ÉÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍ» º º º BuddhaNet: Buddhist Info Network Buddha Dharma Education Assoc. º º Web Site: www.buddhanet.net PO Box K1020 Haymarket NSW 2000 º º Email: bdea@buddhanet.net Tel: +61-2-92123071 AUSTRALIA º º º ÈÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍÍͼ *Heidegger's Oriental Orientation* by Amanda Hart Eventide on Reichenau Over the waters flows a silvern glimmer Forth to distant, darkened shores. And in the summer-weary, dew damped gardens Falls, like a lover's word withheld, The night. From the moon-white gabled prison Neath the ancient tower's roof A bird sings one last song. And the yield to me of shining summer day Rests like heavy fruit - From long eternities A burden beyond sense - For me in the grey desert Of a great Simplicity. Martin Heidegger, 1917 Fourteen Gazing, we do not see it; we call it dim. Listening, we do not hear it; we call it inaudible. Groping, we do not grasp it; we call it intangible. These three properties do not allow ultimate scrutiny, for indeed, merging they become One. Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching Inscribed on the Mind-Heart When we return to the root, we gain the meaning; When we pursue external objects, we lose the reason. The moment we are enlightened within, We go beyond the voidness of a world confronting us. Tao-hsin, first patriarch of Zen in China, AD 606 Introduction In the academic sense, the ideal function of an essay in comparative philosophy is that by examining both for similarities and differences, there is the possibility of a richer and deeper understanding of each. In terms of Australia's present desire to have greater trade and cultural interaction with Asia, an exploration of aspects of Western and Eastern thought, and an understanding, and acceptance of the resonances and dissonances, could be most helpful. For this writer, there is a private or personal agenda; that of seeking in Heidegger a Western philosophical rationale for her own partially Buddhist artwork. When research for this paper first began, this writer felt, as a beginner, inadequate to the task, that all that was possible was to cobble together a patchwork of relevant quotes from other scholars' writings on the subject. As study progressed, frustration arose with what seemed to be a lack on the part of some scholars in getting down to fundamental concepts on the Eastern side, particularly a tendency to quote sayings as though they were dogmas to be believed. The famous sayings of Buddhist and Taoist masters were never intended as dictums or articles of faith to be believed. They were intended as triggers to point the inquirer in the right direction towards a realisation of the truth concerning the nature of being. Interestingly enough, Heidegger also sees his speculations as merely points of departure, and hopes his readers will pursue the subject independently. Therefore, although the first half of the essay, dealing with Heidegger and Eastern thought in general, uses quotes from academic scholarship to show the evidence and authenticity of the relationship between the two, in the second half I have sought to compare what I am able to understand of Heidegger with what I know of Buddhism. Some of the Buddhist understandings come from discourses given by Sayadaw U Janaka, a renowned scholar of Pali manuscripts in the Buddhist world and the Head Meditation Teacher at Rangoon Monastery in Burma. He teaches with strict authenticity, holding without deviation to the unbroken lineage of transmission since the Buddha's time. His authority to teach is given him by his teacher on the basis of success in meditation, and his scholarship of Pali texts. This writer is also using of translations of Buddhist texts, and books on Buddhism by both Asian and Western writers. Heidegger and Eastern Thought Heidegger's primary area of research is ontology. Whether he is exploring the Greek, the Medieval, the linguistic or the Asian approaches, his entire life's work has been an attempt to penetrate into the truth of the nature of being. His methods attempted to escape from the traditions of logical dialectic, and in so doing seemed to invent a poetic, though still logical and analytical mode of thought, relying frequently on pun and often inventing new words or new ways of using current and ancient words to arrive at what he conceives as exact nuances and meanings. Sometimes he pauses within his text to observe that after much examination of the aspects of his Dasein, its understanding may now seem more obscure and elusive than ever. Translations into English, are therefore very clumsy, for they must deal with language that is difficult to understand even in German, and in English there is frequently a lack of a word which would correspond accurately to the German meaning.1 Eastern mysticism also deals primarily with the nature of being. The Indian strand, taken from the Brahman traditions of the Vedas at a religious level, and the Upanishad's at the esoteric level, deal with the essence of being as a positive Self, immortal, re-incarnating until enlightenment which is then union with the ultimate Self or God-nature of the whole of existence. The Buddhist strand, especially in its earliest and purest form (Theravadin or Hinayana), is essentially atheist in that there is no self, existence is an illusion created by the constantly changing amalgam of atoms of physical energy in