キリスト教文化研究所主催（2021年度）連続講演会紀要から
司会：竹内修 パネリスト：椿巌三・田中裕・スムットニー祐美
| テーマ | 執筆者 |
| はじめに | 川中 仁 |
| ミサと茶の湯に見る天地人の調和―侘茶とキリスト教の本質的一致についての一考察― | 椿 巌三 |
| キリスト教と茶道との出会い―禅の修道精神とキリスト教伝道― | 田中 裕 |
| 「適応主義にみる安土・桃山時代の茶の湯」 ―ヴァリニャーノの茶の湯の規則と信長・秀吉・利休の茶の湯― |
スムットニー 祐美 |
| 〈シンポジウム〉二〇二一年度（第 48 回）連続講演会シンポジウム 「茶道とキリスト教」 |
椿 巌三 田中 裕 スムットニー 祐美 竹内 修一 |
A 10-minute walk from my house is the St Gregory's House - Institute of Religious Music, founded in 1979 by the late Father Geréon Goldmann, which will celebrate its 40th anniversary between 2019 and 2021, although the Corona disaster has delayed the dates. The event took place in 2019-2021. You can read an article about it in the St Gregory's House News Letter 2021, which we received yesterday.
It opened with a picture of Father Gueleon and the words "The source of the power of human activity flows from the liturgy". As soon as I saw that, I was reminded, as if it were only yesterday, of the time some 40 years ago when I attended the early morning Divine Liturgy in the small room of the cathedral, the breakfast I had after Divine Liturgy and the stories he told me.
The "St Gregory's House Letter" also included an extract from Dr Wataru Mizugaki's 40th anniversary lecture, "Where are we now in the history of Christianity - between tradition and history". According to Dr Mizugaki, tradition is characterised by 'commonality, identity and constancy', while history is characterised by 'difference and change' and therefore 'individuality and diversity'. The challenge is to "rethink Christianity in the light of the tension between tradition and history, and to seek a future 'vision of Christianity' in the direction that resolves this tension". In order to meet this challenge, he concluded his speech by saying that it is necessary to rethink the 'biblical tradition'.
When the 'liturgy', which is the 'source of active life' as Father Gereon called it, is combined with the 'biblical tradition that transcends denominational differences' as Professor Mizugaki said, the unchanging 'tradition (eternity)' of religion and its various forms of 'history (generation and transmigration)' will be united.
I will continue my series of lectures on 'Listening to the Psalms - Studies in the Bible and Liturgy' at St Gregory's House next year, and I was able to reaffirm where the subject of these lectures lies.
Listening to the Psalms - Studies in Scripture and Liturgy Lecture Series
This is a transcript of a lecture given on the day after Holy Ash Wednesday (18 February 2021) in the Department of Church Music at the Institute of Religious Music at St Gregory's House.
詩編に聴く－聖書と典礼の研究講演録
聖グレゴリオの家宗教音楽研究所での教会音楽科で聖灰水曜日の翌日（2021年2月18日）におこなわれた講義の記録です。コロナ禍の緊急事態宣言の...
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Whitehead characterizes Christianity as a religion seeking a metaphysic in contrast to Buddhism which is a mataphysic as seeking a religion (RM 40, 1927). What is the source of the system of the Buddhist metaphysic which Whitehead mentions?
Here is the text of Funeral Address delivered by Dr. Takashi Nagai at the totally ruined site of St. Mary's Cathedral in 1945.
Funeral Address for the Victims of the Atomic Bomb (from the Bells of Nagasaki, translated by William Johnston)
On August 9, 1945, at 10:30 A.M. a meeting of the Supreme Council of War was held at the Imperial Headquarters to decide whether Japan should capitulate or continue to wage war. At that moment the world was at a crossroad. A decision was being made that would either bring about a new and lasting peace or throw the human family into further cruel bloodshed and carnage.
