Natural Freedom: Human/Nature Nondualism in Japanese Thought
Bret W. Davis
The Oxford Handbook of World Philosophy
Edited by William Edelglass and Jay L. Garfield
Print Publication Date: May 2011 Subject: Philosophy, Non-Western Philosophy Online Publication Date: Sep 2011 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195328998.003.0029
Abstract and Keywords
Many of us today can neither swallow the metaphysical dogma that would separate our souls from the natural world nor bite the
deterministic bullet and renounce our longing for—and inner sense of—freedom. The question, then, is: Can we find a path that leads beyond these apparent conflicts between freedom and nature? One thing seems clear: if there is such a path of reconciliation, it must entail along the way a radical rethinking of the very concepts of “nature” and “freedom.” This article demonstrates that Japanese thought has much to contribute to precisely such a rethinking of nature and freedom—a rethinking that sees them as nondually interrelated in their origins and as ultimately reconcilable through practice. By drawing on a number of traditional and modern thinkers, it explores the philosophical sources in Japan for recognizing and realizing the possibility of a natural freedom.
Keywords: Japanese philosophy, natural freedom, nature, origins
Follow the creative transformations of nature; return to the creative transformations of nature! —Bashō
If one has engaged in this practice for a long period of time, no matter in which direction one lets the mind go, it moves in a state of freedom.
—Takuan Sōhō
“How should one live?”
“One should live freely and naturally.”
An intuitively compelling response. And yet, can one have it both ways? Can one be both free and natural?
In fact, strong currents in the Western tradition tell us no. According to long-standing metaphysical dualisms, just as the mind or soul is distinct from the body, freedom is of an essentially different order than nature. While transcendently oriented religion tells us that we must ultimately free our souls from their embodiment in nature, modern science (albeit perhaps no longer quantum physics) tells us (p. 335) that nature is governed by deterministic laws that would seem to be the very antithesis of freedom as autonomy or self-determination.
Nevertheless, many of us today can neither swallow the metaphysical dogma that would separate our souls from the natural world nor bite the deterministic bullet and renounce our longing for—and inner sense of—freedom. The question, then, is: Can we find a path that leads beyond these apparent conflicts between freedom and nature? One thing seems clear: if there is such a path of reconciliation, it must entail along the way a radical rethinking of the very concepts of “nature” and “freedom.”
What I mean to demonstrate in this essay is that Japanese thought has much to contribute to precisely such a rethinking of nature and freedom, a rethinking that sees them as nondually interrelated in their origins and as ultimately reconcilable through practice. By drawing on a number of traditional and modern thinkers, I shall explore here the philosophical sources in Japan for recognizing and realizing the possibility of a natural freedom.
The Intimacy of Freedom and Nature
The modern Japanese philosopher Kuki Shtizō wrote the following succinct and striking account of the fundamental differences between typically Western and typically Japanese conceptions of the relation between freedom and nature:
In the Japanese ideal of morality, “nature” in the sense of what is “so of itself” [onozukara na shizen] has great significance. ... If one does not reach the point of naturalness [jinen], then morality is not seen as completed. This is quite distinct from the West. Indeed, in Western conceptual configurations nature is often thought in opposition to freedom. By contrast, in Japanese practical experience there is a tendency for nature and freedom to be understood as fused together and identified. Freedom is something that naturally springs forth of itself. Freedom is not born as the result of a strained self-assertiveness. When the heart/mind of heaven and earth naturally comes forth of itself just as it is, that is freedom. 1
According to traditional Japanese thought, then, freedom is not something gained by separating ourselves from nature, but rather is itself an expression of naturalness. It is not a freedom from nature, but rather a freedom in nature, a freedom of naturalness or a natural freedom.
This intimacy between freedom and nature is in fact reflected in the very language used to speak of “nature” and “freedom” in Japan. The ji of jiyū 自由 (“freedom” or, more literally, “arising-from-oneself”) or of jizai 自在 (“freedom” or, more literally, “abiding-of-oneself”) is written with the same character as the shi of shizen自然 (“nature” or, (p. 336) more literally, “what-is-just-so-of-itself”). The latter compound can also be read as jinen (“naturalness” or, more literally, “being-just-so-of-itself”). Moreover, the same character 自 (shi or ji)—a prefix meaning “self-” and originally a preposition meaning “from”—is also used, with only a slight variation in its phonetic modulation, to write
2
both onozukara 自ずから and mizukara 自ら. Onozukara is used as a noun or as an adjective signifying what is, or that something is, originally “so-of-itself,” or as an adverb signifying that something occurs naturally “of-itself.” Mizukara, on the other hand, can be used as a first-person pronoun or as a noun meaning “oneself,” and it is often used as an adverb signifying that something is done “of-oneself,” “by-oneself,” or “from-oneself.” The root meaning of “self” can also be found in these expressions in the ono 己, which refers generally to the self (onore 己 or jiko 自己), and in the mi 身, which refers more specifically to the “personal embodied self” (as in mibun身分 or jibunjishin 自分自身).
