home

go back to Zen Essays: Philosophical

thezensite
Place And Being-Time:
Spatiotemporal Concepts In The
Thought Of Nishida Kitaro And Dogen
Kigen
Rein Raud: Institute of Asian and African Studies, University of Helsinki
Philosophy East and West - Volume 54, Number 1, January 2004, pp. 29-51
University of Hawai'i Press
further reading: Henry Rosemont Jr: Is Zen a Philosophy? Dogen Kigen: The Complete Shobogenzo Kevin
Schilbrack:: Metaphysics in Dogen

It is not accidental that many East Asian thinkers have expressed their views on reality in
terms that relate to the perception of space and time views that are markedly different
from the Newtonian/common sense model accepted by most Western thinkers, in which
space is uniformly empty and filled with discrete objects, while all distances and durations
are clearly measurable. Perhaps the best known among such basically spatiotemporal East
Asian concepts are the notions of place (basho) of Nishida Kitar (18701945) and the
being-time (uji) of Dgen Kigen (12001253). This article is an effort at a comparative
analysis of these notions, focusing especially on Nishidas philosophy as a synthesis of
Western and Asian philosophical discourses.
Nishidas thought is certainly oriented toward an abstract system, a description of our ways
of thinking about reality, and it is not part and parcel of a practical lifemodeling system as is
the Buddhist doctrine of Dgen. In its spatiotemporal grounding, however, it remains firmly
embedded in the Asian tradition, which does not allow the separation of the subject of the
observer from the world observed and thereby moves spatiotemporal concepts into the
ontological domain. This particular position places Nishidas thought between Western and
Asian philosophical discourses, making it simultaneously part of both and of neither. Thus,
perhaps the best place from which to approach Nishidas ideas is their language, their form.
Nishida: Philosophical Discourse Between East and West
The texts of the late Nishida, and in particular his last major work, Bashoteki ronri to
shkyteki sekaikan (The logic of place and the religious worldview) (1945), present a
number of problems, not the least of which is their style. Although constantly speaking about
logic, they are not in the least systematic in exposing their message rather to the
contrary, their text is a flow of an almost oral character, as described by Walther Ong,1
seemingly repetitive and sometimes formulaic. The form of the text, however, is not even
virtually that of a transcript of an oral discussion, since it employs the grammatical markers
of the usual neutral written style; but in addition to the oral traits in its general character it

also occasionally contains curious indications of an oral speech situation remarks such as
I shall give you the details some other day2 instead of elsewhere, et cetera. The text
also uses a quite limited vocabulary. Indeed, it seems that the knowledge of perhaps two or
three hundred carefully selected Chinese characters is quite sufficient to carry the reader
through about 90 percent (if not more) of the text.
It should be noted that the relationship between oral and written language had been more
than problematic during the years of Nishidas maturation. The radical difference between
the heavily sinicized written language in which Nishida had received his education and the
spoken language came to be erased as a result of the gembunitchi (unification of speech and
writing) movement, which resulted in the construction of a new, more phonocentric written
language. This so-called kgo (spoken [written] language) was introduced to school
textbooks only in 1903, when Nishida was thirty-three years old. Karatani Kjin has stressed
the link between this movement and the urge to construct a Western-style civilization based
allegedly on phonetic writing,3 proposing that it was the formation of the genbun itchi
system that made possible the so-called discovery of the self.4 Karatani is speaking about
a process that evolved in literature and drama, but, along these lines, much of Nishidas
philosophy with its focus on subjectivity can be read as a continuation of or a reaction to the
project of self-discovery.
The flowing nature of the text also overwhelms the structural level of its organization. Very
far from being in ordine geometrico demonstrata, the Bashoteki ronri thus possesses a
number of formal characteristics that are typically present in mystical texts, as analyzed by
Niklas Luhmann and Peter Fuchs.5 They write:
The articulated non-articulation of the mystical experience can exploit this form
[of paradox] because it is not concerned with logic-controlled communication.
The decisive factor is that the communication of paradoxes produces results. The
connection of the unconnectables . . . lets communication rotate. It returns again
and again and passes itself by and cannot stand still. The establishment of a
foundation onto which something could subsequently be added is hindered
through paradoxes: sense that can be grasped appears only indirectly, in jumping
off the carousel, as the insight into the impossibility of grasping this sense that is
processed. . . . [Mystical discourse] produces negative concepts that denote
nothing, and treats them as concepts that denote something and to which further
concepts can therefore be attached.6
At first glance, this seems to be a rather adequate description of the form of Nishidas text as
well, and yet his pronounced goal is the elaboration of a kind of logic (ronri). Nishida himself
has pointed this out with some concern in his last, unfinished text, Watakushi no ronri ni
tsuite (About my logic) (1945), where he expresses his fear that his work might be rejected
by the philosophical field as an articulation of religious experience and not a genuine logic
at all.7 This fear is not quite unreasonable, because Nishidas logic proposes a rather radical
break with the forms of thought hitherto considered logical, as he writes: The problems that
have been unthinkable in former logics because of their form have become thinkable [in
mine].8 The quality of the content is thus necessarily reflected in its form as well, which is
why we have to remember that the rigor associated with logic in the Western sense of this
word is not necessarily a characteristic of Nishidas ronri. Even some translators of this text,
notably David Dilworth, who, in their own testimony, attach great value to it, have seemingly
found it impossible to accept it in its original form and therefore have seen fit to correct
Nishida with insertions, interpolations, and technical terms so that it would look more

