Take Two

Take Two

Travelling The Path Of Enlightenment In Zen Buddhism And Taoism

When P’an-chan Pao-chi, a disciple of Ma-tsu, was about to pass away, he asked: “Is there anyone among you who will produce my likeness?” Each tried to do his best in sketching the master’s portrait, but none pleased him. All were sent away. P’u-hua, one of his own disciples, came out and said: “I can make your likeness.” “If so,” said the master, “why not present it to me?” P’u-hua performed a somersault as he went out of the room. P’an-shan’s [sic] remark was: “This fellow, when he goes out in the world as a teacher, will act like a lunatic.”1

Alan turned to me and started to speak, ready to impress me with his usual eloquence about our successful week together. I noticed a sudden breakthrough in his expression; a look of lightness and glow appeared all around him. Alan had discovered a different way to tell me of his feelings: “Yah…Ha…Ho…Ha! Ho…La Cha Om Ha…Deg deg te te…Ta De De Ta Te Ta…Ha Te Te Ha Hom…Te Te Te…” We gibbered and danced all the way up the hill. Everyone understood what we were saying. Alan knew too that he had never – not in all his books – said it any better than that.2

Knowledge of Zen Buddhism in the West is largely due to the work of the late Dr. D. T. Suzuki of Japan who, after strenuous study, attained his Zen enlightenment at the age of twenty seven. Thereafter he taught and wrote for sixty five years, with frequent visits to Europe and the U.S.A.3

Introduction

The above quotes form the basis of discussion for my essay. The one which is initially most intriguing is the third, in which it is explicitly stated that Suzuki became enlightened at the age of twenty seven and also that this occurred after “strenuous study”. The questions which present themselves are how is it known that he became enlightened at that time (what criteria is this conclusion based upon), and how exactly did Suzuki manage to attain his enlightenment?

In trying to answer these questions I will be discussing the theme of the “Path”, both in Taoism and Zen Buddhism, and attempting to understand how anybody can know if they themselves are on the Path, or how anybody else can know if they are. And once someone becomes enlightened, having reached wu or satori, how it is that this further state can be understood. In doing this I hope to show that the examples of behaviour described in the first two quotes are indicative of the Way/Bodhi. Additionally, in doing this, I should make it clear that while I sometimes will use concepts from Taoism and Zen Buddhism interchangeably that these are two quite separate practises in spite of their commonalities.

Neither Taoism nor Zen Buddhism are amenable to words. They are practises whose very essence lie beyond such constructs of ours, reaching out towards an entirety of experience which goes beyond anything like those mental constructs which we might hope to bring to bear in regards to them. This is one of the reasons that Eastern thought is both so appealing and frustrating to the Western mind. It offers us something radically different from what we are used to and yet it also defies us to understand what it is about. For this very reason any purely academic approach to the nature of enlightenment is doomed to failure at the beginning. In order to understand the Tao/Brahman we must experience it for ourselves, rather than merely talk of it falsely:

…the Tao cannot be defined in words and is not an idea or concept. As Chuang-tzu says, “It may be attained but not seen,” or, in other words, felt but not conceived, intuited but not categorized, divined but not explained. In a similar way, air and water cannot be cut or clutched, and their flow ceases when they are enclosed. There is no way of putting a stream in a bucket or the wind in a bag.4

Alan was going to allow his book on Taoism to write itself. He knew, as a scholar, that he was turning out another of his famous themes-and-variations on the meeting of East and West. But as a man of Tao, he also realized that he must give up controlling it intellectually. For as the subject itself clearly maintains, “The Tao that can be Tao-ed is not the Tao.”5

Another reason why the Tao and its pattern escape us is that they are ourselves…By watching the nucleus we change its behaviour, and in our observing the galaxies they run away from us – and, in trying to figure out the brain, the obstacle is that we have no finer instrument than the brain itself for the purpose. The greatest hindrance to objective knowledge is our own subjective presence. There is nothing for it, then, but to trust and go with the Tao as the source and ground of our own being which “may be attained but not seen.”6

Zen expects us to experience within ourselves that the suchness of things – the antithesis of being and non-being – is beyond the ken of intellectual painting or dialectical delineation, and that no number of words can succeed in describing, that is, reasoning out, the what and why of life and the world. This may sound negative and may not be of positive use to our spiritual life. But the real trouble with us whenever we try to talk about things beyond intellection is that we always make our start from intellection itself, although this may be natural and inevitable; therefore, when Zen experience and other such things are talked about they sound empty as if they had no positive value.7

To study Zen means to have Zen experience, for without the experience there is no Zen one can study. But mere experience is not enough; to experience means to be able to communicate it to others; the experience ceases to be vital unless it is adequately expressible. A dumb experience is not human. To experience is to be self-conscious. Zen experience is complete only when it is backed by Zen consciousness and finds expression in one way or another.8

So, it would seem, we are incapable of understanding anything about these practises merely by listening to descriptions of them. Yet, descriptions of Taoism and Zen abound. Why is it that scholars of the subjects have bothered at all to describe something which is ultimately indescribable?

