Audio Renaissance presents The Way of Zen by Alan W. Watts.
Read for you by Ralph Blum with recordings of Alan W. Watts.
Zen Buddhism is a way and a view of life which does not belong to any of the formal categories of modern Western thought.
It is not a religion or philosophy, it is not a psychology or a type of science.
It is an example of what is known in India and China as a way of liberation, and is similar in this respect to Taoism, Vedanta, and Yoga.
As will soon be obvious, a way of liberation can have no positive definition.
It has to be suggested by saying what it is not, somewhat as a sculptor reveals an image by the act of removing pieces of stone from a block.
Historically, Zen may be regarded as the fulfillment of long traditions of Indian and Chinese culture,
though it is actually much more Chinese than Indian.
And, since the 12th century, it has rooted itself deeply and most creatively in the culture of Japan.
As the fruition of these great cultures, and as a unique and particularly instructive example of a way of liberation,
Zen is one of the most precious gifts of Asia to the world.
The word Zen is Japanese way of pronouncing the Chinese word Chan,
Zen, which in turn is the Chinese way of pronouncing the Sanskrit word Jnana.
And Jnana is a very difficult word to translate into English, if not impossible.
It has been called meditation.
Meditation in English generally means sitting quietly and thinking about something.
And that is not what Zen is.
Contemplation might come a little nearer if you use the word in a very technical sense,
the sense that it was used, or still is used, among Catholic mystics.
Perhaps that's something a bit like Zen.
But, again, contemplation, as we normally use the word, has a sense of inactivity.
A sense of not doing anything, of being completely still and passive,
whereas Zen is something highly active.
So we really don't have an English word for Jnana, Chan, Zen.
I would say that we do know what it is,
because we do all sorts of things every day of our lives in the spirit.
When, for example, you drive a car,
or when a rider of a horse is one being with a horse,
when you watch a good cowboy or a cavalry rider,
he's glued to the horse.
He's like a centaur almost.
As the horse moves, he moves.
Which is in control?
Is the horse riding the man or the man riding the horse?
You practically don't know.
Same way when you have an excellent dancing partner.
Who leads?
Who follows?
It seems as if you are one body and you move together.
That is Zen.
That is Jnana.
And so, in a wider sense,
when a person doesn't react to life,
on the one hand,
or try to dominate it on the other,
but when the internal world of one's own organism
and the external world of other people and other things
move together as if they were and indeed are
one and the same motion,
that is Zen.
So, you could say in a very, very simple way
that the real concern of Zen is to realize,
not merely to think,
but to know in your bones
that the inside world inside your skin
and the outside world outside your skin
going out as far as anything can go
into galaxies beyond galaxies
is all one world
and all one being,
oneself,
and you're it.
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,
way,
the Tao produces it
by not making,
woo-way,
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,
un-self-consciousness.
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.
The mind in Chinese
is Xin,
and it isn't quite
what we mean by mind.
They locate it here,
Japanese kokoro.
We locate our mind
here,
but this mind here,
the heart mind,
is the psychic center.
When you say,
I have no peace of mind,
it doesn't mean you've
just got a headache.
You may have a heartache,
too.
It's a more inclusive word.
You might call it
the center of psychic activity.
The important point
is that according
to both Taoism
and Zen,
the center of the mind's
activity is not
in the conscious
thinking process,
not in the ego.
When a man has learned
to let his mind alone
so that it functions
in the integrated
and spontaneous way
that is natural to it,
he begins to show
the special kind of virtue
or power
called Te.
This is not virtue
in the current sense
of moral rectitude,
but in the older sense
of effectiveness,
as when one speaks
of the healing virtues
of a plant.
Te is furthermore
unaffected
or spontaneous virtue,
which cannot be cultivated
or imitated
by any deliberate method.
In some, then,
Te is the unthinkable ingenuity
and creative power
of man's spontaneous
and natural functioning,
a power which is blocked
when one tries to master it
in terms of formal methods
and techniques.
It is like the centipede's skill
in using a hundred legs
at once.
The centipede was happy,
quite,
until a toad in fun said,
pray which leg
goes after which.
This worked his mind
to such a pitch,
he lay distracted
in a ditch
considering how to run.
Taoism is, then,
the original Chinese
way of liberation
which combined
with Indian Mahayana Buddhism
to produce Zen.
It is a liberation
from convention
and of the creative
power of day.
Every attempt
to describe
and formulate it
in words
and one-at-a-time
thought symbols
must, of necessity,
distort it.
The qualities
which distinguish
Zen or Chan
from other types
of Buddhism
are rather elusive
when it comes
to putting them
in words.
Yet Zen has a definite
and unmistakable flavor.
Although the name Zen
is Jhana
or meditation,
other schools
of Buddhism
emphasize meditation
as much as,
if not more than,
Zen.
And at times
it seems as if
the practice
of formal meditation
were not necessary
to Zen at all.
Nor is Zen
peculiar in having
nothing to say,
in insisting
that the truth
cannot be put into words,
for this is already
present in the teachings
of Lao Tzu.
Those who know
do not speak,
those who speak
do not know.
Perhaps
the special flavor
of Zen
is best described
as a certain directness.
In other schools
of Buddhism,
awakening seems remote
and almost superhuman,
something to be reached
only after many lives
of patient effort.
But in Zen
there is always
the feeling
that awakening
is something
quite natural,
something startlingly
obvious,
which may occur
at any moment.
If it involves
a difficulty,
it is just
that it is
much too simple.
Zen is also
direct in its way
of teaching,
for it points
directly and openly
to the truth
and does not trifle
with symbolism.
Direct pointing,
Qi Qi,
is the open
demonstration of Zen
by non-symbolic
actions or words,
which usually appear
to the uninitiated
as having to do
with the most
ordinary secular affairs
or to be completely crazy.
In answer to a question
about Buddhism,
the master makes
a casual remark
about the weather
or performs
some simple action
which seems to have
nothing to do
with philosophical
or spiritual matters.
Zen tradition
maintains that
immediate awakening
is not communicated
by the sutras,
but has passed down
directly from master
to pupil.
This does not
necessarily imply
anything so esoteric
as an experience
conveyed by telepathy,
but something
much less sensational.
Thus,
when Hindu pandits
insist that wisdom
is not to be gained
from the scriptures
but only from a teacher
or guru,
it means that
the actual texts,
such as the Yoga Sutra,
contain only the headings
of the doctrine
and that its full explanation
requires someone
who has learned
the oral tradition.
To this it should
be necessary to add
that since the tradition
is primarily an experience,
words can communicate
it no more
and no less
than any other experience.
Gautama,
the Awakened One
or Buddha,
who died in 545 BC,
lived at a time
when the major Upanishads
were already in existence
and their philosophy
must be seen
as the point of departure
for his own teaching.
The Buddha was acting
in full accord
with this tradition
when he became a Rishi
or forest sage
who had abandoned
the life of the householder
and divested himself
of caste
in order to follow
a way of liberation.
For the Indian tradition,
even more than the Chinese,
specifically encourages
the abandonment
of the conventional life
at a certain age
after the duties of family
and citizenship
have been fulfilled.
Relinquishment of caste
is the outward
and visible sign
of the realization
that one's true state
is unclassified,
that one's role
or person
is simply conventional
and that one's true nature
is no thing
and no body.
This realization
was the crux
of the Buddha's experience
of awakening,
Bodhi,
which dawned upon him
one night
as he sat under
the celebrated
bow tree at Gaia
after seven years
of meditation
in the forests.
From the standpoint
of Zen,
this experience
is the essential content
of Buddhism
and the verbal doctrine
is quite secondary
to the wordless transmission
of the experience
from generation
to generation.
For seven years,
Gautama had struggled
by the traditional means
of yoga and tapas
to penetrate the cause
of man's enslavement
to Maya,
to find release
from the vicious circle
of clinging to life,
Trishna,
which is like trying
to make the hand
grasp itself.
All his efforts
had been in vain.
The eternal Atman,
the real self,
was not to be found.
However much
he concentrated
upon his own mind
to find its root
and ground,
he found only
his own effort
to concentrate.
The evening
before his awakening
he simply gave up,
relaxed his ascetic diet,
and ate some
nourishing food.
Thereupon he felt
at once
that a profound change
was coming over him.
He sat beneath the tree
vowing never to rise
until he had attained
the supreme awakening
and,
according to tradition,
sat all through the night
until the first glimpse
of the morning star
suddenly provoked
a state of perfect clarity
and understanding.
This was
Anuttara Samyak Sambodhi,
Unexcelled Complete Awakening,
Liberation from Maya
and from the everlasting
round of birth and death,
Samsara,
which goes on and on
for as long as a man
tries in any way
whatsoever
to grasp at his own life.
Yet the actual content
of this experience
was never
and could never
be put into words.
For words are the frames
of Maya,
the meshes of its net,
and the experience
is of the water
which slips through.
Thus,
so far as words
are concerned,
the most that may be said
of this experience
are the words
attributed to the Buddha
in the Vajra Kedika.
Quote,
Just so,
Suputi,
I obtained
not the least thing
from unexcelled
Complete Awakening
and for this very reason
it is called
unexcelled Complete Awakening.
Close quote.
Thus,
from the standpoint
of Zen,
the Buddha
never said a word,
despite the volumes
of scriptures
attributed to him.
For his real message
remained always unspoken
and was such
that when words
attempted to express it
they made it seem
as if it were nothing at all.
Yet it is the essential
tradition of Zen
that what cannot be
conveyed in speech
can nevertheless
be passed on
by direct pointing,
by some non-verbal
means of communication
without which
the Buddhist experience
could never
have been handed down
to future generations.
In its own tradition
Zen maintains
that the Buddha
transmitted awakening
to his chief disciple
Mahakasyapa
by holding up a flower
and remaining silent.
The traditional story
which the Zen school
gives of its own origin
is that it arrived
in China in 520
with the Indian monk
Bodhidharma,
28th of a somewhat
fanciful list
of Indian patriarchs
standing in a direct line
of apostolic succession
from Gautama.
Bodhidharma arrived in
Canton from India
and proceeded to the court
of Emperor Wu of Liang,
an enthusiastic patron
of Buddhism.
However, Bodhidharma's
doctrine and his abrupt
attitude did not appeal
to the emperor
so that he withdrew
for some years
to a monastery
in the state of Wei
and spent his time
gazing at the wall
until at last
he found a suitable
disciple who subsequently
became the second
patriarch of Zen
in China.
This man,
whose name was Eka,
he came to where
Bodhidharma was meditating
and said,
Master, I have no peace
of mind.
Please pacify my mind.
Because he didn't even
get in for a long time
to ask the question
because Bodhidharma
refused to see anybody.
Finally, when he cut off
his left arm
as a token of his sincerity
and presented it
to the master,
Bodhidharma said,
you know,
all right,
what do you want?
Well, he said,
I have no peace of mind.
So Bodhidharma said,
bring out your mind
here before me.
I'll pacify it.
And Eka said,
when I look for my mind,
I can't find it.
Bodhidharma said,
there, it's pacified.
Now, somehow,
this answered Eka's question.
And all Zen
is stories like that.
Now, one thing
I must tell you
about these stories.
They are of the same
nature as jokes.
And that is to say,
a joke is told
with the object
of making you laugh.
Laughter is not
an intellectual thing.
It is an emotional reaction.
And the point
is the emotional reaction.
If, therefore,
a joke is explained to you,
you may laugh
out of politeness,
a throaty laugh,
but you will not laugh
spontaneously,
a belly laugh.
Now, the object
of Zen stories
is not to produce laughter,
but to produce awakening.
Clarification,
enlightenment,
or what is called
in Japanese,
satori.
Satori is,
like laughter,
something that happens
suddenly.
You don't use a rule,
slowly begin to laugh,
and then laugh louder
and louder,
because you see
a joke instantly.
A joke is always
a matter of an aha.
So, in the same way,
these stories
are intended
to produce
an aha reaction
in you
of, oh,
but I see,
now it's clear.
And, really,
they don't contain
any information.
Their design
is not to tell you
something,
that is to say,
to impart
information or knowledge.
Their design
is to get rid
of something,
to get rid
of a false problem
with which you
are wrestling,
so that the problem
will disappear
as a result
of understanding
the story.
And you'll see
from the story
that I told you
that what happened
was the disappearance
of a problem,
because Eikar,
when he looked
for his mind
that was giving him
so much trouble,
couldn't find it.
The satori
which so frequently
follows these interchanges
is by no means
a mere comprehension
of the answer
to a riddle,
for whatever
the Zen master
says or does
is a direct
and spontaneous
utterance
of suchness,
of his Buddha nature,
and what he gives
is no symbol
but the very thing.
Zen communication
is always direct
pointing in line
with the traditional
four-phase summary
of Zen.
Outside teaching,
apart from tradition,
not founded
on words and letters,
pointing directly
to the human mind,
seeing into one's nature
and attaining Buddhahood.
The center
of Zen training
is to live
spontaneously,
and this is why
it's so fascinating
to many Western people,
especially Western
intellectuals,
who are overburdened
with self-consciousness.
Because what fascinated
people about Zen
when they first
heard of it
through Dr. Suzuki's
writings
was Zen stories.
I lent a book
of Zen stories
once to a friend
of mine,
years and years ago,
and he was in hospital.
And when he gave it
back to me,
he said,
gee, he said,
I didn't understand
a word of it,
but it cheered me up
enormously.
Almost all the literature
of the period
in early Buddhist Chinese
is anecdotes
about the encounters
of Zen masters
with their students.
They are called
in Japanese
mon-do,
which means
question-answer.
Now then,
these stories
go on
in the most
amazing ways.
And I might
retell a few,
although some of them
may be familiar to you.
I'll try and choose
ones that are
probably less familiar.
There was a
famous master
called Suibi,
and he was asked,
what is the
secret teaching
of Buddhism?
And he was asked
this in the lecture hall,
you know,
where other monks
were studying.
And he said,
wait till there's
no one around
and I'll tell you.
So later in the day,
the monk accosted him
and said,
there's nobody around now.
What is the
secret teaching
of Buddhism?
So he went
into the garden
with this monk
and he pointed
at the bamboos.
And the monk
said,
I don't understand.
He said,
what a tall one
that is.
What a short one
that is.
And this awakened
the monk.
The Chuan Teng Lu
records a fascinating
encounter between
Tao Zin
and the sage
Fa Jung,
who was so holy
that the birds
used to bring him
offerings of flowers.
As the two men
were talking,
a wild animal
roared close by
and Tao Zin
jumped.
Fa Jung commented,
I see it is still
with you,
referring,
of course,
to the instinctive
passion,
Klesa,
of fright.
Shortly afterwards,
while he was
for a moment
unobserved,
Tao Zin
wrote the Chinese
character for Buddha
on the rock
where Fa Jung
was accustomed to sit.
When Fa Jung
returned to sit down
again,
he saw the sacred
name and hesitated
to sit.
Then Tao Zin
said,
I see it is still
with you.
At this remark,
Fa Jung was fully
awakened,
and the birds
never brought
any more flowers.
The following story
is told of
Hui Zhang,
initiating into Zen
his great successor,
Ma Tzu,
who died in 788,
and was at the time
practicing sitting
meditation at the
monastery of
Chuan Fa.
Your reverence,
asked Huai Jing,
what is the objective
of sitting in meditation?
The objective,
answered Ma Tzu,
is to become a Buddha.
