Zen After Zarathustra: The Problem of the Will in the Confrontation Between Nietzsche and Buddhism Author(s): Bret

W. Davis Reviewed work(s): Source: Journal of Nietzsche Studies, No. 28 (AUTUMN 2004), pp. 89-138 Published by: Penn State University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20717843 . Accessed: 13/06/2012 14:28
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Zen After Zarathustra:

Will in the The Problem of the Confrontation

Between Nietzsche and Buddhism

Bret W. Davis

world and oneself as "thewill topower?and affirmationof the besides"1 the path to a self-overcoming of nihilism; or is it, as Is nothing Heidegger contends, the "ultimate entanglement innihilism"?2 Is Buddhism the purest expression of a "passive nihilism," as Nietzsche claims; or does it teach a radical "middle path" that twists free of both the life of thewill to power and Nietzsche's a pessimistic negation of thewill to live? Does theBuddhist path go so far as to intimate a great affirmationof living otherwise thanwilling? From the outset, one thing does seem certain: venturing out to sail on the we confrontBuddhism as one of "open sea" (GS 343) of Nietzsche's thought, themost

Nietzsche's limited knowledge, his misunderstanding, and the distortions involved in his appropriation of Buddhism. Many then go on to develop what Robert Morrison has called the "ironic affinities" between Nietzsche and a Buddhism correctly understood.5 Although Morrison and others have pursued these affinitieswith respect to theTheravada tradition,profounder resonances may in factbe foundwith the Mahayana tradition,ofwhich Nietzsche remained unfortunately ignorant.6 Nishitani Keiji, deeply versed in and influenced by both Nietzsche's philos ophy and Zen Buddhist thought,has been the major precursor in sounding out such resonances. In a book thatfocuses on the "self-overcoming of nihilism" in was not inhis nihilistic view Nietzsche's thought, Nishitani writes: "Ironically, it

forhis critique of Christianity, crediting the former religion in the end only with thedubious honor of representing amore honest expression of amore advanced stage of nihilism. Recent studies on this theme often begin by emphasizing

interesting and challenging "foreign perspectives" from which to one's own."3 And yet, rather than lethis exposure to this other tradi "question tion call into question his own philosophy of thewill to power, Nietzsche him more oftenused his interpretation Buddhism as a "rhetorical instrument"4 self of

of Buddhism but in such ideas as amor fati and theDionysian as the overcom ing of nihilism thatNietzsche came closest to Buddhism, and especially to Mahayana."7 Nishitani, however, in the end goes beyond marking ironic affini ties and develops a "sympathetic critique" ofNietzsche from the standpoint of Zen. A few lines down from the above passage, he writes: "What is clear,
Journal ofNietzsche Copyright ?2004 Studies, Issue 28, 2004 Society. 89

The Friedrich Nietzsche

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however, is that there is in Mahayana a standpoint that cannot yet be reached even by a [i.e.,Nietzsche's] nihilism thatovercomes nihilism, even though the latter may reach in thatdirection" (SN 185/180 tm).

he up against the limits of a sympathetic interpretation, marks these limits and moves on. Hence, Nishitani is scarcely concerned with critically working then through thedetails ofNietzsche's own evaluation of Buddhism; nor does he pay much attention to the cruder formulations of thewill to power inNietzsche's

In pursuing both thisproximity and thisdifference, in thisessay I shall repeat Nishitani's interpretationofNietzsche as well as tohis own devel edly returnto of a philosophy ofZen. Nishitani's style,however, is togo with a thinker opment as far as he can in order to finally pass through and beyond him.When he runs

thought.8Ifwe, forour part, are to cultivate amore explicit Auseinandersetzung between Nietzsche and Buddhism, we need to step back and work throughboth more patiently. There are of these challenging aspects of Nietzsche's thought indeed profound points of resonance between Nietzsche and Buddhism, Zen in particular; but there are also points of genuine confrontation that call for care ful elucidation and reflection.9 I shall begin to develop this Auseinandersetzung by explicating and then criti cally responding toNietzsche's critique of Buddhism. Later, I shall back up and begin again by developing and thenresponding toa Buddhist critique ofNietzsche.

manner, by working fromboth sides, can we flush out and pursue the Only in this more difficult One questions regarding irreducibledifferences and ironicaffinities. thread thatI shall follow throughthisdialogical confrontation is theques guiding tion of the relation between nihilism and will. The ultimate issue at hand, as sug will only my opening questions, iswhether all attempts toget beyond the gested in

succeed in sublimating and exacerbating thenihilism of "life turnedagainst itself," or,on theotherhand,whether anywillful attempt to"overcome nihilism" only hin ders the "step back" througha releasement (Gelassenheit) ofwilling toward a way of being other than thevery duality ofwill and will-lessness. Auseinandersetzung comes down ultimately the My contention, in short,is that to the question of thewill, that is to say, to a confrontationbetween Nietzsche's radical affirmationand Buddhism's radical negation of thewill. The question of between the twoboils down to theques thedepth and limitsof the ironic affinities tion ofwhether and towhat extentZarathustra's "self-overcoming of thewill to

of power" meets up with Zen's reaffirmation life after the "great death" of cutting off the roots ofwilling.

Nietzsche

Contra Buddhism

asWill-less

Nihilism

Nietzsche once wrote inhis notebooks: "I could become theBuddha of Europe: yet thiswould of course be a counterpart [Gegenbild] to the Indian Buddha."10

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manent composition of "aggregates" (P. khandha).n Both see the path towis dom in not flinching frompeering into the abysses of life and death. Buddhism often serves in this regard as a foil forNietzsche's critique of Christianity.

which posits a unified and enduring subject,where in fact "the doer" is "merely a fiction added to thedeed" (GM 1.13), orwhere a name points only to an imper

ubiquity of becoming and the composition and dissolution of all entities, against the metaphysical and theological beliefs in an enduring and substantial self.Both trace the lattererror to a "faith in grammar" and the "seduction of language"

In order to fully appreciate Nietzsche's complex view of Buddhism, it is neces sary to understand both sides of this remarkable statement. On the one hand, Nietzsche held many aspects of Buddhism in high regard, and one can recognize many commonalities in their philosophies. Both argue the

fering" ratherthan the "struggle against sin."Hence, "the self-deception ofmoral concepts lies farbehind" Buddhism; indeedNietzsche sometimes even credits it with standing "beyond good and evil" (A 20). Christianity, by contrast, posits its morality of evil and sin as weapons with which to usurp the power of the strong; it is said to be, in short, a religion of ressentiment. In the "slave morality" of the "priests," as opposed to the "mas

"Buddhism," Nietzsche writes, "is a hundred times more realistic than Christianity"; it is "the only genuinely positivistic religion inhistory,"which has no need of the "concept ofGod" and which speaks of the "struggle against suf

hatred grows tomonstrous and uncanny proportions" (GM 1.7). Buddhism is said to teach freedom from ressentimentand hate. Quoting The Dhammapada's lines, "Not by enmity is enmityended; butby friendliness is enmity ended," Nietzsche compares Buddhism with his own struggle to freehimself from And yet,hereNietzsche asserts a crucial dif "vengefulness and rancor" (EH 1:6).12 ference between two types of freedom from ressentiment,namely, between that which springsfrom strength and that which springsfrom weakness. The unhealthy affectsof ressentiment,such as anger and "impotent lust for revenge," as well as the fact of the "natural inclinationof the sick" toward these reactions, "was com

theirown subterranean quest forpower and revenge. "As iswell known," writes most evil enemies?but why? Because they are Nietzsche, "the priests are the themost impotent. It is because of their impotence [Ohnmacht] that in them

ter morality" of thewarriors, an "ascetic ideal" thatdenies the instinctsof life is posited due to a lack of strength towithstand open competition. Nietzsche's genealogy ofmorality aims to reveal thehypocrisies of thepriests by exposing

end, according toNietzsche, a sign ofweakness. A strongfreedom from ressenti ment, on theotherhand,would no longer aver from these feelings because theyare
"harmful," but rather because they are seen as "beneath one."

prehended by thatprofound physiologist, theBuddha" (ibid.). The Buddha's pre was not a moral one, for emotions such as righteous indignationwould scription "burn one up faster." But thisobsession with "physiological hygiene" is in the only

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but ratherby an overly cultured and hypersensitive affectivity thathas learned to treat thepassions "hygienically." In contrast toChristianity,which out of "an

Likewise, Buddhism's stance beyond good and evil, Nietzsche argues, was not achieved by the strength to affirm life,with all its negative and painful ("evil") sides as necessary counterparts to its good and pleasurable moments,

overpowering desire to inflictpain" needed "barbaric concepts and values to become master over barbarians," Buddhism, according toNietzsche, "is a reli gion for latemen, for gracious and gentle races who have become overspiritual and excessively susceptible to pain (Europe is far fromripe for it); it is a way of leading themback topeace and cheerfulness.... the end and theweariness of civilization" (A 22). Nietzsche

Buddhism is a religion for

to conserve their remaining strength by way of a kind of "hedonism of the weary" (WP 155). Nietzsche thus understands Buddhism as a "passive nihilism," a sign of "decline and recession of the power of the spirit," as opposed to "active nihilism," which represents rathera sign of "increased power of the spirit" (WP

former is "a degeneracy movement" founded on "a rancor against everything well-constituted and dominant" (WP 154). Whereas Christians still covertly attempt to assert themselves against the strong (and still cling to otherworldly salvation from the sorrows of thisworld) by projecting a "kingdom of God," Buddhists have resigned themselves to theirown impotence and seek merely

asserts that "among the nihilistic religions, one must always clearly distinguish theChristian from theBuddhist." While the latter is said to be the "expression of a fine evening, a perfect sweetness and mildness," the

22,23). The active nihilistwould not just passively resign himself to the "deval uation of thehighest values," butwould aggressively embody the turningof the on Christian "will to truth" itself,thuseffecting a rebound from the ideal of "God is truth" to the "fanatical faith that 'All is false.'" At one point Nietzsche calls While he no doubt inpart has the this rebound a "Buddhism of action" (WP 1). Russian nihilists inmind here, Nietzsche certainly recognizes himself and his own project in this turningof Western metaphysics and morality on itself, and

movement through a "self-overcoming of nihilism." he seeks to lead this At one point in his notebooks Nietzsche goes so far as to refer to himself as "the firstperfect nihilist of Europe who, however, has even now lived through whole of nihilism, to theend, leaving itbehind, outside himself" (WP Preface the 3). In a published text, however, Nietzsche looks forward to "he" who is "younger, 'heavier with future', and stronger than I," who will be able to over

come "great nausea, thewill to nothingness, nihilism," and usher in "the great decision that liberates thewill again and restores its goal to the earth and his hope toman." Nietzsche defers to his projected figure "Zarathustra" as "this Antichrist and antinihilist [i.e., anti-Buddhist]; this victor over God and noth ingness [i.e., nirvana]" (GM 11.24).

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Nietzsche's appraisal of Buddhism can thus be summarized as follows: Buddhism would represent a more advanced stage of nihilism thannineteenth centuryEurope, which had yet to recognize the "death of God," much less to enlighten all the shadows of his corpse in thegrammar of our language and in the truths our science. Nietzsche suggests, then,that"a European Buddhism might of ( perhaps be indispensable" WP132) as a pessimistic typeof philosophy tobe used as a "hammer" to sound out false ideals in the twilighthours of Western civiliza tion.This is the reason forNietzsche characterizing himself as "the Buddha of Europe"; for it is necessary topass through thisEuropean Buddhism as a kind of we are to once again learn to remain faithfulto the earth, to become catharsis if capable of affirminglife to the extreme ofwilling itseternal recurrence. A European Buddhism would be the abyss intowe must descend, the dark est night before thedawn, or, to adapt H?lderlin's language, the "danger" where

alone the "saving power" of the will to power could grow in strength.The be mask for Nietzsche, "European Buddha" would, therefore, only a transitional one still turned toward thenegative face of existence. In order to effect the turn to a revaluation of the earth?the conversion thatwould join peak and abyss together so thatone could say with Zarathustra: "thatwhich has hitherto been

Buddha."

your ultimate danger has become your ultimate refuge" (Z III. 1)?Nietzsche claims that it is necessary forhim to become rather"a counterpart to the Indian

Nirvana: TheWill toExtinctionofLife orLife After theExtinctionof Will?

Ithas been suggested that Nietzsche may have firstconceived of the idea of "die Wiederkehr des Gleichen" when reading Hermann Oldenberg's Buddha ewige in 1881,13 and that"Nietzsche's notations on Zarathustra make reference to spe cific pages inOldenberg's book in the context of theRecurrence."14 Be that as it may, decisive differencesmust be pointed out in this regard.Not only is the notion of theeternal returnof "the same" foreign toBuddhist thought; more sig nificantly, it is precisely releasement from the wheel of samsara that is the

from" (a Gelassenheit von) involvements in the karmic world of samsara; or would extinguishing thewill of the ego also positively free one for a nonegois tic engagement in (a Sicheinlassen auf) theworld reaffirmed?For Nietzsche, in any case, the very idea thatone could attain releasement from the cycle of willful karma, the very idea that "the will would become not-willing [Nicht Wollen]" is but an illusory "fable song ofmadness" (Z 11.20 tm).

expressed goal of Buddhist practice, and not the affirmationof its eternal revo lution.The crucial question will be how to interpretthis release. Is the release ment or liberation of nirvana to be understood as a mere negative "freedom

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The European Buddha would apparently preach an eternally recurring samsara with no possibility for nirvana?and thiswould indeed be a "strange form of Buddhism"!15 Nietzsche, itwould seem, seeks to affirmprecisely thatwhich Buddhism seeks to deny. The Buddha would be the preacher of the extinction of the cyclical life of suffering, whereas Nietzsche's Zarathustra would be "the

In one of his notes Nietzsche introduces his "most abysmal thought" as fol lows: "existence, as it is,without meaning or aim, yet inescapably recurring without any finale in nothingness: 'the eternal recurrence'.... This is the most extreme form of nihilism. . . .The European form of Buddhism" (WP 55 tm).

four sights" that set theyoung Siddhartha out on his path of renunciation of the life of sensual pleasure and social power. "They encounter a sickman or an old man or a corpse, and immediately they say, 'Life is refuted'. But only they them selves are refuted, and theireyes, which see only thisone face of existence" (Z

advocate of life, theadvocate of suffering,theadvocate of thecircle" (Zill 13.1). In his speech on "the preachers of death," Zarathustra alludes to threeof "the

Zarathustra summons those "who give themselves theirown will and reject all with only thiseither/orchoice resignation [Ergebung]" (Zill 5.3). But arewe left between "will" and "resignation"? Is therea "middle path" beyond thisduality?

19). Nietzsche suggests thathe too peers deeply into the sufferingface of life, butwith differenteyes, eyes thatare able to interpretlife'smeaninglessness dif ferently,eyes thatare able to lay theirown will into life and justify its suffering.

Nietzsche passes over in silence the fourth sight, thatof thewandering men dicant who seeks a way through and beyond suffering. Or perhaps this "renouncer" is the one inNietzsche's story who says, "Life is only suffering," and towhom Zarathustra responds: "see to it, then, thatyou cease! See to it, which is only sufferingceases!" (ZI 9). But the "middle path" then, that the life (Sk. madhyam? pratipad) discovered by theBuddha was not simply thatof asce tic renunciation, and we need to ask whether what gets "extinguished" in nir vana is not life as such, but rather the life of cyclical birth and death of the ego, the nihilistic "willful" life of samsara. Everything thus depends on how one

understands nirvana. Is nirvana a simple nullification of life; is it a "negative theological" projection of a Hinterwelt; ormight itbe an existential death that gives new life, a conversion to a way of being-in-the-world radically other than will to power? Let us begin by recounting the Four Noble Truths. The first tells us that samsaric life is pervaded by "suffering" or "existential unsatisfactoriness" (P. dukkha). The second names the proximal cause of this sufferingas "thirst"

or "craving" (P. tanh?; Sk. trisna). The thirdclaims that the cessation of suf fering can be brought about by the "complete cessation of thatvery thirst, giv ing itup, renouncing it, emancipating oneself from it,detaching oneself from The cutting offof all craving is nirvana, liberation from samsara, the wheel it."16 of "willful existence." The fourth truthindicates theNoble Eightfold Path that

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leads to this cessation of craving. Let us note here that the sixth aspect of this path is called "right effort" (P. samm? v?y?ma), a kind of "energetic will"17 to cut offunwholesome states ofmind and tocultivatewholesome ones. This "ener getic will," which aims at a complete cessation of thewill of "craving," can in one sense be understood as a kind of transitional "will not towill." As Morrison has pointed out, there are texts that speak of "abandoning tanh? by means of tanh?," and of an "appropriate desire [P. chanda]" to be employed in the over coming of the desire that leads to suffering.18

Nietzsche would interject here that, insofar as "willing" characterizes the whole of existence, not only is nirvana a nihilistic nothingness, but the "right effort" to attain the total cessation of willing is the self-contradictory "will to will tonot will nothingness." According toNietzsche, the "ascetic ideal" of this is a self-contradictoryphenomenon of "life against life."As life is nothing other than thewill to power, the negation of will by the "renouncer," like thatof the

"ascetic priest," can only be apparent (GM III. 13). Nietzsche's genealogy of morals attempts to uncover theweakness ofwill thathas degenerated into self denial, and which now threatens to lead to a passive nihilism orwhat he calls a "Buddhism forEuropeans" (GM Preface 5). In conclusion to his genealogy of morals he writes:

We can no longerconceal fromourselveswhat is expressedby all that willing which has takenitsdirectionfromtheascetic ideal: this hatredof thehuman,and
even more

means?let

of reason itself, thisfearof happiness and beauty, thislongingto get away from all appearance, change,becoming, death,wishing, fromlonging itself?all this
us dare

of the animal,

and more

still of thematerial,

this horror of the senses,

to life,a rebellionagainst the most fundamental presuppositionsof life;but it is and remainsa will! (GM III.28) Does the characterization of samsara as willful craving, together with the goal of nirvana as the extinguishing thiscraving,mean that Buddhism is founded on a self-contradictory ascetic ideal, a will to extinction? Is therea positive notion of action or of "will" inBuddhism? On theone hand,

to grasp

it?a

will

to nothingness,

an aversion

[Widerwillen]

it is possible to show thatjust as Buddhism acknowledges an array of relative joys and pleasures within the realm of dukkha, so too does it recognize produc tive uses of tanh?.19Craving can be turned against itself.But this is precisely

ityof a radical transformationof action such that it is no longer determined by "will"? Already in Theravada Buddhism we find indications in this regard. Walpola Rahula remarks: "An Arahant, though he acts, does not accumulate karma, because he is free from the false idea of self, free from 'thirst'for con him there is no rebirth."20 And yet, is action here tinuityand becoming-For

the contradiction that Nietzsche criticizes. The deeper question iswhether there inBuddhism a positive notion of action as such, an affirmationor reaffirma is tion of the activity of life for itsown sake. Does Buddhism harbor thepossibil

