Chapter X: Part 10

The concentration, however, may not be kept up to such an almost abnormal degree as in the case of Bukko. It may last just a second or two, and if it is the right kind of concentration and rightly handled by the master, the inevitable opening of the mind will follow. When the monk Jō (Ting) asked Rinzai,[5.42] “What is the ultimate principle of Buddhism?” the master came right down from his seat, took hold of the monk, slapped him with his hand, and pushed him away from him. The monk stood stupefied. A bystander suggested, “Why don’t you make a bow?” Obeying the order, Jō was about to bow when he abruptly awoke to the truth of Zen. In this case Jo’s self-absorption or concentration did not seemingly last very long, the bowing was the turning point, it broke up the spell and restored him to sense, not to an ordinary sense of awareness, but to the inward consciousness of his own being. Generally we have no records of the inner working prior to a satori, and may pass lightly over the event as a merely happy incident or some intellectual trick having no deeper background. When we read such records, we have to supply from our own experience, whatever this is, all the necessary antecedent conditions for breaking up into a satori.

IX

So far the phenomenon called satori in Zen Buddhism has been treated as constituting the essence of Zen, as the turning point in one’s life which opens the mind to a wider and deeper world, as something to be gleaned even from a most trivial incident of everyday life; and then it was explained how satori is to come out of one’s inner life, and not by any outside help except as merely indicating the way to it. Next I proceeded to describe what a change satori brings in one’s idea of things, that is, how it all upsets the former valuation of things generally, making one stand now entirely on a different footing. For illustrations, some verses were quoted which were composed by the masters at the moment of their attainment of satori. They are mostly descriptive of the feelings they experienced,, such as those by Bukko and Yōdainen and Yengo and others are typical of this class, as they have almost no intellectual elements in them. If one tries to pick up something from these verses by a mere analytical process, one will be greatly disappointed. The psychological side of satori which is minutely narrated by Hakuin and others will be of great interest to those who are desirous of making a psychological inquiry into Zen. Of course these narratives alone will not do, for there are many other things one has to consider in order to study it thoroughly, among which I may mention the general Buddhist attitude towards life and the world and the historical atmosphere in which the students of Zen find themselves.

I wish to close this Essay by making a few general remarks in the way of recapitulation on the Buddhist experience known as satori.

1. People often imagine that the discipline of Zen is to induce a state of self-suggestion through meditation. This is not quite right. As we can see from the various instances above cited, satori does not consist in producing a certain premeditated condition by intensely thinking of it. It is the growing conscious of a new power in the mind, which enables it to judge things from a new point of view. Even since the unfoldment of consciousness we have been led to respond to the inner and outer conditions in a certain conceptual and analytical manner. The discipline of Zen consists in upsetting this artificially constructed framework once for all and in re-modelling it on an entirely new basis. The older frame is called “Ignorance” (_avidyā_) and the new one “Enlightenment” (_saṁbodhi_). It is evident therefore that meditating on a metaphysical or symbolical statement which is a product of our relative consciousness plays no part in Zen, as I have touched on this in the Introduction.

2. Without the attainment of satori no one can enter into the mystery of Zen. It is the sudden flashing of a new truth hitherto altogether undreamed of. It is a sort of mental catastrophe taking place all at once after so much piling of matters intellectual and demonstrative. The piling has reached its limit and the whole edifice has now come to the ground when behold a new heaven is opened to your full survey. Water freezes suddenly when it reaches a certain point, the liquid has turned into a solidity, and it no more flows. Satori comes upon you unawares when you feel you have exhausted your whole being. Religiously this is a new birth, and, morally, the revaluation of one’s relationship to the world. The latter now appears to be dressed in a different garment which covers up all the ugliness of dualism, which is called in Buddhist phraseology delusion (_māyā_) born of reasoning (_tarka_) and error (_vikalpa_).

