NiNa Petek / PolNost PrazNiNe: budizem med Podobo iN izkustvom 5 DOI:10.4312/ars.16.2.5-12 Nina Petek Predgovor Polnost praznine: budizem med podobo in izkustvom Rdeča nit tematskega bloka pričujoče številke revije Ars & Humanitas, kot je zgo- voren že njegov naslov »Polnost praznine: budizem med podobo in izkustvom«, je praznina, temeljna idejna podstat celotnega budizma, že vse od njegovih začetkov, ki jih je ob uvidu v nestalnost vsega živečega vztrajno gradil utemeljitelj tradicije Siddhartha Gavtama Buddha (ok. 560–480 pr. n. št.). Po njegovi smrti, ko se je bu- dizem v svojem plodnem razvoju razvejal na številne tokove in šole, tudi izven meja Indije, je praznina privzela raznolike podobe, te pa druži njena bistvena lastnost, ki se pretaka skozi vsa miselna obzorja tradicije, in je povsem nasprotna običajnemu razumevanju praznine kot negativitete v smislu breztemeljnega in brezplodnega niča. V budizmu, zlasti v luči nauka o minljivosti in tesni medsebojni povezanosti vsega živečega, je praznina namreč opredeljena kot dinamična totaliteta bivajočega. Eden od pomenov sanskrtskega izraza za praznino, śūnyatā, je odsotnost, ki se nanaša na odsotnost sleherne stalnosti, medtem ko drug pomen pojasnjuje samo naravo te od- sotnosti kot (vse)prisotnosti. To na videz protislovno opredelitev pa osmisli etimolo- gija izraza śūnyatā, izpeljanega iz sanskrtskega glagolskega korena śvi-, ki pomeni »rasti«, »večati se«, »nabrekniti«. Slednji pomen dodatno poglobi pripona -tā, ki v sanskrtu označuje totalnost, kar ilustrira naravo praznine, ki ni prazna, ampak je pre- napolnjena z neizmernim, nedoumljivim preobiljem bivajočega. To preobilje, prosto stalnosti, hierarhij, vrednostnih lestvic in kakršnihkoli omejitev, pa se veča in raste z vselej porajajočimi se, preminjajočimi in na novo nastajajočimi pojavi. Tako budistič- na praznina ni zanikanje sveta in življenja, ampak afirmacija vseh njegovih pojavnih oblik, pulzirajoča unija, ki v sebi spaja brezmejno raznolikost. Je nekaj, kar je prisotno v vsem, privzema mnogovrstne podobe ter se izreka na najrazličnejše načine, a se nikoli ne more dokončno izreči, saj se, v svojem vselej spreminjajočem se značaju kot temeljni lastnosti vsega živečega, izmika sleherni dokončni, še tako dovršeni formi jezikovnega izraza. Drobec te večplastne celovitosti in njenih raznoterih izraznih podob, ki naposled poniknejo v nepojmovnem izkustvu praznine, usvojenem prek meditacije, v budizmu opredeljenem kot vrhovno spoznanje, presegajoče sleherno teoretiziranje, je zaobjet v vsebinsko raznolikih prispevkih tematskega bloka, ki razpravljajo o številnih vidikih AH_2022_2_FINAL.indd 5 6. 03. 2023 13:15:11 NiNa Petek / PolNost PrazNiNe: budizem med Podobo iN izkustvom 6 praznine v budističnih tokovih in šolah Indije, Kitajske, Japonske in Tibeta. Tako je, povsem nepredvidljivo in nenačrtovano, nastala pričujoča »zgodba« o budistični pra- znini, grajena iz štirih »poglavij«, ki sledijo idejno-zgodovinskemu okviru, začenši v Indiji, deželi izvora budizma, od koder se je razširil na Kitajsko in s tem v naše drugo poglavje, ki mu sledi tretji del, posvečen budizmu na Japonskem, nakar se blok zaključi s tibetansko vejo budizma vajrayāna. Kljub majhnosti našega akademskega prostora pa nabor prispevkov priča o plodnem delu slovenskih raziskovalk in raziskovalcev, ki se ukvarjajo s številnimi šolami budizma ter s tem raznolikimi teoretičnimi in izkustvenimi vidiki praznine. Njihova dognanja, med drugim prepletena tudi s premisleki o srečeva- njih z grško filozofijo, kitajskim daoizmom, konfucijanstvom in nekaterimi zahodnimi miselnimi tokovi, pa dopolnjujeta tudi prispevka dveh tujih avtorjev. Prvi del tematskega bloka tako sega v čas življenja Siddharthe Gavtame in zgo- dnjega oblikovanja budizma, pri čemer Nina Petek in Franci Zore v članku »Buddh a in Piron: od praznine stališč do polnosti bivanja« razpravljata o filozofski metodi Buddhe, ki jo je prevzel od staroindijskih skeptikov in ki je navdihnila tudi grškega filozofa Pirona. Njuna, do nekaterih uveljavljenih