Nishida Kitaro and the Logic of Contradictory Identity in Mahayana Buddhism

For propositional logic and dialectical thought such arguments are absurd. For thought which embraces the truth that paradox reveals they are evidence of their limitations. Paradox and metaphor succeed when they simultaneously assert and deny: we accept the co-relation of a grey man and a thistle because of the identity suggested between the two which are, nevertheless, independent. The identity contains its own negation. This logic of contradictory identity is the foundation of the philosophy of Mahayana Buddhism. Nishida (1987), writing in that tradition but also strongly influenced by Western philosophy, points to the logic of soku hi, which means "is and is not”, to refer to the simultaneous presence of affirmation and negation in the logic of contradictory identity. He recalls Daito Kokushi’s verse in illustration:

Buddha and I, distinct through a billion kalpas of time,
Yet not separate for one instant;
Facing each other the whole day through,
Yet not facing each other for an instant.

Buddha and I are identical through a mutual negation: I negate my self for the unity of being inseparable from Buddha ("facing each other the whole day through”), and, in doing so, merge with the self-negation which is Buddhas’s essential nature. Buddha is the true absolute, not because it transcends its own relativity, but because "it determines itself as an absolute identity of negation and affirmation by including self-negation within itself and by being in relation to the form of its own self-negation. The world of the self, the human world, is grounded in this paradox of the absolute" (Nishida, 1987, p. 78).

We should pause here to assimilate the full implications of this statement, and, in this respect, it may be helpful to think of Buddha as ‘the way’, that is, as the course and nature of a journey. We can understand then how the selfnegation of the Buddha’s way to the truth of existence is complemented by the human necessity for an identical self-negation. Both Buddha and the developed human being assert their identity through self-negation. This is the paradox of the identity of selfhood, which is, at the same time, the identity of the self with the world. The negations of the self and of the Buddha are not denials of self; they are a tactical retreat that is necessary in greeting the world, which has, at the same time, made itself available.

The paradox presents itself. On the one hand, Nishida can write, "because there is Buddha there are sentient beings, and because there are sentient beings there is Buddha" (Nishida, 1987, p. 69). On the other, he quotes with approval the verse of the ‘Prajnaparamita Sutra’ that reads "Because there is no Buddha, there is Buddha, and because there are no sentient beings, there are sentient beings”. We witness here the making of the paradoxical identity that unites the two distinct identities into one, as achieved by the Phoenix and the turtle dove.

We are asked to accept that Buddha and sentient beings both owe their existence to each other ‘and’ that sentient beings and Buddha exist ‘because’ they do not exist. The former is an argument from existence to existence, the latter an argument from nonexistence to existence. This ontological paradox can only be resolved through the assertion of the simultaneous identity of negation and affirmation in which a higher and more complete identity is asserted through their joint negation. Buddha and sentient beings assert their identity through self-negation: the identity is that of one with the other, provided that each negates itself - a double negation in support of a double vision. It is the joint negation of the sentient being and Buddha that permits their dependence upon one another.

One can re-state this dependence as that of a mutual availability. But we are able to give this definition a greater precision when we take into account the radical change of logical form it implies. The self of the individual and the self of the other can no longer be placed in a classification system that draws a boundary between each, since they exist as co-dependent and co-originating and as distinct entities. The success of classification systems - classes, series, and the combination of class and series in the concept of number - assumes the discreetness of particulars and their stability of position. An element cannot be in two places at once; it cannot exist and simultaneously not exist in the system: it cannot be 1 and 0. But Nishida’s "logic of contradictory identity" assumes just this principle. An identity that is contradictory is paradoxical. But the double negation of the self and of the other reveals the unity of an implicative order that retains contradiction within itself as the necessary counterpoint to unity.

The inner journey of contemplation reaches its ultimate conclusion when the self-negation of the individual claims its identity with the unity of a self- negating world. The achievement, says Nishida, is a perception of "absolute presence”, an experienced totality of immediacy which exists for itself apart from any misdirection of either desire or intellect. It is a totality in which the distinctions between subjectivity and objectivity, inner and outer, part and whole are negated by the presence of one to the other. Nishida refers to the view of Suzuki Daisetsu that we are confronted with a spirituality of "a discrimination that transcends discrimination”. This meaning is also captured in Bernard Bosanquet’s phrase of a "differentiation without dissociation”.

