Speaker 1: In this existential mode of anxiety, who was faced with
Speaker 1: a chilling encounter with nothingness and felt a spetch of
Speaker 1: guests taking hold of him. At this point, all the
Speaker 1: ordinary necessary things of life all lose their necessity and utility.
Speaker 1: When he's rubbed from what ones had made life worth living.
Speaker 1: The questions why did this happen to me? What can
Speaker 1: I do about it? Are transformed into the questions who
Speaker 1: am I? Why do I exists?
Speaker 2: Help? City? Moly? Who? All right? Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 2: This is David Patrick Carey with Church of the Eternal Logos,
Speaker 2: and today we have a very special stream sponsored by
Speaker 2: our brother AC. Shout out to AC if he's out there.
Speaker 2: I know he might be busy today with the family.
Speaker 2: I shot him an email earlier to let him know
Speaker 2: that I'll be doing his stream, and this is long awaited,
Speaker 2: so I even reached out to AC and apologized. It
Speaker 2: took me a while to get to this one, in which,
Speaker 2: due to request, we're going to be analyzing Keji Nishitani's
Speaker 2: magnus Opus magnum Opus Religion and Nothingness, which is really
Speaker 2: a sort of conversation. I mean, it's not as explicit,
Speaker 2: but what he's trying to do is reconcile Western nihilism
Speaker 2: and materialistic atheism and Christianity with his understanding of the Sunyata,
Speaker 2: which is the concept of emptiness or nothingness within Buddhism.
Speaker 2: And so we're going to be diving into this book.
Speaker 2: As you can see, I got so many freaking tabs.
Speaker 2: Why got done? I'm thinking, Okay, maybe we're not going
Speaker 2: to be able to read all those, so we're going
Speaker 2: to find some of the most important ones. But we're
Speaker 2: going to be discussing each chapter. It's a six chapter book.
Speaker 2: It's about three hundred page and so we're going to
Speaker 2: be talking a little bit about who Nishatani was and
Speaker 2: why he is important. Because he is an important thinker
Speaker 2: and he's a very well read man. You can't read
Speaker 2: this book and not think come away from it by thinking, Okay,
Speaker 2: I don't really agree with the book, but it is
Speaker 2: coming from somebody who's read a lot about Western philosophy,
Speaker 2: and so he himself actually studied under Martin Heidegger. And
Speaker 2: phenomenology is a central focus of Nishatani, along with existentialism,
Speaker 2: and he gets a lot of that from Sartra along
Speaker 2: with he was a major fan of Nietzsche, and that's
Speaker 2: where his conversations on nihilism come together. And his sort
Speaker 2: of I wouldn't say a great understanding of Christianity, certainly
Speaker 2: not orthodox, but from a Japanese Buddhist philosopher who's studying
Speaker 2: Western Christianity, I think he does a pretty good job.
Speaker 2: And in the book he really doesn't bash Christianity very much.
Speaker 2: He really bashes atheist materialism and what he sees as
Speaker 2: the sort of secluded nature of the person or the
Speaker 2: self or the ego within Western existentialism and nihilism. And
Speaker 2: he believes that his concept of emptiness, coming from his
Speaker 2: Zen Buddhist tradition, is going to reconcile these things. So
Speaker 2: I'm skeptical if he does this. Obviously I don't believe
Speaker 2: he does. But due to AC and a major thank
Speaker 2: you to AC for sponsoring today's stream, we're going to
Speaker 2: be covering it. We'll talk a little bit about who
Speaker 2: Nishatani is. I'll give you my three central critiques of
Speaker 2: why his project actually doesn't work because his emptiness nothingness
Speaker 2: again shinyata can be translated various ways. He kind of
Speaker 2: interchanges between emptiness and nothingness is an entirely different paradigm
Speaker 2: and does not reconcile Western atheism, although I get the
Speaker 2: point he's making. It does not reconcile Western ittsisial atheism, nihilism,
Speaker 2: and existentialism with the transcendent meaning of Christianity. But it's
Speaker 2: a good go, and so we're gonna I'll give that.
Speaker 2: Then I got a video that really is just a
Speaker 2: sort of overview of the work of Nishitani because most
Speaker 2: of our conversation is going to be focused on this book.
Speaker 2: This is what AC wanted me to cover, and this
Speaker 2: book I can see why AC wanted me to cover
Speaker 2: it because it's actually very important for John Verveake. So
Speaker 2: if you guys have been following the channel, you know
Speaker 2: that we've been following the ongoing conversation of the Meaning Crisis, right,
Speaker 2: which is a dialogue that really got going between John Verveak,
Speaker 2: Jordan Peterson. Pagio has been part of it. Although I
Speaker 2: wouldn't consider him one of the central progenitors of the
Speaker 2: Meaning crisis, Vervek's really sort of taken the mantle on that,
Speaker 2: and we've discussed his sort of neo Playtonism, his technocratic
Speaker 2: silicon sages that he believes AI is gonna transplant and
Speaker 2: become more wise than the Buddha or Laozu or Socrates,
Speaker 2: and he specifically said it'll be more virtuous than Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2: So we already have laid out. If you haven't seen those,
Speaker 2: you can go check out the other streams I've done
Speaker 2: on John Vervaiki after this stream, but this one's we're
Speaker 2: gonna be focusing on this book. So the video I
Speaker 2: have for you is really an overview of Nishatani, his
Speaker 2: life and his work, so that when we go through
Speaker 2: chapter by chapter of the of this book, it'll make
Speaker 2: a little bit more sense. And also what I wanted
Speaker 2: to point out is I can see why John Vervaiki
Speaker 2: likes this book because your average Western New Age, spiritual,
Speaker 2: not religious, semi Buddhist Eastern mystic isn't going to find
Speaker 2: this book entirely useful because it is very academic. This
Speaker 2: is not your you know, go sit out in your zen,
Speaker 2: meditative lotus posture, whatever you're doing and coming up with
Speaker 2: these you know, these beautiful ecstatic experiences of of Satori
Speaker 2: or whatnot. It's not This is him putting his Buddhism,
Speaker 2: his Zen Buddhist perspective and conversation with particularly German philosophy.
Speaker 2: So I said, he actually studied under Heideger for two
Speaker 2: years and he's a big fan of Nietzsche, although he
Speaker 2: believes Nietzsche comes short of the ultimate conclusion. He has
Speaker 2: actually has a funny quote. He says, Nietzscha, you know
Speaker 2: that there's a how Nietzscha stared into the Abyss and
Speaker 2: got lost in it. Well, Nishatani has a funny quote
Speaker 2: that says, uh, Nietzscha stood in or stared in the Abyss,
Speaker 2: but he didn't stare long enough. And this comes from
Speaker 2: again this Buddhist understanding that by a meditative contemplation on
Speaker 2: the understanding of emptiness or this sort of underground undergirding
Speaker 2: of the sort of transcendent nothingness that undergirds all reality,
Speaker 2: that Nietzscha would eventually there if he just stood a
Speaker 2: little or stared a little bit further into the Abyss.
