AN IMPOSSIBLE DEMAND: DECONSTRUCTIVE ETHICS AND
ZEN BUDDHIST DISCOURSE
By
David Stephen Howe
Submitted to the
Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences
of American University
in Partial Fulfillment of
the Requirements for the Degree of
Master of Arts
In
Philosophy
Chair: CL#y Cl Amy Oliver
1 . H x b l o Jin Y. Park
Lucinda Peach
Dean of the College (L-^7 Date
2005
American University
Washington, D.C. 20016 AMERICAN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY ^
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2005
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. AN IMPOSSIBLE DEMAND: DECONSTRUCTIVE ETHICS AND
ZEN BUDDHIST DISCOURSE
BY
David Stephen Howe
ABSTRACT
The aim of this thesis is to situate Derridian deconstruction along side Zen
Buddhism in order to accomplish two things. The first is to illuminate a sense of the
ethical in Derridian discourse. The sense of the ethical found in Derrida marks a radical
departure from the conventional conception of normative ethics found in Kant and others.
Understood in light of Levinas’ work on ethics, Derrida’s deconstructive ethics offers a
new way of engaging in relations with the other. Second, by situating the “methodology”
of Derridian deconstruction, now understood as a deconstructive ethics, with Zen
encounter dialogues, Derrida’s notion of “democracy to come” is relocated in a more
global context, freeing his “promise of democracy” from its Eurocentric place in
Derrida’s work.
ii
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ABSTRACT...... ii
Chapter
1. INTRODUCTION ...... 1
2. DERRIDIAN DIFFERANCE AND BUDDHIST DEPENDENT CO-ARISING...... 5
Differance...... 6
Buddhist No-Self Theory...... 13
Deconstruction, Buddhism, and Non-Substantial Philosophy...... 17
3. DECONSTRUCTION AS AN ETHICAL OPERATION, AND THE ZEN
ENCOUNTER DIALOGUES...... 23
What “Is” Deconstruction...... 24
Ethical Reading...... 28
Zen Encounter Dialogues: Dogen's Response to the Koan ...... Text 39
Dogen's Critique...... 42
Deconstruction And The Ethical In Dogen...... 46
4. THE INSTITUTION, ITS VIOLENCE, AND ZEN MILITARISM...... 51
Hospitality...... 51
The Institution...... 53
Zen And Militarism...... 56
5. CONCLUSION...... 65
BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 70
iii
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INTRODUCTION
The aim of this thesis is to situate Derridian deconstruction along side Zen
Buddhism in order to accomplish two things. The first is to illuminate a sense of the
ethical in Derridian discourse. The sense of the ethical found in Derrida marks a radical
departure from the conventional conception of normative ethics found in Kant and others.
Understood in light of Levinas’ work on ethics, Derrida’s deconstructive ethics offers a
new way of engaging in relations with the other. Second, by situating the “methodology”
of Derridian deconstruction, now understood as a deconstructive ethics, with Zen
encounter dialogues, Derrida’s notion of “democracy to come” is relocated in a more
global context, freeing his “promise of democracy” from its Eurocentric place in
Derrida’s work. Derrida’s deconstructive readings of friendship, hospitality, and
cosmopolitanism contribute to his notion of “democracy to come”. However, these
readings deal exclusively with European texts. By drawing out parallels, particularly
between differance and dependant co-arising, and situating deconstruction in light of Zen
Buddhism’s relationship with time, Derrida’s promise is freed from the very Eurocentric
origins it aims to deconstruct. Doing so allows for a more global and inclusive notion of
“democracy to come.” By positioning deconstructive ethics this way, the approach to
ethical questions becomes better suited for cross cultural analysis, escaping Derrida’s
criticism of traditional Western approaches to ethics as too prescriptive and generalizing.
1
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This paper will proceed in three sections. First it will draw together and examine
Derridian differance and the idea of dependent co-arising in Buddhism. Doing so begins
to illuminate the way each deals with the “other”. Examiningdifferance in Derrida’s
work and thinking about how the play of deferral and differentiation deconstruct the
notion of a stable self places the individual in a new kind of relationship with the other.
The deconstruction of the idea of a stable self, grounded in presence privileged by
metaphysics, allows for a new way of thinking of the other. Derrida’s work on differance
coupled, or read, alongside Buddhist ideas of emptiness ( sunyata), no-self, and dependent
co-arising (pratitya-samutpada) further clears the path for this new kind of thinking of
the other, providing a more global context for this thinking which traverses the boundary
between Eastern and Western philosophical discourse. Recognizing our interdependency
sets the stage for a perspective on the ethical that radically departs from the classical
conception of ethics founded on generalizing principles that reduce individuals to a single
blanket concept.
Second, I will demonstrate why the relationship with the other should be
characterized as an ethical relationship. In both Derridian deconstruction and Zen
encounter dialogues, an ethical movement is in play. This section examines how this
relationship of interdependency, sketched out in the first section, creates an opening
where a sense of the ethical in Derrida’s work can be illuminated alongside that of the
Buddhist tradition, this time particularly looking at Zen Buddhist encounter dialogues, or
koan-texts. Doing so, we will not arrive at an ethics in the concrete sense, an ethical
system with principles and such. Instead this examination will illuminate a sense of the
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ethical in more of a Levinasian sense, as an opening, an ethical space, where ethics is
practiced, though not completed.
Derrida’s deconstructive reading of friendship opens up the concept of friendship
from its rigid boundary and Eurocentric history to allow the voice of the other in from the
margin. Similarly, the cryptic style of Zen encounter dialogues provided a shock to the
way Zen teaching was transmitted. This shock punctured conventional understanding
and opened these texts to multiple interpretations. Each form these deconstructions take
is ethical, not in the sense that they establish an ethics, but in the way each penetrates a
taken for granted understanding to create an opening, blurring the limit of how we can
read a text or relate to one another. These deconstructions allow the other voices (or
readings) to be accounted for, which after all should be the aim of a democratic process.
The democratic process is the practical form deconstructive ethics takes. From the
perspective of a deconstructive ethics democracy is maintained as a process, not
something achieved and possessed, but always to come.
Third, once the sense in which both Derridian and Zen deconstruction as ethical
“operations” is illuminated, we can begin to examine what this means in a practical sense.
To do so, I will look at Derrida’s critique of the institution. This examination reveals the
limitations of the “institution” and what “right” one has to its discourse. The institution,
Derrida argues, imposes a kind of violence upon discourse in the way the institution
constructs a boundary moderating where, when, and by whom (who has the right, and
where it is right) to engage in philosophical discourse. The institution governs the space;
it determines where and how we will be hospitable to philosophical discourse.
Examining Derrida’s text “On Hospitality”, we see how Derrida deconstructs the notion
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of hospitality, illuminating impossibility, a space of undecidability between welcoming
the other and the laws imposed by institutions governing the arrival of the other.
Zen Buddhism as an institution falls prey to such institutional violence. The
historical example of how Zen was used by the Emperor during World War II to inspire
soldiers to give their lives (killing is not killing if there is no self) reveals how
institutional violence can manifest itself in the form of physical violence.
Finally, once the idea of institution fails via the deconstruction of the privileged
place of the present in metaphysics, practically we are left with the promise of a
“democracy to come.” Derrida’s notion of “democracy to come” arises from the
deconstruction of modem democratic institutions (UN, UNESCO, etc) that are founded
on principles of European political philosophy. Derrida’s argument is that the global
reach of such institutions is limited by their foundation in European ideas. Derrida’s
notion of democracy to come arises from the deconstruction of these ideas, however this
notion too is the product of a European project. Repositioning Derrida’s “democracy to
come” through an examination of Zen Buddhism’s relationship to history, and
illuminating the way Zen reinvents itself through its history, opens Derrida’s notion of
the “promise” of democracy to a truly global context by traversing the boundary between
Eastern and Western philosophy.
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DERRIDIAN DIFFERANCE AND BUDDHIST DEPENDENT CO-ARISING
No-self theory in Buddhist thinking and differance in Derridian deconstruction
traverse a border between Eastern and Western thought. This section aims to illuminate
this connection and its relevance to our increasingly interdependent world. Both no-self
theory and differance call into question the stability of our independence. Each reveals
the porous character of our boundaries of self as well as that of our national borders.
What is at stake is the taken-for-grantedness that our boundaries and borders are
impenetrable.
Such a taken for grantedness constructs a blind spot that cuts off the circulation of
the surrounding world, and sets itself, by digging in, at the center. The view of the self as
center, or of a nation existing isolated from the rest of the world, positions that which is
outside the boundary or border to the margins, be they other people or other nations. In
Buddhist discourse on no-self theory and in Derrida’s differance this center is uprooted
and the blind spot is exposed.
Buddhist no-self theory deconstructs the idea of self as something with an essence
at its core. This deconstruction reveals an individual’s interdependence upon the rest of
the world. Instead of a sense of self that springs outward from an essential core, what is
experienced as self is a play of reflections and interactions with the surrounding
environment. Similarly differance in Derridian discourse reveals an unstable relation
5
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between a sign and what it signifies. A relation of constant play between signifier
undermines the sign’s authority to completely convey what the sign means. A sign’s
essence is broken open illuminating its interdependency with the rest of language.
Each of these discourses, in their own way, breaks open a concept that is often
taken for granted and creates an opening for a new discourse that reexamines our
relationship with the world. This discussion of no-self theory and differance weaves a
pair of threads, one from the Eastern tradition and one from the Western tradition, and
works to blur the boundary between Eastern and Western philosophical inquiry. This is
especially important as the world becomes further and further interconnected and more
interdependent. This section aims less to answer a particular question, and more toward
creating an opening to examine our experience with others in a new way.
Differance
Differance is important to this examination because “it”, where it “takes place”,
illuminates interdependence by deconstructing concepts seemingly unified around a
central stable origin or essence: in this case the conception of self as independent. The
architecture of this conception of independent self is shaken up, exposing a leak that
opens its structure, creating the space where the relation to the other is disclosed as an
interdependent relation.
Critical to understanding the importance of differance in regard to conception of
self as well as to the Buddhist notion of dependent co-arising is understanding that
differance cannot quite be articulated in terms of a device or tool. This language
stabilizes differance and reduces its play to a tool or device to be employed. Differance,
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Derrida makes clear, is “always already” taking place. Discovering or illuminating
differance is a matter of locating where it is at work through reading. Speaking of
differance as a device solidifies it into the very kind of concept differance deconstructs
where it takes place.
If differance is already taking place Derrida’s reading - which finds
deconstruction already at work - opens up a blind spot. This blind spot is a point where a
concept, in this case “the self’, is taken for granted. The conception of self as
independent takes differance for granted because this is a conception that does not
account for differance always already taking place. Differance is always already in play
before the conception of self as essence solidifies.
Derrida’s essay “D iffe r a n c ebegins by speaking of the letter “a” (A). This
mark, Derrida notes, has the shape of a pyramid (a tomb). He writes, “thinking not only
of the form of the letter when it is printed as a capital, but also of the text in Hegel’s
Encyclopedia in which the body of the sign is compared to the Egyptian pyramid”.2
When he replaces the “e” indifferance with the “a” differance( ) the shift is aurally silent
(“secret and discreet as a tomb”) but one can imagine the sense of what may be buried
there. Derrida explains the tombstone “is not far from announcing the death of the
tyrant”.3 Translator Alan Bass notes Derrida may be referring to Hegel’s reading of
1 Derrida’s essay, “Differance ” appears in bothSpeech and Phenomena and Margins of Philosophy. I have chosen to work from the translationMargins in of Philosophy. There are differences in the translations that surely could and should be explored in another forum. 2 Jacques Derrida. 1982. Margins of Philosophy. Tr. Alan Bass. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 4. 3 Margins of Philosophy 4
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Antigone in the Phenomenology4, though I also see buried here another “tyrant,” a
dictator in blinders.5 In French the same line reads, “cette Pierre n ’est loin, pourvu qu’on
en sache dechiffer la leyonde, de signaler la mort du dynaste”.6 There is a sense that not
just a tyrant is passing, but a dynasty7. By this I mean an entire era of thought that
privileges the immediacy of speech over writing8. To deconstruct this privilege, Derrida
introduces differance, a play on the French verbdifferer.
The verbdifferer, in French, has two meanings. First, differer means “not the
same as,” or “other than.” In this waydifferer creates a rift between two terms (the
signifier and signified), posing them against one another as distinct others. The signifier
is the sign/symbol that represents, or stands in as a marker, for the signified, what the
word means. In a second sense, differer means “to defer.” Derrida writes of this second
definition as “to wit, the action of putting off until later, of taking into account, of taking
account of time ... a detour, a delay, a relay, a reserve, a representation - concepts that I
would summarize here in a word I have never used but that could be inscribed in this
chain: temporization”.9 In this second definition we see created, not a rift, but a temporal
tie between the signifier and signified. These terms are opposed, yet interdependent
through secret (silent) tunnels (detours) that connect. Derrida drops the “e” in difference
to show differance, which both differs and defers simultaneously.