And just at that same time, at two minutes past eleven in the morning, an atomic bomb exploded over our district of Urakami in Nagasaki. In an instant, eight thousand Christians were called into the hands of God, while in a few hours the fierce flames reduced to ashes this sacred territory og the East. At midnight of that same night the cathedral suddenly bursd into flames and was burned to the ground. And exactly at that time in the Imperial Palace, His Majesty the Emperor made known his sacred decision to bring the war to an end.
On August 15, the Imperial Rescript which put an end to the fighting was formally promulgated, and the whole world welcomed a day of peace. This day was also the great feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. It is significant to reflect that Urakami Cathedral was dedicated to her. And we must ask if this convergence of events—the ending of the war and the celebration of her feast—was merely coincidental or if there was here some mysterious providence of God.
I have heard that the second atomic bomb, calculated to deal a deadly blow to the war potential of Japan, was originally destined for another city. But since the sky over that city was covered with clouds, the American pilots found it impossible to aim at their target. Consequently, they suddenly changed their plans and decided to drop the bomb on Nagasaki, the secondary target. However, yet another hitch occurred. As the bomb fell, cloud and wind carried it slightly north of the munitions factories over which it was supposed to explode and it exploded above the cathedral.
This is what I have heard. If it is true, the American pilots did not aim at Urakami. It was the providence of God that carried the bomb to that destination.
Is there not a profound relationship between the destruction of Nagasaki and the end of the war? Nagasaki, the only holy place in all Japan—was it not chosen as a victim, a pure lamb, to be slaughtered and burned on the altar of sacrifice to expiate the sins committed by humanity in the Second World War?
The human family has inherited the sin of Adam who ate the fruit of the forbidden tree; we have inherited the sin of Cain who killed his younger brother; we have forgotten that we are children of God; we have believed in idols; we have disobeyed the law of love. Joyfully we have hated one another; joyfully we have killed one another. And now at last we have brought this great and evil war to an end. But in order to restore peace to the world it was not sufficient to repent. We had to obtain God’s pardon through the offering of a great sacrifice.
Before this moment there were many opportunities to end the war. Not a few cities were totally destroyed. But these were not suitable sacrifices; nor did God accept them. Only when Nagasaki was destroyed did God accept the sacrifice. Hearing the cry of the human family, He inspired the emperor to issue the sacred decree by which the war was brought to an end.
Our church of Nagasaki kept the faith during four hundred years of persecution when religion was proscribed and the blood of martyrs flowed freely. During the war this same church never ceased to pray day and night for a lasting peace. Was it not, then, the one unblemished lamb that had to be offered on the altar of God? Thanks to the sacrifice of this lamb many millions who would otherwise have fallen victim to the ravages of war have been saved.
How noble, how splendid was that holocaust of August 9, when flames soared up from the cathedral, dispelling the darkness of war and bringing the light of peace! In the very depth of our grief we reverently saw here something beautiful, something pure, something sublime. Eight thousand people, together with their priests, burning with pure smoke, entered into eternal life. All without exception were good people whom we deeply mourn.
How happy are those people who left this world without knowing the defeat of their country! How happy are the pure lambs who rest in the bosom of God! Compared with them how miserable is the fate of us who have survived! Japan is conquered. Urakami is totally destroyed. A waste of ash and rubble lies before our eyes. We have no houses, no food, no clothes. Our fields are devastated. Only a remnant has survived. In the midst of the ruins we stand in groups of two or three looking blankly at the sky.
Why did we not die with them on that day, at that time, in this house of God? Why must we alone continue this miserable existence?
It is because we are sinners. Ah! Now indeed we are forced to see the enormity of our sins! It is because I have not made expiation for my sins that I am left behind. Those are left who were so deeply rooted in sin that they were not worthy to be offered to God.
We Japanese, a vanquished people, must now walk along a path that is full of pain and suffering. The reparations imposed by the Potsdam Declaration are a heavy burden. But this painful path along which we walk carrying our burden, is it not also the path of hope, which gives to us sinners an opportunity to expiate our sins?
