Words can express no more than a tiny fragment of human knowledge, for what we can say and think is always immeasurably less than what we experience. This is not only because there are no limits to the exhaustive description of an event, as there are no limits to the possible divisions of an inch; it is also because there are experiences that defy the very structure of our language, as water cannot be carried in a sieve. But the intellectual, the man who has a great skill with words, is always in danger of restricting what can be known to what can be described. He is therefore apt to be puzzled and suspicious when anyone tries to use ordinary language to convey an experience which shatters its logic, an experience that words can express only at the cost of losing their meaning. He is suspicious of fuzzy and ill-conceived thinking, and concludes that there is no experience that can correspond to such apparently nonsensical forms of words.
This is particularly true of an idea that crops up repeatedly in the history of philosophy and religion—the idea that the seeming multiplicity of facts, things, and events is in reality One, or, more correctly, beyond duality. This idea is usually intended to convey more than a speculative theory; it is intended to convey the actual experience of unity, which may also be described as the sense that everything that happens or can happen is right and natural in so positive a way that it can even be called divine. To put it in the words of the Shinjinmei:
All is one.
If only it can be thus,
Why trouble about being imperfect?1
To the logician such an utterance is meaningless, and to the moralist it is plainly subversive. Even the psychologist may wonder whether there can be a state of mind or feeling that such words can faithfully represent. For he may insist that sensations or feelings are recognizable only by their mutual differences, as we know white by contrast with black, and that therefore a sensation of nondifference, of absolute oneness, could never be realized. At most it would be like putting on rose-tinted spectacles. One would at first be aware of rosy clouds by contrast with the memory of white clouds, but in time the contrast would fade, and the all-pervasive hue would vanish from consciousness. Yet the literature of Zen Buddhism does not suggest that the experience of unity or nonduality is recognized only temporarily, by contrast with the former experience of multiplicity. It suggests that it is an abiding experience that by no means fades with familiarity. Our best way of understanding it will be to follow, as best we can, the inner process through which the experience is realized. This will mean, in the first place, treating it from the psychological point of view, to find out whether the words express any psychological reality, let alone any logical sense or moral propriety.
It may be assumed that the starting-point is the ordinary man’s feeling of conflict between himself and his environment, between his desires and the hard facts of nature, between his own will and the jarring wills of other people. The ordinary man’s desire to replace this sense of conflict by a sense of harmony has its parallel in the age-old concern of philosophers and scientists to understand nature in terms of unity—in the human mind’s perennial discontent with dualism. We shall see that this is in many ways a rather unsatisfactory starting-point. The problem of telling anyone how to proceed from this point to the experience of unity reminds one of the yokel who was asked the way to an obscure village. He scratched his head for a while and then answered, “Well, sir, I know where it is, but if I were you I wouldn’t start from here.” But unfortunately this is just where we are.
Let us, then, consider some of the ways in which the Zen masters have handled this problem. There are four ways in particular which seem to deserve special attention, and these may be listed briefly as follows:
1. To answer that all things are in reality One.
2. To answer that all things are in reality Nothing, Void.
3. To answer that all things are perfectly all right and natural just as they are.
4. To say that the answer is the question, or the questioner.
The question itself may assume many different forms, but essentially it is the problem of liberation from conflict, from dualism, from what Buddhism calls the samsara or vicious circle of birth-and-death.
1. As an example of the first type of answer, the assertion that all things are in reality One, consider the words of Eka:
The profound truth is the principle of ultimate identity.
Under delusion the mani gem may be called a broken tile,
But when you enter truly into self-awakening it is a real pearl.
Ignorance and wisdom are alike without difference,
For you should know that the ten thousand things are all Suchness (tathata).
It is out of pity for those disciples who hold a dualistic view
That I put words in writing and send this letter.