4 In Sophocles’Antigone, Antigone is entombed alive after defying Creon by burying her brother. She again defies Creon by hanging herself in the tomb avoiding a slow death. Creon, after a change o f heart that is too late kills himself. 5 Margins of Philosophy 4 6 Jacques Derrida. 1972.Marges de la Philosophic. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit. 4. 7 Dynaste is translated as “king” in the translation Speechin and Phenomena. 8 In Of Grammatology, Derrida examines how speech, because of its presence, is favored over writing, which is removed and dislocated from the word itself. However, in his analysis he reveals that speech is just as removed because whether spoken or written, the sign is dislocated from what it signifies. 9Margins of Philosophy 8
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We must be careful. Derrida warns thatdifferance is not a word or a concept.
Differance is not a part of speech or writing but the play that dwells between them. For
this reason, differance cannot be “exposed” or brought to the present.10 It is the
ungraspable space or even a power between a sign and its meaning. To understand why
we cannot grasp this space we must look at the relation of the sign to its meaning. Signs
are markers that refer us back to the “thing itself’, or its meaning. Thus, “the sign
represents the present in its absence”.11 When the “thing itself’ is not present (in space)
and in the present (in time), the sign is our “detour”; it re-presents the thing to us. The
sign is different from ( differer) and defers ( differer) us to something else. This
simultaneous double meaning is differance. Not a word or concept (that is too concrete,
entombing) but the space where difference and deferring play.
In “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences,” Derrida
illustrates play by juxtaposing Nietzschean and Rousseauian conceptions of it. Play is at
work before the notions of the presence of the sign and the absence of the signified are
conceived. Derrida writes of a Rousseau who “dreams of deciphering a truth or origin
which escapes play and the order of the sign”.12 Rousseau’s play is groping for an origin,
a presence in place before play. There is nostalgia for an origin, even a sense of
“sadness” in its absence. In this sense play is at work, though its work longs for the
presence of an origin to put play to rest.
10 Margins of Philosophy 6 11 Margins of Philosophy 9 12 Jacques Derrida. 1978. Writing and Difference. Tr. Alan Bass. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 292.
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On the other hand, the Nietzschean conception of play is a “joyous affirmation” of
play.13 Nietzsche’s play absolves the guilt of the sign. Play is not at fault for its absence
of origin. Instead this play revels in the “innocence of becoming, the affirmation of a
world of signs without fault, without truth, without origin which is offered to active
interpretation”.14 Rather than dreaming of an origin, of a birthplace from which play
became, play affirms its perpetual becoming. Derrida does not put himself into a position
of choosing one conception over the other. There is even play at work between the two
interpretations, a play between the nostalgia for the origin and the innocence of
becoming. What is key here is that there is always play.
In language, for Derrida, there is nothing but play of signs with what they signify.
The signified however, the meaning itself, is never fully present, and signs lure one to
more signs, detours dancing with what is “meant.”15 What we are then left with are not
effects caused, but effects of something not present because the present is always slipping
our grasp in the play of signs. Derrida escapes this uncaused effect by introducing the
trace. The trace is not present, “but [is] the simulacrum of a presence that dislocated
itself, displaces itself, refers itself, it properly has no site - erasure belongs to its
structure”.16 Because of the play in/ofdifferance -that signs do not direct us to what is
“present,” but through detours - each sign has a relation to the past (a previous sign) and
a relationship towards the possibility of a future that one can trace. In a way, the present
never exists because the sign is only related to the past and the future. It cannot be
13 Writing and Difference 292 14 Writing and Difference 292 15 Ferdinand de Saussure, the Swiss linguist, first explored this idea that signs are arbitrary markers; they do not signify something present, but only differences from other signs. The arbitrariness and difference are correlative (de Saussure, Ferdinand.Course in General Linguistics. Duckworth: London. 1983.) 16 Margins of Philosophy 24
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presented, or ever brought into the present. Play gives in to the “adventure of the trace”.17
A path can be traced through the detours, though the trace never becomes fully present,18
rather it has a dislocated, ghostly presence. It is the trace of the “becoming-space of time
or the becoming-time of space” that is differance, simultaneous differing (spatial) and
deferring (temporal).19 I say “ghostly” in the way it remains hidden and silent (“erasure
belongs to its structure”), like the “a” indifferance, from the tomb.
Derrida reveals how differance is at work in Freud, Nietzsche, Levinas, and
Heidegger.20 His reading into Heidegger is especially pertinent as our discussion moves
to Buddhist theory of no-self. Derrida writes that thedifferance here is built in to
Heidegger’s discourse concerning the rift between Being and beings.21 As beings (small
“b”) are disclosed in the world as “things”, Being (capital “B”), the presence itself, is
concealed. Consciousness cannot disclose presence (Being) but only its signifiers, or
Being’s effects. Forgetting to ask questions about Being ignores the differance in and
between Being and beings and this takes for granted beings (disclosed things in the
world) as a privileged presence.
Differance undermines the concept of Being that is bound to presence. In doing
so differance calls into question Being as presence and creates an opening for the concept
of Being to be reexamined. This opening threatens the privileged position of the concept
17 Writing and Difference 292 18 In Lewis Carroll’s (a philosopher himself in his works on logic)Through the Looking Glass the White Queen says to Alice that she can have “jam tomorrow, jam yesterday, but never ever jam today” (p. 171). Today, the present, is never present, but can be traced from the past towards the possibility o f a future but never presented. 19 Margins of Philosophy 13 20 In “Differance ”, Derrida looks at aspects o f the work o f each o f these thinkers, showing where differance is already at work within them. In Freud’s unconscious, Nietzsche’s discord o f forces, Levinas’ Other, and Heidegger’s ontico-ontological difference. 21 Margins of Philosophy 17
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of Being as presence. It is the opening of the concept that illuminates the play of
differance. Differance is important to our discussion because it calls into question the
authority of concepts we often take for granted. Differance creates the opening for a
dialogue of reexamination of concepts.
Derrida asks the question, what is consciousness? Derrida’s answer to this
question is that “consciousness offers itself to thought only as self-presence”.22
Immediately a rift is revealed. If consciousness arrives in thought as self-presence, the
consciousness offered up is different and deferred from presence. The self-consciousness
experienced reflects back onto a consciousness itself, which is different and deferred.
Self-consciousness then functions like a sign, providing a detour but no complete
disclosure of consciousness present itself. What we find instead are traces.
When we think about self, what are we doing? It is a project that works in our
consciousness. But if the object of our consciousness, in thinking about self, is
something removed from what Is (Being), can there be a viable subject? In other words,
can there be a stable concrete self? Self-consciousness then is a signifier, different and
deferring from the self itself. So what is revealed to us in thinking about self (“who am
I?”23) is not at all self itself but a play of traces. Disclosed are effects of self, and as this
happens the self itself is further and further concealed. Similarly, Buddhist discourse
deconstructs the concept of an independent self, opening up the space for realizing one’s
interdependency with the world.
22 Margins of Philosophy 16 23 Returning toThrough the Looking Glass, the Caterpillar asks Alice “who are you?” She replies, “I, I hardly know anymore.. .1 can’t explainmyself, I’m afraid Sir, because I am not m yself you see.”
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Buddhist No-Self Theory
No-self theory is a vital tenet to Buddhist thinking (in all its schools) deeply
intertwined with the ideas of emptiness ( sunyata) and dependent co-arising (pratitya-
samutpada). The Buddhist notion of no-self is of critical importance, as differance is to
Derridian deconstruction, to recognizing relations with the other in terms of
interdependency. Examining self in a Buddhist context alongside Buddhism’s notions of
emptiness and dependent co-arising deconstructs a concept of self as originating from an
essence, and disclosing a concept of self, no-self, that arises in play. Accounting for no
self, a sense of self arising in interdependency with its surroundings is key to recognizing
the blind spot that solidifies a closed concept of self. Recognizing this blind spot creates
an opening in the relation to the other. This opening is a catalyst for a new discourse
with the other, a discourse that accounts for interdependency.
In the Heart Sutra (Prajnaparamita Sutra) the Bodhisattva Avalokita overcame his
suffering by realizing the emptiness of the Five Skandhas.24 What is this suffering, and
how does emptiness remedy this? Suffering in Buddhism is caused in part by attachment
to dharmas (in this sense, simply things). Attachment todharmas is an anchor bonding
one to samsara, the cycle of transmigration or reincarnation. To reach enlightenment,
nirvana, a person must release his or her “self’ from attachment and come to the
realization of emptiness and dependent co-arising. Avalokita is released from
pain/attachment in coming to the realization that the Five Skandhas are empty. The Five
Skandhas are elements that make up an illusion of self. Form, feelings, perceptions,
mental formations, and our consciousness are the Five Skandhas that construct such an
24 Thich Nhat Hanh. 1988. The Heart of Understanding. Berkeley: Parallax Press. 1.
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illusion. Not one of the five can exist independently on its own; each interacts with the
others to construct a sense of self. As such, the self is no one independent element, but
an empty construct, with the Five Skandhas as its scaffolding. The Five Skandhas show
the emptiness of a permanent self in their constant interaction and play. The Self then is
not permanent but always arising in play.
In Thich Nhat Hanh’s commentary on theHeart Sutra, he explores the idea that
emptiness must be empty of something.25 He writes that the Five Skandhas are like rivers
flowing within us, none of which can flow without the others. What these Skandhas are
empty of is a separate independent existence in that they are interdependent on one
another to flow. The concept, the structure of self, is dependent upon this scaffolding,
and therefore empty of any independent substance as well. The idea of emptiness
extends further from the Five Skandhas throughout and in all dharmas. Interdependency
is central to our discussion here because, likedifferance it calls into question the stability
of a conception of self (and further, of community, city, and nation). The closed or taken
for granted concept is cracked open, opening a space for reexamination of our
relationship with the world.
In the Heart Sutra it is written, “Hear Shariputra, all dharmas are marked with
emptiness; they are neither produced nor destroyed, neither defiled nor immaculate,
neither increasing nor decreasing”.26 Dharmas too are empty of an independent static
existence. A table has no independent existence because what the tableis are countless
factors interdependent upon one another. The dependency at work here is not
25 The Heart o f Understanding 8 26 The Heart of Understanding 1
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dependency in the conventional Western sense where when we say that A is dependent
upon B, since each is still assumed to have some kind of separate identity. Here I am
employing the Sanskrit term pratitya-samutpada, which translates to dependent co-
arising. In this sense we find a mutual dependency where A and B have no separate
identity, but arise together. For example, a table is dependent upon the trees that were
used, the sun, the rain, and the light that grew the tree, the logger that uprooted the tree,
etc. That rain is dependent upon the clouds, and the logger him/herself is dependent upon
countless more factors that created and sustain the logger’s life. There is no single
essential element that identifies the table as a table. In this sense there is no Platonic
form of tableness from which all our particular tables are created. Instead all these
factors interacting together allow what we experience as a table to arise. The sense of
dependency used throughout this paper is not a dependency upon, but this Sanskrit sense
of dependency with, an arising together.
In this way we can see how emptiness is intertwined with dependent co-arising.
That things are empty of an independent existence reveals the play of dependent co-
arising. In this play, countless factors are at work, and in their interdependence each is
held up. In Buddhist discourse, Enlightenment nirvana( ) is the awareness of emptiness
and dependent co-arising. This could seem quite nihilistic. Emptiness in Buddhism is a
lack (empty of or lack of a permanent self) but also an openness that upon realization is
liberating. While there is a lack of permanent self, nor is there no-self. It is a neither-nor
relationship. There is neither self nor no-self. Nihilism is avoided this way because
attachment to no-self presupposes that there is a self to be negated in the first place.
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Buying into an illusory sense of self as static and independent shuts off these open
channels that reveal the interdependency (not just dependency) of all things. It is
important to note here the difference between interdependency and dependency. Lets say
we have twodharmas, A and B. When it is said that A is dependent upon B, and B is
dependent upon A, it implies that there is a solid something that A and B has to hold on
to. This, for Buddhism is not at all the case. Interdependency here takes account that
there is no A without B, and no B without A. In theHeart Sutra, the Five Skandhas are
interdependent. Each is not merely dependent upon one another, but cannot be at all
except simultaneously. Theyarise together in dependency. There is no consciousness
without form, no form without consciousness, etc.