filozofskih resnic skeptična drža, nedogmatska soteriološka praksa filozofiranja, ki presega konvencionalne načine spo- znavanja in veščino izpiljene argumentacije ter na novo osmišlja samo vlogo filozo- fije kot načina spokojnega bivanja, pa je vplivala tudi na tokove, ki so se oblikovali po Buddhovi smrti, še posebej na šolo budizma mahāyāna, poznano kot madhyama­ ka. Tej se v prispevku »Koncept praznine i popratni koncepti u filozofijskoj analizi madhyamake« (»Koncept praznine in z njim povezani koncepti v filozofski analizi madhyamake«) posveča Goran Kardaš, zlasti z ozirom na ontološke in epistemološke vidike praznine v luči razmerja med konvencionalno in absolutno resnico. Madhya­ maka je v nekaj desetletjih po dokončni ustalitvi z utemeljiteljem Nagardžuno (ok. 150–250 n. št.) doživela velik razcvet na področju budistične logike in epistemologije z najbolj vplivnima predstavnikoma Dignago (ok. 480–540 n. št.) in Dharmakirtijem (ok. 600–670 n. št.). V takratnih filozofskih krogih je bila še posebej odmevna Di- gnagova semantična teorija izključitve (skrt. apoha), s katero so budistični filozofi poskušali razrešiti vprašanje statusa univerzalij, o le-tej pa v prispevku »The Concept of Exclusion (Apoha) in Buddhist Philosophy« (»Koncept izključitve (apoha) v budi- stični filozofiji«) razpravlja Jiří Holba. Budizem je po nekaj desetletjih od svojih začetkov v Indiji dosegel tudi druge dežele Azije, med prvimi Kitajsko v 1. stoletju n. št., pri čemer so kitajski modreci prepoznali številne idejne sorodnosti med tujim miselnim sistemom in avtohtono fi- lozofsko tradicijo daoizma. Nekatere ontološke, etične in soteriološke segmente, ki družijo obe filozofiji, daoizem in budizem, zlasti vejo mahāyāna, v prispevku »Pra- znina, etika, nihilizem: budizem mahāyāna in klasični daoizem«, s katerim se začne drugi del tematskega bloka, predstavi Sebastijan Pešec, ki na osnovi prikaza njunih AH_2022_2_FINAL.indd 6 6. 03. 2023 13:15:11 NiNa Petek / PolNost PrazNiNe: budizem med Podobo iN izkustvom 7 ontoloških predpostavk opozori tudi na nekatera izkrivljena razumevanja izhodišč obeh sistemov kot nihilističnih. Medtem ko se omenjeni prispevek posveča primerja- vam izbranih naukov budizma in daoizma, pa članek Jane S. Rošker »Chan ali zen? Izvor in transformacija Bodhidharmove šole meditacije« razpravlja o šoli kitajskega budizma, poznani kot chan, ki je nastala kot svojevrstna sinteza budizma, daoizma in posameznih segmentov konfucijanstva. Avtorica analizo idejnih temeljev avto- htonega sistema kitajskega budizma podpre tudi z orisom njegovega zgodovinskega razvoja, v teku katerega je formiranje chana spremljal tudi razvoj drugih budističnih šol. Budizem se je namreč vse od svojega prihoda na Kitajsko globoko zakoreninil v duhovna obzorja dežele in skozi zgodovinska obdobja privzemal raznolike izraze. Jan Vrhovski v prispevku »Buddhist Realism for Modern Times: Intellectual-Historical Readings into Dharma Master Taixu’s Essays on Realism« (»Budistični realizem za moderne čase: idejno-zgodovinska branja esejev Mojstra dharme Taixuja o realiz- mu«) svojo razpravo umesti v republikansko obdobje ter analizira glavne značilnosti Taixujevega (1890–1947) razumevanja t. i. znanstvenega budizma, hkrati pa predsta- vi tudi Taixujevo kritično obravnavo tokov moderne filozofije na Kitajskem, vključno z Russllovim »novim realizmom« in materializmom. Budizem je na Kitajsko torej dospel neposredno iz dežele svojega izvora, Japonsko pa je dosegel prek korejskih in kitajskih odposlancev v 6. stol. n. št. Tudi razvoj budizma v Deželi vzhajajočega sonca je zaznamovan z dinamičnim procesom formiranja številnih šol, med drugim tudi budizma zen, ki izhaja iz idejnih osnov kitajske šole chan. Filozofska izhodišča klasičnega zena so vplivala na sodobnejše šole na Japonskem, pri čemer je, tudi za- voljo svojskega dialoga z nekaterimi tokovi zahodne filozofije, še posebej zanimiva kjotska šola (jap. Kyōto-gakuha), med vidnejšimi predstavniki katere sta filozofa Ni- shida Kitarō in Hisamatsu Shin’ichi. Članek