Regarding this body and the Buddha as neither differing nor separate,
Why, then, should we seek for something which does not need to be added to us?2
The implication of this answer is that liberation from the conflict of dualism does not require any effort to change anything. One has only to realize that every experience is identical with the One, the Buddha-nature, or the Tao, and then the problem will simply vanish. Similarly, when Joshu asked Nansen, “What is the Tao?” Nansen replied, “Your ordinary mind is the Tao.” “How,” asked Joshu, “can one return into accord with it?” Nansen answered, “By intending to accord you immediately deviate.”3
The psychological response to answers of this kind will be an attempt to feel that every experience, every thought, sensation, or feeling is the Tao—that somehow the good is the same as the bad, the pleasant the same as the painful. This may take the form of trying to attach the symbol-thought “this is the Tao” to each experience as it arises, though obviously it will be hard to realize much content, much meaning, in a symbol which applies equally to every possible experience. Yet as the frustration of not realizing any content arises, it is asserted that this, too, is the Tao—so that any grasp of what the nature of this One that is All may be becomes more and more elusive.
2. Thus another, and perhaps better, way of answering the original question is to assert that all things are in reality No-thing or Void (sunyata), following the doctrine of the Prajnaparamita-hrdaya Sutra, “Form is precisely the void; the void is precisely form.”4 This answer provokes no attempt to find content or meaning in the term used to represent the One reality. In Buddhism the word sunya or Void implies inconceivability rather than mere nothingness. The psychological response to the assertion that all is One might be described as an attempt to say “Yes” to every experience as it arises, as an attempt to achieve a total acceptance or affirmation of life in all its aspects. Contrariwise, the psychological response suggested by the assertion that all is Void would be an attempt to say “No” to each experience.
This is found also in the Vedanta, where the formula neti-neti, “no, no,” is used to support the understanding that no experience is the One reality. In Zen, the word mu5—no, not, or nothing—is used in a similar way, and is often employed as a koan6 or initiatory problem in meditation for beginners in such a way that at all times and under all circumstances one persists in saying the word “No” to everything that happens—including saying the word “No.” Hence the reply of Joshu to the question, “How will it be when I come to you without a single thing?” “Throw it down!”7
3. Then there are the answers which seem to imply that nothing has to be done at all, neither saying “Yes” to everything nor “No” to everything. The point here is rather to leave one’s experience and one’s own mind alone and allow them to be just as they are. Consider the following from Rinzai:
One can only resolve past karma as the circumstances arise. When it’s time to dress, put your clothes on. When you have to walk, then walk. When you have to sit, then sit. Don’t have a single thought in your mind about seeking for Buddhahood. How can this be? The ancients say, “If you desire deliberately to seek the Buddha, your Buddha is just Samsara.” … Followers of the Tao, there is no place in Buddhism for using effort. Just be ordinary, without anything special. Relieve your bowels, pass water, put on your clothes, and eat your food. When you’re tired, go and lie down. Ignorant people may laugh at me, but the wise will understand. … The ancients say, “To happen to meet a man of Tao upon the road, you must first not be facing the Tao.” Thus it is said that if a person practices the Tao, the Tao will not work.8
Similarly, a monk asked Bokuju, “We dress and eat every day, and how do we escape from having to put on clothes and eat food?”9 The master answered, “We dress, we eat.” “I don’t understand.” “If you don’t understand,” said the master, “put on your clothes and eat your food.” In other incidents the state of nonduality is sometimes represented as beyond the opposites of “heat” and “cold,” but when asked to describe this state Zen will say:
When cold, we gather round the hearth before the blazing fire;
When hot, we sit on the bank of the mountain stream in the bamboo grove.10
The psychological response here seems to be one of letting one’s mind respond to circumstances as it feels inclined, not to quarrel with feeling hot in summer or cold in winter, and—it must also be added—not to quarrel with the feeling that there is some feeling you want to quarrel with! It is as if to say that the way you are actually feeling is the right way to feel, and that the basic conflict with life and oneself arises from trying to change or get rid of one’s present feeling. Yet this very desire to feel differently may also be the present feeling that is not to be changed.