Thereupon,
Huai Chang picked up
a floor tile
and began to polish
it on a rock.
What are you doing,
Master?
said Ma Tzu.
I am polishing it
for a mirror,
said Hui Chang.
How could polishing
a tile make a mirror?
And Hui Chang replied,
how could sitting
in meditation
make a Buddha?
Ma Tzu
was the first
Zen master
celebrated for strange
words and extraordinary
behavior,
and is described
as one who walked
like a bull
and glared like a tiger.
He was the first
to answer questions
about Buddhism
by hitting the questioner
or by giving a
loud shout,
Ho!
Ma Tzu had a notable
disciple in Po Chang.
To Po Chang
is attributed
the famous definition
of Zen,
when hungry eat,
when tired sleep.
He is said
to have had his
Satori when Ma Tzu
shouted at him
and left him deaf
for three days
and to have been
in the habit
of pointing out
the Zen life
to his disciples
with the saying,
don't cling,
don't seek.
For when asked
about seeking
for the Buddha nature,
he answered,
it's much like
riding an ox
in search of the ox.
There was another
monk
whose name
was Gutte
and whenever people
came to ask him
questions about Buddhism
he would hold up
a finger.
That was the only
answer he would give.
Well, he had an
attendant
and one day
somebody came
to the temple
to inquire about
the teaching
being given there
and the master
was apparently out
and his attendant
was there.
actually,
the master
had been there.
He was peeking
from behind the screen
and so he came
out to this boy
and said,
what's the fundamental
teaching of Buddhism?
And the boy
held up a finger.
Instantly,
the master drew a knife
and cut it off
and the boy
was very dismayed
and rushed away
yelling.
So the master
said,
hey,
come back.
As he came back,
he said,
what's the fundamental
principle of Buddhism?
And he went
to hold up
the finger
and it wasn't there
and he was enlightened.
Empty and marvelous.
The opening words
of the oldest
Zen poem
say that
the perfect way
is without difficulty
save that it avoids
picking and choosing.
Only when you stop
liking and disliking
will all be
clearly understood.
A split hair's
difference
and heaven and earth
are set apart.
If you want to get
the plain truth,
be not concerned
with right and wrong.
The conflict
between right and wrong
is the sickness
of the mind.
The point
is not to make
an effort
to silence the feelings
and cultivate
bland indifference.
It is to see
through the universal
illusion
that what is pleasant
or good
may be wrested
from what is painful
or evil.
To see this
is to see that
good without evil
is like up without down
and that to make
an ideal of pursuing
the good
is like trying
to get rid of the left
by turning constantly
to the right.
One is therefore
compelled to go
around in circles.
Zen is a liberation
from this pattern
and its apparently
dismal starting point
is to understand
the absurdity of choosing,
of the whole feeling
that life may be
significantly improved
by a constant selection
of the good.
One must start
by getting the feel
of relativity
and by knowing
that life is not
a situation
from which there is
anything to be grasped
or gained,
as if it were something
which one approaches
from outside,
like a pie
or a barrel of beer.
To succeed
is always to fail
in the sense
that the more
one succeeds
in anything
the greater
is the need
to go on succeeding.
To eat
is to survive
to be hungry.
The illusion
of significant improvement
arises in moments
of contrast
as when one turns
from the left
to the right
on a hard bed.
The position
is better
so long
as the contrast remains
but before long
the second position
begins to feel
like the first
so one acquires
a more comfortable bed
and, for a while,
sleeps in peace.
But the solution
of the problem
leaves a strange vacuum
in one's consciousness,
a vacuum soon
unfilled by the sensation of another intolerable contrast, hitherto unnoticed, and just as urgent,
just as frustrating as the problem of the hard bed. Zen does not take the attitude that it is
so futile to eat when hungry that one may as well starve, nor is it so inhuman as to say that
when we itch we should not scratch. Disillusionment with the pursuit of the good does not involve the
evil of stagnation as its necessary alternative, for the human situation is like that of fleas on a
hot griddle. None of the alternatives offer a solution, for the flea who falls must jump,
and the flea who jumps must fall. Choosing is absurd because there is no choice, and from this point of
view one can see the sun in the midst of the rain, scoop clear water from the heart of the fire.
But the viewpoint is not fatalistic. It is not simply submission to the inevitability of sweating
when it is hot, shivering when it is cold, eating when hungry, and sleeping when tired. Submission
to fate implies someone who submits, someone who is the helpless puppet of circumstances,
and for Zen there is no such person. The duality of subject and object, of the knower and the known,
is seen to be just as relative, as mutual, as inseparable as every other. We do not sweat because
it is hot. The sweating is the heat. It is just as true to say that the sun is light because of the
eyes, as to say that the eyes see light because of the sun. The viewpoint is unfamiliar, because it
is our settled convention to think that heat comes first, and then, by causality, the body sweats.
To put it the other way around is startling, like saying cheese and bread instead of bread and
cheese. Thus the Zen Rinkushu says, Fire does not wait for the sun to be hot, nor the wind for the
moon to be cool. This shocking and seemingly illogical reversal of common sense may perhaps be clarified
by the favorite Zen image of the moon in the water. The phenomenon moon in the water is likened to human
experience. The water is the subject, and the moon the object. When there is no water, there is no moon in
the water, and likewise when there is no moon. But when the moon rises, the water does not wait to
receive its image, and when even the tiniest drop of water is poured out, the moon does not wait to cast
its reflection. For the moon does not intend to cast its reflection, and the water does not receive its
image on purpose. The event is caused as much by the water as by the moon, and as the water manifests
the brightness of the moon, the moon manifests the clarity of the water. To put it less poetically,
human experience is determined as much by the nature of the mind and the structure of its senses,
as by the external objects whose presence the mind reveals. Men feel themselves to be victims or
puppets of their experience, because they separate themselves from their minds, thinking that the
nature of the mind-body is something involuntarily thrust upon them. They think that they did not ask to
be born, did not ask to be given a sensitive organism, to be frustrated by alternating pleasure and pain.
But Zen asks us to find out who it is that has the mind, and who it was that did not ask to be born
before father and mother conceived us. Thence it appears that the entire sense of subjective isolation,
of being the one who was given a mind, and to whom experience happens, is an illusion of bad semantics.
For there is no myself, apart from the mind-body, which gives structure to my experience. It is likewise
ridiculous to talk of this mind-body as something which was passively and involuntarily given a
certain structure. It is that structure, and before the structure arose, there was no mind-body.
When we are no longer identified with the idea of ourselves, the entire relationship between subject and
object, knower and known, undergoes a sudden and revolutionary change. It becomes a real relationship,
a mutuality in which the subject creates the object just as much as the object creates the subject.
The knower no longer feels himself to be independent of the known. The experiencer no longer feels himself
to stand apart from the experience. Consequently, the whole notion of getting something out of life,
of seeking something from experience, becomes absurd. To put it in another way, it becomes vividly clear
that in concrete fact I have no other self than the totality of things of which I am aware.
This is the hua-yen doctrine of the net of jewels, of xi-xi-wu-ai, in which every jewel contains the
reflection of all the others. Man's identification with his idea of himself gives him a specious and
precarious sense of permanence, for this idea is relatively fixed, being based upon carefully
selected memories of his past, memories which have a preserved and fixed character. But to the degree
that he identifies himself with the fixed idea, he becomes aware of life as something which flows past
him, faster and faster as he grows older, as his idea becomes more rigid, more bolstered with memories.
The more he attempts to clutch the world, the more he feels it as a process in motion.
On one occasion, Matsu and Po Chang were out for a walk, when they saw some wild geese flying past.
What are they? asked Matsu. They're wild geese, said Po Chang. What are they doing? demanded Matsu.
Po Chang replied, they've already flown away. Suddenly Matsu grabbed Po Chang by the nose and twisted it
so that he cried out in pain. How, shouted Matsu, could they ever have flown away?
This was the moment of Po Chang's awakening. The relativity of time and motion is one of the
principal themes of Dogen's Shoubogenzu, where he writes,
If we watch the shore while we are sailing in a boat, we feel that the shore is moving. But if we look
nearer to the boat itself, we know then that it is the boat which moves. When we regard the universe
in confusion of body and mind, we often get the mistaken belief that our mind is constant.
But if we actually practice Zen and come back to ourselves, we see that this was wrong.
When firewood becomes ashes, it never returns to being firewood. But we should not take the view
that what is latterly ashes was formerly firewood. What we should understand is that,
according to the doctrine of Buddhism, firewood stays at the position of firewood. There are former and
later stages, but these stages are clearly cut. It is the same with life and death. Thus we say in
Buddhism that the unborn is also the undying. Life is a position of time. Death is a position of time.
They are like winter and spring, and in Buddhism we do not consider that winter becomes spring,
or that spring becomes summer. Dogen is here trying to express the strange sense of timeless
moments, which arises when one is no longer trying to resist the flow of events, the peculiar stillness
and the self-sufficiency of the succeeding instance when the mind is, as it were, going along with them,
and not trying to arrest them. The measuring of worth and success in terms of time, and the insistent
demand for assurances of a promising future make it impossible to live freely both in the present
and in the promising future when it arrives. For there is never anything but the present,
and if one cannot live there, one cannot live anywhere. The Shobog Enzo says,
When a fish swims, he swims on and on, and there is no end to the water. When a bird flies,
he flies on and on, and there is no end to the sky. From the most ancient times, there was never a fish
who swam out of the water, nor a bird who flew out of the sky. Yet when the fish needs just a little
water, he uses just a little, and when he needs lots, he uses lots. Thus the tips of their heads
are always at the outer edge of their space. If ever a bird flies beyond that edge, he dies,
and so also with the fish. From the water the fish makes his life, and from the sky the bird. But this
life is made by the bird and the fish. At the same time, the bird and the fish are made by life.
Thus there are the fish, the water, and life, and all three create each other.
Yet if there were a bird who first wanted to examine the size of the sky,
or a fish who first wanted to examine the extent of the water, and then try to fly or to swim,
they will never find their own ways in the sky or the water.
This is not a philosophy of not looking where one is going. It is a philosophy of not making where one
is going so much more important than where one is that there will be no point of going.
The life of Zen begins, therefore, in a disillusion with the pursuit of goals which do not really
exist. The good without the bad, the gratification of a self which is no more than an idea, and the
morrow which never comes. For all these things are a deception of symbols pretending to be realities,
and to seek after them is like walking straight into a wall upon which some painter has, by the
convention of perspective, suggested an open passage. In short, Zen begins at the point where
there is nothing further to seek, nothing to be gained. Zen is most emphatically not to be regarded
as a system of self-improvement or a way of becoming a Buddha. In the words of Lin Chi,
if a man seeks the Buddha, that man loses the Buddha. For all ideas of self-improvement and of becoming
or getting something in the future relate solely to our abstract image of ourselves. To follow them is
to give ever more reality to that image. On the other hand, our true non-conceptual self is already
the Buddha and needs no improvement. In the course of time it may grow, but one does not blame an egg
for not being a chicken. Still less does one criticize a pig for having a shorter neck than a giraffe.
What is, therefore, to be gained from Zen is called wu-shi, or nothing special. For as the Buddha says,
I obtained not the least thing from unexcelled complete awakening, and for this very reason it is called
unexcelled complete awakening. The expression of wu-shi also has the sense of the perfectly natural and
unaffected, in which there is no fuss or business. The attainment of Satori is often suggested by the
old Chinese poem, Mount Lu in misty rain, the river Che at high tide. When I had not been there,
no rest from the pain of longing, I went there and returned. It was nothing special.
Mount Lu in misty rain, the river Che at high tide. According to the famous saying of Ching Yuan,
Before I had studied Zen for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains and waters as waters.
When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw that mountains are not
mountains, and waters are not waters. But now that I have got its very substance, I am at rest. For it's
just that I see mountains once again as mountains, and waters once again as waters.
The difficulty of Zen is, of course, to shift one's attention from the abstract to the concrete,
from the symbolic self to one's true nature. So long as we merely talk about it, so long as we turn
over ideas in our minds about symbol and reality, or keep repeating, I am not my idea of myself,
this is still mere abstraction. Zen created the method of direct pointing in order to escape from
this vicious circle, in order to thrust the real immediately to our notice. When reading a difficult
book, it is of no help to think, I should concentrate, for one thinks about concentration instead of what
the book has to say. Likewise, in studying or practicing Zen, it is of no help to think about Zen.
To remain caught up in ideas and words about Zen is, as the old masters say, to stink of Zen.
For this reason, the masters talk about Zen as little as possible, and throw its concrete reality
straight at us. This reality is the suchness of our natural non-verbal world. When Tung Shan was asked,
what is the Buddha? He answered, three pounds of flax. Upon this, Yuan Wu comments,
Various answers have been given by different masters to the question, what is the Buddha?
None, however, can excel Tung Shan's three pounds of flax, as regards its irrationality,
which cuts off all passage of speculation. The masters are resolute in cutting short all
theorizing and speculation about these answers. Direct pointing entirely fails in its intention
if it requires or stimulates any conceptual comment. Another master was having tea with two of his
students, when he suddenly tossed his fan to one of them, saying, what's this? The student opened it
and fanned himself. Not bad, was his comment. Now you, he went on, passing it to the other student,
who had once closed the fan and scratched his neck with it. This done, he opened it again,
placed a piece of cake on it, and offered it to the master. This was considered even better,
for when there are no names, the world is no longer classified in limits and bounds.
Professor Irving Lee of Northwestern University used to hold up a matchbox before his class,
asking, what's this? The students would usually drop squarely into the trap and say,
a matchbox. At this, Professor Lee would say, no, no, it's this, throwing the matchbox at the class and
adding, matchbox is a noise. Is this a noise? A Zen master might hold up his hand to someone insisting
that there are real differences in the world and say, without saying a word, point to the difference
between my fingers. At once it is clear that sameness and difference are abstractions. The
same would have to be said of all categorizations of the concrete world, even concrete itself, for
such terms as physical, material, objective, real, and existential, are simply abstract symbols.
Indeed, the more one tries to define them, the more meaningless they turn out to be.
In R. H. Blythe's arresting metaphor, when we were just about to swat the fly,
the fly flew up and sat on the swatter. In terms of immediate perception, when we look for things,
there is nothing but mind, and when we look for mind, there is nothing but things. For a moment
we are paralyzed, because it seems that we have no basis for action, no ground under foot from which
to take a jump. But this is the way it always was, and in the next moment we find ourselves as free
to act, speak, and think as ever, yet in a strange and miraculous new world, from which self and other,
mind and things have vanished. In the words of Tae Shan, only when you have no thing in your mind,
and no mind in things, are you vacant and spiritual, empty and marvelous. The marvel can only be described
as the peculiar sensation of freedom in action, which arises when the world is no longer felt to be
some sort of obstacle standing over against one. This is not freedom in the crude sense of kicking over
the traces and behaving in wild caprice. It is the discovery of freedom in the most ordinary tasks,
but when the sense of subjective isolation vanishes, the world is no longer felt as an intractable
object. In the context of Christianity, this might be interpreted as feeling that one has become
omnipotent, that one is God, directing everything that happens. However, it must be remembered that in
Taoist and Buddhist thought there is no conception of a God who deliberately and consciously governs the
universe. Lao Tzu said of the Tao, To its accomplishments it lays no claim. It loves and
nourishes all things, but does not lord it over them. The Tao, without doing anything, leaves nothing
undone. To use the imagery of a Tibetan poem, every action, every event, comes of itself from the void,
as from the surface of a clear lake there leaps suddenly a fish. When this is seen to be as true
of the deliberate and the routine, as of the surprising and the unforeseen, one can agree with
the Zen poet Pang Yun. Miraculous power and marvelous activity, drawing water and hewing wood.
