BUDDHIST-CHRISTIAN PHENOMENOLOGY
From Comparison to Collaboration Jacob W. Torbeck Loyola University Chicago Theology
This paper appears in a form similar to the manner in which it delivered on March 27, 2015 at Boston College’s ‘Engaging Particularities’ XIII Conference. For the sake of the conferences time constraints, this version has been substantially condensed from the initial full-length paper. Uncovering what Buddhism and Christianity might look like expressed in the native
philosophical idiom of the other is an ongoing project. Many comparative theologies have been focused on the translation of concepts between idioms – a redescription of one in terms of the other -- an observation of similarities between faiths, such as sin and karma, heaven and nirvana, or in comparative philosophy, angst (die Angst) and duhkha, nothingness (das Nichts) and shunyata. Constructive projects have followed, mediating between various concepts and paradigms. These projects are thanks in part to exchanges that were taking place in philosophical circles in the early half of the 20th Century, when Nishida Kitaro, Tanabe Hajime, and Nishitani Keiji, all in what would become known as the Kyoto School, studied with Heidegger, and according to Heidegger himself, “understood immediately” what he meant by nothingness.1
While this sort of translation has achieved admittedly interesting dialogue and
opportunities for cross-fertilization in some instances, collaborative efforts, in many cases,
remain nascent.2 My attempt in this paper is to suggest not merely a fruitful area for comparative
philosophy or theology, but an outgrowth of comparison that offers a pathway to a shared
method of doing philosophical theology. I envision this as a mutual approach that effects both
meanings of “mutuality” in a movement of each toward the other, held in common by each. To accomplish this, I will describe the beliefs of Yogācāra Buddhism alongside Western
phenomenology, before following phenomenology’s “theological turn” and offering speculation
on future possibilities for collaboration.
What Analogue in Western Thought?
Notable scholars of Buddhism have labeled Yogācāra as a kind of “idealism.” Lambert Schmithausen, for example, employs it, as do Vallee Poussin, D.T. Suzuki, Edward Conze, and
others.3 Against this characterization, Dan Lusthaus argues that the meanings of such an
appellation are so numerous as to be without any real content. By “idealism,” do we mean to say
merely that Yogācāra is not a kind of materialism? Or that it is a metaphysical idealism akin to
Vedanta (wherein “some supermental, non-material entity creates all that exists.”)? An
epistemological idealism, wherein the cognizing subject is the ground and limit of epistemology?
Or a critical epistemological idealism, which brackets metaphysical or ontological implications,
claiming only that the subject unavoidable shapes an experience to such an extent that the self
and other are inextricable?4
These are all inappropriate categories. Yogācāra claims not that there is “only a mind,”
but rather that the “mind only” is the obstacle to seeing things as they are. Rather than
understanding the knowing subject as the limit of epistemology, Yogācāra, as a Buddhism, quite
explicitly seeks to deconstruct and/or rid the practitioner of the delusion of subjectivity-as
selfhood. Finally, in lieu of positing an Other that is essentially unknowable as Other, Yogācāra
hopes to enable practitioners to see the Other without a “mirror,” that is, without the obstructions
we ourselves create, as no longer Other.
The inappropriateness of the category of idealism notwithstanding, the stages of Yogācārin analysis seem to follow paths similar to those of certain Western philosophers. Theodore Stcherbatsky saw affinities between Yogācāra and Kantian critical philosophy, but the two thought systems come to different conclusions: Kant’s ‘thing-in-itself’ “is ultimately unknowable as it is in itself (that is, it is noumenal). For Yogācāra, the way things happen
(yathabhutham) is eminently knowable, and seeing things as they truly are is one of [its] goals.”5
In Kant, we intuit the things themselves, “but never actually perceive anything beyond our own
mental representations (Vorstellungen); for Yogācāra, eliminating precisely this sort of
narcissistic cognitive closure (vijnapti-matra), so that one’s congnitions (jnana) are open to
everything beyond ourselfs, like a mirror (adarsa), is the cognitive shift (asraya-paravrtti)
necessary to become Awakened (Bodhi).”6 Stcherbatsky seems unaware that the reaction against
Kant in the phenomenological school of Husserl was much closer to Yogācāra than Kant ever
was, a movement that will be the subject of much of our comparative exercise.
