First, Metaphysics originally meant arguing from first principles; this sense is now covered by the term etiology; and the term metaphysics covers a more ambiguous terrain - generally more akin to theology.
As for connections between philosophy East and West - this is happening slowly; the first works done in this area is more than likely like large brushstrokes with much detail and nuance missed.
For example, I read somewhere that the canonical literature on the Tao runs to over a thousand volumes; if this is true, which I have no reason to doubt, then one can hardly say the Tao has been translated in the West.
To put this in context, at least for us Westerners, this is like having available only Platos Republic out of his thirty or so works, and nothing else in the Greek tradition of philosophy; or, an alternative example, is to have only the book of Genesis available from the Bible, and no other texts from the Christian tradition ie nothing from St Augustine, or from Aquinas.
But there are people who are busily dissolving barriers, or finding connections and parallels; and lines of influence, direct or otherwise; for example I just read a paper on the connections and similarities between Suhrawardis school of illumination and Abvinaguptas Saivism which the author drew under a common rubric of the metaphysics of light; and he pointed out that there was once a system of divine illumination in European philosophy until it was decisively refuted by Aquinas.
This already covers a wide sphere geographically.
Interestingly, he points out that one reason for the ontological category of being to have a cause must be non-being, as it cannot lie in being; for which he quotes a verse of the Rig-Veda; and this has a bearing of course on the first line of the Tao.
The reception of the Tao in Europe is generally seen in a metaphysical light; even though if I recall correctly that the language of the Tao is quite concrete; Edward Said, once wrote a book called Orientalism in which he pointed that the West was constructing an image of the East that wasn't a true representation; he emphasised, I think the near East; but I imagine similar things can be said, and probably have been (as his book began something of an academic industry) for places elsewhere.
Still, it would be interesting to know exactly what are contained in those thousand or so tomes....
Remember, Hegel wrote on Meyaphysics, and Marx turned him 'upside-down'; and, I'd say an upside down Hegel is still a Hegelian...
It's worth quoting a few paragraphs from the text Heideggers hidden sources by Mey and Parkes
by 1927, Heidegger had engaged in philosophic dialogue with three of Japan's greatest thinkers of 20C Japan, whose formidable intellects covered a range of fields. Philosophy of science and religion (Tanabe), social and political thought (Miki), and metaphysics and aesthetics (Kuki); he had been introduced to the philosophy of Nishida, had ample opportunity to learn about the Buddhist theory of nothingness [sunyata], and the affinity of Meister Eckhart and Zen; and the basic ideas of Daoist thought.
Also
In view of the...manifold opportunities that Heidegger had to learn about East Asian conceptions of nothingness from his Japanese colleagues...it is hardly surprising that the transition of What is Metaphysics was -as put by Heidegger himself - 'understood immediately' [addressed to the philosopher Kojimo Takehiko] by his Japanese readers. In fact Heidegger mentions, at the end of this essay, Hegels own equation of Non-Being and Being and this, to the author, exemplifies a certain reception of East Asian thought in German Idealism; and earlier Wolff, Liebniz, Kant and Herder had all written essays on Chinese thought.
This review by the TLS offers a cautious welcome of Meys and Parkes thesis, down-playing the parallels noted by Mey (as the possible coincidence of 'kindred spirits') but acknowledging the encounter with the concerns of certain Japanese thinkers as being more credible and germane to the development of Heideggers own thought.