4. There is finally the fourth type of answer that turns the question back on itself, or on the questioner himself. Eka asked Bodhidharma, “I have no peace of mind. Please pacify my mind.” Bodhidharma replied, “Bring out your mind here before me, and I will pacify it!” “But when I seek my own mind,” said Eka, “I cannot find it.” “There!” concluded Bodhidharma, “I have pacified your mind!”11
Doshin asked Sosan, “What is the method of liberation?” The master replied, “Who binds you?” “No one binds me.” “Why then,” said the master, “should you seek liberation?”12 There are other instances where the answer is simply the repetition of the question, or some such reply as “Your question is perfectly clear. Why ask me?”
Replies of this type seem to throw attention back upon the state of mind from which the question arises, as if to say, “If your feelings are troubling you, find out who or what it is that is being troubled.” The psychological response is therefore to try to feel what feels and to know what knows—to make an object of the subject. Yet, as Obaku says, “To make the Buddha seek after himself, or to make the mind take hold of itself—this is an impossibility to the end of eternity.” According to Hyakujo, “It is much like looking for an ox when you are riding on it”—or, as one of the poems in the Zenrin-kushu puts it, it is
Like a sword that wounds, but cannot wound itself;
Like an eye that sees, but cannot see itself.14
In the words of an old Chinese popular saying, “A single hand cannot make a clap.”15 Yet Hakuin always introduced his students to Zen by asking them to hear the sound of one hand!
It is not difficult to see that there is a common pattern underlying all these four types of answer, since all the answers are circular. If all things are the One, then my feeling of conflict between dualities is also the One, as well as my objection to this feeling. If all things are Void, then the thought that this is so is also Void, and I feel as if I am being asked to fall into a hole and pull the hole in after me. If everything that happens is perfectly right and natural just as it is, then the wrong and unnatural is also natural. If I am just to let things happen, what happens when one of these things is precisely my desire to interfere with the course of events? And finally, if the root of the conflict is a lack of self-understanding, how can I understand the self which is trying to understand itself? In short, the root of the problem is the question. If you do not ask the question the problem will not arise. To put it another way, the problem of how to escape from conflict is the very conflict one is trying to escape.
If all these answers are not particularly helpful, this is only to say that the human situation is one for which there is no help. Every remedy for suffering is after all like changing one’s position on a hard bed, and every advance in the control of our environment makes the environment harder to control. Nevertheless, all this mental circulation does at least seem to produce two rather definite conclusions. The first is that if we do not try to help ourselves, we shall never realize how helpless we are. Only by ceaseless questioning can we begin to realize the limits, and thus the very form, of the human mind. The second is that when we do at last realize the depths of our helplessness, we are at peace. We have given ourselves up for lost, and this is what is meant by losing oneself, or by self-surrender, or self-sacrifice.
Perhaps this will throw some light on the Buddhist doctrine of the Void, on the saying that all is in reality empty or in vain. For if the deepest impulse of my being is to escape from a conflict which is substantially identical with my desire to escape from conflict; if, in other words, the entire structure of myself, my ego, is an attempt to do the impossible, then I am in vain or void to the very core. I am simply an itch that has nothing upon which to scratch itself. Trying to scratch makes the itch worse, but an itch is, by definition, what wants to be scratched.
Zen is therefore trying to communicate a vivid realization of the vicious circularity, the helplessness, and the plain impossibility of the human situation, of that desire for harmony which is precisely conflict, that desire which is our core, our very will-to-live. This would be a masochistic discipline of pure self-frustration, were it not for very curious and seemingly paradoxical consequences. When it is clear beyond all doubt that the itch cannot be scratched, it stops itching by itself. When it is realized that our basic desire is a vicious circle, it stops circling of its own accord. But this happens only when it has become utterly clear and certain that there is no way of making it stop.
