ANGEL AK I

journal of the theoretical humanities

volume 17 number 3 september 2012

Introduction1
To pursue emptiness is to lose
emptiness.2

artin Heidegger’s thinking of being and

M Chan ( ; Zen in Japanese) Buddhism
have been portrayed as revealing ‘‘pure experi-
ence’’ through a confrontation with the fixated
sedimentations of conceptualization and commu-
nication. Such dismantling would disclose an eric s. nelson
originary experience of being (Sein) in
Heidegger, and self-nature (zixing ) and
original mind (benxin ) in Chan. The DEMYSTIFYING
process of dereification is enacted through the
encounter with nothingness or emptiness as a EXPERIENCE
traceless yet unavoidable moment that allows one
to be attentive and responsive toward, or mindful nothingness and
of, the phenomena themselves in their upsurge, sacredness in heidegger
sway, and self-disclosure or in the suchness
(ru ; Sanskrit tathatā) of the myriad things and chan buddhism
(wanfa ).
Chan Buddhism, like phenomenology, is con-
fronted by issues of how the processes and means criticized as naı̈ve after the historiographical
of communication become reified such that they analysis of Chan Buddhism as ideology, propa-
block instead of motivate compassion toward the ganda, and rhetoric (Welter 4).
other and responsiveness toward the myriad Further, due to the lack of a justifiable appeal
things. As the history of Buddhism indicates, to an original experience or primordial entity
Buddhist discourses of anti-essentialism and external to language’s ongoing self-reproduction
destratification can be conventionalized and and self-transformation, language is inherently
reified. Even in the instance of Linji Yixuan self-deconstructing in Chan such that there is
(d. 866/67), who was repeatedly stylized nothing beyond its communicative event and
and restylized as the prototypical radical Zen enactment. Critics accordingly deny the claim
master, Chan spontaneity and ‘‘antinomian rad- that Chan Buddhism can offer the enchantment
icalness’’ transpire in contexts of monastic disci- and mysticism of ‘‘pure experience’’ (Faure,
pline and ritual. Either spontaneity takes place Chan 3, 78–80).
through and in relation to them or not at all. The I acknowledge the validity of recent decon-
once prevalent assessment of Chan as destructur- structive and historiographical critiques of Chan’s
ing reified constructs for the sake of a pure self-presentation and its later Eastern and
intuitive or mystical experience has been Western appropriations. Still, there is an
ISSN 0969-725X print/ISSN1469-2899 online/12/03065^10 ß 2012 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2012.722396