space and the energy of consciousness which arises from sensations in sentient beings. Enlightenment to the Buddhist is the actual direct experience of this reality. Later forms of Buddhism as religious practice re-integrated many Hindu practices and beliefs, but even these in their upper reaches of meditative practice and study, return to the first premises of the Buddha through the results of experience and in lineages of direct transmission of teacher to student. The Taoist, though much closer to the Buddhist position, seeks not so much enlightenment, as the gradual capacity to be at one with the world, at one within the dualities of opposites, and one with the flow of constantly changing phenomena. Otto Poggeler, reputed as Heidegger's foremost student, writes of his mentor's connection to Taoism in his essay on "East-West Dialogue". According to this paper, there are two senses in which Martin Heidegger can be seen to have a leaning towards Eastern thought. The first is that even before he encountered it, his own thinking, in questioning the basis of the Western concept of Being, was leading him in a direction sympathetic to Far Eastern philosophy. The second is that, as soon as he became aware of the nature of Taoist and Zen thought, he developed a very strong and long lasting interest in it, both through reading and direct contact with Asian scholars. In summarising a few basic points from "East-West Dialogue" the direction, characteristics and evolution of Heidegger's thought begins to become a little clearer. In his youth, Heidegger had tremendous enthusiasm for the mysticism of Meister Ekhart, particularly the latter's concepts of detachment, the death of the Godhead (from God to the absolute nothingness of the Godhead)2 , and that being is finite and therefore not part of God3 This notion of nothingness and detachment, something beyond a linguistically determined conceptual reality laid seeds, coming out of the Western tradition, for a possible questioning of metaphysics. The beginnings of Heidegger's questioning arose by rethinking the work of previous German philosophers who had studied and been influenced by Indian and specifically Vedantist thought.4 German philosophy had long had an interest in notions of enlightenment or transcendence of the human condition. Scholars such as Garbe, Deussen, Hegel, Schelling, Schopenhauer and Neitzche were excited when it was discovered that Sanskrit, being the base of most Indo-European languages, had a grammatical structure which gives rise to and is embedded in metaphysical thinking, therefore making it linguistically accessible to Western thinkers. It was partially the capacity to read translations of Sanskrit texts which opened up the possibilities that a metaphysics descended from Greek philosophy was not the only possible ground of exploration. What was left unsaid in Neitzche opened a door for Heidegger to explore the nature of Being. Yet Heidegger himself had no interest in the philosophies of the Vedas or the Upanishads. Sanskrit has notions of Being embedded in it both grammatically and conceptually. "It is metaphysical in being representational, concept-gathering, and in being productive of ontological speculation about Being as the ground of all that is, and so giving the appearance of setting up a reality other and higher than this world."5 . Greek language carries within its structure a paradigm that lends itself to thinking about Being as Logos Heidegger wanted to formulate a new language that would lead away from metaphysics, to clear away the obscuring masks of language, to find a way of thinking that which was previously unthought, and to reveal a hidden reality of Being. It was this aim which lead him away from Indian metaphysics, and towards the thoughts and experiences of the Far East The earliest Buddhist writings are written in Pali, which is extremely close to Sankrit. It has the same script and the same grammatical structure. It was the commonly spoken language in Northen India in the time and place of the Buddha's life.6 As such it could be taken by Europeans to have linguistic roots suitable for ontological speculation, and sutras capable of philosophical analysis. The historical Buddha was called Gautama, born of the Sakya clan or tribe, and one of his epithets in Buddhist writings is the "Great Analyser," because he was able to analyse his experiences from the memory of them (this would be impossible during the experience itself), and to show the path by which these experiences were attained. Subsequently, over the last 2,600 years, other meditators have followed the path and described their experiences, written in the Pali Sutras and the Ahidharma. Thus Buddhism does have a tradition of recording as exactly as possible the experiences that have been successfully repeated over many generations. Buddhist analysis concerns experience, and while it is extremely logical, it is not he logic of tautological or linguistic speculation. The experience of Being itself is acknowledged by Buddhists to be beyond language, therefore, no matter how different the language is, the different meanings of words are not going to reveal the ultimate nature of Being. What is necessary is a return to the common ground of human experience in pure and bare awareness, without the intervening distractions of culturally conditioned mentations. The Buddha states clearly that this is accessible to all humans regardless