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SOPHIA (2012) 51:323325 DOI 10.1007/s11841-012-0297-1
Review of Leesa S. Davis, Advaita Vedanta and Zen Buddhism: Deconstructive Modes of Spiritual Inquiry
London and New York: Continuum Studies in Eastern Philosophies, 2010, ISBN:978-0826420688, hb, xxi+222pp.
David R. Loy
Published online: 14 February 2012# Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012
The relationship between Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta is quite curious. Their worldviews are very different, of course in fact too different, because they seem to be mirror images of each other: no-self (anatta) vs. all-Self (atman 0 Brahman), conditionality vs. the Unconditioned, impermanence vs. the Immutable, and so forth. Given their common denial of any ontological duality between self and other, one wonders whether their opposed conceptual systems might actually be different attempts to describe the same nondual experience. If Brahman has no characteristics of its own, and sunyata has no characteristics of its own, then what distinguishes pure Being from pure non-being?
Leesa Daviss superb book explores this possibility by comparing the methods and spiritual practices of Advaita and Zen. She shows how both traditions use very similar techniques to subvert and deconstruct dualistic patterns of thinking and experiencing, in order to reveal a nondual way of knowing that Zen and Advaita both claim is innate but normally unrecognized.
She begins with a masterful survey of the foundational philosophies on both sides, focusing on their deconstructive function. I was especially impressed...