When dependent co-arising is taken for granted, the illusory self is a ghost
wearing blinders, emptiness closed off, taking itself for granted as central and
independently concrete. Under blinders, this condition is stagnant and even entombed.
The illusion of independent self eliminates the space for the very freedom it seeks. It cuts
off the circulation; the free play of the ebb and flow in the interdependency of all things
found in Buddhism’s concepts of emptiness and dependent co-arising. Illumination of
these concepts brings one out of blind spot, revealing how the world can be taken for
granted.
Buddhist discourse illuminates the existential dilemma in no-self theory. The
illusion of self is constructed, ignoring the interdependency (dependent co-arising) of all
the factors/effects/signs that seem to be a self. Because all these factors as well are
empty of independent existence what is left, or what is seemingly built is not an
independent self, but play in differance of signs in dependent co-arising. What we have
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then is not self itself, but traces. In Buddhist thought one can trace through the effects in
dependent co-arising, and never arrive at something present as itself - independent and
standing alone. The emptiness of independent self that reveals a condition of dependent
co-arising is quite similar to the trace in differance.
Deconstruction. Buddhism, and Non-Substantial
Philosophy
In looking at the Heart Sutra and differance, I have shown their continuity and
resolved a difference in their empirical and linguistic disparity. Each deconstruct the
notion of self as stable and entirely independent. However, so far I have only examined
each in terms of how they deal with the self in relation to itself. We can see how this
illusion of self is fluid and unable to stand on its own. We looked at this in terms of the
Five Skandhas as the scaffolding for the illusion of self, and the rift between presence and
self-consciousness that shows how the self itself is always out of reach. However, we
have yet to ask about how the self relates to other people (other selves), and we have yet
to distinguish dependency from attachment. When differance or no-self theory calls into
question the authority of the concept of self as independent or emerging from an essence,
the boundary of the concept is penetrated and the outside, or what is other, is let in. Our
relation to the other is critical once the self is no longer stable as an independent concept
with an essence at its core.
The Buddhist project is one that directs itself towards Enlightenment. As we saw
in the Heart Sutra, enlightenment is attained in release from attachment to things. This
release coincides with the realization and coming to be aware of the emptiness of self and
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dharmas through recognizing our relationships as dependently co-arising. How though is
dependent co-arising different from attachment? Is no-self theory itself an attachment?
Replacing the idea of self with no-self is still an attachment, just to another theory of self.
All three of these questions (of others, of the distinction between dependency and
attachment, and of no-self theory as another form of attachment to self) can be resolved
by taking what we have discussed of theHeart Sutra and differance', and introducing
another element of Buddhist discourse, the story of Indra’s Net:27
Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net that has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions. In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each “eye” of the net, and since the net itself is infinite in all dimensions, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang the jewels, glittering like stars of the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring.28
Indra’s Net is used to evoke a sense of deep causality, “an infinite reference of
one thing to another, but no longer a source, a spring”.29 Derrida’s words here resonate
harmoniously with the Buddhist notion of dependent co-arising as illustrated in the story
of Indra’s Net. Seeking fixed meaning of the “things themselves” in the present by
27 Indra’s Net comes from the Hua-yen school o f Buddhism. I realize that in using both Indra’s Net and the Heart Sutra (Zen Buddhism) in my essay I am mixing ideas from two different Buddhist schools. However, each are being used as tools to illuminate the concepts of emptiness and dependent co-arising, which are found throughout Buddhist thinking. 28 Francis Cook. 1977.Hua-yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net o f Indra. State College: Penn State University Press. 2. 29 Jacques Derrida. 1997.O f Grammatology. Tr. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. 36.
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chasing signs into absurdity is parallel to lunging to grasp an illusion of a fixed self by
chasing the interactivity and interdependency of dependent co-arising into absurdity.
In each jewel of Indra’s net the whole world is reflected. Therefore each jewel
cannot shine independently, and the entire net arises at once. In introducing this story
we take a turn from examining the self (the illusion of self we’ve seen) as it relates to
itself towards casting our net wider. Our turn is towards how the self plays outsocially.
Indra’s net creates the arena for a social understanding of how emptiness and dependent
co-arising are at work not just internally, but outwardly. In doing so we are playing with
the very boundary of internal and external. This is done in order that when we realize we
are not simply a jewel in the net but as a result of the way it reflects, weare the entire
net.
Focusing upon any jewel in the net reveals the whole. The single jewel and entire
net are disclosed at once. Its singularity is not, and because of its emptiness cannot be,
grounded in-itself. Instead it is always dancing in the light of reflections, it is always at
play. The light can be traced through from jewel to jewel without origin and without
end. While it can be traced, what is reflected is always reflected, and never fully
present. Tu Shun, the first Patriarch of Hua-yen Buddhism, writes regarding Indra’s
Net, “ends and beginnings, being collectively formed by conditional origination, are
impossible to trace (my emphasis) to a basis - the seeing mind has nothing to rest on”.30
The seeing mind is always tracing, dancing in the hall of mirrors.
30 Thomas Cleary. 1985.Entry Into the Inconceivable: An Introduction Into Hua-yen Buddhism. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. 66.
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Thinking practically about how Indra’s Net is useful when cast in our world,
imagine each jewel in the net as an individual person, or even individual objects. The
net is cast not only spatially, but because of its reflective power, it carries with it a sense
of delay that casts it temporally as well. The jewels at once differ and defer. Each jewel
is empty in itself, but full of the reflections of their entire surrounding world. What
makes me “me” is not any essential single element but the play of all the elements which
construct a sense of identity (elements that define me as a son, a student, etc.). Each of
these elements is empty as well, never fully present themselves, but re-presented as
detours. This play certainly may seem exhausting, but it’s not at all nihilistic. This play,
even in awareness of one’s emptiness, is not self-defeating but life generating. The
infinite play of differance (the net cast spatially and temporally) can be traced from a
past out towards a future always on the horizon. As long as there is play there is life to
be lived ahead.
In Buddhist thought, just replacing the idea of self with another idea of no-self
still leaves us with an attachment to an idea. No-self theory runs the risk of becoming
another ideology of self. The same occurs in Derridian deconstruction. When a
privileged binary opposition (presence or speech) is de-centered, it’s not simply replaced
by the other (absence or writing). To do so still leaves another (an Other) in the margins
behind a blind spot. One center is not replaced by another center. Instead, as we have
seen, there is play. In Buddhist terms there is a similar kind of play at work here
between being and non-being that reveals a middle path:
Neither being nor non-being Both being and non-being Being and non-being interpenetrated,
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ii This is what is called the middle path.
Even to say there is no-self, in effect, still establishes a kind of being in negation.
Jin Park writes: “statements of “is” and “is not” both confirm the existence of a being in
the form of either affirmation or negation”.32 Buddhist thought frees itself from logic of
either/or and, like Derrida, allows for play. Each announces changes in the way we
•5-5 think, calling for an open, active, and non-substantialist mode of thinking.
In everyday life, functioning in this mode of thinking would be maddening. If,
like Thich Nhat Hanh describes, in a sheet of paper you see a cloud, the rain, the
sunshine, etc., and follow this trace through the world, practically, the world could not
function.34 All of our time would be spent infinitely tracing our relationships to no end.
In order to explain this gap between ultimate reality and our lives, Buddhism accounts
for two levels of truth, a conventional (worldly) truth, and an ultimate truth. Distinctions
between “you and I”, the paper, the clouds, and the sunshine must be in effect for the
world to function. This is the conventional, worldly truth where a substantial mode of
thinking and the illusion of independent self are necessary in order to function. On
another level, the ultimate truth is that of emptiness and dependent co-arising. It brings
about the realization that our worldly truths that we live with to get by are constructs
created for a functioning order. The higher truth de-constructs these truths to reveal that
asleep within these structures (silent, like the tomb) are the seeds for their destruction.
31 From theNirvana Sutra as quoted in Jin Y. Park’sBuddhisms and Deconstructions. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Forthcoming. 32 Buddhisms and Deconstructions. j3 Buddhisms and Deconstructions. 34The Heart o f Understanding 3
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What this middle path in Buddhism does isplay between the two levels of truth.
This path at once differs and defers between the two. Ignorance of this higher level of
truth is to live in blindness, in a state of taken for grantedness of the constructs of
worldly truth, accepting those constructs as the gospel. Both feet firmly planted in the
world of constructed truths, of self, of autarky, and substantive independent objects is
like living in the dark, or in a Buddhist sense, unenlightened. At the same time, living
with both feet off the ground, in the clouds, is like staring at the sun. Both the darkness
and the light in themselves are forms of this blind spot. Becoming illuminated by lifting
the blinders and the fog of taken for grantedness allows for the play of light and dark, of
worldly and higher truths, and ofdifferance.
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DECONSTRUCTION AS AN ETHICAL OPERATION, AND THE ZEN
ENCOUNTER DIALOGUES
The last section examined Derrida’s notion of differance in light of Buddhism’s
concept of dependent co-arising in order to recognize the relationship to the other as a
relationship of interdependency. This section will examine how this relationship of
interdependency creates an opening where a sense of the ethical in Derrida’s work will be
examined alongside that of the Buddhist tradition, this time particularly looking at Zen
Buddhist encounter dialogues, or koan-texts. Doing so, we will not arrive at an ethics in
the concrete sense, an ethical system with principles and such. Instead this examination
will illuminate a sense of the ethical as an opening, an ethical space, where ethics is
practiced, though not completed.
Beginning with Derrida’s “deconstruction,” we will see how a deconstructive
reading of a text is an ethical reading in the way it breaks open a text to account for other
readings. The common understanding of a text is opened up allowing for other
interpretations. This opening creates an “other” in the text, and the common
interpretation’s relation to the other becomes an ethical relationship. What is discovered
is a new way of approaching the ethical. Contrary to ethics in the concrete sense, a
Kantian form of ethics for example, yields a conception of the ethical not grounded in
prescribed principles but a sense of the ethical that creates an opening for making ethical
23
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decisions towards the future, to come. In this way the ethical resembles a more
Levinasian sense. Before the irreducibleface of the other, the ethical move cannot be
made based upon prescribed principles because the absolute alterity of the other cannot
be reduced and contained within concepts. Instead, respecting this absolute alterity, the
otherness of the other, ethical decisions must be made in discourse with the other, toward
a future to come.
Derrida’s deconstruction of the concept of friendship reveals this sense of ethical
reading at work. In locating ambiguities, or points of alterity within a text, Derrida
deconstructs the common conception of friendship. Doing so opens the text up to new
readings and interpretations that incite dialogue. This dialogue, part of a larger discourse,
is what is ethical in this context. The act of working through discourse, the interaction,
the process of discussing the ethical is the ethical itself. Ethics is not arrived at, but
worked towards, not arriving, but remaining a promise to come.
Dogen’s re-reading of Zen encounter dialogues between master and student is an
example of this deconstructive reading at work in a Buddhist context. Dogen’s reading
opens up the texts, freeing them from their popular interpretation that has become taken
for granted. This kind of reading reinvigorates the text, giving it life and opening it up to
new discourse. Such a breath of fresh air to the text allows Zen discourse to continue to
reevaluate itself, allowing Zen to remain free from attachment to its own ideas.
What “Is” Deconstruction
Like dijferance, which as we have seen, is neither a word nor a concept,
deconstruction too is difficult, and perhaps impossible, to grasp. Deconstruction is a way
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of engaging a text: however Derrida is careful to point out that it cannot be reduced to a
methodology, an act, or an operation. Deconstruction is none of these things because a
method, act, and operation each presume deconstruction can be grasped, handled by a
subject and performed upon an object to be deconstructed. This misunderstanding of
deconstruction presupposes precisely what deconstruction deconstructs. Instead, Derrida
writes that deconstruction “takes place”; deconstruction “deconstructs itself (ga se
deconstruit).35 Where or when then does deconstruction take place? Derrida writes that
“all sentences of the type “deconstruction is X” or “deconstruction is not X” a priori miss
the point.36 Such statements miss the point because the “is” is precisely what is
deconstructed. Derrida shows that what “is” is the play ofdifferance. Deconstruction is
the “delimiting of ontology”; it reveals how presence is taken for granted. When a text is
deconstructed, and it is always a text, it is the relation of the text, signifiers to what the
text signifies that is opened up. What the text “means”, or rather, what it re-presents is
shown to be unstable because a text refers not to what it “is” or signifies, but rather
toward the chain of signifiers that can never be closed off. The text refers one not to
what the text “means” but towards more text.
