How to defeat nihilism?

[LastLegend]

Improper understanding of emptiness of non-self can lead to the view of nihilism. How to defeat nihilism through Buddhist and/or non-Buddhist reasoning? I have no idea to be honest. I am just aware that I am present here, that's all.

Discuss your reasoning.

[Jesse]

It may be easiest to understand while still sitting on a cushion. Essentially I think it's just: You watch phenomena arise, while no longer attached to it, there is nothing that is you, Yet there you are.

[Rick]

All ism's wither away in presence.

If you are with/in the moment on AND OFF the mat there's no room for conceptual structures to grab hold. Or, more accurately: for you to grab hold of conceptual structures.

[LastLegend]

Despite that, people still hold the view of nihilism. It's quite common. Nagarjuna and Chan Patriarchs tried to explain in ways that prevent people from holding such view. I think it's a big issue.

[Rick]

Despite that, people still hold the view of nihilism. It's quite common.

Easy* fix: Stay fully present to the moment. Problem gone!

* Except that it's probably the hardest thing for mind to do.

[Jesse]

Despite that, people still hold the view of nihilism. It's quite common.

Easy* fix: Stay fully present to the moment. Problem gone!

* Except that it's probably the hardest thing for mind to do.

lol, exactly. That's why only practice helps, not knowledge. Sucks doesn't it. My mindfulness is very lacking mostly.

[Dan74]

I posted this a long time ago on ZFI:

http://zenforuminternational.org/viewto ... =64&t=5677

From where I stand, the most common problem I see is failure to embrace one's life fully and take responsibility for it.. Many of us want to escape our lives, escape the emotional pain, the disappointment, the horrors on TV, the self-loathing, etc. So the first step is to stop running and start healing. To know that you are OK. Without this cliched pop psychology maxim, how can you truly look within? How can you become aware of where thoughts arise when you run from yourself?

Very basic simple activities like gardening, cooking, sport, taking care of the little things, tidying up one's life help create a wholesome foundation. In meditation, bringing the attention to the body by scanning to start with and staying with the breath rather than going to esoteric heights or intellectualism, is important, IMO. And throughout the day be aware of your physical body, of your surroundings, of your breath and your movements. Hakuin taught meditation on the hara/tanden and Meido Roshi has shared on this practice here on the forum, but I have no experience with it. It sounds good though. Basically grounding oneself.

There's much more of course, but maybe that's enough for further discussion.

_/|\_

[Concordiadiscordi]

The equation of emptiness with nihilism is a mistaken view. Emptiness does not negate form, just as form does not negate emptiness. Form and emptiness are merely two isolates of a single reality. As such, emptiness partakes of an ontological dialectic wherein, ultimately, neither negation nor affirmation may be predicated of anything, as either alternative would inevitably amount to an extreme view incommesurate with the spirit of the middle way. If anything, the doctrine of emptiness should serve to attenuate our narrowly and myopically self-identificatory tendencies so as to open us up to existential vistas which promote the earnest cultivation and nurturance of life-affirming altruism, along with a correspondingly life-affirming ethic grounded in a profound awareness of universal co-dependence. This constitutes a far cry from anything akin to nihilism, and those who fail to recognise this fact would undoubtedly benefit from a progressive reintroduction to fundamental Buddhist themes and axioms.

[Concordiadiscordi]

... only practice helps, not knowledge.

This seems to me like a fairly lopsided and potentially misleading view. Practice without knowledge is blind and vacant, just as knowledge without practice is redundant and mastubatory. It is possible to embrace practice and knowledge as mutually reinforcing aspects of the path, the one progressively complimenting and broadening the other via a constructive dynamic of positive feedback. The Way is all-inclusive. As Daofu said to Bodhidharma when asked to present his understanding, "My present view is that we should neither be attached to letters, nor be apart from letters, and to allow the Way to function freely." This is the skin of the ancestor.

[Concordiadiscordi]

As Hee-Jin Kim once so eloquently stated in his magnificent study on Dōgen:

"Metaphors, images, and symbols chosen from an ordinary context are used and function quite extraordinarily in the realm of enlightenment. Words are no longer things that the intellect manipulates abstractly and impersonally, but rather, things that work intimately in the existential metabolism of one who uses them philosophically and religiously in a special manner and with a special attitude. They are no longer mere means or symbols that represent realities other than themselves, but are themselves the realities of original enlightenment and Buddha-nature. In this view, words and symbols inevitably call for practices in which activity and expression are embedded in each other. In Dōgen, [...] expression (dōtoku) and activity (gyōji) were synonymous.

[...] For Dōgen, the enlightened person was adept at appropriating the semantic possibilities of ordinary words in order to express and act out the extraordinary, and even the ineffable, according to the situation. Dōgen's characteristic way of thinking here in connection with the use of language was that the meaning of an ordinary word was totally exerted (gūjin) so that there was nothing but that particular meaning throughout the universe at that given moment. This was the idea of the total exertion of a single thing (ippō-gūjin), which was central to Dōgen's entire thought.

[...] Indeed life was nothing but searching for and acting out the myriad possibilites of meaning with which the self and the world were pregnant, through expressions (dōtoku) and activities (gyōji). This involved not only the human world but the nonhuman and nonliving worlds as well [...], plus much more. Even dreams, illusions, and imagination were not eliminated from the purview of semantic possibilities, even though we are prone to reject those areas of human experience as illusory or unreal.