“Blessed are those that mourn for they shall be comforted.” We must walk this way of expiation faithfully and sincerely. And as we walk in hunger and thirst, ridiculed, penalized, scourged, pouring with sweat and covered with blood, let us remember how Jesus Christ carried His cross to the hill of Calvary. He will give us courage
“The Lord has given: the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord!”
Let us give thanks that Nagasaki was chosen for the sacrifice. Let us give thanks that through this sacrifice peace was given to the world and freedom of religion to Japan.
May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.
The Philosophy of Nothingness and Hayathology
Notes for a public lecture at Claremont School of Theology, May 22 2007
1 The Standpoint of Hayathology （歴程の神学）
The theme of my lecture today is the philosophy of nothingness and process theology. The title may suggest a kind of comparison with two schools of philosophy and theology, pointing both similarities and differences between them, but my intention is, in fact, not a comparison from the objective, value-free standpoint, but from my own perspective of process theology, from the perspective of what I call Hayathology.
This is not my first time of speaking about Hayathology to American audience. I read a paper on “Hayathology” in the second International Whitehead Conference held in Nanzan University in Japan in 1984.
At the Nanzan conference I met Charles Hartshorne, and other eminent process theologians in America and Europe. I remember that Charles Hartshorne gave a sympathetic comment on my paper, though I did not know much about his neo-classical theism at that time, and had developed my own idea of Hayathology independently of the main stream of process theology in America.
My encounter with Whitehead was not so much through process theologians as through Whitehead’s works themselves.
After the Nanzan Conference, I was invited by Prof. Cobb to Claremont to attend another conference on Whitehead’s theory of relativity. That was the beginning of my affiliation with Process Center, and also the beginning of my participation in the Buddhist-Christian Dialogue initiated by Dr. Tokiyuki Nobuhara, who planed to organize a session in AAR for the purpose of a philosophical Dialogue between Whitehead and Nishida.
This session was realized in 1985 as “Process Thought and Nishida School of Buddhist Philosophy”. The program of this session attracted me very much because I thought of Nishida’s philosophy of “Nothingness” as one of the
most original Buddhist contributions to Christian theology. I went on with attending this session of AAR for several years and also attended the international conferences organized by the Society for Buddhist-Christian Dialogue.
I retain, indeed, the past encounter living in my memory, especially my first presentation of Hayathology in the Nagoya conference in 1984, and my later participation in the inter-religious dialogue between the East and the West. So allow me to return, firstly, to what Japanese people say sho-shin(初心), i.e. the original spirit, or the original purpose of my project. I hope it will be a
new occasion of what Whitehead calls “concrescence” which will materialize the “initial aim” of my project of hayathology in the near future.
You may well characterize my theology as a catholic process theology, but my understanding of catholicity is more universal than “Roman” Catholicism. I believe that the truly catholic faith does not know any distinction between Rome and Claremont, any distinction between the so-called Catholics and Protestants.
The apostle’s creed contains such an article as “credo in spiritum sanctum, sanctam ecclesiam catholicum” (I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church). So every protestant belongs to the holy universal ecclesia, the body of Christ, when s/he believes in the apostle’s creed. The truly catholic faith will include Protestantism because we must always retrieve the “origin spirit” of
Christianity in order to advance forwards in the future.
I was baptized at the Roman Catholic Church in Japan, but my wife is a member of the radical protestant group which is known as “Non-Church Movement”, which Uchimura Kanzou (内村鑑三1861-1930) inaugurated. Sometimes I think that “Non-church” Christianity is also, in one sense, a genuine catholic ecclesia if we understand the true meaning of the adjective “non” of the non-church Christianity. It seems to me that Roman Catholic is new, protestant is old, and
Non-church is the oldest form of Christianity.
The Apostle’s Creed also contains “faith in the communion of Saints.” I believe in this article because I feel a living power of the deceased saints in my memory. My understanding of saints is, however, more universal than is usually understood. It includes not only saints of Christianity, but also saints who have exerted a great influence on the East-Asian Spirituality, including Daoist, Confusian, and Buddhist Saints whom we call “the Holy Person(聖人)”, “True man without any Rank(無位眞人)”, “the Awakend person（i.e. Buddha 覺者＝仏陀）” according to so many various religious traditions. I have personally learned very much from these saints of East-Asia, and their words and acts seem to me something like an Old Testament in the East-Asia, which God has provided for us Eastern people as a precious spiritual legacy of the past.
