33



    What does Derrida's  type of deconstruction  imply  about religion
and for religion? Recently  this issue  has become  more important  to
Derrida  and  some  of those  influenced  by his work.(1)  In his most
protracted   discussion   to   date   on  the   relationship   between
deconstruction  and  religion, "Comment  ne  pas  parler: Denegations"
(translated  as "How  to Avoid  Speaking: Denials"), Derrida  has been
primarily  concerned  to  distinguish  deconstruction   from  negative
theology.  The apophatic  language  of negative  theology  suggests  a
project  similar  to his, yet the uses to which  that language  is put
have been quite different.  Negative theologies tend to conclude that,
since all predicative  language is inadequate to express the nature of
God, only a negative attribution can approach him; this denies God any
attributable  essence, but  merely  to reserve  a hyperessentiality, a
being beyond Being.  Derrida refers specifically to Eckhart and we can
see his point in Eckhart's  great sermon on the text "Blessed  are the
poor...", where  Eckhart  declares: "Therefore  I pray God that he may
rid  me  of  God,  for  unconditioned  being  is  above  God  and  all
distinctions."  That we can refer  to any such unconditioned  being is
incompatible with Derrida's argument that there is no
-------------
1.See, for example, Harold  Coward and Toby Foshay, eds., Derrida  and
Negative Theology (Albany: State University  of New York, 1992).  This
includes  two  essays  by Derrida: "Of and Apocalyptic  Tone  Recently
Adopted   in  Philosophy"   and  "How  to  Avoid  Speaking:  Denials";
Christian, Buddhist and Hindu reactions to those essays; and responses
by Derrida.


                                34


"transcendental  signified", since  every  process  of  signification,
including  all supposed  self-presence, is an economy  of differences.
"There    are   only,   everywhere,   differences    and   traces   of
differences."(2)

    Even if this particular  point  is accepted, however, a great deal
remains  to be said  on the  issue  and, needless  to say, we are  not
limited to considering Derrida's own views.  One place to start --  or
rather  (since we never begin at the beginning)  one textual  strand I
would like to continue spinning --  is a fine paper by John D.  Caputo
titled "Mysticism  and Transgression: Derrida and Meister Eckhart".(3)
In this essay Caputo is concerned  that Derrida's  deconstruction  has
been too easily tied with the familiar death-of-God  scenario and used
to refute the possibility  of God or the sacred.  Criticizing  this as
reductionist, Caputo argues  for what he calls the "armed  neutrality"
of Derrida's  differance: armed because it holds all existence  claims
suspect, yet  ontologically  neutral  because  it does  not imply  the
existence or non-existence  of any entity.  Differance establishes the
possibility  of  a language  that  addresses  God  just  as much  as a
discourse that denies God, for it does not settle the God-question one
way or another.  "In fact, it unsettles it, by showing that any debate
about  the  existence  of God  is  beset  by  the  difficulties  which
typically inhabit such debates, by their inevitable recourse to binary
pairs which cannot be made to stick" (p. 28).
    It is easy  to see why deconstructionists  might  be uncomfortable
with this conclusion, inasmuch  as the God-quest  has usually been our
search  for an Unconditioned  which grounds  us.  Nonetheless, I think
Caputo  is correct, and perhaps  more so than  he realizes.  It may be
easier to see this if we shift from God-  talk to Buddha-talk, for the
point I want to make has been expressed  more clearly  in the Buddhist
tradition. Buddhism, like many other Asian traditions, does not accept
the distinction  that the West has come to make between  religion  and
philosophy, which  is why what needs  to be unsettled  in Mahayana  is
neither the God-question  nor the Buddha-question  but most of all the
"commonsense"  everyday  world, riddled  as  it is  with  unconscious,
because automatized, ontological  committments.  Madhyamika  can argue
that the limits [koti] of
----------------
2.Jacques Derrida, Positions, trans.  Alan Bass (University of Chicago
Press, 1981), 26.  The Buddhist doctrine  of pratitya-samutpada  makes
the same point about consciousness.
3."Mysticism  and  Transgression:  Derrida  and  Meister  Eckhart"  in
Derrida and Deconstruction, ed. Hugh J. Silverman (Routledge: New York
and London, 1989), 24-39.

                                35


this  world  are the  same  as the limits  of nirvana(4)  because  our
everyday world has been mentally-conditioned  and socially-constructed
by  our  delusive  attribution  of self-existence  to objects.  So  we
experience the world as a collection of discrete, self-existing things
which interact causally in objective space and time; and that leads to
suffering   insofar  as  we  understand   ourselves  too  to  be  such
self-existing  things, who are nonetheless  subject to the ravages  of
time and change -- who are born only to become ill, grow old, and die.
    This implies a more radical  possibility  for the unsettling  that
Caputo refers to and that differance  certainly implies: for merely by
subverting   such   ontological   claims,  and  without   making   any
metaphysical  claims  of its own, the Buddhist  deconstruction  of all
such self-existence  (especially  our own) can allow something else to
shine forth --  something that has always been there/here yet has been
overlooked  in our haste to objectify  things  in order  to fixate  on
them.  Such deconstruction  can heal us by revealing  a less dualistic
way not only of understanding but of experiencing the relation between
ourselves and the supposedly objective world.
    For Buddhism  this sense  of separation  between  me and the world
lies at the heart of our duhkha, i.e., of our notorious  inability  to
be happy.  Buddhism relates our dis-ease to the delusive nature of the
ego-self, which  like  everything  else  is  a  manifestation  of  the
universe  yet feels  separate  from it.  The basic difficulty  is that
insofar  as ÒIÒ from it.  The basic difficulty  is that insofar as ÒIÒ
feel  separate  (i.e., an autonomous, self-existing  consciousness)  I
also  feel uncomfortable, because  an illusory  sense  of separateness
will inevitably be insecure.  The unavoidable trace of nothingness  in
my fictitious  (because  not really  self-existing)  sense-of-self  is
therefore  experienced  as  a  sense-of-lack;   and  in  reaction  the
sense-of-self becomes preoccupied with trying to make itsekf --  it Ôs
-  self  --  self-existing, in one or another  symbolic  fashion.  The
tragic  irony is that the ways we attempt  to do this cannot  succeed,
for a sense-of-self  can never  expel  the trace  of lack that  always
shadows  it insofar  as it is illusory;  while  in the most  important
sense  we  are  already  self-existing,  since  the  infinite  set  of
differential  traces that constitutes  each of us is nothing less than
the  whole  universe.   "The  self-existence   of  a  Buddha   is  the
self-existence   of  this  very  cosmos.   The  Buddha  is  without  a
self-existent  nature;  the  cosmos  too  is  without  a self-existent
nature."(5)  What Nagarjuna says here about the Buddha is equally true
for   each   of   us,
--------
4.Mulamadhyamikakarika    24:  19.
5.Mulamadhyamikakarika 24:16.