As we shall see, what is striking in Japanese thought is precisely the nonduality between the personal initiative implied in the expression mizukara and the impersonal naturalness implied in the expression onozukara. In other words, the freedom (jiyū 自由) of the self (jiko 自己) is thought to accord with—rather than to stand in opposition to—the naturalness (jinen 自然) of nature (shizen 自然). Only by way of finding one's place of participation in what is naturally “so-of-itself” (onozukara 自ずから) can one recover the authentic ability to be freely “of-oneself” (mizukara 自ら). In taking part in nature, one is naturally free.
Freedom: Negative and Positive, Supernatural and Natural
As with the Western terms “freedom” and “liberty,” Japanese words such as jiyū and jizai also imply, at least to begin with, a freedom from constraints. However, at the same time there is a keen awareness that a liberation merely from external restrictions can give way to an arbitrariness and even egoistic wantonness. Hence, Suzuki (p. 337) Daisetsu draws a sharp distinction between “freedom” (jiyū) and “licentiousness” (hōitsu). Indeed, he claims that these are opposites, insofar as the latter involves a lack of self-control that leads to a slavery to the passions. (It is worth mentioning that Suzuki criticizes here the “Beat Generation”—many of whom ironically claimed to be inspired by Suzuki's own writings on Zen—for failing to make this crucial distinction between freedom and following one's whims.) The realization of true freedom, Suzuki claims, requires passing not only through a discipline of self-control, but ultimately through an existential “death” of
the ego as the internal source of bondage. 3
Unlike humans, inanimate things and nonhuman animals are not alienated from their own specific forms of natural freedom. “The pine tree is not the bamboo, and the bamboo is not the pine tree; each dwells in its own place, and this is the freedom of the pine tree and the bamboo.” To call this “necessity” rather than “freedom,” Suzuki remarks, is to take an outsider's perspective. For the pine tree to be a pine tree is the expression of its natural freedom, not the result of a denial of its desire to be something else. Natural necessity, experienced from within, is natural freedom. Nishitani Keiji also suggests a kind of compatibilism between natural freedom and natural necessity when he writes: “when someone tosses a crust of bread and a dog leaps up in the air to catch it, every ‘thing’ involved ... [is] subject to certain physico-chemical laws. ... [And yet,] the dog and the man live the laws of nature. ... [Moreover,] their activities in some sense also imply an appropriation of
4
the laws of nature.” In fact, as we shall see, in the Japanese tradition human freedom is thought to be compatible not only with the lawful regularity, but also with the radical indeterminacy and contingency of nature's unfathomable ways.
Yet humans, and apparently humans alone, are capable not only of naturalness but also of “falsity,” that is, of a distorted and distorting view of their own place in the world and the range of possibilities open to this place. To be sure, we humans are not pine trees, and we have certain unique abilities and responsibilities for cooperatively shaping our environment. But it is a hubristic falsification for us to think of ourselves as supernatural masters of the natural world. We too have our own specific freedom within nature, not outside or opposed to it.
While Suzuki somewhat polemically claims that the (modern liberal) West has failed to think beyond a negative sense of freedom or liberty, in fact there have long been debates in Western political philosophy surrounding what Isaiah Berlin has referred to as “two concepts of liberty,” 5 namely, a “negative freedom” from constraints and a “positive freedom” to realize one's authentic potentials. Moreover, it is not the case that negative freedom has been thought only in the sense of political freedom from external constraints. According to Kant, for
example, morality demands a freedom from internal compulsions (sensuous or natural “inclinations”), a negative freedom that in turn enables a positive freedom, (p. 338) namely, the “autonomy” of giving the supersensuous or supernatural law of practical reason to oneself.
