The Philosophy of Zen Buddhism E-Book

Byung-Chul Han

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 180

Beschreibung

Zen Buddhism is a form of Mahayana Buddhism that originated in China and is strongly focused on meditation. It is characteristically sceptical towards language and distrustful of conceptual thought, which explains why Zen Buddhist sayings are so enigmatic and succinct. But despite Zen Buddhism's hostility towards theory and discourse, it is possible to reflect philosophically on Zen Buddhism and bring out its philosophical insights. In this short book, Byung-Chul Han seeks to unfold the philosophical force inherent in Zen Buddhism, delving into the foundations of Far Eastern thought to which Zen Buddhism is indebted. Han does this comparatively by confronting and contrasting the insights of Zen Buddhism with the philosophies of Plato, Leibniz, Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Heidegger and others, showing that Zen Buddhism and Western philosophy have very different ways of understanding religion, subjectivity, emptiness, friendliness and death. This important work by one of the most widely read philosophers and cultural theorists of our time will be of great value to anyone interested in comparative philosophy and religion.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Preface

Notes

A Religion without God

Notes

Emptiness

Notes

No one

Notes

Dwelling nowhere

Notes

Death

Notes

Friendliness

Notes

End User License Agreement

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Preface

Begin Reading

End User License Agreement

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The Philosophy of Zen Buddhism

Byung-Chul Han

Translated by Daniel Steuer

polity

Originally published in German as Philosophie des Zen-Buddhismus© Philipp Reclam jun. Verlag GmbH, Ditzingen, 2002

This English edition © Polity Press, 2022

Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press111 River StreetHoboken, NJ 07030, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4511-7

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022933624

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PREFACE

Zen Buddhism is a form of Mahāyāna Buddhism that originated in China and is strongly focused on meditation.1 What is peculiar to Zen Buddhism is expressed by the following verse, attributed to its founder, Bodhidharma,2 a figure surrounded by legend:

A special tradition outside the scriptures;

No dependence upon words and letters;

Direct pointing at the soul of man;

Seeing into one’s own nature,

and the attainment of

Buddhahood.3

This scepticism towards language and distrust of conceptual thought, so typical of Zen Buddhism, explains why Zen Buddhist sayings are so enigmatic and succinct. What is said shines because of what is not said. Zen Buddhist masters also make use of unusual forms of communication. They often respond to questions of the form ‘What is …?’ with a blow of the stick.4 And where words do not get the point across, loud shouting might be used instead.

Despite Zen Buddhism’s fundamental hostility towards theory and discourse, a philosophy of Zen Buddhism need not necessarily end up as a (paradoxical) epic of haikus, for it is possible to reflect philosophically on a subject matter that is not itself philosophy in the narrower sense. One may linguistically circle silence without thereby drowning it out with language. The present philosophy of Zen Buddhism is nourished by a philosophizing about and with Zen Buddhism. It aims conceptually to unfold the philosophical force inherent in Zen Buddhism. This undertaking is not, however, altogether without its problems. The experiences of being or of consciousness that the practice of Zen Buddhism works towards cannot fully be captured in conceptual language. The Philosophy of Zen Buddhism tries to turn this linguistic difficulty around by using certain linguistic strategies to convey meaning.

The present study is designed as a ‘comparative’ one. The philosophies of Plato, Leibniz, Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Heidegger and others will be confronted with the insights of Zen Buddhism. The comparative approach is a method for disclosing meaning.

Haikus are frequently woven into the individual sections of the text. The intention behind this is not, however, to illustrate abstract matters with haikus, and still less is it to produce philosophical interpretations of haikus. The haikus and the individual sections of text relate to each other as neighbours. The quoted haikus aim to put the reader in the mood of the textual passages to which they relate. The haikus should be seen as beautiful frames that quietly talk to their pictures.5

NOTES

1.

Mah

ā

means ‘large’;

y

ā

na

means ‘vehicle’. Thus, the literal translation of Mahāyāna is ‘large vehicle’. Buddhism is a path to salvation that provides a ‘vehicle’ that is meant to lead living creatures out of their painful existence. The teaching of Buddha therefore does not offer a ‘truth’ but a ‘vehicle’, a ‘means’ that would become superfluous once the goal has been reached. That makes Buddhist discourse free of the compulsion to truth that dominates Christian discourse. As opposed to Hīnayāna Buddhism (‘small vehicle’), which aims at self-perfection, Mahāyāna Buddhism strives for the salvation of all living creatures. Therefore, the Bodhisattva, despite having reached complete enlightenment, lives among the suffering creatures in order to lead them to salvation.

2.

It is said that he came to China as the twenty-eighth Indian patriarch in order to found the Chinese line of the Zen tradition.

