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The postmodern, as thinking of the Other, on-the-margin-along is tracked in this article in the work of Tracy, Taylor and the Japanese Zen thinker Dogen. Out of this tracking a faint outline emerges of theological discourse in the post-age.

The signpost marking our age is the `post' sign -- it is a post-age. Theoretical discourse in the post-age is stamped by signifiers like `otherness', `alterity', `singularity', `differance' and `plurality' [1]. These signifiers are signs of a persuasive, amorphous mood of deconstruction destabilisation ... and of fracture and of resistance to all forms of abstract totality, universalism and rationalism. This mood reflects a reaction against the dominant tendencies in the history of Western thought with revelation at times against the Enlightment legacy and sometimes, as in Nietzsche, Heidegger and Derrida, it is the entire tradition of Western metaphysics that is made to tremble and fractured into a bricolage of multiple philosophical and religious perspectives. Thus this post-age of non-dogmatic intellectual inquiry, permeated by the postmodern, poststructural, postnarrative and so forth, is stamped by a paradox where each post-age distances our present from our past in that the post-age marks us as situated beyond, being after, even being done with the past. Yet each post-age inevitably shows the present power of the transcended past. Thus the post-age is a paradoxical age, and unstable era, both denying and affirming the present power of the past. Ambiguity and uncertainty mark the post-age, for the future is indeterminable and invisible and the past paradoxically both dismissed and kept. [2]

Other as it snakes its way through Tracy's `revisionist' theology, the theology of `dissolution' of Taylor [4] and a Dogean experimental, imaginal theology. Such an imaginal theology of the interplay of Christian and Buddhist notions does not tear down early Christian discourses enmeshed in Greek metaphysics or dismiss contemporary (postmodern) discourses enmeshed in different contexts -- socio-historical, feminist, African, liberation -- but merely suggests that one can possibly find in the Japanese Zen master Dogen a sophisticated, philosophical lens for reading and writing Christian texts and experiences in another way and not merely in an essentialist theological way. Fully aware of the possibilities of misunderstanding, misappropriating texts, of being all too historical, of being too facile concerning the complexities of cross-cultural hermeneutics, of knowing that the ideas of one great thinker can never be precisely mapped to those of another, and that texts bear the mark of absence but are mediated through and through nonetheless, an attempt will be made -- inspired and influenced by such trailblazers as Tracy, Taylor, Keenan and especially Pilgrim [5] -- in the last section of this paper to develop briefly face to face with the other Dogen and the other enlightment an imaginal theology out of the interplay of Christian and Buddhist notions within a repentance/faith and things just as they are/void paradigm. In developing such a theology in the words of the famous koan I will attempt to avoid sticking my brains in a pot of glue, [6] which means remaining fixed in a static realisation. The point is to keep the mind open to the infinity of reality, [7] not to congratulate yourself on having found the nose on your face.

In sliding onto the Other track and attempting to avoid producing `more of the same' modernist texts, we come face to face with Tracy's `revisionist theology'. Although his `revisionist theology' shows modernist trends, it is noticeable that his work -- influenced by Tillich, Bultmann, Ogden and Lonergan and dominated by the hermeneutical drives of theological correlation, [8] and a theology of public discourse [9] -- seems to fit into the realm of the postmodern. This postmodern fit is especially noticed with the inclusion into the `revisionist paradigm' of another element which is deeply suggestive of a postmodern consciousness: the affirmation of pluralism and ambiguity as positive features of the human religious enterprise. Tracy describes this feature of postmodernism as `that radical plurality and heightened sense of ambiguity, so typical of all postmodern movements of thought with their refusal of premature closure and their focus upon the categories of the ``different'' and ``other'''. [10] With `different', `other', `plurality' and `ambiguity', Tracy -- after moving from neo-Thomist classical theism through transcendental Thomism -- become -- mystagogical to process theology to an attempted recovery of neo-Platonic Trinitarian dynamic and dialectical theism -- comes face to face with the challenge of searing, almost nihilistic postmodern thought and the challenge of religious diversity in facing Maha}ya}na Buddhism.

