Dt Suzuki Zen Quotes

The truth of Zen, just a little bit of it, is what turns one's humdrum life, a life of monotonous, uninspiring commonplaceness, into one of art, full of genuine inner creativity.

We teach ourselves; Zen merely points the way.

When mountain-climbing is made too easy, the spiritual effect the mountain exercises vanishes into the air.

When a thing is denied, the very denial involves something not denied.

The idea of Zen is to catch life as it flows. There is nothing extraordinary or mysterious about Zen. I raise my hand ; I take a book from the other side of the desk ; I hear the boys playing ball outside my window; I see the clouds blown away beyond the neighbouring wood: — in all these I am practising Zen, I am living Zen. No wordy discussions is necessary, nor any explanation. I do not know why — and there is no need of explaining, but when the sun rises the whole world dances with joy and everybody’s heart is filled with bliss. If Zen is at all conceivable, it must be taken hold of here.

the finger pointing at the moon remains a finger and under no circumstances can it be changed into the moon itself.

The way to ascend unto God is to descend into one's self"; -- these are Hugo's words. "If thou wishest to search out the deep things of God, search out the depths of thine own spirit";

Zen has nothing to do with letters, words, or sutras.

The basic idea of Zen is to come in touch with the inner workings of our being, and to do so in the most direct way possible, without resorting to anything external or superadded.

Zen perceives and feels, and does not abstract and meditate. Zen penetrates and is finally lost in the immersion. Meditation, on the other hand, is outspokenly dualistic and consequently inevitably superficial.

How hard, then, and yet how easy it is to understand Zen! Hard because to understand it is not to understand it; easy because not to understand it is to understand it.

Zen professes itself to be the spirit of Buddhism, but in fact it is the spirit of all religions and philosophies. When Zen is thoroughly understood, absolute peace of mind is attained, and a man lives as he ought to live.

Modern life seems to recede further and further away from nature, and closely connected with this fact we seem to be losing the feeling of reverence towards nature. It is probably inevitable when science and machinery, capitalism and materialism go hand in hand so far in a most remarkably successful manner. Mysticism, which is the life of religion in whatever sense we understand it, has come to be relegated altogether in the background. Without a certain amount of mysticism there is no appreciation for the feeling of reverence, and, along with it, for the spiritual significance of humility. Science and scientific technique have done a great deal for humanity; but as far as our spiritual welfare is concerned we have not made any advances over that attained by our forefathers. In fact we are suffering at present the worst kind of unrest all over the world.

No amount of wordy explanations will ever lead us into the nature of our own selves. The more you explain, the further it runs away from you. It is like trying to get hold of your own shadow. You run after it and it runs with you at the identical rate of speed.

If there is anything Zen strongly emphasizes it is the attainment of freedom; that is, freedom from all unnatural encumbrances. Meditation is something artificially put on; it does not belong to the native activity of the mind. Upon what do the fowls of the air meditate? Upon what do the fish in the water meditate? They fly; they swim. Is not that enough? Who wants to fix his mind on the unity of God and man, or on the nothingness of life? Who wants to be arrested in the daily manifestations of his life-activity by such meditations as the goodness of a divine being or the everlasting fire of hell?

Taking it all in all, Zen is emphatically a matter of personal experience; if anything can be called radically empirical, it is Zen. No amount of reading, no amount of teaching, no amount of contemplation will ever make one a Zen master. Life itself must be grasped in the midst of its flow; to stop it for examination and analysis is to kill it, leaving its cold corpse to be embraced.

In Zen there must be satori; there must be a general mental upheaval which destroys the old accumulations of intellection and lays down the foundation for a new life; there must be the awakening of a new sense which will review the old things from a hitherto undreamed-of angle of observation.

When mind discriminates, there is manifoldness of things; when it does not it looks into the true state of things.

Perhaps there is after all nothing mysterious in Zen. Everything is open to your full view. If you eat your food and keep yourself cleanly dressed and work on the farm to raise your rice or vegetables, you are doing all that is required of you on this earth, and the infinite is realized in you.

Emptiness constantly falls within our reach. It is always with us, and conditions all our knowledge, all our deeds and is our life itself. It is only when we attempt to pick it up and hold it forth as something before our eyes that it eludes us, frustrates all our efforts and vanishes like vapor.