Sitting quietly, doing nothing. In both life and art, the cultures of the Far East appreciate nothing more
highly than spontaneity or naturalness . This is the unmistakable tone of
sincerity marking the action which is not studied and contrived. For a man rings like a cracked bell
when he thinks and acts with a split mind, one part standing aside to interfere with the other,
to control, to condemn or to admire. But the mind, or the true nature of man, cannot actually be split.
According to a Zen Rin poem, it is like a sword that cuts but cannot cut itself, like an eye that sees
but cannot see itself. The illusion of the split comes from the mind's attempt to be both itself
and its idea of itself, from a fatal confusion of fact with symbol. To make an end of the illusion,
the mind must stop trying to act upon itself, upon its stream of experiences, from the standpoint of
the idea of itself, which we call the ego. This is expressed in another Zen Rin poem as
Sitting quietly, doing nothing. Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.
This by itself is the mind's and the world's natural way of action, as when the eyes see by themselves,
and the ears hear by themselves, and the mouth opens by itself without having to be forced apart
by the fingers. As the Zen Rin says again, the blue mountains are of themselves blue mountains,
the white clouds are of themselves white clouds. In its stress upon naturalness, Zen is obviously the
inheritor of Taoism and its view of spontaneous action as marvelous activity, miao yung, which is
precisely what the Taoists meant by the word te, virtue, with an overtone of magical power. But neither in
Taoism nor in Zen does it have anything to do with magic in the merely sensational sense of performing
superhuman miracles. The magical or marvelous quality of spontaneous action is, on the contrary,
that it is perfectly human, and yet shows no sign of being contrived. Perhaps the clue lies in the
saying of young men, In walking, just walk. In sitting, just sit. Above all, don't wobble.
For the essential quality of naturalness is the sincerity of the undivided mind, which does not
dither between alternatives. But it would be quite wrong to suppose that this natural sincerity comes
about by observing such a platitude as, Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might.
This is to overlay, not to discover the original mind. Thus to try to be natural is an affectation,
To try not to be natural is also an affectation. Obviously, the mistake arises in the attempt to
split the mind against itself. But to understand this clearly, we have to enter more deeply into
the cybernetics of the mind, the basic pattern of its self-correcting action. Feedback enables a
machine to be informed of the effects of its own action in such a way as to be able to correct its
action. Perhaps the most familiar example is the electrical thermostat, which regulates the heating of a
house. The furnace is adjusted by the feedback system, but this system in turn needs adjustment.
To make a system more and more automatic will require the use of a series of feedback systems,
a second to correct the first, a third to correct the second, and so on. But there are obvious limits
to such a series. In other words, one cannot correct one's means of self-correction indefinitely.
There must soon be a source of information at the end of the line which is the final authority.
Failure to trust its authority will make it impossible to act, and the system will be paralyzed.
The system can be paralyzed in yet another way. Every feedback system needs a margin of lag
or error. If we try to make a thermostat absolutely accurate, that is to say, if we bring the upper and
lower limits of temperature very close together in an attempt to hold the temperature at a constant 70
degrees, the whole system will break down. When the furnace responds too closely to the thermostat,
it cannot go ahead without also trying to stop, or stop without also trying to go ahead. This is just
what happens to the human being, to the mind, when the desire for certainty and security prompts
identification between the mind and its own image of itself. It cannot let go of itself, it feels that
it should not do what it is doing, and that it should do what it is not doing. It feels that it should
not be what it is, and be what it isn't. Furthermore, the effort to remain always good or happy is like
trying to hold the thermostat at a constant 70 degrees by making the lower limit the same as the upper.
In walking, just walk. In sitting, just sit. Above all, don't wobble. In other words,
the mind cannot act without giving up the impossible attempt to control itself beyond a certain point.
It must let go of itself, both in the sense of trusting its own memory and reflection,
and in the sense of acting spontaneously, on its own, into the unknown.
This is why Zen often seems to take the side of action as against reflection,
and why it describes itself as no mind, wu-sin, or no thought, wu-nyen, and why the masters
demonstrate Zen by giving instantaneous and unpremeditated answers to questions.
Zen. When Yun-men was asked for the ultimate secret of Buddhism, he replied,
Dumpling! The attitude of wu-tsin is by no means an anti-intellectualist exclusion of thinking.
Wu-tsin is action on any level whatsoever, physical or psychic, without trying at the same moment to
observe and check the action from outside. The same is true of the relationship between feeling and action,
for feeling blocks action, and blocks itself as a form of action when it gets caught in this same
tendency to observe or feel itself indefinitely, as when, in the midst of enjoying myself,
I examine myself to see if I am getting the utmost out of the occasion. Not content with tasting the
food, I am also trying to taste my tongue. Not content with feeling happy, I want to feel myself
feeling happy, so as to be sure not to miss anything. Whether trusting our memories or trusting the mind
to act on its own, it comes to the same thing. Ultimately, we must act and think, live and die
from a source beyond all our knowledge and control. In the end, the only alternative to a shuddering
paralysis is to leap into action regardless of the consequences. Action in this spirit may be right or
wrong with respect to conventional standards, but our decisions upon the conventional level must be
supported by the conviction that whatever we do and whatever happens to us is ultimately right.
In other words, we must enter into it without second thought. But to act without second thought,
without double-mindedness, is by no means a mere precept for our imitation, for we cannot realize
this kind of action until it is clear beyond any shadow of a doubt that it is actually impossible to
do anything else. Now this impossibility of grasping the mind with the mind is, when realized,
the non-action, wu-wei, the sitting quietly doing nothing, whereby spring comes and the grass grows
by itself. Social conditioning fosters the identification of the mind with a fixed idea of
itself as the means of self-control, and as a result, man thinks of himself as I, the ego.
As soon as it becomes important for me to be spontaneous, the intention to be so is strengthened.
I cannot get rid of it, and yet it is the one thing that stands in the way of its own fulfillment.
It is as if someone had given me some medicine with the warning that it will not work if I think
of a monkey while taking it. While I am remembering to forget the monkey, I am in a double-bind situation
where to do is not to do, and vice versa. Yes implies no, and go implies stop. At this point,
Zen comes to me and asks, If you cannot help remembering the monkey, are you doing it on
purpose? In other words, do I have an intention for being intentional? Suddenly I realize that my
very intending is spontaneous, or that my controlling self, the ego, arises from my uncontrolled or natural
self. At this moment, all the machinations of the ego come to naught. It is annihilated in its own trap.
I see that it is actually impossible not to be spontaneous. For what I cannot help doing,
I am doing spontaneously. But if I am at the same time trying to control it, I interpret it as a
compulsion. As a Zen master said, Nothing is left to you at this moment but to have a good laugh.
In this moment, the whole quality of consciousness is changed, and I feel myself in a new world,
in which, however, it is obvious that I have always been living. As soon as I recognize that
my voluntary and purposeful action happens spontaneously, by itself, just like breathing,
hearing, and feeling, I am no longer caught in the contradiction of trying to be spontaneous.
There is no real contradiction, since trying is spontaneity. Seeing this, the compulsive,
blocked, and tied-up feeling vanishes. It is just as if I had been absorbed in a tug-of-war
between my two hands, and had forgotten that both were mine.
The new world in which I find myself has an extraordinary transparency or freedom from
barriers, making it seem that I have somehow become the empty space in which everything is
happening. One stops trying to be spontaneous by seeing that it is unnecessary to try,
and then and there it can happen. The Zen masters often bring out this state by the device of evading
a question, and then, as the questioner turns to go, calling him suddenly by name. As he naturally
replies, yes, the Master exclaims, there it is. To the logician it will seem, of course,
that the point at which we have arrived is pure nonsense, as in a way it is. From the Buddhist
point of view, reality itself has no meaning, since it is not a sign pointing to something beyond itself.
To arrive at reality, at suchness, is to go beyond karma, beyond consequential action, and to enter a
life which is completely aimless. Yet to Zen, this is the very life of the universe, which is complete at
every moment, and does not need to justify itself by aiming at something beyond. To the Taoist mentality,
the aimless, empty life does not suggest anything depressing. On the contrary, it suggests the freedom
of clouds and mountain streams wandering nowhere, of flowers in impenetrable canyons, beautiful for no one
to see, and of the ocean surf, forever washing the sand, to no end. Furthermore, the Zen experience is
more of a conclusion than a premise. It is never to be used as the first step in a line of ethical or
metaphysical reasoning, since conclusions draw to it rather than from it. To try to formulate the Zen
experience as a proposition, everything is the Tao, and then to analyze it and draw conclusions from it
is to miss it completely. To say that everything is the Tao almost gets the point, but just at the moment
of getting it, the words crumble into nonsense, for we are here at a limit at which words break down
because they have always implied a meaning beyond themselves, and here there is no meaning beyond.
Although profoundly inconsequential, the Zen experience has consequences in the sense that it may be
applied in any direction, to any conceivable human activity, and that wherever it is so applied,
it lends an unmistakable quality to the work. The characteristic notes of the spontaneous life are
mo chi chu, or going ahead without hesitation, wu wei, which may here be understood as purposelessness,
and wu shi, lack of affectation or simplicity. Much of Zen training consists in confronting the
student with dilemmas which he is expected to handle without stopping to deliberate and choose.
The response to the situation must follow with the immediacy of sound issuing from the hands when
they are clapped, or sparks from a flint when struck. The master may begin a conversation with the
student by asking a series of very ordinary questions about trivial matters, to which the student responds
with perfect spontaneity, but suddenly the master will say, when the bath water flows down the drain,
does it turn clockwise or counterclockwise? As the student stops at the unexpectedness of the question,
and perhaps tries to remember which way it goes, the master shouts, don't think, act, this way,
and whirls his hand in the air, or perhaps less helpfully he may say, so far you've answered my
questions quite naturally and easily, but where's your difficulty now? The student likewise is free to
challenge the master, and one can imagine that in the days when Zen training was less formal,
the members of Zen communities must have had enormous fun laying traps for each other.
In effect then, in the discipline of Zen, when you finally convince the master that you're stupid
enough to be accepted as a student, because you've persisted and because you've defined yourself
as someone having a problem, he has warned you well in advance that he has nothing to teach,
but he says, now I will ask you a question. There are many ways of asking this question,
but they all boil down to one,
common theme and that is who are you? You say you have a problem, you say you
would like to get out of the sufferings of life, you say you'd like to get one up
on the universe. I want to know who's asking this question. Show me you, only
they put it in such ways as before your father and mother conceived you, what was
your original nature. Questions like that. And they'll say now look, I want to be
shown, I don't want a lot of ideas about who you are, I don't want to know who
you are in terms of a social role, you know, that you have such degrees or you
have such professional qualifications and such a name and such a family. All
that's the past. I want to see you genuinely now. It's like saying to a
person. Now, don't be self-conscious, see? I want you right this minute to be
completely sincere. There was a young man who said, though, it seems that I know that
I know. What I would like to see is the eye that knows me when I know that I know
that I know. And so this is the Zen trick. It's to put you into this situation in a
very crucial way. To think about, thinking about, thinking about, thinking about. Or, just
the same thing, to make a very strong effort not to think. That's Zazen. Sit, let your
senses operate and be responsive to whatever there may be around, but don't
think about it. But now this is already thinking. I'm thinking about not thinking. How will I
stop thinking about not thinking? So there you are. See, you're all caught up. It's like
somebody came to you and they put tar in one hand, molasses, feathers in the other, slapped
the two hands together and rubbed them around and said, now pick off the feathers. In Zen, the
double bind is put on you deliberately, knowing how stupid it is. The teacher is well aware of
everything he's doing and what tricks he's playing on you. Because he has behind it all
the compassionate intent of getting you into such a fierce double bind that you will see
how stupid it is. So then, what happens is this. He gives you the double bind. Be genuine. I want to see
you do something. That is the real you. I had a friend who was studying Zen and he was given
some koan like this to work on. And when he was one day going for his interview, he walked
through the garden that connected the sodo or the monk's study quarters with the master's place. And there was a
big bullfrog. Bullfrogs in this country are rather tame. People don't eat them. And so he swept
up the bullfrog and dropped it into the sleeve of his kimono. And when he got in front of the teacher to answer
the koan, that is to say, to do spontaneously produce his genuine self, he produced the bullfrog. And the teacher
looked at it and shook his head and said, too intellectual. As we might say, too contrived,
too studied. That's not yet you. How do you see the bind in this? It's like being told that everything
is alright at this moment so long as you don't think of a green elephant. So try not to think of a green elephant. See?
Now as he works at this, as he tries to produce the genuine you, the teacher really strings him out on this
and makes him work and work and work and work over a period of many months. Until he comes to the point of seeing
this. There is nothing you can do to be genuine. The more you do, the phonier you are. But at the opposite extreme,
there is nothing you can not do. That is to say, you cannot give up trying to be genuine. You can't relax, you know,
and be completely passive. And say, well, let's forget about it. Let's think about practical matters
and forget all these spiritual concerns. The moment you do that, your abandonment of trying is itself
an insidious form of trying. The way of Buddhism is to let go of yourself. To see that you live in a universe
in which nothing can be grasped. Therefore stop grasping. So here's the problem. I come and say to the teacher,
teach me not to grasp. You say, why do you want to know? And he shows you that the reason why you want to stop grasping
is that it's a new form of grasping. You feel that you will beat the game by being unattached. Zen is not merely a cult of impulsive action.
The point is not to eliminate reflective thought, but to eliminate blocking in both action and thought.
So that the response of the mind is always like a ball in a mountain stream. One thought after another without hesitation.
There is something similar in this to the psychoanalytic practice of free association employed as a technique
to get rid of obstacles to the free flow of thought from the unconscious.
The simplest cure is to feel free to block so that one does not block at blocking. When one feels free to block,
the blocking automatically eliminates itself. It is like riding a bicycle. When one starts falling to the left,
one does not resist the fall by turning to the right. One turns the wheel to the left, and the balance is restored.
Blocking is perhaps the best translation of the Zen term nyen, as it occurs in the phrase wu nyen,
no thought, or better, no second thought. Takwan points out that this is the real meaning of attachment in Buddhism,
as when it is said that a Buddha is free from worldly attachments. It does not mean that he is a stone Buddha
with no feelings, no emotions, and no sensations of hunger or pain. It means that he does not block at anything.
Thus it is typical of Zen that its style of action enters into everything wholeheartedly and freely,
without having to keep an eye on itself. It does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes.
Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes. As the fish swims in the water but is unmindful of the water,
the bird flies in the wind but knows not of the wind. So the true life of Zen has no need to raise waves when no wind is blowing,
to drag in religion or spirituality as something over and above life itself. This is why the sage Fa Jung
received no more offerings of flowers from the birds after he had had his interview with the fourth patriarch,
for his holiness no longer stood out like a sore thumb. It is often said that to be clinging to oneself
is like having a thorn in the skin, and that Buddhism is a second thorn to extract the first. When it is out,
both thorns are thrown away. But in the moment when Buddhism, when philosophy or religion,
becomes another way of clinging to oneself, though seeking a spiritual security, the two thorns become one.