There is a fundamental difference between any experience and a description of it. No description, no matter how accurate or vital, can do justice to an experience. If I have never smelled coffee before I am not going to have access to that experience by merely being told what that smell is like. In order to ever really appreciate “coffee” I am going to have to smell it for myself. Nonetheless, such descriptions of it that might be given to me will not be completely meaningless. I will be aware of the fact that I will be “smelling” and not “seeing” so I will have prepared myself in that way. I will also be aware of the fact that the smell is not an unpleasant one, so I will expect not to feel any displeasure with it. Moreover, given an accurate enough description, I will have some idea of just what the smell will be like. Granted, this likeness is only an inaccurate mirror for the smell, but still I will have enough of an idea about the smell of coffee to be able to discuss it with others even if I haven’t had the experience myself. I may even have had it described to me accurately enough to be able to identify the smell on my own if I am ever exposed to it (“Surely,” I might say, “I’ve never smelled this before but it must be what has been described to me as coffee.”) Similarly I have never climbed a high mountain but know of its dangers as well as the shortness of breath that comes from a lack of oxygen; I have never drowned but am aware of the mindless panic that accompanies it.

In partially the same sense, the experiences of Taoism and Zen Buddhism can be discussed. The reason that I say “partially” is because these experiences are so far removed from our everyday experiences. It’s quite alright to say “that state in which all subject/object distinctions disappear”; we know what is meant by the word “subject” and the word “object” and the idea behind the obliteration of their distinction can be grasped. But, really, that doesn’t help us in any way, since we’ve never had any similar experiences. It’s as if I were being told what something I’ve never smelled before smelled like and the person telling me said that it smelled purple. I would have no idea how to react to this. “Purple,” I might say, “how can anything smell purple? That’s impossible. Smell and sight are two completely different concepts, and you can’t relate one to the other.” Nonetheless, upon smelling this “thing”, I immediately understand what the person had been trying to get across to me. Indeed, in explaining it to someone who has never smelled it before, I realize that “purple” was as accurate a description as possible. But not until I had smelled this thing had I been able to understand what had been meant. While certain worldly (commonly experienced – Western) things may be “like this” or “like that” in such a way that the “this” or “that” is something that we can relate to, the experiences of Taoism and Zen do not have such worldly correlates. They simply “smell purple”. But this doesn’t mean that they are things which we can’t experience for ourselves. To understand what smelling “purple” means all we have to do is smell the thing; to understand Zen all we have to do is experience it. And both of these experiences may well be exciting and worthwhile. Indeed, those who are Taoists and Zen Buddhists are so for one reason: they believe that they have access to a better (truer) way of life by being so. And so it’s little wonder that they would urge us to experience such things ourselves. While the descriptions of their experience may not be accurate or convey proper understanding of that experience, they may nonetheless be as accurate as possible within the non-Tao, non-Zen context that they have been placed. 9

Within such a framework, and with the understanding that such discussion need not necessarily have any meaning when viewed within the context of the experiences themselves, there is no reason not to discuss these Eastern experiences – so long as we bear in mind what has been said above. After all, returning to the idea of a thing which is best described as smelling “purple” to someone who has never had experience of it, and extending this analogy further such that there are many things that can be sensed in novel and seemingly impossible ways, it is possible to have a set of “rules” for the interaction of these properties. And in this “universe” you might know that if this thing happened and that if it was followed by that, then certain other things would occur. Although none of these things which happen need make specific external sense nor be fully understood by those who have not experienced them, still their internal sense may yet be discussed and “understood” by all involved.