Many people say that that spiritual tradition of Eastern saints died a virtual death in the modernized Asia. It may have been caused by the secularizing powers of “modernization”, or by the industrial and Cultural Revolution of the East Asian countries from the pressure of Imperialistic Dominating Powers. Whether the spiritual traditions of East-Asia will retrieve the past power in a renewed form or not, I don’t know. But I believe and hope that the Renaissance of Eastern Spirituality will certainly occur in the East-Asian countries including China, Korea, and Japan.
Personally I really experienced the beginning of such Renaissance in the fifth international Process Conference held in 2002 at Beijing Normal University. I met many Chinese scholars including Prof. Shih-Chuan Chen(程石泉). As one of my books on Whitehead had been translated into Chinese, he knew me through this book, and he gave me his own commentaries on Yi Ching (易經). Yi Ching was written about 3000 years ago, and has been considered one of the five sacred
texts the classical Chinese civilization. I learned from Shih-Chuan Chen that his teacher Thome Fang(方東美), translating the title of Yi Ching as “the Book of Creativity”, reinterpreted the natural philosophy contained in Yi ching in the categories of process philosophy.
Five years later I also witnessed the similar revival of the great tradition of classical Chinese civilization in the international conference held in Fu Jin Catholic University(輔仁天主教大學) in Taiwan held on Mach this year.
After having attended two Conferences in China, I began to recognize more than the past the importance between the cultural dialogue or encounter between the West and the East.
I have appreciated the Eastern tradition of spirituality very much, but at the same time I must confess that I find myself unsatisfied with the mere legacy of the past.
Although my theoretical standpoint is Catholicism, i.e. Universalism, which extends over the wall of Christendom, I always find that the locus of my religious commitments is, after all, fundamentally the Biblical tradition. The inter-religious dialogue always helps me to understand the Bible itself from a renewed perspective.
My respect of the Biblical tradition may be one of the reasons why I am dissatisfied with such process theologians who want to define process theology as a “naturalistic” theology. Personally I believe in the reality of the supernatural, and hold in high esteem the traditional formula of confessional faith, especially that of Thomas Aquinas, “grace never abolishes nature, but makes it complete.” The opposition between naturalism and super-naturalism seems to me based on an old
mistaken idea of substance.
I believe that true naturalism is always self-transcending whereas true supernaturalism is always self-trans-de-cending. That is one of my themes today.
The Western Christian theology, in my opinion, has not been accustomed to the non-substantial, non-dualistic, non-monistic, relational modes of thinking. Neither has it been accustomed to the way of “Nothingness” which had deep meaning in the East-Asian spirituality signified with such words as Non-Ego, No-Mind, Self-Emptying Love or what Mahayana Buddhists call Great Compassion(Maha Karuna).
Before explaining the spiritual “Way” of Nothingness, I would like to characterize my own standpoint of Hayathology in this way.
Slide Ⅰ
Slide Ⅱ “From the Bible”
Dixit Deus ad Moysen: “Ego sum qui sum”. Ait: Sic dices filiis Israel: Qui sum misit me ad vos”.(Vulgata)
God said to Moses, "I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'I AM has sent me to you.' "
Footnotes: Or I will be what I will be (NIV)
(Luther : Ich werde sein, der Ich sein werde)
As E. Gilson clearly pointed out, the mediating link between the Bible and Greek philosophy was thought by scholastic theologians to be laid out by Moses, who received God’s revelation of His own name. According to the Bible (Exod.3-14), God’s name was literally, “ehyeh asher ehyeh”. This name was afterwards translated into the Greek Septuaginta as “ I am the Being”, and into the Latin Vulgate, “ego sum qui sum”, i.e. “I am who am”.
