Zen Buddhism

“ While most of the other schools distinguish so many steps of spiritual development and insist on one’s going through all the grades successively in order to reach the consummation of the Buddhist discipline; Zen ignores all these, and boldly declares that when one sees into the inmost nature of one’s own being, one instantly becomes a Buddha, and that there is no necessity of climbing up each rung of perfection through eternal cycles of transmigration. ”

“ It may not altogether be out of place here to show by concrete examples how much the Indian method diverges from the typically Chinese one in demonstrating the truth of Zen Buddhism. As I have repeatedly illustrated, Buddhism, whether primitive or developed, is a religion of freedom and emancipation, and the ultimate aim of its discipline is to release the spirit from its possible bondage so that it can act freely in accordance with its own principles. ”

“ The superabundance of Indian imagination issued in supernaturalism and wonderful symbolism, and the Chinese sense of practicalness and its love for the solid everyday facts of life resulted in Zen Buddhism. ”

“ BEFORE I proceed to the discussion of the main idea of this essay, which is to consider Zen the Chinese way of applying the doctrine of Enlightenment in our practical life, I wish to make some preliminary remarks concerning the attitude of some Zen critics and thereby to define the position of Zen in the general body of Buddhism. According to them, Zen Buddhism is not Buddhism, it is something foreign to the spirit of Buddhism, and that it is one of those aberrations which we often see growing up in the history of any religion. ”

“ Therefore we must be instructed and properly guided by an adept in Zen Buddhism, when we shall open a spiritual eye and by ourselves see into the Nature. This Nature knows no multiplicity, it is absolute oneness, being the same in the ignorant as well as in the wise. The difference comes from confusion and ignorance. People talk so much, think so much, of Prajñā, but fail altogether to realise it in their own minds. It is like talking about food all day, however much we may talk we forever remain hungry. ”

“ As I said before, Buddhism is also a system built by his disciples upon the personality of the Buddha himself, in which the spirit of the Master is more definitely affirmed. And this is what Zen has in its own way been attempting to do—to develop the idea of Enlightenment more deeply, positively, and comprehensively by the practice of dhyana and in conformity with the spirit of general Buddhism, in which life, purged of its blind impulses and sanctified by an insight into its real values, will be asserted. ”

“ While I have not attempted to be very exhaustive in describing all the different methods of demonstration or rather realisation of the truth of Zen resorted to by the masters of various schools, the statements so far made in regard to them, may suffice to give us at least a glimpse into some of the peculiar features of Zen Buddhism. Whatever explanations may be given by critics or scholars to the philosophy of Zen, we must first of all acquire a new point of view of looking at things, which is altogether beyond our ordinary sphere of consciousness. ”

“ If a man understands what enlightenment is or really experiences it in himself, he knows the whole secret of the Buddha’s superhuman nature and with it the riddle of life and the world. The essence of Buddhism must then lie in the Doctrine of Perfect Enlightenment. In the enlightened mind of the Buddha there were many things which he did not and could not divulge to his disciples. ”

“ Though much modified in various aspects, the principle and spirit of Zen Buddhism is still alive as it was in the days of the sixth patriarch, and as one of the great spiritual heritages of the East it is still wielding its unique influence especially among the cultured people in Japan. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Whether an enlightened Zen master or an ignoramus of the first degree, neither can escape the so-called laws of nature. When the stomach is empty, both are hungry; when it snows, both have to put on an extra flannel. I do not however mean that they are both material existences, but they are what they are, regardless of their conditions of spiritual development. As the Buddhist scriptures have it, the darkness of the cave itself turns into enlightenment when a torch of spiritual insight burns. ”

“ The world with all its contents, individually as well as as a whole, is subject to our subjective interpretation, not a capricious interpretation indeed, but growing out of our inner necessity, our religious yearnings. Even the Buddha as an object of one’s religious experience could not escape this, his personality was so constituted as to awaken in us every feeling and thought that goes under the name of Buddhism now. The most significant and fruitful ideas that were provoked by him were concerned with his Enlightenment and Nirvana. ”

“ So is life. We can never retract what we have once committed to deeds, nay, what has once passed through consciousness can never be rubbed out. Zen therefore ought to be caught while the thing is going on, neither before nor after. It is an act of one instant. When Dharma was leaving China, as the legend has it, he asked his disciples what was their understanding of Zen, and one of them who happened to be a nun, replied, “It is like Ānanda’s looking into the kingdom of Akshobhya Buddha, it is seen once and has never been repeated.” ”

“ As long as Indian influence predominated, Zen could not be free from the speculative abstraction of Buddhist philosophy, which meant that Zen was not Zen in its specialised sense. Some scholars think that there is no Zen in the so-called primitive Buddhism and that the Buddha was not at all the author of Zen. But we must all remember that such critics are entirely ignoring the fact that religion when transplanted adapts itself to the genius of the people among whom it is introduced, and that unless it does so it gradually dies out, proving that there was no life-giving soul in that religion. ”

“ When for political reasons Buddhism was persecuted, which caused the loss of many valuable documents, works of art, and the decline of some schools, Zen was always the first to recover itself and to renew its activities with redoubled energy and enthusiasm. Throughout the Five Dynasties, in the first half of the tenth century, when China was torn up into minor kingdoms again, and general political situations seemed to be unfavourable to the thriving of religious sentiments, Zen prospered as before and the masters kept up their monastic centers undisturbed. ”

