a rational consciousness in Western thought seems to be ill at ease with or unwilling to accept, as do Murakami’s anti-heroes, Chuang Tzu’s invitation to walk with him in the ‘Palace of No-Place’, or Dōgen’s remaining with ‘no-trace’. And Kierkegaard, in his writings, is constrained by that rationalizing aspect of Western thought, however much he rejects the dualistic dialectic of Hegel, as inherited from the logocentric lineage of Descartes, and however much he strains towards a non-duality approach, as found in Dōgen. And that is a significant difference between Dōgen and Kierkegaard. Indeed, in Either/Or it becomes for Kierkegaard a crucial obstacle, because having resolved the either/or duality, as does Dōgen, through recourse to the timeless eternal, he finds himself face to face with an even more complex dualism. Whereas Dōgen remains with ‘no-trace’ – ‘this notrace continues endlessly’ – Kierkegaard feels compelled, in the context of the dominance of a rational consciousness in his culture, to identify the eternal, and name it as a still definite presence – ‘God’. Moreover, he now sees himself as rationalized into having a relationship with this rationalized entity, as he has a relationship with his self and with society. So, ironically, in the end, he has ‘dis-solved’ the duality and finds himself entangled in an even more intractable net of duality, now involving his God, as well as, and in interaction with, his subjectivity

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and the ethical. In the light of this dilemma, the title of the concluding section of Either/Or seems even more intensely ironical, ‘The Edifying in the Thought that Against God we are Always in the Wrong’. How does one extract oneself from this seemingly impossible position? That is the problem Kierkegaard confronts in Fear and Trembling, which is a principal reason I regard Fear and Trembling as a natural, even aesthetically satisfying, sequence to Either/Or. In Fear and Trembling God, as a principal element, becomes a potential source of duality. Here Kierkegaard confronts the intractable dilemma that raised its head at the end of Either/Or. We encounter not only the previous duality between the aesthetic-subjective and the universalethical, but there is a greater possibility of multiple dualities between God and each of the subjective and the ethical. So where does Kierkegaard begin his task of dissolving this most intractable cause of dualities? The answer is: by reference to the notion of ‘faith’. Right from the beginning, Abraham is depicted as, above all, a man of faith, ‘This man was no thinker, he felt no need to go further than faith.’6 In making that contrast with thought, as a means of defining faith as an unpredicated awareness, Kierkegaard is very much in tune with Dōgen: ‘When you realize buddha-dharma, you do not think’ (p. 161). And, if faith is seen as an a-rational awareness, which is how I am proposing Kierkegaard envisages it, then Dōgen confirms Kierkegaard’s contention, ‘you don’t need to go further than faith’, by asserting, ‘realization is helped only by the power of realization itself. Realization does not depend on thoughts, but comes forth far beyond them’ (p. 162). It is quite significant that Kierkegaard immediately introduces faith as being distinct from, and in contrast to, thought. In using that contrast as an initial means of saying what he means by faith, he is paralleling not only Dōgen but also Spinoza’s contrast (p. 68) with ratio (as thought) as a means of defining the eternal awareness in the aeterno modo referred to in Either/Or. The principal difficulty that Kierkegaard faced in describing things ‘from the perspective of eternity’ in Either/Or was that he was writing within a culture and was addressing an audience which was conditioned by its rational mode of consciousness to expect that if there was an eternal perspective it had to do with a gaze directed at that object which was already named ‘God’. It is the difference between faith as a state of awareness and rationality as an activity focused on an object of thought. When Kierkegaard says in Either/Or, ‘I am constantly aeterno modo’, he is obviously describing his being in a ‘state’ of awareness (‘I am’), and is wanting to make the point, Dōgen-like, that the achieving of non-duality,

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the dissolving of the duality between the personal and the ethical, is achieved through the ‘undivided activity’ of awareness. But his audience would, for the most part, never accept the idea of an awareness left empty of an object of awareness, as in Dōgen’s ‘realization’. Eternal awareness would be preconceived by Kierkegaard’s potential readers as having for its object, ‘God’; hence, ‘Against God’, as object, he would always be considered to be ‘in the wrong’. In Europe, from the thirteenth century until the time of Kierkegaard, there was active resistance against the notion of an integral consciousness with its emphasis on a state of awareness, in favour of the rational consciousness with its focus on the object to be contemplated. From Aquinas’ rational proofs for the existence of God until Descartes’ ‘I think, therefore I am’, precedence was soon given to the rational ‘I think’ over the faith of Kierkegaard’s integral ‘I am’ – ‘constantly aeterno modo’. Although Spinoza, Descartes’ contemporary, revived the alternative of an integral consciousness perspective, Western thought persisted, for the most part, in following in the lineage of the rational consciousness epitomised by Descartes’ cogito ergo sum. Such was the mind-set Kierkegaard was addressing. In the thirteenth century, those favouring an integral consciousness distinguished it from the rational consciousness by identifying it as ‘faith’, defined in terms of a state of awareness. So the Zohar, the principal thirteenth-century Kabbalah text, returned to by Spinoza, defines faith in the following terms: ‘The essence of faith is an awareness within the vastness of infinity’,7 where infinity is seen as me-ayin, ‘being with nothing’. Here, faith is contrasted to, and seen as opposing, the rationalizing attempt to define God as object, ‘The crude complacency of imagining divinity as embodied in words and letters alone puts humanity to shame. Every definition of God leads to heresy, even attributing divinity itself and the name, “God”, these too are definitions’ (p. 32). Those statements remind one of Dōgen’s insistence that Buddhadharma is ‘unthinkable, unnameable’. In fact, most of the Zohar’s sentences describing the integral consciousness in terms of faith as a state of awareness remind one of Dōgen’s descriptions of realization. For example, ‘As the human spirit verges on complete clarity of faith, the final subtle shell of corporeality falls away. This return to all being requires exquisite insight. Each day one must trace it back to its authentic purity. The infinite transcends every particular content of faith’ (p. 35) is reminiscent of Dōgen’s words: ‘When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind as well as the body and minds of others drop away. No trace of realization remains and this no-trace continues endlessly’ (p. 70).

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When we come to Fear and Trembling, we find Kierkegaard confronting the same conflict between personal freedom and the demands of the ethical as he had in Either/Or. But here awareness within the eternal, depicted as faith, is not regarded simply as a context, but becomes a ubiquitous deus ex machina, so to speak. Kierkegaard well knew, in adopting Spinoza’s aeterno modo, that it was defined by that philosopher as sciential intuitiva, ‘intuitive understanding’, in contrast to ratio, the process of discursive thought. ‘This man was no thinker, he felt no need to go further than faith’, is in accord not only with what he had already emphasized in Either/Or, but was also well established as the mystical mode by, among others, Dōgen: ‘Realization does not depend on thought. When you say that the entire universe is the dharma body of the self, words cannot express it’ (pp. 162–3). This is obviously the reason, at a later stage, for the emphasis on Abraham’s silence. But here, right at the beginning, the quality that is most emphatically and consistently used to describe Abraham, faith, is distinguished in terms of its difference from thought, in the same way as Spinoza and Ibn al-‘Arab¯ı had defined aeterno modo as intuitive awareness, as distinct from ratio as objectifying thought. It is the difference between the integral consciousness of the mystic and the rational consciousness of the dogmatist. So Kierkegaard is interpreting the faith of Abraham as his aeterno modo awareness, his practice of viewing things from the perspective of eternity. There is little mention of the notion of faith in Either/Or, but in Fear and Trembling there is a predominant emphasis on faith as a state of awareness subsuming thought (the ethical) and the egotistical (the subjective), as a way of perfecting both the ethical and the subjective. In fact, it is faith itself that displaces God as the centre of attention; here faith as Abraham’s practice, pushes aside God as the object of thought. We first need to ask why Kierkegaard would choose the Abraham story as a way of elaborating on the same problem of duality, the personal/ ethical dilemma, encountered in Either/Or. In what way can it solve the intractable pattern of duality raised by the presence of the traditional notion of God, as happens at the conclusion of Either/Or, and so be a satisfying resolution to that work – especially as God seems such an inescapable element in the story? The point is, I think, that God thought of anthropomorphically, as depicted in the biblical story, is so outrageously unacceptable, in its demanding that Abraham kill his son, and so contradictory in relation to the qualities traditionally assigned to it as the exemplar of love and virtuous perfection, that the story can be accepted only as an allegory in which God is a metaphor for that which

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is encountered by the principal character, Abraham, with whom the reader, and perhaps the writer, may identify. For Spinoza, for example, ‘God’ was a metaphor for ‘nature’ or ‘reality’, the essence of which was ‘existence’, which he defined as ‘eternity’ (p. 4). What makes most sense to me, in my reading of Fear and Trembling, is that Kierkegaard is presenting Abraham’s encounter with God as if ‘God’ is the same as ‘existence-viewed-from-the-perspective-ofeternity’. In this sense, there is not much difference from the manner in which the Tao Te Ching, for example, speaks of ‘Way’ from the perspective of eternity: ‘There was something formless yet complete, that existed before heaven and earth; without sound, without substance, dependent on nothing, unchanging, all pervading, unfailing. One may think of it as the mother of all things under heaven. Its true name is not known; “Way” is the by-name we give it.’8 The Buddhist translation of ‘way’ was ‘dharma’, meaning the ‘law’ of the universe or ‘phenomena’ or ‘ultimate reality’ and, for Dōgen, all phenomena are Buddha dharma. In terms of Eastern mysticism, it is ‘God’ as the ‘Way’ that Abraham encounters and, as with Dōgen, ‘to study the buddha way is to study the self’. In Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, God becomes what Heidegger was later to name as one’s ‘ownmost possibility of existence’.9 The work is, above all, a study of ‘realization’. The ‘fear and trembling’ of the title is the ‘trial’ that Abraham is here said to be faced with, the challenge to fear nothing, except the failure to experience his own ‘true self’. As with Dōgen’s essay, ‘Actualizing the Fundamental Point’, Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling is a depiction of the ‘actionless action’ of realization or enlightenment. What is this voice that calls Abraham to the mountain in Chapter 22 of Genesis? I think Kierkegaard is already saying of this voice what Heidegger was to say later in Being and Time: ‘The call comes from that entity which I myself am, from me and yet from beyond me. It reaches him who wants to be brought back. In understanding the call, Dasein is in thrall to its ownmost possibility of existence’ (p. 320). The voice that Abraham hears is the voice of existence from within, beyond his self, the voice of his ‘true self’ summoning him to forget his imagined self. As with Abraham, Heidegger’s voice exists in the context of anxiety: ‘The call whose mood has been attuned by anxiety is what makes it possible, first and foremost, for Dasein to project itself upon its ownmost potentiality-for-Being, which alone is the issue’ (p. 322). And, as is the case with Abraham, it exists in the context of silence; it is inexpressible: ‘The call discourses in the uncanny mode of keeping silent. The silence of the calling is the “whither” to which we are called back. It is called

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back into the stillness of itself’ (p. 322). As with Kierkegaard, the call summons one beyond the ethical: ‘In passing over the they, the call pushes it into insignificance. But the Self which the appeal has robbed of this lodgement and hiding place, gets brought to itself by the call’ (p. 317). ‘To study the self is to forget the self.’ The self that Abraham is being called on to forget is mirrored as Isaac, as his reflection of himself, his ego image of the continuance of his self into future generations. The ‘Attunement’, described from the perspective of Isaac, as Abraham’s image of himself, unfolds as a rite of passage of the self into a more complete way of being in the world, a transition effected with a separation from both the law of the father (the ethical) and pleasurable selfinvolvement at the breast of the mother (the egotistical) into the more mature existence of a relationship with the eternal. Initially we see Abraham’s anguish exacerbated by the thought that his own living ‘constantly aeterno modo’ necessarily involves bringing similar anguish to those he most loves (Isaac/Kierkegaard’s rejected fiancée, Regine? See Mime Morita’s discussion of this at the end of Chapter 11). But what emerges most strongly in these few pages is the naturalness of this transition. Compared as it is with the process of weaning from the breast of the mother, withdrawal from attachment to the law of the father (the ethical/Kierkegaard’s father?), the sustenance of the more solid food of awareness is seen as part of a natural process of maturing – although not without anguish. It is seen here, in these early pages, in terms of a necessary, yet finely balanced, psychological event in the process of human development. It is the Oedipus complex in reverse. The putting aside of Isaac, as his self-image, is metaphored as the necessary separation of father and son, as part of the maturation process, here effected by the father rather than by the son. The weaning is initiated by a withdrawal of access to Either self-interest Or the ethical as a source of security. To move forward is to move into the faith of aeterno modo, which is to act from being with awareness within infinite possibility, rather than with the imagined esteem involved in acting according to the objective ratio, the logic of the dutiful ethical. ‘Everything is possible spiritually speaking, but in the finite world there is much that is not possible. This impossibility the knight nevertheless makes possible by his expressing it spiritually, but he expresses it spiritually by renouncing it’ (1985, p. 73). Kierkegaard sees the for-getting of the begotten self, in the same terms as does Dōgen, a moving from the finite of the ratio into the sciential intuitiva of the spiritual infinite. The opening is an ‘Attunement’ also in the sense that it is a coming into harmony with the infinite or, in the words of Dōgen, ‘when you

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see forms or hear sounds, fully engaging body-and-mind you intuit dharma intimately’ (2000, p. 35). For Dōgen, Zen practice is a matter of forgetting the self in an act of union with things, to experience the dharma through personal encounter, as Abraham does in his intimate encounter with God as metaphor for existence, reality, nature. As for me, when I stand in the forest listening the past and the future is forgotten then the world flows with how I am and there is nothing I need to say – I am simultaneously emptied out and filled with all possibilities – pitched into trees I’m on the threshold between what is playing inside me and what is flowing into me from outside me – there is a mingling – a defying of articulation – perhaps an unknowing awareness of all there is – in forest I hear the music of an invisible flute – each time a melody I’ve never heard before ‘To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things of the universe’ (p. 70), says Dōgen. Similarly, in ‘The Speech in Praise of Abraham’, Kierkegaard emphasizes the great pleasure and enhancement of self that the forgetting of self brings to one’s life, as a result of a union with all of nature as a process of personal relating: ‘If there were no eternal consciousness in a man … what then would life be but despair … how empty and devoid of comfort would life be’ (1985, p. 49). The eternal consciousness to which Kierkegaard refers is the faith-awareness that sees things from an eternal perspective; that state of which Kierkegaard says, ‘I am constantly aeterno modo’, which Spinoza also defines as ‘understanding’, as ‘the knowledge that the mind has of its union with the whole of nature’ (p. 226), which I take to be equivalent to Dōgen’s ‘enlightened by all things of the universe’. Spinoza adds, in relation to this kind of aeterno modo understanding, ‘therefore he who knows things by this kind of knowledge passes to the greatest state of human perfection, and consequently he is affected with the greatest pleasure, and that accompanied by the idea of himself’ (p. 210). In following in the line of Spinoza’s aeterno modo, Kierkegaard is aligned with both Spinoza and Dōgen in maintaining that, paradoxically, in forgetting the self one realizes one’s ‘true self’, the ‘original self’,

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in a union with ‘the whole of nature’, ‘all things of the universe’. In the context of the prevalence of an integral conscious in thirteenth-century Europe, the notion of ‘the individual’ was closely related to its Latin derivation, individuum, meaning ‘undivided from the whole’. Within that prevailing integral consciousness, one was seen to be one’s ‘true self’, achieve one’s individuation, in so far as one realized one’s unique role in relation to the whole. That was the undivided activity of faith. In the words of Dōgen, ‘When you find your place where you are, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point’ (p. 72). It is this event of self-realization on the part of Abraham, his finding his place in his encounter with eternal existence, that is the dominant psychic action of Fear and Trembling. As Kierkegaard says there: ‘so what I win is myself in my eternal consciousness’ (1985, p. 77). Unfortunately, after the thirteenth century, the rational consciousness, in the same way it reversed the original notion of faith (from being beyond thought to following thought), gradually re-placed the notion of the individual as ‘undivided from the whole’ to give it exactly the opposite meaning. One was soon seen to be individuated to the extent that one was noticeably separate from the whole. By the twentieth century, Martin Buber could complain, ‘Individuality neither shares in nor obtains any reality. Where there is no sharing there is no reality. The I is real in virtue of its sharing in reality; the fuller it shares, the more real it becomes.’10 Dōgen makes the same point in reflecting on just how one is enlightened by ‘myriad things’, not vice versa. To separate one’s self as observer from the observed, in order to examine it as an object and illuminate it, is the delusion of a rational consciousness; in Kierkegaard’s terms, it is preferring thought to faith. ‘To carry the self forward and illuminate myriad things is delusion. That myriad things come forth and illuminate the self is awakening’ (Dōgen, 2000, p. 35). In this regard Kierkegaard reflects Dōgen’s position, ‘This man was no thinker, he felt no need to go further than faith.’ But even if there is no need to go further than faith, there is in Fear and Trembling that which is seen to arise with faith, the emotion of love, which is given an emphasis almost equal to that of faith; ‘so what I win is myself in my eternal consciousness, in a blessed compliance with my love for my eternal being’ (1985, p. 77). The point Kierkegaard appears to be making there is that, in effect, the emotion of love for my eternal self emerges with that activity which is faith-awareness. What a union with the infinity of the myriad of things achieves is an enhancement of one’s quality and intensity of relating, which is one way of defining love. The result of emancipation from my self to win myself is spontaneously a

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qualitative leap; and the quality it has is the quality of love: ‘Every movement of infinity occurs with passion and no reflection can bring about a movement. That’s the perpetual leap in life. What we lack today is not reflection but passion … the poet ends thus: ein seliger Sprung in die Ewigkeit [a blessed leap into eternity]’ (1985, p. 71). Kierkegaard’s words are an echo of the final stage of Dōgen’s dialectic of non-duality, which is also a statement on emancipation: ‘The buddha way, in essence, is leaping clear of abundance and lack; thus there are birth and death, delusion and realization, sentient beings and buddhas. Yet in attachment blossoms fail, and in aversion weeds spread’ (2000, p. 35). Where for Kierkegaard the predominant feeling in the state of faithawareness is love, for Dōgen, that realm of non-duality brings emancipation. Dōgen’s statements on emancipation reflect accurately the drama of Abraham’s story of emancipation in the death and birth of his self, as paralleled in the potential death and re-birth of Isaac: ‘Emancipation means that in birth you are emancipated from birth, in death you are emancipated from death. Thus there is detachment from birth-and-death and penetrating birth-and-death’ (p. 84). And, as Dōgen’s words predict, Abraham’s trial concerns not only his emancipation from his egoic self, but also his participating in and allowing the falling away of others, as in his silence in the face of Sarah and Isaac: ‘When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind as well as the body and minds of others drop away’ (p. 70). Paradoxically, this self-emancipation, in affecting others, may be simultaneously the activity of love, ‘all beings are the time-being actualized by your complete effort, flowing due to your complete effort’ (p. 80); that is love seen as an enhancement of the quality and intensity of relating: ‘Every movement of infinity occurs with passion. That’s the perpetual leap in life.’ Or, in the words of Dōgen, ‘As overwhelming is caused by you, there is no overwhelming that is separate from you. Thus you go out and meet someone. Someone meets someone. You meet yourself. Going out meets going out’ (p. 82). Such is the paradox of Abraham’s faith-awareness, the realization that in abandoning his self he will actualize himself – in concert with all other beings. And yet, it has to be said, there is in Kierkegaard an emphasis also on a more pessimistic dimension of the aeterno modo paradox, which we do not find in Dōgen. Abraham’s faith-awareness, the mystical action of forgetting the self to achieve self-fulfilment in union with all, is repeatedly regarded by the narrator, Johannes de silentio, as being an impossibility for himself to achieve: ‘I am convinced that God is love; this thought has for me a pristine lyrical validity: but I do not have faith: this

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courage I lack … I am all the time aware of that monstrous paradox that is the content of Abraham’s life. My thought, for all its passion, is unable to enter into it. I strain every muscle to catch sight of it, but the same instant I become paralysed’ (1985, pp. 62–3). Although the anguish experienced in the act of faith-awareness, as expressed by Kierkegaard, is mentioned also by Dōgen, ‘Spring lies in plum twigs accompanied by snow and cold’ (p. 120), the inability ‘to enter into it’, either due to a lack of courage or a becoming paralysed is, for Kierkegaard’s alter ego, his narrator, an essential aspect of the experience of being confronted with the possibility of acting from the perspective of eternity. Johannes de silentio raises the possibility that to act neither rationally nor with self-interest is, in practice, impossible. Then, this impossibility, which becomes an emphatic part of the reality that he is being asked to embrace, is, in fact, that which makes the paradox seem so monstrous. It raises the question: Does not the notion of being with all of reality include within it my impossibility of being with all of reality, as one aspect of reality? Are we not presented with the ideal that there is a utopian way of being in the world only as a dream possibility to sustain us in our endurance of what is, in fact, inevitably a painfully frustrating existence? And is it not the case that to assert that an unattainable ideal is attainable is even more debilitating? It is in the context of the reality of such pessimism, that Kierkegaard approaches the ‘problemata’ in the second half of Fear and Trembling. The problemata are posed in the form of three interrelated questions: ‘I – Is there a teleological suspension of the ethical? II – Is there an absolute duty to God? III – Was it ethically defensible of Abraham to conceal his purpose?’ These three, taken interactively together, constitute one overall ‘problematum’. That is, my own subjective perfection depends on the perfection of my relationship with the eternal-infinite, an undivided activity which is outside the realm of ethics and explanatory speech. This problematum, and its solution, had already been elucidated by Dōgen: ‘The true human body covers the whole universe and extends throughout all time. At this moment it is you, it is I, who is the true human body, the entire world of the ten directions. Although the life of those who have abandoned home and entered the homeless realm may appear bleak and lonely, do not get caught up in discussions of good or bad. Do not stay in the realm of wrong or right, true or false’ (p. 93). Johannes de silentio recognizes the aeterno modo faith in Abraham, the truth that, primarily, I am who I am in relation to all beings, outside the realm of the ethical (‘the realm of wrong or right, true or false’); yet he gets ‘caught up’ in it, sees it as: ‘so paradoxical that it simply cannot be

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thought. He acts on the strength of the absurd … In his action he overstepped the ethical altogether and had a higher telos outside it, in relation to which he suspended it, for God’s sake, and what is exactly the same, for his own; the temptation is the ethical itself’ (1985, pp. 85, 88). Both Dōgen and Kierkegaard identify the same existential implications in viewing things from the perspective of eternity; that one’s own being, living or subjectivity, is perceived as inseparable from all other beings, yet is beyond right and wrong (the ethical), is inexpressible to others, and ‘may appear bleak and lonely’. But there is a difference of emphasis in the narration of Johannes de silentio, a highlighting of the ‘distress and anguish’, a predominating tone of pessimism, especially when read up against the almost ecstatic tone of celebration that emerges between the lines of Dōgen: ‘all beings are the time-being actualized by your complete effort, flowing due to your complete effort’ (p. 80). Kierkegaard’s writing is as permeated by anguish and doubt as Dōgen’s is by calm and contentment. Yet there is always in Kierkegaard’s work a striving towards the expression of that integral consciousness that Dōgen unfolds with seeming ease. There is a very real sense in which we can say that the transformation of our mode of perception in the West today flows due to Kierkegaard’s complete effort. In the face of an oppositional rational consciousness, he reached back via the pivotal work of Spinoza to re-invent the integral consciousness of Dōgen’s thirteenthcentury world-view. As the ‘father of existentialism’, Kierkegaard played a significant role in the evolution to a new mode of thinking that allowed the rational-linear paradigm to be transformed into a relativityquantum consciousness. It would seem more than coincidence that, in the context of the ‘new science’, the late twentieth century saw in ‘the West’ a rediscovery of both a Buddhist and Spinozan aetiology, together with a renewed eco-awareness. What all those share is an emphasis on an integral consciousness. One of the remarkable things about the work of Dōgen is that it had already laid down the conceptual foundations of relativity, quantum and chaos theory seven centuries before their scientific proof. So when David Bohm says that quantum theory tells me that, ‘both observer and observed are merged and interpenetrating aspects of one whole reality, which is indivisible and unanalyzable’,11 I know that Dōgen has already told me that, ‘When you ride in a boat, your body and mind and the environs together are the undivided activity of the boat’ (p. 85). And when Dōgen writes, ‘each grass and each form itself is the entire earth’ (p. 77), or ‘study this place as everywhere and study everywhere as now’ (p. 118), I hear his words echoed in those of contemporary relativity

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theory, ‘Given a total field at a point we must treat it as a whole. And we must know the whole of space before we can trace for all time any one of its parts.’12 Kierkegaard’s affinity with Dōgen is reflected in what we have inherited from him, our own present mode of perception and its congruence with Dōgen’s approach – as an example of our contemporary affinity with Japanese thought. Perhaps that is why I enjoy so much the novels of Murakami.

Notes 1. Mark L. Blum, ‘The Sangoku-Mappo Construct’, in Discourse and Ideology in Medieval Japanese Buddhism, ed. Richard K. Payne and Taigen Dan Leighton (London: Routledge, 2006) p. 32. On the ubiquitous presence of an ‘integral consciousness’ cross-culturally I am indebted to Jean Gebser, The Ever Present Origin, trans. Noel Barstad and Algis Mickunas (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1985). 2. Shah, Idries, The Way of the Sufi (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1970) p. 78. 3. Dōgen, Moon in a Dewdrop: Writings of Zen Master Do¯gen, ed. Kazuaki Tanahashi (New York: North Point Press, 1985) p. 77. Further references to this work will be given in the text. In referring to Dōgen’s essay, ‘Actualizing the Fundamental Point’, I have sometimes preferred to use the translation as revised by Robert Aitken and Kazuaki Tanahashi in Enlightenment Unfolds: the Essential Teachings of Zen Master Do¯gen (Boston: Shambhala, 2000) pp. 35–9. 4. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, trans. Alastair Hannay (London: Penguin, 2004) p. 54. Further references to this work will be given in the text. 5. Spinoza, Ethics and Treatise on the Correction of the Intellect, trans. Andrew Boyle (London: J.M. Dent, 1993) p. 212. Further references to this work will be given in the text. 6. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, trans. Alastair Hannay (London: Penguin, 1985) p. 44. Further references to this work will be given in the text. 7. Daniel Matt, The Essential Kabbalah: the Heart of Jewish Mysticism (San Francisco, California: Harper, 1996) p. 32. Further references to this work will be given in the text. 8. Lao Tzu, The Way and its Power: the Tao Te Ching and its Place in Chinese Thought, trans. Arthur Waley (London: Unwin, 1987) p. 174. 9. Heidegger, Martin, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000) p. 320. Further references to this work will be given in the text. 10. Buber, Martin, I and Thou, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith (New York: Macmillan, 1987) p. 11. 11. Bohm, David, Wholeness and the Implicate Order (London: Routledge, 2000) p. 9. 12. Graves, John, The Conceptual Foundations of Contemporary Relativity Theory (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1971) p. 216.

7 Truth, Paradox, and Silence: Hakuin and Kierkegaard Archie Graham

It is all too easy to dramatize the shortcomings of Kierkegaard in comparison with the Zen master as William Barrett does in ‘Zen for the West’,1 where he tells us that Kierkegaard never attained enlightenment in the Zen sense. Barrett does not offer much in the way of evidence for his case, and even if he did, it is unlikely to generate anything more than a rather tenuous conclusion, given the highly subjective nature of the issue. It is like saying Kierkegaard knew very well how to describe a banana and explain its origins, but he never tasted it. This line of enquiry distracts us from what would seem to be a far more promising pursuit, exploring the remarkable parallels between the language of articulated insights of Kierkegaard and those of one Zen master in particular, Ekaku Hakuin (1685–1768). In this way we can discover not only how radical Kierkegaard was and still is in his divergence from his own religious and cultural tradition, but how both he and Hakuin, in remarkably coincidental ways, point us in the direction of an alternative, rigorous kind of questioning and thinking, an aporetic or paradoxical discourse that deliberately tests the limits of what can be said. In both cases, the aim is not to abandon thinking in the over-simplified and unqualified sense that all too many followers of existentialism, on the one hand, and practitioners of Zen on the other, romantically imagine. The clearly demonstrated purpose of the existential philosopher and the Zen master is to use this highly specialized discursive form of thinking to dismantle thinking and bring us to an exalted kind of experience that comes before thinking, one that thinking already presupposes. Kierkegaard and Hakuin were unmitigated dissidents, both deeply troubled by a collective sickness in their respective cultures. In fact, their distaste for the world was so intense that it drove them to extremes in their efforts at spiritual attainment. They became sick themselves, 124

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Kierkegaard afflicted with despair, Hakuin infected by what he called ‘Zen sickness’, which was more or less the same thing. The reactions to their times were so uncompromising in each case that they could not be sustained without serious cost. Kierkegaard’s attacks on members of the Church and press were unyielding and belligerent to the point where he was vigorously ridiculed and gradually expelled from ordinary social relations. Hakuin made a mockery of the principle of moderation in the middle way by meditating for days on end without food or sleep, and then wondering why he became ill! All this, however, was part of the struggle towards what was to become a more distinctive approach to gaining spiritual salvation than anything else that had existed in the orthodox practices of their respective religions. Kierkegaard developed a polemical existentialism which amounted to a radical attack on the Christianity of his day, the metaphysics of Hegel which ruled the European continent, and the Platonic tradition in general. Hakuin developed a critical Buddhism which savaged not only the more popular sects like Pure Land and perhaps even some varieties of Sōtō Zen, but some eminent Zen masters as well. Both insisted on the need for a thoroughly rigorous discipline in the pursuit of truth or enlightenment.

The attack on priests and laity Kierkegaard and Hakuin led blistering attacks on the collective religious practice of their respective times, more or less for the same reasons: the sharp decline in spiritual commitment and the deep collective confusion in their societies. These involved critiques of formal practitioners, priests and monks, the laity, and even religious leaders, all of whom are held responsible for the resulting state of affairs, which was the destruction of genuine religious practice. It is in the Attack upon Christendom where Kierkegaard expresses his thoroughgoing contempt for priests whom he regards as ‘Churchly civil servants’ making a living out of the crucifixion of Christ.2 Their selfinterest is the motivation for purveying Christianity as a doctrine which transforms the deity into a joke and the Christian spirit into meaningless prattle. The rituals and ceremonies of the Church – weddings and funerals, for example – are transformed by what Kierkegaard deprecatingly refers to as the ‘patter of the lame-brained’: tittle-tattle that tries to soften Christianity by sweetening and sentimentalizing the suffering that Christ endured and the suffering that any Christian undertaking the task of making a bond with God must bear. The priest gives the

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laity an insipid Christianity which inverts the real thing by pandering to the likes and dislikes of humankind, rather than attempting to challenge these by demanding what is necessary: the renunciation and denial of all worldly pursuits. The priests turn Christianity into the opposite of what it is by making it comforting and easy to understand. Kierkegaard’s celebrated razor-sharp sarcasm is unsheathed in his reference to priests as ‘the respected profession’ which actively ‘prevents men from entering the kingdom of heaven’ (p. 222). The effect of this on the laity is profound. Nothing but ‘the stupidest divine worship’ (p. 110) prevails, the kind that ultimately distracts humanity from its eternal task. Christianity does not in truth exist anywhere in the land, but instead a Christian state, Christendom, takes its place. This is nothing less than a diabolical orthodoxy which amounts to little more than a party game for the dispirited, a charade of sentimentalized religiosity, a sickness of mind and spirit, with Christians endlessly chattering about their faith while focusing all their energies on securing themselves against all sorts of trials and tribulations by endlessly accumulating ‘worldly goods, comforts, and profits’ (p. 28). This is the collective malaise of the age, a culturally-induced despair which is all too often disguised by comforting platitudes that make us feel as if nothing at all is wrong. But in reality we are in a ‘critical condition’.3 What is lost here is decisive: the paradoxical character of the act of faith, the necessity and toughness of the dissenting spirit in an individual commitment which must be pitted against the crowd in order to enter into union with God, and the need for engagement with the lived experience of our own subjectivity. The true Christian, in Kierkegaard’s eyes, ‘can only be a Christian in contrast and contrastedly’ (p. 127). It is a serious mistake to imagine that just because he is a Zen priest Hakuin might be more pious or less caustic in his critique than Kierkegaard. Indeed, he is far rougher on the younger generation of Zen monks of his day who he describes, in a language that one would not normally associate with a Zen priest, as morons and idiots, a ‘pack of misfits’ and ‘ungovernable rascals’,4 ‘miserable wretches’ and ‘skin-headed mules’ (Hakuin, 1994, pp. 24–5). Hakuin often exhibits the kind of barbed irony and bold irreverence that anticipates Kierkegaard’s, for example, when blaming these monks for the decay of the dharma and for giving other Buddhist priests a bad reputation among the laity: they are as welcome in villages ‘as a mangy dog with running sores’ (1994, p. 11). Their fault is not only their hopeless lack of discipline and commitment but imagining that starving themselves to

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death on the sides of mountains while engaged in nothing else but ‘dead sitting and silent illumination’ leads to enlightenment, when in fact what this brings about is nothing but the ‘dark cesspool of stupidity and ignorance’.5 The monks that Hakuin is thinking of here are ones who possess no understanding of the dharma in the real sense, but who instead invoke a feeble rhetoric and purvey platitudes that ‘wouldn’t even work as medicine to treat a cavity’ (1971, p. 64). In the end they have no wisdom to offer the world, no understanding worthy of the name, because they have neglected to integrate the mindfulness achieved in meditation into the activities of ordinary daily life. Hakuin’s tempestuous critique of monks includes some Zen masters. When temples prosper they often live in luxury and overabundance, while adorning themselves ‘lavishly in inappropriate silken gowns’ (1971, p. 82) all of which affects the teaching. These Zen masters are out-foxed by their own eloquence and cleverness, they transform aesthetic qualities into moral ones, and they mistakenly imagine that they have attained the dharma because others pay attention to them. Yüan-hsien Yung-chiao (1628–44), for example, author of Ch’an-yünei-chi, is hammered by Hakuin as someone whose ‘attainment was of a highly dubious nature’, one who was trying ‘to palm off discriminatory delusions’, and who ‘doesn’t deserve to be called a teacher of men’ (1994, p. 22). All of this amounts to a spiritual toxin which pollutes Buddhist philosophy and practice to the extent that the progress of the laity is not only made more difficult but seriously obstructed. But while he has high praise for some lay people who have been able to make advances in spite of all this, Hakuin unleashes more fiery criticism on the rest. On the one hand he argues that there are a few special individuals who are far more advanced and awakened than the monks and Zen masters he condemns, among whom he identifies a rarefied group of politicians and Sung poets. ‘All these men were possessed of insight far surpassing ordinary monks’, and ‘in the end awakened to the essentials of the Zen teaching’ (1971, p. 57). On the other hand, the generality of human beings, either by succumbing to their own lack of resources or by suffering the bedevilment of misguided monks, drift into complacency, spending their lives ignorantly flitting about like domesticated animals, while at the same time stuffing their minds with prejudice that they mistake for learning and puffing themselves up with pride. The overarching problem is ‘that everyone is constantly in search of convenience and comfort, fame and profit’, and this issues in nothing less than a ‘degenerate age’ (1971, p. 81).