Nevertheless, while Kant thinks of autonomy dualistically as requiring a supersensuous will free from natural inclinations, Suzuki thinks in nondualistic terms of an autonomous naturalness. Suzuki defines freedom as “the activity that naturally comes forth as it is—without any direction from another and without restriction—from the principle of nature.” Far from seeing autonomy as an independence from nature, he stresses the linguistic as well as semantic intimacy between freedom, or “arising-from-oneself” (jiyū rlFk)—autonomy in the sense of acting
7
on one's own accord or “of-oneself” (mizukara rlLj)—and naturalness as a spontaneous activity that happens “of-itself” (onozukara rlLj). On the one hand, then, Suzuki would agree with Kant that positive freedom requires a negative freedom, not just from external constraints, but also from internal compulsions. On the other hand, however, he would disagree with the idea that autonomy is gained by means of a supernatural freedom from and rational control of all natural inclinations. Autonomy is not gained by means of a complete independence from the supposed heteronomy of nature, but rather by means of harmonizing oneself with the truly natural Way that is the very origin of the self. Freedom is realized not by way of a dualistic disengagement from nature, but rather by way of a nondualistic engagement in nature.
In an early work, Nishitani suggests a dialectical path through a disengagement from egoistic self-will (what we might call our inauthentic, alienated, and alienating self-nature) toward a recovery of genuine naturalness (our authentic self-nature). 8 He acknowledges Kantian rational autonomy as a significant step on a way that ultimately, however, leads back to a realization of the nonduality of our authentic self with a radical naturalness. In his later attempts to think of this human/nature nonduality, where the self freely participates in nature, Nishitani turns increasingly to the tradition of Zen Buddhism. He quotes, for instance, the following passages from Musō Kokushi:
Hills and rivers, the earth, plants and trees, tiles and stones, all of these are the self's own original part. ... Out of the realm of the original part have arisen all things: from the wisdom of Buddhas and saints to the body-and-mind of every sentient being, and all
lands and worlds. 9
(p. 339) When the self awakens to its own “original part,” the core and source of its being, it realizes its participation in the dynamically interconnected whole of nature.
Nature as a Way of Naturalness
The question of freedom has taken us back to the question of nature. The contemporary Japanese psychoanalyst Kimura Bin draws a broad distinction between, on the one hand, a conception of nature that sets it in opposition to human culture and, on the other, a conception of nature that sees it as “pertaining to the innermost psychic reality” of human beings. The former conception, Kimura says, predominates in the Western tradition, whereas the latter is typified in the traditional Japanese understanding of nature. 10 Suzuki also claims that “Western ‘nature’ is dualistic and is set over against ‘the human,’” while “Eastern ‘shizen’ includes ‘the human.’” 11 The Greeks did often set technē (art/craft) and nomos (convention) over against physis (nature); and a dualistic distinction between the natural body (soma) and the supernatural soul (psychē) gets repeated in one form or another from Plato through medieval Christian thought to Descartes. Of course, we can also find countercurrents to such dualisms throughout the Western tradition. But in Japan, a human/nature nondualism is the main current of thinking. As Yanabu Akira writes, the traditional Japanese notion of “nature” (shizen) signifies a world that either precedes the
subject/object split or that entails the unification of subject and object. 12
What, then, is this “nature” in which humans nondually participate? Today, shizen is used as a translation of the Western concept (or rather concepts) of “nature.” In premodern (that is, pre-Westernized) Japan, however, “nature” as the totality of all natural things was referred to with such expressions as “mountains-rivers-grasses-trees” (sansensOmoku) and “the interwoven variety [literally the ‘forest web’] of the myriad phenomena” (shinrabanshO). On the other hand, “Nature” as the order of the cosmos, or as a dynamic cosmological principle of
6
transformation, was expressed with such terms as “heaven and earth” (tenchi), the Way (dō or michi), and “creative transformation” (zōka). Nature in the Japanese tradition is thus an inherently dynamic and creative whole unto itself. It is not the product of a transcendent Creator; indeed, even the Shintō gods are said to have emerged from mysterious yet natural processes. 13
(p. 340) In many respects, this Japanese sense of “nature” does resemble a Greek sense of kosmos: that is, a self-contained world that includes the gods as well as all animate and inanimate beings, and in which humans are to find their proper place. But the Japanese did not attempt to develop a “cosmology” in the sense of a thoroughly logical account (logos) of a thoroughly rationally ordered world (kosmos). While nature is not thought of as simply chaotic, that is, while there are indeed principle patterns (ri or kotowari) that permeate the phenomenal flux, the rhyme and reason of nature's Way ultimately exceeds human calculation and intellectual reasoning. Nevertheless, while the principle of this fluid Way cannot be fixed in place by the objectifying intellect, it can be existentially realized by means of a holistically engaged praxis that includes, but is not limited to, discursive reasoning.