3. Satori is the raison d’être of Zen, and without which Zen is no Zen. Therefore every contrivance (_upāya_) disciplinary or doctrinal is directed toward the attainment of satori. Zen masters could not remain patient for satori to come by itself, that is, to come sporadically and at its own pleasure. They earnestly seek out some way to make people deliberately or systematically realise the truth of Zen. Their manifestly enigmatical presentations of it were mostly to create a state of mind in their disciples, which would pave the way to the enlightenment of Zen. All the intellectual demonstrations and exhortatory persuasions so far carried out by most religious and philosophical leaders failed to produce the desired effect. The disciples were led further and further astray. Especially when Buddhism was introduced into China with all its Indian equipments, with its highly metaphysical abstractions, and in a most complicated system of moral discipline, the Chinese were at a loss how to grasp the central point of the doctrine of Buddhism. Daruma, Yeno, Baso, and other masters noticed the fact. The natural outcome was the proclamation of Zen, satori was placed above Sutra-reading and scholarly discussion of the Śastras, and it came to be identified with Zen. Zen therefore without satori is like pepper without its pungency. But at the same time we must not forget that there is such a thing as too much satori, which is indeed to be detested.

4. This emphasising in Zen of satori above everything else makes the fact quite significant that Zen is not a system of dhyana as practised in India and by other schools of Buddhism than the Zen. By dhyana is understood popularly a kind of meditation or contemplation, that is, the fixing of thought, especially in Mahayana Buddhism, on the doctrine of emptiness (_śūnyatā_). When the mind is so trained as to be able to realise the state of perfect void in which there is not a trace of consciousness left, even the sense of being unconscious having departed, in other words, when all forms of mental activity are swept clean from the field of consciousness which is now like a sky devoid of every speck of cloud, a mere broad expanse of blue, dhyana is said to have reached its perfection. This may be called ecstasy or trance, but it is not Zen. In Zen there must be a satori; there must be a general mental upheaval which destroys the old accumulations of intellectuality and lays down a foundation for a new faith; there must be the awakening of a new sense which will review the old things from an angle of perception entirely and most refreshingly new. In dhyana there are none of these things, for it is merely a quieting exercise of the mind. As such it has doubtless its own merits, but Zen ought not to be identified with such dhyanas. The Buddha therefore got dissatisfied with his two Sankhya teachers, in whose teaching the meditations were so many stages of self-abstraction or thought-annihilation.

5. Satori is not seeing God as he is, as may be contended by some Christian mystics. Zen has from the very beginning made clear its principal thesis, which is to see into the work of creation and not interview the creator himself. The latter may be found then busy moulding his universe, but Zen can go along with its own work even when he is not found there. It is not depending on his support. When it grasps the reason of living a life, it is satisfied. Hōyen, of Gosozan, used to produce his own hand and asked his disciples why it is called a hand. When one knows the reason, there is satori and one has Zen. Whereas, with the God of mysticism there is the grasping of a definite object, and when you have God, what is not God is excluded. This is self-limiting. Zen wants absolute freedom, even from God. “No abiding place” means that; “Cleanse your mouth even when you utter the word ‘Buddha’” amounts to the same thing. It is not that Zen wants to be morbidly unholy and godless, but that it knows the incompleteness of a name. Therefore, when Yakusan (Yüeh-shan) was asked to give a lecture, he did not say a word, but instead came down from the pulpit and went off to his own room. Hyakujo (Pai-chang) merely walked forward a few steps, stood still, and opened his arms—which was his exposition of the great principle of Buddhism.[5.43]

6. Satori is the most intimate individual experience and therefore cannot be expressed in words or described in any manner. All that one can do in the way of communicating the experience to others is to suggest or indicate, and this only tentatively. The one who has had it understands readily enough when such indications are given, but when we try to have a glimpse of it through the indices given we utterly fail. We are then like the man who says that he loves the most beautiful woman in the world and yet who knows nothing of her pedigree or social position, of her personal name or family name, knows nothing of her individuality physical as well as moral. We are again like the man who puts up a staircase in a place where four crossroads meet, to mount up thereby into the upper story of a mansion, and yet who knows not just where that mansion is, in the East or West, in the North or South. The Buddha was quite to the point when he thus derided all those philosophers and vain talkers of his day, who merely dealt in abstractions, empty hearsays, and fruitless indications. Zen therefore wants us to build the staircase right at the front of the very palace into whose upper story we are to mount up. When we can say, “This is the very personality, this is the very house,” we have the satori interviewed face to face and realised by oneself. (_Diṭṭhe va dhamme sayaṁ abhiññā sacchikatvā_.)