Dreams are a favourite metaphor in the Buddhist tradition and are often used to signify phantasmic and phantasmagoric unrealities. Dreams and realities are sharply differentiated and contrasted, and by and large, the former are conceived in depreciatory terms. In Dōgen's view, however, dreams were as real and legitimate as the so-called realities in that they comprised our incessant efforts to decipher and dramatize the expressive and actional possibilities of existence. Both dreams and realities were ultimately empty, unattainable, and without self-nature. Going a step further, Dōgen thought that existence was essentially a discourse on a dream within a dream (muchū-set-sumu) […].

[…] Here, Dōgen's notion of dreams was so original that dreams as a metaphor for both illusion and reality, and dreams as a metaphor for neither illusion nor reality, became exquisitely entwined with one another so as to present a unique metaphysic of dreams. If dreams were an unreality in the ordinary sense, Dōgen elevated this unreality to the level of cosmic or ultimate unreality, in its total exertion (gūjin) abiding in the Dharma position (jūhōi).

[…] The dream of supreme enlightenment and the supreme enlightenment of dream were nondually conjoined in one reality or unreality. Dōgen also called it “liberation as a discourse on a dream within a dream” (gedatsu no muchū-setsumu), which “as though itself hanging in emptiness” (mizukara kūni kakareru gotoku) lets images, myths, parables, and fantasies “play in emptiness” (kū ni yuke seshimuru).”

Even if one hesitates to agree with Kim or Dōgen, it is nonetheless interesting to note that expression ('words and letters') needn't be regarded as intrisically opposed to activity ('practice'), or vice versa. I posted this extract from Kim because it is at once beatifully rendered and clearly captures the sense in which the semiotic and ideational dimensions of existence might be adapted to deep Buddhist practice and understanding. Interestingly enough, Longchenpa expressed something similar in his own work, Finding Comfort and Ease in Enchantment, in which he raised maya to the nth dimension in a manner similar to Dōgen on dreams. Just something to consider.

[silver surfer]

Nihilism (or any ism) is just an ideation. And all ideas originate out of ignorance. According to the Buddha, all views are wrong views. They are mere mental constructs which arise due to one's self-ignorance, avidyã. When one lives in reality, fully aware, they won't "name" things, nor will they identify themselves with those things, they'll rather know things, and conceive reality as it is.

[明安 Myoan]

Say the nembutsu.
See nihilism held in the nembutsu, again and again.
Amida is tireless.

[Konchog1]

Understanding of dependent arsing and mere appearance.

[LastLegend]

Nihilism is a view. Stop attaching to it.

[Ayu]

Maybe it is also important not to forget that emptyness and compassion are connected.
Same as emptyness and appearance are connected. They are dependent on eachother. Emptyness doesn't mean "no appearance".
Not to forget Metta.

[Paul]

Understanding of dependent arsing and mere appearance.

This. They are the two sides of the same coin.

As dependent origination does not exist apart from emptiness, and as emptiness does not exist apart from dependent origination, it is correct to say they are in union.

Oral Transmission of the Supreme Siddhas - Situ Tenpai Nyinje

There are also the third turning of the wheel teachings, which are there as a cure to grasping at emptiness.

Alternatively, kick a rock and decide how nihilistic you feel at that point.

[EarlGrey]

Hi.

Nihilism doesn't have to be defeated. It depends how nihilism is understood.

Saying "nothing exists" isn't necessarily nihilism. It's a question of existence. A thing that exists is taken as Real. Even experienced phenomena (often the last things taken to be real) can be thought as conditioned, that is, not-real.

What is left does not exist. It is not real. So it can be said that nothing exists or is, without being a nihilist.

[Maki]

LastLegend wrote:

Improper understanding of emptiness of non-self can lead to the view of nihilism.

I think that is a very relevant question because today nihilism is the dominante secular thought. But they (nihilist thinkers) understand concepts as "nothing" or "empty" in a very different way than the eastern teaching like taoism and buddhism.

A japanese scholar named Toshihiko Izutsu wrote about this topic in his studies. For example his "Toward a Philosophy of Zen Buddhism" and others.

As I understand, from Izutsu and other authors, on the spiritual paths words like "nothing" or "empty" are not mere negative but, on the contrary, means a "field" plenty of possibilities. This "field" (of course the word field is just metaphorical) contains everything as a mere possibility rather than an actual or effective existence.

When someone is sleeping many beings appear in front his eyes. But when he awake those beings disappear. From the state of dream are reals but from the state of awake are not. Those beings are possibilities inherent to this person.

The same about ordinary life: if the beings were reals, never could disappear, but if were mere nothing never could became visibles for us. So, they are not real nor nothing. Only possibilities within the Universal Mind.

I suggest you (if you allow me) to think about the concept of "possibility"... Is a truly treasure of meanings.

Be well

[boda]

Maybe it is also important not to forget that emptyness and compassion are connected.

Hatred and cruelty are equally 'connected' with emptiness. It's this very groundlessness, this absurdity, that lends itself to nihilism.

The only way to defeat nihilism is to find sufficient meaning in life. That shouldn't be difficult because meaning is everywhere.