| Author Quoted | Kitaro Nishida |
| Title Quoted | study of good / Kitaro Nishida ; transl. by V.H. Viglielmo |
| Date (Year/Month/Day) | 1965/04/03 |
| Imprint | Tokyo : Print. Bureau. Japanese Govt. 1960 |
| Quotation | This morning I finished the appendix which gives some idea of the full scope of Nishida's thought. It is most satisfying. Happily there is at least one other of his books in English. The Study of Good is his first. The development from here is not linear but a spiral deepening of his basic intuition of pure experience which becomes "absolute nothingness as the place of existence," and "eschatological everyday lif" in which the person, as a focus of absolute contradiction (our very existence opening on to death is a contradiction), can say with Rinzai "wherever I stand is all the truth." This hit me with great force. My meditation had been building up to this (awareness for instance that "doubt" arises from projection of the self into the future, or from retrospection, and not grasping the present. He who grasps the present does not doubt). To be open to the nothingness which I am is to grasp the all, in whom I am! I have already written my review of Nishida. [Note 20: "Nishida: A Zen Philosopher," Zen + the Birds of Appetite (New York: New Directions, 1968): 67-70.] |
| Quotation Source | Dancing in the Water of Life: Seeking Peace in the Hermitage. The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume 5, 1963-1965.; Edited by Robert E. Daggy. / San Francisco : Harper Collins. 1997, p. 223 |
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| Link to Merton's Copy |
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