So, we have people who have claimed that certain other people have managed to achieve the long sought after Eastern enlightenment. In evaluating such claims, and the meaning of such claims, we should turn not to what we ourselves might think of such statements but rather to what those within the tradition think of them. Suzuki addresses the status of the enlightened directly:

As the attainment of the Tao does not involve a continuous movement from error to truth, from ignorance to enlightenment, from mayoi to satori, the Zen masters all proclaim that there is no enlightenment whatever which you can claim to have attained. If you say you have attained something, this is the surest proof that you have gone astray. Therefore, not to have is to have; silence is thunder; ignorance is enlightenment…10

Suzuki himself is said to have achieved enlightenment at the age of twenty seven, but it would have been the most unenlightened thing that he could possibly have done to say that this was so. The knowledge of his enlightenment could not have come from him directly but rather from the observations of those around him. And, most definitely, if he was ever “accused” of having achieved this state, he must have done nothing in any non-Zen way to affirm or deny it.

In Zen the mark of one who is on the Path is their ability to not think, in our normal sense of the word at least, about any action that they may be performing; one must approach such things with “no-mind”:11

So long as there are conscious strivings to accomplish a task, the very consciousness works against it, and no task is accomplished. It is only when all the traces of this consciousness are wiped out that Buddhahood is attained.12

And this is perhaps the clearest reason given for why one cannot be enlightened if one claims to be. The essence of enlightenment is to do without trying to do, to perform without being aware of performing. Someone who is enlightened cannot, by definition, be aware of being enlightened (in this sense). By analogy, touch typing is an automatic skill which takes place without having to constantly think about doing it and, as a matter of fact, cannot take place properly if such thinking does occur. In my own experience I will sometimes be typing, suddenly become aware of the fact that I am typing, and then lose it altogether as I consciously try to control my fingers rather than just let them go where they will.

Such “striving” in the Zen sense is mirrored in the destructive “forcing” of Taoism:

…wu-wei as “not forcing” is what we mean by going with the grain, rolling with the punch, swimming with the current, trimming sails to the wind, taking the tide at its flood, and stooping to conquer…The principle is illustrated by the parable of the pine and the willow in heavy snow. The pine branch, being rigid, cracks under the weight; but the willow branch yields to the weight, and the snow drops off. Note, however, that the willow is not limp but springy. Wu-wei is thus the life-style of one who follows the Tao, and must be understood primarily as a form of intelligence – that is, of knowing the principles, structures, and trends of human and natural affairs so well that one uses the least amount of energy in dealing with them.13

‘The baby looks at things all day without squinting and staring; that is because his eyes are not focused on any particular object. He goes without knowing where he is going, and stops without knowing what he is doing. He merges himself with the surroundings and goes along with them. These are the principles of mental hygiene.’14

This, then, points towards those who are on the Path. Of course the question that arises at this point is, how are we to know if someone has managed to cultivate this aspect of non-striving, non-forcing. To the Western mind of dualistic thought it would seem even harder to know if they were working towards it (in the middle of the road so to speak) than if they had actually attained it. But, regardless of such degrees of difficulty in “diagnosing” the situation, the basic question still remains. There are other aspects of enlightenment which might also help to indicate that someone is in this state. For instance, the tenets of Taoism are simply steeped in a moral reverence for the world and all life in it. Even if this is not expressed explicitly, the “lessons” are implicit throughout:

If there is anything basic to Chinese culture, it is an attitude of respectful trust towards nature and human nature – despite wars, revolutions, mass executions, starvation, floods, droughts, and all manner of horrors…Chinese philosophy…takes it as a basic premise that if you cannot trust nature and other people, you cannot trust yourself. If you cannot trust yourself, you cannot even trust your mistrust of yourself – so that without this underlying trust in the whole system of nature you are simply paralyzed…Ultimately, of course, it is not really a matter of oneself, on the one hand, trusting nature, on the other. It is a matter of realizing that oneself and nature are one and the same process, which is the Tao. True, this is an oversimplification, for one knows very well that some people cannot be trusted and that the unpredictable ways of nature are not always one’s own preconceived way, so that basic faith in the system involves taking risks. But when no risk is taken there is no freedom.15

‘The stream does not merely move downhill. The water, all moisture, transpires from the earth, streams, rivers, the ocean, to the upper air, a “breathing out,” and then there is the “breathing in” when the moisture is returned downward as dew, as rain – a marvelous cycle, a living interaction; nothing controlling anything, no “boss,” yet all happening as it should, tse jen.’16

…the art of life is more like navigation than warfare, for what is important is to understand the winds, the tides, the currents, the seasons, and the principles of growth and decay, so that one’s actions may use them and not fight them. In this sense, the Taoist attitude is not opposed to technology per se…The point is therefore that technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as the universe. Our overspecialization in conscious attention and linear thinking has led to neglect, or ignore-ance, of the basic principles and rhythms of this process, of which the foremost is polarity.17

‘Knowing the male but keeping the female, one becomes a universal stream. Becoming a universal stream, one is not separated from eternal virtue.’18