                                36


and for that matter everything in the universe; the difference is that
a Buddha  (and  a Christ?) knows  it.  I think  this  touches  on  the
enduring  attraction  of what Heidegger  calls onto-theology  and what
Derrida  calls  logocentrism, not just  in the  West  but  everywhere:
Being/being  means security  to us because  it means a ground  for the
self, whether  that  is understood  as experiencing  Transcendence  or
intellectually  sublimated  into a metaphysical  principle  underlying
everything.  We want to meet  God face-to-face, or gain enlightenment,
but the fact that everything  is sunya means we can never attain them.
We can, however, realize what we have always been/not been.(6)
    In accordance  with this, Madhyamika  and Ch'an  Buddhism  have no
teaching to transmit, no doctrine that must be believed in order to be
a Buddhist, or that must be grasped in order to be saved.  If our ways
of living  in the world  are what need  to be unsettled, what is to be
taught  will vary according  to the person  and the situation, because
people fixate on different things. "If I tell you that I have a system
of  dharma  [teaching]  to  transmit  to others, I am  cheating  you,"
declared  the  sixth  Ch'an  patriarch  Hui-neng.  "What  I do  to  my
disciples is to liberate them from their own bondage with such devices
as the case may need."(7)
    This type of unsettling  does  not leave  the God-question  or the
Buddha-question in abeyance: it resolves it -- not, however, by giving
us an answer  to those questions  in the place  we look for it, but by
providing  a different  way  of  experiencing, by  deconstructing  our
everyday  world  into a different  one.  At the same  time  (and  this
reappropriates Caputo's point ) it must also be said that from another
perspective  this nondual way of experiencing  nonetheless deepens the
religious  question, because  it still  leaves  the world  essentially
mysterious  in a fashion that cannot be resolved --  but does not need
to be resolved: every nondual "thing" or
--------
6.The  self-existence(Sanskrit,  sva-bhava)that   Madhyamika   refutes
corresponds to the "self-presence" which Derrida criticizes in textual
terms, by  showing  that  every  process  of  signification, including
self-consciousness, is an economy of differences.  Self-presence"  has
never  been  given  but only  dreamed  of and  always  already  split,
incapable  of appearing  to itself  except  in its  own disapperance."
Discussions  of  this  argument  tend  to focus  on the  -presence  of
self-presence, but the self-needs to be emphasized as much. It is "the
hunger for/of self" that seeks fulfillment  in "the absolute phantasm"
of "absolute  self-having."  (Of  Grammatology, 112;  "an  Apocalyptic
Tone', 90,91)  For  more  on  the  Sense-of-lack  as  "shadow"  of the
sense-of-self,  see  David  Loy,  Lack  and  Transcendence,  (Atlantic
Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1996).
7.The Diamond  Sutra and the Sutra of Hui Neng, tran.  A.F.  Price and
Wong Moulam (Boston: Shambhala, 1990),132.


                                37


event acquires  a numinous  quality  which cannot  be fully understood
causally or reductively.

    What does this Buddhist  deconstruction  imply about language? How
does it affect  the ways we hear  and speak, read and write? There  is
some  support  in  the  Buddhist  tradition, as in  negative  theology
generally, for denying or at least depreciating the value of language.
The implication  is that linguistic meaning is so inevitably dualistic
that it can never adequately describe or express reality;  therefore a
wise person speaks seldom and little. Nagarjuna denied that he had any
views  of his own: "If I had a position, no doubt fault could be found
with it.  Since I have no position, that problem  does not arise." How
could he avoid taking a position? "Ultimate  serenity is the coming to
rest  of all ways of taking  things, the repose  of named  things;  no
truth  has been  taught  by a Buddha  for  anyone, anywhere."(8)  This
"coming  to rest of all ways of taking things"  is also found in Ch'an
--  for  example,  in  the  way  that  Tung-shan  Shou-ch'u  (d.  990)
distinguished  between  dead words and living  words: "If there is any
rational intention manifested  in the words, then they are dead words;
if there is no rational intention  manifested  in the words, then they
are living  words."(9)  Tung-shan  does  not deny  the  usefulness  of
language but does question its "rational"  function --  which seems to
mean, he denies its validity as a way to understand  or "take" things.
More recently, the Japanese Zen scholar and popularizer D.  T.  Suzuki
has perpetuated  a similar  distinction  in the  way  he explains  the
process of working on a koan: the purpose  of a koan is to subvert all
rational  attempts  to  solve  it, he  claimed, whereupon  we  may  be
transported  into a different and nonrational  way of experiencing  it
and the world, including language.
    There  is  a  problem  with  this  understanding  of  "enlightened
language", and  it  is  a mistake  to  conclude  that  Tung-shan's  or
Suzuki's  view is the Buddhist or the Mahayana  view of language (even
if we ignore the obvious  contradiction  that would seem to involve!).
The difficulty  with denigrating  "rational intentions"  and trying to
"end all ways of taking  things"  is that this tends to reinforce  the
deluded  dualism  we already  make between  words  and things, between
thought and world.  The danger is that we will "take" language/thought
as  a  filter  that  should  be  eliminated  in  order  to  experience
things/the world more
------------
8.Vigraha-vyavartani 29; Mulamadhamikakarika 25:24.
9.In Chang Chung-yuan, Original Teachings of Ch'an Buddhism (New York:
Vintage, 1971),271.

