Heidegger’s differentiation between the Being Itself and beings, namely that between"Nothingness"and"beingness"is similar to the Mahayana Buddhist distinction between"Sunya"and"bhava"in that both by virtue of the overcoming of obstinacy in"beingness"are aimed to reach recognition of "Nothingness", so that we say Heidegger’s thinking has Buddhist significance. And correspondingly we regard the"Twi-satyas"theory of Mahayana Buddhism also as a kind of"Ontological Difference". Just like Heidegger’s"Nothing"Sunya is the truth and essence of being, it also contains as its significance the deconstruction of Metaphysics."Sunya"in Chinese Buddhism is non-fixedness (Wu Zhu or aniketa), which means freedom in the same ontological significance with Heidegger’s"Nothing". The principal divergence in the Heideggerian and Mahayana theories consists in their different understanding of"Nothingness". Sunya, the Nothingness in Buddhism,is a being absolutely non-linguistic; So the difference between the two"satyas" is in fact that between the linguistic and the non-linguistic; To Heidegger, however, the Nothingness as Being itself is just the language itself or its essence, so the Ontological Difference is just distinction between the language essence and the beings coming into this language. Moreover Heidegger’s Nothing (Nichts) is time itself, whereas the Sunyata of Mahayana Buddhism is totally non-temporal.
