Feature Book Review

Graham Parkes Dogen/Heidegger/Dogen-A review of Dogen Studies. Edited

by William R. LaFleur. Honolulu, Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, 1985.
Pp. 165. Paper $19.00; and Existential and Ontological Dimensions of Time in
Heidegger and Dogen. By Steven Heine. Albany, New York: State University of
New York Press, 1985. Pp. ix+ 202. Cloth $34.50. Paper $14.95.

It was some sixty years ago that Watsuji Tetsuro "liberated" Dagen from the
sectarian clutches of the Soto school of Zen and thereby opened up his work to a
larger and academic audience. Closer to home, almost a decade has passed since
Thomas Kasulis published a review article in these pages, in which he discussed
the then current state of Dagen scholarship in English and argued especially for
the philosophical importance ofDogen's work.1 The past two years have seen the
appearance of two volumes of new translations from the Shobogenzo,2 in ad­
dition to the two books discussed here. Dogen's texts are notoriously difficult,
and a further impediment to Dagen studies in the West has been that the scholars
who have the philological and Buddhological expertise to translate them have
rarely possessed the sophisticated understanding of Western philosophy neces­
sary for rendering them into language that is philosophically illuminating and
avoids misleading metaphysical connotations. There has thus arisen a secondary
current in Dagen studies which approaches his work from the perspectives of
comparative philosophy, the major Western figure with whom he has been
compared being Heidegger. I should like to offer some reflections on the enter­
prise of comparing these two thinkers, with reference to Dogen Studies, an
anthology in which comparisons with Heidegger are adumbrated or alluded to in
the majority of the essays, and to a book-length comparative study, Existential
and Ontological Dimensions of Time in Heidegger and Dogen.
Perhaps the most striking thing about Dagen is the large number of striking
things about him. As well as being a Zen teacher of the highest (no) rank, he was a
profoundly philosophical thinker, an astute psychologist, a wildly innovative
literary stylist-and more. For this reason the anthology is a particularly appro­
priate medium through which to convey the variety of contemporary perspec­
tives on his thought, and Dogen Studies is a fine example of the genre. The
collection has its basis in a conference on the significance of Dagen sponsored by
the Kuroda Institute in 1981, and the seven contributors to the resulting book
examine Dogen's corpus from the perspectives of philosophy, history of religion
and religious studies, linguistic and textual analysis, and sociology. The corpus is
elephantine in bulk, and the examination-perhaps because the several exam­
iners spent time talking among themselves and comparing their perspectives­
contributes to a fuller and clearer picture of Dogen's ideas.
William LaFleur's introductory essay contains insightful reflections on the

Graham Parkes is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Philosophy East and West, volume 37, no. 4 (October 1987). ©by the University of Hawaii Press. All rights reserved.
438 Feature Book Review

problems occasioned by the multifaceted nature of Dogen's work, and prepares

the reader well for the variety of perspectives on it which follow. From among the
contributions by Carl Bielefeldt, Hee-Jin Kim, Thomas Kasulis, Masao Abe,
John Maraldo, Francis Cook and Robert Bellah, I shall discuss those of Profes­
sors Kim, Cook, and Kasulis (with a brief comment on John Maraldo's), since
these are the more stimulating pieces philosophically and also prompt reflections
on comparisons with Heidegger.
Hee-Jin Kim's "The Reason of Words and Letters: Dogen and Koan Lan­
guage" is the only essay of these four which does not mention Heidegger­
though the author has shown his awareness of certain parallels with Heidegger in
his book Dogen Kigen-Mystical Realist yet it contains the most stimulating
-

material for a Heideggerian comparison. Kim undertakes a study of the language

of the Shobogenzoa against the background of the larger issue of the role of
language in Zen practice and methodology in general. He exposes the shortcom­
ings of the received view that Dogen's major concern was to revitalize zazen, the
central practice of the "Silent-illumination" (original enlightenment) tradition
exemplified by the Soto school, by introducing the practice of shikan-tazab at the
expense of neglecting work with koans, the basis of the "Koan-inquiry" (ac­
quired enlightenment) tradition behind the Rinzai sect. Dogen's work in general
stands in contradiction to the naive assumption that Zen is totally anti­
intellectual and concerned exclusively with nonlinguistic means of insight, and
this essay shows how Dogen's understanding of koan as "realization-koan"
(genjo-koanc) allows him to affirm the inseparability of zazen and koan practices.
Kim's primary aim is "to demonstrate how radical Dogen was in his concep­
tion oflinguistic activity as the ultimate spiritual freedom" (p. 56), and his careful
and thorough analyses of numerous passages from the Shobogenzo are convinc­
ing. He shows that Dogen is equally aware of both the limiting and liberating
features of language, and argues that, for Dogen, when language is appropriated
in the context of "total exertion" (gujind), it can become genuine "expression"
(dotoku•) and words can be realized as "the bearers of ultimate truth" (p. 58).
This is a strong thesis, but the author argues it cogently, examining Dogen's
innovative uses of language in the context of the "realization-koan" under such
headings as: transposition of lexical components, semantic reconstruction
through syntactic change, reflexive self-causative utterances, use of homo­
phones, and so forth.
The difficulty of the ShObOgenzo is formidable, and Kim's discussion of the
.
variety of linguistic tropes and strategies in the text will be sufficiently illuminat­
ing to encourage at least some formerly defeated readers to return to the text. He
is most successful in conveying a vivid sense of the work's vitality, inspiring a
vision in the reader of the kanji in the text "crashing and smashing against each
other" (to use a phrase Dogen himself uses to characterize all dharmas rather
than just words). Kim quotes a notoriously opaque passage from the "sky
flowers" (kiiger) fascicle, and suggests that Dogen wants the elements of his
439