3.

Heinrich Dumoulin,

A History of Zen Buddhism

, New York: Pantheon, 1963, p. 87.

4.

See

The Blue Cliff Record

(

Bi-yan-lu

), compiled by Ch’unghsien and commented upon by K’o-ch’in, trans. Thomas Cleary, Berkeley: Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research, 1998: ‘Elder Ding asked Linji, “What is the meaning of Buddhism?” Linji got off his seat, grabbed Ding, slapped him, then pushed him away. Ding stood there motionless. A monk standing by said, “Elder Ding, why don’t you bow?” Just as Ding bowed, he suddenly was greatly enlightened’ (pp. 171f.).

5.

Transl. note: In many cases, there are several, often very different, English translations of a haiku. I have selected the ones that are closest to the German translations. In a few instances I have given, in footnotes, alternative translations that follow the German versions more literally. Where no reference is given, the translations are mine.

A Religion without God

See the great Buddha

he is dozing and dozing

all through the spring day.

– Shiki

In his lectures on the philosophy of religion, Hegel says that the subject matter of religion is ‘God and nothing but God’.1 Buddhism being no exception, Hegel simply equates the central concept of Buddhism, ‘nothing’, with God:

nothing and not-being is what is ultimate and supreme. It is nothing alone which has true independence; all other actuality, all particularity, has none at all. Out of nothingness everything has proceeded; into nothingness everything returns. Nothing, nothingness is the One, the beginning and the ending of everything…. That man should think of God as nothingness must at first sight seem astonishing, must appear to us a most peculiar idea. But, considered more closely, this determination means that God is absolutely nothing determined. He is the Undetermined; no determinateness of any kind pertains to God; He is the Infinite. This is equivalent to saying that God is the negation of all particularity.2

In other words, Hegel interprets Buddhism as a kind of ‘negative theology’. The ‘nothing’ expresses the negativity of God, the fact that He escapes any positive determination. Following this controversial account of the Buddhist concept of nothingness, Hegel voices his bewilderment: ‘God, although actually conceived of as nothingness, as Essence generally, is yet known as a particular immediate human being’, by which he means the Buddha. That ‘a man with all his sensuous needs should be looked upon as God, as He who eternally creates, maintains, and produces the world’, Hegel holds, is a ‘conjunction’ that ‘may appear to us the most offensive, revolting, and incredible of all’.3 The ‘absolute’ – and in Hegel’s view this is a contradiction – ‘has to be worshipped in the immediate finite nature of a human being’:4 ‘A human being is worshipped, and he is as such the god who assumes individual form, and in that form gives himself up to be reverenced.’5 Within this ‘individual existence’, he says, the Buddha is the ‘substance’ that is responsible for the ‘creating and maintaining of the world, of nature, and of all things’.6

In his interpretation of Buddhism, Hegel makes use of ontotheological concepts such as substance, essence, God, power, domination and creation. This is problematic, as these concepts are all incompatible with Buddhism. The Buddhist ‘nothing’ is anything but a ‘substance’. It is not ‘existing in itself’ [in sich seiend],7 nor is it ‘at rest within itself and persists’.8 Rather, it is empty within itself, so to speak. It does not flee from being determined in order to retreat into its infinite inwardness. The Buddhist nothing is not that ‘substantial Power which governs the world, causes everything to originate and come into being in accordance with rational laws of connection’.9 The nothing rather indicates that nothing rules. It does not reveal itself to be a master. No ‘rule’ and no ‘power’ emanates from it. Buddha represents nothing. He does not embody an infinite substance in a separate individual form. Hegel illegitimately entangles the Buddhist nothing in representational and causal relations. His thought, which focuses on ‘substance’ and ‘subject’, is not capable of grasping the Buddhist nothing.

The following koan from the Bi-yan-lu would seem outlandish to Hegel: ‘A monk asked Dongshan, “What is the Buddha?” Dongshan said, “Three pounds of flax.”’10 Hegel would be equally bewildered by the following words from Dōgen: ‘When you talk about the Buddha, you think the Buddha must have various physical characteristics and a radiant halo. If I say that the Buddha is broken tiles and pebbles, you show astonishment.’11 In response to these Zen sayings, Hegel might claim that, in Zen Buddhism, God does not appear as an individual but rather unconsciously ‘staggers’ through various things. For Hegel, Zen Buddhism would therefore constitute a regression from ordinary Buddhism, because the latter’s ‘advance’ over the ‘fantastic’ religion consists precisely in the fact that God’s ‘chaotic stagger’ is ‘reduced to a state of rest’, that the ‘arid disorder’ is returned ‘into itself and into essential unity’. For Hegel, Buddhism is a ‘religion of Being-within-itself’. In such a religion, God collects Himself into Himself. All ‘relation to another is now cut off’.12 The fantastic religion, by contrast, does not involve this self-collection. In the fantastic religion, the ‘One’13 is not with itself; rather, it ‘staggers’. In Buddhism, however, God is no longer dispersed into countless things: ‘Thus, as compared with the previous stage, there is an advance made here from fantastic personification split up into a countless multitude of forms, to a personification which is enclosed within definite bounds, and is actually present.’ This God, who has collected Himself into Himself, appears ‘in an individual concentration’, namely in the form of a human individual who is called Buddha.14

