Existenz

This is a research paper i wrote on the similarities between Heidegger’s thought in Being and Time and Zen Buddhism, specifically the ideas of being and nothingness. For some reason the foootnotes don’t show up when I put this on the site, but the bibliography is at the end, and the paper is properly cited. If anyone wants the actual footnote information drop a comment asking for it. Enjoy.

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“On the Themes of Being and Nothingness in Heidegger’s Being and Time and Zen Buddhism: An Exploration”

By Adam Burgos

There have been many previous investigations into the similarities that exist between the philosophy of Martin Heidegger and the various philosophical traditions of the East, studies that have analyzed the many intricacies of Heidegger’s philosophy as it evolved from the period of Being and Time up until his death, while juxtaposing his thought with the many different facets of Eastern thought. In this essay, I will restrict my comparison to the Heidegger of Being and Time and the Zen Buddhist tradition of Japan. Within this framework, the two themes that come to the fore in terms of their striking similarity are the themes of Being versus nothingness and Nonbeing. These are the issues that are central to achieving a greater understanding of both Being and Time and Zen. John Steffney argues that Zen Buddhism has achieved that which Heidegger wished to achieve but was unable to realize: transmetaphysical thought. The grounds with which Heidegger began his major writings, with Being and Time, were rooted in his desire to destructure the Western metaphysical tradition in order to return to the question of Being, the question that had been forgotten since the times of Plato and Aristotle. This Western tradition implies dualism, referring to both the mind-body dichotomy and the idea of multiple beings in the world; a specific reality that Zen certainly rejects. Steffney argues that Heidegger was never able to totally wrench himself free from that Western metaphysical tradition; he retains within his thought ideas of a dualistic nature, with dualism being the most important concept to leave behind when moving into the realm of the transmetaphysical. Despite Steffney’s conclusions, that a comparison reveals that he does not give Heidegger the credit that he deserves, something that I will prove in the course of this paper. In Being and Time, Heidegger describes an average-everydayness that is the state of Dasein, hence for all Beings. Our elementary way of Being-in-the-World for Heidegger is a practical one, while the idea of dualism for him is theoretical.

Steffney writes, “…for it is dualism that most emphatically marks the beginning of Western Metaphysics.” Zen, for its part, has in its ideas a complete lack of this dualism that is so prevalent in Western thought. Zen Buddhism transcends both Being and Nonbeing, truth and untruth, freedom and unfreedom, life and death—all dualistic ideas, opposites. Zen is able to transcend time and timelessness altogether. Steffney ultimately argues that Heidegger was unable to break from his Western tradition because he could not break through “the matrix of ego-consciousness with all its inherent bifurcations.” For Steffney, the boundaries of the ego-consciousness are the equivalent of conceptual thinking. In its transcendence of dualism, Zen has moved beyond this realm of the conceptual into something more, something that Steffney refers to as Zen’s having found an “Original Source.”

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Before Steffney’s assertions about Heidegger can be properly assessed and discussed, it is essential to paint a proper portrait of the relevant themes from each perspective. It is necessary to understand when thinking of Eastern philosophy—especially when it is being compared to that of the West—is that the grounds of each are very different. The main point of difference is, as I mentioned earlier, the reliance on the concept of dualism throughout Western history, perhaps most importantly with Descartes. Earlier, it was noted that Steffney wrote that dualism is the beginning of Western Metaphysics. The Eastern philosophical traditions—of which Zen Buddhism is no exception—come from no such foundation, and are thus able to easily move beyond such restrictions—the restrictions from which Heidegger tried so hard to escape. The West is rooted in the traditions of its religions (here I refer not just to the Judeo-Christian tradition, but to the religions of ancient Greece as well), therefore causing the primary thinking of the concept of death to include an idea of immortality, or an immortal soul. Despite the fact that Judaism does not believe in a concept of immortality like Christianity, it still retains a concept of salvation by a savior and agnosticism about the afterlife. This stance is typified by the arguably the two most famous deaths that the West has known: Socrates and Jesus Christ.

