Maja Milcinski 
Certainty in Daoism and in Japanese Buddhism 
»It's human nature to resist death, 
»How do I know that loving life is not a delusion ? How do I know that in 
hating death I am not like a man icho, having left home in his youth, has 
forgotten the way backh? 
How did the Japanese explain the phenomenon of death, which after 
all remains the only realistic and certain stance for anyone in the face of the 
future? The future itself, being deprived of certainty, gave many possibili-
ties for speculation on the land which is the best, because it is nonexistent. 
As such it meant the hope for the Other, the chance to evade the paradigms 
of the present and already realized forms of the community. 
In Japan the concept of hell has been elaborated in the minutest de-
tail, at least as far as the Buddhist universe is concerned, during the Heian 
period, and Genshin has emphasized the necessity of grasping the reality 
of the »six paths« (rokudo) - the six lower states of existence, i.e. hell, and 
the realms of hungry spirits, animals, asuras, men and heavenly beings; or 
modes of existence permeating the world of illusion, six levels to be ascended 
on the way towards deliverance. The six modes belong to the world of illu-
sion through which all forms of existence perpetually transmigrate unless, 
of course, one enters the »way of the Buddha« and thereby opens up a fi-
nite future, extinction, a goal to be reached through four further, succes-
sive stages of enlightenment. This vision of the future in »ten realms« (jikkai), 
which, on a general level, also contain the advent of the Buddha Miroku, 
sets an optimistic note since it provides a prospect for escape from the eter-
nal cycle of transmigration. 
' Wei Jingsheng. The Courage to Stand Alone. In: The Free China Journal. July 5, 1997, 
p. 7. 
2 Watson B.: The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu. Columbia University Press. New York 
1968, p. 47. 
Filozofski vestnik, XIX (2/1998), pp. 81-88. 81 
Maja Milcinski 
Kojiki and Nihonshoki, written in the beginning of 8"' century, are the 
chronicles of the time from the 4th century on when the Yamato dynasty 
started to conquer various smaller states. The mythological elements in the 
chronicles act as justification for the Yamato subjugation of all the other 
states; therefore the emperor is believed to have received the power from 
the gods. Besides the Takama-ga-hara (The Plain of High Heaven, High Ce-
lestial Plain), the heavens far in the sky believed to be inhabited by the gods, 
and the actual Japan of that time which was in the middle, there was also 
the notion of Ne-no-kuni (The Root-Land), the place where the dead peo-
ple were supposed to retire. In this well known pantheon of the Yamato dy-
nasty, the myth of handing over the land is included, as well as the image of 
an alien deity, not known among the heavenly and local deities - the archi-
tect and constructor of japan, a small being which was believed to have come 
from across the sea and to have retired there as soon as the work had been 
accomplished. With him is connected the image of Tokoyo-no-kuni, the ever-
lasting land. The land of bliss, which existed once and was gone forever, is 
by some explanations also the land of rice, the paradise from where the 
cereals were brought. A far away land over the sea, which is actually a pre-
Yamato construct, was most probably related to Daoist elements and beliefs 
in eternal youth and immortality. 
»If one divides people into ranks the lowest is he who values his head. 
Those who endeavor only to amass as much knowledge as possible grow 
heads that become bigger and so they topple over easily, like a pyramid 
standing upside down. They excel in imitating others but neither origi-
nality nor inventiveness nor any great work is theirs. 
Next come those of middle rank. For them the chest is most important. 
People with self-control, given to abstinence and asceticism belong to this 
type. These are the men with outward courage but without real strength. 
Many of the so-called great men are in this category. Yet all this is not 
enough. 
But those who regard the belly as the most important part and so have 
built the stronghold where the Divine can grow - these are the people 
of the highest rank. They have developed their minds as well as their 
bodies in the right way. Strength flows out from them and produces a 
spiritual condition of ease and equanimity. They do what seems good to 
them without violating any law. Those in the first category think that 
Science can rule Nature. Those in the second have apparent courage and 
discipline and they know how to fight. Those in the third know what 
reality is.«3 
In Japanese intellectual tradition, various techniques, known as gyo, 
formed an important part of any real philosophical undertaking, which 
3 Sayings of Master Okada. In: K. Graf von Durckheim: Hara. The Vital Center of Man. 
George Allen and Unwin Ltd., London, 1971, p. 176. 