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 demystifying experience

alternative interpretation of the antinomian ten- Heidegger meditated on this issue of exterior-
dencies linked to the Chan Buddhism of the Tang ity in engaging the question of how philosophy
and Song Dynasties. Heidegger’s thinking of can even begin in his 1928–29 lecture course
nothing (das Nichts) helps to differentiate this Introduction to Philosophy. He determined that
alternative communicative approach from the this is a misleading question as the questioner is
more metaphysical and mystical depictions asso- already within philosophy the moment the ques-
ciated with the understanding of Zen developed tion is posed (Einleitung 3). In the question, one
in D.T. Suzuki and the Kyoto School (Faure, is already and uniquely placed within philosophy
The Will 52–88). in myriad ways and with varying degrees of
I argue in this paper that it is a misconception wakefulness. Philosophy cannot begin then from
of Chan Buddhism and Heidegger to maintain historical or systematic analysis or comparisons,
that either posits something beyond the commu- as these lead away from rather than awaken
nicative event such as ‘‘Mind’’ (xin ) or philosophizing (ibid. 2–3). Philosophy does not
‘‘Being’’ (Sein) interpreted as a non-linguistic transpire as long as it is externally discussed.
essence or an absolute pure experience. What is It occurs when it is enacted through ‘‘bringing
at stake in terms such as mind and emptiness, philosophizing underway’’ by letting its matter
being and nothingness, is instead communication and question become ‘‘free in us in this situation’’
itself and particularly the communicative event of (ibid. 4, 6). The question, as a philosophical one,
that which cannot be directly said in a determi- strikes the one who asks the question. In asking,
nate representational language. the questioner is questioned, and the self is
In distinct ways, Heidegger’s nothing and exposed to the question of its own self (ibid. 11).
Chan emptiness (modifying the Indian concep- The address of the self to itself to ‘‘know
tion of śunyatā) indicate what already informs thyself’’ receives no response in ordinary and
and transformatively reorients experience, lan- scientific concepts and categories. The call is
guage, and practice in their enactment. Chan disclosed in the questionable occurrence of
Buddhism does not only instrumentally rely upon philosophy itself and intensified in the exposure
but is enmeshed in experience, language, and to ‘‘the complete nothingness of human essence’’
practice; awakening is to the reality that these too (ibid. 12). The nothingness in its disruptive non-
are conditional, interdependent, and empty. essence is neither merely negative in the sense of
negation nor foreign to human life. Nothingness
is an abyss that exposes existence in its lack
re-posing the basic question of bearing and orientation (Haltlosigkeit;
Dahui Zonggao (1089–1163) distin- Heidegger, Einleitung 331–38). It is identified
guished two forms of awareness: one is an in this work with the radical non-appearance of
immediate mindfulness of the ‘‘beginningless ground. Not even silence can escape this funda-
present’’ that ‘‘flows out point by point from mental disorientation, since it presupposes and
within your own heart to cover heaven and relates to being and nothing in one manner or
earth’’; the other is a comparative cognizance that another (ibid. 191). Communication must conse-
is ‘‘gained from external refinements,’’ discern- quently take this precarious lack of bearing as its
ing, fixating, and fixing categories and names point of departure, and nowhere more so than in
(Dahui 57). The inherent unsuitability of com- the inexorably flawed effort to speak of nothing.
parative reasoning is a non-ideal point of depar-
ture for considering the nothing in Heidegger’s on how to speak about nothing
works in relation to emptiness (both the ‘‘not’’
(wu ) and the Chinese term for śunyatā
3
(kong )). While the ‘‘not’’ of the incomparable
does not permit much to be said, comparing People are afraid to forget the mind, fearing
‘‘this’’ and ‘‘that’’ remains fixated in its periph- that they will fall through the void with
eral external contrasts. nowhere to grab hold. They do not understand

