Nishitani explained that traditional religion lacks an understanding of the human experience of death and that religion needs to "re-examine its worldview." He said: "In ordinary religion, God has been thought to be a bottomless fountain of all living beings. Therefore the dead phase of the universe is nothing but the remaining shade. . . ."⁴

I find a certain irony in Nishitani's writing: the phase of death, which is a fundamental essence hidden within religion, has now been awakened by science instead. It is truly ironic that human beings, who have thus far proceeded by means of an unlimited instinctual impulse, are now meeting with the deeply nihilistic part of human existence, which is somehow fundamentally connected to the essence of religion.

In fact, science and religion have a common root in the "reality of death," according to Nishitani:

Up until now, religions have tended to put the emphasis exclusively on the aspect of life. "Soul" has been viewed only from the side of life. Notions of "personality" and "Spirit," too, have been based on this aspect of life. And yet from the very outset life is at one with death. This means that all living things, just as they are, can be seen under the form of death.⁵

we interpret science as having a structure of self-reflection. But, not only should science learn about self-doubt, it should learn to open itself more deeply to nature, so that nature might reveal its own reality to humankind. In Gelassenheit, Heidegger called for "letting being be" (which some translate as "releasement"):

Letting being be in man's relation to (natural) things and his attitude toward opening himself to the secret of Nature indicates an interrelation between things. This attitude gives us the ability to stay in this natural world in an entirely different way from the past. This attitude promises us some new root and ground, on which man stands and stays in the world of technology without ill effect. . . .

However, letting being be in man's relation to (natural) things and his attitude to open himself to the secret of Nature is not entirely easy. It does not just happen. . . . It is only possible with the deep and continual thinking filled with spirit.⁶

As Heidegger realized, humankind now has to take its hand away from nature, to learn an openness to the hidden dimensions of nature, so that nature will reveal its secrets. For this purpose, humanity must work toward a deep and continual thinking filled with spirit.

Buddhism calls such an openness the "openness of Śūnyatā," which is the basic precondition for having good relations with nature. Only in this way will nature also be released from human bondage and return to its own home ground. Nishitani wrote:

In general, science has its uniqueness of standpoint when it understands the world as persistently objective and proves it through evidence. And yet that standpoint is none other than to investigate a world from inside that very world. Such a standpoint is still "immanent" in a world. . . . To be free from such an immanence, we accept the scientific standpoint as it concerns each of us, and through the deepening process of acceptance, we have to break through the limits of science within the world. Through this process, the standpoint of science will be realized and will open a realm of transcendence. In so doing science shall arrive at its essence, which is not "scientific" in any ordinary sense. . . . Such a direction of negation simultaneously becomes one with the direction in which all phenomenal beings are showing their original Realities, and there the fundamental realm of the Reality is opened up.⁷

Here Nishitani points toward the transcendental world, which belongs neither to the scientific worldview nor to the religious worldview, although, simultaneously, both views belong to that transcendental world, to that sense of Reality. D. T. Suzuki explains it in a different way. "Science today has to change its concept," he writes. "It must treat its object as a living being and not as dead, not as what is killed but as what is living."

i hope for a new direction within science and religion. Although it is still the exception rather than the rule, contemporary science seems to be moving in new directions. Issues such as global warming, air pollution, nuclear energy, information technology, biotechnology, ecosystem studies, and so on are becoming the main topics of our day, and it is none other than the scientists themselves who are now afraid of the awful situation that we have brought about for our living earth.

Scientists are now facing "death" and the possible demise of our planet—realities that have been essentially hidden in science itself. Scientists today also seem to be seeking other possibilities for human happiness than can be created or illuminated by science. It is astonishing to see many Japanese scientists today so interested in Buddhism; they are gathering in large numbers for lectures on Buddhism that are being sponsored, in fact, by other scientists.