Arthur Waley

“ Whether such states of mind are actually more valuable than our ordinary consciousness is difficult to determine. Certainly no one has much right to an opinion who has not experienced them. But something akin to Samādhi—a sudden feeling of contact with a unity more real than the apparent complexity of things—is probably not an uncommon experience. The athlete, the creative artist, the lover, the philosopher—all, I fancy, get a share of it, not when seeking to escape from the visible world ”

“ I do not mean to suggest that Chinese artists found in Zen a short cut to the production of beauty. Zen aims at the annihilation of consciousness, whereas art is produced by an interaction of conscious and unconscious faculties. How far such an interaction can be promoted by the psychic discipline of Zen no layman can judge; moreover the whole question of the artist’s psychology is controversial and obscure. ”

“ Buddha is the Way. The Way is Zen. This word Zen cannot be understood even of the wise. Zen means ‘for a man to behold his fundamental nature.’” [2]
The highest truths cannot be written down or taught by speech. A man who cannot write a word, can yet contemplate his own heart and become wise. Knowledge of 1,000 Sūtras and 10,000 Shāstras cannot help him to realise the Absolute within him.
He was asked: “Can a layman with wife and children, one given over to the lusts of the flesh, achieve Buddhahood?” He answered:
“Provided he contemplate his own inner-nature, he will achieve Buddhahood. ”

“ There is another aspect of Zen which had an equally important effect on art. The Buddha-nature is immanent not in Man only, but in everything that exists, animate or inanimate. Stone, river and tree are alike parts of the great hidden Unity. Thus Man, through his Buddha-nature or universalised consciousness, possesses an intimate means of contact with Nature. ”

“ Perhaps it is not even very important that the artist himself should have a sound æsthetic; but it is of the utmost importance to the artist that the public should have some notion of the conditions under which art can be produced—should have some key to the vagaries of a section of humanity which will in any case always be found troublesome and irritating.
Such a key Zen supplied, and it is in the language of Zen that, after the twelfth century, art is usually discussed in China and Japan. ”

“ Of this inner nature he speaks in exactly the same terms as the Zen teachers spoke of their “Buddha immanent in man’s heart.” He even uses the same kind of doggerel-verse as a medium of teaching.
Rigid Confucianists, who would not have listened to any doctrine of professedly Buddhist origin, were able through Wang Yang-ming’s tact to accept the philosophy of Zen without feeling that they were betraying the Confucian tradition. The followers of Yang-ming are to-day very numerous both in China and Japan. They cultivate introspection, but not the complete self-hypnosis of Zen. ”

“ Upon the invasion of the Mongols [9] many Zen monks from Eastern China took refuge in Japan; the same thing happened during the Manchu invasion in the seventeenth century. But by that time Zen had a serious philosophic rival.
In the fifteenth century the philosopher Wang Yang-ming began to propagate a doctrine which, in all but names, strongly resembled the philosophic side of Zen. He taught that in each one of us is a “higher nature,” something which, borrowing a phrase from Mencius, he called “Good Knowledge.” ”

“ In China decay set in after the fifteenth century. The Zen monasteries became almost indistinguishable from those of popular, idolatrous Buddhism. In Japan, on the other hand, Zen has remained absolutely distinct and is now the favourite creed of the educated classes. It has not hitherto conducted any propaganda in Europe, whereas the Amida Sect has sent out both missionaries and pamphlets. But I believe that Zen would find many converts in England. Something rather near it we already possess. Quakerism, like Zen, is a non-dogmatic religion, laying stress on the doctrine of Immanence. ”

“ In China the habit of quoting written authority was too strong to be easily discarded. The Zen masters soon began to answer difficult questions by quoting from the Buddhist Scriptures. Convenience dictated that practicants of Zen should live in communities and monasticism was soon established in their sect, as in every other sect of Buddhism. Questions of conduct arose, and Zen was squared with the contemporary ethical outlook; though in medieval Japanese literature wicked and cynical persons are generally depicted as adepts of Zen. ”

