Zen Buddhism and Existential Phenomenology: The Dancer and the
Dance

by  Joe Dees

   There can be little disagreement that existential
phenomenology and Zen Buddhism have been within the past three-
quarter century two of the greatest infuences upon the developmental
trends of contemporary thought.  The "way" of Zen and of EP (these
abbreviations shall hereafter be used), and in some cases of both,
arereadily apparent within the works of many of the recent seminal
thinkers in art, whilosophy, religious studies, sociology, psychology,
poetry and prose literature.
   We are here concerned with delineating congruities within
these two influences which may perhaps form the grounds of their
common popularity; we shall listen to their respective songs and strive
to hear the mutual harmonies with which they have so effectively
resonated within our times, ourselves, our (progressively blending)
societies, and our shared world.  We shall consider them in relation to
time, self, society, world, perception, language and metaphysics.  First,
however, we wish to show some historical and general similarities
between them.
   Zen and EP are both syntheses of two formerly independent
philosophical trends.  The two trends synthecized within Zen are
Taoism and Buddhism; the two synthecized within EP are, of course,
phenomenology and existentialism.  The two syntheses share an
aversion to closed systems; Zen's first principle is the primordial
inexpressibility of the all-encompassing, and EP refuses to be statically
defined, although it is grounded in Being-in-the-World.  Since the first
principle of Zen is a totality (reminiscent of the Tao) in Zen, it can be
seen that these are basically two ways of saying the same thing.
   They also, according to some adherents, consider themselves
in the same terms as disciplines.  D.T. Suzuki describes Zen as "radical
empiricism"; William James, a strong influence upon Edmund Husserl,
the founder of phenomenology, gave his method the exact same label.
   
         TIME

   For EP, the meaning of the Being-in the-World (or Dasein) is
temporality; "it's" meaning is evolved within, stretched along, and
perdures through time.  Since Dasein is primordially temporal (within
time), Dasein self-conceives finitude.  This is because eternity would of
necessity be equivalent to the absence of time - it's correlative opposite
absolute - because time needs to be relativistically compared with itself
to possess a meaning.  This meaning is relative to the Dasein (lived
time).  This comparison may be seen as a juxtaposition of moments, but
this is to erroneously spatialize time; time is actually continuous in that
time and its beholders flow through and correlate each other
spatiotemporally.  The present 'as such" could be a victim of infinite
regress into infinitesimality, nut lived time is the interpenetration of past
and future: a moving consciousness-node.
   At the same time (excuse the pun), the temporality we live is "all
the time in the world" for us, for before birth and after death the Dasein
is not in the world and thus cannot apprehend its primordial temporality
through and by means of it.  In this sense, each life is a personal
eternity.  Each moment is now, each now is different from the previous
"now" moment, yet arises from it and is connected with it via relevance
and similarity, and all the nows are a flowing totality through which the
Dasein *becomes* (more on that word later) rather than providing a
static cage for inert being.
   Zen poetically expresses these same themes within two
concepts; The Eternal Now (Nirvana) and the Wheel of Becoming
(Samsara).  When one becomes enlightened (the experiences of Satori
and Samadhi), Nirvana and Samsara and seen to be one and the same. 
There is no need in Zen to trivialize this understanding by lengthy
commentary; the enlightened one intuitively grasps the phenomenal
common ground underlying the disparate conceptual exegeses of it.