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still thoughtof as something essentially negative, something despite which the Arahant is able toproceed toward thefinal peaceful extinction ofparinirv?na? InNietzsche words, does one here need "to perform even good actions only for as a means to emancipation from the time being, merely as a means?namely, all actions" (WP 155)? In response toNietzsche's critique of passive nihilism, itwould not be enough, then, to recuperate a positive sense of will as "right

that life is and could only ever be defined by thewill to power. Might nirvana makes possible a reaffirmationof another be understood as a great negation that of being-in-the-world? Is therea notion of enlightened action thatnot only way

effort," if this effort ismerely an unfortunately necessary means (a necessary evil) on theway to the extinction of action altogether. But this apparently either/orchoice?between "affirmationof life as the will to power" and "negation of thewill as annihilation of life as such"?assumes

world of becoming in its "does not accumulate karma," but which reaffirmsthe own right? Is thepossibility of affirming life's activities restricted inBuddhism to theirultimate negation; or is there a "lion's roar" of theBuddha that saysNo to (the) life (ofwill) so that itcan one day awaken chil to theiruse as a means

Yeses to (the) life (of non-willing)? dren of tender Such a reaffirmationof lifewould depend on an interpretationof nirvana in a "positive" sense, or at least in a sense other than that of sheer annihilation. Nietzsche's critique assumes that life as such is will to power, and hence that the goal of nirvana could only be an expression of a passive nihilism, a nega tion of existence as such or a paradoxical "will tonothingness." But theBuddha in fact rejects both the doctrine of annihilationism (P. ucchedavadd) and the craving for non-existence (P. vibhava-tanha). His rejection of these nihilistic interpretationsof existence and nirvana suggests thatnirvana must have a "pos itive" sense, that therewould be a reaffirmationof life after the extinction of craving. The early Buddhist texts,however, offered relatively few explicit indi cations in this regard, and this reticence to give a positive determination to nir vana allowed earlier generations of Western scholars to misinterpret nirvana as

a pessimistic doctrine of annihilation.21 In playing one teaching or "expedient means" off another in an attempt to point toward "that"which is neither a "reified something" nor a "nihilistic noth

trine of annihilationism. The few indications in the early Buddhist texts of a are there positive sense of nirvana, as, for example, an "unconditioned realm," a famous passage from the Ud?nay we read: "O fore highly significant. In bhikkhus, there is theunborn, ungrown, and unconditioned. Were therenot the

ing," thehistorical Buddha perhaps weighted his teaching of nirvana in thedirec Atman metaphysics of his day. However, while his silence tionof countering the in response to requests for a positive depiction of nirvana effectively thwarted the reifying tendency of language and the metaphysical inclination of specula it also leaves the door open to themisunderstanding of nirvana as a doc tion,

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unborn, ungrown, and unconditioned, therewould be no escape for the born, grown and conditioned."22 The characterization of nirvana as a "domain" or "realm" (Sk. ?yatana or dh?tu)23 that is "unconditioned" (Sk. asamskrta) is a strikingclaim; for accord ing to the Buddha's ontological middle path between "eternalism" (Sk. s?s vatav?da) and "annihilationism" (Sk. ucchedav?da), beings do in fact exist, but only as mutually "conditioned" phenomena in a world of "dependent co origination" (Sk. prat?tyasamutp?da), and not as unconditioned substances with their"own being" (Sk. svabh?va). The assertion of nirvana as an "unconditioned realm" thus might be (and has been) seen as a relapse back into the metaphysi cal assertion of a transcendent world outside the realm of dependent co

origination. Initially the appellation "unconditioned" (or unborn and undying, that is,untouched by the samsaric wheel of birth-and-death) was often reserved for theDharma, theBuddhist Law that teaches thatall is conditioned; in other words, the only thing "permanent" would be "the law of impermanence." But Mahayana sutras,with their textual layers of expedient teachings and their ten dency toward positive expression, boldly assert such notions as an uncondi

vana only at the cost of positing a metaphysical realm cut off from thephysical world of samsara? On the one hand, just as one cannot simply deny the "world negating" content and tone ofmany early Buddhist teachings, at least on the sur

tioned Buddha basis that sustains from below, an unborn Buddha-nature that dwells within, and a Buddha Land thatbeckons from the "other shore" beyond the sufferingof thisworld. The question becomes: IsMahayana Buddhism able to affirma life of nir

matic teaching of the "nondual" (Sk. advaya) relation between nirvana and sam sara, between Boddhisattva wisdom and worldly passions, and between the eternal Buddha Land and the transitory here and now.

face of its texts the Mahayana movement again and again risks falling back into the error of eternalism. And just as he denounces what he sees as a "passive nihilism" in (Theravada) Buddhism, Nietzsche would be quick to criticize the positive depictions of the "other shore" in Mahayana Buddhism as a nihilistic thisworld. But there are layers ofMahayana teachings, where devaluation of one "expedient means" (Sk. up?yd) is both undergirded and often undermined by a deeper teaching; and thedeepest of these layers is no doubt thatof the enig

The Vimalakirti Sutra tells us that theBuddha Lands are not somewhere else, but rather "the various kinds of living beings are themselves theBuddha Lands of theBodhisattvas"; it is only that these beings do not yet see thepurity of this world due to the impurityof their way of seeing.24 In learning to see that"form is none other than emptiness" and that"emptiness does not represent the extinc tion of form," one ceases to "yearn fornirvana" and to "loath this world," and is able to "enter the gate of nondualism."25 Nagarjuna tersely asserts thisdoctrine of nondualism when he writes: "The limits (i.e., realm) of nirvana are the limits

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of samsara. Between the two, also, there is not the slightest differencewhatso of Garfield gives thefollowing helpful interpretation these enigmatic ever."26 Jay crucial lines. "To be in samsara is to see thingsas theyappear todeluded con yet

means thateach and every phenomenal event is goes out of existence. And this marked by?in thewords of his famous eightfold negation?"non-origination,
non-extinction; non-destruction, non-permanence; non-identity, non-differenti

The way thingsare here and now, according toBuddhism, is neither existence nor non-existence, but rather the middle way of dependent co-origination.When thisdynamic process of interconnected becoming is radically thought through, according toNagarjuna, there is no (substantial) "thing" that comes into and

with themaccordingly. To be innirvana, then, is to see sciousness and to interact those things as they are?as merely empty, dependent, impermanent, and non substantial, but not to be somewhere else, seeing something else_Nagarjuna is emphasizing thatnirvana is not someplace else. It is a way of being here."27

ation; non-coming (into being), non-going (out of being)."28 The "uncom pounded" is thus not someplace else, but is this world of non-substantial becoming seen aright.According toNagarjuna, the root of samsaric existence is the activity or disposition (Sk. samsk?ra) that compounds phenomena into we attach ourselves to and then sufferthe loss (of con reified forms, forms that trol) of. The "wise one" who sees into this vicious circle, therefore,ceases to "act" in the sense of "to create compounds." But this cessation is presumably not a cessation of all "activity" as such; indeed, as Garfield puts it,by ceasing
the activity of reification "we can achieve. . . a nirvana not found in an escape

The from theworld but in an enlightened and awakened engagement with it."29 effortto attain nirvana is thusnot a will to nothingness, but leads rather to right the realization that there is nothing to "attain."30 Thus asamskrta refers not to an eternal realm outside the conditioned world of becoming, but to amore orig inaryway of perceiving and dwelling in theworld of dependent co-origination. This nondualism of samsara and nirvana, however, is not a simple identity.It is neither a dualism (since nirvana is not some other place outside thisworld),

moment of negation. The negation of these sightof the importance of this initial modes of "willful" being-in-the-world marks the radical difference between an enlightened "re-affirmation" and an ignorant craving for and attachment to life. Nirvana, as a "blowing out of the flame of craving and attachment," demands firstof all a radical negation of thewill. A reaffirmationof theworld of activity

how can we characterize thisdifference?Negatively speaking, we may assume that enlightened action would not be driven by attachment, craving, or, pre movement inBuddhism back will topower. In following the return sumably, the toward a reaffirmativecharacterization of being-in-the-world, we must not loose

nor is ita sheer nothingness, a negation of existence as such.Yet the world reaf not simply the same as the initial world of "attachment" (P./Sk. firmed is way of being-in-i/ns-world. Yet up?d?na). Rather, nirvana implies a different

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itself only in a movement through its own negation. Saigusa writes that thisdialectical movement toward reaffirmationthrough Mitsuyoshi double negation can already be found in the early sutras.The Suttanip?ta, for instance, often instructsus not only to discard "thisworld," but also to discard "thatworld" of the beyond. Saigusa interprets the firstnegation to signify the completes "negative" moment of nirvana, the "going forth" (Jp. os?) from thisworld of craving and ignorance, and the second negation to indicate a "positive" moment of "returning" (Jp.genso) to compassionate activitywithin theworld of condi tioned existence. This movement of return, he adds, is not that of a one dimensional circle, but rather thatof a three-dimensional spiral.31This dynamic

is made possible, however, only byway of a second?equally necessary?nega tion, namely, a negation of any sublated craving for and attachment to tran scendent repose in the realm of nirvana. The event of nirvana thusparadoxically

dialectic of reaffirmation throughdouble negation is clearly developed in the Heart Sutra: Mahayana tradition,as succinctly stated in the key phrase of the "form is emptiness; emptiness is form." Phenomenal beings (forms; Sk. rupd) are emptied of any reified substantial essence (Sk. svabh?va); yet emptiness essentially empties itself into and as the eventful suchness of phenomenal be ings in theirdependent co-origination.

The Activity

of Life Reaffirmed:

and theSamadhi of Play

The Doing

of Non-doing

Yet how are we to characterize the "activity" of a reaffirmedlife?Does thedou ble negation of nirvana lead to a different way of acting in the world, a way that is spontaneous or natural, as opposed to egoistic or willful? The Vimalakirti Sutra points in thisdirection when it writes that true"quiet sitting," where "you manifest neither body nor will," is not a matter of "sitting in quiet meditation under a tree in the forest," but ratherof "not rising out of your samadhi of com plete cessation and yet showing yourself in the ceremonies of daily life."32 It is most clearly and thoroughlydevelops this the Zen traditionthat Mahayana stress on practice and realization in the verymidst of everyday activities. This reaf firmation of everyday activity is enhanced by way of an integrationof the this

The Zen tradition tells us, worldly orientation of pre-Buddhist Chinese thought. for example, that "ordinary mind is theDao."33 Like nirvana, theDao ismost "unattainable" even though it lies directly underfoot; if you direct yourself

mind."34 Likewise,

toward ityou go away from it. Here toowe find thattheradical stepback requires a double negation. The modern Zen master Shibayama Zenkei comments on this phrase: "When we have broken through thebarrierwhere our ordinarymind is not at all ordinarymind, we can for thefirst time return to our original ordinary

in response to the early Buddhist emphasis on the (first)

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negation of the profane life of worldly passions, Zen iconoclasm emphasizes the (second) negation of the transcendent realm, instructing us to "kill the Buddha" in order to return "the holy" to themost profane phenomena of this world, like "three pounds of flax" or even a "shitstick."35Zen practice, accord ingly,does not lead to an ascetic rejection of thisworld or a mystical medita tion on other shores, but to a reaffirmationof the extraordinary ordinariness of everyday activities such as "carryingwater and hauling firewood" or "washing

your bowls" after a meal. was medi The Zen synthesis ofMahayana Buddhism with Chinese thought ated by thepractice of using existing terms (mostlyDaoist) to translateand inter pret Buddhist concepts. The most importantexample of "matching terms" (Ch. was already mu-i), a word that ge-yi) in thepresent context is thatofwu-wei (Jp.

used to connote a positive sense of "non-doing" in classical Chinese thought, and which was subsequently also used to translateasamskrta ("unconditioned") and nirvana. Although the literal meaning ofwu-wei is "non-doing" in the sense was of "to do nothing," already in early Chinese ethical and political thought it used in a positive sense, as the proper way for a king to rule, namely, not by force of will, but by example of forbearance. Moreover, the "doing" to be refrained from is not any and all activity,but only thatartificial activity (Ch. ren

wei; Jp.jin-i) thatoriginates from egoistic desires and revolts against the natu ral ways of theDao. The Dao itself "acts by not acting," and human "doing non-doing" (Ch. wei wu-wei) is accordingly amatter ofmodeling oneself on the
movement of the Dao. This

sivity, for human beings too find theirplace as one of the "four great things within the realm of being." Stepping back from artificial or willful action, the cosmos falls into order when: "human beings model themselves on the earth; Dao the earthmodels itselfon heaven; heaven models itselfon the Dao; and the models itself on (its own) natural spontaneity."36Under the influence of this as we have Daoist notion of wu-wei, in theZen tradition asamskrta?which, in the unconditioned (nirvana) in the seen, Mahayana thought already implied on the concrete nuances of "natural midst of the conditioned (samsara)?takes and without artifice" (Ch. wuwei-ziran; Jp. mui-jinen), and of dwelling in accord Dao. with thenatural rhythmsand "virtues" (Ch. de) of the Zen tradition took The modern Zen master Morimoto Seinen explains how the up both these Indian and Chinese backgrounds into its contrasting notions of "conditioned doing" (Sk. samskrta; Ch. you-wei; Jp. u-i) and "unconditioned non-doing" (Sk. asamskrta; Ch. wu-wei; Jp.mu-i). He writes that thenotion of u-i depicts the world of samsara temporally as the cycle of birth-and-death, and world of conflict, inequality, and rigid discrimination. The world spatially as the ofmu-i, on theother hand, was initiallyprojected as an image of an ideal world, a transcendent space and eternal time outside this This world of death and strife.

"doing

non-doing"

is not a mere

antihumanistic

pas

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son brings together into one psychological fact the fourmeanings of the term mu-i, namely: (1) adding nothing artificial in deference towhat is natural; (2) that which does not change and is not subject to birth-and-death (i.e., the tradi tionalBuddhist notion of asamskrta as opposed to samskrta); (3) not doing any Daoist political theoryof educating others thing [willfulor artificial] ;and (4) the of one's great virtue and lack of egoistic desire (i.e., with naturally by example out depending on external rules ofmorality and ritual).37

we are led to projection, however, ceases to function as an expedient means if is no path thatcould connect thisotherworld to theone in thinkthat there which we dwell. In fact,what Zen teaches is that these realms are not separated, and one can lay hold ofmu-i right in the midst of u-i. In this way the awakened per

Nishitani has further developed this multiple Zen perspective of "non-doing" (mu-i) in dialogue with Western philosophers including Nietzsche and Heidegger. Jan van Bragt, in his translation of Nishitani's Religion and Nothingness, has skillfully rendered the opposing term u-i (samskrta) here as

"being-at-doing." This being-at-doing, according toNishitani, is a matter of karma; in other words, the vicious circle of volitional action and the disposi tions thatboth result from thesewillful acts and compel us on to furtheracts. This existence as being-at-doing has "the character of an inexhaustible task that we canmaintain our existence in time has been imposed on us, which means that only under theformof constantly doing something.Being in timeconsists essen tially in being obliged to ceaselessly to be doing something."38 This ceaseless cycle of compulsory/volitional activity and debt can only come to an end by

spiraling return to what he calls "the field of samsara-s/ve-nirvana" (RN 275/250). The "great negation" of emptiness or sunyata does not put an end to all activity,but clears theground fora radically different kind of ceaseless activ one no longer centered on the ego and producing karmic debt. On the field ity,
of samsara-sive-nirvana, "constant

abandoning "the standpoint of karma," and by a conversion frombeing-at-doing to non-doing (mu-i). And yet, as we might expect, Nishitani stresses that this conversion does not settledown on "the field of nirvana," but rathercomes full circle in a 360-degree

.. takes the at-doing. shape of non-doing." Now "all ourwork takes on the char acter of play," for here "working and playing become manifest fundamentally and at bottom as sheer, elemental doing," or what Buddhism calls "playful

doing

is constant

non-doing,"

and

"all being

more earnest thanwhen engaged in play" (RN 281/255). The child at earnest play serves as an image for the "radical spontaneity" thatcharacterizes life after the extinction of thewill.

samadhi" (Jp.yuge-zammai) (RN 211-79/252-53). Nishitani uses the image of the child to depict the "dharmic naturalness" (Jp. jinen-h?ni) of an innocent activity that is at once play and elemental earnestness; "for the child is never

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Bret W.Davis Nishitani on the Limits of Nietzsche's of Nihilism

Self-Overcoming Does

I 1)? In his earlier book, The Self-Overcoming ofNihilism, Nishitani himself most insightful interpretationsof Nietzsche's closeness to develops one of the Zen Buddhism by focusing on Nietzsche's notions of eternal recurrence, amor fati, and play. The experience of theeternal recurrenceof the same,Nishitani points out, threat

this "playful samadhi" not remind us, however, ofNietzsche's own image of "the child" as the third metamorphosis of the spiritwho represents "a new a game, a self-propelled wheel, a first movement, a sacred 'Yes'" (Z beginning,

moves at one with theworld." "This idea," he goes on to say, "could be thought of as close to theBuddhist idea of 'karma'; however, Nietzsche's standpoint is a fundamentally creative one" (SN 78/50 tm).This "creativity"would mark a deci an sive difference, foramor fati would not be amatter of suffering external com pulsion, but would mean that the "world appears as the 'playful' activity of will to power and at the same time as fate" (SN 75/48). Commenting on Nietzsche's lines: "Fate, says the grumbler, the fool calls it?play," Nishitani writes: "To immerse oneself in the 'play' of the samsaric world and its groundless activity, and to live it to theutmost, is the 'pantheistic' life" ofNietzsche's new Dionysian "religion." Amor fati would be amatter of joyful participation in the "divine play" world." Here both theconcepts of "neces (g?ttliches Spiel) of the"worlding of the ( sity" and "will" would be eliminated, suggestsNietzsche at one point WP1060), and Nishitani interpretsthis to imply that"complete fate comes tobe, just as it is,

will turns whereby necessity (Notwendigkeit) becomes one with freedom.Here the into love of fate, and fate is united with the self.Nishitani interprets Nietzsche's phrase egofatum to imply that"theworld moves at one with the self, and the self

ens tocrush the will with the will is strong weight of fatalisticnecessity.Only if the enough to affirmlife?all of life?unconditionally could itwithstand the testof thisgreatestweight; only thencould itundergo a "turnof need" (Wende derNot)

complete freedom," and "effortremains effortand yet becomes effortless" (SN 95/62 tm). Nishitani concludes thatthis"turnof need" intoamorfatimarks thepointwhere one finds "the self-overcoming of nihilism itselfin Nietzsche" (SN 103/68). "What Nietzsche means in speaking of becoming a 'child', and what he calls 'my' inno

eternal recurrence ofwhat ismeaningless' is for thefirsttime shed from thebase most remark of the soul" (SN 103/67 tm).This "laughter,"writes Nishitani, is "the able feature of Nietzsche's 'religion'," and something comparable to itcan per has attained the stateof being capable unique religion that haps be found only in that of laughter,namely, Zen Buddhism (SN 101/66).