In Christianity we seem to be too conscious of God, though we say that in him we live and move and have our being. Zen wants to have this last trace of God-consciousness, if possible, obliterated. That is why Zen masters advise us not to linger where the Buddha is, and to pass quickly away where he is not.

[W]e must remember that the finger pointing at the moon remains a finger and under no circumstances can it be changed into the moon itself. Danger always lurks where the intellect slyly creeps in and takes the index for the moon itself.

They justly compare Zen to lightning. The rapidity, however, does not constitute Zen; its naturalness, its freedom from artificialities, its being expressive of life itself, its originality—these are the essential characteristics of Zen.

Copying is slavery. The letter must never be followed, only the spirit is to be grasped. Higher affirmations live in the spirit. And where is the spirit? Seek it in your everyday experience, and therein lies abundance of proof for all you need.

In the study of Zen, the power of an all-illuminating insight must go hand in hand with a deep sense of humility and meekness of heart.

The idea of Zen is to catch lie as it flows. There is nothing extraordinary or mysterious about Zen. [...]. No wordy discussion is necessary, nor any explanation. I do not know why—and there is no need of explaining, but when the sun rises the whole world dances with joy and everybody's heart is filled with bliss. If Zen is at all conceivable, it must be taken hold of here.

There is something rejuvenating in the possession of Zen. The spring flowers look prettier, and the mountain stream runs cooler and more transparent. The subjective revolution that brings about this state of things cannot be called abnormal. When life becomes more enjoyable and its expense broadens to include the universe itself, there must be something in *satori* that is quite precious and well worth one's striving after.

Is satori something that is not at all capable of intellectual analysis? Yes, it is an experience which no amount of explanation or argument can make communicable to others unless the latter themselves had it previously. If satori is amenable to analysis in the sense that by so doing it becomes perfectly clear to another who has never had it, that satori will be no satori. For a satori turned into a concept ceases to be itself; and there will no more be a Zen experience.

All the causes, all the conditions of satori are in the mind; they are merely waiting for the maturing. [...] From the very beginning nothing has been kept from you, all that you wished to see has been there all the time before you, it was only yourself that closed the eye to the fact. Therefore, there is in Zen nothing to explain, nothing to teach, that will add to your knowledge. Unless it grows out of yourself no knowledge is really yours, it is only a borrowed plumage.

— Не е ли похвално да се почита Буда? — Да, — казал учителят, — но още по-добре е без похвални неща.

Zen has no business with ideas.

Религия ли е Дзен? Дзен не е религия в общоприетия смисъл на думата, защото в Дзен няма Бог, пред който да се прекланяме, няма обреди и церемонии, които да спазваме, няма отвъдна обител за мъртвите, и най-сетне, в Дзен няма душа, за чието благополучие да отговаря друг, за чието безсмъртие да се грижат хората. Дзен ще рече освободеност от цялото това бреме на догми и религиозни вярвания.

Zen attempts to take hold of life in its act of living; to stop the flow of life and to look into it is not the business of Zen. [...] Satori is attained in the midst of this activity and not by suppressing it[.]

This acquiring of a new viewpoint in Zen is called *satori* (*wu* in Chinese) and its verb form is *satoru*. Without it there is no Zen, for the life of Zen begins with the "opening of *satori*". *Satori* may be defined as intuitive looking-into, in contradistinction to intellectual and logical understanding. Whatever the definition, *satori* means the unfolding of a new world hitherto unperceived in the confusion of the dualistic mind.

If we really want to get to the bottom of life, we must abandon our cherished syllogisms, we must acquire a new way of observation whereby we can escape the tyranny of logic and the one-sidedness of our everyday phraseology.

Life is an art, and like perfect art it should be self-forgetting; there ought not to be any trace of effort or painful feeling. Life, according to Zen, ought to be lived as a bird flies through the air or as a fish swims in the water.

Zen opens a man's eyes to the greatest mystery as it is daily and hourly performed; it enlarges the heart to embrace eternity of time and infinity of space in its every palpitation; it makes us live in the world as if walking in the garden of Eden

When we know the reason, there is satori and we have Zen. Whereas with the God of mysticism there is the grasping of a definite object; when you have God, what is no-God is excluded. This is self-limiting. Zen wants absolute freedom, even from God.

