Great expose, photogenic, but what relation does it bear to Eastern thought? That's what what's at point here.
An unexamined belief in Western philosophy is that "things" change over a linear time sequence. Eastern writers have challenged this notion, saying that a belief in time as a past, a present, and a future is just another conceptual illusion which is a result of physical attachment, and instead propose an ever-present. Time is illusory, urging us to aim for the eternal now, beyond space and time. In Heidegger, as in Western tradition generally, man has to awaken to an authentic mode of historical existence, to an awareness and acceptance of his essential facticity and mortality. Man remains the mortal man of finitude. There is no complete surrender and merger, or even loss of self, in Heidegger's thinking. More specifically, there is Heidegger's discussion of temporality. Temporality is the foundational structure of Dasein's Being (i.e., of existentiality, facticity, and fallenness) and does not consist of the linear passing of discrete "now-points." The past, the present, and the future do not follow one another in sequence. Rather, they exist simultaneously in a dynamic process in which each gives rise to the other. Consider, for example how a patient in psychotherapy "lives" both his or her past and future in the present. Lastly, consider the Hindu belief that consciousness transcends the individual. Consciousness is generally believed to be a relatively private matter; that is, each one of us is "conscious," but each consciousness is unique to that person and is in no way shared by others. In Hindu thought, however, individualized ego consciousness is considered to be only a partial manifestation of a more global condition. The universe and all that comprises it is made up of consciousness, not a personal consciousness of, but pure consciousness.
At first glance, Heidegger's notion of consciousness appears to be very similar to the Eastern conceptualization. Dasein's consciousness (Being) does not rest simply within but reaches out beyond itself and toward the world and other beings. For Heidegger as a phenomenologist, however, consciousness is always a consciousness of something; that is, consciousness is intentional. It always has an object. Dasein, however, not only reaches out and transcends itself in this fashion, it is also conscious of Being, since it is Being that allows Dasein to exist, or to be as it is. Even though Heidegger seems to be constantly dwelling in the vicinity of the mystical and of self-transcendence, he does not speak explicitly of the mystical union as an experiential moment of eternity. Rather, for Heidegger, there is a mystical openness possible in authentic Dasein for the calling and depth of Being manifesting in things as an experience of meditative thinking, of reflective quietude, still ontologically conceived rather than exponentially and existentially described. Heidegger conceives of the task as one of bringing revealed Being into language, of saying the unsaid, of thinking the unthought, of bringing the event of Being into language. His own meditative thinking discourse is done in terms of
concrete universals, a marriage of poetic and philosophical diction.