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*Heidegger's Oriental Orientation*

by Amanda Hart

Eventide on Reichenau
Over the waters flows a silvern glimmer
1

Forth to distant, darkened shores.

And in the summer-weary, dew damped gardens
Falls, like a lover's word withheld,
The night.
From the moon-white gabled prison
Neath the ancient tower's roof
A bird sings one last song.
And the yield to me of shining summer day
Rests like heavy fruit From long eternities
A burden beyond sense For me in the grey desert
Of a great Simplicity.
Martin Heidegger, 1917

Fourteen
Gazing, we do not see it; we call it dim.
Listening, we do not hear it; we call it inaudible.
Groping, we do not grasp it; we call it intangible.
These three properties do not allow ultimate scrutiny, for indeed,
merging they become One.
Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching

Inscribed on the Mind-Heart

When we return to the root, we gain the meaning;
When we pursue external objects, we lose the reason.
The moment we are enlightened within,
We go beyond the voidness of a world confronting us.
Tao-hsin, first patriarch of Zen in China, AD 606

Introduction
In the academic sense, the ideal function of an essay in
comparative philosophy is that by examining both for similarities and
differences, there is the possibility of a richer and deeper
understanding of each.
In terms of Australia's present desire to have greater trade
and cultural interaction with Asia, an exploration of aspects of
Western and Eastern thought, and an understanding, and acceptance of
the resonances and dissonances, could be most helpful.
For this writer, there is a private or personal agenda; that of
seeking in Heidegger a Western philosophical rationale for her own
partially Buddhist artwork.
When research for this paper first began, this writer felt, as
a beginner, inadequate to the task, that all that was possible was to
cobble together a patchwork of relevant quotes from other scholars'
writings on the subject. As study progressed, frustration arose with
what seemed to be a lack on the part of some scholars in getting down
to fundamental concepts on the Eastern side, particularly a tendency to
quote sayings as though they were dogmas to be believed. The famous
sayings of Buddhist and Taoist masters were never intended as dictums
or articles of faith to be believed. They were intended as triggers to
point the inquirer in the right direction towards a realisation of the
2

truth concerning the nature of being. Interestingly enough, Heidegger

also sees his speculations as merely points of departure, and hopes his
readers will pursue the subject independently. Therefore, although the
first half of the essay, dealing with Heidegger and Eastern thought in
general, uses quotes from academic scholarship to show the evidence and
authenticity of the relationship between the two, in the second half I
have sought to compare what I am able to understand of Heidegger with
what I know of Buddhism. Some of the Buddhist understandings come from
discourses given by Sayadaw U Janaka, a renowned scholar of Pali
manuscripts in the Buddhist world and the Head Meditation Teacher at
Rangoon Monastery in Burma. He teaches with strict authenticity,
holding without deviation to the unbroken lineage of transmission since
the Buddha's time. His authority to teach is given him by his teacher
on the basis of success in meditation, and his scholarship of Pali
texts. This writer is also using of translations of Buddhist texts, and
books on Buddhism by both Asian and Western writers.
Heidegger and Eastern Thought
Heidegger's primary area of research is ontology. Whether he is
exploring the Greek, the Medieval, the linguistic or the Asian
approaches, his entire life's work has been an attempt to penetrate
into the truth of the nature of being. His methods attempted to escape
from the traditions of logical dialectic, and in so doing seemed to
invent a poetic, though still logical and analytical mode of thought,
relying frequently on pun and often inventing new words or new ways of
using current and ancient words to arrive at what he conceives as exact
nuances and meanings. Sometimes he pauses within his text to observe
that after much examination of the aspects of his Dasein, its
understanding may now seem more obscure and elusive than ever.
Translations into English, are therefore very clumsy, for they must
deal with language that is difficult to understand even in German, and
in English there is frequently a lack of a word which would correspond
accurately to the German meaning.1
Eastern mysticism also deals primarily with the nature of
being. The Indian strand, taken from the Brahman traditions of the
Vedas at a religious level, and the Upanishad's at the esoteric level,
deal with the essence of being as a positive Self, immortal,
re-incarnating until enlightenment which is then union with the
ultimate Self or God-nature of the whole of existence. The Buddhist
strand, especially in its earliest and purest form (Theravadin or
Hinayana), is essentially atheist in that there is no self, existence
is an illusion created by the constantly changing amalgam of atoms of
physical energy in space and the energy of consciousness which arises
from sensations in sentient beings. Enlightenment to the Buddhist is
the actual direct experience of this reality. Later forms of Buddhism
as religious practice re-integrated many Hindu practices and beliefs,
but even these in their upper reaches of meditative practice and study,
return to the first premises of the Buddha through the results of
experience and in lineages of direct transmission of teacher to
student. The Taoist, though much closer to the Buddhist position, seeks
not so much enlightenment, as the gradual capacity to be at one with
the world, at one within the dualities of opposites, and one with the
flow of constantly changing phenomena.
Otto Poggeler, reputed as Heidegger's foremost student, writes
of his mentor's connection to Taoism in his essay on "East-West
Dialogue". According to this paper, there are two senses in which
Martin Heidegger can be seen to have a leaning towards Eastern thought.
The first is that even before he encountered it, his own thinking, in
questioning the basis of the Western concept of Being, was leading him
in a direction sympathetic to Far Eastern philosophy. The second is
that, as soon as he became aware of the nature of Taoist and Zen
3

