  In general, we can discern two ways that Nishida made use of Asian sources: anecdotally and systematically. Nishida’s writings are strewn with unacknowledged quotations or paraphrases of verses in classical Chinese sources, as well as allusions that may or may not identify their source in Indian, Chinese, or Japanese literature. This sort of allusion is anecdotal.  Unobtrusively placed in the current of a discussion on a particular issue, the anecdotal allusions serve to clarify an idea, to provide a concrete example, or to insert a playful turn of phrase into otherwise ponderous prose.  One example is the passage in the early work, Intuition and Reflection in Self-Consciousness, where Nishida argues that the will of the individual can freely express absolute will as the creative activity of the universe when the individual will operates spontaneously, without reflection or objectification.  Nishida inserts a saying from the Zen Buddhist Record of Linji in the middle of a sentence to express this undivided spontaneity: “To think of the infinite behind the finite, or of noumenon behind actuality, is to enter the realm of objectified knowledge.  In the immediate, lived experience of willing, however, the finite is immediately infinite, actuality is immediately noumenon, one walks when needing to walk and sits when needing to sit, and there is no interval for conceptual analysis” (NKZ II, 299; see Nishida 1987b, 147). Nishida also incorporates Confucian phrases, often without identifying them as such. In his first book, An Inquiry Into the Good, for example, arguing that logical reasons are often not sufficient to motivate good conduct, he alludes to a maxim of Confucius: “The saying Do not do unto others what you would not have others do unto you, is nearly meaningless without the motivation of sympathy” (Nishida 1990, 113; NKZ I, 132).