82 
Certainty in Daoism and in Japanese Buddhism 
aimed at putting into words the Absolute truth, which in its essence is inex-
pressible. The above quotation is just one in the vast tradition which has been 
reexamining the nature of the intellect; by its nature it cannot carry out its 
function if the distinctions among things are not created and fixed so that 
they appear as independent entities which are divided among themselves. 
The Japanese philosophical tradition, however, has been trying to overcome 
the one-dimensionality of rationality. It still can not be labeled as irrational 
as is often thought, but must rather be considered as arrational, transrational 
or on the other side of experience and creativity. 
Buddha Miroku4 is believed to descend from the Buddhist heaven in 
order to save the people. After 552 A.D. when Buddhism was introduced to 
Japan, it was a religion of the ruling elite meant to protect the land and the 
ruling class. Only after all these aspects was it recognized as having a soter-
iological function. In the 10th century rose the belief in the Western para-
dise where Amida, who was supposed to help any individual to salvation, 
ruled. The five colored strings that lead from the fingers of the dying per-
son to Amida's statue were believed to help and direct one into Amida's Pure 
Land, Western paradise, Ojo (birth in a Buddha or bodhisattva's land, es-
pecially Amida's Pure Land), salvation, or gokuraku - utmost pleasure, that 
which possesses ease and comfort. Gokurakujodo became a synonym for 
Amida's Pure Land of Utmost Bliss. 
Japanese Buddhist philosophers, who will be dealt with in relation to 
Chinese Daoists', introduce with their works essential changes in our dual-
istically educated minds, since they confront us with a completely different 
way of experiencing language and thought. What has in European tradition 
been understood as certainty, standpoint, has been seen through in Sino-
Japanese tradition as the »illusory dust of the world« (Zhuang Zi). The emer-
gence and occurrence of the voidness and the transcendence of Ego are 
inextricably connected with the question of the inexpressible. As for Dao-
ism, the quotation from the concluding lines of chapter 25 in Zhuang Zi is 
illustrative: »The perfection of the Way and things - neither words nor si-
4 Sk. Maitreya, »Benevolent«. The bodkisattva who will appear in this world to become 
the next Buddha after 5,670,000,000 years when he ends his life in the Tusita Heaven 
(Tosotsuten). Inagaki H. A Dictionary of Japanese Buddhist Terms. Nagata Bunshodo, 
Kyoto, 1985, p. 206. 
5 Influences of Daoism in Japan are immense, especially as the concepts of fate, after-
life future and the problematisations of certainty in Lao Zi and Zhuang Zi penetrated 
the Japanese way of thinking. Therefore it is important to discuss the Daoist 
philosophical credos in relation to Buddhism. 
83 
Maja Milcinski 
lence are worthy of expressing it. Not to talk, not to be silent - this is the 
highest form of debate.«6 
For a Buddhist philosopher on this level of approach, the question of 
a venture which is akin to what the later Wittgenstein has called a »language-
game« is raised. The actual question which follows from these two is the 
position of the critic of language in the Buddhist philosophical tradition. Is 
a name logically independent of the characteristics of the thing named? If 
we try to illustrate this with the Daoists: 
When Zhuang Zi poses an explicit demand of »not to talk, not to be 
silent«, he also brings into play the difference between conventional and 
absolute knowledge. The real certainty can be based only on the absolute 
knowledge, on the level of Absolute Truth. There is a difference between 
knowledge as used in Buddhist and Daoist texts and the notion of knowl-
edge in the European tradition. The difference is illustrated with the de-
mand »abandon knowledge« (Dao dejing). The Daoist namely is question-
ing oneself about the value of knowledge and not whether or not we have 
it. The fact that we are supposed to abandon knowledge constitutes the basis 
of certainty and the way to approach the Dao and voidness, both of which 
are set into the realm of Absolute Truth and therefore the sphere of the 
inexpressible. The dependence on the logical and discursive function of the 
language, which is supposed to express the absolute Truth, is denied. In 
Zhuang Zi silence becomes the only real language of voidness. Silence is the 
strongest expression of the void relations. It is not any silence, but Silence 
as such. It is not the silence of ignorance, hostility, intimidation, but it is 
prajna, the wisdom, which is indifferent to the formulation and the rejec-
tion of formulation. 