cence (being without guilt), is participation in the world-play; and this is at once When the world and itseternal recurrencebecome the laugh and 'folly'. laughter terof the soul, not only the spiritof gravity but also nihilism as 'nihilityor the

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Yueshan (Jp. One could perhaps substitute thename Zarathustra for Yakusan) as thecharacter in theZen poem: 'Once, directly above a lonelymountain peak, moon: a cry of laughter" (see SN 102/66-67 tm). the clouds parted. Beneath the most striking accounts of laughter inThus Spoke Zarathustra, the Of the many no doubt that of the shepherd after he spits out the head of the snake: "No is longer shepherd, no longer human?one changed, radiant, laughing! Never yet on earth has a human being laughed as he laughed!" (Z III 2.2). And yet, does Zarathustra himself ever learn to laugh this radiant, over-human laughter? Nietzsche writes rather thata "thirst" and "yearning [Sehnsucht] for this laugh ter" gnaws on Zarathustra. Could perhaps the future laughter thatZarathustra yearned forbe found echoing from thedistant past of theEast?39

with yearn Nishitani comments on this passage: "Zarathustra's soul thirsts for this laughter; it is his yearning for the?bermensch. This is the stand ing point of Nietzsche as one who had lived through nihilism; this is the self-overcoming of nihilism in him" (SN 103/68 tm). The phrase "the self overcoming of nihilism" occurs in a passage from one of Nietzsche's note books,40 and is followed with theparenthetical remark: "the attempt to sayYes to everything thathas hitherto been negated." Did Nietzsche attain to thisulti

mate Yes-saying standpoint?Did he in fact leave nihilism "behind, outside him self" (WP Preface 3)? Or is his thoughtnot rather structuredby the teleological Yes projection of the "goal" of theoverman who will one day be capable of this

willing new values, by positing new goals? Ueda Shizuteru, Nishitani's successor in the traditionof theKyoto School, suggests rather thatnihilism can be leftbehind, notwhen a new value or goal is willed, but when we are able to let ourselves be emptied of thisdemand for an answer to the"why," thatis,when we learn to live "withoutwhy" (ohneWarum), like the rose ofAngelus Silesius's poem: "The rose iswithout why; itblooms

will to power." What he laments is the disparate plurality of the "voice of their goals, values, and peoples: "A thousand goals have therebeen so far, for there have been a thousand peoples. Only theyoke for the thousand necks is still lack ing: theone goal is lacking.Humanity stillhas no goal" (ZI 15). In a well-known passage fromhis notebooks, Nietzsche writes: "What does nihilismmean? That thehighest values devaluate themselves. The goal is lacking; the answer to the "why?" [Warum?] is lacking" (WP 2 tm). But can nihilism be "overcome" by

saying? "I tried to affirm it myself?alas!"41 In the firstuse of the term "will to power," Zarathustra tells us that "a tablet of the good hangs over every people" as the "tablet of theirovercomings" and

because

Zen does away with even the excessive expression "of itself" (Jp. onozukard), and says simply: "mountain ismountain; water iswater," "the flower red; the

itblooms."42 Zen goes yet a step further, according toUeda, in that it leaves behind thevery quest forany "because" in answer to a "why," including thatof a negative response (the "withoutwhy"), and speaks more intimatelyof "water, of itself, Ultimately, writes Ueda, flowing forth;a flower, of itself,red."43

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willow green."44Ueda writes that where Nietzsche's thoughtdoes approach and intimate such a direct and extreme affirmationof life, it is only here and there in those places where he intimates a "dropping off of the will" and a "forgetting of power" in an ekstasis of natural and playful activity.45 Nishitani, who began writing on Nietzsche by comparing him with Meister

with having pursued furtherthe limits of Eckhart, in the end credits the latter the question of themeaning of life. "Where meaning is pushed to its extreme, meaninglessness shows up. And yet... to say here that life as such ismeaning

through nihility to gush forth and life as absolute death-s/ve-life." If Eckhart more nearly approaches the Zen Buddhist standpoint of sunyata or absolute noth "the nihility of Nietzsche's nihilism should be called a standpoint of ingness, relative absolute nothingness" (RN 75/66). If Eckhart was able to "self-overcome"

less is to say that life is truly living itself-It is thepoint that Meister Eckhart calls Leben ohne Warum" (RN 202/180). According toNishitani, "Nietzsche does not seem to have attained Eckhart's standpoint of an absolute nothingness that takes its stand on the immediacy of everyday life," and this is said to reflect "the difference between a nihilityproclaiming that 'God isdead' and an absolute way nothingness reaching a point beyond even 'God' ;or between life forcing its

Nietzsche

theism more radically still than could do so with nihilistic atheism, forNishitani thiswas possible only because Eckhart in the end speaks of breaking through and standing emp tied of both self-will and thewill God (see RN 73/64). For Nishitani, only by lettinggo of both the assertion of self-will and thedependence on a higher will can we step back throughnihilism to a "the field of emptiness" as a groundless

ground of earnest play.While Nietzsche's notion of theUnschuld des Werdens measure of any teleological gauge," approaches this "pure activity beyond the to a "standpoint of will" (see RN 285/258 and in the end it remains tethered

292/265).40 will topower is twofold.To begin with, he For Nishitani, theproblem with the will topower ultimately remains "something" external argues that insofar as the to the self, that is, "something conceived of in the third person as an 'it', ithas yet to shed the character of 'being something', that is, of being a Seiendes" (RN What is at stake here ismore than a matter of thepossible delayed 237/216 tm). of influenceofHeidegger's interpretation "Nietzsche's metaphysics."47 The ques will topower expresses the innermost tionofwhether the wellsprings of lifegoes to theheart ofNishitani's engagement with Nietzsche's thought,an engagement

thatfirsttook shape in an importantessay written in 1938 while Nishitani was, in fact, inFreiburg attendingHeidegger's lectures on Nietzsche. This essay, entitled "Nietzsche's Zarathustra andMeister Eckhart," is a remarkable attempt to show of that there is a "dialectic of life," a reaffirmation human existence made possi ble only by way of its thorough negation, which can be found at work in both Nietzsche's radical atheism and inEckhart's radical theism.This essay was later

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minable ecstatic openness at the abyssal ground of the self. Hence, when Nishitani later comes to criticize thewill to power as "some means that the selfwould remain thing" that remains "external" to the self, this still determined by a reified notion of itself, stilldriven by a power thatremains most originary wellsprings of activity.As long as thewill to power alien to its does not "completely lose itsconnotation of being an other forus" (RN 251 ?234), we remain bound to a determination of a drive, a lust for power, that remains

put at thehead ofNishitani's firstbook, The Philosophy ofRadical Subjectivity. "Radical subjectivity," forNishitani, refersultimately to "the self-realization of bottomlessness" (dattei no jikaku),4S that is, thebecoming aware of the indeter

the sake of power" ( II12). The freedom of the self is limited by its inability to step back beneath and beyond its determination by thewill to power; what life cannot overcome in the end, apparently, is thedetermination of life itselfas thewill to power. For Nishitani, thismeans that the standpoint of thewill to power falls shortof the ecstatic "non-ego" (Sk. an?tman; Jp. muga) of the "the self that is not a self," the self that is truly itselfonly in always already standing

outside the indeterminable freedom and abyssal openness of "radical subjec writes thateven thosewho command must Nietzsche, as amatter of fact, tivity." thewill to power, as even the greatest soul cannot help but "risk life for obey

outside itself in a non-egocentric engagement with others.Nishitani writes that thewill to power may depict a "self that is not a self" a self that is driven to exceed itself,but it does not ultimately express the spontaneous freedom of a "self 'thatis not self (RN 231/216). The self of non-ego would recover itself (its

will to power, which has to do not just with its character as a "something," but with its character as a "will." According toNishitani, all "standpoints of will" are in the end bound to one type or another of "self-centeredness," be it thatof an individual or a collective egoism, or thatof a self-will backed up by thewill of a personal God (RN 222-23/202-3). Stepping back to the standpoint of non

aboriginal wellsprings of activity) by abandoning its self-centeredness, that is, by ecstatically standing out into a relation of dependent co-origination with that which and with those who are not itself,but in relation with which and with whom the self ex-sists. This brings us to the second reason forNishitani's dissatisfaction with the

neighbor and every other" that stems from an awareness of the "non-duality of self and other" (RN 281/255).

will' thatunderlies every typeof self-centeredness. It implies an ori toward 'the entation directly opposite to thatofwill" (RN 276/251 tm).By stepping back to this field "beyond all standpoints of any kind related towill," the self as non ego recovers a "radical spontaneity" togetherwith a "responsibility to every

ego on the "field of sunyata" (Jp.ku no bd) is possible only by breaking through all such transmutationsof self-centeredwilling. Nishitani thus writes that what is "essentially implied in the standpoint of sunyata is an absolute negativity

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overcoming of nihilism, as we have seen, is said tohave stopped shortat a stand point of "relative absolute nothingness" (RN 75/66). Nietzsche's nihilism exposes thewill to power underlying our highest values, but itdoes not break

For Nishitani, this aboriginal standpoint is not reached by willfully "tran scending" nihilism, but by way ofwhat he calls "trans-descendence," that is, by stepping back through the relative nothingness of the field of nihility to the absolute nothingness of the field of sunyata.49Nietzsche's attempt at a self

ofMahay ana thatNishitani had claimed, already in The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism, "cannot yet be reached even by a nihilism that overcomes nihilism, even though the latter may reach in thatdirection" (SN 185/180 tm).

Mve-responsibility. Nishitani finds the purest expression of this "true freedom that is not simply a matter of the freedom of thewill" (RN 314/285) in the Buddhist standpoint of non-ego on the field of sunyata. This is the standpoint

through beneath even this determination of life to a point where "the radical autonomy of the self and theradical circuminsessional relation of self and other" (RN 305/277 tm) flow forth from the same bottomless wellspring of freedom

BuddhismContraNietzsche asWill-fullNihilism
I began by explicating Nietzsche's critique of Buddhism as a passive nihilism, and went on to respond to his charges from a (Mahayana Zen) Buddhist per point fromwhich it appears that itmay, in fact, be Nietzsche who remained matter is the role unable to finally let nihilism overcome itself.The crux of the of thewill in nihilism and its overcoming. The role of thewill inNietzsche and Buddhism is the pivotal point of an Auseinandersetzung between the two. But Western philosophers, the connection between nihilism and theproblem of for thewill does not firstappear when Buddhism is brought into the picture. The
spective. This response, however, has led us beyond a mere "defense" to a stand

will is also the pivotal point in Heidegger's prolonged confrontation with Nietzsche, and recalling what is at stake forHeidegger can help us to under stand the contemporary significance of a Buddhist critique of thewill. Nietzsche defines nihilism as a devaluation of our highest values thatresults

of "nihilism" and its "overcoming." According toHeidegger, thinking in terms world on the of "values" is itselfa symptom of nihilism, insofar as itcenters the perspective of the subject and his evaluating will. Heidegger writes that "Nietzsche's metaphysics is nihilistic insofar as it is value thinking,and insofar Moreover, as the latter is grounded inwill to power as the principle of all valuation."50 the very attempt to "overcome" nihilism ismisguided, "not because

from decadence and weakness of will. Accordingly, he argues that "overcom ing nihilism" demands a revaluation of all values out of a revitalized strength of will. This is not, however, either the firstor the last possible understanding

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it is insuperable, but because all willing-to-overcome is inappropriate to its essence."51 Attempting to willfully overcome nihilism bymeans of positing new values would, then,be like tryingto put out a firewith kerosene. In conclusion

is not unique toHeidegger, and in factHeidegger's post-Nietzschean interpre tation of nihilism in some ways echoes a pre-Nietzschean critique. The first philosophical development of the idea of nihilism is generally ascribed to Friedrich Jacobi, who in a famous lettercriticized Fichte's idealism as falling into nihilism. According to Jacobi, Fichte's absolutization of the ego (the "absolute I" thatposits the "not-I") is an inflationof subjectivity thatdenies the absolute transcendence of God.53 Critically supplementing Heidegger's inter Michael Allen Gillespie pretation of nihilism as therise ofwillful subjectivity,

to his prolonged Auseinandersetzung with Nietzsche, Heidegger claims that "Nietzsche's metaphysics is not an overcoming of nihilism. It is the ultimate entanglement in nihilism."52 It should be noted, however, that linking nihilism and theproblem of the will

traces the roots ofmodern nihilism back to the latemedieval reinterpretationof will. He argues thatthis inflationofGod's absolute God as absolute and irrational over humans triggereda reactive assertion of human power, which in the power end prepares theway for the modern transference of this character of absolute irrationalwill onto human beings. "Nihilism, as itwas originally understood, was thus not the result of the degeneration ofman and his concomitant inabil

ityto sustain a God. Itwas rather theconsequence of theassertion of an absolute human will that rendersGod superfluous and thus for all intentsand purposes dead."54 Gillespie concludes that Nietzsche's proposed "solution to nihilism," in the image of an overman as a figure ofmaximum will to power, is in fact a

historical (and theological) supplement toHeidegger's conjunction of nihilism with theproblem of thewill.56 Critics ofHeidegger's interpretation often, and notwithout good reason, take issue with his claim that Nietzsche's critique ofmetaphysics succeeded only in "inverting" traditional otherworldly doctrines by positing a "metaphysics of the

"turn to exactly thatnotion thatpreviously was conceived to be the essence of nihilism."55We shall later need to question whether this interpretationsuffices to account for Nietzsche's complex?and perhaps in the end ambivalent? image(s) of the overman, but Gillespie's analysis does provide an illuminating

morphosis, growing and declining in power, shifting in size and transforming

in character.

is no noumenal "Will," but always only ever a multiplicity of "punctuations of will [Willens-Punktationen] thatare constantly increasing or losing their power" (WP 715 tm).The competing "wills topower" are always inprocesses ofmeta

absolute subjectivity ofwill topower."57 Nietzsche, in fact,breaks with both the ontology of the "subject" and Schopenhauer's metaphysical claim that thewill is thenoumenon behind all phenomena. According to Nietzsche's thought,there

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685) and as "the innermost essence of being" (WP 693). This assertion, that the will to power is the single defining characteristic of all processes of becoming, can also be found in various key passages of Nietzsche's published texts. will topower" Zarathustra proclaims, "Where I found the living, thereI found the ( II12), and inBeyond Good and Evil Nietzsche ventures furtherto hypothe size thatnot only could our "entire instinctive life" be explained as the devel will topower, but also thatone could "determine opment and ramification of the to power. The world viewed from the all efficient force univocally as?will inside... would be will topower and nothing else" (BGE36; see also WP 1067).58 In this sense Nietzsche claims: "thewill topower is theultimate fact [das let zte Faktum] towhich we come down."59 It is also this claim that Heidegger dis

Nevertheless, thewill to power remains the defining impulse throughout all this transformationand multiplicity, and it is in this sense that Nietzsche writes of thewill to power as "the ultimate ground and character of all change" (WP

Nietzsche is questionable tous."60 putes when he writes: "What seems certain to confrontationwith Nietzsche leads tohis attempt tohistorically sit Heidegger's

history of being, namely, the epoch of the culmination of themetaphysics of subjectivity, an epoch that in turnprepares for the extreme epoch of nihilism and the technological "will towill" (derWille zum Willen). Heidegger's own later thought attempts to anticipate a turn (Kehre) from this extreme assertion would allow humans ofwill to a Gelassenheit, a releasement from thewill that

uate thepervasiveness of thewill to power. For Heidegger, thewill to power is indeed "the ultimate fact towhich we come down" ina particular epoch of the

to engage themselves (sich einlassen) with beings in a way that "lets thembe." This "letting be" would neither set human beings up as "masters of the earth" (see WP 958), nor would it indicate a mere passivity (a weakness or deference ofwill), but would intimate a kind of "active engagement" radically other than thewill to power.61 As we have seen, Zen Buddhism also intimates a way of being-in-the-world other thanwilling in its notions of "playful samadhi," "dharmic naturalness," and "the doing of non-doing." Here too this standpoint is reached only by way

of a radical critique of thewill. I shall now consider the question of how and to will Nietzsche's notion of the what extent thisBuddhism critiquewould apply to to power. To the extent that thewill to power could be understood as a form of tanh?, a critique of thewill to power would lie at the very heart of Buddhism. The second of The Four Noble Truths, we recall, states that tanh? ("craving" or "thirst") is the root cause of "suffering." Craving inBuddhism is broken down into three aspects, k?ma-tanh? or "the craving for sensual pleasure," bhava-tanh? or "the craving for continuing exis
tence or becoming," and vibhava-tanha or "the craving for non-existence."

most immediately appar of While frustration thecraving forpleasure may be the ent cause of instances of suffering, the "affective ground" that pervades the