Deconstruction takes place; it is not performed like an operation but is disclosed
through a way of reading a text. Simon Critchley, author Theof Ethics o f
Deconstruction, writes “Derrida’s readings are parasitic, because they are close readings
of texts that draw their sustenance from within the flesh of the host”.37 This image of the
35 Peggy Kamuf. ed. 1991.A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. 274. 36A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds 275 37 Simon Critchley, 1999.The Ethics o f Deconstruction: Derrida and Levinas. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press. 23
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parasite illustrates how deconstruction deconstructs itself, from within the text.
Deconstruction blurs the distinction between within and without. Derrida in O f
Grammatology writes “// n ’y a pas de hors texte”, there is no outside text.38
Deconstructive reading is a reading that doubles itself and spreads like a parasite.
Critchley continues that deconstruction is a “reading that interlaces at least two motifs or
layers of reading, most often by first repeating what Derrida calls “the dominant
interpretation” ( vouloir-dire) of a text in the guise of commentary and second, within and
through this repetition, leaving the order of commentary and opening a text up to the
blind spots or ellipses within the dominant interpretation”.39 The dominant interpretation
of a text is the interpretation taken for granted, generally what a text is considered to
“mean” or signify.
In a deconstructive reading, when the dominant interpretation is “repeated as
commentary it is not simply a matter of repetition. It is not so because a pure repetition
of the text is impossible, the commentary is always already interpretation”.40 It is this
general understanding that attempts to make the leap, a transcendental reading, from the
text to what it signifies. It attempts a transcendental leap outside of the text.
Derrida writes that this commentary or doubling of the dominant interpretation
“cannot legitimately transgress the text toward something other than it, toward a referent
(a reality that is metaphysical, historical, psychobiographical, etc) or toward a signified
outside the text whose context could take place, could have taken place outside of
38O f Grammatology 158 39The Ethics of Deconstruction 23 40 The Ethics of Deconstruction 24
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language”.41 The meaning of the text is not beyond or outside the text. Because the
meaning of a text is not outside the text, the dominant interpretation of a text is just that,
an interpretation. The text refers not to an outside, but to more text within the text.
There is no stable meaning, or stability to what the text “is”, but rather only the play of
differance described in the previous section. While the dominant interpretation of a text
attempts to safeguard or protect the meaning of the text, the deconstructive reading cracks
the safe and opens the text.
The text is opened by locating a point of “alterity” or ambiguity within the
dominant interpretation of the text. Of this second moment of deconstructive reading,
Critchley writes that it “brings the text into contradiction with itself, opening its intended
meaning, its vouloir-dire, onto an alterity which goes against what the text wants to say
or mean” 42 For example, the word supplement is the point of alterity in Derrida’s
reading of Rousseau in Of Grammatology. In a moment we will see how Derrida
deconstructs the concept of friendship, and later, the concepts of hospitality and
cosmopolitanism.
Finding the point with which to turn the text against itself shakes the stability of
the vouloir-dire of a text and creates an opening to an-other reading - a marginal reading
that calls into question the authority of the dominant interpretation. Our grip around what
our understanding of the text “is” loosens, opening our hand to welcome the other. When
a reading of a text doubles, the vouloir-dire of a text welcomes its other and we can begin
to examine how this double reading becomes an ethical reading.
41 O f Grammatology 158 42 The Ethics o f Deconstruction 27
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Ethical Reading
What I am emphasizing is an ethical reading - and it is critical to understand this
aspect of read ing - an action. This will be necessary to distinguish the sense of the
ethical as it arises in Derrida, and ethics in a Kantian sense, or a closed system. The
sense of the ethical that arises in Derrida does not produce principles or prescriptive
guidelines for interaction with others. Rather, the sense of the ethical in Derridian
deconstructive reading reveals an opening; a space for the relation to the other to be
discovered. In this ethical space the relation to the other takes place. To begin to
understand this sense of the ethical as an opening in Derrida, it is helpful to look at the
ethical in the work of Emmanuel Levinas. In Simon Critchley’s book, The Ethics of
Deconstruction, Levinasian ethics sets the tone for the sense of the ethical in Derrida that
arises when deconstructive reading takes place.
Ethics begins, for Levinas, when what he calls the Same is questioned. The
Same, according to Critchley’s book, “includes not only the intentional acts of
consciousness ( noesis), but also the intentional objects which give meaning to those acts
and which are constituted by consciousness(noemata)”,43 What is called the Same
consists of the acts of sensing (the act of touch, hearing, smelling, tasting, and seeing,
similar to the Five Skandhas we outlined above) as well as the objects “constituted” or
simply sensed by these actions. In my engagement with the world, from the experience
of an I, my acts of consciousness as well as the objects of consciousness are collected,
organized conceptually and appropriated in to my experience. They are appropriated in
to what Levinas calls the Same. “Levinas in Totality and Infinity” sketches the relation
43The Ethics of Deconstruction 4
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between the I and the Same. He writes, “the identification of the same in the I is not
produced as a monotonous tautology: “I am I””.44 The I for Levinas cannot be abstracted
from its relation in the world, therefore “the world, foreign and hostile, should, in good
logic, alter the I”.45 The I is constantly being altered as consciousness acts and
conceptualizes the objects of consciousness in to the Same. Because the I is continually
altered, the I cannot be reduced to a concept of self, which would totalize the I. Further,
because of the alterity of the I to a totalized concept of self the I avoids captivity and
remains infinite. Levinas calls this active engagement of alteration a “sojourn in the
world”.46 He writes, “the way of the I against the “other” of the world consists in
sojourning, in identifying oneself by existing here at home(chez soi) with oneself’.47
The Same is put in to question by what Levinas calls alterity, “that which cannot
be reduced to the Same, that which escapes the cognitive powers of the knowing
object”.48 This idea of alterity brings us back to seemingly familiar territory. Critchley
continues that the “ethical is therefore the location of a point of alterity, or what Levinas
calls ‘exteriority’ exteriorite)( that cannot be reduced to the Same. Both Levinasian
ethics and Derridian deconstruction locate points of alterity that subsequently open up the
vouloir-dire, or Same to the “face” of the Other. Levinas employs this term, face, as “the
way in which the other presents himself, exceeding the idea of the other in me”.49
44 Emmanuel Levinas, 1969.Totality and Infinity. Tr. Alphonso Lingus. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press. 37. 45Totality and Infinity. 37. 46Totality and Infinity. 37. 47Totality and Infinity. 37. 48 The Ethics o f Deconstruction 5 49Totality and Infinity 50
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Recognizing this alterity, that which is outside and other than what my cognitive powers
can grasp, the space is opened up for ethics to take place.
In Derridian deconstruction, a text is opened up at a point of alterity ( supplement
in Rousseau,pharmakon in Plato, Dasein in Heidegger, etc.) and the vouloir-dire is faced
with an other. In this double reading the two threads are engaged in a play of differance,
where the authority of thevouloir-dire is questioned. Each thread of the double reading
is in hand and the question of “correct” interpretation is dissolved via the play of
\ differance. In Levinas, the Same is that which consists of my acts of consciousness as
well as the objects “constituted” by my active consciousness cannot appropriate and
contain. There is a metaphysical desire to appropriate or comprehend this otherness;
however “this desire is never satisfied, but it seems insatiable, and feeds on itself’.50
Levinas’ thinking here is a departure from the Sartrean or Hegelian systems that set up
the relation as a struggle for domination, or more sharply, a form of slavery. For Levinas
the alterity of the other cannot be reduced to the Same, but such a desire is in effect,
though its fruition cannot be arrived at. Levinas writes of this metaphysical desire:
“Desire is a desire for the absolutely other. Besides the hunger one satisfies, the thirst one quenches and the senses one allays, metaphysics desires the other beyond satisfactions, where no gesture by the body to diminish the aspiration is possible, where it is not possible to sketch out any known caress nor invent any new caress. A desire without satisfaction which preciselyunderstands (entend) the remoteness, the alterity, and the exteriority of the other”.51
The absolute alterity of the other is never traversed, but understood as alterity. A
relationship arises, not of dominance, appropriation, or slavery, but rather of an
50 Totality and Infinity 16 51 Totality and Infinity 34
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understanding of difference. A coexistence ensues, where the space between is
uncrossable, an aporia in Derridian terms, and here the possibility for ethics is
maintained.
Levinas’ critique of normative ethics reveals a sense of the ethical that is always
maintained as a possibility, an unquenchable desire. His critique takes account of the
irreducibility of the Other to a concept that neatly fits into to the experience of world as
totality. Ethics never becomes present in a Kantian sense; ethics cannot be systematized,
but remains possible in its impossibility, a project pursued, taking place with no end to be
arrived at. Here Simon Critchley writes ofclotural reading and closure. He distinguishes
closure from end, noting that closure is not the end, the presentation of the end, but rather
the process of coming to the end. Writing of what he calls clotural reading, the end never
arrives but a process of closure is always in play. Simon Critchley definesclotural
reading first by illustrating what takes place in deconstructive reading. Again, the
dominant interpretation of a text is repeated and a point of alterity is located within the
text. This second thread of the double reading turns the text against itself in the way it
differs and defers from what the intention of the text is perceived to be. Critchley writes,
‘‘‘'clotural reading is in-fin-ite, that is, without end, apocalypse, or eschaton. It is situated
in relation to an epoch that is closed, whose conceptuality is suspended or exhausted, but
whose duration is possibly infinite”.52 The closed epoch Critchley refers to is the “epoch
of metaphysics,” a philosophical discourse that Derrida argues, has been exhausted.
Clotural reading is always a process of closure, without coming to a close.
52 The Ethics o f Deconstruction 89
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The absence of closure, the lack of decision between the two threads of the double
reading - the two threads irreconcilable - in the face of one another opens the place/space
of the ethical. It is precisely this irreconcilability, this undecideability cloturalin reading
that opens the space where decision is demanded. Deconstruction does not deconstruct
for the sake of being destructive. It is not nihilistic, but rather quite the opposite.
Because of the undecideable space deconstruction opens up, it is not prescriptive (in the
sense of a Kantian ethics); it therefore demands a decision to be made. If ethics were
systematic, a prescriptive decision would be ready at hand, thus eliminating the need for
decision, for judgment, and further, it eliminates responsibility. The decision cannot be a
decision it arises from a prescription, thus it would simply interpretation of the script or
law. Because of this undecideability, this absence of pre-script or formula to refer to - a
truth outside of the text - the demand for decision arises. An ethical decision based on
prescription fails to be a decision, and leaving things undecided invites chaos, so the
decision demanded is a decision toward the future, a decision that remains to come.
The exhaustion of metaphysics and its failure to stabilize a truth outside of the
text to be referred to leaves the threads unwound through deconstruction to stand
amongst themselves, in play, in differentiation and deferral. Because of the
irreconcilability of this double handed reading, the hands never grasp in handshake, but
remain open, palms up, in welcoming the other. Without metaphysical pre-scription, the
infinite readings of a text are left to their own discourse, amongst themselves. The
alterity will not be reduced to the Same, though they will co-exist or co-arise in
difference. They must co-exist in difference because of the inability of the I to reduce the
infinity of the Other to the totality of the Same. The I continues to bother with the Other
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because of the desire of the I to comprehend the absolutely Other. Even in its absolute
alterity, the desire of the I cannot be satisfied. Deconstructive reading opens the text,
allowing these others to enter the discourse, and though they may be irreconcilable, their
“voices” are permitted to be heard and accounted for. Their desire to become understood
remains “to come”. We can begin to see the sense of the ethical in deconstruction, how
its taking place creates the space for infinite “voices” to be heard. Differing from a
metaphysical or prescriptive form of ethical system that reduces the relations of others to
reified concepts that serve as a prescription for an ethical problem, deconstructive ethics
escapes systemization thus creating not a promise of end, but the radical promise of a
“democracy to come”. Derrida breaks with the traditional concept of ethics that does not
decide on ethical matters but rather fills a prescription by parting with an attachment to
origin that clears the way for decisions to come. Ethical decisions are not made based on
history, but toward tomorrow. Decisions are not based upon our past experience, but
toward the experience we want in the future.
With the ethical sense of deconstruction taking place, we can turn to Derrida’s
later work to see how certain political concepts are unpacked and opened up to allow
room for re-evaluation in the context of the promise of a democracy to come. Derrida’s
readings of friendship, hospitality, and cosmopolitanism raise questions regarding the
dominant interpretations of these taken for granted ideas and illuminates their relation to
his idea of “democracy to come”.