philosophical to the Western reader. This leaves us with the idea that Nishidas thought
itself has also been shaped predominantly in a Western framework, which is clearly not the
case. These distortions amount, at a certain level, to a kind of rejection, if not of Nishidas
thought then at least of its form, and they also obscure the original conceptual apparatus he
is using by superimposing their own. Dilworths translation seems to have become the
standard English version of the Bashoteki ronri and is being used also by philosophers who
do not read Japanese, although it should rather be read as an idiosyncratic interpretation of,
not the first introduction to, the late Nishida.
To be sure, during his entire career, Nishida made use of Western-style philosophical
terminology to express ideas fundamentally indebted to the Buddhist worldview, in particular
Zen, which he himself had practiced. In a letter to Nagayo Yoshir (6 November 1939) he
writes: I, too, have a deep interest in the vision of emptiness. Isnt the vision of emptiness
something that shines at the bottom of the whole of our Eastern culture? At the bottom of
religion as well as of art? Upon this vision of emptiness I have tried to build my
philosophy.10
Widely read as he was in Western philosophy, one of Nishidas main concerns was to find
possible points of contact between his own heritage and the philosophical background of the
modern civilization that was taking shape in Japan during his lifetime. Nishida was born in
1870, two years after the Meiji restoration, and thus grew up during the years of intensive
cultural and technological import. This was also a period of intense intellectual and
ideological activity. The traditional Japanese worldviews were clearly unable to respond to
the challenges of the times, and the technological superiority of the West was easily
explained by the differences in conceptualizing the world. For some Japanese intellectuals,
like Niijima Jand Uchimura Kanz, this led to the acceptance of Western thinking (in their
case, Christianity) out of patriotic duty, but without reservations;11 for others, like
Tachibana Ksaburor Nakano Seig, this was the cause for violent revolt against Western
ideas that seemingly threatened the basis of Japanese society.12 Although the political
positions subsequently embraced by some representatives of the Kyto school align them
with the supporters of Japanese particularism up to the point of endorsing the aggressive
war effort, the initial philosophical position taken by Nishida should in my mind still rather be
seen as motivated by an honest attempt to find the intellectual ground for a new Japan
somewhere between the Western and traditional Asian conceptual systems.
Although Buddhist ideas in dialogue with Western philosophy are manifest already in his first
major work, Zen no kenky (An inquiry into the Good) (1911) the zen of the title means
the good and has nothing to do with the zen of Zen Buddhism Nishida did not actually
introduce much in the way of Buddhist terminology or direct references to Buddhist sources
until the final period of his life. At least in part, this must have been caused by the
organization of the field of thought. Nishidas discipline was tetsugaku, or philosophy, a word
coined by Nishi Amane (18291897) to designate the specifically Western way of philosophic
inquiry, somewhat similarly to Tsubouchi Shys concept of shsetsu as an equivalent to
Western-style prose literature, as opposed to the Japanese literary tradition. Since tetsugaku
is the science of clarity, not the love of wisdom, in such a distinctly determined field,
certain rules obviously had to apply and certain conventions to be followed. It is thus
impossible to assess to what extent Nishidas avoidance of Buddhist terminology or
references to Buddhist sources in his earlier works are a conscious choice, but the relations
between his own thought and the Buddhist tradition are fairly obvious from the start: even if
the term junsui keiken (pure experience) might have been adopted from William James, it is
described in the opening pages of Zen no kenky, without using Buddhist terms or referring

to Buddhist sources, in apparent analogy with the original enlightenment taught by various
schools of Mahyna Buddhism and by Zen in particular.
In view of this it should be clear that when Nishida expresses his views on reality,
subjectivity, et cetera in the Bashoteki ronri and contrasts them with particular standpoints
of earlier Western philosophers, it is not strictly from within the Western terminological
tradition that he is speaking but it is not from the outside (or traditional Asian thought),
either. It seems that the position he ascribes to the subject, on the border between the
internal and the external,13 is in its liminality similar to the position of his own verbal selfexpression, the inside being his traditional heritage and the outside the Western-style
modern, expressive apparatus he is using. Of course it should also be remembered that
apart from aptly designating Nishidas position on the field of thought, the notion of in
between (aida) has traditionally had an important role in Japanese spatiotemporal
thinking,14 where the transition from one clearly marked point to another is normally
gradual and involves the crossing of several boundaries as well as several zones of varying
betweenness. One of the aims of this article is to show, through a close reading of Nishidas
text, that there is, indeed, a more or less strict conceptual apparatus at work in it. It will
concentrate on the notions of time and space, introducing other concepts only inasmuch as
these are necessary for the elucidation of these two (and some others closely related to
them), and it will therefore only marginally touch upon the central issues of the text, such as
Nishidas notion of subjectivity. It should therefore be seen as an attempt to justify the
original form of Nishidas text (or, for that matter, the text of any thinker) and not as a fullscale interpretation of his late thought, although I hope to clarify his notions of temporality
and spatiality in the process. I shall also try to elucidate Nishidas philosophical position by
comparing his views to those of Dgen and by demonstrating their similarity in several
important aspects.
Space, Time, and Reality in Nishidas World(s)
In order to talk about Nishidas ideas of time and space, it is perhaps useful to start with the
broader notions of reality and world. Usually he prefers to speak about worlds, of which
there are many, rather than about reality as a whole. The question of reality emerges most
clearly when Nishida opposes his own view of it to classical logic, or the logic of objects. The
main difference between the logic of objects and Nishidas approach lies in the fact that the
logic of objects presupposes a unique, ready-made reality wherein changes and movements
are of a secondary nature and can be observed as if from the outside,15 whereas the logic
of place positions the individual directly into the process of reality and lets it emerge and
change only in interaction with it:
In order for the self-awareness of an entity (mono) to emerge, it has to be exposed (taisuru)
to the absolute Other. I think that the mutual determination of entities that are facing each
other is what makes them explicit. When people think about things (butsu), they base their
thoughts on the logic of objects, but in fact we think from the standpoint of the mutual
expression of entities facing each other.16
That is to say, the person thinking about a thing is constituted through opposition to the
thing, and subjects only emerge in interaction with the reality that, as subjects, they
perceive. This reminds one of the Hegelian dialectic, but according to Nishida, Hegel still
does not go far enough:
I am never thinking from the standpoint of the logic of objects. What I am
proclaiming is a dialectic of absolutely contradictory self-identity. Even the

dialectic of Hegel still adheres to the standpoint of the logic of objects. This is
why leftists have claimed him to be a pantheist. The only place where a truly
absolute dialectic can be found is the Buddhist teaching of praj. Buddhism is
not pantheistic, as Western scholars think.17
To take this as a commitment to the position of the texts known collectively as the
Prajpramitstras would be incorrect. These texts emerged not merely as the result of
abstract speculation, but had concrete practical functions, and the logic articulated in them
was meant to be a tool with which one could deconstruct the logic of objects in the mind of
an adept who was guided by these texts in meditational practice. Their goal is not the
explanation of reality but the attainment of a state of mind in which all explanation becomes
superfluous. This is not what Nishida had in mind. As Frdric Girard writes: The philosophy
of Nishida presents itself as a rationalism that proposes to analyze reality, which is best
grasped through religious experience. But Nishida wants to empty that experience of all
mystery with the help of a logic that wants to think the illogical.18 Thus, to suggest, as
Agnieszka Kozyra has done,19 that Nishidas philosophy is basically an upya, a device for
expounding Buddhist doctrine to those who are unable to understand it in its true form and
can accept it only through the use of familiar Western philosophical language, is perhaps not
quite fair. Although Nishida identifies himself with the logical position of these texts, his own
philosophy, concerned though it is with the workings of the religious mind and expressing
his own experience, still remains, as he emphatically states in his final manuscript,20
predominantly a reflection on thinking rather than a practical manual of self-deconstruction.
This is another articulation of the betweenness of his position, which is well reflected in his
diary entry of 23 July 1903: I am not practicing Zen for study. I am practicing it for my
mind, for my life. Until seeing the essence I do not think of religion or philosophy.21
In this context, one should also note the use of first-person pronouns in Nishidas text. To
designate himself as the person whose thoughts he relates, he uses watakushi or watashi,
but to refer to a community of individuals, to which he himself also belongs together with the
reader, he uses wareware. Watakushi has the connotation of a separate subject, as in
shiritsu, private, which is written with the same character, whereas ware has the additional
meaning of self and can be used of persons other than the first in idiomatic expressions
such as ware o wasureru, to forget oneself. The text is thus a statement by watakushi
about the condition of what is aware the discourse of an internally constructed observer
about the world-conditioned self.
To return to the question of reality, obviously reality is paradoxical only in the sense that it
transcends the doxa, or, in other words, it is our way of perceiving reality such that it can
appear as paradoxical to us. Nishida prefers to treat reality as an assemblage of worlds, or
overlapping levels of reality, on which different circumstances obtain. This is also a Buddhist
notion that goes back to abhidharma metaphysics, where it appears in the doctrine of
tridhtu, the triple world of passions, forms, and formlessness, but it has been developed
into its most influential form in the Tendai doctrine of three thousand worlds, which are first
distinguished by intellectual exercise and then reunited and reduced in meditational practice
to each single particle of the universe.22 But the grounds of the same idea can also be
found in Ngrjunas distinction and subsequent relativization of the immanent and the
ultimate 23 and its development into the Tendai theory of threefold truth immanent,
ultimate, and middle 24 which also posits different levels of reality with different rules
holding, at the same time stressing their fundamental unity. On the other hand, Nishidas
threefold world is no less indebted to Western philosophy, in particular the levels of matter
posited by Leibniz, as Jacynthe Tremblay has made clear.25