And how is it to be taken out? This, as Bankai said, is wiping off blood with blood.
Therefore in Zen there is neither self nor Buddha, to which one can cling, no good to gain and no evil to be avoided,
no thoughts to be eradicated, no mind to be purified, no body to perish, and no soul to be saved.
At one blow, this entire framework of abstractions is shattered to fragments.
It should not be assumed that a person who has passed a koan, or got a Zen story, is necessarily a transformed human being.
Nor should it be assumed that Satori is a single sudden leap from the common consciousness to complete, unexcelled awakening.
Satori really designates the sudden and intuitive way of seeing into anything,
whether it be remembering a forgotten name or seeing into the deepest principles of Buddhism.
One seeks and seeks, but cannot find. One then gives up, and the answer comes by itself.
Thus there may be many occasions of Satori in the course of training,
great Satori and little Satori, and the solution of many of the koan depends upon nothing more sensational
than the kind of knack for understanding the Zen style of handling Buddhist principles.
Western ideas of Buddhist attainments are all too often distorted by the mysterious East approach,
and by the sensational fantasies so widely circulated in theosophical writings during the decades just before and after the turn of the century.
Zen masters are quite human. They get sick and die, they know joy and sorrow,
they have bad tempers or other little weaknesses of characters just like anyone else,
and they are not above falling in love and entering into a fully human relationship with the opposite sex.
The perfection of Zen is to be perfectly and simply human.
The difference of the adept in Zen from the ordinary run of men is that the latter are, in one way or another,
at odds with their own humanity and are attempting to be angels or demons.
Zen in the Arts
Happily, it is possible for us not only to hear about Zen but also to see it.
Since one showing is worth a hundred sayings, the expression of Zen in the arts gives us one of the most direct ways of understanding it.
This is the more so because the art forms which Zen has created are not symbolic in the same way as other types of Buddhist art,
or as is religious art as a whole.
The favorite subjects of Zen artists, whether painters or poets, are what we would call natural, concrete, and secular things.
Even when they turn to the Buddha or to the patriarchs and masters of Zen, they depict them in a peculiarly down-to-earth and human way.
Furthermore, the arts of Zen are not merely or primarily representational.
Even in painting, the work of art is considered not only as representing nature but as being itself a work of nature.
For the very technique involves the art of artlessness, or what Sabro Hasegawa has called the controlled accident,
so that paintings are formed as naturally as the rocks and grasses which they depict.
The art forms of the Western world arise from spiritual and philosophical traditions in which spirit is divided from nature
and comes down from heaven to work upon it as an intelligent energy upon an inert and recalcitrant stuff.
Thus Malraux speaks always of the artist conquering his medium, as explorers and scientists speak of conquering mountains or conquering space.
To Chinese and Japanese ears, these are grotesque expressions, for when you climb it is the mountain as much as your own legs which lifts you upwards,
and when you paint it is the brush, ink and paper which determine the result as much as your own hand.
The expression of this whole attitude in the arts is perhaps best approached through painting and poetry.
Since writing and poetry were among the chief preoccupations of Chinese scholars, and since the Chinese way of painting is closely akin to writing,
the roles of scholar, artist and poet were not widely separated.
The result was a tremendous cross-fertilization of philosophical, scholarly, poetic and artistic pursuits,
in which the Zen and Taoist feeling for naturalness became the dominant note.
Shiploads of monks amounting almost to floating monasteries, plied between China and Japan,
carrying not only sutras and Chinese classical books, but also tea, silk, pottery, incense, paintings, drugs, musical instruments,
and every refinement of Chinese culture, not to mention Chinese artists and craftsmen.
Closest to the feeling of Zen was a calligraphic style of painting,
done with black ink on paper or silk, usually a painting and poem in one.
Chinese black ink is capable of a great variety of tones, varied by the amount of water,
and the ink itself is found in an enormous number of qualities and colors of black.
The ink comes in a solid stick and is prepared by pouring a little water into a flat stone dish,
upon which the stick is rubbed, until the liquid is of the required density.
Writing or painting is done with a sharply pointed brush set in a bamboo stem,
a brush which is held upright without resting the wrist on the paper,
and whose soft hairs give its strokes a great versatility.
Since the touch of the brush is so light and fluid,
and since it must move continuously over the absorbent paper if the ink is to flow out regularly,
its control requires a free movement of the hand and arm, as if one were dancing rather than writing on paper.
In short, it is a perfect instrument for the expression of unhesitating spontaneity,
and a single stroke is enough to give away one's character to an experienced observer.
One of the most striking features is the relative emptiness of the picture,
an emptiness which appears, however, to be part of the painting and not just unpainted background.
By filling in just one corner, the artist makes the whole area of the picture alive.
Ma Yuan, in particular, was a master of this technique,
which amounts almost to painting by not painting,
or what Zen sometimes calls playing the stringless lute.
The secret lies in knowing how to balance form with emptiness,
and above all, in knowing when one has said enough.
Equally impressive is the mastery of the brush,
of strokes ranging from delicate elegance to rough vitality,
from minutely detailed trees to bold outlines and masses given texture
by the controlled accidents of stray brush hairs and uneven inking of the paper.
In poetry, the empty space is the surrounding silence which a two-line poem requires,
a silence of the mind in which one does not think about the poem,
but actually feels the sensation which it evokes,
all the more strongly for having said so little.
By the seventeenth century, the Japanese had brought this wordless poetry to perfection
in the haiku, the poem of just seventeen syllables,
which drops the subject almost as it takes it up.
To non-Japanese people, haiku are apt to seem no more than beginnings,
or even titles for poems, and in translation,
it is impossible to convey the effect of their sound and rhythm.
However, translation can usually convey the image,
and this is the important point.
Of course there are many haiku which seem as stilted as the Japanese paintings,
on cheap lacquer trays for export.
But the non-Japanese listener must remember that a good haiku
is a pebble thrown into the pool of the listener's mind,
evoking associations out of the richness of his own memory.
It invites the listener to participate,
instead of leaving him dumb with admiration while the poet shows off.
The development of the haiku was largely the work of Basho,
1643 to 1694, whose feeling for Zen wanted to express itself in a type of poetry
altogether in the spirit of wu-shi, nothing special.
Basho wrote his haiku in the simplest type of Japanese speech,
naturally avoiding literary and highbrow language,
so creating a style which made it possible for ordinary people to be poets.
The haiku sees things in their suchness, without comment,
a view of the world which the Japanese call sonomama,
just as it is, or just so.
Weeds in the rice field, cut and left lying, just so.
Fertilizer.
Haiku and waka poems convey perhaps more easily than painting
the subtle differences between the four moods of
Sabi, Wabi, Aware, and Yugen.
The quiet, thrilling loneliness of Sabi
is loneliness in the sense of Buddhist detachment,
of seeing all things as happening by themselves in miraculous spontaneity.
With this goes that sense of deep, illimitable quietude,
which descends with a long fall of snow,
swallowing all sounds in layer upon layer of softness.
Sleet falling.
Fathomless, infinite loneliness.
Wabi, the unexpected recognition of the faithful suchness
of very ordinary things, especially when the gloom of the future
has momentarily checked our ambitiousness,
is perhaps the mood of the following haiku.
A brushwood gate, and for a lock, this snail.
The woodpecker keeps on in the same place.
Day is closing.
Winter desolation.
In the rainwater tub, sparrows are walking.
Aware is not quite grief, and not quite nostalgia
in the usual sense of longing for the return of a beloved past.
Aware is the echo of what has passed and of what was loved,
giving them a resonance such as a great cathedral gives to acquire,
so that they would be the poorer without it.
Aware is the moment of crisis between seeing the transience of the world with sorrow and regret,
and seeing it as the very form of the great void.
The stream hides itself in the grasses of departing autumn.
Leaves falling lie on one another.
The rain beats on the rain.
Since Yugen signifies a kind of mystery,
it is the most baffling of all to describe,
and the poems must speak for themselves.
The sea darkens.
The voices of the wild ducks are faintly white.
The skylark.
Its voice alone fell, leaving nothing behind.
In the dense mist.
What is being shouted between hill and boat?
A trout leaps.
Clouds are moving in the bed of the stream.
The association of Zen with poetry
must inevitably bring up the name of the Soto Zen monk and hermit, Ryokan.
It is easy to form the impression
that the Japanese love of nature is predominantly sentimental,
dwelling on those aspects of nature which are nice and pretty.
Butterflies, cherry blossoms, the autumn moon, chrysanthemums, and old pine trees.
But Ryokan is also the poet of lice, fleas,
and being utterly soaked with cold rain.
On rainy days, the monk Ryokan feels sorry for himself.
And Ryokan's view of nature is all of a piece.
The sound of the scouring of the saucepan
blends with the tree frog's voices.
He thinks of the lice on his chest as insects in the grass,
and expresses the most natural human feelings,
sadness, loneliness, bewilderment, or pity,
without a trace of shame or pride.
Even when robbed, he is still rich,
for the thief left it behind, the moon at the window.
And when Ryokan has no money,
the wind brings fallen leaves, enough to make a fire.
The sense of an infinitely expanded present
is nowhere stronger than in Cha no Yu, the art of tea.
Strictly, the term means something like tea with hot water.
And through this one art, Zen has exercised an incalculable influence
on Japanese life.
Since the Cha Jin, or man of tea,
is an arbiter of taste in the many subsidiary arts
which Cha no Yu involves.
Architecture, gardening, ceramics, metalwork,
lacquer, and the arrangement of flowers, or ikebana.
Ceremonial tea is not the ordinary leaf tea
which is steeped in hot water.
It is finely powdered green tea,
mixed with hot water by means of a bamboo whisk,
until it becomes what a Chinese writer called
the froth of the liquid jade.
Cha no Yu is most appreciated when confined to a small group,
or just two companions, and was especially loved
by the old-time samurai, as today by harassed businessmen,
as a frank escape from the turmoil of the world.
Ideally, the house for Cha no Yu is a small hut,
set apart from the main dwelling in its own garden.
The hut is floored with tatami, or straw mats,
enclosing a fire pit.
The roof is usually thatched with rice straw,
and the walls, as in all Japanese homes,
are paper shoji, supported by uprights of wood,
with a natural finish.
One side of the room is occupied by an alcove, or tokonoma,
the position for a single hanging scroll of painting or calligraphy,
together with a rock, a spray of flowers, or some other object of art.
The atmosphere, though formal, is strangely relaxed,
and the guests feel free to talk or watch in silence as they wish.
The host takes his time to prepare a charcoal fire,
and with a bamboo dipper pours water into a squat kettle of soft brown iron.
In the same formal but completely unhurried manner,
he brings in the other utensils,
a plate with a few cakes, the tea bowl, and caddy,
the whisk, and a larger bowl for leavings.
During these preparations a casual conversation continues,
and soon the water in the kettle begins to simmer and sigh,
so that the guests fall silent to listen.
After a while, the host serves tea to the guests,
one by one, from the same bowl,
taking it from the caddy with a strip of bamboo bent into a spoon,
pouring water from the kettle with the long-handled dipper,
whipping it into a froth with the whisk,
and laying the bowl before the first guest,
with its most interesting side towards him.
The bowls used for Chanoo-yu are normally dull-colored and rough-finished,
often unglazed at the base,
and on the sides the glaze has usually been allowed to run,
an original fortunate mistake,
which has been seen to offer endless opportunities for the controlled accident.
Specially favored are Korean rice bowls of the cheapest quality,
a peasant wear of crude texture
from which the tea masters have selected unintentional masterpieces of form.
The tea caddy is often of tarnished silver or infinitely deep black lacquer,
though sometimes old pottery medicine jars are used,
purely functional articles,
which were again picked out by the masters for their unaffected beauty.
A celebrated caddy, once smashed to pieces,
was mended with gold cement
and became the much more treasured
for the haphazard network of thin gold lines which then covered its surface.
After the tea has been drunk,
the guests may ask to inspect all the utensils which have been used,
since every one of them has been made or chosen with the utmost care,
and often brought out for the occasion because of some feature
that would particularly appeal to one of the guests.
The style of garden that goes with Zen and Chanoyu
is not, of course, one of those ornate imitation landscapes
with bronze cranes and miniature pagodas.
The intention of the best Japanese gardens
is not to make a realistic illusion of landscape,
but simply to suggest the general atmosphere of mountain and water in a small space,
so arranging the design of the garden that it seems to have been helped
rather than governed by the hand of man.
The Zen gardener has no mind to impose his own intention upon natural forms,
but is careful, rather, to follow the intentionless intention of the forms themselves.
The major art which contributes to such gardens is Bonseki,
which may well be called the growing of rocks.
It requires difficult expeditions to the seashore, to mountains, and to rivers,
in search of rock forms which wind and water have shaped into asymmetrical living contours.
These are carted to the garden site and placed so as to look as if they had grown where they stand,
so as to be related to the surrounding space or to the area of sand
in the same way as figure to background in sung paintings.
Because the rock must look as if it had always been in the same position,
it must have the air of moss-covered antiquity,
and, rather than try to plant moss on the rock,
the rock is first set for some years in a place where the moss will grow by itself,
and thereafter is moved to its final position.
Every one of the arts which have been discussed involves a technical training
which follows the same essential principles as training in Zen.
The best account of this training thus far available in a Western language
is Eugen Herrigel's Zen in the Art of Archery,
which is the author's story of his own experience under a master of the Japanese bow.
The major problem of each of these disciplines is to bring the student to the point
from which he can really begin.
Herrigel spent almost five years trying to find the right way of releasing the bowstring,
for it had to be done unintentionally, in the same way as a ripe fruit bursts its skin.
His problem was to resolve the paradox of practicing relentlessly without ever trying,
and to let go of the taut string intentionally without intention.
His master, at one and the same time, urged him to keep on working and working,
but also to stop making an effort.
For the art cannot be learned unless the arrow shoots itself,
unless the string is released Wuxin and Wunyen, without mind and without thought.
The same is true in learning to use the brush for writing or painting.
The brush must draw by itself.
This cannot happen if one does not practice constantly,
but neither can it happen if one makes an effort.
Similarly, in swordsmanship, one must not first decide upon a certain thrust
and then attempt to make it, since by that time it would be too late.
Decision and action must be simultaneous.
This was the point of Dogen's image of firewood and ashes,
for to say that firewood does not become ashes is to say that it has no intention to be ash
before it is actually ash, and then it is no longer firewood.
Dogen insisted that the two states were clearly cut,
and in the same way Herrigal's master did not want him to mix the two states of stretching and releasing the bow.
He instructed him to draw it to the point of fullest tension and stop there without any purpose,
any intention in mind as to what to do next.
Likewise, in Dogen's view of Zazen, one must be sitting just to sit,
and there must not be any intention to have Satori.
The sudden visions of nature which form the substance of haiku arise in the same way,
for they are never there when one looks for them.
The artificial haiku always feels like a piece of life which has been deliberately broken off
or wrenched away from the universe, whereas the genuine haiku has dropped off all by itself
and has the whole universe inside it.
Because Zen does not involve an ultimate dualism between the controller and the controlled,
the mind and the body, the spiritual and the material,
there is always a certain physiological aspect to its techniques.
Whether Zen is practiced through Zazen, or Cha No Yu, or Kendo,
great importance is attached to the way of breathing.
Not only is breathing one of the two fundamental rhythms of the body,
it is also the process in which control and spontaneity,
voluntary and involuntary action, find their most obvious identity.
