Ron Scapp Brian Seitz Editors Philosophy, Travel, and Place Being in Transit palgiave macmiUan 128 I 1. B. MOHAGHEGH NOTES 1. Bernard Khoury (architect). B018. Beirut, Lebanon (1998). http://www. bernardkhoury.com/project.php?id= 127. 2. Larissa Sansour/Soren Lind (filmmakers). In the Future, They Ate from the Finest Porcelain (film, 2016). http://www.1arissasansour.com/ Future.html. 3. Bernard Khoury (architect). B018. Beirut, Lebanon (1998). http://www. bernardkhoury.com/project.php?id= 127. 4. Bernard Khoury (architect). B018. Beirut, Lebanon (1998). http://www. bernardlchoury.com/project.php?id=127. 5. The term “dead ringers” derives more accurately from an old practice of fraud in horse-racing, which prompts one to add another conceptual personage to the mix of nocturnal experience: The Horseman’s Night. 6. Larissa Sansour/Soren Lind (filmmakers). In the Future, They Ate from the Finest Porcelain (film, 2016). http://www.larissasansour.com/ Future.html. 7. Larissa Sansour/Soren Lind (filmmakers). In the Future, They Ate from the Finest Porcelain (film, 2016). http://www.larissasansour.com/ Future.html. 8. Larissa Sansour/Soren Lind (filmmakers). In the Future, They Ace from the Finest Porcelain (film, 2016). http://www.larissasansour.com/ Future.html. 9. Larissa Sansour/Soren Lind (filmmakers). In the Future, They Ate from the Finest Porcelain (film, 2016). http://www.larissasansour.com/ Furure.html. 10. Is the implication here that totalitarian systems remain optimally uninocu lated against the imperceptible travel of certain images, stories, and rum ors (counter-scourge).. .especially those traded by night? CHAPTER 9 Walking in Wild Emptiness: A Zen Phenomenology Bria;n Shudo Schroeder The mountains, the rivers, the earth—where are they to be found? —Yunmen Wenvan, in Blue CliffRecord’ We learn a place and how to visualize spatial relationships, as children, on foot and with imagination. —Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild2 Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl In wildness is the salvation of the world. Perhaps this is the of a wolf hidden meaning in the howl of the wolf, long known among mountains, but seldom perceived among men. —Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac3 The practice of the Wild begins with who we arc, which is how we practice vhere we are rzcjht now. —Jason M. Wirth, Mountains, Rivers, and the Great Earth4 B. S. Schroeder () Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY, USA e-mail: bxsgla@rit.edu © The Author(s) 2018 R. Scapp and B. Seitz (eds.), Philosophy, Travel, and Place, https://doi.org/1 0.1 007/978-3-319-98225-0_9 129 130 9 WALKING IN WILl) EMPTINESS: A ZEN PHENOMENOLOGY B, S. SCHROEDER 131 the reference is literally to things, to mountains and waters as forms, not as metaphors), but then in the great awareness and experience of empti ness (Sk. ãnyata; Ch. wu there are no mountains and waters. This leads to the realization—perhaps for the first time—that there are moun tains and waters and this is all that they are. In other words, there is no separation from mountains and waters from which we have much to learn from them; and yet, we are neither mountains nor waters. This dif ference is critical and is set against the simplistic, commonplace, modern Western interpretation that “being Zen” is somehow about being one with everything. The meaning of this poem does not lend itself to simply rational explanation; rather, it is more like a käan.9 Aldo Leopold wrote about “thinking like a mountain.” This enig matic declaration is also perhaps best approached as a koan. What does Leopold mean? What does it mean to be human? What can we learn from mountains? Addressing these questions, the thirteenth-century Zen master and philosopher Eihei Dogen brings to our attention the thought of the between. According to him, if you doubt that mountains are walk ing then you do not know your own walking. And if we do not know something as basic, as fundamental to our being as walking, then we really cannot say that we have any clear idea about what it means to be a human being. Dogen is not saying that if mountains doubt their own walking then they do not know that humans are walking. There is a clear distinction that he is making between humans and other beings, which puts him squarely in line with the vast majority of Western thinkers. What does it mean for mountains and waters, that is, the natural ele ments, to be what they are? How does this affect the activity of being human? Dogen pushes against the idea that the interconnectedness of all things, or dependent origination, means that we as human beings are the same as all other things. We cannot simply assume, therefore, that what we see as water is the same as what a fish, a frog, or an aquatic bird, for instance, sees as water. Neither can we know how water is to itself. To illustrate this, in the fascicle “Mountains and Waters Sun-a” (Sansuikyo W7J() in his masterwork Shobogenzo (ii; Treasury of the True Dharma Eye), Dogen uses the example of the palace or pavilion.’0 To the fish, water is their palace, their place, their realm. More than that, it is their karma. Dogen’s point is that our own human realm, our own palatial spatiality (though perhaps placiality is the better operative term), is precisely to think in-between various realms of beings, both like and unlike ourselves. It is our MOVING BETWEEN WALKING MOUNTAINS AND THE OPEN SKY Being in transit is always a matter of being-between. Usually it is the case that one is between a point of departure and a point of arrival. One can, however, also move without a discernible beginning or end, whether spa tially, temporally, physically, or psychologically. This is possible from the perspective of the Buddhist concept of dependent origination (Sk. pratit yasamutpada).5 This ontological principle is not confined to abstract laws of causality; it applies to the very nature of existence and identity. From this standpoint, there is no first cause from which all things emerge. Moreover, dependent origination repudiates any assertion of the inde pendence of objects or subjects as well as their permanence and stability as such. In the form of Buddhism known as Zen, the “great matter” of life is the relation between birth and death. It is between these two funda mental events that the human being is situated and moves. We neither choose the moment of our birth nor, in most instances, the moment of our death; though, even if the latter choice is made, preceding it there is always a time of not