Както казват учителите по Дзен, коан е само парче тухла, с която чукаш по вратата, показалец, насочен към луната. Той има за цел да синтезира или да преодолява — без значение коя дума ще изберете — дуализма на сетивата. Докато съзнанието не е свободно да приеме звук от една ръка, то остава ограничено и раздвоено в своя вреда. Вместо да намери ключа към тайните на съзиданието, съзнанието е безнадеждно погребано в относителността на нещата, т. е. неистинската им страна. Докато съзнанието не се освободи от оковите, то никога няма да разглежда света в неговата цялост и да бъде удовлетворено. Всъщност звукът, произведен от едната ръка, стига и горе до рая, и долу до ада, така както „истинското лице“ на човека е обърнато към цялото пространство на съзиданието и до края на времето.

Zen, therefore, most strongly and persistently insists on an inner spiritual experience. It does not attach any intrinsic importance to the sacred sutras or to their exegeses by the wise and learned. Personal experience is strongly set against authority and objective revelation[.]

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 later on in this book (see p. 110).

Christians as well as Buddhists can practise Zen just as big fish and small fish are both contentedly living in the same ocean. Zen is the ocean, Zen is the air, Zen is the mountain, Zen is thunder and lightning, the spring flower, summer heat, and winter snow; nay, more than that, Zen is the man.

The wise Sekiso (Shih-shuang) said, 'Stop all your hankerings; let the mildew grow on your lips; make yourself like unto a perfect piece of immaculate silk; let your one thought be eternity; let yourself be like the dead ashes, cold and lifeless; again let yourself be like an old censer in a deserted village shrine!

When Nangaku was approaching Yeno, the Sixth Patriarch, and was questioned, "What is it that thus walks toward me?" he did not know what to answer. For eight long years he pondered the question, when one day it dawned upon him, and he exclaimed, "Even to say it is something does not hit the mark". This is the same as saying, "I do not know".

Are you going to be eternally chained by your own laws of thought, or are you going to be perfectly free in an assertion of life which knows no beginning or end? [...]. The Zen method of discipline generally consists in putting one in a dilemma, out of which one must contrive to escape, not through logic indeed, but through a mind of higher order.

Zen has from the beginning made clear and insisted upon the main thesis, which is to see into the work of creation; the creator may be found busy moulding his universe, or he may be absent from his workshop, but Zen goes on with its own work. It is not dependent upon the support of a creator; when it grasps the reason for living a life, it is satisfied.

Some say that as Zen is admittedly a form of mysticism it cannot claim to be unique in the history of religion. Perhaps so; but Zen is a mysticism of its own order. It is mystical in the sense that the sun shines, that the flower blooms, that I hear at this moment somebody beating a drum in the street. If these are mystical facts, Zen is brim-full of them.

The basic idea of Zen is to come in touch with the inner workings of our being, and to do this in the most direct way possible, without resorting to anything external or superadded. Therefore, anything that has the semblance of an external authority is rejected by Zen. Absolute faith is placed in a man's own inner being. For whatever authority there is in Zen, all comes from within.

Zen purposes to discipline the mind itself, to make it its own master, through an insight into its proper nature. This getting into the real nature of one's own mind or soul is the fundamental object of Zen Buddhism. Zen, therefore, is more than meditation and Dhyana in its ordinary sense. The discipline of Zen consists in opening the mental eye in order to look into the very reason of existence.

As far as content goes, there is none in either satori or Zen that can be described or presented or demonstrated for your intellectual appreciation. For Zen has no business with ideas, and satori is a sort of inner perception—not the perception, indeed, of a single individual object but the perception of Reality itself, so to speak. The ultimate destination of satori is towards the Self; it has no other end but to be back within oneself.

Monks ought to behave like a grinding stone: Changsan comes to sharpen his knife, Li-szŭ comes to grind his axe, everybody and anybody who wants to have his metal improved in anyway comes and makes use of the stone. Each time the stone is rubbed, it wears out, but it makes no complaint, nor does it boast of its usefulness. And those who come to it go home fully benefitted; some of them may not be quite appreciative of the stone; but the stone itself remains ever contented......

