Teaching Buddha

from The Nothingness Beyond God
by Kitaro Nishida


Pure experience is the beginning of Zen. It is awareness stripped of all thought, all conceptualization, all categorization, and all distinctions between subject-as-having-an-experience and as experience-as-having-been-had-by-a-subject. It is prior to all judgment. Pure experience is without all distinction; it is pure no-thingness, pure no-this-or-that. It is empty of any and all distinctions. It is absolutely no-thing at all. Yet its emptiness and nothingness is a chock-a-block fullness, for it is all experience-to-come. It is rose, child, river, anger, death, pain, rocks, and cicada sounds. We carve these discrete events and entities out of a richer-yet-non-distinct manifold of pure experience.

Compare with the following from the Buddha as found in the suttas:

Compare also with Master Sheng-yen's verses Faith In Mind.

Compare also with this:


Back to Buddhist Miscellany
Back to Leigh's Home Page Site Map                   Site Search 


Permalink http://leighb.com/nishida.htm [] Hosted by Host
Leigh Brasington / EmailAddr / Revised 11 Dec 22