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that the void is without void, that there is only For Wittgenstein and Carnap it is a senseless
one true Dharma body. (Huangbo Xiyun error in elementary logic to talk of nothing.
21) Despite its taking on the modern language of the
critique of metaphysics, such hostility is not new
It is a requirement of polite conversation and
with the emergence of logical positivism. It has
formal logic that one not speak about nothing.
deeper roots within the Western philosophical
Ludwig Wittgenstein concluded his Tractatus
tradition itself. Neo-Platonism identified nothing
Logico-Philosophicus with the words: ‘‘Whereof
with the denial and privation of being, as a lack of
one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent’’
and exclusion from the good. Augustine con-
(Prop. 7). As he argued earlier, no propositions
ceived of it more radically as evil, as nothingness
can be legitimately made about what lies outside
is distance from God, and evil is choosing it over
the world whilst all sense and value of the world
God. Materiality and the devil are considered the
must at the same time be outside it (6.41–6.42).
nadir of evil; still, they cannot be absolutely evil
This is the ‘‘mystical.’’ Therefore, since the world
insofar as they share in existence – even if solely
consists of facts and logical relations between
through privation and lack. This situation of
facts, metaphysics, along with ethics and aes- God’s separation from and creation out of the
thetics, ‘‘cannot be expressed’’ (6.42–6.421). nothing forms a paradox for Heidegger: God
Without Wittgenstein’s mystical tone concerning perplexingly relates to the nothing in excluding it
the inexpressible that shows itself (6.522), Rudolf even though as God ‘‘he cannot know the
Carnap likewise rejected such inquiries as futile. nothing, assuming that the ‘absolute’ excludes
Affirming Wittgenstein’s proposition 6.5 that all nothingness’’ (Heidegger, Pathmarks 94).
‘‘the riddle does not exist,’’ there are no ‘‘riddles When early modern Europeans came across
of life’’ that are answerable questions for Carnap. the Buddhist notion of śunyatā (emptiness) they
Life-issues are exclusively about practical situa- characteristically interpreted it as signifying an
tions (Carnap, The Logical 297). Metaphysical illogical self-contradictory concept or – by asso-
propositions, including those concerning moral ciating nirvana with extinction – nihilistic void. It
and aesthetic values and norms, are not false or was judged as senseless metaphysics or ethically
uncertain. They are cognitively and epistemically, antinomian and religiously dangerous. Both log-
if not expressively, meaningless (Carnap, ical and metaphysical or ontotheological positiv-
Scheinprobleme 81, 103). In ‘‘Overcoming ism presuppose that the meaning and value of the
Metaphysics through the Logical Analysis of world is not internal or immanent to the world.
Language’’ (1932), Carnap analyzed Heidegger’s As significance could only arise from beyond the
discussion of the nothing in ‘‘What is world, it is senseless to speak of the generative,
Metaphysics?’’ as a confusion that substantializes immanent or self-disclosing meaning of things.
and reifies the logical operation of negation by Either such questions are transcendent, and
incorrectly positing ‘‘nothing’’ as an object. meaningless, as Wittgenstein and Carnap pro-
Negation is the reversal of an existential propo- pose, or there must be a metaphysical realm and/
sition, and hence cannot itself be treated as or revelation of the transcendent that justifies the
affirming existence (Carnap, Scheinprobleme 95). meaning of worldly things. Heidegger articulates
Negation derivatively and immanently denies the how the question of nothing is not derivative or
factual and logical propositions that it depends on accidental in the Western tradition that deni-
for its significance, and has no further cognitive grates it. The prohibition on the nothing still
significance. Carnap concluded that metaphysical takes recourse to it and feeds off it (Heidegger,
utterances senselessly reify logical operations Pathmarks 84). The question of nothing disturbs
such as the assertion of being and nothing and, what is, the ocular purity of direct intuition and
adopting an argument from Dilthey, are at best perception, and the professedly unquestionable
an impoverished replacement for art, literature, givenness – whether formulated as the positivity
and music in expressing a ‘‘feeling of life’’ of God as the highest being among others or of
(ibid. 106–07). the factually given – through which philosophy

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construes beings (Heidegger, Introduction In his meditation on non-being, Heidegger