Във всички тези обреди — благочестиви и пречистващи за повечето вярващи — Дзен вижда нещо изкуствено. „Съвършените йоги не постигат нирвана, а монасите, нарушаващи обета си, не отиват в ада“, гласи един от дзен-принципите. За обикновеното съзнание това противоречи на общоприетите морални норми, но именно тук се крие истината и жизнеността на Дзен. Дзен е духът на човека. Дзен вярва във вътрешната му чистота и доброта. Всичко насилствено добавено или отнето от духа нарушава неговата цялост. Затова Дзен е категорично против всякакви религиозни условности.

Satori is the sudden flashing into consciousness of a new truth hitherto undreamed of. It is a sort of mental catastrophe taking place all at once, after much piling up of matters intellectual and demonstrative. The piling has reached a limit of stability and the whole edifice has come tumbling to the ground, when, behold, a new heaven is open to full survey. [...]. Religiously, it is a new birth; intellectually, it is the acquiring of a new viewpoint. The world now appears as if dressed in a new garment, which seems to cover up all the unsightliness of dualism[.]

[T]he koan is only a piece of brick used to knock at the gate, an index-finger pointing at the moon. It is only intended to synthesize or transcend—whichever expression you may choose—the dualism of the senses. So long as the mind is not free to perceive a sound produced by one hand, it is limited and is divided against itself. Instead of grasping the key to the secrets of creation, the mind is hopelessly buried in the relativity of things, and, therefore, in their superficiality. Until the mind is free from the fetters, the time never comes for it to view the whole world with any amount of satisfaction.

Zen often compares the mind to a mirror free from stains. To be simple, therefore, according to Zen, will be to keep this mirror always bright and pure and ready to reflect simply and absolutely whatever comes before it. The result will be to acknowledge a spade to be a spade and at the same time not to be a spade. To recognize the first only is a common-sense view, and there is no Zen until the second is also admitted along with the first. The common-sense view is flat and tame, whereas that of Zen is always original and stimulating. Each time Zen is asserted things get vitalized; there is an act of creation.

Here lies the value of the Zen discipline, as it gives birth to the unshakable conviction that there is something indeed going beyond mere intellection. The wall of koan once broken through and the intellectual obstructions well cleared off, you come back, so to speak, to your everyday relatively constructed consciousness. [...] Zen is now the most ordinary thing in the world. A field that we formerly supposed to lie far beyond is now found to be the very field in which we walk, day in, day out. When we come out of satori we see the familiar world with all its multitudinous objects and ideas together with their logicalness, and pronounce them "good".

The object of Zen discipline consists in acquiring a new viewpoint for looking into the essence of things. If you have been in the habit of thinking logically according to the rules of dualism, rid yourself of it and you may come around somewhat to the viewpoint of Zen. You and I are supposedly living in the same world, but who can tell that the thing we popularly call a stone that is lying before my window is the same to both of us? You and I sip a cup of tea. That act is apparently alike to us both, but who can tell what a wide gap there is subjectively between your drinking and my drinking? In your drinking there may be no Zen, while mine is brim-full of it. The reason for it is: you move in a logical circle and I am out of it.

When Tanka (Tan-hsia) of the T'ang dynasty stopped at Yerinji in the Capital, it was severely cold; so taking down one of the Buddha images enshrined there, he made a fire of it and warmed himself. The keeper of the shrine, seeing this, was greatly incensed, and exclaimed: "How dare you burn my wooden image of the Buddha?" Tanka began to search in the ashes as if he were looking for something, and said: "I am gathering the holy sariras* from the burnt ashes." "How," said the keeper, "can you get sariras from a wooden Buddha?" Tanka retorted, "If there are no sariras to be found in it, may I have the remaining two Buddhas for my fire?" * Sarira (shari in J. and she-li in C.) literally means the "body", but in Buddhism it is a kind of mineral deposit found in the human body after cremation. The value of such deposits is understood by the Buddhists to correspond to the saintliness of life.

Jesus said, "When thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth; that thine alms may be in secret." This is the "secret virtue" of Buddhism. But when the account goes on to say that "Thy Father who seeth in secret shall recompense thee", we see a deep cleavage between Buddhism and Christianity. As long as there is any thought of anybody, be he God or devil, knowing of our doings and making recompense, Zen would say, "You are not yet one of us." Deeds that are the product of such thought leave "traces" and "shadows". If a spirit is tracing your doings, he will in no time get hold of you and make you account for what you have done; Zen will have none of it. The perfect garment shows no seams, inside and outside; it is one complete piece and nobody can tell where the work began, or how it was woven. In Zen, therefore, no traces of self-conceit or self-glorification are to be left behind even after the doing of good, much less the thought of recompense, even by God.