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Fake versus real: Christian existential polemics and critical Buddhism The parallels between Kierkegaard and Hakuin in respect to the way in which they think their religions are faked and made bankrupt are astonishing, and once again illuminating. Both criticize the mythological and fictional interpretations which water down the difficulty of the practice and the reality – sometimes brutal reality – of the suffering to be endured in order to realize the ultimate. Kierkegaard rejects the fantastic tales of Christ as performer of miracles, as if these were settled proof of his Godliness. This is a picture which covers up the offence that Christianity causes, the offence which arises from being faced with a man who claims to be God, something that is a contradiction in terms. We cannot comprehend how any finite temporal being can at the same time be an infinite eternal god. This offence, in Kierkegaard’s view is just too easy to dismiss by calling Christ a quack, or too easy to fantasize about by taking the events associated with him to be miracles. Either way, he tells us in Training in Christianity, where he treats the question of the offence at length, ‘Christ never looked like this’,6 and we are negating the offence by suggesting that he did. The alternative is not to try to resolve the offence, which can only result in failure anyway, but to engage it, take seriously the shock of not being able to understand the possibility. Kierkegaard dismisses the metaphysical resolution of the offending contradiction that Christ embodies, the Hegelian mediation of the manGod, finite-infinite, temporal-eternal, and existent-nonexistent in an ‘absolute idea’. This reduces Christianity to an abstraction and a doctrine to be understood, whereas it is the historical reality of an individual we must confront. It is a matter not of metaphysical comprehension but existential experience. However, it is a key point in Kierkegaard’s account that it is by means of reason alone that we come to this offence. When reason in its questioning demands an answer only to discover that there is none, the existential offence arises. ‘At the absolute the understanding stands still’ in the face of ‘the contradiction which arrests it’ (p. 106). Real Christianity is in fact defined in Training in Christianity as the embodiment of a contradiction understood not as the metaphysical ‘unity of God and man sub specie aeterni’, (p. 107) but as the historical union of God and the individual human being in the concrete reality of temporal presence. This means that direct communication with this reality is impossible, when by this we mean that we can explain it in a

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way that is readily available to the understanding. The contradiction, rather, is an irresolvable riddle which is not therefore to be dismissed, but embraced, precisely because it serves as a mirror to the individual himself: ‘The contradiction puts before him a choice, and while he is choosing, he himself is revealed’ (p. 111). The communication involved here is indirect because the lesson it contains does not lie in the object of reflection, but in the subject doing the reflecting, the subject who is so distracted by the philosophical speculations and the miracles of a runaway imagination that he has forgotten what existence means and does not know himself. The contradiction which is alive in the figure of Christ, ‘being God, to be also an individual man’, intensifies the disparity between being a man we can know, and a god we cannot know, and it announces with its presence, the different which is simply not cognizable, an ‘absolute unrecognizableness’ (p. 112). If, at the point of awareness of the possibility of the offence, we refuse to become offended, however, and refuse to take the road of direct communication with its consoling solutions to problems, we encounter ‘the repellent force by which faith comes into existence’ (p. 107). Faith is indirect communication because it is not composed of external concepts or words which resolve all our questions, but because it acknowledges what is fundamentally incomprehensible at the core of our own inwardness. The challenge is not to comprehend Christ in terms of an objective account of his life and teachings, but to become his disciple in the sense of his existential contemporary. In the Philosophical Fragments, Kierkegaard presents his case for the disciple understood as one who is not a follower, but precisely the opposite, one who in ‘a moment of decisive significance’,7 the moment when reason cannot resolve the contradiction, realizes that the contradiction that Christ embodies is an absurdity that knowledge cannot take for an object. It is only in such a moment, when the individual sets aside reason, that he opens himself up to receiving the condition which allows him to come into the presence of God and serves as the condition for his eternal happiness. In this moment, the individual becomes a disciple because he makes an existential decision to let this condition happen, to receive, in other words, the ‘happy passion’ of faith from God (p. 73). Being a disciple or contemporary of Christ is not an accident of history, but the privilege of the faith-full. In contrast to those who were only the immediate contemporaries of Christ at the beginning of the millennium, the real contemporary is the one who is recipient of faith from God. The contradiction which Christ embodies is thus internalized: the eternal condition is temporalized in one who in this way is

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now existentially contemporary with Christ because ‘he is eo ipso himself the Truth’ (p. 73). The idea of contemporariness is explored further by Eshin Nishimura in Chapter 4. Like Kierkegaard’s polemic against fake Christianity, Hakuin’s dispute with the romanticized forms of Zen that evolved from Kenko (1283–1350), Bankei (1622–53), and perhaps even Dōgen, can hardly be classified as just a case of ‘good-natured ribbing’ of other sects.8 They are rather an attack on Buddhism in practice and thus a truly – critical form of Buddhist philosophy. In the first chapter of his autobiography, Wild Ivy,9 Hakuin debunks some of the myths about Zen masters and the practice of Zen, for example, the notion that Zen is nothing but quiet contemplation and peaceful coexistence with nature in seclusion from the world. Zen, above all, is active engagement with everyday life. The practice of sitting endlessly in silent meditation, to take another example, in itself does not lead to enlightenment, but to thoughtless stupidity. Hakuin entertains no illusions about what it means to be a monk, and contemptuously dismisses the conventional wisdom that once you don monk’s robes you are automatically liberated from the problems of the laity. He even demystifies the attainment of kenshoˉ (enlightenment; awakening), since it is possible for the wisest among those who have realized it to lose their way. Hakuin further suggests that the surplice worn by the master signifying the achievement of enlightenment guarantees nothing of the kind. There simply is no resting place after true realization, only the continuous hard work of maintaining ‘the Mind of Enlightenment by helping others’ (p. 40). Perhaps Hakuin’s reaction to the mythological Zen he was so intent on destroying is one of the reasons behind his tendency to extremism, an extremism that we catch a hint of in Wild Ivy with his selection of the heroes of true Zen, a selection which is intended to counter the sentimentalized versions of Zen practice. He recounts the story of Gudō Kokushi (1579–1661) for example, who, on a mountainside with mosquitoes swarming around him ‘in great black clouds’, stubbornly sat in zazen until he achieved the great satori experience, afterwards just wiping away those that were feeding on his skin until they lay at his feet ‘like a thick carpet of crimson red-cherries’ (p. 76). With equal admiration, he tells the tale of Shūhō Myōchō (1282–1337) who meditated continuously in a graveyard for seven nights in a row with wolves ‘padding around him on all sides’ and ‘sniffing at his throat’ (p. 78). He also speaks of the dedication of priests like Chōmon Zen’a (1661–1741) who would burn his flesh with moxa (a Chinese herb) to keep himself awake

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for meditation. Acts like these can hardly be said to represent the moderation of the middle way. They could be taken as evidence of a lapse in judgement by the master himself who in his mature years recommends them as models, if we were to consider them in isolation. But just as Kierkegaard points to Christ as a living embodiment of real Christianity and the existential distress it involves, so Hakuin identifies the heroes of true Zen and the suffering it includes. He does this to illustrate how difficult the way to realization really is. What Kierkegaard calls the indirect communication with truth, is for Hakuin, the direct communication with the dharma. The indirect for one and the direct for the other refer to the same thing, however: the true way which is the concrete experience of truth or the dharma unmediated by words and explanations. For Kierkegaard the aim of this communication is to become an existential contemporary of Christ by realizing the eternal truth in one’s own individuality, and for Hakuin the task is to become no less than a Buddha himself, an awakened one. This is not a matter of mimicking the lifestyle of Siddartha, or of worshipping and bowing down to his image, but a matter of struggling to experience what he experienced. Like Kierkegaard, Hakuin rails against laziness and stupidity in the pursuit of realization. While ‘there is no way for those of ordinary or inferior capacity to know the Dharma’ (1994, p. 50) those with unwavering fortitude and the highest intelligence in the face of all challenges can become enlightened, and in doing so, they themselves become Buddhas (1994, p. 42).

The affirmation of authenticity The views of Kierkegaard and Hakuin coincide in the affirmation of the need for a more authentic spiritual experience, one that is acknowledged as a more elusive route to the truth partly because it runs counter to the orthodox systems of thought or practice, and partly because of the problematic nature of truth itself. For Kierkegaard this is a matter of becoming a true Christian in the sense of making a bond with God at the level of individual inwardness. For Hakuin it is a question of becoming a ‘true hero’ of Zen in the sense of one who has plumbed the mysteries of seeing into one’s own nature. This is called the difficult way because it means, in Kierkegaard’s terms, breaking away from the crowd, or in Hakuin’s words, becoming one among ten thousand, and in both cases exceeding ordinary understanding. Kierkegaard is well known for his vigorous – some would say extreme – promotion of individual dissension from the group as a necessary step

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in coming to God. Although his thinking is individualistic, it is not antisocial. It is oriented to what he calls the ‘invisible Church’ which, while it ‘cannot be observed objectively at all’ because it ‘exists only in the subjectivity of individuals’,10 is the foundation of a solitude that serves a ‘reconciling fellowship with all men’ (Kierkegaard, 1968, p. 110). The fellowship consists in the shared pursuit of the highest task for human beings, the task of pursuing eternal, as opposed to temporal, happiness. This holds out the promise of the highest reward, namely, eternal fellowship with God, but only when we recognize that Christianity is the difficult way, particularly since it is opposed to the conventions of wisdom in the precincts of scholarship. Kierkegaard takes issue, in particular, with the unquestioned priority of reason in this context. To be a Christian means not that one must altogether reject reason, but that one must make use of reason to regulate reason, apply rationality to the determination of the limits of rationality. The attainment of the spirit of Christianity is not a merely intellectual endeavour, or a matter of understanding doctrine and developing analytical knowledge. In fact, Christianity is an offence against all that, an offence against reason because in spiritual terms reason is not valued as an end in itself. But while reason can only take us so far, it can indeed take us where we need to go, namely, to the boundaries of reason itself. In a sense, Christianity puts reason to spiritual use here, pressing it into the service of a Christianity that was ‘never intended to be understood’, so that it declares ‘itself to be the paradox’ (1968, p. 190). And what is this paradox? The paradox is the end point that reason comes to, the paradox that is at the same time the tripartite ‘definition of truth’ which, as we will see below, corresponds almost exactly to Hakuin’s three essentials for reaching enlightenment. This paradox is that ‘an objective uncertainty held fast in an appropriation-process of the most passionate inwardness is the truth, the highest available for an existing individual’ (1968, p. 182). A paradox like this, a paradox about matters of ultimate value, does not complete the quest but, on the contrary, changes its direction and points it beyond the parameters of reason. It is the moment of holding fast to the uncertainty that is necessary, as Kierkegaard goes on to say about his definition of truth, in order to ‘remain out upon the deep, over seventy thousand fathoms of water’, while still keeping faith. It is hardly overstating the case to say that Hakuin moves along more or less the same route to exactly the same conclusion. The hero of Zen, as we saw, is not one who merely abandons reason and intense study to retreat to a hillside and immerse herself in the ‘quietistic approach’ that

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amounts to dead sitting (shiza) (1971, p. 33). On the contrary, such an individual is engaged in an introspective process of intense study and a questioning that is not meant to be answered in the way that questions are normally answered. Indeed, the intended result of this studying is to reach ‘the place that requires no more study’, the point at which the practitioner has ‘exhausted reason, reached the end of words and ingenuity, stretched his hand to the precipice’ (1971, p. 63). This is a process which involves the application of what Hakuin calls Kao-feng Yüan-miao’s (1238–95) ‘three essentials’, which correspond remarkably to Kierkegaard’s tripartite definition of truth (although the concept of faith is not the same): ‘A great root of faith. A great ball of doubt. A great tenacity of purpose’ (1994, p. 62). It is by affirming this doubt with courage and faith that we may arrive at the experience Hakuin describes in terms of a metaphor that is again astonishingly in tune with Kierkegaard’s out-upon-the-deep metaphor, the experience of being ‘alone in a field extending tens of thousands of miles’ (1971, p. 59). But how do we come to this point where reason is exhausted? By means of the difficult way that requires courage and endurance. Hakuin himself struggled against fear, illness, doubt, self-loathing, and disillusionment at various times in his pursuit of enlightenment. He endured depression and travelled to temple after temple, looking for true Zen teachers, never shirking the dangers or avoiding the problems that he knew had to be overcome to achieve realization. Even after he crossed the threshold at the age of twenty-four, he ran headlong into the resistance of this mystery, when he encountered Shōju Rōjin (1642–1721) who asked him about the koan of the dog having the Buddha nature or not. Hakuin’s inflated confidence in his enlightened state was quickly deflated when his answer, ‘no way to lay a hand or foot on that’, was mockingly dismissed by the master with a sharp tug of Hakuin’s nose: ‘got a pretty good hand on it there!’ he yelled, transfixing Hakuin with shock (2001, p. 30). It was Shōju who helped Hakuin eventually to deepen his understanding by taking him through a whole range of ‘impenetrable’ koans that illustrate the contradictory character of Zen. This is why the difficult way also requires intelligence. The way not to get there, according to Hakuin, is to rely on ‘intellectual teaching’ that makes the ‘Wondrous Law of the One Mind’ (which refers to the title of The Lotus S¯utra) simple to understand by saying things like ‘it is in the West or in the East’, or it can be defined as this, that or the next thing. You cannot even rely on ‘the sutras for an answer, or seek it in the words you hear a teacher speak’ (1994, p. 61). This is the easy way while in fact Zen is the difficult way, ‘difficult to believe in, difficult to

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enter, and difficult to understand’ (1971, p. 177). It is difficult because the way to get there is by means of a paradox, and for all of us who are weaned on the notion that a paradox is a signal of the failure of reason, this is a difficult thing to grasp. Zen not only employs paradoxes but has developed a profound system of paradoxes, the koans, the purpose of which is to engage students in the most rigorous instruction regarding the truth of truths. Hakuin claims, for example, that his celebrated koan, ‘What is the sound of the one hand clapping?’ is ‘infinitely more effective’ in generating doubt (1971, p. 164). In other words, rather than allowing thought to be shut down by the emergence of a paradox like the sound of the one hand clapping, Hakuin teaches us to continue to contemplate it until the doubt becomes so great that we are made aware of the limits of ordinary consciousness, thinking and emotions, aware that by these means we cannot advance beyond this point. It is the greatness of this doubt, the intensity of such an all pervasive doubt driven by a paradox, which discloses the limits of reason and serves as the key to unlock the door to the dharma. For Kierkegaard, true Christianity delivers the paradox of paradoxes, the ultimate paradox, the paradox that ‘the maximum of understanding’ which is possible ‘is to understand that [truth, God] cannot be understood’, because this ‘is not a matter of knowledge’ and ‘increased knowledge is of no avail’ (1968, p. 192). Indeed, Christianity in the existential sense that Kierkegaard is referring to is not open to rational understanding, but instead issues in the paradox which generates the profound passion that turns us inward. This is why Christianity is so philosophically difficult, because while ‘understanding speaks only of livelihood and wife and fields and oxen and the like’, faith is about the ‘collision of the finite and the infinite’ which is the realm of improbability (1968, p. 208). The paradox has the effect of driving the individual away from reason into a passionate intensity, of pushing her to the edge of an abyss which reason cannot deal with. ‘Reason cannot negate itself absolutely, but uses itself’ to conceive ‘only such an unlikeness of itself as it can conceive by means of itself’ (1962, p. 55). Thus, while reason cannot carry us to the truth of God’s being, which for Kierkegaard is the eternal truth, it may nevertheless bring us to the point that makes the decisive difference. What reason discovers is that God is not just inexplicable but is thoroughly circuitous in his withdrawal, present everywhere, but as a ‘divine elusiveness’ about which there is ‘absolutely nothing obvious’, except an omnipresent invisibility (1968, p. 219). When we speak of God in

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Kierkegaard’s authentic Christian sense we are speaking not of a metaphysical agent or a theological figurehead but of an existential experience of the eternal truth. More precisely, we are engaged in developing not a metaphysical ‘doctrine’ about an ontological entity, but ‘an existential communication expressing an existential contradiction’ (1968, p. 339). God is the unknown, and this is what reason repeatedly collides with. The term ‘God’ is only a name that we give to it, a name for something effectively unnameable. The paradox which gives reason so much trouble is the paradox of the unknown, the unknown ‘which does indeed exist, but is unknown, and in so far does not exist’ (1962, p. 55). It exists in that it is known as unknown, but does not exist as something knowable. Reason cannot fail to generate this paradox, because it is always engaged in the pursuit of the unknown, yet finds it impossible to advance beyond this limit. Reason recognizes this ultimate paradox as the boundary of God’s absolute difference, identifying it as that which cannot be identified. It is a mistake to think, however, that this formulation of the unknown God amounts to a description or explanation; in fact such a formulation is nothing else than ‘an unlikeness within itself as [reason] can conceive by means of itself’ (1962, p. 55). The failure of reason to articulate the being of God, however, is in fact a success when reason recognizes this as the clear disclosure of its own limits. It is precisely this fact which issues in what amounts to both a torment and an incitement to passion and gives rise to the decisive act that changes everything. As in Kierkegaard’s case, so with Hakuin, that when he speaks of the highest truth in terms of the ‘eternal, unchanging’ truth (1971, p. 90) the wondrous law of the one mind, he is not formulating metaphysical theory to explain an ontological substance, something that in his terms would be described as a merely intellectual teaching. Even when he tells us that this ultimate principle is the same in Confucianism, Taoism, and Shintō, that the wondrous law of the one mind, the ultimate good, the undeveloped mean and takamanohara (the kami’s plane of the high sky) are all different names for the same thing, Hakuin is not dealing in metaphysical explanations. He has no patience with those who try to explain things in words that distract our attention from the immediate reality in front of our noses. Just as Kierkegaard resorts to paradox to articulate God’s elusiveness, Hakuin turns to almost exactly the same language to refer to the ultimate principle which cannot be transmitted: ‘If you say it is in existence it will not be there; if you say it is in non-existence it will not be there

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either’ (1971, p. 89). The wondrous law in fact cannot be rendered in words, yet at the same time the only means we have for opening the door to it is through words, the words of a paradox. The key here is not to try to respond to the paradox by resolving it in an intellectual fashion that explains it away, but simply to recognize that the paradox is irresolvable and the wondrous law is inconceivable. While Kierkegaard exhorts us to remember Socrates’ dictum, know thyself, Hakuin reminds us that we must take seriously the ‘Maha Vairocana Sutra: “Know your own mind as it really is”’ (1971, p. 101). He challenges us to see the truth for ourselves, to hear it, in a nonmetaphysical and existential sense, in a way that does not require us to go anywhere beyond ourselves. In fact it is closer than we might think, closer than the closest of the close: ‘Is there anything nearer than to see your own mind with your own mind, to see your own eyeballs with your own eyeballs?’ (1971, p. 97). As this question demonstrates, however, this cannot be understood in any straightforward sense since we are speaking once again in terms of a paradox, in the sense that it is physically impossible to see our own eyes with our own eyeballs. The truth of the one mind lies in seeing into your own mind or what Hakuin calls true introspection; pure, in the sense that it is a pre-conceptual, non-linguistic, concrete experience. In the end, however, one who reaches this realization ‘does not say that the Wondrous Law is inside or that it is outside’ (1971, p. 105). Hakuin simply refuses to confirm whether it is one or the other, both, or neither. It is important to recognize that this is his point. There is no answer that language can give here. Considering the koan of the sound of the one hand, we need to recognize that understanding it is a matter not of ordinary hearing but of an extraordinary kind of hearing, although this is not to be understood in some mystical or metaphysical sense. The sound of the one hand is silent, but how can we hear silence? We do not hear it exactly, and yet we do, because we distinguish it from sound. There is the rub. We can only hear the silence when we listen to the sound, the silence that accompanies every sound. It is just that we never pay attention to the silence itself, because we are so focused on sound. To hear the silence in Hakuin’s sense is to pay attention to what it is we are not hearing when we are listening to those sounds. But the hearing of the silence in this case is in fact the not-hearing that is wedded to the listening. We cannot get away from such paradoxes at this point. As Hakuin demonstrates, however, by making use of paradoxes to induce existential doubt about all such explanations, we can strip away

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the rational structure of thought and experience in a pre-rational way what can be articulated only as the paradox of the eternal truth in the here and now. It is in this way that we can understand, by investigating for ourselves, how ‘coughing, swallowing, waving the arms, activity and quietude, words and actions, all plants, trees, tiles, stones, the sentient and the non-sentient, all manifest’ the wondrous law (1971, p. 92). It is the great doubt, when pursued with tenacity, that can lead to the awakening: ‘At the bottom of great doubt lies great enlightenment, a full measure of doubt will become a full measure of enlightenment’ (1994, pp. 63–4). This comes from letting go of the compulsion to understand, the imperative of answering the question of the koan, a letting go that is not nothing, but an advance of the understanding in the form of not-understanding. ‘Release your hold’, says Hakuin, ‘from the edge of the precipice to which you hang, and perish into life anew’ (1994, p. 50). We are, he says, thus brought to ‘this place, where words and speech are cut off, this free and untrammelled place’, which ‘is provisionally called the Wondrous Law (Myoˉhoˉ)’ (1971, p. 89). Here we arrive at the great death of the self and the awakening of the mind to itself beyond self. While Kierkegaard mocks the putatively ‘awakened’ man of Christendom, he nevertheless affirms the same connection between existential doubt and becoming aware of reality, more precisely, that holding fast with the passionate ‘inwardness of self activity’ to objective uncertainty can enable us to ‘see God’ (1968, p. 218) and wake up to the truth. The rational desire to prove God’s existence only leads us up a blind alley. Stubbornly insisting on a rational explanation is the exact opposite of what is required because it entraps us in the net of reason and distracts us from the real, which is to be found in the lived relationship with God. ‘When I let the proof go’, Kierkegaard says, echoing Hakuin’s remark about the precipice, ‘the existence is there’ and this ‘letting go is surely also something’ (1962, p. 53). It is what Kierkegaard calls a qualitative leap, the most difficult of all leaps. This leap is not an extension of the rational process, but a decisive irruption in the face of an impasse, the chasm of the absurd. It does not, however, bring the spiritual quest to an end. Indeed, it amounts to the transformation of this quest into an active engagement with individual existence. This is at the same time the most intimate connection with divinity, the absurdity of which is brought home by the fact that the closer the individual gets to God the more infinitely far away he is. With both the Zen master and the Christian existentialist the acquisition of such wisdom is not a matter of gaining knowledge or

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understanding theory. Hakuin speaks of the enlightenment experience as dying into life, the dissolution of the self and the falling away of the dualism of mind and body. This is reminiscent of Dōgen’s idea of forgetting the self and the dropping away of mind and body (see Chapters 5 and 6). It may come as a surprise to those who mistakenly regard Kierkegaard as too much the subjectivist that he talks of arriving at truth and communion with God in much the same terms, as something to be attained through the annihilation of the self. In language that is typical of Zen, he tells us that ‘knowing oneself in one’s own nothingness is the condition for knowing God’.11 This experience for Hakuin and Kierkegaard is accompanied by, and legitimated in, a moment of ecstasy which serves as the foundation for overcoming all suffering. For Hakuin, it is the joy of awakening ‘to the fact that you yourself are a divine sage with true immortality, one who was born before heaven and earth and who will not die after empty space has vanished’ (1971, p. 42). For Kierkegaard it is the ‘joy of the eternal,’ an ‘unutterable’ joy that has its ‘ground in the contradiction that an existing human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite situated in time’ (1968, p. 198). For both, it is the joy of discovering eternal truth not by knowing it as this or that in some metaphysical form, but, ironically, in the lived experience of its presence in our own temporal existence.

The rigour of aporetic thinking Hakuin rightly condemns the intellectualization of this experience of the wondrous law of the one mind. But by intellectualization he means a pernicious kind of thinking, the kind that presumes that everything can be reduced to words, in particular, to a pat formula which, when conceptually understood, is truth – wording alienated from practice. Likewise, Kierkegaard condemns the reason, by which he means the calculative reason of traditional metaphysics that seeks to increase indefinitely the acquisition of conceptual knowledge, as an ineffectual way to truth. But it is a misconception to imagine that either Hakuin or Kierkegaard advocates the unqualified dismissal of thinking. Clearly, thinking has a place in Hakuin’s practice, not only in the form of all of his writings, but in the system of koans, many of which are framed as questions, the very origin of the thinking process. And again, a very sophisticated and highly developed thinking has a place in Kierkegaard’s philosophy not only in the form of all those polemical attacks on Hegel and Christendom, but as we have seen, as a necessary stepping stone on the route to faith.

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Thinking has a place in both Kierkegaard and Hakuin, but understood in a very special sense: as the purposeful articulation of the limits of thinking itself. This kind of thinking is not mere intellectualization, but a radically critical kind of doubting that goes beyond the methodological doubt of Descartes. It is a thinking that knows no bounds to its questioning, a questioning which questions the questioning itself and finds ultimate expression in the paradox. Without minimizing the differences between Kierkegaard and Hakuin, I think each of their respective approaches to the pursuit of understanding not only illuminates the other, but together they suggest this profound alternative mode of enquiry. In particular, they exemplify a rigorous anti-epistemological, pre-ontological thinking articulated in an aporetic language, a kind of deconstructive questioning, one which demonstrates the limitations of the intellectual process in the quest for ultimate meaning. The end result is not the radical scepticism that flows from the contemporary deconstruction of knowledge, but a conviction grounded in experience of the enigma of the human condition. Thinking has a positive value in this kind of inquiry, not as a vehicle of knowledge, if we mean by that objective certainty, but as a discourse whose importance is its capacity to help us arrive at the limitations of such a project. Thinking, in other words, is valued mainly because it has the power to dismantle itself. Thinking in the way that Kierkegaard and Hakuin use it, does not build up knowledge, but takes it down. Their aim is not to develop an epistemological system that explains truth or an ontological framework that reflects being, but to disassemble such efforts in order to arrive at existential experience. The term ‘existential’ is not really sufficient here, because we are trying to refer to what is pre-conceptual, pre-ontological, and pre-linguistic. And this is precisely why Kierkegaard in defining truth makes use of the paradox that refuses resolution by vigorously maintaining the tension between objectivity and subjectivity. It is also why Hakuin refuses to affirm whether the ultimate principle is inside or outside. This is more than an attempt to refer to experience unmediated by reason or language – immediate concrete experience. It is also a deliberately and poetically circuitous form of communication that is intended to demonstrate how all acts of referring to or otherwise representing such experience are deeply problematic, while taking this, not as the end to the questioning, but as its rebirth. Even saying this, however, is a function of reason, and reason can only give us more rational ways of conceiving what we are suggesting is inconceivable. If reason speaks, it must

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in the end ‘speak’ in silence. I am not referring to a purely metaphysical silence that comes after, behind, or beyond words, but a silence that is the mute endurance of existence itself, a silence that we can prepare ourselves to hear only by means of words used in the unavoidably elusive way that Kierkegaard and Hakuin exemplify so well and with remarkable commonality across the boundaries of their diverse cultures.

Notes 1. William Barrett, ‘Zen for the West’, in William Barrett (ed.), Zen Buddhism: Selected Writings of D.T. Suzuki (Garden City, New Jersey: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1956). 2. Kierkegaard, Attack Upon Chistendom, trans. Walter Lowrie (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1972) p. 27. Further references to this edition are given in the text. 3. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling and Sickness unto Death, trans. Walter Lowrie (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1974) p. 158. 4. Hakuin, Essential Teachings of Zen Master Hakuin, trans. Norman Waddell (Boston: Shambhala, 1994) p. 10. Further references to this edition are given in the text. 5. Hakuin, Zen Master Hakuin: Selected Writings, trans. Philip Yampolsky (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971) p. 62. Further references to this edition are given in the text. 6. Kierkegaard, Training in Christianity, trans. Walter Lowrie (New York: Vintage Classics, 2004) p. 84. Further references to this edition are given in the text. 7. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, trans. David Swenson (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1962) p. 245. Further references to this edition are given in the text. 8. Paul Stevens, Three Zen Masters: Ikkyu¯, Ryoˉkan, and Hakuin (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1993) p. 95. 9. Hakuin, Wild Ivy, trans. Norman Waddell (Boston: Shambhala, 2001) p. 37–8. Further references to this edition are given in the text. 10. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. David Swenson and Walter Lowrie (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1968) p. 53. Further references to this edition are given in the text. 11. Kierkegaard, Upbuilding Discourses, trans. Howard and Edna Hong (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990) p. 325.

8 Living with Death: Kierkegaard and the Samurai Adam Buben

‘In the eleventh hour one understands life in a wholly different way.’1 Many of Kierkegaard’s works, both pseudonymous and signed, briefly address the issues of death and thinking about death. But as is shown in the introduction, Kierkegaard’s interests here are not with death itself, but rather with the meaning or symbolism that death can have for us when we are living. This is also evident in his concept of ‘the fellowship of the dead’, something Kinya Masugata discusses in the final chapter. Thus, Kierkegaard addresses the issues of death within the context of a broader topic in order to change the way we live. Although these discussions of death are often brief, in Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions (1845), Kierkegaard dedicates an entire discourse, ‘At a Graveside’, to describing the use of the thought of death for guidance on the road to living earnestly.2 Around the same time that Kierkegaard is offering this description and confronting his own impending death, on the other side of the world, the long era of feudalism in isolated Japan is drawing to a close.3 Interestingly, some of the more thoughtful members of the ancient warrior class that epitomize this feudalism, known in the Western world as samurai (literally, ‘retainer’), advocate a life with death in mind that is uncannily similar to the one Kierkegaard prescribes. But is this similarity so striking that it would allow one to draw philosophically significant conclusions from it? Despite the history of Japanese scholarly interest in Kierkegaard’s works, which Kinya Masugata describes in Chapter 2,4 very little has been said about a connection between Kierkegaard and the samurai,5 and even less has been said concerning death. Thus, it has been left to the present to explain this potentially fruitful connection. For the sake of such an explanation, it will be helpful to notice Kierkegaard’s distinction between two ways of thinking about death. He advocates the earnest thought of death and discourages viewing death from any 141

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of the various ‘moods’ he describes (1993, pp. 73–5). With an eye towards discovering what, if anything, Kierkegaard and the samurai could learn from each other, the purpose of this chapter is to determine whether or not Kierkegaard and the samurai actually recommend approaching life through death in the same way and for the same reasons, and, if not, to determine whether or not Kierkegaard could accuse the samurai of being in one of the moods he proscribes (these are discussed below). In order to realize this goal it will be necessary to describe the proper way to take death into account, and the value of doing so, according to both Kierkegaard and the samurai.

Kierkegaard: the thought of death In ‘At a Graveside’ Kierkegaard makes use of the imagined occasion of a funeral to remind each individual reader of death. One might think it is unnecessary to remind people of such a thing, but Kierkegaard clearly disagrees. He states that humans ‘want to shove away the thought of death and shove death out of life as much as possible. Men desire to live as if there were no death.’6 According to Kierkegaard, by failing to think about death one is likely to live a life of frivolity. It is not just any thought of death, however, that can help one to avoid this kind of life. Death must be thought of earnestly. Kierkegaard claims, ‘the thought of death gives the earnest person the right momentum in life and the right goal toward which he directs his momentum’ (1993, p. 83). Before one can understand the effect that the earnest thought of death can have on one’s life, one must first understand what is involved in thinking earnestly about death. Kierkegaard offers four aspects of this earnest thinking, which one might consider under the generic subheadings: Making death one’s own, Awareness of the certainty, Remembrance of the uncertainty, and Management of fear. Corresponding to each of these aspects is a possible way in which one might fall short of the life achieved through earnestly thinking about death by giving in to a ‘mood’. Making death one’s own. When considering death, Kierkegaard believes that each individual should consider his or her own death. It is not enough simply to believe that death is ‘the human condition’ (p. 73). While this way of thinking about death is not incorrect, there is a deficiency in thinking of death only in this way. Kierkegaard claims that in order to have a complete view of death, it is important to realize that each person dies as an individual, not as a group, and surely not as humankind (p. 86). Failure to realize this fact results in the mood of

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objectivity towards death. Kierkegaard uses Epicurus as an example of someone in this mood. Although perhaps not a fair criticism, he claims that Epicurus is willing to think of death in general terms, but it seems that he would rather not ‘think about and take into account his own death’ (p. 73). To take into account only an abstract idea of death, without sincerely applying it to oneself, does not only display an incomplete view of death, it displays a lack of earnestness according to Kierkegaard. It is only a trivial contemplation of death unless ‘you are thinking it as your lot’ (p. 75). Because every individual must meet his or her death alone, Kierkegaard emphasizes appropriation as the first aspect of earnestly thinking about death. But what is it about death that one must appropriate according to Kierkegaard? Awareness of the certainty. It is the certainty of death that must be appropriated by each individual so that each individual thinks, ‘it is certain that I will die’. After birth, of all of the possible events in life there is only one that must take place. When Kierkegaard states ‘death is the only certainty’ he points out something that most people claim to be aware of, or at least acknowledge from time to time in casual conversation. Given his extended consideration of the mood of objectivity, Kierkegaard clearly believes that people are routinely out of touch with the reality that their own death is certain, but he even doubts that they maintain a genuine awareness of death’s certainty in general. How, he wonders, can people be so dismayed when faced with an instance of the death of another? After all, it should come as no surprise when the only event regarded as certain comes to pass. Even if one fails to adhere to the first aspect of earnestly thinking about death, it might still be possible to avoid the mood of excessive sorrow at the death of a loved one by realizing and maintaining awareness that death is certain for every individual. If one is truly aware of the certainty of death, then while one might feel some sorrow, for example, when coming to terms with the impossibility of fulfilling the desire for the company of the deceased, one will already be prepared for this impossibility. Prepared in this way, such a loss cannot become ‘soul-destroying’ (p. 75). However, beyond simply using the awareness of the certainty of death to prevent the mood of excessive sorrow, it is important to understand that Kierkegaard demands that this awareness be applied to one’s own death in order to avoid falling into the mood of objectivity towards death. Remembrance of the uncertainty. To the awareness of the certainty of one’s own death, Kierkegaard adds the remembrance of death’s uncertainty. If what is certain is that one will die, what is uncertain is when one will die. Death will come at its leisure and no one can know for sure

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when this will be. Kierkegaard states that death ‘can at any moment be at hand ... it is very advisable for you to bear this in mind’ (pp. 100–1). Unless each individual remembers the possibility of their own death at any moment, it is possible to fall into the mood of postponement. This is the mood of one who, feeling secure in the idea that there is a long life ahead, puts off thinking of his or her own death (1948, p. 42; 1993, pp. 79–80, 91) It may well be the case that one has many years left, but there is only a very imprecise indication of longevity in this life. Neither youth, nor health, nor wealth, nor any other conditions of life are factors that accurately determine when one will die (1948, p. 41; 1993, pp. 79, 91). Sometimes people are struck down in youth by disease or a car accident. If one is deceived by any of life’s conditions into putting off the thought of death, the notion of death’s uncertainty can be used as a reminder that death is always a relevant issue, regardless of conditions. Kierkegaard believes that the best way to remember the uncertainty of death is to treat each day as though it were the last. He states, ‘If death says, “Perhaps this very day”, then earnestness says, “Let it perhaps be today or not”, but I say, “This very day” ’ (1993, p. 85). Management of fear. Even with the awareness of the certainty and the remembrance of the uncertainty of death, Kierkegaard still seems to believe that one can fail to think earnestly about death. This failure is the result of having an inappropriate fear of death (p. 81). There are two ways, or moods, in which fear of death can be understood as inappropriate. One can either have an excessive fear of death, or one can have an insufficient fear of death. While a more comprehensive description of these two moods can be found later in this chapter, it is important to recognize here that their danger lies in the fact that they might prevent the individual from realizing the benefits for life of being aware of the certainty and remembering the uncertainty of his or her own death (1967, p. 334; 1993, p. 98). It is only by managing fear, that is, walking the narrow path between these two moods, that it is possible to put the first three aspects of the earnest thought of death to work in one’s life. What remains to be determined is how exactly Kierkegaard envisages the life of one who holds together these four aspects and earnestly thinks about death. In his journals Kierkegaard states, ‘as the captive animal paces around its cage every day for the sake of movement or measures the length of its chain, so I measure the length of my chain every day by turning to the thought of death – for the sake of movement and in order to endure living’ (1967, p. 336). What he refers to as the endurance of life in this passage Kierkegaard calls in ‘At a Graveside’,

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‘the retroactive power in life’ (p. 99), and he claims that attaining this power is the subject of this discourse. It is by earnestly thinking about death that one can in some sense assume the point of view of oneself as dead while remaining alive. George Connell points out that it is perhaps incorrect to speak of death as having a point of view, rather than as being the absence of a point of view. However, the expression ‘point of view of oneself as dead’ in the present context takes into account this very absence. That is, this expression refers to the viewing of one’s life while considering one’s impending lack of life. Connell refers to this view of life as ‘anticipatory non-recollection’.7 From the point of view of oneself as dead one not only has the power to reflect on life and to change the way in which one lives, but this viewpoint also allows a different understanding of how life ought to be lived. The understanding provided by assuming the point of view of oneself as dead is that, because life is limited and no amount of time is guaranteed, it is important to make good use of whatever time remains (Kierkegaard, 1993, pp. 84–5). Making good use of an indeterminate amount of time means realizing that there is no place in life for concern about accidental (or incidental) matters. An incidental (accidental) matter is any matter that, because it focuses primarily on what is at stake, requires some certain amount of time to address or complete. Kierkegaard states, ‘with regard to the accidental, the length of time is the decisive factor’. It seems absurd to get involved too seriously with incidental matters that one might not be around to see to their conclusion. As opposed to a life concerned with such incidental matters, Kierkegaard recommends a life that focuses primarily on how one is going about whatever one might be doing, regardless of the time that may or may not be left. He claims, ‘earnestness, therefore, becomes the living of each day as if it were the last and also the first in a long life, and the choosing of work that does not depend on whether one is granted a lifetime to complete it well or only a brief time to have begun it well’ (p. 96). It is only through thinking earnestly about death that one is able to gain the retroactive power that is necessary to eliminate incidental concerns and alter one’s life.