knowing that moment. In that being-between we are bound to the great Earth, to nature, to the elemental. By and large, we do not know how to just be human beings. We sometimes react and respond to the awesome power of nature by attempting to assume through our technologies the mantle of the gods and thus try to bend nature to our will. Or sometimes we become pas sively reactive and do not engage nature as participating natural beings. Either way, we are outside the flow of dao (Ch. ifl), usually translated as “the way,” or what Gary Snyder refers to as the wild, which comes very close to being how the Chinese define the term Dao, the way of Great Nature: eluding analysis, beyond categories, self-organizing, self-informing, playful, surprising, impermanent, insubstantial, independ ent, complete, orderly, unmediated, freely manifesting, selfauthenticating, self-willed, complex, quite simple. Both empty and real at the same time. In some cases we might call it sacred. It is not far from the Buddhist term Dhcwma with its original senses of forming and firming!L These senses of being simultaneously empty and real, of forming and firming, find expression in a famous Chinese Chän (Zen) poem,7 which says that in the beginning there were mountains and waters (and here a 132 9 B. S. SCHROEDER responsibility, or again, our karma, to be able to think about the relation between realms, which is to say, places, and the many beings that inhabit and dwell within and between those places. This is precisely what makes the human being different from other species—and why awakening or enlight enment is possible only for human beings. One is awakened to being able to think as well as move between the multiple spaces that make up the natural world, which also includes the conceptual world. This is a deep insight of Zen, though by no means exclusive to it. At the beginning of the “Mountains and Waters Sutra,” Dogen writes the following lines, which have the ring of a kOan: “Mountains do not lack the characteristics [or virtues] of mountains. Therefore, they always Mountains’ walking [that is, the activity abide in ease and always walk. of the walking of mountains] is just like human walking. Accordingly, do no doubt mountains’ walking even though it does not look the same as human walking.” The Japanese word translated as “characteristics” is kudoku (J ), which can also be rendered as “virtues.” The toku () which means in kudoku is the translation of the Chinese word de variously “inherent character,” “excellence,” “inner power,” “integrity,” or “virtue.” It is similar to the Greek word arëte, although the specific human moral sense of virtue connoted by this term is not so prevalent in the Chinese, or at least in the Daoist, use of the term. This is the same word one finds in the title of what is arguably the most famous work in Daoism, the Daodejing (i; The Classic [or Book] of the Way and Its Virtue [or Power]). The toku of the mountain is precisely its character istic; it is the expression of its excellence. In other words, a mountain is not doing anything other than what it is supposed to be doing. From the start, Dogen adjures, learn from the mountain not to be other than what you are. In the middle of the “Mountains and Waters Sutra,” Dogen makes his strongest case against the view that Zen is irrational, that it is about just doing what comes naturally without being completely aware or fully understanding what one is doing, that is, just tapping into some instinc tual animal aspect of being human. He criticizes his fellow monks and Zen practitioners who would argue that statements about mountains walking or traveling on water are illogical. But, he says, such statements “are only illogical for them, not for Buddha ancestors.”12 The Buddha ancestors are those who see the nature of reality with an awakened mind, with a true “Dharma eye.” Several lines later, Dogen notes that even if it is beyond understanding in the end, it is not there—it is here. In W’LKING IN WILD EMPTINESS: A ZEN PHENOMF.NOLOGY 133 other words, this “beyond understanding” is not pre-logical; rather, it is post-logical. In the end, those who make this criticism are simply off the mark. Drawing on the insights of earlier masters, in the ShObogenzo fasci Dgen cle “The Mind Itself is Buddha” (Sokushin Zebutsu exactly But what the same. and are one teaches that mind and Buddha in that He writes precise with answer. provides a us is “mind?” Dogen wondrous the is “What query, Lingyu’s response to master Guishan clear mind?” Yangshan Huiji replied, “I say it is mountains, rivers, and the earth; it is the sun, the moon, and stars.” Dogen continues with this commentary: ... (s), What is said here is not more, not less. Mountains, rivers, and earth mind are just mountains, rivers and the earth. There are no extra waves or sprays [in this mind]. The sun, the moon, and stars mind is just the sun, the moon, and the stars. There is no extra fog or mist. The coming and going of birth and death mind is just the coming and going of birth and death. There is no extra delusion or enlightenment.3 Phenomena are simply as they are. This is true also for human beings. Understanding this is being awakened to the realization that mind itself is Buddha. Buddha- nature is impermanence and interconnectedness. Thus, what it means to be human is always to be in relation to some thing, to some other, and to ourselves. We learn from the mountains, but we are not the mountains. It means being open to the perspective of the other, in this case, that of the mountain, though we can say more generally that it means being open to the space occupied by the elemen tal. It also means to be open to one’s own limitations. Dogen is not discussing the abstractions of emptiness and form in the “Mountains and Waters Sutra”; rather, he is talking about moun tains and waters, that is, the elemental. This is similar to the twentiethcentury Kyoto School philosopher Nishitani Keiji’s’4 observation that the sky (sora) is the visible manifestation of emptiness, or what can also be translated here as “void” (kü) (both are written with the same char acter in Japanese: ).15 In other words, this is about as close as we can get to the elemental itself the open—which is to say, the empty— sky. It is to this standpoint that John Sallis leads us when he writes in the Prologue to The Return to Nature: “Since the things of nature are encompassed by various elements—and always by Earth and sky—they 134 9 WALKING IN WILD EMPTINESS: A ZEN PHENOMENOLOGY B. S. SCHROE1)ER 135 In moving away