If we turn to Zen Buddhism we don’t find the same abundant traces of morality. Even on an implicit level almost nothing is said of it; instead it seems to indicate that it is “beyond” such things:

…Hsiang-nien was approached with this request: “I, a humble pupil of yours, have been troubled for long with an unsolved problem. Will you be kind enough to give it your consideration?” The master brusquely answered: “I have no time for idle deliberation.” The monk was naturally not satisfied the this answer, for he did not know what to make of it. “Why is it so with you, Reverend Sir?” “When I want to walk, I walk; when I want to sit, I sit.” This was simple enough; he was perfect master of himself. He did not need any deliberation. Between his deed and his desire there was no moral or intellectual intermediary, no “mind” interfered, and consequently he had no problems which harassed his peace of mind. His answer could not be anything but practical and truly to the point. [Italics mine.]19

Nevertheless, it should be realized that, as has been said before, no-mind does not necessarily mean no mind in the way that we would mean it. Just because there is “no moral or intellectual intermediary” does not mean that there is no moral or intellectual action. Yet, consider the one rare and unusual passage which I stumbled across in my readings that directly concerns itself with morality:

The Diamond Sutra tells about a former life of the Buddha when his body was terribly mutilated by a despotic king: “…Subhuti, anciently, when my body was cut to pieces by the King Of Kalinga, I had neither the idea of an ego, nor the idea of a person, nor the idea of a being, nor the idea of a soul. Why? When at that time my body was dismembered, limb by limb, joint after joint, if I had had the idea either of an ego, or of a person, or of a being, or a soul, the feeling of anger and ill-will would have been awakened in me…” [Additional italics mine.]1

This indicates that Zen is at least as concerned with ethical matters as it is with attempting to see through the delusional world of the senses to the ultimate Reality. 21 Perhaps what the Buddha would claim is that these matters are not distinguishable at all but part and parcel of one another. Whatever the case may be, although Zen is not as ostensibly richly ethical as Taoism is, there is yet a case that can be made for its being ethical nonetheless. 22

To someone who gives Zen and Taoism a cursory look it might seem that there is a radical difference between the two. In Zen there is no such thing as a distinction between the subject and the object; everything is the same as everything else, there is no such thing as one thing and something else which is its opposite. Whereas in Taoism there might very much seem to be a distinction between opposites, such that you cannot have one thing without also having its opposite:

‘When everyone knows beauty as beautiful, there
is already ugliness;
When everyone knows good and goodness, there is
already evil.
“To be” and “not to be” arise mutually;
Difficult and easy are mutually realized;
Long and short are mutually contrasted;
High and low are mutually posited;…
Before and after are in mutual sequence.’23
‘One yin and one yang is called the Tao. The passionate union of yin and yang and the copulation of husband and wife is the eternal pattern of the universe. If heaven and earth did not mingle, whence would everything receive life?’…’Thus those who say that they would have right without its correlate, wrong, or good government without its correlate, misrule, do not apprehend the great principles of the universe, nor the nature of all creation. One might as well talk of the existence of Heaven without that of Earth, or of the negative principle without the positive, which is clearly impossible. Yet people keep on discussing it without stop; such people must be either fools or knaves.’24

…a universe without the polarity of pleasure and pain would be difficult indeed to imagine…If, then, we go deep into the very nature of feeling, we begin to see that we do not, and even cannot, want a universe without this polarity. In other words, so long as we desire the experience called pleasure we imply, and so generate, its opposite.25

But what has to be understood is that while the idea of opposites is so basic to Taoism, it is not the case, as the Western mind would have it, that this implies separateness. Good and evil, for instance, are not two different things, one which cannot exist without the other, but are the very same thing; it is for this reason that you cannot have one without the other – this would be an impossibility. Ultimately there is no “one” and the “other”. It is analogous to a coin: there cannot be a head without a tail; but one would not be tempted to say that the head and tail are distinct entities, rather they are just different aspects of the same coin. That is why the word “opposite” is rarely used in Taoist text. If the three previous passages are re-read it will be seen that the words used to described the different aspects of the same thing are “correlate”, “principle”, and “polarity”. In fact, it is the Western mind which assumes in its reading the distinctive opposition of “good” and “evil”.