Speaker 2: I disagree, but my point is this book is very academic.
Speaker 2: So if you're wondering, like maybe you went through a
Speaker 2: New Age phase or something and you didn't read this book.
Speaker 2: It's probably because this is a little bit more technical.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of technical terms here, and so there's
Speaker 2: a there's a handful I want to address that's going
Speaker 2: to be brought up over and over throughout this conversation,
Speaker 2: and so let me hit those. There's about five that
Speaker 2: I want to get out right from the beginning. The
Speaker 2: first one, as I already said, is shinyata, and this
Speaker 2: is a Buddhist concept for the sort of transcendent reality
Speaker 2: beyond concept. So Nishitani is actually a I wouldn't call
Speaker 2: him anomenalist, because he believes there's a sort of utility
Speaker 2: and the concept of essences and substances, but he rejects
Speaker 2: their ultimate reality because they're ultimately grounded on nothingness, and
Speaker 2: this nothingness penetrates all things. And so you're gonna hear
Speaker 2: Sunyata like, for example, chapter three, nihilism in Sunyata, chapter four,
Speaker 2: the standpoint of Shunyata, Chapter five, Shunyata in Time, chapter six,
Speaker 2: Shunyata in history. So this is central to his whole thing,
Speaker 2: is putting this concept of emptiness or nothingness in place,
Speaker 2: or some sort of reconciliation, some sort of middle ground
Speaker 2: between what he sees as atheist existential materialism that leads
Speaker 2: to a sort of detrimental understanding of nihilism and then
Speaker 2: transcendent meaning in Christianity. And he's arguing that this Shunyata
Speaker 2: concept within Buddhism is essentially the thing that's gonna reconcile
Speaker 2: these and allowed for a transcendent meaning. But ultimately there
Speaker 2: is an undergirding of nothingness that is the foundation of reality.
Speaker 2: Another concept, as we've talked about it, and we did
Speaker 2: a stream on an introduction of Buddhism. We talked about
Speaker 2: the differences between Terravada, Mahayana Vadriyana. The Tibetan form of Buddhism,
Speaker 2: which has very tantric has many forms of gods, is
Speaker 2: the on atman. So if you're familiar with the Hindu
Speaker 2: concept of atman, which is a soul or sometimes translated
Speaker 2: as an ego, and Buddhism they believe in an on atman,
Speaker 2: a no soul or no ego, and they believe this
Speaker 2: to be the core of yourself. So his entire work
Speaker 2: is going to be an opposition to a Christian understanding
Speaker 2: of a sort of personal soul that is a dimension
Speaker 2: of us that is made in the image of God,
Speaker 2: the imago day. Although he's going to reference these things,
Speaker 2: but he does ultimately reject any existence of a soul,
Speaker 2: and in some of the passages we read, he's going
Speaker 2: to probably mention the on Atman. So I want to
Speaker 2: lay that one out. Another one is Indra's net. So
Speaker 2: another important concept he uses for his work is the
Speaker 2: idea of Indra's net, which, again, if you're familiar with
Speaker 2: Hinduism or Buddhism, is a concept related to again this
Speaker 2: sort of maya of existence, the illusory nature of the
Speaker 2: perceived world. And so he believes that the relationship between
Speaker 2: subject and object subjective experience and objective reality is an illusion,
Speaker 2: and that again this emptiness, the shunyata, is really what's
Speaker 2: underneath what he calls Indra's net, Indra's net, this matrix
Speaker 2: of associations between my subjective self or perception of self
Speaker 2: verse objective reality. And so he considers this the sort
Speaker 2: of codependence that true enlightenment and true meaning is actually
Speaker 2: the transcendence of Indra's net, or the transcendence of this
Speaker 2: correspondent relationship between the subjective self and objective objects, which
Speaker 2: include metaphysical universals like essences, natures, or substances. He believes
Speaker 2: those things are also objects, though mental or cognitive objects
Speaker 2: that are still illusory and build this correspondent relationship between
Speaker 2: self and those or self in other Another one is
Speaker 2: some maadi some hobdi is meditative consciousness. That is, so
Speaker 2: it's more of the phenomenological experience of nothingness. This again,
Speaker 2: for him, the emptiness that undergirds all of reality, and
Speaker 2: so the actual experience of this emptiness is a term
Speaker 2: called samadi, and he'll use this multiple times as well.
Speaker 2: And then the last one, just to give more clarification,
Speaker 2: is the great doubt. He references the Great doubt multiple
Speaker 2: multiple times in regards to Nietzsche or any sort of
Speaker 2: nihilistic worldview, moving towards what he believes is the ultimate
Speaker 2: purpose of Zen Buddhism, which is this continual doubting, doubting
Speaker 2: of existence, doubting of the reason why you're here, doubting
Speaker 2: of your own self, perception and identity, doubting ultimate questions
Speaker 2: until you eventually doubt the concept of doubt, and then
Speaker 2: once you have doubted everything, the great doubt is the
Speaker 2: zin awakening to the limits of rationality and meaning itself,
Speaker 2: therefore awakening to emptiness and nothingness. So those are the
Speaker 2: five main terms that I just want to give clarification
Speaker 2: for because everything else is going to be in pretty
Speaker 2: straightforward English. But if you're not familiar with those, it
Speaker 2: may cause a little bit of problem moving forward. And
Speaker 2: so Kaiji Nishatani live from February twenty seventh, nineteen hundred
Speaker 2: two November twenty fourth, nineteen ninety and so he's ninety
Speaker 2: years old. He lived during a very interesting period of time,
Speaker 2: especially for a Japanese man, because obviously World War II
Speaker 2: occurs during this period, and that's going to affect him
Speaker 2: personally in regards to his opportunity to hold any sort
Speaker 2: of public position or teaching position in the United States,
Speaker 2: because by the time of nineteen forty six, he's actually
Speaker 2: banned from any professional or public teaching position in the
Speaker 2: United States. So that's a point there. So he is
Speaker 2: part of the Japanese Kyoto School, which is the Kyoto
Speaker 2: School was founded by his teacher, Kataro Nishida, who the
Speaker 2: Kyoto School is really about Japanese typically Buddhist philosophers engaging
Speaker 2: with Western philosophy to sort of develop a new philosophical dialogue,
Speaker 2: and so he is part of that tradition, and that's
Speaker 2: partly why he goes to Germany in nineteen thirty seven
Speaker 2: through nineteen thirty nine SOL, a two year period in
Speaker 2: which he is already an accomplished writer philosopher, and studies
Speaker 2: under Heidegger, because he's very much interested in German philosophy.