It is Heidegger’s contention, and criticism, that Western thought, exemplified by European ontology lacks the concept of death. Ontology is, at its core, the study of what there is, and everything that comes along with that discipline. Heidegger is concerned with the ideas of Nothingness and Emptiness as it relates to our human condition, something that the West had forgotten. It is in this light that Heidegger makes the criticism, and it is a valid one. To the West, the deaths of these men did not signal a return to the Nothingness of which Heidegger speaks. In the case of Buddha, the most significant death in the Eastern traditions, his death meant a return to that Nothingness. A natural death is the ideal, a representation of man’s return to nature. It is in this way that it can be seen that there is a fundamental difference within the ontological framework between East and West, a chasm that Heidegger wanted to transcend. This is the gap that Steffney argues Heidegger was unable to reconcile.

This underlying difference is noticeable in the fact that in Buddhism “nothingness” is regarded as being far more important than “beings.” Takeshi Umehara describes human existence, for Buddhism, as having been “handed over into nothingness or non-being.” Umehara also mentions the thirteenth century Zen master Dogen, who posited that temporality only exists in the present. All time is individual, absolute, present. Taken further, one can only find proof of eternity by throwing himself into the present and living the entirety of his existence in that present. Throwing is Umehara’s word, and it immediately calls to mind Heidegger’s idea of “throwness” in Being and Time. The idea is very similar, with the difference lying in that for Dogen, this was a way to eternity. For Heidegger it is simply the necessary condition of one’s life that must be taken up and embraced in order for us to have a grasp on our existence.

Buddhism, then, can be said to grasp beings in terms of their finitude, meaning their death. This can be clearly seen in the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, which are as follows:
1. The truth that suffering exists.
2. The truth that suffering has a cause.
3. The truth that the cause can be removed.
4. The truth that there are eight practices by which the cause of suffering can be removed.
The human being, then, is conceived totally in terms of suffering, such as death, disease, decay, sickness, and aging. Death is the ultimate form of this suffering, therefore meaning that beings are couched completely in terms of death or finitude.

Joan Stambaugh takes issue with what she perceives as Takeshi Umehara’s suggestion that the Buddhist notion of suffering found in the Noble Truths somehow corresponds to Heidegger’s notion of angst. Angst is important in this discussion because it relates directly to the transmetaphysical thinking about which Steffney writes. For Heidegger, angst is what reveals the world to us, and lets us see more clearly our finitude. A perfect example of angst pointing towards finitude is Heidegger’s hammer that is broken in the workshop. This example will be further explained shortly. Angst is a fundamental mode of Dasein’s existence, and “reveals to Dasein the world and all its uncanniness.” Suffering in Buddhism, however, does nothing of the sort. Instead, it is a universal condition for all beings. Suffering is common and prevalent, and not hidden to beings, whereas angst is able to authenticate the human in a different way. Dasein is able to use angst to reveal the world; suffering is a mere fact, always revealed. The concept of angst also contains in it the connotation of restlessness that goes against the grain of the Zen mindset. Steffney brings up this point in the conclusion of his article, and it indeed does have some credence. We will return to it later once a better understanding of the groundwork of Zen has been put forth.

Zen Buddhism strives “to transcend the world of opposites and value judgments and aim their spiritual efforts at grasping true Reality (Being).” The word Zen is derived from the Sanskrit word dhyana, which means “trance.” In Zen, the unenlightened mind is comparable to a pool of muddy water. The best way to clear the water is to have it be still, rather than stir it up with the study of doctrines; meditation is key. The goal of meditation is the realization that the truth lies beyond any possible rational apprehension. The intellect must give up its restlessness and its quest to reduce Truth to theory in order for enlightenment to dawn. It should now be clear that Zen places a very high value on calm meditation. Steffney, by way of D.T. Suzuki, calls this “quietly resting.”

In Being and Time, Heidegger crafts an ontology that says that death and finitude belong to the very essence of being-there, of existence for Dasein. While the inauthentic choose to push thoughts of their own finitude into the background and live as though death does not apply to them, the authentic person has a free-resolve towards death. Facing death through an authentic Being-there is a mood of angst for Dasein that is responsible for his projection into his own future, in other words an ecstatic nature of being. The choice of authenticity makes possible for Dasein its authentic potentiality-of-being, a potentiality that is attested to through our “voice of conscience.”

It is this voice that pulls the authentic Dasein away from the inauthenticity of the other—Heidegger’s Mitda-sein—to which it is constantly exposed. As Heidegger puts it, “conscience calls the self of Dasein forth from its lostness in the they.” It is angst that is borne out of the knowledge of one’s finitude through death that results in revealing the Nothingness of the world. Being is only able to come into focus once it is understood through the concept of non-Being, which in turn is only able to be understood though one’s authentic stance on the recognition of finitude through death. Only once it can be understood that there is the possibility of no-thing, can the thing be understood; Being-there illuminates the world.