Nishida defines his concept of a world in the following way:

The term world . . . does not mean, as it is usually the case when people think
about the world, this world that stands in opposition (tairitsu) to us as selves. It
is used for nothing else than expressing an absolute place-like existence;
therefore one could also call it the absolute. When I discussed mathematics, I
called it the system of contradictory self-identity.26
The word absolute is used here to designate the absolute Other with which one must stand
in relation in order to be constituted as a subject, and not a preexisting entity of the kind
Hegel describes in his Logic ( 194, add.1).27 Leaving aside, at this point, the central
concept of place that appears here in the compound bashoteki, place-like, we can thus
define Nishidas notion of the world as the reality in which one is inasmuch as one is. In
order for one to be, to exist in the first place, one needs this first place to exist in
although these paraphrases probably do not make matters any clearer.
There are three immediately distinct worlds, or layers of reality, in which one is: the material
(busshitsuteki) world, the life-world (seimeiteki sekai), and the historical (rekishiteki) world.
Apart from these three, in which one is through being, there is also the world of
consciousness (ishikiteki sekai), in which one is through being conscious; the intelligible
(eichiteki) world; the world of creation (szteki), in which one is by interacting with it in
various ways; et cetera. But these worlds are postulated through ones relation to them and
are thus secondary to the worlds of being. Although all of them overlap, there are important
distinctions to be made between them, and especially important for the present purposes is
the hierarchy that links the first three. It should be noted, however, that Nishida uses the
word world in two ways: strictly as a term, as in the three worlds of being, and occasionally
also ad hoc to designate an aspect of reality or the historical world itself from a
particular point of view, as, for example, in the expression zettaiteki ishi no sekai (the world
of absolute will),28 et cetera. The world of consciousness and other similar expressions are
more stable uses of this second kind.
The first world is the material one:
Two things, which both retain their uniqueness, oppose each other, negate each
other, are simultaneously linked with each other and are united in one form, or,
conversely, they relate to each other, are then linked to each other, and are then
united in one form it is this process that is always necessary for things to
become individual and unique as they are, for things to become themselves. It is
according to this model that we think of the world of things in interaction, of the
material world.29
Note that the material world, thus defined, is something we think of, not something that
exists as such, that is, independently of the other worlds or layers of reality, although there
are certain characteristics pertinent to this world only that distinguish it from the next level,
the world of life:
I think that in the material world, time is reversible. When we come to the lifeworld, time becomes irreversible. This is because life is singular, and the dead do
not return to life. . . . Acting entities create forms. This world is the world of
purposes. As I have written in my essay Life (Seimei), the life-world, differently
from the material world, includes within the individual self also its selfexpression, and because the inside of the self is its own reflection, in this world

action proceeds from the created to the creator, in balance between the inside
and the outside.30
Several points are of interest here. First of all, the distinction between the material world
and the life-world brings us to the notion of time, to which I shall return below in more
detail. Life, which entails birth, growth, and death, all irreversible processes, is what
determines the direction of time in this framework, whereas in the material world time
seems to be akin to the C-series of J. McT. E. McTaggart, a series of the permanent relations
to one another of those realities which in time are events 31 an order like the one of the
letters in the alphabet, which stays the same regardless of whether it is read forwards or
backwards. A thing in which the quality of life is not noted may thus appear from a certain
backwards-looking perspective at the moment of its death, decrease gradually, and finally
disappear at the moment of its birth. As soon as we perceive it as a form of life, however, it
cannot be distinguished from its unique, directional trajectory. Moreover, according to
Nishida, the living thing contains its own expression in itself; this can probably be
understood as the totality of all the trajectories it could possibly follow a newborn mouse
can only grow into an adult mouse, not into an elephant which is why it contains all the
phases of its self-manifestation along the irreversible axis of time in itself at the moment of
its birth.
This quality of life takes the form of action. A more readily accessible definition of action
(hataraki) as Nishidas technical term has been given in his essay Kkan (Space): To act
means to change the world while being at the same time just one point of it, no more than
an extremely limited particular to set the form of the world into movement from one of its
corners.32 In the Bashoteki ronri he is more technical:
Our selves are acting entities (mono). What does this mean? Action is thought of
in the context of the mutual relationships between things (butsu). . . . Action
means in the first place that the One negates the Other and the Other negates
the One. This relationship of mutual negation is necessary. But not any kind of
mutual negation can be called action. This mutual negation must entail mutual
affirmation.33
But even this is not enough: Truly to act is not just to be moved or move because of the
other, for that is to move the other by oneself / ones self, to act by ones self. This is why
there is no true action in the material world. There, everything is relative and all force is
[merely] quantitative.34
This is clearly a distinction that cannot be made in terms of the logic of objects. The
postulation of the world of life in these terms already entails the shift of perspective from
the totally outside observer into the process itself, in which we as selves take our positions
before there is any talk of consciousness, that is, before we can actually begin to observe
which, in fact, corresponds quite closely to reality. The third level of reality, the historical
world, is distinguished from the previous ones by this very token: Our selves are corporeal,
living things. The actions of our selves pursue the goals of living things. But since our selves
are the singular particularities of the historical world of absolutely contradictory self-identity,
our actions are not merely pursuits of some goals, but of goals that we know and pursue
self-consciously. These are the true acts that come from within the individual self.35
We can thus distinguish between three levels of being that correspond to the three worlds, or
layers, of reality: in the world of matter there are things (mono; the Japanese word aptly
includes both lifeless objects and living things, although Nishida makes a distinction