The Multiplicity of Phenomenologies
Through a close examination of Western phenomenologists in comparison with Yogācāra
thought, Dan Lusthaus’s Buddhist Phenomenology argues for the understanding of Yogācāra as
Buddhist phenomenology, with the caveat that “Husserlian phenomenology and Yogācāra are
not isomorphic systems… Husserl, et al., do not provide us with an exact correlation to
Yogācāra.”7 Furthermore, we should not forget that Husserl himself continually changed his
mind and developed his thought. One cannot pin Husserl down to a static set of propositions –
he must be identified, rather, with his method and the trajectory of his work.8 In addition, a
number of followers of Husserl, among which were Edith Stein and Martin Heidegger, departed
in their own ways from doing phenomenology in the manner Husserl taught, creating within the
discipline a multiplicity of phenomenological perspectives. An analogue to this is true of
Yogācāra, as well. The development of Yogācāra as a broad category within Buddhism is such
that no one system can answer univocally to that name.9 Nevertheless, Lusthaus believes that
phenomenology (in its varied forms) is the closest Western system of thought system to
Yogācāra (in its varied forms), and thus offers a westerner a methodological advantage and a hermeneutical lens that other perspectives lack.10
The great perceived potential for mutual approach is promising in comparative efforts to to build bridges (and erect shrines?) where a broadly shared perspective and language can help us think together on the preoccupations Western phenomenology and Yogācāra have in common: “the whys and hows of human experience […] perception, sensation, cognition, noetic construction, embodied conditioning,” and overcoming “embodied ways of seeing the world.”11 This approach would still involve the “translation” of Yogācāra Buddhism into Western phenomenological language, and perhaps the converse as well. Lusthaus believes that this sort of translation has far fewer problems than with another system, e.g., German Idealism a la Hegel. In demonstrating the translation already underway, I will weave together some of the many points of connection between the Yogācāra school and phenomenologists from Edmund Husserl to Jean-Luc Marion.
“Buddhism contends that we habitually and incessantly misinterpret our experience,” Lusthaus writes.12 This basic starting point was the impetus for Husserl as well. Husserl called his method a transcendental idealism, by which he meant an “investigation of those conditions through which we experience and think that are not readily apparent while we are experiencing and thinking.”13 To move to the experience, Husserl hoped to ‘bracket’ presuppositions. He finds common ground here with the Yogācāra, in the “search for the cognitive roots of knowledge,” or the epistemic foundation.14 For Husserl, all philosophic concerns ultimately must rest on the epistemic foundation. The philosopher questions ‘why and how’ cognition is possible, while the naïve (for the Buddhist, “unawakened” or “unenlightened”) viewpoint leaves such things unquestioned.15
Husserl’s Hyle and the Yogācārin Worldview
Yogācāra’s affinity to Husserl manifests itself in the problem of consciousness. In
consciousness, we all the time encounter “non-genuine cognitive objects.” For Husserl, these
objects are a ‘past’ objects (memories). Lusthaus identifies this example as “strikingly
Yogacaric. Yogacara also accepts only a present object as genuine, as real. Objects from the
past and future are never immediately given, or even remotely given; they are, according to
Yogacara, cognitive constructions (parikalpita), which is to say, they are mental fictions.”16
While Husserl and Yogācāra both regard the present moment alone as real, “the present is
never anything other than embodied history.”17 Husserl approaches this history through the
phenomenological method, which innovatively reflects on the present moment. Yogācāra has as
its soteriological underpinning a theory of historical embodiment in karma and the alayavijnana
(storehouse consciousness). The two approaches can be viewed in parallel. On the one hand, a
phenomenological movement from viewing the present as “mere presence” to “embodied
history,” on the other, the uncovering and elimination of habitual (karmic) sedimentations, which
float as seeds down the stream of consciousness.18
Alayavijnana, Edith Stein, and Other Consciousnesses
“According to Yogācāra our mental experience is changing, altering (parinama, pravrtti)
every moment. In this fluctuating stream (vijnana-santana) we tend to posit two constants which
and through which we cognize and evaluate all that we experience.”19 First, the self (ātman) as
unchanging witness, and ‘objective’ circumstances (dharmas). In this stream of constant
change, we grasp at physical objects because we have theories of them and ourselves by which
we give value and identity to ourselves by obtaining the objects onto which we project values
and identities.20