7. Satori is not a morbid state of mind, a fit subject for abnormal psychology. If anything, it is a perfectly normal state of mind. When I speak of a mental upheaval, one may be led to consider Zen something to be shunned by ordinary people. This is a mistaken view of Zen, unfortunately often held by prejudiced critics. As Nansen (Nan-ch‘üan) declared, it is your “everyday thought.” When later a monk asked a master[f124] what was meant by “everyday thought,” he said,

“Drinking tea, eating rice,
I pass my time as it comes;
Looking down at the stream, looking up at the mountains,
How serene and relaxed I feel indeed!”

It all depends upon the adjustment of the hinge whether the door opens in or out. Even in the twinkling of an eye, the whole affair is changed, and you have Zen, and you are as perfect and normal as ever. More than that, you have in the meantime acquired something altogether new. All your mental activities are now working to a different key, which is more satisfying, more peaceful, and fuller of joy than anything you ever had. The tone of your life is altered. There is something rejuvenating in it. The spring flowers look prettier, and the mountain stream runs cooler and more transparent. The subjective revolution that brings out this state of things cannot be called abnormal. When life becomes more enjoyable and its expanse is as broad as the universe itself, there must be something in satori quite healthy and worth one’s striving after its attainment.

8. We are supposedly living in the same world, but who can tell the thing we popularly call a stone lying before this window is the same thing to all of us? According to the way we look at it, to some the stone ceases to be a stone, while to others it forever remains a worthless specimen of geological product. And this initial divergence of views calls forth an endless series of divergencies later in our moral and spiritual lives. Just a little twisting as it were in our modes of thinking and yet what a world of difference will grow up eventually between one another! So with Zen, satori is this twisting or rather screwing, not in the wrong way, but in a deeper and fuller sense, and the result is the revelation of a world of entirely new values.

Again, you and I sip a cup of tea. The act is apparently alike, but who can tell what a wide gap there is subjectively between you and me? In your drinking there may be no Zen while mine is brimful of it. The reason is, the one moves in the logical circle and the other is out of it; that is to say, in one case rigid rules of intellection so called are asserting themselves, and the actor even when acting is unable to unfetter himself from these intellectual bonds; while in the other case the subject has struck a new path and is not at all conscious of the duality of his act, in him life is not split into object and subject or into acting and acted. The drinking at the moment to him means the whole fact, the whole world. Zen lives and is therefore free, whereas our “ordinary” life is in bondage; satori is the first step to freedom.

9. Satori is Enlightenment (_saṁbodhi_). As long as Buddhism is the doctrine of Enlightenment as we all know from its earliest literature as well as from its later one, and as long as Zen asserts satori to be its culmination, satori must be said to represent the very spirit of the Buddhist teaching. When it announces itself to be the transmission of the Buddha-citta (_fo-hsin_) not dependent upon the logical and discursive exposition in the canonical writings, either Hinayana or Mahayana, it is by no means exaggerating its fundamental characteristic as distinguished from the other schools of Buddhism that have grown up in Japan and China. Whatever this may be, there is no doubt that Zen is one of the most precious and in many respects the most remarkable spiritual possessions bequeathed to Eastern people. Even when it is considered the Buddhist form of speculative mysticism not unknown to the West in the philosophy of Plotinus, Eckhart, and their followers, its complete literature alone since the sixth patriarch, Yeno (Hui-nêng, 637–713), so well preserved, is worth the serious study of scholars and truth-seekers. And then the whole body of the kō-ans systematically grading the progress of the spiritual awakening is the wonderful treasure in the hands of the Zen monks in Japan at present.

PRACTICAL METHODS OF ZEN INSTRUCTION

PRACTICAL METHODS OF ZEN INSTRUCTION

“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.

II

It is well-known that all mystics are fond of paradoxes to expound their views. For instance, a Christian mystic may say: “God is real, yet he is nothing, infinite emptiness; he is at once all-being and no-being. The divine kingdom is real and objective; and at the same time it is within myself—I myself am heaven and hell.” Eckhart’s “divine darkness” or “immovable mover” is another example. I believe we can casually pick up any such statements in mystic literature, and compile a book of mystic irrationalities. Zen is no exception in this respect, but in its way of thus expressing the truth there is something we may designate characteristically Zen. It principally consists in the concreteness and vividness of expression. It generally refuses to lend an ear to abstractions. A few examples will be given. According to Fudaishi (Fu-ta-shih)[6.8];

“Empty-handed I go and yet the spade is in my hands;
I walk on foot, and yet on the back of an ox I am riding:
When I pass over the bridge,
Lo, the water floweth not, but the bridge doth flow.”