Hegel’s interpretation of Buddhist meditation also fails to grasp Buddhism’s spiritual attitude. According to Hegel, in meditative contemplation the goal is ‘the stillness of being-within-itself’.15 In this ‘being-within-itself … all relation to another is now precluded’.16 Thus, in ‘meditation’ man ‘is occupied with himself’;17 he is ‘returning into himself’.18 Hegel even talks of ‘self-absorption’ [An-sich-selbst-Saugen].19 The aim is a pure, absolute inwardness of being-within-itself that is completely free of another. One immerses oneself in ‘abstract thought in itself’, which is ‘active substantiality’ and constitutive of the ‘creation and preservation of the world’.20 The ‘holiness of a man consists in his uniting himself in this extinction, in this silence, with God, with nothingness, with the Absolute’.21 In this state of nirvana, Hegel says, ‘man is without gravity, he has no longer any weight, is not subject to disease, to old age, to death; he is looked upon as God Himself; he has become Buddha’.22 In the state of nirvana, man reaches an infinity, an immortality, that represents infinite freedom. This freedom Hegel imagines as follows:

The thought of immortality is implied in the fact that man is a thinking being, that he is in his freedom at home with himself; thus he is absolutely independent; an ‘Other’ cannot break in upon his freedom: he relates himself to himself alone; an Other cannot assert itself within him.

This equality with myself, ‘I’, this self-contained existence, this true Infinite, is what, according to this point of view, is immortal, is subject to no change; it is itself the Unchangeable, what is within itself alone, what moves itself only within itself.23

Accordingly, infinity as freedom consists in a pure inwardness that is in no way entangled with anything external or other. In this immersion in pure thinking, human beings are wholly with themselves, only relate to themselves, only touch themselves. Nothing external disturbs this self-referential contemplation. In Hegel’s version of Buddhism, God is characterized by this pure ‘inwardness’ of the ‘I’. We shall see later that in fact the Buddhist nothing is opposed to inwardness.

According to Hegel, the God of all religions, and especially the God of Christianity, is not only ‘substance’ but also ‘subject’.24 God is to be imagined, like the human being, as a subject, a person. However, the Buddhist nothing, according to Hegel, lacks subjectivity and personality. Like the Indian God, it is not ‘the One Person’ but ‘the One in a neuter sense’.25 It is not yet a ‘He’, not a master. It lacks ‘exclusive subjectivity’.26 It is not as exclusive as the Jewish God. The figure of the Buddha compensates for this lack of subjectivity. The ‘absolute’ is personified and ‘worshipped’ in an empirical, finite individual. However, as we have already seen, for Hegel the fact that a finite human being is considered to be God ‘may appear to us the most offensive, revolting, and incredible of all’. For Hegel, it is a contradiction to imagine the absolute in the form of a finite individual. But Hegel’s view rests on a misinterpretation of Buddhism. Hegel declares the Christian religion to be the final form of religion, and for Christianity the figure of the person is constitutive. Hegel projects Christianity onto Buddhism, and this leads him to believe that Buddhism is lacking. He thereby fails to recognize the radical alterity of Buddhist religion. The Zen master Linji’s demand that one should ‘kill the Buddha’ would be wholly incomprehensible to Hegel: ‘if you meet a buddha, kill the buddha…. Then for the first time you will gain emancipation, will not be entangled with things, will pass freely anywhere you wish to go.’27

The Buddhist nothing’s lack of ‘exclusive subjectivity’ or ‘conscious will’ is not a ‘deficiency’ but a strength of Buddhism.28 The absence of ‘will’ or ‘subjectivity’ is precisely what constitutes the peacefulness of Buddhism. Further, because the category of ‘power’ is an expression of ‘substance’ or ‘subject’, it does not apply to the Buddhist nothing. ‘Power’ that ‘reveals’ or ‘manifests’ itself is alien to the nothing, which lacks substance and subjectivity. The nothing does not represent an ‘acting, effective power’; it does not ‘effect’ anything.29 The absence of a ‘master’ further distances Buddhism from any economy of domination. Because ‘power’ is not concentrated in a name, Buddhism is non-violent. There is no individual who represents a ‘power’. Buddhism’s foundation is an empty centre that does not exclude anything, that is not occupied by a holder of power. This emptiness, this absence of ‘exclusive subjectivity’, is what makes Buddhism friendly. Its nature is incompatible with ‘fundamentalism’.

