  Nishida makes use of Asian philosophies systematically both in key notions such as nothingness and in the methods that characterize his thinking.  The notion of absolute nothingness recalls Indian ideas as well as Chinese Daoist and Buddhist expressions. Indeed, Nishida once suggested that we can distinguish traditional Eastern and Western philosophies by the East’s prioritizing of nothingness and the West’s reliance on being (NKZ VII, 429–30; Nishida 1970b, 237). He explicitly mentions the profound idea of nothingness developed in Indian religion (Nishida 1970b, 239), and we can find a precedent to his notion of absolute nothingness as beyond being and nonbeing in the Hymn of Creation in book ten of the Rg Veda: “nonbeing existed not, nor being” (Radhakrishnan 1957, 23). Nishida also had in mind the Chinese Daoist classics attributed to Laozi and Zhuangzi, where “the Way (or Dao) was clearly said to be ‘nonbeing’” (Nishida 1970b, 242). The Japanese term Nishida uses is mu (wu in Chinese), a sinogram that in Chinese literature usually functions simply as a negation of being or having and in this respect fails to convey Nishida’s full sense of nothingness that does not reduce to a lack of being. Nevertheless, philosophical Daoist literature provided a precedent that Nishida could draw upon. In chapter 40 of Laozi’s Daodejing we find the statement, “The myriad things are born from being. Being is born from nonbeing.” Reminiscent of Nishida’s absolute nothingness as a creative source, the Daodejing refers to the generative power of nonbeing and to the non-nameable Dao or Way that gives rise to the myriad things. One source suggestive of Nishida’s sense of absolute nothingness as the most inclusive and undifferentiated place is the text known by its legendary author’s name, the Zhuangzi. It refers to a Dao that has never known boundaries but preserves the possibility of distinctions. Taken up by Chinese Buddhism, wu not only referred to non-existence but also served as a variant of the Mahayana Buddhist notion of emptiness (śūnyatā), a negation of the self-subsistence of individual beings and an affirmation of their interdependence. Nishida drew upon such Buddhist and Daoist precedents in formulating his critique of substantialist metaphysics and his notion of absolute nothingness as an all-encompassing, ultimate frame of reference that is creative yet not transcendent to the world.