By Making God, Country, Humanity, Society, and so forth One's Own Concern, One Forgets the Self

One normally considers the higher things to be those that relate to a universal apart from the self. One devotes oneself to such matters and makes them the concerns of the self. The religious person serves God, the socialist serves society, patriots their country, the housewife her home, as the concern (Sache) of the self. Each sees the meaning of life in this concern and finds his or her mission in it. To efface the self and devote oneself to one's concern is regarded as a superior way of life. By making God, country, humanity, society, and so forth one's own concern, one forgets the self and invests one's interest in something outside the self which then becomes one's own affair. This is one's Sache, the focus of ideals or values regarded as sacred.

--Keiji Nishitani, The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism, trans. Graham Parkes and Setsuko Aihara, SUNY Series in Modern Japanese Philosophy (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1990), 103.