A perfect example of this concept can be found in a lecture given by Heidegger entitled “The Thing,” on the 6th of June, 1950, at the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts. Here he presents the figure of a jug, which is defined not by the clay that forms it, but by the nothingness that produces its function. The potter does not construct the jug; he merely shapes the clay, which in turn shapes the void. In Heidegger’s words, “The vessel’s thingness does not lie at all in the material of which it consists, but in the void that holds.” The idea of the Nothing was taken by Heidegger from Eastern thought, and the idea can be found in both the Laozi—the Chinese character wu—and in Zen Buddhism—the character Japanese mu, both of which translate as nothing.

Zen Buddhism takes the awareness of man’s death and uses it in a different manner than does Heidegger. Zen comes to the conclusion that our Being-in-the world points us towards Buddhahood—the enlightenment sought by Buddhists, a removal of oneself from the cycle of rebirth that plagues us until we are able to extricate ourselves from it through meditation—coming into agreement with Heidegger’s viewpoint that our Being-there transcends towards Being, only in a different way. Being-there and Being stand towards one another in a reciprocal relation that brings to mind the Hermeneutic Circle; one is not possible without the other and the two affect one another through the experiences of Dasein. Being both conceals itself and reveals itself within the world and our Being-in-the-world, and without the world we would be unable to speak of Being. The main difference between how Heidegger viewed this relationship and how it is viewed in Zen is that in Zen Buddhahood may be grasped by concentration and meditation on worldly things, but once complete, this process is unable to be reversed. For Heidegger, Being goes only as far as the world goes. Authenticity is not total and final; as in Kierkegaard, it is an ongoing process. One is constantly falling back towards inauthenticity, ever the ballerina landing a pirouette; we are always in the process of landing that jump.

In Zen there are two types of thinking. The first is a transformation of man’s nature into his true essence, and the second is man’s projection into Nothing “where there is a relating both to Being and what-is.” We use the what-is of the world to carve out mundane lives from the purity of the original block of the world. In doing this we construct the world of things, after which it must be overcome through disciplined meditation. It is through this process that the Zen Buddhist is projected into Nothingness, and his true nature is transformed into its true essence, its “Buddha-nature.” Through this process, the Buddhist is able to “return to the source,” meaning Being. This returning to the source evokes similarities with the assertion made in Steffney’s article about Zen having found an “Original Source,” a oneness beyond the realms of dualism.

It is through meditation that the Zen Buddhist hopes to calm his mind as one would calm the aforementioned cloudy mud puddle: through stillness. Zen philosophy is not the search for new paradigms, but rather it seeks to undermine all paradigms, whether past, present, or future. The process of completing such a task is through meditation. Thought in Zen can be said to “dwell” in the world, lighted by Being. The thinker has no ego, and therefore is unable to project his feelings and preconceptions onto objective reality; he allows things to lie before him as they are. Summed up by Mitchell, “Thought for Zen is both an intuition of Being in its reality and a relation to what-is in its suchness,” with suchness representing the pure uncarved block from which individual worlds are carved.

The conception of Being in Zen philosophy makes clear Steffney’s claim that Zen transcends—remains unconstrained by—Western metaphysics completely and moves beyond dualism. The ultimate for Zen is an emptiness—or Being—that is beyond all dichotomies or dualisms. The emptiness is directly identified with Dasein, who is truly Being-there-in-the-world. Through the direct intuition of Being, the duality of the subject/object distinction is overcome and the emptiness of self has been achieved.

The Nothingness in Zen Buddhism can be represented quite well using Heidegger’s most famous example, the hammer in the tool shop. Zen nothingness connotes not a vacuum, but instead the inner core of reality. Nothingness is able to come to the fore whenever the routine course of our lives is disrupted by inner doubt. At that point our existence becomes a question mark and we begin to wonder why we exist; the taken-for-granted meaning of our life has been shattered. This is clearly an analogous situation to Heidegger’s example of the hammer. It is only once we lose sight of something that once seemed to be so simple and commonplace are we able to see how necessary it really was. It shatters our world and forces us to rethink our previous positions. The angst of such discoveries reveals our Being to us. Facts about the world are only able to gain truth and falsity through their interaction with Dasein.