Nor is it at all the case that the subject is maintained as separate from the object in Taoism. While we are told to embrace our own experiences, we are yet informed that we must also see these experiences as in no way separate or unconnected from anything else that we might find in the world. There is no this and that, no “things”, only different aspects of the same thing:

‘The knowledge of the ancients was perfect. How perfect? At first, they did not know that there were things. This is the most perfect knowledge; nothing can be added. Next, they knew that there were things, but did not yet make distinctions between them. Next, they made distinctions between them, but they did not yet pass judgements upon them. When judgements were passed, Tao was destroyed.’26

‘The eye is a menace to clear sight, the ear is a menace to subtle hearing, the mind is a menace to wisdom, every organ of the senses is a menace to its own capacity…Fuss, the god of the Southern Ocean, and Fret, the God of the Northern Ocean, happened once to meet in the realm of Chaos, the god of the center. Chaos treated them very handsomely and they discussed together what they could do to repay his kindness. They had noticed that, whereas everyone else had seven apertures, for sight, hearing, eating, breathing and so on, Chaos had none. So they decided to make the experiment of boring holes in him. Every day they bored a hole, and on the seventh day, Chaos died.’27

Earlier on I said that, in Zen, “…everything is the same as everything else…” This is not at all accurate – I had merely meant to make a point about what a cursory reading of the texts might engender. To the contrary, the Zen view mirrors the Taoist view which I have just outlined. It is not the case that everything is “the same as” everything else. It is merely that there is no distinction between one thing and another in terms of object/object or subject/object. In Zen the world is One and it is made up of dharmas, or the elements of Reality. Returning to the analogy of the coin, the head is just as much a part of the coin as is the tail; the “two” are inseparable. Similarly everything that we experience is just another aspect of Reality, is just composed of different dharmas (aspects) within the same world.

Both of these views of the world contradict the Western idea that it is the individual who experiences, who knows, who orders the world around herself:

[Westerners] cannot talk of “knowing” without assuming that there is some “who” or “what” that knows, not realizing that this is nothing more than a grammatical convention. The supposition that knowing requires a knower is based on a linguistic and not an existential rule, as becomes obvious when we consider that raining needs no rainer and clouding no clouder. Thus when a Chinese receives a formal invitation, he may reply simply with the word “Know,” indicating that he is aware of the event and may or may not come.28

Over time I came to realize that it is not that experience exists because there is an individual, but that an individual exists because there is experience. 29

I am much more interested in…the actual experiencing and feeling of that attitude to life which is the following of the Tao.30

It is this belief in everything being part of everything else, each event being part of the cycle of the universe, that imbibes both Zen and Taoism with their unique view of the world. Things grow sick, wither, and die, but things are also born, grow healthy, and live joyfully. Although everything must eventually die this is not something to be avoided or even mourned because out of that death the endless cycle will continue, bringing with it life once more:

The yin-yang view of the world is serenely cyclic. Fortune and misfortune, life and death, whether on small scale or vast, come and go everlastingly without beginning or end…31 | 32

Now that all of this has been said we can return to the question of knowing whether or not someone is on the Path and, if so, how they managed to accomplish it. In proceeding, it is easier to address the second question first as both Zen Buddhism and Taoism have a great deal to say on the subject of attaining enlightenment.

In Zen it is common place 33 for one to put oneself under the tutelage of a “master”, someone who is able to act as an instructor in the matters of Zen, and such schools have existed for centuries in Japan and still exist today. In this regard it is true that Zen is taught. However, what is not true is that it can be taught in the manner that we are used to. As satori is such a subjective experience and neither Zen nor Taoism are amenable to words, it is impossible for anyone to tell anybody else anything about Zen that captures its true meaning. In order for the student to become enlightened, they must experience that state for themselves.

We are given many examples of a student approaching the master and asking for clarifications of the Zen doctrines, asking to have conveyed to them the nature of enlightenment. The responses that they get are all far from satisfactory from a rational point of view. The student is hit, kicked, laughed at, ignored, answered in cryptic fashion, told to leave the school (as described in Zen And The Art Of Archery by Herrigal), and so on. In no case does the teacher ever give a “straight” answer to the question. That such a straight answer cannot be given, by the very nature of the subject, is one reason for this. Another, assuming that a straight answer were possible, is that such an answer would be defeating the individual, experience based nature of Zen. It is up to the student to find the Path on their own, and only if they do so themselves will they really have found what they were looking for. The irrational responses of the teachers are esigned to “shock” the student into intuiting the answers, and serve as pedagogic devices of a kind which we are rarely exposed to:

In Rinzai’s case the answer was given, not in the form of laughter, but in a more forbidding manner, for he was given so many blows by the master. In fact, however, whether it is a blow or a laugh or a kick or a slap, it makes little difference so long as it comes directly from an experience on the part of the master. Rinzai, too, failed to comprehend Obaku and had to run to Daigu for elucidation. And the elucidation came in the form of a good-natured comment: “Obaku was indeed grandmotherly!” The dealing of the hard blows was a kindhearted treatment to wake up the spirit-weary Rinzai. [Italics mine.]34

Whatever we may say of these dynamic demonstrations, there is another striking fact in Zen. It is that the methods resorted to by the Zen masters in order to establish the truth of Zen, or to open the eye of the inquirer, are so varied, so original, so entirely unconventional, that each time we come across them we feel thoroughly refreshed, and frequently as if resurrected from the grave.35

So, while it’s true that instruction in Zen is offered, it is not the case that this instruction is the sort we might see in any standard academic institution. Although instruction in Zen can bring about an understanding of the practise, the understanding itself can never be dependant on anything other than the intuitive insight of the students themselves, as brought about by the “shocking” methods of the instructors designed to “awaken” them to the truth.

Now consider the following when it comes to formal indoctrination to Taoism:

The question now arises whether wu-wei and following of the Tao can be cultivated intentionally by some spiritual or psychological discipline…So far from using any artifice or method to attain spiritual power or to control or rise above the transformation of life and death, Chuang-tzu seems to exult in just going along with the process.36

While there are certainly many people revered for their Taoist teachings, and there is a great deal of literature written on the subject, there is not the same organized effort of formal training as there is with Zen. And, as is indicated in the above passage, the idea of “training” is not part of the Taoist perspective. There may be Zen archery, Zen martial arts, Zen tea ceremony, Zen flower arranging, and so on, each an activity which one specifically trains at in order to achieve Zen tranquillity and peace of mind, yet there are no Taoist specific activities in the same way. All action is Taoist action, the Tao is seen in everything, and there is no need to focus one’s attention on a specific activity in order to apprehend this.

…those who understand the Tao delight, like cats, in just sitting and watching without any goal or result in mind. But when a cat gets tired of sitting, it gets up and goes for a walk or hunts for mice…Contemplative Taoists will happily sit with yogis and Zennists for as long as is reasonable and comfortable, but when nature tells us the we are “pushing the river” we will get up and do something else, or even go to sleep.37

Yet it is not that there is nothing Taoists do in order to realize the Tao. There is an awareness of things, a oneness with the world, an attitude which must be had:

…a one-sidedly literary and academic approach to the Tao gives nothing of its essence, so that to understand what follows the reader must now, and at each subsequent reading, allow himself to be in a proper state of mind. You are asked – temporarily, of course – to lay aside all your philosophical, religious, and political opinions, and to become almost like an infant, knowing nothing. Nothing, that is, except what you actually hear, see, feel, and smell. Take it that you are not going anywhere but here, and that there never was, is, or will be any other time than now. Simply be aware of what actually is without giving it names and without judging it, for you are now feeling out reality itself instead of ideas and opinions about it. There is no point in trying to suppress the babble of words and ideas that goes on in most adult brains, so if it won’t stop, let it go on as it will, and listen to it as if it were the sound of traffic or the clucking of hens. Let your ears hear whatever they want to hear; let your eyes see whatever they want to see; let your mind think whatever it wants to think; let your lungs breathe in their own rhythm. Do not expect any special result, for in this wordless and idealess state, where can there be past or future, and where any notion of purpose? Stop, look, and listen…and stay there awhile before you go on reading.38

The “proper state of mind” must be achieved in order to become aware of those things that are part of the Tao. There is no practise, nothing physical or mental, which must be done in order to follow the Tao, yet the experience, the intuition, of the Tao must exist. This understanding can come only from a “letting go” of those things which dominate and control; we must go where we will, rather than where we think we should go or where we are expected to go.

Such descriptions of the methodology of finding the Path are the best that can be given. The Path is not something which can ever be defined, or given accurate directions towards, it is just something which must be found on one’s own. Once this has been said it leaves only the question of the recognition of one who has already found the Path to be answered. And the answer to this question is perhaps the trickiest of all to come by.

One who is following the Way will not be constrained by the restrictions of our phenomenal, dualistic world. They will act with the feeling of the oneness of things; they will act without any premeditation or awareness of action; they will simply do what they do when they do it.

