existence  which is incompatible  with the spirit of
　　   emptiness.  In  one  place  Dogen  seems  almost  to
　　   concede that karman is, in some sense, empty when he
　　   says  that  "basically  the  law  of karman  has  no
　　   concrete existence."(7) It is precisely the concrete
　　   existence  of karman  that is incompatible  with its
　　   being empty; and it is precisely such "concreteness"
　　   which  reification   and  hypostatization   seek  to
　　   effect.  Here  I think  one can say that  the entire
　　   metaphor of karman as moral law involves the fallacy
　　   of misplaced  concreteness, and that the whole point
　　   of the realization  of emptiness  is to see  through
　　   this pervasive  and insidious fallacy.  (I hasten to
　　   add: "the whole point"  from a theoretical  point of
　　   view.)

　　　　  Dogen's  second  objection,  then,  turns  on  a
　　   certain  use to which  karman  is to be put (namely,
　　   being the ground of morality).  His claim is that if
　　   karman  were empty, it could not be put to that use;
　　   to which  the response  is that the question  of the
　　   emptiness or nonemptiness  of karman must be decided
　　   independently of any consideration of possible uses.
　　   If karman  cannot  both  be empty  and  the concrete
　　   ground  of morality, it is by no means  self-evident
　　   that  the  former  alternative  is  the  one  to  be
　　   rejected.  The  attempt  to deny  the  emptiness  of
　　   karman because  it conflicts  with the use of karman
　　   as the ground of morality involves  an inappropriate
　　   mixing of theoretical and practical considerations.

　　　　  I turn now to Dogen's  first  objection.  To say
　　   that  something   we  have  produced   cannot   have
　　   emptiness   as  its  essential   nature  amounts  to
　　   claiming  that agency, will, and action  have a kind
　　   of  reality  which  is  exempt  from  the  scope  of
　　   emptiness.  Dogen seems to be distinguishing between
　　   dharmas   which  we  have  not  produced-these   are
　　   empty--and those which we have produced.

　　　　　　　　　　　　  P.79

　　   Is there  any validity  to this distinction? I think
　　   the only way we can make sense  of this  distinction
　　   is if karman  is no longer  seen as a dharma  in the
　　   world, but rather  as something  in some sense prior
　　   to the world.  That karman  should, in fact, be seen
　　   as prior  to the  world  in the sense  of being  the
　　   transcendental  condition of the possibility  of the