As the very name of God was identified with the Being itself, the quest for God became a philosophical inquiry into the Real Being, which Aristotle had considered as the chief concern of his metaphysics.
The text of Exodus, however, presupposes a very different conception of Being from Greek one. The Hebrew meaning of “ehyeh” is an imperfect form of the Verb “HAYA” which can be translated as “I will be who will be” as well as “I am who am”. According to the Old Testament hermeneutics of Boman, a German Old Testament scholar, the Hebrew verb “Haya” contains Becoming as the focal
core meaning, whereas the verb “on” in the corresponding Greek translation excludes any trace of change or becoming, especially in the philosophical context. Thereforem “Ego eimi ho on” (I am the Being” was interpreted by Greek and Latin Fathers to signify God’s existence as well as His Essence from the Greek philosophical perspective, i.e. the self-sufficient Being standing aloof from
the vicissitudes of the world. They affirmed God to be immutable, and invariable in his Being, and always in the same mode of existence, admitting neither progress nor diminution. The dynamic historical aspect of the Old Testament God had to be ignored because God was considered as the absolute substance, or the unmoved Mover.
The Biblical God, on the other hand cannot stand aloof from the historical process of the world. He essentially related with the fate with the fate of humankind as if the Bible were a book of God’s anthropology rather than Human’s theology. The culmination of God’s concern for human was shown in the Christ-Events, i.e. the Incarnation of the Word as Jesus, His Suffering, His Death, and His Resurrection. The so-called Christological problem, which arose from the New Testament
attribution of suffering to incarnate deity, was to the Early Fathers an insoluble aporia beyond human Reason, because such ideas were repugnant to the Greek conception of absolute Being. If we want to understand Christ-Events faithfully to the Biblical tradition, we need some other conceptual frameworks than Greek one. What I call Hayathology is such metaphysics of becoming based on the Biblical concept of “Haya”. It is essentially the theology of Historical Process, because
the theme of Hayathology is God-Becoming, Human-Becoming, and World-Becoming in the inseparable trinity.
The word of “surrelativism” was used by Charles Hartshorne in his Divine Relativity. His standpoint is, if I understand him correctly, is that thoroughgoing relativism is not a simple relativism, and may well be characterized by the name of surrelativism which includes absolutism as its abstract component. Agreeing with Hartshorne that surrelativism represents a more concrete standpoint than an abstract absolutism. I would like to apply such a dynamically relational mode of
thinking to the problematic of naturalism. I characterize my theology as “surnaturalism.” It is self-transcending naturalism which includes supernaturalism as its abstract components. It does not treat nature as the closed wholeness, but as always self-transcending, self-surpassing totality which is open to the realm of infinite possibilities in the future.
As I believe in the reality of the supernatural, I would like to underscore not only selftranscending of the natural, but also self-trans-de-cending of the supernatural. Hayathology is the middle Way between two extremes, naturalism and supernaturalism.
As panentheism is a widely accepted view among many process theologians, I may not have to explain it in the details. Roughly speaking, Panentheism says God does not exist in a specialized place of the world, but is everywhere. The reason why God is omnipresent is not that God is in the world, but that the World itself is in God, i.e. everything is in God. In other words, the world is not the place of God, but God is the Place of the world—that is the central idea of panentheism.
The opening sentence of the Gospel according to John is crucial to Hayathology, especially for the understanding of Temporality as a moving image of Eternity.
The Chinese verb “you”(有) can be translated as “was/is” because its tense is “imperfect”. In this respect Chinese grammar resembles Hebrews grammar which also has the distinction only between perfect and imperfect, but no distinction of past, present, and future.
Do you think the sentence “In the Beginning was the Word” narrates a historically past event, or the state of affairs which “was the case” a long time ago, e.g. 6000 years ago, or 15 billion years ago before Big-Bang? Is “the Word’s being with God” only in the past? Isn’t it more suitable to say “the Word is God” rather than to say “the Word was God”? Greek grammar uses “aorist” when it narrates a historical event as if it were a point lying on the temporal coordinate of the linear
sequences of events. The verb “on” is “imperfect”, and does not represent a point-like past of the chronological table of the world history. It narrates not only the past state of affairs, but also the present/ future states of affairs.
