human world has been persuasively argued in a recent
　　   unpublished  paper  by Bibhuti  Yadav.(8) If  it  is
　　   plausible  to restrict  the  scope  of emptiness  to
　　   dharmas  within  the world, and if it is indeed  the
　　   case that karman ought to be viewed  as prior to the
　　   world, then  perhaps  it becomes  possible  to claim
　　   that karman is not empty because  it is prior to the
　　   world.  I think there is, in fact, some plausibility
　　   to this view.

　　　　  According  to Yadav, the world comes  into being
　　   because of the fact of karman, which "signifies  the
　　   ego's  commitment  to bear  the  world  in the first
　　   person." (9) He goes on to claim that karman, as the
　　   fundamental  expression  of ego, is, like  the  ego,
　　   "existentially  a priori  in the  sense  that  it is
　　   presupposed  in all experience  and  therefore   the
　　   world   itself"(10)  We  would   do  well  here   to
　　   distinguish   two   senses   of  karman:  the  first
　　   referring  to action  prior  to the world, or action
　　   which  creates  the world  (Action), and  the second
　　   referring  to action  occurring  within that created
　　   world  (action) .   I  believe  Yadav  is  right  in
　　   insisting  that  the real thrust  of the concept  of
　　   karman  has to do with  the  first  sense  of karman
　　   rather  than  the second.  Moreover, even though  he
　　   does  not  deal  with  Zen, I  think  Yadav's  point
　　   captures  the spirit  of the Zen approach  to karman
　　   which seeks precisely  to uproot the karman prior to
　　   the world by undermining  "the ego's  commitment  to
　　   bear  the world  in the first  person";  undermining
　　   such  a commitment  is tantamount  to what Castaneda
　　   calls  "stopping  the  world;"  the whole  point  of
　　   meditation  practice  in Zen being nothing less than
　　   that of trying to stop the world.  Zen's fundamental
　　   interest   in  karman   is  on  this  a  priori   or
　　   transcendental level.

　　　　  We can now reconstruct Dogen's claim as follows:
　　   instead of saying that karma cannot be empty because
　　   actions  produced  by us cannot be so considered, we
　　   would  now say  rather  that  the production  of the
　　   world itself  through  Action  cannot  be considered
　　   empty  because   emptiness   applies   only  to  the
　　   posterior  not the a priori level.  I do not wish to
　　   argue  for  the  reasonableness  or  truth  of  this