language here "to be appreciated visually and aurally, as they are, like the images
of a dream" (p. 62). His translation of the passage in which Dogen plays
variations on the theme of "the sky flowers falling furiously" is masterful, and
opens up a new dimension for the appreciation of Dogen's poetry. He lets Do gen
(re)sound like Samuel Beckett undertaking a neo-Freudian interpretation of a
dream of William Blake's.
The violence Dogen perpetrates on Chinese Buddhist sutras as he forces them
into medieval Japanese, together with the more tranquil ways in which he works
the elements of language into a spontaneous interplay, fully justifies Kim's
calling him "a magician or alchemist of language" (p. 63). This characterization,
and the quotations adduced to justify it, will remind readers familiar with
Heidegger of the ways in which the latter in his later works lets language play.
Dogen's sense of words as dynamic forces that are as vitally alive as the animate
creatures of nature is echoed in Heidegger's trust in the ability of language itself
to do the speaking.
Many of the strategies both thinkers employ are similar. German syntax is
more constricting than the paratactic openness of Chinese, but Heidegger does
his best to loosen it up when he reframes, in a "transposition of lexical compo­
nents," the question of the essence/being of truth (das Wesen der Wahrheit) as the
truth of essence/being (die Wahrheit des Wesens). Dogen's reconstruing offushi­
ryog, "not-thinking," as Ju no shiryo, "the not's [or emptiness's] thinking,"
anticipates Heidegger's playful explotation of the "double genitive" -wherein a
locution such as "the thinking of Being" (das Denken des Seins) expresses that the
thinking is done by Being as much as it is about it. Similarly, Dogen's penchant
for creating verbs out of nouns has a counterpart in Heidegger's fondness for
formulations such as "world worlds," "nothing nothings," "things thing," and
"language languages" (die Sprache spricht). Nor are Heidegger's aims and moti­
vations here so different from Dogen's in working with koan language. Heidegger
makes this play only when dealing with the most primordial ideas: rather than
succumbing to the temptation to explicate, for example, the phenomenon of
world in other terms by saying something like "World opens up the horizon of
possible meaningfulness," thereby allowing the reader's thinking to drift away
from the mystery in the direction of the familiar and the intelligible, he insists on
our staying with the word "world," and through repetition encourages language
itself to speak the being of world.
In a section entitled "The Upgrading of Commonplace Notions and Use of
Neglected Metaphors," Kim discusses another aspect of Dogen's use of lan­
guage: the ways in which "Dogen's multifaceted genius consists in his ability to
discover and rediscover the conceptual and symbolic possibilities of plain, unpre­
tentious words and expressions" (p. 72). While Heidegger in Sein und Zeit leaned
towards creating neologisms in order to avoid using terminology laden with
traditional metaphysical connotations, in his later work he reverted to a rela­
tively plain vocabulary and concentrated on deepening the resonances of ordi-
440 Feature Book Review

nary language through etymological reanimation of the forgotten primordial

meanings of basic terms. (In this he was surely influenced by his study of the
Chinese language, and-given his years of contact with philosophers from Japan
and his interest in Japanese culture generally-he probably also had some
acquaintance with Dogen's ideas.3)
Dogen's fondness for bizarre and unconventional readings of Buddhist siitras
is well known, and Kim cites several telling examples. This practice anticipates
Heidegger's often shocking interpretations of major texts in the Western
tradition-which he himself characterizes, not without a touch of glee, as
"violent"-and especially his readings of the fragments of the Presocratics. In
both cases the reinterpretations are grounded in a thorough knowledge of the
tradition and an acute hermeneutic sensibility, and the purpose is again to let
language itself speak. Kim concludes with an account of the ways in which Dogen
reinterprets a variety of Buddhist sayings and locutions on the basis of the
principle of emptiness (kuh), the underlying idea being that "authentic linguistic
activity is appropriate to the principle of absolute emptiness" (p. 78). This
characterization of Dogen fits Heidegger perfectly: we can realize language as
"the house of Being" only if we can hold back from speaking ourselves and allow
language to arise spontaneously out of primordial silence.4
For the first part of his title and the last words of his essay Kim adduces
Dogen's phrase monji no dori;, which he translates as "the reason of words and
letters." The translation of dori as "reason" and the author's talk of "the ration­
ality of the Buddha-dharma" and Dogen's "passion for rationality" are some­
what misleading. While it is important to counter the view that Zen thinkers are
irrationalists, the claim that "[Dogen's] foremost concern is ultimately rational
rather than rhetorical; he believes that reason, not eloquence, is paramount for
the attainment of the Way" goes too far. Dori, which means literally something
like "way-principle," is a hard term to translate, but "reason" and its cognates
have too many connotations from their use in Western metaphysics referring to
pure intellect to be appropriate for what Dogen has in mind. 5 While Dogen
surely considers rationality essential, one should not downplay his concern to
balance it with the different precision of poetic imagery grounded in the peculiar
logic of the Chinese and Japanese languages. (As a final, relatively minor point,
let me register a parenthetic protest against the use-increasingly frequent in
writers on comparative philosophy-of the term "homocentric," which means
"having the same center," as a substitute for the less compact, but correct,
"anthropocentric.")
The topic of anthropocentrism, or rather the overcoming of it, is central to
Francis Cook's essay "Dogen's View of Authentic Selfuood and Its Socio­
Ethical Implications." The author begins by proclaiming his belief that Dogen
can still speak to us in the twentieth century, on the grounds that "his under­
standing of the nature of authentic selfuood is more satisfying philosophically
441

and has more value existentially than does the traditional Western definition of
selfhood" (p. 132). Cook goes on to remark, however, that "a new formulation
of selfhood has emerged" recently in the West, "particularly in the thinking of
Martin Heidegger and Alfred North Whitehead . . . and this new formulation
parallels Dogen's in great part." After further suggesting that "Dogen's under­
standing of authentic selfhood is in many ways consonant with, and in many
ways an even more radical statement of, recent trends in Western thought," he
cites the following well-known passages from the Shobogenzo genjo-koan to serve
as the basis for his discussion (p. 133):

1. Conveying the self to the myriad beings to authenticate them is delusion;

The myriad things advancing to authenticate the self is enlightenment.
2. To study the Buddha Way is to study the self;
To study the self is to forget the self;
To forget the self is to be authenticated by the myriad things.

