Intersections Between Zen Buddhism and Deleuzian Philosophy

This paper teases out some of the common threads between two separate traditions: zen buddhist thought as it is interpreted by Thich Nhat Hanh and by Allan Watts, and poststructuralist thought as it is interpreted by Gilles Deleuze, and by Henri Bergson. Despite some semantic differences, zen buddhism and deleuzian thought are found to have a great deal in common. Both open up new ways of thinking and of being that challenge the apparent inevitabilities of todayss neoliberal world. The inter-related areas I will etplore in this paper, in which deleuz­ian scholars and buddhist thinkerslpractitioners can fruitfully be put in dialogue with each other, include abandoning the self-as-entity or ego, resisting the pull of binary thinking, and the interconnectedness of being.