18–21). remarked in the postscript to ‘‘What is
With the ambition of proving God’s reality, Metaphysics?’’: ‘‘One of the essential sites of
Leibniz posed the question: ‘‘why is there speechlessness is anxiety in the sense of the
something rather than nothing?’’ Leibniz replied horror to which the abyss of the nothing attunes
that both terms, beings and nothing, could solely human beings’’ (Pathmarks 238). Why might
be justified and explained through a third term, Heidegger endeavor to speak of the nothing in
God, which is external to and constitutes the response to this speechlessness? Is this not the
ground for both. If there is no God, there is no logical confusion, religious error, or nihilistic
sufficient reason for existence over non-existence, void of which metaphysical and anti-metaphysical
and the world would disappear into nothingness. Western philosophy insistently warns?
Since the world does exist, its sufficient reason
must exist (149). Heidegger, who himself sacred enchantment or meditative
employed the idiom of overcoming metaphysics,
emptiness?
recurrently returned from the 1920s to the 1960s
to Leibniz’s question. According to Heidegger, Notwithstanding its distinct origins, Western
the most perplexing question is why there is interpreters of Buddhism, since the early
something instead of nothing. It is baffling in its modern encounters, have introduced the
own terms of something (being) and nothing even issues of nihilism and annihilationism into the
before considering Leibniz’s further recourse to elucidation of Buddhism by claiming that
God as a transcendent third term. In contrast to emptiness (śunyatā) is a nihilistic void that
being or God, it is precisely the nothing appear- denies any – according to Nietzsche – internally
ing in Leibniz’s argument that should provoke immanent or – for Christian critics – externally
the greatest perplexity and concern. transcendent significance to things. The problem
Heidegger remarked in his later introduction of a supposed ‘‘cult of nothingness’’ nihilistically
to ‘‘What is Metaphysics?’’ that he poses this negating the world is more acute in varieties of
question in an altered sense from Leibniz. Buddhism, such as Mādhyamaka and Chan,
Whereas for Leibniz ‘‘nothing is simpler and which prioritize emptiness in relation to the
easier than anything,’’ for Heidegger ‘‘If [the positive practices and theses of Buddhism itself.
question] does not concern itself with beings and The self-questioning of the principal formula-
inquire about their first cause among all beings, tions of the dharma is apparent in Chan question-
then [it] must begin from that which is not and-answer dialogues (wenda ) that became
being’’ (Pathmarks 290). Heidegger is mistaken the basis of the ‘‘public case’’ or gongan ( ;
koan in Japanese). One such interruptive dia-
insomuch as Leibniz in his Dialogue on Human
logue, which will eventually become the first case
Freedom (1695) articulated how nothing ‘‘can
of the Blue Cliff Record (Biyan lu ),
enter into the composition of things’’ much like
portrayed Emperor Wu of the Liang Dynasty
the zero in arithmetic. But Leibniz returns this
( ) informing Bodhidharma ( )
insight to the traditional Christian view, arguing
of his numerous meritorious efforts:
that things ‘‘are bounded or imperfect by virtue
of the principle of negation or nothingness they [W]hen the Emperor asked how much merit
contain, by virtue of the lack of infinity of he had acquired, Bodhidharma answered
perfections in them, and which are only a ‘‘none.’’ He asked ‘‘What is the first principle
nothingness with respect to them’’ (Leibniz of sacred truth?’’ Bodhidharma replied ‘‘Vast
emptiness, nothing sacred [kuoranwusheng
114). The analysis of finitude as imperfection,
].’’ He asked ‘‘Who then is facing
privation, and sin contrasts with the perfection me?’’ He replied ‘‘Don’t know.’’4
of things ‘‘just as they are’’ in Mazu Daoyi
(709–88) and the Hongzhou Here, in the iconoclastic style of what was
style of Chan. retrospectively designated the Hongzhou lineage,