between the word written in hiragana and with the Chinese character butsu that designates
lifeless things); in the world of life there are already selves (jiko) that strive to fulfill their
destinies; and in the historical world there are individual selves (jikojishin). This usage
seems to be more or less consistent in Nishidas text. The distinction between jiko and
jikojishin, however, seems to be rather strict and, in my mind, also essential for the
understanding of several otherwise obscure statements. This difference is evident from such
sentences as our selves must first become the predicates of our individualities (jikojishin),
no, predicates about (ni tsuite) our individualities36 where he speaks, it appears, about
two different stages of selfhood and asserts that the life-world-level self must become the
predicate of the historical-world-level individuality. A few lines later he writes: To be
oriented toward a goal does not mean by far that something reflects its individuality
(jikojishin), or is aware of itself a statement that again opposes the jiko of the life-world
and the jikojishin of the historical world, thus supporting my reading. A more thorough
analysis of Nishidas views on subjectivity falls beyond the scope of this article, which is why
we shall now return to the question of time and space. I have already pointed out the
difference in the phenomenon of time between the material world and the world of life, in
which time becomes irreversible. But there can be time without this characteristic as well:
Of course, speaking about the material world we cannot say that time does not possess its
character. In a place where time does not have its character there is no such thing as force.
However, in the material world time is self-negating, spatial.37 A clearer definition of
temporality and spatiality is to be found in the essay Kkan:
Usually, from the point of view of the conscious self, in abstract terms, we think
of time as the order (keishiki) of succession, and of space as the order of
juxtaposition, thus as of two orders that oppose each other. And we think of
space from within time. When things that have previously appeared to us in a
certain succession are repeated in the inverse order, we think of them as spatially
organized. This is not unreasonable. The action of our consciousness is temporal.
Looking from the standpoint of consciousness, time is primary.38
This usual view thus opposes time to space as the inside order inherent in consciousness
to the rules that obtain outside. Clearly this view is itself only possible when we accept
Nishidas terms and place the subject of consciousness immediately into the stream of the
world, where the opposition arises, and we do not try to think, with Kant, of time and space
in a priori terms. Under such circumstances, anything that we would habitually call a spatial
object is in fact spread out in time in order to perceive a cube, for instance, we should
have access to it from different sides, which we cannot do in a single instant. Accordingly,
our perception of the cube is spread out in time, and so is the cube itself, seen from the
point of view of the perceiving consciousness that does not yet operate with the category of
space.
We have seen above that this primacy of time is, in fact, only a relative one, since it
presupposes the consciousness of a perceiver. But in Nishidas world the latter is not a given.
This situation is not possible, according to the Aristotelian view, which, according to Martin
Heidegger, underlies all Western theorizing on time until his own.39 For Aristotle, time
cannot exist without the perceiving subject:
We still face the problem of whether, if there is no soul, time would exist or not, because if
the entity that counts is not there, then there cannot be anything that is counted either.
Clearly that means that numbers would not exist, because a number is something either
already counted or countable in principle. And if nothing else can do the counting except the

soul and the reason in the soul, it is impossible for time to exist without the existence of the
soul. . . . The before and after exist in motion, and time exists inasmuch these are
countable.40
Aristotles reality thus becomes time only in consciousness, but this reality is already
temporal for Nishida, because he associates it with force, that is, the source of action that
takes place in the material world. We can thus describe the time of the material world with a
spatial model where causes precede results, but one can move freely from results to causes
as well, and the words before and after have the same degree of relativity as above and
below. This is not at all paradoxical for a discourse one of whose constantly repeated
formulas is from the created to the creator (tsukurareta mono kara tsukuru mono e)
used to describe the direction that creation takes, and not only in this spatial time.
The distinction between spatiality and temporality arises when we move on to the world of
life, as noted above. It seems to be the same thing to say that the irreversibility of time
appears in the world of life, or that the world of life is constituted by the irreversibility of
time, since this world is in any case just a term to designate a layer of reality, not a reality
apart. Nishida uses two words to denote order: To be able to think of true action, it is
necessary to introduce the concept of order (chitsujo) or at least sequence (junjo). This is
because we now need the concept of irreversible time.41 The hierarchy of the concepts
suggested by the text implies that order (chitsujo) is a higher concept that holds sequence
(junjo, which could normally also be translated as order) within its borders. The latter,
being sufficient to produce the idea of irreversible time, is accordingly of temporal nature.
The former, higher notion of order, does not, however, indicate some more advanced form
of spatiotemporal organization, but pertains to a dimension that already includes an element
of subjectivity:
The world includes self-expression in the self and proceeds by giving form to the
individual self. It is from this point of view that the world of life emerges. It
happens in the contradictory self-identity of time and space, from the created to
the creator. The acts of mutual determination of individuals/particulars, as things
that are in such a world, are goal-oriented. A particular is not merely opposing
another particular; they stand in order (chitsujo). This is where the acting entity
appears for the first time.42
Thus, when time and space are separated by the lower order of junjo, they are brought
back again in contradictory self-identity (mujunteki jikoditsu, one of Nishidas most basic
concepts) through the higher order of chitsujo, whereas time does not lose its irreversible
character in the latter.
The irreversibility of time is thus a matter of change of perspective: what we have hitherto
perceived to be merely material is now seen not just to move but to move toward certain
goals, and the movement is measured by changes of qualitative nature, up to the point of
the irreversibility of death. The transition that corresponds to the phenomenon of death in
the material world should thus not be irreversible; because the quality of life is absent there
in any case, it is just matter that changes shape. This offers an interesting perspective for
comparison with the concept of time formulated by one of Japans most sophisticated Zen
thinkers, Dgen Kigen.
Dgens Being-Time
One of Dgens central ideas is his notion of being-time (uji, a deliberate misreading of aru