from his earlier language of ontological transcend ence and toward that of indwelling, Heidegger employs the language of the “step back” in order to get back to where we already are in the first place, not to transcend and arrive at an entirely new and different place. For instance, the present reader is likely sitting in a room or some sheltered space, thus sharing not only that physical location but also the space of language and thought. And yet, the reader is also already in nature. We do not need to travel to some remote area to be in nature. There is a paradox here: While we may be there already, if we do not dwell in that being there already, then we are not actually quite there already. Dogen observes that one can be somewhere and yet not aware that one is there. This is what he calls “actualizing the fundamental point,”22 and one of the ways to understand that is to be fully where one is in the moment. The horizon of the beginning sections of Being and Time is tempo rality, which is a way of exploding the encasement of the spatial model. At the end of this work, however, Heidegger seems unable to make the move fully from the Zeitlichkeit des Daseins to the Temporalitat des Seins because the temporality of being would encompass the temporality of Dasein. Now, perhaps Heidegger is unable because we keep falling back into the spatial image. Another difficulty is that this attempt is a move toward an encapsulating, enclosing model, which would limit the tempo rality of being. Could it be that the way Out is by way of another tempo ralized sense of dwelling? What is interesting is that Heidegger then moves from temporality to another spatial model, namely, die Lichtung, the “clearing” or “lighting,” which is his corresponding concept to the Platonic chãra (space; region; location). This turn toward the spatial, which is always for Heidegger primarily a turn toward place (Ort), reaches a culmination in the 1969 Le Thor Seminar where we encounter the phrase “topology of being.”23 Still, there seems to be a consistent thread throughout his writing that the question concerns the temporalization of the spatial. Yet in his 1962 lecture, “On Time and Being,” Heidegger argues that the ground is nei ther temporal nor spatial. Indeed, what proves to be most elusive, most ambiguous, is the very concept of Grund. In a move that captures this ambiguity, Sallis writes, “The case of the sky makes it especially evident can be apprehended in the fullness of their appearance only if they show themselves within their elemental setting, only if an openness to the ele ments belongs intrinsically to their apprehension.”6 We know what the elements are even though we have never seen them; what we see are manifestations of the elements or particular beings that participate, or are disclosed, in the showing forth, what the Greeks called the phaInestai, of the elemental. Sallis characterizes the elemental as “gigantic,” even “mon strous,” and writes, “no other elemental is as openly encompassing as the sky.”7 The empty or open sky elicits a sense of the emptiness of Mahyãna Buddhism, that is, a fundamental originar interconnectedness (Sk. pratityasamutpada) of all beings and things both sentient and non-sentient. Alphonso Lingis captures this sense in his beautiful and haunting book, Dangerous Emotions We live our lives on the surface of the planet, among things we can detach and manipulate; we live under the sky. The sky is without surface, without shape, without inner structure, ungraspable. We see in the sky the sover eign realm of chance. The sky is also a bond uniting us to all who breathe under its expanse, uniting us to all who are born and shall be born under that sky 18 Under the empty sky we are all bound together; and stated karmi cally, there is no action that is independent of other actions. We move in-between the interconnectedness of all things in the openness of emptiness. MOVING BETWEEN THE SPATIAL AND THE TEMPORAL In Country Path Conversations,’9 which is in many respects a cri us tique of his earlier thinking in Being and Time,20 Heidegger directs horizons wherein region,” toward the concept of die Gegnet, “the open that are surrounded or encompassed but not necessarily encased since open. be longer no would it case would limit the open region, in which Therefore, the matter becomes not that of transcendentally positing the horizon, but rather of moving toward, Heidegger writes, “an indwelling releasernent [instandige Gelassenheit] to the woriding of the world.”2’ This indwelling is a listening, a corresponding with that to, or in, which we belong. that elementals are intimately linked to space and time, though they are neither simply spatial nor temporal.”24 The question then for both Heidegger and Sallis concerns the status of the between. What is it that I 136 B. S. SCHR()E1)ER fills this place between the spatial and the temporal, if in fact it can be filled? Or perhaps better put, what is it that moves between the spatial and the temporal? RELEASING THE OPEN REGION OF DAO There are two senses of the word open in Heidegger: the open region, which is so radical in its openness that it is closed to us, and the horizon, which, because it is a closure, is open. Heidegger’s use of this distinction is ambiguous at times, and this is also the case with the notion of the Lichtung. The example he gives is a clearing in the forest, an opening that allows us to move freely about and see the forest with the perspec tive of distance thus enabling us to make sense of our placiality. But the clearing in the forest is the horizon. The forest itself is the open region precisely because of its openness, because it has no boundary, no limit, no péras, as the Greeks termed it. The forest is not open to us; it is closed because of its radical openness. It is like the feeling one has in the middle of the desert where the surrounding openness leaves one without a sense of bearing, so that the only focal point is the immediate space that one is in. One is disoriented because there is no horizon. There is in a sense no world because there are no fixed reference points. It is para doxically a claustrophobic infinite expanse, but with infinite understood also as in-the-finite. There is a horizon within the open region. Both world (Welt) and earth (Erde), terms whose meaning Heidegger distinguishes in his sem inal essay “The Origin of the Work of Art,”25 are horizons in the open region. We are always dwelling within horizons. But how are these hori zons established? That is the question of the difference