Tare Peternell »Prostor absolutne nično- sti: približevanje k (ne-)sebstvu v Nishidovi filozofiji«, ki začne tretji del tematskega bloka, razpravlja o osrednjih naukih filozofskega sistema Nishide, tj. čistem izkustvu, bashoju in absolutni ničnosti, ter osvetli tudi problematiko individualnega jaza v od- nosu do sveta, načine odpravljanja vrzeli med subjektom in objektom ter pot, ki vodi k njuni uniji, v kateri pa oba pola, kljub vzajemni povezanosti, ohranita svoje posebno- sti. Članek Janka Lozarja »Heidegger in Hisamatsu. Na poti k vzajemni drugosti« pa prinaša razmislek o neki drugi vrsti vzajemnosti, namreč evropske in japonske misli. Avtor razpravlja o srečevanjih med fenomenologijo Martina Heideggra in budistično mislijo Hisamatsuja Shin’ichija, natančneje med Hisamatsujevim pojmovanjem niča in Heideggrovo resnico biti, pri čemer pa obe filozofiji v pretanjenem dialogu druga drugi dopuščata avtonomijo in v tem posebnem približevanju razkrivata svojo lastno enkratnost. Ko se je budizem zen uveljavil na Zahodu, je bil deležen številnih inter- pretacij, nekatere od njih pa v prispevku »Beyond Elimination and Construction: Zen, Symbolism, and the Perennialist School« (»Onkraj eliminacije in konstrukcije: zen, AH_2022_2_FINAL.indd 7 6. 03. 2023 13:15:11 NiNa Petek / PolNost PrazNiNe: budizem med Podobo iN izkustvom 8 simbolizem in perenialistična šola«) predstavita Adnan Sivić in Sebastjan Vörös. Av- torja podata nekatere najpomembnejše ugovore proti eliminativizmu in konstruktiviz- mu ter orišeta drugačno razumevanje odnosa med budistično prakso in razsvetljenjem na osnovi perenialistične tradicije in fenomenološko utemeljene ideje simbola. Le-ta zdužuje lastnosti zena v enotno tradicijo, hkrati pa kaže onkraj njih kot znak nečesa neizrekljivega, doumljivega zgolj v budistični praksi. K meditacijski praksi je še posebej izrazito usmerjena tradicija, o kateri razpravlja zadnji prispevek, ki zapolnjuje četrti del tematskega bloka – stoji sam zase, samotno, povsem v duhu nazorov šole, o kateri teče beseda. Namreč na skrajnem robu družbe- nih in kulturnih obzorij, konvencionalnih religijskih izrazov in uveljavljenih filozofskih diskurzov, kjer se giblje vse od svojih začetkov, tradicija budističnih puščavnikov in puščavnic (skrt. yogi, yoginī), ki izhaja iz budizma vajrayāna, zadnje faze diferenciacije budizma na tri temeljne veje, še danes kleno neguje izkustveno srčiko budizma prek izvajanja kompleksnih meditacijskih tehnik. Nina Petek in Jan Ciglenečki v prispevku »Budizem v himalajskih puščavah: tradicija jogijev in jogini v Zangskarju« tako orišeta nekatere vidike sodobne tradicije budističnega puščavništva, ki se na območju zveznega teoritorija Ladakh v predelu indijske Himalaje ohranja vse od 11. stoletja dalje. Tradici- ja, ki še danes stavi zgolj na neposredno, nepojmovno izkustvo praznine, onstran študija skladovnice besedil, saj le-to edino vodi k osvoboditvi od vseh navezanosti in tegob v blaženo spokojnost bivanja, poziva k iskanju praznine v tem svetu – v tem umu, v tem telesu, v tem življenju, saj – kdaj vendarle, če ne zdaj? * Tistega, ki neguje vednost o Praznini, ne radostijo svetne stvari, saj so brez bistev. Dobiček ga ne navdušuje, izguba ga ne žalosti. Slava ga ne zaslepi in ni ga sram šibkosti. Prezir se mu ne upira in hvala mu ne godi. Užitek ga ne veseli, bolest ga ne vznemirja. Kogar ne mikajo stvari sveta, pozna Praznino; in tisti, ki neguje vednost o Praznini, ne čuti ne naklonjenosti ne odpora. Ve, da to, kar mu je drago, je le Praznina – in jo motri kot tako. Iz besedila Dharmasaṃgītisūtra (prev. Nina Petek) AH_2022_2_FINAL.indd 8 6. 03. 