toki, at a time), advanced against the common view of time that he sums up as follows:
[T]he understanding of an ordinary man who has not studied the Buddhist
teaching is such that on hearing the word being-time, he thinks: At one time
someone had become an asura [three-heads-eight-arms], at another time he had
become a Buddha [six-j-eightshaku]. This is just like crossing a river, passing a
mountain. Even if the mountain and the river still exist (tatoi aruramedomo), I
have passed them, my place is now in this jewel palace and vermilion tower. Me
and the mountains-rivers are like heaven and earth to each other. 43
This passage appears to make perfect sense to us if read against a Cartesian or even an
Aristotelian understanding of the subject and its world: there is the I, the Cartesian subject
or the Aristotelian counting soul, who sets itself apart from the independently existing, selfidentical material world, the mountains and the rivers of the text. The criticized point in
this view seems to be precisely the split of I-consciousness from this material world, which
we know to be canceled in Buddhist doctrine.
However, Dgens contemporaries did not hold Cartesian or Aristotelian views. If we read this
passage against the background of the culturally constructed living-world of the late Heian
and early Kamakura aristocracy, there is a slight change of accent. In their aesthetic
pursuits, the court nobles had pushed the expressive capacities of poetic language, through
the use of multiple associative encoding and play on ambiguity, almost to its limits, and the
standards of courtly conduct also required the observation of a multitude of situationdependent rules of linguistic behavior. In this world, the perceiver does not perceive an
objective, self-identical material world that is separate from him/herself, but the flux of
impermanence, and this world can only be observed from within, not from an outside
perspective as is the case with the transcendental cogito. Moreover, this world is not a
continuous, three-dimensional whole that is, it is not conceivable as such from the point of
view of the observer but rather a conflux of intersecting trajectories, cycles, routes, and
scripts, governed by constantly shifting centers of gravity and represented in semantically
overloaded, but grammatically underdetermined, ambiguous, situation-dependent linguistic
codes. There is absolutely no way of separating the I-consciousness from this world, because
it is conscious of itself only through being conscious of this world mere consciousness of
oneself as the starting-point of world-construction would be unimaginable both for earlier
Buddhist theory and for the sociocultural practice of late Heian and early Kamakura Japan.
Read along these lines, the common view of time that Dgen criticizes consists of three
points. First, it holds that there is an axis of irreversible difference between single moments
of time somebody is an asura at one time, a Buddha at another. This difference is the
precondition of any kind of change and also the temporal form of impermanence, the moving
force behind the continuous flux. Second, ones personal consciousness is the center of ones
world, and the shape that one has, that of an asura or a Buddha, that of an outcast or an
aristocrat, is determined by the position of the I in the world hence the analogy between
the bodies of asura and Buddha and ones wandering through the mountains into the jewel
palace. And finally, only what is present in the consciousness at a given moment is relevant
or real even though mountains and rivers might exist independently of the perceiver, just
as sound reason should suppose that a scenic spot with a seasonally encoded name might
also exist out of season, the whole world is relevant only to the extent that it engages the
individual consciousness that is anchored in the flux of impermanence.
Dgens argument is directed against these three points and is based on the notion of beingtime, a single reality that is stretched out in space and (our conventional) time and is

directly accessible to the enlightened mind in its entirety. The reality of being-time
surpasses the world as we perceive it from our limited, unenlightened perspectives. This
does not mean, as it is sometimes assumed, that being-time exists only for the
enlightened mind, because that would imply that reality is different depending on how it is
perceived. The difference between the enlightened and unenlightened perspective means
only that reality is accessible to the enlightened perspective as it is, but for the
unenlightened it remains clouded by the common views about it.
Since being-time encompasses the whole time, it contains the past, the present, and the
future. Within this reality, there can be no essential difference between single moments of
time, because they are contained within each other. The relation between single moments of
time is passage, which is not irreversible:
Being-time has the quality of passage. This is to say it passes from today into
tomorrow, it passes from today into yesterday, from yesterday into today. It
passes from today into today, from tomorrow into tomorrow. Because this
passage is a quality of time, the times of past and present do not pile onto each
other.44
Firewood becomes ashes, and there is no way for it to become firewood again.
Although this is so, we should not see ashes as after and firewood as before.
You should know that firewood abides in the dharma-configuration of firewood,
for which there is a before and after. But although there is a difference between
before and after, it is within the limits of this dharma-configuration. Ashes
abide in the dharma-configuration of ashes, and there is a before, and there is
an after. Just like this firewood, which will not become firewood again after it
has become ashes, a human being will not return to life again after death. . . .
This is like winter and spring. One does not say that winter has become spring,
one does not say that spring has become summer.45
This view is absolutely different from the Aristotelian view of time, which also speaks about
passage. Aristotle sees the before and after as two distinct instances of now, the distance
between which, fully analogous to distances in space, is what constitutes time.46 For
Aristotle, the now is not a segment of time at all,47 similarly as a point is not a segment of
a line, because a segment of something measurable must itself be measurable and have
borders, and a now, or a point, being indivisible, does not.48 For Dgen, however, the
absolute now is the point of departure for the examination of the passage of time.
But this tenet is the most problematic one in Dgens view of time. On the one hand he
ascribes to time the quality of passage (kyryaku), while on the other he asserts that
everything exists as it is only when it abides in its dharma-configuration (hi): firewood does
not become ashes any more than spring becomes summer. This creates an apparent
contradiction: if all entities are confined to their dharma configurations and have no enduring
essence, then exactly what is it the passage of that is involved in time, which has no
existence apart from being either?
Addressing this issue, Hee-Jin Kim notes that a Dharma-position does not come and go, or
pass, or flow as the commonsense view of time would assume. This is a radical rejection of
the flow of time, or the stream of consciousness, or any other conceptions of time based on
the idea of continuity and duration. That is, time is absolutely discrete and discontinuous,
and accordingly, continuity or passage, in this view, is not so much a matter of a succession
or contiguity of inter-epochal wholes, as that of the dynamic experience of an intra-epochal
whole of the absolute now in which the selective memory of the past and the projected

anticipation of the future are subjectively appropriated in a unique manner. In brief,

continuity in Dgens context means dynamism.49 Kims solution of the problem is thus
based on the reinterpretation of the word kyryaku as dynamism, which is perfectly
possible. However, if we are to remain faithful to Dgens text, this dynamism should be
seen as a concrete phenomenon, because it occurs from today to yesterday, which still
allows one to doubt whether the notion of kyryaku is fully compatible with the radical
rejection of the flow of time that Kim ascribes to Dgen.
But this is not an insurmountable difficulty. Following a certain tradition,50 Kim takes the
word dharma in hi (translated as dharma-position) to refer, at least connotatively, to
dharma as teaching. What makes a particular position of time a Dharma-position is the
appropriation of these particularities in such a manner that they are now seen nondualistically in and through mediation of absolute emptiness, writes Kim,51 as if firewood
could at a certain moment not abide in its dharma configuration, for example when its
particularities are not seen non-dualistically. It seems much more plausible, however, that a
hi is nothing more than a particular configuration of dharmas as existential particles; one
such configuration yields firewood, another one yields ashes, and no person of an
enlightened observer is involved. On the contrary, such observers themselves are always
yielded by particular dharma-configurations. In such a reading, the before and after that
are inherent in a dharma-configuration do not mean the selective memory of the past and
the projected anticipation of the future52 but the arising and the perishing of the dharmas
that are configured. The instantaneous existence of the dharma configuration in the absolute
now contains them both, as Dgen says: Although it is taught that past, future, and present
are impermanent, not-yet-arrived, or extinguished, one should definitely also apprehend the
principle of how past, future, and present are in what is not yet there [and so on].53 When
things are, at each single moment of absolute now, in their dharma-configurations, they
arise and perish simultaneously as the moment passes. This is where the absolute now and
passage are linked. In the words of Kevin Schilbrack, the two ideas do not contradict each
other, but rather serve to make the same point that things do not become.54 There is
passage even in the absolute, unseizable single moment, and this is precisely what makes it
absolute. In this sense kyryaku truly means dynamism it is movement within an
indivisible instant, the same movement that brings about the configured dharmas again and
again. But this dynamism is a characteristic feature not only of the passage of time in the
conventional sense of the word but of beingtime, existence as such. To be is in this view to
be dynamically. To be is a transitive verb that includes in itself the senses of to construct,
to affirm, to express, to manifest itself as, and also to set in question ones own existence
as. When things are in their respective dharma-configurations, they are not they, but
them.
This has been noted by Kim also in connection with Dgens doctrine of Buddha-nature,
which is maintained in the dynamic and creative mode in which any single act (dying,
eating, and what-not) is totally exerted contemporaneously, coextensively, coessentially with
the total mind not with a fragment of that mind.55 Buddha-nature, in Dgens view, is
at once beings and being itself.56 However, Kim still seems to link this dynamic mode of
being with the enlightened state of mind: The absolute now consists, not in static
timelessness that enables us to accept the given reality as it is, but, rather, in a dynamic
activity that involves us intimately in time, hence, transforming our deeds, speech, and
thought.57 This passage seems to imply, as some scholars also suppose,58 that reality has
two coextensive modes of existence, depending on the state of ones mind, a dualism of
illusion and enlightenment. While this is seemingly concordant with the view that the triple
world is nothing but mind,59 it still seems more plausible to think that dynamic being

