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In so far as Zen is part of a social and religious complex, in so far as it seems to be related to other elements of a cultural system - "yes." In so far as Zen is Zen Buddhism, "yes." But in that case what fits into the system is Buddhism rather than Zen. The more Zen is considered as Buddhist the more it can be grasped as an expression of man's cultural and religious impulse. In that case Zen can be seen as having a special kind of structure with basic demands that are structural demands and therefore open to scientific investigation - and the more it can seem to have a definite character to be grasped and "understood." When Zen is studied in this way, it is seen in the context of Chinese and Japanese history. It is seen as a product of the meeting of speculative Indian Buddhism with practical Chinese Taoism and even Confucianism. It is seen in the light of the culture of the T'ang dynasty, and the teachings of various "houses." It is related to other cultural movements. It is studied in its passage into Japan and its integration into Japanese civilization. And then a great deal of things about Zen come to seem important, even essential. The Zendo or meditation hall. The Zazen sitting. The study of the Koan. The costume. The lotus seat. The bows. The visits to the Roshi and the Roshi's technique for determining whether one has attained Kensho or Satori, and helping one to do this. Zen, seen in this light, can then be set up against other religious structures - for instance that of Catholicism, with its sacraments, its liturgy, its mental prayer (now no longer practiced by many), its devotions, its laws, its theology, its Bible; its cathedrals and convents; its priesthood and its hierarchical organization; its councils and Encyclicals. One can examine both of them and conclude that they have a few things in common. They share certain cultural and religious features. The are "religions." One is an Asian religion, the other is a Western, Judeo-Christian religion. One offers man a metaphysical enlightenment, the other a theological salvation. Both can be seen as oddities, pleasant survivals of a past which is no more, but which one can nevertheless appreciate just as one appreciates Noh plays, the sculpture of Chartres or the music of Monteverdi. One can further refine one's investigations and imagine (quite wrongly) that because Zen is simple and austere, it has a great deal in common with Cistercian monasticism, which is also austere - or once was. They do share a certain taste for simplicity, and it is possible that the builders of twelfth-century Cistercian churches in Burgundy and Provence were illuminated by a kind of instinctive Zen vision in their work, which does have the luminous poverty and solitude that Zen calls Wabi. Nevertheless, studied as structures, as systems, and as religions, Zen and Catholicism don't mix an better than oil and water. One can assume that from one side and the other, from the Zendo and from the university, monastery or curia, persons might convene for polite and informed discussion. but their differences would remain inviolate. They would return to their several structures and bed down again in their own systems, having attained just enough understanding to recognize themselves as utterly alien to one another. All this is true as long as Zen is considered specifically as Zen Buddhism, as a school or sect of Buddhism, as forming part of the religious system which we call "the Buddhist Religion." When we look a little closer however, we find very serious and responsible practitioners of Zen first denying that it is a "religion," then denying that it is a sect or school, and finally denying that it is confined to Buddhism and its "structure." For instance, one of the great Japanese Zen Masters, Dogne, the found of Soto Zen, said categorically: "Anybody who would regard Zen as a school or sect of Buddhism and call it Zen-thu, Zen school, is a devil. To define Zen in terms of a religious system or structure is in fact to destroy it - or rather to miss it completely, for what cannot be "constructed" cannot be destroyed either. Zen is not something which is grasped by being set within distinct limits or given a characteristic outline or easily recognizable features so that, when we see these distinct and particular forms, we say: "There it is!" Zen is not understood by being set apart in its own category, separated from everything else: "It is this and not that." On the contrary, in the words of D.T. Suzuki, Zen is "beyond the world of opposites, a world built up by intellectual distinction . . . a spiritual world of non distinction which involves achieving an absolute point of view." yet this too could easily become a trap if we "distinguished" the Absolute from the nonabsolute in a Western Platonic way. Suzuki therefore immediately adds, "The Absolute is in no way distinct from the world of discrimination . . . The Absolute is in the world of opposites and not apart from it." (D.T. Suzuki, The Essence of Buddhism, London, 1946, p. 9) We see form this