Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook

Karaki Junzō

227 Karaki Junzō 唐木順三 (1904–1980) Karaki Junzō was active throughout the Shōwa period more as a critic than a philosopher professionally trained in western sources. He studied under Nishida Kitarō* at Kyoto University and remained indebted to the thinking of Kyoto School philosophers throughout his life. At the same time, the religious ideas of Dōgen’s* Zen and Shinran’s* Pure Landž teachings are also reflected in the development of his thought. Beginning with early works on modern and contemporary literary criticism, in later years he turned to medieval literature and to figures like the haiku poet, Bashō. Throughout his career, his abiding concern was with aesthetics and religious sensibility. In addition to a major work on the writing of contemporary history, he also published a critical appraisal of the work of Miki Kiyoshi*. His last book, published in the year of his death, was an attempt to address the social responsibilities of scientists in the present age. Karaki’s 1963 book, Impermanence, from which the following pages have been extracted, is an extended attempt to clarify the sense of the transiency of all things that he sees as defining the Japanese mentality from the Middle Ages on. Seeing the awareness of the fragility and uncertainty of existence, often associated with male warriors, as grounded in Buddhist ideas, Karaki went on to develop a highly regarded theory of Japanese aesthetic appreciation. [mh] Metaphysical impermane nce Karaki Junzō 1963, 209–16 I should like to set down my thoughts on what most interests me in Dōgen’s* account of impermanence. I shall begin with a close reading of this passage from the ninety-third fascicle of the Shōbōgenzō: In a degenerate age there is almost no one with a genuine will to the truth. Nevertheless, applying the mind for a while to impermanence, we should not forget the transience of the world and the precariousness of human life. We need not be conscious that “I am thinking about the transiency of the world.” Deliberately attaching weight to the dharmaž, we should think lightly of “my body” and “my life.” For the sake of the dharma we should begrudge neither body nor life. (Dōgen n.d., 241 [223]) I think I detect in this short passage, which on first reading might seem to be no more than conventional preaching about impermanence, something that is essentially different from former understandings of impermanence. As I read 228 | bu d d h i s t t r a d i t i o n s : z e n the passage I was brought up short by the words, “We need not be conscious that ‘I am thinking about the transiency of the world.’” I did not sufficiently take in the meaning of this phrase, and I suspected that Dōgen must have inserted it at a later stage. It certainly seems very abrupt. Looking into the Collected Commentaries on the Shōbōgenzō,18 all I found was the following marginal note: “Not to know you are meditating on the world’s transience and impermanence means correcting the dharma.” To me this correcting the dharma seems unclear, if not evasive. …… The first thing to attend to in developing the bodhisattva mindž, the mind set on the Wayž, is “insight into impermanence.” To be a real person whose mind is set on the Way, one must first reflect deeply on impermanence. Now notice the “for a while” in the injunction to “apply the mind for a while to impermanence .” In order for a worldly person, who seeks for what should not be sought, to become a renunciant who attains the Way, the first condition to be met is that one is convinced that the thing one was seeking is really something that should not be sought. From keeping impermanence in mind one recognizes that the world is transient and human life is uncertain. The “mind” referred to here is the mind of the “ego,” the mind of the subject. “Impermanence” is an objective reality, but “transiency” and “uncertainty” can be seen as reflecting the emotional consciousness of the subjective ego. As the marginal note referred to above says, transiency and impermanence are not the same in every respect. They are distinguished as follows: transience is what the subject emotively recognizes , impermanence is the reality of the object. That is the very reason for “applying the mind to impermanence.” The next sentence refers to the ego, the mind of that self...