thought, he developed a very strong and long lasting interest in it,

both through reading and direct contact with Asian scholars. In
summarising a few basic points from "East-West Dialogue" the direction,
characteristics and evolution of Heidegger's thought begins to become a
little clearer.
In his youth, Heidegger had tremendous enthusiasm for the
mysticism of Meister Ekhart, particularly the latter's concepts of
detachment, the death of the Godhead (from God to the absolute
nothingness of the Godhead)2 , and that being is finite and therefore
not part of God3 This notion of nothingness and detachment, something
beyond a linguistically determined conceptual reality laid seeds,
coming out of the Western tradition, for a possible questioning of
metaphysics. The beginnings of Heidegger's questioning arose by
rethinking the work of previous German philosophers who had studied and
been influenced by Indian and specifically Vedantist thought.4 German
philosophy had long had an interest in notions of enlightenment or
transcendence of the human condition. Scholars such as Garbe, Deussen,
Hegel, Schelling, Schopenhauer and Neitzche were excited when it was
discovered that Sanskrit, being the base of most Indo-European
languages, had a grammatical structure which gives rise to and is
embedded in metaphysical thinking, therefore making it linguistically
accessible to Western thinkers. It was partially the capacity to read
translations of Sanskrit texts which opened up the possibilities that a
metaphysics descended from Greek philosophy was not the only possible
ground of exploration. What was left unsaid in Neitzche opened a door
for Heidegger to explore the nature of Being. Yet Heidegger himself had
no interest in the philosophies of the Vedas or the Upanishads.
Sanskrit has notions of Being embedded in it both grammatically and
conceptually. "It is metaphysical in being representational,
concept-gathering, and in being productive of ontological speculation
about Being as the ground of all that is, and so giving the appearance
of setting up a reality other and higher than this world."5 . Greek
language carries within its structure a paradigm that lends itself to
thinking about Being as Logos Heidegger wanted to formulate a new
language that would lead away from metaphysics, to clear away the
obscuring masks of language, to find a way of thinking that which was
previously unthought, and to reveal a hidden reality of Being. It was
this aim which lead him away from Indian metaphysics, and towards the
thoughts and experiences of the Far East
The earliest Buddhist writings are written in Pali, which is
extremely close to Sankrit. It has the same script and the same
grammatical structure. It was the commonly spoken language in Northen
India in the time and place of the Buddha's life.6 As such it could be
taken by Europeans to have linguistic roots suitable for ontological
speculation, and sutras capable of philosophical analysis. The
historical Buddha was called Gautama, born of the Sakya clan or tribe,
and one of his epithets in Buddhist writings is the "Great Analyser,"
because he was able to analyse his experiences from the memory of them
(this would be impossible during the experience itself), and to show
the path by which these experiences were attained. Subsequently, over
the last 2,600 years, other meditators have followed the path and
described their experiences, written in the Pali Sutras and the
Ahidharma. Thus Buddhism does have a tradition of recording as exactly
as possible the experiences that have been successfully repeated over
many generations. Buddhist analysis concerns experience, and while it
is extremely logical, it is not he logic of tautological or linguistic
speculation. The experience of Being itself is acknowledged by
Buddhists to be beyond language, therefore, no matter how different the
language is, the different meanings of words are not going to reveal
the ultimate nature of Being. What is necessary is a return to the
common ground of human experience in pure and bare awareness, without
4

