Nothingness in Asian Philosophy

A variety of crucial and still most relevant ideas about nothingness or emptiness have gained profound philosophical prominence in the history and development of a number of South and East Asian traditions-including in Buddhism, Daoism, Neo-Confucianism, Hinduism, Korean philosophy, and the Japanese Kyoto School. These traditions share the insight that in order to explain both the great mysteries and mundane facts about our experience, ideas of ""nothingness"" must play a primary role. This collection of essays brings together the work of twenty of the world's prominent

Cover; Title; Copyright; Contents; Contributors; Introduction: Conceptions of Nothingness in Asian Philosophy; PART I Emptiness in Brāhminịcal and Early Buddhist Traditions; 1 The Unavoidable Void: Nonexistence, Absence, and Emptiness; 2 Semantics of Nothingness: Bhartrḥari's Philosophy of Negation; 3 Madhyamaka, Nihilism, and the Emptiness of Emptiness; 4 In Search of the Semantics of Emptiness; 5 Madhyamaka Emptiness and Buddhist Ethics; 6 Emptiness and Violence: An Unexpected Encounter of Nāgārjuna with Derrida and Levinas; 7 Speaking of the Ineffable ...

8 Emptiness as Subject-Object Unity: Sengzhao on the Way Things Truly Are9 On Nothing in Particular: Delimiting Not-Being for Knowing's Sake; 10 The Cognition of Nonexistent Objects: Five Yogācāra Arguments; PART II Nothingness in Early and Modern East Asian Traditions; 11 The Notion of Wu or Nonbeing as the Root of the Universe and a Guide for Life; 12 The Relation of Nothing and Something: Two Classical Chinese Readings of Daodejing 11; 13 Was There Something in Nothingness? The Debate on the Primordial State between Daoism and Neo-Confucianism.

14 Heart-Fasting, Forgetting, and Using the Heart Like a Mirror: Applied Empti…