This assertion of the joint identity of difference and coherence is, we have seen, the logic of paradox. Could we not now say in the same spirit that paradox is a contradiction that avoids contradiction? We see the association in a dissociation and believe this capacity as a relatively sophisticated achievement. But its basic structure has a lineage that pre-dates the consciously symbolic paradox to first appear through the acting out of conflict. We saw how early humans reacted to the distress of the everyday presence of death by a deliberate repetition of death in rituals of human sacrifice.

This early symbolic presence of a paradox in action suggests that paradox owes its existence in the first place to the trauma, and not the pleasure, of human existence. It looks as though the actions of "taking control” of the naturally occurring sequence of events is itself of psychological significance: of course, in the first instance sacrifice may be a kind of bartering with the Gods and not a novel strategy for handling despair, but this does not challenge the fact that it is an action in relation to the Gods, and a symbolic one at that. The relation, as any paradox, leaves its opposites intact and at the same time opposes the opposition through its representation in a ritual capable of repetition which then acquires the status of a "life of its own”.

The common feature of these symbolic negotiations is to re-present (i.e., bring into presence) a cultural perspective that unites gods and humans, with each retaining their "proper” place. Ortega y Gasset’s view, that culture is a kind of detour necessary to bring the immediate into focus, appears particularly insightful if placed within the context of the symbolic paradox. From this we could proceed to argue that the individual selves within the culture find their own measure and identity through identification with the cultural forms, and, to be sure, there is ample evidence that the self is, to a large extent, defined in this fashion. But any truth that this view possesses pertains only to a mind that functions without benefit of a self-reflection that reveals the absolute contradictory nature of the self in its relation to the other. The self that experiences the other as a direct presence is the self that negates itself to allow the presence of the other to itself; similarly, that which is other than the self negates itself to become an other for the self. Think of the eternal Phoenix and the finite Turtle Dove: through mutual self-negation, the transcendence of the former unites with the immanence of the latter!

It is for this reason, says Nishida, that we can never define the self. Contemplation leads us, not to the self, but to the absolute. In this respect the depth of the self is without end, as is the range and depth of the absolute. It is not the case that there is "no self”, for in that case there would be no experience, since experience can only occur in relation to someone who experiences. Rather, the self in its relation to the absolute has acquired the “largeness” that Walt Whitman exemplified, that of the absolute itself. It exists now in what Wallace Stevens called “the intensist rendezvous”, where “we believe, for little reason, that God and the Imagination are one”. Ultimately, we must, after all speculative thought, return to the poetic, for only the poetic can capture the sense in we may live within the absolute. The poetic ‘is’ the argument that is lived. It gives us the sense of that inexhaustible largeness and depth of a truth which is “beyond us, yet ourselves”.

The power of the haiku is its reserve. It invites the reader to contemplate the value it expresses. As Stryk (1986) says, that value lies most fully in nature. Whaley (2022) says:

Stone, river, and tree are alike parts of the great hidden Unity. Thus man, through his Buddha nature or universalized consciousness, possesses an intimate means of contact with nature. The songs of birds, the noise of waterfalls, the rolling of thunder, the whispering of wind in the pine trees - all these are utterances of the Absolute.

This is Nishida’s "paradox of the Absolute”, the "is” and "is not” of the two terms.

Just as we can perceive Science and Technology as the outcome of the capacity to know the physical world and to use it to our advantage, so we can envisage the development of a distinct symbolic order whose province is essentially that of finding meanings we can live by amidst life’s uncertainties. The double negation of self and other, I suggested, reveals the unity of an implicative order that retains contradiction within itself. These contradictions are not those to be resolved by Science and Technology; they are part of our nature as symbolic animals and do not submit to an explicit synthesis. That implicative order must be understood as the outcome of the poetic imagination which affirms the unity within difference of the human and the natural world. That unity exists, prior to the constructions of the intellect, as our being within nature, so that we may see ourselves in the natural and the natural in ourselves: the unity is the perception of our expressiveness in the physiognomic expressiveness of the natural world.

In this sense, as Merleau-Ponty pointed out, the human face exists primarily in relation to the face of the world. The relations of this symbolic order imply one another intrinsically, in the way that one perceives a face in its wholeness prior to an explicit account of its parts. It is surely this kind of relationship that he refers to in that final inspiring paragraph of ‘The Phenomenology of Perception’ in which, discussing the meaning of human freedom, he claims: "Nothing determines me from outside, not because nothing acts upon me, but, on the contrary, because I am from the start outside myself and open to the world" (Merleau-Ponty, 1962, p. 456).

