A Very dense buddhist book: The Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana

The foundation of buddhism seems to be in the affirmation of negation. Buddhism, and especially zen has seemed to me to flourish in this kind of paradoxical thinking regarding things which could be foundational principles for a theory of life, being or existence. The Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana describes a statement of bhutathata or suchness which is used to “express” totality.

Suchness is described to be trueness and self existing. While at the same time being described as utter emptiness without qualities, distinctions or particularisations. The text puts great emphasis on the non-particularising state of suchness, and as suchess is not distinguishable are the past few sentences completely incoherent.

The logical mind works by particularisation, and true reality is a totality free of distinctions. Distinction is the method of a mind-process, which can be expressed as subjectivity. This gives the foundation to describe suchness as a negation as it is that what the distinguishing mind is not expressing. Now we see, that a way to describe reality, is by negation, although reality is beyond comprehension by the particularising consciousness.

The text here -my writing not the book- is in its nature in a format which distinguishes and compares. My text is completely useless for true understanding. I read the DT Suzuki translation and the his text is really clear and the work is a compact handbook to learn the Dharma. 5/5