between, on the one hand, existence understood in terms of willing, and on the other in terms of non-willing, or what Meister Eckhart names Gelassenheit. How are our habitations established within nature? In one sense, it is all within nature. We can dwell willfully, that is, try to bend nature and the horizon to our own sense of what is “in each case mine” (je mein),26 and thus set up the landmarks that will delimit the horizon; or we can dwell in a different way, one that walks like and with the mountains, one that flows like and with the waters of Dao. The open region contains that from which it also draws. The open region in which we always are exceeds us, and therefore withdraws from our grasp. This is a withdrawing of the will as transcendental positing 9 WALKING IN WILD EMPTINESS: A ZEN I’HENOMENOLOGY 137 of horizon. This is the transcendental thinking of Being and Time that Heidegger is trying to think beyond in Contributions to Philosophy27 and, more radically so, in Country Path Conversations. We posit a hori zon so that we can think of ourselves as human, understand the human itself, but then we need to understand that positing, and so we estab lish another horizon in which that will make sense. Thus, all we will get are these horizons encased in one another. We therefore have to change our mode of thinking: Instead of the transcendental positing of horizon, which will always be anthropocentric and thus tied to the will, we need to think in terms of indwelling to the open region. This is what is meant by the word Gelassenheit. Unfortunately, Gelassenheit is often erroneously construed as a rad ical passivity, in the sense of just doing nothing. The translation of Gelassenheit as “letting-be” implies a sense of both activity and passiv ity; the letting in letting-be is the middle voice. Heidegger makes it clear though that this is not the correct understanding: Gelassenheit is outside the domain of passivity and activity.28 Gelassenheit is perhaps better trans lated as “releasernent” since this implies this condition of being outside. The parallels between Gelassenheit and the Daoist concept of wu wei non-doing or non-action), which also is often wrongly interpreted as a radical passivity, are worth noting. More accurately, wu wei iS wei wu wei, that is, doing non-doing. This is the activity of dao, which is “orig inally perfect and all pervading,” as Dogen writes in the opening line of “Universally his earliest circulated writing, Fukanzazengi Zazen”).29 Recommended Instructions for Heidegger was familiar with the ancient Chinese word da.o even in his earlier thinking although it does not appear, to my knowledge, until the third of three lectures given in 1957—1958 under the title “The Nature of Language.” Heidegger is at once both close and yet distant in ascer taining its meaning. He seems to ignore the very first line of Laozi’s Daodejing—”Dao that can be named is not Dao”—and displays his fidel ity to the Greek lexicon when he writes: Dao could be the way that gives all ways, the very source of our power to think what reason, mind, meaning, lo’gos properly mean to say—prop erly, by their proper nature. Perhaps the mystery of mysteries of thoughtful Saying conceals itself in the word “way,” Dao, if only we let these names return to what they leave unspoken, if only we are capable of this, to allow them to do so. All is way.3° 138 B. S. SCHROEI)ER This passage merits considerably more time to its exegesis than I will give it here; for now I wish only to bring to our attention the phrase “if only we let these names return to what they leave unspoken, if only we are capable of this ...“ The temptation for ‘vVestern humanism is to define our own essence. Heidegger recognizes this as tantamount to a type of infinite regress and seeks to point out the limitation of this way of thinking. This is played out in the dialogue “A Triadic Conversation” in Country Path Conversations. One finds here still a desire for humanism, though not for the old type of humanism, but rather for a humanism that actually grasps the problematic of the human. The questions that confront us then are: Where are we doing this? And who are we doing this? So, when Dogen writes about mountains walking, or about Zen practice, this is the activity of no activity, wei wu wei. This is the meaning of his fundamental idea regarding zazen, the heart of his Zen practice— which is between thinking and namely, non-thinking (hi-shiryo not thinking, in a place that is not a place. In his own way, Dogen is attempting to enact, not just think, this return to what names leave unspoken. This return, this non-thinking, we can also call Gelassenheit. It is remarkable that Dogen and Eckhart developed these very similar concepts only a few decades apart from one another, and that it was not until about the same time in the twentieth century that they resurfaced again in both Germans’ and Japan in the thinking of Heidegger and the Kyoto School, respectively. MOUNTAINS PRACTICING WALKING Dogen writes: “Know that mountains are not the realm of human beings or the realm of heavenly beings. Do not view mountains from the stand ard of human thought. If you do not judge mountains’ flowing by the human understanding of flowing, you will not doubt mountains flow ing and not flowing.”3’ What is meant here by flowing? One perspective is that this is what is meant by mountains mountain-ing, that is, being a process and not simply a thing or object. This is what Dogen means when he describes the walking of mountains: mountains simply being mountains, doing their thing. But this notion of flowing becomes com plicated by the fact that the language of flowing or walking is Dogen’s attempt to talk about time. This is not to say that there is a mountain walking or doing something else over a span of time; rather, the walking is that the mountain becomes a mountain ever anew. It is not matter of a 9 WALKING IN WILD EMPTINESS: A ZEN PHENOMENOLOGY 139 mountain doing something, or of changing spatially; time is now moun tain. Therefore, it is really more a matter of discontinuity rather than continuity. Dogen is specifically denying that time is simply a matter of measuring continuity. It is important to note that the one of the kanji that Dogen uses for “walking” is the same character that means “practice” (gyo ), so moun tains walking is actually the same as mountains practicing being moun tains, just as waters flowing is waters practicing being waters. Mountains and waters are always doing their practice, but human beings, well, not