“ O you, followers of Truth, if you wish to obtain an orthodox understanding [of Zen] , do not be deceived by others. Inwardly or outwardly, if you encounter any obstacles, lay them low right away. If you encounter the Buddha slay him; if you encounter the Patriarch, slay him; if you encounter the Arhat or the parent or the relative, slay them all without hesitation: for this is the only way to deliverance. Do not get yourselves entangled with any object, but stand above, pass on, and be free. ”

“ As we have already observed in several instances of satori, the transition from ignorance to enlightenment is so abrupt, the common cur, as it were, suddenly turns into a golden-haired lion. Zen is an ultra-discrete wing of Buddhism. But this holds true only when the truth of Zen itself is considered, apart from its relation to the human mind in which it is disclosed. Inasmuch as the truth is true only when it is considered in the light it gives to the mind and cannot be thought of at all independent of the latter, we may speak of its gradual and progressive realisation in us. ”

“ Their attitude towards the Buddha and Zen is that of Lieh-tzŭ riding on the wind; a complete identification of the self with the object of thought is what is aimed at by the disciples of Jōshu, Ummon, and other leaders of Zen. This is the reason why they are all loath to hear the word Buddha or Zen mentioned in their discourse, not because indeed they are anti-Buddhist, but because they have so thoroughly assimilated Buddhism in their being. ”

“ While the Puṇḍarīka emphasises the Buddha-aspect of Enlightenment, Zen directs its attention mainly to the Enlightenment-aspect of Buddhahood. When this latter aspect is considered intellectually, we have the philosophy of Buddhist dogmatics, which is studied by scholars of the Tendai (t‘ien-tai) , Kegon (avataṁsaka) , Hosso, (dharmalaksha) , and other schools. Zen approaches it from the practical side of life, that is, to work out Enlightenment in life itself. ”

“ Thus to know what Buddhism is will be to get into the life of Buddhism and to understand it from the inside as it unfolds itself objectively in history. Therefore, the definition of Buddhism must be that of the life-force which carries forward a spiritual movement called Buddhism. All these doctrines, controversies, constructions, and interpretations that were offered after the Buddha’s death as regards his person, life, and teaching were what essentially constituted the life of Indian Buddhism, and without these there could be no spiritual activity to be known as Buddhism. ”

“ Is there not something in the wordy teaching of the Buddha, which gives life to it and which lieth underneath all the arguments and controversies characterising the history of Buddhism throughout Asia? ”

“ There were probably other Buddhists who penetrated deeper into his life, as their own inner consciousness had a richer content. The history of religion thus becomes the history of our own spiritual unfolding. Buddhism must be conceived biologically, so to speak, and not mechanically. When we take this attitude, even the doctrine of the Fourfold Noble Truth becomes pregnant with yet deeper truths.
The Buddha was not a metaphysician and naturally avoided discussing such subjects as were strictly theoretical and had no practical bearing on the attainment of Nirvana. ”

“ Zen has claimed from the beginning of its history in China that it is transmitting the spirit and not the letter of the Buddha, by which we understand that Zen, independent of traditional Buddhist 341philosophy including its terminology and modes of thinking, wove out its own garment from within just as the silkworm weaves its own cocoon. Therefore, the outer garment of Zen is original, befitting itself wonderfully well, and there are no patchings on it, nor any seams either: Zen is truly the traditional celestial robe. ”

“ The man over the precipice is caught in a dilemma of life and death, and there can be no logical quibblings. The cat may be sacrificed at the altar of Zen, the mirror may be smashed on the ground, but how about one’s own life? The Buddha in one of his former lives is said to have thrown himself down into the maw of a man-devouring monster, in order to get the whole stanza of the truth. Zen being practical wants us to make the same noble determination to give up our dualistic life for the sake of enlightenment and eternal peace. ”

“ While the attainment of Buddhahood or Arhatship was the ultimate goal of his teaching, the Buddha was practical and always close to the facts of life and insisted in his ordinary sermons on a life regulated by moral rules. Nor had he any desire to disclose intellectually or metaphysically the content of Enlightenment which must be experienced but cannot be explained. He never neglected to emphasise the significance of self-realisation, for Nirvana or Enlightenment was to be attained personally through one’s own efforts in one’s own inner consciousness. ”

“ In any event Zen as the essence of the Buddha’s mind continued to flourish so that any Chinese minds at all inclined towards Buddhism came to study Zen and neglected the rest of the Buddhist 96schools still in existence though at the last stage of their productive activity. The only form of Buddhism that retains its vitality to a certain extent even to this day, is Zen, more or less modified to accommodate the Pure Land tendency, that had been growing soon after the introduction of Buddhism into China. ”

“ Epistemologically this may be so, but spiritually a state of perfect freedom is obtained only when all our egoistic thoughts are not read into life and the world is accepted as it is as a mirror reflects a flower as flower and the moon as moon. When therefore I say Buddhism is radical empiricism, this is not to be understood epistemologically but spiritually. ”

“ Superficially, indeed, there is something in Zen so bizarre and even irrational, as to frighten the pious literary followers of the so-called primitive Buddhism and to make them 30declare that Zen is not Buddhism but a Chinese anomaly of it. ”

“ 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 ”