the intervening distractions of culturally conditioned mentations. The

Buddha states clearly that this is accessible to all humans regardless
of gender or race.
We know that as early as 1938, Heidegger invited his Japanese
student, Nishitani, to his home to discuss their reading of
D.T.Suzuki's book "Essays on Zen Buddhism." Professor Poggeler
describes how, from early in his career, Heidegger became familiar with
Taoist thought through his contacts with scholars from Asia.7
The fact that Heidegger rarely refers to Eastern thought in his
writings, is, according to Professor Gadamer, "because a scholar of his
generation would be very reluctant to say anything in print about a
philosophy if he were himself unable to read and understand the
relevant texts in the original language."8
Heidegger himself gave his blessing to a comparative inquiry
when he wrote "Again and again it has seemed urgent to me that a
dialogue take place with what is to us the thinkers of the Eastern
world".9
Otto Poggeler tells us, in his paper on Heidegger and Lao-tzu,
that Heidegger had suffered an emotional collapse during the 1945
trials of Nazis and was hospitalised for three weeks. He apparently
suffered tremendous shock and guilt at the realisation of the enormity
of Nazi crimes and subsequently went into a forest mountain retreat for
recovery. During this time he made contact with the psychiatrist Medard
Boss seeking to "break through the narrowness of academic philosophy
and reach much broader circles, for the benefit of a large number of
people who are suffering." Heidegger wrote "From the Experience of
Thinking" in which he sought to heal himself and his thinking through
direct experience of passing days and seasons and re-evaluating the
work of thought. He subsequently lived a hermit's life, close to
nature.10 He embarked, with a Chinese scholar and colleague, on a
translation of Lao-tzu's "Tao Te Ching" into the German, but only
succeeded in completing eight of the eighty-one chapters, working
painstakingly and consistently everyday over many months. He was
seeking an absolute rigour in the translation, and dealing with the
difficulties of a language with totally different syntactical
structure, and one which uses poetic allegory and synonym as a norm in
imparting meaning. The "Tao Te Ching" clearly states at its very
beginning that the truth of the Way, or the Tao, cannot be explained by
words, but only experienced after long and careful practice of the
path. It the proceeds to attempt to point sideways at the truth by
means of paradoxes in thought, simile and the duality of inter-related
phenomena. It becomes evident in Heidegger's subsequent writings, as he
becomes more and more concerned with poetry and art as means of saving
the world, that he sees ordinary language as inadequate to express the
exact meaning of Being.
Heidegger's purpose in translating and studying this most
classic of Chinese texts was not to become a Taoist, but rather to
return to the historical roots of a system of thought that was more
than two thousand years old and exactly contemporary with the roots of
Greek, and therefore Western, thought. He wanted to examine and compare
how thought paths evolved. To trace the trajectory of Western thought
and where it went wrong in how it arrived at its twentieth century
conception of being, he needed to step outside the expected norms of
the West, to explore the totally different ways of dealing with the
same issues in a totally foreign culture. He felt that this study would
engender an objectivity that would help uncover the unspoken
suppositions or roots of the Greek concept of Logos. In the midst of
all this he was acutely aware of the difficulties of language, the
5

uncertainties of never being sure whether the perceived meaning of a

text has been understood in the way intended by the original writer,
the probability that due to cultural differences the task might
actually be impossible. Despite these difficulties, Heidegger
persevered in his Eastern studies, and in later years we find some
surprising correspondences between his thoughts and the examples he
uses and those of Taoist thought.
One such correspondence is found in the metaphor of the jug as
a thing and a being. In his 1949 Bremen lecture series entitled
'Insight into that which Is," in the first lecture on the Thing,
(Poggeler relates) Heidegger shows that what is important in a jug is
not its "form" but rather its "emptiness" which enables it to hold
liquids, to pour, to be the kind of object it is, and to be useful. For
Heidegger this empty space and thingness brings together his "Fourfold"
of earth and heaven, divinities and mortals. The "Tao Te Ching" in
chapter 11 observes that the usefulness of a jug is precisely in its
emptiness. Here the comparison of Taoism deals with the opposites of
duality such as light and dark, positive and negative, apparent
solidity of form and its emptiness, the manner in which these paired
opposites are necessary to one another, could not exist without each
other, and are thus one, ceaselessly changing within a whole. Thus
Heidegger is not using the Chinese sense of emptiness in its whole
context. Rather he is borrowing the idea of emptiness to undermine the
root of the Western conception of form in Being, and to show that its
underlying truth is an emptiness conceived in a Western way through
Western modes of thought. In discussing Being in this manner his words
begin to sound very much like Eastern mysticism, and indeed the
influence is really there, but the results of his thinking do not add
up to meaning the same as would be intended by a Taoist. In fact this
would be impossible because the Tao can only be experienced, then
pointed, alluded and hinted at in words that remain inadequate.
Heidegger's path was academic, and despite his own desire to overcome
the limitations of academic tradition, he was bound into it in a way
which would preclude him from ever experiencing being in its Taoist
sense. Poggeler expands the correspondences between Heidegger's and
Taoist thought enough to show considerable influence on Heidegger's
post-war thinking. Taoism is close to Buddhism in many ways and is
therefore a relevant tangent to this writer's main aim of exploring
Heidegger's parallels with Buddhism.
Heidegger and Buddhism
Another source of comparisons of Heidegger with Eastern thought
comes from Japan.
From the early Twentieth Century up to the Second World War,
numerous Japanese scholars came to Germany to study Western knowledge
and disciplines of study. Some became very interested in existentialist
and nihilist thought, and in particular, Heidegger, who's thinking they
found very close to Zen. This study was taken back to Japan, and
established in the Kyoto School which is still very active today.
According to Tesuaki Kotoh, the main difference between the West and
East is that in the West the perception of no reason or goal for
existence plunges the Western mind into negativity and despair, while
in the East, due to Zen (and Taoism), this groundlessness is accepted
as it is and thus becomes a source of salvation.
Buddhism posits what it takes to be the four fundamental truths
of life. 1. That all sentient beings suffer, that it is in the nature
of living to experience suffering. Suffering arises when that which is
pleasant or desired ceases or when that which is unpleasant arises or
threatens to arise. 2. That the ultimate cause of all suffering is
attachment; ie the attachment to or concern for life, security,
comfort, and attachments to ideas, identities, things and people, and
6