This sounds altogether out of reason, but in fact Zen abounds with such graphic irrationalities. “The flower is not red, nor is the willow green”—is one of the best known utterances of Zen, and is regarded as the same as its affirmative: “The flower is red and the willow is green.” To put it in logical formula, it will run like this: “A is at once A and not-A.” If so, I am I and yet you are I. An Indian philosopher asserts that _Tat twam asi_, Thou art it. If so, heaven is hell and God is Devil. To pious orthodox Christians, what a shocking doctrine this Zen is! When Mr Chang drinks Mr Li grows tipsy. The silent thundering Vimalakīrti confessed that he was sick because all his fellow-beings were sick. All wise and loving souls must be said to be the embodiments of the Great Paradox of the universe. But I am digressing. What I wanted to say was that Zen is more daringly concerte in its paradoxes than other mystical teachings. The latter are more or less confined to general statements concerning life or God or the world, but Zen carries its paradoxical assertions into every detail of our daily life. It has no hesitation in flatly denying all our most familiar facts of experience, “I am writing here and yet I have not written a word. You are perhaps reading this now and yet there is not a person in the world who reads. I am utterly blind and deaf, but every colour is recognised and every sound discerned.” The Zen masters will go on like this indefinitely. Basho (Pa-chiao), a Korean monk of the ninth century, once delivered a famous sermon which ran thus: “If you have a staff (_shujo_, or _chu-chang_ in Chinese), I will give you one; if you have not, I will take it away from you.”[6.9]

When Jōshu, the great Zen master of whom mention was repeatedly made, was asked what he would give when a poverty-stricken fellow should come to him, he replied, “What is wanting in him?”[f127][6.10] When he was asked on another occasion, “When a man comes to you with nothing, what would you say to him?” his immediate response was, “Cast it away!”[6.11] We may ask him, When a man has nothing, what will he cast? When a man is poor, can he be said to be sufficient unto himself? Is he not in need of everything? Whatever deep meaning there may be in these answers of Jōshu, the paradoxes are quite puzzling and baffle our logically trained intellect. “Carry away the farmer’s oxen, and make off with the hungry man’s food,” is a favourite phrase with the Zen masters who think we can thus best cultivate our spiritual farm and fill up the soul hungry for the substance of things.

It is related that Ōkubo Shibun, famous for painting bamboo, was requested to execute a kakemono representing a bamboo forest. Consenting, he painted with all his known skill a picture in which the entire bamboo grove was in red. The patron upon its receipt marvelled at the extraordinary skill with which the painting had been executed, and, repairing to the artist’s residence, he said: “Master, I have come to thank you for the picture; but, excuse me, you have painted the bamboo red.” “Well,” cried the master, “in what colour would you desire it?” “In black, of course,” replied the patron. “And who,” answered the artist, “ever saw a black-leaved bamboo?” When one is so used to a certain way of looking at things, one finds it so full of difficulties to veer round and start on a new line of procedure. The true colour of the bamboo is perhaps neither red nor black nor green nor any other colour known to us. Perhaps it is red, perhaps it is black just as well. Who knows? The imagined paradoxes may be after all really not paradoxes.

III

The next form in which Zen expresses itself is the denial of opposites, somehow corresponding to the mystic “via negativa.” The point is not to be “caught” as the masters would say in any of the four propositions (_catushkotika_): 1. “It is A”; 2. “It is not A”; 3. “It is both A and not-A”; and 4. “It is neither A nor not-A.” When we make a negation or an assertion, we are sure to get into one of these logical formulas according to the Indian method of reasoning. As long as the intellect is to move along the ordinary dualistic groove, this is unavoidable. It is in the nature of our logic that any statement we can make is to be so expressed. But Zen thinks that the truth can be reached when it is neither asserted nor negated. This is indeed the dilemma of life, but the Zen masters are ever insistent on escaping the dilemma. Let us see if they escape free.

According to Ummon,[6.12] “In Zen there is absolute freedom; sometimes it negates and at other times it affirms; it does either way at pleasure.” A monk asked, “How does it negate?” “With the passing of winter there cometh spring.” “What happens when spring cometh?” “Carrying a staff across the shoulders, let one ramble about in the fields, east or west, north or south, and beat the old stumps to one’s heart’s content.” This was one way to be free as shown by one of the greatest masters in China. Another way follows.