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whole of samsaric existence is perhaps best understood as bhava-tanh? or "the as "'thirsting' after craving for existence." As Morrison argues, bhava-tanh?, or experience or object," underlies k?ma-tanh? as thirsting any form of being after specific sensual experiences, and vibhava-tanh? could be understood tobe the outcome of continual frustrationof the first two aspects of craving. Tanh? as such, then, is not any particular craving, but rathera "voluntaristicmetaphor" most pervasive affective characteristic of samsaric that"attempts to capture the

existence."62

Tanh?, in fact, is one of several "voluntaristic metaphors" that characterize samsaric existence forBuddhism, another of which is "karma." Karma origi nally meant literally "action" or "doing," but in theBuddhist context it comes to take on the specificmeaning of "volitional action" that stems from craving,

that is, action thatcenters on and supports thepersistence of theego. The Buddha states: "it is volition (cetano) that I call karma. Having willed, one acts through body, speech and mind."63 Thus, although strictlyspeaking theBuddhist ontol ogy of dependent co-origination does not admit of a "firstcause" (a more spe cific sense of craving is, in fact, listed as one of the links in the twelvefoldwheel willful craving is "themost palpable and imme of causation), itcan be said that diate cause, the 'principal thing' and the 'all pervading thing'" that sustains and pervades thewheel of samsara. "According to theBuddha's analysis," writes

Walpola

will inpart back to the modern problem of the nihilism. Nishitani also traces the to overcome the problem of egoistic will by positing a monotheistic attempt transcendent Ego andWill of God. He argues (in a manner not unrelated to Nietzsche's critique of thehypocrisies of the ascetic priest's feigned deference of will) that here "self-centeredness appears once again, only this time on a higher plane: as thewill of self backed up by thewill of God" (RN 223/203). The "death of God" at thehands ofmodern secularism leaves us, according to Nishitani, in an ambivalent situation.On the one hand, freedom from religious will ofGod) allows humans teleology (i.e., from time structuredaccording to the

Rahula, "all the troubles and strife in theworld, from littlepersonal quarrels in families to greatwars between nations and countries, arise out of this selfish 'thirst.'"64 will as the "infi and develops theBuddhist critique of the Nishitani interprets modern predicament of surfaces in the nite drive" of "self-will" that manifestly

to recover their autonomy, to become "autotelic." On the other hand, the self centered autonomy of thewill is not yet a true autonomy, but ultimately finds itself subject to an aimless "infinite drive." In a time of secularism, writes Nishitani, "every function of life, as something that is autotelic and therefore aimless, is given over to theunrestricted pursuit of itself. It is here that the infi nite drive, or what may be termed 'self-will', is to be seen" (RN 2591236). The volitional "autonomy" of the ego is only apparent insofar as it remains driven by itspassions. Here we find that,just as the "passivity" of a submission

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While

the controlled" (RN 95/84) in the complete mechanization of (human) nature. science and technology are developed under the auspices of increasing human freedom and power over nature, at "the extreme of the freedom of the

to the will ofGod conceals a sublated self-will, the apparent "autonomy" of sec ularism conceals a tendency toward a reversion to "animality." This ironic loss of autonomy is compounded by the phenomenon of the "controller becoming

self in controlling the laws of nature,man shows the countertendency to forfeit his human nature and to mechanize it."Hence, one finds a double loss of auton omy in an extreme age of secularism. Human self-assertion over against God

and nature leads to a situationwhere the "emergence of themechanization of human life and the transformationofman into a completely non-rational sub ject inpursuit of his desires are fundamentally bound up with one another" (RN 98/87). In thismanner, Nishitani understands the historical emergence of nihilism as a failed assertion of human autonomy that succumbs to the infinite drive of self-will. Nishitani interpretsthisparadoxical symbiosis of assertion and loss ofwill in termsof a "demythologized" notion of karma. Behind the scientific rationality and technological will ofmodern human being, Nishitani writes, lurks the same "infinite drive" that the ancient Buddhist doctrine of karma sought to expose.65 In the great yet ambivalent conversion of secularization, writes Nishitani, "at the bottom of the elevation of human reason to independence, we find hidden an important event: the 'being' of human being becomes a matter of will" (RN

258/235 tm).Yet the standpoint of secularism still conceals the character of this will as an infinitedrive. Here the notion of karma can help, for the standpoint of karma "implies this self-awareness" (RN 260/237). Karma, writes Nishitani, is amatter of "being-at-doing" (Jp.u-i; Sk. samskrta), a self-willing that is conditioned ("willed") by the dispositions created by past acts, andwhich continually createsmore "debts" in itsattempt topay offold ones.

Critically appropriatingHeidegger's early phenomenological analysis of being in-the-worldby way of linking theBuddhist notion of karma with Heidegger's own later critique of the nihilistic "will towill," Nishitani describes how our

never radically departing from itsown "remains shutup perpetually within itself, "the darkness of ignorance" home-ground" (RN264/240 tm).Nishitani interprets is generally understood alongside tanh? to be (Jp.mumy?; Sk. avidy?)?which

everyday karmic Dasein remains tethered to itself,"tying itselfup with its own world. Our everyday Dasein "endlessly stands rope," even as it steps out into the and yet at the same time, in this everyday mode of ek-stasis, outside itself,"

this"radical self-enclosure, the self the root cause of sufferinginBuddhism?as of endless karmic activity" (RN 266/242 tm). centeredness that is the wellspring The notion of karma, as we have seen, can also help us tounderstand how exis tence as will is strungbetween voluntarism and fatalism. "The karma thatrelates to something by lusting after it is at once voluntary and compulsory" (RN

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with thatfreedom. Here thepresent karma reaches awareness under its form of as drive, in its 'willful' essence" (RN 271/246). Whereas inThe infinity infinite Self Overcoming ofNihilism, Nishitani characterized Nietzsche's amor fati as a will topower standpointwhere the "world appears as the 'playful' activity of the and at the same time as fate," and claims thatthisgoes beyond theBuddhist idea

271/246). One passage of Religion and Nothingness seems to imply thatwe should finally understand the ambiguity of Nietzsche's amor fati in this sense. "While thepresent karma is here the freework of the self, itappears at the same time to be possessed of the character of fate.Fate arises to awareness in unison

of undergoing the conversion to the freedommade possible on thefield of sun yata, insofar as the idea of eternal recurrence does not allow for the creation of something absolutely new. Nietzsche's radical nihilism would stop short at an

of karma in that amor fati depicts a fundamentally creative standpoint (SN Nietzsche's standpoint falls short 75-79/48-50), now Nishitani concludes that

Nishitani's thought thus combines an analysis of themodern problem of nihilism with a Buddhist critique of thewill, and his profound appreciation of Nietzsche's thought, in the end, cannot evade a confrontation over thequestion of thewill to power. Nishitani, however, having remarked on what he sees as

will would stop shortat exposing the back throughnihilism, but it problem of the as infinite drive, just as the awareness of karmic voluntarism/fatalism in Buddhism only prepares us for theultimate task of cutting the roots of craving.

"ecstatic transcendence to nihility," at an awareness of a "free karma," but this drive would not yet be a "true freedom or creativ union of freedom and infinite will topower would be a step on thepath ity" (RN 270/246). The doctrine of the

the limits ofNietzsche's thought inReligion and Nothingness, never returns to a detailed encounterwith Nietzsche after thispoint, being less interested incom matter of his own with a particular thinkerthanwith following the ing to terms He did reportedly admit in conversation increasingly Zen-inspired philosophy. with Graham Parkes that "the parallels between Nietzsche's thinking and his own run fartherthanhe was prepared to allow inReligion and Nothingness"66 Yet, even if thewill to power can be wholly reduced to the notion of an "infi nite drive" normore than to the "metaphysical subjectivism" ofHeidegger's cri tique, we need to ask whether a decisive gap remains between Nishitani's

the fact that Nietzsche explicitly denies thathis notion of the will topower could be understood as a mere "craving" (Begierde) or "drive" (Trieb). According to was Schopenhauer's "basic misunderstanding of the will" to think Nietzsche, it that "craving, instinct,drive were the essence of will." In fact, thisunderstand ing is said to betray a great "symptom of the exhaustion or theweakness of the will: for thewill is precisely thatwhich treats cravings as theirmaster and

will topower over theques standpoint ofZen andNietzsche's philosophy of the tion of egoism. Before we begin to explore this question, we need to give consideration to

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appoints to them theirway and measure" (WP 84). The will, according to will to exist, or thewill to live, but the will topower, "the Zarathustra, is not the will tobe master" ( II12).67 And yet, this will to expand one's power is, in fact, also implied in theBuddhist notion of craving.Walpola Rahula explains that "the terms 'thirst', 'volition', 'mental volition' and 'karma' all denote the same thing: theydenote thedesire, thewill to be, to exist, to re-exist, to become more
to grow more and more, to accumulate more and more. "68 And a stan

and more,

dard Buddhist dictionary in Japan defines bhava-tanh?, notmerely as thewill to exist, but as "the will to expand the ego."69 Hence, theBuddhist critique of craving is also aimed at the lust for egoistic expansion, and not just at theblind will to live. The "ego" as a given substantial entity, to be sure, exists forNietzsche no more than itdoes forBuddhism. There is neither such a thingas "will" or a sub stance called "ego" forNietzsche (see BGE 16-17; WP 488); indeed Nietzsche states his "hypothesis" as "the subject as multiplicity." Nevertheless, the "only

force that exists" in the organization and dispersion of thismultiplicity "is of the same kind as thatofwill: a commanding of other subjects, which thereupon change" (WP 490). Hence, while on the one hand Nietzsche claims that "will ing seems tome to be above all something complicated," on the other hand he claims that the will is "above all an affect,and specifically the affect of the com mand" (BGE 19).While "our body is but a social structurecomposed ofmany souls," the ego is constructed by subjecting weaker "under-souls" or "under wills" to a stronger rulingwill (ibid.). There is no substantial unchanging ego or "will," but ratheramovement between organization and disintegration. "The

multitude and disgregation of impulses and the lack of any systematic order among them result in a 'weak will' ; theircoordination under a single predomi nant impulse results in a 'strongwill'" (WP 46). In short, while forNietzsche there is no ego as a given, there is the task of constructing an ego, of organiz ing theplurality of disparate impulses by submitting them to the rule of a com manding will to power. Buddhism, on theother hand, speaks directly against thewillful construction of an ego, and indeed sees the task tobe thatof uprooting the rulingwill behind

this construction. In the Dhammapada we are instructed to "cut off the love of the ego with your own hands,"70 and nirvana is attained at the point where one can exclaim: "Now I see you, O builder of thishouse [of the ego], all of your rafters are broken, your ridgepole is shattered.Never again need you build a me. My mind... has achieved the extinction of craving."71We have house for seen above that the "non-ego" thatappears after thisdisintegration of thewill

ful ego is not a matter of sheer extinction, but is, inNishitani's words, "the self that is not a self." Such a non-ego would no longer be centered on its self interests,but would be capable of compassionate altruism, of giving without return.But forNietzsche such a disintegration of the ego is a matter of a deca

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dent "disintegration of the instincts," and decadence paves the road to nihilism. which self-interest "An 'altruistic' wilts away?remains morality?a morality in a bad sign under all circumstances" (A 35). To overcome nihilism one must

and any postmodern or comparative attempt to skip lightlyover such passages as the following threatens not only to forgo a critical confrontation with his but todrain from it its shock and itsforce. "The 'ego' subdues and kills," thought, writes Nietzsche, "it operates like an organic cell: it is a robber and is violent.

indeed first"become an annihilator and break values," but this only in order to world. clear the ground for thewilling of a new organization for the ego and its are yetmany houses to be built!?Thus "There spoke Zarathustra" (ZU 12). we run up will topower, then, InNietzsche's affirmationof the egoism of the against a formidable limit to the search for "ironic affinities"with Buddhism,

matters through to the ground, resisting all sentimentalweakness: ically think life itself is essentially appropriation, injury,overpowering what is alien and weaker; suppression, hardness, imposition of one's own forms, incorporation and at least, at itsmildness, exploitation. . . . [Life] simply iswill to power" (?G?259tm). If this is das letzteFaktum towhich Nietzsche's thought comes down, then what would be an inalterable reality forhim is akin to the alterable condition of existence forBuddhism?the willful nihilism of samsara. The will topower, as an egoistic force thatexpands thedomain of the ego by subjugating others to its make possible a fundamental con rule, is the root thatneeds tobe cut inorder to to a radically otherway of being-in-the-world. The radical step version of life back to this other,more originary way of being is thoughtof inBuddhism not only as a recovery of a natural spontaneity, but also as a re-tapping of an abo riginal wellspring of an active compassion (Sk. karund)72 that is radically other than the will toappropriation, injury, and overpowering what is alien andweaker.

unshakable faith that to a being such as 'we are' other beings must be subordi nate by nature and have to sacrifice themselves" (BGE 265). "Here we must rad

Itwants to regenerate itself?pregnancy. Itwants to give birth to itsgod and see all mankind at its feet" (WP 768). The "noble soul," he tells us, "accepts this fact of egoism without any question mark." "At the risk of displeasing innocent ears I propose: egoism belongs to the nature of the noble soul?I mean that

Elevated

Egoism

and theAmbivalent

of the Will toPower

Self-Overcoming

would have been to accept the judgment thatBuddhism is nothingmore than a passive nihilism. For not only does Nietzsche's thought experiment call into

To end a confrontationbetween Nietzsche and Buddhism by concluding that the former is nothingmore than a "willful nihilist," however, would be as rash as it

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me." The selfishness that is "whole and holy," on theother hand, "Everything for is that "gift-giving virtue" that forces "all things to and into yourself that they may flow back out of your well as the gifts of your love" ( 122). Zarathustra's moun storybegins by relatinghow he grows weary of his wisdom on his solitary "like a bee thathas gathered toomuch honey," voluntarily goes taintop, and, under to empty his overfull cup, topreach to others thevirtue of "becoming sac rifices and gifts yourselves." Does Zarathustra's gift-giving virtue not remind us of thefirstof the "perfections" of theBodhisattva, the "perfection of giving"

feeling of strength that desires to overpower, to compel to itself, to lay to its heart?the drive of the artist in relation tohis material" (WP 873). Similarly, he tells us thatonly a "sick selfishness" evidences the "thievish greed" that says,

'non-ego', theprofoundly average creature, the species man, who desires topre serve himself." But this, claims Nietzsche, is precisely a "misunderstanding of the part of common natures who know nothing whatever of the egoism?on of conquest and the insatiability of great love, nor of the overflowing pleasures

preservation and theordinary notions of "egoism" and "selfishness" depict only will topower. "In ordinary 'egoism' it is precisely the degenerative forms of the

question the "slanderous intent" thathas been "imprinted for ages" on the lan guage of willful appropriation, but he also tells us that the craving for self

however, the greatest and best warrior conquers himself."73Walter Kaufmann, who stresses the element of self-mastery inNietzsche's philosophy, alludes to section 33 of the Dao De Jing (where we find the lines: "He who conquers oth ers has power; but he who conquers himself is [truly] strong") in connection with a passage where Nietzsche writes: "I have found strength where one does

without return?Can Zarathustra's "going under" be compared to the last of the Ten Oxherding Pictures, where, in an outpouring of the emptying of emptiness, the old Zen recluse returns to the marketplace with outstretched hands? Once again, we encounter a number of ironic affinities. Ithas sometimes been Nietzsche's emphasis on^//-mastery resonates with the words pointed out that from theDhammapada: "One may conquer a million men in a single battle;

not look for it: in simple,mild, and pleasant people, without the least desire to me a sign of inner rule?and, conversely, thedesire to rule has often appeared to

weakness."74

on Nietzsche's path of self-overcoming? "Those were steps forme," writes Nietzsche, "and I have climbed over them: to thatend I had to pass over them. Yet they thought that I wanted to retireon them" (TI 142). Indeed, many of the

Yet to simply end our discussion here by rounding out the differences once would be equally premature.What the confrontation again into ironic affinities with a Buddhist critique of thewill can help us to do, however, is to return to movement ofNietzsche's thought with a sharpened sense for the following the Does the affirmation of thewill to power as a fundamental drive to question: overpower, subdue, and appropriate others, represent only one aspect, one step

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metamorphoses of the spirit": the camel, the lion, and the child. Is itpossible to confine Nietzsche's assertions of the crude egoism of thewill to power to the "lion stage" of his thought?Karl L?with, for example, has suggested thatwe read Nietzsche's thought as a movement from a Du sollst to an Ich will and finally to the Ich bin of the "cosmic child" at play.75The final transformation in Nietzsche's thought is said to be from thewill to power to amor fati, a "lieben" thatis "nichtmehr ein Wollen," but rather"eine nichtsmehr wollende Willigkeit, in der sich das Wollen als solches aufhebt."76 Charles Scott finds in the textof Thus Spoke Zarathustra "a movement in thepower of the idea ofwill to power

will topower can be found, as we have strongest assertions of the egoism of the with which Nietzsche later seen, beginning with Beyond Good and Evil, the text tells us thathe began "theNo-saying part of his task" (EH III 7.1). The Yes-saying part, he tells us, had been solved in his most importantbook, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The firstof Zarathustra's speeches tells of the "three

between assertion and denial ofwill.78 One could readNietzsche's assertion of the doctrine of thewill to power as an inversion of the binary opposition that posits will-lessness as the ideal. Nietzsche's genealogies would reveal that this traditional ethical ideal is in fact constructed upon that which it seeks to demo would nize and exclude, thewill to power. Yet the path of Nietzsche's thought not stop at this inversion of the traditional hierarchy, for, as Heidegger points
out, a mere countermovement necessarily remains, "as does everything 'anti',

movement of self-overcoming would not most radical possibility this In its will to power, butwould be more akin just lead to a dialectical Aufhebung of the to a Derridian deconstruction of the very regime of the language of will, that is to say, an overturning within and then breaking free of the binary opposition

toward an anticipated organization that is beyond the will-to-power dis course."77 Is itpossible, then, to speak of a movement inNietzsche's thought that leads to a self-overcoming of thewill to power?

held fast in the essence of thatover against which it moves."79 Heidegger him that in the final step of Nietzsche's thought?purportedly self acknowledges undertaken only during his last creative year (1888), just before his descent into madness?his "overturning" (Umdrehung) of Platonism became for him a "twisting free" (Herausdrehung).80 Perhaps, then, just as Nietzsche's thought would in the end twistfree of theopposition between the "true" and the "appar ent" worlds (see 77 4),81 so toowould he move beyond both the simple denial

and the simple affirmationof thewill to power. For Nietzsche, the epitome of thephilosophy of thedenial ofwill is Schopen move of his thought,his inversion of the opposi hauer; and therefore the first would be to deify what Schopenhauer demonizes. In a note that retraces tion,

the path of his own thought, Nietzsche writes: "Schopenhauer's interpretation of the 'in itself as will was an essential step; but he did not understand how to deify thiswill." Nietzsche's second step of twisting free, however, would be