The samurai: death in mind The development of the samurai notion of a life focused by death can be seen in the course of their writings over centuries of warfare. However, it is only after almost 100 years of isolation and peace that this notion receives its most thorough and explicit treatments. Perhaps

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the most significant of these can be found in Tsunetomo Yamamoto’s (1659–1719) Hagakure or In the Shadow of Leaves. A loyal samurai from a clan in southern Japan Yamamoto dictated this extensive work while living as a Buddhist monk after his retirement. In the second chapter of Hagakure, Yamamoto expands on his famous claim that ‘the Way of the Samurai is found in death’,8 when he states that ‘the Way of the Samurai is, morning after morning, the practice of death, considering whether it will be here or be there, imagining the most sightly way of dying, and putting one’s mind firmly in death’ (p. 73). Yamamoto and other samurai agree that unless death is kept in mind, one will not be able to live properly. In his Bud¯oshoshinshu¯ or The Primary Essential-Mind of the Warrior, Yuzan Daidoji (1639–1730), a lifelong ronin (samurai without a master) with a general interest in the state of the samurai class, claims, ‘a mind that is negligent and forgetful of death will beget a lack of prudence’.9 It is important to notice, however, that one must realize certain characteristics of death, and relate to death in certain ways, in order for life to be properly influenced by keeping death in mind. The samurai consider four aspects of keeping death in mind in this properly life-altering sense that are roughly equivalent to the four aspects described in the section on Kierkegaard above. Here we will explain each of these aspects according to the samurai, and then depict the life that results from keeping death in mind in this way. Making death one’s own. Despite the fact that both Yamamoto and Daidoji seem to spend much of their time emphasizing the consideration of death in general, they both clearly see the importance of each individual’s realization of his or her own death. In the context of discussing other aspects of keeping death in mind in the right way, the individualistic language these samurai authors use demonstrates the importance they see in this realization. For example, Yamamoto claims that ‘every day without fail one should consider himself as dead’ (p. 164), and Daidoji states that one who ‘has not kept death constantly in mind ... but, hearing of the death of another, finds it merely vexing, and thinks that he himself should be able to exist in the world forever. His own death will be tainted with deep greed and craving for life’ (p. 50). Awareness of the certainty. Yamamoto states, ‘meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily’ (p. 164). This meditation is necessary in order to prevent people from behaving as though death is not coming for them. If one never, or only occasionally, considers the inevitability of death, it is easy to become so involved in daily affairs that one forgets, or fails to realize, that life will ultimately end in death. It

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does not matter ‘whether people be of high or low birth, rich or poor, old or young, enlightened or confused, they are all alike in that they will one day die’ (p. 75). With a daily reminder of this fact of existence, the samurai believe that the individual is taking an important step toward viewing his or her daily affairs in the proper light. However, the awareness that life will end, brought about by regular meditation on inevitable death, must be maintained in conjunction with the following aspect of keeping death in mind in order to achieve this new way of looking at things. Remembrance of the uncertainty. In addition to meditating on the inevitability of one’s own death, the samurai strive to remember that one could die at any time (Daidoji, p. 19; Yamamoto, p. 33).10 It is in an attempt to remind his clan’s young retainers of this latter fact that Yamamoto quotes a saying that goes, ‘“step from under the eaves and you’re a dead man. Leave the gate and the enemy is waiting”’ (p. 164). Because one might die at any time, the samurai believe it is foolish to behave as though one has many years ahead. Yamamoto states, ‘while knowing that we will die someday, we think that all the others will die before us and that we will be the last to go. Death seems a long way off. Is this not shallow thinking?’ (p. 75). One may in fact continue to live for quite a while, but there is no way of knowing whether or not this will be the case. Without this knowledge, the samurai recommend viewing each day as the last opportunity to address one’s responsibilities (Daidoji, p. 19). The proper way to go about addressing these responsibilities, assuming that today is one’s last, remains to be explained. Management of fear. Even if the individual remains always cognizant of the inevitability and the ever-present possibility of his or her own death, the samurai still believe that life might not be affected in the proper way by focusing on just these aspects of keeping death in mind. One must also resolve oneself towards death (Daidoji, pp. 48–50; Yamamoto, pp. 33–4, 70, 164).11 That is, one must prepare oneself to die and even pursue a daily course of action that might lead to one’s own death. In one of his more extreme accounts of the samurai resolution towards death Yamamoto states that the samurai ‘plunges recklessly towards an irrational death’ (p. 30). His more mainstream account is that the samurai, if faced with a situation in which death seems possible or even likely, will not avoid this situation, but will knowingly persevere (pp. 17, 45). While the first account makes it sound as though the samurai should throw away his life on a whim, the second suggests that one’s life should be easily relinquished, but only when the situation calls for it. Whichever account one considers, the samurai believe that this resolution

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towards death is important in order to avoid the fear of death. It is this fear that can prevent one from living the life that is appropriate for a samurai. Once the fear of dying has been overcome, a great deal can be learned about life from the other aspects of keeping death in mind. But what exactly are the life-lessons that result from meditating on death as the samurai do? The samurai believe that with the recognition that death will take place and that it will occur at an unknown time comes the recognition that time is limited, longevity is not guaranteed, and life should not to be wasted on self-indulgent trivialities (Daidoji, pp. 19–21; Yamamoto, pp. 33–44). Yamamoto states, ‘it will not do to think in such a way and be negligent. Insofar as death is always at one’s door, one should make sufficient effort and act quickly’ (p. 75). Rather than wasting an inevitably limited time trying to satisfy trivial personal desires, whatever time is left should be spent addressing one’s responsibilities.12 While the samurai recommend keeping death in mind as an aid in remembering the importance of presently attending to responsibilities, they also keep death in mind, as previously stated, to help them understand the proper way in which to go about addressing these responsibilities. Because the time of death is always unknown, it is also impossible to know whether or not one will be able to successfully or completely address a given responsibility. Yamamoto claims that ‘the Way of the samurai should be in being aware that you do not know what is going to happen next ... Victory and defeat are matters of the temporary force of circumstances. The way of avoiding shame is different. It is simply in death’ (1979, p. 30). While one cannot control what one accomplishes, one can control how one goes about trying to accomplish things (Daidoji, p. 50). Because an individual should only be held accountable for what is controllable, the samurai conclude that it is less important to complete a project than it is to strive diligently to complete it. Yamamoto states, ‘to say that dying without reaching one’s aim is to die a dog’s death is the frivolous way of sophisticates. When pressed with the choice of life or death, it is not necessary to gain one’s aim’ (1979, p. 17). By keeping death in mind every day, it is possible to live a life focused on one’s responsibilities, but with the understanding that the proper way to address life’s responsibilities involves simply putting forth one’s best effort and being free from excessive concern as to whether certain ends are realized. Yamamoto asserts, ‘if by setting one’s heart right every morning and evening, one is able to live as though his body were

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already dead, he gains freedom in the Way. His whole life will be without blame, and he will succeed in his calling’ (p. 18). Having completed the exposition of the respective approaches to life through death of both Kierkegaard and the samurai, some concerns about the coherence of these approaches probably remain. For example, why should time become precious with the realization that life could end at any time? More generally, why should Kierkegaard or the samurai believe that the subjective acceptance of, and relation to, certain facts about death should promote some ways to approach life and not others? Concerns of this nature must be addressed if we are to reach a more complete understanding of their respective approaches to life through death and their motivations for advocating these approaches. Despite any unresolved issues, the presentation of their accounts of life approached through death given here should provide the basic understanding that will be necessary to proceed into the comparative portion of this chapter.

Earnestness or mood: a Kierkegaardian view of the samurai Evidently there is a great deal of agreement, but perhaps there is also some disagreement, between Kierkegaard and the samurai on the subject of approaching life through death. Both note the certainty and the uncertainty of death. Both emphasize not only the importance of acknowledging these characteristics of death but also some of the same potential problems of failing to make this acknowledgment. Kierkegaard and the samurai even seem to envisage the same kind of life for the individual who approaches life in the way that they advocate, that is, a life concerned more with the how of whatever one might be doing than with the attempted result or accomplishment. Given all these similarities, it would be difficult for Kierkegaard to accuse the samurai of adhering to one of his proscribed moods. Even in the case of the samurai’s lack of an explicit consideration of the appropriation of death, parallel to Kierkegaard’s, the individualistic language of the samurai makes it clear that they avoid the mood of objectivity towards death. It is not until one compares Kierkegaard and the samurai on the aspect of the management of fear that a potentially telling difference stands out. In this part of the chapter I aim both to determine whether this difference is substantial enough to justify the claim that Kierkegaard could accuse the samurai of being in a wrong mood, and to explore what this determination can teach about Kierkegaard and the samurai.

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In order to reach the desired conclusions, it will be helpful to separate this section into three distinct subsections: Difference, Foundational assumptions, and Resolution.

Difference The only significant difference between Kierkegaard and the samurai on the subject of approaching life through death concerns the recommendations for managing the fear of death. With only one important difference in the basic structure of using death to alter life, the kind of life brought about by this structure is, according to Kierkegaard, almost interchangeable with the kind of life brought about by this structure as presented by Yamamoto, Daidoji, and other samurai authors. Despite this seeming interchangeability, however, this one important difference concerning the management of fear leads to behaviours in the life of a samurai that Kierkegaard would probably not condone. It is these behaviours that make it seem likely that Kierkegaard would accuse the samurai of being in a wrong mood toward death. In order to see how this difference can lead to these behaviours, one must first understand exactly what the difference consists of. Kierkegaard considers two moods with respect to the fear of death that must be avoided by properly managing this fear. He spends a great deal of time in ‘At a Graveside’ considering the mood of the insufficient fear of death. This mood is exemplified by the use of metaphorical descriptions of death to mitigate death’s frightening nature by personifying it, or by depicting it as a kind of sleep or transition (pp. 80–1, 98–9). Kierkegaard believes that these mitigating metaphors, in removing fear from the thought of death, can lead to a situation in which life is more feared than death. The danger in this is that a person might eventually come to desire the ‘peace’ of death more than the troubles of life (pp. 81–2); and this warped desire might lead eventually to suicide. If death is to be thought of earnestly, it should be feared instead of longed for. The mood of the insufficient fear of death is also exemplified by one who ‘wants to conspire with death’ (p. 88) in order to attack an unsatisfactory or unsatisfying life. In this case, the idea of death as a great equalizer might provide consolation for a demonstrable inferiority in some facet of life (pp. 86–7). A sufficient fear of death will counterbalance the desire to turn on life when it seems unfair. According to Kierkegaard, the use of the thought of death for attacking life, like the use of mitigating metaphors, is a perversion of the first three aspects of earnestly thinking about death. The thought of death is recommended for enhancing one’s

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life, not negating it. Kierkegaard claims that ‘earnestness does not scowl but is reconciled with life and knows how to fear death’ (p. 88). Kierkegaard also acknowledges the mood of excessive fear of death. This mood describes a situation in which, paralyzed by the first three aspects of thinking earnestly about death, one is unable to continue participating in life’s activities (pp. 83–4). Although in the mood of excessive fear of death (like Daidoji’s monk in the following paragraph) these aspects are not intentionally misrepresented or misused, Kierkegaard seems to see the same basic problem with this mood that he has with being insufficiently afraid of death. That is, that in this mood, the individual retreats from life and, therefore, is unable to reap the benefits for life of being aware of the certainty and remembering the uncertainty of one’s own death. Without maintaining an appropriate fear of death, that is, a fear that is neither excessive nor insufficient, life cannot be affected in the way that Kierkegaard envisages. The samurai, on the other hand, seem interested in managing fear by eliminating it altogether. In their presentation of the resolution towards death they do not explicitly consider the issue of having too little fear of death. The samurai believe that failing to resolve oneself towards death can have unfortunate effects on the life of an individual who adheres to the other aspects of keeping death in mind. As an example of these effects, Daidoji tells the story of the monk who lived in constant fear of his own death. This fear is the result of the monk’s meditation on and recollection of the inevitability and ever-present possibility of his own death; and because of this fear the monk is unable to address life’s responsibilities (p. 21). The samurai agree with Kierkegaard that if one is unable to engage in life, one cannot reap the benefits for life of keeping death in mind. What the monk lacks is resolution towards death. The samurai believe that it is only by becoming resolved towards one’s own death that fear of death can be overcome, and the proper effect on life of keeping death in mind can be achieved (Daidoji, pp. 49–50; Yamamoto, 1979, p. 38). While the samurai resolution towards death certainly eliminates what Kierkegaard would recognize as an excessive fear of death, it actually seems to encourage what he would consider to be an insufficient fear of death. Because the samurai differ from Kierkegaard in that they do not acknowledge the possibility of such a thing as having too little fear of death, it seems that Kierkegaard might here part company with their approach to life through death. Unlike other apparent differences in the samurai notion of the value for life of keeping death in mind, this lack of acknowledgement could suggest a fundamental disparity

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between the samurai and Kierkegaard, particularly concerning the value attributed to life itself (although as I will argue later, this does not actually turn out to be the case). Kierkegaard, in his journals, considers life as meaningful suffering, the endurance of which is necessary in order to demonstrate to God one’s longing for eternal life (1967, p. 443). The samurai, on the other hand – who perhaps not incidentally are without an explicit notion of eternal life – do not believe in the necessity of enduring life. Rather, they tend to think that life should be cast off easily (Yamamoto, 1979, pp. 17, 30, 109). While this relative ease, which one might mistakenly see as an eagerness for death, may not appear overly problematic for a Kierkegaardian approach, consider how it manifests itself in the samurai practice of seppuku. Seppuku is a ritualized form of suicide that samurai perform for various reasons that may, at first glance, seem trivial to Western observers. However, this sort of behaviour is not without precedent in Western history. As Kierkegaard points out in his journals, the Stoics also reserved the right to take their own lives for apparently trivial reasons (1967, p. 333). However, Kierkegaard goes on to condemn this Stoic practice. Even though he acknowledges the similarity between Stoicism and his understanding of Christianity in that they both make ‘life intensive with the thought of death’ (p. 332), Kierkegaard claims that Stoic reliance on suicide is really just a sign of cowardice in the face of life. This fear of life is precisely the danger he sees in having an insufficient fear of death. Fleeing life, whether by suicide or other less permanent measures, especially when it is about to become most difficult or undesirable can only be avoided by having some fear of death, albeit fear of an appropriate nature. Because the samurai, like the Stoics, are so willing to turn on life and embrace death, it seems that Kierkegaard might accuse them of being in the mood of the insufficient fear of death. After considering this singular troubling discrepancy between Kierkegaard and the samurai, it may seem that despite the great similarities between these thinkers on the subject of approaching life through death, the respective lives that they recommend are ultimately too different to allow any meaningful conclusions to be drawn from their comparison. Perhaps, however, there are other factors that should be taken into consideration when assessing the significance of this difference and determining whether or not Kierkegaard would accuse the samurai of viewing death while in a wrong mood. Furthermore, even if Kierkegaard would accuse the samurai of being in a wrong mood, this does not rule out the possibility of learning something from both their

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great similarity and their divergence. With these thoughts in mind, it is time to turn our attention to the assumptions that make up the foundations of their enquiries into death in an effort to understand why the difference concerning the management of fear might not be as problematic as it at first appears to be.

Foundational assumptions Although neither Kierkegaard nor the samurai clearly identify certain key assumptions as factors in their notions of approaching life through death, in both cases there are assumptions on which these notions stand. What is more, the difference between these respective foundational assumptions is directly responsible for the difference between the ways in which each recommends managing the fear of death. Despite particular differences in assumptions, however, the form that they take is remarkably similar, and it is this similarity that will ultimately mitigate the sting of the difference between Kierkegaard and the samurai on the subject of the value of life and the practice of suicide. In order to see this similarity and, later, to explain how it mitigates this sting, it will first be necessary to point out and critically examine their assumptions, describing along the way how the difference in these assumptions leads to the relevant difference between their approaches to life through death. Connell claims that the primary assumption at the root of Kierkegaard’s recommendation of the thought of death is, not surprisingly, the existence of the Christian God.13 This claim is probably accurate given Kierkegaard’s theological interests and some of the statements he makes in ‘At a Graveside’. For example, Kierkegaard says, ‘the person who is without God in the world soon becomes bored with himself – and expresses this haughtily by being bored with all life, but the person who is in fellowship with God indeed lives with the one whose presence gives infinite significance to even the most insignificant’ (p. 78). Since Kierkegaard begins ‘At a Graveside’ in the context of belief in the Christian God, he is in some sense committed to certain concepts about finding significance in life and certain prohibitions on taking one’s own life or throwing it away recklessly. From the outset, he has a Christian agenda – to explain how one can live as God would want. While much of his presentation of the value of thinking earnestly about death might seem to be independent of theological considerations, in reality, what Kierkegaard is recommending can only be compelling to one who already wants to live a Godly life. Therefore, what might be

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seen as a shortcoming14 of Kierkegaard’s description of thinking earnestly about death is not that, phenomenologically speaking, it misses some important fact of death. Rather, it is simply that the way of life he derives from the earnest thought of death does not follow for one who does not first make Kierkegaard’s assumption. Without this assumption it is easy to see how issues or questions might arise, such as, ‘why should the prospect of the “all is over” galvanize the self into action?’15 Like Kierkegaard, the samurai also begin with the assumption that there is a right way to live before making the recommendation to keep death in mind in order to learn how this life is possible. However, the samurai do not rely on any belief in the existence of a supernatural being to provide them with an idea of the proper pursuits in life. Their assumption is that one ought to serve one’s daimyo¯ (feudal lord) to the best of one’s ability, but it must be stated that the samurai notion of serving one’s daimyo¯ is very broad and it even includes suicide as an act of service (Yamamoto, 1979, pp. 18, 21, 169). While there are very obvious differences in founding one’s approach to life through death on the idea of serving a daimyo¯ rather than on the idea of serving the Christian God, for the purposes of this comparison, it seems both possible and reasonable to understand the relationship between a samurai and his daimyo¯ in the same way that Kierkegaard understands his relationship with God. Just as ‘At a Graveside’ is meant to explain how one can live as God would want one to, In the Shadow of Leaves, for instance, is meant to explain how one can live in the way that will be most pleasing to one’s daimyo¯ (Yamamoto, 2002, p. 10; 1979, pp. 168–9). Furthermore, just as the earnest thought of death can only bring about a Godly life for one who already wants to live a Godly life, keeping death in mind in the right way can only bring about a life of dedicated service to one’s daimyo¯ for one who first values such a life. Finally, as in Kierkegaard’s situation, given that the sort of life the samurai arrive at by keeping death in mind in the right way is dependent upon the samurai assumption, it follows that this sort of life need not be accepted by one who does not, or cannot, make this assumption. Without the samurai assumption, keeping death in mind as the samurai recommend might not be very meaningful. Even though neither Kierkegaard nor the samurai make a point of explicitly acknowledging their assumptions as key factors in deriving specific ways of life from their particular approaches to life through death, once these assumptions are identified it becomes clear what their motivations are in looking to death for guidance in life. Kierkegaard is motivated by a desire to eliminate all concerns that are not relevant to being a Christian from individuals who would be Christians. The samurai,

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on the other hand, are motivated by a desire to eliminate all concerns that are not relevant to being a samurai from individual samurai (Yamamoto, 2002, pp. xiv–xv). With comparable assumptions about how to live and similar motivations for turning to death, and given some remarkably similar aspects of their respective approaches to life through death, it is no surprise that Kierkegaard and the samurai have so much in common when considering the lives that result from each of their approaches. Given the potentially excessive enthusiasm for death on the part of the samurai, exemplified by the practice of seppuku, however, it is clear that these lives are also clearly distinguishable. What remains to be demonstrated is how awareness of both the difference in the assumptions which lead to these lives, that is, Christian doctrine as opposed to the will of one’s daimyo¯, and the overall similarity in the form of these assumptions can lessen the differences between Kierkegaard and the samurai on the value of life and suicide.

Resolution After this enquiry into the similarities and differences between the respective approaches to life through death of Kierkegaard and the samurai, it is now time to ask whether Kierkegaard would accuse the samurai of being in a wrong mood. In the process of coming to an answer, it will be important to emphasize what these thinkers might learn from each other’s approaches. Of course, the most instructive area to consider in this vein is not the points at which they meet, but the points at which they diverge. Having demonstrated why Kierkegaard might be critical of the samurai approach to life through death, it seems only fair to consider why the samurai might criticize Kierkegaard’s notion of life with the earnest thought of death. Despite its focus on difference, this consideration will actually lead the discussion in the direction of what will ultimately be an overall agreement between Kierkegaard and the samurai on the subject of living with death. It may be that the samurai intentionally avoid discussion of having too little fear of death because they believe that the potential dangers, if they should even be called dangers, of having an insufficient fear of death are outweighed by the potential dangers of allowing for any fear of death at all. That is, perhaps the samurai believe that it is better to hate life and to die than to risk being paralyzed in life by the fear of death. If this interpretation of the samurai is correct, then they would likely criticize Kierkegaard for his excessively lenient account of managing

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the fear of death. Because he allows for some sort of fear of death he provides an avenue of escape for cowardice in the face of death, along which one can avoid true resolution towards death and even some of one’s responsibilities (Yamamoto, 1979, p. 17). For example, Kierkegaard’s understanding of the appropriate fear of death seems to exclude the possibility of suicide, which in a samurai might make it difficult to perform seppuku although this might in fact be the samurai’s responsibility. While Kierkegaard might teach the samurai that the only point of thinking about death at all is to enhance a life that must exist in order to be enhanced, the samurai might teach Kierkegaard that in order for life to be truly enhanced by keeping death in mind, one must do more than just think about death, one must genuinely be willing to die. Despite the lessons that can be learned from studying the difference between Kierkegaard and the samurai, by returning to the examination of responsibilities we can see that Kierkegaard and the samurai are really not so different after all. Both Kierkegaard and the samurai are responsible for their actions before their respective lords. For the follower of God, these responsibilities do not include suicide, but for the retainer of a particular daimyo¯, they may well include seppuku. What is interesting to notice is that this difference springs from very similar foundational assumptions. Both responses are rooted in the notion of obedience to one’s lord. Even though Kierkegaard might claim that a daimyo¯ is not worthy of the same sort of discipleship as is God, it is doubtful that he would accuse the samurai of being in a wrong mood, when their motivations are the same as a Christian’s – adhering to the will of their lord. It is this adherence to the will of a lord that distinguishes the samurai from the Stoic and shows that Kierkegaard’s criticism of the latter is not necessarily applicable to the former despite their similarity in practice. In an effort to provide further support for the claim that Kierkegaard and the samurai are remarkably in line concerning the approach to life through death despite the difference exemplified by the samurai practice of seppuku, there are other particular similarities that should be pointed out. First, it is not necessarily the case that the samurai have no appreciation of the dangers of having an insufficient fear of death. It is simply that they do not explicitly discuss this issue. Nor do they consistently recommend suicide without reason or motive. This suggests that the samurai perhaps have an unspoken notion of avoiding the insufficient fear of death, and if this is the case, the difference between the samurai and Kierkegaard exemplified by samurai willingness to commit suicide might actually be seen as a difference in degree and not in kind.

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The second similarity that should be pointed out is that in his consideration of martyrdom, Kierkegaard speaks in language that recalls samurai discussions of their willingness to die for their daimyo¯. Kierkegaard actually claims that one should be willing to sacrifice oneself for reasons that might not be apparent to onlookers: Let us now think of a Christian witness. For the sake of this doctrine, he ventures into battle with the powers that be who have his life in their hands and who must see in him a troublemaker – this will probably cost him his life. At the same time his contemporaries, with whom he has no immediate dispute but who are onlookers, find it ludicrous to risk death for the sake of such fatuousness. Here there is life to lose and truly no honor and admiration to gain! Yet to be abandoned in this way, only in this way to be abandoned, is Christian self-denial!16 Here it could even be argued that Kierkegaard is more extreme than the samurai. Although he is not recommending suicide, he is recommending a willingness to die for no apparent gain. At least the samurai believe honour can be gained by dying for their lord. These final similarities, in addition to the closeness in their foundational assumptions, lead to the conclusion that there is no substantial difference between Kierkegaard and the samurai on the issue of a life approached through death.17

Notes 1. Søren Kierkegaard, Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing, trans. Douglas Steere (New York: Harpers, 1948) p. 41. Further references to this work will be given in the text. 2. Søren Kierkegaard, Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions, trans. and ed. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1993) p. 102. Further references to this work will be given in the text. 3. Edwin O. Reischauer, Japan: the Story of a Nation (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1990) pp. 90–100; Finn Hauberg Mortensen, Kierkegaard Made in Japan (Gylling, Denmark: Odense University Press, 1996) p. 9. 4. For a specific account of Japanese interest in Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions, see Jun Hashimoto, ‘On Japanese Resources (Translation of the Work and Research Literature)’, in Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook 2000, ed. Niels Jorgen Cappelorn, Hermann Deuser and Jon Stewart (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2000). 5. See Mortensen, pp. 41, 72, 88, 100, 116, 163. 6. Søren Kierkegaard, Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, vols 1 and 4, trans. and ed. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana

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7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13. 14.

15. 16. 17.

University Press, 1967) p. 335. Further references to this work will be given in the text. George Connell, ‘Four Funerals: the Experience of Time by the Side of the Grave’, in International Kierkegaard Commentary, 10, ed. Robert L. Perkins (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 2006) p. 434. Tsunetomo Yamamoto, Hagakure: the Book of the Samurai, trans. William Scott Wilson (New York: Kodansha International, 1979) p. 17. Further references to this work will be given in the text. Yuzan Daidoji, Budoshoshinshu: the Warrior’s Primer of Daidoji Yuzan, ed. Jack Vaughn and trans. William Scott Wilson (Burbank, California: Ohara Publications, 1984) p. 20. Further references to this work will be given in the text. For similar claims see Shigetoki Hojo, ‘The Message of Master Gokurakuji’, in Ideals of the Samurai, ed. Gregory N. Lee and trans. William Scott Wilson (Burbank, California: Ohara Publications, 1982) pp. 37 and 43. For similar claims see Mototada Torii, ‘The Last Statement of Torii Mototada’, in Ideals of the Samurai, ed. Gregory N. Lee and trans. William Scott Wilson (Burbank, California: Ohara Publications, 1982) pp. 121–2. Tsunetomo Yamamoto, Bushido: the Way of the Samurai [Hagakure], ed. Justin Stone and trans. Minoru Tanaka (New York: Square One Publishers, 2002) pp. 57–8. See also, Daidoji, pp. 19–21; Yamamoto, 1979, pp. 33–4. Connell, p. 436. See Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1996) pp. 405, 407, 412–13; John D. Caputo, ‘Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and the Foundering of Metaphysics’, in International Kierkegaard Commentary, 6, ed. Robert L. Perkins (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1993) pp. 201–3. Connell, p. 436. Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love, trans. and ed. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1995) pp. 196–7. I should like to thank Kelly Becker, Richard Hayes, Gordon Marino, Iain Thomson, and William Scott Wilson, as well as the Office of Graduate Studies at the University of New Mexico, the Hong Kierkegaard Library, the Kierkegaard Society in Japan, and the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy, for various sorts of assistance in the course of writing this chapter. I would also like to express my deep gratitude to Andrew Burgess for his invaluable and tireless work as my adviser.

9 Kierkegaard and Nishida: Ways to the Non-Substantial Eiko Hanaoka

The substantial in Western thought European philosophy, from the ancient Greeks to Hegel, is a philosophy that has at its centre the idea of a substantial absolute. Hegel’s Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1817) is a typical example. In this work the Christian God is conceived of as a substantial entity spontaneously unfolding itself through history. In almost all components of this tradition up to and including Hegel the idea of the Christian substantial God as well as Platonic forms are the central philosophical themes. However, with the appearance of Nietzsche (1844–1900) and his proclamation that God is dead, or that we killed God, the Christian God and Platonic philosophy as the two great substantial pillars of European culture began to crumble. Because of this, European philosophy – in which the summit was located in God, essence, and form – descended into nihilism, just as Nietzsche had predicted. However, even before Nietzsche, there were critics of this form of philosophy. David Hume, for example, is a representative of an empiricist non-substantial way of thinking. Hume, who wrote during the Enlightenment, acknowledged neither the reality of the self nor God. In a similar way George Berkeley, Hume’s contemporary, rejected the existence of Platonic or abstract ideas and also the material orld (though not God). The other major British empiricist, John Locke from the seventeenth century, did not go as far as either Berkeley or Hume. This is because, although he was an empiricist in many ways, Locke nevertheless acknowledged the notion of abstract ideas (a notion closely related to Platonic forms), the being of a substance that existed beyond perception, and the existence of a substantial God.

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Although each of these philosophers, in his own way, clearly rejects aspects of substantial ways of thinking, this simple rejection is not enough to make clear the true relation between the self and the world. This is because making explicit this relation requires acknowledging an openness in the dimension of the origin of both substantial and nonsubstantial ways of thinking. Another philosopher, Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), who lived before Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, can give the superficial impression that he is also a representative of the non-substantial way of thinking. However, he tried to regard the mental in human beings as a sort of physical necessity based on the idea of mechanical causality. This also depends on substantialist notions, though here the substance is materialistic. Contrary to both the traditional substantial way of thinking and to the varieties of non-substantial or apparent non-substantial thinking found in Nietzsche, the British empiricists, and Hobbes, I want to try to understand the dimensions of nature, human beings, and the transcendental from the perspective of the openness that exists at the origin of these two types of thinking. This perspective can be found in the works of two philosophers who offer a turning point from the old substantial philosophy to a new existential way of thinking and different degrees of non-substantial philosophy. These are Kierkegaard and the Japanese philosopher Nishida (1870–1945). Kierkegaard proposes an existential way of thinking in which an individual is separated from the attachment to his or her own ego and tries, in despair, to confront the substantial God as absolute being. Or, again, in such separation the individual, in anxiety, confronts relative nothingness (or the nothing, as he termed it) as the reverse side of relative being. Nishida, on the other hand, works out what he calls ‘the place logic of absolute nothingness’. Absolute nothingness in Nishida, as we shall see, means the absolute negation of the substantial or of the way of thinking that is based on the subject-object scheme.

The non-substantial in Kierkegaard’s thought When we see the non-substantial way of thinking in Kierkegaard as a whole, two characteristics are immediately evident, namely, the idea of pursuing the self as existence and the idea of God as a relation. These ideas, however, only become possible if the self and God are understood as independent from each other. The Christian and Platonic philosophy in Europe saw not only God or the absolute as the substantial, but also the self as substantial.

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Moreover, it regarded the self or soul of each individual as a central observer in the cosmos, an observer that engaged in objectifying, abstracting, symbolizing, idealizing, and substantiating all things. Kierkegaard, on the other hand, tries to understand the human individual not as the observer or a substantial self, but as the existence who lives together with all things in every happening. For Kierkegaard, the existence that is free from a substantial self lives in a double relation. This is the relation between existence (composed of the infinite and the finite, of the eternal and the temporal, of freedom and necessity) and its own self on the one hand, and the relation between existence and God on the other hand. The starting point in Kierkegaard’s thought does not consist in the Christian God, but rather in the passionate subjectivity of the human individual. His contribution to philosophy lies in the fact that he builds his thought not on the basis of the paradigm of absolute being, but rather on the paradigm of relative nothingness. It should also be noted here that, for Kierkegaard, God is not only the creator of human beings, but also the partner in dialogue with each human being in what Buber later calls the I-thou relationship.1 Now, as an example of a philosopher of life, Nietzsche can be proposed as a typical representative. In his life-philosophy, life is understood as the origin of essence (as in Hegel’s essentialism) and existence (as in Kierkegaard’s existentialism). As mentioned above, Nietzsche predicted that European traditional philosophy as metaphysics would fall into nihilism. Nietzsche’s reasoning for this was that in essentialist European philosophy the central areas of inquiry were always seen to be the Christian God and the Platonic forms. As a result, the events of this world and the individual perspective of each human being were largely neglected, resulting in the negation of both this world and the individual. Moreover, the fact that existential thought since Kierkegaard also could not help but fall into nihilism is, in my view, caused by the paradigm of relative nothingness on which existential thought is built. When essentialist ideas are based on the paradigm of absolute being – like the ideas of the Christian God and Platonic forms – then their removal leads to relative nothingness, which in turn leads to nihilism. Nihilism, however, is founded on the paradigm of nihil (the Latin word for ‘nothing’); the throne of the Christian God or of the absolute is vacant, that is, it is claimed by nihil. In order to overcome nihilism, the nihil must be overcome. Nietzsche advocates the idea of the ‘superman’, someone who can live in the world of eternal recurrence with the will-to-power and the love of destiny. Such a person fills the vacancy left by the absolute with his own revaluation of all values. This approach,

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however, must ultimately fail. This is because it lacks the paradigm of absolute nothingness and it is only in this paradigm, as I shall argue shortly, that the nihil in nihilism can be truly overcome. Nihilism, taken together with relative being, relative nothingness, and absolute being, constitute the four main paradigms found in European philosophy. For now, let us return to Kierkegaard’s critique of the substantialist philosophy. A good example of this is given in the beginning of his book The Sickness unto Death where he rejects Hegel’s essentialism by offering an existential account of the self: A human being is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation that relates itself to itself or is the relation’s relating itself to itself in the relation; the self is not the relation but is the relation’s relating itself to itself. A human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity, in short, a synthesis. A synthesis is a relation between two. Considered in this way, a human being is still not a self.2 This distinction between spirit and the self is the distinction between spirit, which is the core of Hegel’s philosophical system, and the self, which is the core of Kierkegaard’s existentialism. Kierkegaard seeks to illustrate that there is no substantial Hegelian spirit by defining it in terms of an existential self. Further, Kierkegaard tries to maintain here the difference between the infinite and the finite, the temporal and the eternal, and freedom and necessity while nevertheless arguing that there is a relation of synthesis between the two. For Kierkegaard, it is crucial that this synthesis is between two opposing poles. This notion is one that is further explored by Shudo Tsukiyama in Chapter 10. When the human being is understood in terms of a Hegelian-like spirit, then the human being must ultimately be understood within the logic of the absolute spirit (which is the goal at which the individual spirit will ultimately arrive). In this view, the spirit of the human being can only play the role of an intermediary vessel through which the absolute spirit or idea spontaneously unfolds. In such a philosophical system the dignity of the personality of the individual, which can never be exchanged for or merged with another person’s personality, cannot be protected. As Kant argues, the person loses his or her dignity when he or she is regarded as a tool or a means (though Kant, it should be noted, held to a substantialist subject-object view of existence). This loss of personal dignity is just what happens in Hegel’s philosophy. The philosopher who overcomes the subject-object way of thinking is Kierkegaard. He does so by understanding human existence as the self

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which strives (or at least ought to strive) to become a true self for each person. That is, he sees human existence as involving a problem at its very core. It is a problem that involves the attempt to live harmoniously within the synthesis without being biased to only one side of the relation. This is a life-long problem which only disappears with death. This distinction between the self and the spirit concerns the second characteristic of Kierkegaard’s way of thinking, namely, the idea of God as a relation. For Kierkegaard, both the individual’s existence and the Christian God are understood as things that are related to the relation that constitutes the self. Moreover, God is understood as that for which everything is possible. This is because Kierkegaard thinks that the idea that everything is possible necessarily refers to God.3 In addition, his account of God makes it clear that, for Kierkegaard, God is not wholly substantial, but rather relational. In The Concept of Anxiety, for example, God is brought into the discussion within the context of the biblical story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. In this story, God is not described as an absolute substantial God, but rather as a God who talks to an existing individual who lives in freedom. Further, in Philosophical Fragments, which was published in the same year as The Concept of Anxiety, Kierkegaard advocates a new way of defining the concept of truth. This involves the idea that the individual can be presented with the truth that had previously been lost through the individual’s own responsibility. Faith in God, however, is the condition which enables the individual to understand the truth.4 This way of understanding the truth is a rejection of the Platonic doctrine of recollection. The truth, in Kierkegaard is Christian truth, namely, Jesus as the way, the truth, and the life. Of course, the starting point for the idea of truth in Kierkegaard’s thought lies in his claim that ‘truth is subjectivity’.5 However, after the individual acquires the faith necessary to be able to understand the truth, the truth lies not on the side of subjectivity, but on the side of God. In other words, subjectivity is no longer the truth. This point is taken up further in the next chapter. Thus, in Kierkegaard we find a not completely non-substantial way of thinking. What we have is rather a half non-substantial way of thinking. This half non-substantial way of thinking is displayed in his view of the self’s relation to God. But this is not the only place where it appears in Kierkegaard’s philosophy. It is also there in his way of thinking about love as spontaneity and simultaneous responsibility, and in his thinking about anxiety as ‘freedom’s actuality as the possibility before possibility’.6 For Kierkegaard, this half non-substantial way of

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thinking also plays the peculiar role of acting as a go-between between half non-substantial and completely non-substantial ways of thinking.

The non-substantial in Nishida’s thought Let us now see how Nishida deals with these issues. At the core of Nishida’s thought lies the idea of ‘the place logic of absolute nothingness’. For Nishida, ‘the place of absolute nothingness’ means ‘the ground of unqualified infinite openness’.7 Absolute nothingness refers to the absolute negation of the substantial standpoint. The field or place of the absolute nothingness in which every substantial standpoint is negated can subsume all perspectives based on the four main paradigms mentioned above, that is, the paradigms of relative being, relative nothingness, absolute being, and nihilism. This fifth paradigm of absolute nothingness can explain the standpoints of the other four paradigms with the help of love (as agape) and compassion. I believe that these five paradigms can combine Western or European philosophy and Eastern or Japanese philosophy. The concept of absolute nothingness is argued by Nishida to be the foundation of all other paradigms which dominated and continue to dominate the various Western approaches to metaphysics, based as they are on the paradigms of relative being, relative nothingness, absolute being, and nihilism. In the first paradigm, relative being for a framework of thinking is the conceptual core in all thinking about nature. The logic here consists in the three principles of thinking, namely in laws of identity, contradiction, and the excluded middle. Moreover, the individual in this situation is not yet a true self, but remains within himself or herself as an unopened or closed self. Such an individual, who thinks purely on the basis of objective logic, is unable to open himself or herself to the place of absolute nothingness wherein the true self abides. It is also within this paradigm that one can conceive of new physical theories like the theory of relativity, quantum theory and complementarity, and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. In the second paradigm, relative nothingness as a way of thinking underlies existential thinking as found in Kierkegaard. Relative nothingness consists in oneness with relative being. This is because the former is the other side of the latter. Relative nothingness is realized as the nothingness of anxiety and despair in each individual. The individual exists here in detachment, liberated from the closed self, but not yet aware of the true self of the individual. This is because the thinking here is only a half non-substantial way of thinking.