In the Japanese tradition nature is thus not so much an object of study as it is a way of life. The Japanese were concerned less with “nature” as the object of a theory of being, and more with “naturalness” as a principle of becoming and as a practical way of living. In fact, the Japanese word that is used today to translate the Western concept of “nature”—自然, read as shizen—was originally used as an adjective (natural) or as an adverb (naturally), rather than as a substantive (nature). Naturalness—自然, read as jinen—is an adverb describing the authentic way in which things, animals, and, ideally, people are. The human task is therefore not to learn to completely predict and externally control nature by fathoming its rational laws, but rather to bring oneself into accordance with the fluid principle of its Way.
A Way Beyond the Pitfalls of Naturalism and Supernaturalism
As we have seen, in traditional Japanese thought freedom is not found in a victorious or tragic struggle against nature, but rather in the naturalness of a participation in nature. But this free participation in nature is not in fact a given; the source of natural freedom must be retapped. And the path back to a radical wellspring of naturalness must avoid the pitfall of a superficial “naturalism.” At the same time, as we shall see, Japanese thinkers attempted to avoid this pitfall without diverting the path away from a nondualistic this-worldly naturalness toward a dualistic otherworldly supernaturalism.
An affirmation of the soteriological efficacy of nature is a recurrent theme in Japanese Buddhism as well as in indigenous Shintō thought. The Buddha Way does not lead to a transcendence of nature, but entails rather a return to naturalness; and natural phenomena themselves
14
help teach us this Way. Dōgen claims that “grass and trees” are the Buddha-nature. “The stitras,” he says, “are the entire universe, (p. 341) mountains and rivers and the great earth, plants and trees,” and we are counseled to listen to “the voices and figures of streams and the sounds and shapes of mountains” as they “bounteously deliver eighty-four-thousand gāthās [verses].” 15
And yet, Dōgen was also keenly aware that the then-prevalent doctrine of the “original enlightenment” (hongaku) of all beings can easily mislead one to a superficial “naturalism” that permits a wanton indifference to practice. 16 In this regard he cites his teacher Rujin's warning: “If one says all sentient beings are from the first Buddhas, that would fall under the teaching of the non-Buddhist school of Naturalism.” 17
That a genuinely radical naturalness is not to be confused with the egoistic abandon of so-called naturalism is also clearly apparent in Shinran's ideal of “dharmic naturalness” (jinenhōni). For Shinran, such genuine naturalness is achieved precisely by disposing of all egoistic workings of “self-power” (jiriki) and opening oneself to the “other-power” (tariki) of Amida Buddha's grace. To Western ears, this may initially sound like a familiar sacrifice of naturalistic egoism for the sake of supernatural fideism, in other words, a giving up of self-will for the sake of obedience to God's Will. Yet, for Shinran, even the personified transcendence of Amida is ultimately to be understood as an
18
“expedient means” for returning to a natural spontaneity and effortless compassion here and now. And, we might ask, would not this dharmic naturalness then lie radically beyond the very dualism of self-power and other-power?
19
Nishida Kitarō writes that “in dharmic naturalness, we see God in a place where there is no God,” and he explicitly suggests that dharmic naturalness must be understood neither in terms of the egoistic arbitrariness of an immanent naturalism nor in terms of a deferential obedience to a supernatural being.
Something like what Shinran calls dharmic naturalness is not what is thought of as natural [shizen] in Western thought. It is not a matter of behaving arbitrarily and just following one's impulses. It is not a matter of so-called “naturalism” [shizenshugi]. Dharmic naturalness must involve exhaustively exerting the self in the face of things. It must include infinite effort, and must not merely be a matter of going with the flow. And yet, it should be recognized that one's efforts are themselves not one's own. There is
something which of itself naturally allows things to happen [onozukara shikarashimeru mono]. ... [This] must not be [thought of as] something that moves the self either from the outside or from the inside, but rather [as] something that envelopes the self.
(p. 342) True naturalness is not gained by simply passively submitting oneself to the Will of a transcendent being outside the self, any more than it can be gained by simply acting on the willfulness found immanent in the surface layers of the self. Rather, according to Nishida, the true individual discovers him- or herself to be “enveloped” by the “place of absolute nothingness”; and, realizing oneself as a “focal point” of
the self-determination of this dynamic place, one truly becomes what one is, “a creative element in a creative world.” 21
Human/Nature Nonduality: Existence and return
Nondualism is sometimes taken to be synonymous with distinctionless monism. However, while this may apply to the Advaita Vedanta school of Indian philosophy, in East Asian thought, and in Zen Buddhism in particular, nonduality (funi) tends to be thought rather in terms of “not one and not two” (fuichi-funi). As seen in the passage quoted above, Nishida was satisfied neither with a philosophy of sheer immanence nor with one of dualistic transcendence. Rather, he thought that the nondual relation between the self and the absolute must be
22
understood in terms of “immanent transcendence” (naizai-teki-chōetsu). Precisely because the finite self is “enveloped by” rather than externally opposed to the absolute, the absolute is found at the very heart of the finite self. Insofar as we understand nature to be the encompassing whole of reality,23 in order to understand the relation of the finite self to nature, we must think in such terms of a nondual relation of immanent transcendence. The self is not simply submerged in nature, but neither is it something dualistically separate or separable from nature.