In other words, the so-called “Pre-existence of the Word” essentially involves the element of “Becoming” at each instant of Time.
I would like to cite another key sentence from the Gospel of John 8-58:
eipen autoiV o ihsouV amhn amhn legw umin prin abraam genesqai egw eimi.
Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, before Abraham was, I am.
Here, umin prin abraam genesqai (before Abraham was) is “aorist”, and represents the historical past states of affairs as appoint-like instant on the linear coordinate time, but Jesus’ answer is not “I was” but “I am” i.e. egw eimi.
As “egw eimi o wn” is God’s name to Hebrews, this reply “I am” is deeply connected with God’s self-revelation of his name to Moses, i.e. “I am who am”.
Under the influences of Greek ontology, theologians in the past usually considered “Before Abraham was, I am” signifies the Eternity of Christ. They do not think that such lofty phrase is absolutely not applicable to ordinal human beings because Eternity and Temporality does not intersect with each other. But would not such theologians side with those who did not believe in Jesus and stoned him? I would like to affirm the really real existence of such intersection between Eternity and Temporality, or rather, the dynamical relatedness of Temporality with Eternity at every instant of time.
The Relation of Philosophical Ultimate to Theological Ultimate
Being, Nothingness, and Becoming are transcendental predicates, i.e. the Universal of Universals which are predicable to everything including God, Human, and Worlds in their inseparable Unity. (One and Many are also such universal of universals which transcends the limit of categorical predicates.)
I have shown the two diagrams of Trinitarian structure, i.e. a philosophical trinity and a theological trinity. Theological trinity is well known, and every Catholic Christian professes his faith in the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. These three are three persons in one substance or essence in the orthodox Christian theology. And I think with Whitehead that the Trinitarian modes of thinking are necessary when we want to transcend the limit of Greek ontology, and grasp this world, and its essential relatedness to God. But how should we understand three concepts, Being, Nothingness, and Becoming? Everybody already has some pre-understanding of these three, because these constitute the most universal conceptual frameworks. The Medieval western philosophers call “One”, “Being”, and “Goodness” as transcendental concepts, because they signify the universal of universals, transcending Aristotle’s categories. They are applicable everything including God and temporal entities. So the study of transcendentals is the proper task of primary philosophy, i.e. metaphysics, whereas the study of objects under the Aristotelian categories belongs to sciences. The Scholastic philosophers did not count “Becoming” and “Nothingness” as transcendentals, because they are under the strong influence of Greek ontology. They don’t recognize the importance of “Becoming” and “nothingness” because they considered both as essentially negative dependent concepts. Whitehead calls “One” “many” and “Creativity” as the categories of the ultimate, which play the similar role in his metaphysics as “transcendentals” in the medieval philosophy. Hegel was, as far as I know, the first Western philosopher who pointed out the paradoxical identity between Pure Being and Pure Nothingness: This logic has to do with the development of philosophical thinking in the West as well as in the East. Whereas the principle of the Western metaphysics is Being itself, or Pure Being, the principle of the East-Asian metaphysics is Nothingness. What Hegel means by “Pure Being” or “Pure Nothingness” is an abstract universal which would contradicts itself and becomes its opposite if we conceptually grasp it as if it were a “concrete” universal. “Becoming” is a higher concept than Being and Nothingness, and it both abolishes and integrate Being and Nothingness. It is a great insight of Hegel that the paradoxical Identity between Being and Nothingness should be resolved in the higher concept of Becoming. But I think that the whole problem of Becoming is not merely a conceptual one of a Hegelian Logic. It is fundamentally an existential and religious problem of Life/Death which is always transcending the standpoint of Reason itself. It necessitates us to think beyond Reason(noesis), something like Metanoetics which Tanabe Hajime advocated after the World War II. The proper understanding of Becoming in Hayathology needs more than conceptual dialectics in Hegel.