of gender or race. We know that as early as 1938, Heidegger invited his Japanese student, Nishitani, to his home to discuss their reading of D.T.Suzuki's book "Essays on Zen Buddhism." Professor Poggeler describes how, from early in his career, Heidegger became familiar with Taoist thought through his contacts with scholars from Asia.7 The fact that Heidegger rarely refers to Eastern thought in his writings, is, according to Professor Gadamer, "because a scholar of his generation would be very reluctant to say anything in print about a philosophy if he were himself unable to read and understand the relevant texts in the original language."8 Heidegger himself gave his blessing to a comparative inquiry when he wrote "Again and again it has seemed urgent to me that a dialogue take place with what is to us the thinkers of the Eastern world".9 Otto Poggeler tells us, in his paper on Heidegger and Lao-tzu, that Heidegger had suffered an emotional collapse during the 1945 trials of Nazis and was hospitalised for three weeks. He apparently suffered tremendous shock and guilt at the realisation of the enormity of Nazi crimes and subsequently went into a forest mountain retreat for recovery. During this time he made contact with the psychiatrist Medard Boss seeking to "break through the narrowness of academic philosophy and reach much broader circles, for the benefit of a large number of people who are suffering." Heidegger wrote "From the Experience of Thinking" in which he sought to heal himself and his thinking through direct experience of passing days and seasons and re-evaluating the work of thought. He subsequently lived a hermit's life, close to nature.10 He embarked, with a Chinese scholar and colleague, on a translation of Lao-tzu's "Tao Te Ching" into the German, but only succeeded in completing eight of the eighty-one chapters, working painstakingly and consistently everyday over many months. He was seeking an absolute rigour in the translation, and dealing with the difficulties of a language with totally different syntactical structure, and one which uses poetic allegory and synonym as a norm in imparting meaning. The "Tao Te Ching" clearly states at its very beginning that the truth of the Way, or the Tao, cannot be explained by words, but only experienced after long and careful practice of the path. It the proceeds to attempt to point sideways at the truth by means of paradoxes in thought, simile and the duality of inter-related phenomena. It becomes evident in Heidegger's subsequent writings, as he becomes more and more concerned with poetry and art as means of saving the world, that he sees ordinary language as inadequate to express the exact meaning of Being. Heidegger's purpose in translating and studying this most classic of Chinese texts was not to become a Taoist, but rather to return to the historical roots of a system of thought that was more than two thousand years old and exactly contemporary with the roots of Greek, and therefore Western, thought. He wanted to examine and compare how thought paths evolved. To trace the trajectory of Western thought and where it went wrong in how it arrived at its twentieth century conception of being, he needed to step outside the expected norms of the West, to explore the totally different ways of dealing with the same issues in a totally foreign culture. He felt that this study would engender an objectivity that would help uncover the unspoken suppositions or roots of the Greek concept of Logos. In the midst of all this he was acutely aware of the difficulties of language, the uncertainties of never being sure whether the perceived meaning of a text has been understood in the way intended by the original writer, the probability that due to cultural differences the task might actually be impossible. Despite these difficulties, Heidegger persevered in his Eastern studies, and in later years we find some surprising correspondences between his thoughts and the examples he uses and those of Taoist thought. One such correspondence is found in the metaphor of the jug as a thing and a being. In his 1949 Bremen lecture series entitled 'Insight into that which Is," in the first lecture on the Thing, (Poggeler relates) Heidegger shows that what is important in a jug is not its "form" but rather its "emptiness" which enables it to hold liquids, to pour, to be the kind of object it is, and to be useful. For Heidegger this empty space and thingness brings together his "Fourfold" of earth and heaven, divinities and mortals. The "Tao Te Ching" in chapter 11 observes that the usefulness of a jug is precisely in its emptiness. Here the comparison of Taoism deals with the opposites of duality such as light and dark, positive and negative, apparent solidity of form and its emptiness, the manner in which these paired opposites are necessary to one another, could not exist without each other, and are thus one, ceaselessly changing within a whole. Thus Heidegger is not using the Chinese sense of emptiness in its whole context. Rather he is borrowing the idea of emptiness to undermine the root of the Western conception of form in Being, and to show that its underlying truth is an emptiness conceived in a Western way through Western modes of thought. In discussing Being in this manner his words begin to sound very much like Eastern mysticism, and indeed the influence is really there, but the results of his thinking do not add up to meaning