involves the total reality and mind regardless of its state that the emancipation of the
mind consists of its apprehension of its own nature and that of reality, which is always
there, or the act-cum-totality of dynamic being, which is precisely what Dgen calls
Buddha-nature. The traditional Zen view that enlightenment is the realization of ones
inherent Buddha-nature is thus reasserted: to be enlightened means to live the dynamism of
being.
The second point of the common view of time, the clinging to ones self as the center of the
world, although consistent with the principle of impermanence as it functioned in Japanese
aristocratic culture, is the main object of criticism in much Buddhist thought, and Dgen has
made frequent statements of it; for example:
When somebody aboard a moving boat looks around and watches the shore, he
might err to think that the shore is moving. If he looks closely at the boat,
though, he will know that it is the boat that moves. Similarly, if one observes the
myriad things with a confused mind and a strained body, it might appear that
everything has a nature of its own, a mind of its own. But if one adjusts ones
mind and returns his thought to the point of origin, the logic that none of the
myriad things has a self will become apparent.60
Thus, the operation that produced, for Descartes, the transcendent subject of the cogito
yielded the opposite result for Dgen, to whom a fixed, unmoving position of an observer
vis-a`-vis the world was not conceivable.
For us, it is certainly much easier to agree with the third point of Dgens criticism of the
common view of time, namely that things exist in the same way regardless of our perception
of them, but he asserts this only from the perspective of the reality of being-time:
Mountains are time. Oceans are time. If there were no time, there would be no mountains
and no oceans. One should not think that mountains and oceans are not time at this very
moment. If time would collapse, mountains and oceans would collapse, too, and since time
does not collapse, mountains and oceans do not collapse either.61 The existence of
mountains and oceans is thus not irrelevant to the mind, because they are also being-time,
and mental divisions of any kind that we might effect in our world tamper with reality,
although they make it culturally habitable. Reality is truly experienced only in its undivided
totality, and therefore the parts of the world that are not directly presented to the perceiving
mind also engage it when it tries to seize the whole. From this standpoint it is probable that
the Newtonian world is not much closer to Dgens reality than the living world of Heian
aristocrats, because access to true being-time is not available via conceptual constructions.
Dgens vision of time is one that has already transcended the ordinary, irreversible time
(the time of Nishidas life-world), which is also the framework for goal oriented action (for
Buddhist discourse, the only goal worth pursuing is, of course, enlightenment or realization):
Now the point of view of the ordinary man, and the causes of this view, may well
be what the ordinary man sees, yet they are not his law. Only for a while, the law
is the cause of the ordinary man. As you realize that this time, this being, is not
the law, you grasp that the six-j-long golden body [of the Buddha] is not your
self. But, having realized that the self is not the six-j-long golden body and
trying to escape from it, all that is left are splinters of the being-time.62
From this passage it is evident, however, that in Dgens view the attainment of that
particular goal is impossible in such a goal-oriented framework, and it is precisely the

concept of irreversible time that makes it so. Therefore, one should transcend the logic of
goal-oriented practice and direct ones efforts at coming to terms with the being-time
directly: Everything is nothing but the unimpeded manifestation of being-time. It is
manifested in the Four Heavenly Kings and all beings in the worlds on the right and on the
left, who are all the being-time of my ultimate effort right now. The being-time of all beings
everywhere else, in water and on land, is manifested in my ultimate effort right now.63
This effort of right now transcends temporality and obtains access to the entire being-time
in its reversible, spatial form, in which there is being, but not becoming: In each moment of
time there is the entire being, the entire world.64 This view of reality follows from the
doctrine of dharma-configurations discussed above. In classical abhidharma it became a
point of controversy what degree of reality should be attached to the momentary
configurations of existence the Sarvstivdin view that everything exists, that is, that the
absolute presents of past and future times also have a degree of reality, being rejected by
later thinkers.65 For the present purposes, however, the question of the reality of these
momentary configurations is irrelevant, since they are in any case the only form in which
existence is immediately accessible to the perceiver, who is, unavoidably, a part of these
configurations him/herself. Moreover, it is not impossible to conceive of the mutual
noninterfering interpenetration of things (the Huayan doctrine of jijimuge) in discursive
terms, without resorting to transcending intuition. Richard Taylor has proposed the idea of
temporal parts of things in analogy to spatial ones: just as a street might be broad at one
end and narrow at another, an apple may be green at one moment and red at another. One
part of the street is broad, another narrow, one part of the apple is green, another red.66
Developing this idea, Judith Jarvis Thompson has proposed the notion of a superobject, a
thing as a process in its entire existence-span, with its whole trajectory of the movements
and changes it goes through.67 It is clear that superobjects may penetrate each other easily
without interfering: their parts that occupy the same positions in space are temporal. This
idea of superobjects, which Thompson herself rejects, is fully compatible with Buddhist
thought which prefers to operate with things as static processes rather than discrete,
self-identical entities or, for that matter, with any thinking that rejects the logic of
objects.
Dgen and Nishida: Self-realization Transcending Time and Space
Most of Dgens views as presented above resemble Nishidas. Having rejected the logic of
objects Nishida adopts a view of reality that is analogous to the abhidharmic one, although
he uses a metaphor borrowed from Nicolaus of Cusa68 to describe it:
When I speak of our selves being singular focal points of the world and
determining our individualities through self-expression, this does not mean that I
conceive of the self necessarily in terms of the logic of objects. It is, rather, a
singular center of the absolute present that includes in itself the eternal past and
future. This is why I call the self a momentary self-determination of the absolute
present. . . . And the world of the absolute present is the sphere with infinite
radius and no circumference, which has a center everywhere.69
Nicolaus of Cusa uses this metaphor to describe God, but Nishida applies it to the absolute
present, which is thus described in spatial terms and is content-wise very close to Dgens
being-time, to which access is gained in a single moment, and also to this view of the
relation of self to being-time. This absolute present is opposed to the dichotomy of space
and time that obtains in the world of objective actions, conceived exclusively from the
standpoint of a conscious self,70 since Nishida describes the world similar to the way Kant