To speak conventionally - and I think it is easier for the general reader to see Zen thus presented - there are unknown recesses in our minds which lie beyond the threshold of the relatively constructed consciousness. To designate them as “sub-conciousness” or “supra-consciousness” is not correct. The word “beyond” is used simply because it is a most convenient term to indicate their whereabouts. But as a matter of fact there is no “beyond”, no “underneath”, no “upon” in our consciousness. The mind is one indivisible whole and cannot be torn in pieces. The so-called terra incognita is the concession of Zen to our ordinary way of talking, because whatever field of consciousness that is known to us is generally filled with conceptual riffraff, and to get rid of them, which is absolutely necessary for maturing Zen experience, the Zen psychologist sometimes points to the presence of some inaccessible region in our minds. Though in actuality there is no such region apart from our everyday consciousness, we talk of it as generally more easily comprehensible by us.

While the founder [of any religious or spiritual system] was still walking among his followers and disciples, the latter did not distinguish between the person of their leader and his teaching; for the teaching was realized in the person and the person was livingly explained in the teaching. To embrace the teaching was to follow his steps - that is, to believe in him. His presence among them was enough to inspire them and convince them of the truth of his teaching... So long as he lived among them and spoke to them his teaching and his person appealed to them as an individual unity. But things went differently when his stately and inspiring personality was no more seen in the flesh... The similarities that were, either consciously or unconsciously, recognized as existing in various forms between leader and disciple gradually vanished, and as they vanished, the other side - that is, that which made him so distinctly different from his followers - came to assert itself all the more emphatically and irresistibly. The result was the conviction that he must have come from quite a unique spiritual source. The process of deification thus constantly went on until, some centuries after the death of the Master, he became a direct manifestation of the Supreme Being himself - in fact, he was the Highest One in the flesh, in him there was a divine humanity in perfect realization... Indeed, the teaching is to be interpreted in the light of the teacher's divine personality. The latter now predominates over the whole system; he is the centre whence radiate the rays of Enlightenment, salvation is only possible in believing in him as saviour.

As far as the content goes, there is none in either *satori* or Zen that can be described or presented or demonstrated for your intellectual appreciation. For Zen has no business with ideas, and *satori* is a sort of inner perception -- not the perception, indeed, of a single individual object but the perception of Reality itself, so to speak.

... в Дзен няма нищо за обяснение, нищо за обучаване, нищо, с което да се обогатят човешките знания. Ако познанието не възникне у човека, то не е истински негово, то е като взето назаем чуждо украшение.

Монаси помолили учителя Хякуджо (Пайчан) да им изнесе беседа за Дзен. Той казал: — Идете на полето да си гледате работата, а после ще ви кажа всичко за Дзен. След като си свършили работата, те помолили учителя да изпълни своето обещание. В отговор Хякуджо разтворил двете си ръце, но не казал нито дума. Това била неговата велика проповед.

Индийците са мистични, но техният мистицизъм е прекалено умозрителен, прекалено съзерцателен, прекалено сложен и, нещо повече, — сякаш няма реална, жизнена връзка с конкретния свят, в който съществуваме. Далекоизточният мистицизъм, напротив, е непосредствен, практичен, учудващо прост и не би могъл да прерасне в нищо друго освен в Дзен.

Нито сатори, нито Дзен имат същност, която да бъде представена или демонстрирана за усвояване.“ Защото Дзен не борави с идеи, а сатори е своеобразно вътрешно възприятие — всъщност не възприятие на отделен предмет, а — така да се каже — на Цялото. Крайната цел на сатори е Азът; няма друга цел освен човек да стане отново самия себе си.

— Когато съзнанието не се помещава в определен обект, казваме, че то пребивава там, където не съществува постоянна обител. — Какво значи да не се помещава в определен обект? — Това значи да не пребивава в двуначалието добро — зло, съществуване — несъществуване, дух — материя. Това означава да не пребивава в пустотата или не-пустотата, нито в покоя или не-по-коя. Където не съществува постоянна обител, там е истинската обител на съзнанието.