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The third paradigm is that of absolute being. This paradigm, as I have pointed out, is the one that has dominated both traditional Western metaphysics, with its notions of absolute reality and ideal forms, and also Christian theology, with its substantial and objective God. However, since Nietzsche, Platonic idealism and the God of Christian theology have lost any real power over philosophers and thinking has turned towards nihilism, the fourth paradigm. In this way of thinking each individual has neither aim, nor meaning, nor values for which to live. Nevertheless, this paradigm, as is evident with Nietzsche, can play the role of a catalyst with which the individual can break through meaninglessness and become a true self. In such a breaking through the individual can be reborn in the death of the nihilistic self through absorption in religious discipline, literature, arts or sports, all of which can help him or her to acquire a true self. When the individual breaks through the wall of nihilism, even if for an instant, the true self can be realized. This true self is, as the Kyoto philosopher Shinichi Hisamatsu puts it, a ‘formless self’.8 As Eshin Nishimura points out in Chapter 4, for Hisamatsu, this is the self of no-self, something that is only discovered in pure subjectivity. This subjective being is, in Nishimura’s words, no longer an ordinary existence which is opposed to the world but is rather the existence of non-existence. Subjectivity here is something that becomes identified with the objective world. This instance of discovery, which is similar to Kierkegaard’s idea of the moment as an element of eternity, is for Nishida the eternal now in the place of absolute nothingness. This is something, says Nishida, that is often realized by the Zen discipline of zazen or sitting meditation. The infinite openness, which is common to the self and the world, can be opened and realized in Zen practice, even though the self and the world are, in another sense, independent. Nishida originally called this experience of realization in the place of absolute nothingness ‘pure experience’. Unfortunately, many people misunderstood this term as referring to something like the psychological state described by William James. Nishida’s notion, however, is fundamentally different from James’ notion. He therefore changed the term to ‘pure activity’ (like Fichte’s Tathandlung). This then referred to what he called the ‘the place’ of absolute nothingness. Later he tried to make this idea more concrete by calling it the ‘dialectic universal’ which was supposed to be immediate in the form of ‘acting intuition’. Finally, he referred to his original idea of pure experience as either the historically real world or the world of creativity, depending on the degree of non-substantialism he was considering.

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According to Nishida, Zen practice is modified into philosophy in that Zen and philosophy become unified. He began his practice of Zen when he was 26 years old. This shows the early stage at which self-awareness – the core of Zen meditation – was an element in his thinking. For Nishida, however, self-awareness refers not only to self-awareness in Zen Buddhism, but also to religious self-awareness generally. Nishida’s concept here can thus also include religious self-awareness in Christianity. Since, however, Nishida was a Japanese philosopher born and raised in the Shintō culture of Japan, this also raises the question of the relation of Nishida’s philosophy to Shintō. Shintō, it should be noted, is also grounded not in the intellect, but in awareness and feeling. In fact, Shintō is very near to the non-substantial way of thinking in Nishida’s philosophy. However, in Shintō the self-awareness of the true self is not yet decisive. In this sense Nishida’s philosophy is much nearer to the reality, where the true self and the world are, as we shall see shortly, absolutely contradictorily self-identical. Yet, in Shintō the idea of naturalness – in the sense of ‘to be natural’ – is much deeper than in Nishida. In an important sense, however, Shintō is a national religion that is tied to the culture of the people of Japan. In this it is quite distinct from universal religions, such as Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism, which are not limited, as Shintō is, by a geographical region, nationality, and culture. Because of this limitation Shintō lacks the basis on which to propagate its insights as universal insights. Nevertheless, in Shintō traditional Japanese feelings and the morality considered proper to the Japanese people are realized. Moreover, in Shintō the natural environment – including the Japanese living environment – is expressed in a way appropriate to Japanese culture and tradition, where human beings and nature are conceived to be a oneness, as they were in ancient Japan. For example, in the Manyoˉshu¯ or Ten Thousand Leaves, the first collection of poems in Japan (759 CE), there is the following poem, which displays a Shintō sentiment: Producing blue colours in capital Nara trail white clouds in the sky I see without being insatiable.9 In this poem we get a feeling for how the ancient Japanese lived in oneness with nature. This view of nature in ancient Japan can also be found in Japanese Buddhist writings; for here there was also the

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influence of Shintō naturalism. This can be seen in a fascicle of Dōgen’s Shoˉboˉgenzoˉ called ‘Zazen shin’ or ‘Point of Zazen’. Here Dōgen gives the following poem: Water is clear to the bottom, where fish sail as they do the sky is vast and clear to the heaven, where birds fly away as they do.10 Nishida, however, lacks this idea of ‘to be natural’ or ‘suchness’ (Japanese: nyoˉ) because he tries to unify the idea of scientific nature with that of historical nature while ignoring literary nature, which is where suchness is expressed. (For further discussions of Shintō naturalism and its relation to Japanese thought see Chapters 1 and 12.) Now, for Nishida, the self and the world are independent on the one side and, nevertheless, originally identical on the other. He expressed this fact by saying the self and the world are ‘absolutely contradictorily self-identical’. With Nishida, the two sides of polarity or duality in objective logic are characterized as being absolutely contradictorily selfidentical in the place of absolute nothingness. The logic of absolutecontradictory self-identity is, in Nishinda’s terminology, called the logic of emptiness in the place of absolute nothingness. The logic of such self-identity is the core of the logic in the Mulama¯dhyamaka Su¯tra by the Indian Mahāyāna philosopher Nagarjuna (c.150–c.250 CE). I earlier mentioned the three logical principles of thinking – the laws of identity, contradiction, and the excluded middle – in the substantialist paradigm of relative being. In the logic of emptiness Nagarjuna refers to the four principles known as ‘the prudence of the four phrases’ (shiku funbetsu in Japanese). These are as follows: 1. 2. 3. 4.

A is B (affirmation). A is not B (negation). A is B and simultaneously A is not B (affirmation and negation). Neither A is B nor A is not B (neither affirmation nor negation).

An example of (1) would be ‘I am nothingness’, while an example of (2) would be ‘I am not nothingness’. An example of (3), which is both the affirmation of (1) and the affirmation of the negation that is (2), would be ‘I am nothingness and simultaneously not nothingness’. Finally, an example of (4) would be ‘I am neither nothingness, nor not nothingness’. This is the negation of (1) and (2).

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The significance of this logic of emptiness consists in its showing that the nature of a thing cannot be fully captured with words. Rather, it lies between the lines. As an example of the concept of absolute-contradictory self-identity Nishida gives a phrase by Daito-kokushi, a Zen master from the Kamakura period who was the founder of the temple of Daitokuji in Kyoto. Daito Kokushi’s words are: ‘Distinct for a billion kalpas of time, yet not separate for a single instant; opposite one another all day long, yet not opposed for a single instant.’11 This is an example of an inverse correspondence between two poles, much like the duality found in the concepts of the one and the many or the self and the world. Even if the Buddha (or God) and I or the self and the world are infinitely distinct in a objective and substantial world, the Buddha (or God) and I are, in a non-substantial place of absolute nothingness, originally self-identical. This is because the whole of the world is in oneness in the non-substantial place of absolute nothingness. In religion, to live in the inverse world means to live in the world of self-awareness of the self and the world. What is characterized as the world of a inverse correspondence in the objective logic can be called the world of the everyday mind, when it is understood from the perspective of the place of absolute nothingness. Now, Nishida argues for a philosophical view that, he feels, can subsume traditional European metaphysics, including the essential philosophy from Plato to Hegel, existential thought represented by Kierkegaard, the life-philosophy represented by Nietzsche, and so on. While European traditional metaphysics is, for the most part, based on the substantial and attachment to the self while also being founded on the intellect, Nishida’s philosophy is founded on the thought of emptiness and the idea of interdependent origination argued for in Mahāyāna Buddhism. Further, he bases his philosophical position not on the intellect, but on feeling, awareness, and the will. Nishida asserts that philosophy begins with the sadness of human life (here we see how the Japanese concept of aware, or the sadness of things, finds expression in Nishida’s philosophy). This contrasts with the Western idea, prevalent at least since Aristotle, that philosophy begins with astonishment. The sadness of human life in Nishida’s philosophy is the premise of his ‘pure experience’, which lies at the core of his ideas of religious experience and philosophy. However, Nishida’s philosophy as a philosophical system begins with the self-awareness of the world, an awareness that unifies all things. As he says, ‘heaven and earth grow from the same root, and the myriad of things are one system’.12 Still, this core in Nishida’s philosophy

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locates the world before his philosophical system. An essential idea in Nishida’s philosophy is that, through ‘pure experience’ as the heart of the religious experience, the true self can be aware of itself. In other words, ‘it is not that there is experience because there is an individual, but that there is an individual because there is experience’.13 This view of the relation between the individual and experience fits with Nishida’s expressed desire ‘to explain all things on the basis of pure experience as the sole reality’.14 In Kierkegaard the relations of the self to itself and also to God must always be transparent. However, in Nishida the relations between the self and the place of absolute nothingness should be one of absolutecontradictory self-identity in infinite openness (as the place of absolute nothingness). Now, when the individual at last breaks through to the place of becoming aware of the self – to what Nishida calls ‘the self-aware universal place’ – then this latter place immediately subsumes the former (that is, the paradigm from which the individual broke through). In 1929 Nishida used the term ‘the self-aware universal’ for the first time. Later in the same year he coined the term ‘the place of expressing the universal’.15 This latter term was introduced to refer to the further experience of expressing the self-aware universal. When the place of absolute nothingness is experienced and the experience is expressed, then the place of expressing the universal is opened. When the place of the self-aware universal is subsumed by the place of expressing the universal through the former’s breakthrough to the latter, the individual’s true self is able to arrive at a particular awareness. This is the awareness that the individual self-awareness of the true self consists in the self-awareness of the world. And, moreover, that both kinds of awareness consist in absolute-contradictory self-identity in the place of absolute nothingness. Finally, when the place of creativity is realized, the individual self (who simultaneously both creates and is created) in turn subsumes the place of absolute nothingness. As mentioned earlier, Nishida’s idea of pure experience eventually evolved into the idea of the historically real world. Nishida explains the world of this historical reality by using the double relation of the individual to himself or herself and also to God by quoting Kierkegaard’s words in the beginning of The Sickness unto Death. He does this in his ‘Introduction to Practical Philosophy’ (1940). In this treatise the relation of the individual existence to its own existence in Kierkegaard corresponds to what Nishida calls ‘the building action of the self’. The relation of the self to God in Kierkegaard corresponds to expressing the

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building action of the world in Nishida. Kierkegaard’s idea of the personal relation between the self and God through the mediation of sin-consciousness, corresponds to Nishida’s idea of absolute-contradictory self-identity through the mediation of absolute nothingness as the absolute negation of the substantial point of view. In Kierkegaard’s thought the individual encounters God, who is selfemptying. This can be seen, for example, in the Bible in ‘Philippians’ 2:7 where God is said to ‘make himself of no reputation’ (kenosis, the Greek word used here, means self-emptying). In Kierkegaard’s view, the individual builds both society and the world in their double relation to his or her own existence and to God. The individual does this so far as he or she answers to love as agape from God and thus constructs society and the world on the basis of the love for neighbours. The self-awareness of equality of all human beings on the basis of the love for neighbours through faith is self-awareness for Kierkegaard. In conclusion I should like to say that the philosophy of religion suitable to our time begins with the origin of substantial and nonsubstantial ways of thinking and with the origin of the mechanical view of nature and teleological views of history. In order to make clear the relation between the self and the world or the relation between the three dimensions of nature, human beings and the transcendental, it is not enough to think in merely substantial or non-substantial ways of thinking. We, who live in the twenty-first century, have to think these relations not only from the standpoint of objective logic, but also of the logic of emptiness. Otherwise none of us will ever be able to live as the true self common to all nature.

Notes 1. Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Touchstone, 1970. 2. Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980) p. 13. 3. Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death, p. 40. 4. Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1985) p. 67. 5. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1992) p. 189. 6. Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety, trans. Reidar Thomte (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980) p. 42. 7. Kitaro Nishida, ‘Basho’ [‘Place’] in Nishida Kitaro zenshu¯ [Complete Works of Kitaro Nishida] 4, ed. Torataro Shimomura (Tokyo: Iwanami Press, 1965) p. 209. 8. Shinichi Hisamatsu, ‘Kaku to sozo’ [‘Self-awareness and Creativity’] in Hisamatsu Shinichi zenshu¯ [Complete Works of Shinichi Hisamatsu] 3 (Tokyo: Risōsha, 1972) p. 458.

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9. Manyoˉshu¯, 2, ed. Nobutsuna Sasaki (Tokyo: Iwanami Press, 1996) p. 139 (as with all other quotations from Japanese works, this is my own translation). 10. Dōgen, The Shoˉboˉgenzoˉ, I, translated by Yūhū Yokoi (Tokyo: Sankibo Buddhist Bookstore, 1986) p. 145. 11. Nishida, ‘Bashotekironri to syu¯kyoˉteki sekaikan’ [‘Place-Logic and the Religious World-View’] in Nishida Kitaro zenshu¯, 11, p. 409. 12. Nishida, Zen no kenkyu¯ [An Inquiry into the Good] in Nishida Kitaro zenshu¯, 1, p. 156. 13. Nishida, Zen no kenkyu¯, p. 28. 14. Nishida, Zen no kenkyu¯, p. 4. 15. Nishida, ‘Sosetsu’ [‘An Outline’] in Nishida Kitaro zenshu¯, 5, pp. 471–81.

10 The Religious Thought of Nishida and Kierkegaard Shudo Tsukiyama

Introduction Nishida and Kierkegaard can be seen as representative thinkers of the contemporary East and West. Both possess originality, depth, and prominence, and underpinning their thought is the idea of religious existence. It is this basic commonality which I wish to focus on in this chapter. Eiko Hanaoko has considered the relationship between the philosophical thought of Nishida and Kierkegaard in the previous chapter. Here – in what I hope will complement her study – I wish to consider in particular their similarities in the area of religious thought. I will examine these similarities from three points of view that are intended to enable an investigation of the basic characteristics of their religious thought. On a wider scale, I also hope that this will to some extent broaden both philosophical exchange and religious dialogue between East and West. Such dialogue can only help to achieve mutual understanding between our different cultures, and thus aid in the promotion of harmony and world peace. The three points of view presented below are, firstly, religion and ways of enquiring into religion; secondly, the religious problem; and, thirdly, the proper relationship of the self to God: inverse correspondence and absolute paradox.

Religion and ways of enquiring into religion The first question to answer is how Nishida and Kierkegaard grasp religion in general. Nishida refers often to religion throughout his writings, albeit usually only in fragmentary references. He did, however, first set out his view of religion more definitely in his book, An Inquiry into the 172

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Good (1911). Still, a thematic approach to his view of religion is not found until his last major work, ‘Place-Logic and the Religious WorldView’. Here we find his well-known definition of religion: ‘Religion is a fact in spiritual self-awareness. A philosopher should not fabricate religion from his own philosophical system. He must explain such a fact in spiritual self-awareness.’1 Or again, ‘There is no religion without God. God is the fundamental concept of religion ... God manifests himself as a fact in spiritual self-awareness in each self. God cannot be known just intellectually ... but it should not be said that God is therefore subjective’ (p. 372). From this we can begin to establish some of Nishida’s views about religion. First of all, Nishida regards religion as a fact in spiritual selfawareness that is, awareness of oneself as a spiritual entity. When he says that a philosopher should not fabricate religion from his philosophical system but explain ‘such a fact’, the religious thought of Nishida as a philosopher must also be seen as the expression of a religious fact in spiritual self-awareness. It must aim to account for the religious fact as such. In Nishida’s definition, religion is a fact itself, and the role of philosophy is explanation of this fact. Therefore we must understand that the duties of religious thinkers and of philosophers are always different. It should accordingly be understood that Nishida’s religious thought takes the form of philosophical and logical expression to explain the factuality of religion as it exists in our awareness. This corresponds to his philosophical standpoint which is ‘thoroughly to see logos in a fact’ (p. 370). Secondly, when Nishida observes that there is no religion without God, and that God is the most fundamental concept of religion, he places God at the heart of all religious facts. But where and in what aspect does God manifest himself as spiritual self-awareness in our individual selves? Just as colour shows itself as colour in our eyes and sound is heard in our ears – sensed rather than intellectualized – so neither can God be contemplated only intellectually. Such is not God. Yet it is also said that God must not be considered something wholly subjective either. Further, since such a God manifests himself as spiritual selfawareness in each one of us, the real location of religion is in each human being, and the primary religious matter concerns God and the self in each individual. In other words, God and the self cannot be separated. Accordingly, the matter of God is immediately a matter of the self as well. As a result, the place in which religious questions are raised or revelations occur lies within ourselves. This could suggest that the religious problem is one concerning the self itself. (Below we consider in more detail the idea that the relationship between God and the self is the focal point of religious concern in Nishida’s religious

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thought, and in what ways the religious problem is concerned with the self itself). Thirdly, Nishida argues that: A person who deals with religion must at least have his or her own religious consciousness as a fact in spiritual self-awareness. If not, he may deal with something other than religion even though he believes he is dealing with religion. I think that in terms of objective logic not only can we not deal with a religious fact, but a religious fact does not even come into being. (pp. 373–4) Here we find both Nishida’s description of the basic attitude or position necessary for the person who deals with religion, and his own view of the way to question and investigate a religious problem. In other words, Nishida thinks as follows: a religious experience in the profoundest sense is a fact of the religious in our awareness, therefore a person who discusses religion must to some extent understand a religious consciousness in his or her own self. A person who wants to explain a religious fact must himself or herself directly touch the fact to some extent. If the person does not, he or she will be dealing with something other than religion. Such an attitude or position is thus immediately related to the method of enquiry into religion itself. That is, Nishida thinks that the standpoint of objective logic is not only unsuitable but also unfeasible as a method for investigating a religious fact and to question religious problems. What, then, is the proper way of enquiring into religion? According to Nishida, it should be done in a way that is both self-aware and introspective. Only then can a religious fact be revealed for what it is. This approach aims ‘to explain a fact’, and also ‘to see logos in a fact’, to use Nishida’s terms. Such a self-aware and introspective analysis means endless deepening of self-awareness in a reflection on religious consciousnes. For Nishida, the most thorough dialectic in the logic of selfawareness is the ‘absolute dialectic’ which consists of the immediacy of absolute denial. What does he mean by this? In Nishida’s philosophy this absolute dialectic is the ‘logic of place’. Briefly, the actual historical world is really formed as a world of the absolutely contradictory self-identity of one (the general) and many (the individual). What establishes this identity is the dialectical movement of what he calls absolute negation-as-affirmation, which is enabled by the self-determination of ‘absolute nothingness’. This concept is discussed by Eiko Hanaoka in the previous chapter. The

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point of this dialectic then is that it is based on the immediacy of absolute denial. In terms of Nishida’s philosophy, the ‘logic of place’ which is formed by the self-determination of the ‘place of absolute nothingness’ must be the ‘absolute dialectic’. (For Nishida, the absolute dialectic would inversely have to be the logic of place.) In summary, one could say the way of explaining a religious fact or the mind which cannot be objectified must be through self-awareness and introspective analysis. The logic of self-awareness in its most thorough form ought to be the ‘absolute dialectic’ which contains absolute denial in itself. In other words, according to Nishida, the proper way to enquire into religion or ask about religious problems must conclusively follow the logic of self-awareness, and it must simultaneously use placelogic as the absolute dialectic. ‘Place-Logic and the Religious WorldView’ explicitly supports this hypothesis. Turning to Kierkegaard now, let ask how he sees religion and enquiry into religion or religious problems. Underlying the whole of Kierkegaard’s thought is the theme of existence, and what permeates the whole of this existence is its religious character. According to Kierkegaard, our existence is divided into three stages: aesthetic, ethical, and religious. However, it could be argued that aesthetic and ethical existences are deficient forms of religious existence. What aesthetic existence lacks is the earnestness of existing before God. Ethical existence lacks the decisive frame of ‘before God’ or ‘with an idea of God’ as the ultimate ground for human existence. What is religious existence then? Kierkegaard’s answer is that it is ‘what it means to exist and what inwardness is. It is entirely correct that the religious is the existing inwardness, and religiousness heightens in accord with the deepening of this qualification, and the paradoxicalreligious becomes the last. All interpretations of existence take their rank in relation to the qualification of the individual’s dialectical inward deepening.’² He continues as follows: If in himself the individual is unable to practice logic and has his dialectic outside himself, then we have the aesthetical interpretation. If the individual is dialectically turned inward in self-assertion in such a way that the ultimate foundation does not in itself become dialectical ... then we have the ethical interpretation. If the individual is defined as dialectically turned inward in self-annihilation before God, then we have Religiousness A. If the individual is paradoxicaldialectical, every remnant of original immanence annihilated, and

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all connection cut away, and the individual situated at the edge of existence, then we have the paradoxical-religious. The paradoxical inwardness is the greatest possible ... the break makes the inwardness the greatest possible.³ There are several important points here. First, the religious is ‘existing inwardness’, and it becomes the basic qualification of religiousness in general because it contains both what he calls religiousness A and religiousness B. (This qualification would correspond to Nishida’s ‘religion is a fact in spiritual self-awareness’.) But what is ‘existing inwardness’? Kierkegaard thinks that inwardness is to take suffering as the essential matter of the self: It [suffering] is the turning around of the relation, dying to immediacy or existentially expressing that the individual is capable of doing nothing himself but is nothing before God ... and self-annihilation is the essential form for the relationship with God ... Religiously, the task is to comprehend that a person is nothing at all before God or to be nothing at all and thereby to be before God, as He continually insists upon having this incapability before him. Its disappearance is the disappearance of religiousness.4 In short, the existing inwardness is the dialectical movement of becoming oneself through self-annihilation before God. In accordance with the deepening self-awareness of self-annihilation, religiousness A and B are divided on just this point. That is, if the self-annihilation is not thorough, and the inwardness of existence is just dialectical, then there is religiousness A. If, on the other hand, it is thorough, then the inwardness is paradoxically dialectical and the religious truth corresponding to this is also paradoxical. Here, then, there is religiousness B. This is where original religiousness is realized. But how did Kierkegaard think about ways of questioning religion or religious problems and expressing them? In his view, religion could be neither the subject of the gifted imagination of a poet, nor the object of speculative thought. Religion cannot be comprehended or expressed objectively nor speculatively. The proper way to enquire into religion and religious problems is to go straight to the point, through the introspective analysis of one’s own existence. It must also be paradoxically dialectical, to correspond to the religious matter or the ‘truth’ to be questioned. Hence, Nishida’s and Kierkegaard’s definitions of religion (‘religion is a fact in spiritual self-awareness’ and ‘religion is the existing inwardness’)

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clearly differ in verbal expression. Nishida’s definition is given from a comprehensive standpoint which takes into account Christianity, Zen Buddhism, Pure Land Buddhism, and even Shintō, while Kierkegaard’s is exclusively in the form of Christian expression. It should be mentioned, however, that although Nishida’s view takes Shintō into account, in ‘Place-Logic and the Religious World-View’, Nishida does not refer to Shintō at all. There are two main reasons for this. Firstly, while Shintō certainly belongs to the category of Nishida’s definition of religion, the gods of Shintō are the kami who were originally venerated by people of the local community as a whole or by the family or the whole nation, they were not normally worshipped by individuals as such. Consequently, the concerns of Shintō are often the notions of safety, peace, and prosperity for the whole group or society, not just in terms of the individual. As a result, in Shintō the attitudes, rituals, and feasts, which members of the group or society celebrate in order to venerate their common deities are often seen to be more significant than the spirituality of each individual. These, however, are not the essential matters which Nishida deals with in his main work in religion. Secondly, the frequently social location of religious problems in Shintō – in groups or society rather than in individuals – means that Shintō is not necessarily a religion which is derived from any awareness of the deep contradiction of being of our own selves. In this sense then, Shintō is not so much an individual or personal religion as a social or national one. Accordingly, Shintō does not and cannot radically question the matters of life, death, sin and vice which are at the core of religiousness A. The essential importance in Shintō of the relationship of the whole community to their gods, rather than the relationship of each individual to an absolute God, is the main reason for its absence from ‘PlaceLogic and the Religious World-View’. In terms of Nishida’s view of religion, although Shintō holds a great deal of spiritual purity, piety, sublimity, and holiness (all necessary for religion) their forms are not sufficiently self-aware to be unfolded yet into thought. Shintō still remains ‘primitive’ as a result. Now, although Nishida’s and Kierkegaard’s definitions of religion differ in verbal expression, their views on religion and ways of questioning it, especially from the viewpoint of religious facts, have a number of significant points in common. Nishida’s ‘fact in spiritual self-awareness’ and Kierkegaard’s ‘existing inwardness’ are more significant for their similarities than for their differences, not least because the former signifies deeper religiousness than the latter.

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The second important point to be considered is that Nishida and Kierkegaard are also very close in their views of the logical structure of religious facts. What we see in Nishida’s ‘religious fact in spiritual selfawareness’ is absolute dialectic as place-logic, while the existential structure which enables the existence of Kierkegaard’s ‘existing inwardness’ is paradoxically dialectical. In other words, absolute dialectic and paradoxical dialectic have more common features than differences. This point will be discussed later. Thirdly, there is much that is shared or in close concordance in the ways in which both thinkers question and express religious ideas. That is, the two ways of enquiring share a thoroughly self-aware and introspective analysis, and such ways must also be thoroughly dialectical. Both Nishida’s absolute dialectic and Kierkegaard’s paradoxical dialectic are, so to speak, the qualitative dialectic which reflects absolute self-denial. However, we also find distinct differences between Nishida and Kierkegaard, particularly arising from the traditions that underlie their approach to religious problems and their expression. Nishida tries logically to explain a religious fact, or thoroughly to see logos in a religious fact. In contrast, Kierkegaard’s method is passionate, corresponding to the infinite fervour of religious inwardness. These differences are important in characterizing the individuality of their thought, but they should not be regarded as crucial to distinguishing differences between them. Indeed, despite Kierkegaard’s passionate method, Nishida appreciates the seriousness and the thoroughness of Kierkegaard’s analysis of the self, and he is often receptive to Kierkegaard in developing and expressing his own thought.5 However, there remain significant differences between logic and passion as ways of representing thought, although that must remain a topic for another time.

The religious problem As we have seen, it is clear that the religious problem for both Nishida and Kierkegaard is a problem concerning the self. Further, for both, it concerns the being of the self. But where does the problem actually lie? We can say that the religious problem arises just where the being of one’s self is contradictory. That is, it rises from the fact that the self is a conflicted being. Both Nishida and Kierkegaard think that the self is contradictory, and the religious problem comes from the contradiction of the self’s being. This point is especially significant for understanding their religious thought because it is also the point at which religion becomes distinct from morality. For example, Nishida states that religion is the

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matter of what and how the self is, not of what and how it should be. The latter is a moral problem (see Nishida, p. 406). This signifies that religion is the matter of the self’s being itself. The same is true for Kierkegaard. However, the problem appears to them in different ways, because their understanding of the self differs. Despite this fact, it is worth noticing that their understanding of the logical structure of the self is very close. What is the self-contradiction of the self’s being from which the religious problem rises? Nishida’s answer is that: in terms of morality, the being of the self cannot be asked about, because one’s morals are ‘from’ (or ‘based on’) the being of the self, even though the self realizes how evil and sinful it is. It is nothing but a negation of morality to deny this ... In what case does the religious problem manifest itself to us, then? The matter of religion is not one of value. When we are conscious of the deep self-contradiction that lies at the basis of our self, or when we become aware of our own self-contradictory being, then the being of our self becomes itself problematic ... when we thoroughly go on gazing at this fact, the religious problem ought to be brought to us. It does not require a pessimistic philosopher to tell us that our wants are selfcontradictory ... The culmination of morality would be denying morality itself. The moral will itself contains self-contradiction ... however, I think that the fundamental fact of self-contradiction in being of our selves is the self-awareness of death. (pp. 393–4) What, then, is the self-awareness of death and how is this awareness possible? Nishida replies that: when our self is before the absolute, then it is aware of its own eternal death. By facing absolute denial, we know our eternal death ... Thus, it is the fundamental reason of being of the self that our self knows its eternal death, because only a person who knows his or her eternal death knows that he or she is truly an individual ... When the self knows its eternal death, or its eternal annihilation, then is it really self-aware. It must be absolutely contradictory that the self is under such a condition ... The living must be the mortal. That is indeed contradictory. There, however, is the existence of our self. This is also what I stated about a religious fact in spiritual self-awareness. (pp. 395–6) This is the religious problem for Nishida. The point is that the religious problem rises from the self-contradiction of being of the self. The radical

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fact of self-contradiction is the self-awareness of death. It is when one is facing the absolute that one is aware of eternal death. An individual who knows his or her eternal death is really self-aware. The radical raison d’être of the self, is the absolute contradiction, namely eternal life through eternal death, and absolute self-affirmation through absolute self-denial. Thus, if such a state of affairs should be expressed logically, it must be absolute dialectic as place-logic which contains absolute denial. This is what is meant by Nishida’s explanation of a religious fact in spiritual self-awareness. How is it with Kierkegaard then? It is clear that the religious problems for Kierkegaard are also located in the contradiction of being of the self. His analysis of the self and despair indicate that. His thought illustrates that the human being is spirit and spirit is the self. The self is a relation which relates to its own self. Such a relation must either have established itself or have been established by another. If this relation is established by another, the relation is the third term, but this third term is in turn a relation relating itself to that which constituted the whole relation. Such an established relation is the human self. Thus, the human self relates to its own self, and relates itself to another. In short, the human self is a self-relation which has a relation to another in itself. Hence there can be the two forms of despair in the strictest sense; despair at not willing to be oneself and despair at being oneself.6 Thus, the religious problem for Kierkegaard is undoubtedly the fact that the self is in despair, and that the despair is no less than the disjointed relationship between the self as a self-relation and God as another power which constituted it. This ‘disrelationship’ is also the contradiction between the self and God, and this contradiction is a further self-contradiction in the self. Therefore, the most difficult and the greatest self-contradiction is that the self is in the proper relation to the power (God) who created it. The self-contradiction of despair is not simple. It is infinitely deep and complicated. It must, therefore, be the greatest task for the individual self to resolve. If such a task can existentially be represented, it ought to be within the paradoxical dialectic or absolute paradox. At this point, it is clear to see how, concerning the religious problem, Nishida and Kierkegaard base their ideas on a common premise.

The proper relationship of the self to God: inverse correspondence and absolute paradox For Nishida and Kierkegaard, it is only possible that the self becomes a real self in the proper relationship of the self to God. What, then, is the

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proper relationship between the real self and God? What is the real self here? And what and how is God as the real absolute in the relation to the real self? The proper relationship between the self and God implies the following doubleness. One is the proper relation of the self to God; the other is the relation of God to the self or the human being. In the former, the self can only become a real self by overcoming or unravelling religious tasks through faith, spiritual awakening, practice, prayer, and so on. The latter – for God to realize himself, God’s love, or the Buddha’s compassion – is more problematic. In other words, what is God’s expression of agape, or the Buddha’s ‘great compassion’ and how is it capable of the task of relation? The positions of both the self and God raise further questions. They are interrelated and they are inseparable. On this point Nishida argues: It is in death that the relative faces the absolute. It is in death when our individual self faces God as the absolute ... But it cannot be said that the relative faces the absolute. The absolute that faces the relative is not the absolute either. The absolute itself is also the relative. Therefore, if the relative faces the absolute, then there must be death. That must be becoming nothingness. Only through death, can each self come into contact with God in the inversely correspondent way of being. (p. 396) Accordingly, the proper relationship between the real self and God must be inversely correspondent. So how is God, in the inverse correspondent relation to the self or as the real absolute? Nishida states: In what meaning is the absolute real? The absolute is the real absolute by facing nothingness. It (the absolute) is the supreme being by facing absolute nothingness ... The self is not the absolute as long as there is something that denies or is opposed to the self outside itself. The absolute must contain absolute self-denial in itself. And this must further mean that the self becomes absolute nothingness. As far as the self does not become absolute nothingness, something is opposed to it. That is, it cannot be said that the self contains absolute self-denial in itself. Therefore, that the self is self-contradictorily opposed to itself means that nothingness stands for nothingness. In this sense, the real absolute must be absolutely contradictorily self-identical. (pp. 397–8) Nishida’s point is that God is the real absolute in that he contains absolute self-denial in himself, and for that God must become absolute

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nothingness. In other words, absolute death, absolute self-denial or absolute nothingness penetrate or inhere in not only the human self but also God himself. ‘Inverse correspondence’ and ‘absolutelycontradictory self-identity’ are possible as a result. From this fundamental standpoint, Nishida makes many significant statements about God or the real absolute, including the following: 1. ‘God is an absolute being because he is absolute nothingness. He (God) is omniscient and omnipotent because he is absolute nothingness and the absolute being. Therefore, I say that humankind exists because the Buddha is. Inversely the Buddha is because humankind exists. I think also that the world as creature is because God as creator is, and inversely God is because the world as creature is.’ (p. 397) 2. ‘The absolute has thorough self-denial in itself ... The whole-one has in itself individually many. God is in the world in a thoroughly self-denying form ... It can be, therefore, that God is nowhere within the world, and simultaneously in the world there is not any place where God is not. Buddhism expresses such a paradox with the logic of sive/non or “is and not” (sokuhi no ronri) in The Diamond Su¯tra (Daisetsu Suzuki): Buddha is not Buddha, therefore Buddha is Buddha. Sentient beings are not conscious beings; therefore sentient beings are conscious beings.’ (pp. 398–9) 3. ‘Extremely paradoxically, a truly absolute God must be demonic or devilish on the other side. Thus, this is also what is meant by God as omniscient and omnipotent. Jehovah is God who demanded Abraham to sacrifice his only son Isaac for him. That is, he is the God who required the negation of an inherent personality trait. A just, transcendental, and elevated God is nothing but an abstract God.’ (p. 404) 4. ‘The real absolute must deny itself thoroughly enough to descend to the devilish. The absolute can really let a person be himself or saves a person by denying itself thoroughly ... In Buddhism it is said that Buddha himself becomes a devil to save a person, while in Christianity the meaning of God’s self-denial could be found in his incarnation.’ (p. 436) With these statements Nishida’s idea of the proper relationship between God and the individual can be discerned. If expressed logically, it is the concept of ‘inverse correspondence’ (gyaku taioˉ in Japanese), which is most significant and unique to Nishida’s view of religion. One point is

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that it is possible by absolute self-denial, death, or nothingness, to penetrate both God and the self. Also, inverse correspondence is especially argued with regard to God’s kenosis or agape. This is the profoundest expression of Nishida’s philosophy of religion, and what was represented in ‘Place-Logic and the Religious World-View’. It also forms the core of his religious thought and is equal to other fundamental concepts in Nishida’s philosophy, such as ‘pure experience’, ‘self-awareness’, ‘the place of absolute nothingness’, ‘absolute-contradictory self-identity’, and so on. In developing his views on religion, Nishida often cited the paradox of Kierkegaard. This indicates another commonality between the two philosophers’ basic ideas. What then is the absolute paradox for Kierkegaard? There is no doubt that it expresses the proper relationship between the self and God. How does it do so? It is impossible for the self to relate itself immediately to God. The self can only be brought into a relation with God through self-denial. The individual can only be justified and accepted by God when he or she is really aware of his or her own sin and repents. According to Kierkegaard, however, God enables the individual to do that. This is illustrated in two ways: (1) such a possibility is only given to the single individual by God. (2) God humbled himself and came into the world in the form of a servant so that the possibility might be realized. In other words, God became a human being to save human beings, and took the humblest form of a servant. This shows how Jesus Christ was simultaneously God and a human being. Hereby the proper relation of the self to God is established, and the self is grounded transparently in God. This, however, is illogical, paradoxical, and unacceptable to reason or understanding. It is only through faith that one can accept such a paradox. The paradox is also said to be the object of faith, and the moment when faith accepts the paradox is decisive. Faith received the paradox at the decisive moment when God became a human being (Jesus) to redeem people from sin. Accordingly, for Kierkegaard this moment was uniquely significant; it united the contradictions, eternalizing the historical and historicizing the eternal. The paradox is the moment and faith. The eternal is in a sense based upon the historical or temporal and a sinful person who confesses his or her own sin accepts the paradox of faith. This double paradox manifests itself negatively as the absolute by bringing into prominence the absolute difference of sin between God and humankind, and positively by aiming to annul this absolute difference in the absolute equality of redemption or agape. This is the absolute paradox for Kierkegaard.7 Self-denial, which is the most significant

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and principal factor makes the absolute paradox real. This self-denial should be thorough in both God and the self. As I have tried to show, Nishida and Kierkegaard share in common many ideas that underpin their interpretations regarding the proper relationship of the self to God. Nishida called the relation ‘inverse correspondence’ and made great efforts to express it as logically as possible and Kierkegaard more passionately described it as the ‘absolute paradox’. However, major discrepancies remain: compared with Nishida’s thought, how thoroughly were God’s kenosis and agape considered by Kierkegaard? And is it God’s self-denial which enabled him to become a human being and enables him to continue to express selfless love? These are also significant problems for religion, but they must be addressed another time.