These are stimulating lines for the Heidegger enthusiast, who might look forward
to an explication of them in something like the following terms:

1. To participate in the collective prior projection of a "mathematical" horizon,

or horizon of utility, and to impose meanings on things by subjecting them to
representational/calculative thinking (vorstellendes/rechnendes Denken) is the
way of inauthentic existence;
to practice attentive, patient and open "non-willing," and thereby to cultivate
a "releasement towards things" (Gelassenheit zu den Dingen) which lets the
phenomena present themselves "from themselves," is the way of authentic
existence.
2. To follow the way of thinking requires a preliminary inquiry into Dasein;
the inquiry into Dasein attains depth only when one has let the inauthentic self
shatter itself against death;
to let the inauthentic self shatter itself is to allow Dasein to realize itself as
open/ed (entschlossen) being-in-the-world. 6

Now it is true that the declared focus of Cook's essay is Dogen's understanding of
the self, and I have no wish to criticize the author for failing to accomplish
something he did not set out to do. However, given that he begins by mentioning
two comparable Western views, it is disappointing that Cook does not pursue the
interesting question of the ways in which "this new formulation [of the self, in the
thinking of Heidegger and Whitehead] parallels Dogen's" (p. 132). Subsequent
to the introduction there are only two or three mentions of Whitehead's ideas,
and a few references to Heidegger (by way of a secondary source). The first topic
in connection with which Cook refers to Heidegger is anxiety in the face of
death-a most fruitful area for a comparison with Dogen-but he drops it,
disappointingly, almost as soon as he takes it up.
The next mention of Heidegger is not only cursory but misleading. Cook has
just shown that a necessary condition of authentic selfhood for Dogen is the
overcoming or "transcendence" of egocentrism and anthropocentrism. He then
442 Feature Book Review

goes on to say that "In the West, even among those such as Heidegger and some
Christian mystics, for example, who speak of self-transcendence, the ultimacy of
human values, goals, and the like is never questioned" (p. 143). But it is precisely
"the ultimacy of human values" that Heidegger questions from the beginning to
the end of his "path of thinking." From Sein und Zeit, in which the question of
Being is asked within the clearing of Dasein-which, he stresses, is not to be
equated with human being (Mens chsein)-through and beyond the Letter on
Humanism, in which he dismisses all thinking in terms of values as perniciously
anthropocentric, and explicitly and laboriously distinguishes his own thinking
from any kind of humanism -Heidegger has striven to shift our philosophical
focus and existential center of gravity from man to Being. And while Being is
understood as radically finite, it is nevertheless "nothing human."
This is not to claim that Dogen and Heidegger are perfectly aligned in their
attitudes towards beings other than human beings-the latter always becomes
palpably nervous when thinking (at least in writing) about animals, and is clearly
more comfortable with trees, bridges, pitchers, and the like-but rather that the
charge of anthropocentrism is particularly inapplicable to Heidegger. Indeed, it
is precisely his radically nonanthropocentric attitude that recommends a careful
comparison with Dogen. Of course Heidegger grants man a privileged place in
the order of things, as being "the shepherd of Being" and "the place-holder of
nothingness"; but in Zen, too, even though all things are considered to be
Buddha-nature, the human being's possibilities of attaining enlightenment are
qualitatively different and more comprehensive than those of other sentient and
nonsentient beings.
While the topic of "the authentic self" is one of the most fruitful to address in
comparing Dogen and Heidegger, a more manageable (because more restricted)
one, which is mentioned but never fully treated in this anthology, is that of the
relation between Dogen's notion of "nonthinking" ( hishiry oi) and Heidegger's
"meditative/(com)memorative thinking" (besinnendes Nachdenken). Cook men­
tions hishiryi5 in a perfectly appropriate context, suggesting that we might
translate it loosely as "true thinking," but does not develop the theme further.
John Maraldo also touches on the idea of hishiryi5 in his essay "The Practice of
Body-Mind: Dogen's Shinjingakudi5k and Comparative Philosophy," a careful
and insightful comparison ofDogen's views on body-mind with some themes in
Western philosophy of mind.Maraldo cites Heidegger as an existential phenom­
enologist who has given a powerful critique of traditional Western conceptions
of the "mind-body problem" and has reminded us of "some non-objectifying
ways of study: musing, poeticizing, questioning, conversing" (p. 117). He sug­
gests that Heidegger's idea of "thinking [as] first and foremost a practice"-not
only that, but a craft (Handwerk), a work of the hand-"[approaches] Dogen's
primacy of practice ... where mind is a matter to be practised and realized."
But then the author asks whether Heidegger's thinking "[attains] Dogen's
'thinking of not-thinking [hishiryi5]' either as a technique of practice or as an
443

interpretation of exemplary human activity"-and answers, "I think not." He

gives as his grounds for not thinking this the fact that "[the existential] phenome­
nologists' study] does not include the practice of letting go of thoughts, 'discard­
ing all aspects of mind' (as Dogen has paraphrased 'not-thinking')." Given that
Maraldo himself has a fine sense of the force of Heidegger's critique of represen­
tational thinking and of the alternative, nonobjectifying ways of thinking he
advocates-especially in the later works, where one can assume some influence
from Chinese and Japanese philosophy-it is disappointing that he does not say
why he thinks that Heidegger's notion of "releasement" (Gelassenheit), for
example, does not come close to Dogen's "non-thinking." And given that Dogen
and Heidegger offer comparable critiques of the kinds of thinking that distance
us from what is really going on, and that Heidegger's notion of Gelassenheit is of
all his ideas the one most in harmony with Zen, one would like to know what
makes Gelassenheit so different from "discarding all aspects of mind." 7
Thomas Kasulis, in his essay "The Incomparable Philosopher: Dogen on How
to Read the ShObogenzo," suggests that two features of Dogen's work which
make it especially relevant to issues in contemporary philosophy are its concerns
with language and with "the issue of presence or givenness" (pp. 83-84). While
warning against the shortcomings of taking Dogen as merely the precursor of
some modern philosophical movement or figure, Kasulis does a fine job of
displaying Dogen's considerable hermeneutic sensibilities and the extent to
which these are combined with an emphasis on concrete experience rather than
abstraction. The essay as a whole thereby furthers the author's project of
bringing to light the subtle and profound philosophical importance of Dogen's
work.
While Kasulis makes several references to Heidegger in the course of his essay,
one of his major concerns is to point up the limitations of the comparative
approach to Dogen-as suggested by one of the senses of the "Incomparable" in
the essay's title. His criticisms of the Eurocentrism which informs the more
condescending examples of comparative philosophy are trenchant, as are his
suggestions that East-West philosophical inquiries can also be overly
defensive-by attempting, for example, "to show Dogen's philosophical nature
by virtue of the company we can make him keep [Plato, Heidegger, J. L. Austin,
and others]" (p. 87). Kasulis is surely right in holding that "Dogen often suffers
more from comparisons than he is helped by them"-in large part because the
organic unity of his thought makes the isolating of aspects for comparison a
delicate and difficult operation. But while granting the necessity of "approaching
Dogen on his own terms," one might also want to encourage-because of the
extreme difficulty of his work for a Western audience-complementary ap­
proaches along comparative lines, as long as the topics and style of the compar­
ison are appropriate.
Kasulis makes the hermeneutic point that in comparisons of Dogen with a
Western thinker it is the comparer as a third party to whom the similarities occur,
444 Feature Book Review