Speaker 2: He really doesn't talk much about any of the analytic
Speaker 2: philosophical tradition, really doesn't talk much about, at least in
Speaker 2: a positive way, about science and the sort of remnant
Speaker 2: of the scientific process that leads to what he argues
Speaker 2: is atheist materialism, which we would agree with, We would
Speaker 2: absolutely agree with. So he's much less a proponent of
Speaker 2: Western analytic philosophy, but much more of a proponent of
Speaker 2: German idealism or phenomenology specifically speaking. And this is because
Speaker 2: his work is not interested in larger sociological or cultural understandings.
Speaker 2: His work is really really focused on the individual. And
Speaker 2: this is because Nishatani had his own sort of meaning crisis,
Speaker 2: if you will, And so really what led him to
Speaker 2: become this philosopher is because of his own experi of
Speaker 2: nihilism and him wanting to try to he are. I mean,
Speaker 2: we have a quote I'm going to show you where
Speaker 2: he literally says it was life or death that he
Speaker 2: was thinking about killing himself because he came to the
Speaker 2: conclusion that everything was ultimately meaningless, and so philosophy for
Speaker 2: him was the way in which he sort of climbed
Speaker 2: out of this meaningless pit, if you will. So, so
Speaker 2: his work really focuses on the individual, which makes sense
Speaker 2: why he's so interested in German philosophy. And also he
Speaker 2: has a section which I don't know if we're going
Speaker 2: to read about, which talks a lot about em Manual
Speaker 2: cont Now, you guys know, we've done whole streams on metaphysics.
Speaker 2: I did a whole stream just on am Manual Kant
Speaker 2: and his impact on metaphysics due to his critique of
Speaker 2: pure reason. And Nishatani's basically going to pick up on this,
Speaker 2: and he's going to argue in favor of the idea
Speaker 2: that the exterior world isn't totally knowable, right, because this
Speaker 2: is what Kant does. He calls calls into question the Noah,
Speaker 2: the intelligibility, no ability, ultimate truth of the exterior world
Speaker 2: and argues in favor of these a priori cognitive categories, which,
Speaker 2: through sense impression, this is the world that we actually experience.
Speaker 2: Whatever is out here, whatever this book is in its reality,
Speaker 2: I don't know. But what I do know is these
Speaker 2: cognitive a priori categories, which he takes from Aristotle to
Speaker 2: ten categories, which he adds two more as twelve. Kant
Speaker 2: does that. He says, this synthetic experience where these sort
Speaker 2: of blend together. Yes, this is kind of his understanding
Speaker 2: as well. However, he would argue in favor of this Shunyata,
Speaker 2: this Buddhist is in concept of nothingness undergirding all that,
Speaker 2: and that's where he believes they kind of came up short.
Speaker 2: So he is critical of German idealism, which comes after Kant,
Speaker 2: because they believed in these cognitive categories as being ontologically real,
Speaker 2: which he rejects. So he says, yeah, they're useful. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's something in which allows us to give rational discourse
Speaker 2: to the exterior world. However, he does not believe in
Speaker 2: sort of these metaphysical universals ultimately speaking, because everything is
Speaker 2: innately nothingness empty, it's empty, it's void, and therefore we
Speaker 2: need to fully come to this concept, and so he's
Speaker 2: a very very well read man. So you can't read
Speaker 2: hisself without recognizing that he's a very well read man.
Speaker 2: But I want to give you a few points of
Speaker 2: his philosophy, so I have a few notes. So the
Speaker 2: foundations of his philosophy is the influences in Buddhism. Nishatani's
Speaker 2: philosophical perspective is deeply rooted in Zen Buddhism. He employs
Speaker 2: the concept of shinyata, as I said, not as a
Speaker 2: nihilistic void, but as a foundational reality. Right, So for him,
Speaker 2: nihilism is not the absence of meaning, it's the fullness
Speaker 2: of meaning, because nihilism isn't a thing, it's a reality
Speaker 2: that undergirds all things. Now you may think that's not
Speaker 2: that big of a distinction, but for him, this is
Speaker 2: a major distinction because this is what he's trying to criticize,
Speaker 2: the Western philosophical project and why he believes has sort
Speaker 2: of come to a dead end. So that's that and
Speaker 2: from which all things emerge and from which they will
Speaker 2: all return. So all things again very Buddhists, right, this
Speaker 2: is pretty standards in Buddhism. Right here, this understanding influences
Speaker 2: his interpretation of existence, identity, and the cosmos. Another central
Speaker 2: point of his philosophy is dialogue with the West. Nister
Speaker 2: Tania engaged extensively with philosophers such as Nietzsche, Heidiger, and Sartra.
Speaker 2: His encounter with Nietzsche's proclamation of the death of God
Speaker 2: and Heidegger's analysis of being toward death led him to
Speaker 2: explore the depths of nihilism and the possibility of overcoming
Speaker 2: it through a return to the existential and religious dimensions
Speaker 2: of human life, which ultimately means the realization that everything
Speaker 2: is empty and nothing and then. The engagement with nihilism
Speaker 2: is central theme in Nishatani's work, which he wrote a
Speaker 2: whole book just on nihilism. This one is mostly about nihilism,
Speaker 2: but it's a little bit more expansive, and that his
Speaker 2: work is the confrontation with nihilism. He saw the crisis
Speaker 2: of nihilism not just as a Western problem, but as
Speaker 2: a universal human issue, and so Nishatani argued that both
Speaker 2: Western and Eastern traditions could provide pathways out of nihilism
Speaker 2: through a radical reorientation towards the experience of nothingness as
Speaker 2: a positive foundational aspect of existence. And then this obviously
Speaker 2: leads to the concept or the field of nothingness, where
Speaker 2: he believes that this notion of a field of nothingness
Speaker 2: as a metaphysical framework where the individual selves and phenomena
Speaker 2: are interconnected. So he even makes lip service to Leibniz's
Speaker 2: monad towards the end of it of the book talking
Speaker 2: about this, that's chapter four, That this emptiness and once
Speaker 2: we come to this, Samadi, this realization and c really
Speaker 2: incorporate this transcendent meaning of nothingness. I know it sounds
Speaker 2: oxy moronic, but that then we can have this sort
Speaker 2: of collapsing of these dualistic problems. Right so subject and object,
Speaker 2: self and other being a non being, all these things
Speaker 2: are collapsed once we come to this fuller realization of nothingness.
