Subjective Experiences of Awakening, Part 5, Kitaro Nishida

Greetings, Friendlies. :)

Writing this series I was reminded of a quote from Kitaro Nishida (which I got from Leigh Brasington and he thinks it’s from the book The Nothingness Beyond God but I haven’t gotten a copy from the library yet, so check your facts).

Pure experience is the beginning of Zen. It is awareness stripped of all thought, all conceptualization, all categorization, and all distinctions between subject-as-having-an-experience and as experience-as-having-been-had-by-a-subject. It is prior to all judgment. Pure experience is without all distinction; it is pure no-thingness, pure no-this-or-that. It is empty of any and all distinctions. It is absolutely no-thing at all. Yet its emptiness and nothingness is a chock-a-block fullness, for it is all experience-to-come. It is rose, child, river, anger, death, pain, rocks, and cicada sounds. We carve these discrete events and entities out of a richer-yet-non-distinct manifold of pure experience.

I think this matches Watts’ description. But I think it’s a more grounded, more Zen-y articulation. A little Dzogchen even. I think it fills out Watts a bit.

Also, I just like it. You’re welcome.

With friendliness,

🌻