Nietzsche and Other Buddhas: Philosophy after Comparative Philosophy

By Jason M. Wirth

“A tour de force that both challenges and expands our understanding of the very practice of philosophy . . . and comparative philosophy in particular” (Joseph Markowski, Reading Religion).

In Nietzche and Other Buddhas, author Jason M. Wirth brings major East Asian Buddhist thinkers into radical dialogue with key Continental philosophers through a series of exercises that pursue what is traditionally called comparative or intercultural philosophy. In the process, he reflects on what makes such exercises possible and intelligible.

The primary questions Wirth asks are: How does this particular engagement and confrontation challenge and radicalize what is sometimes called comparative or intercultural philosophy? How does this task reconsider what is meant by philosophy?

The confrontations that Wirth sets up between Dogen, Hakuin, Linji, Shinran, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, James, and Deleuze consider the nature of philosophy—and especially comparative philosophy—from a global perspective. This global perspective in turn opens up a new and challenging space of thought within and between the cutting edges of Western Continental philosophy and East Asian Buddhist practice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Mar 4, 2019
• ISBN: 9780253039736

Book preview

NIETZSCHE AND OTHER BUDDHAS

WORLD PHILOSOPHIES

Bret W. Davis, D. A. Masolo, and Alejandro Vallega, editors

NIETZSCHE AND OTHER BUDDHAS

Philosophy after Comparative Philosophy

Jason M. Wirth

INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS

This book is a publication of

Indiana University Press

Office of Scholarly Publishing

Herman B Wells Library 350

1320 East 10th Street

Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA

iupress.indiana.edu

© 2019 by Jason M. Wirth

All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-0-253-03970-5 (hdbk.)

ISBN 978-0-253-03971-2 (pbk.)

ISBN 978-0-253-03972-9 (web PDF)

12345242322212019

For Elizabeth Myōen Sikes,

Impish Bodhisattva

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

List of Abbreviations

Introduction: Philosophy after Comparative Philosophy

1Thinking about Nietzsche and Zen

2Strange Saints: Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Hakuin

3Convalescence: Nietzsche, James, Hakuin

4Nietzsche in the Pure Land: Nietzsche, Shinran, Tanabe

5Planomenal Nourishment: Nietzsche, Deleuze, Dōgen

Concluding Thoughts: Pure Experience and Philosophy after Comparative Philosophy

Bibliography

Index

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THIS BOOK IS BORN OF YEARS OF BOTH Sōtō Zen practice and valuable philosophical engagement with good books and, more important, my colleagues and students. I have learned more than I can calculate or thank. I would at least like to extend my wholehearted gratitude to my Sōtō Zen teacher, Kōshō Itagaki, abbot of the Eishoji Zen training and practice facility in south Seattle; to my brother Nathan and his amazing artwork; to my beloved Dharma sisters and brothers of CoZen, especially Brian Shūdō Schroeder, Bret Kanpū Davis, and Erin Jien McCarthy; to my companions at PACT (Pacific Association for the Continental Tradition), especially Gerard Kuperus, Marjolein Oele, Tim Freeman, Chris Lauer, Josh Hayes, Jason Winfree, and Brian Treanor; to my cherished interlocutors in Sweden, Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback and Hans Ruin; to my many companions at the CCPC (Comparative and Continental Philosophy Circle), especially David Jones and Michael Schwartz, with whom I have enjoyed spirited discussions regarding the materials and insights in this book for over two decades; to Graham Parkes whose pioneering work on both Nietzsche and comparative thinking is a sine qua non; to the poet, philosopher, and activist Gary Snyder who inadvertently inspired some of these thoughts; to Don Castro and Mark Unno, great teachers in word and deed of the Pure Land; to Sean McGrath of Memorial University in Newfoundland who pushes me hard and compassionately on these issues; and to the many members of the Seattle University EcoSangha, all of whom inspire me with the depth of their practice. Most significantly, I would like to express my gratitude to Elizabeth Myōen Sikes, who exemplifies the ordinary profundity of the everyday in all that she does.

May all beings flourish.

A very different version of some parts of the fourth chapter appeared as Death and Resurrection as the Eternal Return of the Pure Land: Tanabe Hajime’s Metanoetic Reading of Nietzsche, in The Past’s Presence: Essays on the Historicity of Philosophical Thought (Södertörn Philosophical Studies 3), edited by Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback and Hans Ruin, 185–201 (Stockholm, Sweden: Södertörns Högskola, 2006).