2023 13:15:11 NiNa Petek / PolNost PrazNiNe: budizem med Podobo iN izkustvom 9 Nina Petek Foreword The Fullness of Emptiness: Buddhism between Image and Experience The cohesive thread of the present thematic section of Ars & Humanitas, as its title “The Fullness of Emptiness: Buddhism between Image and Experience” indicates, is emptiness. This is the fundamental concept of Buddhism as a whole, since its begin- nings, which the founder of the tradition, Siddhartha Gautama Buddha (c. 560–480 BC), steadily built upon with his insight into the impermanence of all living things. Since his death, as Buddhism diversified into many streams and schools, even beyond the borders of India, emptiness has taken on a variety of images, all united by its essential feature, which runs through all the varied expressions of the tradition, quite contrary to the common understanding of emptiness as negativity in the sense of a meaningless and fruitless nothingness. In Buddhism, especially in the light of the doctrine of transi- ence and the close interconnectedness of all living things, emptiness is defined as the dynamic totality of being. One meaning of the Sanskrit term for emptiness, śūnyatā, is absence, referring to the absence of any permanence, while another meaning explains the very nature of this absence as (all)-presence. This apparent contradictory definition is made clear by the etymology of śūnyatā, derived from the Sanskrit verb root śvi-, meaning “to grow”, “to increase”, “to swell”. This meaning is further deepened by the suffix -tā, which in Sanskrit denotes totality, illustrating the nature of emptiness, which is not empty but overflowing with an immeasurable, unfathomable abundance of being. This overabundance, free from permanence, hierarchies, value scales and any kind of limitation, grows and grows with the ever-emerging, ever-transforming and ever-new becoming phenomena. Thus Buddhist emptiness is not a negation of the world and life, but an affirmation of all its manifested forms, a pulsating union that brings together their infinite diversity. It is something that is present in everything, takes on many forms and expresses itself in the most varied ways, but can never be fully expressed, because, in its ever-changing character as the fundamental characteristic of all living things, it eludes any definitive – however sophisticated – form of linguistic expression. A fragment of this multifaceted totality and its manifold expressive images, which ultimately find their expression in the non-conceptual experience of emptiness acquired through meditation, which in Buddhism is defined as the supreme realization transcend- ing all theorizing, is captured in the thematically diverse contributions of the thematic section, which discuss the many facets of emptiness in Buddhist currents and schools AH_2022_2_FINAL.indd 9 6. 03. 2023 13:15:11 NiNa Petek / PolNost PrazNiNe: budizem med Podobo iN izkustvom 10 in India, China, Japan and Tibet. Thus, quite unpredictably and unexpectedly, the pre- sent “story” of Buddhist emptiness emerged, built from four “chapters” following the conceptual-historical framework, starting in India, the land of origin of Buddhism, from where it spread to China, and thus to our second chapter, followed by a third section on Buddhism in Japan, before concluding with the fourth section, Tibetan branch of Vajrayāna Buddhism. Despite the smallness of our academic sphere, the range of con- tributions testifies to the fruitful work of Slovenian scholars working on the many fields of Buddhism and thus on the diverse theoretical and experiential aspects of emptiness. Their findings, also intertwined with reflections on encounters with Greek philosophy, Chinese Daoism, Confucianism and some streams of Western thought, are complement- ed by contributions from two foreign authors. The first part of the thematic section thus dates back to the life of Siddhartha Gau- tama and the early formation of Buddhism, with Nina Petek and Franci Zore discussing the philosophical method of the Buddha, which he adopted from the ancient Indian sceptics and which also inspired the Greek philosopher Pyrrho, in their article “Buddha and Pyrrho: from the Emptiness of Views to the Fullness of Being”. The Buddha’s and Pyrrho’s sceptical attitude towards some established philosophical truths, their non-dog- matic soteriological practice of philosophizing, which goes beyond conventional ways of knowing