                                38


immediately  --  an approach  which  unfortunately  reconstitutes  the
problem of dualism in the means chosen to overcome it.  An alternative
approach  was hinted  at by Ch'an master  Yun-men  Wen-yen  (d.  949):
"There  are words  which  go beyond  words.  This is like eating  rice
everyday  without  any attachment  to a grain  of rice."(10)  Hui-neng
tells us how words can go beyond  words, in the process  of explaining
why he has no dharma to transmit to others:

    Only  those  who do not  possess  a single  system  of dharma  can
    formulate all systems of dharma, and only those who can understand
    the meaning  [of this paradox]  may use such  terms.  It makes  no
    difference  to those who have realized the essence of mind whether
    they formulate all systems of dharma or dispense with all of them.
    They are at liberty to come or to go. They are free from obstacles
    or impediments.  They  take appropriate  actions  as circumstances
    require.  They give suitable answers according  to the temperament
    of the inquirer.(11)

    For Caputo, following  Derrida, Eckhart's  "godhead beyond god" is
another signifer with transcendental pretensions (p.  33), which needs
to be deconstructed  and  shown  to be the  function  of a network  of
differences (a deconstruction that, for example, Nagarjuna performs on
nirvana  in chapter  25 of the Mulamadhyamikakarika).  For Derrida  no
words go beyond  words, yet these  words of the sixth patriarch  imply
that for Buddhism  there is another  perspective  where  one signifier
does  not  necessarily  equal  another  or simply  reduce  to being  a
function  of  others.  I think  there  is no better  way  to  gain  an
appreciation  of how words can go beyond words than by considering how
Hui-neng, Dogen and Eckhart understood  language.  And the best way to
understand  their understanding  of language is, of course, to look at
how they actually used words.

                                 I I

Hui-neng, Dogen  and  Eckhart: arguably  the  greatest  Chinese  Ch'an
master, the greatest  Japanese  Zen master, and the greatest  medieval
Christian  mystical  writer.  They are so elevated  in our pantheon of
religious  heroes  that  we are apt to overlook  how opportunistic  --
indeed,
----------------
10.Original Teachings of Ch'an Buddhism,271.
11.The Sutra of Hui Neng, 132.



                                39


how  completely  unscrupulous--they  were  in the ways  they  employed
language.(12)
    Hui-neng's  opportunism  is obvious  in the two passages  from his
Platform  Sutra  already  quoted  above.  His own words  provide  some
excellent  instances of language "free from obstacles or impediments",
of teachings  that "give suitable answers according to the temperament
of the inquirer."  To cite  only  one example, in one place  the sixth
patriarch does not hesitate to contradict received Buddhist teachings,
in response  to the question  of a monk, Chang Hsing-ch'ang, who could
not understand the meaning of the terms "eternal" and "not eternal" in
the Mahaparinirvana Sutra.

    "What is not eternal is the buddha-nature," replied the patriarch,
    "and what is eternal is the discriminating  mind together with all
    meritorious  and demeritorious  dharmas."
    "Your  explanation, sir, contradicts  the sutra," said  Chang.
    "I dare not, since I inherit the heart seal of Lord Buddha....  If
    buddha-  nature  is eternal, it would  be of no use to talk  about
    meritorious  and demeritorious  dharmas;  and until  the  end of a
    kalpa no one would  arouse  the bodhicitta.  Therefore, when I say
    'not eternal'  it is exactly what Lord Buddha meant for 'eternal.'
    Again, if all dharmas  are not eternal, then every thing or object
    would have a nature  of its own [i.e., self-existence  or essence]
    to suffer  death and birth.  In that case, it would  mean that the
    essence  of  mind,  which  is  truly  eternal,  does  not  pervade
    everywhere. Therefore when I say 'eternal' it is exactly what Lord
    Buddha  meant  by 'not  eternal.'...  In following  slavishly  the
    wording of the sutra, you have ignored the spirit of the text."


    From this passage alone it is difficult to understand why Hui-neng
reversed  the meaning  of the two terms;  we would  need  to know more
about situation within which this dialogue took place, the con-text of
the text.  But apparently  it worked: "All of a sudden  Chang awoke to
full enlightenment". Whether we find Hui-neng's explanation helpful or
not, the most  important  point  here  is that, by his  own criterion,
there is no arguing with such success.
    In his final instructions  to his successors  before passing away,
Hui-neng  taught  more  about  how to teach: " Whenever  a man puts  a
question  to you, answer  him in antonyms, so that a pair of opposites
will be formed, such as coming and going.  When the interdependence of
the two
----------
12.Scruple  is from the Latin scrupulus, itself derived from scrupus a
rough  or hard pebble, used  figuratively  by Cicero  for a casuse  of
uneasiness  or anxiety.  The Latin  opportun-us  means  fit, suitable,
convenient, seasonable; advantageous, serviceable.