…people try to force issues only when not realizing that it can’t be done – that there is no way of deviating from the watercourse of nature. You may imagine that you are outside, or separate from, the Tao and thus able to follow it or not follow; but this very imagination is itself within the stream, for there is no way other than the Way. Willy-nilly, we are it and go with it. From a strictly logical point of view, this means nothing and gives us no information. Tao is just a name for whatever happens, or, as Lao-tzu put it, “The Tao principle is what happens of itself [tzu-jan].”39

Because ink is mostly water, Chinese calligraphy… requires that you go with the flow. If you hesitate, hold the brush too long in one place, or hurry, or try to correct what you have written, the blemishes are all too obvious. But if you write well there is at the same time the sensation that the work is happening on its own, that the brush is writing all by itself – as a river, by following the line of least resistance, makes elegant curves.40

Actions will not be censored by a mind which says, “This is silly.”, “I’m not going to embarrass myself by doing that!”, or, “That would be the action of a madman – and I will restrain myself accordingly.” And so, one who acts for the sake of acting, on the spur of the moment, out of spontaneity, will do things which will seem quite irrational to us and yet which will be completely natural and normal to them.

It is for this reason that the teacher responds in a fashion to the student which seems completely mystifying and impossible to comprehend, yet which is so full of meaning. It is why the “meaningless” behaviour exhibited in the introductory quotes of this essay are praised as being worthwhile: “P’u-hua performed a somersault as he went out of the room. P’an-shan’s remark was: ‘This fellow, when he goes out in the world as a teacher, will act like a lunatic.'” The remark is given in such a way that it implies a compliment, the lunatic behaviour is seen as containing insight. Similarly: “We gibbered and danced all the way up the hill. Everyone understood what we were saying. Alan knew too that he had never – not in all his books – said it any better than that.”

But if such behaviour is seen as an indicator of enlightenment, then how is one to separate this behaviour from that of one who truly has no understanding at all and simply acts the same way? It cannot be the act itself but the context within which the act is placed. One must be observed to follow and understand the other aspects of the Way which have been described above. To act out of spontaneity alone is not enough; this spontaneity must be a result of the realization of all that goes into making it “significantly” spontaneous.

In the small exposure that I have had to such Eastern attitudes, I have come to recognize a certain kind of behaviour and thought as being “enlightened”, being indicative of the Way. Nonetheless I am unable to point to such things with any kind of authority as I make no claims about my own attainments. Ironically, even were I to have achieved such enlightenment I would be unable to make these claims, because it would then be outside of my realm of experience. I could no more make a declaration of somebody else’s state of enlightenment or unenlightenment than I could of my own. And since it is really only those who have achieved this state that can be the proper judges of others having also achieved it we have a problem.

Certainly in a scholarly work Suzuki may be able to talk about enlightenment, or the Buddha as having been enlightened, but he is not writing for himself or anyone else in a similar position. What he is doing is describing these things to us, and in a way as hopelessly inaccurate as any description of Zen itself is. To those on the Path, such descriptions are not to be considered. As Suzuki said, “ignorance is enlightenment”. In this context, enlightenment is also ignorance. One may answer the question of the identification of someone who is on the Path, by observing their actions in the way that I have indicated above. But also, if one truly understands the question, one may dismiss it as meaningless, as not being a question at all.