So-called normal breathing is fitful and anxious.
The air is always being held and not fully released,
for the individual seems incapable of letting it run its full course through the lungs.
He breathes compulsively rather than freely.
The technique, therefore, begins by encouraging a full release of the breath,
easing it out as if the body were being emptied of air by a great leaden ball
sinking through the chest and abdomen and settling down into the ground.
The returning in-breath is then allowed to follow as a simple reflex action.
The air is not actively inhaled, it is just allowed to come,
and then, when the lungs are comfortably filled, it is allowed to go out once more.
The image of the leaden ball giving it the sense of falling out as distinct from being pushed out.
But just as there is no need to try to be in accord with the Tao,
to try to see or to try to hear,
so it must be remembered that the breath will always take care of itself.
This is not a breathing exercise so much as a watching and letting of the breath,
and it is always a serious mistake to undertake it in the spirit of a compulsive discipline to be practiced with a goal in mind.
This way of breathing is not for special times alone.
Like Zen itself, it is for all circumstances whatsoever,
and in this way every human activity can become a form of Zazen.
In its own way, each one of the arts which Zen has inspired gives vivid expression to the sudden or instantaneous quality of its view of the world.
The momentariness of sumi paintings and haiku,
and the total presence of mind required in cha no yu and kendo,
bring out the real reason why Zen has always called itself the way of instantaneous awakening.
It is not just that Satori comes quickly and unexpectedly all of a sudden, for mere speed has nothing to do with it.
The reason is that Zen is a liberation from time.
For if we open our eyes and see clearly, it becomes obvious that there is no other time than this instant,
and that the past and the future are abstractions without any concrete reality.
Until this has become clear, it seems that our life is all past and future,
and that the present is nothing more than the infinitesimal hairline which divides them.
From this comes the sensation of having no time,
of a world which hurries by so rapidly that it is gone before we can enjoy it.
But through awakening to the instant, one sees that this is the reverse of the truth.
It is rather the past and future.
which are the fleeting illusions, and the present, which is eternally real.
Western thought has changed so rapidly in this century
that we are in a state of considerable confusion.
Familiar concepts of space, time, and motion,
of nature and natural law, of history and social change,
of human personality itself, have dissolved,
and we find ourselves adrift without landmarks
in a universe which more and more resembles the Buddhist principle
of the great void.
The various wisdoms of the West, religious, philosophical, and scientific,
do not offer much guidance to the art of living in such a universe,
and we find the prospects of making our way
in so trackless an ocean of relativity rather frightening.
For we are used to absolutes, to firm principles and laws
to which we can cling for spiritual and psychological security.
That may be why there is so much interest in a culturally productive way of life
which, for some fifteen hundred years, has felt thoroughly at home in the void,
and which not only feels no terror for it, but rather a positive delight.
To use its own words, the situation of Zen has always been
above, not a tile to cover the head,
below, not an inch of ground for the foot.
But the scientifically trained Westerner is a cautious and sceptical fellow
who likes to know what he is getting into.
This does not advocate importing Zen from the Far East,
for there it has become deeply involved with cultural institutions
which are quite foreign to us.
But there is no doubt that there are things which we can learn,
or unlearn, from Zen, and apply in our own way.
Historically, Zen may be regarded as the fulfillment
of long traditions of Indian and Chinese culture,
though it is actually much more Chinese than Indian,
and, since the twelfth century,
it has rooted itself deeply and most creatively
in the culture of Japan.
It is not a religion or philosophy,
it is not a psychology or a type of science,
it is rather an example of what is known in India and China
as a way of liberation,
and is as much Taoist as Buddhist.
Zen is a translation of the Sanskrit word dhyana,
pronounced chan in Chinese,
and zen in Japanese.
It is unfortunately untranslatable in English.
It designates a certain state of consciousness
that is sometimes called meditation,
but that won't do it all.
Contemplation isn't really the point,
and sometimes one-pointedness of mind.
I would prefer to translate this word
with the notion of total presence of mind.
When we say a person is crazy,
we often say they're not all there.
Now go to the opposite of that
and visualize a person who is completely there,
or who is completely here.
A person who lives totally and absolutely now.
That doesn't mean he's incapable of thinking about the past or the future,
because thoughts about the past and about the future
are included in the present.
You have them now.
But imagine the kind of person
who is not distracted,
who when he talks to you,
really gives you his whole being.
The Tao is a way of life.
The word Tao means the way,
the course of nature,
the flow of things.
And in order to understand this point of view,
we have to make a very, very radical adjustment
in our ordinary common sense.
Because Zen and Taoism in common
involve not a system of doctrine,
not a set of beliefs,
as we ordinarily understand religion.
They involve a transformation of your consciousness.
That is to say,
of the way in which you experience
your own existence at every moment.
One might say that the average individual,
not only in the West,
but also in the East,
has a feeling of himself
as separate from his surroundings,
from other people,
and from the Earth itself,
and from the space and the stars
and everything around the Earth.
He feels this in such a way
that it's expressed
in all the phrases of common speech.
We talk about coming into the world.
I came into this world.
As a matter of fact, you didn't.
You came out of it.
Just in the same way
as an apple comes out of an apple tree,
as an expression of the apple tree.
The world that we live in
and we experience
is not cut up
into things and events.
It all goes together
in the same way
that the bees and the flowers go together,
only we don't notice this.
We've got a way of thinking
which splits it all up.
And as a result of that,
we think of ourselves
and so feel ourselves
as if we were something separate
from the whole domain of nature.
And to make a long story short
and to tell you the whole point
right at the beginning,
the disciplines of Taoism
and of Zen
propose to change your consciousness
in such a way
that you will no longer feel
that you are an isolated unit
locked up inside a bag of skin,
but that you will actually experience
the fact that your real self,
the real you,
is everything that there is,
but concentrated
and expressing itself
at the point
called your physical organism.
We as individual organisms,
as what we call physical bodies,
we come and go
like leaves on a tree,
but there's the tree
and you are the tree.
In the saying of Jesus,
I am the vine,
you are the branches,
but that I am
before Abraham was,
I am
is the self
and it's what the Hindus
call the Brahman
and the Chinese call the Tao.
The Indian Buddhist origins of Zen.
Fundamental to the life
and thought of India
from the very earliest times
is the great mythological theme
of self-sacrifice,
whereby God gives birth
to the world
and whereby men,
following the divine pattern,
reintegrate themselves with God.
As Prajapati,
Vishnu or Brahma,
the Lord under many names,
creates the world
by an act of self-dismemberment
or self-forgetting,
whereby the one becomes many
and the single actor
plays innumerable parts.
The thousand heads,
eyes and feet
of the Purusha
are the members
of the human race
and other beings,
for the point is that
that which knows
in and through
every individual
is God himself,
the Atman
or self of the world.
Every life
is a part
or role
in which the mind
of God is absorbed,
somewhat as an actor
absorbs himself
in being Hamlet
and forgets
that in real life
he is Mr. Smith.
By the act
of self-abandonment,
God becomes
all beings.
It is important
to remember
that this picture
of the world
as the play,
Leela,
of God
is mythological
in form.
According to the myth,
the divine play
goes on
through endless cycles
of time,
through periods
of manifestation
and withdrawal
of the worlds.
The foregoing myth
is not the expression
of a formal philosophy,
but of an experience
or state of consciousness
which is called
moksha
or liberation.
It may be considered
as the discovery
of who or what
I am
when I am
no longer identified
with any role
or conventional definition
of my person.
Indian philosophy
does not describe
the content
of this discovery
except in mythological terms
using the phrase
I am Brahman
or
That Art Thou
to suggest
that self-knowledge
is a realization
of one's original identity
with God.
Moksha
is also understood
as liberation
from Maya,
one of the most important words
in Indian philosophy,
both Hindu
and Buddhist.
The manifold world
of facts and events
is said to be
Maya.
To say then
that the world
of facts and events
is Maya
is to say that
facts and events
are terms of measurement
rather than
realities of nature.
This point of view
is somewhat startling
and even quite hard
to understand
for those long accustomed
to think
that things,
facts and events
are the very building blocks
of the world,
the most solid
of solid realities.
Yet a proper understanding
of the Maya doctrine
is one of the most
essential prerequisites
for the study of Buddhism.
Buddhists prefer
to speak of reality
as non-dual
rather than one,
since the concept of one
must always be in relation
to that of many.
The doctrine of Maya
is therefore
a doctrine of relativity.
It is saying that
things, facts and events
are delineated
not by nature
but by human description
and that the way
in which we describe
or divide them
is relative
to our varying points of view.
In summary then,
the Maya doctrine
points out first
the impossibility
of grasping
the actual world
in the mind's net
of words and concepts
and second
the fluid character
of those very forms
which thought
attempts to define.
The world of facts
and events
is altogether
Nama,
abstract names
and Rupa,
fluid form.
It escapes both
the comprehension
of the philosopher
and the grasp
of the pleasure seeker
like water
from a clutching fist.
It is precisely
this realization
of the total
elusiveness
of the world
which lies
at the root
of Buddhism.
This is the special
shift of emphasis
which, more than
anything else,
distinguishes the
doctrine of the Buddha
from the teaching
of the Upanishads.
Gautama,
the Awakened One
or Buddha
lived at a time
when the major
Upanishads
were already in existence.
That was in the
6th century
and their philosophy
must be seen
as the point of departure
for his own teaching.
For seven years
Gautama had struggled
by the traditional means
of yoga and tapas,
contemplation and asceticism
to penetrate the cause
of man's enslavement
to Maya,
to find release
from the vicious circle
of clinging to life,
Krishna,
which is like
trying to make
the hand
grasp itself.
All his efforts
had been in vain.
The eternal Atman,
the real self,
was not to be found.
However much
he concentrated
upon his own mind
to find its root
and ground,
he found
only his own effort
to concentrate.
The evening
before his awakening
he simply gave up,
relaxed his ascetic diet
and ate some
nourishing food.
Thereupon
he felt at once
that a profound change
was coming over him.
He sat beneath
the bow tree,
vowing never to rise
until he had attained
the supreme awakening,
and according to a tradition
sat all through the night
until the first glimpse
of the morning star
suddenly provoked
a state of perfect clarity
and understanding.
This was his
Anuttara Samyak Sambodhi,
unexcelled,
complete awakening,
liberation from Maya
and from the everlasting
round of birth
and death,
samsara,
which goes on and on
for as long as a man
tries in any way
whatsoever
to grasp
at his own life.
The Buddha
set forth
his doctrine
in the form
of four noble truths.
The first truth
is concerned
with the problematic
word dukkha,
loosely translatable
as suffering,
which designates
the great disease
of the world
for which the Buddha's
method,
dharma,
is the cure.
This, however,
cannot be compressed
into the sweeping
assertion that
life is suffering.
The point is rather
that life as we usually
live it
is suffering,
or more exactly
is bedeviled
by the peculiar frustration
which comes from
attempting the impossible.
Perhaps, then,
frustration
is the best
equivalent of dukkha.
The second noble truth
relates to the cause
of frustration,
which is said
to be trishna,
clinging,
or grasping,
based on avidya,
which is ignorance
or unconsciousness.
Now, avidya
is the formal opposite
of awakening.
It is the state
of the mind
when hypnotized
or spellbound
by maya,
so that it mistakes
the abstract world
of things
and events
for the concrete
world of reality.
At a still deeper level
it is the lack
of self-knowledge,
lack of the realization
that all grasping
turns out
to be the futile effort
to grasp oneself,
or rather,
to make life
catch hold of itself.
The third noble truth
is concerned
with the ending
of self-frustration,
of grasping,
and of the whole
viciously circular
pattern of karma
which generates
the round.
The ending of karma
is called nirvana.
Nirvana
could be described
as desperation.
It is the act
of one
who has seen
the futility
of trying to hold
his breath or life,
prana,
indefinitely,
since to hold
the breath
is to lose it.
Thus, nirvana
is the equivalent
of moksha,
release or liberation.
Nirvana is the way
of life which ensues
when clutching
at life
has come to an end.
To attain nirvana
is also to attain
buddhahood,
awakening.
But this is not
attainment
in any ordinary sense
because no acquisition
and no motivation
are involved.
It is impossible
to desire nirvana
or to intend
to reach it
for anything
desirable
or conceivable
as an object of action
is, by definition,
not nirvana.
Nirvana can only
arise unintentionally,
spontaneously,
when the impossibility
of self-grasping
has been thoroughly
perceived.
The fourth noble truth
describes the
eightfold path
of the Buddha's dharma,
that is,
the method or doctrine
whereby self-frustration
is brought to an end.
The first two sections
have to do with thought,
the following four
have to do with action
and the final two
have to do with
contemplation or awareness.
The four sections
dealing with action
are often misunderstood
because they have
a deceptive similarity
to a system of morals.
Buddhism does not share
the Western view
that there is a moral law
enjoined by God
or by nature
which it is one's duty
to obey.
The Buddha's precepts
of conduct,
abstinence from taking life,
taking what is not given,
exploitation of the passions,
lying and intoxication,
are voluntarily assumed
rules of expediency,
the intent of which
is to remove the hindrances
to clarity,
to awareness.
Failure to observe the precepts
produces bad karma,
not because karma is a law
or moral retribution,
but because all motivated
and purposeful actions,
whether conventionally good
or bad,
are karma insofar
as they are directed
to the grasping of life.
Generally speaking,
the conventionally bad actions
are rather more grasping
than the good,
but the higher stages
of Buddhist practice
are as much concerned
with disentanglement
from good karma
as from bad.
Thus, complete action
is ultimately free,
uncontrived,
or spontaneous action
in exactly the same sense
as the Taoist
Wu Wei.
This means
not to force things.
That's the best
English translation
I've come to see.
It's sometimes translated
not doing,
no artificiality,
no interference,
but our word forcing
as when a forced laugh,
forcing a lock,
forced behavior,
forced kindness,
forced love,
in that sense forcing,
don't force it.
So,
it means action
in accordance
with the character
of the moment
and of the circumstances
in which you're acting.
You see,
you can't not interfere
with the world.
Everything you do
interferes
with your environment.
To know things
is to change them.
You cannot not interfere.
So,
the idea is
to learn
how to interfere
skillfully.
That's meaning
of Wu Wei.
Smriti,
recollectedness,
and samadhi,
contemplation,
constitute the section
dealing with
the life of meditation,
the inner,
mental practice
of the Buddha's way.
Complete recollectedness
is a constant awareness
or watching
of one's sensations,
feelings,
and thoughts
without purpose
or comment.
It is a total clarity
and presence of mind,
actively passive,
wherein events
come and go
like reflections
on a mirror.
Nothing is reflected
except what is.
Through such awareness
it is seen
that the separation
of the thinker
from the thought,
the knower
from the known,
the subject
from the object
is purely abstract.
There is not
the mind
on the one hand
and its experiences
on the other.
There is just
a process
of experiencing
in which there is
nothing to be grasped
as an object
and no one
as a subject
to grasp it.
Seen thus,
the process
of experiencing
ceases to clutch
at itself.
Thought follows thought
without interruption,
that is,
without any need
to divide itself
from itself
so as to become
its own object.
The non-duality
of the mind
in which it is
no longer divided
against itself
is Samadhi
and because of
the disappearance
of that fruitless
threshing around
of the mind
to grasp itself,
Samadhi is a state
of profound peace.