would describe it: Such a world [like the one of Kant] of which the center is the selfcontradictorily identical focal point of the self, is temporal inasmuch as it negates the selves
of the Many, and spatial inasmuch as it negates the self of the One.71 In such a world, time
and space are opposed to each other, since the world is perceived differently depending on
which of the two one chooses to look at the world from objectively in space or
subjectively in time. To transcend this dichotomy, one has to unite these perspectives into
one contradictorily self-identical point of view, which should not be posited outside the
context of reality itself.
We have seen that this has already happened in the life-world and it is even more relevant
for the historical world: in the truly concrete real world, that is, the historical world, time
always negates space, and, simultaneously, space negates time. In this absolutely
contradictory self-identity of time and space, of the One and the Many, no, of Being and
Nothingness, proceeding from the created to the creator, is boundless creativity.72 In such
a world one has thus attained the stage where one is finally capable of realizing oneself in
both senses of the word through action oriented toward the world, and through conscious
activity oriented toward ones own being. This double sense indicates why, as Yoko Arisaka
has shown,73 the word jikaku should be translated as self-realization and not as selfconsciousness. To use Nishidas favorite term, these two aspects of self-realization are
united in contradictory self-identity and therefore are also premises of each other. This
possibility is the expectable sequel to the movement that has taken us from the material
world, through the life-world, to the historical one.
Nishida defines this realization in terms that sound almost like paraphrases of Dgen:
Self-realization occurs only when our self transcends itself and faces the Other. At
the moment of self-realization, our self has already transcended itself.74
Therefore, I always say: become things and you think, become things and you
happen. I and things are relative to each other in contradictory self-identity.
However, when one thinks about the things one faces merely in spatial terms,
ones self will also be just another thing. The relation between the two will be a
relation between two things, a mere act. Even human knowledge will be a mere
act, I think.75
Nishida here uses the word thing (mono) and being/becoming a thing in a rather hairsplitting fashion. In the first case he means, of course, that ones self should identify with
the things of the world, but in the second case he means that the spatial view causes one
to assume a separate thing-identity of ones own, which will make self-realization
impossible. At the same time, it is evident that the things in the world remain the same in
both cases, because the worlds are overlapping, and the difference between the material and
the historical world is that of perspective: we think of the physical world, but we should
think of it already as one aspect (men) of the absolutely contradictorily self-identical
historical world.76 It is spatial thinking that distorts the perspective.
The concept that opposes this distorted spatiality, in the same way that absolute present
has been opposed to temporality, is, of course, Nishidas central term, basho or place. This
word is used to translate the topos of Aristotle, and the cognate ba means field, as in
physics. Unlike abstract space, basho is loaded, it is the locus of tension, where the
contradictory self-identities are acted out and complementary opposites negate each other
space is thus hierarchically inferior to place, and not vice versa, as would be expected in the
Newtonian world, because in the terms of place, space is the complementary opposite of
time, and it appears in place together with time, interlocked in mutual negation: strictly

speaking, time and space are not independent forms, but only two directions of selfdetermination in place.77
Spatiality is directly opposed to placeness,78 which becomes the quality of time from the
life-world onward, and Nishida even uses the words place and world occasionally as
synonyms79 to designate where the self-determination of the individual self takes place. It
seems that the closest conceptual equivalent to basho is the dharma-configuration of the
single moment of Buddhism, the momentary thusness of existence, which is new every next
instant, expressing itself by coming into being and negating itself by passing
instantaneously. In a word, basho is the place where impermanence happens.
The argument above could be summed up in Table 1. Although time acquires the character
of placeness in the life-world by becoming irreversible, place opens itself to the perceiver
only after he/she becomes aware of the goal-oriented character of his/her actions and
thereby opens up to the possibility of self-realization in both senses of the word. In place,
the mutual negation of time and space fuses them into one reality, which is place itself. And
since one of the tensions in place is released along the line that runs from the created to
the creator it also means that the act of self-realization in the middle of historical reality also
releases one from the perceptive irreversibility of time.
Table 1
World

Material
Life-world
Historical

Entity

Chronotope

thing
self
individuality

reversible (spatial) time

timeless space
irreversible time
space
negated by time
Basho of the self-determination of the
individual self in the absolute present

Concluding Remarks
If we now ask why both Dgen and Nishida use terms related to space and time to express
fundamental ideas about being, then it seems that the answer is relatively simple: it is
because both of them see the subject as not outside but inside the world, and therefore the
ideas of space and time are constitutive also of the subjects form of being. An objective
subject, an independent observer who analyzes reality from a timeless and extraspatial,
absolute standpoint, is for them an illusory construction, and when time and space are
viewed from such a standpoint the illusion is perpetuated and spread over the whole view of
reality. An undistorted view of reality can be attained solely from within it, but each available
point of view initially presents only a limited perspective. This is why spatiotemporal thinking
is crucial for any philosophical effort that accepts these premises: in order to grasp the
ontological foundations of reality, it is necessary to transcend ones perspective, but this has
to be done, without leaving ones place, through (self-)realization. This is also where
Nishidas views converge with Dgens: in order to attain self-realization one must transcend
the ordinary reality not by rising above it, and thereby separating oneself from it, but by
becoming it, realizing oneself in it and the totality of the world of being-time together