In a similar manner, Edith Stein writes, “We can take das Ich in a second sense as the unity of a stream of consciousness. We begin with das Ich as the subject of an actual experience. However, when we reflect on this experience, we find that it is not isolated, but set against the background of a stream of such experiences more or less clearly and distinctively given. The Ich of this experience was not always in it but shifted over or was drawn into it from another experience, and so on.”21 That is, our stream of consciousness is dependently arisen. She continues, “Our uniform, isolated stream of consciousness is not our soul. But . . . there is one basic experience given to us which, together with its persistent attributes, becomes apparent in our experiences as the identical “bearer” of [those experiences]. This is the substantial soul.”22 What she means here is something quite similar to the storehouse consciousness of the Yogācāra, understood by Paul Williams to be a “bearer” of karmic “seeds.”23 These seeds explain phenomenal existence in general,” and in particular, the link between experiences arising
from prior actions.24 This consciousness is described as belonging to an individual, always
changing (flowing), and yet providing the principle of personal identity by linking actions in a
causal chain (or stream). Despite belonging to an individual, because of the dependent,
“intersubjective” nature of the world, the karmic seeds actually engage with all relevant
storehouse consciousnesses, in effect giving rise to common experience and the intersubjective
phenomenal world itself. The metaphor of “perfuming” used by the Yogācāra is quite evocative,
leading us to imagine a sort of continuous causality that looks less like the causal model evoked
by billiard balls ricocheting around a table, and more like the very organic image we get of an
flower’s odor permeating the air, causing a new and different “perfuming” each time it gives rise
to a new experience. Just as we can imagine this going on into the indefinite future, so too
would it stretch back through history ad infinitum.25
Dependent origination comes again to the fore in the “perfuming” by these karmic seeds, as many experiences of phenomena could be said to be phenomena “of ‘foreign experience’ and correlatively the ‘perception of foreign experience,’”26 or in other words, an experiential awareness of foreign consciousness(es). Stein addresses knowledge of foreign consciousnesses earlier in Empathy, when she talks of, among other examples, how “[a] child seeing another crying cries, too,” speaking of transference of feeling as a kind of imitation resulting from the
action of another. “If we had not first comprehended the foreign experience,” Stein says, “we
could not have brought it to givenness to ourselves at all.”27 She chooses the example of
imitation of feeling to make the point that we not only observe the effects of others’ actions, but
these actions truly affect us, even in situations where they don’t impinge upon us physically.
After a like fashion, it makes sense to the Yogācāra to speak of the minds of others, and to avoid
asserting any kind of solipsism; there are as many streams of consciousness as there are others,
and the scent of their karmic seeds is not limited to one storehouse, but permeates the
surroundings and becomes constitutive of the intersubjective phenomenal world.28
On the nature of value, Edith Stein, in 1916, was merely concerned with writing a descriptive account of how and why valuing occurs, and shared none of the soteriological aims of Yogācāra philosophy. For the Yogācāra, “value” is connected with desire, and is indicative of a subject-object dualism spoken of in terms of grahaka (the grasper) and grahya (the grasped). Escaping this problematic dualism through a realization or revelation of the emptiness of all things is the goal of Yogācāra thought and practice. Peter Oldmeadow, in observing this problem, notes similarities not primarily with Husserl or Stein, but with Martin Heidegger, who, with the Yogācāra Buddhists, rejects dualisms of almost every kind. The Problem of Dualism in Heidegger and Yogācāra Buddhism.
Heidegger, in his critique of the Western philosophical tradition, identifies the dualist
orientation as a cause of cultural and personal alienation.29 His insistence on breaking through
the alienation of dualism has an almost soteriological trajectory, prima facie resonating with the
goals of Yogācāra philosophy. In Heidegger’s work, the problem of dualism is linked to the
question of ontology. The enquiry into the meaning of being is never one that can be asked from
objectivity, however, and this very fact is the condition that makes Heidegger’s
phenomenological method necessary. Being “thrown” into a particular world, with its particular
socio-historical constitution, we must engage a method of traveling back to “a more fundamental
attunement with Being,” creating an openness, or a clearing, “where a more fundamental
presencing (as opposed to representation) of beings can occur.”30 Oldmeadow here identifies a point of connection with Yogācāra Buddhism, wherein the “fundamental mode of being, or awakened awareness, which ‘precedes’ dualistic appearance (dvaya-pratibhasa) must be uncovered,” through a similar “going back.”31
Dualistic appearances, which much be ultimately un-seen (or re-viewed) are of various kinds: subject/object, perceiver/perceived, knower/known, and absolute/phenomena, for example. The final example might even be understood on the theological level as God/world, or nirvana/samsara.32 This matter of un-seeing, however, should not be understood as placing reality under the umbrella of monism. Rather than a radical unity, both Yogācāric and Heideggerian phenomenology emphasize the intersubjective or dependently originated nature of all things.33
This process of un-seeing is conceived of in different, though perhaps complementary ways. In the West, “being” is taken for granted so as to be forgotten, so much so that even the forgetting has been forgotten. Thus Heidegger’s project can be said to be a “remembering” of