its opposite of aversion in the forms of fear, negative emotions,

dislike of sickness, discomfort, loss of a loved one etc. 3. That it is
possible to transcend suffering by achieving enlightenment, seeing
reality as it is, the nature of being and of suffering, developing a
total cessation of craving for all things, a non-attachment and letting
go. This might be sudden after many years of developmental practice, or
it might be gradual, accumulating with practice. At this point physical
pain might still be experienced, but it is not increased by the
emotional affect of aversion to pain. From this point on all emotional
suffering ceases completely. 4. That the way to attain enlightenment is
by the practice of the Path or the Middle Way. This path has eight
factors which should be practiced and gradually developed in daily
life; right understanding, right directed thought, right speech, right
action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right
concentration.11 "Right" in this instance means the mode most conducive
to developing a high level of pure awareness as consistently as
possible, reducing attachments, and seeking to live harmlessly. In
Buddhism there is no actual word for meditation. What is translated
into English as "meditation" is the word "Bhavana" meaning development.
So the practice of meditation is seen as one of developing or training
the mind in awareness, looking inwards at the level of pure perception.
It is understood that a primary obstacle is the conditioned state of
our minds, by which we ordinarily perceive everything around us through
the veil of our desires, aversions, interpretations, and distracted
mentations. The Bhavana incorporates methods of overcoming mental
obstacles.
Heidegger seems to agree with the first truth of Buddhism (that
it is in the nature of living to suffer), when he says that one of the
ontological characteristics of Dasein is to suffer the burden of life.
In his words, "a mood of elation can alleviate the manifest burden of
Being; that such a mood is possible also discloses the burdensome
character of Dasein, even while it alleviates the burden."12 He also
seems to acknowledge that a characteristic of Dasein is "care" or
"concern" for its continued existence, and for all ideas, activities,
things and others which contribute to that continued being. In so far
as Dasein can split itself into different modes of being; "attending
to, making use of , producing, looking after, giving up or letting go,
interrogating, discussing..."Dasein does so out of concern for its
existence. He goes on to state that Dasein, through its awareness of
possibility, may experience fear, and that this fear in all its
different forms is both a mood by which it knows itself to be and an
aspect of concern for its continued existence.13 This is exactly what
Buddhism constitutes as attachment. Thus we can see that Heidegger also
agrees with the second fundamental truth of Buddhism, that suffering is
caused by attachment.
Where he discusses "The Existential Constitution of the
'There'," he shows that Dasein is not merely a being that knows itself
to be dwelling in the world, but one which is sentient, which knows its
existence through its most familiar and everyday states of mind or
moods.14 Buddhism in this instance, says that consciousness arises and
knows itself to be as a result of sentient perception, and feelings15 ,
(whether they are neutral, pleasant or unpleasant, although it places
perception itself of all the senses16 as happening prior to feeling.)
Kocklemans explains "that care is the unifying factor which integrates
into a unity the multiple elements of the Being of that being whose
Being is precisely such that it is concerned about its own Being."17
Yet Heidegger also describes Daseign as generally and/or frequently
blind to its own condition through being lost in the cares of its world
and distracted by mentations, by delusion and language that separates
mind from direct knowing. He says "Even though states of mind are
disclosive (of Dasein's being), everyday circumspection goes wrong and
7

