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 The origins of Zen are as much Taoist as Buddhist, and because its flavor is so
 peculiarly Chinese, it may be best to begin by inquiring into its Chinese
 ancestry. Chinese civilization was at least 2,000 years old when it first
 encountered Buddhism. China absorbed Buddhism as it has absorbed so many
 other external influences, not only philosophies and ideas, but also alien
 populations and invaders. Undoubtedly, this is due in some measure to the
 extraordinary stability and maturity which the Chinese have derived from
 Confucianism. Reasonable, unfanatical, humanistic, Confucianism is one of the
 most workable patterns of social convention that the world has known.
 Coupled with the "let well enough alone" attitude of Taoism, it nurtured a mellow
 and rather easygoing type of mentality which, when it absorbed Buddhism, did much
 to make it more practical. That is to say, it made Buddhism a possible way of life
 for human beings, for people with families, with everyday work to do, and
 with normal instincts and passions. Generally speaking, Confucianism
 concerns itself with the linguistic, ethical, legal, and ritual conventions
 which provide the society with its system of communication. Confucianism, in
 other words, preoccupies itself with conventional knowledge, and under its
 auspices, children are brought up so that their originally wayward and whimsical
 natures are made to fit the Procrustean bed of the social order. The individual
 defines himself and his place in society in terms of the Confucian formulae.
 Taoism, on the other hand, is generally a pursuit of older men, and especially of
 men who are retiring from active life in the community. Their retirement from
 society is a kind of outward symbol of an inward liberation from the bounds of
 conventional patterns of thought and conduct, for Taoism concerns itself with
 unconventional knowledge, with the understanding of life directly, instead
 of in the abstract, linear terms of representational thinking. The reason why
 Taoism and Zen present at first sight such a puzzle to the Western mind is
 that we have taken a restricted view of human knowledge. For us, almost all
 knowledge is what a Taoist would call conventional knowledge, because we do not
 feel that we really know anything unless we can represent it to ourselves in
 words, or in some other system of communication. To begin to understand
 what Taoism is about, we must at least be prepared to admit the possibility of
 some view of the world other than the conventional, some knowledge other than
 the contents of our surface consciousness, which can apprehend reality
 only in the form of one thought at a time. There is no real difficulty in this,
 for we will already admit that we know how to move our hands, how to make a
 decision, or how to breathe, even though we can hardly begin to explain how we do
 it in words. We know how to do it because we just do it. Taoism is an extension of
 this kind of knowledge, an extension which gives us a very different view of
 ourselves from that to which we are conventionally accustomed, and a view
 which liberates the human mind from its constricting identification with the
 abstract ego. The West has no recognized institution corresponding to Taoism,
 because our Hebrew Christian spiritual tradition identifies the absolute God
 with the moral and logical order of convention. The important difference
 between the Tao and the usual idea of God is that whereas God produces the
 world by making, "wei," the Tao produces it by not making, "wu-wei," which is
 approximately what we mean by growing. Things which are made are separate parts
 put together, like machines, or things fashioned from without inwards, like
 sculptures, whereas things that are grown divide themselves into parts from within,
 outwards. Because the natural universe works mainly according to the principles
 of growth, it would seem quite odd to the Chinese mind to ask how it was made.
 If the universe were made, there would of course be someone who knows how it was
 made, who could explain how it was put together bit by bit, as a technician can
 explain in one-at-a-time words how to assemble a machine. But a universe which
 grows utterly excludes the possibility of knowing how it grows in the clumsy
 terms of thought and language, so that no Taoist would dream of asking whether the
 Tao knows how it produces the universe, for it operates according to
 spontaneity, not according to plan. It is really impossible to appreciate what is
 meant by the Tao without becoming, in a rather special sense, stupid. So long as
 the conscious intellect is frantically trying to clutch the world in its net of
 abstractions, and to insist that life be bound and fitted to its rigid categories,
 the mood of Taoism will remain incomprehensible, and the intellect will
 wear itself out. The Tao is accessible only to the mind which can practice the
 simple and subtle art of wu-wei. It is not simply calmness of mind, but
 non-graspingness of the mind, signified by wu-xin, literally "no mind," which is to
 say, unselfconsciousness. It is a state of wholeness in which the mind functions
 freely and easily, without the sensation of a second mind or ego standing over it
 with a club. If the ordinary man is one who has to walk by lifting his legs with
 his hands, the Taoist is one who has learned to let the legs walk by
 themselves. Each of the other senses might similarly be used to illustrate
 the non-active functioning of the mind listening without straining to hear,
 smelling without strong inhalation, tasting without screwing up the tongue,
 and touching without pressing the object. Each is a special instance of the mental
 function which works through all, and which Chinese language designates with
 the peculiar word "xin." We usually translate it as "mind" or "heart," but
 neither of these words is satisfactory. The difficulty with our translations is
 that "mind" is too intellectual, too cortical, and that "heart," in its current
 English usage, is too emotional, even sentimental.


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