The attempt to make oneself do or not do something implies, of course, an inner, subjective duality—a splitting asunder of the mind’s integrity, which brings about a paralysis of action. To some extent, then, the statement that all is One and One is all is actually expressing the end of this inner split, and the discovery of the mind’s original unity and autonomy. It is not unlike learning the use of a new muscle—when suddenly you move it from inside, or rather, it moves itself, after all efforts to force it from without have been unavailing. This type of experience is vivid enough, but, as we all know, practically impossible to communicate.
It is important to remember that the state of mind out of which this new experience of unity arises is one of total futility. In Zen it is likened to the predicament of a mosquito biting an iron bull, or, as another poem in the Zenrin-kushu expresses it:
To trample upon the Great Void
The Iron Bull must sweat.16
But how will an iron bull sweat? It is the same question as “How can I escape from conflict?” or “How can I catch hold of myself, or of my own hand?”
Now in the intensity of this complete impasse, in which the radical impotence of the ego is vividly understood, it is suddenly realized that—nevertheless—there is a great process of life still going on. “I stand and I sit; I clothe myself and I eat. … The water flows blue, and the mountain towers green. … The wind blows in the trees, and cars honk in the distance.” With my ordinary self reduced to nothing but a completely useless straining I suddenly realize that all this is my real activity—that the activity of my ego has been displaced by the total activity of life, in such a way that the rigid boundary between myself and everything else has completely disappeared. All events whatsoever, whether the raising of my own hand or the chattering of a bird outside, are seen to be happening shizen,17 “by themselves” or “automatically,” in the spontaneous as distinct from the mechanical sense of the word.
The blue mountains are of themselves blue mountains;
The white clouds are of themselves white clouds.18
And the raising of a hand, the thinking of a thought, or the making of a decision happen in just the same way. It becomes clear that this is, in fact, the way things have always been happening, and that therefore all my efforts to move myself or to control myself have been irrelevant—having had the sole value of proving that it cannot be done. The whole concept of self-control has been misconstrued, since it is as impossible to make oneself relax, or make oneself do anything, as to open one’s mouth by the exclusively mental act of willing it to open. No matter how much the will is strained and thought is concentrated on the idea of opening, the mouth will remain unmoved until it opens itself. It was out of this sense of all events happening “by themselves” that the poet Hokoji wrote:
Miraculous power and marvelous activity—
Drawing water and hewing wood!19
This state of consciousness is by no means a psychological impossibility, even as a more or less continuous feeling. Throughout the course of their lives most people seem to feel more or less continuously the rigid distinction between the ego and its environment. Release from this feeling is like release from a chronic illness, and is followed by a sense of lightness and ease comparable to being relieved of the burden of a huge plaster cast. Naturally the immediate sense of euphoria or ecstasy wears off in the course of time, but the permanent absence of the rigid ego-environment boundary remains as a significant change in the structure or our experience. It is of no consequence that the ecstasy wears off, for the compulsive craving for ecstasy disappears, having formerly existed by way of compensation for the chronic frustration of living in a vicious circle.
To some extent the rigid distinction between ego and environment is equivalent to that between mind and body, or between the voluntary and involuntary neural systems. This is probably the reason why Zen and yoga disciplines pay so much attention to breathing, to watching over the breath (anapranasmrti), since it is in this organic function that we can see most easily the essential identity of voluntary and involuntary action. We cannot help breathing, and yet it seems that breath is under our control; we both breathe and are breathed. For the distinction of the voluntary and the involuntary is valid only within a somewhat limited perspective. Strictly speaking, I will or decide involuntarily. Were it not so, it would always be necessary for me to decide to decide and to decide to decide to decide in an infinite regress. Now the involuntary processes of the body, such as the beating of the heart, do not seem to differ very much in principle from other involuntary actions going on outside the body. Both are, as it were, environmental. When, therefore, the distinction of voluntary and involuntary is transcended within the body, it is also transcended with respect to events outside the body.