When the friend arrives, what is constituted? What is constructed? It seems as
though a line is drawn; a mark that at once distinguishes this new friend but also
introduces the enemy on theother side of the mark. In this polemic structure it would
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seem that there is no friend without introducing the enemy in the same stroke. Derrida,
however, recognizes the instability of such a polemic structure, and inThe Politics of
Friendship works to illuminate this instability. He does not deconstruct friendship
through an operation, with the surgical precision of his pen. Derrida instead reveals how
deconstruction is “always already” at work in the veiy architecture of the concept of
friendship. He dispels the myth that there is an essence central to a concept of friendship
that marks off a boundary, a separation from the other, the enemy.
Derrida explains that friendship, instead of being founded/grounded in reason or a
central essence that keeps friendship stable, is maintained by a silence or a willful
disregard for friendship’s instability: “Friendship does not keep silence, it is preserved
by silence. From its first word to itself friendship inverts itself... Friendship tells the truth
- and this is always better left unknown.” Derrida continues, “the protection of this
custody guarantees the truth of friendship, its ambiguous truth, that by which friends
protect themselves from the error or the illusion on which this friendship is founded -
more precisely, the bottomless bottom founding a friendship, which enables it to resist its
own abyss”.53 Next we must summon this illusion, ghost or phantom that lures us in to
“understanding” erroneously that friendship is grounded and stable. What is this
erroneous essence at the center of the concept of friendship that is “always already” being
deconstructed? What is the idea/form that holds friendship together?
It is important to examine where and how friendship “begins”, how it originates,
or seems to. Derrida turns to a reading of Emile Benveniste’s Indo-European Language
and Society that performs a semantic genealogy of the word fraternization. Benveniste
53 Jacques Derrida. 1997.The Politics o f Friendship. Tr. George Collins. New York, NY: Verso. 53.
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argues that in history there was a Christianization of the concept of fraternization. This
Christianization resulted in a shift in the use of language, in this case regarding the Latin
word frater and the Greek work phrater.54 In the case of the Latin word frater
Christianization brought about a change in its use from “brother” to a sense of “brother in
religion”. Benveniste writes, “as a term for kinship, Latin frater has disappeared, and it
has be replaced by hermano in Spanish and irmao in Portuguese, that is to say by Latin
germanus”.55
Becausefrater came to denote a relationship of brotherhood in religion, a new
term was necessary in order to refer to brother as kinship (and what of the sister?).
However, this new perspective or reading of an old term, frater, maintained its sense of a
natural bond between brothers from its previous use as the term for kinship. Thistrace of
its old use passes through, and it becomes taken for granted that brothers in religion,
friends with no natural relation, are maintained by a natural bond.
A similar shift occurred in the Greekphrater. Benveniste writes, “the ancient
contrast between ‘brother’ and ‘sister’ rested on the difference that all the brothers form a
phratria mystically descended from the same father. There are no feminine phratriai‘ \ 56
However, as in the case of the Latinfrater, during the process of Christianization, phrater
became a classificatory term for a general ‘brotherhood’ and a new term for kinship was
required. Benveniste continues, “in a new conception of kinship, the connection by
consanguinity is stressed - and this is the situation we have in historical Greek - a
descriptive term becomes necessary, and it must be the same for brother and sister. In the
54The Politics o f Friendship 96 53The Politics o f Friendship 96 56The Politics o f Friendship 97
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new names, the distinction is made only by a morphological indication of gender
(adelphos, adelphe).57 What is important here is the trace of a natural bond that remains
after the shift from fraternity in kinship to a brotherhood in religion. Derrida is interested
in how these two kinds of kinship “natural” and “religious” bind individuals as kin. How
does the analogy play out? Where do the threads of a natural bond and a legal bond
cross?
Law for the Greeks is derived from nature; Derrida writes; “nature commands
law. ..equality at birth founds in necessity legal equality”.58 If laws are created in
accordance to the laws of nature, kinship in the sense of a natural bond of brotherhood
takes on a character of nobility. That which follows law is regarded as noble, and thus
friendship takes on this noble character. Friendship is lofted upon this pedestal because
of its root, its origin in a natural bond of kinship. It seems then that even friends, brothers
without this kinship by birth also take on this noble character of fraternity by retaining a
trace of the natural bond remaining from the pre-Christianized use of fraternity, because
in time this shift is forgotten. Derrida illustrates elsewhere that deconstruction is after all,
not operation, but more of memory work, an unearthing; bringing out from the tomb what
is forgotten.
Thus the natural origin that constitutes the bond of friendship becomes shaky at
best. The illusory nature of the origin of friendship renders the concept of friendship
unstable. As noted above, friendship is preserved in silence, a silence maintained in
order to disguise friendship’s truth; that it is bottomless. This discovery that the natural
57The Politics of Friendship 97 58 The Politics o f Friendship 99
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origin of friendship does not place a negative value on friendship, but rather “to think a
politics of friendship, a justice which began by breaking with their naturalness or
homogeneity, with their alleged place of origin”.59 Unearthing the genealogy of
friendship and uprooting its illusory origin is not undertaken to destroy friendship. This
deconstruction is “always already” at work. Instead, a departure from this “origin” or
“nature” releases us from an attachment to this idea of origin and opens us to what may
come. The concept of friendship is opened up from its closed structure - its architecture
with an origin or essence at its center - it is opened to the future, a friendship to come.
Once the attachment to a natural bond or origin of friendship dissolves, we see
that friendship finds its stability not in the center or origin, but from the outside, in its
relation to the other - the enemy. Without a center to stabilize the concept of friendship,
and subsequently without an anchor that “mystically” holds subjects together bound in
friendship - friendship always remains on the edge of what Derrida called the
“bottomless abyss.” Friendship forever runs the risk of slipping into enmity. Without a
stable “form” - in the Platonic sense - of friendship, the boundary between friendship
and enmity blurs. Derrida writes that the figure of the friend starts to resemble the figure
of the enemy.60 Each arise, co-arise if you will, interdependently.
Two key points surface here. First, without a stable concept of friendship,
grounded by roots in a natural bond or origin, friendship is left standing only in relation
to its other, the enemy. However, and this is the second point, without natural bond or
origin, the idea of friendship and the subjects of friendship themselves are always on the
59 The Politics o f Friendship 125 60 The Politics o f Friendship 151
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edge of falling apart. The face of the friend can quickly, and perhaps even at the same
time, take on the face of the enemy. Derrida sketches examples of this relation. For
instance he recounts the stories of Cain and Abel as well as that of Atreus and Thyestes.
I would like to offer an illustration of this unstable shifting friend/enemy relation
that is historically closer to home. During the Cold War the world was “divided” and
caught in the pull between a pair of forces, “superpowers”, the United States and the
Soviet Union. For myself, quite young at the time, I remember (this is “memory work”)
the tension being presented to me so strongly as a struggle between good and evil. The
propaganda on both sides was thick. Upon the collapse of the Soviet Union this Cold
War seemingly ended, and as it was portrayed to me, “good” had prevailed over the
enemy. The polemical structure of superpowers has collapsed and a question arises what
is to come of the “good”, the friends to the world, now that the enemy’s “superpower”
was dismantled? How was a nation, the “melting pot”, supposed to maintain stability, as
a “we”? Further, how was patriotism to be maintained and rallied around without the
figure of the enemy? With no stable natural bond or common origin among citizens of
the U.S., it seemed that an enemy must be maintained and preserved in order to presence
the nation’s identity as “friend” to the world.
Barely a decade later, the “United States” finds itself in a “War on Terror.” Who
or what is this enemy? Terrorism is a blanket term for acts of terror. For example, the
serin gas attacks on the subway system in Tokyo, the bombing of a Federal Building in
Oklahoma City, a school shooting; these are acts of terror. How did terror take on its
face? How did these separate acts take on the identity of a single enemy? Could it be
that the enemy, terrorism, has been constituted in order to resituate the “friend/enemy”
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relation necessary to maintain politics itself? Can politics exist without the polemical
structure of friend/enemy? Curiously, the image of this enemy takes on a particular face,
that of Osama Bin Laden. It’s curious because twenty years before, this was a character
supported as an ally of the United States to overcome the Soviet occupation of
Afghanistan. The friend quickly takes on the figure of the enemy.
The friend or enemy is never inscribed in stone, never grounded by some
metaphysical idea, nature or origin. Their identities are always to come. In addition to
opening up the concept of friendship to what is to come, what is important for the aim of
this paper is the recognition of the deconstruction already at work. The deconstruction
taking place is critical. In the opening, the other is disclosed; an-other reading is
permitted to be “heard.” Permission for the other in to the play is critical for democracy.
And perhaps most important, Derrida writes of the “indefinite right to question, to
criticism, to deconstruction (guaranteed rights, in principle, in any democracy: no
deconstruction without democracy, no democracy without deconstruction)”.61
Zen Encounter Dialogues: Dogen's Response to the Koan Text
Dogen’s thought is placed 600 years into the history of Zen Buddhism and must
be approached not as abstracted from that context but immersed within it. Dogen is
responding to Zen discourse that has over time become reified and lost its liveliness.
From the Lankavatara Sutra on Zen discourse adopts ideas that are appropriated in to the
Zen teaching, or in Levinasian terms, the vouloir-dire or Said of the discourse. In
particular the idea of a buddha-nature, or a conception of enlightenment that holds that
61 The Politics o f Friendship 105
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one is always already enlightened. Dogen is significant here because, like Derrida, he
creates an interruption in the discourse. Where Derrida acts as an interruption in the
history of Western philosophy by challenging the presuppositions of metaphysics,
Dogen’s interruption recognizes the reification of Zen discourse in to identifiable
principles and works to deconstruct this discourse that has become taken for granted.
Dogen aims to return Zen discourse from possession to practice. Dogen’s thought sets
out to revitalize this discourse, and examining his take on being-time and buddha-nature
reveal much about the importance of revitalizing the discourse, which in the same stroke
keeps the practice alive. In its historical context, Dogen is responding to koan-ttxts used
to transmit the Zen teaching. TheMumonkan and Hekiganroku are collections of these
koans, or public cases. These cases of recorded encounters between Zen Masters and
students drum up a sense of immediacy and spontaneity. Their shock and illogic draw
the mind into a sense of confusion and the search for their truths leads to a dead end.
According to the notes in the Hekiganroku, the word “koan” derives from “vines and
creepers”.62 Grappling with these texts is a way of working through the vines, clearing
the path for “direct word, direct speech”.63 The process of clearing a path though the
tangles of the texts is a skillful means employed to keep the mind in constant motion. For
example, see the following koan from the Mumonkan:
“Lifting his leg, he kicks up the scented ocean; Lowering his head, he looks down on the fourth Dhyana heaven. There is no space vast enough for his body- Now, somebody write the last line here”.64
62 Two Zen Classics. 1977. Tr. Katsuki Sekida. Trumbull, CT: Weatherhill. 150. 63Two Zen Classics 150 64Two Zen Classics 11
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The verse doesn’t explicitly teach you anything. The poetic license taken here effectively
illuminates the way in which the mind is in constant movement and should not rest on
any single idea. By evading any affirmative or negative statement, the mind remains free
to play with the text without becoming attached. In addition to allowing the reader to
play with the text, this verse lures the reader into the text itself. It challenges you to fill
in the rest, allowing the student to be an active participant, not merely a passive sponge
memorizing a teaching.
Cases 28 and 41 also address the reader directly. They read, “let the mountains
become the sea; I’ll give you no comment”65, and “the clamor of monasteries is all
because of you”.66 Each again speaks to the reader. When Mumon writes, “I’ll give you
no comment” he is again challenging us to grapple with the text, to break down a
distinction and become a part of it. It illuminates also that the answer is already within us,
and does so by making the reader/student a part of the text and teaching itself. This is
more effective than a method that directly tries to transmit a teaching through direct
statements because it makes the reading active, it’s taught through living it. The
encounter with the text must be active to avoid essentializing the discourse.
Ironically, Sekida’s text Two Zen Classics (that house these collections of koans)
is appended with text by the editor that provides context and interpretation into each case.
It would certainly then seem that doing so would reify the cases and render them
powerless. The editor’s commentary closes the opening of the possibility the koans
create.
65Two Zen Classics 92 66Two Zen Classics 119
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Doeen's Critique
With or without commentary, however, intime the koan texts inevitably lose their
immediacy and shock value. This is where Dogen enters the picture. He sets out to
deconstruct, defamiliarize and reinterpret these texts in the Shobogenzo in order to
revitalize the discourse and re-instill that sense of shock. Dogen’s accounts of buddha-
nature and being-time are reinterpretations of Zen discourses intended to bring the
transmission back to life. The introduction to Dogen’s Bussho fascicle says that he “does
this to focus attention on what he feels are inadequacies in the traditional ways the texts
are read and to rectify those inadequacies based on his own understanding”.67
Dogen, for example, takes a well known (and reified) statement “all sentient
beings without exception have the Buddha-nature. Tathagata abides forever without
change”.68 He takes issue with the dualism this classic statement sets up. It creates a rift
between being and nature, as well as between being and beings that sets up a dualism
among sentient beings. This is a problem because in a dependently arising world (key to
all Buddhist discourse) in an ultimate sense there is not this dualism. The language, or
the transmission of the teaching, is Dogen’s target. He deconstructs these reified ideas
(that have become ideology) and defamiliarizes them by providing a reinterpretation.