The masters generally go about with a kind of short stick known as shippé (_chu-pi_), or at least they did so in old China. It does not matter whether it is a shippé or not, anything in fact will answer our purpose. Shuzan, a noted Zen master of the tenth century, held out his stick and said to a group of his disciples:[6.13] “Call it not a shippé; if you do, you assert. Nor do you deny its being a shippé; if you do, you negate. Apart from affirmation and negation, speak, speak!” The idea is to get our heads free from dualistic tangles and philosophic subtleties. A monk came out of the rank, took the shippé away from the master’s hand, and threw it down on the floor. Is this the answer? Is this the way to respond to the master’s request “to speak”? Is this the way to transcend the four propositions—the logical conditions of thinking? In short, is this the way to be free? Nothing is stereotyped in Zen, and somebody else may solve the difficulty in quite a different manner. This is where Zen is original and creative.

Ummon expressed the same idea with his staff, which he held up, saying,[6.14] “What is this? If you say it is a staff, you go right to hell; but if it is not a staff, what is it?” Hima’s (Pi-mo) way somewhat deviated from this. He used to carry a forked stick and whenever a monk came up to him and made a bow, he applied the stick on the neck of the monk, and said,[6.15] “What devil taught you to be a homeless monk? What devil taught you to go round? Whether you can say something, or whether you cannot say anything, all the same you are to die under my fork: speak, speak, be quick!” Tokusan (Tê-shan) was another master who flourished a stick to the same effect; for he used to say[6.16]: “No matter what you say, or what you say not, just the same thirty blows for you?”

When the ownership of a kitten was disputed between two parties of monks, the Master Nansen (Nan-ch‘üan P‘u-yüan, 749–835) came out, took hold of the animal, and said to them,[6.17] “If you can say a word, this will be saved: if not, it will be slain.” By “a word” of course he meant one that transcended both affirmation and negation, as when Jōshu was asked for “One word of the ultimate truth.” No one made a response, whereupon the master slew the poor creature. Nansen looks like a hard-hearted Buddhist, but his point is: To say it is, involves us in a dilemma; to say it is not, puts us in the same predicament. To attain to the truth, this dualism must be avoided. How do you avoid it? It may not only be the loss of the life of a kitten, but the loss of your own life and soul, if you fail to ride over this _impasse_. Hence Nansen’s drastic procedure. Later, in the evening Jōshu who was one of his disciples came back, when the master told him of the incident of the day. Jōshu at once took off one of his straw sandals and putting it over his head began to depart. Upon this, said the master, “What a pity you were not to-day with us, for you could have saved the kitten.” This strange behaviour, however, was Jōshu’s way of affirming the truth transcending the dualism of “to be” (_sat_) and “not to be” (_asat_).

While Kyōzan (Yang-shan, 804–890) was residing at Tōhei (Tung-ping) of Shao-chou, his master Isan (Wei-shan, 771–853),—both of whom were noted Zen masters of the T‘ang dynasty—sent him a mirror accompanied with a letter.[6.18] Kyōzan held forth the mirror before a congregation of monks and said, “O monks, Isan has sent here a mirror. Is this Isan’s mirror or mine own? If you say it is Isan’s, how is it that the mirror is in my hands? If you say it is mine own, has it not come from Isan? If you make a proper statement, it will be retained here. If you cannot, it will be smashed in pieces.” He said this for three times but nobody even made an attempt to answer. The mirror was then smashed. This was somewhat like the case of Nansen’s kitten. In both cases the monks failed to save the innocent victim or the precious treasure, simply because their minds were not yet free from intellectualism and were unable to break through the entanglements purposely set up by Nansen in one case and by Kyōzan in the other. The Zen method of training its followers thus appears so altogether out of reason and unnecessarily inhuman. But the master’s eyes are always upon the truth absolute and yet attainable in this world of particulars. If this can be gained, what does it matter whether a thing known as precious be broken and an animal be sacrificed? Is not the recovering of the soul more important than the loss of a kingdom?