This is not
the stillness
of total inactivity
for once the mind
returns to its natural state
Samadhi persists
at all times
in walking,
standing,
sitting and lying.
But from the earliest times
Buddhism has especially
emphasized the practice
of recollectedness
and contemplation
while sitting.
Most images
of the Buddha
show him in the posture
of sitting meditation,
the posture
of the lotus,
with the legs crossed
and the feet resting,
soles upward
upon the thighs.
Sitting meditation
is not,
as is often supposed,
a spiritual exercise,
a practice followed
for some ulterior object.
From a Buddhist standpoint,
it is simply
the proper way to sit
and it seems
perfectly natural
to remain sitting
so long as there
is nothing else
to be done
and so long
as one is not consumed
with nervous agitation.
To the restless temperament
of the West,
sitting meditation
may seem to be
an unpleasant discipline
because we do not
seem to be able
to sit,
just to sit,
without qualms
of conscience,
without feeling
that we ought to be
doing something
more important
to justify our existence.
Because the teaching
of the Buddha
was a way of liberation,
it had no other object
than the experience
of nirvana.
The Buddha did not
attempt to set forth
a consistent philosophical system
trying to satisfy
that intellectual curiosity
about ultimate things
which expects answers
in words.
When pressed
for such answers,
when questioned
about the nature
of nirvana,
the origin of the world
and the reality
of the self,
the Buddha maintained
a noble silence
and went on to say
that such questions
were irrelevant
and did not lead
to the actual experience
of liberation.
It has often been said
that the later development
of Buddhism
was due to the inability
of the Indian mind
to rest content
with that silence,
so that at last
it had to indulge
its overwhelming urge
for abstract
metaphysical speculations
about the nature
of reality.
There are two sets
of Buddhist scriptures,
the Pali canon
of the southern school
of Buddhism,
which flourishes
in Ceylon,
Burma and Thailand
and the Sanskrit
Tibetan-Chinese canon
of the Mahayana
or northern school.
The vast body
of Mahayana doctrine
arose not so much
to satisfy
intellectual curiosity
as to deal
with the practical,
psychological problems
encountered
in following
the Buddha's way.
Certainly,
the treatment
of these problems
is highly scholastic
and the intellectual
level of the Mahayana
texts is very lofty.
But the consistent aim
is to bring about
the experience
of liberation,
not to construct
a philosophical system.
The great concern
of the Mahayana
is the provision
of skillful means,
upaya,
for making nirvana
accessible
to every type
of mentality.
These skillful means
range from
the sophisticated dialectic
of Nagarjuna,
whose object
is to free the mind
of all fixed conceptions,
to the pure land
doctrine of liberation
through simply repeating
the name of Amitabha.
They even include
the tantric Buddhism
of medieval India,
where liberation
may be realized
through the repetition
of sacred words
and formulae
called dharani,
and through special
types of yoga
involving sexual intercourse
with a shakti
or spiritual wife.
No one has been able
to find any trace
of a specific
dhyana school
in Indian Buddhism.
However,
it is not really necessary
to suppose that there
was ever a specific
dhyana school in India.
The creation of Zen
would seem to be
sufficiently explained
by the exposure
of Taoists and Confucians
to the main principles
of Mahayana Buddhism.
Therefore,
the appearance of trends
very close to Zen
can be seen
almost as soon
as the great
Mahayana sutras
became available
in China.
Buddhism came to China
about the year 400.
A very great
Sanskrit scholar
by the name of
Kumara Jiva
came and started
teaching Chinese
scholars Sanskrit.
Slowly then,
Indian attitudes
began to be modified
by Chinese attitudes
because the Chinese
read into these
translations
Taoist meanings,
so things got
a little altered.
So Chinese Zen
is the preeminent
expression of this
because it is
the mixture
of Indian Buddhism
and Chinese Taoism
plus a certain
Confucian practicality.
Shortly before 500,
as the dates
now check out,
another Indian
came to China
whose name
was Bodhidharma.
And Bodhidharma
was the
person who
touched off
Zen
as a specific
movement.
Bodhidharma
had a pupil
by the name
of
Eka.
The story
is that
when
Eka
came to
Bodhidharma,
Bodhidharma
refused to
accept him
as a student.
All Zen
masters do this.
They reject you.
And this
stimulates you,
you see,
to come back
stronger.
I mean,
if you're going to
learn at all.
And Eka
came back
stronger and
Bodhidharma
resisted him
stronger and
finally he
cut off his
left arm
and presented
it to
Bodhidharma
and said,
look,
here's my
left arm
given to
you as a
token that
nothing in
the world
matters to
me except
to find out
what you're
all about.
All right,
he said,
what do you
want to
know?
Eka
said,
I have
no peace
of mind.
Please
pacify my
mind.
In
Chinese,
mind is
this word
pronounced
shin,
and shin
is here.
Shin is the
heart-mind,
it's the
psychic center.
And so
Bodhidharma
said,
bring out
your shin
here before
me and
I will
pacify it.
Eka
said,
when I
look for
it,
I can't
find it.
Bodhidharma
said,
then it's
pacified.
And Eka
immediately
understood
what all
the thing
was about.
That's the
experience
called
satori
in Japanese,
wu
in Chinese,
Mandarin,
and in the
Cantonese
dialect,
it's just
what we
call in
our
modern
psychological
jargon,
the
aha
phenomenon.
The
aha
phenomenon.
Aha!
Now I
see.
Perhaps the
special
flavor of
Zen is
best
described
as a
certain
directness.
In
other
schools
of
Buddhism,
awakening
or
Bodhi
seems
remote
and
almost
superhuman,
something
to be
reached
only
after
many
lives
of
patient
effort.
But
in
Zen
there
is
always
the
feeling
that
awakening
is
something
quite
natural,
something
startlingly
obvious,
which may
occur at
any
moment.
If it
involves
a
difficulty,
it is
just
that
it
is
much
too
simple.
Zen
is
also
direct
in
its
way
of
teaching,
for it
points
directly
and
openly
to
the
truth
and
does
not
trifle
with
symbolism.
Direct
pointing
is the
open
demonstration
of Zen
by
non-symbolic
actions
or words
which usually
appear
to the
uninitiated
as
having
to
do
with
the
most
ordinary
secular
affairs
or
to
be
completely
crazy.
In
answer
to
a
question
about
Buddhism,
the
master
makes
a
casual
remark
about
the
weather
or
performs
some
simple
action
which
seems
to
have
nothing
to
do
with
philosophical
or
spiritual
matters.
Much
of the
difficulty
in
mystification
which
Zen
presents
to
the
Western
student
is
the
result
of
his
unfamiliarity
with
Chinese
ways
of
thinking.
In
English
the
differences
between
things
and
actions
are
clearly
if not
always
logically
distinguished
but
a
great
number
of
Chinese
words
do
duty
for
both
nouns
and
verbs
so
that
one
who
thinks
in
Chinese
has
little
difficulty
in
seeing
that
objects
are
also
events
that
our
world
is
a
collection
of
processes
rather
than
entities.
It is
not
easy
to
say
why
we
must
communicate
with
others
speak
and
with
ourselves
think
by
this
one
at
a
time
method.
Life
itself
does
not
proceed
in
this
cumbersome
linear
fashion
and
our
own
organisms
could
hardly
live
for
a
moment
if
they
had
to
control
themselves
by
taking
thought
of
every
breath
every
beat
of
the
heart
and
every
neural
impulse.
But
if
we
are
to
find
some
explanation
for
this
characteristic
of
thought
the
sense
of
sight
offers
a
suggestive
analogy.
For
we
have
two
types
of
vision
central
and
peripheral
not
unlike
the
spotlight
and
the
flood
light.
Central
vision
is
used
for
accurate
work
like
reading
in
which
our
eyes
are
focused
on
one
small
area
after
another
like
spotlights.
Peripheral
vision
is
less
conscious
less
bright
than
conscious
notice
of
objects
and
movements
not
in
the
direct
line
of
central
vision.
Unlike
the
spotlight
it
can
take
in
very
many
things
at
a
time.
We
are
not
suggesting
that
Westerners
simply
do
not
use
the
peripheral
mind.
Being
human
we
use
it
all
the
time
and
every
artist
every
workman
every
athlete
calls
into
play
some
special
development
of
its
powers.
But
it
is
not
academically
and
philosophically
respectable.
When
we
turn
to
ancient
Chinese
society
we
find
two
philosophical
traditions
playing
complementary
parts
Confucianism
and
Taoism.
According
to
tradition
the
originator
of
Taoism
Lao
Tse
was
an
older
contemporary
of
Confucius.
Lao Tse
is said
to have
been
the
author
of
the
Tao
Te
Ching
a
short
book
of
aphorisms
setting
forth
the
principles
of
the
and its power of virtue, day. But traditional Chinese philosophy ascribes
both Daoism and Confucianism to a still earlier source, to a work which lies at
the very foundation of Chinese thought and culture, dating anywhere from 3000 to 1200 BC.
This is the I Ching, the Book of Changes. The I Ching is ostensibly a book of
divination. It consists of oracles based on 64 abstract figures, each of which is
composed of six lines. The lines are of two kinds, divided or negative and
undivided or positive, and the six line figures or hexagrams are believed to
have been based on the various ways in which a tortoise shell will crack when
heated. But an expert in the I Ching need not necessarily use tortoise shells or
yarrow stalks. He can see a hexagram in anything, in the chance arrangement of a
bowl of flowers, in objects scattered upon a table, in the natural markings on a
pebble. A modern psychologist will recognize in this something not unlike a
Rorschach test, in which the psychological condition of a patient is diagnosed
from the spontaneous images that the patient sees in a complex inkblot. On the
other hand, we feel that we decide rationally because we base our decisions on
collecting relevant data about the matter in hand. We do not depend upon such
irrelevant trifles as the chance tossing of a coin, or the patterns of tea
leaves, or cracks in a shell. We go through the motions of gathering the
necessary information in a rational way, and then, just because of a hunch, or
because we are tired of thinking, or because the time has come to decide, we act. By
far, the greater part of our important decisions depend upon hunch, in other
words, upon the peripheral vision of the mind. Thus, the reliability of our
decisions rests, ultimately, upon our ability to feel the situation, upon the
degree to which this peripheral vision has been developed. Every exponent of the
I Ching knows this. He knows that the book itself does not contain an exact
science, but rather a useful tool which will work for him if he has a good
intuition, or if, as he would say, he is in the Tao. The I Ching had given the
Chinese mind some experience in arriving at decisions spontaneously, decisions
which are effective to the degree that one knows how to let one's mind alone,
trusting it to work by itself. This is Wu Wei, since Wu means not or non, and Wei
means action, making, doing, striving, straining, or busyness. To return to the
illustration of eyesight, the peripheral vision works most effectively, as in the
dark, when we see out of the corners of the eyes, and do not look at things
directly. Similarly, when we need to see the details of a distant object, such as a
clock, the eyes must be relaxed, not staring, not trying to see. So, too, no amount of
working with the muscles of the mouth and tongue will enable us to taste our food
more acutely. The eyes and the tongue must be trusted to do the work by
themselves. The mental or psychological equivalent of this is the special kind of
stupidity to which Lao Tse and Chuan Tse so often refer. It is not simply calmness of mind,
but non-graspingness of mind. Wu Xin, literally, no mind, which is to say,
un-self-consciousness. It is a state of wholeness in which the mind functions freely and easily.
It has been well said that Buddhism is Hinduism stripped for export. So one might say simply this,
to try and sum up what Buddhism is about. The word Buddha is derived from the root
Buddha in Sanskrit, B-U-D-H, which means to be awake. So the Buddha is the awakened man,
the man who woke up. What does he wake up from? Obviously a dream. And what kind of a dream is this?
Well, I would call it a state of hypnosis. And this state of hypnosis,
hypnosis, although I'm using hypnosis in a rather archaic sense of the word, is a state of being
entranced, spellbound, fascinated, and this is called in Sanskrit avidya. When we were hypnotized into the
notion of attending to life by conscious attention alone, by the spotlight to the exclusion of the
floodlight. And so we began to imagine that we were separate individuals. What is called in Buddhism
Sakaya Drishti, the view of separateness. And a Buddha is one who has overcome that.
So the method of Buddhism, what's called the Dharma, doesn't mean the law, it means the method.
The method is to knock the stuffing out of you, to take away everything to which you cling,
to cleanse you completely of all beliefs, all ideas, all concepts of what life is about,
so that you are completely let go. So Buddhism has no doctrines at all, that you have to believe in.
I don't care what background you come from, whether you're a Roman Catholic, or at one extreme,
or a logical positivist at the other, both are clinging to something. You see? And so
the method of Buddhism is to knock out the underpinnings, and say, well, we just,
not only do we not believe in anything, we don't even believe in not believing in anything.
So this is what Buddhism does. When it says it's the art of let go of non-attachment. Non-attachment
doesn't mean that you lose your appetite for dinner. It means simply that you stop grabbing.
Zen developed in China after Bodhidharma's time and came to a sort of golden age in the Tang and
Song dynasties. In the year 845 there was a brief but vigorous persecution of Buddhism by the Daoist
Emperor Wu Tsung. Temples and monasteries were destroyed, lands confiscated, and the monks compelled
to return to lay life. Fortunately, his enthusiasm for Daoist alchemy soon involved him in experiments
with the elixir of immortality, and from partaking of this concoction he shortly died. Zen had survived
the persecution better than any other school, and now entered a long era of imperial and popular favor.
Hundreds of monks thronged its wealthy monastic institutions, and the fortunes of the school so
prospered and its numbers so increased that the preservation of its spirit became a very serious problem.
The solution was the system of the kung-an, Japanese koan, or zen problem.
Literally, this term means a public document, or case, in the sense of a decision creating a legal precedent.
Thus the koan system involves passing a series of tests based on the mondo, or anecdotes, of the old masters.
The Rinzai school has always forbidden the publication of formally acceptable answers to the various koans,
because the whole point of the discipline is to discover them for oneself by intuition.
To know the answers without having so discovered them would be like studying the map without taking the journey.
Lacking the actual shock of recognition, the bare answers seem flat and disappointing,
and obviously no competent master would be deceived by anyone who gave them without genuine feeling.
The study of zen in the Rinzai school proceeds through six stages.
The first five stages consist of passing a graduated series of approximately 50 koan problems.
The sixth stage is a study of the Buddhist precepts and the regulations of the monk's life,
Vinaya, in the light of zen understanding.
Normally this course of training takes about 30 years.
By no means all zen monks complete the whole training.
This is required only of those who are to receive their master's Inka, or seal of approval,
so that they themselves may become masters, Roshi, thoroughly versed in all the skillful means,
upaya, for teaching zen to others.
Like so many other things of this kind, the system is as good as one makes it,
and its graduates are both tall Buddhas and short Buddhas.
It should not be assumed that a person who has passed a koan, or even many koan,
is necessarily a transformed human being whose character and way of life are radically different
from what they were before.
Nor should it be assumed that Satori, enlightenment, is a single sudden leap from the common consciousness
to complete, unexcelled awakening, Anuttara Samyak Sambodhi.
Satori really designates the sudden and intuitive way of seeing into anything,
whether it be remembering a forgotten name, or seeing into the deepest principles of Buddhism.
One seeks and seeks, but one cannot find.
One then gives up, and the answer comes by itself.
Thus there may be many occasions of Satori in the course of training,
great Satori and little Satori, and the solution of many of the koan depends upon nothing more
sensational than a kind of knack for understanding the zen style of handling Buddhist principles.