Speaker 2: And so so in regards to this book, particularly speaking,
Speaker 2: the major themes that I wrote down is obviously the
Speaker 2: crisis of nihilism. Nishatani identifies nihilism as a pervasive condition
Speaker 2: of modern life, characterized by the loss of meaning and value.
Speaker 2: This crisis is exacerbated by the decline of traditional religious
Speaker 2: beliefs and the disenchantment of the world in the face
Speaker 2: of scientific rationalism. We can all agree with that. So
Speaker 2: he has things that we would certainly agree with it. Really,
Speaker 2: his criticism of science, atheist, materialism, nihilism from the Western context,
Speaker 2: not his, and existential are pretty on point. So I
Speaker 2: think we can pretty much adopt most of that. Now.
Speaker 2: When he gets into Christian theology, I'm gonna mention it here.
Speaker 2: In a second. He gets into meister Eckhart, who is
Speaker 2: not Orthodox and certainly is even deemed a heretic within
Speaker 2: the Catholic tradition. Although he's ring of been. He's tried
Speaker 2: to been revived here recently, especially in the last two
Speaker 2: hundred years. But anyways, I digress. I'll get to that
Speaker 2: in just this moment. So he argues that Nishatani traces
Speaker 2: the roots of nihilism and Western thought, drawing on Nietzsche Heidegger,
Speaker 2: and suggests this confrontation with nothingness is essential to overcoming
Speaker 2: existential impass of nihilism. So the way you get through
Speaker 2: nihilism is to appreciate and embody nihilism or for him,
Speaker 2: emptiness shunyata nothingness. The next one is religion and the
Speaker 2: encounter with nothingness. Nishitani posits that genuine religious experience, which
Speaker 2: he posits as an individual endeavor. So we're going to
Speaker 2: get into chapter one is where he's defining what is religion. Well,
Speaker 2: he basically defines it as an individual relationship with transcendent meaning,
Speaker 2: and we can probably agree to that to an extent,
Speaker 2: but to characterize all of religion of that, you can
Speaker 2: see the presuppositions he already has focusing so much on
Speaker 2: the individual as opposed to collective identity. So there's that.
Speaker 2: But he believes that religious experience encounters the abyss of nothingness,
Speaker 2: leading to a transformation of the self. This encounter is
Speaker 2: not a nihilistic surrender, but a liberating realization that frees
Speaker 2: the individual from an egocentric illusion of the world and
Speaker 2: reveals the interconnectedness in the emptiness of all things. And
Speaker 2: so then he goes from nihilism to religious awakening. These
Speaker 2: are just themes, So we're going to go through the chapters.
Speaker 2: This is not in a particular order, but the journey
Speaker 2: through nihilism to religious awakening requires a shift from the
Speaker 2: standpoint of the ego to the standpoint of nothingness. Nishatani
Speaker 2: outlines a path of spiritual practice and existential inquiry that
Speaker 2: leads to this transformation, emphasizing the importance of meditation and
Speaker 2: the cultivation of the great doubt to awaken to the
Speaker 2: reality of nothing and the ethics and social engagement. Nishatani's
Speaker 2: vision of religion and nothingness has profound it for him
Speaker 2: ethical implications by recognizing that emptiness and interconnectedness of all things.
Speaker 2: Individuals then are called to act with compassion and responsibility
Speaker 2: towards all life of the natural world because of our
Speaker 2: realization that of this interconnectedness or that we're all one.
Speaker 2: And if you don't, you're going to have karma build
Speaker 2: up and you're going to reincarnate at another point in
Speaker 2: time anyway, So you might as well come to this
Speaker 2: realization now. And so he believes karma samsara, the cycle
Speaker 2: of death and rebirth in carnation. This is for him
Speaker 2: the ethical basis of nihilism and why it actually gives
Speaker 2: you for what he believes, a ethical justification for love
Speaker 2: and compassion towards the world. So those are the main
Speaker 2: themes right there that we're going to be discussing today. Yeah,
Speaker 2: as you you guys can pick up, we're going to
Speaker 2: be hearing a lot of the term nothingness in emptiness,
Speaker 2: because this is the whole basis. Now, there's a few
Speaker 2: critiques that I want to make, so right off the
Speaker 2: bat here in regards to looking at this from a
Speaker 2: Christian perspective, I have three major critiques which why his
Speaker 2: project doesn't work because it doesn't recognize the holistic nature
Speaker 2: of paradigms and worldviews. And so number one, the utilizing
Speaker 2: his concept of shunata doesn't work in this reconciliation of
Speaker 2: Christianity and material atheism, because one, he rejects divine revelation
Speaker 2: and is in favor of the subjective experience of nothing
Speaker 2: of emptiness. And so I highlight that he's really in
Speaker 2: no better epistemic ground than somebody claiming divine revelation or
Speaker 2: reading the Bible literally, because his whole argument is that
Speaker 2: we have to come through a subjective phenomenological experience to
Speaker 2: realize that the world is ultimately empty and nothing. And
Speaker 2: this is the basis for his whole book. So this
Speaker 2: is the presupposition that is for him objectively true. This
Speaker 2: is the case, guys, that there's nothing that's undergirding reality.
Speaker 2: It's total nothing emptiness. And because of that, you know,
Speaker 2: you have to go through a meditative, contemplative state so
Speaker 2: that you can get to this understanding, so that you
Speaker 2: can buy you can sort of break through nihilism through
Speaker 2: the understanding of the ultimate totality of nihilism, meaning nothingness.
Speaker 2: So that's a bit of a critique. There's no real epy.
Speaker 2: He's not on any better epistemic ground, and I wouldn't
Speaker 2: say he's even on any better epistemic ground than the
Speaker 2: atheist materialists that he correctly criticizes for their own belief
Speaker 2: and objective truth or that science is the ultimate arbiter
Speaker 2: of truth, which yet they operate on all these other
Speaker 2: presuppositions that they can't justify. So here's the main points
Speaker 2: that he makes that I wrote down. Number one, religion
Speaker 2: is ultimately an individual relationship towards transcendent meaning. So he
Speaker 2: makes it explicit, and I think I have this. This
Speaker 2: is like the first tab we have that religion is
Speaker 2: ultimately an individual process or an individual experience. And he's
Speaker 2: not concerned. He speaks explicitly, he's not concerned with the
Speaker 2: societal or the sociological or the cultural implications of religion.