that the comparer is an inextricable part of the equation. However, his related
claim that an interpretation of Dogen is valid "if [it] is appropriate to one's
perspective, and if one incorporates that interpretation fully into one's own life"
(p. 93) seems to me to overemphasize the personal element. To these necessary
conditions I should want to add another, to the effect that the interpretation also
enhance the understanding ofDogen on the part of at least some other members
of the community of readers.
Near the conclusion of his essay Kasulis writes: "It is now clearer whyDogen
should not be the object of East-West comparisons. . .. Allusions to other tra­
ditions may be helpful as an explanatory device in some cases, but at best they can
only be a prelude to the real philosophizing. In the end, Dogen himself must
speak through the interpreter . .. " (p. 96). His point is that it is difficult to let
Dogen himself speak if we choose a topic in advance-an act that already
restricts the possibilities of our understanding-and then compare what he says
with, say, Heidegger's ideas on the topic. Rather, we should try to let bothDogen
and Heidegger speak to us in such a way that topics for comparison are suggested
by the texts themselves, so as to allow the reader/interpreter's response to
constitute a philosophically fruitful three-way conversation.
Kasulis's contribution rightly emphasizes the problem inherent in compara­
tive approaches to Dogen's thought by pointing up the breadth of the qualifi­
cations required, the hermeneutical awareness necessary (if not sufficient) for a
successful comparison, and the dangers posed by latent ethnocentrism.The essay
opens with an admonition concerning the dangers of what the author felicitously
terms "philosophical imperialism" (p. 86) when undertaking cross-cultural com­
parisons. Kasulis does not, however, mention the equally pernicious counter­
phenomenon, which was so prevalent a decade or so ago-a kind of "reverse
cultural chauvinism," in which one is from the start so favorably disposed
towards the representative of the wisdom of the East that the Western compar­
andum is not granted a fair hearing. It is to an instance of this syndrome that we
now turn.

The topic of Existential and Ontological Dimensions of Time in Heidegger and

Dogen is one of the most fascinating in the field of comparative philosophy. The
question of the nature of time is perennially difficult and challenging, in both
Eastern and Western thought, and the treatments of bothDogen and Heidegger
rank among the most enigmatic and profound in their respective traditions. And
since the secondary literature on these figures has for the most part been reluctant
to engage them on the most difficult topic of their reflection, a comparative
approach is all the more recommended.
In spite of their different historical backgrounds, both thinkers trace the major
philosophical and existential problems on the part of their intellectual precursors
and nonphilosophical contemporaries to misunderstandings of the nature of
time. Their positive views appear at first glance to have much in common: they
445

both distinguish between "primordial" and "derivative" views of temporality,

and through a consideration of the issue of death and finitude and a thorough
investigation of the "now" they come to understand the three temporal dimen­
sions as somehow "co-present." Tracing the similarities, one might then be able
to illuminate the obscurer aspects of each thinker's thought by delineating the
ultimate divergences and clarifying the grounds of their differences.
However, as the enterprise gains in fascination, the requirements for under­
taking it multiply, since they involve a thorough grounding in the traditions out
of which both Dogen's and Heidegger's ideas grow. The linguistic competence
necessary on both sides for such a grounding is considerable, involving German,
classical Chinese, and medieval Japanese-plus an understanding of the difficult
and idiosyncratic language employed by both thinkers. The whole thing is an
awesome task; yet, if done well, the result would be a tour de force of comparative
philosophy. In short, the person who can carry off an in-depth comparison of
Dogen and Heidegger on the topic of time successfully-let alone with elan and
panache-is going to have to be a mature scholar of remarkable ability. While
Steven Heine's boldness in trying is perhaps to be commended, the attempt is
sadly premature. There are two reasons why it is worthwhile to respond to his
attempt at some length rather than with a more peremptory dismissal. For one
thing the topic is fascinating and potentially so enlightening; for another, Heine's
treatment is symptomatic of a more general malaise affecting comparative work
on Heidegger, and its shortcomings typify some of the more widespread
misconceptions.
Heine appears to have read widely, if not deeply, in the Heideggerian corpus,
and to know his way around pretty well in the texts of Dogen and some of his
precursors. He also has a good sense of the general areas in which a comparison
would be fruitful. It is to Heine's credit that he has marshalled the majority of the
passages from Dogen's writings which are resonant with Heidegger's work, but
there are areas where his treatment of the background to Dogen's thought is
somewhat slight. While he is surely right, for example, in saying that Dogen was
"positively influenced by the aesthetic-naturalistic concern with impermanence
of the poets [of the Heian period]," this statement sums up a rather brusque
treatment of the idea of mujo in the literature of the period prior to Dogen-a
topic which surely deserves more extensive treatment in this context. More
generally, one would like to have seen the author demonstrate more familiarity
with the extensive commentarial tradition on Dogen in both classical and mod­
em Japanese.
The translation of the " Uji1" fascicle of the Shobogenzo, which constitutes the
appendix to Heine's book, seems gratuitous in that it does not improve on the
previous efforts that have been published. In translating an essay on "being­
time" one should surely be as meticulous as possible concerning the terms which
have to do with time, and while Heine's translation is generally unobjectionable,
his rendering of some of the time words in particular seems to me to go against
446 Feature Book Review