For Tracy, postmodern thought, in typical Levinas fashion is, a turn to the Other. Tracy writes: `the real face of postmodernity ... is the face of the other' [11]. This `face of the other' defines the intellectual and ethical meaning of postmodernity and thus both other and difference come forward as central intellectual categories across all major disciplines including theology. The other and the different -- both of these from other cultures and those others not accounted for by the grand narrative -- come now in postmodernism to demand the serious attention of all thoughtful theologians, for indeed new postmodern theological options have exploded in a hundred new cultural and theological forms, as witnessed in Emmanuel Levina's brilliant recovery of ethics as first philosophy, partly made possible by his recovery of the Judaic strands of our culture; Jacques Derrida's interest in (and critique of) the traditions of apophatic theology and John Caputo's recent Judeo-Christian philosophical critique of Heidegger's obsession with the Greeks. [12] This self-conscious recovery of the non-Enlightment, even at times the non-Greek resources of Western culture, leads to others speaking their descriptions of the Other in more familiar theological terms -- the gift is explicitly named grace; the event of the Other is named the revelation event of the Other's self-manifestation.

Now this postmodern explosion of theological options drives Tracy relentlessly to explore the issues of religious pluralism directly and extensively -- so directly and explicitly that it is difficult to separate this issue from Tracy's theology more generally. Tracy's whole career has, in some sense, been devoted to the theological implications of religious diversity. However, his first attempt to deal with the global diversity of religions is found in Dialogue with the Other: the inter-religious dialogue. With this work, dealing with extra-Christian diversity, Tracy draws from insights from Sigmund Freud, William James and Mircea Eliade to construct a theologically grounded method of approach to interreligious dialogue. This basic framework entails a religious discourse divided into `prophetical' and `mystical' categories [13] with the prophetical pointing in the direction of the prophet hearing a word from an Other, which demands expression through the prophet, and the mystical denying that any word can be spoken that tells truly of what is ultimate. With these `rhetorics' Tracy hopes to facilitate the dialogue with the Buddhist Other -- an other that shows affinity with certain contemporary strands of postmodern thought like those of Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida, with Deleuze's celebration of Nietzschean difference and Derrida's non-category of differance that challenge `substantialist' thought and also relational thought, both process and dialectical. Tracy faces this challenge of the `fit' affinity between postmodern thought and Buddhist, but the more serious challenge from the Buddhist side lies in the field of Christian theological reflection. To try to think the initially unthinkable thoughts of no-self for the self, of voidness for ultimate reality and pervading both with co-dependent origination as describing, all reality is for Tracy a deeply disorienting matter for anyone believing in God's self-disclosure in Sinai, Exodus and Jesus Christ. It is difficult to conceive what might be meant by the Buddhist: so initially other -- even alien -- is the thought of voidness -- voidness of all reality. Nothing has an independent, intrinsic nature.

Tracy with a typical Buddhist in-between neither/nor seems to avow both pluralism and the particular. Tracy seeks a pluralism which allows him to maintain the real diversity of religious traditions as well as his dialogue model of theology. Thus Tracy's middle way is neither radically particularist nor phenomenally pluralist. His middle way celebrates diversity. In celebrating diversity Tracy celebrates in a practical way understanding the other. His Christomorphic theology values the other.