“ Question.—Can Zen be practised in a Buddha Shrine?
Answer.—No, indeed! Zen should be practised in a quiet room or under a tree or among tombs or sitting on the dewy earth.
Question.—Can Zen be practised by many sitting together?
Answer.—To be sure it may; but each must face his neighbour’s back. They must not sit face to face. When there are many sitting together at night, a lamp or candle may be lit; but when there are few together, it ought not to be used. ”

“ For I have [11] learnt to know that the outer world is empty and untenanted.”
Such was the teaching of Bodhidharma. It was Vedantic [3] rather than Buddhist. The terms “thought,” “Buddha,” etc., used by Bodhidharma correspond exactly to the brahman of the Upanishads. Mystic contemplation or yoga had been used by the Brahmins and was not unknown to the early Buddhists. But Bodhidharma was the first to insist upon it as the sole means of salvation.
Yet though his whole teaching turned on this “meditation” or “Zen,” he left behind him no exact directions for the practice of it. ”

“ Books on the Far East often mention a sect of Buddhism called Zen. They say that it was a “school of abstract meditation” and that it exercised a profound influence upon art and literature; but they tell us very little about what Zen actually was, about its relation to ordinary Buddhism, its history, or the exact nature of its influence upon the arts. ”

“ Buddha is simply a Sanskrit word meaning “initiate.” The Absolute is immanent in every man’s heart. This “treasure of the heart” is the only Buddha that exists. It is no use seeking Buddha outside your own nature. ”

“ Ōbaku (replying) .—Shinshū’s conception of Thought was too material. His proofs and practices were too positive.
“The master told me that when he was studying with Enkwan, the Emperor Tai Chung came dressed as a monk. [19] The master happened to be in the chapel prostrating himself before an image of Buddha. The Emperor, who thought he had learnt the lesson of Zen idealism, said to him: ‘There is nothing to be got from Buddha, nothing from the Church, nothing from Man; for nothing exists. ”

“ When one son becomes a priest, the whole family is born again in Heaven;
If that is a lie, all that Buddha promised is a lie.
Henceforward the throwing of a lighted torch into the bier became part of the Zen funeral ceremony; it was accompanied by the reciting of the above verses. Probably formula, ritual, and story alike belong to a period much more ancient than Buddhism.
In the seventeenth century a Chinese priest named Ingen [8] carried the teaching of Ōbaku to Japan, where it now possesses nearly 700 temples. ”

“ The Buddha consciousness of Zen exactly corresponds to the Universal Consciousness which, according to certain modern investigators, lies hid beneath the personal Consciousness. Such converts will probably use a kind of applied Zen, much as the Japanese have done ”

“ Sometimes when you have been sitting for a long while and your back is aching, you will suddenly hear a sound of rapping with the fingers or a noise as of some one bumping against the door. Do not be disquieted. ”

“ In the South they have not Buddha in their souls.” “North and South,” replied Enō, “are human distinctions that Buddha knows nothing of.”
Kōnin accepted him as a lay-brother and put him to pound rice in the bakery.
Kōnin was growing old and wished to choose his successor. He therefore instituted a poetical competition in which each monk was to epitomise in a quatrain the essence of Zen. The favourite candidate was the warden Shinshū, who sent in the following verses:
The body is the trunk of the Bodhi-tree ”

“ It is not likely that they will rest content with the traditional Eastern methods of self-hypnosis. If certain states of consciousness are indeed more valuable than those with which we are familiar in ordinary life—then we must seek them unflinchingly by whatever means we can devise. ”

“ The following conversation took place in the Palace at Nanking:
Emperor: You will be interested to hear that I have built many monasteries, distributed scriptures, given alms, and upheld the Faith. Have I not indeed acquired merit? ”

“ In neither case must you be discomposed or put out your hand. Sometimes it will seem as though oil were dripping down from your head and face; sometimes a light will shine from out of the ground you are sitting upon. ”

“ Enō, as a lay-brother, was not qualified to compete. Some one told him of Shinshū’s quatrain. “Mine would be very different,” he exclaimed, and persuaded one of the boys employed in the bakery to go stealthily by night and inscribe the following poem on the monastery-wall:
Knowledge is not a tree ”