         SELF/WORLD

   For both EP and Zen, the self as *essence* does not exist. 
Essence is in-itself, and both the existential phenomenologist and the
Zen acolyte refuse to grant the self an existence independent of the
world.  This refusal is expressed by Jean-Paul Sartre in his famous
dictum, "Existence precedes essence", which itself may be derived from
Martin Heidegger's exposition of Dasein as "in each case mine", and as
lying "in its existence".  Since freedom is a result of temporality and
choice, it is the ability to change in time according to intention.  Thus
not only is essence particular (a contradiction demonstrating an
absence, since an essence is a universal), but since essences are
changeless, a human essence can only appear after further change is
impossible (that is, after death).  Therefore, the essence of  Dasein is
established only after its historicity is entirely consigned to the past, or,
as G.W.F. Hegel says, "essence is what has been".  We create our
meaning through interaction with the world; thus, only when we are
finished living can our meaning be complete.  This evolution of human
meaning through time is known as becoming.
   Hui-Neng also expressed this understanding within his Shen-
Hsiu refuting gatha, an insight that crystallized into the central Zen
tenet Wu-Hsin, the Zen Doctrine of No-Mind.  Wu-Hsin has an
important corollary, namely, Sunyata (Void or Emptiness), or No-World. 
This may be interpreted as an original lack of meaning.  Neither the
world nor the mind has meaning apart from each other; only within their
interpenetration is Suchness (Tathata) revealed.  Thius Tathata is itself
Sunyata, for Suchness is seen to be Empty of intrinsic meaning or
essence apart from its intentional apprehension and the meaning-giving
(Sinngebung) function of consciousness-of.
   EP also sees the world (before our imposition of meaning upon
it) as brute facticity, and devoid of extrahuman meaning.  The Dasein
and the Lebenswelt (lived world) are correlatives; each is necessary to
imbue the other with meaning, for one furnishes the Being, and the
other furnishes the perspective relative to that Being which constitutes
Meaning.  The Dasein is still part of the world whose meaning(s)(s)he
creates, and that thus contemplates itself in a part-beholding-the-whole
fashion.  Why fight the creation of meaning (netural to the correlation as
it is) by polishing the nonexistent mirror of the original face?

         SOCIETY

   EP has never been called a quietism - in fact, it has been
criticized for being too loud.  However, the idea still persists that Zen is
a quietism, in spite of the apparent contradiction of this statement with
the facticity of Zen's influence).  The activity of Wu-Hsin is designed to
not allow the vicious circle of contradictory concepts to preoccupy one's
mind and interfere with the actualization of one's projects in the world.
   There is, however, an important difference.  Whereas the spirit
of existentialism, the prescriptive counterpart of the descriptive
phenomenology, is basically seen as a rebellion against social
injustices, Zen's world-view is biased towards the promotion of social
cohesion.  Both stances are useful, and an accentuate-the-positive-
eliminate-the-negative synthesis suggests itself as the employment of
complementary means to a common end (a just and peaceful world).

         WORLD

   In EP intersubjectivity is the yardstick of "objectivity" (in quotes
because of the impossibility of apprehending any object from all
perspectives and because the object as an ideal independent of the
subject is a falsely dualist conception).  Not to realize that the world is
shared and that the foundations of one's own created meaning rest
firmly on the ground of the empirical world is not to understand the
essence of meaning as a correlative (with the primordial character of
'aboutness').  Meaning, like the freedom which makes it possible, must
be measured against its referential field, the lived world of nature and
society.  Mitdasein (being-with) is for Martin Heidegger a lived reality,
as is Dasein's manner of Being-in-the-World, Care.
   Zen also perceives the valuelessness of solitary existence
(which is existentially inauthentic), and insists upon interaction with
both nature and society as necessary for self-actualization.  This is a
rejection of passive self-thought.  Quietism interferes apprehension and
enlightenment; this is why Boddhisatvas reject trancendence in favor of
engagement.  Within EP, existence is a symbiotic enterprise simply
because to express there must be others to whom one's expression is
directed - expression od the existent self is directed towards the other. 
Within both Zen and EP, social interaction is the meaningful choice.