Speaker 2: He believes that is culturally relative. But therefore the main
Speaker 2: core of what religion is is this individual experience towards
Speaker 2: transcendent meaning. Then he says that what religion offers humanity
Speaker 2: then is access to these fundamental questions of life, like
Speaker 2: why are you here, where are you going? What do
Speaker 2: you want? And he would argue that like atheist materialism
Speaker 2: in the West doesn't really provide sufficient doubt for these
Speaker 2: questions because of the scientific rationalism, it already has these
Speaker 2: explicit answers, so like why are you here? Well, big bang,
Speaker 2: Darwinian macro evolution, that's why you're here. You're a sort
Speaker 2: of cosmic happening. You're insignificant. So he would argue that
Speaker 2: science believes it's answering these questions, but it's really not,
Speaker 2: and because of its sort of epistemic hubris, that it
Speaker 2: isn't allowing for the great doubt that we talked about.
Speaker 2: It's not allowing for the doubt that is a sort
Speaker 2: of growing of knowledge and within oneself, which he believes
Speaker 2: moves you towards the realization of emptiness. Okay, he also
Speaker 2: talks about the self awareness of reality in that again
Speaker 2: getting into the anapman, the absence of a soul, that
Speaker 2: this is what allows you to fully understand reality, because
Speaker 2: once you have a full self awareness of the absence
Speaker 2: of a soul or the absence of a permanent self,
Speaker 2: now you can see reality as it truly is. Obviously,
Speaker 2: as a Christian we totally reject that. And as we've
Speaker 2: talked about in multiple streams, I would argue that it's
Speaker 2: the relationship you build with Christ. Right. I just talked
Speaker 2: about this with my priest today about how some young
Speaker 2: men who are coming to the Orthodox Church and who
Speaker 2: are let's say, going down some of these conspiratorial rabbit
Speaker 2: holes and they're putting dots together. We've all talked about
Speaker 2: how Christianity uniquely fits everything together, that when you look
Speaker 2: at the world and you look at the chaos, and
Speaker 2: you look at the degeneracy, the only thing that actually
Speaker 2: gives you an understanding of why this is happening is
Speaker 2: the Christian worldview. And so I would argue that it's
Speaker 2: your relationship with Christ which gives you new eyes to
Speaker 2: see and new ears to hear. Right, So Christ healing
Speaker 2: the blind, which happens multiple times throughout scripture, is not
Speaker 2: just a historical happening of a miracle which did happen.
Speaker 2: It's a happening that's occurring to you and me right now.
Speaker 2: It's the cleansing of our news. It's the cleansing of
Speaker 2: our noetic faculties, the eye of the heart, the eye
Speaker 2: of the soul. Again, he rejects these things, so he
Speaker 2: believes that by you realizing they don't exist, it's actually
Speaker 2: going to bring you to a better understanding of reality.
Speaker 2: I would argue that it's your personal relationship with Christ
Speaker 2: and understanding the moral implications of the world we live in.
Speaker 2: That that's what gives you the eyes to see and
Speaker 2: the ears to hear and fully understand what's happening in reality.
Speaker 2: Another point, the great doubt. We've already kind of talked
Speaker 2: about this. So he talks about the importance of doubting
Speaker 2: and why religion ask these fundamental deeper questions, and so
Speaker 2: we can go on the great doubt, which is a
Speaker 2: Buddhist concept. So the great doubt is not something he's invented.
Speaker 2: This is something that's indicative of Zen Buddhism itself. And
Speaker 2: so the great doubt is this sort of prodigal journey
Speaker 2: of doubting things in the world, where eventually you get
Speaker 2: to the bottomless pit of nihilism and then you doubt it,
Speaker 2: and you doubt your doubts, and now you can break
Speaker 2: through into the Sunyata. Then he talks about rational materialism
Speaker 2: and existentialism, and he actually has a great critique of Sartre,
Speaker 2: which I'll try to read. I have that one tagged.
Speaker 2: And then he talks about subjective nothingness, and he highlights
Speaker 2: this relationship with hedonism, scientism, Western existentialism, that it sort
Speaker 2: of relicates the self to like Sartre, for example, that
Speaker 2: you're a person happening within space and time. There are
Speaker 2: new universal claims, and therefore you need to existentially make
Speaker 2: yourself and you are whatever you're doing. And so Sartra
Speaker 2: makes a claim that Nishatani critiques that you, well, he
Speaker 2: kind of critiques because he has similarities with it. But
Speaker 2: the idea that Sartre makes is you because nothing exist
Speaker 2: and there's no ultimate meaning and religious religion is a joke.
Speaker 2: Sartra says, well, then humanity, however you live your life,
Speaker 2: if you choose to get married and you have kids,
Speaker 2: then that is you saying to the world that that's
Speaker 2: what everybody should do. And if you're Sartra and you
Speaker 2: believe that you want to have sexual relations with underage
Speaker 2: people and that your girlfriend's gonna aid in that facilitation. Well,
Speaker 2: then you believe that's the way that humanity should operate,
Speaker 2: and that is you then expressing sort of ultimate questions
Speaker 2: and the ultimate te los of humanity. It's how you
Speaker 2: act in the world. So those are the main points
Speaker 2: in chapter one. So let's go through now chapter one
Speaker 2: and read some of Nishatani' stuff. So Dean Limb tooth
Speaker 2: that sends in five dollars over on the Dono chat
Speaker 2: and he says a little something this, Well, thank you
Speaker 2: Dean Limb too. It I need a little something this
Speaker 2: right now, So thank you for that, brother, hilarious, really
Speaker 2: appreciate you. Okay, So first one, this is on page two.
Speaker 2: This is him answering what is religion, and Nishatani says this.
Speaker 2: Two points should be noted from what was just been said. First,
Speaker 2: religion is at all times the individual affair of each individual,
Speaker 2: you see, So he has no collective So Durkheim, Emmanuel Durkheim,
Speaker 2: the father of sociology, he'd be very frustrated with this
Speaker 2: definition of religion because his is all about the sociological
Speaker 2: and the totemic symbol that unifies people or tribes. He's
Speaker 2: saying it's totally individual. This is more of a William
Speaker 2: James take on what religion is. I mean, it's very
Speaker 2: much William James. This sets it apart from things like culture, which,
Speaker 2: while related to the individual, do not concern each individual. Accordingly,
Speaker 2: we cannot understand what religion is from the outside. The
Speaker 2: religious quest alone is the key to understanding it. There
Speaker 2: is no other way. This is the most important point
Speaker 2: to be made regarding the essence of religion. Second, from
Speaker 2: that standpoint, the essence of religion is a mistake to
Speaker 2: ask what is the purpose of religion for us? For
Speaker 2: and one that clearly betrays an attitude of trying to
Speaker 2: understand religion apart from the religious quest. It is a
Speaker 2: question that must be broken through by another question coming
Speaker 2: from within the person who asks it. There is no
Speaker 2: road that can lead you to an understanding of what
Speaker 2: religion is and what proposes or what purpose it serves.