Kyōgen (Hsiang-yen),[6.19] a disciple of Isan (Wei-shan), with whom we got acquainted just now, said in one of his sermons: “It is like a man over a precipice one thousand feet high, he is hanging himself there with a branch of a tree between his teeth, the feet are far off the ground, and his hands are not taking hold of anything. Suppose another man coming to him to propose a question, ‘What is the meaning of the first patriarch coming over here from the west?’ If this man should open the mouth to answer, he is sure to fall and lose his life; but if he would make no answer, he must be said to ignore the inquirer. At this critical moment what should he do?” This is putting the negation of opposites in a most graphically illustrative manner. 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. For it says that its gate will open when this determination is reached.

The logical dualism of “to be” (_asti_) and “not to be” (_nasti_) is frequently expressed by Zen masters by such terms of contrast as are used in our daily parlance: “taking life” and “giving life,” “capturing” and “releasing,” “giving” and “taking away,” “coming in contact” and “turning away from,”[6.20] etc. Ummon once held up his staff and declared: “The whole world, heaven and earth, altogether owes its life and death to this staff.” A monk came out and asked, “How is it killed?” “Writhing in agony!” “How is it restored to life?” “You had better be a chéf.” “When it is neither put to death nor living, what would you say?” Ummon rose from his seat and said, “Mo-hê-pan-jê-po-lo-mi-ta!” (_Mahā-prajñā-pāramitā_).[6.21] This was Ummon’s synthesis—“the one word” of the ultimate truth, in which thesis and antithesis are concretely unified, and to which the four propositions are inapplicable (_rahita_).

IV

We now come to the third class I have styled, “Contradiction,” by which I mean the Zen master’s negation, implicitly or expressly, of what he himself has stated or what has been stated by another. To one and the same question his answer is sometimes “No,” sometimes “Yes.” Or to a well-known and fully-established fact he gives an unqualified denial. From an ordinary point of view he is altogether unreliable, yet he seems to think that the truth of Zen requires such contradictions and denials; for Zen has a standard of its own, which, to our common-sense minds, consists just in negating everything we properly hold true and real. In spite of these apparent confusions, the philosophy of Zen is guided by a thorough-going principle which, when once grasped, its topsy-turviness becomes the plainest truth.

A monk asked the sixth patriarch of the Zen sect in China, who flourished late in the seventh and early in the eighth century, “Who has attained to the secrets of Wobai (Huang-mei)?” Wobai is the name of the mountain where the fifth patriarch, Hung-jên used to reside, and, it was a well-known fact that Hui-nêng, the sixth patriarch, studied Zen under him and succeeded in the orthodox line of transmission. The question was therefore really not a plain regular one, seeking an information about facts. It had quite an ulterior object. The reply of the sixth patriarch was, “One who understands Buddhism has attained to the secrets of Wobai.”

“Have you then attained them?”

“No, I have not.”

“How is it,” asked the monk, “that you have not?”

The answer was, “I do not understand Buddhism.”[f128][6.22]

Did he not really understand Buddhism? Or is it that not to understand is to understand? This is also the philosophy of the _Kena-Upanishad_.

The self-contradiction of the sixth patriarch is somewhat mild and indirect when compared with that of Dōgo (Tao-wu). He succeeded to Yakusan (Yüeh-shan Wei-yen, 751–834), but when he was asked by Gohō (Wu-fêng) whether he knew the old master of Yakusan, he flatly denied it, saying,[6.23] “No, I do not.” Gohō was however persistent, “Why do you not know him?” “I do not, I do not,” was the emphatic statement of Dōgo. The latter thus singularly enough refused to give any reason except simply and forcibly denying the fact which was apparent to our common-sense knowledge.

Another emphatic and unequivocal contradiction by Tesshikaku (T‘ieh-tsui Chiao) is better known to students of Zen than the case just cited.[6.24] He was a disciple of Jōshu (Chao-chou). When he visited Hōgen (Fa-yen Wên-i, died 958), another great Zen master, the latter asked him, what was the last place he came from. Tesshikaku replied that he came from Jōshu. Said Hōgen,

“I understand that a cypress tree once became the subject of his talk; was that really so?”

Tesshikaku was positive in his denial, saying, “He had no such talk.”

Hōgen protested, “All the monks coming from Jōshu lately speak of his reference to a cypress tree in answer to a monk’s question, ‘What was the real object of the coming east of Bodhi-dharma?’ How do you say that Jōshu made no such reference to a cypress tree?”

Whereupon Tesshikaku roared, “My late master never made such a talk; no slighting allusion to him, if you please!”

Hōgen greatly admired this attitude on the part of the disciple of the famous Jōshu, and said, “Truly, you are a lion’s child!”

