Transcendence, Immanence, and Kukai

In his explication of Kūkai, Professor Gardiner highlighted his polemical use of the term ri 離 "separate, apart, transcendent" in his presentation of the Nikyōron. Abandoning the more popular theory that Kūkai was simply being "antagonistic" in his derision of Yogacara, Madhyamaka, T'ien-t'ai, and Hua-yen as "ontologically challenged by an unsophisticated dualism," Gardiner opted for more a nuanced hermeneutic. According to Gardiner, Kūkai's critique of these "Exoteric" schools may in fact be a strategic response to a growing tendency to reify non-dual ontology (shades of the Tibetan gzhan stong pa school). Kūkai's rhetoric, explained Gardiner, "seems intent upon highlighting a purported exoteric obsession with the transcendent character of ultimate reality... " Though Gardiner admits that his theory is perhaps impossible to prove, what is clear—at least to Gardiner—is that Kūkai's literary strategy is to bring the reader's attention to the "immanental" orientation of Shingon ("Esoteric") practice. For Kūkai, the path to Buddhahood relies on a realization of the immanent "mandalic" nature of one's material body, and a turning away from conceptual interpretations of the transcendent.

Enter Susanne Langer.

As with the earlier works of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Langer sees the impossibility of language to convey subjective states. The reader will recall the following from Wittgenstein's "Remarks on Colour", “When we’re asked ‘What do 'red', 'blue', 'black', 'white' mean?' we can, of course, immediately point to things which have these colours,—but that’s all we can do: our ability to explain their meaning goes no further” (v.102). Or the oft quoted seventh proposition, "What we cannot speak of we must pass over in silence" (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus).

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