with it.
To conclude, we should briefly return to the question of the form of Nishidas philosophic
discourse. If we now ask why, after all, Nishida has chosen to express himself in such a
manner, a number of possible answers present themselves. I think we can dismiss the
underlying assumption of his correctors that he was incapable of doing otherwise. It could
also be suggested that this form of writing is typical of Japanese traditional thought. But
although it is true that Japanese thinkers sometimes express their ideas in a similar manner,
Nishidas heritage comprises also Buddhist texts of Indian and Chinese origin, which are
much more systematic. And his placing of his work within the field of Western-style
philosophy (tetsugaku) severed the formal link with classical Asian thought from the
beginning. The only plausible answer, to my mind, is that he saw this form as most suitable
for conveying his ideas. By rejecting the object logic and the transcendental subject that is
placed outside the world-process he also rejects the unmovable standpoint from which a
systematic view of his conceptual apparatus could be presented and admittedly this
standpoint also invalidates any attempt to justify his form in the manner that the present
article has been trying to do. Nishida puts the reader right in the midst of the discursive flow
where he himself is, because otherwise he could not speak without invalidating himself. The
form of the text is an integral part of his message. Instead of leading the reader through a
ready, stopped world whose conceptual architecture can be observed slowly, accurately,
and in a logical order, he has to jump from one standpoint to another even within the field
of his own views, because every statement he makes from a particular position has also
changed that position itself, and it is not the same place where he was a moment ago, and
the only permanent aspect of himself as the speaker and the self whose experiences he
speaks about is his absolutely contradictory self-identity.
Notes
I would like to thank Professor Frdric Girard, Ms. Uehara Mayuko, Ms. Triin Kallas, and the
anonymous reader for Philosophy East and West for valuable comments and suggestions, as
well as the Academy of Finland, the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, and the cole
Franaise dExtrme-Orient for grants that made the research for this article possible.
1 Walther Ong, Orality and Literacy (London and New York: Routledge 1982, 1988),
passim.
2 Nishida Kitar, Bashoteki ronri to shukyteki sekaikan, in Nishida Kitarozensh
(hereafter NKZ ) (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1979), vol. 11, p. 388.
3 Karatani Kjin, Origins of Modern Japanese Literature, trans. Brett de Bary (Durham and
London: Duke University Press 1993), pp. 4561.
4 Ibid., p. 61.
5 Niklas Luhmann and Peter Fuchs, Reden und Schweigen (Frankfurt a.M.:Suhrkamp,
1989, 1992), p. 9296.
6 Ibid., pp. 9495.
7 NKZ, 12 : 265266.
8 NKZ, 12 : 266.
9 Nishida Kitar, Last Writings: Nothingness and the Religious Worldview, trans.with an
introd. by David A. Dilworth (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press,1987, 1993), p. 2.
10 NKZ, 19 : 90.
11 Hirakawa Sukehiro, Japans Turn to the West, in Bob T. Wakabayashi, ed.,Modern
Japanese Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1998),pp. 5154, 90.
12 Najita Tetsuo and H. D. Harootunian, Japans Revolt against the West, in
Wakabayashi, Modern Japanese Thought, pp. 222226.

13 NKZ, 11 : 377 and elsewhere.

14 See Kimura Bin, Aida (Tokyo: Kbund, 1988).
15 NKZ, 11 : 382383.
16 NKZ, 11 : 381.
17 NKZ, 11 : 399.
18 Frederic Girard, Logique du lieu et experience unitive de labsolu: Nishida lecteur
du Buddha? in Augustin Berque, ed., Logique du lieu et depassement de la modernite,
vol. 1 (Bruxelles: Ousia, 2000), p. 234.
19 Agnieszka Kozyra, Eastern Nothingness (Tyteki mu) in Nishida Kitar and Lin-Chi,
in Berque, ed., Logique du lieu, p. 168.
20 NKZ, 12 : 266.
21 NKZ, 17 : 117.
22 See Leon Hurwitz, Chih-I: An Introduction to the Life and Ideas of a Chinese Buddhist
Monk, Melanges chinois et bouddhiques 12 (Bruxelles: lInstitut Belge des Hautes tudes
Chinoises, 962): 271284.
23 Daigan and Alicia Matsunaga, Foundation of Japanese Buddhism (Los Angeles and
Tokyo: Buddhist Books International 1976, 1996), vol. 1, pp. 7072.
24 See Paul L. Swanson, Foundation of Tien-Tai Philosophy: The Flowering of the Two
Truths Theory in Chinese Buddhism (Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1989).
25 Jacynthe Tremblay, Nishida Kitar: Le jeu de lindividuel et de luniversel (Paris: CNRS
Editions, 2000), pp. 119125.
26 NKZ, 11 : 402403.
27 G.W.F. Hegel, The Encyclopaedia Logic: Part 1 of the Encyclopaedia of Philosophical
Sciences with the Zusa tze, trans. with introd. and notes by T. F. Geraets, W. A. Suchting,
and H. S. Harris (1830; Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Co., 1991), pp.
272273.
28 NKZ, 11 : 403.
29 NKZ, 11 : 374.
30 NKZ, 11 : 375.
31 J. McT. E. McTaggart, Philosophical Studies (London: Edward Arnold and Co., 1934), p.
116.
32 NKZ, 11 : 194.
33 NKZ, 11 : 74.
34 NKZ, 11 : 374375.
35 NKZ, 11 : 376.
36 NKZ, 11 : 381.
37 NKZ, 11 : 375376.
38 NKZ, 11 : 193.
39 Martin Heidegger, Die Grundprobleme der Phanomenologie, in Gesamtausgabe, II Abt.
Band 24 (1927; Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1975), p. 327.
40 Aristotle Physica 4.14.223a2329.
41 NKZ, 11 : 375.
42 NKZ, 11 : 383.
43 Dgen, 2 vols., ed. Terada Tru and Mizuno Yaoko, Nihon shistaikei, 1213 (Tokyo:
Iwanami Shoten, 1970), vol. 1, p. 257.
Rein Raud 49
44 Ibid., 1 : 258.
45 Ibid., 1 : 36.
46 Aristotle Physica 4.11.219a1530.
47 Ibid., 4.10.218a6.

48 Ibid., 4.1.231a2429.
49 Hee-Jin Kim, Dgen Kigen: Mystical Realist (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1987),
pp. 150, 154155.
50 See, for example, Abe Masao, A Study of Dgen: His Philosophy and Religion (New
York: State University of New York Press, 1992), p. 114.
51 Ibid., p. 149.
52 See Kim, Dgen Kigen: Mystical Realist.
53 Terada and Mizuno, Dgen, 1 : 273.
54 Kevin Schilbrack, Metaphysics in Dgen, Philosophy East and West 50 (1) (January
2000): 39.
55 Kim, Dgen Kigen: Mystical Realist, p. 119.
56 Ibid., p. 123.
57 Ibid., p. 157; italics added.
58 See for example, Trent Collier, Time and Self: Religious Awakening in Dgen and
Shinran, Eastern Buddhist 32 (1) (2000): 61.
59 Terada and Mizuno, Dgen, 2 : 11.
60 Ibid., 1 : 36.
61 Ibid., 1 : 261.
62 Ibid., 1 : 258259.
63 Ibid., 1 : 259.
64 Ibid., 1 : 257.
65 Matsunaga and Matsunaga, Foundation of Japanese Buddhism, 1 : 3639, 4243.
66 Richard Taylor, Metaphysics (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1963, 1992), pp. 6971.
67 Judith Jarvis Thompson, Time, Space and Objects, Mind 74 (293) (1965): 45.
68 Nicolaus of Cusa, De docta ignorantia, 1.21.
69 NKZ, 11 : 379.
70 NKZ, 11 : 388.
50 Philosophy East & West
71 Ibid.
72 NKZ, 11 : 384.
73 Yoko Arisaka, System and existence: Nishidas Logic of Place, in Berque, Logique du
lieu, p. 50.
74 NKZ, 11 : 378.
75 NKZ, 11 : 381.
76 NKZ, 11 : 379.
77 NKZ, 11 : 389.
78 NKZ, 11 : 376.
79 For example, NKZ, 11 : 386.

home