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 Emptiness and Fullness
Sunyata in Mahayana Buddhism

Ueda Shizuteru

The formula “emptiness and fullness” may be said to represent a Bud-

hist version of the general question of “unity and diversity.” On the one
hand, the category of unity is based on the concept of “one,” which
Buddhism as it were steps over and back to “zero.” The word funya,
which as a Buddhist term means “void,” is also used in the realm of mathe­
matics to signify “zero.” Though it is of course not a quantity, zero has
several crucial functions to play in the workings of mathematics. The
same is true of the concept of “emptiness” in the realm of existence. On
the other hand, the category of diversity is made concrete through the
Buddhist notion of “fullness.” That is to say, fullness not only concerns
the diversity among things, but goes on to include the specific completeness
of each and every thing and the concrete fullness of the whole. These
two, the radical negation to zero and the concretization to fullness,
belong together as correlatives. In Buddhism as well, this correlatedness
forms the basis on which the problem of “unity and diversity” has been
explored in various ways.
This correlatedness of zero or emptiness—or in its other, philosophical
term, absolute nothingness—on the one hand, and fullness on the other,
represents the fundamental relationship in Buddhist thought. It is, in its
authentic, original sense, an existential category that refers to the self-
awareness of the self, not a self that has its existence in itself but a self
that exists precisely within this correlatedness. In the long history of
Buddhism, this correlatedness was developed in manifold speculative
directions. It is Zen that brought it back to its original, living sphere of

• Originally a lecture given at the ERANOS CONFERENCE 1976 in Ascona,

and published in ERANOS YEARBOOK 45-1976, E. J. Brill, Leiden, Netherlands.

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 UEDA

existence. Accordingly, I would like to begin by attempting a treatment of

“emptiness and fullness” in its original, existential context. To do so, I
shall rely principally on examples from Zen Buddhism, drawing on
Mahayana philosophy and modem Japanese philosophy for clarification.
What is our self? What is there to say about it? To shed some light
on these questions, I would like to take as an illustration a short classical
Chinese text of the Zen school, a kind of picture book, which will I hope
bring us somewhat nearer the matter at hand without letting us slip off
at some point unawares into conceptualization on an abstract level.
Conceptualization is supposed to lead to clarity, of course, but at times
it ends up misleading if the requisite preliminary understanding is lacking.
This is especially so when one has to do with things from another culture,
as is the case here. What we are dealing with relates originally to the self­
understanding of East Asian peoples whose world of ideas was expressed
in classical Chinese and Japanese and is here being presented in English.
The gap between the East Asian subject matter being presented and the
Western language that presents it recommends that particular care be
taken both on the part of the author of this essay as well as on the part
of his readers. In such circumstances having a kind of picture book to
refer to as a basic text may help.

The text, which dates originally from the 12th century, has appeared in
German under the title Der Ochs und sein Hirte: eine altchinesische Zen-
Geschichte, in the translation of K. Tsujimura and H. Buchner (Pfullingen,
1975). An English translation of this edition was prepared by M. H.
Trevor and published in Japan as The Ox and His Herdsman (Tokyo,
1969). It is this translation that will be cited in the following pages.
Another English version was made by D. T. Suzuki and included in his
Manual of Zen Buddhism (New York, 1960), there called simply “The Ten
Oxherding Pictures.**
Even today the text is widely used in Japanese Zen circles. It portrays
graphically the process of human self-realization in ten stages, each stage
including a brief introductory remark, an ink drawing in a circular frame,
and a concise explanation in the form of a poem. Each drawing depicts a
distinct mode and dimension of existence on the way to the true self. The

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 EMPTINESS AND FULLNESS

ox serves as a provisional symbol for the true self that is being sought,
and the herdsman represents the individual on the quest for the true self.
It should be pointed out here that despite the title, the figure of the ox
does not appear in all ten drawings, only in four of them. This point is of
decisive importance for the Zen Buddhist understanding of the self, and
I shall return to it later.
The first six stages are entitled as follows: (1) The Search for the Ox,
(2) Finding the Traces of the Ox, (3) Finding the Ox, (4) Catching the Ox,
(5) Taming the Ox, and (6) Returning Home on the Back of the Ox.
Already from this much we can see that the relationship of the herdsman
to the ox gets continually closer and more intimate, up until the 7th stage
where a unification is achieved wherein the man no longer conceives of the
ox as an object to be united with. The self, in the manner and to the
extent that it has been symbolized by the ox, is there realized and the
ox, as a symbol for the self, is eliminated. The 7th stage is thus entitled
“The Ox is Forgotten, the Herdsman Remains.” In the accompanying
drawing the ox is absent and the man is left seated alone, “quiet and at
leisure.... Between the sky and the earth he has become his own master,”
as the text has it. The course from the 1st to the 7th stage portrays in step
by step progression the successive phases of Buddhist instruction: training
in meditation, difficulty and strenuous discipline, unification in bliss,
and so forth. With the attainment of the 7th stage, however, the true self
as Zen understands it has not yet been realized. We are still in transit on
the way to the self. The decisive leap that breaks through to the 8th stage,
where the characteristic features of the true self as Zen understands it are
to become manifest, still remains to be made.

♦ ♦ ♦

The 8th stage, entitled “Complete Oblivion of Ox and Herdsman” or

“Double Oblivion,” is depicted by a curious drawing—an “empty circle”
with nothing at all in it, neither ox nor man. This emptiness with nothing
drawn in it needs to be emphasized in the present context. Absolute
nothingness signifies in the first place, in passing beyond the 7th stage, an
absolute negation.
In Buddhism, absolute nothingness does not mean that nothing at all
exists. It is rather supposed to free one from substantializing thinking
and from a substantializing apprehension of the self. For Buddhism, sub­
ll
2
 EMPTINESS AND FULLNESS