In Zen literature, Dharma’s coming from the west, that is, from India, is quite frequently made the subject of the discourse. When a question is asked as to the real object of his coming over to China, it refers to the ultimate principle of Buddhism, and has nothing to do with his personal motive which made him cross the ocean, landing him at some point along the southern coast of China. The historical fact is not the issue here. And to this all-important question numerous answers are given, but so varied and so unexpectedly odd, yet according to Zen masters all expressive of the truth of their teaching.

This contradiction, negation, or paradoxical statement is the inevitable result of the Zen way of looking at life. The whole emphasis of its discipline is placed on the intuitive grasping of the inner truth deeply hidden in our consciousness. And this truth thus revealed or awakened within oneself defies intellectual manipulation, or at least cannot be imparted to others through any of dialectical formulas. It must come out of oneself, grow within oneself, and become one with one’s own being. What others, that is, ideas or images can do, is to indicate the way where lies the truth. This is what Zen masters do. And the indicators given by them are naturally unconventionally free and refreshingly original. As their eyes are always fixed on the ultimate truth itself, anything and everything they can command is utilised to accomplish the end, regardless of its logical conditions and consequences. This indifference to logic is sometimes asserted purposely, just to let us know that the truth of Zen is independent of the intellect. Hence the statement in the _Prañā-pāramitā Sūtra_, that “Not to have any Dharma to discourse about—this is discoursing about the Dharma.” (_Dharmadeśanā dharmadeśaneti subhūte nāsti sa kaścid dharmo yo dharmadeśanā nāmotpalabhyate_.)

Haikyu (P‘ei Hsiu), a state minister of the T‘ang dynasty, was a devoted follower of Zen under Ōbaku. One day[6.25] he showed him a manuscript in which his understanding of Zen was stated. The master took it, and setting it down beside him, made no movement to read it, but remained silent for some little while. He then said, “Do you understand?” “Not quite,” answered the minister. “If you have an understanding here,” said the master, “there is something of Zen. But if it is committed to paper and ink, nowhere is our religion to be found.” Something analogous to this we have already noticed in Hakuin’s interview with Shōju Rōnin. Being a living fact, Zen is only where living facts are handled. Appeal to the intellect is real and living as long as it issues directly from life. Otherwise, no amount of literary accomplishment or of intellectual analysis avails in the study of Zen.

V

So far Zen appears to be nothing but a philosophy of negation and contradiction, whereas in fact it has its affirmative side, and in this consists the uniqueness of Zen. In most forms of mysticism, speculative or emotional, their assertions are general and abstract, and there is not much in them that will specifically distinguish them from some of the philosophical dictums. Sings Blake for instance:

“To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.”

Again listen to the exquisite feelings expressed in the lines of Wither:

“By the murmur of a spring,
Or the least bough’s rustling;
By a daisy, whose leaves spread
Shut when Titan goes to bed;
Or a shady bush or tree—
She could more infuse in me
Than all nature’s beauties can
In some other wiser man.”

It is not very difficult to understand these poetic and mystical feelings as expressed by the highly sensitive souls, though we may not all realise exactly as they felt. Even when Eckhart declares that “the eye with which I see God is the same with which God sees me,” or when Plotinus refers to “that which mind, when it turns back, thinks before it thinks itself,” we do not find it altogether beyond our understanding to get at their meaning as far as the ideas are concerned which they try to convey in these mystical utterances. But when we come to statements by the Zen masters, we are entirely at sea how to take them. Their affirmations are as irrelevant, so inappropriate, so irrational, and so nonsensical—at least superficially, that those who have not gained the Zen way of looking at things can hardly make, as we say, heads or tails of them. The truth is that even with full-fledged mystics they are unable to be quite free from the taint of intellection, and leave as a rule “traces” by which their holy abode could be reached. Plotinus’ “flight from alone to alone” is a great mystical utterance proving how deeply he delved into the inner sanctuary of our consciousness. But there is still something speculative or metaphysical about it, and when it is put side by side with the Zen utterances to be cited below, it has, as the masters would say, a mystic flavour on the surface. So long as the masters are indulging in negations, denials, contradictions, or paradoxes, the stain of speculation is not quite washed off of them. Naturally, Zen is not opposed to speculation as it is also one of the functions of the mind. But Zen has travelled along a different path altogether unique, I think, in the history of mysticism, whether Eastern or Western, Christian or Buddhist. A few examples will suffice to illustrate my point.