Now, similar images have been used by others, for example Heidegger, who defines 'nothing' (no-thing) as the complete negation of the totality of beings, but a more fascinating clue is found in the Middle Way in Madhyamika Buddhism founded by Nagarjuna. [17] The Middle Way, as a slipping between and away from existence and non-existence, reverberates with the voidness of reality, the ultimate identity of samsara and nirvana, and the necessity of making relative all linguistic constructions in order to attain liberation. In this discursive move of deconstructing self-existence, the self-presence of all things, voidness, like Derrida's differance, [18] is permanently under erasure, displayed for tactical reasons but denied any semantic or conceptual stability. Now, voidness (sunyatu) viewed in terms of co-dependent origination (the principle of origination in dependence) approaches the 'non-original origin' interpreted by Taylor as the divine milieu. The divine milieu is the marginal `space' and when Taylor dives into this `space' he creates an a/theology in which God becomes writing -- along the middle way between presence and absence, writing of God constantly appears as the unending dissemination of the word; self becomes trace -- in the marginal space the self realises it cannot and need not possess own identity; history becomes erring -- what is left of history is `out of time', left wondering and erring -- a wondering without limits and boundaries, with endless `connections and with a loss of certainty that results in knowledge and truth becoming relative; book becomes text -- the `closure of the book' creates a place for open text where meaning is found between texts or through intertextuality, beyond all of the boundless interpretations and interrelations of the divine milieu. [19] Between presence and absence, the marginal space, Taylor wants to explore what lies beyond traditional philosophy and theology. Taylor explores the margin `out of time' and relates the mean between Hegel and Kierkegaard [20] to that between Barth and Altizer for with the deconstruction of God-self-history-book, Taylor makes a discursive move beyond the end of theology or another end of theology. In embracing the between/beyond marginal space he takes a step back to Kierkegaard (Kierkegaard always hovers in the background) with his relentless non-systematic critique of Hegel's system and Absolute Knowledge and his concerted effort to recover the difference and return the otherness that philosophy and philosophical theology repress. Thus to think beyond the end of theology is to unthink repression in a way that allows the return of the repressed. This unthinking, reflecting the background debate of Hegel and Kierkegaard, begins theologically with Karl Barth's `No' that highlights the related problems of transcendence, representation, difference and otherness, for Barth's theological discourse traces how the mystery of otherness evades domestication, how this evasion prevents foreclosure, and generates supplementary attempts to argue for or to this otherness. [21] Barth thus attempts to reassert divine transcendence vis-à-vis theologians, like Altizer at a later stage, who wants to reestablish divine immanence. [22] Thus for Barth, the Kingdom of God is elsewhere and for Altizer the Kingdom of God is already here. But, maintains Taylor, what neither Barth nor Altizer confronts is the possibility of the impossibility of the presence of the Kingdom -- here or elsewhere, now or then. Consequently neither thinks the negative radically enough, for the radical negative between Hegel and Kierkegaard, between Barth and Altizer, reveals that the Kingdom is neither present nor coming and that the dream of a future salvation must be let go, as must that of present salvation. Thus, the non-dialectical third of which Taylor writes is neither alterity nor identity, transcendence nor immanence, then nor now.

This is the middle ground and this middle ground Taylor also sees in the work of the French thinker Maurice Blanchot, [23] who reads Nietzsche's eternal return backwards in approaching the present, by way of the detour through past and future. If return is eternal, not only will it never end but it never began in the first place. This means then that present is never fully present, never was fully present, and never will be fully present. Thus there are no true origins or true endings. There is a lack, gap, an unrepresentable, an `outside time', a writing that is neither fully past nor present; it cannot be original or absolutely representable. Everything is -- Buddhist co-dependent origination. Everything flows. And with everything flowing we have the unthinkable, unthought unnamable Other that for Taylor ties up with the death of God -- the eternal deferral of the realisation of presence. Thus the infinite deferral of the end harbours an end that is not the end of theology but another end or an endless end. Blanchot calls this endless end the `disaster' [24]. The `disaster' is the non-event in which nothing happens. The eventuality of nothing ruins all presence by interminably delaying the arrival of every presence. In the presence of such absence Taylor feels religion should be refigured, for if the origin is always missing and the end never arrives then religion binds back to nothing (no-thing) and nothing is between or better, neither being nor non-being, neither identity nor difference, neither presence nor absence. This is Taylor's middle ground, his divine milieu. Writing on this `margin along' is to write with twisting and turnings that can never be straightened out -- it is to torment and fissure words in order to make them say that which literally they do not say -- to make language falter and when language falters then nothing happens. And nothing is the limit experience (liminal experience) an other, the sacred [25] as the denegation of God (negation without negation) is glimpsed. The sacred does not exist and yet is not nothing, for the sacred, within the framework of Taylor's double deconstruction, is neither present nor absent. The sacred forever draws near as the future that never arrives. The sacred is thus that in-time which is always already past and therefore always yet to come -- it can show itself only by not showing itself, or by showing 'not'. In this not, deserted (desert) space we are called fragmentally and again and again by an Other we can never name.