Speaker 2: The counter question that achieves this breakthrough is one that
Speaker 2: asks for what purpose do I myself exist? Of everything else?
Speaker 2: We can ask its purpose for us, but not of religion.
Speaker 2: With regard to everything else. We make a tlose of
Speaker 2: ourselves as individuals a man or as mankind, and evaluate
Speaker 2: those things in relation to our life and existence. We
Speaker 2: put ourselves as individuals, as men, as mankind at the
Speaker 2: center and way the significance of everything, as the contents
Speaker 2: of our lives as individuals. But religion upsets the posture
Speaker 2: from which we think of ourselves as telos and center
Speaker 2: for all things. Instead, religion poses a starting point to
Speaker 2: the question for what purpose do I exist? Now I
Speaker 2: get the point he's making. But again from an Orthodox perspective,
Speaker 2: there is a telos to the individual, and that is theosis,
Speaker 2: that is our graceful unification with God himself. That is
Speaker 2: not me coming up with my own ramification or from
Speaker 2: my own telos, which he's going to associate with Sartra.
Speaker 2: So let's skip forward here to the next one. And
Speaker 2: so here's him defining what he means by self awareness.
Speaker 2: By this self awareness of reality, I mean both are
Speaker 2: becoming aware of reality and at the same time, the
Speaker 2: reality of realizing itself in our awareness. So he you
Speaker 2: see the very Buddhists. You see how he's always hitting
Speaker 2: both sides. The English word realize with its twofold meaning
Speaker 2: of actualize and understand is particularly well suited to what
Speaker 2: I have in mind here, although I am not that
Speaker 2: sense of understood does not necessarily connote the sense of
Speaker 2: reality coming to actualization in us. Be that as it may,
Speaker 2: I am using the word to indicate that our ability
Speaker 2: to perceive reality means that reality realizes itself in us.
Speaker 2: This is the shunata, This is the emptiness. It realizes
Speaker 2: itself inside of you. That this, in turn is the
Speaker 2: only way that we can realize appropriate through understanding the
Speaker 2: fact that reality is so realizing itself in us that
Speaker 2: in so doing, the self realization of reality itself takes place.
Speaker 2: So you get now you're getting a taste of what
Speaker 2: it's like to read him. It goes back and forth.
Speaker 2: So here is him talking about the sort of development
Speaker 2: of the mechanical worldview of the West. He's very critical
Speaker 2: of Descartes because he's critical of the rationalist project itself
Speaker 2: that believed in metaphysical universals or believe that we can
Speaker 2: get to the grounding of reality through reason, and so
Speaker 2: he says, so he just criticized this whole West becoming mechanical.
Speaker 2: And he says that such a mechanistic view of the
Speaker 2: world would come into being, and that the world itself
Speaker 2: would turn into a world of death. We might say
Speaker 2: already implicate in Descartes identification of matter with the extension
Speaker 2: of his consideration that the extension as the essence of things,
Speaker 2: so metaphysical universals. This did enable the image of the
Speaker 2: world we find in modern modern natural science to come about,
Speaker 2: and did open the way for the control of nature
Speaker 2: by scientific technology. But it had other consequences. To the
Speaker 2: self centered ego of man, the world came to look
Speaker 2: so much like raw material. By wielding his great power
Speaker 2: and authority and controlling the natural world, man cam to
Speaker 2: surround himself with a cold, lifeless world. Inevitably, each individual
Speaker 2: ego became like a lonely but well fortified island floating
Speaker 2: on a sea of dead matter. The life was snuffed
Speaker 2: out of nature in the things of nature, the living
Speaker 2: stream that flowed at the bottom of man and all
Speaker 2: things and kept them bound together and dried up. So
Speaker 2: we can probably agree with many of his criticisms of
Speaker 2: Western rational materialism. Now here's another one. This is again
Speaker 2: we're still in chapter one. Here he's talking about the realization.
Speaker 2: Now the realization we are speaking of here is not
Speaker 2: of self consciousness therefore, but consist rather in breaking through
Speaker 2: the field of consciousness and self consciousness. Consciousness is the
Speaker 2: field of relationships between those entities characterize as self and things.
Speaker 2: So he's he's saying, look, this is again why I
Speaker 2: wanted to play that video. You remember in the video
Speaker 2: it was talking about consciousness, nihilism, and then emptiness. These
Speaker 2: are his three stages right well, he's saying that Western
Speaker 2: philosophy is caught at the level of consciousness, and therefore,
Speaker 2: because we're analyzing the world through consciousness, there's always a
Speaker 2: sense of self, and there's a sense of any object,
Speaker 2: and this needs to be broken through if one's going
Speaker 2: to attain enlightenment. For him, that is that the fields
Speaker 2: of being in which the nilty that lies beneath the
Speaker 2: ground of being remains covered over. At this level level,
Speaker 2: even the self, in its very subjectivity is still only
Speaker 2: represented self consciously as self. So you only self consciously
Speaker 2: have a self. It is put through a kind of
Speaker 2: object objectivization so that it can be grasped as an
Speaker 2: actual being. Only when the self breaks through the field
Speaker 2: of consciousness and the field of beings and stands on
Speaker 2: the ground of nihilism. Is it able to achieve a
Speaker 2: subjectivity that it can no way be objectivized. This is
Speaker 2: the eternal realization that reaches deeper than self consciousness and
Speaker 2: standing subjectively on the field of nihilism. But in fact
Speaker 2: there is literally no place to stand on. The self
Speaker 2: becomes itself in a more elemental sense. When this takes place,
Speaker 2: the being of the self is itself nullified along with
Speaker 2: the being of everything else. Nullification does not mean that
Speaker 2: everything is simply annihilated out of existence. It means that
Speaker 2: nihilty appears at the ground of everything that exists, that
Speaker 2: the field of consciousness and its separation from the within
Speaker 2: and the without is surpassed subjectively, and that nilty opens
Speaker 2: up at the ground of the within towards the without.
Speaker 2: So you see again everything that we already laid out there.
