Buddhism: A Heideggerian Parallel

Calculative thinking computes… it races from one prospect to the next. It never stops, never collects itself. It is not meditative thinking, not thinking which contemplates the meaning that reigns in everything there is… Meditative thinking demands of us that we engage ourselves with what, at first sight, does not go together.

— Martin Heidegger, Memorial Address
found in “The Death of Environmentalism“

Calculative thinking is equivalent to vijñana in Buddhism – the mind which flutters on the surface of reality (“races from one prospect to the next”). It is juxtaposed to prajña, which sinks into the calming depths of reality (“reigns in everything there is”). On the surface we cannot see beyond the next wave, especially when life is ‘choppy.’ In fact, the calculative mind can quickly get caught up in discerning ‘this wave’ from that one, dividing reality into chunks (nationalities, races, etc). But when one goes deeper one sees that the surface is all of one whole, one grasps the togetherness of all which was once thought disparate.