Second, in so far as the Buddhist notion of śūnyatā stresses the interdependence and non-substantiality of all reality, it implies that it is not only objects or states of affairs that lack any independent reality, but that principles, values or ideals lack any substantial reality as well. Such values are also emptied by the Buddhist, leaving us with no privileged imperatives to guide our ethical choices. As Lee Stauffer puts it, "Zen has as a major doctrine the principle of nondiscrimination, and this principle is meant to include the discrimination inherent in ethical choices."(23) Abe admits that even good and evil are interdependent, relative and contingent: "Buddhists generally talk about the complete relativity of good and evil and reject the idea of the priority of one over the other."(24) The doctrine of śūnyatā thus undermines the notion that there could be any morally objective values and in doing so seems to leave us with no criteria to appeal to in adjudicating claims of social justice. A Buddhist social ethics must show how the Buddhist can reject any ultimate moral criteria and yet still allow for constructive social criticism.

In the preceding section I have tried to show how various criticisms concerning the social import of Zen Buddhism have been made in relation to certain central Buddhist tenets. In particular, I examined these criticisms in relation to the Buddhist notions of karma, nirvana, and śūnyatā. This treatment was in no way intended to be exhaustive. Rather, my project was limited to attempting to show what appear to be some prima facie incompatibilities between these concepts and the elaboration of any systematic social philosophy. The goal was to bring to light what detractors of Buddhism see as a conceptual incoherency in the very idea of a Zen social philosophy. And, it seems to me that any such criticisms must be addressed by any serious discussion of Zen and social philosophy. Thus, in the following section I will turn to the recent work of Masao Abe in order to see how his reworking of basic Zen doctrines can be seen as a response to this challenge.

Abe and the Social Force of Zen As mentioned at the beginning of this paper, Masao Abe is well aware of the traditional criticisms of Buddhism, including criticisms concerning its social applicability. And, Abe does not merely dismiss such criticisms as irrelevant. Rather, Abe accepts that such criticisms do point to some real difficulties embodied in the traditional understanding of Buddhism. However, Abe also believes that in dialogical response to such critiques we can transform our understanding of basic Buddhist concepts in such a way as to overcome the challenges that they pose. While Abe does not specifically or systematically respond to all of the issues that I have outlined concerning the social force of Buddhism, he does provide a new paradigm for Zen Buddhism that I believe allows us to see how Western Buddhists might develop a coherent and methodical social philosophy. In the remainder of this paper I will thus attempt to show how Abe's position might be used to effectively overcome the traditional problems raised concerning Zen's social impact.

In approaching the Buddhist notions of karma, nirvana, and śūnyatā in light of the traditional criticisms outlined above, Abe offers what I take as three strategies of interpretation for creatively transvaluing these central Buddhist doctrines. I will argue that by utilizing these hermeneutic tactics Abe is able to explicate the nature of karma, nirvana and śūnyatā in such a way as to overcome the typical criticisms and to uncover a positive social aspect of Zen Buddhism. I will explicate each of these interpretive strategies and show how they relate to the criticisms of the essential Buddhist doctrines that we delineated previously.

One theme that ran through almost all of the criticisms that we looked at previously concerning the social applicability of Zen concerned its alleged individualistic and escapist attitude. Thus, we saw that the problem of karma has often been taken in an excessively individualistic manner that led to an isolation of individuals from their social context. Likewise, when nirvana is interpreted in a personalistic way, it seems to imply that the goal of Buddhist life is an isolation from the world of saṃsāra with all of its various social bonds. The challenge, we saw, was to see if we could show that the narrowly individualistic interpretation of these Buddhist notions is a distortion that overlooks the social aspect of Zen doctrine. And this is, I think, precisely what Abe does in his own exposition of Zen Buddhism.

For Abe, the first key to discerning the social force of Zen is to begin any treatment of Buddhist doctrines by stressing the idea of interdependence that is central to Zen metaphysics. We saw in our exposition of the doctrine of śūnyatā, or absolute nothingness, that śūnyatā signifies the complete interdependence of all reality and the lack of any independent essence to things. It is no surprise that in his writings Abe has most often begun his exposition of the Zen position with the doctrine of śūnyatā, say rather than with the doctrine of karma or nirvana, because for Abe the recognition of the interdependence of all things is at the heart of the Buddhist worldview. Śūnyatā does not, as Abe points out, signify a substantial nothingness apart from the everyday world of distinctions, but refers to the unsubstantiality of that very world; he thus states that śūnyatā should be translated "with the gerund 'self-emptying' rather than the nominal 'emptiness.'"(25) Thus, any discussion of Buddhist doctrine must be carried out in terms of an acknowledgment of the dynamic interdependence that is, for Zen, constitutive of all reality. Below, I will show several ways in which taking this dynamic interdependence into consideration can vitiate the traditional criticisms that we examined earlier.