so much. So, one’s palace—that is, one’s place—is where one finds one’s practice. Dgen did not frame it exactly in that way but this is basically the meaning. The act of walking is in many respects a constant instability. With each step one takes, one is constantly in the process of falling over, and yet one does not; it is a constant movement of destabilizing and restabiliz ing, a process of repeated movement that is a form of continuity even though there is discontinuity in it. To put it another way there is a con tinuity of controlled instability at play here. With that in mind, the now of the mountain walking is not simply to be understood as the mountain staying in place, but rather that the mountain is continually placing itself in the process, or put differently, the numerous places of process give the mountain its walking movement. If the foot just remained a foot it could not walk; it has to not be the foot in order to become the foot in order to walk. So, too, does the mountain (or any of the elementals) have to not be the mountain (in the sense of being a fixed object) in order to become the mountain that is teeming with multiple places filled with innumerable processes and life forms interacting to make the moun tain truly a mountain. The emptiness that keeps the form of the foot, or the form of the mountain, is what makes it possible for the foot, or the mountain, to walk, otherwise it would be stuck in its form. This is because each step is an event. But is continuity the correct or rather fundamental term that should be thought here? Let us recall David Hume’s reflections on causation. Hume says that we always only infer causality, and the concepts of conti nuity and identity are really the result of our experience of contiguity and resemblance. Therefore, every step is a separate event and we are only making sense of it or holding it together by observing the succession of events in some way that is not truly capturing in thought what is actu ally occurring. The mountain seems to be temporally continuous, slow 140 B. S. SCHROEDER moving on one level and, if not, seemingly immovable; yet we know, of course, that the mountain is anything but that. Those who have lived on or near mountains know that they are wildly unpredictable and ever-changing in terms of climate, vegetation, movement of animal, bird, and insect life. In general, however, we do not see that and therefore do not really see our own relationship to the mountain. In Buddhist parlance, it is a matter of Dharma dwelling stages. If one puts the aspect of continuity back into it and falls back into a form of substance metaphysics, one winds up doing away with history. It is because of this now-ness that, from a Buddhist perspective, things can be seen as genuinely historical, that is, as events. This is in part what Dogen means by “flow” (ryu t), which bears resemblance to Alfred North Whitehead’s understanding of process or Gilles Deleuze’s understanding of event. Although Deleuze identifies Hume as a fellow nomadic thinker, we need to move beyond Hume here insofar as this is not simply a mat ter of how we conjoin ideas or sense impressions. The mountain is not simply sticking thoughts and impressions together; the mountain is its own happening, its own event. This is what Dogen is getting at with his notion of “time-being” (uji ). This brings to mind Immanuel Kant, who radically transforms the concept of substance by interpreting it in terms of duration rather than as the Ding an sich. No longer is it possible to think simply in terms of object metaphysics; rather, the matter is all about time, the event. Dogen was also grappling with a similar perspective some five-hundred years ear lier. What then is the form of substance that we are left with? It is the process in the now-moment (nikon 14’); the now occurring as a suc cession of nows, as the instant continually recurring—not as the identical but rather, as Deleuze brilliantly notes, as itself: “The repetition in the eternal return is the same, but the same in so far as it is said uniquely of difference and the different.”32 ‘ TIME-BEING AND THE CONTINUITY OF DIsc0NTINun-Y One way of thinking about mountains is as the form, or the identity, of the mountain, but Dogen wants to say that a mountain cannot be a mountain simply by being a mountain. A mountain can only be a moun tain through emptiness, by walking, in the same way that a foot cannot walk if it is just a foot; it has to have emptiness. And when Dogen refers to water, he does not simply mean actual water as in a stream or a lake, 9 WALKiNG IN WILl) EMPTlNISS: A ZIN PHENOMLNOLOGY 141 which is the only the form. The water in question is beyond any actual water. As emptiness, both mountains and waters flow. In this sense, flow and continuity are more or less the same in meaning, if by continuity one means something other than a substance that does not change but rather persists. Mountains and waters may be millions of years old but they have been flowing for that long also. And yet, mountains and waters are not sim ply just mountains and waters. There is also “the watery elemental of mountain-practice, and the earth elemental of ocean-practice.”33 Place and activity are intertwined and everchanging. A thing cannot be itself simply by being itself, This is the “logic of sokuhi” (sokuhi no ronri the logic of is and is not. Nishida Kitaro, considered by many Japan’s first original modern philosopher, takes up the same problematic and develops the logic of the “continuity of discontinuity” (hirenzoku which for him is all that there is. Without no renzoku same; things have to change in order to be. the remains change, nothing which is also a conditioning by existence, This allows for the newness of logic and trying to push it as with Western the past. Nishida is working the purposely paradoxical phrase with up winds far as possible so that he he is not thinking in terms , because is this but discontinuity continuity of ).35 (kyoryaku calls “passage” what Dogen of process, or of If all one has is a continuity or, conversely, a discontinuity of essen tially atomistic now-moments, then one is driven to paradox along the lines of, say, Zeno. The other option is to think of flow in terms of the now-moments that both cut off and not cut off from past and future, so in a way Dgen is also making a move similar to that of Nishida. Dogen writes that one has a now-moment (nikon) that both contains its past and its future and is cut off from its past and future. But then he says that we can also think