God as Illeity, Buddha Nature, and Transcendence in Literature

Abstract

This paper compares the notion of the Buddha nature in Mahāyāna Buddhism with Emmanuel Levinas’s thought of illeity--that is true transcendence or "the origin of the alterity of being." This paper is an attempt to develop Levinasian ethics, whose ultimate goal is to approach the revealed God in Judeo-Christian spirituality, and the notion of Buddha nature into a critical theory of art and literature that explains how the reader, viewer or listener experiences transcendence and infinity while reading a literary text or a work of other arts. The first part of the paper analyzes how Levinas's notion of "the trace of the Other" should be the aim of the work of art and literature. Art offers the appreciator an opportunity to surpass the level of the self to glimpse this transcendence of the Other that is the realm of heterogeneity. Art is not a way of hardening, but rather that of rupturing, one’s egotism. Levinas's use of "enjoyment" is introduced as excess or surplus of the ordinary feelings. Then it is explained that what Levinas ultimately means by the absolutely Other, or rather the third party, is Judeo-Christian God who is free from any ontological categorization. Then the paper explores how the Other has been thought in Mahāyāna Buddhism in terms of the perfect emptiness: it is no different from “fullness” as the transcendent source of perception. The non-dual Buddha nature, which is free from phenomena embraces fully the absolute, immutable characteristics of the mind that is beyond binary opposition. Then the paper finally explores the state of total apathy or indifference with pure bliss as the last phase of what Levinas means by "experience par excellence" as the ethical sublime. Toward the end, the state of apathy or indifference, that is a block to the further operation of reason and emotion, is explained as the last phase of the subjectivity before it enters the realm of transcendence. A literary text is meant to free the reader’s mind by letting her experience the extraordinary and strange—often even grotesque and uncanny—mood that leads to confront the outside of the comprehension of the reader. In this way, a literary text leads the reader to the realm of the infinity of Judeo-Christian God, or emptiness as fullness in Buddhist terms. The text guides the reader, and thus the reading is not only aesthetic but also ethical.