When, therefore, it is understood that these ego-environment and voluntary-involuntary distinctions are conventional, and valid only within limited and somewhat arbitrary perspectives, we find ourselves in a kind of experiencing to which such expressions as “One is All and All is One” are quite appropriate. For this one-ness represents the disappearance of a fixed barrier, or a rigid dualism. But it is in no sense a “one-thing-ness”—a type of pantheism or monism asserting that all so-called things are the illusory forms of one homogeneous “stuff.” The experience of release from dualism is not to be understood as the sudden disappearance of mountains and trees, houses and people, into a uniform mass of light or transparent voidness.
For this reason the Zen masters have always recognized that “the One” is a somewhat misleading term. In the words of the Shinjinmei:
There are two because there is One,
Yet cling not to this One …
In the dharma-world of true Suchness
There is neither “other” nor “self,”
If you want an immediate answer,
We can only say “Not two.”20
Hence the koan question, “When the many are reduced to the One, to what shall the One be reduced?” To this Joshu replied, “When I was in Seiju Province, I made a linen robe weighing nine pounds.”21 Strange as it may sound, it is in this type of language that Zen expresses itself most plainly, for this is a direct language without the least element of symbolism or conceptualism. After all, it is so easy to forget that what is being expressed here is not an idea or an opinion, but an experience. For Zen does not speak from the external standpoint of one who stands outside life and comments upon it. This is a standpoint from which effective understanding is impossible, just as it is impossible to move a muscle by nothing more than verbal commands, however strenuously spoken.
There is, of course, a permanent value in being able, as it were, to stand aside from life and reflect upon it, in being aware of one’s own existence, in having what communications engineers would call a psychological feedback system that enables us to criticize and correct our actions. But systems of this kind have their limitations, and a moment’s consideration of the analogy of feedback will show where they lie. Probably the most familiar example of feedback is the electrical thermostat which regulates the heating of a house. By setting an upper and lower limit of desired temperature, a thermometer is so connected that it will switch the heat on when the lower limit is reached, and off when the upper limit is reached. The temperature of the rooms is thus kept within the desired limits. We might say, then, that the thermostat is a kind of sensitive organ which the furnace acquires in order to regulate its own conduct, and that this is a very rudimentary analogy of human self-consciousness.
But having thus constructed a self-regulating furnace, how about constructing a self-regulating thermostat? We are all familiar enough with the vagaries of thermostats, and it might be a fine idea to install a second feedback system to control the first. But then there arises the problem of how far can this go. Followed logically to its limits, it implies an indefinite series of feedbacks controlling feedbacks, which, beyond a certain point, would paralyze the whole system with the confusion of complexity. If it is to be avoided, there must, somewhere at the end of the line, be a thermostat or a source of intelligence whose information and authority is to be trusted, and not subjected to further checks and controls. For to this the only alternative is an infinite series of controls, which is absurd, since a point would arrive when the information would never reach the furnace. It might seem that another alternative would be a circular system of control, as when the civilian is controlled by the policeman, who is controlled by the mayor, who is controlled by the civilian. But this works only when each member trusts the one above it, or, to put it in another way, when the system trusts itself—and does not keep on trying to stand outside itself to correct itself.
This gives us rather a vivid picture of the human predicament. Our life consists essentially in action, but we have the power to check action by reflection. Too much reflection inhibits and paralyzes action, but because action is a matter of life or death, how much reflection is necessary? In so far as Zen describes its fundamental attitude as mushin or munen,22 “no-mind” or “no-thought” it seems to stand for action as against reflection.
In walking, just walk. In sitting, just sit.
Above all, don’t wobble.23
Joshu’s answer to the question about the many and the One was simply unreflective action, unpremeditated speech. “When I was in Seiju Province I made a linen robe weighing nine pounds.”
But reflection is also action, and Zen might equally well say: “In acting, just act. In thinking, just think. Above all, don’t wobble.” In other words, if you are going to reflect, to think, just reflect, but do not reflect about reflecting. And Zen would also agree that reflection about reflection is action, provided that in doing it we do just that, and have no tendency to drift off into the infinite regression of trying always to stand above or outside the level upon which we are acting. In short, Zen is also a liberation from the dualism of thought versus action, for it thinks as it acts—with the same quality of abandon, commitment, or faith. Thus the attitude of mushin is by no means an anti-intellectualist exclusion of thinking. It is action upon any level whatsoever, physical or psychic, without trying at the same moment to observe and check the action from outside, that is, without wobbling or anxiety.