Speaker 2: This is exactly what we were talking about. Therefore, this
Speaker 2: opening up of nihilty is one of the elemental realizations
Speaker 2: of subjectivity. You see, he's so focused on the subjective
Speaker 2: because again, for his argumentation, we have to subjectively phenomenologically
Speaker 2: experience this undergirding field of emptiness, and therefore he's not
Speaker 2: concerned so much. Now he's making objective claims about it,
Speaker 2: but he's making objective claims based on subjective experience. And
Speaker 2: I told you earlier, as we began the stream, his
Speaker 2: entire focus is on the individual, so you can see
Speaker 2: this here. The self presentation of nilty is rather a
Speaker 2: real presentation of what is actually concealed at the ground
Speaker 2: of the self and everything in the world. On the
Speaker 2: field of consciousness, this nilty is covered over and cannot
Speaker 2: make itself really present. When it does make it self present, however,
Speaker 2: everything that was taken for external and internal reality at
Speaker 2: the field of conscious becomes unreal, and in its very
Speaker 2: reality it is nullified, but it's not annihilated. Self being
Speaker 2: and the being of all things combined to make one question.
Speaker 2: All being becomes a single great question mark. This elemental
Speaker 2: subjective realization goes deeper than the self evidence of self
Speaker 2: consciousness clinging to itself like within but shut up inside itself.
Speaker 2: It is an awareness that only can emerge in the
Speaker 2: reality of the extends. This is the existential being that
Speaker 2: overstepped the limitations of being. So it's this is where
Speaker 2: he would agree with the sort of willful will to
Speaker 2: power now not the Nietzschean same concept of will to power.
Speaker 2: But you have to willfully break through nihilism. You have
Speaker 2: to extend this is a German term, and in that
Speaker 2: awareness that lies on the far side of everything that
Speaker 2: psychology can apprehend, precisely by virtue of being on all
Speaker 2: the more near side of the subject. So I hope
Speaker 2: that made a little bit of sense to you, guys.
Speaker 2: Here's a paragraph of him trying to describe the great doubt.
Speaker 2: Remember I said this was a central point of chapter one.
Speaker 2: Here along the same line. It would be an error
Speaker 2: to regard the self presentation of the great doubt as
Speaker 2: a kind of psychological state that takes place in the
Speaker 2: course of a religious practice, as even a great number
Speaker 2: of religious people seem to see it nowadays. And the
Speaker 2: state of doubt the self is concentrated single mindedly on
Speaker 2: the doubt alone and to the exclusion of everything else,
Speaker 2: and becomes a pure doubt in itself Samadi Enlightenment. This
Speaker 2: much is certain, since it no longer questions of a
Speaker 2: self that doubts something on the field of consciouness, but
Speaker 2: rather a point at which the field of conscienness has
Speaker 2: been a race of course, the fact remains that when
Speaker 2: doubt is concentrated and brooded over, it provides its own
Speaker 2: psychological state against Samadi enlightenment. When we speak of a
Speaker 2: grief deep enough to drown the world in oneself in it,
Speaker 2: or a joy that sets one hands a flutter and
Speaker 2: one's feet at dancing, we have the same sense of
Speaker 2: a single mindedness or a becoming that one experiences. But
Speaker 2: it matters not whether we call it single mindedness or Samadi.
Speaker 2: It is not to be interpreted as a mere psychological state.
Speaker 2: The mind of single mindness is not a mind in
Speaker 2: any psychological sense. All right, And now he's this is
Speaker 2: him getting into Buddhists, Buddhism's thought on evil. So this
Speaker 2: is his take on Buddhist the odyssey, which he'll he'll
Speaker 2: hammer out more in later chapters. Basically, this first chapter
Speaker 2: he lays out and then by the end of the
Speaker 2: book it's all self referencing back to the first chapter
Speaker 2: he got you can see the cyclical dimension which he
Speaker 2: was trying to do. Again, give him credit. It's very
Speaker 2: consistent with his Buddhism. So he says, uh, this also
Speaker 2: explains why Buddhism thinks of evil in terms of karma
Speaker 2: from times past without beginning, and why Christianity turns to
Speaker 2: the notion of the original sin again Augustinian Western notion
Speaker 2: transmitted from one generation to the next. So he's trying
Speaker 2: to say, well, look, Christianity has original sin. That's basically
Speaker 2: just like the Buddhist concept of karma. Not quite. And
Speaker 2: again we don't support original sin in that same sense.
Speaker 2: We inherit the consequences. We don't inherit the guilt. He's
Speaker 2: insinuaing we inherit the guilt. Each of these concepts contains
Speaker 2: a real perception of evil and sin and Christianity. It
Speaker 2: has said that the sinful existence of man is the
Speaker 2: result of atoms sin of disobedience. The sinful existence of
Speaker 2: man is the result of man's sin of disobedience against God,
Speaker 2: and thus in turn is interpreted as we ourselves having
Speaker 2: committed sin as an atom. No, we did not commit
Speaker 2: the same sin as Adam. That is not an orthodox perspective.
Speaker 2: Put more subjectively, in existentially, this simply means that both
Speaker 2: the sinfulness of the self and the sinfulness of all
Speaker 2: mankind make themselves present in an elemental sense as in
Speaker 2: one reality, meaning a person you and are actualized and
Speaker 2: appropriated in such in the self. So the concept of
Speaker 2: the self it is, so to speak, an appropriation of
Speaker 2: the evil of all men within the evil of the self,
Speaker 2: and at the same time of the evil of the
Speaker 2: self within all the evil of all men. Okay, and
Speaker 2: I have this one highlighted here. This is he starts
Speaker 2: getting into Greek philosophy and stuff like that. I'm not
Speaker 2: going to bore you with that whole section, but he says,
Speaker 2: the locus of nothingness that I am speaking of here
Speaker 2: is the point in which the self is a nothingness,
Speaker 2: at which the self has ceased to be a self
Speaker 2: any longer and has become the realization of sin as
Speaker 2: a great reality as it is itself nothingness. It is
Speaker 2: the locus wherein God's love can be accepted really and
Speaker 2: actually just as it is. So therefore, once you understand
Speaker 2: this inherited guilt and that it's really just this imposition,
Speaker 2: so that you can sort of be a singular point
Speaker 2: within space and time, now you can appreciate God's love. No,
Speaker 2: not quite, not quite. Let's see the next one we
Speaker 2: have here. This is on page thirty within chapter one,
Speaker 2: and he's getting into Sartra. Now, So, for Sartra, existentialism
Speaker 2: and nothing other than an attempt to draw out the
Speaker 2: consequences of a coherent atheistic position. God does not exist
Speaker 2: and is not and is necessary to draw the consequences
Speaker 2: on his absence right to the end. As early as
Speaker 2: the last century, people were saying that God has become
Speaker 2: a useless, outdated hypothesis, and that it was possible to
Speaker 2: establish simply a standpoint of humanism, a set of a
Speaker 2: priori values that would yield norms for society, culture, morality,
Speaker 2: and so forth. This was an altogether optimistic brand of humanism,
Speaker 2: one of the most forceful expressions of which is to
Speaker 2: be found in the anthological approach of Foreherbach. But the
Speaker 2: humanism of our time, says Sartra, is an existentialism that
Speaker 2: quote finds it extremely embarrassing that God does not exist unquote.
