“What is Zen?” This is one of the most difficult questions to answer,
I mean, to the satisfaction of the inquirer; for Zen refuses even
tentatively to be defined or described in any manner. The best way to
understand it will be of course to study and practise it at least some
years in the Meditation Hall. Therefore, even after the reader has
carefully gone over this Essay, he will still be at sea as to the real
signification of Zen. It is, in fact, in the very nature of Zen that
it evades all definition and explanation, that is to say, Zen cannot
be converted into ideas, it can never be described in logical terms.
For this reason, the Zen masters declare that it is “independent of
letter,” being “a special transmission outside the orthodox teachings.”
But the purpose of this Essay is not just to demonstrate that Zen
is an unintelligible thing and that there is no use of attempting
to discourse about it. My object, on the contrary, will be to make
it clear to the fullest extent of my ability, however imperfect and
inadequate that may be. And there are several ways to do this. Zen
may be treated psychologically, ontologically, or epistemologically,
or historically as I did in the first part of this book to a certain
extent. These are all extremely interesting each in its way, but they
are a great undertaking requiring years of preparation. What here
I propose to do, therefore, will be a practical exposition of the
subject-matter by giving some aspects of the _modus operandi_ of Zen
instruction as carried out by the masters for the enlightenment of the
pupils. The perusal of these accounts will help us to get into the
spirit of Zen to the limits of its intelligibility.
I
As I conceive it, Zen is the ultimate fact of all philosophy and
religion. Every intellectual effort must culminate in it or
rather must start from it, if it is to bear any practical fruits.
Every religious faith must spring from it if it has to prove at all
efficiently and livingly workable in our active life. Therefore, Zen
is not necessarily the fountain of Buddhist thought and life alone;
it is very much alive also in Christianity, Mahommedanism, in Taoism,
and even in positivistic Confucianism. What makes all these religions
and philosophies vital and inspiring, keeping up their usefulness and
efficiency, is due to the presence in them of what I may designate as
the Zen element. Mere scholasticism or mere sacerdotalism will never
create a living faith. Religion requires something inwardly propelling,
energising, and capable of doing work. The intellect is useful in
its place, but when it tries to cover the whole field of religion it
dries up the source of life. Feeling or mere faith is so blind and
will grasp anything that may come across and hold to it as the final
reality. Fanaticism is vital enough as far as its explosiveness is
concerned, but this is not a true religion, and its practical sequence
is the destruction of the whole system, not to speak of the fate of
its own being. Zen is what makes the religious feeling run through its
legitimate channel and what gives life to the intellect.
Zen does this by giving one a new point of view of looking at things,
a new way of appreciating the truth and beauty of life and the
world, by discovering a new source of energy in the inmost recesses
of consciousness, and by bestowing on one a feeling of completeness
and sufficiency. That is to say, Zen works miracles by overhauling
the whole system of one’s inner life and opening up a world hitherto
entirely undreamt of. This may be called a resurrection. And Zen tends
to emphasise the speculative element, though confessedly it opposes
this, more than anything else in the whole process of the spiritual
revolution, and in this respect Zen is truly Buddhistic. Or it may be
better to say that Zen makes use of the phraseology belonging to the
sciences of speculative philosophy. Evidently, the feeling element
is not so prominently visible in Zen as in the Pure Land sects where
“bakti” (faith) is all in all; Zen on the other hand emphasises the
faculty of seeing (_darśana_) or knowing (_vidyā_) though not in
the sense of reasoning out, but in that of intuitively grasping.
According to the philosophy of Zen, we are too much of a slave to the
conventional way of thinking, which is dualistic through and through.
No “interpenetration” is allowed, there takes place no fusing of
opposites in our everyday logic. What belongs to God is not of this
world, and what is of this world is incompatible with the divine. Black
is not white, and white is not black. Tiger is tiger, and cat is cat,
and they will never be one. Water flows, a mountain towers. This is the
way things or ideas go in this universe of the senses and syllogisms.
