Heidegger and the Holy. A buddhist reading

ROCHA, Antonio Carlos P. B. Heidegger and the Holy. A buddhist reading. Rio de Janeiro. Letters College - UFRJ, 2007, PhD thesis in Literature Science – Poetics.

SUMMARY

Our thesis's proposition is to try to show the deep similarities between the thoughts of the german philosopher Martin Heidegger, in the first half of the XXth century, and Sidarta Gautama, who since the VIth century bC. and all along these two milleniums and a half is known as “the Buddha”, “the illuminate”, “ the awaken”.

We emphasize the verb “try” because we do not have a closed, a finished, a concluded intention. By the way, such a determinist point of view does not agree with the principles neither of the german thinker's work nor of the Buddhism. We raise questions and we signalize the closeness of some approaches concerning life, reality and art.

Among the vast work of Heidegger we detach the book Memorial Adress, yet unpublished in Brazil but edited in Portugal. It seemed to us an authentic guide of buddhist meditation, full of the philosophical jargon that distinguishes Heidegger, who created a whole original language, almost a dialect; hermetic, accessible to the initiated, the chosen ones. The three texts that compose this volume date from 1944/45, 1954 and 1955, when the Zen-budhism was in “fashion” in Europe and in Occidental world.

Another text that we detach is the chapter “A dialogue on language”, from the book On the way to language. In the dialogue it remains evident that the thinker from the Black Forest had japanese students, that he knew about the existence of some japanese buddhist philosophers (monks) and that he experienced even a little bit of the nipponic culture through the film Rashomon, from the japonese motion picture director Akira Kurosawa.

We tried also to make a parallel between the Heidegger's basic work, Being and time, and the book The time being, from the japanese buddhist monk Dôgen (1200-1253), considered as the founder of the philosophical thinking in Japan. Uji, the japanese original title for this work, was written in 1240.

The originality of our thesis resides in the fact that, until a contrary proof, we do not know “any buddhist reading of the Martin Heidegger's work” in the brazilian academic field. We did not find anything similar in any mentioned and consulted bibliography, including some important libraries in Rio de Janeiro, as the considered National Library and the Library of the Letters College of UFRJ, and also several thesis database.

What we are suggesting here is a provocation in the academic sense. In a certain way, we recognize that “to read” Heidegger under the Oriental optics is an effrontery, however it was in this form that his texts appeared to us.

The so anthropocentric, cartesian, logical Occidental world needs to accept the contribution of the Oriental thinking, and particularly, of the buddhist thoughts, moreover during this globalization times. Here is our position for the debate. We repeat that we are not closed, neither ready nor finished, we are beginning, with this thesis, the discussion in the brazilian university.