With Taylor's attempt to discover the mystery of the space in-between-what is not `the nothing' the Other, the sacred, we come closer to Tracy's `terror of otherness' as we come theologically face to face with Chan (Zen) Buddhism [26] and its most important thirteenth-century spokesman in Japanese history -- Dogen Zenji. Zen Buddhism -- with its focus on meditation (wordless-word) practice and on direct realisation of voidness as well as its postmodern non-logocentric approach of non-dualistic foundations (realisation of duality realism) and textuality and decentring [27] -- shows a fascinating relation to Nagarjuna's Madhyamika. On the one hand, Chan (Zen) may be said to put into practice the approach of Nagarjuna, but on the other hand Chan practice is a deconstruction of Madhyamika theory whose antimetaphysics is still philosophical. If dualism between inside and outside is a construct, the result of an `invagination' of the outside (which is therefore not an outside), it raises the possibility of a `devagination'. Such a radical thrust is noticed when Dogen described his experience thus: `Mountains, rivers, and the great earth, the sun, moon, and the stars ... all are the mind.' [28] This process of radicalisation probably began in the Heian [29] period when Tendai scholar-monks began to examine more deeply the question of what is meant when it is said that all beings possess Buddha-nature. They concluded that even trees and stones possess it. However, it was Dogen who carried the idea to its final conclusion and articulated his vision in powerful, poetic language. He extended and universalised Buddha-nature in several ways. One way was to reinterpret a well-known scriptural passage in the light of his own religious experience and not only to extend Buddha-nature to all things but also to eliminate the dualism of Buddha-nature and beings. This text (Bussho -- the Buddha-nature text [30]) reads as follows: `All sentient beings without exception possess (have) the Buddha-nature.' Dogen interpreted the text rather creatively as `All are sentient beigns, and total being (existence) is Buddha-nature.' He thus interpreted `sentient being' as a term referring to `all', and this means the sentient and non-sentient conceptual and material. Thus `sentient-beings' means `total being' and this total being is -- not possesses (have/has)-- Buddha-nature. Thus rocks and trees, votive lanterns and rubble-filled walls, truth and falsity, life and death and everything else is Buddha. [31] All things without exception are Buddha or Buddha-nature void. What you see is It? Thus the bird is not just a bird in some flatly materialistic and realistic sense. It is that, but at the same time it is voidness, absolute nothingness and a crystallised expression of interdependent being. It is at the same time phenomenal and noumenal, relative and absolute. Thus one's own mind is the Buddha. Thus, whatever happens, or is, is not in time, but is time, which means that I am time and as long as I am time, it does not slip away. If time does not slip away, then the world takes place all at once, all of it every moment anew -- every moment now, generation and extinction, birth and death. [32]

What is Dogen saying? We begin by studying the self, we forget the self and find all dharmas, all things, which includes everything. To be verified by all dharmas is to cast off body and mind and the bodies and minds of others as well. The slipping away/disappearance of the un-enlightened self means that one does not have enlightment, but is enlightment. The self and the world are cast off and hence `undefiled' but not dissolved. The inexorable duality of self and the world -- and all the ensuing implications, paradoxes, conflicts -- are not dissolved but seen in the light of voidness and thusness -- of things as they are. Now, this continuing, immediate process by which mind/body `dies' to impermanence and death in every radical particular moment means that every radical particular moment then confirms and actualises enlightened existence. Enlightened existence is the way one encounters an event authentically by penetrating thoroughly to its true reality, which is variously symbolised as Buddha, voidness and absolute nothingness. The unenlightened cannot do this.

Now the Bible does not carry with the same consistency this generating experience of breaking and entering as understood here. It is possible that the book of Job shows some of these images. Job's iconically ordered world begins to break down in the face of great and inexplicable suffering and a great doubt about human knowing (the wisdom of the Fathers/friends) as it pretends to understand and order a world. True wisdom, we learn, begins only in awe before God or when the Spirit of God is with one. Job's redemption is realised only when the human pretence of wisdom, both orthodox and heretical, is deconstructed and he stands face to face with God. When Job stands face to face with God he says the following: `Then I knew only what others had told me but now I have seen you with my own eyes. So I am ashamed of all I have said and repent in dust and ashes' (Job 42:5--6). There is a direct experience of letting go, of breaking and entering -- a direct experience [38] of things as they are. This direct experience of things as they are brings the self low and casts it (casting off) into the house of God. Casting oneself into the house of God, one is activated by God (in the Spirit) for the Christ life of resurrected existence -- an existence marked by a radical self-giving love which reaches every place in total healing intimacy. With `reaches every place' we make a hermeneutical switchback to Buddhist enlightenment/enlightened existence and a Dogen master metaphor as it is seen in the following story told by Dogen. [39]