Doing so returns vitality to the discourse and breaks the student’s (and why not the
Master’s as well?) frame of reference, which was the original intention of the koan texts.
Dogen’s reinterpretation provides a new account of buddha-nature. He
approaches buddha-nature by setting it up in relation to concepts he introduces, being-
67The Heart of Dogen’s Shobogenzo. 2002. Tr. Norman Waddell and Masao Abe. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. 59. 68The Heart o f Dogen’s Shobogenzo 60
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time and entire being. These concepts deconstruct fixed ideas in Zen discourse (up to
Dogen) and work to close the dualism and open up the ideological trap the discourse has
fallen into. Dogen’s deconstruction differs from critical reading in the way it opens, like
Derrida, the vouloir-dire of the text creating the space for reinterpretation. Dogen’s
deconstruction does not critique reified Zen discourse by replacing it with another idea
that again conceptualizes Zen, but rather deconstructs in a way that creates an opening by
reintroducing the temporal element that recognizes Zen as an evolving practice, a Saying
that elude the Said.
Being and time in Dogen are not separated, but indistinguishable. Being does not
only account for objects in space (that is there, this is here), but also in time. He writes,
“the time being means time, just as it is, is being, and all being is time”.69 Being or
presence is ripped from rest and thrown into motion through time. Presence is not a static
object, but in a sense becomes something verbal. By verbal I mean that presence
becomes presencmg. Presence is not in passivity, but in action. This active aspect
introduces a temporal element to Being. Presencing is also verbal in the sense that Zen,
from the beginning, is an oral tradition. That Zen was once primarily transmitted through
the spoken word plays an integral part in the role of discourse in the tradition. We will
return to the role of discourse as it relates to practice and realization later, as well as the
role of the critique in Zen.
One could draw parallels between the spatio-temporal nature of being-time in
Dogen and differance in Derrida. Dogen writes, “we set the self out in array and make
69The Heart o f Dogen’s Shobogenzo 48
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that the whole world”.70 The “self’ set out here must be understood in terms of self as
suchness. In its suchness, the self is indistinguishable from being-time.
In Derrida the world is in a constant play of differentiation and deferral, in space
and time. The simultaneous double meaning of differance illuminates this play. First
differance in its spatial sense creates a rift between two terms (this is this, that is that).
Secondly, in a temporal sense differance means “to wit, the action of putting off until
later, of taking account of time.. .a detour, a delay, a relay, a reserve, a
representation...”71 This can be found in Dogen’s being-time in the way that the tension,
or play, between differentiation and deferral (the spatial and temporal) creates the world.
Things in the world at once hold a distinct identity, and at the same time are intertwined
in a web of dependent arising “penetrating exhaustively” through the world.72
Historically, it is said that Dogen arrived at this idea by first questioning the
relationship between practice and enlightenment. Masao Abe restates this question of
Dogen’s as follows:
“If, as Tendai Buddhism expounds, all sentient beings are originally endowed with Buddha-nature and are inherently awakened to their true nature, why is it necessary for so many Buddhists in the past, present and future to set upon a religious quest and practice various forms of Buddhist discipline to attain enlightenment? Are not that resolve and practice unnecessary?”73
The question arises when one approaches the issue with a mode of thinking that
idealizes concepts of buddha-nature as original enlightenment. When the
concepts are solidified and approached in the abstract, Dogen’s question certainly
70 The Heart o f Dogen’s Shobogenzo 49 71 Margins of Philosophy 8 72 The Heart o f Dogen's Shobogenzo 53 73 Masao Abe. 1991. “Dogen’s View o f Time and Space”.Study of Dogen: His Philosophy and Religion. Ed. Steven Heine. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. 99-100.
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presents a problem. However, taking account of the temporal element, by
removing “original enlightenment” from the abstract and putting it into play, in
time, “original enlightenment” becomes intertwined with practice in a way that
makes them indistinguishable.
Yuho Yokoi writes on Dogen’s practice as realization; “enlightenment is not
something that is attained as the result of practice; it is embodied in practice from the
very beginning”.74 To practice is to realize, the realization is in the act of practicing.
This relation takes account of time in that the practice occurs in time. Appropriating a
teaching memorized from a text is useless without living the teaching through practice,
over time. One’s buddha-nature is inherent but must be cultivated in practice, over time.
Abe writes that buddha-nature “discloses itself only in our own resolution and practice in
time and space”.75 Disclosure is achieved through unconcealingaletheia ( ) by entering
the clearing. Dogen realized this, recognizing that this temporal element was lost in Zen
discourse. The collections of koans, despite their intention to shock and shake down a
framed mind set, in time become reified and appropriated into ideology.
The Bussho fascicle inThe Heart of Dogen’s Shobogenzo adds to the account of
being-time, incorporating this idea with the concept of “entire being”. Entire being is not
merely “the being of being and non-being”.76 Throughout the text it seems that “entire
being” is not explained in terms of what it is, but rather always in terms of what it is not
(difference). Perhaps this is because speaking of “entire being” in positive terms, by
attributing characteristics to it, is to impose a boundary that misses the point because
74 Yuho Yokoi. 1976.Zen Master Dogen. Trumbull, CT: Weatherhill. 58. 75Study of Dogen: His Philosophy and Religion 100 76The Heart o f Dogen’s Shobogenzo 62
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“entire being” is just that, entire. Entire being is whole and “not in the least bit involved
in the waxing influences of karma, is not bred by illusory causation, does not come in to
being naturally, and is not practiced or realized through miraculous powers.77
Entire being is not realized through miraculous powers, but in simple practice.
Dogen sets up entire being as indistinguishable from buddha-nature. Buddha-nature is
“not simply a question of knowing”, but an expounding, practice, realization, [and]
forgetting”.78 While each of these is a description, they do not describe something still
that can be grasped as a positive object of knowledge. Instead they describe “temporal
conditions” that illuminate entire being with a flickering light that cannot be grasped, but
lived through in time.
Deconstruction And The Ethical In Dogen
Dogen’s deconstruction of the idea of buddha-nature opens up the discourse and
provides a fresh interpretation. However, one must now ask whether Dogen’s
reinterpretation has become idealized as well? In time the discourse of the koans lost
their vitality as they were appropriated into ideology. Has Dogen’s reinterpretation too,
in time, become reified in the same way? Has being-time been essentialized as a form of
grounding for the discourse in Zen philosophy? Dogen has not escaped the critical knife.
Writing on dogma in the study of Dogen, Carl Bielefeldt writes that we must “continue to
use these texts with care, this very fact reminds us that we need to be equally critical in
77 The Heart o f Dogen’s Shobogenzo 62 78 The Heart o f Dogen's Shobogenzo 65
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our use of Dogen’s writings”.79 Contemporary critiques of Zen discourse argue that Zen
again has lost its edge, and become a closed ideology.
A close reading of Zen koan texts reveals a deconstruction already taking place
within the encounter dialogues. The cryptic transmission and communication between
Zen Master and student employs a form of skillful means to set the “mind” into motion
without essentializing the teaching. In doing so, the “teaching” avoids becoming reified
and maintains the tie between teaching and practice. Zen practice does not culminate in
the appropriation of and understanding of a Zen teaching. In fact, there is no “tie”
between teaching and practice. A tie presumes some kind of separation of the two.
Rather, the teaching is the practice, and the practice is the teaching. The existence of a
Zen teaching, its being, is one and the same with a temporal aspect that accounts for
practice, a teaching not essentialized, but one that breathes in time.
However, as Dogen recognized, these encounter dialogues in time become a kind
of historical reference point. They are housed in collections, such as theMumonkan and
Hekiganroku, and in time become reified through commentary that provides an easily
teachable understanding that essentializes the dialogue. In Levinasian terms, the text
develops a vouloir-dire. Doing so tames the shock value that provided the text with its
capability to stir the mind into motion. An essentialized text may still stir the mind into
motion. However this stirring is a movement toward an end. In this case, an
understanding of the text that may be grasped, thus putting an end to the mind’s grappling
“through the vines” and closing the text off from other readings.
79 Carl Bielefeldt. “Recarving the Dragon”.Dogen Studies. 1985. Ed. William R. LaFleur. Honolulu, HI: University o f Hawaii Press. 27.
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The irreducibility of these dialogues to a single reading, or in Levinasian terms, to
the “Same”, forces us to take account of the Other, since this play of differance“ ” taking
place within the dialogues is a kind of force. In the encounter dialogues, there is no
teaching outside of the text. There is nothing beyond the text to take hold of. Rather, the
mind is drawn into motion, into playing within the text. The play keeps the mind from
becoming attached to an essentialized teaching appropriated from the reading and creates
an opening. In this space, countless readings are in play, none of which can be reduced to
the “Same.” The irreducible alterity of these readings forces, with the force ofdifferance
already taking place, to come face to face with the Other. Confronting the face of the
Other not with the intention of appropriation, but to recognizing the tension of this
irreducible relationship.
This tension, force, play, or differance illuminates a deconstruction always
already taking place that maintains an opening, a space where the Other is accounted for
in their Otherness. Countless readings of thekoan texts are recognized, and each of these
threads are engaged in a web that the mind navigates. No one thread is settled upon, and
an understanding of Zen teaching always remains “to come.” Zen discourse here takes
on an ethical character, not in a Kantian sense, but rather in a Levinasian sense where the
ethical is an opening or space. In Derridian terms, this space is not closed, but always in
a process of closure, its end “to come.” Zen practice is maintaining an opening; Zen’s
teaching is an aporia, its completion or appropriable understanding always “to come.”
Dogen warns that time is not simply something that passes by, but “something not
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yet arrived”.80 His re-reading of the encounter dialogues revives the discourse sparking it
to life by illuminating a temporal dimension in Zen that is a kind of deconstruction
already taking place within the discourse. Dogen’s clotural reading doubles and opens
up the text, creating a space for what is “to come.” This deconstruction taking place
throughout the history of Zen discourse, from the teaching of Bodhidharma, through the
Lankavatara Sutra, the koan texts, as well as Dogen, and up through the 20th Century,
reveals a growth and rereading of Zen that revitalizes itself and avoids essentialization.
Each step along this timeline runs the risk of becoming closed and reified, but an
underlying deconstruction always taking place, if it is recognized, maintains the opening,
freeing the discourse from its historical frame of reference and keeps Zen awakened for
what is to come. Upon bringing Zen to China, Bodhidharma said that Zen has “no
dependence upon the written word.” Zen then, must avoid becoming written, which
reifies and essentializes, and instead continues writing and re-writing.
The ethical space opened up in Zen is maintained through multi-handed readings,
through discovering what Zen is writing, what Zen issaying, not what is said. This rings
harmoniously with Levinas’ description of the ethical Saying in contrast to the Said. In
Levinas the Saying is “the performative stating, proposing, or expressive position of
myself facing the Other. It is a verbal or non-verbal ethical performance, whose essence
cannot be caught in constative propositions”.81 On the other hand, the Said is “a
statement, assertion, or proposition (or the form S is P), concerning which the truth or
80 The Heart of Dogen’s Shobogenzo 53 81 The Ethics o f Deconstruction 1
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falsity can be ascertained”.82 In other words, the Saying takes account of the performance
of dialogue with an Other. The Saying consists not of propositions that are closed, in
stating either truth or falsity. The Saying is a performance; part of a dialogue or
discourse one is creating with an irreducible Other. Its Saying is not stated or reducible
to an end. Saying maintains an ethical opening with the Other, a discourse that develops,
that listens to the Other, and the closure of this discourse always remains to come.
Levinas’ ethical Saying, in contrast to the Said, characterizes the movement of
dialogue in Zen encounter dialogues. It is the effectiveness of poetry over prose in the
transmission of Zen teaching. Prose takes the form of statements (S is P); it is an account
of what was said. Poetry, or the kind of skillful means employed in the cryptic writing
(silent, “like the tomb”) of Zen encounter dialogues accounts for an ethical Saying. Its
dialogue does not arrive at stated conclusions, but rather incites the mind into play or
practice. Of course, when these dialogues lose their effectiveness in time as they are
collected in anthologies and new skillful means must be enacted to revitalize the
discourse and avoid essentialization. The course these means take always remains to
come. Zen must do so. Otherwise an essentialization of Zen will close off this ethical
space, allowing the Said of Zen to be reified and perhaps become something un-ethical
and perhaps dangerously violent.
