China and the West

Heidegger, Martin. Poetry, language, thought. (New York, N.Y. : Harper & Row, 1971).
Enthält :
The thinker as poet. = Aus der Erfarhung des Denkens. Privatdruck (1947).
The origin of the work of art. = Ursprung des Kunstwerks (1935, 1937, 1950, 1960).
What are poets for ? = Wozu Dichter. In : Holzwege (1951).
Building, dwelling, thinking. = Bauen, Wohnen, Denken. (1954). In : Vorträge und Aufsätze. (Pfullingen : Neske, 1954).
The thing. = Das Ding. In: Jahrbuch der Bayerischen Akademie der Schönen Künste, Bd. 1 (1951). [Vortrag München 1950].
Language. = Die Sprache. [Vortrag Bühlerhöhe 1950].
Poetically man dwells. = Dichterisch wohnet der Mensch. In : Akzente ; Bd. 1 (1954). [Vortrag Bühlerhöhe 1954].

Archie S. Graham : These texts are important not just because they present an alternative to the traditional perspective on art and poetry, but also because they contain Heidegger's philosophy of language, which, though it still employs a modified version of the analytical method, testifies to a remarkable divergence from the rationalistic tradition of the West. In fact, it introduces what amounts to a radical form of Zen. This claim is not a historical one based on establishing and documenting Heidegger’s meetings with Japanese scholars, whoever they were, or his presumed access to Zen texts. It is a philosophical claim – one that relies on identifying fundamental conceptual similarities and consistencies between Heidegger and Zen, while at the same time tracing their significance in the context of Heidegger's thought in particual and Western philosophy in general. I don't mean Heidegger is attempting literally to interpret Zen for the West, but rather that his approach to the development of philosophical thinking in general is a new development in the Western context in that is closely approaches Zen in both method and aim. When I say Heidegger's Zen is radical I don't mean 'extreme', but rather that he ‘goes to the philosophical roots’ – without importing the entire belief-system of Buddhism itself.
Just as Heidegger assigns the highest ontological status to art, establishing it not as the reflection of beauty but as an avenue to truth, so D.T. Suzuki and other Zen writers assign the same ontological status to the ancient art of the tea ceremony, cha-no-yu, which consists of deceptively simple acts involving and pertaining to making tea, serving and drinking it, and cleaning up afterwards. In the same way that Heidegger thinks truth is fused with the artist's active disclosure of what is, Suzuki believes the practice of tea-drinking is coincidental with truth. Heidegger's notion of truth, which is addressed in his philosophy of art and developed in his subsequent lectures on language, echoes that of Zen in three important respects. Both Heidegger and contemporary Korean Zen master, Seung Sahn, for instance, explicitly define truth in contrast to the predominant Western model of truth, which posits truth as propositional rightness, representation of reality, or correspondence with fact. Truth in this sense simply fails to put us in touch with being. Second, both think that truth is an experiential engagement of the present. This is the implication in both Heidegger's claim that truth 'happens' and Seung Sahn's that it ivolves 'direct pointing'. Third, Heidegger and Seung Sahn argue that truth is ultimately inscrutable. For Heidegger, it is the 'unconcealment of concealment', while for Seung Sahn it is 'beyond words'. Heidegger's notion of truth involves an interesting twist, one which serves to bring him closer to Zen : 'The lighting in which what is stands is in itself at the same time concealment'. Seung Sahn arrives at the same point as Heidegger does : Truth involves the recognition that there is something fundamentally inscrutable about the human experience of the present, and that this takes priority. Both acknoweldge the ontological superiority of the unknown over the known, where the known is understood in terms of a body of propositions, explanations, and arguments.
In his reference to the truth, Heidegger seems compelled to resort to paradoxes such as 'the concealment of unconcealment' and 'truth is untruth'. He makes use of somewhat more poetic paradoxes that are distinctly reminiscent of some of the most well-know Zen oxymorons used to refer to the moment of enlightenment. This is where Heidegger's divergence from the Western tradition and his communion with Zen is truly highlighted. Both are concerned with the limitations of language in respect to its capacity to convey truth. Heidegger's propensity for paradoxes distinctly echoes the same think in Zen, and his insistence on the need to experience these rather than attempt to explain them, is a remarkable restatement of their Zen function. This does not mean, that Heidegger is any more irrational or mystical than is Zen. There is logic to the paradoxical utterances in both.
In both the later Heidegger and Zen, the reliance on ratiocination is replaced by a commitment to poetry or poetic language as the primary means of attaining truth. He refers to the poetic exercise as 'thinking-experience', and Zen master Dôgen associates it with an exalted kind of seeing. It is in Heidegger's treatment of poetry as something that involves, above all, an experience of being, that we can see the Zen once again in his philosophy.
It is in respect to how Heidegger conceives of coming to this poetic experience-with language, that we once again see how intimately connected his philosophy is with Zen, inasmuch as this process requires a shift in the orientation of thinking away from questioning to listening. While Heidegger by no means denies the validity of asking questions in the search for understanding, he nonetheless revises its status relative to the quest for the experience of truth. The rejection, in both Heidegger and Zen, of the priority of ratiocination in the pursuit of ultimate truth, it will come as little suprise that the two are in agreement about what takes precedence instead : poetry. While Heidegger clearly tries to reclassify poetry as a special kind of philosophical thinking, Suzuki and other Zen writers tend to view the poetry of Zen as something quite separate from philosophy : "Zen naturally finds its readiest expression in poetry rather than philosophy, its poetic predilection is inevitable". Heidegger and Zen are more or less in agreement about the fact that a 'poetic kind of philosophizing' is of the highest value in the search for truth.
Heidegger's philosophy of art, truth, and language seems to be consitent with Zen on matters of fundamental principle. The climax of this coincidences resides in his definition of the pursuit of truth in terms of the 'attainment of the way' which leads, not to knowledge of, but to experience with being. He describes this experience, furthermore, in a way that is reminiscent of the way Zen writers have described the experience of 'satori' – as a transformative experience that liberates us from entanglement with language and puts us in touch with the emptiness that is also the fullness of being. All the italicized terminology is Heidegger's own, but it is also key terminology in Zen. Heidgger's main concern in the later essays on language, is to prepare us for the possibility of undergoing the poetic experience with the work, the hearing of the 'peal of stillness' in its saying. It is in this respect that the connection between Heidegger and Zen becomes most explicit. He tells us in language that could have been written by a Zen master, 'to experience something means to attain it along the way, by going on a way'.
Heidegger seems to come into communication with Zen in what may be called a kind of 'post-rationalistic' phenomenology with a strong empirical strain. Neither Heidegger nor Zen eliminate the need for reason and empirical observation in the quest for truth. On the contrary, both make effective use of reason to demonstrate the limitations of reason in the search for truth, and both acknowledge the priority of sense-experience in attaining it.