Phenomenon of Life and Death by Dōgen and Heidegger––In View of “Embodied Cognition” in Buddhist Philosophy and Phenomenology

Abstract

Contrary to occidental philosophy, which is to grasp and solidify the principles of essential being (ontos on), Buddhism seeks to understand the existence of human beings and the significance of suffering in human life. In the East Asian languages human beings are described as “inter-beings” in that they are enveloped by the topos of life and death. From breath to breath, our life is bound to the moments of emerging and vanishing, being and non-being in an essential unity. Dōgen’s philosophical thinking integrated this conception with the embodied cognition of both the thinking and the acting self. In the phenomenological point of view, Heidegger, in his early work, emphasizes that being is bound to a fundamental substantiality, which borders on the Abgrund, falling into nothingness. With Dōgen, the unity-within-contrast of life and death is exemplified in our breathing because it achieves a unity of body and cognition which can be called “corpus”. In perfect contrast, the essential reflection for Heidegger is that of grasping the fundament of being in the world, which represents the actualization of a thinking-being-unity. The goal of this comparison is to fundamentally grasp what is the essentiality of being, life, and recognition (jikaku 自覚), bound to embodied cognition in our globalized world.