that Zen is outside all particular structures and distinct forms, and that it is neither opposed to them nor not-opposed to them. It neither denies them nor affirms them, loves them nor hates them, rejects them nor desires them. Zen is consciousness unstructured by particular form or particular system, a trans-cultural, trans-religious, trans-formed consciousness. It is therefore in a sense "void." But it can shine through this or that system, religious or irreligious, just as light can shine through glass that is blue, or green, or red, or yellow. If Zen has any preference it is for glass that is plain, has no color, and is "just glass." In other words to regard Zen merely and exclusively as Zen Buddhism is to falsify it and, no doubt, to betray the fact that one has no understanding of it whatever. Yet this does not mean that there cannot be "Zen Buddhists," but these surely will realized (precisely because they are Zen-men) the difference between their Buddhism and their Zen - even while admitting that for them their Zen is in fact the purest expression of Buddhism. But , of course, the reason for that is that Buddhism itself (more than any "religious system") points beyond any theological or philosophical "ism." It demands not to be a system (while at the same time, like other religions, presenting a peculiar temptation to systematizers). The real drive of Buddhism is toward an enlightenment which is precisely a breakthrough into what is beyond system, beyond cultural and social structures, and beyond religious rite and belief (even where it accepts many kinds of systematic religious and cultural superstructures - Tibetan, Burmese, Japanese, etc.) Now if we reflect a moment, we will realize that in Christianity, too, as well as in Islam, we have various admittedly unusual people who see beyond the "religious" aspect of their faith. Karl Barth for instance - in the pure tradition of Protestantism - protested against calling Christianity "a religion" and vehemently denied that Christian faith could be understood as long as it was seen embedded in social and cultural structures. These structures, he believed, were completely alien to it, and a perversion of it. In Islam, too, the Sufis sought Fana, the extinction of that social and cultural self which was determined by the structural forms of religious customs. This extinction is a breakthrough into a realm of mystical liberty in which the "self" is lost and then reconstituted in Baga - something like the "New Man" of Christianity, as understood by the Christian mystics (including the Apostles. " I live, said Paul, "now not I but Christ lives in me." And in Zen enlightenment, the discovery of the "original face before you were born" is the discovery not that one sees Buddha but that one is Buddha and that Buddha is not what the images in the temple had led one to expect; for there is no longer any image, and consequently nothing to see, no one to see it, and a Void in which no image is even conceivable. "The true seeing," said Shen Hui, "is when there is no seeing." What this means then is that Zen is outside all structures and forms. We may use certain externals of Zen Buddhist monasticism - along with the paintings of Zen artists, their poems, their brief and vivid sayings - to help us approach Zen. The peculiar quality of Chinese and Japanese art that is influenced by Zen is that it is able to suggest what cannot be said, and, by using a bare minimum of form, to awaken us to the formless. Zen painting tells us just enough to alert us to what is not and is nevertheless "right there." Zen calligraphy, by its peculiar suppleness, dynamism, abandon, contempt for "prettiness" and for formal "style," reveals to us something of the freedom which is not transcendent in some abstract and intellectual sense, but which employs a minimum of form without being attached to it, and is therefore free form it. The Zen consciousness is compared to a mirror. A modern Zen writer says:
What is meant here is that the Zen consciousness does to distinguish and categorize what it sees in terms of social and cultural standards. It does not try to fit things into artificially preconceived structures. It does not judge beauty and ugliness according to canons of taste - even though it may have its own taste. If it seems to judge and distinguish, it does so only enough to point beyond judgment to the pure void. it does not settle down in its judgment as final. It doe not erect its judgment into a structure to be defended against all comers. Here we can fruitfully reflect on the deep meaning of Jesus' saying: "Judge not, and you will not be judged." Beyond its moral implications, familiar to all, there is a Zen dimension to this word of the Gospel. Only when this Zen dimension is grasped will the moral bearing of it be fully clear! As to the notion of the "Buddha mind" - it is not something esoteric to be laboriously acquired, something "not-there" which has to be put there (where?) by the assiduous mental and physical pummeling of Roshi, Koans and all the rest. "The Buddha is your everyday mind." Cultural structures