When the differences among the ontological categories (being, non-
being etc.) are denied, in regard to certainty new problems as well as orig-
inal solutions to the old problems arise. The Daoist as well as Buddhist phi-
losophers demand a radical negation as the basis for the achievement of 
certainty, Absolute Truth, which is beyond the beginning and the end, be-
ing and non-being, something and nothing. For the Daoists, being and non-
being are just two aspects of the inexpressible Dao. Buddhist voidness, on the 
other hand, is a dynamic whole which evades distinctions. The methodolo-
gy of Koans and paradox in Zen demands an intuitive structure of under-
standing which assures meaning in the combination of concepts which would 
otherwise be understood as logically inconsistent. Metaphorical thinking in 
the Daoist and Buddhist philosophical tradition is not understood as some-
8 Watson B.: The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu. Columbia University Press. New York 
1968, p. 293. 
84 
Certainty in Daoism and in Japanese Buddhism 
thing inferior to conceptual thinking, which is itself put into question, es-
pecially at the undertakings, such as the path to certainty. In Japanese Bud-
dhist philosophy, as well as in Daoism, the demand for deontologisation has 
been strong. The notion of voidness, the central philosophical concept in 
Buddhism, is precisely the one which tests the nature of various attachments 
(to the Ego etc.). Therefore the demand for discovery of the nature of non-
attachment, which forms the basis of certainty, is posed. Certainty, acquired 
in such away, opens up new perspectives of existence. When the enlightened 
one, the one who has reached the basis of certainty, sees everything in the 
light of voidness, protection against the appearance of ontological entities 
is established, which then opens up this astonishing realm of suchness of 
being. Although this means a temptation, the concept of voidness can never 
be brought to the metaphysical level or reduced to ontology. The voidness 
therefore is not the antithesis to being neither is it the position between 
nothingness and being. Voidness is transcendence of all standpoints and 
positions. It provides the certainty which leads to the liberation from think-
ing, and from substantiating the Self and the imprisonment in the Ego. 
Among the abundant Pure Land theoretical heritage, Genshin, with his 
basis of amidist doctrine and the ôjoden texts, legends of a good death, is inter-
esting when treating the problem of certainty. The obsession of having one's 
life and death under complete control reached its peak with a new genre 
of descriptions of the people who were certain to have had a good death, 
i.e. have gone to the Pure Land of Amida to be reborn there. In the imagi-
native geography, one reaches the model death by passing over the sea of 
uncertainty, landing in the Pure Land, which is conceptually beyond both 
hell and heaven. It is an illusion created and transferred beyond one's own 
death, a dream of a certainty reached in a paradise far away in the West. The 
moment of death becomes the sole possibility of attainment of the certain-
ty sought for during the entire lifetime. 
When analyzing the Pure Land theories of Heaven, we see that in most 
of them the transcendental voidness is present. The situation, described in 
the texts as Heaven, is the state of undifferentiated consciousness. Since the 
language is based in the differences, here the void space comes into play. 
The unusual vision, which might be a product of mystical experience, ap-
pears in the spiritual eyes as a vast, limitless space, where things exist in an 
amorphous, dreamlike mode of existence, always changing and flowing into 
each other. The Pure Land Heaven can therefore be named as the highest 
point of uncertainty, where everything flows in a dreamlike insecurity and 
indétermination. The borders and limits are fluid. It is only the veil of illu-
85 
Maja Milcinski 
sion (maya) which constitutes the form of language. The primal function of 
the intellect is that it holds to these mobile and flowing borders, and fixes 
them into quiet entities. As a result, clearly defined and rigidly fixed distinc-
tions are formed, however these do not correspond to the paradisiacal ab-
sence of the formation of meaning. The veil of illusion forms the totality of 
being and meaning by which in our minds, the image of so-called reality is 
formed. This reality, however, is just a surface reality, just a phenomenon , 
an appearance, a distorted reality of a real unity of reality, which lies at the 
deepest level, hidden from the eyes of a common human being. 