         PERCEPTION

   For EP, perception is the realization of sense experience; this
realization of its facticity as a phenomenon involves the imposition of a
significance to this realization.  Since one is part of the perceived, this
meaning is both (and correlatively) externalized and internalized.  This
is another aspect of Being-in-the-World as a correlative -- authentic
perception of the world involves the creation of meaning for one's
perception(s).  Since Dasein is temporally finite, this meaning is of
necessity contingent, not absolute.  The fact of human meaning's
contingency does not, however, detract from its world-referential
structure; it simply establishes that structure as a point-of-view (in
geometry, a point occupies no space yet possesses position). 
Perception, therefore, is not only valid, it also comprises the ground for
the manifestation of Care.  The realization of its particularity, however
(absence of universal god's eye world-view), entails the further
realization of its incompleteness.  Thus possibility outstrips actuality
even in perception and choices are perpetually being made in the
inposition of meaning (determination as negation of alternatives). 
These choices still reflect the imposed-upon, and are relational to them,
and gain further validity (in the sense of multiplicity of shared
perspectives) from corroboration; shared perception and shared
meaning are less contingent than their solitary apprehension and
creation.  The existential leap is an outgrowth of the phenomenological
apprehension of the lived world tempered bynthe reflective realization
of its contingent nature as interpretive.
   In Zen, this leap is analogous to Satori.  The preceding
exposition upon EP and perception is intuitionally encapsulated in the
Zen statement, "When I bagan to study Zen, mountains were mountains
and rivers were rivers; when I thought I understood Zen, mountains
were not mountains and rivers were not rivers; but once I came to full
knowledge of Zen, mountains were once again mountains and rivers
were one again rivers".  These mountains and rivers, however, possess
a deeper and less naïve meaning after Satori.

         LANGUAGE

   In EP, language is the "means by which" and the "condition
without which" of intersubjectivity.  Language is the meaning of
corroboration and the common ground by which expression is achieved
(not FROM whichthat would be the Being-in-the-World interpenetrated
by the Being-of-the-World).  The danger is in confusing the sign (word)
with what it signifies or refers to in the world; this mistake places the
primary importance falsly upon the means rather thatn the end
(corroboration of phenomena and the differing yet similar perspectives
concerning them).
   Zen sees a deeper problem.  The use of language tends to
falsely dualize a separate reality of language even before this 'reality'
becomes an inauthentic primordial (which is EP's concern).  To say, for
instance, "This is a stick" is to linguistically separate "This" and "stick"
both by the use of two different descriptive terms and by the use of a
mediating (therefore bifurcating) relational term, for to state the identity
of the "two" is to implicitly acknowledge the necessity of such an
equivalence.  Koans are linguistic guards against this kind of thing;
among other things, they expose words for the 'entrapping tools' they
are.  By using words against themselves through the direct
apprehension of their ambiguity and absurdity rather than by the
multiplication of their semiotic web (as self-defeating (chuckle!)
gesture), Zen makes admirable use of William of Occam's dictum that
simplest is best.

         METAPHYSICS

   There is no metaphysical study in EP; any 'metaphysics' is
actually ontology, the study of the structures underlying existence and
experience.  The thing independent of Dasein's lived world is eschewed
as a purposeless study in that things are not existent in and of
themselves, but are dependent, as phenomena, upon our imposition of
meaning into our perceptions.  Transcendentals (unapprehended - not
apparent or immanent) are not of the phenomenal world (phenomenon -
what appears to perception).  In the same way, the concept of a
personal deity is a pseudoleap possessing not even contingent support
from the phenomenal field.  It is an unsupported article of belief, not an
extrapolation from knowledge.  The very concept of such a deity as
having a persona or any human-derived attributes is an illegitimate
anthropomorphization(humanity creating gods in its own image - even
to determination of sex).
   The Zen perspective on metaphysics is well reflected in the
shocking (to the believer) statement which is the title of a book by
Sheldon B. Kopp; "If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him".  My
interpretation of this statement is , "If an ideology or metaphysics strives
to render the lived world into an appendage of the transcendental,
eschew it".  Sheldon's equivalent is a different way of saying the same
thing, and appears on the front cover of his book.  As he puts it, "No
meaning that comes from outside of ourselves is real.  The
Buddhahood of each of us has already been attained.  We need only
recognize it.  A grown-up can be no one's disciple, for the most
important things that each of us must learn no one else may teach us." 
The apprehension of a God in Zen is western wishful thinking.
   This is one of the most significant goals of Zen - to help people
to learn to stand on their own two feet.
            