* * *

The example of the hammer leads back to Steffney’s argument as outlined at the beginning of this essay. He claims that Heidegger fails to achieve the transmetaphysicality of Zen Buddhism, and in doing so he overlooks an important distinction within Heidegger. It is true that Zen, in order to achieve the transmetaphysical thought of which Steffney speaks, must achieve a state of rest, a state of “quietly resting” that is needed to clear the puddle. Heidegger does lack this, in that his way of revealing the Being of the world to Dasein requires angst, something not associated with “quietly resting.” Steffney posits that Zen would say that Heidegger’s difficulty is his restlessness, and it is borne out of the fact that he has yet to halt his thinking in a Western metaphysical manner. According to Steffney, Heidegger would have never been able to quiet his mind, as he would have been able to build “another ontological mountain” atop his previous philosophy, and so on. In outlining the above distinction within Heidegger I have shows the falsity of these two claims made by Steffney about Heidegger’s thought.

The point here is to bring to light an element of Heidegger that is absent from Steffney’s analysis; he either ignores or is unaware of the distinction that I made in the previous paragraph. Within the example of the hammer in the shop we are shown the aspect of Heidegger’s philosophy that is his average-everydayness. Heidegger’s Dasein is a practical being, and he writes that “to go such ways demands practice in going. Practice requires craft.” Dasein’s way of being-in-the-world has the kind of being of taking care, which has many common ontic meanings but also has an ontological meaning, in that it designates the being of a possible being-in-the-world.

More specifically, Heidegger writes that “Dasein is initially economical and ‘practical’ to a large extent, but because the being of Dasein itself is to be made visible as care.” Through this quote it is made clear that Dasein’s being-in-the-world is defined through practical means, in that his existence is one of completing practical actions in accordance with taking care, an expression which is meant to be understood as an ontological structure concept. The ontic everyday feelings of Dasein—such as distress or melancholy, and their opposites—are possible only because Dasein, ontologically understood, is care; being-in-the-world belongs essentially to Dasein, making its being towards the world essentially taking care.

The nearest kind of being of Dasein is the aforementioned average everydayness. “With it [average everydayness] as a phenomenal support, something like the world must come into view.” Heidegger is saying here that although the world is revealed to us through Being and our recognition of finitude through death, this can only be realized if we have as our starting point an average everydayness from which we can be shaken. The shop with the hammer is the average everydayness, and once it goes missing our world is shaken. Phenomenal support is necessary, and ultimately, as the above quote demonstrates, average everydayness helps the world to come into view.

Heidegger also describes average everydayness in other terms. Everydayness, as Dasein is in the shop with his hammer, is a mode of indifference, neither authentic nor inauthentic. Indifference is a positive characteristic because all existence is from this kind of being and back into it. The everyday indifference of Dasein is averageness. The basis for the existence of Dasein, then, is this average everydayness, a fact that corresponds well with Heidegger’s notion that “Dasein always understands itself in terms of its existence.” Therefore, since it is necessary for Dasein to have average everydayness as a mode of being-in-the-world, and since Dasein also always understands itself in terms of its existence, then it is clear that all modes of being for Dasein, according to Heidegger, are practical. All of this is easily summed up in what is one of Heidegger’s most well-known quotes: “The ‘essence’ of Dasein lies in its existence.”

Heidegger also brings hermeneutics to the fore when describing the practicality of Dasein. Interpretation is a practical matter, and is a way of making sense of the world. Hermeneutical interpretation requires making sense of something by putting it into a context that makes sense. It is practical because it must belong to lived life. Its practicality is readily apparent in Heidegger’s language. “We shall call the beings encountered in taking care useful things,” and “We shall call the useful thing’s kind of being in which it reveals itself by itself handiness,” which is “not grasped theoretically at all.”

In order to tie these thoughts of Heidegger’s to Steffney’s ideas, a quote from Fred Dallmayr will be useful to demonstrate exactly the kind of transmetaphysical thought Steffney is referring to: “Buddhism thematizes as gateway to this no-ground the experience of the ‘Great Doubt’ where the distinction between doubter and doubted drops away and where the self turns into or becomes doubt itself.” What he is describing is Zen’s transcendence of metaphysical thought, characterized by dualism. The emptiness in Zen is a complete removal of oneself from attachment to oneself, and a disentanglement from subjectivity; it is a transgression of that subjectivity in favor of the non-ego.

