The Nietzsche Podcast

In this episode, we're going to discuss what is likely the founding text of the Zen tradition, the Laṅkāvatāra Sutra. According to some of the earliest sources on Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen in China, the "Lanka" was the teaching whose "abstruse principle" he passed down to his successor, Huike. Within the same story, Huike laments that within only a few generations, the sutra will pass into obscurity - which is exactly what has happened. Though few read this text today, during my time in Zen, I found the Lanka's philosophical presentation of the "mind only" teaching to be uniquely intriguing among all the Buddhist scriptures I'd read. Join me on this exploration of the Buddha's teaching in Lanka, including an analysis of the eight consciousness model of the mind, the concept of paravrrti, the non-reliance on either existence or non-existence, and sublime teaching that the world is nothing other than mind.
My Diagram:
https://untimely-reflections.blogspot.com/2026/09/lankavatara-sutra-my-diagram-of-eight.html

This episode begins with an analysis of Baizhang's wild fox koan found in the Wumenguan, which we will use as a jumping off point for understanding the paradoxical relationship of the enlightened person with karma. This opens up into the general problem of discussing reality from the perspective of sunyata, in which samsara and nirvana become equivalent - because, so long as one approaches from the perspective of conceptual thought, they will remain forever unequivalent, and all such statements will be false or misleading. Join me as we discuss karma, the bodhisattva vow, "plucking out the eye of Buddha and sitting in its hollow", the meaning of "just sitting" in zazen, and the time when St. Francis made the sign of the cross to a cauterizing iron and blessed his brother, fire.

UPDATE: I accidentally uploaded part two to Spotify instead of part one. This has been fixed. To those who got to listen to the entire two-parter already already, lucky! But, the audio should now be part one.
Join me for a deep dive into Nishitani's opus, Religion and Nothingness: an intersection of philosophy and religion, east and west, Heidegger and the Mahayana. The topics I choose to emphasize in my reading are: the "double exposure" whereby the two layers of reality (being and nihility) are simultaneously perceived; the mechanization of the world, which serves to objectify the scientific worldview; Nietzsche's answer to this problem, as Nishitani understands it; the religious quest, in which one pushes through nihility, subsuming their entire life and body within the "great doubt"; finally, the standpoint of sunyata in which emptiness is perceived as the ground of being.

For all that is admirable in Buddhism, Nietzsche fundamentally opposes the movement towards the Last Man that Buddhism not only cannot oppose, but may even help bring forth. Why does the notion of a "European Buddhism" haunt Nietzsche's later writings? We will explore this question here: how a religion that is realistic, empirical, and achieves great practical success in the relief of suffering isnevertheless inevitably aimed at uprooting all action and delivering man to a state of passivity. Here we find another religion of pity, and another denial of the world - merely deprived of the sensualism and moral fanaticism of Christianity. Were such a religion to take hold in the West, Nietzsche believes, the opportunity of moment, which we face as a consequence of the death of God, would be squandered. Join me in exploring more sutras, as well Nietzsche's criticisms of Buddhism in The Gay Science, Daybreak, Beyond Good and Evil, and the Will to Power.

Welcome back to The Nietzsche Podcast, Season Seven! We're beginning with a two-part episode concerning Nietzsche's view of Buddhism. This episode, we will consider some of the basic teachings of Buddhism, and explore why Nietzsche viewed Buddhism with admiration. A repeated refrain in The Antichrist concerns Buddhism's superiority over Christianity. Why is it that Nietzsche considered Buddhism, a religion with a complex metaphysics and cosmology, to be a far more realistic and logical religion than Christianity? We are pointed in the direction of an answer in Nietzsche's description of Buddhism as "the religion of self-redemption".
The following episode will concern Nietzsche's criticisms of Buddhism.