the same as would be intended by a Taoist. In fact this would be impossible because the Tao can only be experienced, then pointed, alluded and hinted at in words that remain inadequate. Heidegger's path was academic, and despite his own desire to overcome the limitations of academic tradition, he was bound into it in a way which would preclude him from ever experiencing being in its Taoist sense. Poggeler expands the correspondences between Heidegger's and Taoist thought enough to show considerable influence on Heidegger's post-war thinking. Taoism is close to Buddhism in many ways and is therefore a relevant tangent to this writer's main aim of exploring Heidegger's parallels with Buddhism. Heidegger and Buddhism Another source of comparisons of Heidegger with Eastern thought comes from Japan. From the early Twentieth Century up to the Second World War, numerous Japanese scholars came to Germany to study Western knowledge and disciplines of study. Some became very interested in existentialist and nihilist thought, and in particular, Heidegger, who's thinking they found very close to Zen. This study was taken back to Japan, and established in the Kyoto School which is still very active today. According to Tesuaki Kotoh, the main difference between the West and East is that in the West the perception of no reason or goal for existence plunges the Western mind into negativity and despair, while in the East, due to Zen (and Taoism), this groundlessness is accepted as it is and thus becomes a source of salvation. Buddhism posits what it takes to be the four fundamental truths of life. 1. That all sentient beings suffer, that it is in the nature of living to experience suffering. Suffering arises when that which is pleasant or desired ceases or when that which is unpleasant arises or threatens to arise. 2. That the ultimate cause of all suffering is attachment; ie the attachment to or concern for life, security, comfort, and attachments to ideas, identities, things and people, and its opposite of aversion in the forms of fear, negative emotions, dislike of sickness, discomfort, loss of a loved one etc. 3. That it is possible to transcend suffering by achieving enlightenment, seeing reality as it is, the nature of being and of suffering, developing a total cessation of craving for all things, a non-attachment and letting go. This might be sudden after many years of developmental practice, or it might be gradual, accumulating with practice. At this point physical pain might still be experienced, but it is not increased by the emotional affect of aversion to pain. From this point on all emotional suffering ceases completely. 4. That the way to attain enlightenment is by the practice of the Path or the Middle Way. This path has eight factors which should be practiced and gradually developed in daily life; right understanding, right directed thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration.11 "Right" in this instance means the mode most conducive to developing a high level of pure awareness as consistently as possible, reducing attachments, and seeking to live harmlessly. In Buddhism there is no actual word for meditation. What is translated into English as "meditation" is the word "Bhavana" meaning development. So the practice of meditation is seen as one of developing or training the mind in awareness, looking inwards at the level of pure perception. It is understood that a primary obstacle is the conditioned state of our minds, by which we ordinarily perceive everything around us through the veil of our desires, aversions, interpretations, and distracted mentations. The Bhavana incorporates methods of overcoming mental obstacles. Heidegger seems to agree with the first truth of Buddhism (that it is in the nature of living to suffer), when he says that one of the ontological characteristics of Dasein is to suffer the burden of life. In his words, "a mood of elation can alleviate the manifest burden of Being; that such a mood is possible also discloses the burdensome character of Dasein, even while it alleviates the burden."12 He also seems to acknowledge that a characteristic of Dasein is "care" or "concern" for its continued existence, and for all ideas, activities, things and others which contribute to that continued being. In so far as Dasein can split itself into different modes of being; "attending to, making use of , producing, looking after, giving up or letting go, interrogating, discussing..."Dasein does so out of concern for its existence. He goes on to state that Dasein, through its awareness of possibility, may experience fear, and that this fear in all its different forms is both a mood by which it knows itself to be and an aspect of concern for its continued existence.13 This is exactly what Buddhism constitutes as attachment. Thus we can see that Heidegger also agrees with the second fundamental truth of Buddhism, that suffering is caused by attachment. Where he discusses "The Existential Constitution of the 'There'," he shows that Dasein is not merely a being that knows itself to be dwelling in the world, but one which is sentient, which knows its existence through its most familiar and everyday states of mind or moods.14 Buddhism in this instance, says that consciousness arises and knows itself to be as a result of sentient perception, and feelings15 , (whether they are neutral, pleasant or unpleasant, although it places perception itself of