Being and a rediscovery of the open horizon of possibilities.34 Buddhists approach a similar soteriological goal from the starting point of the first noble truth. Because the aim of Buddhists is to escape duhkha and samsara, they come to discuss the existence of graspable, cravable things as a product of delusion, an unawakened state.35 The unawakened state takes the imagined nature to be real, having its own inherent being, which is essentially what Heidegger rejects when he rejects the correspondence theory of ontological realists. The Yogācāra reject such theories as well, saying that the “apprehending subject and apprehending object are inseparable in experience . . . there is no ‘self’ or ‘world’ but only experience (cittamatra) or presence (abhasa). ‘The appearance/ presencing (abhasata) of duality (dyava) exists (asti) but the being of duality does not’ (Mahayanasutralamkara XI, 21).”36 This is not to say that things are entirely not-existent, as if the Yogācāra were nihilists, but rather that they exist as dependently originated, and never inseparable from our experience of them. In other words, with the Western phenomenologists, “to the Yogācārins, to speak of a ‘world’ independent of our experiencing it makes no sense.”37
By positing “things,” the deluded creates in the consciousness the dualism of grahaka and grahya, the latter of which will be desired as if they have their own inherent being, as a means of attaining some lasting satisfaction. This inevitably causes duhka, as any apparent independence or inherent being is illusory. Thus, Yogācāra’s methodical stance is a “re membering” of the dependent nature of things, an un-seeing of the world of objects, and the move from delusion to enlightened awareness (jnana), in which the awakened is free of false epistemology and sees things as they are.38 While the soteriological trajectory of Yogācāra seems foreign to the thought of Husserl, Heidegger in some senses has reintroduced a weak soteriological equation: being open to Being
results in a more fundamental presencing (against representation) of beings, or in later thought, Gelassenheit, “releasement” from willing or grasping, enables aletheia, or the disclosure of the mystery of Being.39 I say only “weak” soteriological principle, as it occurs in the shadow of his critique of onto-theology. Husserl’s methodological influence on philosophy was such that it took very little time for (especially French) phenomenologists to begin to do what Husserl – who himself “bracketed” religious assumptions -- would not do: apply his method to religious assumptions.40
The Theological Turn, and a Path Toward Theological-Buddhological Collaboration.
Heidegger’s critique of onto-theology in some ways complicates any use of philosophy by Christians. In others, his critique enables Christianity to make use of phenomenology as a better theological method than Heidegger might think. To the first point, Heidegger critiques the notion of God or the divine conceived of as “Being.” When asked in Zurich, in 1951, whether it is “proper to posit Being and God as identical?” Heidegger responded,
Being and God are not identical and I would never attempt to think the essence of God by means of being. Some among you perhaps know that I come from theology, that I still guard an old love for it and that I am not without a certain understanding of it. If I were yet to write a theology – to which I sometimes feel inclined – then the word Being would not occur in it. Faith does not need the thought of Being. […] I believe that Being can never be thought as the ground and essence of God and of his manifestedness, to the extent that the latter can indeed meet man, flashes in the dimension of Being, which in no way signifies that Being might be regarded as a possible predicate for God. On this point one would have to establish completely new distinctions and delimitations.41
Further, it seems to Heidegger that for a Christian to engage philosophy at all is absurd, The thinker speaks of the ‘manifestness of Being;’ but ‘Being’ is an untheological word. Because revelation itself determines the manner of manifestness and because theology does not have to prove or interpret ‘Being,’ theology does not have to defend itself before philosophy. . . . The Christian experience is so completely different that is has no need to enter into competition with philosophy. When theology holds fast to the view that philosophy is foolishness, the mystery character of revelation will be much better preserved. Therefore, in the face of a final decision, the ways part.42
Jean-Luc Marion and others have interpreted the first kind of distinction as mitigating against blasphemy or idolatry. “To ‘degrade’ the notion of ‘God,’ for example, to the ‘highest value’ constitutes a ‘blow’ against ‘God,’ inasmuch as it is first ‘the greatest blasphemy imaginable against Being.’”43 This maneuver is (in a manner discussed above) reminiscent of the Yogācāra rejection of the reification of the absolute, and leads to, in Marion’s terms, a necessary retreat from the inevitable blasphemy and idolatry of metaphysics.44 If we take this point seriously, our only recourse to discuss the kind of inherently religious thought of Yogācāra, or to talk of a Christian (or even Jewish) philosophical approach, then, is to turn to a method that is at least in the phenomenological tradition.
