Advaita Vedānta and Zen Buddhism: Deconstructive Modes of Spiritual Inquiry.

By
Leesa S. Davis. London: Continuum, 2010. ISBN 9781441121097. xxi. 222. $120
(cloth), $44.95 (paper).
In this concise and focused study, Leesa Davis examines the strategies of teachers
in both the Advaita Vedānta and Zen Buddhist traditions aimed at cultivating a non-dual
awareness in their practitioners through the deconstruction of the subject-object duality
that typically characterizes conventional experience. Davis isolates four specific methods
by which these teachers destabilize their students’ deeply ingrained habit of experiencing
and interpreting the contents of experience in dualistic terms. She labels these methods
or “deconstructive techniques” (1) unfindability analysis, (2) bringing everything back to
the here and now, (3) paradoxical problems, and (4) negation (p. xx), and explores the
workings of these methods through interviews with contemporary practitioners.
Davis’ thesis is that, the radical differences in the ontologies of Advaita Vedānta
and Zen Buddhism notwithstanding, the deconstructive strategies pursued by teachers in
these two traditions are, in many respects, virtually identical, as are the results that they
yield in the experience of their practitioners. Both traditions are united in seeing subject-
object dualism as an inadequate and distorting overlay upon the true nature of reality, and
thus in seeking to deconstruct this overlay. Davis is careful not to conflate, and always to

distinguish, the advaitavāda, or teaching of non-difference, of Vedānta, and the Buddhist

teaching of “not two,” or advayavāda (the rejection of both members of any given pair of
extreme views). Citing the work of Richard King, though, she notes the deep structural
similarities between these two traditions’ conceptions of and approaches to reality. “In a
sense one might say that [these two traditions] are looking at the same picture from
opposite sides of the mirror. Their presuppositions (and therefore their conclusions) are
thus diametrically opposed. Paradoxical as this may seem, it is because of ‘the directly
facing nature’ of the two systems that the Mahayana and the Advaita traditions are so

often confused; in many respects their discussions and conclusions are mirrored in the
views of the other. Mirror images are, of course, reversals of the things which they
reflect…” (Richard King, Early Advaita and Buddhism: The Mahāyāna Context of the
Gauḍapādīya-kārikā (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 238.
The shared “picture” at which Advaita and Zen are looking “from opposite sides
of the mirror” is one in which, again, the conventional structuring of experience along the
lines of subject-object dualism is deeply inadequate to and obscuring of the true nature of
reality which both traditions aim to reveal to their practitioners through the cultivation of
insight–a cultivation which includes the deconstructive strategies detailed by Davis. It is
also a picture in which a distinction is made between “conventional truth” which can be
expressed in language (but which, inevitably, involves the distortions inherent in dualistic
modes of thought) and “ultimate truth”: the non-dual reality disclosed through practice.
Where Advaita and Zen differ is in their characterization of that ultimate reality. In the
case of Advaita, one finds the affirmation that there is ultimately only one reality: that is,
nirguṇa brahman, which is infinite being, consciousness, and bliss. Time, space, and the
distinction between self and other are all mere appearance (māyā). In the case of Zen and
the classical Mahāyāna tradition from which it emerges and with which it is in continuity,
ultimate reality is the dynamic and constantly interdependently originating flow from one
moment to the next. As in Advaita Vedānta, time, space, and the distinction between self

and other are distorting concepts that inhibit the reality of ‘emptiness’ (śūnyatā) from its
full emergence in the experience of the practitioner. These conceptual distortions need to
be deconstructed in order for the practitoner to experience reality as it truly is: either as
“the paradoxical ‘empty fullness’ of brahman or the ‘full emptiness’ of śūnyatā” (p. 189).
Both traditions share a deep sense of paradox because, in both cases, given the ultimately
illusory character of time and space, nothing is ever really “attained” in either practice.
One does not “achieve” either brahman or śūnyatā. Both were always one’s true nature
and are one’s true nature here and now and forever. Even the idea of a “true nature” is a

problematic distortion, if one slips into the dualistic habit of contrasting it with a “false”
nature. “Despite the ‘all-self’ ontology of Advaita and the ‘no self’ (empty) ontology of
Zen, both traditions reject any objectification of their ultimate non-dual expressions:
brahman in Advaita and śūnyatā in Zen” (p. 187). Though, again, Davis is careful not to
conflate these two traditions, and a philosophical engagement with their respective claims
is beyond the scope of this study, the reader may be left wondering whether the contrast
between the ‘all-self’ ontology of Advaita and the ‘no self’ ontology of Zen is not, itself,
an example of the kind of dualistic thinking which both traditions urge their practitioners
to overcome.
After presenting a clear and reasonably thorough overview of the foundations of
both Advaita and Zen, inluding classical thinkers such as Śaṅkara, Nāgārjuna, and Dōgen
and modern teachers such as Ramana Maharshi, H.W.L. Poonja, and Ekai Korematsu,
Davis takes the reader through a close analysis of the four deconstructive techniques and
a “mapping” of the results of these techniques in the experience of current practitioners.
This study is a worthy contribution both to the study of Indian philosophical and
spiritual traditions and to the phenomenology religious experience. Although it does not
break any new ground in regard to the study of classical Advaita or Mahāyāna Buddhism,
it provides a good introduction to these two frequently paired traditions, with the special
virtue of carrying its overview to the present, through its inclusion of the work of modern

and contemporary teachers. And in its analysis of how specific deconstructive techniques
issue in specific experiential effects, it has implications for the study of mysticism and
spiritual practice. It is recommended for professional scholars and graduate students in
these fields, and perhaps for advanced undergraduate courses on either Indian philosophy
or the phenomenology of religious experience.
Jeffery D. Long
Elizabethtown College
LongJD@etown.edu

309 Farmland Drive, Elizabethtown, PA 17022, USA