Needless to say, what is true of the relationship of thinking to action is also true of feeling, since our feelings or emotions about life are as much a type of feedback as our thoughts. Feeling blocks action, and blocks itself as a form of action, when it gets caught in this same tendency to observe or feel itself indefinitely—as for example, when, in the midst of enjoying myself thoroughly, I examine myself to see if I am getting the utmost out of the occasion. Not content with tasting the food, I am trying also to taste my tongue. Not content with feeling happy, I want to feel myself feeling happy—so as to be sure not to miss anything.
Obviously there is no fixed way of determining the exact point where reflection must turn into action in any given situation, of knowing that we have given the matter enough thought to act without regret. This is always a problem of sensibility, of nice judgment. But the fact remains that however skillfully and carefully our reflecting is done, its conclusions are always a long way short of certainty. Ultimately, every action is a leap into the dark. The only real certainty that we have about the future is that unknown quantity called death, standing as the final symbol of the fact that our lives are not in our own control. In other words, human life is founded upon an irreducible element of the unknown and the uncontrolled, which is the Buddhist sunya or Void and which is the mushin or “no-mind” of Zen. But Zen is—beyond this—the realization that I do not merely stand on this unknown, or float upon it in the frail barque of my body: it is the realization that this unknown is myself.
From the standpoint of vision, my own head is an empty space in the midst of experience—an invisible and inconceivable void which is neither dark nor light. This same voidness stands behind each one of our senses—both the external or exteroceptive and the internal or proprioceptive senses. It stands, too, beyond the beginnings of my life, beyond my conception in my mother’s womb. It stands at the center of the very nuclear structure of my organism. For when the physicist tries to penetrate this structure he finds that the very act of looking into it obscures what he wants to see. This is an example of the same principle that we have encountered all along—that in trying to look into themselves, the eyes turn away from themselves. This is why it is usual to begin training in Zen with one of the many forms of the koan, “Who are you?” “Before father and mother, what is your original nature?” “Who is it that carries this corpse around?”
By such means it is discovered that our “self-nature” (svabhava) is “no-nature,” that our real mind (shin) is “no-mind” (mushin). To the extent, then, that we realize that the unknown and the inconceivable is our own original nature, it no longer stands over against us as a threatening object. It is not so much the abyss into which we are falling; it is rather that out of which we act and live, think and feel.
Again, we can see the appropriateness of the language of unity. There is no longer a fixed dualism between reflection and action. More important still, there is no longer a separation of the knower on the one hand and the unknown on the other. Reflection is action, and the knower is the unknown. We can see, too, the appropriateness of such remarks as Hui Hai’s “Act as you will; go on as you feel, without second thought. This is the incomparable Way.” For sayings of this kind are not intended to discourage ordinary reflection, judgment, and restraint. Their application is not superficial but profound. That is to say, in the final analysis we have to act and think, live and die, from a source beyond all our knowledge and control. If this is unfortunate, no amount of care and hesitancy, no amount of introspection and searching of our motives, can make any ultimate difference to it. We are therefore compelled to choose between a shuddering paralysis or a leap into action regardless of the ultimate consequences. Superficially speaking, our actions may be right or wrong with respect to relative standards. But our decisions upon this superficial level must be supported by the underlying conviction that whatever we do and whatever happens to us is ultimately “right”—which is a way of saying that we must enter into it without “second thought,” without the arrière pensée of regret, hesitancy, doubt, or self-recrimination. Thus when Ummon was asked, “What is the Tao?” he answered simply, “Walk on!”24 But to act without second thought is not by any means a mere precept for our imitation. It is actually impossible to realize this kind of action until we have understood that we have no other alternative, until we have realized that we ourselves are the unknown and the uncontrolled.
