Non-abiding nirvana
“True nirvana is ‘non-abiding’, non-different from samsara. That is to say that it is not an eternal realm separate from this world of change. Authentic freedom is to be realized in this world but through its unfettering from the volitional imperialism of the ego and its drives. Nirvana as Leben ohne Warum occurs in the here-and-now, in this world and this life” (Religion and Nothingness p 179)
“Non-abiding nirvana” is yet another traditional word Nishitani borrowed from Mahayana. In John Krummel’s words: “Non-abiding nirvana” is nirvana “freed from its reification and attachment as a state transcendent to, hence other than, this very life (samsara).” In Buddhism, this teaching came as a warning against “the danger of clinging not only to emptiness as a concept but also to the goal or ideal of nirvana. The point was that such clinging to nirvana that withdraws and isolates one from the world would be life-negating and world-denying, another fetter in the way of authentic freedom … True nirvana is ‘non-abiding’ (Jp fuju), non-different from samsara. That is to say that it is not an eternal realm separate from this world of change. Authentic freedom is to be realized in this world but through its unfettering from the volitional imperialism of the ego and its drives. Nirvana as Leben ohne Warum occurs in the here-and-now, in this world and this life.”
“The realization that “being is immediately nothing” or that “form is immediately emptiness” entails a standpoint at the point of “immediacy” (soku) that enables one to see both being and nothingness. In taking a stance on this soku (“is,” “immediacy”) between form and emptiness, being and nothingness, one breaks through the shackles of both substance and nihility to be liberated from their double confinement and released into emptiness, that is, empty emptiness, non-abiding nirvana. In Nishitani’s words: “Emptiness in the sense of sunyata is emptiness only when it empties itself even of the standpoint that represents it as some “thing” that is emptiness. It is, in its original Form, self-emptying … True emptiness is not to be posited as something outside of or other than ‘being’. Rather, it is to be realized as something united to and self-identical with being” (RN 96-97).
Krummel once more comes back to “the Tendai stance of the “middle” (Jp chu) between— or rather encompassing—“provisionality” and “emptiness … The “double- exposure” of the “middle” stance on the field of emptiness makes explicit the irreducibility of reality and life to dichotomous terms that Nishitani characterizes as nothingness, identifies with Mahayana emptiness, and recognizes in Eckhart’s godhood beyond God (see RN 99). Reality is the irreducible nonduality of “life and death,” being and nothing. Therefore the realization of reality demands a single vision grasping both sides—the positive and the negative orientations, life and death, being and nihility—simultaneously, a vision that encompasses “the great death” and “the great life.” Seen thus together in emptiness, the opposites cancel each other out as ultimately empty, revealing the actual world in its truth and reality as seen through this ‘middle’ vision.”
Krummel’s Conclusion
Krummel concludes with a critical assessment of Nishitani’s achievement. On one hand, he believes that “Nishitani has succeeded in giving voice in a highly sophisticated manner and within the frame of contemporary philosophical discourse the difficult and intricate thought content of Mahayana Buddhism.”
On the other hand, however, he asks whether, “in setting up its own tacit dichotomy between emptiness and duality” Nishitani ignores the “very complexity of the manifold of reality that exceeds and escapes any sort of binary schematization? This may be a danger implicit in Nishitani’s thought (as well as Nishida’s later thought and perhaps of other Kyoto school thinkers.)
I quote in full Krummel’s concluding remarks: “The vision of emptiness as reality revealing itself in that “middle” standpoint, as Nishitani claims, is neither nihilistic nor positivistic; nor is it materialistic atheism, theism, or pantheism. It points to the anontological (under)ground that environs the comings and goings, constructions and destructions, of being and non-being, on and meon. We might add that it refers to the open clearing of an infinitely rich and deep world of manifold possibilities, actualities, and their negations, and inclusive not only of opposites but of disparates. In that sense it encompasses more than a reductive dichotomization of reality into opposites, but includes the vast and irreducible complexity of a manifold plurality and gathers them in their emptiness. The simplicity that is emptiness simultaneously permits that irreducible excess; and reciprocally, that excess complexity calls for the emptiness of substance. Its vision and realization in human awareness is what Nishitani envisioned to be true ‘religion’. In negating the reified negation of being, it returns us to affirm non-reified existence along with life and meaning. Such is the realization of emptiness but I think that this also means the recognition of complexity and multiplicity. Life and reality are not only finite; they are complex. Nishitani’s philosophical project in that sense brings ancient Mahayana Buddhist insights into the contemporary world setting, where age-old securities are today crumbling to unfold the irreducible complexity of ‘truth’, and makes them relevant for our day-to-day living.”
Sources:
John W. M. Krummel – “Nishitani Keiji: Nihilism, Buddhism, Anontology,” in The Dao Companion to Japanese Buddhist Philosophy, Ed. Gereon Kopf
Nishitani Keiji – Religion and Nothingness