and forms are there, no doubt. There is no such thing as getting along without them or treating them as if they did not exist. But there eventually comes a time when like Moses we see that the thorn bush of cultural and religious forms is suddenly on fire and we are summoned to approach it without shoes - and probably also without feet. Is the fire other than the Bush? More than the Bush? Or is it more the Bush than the Bush itself? The Burning Bush of Exodus reminds us strangely of the Prajnaparamita Sutra; "Form is emptiness, emptiness itself is form; form does not differ from emptiness (the Void), emptiness, whatever emptiness, that is form. . . . " So too the words from the flame and bush in Exodus: "I am what I am." These words go beyond position and negation, in fact no one quite knows what the Hebrew means. The scholars make their surmises according to the spirit of the age: now Essentialist ("Pure - self - subsistent - Being - in - Act"), now existentialist ("I - won't - tell - you - so - mind - your - own - business - which - is - not - to - know - but - to - do - next - time - I - am - around"). In other words, we begin to divine that Zen is not only beyond the formulations of Buddhism but it is also in a certain way "beyond" (and even pointed to by) the revealed message of Christianity. That is to say that when one breaks through the limits of cultural and structural religion - or irreligion - one is liable to end up, by "birth in the Spirit," or just by intellectual awakening, in a simple void where all is liberty because all is the actionless action, called by the Chinese Wu-wei and by the New Testament the "freedom of the Sons of God." Not that they are theologically one and the same, but they have at any rate the same kind of limitlessness, the same lack of of inhibition, the same psychic fullness of creativity, which mark the fully integrated maturity of the "enlightened self." The "mind of Christ" as described by St. Paul in Philippians 2 may be theologically worlds apart form the "mind of Buddha" - this I am not prepared to discuss. But the utter "self-emptying" of Christ in His kenosis - can be understood and has been understood in a very Zen-like sense as far as psychology and experience are concerned. Thus with all due deference to the vast doctrinal differences between Buddhism and Christianity, and preserving intact all respect for the claims of the different religions: in no way mixing up the Christian "vision of God" with Buddhist "enlightenment," we can nevertheless say that the two have this psychic "limitlessness" in common. And they tend to describe it in much the same language. It is now "emptiness," now "dark night," now "perfect freedom," now "no-mind," now "poverty" in the sense used by Eckhart and by D.T. Suzuki. At this point I may take occasion to say clearly that in my dialog with Dr. Suzuki, my choice of Cassian's "purity of heart" as a Christian expression of Zen-consciousness was an unfortunate example. No doubt there are passages in Cassian and Evagrius Ponticus and other contemplatives of the Egyptian Desert which suggest some tendency toward the "emptiness" of Zen. but Cassian's idea of "purity of heart," with its Platonic implications, while it may or may not be mystical, is not yet Zen because it still maintains that the supreme consciousness resides in a distinct heart which is pure and which is therefore ready and even worthy to receive a vision of God. it is still very aware of a "pure," distinct and separate self-consciousness. A fuller and truer expression of Zen in Christian experience is given by Meister Eckhart. he admits that:
This is Cassian's "purity of heart," and it also corresponds to the idea of "spiritual virginity" in some Christian mystics. But now Eckhart goes on to say that there is much more:
A man should be so disinterested and untrammeled that he does not know what God is doing in him" For, he continues,
Because of the peculiar problems this difficult text poses for Christian orthodoxy, the editor of the English version (Blakney) has printed God now with a small g and now with a large one. This is perhaps an unnecessary scruple. In any case this passage reflects Eckhart's Zen-like equation of God as infinite abyss and ground (cf. Sunyata), with the true being of self grounded in Him; hence it is that Eckhart believes only when there is no self left as a "place" in which God acts only when God acts purely in Himself, do we at last recover our "true self" (which is in Zen terms "no-self"). "It is here, in this poverty, that man regains the eternal being that once he was, now is and evermore shall be." it is easy to see why those who interpreted this purely in terms of the theological system of the time (instead of in terms of the Zen-like experience it was meant to express) found in unacceptable. Yet the same idea, expressed in slightly different words in Eckhart, is capable of a perfectly orthodox interpretation. Eckhart speaks of "perfect poverty" in which man is even "without God," and "has not place in himself for God to work" (i.e., is beyond purity of heart).
