Mind as Mirror and the Mirroring of Mind: Buddhist Reflections on Western Phenomenology

The book is organized into two principal parts. The opening materials include “An Incident at Wang-Mei Shan” and “Prelude in the Key of Emptiness,” which introduce the book’s central imagery and philosophical atmosphere. Part I, “Mind as Mirror,” studies the mirror as a philosophical metaphor through chapters on Buddhist dialectic, reflection, negativity, space, distortion, and visibility, culminating in discussions of installation and manifestation. This section treats consciousness as something that both reflects and constructs appearance, while also examining how Buddhist analysis destabilizes fixed subject-object structures. Part II, “The Mirroring of Mind,” shifts from the image of the mirror to the dynamic activity of mirroring itself. It develops methodological reflections on phenomenology, language, perception, modes of reflection, edidetic reduction, the epiphany of insight, and the “great doubt.” The final movement addresses mindless minding, intentionality, consciousness, primordial purity, world-horizon, ego-reflection, and the gesture of mind, thereby presenting Buddhist phenomenology as a radical inquiry into how mind, world, and emptiness mutually disclose one another.