                                40

is entirely  done  away with there  would  be, in the absolute  sense,
neither  coming  nor going."(13)  If someone  is fixated  on one view,
challenge  him with the opposite  view --  not to convert  him to that
view but to unsettle  him from  all views, so that one might  slip out
between them.

    Language and symbols circumscribe; but, as living forces, they are
    dynamic enough to open up, constantly re-expressing, renewing, and
    casting-off, so as to unfold  new horizons  of their own life.  In
    this way language  and symbols  know no limits with respect to how
    far they  can penetrate  both  conceptually  and symbolically.  No
    Buddhist thinker was more intensely and meticulously involved with
    the  exploration  of each  and  every  linguistic  possibility  of
    Buddhist  concepts and symbols --  even those forgotten, displaced
    ones  --  than Dogen  who endeavored  to appropriate  them  in the
    dynamic workings of the Way's realization. (Hee-jin Kim)(14)

    Many Buddhists believe that concepts are inherently delusive, that
they should be eliminated in order to realize our true nature. Dogen's
approach  was the complete  opposite, and he devoted  much  energy  to
demonstrating the importance of language and its possibilities. Before
discussing his understanding  of language, however, we must notice how
he used it.

    Throughout  the Shobogenzo, Dogen painstakingly  dissects  a given
    passage  and explores  its semantic  possibilities  at every turn,
    literally turning the conventional  diction upside down and inside
    out.  The  result  is  a dramatic  shift  in  our  perception  and
    understanding  of the original passage.  One of the most rewarding
    aspects of translating Dogen's Shobogenzo is his radical challenge
    to ordinary  language.  To Dogen  the manner  of expression  is as
    important   as   the   substance   of   thought;   in   fact,  the
    experimentation  with  language  is equivalent  to the  making  of
    reality.  Furthermore, Dogen  frequently  puts  forth  deliberate,
    often  brilliant,  "misinterpretations"  of  certain  notions  and
    passages of Buddhism.  This distortion  of original meaning is not
    due to any ignorance  of Chinese or Japanese (indeed, it testifies
    to a unique  mastery  of both) but rather  to a different  kind of
    thinking -- the logic of the Buddha-dharma. (Kim)(15)
--------------
13.The Sutra of Hui Neng, 134-135,142. My italics.
14.Hee-jin  Kim, "Method  and  Realization: Dogen's  Use  of the  Koan
Language",9,presented at a conference on "The Significance  of Dogen",
Tasajara Zen Mountain Center, October 8-11,1981.
15.Hee-jin  Kim, "The  Reason  of Words  and Letters": Dogen  and Koan
Language",  in  William  R.  LaFleur,  ed., Dogen  Studies  (Honolulu:
University of Hawaii, 1985),60. My italics.


                                41


    Among  the many examples  which may be cited, here are some of the
most interesting:
    Dogen's  discussion  of  to-higan  ("reaching  the  other  shore")
transposes  the  two  characters  into  higan-to, "the  other  shore's
arrival"  or "the other shore  has arrived."  The transcribed  term no
longer  refers  to  a  future  event  but  emphasizes   the  event  of
realization here and now.
    Seppo "preaching the dharma" is reversed in the same way to become
ho-setsu  "the dharma's  preaching."  This allows  Dogen to say: "This
'discourse on the Dharma' is 'the Dharma's discourse.'"
    Dogen  takes  the term  arutoki  ("at  a certain  time, sometimes,
once") and recombines its components  u "to be, to have" and ji "time,
occasion"  to make  uji, "being-time", which  he uses  to signify  the
nonduality  of existence  and time.
    Perhaps the best known example of this particular  technique is in
the  Bussho  fascicle,  which  quotes  from  the  Nirvana  Sutra: "All
sentient   beings  without   exception   have  Buddha-nature".   Dogen
rearranges the syntactical  components to make them mean: All sentient
beings, i.e., all existence, is Buddha-nature. As Kim points out, this
changes  potentiality   into  actuality,  and  it  liberates  us  from
anthropocentrism.   Sentient   beings,  everything   that  exists  and
Buddha-nature all become nondual.
    Like Heidegger, Dogen converts  nouns into verbs  and uses them to
predicate  the same  noun, in order  to say, e.g., "the  sky skys  the
sky."  This  allows  him to escape  the subject-predicate  dualism  of
language  and  point  out that, for  example, spring  "passes  without
anything outside itself."
    The Zazenshin fascicle of the Shobogenzo reinterprets a koan about
thinking   (shiryo),   not-thinking   (fu-shiryo),  and   non-thinking
(hi-shiryo). The original koan, which Dogen quotes, reads as follows:

    After sitting, a monk asked Great Master Yueh-shan Hung-tao: "What
    are  you thinking  in the immobile  state  of sitting?" The master
    answered: "I think of not-thinking."  The monk asked: "How can one
    think of not-thinking?" The master said: "Nonthinking."