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practices of the acquisition of merit through good but from the immanent self-generating emptiness
works and ideas of the sacred are problematized of the phenomena themselves. But, for
by the emptiness of the agent, works, and the instance, the sixteenth-century Korean master
sacred itself. Earlier figures such as Bodhidharma So Sahn ( ) used a number of expressions
and Hongren are depicted as dismissing indicating the suchness of phenomena such as
offerings and the pursuit of blessings in favor of ‘‘just as it is,’’ ‘‘just like this’’ (So Sahn 99). How
looking into oneself (Huineng 128). By looking are emptiness and the nothing, on the one hand,
into and examining the self, the emptiness of the and, on the other, the immanent givenness,
self is encountered. suchness, or thusness (Sanskrit tathatā, zhenru
Heidegger’s disorienting and reorienting ) of things – empty and ‘‘just as they are’’
horror of the nothing’s groundlessness is absent (faruru ) – interrelated?
in Chan discourses. There are affinities in the Is the ‘‘not’’ an operational negation or can it
motif of an interruptive and potentially transfor- have another function in its surprising performa-
mative exposure to that which is not a something, tive enactment? Whereas ‘‘nothing’’ presupposes
not even a noumenal or transcendent unknowable the logical negation that is its measure in
object, but nothing. In a well-known conversation Carnap’s argument, Heidegger reverses the pri-
from the Zhaozhouyulu [Recorded macy of negation. Logical negation, theological
Sayings of Zhaozhou], which developed into the privation, and – more radically – the very
initial case of the Wumenguan ( ), a monk positivity of things presuppose the radical open-
inquired: ‘‘Does a dog have Buddha-nature or not ness and emptiness that allows humans to
[gouzifoxing ]?’’ Despite the inherent encounter things at all (Heidegger, Pathmarks
Buddha-nature in all sentient beings, the master 91). The open fullness of things as they are is
replied wu (‘‘Not’’ or ‘‘No’’; Addiss, disclosed through this formalization through the
Lombardo, and Roitman 76). formless and emptying through the nothing. The
The Chinese word wu signifies ‘‘not’’ or formally indicative emptying of openness is
‘‘without’’ and means emptiness in its early presupposed in communication and experience
Daoist context. It is the ‘‘absolute nothing’’ or yet rarely revealed in encounters with the
void in the phrase xuwu . Reinhard May nothing, which cannot be an entity.5
stresses that the Chinese graph is associated Nothingness is an object-less and non-intentional
with a clearing, the destruction of a previously condition and way of being attuned in dis-
forested place, which he equates with Heidegger’s attunement (ibid. 86–88). This perplexing condi-
clearing (Lichtung; May 32–33). May bases his tion is evident in extraordinary conditions of
interpretation on a later form of the graph, which exposure to uncanniness (Unheimlichkeit), where
was previously one of a dancing person. existence is experienced as slipping away and
Neglecting the priority of the nothing and being left hanging, such as in extreme anxiety
emptiness, the space that allows the dancer to and boredom in which all sense is shaken and
move, May gives the emptiness of wu a derivative shattered (ibid. 91).
meaning to what was once present and its Heidegger maintains that the question and
previous givenness or positivity. This interpreta- sense of being is disclosed in anxiety and
tion consequently makes emptiness secondary to uncanniness. Being is disclosed in the anxious
presence, whereas emptiness is the very space of dread in the face of one’s own inescapable death,
the occurrence and presence itself. which cannot be mastered insofar as death is
Immanence is typically construed to be the anticipated as inappropriable death. There is no
givenness and positivity of worldly things or overcoming of the radical lack of ground
phenomena, which are to be accepted as such or (Ab-grund) of the nothing. Such encounters
derived from a higher ideal or transcendent with groundlessness are difficult to identify with
source. Here – between self-empty dogs and vast sacred enchantment. The questionable moment of
emptiness – the question does not so much rise the uncanny is much less and more than another
from the positivity of things and facts about them something to be integrated in everyday existence

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or ordered in a conceptual system. In interruptive formal logic, which makes the derivative primary
and aporetic limit situations, the ‘‘I’’ is inasmuch as its model of truth as correctness
de-personalized and existence reduced to its presupposes truth as the openness of disclosure
being-there (da sein; Heidegger, Pathmarks 89). (Heidegger, Pathmarks 142), Heidegger
Without experiences of the ‘‘not’’ and otherwise, proposes:
the absolutely and fully other, the conceptualiza-
tion of negation would not occur. Logical nega- Only if it belonged to the essence of philos-
tion is one way in which nihilation occurs and ophy to make the obvious incomprehensible
and the unquestioned something questioned.
cannot be the absolute measure of the nothing
Only if philosophy had the task of shocking
that it becomes in both ontotheological meta-
common sense out of its presumptive self-
physics and positivist anti-metaphysics (ibid. 92). glorification. Only if philosophy had the
function of arousing us so that we become
on how to play with words awake . . . (Metaphysical 2–3)