the grain of Dogen's thought. He follows the majority of previous translators in

renderingji consistently by the abstract noun "time" (p. 155), whereas in many
instances "a time" or "times" would better convey Dogen's emphasis on con­
crete experience. The Master is far more concerned with having the reader
understand that a particular being is itself a time or that beings in general are
times than with propounding a theory of "time" in the abstract. Nor does it help
to translate imam as "the present moment" (p. 155 passim) rather than "now."
"Now" has the virtue of being, like the Japanese ima, open-ended in its de­
pendence on context, and this feature is important for the purposes of Dogen's
argument. If I say "Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer
. . . " I am referring to a period rather than to a moment, a season rather than a
point in time-whether I speak in English or in Japanese.
Equally unilluminating is the rendering of two other key terms concerning
time: nikon° and kyoryaku0• To translate nikon as "right here-and-now" (p. 157)
is to import a spatial element that is not in the term or the text, and again to limit
the extension of the "now." "Right now" would be better, and would also suggest
a comparison with Heidegger's subtle analysis of das Jetzt in section 81 of Sein und
Zeit. Kyoryaku is a difficult term to translate, but "passage" (p. 157) is especially
inapt in the light of Dogen's warning us not to take the idea on the analogy of a
rainstorm's "moving from east to west" (p. 159). Time is not a thing that moves
from one time, or place, to another. "Passing"would be an improvement, insofar
as it conveys more of the dynamic continuity of kyoryaku. But better still would
be "ranging" (suggested by Kasulis in the review article referred to above), which
would also invite a comparison with Heidegger's notion of the "stretched-out­
ness" (Erstreckung) of Dasein's temporality. (Nor does the addition in brackets
of Heine's favorite neologism, "totalistic," redeem "passage" as a rendering of
kyoryaku.) Lastly, his translation of jisetsuP as "moment" rather than "occa­
sion" (p. 157) is unnecessarily confusing.
One final point is prompted by Kasulis's remark on the need to avoid language
laden with presuppositions from Western metaphysics (such as "absolute,"
"reality," "transcendence") when translating or discussing Dogen. Heine seems
insensitive to this issue: he generally uses terms such as "realize," "manifest," or
"manifestation" in translating gelijo-terms which through their associations
with Western metaphysical ideas are alien to Dogen's way of thinking. "Presenc­
ing," which he sometimes uses in other contexts, is better-as long as we take the
term in an appropriately "becoming" Heideggerian way.
It would not normally be appropriate to criticize the style of a nonliterary text,
as long as the ideas are worth something. But since language is of such crucial
importance for both Heidegger and Dogen, the repetitive and unreflective style
of Existential and Ontological Dimensions is especially deplorable. The book
reads like a doctoral dissertation barely warmed over, and the inordinate amount
of repetitiveness suggests that with this manuscript the Press may have dispensed
altogether with the time-consuming process of editing. One has the impression of
447

having come across some sentences, with slight changes in word order, at least
ten times by the end of the book. Perhaps the battle against the awkwardness of
the split infinitive has been lost, but Heine seems intent on driving a few more
nails into the coffin of elegant prose by splitting every infinitive he can-in this
case most of them, since a verb rarely appears without a modifying adverb-and
often by two conjoined modifiers. Other principles seem to be: never use one
adjective when you can slip in a second or third; substantives will be more
effective when used in groups of two or three than singly; and-most important
of all-mix all metaphors thoroughly before using. Since most of the metaphors
employed are mixed, good (or bad) examples can be found on almost every page.
An instance from the beginning of the book: "Death is disclosed by Heidegger
and Dogen as the urgent, immediate and inescapable signpost of time which
disavows any attempt to divorce time from existence, and betrays claims of
permanence which bypass this relation" (p. 9).
It is not unreasonable to expect a commentator on two thinkers so concerned
with language to display at least an average linguistic sensitivity. But when an
author is able to mix his basic tropes to such incongruous and confusing effect in
almost every paragraph, the reader is forced to question whether he is thinking
about what he is doing or even once reflecting on what the words he is putting
down actually say. A good editor could have straightened some of this out, but
Heine's manuscript-and here he deserves our sympathy-has not even had the
benefit of proper copy editing. It is hardly encouraging to encounter a misspelled
word in the book's opening sentence, and typos such as "Doogen" and "Heigeg­
ger" are particularly unfortunate. One should perhaps be charitable and count
errors such as "ecstacy" as typo- rather than orthographical, but when faced with
an author who tries to create such neologisms as "trans-ultimate" and "statici­
zation," the quality of charity is somewhat strained.
Turning to the Western side of the comparison, one encounters three major
problems: Heine's apparent lack of familiarity with the philosophical tradition
which Heidegger knew so well that he was able to claim-with a great deal of
justification-to have overcome it, his failure to engage Heidegger's texts in the
original German, and a peculiar kind of reverse cultural chauvinism. With
respect to the background understanding of the Western philosophical tradition,
while Heine occasionally mentions the names of some of the appropriate figures,
he generally lumps their ideas together under the heading of "derivative sub­
stance and eternalist ontology." A major source of confusion is the author's
repeated emphasis on the term "radical contingency"-a term with no immedi­
ately clear meaning in standard philosophical discourse, but which he declines to
define for us.Whatever this "radical contingency" is, it is clearly important, since
Heidegger and Dogen "uncover" it as "the universal and undeniable, ultimate
and all-pervasive basis, nature and structure of all existence" (p. 73). It is not
clear whether they do or not-since one has no idea to what Japanese or German
term, or configuration of terms, Heine means to refer by this phrase. Nor is it, I
448 Feature Book Review