Notes 1. Kitaro Nishida, ‘Bashotekironri to syukyoteki sekaikan’ [‘Place-Logic and the Religious World-View’] in Nishida Kitaro zenshuˉ [Complete Works of Kitaro Nishida] third edition, 11, ed. Torataro Shimomura (Tokyo: Iwanami Press, 1955) p. 371. Further references to this work will be given in the text. This and other translations of Kitaro Nishida from Japanese are my own. 2. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 1, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1992) p. 571. 3. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p. 572. 4. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p. 461. 5. Nishida, Jissentetsugaku jyoron ‘An Introduction to Practical Philosophy’, Nishida Kitaro zenshu ˉ, 10, p. 7. 6. See Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling/The Sickness unto Death, trans. Walter Lowrie (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1954), pp. 46–7, (and The Sickness unto Death, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980) pp. 13–14). 7. See Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1985) pp. 61–2.

11 Kobayashi’s Spirit of Unselfishness and Kierkegaard’s Faith Makoto Mizuta

Introduction to Kobayashi Kierkegaard aimed to become the Christian who is a ‘single individual’ and sought to explain what this would involve. He was, however, aware of the difficulty of directly imparting these ideas to others. He tried, therefore, indirectly to lead his readers to the problem, while discussing Christianity from the outside through the pseudonym of Johannes Climacus, among others, and from inside through the pseudonym of Anti-Climacus or under his own name. It is frequently said that the Japanese have a strong tendency towards conformity. Therefore, it is particularly because of the significance that he attaches to the individual and because of what he calls the ‘untruth’ of the crowd, that it is important for the Japanese to study Kierkegaard. The problem of how to understand Kierkegaard’s thought in a Japanese context led me to look for Japanese thinkers whose ideas have something in common with Kierkegaard’s. One likely person here, it seemed to me, is the modern thinker Hideo Kobayashi (1902–83), someone who is hardly known in the West. I should like, therefore, to present Kobayashi and compare his ideas with Kierkegaard’s. I will do this mainly through a description of Kobayashi’s thoughts while providing some sketches and short comments about Kierkegaard’s ideas. Though Kobayashi hardly discusses Kierkegaard, there are remarkable connections between their ideas. In spite of their different cultures and backgrounds, they are close to each other in their thinking about the nature of truth, ultimate reality, and the meaning of life. Kobayashi, who lived in a more modern age than Kierkegaard, naturally had wider 185

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horizons, which is not to say that we cannot find contemporary ways of thinking in Kierkegaard’s works. However, Kobayashi had not only the Eastern traditions and ways of thought readily at his disposal, but also knew of those of the West. In contrast, Kierkegaard did not deal with any non-Christian thinkers outside Western culture. Indeed, he did not seem much interested in non-Western cultures (even though several translated texts were then available). He considered only ‘paganism in Christendom’. Kierkegaard tried to discover the truth of Christendom through dialogue with Socrates, although he regarded him as a pagan to the last. Kierkegaard thought that people had to learn from Socrates how to obtain subjectivity, because each individual can grasp the truth only after he or she becomes a subjective individual. From another angle then, I should like to reconsider Kierkegaard’s thought by undertaking a comparative study between Eastern and Western thought. At the same time, I should like to attempt to purely express the fundamental truth through defining the Christianity of Kierkegaard. Traditional Eastern thinking is helpful here. However, one should always aim at discovering the ultimate truth that exists beyond both Eastern and Western philosophical traditions. Kobayashi’s ideas are useful when re-examining Kierkegaard’s thinking and help in understanding the relationship between Eastern and Western thought, which in turn enables us to grasp deeper truths about the meaning of existence. Kobayashi is a model of the Japanese thinker as an essayist. He studied French literature at Tokyo Imperial University and was impressed by French writers like Jean Arthur Rimbaud and Charles Baudelaire. The young Kobayashi was a person with a strong self-consciousness, which was connected with thoughts of death and solitude. He often appeared to be in the depths of despair. But, for him, despair was the starting point of creativity. He began writing in his schooldays. After writing a few short stories, he became a literary critic by profession. Shortly after that, the Second World War broke out. Although Kobayashi was not a pacifist as such, he believed that literature is irreconcilable with war. Literature is insistently a peaceful activity. The writer is not a person of action, but an individual who expresses ideas through an essentially peaceful pursuit. Mistrusting modern Japanese culture, Kobayashi took a greater interest in the contemporary cultural phenomenon of internal spiritual crisis. It was in this way that he emerged from the ordeal of the war. After the war, Kobayashi went into the aesthetic and ethical field as a free essayist. He associated himself with the modern European spirit, by which many Japanese people had been deeply influenced. His interest

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at that time was the nature of human existence. He pursued his interest by studying the lives of artistic geniuses such as Mozart, Dostoevsky, van Gogh, Cézanne, and other impressionists. His favourite philosopher was Henri Louis Bergson, who valued the power of intuition. Since he had earlier in life been fascinated with the traditional Japanese view of nature or values of beauty, in his later years he attempted to recover the essence of Japanese culture. Thus, he concentrated his effort on writing his life’s work, Motoori Norinaga, about Norinaga Motoori (1730–1801), one of the most famous Shintō scholars in Japanese history. It is a work meant to confirm the ‘spirit of unselfishness’ at the heart of Japanese culture. Shintō is the native religion of Japan. The term itself means ‘the divine way’ or ‘the principle of nature’. It is a form of animism which stresses the importance of living in harmony with nature. It evolved under the influence of Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism. (Some people even claim that, in Shintō, they can find some signs of ancient Christianity and Jewry that would have come into Japan along the Silk Road, although this view is not widely held in the academic community.) In medieval times, a theory arose that insisted on a fundamental oneness of Buddhism and Shintō. After the Meiji restoration, Shintō split into jinja shintoˉ (shrine Shintō) and kyoha shintoˉ (denomination Shintō), in which there are 13 denominations. The government supported jinja shintoˉ, as the Japanese national ideology until the end of the Second World War. It is generally accepted in Shintō that there is no transcendental God as the almighty power; rather there are many gods with their own power, each existing immanently in this world. These gods are natural spirits and ancestors who live in harmony with nature. Thus Shintō is usually regarded as a veneration of nature and the ancestors. However, Kobayashi’s interpretation of Shintō through his research into Motoori’s thought is different. He tried to purify Shintō, and insisted that Motoori believed in only the natural spirit Tama. This spirit is sometimes called musubi no kami or a productive divinity, who is always engendering something new in nature. (Nevertheless, it is not presumed that Tama is God the almighty. Unlike the Christian creator, this productive divinity brings harmony into the world through existing in nature, not beyond it.) The spirit works with natural things when people visit them with a heart of gratitude. The Japanese sense of intimacy with nature implies gratitude for the spirit that works with natural things. According to Kobayashi, this sense is the core of Shintō.1

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In Kobayashi’s interpretation, while people cannot clearly know the spirit itself, they can be aware of its presence when they are touched by some unaccountable, mysterious power. They yearn for the ancient harmonious world and their ancestors – who exist under the unaccountable spirit – provide their ideal models of existence. Each time that the unaccountable spirit is felt, it is given a different name. That is why Shintō is often counted among polytheisms.

Language, history, and freedom Kobayashi says that writers often start their works by talking about themselves because of a heightened self-consciousness. He also says that excessive self-consciousness leads to distress or anxiety and on to depression. Here it leads to further sorrow when difficult conditions cannot be confronted with clear objectivity.2 This bears similarities to Kierkegaard’s idea of anxiety, a mood that has no definite object and arises against a sense of what he called ‘the nothing’.3 According to Kobayashi, people enjoy themselves most when they are thinking very clearly about things in life. At these times, creative individuals strive to attain the best expression to demonstrate a recognition of life. Kobayashi thinks that writers and other creative persons, such as artists, become aware of their selves through their creative activities. They do not, he says, try to escape from their own personal experience. Rather, they immerse themselves in it, believing that only the experiential world is reliable.4 This attitude has definite connections to Kierkegaard’s and is found especially in his emphasis on subjectivity. Kobayashi says that the writer should be ready to work with thinking as though it were language, and to think his or her way through the world with language. That is to say, the writer must recognize no difference between thinking and writing. The writer uses words as if they were natural things. Since every language has evolved through a very slow transformation, writers must also value the cultural traditions that enable these transformations. Tradition is not nature, but for human beings it is a second nature. It especially works, says Kobayashi, in the minds of those who endeavour to understand their own selves.5 The writer’s determination for independence works together with an awareness that people are integrated with both nature (the natural world) and with a second nature of tradition or history. It is because of this latter integration that the writer must, in some sense, determine to accept tradition and history with humility.6

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Kobayashi also considers the question of how to understand the relationship between freedom and necessity, and the inevitability of death. These are common themes in philosophical inquiry. Kobayashi sees freedom as a golden mean. According to Kobayashi, human freedom consists in spiritual action through spontaneous, correct decisions taken in constantly changing situations that can be either good or bad.7 Human beings are neither automatic machines nor omnipotent gods. Our short lives intersect vertically with the stream of human history and the relation of cause and effect. Everyone lives as an individual, but we all feel that we exist as part of some great, nameless substance which is our mutual foundation. This, says Kobayashi, appears in various ways in the existence of each individual through inner experience. In other words, each person expresses in various ways the whole experience of this basic substance.8 That is why we cannot recognize spiritual freedom as a mass phenomenon. Here, one is reminded of Kierkegaard’s single individual existing apart from the mass of the crowd.

The problem of morality Kobayashi sees the problem of freedom and necessity as a moral problem that leads in the end to a kind of mysticism. Morality, however, is itself a complex problem of consciousness, conscience, and of human relationships. The focus here is more on personal relationships than on the social system as a whole. And again, one will recall Kierkegaard’s attitude to socio-political problems. Kobayashi noted that in modern social sciences morality is pursued outside the experience of conscience. Consequently, the principle of morality remains elusive.9 Social science is a science of customs and is concerned with researching abilities and efficiencies in actual life. As a discipline it is indifferent to the problems of personality. To study morality from this perspective, we would do better to keep away from ideas such as conscience, which is personal, subjective, and ambiguous. It is easier to study social justice than to be concerned with the problems of conscience. However, this leaves the problem of morality as a problem of strife between psychological forces. Even if we abandon the concept of conscience in our consideration of morality, the reality of conscience remains in our heart. Thus, we all worry about our guilt in private. Conscience does not obviously command us to action. Nor does it necessarily fit our socio-political structures. It exists as part of our deep personal emotions. Kobayashi shows us that Motoori saw mono no aware as an element with these emotions. (Mono no aware is difficult to translate into English. Its literal translation

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is ‘the pathos of a thing’ or ‘the sadness of a thing’. It implies ‘the pathos of nature’ and ‘the pathos of life’.) Motoori valued the consciousness of mono no aware as a fundamental feature of conscience.10 Emotion is essentially the opposite of desire. With deep emotions, we concentrate on our object (nature, other people) and are lost in it. At that moment we discard the egoistic will or eagerness, and catch a glimpse of the primary relationship between human beings and other living things. Poetry arises from that consciousness when it is combined with unselfish emotion. But this relationship always eludes human egotism, even if this egotism is unconscious. Motoori’s theory of mono no aware is based on awareness of this fact. Here, we might recognize something akin to ‘hereditary sin’ in the sense which Kierkegaard considers in The Concept of Anxiety. For here, as with Kierkegaard’s concept, we have a fundamental feature of consciousness which is closely tied to human discontentment. It is true that almost all Japanese feel a strong sense of intimacy with the nature of their land. They have preserved a desire to belong to it. Nevertheless, there is distance between nature and human beings. Nature is transitory, like human beings, and this is a moving thought to Japanese people. It demonstrates to them how ephemeral they are. But, nature is periodically renewed, whereas the dead go away for ever. This also touches people’s hearts. This feeling or emotion has also been called mono no aware, and it is a basic awareness in the Japanese mind. Only in the belief that they belong to nature and that the dead – who become kami or gods – belong to nature too may they find solace. With this belief, existence becomes an ambivalent combination of resignation and confidence. The Japanese sense of intimacy with nature and relationships between people are one, as in the primitive sense of religiousness in ancestor veneration. Most Japanese have a tendency to want to melt into homogeneity instead of attaining an individual identity or self. Thus, they desire to become a kind of mass. This is the pattern of the life of the ordinary person as expressed in Kierkegaard’s terms. He thought that it showed a kind of despair, namely, the despair that is ignorant of being in despair.11 However, according to Motoori, the consciousness of mono no aware is the core of poetry. We must be careful to note that Motoori did not stress mono no aware itself, but the consciousness of mono no aware. Sympathizing with him, Kobayashi said that literature could not be separated from morality12 since creativity involves clear consciousness and conscience. His view here is different from Kierkegaard’s. I will

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come back to this point later. Here, I want only to add that Motoori’s concept of deep emotion is, like Kobayashi’s, fairly similar to Kierkegaard’s concept of passion. This is so because, for Kierkegaard, passion is also a fundamental feature of human existence. Here too we become lost in the experience when we concentrate on its object.

Japanese traditional thinking I should like now to introduce Motoori’s chief idea through Kobayashi’s interpretation. According to Motoori, the consciousness of mono no aware or conscience means to grasp the real human heart. In Motoori’s study of classical literature, this experience is called magokoro, namely, sincerity or being true of heart. He firmly supported traditional Japanese ways of thinking, sensitivity, and belief. In his studies, he tried to deal with mythology and to understand each myth as if he were living in ancient times. He found that ancient peoples had a sensitivity to mysterious events, which led them to speak of marvellous things in a legendary form. He firmly believed that scholars should not distance themselves from the apparent unreasonableness of legends. Rather, they should pursue the storytellers’ reality behind the legends, and should enquire into the meaning of the stories.13 This attitude reflects Kierkegaard’s approach to biblical stories such as Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, Abraham’s attempt to sacrifice his son Isaac, and Lazarus rising from the dead. Motoori deals with the problem of life and death, which lies at the root of religious thought. According to Shintō doctrine, everyone, both good and bad, continues to exist in the afterlife, though, as mentioned in Chapter 1, there is much disagreement in Shintō thinking about where this world is to be found. This idea of continued existence gives solace and indicates salvation in Shintō. However, the dead never return to their previous existence among their loved ones, leaving loved ones with a deep sorrow. This deep sorrow breeds a kind of spiritual unselfishness. It is at this time that people are able to stand face to face before the unaccountable – departed loved ones who continue but never return – with an intuition that is a function of magokoro.14 Kobayashi said, Study in the time of Motoori meant the study of morality. In a sense, it belonged to the humanities, but rather it appeared as art. Scholars started from self-awareness and came up with a method to solve problems single-handedly. As they concentrated on what they were

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studying, they became independent of each other. All were experts at reading. They read the classics not for the purpose of collecting knowledge, but for seeking guidance on how to live properly. Results were dependent upon their reading ability.15 There, independence and unselfishness were one. This is also Kobayashi’s attitude. He believed that the principle of criticism is a well-trained unselfishness free of egotism or selfcentredness.16 The best works of the world compel a straightforward approach and true self-understanding can only be achieved by a direct appreciation of the works of others, unmediated by prior or perfunctory knowledge. Kobayashi believed that the normal way of life means just this: being absorbed in understanding and becoming oneself through a direct appreciation of others. This is the true meaning of becoming unselfishly oneself. He says that the best thinkers counsel us and say, ‘You shall be yourself.’17

Kan or vision and faith Kobayashi said that belief and scepticism are less incompatible than are independence and unselfishness. The spirit of unselfishness must also contain a degree of scepticism, for scepticism is a normal human trait. Unselfish people keep scepticism in mind. They are cautious of received wisdom, since they find and experience a world that is not fully known. They can doubt because they understand the often uncertain basis of belief. Thus there is devoutness for reality, which provides the foundation for belief.18 Socrates and Descartes, for both of whom Kobayashi (and, indeed, Kierkegaard) had great respect, were two such thinkers. Socrates started from the awareness of his ignorance, so he could doubt everything. Descartes started from his awareness of his own thinking. He believed in consciousness and reason. Kobayashi considered reason or common sense along with intuition. While common sense seems to represent a popular approach to our questioning of the meaning of life, for Kobayashi the meaning itself must be grasped with intuition. If we were wholly absorbed with the commonsensical, we could not reflect, nor be full of creativity. When we think deeply, we will naturally be led to meditation, for, in a sense, such thinking is the beginning of meditation.19 It should be recalled that Buddhist meditation – the final steps in the eightfold noble path – begins with reflecting on the problem of meaning of human suffering. Thus, philosophy is essential for us. And criticism is

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more closely connected to philosophy than to science. Kobayashi argued that Bergson, who had doubts about the current of rationalistic thought or intellectualism, attached importance to intuition with a concept of vision that had traditionally held a theological meaning.20 The word ‘intuition’ here is similar to the Japanese ‘kan’, which comes from Buddhism. In Japanese Buddhism kan is considered a fundamental experience. It represents the experience of an unselfish state. Traditional Japanese culture contains an idea of self-discipline that is expressed through a type of meditation called kan po. This has direct connections to art and literature because the fundamental experience in Japanese Buddhist meditation includes an aesthetic quality. Kobayashi points out here that Buddhism never fought against idol worship as Christianity did.21 While both hold that the highest truth cannot be expressed through the making of images, Buddhism always assumed a tolerant attitude towards religious images. In Mahāyāna Buddhism, which is the basis of Japanese Buddhism, the use or worship of images is considered an expedient means, which well might lead to a grasping of the ultimate truth that lies behind the images. Consequently, the making of images was happily accepted by Buddhism. Christianity, on the other hand, disallowed the worshipping of idols because it was considered blasphemy against a personal God. Yet, art took religion and religious imagery as its subject, and religion kept a close watch on art. It did this through social power, dogmas, rites, and various systems. For Kobayashi, a religion manifested through a social power is unable to control a person’s inner life; for each individual will reflect religion in his or her own experience. As Shudo Tsukiyama shows in Chapter 10, this is in harmony with Nishida’s view that religion is, above all else, a fact in spiritual self-awareness. Artists, who instinctively know this, must start from their own experience. In not adhering to the social power, they may embody kan. Kierkegaard, with his attack on the social power of organized religion and his arguments for the truth of subjectivity, was just such a person. For Kobayashi, thinking, action, and production formed a harmonious whole. In his view, knowledge is linked with morality and this is linked to art and literature. In the end, all of these reach towards a religious stage of ‘unselfishness’, which is a state of perfect selflessness through the path of concentration. Kobayashi did not belong to any religion or denomination, but he had a faith in his attitude towards life. He believes that each person in his or her own way has such a faith. He said that he believed in himself,

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therefore he could subjectively think and act. He expressed this by saying he believes in his spirit hiding behind himself.22 He was sure if he did not have a dialogue with the self that was more than and superior to his own self, he could not grasp the meaning of existence.23

Faith and sin in Kierkegaard’s thought Let us now reflect on Kierkegaard’s thought and his Christian beliefs. Kierkegaard classifies the human existential form as comprising of the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious stage. The lowest stage is the aesthetic one and the highest is the religious one. In moving to the upper stage from the lower, the individual becomes more and more of a subjective self. Kierkegaard further divides religion into what he calls religiousness A and religiousness B in Concluding Unscientific Postscript, which was published under the pseudonym of Johannes Climacus. His religiousness B describes Christianity, while his religiousness A belongs to other religions. In religiousness A, people believe in the oneness of God and the human being. Faith becomes the subjective attitude of the individual. So, Climacus says, subjectivity is truth. But in Christianity, people cannot meet God by themselves because of their sin. So therefore he also remarks, subjectivity is untruth. Subjectivity can be truth again only when an individual resolves to believe in Jesus Christ as the revelation of God. Climacus presupposes the existence of the historical Jesus, but he says that people cannot know anything about his real life. Therefore people are asked to believe a paradoxical proposition: Jesus Christ is God. He regards Christianity as a problem which urges people to either believing the paradox or not believing it. This opinion of Climacus might be linked directly with what could be called Christian absolutism. However, one should not ignore Climacus’ confession that he was not a Christian. Where in this did Kierkegaard reveal his real intention? Kierkegaard published The Sickness unto Death and Practice in Christianity, using the pseudonym of Anti-Climacus. This author was imagined as an extraordinarily high Christian. So, the question is how far Anti-Climacus extricated himself from Johannes Climacus’ view. At first, we should make clear the concepts of God and sin in The Sickness unto Death. Here we find both the statement ‘sin is before God’ and the concept that the opposite of sin is faith. It is one of the most decisive definitions for all Christianity that the opposite of sin is not virtue but faith. The non-Christian that Kierkegaard admired the most was Socrates, and ‘sin is ignorance’ was the Socratic definition. However, in

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a Christian interpretation, sin has its roots in willing, and this corruption of willing that is sin embraces the individual’s entire consciousness. Here Christianity adds the doctrine of hereditary sin as a paradox. This is a paradox because it is unclear how one can will something that one also inherits. It assumes that there has to be a revelation from God to show what this sin is. Thus, sin must be understood by revelations from God, before God, in despair not to will to be oneself, or in despair to will to be oneself. According to Kierkegaard (under the pseudonym of Anti-Climacus) there are three kinds of sin: (1) the sin of despairing over one’s sin; (2) the sin of despairing of the forgiveness of sin; and, (3) the sin of dismissing Christianity absolutely, of declaring it to be untrue. The second sin is an offence against Jesus and the third is sin against the Holy Spirit. So the first sin should be sin against God the Father. Kierkegaard’s God is this trinity, that is, a god that is somehow all three of these at once. The key issue for Kierkegaard is how Jesus, who was a man, could at the same time be God.

The concept of the God-man Kierkegaard calls Jesus the ‘God-man’. This is meant as an expression of the contradiction of the unity of God and a human being in a historical, concrete situation. In this sense, God has become an individual. Here Kierkegaard talks of God, of an individual, and of a unity of them in one breath. It is also vital for Kierkegaard that it was a historical event that God became an individual. It is ‘the holy history’ as a special intention of God. This idea of the God-man ties in, for Kierkegaard, with the notion of embodying the truth or living as truth. Now, God is the truth in a different sense. He is the truth in that he is somehow ultimately responsible for all truths. In this sense, one could say, he is ‘truth itself’. Kierkegaard’s idea of truth here has a double meaning: ‘the truth itself’ and ‘to be based on the truth’. God the Father is the truth. Jesus the son is the truth as an individual who perfectly followed God the Father. He is thus based on the truth or, because he is in a unity with God, he is one with the truth. He is the standard by which humankind should live. We can understand what truth is (though not through reason) only when it is within us and becomes an aspect of our life. In this way, Jesus is a symbol for Kierkegaard. Nevertheless, he is not a symbol of what we can attain: no one can be the truth except Jesus. He stands at the beginning as something which we can only reach through our

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belief or faith, not through our reason. The God-man, then, is an absolute paradox, the absurd, because no one can understand him through reason. When we face the God-man, either we have faith in him (reason will not help) or, from the Christian perspective, we offend him. This is the most radical meaning of ‘before God’. Before the absurd God-man, there were the paradoxes of human existence and sin. The paradox of human existence lies in the idea that a human being is a likeness of God and at the same time he is qualitatively different from God. It is this paradoxical blend that enables human beings to sin: like God they can choose, but unlike God they choose evil. It is the fundamental disobedience of an individual to God. Faith in Jesus, faith in God’s salvation, means the awareness of one’s sin and believing in release from sin. If an individual does not believe in Jesus, then, according to Kierkegaard, he or she cannot help but offend. This is Kierkegaard’s idea of sin in the strictest sense. Sin is the sign of the qualitative difference between God and human beings. Kierkegaard took a serious view of sin. In his idea human existence is firmly tied to human sin. However, even to him, sin is only the second nature of the human being.24 For Kierkegaard when people face the absurd God-man, they then know their own sin. This then leads them to grasp the relation between God and human beings. In this, however, there is always possibility of offence in despairing or in dismissing Christianity. Now although it is this awareness of sin that leads to despair, Kierkegaard dared to break his order and gave priority to the analysis of despair in the first part of The Sickness unto Death. This is the reason why many non-Christians value this book. Part two of the same book, as well as Practice in Christianity, on the other hand, have a stronger Christian character. The categorical difference between Jesus and others is insisted upon in these writings. Non-Christians may be concerned that Kierkegaard emphasizes the notions of paradox or offence too much and that he had left the door open for the justification of blind or unfounded faith. In this faith, believers are blind to fundamental problems concerning the relation between God and the human being. Without the real sense of ‘existential contemporaneity’ – something Kierkegaard thought essential (see Chapter 7) – they endeavour to cover an abyss full of problems with their unfounded decision simply to have faith or with the simple dogmatic proclamation of the Church that Jesus is the son of God. However, Kierkegaard wrote in his last years, ‘It seems to me that, despite the abyss of nonsense into which we are thrust, we all will still be just as fully saved.’25 This makes it clear, I feel, that the idea of salvation is more basic to Kierkegaard’s thinking than is the idea of sin. (It is

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worth noting here that, in this way, his thinking is not that far from Shinran’s Pure Land Buddhism: see Chapter 3.)

Kobayashi and Kierkegaard: unselfish faith We are now in a position to draw a more thorough comparison between Kobayashi and Kierkegaard: with what has been said, it is easy to see that Kobayashi as a thinker was similar to Kierkegaard. Each emphasized the importance of subjectivity and faith. It is certain that Kobayashi stressed unselfishness in place of faith, but we can also say that Kierkegaard’s ‘faith’ is similar to ‘unselfishness’. He talks about faith with ‘silence, obedience, and joy’.26 These words show us that his idea of faith puts it close to unselfishness; for there is a clear sense in which obedience to another, especially if carried out in joy and without protest, is unselfishness. According to Kierkegaard, a human being is a spirit, that is the self, and the self is a relation which relates itself to its own self. But this relation is also a relation relating to that which constituted the whole relation.27 And the power which enabled the human self is called God. In this description, we recognize that the concept of self includes consciousness (or self-consciousness) with will. Kierkegaard goes on to say, ‘faith is that the self in being itself and in willing to be itself rests transparently in God’.28 In this assertion, will, conscience, and unselfishness are harmoniously unified. Thus, we understand that faith is an unselfish subjectivity. However, there are a few important problems that we must also consider. Kierkegaard’s religiousness A means religion in general, in which subjectivity is truth, and his religiousness B means Christianity, which rests on the Gospels. There, people stand before the God of the Godman Jesus and their sins are revealed. That is the time at which they can perfectly accept salvation. Religiousness B, in which subjectivity is not truth because of the consciousness of sin, is the religion of the grace of God.29 From Kierkegaard’s point of view, Kobayashi’s ground is in religiousness A. One question that could be raised here is whether, for Kierkegaard, religiousness A has any inherent positive value. For example, Kierkegaard highly admired Socrates, and yet his paganism or religiousness A meant that Kierkegaard inevitably set limits to his value of Socrates. Kierkegaard, however, recognizes religiousness A as an indispensable step to religiousness B. He considers it to be the final preparatory stage for religiousness B. Nevertheless, paganism was, in itself, of little interest to him. His main concern was how to lead the pagan within Christendom

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to genuine Christian faith. Kierkegaard’s faith is connected with a heartfelt belief in the historical God-man, from whose absolute unselfishness to his heavenly father, God, believers must take their example. Proper observation of his life should lead to unselfishness. But, Kierkegaard’s emphasis on ‘the holy history’ with the possibility of ‘offence’ indicates a tendency to Christian absolutism. Moreover, Kierkegaard’s ideal Christianity was so strict that hardly anyone could become a Christian. He regarded himself as a poet of the religious, and said that from a Christian standpoint a poet-existence is sin; in spite of the aesthetic.30 He could not value the aesthetic existence and in that he differs from Kobayashi. In Kobayashi’s thought, not only morality but also art and literature could be harmonious with religiousness. It is definitely not a lower stage that one must transcend to arrive at relgiousness. It is interesting that Kierkegaard regarded someone as a pagan because of his worshipful attitude.31 On the other hand, he could not say he was a real Christian, though he wanted to be. Nevertheless, in the end he could not help but believe in salvation for everyone. He did not explain the reason why he could come to this belief. There was a sort of dichotomy in his thought. But if we carefully consider his concept of the Godman, we might arrive at some indication. The most important point of God-man is that it shows us the fundamental, complete relationship between God and human beings.32 This relationship must have universal validity. Thus, every person has a chance to participate in salvation, even if he or she does not know ‘the holy history’. The fact of the fundamental, complete relationship between God and human beings precedes even the holy history. As a result, the difference between religiousness A and religiousness B would be relaxed. Here, the name of Jesus is not necessarily related to faith in the sense of a spiritual awakening to the unity of God and human beings in spite of the qualitative difference between them. Of course, the degree of precision in thinking presents a problem, and we must recognize that certain guides such as teachers, models, or symbols are essential for spiritual awakening. But if we are convinced that everyone possesses oneness with God originally, we can believe that the fact of salvation is more basic than the fact of sin. We can then say that recognition of this fact is faith. The most important element of such faith is an essential cognition of the fundamental fact, that is, the fundamental relation in which God and every human being are never separated and never equal at the same

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time. In this relationship, God is the Lord and human beings are subordinate. The order never changes. Kobayashi did not comment specifically on Christianity. However, silence should not be taken to equate to denial. In his last years, Kobayashi particularly loved the French painter Georges Rouault although he remained almost silent about him. Kobayashi might stand still before Jesus as he stood still before one of Rouault’s woodblock prints. His attitude here was unrelated to idol worship. The wrongness in worshipping idols, if there is such wrongness, lies only in treating them, through a selfish wish, as though they were gods, and Kobayashi’s wish was to embody unselfishness.

Notes 1. Hideo Kobayashi and Gabriel Marcel, ‘Taidan’ [‘Dialogue’] in Mauseru chosakushu¯ bekkan [Marcel’s Writings, Supplementary Volume] (Tokyo: Shinjūsha, 1966) pp. 193–6. 2. Hideo Kobayashi, ‘Hyogen nitsuite’ [‘On Expression’] Kobayashi Hideo zenshu¯ [Complete Works of Hideo Kobayashi] 7 (Tokyo: Shinchō -sha, 2001) pp. 126–7. 3. Kierkegaard, Begrebet Angest [The Concept of Anxiety] in Søren Kierkegaards Samlede Værker [Collected Works of Søren Kierkegaard] first edition, 3, ed. A. B. Drachmann, J. L. Heiberg and H. O. Lange (Copenhagen: Gyldendalske Boghandels Forlag, 1901) p. 313. Further references to Kierkegaard’s works are to this edition. 4. Kobayashi, ‘Bungaku to jibun’ [‘Literature and I’] Kobayashi Hideo zenshu¯, 7, pp. 129–42. 5. Kobayashi, ‘Tetsugaku’ [‘Philosophy’] Kobayashi Hideo zenshu¯, 12, p. 389. 6. Kobayashi, ‘Bungaku to jibun’, Kobayashi Hideo zenshu¯, 7, pp. 137–44. 7. Kobayashi, ‘Chu¯yoˉ’ [‘The Golden Mean’] Kobayashi Hideo zenshu¯, 10, pp. 155–6. 8. Kobayashi, ‘Rekishi’ [‘History’] Kobayashi Hideo zenshu¯, 12, pp. 98–100. 9. Kobayashi, ‘Doˉ toku nitsuite’ [‘On Morality’] Kobayashi Hideo zenshu¯, 7, pp. 74–9. 10. Kobayashi, ‘Ryoˉshin’ [‘Conscience’] Kobayashi Hideo zenshu¯, 12, pp. 84–6. 11. Kierkegaard, Sygdommen til Døden [The Sickness unto Death] in Kierkegaards Samlede Værker, 11, pp. 155–9. 12. Kobayashi, ‘Ryoˉshin’, Kobayashi Hideo zenshu¯, 12, pp. 84–6. 13. Kobayashi, ‘Watakushi no jinseikan’ [‘My View of Life’] Kobayashi Hideo zenshu¯, 9, pp. 158–9. 14. Kobayashi, ‘Shinkoˉ nitsuite’ [‘On Faith’] Kobayashi Hideo zenshu¯, 9, p. 253. 15. Kobayashi, ‘Shinzurukoto to shirukoto’ [‘Believing and Understanding’] Kobayashi Hideo zenshu¯, 13, pp. 399–401. 16. Kobayashi, ‘Moˉ tsuaruto no ongaku nitsuite’ [‘On the Music of Mozart’] Kobayashi Hideo zenshu¯, 11, p. 123.

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17. Kobayashi, ‘Dokusho nitsuite’ [‘On Reading’] Kobayashi Hideo zenshu¯, 6, pp. 80–4. 18. Kobayashi, ‘Mushi no seishin’ [‘The Spirit of Unselfishness’] Kobayashi Hideo zenshu¯, 12, pp. 102–3. 19. Kobayashi, ‘Ki’ [‘The Season’] Kobayashi Hideo zenshu¯, 12, p. 376. 20. Kobayashi, ‘Watakushi no jinseikan’, Kobayashi Hideo zenshu¯, 9, p. 168. 21. Kobayashi, ‘Watakushi no jinseikan’, Kobayashi Hideo zenshu¯, 9, pp. 132–46. 22. Kobayashi, ‘Shinkoˉ nitsuite’, Kobayashi Hideo zenshu¯, 9, p. 253. 23. Kobayashi, ‘Akuma tekina mono’ [‘The Demoniac’] Kobayashi Hideo zenshu¯, 1, pp. 272–4. 24. Kierkegaard, Sygdommen til Døden, in Kierkegaards Samlede Værker, 11, p. 216. 25. Kierkegaard, Søren Kierkegaards Papirer [Papers of Søren Kierkegaard] 11 (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1969) p. 255. 26. Kierkegaard, ‘Lilien paa Marken og Fuglen under Himlen’, Kierkegaards Samlede Værker, 11, pp. 12–46. 27. Kierkegaard, Sygdommen til Døden, in Kierkegaards Samlede Værker, 11, pp. 127–8. 28. Kierkegaard, Sygdommen til Døden, in Kierkegaards Samlede Værker, 11, pp. 191. 29. Kierkegaard, Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift [Concluding Unscientific Postscript] in Kierkegaards Samlede Værker, 7, p. 508. 30. Kierkegaard, Sygdommen til Døden, in Kierkegaards Samlede Værker, 11, p. 189. 31. Kierkegaard, Sygdommen til Døden, in Kierkegaards Samlede Værker, 7, p. 168. 32. Kierkegaard, Indøvelse I Christendom [Practice in Christianity] in Kierkegaards Samlede Værke, 12, p. 169.

12 Mori and Kierkegaard: Experience and Existence Mime Morita

In this chapter I will discuss the relationship between Kierkegaard and the Japanese scholar Arimasa Mori (1911–76), one of the more famous philosophers and Christian thinkers in modern Japan. Mori’s particular significance in Japan lies in his position as one of a small number of intellectuals who struggled to be individuals in the Western sense of the term. Beneath these struggles lay strong interests in Western thought, culture and civilization. Because Mori is so little known in the West, I will start by giving an account of his background and thought. I will then examine his relations to Kierkegaard from three points of view. Firstly, I will ask how Mori understands Kierkegaard. Secondly, I will explore the relation between Mori’s central concept of experience and Kierkegaard’s equally central concept of existence. Here I will examine the resemblance of Mori’s idea to Nishida’s idea of ‘pure experience’. Thirdly, I will look at Mori’s interpretation of the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac and explore its points of connection with Kierkegaard’s interpretation in Fear and Trembling. Mori regards Abraham as the model of his idea of experience and also of his notion of what it is ‘to be an individual’. To have a full grasp of Mori’s interpretation of Abraham it will be helpful for us to understand not only his thought, but also his life. From here I will conclude that Mori grasped the essence of Kierkegaard’s philosophy because – rather than trying to interpret Kierkegaard – he lived out his own thought even as Kierkegaard did.