What is [is] what is Heidegger remarked that, however inappropri-

not; what is not [is] what is.6 ately and inadequately, the transition from
representational to recollective thinking proceeds
Hongzhou and Linji styles of Chan are recognized through representational thinking (Heidegger,
for their simultaneous critique and creative Pathmarks 286). The transition out of metaphys-
exercise of language. Its use of indirect, paradox- ics to another thinking proceeds through meta-
ical, and shocking ways of speaking indicates a physical questions (ibid. 289). Even if it is not
strategy that is simultaneously suspicious of primary, representational and predicative think-
language while richly employing it in manifold ing, and the tension between predication and
ways. Chan ‘‘wordless words’’ are extraneous to performance, are part of the movement of
the extent that they should not be taken as thinking understood as a practice instead of as a
establishing an absolute standard or reifying collection of representational or referential
concepts of the Buddha and awakening contents.
(Yuanwu Keqin 106–07). This Chan performatively places in doubt the use of
manner of speaking is incoherent only if the predication in utterances that use predication,
expressive exercise of language is subordinate to thereby letting the exercise of authority be an
its cognitive propositional use or if it is impos- occasion for criticism and transformations
sible to performatively enact language against (Foulk 35). Such self-challenging communication
language’s referential character. McRae has is enacted in the Chan iconoclasm exemplified in
described the distinction between performative Linji, who advised Buddhists to ‘‘kill the
and referential utterances (76). Chan forms of
Buddha,’’ ‘‘a shitty ass-wiper,’’ and become
communication disclose the insufficiency of both
the genuine person without rank right ‘‘here in
kinds of utterances. The communicative event
this lump of red flesh’’ (Linji 52, 13). The Chan
occurs through the tensions between performance
language of spontaneous naturalness and use of
and predication. Encountering and lingering in
iconoclastic practices are compatible with its
these tensions clarifies the wide-ranging diversity
of linguistic and non-linguistic communicative frequently conservative social role (Welter
strategies employed in Chan Buddhist challenges 120–21, 165). It is only conceivable in relation
to ordinary speech and understanding. to the doctrinal, devotional, and ritual contexts of
Predicative propositional thinking is charac- Buddhism that are transformed into questions
terized by intentionality. It reductively grasps through Chan practices (McRae 92–93, 132).
‘‘nothing’’ under the guise of a sort of something, Chan’s communicative practices encompass an
a quasi-object of predication, or as absurd emptying and desacralization of what is popularly
nonsense (Heidegger, Metaphysical 2–3). In understood as sacred in order to point toward the
contrast to the paradigm of conventional and great issue: ‘‘There is only you, followers of the