think, unreasonable to ask of someone from the field of religious studies who is
comparing two philosophies of time that he relate his terminology to traditional
or current philosophical discourse-or that he define his terms when he diverges.
While an attempt from another discipline to appropriate Heidegger's thought is
most welcome, it must be appropriated as philosophy, and as the work of a
thinker with a profound understanding of the Western philosophical tradition.
If Heine knows German-and one assumes that the author of a book on
Heidegger will-he never once uses it to explicate Heidegger's texts. While he
does put the original in parentheses for some of Heidegger's terms, many of these
insertions are gratuitous, misspelled, or else never used by Heidegger or any other
native German speaker: "subiectitat," "mehr ursprunglich," and "Gedanke­
sache," to give some of the more egregious examples. Someone, surely, some­
where on the way from dissertation to publication should have caught errors like
these. Heine, sensibly, makes his major focus Sein und Zeit, but bases his entire
treatment of the text on the often inadequate translation, Being and Time, by
Macquarrie and Robinson. By unthinkingly adopting their renderings of, for
example, Schuld as "guilt" and Befindlichkeit as "state-of-mind" or (Heine adds,
making things even worse) "emotion," he is led to misinterpret Heidegger as a
thinly disguised Christian voluntarist relying on a quasi-substantialist view of the
self. He displays minimal acquaintance with the secondary literature, mentioning
only William Richardson's magnum opus, an anthology of essays in English, and
one rather undistinguished commentary. There is no bibliography.
The bulk of the book's treatment of Heidegger consists of an inordinate
amount of paraphrase of Being and Time, some of it so close to the original as to
deserve quotation marks, punctuated by citations from this and some later texts
in translation. The preponderance of jargonated paraphrase of Heidegger's
language makes it difficult to tell whether Heine understands the ideas or is
simply recycling the terminology. The reader longs for an argument to grapple
with-but there is none. The author's idea of how to make a point is simply to
repeat the same sentence-often the same words in a slightly different order­
over and over again, at more or less decent intervals.
The structure of the book at least has the virtues of simplicity and predict­
ability. Each chapter has an introductory section, a section on Heidegger, a
section on Dogen, and then a "Comparative Examination" in which the asser­
tions from the previous two sections are reiterated in alternation. It is in this
procedure that the author's prejudices-the unstated gist of which appears to be:
"Eastern thinkers are by nature more profound and subtle than Western"-so
thoroughly vitiate his treatment. The conclusion of each phase is that although
Heidegger has to some extent overcome the deficiencies of the traditional views
on the topic, his philosophy "seems to be haunted by a variety of ontological gaps
or separations that fall short of a fully unified and non-substantive disclosure of
primordial time" (p. 138), or else he "inherently limits the possibility for a fully
non-substantive disclosure of temporality" (p. 148).
449

Nowhere do we find a constructive engagement of the two thinkers' views on a

particular topic. Instead we are treated to an increasingly shameless eulogy of
Dogen, at Heidegger's expense, informed by an almost touchingly Manichean
simplicity. The inauthentic approach (shared by both the metaphysical tradition
and the man in the street) is branded with labels such as "derivative," "unreflec­
tive," "fixation," "fabricated separation," and "subtle and insidiously veiled
deficiencies," while the authentic view is dignified with the terms "dynami­
cally immediate," "totalistic," "holistic," "naturalistic," "appropriately non­
ousiological," and, of course, "primordiality." While Dogen's views are para­
digms of the latter collection of epithets, Heidegger's deserve only some of them
and cannot shake off some of the labels from the first batch. Since it would be
tedious to present a complete documentation of Heine's misunderstandings of
Heidegger, I shall restrict the remarks which follow to those points on which he
criticizes Heidegger misguidedly and which, if properly understood, would pro­
vide fertile ground for an in-depth comparison.
It is clear that since Dogen and Heidegger were writing in quite disparate
contexts for different audiences, their purposes are to some extent different.
While they both undertake careful analyses of our experience, Dogen's motives
are more soteriological, while Heidegger's concerns lie more in the realm of
ontology. Many of Heine's criticisms of Heidegger concern his not being suffi­
ciently soteriological. Firstly, it is vacuous to criticize a thinker for failing to do
something that he has stated he is not interested in doing. And secondly, there is
of course a strong (if not explicitly stated) existential agenda in Sein und Zeit,
which verges occasionally on the soteriological-and it is because Heine has
decided in advance that Dogen is the more profound thinker that he fails to see it.
Time and again Heine reproaches Heidegger for being "reluctant to existen­
tially criticize derivative time or to offer injunctives [sic] for overcoming it" (p. 63),
or for his "inability to offer a moral or existential critique of inauthentic now­
time" (p. 66). Heidegger claims to be-and surely is-working at a deeper level
than the ethical; nevertheless, the language he uses throughout Sein und Zeit to
distinguish between authentic and inauthentic existence implies that the deriva­
tive understanding of temporality conceals what is really going on and severely
restricts Dasein's possibilities-and that to make the breakthrough to authentic
existence will result in a more fulfilling, though not necessarily morally better,
way of life. On these grounds a comparison with Dogen that respects their
parallel but distinct motivations is indeed recommended.
One of the book's problems in this context stems from the author's failure to
appreciate one of the most fundamental distinctions in Sein and Zeit ( SZ): that
between existenzie/l and existenzial understanding. He announces rather
cavalierly in an early note that he is going to use the term "existential" to refer to
"a unity of existenzie/l and existenzial from the higher point of view" (p. 164).
While this serves Heine's purposes of making Dogen appear the more profound
thinker, it flaws the presentation of Heidegger's ideas. At the very beginning of
450 Feature Book Review

SZ Heidegger carefully explains the distinction: "existenziell" refers to the

understanding of ourselves each of us has and displays simply by existing;
"existenzial" refers to a theoretical understanding of the structures of existence
(SZ 12). Heine frequently reproaches Heidegger for "[presupposing] subtle gaps
... between existenziell and existenzial levels" (which Dogen, somehow,
"overcomes"), and at the end of the book he announces that "the question thus
remains whether any separation between ontology and personal experience is,
indeed, possible or even reasonable in terms of Heidegger's hermeneutic method
and philosophical aims" (p. 148). Heidegger does not presuppose any gaps,
however subtle: he simply makes a distinction and stipulates how he is using the
terms. As for the "separation between ontology and experience," surely its
possibility or reasonableness is not in question-since Heidegger uses the term
"ontology" to mean "the explicit, theoretical inquiry into the meaning of Being"
(SZ 12; my italics). Few could take exception to the idea that one can-and
most people do-exist without doing ontology, and that to do ontology well
requires that one have something approaching an authentic understanding of
existence.
Heine's major criticism seems to be that Heidegger fails to overcome the
substance ontology that characterizes Western metaphysics, and that this vitiates
both his understanding of the self and his theory of primordial temporality:
"Heidegger's exclusive focus on Dasein seems to perpetuate but not overcome or
eliminate substance ontology, now disguised by a still derivative reversal ... [and
to prevent] a breakthrough from any conception of substantiality or its inversion,
subjecticity [sic]" (p.64). Correspondingly, the Heidegger of SZ is reproached for
being anthropocentric, generally indirectly on the grounds of the "attempted
trans-anthropocentrism in later writings" (p. 101). I have explained earlier, in
connection with Francis Cook's essay, why such a criticism is invalid. But if
Heine insists on pressing the point, he owes us an account of why we should not
take Heidegger's protestations in§ 10 of SZ seriously. There Heidegger carefully
distinguishes his enterprise from anthropology, psychology, and so on by saying
that he is deliberately adopting the term Dasein to refer to something about us
that is different from the person, soul, subject, substance, the human being-or
even life.
Heine claims that Heidegger's conception of the self is still infected by sub­
stance metaphysics because his understanding of death is not deep enough. But
the discussion of Heidegger's treatment of the topics of Angst and death is
disappointingly scant, given that it is the confrontation with death in anxiety that
alone makes possible an understanding of authentic temporality (Zeitlichkeit).
Although Heine paraphrases some of the appropriate pasages, he fails to appreci­
ate the crucial feature of Heidegger's existential conception of death-that it
understands death as an ever-present possibility rather than an actual event that
will take place later. While on the one hand he says, rightly, that death "pervades
each and every moment," on the other he remarks that Heidegger's approach
451