The background of Mori’s life Mori’s grandfather Arinori Mori (1847–89) was the first Minister of Education in the Meiji government. Arinori Mori was born and brought 201

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up in Satsuma-han (now Kagoshima Prefecture). He was sent to London to study and from there he travelled to America where he came into contact with Christianity through Thomas Lake Harris, a pious teacher of religion. Mori was strongly influenced by Christianity, but kept his faith to himself. At this period – just before the Meiji restoration – Christianity was officially prohibited by the Tokugawa Shōgunate. After the Meiji restoration Mori helped establish the Meiroku sha party in 1875, and invited Harris to Japan, where he stayed for some time, teaching English at the Naval Academy. In 1885 Mori become the first Minister of Education in the cabinet of Hirobumi Ito and endeavoured to establish a modern Western-style education system in Japan. However, in 1889, on the day of a Great Japanese Imperial Constitution promulgation ceremony, he was assassinated by the ultranationalist Buntaro Nishino. He was 43. Although Arinori Mori was one of the most progressive politicians in the Meiji era, he was not in the mainstream of the government. Mori’s enthusiasm for Western culture, science, and technology, which he saw as necessary in order for Japan to catch up with the West, spurred the establishment of modern educational and school systems in Japan. He also tried in various ways to change the Japanese language into English and one of his major achievements was the establishment of the Imperial Rescript on Education (Japanese: kyoiku tyokugo). This was not, however, exactly what he wanted but was a compromise with the conservative powers who insisted that loyalty to emperor is the first aim of education.1 Arimasa Mori’s grandfather was thus a pioneer in bringing Western civilization to Japan, and Christianity was at the centre of his efforts. He tried to introduce the idea of marriage by mutually agreed contract into a culture of arranged marriage. This latter attempt was subverted by his own divorce. He married again, however, this time to Horiko Iwakura, the fifth daughter of Tomomi Iwakura, one of the most important politicians of the Meiji restoration. After Arinori Mori was killed, Harris, who had left Japan earlier, returned as a missionary, and helped to console Hiroko and her son Akira. Under Harris’s sway both mother and son became deeply influenced by Christianity. They were later baptized by the famous Japanese pastor Masahisa Uemura and it was at this point that Mori’s family became firmly Christian. The strength of their Christian faith was such that they were not to be swayed by the waves of temporal change. Mori’s grandmother Hiroko represented an important characteristic of the family. She prayed every day, sitting in Japanese style and closing

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her eyes, remaining in this posture for four to five hours at a time. Her prayers, she said, were for her family, members of the church, her nephews and nieces, and over 50 other persons. Ayako Sekiya, Mori’s younger sister, who later became president of the Japanese YWCA, wrote that Mori felt Hiroko’s sincere attitude in these prayers showed the presence of God silently and with dignity. Her attitude in her prayers thus became a form of support and encouragement for her family: ‘we could not help believing the unseen God whenever we saw our grandmother in prayer’.2 Hiroko’s son Akira was a weak child and suffered so seriously from asthma that he could not go to school. Instead, he studied by himself and eventually became a pastor, establishing the church nakashibuy kyoukai. As a pastor Akira donated almost all his property to the church and to the students’ association kirisuto kyoˉ kyoˉjo kai (the Christian Association for Mutual Help). Akira died when his son Mori was thirteen years old. The week after his father’s death Mori decided, as he says in one of his essays, ‘I should return to here someday, too. However, until I return to here absolutely, I will begin to walk from here.’3 After his father’s death, Mori remained with his grandmother, mother, and younger sister, all of who were also strongly Christian. He thus grew up in a family that was much influenced by Western culture, a situation that was extremely unusual in Japan. Normally, a Japanese only son would be expected to carry out Confucian familial duties within a Buddhist or Shintō context. He also, it should be noted, studied French and Latin and learned to play the organ. Acquiring foreign language abilities and skills with a Western musical instrument that were also rare for a Japanese in those times. While at Tokyo Teikoku Daigaku (now Tokyo University) he read French and French literature and became interested in the writings of Descartes and Pascal. According to Sekiya, Mori got up at five o’clock every morning in order to concentrate on reading or sometimes to play the organ.4 However, while still a student, Mori contracted tuberculosis. This necessitated his having to withdraw from his studies for four years, during which time he received medical treatment and attempted to recover.5 Eventually he returned to the university and became an assistant in French literature in the Department of Literature. While there he recommenced his study of Descartes and Pascal. It is not known exactly when Mori first encountered Kierkegaard and which of Kierkegaard’s works he read. However, Kierkegaard’s books, The Sickness unto Death, The Concept of Anxiety, and Fear and Trembling are mentioned in his early work Kindai seishin to kirisuto kyoˉ [Modern

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Spirit and Christianity], which was published in 1952.6 He read many books by Christian writers in his younger days, and one of those writers was probably Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard, however, is hardly referred to in Mori’s later writings. Yet the relations between Kierkegaard’s thought and Mori’s are so obvious that it seems likely that Kierkegaard played a significant, if unconscious role in the formation of Mori’s ideas. Eventually he became an associate professor at Tokyo University, which in 1950 gave him a year’s leave of absence and the cherished opportunity to study in Paris. But he did not return to Japan, instead resigning his position at Tokyo. Although he made occasional short visits to Japan, he lived in Paris, engaged in his writing, until his death in 1976. The writings of Mori can, for the most part, be divided into three groups. Firstly, there are dissertations on philosophers like Descartes and Pascal. Secondly, there are essays on Christianity, including some sermons and lectures. Thirdly, there are his original contemplations and philosophical writings, most of them written in the style of a diary. Most popular in the last group are the philosophical essays, which are characteristic of both Mori’s distinctive style of writing and of his thought. The majority of these works combine sensuous descriptions with Mori’s thoughts – so mixed that the boundaries between them are blurred and the effect is almost that of a stream-of-consciousness monologue. He can also be repetitive and borders at times on being logically incoherent. Kunio Tsuji, a famous Japanese writer and one of Mori’s students, has this to say: In his essay Babylon no nagare no hotori nite [By the Flow of Babylon], his style is developed through a principle that enables the expression of the accumulation of sense. This principle is different from logical strictness. The principle of such living ideas is needed in the case where one grasps a concrete ‘the lump of sense’ rather than grasping abstract ideas or concepts. In such a case, in order to keep the contents of the idea alive, the homogeneous ‘lump of sense’ needs to be sustained by the continuation of the images and ideas.7 Tsuji sees Mori’s style and ideas as being so closely and so vividly interconnected as to be inseparable from each other. Mori developed a process whereby concrete sense gradually cohered and ripened into the expression of ideas. Thus the style is integral to the formulation of ideas.

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Another characteristic of his writing is that he preferred not to use established technical terms. Mori’s thought was influential on many Japanese intellectuals up until the 1970s. One of the most difficult problems faced in Japanese modernization was that of establishing the notion of individual subjectivity. Mori focused on just this, basing his ideas on a view of the problem of individuality as the core of the human problem, a problem that he also saw as finding expression in both politics and education. He struggled with the idea of how the individual is formed because he regarded the idea of individuality as the foundation of Western thought and civilization. Nevertheless, he kept his distance from both politics and the social issues of the times. I think this distancing was a result of his background and the purpose he saw in his own life. He neither wanted to become involved in social movements nor to acquire any social positions. Rather, his desires were simply to seek the truth and to live sincerely. In the 30 years or so that have passed since his death various testimonies about Mori’s personality have appeared. In contrast to the seriousness of his thought, many people have claimed that, in real life, he was an eccentric and a considerable epicure. For example, Kumiko Tochiori, one of Mori’s associates, described Mori as stubborn, arrogant, and too strong in his self-assertion.8 Tochiori said she wanted to ‘watch how he grew old. He had such a lack of common-sense, was selfish, full of contradictory behaviours, and sometimes avaricious for money and food. He had all those things that I was not able to have even in my imagination.’9 But Tsuji understood Mori otherwise: ‘he fought in life literally and was agonized. As a philosopher he was a model of thinking. But in everyday life, there was all the more place for imagination, and, within him, indifference and confusion lived side by side.’10 It seems likely that Mori’s personality was formed by his unusual family background, and that it represented independence from political power and authority, trust in an unseen God, and the dynamics of thought and inquiry. His personality was perhaps too complex to be easily grasped, but the value of his thought is nevertheless evident. It could be further said that there seems little influence of the Japanese tradition – Buddhism and Shintō, for example – in his thought. His personality and the characteristics of his thought were formed within the context of his family’s Christian faith, though this was still expressed in a Japanese way. For example, his grandmother’s way of praying – sitting in one posture for long periods – is reminiscent of some forms of

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Buddhist meditation. Still, originality brought him into conflict with Japanese human relations, customs, and society.

How did Mori understand Kierkegaard? Mori perceives Kierkegaard as a person who thoroughly lived out his Christianity. It is this existential aspect of Kierkegaard that brings Mori to understand and appreciate Kierkegaard’s criticism of modern rationalism. I think this understanding is also much influenced by Mori’s reading of Pascal and Dostoevsky. Mori started his academic research, it will be recalled, with the study of Descartes and Pascal, philosophers who represent the two major streams of Western philosophy. Let us start then by having a look at how Mori responded to these two pivotal philosophers. Mori saw Descartes as the essential rationalist. But what is the basis of this rationalism? The spirit of rationalism in Descartes was a means of mediating that which promotes the free development of the human spirit and providing a discipline which is able to change the things that block such development. Thus, Descartes could treat nature methodically in order to promote the free development of the human spirit. For example, Descartes saw the study of nature and Stoic generosity as mediating between and complementing each other. Enlightenment thinkers took up this rational criticism and applied it to social reality. This prepared the way for the French Revolution and opened up positivism in the nineteenth century, in part as a study of society. But, says Mori, the modern rationalism that arose from Descartes had a tendency to see human beings as a part of the natural order. It thus lacked the power to grasp the dynamic aspect in historical subjectivity.11 In comparing Descartes with Pascal, Mori argued that Descartes’ rationalism, along with the anthropocentrism that was characteristic of modern times, portrayed human beings in a way that opposed the thought of Pascal’s Christianity. Pascal’s insight, according to Mori, was that there were two orders in the human being: One order is the natural and direct pursuit of self-interest. It is the order of flesh and desire. Here the spirit aims consciously and methodically at self-sufficiency. In contrast, the other order is one that denies the self and aims rather at the love of others; both God and persons. It is the order of the spirit (Pascal’s original expression is ‘order’ of heart). While there is a great distance from the order of flesh to the order of spirit (Pascal claimed that the distance is infinitely

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large), the former order is really only a symbol of the latter. This is because there is difference in principle between the two orders: the order of love is the supernatural order.12 Human beings, Mori argues, tend to choose the order of desire and the pursuit of self. But we should be turned to the order of love. He wrote that through the order of spirit or heart human beings seek God and are supported by God. These orders – of the flesh and of the spirit – Mori feels, are interrelated in human beings, and how to change one’s life from the former to the latter was the most important task set forth in Pensées.13 For Pascal, then, the self was to be denied and self-love extinguished; for it is such things that prevent us from loving God and deny the order of love. As a Christian thinker Mori is thus clearly influenced by Pascal. He had, however, a resistance to the full acceptance of Pascal’s ideas, and found greater sympathy with Dostoevsky who was, in many ways, a similar thinker. Because the characters of Dostoevsky’s fictions are so full of contradictions and confusion Mori felt they were vivid depictions of the ways in which the two orders could combine and clash within one individual. Haruo Sugimoto, a Mori scholar, feels that the germ of Mori’s thought can be found in his essay on Dostoevsky. Sugimoto points here towards Mori’s interpretation of The Brothers Karamazov. In this novel, a poor and miserable man named Snegiryov refuses to accept money because he imagines the shame that this will bring to his son Ilusya. Mori analyses this feeling and says, ‘before his spirit there was Ilusya, the existence of love and anger. This is a simple fact that denies any reason or deduction.’ Mori calls it love itself. Sugimoto focuses on this and comments that the fact itself cannot be changed or operated upon, it can only be encountered. Mori uses the word ‘encounter’ here but, as Sugimoto points out, it is the germ of his key concept of experience.14 Mori argues that modern rationalism saw the human being as only fixed and historical. This constituted a civilized life-system and was meant to evade any radical or existential problems. However, problems remained. Although many rationalists expressed optimism, says Mori, the problems came together with a sense of the abyss. It was only a few persons who noticed it. Yet the few who noticed this turned to criticism. Luther, Pascal, Kierkegaard, and Dostoevsky were such people. As Eiko Hanaoka points out in Chapter 9, it is natural that modern rationalist culture, which is to be based on the evasion of contradictions, will before long fall into nihilism.15

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Modern Western philosophy, which began with Descartes, developed a sense of independence and freedom through its rationality and universality. However, such a rationality and universality could not, Mori contended, understand the human being as an individual, an individual with an irrational and mysterious existence. True selfhood in the human being is recognized only when one believes one is before the absolute God. To achieve this, one must have faith. Kierkegaard, Mori felt, was the rare philosopher who noticed this. And it is here that Kierkegaard makes his way into Mori’s thought. Mori says, ‘faith must be the human existence that is able to put the individual before God as the absolute to the last. This was seen by Kierkegaard. The contents of our existence are given to the very last by the side of God.’16 We cannot help calling such existence ‘faith’. And it is in such faith that we first become aware of human individuality. We ourselves realize this in the presence of God. But very few Japanese intellectuals at the time could understand the significance of such thought based on human existence. Mori, however, had insight into the significance and essence of the Christian view. Furthermore, Mori believed that Kierkegaard and other Christian thinkers describe ‘the dynamic root of the deepest part of human reality’. This idea is most likely the source of Mori’s original concerns. Mori says here: This philosophy of religion is based on the ultimate awareness of human existence as the existential root that underlies philosophy and theology. It is a special dynamic awareness that includes the awareness of the common root of both the universal and the particular to produce universality constantly. The greatest books illuminate the mix of light and shade found in approaching this common root. Works such as Pensées by Pascal, the writings of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, the Pauline epistles, The Confessions by Augustine, and the literature of Dostoevsky, all these reflect the dynamic root of the deepest part of the human being so as to be frightening.17 Here we can find the root of Mori’s concept of experience. Firstly, he refers to ‘the ultimate awareness of human existence as the existential root that underlies philosophy and theology’. Secondly, there is the ‘awareness of the common root of both the universal and the particular’. The particular here is not included in or related to the universal, but has a common root and, for the individual, the particular produces the universal. Thirdly, Mori finds in this ‘the dynamic root of the deepest part of the human being’. In all of this his concept is not all that far

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from Nishida’s concept of pure experience, something I will come back to shortly. Mori also saw this in Kierkegaard. For example, Mori wrote of Kierkegaard that: faith criticizes cultural and moral orders as the foundation and demands the conscious rebuilding of the foundation. Faith truly finds itself in right relationship to God as Kierkegaard describes it in The Sickness unto Death. However, in a sense, human self-pursuit and the impulse of self-realization is the essence of human existence … but sin appears for the first time in the destruction of relations of love with others. In other words from the standpoint of faith people believe it is their life’s responsibility to exchange their self-pursuit for a solemn responsibility for seeking the will of God.18 Mori declared that from the standpoint of faith self-investigation was contrary to modern thought. In this view the Christian faith represented by Kierkegaard is completely the opposite of modern rationalism. Mori claims here that ‘to deny systematic thought while making much of individual existence in concrete reality is the overcoming of nihilism’.19 Mori thus understands the history of Western rationalist thought as having its significance in its ultimate conflict with Kierkegaard’s existential thought. For Mori Western thought was not only an object of study, but a subjective way of living. This is why he felt such an affinity to Kierkegaard. He wrote of this, saying, ‘I should write that to find the true meaning of life is the most remarkable sign of despair. This is a difficult subject, while at the same time it is the most universal. Some may say I took this from Kierkegaard. However, I came to it as a result of my own contemplation.’20 Mori’s purpose was both to seek the truth and to live truly. For Mori, Kierkegaard was a model for such seekers and the guide who returned him to his own essential problem. Here we can see the fundamental similarities between Mori and Kierkegaard.

Mori’s experience and Kierkegaard’s existence Experience is the core concept in Mori’s thought. He describes it as the one lasting part of human existence in a subjective world. To him this is the same as Kierkegaard’s concept of existence. Mori understands experience in this sense as essential to human beings, originating in the

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dynamic root of our deepest core. Furthermore, he believes that experience is so personal and existential that each individual could only create his or her own. Even so, each personal experience is part of the universal experience. Mori said that experience comes from fully sensing that which is outside of self. It begins when a person has an awareness of contact with others or other things. When there is nothing to impede or prevent direct contact with a thing outside oneself, something within is created. This is the genesis of experience. The scholar Akemi Kugimiya points out that Mori’s idea here is very similar to Husserl’s phenomenological reduction since it starts from experience with things outside oneself and, bracketing the question of external existence, focuses on and awakens pure sense.21 Mori describes his own first experience of this in an essay dated 24 March 1956: When I stand in the presence of unchangeable things such as untouched nature or an accumulation of stones, I am conscious of turning and flowing within myself. I feel the change in my existence with opacity which is tied and solidified by various things, gradually being melted and isolated. It then begins to turn and gradually wind up all of existence in the turning, gradually becoming more transparent little by little, until at last the flow becomes something homogeneous. Then I find ‘the blue space’, a shaft of light, or light rather than a colour, luminous points rather than light. The points of light flow together becoming a greater light, adding height and width, collecting innumerable luminous points in themselves.22 This amalgamation is both a psychological and a natural phenomenon. Mori finds the two are unified as awareness becomes transparently clear. Thus he feels there is no border between oneself and an object, or self-consciousness and an object. It is worth noting that Mori thought such a true experience happens only once in a lifetime. Other apparent instances are merely a change of the same experience. Mori adds that it becomes existential change in the pure sense. Mori calls this ‘enhancement of the definition itself’. His view is that sense becomes experience and experience leads to definition and thought. This was a basic tenet of Mori’s view and one which never changed. Mori further describes the characteristics of experience as it relates to the passage of time. He emphasizes the importance of inner time. The passage of time is essential for the maturing of experience: ‘That I myself

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live for my sense faithfully depends on the irretrievable flow of this time into myself. Images are heavily tinged with sedimentation of time, which helps me to live sincerely according to my sense. During this process the sedimentation becomes crystallized and formed more than the time itself, until it gradually ferments and produces significance resisting the flow of time from within myself.’23 We can compare Mori’s concept of time with Kierkegaard’s. For Kierkegaard the fullness of time implies two meanings. Firstly, it means the incarnation of Christ. The eternal was incarnated only once in history. Christ invaded human time. At that point the whole significance of history underwent a decisive change. Secondly, every person is changed decisively by meeting with eternity in real time, which awakens them to real existence. Both meanings incorporate decisive turning points in time or history. One notable difference here between Mori and Kierkegaard is that Mori does not, as Kierkegaard does, have the idea of a decisive turning point in time. Mori values inward time, which is the process of change or renewal of experience. Time does not go beyond itself and meet something outside of time. Rather, the maturity of time means progress in self-consciousness or experience. Thus he does not mention, as Kierkegaard does, the idea of the meeting of the eternal and finite. His concern is with the change of inwardness and inner time. Here, perhaps, is a place where, despite his Christian background, he is under the influence of Japanese thinking about the impermanence of things. This idea is traditionally expressed in the Japanese idea of aware and in Japanese Buddhism. Finally, he claims that experience forms the inwardness of the self, which leads to the relationship with existence. Mori uses the term ‘inner prompting’ to refer to this forming of experience. Each person decides his or her actions and choices in life based on this inner prompting. When someone feels such inner prompting and thereupon comes into contact with the outside world, it is the beginning of experience. Mori describes inner prompting like this: An important thing is that I continually follow this process in myself. For in doing so I am sure to find the true ‘prompting’. But one must be certain that it is true prompting. However, wanting it by itself might prove fatal to its appearance. For a person who desires it in this limited way might not be permitted to enter the experience. Not only that, when this prompting appears, a person must be certain of its appearance. However, persons with patience and courage, and

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even the virtue of believing that it should be possible because of their sincere desire, do not always realize it. Another name for this patience and courage is talent or a genius.24 While this inner prompting is personal, the results of it are universal. Inner prompting is the beginning of being oneself, being individual, and of experience itself. From this individualistic standpoint, Mori criticizes what is meant by being ‘Japanese’ (in the cultural sense of language, lifestyle, ways of thought, customs, social manners, and so on). He thought that language constituted a central problem and that a fatal flaw in the Japanese language was its inability to enable real individuality. In other words the language denies a person true subjectivity. Mori contrasted French and Japanese to illustrate this. In French, the speaker is the subject ‘I’ and someone to whom he talks is ‘you’. This ‘you’ is an absolute you, subjective, and the absolute other. ‘I’ also represents an absolute and independent subject. However, in Japanese, when I talk to ‘you’, I am defined in part by ‘you’ and cannot be an independent and absolute subject. When ‘I’ is used in Japanese, it must be used according to the cases, watashi, boku, ore, which in turn accord to the social and domestic roles, the age, sex, profession, and other conditions of the person being addressed. This is also true of other pronouns. Further, these conditions are also determined by the relation of the person being addressed to the speaker. Thus, when a Japanese chooses a certain form of ‘I’ (for example, watashi), she is immediately caught up in the role implied by this situation and acts unconsciously in the manner expected by the other person. So in Japanese ‘I’ is relative and dependent upon others or situations and thus it is very difficult to be an absolute individual. As a result, Mori concludes, the Japanese language prevents a person from having true and pure subjectivity. Mori calls it the relationship of ‘you for you’. But the real ‘inner prompting’ occurs as one’s own innermost truth, independent of other persons. Mori stated in a lecture that In Japan, people have killed such inner promptings over and over again since ancient times. The inner prompting of every person makes him into a self, individual, or irreplaceable individual. This is because the person only becomes ‘the other’ person in relation to society, for the Emperor, and parents, if he becomes absolute self or individual. But Japanese are afraid of this. You must not be afraid of it. A person must not be afraid when his lover, friends, or even

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parents become ‘the other’. In becoming ‘the other’ person he is truly becoming himself.25 Mori claims that the significance of the individual comes through being thoroughly oneself. What accomplishes this in the person is (Mori’s notion of) experience. In this way both Mori and Kierkegaard emphasize being a true individual or self. It is evident therefore that Mori and Kierkegaard have this promotion of the individual in common. Another question that naturally arises at this point concerns the relation of Mori’s concept of experience to Nishida’s concept of pure experience. (See chapters 9 and 10 where Nishida’s concept is fully discussed.) Mori himself insisted that his experience was different from Nishida’s idea of pure experience. Nishida’s concept is described as ‘the primitive fact that unites subject and object’.26 Mori claims that his concept of experience is different from Nishida’s because his concept does not refer to the idea of ‘my experience’, but rather to ‘the total experience that contains my experience and that of others’. In Sugimoto’s analysis the relations between these two conceptions of experience are very similar: both of them refer to the fact of experience itself. Both concepts share a fundamental unity of opposites, the unity of subject and object, while differences remain in their equality, and equality in their difference. Mori states that experience is reality itself. Sugimoto describes Mori’s idea here by saying that they have the same quality in each phase of experience. In addition, Sugimoto distinguishes between Mori’s and Nishida’s concepts by pointing to Nishida’s further notion of ba or place. For Nishida, says Sugimoto, the idea of ba is so basic to pure experience that it cannot be separated from it. Free will is the ba that emerges in the consciousness beyond the difference of subject and object.27 Although Mori does not agree with Nishida’s idea of the loss of the boundary between subject and object, referring more to the importance of facing the transcendental God and acting in consciousness of God (thus maintaining the boundary between subject and object), he nevertheless agrees with Nishida on the idea of free will. Both Mori and Nishida, says Sugimoto, see human beings as able to perform creative acts without a conscious sense of free will. Thus, Sugimoto concludes that Mori’s concept of human experience has some important resemblances to Nishida’s concept of pure experience. I should like to point out, however, that there is an essential difference here between Mori and Nishida. This is the subjective character of Mori’s concept. Mori insisted that the individual should find his experience by himself. It is vital for Mori that an individual becomes aware of

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his self through his own experience. For Nishida, on the other hand, it is the essence of pure experience, that within it the individual becomes subsumed into the universal. That is, pure experience does not enable the individual to become aware of his own distinctive self. Mori, however, valued the importance of the individual. For him, the individual could not and should not be subsumed into the universal. This is the fundamental quality of Mori’s concept, and one that ties him closely to Kierkegaard.

Mori’s Abraham and Kierkegaard’s Abraham For Mori, Abraham was the father and model of faith – even as he is to Jews and Christians alike. It is Abraham, says Mori, who represents the ‘ultimate example of the transparency of human experience’.28 Mori claims that the defining characteristic of Abraham is his following the inner prompting and leaving his ancestors’ land, an act undertaken with no guarantees. This is part of Abraham’s faith. Mori speaks about the attempted sacrifice of Isaac in a lecture titled, ‘Mount Moriah’. He suggests that this trial was a moment of crisis in Abraham’s contract with God. It was a chance for him to re-evaluate the meaning of obedience to God: To sacrifice Isaac, his only child, for God, and to do it by his own hand meant to lay waste to the contract between himself and God. Furthermore, this sacrifice was ordered by God who had given him the original promise as well as his son Isaac. Who can bear such absurdity? ... Sometimes we meet with accidents which we cannot explain to others or to ourselves. But I believe such accidents make our lives unique. They are a once in a lifetime opportunity. When we meet such opportunities we should take a risk with them, as in stepping over a hot fire. We should move forward, laying aside our hope, inclination, nature, and natural propensity. Abraham did this fully in his life.29 Abraham’s situation is absurd and he is alone, with no one to consult, but it is through such trials – and the responses to them – that a person can develop a sense of self. Abraham was willing to sacrifice Isaac. This is inexplicable. Mori describes it as ‘faith’ or ‘obedience’, but it is impossible to explain any further than that. Mori gave another lecture on the story of Abraham and Isaac at the International Christian University in 1972. This was entitled, ‘Birth

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of an Only Child’. In it he stated, ‘the biblical record of this event is really naively simple. But it is a quite dreadful thing, and in a sense the contents can touch our faith, the most fundamental feature of our existence as human beings.’ Mori said that when Kierkegaard considered this episode, he started with the meaning of the problem faced by Abraham and demonstrated why Abraham said nothing to Isaac. 30 In this lecture Mori focuses on the relationship between Abraham and God. Although Isaac was closest to Abraham in human terms, in this story Abraham relates only to God as ‘you’. Isaac was an outsider to this relationship. Abraham shares the secret only with God; the only ‘you’. No one could intervene between Abraham and God, the absolute ‘you’. This is what Mori meant by ‘faith’. So we may say that the relationship of faith with God excludes all other persons. Kierkegaard also understood Abraham’s faith in terms of the absurd. We let Isaac actually be sacrificed. Abraham had faith. He did not have faith that he would be blessed in a future life but that he would be blessed here in this world. God could give him a new Isaac, could restore to life the one sacrificed. He had faith by virtue of the absurd, for all human calculation ceased long ago.31 Kierkegaard emphasizes Abraham’s faith in spite of the absurd and the paradox: ‘Precisely because resignation is antecedent, faith is no aesthetic emotion but something far higher; it is not the spontaneous inclination of the heart but the paradox of existence.’32 Both Mori and Kierkegaard discuss the solitude and absurdity of Abraham, but only Kierkegaard writes about faith as a passion and as the teleological suspension of ethics. Mori does not mention these. What Mori values is the sincerity of Abraham’s life, as something expressed not only in his attempt to sacrifice Isaac, but also as expressed when his wife Sarah died or when he made the sacrifice to Melchizedek. He does not focus on the construction of the absurdity or the paradox of existence. However, both Kierkegaard and Mori claimed that faith was an absolute relationship with God which is where the idea of solitude comes in. After that Kierkegaard returns to the paradox of existence and the passion of faith. Mori, however, turns towards living his own life sincerely. Mori does not make much of the passion of existence here. But both Mori and Kierkegaard make faith the first priority in an absolute relationship with God.

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Conclusion It is possible to conclude, then, that Mori’s concept of experience corresponds in significant ways to Kierkegaard’s concept of existence. But there are caveats to this. Mori’s notion of experience contains a number of aspects, and while from one aspect it is very similar to Kierkegaard’s concept of existence, I also think that Mori intended there to be more diverse meanings within his own concept as, for example, with his ideas of inner prompting and sincerity. However, in the existential aspect, both concepts have very similar content. But there is another question: What did Mori and Kierkegaard really think of other people? How did they relate to other concrete individuals? Naturally, they argued for the importance of others. But within their work I cannot find tangible examples of how they realize this relation. They both emphasized the subjectivity of self or the individual. However, the ‘you’ or absolute ‘you’ with whose relationship they were primarily concerned was God, not the ‘you’ of other people. Yet Mori was thoroughly convinced that the pursuit of self or subjectivity would lead to objectivity or universality. But I wonder why Mori mentions neither equal communication nor relations with others, especially with women. Mori married while he was in Japan, but when he went to France he got divorced. Then he married a French woman, but this marriage also failed. I find Mori’s view of women to be so aesthetic that he did not seem to consider them as actual subjects of experience. In fact Mori seemed to avoid real and equal personal relations with women. This also appears to be true of Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard was engaged once, but for reasons that remain unclear, broke the engagement off and never married. It seems important to note here that many commentators have pointed to the similarities between Kierkegaard’s version of the relationship between Abraham and Isaac and his actual relationship with his fiancée Regine. That is, just as Abraham is determined to sacrifice his son, who plays no part as a subject in Kierkegaard’s view of the matter, so is Kierkegaard determined to sacrifice (call off the marriage to) Regine, who likewise plays no part as a subject. In other words, just as Abraham does not consider Isaac’s subjective experience as an individual, so too does Kierkegaard not consider his fiancée’s subjective experience as an individual. She is merely an object in his own complicated scheme of subjectivity. No doubt, Mori and Kierkegaard were both men of genius who promoted their thinking widely. Each had a unique and strong personality,

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complemented by original thinking. But I wonder if in the end their concepts failed the test in relation to others. Did their concepts apply to real concrete relationships, or did they only function theoretically within themselves, floating free of any contact with real individuals? In the context of deep personal relations with others these concepts were severely tried, so much so perhaps that their authors’ awareness of self or self-consciousness intensified to such a point that they were unable to abandon their own persistent sense of self.

Notes 1. Ayako Sekiya, Ippan no kashi no ki [An Oak Tree: an Essay on the Mori Family] (Tokyo: Nihon kirisoto kyodan syuppankyoku, 1981) p. 72. 2. Sekiya, Ippan no kashi no ki, p. 52. 3. Ayako Sekiya, Furikaerunobe no michi [Looking Back on the Path through the Field: Memories of my Life] (Tokyo: Nihon kirisoto kyodan syuppankyoku, 2000) p. 29. 4. Sekiya, Ippan no kashi no ki, p. 165. 5. Sekiya, Ippan no kashi no ki, p. 190. 6. Arimasa Mori, Mori Arimasa zenshu¯ [Complete Works of Arimasa Mori] 7 (Tokyo: Chikuma-shobo, 1979) p. 112. 7. Kunio Tsuji, Tsuji Kunio zenshu¯ [Complete Works of Kunio Tsuji] 15 (Tokyo: Shincho-sya, 2005) p.188. 8. Kumiko Tochiori, Mori Arimasa sensei no koto [My Memories of Arimasa Mori] (Tokyo: Chikuma-shobo, 2002) p. 124. 9. Tochiori, Mori Arimasa sensei no koto, p. 52. 10. Kunio Tsuji, Tsuji Kunio zenshu¯ [Complete Works of Kunio Tsuji] 15 (Tokyo: Shincho-sya, 2005) p. 177. 11. Mori, Mori Arimasa zenshu¯, 9, p. 349. 12. Mori, Mori Arimasa zenshu¯, 1, p. 26. 13. Mori, Mori Arimasa zenshu¯, 11, p. 26. 14. Haruo Sugimoto, Mori Arimasa ron [An Essay on Arimasa Mori] (Tokyo: Chuseki-sya, 2004) p. 150. 15. Mori, Mori Arimasa zenshu¯, 7, p. 111. 16. Mori, Mori Arimasa zenshu¯, 7, pp. 50–1. 17. Mori, Mori Arimasa zenshu¯, 7, p. 71. 18. Mori, Mori Arimasa zenshu¯, 7, p. 112. 19. Mori, Mori Arimasa zenshu¯, 7, p. 205. 20. Arimasa Mori, Mori Arimasa essay-shu [Collected Essays of Arimasa Mori] 2 (Tokyo: Chikuma-shobo, 1999) p. 151. 21. Akemi Kugimiya, ‘Mori Arimasa ni okeru keiken no soˉzoˉ’ [‘On the Creation of “Experience”, in Arimasa Mori’] part 2, Gendai bungaku, 71, 2005: 38. 22. Mori, Mori Arimasa essay shu¯, 1, pp. 129–30. 23. Mori, Mori Arimasa essay shu¯, 1, p. 328. 24. Mori, Mori Arimasa essay shu¯, 4, p. 273. 25. Arimasa Mori, Furui mono to atarashii mono [The Old Thing and The New Thing] (Tokyo: Nihon kirisoto kyodan syuppankyoku, 1975) p. 57.

218 Kierkegaard and Japanese Thought 26. Mori, Mori Arimasa zenshu¯, 12, pp. 14–15. 27. Haruo Sugimoto, Mori Arimasa ron, p. 210. 28. Arimasa Mori, Abraham no shoˉgai [The Life of Abraham] (Tokyo: Nihon kirisoto kyodan syuppankyoku, 1975) p. 11. 29. Mori, Abraham no shoˉgai, p. 110. 30. Arimasa Mori, Hikari to Yami [The Light and Darkness] (Tokyo: Nihon kirisoto kyodan syuppankyoku, 1977) p. 80. 31. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, trans. Howard and Edna Hong (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1983) p. 80. 32. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, p. 47.

13 Otani: a Kierkegaardian Fellow of the Dead Kinya Masugata

‘Arise, dear συμπαρανεκρωμεnοι [fellows of the dead], the night is over; the day is beginning its unflagging activity again, never, so it seems, tired of repeating itself forever and ever.’1 Over twenty years ago the founder of the Kierkegaard Society of Japan, Masaru Otani, who was then 72 years old, gave a lecture on the relationship between the ethical and the martyrdom of the individual. The lecture, which I attended, was delivered on 12 November 1983 at Kyoto University and was published the following year in Kierkegaard Studiet, the journal of the Kierkegaard Society of Japan, under the title ‘The Ethical and Martyrdom of the Individual in Kierkegaard’. I was strongly attracted to the word ‘martyrdom’. Not only was I overwhelmed by the power of his lecture, but I also had an impression that Otani regarded himself as a martyr who had given his life up to the study of Kierkegaard. When we look back on his life of over seventy years, and also at his interpretation of Kierkegaard, we find that Otani chose to tread a difficult path as a Kierkegaardian fellow of the dead. From the very beginning of his writings on Kierkegaard, in his 1936 undergraduate thesis, it is clear that Kierkegaard was to become the focus of his life’s work. Several years after attending Otani’s lecture I became an editorial member of the Otani Masaru zenshu¯ or the Complete Works of Masaru Otani. I was then given the chance to write a bibliographical note in one of the volumes. I read the paper on the ethical and martyrdom again and I clearly recalled the impression I had at that autumn lecture. In 1982, Otani looked back at his past in a paper titled, ‘Ånder, som Kæmper rundt om Kierkegaard: En privat erindring’ (‘Spirits that Fight around Kierkegaard: a Personal Remembrance’). In this paper, Otani described Kai Vilhelm Sejr Kühle as ‘the first, as it were, Kierkegaardian συμπαρανεκρωμεnοι [fellow of the dead] who I met and 219

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felt sad at his parting’. 2 It was in reflection on this comment, that I came to the idea of writing something with the term ‘fellow of the dead’ in the title. The Greek word συμπαρανεκρωμεnοι, or symparanekromenoi in Latin letters, is used by Kierkegaard in the subtitle, ‘Delivered before the Συμπαρανεκρωμεnοι’, which appears in the chapters titled ‘The Tragic in Ancient Drama Reflected in the Tragic in Modern Drama’ and ‘Silhouettes, Psychological Diversion’. It further appears in the subtitle, ‘An Inspired Address to the Συμπαρανεκρωμεnοι’ in the chapter titled ‘The Unhappiest One’ in Either/Or. Howard and Edna Hong translate symparanekromenoi as ‘fellowship of the dead’ or ‘society of buried lives’. This expression was coined by Kierkegaard as ‘an expression to designate the kind of people I would like to write for, convinced that they would share my views’.3 Otani himself translated ‘The Unhappiest One’ into Japanese and added a note saying, ‘from the standpoint of Greek, Kierkegaard has produced what Professor Eduard Geismar of the University of Copenhagen calls an “impossible word”. Yet it is easy enough to see what Kierkegaard meant by it, and Geismar freely translated it as “the fellowship of buried lives.” Kierkegaard imagines himself addressing a society composed of people “who, for one cause or another, are living lives which are spiritually or mentally entombed and isolated”.’4 Before his translation of ‘The Unhappiest One’, Otani published the article ‘Reading “The Unhappiest One” in Either/Or’. In this article we find the following: As aphorisms (aphorismer) in life, he who lives as the separated (α′φορισμεnοι), ‘fellowship of the dead’, ‘who does not believe in the game of gladness or the happiness of fools’, ‘who believes in nothing but unhappiness,’ does not fear death; he knows a worse calamity than death, namely, to live. If there were a person who could not die, because he wrongly fears death, he would be the unhappiest one. The most unfortunate person, the one who suffers most, is the very one who is to bring consolation to others … the unhappiest one cannot yet die by himself and only slides down into the grave. (The passages within quotation marks here are from Kierkegaard) (KS, 18 (1988): 29) But the whole is a poem; the history of Kierkegaard’s religious spirit at the time that he moves closer to conversion, but yet again turns away from such conversion through writing a poem. The agony of the romantic and the magnificence of the literary-tragic

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is going to perform a horrifying and endless twilight drama in the halo of the religious. That is the very aesthetic Enten [Danish for ‘Either’]. It is this aesthetic which presupposes the contrast of Eller [Danish for ‘Or’], namely, the ethical or the ethico-religious. This is not only a gem of a poem in the originality of organization, the profoundness of implication, the height of thinking, the sincerity to truth, the compassion of oppression, and the sympathy of helplessness, but also a key to figuring out Either/Or. Besides this, it is like Ariadne’s thread in that it helps us to resolve the enigma of Kierkegaard. We can already see here the ideas of death and martyrdom that are emblematic of Kierkegaard’s last stage of life. (KS, 18 (1988): 35–6) In Otani’s aesthetic and passionate style, we perceive the possibility that Otani paralleled his interpretation of Kierkegaard with his own life. There was a period of four years between ‘The Ethical and Martyrdom of the Individual in Kierkegaard’ and ‘Reading “The Unhappiest One” in Either/Or’, and in 1988 the Japanese edition of Kierkegaard Writings first began to be published. Otani had talked about the publication of a Japanese translation of Kierkegaard’s works since the early 1980s. He felt this publication was his last mission in life. The following is a chronology of his work on Kierkegaard from 1982 to 1988, from the time he was 71 to 77 years old: 1982 1. Lecture given at the Kierkegaard International Congress in Milan: ‘The Ethical and the Individual in Søren Kierkegaard’.5 2. ‘Ånder, som Kæmper rundt om Kierkegaard (Part 1): En privat erindring’6 (KS, 12 (1982): 35–6). 3. ‘Ånder, som Kæmper rundt om Kierkegaard (Part 2): En privat erindring’ (KS, 12 (1982): 15–25). 1983 4. Lecture given at the annual meeting of the Kierkegaard Society of Japan: ‘The Ethical and Martyrdom of the Individual in Kierkegaard’. 1984 5. ‘The Ethical and Martyrdom of the Individual in Kierkegaard’ (KS, 14 (1984): 37–49).

