Abstract
The theism-atheism debate is foreign to many Mahāyāna Buddhist thinkers such as the Japanese Zen Master Dōgen (1200–1253). Nevertheless, his philosophy of ‘expression’ (dōtoku) is able to shine a new light on the various incarnations of this debate throughout history. This paper will explore a/theism from Dōgen’s philosophical standpoint.
Dōgen introduces the notion of ‘expression’ to describe the concomitant vertical and horizontal relationships of the religious project, namely the relationship between the individual and the divine as well as the relationship among a multiplicity of individuals, each of which Dōgen conceives of as an expression of the divine and/or the oneness of the cosmos. Dōgen’s philosophy presupposes the ‘way of emptiness’ (śūnyatāvāda) and Chengguan’s (738–839) ‘four dharma worlds’ (sifajie). To Dōgen, the former indicates the conventional nature of predication and signification, while the latter denotes the existential interwovenness of numerous individuals and the divine oneness of the cosmos.
Such a philosophy implies that all truth claims and philosophical positions are mere intellectual and discursive constructions that are formulated against a perceived other. Therefore, Dōgen observes laconically that ‘when one side is expressed, the other is obscured’ or, as Dōgen says elsewhere, ‘when expression is expressed, non-expression is not expressed.’ Dōgen’s philosophical framework provides some interesting insights about one or more discourses on atheism: Again, the basic assumption is that all philosophical paradigms, systems, and positions are devoid of an absolute truth value, framed in a specific cultural and historical context which they express, and formulated vis-à-vis a perceived other.
In this paper, I will look at Friedrich Nietzsche’s (1844–1900) atheism from the perspective of Dōgen’s philosophical standpoint. Concretely, I will present Nietzsche’s position on his own terms, translate his philosophy into Dōgen’s terminology, interpret his philosophy from the standpoint of Dōgen’s philosophical approach, and assess the utility of such an exercise. I believe that such a project enables us to read theism through the eyes of atheism, atheism through the eyes of theism, both through the eyes of Dōgen, and Dōgen through the eyes of the a/theism debate. In this last section, I will introduce the language of Nishida Kitarō (1870–1945) who attempted a similar project in his The Logic of Basho and the Religious Worldview. The goal of this project is to determine what atheism denies, what atheism contributes, and why a multi-faceted and multi-cultural engagement of atheism is important today.
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Notes
In this case, I adopted Kaufmann’s translation.
Kaufmann is rather critical or this reading and suggests that Nietzsche’s account of the “death of God” is descriptive rather than normative. He argues that madness is the necessary consequence of the death of God. However, whether Nietzsche’s “god is dead” is understood descriptively or normatively, Nietzsche does relate the “death of God” to human freedom and responsibility.
In his Psychology of Religion (Collected Works Volume 11, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), Jung suggests that rituals are necessary since they mediate the force of an encounter with God or, in his mind, the collective unconscious. Similarly, in the novel The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (New York: Harmony Books, 1980), Douglas Adams suggests that humans inevitably have psychotic episodes when they realize their own personal insignificance in the history of the universe.
This terminology is rather unfortunate since slaves have no say in or influence on their legal status while Nietzsche implies that people can chose their moral comportment. Therefore, I believe that the phrases such as “herd morality” or “morality of submission” is more appropriate in this context.
The translations of Also Sprach Zarathustra are mine.
This was the tagline of Slavoj Žižek’s keynote speech “The Death of God” at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Montréal November 8, 2009. Last Accessed April 1, 2021. http://zizekpodcast.com/2017/04/15/ziz168-whither-the-death-of-god-a-continuing-currency-08-11-2009/
The translations of the Chinese canon are mine. I identify, whenever possible, available English translations for readers who want to access an English version of the text.
See the Digital Dictionary of Buddhism by Charles Muller. Last Accessed April 1, 2021. http://buddhism-dict.net/ddb/index.html. See particularly the entries on “五逆” and “五無間業.”.
Marcus Bingenheimer translates this phrase as ‘Buddhism that was not inhabited by gods.’ In Der Mönchsgelehrte Yinshun (*1906) und seine Bedeutung für den Chinesisch-Taiwanischen Buddhismus im 20. Jahrhundert (Würzburg: Würzburger Sinologischen Schriften, 2004), 210 & 78.
The translations from the Japanese original are mine. For an English translation of Nishida’s The Logic of Basho see David A. Dilworth’s Nishida Kitarō––Last Writings: Nothingness and the Religious Worldview (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1993) or Michiko Yuasa’s ‘The Logic of Topos and the Religious Worldview’ (Eastern Buddhist 1986 19/2 and 20/1).
This wording was inspired by section 5 in chapter 2 of the Zhuangzi. For a bilingual version of the text see the Chinese Text Project at https://ctext.org/zhuangzi/adjustment-of-controversies.
All translations of Kūkai’s text are Rolf W. Giebel’s as published in James Heisig’s Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2011), 64–74.
It goes without saying that this is Kūkai’s ‘history of religion’ and not a scholarly assessment of either Hinduism or Daoism.
The translations from the Japanese canon are mine. One English translation of this fascicle and the whole Shōbōgenzō can be accessed at thezensite (http://www.thezensite.com/ZenTeachings/Dogen_Teachings/Shobogenzo/038dotoku.pdf).
Here, Dōgen follows the overall direction of the Mahāyāna Buddhist philosophy referred to as ‘way of emptiness’ (Skrt. śūnyatāvāda).
Obviously, like other thirteenth century thinkers, Dōgen does not talk about cultural and historical contexts, he does, however, imply that the content of these expressions of buddha-nature is neither limited to a particular person nor exhaustive of ‘all buddhas and ancestors.’
I borrow the idea of ‘heteronomous ethics’ (Jap. taritsuteki rinrigakusetsu) from Nishida (NKZ 1: 121).
References
Abbreviations
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NKC Nishitani keiji chosakushū 『西谷啓治著作集』 [Collected Works of Keiji Nishitani]. 26 vols. (Tokyo: Sōbunsha, 1986–1995).
NKZ Nishida kitarō zenshū『西田幾多郎全集新版』 [Complete Works of Kitarō Nishida]. 20 vols. (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1988).
T Taishō daizōkyō『 大正大藏經』[Buddhist Canon - The Taishō Version], ed. by Junjirō Takakusu and Kaigyoku Watanabe (Tokyo: Taishō Shinshū Daizōkyō Kankōkai. 1961).
THZ Tanabe hajime zenshū 『田邊元全集』 [The Complete Works Hajime Tanabe]. 15 volumes (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 1963–4).
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I thank the guest editors via the journal Editors for inviting me to contribute to this very special issue and Megah Carron for her editorial comments on the text.
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Kopf, G. Atheism is Nothing but an Expression of Buddha-Nature. SOPHIA 60, 607–622 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-021-00867-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-021-00867-z