82 The Ethics o f Deconstruction 7
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THE INSTITUTION, ITS VIOLENCE, AND ZEN MILITARISM
A question remains regarding the practicality of the form (or formlessness) of the
ethical in Derrida’s “to come” and Saying in Levinas. For this sense of the ethical to be
realized and practiced so it may be recognized as ethical, it seems that one must reify and
institutionalize the Derridian sense of the ethical in a manner that closes off and inhibits
what is ethical (or further, what is democratic) in deconstructive ethics. This section
examines this question of practicality of the ethical in a Derridian sense and his
“democracy to come.”
Hospitality
In O f Hospitality, Derrida illustrates theaporia encountered when welcoming the
other. This text is relevant here in the way it accounts for the risk involved with a
discourse that is open, a discourse “to come.” Derrida’s text accounts for the conception
of hospitality, an impossible hospitality, which haunts a discourse that writes its way into
uncharted territory. What conception of hospitality must be in place, or rather dis-placed,
in order to welcome what is “to come”?
Derrida juxtaposes the law of absolute hospitality withthe laws of hospitality.
The law of absolute hospitality: “to give the new arrival all of one’s home and oneself, to
give him or her one’s own, our own, without asking a name, or compensation, or the
51
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fulfillment of even the smallest condition,” is examined beside laws of hospitality
“defined by the Greco-Roman tradition and even the Judeo-Christian one, by all of law
and all philosophy of law up to Kant and Hegel in particular”.83 The laws of hospitality
are laws that condition hospitality, they provide parameters for where and when
hospitality is to be given, and most importantly, to whom hospitality is granted. Such
laws of hospitality go against the law of hospitality; which places no conditions upon
where, when, and to whom one must be welcome. However, as Derrida carefully argues
in his text, although the law and the laws of hospitality are irreconcilable they are at the
same time dependent upon one another.
In the law of absolute hospitality, the other, whatever or whomever may come is
welcomed unconditionally. The unconditional opening to what may come also welcomes
the threat, that which or whom may be the enemy. As we saw illustrated above, this
distinction of the friend and enemy is blurred and one never really “knows” what may
come. The conditions imposed by the laws of hospitality protect against this threat, but at
the same time make hospitality impossible.
Derrida argues that absolute hospitality welcomes the other unconditionally, and
this opening gives one’s “home” or territory up to the other unconditionally. Doing so
threatens the boundary of one’s home or territory, a boundary that provides the condition
for one to be absolutely hospitable in the first place. If in being unconditionally
hospitable I open my home to the other, this eliminates the boundary that marks off my
home that allows me to grant hospitality and welcome the other. My home is no longer
83 Jacques Derrida. 2000. O f Hospitality. Anne Dufourmantelle Invites Jacques Derrida to Respond. Tr. Rachel Bowlby. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 77.
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my home, and who then becomes the other, who is the foreigner here? Therefore the
laws of hospitality are necessary to maintain my sense of home or territory by providing
conditions that I negotiate in order to receive the other. And this contradicts the spirit of
hospitality.
Derrida illuminates an aporia, an irreconcilability, that leaves us, for the moment,
frozen in a space of “undecidability”. Following from Derrida’s examination of
hospitality, of welcoming what is “to come,” Derrida develops a similar argument
regarding “the question”. The question opens a space; it serves as an invitation for a
response. The question welcomes what may come. Derrida examines the institution and
how it limits the discourse closing the door on what may come. The institution instead
constructs a boundary where the right place and the right to question is defined. Thus the
institution is not hospitable to the question.
The Institution
Philosophy, in its inquiries into wisdom and truths, is limited in how its discourse
is kept within the halls of academic institutions. Derrida explores this limit and asks how
truths can be explored within the boundaries of an institution, and questions how the
institution is privileged in the way it possesses these truths and dictates philosophy’s
discourse. In Ethics, Institutions, and the Right to Philosophy Derrida explores the
question of the question, or the question as to where and by whom the question may be
asked. He writes of the supposition “between the question and the place, between the
question of the question and the question of the place, there be a sort of implicit contract,
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a supposed affinity, as if a question should always be first authorized by a place,
legitimated in advance by a determined space that makes it both rightful and meaningful
(a lafois droit et sens), thus rendering it possible and by the same token necessary, both
legitimate and inevitable”.84 The space or forum for questioning is prescribed and
determined. Outside the boundary of the predetermined space for questioning, discourse
is illegitimate. A question is asked but done so in accordance with a script or
predetermined range of legitimate questions based on the limits arranged by the
institution. When a question is asked, it is almost done so rhetorically. How can the
question be a question if the range of responses is already determined?
Derrida’s text is transcribed from a talk given at UNESCO in May of 1991. He
notes, or rather reminds, that UNESCO is an institution originating in philosophical
questions that are part of a larger discourse in the history of philosophy. UNESCO’s
history is a European history that goes back to Kant’s 1784 essay “Idea (in view) of a
Universal History from a Cosmopolitical Point of View.” Considering this history,
Derrida writes that “institutions are alreadyphilosopheme ^ , and continues that “they are
philosophical acts and archives, philosophical productions and products, not only because
the concepts that legitimate them have an assignablephilosophical history, and therefore
a philosophical history that is inscribed in UNESCO’s charter or constitution; but
because, by the same token and for that very reason, such institutions imply the sharing
of a culture and a philosophical language”.85 Derrida is arguing that the institution is
constituted by a reified moment in the history of philosophy. The institution is based
84 Jacques Derrida. 2002. Ethics, Institutions, and the Right to Philosophy. Tr. Peter Pericles Trifonas. Lanham, MD: Roman & Littlefield Press. 2. 85Ethics, Institutions, and the Right to Philosophy 3
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upon a snapshot, a framed moment in the history of philosophical discourse. Philosophy
continues to ask questions, but when framed within the boundaries of an institution, the
questions, or the path philosophical discourse takes, is limited by the institution. The
charter of the institution, which is based on a framed moment in philosophical history,
constructs where it is right, and who has the right to such discourse.
Questions outside the framework of the institution become illegitimate,
unwelcome, and marginalized. How can philosophical inquiry seek wisdom and truths
within the boundary of the institution, while questions remain unaccounted for in the
margin? Philosophical questions cannot be questions inside the framework of the
institution because what makes a question a question, the way a question opens a
discourse, is closed by the boundary of the institution that moderates discourse. The
question opens a space, it invites. The invitation invokes a sense of hospitality; it
welcomes what may come.
If the question takes place within the frame of the institution that dictates where
and what kind of questions are asked then the question is closed. The question cannot be
a question within the parameters of a frame. If the space for discourse is already mapped
and predetermined, the question cannot question. Closing the space for discourse within
the frame of the institution inflicts institutional violence upon the discourse and inhibits
its inquiry. Institutional violence closes inquiry within a frame and this violence, in the
case of institutionalized Zen, manifests itself as physical violence.
20th Century Zen Buddhist discourse, in becoming institutionalized, articulates its
ethics systematically, producing a reified version of its teaching. The Japanese Emperor
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during World War II used this reified Zen as a point to rally nationalism and incite
soldiers to give their lives. The next section will examine this historical example of
institutional violence taking the form of physical violence. Derrida writes in “Violence
and Metaphysics”, “violence appears with articulation”.86 When Zen is articulated in a
way that reifies and institutionalizes, this violence arises and its effects can take the form
of physical violence.
Zen And Militarism
A number of scholars, of religion and philosophy, in recent years have expressed
the importance of Zen Buddhism to account for its ethics. It seems that in order for Zen
Buddhism to be relevant in the West, Zen must account for its ethical position in terms of
a system or method that pre-scribes a solution to an ethical problem. James Whitehill,
Buddhist scholar at Stephens College and author of several articles on Buddhist ethics,
writes: “Zen Buddhism will have only a marginal influence upon the West if it fails to
penetrate Western culture’s spiritual style to its living core: the moral heart and will,
shaped by ethical inquiry”.87 This raises a number of questions. First, why must Zen
articulate and justify its ethical position in order to be relevant in the West? And why
must it be presented in the form of a complete system to be relevant? Whitehill, in a
separate article, writes: “Buddhism must begin to demonstrate a far clearer moral form
86 Writing and Difference 147 87 James Whitehill. “Is there a Zen Ethic?”The Eastern Buddhist, vol. 20 (1987): 9-33. 11.
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and a more sophisticated, appropriate ethical strategy can be found among its
contemporary Western interpreters and representatives if it is to flourish in the West”.88
This demand for Zen to account for its ethics articulated as a system suggests an
anthropocentrism and an attachment to the idea that the ethical must be presented in an
easy to swallow prescription. This, first, oversimplifies Zen practice by turning its
practice into a product. Second, this demand reinforces a rift between Eastern and
Western thought, privileging a Western preoccupation with order and form. Instead,
perhaps the West should encounter Zen as it is, without imposing its constructs in order
to engineer it for a Western audience. After all, Buddhism has a history of compassion
and peace, doesn’t it? Why must it justify its ethics to the West, especially as it emerges
from a century marked by violence? Or perhaps this is not exactly true. Zen practice has
been tied by some to violence, particularly in its relation to Japanese nationalism up to
and through the Second World War. Is the tie between Zen and violence a by product of
Zen “itself’, or is it the result of Zen practice becoming institutionalized, systematized,
and subsequently closed off so it may be grasped and used as a tool of violence?
In the last section we saw the importance of critique in Zen discourse. The act,
practice even, of putting into question is key to Zen discourse so that it may evade
essentialization, remain fresh and unattached to its own teaching. This is maintained
through “skillful means”, like the example of thekoan, which keeps the mind turning,
challenging its frame of reference and not allowing the mind to rest.
88 James Whitehill. “Buddhist Ethics in Western Context: The Virtues Approach”.The Journal o f Buddhist Ethics, vol. 1 (1994). 2.
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Whitehill, however, finds that these skillful means are useful in a therapeutic
sense, but inhibit the production of a clear ethical system. He writes, “paradox tends to
halt thought and action”.89 Quite the contrary. As we have seen, the paradox presented in
the encounter dialogues stir the mind into thought, creating the space, not a prescription,
for action. Whitehill continues that a Zen ethic presented in terms of principles “to fit the
language forms of ethical discourse as conducted by philosophers and others” would
“curtail the use of parable, Zen story, koan, shouts, or silence in response to questions of
ethical justification, calls for clarity of definition, charges of mystic fogginess, or
accusations of nonsense”.90
What it boils down to is a difference in determining what is “ethical” in the first
place. Whitehill and many others in the Western philosophical tradition hold that ethics
is a system of guiding principles, prescriptions for working through an ethical problem.
From this perspective, the ethical becomes inscribed, institutionalized, and in a sense,
framed and closed off. On the other hand, encountering Zen discourse on its own terms
(as it is, phenomenologically) Zen practice and the transmission of its teaching defy
becoming framed and prescriptive. Encountering Zen discourse as it is, its ethical dis
position, seems to be more in line with ethics in the Levinasian sense outlined above.
The ethical in Zen is an opening, a space created for thought and action, kept active and
in motion through its endless process of questioning and self critique, coupled by a
deconstruction “always already” taking place as illustrated by Buddhist notions of
emptiness and dependent co-arising.
89 “Is there a Zen Ethic?” 21 90 “Is there a Zen Ethic?” 31
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Essentializing Zen discourse by reducing it to principles framed as an ethical
system runs the risk of turning it into a tool of violence. Essentializing Zen ethics does
violence to its discourse by reducing its teaching to an object of knowledge to be
manipulated and used as an ideology. There is a historical example of Zen discourse
becoming institutionalized and framed into a system. This example shows the violence
done to the discourse by the institution and its effects in the form of physical violence.
In Brian Victoria’s book, Zen War Stories, he illustrates how Zen discourse was
used to provoke and rally citizens around a Japanese nationalism before and through the
Second World War. One of the things Victoria’s text zeros in on is the Field Service
Code and four accompanying texts, guidebooks provided to Japanese soldiers that
“encapsulated Japan’s ‘do or die’ military spirit”.91 This text uses Buddhist notions of
no-self, dependent co-arising, and non-discrimination to rally soldiers and attempt to
remove fear of war. Victoria recounts some of these texts:
“That which penetrates life and death is the lofty spirit of self sacrifice for the public good. Transcending life and death, earnestly rush forward to accomplish your duty. Exhausting the power of your body and mind, calmly find joy in living in eternal duty”.92
Passages such as this one provided soldiers with the spiritual guidance required for
sacrificing their lives, their worldly selves, for the more ultimate truth of emptiness
(sunyata). The Buddhist notion of non-discrimination, rooted in the tradition’s truth of
dependent co-arising, blurred the distinction between life and death so that soldiers would
not fear sacrificing their lives. Further, they could absolve themselves of the guilt from
91 Brian D. Victoria. Zen War Stories. 2003. New York, NY: Routledge. 106. 92Zen War Stories 118
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killing because killing is not killing if life and death are one [the ordinary and the
Buddha, are one].