stantializing thought is grounded in the individual’s substantializing of

the self. This substantializing of the self in turn has its roots concealed in
the ego as such, or in ego-captivity. Ego is understood in Buddhist teach­
ing as ego-consciousness whose most rudimentary expression is: *T am I,”
and that in the sense that “I am I because I am I.” This “I am I” that has
its ground in another “I am I” so as to be closed up and locked away in
itself, together with the so-called threefold poisoning of the self-hatred
toward others, fundamental blindness toward oneself, and avarice—is
deemed the fundamental human perversion and the cause of human
misery. In contrast, the true self, or what Buddhism understands as the
“selfless” self, would say of itself: “I am I and likewise I am not I” (ac­
cording to the formulation of Professor Nishitani), or “I am I because I
am not I” (D. T. Suzuki). Everything depends on the complete disengage­
ment of the “I am I” from its self-containment and self-confinement, on
finally breaking free of the shackles of ego. The ego-individual has to die
for the sake of the true, selfless self. The way from the 1st stage to the 7th
stage is at the same time the process of deliverance from the “I am I.” If
one stops at the 7th stage, however, in the self-sufficiency and self-con­
fidence of being oneself (that is, of still being oneself), one falls back into
a covert “I am I” with a self-consciousness that reckons “I am now what
I should be”—which is but a sublimer form of religious egoism, so to
speak. One’s ultimate religious concern here is to abandon even one’s own
religion. Hence the 8th stage leads to a once-and-for-all, decisive, resolute
leap into absolute nothingness where there is neither herdsman who is
seeking nor ox that is being sought, neither oneself nor Buddha, neither
duality nor unity. (In this connection we may allude to the thought of
Meister Eckhart: forgetting God, abandoning God, away from union
with God and on to the nothingness of godhead which is at the same time
the ground of the soul.)
In order to arrive at the breakthrough to the true self, which is the
equivalent of an unconditional selflessness, one must therefore abandon
all religious insight and experience accumulated so far. One must rid
oneself of oneself and of the Buddha, and leap once and for all into pure
nothingness. One must, as the Zen expression goes, die the Great Death.
The text accompanying the drawing of the empty circle puts it this way:
All worldly desires have fallen away, and at the same time the
meaning of holiness has become completely empty. Do not linger

13
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 EMPTINESS AND FULLNESS

where the Buddha dwells. Go quickly past the place where no

Buddha dwells....
With one blow the vast sky suddenly breaks into pieces.
Holy, worldly, both vanished without a trace.
This is what is expressed in the 8th drawing.
This Buddhist nothingness that dissolves substance-thinking must not
be adhered to as a nothingness however; it must not be taken as a kind
of substance or “minus-substance” (a nihilum). It has to do with the
desubstantializing dynamic of absolute nothingness, with the nothingness
of nothingness, or in philosophical terms, with the negation of negation.
That is to say, it is a question of a pure movement of nothingness in two
interrelated directions: (1) as the negation of negation in the sense of
a further denial of negation that does not revert back to affirmation but
continues on toward infinitely open nothingness; and (2) as the negation
of negation in the sense of a reversal to affirmation without any trace of
mediation. Absolute nothingess confirms itself as this dynamic correlated-
ness of endless negation and immediate, straightforward affirmation, and
this correlatedness is the only thing that counts. Absolute nothingness
moves as the nothingness of nothingness. The absolute nothingness that
from the 7th stage onward functions as the absolute negation of that stage
is nothing other than this dynamic correlatedness of negation and affirma­
tion. Thus a fundamental transformation and a complete reversal takes
place in this nothingness as the nothingness of nothingness—as in Goethe’s
cry, “Die and be born!” or as in a “death and resurrection.”

♦ * ♦

The drawing accompanying the next and 9th stage shows a tree in bloom
alongside a river, and nothing else. The text reads: “Boundlessly flows
the river, just as it flows. Red blooms the flower, just as it blooms.” Here
we have to do with the human individual in his or her true self. Why sud­
denly a tree in bloom alongside a river? Since we are on the way to the true
self, it is not a question here of an outer, objective landscape that surrounds
us, nor of a metaphorical landscape that portrays an inner human state or
projects an inner, spiritual landscape of the soul. It is rather a question of
an altogether new reality as a re-presentation of the selfless self. It has to

15
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 EMPTINESS AND FULLNESS

do with resurrection out of nothingness, with radical transformation from

absolute negation to a great Yes. Yes, this is it! Since the subject-object
dichotomy in all its forms was restored at the 8th stage to a state of pre­
dichotomy in nothingness, at this stage, in resurrection out of nothingness,
a tree blooming by a river is simply the self, not in the sense of a substan­
tial identity of nature and human being, but rather in the sense that a tree
in bloom, just as it blooms, embodies in a non-objective way the selflessness
of human being. Thus the blooming of the flowers and the flowing of the
water here are, just as they happen, at the same time the play of the self­
less freedom of the self. Nature, as the flowers blooming and the river
flowing, is the first resurrection body of the selfless self out of nothingness.
We cannot speak here of a nature-mysticism or a pantheism. “Red
blooms the flower, just as it blooms.” There is nothing mystical about
this. It is simply and immediately “a tree in bloom alongside a river,” and
nothing else. It is a simplicity to which nothing stands in opposition, to
which nothing is added. This simplicity unfolds itself without losing the
simpleness of its reality. As we have already said, “Red blooms the flower,
just as it blooms;” or to cite another example of a Zen saying, “Distant
mountains, without limit, green upon green.”
But where is the locus at which such simplicity unfolds, just as it is, by
itself and without any supposedly higher, human agency? It is, to use a
classical Sino-Japanese term, in mushin, in the nothingness of the mind,
or more literally in the no-mind. There the mind, having passed away into
nothingness on the 8th stage and now resurrected out of nothingness, is
nothing other than these blooming flowers. It is in no-mind, and not in the
ego-individual, that blooming flowers reveal themselves and offer them­
selves totally, just as they bloom by themselves. There, in virtue of no­
thingness, a special connection obtains between the existentiality of the
self and the objectivity of existing things. According to a traditional phrase,
existence becomes “thing.” Or in the Zen saying, “The inexhaustible
fullness of nothingness; flowers bloom, the moon shines.” This provides
us with a first model of “emptiness and fullness.”
The Chinese characters for the word “nature,” pronounced shizen in
Japanese (or jinen, in its Buddhist reading), actually mean something
like “to be as it is by itself.” It does not signify nature in the sense of a
determined realm of beings in toto, but points to the truth of the being of
all beings. If one, for example, experiences flowers as they bloom by
themselves in one’s nothingness, that is to say, not from out of one’s ego;

