Embracing Earth While Facing Death(4)
For example, it is now not uncommon for medical doctors to seek and raise awareness about what "death" means, such that medical science is now including the issue of death within its field. This has led to a host of new discussions within medical ethics, which are greater in depth and broader in scope than ever before.
Religion, on the other hand, is changing to be more existential and "in the present" than before, in the sense that it now concerns itself just as much with one's present condition as it formerly did with the afterlife. Science, which has for many years ignored human questions about life, now appears to be moving into the domain of traditional religion. Scientists are investigating human subjectivity and concerning themselves with the tremendous influence science exercises in human social, political, and intellectual affairs.
Such a change in humanity's attitude is beautifully summarized by Nishitani as the "un-mythologizing of mythology and the existentialization of science." In these new developments I see hope for a creative relationship between science and religion, a deep relationship that has never happened before in the history of the human species.
Notes
- Shini'ichi Hisamatsu, Collected Works, vol. 3, Enlightenment and Creation (in Japanese) (Risōsha, [1970–80] ), 47 ff. The Recorded Sayings of Ch'an Master Lin-chi Hui-chao of Chen Prefecture, trans. Ruth Fuller Sasaki (Institute for Zen Studies, 1975), 3. See Keiji Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, trans. Jan Van Bragt (University of California Press, 1982), 10. Keiji Nishitani, Works, vol. 11, Science and Zen (in Japanese) (Sōbunsha, 1987), 231. Ibid., 50. The translation from Heidegger's Gelassenheit is my own. Nishitani, Works, 250.
eshin nishimura is the former president of Hanazono University in Kyoto, Japan. He is a Zen priest, a leading scholar of the philosophical tradition known in the West as the Kyoto School, and a leading scholar in the dialogue between Zen Buddhism and Western philosophy. This essay was adapted from his talk presented at HDS on April 20, 2007.