Endnotes

  1. Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, The Zen Doctrine Of No Mind, p. 86, Samuel Weiser, Inc., New York, N.Y., 1973.
  2. Alan Watts, The Watercourse Way, p.ix.
  3. Suzuki, op. cit., back jacket cover.
  4. Watts, op. cit., p. 42.
  5. Ibid., pp. vii-viii.
  6. Ibid., pp. 49-50.
  7. D. T. Suzuki, “An Interpretation Of Zen Experience”, in Charles E. Moore, The Japanese Mind, p. 131.
  8. Moore, op. cit., p. 123.
  9. Suzuki is said to have attained enlightenment at the age of twenty seven. The Buddha was also enlightened, and there are others throughout Eastern history who have achieved the same status. It is indeed fascinating to note that, differences aside, each of these people describe Buddhism similarly. The same is true of those Taoists who can be claimed to have found the Way. All of these people describe their experiences as strictly indescribable and tell us of the Oneness or deception of the world in which we live. Now, unless none of these people have ever truly experienced anything “different” from the mundane world and are just parroting (perhaps sincerely) a body of fantastical and confusingly irrational doctrines, there must be something to be said for the fact that they agree, in principle, on the essence of their experiences.
  10. Suzuki, op. cit., p. 53.
  11. This concept of “no-mind” is as hard to grasp as any other aspect of the practise. And since it is the essential basis of Zen it is no wonder. One might initially think that “no-mind” means “no thought” but this isn’t completely accurate as those people who are dead or asleep have no thoughts, and yet they don’t qualify as having no-mind. What is required is a kind of thought without thinking, awareness without awareness of being aware. The whole basis of our Western outlook on life is steeped in the Cartesian ideal of the individual mind sorting and controlling everything outside of it, the mind proving its existence by simply being aware of itself. Such a viewpoint is antithetical to the no-mind required in Zen. Outside of our standard logical dualism, “no-mind” is not-thinking but it is also not not-thinking. Once such a state can be achieved, only then can it be truly understood.
  12. Ibid., p. 72., footnote #3.
  13. Watts, op. cit., p. 76.
  14. Ibid., p. 55.
  15. Ibid., pp. 32-33.
  16. Ibid., p. x.
  17. Ibid., p. 21.
  18. Ibid., p. 22.
  19. Suzuki, op. cit., pp. 135-136
  20. Ibid., pp. 119-120.
  21. Or, perhaps, it is the case that to feel anger and ill-will is to place oneself once again in samsara. The Buddha might also have related a story in which he was loved by some woman and “escaped” into no-mind so as to not feel pleasure or good-will, the idea behind this analysis being that all “earthly” pleasures detract from one’s needed disassociation with the phenomenal world in order to achieve bodhi. However, I tend to believe that this cannot be correct. Those who say that Zen seeks to deny the senses are only correct on a certain level. It is not the senses themselves which are being denied but rather the phenomenal interpretation of those senses. Similarly, the same should be true of all phenomenal experience, including the emotions. Because while the phenomenal world is a delusion, it is also true that that delusion, by its very existence, is part of Brahman. And with this in mind, the Buddha’s wish to escape anger and ill-will is, in my mind, directed against those specific emotions (in an ethical fashion) and not against all emotion in general.
  22. And of course the Zen doctrine can easily give way to ethical beliefs, in light of the status that it gives to the individual in relation to others. Since one is part of the whole, this leads to a consideration of the lives and feelings of others in a light at least equal to one’s own. It points towards such “ethical” positions as the bushido code, where one warrior feels compelled to act for the good of others. Similarly, Nishida’s own ethical stance and philosophy was, at least, inspired by the tenets of Zen. Still, however, the “ethicism” of these things can be questioned in terms of intent. For instance, bushido, while in action may be considered to be ethical, it is still the case that it was also at least as much based on obedience to authority as it was to moral values. (The self-sacrifice of the ronin in the movie The Forty-Seven Ronin, need not be looked at as moral outrage at the injustice committed to their lord, but may be viewed as the simple need to maintain honour and save the face they had lost when their lord was insulted.) And in the case of Nishida, while this is more easily indicative of an intentionally moral system, in terms of Japanese philosophy and Zen Buddhism, it is far from well established and need not speak for more than only one interpretation of the school of thought. While all of this is far from conclusive in terms of the morality of Zen, it is still important to note that this level of debate could not go on in the much more “obviously” ethical Taoist system.
  23. Watts, op. cit., pp. 22-23.
  24. Ibid., op. cit., p. 26.
  25. Ibid., p. 96.
  26. Ibid., p. 55.
  27. Joanna Russ, And Chaos Died, opening quote.
  28. Watts, op. cit., p. 11.
  29. Kitaro Nishida, An Inquiry Into The Good, p. xxx.
  30. Watts, op. cit., p. xvi.
  31. Ibid., p. 31.
  32. In the end it must be noted that although this worldview is comprised of both life and death, happiness and sorrow, it is the positive aspects of the cycle which are held to heart. Given the philosophy it could have been interpreted just the opposite way: pessimistically (the emphasis on death from life instead of life from death). Rather than rejoicing in and honouring the endless cycle of events, one might despair of and fear such a cycle. But when all is said and done this is not the case and, given that there seems no explicit philosophical reason for the emphasis not to be arbitrary, it indicates something about the Oriental way of thought that must have existed before these philosophies were adopted, and which must still exist. (Unless, of course, I have simply never been exposed to any of the pessimistic Oriental philosophies, and I can imagine this to be quite possible. Still, however, I suspect that Oriental culture is in general more optimistic/reverent than not.)
  33. By “common place” of course, I don’t mean to say that the majority of Japanese will do this. I merely mean that it is not anything unexpected or shocking for any individual to do this should they so choose.
  34. Moore, op. cit., p. 130.
  35. Suzuki, op. cit., pp. 88-89.
  36. Watts, op. cit., p. 87.
  37. Ibid., pp. 89-90.
  38. Ibid., p. 36.
  39. Ibid., p. 38.
  40. Ibid., p. 15.

Leave a Reply