17
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or put in more immediate terms, if flowers actually bloom in the nothing*

ness of the individual as they bloom by themselves, then one is at one
with them in the truth of one’s own being. Nature in this sense of as-it-
is-by-itself is directly synonymous in Buddhism with true-ness (Skt.,
tathata\ Jap., shinnyo, literally “thus-ness”). One awakened to the truth
is called Tathagata (Jap., nyorai), that is, one who comes and goes in the
thus-ness as which nature “natures.”
In the movement from the 8th stage to the 9th it is no longer, as in the
preceding stages, a matter of a gradual progression but of a correlated-
ness, or an oscillating back and forth. Nothingness in the 8th stage and
simplicity in the 9th belong together, metaphorically speaking, like two
sides of a single sheet of paper, a paper without thickness. The two sides
are neither two nor one. It is rather a matter of a correlated double per­
spective each of which penetrates the other. In other words, the direction
from the 8th stage to the 9th is “at one with” the opposite direction from
the 9th stage to the 8th, permitting the whole to be described in reversible
terms: “The blooming flowers are nothingness, nothingness is the bloom­
ing flowers.” The classical formula for this in Buddhism reads: “Form is
emptiness, emptiness is form” (Skt., rupam tunyata, funyata rupam\ Jap.,
shiki soku ze ku, ku soku ze shiki), It is thus a question of an absolute
coincidence of nothingness and form where the stress falls not on the
identity of the two, which would be a further form of mistaken substan­
tializing, but on an interrelated double perspective which relates then to
“death and resurrection” in the existentiell sphere. The direction of seeing
through form as nothingness is designated Great Understanding, while
the direction of seeing nothingness immediately concretized as form is
designated Great Compassion.
The matter treated expressly in the 10th and final stage concerns the
encounter between human individuals. Here the true self resurrected from
nothingness is at work between individuals, or comes into play there, as a
selfless dynamic of the “between.” This “between” is here the self’s own
domain, its inner playground. In other words, the self, cut open by ab­
solute nothingness and laid bare, unfolds as this “between.” The drawing
for this 10th stage depicts an old man meeting a young man on the road of
the world. It is not a question here of two different individuals running
into one another by chance. “An old man and a young man” represents
the selfless manifestation of the self of the old man himself. The concerns
of the other are now the concerns of the self in its selflessness. What
19
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matters for the youth as such comes to matter for the old man, and the old
man in turn keeps no matter of his own to himself. This communion in
a common life is the second resurrection body of the selfless self. I am
“I and thou,” “I and thou” is I. The self is seen as a double self in virtue
of selflessness. This is the second model of “emptiness and fullness.”
The introductory text remarks:
The brushwood gate is firmly closed and even the wisest holy man
cannot see him [that is, the old man comes from unknown stock,
namely from absolute nothingness]. He has buried his illuminated
nature deep.... He sometimes enters the marketplace with a
hollowed-out gourd or returns to his hut with a staff. He visits the
drinking place and fish stalls as he pleases, to awaken the drunkards
there to themselves.

To encounter others, the true self does not dwell off in “nirvana” but
keeps to the well-travelled and frequented roads of the world, without
forsaking absolute nothingness. Here again we come to the dynamic with
a double perspective: on the roads of the world as in nothingness, in
nothingness as on the roads of the world. Untiring and serious efforts made
on behalf of another is thus at the same time, in virtue of nothingness,
play for oneself, though not in the sense of a play that entails the loss of
effort and compassion. This is what Zen has in mind with those double
statements that look contradictory if only viewed logically. One the one
hand it is said, “Living beings are countless, we vow to save them all.”
And on the other, “There is no living being that we should save or have
saved, nor is there any salvation.” Or again, “Alas, up until now I have
wanted to save all the world. Surprise! There is no more world to save.”
The self-consciousness of having saved others would by itself already be
enough to corrupt salvation.
One’s own awakening to the true self is confirmed in bringing others to
awakening in such a way that it is their own awakening. In virtue of
formless and modeless nothingness, the type and mode of meeting seen
here is once again very distinctive. Had the meeting taken place somewhere
en route from the 1st to the 7th stage, the two would have talked about
things religious with one another. But not here. The old man neither
preaches nor instructs, but from the moment they meet and during their
time together he simply asks questions: “Where do you come from?”
“What is your name?” “How are you?” “Have you already eaten?”
21
 UEDA

“Do you see the flowers?”—to cite a few examples from the history of
Zen. At first all of them seem like ordinary, everyday questions. But
does the other in truth know at all where he comes from? Does he really
see the flowers as they bloom by themselves? The old man asks, and in
so doing the question—the question about oneself, the true self—is
awakened in the other: “Who am I really?” The other begins to “search
for the ox” himself. This brings us back again to the first stage. The 10th
stage is therefore not a conclusion but a new beginning at Stage 1 for
another, namely for the young man whom the old man encounters in the
open “between” and in whom the question about the true self has been
awakened. What we have here is the transmission of the self, from self to
self.

♦ * ♦

To review what we have said so far: while stages 1 to 7 are basically

concerned with a step by step process of advancing along the way to the
self, the last three stages no longer mark any progress as such, but rather
portray a threefold manifestation, in each aspect of which the same thing
is totally present in a unique way even as it undergoes transformation. This
same thing, the selfless self, is for its part only fully real insofar as it is
able to realize itself in a totally different way in each aspect of this three­
fold transformation: as absolute nothingness, as the simplicity of nature,
and as the double self of communication. The final three stages portray as
it were the three-in-one character of the true self. This means that the self
is never “there” but always in process of transformation, always fitted to
its circumstances and likewise always proceeding from out of itself, at one
moment passing away into nothingness unhindered and without a trace,
at another, blooming in the flowers as the selfless self, and at a third, in
the encounter with the other, converting that very encounter into its own
self. The free interchange of the aspects treated in the 8th, 9th, and 10th
stages attests to the nonsubstantiality of the self. It is not an identity re­
maining with itself and in itself that constitutes the true selfless self, but an
ek-static dynamic drawing an invisible circle of nothing-nature-person,
as it were, with ex-sistence itself. To be sure, these three aspects, each of
which is capable of endless variations, can also be objectified and depicted
in imagery, as in the drawings that illustrate the final three stages. But the
dynamic as such, the one single thing that matters, can never be fixed ob­