Now, `the nature of wind is always abiding/constancy,' that is, the Buddha nature cannot be consummated without the act of using a fan (practice). Practice, intrinsic practice is the `fan' that makes the wind of enlighment eternal and existing everywhere. Thus the truth of the Buddha-nature is that the Buddha-nature is not endowed before actualising a buddha, but endows itself after actualising a buddha. The Buddha-nature and Buddha actualisation always go simultaneously. The `wind', `wind of Buddha's house' signifies the spiritual tradition of the Buddha-dharma that includes the practice of zazen, realisation and going beyond realisation. All this is in accord with the wind of the universe, the Buddha mind which is neither something we always possess, nor something that first appears upon enlightment. Connecting now again with enlightened existence means that conventionally speaking, enlightened existence can be characterised as a constancy reaching every place, pervading the whole universe even as such characterisations/names are themselves necessarily deconstructed in a final traceless enlightenment. But still staying with the constancy of voidness and the wondrous-reaching-every-place, it now becomes clear that voidness is the Not (Taylor) [40] that gathers all into a radical constancy. The enlightened mind, in Dogen's continual practice an endless casting off and wiping away of the idea of attainment, must continually touch base with this home ground where things are just as they are in constancy per se. However, this constancy or voidness is only actualised as it is embodied in the multiple conditions of lived life (form). Together form/voidness or constancy/reaching-every-place characterise an enlightened existence lived out in the world and thus `entering the market place with bliss-bestowing hands'. Thus born out of extrinsic enlightenment the womb of the `Buddha's-voidness' means that the whole of the mentally constructed world is filled by the wind (Buddha-dharma) that reaches every place -- reaching out to all beings and every place. All icons and flesh are retrieved for full and authentic use in the Buddha service. In biblical language one could say that in iconoclastic death one falls into things as they are, into the tomb of voidness, as the tomb signalling new birth in absolute grace, a grace of not self/other and a `place of suchness'. At such a place in a desert experience, we come face to face with God as the absolute absence/presence (I am becoming what I am becoming) of void reality. As such, God is not only not but the ground of all creative yes upon which everything (now-time) is born, reborn, or resurrected. Thus, switching hermeneutically forward again, being cast into the house of God, means that one is activated by God's Spirit (wind) for the Christ-life that reaches every place -- the wind of enlightment existing everywhere. The Christ event and the Spirit of God/Christ, are the God made known in every place of our life -- saving, and fulfilling it. Paul says in Romans 8:2: `For the law of the Spirit, which brings us life in union with Christ Jesus, has set me free from the law of sin and death.'

In the situation of the mountains' total exertion, [42] wise ones/holy ones do not stand against one another, or juxtaposed with each other in space and time. `There are no further traces even of having entered.' With radical entering/breaking -- casting off, casting off -- the self disappears in the `immediately manifesting' place of suchness. One becomes a kind of spirit invisible to self and other in every moment -- whether it is a moment of fanning or entering the mountains -- in the world and somehow removed from the world. [43] Entering the mountains, one becomes transfigured in the presence of God and transparent to the Spirit in self-giving love. Such is the Kingdom of God. Jesus says that he was hungry and we gave him something to eat. And he was thirsty and we gave him something to drink. And the people asked, When have we seen you hungry and gave you something to eat and thirsty and gave you something to drink? And Jesus replied: `I tell you, whenever you refused to help one of these least important ones, you refused to help me' (Matt 25:34--46). [44] Totally united with things as they are beyond and outside any duality, [45] one inherits the Kingdom anonymously, for the mark of the Kingdom is anonymous, given even to these `least important ones'. The presence of the resurrected spirit/body is nameless in its pure grace and in its pure gift as a life of continual witness (bodily as well). The resurrected life, living-dying life of putting off the Pauline old man, is a continual, traceless, vanishing presence within the ordinary bread of life -- bread and body given for other in a brokenness that keeps the cracks, fissures open in order that we may catch a glimpse of God's back as God is continually moving on. We are called to be silent witnesses even unto the least important ones and a silent witness that God is in the cracks, fissures, the in-between, on the margin along -- a desert margin that many times we cannot -- not name.

