God, the Self, and Nothingness - Reflections: Eastern and Western

✍ Scribed by Robert E. Carter

• Publisher: Paragon House
• Year: 1990
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 340
• Series: A New Ecumenical Research Association Book
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

God, the Self and Nothingness examines both Eastern and Western views of the Ultimate. Beneath the obvious differences between Asian and Judeo-Christian approaches, certain unities emerge. In our increasingly global culture, Confucius, Buddha, Sankara, and Dogen are as much a part of our contemporary heritage as Moses, Jesus, Shakespeare, and Jefferson. But there are differences as well: In the words of Nishida Kitaro, Japan’s eminent philosopher, “The West has taken being as the ground of reality, and the East has taken nothingness as its ground.” Efforts to explicate the meaning of “being” and “nothingness” form this volume’s subject matter.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Half title
Imprint
Acknowledgments
Table of Contents
Foreword (Ninian Smart)
Introduction (Robert E. Carter)
Western Reflections
1. Philosophy, Theology, and the Primordial Claim (Huston Smith)
2. Some Psychological Aspects of the Kabbalah (R.J. Zwi Werblowsky)
3. God as ‘Nothing’ in the Kabbalah (RJ. Zwi Werblowsky)
4. The One, the Many, the Other, the Divine (Manfred H. Vogel)
5. The Self and Not-Self in Christian Mysticism: Augustine and Eckhart (Ewert Hilary Cousins)
6. Steps Toward Ecumenism in Meister Eckhart and Nicholas of Cusa (Emilie Zum Brunn)
7. Self, Not-Self and the Ultimate in Marguerite Porete’s ‘Mirror of Annihilated Souls’ (Emilie Zum Brunn)
8. The Epistemological Role of Love in Knowing the Divine: The Shaping of the Christian Tradition (Brian Gaybba)
9. Kierkegaard’s Theological Suspension of the Self 107 (Nona R. Bolin)
10. A Speculation about the Trinity Doctrine (Ninian Smart)
Eastern Reflections
11. God, Nothing and the Ultimate: À Hindu Perspective (S.P. Banerjee)
12. God-Language and the Language of Nothing in Hindu and Buddhist Thinking (Krishna Sivaraman)
13. The Ultimate Goal of Buddhism and the Doctrine of No-Self (P. D. Premasiri)
14. The Buddha’s Conceptions of Reality and Morality (David J. Kalupahana)
15. Nishitani’s Conception of Time and His Critique of the Western Notion of History (John R. Mayer)
16. Nishitani on the Self: Selflessness and Historicity (Daniel Charles)
17. Nothingness as the Ultimate (Damel Charles)
18. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Zen Universalism (Sütku Shigematsu)
19. Paradox, Language and Reality (Robert E. Carter)
Contributors
Index

✦ Subjects

godselfnothingne0000unse;nothingness;comparative religion