One Step Towards Buddhism as Philosophy

Abstract

When we first hear the word “Buddhism,” what kind of image enters the mind? Perhaps a temple, but is it a temple near your home, or the one you visited in Kyoto or Kamakura? In your image, the temple may possess a “Japanese” serenity with a sophisticated garden of many flowers and pine trees. You may sense therein the aesthetic world separate from secular society. There are often many tombstones behind the main building of a typical temple, and, aided by the smell of incense, you might feel that Buddhism is the religious equivalent of a funeral ceremony. However, considering that Buddhism deals with fundamental issues of human life such as existence, language, mind, nature, absoluteness, relation, and time, we can recognize that Buddhism obviously contains “philosophical” characteristics that are underscored by sophisticated logical arguments. Surprisingly, Buddhism embraces a cutting-edge philosophical insight that even Western philosophical traditions have not yet discovered or have only recently discovered.

Eiji Suhara is a Lecturer of the School of International Letters and Cultures, Arizona State University. He is interested in researching various topics in East Asian religion, philosophy, and cognitive science, and is currently devoted to revealing metaphorical expressions implicitly used in Zen kōan from the perspectives of phenomenology and embodied realism. His works have been published in the Journal of Buddhist Philosophy, Journal of Japanese Philosophy, and Philosophy East and West.