Zen, however, upsets this scheme of thought and substitutes a new one
in which there exists no logic, no dualistic arrangement of ideas.
We believe in dualism chiefly because of our traditional training.
Whether ideas really correspond to facts is another matter requiring a
special investigation. Ordinarily, we do not inquire into the matter,
we just accept what is instilled into our minds; for to accept is more
convenient and practical, and life is to a certain extent, though
not in reality, made thereby easier. We are in nature conservatists,
not because we are lazy, but because we like repose and peace, even
superficially. But the time comes when traditional logic holds no more
true, for we begin to feel contradictions and splits and consequently
spiritual anguish. We lose trustful repose which we experienced when
we blindly followed the traditional ways of thinking. Eckhart says
that we are all seeking repose whether consciously or not, just as the
stone cannot cease moving until it touches the earth. Evidently, the
repose we seemed to enjoy before we were awakened to the contradictions
involved in our logic, was not the real one, the stone has kept moving
down towards the ground. Where then is the ground of non-dualism on
which the soul can be really and truthfully tranquil and blessed? To
quote Eckhart again, “Simple people conceive that we are to see God
as if He stood on that side and we on this. It is not so; God and I
are one in the act of my perceiving Him.” In this absolute oneness of
things Zen establishes the foundations of its philosophy.
The idea of absolute oneness is not the exclusive possession of
Zen, there are other religions and philosophies that preach the same
doctrine. If Zen, like other monisms or theisms, merely laid down this
principle and did not have anything specifically to be known as Zen, it
would have long ceased to exist as such. But there is in Zen something
unique which makes up its life and justifies its claim to be the most
precious heritage of Eastern culture. The following “mondo” or dialogue
(literally, questioning and answering)[6.1] will give us a glimpse into
the ways of Zen. A monk asked Jōshu (Chao-chou), one of the greatest
masters in China,[6.2] “What is the one ultimate word of truth?”
Instead of giving him any specific answer, he made a simple response
saying, “Yes.” The monk who naturally failed to see any sense in this
kind of response asked for a second time, and to this the master roared
back, “I am not deaf!”[f125] See how irrelevantly (shall I say?) the
all-important problem of absolute oneness or of the ultimate reason
is treated here! But this is characteristic of Zen, this is where Zen
transcends logic and overrides the tyranny and misrepresentation of
ideas. As I said before, Zen mistrusts the intellect, does not rely
upon traditional and dualistic methods of reasoning, and handles
problems after its own original manners.
To cite another instance before going further into the subject proper.
The same old Jōshu was asked another time, “One light divides itself
into hundreds of thousands of lights; may I ask where this one light
originates?”[f126][6.5] This question like the last mentioned is
one of the deepest and most baffling problems of philosophy. But the
old master did not waste much time in answering the question, nor did
he resort to any wordy discussion. He simply threw off one of his shoes
without a remark. What did he mean by it? To understand all this, it is
necessary that we should acquire a “third eye” as they say, and learn
to look at things from a new point of view.
How is this new way of looking at things demonstrated by the Zen
masters? Their methods are naturally very uncommon, unconventional,
illogical, and consequently incomprehensible to the uninitiated.
The object of the present essay will be to describe those methods
classified under the following general headings: I. Verbal Method, and
II. Direct Method. The first method may be further divided into: 1.
Paradox; 2. Going Beyond Opposites; 3. Contradiction; 4. Affirmation;
5. Repetition; and 6. Exclamation. The Direct Method, so called, means
a display of physical force, and may be subdivided into several groups
such as gesture, striking, performance of a definite set of acts,
directing others to move about, etc. But as I do not mean to offer here
any scientific and thoroughgoing classification of the Zen masters’
ways of dealing with their pupils in order to initiate them into the
mysteries of Zen, I will not attempt to be exhaustive in this article.
Later I will write fully about the Direct Method. If I make the reader
acquire here a kind of understanding as to the general tendencies and
peculiarities of Zen Buddhism, I regard my task as a success.