Kimura Bin helps us to understand this nondual relation between the self and nature by explaining it in terms of a literal sense of “existence.” “The self, mizukara, is nothing but an ‘existence’ in the sense of a ‘standing out’ or ‘emerging’ of the intrinsic nature, onozukara, into the outer intersubjective reality of human life through the ‘ex-it’ of one's own body, mi.”24 The personal embodied self is thus an (p. 343) ek-stasis, a standing outside oneself, insofar as it is an emergence from “the overall spontaneous activity of nature” that is the “very origin of the inner self.”
Kimura suggests that mental health requires a dynamic balance between individuating existence and staying in touch with one's natural origins. While on the one hand the schizophrenic is unable to first achieve an individuating existence from nature, on the other hand the Zen practitioner seeks to radically return to the creative source of (human) nature. “If the goal of endeavor in Zen Buddhism is gaining access to the true Self before the differentiation of mizukara from onozukara, the basic disturbance of the schizophrenic psychosis can be seen in a
25
difficulty to differentiate them.” While the schizophrenic fails to become an individual in the first place, the Zen practitioner attempts to transcend individual egoism and alienation by returning to the natural roots of humanity.
Freedom is thus not simply an innate given, but rather the achievement of a regained naturalness. The true self is a part of nature, but it is a part that dynamically stands out from and returns to nature. Natural freedom is not a static state of being, but rather a dynamic dialectic of existence and return.
The Unfathomability of Nature and Freedom
Insofar as we humans are one with nature, in other words, insofar as we come from nature and can return to nature, we can realize—awaken to and embody—the principle of its fluid Way. And yet, insofar as we stand out from nature as existing finite individuals, we can neither fathom its every rhyme and reason nor control every twist and turn of its flow.
As we have seen, the same characters 自然 can be read either as jinen or as shizen. While the former reading was used in the past, as it is still today, in the sense of “natural,” without artificial intervention, the latter reading was traditionally used to refer to events that were unexpected, “one in ten thousand” (man-ichi). Analogously, the expression onozukara was used not only to refer to events that were
26
“natural,” that happen as a matter “of course,” but also to events that occur “perchance” (hyottosuruto or tamatama). Hence, the expressions onozukara and shizen evince, not a nature that is exhaustively ruled by laws of necessity that can be epistemologically fathomed and technologically manipulated, but rather a nature that can manifest itself also in radically contingent and surprising events.27 Such events,
28
that of death in particular, are (p. 344) beyond our ken and control—and yet they too are natural. Returning to a life of naturalness thus
20
requires more than comprehending and attuning ourselves to the lawful regularities of nature; it also demands an openness to nature's unfathomable contingencies and a recognition of our own finitude and mortality in particular.
This conjunction of what is natural (“of course”) with what is contingent and surprising is paradoxical only if we assume that the ways of nature can be reduced to the laws of human understanding and submitted to the calculations of egoistic desire. Yet, while this noncalculable contingency means that the natural world is beyond our control, the indeterminacy of nature is in fact also the source of our own freedom. An acknowledgment of the ultimate unfathomability of natural processes is at the same time an affirmation of the nondeterministic freedom of our participation in these processes. The spontaneity and creativity of nature and freedom is the complement of their contingency and unpredictability.
Freedom, after all, essentially cannot be explained—for to explain freedom would be to explain it away. What can be determined in advance is, strictly speaking, nothing new, but rather merely the mechanistic or teleological unfolding of what was already there. However situated and finite it may be, freedom is precisely what cannot be exhaustively determined by causes and conditions. Indeed, freedom (jiyū 自由) is as such an origin; it is a source from (自) which something new arises (由). It is not a predictable becoming based on determinate being, but
rather a creative emergence out of an indeterminate “nothingness.” 29
The traditional Japanese Way of nature entails, then, a nondeterministic, uncontrollable, incalculable excess of originality and creativity. This natural Way both exceeds the control of our egos and is the very source of the freedom of our authentic selves. For, as Nishida puts it, we become true individuals when we realize ourselves as “creative elements in a creative world.”
