God The Self And Nothingness: Reflections Eastern And Western (god, The Contemporary Discussion Series)

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. 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 Edited By Robert E. Carter. A New Era Book. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.