Dogen transforms Yueh-shan's "I think of not-thinking"  into "Thinking
is not-  thinking."  Fu-shiryo becomes fu no shiryo: the not's, or (as
Kim puts it) the absolute emptiness's, thinking. That is, fu-shiryo no
longer  refers  to the  absence  or denial  of thinking, but  suggests
instead that authentic thinking is "the not's thinking".
    What ties together all these remarkable examples is more than that
Dogen unscrupulously twists traditional texts to make them mean


                                42

whatever  he wants  them to say.  In each case Dogen  is conflating  a
problematic  dualism, that is, a deluded way of thinking  which causes
problems  for us.  Higan-to  denies the usual duality between practice
and realization.  Ho-setsu  denies  any duality  between  the  one who
preaches the dharma and the dharma that is taught. The Bussho fascicle
denies the duality  between  sentient  beings and their Buddha-nature.
Uji  denies  any  duality   between   beings  and  their  temporality;
converting  nouns  into verbs allows  Dogen to deny, e.g., the duality
between springtime  and things in springtime.  Fu no shiryo denies the
especially  dangerous  dualism  (for Buddhist  practitioners)  between
thinking and not-thinking  (as it occurs in zazen);  practice is not a
matter of getting  rid of thinking  but realizing  the "emptiness"  of
thinking.  In each instance Dogen does not allow himself to be limited
by  the  usual  dualisms  of our  language, and  of  our  thought, but
concocts  expressions  that leap out of the bifurcations  we get stuck
in.  For Kim it is "abundantly  clear  that  in these  linguistic  and
symbolic transformations  Dogen acts as a magician or an alchemist  of
language conjuring  up an infinity  of symbolic  universes  freely and
selflessly as the self-expressions of Buddha-nature."(16)
    One more type of conflation (or deconstruction)  should be noticed
before  we attempt  to characterize  this  way of using  language.  In
Buddhism  a number  of metaphors  have become  traditional  as ways to
contrast this world of suffering  with the realm of enlightenment: for
example, gabyo (pictured  cakes, which cannot  satisfy  us when we are
hungry), kuge (literally  sky-flowers, seen when the eye is defective,
hence a metaphor  for illusory perceptions), katto (entangling  vines,
meaning  worldly  attachments), and  mu (a dream, as opposed  to being
awake).  Dogen  elevates  all these depreciated  terms by revitalizing
them.  Instead of dismissing  pictures (i.e., concepts), he emphasizes
their  importance: "Because  the  entire  world  and all  dharmas  are
unequivocally   pictures,  men  and  dharmas  are  actualized  through
pictures,  and  the  buddhas  and  patriarchs  are  perfected  through
pictures."  Kuge, usually castigated  as illusions, he revalorizes  as
"flowers  of emptiness";  in place  of the  typical  Buddhist  duality
between  reality  and delusion, "all dharmas  of the universe  are the
flowers of emptiness."  Instead of the usual admonition to cut off all
entangling   vines,  Dogen  emphasizes   the  importance   of  worldly
relationships.  And "all dharmas  in the dream state as well as in the
waking state are equally ultimate reality.... Dream and waking are
--------
(16) "The Reason of Words and Letters",63.


                                43


equally ultimate reality: no largeness or smallness, no superiority or
inferiority has anything to do with them."(17)
    These  last  examples, in  particular, leave  us  no  doubt  about
Dogen's understanding  of language.  Concepts, metaphors, parables and
so forth  are not just instrumental, convenient  means  to communicate
truth, for they themselves manifest the truth -- or rather, since that
way of putting  it is still  too  dualistic, they  themselves  are the
truth that we need to realize.

    Words are no longer just something that the intellect  manipulates
    abstractly and impersonally but something that works intimately in
    the existential  metabolism  of one who uses them  philosophically
    and religiously  in a special manner and with a special  attitude.
    They are no longer  mere means or symbols  that point to realities
    other than themselves but are themselves the realities of original
    enlightenment and the Buddha-nature. (Kim)(18)

    "Metaphor  in Dogen's  sense is not that which points to something
other  than  itself, but that  in which  something  realizes  itself",
summarizes  Kim.  "In short, the symbol  is not a means to edification
but an end in itself  --  the workings  of ultimate  truth."  As Dogen
himself  puts  it: "The  Buddha-dharma, even  if it  is a metaphor, is
ultimate reality."(19)  If the metaphor is not used to compensate  for
my own  lack  of self-existence  --  which  makes  me try  to get some
graspable truth from it -- it can be a way my mind consummates itself:
although  symbols  can be redeemed  only  by mind, the mind  does  not
function in a vacuum but is activated by symbols.
    In the Sansuikyo fascicle of the Shobogenzo Dogen criticizes those
who have an instrumentalist  view of language: "How pitiable  are they
who are unaware that discriminating  thought is words and phrases, and
that words and phrases liberate discriminating  thought." Kim provides
a valuable  gloss  on this  memorable  phrase: "In  spite  of inherent
frailties in their make-up, words are the bearer of ultimate truth. In
this respect, words  are not different  from things, events, or beings
-- all 'alive' in Dogen's thought."(20)
    Alive, because  language, like any other  thing  or event, is (and
must be realized  to be) ippo-gujin, "the total  exertion  of a single
dharma." This
--------------
17."The Reason of Words and Letters", 66 ff.
18.Hee-Jin  Kim, Dogen Kigen-Mystical  Realist (Tucson: University  of
Arizona Press, 1975), 110.When  was the last time your Zen master told
you that?
19.In the Muchu-setsumu  fascicle, as quoted  in "The Reason  of Words
and Letters", 73.
20."The Reason of Words and Letter", 57, 58.

                                44

term, a key one for Dogen, embodies  his dynamic understanding  of the
Hua-yen  doctrine  of  interpenetration.  According  to  Hua-yen, each
dharma (here meaning any thing or event, and for Dogen this explicitly
includes linguistic  expressions)  is both the cause of and the effect
of all other dharmas in the universe.  This interfusion means that the
life  of one dharma  becomes  the  life  of all  dharmas, as there  is
nothing  but  that  dharma  in the  whole  universe.  Since  no dharma
interferes with any other dharma -- because each is nothing other than
an expression of all the others --  dharmas transcend all dualism;  in
this way they are both harmonious  with all other dharmas yet function
as if independent of them.(21)
    If we apply  this Hua-yen  view of dharmas  to language, words and
metaphors can be understood not just as instrumentally trying to grasp
and convey  truth  (and thereby  dualistically  interfering  with  our
realization  of some truth  that transcends  words)  but as being  the
truth --  that is, as one of the many ways that Buddha-  nature is.  A
birdsong, a temple bell ringing, a flower blooming, and Dogen's  words
too blooming  for us as we read  or hear them...  if we do not dualize
between  world and word (and Dogen  shows us we do not need to dualize
between  them), then we can experience  the Buddha-dharma  --  our own
"empty" nature --  presencing (but not self-presencing: each manifests
the whole universe) and playing in each.
    Dogen  is more  literary  than  Hui-neng, yet  I do  not  see  any
fundamental  difference  in their  teachings  and  in their  views  of
language. Like Beethoven and the Romantic tradition that followed him,
Hui-neng  forged a path that others explored  more fully, in this case
by developing  the Ch'an tradition....  Is there anyone comparable  to
Hui-neng and Dogen in Christianity?