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intimated in the final line of this note: "He [Schopenhauer] failed to grasp that therecan be an infinite variety ofways of being different [unendliche Arten des Anders-sein-k?nnens], even of being god" (WP 1005). Would not this "infinite variety ofways of being different" include not just a deification ofwill but also ways of being other thanwilling? movement of twisting free of the The question of whether and how far this will topower was carried out in Nietzsche's thought is perhaps best pursued not

movement from the subjective to the objective genitive in thephrase "the self will topower"? Must lifeceaselessly overcome itselfbecause overcoming of the

always overcome itself" ( II 12). And yet, when this self-overcoming is explained in termsof "life sacrificing itself?for power," is itnot explained on the basis of thewill to power? Does Nietzsche leave open the possibility of a

in the largelyNo-saying writings of his last productive year, but inhis most far reaching and Yes-saying book, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. We do indeed find in this text that the idea of thewill to power is developed in connection with the idea of "self-overcoming." Life confides its secret as: "I am thatwhich must

morphoses of the spiritatwork, with the image of the "bull" now at thepivotal middle position. The ascetic of the spirit stands there "decked out with ugly
truths," and "many thorns too adorned him?though I saw no rose. ... As yet

come even his sublimity. "If he grew tired of his sublimity, this sublime one, only then would his beauty commence." I shall consider later Nietzsche's intensely ambivalent attitude toward asceticism, but let us note here that the ascetic has not simply strayed in a wrong direction; hemust ratherpush forward on his path of self-overcoming. Here we find another version of the three meta

it is in essence thewill topower; or,might thewill topower itself in the end be overcome because life is in essence self-ove rooming? In the chapter "On Those Who are Sublime" ( II13)?which immediately follows the chapter "On Self-Overcoming," where the notion of will to power is firstdeveloped in detail?Zarathustra urges "an ascetic of the spirit" to over

and not of contempt for the earth." Perhaps not unlike certain images of the Buddha, this transformed ascetic spiritwould wander alone like a rhinoceros, or like "a bull among men, a noble hero (paravamv?ra). . . a conqueror (vijit?vin)."*2 But while Nietzsche's bull, inbellowing his "praise of everything earthly,"would already have moved beyond the "lions roar" (another Buddhist would not yet be thefinalYes-saying formof the spirit: image) thatannihilates, it
Though I love the bull's sublime neck on him, I also want [ein Erhabener]: ! ... To to see the eyes of the angel. He elevate

he has not learned laughter or beauty.... Contempt is still in his eyes, and nau sea hides around his mouth." Zarathustra ends his description here and gives his advise: "He should act like a bull, and his happiness should smell of the earth,

must stillunlearn even his heroicwill; he shallbe elevated [einGehobener] for

me, not merely one the ether itself should stand with will-less [den Willenlosen] relaxed muscles him, the and unhar

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ne s s ed will: becomes And erful:

that is most

Iwant beauty as much ... Of all evil let your kindness be your final self-conquest. this is this soul's therefore Iwant the good from you_For capable: in a dream,?by when the hero has abandoned her, she is approached,

gracious there is no one from whom

and descends

difficult for all of you sublime ones. into the visible?such descent

power I call beauty.... as from you who are pow I deem you secret: only the over

. . When .

hero. (ZII13

tm,emphasis added)

This "soul's secret" of the "overhero" (der ?ber-Held), who has relaxed or even unlearned his heroic will out of an abundance of strength,is surely one of the high points ofZarathustra's teaching. The ultimate image of theoverman would not be thatof the "blond beast" of heroic will, who revolts against a "slave moral ity"of pitywith a resurrected "mastermorality" of violent conquest, but would

be the "overhero" with the "generosity of the great-souled" (Gro?mut des Gro?gesinnten), or what Nietzsche calls elsewhere "the Roman Caesar with

Christ's soul" (WP 983). Nietzsche's subsequent No-saying books, such as theGenealogy of Morals, would thenneed to be read as fishhooks intended for "those who, prompted by me theirhands fordestroying" (EH III 7.1 ). But afterhav would offer strength, ing lured a few camels out into thedesert, and after these had become lions and

had conquered the dragon of the "Thou shalt" by roaring "I will," the ground would be cleared for the appearance of the "child." "The child is innocence and moment, a forgetting,a new beginning, a game, a self-propelled wheel, a first Would

morning, my day is breaking" ( IV 20). The world would now be conquered by Zarathustra's will; his childrenwould spread his word. Are we readers, then, to become thenew generation of camels who would bear his new tablet of val

"Yes" of thenew game of creation,we are told,would be thedawn of yet another will to power: "the spirit now wills his own will, and he who had been lost to theworld now conquers his own world" (ibid.). In the end of the book, Zarathustra pronounces: "Well then!The lion came, my children are near, Zarathustra has ripened, my hour has come: this is my

sacred 'Yes'" (ZI 1). But would this child be beyond the "I will" of the lion? the child's play no longer be driven by thewill to power? Nietzsche's answer, at least the answer we find in the text at this point, is no. The sacred

ues thatdictates "Thou shalt remain faithful to theearth," to theearth interpreted as "the eternal recurrence of the will topower"? Here we come upon an ambiva lence thatappears to runright through theheart of Zarathustra's teaching. In the end of thefirstpart of thebook, Zarathustra urges his disciples to "go away fromme and resist Zarathustra! . . .One repays a teacher badly if one I bid you loseme and find yourselves; and only always remains a pupil_Now

when you have all denied me will I returntoyou" (ZI 22). But here is theambiva lence: Does Zarathustra want to give birth to children who are free of his will, to a plurality of perspectives thatare not yoked under his one goal? Or, in the

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manner ofHegel's dialectic ofmaster and slave, does he want not justmeek sub mission, but the submission of "free and independent" wills? Does Zarathustra seek genuinely independent companions, or is he contentwith the thought: "it

turnedout thathe could not find them [companions], unless he firstcreated them mean that Zarathustra wants to one day dig up himself" (Z III 3)?What does it "the trees ofmy garden" (his children) and "place each by itself, so that it may learn solitude and defiance," if in the end this expulsion from the nest is neces sary only "so thathe [the child] may one day become my companion and a fel low creator and fellow celebrant ofZarathustra?one who writes my will onmy

would tolerate a plurality of perspectives out of a released willingness to let them be, or out of a strengthofwill that is capable of throwing itsring around a thou we can "measure the sand counter-wills. Nietzsche writes in an earlier text that

tablets" (ibid.)? Does Nietzsche recognize this tension when he narrates that my [Zarathustra' s] children," was "cook Zarathustra, "chained to the love for ing in his own juice"? The question, then, iswhether the "elevated egoism" ofNietzsche's overhero

health of a society and of individuals according to thenumber of parasites they can tolerate" (M 202). But, in the context of his developed philosophy of the will topower, would this tolerance merely be a testof the strengthof the com more free a manding will? Justas the "greater thedominating power of will, the dom may thepassions be allowed" in the "greatman" who knows how to "press

which seeks to compel all other egos to accept its own perspectival interpreta tion of theworld.84 On the other hand, however, "perspectivism" expresses an awareness of the finite limits of one's standpoint, and thus implies an openness to infiniteother points of view. Nietzsche, in fact, explicitly derides "the ridicu would be involved in decreeing from our corner thatper lous immodesty that

we shut our eyes to ourselves" (WP 426), so toowould the domi requires that will of a society, in order to secure and promote itsdominion, ultimately nating need to ignore or extinguish perspectives thatdefy appropriation. Nietzsche's between amore subtle sub elevated egoism appears to remain ambivalently torn of other perspectives83 and an engagement with them thatwould let jugation their irreducible and unappropriable otherness be. This ambivalence infects the doctrine of "perspectivism" itself.On the one hand, Nietzsche's perspectivism is explicitly aligned with egoism. "Egoism is the law of perspective applied to feelings" (GS 162). It is our needs and drives that interprettheworld, and since "every drive is a kind of lust to rule... each would like to compel all the other drives to accept one has itsperspective that it as a norm" (WP 481). The ruling drive organizes the constellation of the ego,

so too thegreat society could these magnificent monsters into service" (WP 933), strengthen itselfby toleratingameasure of freeprotest.The limitsof the strength of the rulingwill, however, would also be the limits of its tolerance. And since all wills have their limits, just as "the great egoism of our dominating will

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spectives are permitted only from thiscorner."Rather, he claims, "theworld has become 'infinite'for us all over again, inasmuch as we cannot reject thepossi may include infiniteinterpretations" (GS 374). In this sense, per bility that it

and Nietzsche openness to other interpretations, spectivism demands an infinite accordingly expresses a "profound aversion to reposing once and for all in any one total view of theworld," and even a "fascination for the opposite way of thinking" (WP 410 tm). Yet, once again, we are told that "interpretation is itselfa means of becom

this would signal a slide intodecadence and ultimately intonihilism. Perspectivism thus serves both to legitimate and to disrupt egoism, and the with remain internally tornbetween a fas images of elevated egoism we are left cination with, and a drive to appropriate, other points of view. In the end, the movement ofNietzsche's thoughtappears to leave us teeteringon the ambiva Nietzsche lent axis of the "self-overcoming of thewill to power."

ingmaster of something" (WP 643), and that the "organic process" of thewill to power demands thatother perspectives be brought under the command of a rulingwill, lest a fascination forplurality lead to a decadent fall into disorgan must obey; ization.When a will to power is not strong enough to command, it or society at large, then for and ifno will is strong enough to organize the ego

Will ReorientationsofAsceticism:A Gymnasticsof the or ItsGreatDeath?

We can bring the Auseinandersetzung between Nietzsche and Zen Buddhism to a sharp focus by comparing the role thatasceticism plays in the two.Neither the Buddhist path norNietzsche's Denkweg simply denies a role to asceticism; what to radically rethinkand reorient it. in its own way?is theydo?each The "middle way" of Buddhism, of course, explicitly rejects the ascetic self mortification of theflesh along with the opposite extreme of indulgence of the senses. "As a blade of grass when wrongly handled cuts thehand," we are told, "so also asceticism when wrongly tried leads tohell."85 When rightly employed, thispassage already suggests, ascetic practices can be harnessed for the much

more difficultpath to the extinction of craving, including theperverse cravings for non-existence and self-mutilation.The "middle way" of Buddhism is thus hardly intended tobe a simple piecemeal negotiation or a hedonistic avoidance of extremes; it is rathera radical passage throughan uprooting of craving toward an awakening to a world beyond thedualistic extremes of eternalism and anni movement is depicted as passing througha "great nega hilationism. InZen, this tion" to a "great affirmation." Nietzsche isboth fascinated and disgusted bywhat he calls the "ascetic ideal." In the "ascetic priest" he discovers thathuman being is both "the sick animal"

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What repulses Nietzsche and "the great experimenterwith himself" (GM III. 13). is the "devious paths to tyrannyover thehealthy" that the "will to power of the weakest" takes, in particular the invention of an "invertedworld" and theprop agation of a self-contradictory "will to nothingness." But Nietzsche credits the ascetic priestwith carrying out the "tremendous historical mission" of "altering the direction of ressentiment" that is, of redirecting the search for someone or something to blame for suffering inward by means of such "paradoxical and manner, the ascetic priestwas paralogical concepts" as "guilt" and "sin." In this able to "exploit thebad instinctsof all sufferersfor thepurpose of self-discipline, self-surveillance, and self-overcoming" (GM III. 16). Nietzsche finds this self overcoming atwork even in the ascetic priest's apparent denial of life. "The No

he says to lifebrings to light,as ifbymagic, an abundance of tender Yeses; even when he wounds himself, thismaster of destruction, of self-destruction?the verywound itself afterward compels him to live" (GM III. 13). Nietzsche finds his own historical mission in the self-overcoming?not in the make world, to simple eradication?of the ascetic ideal. He seeks to reinvert the thewill honest again. Instead of feigning a denial of thewill to power, he pro Nietzsche proposes "tomake asceticism once again nat poses that itbe trained. ural: in place of the purpose of denial, the purpose of strengthening; a

mulation to the point of spontaneous activity" (WP 916). Nietzsche not only understands his role in history but also his personal his toryof isolation and sickness in termsof a naturalized asceticism. In theEpilogue

gymnastics of thewill" (WP 915 tm). This "education of will power" would redirect traditional ascetic disciplines, such as fasting and even monastic retreat, as "a detachment from the tyrannyof stimuli and influences that condemns us to spend our strength in nothing but reactions and does not permit their accu

to his last published book (in sections largely reprinted from the 1886 Preface to what Nietzsche called "themost personal of allmy books," The Gay Science), Nietzsche tells us that"only great pain is the liberator of the spirit," for itforces us philosophers to "descend into our ultimate depths":
pain], equaling theAmerican Indian who, however

Whether we learn topit our pride, our scorn,ourwill power against [thisgreat malice of his tongue;orwhetherwe withdraw from his torturer the pain into by
self-extinction: into mute, rigid, deaf resignation, that Nothing, self-forgetting, of self-mastery one emerges as a dif out of such long and dangerous exercises ferent person, with a few more question marks?above all, with the will to ques and quietly than tion more persistently, more deeply, severely, harshly, wickedly, one has questioned a different on this earth before_What second taste?a taste. Out tortured, evens the score with

has ever been ward

one returns newborn, the abyss of great suspicion, taste for joy, with a more tender with a more delicate ticklish and mischievous, innocence tongue for all good things, with gayer senses, with a second dangerous

is strangest is this: after of such abysses, also out of having shed one's skin, more

before. (NCWEpilogue 1-2 tm)

in joy, more

childlike

and yet a hundred

times more

subtle than one has ever been

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This is a strikingaccount of descending into the depths of the soul, sometimes pressing the limits of one's will, sometimes abandoning oneself to a silent res ignation, and finally of reemerging from these abysses with a different taste, a

"subtle innocence" thathas perhaps begun to twist free of the dualism of will and resignation. In some respects, it reads like an account of the struggles of a Zen iconoclast in themaking. Yet, there remains at least one crucial distinc tion?a difference that,perhaps, makes all the difference. Nietzsche tells us in this context thathe owes to his long sickness "a higher health?one

which ismade stronger by whatever does not kill if (ibid., empha sis added). It is here thatwe find a decisive divergence from the path of Zen Buddhism; for theZen masters would urge us to proceed "one step forward"86 beyond the tip of thishundred-foot gymnastics pole: Kill the ego?let even its solitary accomplishments of strengthdie into the ten directions of theworld! Zen urges one toproceed through "the great doubt" (Jp.daigi) to the experience of what itcalls "the great death" (Jp.daishi). Only then would itbe possible to a new life and a "new taste," in this case the "one taste" (Jp. ichimi) of speak of

move A thenonduality of subject and object, self and other. Zen saying puts this ment through existential death as follows: "First of all?the great death; after cutting off completely?once again coming back to life."87Only after becom "a person of the great death" (Jp.daishitei no hito) would itbe possible to ing speak of the dawn of a new life of activity.88Only by way of an utter "self abandonment and throwing away one's life" (Jp.h?shin shamei) could one dis cover that "the sword of death is at the same time a sword of life."89

other thanwilling. Nishitani interprets nihilism as "the great ball of doubt" (Jp.daigidan) of the modern age. Paralleling its role inZen practice, this great doubt has the posi tive potential to lead us to a deeper "investigation of the self" (Jp.kojikyumei). we are accustomed to living on what This investigation reveals firstof all that Nishitani calls the "field of consciousness" or the "field of possession/being." Drawing on thedual meaning of thecharacter for "being" (Ch. you; Jp.w),which

to nothingness. In letting go completely, one dies into life.The Japanese Zen master Shid? Bunan writes in a famous passage: "Become a dead person while alive; die completely; thendo what you will [omohimama ni sum]; all your acts are then good."92 When the ego has died completely, then "do what you will," for then?playing on the translation I have given here?one's acts would in fact no longer be oriented by a "will," but would express a way of being radically

Shibayama tells us that"the secret of Zen lies in this really throwingoneself away."90 "Throwing down" (Jp. h?ge)9X a termoften used inmodern times to translate "Gelassenheit," refers to casting off not only all attachment to the ego and itspossessions but also all "attachment toBuddhist teachings" (Jp.h?sh?), including any attachment to "emptiness" or to "the non-possession of a single thing" (Jp.muichimotsu); one must let go of both thewill to being and thewill

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can mean both "existence" and "having" or "possession," Nishitani depicts life on thisfield in the following manner: "By 'having' something outside the self, one seeks to secure one's 'being' ;one is held by what one holds, in otherwords, 'possession' and 'existence' are bound together in a fundamental will [konpon iyoku] as a basic state ofmind." In the crisis of nihilism one finds this existence

of possessing and being possessed by beings slipping away, and the abyss of the "field of nihility" opens up around one. Here arises the final temptation of the will, namely, that of the nihilists who attach themselves to this experience of nihility and to acts of annihilation. Still here a "deep trace of the fundamental will" can be found. It is only by "cutting the root" of this fundamental will alto gether thatone could step back beyond nihilism.93

Having passed through the great negation on the field of nihility,Nishitani writes, on the field of sunyata we experience a reaffirmationof being, where "true emptiness is one withmarvelous being" (Jp.shink?my?u). Passing through absolute nullification (Nichtung; Jp.muka) is said to lead to an originary reaf firmationof the self and of being (Ichtung; Jp.ukd) (RN140/123). For Nishitani, then,nihilism is a crisis both in the sense of the greatest danger, the reduction of human being to the infinitedrive of will, and in sense of the greatest possi

bility; forhere the roots of the "fundamental will" lie exposed. By cutting these roots, a conversion to the standpoint of sunyata is possible, for "the standpoint of sunyata is first established at a bottomless place that exceeds by way of absolute negation all standpoints of any kind related towill" (RN 216/251 tm). Nishitani never succumbed to the temptation to read Nietzsche's idea of the will to power as a simple affirmationof a biological drive or a simple "lust for

thepower of authority" (kenryoku-yoku).94 In fact, he never loses his apprecia tion for a positive sense of thewill to power as a potentially creative life-force thatwells up after a great negation.95 Even in Religion and Nothingness, Nishitani affirms that "forNietzsche, itwas thewill to power that appeared in the conversion from a great death to a great life" (RN 254/232 tm). In the end, however, the radicality of both Nietzsche's negation and his reaffirmationof life is said to remain limited insofar as the "standpoint ofwill" is not cast off.This "cutting the roots of thewill" iswhat ultimately would distinguish Nishitani's "standpoint of Zen" fromNietzsche's philosophy of thewill power. For Nietzsche, on the other hand, the idea thatone could attain release from the cycle of karma?from

"the punishment called existence, thatexistence must become deed and guilt again"?by way of a radical conversion eternally whereby "the will would become not-willing [Nicht-Wollen]" is but a great "fable song ofmadness" ( II 20 tm). In his own storyof Zarathustra's dream,
where the "soul's secret" of the overhero, "the will-less one" who

only after theheroic will is unlearned, perhaps Nietzsche himself comes close to adding a verse to this fable song ofmadness. But Zarathustra recoils: "I flew too far into the future: dread overcame me" ( II14). Perhaps out of an inabil

approaches

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In one of his notes opposing Schopenhauer's philosophy of thedenial ofwill, Nietzsche writes: "I assess a person by thequantum ofpower and abundance of his will: not by its enfeeblement and extinction; I regard a philosophy which teaches denial of thewill as a teaching of defamation and slander?I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, tortureitendures and knows how to turnto itsadvantage" (WP 382 tm). It is by cultivating "an abundance of con drives and impulses within himself" that thehuman being is said to have trary distinguished itself from the animals, and "thanks to this synthesis [of contrary drives], he ismaster of the earth." "The highest human being," we are told in this context, "would have the greatest multiplicity of drives, in the relatively greatest strength thatcan be endured" (WP 966).

ity to let thewill to power overcome itself,or perhaps in the spirit of a "flight back into the land of education" (ibid.), that is, into the No-saying task of speak to speak of self-overcoming rather ing to his contemporaries, Nietzsche tends as a gymnastic trainingof thewill to power.