all the senses16 as happening prior to feeling.) Kocklemans explains "that care is the unifying factor which integrates into a unity the multiple elements of the Being of that being whose Being is precisely such that it is concerned about its own Being."17 Yet Heidegger also describes Daseign as generally and/or frequently blind to its own condition through being lost in the cares of its world and distracted by mentations, by delusion and language that separates mind from direct knowing. He says "Even though states of mind are disclosive (of Dasein's being), everyday circumspection goes wrong and to a large extent succumbs to delusion because of them, when measured against the idea of knowing the world absolutely."18 Heidegger's Dasein is a da (there) sein (being), a literal being-there or there-being. This Dasein has the faculty of being aware of its own existence: it knows itself to be there. A Being with Heidegger may be anything in existence, for instance, a clod of earth or a bridge. It is being, is existing, but it does not know itself to be there. Only Dasein knows its own thereness. In brief summary of Heidegger's discussion of in "Being and Time", we can list Dasein's characteristics as the following; Its very Being comports itself understandingly towards that Being.19 (G53,E79) It is an entity which I myself am. Mineness belongs to any existent Dasien, and belongs to it as the condition which makes authenticity and inauthenticity possible. Being-in-the-world is a state of Dasein a priori.(G54,E79) Beings are in the world as a jug is in a room, a room in university, university in a city, city in the world, etc. Beings or entities may be in the world in this way, and their ontological category may be one of present-at-hand, side-by-sideness, but Dasein is not "In-the world" in the same manner as objects without self-awareness. Rather, Dasein "dwells" in or in-habits the world. Thus the Being-in-the-world of Dasein means to dwell. Dasein can never be "alongside" or beside the world. (G54-55,E80-81) It is possible for Dasein to be merely present-at-hand if it does not see or disregards its own existential state of Being-in (ie delusion, sleep, coma)(G55,E82) Dasein understands its own inmost being in the sense of a certain factual being-present-at-hand.(G56,E82) Whenever Dasein is, it is a fact; and the factuality of such a fact is what we shall call Dasein;s "facticity". Dasein can understand itself as bound up in its "destiny" with the Being of entities (and other Daseins) which it encounters within its own world. Dasein can split itself into different ways of being - having to do with something in actions of thought, speech or body. All these ways of Being have concern as their kind of Being. (G56. E83)(Only a Dasein is capable of concern for its continued existence, concern for the things, actitivities and relationships which aid in this, and fear for that which threatens this.) Being is familiar in and for Dasein.(G58-59,E85) Addressing oneself to the world is a primary function of being in it. Dasein conceives its being in the world via its relationship to others, but it also knows its own existence prior to such relationships.(G59,E85) We might be tempted to substitute the word "person" for Dasein to make the reading easier, but "person" can denote an individual with personality or an individual with specific characteristics, while the sense that Heidegger intends refers to a person's pure being, and those characteristics which all people have regardless of personal conditioning. Both in English and German there is a lack of a word to describe Heidegger's meaning, so in English we retain the Da-sein or there-Being to retain awareness of his sense. Heidegger sees Dasein as the only Being capable of being either authentic or inauthentic, and sees authenticity as a necessary condition for transcendence. There is a general feeling in Buddhism that a human birth (as opposed to, say, animal) is particularly fortunate because it allows for the possibility of self awareness, insight, and transcendence. This transcendence has one part of its meaning in common with Heidegger it that both agree that the reality of being, existence and experienced can only occur through direct and conscious perception, without language. interpretation and inauthentic modes of being getting in the way, making the perceiver blind. We can thus say that Heidegger seems almost to agree with the third truth of Buddhism, that the way out of suffering is through transcendence, through awareness, but in this instance it is more that there is an overlap or partial agreement in certain senses, for Buddhism's notion of enlightenment goes a lot further and deeper it its meaning than Heidegger's does. In the instance of the fourth truth of Buddhism, the two modes of thought part company. Buddhism's construction of the path to enlightenment is seen always as something undertaken by an individual, a moderate and yet extremely difficult path in that most people will be too caught in struggles and desires for pleasure to devote enough time to the Path, hence only a few individuals at any time or era will ever achieve full enlightenment.20 While Heidegger seems to see salvation as something possible not only for an individual in becoming authentic, but for a whole society or whole era through the possibility for it to change it ontological conception of itself within the world. Also he seems to think