Levinas achieves this theological turn to some degree by arguing that encounter with the faces belonging to foreign consciousnesses communicates an irreducible quality of infinity; Michel Henry takes a different approach, arguing from his Christian faith that the Incarnation means that God is an experience and a phenomenon that can thus be phenomenologically analyzed.45 A Buddhist may already consider this in some manner valid, since the Buddha was supposed to have been conceived from divinity, but (re)incarnated as a human man – accordingly, Yogācāra holds that the realizations of its phenomenological methods are the same that brought Gautama Buddha to enlightenment. If we can, as Lusthaus argues, consider Yogācāra a Buddhist phenomenology, then perhaps phenomenology, which Husserl once said “makes ‘protestants out of catholics and catholics out of protestants,’” truly “open[s] up a space of reflection in which religious themes and concerns obtain a new philosophical weight and urgency, so as to bridge or at least make problematic the apparently strict separation between reason and faith.”46
This characterization brings us back to the central conceit of the paper, which I hope is
now apparent: Phenomenology offers a bridge not only within traditions as means of reconciling
reason and faith, but also as a method of mutual approach to the “religious themes and concerns”
of Yogācāra Buddhism and Christianity. The human person, notions of the sacred, spirituality,
and mystical experiences are all among the fertile grounds for collaborative exploration.
Comparative theology often takes as its method a process of importing concepts from an
outside tradition and letting those alien spiritual insights dialogue with the home tradition to
enrich meaning or uncover new possibilities within the home tradition. While this method has
admittedly produced immensely interesting results in certain cases, the end product is an often
piecemeal collection of semi-isolated re-articulated dogmata that remain problematic in relation
to the larger whole of their respective traditions. Rather than suggest that the problemata render
the exercise worthless, I affirm the value of theological dialogue of this nature, and take its rough
edges as a promise that there is more work to be done. Nevertheless, in the limited realm where
it is possible, between Yogacara Buddhism and Western religious phenomenology, I hope to
encourage a transcendence of “cross-fertilization” and a move towards a method of shared
discovery that has no need of “crossing over” or “crossing back” as both parties resolve to do the
work of theology together.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bornemark, Jonna, and Hans Ruin, eds., Phenomenology and Religion: New Frontiers. Stockholm: Södertörn University, 2010.
Cobb, John B., Jr., and Christopher Ives, eds. The Emptying God: A Buddhist-Jewish-Christian Conversation. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1990.
Dalton, Drew. "Phenomenology and the Divine: Understanding the French Theological Turn,” Lecture given at St. Anselm College, October, 2009. Accessed December 1, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deE2qoyVf-0
Dupuis, Jacques. Christianity and the Religions: From Confrontation to Dialogue. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2003.
Janicaud, Dominique, et al. Phenomenology and the “Theological Turn”: The French Debate. New York: Fordham University Press, 2000.
Lusthaus, Dan. Buddhist Phenomenology: A philosophical Investigation of Yogācāra Buddhism and the Ch’eng Wei-shih lun. New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002.
Marion, Jean-Luc. God Without Being: hors-texte. Translated by Thomas A. Carlson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.
May, Reinhard. Heidegger's Hidden Sources: East-Asian Influences on his Work. Translated by Graham Parkes. New York: Routledge, 1996.
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Nishitani, Keiji. Religion and Nothingness, trans. Jan Van Bragt (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1983)
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Powers, John. Hermeneutics and Tradition in the Saṃdhinirmocana-sūtra (Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 1993)
Powers, John. “Yogācāra: Indian Buddhist Origins.” In Transforming Consciousness: Yogācāra Thought in Modern China. Edited by John Makeham, 41-63. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
Sawicki, Marianne. “Husserl” in The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Accessed December 1, 2014. http://www.iep.utm.edu/husserl/#H6
Schmithausen, Lambert. The Genesis of Yogācāra-Vijñānavāda: Responses and Reflections. Tokyo: International Institute for Buddhist Studies of the ICPBS, 2014.
Stein, Edith. On the Problem of Empathy. Translated by Waltraut Stein. Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1989.