Nietzsche's gymnastics of thewill thus coaches us to seek out the greatest testof strength,for whatever does not kill us will make us stronger. He finds the ultimate test in his experiments with nihilism and ultimately in his experience of the eternal recurrence?both of which, we recall, he connects with his idea of "the European form of Buddhism":
must that it of themost fundamental nihilism; but this does not mean possibilities wants halt at a negation, a No, a will to negation. This experimental philosophy a Dionysian to the world rather to cross over to the opposite of this?to Yes-saying

even the Such an experimental philosophy as I live anticipatesexperimentally

or selection?it as it is, without wants the eternal circu subtraction, exception, same things, the same logic and illogic of entanglements. lation:?the The high can attain: to est state a philosopher to stand in a Dionysian relationship

existence?my formulafor this isamorfati. (WP 1041 tm)

The question iswhether this "love of fate" twists free of thewill to interpretive power over theplay ofmultiple perspectives, or whether it is the triumphof the will to power thathas learned even to "will backwards," to say to everything: you are thusonly because thus Iwill you tobe. The thoughtof eternal recurrence arrives as thegreatestweight and challenge to the will is confronted by will; the the "itwas" as that which finally resists its command. The fragment and riddle of thepast escapes the will's power?unless the "creative will" learns how to say, "But thus I willed it" ( II 20). The vision of the eternal recurrence itself turns into theanswer to thisdilemma, for thepast is now also the future,and all things past, present, and futureare "knotted together so firmly" that towill thepresent

moment is towill all of existence, again and again (see III 2.2). The experience of theeternal recurrence can be borne only if the will topower is transformedintoa love of fate.But is this love the shatteringtransformation of the will to power or is it its consummation? Itwould appear tobe the latter inso

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pher of becoming, feel compelled to once again approximate a world of being? It is not without reason thatHeidegger suggests thatwhat is revealed here is Nietzsche's own "form of illwill against sheer transiency and therebya highly Would not a philosophy of impermanence (Jp. spiritualized spiritof revenge."96 mujo) without return?perhaps togetherwith an attunement to the "pathos of things" (Jp.mono no aware) thatcompassionately embraces thebeauty of flow ers that fall and smiles that fade, never to returnexactly the same?express an even greater willingness to radically affirm thisworld of becoming? Yet such releasement into the streamof impermanencewould lie beyond thecapacity of an would demand more thanany gym experimental philosophy of strength;this test will to power could prepare one for. nastics of the will to power, as we have seen, runs up against Nietzsche's philosophy of the

faras: "To impose upon becoming thecharacter of being?that is thesupremewill to most extreme approximation of a world power.... That everythingrecurs is the of becoming toa world of being" (WP6?1 tm). Why does Nietzsche, thephiloso

its ambivalent limits time and again, and just as one may find passages in his diatribes against traditional morality that seem to call for a reactive violent self assertion, it is also possible to find elsewhere passages thatread like an "unsung precursor of Heidegger's Gelassenheit."91 In the end, as I have suggested, the movement of his thought teeters on the ambivalent axis of "the self-overcom will topower." Perhaps Nietzsche's own awareness of thisunresolved ing of 'the tension in his thought explains his projection of a future overman who would have successfully overcome this ambivalence. Perhaps the overman would be able to resolve the tensions inNietzsche's philosophy of the self-overcoming of thewill to power.

man's greatness consists in the absolutization of his perspective." The "most most evil, in as much powerful man," writes Nietzsche, "would have to be the as he carries his ideal against the ideals of othermen and remakes them in his own image" (WP 1026). On theother hand,M?ller-Lauter points out,Nietzsche also characterizes the greatman "as the one who withdraws from no possible ... He should learn to see in various kinds of perspectives, with knowledge. most contradictory more andmore eyes, omitting nothing ever known, even the This tension between "the fixation of a perspective in exclusive oppo things."98 sition to other perspectives and the opening up to themultiplicity of possible perspectives"99 is reproduced in the two ways of understanding Nietzsche's "unrestrictedYes" to the eternal recurrence of the same. Does this unrestricted wise man has learned tobless everymoment Yes, thisamor fati, indicate that the

Nietzsche's philosophy in Wolfgang M?ller-Lauter has argued, however, that the end leaves us with an insurmountable contradiction between twomutually incompatible images of the overman. These two images, of the "strongman" and the "wise man," are said to reflect two opposing tendencies inNietzsche's thought as a whole. On the one hand, we find "portrayals according towhich

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moment I endure recurrence,"writes Nietzsche inhis note "For the sake of this man "must Yes mean that the strong books.100 Does the unrestrictedness of the tolerate no counter-ideals," or that thewise man would unreservedly recognize "the independent claims of other ideals"?101 Nietzsche anticipated a synthesis of the twowhen, M?ller-Lauter argues that for example, he wrote: "The wise man and theanimal will draw closer and pro duce a new type" But how,M?ller-Lauter asks, "could such an approximation be possible without reducing wisdom or animality,whereas thegrowth of both

mean that the strong man succeeds and everything for itsown sake? Or does it in interpretingall existence, including thatof the nauseating lastman, as nec essary for the "high point of the series," themoment of his own affirmation?

is supposed to be indispensable for the increase of power?" He claims that "Nietzsche gives no convincing answer to this question," and he rejects even attempts to resolve this tension dialectically by positing a temporal succession: How shall theone who selects and rejects,breeds and destroys, possibly be the
without affirms everything that is, was, and will be, unconditionally Each of the two types of overman must with condemning everything?... to the other.... his consistent self-realization The effort destroy what is peculiar same as the one who

a toconstrue transition between thetwotypesin theform an historicalsequence of also fails. It is impossible to speak of the wise man emergingfrom theviolent one without assuming an incomprehensible qualitative leap.102

As I have suggested above, were one to search for such a qualitative leap, or a most radi twisting free, inNietzsche's thought,one would need to pursue the movement of the "the self-overcoming of the cal trajectory in the will topower."

A Zen Overman as a Master of Service or Another Fable Song ofMadness? Having already explored thequestion ofwhether and towhat extent intimations of a twistingfreeof thecontradiction between strength and wisdom can be found we inNietzsche's thought, may now consider the following question: Does the "sudden awakening" (Ch. dunwu; Jp. tongo)?which would spontaneously arrive at the end of arduous and paradoxical disciplines of "willing not towill" and "letting the will overcome itself"?indicate an alternative "qualitative leap" inZen Buddhism? The Zen masters do indeed seem to suggest that strengthand wisdom can be reconciled, and thata dynamic nondualism between autonomous

mastery and compassionate servitude can be thought outside the horizon of a contest of wills. Let us look at several interconnected expressions of thisplay
between extremes.

One theone hand, we find inZen expressions of a nonduality of self and world thatexceed even those ofNietzsche's elevated egoism and love of fate. In The

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Blue Cliff Record we read: "When you have not penetrated it, it is like silver mountains and iron cliffs. When you have penetrated it,you find thatyou your selves are originally the silvermountains and iron cliffs." Indeed, you are said tobe able to exclaim: "I alone am holy throughoutheaven and earth."103 D?gen writes of "setting the self out in array and making that thewhole world," for "I am being-time" and theentireworld of phenomena is manifested in "the exhaus tive exertion ofmy power \jinriki]"m Linji teaches: "If you become a master

wherever you are, every place you are will be true."105 mean inZen to be a "master" or "host" (Ch. zhu; Jp. shu)! But what does it To begin with, it does indeed imply thatone is not passively "tossed around"

furimawasareru) by other "perspectives," neither by themanipulations of (Jp. other egos nor even by the "words and letters" of the Zen teachings them selves.106On the other hand, the freedom of the "master" here is evidently not that of one who has strengthened the power of his ego to the point where it whole world into itsdomain, but rather expands to aggressively incorporate the thatof one who has undergone the great death of the ego and is able to freely

enment." Thus, according toD?gen, although "to study theBuddha way is to study the self," "to study the self is to forget the self and be enlightened by the myriad things of theworld."107 Only through this experience of releasement from the ego do we find that, just like us, "pine trees are time, and so are bamboo trees."108 Only by "exhaust ing one's power" is itpossible to ek-statically stand out into theworld such that one can?in Bash?'s words?"from thepine tree learn of thepine tree; and from

with others by ek-statically opening himself or herself to theirpresence. interact D?gen writes that "practice that confirms things by taking the self to them is illusion; for things to come forward and practice and confirm the self is enlight

moments of being-time. The self is both inseparably related to and irreducibly differentfrom other selves. Huayan Against the tendency to reifyand isolate separate entities and egos, the of the mutual containment (Ch. xiang-ji; Jp. sosoku) and the philosophers spoke

akuby?d?). Nanquan (Jp.Nansen) rebukes a monk who had quoted the above phrase by pointing to a flower in the garden and saying: "People these days see were in a dream."109 The world is both one andmany, thisflower as though they a co-originating whole and differentiated into discrete singular both unified in

the bamboo of the bamboo." Only through the "great death" of thewillful ego could one say: "Heaven and earth and I have the same root; all things and I are of the same body." Yet, theZen masters warn that to stop at a static experience would be to fall into a one-sided "bad equality" (Jp. of undifferentiated identity

world mutual interp?n?tration (Ch. xiang-ru; Jp. s?nyi?) of all phenomena in the of dependent co-origination.110At itshighest stage of teaching,Huayan philos ophy speaks of the "mutual free circulation between master and attendant,"111 where each and every phenomenon is capable of freelymoving between the

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"master" perspective and the supporting position of "attendant." In theJapanese tea ceremony, when both thehost and the guest share equally in the communi cation of no-mind (Jp.mushin), one speaks of "the tea of no host and no guest"

remarkable stories of give and take, of "letting go" and "gathering in," that is, of the free circulation between acting as "guest" and as "host." In The Blue Cliff Record we find the following story: Yangshan Huiji asked SanshengHuir?n, "What is yourname?" Sansheng said, "Huiji!"
"that's my name." "Huiji!" replied Yangshan, "Well then," said Sansheng, "my name is Huir?n." roared with laughter.113 Yangshan

his or her students, even though this mutually determined relation ismalleable and at times, and certainly over time, reversible. What happens, then,when two "masters" meet? Here we discover those

(Jp.muhinju no cha). Linji reminds us, however, not to fall into the illusion of an abstract equality; even in a "dharma battle" between monks where both shout inunison, "host and guest are clearly distinguished" (Ch. binzhu-liran; Jp.hinju rekinen).112 Itwould not do, for example, for a teacher to defer completely to

hand, thatboth the I and theThou are, because of theirrelationship to each other, at the same time absolutely relative. The interpersonal relation of nonduality

In his interpretationof this story, Nishitani writes that the I-Thou relationship evidenced here demands, on theone hand, that the I and theThou are thoughtof as absolutely independent, each an irreplaceable singularity,and, on the other

right degree, "transparent" (Jp. tornei), in the sense of allowing a freer commu nication between selves of interconnected yet irreducible difference.115 Drawing on Huayan philosophy, Nishitani writes of the "circuminsessional"

Elsewhere Nishitani uses implies that"self and other are not one, and not two."114 the of two adjoining rooms that share a wall. Insofar as a "boundary" metaphor wall both irreducibly separates the implies both discontinuity and continuity, the two rooms as singular individuals and yet links them together as inseparable neighbors. The taskof community isneither to lock oneself up inone's own room nor to tryto completely knock down the walls of individuality and invade some one else's space. It is ratheramatter of lettingthe walls of theego become, to the

(Jp. egoteki) relation between dependently co-originating phenomena, where each is at once autonomous and subordinate in relation to others (i.e., is both "master" and "attendant") (see RN 166-67/148). When a relation of "circum

insessional interp?n?tration" (egoteki s?ny?) is realized, "absolute opposition is at the same time absolute harmony." Such harmony takes place among persons when "the other is at the center of the individual, and where the existence of each one is 'other-centered.'"116 This would notmean, we are told, that the indi vidual would give up his or her freedom, for at the standpoint of sunyata true freedom is not a matter of the freedom of thewill (RN 314/285).

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Hence, the true "master," according to Zen, would no longer be caught in a willful struggle for power over the servant, but would freely become a master in and of servitude. Nishitani writes that true "autonomy," or "being one's own with "becoming a thingand ameans for all other master," comes about together He quotes the following passage from Hakuin in thiscon things" (RN305/276). text: "You must resolve towithdraw yourself this very day, to reduce yourself to the level of a footman or a lackey, and yet bring yourmind-master tofirm and sure resolution." In contrast to the egoistic self-centeredness found at "the stand point of karma" and accompanying all other "standpoints ofwill" (7W283/257), Nishitani writes: "True self-centeredness is a selfless self-centeredness: the self centeredness of a 'self that is not a self. It consists of . . . 'circuminsessional interp?n?tration' on the field of sunyata. The gathering together of the being of

all things at the home-ground of the being of the self can only come about in unison with the subordination of the being of the self to the being of all things at theirhome-ground" (RN 274/249). Beyond all standpoints of will, the radi cal step back to the field of sunyata would open up the possibility of a mutual

different places on earth and in the greatest variety of cultures" (A 4 tm). Regrettably, Nietzsche was not exposed to any accounts of thebenevolent sever ity,theplayful antics and roaring laughter of theZen masters. Let us, however, end with thequestion of how he might have responded to the characters in these stories. Would he have found in theirgreat reaffirmationof life a synthesis of the strong and wise overmen? Would he have seen in their vitality and com passion an overflowing beyond power and pity?Might he have learned from them a path of twisting free from the contradictions that frustrate the self

interp?n?tration of "absolute subordination and absolute autonomy" (RN 304/275). Would thisnonduality of autonomous mastery and subordinate servi tude indicate a direction for transformingand reconciling the two incompatible images of Nietzsche's overman?117 In The Antichrist, Nietzsche rejects the modern idea of "progress" in human "toward something better or stronger or higher." On the contrary, development he claims, a "kind of overman" is "constantly encountered in the most widely

will topower? Or would he have persisted inhis original sus overcoming of the of "a Buddhist negation of thewill" (BT1) as the danger par excellence picion to an artistic affirmation of life? Might he have found inZen a different art of will topower? Or would its radical path of cutting off thevery the living beyond roots of thewill?giving rise, as itdoes, to such paradoxical expressions as the "doing of non-doing" and the "nonduality of mastery and servitude"?be rejected as yet another verse in the so-called "fable song ofmadness"?

Department of Japanese Philosophy Kyoto University

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Notes
1.WP 1067; see BGE 36; II12; WP 685; and WP 693. References toNietzsche's published works will be given in the text according to standard abbreviations, with part number given in roman numerals and/or section number inArabic numbers. Although I have in all cases consulted

the original German text, in general I have adopted the translations by Walter Kaufman in The Portable Nietzsche (New York: Viking Penguin, 1982) and Basic Writings of Nietzsche (New York: Random House, in The Will to Power 1968), and byWalter Kaufman and R. J.Hollingdale

(New York: Random House, 1967). I have marked "tm" in cases where I have modified the translation. A word here on my use of theNachla?: I am concerned neither with "lumping" all of texts under a single proper name nor with "splitting" the "real Nietzsche" offfrom the Nietzsche's "less refined" notebooks and fragments. My concern is rather with thinking through the play and strife among certain predominant perspectives and movements that can be found throughout both the published texts and unpublished notes. The severest limitation of the notes is thatwe do not

know

that of a pessimistic type of "European Buddhism" (WP 132). Derrida has taught"?including compellingly argued thatNietzsche was "one of the few great thinkers who multiplied his names and played with signatures, identities, and masks." (Jacques Derrida, "Interpreting Signatures Two Questions," inDialogue and Deconstruction: The Gadamer-Derrida (Nietzsche/Heidegger): and Richard E. Palmer [Albany: SUNY Press, 1989], 67.) Encounter, ed. Diana P. Michelfelder Nietzsche between

how they would have eventually been situated and organized, that is, what role of perspective and voice theywould have played in a finished text. In fact, as one of those fragments tells us, Nietzsche claimed to "hold in reserve many types of philosophy which need to be

under the strength of a ruling one, or over that "mask" which speaks of the creation (not the given existence) of a puppeteer behind themasks. Indeed, in the above-quoted fragment that speaks of the need to employ various philosophies, Nietzsche subordinates this thought under that of the "development of strength of thewill, an art that permits us towear masks" in order to prepare for "the legislators of the future, themasters of the earth." It is this philosophy of the will to power

is indeed a thinker of multiple perspectives, and I shall be concerned with the tensions several of these. On the other hand, one must not pass over that particularly predominant voice in his text that speaks of thewill to power as a subordination of themultitude of perspectives

as a drive toward organization under a focal perspective from which others can be commanded thatmany contemporary philosophers of difference do not critically encounter, or at least tend to themes. It is also this philosophy downplay, in their otherwise fecund repetitions of Nietzschean of the will that the perspective of Buddhism allows us to critically reconsider. The Buddhist perspective shall also let us return toHeidegger's critique of "the fundamental attunement," ifnot

themetaphysics, of thewill to power in a new light. 2. Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche, vol. 2, 5th ed. (Pfullingen: Neske, 1989), 340; Nietzsche Volume TV: Nihilism, trans. Frank A. Capuzzi (New York: Harper & Row, 1982), 203. 3. On Nietzsche's hermeneutical strategy of using foreign perspectives to critically question the Western tradition, see Eberhard Scheiffele, "Questioning One's 'Own' from the Perspective of trans. Graham Parkes, in Nietzsche and Asian Thought, ed. Graham Parkes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 31^17. 4. See Mervyn Sprung, "Nietzsche's Trans-European Eye," inNietzsche and Asian Thought, 76-90. Sprung concludes that "Nietzsche's trans-European eye was more European than 'trans'" the Foreign,"

Mahayana thought, Nitta Akira, in his book Y?roppa no Budda: Niiche no Toi [The European Buddha: Nietzsche's question] (Matsudo: Ris?sha, 1998), goes so far as to suggest that "ironically, in fact led him into the nearest proximity to Buddhism" Nietzsche's criticism of Buddhism (31).