22
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jectively or pictorially. It cannot even be symbolized by a circle, because

a circle is unmoving and static. It is rather a question of the circular
movement, of the movement that enables a circle to be drawn. But the
movement that enables the drawing of a circle as such must also enable
the circle that has been drawn to be erased. Otherwise the movent would
be bound by the drawing. In order to get at the selfless self as this dynamic
movement of ex-sistence, we need to turn to secondary pointers for help.
We may liken it, for instance, to fu-kaku, “wind-character,” and say that
this movement is like the blowing of the wind. By fu-kaku we are given to
understand something other than personality, for which Japanese has
another word, jin-kaku, human-character. Jin-kaku is something that
each human individual as such possesses. Human-character is for each
individual person completely identical with that of every other individual
and beyond dispute. In contrast, wind-character is completely individual,
in each instance different and possessed of a character all its own, always
blowing at a different velocity and varying according to which of its faces
it is showing. If one is bound by the “I am I,” one lacks this fu-kaku'. the
dynamic of the selfless self is absent. “How is it blowing with you?” “How
is the wind in your house?” In the history of Zen, masters were often
asked about the “how” of their self with questions such as these.
The 8th, 9th, and 10th stages, therefore, do not represent a step by
step advance but rather three aspects of the true, selfless self. Still the
sequence of stages here does have a practical significance. The absolutely
decisive element in the Zen way to the true self is the nothingness-event
that breaks through the “I am I” definitively, including also the subtler
forms it assumes in the realm of religion. In this absolute nothingness all
form fades away, and this means likewise that the self, free of form, dis­
closes itself initially as formlessness pure and simple, as formlessness itself.
This takes place at the 8th stage, represented by an empty circle. There
the circle “circles” itself, and nothingness, as a desubstantializing dynamic,
proceeds to the nothingness of nothingness. In this way the self resurrects
from nothingness and into the selfless self. But why then does “a tree in
bloom alongside a river” appear in the 9th stage that follows and not a
human being? It is a resurrection from nothingness to the selfless self;
and the selflessness that constitutes the fundamental condition of the true
self is first of all embodied, for the sake of that selflessness itself, in a reality
where the human is not to the fore, for instance in a blooming tree. This
is what the 9th stage shows us: a tree in bloom by a river and nothing else.
23
 UEDA

The human does not appear. Here we have instead the very selflessness
itself of the human being. Only then, in virtue of the reality of this embodi­
ment which confirms and sustains selflessness and which guards us against
falling back into the “I am I,” does the selfless self make its appearance
and because of its selflessness transform the “between” of the I-Thou into
its own ex-sisting inner space. This is the meaning of the 10th stage. This
relationship of mobility among the 8th, 9th, and 10th stages provides us
with our third model for “emptiness and fullness.”
The selfless self in its dynamic movement, as seen above with the aid
of a Zen text, may seem implausible, even fantastic, when compared with
the concept of the person as characterized by the modem understanding of
ego. Strangely enough, it seems to me that the nonsubstantializing concept
of the self treated here bears a structural relation to the concept of the
person characteristic of the medieval Christian doctrine of the Trinity.
This of course should not be taken to mean that the Buddhist self is the
equivalent of the Christian deity. There is no question of a real similarity
between “self” and “God,” but only of a similarity in the conceptual
structure of the way each finds its way into human understanding.

In this second part we turn to a more precise understanding of our topic.

To do so, we may take up separately three different problems that arise
in connection with what has been discussed above, and view them from a
wider perspective.
The first problem has to do with funyata (or emptiness, in the Buddhist
sense of the term). It is the problem of nothingness and oneness. At the
level of fundamental principle, Buddhist (both primitive Buddhism with
its doctrine of anattd as well as Mahayana Buddhism with its doctrine
of sunyata) denies the notion of being as such, and with it the category of
“substance” in the sense of some entity identical with itself and having its
ground of being in itsef. Buddhism sees at work in substantializing the
covert self-substantializing of the ego-captivated human subject. In con­
trast to the concept of substantial being, Buddhism recognizes only the
category of “relation.” According to Buddhist thought nothing at all is
in itself and through itself. Everything that is, only is in relation to other
things, in a relationship of mutual conditioning among beings. “To be”

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means “to be nothing in oneself and to stand in relation.” Of fundamental

importance here is the category of “relation,” for everything that stands
in relation comes to be what it is in relation and passes out of being what
it is again in relation. Even relationship itself is not an enduring state but a
dynamic event that happens toward another, with another, for another,
through another, by another, and so forth. In this relational dynamic each
and every thing is in itself a nothingness, which is precisely why it is
boundlessly open to universal relationships, all of which arfc then centered
on the nothingness of each thing in a once-and-for-all and unique manner.
This is what constitutes the individuality of each thing. As the Zen text
has it, “Up comes a flower and a world is born.”
This correlative, dynamic situation is treated in Buddhist thought from
a double perspective. The doctrine of sunyatd, according to which each
thing in its own being is empty, views the entire situation from the per­
spective of “nothingness”; while the doctrine of pratityasamutpdda, the
origination of each things in mutual dependency with everything about it,
views the same situation from the perspective of the universal dynamic of
relationship. But the truth lies in that inseparable correlatedness of
nothingness and the relational dynamic whereby correlatedness as such
is devoid of being and of nothingness. Corresponding to this correlatedness
is the distinctive formula widely used in Buddhist thought:
likewise Jit is not.
nevertheless
^(likewise }il is.
(nevertheless
In this double perspective of the and nevertheless or and likewise of A and
not-A Buddhism sees the truth of both being and nothingness. Being alone
would be onesided; nothingness alone would be onesided, too. The insight
into this and likewise of A and not-A is called prq/ffa-understanding, the
absolute wisdom beyond every duality. The and likewise as such is neither
A nor not-A. It cannot be determined by affixing any image or concept or
idea to it, and is thus sometimes referred to in modem Japanese philosophy
as “absolute nothingness,” of which the human subject in its “nothing­
ness” can only become aware in a non-objective way. Our question here
is: What can we say about oneness on the basis of this correlatedness of
nothingness and the relational dynamic?
The forty-fifth case of the Hekiganroku (trans, by K. Sekida in Two

25
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Zen Classics, New York: Weatherhill, 1977, p. 271) reads:

A monk asked Joshu, “All the Dharmas are reduced to oneness,
but what is oneness reduced to?” Joshu said, “When I was in
Seishu I made a hempen shirt. It weighed seven pounds.”
“All beings are reduced to One.” But to this Zen Buddhism adds the
question, “To what is the One reduced?” That all beings with their dif­
ferences and oppositions return to the original One is the doctrine of
“All is One.” But this does not yet make it clear what is meant by the One.
In certain circumstances the One could signify an ontological cul-de-sac
for the many. Therefore Zen Buddhism goes on to the further question,
“What is the One reduced to?” There is no stopping short, even at the
One itself: “All things indeed are reduced to One. Even that one is not
to be clung to.” To do so would mean getting trapped in oneness. Even
that One must be broken through since it cannot be the truth. Insofar as
oneness is understood as a unity and hence as distinct from difference and
opposition, it is being substantialized into a One which as such must then
be apprehended by a definite conception or in a definite form. Thus the One
would no longer be understood as a unifier but on the contrary as a cause
of dichotomy and opposition. For once conceived in a definite form, it
must exclude other things that do not fit this form, and what has been
excluded then finds its own One as a principle in another form. Then comes
the struggle over fundamental principle which leads to the deepest of di­
chotomies. In such fundamental opposition idealism must evoke materi­
alism, theism must evoke atheism or nihilism, and vice versa. If everything
is “in truth” One, then the true oneness of being must be exempt from
substantialist prehension through specific forms of the One. This is what
the question, “What is the one reduced to?” is aiming at. The question
leads to the realization that the One must become nothingness or that one
must abandon the One. This entails two dynamically correlative move­
ments: toward nothingness, and then toward (or back to) multiplicity.
Thus the truth of the One is nothingness and likewise multiplicity. In
Buddhism the complete formula reads: “Neither the One nor the Many;
the One and likewise the Many, the Many and likewise the One.” Once
the One has become nothingness, it then returns as the relationship of
“the One and likewise the Many, the Many and likewise the One.” At the
ground of this relationship, let it is emphasized yet again, lies ungrounded
nothingness, which hereafter carries out its negation at the level of the

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relationship “Neither the One nor the Many.” Nothingness dissolves the
Many into the One, and likewise disperses the One into the Many. In so
doing, nothingness eliminates from the Many its contradictoriness (but
not its differentiation) and eliminates from the One its security of being
closed up and locked away in itself (but not its unity). Thus the relationship
of “the One and likewise the Many, the Many and likewise the One” has
its ground of possibility in nothingness, which in turn has its reality con­
firmed in this relationship. In this sort of relational dynamic the true over­
coming of multiplicity signals nothing other than a return to multiplicity
as a process leading away from the One and toward nothingness. As the
Zen saying has it, “In the spring wind, constant and invisible, the long
boughs are long with blossoms and the short are short, each from itself.”
“The long, long and the short, short” or “Red, red and green, green.”
This is where Buddhism locates unity free of form, a unity that maintains
each being and each happening in its uniqueness and so displays a motley
symphony of being in the openness of nothingness. This is what is intended
by the Buddhist phrase, “Differentiation means unity, unity means dif­
ferentiation.” In this connection two standard terms should be mentioned
at least in passing. Buddhism speaks of ichinyo and funi. Ichi means “one”
and nyo means “as” or “such as” (thus echoing “thusness,” the Buddhist
notion of reality). Ichinyo can be roughly translated as “as one,” thus
giving us: (The two, or the many, are) as one. The two, as they are two,
are one. In other words, the two are “not two”—which is what the word
funi expresses. Fu means “not” and ni means “two.” Thus Buddhism
speaks less directly of oneness than it does of “as-one-ness” or “not-two-
ness.”
Let us listen once again to the example from the Hekiganroku:
A monk asked Joshu, “All the Dharmas are reduced to oneness,
but what is oneness reduced to?” Joshu said, “When I was in
Seishu I made a hempen shirt. It weighed seven pounds.”
The style and manner of reply of the Zen master is completely different
from the sort of argument attempted above. Instead of talking about the
situation, the Zen master is able to express the situation as such in a wholly
concrete and living way.

* ♦ ♦

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 UEDA

The second problem concerns the non-objective, ek-static experience

of nature found in the correlation between the 8th and 9th stages of the
Oxherding Pictures. In the explanation we saw that a tree in flower along­
side a river was nothing other than the selfless self. This situation, which
does not yield to the subject-object scheme, may now be clarified from
another point of view, one drawn chiefly from the philosophy of “pure
experience” found in Nishida Kitaro (1870-1945), a representative of
modem philosophy in Japan.
To cite from the opening chapter of Nishida’s A Study of GoodO^^ntst
Ministry of Education, 1960):
In the moment of seeing or hearing, where reflection (“I see
flowers”) and judgment (“The flowers are red”) are not yet present,
in that moment of actual seeing or hearing, there is neither subject
nor object. This directly experiencing experience, this “pure ex­
perience” not yet elaborated by reflecting and judging thought,
is the ground of being of the most real of all realities and the ground
of being of the true self, since prior to the dichotomy of subject and
object a non-differentiation, which is the original fullness of
totality, is present.
A direct bond between the empirical and the metaphysical shows up
here in a peculiar manner. In speaking of seeing and hearing, Nishida
stands firmly within the realm of experience. But insofar as he draws
nearer to experience than does empiricism, which from the outset overlays
a variety of thought constructs on experience, such as the hypothesis of
atoms of perception as the foundation of experience, or the idea of ver­
ifiability through experimentation, with Nishida experience leads imme­
diately to the metaphysical. Thus for Nishida the metaphysical does not
lie beyond experience, as is usually the case in metaphysics, but rather on
its other side, that is to say on the near side of experienced experience,
within the experiencing experience.” In the moment of seeing or hearing,
there is neither subject nor object,” for they are not yet able to be deter­
mined. In this sense it is “nothingness” and yet at the same time it is simply
a pure presence “without anyone seeing or anything being seen.”
Usually we are not aware of this “moment.” In our seeing and hearing
we leap over the “moment prior to the dichotomy.” We forget the “mo­
ment” and lump a vague stretch of time together to announce something
like, “I see flowers,” taking it as self-evident that this “I see flowers” is