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1985 6. ‘On the Problematical Points in the Titles of Kierkegaard’s Works 1: Problems in the Title of Philosophical Fragments’ (KS, 15 (1985): 17–27). 1986 7. ‘On the Problematical Points in the Titles of Kierkegaard’s Works 2: The Point of View, on my Work as an Author’ (KS, 16 (1986): 19–29). 1987 8. ‘On the Problematical Points in the Titles of Kierkegaard’s Works 3: Judge for Yourself!, Upbuilding Discourses, Stages on Life’s Way’ (KS, 17 (1987): 39–48). 1988 9. ‘Reading “The Unhappiest One” in Either/Or’ (KS, 18 (1988): 27–36). During this period, Otani did not lose his interest in the problem of martyrdom, rather he became absorbed by it during his study for the preparation of the Japanese edition of Kierkegaard’s Writings. It was in terms of martyrdom that Otani mourned the death of the Kierkegaard scholar Niels Thulstrup when he wrote a special editor’s note in Kierkegaard Studiet: When I think back to the hundredth anniversary of Kierkegaard’s death in 1955, I recall that it was Thulstrup who waited for me when I arrived the next day in Copenhagen as a Japanese representative. He waited for me at a restaurant in Tivoli Gardens, in the not yet familiar local geography. Taking me under his wing, he made it possible for me to stay in Denmark for a year with the help of W. Lowrie in the USA and presented to me, through Lowrie, the first and second edition of Kierkegaard’s complete works. Since then we have had occasion to talk, just he and I, but it’s no use any more. Malantschuk passed away and now Thulstrup, having wounds all over his body, died – he who had devoted himself to Kierkegaard as a martyr. In this Denmark Kierkegaard could be alive without any mishaps. (Emphasis in the original) (KS, 19 (1987): 49) Otani translated Kierkegaard’s term, symparanekromenoi, as ‘people who died together’ in Japanese, and interpreted this word as the concept

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of martyrdom. He further coined the phrase, ‘Kierkegaardian symparanekromenoi’ or ‘Kierkegaardian fellow of the dead’, and he felt proud to see himself as a member of this fellowship. Otani related Kierkegaard’s concept of martyrdom to symparanekromenoi in ‘The Ethical and Martyrdom of the Individual in Kierkegaard’: We can say that his martyrdom is not ‘a short-run martyrdom’, but ‘a long-distance martyrdom’ or ‘a protracted martyrdom’ or ‘a martyrdom of continuance’. And he compared his existence, as above mentioned, with ‘a bloodless martyrdom’ or ‘a bloodless martyr’ against ‘bloody persecution’ – ‘a bloody witness.’ As for the case of his later martyrdom, Kierkegaard suggested the situation of The Corsar [the Copenhagen newspaper that ridiculed Kierkegaard], but this later martyrdom is a universal sign of martyrdom which he always used unchangeably. It appeared already in the comment on συμπαρανεκρωμεnοι in Either/Or: ‘he became a martyr, even though his martyrdom was not what he wanted, being nailed to the cross’. (KS, 14 (1984): 43–4) Otani quotes Kierkegaard’s words: ‘Still I cannot yet … properly … become a martyr for Christianity, because in that high grade I do not dare to call myself a Christian. I am properly a genius who could probably become martyr for the truth, scilicet, truly to explain what Christianity is.’ (Otani’s emphasis) (KS, 14 (1984): 42) And: ‘the only true situation for being in the truth, from a Christian point of view, is to become a martyr’ (p. 43). It becomes clear that Otani thought that the one true path to understanding Kierkegaard, from an existential point of view, was to become a Kierkegaardian fellow of the dead, which is to become filled with pathos. Otani’s methodological approach to the study of Kierkegaard was the source of the depth of his interpretation of Kierkegaard and the originality of his reading. This methodological attitude appears especially in his original Japanese translation of the titles of Kierkegaard’s works and Kierkegaard’s terms. It seems that Otani derives something of his own self-worth from the belief that the ‘true Kierkegaard’ comes to birth in his own study, and this belief was the origin of bitter criticism against other Kierkegaard scholars. For example, Otani heavily criticizes the

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commentary by Hirsch and Holenberg on the history of completing Either/Or. He says, But Kierkegaard did not only have these psychological behaviours; we must not lose a more qualitative task of human salvation while focusing on Kierkegaard’s entirely personal, as it were, low dimensional solicitude. We must not forget a woeful attitude towards the truth or that Kierkegaard’s soul was filled up with the problems of guilt, affliction, tragedy, despair, redemption, purification, and salvation, or the deepness of the inner spiritual constitution of his authorship that, as it were, deceives a person into the religious by means of the aesthetical.7 Otani also criticized Schröer’s methodology for the displacement of Kierkegaard’s thought in favour of his own theological method: ‘but this kind of treatment of Kierkegaard, in truth, puts out something other than Kierkegaard’s intention: we certainly lose Kierkegaard himself. To remove a part from the whole for some other expedient purpose is to destroy the whole itself. We have to take care to preserve the whole constitution of Kierkegaard’s style’ (KS, 1 (1964): 79). Schröer is critical of Kierkegaard’s concept of paradox as the cause of many varieties of theological confusion. But Otani criticizes Schröer’s understanding, saying that Schröer’s criticism neglects the intellectual situation of the time and overlooks the ‘how’ of how Kierkegaard first became conscious of ‘paradoxes, which are nothing other than rudimentary majestic thoughts’ (P. II A 755). These paradoxes are key concepts of existence-dialectic and orientate categorical significance in order genuinely to ascertain the religious. [Schröer] forcibly interprets Kierkegaard’s figure of thought as readymade theology, removing Kierkegaard’s situational and educational particularity. Schröer explains at great length the danger of uncritical acceptance of Kierkegaard and, above all, claims that Kierkegaard’s dialectic moves in the direction of over-dialectical observation thus defying all the partial theological statements (S. 132 cf.). He states that decisive middle determinations of biblical dialectic fall off and come to have other structures and other stages (S. 96 cf.). Although such a critical interpretation of Kierkegaard as Schröer’s might be a ‘contribution to theological logic’, it is not a correct interpretation of Kierkegaard himself … Every theoretical criticism, beyond the narrative literature written by Kierkegaard’s flesh and blood, only serves to remove

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Kierkegaard’s importance. We must accept Kierkegaard in the form of his passionate effusion, in other words, in Leidenschaftsform [the form of passion], not in Denkform [the form of thought]. (KS, 1 (1964): 81) The word ‘pathos’ indicates Otani’s fundamental attitude to the study of Kierkegaard. He says, for example, ‘we must also learn to observe Kierkegaard’s intention of work with positive feeling of pathetisk understanding [understanding filled with pathos], when we consider all of the difficult situational conditions inflicted on him’ (KS, 14 (1984): 88). These fundamental attitudes towards Kierkegaard give birth to a kind of religious-philosophical ambition for investigation into religiousphilosophical truth through the understanding of Kierkegaard’s thought. We can find this concretion in two articles which treat the relationship between Kierkegaard and Shinran, the medieval Japanese founder of True Pure Land Buddhism. For example, Otani says: if the catholicity of actuality of transcendent faith moved by God – which Kierkegaardian Christianity of the New Testament includes – and catholicity of faith directed by the ‘other power of transcending crosswise’ – which Shinran’s Buddhism includes – if they reflect each other like a mirror, then in this place both catholicities can only recognize the reciprocity of faith with the joy of self-denial. The criterion that both employ is the decision of choice by the absolute other. This criterion renders them identical with each other in ideality and consubstantial great mercy. (OMZ, 4, p. 394)8 (For a discussion of Shinran’s Pure Land Buddhism and the concept of ‘transcending crosswise’, see Chapter 3.) In this state of affairs ‘the universality of faith in the absolute other helps to brighten prospects for a truly tolerant ecumenism, one that is full of love and mercy’.9 Finally, Otani did not develop his own philosophy of religion, but remained as a Kierkegaard researcher. Kierkegaardian fellow of the dead, Otani, characterized Kierkegaard’s genius as follows: ‘To the last he never aspired to become a witness of truth in the way that the apostles and saints were. Rather, he continued to observe the category of “genius”. This is just his martyrdom’ (KS, 14 (1984): 43). I should like now to return to Otani’s interpretation of the similarities between Kierkegaard and Shinran. We can here also perceive his attitude of pathos to the study of Kierkegaard. It is hard not to feel that Otani has a particular advantage over other scholars in the comparative

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study of Shinran and Kierkegaard because he himself was steeped in the tradition of the teachings of Shinran. In fact, he is part of a direct line of scholarly descendents from Shinran. That is, Otani’s teacher was taught by another teacher, who was taught by another teacher, and so on, all the way back to a teacher who was taught by Shinran himself. In beginning his research on the relations between Kierkegaard and Shinran, Otani criticizes the Christian theologians Karl Barth and Paul Tillich, who had a strong interest in Japanese Buddhism. His criticism lies in the argument that they could not only not understand the essence of Japanese Buddhism, but that they also rejected Buddhism as being inferior to Christianity. Barth was greatly interested in Shinran’s Pure Land Buddhism, but criticized it saying that the ‘good will and mercy of this god entirely lacks relief for the authentic solution through a dramatic rendition to redeem the human being. This is because it lacks the doctrine of the anger and the sanctity of Amitabha [Amida Buddha] without the lessons of law’ (OMZ, 4, p. 382). Finally, he dismissed Buddhism as ‘a miserable, ruined paganism’. The same dismissal of Buddhism, says Otani, is given by Tillich. He says that although Tillich ‘advocates reconsidering Christianity in the context of worldwide religious phenomena, his final intention is only to open the possibility of a Christian mission to universal acceptability of faith by denying the Barthian exclusive, ultra-naturalistic “negative” theology. But in the case of Tillich, it is the guide of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament that is the criterion being applied to all advanced religions’ (OMZ, 4, p. 379). Otani also argues against Tillich that the self-criticism of Christianity through the dialogue which Tillich recommends is based only on the birth of Jesus and his resurrection. For Tillich these alone are the beginnings and the purpose of all beings (OMZ, 4, pp. 382–3). Even if Christianity judges itself, it only has one criterion for judgement, and that is the belief in the holy trinity. Barth and Tillich believe that the Christian religion has an advantage of exclusiveness of only one revelation of Jesus Christ. Tillich thus rejects the original foundation of other religions although he recommends discussion between religions. However, in the end, we find, for Tillich, that the ‘righteousness’ of Christianity overcomes the merits of other religions. Otani therefore offers a radical criticism of Barth and Tillich and goes well beyond their religio-centricism when he proposes the new possibility that Christianity and Buddhism might coexist. Otani bases this proposal on the meaning of catholicism, or universality, as ‘transcendent, altruistic faith of redemption by absolute being’ (OMZ, 4, p. 384), and

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developed his view out of the ideas of Kierkegaard and Shinran. We can find the core of this proposal in his article, ‘On the Possibility of Ideal Contact between Japanese True Pure Land Buddhism and the Concept of God by Kierkegaard’. He writes in the first section that Kierkegaard and Shinran are closely aligned in the depth of understanding of faith and the radical religious ideal. Especially since that for both of them the essence of faith lies not in ‘what’, but ‘how’ (KS, 9 (1979): 190). Their similarities, says Otani, are even greater than first seems the case (see Yamashita’s account of these similarities in Chapter 3). In the second section, he traces the similarity in Kierkegaard’s and Shinran’s ideas of faith. He describes this similarity in several points. Firstly he mentions the depth of the purity of faith. In this depth we can find a radicalism. We can see that there is a continuous conflict between self-power and other-power in the case of Shinran. In the case of Kierkegaard we can find this conflict in the rejection of his poetic genius. Otani interprets their attitudes regarding truth as reflecting the density of genuine faith, or the purity of faith. Shinran characterizes himself as a shaven-headed fool; Kierkegaard, in contrast, only characterizes himself as a religious genius. They distinguish strictly between the religious and the non-religious, realizing there is a chasm between the religious and the non-religious. This shows the purity of their faith. Secondly he refers to the identification with God and becoming Buddha. Kierkegaard writes in his papers (Papirer XI 2 A 8) that a human being is transformed into likeness with God (Danish: at forvandles i Lighed med Gud) by the means of the infinite love of God. This transformation, in other words, is to become God. The real or true meaning of this transformation is that human beings are created as a pure likeness of God through faith. This is similar to Shinran’s concept of becoming a Buddha through rebirth. When we hear the words of Kierkegaard ‘That God is Love, naturally means that God will do everything in order to help you to love God’, we make the association with Shinran’s thoughts of the original vow of Amida Buddha (OMZ, 4, pp. 199–200). Thirdly, there is a similarity in their notions of beyond good and evil. Shinran said that if the good person can be saved, still more can evil people.10 The evil person, who relies on the other power, originally has the possibility to be saved. The sphere in which we decide between the good and the evil lies in the world of other power. Also in Kierkegaard, ‘The essential thing is not to choose between good and evil, but to choose the world of repetition of freedom’ (OMZ, 4, p. 200). Fourthly, Otani points to the ideas of the single individual and the original vow. We can find similarities between Kierkegaard’s concept of the

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single individual and Shinran’s expression that the original vow of Amida Buddha is for each individual alone. In this way Shinran does not have any disciples to whom he can directly communicate the original vow. Shinran says that the original vow of Amida Buddha cannot be directly communicated to others and it is taught to the individuals by the Buddha’s wisdom and is experienced as an other power. Fifthly, there are, states Otani, connections between the ideas of the salvation by the absolute power of the absolute other. He says, ‘In order to experience a rebirth in the Pure Land of the Buddha we have no power to help the Buddha’s power of salvation. The absolute mercy of Amida Buddha to embrace and not to forsake any human being responds paradoxically to the individual sentient person who, with purity of heart, relies on the hand of salvation, and follows the royal command of Amida Buddha’ (OMZ, 4, pp. 201–2). The reason why Kierkegaard emphasizes the absolute difference between God and human beings, is that he would like to emphasize the infinite power of God. Otani further develops the last point in the third section of his article. He does this by considering Kierkegaard’s absolute paradox between God and human beings from two points of view. The first is his theory of salvation by absolute grace. Human beings should be redeemed by the grace of absolute similarity of the other being qualitatively separated from every human being. This is the theory of absolute paradox. Secondly, when we emphasize this absolute grace, what remains on the side of human beings? Human beings, subjectively, only respond to the absolute other with absolute pathos, desperate faith, and consciousness of absolute deference of sin. This is also a paradox because it is beyond the logical argument of God’s existence, the requisite argument of moral reason, and it is not a peculiar phenomenon of possession or theosophical phenomenon (OMZ, 4, p. 204). Otani interprets Kierkegaard’s absolute paradox by means of Shinran’s understanding of the relationship of ki (the deep human consciousness of having evil karma) and hoˉ (truth itself). Shinran radically considers human beings as pitiable, he decried himself as a fool, and argued that all persons were nevertheless saved through the other power of Amida Buddha. In accordance with this seeming paradox appeared the ultimate circumstance of the absolute – absolute correspondence between ki and hoˉ. Shinran’s aim was to create a correspondence with the original vow of Amida Buddha. Otani expressed it as absolute correspondence between ki and hoˉ. In his final years Shinran described it as, ‘to be without righteousness is righteous.’ This is also called jinenhoni, the spontaneity of the appearance of truth. Jinenhoni shows us a spiritual

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state where the caller of nembutsu is unspontaneously saved by Amida Buddha’s act of grace. The ‘righteousness of the righteous, without righteousness’ is Amida Buddha’s act of grace that we get only when we absolutely deny or neglect the deliberation from our own will. Otani points out the danger that Kierkegaard’s theory of Christ could be interpreted as Docetism, that is, the view that Jesus’ physical body was an illusion. Otani says that Kierkegaard’s theory of Christ could blur the meaning of the physical human existence of Jesus on Earth. But Otani finds some idealistic intersecting points in Kierkegaard’s view of Jesus and Mahāyāna Buddhism’s vision of the world. Kierkegaard’s theory of Christ has similarities with Shinran’s view of Amida Buddha in which hosshoˉ hosshin (in English, truth itself) and hoˉben hosshin or ‘the shape through which human beings know the truth’ are distinguished and Gautama Buddha is interpreted as Amida Buddha (hoˉben hosshin) or the real manifestation of the truth (hosshoˉ hosshin). This is the way Otani observes some common ideality between Kierkegaard and Shinran about the absolute paradoxical character existing between God and human beings, and between hoˉ and ki (OMZ, 4, pp. 207–8). Otani finds the difference between the two in that while Shinran emphasizes the ‘natural’ embracement of ki by Amida because the grace of the absolute-other is transferred to human beings through Amida Buddha, Kierkegaard emphasizes the moment of subjective truth in the phase of faith. Otani believes there is no crucial difference between the two, only a difference in nuance. However, I disagree that the difference is slight. Rather, they differ on the idea of the origin of choice. In the case of Kierkegaard, it is human beings who make choices, and in the case of Shinran, it is the absoluteother that makes the choice. In his Christology, Kierkegaard emphasizes the thought of imitatio Christi or the imitation of Christ. His Christology goes beyond Docetism. This is why Kierkegaard characterizes Christianity as the ethico-religious. In fact he uses the term ‘second-immediacy’, but he also uses ‘second ethics’. I think Kierkegaard is very different here from Shinran who emphasizes what is natural, or nature more than ethics. The Concept of Anxiety is indeed a book about freedom, yet another theme in this book is sex. On the one hand human beings are discriminated as spirit, and on the other hand they are sexual beings. I think spirit is not defined as being sexual; however, human beings are sexual beings. This is an absolute contradiction for human beings. Kierkegaard re-takes (gjentage in Danish) this finitude as finite, but he eventually has a tendency to transcend this finitude in spirit. I think his close relationship to spirit causes a problem, as Morita suggests in

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the previous chapter, with his relationship with Regine. And in later life he rejected marriage. In Shinran the problem of sex also is crucially important. The female also has the Buddha-nature and the ultimate task of all human beings is to become a Buddha. We can also find here the absolute contradiction between the finite and the infinite. Shinran radically affirms the finiteness of human beings as natural. In the case of Shinran, to follow the original vow of Amida Buddha is important and it is the ‘easy way’ to chant the name of Amida (nembutsu in Japanese). As a result he emphasizes the concept of nature, and here we can find the decisive differences between Kierkegaard and Shinran. The former chooses the term ‘spirit’, the latter chooses the term ‘nature’.

Notes 1. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, trans. Howard and Edna Hong (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1987) p. 229. 2. Otani, Kierkegaard Studiet 12 (1982) p. 16. References to the publications in this journal in the text will be given as KS followed by the year, volume, and page number. Translations from Japanese are my own. 3. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, p. 539. 4. Kierkegaard, Either/Or, p. 450. 5. English outline in Otani, Kierkegaard Studiet, 12 (1982) pp. 15–25. 6. Kyerukegoˉru – Denma¯ku no shiso to gengo [Kierkegaard: Thinking and Language Use in Denmark] Memorial volume on the occasion of Professor Dr Masaru Otani’s seventieth birthday (Osaka: Tohoshuppan, 1982) pp. 361–92. Otani sometimes used Danish titles for his works even though they were written in Japanese. 7. Translator’s note in the Japanese edition of Kierkegaard Writings, 1, ed. Masaru Otani (Tokyo: Sogensha, 1988) p. 637. 8. Otani, ‘Universality of Revelation Faith in the Absolute Other by Kierkegaard and Shinran’, in Otani Masaru zenshu¯ [Complete Works of Masaru Otani], 4, ed. Kazuhiko Ozaki, Hidetomo Yamashita and others (Tokyo: Sogensha, 2000) p. 393. Further references to this work are given in the text as OMZ followed by the volume and page number. Translations from Japanese are my own. 9. See also Otani, ‘On the Possibility of Ideal Contact between Japanese True Pure Land Buddhism and the Concept of God by Kierkegaard’, Kierkegaard Studiet, 9 (1979) pp. 25–41. 10. The Collected Works of Shinran, 1 (Kyoto: Jōdo Shinshū Hongwanji-ha, 1997) Chapter 3.

Index Abhaya mudra, ‘Have no fear’, 26 Abraham, 8, 24, 46, 99, 102, 113, 115–21, 182, 191, 201 214–16 hallucination, 24 psychosis, 8 silence, 115–16, 120 absolute-contradictory self-identity, 45–6, 167–70, 174, 182, 183 abstract ideas, 159 absurd/absurdity, 8, 24, 122 act-intuition, 45 Adam and Eve, 8, 191 aeterno modo, 107–15, 117, 118, 120, 121 agape, 61, 170, 181, 183 Agrippa, 60 aidagara, 43 al-‘Arabi, I., 107, 108, 111, 115 Amaterasu, 11 America, 39 see also USA Amherst College, 39 Amida Buddha, 19, 25, 50, 54, 55, 56, 59, 226–30 Amida Su¯tra, 54 ancestor veneration, 16, 23 ancestors, 12, 23, 27 see also ancestor veneration; early Japanese ancestor worship ancient Greeks, 159 Andersen, H. C., 39 anguish, 117, 121, 122 animal/animals, 55, 127, 144 instinct, 75 nature, 76 Annen, 16 Dōjikyō, 16 anthropology, 44 anxieties unto death, 10 anxiety, 3–5, 8, 26, 44, 49, 116, 160, 163, 164, 170, 188 see also Heidegger, anxiety appropriation, 48, 143, 149

appropriation-process, 132 Aquinas, T., 108 arhats, 62 Aristotle, 61 Asahara, S., see Saichi Asahara asceticism, see yogic asceticism aspiration to Buddhahood, 64 Astanga, 2 asuras, 55 atheism, 107 attack on Christendom, viii, 36 Augustine, 208 The Confessions, 208 awakened existence, 80 aware, 19, 24, 168, 211 see also mono no aware awareness, 13, 14, 25, 54, 89, 94–7, 99, 101, 103, 104, 109, 113–22, 129, 155, 168, 169–70, 177, 179, 188, 190–2, 208, 210 contact with other things, 210 eternal, 114 fragmenting, 87 inevitability/certainty of death, 26, 142–4, 146–7 natural, 25 primordial, 13 satori, 81 sin before God, 78 sin, 196 ultimate, 208 universe constituted, 100 see also water, awareness; eco-awareness; faith, awareness; self-awareness ba, 213 Baldwin, J. M., 35 Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, 35 ‘ball of doubt’, 77 Bankei, 130 Baoche, 110 231

232 Index Barrett, W., 124 ‘Zen for the West’, 124 Barth, K., 226 Baudelaire, C., 186 beasts, 11, 12 Beauvoir, S. de, 10 becoming subjective, 23 being true of heart, 191 Bergson, H. L., 187 Berkeley, G., 2, 159 Bessho, U. ‘The Gospel of Suffering, Vigny and Kierkegaard’, 41 translator of hymns, 41 bewilderment, 8 Bible, 7, 8, 40, 100 ‘Genesis’, 116 ‘Matthew’, 66, 68 New Testament, 8, 225 ‘Philippians’, 170 ‘Romans’, 63 biblical apologist, 7 bird/birds, 11, 12, 19, 167 birth, 18, 20–2, 48, 56, 59, 65, 109–10, 120, 143, 146 Blum, M. L., 107 bodaishin, 64 bodhisattva, 18 see also hell, hell-bodhisattva; Hōzō bodhisattva Bohm, D., 122 borderland, 58–9 Brand, 34, 37 ‘All or nothing’, 34 Either/or dilemma, 36 Kierkegaard model, 37 Brandes, G., 32, 33, 41 ‘First Impression of Ibsen’, 37 Henrik Ibsen, 36 Henrik Ibsen, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson. Critical Studies, 37 Ibsen and Bjørnson, 36 brightness of existence, 78 British empiricist/empiricists, 159–60 brotherly love, see Confucius, Confucian virtues Buber, M., 68 ‘I-Thou’ relation, 68

Buddha, 2, 17–18, 21, 26, 37, 65, 75–7, 79–82, 83, 85, 90, 94, 97–9, 100, 109 ‘The All’, 100 compassion, 68, 82, 181 The Connected Discourses, 100 ‘Dhammacakkappavattana’, 90 four sights, 28, 73–4 hand, 76 infinite light, 19 land, 78, see also one jump into the land of Buddha, 78 name, 22, 78, 79 nature, 81, 84, 98, 230 philosophy, 90 Samyutta Nikayā, 100 ‘The Setting in Motion of the Wheel of Truth’, 90 suffering, 73–4 this mind, 19 way, 92, 97 wisdom, 21 within, 20 see also Gautama Buddha-dharma, 109, 113, 114 Buddhahood, 54, 60, 62, 63 see also aspiration to Buddhahood Buddhism, 11, 14, 17–23, 25, 26, 62, 166, 187, 205, 226 accessible, 53 Chinese Cha’n, 4, 20 Chinese, 18, 20 Chinese Tien-t’ai, 90, 92 esoteric forms, 94 Hı¯nayā na, 62 Hossō school, 96 Mahāyā na, 18, 61, 73, 90, 168, 193, 229 Mind Only school, 2 Nara, 64 Nichiren, 19, 21, 61 Pure Land, 20, 25, 53–70, 79, see also faith, Pure Land; history, Pure Land Buddhism Rinzai school, 71, 75, 83 Shingon, 18 Sōtō sect/Zen, 50, 125 Tendai, 18, 50, 90, 92

Index Buddhism – continued True Pure Land, 19, 20, 45, 55, 225, 227 Yogacārā/Yogacārā school, 62, 66, 96 Zen, 19, 20, 24, 42, 46, 48, 50, 53, 59, 71–85, see also Buddhism, Rinzai school; Buddhism, Sōtō sect/Zen history, Zen Buddhism; Japanese Buddhism, Kamakura Zen; meditation, Zen; Zen training/practice see also Japanese Buddhism; Shinran, Buddhism Buddhist doctrine/doctrines, 53 Buddhist philosophy, see philosophy, Buddhist Buddhist sages, 62 Buddhist teachings, 63 Buddhist thinkers, 54 Buddhist thought, 18–19, 24 Zen, 24 see also Kamakura, centre of Buddhist thought bushido ,̄ 17 butsudan, 28 byōdōshōchi, 62 The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard, 1 Cézanne, P., 187 chain of dependent origination, 18 Chao-chou, 79, 83 character formation, 15 Chih-i, 92–3, 97 Great Concentration and Insight, 92 China, 19, 80, 90, 107 Chinese classics, 15 Chinese Pure Land master, see Shan-tao Chinese words, xiv Chinese Zen, see Buddhism, Chinese Chiyo, 47 choice/choices, 3–5, 8, 25–6, 49, 84, 99, 129, 148, 211, 225, 229 Chōmon Zen’a, 130 Christ, 63, 99, 128 contradiction, 129 crucifixion, 125

233

‘existential contemporary’, 99, 130 incarnation, 211 living embodiment of real Christianity, 13 performer of miracles, 128 worthy of discipleship, 156 Christian Association for Mutual Help, 203 Christian doctrine, 10, 40 Christian missionaries, 22 Christian non-church movement, 38 Christian writer/writers, 7, 204 Christianity, viii, 7, 10, 36, 38, 40, 41, 44, 46, 62, 66–9, 98–100, 125–6, 152, 166, 177, 182, 185–7, 193–9, 202, 204, 225 Buddhism, inferior, 226 ethico-religious, 229 fake, 130–2 Japanese thought, 22–3 offence, 128 paradox, 132, 134, 194 religious love, 60, see also love, religious salvation, 58, 72 truth, 23, 40 Christology, 229 Chronicle of Great Peace, 17 Chronicles of Japan, 11 Chuang Tzu, 14, 112 ‘Palace of No-Place’, 112 clouds, 89, 97, 98, 166 communication, 131 existential, 135 equal, 216 direct, 129, 131 indirect, 129, 131 compassion, 54, 62, 63, 65, 81, 82, 164, 221 see also Buddha, compassion concentration, 18 confession, 88, 97, 98, 101–2 Confucianism, 11, 15–16, 18, 22, 27, 135, 187 ‘this-worldly’ quality, 16 see also Shintō, ‘this-worldly’ quality

234 Index Confucius, 2, 15, 17, 27 Analects, 15 Confucian thinking, 27 Confucian virtues, 15, 16, 17, 27 consciousness, 46, 48, 55, 60, 67, 80, 92, 97, 134, 174, 186, 189–92, 195, 197, 213, 228 eternal, 119 integral, 107–9, 112, 114, 115, 119, 122 shame, 79 see also manas-consciousness; self-consciousness Contemplation Sūt ra, 54 contemporariness, 82–3 Copenhagen, 32, 222 The Corsar (Copenhagen newspaper), 223 cowardice, 152, 155 craving, 18, 20, 28 culture/cultures, vii–viii, 87, 112, 113, 140, 166, 172, 185, 201, 202 European, viii, 32, 159 Japanese, vii–viii, 11, 17, 18, 50, 93, 166, 186, 187, 193 non-Western, viii, 186 rationalist, 207 Western, 186, 202–3 daibodaishin, 64 Daidoji, Y., 146, 150, 151 The Primary Essential-Mind of the Warrior, 146 Daiichi Secondary School, 39 daimyō, 154–7 Daito-kokushi, 168 Daitokuji temple, 168 dark night of the soul, 77 darkness of non-existence, 78 Dasein, 116 datsuraku, 21 dead sitting, 133 death, 3–4, 6–7, 17, 24, 26–7, 73, 74–6, 79, 82, 109–10, 120, 127, 137, 141–57, 163, 165, 177, 179–83, 186, 189, 191, 220–2 see also anxieties unto death; awareness, inevitability/ certainty of death; death in

mind; desire/desires, peace of death; fear, of death; meaning of to die; meditation, inevitability of death; philosophy, death; thinking earnestly about death death in mind, 141, 145–8, 151, 154, 156 deep faith of oneself, 61 deep human consciousness of having evil karma, 228 deities, 11 delusion/delusions, 19–20, 60–1, 90, 97, 103, 109–10, 119, 120, 127 see also everyday world of delusion; illusion/illusions; self, grand delusion demons, 55 Denmark, 40, 41, 222 depression, 7 Descartes, R., 77, 108, 114, 139, 192, 204, 206, 208 cogito ergo sum, 114 desire/desires, 7, 13, 87, 99, 142, 143, 154, 190, 205–7, 211, 212 earthly, 21, 61 evil, 20, 26 immoral, 56 obscuring, 25 opposite of emotion, 190 peace of death, 150 rational, 137 selfish, 18, 22, 28, 90 trivial personal, 148 worldly, 56, 61 despair, 3, 6–7, 9–10, 18, 27, 51, 68, 75, 77–8, 118, 125–6, 160, 164, 180, 186, 190, 195–6, 209, 224 authentic, 75 culturally induced, 126 see also great doubt; depression deterministic ties, 4, 25 devil, 61 dewdrop, 111 dhāranı¯, 22 dharma/dharmas, 54, 63, 79, 92–3, 98, 116, 118, 126, 127, 131, 134 see also Buddha-dharma; dharma body dharma body, 115

Index dialectical tensions, 10 Diamond Sūt ra, 182 diamond-like mind of crosswise transcendence, 64 Diem, H., 49 direct experience, 20 discursive thought, 115 divination, 15 The Divine Comedy, 107 Docetism, 229 Dōgen, 20–1, 48, 50, 53, 87, 90–104, 106–23, 130, 167 ‘Actualizing the Fundamental Point’, 107, 109, 110, 116, 119, see also Dōgen, ‘The Realization of Things as They Are’ [same work] ‘Mountain and Water Su ˉtra’, 93 ‘On the Endeavour of the Way’, 21 ‘Point of Zazen’, 167 ‘The Realization of Things as They Are’, 92 Shōbōgenzo, 91, 107, 167 Treasury of the Eye of the True Teaching, 91 dōkyō, 13 Dōkyo Etan, 81 Donran, 65 Commentary of the Treatise on the Pure Land, 65 Dostoevsky, F., 68, 187, 206 The Brothers Karamazov, 207 double-mindedness, 87–8, 97, 101, 104 Dr Maximus, 107 see also al-‘Arabi, I. dualism, 122, 138 Arian, 74 Hegel, 109 subject-object, 42 see also dualistic view dualistic view, 96 eagle, 110 early Japanese ancestor worship, 16 see also ancestor veneration early Japanese poets, 18 earnestness, 39, 40, 89, 143–5, 149–50, 175 East Asia, 94

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Eastern philosophy, see philosophy, Eastern Eastern thinkers, 2 Eastern thought, 107 see also Japanese thought; philosophy, Asian; philosophy, East Asian; philosophy, Eastern; philosophy, Japanese Eckhart, M., 107 eco-awareness, 122 ecstasy, 138 ecumenism, 225 eightfold noble path, 18, 192 Eikan, 19 emotion/emotions, 43, 134, 189, 190–1 aesthetic, 215 love, 119 opposite of desire, 190 personal, 189 poignant sadness, 19 unselfish, 190 see also aware; grief; happiness; sadness; unhappiness emperor/emperors, 39, 202 Japanese, 17 empiricism, see British empiricist/ empiricists ‘emptiness is immediately form’, 69 emptiness, 62, 69, 107, 138, 167, 168, 170 see also ‘emptiness is immediately form’ The Enduring Questions, 2 Engakuji temple, 29 Engels, S. M., 2 The Study of Philosophy, 2 enhancement of the definition itself, 210 Enlightenment [historical period], 159, 206 enlightenment, 18, 19, 21, 59, 61, 64, 79, 90–3, 95–6, 98–9, 116, 124, 125, 127, 132–3, 137, 138 awakening, 130 dissolution of the self, 138, see also mind, enlightenment first stage, 62 no self, 78 supreme, 54, 63 synthesis, 76

236

Index

Epicurus, 143 epistemology, 2, 37 eros, 61 ethics, 2, 32, 33, 35, 43, 121, 229 social, 15 teleological suspension, 99 Europe, 37, 41, 107–8, 114, 118, 119, 160 European continent, 125 European philosophy, see philosophy, European Evangelist, 37 everyday world of delusion, 6, 55 evil, 55, 59, 89, 103, 179, 196, 227 existentialism, 32, 49, 78, 124 end, 50 father, 122 Kierkegaard, 73, 161, 163 polemical, 125 Zen, 73 existentiall, 48 existentiell, 48 existing individual, 3, 4, 72, 132, 163 expedient means, 18, 20, 55 experience (Mori’s concept), 210–14 faith, 3, 19–20, 23, 59, 60, 72, 99, 101, 102, 113–15, 117–21, 126, 129, 132–4, 138, 170, 181, 183, 185, 192–4, 196–8, 202, 205, 208, 209, 211, 214–15, 225, 227 altruistic, 226 awareness, 118 basis of Christian love, 67 Christian, 39 desperate, 226 God, 196 Jesus, 42, 196 Kierkegaard’s concept, 56–8 person of, 78 psychological or phenomenological state, 8 Pure Land, 72 subjective truth, 229 see also knight of faith; two aspects of deep faith fear, 26, 39, 57, 81, 87, 116, 133 death, 26, 142, 144–53, 155, 220, see also death in mind life, 152

see also Abhaya mudra feudal lord, 154 Feuerbach, L., 37 Fichte, J. G., 165 filial piety or love, see Confucius, Confucian virtues finitizing, 7, 77 Finland, 39 First International Conference of the Kierkegaard Society of Japan, see Kierkegaard Society of Japan, First International Conference First World War, 44 flow of time, 211 four noble truths, 17–18 four sights, see Buddha, four sights France, 216 freedom, 3–5, 8, 25–6, 60, 76, 78, 99, 103, 104, 115, 148, 161–3, 188, 189, 208, 227, 229 necessity, 75, 76, 161, 162, 189 friendship, 67, 87 see also love, within friendship Gaia, 112 The Gateless Gate, 83 Gautama, S., 17 see also Siddartha Geismar, E., 220 genius/geniuses, 187, 212, 216, 223, 225, 227 genius in a market town, 29 Germany, 39, 43, 45 Kierkegaard renaissance, 43, 45 God, 8–9, 24–5, 46, 57, 60, 61, 67, 72, 75, 88, 98–9, 101–2, 107–8, 111–16, 118, 122 absolute duty, 121 all things, 66 all things are possible, 9 belief, 9, 24 death, 46 ethical evil, 46 existence, 8, 101–2 instrumental, 78 love, 65, 120 nature, 25 relation/relationship, 9, 60 salvation, 80, 81