The Buddhist Land of Supreme Bliss7 has no spatial form. According 
to the Amitabha Sütra, the land of Supreme Bliss is a world located infinite-
ly far away in the West, reached after passing over one thousand billion lands 
of Buddhas, and in it dwells the Buddha known as Amitabha, who contin-
ues to preach the Law to this day. As seen in the pre-buddhist notions, the 
earthly paradise of supreme bliss is located in a fixed geographical position 
on a high mountain at the far end or at the center of the world, or on an 
island far out in the ocean. It is a non-place, which does not allow for easy 
approach, surrounded by walls which can not be penetrated, walls of ice, a 
permanent shroud of thick clouds, or blazing flames. But as Shambhala, this 
paradise, although situated on the same plane as our own world, it cannot 
be found situated on any map. Why? It slips through the grasp of language.8 
The image of paradise, as well as the paradisiacal dimension itself, are 
formed on the level of consciousness so well described in the Yoga Sütra. In 
contrast with other pre-Buddhist Indian systems that focused exclusively on 
the cultivation of knowledge as the means to liberation, yoga, while not 
denying the efficacy of knowledge, advances several ancillary techniques.9 
The formation of the images of paradise is therefore connected with 
altering the state of consciousness through the use of various physical tech-
niques. It is the state that transcends the citta-vrtti-nirodha and is therefore 
indescribable. The popular image of the Amitabha in the Pure Land doc-
trine, as the one who dwells in the Western Land of Supreme Bliss and as 
7 Milcinski M.: On Approaching Wabi-Sabi. In: Inde-Europe-Postmodernite. Noel Blandin, 
Paris, 1993, p. 298. 
8 Nakazawa S.: Gokuraku. In: Cibeto noMozuaruto. Seikaido. Tokyo, 1983. 
IJ Chappie C.: The Unseen Seer and the Field: Consciousness in Samkhya and Yoga. 
In: The Problem of Pure Consciousness. (Ed. Forman R.), pp. 62-3. While the author 
presents the five fluctuations (vrtti) of the mind (citta) as described in the Yoga 
Sutra, he comes to the conclusion that »for the yogi, the goal is to transcend all five 
by entering the state of citta-vrtti-nirodha. Hence, by definition, the practitioner of 
meditation is entering into a state of being that cannot be described in the same way 
one would describe conventional sensory or mental experience«. 
86 
Certainty in Daoism and in Japanese Buddhism 
the saviour who will come to rescue all living beings with his overabundance 
of compassion, is reserved for the devotees that are, due to the Nembutsu10 
practice, bound to the world of being and the realm of language. 
The certainty, however, is in Sino-Japanese philosophical context 
formed with the body, with the transformation of the body into a base for 
the formation of meaning from which visions of the Pure Land arise, through 
the use of mental and physical techniques for the visualization of the Land 
of Supreme Bliss; the land situated in the farthest depths of infinity. 
From the early Middle Ages onwards, accounts of rebirth in the Land 
of Supreme Bliss started to appear in the Japanese philosophical and reli-
gious texts. As we have seen, the theory of the Pure Land gives rise to a prob-
lem of language and the mind-body theory in Japanese Buddhism. The 
absence of Ego, the selflessness and the problem of inexpressible are the 
effects of the transition to the level of citta-vrtti-nirodha. This is the level of 
mantra and some of the Koans that slip through the clutches of silence and 
language - the situation described by Zhuang Zi, and the one which origi-
nates and derives from the voidness, as the basis of certainty and prajna or 
supreme wisdom. 