to a large extent succumbs to delusion because of them, when measured

against the idea of knowing the world absolutely."18
Heidegger's Dasein is a da (there) sein (being), a literal
being-there or there-being. This Dasein has the faculty of being aware
of its own existence: it knows itself to be there. A Being with
Heidegger may be anything in existence, for instance, a clod of earth
or a bridge. It is being, is existing, but it does not know itself to
be there. Only Dasein knows its own thereness.
In brief summary of Heidegger's discussion of in "Being and
Time", we can list Dasein's characteristics as the following;
Its very Being comports itself understandingly towards that Being.19
(G53,E79)
It is an entity which I myself am.
Mineness belongs to any existent Dasien, and belongs to it as the
condition which makes authenticity and inauthenticity possible.
Being-in-the-world is a state of Dasein a priori.(G54,E79)
Beings are in the world as a jug is in a room, a room in university,
university in a city, city in the world, etc.
Beings or entities may be in the world in this way, and their
ontological category may be one of present-at-hand, side-by-sideness,
but Dasein is not "In-the world" in the same manner as objects without
self-awareness. Rather, Dasein "dwells" in or in-habits the world. Thus
the Being-in-the-world of Dasein means to dwell. Dasein can never be
"alongside" or beside the world. (G54-55,E80-81)
It is possible for Dasein to be merely present-at-hand if it does not
see or disregards its own existential state of Being-in (ie delusion,
sleep, coma)(G55,E82)
Dasein understands its own inmost being in the sense of a certain
factual being-present-at-hand.(G56,E82)
Whenever Dasein is, it is a fact; and the factuality of such a fact is
what we shall call Dasein;s "facticity".
Dasein can understand itself as bound up in its "destiny" with the
Being of entities (and other Daseins) which it encounters within its
own world.
Dasein can split itself into different ways of being - having to do
with something in actions of thought, speech or body.
All these ways of Being have concern as their kind of Being. (G56.
E83)(Only a Dasein is capable of concern for its continued existence,
concern for the things, actitivities and relationships which aid in
this, and fear for that which threatens this.)
Being is familiar in and for Dasein.(G58-59,E85)
Addressing oneself to the world is a primary function of being in it.
Dasein conceives its being in the world via its relationship to others,
but it also knows its own existence prior to such
relationships.(G59,E85)
We might be tempted to substitute the word "person" for Dasein
to make the reading easier, but "person" can denote an individual with
personality or an individual with specific characteristics, while the
sense that Heidegger intends refers to a person's pure being, and those
characteristics which all people have regardless of personal
conditioning. Both in English and German there is a lack of a word to
describe Heidegger's meaning, so in English we retain the Da-sein or
there-Being to retain awareness of his sense.
Heidegger sees Dasein as the only Being capable of being either
authentic or inauthentic, and sees authenticity as a necessary
condition for transcendence. There is a general feeling in Buddhism
8

that a human birth (as opposed to, say, animal) is particularly

fortunate because it allows for the possibility of self awareness,
insight, and transcendence. This transcendence has one part of its
meaning in common with Heidegger it that both agree that the reality of
being, existence and experienced can only occur through direct and
conscious perception, without language. interpretation and inauthentic
modes of being getting in the way, making the perceiver blind. We can
thus say that Heidegger seems almost to agree with the third truth of
Buddhism, that the way out of suffering is through transcendence,
through awareness, but in this instance it is more that there is an
overlap or partial agreement in certain senses, for Buddhism's notion
of enlightenment goes a lot further and deeper it its meaning than
Heidegger's does.
In the instance of the fourth truth of Buddhism, the two modes
of thought part company. Buddhism's construction of the path to
enlightenment is seen always as something undertaken by an individual,
a moderate and yet extremely difficult path in that most people will be
too caught in struggles and desires for pleasure to devote enough time
to the Path, hence only a few individuals at any time or era will ever
achieve full enlightenment.20 While Heidegger seems to see salvation as
something possible not only for an individual in becoming authentic,
but for a whole society or whole era through the possibility for it to
change it ontological conception of itself within the world. Also he
seems to think that authenticity through direct awareness is somehow
much easier than Buddhism would have it. This is the point at which
this writer has doubts about whether transcendence, salvation or
enlightenment actually mean a the same thing in the two modes of
thought. The question possibly needs to remain open for further
investigation. Some reputable Japanese Zen scholars, especially those
of the Kyoto School, believe that Heidegger's concept of salvation is
the same as that in Buddhism.21
Heidegger, first in his original conception of time in 1927 and
later in his lectures "On Time and Being", in 1962,22 sees a Being,
(ie. any entity which has existence,) as a Being-in Time. The horizon
of a being is the boundary of its existence in time. Unless something
is eternal, for which the only example we have is the idea of God, a
Thing is bounded by a past in which it did not exist, and a future in
which it will no longer exist. This may also be said of objects which
once were or are yet to be. Thus temporality is an essential
pre-requisite of Being. Joseph Kockleman writes that no one before
Heidegger had "ever asked the question of how time can have this
distinctive ontological function."23
Buddhism agrees that the nature of the whole of existence is
conditioned by temporality, but it differs in seeing the being not as a
whole which arises and passes away, but rather the sum total of
countless arisings and passings away in infinitesimally tiny moments.
Buddhist "Abidharma" (Psychology) posits 84,000 moments of
consciousness occurring in the mind in the time it takes to observe one
sensory perception. Much like the television shows 18 images per second
to create a convincing illusion of movement, the human mind is normally
involved in an extraordinarily high speed of cognitive function at the
level of pure or bare awareness, pure consciousness. A moment's
reflection shows that this is necessary in order that autonomic and
unconscious processes can continue while the conscious mind of daily
experience carries out its functions. At the level of meditation where
these mind moments are actually witnessed arising and passing away, the
Buddhist perception of the nature of being and change is perceived.
Thus the Buddhist view of Being is one which arises from the ground of
being in the experience of being without language intervening to name
or interpret. This is particularly so of and Zen Buddhism, less so of
9