    He is a master  of life and a master  of the letter who plays with
    the syntax and semantics of the scriptural  texts and the texts of
    the masters  before  him in order  to tease  out of them ever  new
    senses.  He is a master  of repetition  who  knew  well  that  his
    commentary was not to be a simple reproduction

--------
21.This  apparent  paradox is a crucial  point, yet explaining  it and
defending it would shift the focus of this essay. It may be understood
as   the   Chinese   version   of   Nagarjuna's   argunment   in   the
Mulamadhyamikakarika,   which   uses   causality    to   refute    the
self-existence  of anything, and  then  denies  causal  relationships:
"That  which, taken  as causal  or dependent, is the process  of being
born and passing on, is, taken non-causally and beyond all dependence,
declared to be nirvana."  (25:19) For more on this, see my Nonduality:
A Study  in Comparative  Philosophy  (Yale, 1988)chapter  6, and  "The
Deconstruction of Buddhism" in Derrida and Negative Theology (cited in
fn 1).


                                45


    but  a new production, a new rendering  which  made  the old  text
    speak  anew  and say what  had not been  heard.  He was constantly
    altering  the  syntax  of  a text, rewriting  it so  that  it said
    something  new.  He would fuss with trivial features  of a text to
    which no attention  at all had been paid and make everything  turn
    on  them,  even  to  the  point  of  reversing  their  traditional
    meaning....  He would invert sayings  to see what fruit they would
    yield.

Is this more of Kim on Dogen? It could be, but in fact it's Caputo  on
Eckhart. Let us let him finish his point.

    There is no better example, to my knowledge, of a certain mystical
    dissemination   and  a  religiously   joyful   wisdom   than   the
    brilliantly, playful virtuosity  of Eckhart's  German sermons  and
    Latin  treatises.  He rewrites  the words  of Scripture, turns and
    twists the most familiar  sacred stories, reinterprets  the oldest
    teachings in the most innovative and shocking ways....  And always
    with  the same effect: to prod  the life of the spirit, to promote
    its vitality, to raise  its pitch, to enhance  its energy.  Like a
    religious  answer  to Nietzsche  six centuries  before  the  fact,
    Eckhart engages with Dionysian productivity in a multiplication of
    religious  fictions  which serve the interests  of a "life"  which
    lives out of its own superabundance, without why or wherefore, for
    the sake of life itself...(22)

"There  is  a grammatological  exuberance, a transgressive  energy, in
Eckhart", summarizes  Caputo, and because of his own exuberance we can
readily forgive the trendy vocabulary (today everyone seems rather too
eager to transgress!). However, we need some examples.
    Eckhart reads mutuo (reciprocal) as meo tuo et tuo meo (mine yours
and yours  mine).  He plays  with the name of his own religious  order
(ordo  praedicatorum, order  of preachers)  to make  it  an "order  of
praisers", i.e., those  who offer  divine  predicates.  In the Vulgate
version  of Romans 6:22, Nun vero liberati  a peccato  ("Now, however,
you have been liberated from sin'"), Eckhart discovers eight different
grammatical  functions in vero, including: truly (vere) delivered from
sin;  delivered  from sin by truth (vero, the datum  of verum), and so
forth.  At the  beginning  of the  Gospel  of John, In principio  erat
verbum, the words principium, erat and verbum are submitted to similar
readings, multiplying  and disseminating  their meanings.  Perhaps the
most shocking  of all, Eckhart presumes to change the opening lines of
the Pater Noster  (believed  to be the only prayer we have from Jesus)
so that "thy will be done" becomes '"will, be thine [i.e.,
---------
22."Mysticism and Transgression," 35.


                                46


God's]", because he believed  that willing  to do God's will is not as
good as getting beyond willing altogether.(23)