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way, this person in front of my eyes now listening Being-there exceeds the world while being world-
to the dharma . . . ’’ (Linji 50). formative, though it does not transcend the
In another case, Linji is depicted as forbidding world in the sense of accessing another world.
travel to Mount Wutai ( ), where devo- Heidegger’s this-worldly transcendence, as a
tional Buddhists believe the Bodhisattva Mañjuśrı̄ groundless excess, cannot be derivative of inten-
appears (Heine cases 13–15). Linji’s Mañjuśrı̄ is tionality, selfhood, or subjectivity; it grounds
not seen on a sacred mountain. He is performa- them (ibid. 106–08). Dasein is fundamentally
tively manifested in one’s own activity and ecstatic and eccentric. It is consequently inexo-
practice. There are limits to Linji’s disenchant- rably more than the immanence of consciousness
ment of Chan. Several episodes involve Linji’s or perception, the subject or the ‘‘I,’’ even as it
ambiguous success in handling Puhua ( ), exists within worldly immanence as exactly this
a non-Buddhist or perhaps esoteric Buddhist and in each case one’s own being-in-the-world
practitioner attributed with magical powers, who (ibid. 71, 107–09, 284).
Linji is unable to expose (Heine cases 16, 57). In Chan discourses, faith can become an
Despite Linji’s warnings, the sacred mountain obstacle to awakening. One should avoid becom-
of the bodhisattva of compassion continued to ing attached to and hindered by the Buddha in
appeal to ordinary Buddhists. awakening to one’s own condition. In contrast to
In the encounter dialogues that became the the faith that Heidegger described as a believing,
basis of various gongan, Chan is not thoroughly revealing, and way of existing, which does not
demythologizing. It is playing a dangerous game arise spontaneously or immanently from Dasein
of ironic ambiguity and reversal. Chan is desa- itself, it is human existence itself that is each time
cralizing, disenchanting, and demystifying. But it in question (ibid. 43–44), just as it is one’s own
involves the recognition of the validity in other mind that is the fundamental issue in Chan
approaches and practices while releasing them awakening (Bodhidharma 9–13). Chan practices
and its own position through the enactment of do not directly reveal or transform the mind but
emptiness. point at how the mind perceives itself amidst
The secularization and demystification of things; whether it mirrors things in a free
Heidegger’s ‘‘methodological atheism’’ analo- responding to phenomena or is reactively
gously separates the questionable non-essence of engrossed by and attached to them.
philosophy from faith, even as Heidegger Authenticity and transcendence are modifications
maintains that faith as faith remains beyond rather than the elimination of inauthenticity and
and irreducible to the immanence of philosophy. absorption in things. ‘‘We are,’’ Heidegger
For Heidegger, destructuring (Destruktion) must claimed, ‘‘overwhelmed and spellbound by
struggle to renew itself in its enactment (Vollzug) beings’’ (Heidegger, Metaphysical 106).
and confrontation (Auseinandersetzung) with Authenticity and inauthenticity are not the
what has been handed down and solidified. opposites of a duality; they are variations or
Accordingly it calls for ‘‘a genuine confrontation transformed and individuated modes of the same
with the history that we ourselves ‘are’’’ everydayness. Authenticity is the realization of
(Heidegger, Pathmarks 3–4). Heidegger and one’s persistent inauthenticity. As self-relating
Chan partake in a strategy that is partly analo- finitude confronted by infinity, Dasein can at
gous in that the destructuring discloses what is most be authentically inauthentic or inauthenti-
already at play. This destructuring transcendence cally authentic: ‘‘The authentic being of Dasein is
or transformation of everydayness remains imma- what it is insofar as it is inauthentically authentic,
nent within everyday existence or ordinary mind. that is, ‘preserved’ in itself. [Authenticity] is not
It is this world that is the great issue of concern anything that should or could exist for itself
and potential transformation. next to the inauthentic’’ (Heidegger, Der
Heidegger describes Dasein as ecstatic or Begriff 81).
transcendent in the sense of standing out in An evocative Chan formulation, adopted from
the world, irrupting in the midst of beings. Nāgārjuna, asserts that nirvana is samsara and