In such perfect poverty, says Eckhart, one may still have idea and experiences, yet one is free of them:
Beyond the thinking, reflecting, willing and loving self, and even beyond the mystical "spark" in the deepest ground of the soul, is the highest agent, "at once pure and free as God is and like him it is a perfect unity." For "there is something in the soul so closely akin to God that is already one with him and need never be unite to him." Eckhart goes on to develop this idea of dynamic unity in a marvelous image which is distinctly Western and yet has a deeply Zen-like quality about it. This divine likeness in us which is the core of our being and is "in God" even more than it is "in us," is the focus to God's inexhaustible creative delight.
From the point of view of logic this poetic development simply does not make sense, but as an expression of inexpressible insight into the very core of life, it is incomparable. It shows, incidentally, how Eckhart understood the Christian doctrine of creation. he admits the separation of the creature and Creator, for this "Something is apart from and strange to all creation." yet the distinction between Creator and creature does not alter the fact that there is also a basic unity within ourselves at the summit of our being where we are "one with God." If we could identify purely with the summit we would be other than we experience ourselves to be, yet much more truly ourselves than we actually are. So Eckhart says:
Yet we must finally discover the dignity and importance even of our "earthly self" which does not exist apart from it, but in it and by it. The tragedy is that our consciousness is totally alienated from this inmost ground of our identity. And in Christian mystical tradition, this inner split and alienation is the real meaning of "original sin." This is all very close to the expressions we find everywhere in the Zen Masters. But it is also intended to be purely Christian for , as Eckhart says, it is precisely in this pure poverty when one is no longer a "self" that one recovers one's true identity in God: This true identity is the "birth of Christ in us." Curiously, then, for Eckhart, it is when we lose our special, separate cultural and religious identity - the "self" or "persona" that is the subject of virtues as well as visions, that perfects itself by good works, that advances in the practice of piety - that Christ is finally born in us in the highest sense. (Eckhart does not deny the sacramental teaching of the birth of Christ in us by baptism, but he is interested in something more fully developed). Obviously these teachings of Eckhart were found very disturbing. His taste for paradox, his deliberate use of expressions which outraged conventional religious susceptibilities, in order to awaken his hearers to a new dimension of experience, left him open to the attacks of this enemies. Some of his teachings were officially condemned by the Church - and many of these are being reinterpreted today by scholars in a fully orthodox sense. This is not however what concerns us here. Eckhart can best be appreciated for what is really best in him: and this is not something that is to be found within the framework of a theological system but outside it. In all that he tried to say, whether in familiar or in startling terms, Eckhart was trying to point to something that cannot be structured and cannot be contained within the limits of any system. he was not trying to construct a new dogmatic theology, but was trying to give expression to the great creative renewal of the mystical consciousness which was sweeping through the Rhineland and the Low Countries in his time. If Eckhart is studied in the framework of a religious and cultural structure, he is undoubtedly intriguing; yet we may entirely miss the point of what he was saying and become involved in side issues. Seen in relation to those Zen Masters on the other side of the earth who, like him, deliberately used extremely paradoxical expressions, we can detect in him the same kind of consciousness as theirs. Whatever Zen may be, however you define it, it is somehow there in Eckhart. But the way to see it is not first to define Zen and then apply the definition both to him and to the Japanese Zen Masters. The real way to study Zen is to penetrate the outer shell and taste the inner kernel which cannot be defined. Then one realizes in oneself the reality which is being talked about. As Eckhart says:
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