    In the famous  story  where  Jesus  said that Mary had chosen  the
better part (the vita contemplativa), Eckhart reverses the traditional
understanding  by explaining  that  the  repetition  of Martha's  name
("Martha, Martha, you worry and fret about so many things") means that
she had two gifts, the vita activa  as well as the vita contemplativa,
and therefore  Martha had chosen  the better  part! This follows  from
Eckhart's  emphasis  on spiritual  vitality, his  teaching  that  true
thankfulness  is fruitfulness  (i.e., to be made fruitful  by the gift
one receives, to give birth from it in return).  Caputo concludes  his
article by praising this typical "mystical perversity" whereby Eckhart
argues that the better part belongs not to Mary "languishing  dreamily
at the feet of Jesus, trying to be one with the One" but to Martha who
rushes here and there preparing  for Jesus' visit "with all the energy
and robustness of life."
    Perhaps the most significant  instance  of Eckhart's  unscrupulous
use of language  is the way he plays with the binary  terms  Being and
Nonbeing  (or  Nothing)  by  nonchalantly   reversing  their  meaning.
Sometimes  he refers to the being of creatures  and describes God as a
nothing, without  the slightest  bit of existence.  At other times  he
contrasts  the "nullity"  of all creatures  with the being  of God, in
which  case  it is not that God has being, or even  that God is being,
but that  being  is God (esse  est deus).  Caputo  says  that  Eckhart
"understands  quite  well that  the terms  'Being'  and 'Nothing'  are
functions  of each other, that each is inscribed  in the other, marked
and traced by the other, and that neither  gets the job done, alone or
together."  (p.  31)  Well  put, yet Eckhart, like  Dogen, plays  with
syntax  and semantics  not just to tease out ever new senses, not just
to see how many meanings  he can make dance  on the head of a pin, but
to develop some special types of expression, particularly  those which
can help us to see through the duality between ourselves  and God.  In
the Bussho fascicle  Dogen reorders  syntax  to make "All beings  have
Buddha-nature" into "All beings are Buddha- nature";  Eckhart is happy
to reverse  the referents  of Being  and Nothingness  to the same end,
without  ever  asserting  that both God and creatures  have being, for
that would involve a dualism between the two: if God is nothing  it is
because he is our nothingness, and if we are nothing it is because all
our being  is actually  God's.  The same denial  of that same  duality
occurs in reading "thy will
----------
23."Mysticism  and Transgression," 37.  Caputo refers to Frank Tobin's
study Meister Eckhart: Thought and Language  (Philadelphia: Unviersity
of Pennsylvanisa Press, 1986), 171-179.


                                47


be done" as "will, be thine  [God's]".  And Eckhart  uses the story of
Mary and Martha to deny a derivative dualism between the contemplative
life and the active life.
    Caputo does not deny a orthodox  side to Eckhart, which denies God
(Deus) the better to assert the Godhead (Deitas) and which understands
that Godhead as a super-essentiality  more real than reality.  That is
one tendency  in Eckhart's  writings, yet it is not the only aspect or
for us the most significant  aspect.  "'I pray God that he may make me
free of God' is an ongoing prayer which keeps the discourse open. This
is a prayer  against  closure, against  turning  the  latest  and best
creations of discourse into idols.  It arises from an ongoing distrust
of our ineradicable  desire for presence, of our insidious tendency to
arrest the play and build an altar to a produced effect." (p. 34) This
is so well-expressed  that I hesitate to quibble;  yet, again, I think
that Eckhart is concerned with more than resisting conceptual closure.
Although  he doesn't  want  to build  altars  to the  products  of his
originality, his linguistic  play is happy to produce them because  he
wants  to do something  more  than keep the conversation  going.  Like
Hui-neng  and Dogen, he wants us to change the ways we experience  and
live "in" the world.
    That  brings  us to a crucial  question  which  can  no longer  be
avoided.  If, as  I have  been  trying  to  show, Hui-neng, Dogen  and
Eckhart  exemplify  a freedom  with  language  that  Derrida  has more
recently  celebrated;  if their  writings  contain  some  of the  best
examples  of  the  liberated  kind  of  dissemination  that  Derrida's
deconstruction implies, which is not pious of any produced effects but
is ready to challenge  them all;  then what is the difference, if any,
between  what Derrida  is doing  and what  they  are doing? What makes
their deconstructive disseminations "religious" and Derrida's not?


                                  III
           
    The answer to this question  is most evident in Dogen, although  a
similar response is implicit in Hui-neng's and Eckhart's writings.
    Earlier, in a discussion  of ippo-gujin  ("the total exertion of a
single  dharma")  aspect of language, it was emphasized  that language
for Dogen  does not just instrumentally  attempt  to grasp  and convey
truth, it is truth: that is, one of the ways that Buddhanature is. But
of course that is not to deny that language  is instrumental  as well.
The point of the Hua-


                                48


yen doctrine of interpenetration is that each dharma is both the cause
and the effect  of all other  dharmas.  One way to understand  this is
that linguistic  expressions  are at the same time both means --  they
refer to other things -- and ends in themselves. This dual function is
even embodied  in the term dharma, which (as we have already seen) for
Buddhism  means both things  themselves  (what really is) and Buddhist
teachings  (what  Buddhism  says about  what  is).  Both meanings  are
necessary. To dwell only on the instrumental and referential aspect of
language  overlooks  the ippo-gujin  of words;  yet to emphasize  only
ippo-gujin  ignores the ability of words to affect the way we perceive
things  "in" the world.  That  latter  function  is also  crucial  for
Buddhism  because Buddhism as a religion is primarily  concerned  with
helping  us change  our way of living  in the world, which  is usually
duhkha, dissatisfied. Sakyamuni Buddha said that he taught only duhkha
and the end of duhkha.
    Distinguishing  these two inseparable  aspects of language enables
us to clarify the differences between Buddhism and Derrida. On the one
side, Derrida's  writings  are not aware of the ippo-gujin  aspect  of
language.  From  a Hua-yen  perspective, it may be said  that  Derrida
demonstrates  how each  linguistic-dharma  is an effect  of all  other
dharmas, but  he overlooks  the other  aspect  equally  essential  for
Mahayana: that  each linguistic-dharma  is at the same  time  the only
dharma in the whole universe.  Yes, every signification  is a function
of a network  of differences, yet for that very reason  each transient
produced  effect  is also  an end in itself, in fact  the only  end in
itself, the sole reason that the cosmos exists.(24)
    Perhaps a favorite metaphor may be used to illustrate  this point.
The musicological  analysis  of a score  may  reveal  interesting  and
important  things  about the text, but that analysis  can never convey
the living experience  of listening to that music, of actually hearing
(for example) that climactic moment in classical sonata-form  when the
key returns to the dominant  and the tension that has been building up
is resolved harmonically. Yet there are also different ways of hearing
that  harmonic  resolution.  Although  we usually  retain  a sense  of
ourselves as enjoying the music, there are those all-too-rare  moments
when we forget ourselves
-----------
24.On  Grammatology  privileges  writing  as  a  better  metaphor  for
understanding language than the supposed self-presence of speech.  Yet
speech remains a better metaphor  for the ippo-gujin  of language.  Of
course, speech  does give us an illusion  of wholeness  and unity, but
the point of ippo-gujin is that that is not merely an illusion.  There
is more on this argument in the two sources cited in fn.21.


