Suchness

Comparative philosophy has mostly unfolded as a parallel history of ideas, which provides a space for contributions from traditions other than Western philosophy, but effectively retains the conceptual framework developed in Western philosophy and, more often than not, takes its cue from a particular problem common to Western philosophy, assuming that the object of comparison is the same concept in the traditions that it compares. Few attempts have been made to focus on concerns which originate from a non-Western tradition. Yet these may have received extended and sophisticated philosophical analysis in that tradition and might engender closer comparison with other non-Western traditions. This chapter reconsiders some of the questions posited by the metaphysical pursuit through the lens of a central idea indigenous to “Buddhist metaphysics:” Suchness. In making use of this Buddhist notion as developed through the medium of the Chinese language in China and Japan, my aim is to envisage the possible articulations of a metaphysical position which emphatically asserts this world and values the present, but it is formulated in a non-substantialist language that avoids both reification and apophaticism. Recentring the metaphysical discourse on such a notion means not only to move away from the centrality of transcendence as “the model” to approach ideas of reality, but also to set aside the certainty of distinct essences and to put ambiguity at the core of the metaphysical inquiry.