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 EMPTINESS AND FULLNESS

immediate, fundamental experience. For Nishida this is already a re­

construction of what has been experienced into a subject-object frame­
work, and thus is no longer present but belongs to the past. It is no longer
an experiencing experience but an experienced experience that has been
reconstructed from a reflecting ego and a re-presentation of flowers as
something that has been seen. It is not that Nishida wanted to deny re­
flection and re-presentation altogether. What he wanted to deny was rather
setting up as self-evident from the start a duality that assumed forms like
mind and nature, consciousness and thing, or formally expressed, subject
and object. For Nishida it was a question of where to posit the immediacy
of experience, that original immediacy that is the basis of reality and that
offers the final guarantee for the unity of experience. He shifted this imme­
diacy back to a point prior to the dichotomy and traced it back through
experiencing experience itself. This point of pre-dichotomy is not to be
grasped through reflection. Nor can we apprehend it objectively—for
every objectification it must remain an empty nothingness. We become
aware of it only in an egoless, immediate, non-objective fashion. But how
does this take place? Since we usually find ourselves already in experienced
experience, that is, since the original and pre-dichotomy immediacy has
already been skipped over and forgotten, in order to get to the bottom
of experience we need to find our way back to the origin (Ursprung) by
taking a leap (Sprung) backwards. And we must do this in such a way
that even the retrieval itself is subsumed into the immediacy of experience.
But how is such a leap backwards to be accomplished ? Not through any
voluntary or reflective activity of our own. We cannot simply retreat at
will from the subject-object frame of reference. As Nishida says, “In the
moment of seeing or hearing there is neither subject nor object.” Struck by
the “moment” of a presence, unfettered by the subject-object framework,
and thus also egoless, we are carried back in a leap to the nothingness of
the “pre-”. The readiness to be struck by the “moment” requires as an
indispensable condition that we practice concentrating egolessly on the
“moment” of seeing or hearing, even though we must be struck in such a
way that our practicing itself is absorbed into the presence without remain­
der. In this breaking through of the enclosed I-am-I in and through the
“moment,” Nishida secs the empirical-metaphysical and the existentielle
as a unity realized by the self on an original ground prior to dichotomy.
In the pre-dichotomy state of actual seeing and hearing Nishida sees the
original interlacing of the empirical, the metaphysical, and the existentielle,

29
 UEDA

all three of which normally occur separately and at odds with one an­
other—which then faces human Dasein with a fatal difficulty.
In this way, at the “moment” of seeing and hearing we are struck by the
“moment” and broken through by it. We are carried back in a leap to the
nothingness of the “pre-” where we retrieve the origin that had been
skipped over and forgotten. But this does not mean that we end up fading
away into nothingness with the “pre-” alone remaining as the whole truth.
Nishida speaks of a “pre-dichotomy” and thus means to accord the dicho­
tomy itself a validity as well. But a dichotomy of what? This is a critical
question for Nishida. He takes it upon himself to ask from where and as
what this dichotomy is experienced and in so doing presents us with a
circular movement: back to the nothingness of the “pre-” and from there
on to an experience of the subject-object dichotomy as a split within the
original self in its pre-dichotomy state, an experience that now signals the
self-unfolding of pure experience. The subject-object frame then becomes
the authentic domain of the self that, once debecome into nothingness, now
comes to be out of nothingness. The self now sees everything, as the Zen
expression goes, “as if held in the palm of its inner hand” or “as its own
countenance.” Nishida speaks here of the subject-side and the object-side
of one and the same experiences that has unfolded. It is a question of a
double perspective, not of a duality of subject and object. For Nishida this
unfolding of experience belongs to pure experience.
It remains to ask whether pure experience, as Nishida treats it, can be
considered real experience. As an example to illustrate “pure experience”
we may cite, without entering into an interpretation, the well-known epi­
taph of Rainer-Maria Rilke:
Rose, oh pure contradiction, delight
to be the sleep of no one under so many
lids
Our present concern turns us to the “oh” to ask, “What really is this ohT'
Focusing on the oh might not be the most important from the point of
view of German poetics, but by turning the poem inside out as it were so
that the once unobtrustive little oh becomes a great Ohl, it becomes pos­
sible to look at it afresh as a primordial occurrence of the word. “Rose,
Oh! Pure contradiction...What then is this Ohl ? As a written word it
can be classed grammatically as an interjection. But what is really going
on in the Oh! with its actual outcry? What happens when Oh! is cried out
30
 EMPTINESS AND FULLNESS

in reality and in truth? Simply put, we may speak of an “Oh-event.”

If we listen to the poem not as a finished written or printed product
but as an occurrence of the word in the actual act of poeticizing, we can
apprehend in the Oh! the origin of the poem from which the remaining
words of the verse unfold as an articulation. “Rose, Oh!..Struck by
pure presence, the cry goes out, “Oh!” What is occurring in this actual
Oh!'I
On the one hand, pure presence robs us of speech. “Oh!” What is going
on here in actuality is no longer that which “people” depict in their trusty
but overused word “rose.” It is no longer that which people encounter in
the linguistic precognitive world. There is, so to speak, a flash of rose-
no, of something, something unspeakable. The rose becomes an Oh!.
Or more properly put, it debecomes an Oh!. Here the linguistic precogni­
tive world is broken through, rent asunder. The Oh! is a primordial sound
of presence at one with that original, primitive sound wherein the world
of language is broken back into. “Oh!” Language is gathered back into
the inarticulate in order to debecome in absolute quiet. “Oh!”—and
quiet. At the same time this signifies the essential death of the human
subject as an essence endowed with language. The Oh! is not a word that
one has at one’s disposal. The Oh! is spoken and language is taken away.
The Oh! is rather the sound of the last breath issuing forth from the human
subject endowed with language before it dies. The human has, in its
essence, ceased to be. It has become, debecome an Oh!. There remains now
only the Oh! wherein both rose and human subject have debecome what
they once were. “Oh!”—and quiet.
On the other hand, this Oh! is also and at the same time the prefatory,
starting point for the words of the verse that follow after it: “Oh pure
contradiction....” It is the very first, primordial sound that reverberates
in absolute stillness. It is as this sound that the unspeakable presence itself,
which takes away language, becomes word in general. As the presence of
the unspeakable, this Oh! is the very first of all words. It does not really
belong yet to language, but is a nonverbal, fore-word to language through
which the way to language in general is re-disclosed. Similarly, it signals
the re-surrection of the human to its essential linguisticity. “Oh!” is the
first and the earliest sound of the human as it is bom again into the
linguisticity that characterizes its essence and sets it off. “Oh!”—everything
is said at once, albeit still inarticulately; and thus spoken, everything is
understood in an original, albeit still unreflective, sense.
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 UEDA