and the skill of sophisticated argumentation, which rethinks the very role of philosophy as a way of peaceful existence, also influenced the currents that formed after the Buddha’s death, in particular the Mahāyāna school of Buddhism, known as the Madhyamaka. Goran Kardaš focuses on this school in his paper “The Concept of Empti- ness and Accompanying Concepts in the Philosophical Analysis of Madhyamaka”, in particular with regard to the ontological and epistemological aspects of emptiness in the light of the relation between conventional and absolute truth. Within a few decades of its final establishment with its founder Nagarjuna (c. 150–250 CE), the Madhyamaka experienced a great flowering in the field of Buddhist logic and epistemology, with its most influential philosophers being Dignaga (c. 480–540 CE) and Dharmakirti (c. 600– 670 CE). Dignaga’s semantic theory of exclusion (Skrt. apoha), with which Buddhist philosophers tried to resolve the question of the status of universals, was particularly prominent in philosophical circles at that time, and this is discussed by Jiří Holba in his paper “The Concept of Exclusion (Apoha) in Buddhist Philosophy”. Within a few decades of its beginnings in India, Buddhism had reached other coun- tries in Asia, among the first of which was China in the 1st century CE, and the Chinese sages recognized the many conceptual affinities between the foreign system of thought and the indigenous philosophical tradition of Daoism. Some ontological, ethical and soteriological segments that unite the two philosophies, Daoism and Buddhism, espe- cially the Mahāyāna branch of the latter, are discussed in the paper “Emptiness, Ethics, Nihilism. Mahāyāna Buddhism and Classical Daoism”, with which the second part of AH_2022_2_FINAL.indd 10 6. 03. 2023 13:15:11 NiNa Petek / PolNost PrazNiNe: budizem med Podobo iN izkustvom 11 the thematic section begins. This work is presented by Sebastijan Pešec, who, on the basis of a presentation of the two philosophies ontological assumptions, also points to some distorted understandings of both systems as nihilistic. While the aforementioned paper focuses on comparisons of selected teachings of Buddhism and Daoism, Jana S. Rošker’s article “Chan or Zen? The Origin and Transformation of the Bodhidharma School of Meditation” presents the school of Chinese Buddhism known as Chan, which emerged as a unique synthesis of Buddhism, Daoism and particular segments of Con- fucianism. The author supports the analysis of the ideological foundations of the indig- enous system of Chinese Buddhism with an outline of its historical development, in the course of which the formation of Chan was accompanied by the emergence of other schools. Since its arrival in China, Buddhism has been deeply rooted in Chinese spiritu- al horizons and has taken on diverse expressions throughout different historical periods. Jan Vrhovski, in his paper “Buddhist Realism for Modern Times: Intellectual-Historical Readings into Dharma Master Taixu’s Essays on Realism”, situates the discussion in the Republican Era and presents the main features of Taixu’s (1890–1947) understanding of realism. In the article he also analyses Taixu’s critical accounts of modern philosophical currents in contemporary China, including Russell’s “New Realism” and materialism. While Buddhism came to China directly from its land of origin, it reached Japan through Korean and Chinese emissaries in the 6th century CE. The development of Bud- dhism in the Land of the Rising Sun has also been marked by the dynamic process of the formation of a number of schools, including Zen Buddhism, which has its roots in the philosophical foundations of the Chinese Chan school. The philosophical foundations of classical Zen have also influenced more recent schools in Japan, among which, also because of its dialogue with some currents of Western philosophy, the Kyōto School (Jap. Kyōto-gakuha) is of particular interest, whose most prominent philosophers in- clude Nishida Kitarō and Hisamatsu