about this in terms of flow, which he links to prac tice. This paradox, expressed by thinkers such as Zeno, Nagarjuna, and Nishida, is not found only in Western metaphysics, which tends toward isolating things and concepts into discrete moments, resulting in a dis connect with experience or reality. What we find in Zeno, Nagarjuna, DOgen, and Nishida is a different intent, an effort to push us toward the limitations of language. The now-moment in time-being (uji) is the sense that the entire moment of exertion of the now is interpenetrating. In other words, in the midst of all that is happening, how far can one penetrate, move into, that moment? This becomes the place that is the between of being and r 142 9 B. S. SCHROEDER time. This now-moment acquires a depth or thickness; it becomes preg nant with possibility, much in the sense that chOrcr is pregnant with the prefiguration of the elementals. The progression of Dogen’s Shobogenzo fascicle “The Time Being” (Uji H) moves from the critique of seeing time as simply passing by (which is not the same as flowing) to the standpoint of nikon, and then back to flow. This means that flow can only really be grasped together with the now-moment, or perhaps from within that now-moment, which is the between of a false sense of flow and the actual sense of beingtime as flow. Stated diffcrentl nikon can perhaps be interpreted as the between of form and emptiness. I say perhaps because this is the point of difficulty in DOgen’s text, namely, how to understand the relation between the now-moment and flow. How does this reflection on flow and the continuity of discontinuity relate to dwelling? Stated otherwise, how does this translate into praxis, whether as dwelling or as a new disposition or mood? Dgen’s texts are embedded in a wider field of praxis of which there are other equally important practices. Although focused principally on zazen, there is nev ertheless a place in the Zen of Dogen for the kOan, which is a means to drive one to a new disposition and relationship with the limits of language and rational thinking. This is th point of the passage in the “Mountains and Waters Sutra” where he criticizes those “bald-headed fellows” who regard statements such as mountains walking as illogical and meaningless. One needs to go through human thinking to the point where Zen practice exceeds the philosophy of Zen. But there is no short cut; continual practice is demanded for a breakthrough. The eternally recurring flow of uji is emptiness (Sk. unyata; ku ). This is the moment of realization that being (u ) and non-being (mu ), having and not having, are one and the same as Buddha-nature. Even more radically, there is nothing before or after, beneath or above Buddhanature—including Buddha-nature itself. “From Dogen’s standpoint,” ites Masao Am, “there is absolutely nothing behind or beyond Being, time, and This absolute thinking—even a so-called Buddha-nature or Eregnis. Dogen, this absolute nothingness is not apart from Dogen’s Self. Rather, for nothingness.”36 nothingness is the true Self and the true Self is this absolute in realizing the interconnectedness of all things, the flowing or “pas sageless passage” (kyörvaku), as Abe paradoxically translates it, of uji moves beyond, or rather incorporates, both the reversibility and irreversi bility of time. Dogen describes it in the following way: ... WALKING IN WILl) EMPTINESS: A ZEN 1’HENOMENOLOGY 143 The time being has a characteristic of flowing. So-called today flows into tomorrow, today flows into yesterday, yesterday flows into today. And today flows into today, tomorrow flows into tomorrow. Because flowing is a characteristic of time, moments of past and present do not overlap or line self and other are already time.37 up side by side. ... I I * In the present, the past is fully taken up, and yet it is simultaneously negated in its emptiness so that there is always and only the present. This is the case also with futurity. As being-time fills out the moment the future is actualized but being empty of form it immediately recedes into the past so that it no longer remains the future. In this way, past, present, and future flow together, eternally recurring in the here and now of life. To grasp this flow is not to measure it but rather to expe rience it in the present or right now (nikon). But since the here and now is never present in any lasting sense, it is a continual dying. This is why, for Dogen, living and dying is one and the same. To grasp this with one’s entire being is to awaken to the great matter of birth-anddeath. The “great death” (daishi E) of ego-selfhood is both the releasementfro;n and the total immersion in the ever-flowing transient impermanence of being-time. The great death is the actualization of the standpoint of absolute nothingness, which is possible only from the standpoint of neither/nor—neither death nor life—because only thus is the abslute nothingness of the self and of existence in general able to avoidbeing grounded as a self-identity. In Buddhism, enlighten ment or awakening is affirming that the ground of being is bottomless, in other words, empty of form and endless in being-time. All moments are the flow itself, which is to say, impermanent Buddha-nature eternally recurring.38 The intertwining, or c.hiasm,39 to draw on Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s rich term, of living and dying as a non-dual whole is expressed in Dogen’s concept of uji. Time permeates being and being permeates time. Dogen writes, “For the time being here means time itself is being, and all being is time.”40 This is analogous to Heidegger’s proposi tion in On Time and Being that “Being means the same as presencing [Anwesen]. . . the present, together with past and future, forms the character of time. Being is determined as presence by rime.”41 Dogen - I differs from Heidegger, however, in not asserting the priority of time over being. Time and being form a complete and fundamental interpermeation. From the Buddhist perspective of the non-substantiality, 144 B. S. SCHROEDER impermanence, and interconnectedness of all things, there is no distinct identity given to either time or being. This is why uji is alternately trans lated as meaning both “being-time” and “time-being.” So, although they come from very different times and contexts, Dogen and Heidegger arrive at the same standpoint: being and time are inseparable and time constitutes the essence of what it means to exist. This is why Dogen states, “Time is not separate from you, and as you are present, time does