Temple of the Myōshin-ji in Kyoto, Abe personally challenged Hisamatsu, screaming to him, "Is that the True Self?" Hisamatsu replied, "That's the True Self." Thereafter Abe entered an intense phase and struggled with the view that "It's all a lie!" (which he cried out while dousing himself with a bucket of ice water at a subsequent group sitting). He agonized over the seeming proximity of the Deity and the devil, and with his own complicity. Finally, Abe told Hisamatsu, "I just cannot find any place where I can stand." Hisamatsu told him, "Stand right at that place where there is nowhere to stand." Along this way Abe confronted, and managed to distinguish and overcome, a "positive nihilism" associated with the secular, irreligious philosopher Frederich Nietzsche. Reflecting on his life development, Abe acknowledged the crucial role of Shin'ichi Hisamatsu in his spiritual formation. "Without him I am not what I am." Academia Among Abe's chief academic influences would be the aforementioned Shin'ichi Hisamatsu (1889–1980) and also Keiji Nishitani (1900–1990), as well as Hajime Tanabe (1885–1962), key professors for Abe at Kyoto University, and Kitaro Nishida (1870–1945), teacher of Hisamatsu and Nishitani, and teacher of his own successor Tanabe. Abe follows Nishida's Kyoto school of philosophy. During the 1950s and early 1960s Abe was in communication with the well-known Buddhist scholar Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki (1870–1966), e.g., at Columbia University in New York City; Abe is said to have later assumed Suzuki's role as academic transmitter of Buddhism. Also in New York City, at the Union Theological Seminary, Abe encountered the Christian professors and teachers Paul Tillich (1886–1965) and Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971). From 1952 to 1980, Abe served as professor of philosophy at Nara University. Before he had been professor at Kyoto Women's College (1946–1948) and Otani University (1948–1950). Thereafter, while at Nara, Abe was concurrently professor at Kyoto University from 1955 to 1958, and from 1964-1980 professor at Hana Zono University. Also in the mid-1950s he studied Christian theology in New York City at the Union Theological Seminary and at Columbia University. Then in 1980 he left Nara University and moved to California, to the Department of Religion at the Claremont Graduate School, and later in 1983 to the University of Hawaii where he served as Professor of Japanese Philosophy. From 1965 Abe participated and made presentations at many universities and colleges throughout the U.S.A. while serving as a visiting professor in