A monk asked Jōshu,[6.26] “I read in the Sutra that all things return to the One, but where does this One return to?” Answered the master, “When I was in the province of Tsing I had a robe made which weighed seven _chin_.” When Kōrin (Hsiang-lin Yüan)[6.27] was asked what was the signification of Bodhi-Dharma’s coming from the West, his reply was, “After a long sitting one feels fatigued.” What is the logical relation between the question and the answer? Does it refer to Dharma’s nine years’ sitting against the wall as the tradition has it? If so, was his propaganda much ado for nothing except his feeling fatigued? When Kwazan (Hê-shan)[6.28] was asked what the Buddha was, he said, “I know how to play the drum, rub-a-dub, rub-a-dub!” (_chieh ta ku_). When Baso Dōichi was sick,[6.29] one of his disciples came and inquired about his condition, “How do you feel to-day?” “Nichimen-butsu, Gwachimen-butsu!” was the reply which literally means “sun-faced Buddha, moon-faced Buddha!” A monk asked Jōshu,[6.30] “When the body crumbles all to pieces and returns to the dust, there eternally abides one thing. Of this I have been told, but where does this one thing abide?” The master replied, “It is windy again this morning.” When Shuzan (Shou-shan) was asked what was the principal teaching of Buddhism, he quoted a verse[6.31]:

“By the castle of the king of Ch‘u,
Eastward flows the stream of Ju.”

“Who is the teacher of all the Buddhas?”[6.32] was the question put to Bokuju (Mu-chou), who in reply merely hummed a tune, “Ting-ting, tung-tung, ku-ti, ku-tung!” To the question what Zen was, the same master gave the following answer, “Namu-sambo!” (_namoratnatrayāya_). The monk however confessed that he could not understand it, whereupon the master exclaimed, “O you miserable frog, whence is this evil karma of yours?” On another occasion, the same question called out a different answer, which was, “Makahannyaharamii!” (_mahāprajñāpāramitā_). When the monk failed to comprehend the ultimate meaning of the phrase, the master went on:

“My robe is all worn out after so many years’ usage,
And parts of it in shreds loosely hanging, have been blown away to
the clouds!”

To quote another case from Bokuju, he was once asked by a monk, “What is the doctrine that goes beyond the Buddhas and Fathers?” The master immediately holding up his staff said to the congregation, “I call this a staff, and what would you call it?” No answer was forthcoming, whereupon the master again holding forth the staff asked the monk, “Did you not ask me about the doctrine that goes beyond the Buddhas and Fathers?”

When Nan-yin Yê-gu (Nan-yüan Hui-yung)[6.33] was once asked what the Buddha was, he said, “What is not the Buddha?” Another time his answer was, “I never knew him.” There was still another occasion when he said, “Wait until there is one, for then I will tell you.” So far Nan-yin does not seem to be so very incomprehensible, but what follows will challenge our keenest intellectual analysis. When the inquiring monk replied to the master’s third statement, saying, “If so, there is no Buddha in you,” the master promptly asserted, “You are right there.” This evoked a further question, “Where am I right, sir?” “This is the thirtieth day of the month,” replied the master.

Ki-su Chi-jo (Kuei-tsung Chih-ch‘ang) was one of the able disciples of Baso (Ma-tsu).[6.34] When he was weeding in the garden, a Buddhist scholar versed in the philosophy of Buddhism came to see the master. A snake happened to pass by them, and the master at once killed it with a spade. The philosopher-monk remarked, “How long I have heard of the name of Kisu, and how reverently I have thought of it! But what do I see now but a rude-mannered monk?” “O my scholar-monk,” said the master, “you had better go back to the Hall and have a cup of tea over there.” Kisu’s retort as it stands here is quite unintelligible as far as our common-sense knowledge of worldly affairs goes; but according to another informant Kisu is reported, when he was reproached by the monk, to have said this, “Who is the rude-mannered one, you or I?” Then said the monk, “What is rude-mannered?” The master held up the spade. “What is refined? “He now assumed the attitude as if to kill the snake. “If so,” said the monk, “you are behaving according to the law.” “Enough with my lawful or unlawful behaviour,” demanded the master, “when did you see my killing the snake anyway?” The monk made no answer.[6.34a]