To sum up: the Oh-event is a single and likewise a double event. In the
single Oh!, rose and human subject alike have tZebecome the Oh! which
is, as such, “neither subject nor object.” And likewise, that same Oh! is
the proper origin from which the structured totality unfolds. It is nothing­
ness and everything in one, and that in a fully concrete way: “Oh!” If the
Oh! actually occurs in this way, the Oh-event would constitute what
Nishida understands as a pure experience, or in this case is in fact pure
experience itself.
Pure experience, as just illustrated in the example of the Oh!, is neither
experience linguistically apprehended nor is it simply nonlinguistic ex­
perience. It is the experience of the word being taken away and at the same
time the experience of the word being bom. There presence robs one
outright of language and in so doing likewise becomes the first of all words.
It tears itself away from language and pushes itself into language. Hence
through the Oh! and as the Oh! there takes place a circular movement from
one extreme to the other—away from the word and toward the word.
And this movement likewise signals a “death and resurrection” of homo
loquens, the human subject endowed with language. It is a matter of a
radical freedom from language and likewise the most primordial freedom
for language. As this freedom, the Oh! is something that occurs at the
ground of the essence of the human, and at the same time is something
that concerns all beings as a whole.
The Oh!, as the very first word proceeding forth from absolute silence,
as the nonverbal fore-word to language, could be described as an Urwort,
an original, primordial word. But this does not mean that every oh that is
interjected into human speech from time to time would thereby qualify
as a primordial word. Without the event described above there can be no
talk of primordial word. Conversely, that event is not bound to any one
particular word. It could as well happen in a pre-linguistic form like
laughing or crying, even in the drawing of a breath or in physical move­
ment that we might refer to as body-language. In coming to lingustitic
articulation, the primordial word itself quite often disappears “between
the lines” where it works unseen to shape the style of a composition as
a whole and even to determine the choice of words. (Thus, in Rilke’s
epitaph, we have only an inconspicuous little “oh” that, according to the
meter, receives a weak accent. The Oh! has been articulated into the words
of the verse which are the only thing that counts in a poem, leaving only
a faint trace of itself behind in the “oh”.

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A few further remarks on the Oh-event might aid at the same time to
explain what is meant by "pure experience.”
1. In the Oh! silence and language are one. In this Oh! and as this Oh!,
language is silent, and silence utters itself from out of silence. In the Oh!
language frees itself from talk.
2. In this Oh! reality and language are not yet distinguished from one
another. "Oh!”—speaking a primordial word, as a primary event in
absolute quiet, is a primary reality in the direct sense of the term. Pri­
mordial word signifies primordial matter or affair. There is as yet no
rift between experience and its linguistic expression, no duality of the real
and the unreal. This absolute non-differentiation of primordial word and
primordial affair in one and the same Oh! provides various areas where
reality and language are already divided with an original and final ground­
work for binding reality and language back together, as in the case of the
accord between knowing and the object of knowing, in the formation of
reality through the word, and perhaps also in activity that "keeps its
word.”
3. Who is it really that speaks that Oh! as primordial word? In the
outcry "Oh!” there is no “I say, ‘Oh!’ ” being spoken. The I is instead
completely forgotten there. It is not the I that cries out "Oh!” but an
ek-stasis from the I. The Oh! occurs as an ek-static unity of person, lan­
guage, and reality (or affair).
4. A single Oh!, and yet two movements in opposite directions. Rose
becomes Oh! and likewise human subject becomes Oh!. We have here both
primordial appeal and primordial response in one. "Oh!”—a primordial
dialogue in an original accord. The dialogical essence of language goes
back to the Oh!.
As an occurrence of "pure experience,” the Oh! is also a circular move­
ment from language through absolute silence and back again to language.
The initial movement to language is as such the primordial word, the non­
verbal fore-word to language. Through it the way to language is disclosed.
Then language comes into the picture, that is to say, the primordial word
is articulated through language in words. In this regard Rilke’s epitaph in
its entirety can be seen as an articulation of the Oh!, of an Oh! that the
poet, struck by a presence, has cried out ek-statically. Insofar as it has come
to articulation, and in fact only to that extent, we are able to look back to
the source and recognize such a thing as primordial word. Of itself the Oh
would be nothing. In articulation the Oh becomes a nothingness that says
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 UEDA

everything at once and is then articulated as such. This articulation of the

primordial word is the equivalent of what we mentioned above as the
unfolding of pure experience passing judgment on itself. Thus the words
cited above in commenting on the 9th station, “The flowers bloom, just as
they bloom by themselves,” also serve as an articulation of pure experience.
The problem of articulation though, merits treatment all on its own, and
we shall have to pass over it lightly here with only a hint of an explanation.
In the articulation of a primordial word such as the Oh!, we need to draw
distinctions with regard to mode and with regard to dimension:
Modally speaking we have (a) the Zogos-articulation of the Oh! as a
non-differentiation pure and simple, an absolute indifference; (b) the
por^-articulation of the Oh! as a primordial sound; and (c) the perfor-
mwice-articulation of the Oh! as a primordial force.
Dimensionally speaking we need to distinguish between a first and a
second articulation. The Zen saying, “The flowers bloom just as they
bloom by themselves,” belongs to the first articulation, while “the phi­
losophy of pure experience” belongs to the second. In this connection
two questions arise: (1) What kind of an event is the “articulation” of
the primordial word in general, and in which kind of relation does the
linguistic articulation of the primordial word stand to the use of language?
And (2) What characterizes the articulated (for example, what is charac­
teristic of a statement as a logos-articulation of a primordial word,
particularly where “logic” is concerned)?