In the moment of loss of philosophical centrality, we are facing a rad-
ical critique of the long lived dream to attain a foundation of knowledge, 
certainty and an absolute basis for Truth. The topics discussed above from 
the Buddhist philosophical schools call the rational argumentation itself into 
question. The obsession about whether or not something could be subsumed 
under the concept of Truth becomes irrelevant. One of the challenges that 
we face when approaching the Buddhist (and Daoist) texts is the problem 
of language, of the status of words, and of the spheres of silent language and 
the language of silence. Language as the indispensable tool of intellect helps 
to create the distinctions of everything and the borders among the myriad 
things, which from the viewpoint of the citta-vrtti-nirodha are unseparate-
bly connected in One. The word on the other hand is a symbol, a sign of 
something that has been in the thoughts. The meaning itself is, on the oth-
er hand, the symbol of something which is beyond the grasp of logos and is 
indescribable, inexpressible, certain, since it manifests itself in everything. 
Here we deal with two levels: The surface one, in which reality manifests itself 
in the form of the ten thousand, myriad things; and the other one, beyond 
10 Nembutsu: »Thinking of or meditating on Buddha«, »buddhânusmriti in skrt. It also 
means »uttering Buddha's Name«. In Amidist tradition it means utterance of Amida's 
Name, i.e, »Namu-Amida-Butsu«. See also: The Tanni Sho. Notes Lament ing 
Differences. Ryukoku University, Kyoto, 1990, p. 15. 
87 
Maja Milcinski 
it, the certain one, which is spoken of (or kept silent about) in the sense of 
the first chapter of the Dao dejing.11 
The Japanese mind-body concept is based on radical transformation 
of subjectivity and with it the notion of rationality. The notion of Heaven, 
as understood and described in the way of transformation of consciousness, 
demands the opening up of the established governing positions of Europe-
an metaphysics to deeper dimensions of truth, often related to the trans-
rational and trans-linguistic experiences upon which any kind of certainty 
is grounded. The quoted division of the people into ranks where the lowest 
is the one who values one's head has implications for the philosopher's in-
terest. Namely, how to read the autonomous philosophical productions of 
China and japan from the standpoint of the tradition which has been called 
philosophia, the love of wisdom, a discipline that in its development sought 
in the name of Truth a »pure« starting point, a foundation of Absolute Truth, 
the ground of certainty. Such undertakings have also in the Buddhist con-
text been brought close to the pondering of Zhuang Zi: 
»The Great Way is not named; Great Discriminations are not spoken; Great 
Benevolence is not benevolence; Great Modesty is not humble; Great 
Daring does not attack. If the Way is made clear, it is not the Way. If dis-
criminations are put into words, they do not suffice. If benevolence has a 
constant object, it cannot be universal. If modesty is fastidious, it cannot 
be trusted. If daring attacks, it cannot be complete. These five are all round, 
but they tend toward the square. (All are originally perfect, but may be-
come »squared«, i.e., impaired, by the misuses mentioned.) 
Therefore understanding that rests in what it does not understand is the 
finest. Who can understand discriminations that are not spoken, the Way 
that is not a way? If he can understand this, he may be called the Reser-
voir of Heaven. Pour into it and it is never full, dip from it and it never 
runs dry, and yet it does not know where the supply comes from. This is 
called the Precious Light.«12 
Daoism and Buddhism, two of the Asian deontological philosophical 
traditions, which menaged to ask and answer vital philosophical questions, 
nurtured the principle of becoming and constant change. In the horizon, 
where nothing is permanent and there is no such thing as substance, the words, 
concepts, theories or knowledge are transient, as well. The idea of truth, cer-
tainty and causality, the inquiring into being and substance - the nominal 
world - was therefore not seen as relevant philosophical preoccupation. 
11 »As for the Way, the Way that can be spoken of is not the constant Way.« In: Lao-Tzu: 
Te-Tao Ching. Translated by Henricks R. Ballantine Books. New York, 1989, p. 188. 
12 Watson B.: The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu. Columbia University Press. New York 
1968, pp. 44-5. 
88