The Voice of Nothingness - Documentary`

[chicanobudista]

Good day folks...

Yesterday I received via our sangha's email address a link to a documentary:

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/voiceofnothingness

About the life and thought of Kitaro Nishida. I am not familiar with him and his school of thought. Can anyone give me some background information or cite where I can get more info specifically how does he connect to Zen Buddhism in general.

[Jundo]

Ah, the Kyoto School ... a group of 20th Century Japanese philosophers much inspired by Zen Teachings ...

Here is more information than you certainly need (this being Zen) ...

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kyoto-school/

and

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nishida-kitaro/

A bit heavy going, as philosophy can be ...

Nishida attempted to explicate a kind of experience, which he called “pure experience,” prior to conceptual articulation. Zen, as well as other Far Eastern thoughts, conceives “experience” and “understanding” as a holistic, embodied experience or awakening prior to conceptual articulations by means of sets of dualistic categories such as subject-object, part-whole, intuition-reflection, particular-universal, and relative-absolute. Those experiences often reject linguistic articulation. Nishida attempted to explicate pre-conceptual, pre-linguistic experiences, rooted in Zen, and find the relationships between those experiences and conceptualized thoughts. Nishida employed categories and concepts of Western philosophy in order to explain the relationships between these two modes of thought. Nishida’s philosophy is one of the earliest attempts to explore two distinct modes of thinking; the pre-conceptual and the conceptual, the non-linguistic and the linguistic. Later Nishida attempted to re-formulate his thought within the framework of a topology he developed.
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/...99s_Philosophy

A lot of big words about being wordless.

Gassho, J

SatToday

[Jakuden]

Wow! This must be what it's like for non-medical folks to try to read one of my veterinary journals, lol. It's in English, yes, but darned if I can understand half of it.

Gassho
Jakuden
SatToday

[Taikai]

Explanations like that definitely make me want to reject linguistic articulation!
Gassho, Taikai
Sat today

[Jishin]

The Voice of Nothingness - Documentary`

A bit heavy going, as philosophy can be ...



A lot of big words about being wordless.

Gassho, J

SatToday

Just read it. It doesn't seem like anything new. It's kind of expanding the simple mathematical formula of calories minus calories burned equals weight loss or weight gain to 350 pages and calling it a new diet and giving it a name. Absolute preverbal emptiness is just that. No explanation is necessary. Or not. [emoji3]

Gasho, Jishin, _/st\_

[chicanobudista]

A lot of big words about being wordless.

Gassho, J

Thanks, Jundo!

I received the email and didn't have much context as to who Nishida was and the trailer sure didn't help.

[Byokan]

Nishida attempted to explicate a kind of experience, which he called “pure experience,” prior to conceptual articulation. Zen, as well as other Far Eastern thoughts, conceives “experience” and “understanding” as a holistic, embodied experience or awakening prior to conceptual articulations by means of sets of dualistic categories such as subject-object, part-whole, intuition-reflection, particular-universal, and relative-absolute. Those experiences often reject linguistic articulation. Nishida attempted to explicate pre-conceptual, pre-linguistic experiences, rooted in Zen, and find the relationships between those experiences and conceptualized thoughts. Nishida employed categories and concepts of Western philosophy in order to explain the relationships between these two modes of thought. Nishida’s philosophy is one of the earliest attempts to explore two distinct modes of thinking; the pre-conceptual and the conceptual, the non-linguistic and the linguistic. Later Nishida attempted to re-formulate his thought within the framework of a topology he developed.

Oh Jundo, this stuff is like crack (or whatever the current drug is!) to me! Just for today I will not partake, nope, I'm leaving it there, there it is, okay, I'm walking away...

Gassho
Byōkan
sat today

[Rich]

This makes me dizzy ))((

Sat today

Sent from my LG-LS720 using Tapatalk

[Jika]

Uhm, how come I have the thought I understand Nishida more than the typical Zen books?
"Yes, sure, it is so."

But then, maybe I misunderstand him even more than I can't understand the other authors.

I think this is the third "Buddhist" text (after "Hardcore Zen" and the Windbell poem) that has not left me at a complete loss.
Cool.

Gassho
Jika
#sattoday

[John Mac]

Great links, thanks. So much material to read. Wonderful !