Nothingness and the Place of Religious Experience — An Asian View
George Pattison
Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks 1996 DOI: 10.1057/9780230379374_5 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that Western attempts to account for nothingness in isolation are provincial and that engaging Hindu, Taoist, and Buddhist thought is necessary to invigorate and strengthen the concept. Contends that religious thought today must understand being and nothingness against the background of human globalization. |
Abstract
The language and the symbolism of nothingness, of non-being and of the void inevitably call to mind Asian traditions of religious thought and experience. Indeed, any attempt by the West to go it alone in formulating an adequate account of nothingness would be the height of provincialism. 1 On the contrary, the enterprise of thinking through the concept of nothingness in the context of Western thought cannot but be invigorated and strengthened by a serious engagement with any one of a number of Eastern thinkers and schools, Hindu, Taoist and Buddhist. If religious thought today is duty-bound to understand its project against the background of human globalization, this must be especially true in the case of fundamental concepts of being and nothingness that have so widely been taken as marking one of the most distinctive boundaries between East and West. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.