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samsara nirvana (shengsi ji niepan ), turning repetition against repetition, undo setting
just as suffering is awakening (fannao ji puti up a stable subject in relation to an intransitive
). The missing and discovery of what is absolute. The priority of praxis demands atten-
already taking place is noted by Linji in his tiveness, clarity, and mindfulness and is conse-
account of Yajnadatta, the madman of Śrāvastı̄: quently neither a mystical nor faith-based
‘‘Yajnadatta thought he had lost his head and enchantment.
went looking for it, but once he had put a stop to The encounter with and transformation
his seeking mind, he found he was perfectly all through emptiness is crucial in Chan; but it is
right’’ (Linji 27). As with the Bodhisattva’s not the end or an absolute. Emptiness need not
non-appearance on Mount Wutai, what we imply the customary Christian notion of nothing,
pursue is not external to ourselves (Linji as the negation or privation of being, or that of its
29, 31). Pursuit entails not finding in that it modern ontotheological – including logical pos-
questionably presupposes a presence that has itivist – successors. Emptiness is not simply
been lost (ibid. 76). negation nor is it a neutral naught. There is an
With its emphasis on a transmission from intimation of emptiness as a groundless abyss in
mind to mind outside of the scriptures and its the language of Heidegger and Chan Buddhism.
view of enlightenment as a lightning bolt Huangbo described how the dharma cannot
illumining the mind, Chan illuminated the insuf- signify the absence or nihility of things. It entails
ficiency of language to signify the truth of the instead a freedom and ease in relation to things in
matter. Welter exposes the internal Buddhist and their conditionality. It is not being dependent on
external worldly political dimensions of these causes and things in the midst of their inter-
claims (Welter 18–19), since assertions about dependent arising and mutual conditionality
transmission establish lineage and authority (Huangbo 37).
along with truth and authenticity. Welter also Emptiness is irreducible to being and nothing,
illustrates how doctrine, ideology, and lineage mind and no-mind. It is better equated to the
are not necessarily coherent, and their empty sky, empty hand, or the clarity of infinite
intersections become contested sites for creating empty space (So Sahn 51, 64; Dahui 1).
and recreating past, present, and future (ibid. Emptiness is not an entity nor to be construed
67–68, 79). as an absolute reality (Huangbo 37). It is itself
Chan’s critics highlight its ‘‘rhetoric of imme- empty and calls for its own dereification and
diacy’’ (Faure, The Will) and instrumental unsaying in being said and performatively
degradation of language (Wright). Faure and enacted. Heidegger’s abyssal groundless ground,
Wright criticize the notion that, in the non-essence that informs all essence, circles
Bodhidharma’s words, one can use words to get this conditionless condition (Heidegger,
beyond words and in doing so forget them Pathmarks 134). Emptiness, as self-empty, both
(Bodhidharma 111). But the enactment of the demands and escapes words, as can be sketched
dharma is not merely instrumental. Since ‘‘self- in the protracted multicultural history of apo-
practice is the practice of the Buddha’’ and being phatic ways of speaking and unspeaking
the Buddha is equivalent to the practice of the language.
Buddha, the dharma is a medium that transforms
itself in its being enacted for oneself (Huineng
141, 168). Practices of body, mind, and language
conclusion: beyond mysticism and
are constitutive of the path and the being- skepticism
underway along the path that is itself awakening.
Genuine awakening
The performative instead of instrumental practice is not awakening; genuine emptiness is not
of language in Chan entails that language should empty.7
not be regarded as merely a vehicle to a non-
communicative mystical exteriority transcending Linji is reported to describe emptiness as a
the world. Self-enacting transformative practices, requirement of the excess and fullness of things

72
 nelson

and as oneness without the one (Linji 36, 25). notes

Given that emptiness is one, and the one
1 Note that some of the arguments and passages
emptiness is itself empty, instead of being a
in this paper overlap with and are developed fur-
monistic and mystical self-absorption in the one, ther in Nelson, Language 472^92. I have used the
emptiness is the one suchness (yiru ). It is electronic edition of the CBETA for Chinese pas-
the means to liberation from fear and attachment sages and phrases. It is available online at5http://
so as to realize the ethical condition of unlimited www.cbeta.org/index.htm4, the SAT Taisho shin-
compassion, which is an elemental responsiveness shu daizokyo at 5http://21dzk.l.u-tokyo.ac.jp/SAT/
that is non-dual without presupposing a static index.html4, and the Digital Dictionary of
unity. The destructuring strategies unfolded in Buddhism at 5http://www.buddhism-dict.net/
Chan practices and texts are themselves to be ddb/4. Translations have occasionally been silently
modified.
destructured, since one cannot cling to emptiness,
non-clinging, and paradoxical and poetic lan- 2 T48 N2010: 376b29.
guage. Skeptical dissolution is not the objective, 3 T48 N2012A: 381a21^22.
not because there is a reified something that it
cannot touch, but because it itself is empty such 4 Translation slightly altered from Addiss,
that one can neither grasp it nor throw it away Lombardo, and Roitman 9; compare Nelson,
Language 482.
(Huineng 149). Neither existence nor non-
existence can be grasped, and even ‘‘ungrasp- 5 I discuss Heidegger’s early methodology of
ability itself cannot be grasped’’ (Dahui 46). The formal indication in detail in Nelson, Questioning
paradox, the question, the self-dismantling qual- 150 ^59.
ities of language are themselves empty and need 6 T48 N2010: 377a06 ^a07.
to be shaken up and uprooted so that they do not
7 T51 N2076: 458a06.
become fixated objects of attachment (Huineng
166, 172). It is in this manner that the path does
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