Dogen seems to feel that the emptiness of karman
　　   must be denied if karman is to serve as a foundation
　　   for  morality.  Or: karman  as moral  law cannot  be
　　   empty.  Now the trouble  with speaking  of karman as
　　   moral  law is that thereby  one commits  oneself  to
　　   seeing  its operation  as part of the very fabric of
　　   reality, which  in turn  commits  one to the kind of
　　   reification  and hypostatization  that is proscribed
　　   by the  realization  of emptiness.(6) The spirit  of
　　   emptiness  consists, I think, in the elimination  of
　　   all  reification  and hypostatization.  To say  that
　　   karman  is empty, or devoid  of own-being, means  in
　　   effect  that there is no "nature"  or "essence"  the
　　   term refers to or names. But the metaphor of karman

　　　　　　　　　　　　  P.78

　　   as moral law seems  to reintroduce  essentialism  on
　　   the  ground  that  this  is necessary  if one  is to
　　   secure the objective status and independent  reality
　　   of karman.  Since  the  whole  point  of  emptiness,
　　   however, is to cut off our attachment  to the belief
　　   in the objective  status and independent  reality of
　　   dharmas, the  force  of the  metaphor  of karman  as
　　   moral   law  and  the  spirit   of  emptiness   seem
　　   incompatible.

　　　　  If karman is not metaphorically  conceived of as
　　   the ground  of morality, then there is no reason for
　　   insisting  that  it be nonempty.  The problem, in my
　　   opinion, lies in the whole  enterprise  of grounding
　　   morality   and  in  the  assumption   that  morality
　　   requires  such  a ground;  it does not lie in karman
　　   itself.   If  we  take   the  spirit   of  emptiness
　　   seriously, then the attempt  to ground  morality  in
　　   karman, to the extent  that  it inevitably  involves
　　   reification  and  hypostatization, must, I think, be
　　   seen as deluded.  If the spirit  of emptiness  is to
　　   extend  to  morality, it must  be to  a "groundless"
　　   morality  in which there would no longer be any need
　　   to reify karman. At the very least it must remain an
　　   open  question   whether  morality   requires   such
　　   grounding.

　　　　  Another  way of putting  the problem would be to
　　   say that the metaphor of karman as moral law commits
　　   one  to  attributing  to  karman  a concreteness  of