Pure Land, or Tibetan sects.

The Dasein of Heidegger is also seen, due to its temporality,
to possess historicity. Existence is co-determined by a "thrown-ness,"
that is, the present being is thrown into existence by that which was
before it. Kockleman explains "Dasein is as it already was and is what
it already was. It is its past, in the sense that its past is, as it
were, pushing itself along behind it, and which Dasein thus possesses
as a kind of property which is still present at hand: Dasein is its
past in the way of its own being."
In Buddhism this concept is expressed as the Law of Cause and
Effect, otherwise called Karma.24 All phenomena of existence are seen
to arise as the result of the changes in past phenomena; thus coal
arises from petrified wood or a chair is crafted by human action upon a
tree, a thought arises in response to a previous thought, feeling or
sense impression, a human mind is conditioned by the circumstances of
its world, a star falls in response to gravity, a death occurs when
consciousness ceases to arise, or when the body of a sentient being
stops generating from food and air the physical energy that gives rise
to consciousness.
Heidegger, according to Kockleman's exposition, differentiates
between the unauthentic and the authentic Dasein. ..." if it (Dasein)
takes itself as a temporal thing which finds itself in a temporal
horizon, it is in an unauthentic manner.....When man turns toward
historicity, he is able to ek-sist authentically: however, if he turns
to his own 'inner-temporality' he forgets himself in his concern for
what is ready-to-hand or in his presentation of what is
present-at-hand."25 Heidegger requires three elements for Dasein's
authentic awareness through temporality; 1. awareness of historicity or
causal arising out of past being, 2.awareness of a present existence
which is limited in time, a capacity for "making present" through
awareness of presence, and letting that which has environmental
presence be encountered, and 3. awareness of Death as a finite and
future limit of existence. When Dasein is aware of all this, its
existence in the ground of being becomes authentic. " In other words,
man can ek-sist authentically only if in his historicity he expressly
endures his destiny of having to temporalise time as finite, that is as
a mortal being."26
In the Theravadin practice of insight meditation one of the
first goals is to know the truth that all things change, including that
which is identified as self. Within the early stages of Insight
(Vipassana) meditation it is seen that all present perception is
conditioned by past. It is seen that the only way to be aware of
anything is in the present moment, that sensory perception (hearing,
seeing, thinking, remembering, feeling, etc) of whatever is can only be
in the present. There is also a specific form of Concentration
(Samadha) meditation which contemplates Death as inevitable, used to
bring the practitioner into awareness of the urgency to achieve self
transcendence in this lifetime. Yet these three aspects of awareness
are not used to define authentic or inauthentic Being, rather they are
taken as fundamentals for development towards greater mental sanity and
happiness, and eventually salvation from existential suffering, or
enlightenment. But then if Heidegger were to agree that an authentic
Dasein is saner and happier by virtue of being less deluded, then
perhaps he and Buddhism agree more on this point than at first appears.
Heidegger claims that an authentic Dasein in the ground of
being, having a capacity to let be, to be as one with the world, rather
than seeing the world as an Other for exploitation and use, is
essential for human kind's salvation from the Modern Age and
10