Сатори е изживяване, което с никакви обяснения или примери не може да бъде предадено на друг човек, освен ако той самият вече не го е изпитал. Ако се поддаваше на анализ — в смисъл, чрез анализ да става ясно другиму, който не го е изпитал, сатори не би било сатори. Превърнато в понятие, то губи същността си и вече няма Дзен. Затова единственото, което може да се направи в Дзен, в смисъл на обучение, е да се посочи, да се подскаже или означи пътят, така че да се съсредоточи вниманието на човека към целта. Постигането на целта и осъзнаването на този факт трябва да направим сами, никой не може го стори вместо нас. А знаците за това са навсякъде. Когато съзнанието на човека е узряло за сатори, той може да го намери във всяко нещо.

Ако човек отвори уста, за да изрече утвърждение или отрицание, той е загубен. Дзен вече го няма. Но и да пази мълчание не върви. Камъкът на земята мълчи, разцъфналото цвете под прозореца също мълчи, ала те не разбират Дзен. Трябва да се открие някакъв начин, мълчанието и говорът да бъдат едно и също, т.е. отрицанието и утвърждението да се уеднаквят в по-висша форма на изказ. Постигнем ли това, значи сме познали Дзен.

Дзен се интересува от фактите, а не от техните логически, словесни, предубедени и непълноценни изразители. Съкровената същност на Дзен е непосредствеността и простотата, оттук и неговата жизненост, свобода и оригиналност. В християнството, както и в други религии, също се говори много за простотата на сърцето, което не винаги означава човек да бъде простодушен. В Дзен това означава да не се допусне въвличане в интелектуални упражнения, нито във философски разсъждения, които често са безсмислени и пълни със софистика.

D.T. Suzuki notes that "when Zen wants you to taste the sweetness of sugar, it will put the required article right into your mouth and no further words are said." In this sense, Zen is direct and not intermediated, concrete and not abstract, practical and not theoretical, sensual and not intellectual, down-to-earth and not otherworldly.

When a humble flower in the crannied wall is understood, the whole universe and all things in it and out of it are understood.

Uma criança está se afogando; eu entro na água, e a criança é salva. Isso é tudo

I allowed my mind without restraint to think of what it pleased, and my mouth to talk about whatever it pleased; I then forgot whether ‘this and not-this’ was mine or others’, whether the gain or loss was mine or others’; nor did I know whether Lao-shang-shih was my teacher and Pa-kao was my friend. In and out, I was thoroughly transformed; and then it was that the eye became like the ear, and the ear like the nose, and the nose like the mouth; and there was nothing that was not identified. As the mind became concentrated, the form dissolved, the bones and flesh all thawed away; I did not know upon what my frame was supported, or where my feet were treading; I just moved along with the wind, east or west, like a leaf of the tree detached from its stem; I was unconscious whether I was riding on the wind, or the wind riding on me.

A monk once asked the master, “Has a dog Buddhist nature, too?”, whereupon the master answered, “Wu.” As Suzuki remarks, this “Wu” means quite simply “Wu”, obviously just what the dog himself would have said in answer to the question.

When a man's mind is matured for satori it tumbles over one everywhere. An inarticulate sound, an unintelligent remark, a blooming flower, or a trivial incident such as stumbling, is the condition or occasion that will open his mind to satori.

Especially is this true of the concept of "secret virtue", which is a very characteristic feature of Zen discipline. It means not to waste natural resources; it means to make full use, economic and moral, of everything that comes your way; it means to treat yourself and the world in the most appreciative and reverential frame of mind. It particularly means practising goodness without any thought of recognition by others. A child is drowning; I get into the water, and the child is saved. That is all there is to be done in the case; what is done is done. I walk away, I never look backward, and nothing more is thought of it. A cloud passes and the sky is as blue as ever and as broad. Zen calls it "a deed without merit" (anabhogacarya) , and compares it to a man's work who tries to fill up a well with snow,

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 nondistinction 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)

Being practical and directly to the point, Zen never wastes time or words in explanation. Its answers are always curt and pithy; there is nothing circumlocutory in Zen; the master's words come out spontaneously and without a moment's delay. A gong is struck and its vibrations instantly follow. If we are not on the alert we fail to catch them; a mere winking and we miss the mark forever.

An absolute affirmation must rise from the fiery crater of life itself.