Victoria poses a critical question when he asks whether this “represents the
Japanese military’s understanding of Zen, not Zen’s understanding of itself, or at least not
the understanding of Zen held by leading Zen figures?”93 Victoria’s research reveals that
many Zen figures, masters and scholars, backed this perspective binding Zen and
Japanese militarism. In fact, many high-ranking Japanese military officials were in
contact in some form or another with Zen masters and scholars.
Victoria notes that D.T. Suzuki was “one of the first Zen leaders to address the
question of the Zen view of life and death in the period following the promulgation of the
Field Service Code. Suzuki had, furthermore, actively promoted the idea of a link
between Zen, bushido, and the modem Japanese military from as early as 1906”.94
Suzuki’s own writing attests to this: “it is the warrior spirit that can be rightly said to
represent the Japanese people. I believe that if the warrior spirit, in its purity, were to be
imbibed by all classes in Japan - whether government officials, military men,
industrialists, or intellectuals - then most of the problems presently troubling us would be
swept away as if at the stroke of the sword”.95 Tying this warrior spirit to Zen, Suzuki
continues: “ once the warrior sets his goal, it is intuition that allows him to rush towards it
having transcended advantage and disadvantage, profit and loss. This intuitive nature is a
pronounced characteristic of Zen”.96
93Zen War Stories 119 94Zen War Stories 119 95Zen War Stories 120 96Zen War Stories 121
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Another example is Lt. Colonel Sugimoto Goro (1900-1937) who was a disciple
of Rinzai Zen Master Yamazaki Ekiju (1882-1961). Sugimoto’s papers recall the impact
of his Zen training on his military service: “The reason that Zen is necessary for soldiers
is that all Japanese, especially soldiers, must live in spirit of the unity of sovereign and
subjects, eliminating their ego and getting rid of their self. It is exactly the awakening to
the nothingness (mu) of Zen that is the fundamental spirit of the unity of sovereign and
subjects. Through my practice of Zen I am able to get rid of myself. In facilitating the
accomplishment of this, Zen becomes, as it is, the true spirit of the imperial military”.97
In addition to inciting the sacrifice of self, this perspective also provided the basis for an
unquestioned loyalty to the Emperor. Sugimoto continues, “in pure loyalty there is no
life and death. Where there is life and death there is no pure loyalty. Those who speak of
life and death are not yet pure in heart, for they have not yet abandoned body and mind.
In pure loyalty there is no life and death. No, it is too easy to say, “live in pure loyalty.”
Pure loyalty is all there is; nothing lies outside of it. This is truly the meaning of pure
loyalty”.98
The purpose of illustrating each of the examples linking Zen practice to military
service is to show that Zen, when organized into an ideology and reduced to appropriable
principles, is objectified and becomes “useful” as a tool of violence and authoritarianism.
The Field Service Code, supported by military officials and Zen practitioners,
essentializes Zen practice and creates an attachment to a text (no dependence upon the
written word). Zen then, becomes attached to itself, attached to its principles and
97Zen War Stories 124 98Zen War Stories 126
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contradicts the idea of Zen as a practice that is becoming, a teaching that always remains
to come.
Is a Zen discourse “to come” practical? Given the above account, Zen discourse
would become essentialized or institutionalized the moment one speaks or writes of Zen.
If Zen cannot be contained, if Zen is a discourse that is practiced, lived through and not
grasped, Zen loses this power the moment the tongue shapes the voice and the moment a
mark regarding Zen is inscribed upon the page. How then can Zen be practiced
practically if, because of its very iterability (“violence appears with articulation”), it is
threatened and risks losing its course? What would become of a Zen community, and
deeper, how could anyone relate to another as Zen practitioners if Zen is lost the moment
it is spoken or written of? Given this account of Zen practice, Zen always runs the risk of
losing its power, the active force of its practice, when a mark is made. Where Zen is
spoken of and where Zen is written of, Zen discourse begins to become reified.
Here we must confront an impossibility. Such an impossibility, however, is not
necessarily debilitating. Where Zen discourse cannot be contained, where it cannot be
closed and kept (in the tomb, or a safe), leaves an opening towards what may come. As
such, the discourse runs a risk that what may arrive could be unwelcome or perhaps
violent, as the example of Zen coupled with militarism illustrates. A dilemma arises.
Does one maintain such an opening, and open ended discourse, a practice towards a
future, always to come but always runs the risk of allowing that which may be
unwelcome (the enemy, the friend, the friend/enemy) or violent to arrive? Or, on the
other hand, does one protect the teaching of the discourse by closing it off so it may
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become reified and institutionalized, which chokes out the temporal aspect that provides
Zen discourse with its spark and liveliness?
One is at an impasse regarding Zen discourse. Such an impasse or aporia may
not be reconcilable; however, in its impossibility, it creates the possible. The
undecidability of this impasse, and the possibility it fosters can be accounted for in both
Buddhist and Derridian terms. In the Zen Buddhist context, one needs to look towards
non-attachment based/de-based on the Buddhist truth of sunyata. In Derrida, differance
always already in play dislocates and destabilizes the concept of origin which steers us
away from searching the past for concrete answers or prescriptions for decision making
and toward the future, to the opening “to come”, in order to make decisions toward a
future rather than diagnoses based on the past, unstable and dislocated by differance.
Zen discourse, any discourse for that matter, must be marked by a form of
violence. The possibility that Zen may be spoken or written about, its very iterability,
clears the path for both growth and stagnation. Inevitably Zen will be discursive, Zen
will be written and spoken of and this iterability renders the ethical dimension of what
Zen is saying into something that Zen said. Zen discourse then cannot help but become
reified and institutionalized the moment it’s spoken or written of, however, one must not
become attached to such discourse as it is said. While some level of institutionalization
that inhibits discourse is inevitable, this is fixed, or rather unfixed, by not allowing it to
take hold. In Buddhist terms, this is maintained by not becoming attached to the
institution. Zen Buddhist discourse becomes reified and institutionalized the moment it is
spoken or written of. Thus the “to come” is rendered impossible, it always remains to
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come. How then does Zen discourse move forward, becoming an institution, and at the
same time, traversing this boundary of the institution? Thisaporia or impasse - this
point of undecidability - does not leave us with indecision. The aporia demands
decision, not a decision based on an origin or predetermined range of possibilities
(enclosed within the charters of institutions), but rather a decision towards the future, to
come. This kind of decision demands a new perspective on the ethics, a decision that
does not carry the weight of the gavel, but the force ofdifferance.
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CONCLUSION
The philosophical notions of differance and dependent co-arising each offer
perspectives on relating to others that take account of our condition of interdependency.
Each of these perspectives makes a break with a taken for granted ideology that clings to
a notion of self as a stable entity, central to our experience of the world. Recognizing a
relation with others as a relation of interdependency illuminates an experience with the
world that asks us to reach beyond the boundary of self-identity to reveal how relations
with others contributes to how identity arises.
The play of difference shakes open solid concepts, such as the concept of an
independent self grounded in presence and introduces a temporal element that opens the
boundary that provides a sense that identity is not there - present - by becoming. Derrida
later develops this idea into the “promise” of a “democracy to come”.
Buddhist philosophy’s idea of dependent co-arising similarly calls into question
and breaks with the idea of a stable self. The idea of self does not spring forth from an
origin or essence, but rather it arises in a play of interactivity and reflection (like the
jewels of Indra’s Net) with the rest of the world. Considering all of the factors that make
our lives what they are, some grand and monumental, while others small and
insignificant, our experience in interacting with the world contributes to creating who we
are. Like a surrealist French film, a raindrop falling in one far-flung comer of town may
65
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change someone’s life across town. Perhaps this is not so surreal.
This interdependency with the world sets the stage for a new conception of the
ethical. An ethics that takes account of this interdependency makes a move from
classical conceptions of ethics that are founded upon widely generalizing principles that
aim to socially engineer individuals to fall in line with their systems. This new ethical
perspective encounters the individual as an absolute Other, an irreconcilableface (in the
Levinasian sense) who cannot be reduced or captured within the boundaries of a
preconceived conception of self. The individual cannot be socially engineered to fit an
ethical system, but engaged in a discourse that paves the way for making ethical
decisions for tomorrow.
Deconstruction, always already taking place, illuminates an ethical space already
opened for discourse that allows the other, outside of the margin, to be accounted for.
The deconstruction of the metaphysics of presence destabilizes the legitimacy of a closed
ethical system that marks its territory and requires individuals to fall in line. Instead,
deconstructive ethics shakes this foundation, calling for ethical decisions made for what
is “to come”.
Zen Buddhist discourse exemplifies such deconstructive processes in the way it
reinvents and revitalizes its discourse to avoid attachment to its own ideology. Dogen’s
deconstruction is but one example of Zen Buddhism’s dedication to reinvention to
maintain a lively discourse. Dogen’s reading of koan texts, encounter dialogues between
Zen masters and students, frees Zen from essentialization that closes off Zen in a way that
reifies its teaching, inseparable from practice, reducing Zen to a ideological tool. This
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deconstruction breaks open a common interpretation of Zen (its vouloir-dire) and allows
for another reading into the discourse. This deconstruction is parallel, if not one and the
same, with a democratic spirit that strives for the inclusion of all. The voices of the
margin are all part of the discourse. By opening up the common interpretation and
allowing other voices into the discourse, the ethical becomes a process engaged in
discourse the voice of the Other is heard and not swept to the margin. As such, a
concrete conception of the ethical will never arrive, but the ethical process remains
inclusive and democratic, and always to come.
Practically, this presents a tricky situation. A discourse such as Zen philosophical
discourse, that must remain open in order to avoid reification, will find itself in a difficult
position in regards to defining itself when this identity always remains “to come”. The
boundary that maintains its identity (that states “this is Zen”) is broken in order to
maintain hospitality to what may arrive, where the discourse may go in the future. If this
boundary is closed, the discussion stops. However remaining open, dissolves the
boundary that gives Zen its identity. An impossibility arrives, and the resolution always
remains to come.
If the boundary is closed, Zen becomes reified and institutionalized, attached to its
ideas and subject to an institutional violence that in the most severe circumstances runs
the risk of manifesting in physical violence. The institution that has power over when,
where, and who may enter the discourse stifles the discourse it wishes to maintain. In the
case of Zen, as it was reified and reduced to a pocket sized set of ideas, it lost its vitality
as an open discourse and became a tool of violence. Institutional violence begets
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physical violence.
It seems, however, because of its very iterability, the moment Zen is spoken or
written of, it inevitably becomes reified and institutionalized. Zen arrives at an impasse,
a moment of indecision. How can the discourse go forward without reification? This
impossibility creates the very space for the possible. Because of this impossibility, the
space for decision is opened. This is not a decision based upon a prescriptive set of
predetermined principles of guidance, but rather a decision into the future, a decision for
what is to come. The impossibility allows for a decision unattached to history or to
origin. In the case of Zen, it allows for a decision that breaks from the patriarchy of its
history. Because of the absence of the prescriptive, lost with the deconstruction of
metaphysics, a decision is demanded. This demand is for a decision not called for by the
past, but a decision for how we, we all, want to live tomorrow. The ethical decision is
made toward the future to come. Doing so emphasizes the importance of addressing each
ethical decision without carrying presumptions that reduce those involved to
oversimplified concepts as part of a totality. Recognizing the infinite in the face of the
other demands this.
Zen Buddhist discourse and Derridian deconstruction, although separated by a
boundary between Eastern and Western thought, and perhaps even by thousands of years,
offer one another open hands, a hospitality that allows us to discover ways to traverse
these borders. Zen Buddhism in light of Derrida’s work reminds the Zen tradition of its
openness, the unattachment that is characteristic of its discourse. Derrida, in a way, can
play a similar role to Dogen in the 13th Century. On the other hand, Derrida’s work, in
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light of Zen Buddhism, is freed from a eurocentricism that it tries to overcome but
remains a part of as Derrida’s work deals with European texts and a European history
Derrida’s work in light of Zen Buddhism gives his notion of “democracy to come” a
global scope it needs to be legitimate; the global scope it needs to be freed from the
institution of European philosophy and become relevant today, or more importantly,
relevant for what may come.
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