To the normal Asian concept of the master-pupil relationship,
Zen adds something of its own in the sense that it leaves the formation of the relationship
entirely to the initiative of the pupil.
The basic position of Zen is that it has nothing to say, nothing to teach.
The truth of Buddhism is so self-evident, so obvious, that it is, if anything, concealed by explaining it.
Therefore, the master does not help the student in any way, since helping would actually be hindering.
On the contrary, he goes out of his way to put obstacles and barriers in the student's path.
The preliminary hosh-shin type of koan begins, therefore, to obstruct the student by sending
him off in the direction exactly opposite to that in which he should look.
Only it does it rather cleverly, so as to conceal the stratagem.
Everyone knows that the Buddha nature is within oneself, and is not to be sought outside,
so that no student would be fooled by being told to seek it by going to India,
or by reading a certain sutra. On the contrary, he is told to look for it in himself.
Worse still, he is encouraged to seek it with the whole energy of his being,
never giving up his quest by day or night, whether actually in Zazen or whether working or eating.
He is encouraged, in fact, to make a total fool of himself,
to whirl around and around like a dog trying to catch up with its own tail.
Commonly, then, a first koan given to a student might be Hui Neng's original face,
Chao Chu's Wu, or Hakuin's one hand. At the first San Zen interview, the Roshi instructs
the reluctantly accepted student to discover his original face or aspect, that is, his basic nature,
as it was before his father and mother conceived him. When the beginning koan is Chao Chu's Wu,
the student is asked to find out why Chao Chu answered Wu, or none to the question,
does a dog have the Buddha nature? The Roshi asks to be shown this nothing. A Chinese proverb says
that a single hand does not make a clap, and therefore Hakuin asks, what is the sound of one
hand clapping? Can you hear what is not making a noise? Can you get any sound out of this one object
which has nothing to hit? Can you get any knowledge of your own real nature? What an idiotic question!
By such means the student is at last brought to a point of feeling completely stupid, as if he were
encased in a huge block of ice, unable to move or think. He just knows nothing. After some time in
this state there comes a moment when the block of ice suddenly melts, when this vast lump of
unintelligibility comes instantly alive. The problem of who or what it is becomes transparently absurd,
a question which from the beginning meant nothing whatever. There is no one left to ask himself
the question or to answer it. In this state the Roshi needs only a single look at the student
to know that he is now ready to begin his Zen training in earnest.
It is not quite the paradox which it seems to say that Zen training can begin only when it has been
finished, for this is simply the basic Mahayana principle that Prajna leads to Karuna, that awakening
is not truly attained unless it also implies the life of the Bodhisattva, the manifestation of the
marvelous use of the void for the benefit of all sentient beings. At this point the Roshi begins to
present the student with koan which asks for impossible feats of action or judgment, such as
Take the four divisions of Tokyo out of your sleeve. Stop that ship on the distant ocean.
Stop the booming of the distant bell. A girl is crossing the street. Is she the younger or the older
sister? Such koan are rather more obviously tricky than the basic introductory problems, and show the
student that what are dilemmas for thought present no barriers to action. A paper handkerchief easily
becomes the four divisions of Tokyo, and the student solves the problem of the younger or older sister
by mincing across the room like a girl. For in her absolute suchness the girl is just that.
She is only relatively sister, older or younger. The continued practice of Zazen now provides the
student with a clear unobstructed mind into which he can toss the koan like a pebble into a pool and simply
watch to see what his mind does with it. As the work goes on, crucial koan alternate with subsidiary
koan which explore the implications of the former and give the student a thorough working acquaintance
with every theme in the Buddhist view of the universe, presenting the whole body of understanding
in such a way that he knows it in his bones and in his nerves. By such means he learns to respond with
it instantly and unwaveringly in the situations of everyday life. Koan training comes to its conclusion
in the stage of perfect naturalness of freedom in both the absolute and the relative worlds. However,
because this freedom is not opposed to the conventional order, but is rather a freedom which upholds the
world, loka samgara. The final phase of study is the relationship of Zen to the rules of social and
monastic life. The koan system was developed in the Lin Chi, Rinzai school of Zen, but not without
opposition. The Soto school felt that it was much too artificial. Whereas the koan advocates used this
technique as a means for encouraging that overwhelming feeling of doubt, I Ching, which they felt to be
essential as a prerequisite for Satori, the Soto school argued that it lent itself too easily
to that very seeking for Satori which thrusts it away, or what is worse, induces an artificial Satori.
To say that the koan system has certain dangers or drawbacks is only to say that anything can be
misused. One drawback can arise from the opposition of Satori to the intense feeling of doubt which some
koan exponents so deliberately encourage. For this is to foster a dualistic Satori. To say that the depth
of the Satori is proportional to the intensity of seeking and striving which precede it is to confuse
Satori with its purely emotional adjuncts. In other words, if one wants to feel exhilaratingly light-footed,
it is always possible to go around for some time with lead in one's shoes and then take them off.
The sense of relief will certainly be proportional to the length of time
such shoes have been worn and to the weight of the lead.
This is equivalent to the old trick of religious revivalists who give their followers a tremendous
emotional uplift by first implanting an acute sense of sin and then relieving it through faith in Jesus.
But such uplifts do not last. For the Soto school, this suggests that such a Satori
has a dualistic character and is thus no more than an artificial emotional reaction.
Thus the Soto view was that proper dhyana lay in motiveless action, wu-wei, in sitting just to sit or
walking just to walk. The two schools, therefore, came to be known respectively as Kan Hua Zen,
observing the anecdote Zen, and Mo Chao Zen, silently illumined Zen.
The Rinzai school of Zen was introduced into Japan in 1191 by the Japanese monk Eisai. The Soto school
was introduced in 1227 by the extraordinary genius Dogen. Both Rinzai and Soto Zen, as we find them in
Japanese monasteries today, put enormous emphasis on Zazen, or sitting meditation, a practice which they
follow for many hours of the day, attaching great importance to the correctness of posture and the way
of breathing which it involves. To practice Zen in Japan today is, to all intents and purposes,
to practice Zazen. It may seem both strange and unreasonable that strong and intelligent people
should simply sit for hours on end. The Western mentality feels that such things are not only
unnatural, but a great waste of valuable time, however useful as a discipline for inculcating
patience and fortitude. Although the West has its own contemplative tradition in the Catholic Church,
the life of sitting and looking has lost its appeal, for no religion is valued which does not
improve the world, and it is hard to see how the world can be improved by sitting still. Yet it should
be obvious that action without wisdom, without clear awareness of the world as it really is,
can never improve anything. Furthermore, just as muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone,
it could be argued that those who sit quietly and do nothing are making one of the best
contributions to a world in turmoil. In the Sodo or Zendo, the monks hall or meditation hall of a Zen
community, there is of course nothing particularly distracting in the external surroundings.
There is a long room with wide platforms down either side where the monks both sleep and meditate.
The platforms are covered with tatami, thick floor mats of straw, and the monks sit in two rows
facing one another across the room. The silence which prevails is deepened rather than broken by
occasional sounds that float up from a nearby village, by the intermittent ringing of soft-toned bells
from other parts of the monastery, and by the chatter of birds in the trees. Other than this,
there is only the feel of the cold, clear mountain air and the woody smell of a special kind of incense.
Much importance is attached to the physical posture of Zazen. The monks sit on firmly padded cushions,
with legs crossed and feet soles upward upon the thighs. The hands rest upon the lap,
the left over the right, with palms upward and thumbs touching one another. The body is held erect,
though not stiffly erect, and the eyes are left open so that their gaze falls upon the floor
a few feet ahead. The breathing is regulated so as to be slow without strain, with the stress upon the
out-breath, and its impulse from the belly rather than the chest. This has the effect of shifting the
body's centre of gravity to the abdomen, so that the whole posture has a sense of firmness,
of being part of the ground upon which one is sitting. The slow, easy breathing from the belly
works upon the consciousness like bellows, and gives it a still, bright clarity. The beginner is
advised to accustom himself to the stillness by doing nothing more than counting his breaths,
from one to ten, over and over again, until the sensation of sitting without comment becomes
effortless and natural. While the monks are thus seated, two attendants walk slowly back and forth
along the floor between the platforms, each carrying a kesaku, or warning stick, round at one end and
flattened at the other, a symbol of the Bodhisattva Manjusri's sword of Prajna. As soon as they see a monk going
to sleep, or sitting in an incorrect posture, they stop before him, bow ceremoniously, and beat him on
the shoulders. It is said that this is not punishment, but an invigorating massage to take the stiffness
out of the shoulder muscles and bring the mind back to a state of alertness. However, monks with
whom I have discussed this practice seem to have the same wryly humorous attitude about it which one
associates with the usual corporal disciplines of boys' boarding schools. Furthermore, the Sodo
regulations say, at the time of morning service the dozing ones are to be severely dealt with the
kesaku. At intervals the sitting posture is interrupted and the monks fall into ranks for a
swift march around the floor between the platforms to keep themselves from sluggishness. The periods of
zazen are also interrupted for work in the monastery grounds, cleaning the premises, services in the main
shrine or Buddha hall, and other duties as well as for meals and short hours of sleep. At certain times
of year, zazen is kept up almost continuously from 3.30 a.m. until 10 p.m., and these long periods are
called seshin, or collecting the mind. Every aspect of the monks' lives is conducted according to a precise,
though not ostentatious, ritual which gives the atmosphere of the Sodo a slightly military air.
The rituals are signaled and accompanied by about a dozen different kinds of bells, clappers,
and wooden gongs, struck in various rhythms to announce the times for zazen, meals, services,
lectures, or sanzen interviews with the master. Mature western students who discover an interest in
zen as a philosophy will find that zen is a discipline enforced with a big stick. They will
find that although it is still an effective way of liberation at its upper end, its main preoccupation
is with a disciplinary regimen which trains character in the same way as the old-fashioned
British public school or the Jesuit novitiate trained character. Now people who go to Japan
to study zen have read about it in the writings of Suzuki and R.H. Blythe and myself,
and very often they're in for a curious shock. They suppose that zen people are kind of quakerish,
and they are shocked to find that procedures in a zen monastery and zen temples are highly ritualistic,
that the temple buildings and grounds are positively sumptuous, and that zen
is existing in terms of a big ecclesiastical organization.
Most of the monks in the monasteries are the sons of priests. You see, a zen monastery is a seminary more
than a monastery. It's a training school. It isn't a monastery in our sense where you take life vows and
you enter into the monastery for your whole life with the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. It's a training
school from which you graduate in due course when the teacher thinks you're ready. When you've taken the
training, there are various options open to you, and the usual one is to become a temple priest.
Every zen monastery stands in the middle of an enormous campus. There is the training center,
and then surrounding it, ever so many separate buildings, which are individual temples.
And these temples were originally built by wealthy patrons of the monastery
to provide a place where a priest would, for all time, chant sutras for the future
assistance of the wealthy patron through his future incarnations. Occasionally they will take a few
students for meditation, but by and large the zen priest is a sutra chanter, and this is true of almost
all Buddhist priests, serving the community in much the same way as a catholic priest serves a parish.
But you see, these temples are passed down in the family from father to son.
So my oldest son should take over the temple from me if I'm a priest. So I say, you go to this,
to the zen monastery, and you train there until the teacher says you're ready, and then you can come back
and help me out around the temple, and when I die or retire you take it over. So most of the boys,
and they are boys, many of them just out of high school, the boys in there are not really there because
they have a strong vocation for it. They are there because they've been sent there through parental authority.
And therefore it is not surprising that their attitude to zen is rather mechanical.
I notice this more in the Soto sect than in the Rinzai sect, but to a great extent it is a kind of
mechanical existence. They are going through a prolonged hazing process, as it were, in order to be fit
to take over father's job, and to have zen style. Zen style is very important. Just as we train physicians
to have a good bedside manner, or a priest to behave as a priest in the style of a priest, and that carries
with it a certain aura of tradition and authority and conviction. And so these boys are trained very
carefully to walk, to carry themselves, to speak and behave according to zen style. And it's very pleasant.
I must say, they are very presentable people. They are unlike ordinary Japanese people, in that they're not nervous.
They don't giggle when embarrassed. It's difficult to embarrass them. And occasionally, every now and then,
one of them turns out to be an enthusiast, and really gets through with zen. But by and large, I'm sorry to say,
that in both the Rinzai and the Soto schools, a large number of products are graduated, who really have no
feeling for zen, who never quite got the point, but manage to struggle through the motions. And thus, there are increasingly few
great teachers of zen in the country. There is, however, an awakening going on, and times are beginning to change,
and to a great extent, this is the result of the Western interest in zen. As a matter of fact, this sort of revival
is true all over Asia. If you read a book by Ernst Benz called Buddhism or Communism, it's very fascinating.
And he shows to what extent there has been a Buddhist revival in Asia through Western intervention, interest,
and so on. And this is particularly true in Japan. But the real struggle and the real problem is this.
The younger generation in Japan is not interested in Buddhism, period. If you ask a Japanese, say roughly between
30 and 40, what's your religion? He's apt to say, my parents are Buddhists. As for himself, he has no interest,
and he knows nothing about it. When they hear Sutra chanting...
...
They think, oh, what a bore.
Nobody understands it anyway because the sutras are chanted in Sino-Japanese.
That is to say, it is a peculiar Japanese way of pronouncing Chinese.
It is not the Japanese way of pronouncing Japanese.
And so nobody knows what it's about.
Most of the people who are chanting don't know what it's about.
And of course some of it, insofar as it's what's called dharani, didn't mean anything in the first place.
And so they have this modern feeling, what does it all mean?
Second generation Japanese in the United States can't stand it when the priests chant a sutra to pacify the old folks.
They want the whole thing changed.
And they sing in the Buddhist churches in the United States.
Buddha loves me, this I know, for the sutra tells me so.
They have Sunday school and everything, they organize just like a Protestant church.
Because the Nisei and the Sansei, second and third generation Japanese, want to slip into the American scene.
And unlike the Chinese who are very retentive of their culture, the Japanese settlers here seem to want to lose it and become Rotarian.
And so in Japan today, much the same situation prevails.
There is an extraordinary outbreak of new religions, which we would hear would call cults, like Tenrikyu and so on.
But so far as Buddhism is concerned, the younger generation couldn't care less.
And that's why, you see, the only young people who frequent the temples, by and large, are priests' sons.
So there is this tremendous problem of, unless the Buddhist tradition is to go down the drain completely,
of re-familiarizing the Japanese with what it's all about.
So either the modern Japanese are going to let the whole thing go down the drain,
or else somehow it's got to be re-presented to them in a modern idiom.
They wake up and realize that they have a treasure.
When one has learned to let one's mind alone, so that it functions in the integrated and spontaneous way that is natural to it,
one begins to show the special kind of virtue, or power, called Dei.
A profound regard for Dei underlies the entire higher culture of the Far East,
so much so that it has been made the basic principle of every kind of art and craft.
While it is true that these arts employ what are to us highly difficult technical disciplines,
it is always recognized that they are instrumental and secondary,
and that the superior work has the quality of an accident.
This is not merely a masterful mimicry of the accidental, an assumed spontaneity in which the careful planning does not show.
It lies at a much deeper and more genuine level.
For what the culture of Daoism and Zen proposes is that one might become the kind of person who,
without intending it, is a source of marvelous accidents.