(83). 5. Robert Morrison, Nietzsche and Buddhism: A Study in Ironic Affinities (New York: Oxford to a and Buddhism: 1997); see Freny Mistry, Nietzsche University Press, Prolegomenon Comparative Study (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1981). Alluding to various points of similarity with

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In his emphasis on points of resonance, however, Nitta neglects the tension between an affirmation of thewill to power and a Buddhist critique of thewill. 6. Mistry argues that connecting Nietzsche's tradition "poses the thought with theMahayana in the kind of idealism he vociferously rejected" (Nietzsche and danger of involving Nietzsche Buddhism, 141), but he himself finds it necessary on occasion to have recourse to Nagarjuna's thought in order to counter Nietzsche's critique of the life-negating impulse of (Theravada) Buddhism. Graham Parkes comments on Mistry's book in this regard: "The detachment of the arhant who has attained nirvana issues in a condition that is insufficiently o/the world?albeit still in it?to be comparable with the results of fully living out the Nietzschean program. [Mistry] tries to close the gap by invoking the later Buddhist (Mah?y?na) denial that nirvana occasionally of Mah?y?na does Resonances," is different from theworld of everyday life; but that denial is precisely the distinguishing feature than Buddhism, which thus makes for a more fruitful comparison with Nietzsche the earlier tradition." ("Nietzsche and East Asian toNietzsche, in The Cambridge Companion

Influences, Impacts, and Thought: ed. Bernd Magnus and Kathleen M. Higgins [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996], 373.) For some interesting examples of such comparison, see the chapters by Glen T. Martin, ?k?chi Ry?gi, Arifuku K?gaku, and Sonoda in Parkes's collection Nietzsche and Asian Thought. Muneto 7. Nishitani Keiji, Nihirizumu [Nihilism], inNishitani Keiji Chosakush? [The collected works of Nishitani Keiji] S?bunsha, 1986), 8:185; translated by Graham Parkes with Setsuko (Tokyo: Aihara as The Self-Overcoming ofNihilism (Albany: SUNY Press, 1990), 180. References to this work will be cited in the text as SN, with the page number from the original followed by the page number from the translation. I will mark "tm" in cases where I have modified the translation. 8. ?k?chi Ry?gi, taking his impetus in part from Nishitani, develops a sympathetic, yet in the end critical, interpretation of Nietzsche from the perspective of Japanese Pure Land Buddhism. Ok?chi claims thatNietzsche comes into proximity to Buddhism in "the last phase of his thought experiment" where he appears to succeed in the venture of "overcoming nihilism through nihilism itself." Ok?chi goes on to argue, however, thatNietzsche's attempt to attain to a standpoint of

[Nietzsche and greater detail in his book Niiche to Bukky?: Kongenteki Nihirizumu no Mondai Buddhism: The problem of radical nihilism] (Kyoto: H?z?kan, 1983). 9. On the one hand, it is far too limited an approach to "evaluate the Buddha by way of Nietzsche," to "attempt to understand theBuddha's teachings in the lightof Nietzsche's philosophy," and then to simply conclude that "Nietzsche and the Buddha are thinkers who stand in direct [Buddha vs. Nietzsche] (Yuda Yutaka, Budda vs. Niiche [Tokyo: text can 2001], 2,5, and 220.) While certain passages and moments of Nietzsche's Dait?shuppansha, indeed be employed to support such a clear-cut antithesis, themovement of Nietzsche's thought and opposition to one another."

amor fati beyond all revengefulness remained limited on account of his attachment to the doctrine amor fati im Lichte von Karma to power. (Ry?gi Ok?chi, of the will "Nietzsches des inNietzsche-Studien 1 [1972]: 42, 80ff.) Ok?chi works out his interpretation in Buddhismus,"

the complexities of his view of Buddhism do not allow us to rest assured with this "faith in opposite values" (BGE 2). On the other hand, however, to anyone who would gloss over the confrontation understanding of altogether by paying exclusive attention either to the errors in Nietzsche's his thought and Buddhism correctly understood, . . . likely direct us to the following aphorism: "Against mediators. Seeing things as similar and making things the same is the sign of weak eyes" (GS 228). ed. G. Colli and M. Montinari 10. Friedrich Nietzsche, Kritische Gesamtausgabe, (Berlin: would or to the ironic affinities between

Buddhism Nietzsche

Walter

de Gruyter, 1977), Division 7, vol. 1, p. 111. 11. The following abbreviations will be used in reference to Buddhist terminology: P. = Pali; Sk. = Sanskrit; Ch. = Chinese; and Jp. = Japanese. Diacritical marks have been kept to a minimum and eliminated in cases where the term is commonly used in English publications (samsara, Theravada, samadhi, sunyata, etc.). Note that, for the sake of consistency, I

nirvana, Mahayana,

Zen After Zarathustra

have also reduced or eliminated sources. Chinese

131

diacritical marks in citations from translations and secondary and Japanese names will be written in the original order of family name followed Western languages that list the given name first. by given name, except in citations of works in 12. See the following section of Ecce Homo (EH 17), where Nietzsche attempts to distinguish his own "war against Christianity" from the spirit of revenge. Ok?chi, however, questions the own "anti-" against all forms of "transcendence." "Does it come from his impulse of Nietzsche's the 'ressentiment' against the 'proponents of another world' [die 'Hinterweiter']! Against 'shadow of God'? From an imprisonment in 'his' Christianity?" ("Nietzsches amor fati im Lichte von Karma des Buddhismus," 91.) My own concern liesmore with the question: Does Nietzsche's persistent assertion of the will to power in some sense remain a "reaction" against certain excessive malformations of an ascetic denial of thewill? 13. Hermann Oldenberg, Buddha: Sein Leben, seine Lehre, seine Gemeinde (Berlin, 1881). library appears never to have Sprung tells us that the volume of this book presently inNietzsche's been opened, but he also warns thatwe should bear inmind the possibility that this copy is not

("Nietzsche's Trans-European Eye," 82.) actually possessed. 14CM2. Mistry that 14. Mistry, Nietzsche and Buddhism, attempts to "demonstrate Nietzsche's Eternal Recurrence represents the reverse of theBuddhist perspective essentially only in one sense, namely, that of the 'finality' in recurrence." (Ibid., 196.) This is, however, a decisive "only," one with ramifications that color the entire conception of the recurrence. 15. See Morrison, Nietzsche and Buddhism, 153. as translated inWalpola 16. From the Dhammacakkappavattana-sutta, Rahula, Buddha Taught, rev. ed. (Bedford: Gordon Fraser, 1967), 93.

the one Nietzsche

What

the

17. See Rahula, What theBuddha Taught, 48. 18.Morrison, Nietzsche and Buddhism, 142ff. 19.Morrison finds an ironic affinitybetween "skillful and unskillful tanh?" in Buddhism, and thought. (Nietzsche and Buddhism, 152.) "generative and degenerative will to power" inNietzsche's But this comparison reaches its limits with the fundamental disagreement between Nietzsche's radical affirmation of thewill to power (his generative accounts are of strongwill) and theBuddhist aim of provisionally using tanh? to cut off the roots of tanh?. The goal of the extinction of tanh? is in fact a particularly prominent theme in Theravada Buddhism, and while Morrison does find quenched

resources in the Pali cannon for claiming that "perhaps it is only a certain aspect of striving that is in nirvana" (ibid., 153), it is fair to say that this radically other kind of striving ismore

tradition.D. T. Suzuki, while perhaps unfairly restrictive in his explicitly developed in the Mahayana even uncovers a deeper, positive notion of view of Theravada, writes in one text that Mahayana tanh?. Suzuki writes: "the destruction of desires or cravings (tanh?nam khayam) so much in the teaching of earlier Buddhism is not to be understood negativistically. The emphasized Buddhist training consists in transforming trisn? (tanh?) into karun?, ego-centered love into . . .Let tanh? be something universal, eros into agape. destroyed but we must not forget that ithas another root which reaches the very ground of being." When we are released from the hold of a restrictive sense of tanh?, that is, from tanh? thathas fallen into the "thrall of egoistic impulses" and turned into "the most ungovernable and insatiable upholder of power," then this energetic impulse

Mysticism

returns to its "primal nature" as mah?karun? or "absolute compassion." (Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, Christian and Buddhist [Mine?la, N.Y.: Dover, 2002], 73 and 127.) We need to bear in mind, however, that the radical reaffirmation of life in Zen Buddhism?a complete conversion that makes possible even such occasional iconoclastic statements as "Buddha is trisn?" (see ibid., 125)? is predicated on a radical negation, a "great death" of (egoistic) trisn?. 20. Rahula, What theBuddha Taught, 32. manner 21. For a good general account of themisinterpretation and appropriation of Buddhism in this see Roger-Pol Droit, The Cult of Nothingness: by nineteenth-century philosophers, and theBuddha, trans. David Streit and Pamela Vohnson (Chapel Hill: University

Philosophers

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of North Carolina

annihilationist view of nirvana, and his pessimistic Press, 2003). Nietzsche's interpretation of Buddhism in general, was most likely influenced by passages like the following from Carl F. Koeppen's Die Religion des Buddha (Berlin, 1857-59): "The ethics of Buddhism is . .a negative: it is. morality of renunciation and self-abnegation, not striving and creating; it teaches suffering and endurance, not action and work. . . . Furthermore, it is also essentially negative because it is otherworldly and transcendent and because the real world, the earth with what it bears, is of no value to it." (Quoted inMistry, Nietzsche and Buddhism, 113.) Curiously, although Nietzsche apparently closely read Oldenberg's Buddha, he seems to have ignored its rejection of the interpretation of nirvana as annihilation as "wholly missing themain drift of [the] Buddha and the ancient order of his disciples." (Quoted inMorrison, Nietzsche and Buddhism, in one breath 54-55.) The fact thatNietzsche frequently refers to Buddhism and Schopenhauer gives

indication of the influence this self-proclaimed exerted on Nietzsche's pessimist hints of a interpretation. It is significant to note, however, that he ignores even Schopenhauer's of nirvana. These hints are, to be sure, few and remained undeveloped; but positive interpretation texts, for example, in the closing lines of the they are given prominent place in Schopenhauer's main text of his magnum opus: "[We] freely acknowledge thatwhat remains after the complete abolition of thewill is,for all who are stillfull of thewill, assuredly nothing. But also conversely, to those inwhom thewill has turned and denied itself, this very real world of ours with all its suns

(Arthur Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, vol. 1 is?nothing." [Stuttgart: Suhrkamp, 1986], 558; The World as Will and Representation, vol. 1, trans. E. F. Payne [New York: Dover, 1969], 411-12, emphasis added.) If we were to completely give up the will, claims, "all the signs would change," and that which we can now only refer to Schopenhauer negatively as a "nothing" would show itself as thatwhich truly exists. (Ibid., p. 556/410.) 49ff.Williams argues implied in this language of "domain" or "realm," but rather only an affirmation of the perceptual condition necessary for the event of nirvana to take place. (Ibid., p. 52.) 2000), 24. The Vimalakirti Sutra, trans. Burton Watson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 26, 29-30. 25. Ibid., 106-7, 110. A Translation of his M?lamadhyamakak?rik? 26. Kenneth K. Inada, N?g?rjuna: with an 1993), 158. Introductory Essay (Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications, 27. Jay L. Garfield, The Fundamental Wisdom Way: N?g?rjuna's of the Middle M?lamadhyamakak?rik? 28. Inada, N?g?rjuna, 160ff. 30. See The Vimalakirti Sutra, 92. 31. Nakamura Hajime and Saigusa Mitsuyoshi, Baudda?Bukky? [Bauddha?Buddhism] (Tokyo: Sh?gakkan, 1996), 208-10. 32. The vimalakirti Sutra, 37. collection to this k?an Gate (Ch. Wumenkuan; Case 19. References Jp.Mumonkan), and to The Blue Cliff Record (Ch. Piyenlu; Jp.Hekiganroku) will be to case numbers. I have referred to the following editions of the originals. Mumonkan, ed. Nishimura Eshin (Tokyo: 3 vols., ed. Iriya Yoshitaka et al. (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1992). Iwanami, 1994); Hekiganroku, 33. The Gateless 34. Zenkei (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 39. Wisdom Middle of the 1995), 332. 22. Quoted inRahula, What theBuddha Taught, 37. 23. See Paul Williams, Buddhist Thought (London: Routledge, that there is no positive (or negative) ontological commitment

and galaxies,

29. Garfield, The Fundamental

Way, 341. See also Inada, N?g?rjuna,

Kudo

trans. Sumiko Mumonkan, Shibayama, The Gateless Gate: Zen Comments on the (Boston: Shambhala, 2000), 142. is said to have responded to an emperor's 35. Upon arriving in China, the Bodhidharma question "What is the first principle of the holy teachings?" by bluntly stating: "Vast openness

Zen

After

Zarathustra

133

without anything holy." (The Blue Cliff Record, Case 1.) Linji most strikingly expresses the Zen negation of otherworldly salvation as follows: "If you love what is holy and hate what is ordinary, you float and sink in the sea of birth and death." Or again: "You seek the Buddha and you seek theDharma. You seek liberation; you seek to leave the tripleworld. You fools, where do you want to go when you leave the triple world?" More provocatively still, he condemns all "seeking outside": "If you meet theBuddha, kill theBuddha; ifyou meet thePatriarchs, kill the Patriarchs." (Rinzairoku, ed. Iriya Yoshitani [Tokyo: Iwanami, 1989], 52, 96-97, 101; The Recorded Sayings of Linji, 33-34, trans. J. C. Cleary, in Three Chan [Zen] Classics [Berkeley: Numata Center, 1999], 21, translation modified). For the responses of "three pounds of flax" and "a shitstick" to the see The Gateless Gate, Cases 18 and 21. question "What is Buddha?" 36. Dao (Tokyo: Keio De Jing, chap. 25; Press, see Lao-tzu: 2001), University expression wu-wei, see chaps. 2, 3, 43, 48, and 64. 37. "Mu-i no Gogi ni tsuite" [On themeaning of the termmu-i], Morimoto 1Gorokuhen, ed. Yamada Kunio (Kyoto: T?eisha, 1997), 46-68. 10, p. 262; 72-73, The Way and Its Virtue, trans. Toshihiko translation modified. For occurrences Izutsu of the vol.

Seinen-r?shi,

38. Nishitani Keiji, Sh?ky? towa Nanika [What is religion?], Nishitani Keiji Chosakushu, vol. translated by Jan Van Bragt as Religion and Nothingness (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982), 238-39. References to thiswork will be cited in the text as RN, with the page number from the original followed by the page number from the translation. I will mark "tm" in cases where I have modified the translation. wa kaku Katatta to Zen" "Hi' to 'K?sh?': Tsuaratosutora and ["Compassion" Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Zen], in Ohashi Ry?suke, Hi no Gensh?ron Josetsu: "laughter": Nihontetsugaku no Roku Teeze yori [Prolegomenon to a phenomenology of compassion: From six theses of Japanese philosophy] (Tokyo: S?bunsha, 1998), 161-77. 39. See 40. Friedrich Nietzsche, Grossoktavausgabe, ed. Nietzsche Archive (Leipzig: 1894-1912), vol. 16, p. 422. Nishitani refers to this note in SN 98/64. 41. Grossoktavausgabe, vol. 7, p. 359; quoted inWolfgang M?ller-Lauter, Nietzsche: His Philosophy of Contradictions and the Contradictions of His Philosophy, trans. David J. Parent (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 82. 42. Angelus Silesius, S?mtliche Poetische Werke, vol. 3 (Cherubinischer Wandersmann), 3rd ed. (Munich: Carl Hanser, 1949), 39. 43. This line is from the verse appended to the ninth of Kuoan's "Ten Oxherding Pictures."

