CHAPTER 1 Ichikawa' s View of the Body INTRODUCTION In 1975, Ichikawa Hiroshi published a remarkable book on the concept of the body entitled, ...

This paper attempts to make intelligible the logic contained in the Diamond Sutra. This 'logic' is called the 'logic of not'. It is stated in a propositional form: 'A is not A, therefore it is A'. Since this formulation is contradictory or paradoxical when it is read in light of Aristotelean logic, one might dismiss it as nonsensical. In order to show that it is neither nonsensical nor meaningless, the paper will articulate the philosophical reasons why the Sutra makes its (...) position in this contradictory form. The thesis to be presented is that as long as one understands the 'logic of not' from a dualistic, either-or egological standpoint, it remains contradictory, but in order to properly understand it, one must effect a perspectival shift from the dualistic, egological stance to a non-dualistic, non-egological stance. This thesis is advanced with a broader concern in mind: to reexamine how the self understands itself, how it understands others, and how it understands its intra-ecological relationship with nature. (shrink)

When one side is illuminated, the other side remains in darkness.My reason for addressing the topic for this article is to attempt a philosophical reconstruction of the "logic of not" in such a way as to guide us into entertaining a holistic mode of thinking. In preparation for this investigation, for comparative purposes I will engage a conceptual paradigm that is dominant in the Western philosophical tradition, namely the paradigm that is framed in terms of an either-or, ego-logical dualistic stance (...) and that undergirds our daily life in knowing and understanding thing-events. I will use the phrase "thing-event" throughout this article as a way of attempting to capture a sense of the whole rather than thematizing... (shrink)

: This essay investigates why and how East Asian thought, particularly Chinese thought, has traditionally developed differently from that of Western philosophy by examining the linguistic differences discerned in the Chinese language and Western languages. To accomplish this task, it focuses on the understanding of "being" that relates to the theoretical thinking of the West and the image-thinking of East Asia, while providing a psychological basis for the latter.

This essay investigates why and how East Asian thought, particularly Chinese thought, has traditionally developed differently from that of Western philosophy by examining the linguistic differences discerned in the Chinese language and Western languages. To accomplish this taks, it focuses on the understanding of "being" that relates to the theoretical thinking of the West and the image- thinking of East Asia, while providing a psychological basis for the latter.

This essay investigates why and how East Asian thought, particularly Chinese thought, has traditionally developed differently from that of Western philosophy by examining the linguistic differences discerned in the Chinese language and Western languages. To accomplish this taks, it focuses on the understanding of "being" that relates to the theoretical thinking of the West and the image-thinking of East Asia, while providing a psychological basis for the latter.

Although it seems natural to consider the last fifty years the contemporary period, because this year (1995) punctuates a historical period celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Pacific War, this essay will limit the term “contemporary” roughly to the last twenty‐five years. The reason for this demarcation is that at the beginning of the 1970s, we witnessed a new philosophical mood emerging in Japan. Prior to that period, the Japanese philosophical scene was dominated by the study of (...) European thinkers, such as Husserl, Heiddeger, Sartre, and Merleau Ponty. The end of the students' movement in the early 1970s also marked the end of the ideological disputes launched by Marxism since the early 1930s. Instead, it appears that the Japanese intelligentsia in the early 1970s began to acutely sense problems inherent in the Eurocentric philosophy which had served as a foundation for Western science and technology. This occurred largely through a recognition that scientific technology had yielded, as its unexpected byproduct, a “mind/heartless” society, pollution, and global ecological crises, which had permeated almost all parts of the Japanese archipelago to threaten the psyche of the Japanese people and their mode of living. In this essay, I should like to briefly introduce three representative contemporary Japanese thinkers who have addressed some aspects of these problems in their writings. They are Nakamura Yujiro, Sakabe Megumi, and Yuasa Yasuo. (Because of the limitations of space, this article will restrict itself to these three thinkers, but this should not suggest that there are no other representative thinkers in Japan. Consider particularly those belonging to the neo Kyoto school, such as Nishitani Keiji, Kosaka Masaki, Koyama Iwao, Umehara Takeshi and Ueda Shizuteru. Nishitani's works are well known in the English speaking world, along with those of Abe Masao. Out side of the Kyoto school, we can also mention other thinkers, such as Matsumoto Masao, Hiromatsu Wataru and Ichikawa Hiroshi.). (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty and Buddhism explores a new mode of philosophizing through a comparative study of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology and philosophies of major Buddhist thinkers including Nagarjuna, Chinul, Dogen, Shinran, and Nishida Kitaro. The book offers an intercultural philosophy in which opposites intermingle in a chiasmic relationship, and which brings new understanding regarding the self and the self's relation with others in a globalized and multicultural world.

This paper addresses a need to re-examine the mind-body dualism established since Descartes. Descartes' dualism has been regarded by modern philosophers as an extremely insufficient solution to the problem of mind and body, from which is derived a long opposition in modern epistomology between idealism and empiricism. This dualism, bifurcating the region of spirit and matter, and the dichotomous models of thinking based on this dualism, have long dominated the world of modern philosophy and science. The paper examines states of (...) conscious experience from an East Asian perspective allowing analysis on achieved supernormal consciousness rather than a focus on “normal” or “subnormal.” The nature of the “transformation” of human consciousness will be studied both philosophically, as a transformation from “provisional” dualism to non-dualism, and neurophysiologically. The theoretical structure of the transformation will, in part, be examined through the model provided by a Japanese medieval Zen master, Takuan Sôhô. Then, to verify Takuan's theoretical explanation, toposcopic analysis of electroencephalographs will be presented of the performance of individuals practicing the martial arts technique of tôate. (shrink)

This article briefly introduces the phenomena of ki- energy to the Western readers who are not familiar with them, by relying on Yuasa Yasuo's conceptual scheme. Ki- energy has traditionally been an intense thematic focus of various East-Asian fields of human endeavours such as acupuncture medicine, martial arts and meditational training. The article articulates some of the salient features of this energy as it is understood in these fields, while incorporating knowledge of contemporary scientific research on them. It is written (...) with a view to stimulating further research on it, as it carries important implications for addressing many of the issues we face today. (shrink)

NAGATOMO SHIGENORI PRELUDE: INTRODUCING YUASA YASUO) An Initial Encounter with Professor YUASA In June,, TP Kasulis1 and I went to see Professor Yuasa at...