From ‘Heidegger to Suhrawardi’ / Part 3

Heidegger’s Hermeneutic Phenomenology 

~Samir Mahmoud 

“To the things themselves” is Husserl’s well-known maxim for a phenomenological approach to reality that gains access to the pre-reflective given-ness of things and avoids the subjectivism of modern thought. However, in contrast to Husserl who bracketed the ontological and reduced phenomena to consciousness, Heidegger proposed a phenomenology that was more essential and basic. His aim was to uncover, through an analysis of Dasein, those hidden meanings of existence that were prior to reflection and thought itself. To understand Heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology, we must first understand what he means by phenomenology and hermeneutics. 

In Being and Time, Heidegger provides a lucid exposition of what he means by phenomenology. First, the very concept of ‘phenomenon’ is to be understood in its Greek sense of phainomenon, which is derived from the verb phainesthai “show itself”, “come to light.” Thus, phenomenon signifies “to show it self.” In Heidegger’s own words, “the expression ‘phenomenon’ signifies that which shows itself in itself, the manifest.” The phenomenon does not show itself through anything other than itself and in this sense, Heidegger’s ‘phenomenon’ is to be distinguished from the ‘phenomenon’ of Kant who uses it in the sense of an appearance as opposed to the thing itself, the ‘noumenon.’54 

Dzogchen / As it is [3]

~Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche

Looking from the pure angle, then, this buddha nature is present in every being, the expression of the victorious ones, just like the rays of light are present from the sun. The light is emanated by the sun, isn't it? If it weren't for the sun, there wouldn't be any light. Similarly, the origin of the body, speech and mind of beings is the expression of the buddha nature that pervades both samsara and nirvana. It is said that all sentient beings are buddhas, but they are covered by their temporary obscurations. These 'temporary obscurations' are our own thinking. 

Dharmadhatu encompasses all of samsara and nirvana - not just the awakened state of nirvana, but everything, every single thing. The ordinary body, speech and mind of sentient beings temporarily arose from the expression of the qualities of enlightened body, speech and mind. As space pervades, so awareness pervades. If this were not so, then space would pervade but rigpa wouldn't. Just like space, rigpa is all-encompassing: nothing is outside it. Just as the contents and beings are all pervaded by space, rigpa pervades the minds of beings. 

The Buddha Eye [1]

~Suzuki Teitaro Daisetz

The essential discipline of Zen consists in emptying the self of all its psychological contents, in stripping the self of all those trappings, moral, philosophical, and spiritual, with which it has continued to adorn itself ever since the first awakening of consciousness. When the self thus stands in its native nakedness, it defies all description. 

The only means we have to make it more approachable and communicable is to resort to figures of speech. The self in its is-ness, pure and simple, is comparable to a circle without circumference and, therefore, with its center nowhere—which is everywhere. 

Or it is like a zero that is equal to, or rather identical with, infinity. Infinity is not to be conceived here serially as an infinite continuum of natural numbers; it is rather a group whose infinitely multitudinous contents are taken as a totality. I formulate it in this way: 0 = Infinity.