Moving Away From Ego--Subjectivity Spirals Into Nothingness

Existentialism And Mysticism continued
Jan. '78

Toward A Deeper Subjectivity

It is false to think that we—mind, soul, and/or consciousness (take
your pick) — are here to lord it over the rest of creation. From inside
our "citadel of selfhood," we are wrong to look out at everything
else, whether human or nonhuman, --as other. We are wrong to think of
God as the prime mover, the "watch maker," or the king of the
universe. Until I read Nishitani's book, I didn't know that we in the
West were so shallow, so practical, so business like, and so wrong.

Nishitani, obviously critical of the Western tradition, was still
drawn to the study of this tradition, or at least to the study of the
existential response to the meaninglessness at the root of man's
being. That response originated in the Germanic-European tradition,
not the Anglo-American tradition. The existentialism of Nietzsche,
Sartre, Heidegger, and Kierkegaard grew out of the ruins of
Greek-Christian thought and belief structures. For the most part, the
American culture of commonsense realism-- practical, simplistic,
Utilitarianism, the political philosophy of John Locke, and the
God-centered idealism of Bishop Berkeley---was diametrically opposed
to the Taoist-Buddhist principle of harmony espoused by Asian culture.

The European Existentialists, from their rational-religious despair,
spoke to Nishitani. From a no-God, no-meaning world, wherein all human
values came to naught in death, surged, from the pens of those
self-conscious thinkers, new meanings--meanings that were not totally
opposed to Buddhist-oriented culture. Ultimately, for Nishitani, it
was sunyata that filled the gap separating man's being from his
religious awareness. This organic awareness, common to Asian
religions, would be necessary if the experience of "oneness" were to
be made manifest in the West. Existentialism was deficient here, but
at least it was a major step in the right direction.