The Practice of Regaining Natural Freedom
As is implied in Bashō's call for us to “return to the creative transformations of nature,” natural freedom is not simply a given; it must be achieved. This achievement, however, is a matter of radical regress rather than linear progress; that is to say, it entails stepping back to our forgotten roots, getting back in touch with the hidden source of spontaneous creativity and compassionate responsibility that lies underfoot.
(p. 345) The quest for natural freedom in the Japanese tradition thus always starts with a paradox of self-alienation: to begin with we are not who we are most originally.
Dōgen opens his Fukanzazengi with a version of this paradox: “From the beginning the Way circulates everywhere; why the need to verify it in practice? ... And yet, if there is the slightest discrepancy, heaven and earth are vastly separated; if the least disorder arises, the heart and
30
mind get lost in confusion.” Although the natural Way is everywhere, its ubiquity must be realized, that is, awakened to and actualized. Dōgen's solution to the acquired enlightenment (shikaku) versus original enlightenment (hongaku) dilemma is found in his notion of “the
31
oneness of practice and enlightenment” (shushO ittO). With this doctrine he manages to avoid the pitfall of a superficial naturalism that excuses humans from the task of realizing the originary ubiquity of the Buddha-nature. Practice is not a means by which we acquire a new essence; yet it is a way of expressly verifying our true being. As he tells us in BendOwa: “Although the Dharma [cosmic law] amply inheres in every person, without practice, it does not presence; if it is not verified, it is not attained.” 32 The natural freedom of our Buddha-nature is always already underfoot, and yet it must be appropriated by means of holistic practice (shugyO).
While there is no end to this practice of the realization of natural freedom (insofar as what one realizes is that practice is realization), one
33
does pass from a more or less artificially forced discipline to what Takuan calls a state of “samadhic freedom” (jiyū zammai). The practice (keiko) of serious discipline, Takuan writes, leads to a “state of freedom [jiyū]” in which one can let the mind go in any direction. 34 If one has learned to “throw the mind away in the entire body, not stopping it here or there,” then, “when it does inhabit these various places, it will realize its function and act without error.” 35 Freed from internal compulsion by means of strict external discipline, one finally lets go of the latter to realize a genuinely natural freedom in the midst of everyday activity.
As we have seen, the nonduality of this natural freedom does not imply a licentious naturalism, nor does it imply a distinctionless monism into which singular differences are dissolved and ethical responsibility abnegated. Although Takuan is sometimes accused of dissolving ethical distinctions, insofar as in his “lessons to the sword master” he says that the self, the opponent, and the sword are all to be viewed as
36
“empty [of independent substantiality],” in fact, the spontaneous freedom he teaches does contain significant ethical implications. It is necessary to cast off the dualistic discriminations of the ego, not in order to attain a blanket state of nondiscrimination, but rather in order to discriminate—that is, to make practical (p. 346) distinctions and ethical judgments—freely and naturally. This freedom from (artificial and egoistic) discrimination and freedom for (natural and nonegoistic) discrimination is what Takuan means when he says: “Without looking at right and wrong, he is able to see right and wrong well; without attempting to discriminate, he is able to discriminate well.” 37 One finds the
source of practical wisdom, not by intellectually disengaging oneself from the everyday world and transcending it to a supernatural realm, but rather by means of a holistic practice of intimately engaging oneself with the everyday world by nondually attuning oneself to the fluid principle—the natural Way—that pervades the singular events of the here and now.
To be sure, Zen masters and other Japanese teachers in the past and in the present have not always lived up to their ideal practices of returning to a free and responsible naturalness. At their worst, they have inhibited individual autonomy by conflating nonegoistic naturalness with conformity to the status quo of the community. On the path to recovering a nondual spontaneity, there are certainly perilous sidetracks that would confuse nonduality with homogeneity and pitfalls that would simply replace self-assertive activity with deferential passivity. But such aberrations and crude reversals should not divert our attention from genuine paths of recovering natural freedom. At their best, Japanese thinkers have conveyed ways of casting off both individual and collective egoism through practices of returning ever again to the wellsprings of a nondual naturalness that is a source of both compassionate responsibility and creative freedom.
Bibliography and Suggested Readings
DAVIS, BRET W. (2007) “Does a Dog See Into Its Buddha-nature? Re-posing the Question of Animality/Humanity in Zen Buddhism.” In uddha Nature and Animality , edited by David Jones. Fremont, CA: Jain Publishing.