As I have explained, though very roughly, the fundamental standpoint of Hayathology, I would like to take up the second theme of my lecture today, i.e. the philosophy of Nothingness. The reason why I take up the philosophy of Nothingness seriously is that I believe that the Deeper understanding of “Nothingness” in the Eastern philosophical tradition will make it possible the deeper understanding of “Becoming” in Hayathology and process theology in general.
First I quote Nishida Kitaro in order to know the spirit of philosophy of nothingness.
I would cite an episode narrating the young Nishida’s encounter with the East-Asian Tradition of Nothingness. It would help us to understand his philosophy of nothingness because it tells as something like the birthplace of his philosophy, or Sitz im Leben (Locus of Life) which the philosophy of nothingness was born. The locus was Zen Buddhist Temple where the young Nishida was negotiating the way of Meditation and “Koan” Practice. Epecially the first case of the Gateless Gate (無門関) known as “Joshu’s one letter of Nothingness or Joshu’s Dog is relevant to our purpose
The First Case of the Gateless Gate（無門関）
The Koan of One Letter of Nothingness （無字）or Zaoshou’s DOG（趙州狗子）
A monk asked Zaozhou, "Has a dog the Buddha Nature?"
Zaozhou replied, "NOTHINGNESS(無)"
The use of Koan is characteristic of the meditation training of Rinzai Zen. The role of the first case of Koan is similar to Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church. It is an indispensable part of the ceremony of initiation for the novice, who after the spiritual/bodily meditation exercise, must pass a series of examination (Koan) which Zen Master gives to him/her. There is a systematic way of Koan training in the Rinzai school of Zen, and the first case of Gateless Gate is often used as the first examination imposed upon Zen practitioners.
The young Nishida struggled with this test, but he did not pass the examination so easily, because he did not understand intellectually the purpose and meaning of the Koan “one letter of Nothingness.”
So he wrote a letter to Zen Mater Tekisui, asking many philosophical questions to the meaning and purpose of “One letter of Nothingness”. Tekisui wrote the following reply to Nishida, and Nishida, thinking much of this letter, put it in a frame, and kept it as his precious treasure for a long time.
Zen Master Tekisui’s Letter to the young Nishida
Dear Nishida,
An old man of virtue says: I have no word, no phrase, none of dharma to give others. Nothing other than
Nothing
can be expected from such an old monk as me. Do not ask any more questions in your letter.
February 4th
Tekisui
Note that the extremely strong power of “Nothing”. It is not a negative abstract concept at all, but is full of transcending Power. “Nothing” is a very powerful word which seems to have awakened Nishida to Something Very Important. I pointed out the similarity between “Koan” training of Rinzai Zen and the spiritual exercise and catechisms of Roman Catholics. But there is also a great difference between them. Christian Catechisms require a definite answer, “yes” or “no” to each important article of faith. To the contrary, the purpose of Koan training seems to liberate, or deconstruct any kind of dogmatic thinking. Wumen (無門) says in the concluding poem of the Gateless Gate: Has a dog the Buddha nature? This is a matter of life and death. If you wonder whether a dog has it or not, You certainly lose your body and life. The Koan is a matter of life and death: it also asks the novice, “Do you also have the Buddha Nature?” One of the dogmas in Mahayana Buddhism before Zen is the immanence of Buddha Nature, i.e. “All sentient beings have the Buddha Nature.”(Nirvana Sutra) . The Koan is about one of the most important problems of Mahayana Buddhism: i.e. the immanence of the Buddha Nature. But the simple logical answer “yes”, resulting from the Nirvana Sutra is unsatisfactory, because it seems to neglect our real experience of so many unintelligible things in this world which contradict the immanence of the Buddha Nature. On the contrary, if we answer “No”, then we will contradict the spirit and authority of Nirvana Sutra, because there should be no discrimination among humans and other sentient beings. Neither simple “yes” nor simple “no” being satisfactory, how do you yourself respond to this fundamental question on the Buddha Nature? –This is the background of the Koan of Nothingness. “Nothingness” has nothing to do with a relative “yes”, nor with relative “no”. It is Absolute Nothingness. The question of the Gateless Gate had a precursor in the Daoist Zhuangzi (荘子about 350 B.C)、which I will cite later, in his dialogue with Dongguozi(東郭子) concerning the immanence of the Way (Dao). The influence of Zhuanzi on Wumen may be found in the introductory poem of the Gateless Gate. The Great Way(Dao) has no gate A thousand roads enter it . When one passes through this gateless gate He freely walks between heaven and earth The Gateless Gate is open to the Great Way to Zen. The young Nishida wrote several reminders on the back cover of his dairy. One of them reads: By Zen I inquire into the Great Way, By scholarship, I clarify the truth. I take the Way as my body, and scholarship as my four limbs. The Development of Nishida’s philosophy of Nothingness, the Great Way, and the Truth, may be summarized as the following 6 stages.