that authenticity through direct awareness is somehow much easier than Buddhism would have it. This is the point at which this writer has doubts about whether transcendence, salvation or enlightenment actually mean a the same thing in the two modes of thought. The question possibly needs to remain open for further investigation. Some reputable Japanese Zen scholars, especially those of the Kyoto School, believe that Heidegger's concept of salvation is the same as that in Buddhism.21 Heidegger, first in his original conception of time in 1927 and later in his lectures "On Time and Being", in 1962,22 sees a Being, (ie. any entity which has existence,) as a Being-in Time. The horizon of a being is the boundary of its existence in time. Unless something is eternal, for which the only example we have is the idea of God, a Thing is bounded by a past in which it did not exist, and a future in which it will no longer exist. This may also be said of objects which once were or are yet to be. Thus temporality is an essential pre-requisite of Being. Joseph Kockleman writes that no one before Heidegger had "ever asked the question of how time can have this distinctive ontological function."23 Buddhism agrees that the nature of the whole of existence is conditioned by temporality, but it differs in seeing the being not as a whole which arises and passes away, but rather the sum total of countless arisings and passings away in infinitesimally tiny moments. Buddhist "Abidharma" (Psychology) posits 84,000 moments of consciousness occurring in the mind in the time it takes to observe one sensory perception. Much like the television shows 18 images per second to create a convincing illusion of movement, the human mind is normally involved in an extraordinarily high speed of cognitive function at the level of pure or bare awareness, pure consciousness. A moment's reflection shows that this is necessary in order that autonomic and unconscious processes can continue while the conscious mind of daily experience carries out its functions. At the level of meditation where these mind moments are actually witnessed arising and passing away, the Buddhist perception of the nature of being and change is perceived. Thus the Buddhist view of Being is one which arises from the ground of being in the experience of being without language intervening to name or interpret. This is particularly so of and Zen Buddhism, less so of Pure Land, or Tibetan sects. The Dasein of Heidegger is also seen, due to its temporality, to possess historicity. Existence is co-determined by a "thrown-ness," that is, the present being is thrown into existence by that which was before it. Kockleman explains "Dasein is as it already was and is what it already was. It is its past, in the sense that its past is, as it were, pushing itself along behind it, and which Dasein thus possesses as a kind of property which is still present at hand: Dasein is its past in the way of its own being." In Buddhism this concept is expressed as the Law of Cause and Effect, otherwise called Karma.24 All phenomena of existence are seen to arise as the result of the changes in past phenomena; thus coal arises from petrified wood or a chair is crafted by human action upon a tree, a thought arises in response to a previous thought, feeling or sense impression, a human mind is conditioned by the circumstances of its world, a star falls in response to gravity, a death occurs when consciousness ceases to arise, or when the body of a sentient being stops generating from food and air the physical energy that gives rise to consciousness. Heidegger, according to Kockleman's exposition, differentiates between the unauthentic and the authentic Dasein. ..." if it (Dasein) takes itself as a temporal thing which finds itself in a temporal horizon, it is in an unauthentic manner.....When man turns toward historicity, he is able to ek-sist authentically: however, if he turns to his own 'inner-temporality' he forgets himself in his concern for what is ready-to-hand or in his presentation of what is present-at-hand."25 Heidegger requires three elements for Dasein's authentic awareness through temporality; 1. awareness of historicity or causal arising out of past being, 2.awareness of a present existence which is limited in time, a capacity for "making present" through awareness of presence, and letting that which has environmental presence be encountered, and 3. awareness of Death as a finite and future limit of existence. When Dasein is aware of all this, its existence in the ground of being becomes authentic. " In other words, man can ek-sist authentically only if in his historicity he expressly endures his destiny of having to temporalise time as finite, that is as a mortal being."26 In the Theravadin practice of insight meditation one of the first goals is to know the truth that all things change, including that which is identified as self. Within the early stages of Insight (Vipassana) meditation it is seen that all present perception is conditioned by past. It is seen that the only way to be aware of anything is in the present moment, that sensory perception (hearing, seeing, thinking, remembering, feeling, etc) of whatever is can only be in the present. There is also a specific form of Concentration (Samadha) meditation which contemplates Death as inevitable, used to bring the practitioner into awareness of the urgency to achieve self transcendence in