With his use of the word ego in his claim about Heidegger, Dallmayr uses language similar to Steffney. He uses the term “ego-consciousness” to describe what it is that Heidegger was unable to break free from, and defines it as “what we generally regard as conceptual.” One of the key differences between Heidegger’s thought and Zen thought is that Heidegger’s Being is bound up with temporality and history. In Zen there is talk of the “original mind,” which connotes not what is historically prior, but “Original” here means something ontological instead of temporal. Steffney, thinking from a Zen perspective, says that Heidegger must stop thinking in a temporal manner if he ever wishes to “come home,” and that he must come to terms with the “Originless Origin” by transcending time; only then will he have achieved transmetaphysical thought.

Since he has already established that dualism is the foundation for Western metaphysics, it is clear that if Heidegger were to overcome dualism in some sense—as I have shown him to have done—then he would have accomplished transmetaphysical thinking. This would not have to mean that he has done do in a manner that is equal to Zen, but only that he has done so at all. Steffney makes the point that Heidegger has not transcended time as Zen has, a point for which he provides ample evidence. What remains, however, is the fact that the practicality that is essential to Heidegger’s philosophy in Being and Time is not a dualistic one. It is true that Heidegger couches his philosophy in time, and this can be shown by his assertion that all things gain their meaning through reference to other things. “Things in the world “are relevant together with something else. The character of being of things at hand is relevance.” That much is clear, but the fact that these ideas are temporal does not preclude a non-dualism.

Since everything for Heidegger, including Dasein himself, is only able to be understood according to his surroundings, including references and signs, and his history, then all things are of a practical nature for Heidegger. The average everydayness of Dasein shows how his nature is only practical. In leaving the realm of the theoretical behind, Heidegger has also left the concept of dualism behind. In understanding Dasein in the proper way, it is important to grasp Heidegger’s assertion that Dasein is pre-ontological. He writes, “The intended ontological character of Dasein is to be designated as pre-ontological.” From this pre-ontological position, Dasein in fact stands outside of all aspects of dualism, and can only be thought of through being-in-the-world.

Heidegger’s ideas have much in common with Zen Buddhism in terms of their characterization of Being and nothingness, and Steffney does well to point these out. His view, however, can be pushed much farther. As I have shown, Steffney’s view is limited in that it does not recognize that although Heidegger does not transcend metaphysics in the same way that Zen does, he does so in his own different way. Steffney makes no mention of the unique manner in which Heidegger rids himself of dualism through his use of Dasein as pre-ontological and his most elementary way of being-in-the-world.

Bibliography

1. Steffney, John. “Transmetaphysical Thinking in Heidegger and Zen Buddhism.” Philosophy East and West, vol. 27, July 1977. Honolulu, University Press of Hawaii.

2. Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Trans. Joan Stambaugh, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1996

3. Umehara, Takeshi. “Heidegger and Buddhism.” Philosophy East and West, vol. xx, 1970. Honolulu, University Press of Hawaii

4. Keown, Damien. Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, Oxford: 1996.

5. Stambaugh, Joan. “Commentary on Takeshi Umehara’s ‘Heidegger and Buddhism.’” Philosophy East and West, vol. xx, 1970. Honolulu, University Press of Hawaii.

6. Elisabeth Feist Hirsch. “Martin Heidegger and the East” Philosophy East and West, vol. xx, 1970. Honolulu, University Press of Hawaii.

7. Wohlfart, Guenter, “Heidegger and the Laozi: Wu (Nothing)—On Chapter 11 of the Daodejing” trans. Marty Heitz. Journal of Chinese Philosophy. March 2003

8. Mitchell, Donald W. “Commentary on Elisabeth Feist Hirsch’s ‘Martin Heidegger and the East’” Philosophy East and West, vol. xx, 1970. Honolulu, University Press of Hawaii

9. Olson, Carl. Zen and the Art of Postmodern Philosophy. State University of New York Press, Albany, 2000.

10. Dallmayr, Fred. “Nothingness and Sunyata: A Comparison of Heidegger and Nishitani.” Philosophy East and West, vol. 42, 1992. Honolulu, University Press of Hawaii

11. May, Reinhard. Heidegger’s Hidden Sources, trans. Graham Parkes, Routledge, New York, 1996