not go away.”42 BEING BEIWEEN HUMAN AND ANIMAL, LIFE AND DEATH In the northwest corner of Yellowstone Park, outside the boundary of the official entrance, there is a small, seldom used path that follows the Gallatin River. Besides the occasional adventurous angler willing to com pete with the bears that frequent the area, one finds there few human beings. If one is willing to camp there under the stars, an entirely new world is revealed, a veritable open region. Montana is not called the Big Sky Country for nothing, and its emp tiness is an endless parade of cloud formations, dancing hues of color, punctuated by the appearance now and then of godlike avian beings. Under the night sky, the emptiness of space becomes alive with the age less celestial lightshow that relatively few living in the industrially devel oped world will ever see. The emptiness of the sky is not the nothingness normally associated by the metaphysically conditioned Western mind with mere absence; it manifests rather a sense of both fullness or suchness (Sk. tathata) and emptiness (Sk. .anyata), which simultaneously occur at every moment. The overfull emptiness of the sky serves to amplify the sounds of a world itself just awakening, one for the most part silent and invisible during the daylight. It is within the closed horizon of the nocturnal sky, if fortune smiles, that the eerie yet rapturous howling of the Gallatin wolf pack can be heard. Such an experience throws one’s body back into a more primitive state, tense with the excitement that attends the primal animal fear of the unknown. In these rare moments, one truly does become-other, as Deleuze and Felix Guattari write; the sense of personal conscious selfliood dissolves in the awakening of one’s repressed alter identity. Alone, lying close to a fire kept burning throughout the night, one is acutely aware of the myriad sounds of running water, sizzling wood, 9 WALKING IN WILD EMPTINESS: A ZEN PHENOMENOLOGY 145 broken twigs, rustling grass, and the exchanges of wolf cries and howls in the distance. Not possessing the keenness of perception to know exactly from where those howls originate, we all-too-human-animals prick our ears in an effort to discern one from another, taking in the midnight air through distended nostrils as if to unconsciously recover what had been largely repressed for millennia. “When a human animal comes to inhabit other animals’ territory with them, or even inhabit their bodies as they his,” writes Lingis, “the movements released by the excess energies in his body are composed with the differentials, directions, rhythms, and speeds of their bodies.”43 The lupine music continues for some time, then abruptly halts. No longer feeling fully human at this moment and unable to sleep, one real izes perhaps mounting sexual arousal that both surprises and delights, charged by emotions now raw and on edge, by the body tingling with exhilaration at the intangible sense of vague danger brought on by an extreme awareness of vulnerability. “Is not the force our emotions that of the other animals?” asks Lingis.44 Elsewhere, he observes: “Today, in our internet world where everything is reduced to digitally coded messages, images, and simulacra instantaneously transmitted from one animal to another, it is in our passions for the other animals that we learn all the rites and sorceries, the torrid and teasing presence, and the ceremonious delays, of eroticism.”45 Rising at the crack of dawn, even with little sleep, one feels fully awakened (but not in the mundane sense of just having woke from sleep)—alive—because of the proximity of death. One’s senses, mind, and spirit soar like the hawk over the mountains, trees, and waters, between earth arid the open, empty sky. Standing naked to bathe in a nearby pool of water fed by a cold mountain stream, the pri mal energies of life are all that seem to matter at the moment. The mountains also wake and continue their glacial-paced walking, as do all the life-entities, sentient and non-sentient, that walk with and between the mountains and the open sky. In such moments, one moves between the life energies in their myriad manifestations— physical, intellectual, emotional, affective, spiritual—that give form to the emptiness within which we all dwell. Being fully in the nowmoment is dwelling and being in transit between the empty fullness and full emptiness of life. 146 9 WALKING IN WILD EMPTINESS: A ZEN PHENOMENOLOGY B. S. SCHROEDER 13. Ibid., p. 46. The discuss the relation between mind and Buddha in my “On Shushagi Paragraph 31,” in Engaging Dogen’s Zen: The Philosophy of Practice as Awakening, eds. Tetsuzen Jason M. Wirth, ShUdo Brian Schroeder, and Kanpu Bret W. Davis (Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2016), pp. 185—192. The traditional account of this exchange between Guishan and Yangshan is as follows (cited in The Five Houses of Zen, tra1s. Thomas Cleary [Boston and London: Shamhhala, 1997], pp. 25—26): NOTES 1. Yunmen Wenyan, Blue Cliff Record, trans. Thomas Cleary and J. C. Cleary with foreword by Taizan Maczumi Roshi (Boston: Shamhhala, 2005), P. 343. 2. Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1990), p. 98. 3. Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac (New York: Ballantine Books, 1986), pp. 137, 141. 4. Jason M. Wirth, Mountains, Rivers, and the Great Earth: Reading Gary Snyder and Dogen in an Age of Ecological Crisis (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2017), p. 69. 5. All non-European words will be in Japanese unless indicated otherwise, in which case the following abbreviations will be used: Ch. for Chinese; Sk. for Sanskrit. 6. Snyder, p. 10. 7. This poem, written by the Tang dynasty Chan master Qingyuan Weixan is found in The Compendium of Five Lamps (Ch. Wudeng Huiyuan ), compiled during the Song dynasty by Puji. It is quoted and dis cussed in Masao Aiw, Zen and Western Thought (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1985), pp. 4—5; also see Wirth, p. 9, for further commen tary on this. 8. Classical Chinese and Japanese characters will be used throughout this essay. See also note 15. 9. Koan is a Japanese term for a narrative, question, or statement that chal lenges conventionai thinking because of its generally paradoxical nature. It is used in Zen practice to help the practitioner break through the stric tures of purely rational thinking in order to free the mind of conceptual attachments. It helps to produce what in Zen is referred to as the Great Doubt, which is a stage toward reaching enlightenment or awakening. I discuss the köan at greater length, with respect to the relation between the human and non-human in my “What Is the Trace of the Original Face? Levinas, Buddhism, and the Mystery of Animality,” in Face to Face with Animals: Levinas and the Animal Question, eds. Peter Atterton and Tamra Wright (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2019). 