this lifetime. Yet these three aspects of awareness are not used to define authentic or inauthentic Being, rather they are taken as fundamentals for development towards greater mental sanity and happiness, and eventually salvation from existential suffering, or enlightenment. But then if Heidegger were to agree that an authentic Dasein is saner and happier by virtue of being less deluded, then perhaps he and Buddhism agree more on this point than at first appears. Heidegger claims that an authentic Dasein in the ground of being, having a capacity to let be, to be as one with the world, rather than seeing the world as an Other for exploitation and use, is essential for human kind's salvation from the Modern Age and technology, and as salvation from the sense of homelessness that comes of forgetting one's Being. Both Heidegger and Buddhism are concerned with salvation from suffering, and both see salvation as contingent upon awareness of temporality. But for Heidegger this salvation does not seem to be synonymous with enlightenment in the Buddhist sense, and for Buddhists there is considerably more to salvation than just the single factor of knowing temporality. Keiji Nishitani disagrees with this writer's opinion that the meaning of Salvation is conceived differently. In his reflection on Heidegger's 1961 speech "Ansprache zum Heimatabend," he observes that in Zen Buddhism "this awakening, this attainment of repose in the midst of transitoriness, can mean a way of discovering home in the immediate midst of homelessness, as is also pointed out by Heidegger."27 Conclusion The Western tradition of studying the nature of being may have been started by Greek speculation, but it was fuelled by the Christian need to prove, a priori, Church dicta on the nature and origins of existence, dicta which were articles of faith that could not be known a posteriori. This meant that ontology was capable of becoming no more than an analytical playing with words and their meanings. Heidegger saw the despair the nihilist position, and wanted to find a view of Being that went beyond traditional academic form, that would lead to a healing or salvation for the modern age. He also eventually saw that to experience Dasein in the ground of being authentically, such experience had to be between Being and language; language could not be used as a route to Being, for it stands as an obstacle to pure experience. This agrees with the Buddhist and Taoist positions, except that these positions are obtained a posteriori or empirically. The East does not speculate. It builds on its knowledge only through the experiences of those who have obtained enlightenment over the centuries. It sees language and art as merely pointing the Way to an understanding which is directly perceived. While it counts intellectual acumen as a great blessing, it also sees truth as incapable of realisation through intellectual speculation. We have explored some of the references and evidence compiled by scholars which proves that Heidegger was interested in and influenced by Eastern, specifically Taoist and Zeb Buddhist, thought. We have arrived at an understanding and comparison of some of the main aspects in the thinking of Heidegger and Buddhism, in particular that there is close agreement between them on the first two truths of Buddhism, and definite overlaps of agreement in the second two. Further to this we have found several other significant correspondances in the basic premises of each. Bibliography Davids, T.W. Rhys. Buddhist India. 1st ed 1903. Motilal Banasidass, India Harvey, Peter. An Introduction to Buddhism. 1990, Cambridge University Press Heidegger, Martin. Basic Writings. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London & Henley, '77 Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Basil Blackwell, Oxford, UK, 1985 translated by John Macquarie and Edward Robinson Heidegger, Martin. What is Called Thinking? Harper and Row, New York, 1968 Heidegger, Martin. The Age of the World Picture. trans and details? Kocklemans, Joseph. Heidegger on Time and Being, Pennsylvania State University Miller, Alice. Breaking Down the Walls of Silence; to Join the Waiting Child Virago Press, London, 1992. !st pub in German in 1990 Ni,Hua-Ching The complete Works of Lao Tzu; Tao Te Ching and Hua Hu Ching pub byThe Shrine of the Eternal Breath of Tao, Malibu, California, and College of Tao and Traditional Chinese Healing, L.A. California, 1989 Parkes,Graham. ed., Heidegger and Eastern Thought, 1987. Uni. of Hawaii Press Radice, Betty. ed. Buddhist Scriptures, 1959, Penguine Classics, England Richardson, William J. Heidegger; Through Phenomenology to Thought. Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1963 Suzuki, D T. Essays in Zeb Buddhism. Grove Weidenfeld, New York, 1st pub 1927 Ms Amanda Hart, Mon, 1st May, 1994 21 Queen St, Glebe, 2037, Australia (612) 9660-1749 1 From the translator's preface, Being and Time, p13 2 Author's note. In Buddhism one of the three fundamental truths attained through enlightenment is "Anata" which means the non-existence of the self. There is no self, soul, or spirit. The ego, or sense of existing I with a specifif identity and identification, is an illusion created by an apparent continuity of consciousness, memory, attachments and aversions, and the illusion of a fixed and continuing conditioned reality. Part of enlightenment involves the "death of the I," which does not mean the death of the person, nor of experience and sentience. Rather it means that in the meditative state there is no difference between the self and the world, and in the non-meditative state this experience is remembered and affects one's being in the world in a manner which greatly reduces suffering. It is, however, unlikely that Ekhardt's nothingness of the Godhead, attained through detachment is actually the same thing. Rather it might be postulated that Ekhardt's detachment is equivilent to certain stage in the development of the practice of Buddhist meditation, still far from its goal. 3 Otto Poggeler, East-West Dialogue, p48 "Heidegger and Asian Thought" 4 J.L. Mehta, Heidegger and Vedanta: Reflections on a Questionable Theme" p. 22,. "Heidegger and Easter Thought" 5 From a speciallist in Vedantic and Brahmanic philosophy, J.L. Mehta, in "Heidegger and Vedanta; Reflections on a Questionable Theme". 6 T.W. Rhys Davids, "Buddhist India" p.18 7 Otto Poggeler, "East-West Dialogue; Heidegger and Lao-tsu.", p79, Heidegger anad Asian Thought." 8 Graham Parkes, from a personal conversation with Gadamer, recorded in Parkes' introduction to the anthology "Heidegger and Asian Thought", p.7. 9 Letter by Heidegger to the organisers of a symposium for Heidegger's 80th birthday in 1969 at the University of Hawaii. 10 Author's note. In Taoist, Buddhist and Hindu practices, a retreat from the world to quiet forest and mountainous places in nature is regarded as necessary, especially in early stages of meditation, because the mind must be trained to completely quiet its verbal chatter in order to get closer to the actual experience of being. The mental and sensory stimulations of urban life are seen as potential obstacles to this process and to mental health in general. 11 Peter Harvey, An Introduction to Buddhism. pp 47-68 The eightfold path should be accompanied in daily life by the development of unconditional compassion for all living beings, and the development of generousity (which reduces one's own attachment and lessons the suffering of others). The eight precepts include within them five ethical precepts of noble speech (communicating the truth without intent to deceive), not taking that which is not freely given, right livelihood (not selling drugs or armaments, or dealing in warfare), not committing sexual misconduct (meaning any behaviour which would cause suffering to another), and not consuming mind intoxicating drugs. 12 Being and Time German p134, English p173 13 Being and Time German p142, English p182 14 Being and Time .German p134, English p172 15 The specific text dealing with this is the Abhidarma, a treatise of Buddhist psychology arising from the collective observations of monks in meditations. The texts have been collected and croos checked against experience over twenty-five centuries. Here feeling is niether a physical sentation, nor an emotion. Rather it is a reponse of enjoyment or discomfort arising as a result of either a physical or mental perception. If left unobserved by Dasein, the feeling will subsequently develop into an emotion or mood. 16 In Buddhism, the mind is regarded as a sixth sense, one which percieves ideas, memories, plans, fantasies, visual, auditory and other sense hallucinations, in the same way that sight percieves objects reflected by light, or hearing perceives vibrations of sound. 17 Kocklemans, "heidegger on Being and Time'" p.58. Ibid pp.228-241. 18 Being and Time .German p138, English p180 19 Numbers refer to page references of Heidegger's Being and Time. Numbers with a G refer to the *th German edition, numbers with an E refer to the English edition translated byJohn Macquarie and Edward Robinson in1962. Where page numbers are not marked the statement may be found on the same page as that of the last statement so marked. 20 Buddhism recognises thirteen stages of enlightenment, of which the first three are easy to obtain, but also unstable and easy to lose if development ceases. The latter stages are seen as permanent for the life of the individual. 21 Keiji Nishitani in Reflections on Two Addresses by Martin Heidegger p145, and Tetsuaki Kotoh in Languge and Silence: Self-Inquiry in Heidegger and Zen, p201 in Graham Parkes' anthology on Heidegger and Eastern Thought 22 Heidegger, "Being and Time," 1927 23 Josehp Kocklemans, :"Heidegger on Being and Time", Pemmsylvania State University 24 Not to be mistaken for the popular conception in the West that Karma refers to a moral "just deserts" for actions in this or something inherited as 'punishment' or 'reward' from a previous incarnation. This is a predominantly Hindu notion, also common to Mahayanist Buddhism at the popular level. In the doctrines taught by the Buddha, Karma is purely the law of cuse and effeect, or cause and cosequence, otherwise also called the Law of Dependant Causation. An action will certainly have results, and these may often be unseen or not immediate, but the past life is merely a past belonging to this lifetime for this being. I might inherit a karm which is the result of actions of other, possibly dead beings, but I do not inherit it in the sense of re-incarnation because there is no self that can re-incarnate. 25 Kocklemans, Heidegger on Being and Time, p.60 cited Ibid., pp.383-401 26 Kocklemans, Heidegger on Being and Time, p.60 cited Ibid., p375 27 Keiji Nishitani, "Reflections on Two Addresse," p.149 "Heidegger and Eastern Thought." End of file