Find this resource:
DŌGEN KIGEN. (2002) The Heart of Dôgen's Shôbôgenzô, translated by Norman Waddell and Masao Abe. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Find this resource:
KIM, HEE-JIN. (1987) Dôgen Kigen: Mystical Realist (revised ed.). Tucson, AZ: The University of Arizona Press. Find this resource:
KIMURA BIN. (1988) “Self and Nature—An Interpretation of Schizophrenia.” Zen Buddhism Today 6, 1–10. Find this resource:
LAFLEUR, WILLIAM R. (1989) “Saigyō and the Buddhist Value of Nature.” In Nature in Asian Traditions of Thought: Essays in nvironmental Philosophy, edited by J. Baird Callicott and Roger T. Ames. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Find this resource:
MARUYAMA, MASAO. (1974) Studies in the Intellectual History of Tokugawa Japan, translated by Mikiso Hane. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press.
Find this resource:
NISHIDA KITARŌ. (1987) Last Writings: Nothingness and the Religious Worldview, translated by David A. Dilworth. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press.
Find this resource:
(p. 347) NISHITANI, KEIJI. (1982) Religion and Nothingness, translated by Jan Van Bragt. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Find this resource:
——— . (2005) “On Nature,” translated by Aihara Setsuko and Graham Parkes. In Confluences: Studies from East to West in Honor of V. H. Viglielmo, edited by William Ridgeway and Nobuko Ochner. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press.
Find this resource:
SUZUKI, D. T. (1996) “The Role of Nature in Zen Buddhism.” In Zen Buddhism: Selected Writings of D. T. Suzuki, edited by William Barrett. New York: Doubleday.
Find this resource:
TAKUAN SŌHŌ. (1986) The Unfettered Mind, translated by William Scott Wilson. Tokyo: Kodansha. Find this resource:
UNNO, TAITETSU. (1998) River of Fire, River of Water: An Introduction to the Pure Land Tradition of Shin Buddhism. New York: Doubleday. Find this resource:
Notes:
(1) Kuki ShūzO zenshū (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1980), vol. 3, p. 276; also see ibid., vol. 2, p. 102. Unless otherwise noted, translations from Japanese sources are my own.
(2) Mizukara and onozukara are indigenous Japanese expressions that are sometimes written entirely in phonetic script (hiragana); more often, however, they are written in part with kanji, the ideograms adopted from China. I cannot discuss here the continuities/parallels and differences between Japanese and Chinese (specifically Daoist and Chan) conceptions of the intimacy of freedom and nature. I will also have to defer an examination of the many variations within Japanese thought, since my intent in this essay is to synthesize and reflect on a general sense of “natural freedom” that pervades much of this tradition. Nevertheless, it should be mentioned that, just as the Daoists, who pleaded for a return to naturalness, had their critics in the Legalists and some Confucians (Hanzi), who stressed an artificial reshaping of human nature, the prominent theme of recovering natural freedom was not always universally accepted in Japan. Maruyama Masao has argued, for example, that a rejection of the Neo-Confucian rooting of ethical and political principles in “nature” (shizen), and an attempt to see them as based rather on human “invention” (sakui), can be found in a number of thinkers (Ogyti Sorai in particular) in the Tokugawa period in Japan. Maruyama interprets this shift as a “modernization” that paved the way for Westernization. See Maruyama 1974, part 2.
(3) Suzuki Daisetsu, TOyO-teki-na mikata (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1997), p. 68.
(4) Nishitani 1982, 79–80.
(5) See Isaiah Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty,” in Four Essays on Liberty (London: Oxford University Press, 1969).
(6) See Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, 2nd ed., trans. Lewis White Beck (New York: Macmillan, 1990), p. 70 [452]. When Kant uses the term “nature” in the “widest sense” to mean “the existence of things under laws,” he opposes the intelligible world of “supersensuous nature” to the empirical world of “sensuous nature.” He claims that these worlds, or views of the world, are strictly distinct and yet somehow coexist in a manner incomprehensible to us. See Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Lewis White Beck (New York: Macmillan, 1956), p. 44 [43], 102–103 [99–100].
(7) Suzuki, TOyO-teki-na mikata, p. 65. Note that Suzuki writes here mizukara and onozukara exactly the same, distinguishing them only by appended phonetic script (furigana).
(8) See Nishitani Keiji chosakushū (Tokyo: Sōbunsha, 1986), vol. 1, pp. 85–90.
(9) Nishitani 1982, 108.
(10) Kimura 1988, 4.
(11) Suzuki, TOyO-tekihna mikata, p. 220.