10. Dogen, Treasury of the True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dogen’s “Shobo Genzo”, ed. Kazuaki TAr.JAsuI, vol. 1 (Boston and London: Shambhala, 2010), p. 159. 11. Ibid., p. 154. 12. Ibid., p. 157. 147 Kuei-shan [Guishan] asked Yang-shan [Yangshan], ‘How do you understand the immaculate mind?’ Yang-shan replied, ‘Mountains, rivers, and plains; sun, moon, and stars.’ Kuei-shan said, ‘You only get the phenomena.’ Yang-shan rejoined, ‘What did you just ask about?’ Kuei-shan said, ‘The immaculate mind.’ Yang-shan asked, ‘Is it appropriate to call it phenomena?’ Kuei-shan said, ‘You’re right.’ I 14. Japanese names are written in the Japanese order of timily name first, fol lowed by given name (e.g., Nishitani Keiji), except when authors have used the Western name order for their publications in Western languages, in which case the surname will he rendered in small upper-case letters (e.g., Masao ABE, Shigeru TAGUCHI, Kazuaki TANAHASHI). (kã) is used to translate 15. The reader will note that the Japanese kanji (wu) was employed earlier. “emptiness” whereas the Chinese character The reason is for this probably has to do with an early translation decision that was made to distinguish the Buddhist conception of emptiness from (mu) is generally translated variously the Daoist conception. The kanji as “nothingness,” “nothing,” “non-existence,” “no,” “without.” Wu can also have the same meaning depending on the context. 16. John Sallis, The Return to Nature (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2016), p. 2. 17. Ibid., pp. 78—79. 18. Alphonso Lingis, Dangerous Emotions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), p. 114. 19. Martin Heidegger, Country Path Conversations, trans. Bret W. Davis (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2010). 20. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh, revised with a foreword Dennis J. Schmidt (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010). 9 WLKIXG IN WILl) EMPTINESS: A ZEN PHENOMENOLOGY B. S. SCHROII)EK 148 21. Heidegger, country Path Conversations, p. 99. For an in-depth analysis of this, as well as the related concept of die Gegnet, which significantly inform my own treatment here of Heidegger, see Bret W Davis, “Returning the World to Nature: Heidegger’s Turn from a Transcendental-Horizonal 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. Projection of World to an Indwelling Releasement to the Open-Region,” Continental Philosophy Review 47, nos. 3—4 (2014): 373—397. See DOgen, “The Presencing of Truth: Dogen’s Genjokoan,” in Buddhist Philosophy: Essential Readings, trans. Bret W. Davis and eds. William Edelglass and Jay L. Garfield (Oxford: Oxford Univcrsin’ Press, 2009), Fundamental Point,” in pp. 251—259; also, cf. Dogen, “Actualizing the 29—33. Eye, pp. Treasury of the True Dharma See Martin Heidegger, “Seminar in Le Thor 1969,” in Four Seminars, trans. Andrew Mitchell and François Raffoul (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2003), pp. 35—63. SaIlis, The Return of Nature, p. 78. Martin Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art,” in Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper & Row, 1971). See also Kelly Oliver, Earth & World: Philosophy After the Apollo Missions (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), pp. 111—161, for an extended treatment of these concepts in Heidegger. Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 112. Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event), trans. Richard Rojcewicz and Daniela Vallega-Neu (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2012). See Bret W. Davis, Heideqer and the Will: On the Way to ‘Gelassenheit” (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2007), for a full engagement on this concept. Dogen, Fukanzazengi (Universally Recom;nended Instructions for Zazen), in Engaging Dogen’s Zen: The Philosophy of Practice as Awakening, eds. Tetsuzen Jason M. Wirth, ShOdO Brian Schroeder, and Kanpu Bret W. Davis (Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2016), pp. 195—198. 30. Martin Heidegger, On the Way to Language, trans. Peter D. Hertz (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), p. 92; translation modified. 31. Dogen, “Mountains and Waters Sutra,” in Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, p. 163. 32. Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), pp. 300—301; italics in the orig inal. I develop the similar yet different conceptions of eternal recur rence in Deleuze, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Nishitani, and Tanabe Hajime with respect to Dgen in my “Recurrence and the Great Death: A Transcontinental Phenomenology,” in Phenomenology and Japanese Philosophy, eds. Shigeru TAGucHI and Andrea Altobrando (Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2019). 149 33. Elizabeth Sikes, personal correspondence with me, February 12, 2018. 34. Nishida KitarO, Place and Dialectic, trans. John W. M. Krummel and Shigenori Nagatomo (Oxford: Oxford Universit Press, 2012), pp. 108, 121. Nishida borrows this phrase from Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki. 35. Dogen, “The Time Being,” in Treasury of the True Dharrna Eye, p. 106. 36. Masao Aiu, A Study of Dogen: His Philosophy and Religion, ed. Steven Heine (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), p. 144. Dogen, “The Time Being,” in Treasury ofthe True Dharma Eye, pp. 106— 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 107. For an analysis offlow in Dogen, see Kevin Schilbrack, “Metaphysics in Dogen,” Philosophy East and West 50, no. 1 (January 2000): 37—40. On the relation between the great death and flow, see my “Recurrence and the Great Death: A Transcontinental Phenomenology.” Maurice Merleau-Pontv, The Visible and the Invisible, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968), pp. 130—155. Dogen, “The Time Being,” in Treasury ofthe True Dharma Eye, p. 104. Martin Heidegger, On Time and Being, trans. Joan Stambaugh (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), p. 2. Dogen, “The Time Being,” in Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, p. 106. Lingis, p. 56. 44. Ibid., p. 36. 45. Ibid., p. 39.