[1] See the perceptive essay of Richard Bernstein, `Incommensurability and Otherness revisited.' Culture and modernity, pp 85--103.
[2] Postmodernism extends and brings to a close the fundamental tenets and activities of a modernist outlook. This means that the lines of demarcation between modernism and postmodernism are not well defined.
[3] For an account of the Other see the classical work of Michael Theunissen, The Other, 1984. Theunissen probes the Other by way of contrasting approaches of transcendental constitution and the philosophy of dialogue.
[4] See Tilley, Postmodern theologies, pp 28ff and pp 58ff.
[5] See Keenans, The meaning of Christ: a Mahayana theology, 1989; and Pilgrim's seminal article, `God is in the Gaps', Buddhist-Christian Studies. 1989.
[6] This is the comment of Zen Master Songhua on the koan: Buddha picks up a flower. See Thomas Cleary's No barrier, pp 33--38.
[7] We all have our brains stuck in bowls of glue in the sense of being involved in historical contexts and cultural and linguistic expressions, even Zen with its wordless-word methodology. However, we could attempt to keep the mind open to the infinity of reality.
[8] Tracy's theological method of correlation attempts to correlate `tradition', understood as the whole history of Christian theological development, and `contemporary situation', understood as the realm of `common human experience and language'. See Blessed rage for order, p 43.
[9] Flowing from Tracy's assertion of the need for theological correlation is his claim that theology is a public discourse. Theology has three publics: Church, society and academy mirrored by three types of theology: systematic, practical and fundamental, respectively.
[10] See Tracy's contribution in Theological Studies, `The uneasy alliance, reconceived: Catholic Theological method, modernity and postmodernity' pp 548--570.
[11] See Tracy's perceptive article in Theology Today, `Theology and the many faces of Postmodernity', pp 104--114.
[12] With some of these postmodern philosophical exercises it is difficult to distinguish a philosophical from a theological position, as for example in the work of Mark Taylor.
[13] See Tracy's Dialogue with the Other, pp 68ff.
[14] Tracy writes that Eckhart's intellectual-spiritual journey goes a long way with that of a Buddhist.
[15] See Tracy's Dialogue with the Other, pp 90ff.
[16] Taylor sees an a-theoesthetics emerging in art and architecture that is `disfiguring' -- to figure the unfigurable in a disfiguring that is neither modern nor modernist postmodern. The `disfiguring' is done in the space between the figure and the unfigurable affirmation and negation. Taylor sees room for religious reflection in a/theoesthetics. See Taylor, Disfiguring, 1992.
[17] See Nagarjuna's major work, Mulamadhyamaka-Karika, translated by David Kalupahana under the title Nagarjuna. The philosophy of the middle way, 1986; and Seyfort Ruegg's insightful handling of Madhyamika material, The literature of the Madhyamaka School of Philosophy in India. 1981.
[18] Differance, as a key Derridean notion, refers to `the systematic play of differences, of the traces of differences, of the spacing by means of which elements are related to each other'. See Positions, p 27 and Margins of Philosophy, pp 3--27.
[19] In Erring, Taylor wants to illustrate religious reflection through and in the marginal `space'.
[20] Taylor's Journeys to selfhood shows his intense concern with the texts of Hegel and Kierkegaard. The margin of difference betwen Hegel and Kierkegaard creates a seminal opening for contemporary religious reflection.
[21] See Graham Ward's, Barth, Derrida and the language of theology. Ward's work on religious language shows Barth's closeness to postmodern thinking.
[22] In the light of the transcendence and immanence debate, it is asked whether there is a non-dialectical third that lies between the dialectic of either/or (Kierkegaard) and both/and (Hegel). Taylor's response involves a return to Nietzsche's notion of the eternal return.
[23] In Maurice Blanchot's formulation of the return, there is no present in which the self could be present. Thus there is not, and never has been any now in which to live anything. See Blanchot's, The step not beyond, p 22.
[24] Maurice Blanchot's The Writing of the disaster functions as an inspirational model for Taylor's essay `The End(s) of Theology', in Theology at the end of modernity, pp 233--248.
