Sunyata—Self Emptiness--Being What Is Not While Not Being What Is

Existentialism And Mysticism continued
Purgatory Of Sartre’s Self
Jan. ‘78

The cogito of Sartre, says Nishitani, does not lead us down the path of inner
subjectivity because sunyata—absolute emptiness—is not the ground of
the subject. Antipodal negativity or the opposite of existence, takes
us nowhere. "It is not that the self is empty," says Nishitani, "but
that emptiness is self; not that things are empty, but that emptiness
is things…On the field of sunyata, each thing is itself in not being
itself, and is not itself in being itself." In the end, sunyata fills
the gap between subject and object, between man and God, and between
God and creation. Sunyata reaches across into the ground of all other
things by gathering all things together in relationship with one
another, and, as such, fills the chasm at the root of being. Sunyata,
in this sense, says Nishitani, is not just absolute emptiness; it is
the "Great Affirmation."


The rest of my book report deals with the "hows," "whys," and
"wherefores" of the following statement: For Kierkegaard the inner
journey into subjectivity ended with a person discovering his or her
"nothingness before God." In a like manner, for Heidegger, the journey
ended with the appropriation of a similar nothingness--the discovery of
Being-in-the-world, or the condition for any "knowing" whatsoever. In
Nietzsche, that nothingness, along with subjectivity itself, was
affirmed. The positive results of faith, authenticity, and life
affirmation, respectively, are not found in Sartre. Rather, the
nothingness discovered by Sartre condemned humanity to a kind of
purgatory. "The self is free from all but self," says Sartre. Here the
self is cut off from everything except from its own nothingness.