Partial material from the fifth chapter appeared in a different form as When Washing Rice, Know that the Water Is Your Own Life: An Essay on Dōgen in the Age of Fast Food, in Ontologies of Nature: Continental Perspectives and Environmental Reorientations, edited by Gerard Kuperus and Marjolein Oele, 235–244 (Cham, Switzerland: Springer International, 2017).

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

INTRODUCTION

Philosophy after Comparative Philosophy

I. Other Buddhas

Nietzsche and other Buddhas?

By what right could one call Nietzsche a Buddha? He certainly did not consider himself one and, as we see in this study, he opposed his thinking to the impending catastrophe of what he called the deification of nothingness that is European Buddhism.¹ To speak therefore of Nietzsche as a Buddha is not to speak of him as a philosopher who understood himself in this way. That Nietzsche in some way could be called a Buddha does not stem from his study of or personal engagement with Buddha Dharma.²

If one’s image of the history of philosophy is the passing of the baton in a great relay race—ideas are passed from one thinker to another—then one ignores the creativity and genesis at the heart of the philosophical enterprise. Even what matters as philosophy has historically been subject to genesis. Despite occasional and sometimes acrimonious academic protests to the contrary, the nature of philosophical activity remains one of philosophy’s most vexing questions. Nietzsche, whose creativity transformed the experience of philosophy as the European philosophical tradition recognized it, neither received the baton from the Mahāyāna nor passed it to them.

There are further considerations. (1) Although, as we see in the fourth chapter, the great Kyoto School philosopher Nishitani Keiji³ rediscovered Japan’s Zen tradition through the gate of his youthful infatuation with Nietzsche, it does not follow that one needs Nietzsche in order to appreciate Zen. (2) As several philosophers have already convincingly demonstrated, Nietzsche’s philosophical creativity resonates in new ways with some ancient strands of Mahāyāna practice. However, the identification of coincidences or affinities does not ipso facto recommend them. (3) Finally, both the affinities and the differences are co-illuminating, transforming some of the ways that we can appreciate the accomplishments and resources of both. This confrontation is mutually transformative.

This co-illuminating confrontation, however, does not first transpire by lining up each thinker’s array of concepts and comparing and contrasting them. Jumping to this task assumes that we know what we mean by philosophy, that what matters as philosophy is somehow self-evident or otherwise settled. By some conventional measures of what counts as philosophy, we cannot count Zen and other strands of Mahāyāna as philosophy, even if they are of interest to some philosophers as food for thought. Moreover, as I discuss in more detail shortly, it is important to concede from the outset that it would also be unwieldy at best and incoherent at worst to imagine that one can confront a single European philosopher with all or even a lot of Mahāyāna. The requisite generalizations necessary to consider the latter as a unified perspective would be untenable. This book therefore concentrates on a handful of singular and strikingly original East Asian Mahāyāna thinker-practitioners.

How then does this co-illuminating confrontation transpire if it is not first and foremost a sorting of concepts? Nietzsche’s contribution to philosophy was not just a toolkit of new concepts—although this too is a formidable inheritance—but rather an expansion of the experience of what matters as philosophy. Nietzsche did not just transform the stock of philosophical concepts. He transformed both what could count as a philosophical concept and the manner in which concepts matter. Nietzsche challenged the conventions that govern how issues come to have philosophical value as well as the values by which we patrol the borders of philosophy. Given that Nietzsche’s experience of philosophy is a non sequitur from the prevailing practices of philosophy, one could not say that he derived his sense of philosophy (in both senses of sense) from the status quo. Where then did it originate?

Zen practice also does not originate from or primarily conduct itself in discursive activity. Zen is not first and foremost a philosophical argument, although it has and does give rise to a proud philosophical tradition (despite the stereotype to the contrary). Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō or Hakuin’s reformation of Rinzai practice, to cite two prominent examples germane to this book, are philosophically staggering works, although they do not originate in discursive gestures. They emerge, as Dōgen maintains, from the opening of the true Dharma eye.