One occasionally encounters a Zen practice which stresses the use of one's ordinary work as the means of meditation.
This principle underlies the common use of such arts as tea ceremony, flute playing, brush drawing,
archery, fencing, and jiu-jitsu as ways of practicing Zen.
One of the great applications of Zen was to the art of fencing.
And when you learn fencing, you see you have to learn to be spontaneous,
because here of all places it is true that he who hesitates is lost.
If you're engaged in combat, you see, and you stop to think what sort of a defense or attack you ought to make,
the enemy's got you.
So the way they teach people spontaneity in fencing is very interesting.
When you start into fencing school, you of course live with the teacher.
He has a kind of ashram.
But you're given a janitorial job.
You clean up, you wash dishes, you put bedding away, and things like that.
While you're going about your daily business, the master surprises you with a practice sword,
which is made of four strips of bamboo rather loosely tied together.
And he hits you with this, surprisingly and suddenly, from nowhere.
And you are expected to defend yourself with anything available.
With the bedding, with the broom, with the pots and pans, just anything to defend.
But the poor student never knows when the attack is coming,
or where, what direction it's coming from.
And he begins to get tense.
And he begins to go around everywhere on the sort of alert, you see, watching,
watching which direction it's coming from.
And as he goes down a certain passage, feeling that the master is probably lurking around that corner,
and he's all set to go for him with that, that he gets that practice sword,
he suddenly gets hit from behind.
So eventually, he gives up.
There's absolutely no way of preparing for the attack.
And so he just wanders around, feeling, well, if it hits, it's going to hit.
And then he's ready to begin fencing.
Because if you prepare for an attack from a specific direction,
and it comes from some other direction, you have to withdraw from the direction in which you had expected it,
and send your energy in another direction, and that takes time.
So what you do is, you go around with a mind of no expectation.
That is called, uh, Mushin, or Munen.
This is a very important Zen expression.
You could also call it, no heart.
Because the character Shin means both heart and mind,
but it isn't quite the same as our word heartless, as we use it,
and it isn't the same as the word mindless, as we use it, meaning stupid.
To be in the state of Mushin is to have a mind like a mirror.
And of this, the Taoist sage Zhuangzi said,
the perfect man employs his mind as a mirror.
It grasps nothing, it refuses nothing, it receives but does not keep.
And when anything comes in front of a mirror, it reflects it instantly.
The mirror doesn't wait to reflect it.
And this is also likened to a vessel of water, like a wooden barrel.
When you make a hole in the barrel, the water instantly flows out of the hole.
Because the water is always available to come out.
It doesn't have to choose.
And so you could also say that Mushin is what Krishnamurti calls choicelessness.
To be or not to be, that is the question.
But there is no question about to be or not to be.
See, because to be and not to be go together, as we saw, they arise mutually.
Bowmen and swordsmen, trained by quite other methods, can equal the feats of Zen-inspired samurai.
But so far as Zen is concerned, the end results have nothing to do with it.
For as we have seen all along, Zen has no goal.
It is a traveling without point, with nowhere to go.
To travel is to be alive, but to get somewhere is to be dead.
For as our own proverb says, to travel well is better than to arrive.
A world which increasingly consists of destinations without journeys between them,
a world which values only getting somewhere as fast as possible, becomes a world without substance.
One can get anywhere and everywhere, and yet the more this is possible,
the less is anywhere and everywhere worth getting to.
And it is all very much like eating the precise ends of a banana without getting what lies in between.
The point, therefore, of these arts is the doing of them rather than the accomplishment.
But more than this, the real joy of them lies in what turns up unintentionally in the course of practice.
Planned surprises are as much of a contradiction as intentional satori,
and whoever aims at satori is, after all, like a person who sends himself Christmas presents
for fear that others will forget him.
One must simply face the fact that Zen is all that side of life which is completely beyond our control,
and which will not come to us by any amount of forcing,
or wangling, or cunning stratagems which produce only fakes of the real thing.
But the last word of Zen is not an absolute dualism,
the rather barren world of controlled action on the one side,
and the spontaneous world of uncontrolled surprise on the other.
There was, for example, a great Zen monk, who lived shortly after 1000 AD,
who had a very peculiar way of painting.
He had long hair, and he would soak it, he'd get very drunk on rice wine,
then he'd soak his hair in ink, and slosh it all over the paper.
Then he would do a Rorschach test on it,
and decide what kind of a landscape it actually was,
and then put in the finishing touches.
And suddenly, out of this apparent mess, a great landscape would be evoked.
But the whole art of the thing lay in putting in the finishing touches.
And also, there's a very curious thing.
If a person who is untrained in painting, makes a mess with a brush,
it's liable to be just a mess.
Whereas if a person who has the feeling of painting in them for a long time,
and they make a mess with a brush, or just do anything, it looks interesting.
When you get a piece of jade, and look at its markings,
you don't think of them as chaotic.
When you see a dirty old ashtray, with cigarette butts in it,
and rolled up bits of paper, and pieces of Kleenex, and things that everybody's throw away,
you know that that's a mess.
And you don't want that kind of a mess around, you get rid of it.
But, when you look at the patterns on rocks, or the shapes of clouds,
or the outlines of trees, you've got something which isn't orderly in the sense of being symmetrical.
It doesn't form fours.
You know?
But you know it's beautiful.
Blue mountains are spontaneously blue mountains.
White clouds are spontaneously white clouds.
They just do that, you see?
That's their game.
And, but they are definitely something that we recognize as having an order,
and not being chaos.
But we can't quite pin down wherein that order consists.
So there is this always ungraspable, indefinable principle of order in things, which is Li.
And, uh, that explains why Chinese art appreciates, in all that it does,
a certain element of the uncontrolled.
Now, you see, when you use, for example, a brush,
the brush runs a little dry.
And you're at the mercy of the hairs of this brush.
Now, some painters like to let everything go wild.
But what the ideal that they're aiming at is,
and which you have to be a tremendous master to accomplish,
is to let it go wild within limits.
To create a situation which overall is orderly,
but allows for the unexpected random surprises.
The sudden visions of nature, which form the substance of haiku,
arise in the same way.
For they are never there when one looks for them.
The artificial haiku always feels like a piece of life,
which has been deliberately broken off, or wrenched away from the universe.
Where the genuine haiku has dropped off all by itself,
and has the whole universe inside it.
From the earliest times, the Zen masters had shown a partiality for short,
gnomic poems, at once laconic and direct,
like their answers to questions about Buddhism.
Just as Tung Shan's Three Pounds of Flax was an answer full of Zen,
but not about Zen,
so the most expressive Zen poetry is that which says nothing.
Which, in other words, is not philosophy or commentary about life.
Basho, who was the great 17th century master of haiku,
said, get a three-foot child to write haiku.
Because they are the sort of direct,
guileless things that children would say.
But now there are magazines devoted to haiku poetry,
where in every issue there will be 10,000 haikus,
written by people all over the country.
And they get so stilted and so affected that one wish one had never heard of haiku.
But there's no formula, you see, for fixing it,
so that you can do it again and again and again.
Because the moment you start doing it again and again and again,
it isn't it anymore, the real thing has escaped.
Do you remember some time ago,
there was a fashion for having wrought iron fish,
just the outline of the fish.
Some artist originally, you know, put this fish together and it looked great.
But then you suddenly found them in every gift shop and dime store,
and they looked perfectly terrible.
So this is the mysterious thing.
Well, not only in the arts, but in lifestyles, in everything,
when you start saying, what is the technique for getting this thing?
And people say, well, this is it.
It's gone.
And when you know how something is done, it doesn't surprise you.
This is known in Zen as a very difficult,
this is the most difficult virtue to attain.
Bougie.
It means nothing special.
It means no business, no artificiality.
So, bougie is where something doesn't stand out like a sore thumb.
But it is absolutely different from being modest.
A bougie person may be immodest,
in the sense that if he knows he can do something well,
he just says he can.
He doesn't go with all sorts of blushing violet techniques.
Bougie, you see, is this mysterious quality of nothing special, no special method.
Because if there is, let me repeat, if we do know the method and we know it infallibly,
it ceases to be interesting.
Thus the aimless life is the constant theme of Zen art of every kind, expressing the artist's own
inner state of going nowhere in a timeless moment.
All of us have those moments occasionally, and it is just then that we catch those vivid glimpses of
the world which cast such a glow over the intervening wastes of memory.
The smell of burning leaves on a morning of autumn haze, a flight of sunlit pigeons against a
thundercloud, the sound of an unseen waterfall at dusk, or the single cry of some unidentified
bird in the depths of the forest. In the art of Zen, every landscape, every sketch of bamboo in
the wind or of lonely rocks is an echo of such moments.
The sense of an infinitely expanded present is nowhere stronger than in Chano Yu, the art of tea.
Since Chano Yu has become a conventional accomplishment for young women, it has been
made the subject of a great deal of sentimental nonsense, associated with brocaded young dolls
in moonlit rooms, nervously trying to imitate the most stilted feelings about porcelain and cherry
blossom. But in the austere purity of, say, the Soshu-sen school, the art of tea is a
genuine expression of Zen which requires, if necessary, no further apparatus than a bowl,
tea, and hot water. If there is not even that, Chado, the way of tea, can be practiced everywhere
and with anything, since it is really the same as Zen.
In the whole history of ceramics, the Chinese developed some of the most elegant work imaginable
with translucent porcelain, white clay, the most subtle designs of all, unbelievable. The lacquer,
the boxes in pure gold, and oh, you know, it was delicious stuff. But then it was just like having too much
eclairs, and uh, ice cream, and filet mignon. Now what happened? The people who practiced Zen,
suddenly got an eye for the beauty of the ordinary. There were two reasons for this.
One was that they became fascinated with what happened spontaneously,
what pattern a brush would make when handled roughly, and the hairlines were shown.
They also, because they practiced Sazen, which is sitting quietly, not thinking of anything special,
but having a completely open mind, that puts you into a state
state where you get much better eyes and ears than you ordinarily have. And you start really seeing things.
Somebody suddenly realized, you see, just the sound of the water is marvelous.
And so, in the same way, they found that it was quite as satisfactory
to listen to the kettle boiling as to listen to an elaborate concert. So what did they do?
They started through, particularly a man called Senna Rikyu, to give parties for very small few guests,
in shacks, little huts in the garden, made of uh, very primitive materials, such as mud walls,
and where they would go and sit, and out of the simplest utensils, carefully chosen by a superb
artist, they would simply sit and enjoy the uncomplicated life. And so was born the tea ceremony.
It was a going back to the primitive, after people were sick of too much civilization.
I was present at a tea ceremony, celebrated by a Zen monk, who happens to be an American.
And he is a man who has done a lot of mountaineering.
And he has, therefore, with him at all times, uh, the sort of equipment that you take on camping in
the mountains, because he does a lot of climbing in Japan. And I said to him, won't you, uh,
well, this afternoon would be very nice to have the tea ceremony, and you did it once before here,
and it was so pleasant. Would you serve it again? He said, yes, by all means.
Before, he had served tea ceremony in the style that Zen monks do it, which is rather simple and
direct, and much more comfortable than all these well-educated ladies who are on, tittering about it,
and are on tiptoe, and nervous, and hoping they won't make a mistake, and all that kind of thing.
It's just dreadful. So he suddenly came in with a small primus stove, set that down.
Then he had an old paint pot, which had inside it an aluminum mug. He set that down.
He then, uh, proceeded to take the aluminum mug out, pour water into the paint pot, and set that on
the primus stove, but he ritually pumped up the primus stove. He did everything in the style of tea
ceremony, but this was a dirty old primus stove. And suddenly the thing began to flame like the god
Fudo, and, uh, he mixed the tea in the traditional way with the whisk, had all the perfect lovely manners,
handing us the aluminum cup. And we got into a long, we, it's a custom after the tea ceremony,
after you've drunk, to pass all the utensils round for inspection. And this is exactly what happened.
And we found that the aluminum cup had the year 1945 stamped on it for some reason.
We got into a discussion about styles of aluminum cups made in 1945.
And it was the funniest thing, but it was a, a complete makeover of the tea ceremony into the modern idiom.
The Zen monks liked also to cultivate gardens which took advantage of an existing natural setting,
to arrange rocks and plants along the edges of a stream, creating a more informal atmosphere,
suggesting a mountain canyon adjoining the monastery buildings. They were always sparing and reserved in
their use of color, as were the sung painters before them, since masses of flowers in sharply varying colors
are seldom found in the state of nature. Though not symmetrical, the Japanese garden has a clearly
perceptible form. Unlike so many English and American flower gardens, it does not resemble a
daub in oil colors, and this delight in the form of plants carries over into the art of flower arrangement
inside the house, accentuating the shapes of single sprays and leaves, rather than bunched colors.
The best image might be a garden consisting of no more than an expanse of raked sand as a ground for
several unhewn rocks overgrown with lichen and moss, such as one may see today in the Zen temples of Kyoto.
The media are the simplest imaginable. The effect is as if one had hardly touched it,
as if it had been transported unchanged from the seashore. But in practice, only the most sensitive
and experienced artist can achieve it. This sounds, of course, as though Zen flavor were a studied and
affected primitivism. Sometimes it is. But the genuine Zen flavor comes when one is almost miraculously
natural without intending to be so. The Zen life is not to make oneself, but rather to grow that way.
Taoism is, then, the original Chinese way of liberation, which combined with Indian Mahayana
Buddhism to produce Zen. It is a liberation from convention and of the creative power of day.
Every attempt to describe and formulate it in words and one at a time thought symbols must, of necessity, distort it.
If we are going to introduce Westerners to the fundamentals of Zen,
we need to revise a bit the procedures and rationale of meditation, so that it doesn't become a competitive
one-upmanship marathon as to who can take this, who can endure, because then that puts it under the domain
of time. The important thing to emphasize is presence, being completely here and not feeling guilty if you enjoy it.
And you can do that most easily in any kind of activity that does not require much discursive thought.
So, in other words, if you want to be shucking peas or digging a plot of ground
or putting up a fence or anything, which you can do without a great deal of discursive thought,
it's perfectly good for meditation. In Buddhism there are what they call the four dignities of man
and they are walking, standing, sitting and lying. And so Zazen is simply sitting Zen.
There is also lying Zen, which is sleeping Zen, of when you sleep, sleep. There is standing Zen,
and there is walking Zen. And there is a very good method of meditation, is the walking method.
That's where you have a cloister that you can simply stroll around. But be here.
Now, there is a difficulty that people come into with this. They get the feeling of, well, is it only this?
I mean, is this all? Nothing seems to be happening much. It's just what's going on. I don't feel,
I feel a little frustrated. I feel particularly enlightened. I, it's just nothing special at all.
I mean, I'm wondering, do I have to do this longer in order for something to happen or what? No, the, the,
there's nothing special supposed to happen. Uh, it's just that this here is it. But you see, you have
difficulty in, in, in accepting it because you still feel, uh, how shall I say, um, the lack of nerve,
to see that you are all of it. You are not an observer who is witnessing the present moment
as something happening to you. If you feel it that way, then you naturally ask, well, what next?
The important thing is that this present which you are experiencing is all of you.
It's not you here looking at the floor there. Uh, the floor is just as much you as the
organism looking at it. You are doing the floor just like you're doing your feet.
It's all one world. And you're responsible for it. So have a good time.
We hope you've enjoyed this Audio Renaissance production of The Way of Zen.