Speaker 2: He cites the words of Dostoevsky that quote, if God
Speaker 2: did not exist, everything would be permitted unquote to illustrate
Speaker 2: the starting point of his existentialism. So again Sartra, who
Speaker 2: was again interested in unique relationships with children, his beginning
Speaker 2: philosophical point is God doesn't exists, and therefore all things
Speaker 2: are permitted. Hmm hmmm. That sounds about right for the
Speaker 2: modern West. For Sartre, the foundation of human existence is
Speaker 2: nothingness that man can no longer rely on, either within
Speaker 2: himself or without, constitutes the basis of existentialism. Moreover, the
Speaker 2: reason that existentialism is based on atheism is that we
Speaker 2: have awakened to the fact that nothingness we encounter at
Speaker 2: the ground of our very being is itself one with
Speaker 2: the ground, and is the basis of our very subjectivity. Accordingly,
Speaker 2: Sartre describes existentialism as a subjective standpoint. Atheism, or the
Speaker 2: assertion that man finds nothing to rely on, either within
Speaker 2: himself or without, appears to have appears then as a
Speaker 2: deepening of human subjectivity. So he's very much interested in
Speaker 2: the development of this subjectivity. And let's see here, there's okay,
Speaker 2: here is a the next one. He's talking talking a
Speaker 2: little bit about Heidegger, Sartra, all this different stuff, and
Speaker 2: now he's putting in his Buddhist perspective and conversation with
Speaker 2: it even less. So are we dealing here with the
Speaker 2: Buddhist notion of Sunyata. Nothingness in Buddhism is non ego,
Speaker 2: while This nothingness in Sartra is an imminent ego. Whatever
Speaker 2: transcendence this may allow for, remains glued to his ego.
Speaker 2: Sartra considers this his nothingness, to be the ground of
Speaker 2: the subject, and yet he presents it like a wall
Speaker 2: at the bottom of the ego, or like a springboard
Speaker 2: underfoot of the ego. This turns his nothingness into a
Speaker 2: basic principle that shuts up the ego within itself. By
Speaker 2: virtue of this partition, the nothingness sets up at a
Speaker 2: ground of the self. The ego becomes a vast and
Speaker 2: desolate cave. It reminds me of the ancient Zen tradition
Speaker 2: that calls life inside of the black mountain or living
Speaker 2: in the demon's cavern. One is holed up inside a
Speaker 2: cave of the self conscious ego go and has nothing
Speaker 2: at its ground and as nothing. As long as this
Speaker 2: nothingness is still set up as something called nothingness at
Speaker 2: the bottom of the self, it remains what Buddhism repudiates
Speaker 2: as the emptiness pervasively clung to the subjectivity of man
Speaker 2: must be fundamentally deepened, but it still hangs on with
Speaker 2: a devilish tenacity. The self that sets up this nothingness
Speaker 2: is thereby bound by and attached to it. Nothingness may
Speaker 2: seem here to be a denial of self attachment, but
Speaker 2: in fact that attachment is rather an exponentialized and concealed
Speaker 2: So he's saying that Sartra's nothingness is not his nothingness,
Speaker 2: because Tartra's nothingness is like a ground in which he's
Speaker 2: able to existentially make himself. Nishatani's trying to say that, no,
Speaker 2: that nothingness is actually the ground of reality. Something. Again,
Speaker 2: I've already hammered that, So I apologize if I'm being
Speaker 2: a bit redundant. Now this is the This is towards
Speaker 2: the close of chapter one, and this is my last
Speaker 2: little tag in chapter one, And this is him trying
Speaker 2: to talk about the Christian standpoint. So let me express
Speaker 2: the traditional standpoint of Christianity implies an estrangement from the
Speaker 2: awakened subjectivity of modern man. Might it not be that
Speaker 2: these two mutually exclusive positions, the freedom of man carried
Speaker 2: all the way to a subjective nothingness nihilism nietzsche nihilism
Speaker 2: Sartrain existentialism and the subjectivize atheism and the religious freedom
Speaker 2: appearing in traditional Christianity require some sort of higher synthesis
Speaker 2: in our times. Christianity cannot and must not look on
Speaker 2: modern atheism merely as something to be eliminated. It must
Speaker 2: instead accept atheism as a meditation to a new development
Speaker 2: of Christianity itself. Be that as it may. The question
Speaker 2: needs to be asked, at what point has Christianity become
Speaker 2: so problematic for modern man to make him advance in
Speaker 2: the direction of an estrangement from Christianity. I should like
Speaker 2: to consider this question briefly with regard to the Christian
Speaker 2: view of God, and in particular the transcendent and personal
Speaker 2: character of the Christian God. Christianity speaks of a creatio
Speaker 2: x nilo. God created everything from a point which there
Speaker 2: was nothing at all, and since all things have this
Speaker 2: nihilism at the ground of their being, they are absolutely
Speaker 2: distinct from their creator. This idea is a plain expression
Speaker 2: of the absolute transcendence of God. Compared to the Greek
Speaker 2: notion of a demiurge who fashioned things by giving shape
Speaker 2: to an already existing material, the notion of a God
Speaker 2: creating everything from nothing at all represents a more advanced
Speaker 2: idea of God and enables us to conceive of the
Speaker 2: absoluteness of God. But then he's going to talk a
Speaker 2: little bit further about the problems of that ultimate transcendence,
Speaker 2: because then people are going to be too sort of
Speaker 2: psychologically and cognitively attached to the subject object differentiation between
Speaker 2: self and God. See. He eventually gets to the point
Speaker 2: where this concept of a totally transcendent creator God, although
Speaker 2: it's a higher development in the idea of God as
Speaker 2: he highlights compared to the Greek pantheon, he'll later elucidate
Speaker 2: for him why that's problematic, because it still maintains a
Speaker 2: subject object distinction that is in the field of consciousness
Speaker 2: and limits somebody to getting to the bottomless pit of
Speaker 2: nihilism and then breaking to the ultimate groundwork of emptiness.