With the development of Zen, mysticism has ceased to be mystical; it is no more the spasmodic product of an abnormally endowed mind. For Zen reveals itself in the most uninteresting and uneventful life of a plain man of the street, recognizing the fact of living in the midst of life as it is lived. Zen systematically trains the mind to see this; it opens a man's eye to the greatest mystery as it is daily and hourly performed; it enlarges the heart to embrace eternity of time and infinity of space in its every palpitation; it makes us live in the world as if walking in the garden of Eden; and all these spiritual feats are accomplished without resorting to any doctrines but by simply asserting in the most direct way the truth that lies in our inner being.

Zen has nothing to teach us in the way of intellectual analysis ; nor has it any set doctrines which are imposed on its followers for acceptance. In this respect Zen is quite chaotic if you choose to say so. Probably Zen followers may have sets of doctrines, but they have them on their own account, and for their own benefit; they do not owe the fact to Zen. Therefore, there are in Zen no sacred books or dogmatic tenets, nor are there any symbolic formulae through which an access might be gained into the signification of Zen. If I am asked, then, what Zen teaches, I would answer, Zen teaches nothing. Whatever teachings there are in Zen, they come out of one's own mind. We teach ourselves; Zen merely points the way. Unless this pointing is teaching, there is certainly nothing in Zen purposely set up as its cardinal doctrines or as its fundamental philosophy.

Zen must be seized with bare hands, with no gloves on.

The idea of Zen is to catch life as it flows. There

However innumerable sentient beings are, I vow to save them; However inexhaustible the passions are, I vow to extinguish them; However immeasurable the Dharmas are, I vow to study them; However incomparable the Buddha-truth is, I vow to attain it.

Mo, of Wu-hsieh, (H&At), before his death, had a bath and incense burned. Quietly sitting in his seat, he said to the monks: "The Dharmakaya remains forever perfectly serene, and yet shows that there are comings and goings ; all the sages of the past come from the same source, and all the souls of the world return to the One. My being like a foam is now broken up; you have no reason to grieve over the fact. Do not needlessly put your nerves to task, but keep up your quiet thought. If you observe this injunction of mine, you are requiting me for all that I did for you; but if you go against my words, you are not to be known as my disciples." A monk came out and asked, "Where would you depart?" "No-where." "Why cannot I see this `no-where'?

deepest spiritual experience.

Going through all these quotations, it may be thought that the critics are justified in charging Zen with advocating a philosophy of pure negation, but nothing is so far from Zen as this criticism would imply. For Zen always aims at grasping the central fact of life, which can never be brought to the dissecting table of the intellect. To grasp this central fact of life, Zen is forced to propose a series of negations. Mere negation, however, is not the spirit of Zen, but as we are so accustomed to the dualistic way of thinking, this intellectual error must be cut at its root. Naturally Zen would proclaim, "Not this, not that, not anything." But we may insist upon asking Zen what it is that is left after all these denials, and the master will perhaps on such an occasion give us a slap in the face, exclaiming, "You fool, what is this?" Some may take this as only an excuse to get away from the dilemma, or as having no more meaning than a practical example of ill-breeding. But when the spirit of Zen is grasped in its purity, it will be seen what a real thing that slap is. For here is no negation, no affirmation, but a plain fact, a pure experience, the very foundation of our being and thought. All the quietness and emptiness one might desire in the midst of most active mentation lies therein. Do not be carried away by anything outward or conventional. Zen must be seized with bare hands, with no gloves on.

Zen is forced to resort to negation because of our innate ignorance (avidya), which tenaciously clings to the mind as wet clothes do to the body. 'Ignorance' is all very well as far as it goes, but it must not go out of its proper sphere. 'Ignorance' is another name for logical dualism. White is snow and black is the raven. But these belong to the world and its ignorant way of talking. If we want to get to the very truth of things, we must see them from the point where this world has not yet been created, where the consciousness of this and that has not yet been awakened and where the mind is absorbed in its own identity, that is, in its serenity and emptiness. This is a world of negations but leading to a higher and absolute affirmation--an affirmation in the midst of negations. Snow is not white, the raven is not black, yet each in itself is white or black. This is where our everyday language fails to convey the exact meaning as conceived by Zen.

Zen wants us to acquire an entirely new point of view whereby to look into the mysteries of life and the secrets of nature. This is because Zen has come to the definite conclusion that the ordinary logical process of reasoning is powerless to give final satisfaction to our deepest spiritual needs.