This "being outside myself" and openness to the world ‘from the start’, is the central principle of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of a pre-reflective intention- ality that exists in a natural and original accord with its environment. There occurs a similar statement in one of Rumi’s poems in relation to those experiences of a "closeness" of our and the world’s being: "we are out of ourselves but collected". The word "collected" is ambiguous and thus serves to occupy a middle-point between a self that has collected itself and a world which has itself collected the human self. It’s Wordsworth’s balance of an "ennobling interchange of forces from within and from without". The context of this primary self-negation is a state of being in the world in which a naive or innocent openness simultaneously takes us out of and confirms our selves: a differentiation without dissociation of self and world. In contrast, when the closeness of self and world is lost, self-negation becomes a necessary first step towards the recovery of the primary pre-reflective awareness.

But is it the case that in Nishida’s perspective, and in all those programmes of training which emphasise overcoming the logic of paradox through the realisation of contradictory identity, the enlightenment of the paradigm shift, derives solely from the force of that logic, in which the self-negation of the absolute complements that of the individual self? In Nishida’s case, we should note the influence of Kierkegaard, in particular, that account of the journey of Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, in Fear and Trembling; as we know, God finally relents, revealing Himself to Abraham on Abraham’s revelation of his own identity. This is a journey of despair, seen as the necessary precursor of enlightenment. In this instance the self-negation of the Absolute is not one that necessarily accommodates and encourages the self-negation of the individual: there is no pre-existing harmony of inner and outer nature to ease the way forward.

There is little sense of the communal in Kierkegaard’ philosophy of self-enlightenment: he declined marriage on the grounds that it would interfere with his mission of devotion to God. Similarly, in his rejection of the view that his philosophy is one of mysticism, Nishida discounts the decisive influence of that experience of intimacy with the world which characterises both the pre-reflective world, the world of sharing and caring, which forms the basis for a moral outlook. He affirms, on the contrary, that "religion does not necessarily take morality as its medium or vehicle” (Nishida, 1987, p. 79).

I cannot agree with the view that the path to enlightenment is one of logic alone. Does not the logic of contradictory identity itself rest upon the perception of a benevolent harmony, achieved through the exercise of metaphor in the poetic imagination and in religious thought? In this chapter I have on some occasions equated self-negation to Marcel’s idea of availability. But availability is not simply a curtailing of self; it is suggestive of a directed openness to what exists as available in the world, one in which feeling and thinking are united in an enlargement of self-understanding. Similarly, in respect to the availability of what is other than our selves, it must present itself through a perception of its embodiment that can be incorporated into our all-too-human lives - a cooperative, not a confrontational experience.

There is a communal, interpersonal level of human interaction with each other and the with the world which is foundational, and which exists alongside and determines the logic of contradictory experience. I suggest, therefore, that the logic of contradictory identity necessarily implies the context of what we might call the "logic” of joint availability, a logic which pertains to the whole structure in which self-negation operates, and in which the benefits of joint availability may be encouraged. Within this structure the self-negates itself insofar as it withdraws from imposing itself on the other, but it exists and derives its influence from the taken-for- granted presence of the quality of shared concern.

In this way we may avoid the danger of assuming the finality of an identity of an absolute self-satisfaction. - the idea that this is the terminus of the journey - for it signifies an end to engagement with the world whose always qualified being through human discourse requires the exercise of imagination and of virtue. The only end-state in human life is death, and we will be less than human if we abolish despair, which is "the sickness unto death”. Perhaps, to be true to our methodology of tracing phenomena to their developmental starting point, we should remember that, although there are discernible stages in development, the earlier and so-called "primitive” experiences are still present. We may no longer sacrifice our loved ones in despair at our collective suffering in the unstated hope that the deliberate repetition of the same experience brings relief through habituation. But we would be less than human if we were to lose our despair at the death of a loved one. Insofar as we engage with others, our lives are lived within the "somewhat absolute”, suggested by Henry Bugbee, in which the "somewhats” of life occur as figures, episodes, often brief and transient reminders, of the absolute of a benevolent unity.

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