[25] Taylor's article in the Critical Inquiry, `Denegating God' pp 592--610 reflects his most recent thinking on the sacred. Taylor writes `The text woven from these traces is an allograph which in its failure, in its gaps and fissures, its faults and lacks, inscribes an Other it cannot represent'. See Disfiguring, pp 318--319.
[26] Although Japanese Zen is cast completely in the mould of Chinese Zen Buddhism it is clear that Japanese Zen adopted its own local materials to transform what it had inherited from China, producing something new and different. See Heinrich Dumoulin's, Zen Buddhism: a history. 1990.
[27] Steven Heine perceptively states that `The postmodern notion of intertextuality which argues that every text is a `mosaic of citations -- the absorption and transformation of other texts' suggests the possibility of a nonhierarchical and decentric means of explaining the mutuality of influences and reverberating reactions within the Zen tradition.' See Steven Heine, Dogen and the Koan tradition, pp 16--17.
[28] From `Shinjin-gakudo' in Flowers of emptiness, p 98.
[29] Heinrich Dumoulin, Zen Buddhism: a history, pp 18--19.
[30] From `Bussho' in Flowers of emptiness, p 67.
[31] The extension of Buddha-nature to more and more parts of reality is an outstanding aspect of Dogen's Buddhology. See Francis Cook, Sounds of valley streams, p 128.
[32] See Joan Stambaugh, Impermanence is Buddha-nature, pp 42ff.
[33] Koans as highly imaginative, poetic forms of indirect expression delight in baffling paradoxes and patent absurdities. See Steven Heine, Dogen and the Koan tradition, p 55.
[34] The relative is itself the absolute. See Francis Cook, Sounds of valley streams, pp 77ff. `One bright pearl' refers to identity.
[35] The core of Dogen's mystical/realist thought is reflected in Hee-Jin Kim's classical work Dogen Kigen. Mystical Realist. See also the work of Masao Abe, A Study of Dogen, and The Kuroda Institute publication, Dogen Studies.
[36] `Body-mind' is one of Dogen's favourite phrases. With `the casting off of body and mind' Dogen realised the complete non-duality of life and death, being and nothing, delusion and enlightenment, impermanency and Buddha-nature. See Masao Abe, A study of Dogen, p 123.
[37] From `Genjo-Koan' in Flowers of emptiness, p 52.
[38] Kroeze, Het Boek Job, interprets the seeing as an encounter with the glory and majesty of the God of the storm. See also Driver & Gray, The Book of Job, on the traditional knowledge of God as `what he heard of/received a report about'. Note that Van der Lugt, Rhetorical criticism and the poetry of the Book of Job, comments that at present it is argued that Job was defiant to the end.
[39] From `Genjo-Koan' in Flowers of emptiness, p 55.
[40] See Taylor's Nots. In this work Taylor struggles to think the unthinkable not(s) with its religious and theological implications.
[41] From `Sansuikyo' in Flowers of emptiness, pp 300--301.
[42] Total exertion of a single thing in Dogen's thought refers to the dynamic and creative mode in which any single act (dying, eating) is totally exerted contemporaneously, coextensively, coessentially with the total mind.
[43]See Thomas Cleary, Rational Zen. The Mind of Dogen Zenji, p 148.
[44] See Malina and Rohrbaugh, Social-science commentary on the Synoptic Gospels. The basis for the ingroup and outgroup division here is compassionate action toward the weak and the poor (p 151). Sealy, Deconstructing the New Testament, corroborates this when he states Matthew's `predilection for depicting people's salvation as dependent on their behaviour', p 44.
[45] Joan Stambough remarks, `The negation at work is existential negation, negation of emptiness.' Impermanence is the Buddha-nature, p 88.

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Articles
Pilgrim, R 1989.: `God is in the gaps'. Buddhist-Christian Studies 9: 87--97.Taylor, MC 1994.; `Denegating God'. Critical Inquiry. Summer 1994:592--610.
Tracy, D 1989.: `The uneasy alliance reconceived: Catholic theological method, modernity and postmodernity. Theological Studies 50/4:548--570.Tracy, D 1994.; `Theology and the many faces of postmodernity'. Theology Today. Vol 51:104--114.; Prof C du P le Roux
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The postmodern Tracy, Taylor and Dogen

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