technology, and as salvation from the sense of homelessness that comes

of forgetting one's Being. Both Heidegger and Buddhism are concerned
with salvation from suffering, and both see salvation as contingent
upon awareness of temporality. But for Heidegger this salvation does
not seem to be synonymous with enlightenment in the Buddhist sense, and
for Buddhists there is considerably more to salvation than just the
single factor of knowing temporality.
Keiji Nishitani disagrees with this writer's opinion that the
meaning of Salvation is conceived differently. In his reflection on
Heidegger's 1961 speech "Ansprache zum Heimatabend," he observes that
in Zen Buddhism "this awakening, this attainment of repose in the midst
of transitoriness, can mean a way of discovering home in the immediate
midst of homelessness, as is also pointed out by Heidegger."27
Conclusion
The Western tradition of studying the nature of being may have
been started by Greek speculation, but it was fuelled by the Christian
need to prove, a priori, Church dicta on the nature and origins of
existence, dicta which were articles of faith that could not be known a
posteriori. This meant that ontology was capable of becoming no more
than an analytical playing with words and their meanings. Heidegger saw
the despair the nihilist position, and wanted to find a view of Being
that went beyond traditional academic form, that would lead to a
healing or salvation for the modern age. He also eventually saw that to
experience Dasein in the ground of being authentically, such experience
had to be between Being and language; language could not be used as a
route to Being, for it stands as an obstacle to pure experience.
This agrees with the Buddhist and Taoist positions, except that
these positions are obtained a posteriori or empirically. The East does
not speculate. It builds on its knowledge only through the experiences
of those who have obtained enlightenment over the centuries. It sees
language and art as merely pointing the Way to an understanding which
is directly perceived. While it counts intellectual acumen as a great
blessing, it also sees truth as incapable of realisation through
intellectual speculation.
We have explored some of the references and evidence compiled
by scholars which proves that Heidegger was interested in and
influenced by Eastern, specifically Taoist and Zeb Buddhist, thought.
We have arrived at an understanding and comparison of some of the main
aspects in the thinking of Heidegger and Buddhism, in particular that
there is close agreement between them on the first two truths of
Buddhism, and definite overlaps of agreement in the second two. Further
to this we have found several other significant correspondances in the
basic premises of each.

Bibliography
Davids, T.W. Rhys. Buddhist India. 1st ed 1903. Motilal Banasidass,
India
Harvey, Peter. An Introduction to Buddhism. 1990, Cambridge University
Press
Heidegger, Martin. Basic Writings. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London &
Henley, '77
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Basil Blackwell, Oxford, UK, 1985
translated by John Macquarie and Edward Robinson
Heidegger, Martin. What is Called Thinking? Harper and Row, New York,
1968
Heidegger, Martin. The Age of the World Picture. trans and details?
Kocklemans, Joseph. Heidegger on Time and Being, Pennsylvania State
11

University
Miller, Alice. Breaking Down the Walls of Silence; to Join the Waiting
Child Virago
Press, London, 1992. !st pub in German in 1990
Ni,Hua-Ching The complete Works of Lao Tzu; Tao Te Ching and Hua Hu
Ching
pub byThe Shrine of the Eternal Breath of Tao, Malibu,
California, and
College of Tao and Traditional Chinese Healing, L.A.
California, 1989
Parkes,Graham. ed., Heidegger and Eastern Thought, 1987. Uni. of Hawaii
Press
Radice, Betty. ed. Buddhist Scriptures, 1959, Penguine Classics,
England
Richardson, William J. Heidegger; Through Phenomenology to Thought.
Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1963
Suzuki, D T. Essays in Zeb Buddhism. Grove Weidenfeld, New York, 1st
pub 1927

Ms Amanda Hart,
Mon, 1st May, 1994
21 Queen St,
Glebe, 2037, Australia
(612) 9660-1749