                                49


and become the music, when we forget past and future  to regain  a no-
longer-falling-away  "eternal  now"  that  flows, as notes  no  longer
succeed each other but the same note dances up and down.  This reveals
the  nondual  ippo-  gujin  of  music, which  at that  moment  is  not
different from our own "empty" nature.
    Words  and symbols  can be ippo-gujin  as well because  as well as
instrumental  they  are, like music  and everything  else, groundless:
that  is,  without  any  self-  nature  or  self-presence, which  fact
Mahayana  expresses  with  the term  sunya  "empty".  From  a Buddhist
perspective, our intellectual  quest  may  be seen  to derive  from  a
sublimated  version  of the same duhkha  that haunts  the rest  of our
lives; in response, we try to fixate ourselves somewhere, if only (for
intellectuals like us) on some produced linguistic effect.  But as all
our various searches for unconditioned  grounds and origins are doomed
to fail, our philosophizing too sails in an unfathomable ocean without
any permanent  harbors to cast anchor in.  It is only when language is
not used  as a way to compensate  for my own groundlessness  --  which
makes me grasp at it in order to try to get some truth from it -- that
language can become a way the mind consummates itself.
    We might want to say that this epiphany involves more than a dance
with words, but we can just as well call  it a special  kind of dance.
The playfulness of Hui-neng, Dogen and Eckhart is an end in itself, to
be sure, yet it also embodies an understanding  of our duhkha and is a
considered  response  to our duhkha.  The deconstructions  of dualisms
that we find in these  religious  innovators  can help to free us from
our own "mind-forg'd  manacles"  (as Blake put it), from chains of our
own  making  (the  Zen metaphor).  For  Buddhism, and  apparently  for
Eckhart  as  well,  the  most  important  dualism  that  needs  to  be
deconstructed  is that between  myself  "inside"  and the rest  of the
world "outside". We have noticed how Dogen devises numerous linguistic
devices  to subvert  the usual dualisms  of language, to make language
reveal instead the nonduality  between us and the world.  Eckhart does
the same when, for example, he changes  "thy will be done" into "will,
be thine", and when  he refuses  to grant  being  both  to God and  to
creatures at the same time.
    Their projects  are religious, and Derrida Ôs is not, because this
other aspect of language --  which works to deconstruct  the duhkha of
our  lives  --   is  also  lacking  in  Derrida.   Derrida  in  effect
deconstructs  the  subject-object   opposition  by  disseminating  it,
because he does not believe that it can be recuperated  or regathered,
for we have no access to any


                                50


nonduality   prior   to  that  duality.(25)   As  a  consequence,  his
deconstruction  is  more  focussed  on the  duhkha  that  operates  in
language, which is the place we intellectuals  search  for a truth  to
fixate on;  his philosophical  critique  does not address  the role of
grasping  and fixation in the rest of our lives.  Dogen's Buddhism and
Eckhart's  Christianity  are religions because they offer much broader
critiques of attachment  intended to inform and alter the ways we live
"in" the world.  Buddhist usage of language  and claims about language
are part of a larger, indeed  holistic  practice--including  moral
precepts,   ritual,  meditation   exercises,  etc.   --that   develops
nonattachment  in all our activities and is therefore able to discover
and liberate the ippo-gujin in all of them.


                                   IV

    In conclusion, we can distinguish  not only between dead words and
living words, as (in very different  ways) Tung-shan  and Derrida  do,
but also between living words and healing words.
    We  know  dead  words  well  enough.  The  problem  with  academic
discourse is that it flattens language into the one-dimensionality  of
objectified texts.  Our intellectual concern to study and dissect such
texts "rigorously"  makes this type of discourse paradigmatic  for us.
The  ability  to do this  well, or cleverly, has  become  the academic
meal-ticket: those  who play  the game  skillfully  get published  and
invited to conferences.
    The fact that this is the dwelling-place  within language where we
have learned to dwell comfortably, and which helps us get tenure, does
not deny the other possibilities of language.  One such possibility is
the dissemination exemplified by Derrida's type of deconstruction  and
now  practiced  by  many  other  postmodern  writers, not  usually  so
skillfully. That language is certainly more alive than the chess-board
rearrangement  of jargon predominant  in academia.  Nonetheless I find
something  lacking in most of it.  One way to express it is that, when
merely  an  end  in itself, grammatological  freedom  quickly  becomes
boring, like those postmodern  novels  I can never quite finish, which
are stylistically  very  ingenious  yet seem  to have  little  else to
communicate  besides  celebrating  their  cleverness  in transgressing
conventional forms.
-------------
25.I  am indebted  to Professor  Caputo  for  this  felicitous  way of
expressing the difference (in a personal communication).


                                51


    Such vitality  should not be confused  with the nondual ippo-gujin
that Dogen describes and Eckhart also exemplifies. The deconstructions
and  disseminations  we  find  in  Hui-neng,  Dogen  and  Eckhart  are
certainly playful, yet they gain their force --  a power that survives
through the centuries  to touch us today --  from their ability to rub
against the grain of our duhkha, from their challenge  to the deadened
categories  and automatized  dualisms which structure the ways we live
and suffer in the world.