The Thought and Legacy of Masao Abe

Abstract

Masao Abe stands as the most important Buddhist in modern interfaith dialogue and the main transmitter of Zen thought to the West following the death of D. T. Suzuki. His most widely read work, Zen and Western Thought, edited by William LaFleur, won an award in 1987 from the American Academy of Religion as the best recent publication in the constructive and reflective category. Abe followed that influential volume with further collections of essays edited by Steven Heine: Buddhism and Interfaith Dialogue, Zen and Comparative Studies, and Zen and the Modern World. Abe also wrote widely in Japanese, with his most mature thought finding expression in several volumes he published later in life: Kongen no shuppatsu (Starting from the Root), Kyogi to kyomu (Falsehood and Nihility), and Hibutsu hima (Neither Buddha nor Devil). Abe also made significant contributions to the study of the renowned Soto Zen thinker Dogen (1200-1253). With Norman Waddell he translated a number of fascicles of Dogen's Shobo-genzo, which appeared in The Eastern Buddhist and were then compiled as The Heart ofDogen 's Shobo-genzo. Abe published his own essays on Dogen, again with Heine's editorial help, in the volume Dogen: His Philosophy and Religion. In such journals as International Philosophical Quarterly, Abe also published essays on Nishida Kitaro and other Kyoto school thinkers, and with me he translated Nishida's seminal work, Zen no Kenkyu (An Inquiry into the Good). In the 1980s, Abe and his main Christian dialogue partner, process theologian John Cobb, started the North American Buddhist-Christian Theological Encounter. They were also instrumental in the founding of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies. Records of Abe's dialogue with Christian and Jewish thinkers can be found in such volumes as The Emptying God, which John Cobb and I coedited, and in a follow-up volume I edited alone, Divine Emptiness and Historical Fullness. In terms of his legacy, Abe may ultimately be seen less as a purely Zen thinker than as a Japanese philosopher of religion indebted to his teacher, Hisamatsu Shin'ichi, the Zen and Pure Land traditions, and the Kyoto school of philosophy, while also influenced by Christian mysticism and theology, process philosophy, German idealism,