I
The essence of Zen Buddhism consists in acquiring a new viewpoint of
looking at life and things generally. By this I mean that if we want
to get into the inmost life of Zen, we must forego all our ordinary
habits of thinking which control our everyday life, we must try to see
if there is any other way of judging things, or rather if our ordinary
way is always sufficient to give us the ultimate satisfaction of our
spiritual needs. If we feel dissatisfied somehow with this life, if
there is something in our ordinary way of living that deprives us
of freedom in its most sanctified sense, we must endeavour to find
a way somewhere which gives us a sense of finality and contentment.
Zen proposes to do this for us and assures us of the acquirement of a
new point of view in which life assumes a fresher, deeper, and more
satisfying aspect. This acquirement, however, is really and naturally
the greatest mental cataclysm one can go through with in life. It is
no easy task, it is a kind of fiery baptism, and one has to go through
the storm, the earthquake, the overthrowing of the mountains, and the
breaking in pieces of the rocks.
This acquiring of a new point of view in our dealings with life and
the world is popularly called by Japanese Zen students “satori”[5.1]
(_wu_ in Chinese). It is really another name for Enlightenment
(_anuttara-samyak-saṁbodhi_), which is the word used by the Buddha and
his Indian followers ever since his realisation under the Bodhi-tree
by the River Nairañjanā. There are several other phrases in Chinese
designating this spiritual experience, each of which has a special
connotation, showing tentatively how this phenomenon is interpreted. At
all events, there is no Zen without satori, which is indeed the Alpha
and Omega of Zen Buddhism. Zen devoid of satori is like a sun
without its light and heat. Zen may lose all its literature, all its
monasteries, and all its paraphernalia; but as long as there is satori
in it, it will survive to eternity. I want to emphasise this most
fundamental fact concerning the very life of Zen; for there are some
even among the students of Zen themselves who are blind to this central
fact and are apt to think when Zen has been explained away logically
or psychologically or as one of the Buddhist philosophies which can be
summed up by using highly technical and conceptual Buddhist phrases,
Zen is exhausted and there remains nothing in it that makes it what it
is. But my contention is, the life of Zen begins with the opening of
satori (_kai wu_ in Chinese).[5.2]
Satori may be defined as an intuitive looking into the nature of
things in contradistinction to the analytical or logical understanding
of it. Practically, it means the unfolding of a new world hitherto
unperceived in the confusion of a dualistically-trained mind. Or we may
say that with satori our entire surroundings are viewed from quite an
unexpected angle of perception. Whatever this is, the world for those
who have gained a satori is no more the old world as it used to be;
even with all its flowing streams and burning fires, it is never the
same one again. Logically stated, all its opposites and contradictions
are united and harmonised into a consistent organic whole. This is a
mystery and a miracle, but according to the Zen masters such is being
performed every day. Satori can thus be had only through our once
personally experiencing it.
Its semblance or analogy in a more or less feeble and fragmentary
way is gained when a difficult mathematical problem is solved, or
when a great discovery is made, or when a sudden means of escape is
realised in the midst of most desperate complications, in short,
when one exclaims, “Eureka! eureka!” But this refers only to the
intellectual aspect of satori, which is therefore necessarily partial
and incomplete and does not touch the very foundations of life
considered one indivisible whole. Satori as the Zen experience must
be concerned with the entirety of life. For what Zen proposes
to do is the revolution, and the revaluation as well, of oneself as
a spiritual unity. The solving of a mathematical problem ends with
the solution, it does not affect one’s whole life. So with all other
particular questions, practical or scientific, they do not enter
the basic life-tone of the individual concerned. But the opening of
satori is the re-making of life itself. When it is genuine—for there
are many simulacra of it—its effects on one’s moral and spiritual
life are revolutionary, and they are so enhancing, purifying, as well
as exacting. When a master was asked what constituted Buddhahood,
he answered, “The bottom of a pale is broken through.” From this we
can see what a complete revolution is produced by this spiritual
experience. The birth of a new man is really cataclysmic.
In the psychology of religion this spiritual enhancement of one’s
whole life is called “conversion.” But as the term is generally used
by Christian converts, it cannot be applied in its strict sense to
the Buddhist experience, especially to that of the Zen followers;
the term has too affective or emotional a shade to take the place of
satori, which is above all noetic. The general tendency of Buddhism
is as we know more intellectual than emotional, and its doctrine of
Enlightenment distinguishes it sharply from the Christian view of
salvation; Zen as one of the Mahayana schools naturally shares a
large amount of what we may call transcendental intellectualism which
does not issue in logical dualism. When poetically or figuratively
expressed, satori is “the opening of the mind-flower,”[5.3] or
“the removing of the bar,”[5.4] or “the brightening up of the
mind-works.”[5.5] All these tend to mean the clearing up of a passage
which has been somehow blocked, preventing the free, unobstructed
operation of a machine or a full display of the inner works. With the
removal of the obstruction, a new vista opens before one, boundless in
expanse and reaching the end of time. As life thus feels quite free
in its activity, which was not the case before the awakening, it now
enjoys itself to the fullest extent of its possibilities, to attain
which is the object of Zen discipline. This is often taken to be
equivalent to “vacuity of interest and poverty of purpose.” But
according to the Zen masters the doctrine of non-achievement concerns
itself with the subjective attitude of mind which goes beyond the
limitations of thought. It does not deny ethical ideals, nor does it
transcend them; it is simply an inner state of consciousness without
reference to its objective consequences.