Shin’ichi. Tara Peternell’s paper “The Place of Absolute Nothingness: Approaching the (Non-)Self in Nishida’s Thought”, which be- gins the third part of the thematic section, discusses the central doctrines of Nishida’s philosophical system, i.e. pure experience, basho and absolute nothingness. This paper also sheds light on the problem of the individual self in relation to the world, the ways of bridging the gap between subject and object, and the path leading to their union, in which both poles, despite their mutual interconnectedness, retain their particularities. Janko Lozar’s article “Heidegger and Hisamatsu. On the Way to Mutual Alterity” of- fers a reflection on another kind of mutuality, that of European and Japanese thought. The author discusses the encounters between the phenomenology of Martin Heidegger and the Buddhist thought of Hisamatsu Shin’ichi, and more specifically between Hisa- matsu’s concept of nothingness and Heidegger’s truth of being, as in a subtle dialogue both philosophies allow each other autonomy and thus reveal their own uniqueness in this special convergence. Zen Buddhism has been the subject of many interpretations AH_2022_2_FINAL.indd 11 6. 03. 2023 13:15:11 NiNa Petek / PolNost PrazNiNe: budizem med Podobo iN izkustvom 12 since it was first introduced in the West, some of which are presented by Adnan Sivić and Sebastjan Vörös in their paper “Beyond Elimination and Construction: Zen, Sym- bolism, and the Perennialist School”. The authors present some of the most important objections to eliminativism and constructivism, and outline a different understanding of the relation between Buddhist practice and enlightenment based on the perennialist tradition and the phenomenologically grounded idea of the symbol. In this context, the symbol gathers the particularities of Zen into a unified tradition, while pointing beyond them as a sign of something ineffable, comprehensible only in Buddhist practice. The tradition presented in the last paper, which is a part of the fourth chapter of the thematic section, is especially strongly oriented towards meditation as a prac- tice – it stands on its own, alone, entirely in the spirit of the views of tradition itself. At the edge of socio-cultural horizons, conventional religious expressions and es- tablished philosophical discourses, where it has been since its beginnings, the tradi- tion of Buddhist hermits and hermitesses (Skrt. yogi, yoginī), which has its roots in Vajrayāna Buddhism, the last phase of the differentiation of Buddhism into three fun- damental branches, cultivates the experiential heart of Buddhism through the practice of complex meditation techniques, which still continues today. Nina Petek and Jan Ciglenečki, in the paper “Buddhism in the Himalayan deserts: the Tradition of Yogis and Yoginis in Zangskar”, thus outline some aspects of the contemporary expression of the Buddhist eremitic tradition, which has been preserved in the Union Territory of Ladakh in the Indian Himalayas since the 11th century. This tradition, which relies solely on the direct, non-conceptual experience of emptiness, beyond the study of a stack of texts, since this alone leads to liberation from all attachments and afflictions into the blissful tranquillity of being, appeals for a search for emptiness in this world – in this mind, in this body, in this life. Because – if not now, then when? He who maintains the doctrine of Emptiness is not allured by the things of the world, because they have no basis. He is not excited by gain or dejected by loss. Fame does not dazzle him and infamy does not shame him. Scorn does not repel him, praise does not attract him. Pleasure does not please him, pain does not trouble him. He who is not allured by the things of the world knows Emptiness, and one who maintains the doctrine of Emptiness has neither likes nor dislikes. What he likes he knows to be only Emptiness – and sees it as such. From Dharmasaṃgītisūtra (transl. by Cecil Bendall) AH_2022_2_FINAL.indd 12 6. 03. 2023 13:15:11