Zen and its culture are unique to the East,
and until recently the West knew little about them. Some
Americans and Europeans who have learned of Zen have become
deeply interested in it.
The interest stems possibly from Zen's ability
to communicate new life awareness. Western culture is oriented
primarily toward Being; Eastern culture, toward non-Being.
Being can be studied by objective logic. Non-Being must
be existentially understood; it is the principle of absolute
negation that enables one to loosen bonds and turn toward
limitlessness.
This culture of non-Being developed in the
Far East with the points of emphasis differing from country
to country. In India it was pre dominantly intellectual
and philosophical; in China, practical and down to earth;
and in Japan, esthetic and emotional. Zen linked up with
these various cultural characteristics as it spread. What
then is Zen?
To define Zen is difficult. To define is to
limit to make a neat conceptual package that abstracts from
the whole and gives only part of the picture. This would
not capture Zen, for it is rooted in our deepest life flow
and deals with the facts of unfettered experience.
The non-conceptual nature of Zen is apparent
in the catch phrases that became popular in Sung China.
Zen trainees took their cues from such expressions as:
1) "No dependence on words and letters";
2) "A special transmission outside the
classified teachings";
3) "Direct pointing to the mind of man";
and
4) "Seeing the mind is becoming the Buddha."
Zen is not bound by the words and letters of
the sutras and satras. It passes from mind to mind outside
the classified and systematized doctrines. Systematizing
the Buddhist scriptures was a characteristic of Chinese
Buddhism. Bot Zen basically eluded systematization. It does
not lean on the classified teachings. It concentrates on
penetrating to the inherent nature of man, and this is called
becoming the Buddha.
Of course, Zen does not dispense with words
and letters altogether. It is merely not be enslaved by
them. In fact, very few religions have produced as many
fresh literary works as Zen. Much of the material, naturally
enough, deals with awakening from the word-bound state.
This experience does not lend itself to long discourses,
so Zen expressions are usually epigrammatic and poetic.
One of Ummon' most famous sayings was: "Every day is
a good day." Hoen said: "When one scoops up water,
the moon is reflected in the hands. When one handles flowers,
the scent soaks into the robe."
From the outset Zen emphasized human dignity.
This is the dignity deriving not from the ego but from the
"natural face" we all have. We gain vital freedom
by becoming aware of this "natural face" and living
in terms of it. Technically, this makes Zen a religion of
immanence, but to stop here leaves only a concept "a
pictured mochi (rice-cake)."
The important thing is the actual experiencing
of Zen. Such an experience would contribute significantly
toward allaying the anxieties of modern man, beset as he
is with the deadening impact of mass communications and
the mechanical life.
Because modern man needs some sort of conceptual
guideline to start out with, an effort to put Zen in sharper
focus may serve a purpose. In olden times some Zen masters
responded to questions with: "Zen is Zen." While
terse and to the point, this definition hardly offers any
help to modern seekers of Zen understanding. Therefore,
I venture to define Zen tentatively as follows: "Zen
is a practice that helps man to penetrate to his true self
through cross-legged sitting (zazen) and to vitalize this
self in daily life."
This definition, of course, does not cover
all of Zen. But it does in dude the important elements.
The three basic points in the definition are:
1) The practice of zazen,
2) Penetrating to the true self, and
3) Vitalizing the true self in daily life.