                                        CONCLUSION

   There is much work to be done in the field of comparative
philosophy, and one of the richest comparisons still to be made in depth
(although both D.T. Suzuki and Stephen Batchelor have substantially
addressed it) is that of Zen and EP.  We have barely scratched the
surface within this preliminary study, but we shall nevertheless risk a
few imporessions on their conjoint future.
   EP is an intellectual revolt against the sterile intellectualism of
the scientistic formalist who threatens to destroy subjectivity by
objectifying everything; Zen is an intuitional revolt against the
transcendental mysticism of the everyday Hindu.  They seem to be on
converging paths.  Why?
   The two could be naturally complementary, as are the
intellectual and intuitional aspects of the brain.  This complementarity
is, however, not the final stage if such is the case, for as the individual
is the synthesis of the two as a concrete bearer of reality, so would the
truth each is in its own way approaching be found between them.  Zen
already involves intellection, and EP intuition.  This truth is lived - they
agree on this.  The continuation of the present convergence would thus
most likely involve dynamic interpenetration.
   Both of them are growing more popular as they converge.  This
would suggest that their respective zeniths of popularity - or the points
at which they are each appropriated by the greatest number of
individuals as ways to the understanding of life - will coincide with their
synthesis in a Hegelian sense (with the truths of each prteserved within
their commin supercession).  That this is perhaps better understood as
synthesis in F.S.C. Northrup's terminology rather than in Hegel's is a
realization to which one comes when one contemplates the number of
various schools of thought comprising each of them.  Not the two, but
the many converge.  This involution cannot help but stimulate evolution,
and as yet unsupposed insights which will at the same time be
widespread and readily accessible.  The effect snowballs, the East and
West rush towards their appointed meeting, and - purely subjectively - I
nod, smile, and perhaps even applaud a little.  Such a fertile playground
is grist for the mill of a future synthecizer in the spirit of Aristotle, Kant
and Hegel, and the revolutions themselves are temporally closer as
time goes on.  The next cannot come soon enough for me.

      CONCLUDING AESTHETIC POSTSCRIPT

   "What we cannot speak anout", says Wittgenstein, "we must
pass over in silence'>  What we can speak of, we must and will, and the
only way to find out is to try, replies EP.  Zen answers that we cannot
speak about the foundations from which the speakers themselves
spring except imperfectly and incompletely.  At that moment, the silence
casts light upon, rather than passes over, this primordiality.
   EP might just agree already; or so Albert Camus seems to be
saying.  In the beautiful words of an intuitive intellectual:

   "The secret I am seeking lies hidden in a valley full of olive
trees, under the grass and the cold violets, around an old house that
smells of wood smoke.  For more than twenty years I rambled over that
valley and others resembling it, I questioned mute goatherds, I knocked
at the doors of deserted ruins.  Occasionally, at the moment of the first
star in the still bright sky, under a shower of shimmering light, I thought I
knew.  I did know, in truth.  I still know, perhaps.  But no one wants any
of this secret; I don't want any myself, doubtless; and I cannot stand,
apart from my people.  I live in my family, which thinks it rules over rich
and hideous cities built of stones and mists.  Day and night it speaks
up, and everything bows before it, which bows before nothing: it is deaf
to all secrets.  Its power that carries me bores me, nevertheless, and on
occasion its shouts weary me.  But its misfortune is mine, and we are of
the same blood.  A cripple, likewise, an accomplice and noisy, have I
not too shouted among the stones?  Consequently, I strive to forget, I
walk in our cities of iron and fire, I smile bravely in the night, I hail the
storms, I shall be faithful.  But perhaps someday, when we are ready to
die of exhaustion and ignorance, I shall be able to disown our garish
tombs and go and stretch out in the valley, under the same light, and
learn for the last time what I know."