Buddhism does not allow for the invocation of God. It does not know the divine inwardness into which such an invocation would delve, nor the human inwardness that would require such an invocation. It is free of the urge to invoke. The ‘immediate impulse’, ‘longing’ and ‘instinct of spirit’ that insists on God being concrete and concentrated ‘in the form of a real man’ (i.e. Christ) is alien to Buddhism.30 In God in human form, the human being sees himself. In God, the human appreciates himself. Buddhism, by contrast, does not have a narcissistic structure.

The Zen master Dongshan would shatter ‘God’ with his ‘sword that kills’.31 Zen Buddhism leads the Buddhist religion towards strict immanence in the most radical way: ‘Vast and empty. Nothing holy!’32 The Zen sayings about Buddha being ‘broken tiles and pebbles’ or ‘three pounds of flax’ indicate the orientation towards immanence in the spiritual attitude of Zen Buddhism. They express the ‘everyday mind’ that makes Zen Buddhism a religion of immanence.33 The nothing, or emptiness, of Zen Buddhism is not directed at a divine There. The radical turn towards immanence, towards Here, is a reflection of the Chinese, or Far Eastern, character of Zen Buddhism.34 Like Linji, the Zen master Yunmen urges the destruction of the holy. He seems to understand what peace depends upon:

Master Yunmen related [the legend according to which] the Buddha, immediately after his birth, pointed with one hand to heaven and with the other to earth, walked a circle in seven steps, looked at the four quarters, and said, ‘Above heaven and under heaven, I alone am the Honored One.’

The Master said, ‘Had I witnessed this at the time, I would have knocked him dead with one stroke and fed him to the dogs in order to bring about peace on earth!’35

The worldview of Zen Buddhism is not directed upwards, nor is it oriented towards a centre. It lacks a ruling centre. One might also say: the centre is everywhere. Every being forms a centre. As friendly beings that do not exclude anything, each being reflects the whole in itself. All beings de-internalize themselves, open up boundlessly towards a world-like openness: ‘Someone who has come to know a single particle knows the whole universe.’36 In a single plum blossom, the whole universe blooms.

The world that fits into a ‘single particle’ has certainly been emptied of any theological-teleological ‘meaning’. It is also empty in the sense that it is occupied neither by theos nor by anthropos. It is free of the complicity between anthropos and theos. The nothing of Zen Buddhism does not offer anything to hold on to, no solid ‘ground’ that one could be sure of or ascertain, nothing that one could cling to. The world is without a ground: ‘There is no roof over the head and no earth under the feet.’37 ‘With one blow the vast sky suddenly breaks into pieces. / Holy, worldly, both vanished without trace. In the untreadable ends the way.’38 The spiritual force of Buddhism is that it can transform the groundless into a unique hold and abode, can enable one to inhabit the nothing, can turn the great doubt into a Yes. The path does not lead into ‘transcendence’. One cannot flee from the world, because there is no other world. ‘There is a turning in the untreadable and a new way, or rather the old one, suddenly opens out. The bright moon shines in front of the temple and there is a rustling wind.’ The path ends in the age-old, leads to a deep immanence, to an everyday world of ‘men and women, young and old, pan and kettle, cat and spoon’.39

Zen meditation differs radically from the Cartesian meditations, which, as is well known, are based on the aim of achieving certainty and save themselves from doubt by way of the ‘I’ and ‘God’. Zen master Dōgen would suggest that Descartes continue with his meditations, pushing and deepening his doubt even further, to the point at which he himself becomes the great doubt in which the ‘I’ as well as the idea of ‘God’ are shattered completely. Having reached the point of that doubt, Descartes would probably have exclaimed neque cogito neque sum, I do not think, nor am I: ‘The realm of nonthinking can hardly be fathomed by cognition; in the sphere of genuine suchness there is neither “I” nor “other.”’40

According to Leibniz, for the existence of every individual thing there must be a ground: ‘Furthermore, assuming that things must exist, we must be able to give a reason for why they must exist in this way, and not otherwise.’41 This question of reasons necessarily leads to the ultimate reason, which is called ‘God’: ‘And that is why the ultimate reason of things must be in a necessary substance in which the diversity of changes is only eminent, as in its source. This is what we call God.’42 Having reached this ‘ultimate reason of things’, thinking, the asking for a ‘why’, becomes calm