1 From the translator's preface, Being and Time, p13

2 Author's note. In Buddhism one of the three fundamental truths
attained through enlightenment is "Anata" which means the non-existence
of the self. There is no self, soul, or spirit. The ego, or sense of
existing I with a specifif identity and identification, is an illusion
created by an apparent continuity of consciousness, memory, attachments
and aversions, and the illusion of a fixed and continuing conditioned
reality. Part of enlightenment involves the "death of the I," which
does not mean the death of the person, nor of experience and sentience.
Rather it means that in the meditative state there is no difference
between the self and the world, and in the non-meditative state this
experience is remembered and affects one's being in the world in a
manner which greatly reduces suffering.
It is, however, unlikely that Ekhardt's nothingness of the
Godhead, attained through detachment is actually the same thing. Rather
it might be postulated that Ekhardt's detachment is equivilent to
certain stage in the development of the practice of Buddhist
meditation, still far from its goal.
3 Otto Poggeler, East-West Dialogue, p48 "Heidegger and Asian Thought"
4 J.L. Mehta, Heidegger and Vedanta: Reflections on a Questionable
Theme" p. 22,. "Heidegger and Easter Thought"
5 From a speciallist in Vedantic and Brahmanic philosophy, J.L. Mehta,
in "Heidegger and Vedanta; Reflections on a Questionable Theme".
6 T.W. Rhys Davids, "Buddhist India" p.18
7 Otto Poggeler, "East-West Dialogue; Heidegger and Lao-tsu.", p79,
Heidegger anad Asian Thought."
8 Graham Parkes, from a personal conversation with Gadamer, recorded in
Parkes' introduction to the anthology "Heidegger and Asian Thought",
p.7.
9 Letter by Heidegger to the organisers of a symposium for Heidegger's
80th birthday in 1969 at the University of Hawaii.
10 Author's note. In Taoist, Buddhist and Hindu practices, a retreat
from the world to quiet forest and mountainous places in nature is
regarded as necessary, especially in early stages of meditation,
because the mind must be trained to completely quiet its verbal chatter
in order to get closer to the actual experience of being. The mental
12

and sensory stimulations of urban life are seen as potential obstacles

to this process and to mental health in general.
11 Peter Harvey, An Introduction to Buddhism. pp 47-68 The eightfold
path should be accompanied in daily life by the development of
unconditional compassion for all living beings, and the development of
generousity (which reduces one's own attachment and lessons the
suffering of others). The eight precepts include within them five
ethical precepts of noble speech (communicating the truth without
intent to deceive), not taking that which is not freely given, right
livelihood (not selling drugs or armaments, or dealing in warfare), not
committing sexual misconduct (meaning any behaviour which would cause
suffering to another), and not consuming mind intoxicating drugs.
12 Being and Time German p134, English p173
13 Being and Time German p142, English p182
14 Being and Time .German p134, English p172
15 The specific text dealing with this is the Abhidarma, a treatise of
Buddhist psychology arising from the collective observations of monks
in meditations. The texts have been collected and croos checked against
experience over twenty-five centuries.
Here feeling is niether a physical sentation, nor an emotion.
Rather it is a reponse of enjoyment or discomfort arising as a result
of either a physical or mental perception. If left unobserved by
Dasein, the feeling will subsequently develop into an emotion or mood.
16 In Buddhism, the mind is regarded as a sixth sense, one which
percieves ideas, memories, plans, fantasies, visual, auditory and other
sense hallucinations, in the same way that sight percieves objects
reflected by light, or hearing perceives vibrations of sound.
17 Kocklemans, "heidegger on Being and Time'" p.58. Ibid pp.228-241.
18 Being and Time .German p138, English p180
19 Numbers refer to page references of Heidegger's Being and Time.
Numbers with a G refer to the *th German edition, numbers with an E
refer to the English edition translated byJohn Macquarie and Edward
Robinson in1962. Where page numbers are not marked the statement may be
found on the same page as that of the last statement so marked.
20 Buddhism recognises thirteen stages of enlightenment, of which the
first three are easy to obtain, but also unstable and easy to lose if
development ceases. The latter stages are seen as permanent for the
life of the individual.
21 Keiji Nishitani in Reflections on Two Addresses by Martin Heidegger
p145, and Tetsuaki Kotoh in Languge and Silence: Self-Inquiry in
Heidegger and Zen, p201 in Graham Parkes' anthology on Heidegger and
Eastern Thought
22 Heidegger, "Being and Time," 1927
23 Josehp Kocklemans, :"Heidegger on Being and Time", Pemmsylvania
State University
24 Not to be mistaken for the popular conception in the West that Karma
refers to a moral "just deserts" for actions in this or something
inherited as 'punishment' or 'reward' from a previous incarnation. This
is a predominantly Hindu notion, also common to Mahayanist Buddhism at
the popular level. In the doctrines taught by the Buddha, Karma is
purely the law of cuse and effeect, or cause and cosequence, otherwise
also called the Law of Dependant Causation. An action will certainly
have results, and these may often be unseen or not immediate, but the
past life is merely a past belonging to this lifetime for this being. I
might inherit a karm which is the result of actions of other, possibly
dead beings, but I do not inherit it in the sense of re-incarnation
because there is no self that can re-incarnate.
25 Kocklemans, Heidegger on Being and Time, p.60 cited Ibid.,
pp.383-401
26 Kocklemans, Heidegger on Being and Time, p.60 cited Ibid., p375
27 Keiji Nishitani, "Reflections on Two Addresse," p.149 "Heidegger and
Eastern Thought."
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