Williams, Paul. “Catholicism and Buddhism,” in The Catholic Church and the World Religions. Edited by Gavin d’Costa, 141-177. London: T&T Clark, 2011. Williams, Paul. “Yogācāra.” In Mahayana Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations, 2nd ed. 84102. New York: Routledge, 2009.
1 Peter Oldmeadow, “Approaches to the Problem of Dualism in Heidegger and Indian Yogācāra Buddhism,” in Religion and Retributive Logic: Essays in Honor of Professor Garry W. Trompf, eds. Carol M. Cusack and Christopher Hartney (Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2010), 272; see also Keiji Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, trans. Jan Van Bragt (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1983), passim, and Reinhard May, Heidegger's Hidden Sources: East-Asian Influences on his Work, trans. Graham Parkes (New York: Routledge, 1996), 25.
2 One example of extraordinary dialogue can be found in John B. Cobb, Jr., and Christopher Ives, eds., The Emptying God: A Buddhist-Jewish-Christian Conversation (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1990). The conversation is mature and fruitful, but still sadly, because of its format of open dialogue, occupies a realm somewhere on the margins of (published) theological collaboration, which tends to take the form of a collection of essays united by topic of interest but not in actual participatory discourse.
3 Dan Lusthaus, Buddhist Phenomenology: A philosophical Investigation of Yogācāra Buddhism and the Ch’eng Wei-shih lun (New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002), v, 4. Cf. Oldmeadow, 270.
4 Ibid., 4-5.
5 Ibid., v.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid., vi. See also, Powers, “Yogācāra: Indian Buddhist Origins,” in John Makeham, Transforming Consciousness: Yogācāra Thought in Modern China (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 57. Powers praises Lusthaus for providing an erudite overview of Yogācāra, but balks at the apparent lack of a method analogous to Husserls epoché in Yogācāra texts.
8 Indeed, the continuously delayed Ideen II, compiled by Edith stein before 1920, only saw publication in 1952, after Husserl’s death, in part because he had moved on in his thought before the manuscript could be finished. Cf. Marianne Sawicki, “Husserl,” in The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://www.iep.utm.edu/husserl/#H6 <accessed Dec 1, 2014.>
9 Lusthaus, 6-7.
10 Ibid., vii.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid., 1.
13 Ibid., 11.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid., 13.
16 Ibid., 15.
17 Ibid., 25.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid., 1.
20 Ibid.
21 Edith Stein, On the Problem of Empathy, trans. Waltraut Stein (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1989), 38-39. I have changed W. Stein’s rendering of “the ‘I’” back to das Ich, as the German renders better the disconnect between a mere personal referent and the conceptual “proper noun” that stands in for the perceiving self, experiencing subject, and moral agent.
22 Ibid., 39-40.
23 The Yogacara would strenuously object to any suggestion that this is some sort of self.
24 Williams, “Yogācāra,” 97. 25 Williams, “Yogācāra,” 97.
26 Stein, 21.
27 Ibid., 23.
28 Williams, “Yogācāra,” 98.
29 Oldmeadow, 269.
30 Ibid.
31 Ibid.
32 Cf. Nagarjuna in the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras; & Ibid., 280-281.
33 Ibid., 270.
34 Ibid., 277.
35 Ibid., 279.
36 Ibid., 284.
37 Ibid.
38 Ibid., 280-282.
39 Ibid., 279, 286.
40 Cf. Dominique Janicaud, Phenomenology and the Theological Turn: The French Debate (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000).
41 Quoted in Jean-Luc Marion, God Without Being: Hors-Texte, trans. Thomas A. Carlson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 61-62.
42 Quoted in Marion, 62.
43 Quoting Heidegger, from, respectively, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. William Lovitt (New York: Haper and Row, 1977), 105, and “The Letter on Humanism,” in Basic Writings, trans. Frank A. Capuzzi, ed. David Farrel Krell (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), 228, in Marion, 64. Cf. Drew Dalton, "Phenomenology and the Divine: Understanding the French Theological Turn,” Lecture given October, 2009 at St. Anselm College, available online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deE2qoyVf-0 <accessed Dec 1, 2014>.
44 Marion, 37. The dependent origination, or emptiness, of God, a possible solution to how the conflict of God and the notion of inherent Being might be resolved, explored via the concept of Trinity, is discussed in Cobb & Ives, but won’t be taken up here. 45 See Dalton.
46 Jonna Bornemark and Hans Ruin, eds., Phenomenology and Religion: New Frontiers (Stockholm: Södertörn University, 2010), 7.