"still views death as an end that is arriving from the future. . .. it is not said to be
fully coterminous with the present moment" (p. 102).
This is again to miss the point that deserves to be the focus of comparison. Or,
if Heine does get the point, his ill-chosen metaphor obscures it: "Death frames
existence to such an inevitable and all-pervasive extent that it must be taken into
account in all one's affairs" (p. 97). Death as the end of Dasein does not form a
boundary to life as a kind of frame; rather, Dasein ends precisely in every
moment. As the possibility of the absolute impossibility of any possibilities,
death is not a nothingness at the end of the line, but rather a possibility that
"stands into" every moment of our being here now (SZ 248). As "the outermost
not-yet of Dasein's being, to which all the others are prior" and which is "always
already included" in our being here (SZ 259), death is at the same time "the
uttermost possibility" that is closer than any other possible ways to be, and which
"stands into" every possibility that we actually take up (SZ 302). It is a pity that
Heine rarely mentions Heidegger's idea of the nothingness (das Nichts) of death,
since a comparison of das Nichts and the idea of kii in Zen would constitute the
appropriate context for a discussion of Heidegger's and Dogen's ideas on the
interrelations among death and anxiety and the moment and primordial time.
Heine's related criticism that "[Heidegger's] notion of finitude is not sufficiently
radical to uncover the complete existential and ontological insubstantiality of the
self" (p. 101) is based on an inadequate translation. Heidegger is in fact so aware
of the shortcomings of the subjectivist and substantialist views of the self that the
repeated warnings against such understandings which precede almost every
discussion of the self in SZ become quite tiresome. His positive position is that
the true nature of the self is to be found in the phenomenon of vorlaufende
Entschlossenheit (SZ 322 passim). Relying on the standard translation of Entsch­
lossenheit as "resoluteness," Heine claims to find elements of "voluntarism" in
Heidegger's conception of authentic selfhood. But Heidegger emphasizes that
Entschlossenheit is "freedom for the giving up of any particular resolution [Ent­
schluss]" that might be demanded by the circumstances (SZ 391). In view of this,
"open(ed)ness" would be a more appropriate rendering, especially since
Heidegger's use of the term in the context of disclosure prompts us to hear the
privative "Ent-" work against the "closing" and "concluding" of "schliessen."
And how does the self get opened up? Through Vorlaufen-for which "anticipa­
tion" is much too weak a translation. The quasi-substantial and "encapsulated"
inauthentic self takes up its thrownness into death by "running ahead" (vor­
laufen) and shattering itself against it. On another level, Dasein has no need to
"traverse the time granted to it" (as Heine puts it on p. 43) between birth and
death, because owing to its ecstatic temporality it is always already "stretched
out" between those possibilities. In sum, Heidegger's understanding of the self as
permeated with the twofold nothingness of death and thrownness (SZ 283-285)
cries out for comparison with the idea of mugaq (nonself) in Dogen-a task
which Heine declines to undertake.
452 Feature Book Review

The author's reliance on the Macquarrie and Robinson translation leads him
astray again in connection with the term "Vorhandenheit," which they translate
as "presence-at-hand." He reproaches Heidegger several times for "closely [as­
sociating] Dasein's falling with its preoccupation with the derivative present ...
[and with] the present tense in the sense of Dasein's making-present that which is
present-at-hand" (pp. 62 and 69). It is true that Heidegger associates falling
primarily with the present: Heine quotes the relevant passage (SZ 346)-and also
Heidegger's saying in the same breath that inauthentic making-present forms a
unity with the inauthentic future and past. But he fails to see that falling is a more
comprehensive Existenzial than disposition (Befindlichkeit) or understanding
(Verstehen)-associated with past and future respectively-because he is taken
in by the "present" in "present-at-hand." "Das Vorhandene" does convey a sense
of objects "neutrally there," but nothing in the term is related to Gegenwart ("the
present") or its cognates, nor is its extension restricted to the present. We "fall"
into the inauthentic future and past-by identifying ourselves with things from
our past and with things planned or hoped for in the future-just as much as into
the inauthentic present.
This opens out into a broader issue which is exemplified in another formula­
tion of the same criticism, to the effect that "Heidegger is not capable by his own
admission of investigating the time of vorhanden entities because he associates
Dasein's concern for things present-at-hand with the state of falling into now­
time" (p. 63). Heidegger has very little interest in "investigating the time of
vorhanden entities" since the whole idea of Vorhandenheit goes along with the
"vulgar interpretation" of time, the inadequacies of which he documents so
exhaustively in the final chapter of SZ, and with the objective perspective of
science. Entities are encountered as "present-at-hand" only within a temporal
horizon which has neutralized the "datability and meaningfulness of the now" in
which we usually encounter entities-as "ready-to-hand" (SZ 422). Heine no­
where even mentions the idea of Zuhandenheit ("readiness-to-hand"), the analy­
sis of which is the crux of Heidegger's criticisms of traditional ontology. Worse
still, to speak of "Dasein's circumspective making-present of entities present-at­
hand [as] a necessary mode of comportment in both science and handiwork"
(p. 62) betrays a total misunderstanding of the argument of the first few chapters
of SZ. "Circumspection" (Umsicht) lets things be encountered only as "ready-to­
hand"-not as "present-at-hand," which is how science discloses them. In the
context of Heine's enterprise this confusion is unsettling, given the extent to
which Heidegger's distinction between derived and primordial temporality cor­
responds to that between Vorhandenheit and Zuhandenheit.
There is, of course, some basis to Heine's claim that Dogen's thinking does
better justice than Heidegger's to the time of things other than human beings. We
do not find anything comparable to Dogen's assertion that "the pine is a time,
and the bamboo is a time" in Heidegger's analysis of the ways that das Zuhandene
and Vorhandene are in time. For this we should have to look into the lacuna of
453