So far as Zen is concerned, this realization is little more than the first step in a long course of study. For it must be remembered that Zen is a form of Mahayana Buddhism, in which Nirvana—liberation from the vicious circle of Samsara—is not so much the final goal as the beginning of the life of the Bodhisattva. The concern of the Bodhisattva is upaya or hoben,25 the application of this realization to every aspect of life for the “liberation of all sentient beings,” not only human and animal, but also trees, grass, and the very dust.β It might be said, then, that the real discipline of Zen begins only at the point where the individual has altogether stopped trying to improve himself. This appears to be a contradiction because we are almost completely unaccustomed to the idea of effortless-effort, of tension without conflict and concentration without strain.
But it is fundamental to Zen that a person who is trying to improve himself, to become something more than he is, is incapable of creative action. In the words of Rinzai, “If you seek deliberately to become a Buddha, your Buddha is just Samsara.” Or again, “If a person seeks the Tao, that person loses the Tao.”26 The reason is simply that the attempt to improve or act upon oneself is a way of locking action in a vicious circle, like trying to bite one’s own teeth. Release from this ridiculous predicament is achieved, at the very beginning of Zen discipline, by understanding that “you yourself as you are, are the Buddha.” For the object of Zen is not so much to become a Buddha as to act like one. Therefore no progress can be made in the life of the Bodhisattva so long as there is the least anxiety or striving to become more than what one is. Similarly, a person who tries to concentrate upon a certain task with a result in mind will forget the task in thinking about its result.
The irrelevance of self-improvement is expressed in two poems of the Zenrin Kushu:
A long thing is the long body of Buddha;
A short thing is the short body of Buddha.27
In the landscape of spring there is no measure of worth or value;
The flowering branches are naturally short and long.28
Or the following from Goso:
If you look for the Buddha, you will not see the Buddha;
If you seek the Patriarch, you will not see the Patriarch.
The sweet melon is sweet even through the stem;
The bitter gourd is bitter even to the roots.29
Some Buddhas are short and some are long; some students are beginners, and others are far advanced, but each is “right” just exactly as he is. For if he strives to make himself better, he falls into the vicious circle of egoism. It is perhaps difficult for the Western mind to appreciate that man develops by growth rather than self-improvement, and that neither the body nor the mind grows by stretching itself. As the seed becomes the tree, the short Buddha becomes the long Buddha. It is not a question of improvement, for a tree is not an improved seed, and it is even in perfect accord with nature or Tao that many seeds never become trees. Seeds lead to plants, and plants lead to seeds. There is no question of higher or lower, better or worse, for the process is fulfilled in each moment of its activity.
A philosophy of nonstriving or mui30 always raises the problem of incentive, for if people are “right” or Buddhas just as they are, does not this self-acceptance destroy the creative urge? The answer is that there is nothing truly creative about actions which spring from incentives, for these are not so much free or creative actions as conditioned reactions. True creation is always purposeless, without ulterior motive, which is why it is said that the true artist copies nature in the manner of her operation and understands the real meaning of “art for art’s sake.” As Kojisei wrote in his Saikontan:
If your true nature has the creative force of Nature itself, wherever you may go, you will see (all things as) fishes leaping and geese flying.31
αI wish to take this opportunity of expressing my gratitude to my assistant, Miss Lois Thille, for many hours of secretarial help, and also to Mr. Wing Hoh, for transcribing my atrocious Chinese characters into a legible and elegant form.
βIn Zen, however, the idea of Samsara as a process of cyclic reincarnation is not taken literally, and thus Zen has its own special meaning for the Bodhisattva’s task of delivering all things from the course of endless birth and death. In one sense, the cycle of birth and death is from moment to moment, and a person may be said to be involved in Samsara to the extent that he identifies himself with an ego continuing through time.
Reprinted from Asian Study Monographs, No. 1, by the permission of HSG Agency as agent for the author. The Way of Liberation in Zen Buddhism. Copyright © 1955 by A. W. Watts.