* * «

The third problem concerns the interhuman relationship in the most

general sense of the term. The question here is: What is characteristic of
the interhuman relationship grounded in nothingness toward which the
human subject debecomes and from which it resurrects?
In the 10th station of the Oxherding Pictures we saw two men meeting
on a road. In the context of self-becoming as understood by Zen and as
the accompanying text explains, it is an image of the true self in its aspect
of a double self grounded on selflessness in nothingness. Split open by
absolute nothingness the self spreads out and unfolds itself selflessly in­
to the between where the other in its otherness belongs to the selflessness
of the self. As such this situation contains more than what is given im­
mediately and expressly in the text. It is able to present what is charac­
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 EMPTINESS AND FULLNESS

teristic with regard to the problem of “I and Thou.” Indeed, the I-Thou
relationship is contained in this situation as an essential moment, but the
situation in its entirety is something other, something more than the I-
Thou relationship. The example of the common form of Japanese greet­
ing may help to clarify things.
Two Japanese meet on a road. First they bow to one another, sometimes
so deeply as to suggest a bow to the groundlessness of nothingness where
there is neither I nor Thou. Only then do they straighten up and turn to
greet one another. “Nice day, isn’t it?” “Yes, it is.” The scene is incon­
spicuous and everyday enough, hardly more than a customary form of
meeting and salutation. But a form is from the very start more than some­
thing merely formal, though it can deteriorate to the level of pure form.
A form of greeting is originally an elemental expression and a way of
exercising human self-understanding in interhuman encounters where the
essence of the human is being expressed. This leads us to inquire into what
kind of human self-understanding through encounter it is that underlies
such a form of everyday greeting.
At first the two partners bow deeply to one another from opposite
sides, out of courtesy as it is commonly said. But the deep bow is some­
thing on the order of being and carries more in it than mere “courtesy.”
It is a matter of making oneself a nothingness before the other, so that
the other, too, then ceases to be present—and vice versa. Instead of
stepping right into the midst of an I-Thou relationship, the bow signals
an initial plunge into the depths of groundlessness, breaking the “ego”
as it were in the depths of nothingness and allowing it to debecome to a
point where there is no longer neither “I” nor “Thou.” It is a sort of
submersion into the groundlessness of nothingness.
Only then do the two partners straighten up again—resurrect from
nothingness—and turn toward one another to take a position in a mutual
I-Thou relationship. This means that their I-Thou relationship is at the
same time permeated with the neither-I-nor-Thou in nothingness. A dy­
namic correlatedness of the I-Thou relationship and the neither-I-nor-
Thou in nothingness takes place here. How does this function within the
I-Thou relationship itself? An infinite openness permeated with nothing­
ness is disclosed from within the between, at the point where the two stand
vis-a-vis each other. Each of the two partners in the I-Thou relationship
has now experienced absolute non-differentiation as a neither -I-nor-Thou
in nothingness. In this open between, each can on the one hand live out
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 UEDA

the entire I-Thou relationship as its own self (absolute self-sufficiency and
exclusivity), and on the other abandon the entire I-Thou relationship to
the Thou into which it is absorbed without remainder (absolute depen­
dency). Thus on the ground of non-differentiation which each of the two
partners has experienced in the neither-I-nor-Thou, each can both live out
the entire relationship on the I-side (I am “I and Thou” in absolute self-
sufficiency) as well as abandon this same relationship entirely to the
Thou-side (I am in my absolute dependency “I and Thou,” and Thou art
master). In other words, as Zen Buddhism says, we are dealing here with a
reciprocal exchange of the role of master. This correlatedness of absolute
self-sufficiency and absolute dependency (again reciprocal) characterizes
the I-Thou relationship grounded on nothingness. Only in this way do both
partners find themselves in a relationship where both are at once abso­
lutely free and completely the equal of one another.
They bow to one another in the groundlessness of nothingness and
straighten up again from nothingness to turn toward one another. This
entire movement comprises the following phases and moments:
1. The neither “I” nor “Thou” in nothingness.
2. The I-Thou relationship which of itself contains (a) a mutual opposi­
tion of I and Thou on the plane of relationship, and (b) a correlatedness
of absolute self-sufficiency and absolute dependency grounded in the I-
Thou relationship permeated with nothingness (that is, a reciprocal ex­
change between the two partners of the role of master).
This entire movement, which may appear complicated in its particular
phases and moments though in reality, as an activity, it is quite simple,
constitutes the selfless self in the interhuman relationship. Put the other
way around, in the interhuman relationship the selfless self has to be able
freely to traverse these various phases and moments.
Two Japanese meet on the road. They bow to one another in the depths
of nothingness where there is neither I nor Thou (the 8th station of the
Oxherding Pictures), and then straighten up, turn to one another (the 10th
station), and exchange greetings. “Nice day, isn’t it?” “Yes, it is” (the
9th station). Taken at bottom, the whole movement of the greeting is
nothing other than the circular dynamic of the 8th, 9th, and 10th stations
of the Oxherding Pictures, where the Buddhist concern of the non-differen-
tiation of the religious and the everyday is given expression. This is how
everyday life, in all its details, gets filled up with meaning. It is therefore of
critical importance for both of the partners whether they are able, in
36
 EMPTINESS AND FULLNESS

reality and in truth, so to greet their counterpart.

In the relational dynamic grounded in nothingness, the human subject
does not understand itself as a subject in itself substantially identical
with itself that only later somehow comes to take up relations with an
other. Rather it understands itself at any given moment from the relation­
ship in which it finds itself involved from the beginning. It understands
itself as already “a partner of a partner.” It belongs to the inner structure
of the self to step out of itself and to be permanently already in relation­
ship to an other against whom it stands in mutual confrontation. If we
describe this structure of “stepping outside of oneself” with the term
ex-sistence, the other, in its opposition to the self is not an other, but
precisely in virtue of its otherness, the embodiment of the ex of ex-sistence.
It is the out-of-itselfness of the selfless self. Self vis-a-vis other: each, cut
open by nothingness and spread out, combines its being with the being of
the other so that in this combination with one another they are “neither
two nor one.” I and Thou then become two perspectives at opposite poles.
I am “I and Thou,” and the same can be said vice versa for the Thou. The
self is the relationship of “the partner of a partner.” This does not, how­
ever, signal a onesided dissolution of self in the relationship. The entire
relationship is self. I am “I and Thou.” And this situation is not a state of
rest but an event happening at each and every moment. It can only be
practiced and confirmed at any given moment concretely, in encounter
and communication.
On the ethical plane the emphasis, obviously, falls on the moment of
self-negation when the role of master is surrendered to the other. But this
does not mean a onesided sacrifice of self. At bottom it is a question of
reciprocal exchange in “giving priority to the other,” of a mutual exchange
of “Please, after you,” so to speak. This is not, however, a conscious, in­
tentional exchange; that would relegate it to the level of commerce
between egos. “Giving priority to the other” (or “according the other the
priority of being”) shows us the greatness of the selfless self which in so
doing is in a position to liberate the other from its ego-emprisonment so
that the relationship of ex-sistence described above can function re­
ciprocally.

Translated by James W. Heisig

and Frederick Greiner

37