(12) Yanabu Akira, “Shizen: Honyakugo no unda gokai,” in Honyakugo seiritsu jijO (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1982), p. 133.
(13) See Sagara Tōru, “‘Onozukara’ toshite no shizen,” in Sagara TOru chosakushū (Tokyo: Perikansha, 1995), vol. 6, pp. 148–149. Maruyama sees this as reflecting the fact that the Japanese historical consciousness is based, not on a teleological sense of creation, but on a sense of the natural dynamism of a continual becoming (tsugi-tsugi ni nariyuku ikioi). See Maruyama Masao, “Rekishi-ishiki no ‘kosō,’ ” in Chūsei to hangyaku (Tokyo: Chikuma, 1992).
(14) Dōgen 2002, 76–77.
(15) Quoted from the “Jishō zammai” and “Keiseisanshoku” fascicles of the ShObOgenzO in Kim 1987, 97, 256.
(16) According to Takeuchi Seiichi, the “naturalism” (shizenshugi) of the “I novels” of early twentieth-century Japanese literature also fell into an analogous pitfall. See Takeuchi Seiichi, “Onozukara” to “mizukara”: NihonshisO no kiso (Tokyo: Shunjtisha, 2004), pp. 11–13, 20– 21.
(17) “Dōgen's Hōkyō-ki (1),” trans. Norman Waddell, The Eastern Buddhist New Series 10/2 (October 1977): 121.
(18) Sagara shows how Shinran ultimately understands Amida and other-power as expedient means for realizing naturalness (“ ‘Onozukara’ keijijōgaku,” in Sagara TOru chosakushū, vol. 6, pp. 136–137).
(19) Nishida 1987, 121, translation modified.
(20) Nishida Kitarô zenshū (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1987–1989), vol. 12, p. 369.
(21) See Nishida Kitarô zenshū, vol. 8, p. 339.
(22) See Nishida 1987, 99, 110, 121.
(23) Nishida himself does not in fact usually speak of the absolute or the ultimately enveloping and self-determining world as “nature.” In his later thought, he tends to limit “nature” (shizen) per se to the realms of biology and physics, which he generally claims are enveloped by the historical world. However, in an important text from his later period, Nishida writes of the dialectically self-determining world in terms of “historical nature” (rekishi-teki shizen) (Nishida Kitarô zenshū, vol. 8, pp. 298ff.). In an early essay, Nishida had written that “nature and culture are not opposed to one another; nature is the root of culture. An artificial culture separated from a profound and vast nature cannot but degenerate” (Nishida Kitarô zenshū, vol. 13, p. 129).
(24) Kimura 1988, 6.
(25) Ibid., 10.
(26) See the entries for “shizen” and “onozukara” in Kôjien (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1991) and in Iwanami kogojiten (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1992).
(27) It is not surprising that Kuki's philosophical investigation of “contingency” (gūzen) led him through European existentialism back to the Japanese conception of nature. See Tanaka Kytibun, Kuki Shūzô: gūzen to shizen (Tokyo: Perikansha, 1992), ch. 5.
(28) See Sagara, “‘Onozukara’ keijijōgaku,” pp. 124–125, and “‘Onozukara’ toshite no shizen,” pp. 151–153.
(29) See Nishitani 2005, 67–68.
(30) My translation. For an alternative translation, see Dōgen 2002, 2–3.
(31) The attempt to steer through the horns of acquired versus original enlightenment dualism did not remain unique to Dōgen. As Takeuchi points out, Ippen spoke of “the nonduality of acquired and original enlightenment [shihon-funi]” (“Onozukara” to “mizukara,” 19).
(32) My translation. For an alternative translation, see Dōgen 2002, 8.
(33) Takuan 1986, 82. Wilson translates jiyū zammai as “freedom in a meditative state.”
(34) Ibid., 36.
(35) Ibid., 26, 31, translation modified.
(36) Ibid., 37.
(37) Ibid., 81, translation modified.
Bret W. Davis
Bret W. Davis is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Maryland. In addition to earning a Ph.D. in Western Philosophy, he spent over a decade in Japan working on Buddhist and Japanese philosophy. He is author of Heidegger and the Will: On the Way to Gelassenheit (2007); translator of Martin Heidegger, Country Path Conversations (2010); editor of Martin Heidegger: Key Concepts (2009); and coeditor of Japanese Philosophy in the World (in Japanese, 2005) and Japanese and Continental Philosophy: Conversations with the Kyoto School (2010). He has also published numerous articles in English and Japanese, including an article on the Kyoto school for the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Oxford Handbooks Online
