Drawing from a Deeper Well: Contemplative Asian Sources of Radical Existential Thought
Keywords:
Existential Therapy, East/West Psychology, Heidegger, Buber, Buddhism, Taoism, nonduality, authenticity. Introducing Existential thought to American psychologists in 1958, Rollo May explained, ‘Existentialism, in short, is the endeavor to understand man by cutting below the cleavage between subject and object which has bedeviled Western thought and science since shortly after the Renaissance’ (p 11). In these words, May alluded to a non-dualistic view which informs the radical epistemology of Existential-Phenomenology. Almost a quarter century later he was compelled to admit, ‘In our crisis of thought and religion in the West, the wisdom of the East emerges as a corrective. This wisdom recalls us to truths in our own mystic tradition that we had forgotten, such as contemplation’ (1981, p 164). It is one thing to have a theoretical view of human nature not based on an object/subject split, but another thing entirely to be able to put that undivided vision into practice. May came to appreciate that while the West may be able to intellectually understand (theoria) a holistic approach to being in the world, it lacks the meditative capability (praxis) for realizing non-dualistic knowing. Prior to May’s declaration of the value of Eastern wisdom for the West, Martin Buber and Martin Heidegger, among other akin philosophers at the time, shared a similar concern, immersing themselves in the study of Eastern ‘mystic’ traditions. This immersion, occurring at the beginning of the 20th century, is a largely unacknowledged source of some of the most radicalAbstract
This paper discusses how Taoism and Buddhism are significant, if unrecognized, sources of what we think of as Existential thought. The radical philosophies of Buber and Heidegger are discussed as essential examples that have been inspired and informed by Asian non-dualistic traditions. This intellectual heritage expands the Euro-centrism of Existential thought into a necessarily, and potentially creative, East/West philosophy, and challenges Existential Therapy to recognize itself as a fundamentally contemplative discipline that must rethink its understanding of authenticity.
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Published
2017-01-01
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