The Development of Nishida’s Philosophy of Nothingness
1 Psychology of Nothingness －Pure Experience
2 Phenomenology of Nothingness －Noetic Transcendence of Self-Awareness
3 Self-Awakening of Nothingness －The Place of Absolute Nothingness
4 Intersubjectivity in the Place of Nothingness －I-Thou Relation with He in Philosophy of Nothingness
5 The Historical World as the Dialectical Universal －The reciprocal relationality between an Individual and the World
6 The Identity in and through Absolute Contradictories －the logic of sive/non (即非), the unity of opposites such as action-intuition, the dynamism of God in the inverse-relationality (逆對應) and Self-emptying Kenosis of God’s Love.
physical time makes its appearance in the coordinate analysis of the satisfaction. The actual entity is the enjoyment of a certain quantum of physical time. But the genetic process is not the temporal succession: such a view is exactly what is denied by the epochal theory of time. Each phase in the genetic process presupposes the entire quantum, and so does each feeling in each phase. The subjective unity dominating the process forbids the division of that extensive quantum which originates with the primary phase of the subjective aim. The problem dominating the concrescence is the actualization of the quantum in solido.The above passages seem to have annoyed many commentators ofProcess and Reality. The genetic analysis of an actual occasion (Part III) divides the concrescence into primary, intermediate, and final phases, which, according to Whitehead, are not "in" the physical (i.e. coordinate) time. One phase of genetic divisions must be prior to another: but what sort of priority is this? William Christian discusses and rejects four possible ways of interpretation, i.e. (i) priority in physical time,(ii) the logical priority of a premise to a conclusion, (iii) a whole-part relation, and (iv) a dialectical process of the Hegelian development of an idea. Then he says, though genetic priority may have some analogies with other sorts of priority, we must accept it as something of its own kind, but he does not analyse further the sui generis character of genetic divisions." Charles Hartshorne also questions the validity of "genetic" analysis, and proposes to accept only the succession of phases in the physical time.
"It was my good fortune to be present at the meeting of the Royal Society in London when the Astronomer Royal for England announced that the photographic plates of the famous eclipse, as measured by his colleagues in Greenwich Observatory, has verified the prediction of Einstein . . . The whole atmosphere of tense interest was exactly that of the Greek drama: we are the chorus commenting on the decree of destiny as disclosed in the development of a supreme incident. There was dramatic quality in the very staging: the traditional ceremonial, and in the background the picture of Newton to remind us that the greatest of scientific generalizations was, now, after more than two centuries, to receive its first modification."(1)The crucial point of the above drama was that the new theory, in spite of the risk of refutation, dared to predict that something should happen at the time of the eclipse, which was afterwards confirmed by experimental physicists. Moreover, the admission of the new theory involved abandonment of common notions which physicists had hitherto uncritically accepted. The very validity of Euclidian geometry, as applied to physical space, was now suspect in the light of relativistic theory. In other words, Einstein claimed that non-Euclidian geometry should hold in the presence of a strong gravitational field. The meaning of spatio-temporal magnitudes must be changed in such a way that the length of a rigid body and the lapse of time measured by clocks cannot remain unaltered after the transformation of coordinate systems.