Hartmut Buchner

translate the line as follows. "Grenzenlos flie?t der Flu?, wie er flie?t. Rot bl?t die Blume, wie sie bl?ht." (Der Ochs und Sein Hirte [Pfullingen: Neske, 1958], 45.) Heidegger suggests that humans too "first truly are when in their own way they are like the rose?without 1992], 73.) why." (Der Satz vom Grund, 7th ed. [Pfullingen: Neske, 44. See Ueda, J?gy?zu: Jiko no Gensh?gaku, 116-18. 45. Ibid., 146; also see Shizuteru Ueda, "Das absolute Nichts im Zen, bei Eckhart und bei Texte und Einf?hrung, ed. Ry?suke Ohashi

Seizan, J?gy?zu: Jiko no Gensh?gaku (See Ueda Shizuteru and Yanagida [The ten oxherding of the self] [Tokyo: Chikuma, 1992], 247.) Tsujimura K?ichi, who pictures: Phenomenology translated this text into German, relates Heidegger's interest in this line, which is said to have reminded him of Angelus Silesius's poem. (See Ueda's foreword in ibid., 19.) Tsujimura and

Nietzsche,"

in Die

becoming.

also questions whether the will to power truly expresses the innocence of In Zen, he writes, "the innocence of becoming and true naturalness are realized only in [what Linji calls] 'the place where the seeking mind ceases,'" but thewill to power would seem rather to express the "fundamental form of the 'seeking mind' itself." ("Zen and Nietzsche," in Abe, Zen, and Western Thought, ed. William 1985], 149-50.) R. LaFleur [Honolulu: University of Hawaii

(Munich: Alber, 46. Abe Masao

Philosophie 1990), 497.

der Kyoto-Schule:

Masao Press,

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47. There is some debate on the timing and extent of Heidegger's influence on Nishitani's increasingly critical interpretation of Nietzsche. Nishitani studied with Heidegger from 1937 to 1939, during which timeHeidegger was lecturing on Nietzsche, but before he had yet fullyworked out his critique of "Nietzsche's nihilism." Parkes suggests that,while Nishitani's 1949 The Self Overcoming of Nihilism Religion and Nothingness "remains independent of the Heideggerian interpretation," the 1961 shows signs of a "delayed influence." (See Parkes's comments in The Self xxii and 196.) Kashima T?ru argues (purportedly against Parkes) that

wo megutte" to Haideggaa: Niiche-kaishaku [Nishitani Keiji and Heidegger: On their in "Taiwa" ni tatsu Heideggaa ed. interpretations of Nietzsche], [Heidegger in "dialogue"], [Matsudo: Ris?sha, 2000], 231. In this article Kashima sees a contradiction Haideggaa Kenky?kai Keiji in the fact that Nishitani finds links with Mahayana in Heidegger, despite Heidegger's to Nishitani's alleged desire own critical Buddhism stance at times inNietzsche He and other times attributes this toward Nietzsche.

Overcoming of Nihilism, Nishitani had not digested Heidegger's critique of Nietzsche while he was inFreiburg, forHeidegger had not yet at that time developed his interpretation of Nietzsche's relation to nihilism, and that even Religion and Nothingness shows only in a few parts some external signs of influence. ("Nishitani

to overcome the modern Japanese Heimatlosigkeit, a inconsistency desire to return to his native tradition that supposedly led him at times to appropriate incompatible [See ibid., 229.] This critique, however, does justice neither to Nishitani's foreign philosophies. and Heidegger nor to his style of deliberately working through apparently contradictory standpoints in order to point out deeper points of contact. The nuances of Nishitani's "return to theEast," it should also be noted, can be simply conflated with the critical engagement with both Nietzsche

uncritical currents of reactionary Japanism no more than his intense study of Western philosophy can be conflated with the lack of self-reflection on the part of some Japanese specialists inWestern philosophy.) Nishitani's student and Heidegger scholar Tsujimura K?ichi, on the other hand, writes will,"

On the modern problem of nihilism], inJ?i ni okeru K?, ed. Ueda Shizuteru [Tokyo: thathe in 1992], 165.) Nishitani himself remarks in a 1976 conversation with Abe Masao general agrees with the latter's characterization of thewill to power as a self-reflexive will towill that does not reach reality itself, and with Heidegger's linking of thewill to power with the eternal S?bunsha, recurrence. Nishitani goes on in this context, however, to propound his understanding of the eternal recurrence as a "standpoint of great negation" (i.e., the eternal recurrence ofmeaninglessness), while thewill to power expresses a standpoint of reaffirmation. Ultimately, however, he states that amor

and Heidegger:

thatNishitani basically agreed with Heidegger's interpretation of the will to power as "the will to and that their interpretations of the eternal recurrence were also "remarkably similar." ("Nishitani-sensei toHaideggaa: Gendai Nihirizumu no Mondai wo megutte" [Professor Nishitani

affirmative word of Nietzsche's to fati is the encompassing thought. ("Taidan: Sekai-aku Nihirizumu" [Conversation on world-evil and nihilism], in Abe Masao, Kyogi to Kyomu [Falsity and nihility] [Kyoto: H?z?kan, 2000], 192-93.) This sympathetic attention to the idea of amor fati runs through all of Nishitani's engagements with Nietzsche's thought, and it is here that one can mark one of themost significant points of distance from Heidegger's critical interpretation.Moreover, as I demonstrate here, Nishitani's increasingly critical view of thewill to power was by no means simply imported from Heidegger, but was developed 1:3. 48. Nishitani Keiji Chosakush?, and what primarily from the standpoint of Zen Buddhism.

49. For an interpretation of Nishitani's thought that focuses on the idea of "trans-descendence" I call his "topology of the step back," see my "Nishitani Keiji ni okeru Taiho': he" [The "step back" in Nishitani Keiji: Through Nihirizumu wo t?shite Zettaiteki-Shigan

nihilism to the absolute near-side], in "K?ngen" he no Tankyu: Kindai Nihon no Sh?ky? Shis? no Yamanami [The search for "grounds": The range of religious thought in modern Japan], ed. (Kyoto: K?y? Shob?, 2000), 71-91. An essay in English on this topic is in Hosoya Masashi as "The Step Back preparation and will appear in an upcoming issue of Synthesis Philosophica Through Nihilism: The Radical Orientation of Nishitani Keiji's Philosophy of Zen."

Zen After Zarathustra

50. Heidegger, Nietzsche, 51. Ibid., 389/243. 52. Ibid., 340/203. 2:342; Heidegger, Nietzsche Volume IV: Nihilism, 204.

135

53. Friedrich Heinrich Jacobis Werke (Leipzig, 1816), 3:49; see Michael Allen Gillespie, Nihilism before Nietzsche (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 65-66. 54. Gillespie, Nihilism before Nietzsche, 256. 55. Ibid., XX. 56. Gillespie agrees with Heidegger that in response to nihilism what is called for is a "step back fromwilling," but he criticizes Heidegger for not having investigated the origins of nihilism in the late medieval theological voluntarism, and even claims thatHeidegger falls back into the same trap of attempting to overcome human will by hypostatizing a will of Being. (See ibid., xxii.) I have argued elsewhere thatHeidegger's critique of thewill is farmore complex and that, despite certain problematic residues and moments of relapse, an attempt to twist free from the very "horizon of thewill" Way toGelassenheit

"metaphysical root," but rather a reciprocal relation between a plurality of "wills to power." When Nietzsche speaks of "the will to power," M?ller-Lauter concludes, this refers to the "sole quality" common towhat is different quantitatively. See his Nietzsche, 133ff. 59. Grossoktavausgabe, 4:327. 60. Heidegger, Nietzsche, 2:114; Heidegger, Nietzsche Volume IV: Nihilism, 73. 61. For a detailed interpretation of Heidegger's thought from the perspective of the problem of thewill and the possibility of non-willing, see my Heidegger and theWill. 62. Morrison, Nietzsche and Buddhism, 138-39. 63. From theAnguttara-nik?ya; quoted inRahula, What 64. Rahula, What theBuddha Taught, 29-30. theBuddha Taught, 22.

is at the heart of his path of thinking. See my Heidegger and the Will: On the (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, forthcoming). 57. Heidegger, Nietzsche, 2:200; Heidegger, Nietzsche Volume IV: Nihilism, 147. 58. Wolfgang M?ller-Lauter writes that Nietzsche is not envisioning in such statements a

persist, but struggles "in order to appear in a higher grade that is so much themore powerful." (Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, 1:216; The World as Will and Representation, 1:146.) 68. Rahula, What theBuddha Taught, 31, emphasis added. 69. Iwanami Bukky?jiten (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1989), 53. 70. The Dhammapada, trans.Ananda Maitreya (Berkeley: Paralax, 71. Ibid., 42. 1995), 77.

65. Nishitani Keiji Chosakushu, 11:168. 66. Parkes, "Nietzsche and East Asian Thought: Influences, Impacts, and Resonances," 381. 67. It should be noted that Schopenhauer's view of thewill in this regard is closer toNietzsche than the latter is willing to admit. For Schopenhauer, the will-to-live does not merely seek to

full of dynamic forces." (Mysticism Christian and Buddhist, 74.) 73. The Dhammapada, 29.

72. D. T. Suzuki writes that "with the human passions, the firstwork is to destroy the root of the Buddha-nature which consists ignorance and egoism. When this is thoroughly accomplished, in praj?? and karun? will start its native operation. The principle of Suchness is not static, it is

74. Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, 4th ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), 252. . 75. Karl L?with, S?mtliche Schriften, vol. 6, Nietzsche (Stuttgart: J. Metzlersche, 1987), 128. 76. Ibid., 201. A decade that Nietzsche later, however, L?with concludes "undoubtedly achieved themetamorphosis from the Christian 'Thou shalt' to themodern will', but hardly the crucial transformation from the will' to the am' of the cosmic child." (Ibid., 426.) 77. Charles E. Scott, The Question Indiana University Press, 1990), 29. of Ethics: Nietzsche, Foucault, Heidegger (Bloomington:

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78. Derrida explains the "double gesture" involved in his deconstructive writing as follows. "On the one hand, we must traverse a phase of overturning. . . . [On] the other hand?to remain in this phase is still to operate on the terrain of and fromwithin the deconstructed system. By means of this double, and precisely stratified, dislodged and dislodging, writing, we must also mark the interval between inversion, which brings low what was high, and the irruptive emergence of a new 'concept', a concept that can no longer be, and never could be, included in the previous regime." (Jacques trans.Alan Bass [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981], 41-^2.) vol. 5 (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio 79. Martin Heidegger, Holzwege, Gesamtausgabe, William 1977), 217; Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology, trans. (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), 61. 80. Heidegger, Nietzsche, 1:233; Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche Volume I: The Will toPower as

Derrida, Positions, Klostermann, Lovitt

Art, trans. David

Farrell Krell (Harper & Row, 1979), 202. 81. Heidegger refers to the final stage in this key text, "How the 'TrueWorld' Finally Became a Fable: The History of an Error," as evidence of Nietzsche's twisting free of Platonism. The as a "twisting free" that is "not merely inversion but also displacement" notion ofHerausdrehung (Bloomington:

in this context by John Sallis in his Echoes: After Heidegger has been developed Indiana University Press, 1990), 76ff. in Morrison, Nietzsche and Buddhism, from the Suttanip?ta 82. Quoted Nietzsche alone. expressed his fondness for the image in the Suttanip?ta (See Mistry, Nietzsche and Buddhism, 17.)

36. In a letter, of the rhinoceros who wanders

really to incorporate another: while a crude injury done him certainly demonstrates our power over him, it at the same time estranges his will from us even more?and thusmakes him less easy to subjugate" (WP 769). 84. Keta Masako writes that Nishitani's

83. See the following note in this regard. "Every living thing reaches out as far from itselfwith its force as it can, and overwhelms what is weaker: thus it takes pleasure in itself. The increasing 'humanizing' of this tendency consists in this, that there is an ever subtler sense of how hard it is

thought implies, however, that the relation with Nishitani's thought is also ambivalent. as translated inA Sourcebook in Indian Philosophy, ed. Sarvepalli 85. From The Dhammapada, Radhakrishnan and Charles A. Moore (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), 316. 86. The allusion here is to Case 46 of The Gateless Barrier. Buny?, Zengony?mon 87. In Japanese: daishi ichiban zetsugo futatabi sosei. See Kusumoto 1982), 104. [Introduction to Zen terms] [Tokyo: Daih?rinkaku, 88. See The Blue Cliff Record, Case 41. 89. See Nishitani Buddha

antithesis. (See Keta Masako, Nihirizumu no Shisaku [The thought of nihilism] that I am pointing out here in Nietzsche's 1999], 42-43.) The ambivalence

focuses on this egocentric aspect of Nietzsche's perspectivism when she of "circuminsessional interp?n?tration" is its absolute philosophy [Tokyo: S?bunsha,

1982), 90. Shibayama, The Gateless Barrier, 26. 91. See Kusumoto, Zengony?mon, 45-47. 92. Shid? Bunan Zenji Rentar? SM

ll:236ff.; Nishitani Keiji, "Science and Zen," in The Keiji Chosakush?, Eye: An Anthology of the Kyoto School, ed. Frederick Frank (New York: Crossroad, 122ff.

[The collected writings of Zen Master

Shid? Bunan],

ed. K?da

(Tokyo: Shunsh?sha, 1968), 31. 11:190-91. 93. Nishitani Keiji Chosakush?, 94. See Nishitani's comments in a 1949 dialogue with Watsuji 15:348. Nishitani Keiji Chosakush?,

Tetsur? and others, reprinted in

95. See Nishitani Keiji Chosakush?, 1:26; and 15:338. 96. Martin Heidegger, Vortr?ge und Aufs?tze, 7th ed. (Pfullingen: Neske, 1994), 117; Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche Volume II: The Eternal Recurrence of the Same, trans. David Farrell Krell (New York: Harper & Row, 1984), 228.

Zen After Zarathustra

137

97. David Farrell Krell, Intimations of Mortality State (University Park: Pennsylvania University Press, 1986), 136. Krell alludes to a passage where Nietzsche writes that "learning to see" is a matter of "habituating the eye to patience, to letting things come to it; learning to defer to investigate and comprehend the individual case in all its aspects." While in in fact, "unphilosophical language" we might refer to this as a matter of "strong will-power," Nietzsche tells us, "the essence of it is precisely not to 'will'" (77 8.6). 98. M?ller-Lauter, Nietzsche: His Philosophy of Contradictions and the Contradictions ofHis judgment, Philosophy, 73-75. 99. Ibid., 77. 100. Nietzsche, Grossoktavausgabe, 101. M?ller-Lauter, Nietzsche, 85. 2:371; quoted in M?ller-Lauter, Nietzsche, 120.

102. Ibid., 99. 103. The Blue Cliff Record, Case 57. This exclamation is traditionally attributed to theBuddha at the time of his birth. Nishitani relates a personal episode of watching the sunrise from a hotel balcony and having the "overwhelming experience that the radiance of the sun was focused on me and that thewhole world was opening brightly, concentrated on myself alone." This experience of "the whole ismyself," he goes on to say, should not be misunderstood as in any way excluding an

openness to the fact that a person on the next balcony may be enjoying the same experience. (See Nishitani Keiji, "Encounter with Emptiness," in The Religious Philosophy ofNishitani Keiji, ed. Taitetsu Unno [Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1989], 2-3.) vol. 2, ed. Mizuno Yaoko "Uji" [Being-time], Sh?b?genz?, (Tokyo: Iwanami, trans.Norman Waddell and Masao 47, 50, and 54; see The Heart ofD?gen's 1990), Sh?b?genz?, Abe (Albany: SUNY Press, 2002), 49, 51, and 54. 105. Rinzairoku, 50-51; see The Recorded Sayings of Linji, 20. 106. Another Gateless means often-used Zen term for "master" Barrier, Case 12.) In modern a novel or film. Note that the Western "old teacher" (Jp. r?shi). 107. D?gen, 104. D?gen,

is zhurengong (Jp. shujink?). (See The Japanese this term is used to refer to the lead character in term "Zen master" translates a different term that literally

vol. 1, ed. Mizuno Yaoko "Genj?k?an" [Manifesting suchness], Sh?b?genz?, (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1990), 54; see The Heart ofD?gen's Sh?b?genz?, 40-41. 108. D?gen, "Uji," 50; see The Heart ofD?gen's Sh?b?genz?, 51. 109. The Blue Cliff Record, Case 40. For Nishitani's comments on this case, see Nishitani Keiji Chosakushu, 3:3 Iff. 110. See Kamata Shigeo, Kegongoky?sh? [The five chapters of Huayan] See ibid., 166. (Tokyo: 1979), 246ff. Daiz?shuppan, 111. Ch. zhuban juzu yuantong-zizai; Jp. shuban gusoku ents?-jizai. 112. Rinzairoku, 22; see The Recorded Sayings of Linji, 13. 113. The Blue Cliff Record, Case 68. 114. Nishitani Relation

and 285; see Nishitani Keiji, 12:277-78 Keiji Chosakushu, trans.N. A. Waddell, in Zen Buddhism," in The Buddha Eye, 49 and 56. 115. Set Nishitani Keiji Chosakushu, 13:133 and 141. 116. Nishitani Keiji Chosakushu, 12:285; see Nishitani, "The 56.

"The

I-Thou

I-Thou Relation

in Zen

Buddhism,"

himself writes in one place of the need for a schooling of "hard discipline" that and also proudly to obey; to stand in the ranks, but also capable at any time of leading" (WP 912); but this sounds more like a military gymnastics of the will than a circuminsessional relation of non-egos. Admittedly, Zen too has a history of being 117. Nietzsche teaches one to "be able to command used, and abused, formilitary training, not only in the samurai's Bushid? ethic of premodern times but also during themore recent history of Japanese militarism. Brian Victoria has documented in detail how the rhetoric of "becoming a master wherever you are" was misused by colonizing

138
soldiers,

Bret W.Davis
and how that of "selflessness" "absolute and unquestioning (See Brian Victoria, Zen at War [New York: himself problematically spoke of "extinguishing the personal self was twisted to mean

submission

to thewill and dictates of the emperor."

Weatherhill, 1997].) Nishitani and serving the public" (messhi-h?k?) during the war, idealistically thinking that the Japanese state could, in turn, undergo "self-negation" and become a compassionate "nation of non-ego." (On Nishitani's wartime political thought in the context of his philosophical career as a whole, see

[From religion to my "Sh?ky? kara Seiji he, Seiji kara Sh?ky? he: Nishitani Keiji no Tenkai" to Tetsugaku and back to religion: Nishitani's turn], in Higashiajia [East-Asia and politics et al. [Kyoto: Nakanishiya, 2002], 347-62.) D. T. Suzuki, philosophy], ed. Fujita Masakatsu whose writings are equally complex and problematic in this regard, wrote in 1938 that "Zen is a religion of will-power, and will-power iswhat is urgently needed by thewarriors, though it ought to be enlightened by intuition." (Zen and Japanese Culture [New York: Princeton University Press, 1959], 63.) Later, however, he sometimes stressed the radical "passivity" involved in Zen as in all "religious experience." (See his "Bukky? Seikatsu to Jud?sei" [Buddhist lifestyle and 1990, 1st ed. 1942], esp. passivity] in T?y?teki Ichi [Eastern oneness] [Tokyo: Dait?shuppansha,

153ff.) In the end, however, Suzuki problematizes a simple "active/passive" or "self-power/other power" distinction, and employs the language of "action of non-action" (musa no sa) in a struggle to express an idea of a freedom and responsibility other than thatwhich can be thought in terms of thewill of the ego. (See his Zen no Shis? [Zen thought] [Tokyo; Shunj?sha, 1990,1st ed. 1943], from the Japan

130ff.)
This article was written with the generous (JSPS). Society for the Promotion of Science

support of a research fellowship