The co-illuminating confrontation that is the concern of this book, therefore, is not a horizontal sorting but rather a vertical encounter. All is lost, however, when this gesture toward the vertical is a dishonest act of willful obscurantism. There is nothing mysterious or supernatural about this vertical dimension, although it is a question of finding a way to make the darkness shine and the silence ring forth. Rather it is our prevailing habits of philosophy that risk obscurantism in assuming that they are self-evident. There is nothing obvious about philosophy; its genesis and creativity do not reduce to its prevailing consensuses. In gesturing toward the vertical, whatever the limits of the metaphor of depth, we are not comparing Western and East Asian philosophies but rather inquiring into the prephilosophical ground of philosophy. Philosophy does not originate in itself, creating itself out of itself.

This vertical dimension is what the early Nishida Kitarō called junsui keiken, pure experience. This is not the experience of something but rather experience before it divides into an experiencing subject and an experienced object. It is to see (beyond seer and seen) the formless form and to hear (beyond auditor and audited) the soundless sound. Nishida would later come to regard the language of experience as too psychological, and that remains a risk in using such language. However we articulate it, we follow Nishida in trying to give a philosophical foundation to this demand.⁴ Yet can philosophy provide a philosophical foundation to its outside? No doubt this is problematic and to some extent doomed to fail, but it is the task of this study to somehow show that it is there and that it is a matter of great consequence to philosophy. In the co-illuminating confrontation in which Nietzsche emerges as a kind of Buddha, he and the other Buddhas do so by simultaneously revealing the prephilosophical ground of any possible philosophy.

II. Zen and the Experience of Philosophy

Since Zen, and Buddha Dharma more broadly, do not insist on the existence or relevance of God, some people wonder if Zen is less a religion and more a philosophy. Yet it would be hard to reconcile what we currently recognize as philosophy—the art of thinking and interlocution—with the following bold words of Sengcan Jianzhi (Jp. Sōzan Kanchi, d. 606)⁵ in the Xinxin Ming:

The more you think and talk,

The more you lose the Way.

Cut of all thinking

And pass freely anywhere.

Return to the root and understand,

Chase outcomes and lose the source.

One clear moment within

Illumines the emptiness before you.

Emptiness changing into things

Is only our deluded view.

Do not seek the truth,

Only let go of your opinions.⁶

Although Sinologists and Buddhologists debate whether Sengcan, the legendary Third Patriarch of Chan Buddhism, wrote these words, the counsel remains provocative: cut off all thinking and return to the root and do this by abandoning all views and opinions. The more one thinks and talks, the part and parcel of philosophy, the more one loses the Way. Since this is a book about the confrontation between certain strains of East Asian Mahāyāna Buddha Dharma and Friedrich Nietzsche (and others), the problem is immediately evident: is not philosophy about the production, refinement, and critique of views? How can this dialogue transpire when one of the interlocutors speaks and writes endlessly and the other grows silent?

This is not to say that we cannot or should not write about Zen philosophically—one can and by all means should—but it in so doing, one should remember that Zen, despite its own claims to the contrary, is not a unified field and history and, more important, it is not in itself primarily discursive. In Bendōwa (1231),⁷ an early writing by the great Kamakura period Zen Master Eihei Dōgen (1200–1253), we are admonished that in studying sūtras you should not expend thoughts in the vain hope that they will be helpful for attaining realization (S, 8). Purely academic practice realizes nothing. It is just words. Access to Dōgen’s writings requires something more than discursive athleticism and scholarly diligence. The title of Dōgen’s magnum opus, the Shōbōgenzō or Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, refers to the legend of the Buddha’s first transmission. Holding up a flower, the Buddha blinked and Mahākāśyapa smiled. The Buddha responded, I possess the true Dharma eye, the marvelous mind of Nirvana, the true form of the formless, the subtle dharma gate that does not rest on words or letters but is a special transmission outside of the scriptures. This I entrust to Mahākāśyapa.⁸ The transmission outside sūtras is also outside philosophical argumentation and discursive demonstration.

Dōgen’s insistence (found in most all Zen practice) on transmission outside of the sūtras does not mean, however, that one should not read sūtras and engage in the practice both of study and philosophical reflection. As Dōgen’s Chinese teacher Rujing (Jp. Nyōjō) pressed him, Why should the great Way of the buddhas and patriarchs concern inside or outside?⁹ It is a question rather of finding and practicing the most helpful and mindful relationship between thinking and Zen practice. The Shōbōgenzō is full of stories about the relationship between thinking and practice gone awry. In a particularly pointed example from Keisei Sanshoku (Valley Sounds, Mountains Colors, 1240), Dōgen recounts the celebrated awakening story of the Tang dynasty Chan Master, Xiangyan Zhixian (Jp.