that enigmatic third way of being that is mentioned (SZ 70 and 211) but nowhere
explicated in SZ : the being of natural phenomena experienced as "the power of
nature" (die Naturmacht). As Heine seems to realize, the ways to pursue the
comparison with Dogen would be through the accounts of the being of things in
such later essays as "The Thing" and "Building, Dwelling, Thinking." Again, I
do not want to argue that Heidegger and Dogen are "saying the same things
about the same things." However, they are a great deal closer than Heine's
prejudices allow him to see, and a careful and impartial evaluation of the extent
of the similarities and differences would enhance our understanding of both
thinkers.
If the foregoing criticisms appear overly harsh, it is because I believe that the
issue goes deeper than just the publication of one more piece of mediocre scholar­
ship. There are signs that the place of Continental European philosophy in
centers of higher education in this country, while it was for many years uncertain,
is now assured. Heidegger scholarship has finally reached a level of sophistication
such that the publication of a treatment as inept as this one, while superfluous,
will not be too detrimental-except to the unsuspecting reader who lacks an
understanding of Heidegger as a basis on which to evaluate it. However, the
situation with respect to Japanese philosophy and that discipline which is only
recently showing signs of knowing what it is about-comparative philosophy­
is more precarious.
It is encouraging that S.U.N.Y. Press, with its ever lengthening list of titles in
philosophy and religion, which comprises a number of first-rate texts and fills
some important lacunas, is such a thriving concern. However, the appearance of
a book such as this makes one wonder whether the push for quantity is not
detracting from quality. The motivations behind the burgeoning list surely aim at
promoting scholarship in the field and at helping those working in it, but there is
a danger that they may have the opposite effect. It is distressing that in a world in
which perspectives are gradually becoming less parochial and more global there
are not more jobs available in Asian and comparative philosophy, and it would
be a good thing for us all if there were more opportunities for recent Ph.D.'s and
junior faculty in the field. But now imagine a philosophy department with a
position that becomes vacant and a member who has been wondering whether it
might not be a good thing to look for someone with competence in Asian and
comparative philosophy. Suppose this enlightened professor has an interest in
the problem of time, has been wondering what Heidegger has to say on the topic,
and has even heard of Dogen. Heaven forfend that, browsing in a bookshop, he
should happen upon Heine's book, which is hailed on the back cover as "a
landmark work." Half-an-hour's perusal would be enough to confirm all his
worst fears about the vacuousness of Heidegger's jargonated thinking and the
maddening inscrutability of Asian thought, and to banish all thoughts of inter­
viewing any candidates outside the field of analytic philosophy. There is a
widespread perception on the part of the "mainstream" of contemporary Anglo-
454 Feature Book Review

American philosophy that students of Asian and comparative philosophy lack

rigor : it seems to me that an academic press publishing in this area has a responsi­
bility to ensure that its output serves to dispel rather than confirm this impression.
I have gone on at some length because the topic of Dogen and Heidegger is
fascinating and important, and because-even if we should be grateful on one
level to Heine and S.U.N.Y. Press for calling attention to its importance-the
book's presentation of Heidegger's thought is misleading and flawed, and it fails
to engage the topics that would make the comparison with Dogen most illu­
minating.8 But the fact that the first attempt should have been premature ought
to encourage rather than discourage further work in the area. It is important that
Japanese philosophy be given more serious attention in the Western philosoph­
ical world, and Dogen studies are clearly going to be crucial in this enterprise.
There are signs that the time is approaching for Dogen to come into his own in
the West: may the presence of Heidegger here help rather than hinder the "event
of appropriation."

NOTES

I . T. P. Kasulis, "The Zen Philosopher: A Review Article on Dogen Scholarship in English,"

Philosophy East and West 2 8 , no. 3 (July 1 978).
2 . The Flowers of Emptiness: Selections from Dogen 's ShobOgenzo, translated, with an intro­
ductory essay and notes, by Hee-Jin Kim (Lewiston, New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1 986);
Shobogenzo: Zen Essays by Dagen, translated, with a commentary, by William Cleary (Honolulu,
Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, 1 986).
3. In this connection, see Otto Piiggeler's "West-East Dialogue: Heidegger and Lao-tzu," in
Heidegger and Asian Thought, edited by Graham Parkes (Honolulu, Hawaii: University of Hawaii
Press, 1 987), and also the editor's contribution: "Thoughts on the Way: Being and Time via Lao­
Chuang. "
4. O n this topic, see Tetsuaki Kotoh, "Language and Silence: Self-Inquiry i n Heidegger and Zen,"
in Heidegger and Asian Thought.
5. The translation of do as "reason" has a precedent in Paul Carus's translation of the
Tao te ching
as " The Canon of Reason and Virtue" -but I doubt whether the advantages of following precedent
in this case outweight the drawbacks.
6. These are paraphrases, not direct quotations, of Heidegger, based primarily on Sein und
Zeit/Being and Time, the second book on Kant (Die Frage nach dem Ding/ What is a Thing?), which
discusses the idea of "mathematical" projection, and Gelassenheit/Discourse on Thinking.
7. Gelassenheit/Discourse on Thinking; cf. also, Peter Kreeft, "Zen in Heidegger's Gelassenheit,"
International Philosophical Quarterly 1 1 (1971), and John D . Caputo, The Mystical Element in
Heidegger's Thought (New York: Fordham University Press, 1 987), chap. 4.
8. To be fair, I should say that Heine's book has received a number of favorable reviews-though
in each case the level of enthusiasm seems to me to be inversely proportional to the reviewer's
understanding of Heidegger.

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