Index God – continued sanity, 10 truth, 195 see also awareness, sin before God; Nietzsche, F., God is dead; Zen training/practice, no saving God goddesses, 11, 88 gods, 11–12, 88 good, 88–90, 97, 99, 100, 102–4, 227 graveyard, 27 great aspiration sent by the Buddha, 64–5 great doubt, 75, 77, 137 Great Japanese Imperial Constitution, 202 grief, 18 guilt, 26, 88, 189, 224 Gundert, W., 39 gunki mono, 17 gyaku taiō, 182 Hakuin, 22, 24, 75–8, 81, 82, 106, 124–40 Wild Ivy, 130 Halle University, 41 hallucination, see Abraham, hallucination Hanazono University, 71 Hannay, A., 99 happiness, 28, 57, 58, 60–2, 220 eternal, 56, 57, 129, 132 temporal, 132 Harris, T. L., 202 Hartford Seminary, 39 Hasedera temple, 29 ‘Have no fear’, see Abhaya mudra Heart Sūt ra, 69 heaven, 8, 11, 12, 23, 55, 58, 66, 82, 98, 167 before, 116 Christian, 98 Hegel, G. W. F., 3, 43–5, 47, 48, 125, 128, 138, 159, 168 Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, 159 essentialism, 161–2, see also dualism, Hegel Heian period, 16, 53

237

Heidegger, M., 43, 44, 47, 49, 116 anxiety, 44, 48 Being and Time, 116 see also existentiall; existentiell Heidelberg, 43, 44, 47 heijōshin, 61 hell, 12, 55, 58, 59, 79, 80, 81 hell-bodhisattva, 82 hermeneutics, 50 Hirata, A., 13 Hiroko Iwakura, 202–3 Hirsch, E., 224 Hisamatsu, S., 72–3, 80–1, 165 hishryō, 91 history, 15, 44, 45, 129, 159, 188–9, 195, 211 completing Either/Or, 224 holy, 198 Japanese, 12, 187 Japanese Buddhism, 50 Kierkegaard research, 31, 141 Kierkegaard’s religious spirit, 220 literature, 35, 51 Pure Land Buddhism, 55 teleological views, 170 universal, 4 Western rationalist thought, 209 Western, 152, see also history, Western rationalist thought Zen Buddhism, 85 history of philosophy, see philosophy, history of philosophy hō, 228 Hobbes, T., 160 hōben hosshin, 229 hoen no jihi, 62 Høffding, H., 32, 35, 37, 41, 42 ‘Danish Philosophy in the 19th Century’, 32 Ethics, 32 Psychology, 32 Søren Kierkegaard as Philosopher, 33, 35 Hohlenberg, J., 224 Holtom, D. C., 16 Hōnen, 20, 50, 53, 64 The Choice of the Nembutsu of the Orginal Vow, 64 Hong, H. and E. Hong, 220 hosshō hosshin, 229

238 Index Hōzō bodhisattva, 54 Hsiang-yen Hih-hsien, 84 Hsu-t’ang Chih-yu, 80 humaneness, see Confucius, Confucian virtues humanistic concerns, 3 Hume, D., 2, 159 humility, 14, 188 Humphreys, C., 20 Husserl, E., 210 hymns, 7 see also Bessho, U., translator of hymns Ibsen, H., 36–7, 39, 40 A Doll’s House, 33, 34 An Enemy of the People, 33, 34 Brand, 34, see also Brand Peer Gynt, 34 Ibsen, K., 33 ‘Danish Philosophy of the Last Decade’, 33 icchō jikinnyu¯ nyoraji, 78 idealism, 2 see also Buddhism, Mind Only school; Platonic idealism ignorance, 18, 22, 62, 127, 192, 194 illusion/illusions, 6, 65, 92 optical, 95 see also self, illusion imagination, 7, 9–10, 129, 176, 205 imitatio Christi, 229 immorality, 55, 56 immortality, 138 imperial court, 18 Imperial Rescript on Education, 202 impermanence, 28, 211 impressionists, 187 inborn nature, 76 India, 2, 73–4 individualism, 33–5, 37, see also Nietzsche, extreme individualism individuum, 119 infinitizing, 7, 77 inner prompting, 211–12, 214, 216 inner time, 210, 211 insanity, 10 intelligence, 75, 131, 133 intention/intentions, 3, 87

International Christian University, 214 International Eastern Conference, 32 interpersonal harmony, 15 intuitive understanding, 115 inverse correspondence, 45, 168, 172, 180–4 invisible church, 132 inwardness, 27, 99, 101, 124, 131, 132, 137, 175–8, 211 see also turning inward Ippen, 53 Isaac, 8, 117, 120, 182, 191, 201, 214–16 Ishida, S., 33 Islam, 166 isshiki ikkō muhi chu ¯ dō, 69 Ito, H., 202 Iwakura, H., see Hiroko Iwakura Iwakura, T., 202 Izanagi and Izanami, 11 James, W., 37, 165 Japan, 22, 31–6, 38, 41–5, 51, 71, 93, 107, 141, 166, 202, 212, 216 defeat, 47, 49 militarists, 47 Japanese Buddhism, viii, 18–22, 25, 50, 54, 67, 72, 193, 211, 226 Kamakura Zen, 20 six schools, 18, 64 see also Buddhism, Hossō school; Buddhism, Nara; Buddhism, Nichiren; Buddhism, Pure Land; Buddhism, Shingon; Buddhism, Tendai; Buddhism, True Pure Land; Buddhism, Zen; history, Japanese Buddhism; Taoism, Japanese Buddhism Japanese language, 202, 212 Japanese philosophy, see philosophy, Japanese Japanese Tendai sect, 54 see also Buddhism, Tendai Japanese thinking, 31, 211 Japanese thought, vii, 1–3, 10–12, 14–19, 22–9, 50–1 syncretism, 11 synthesis with Western thought, 43 see also Christianity, Japanese thought

Index Japanese tradition of the warrior, 16–17 Japanese universities, 23, 50 see also Hanazono University; Kyoto, Imperial University; Kyoto, University; Tokyo, Imperial University; Tokyo, University; Waseda University Japanese words, xiv Jaspers, K., 44 Jesus, 8, 23, 42, 66, 82–5, 98, 163, 183, 194–9, 226, 229 indirect disciple, 85 love, 66 ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’, 66 offence, 195 teacher of the truth, 82–3 truth, 163, 195 see also faith, Jesus Jewry, 187 jihi, 62 jinenhoni, 228 jinja shintō, 187 jiriki, 72 John (New Testament writer), 62 Joshu, 83 jukyōshugi, 15 K’uo-an Shih-yuan, 80 Kagoshima, 202 kakuzon, 80 kamakiri, 24 Kamakura, 19, 20 centre of Buddhist thought, 19 temples, 28 Kamakura period/era, 18, 19, 53, 90, 107 Kamakura Zen Buddhism, see Japanese Buddhism, Kamakura Zen kami, 11–12, 14–16, 17, 23–7, 93, 94, 135 kami no michi, 11 kamikaze, 17 kan po, see meditation, kan po Kaneko, C., 33, 37 ‘Kierkegaard’s view of Life’, 37 ‘New Great Man of Literature’, 33 ‘Religious Truth’, 37

239

Kanetomo, Y., 14 Kant, I., 100, 162 Kao-feng Yüan-miao, 133 karman samsā ra, 55 karma (evil), 55–6, 61, 63, 228 see also desire/desires, evil; deep human consciousness of having evil karma keiken, 40 Kenchoji temple, 29 kengai sasshu ¯, 78 Kenko, 130 kenosis, 170, 183, 184 kenshō, 81, 91 ki, 228, 229 Kierkegaard, S. ‘At a Graveside’, 141, 142, 143, 145, 149, 150, 175 Attack upon Christendom, 125 The Concept of Anxiety, 8, 26, 44, 48, 99, 103, 104, 163, 190, 203, 229 The Concept of Irony, 44 Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 27, 49 ‘Diapsalmata’, 108 ‘Diary of a Seducer’, 44 ‘The Edifying in the Thought that Against God we are Always in the Wrong’, 108, 111, 113 Either/Or, 6, 108, 110–13, 115, 220, 221, 223, 224, see also history, completing Either/Or ‘Either/Or, an ecstatic lecture’, 108 Fear and Trembling, 8, 43, 44, 45, 99, 201, 203 Kierkegaard’s Writings, 49, 221, 222 The Moment, 33, 44 ‘An Occasional Address’, 8, 87, 88, 103, 104, see also Kierkegaard, S., Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing [same work] ‘One Lives Only Once’, 28 Philosophical Fragments, 82, 129, 163, 222 The Point of View for my Work as an Author, 10 Practice in Christianity, 6, 44, see also Kierkegaard, S., Training in Christianity [same work]

240

Index

Kierkegaard, S. – continued Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing, 87 Repetition, 44 Selected Works of Kierkegaard, 49, 50 The Sickness unto Death, 5, 8, 9, 43, 44, 45, 48, 49, 162, 169, 194, 196, 203, 209 ‘Silhouettes, Psychological Diversion’, 220 Three Discourses on Imagined Occasions, 141 ‘The Tragic in Ancient Drama Reflected in the Tragic in Modern Drama’, 220 Training in Christianity, 128 ‘The Unhappiest One’, 220 ‘The Work of Love in Remembering one Dead’, 27, 47 Works of Love, 27, 48, 63, 66 Kierkegaard International Congress in Milan, 221 Kierkegaard scholars Japanese, 71 Western, 1 Kierkegaard Society, 49 Kierkegaard Society of Japan, ix, 219 First International Conference, ix Kierkegaard Studiet, 49, 219, 222 Kierkegaardian fellow(ship) of the dead, 27, 219–20, 223, 225 kino jinshin, 61 kirisutokyokyō kyōjo kai, 203 Kito, I., 49 The Philosophy of Possibility, 49 knight of faith, 8 ko kindaijin, 73 koan, 22, 24, 83–4 Kobayashi, H., 25, 185–93, 197–9 Motoori Norinaga, 187 Kobayashi, I., 32 ‘Modern Philosophy of Denmark’, 32 koji kyu ¯ mei no gyōdō, 77 Kojiki, 11 kokumanman ji, 78 kōmei rekireke ji, 78 Kuˉkai, 19

Kühle, K. V. S., 219 kuei-ken, 13, 14 Kugimiya, A., 210 kyoha shintō, 187 Kyoto, 50, 71, 165, 168 Imperial University, 32, 35 school, 43, 48, 72, 80, 83 University, 219 kyoiku tyokugo, 202 Lao Tzu, 13, 20, 25, 94 Lazarus, 8, 191 letting go of one’s hold from a precipice, 78 Liang K’ai, 20 Lieh Tzu, 14 Lin-chi, 76–7, 79 ‘one true person of no rank’, 68 literature, 35, 48, 165, 186, 190, 193, 198, 224 Brandes, Danish historian, 32 classical, 191 French, 186, 203 Occidental, 32 Scandinavian, 34 see also history, literature living earnestly, 141 see also thinking earnestly about death Löwith, K., 44 Locke, J., 159 logic, 3, 32, 48, 59, 162 dutiful ethical, 117 identity and difference, 59 objective, 164, 167 paradoxical, 59 place, 45, 160, 164 religion, 46 species, 47 The Lotus Sūt ra, 18, 21, 81, 94, 133 love, 3, 88, 89 Christian, 63, 65, 67, 68 concept, 61 erotic, 61, 67 eternal, 65 natural, 63 religious, 61–3 selfish, 62 self-negativity, 65–7

Index love – continued unchangeableness, 67–9 unconditional, 65 within friendship, 61–2 see also Confucius, Confucian virtues; faith, basis of Christian love; God, love; self-love; trinity of love Lowrie, W., 222 loyalty to one’s superiors, 16–17 see also Confucius, Confucian virtues Luther, M., 207 magokoro, 191 Mahā Vairocana Sūt ra, 136 Mahāyā na Buddhism, see Buddhism, Mahāyā na Mahāyā na platform precepts, 54 Malantschuk, G., 222 manas-consciousness, 62, 66 mantra, 20 mappō, 53 Marburg, 43 Marino, G. D., 100 marriage, 202 arranged, 202 mutually agreed contract, 202 martyrdom, 156, 219, 221–3, 225 Marx, K., 47, 49 Marxism, 47 Marxist materialism, 45 Masashige, 17 Masnawi, 107 Masuda, K., 49 ‘The Meaning and Method of Kierkegaard Study – One Apology’, 49 mathematics, 3 meaning of to die, 3–4 meaninglessness of existence, 10 meditation, vii, 18, 20, 21, 22, 90–1, 127, 130, 131, 192 Buddhist, 192, 206 inevitability of death, 146–7, 151 kan po, 193 new concept, 75 sitting/seated, 21, 91, 165, see also zazen

241

Zen, 96, 166, see also meditation, sitting/seated Meiji government, 22, 201 Meiji period/era, 31, 33, 42 Meiji restoration, 187, 202 Meiroku sha party, 202 melancholy, 51 Mencius, 15 merit, 14, 67 metaphysics, 2, 78, 92, 125, 138, 161, 164, 165, 168 mi nu tuku, 48 Miao-fa lion-hua ching, 18 middle land, 12 middle way, 69, 131 found in all things, 69 truth, 69 Miki, K., 43 ‘Contemporary Thought’, 44 Inexpressible Philosophy, 44 ‘Kierkegaard and the Present Age’, 44 ‘Ontological Explanation of Dialectic’, 44 Selected Works of Kierkegaard, 44 ‘A Study of Humanity in Pascal’, 45 ‘The Thought of Anxiety and its Conquest’, 44 Miletus, 2 mind, 13, 15, 19, 21, 25, 126, 136, 137 against itself, 87, 91 deep, 56 diamond-like, 64 discriminating, 83 enlightenment, 130 entrusting, 56 everyday, 168 Japanese, 190 mind-body relation, 46, 92, 138 peaceful, 74 save all sentient beings, 62–5 seeking, 79 sincere, 54 unmovable, 61 see also Buddha, this mind; death in mind; diamond-like mind of crosswise transcendence; doublemindedness; mindfulness; wondrous law of the one mind mindfulness, 18, 127

242 Index Mitsuchi, K., 31, 43 Drunken Songs, 31, 43 ‘The Love of Kami’, 43 suicide, 43 Miyahara, K., 50 Philosophy of Melancholy, 50 moment, concept, 45, 47 Mongols, 107 mono no aware, 189–90 mood/moods, 142–4, 149–52, 155–6, 188 moon, 92, 95, 99, 101, 111 morality, 166, 178–9, 189–91, 193, 198 Mori, A. (Arinori), 201–2 Minister of Education, 202 Mori, A. (Arismasa), 201 ‘Birth of an Only Child’, 214–15 By the Flow of Babylon, 204 Modern Spirit and Christianity, 203–4 Mortensen, F. H., 1, 23 Kierkegaard Made in Japan, 1 Motoori, N., 11, 12, 187, 189–91 Mount Hiei, 50 Mount Olympus, 93 Mount Tsurigi, 12 mountain veneration, 93–4 mountain/mountains, 11, 12, 13, 93–6, 97, 100, 101, 110, 116, 127 see also mountain veneration Mozart, W. A., 187 Mt Yamamuro, 13 Mu-chou Tao-tsung, 84 muen no jihi, 62 Mulamādhyamaka Sūt ra, 167 Murakami, H., 111, 112, 123 music, 15, 118 Mutō, K., 24 Myōe, 64 Breaking the Wheel of False Teaching, 64 Myōhō, 137 myōkōnin, 55 mysticism, 189 Catholic, 78 Christian, 48 Eastern, 116

Nagarjuna, 167 nakashibuy kyoukai church, 203 nakasutkuni, 12 Nakazato, S., 25 Nam myoho renge kyō, 21 Namu Amida Butsu, 20, 54 Nara, 18, 23, 166 Nara period, 18, 19 nationalism, 33, 47 nature veneration, 12 Nearman, H., 91 nembutsu, 229, 230 neo-Kantians, 42 New Novel, 36 New Testament, see Bible, New Testament Nichiren, 21, 53, 61 Nietzsche, F., 34–5, 36, 42, 43, 159, 168, 208 extreme individualism, 35 God is dead, 159 revaluation of all values, 161 superman, 161 Nietzscheism, 34 nihil, 161–2 nihilism, 48, 159, 161–2, 164–5, 207, 209, see also self, nihilistic Nihongi, 11 nirvā na, 21–2, 90, 98 Nishida, K., 37–8, 42, 43, 44, 46, 50, 72 ‘Absolute Nothingness as Determined through Self-Consciousness or Self-Determination through Self-Consciousness of Absolute Nothingness’, 45 ‘From that which Acts to that which Sees’, 45 An Inquiry into the Good, 37, 42, 172–3 ‘Introduction to Practical Philosophy’, 45, 169 ‘My View of Hegel’s Dialectics’, 37 ‘Place-Logic and the Religious World View’ (also referred to as ‘The Logic of Place and the Religious World View), 45, 46, 173, 175, 177, 183 ‘The Principle of Self-Awareness’, 37

Index Nishida, K. – continued ‘Self-Determination of the Eternal Present, 45 Nishino, B., 202 Nishitani, K., 46, 48–9, 83, 159–60, 164–70, 172–84, 193, 201, 209, 213–14 nishu jinshin, 55 Nitta, 17 non-action, 13, 25, 67 non-discriminating wisdom, 62 non-substantial way/ways of thinking, 159–60, 163–4, 166, 170 nori, 93 no-self theory/view, 2, 17, 102 see also subjectivity, no self nothing to cling to is an inexhaustible store, 67 nothingness, 60, 107, 138, 167, 181, 183 absolute, 45, 49, 83, 160–5, 167–70, 174–5, 181–3 oriental, 80 relative, 160–2, 164 Obama, 54 objective truth, see truth, objective oˉchoˉ shidanru, 63 odes, 15 Ogawa, K., 49 ‘The Problem of the Interpretation of Kierkegaard’, 49 Ohnishi, H., 32–3 Ohtsuka, Y., 34–5 ‘A Look at our Current Literature through the Romantic Movement’, 34 one jump into the land of Buddha, 78 original vow, see vow/vows Osaka, 49 Otani, M., 27, 219–29 Complete Works of Masaru Otani, 219 ‘The Ethical and Martyrdom of the Individual in Kierkegaard’, 219, 221, 223 ‘On the Problematical Points in the Titles of Kierkegaard’s Works 1: Problems in the Title of Philosophical Fragments’, 222

243

‘On the Problematical Points in the Titles of Kierkegaard’s Works 2: The Point of View, on my Work as an Author’, 222 ‘On the Problematical Points in the Titles of Kierkegaard’s Works 3: Judge for Yourself!, Upbuilding Discourses, Stages on Life’s Way’, 222 ‘Reading “The Unhappiest One” in Either/Or’, 220, 221, 222 ‘Spirits that Fight around Kierkegaard: a Personal Remembrance’, 219 other power, 19–20, 25–6, 64, 72 transcending crosswise, 225, see also two-part classification sub-divided into four parts, transcending crosswise and departing crosswise; diamond-like mind of crosswise transcendence paganism, 186, 197, 226 pagoda, 23 paradox, 45, 56, 76, 84, 111, 120, 121, 134–7, 139, 182, 195, 196, 215, 224 absolute, 84, 172, 180, 183, 184, 196, 228, 229 see also Christianity, paradox; logic, paradoxical parents, 16, 27, 212–13 Paris, 45, 204 Pascal, B., 45, 203, 204, 206–8 Pensées, 208 pathetisk understanding, 225 pathos, 48, 190, 223, 225, 228 see also pathos of a thing; understanding filled with pathos pathos of a thing, 190 Paul (New Testament writer), 57–62, 98 period of imitative law, 53 period of last law, 53 period of righteous law, 53 pessimism, 37, 121, 122 see also Schopenhauer, A., pessimism

244 Index phantoms, 83 phenomenological reduction, 210 phenomenology, 50 philanthropy, 35 philia, 61 philosophical psychology, 32 philosophical traveller, vii philosophy, vii, 2, 31, 33, 35, 42, 44, 47–9, 51, 72, 87, 159–61, 166, 168, 173, 192, 193, 208 analytic, 50 Asian, 31 Buddha, 90 Buddhist, 127, 130 Chinese, 13 Christian, 23, 160 comparative, vii Danish, 32 death, 47, see also death Descartes, 108 Dōgen, 90 East Asian, 71 Eastern, 2, 164 European, 32, 108, 159, 161–2 Hakuin, 75 Hegel, 47, 162 Heidegger, 44 history of philosophy, vii, 32 inexpressible, 44 Japanese, 1, 2, 23, 31, 164, see also Kyoto school Kierkegaard, vii, 3, 42, 47, 99, 103, 138, 163, 201 Nishida, 166, 168–9, 174–5, 183 philosophy of history, 3 Platonic, 159–60 Tanabe, 46 Taoism, 94 Western, 22, 23, 32, 42, 71, 164, 206, 208 Zen, 59 physics, 35 piety, 40, 177 see also Confucius, Confucian virtues place (Nishda’s concept), 160, 164–5, 167–9, 174, 175, 178, 180, 183, 213 plane of high sky, 12, 20, 135

plants, 11, 12, 83 Plato, 168 see also philosophy, Platonic; Platonic form/forms; Platonic idealism Platonic form/forms, 89, 159 Platonic idealism, 165 pleasure/pleasures, 40, 44, 74, 88, 112, 118 poetry, 15, 190 Rumi, 107 polytheism/polytheisms, 11, 188 post-modernist, 73 Praise to Amida Buddha, 20 Praise to the lotus of the wondrous law, 21 prayer/prayers, 7, 93, 181, 203 praying mantis, 23 Protestantism, 35 prudence of the four phases, 167 pseudonym/pseudonyms, 1, 3, 40, 103–4, 141, 183, 194, 195 pseudonymous works, 3 psychology, 33, 35 see also philosophical psychology psychotherapy, 10 pure experience, 44, 48, 165, 168, 169, 183, 201, 209, 213, 214 Pure Land, 21, 25 see also Buddhism, Pure Land; Buddhism, True Pure Land Pure Land Buddhism, see Buddhism, Pure Land Pure Land sect, 50 see also Buddhism, Pure Land qualitative leap, 4, 25–6, 99 quantum theory, 122 ratio, 115, 117 rationalism, 206–7, 209 rebirth, 18, 54, 139, 227, 228 recollection of truth, 78 Record of Ancient Matters, 11 Regine, 10, 117, 216, 229 reincarnation, 76 reliability in word, see Confucius, Confucian virtues

Index religion/religions, 10, 11, 12, 31, 35, 38–9, 45–8, 61, 72, 94, 125, 128, 165, 166, 168, 172–9, 182–4, 187, 193–4, 197, 202, 226 fundamental understanding, 51 Nishida, 46 see also Buddhism; Christianity; Islam; Japanese Buddhism; Shintō; Taoism, ritual and magical practices religiousness A, 73, 81–2, 175–7, 194, 197–8 religiousness B, 73, 81–2, 176, 194, 197–8 repetition, 227 concept, 47, 69 returning to the root, 14 see also returning to the source returning to the source, 13, 94 see also returning to the root reverence, see Confucius, Confucian virtues Rimbaud, J. A., 186 Rinzai, see Lin-chi Rinzai school, see Buddhism, Rinzai school Rinzo, S., 50 ‘Journey in a Melancholy Fog’, 51 rites, 15 ritualized form of suicide, 152 river/rivers, 92, 93, 101 river nymphs, 93 Romans, see Paul (New Testament writer) romanticism, 35 Rouault, G., 199 Rudin, W., 40 Søren Kierkegaard’s Person and Authorship, 40 Rumi, 107 Russia, 35 Russo-Japanese War, 36, 40 sadness, 18, 119, 168, 190 see also unhappiness Saichi Asahara, 54, 61 Saichō, 19, 50, 53 Saito, S. (Shinji), 49 Socrates and Kierkegaard: the Concept of Irony, 49

245

Saito, S. (Shinsaku), 37 ‘Who is Ibsen: Ibsen and Civilization in the 19th Century’, 37 salvation, 58, 125 see also God, salvation; Christianity, salvation samata-jnāna, 62 Samos, 2 samsā ra, 55, 61, 90 samurai, 17, 26, 141–2, 145–57 Sanskrit words, xiv Sarah, 120, 215 Sartre, J-P., 10 Satan, 57–8 satori, 78, 83, 130 see also awareness, satori Satsuma-han, 202 saving sentient beings from suffering, 62 Sazanami, I., 36–7 ‘Henrik Ibsen’, 36 Schopenhauer, A., 31 pessimism, 35 Schopenhauerian thought, 37 Schröer, H., 224 science, 4, 25 Western, 202 sciential intuitiva, 115, 117 sea/seas, 11, 12, 89, 97 Second World War, 17, 47, 49, 186, 187 seeing into one’s own nature, see enlightenment Seelye, J. H., 39 Sekiya, A., president of Japanese YWCA, 203 self, 7, 21, 28, 33, 46, 60, 62, 65, 66, 78, 84, 92, 95, 102, 109, 112, 115–20, 137, 138, 154, 159–71, 173, 174, 176, 178–84, 190, 194, 197, 206, 207, 210–14, 216, 217 grand delusion, 22 historical, corporeal, 45 illusion, 96, 102 nihilistic, 165 no self, 78 non-existence, 18 sinful, 60 synthesis, 7, 9, 74–5, 162

246

Index

self – continued true, 77, 82, 109, 116, 118, 164–6, 168 unchanging, 90, 111 universal, 81 see also no-self theory/view; spirit/ spirits, self self-annihilation, 175–6 self-assertion, 14, 67 self-awareness, 37–8, 83, 166, 168–70, 174–6, 179, 180, 183, 191 see also spiritual self-awareness self-boasting, 14, 67 self-complacency, 14 self-consciousness, 54 self-deception, 3, 4, 5–6, 8, 25, 87 self-denial, 46, 66, 67, 157, 178, 180–4, 225 self-display, 14, 67 self-emptying, 170 self-identity, 46, 167 see also absolute-contradictory self-identity self-love, 66 self-nature, 81 self-power, 54, 64 sentient beings, 54, 56, 62, 109, 110, 120, 182 see also saving sentient beings from suffering; mind, save all sentient beings seppuku, 152, 155, 156 seven treasures, 94 sex, 229, 230 sexual beings, 229 sexual union, 21 Shā kyamuni Buddha, 59, see also Buddha shamanistic and animistic practices, 11 Shan-tao, Commentary on the Contemplation Sūt ra, 56 shape through which human beings know the truth, 229 shikishu ¯ , 80 Shikoku, 12 shiku funbetsu, 167 Shimane, 55 shinjin [faith], 20–1, 58 shinjin [mind and body], 21

Shinran, 20–1, 25, 45, 50, 53–4, 56, 60–1, 67, 72, 225–30 Buddhism, 225 Kyō gyō shin shō, 54 A Record of Lament of the Divergences, see Yuien, A Record of Lament of the Divergences Teaching, Practice, Faith, and Attainment, 54, 63, 64 Shintō, viii, 11, 12, 14–15, 22–5, 93, 135, 166–7, 177, 187–8, 191, 203, 205 denomination, 187 Indian and Greek origins, 11 nature veneration, 12 shrine, 187 ‘this-worldly’ quality, 12, 24, 25 see also kami Shintō thinking, 27 shiza, 133 shōbō, 53 Shōgun/Shōgunate, 19, 22 Shōgun/Shōgunate, Tokugawa, 22, 202 Shōju Rōjin, 133 sho¯zo¯matsu, 53 shrines, 11 shugendō, 93 Shu ¯hō Myōchō, 85, 130 shujo¯en no jihi, 62 shūnya, 62 shu ¯ nyatā, 69, 83 Siddartha, 131 see also Shā kyamuni Buddha silence, 88, 97, 136, 139–40, 197, 199 see also Abraham, silence Silk Road, 187 sin, 26 original, 8 a person of, 78 Sino-Japanese War, 33 six schools of Buddhism, see Japanese Buddhism, six schools six worlds, 55 Sixth Patriarch of Zen, 20 Skovgaard-Petersen, C., 40 sky, 111, 166, 167 see also plane of high sky

Index Socrates, 37, 136, 192, 197 see also recollection of truth; Socratic method Socratic method, 84 sorrow, 6, 19, 110, 143, 188, 191 Sōtō school, see Buddhism, Sōtō sect/ Zen soul/souls, 28, 40, 55, 60, 61, 87, 88 spatio-temporal world, 12 Spinoza, B., 108–16, 118, 122 spirit/spirits, 11, 12, 13, 55, 56, 69, 93, 126, 163, 188, 194, 206, 207, 229, 230 absolute, 162 Christian, 114 friendly, 61 Hegelian, 162 holy, 62, 195, 226 human/human being, 114, 162, 180, 197, 206, 229 natural, 187 original, 14–15 self, 114, 180, 197 see also history, Kierkegaard’s religious spirit spiritual self-awareness, 173–4, 176–80, 193 spontaneity of the appearance of truth, 228 sports, 165 stars, 89, 97, 98, 100, 101 Stoicism, 152 Stoics, 152 Sūt ra of Immeasurable Life, 54 sūtra/sūtras, 22, 58 Buddhist, 20, 54 Indian, 19 tearing up, 20 see also The Lotus Sūt ra sub specie aeterni, 128 subjective thinker, 44 subjective truth, see truth, subjective subjectivism, 37 subjectivity, 3–4, 7, 24, 26, 49, 78, 79, 85, 122, 126, 132, 139, 161, 163, 165, 186, 188, 193–4, 197, 205–6, 212, 216 no self, 73, 80–1 Socratic, 80

247

Zen, 72–3, 79–82 suchness, 61 suffering/sufferings, 7, 17–18, 22, 26, 28, 58, 60, 74, 75, 90 bodily, 74 existential, 74 law, 74 physical, 74 see also saving sentient beings from suffering Sugimoto, H., 205, 213 suicide, 150, 152–7 recovery from depression, 7 see also Mitsuchi, K., suicide; ritualized form of suicide; seppuku; suicide pilots, suicide pilots, 17 sun, 92, 99, 101 The Sun, 33 Sung dynasty, 80 Sung poets, 127 support of family and friends, 10 Suzuki, D. T., 59 Sweden, 32, 39 symparanekromenoi, 220, 221 Taiheiki, 17 Taihō reforms, 14 taishi ichiban, 77 takamanohara, 12, 135 Takayama, C., 33–4 ‘Treating Aesthetic Life’, 34 ‘The Writer as a Critic of Civilization’, 33 Takayasu, G., 33 Tama, 187 Tamura, Y., 19 Tanabe, H., 43, 46–8 ‘An Appreciation of Professor Nishida: a Response to his Teaching’, 46 ‘Either Ontology of Life or Dialectics of Death’, 47 Hegelian Philosophy and Dialectics, 46 ‘The Individuality of Existence and Sociality of Nothingness’, 47 ‘Memento Mori’, 47 ‘Obligations of Love and Social Practice’, 47 Philosophy as Metanoetics, 47

248

Index

Tao, 13–15, 94 see also water, symbol of the Tao Tao Te Ching, 13, 15, 116 Taoism, vii, 11, 13–15, 18, 20, 22, 135, 187 Chinese, 94 freedom, 25 Japanese Buddhism, 25, 67 ritual and magical practices, 14 tariki, 54 Tathandlung, 165 tathatā, 61 tautologies, 10 teleological suspension of ethics, see ethics, teleological suspension Ten Ox-herding Pictures, 80 Ten Thousand Leaves, 166 Teruji, I., 50 Tetsujiro, I., 32 theism, 7 theology, 39, 208, 224, 226 Christian, 165 dialectical, 44 things as they are, 61, 96 thinking beyond thinking and not thinking, 92, 97 thinking earnestly about death, 142, 145, 151, 153 third kind of knowledge, 111–12 thorn in the flesh, 57–60 Thorvaldsen, B., 39 three essentials, 133 three periods of the teaching, 53 Thulstrup, N., 222 Tilegnelse, 48, 61 Tillich, P., 226 time, 138, 145, 148, 210–11 see also flow of time; impermanence; inner time; time-being; timeless interdependence of all things; timeless place time-being, 120, 122 timeless interdependence of all things, 109 timeless place, 107 Tivoli Gardens, 222 Tochiori, K., 205 Tōkai Shōshun, 29

Tokyo, 204 Imperial University, 186 Senmon Gakko, 33 Teikoku Daigaku, 203 University, 203, 204 Tolstoy, L., 35 Tomonaga, S., 35 Dictionary of Philosophy, 35 torment, 7 totalitarianism, 49 Tou-shuai Ts’ung-yueh, 76 transcendence, 21, 69, 82–3, 98 see also diamond-like mind of crosswise transcendence transmigration, 56 trees, 11, 12, 83, 88, 98, 101, 118 trinity of love, 47 True Pure Land Buddhism, see Buddhism, True Pure Land truth itself, 228 truth, 4, 6, 37, 39, 44, 48, 60, 62, 66, 69, 82–3, 90, 94, 99, 101, 121, 134–9, 163, 176, 185, 193, 194, 205, 209, 221, 223–5, 227 concept, 163 indirect transmission, 84–5 infinite, 40 jump, 78 living, 40 objective, 3 religious, 61, 176 subjective, 3, 99, 101, 229, see also faith, subjective truth subjectivity, 23–4, 163, 197 see also Christianity, truth; four noble truths; God, truth; Jesus, truth; middle way, truth; recollection of truth; shape through which human beings know the truth; spontaneity of the appearance of truth; truth itself Ts’ui, 79 Tsubouchi, S., 33 ‘Ibsen’s Social Drama’, 34 Tsuji, K., 204–5 Tsunajima, R., 37 turning inward, 4, 23 twentieth-century receptions of Kierkegaard, 1

Index two aspects of deep faith, 54, 56, 67 see also deep faith of oneself two-part classification sub-divided into four parts, 63–4 transcending crosswise and departing crosswise, 64, see also diamond-like mind of crosswise transcendence transcending lengthwise and departing lengthwise, 64 Uchimura, K., 38–42 ‘A Story of Denmark or a Story of how Faith and Forestry Saved a Country’, 41 The Biblical Study, 41 The Diary of a Japanese Convert, 39 ‘The Great Ambition’, 38 How I became a Christian, 39, 40, 41 Ueda, B., 39 ‘Ibsen’, 36 Ueda, K., 14 Uendliggjørelse, 7 understanding filled with pathos, 225 underworld, 12–13 undivided activity, 92, 114 undivided from the whole, 119 unhappiness, 220 see also sadness United Church of Japan, 23 universals, 3 unselfishness, 187, 191–3, 197–9 untruth, 77, 78, 83 crowd, 185 Upanishads, 2 upa ¯ ya, 18 USA, 222 van Gogh, V., 187 vanity, 58 Vashubandhu, 2 Vedas, 2 viewing things from the perspective of eternity, 107, 115, 122 virtue/virtues, 15–17, 27, 54, 61, 194, 212 exalted, 63 see also Confucius, Confucian virtues vow/vows, 19–20, 54–6, 227–8, 230

249

war tales, 17 warfare, 145 Waseda Literary Magazine, 33, 34 Waseda University, 33 water, 93–7, 100, 102, 111 awareness, 97 clear to the bottom, 167 symbol of the Tao, 13–14, 25 Watsuji, T., 31, 36 Søren Kierkegaard, 31, 42 Wei-shan Ling-yu, 84 Western and Christian perspective, viii Western civilization, 202, 205 Western philosophy, see philosophy, Western Western technology, 202 Western thought, viii, 2, 43, 61, 107, 112, 114, 180, 201, 205, 209 see also Japanese thought, synthesis with Western thought wind, 89, 97 Wolff, M., 40 wondrous law of the one mind, 133, 135, 138 wondrous law, 136, 137 see also wondrous law of one mind Wu-men Hui-k’ai, 83 Wu men kuan, 83 wu-wei, 13, 14, 25, 67 Yamamoto, T., 146–7, 150 In the Shadow of Leaves, 146 yogic asceticism, 74 yogin, 74 yomi, 12, 13 you for you, 212 Yüan-hsien Yung-chiao, 127 Ch’an-yü-nei-chi, 127 Yuien, 54, 58, 59 A Record of Lament of the Divergences, 54, 58, 67 Yun-men Wen-yen, 84–5 zazen, 21, 91, 92, 96, 101, 103, 130, 165 see also dead sitting Zen, see Buddhism, Zen Zen Buddhism, see Buddhism, Zen

250 Index Zen sickness, 125 Zen training/practice, 29, 82, 118, 130, 165–6 no saving God, 78 Zendo, see Shan-tao zettaimu teki shutai, 80

Ziegler, T., 34 ‘The Spiritual and Social Currents of the 19th Century’, 34 Zilu, 17 zōbō, 53 Zohar, 107, 108, 114