From Wikipedia: “In David A. Dilworth's survey of Nishida's works, he did not mention the debut book, An Inquiry into the Good. There, Nishida writes about experience, reality, good and religion. He argues that the most profound form of experience is the pure experience. Nishida analyzes the thought, the will, the intellectual intuition, and the pure experience among them. According to Nishida's vision as well as to the essence of Asian wisdom, one craves harmony in experience, for unity. Does this suggest that poetry is “pure experience?”

Kinpu Kosho

Thank you so much for your thoughtful comment — and for your care in engaging this topic so deeply.
Yes, I do think Nishida’s idea of pure experience resonates beautifully with the kind of poetic attention I hoped to explore in this essay. As you note, it speaks to that early moment before the mind draws a line between self and world — when we are simply present, without separation. In that sense, a haiku — especially one rooted in Zen — might be seen as a crystallization of such a moment.
That said, I also want to acknowledge how delicate and difficult it is to translate terms like junsui keiken into English.
“Pure experience” might sound, in English, like something psychological or introspective. But in Nishida’s usage, it feels much closer to a lived sense of unity — where awareness and world, body and breath, are not yet apart. There’s a kind of stillness at its core.
Poetry, then, is not merely about describing experience, or even recording it. At its best, it lets us enter the experience — to become, even for a breath, the ripple, the flower, the sound.
So yes — I would say that true poetry can offer us a glimpse of pure experience.
But only when we are willing to read not just the words, but the silence between them.
I truly appreciate your insight — and your presence here.
Kosho in Gassho
Thank you for your wonderful message.

I was so happy to hear that your project is moving forward so well. Even more, I was happy to hear that you are no longer chasing things, but allowing them to come to you naturally. To me, that is a very Zen way of working. In fact, that was part of what I hoped for when I gave you the Dharma name Ko Ho Ryu Kan.

I don’t know much about the conference you are attending, but my impression is that many academic conferences, especially in the humanities, become something of an intellectual elite salon, where simply participating becomes part of their value. Having watched Jason over the years, that has become my impression of at least some parts of the academic world.

I also think that your years of continuous Zen practice have given you a very realistic way of seeing the world. To people who are accustomed to academic culture, that perspective probably feels fresh and remarkably original. Shikantaza is, in many ways, Dōgen’s reminder to keep returning to reality itself.

For example, when we see a red flower, reality is simply, “The flower is red.” Nothing more is required.

The Japanese philosopher Kitarō Nishida called this kind of immediate, pre-conceptual encounter “pure experience.” Before judgments and concepts arise, there is simply the direct reality of the flower. There is not yet even the separation between “I” and “the flower.” There is only the flower, red, appearing just as it is.

But the moment we begin asking, “What kind of red is it?” concepts appear, discussions begin, and one discussion naturally leads to another. Those discussions certainly have value as scholarship, but they can never communicate the direct experience of the flower itself.

In fact, once we begin discussing pure experience itself, we have already stepped away from it. Pure experience is not something to be analyzed or argued about. It is something to be lived.

Little by little, our attention shifts from reality itself to ideas about reality. Scholarship can certainly flourish there, but from the perspective of Zen, something essential has already been left behind.

If we become satisfied simply by participating in discussions, we begin moving in the opposite direction from Genjōkōan. Dōgen continually points us back to the reality that is already manifest before us. Once we begin mistaking discussion itself for reality, finding our way back becomes surprisingly difficult.

After all, writing the word “fire” on a piece of paper will never burn your hand.

I hope you continue enjoying the conference, and I look forward to hearing more about your work on Clyfford Still.

In Gassho,

Kosho