11

The Koan and The Five Steps

In the course of his long sojourn in New York in the 1950s, Suzuki met a number of psychoanalysts who, through his writings and seminars at Columbia, had taken an interest in Zen. One of the most prominent members of the group of psychoanalysts to engage with Suzuki was Erich Fromm, who first encountered Suzuki’s writings during the 1940s. From 1950 to 1973, Fromm was in Mexico, working in Cuernevaca and Mexico City, where he played a pivotal role in the development of the psychoanalytical profession in Mexico. Having met Suzuki for a particularly stimulating dinner in 1956, Fromm, who perceived deep resonances between Zen and psychoanalysis, invited Suzuki to visit him in Cuernevaca and even proposed that he consider settling in Mexico for the long term. This marked the beginning of a rich series of intellectual exchanges between the two men that continued until Suzuki’s death in 1966. Although Suzuki did not accept that invitation, he did agree to participate in a weeklong workshop on Zen and psychoanalysis that was sponsored by the Autonomous National University of Mexico’s Department of Psychoanalysis. During the first week of August 1957, Suzuki presided as the keynote speaker for a group of approximately fifty psychoanalysts who had gathered in Cuernevaca, delivering a series of four lectures on Zen Buddhism. According to Erich Fromm’s account of the event, Suzuki through his lectures and his presence made a noticeable and lasting impression on the participants. One product of the conference was the book containing these lectures, which was coauthored by Fromm, Suzuki, and Suzuki’s close associate and student Richard DeMartino. Although initial sales of the book were meager, it “eventually sold a million copies and was translated into sixteen languages.” (See Friedman and Schreiber, The Lives of Erich Fromm, 165–170.)

The essay below consists of two parts of Suzuki’s lectures delivered at the 1957 Cuernevaca conference. As noted by Erich Fromm in the foreword of the book from which they are drawn, apart from a few minor stylistic changes, the essays are “literal versions” of the lectures Suzuki presented (Suzuki, Fromm, et al., Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis, viii). In the first of the two sections, Suzuki presents again a description of the function and nature of koan, rephrasing his earlier presentations of that material with a vocabulary that would resonate more strongly with an audience comprising psychoanalysts, most of whom were unfamiliar with Zen and Asian culture more generally. The “Koan” section of the essay is of interest because it provides us with one of the clearest statements by Suzuki about how he understood koan to work on a psychological level and one of his most systematic, albeit brief, overviews of the koan system. The second chapter on the five steps (goi) that is presented here is also of importance, as it is Suzuki’s most detailed analysis of that aspect of Zen thought and training in his English writings.

The two sections of Suzuki’s lectures in this volume are from “Lectures on Zen Buddhism,” in Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis, by D. T. Suzuki, Erich Fromm, and Richard DeMartino (New York: Harper, 1960): 43–76. Suzuki’s contributions to the book were translated into Japanese by Kobori Sōhaku as Zen to seishin bunseki (Tokyo: Sōgensha, 1960). The Japanese translation is found in SDZ 28:311–421.

• • •

IV. THE KOAN

1

A koan is a kind of problem which is given by the master to his disciples to solve. “Problem” is not a good term, however, and I prefer the original Japanese kōan (gongan in Chinese). Kō literally means “public” and an is “a document.” But “a public document” has nothing to do with Zen. The Zen “document” is the one each one of us brings along to this world at his birth and tries to decipher before he passes away.

According to Mahayana legend Buddha is said to have made the following utterance when he came out of his mother’s body: “Heaven above, earth below, I alone am the most honored one.” This was Buddha’s “document” bequeathed to us to read, and those who read it successfully are the followers of Zen. There is, however, no secrecy in this, as it is all open or “public” to us, to every one of us; and to those who have an eye to see the utterance it presents no difficulty. If there is any hidden meaning in it at all, it is on our side and not in “the document.”

The koan is within ourselves, and what the Zen master does is no more than to point it out for us so that we can see it more plainly than before. When the koan is brought out of the unconscious to the field of consciousness, it is said to have been understood by us. To effect this awakening, the koan sometimes takes a dialectical form but frequently assumes, superficially at least, an entirely nonsensical form.

The following may be classified as dialectical:

The master generally carries a staff or stick which is used while traveling over the mountain paths. But nowadays it has turned into a symbol of authority in the hand of the master, who frequently resorts to it to demonstrate his point. He will produce it before the congregation and say something like this: “This is not a staff. What do you call it?” Sometimes he may make this kind of statement: “If you say it is a staff, you ‘touch’ [or affirm]; if you do not call it a staff, you ‘go against’ [or negate]. Apart from negation and affirmation, what would you call it?” In fact, such a koan as this is more than dialectical. Here is one of the solutions given by a competent disciple: Once, when the master gave this statement, a monk came out of the congregation and, taking the staff away from the master, broke it into two and threw the pieces down on the ground.

There was another master who, bringing out his staff, made this enigmatic declaration: “When you have a staff, I’ll give you one; when you have none I’ll take it away from you.”

Sometimes the master will ask quite legitimately, “Where do you come from?” or “Whither do you go?” But he may suddenly change his topic and say, “How my hands resemble those of the Buddha! And how my legs resemble those of the donkey!”

One may ask, “What does it matter if my hands are like those of the Buddha? As to my legs looking like those of the donkey, the statement sounds fantastic. Granting that they do, what has this fact to do with the ultimate question of existence, with which we are seriously concerned?” The questions or challenges here set down by the master may be regarded as “nonsensical” if you want to so designate them.

Let me give one or two more examples of such “nonsense” given by another master. When a disciple asked, “Who is the one who stands all alone, without a companion among the ten thousand things?” the master answered, “When you swallow the West River at one gulp, I’ll tell you.” “Impossible” will be our immediate reaction. But history tells us that this remark from the master opened up the dark chamber of the questioner’s consciousness.

It was the same master who kicked the chest of a questioning monk whose fault was to ask, “What is the meaning of Bodhidharma’s coming to China from the West?” which is tantamount to “What is the ultimate meaning of the Dharma?” But when the monk rose from the ground, recovering from the shock, he, boldly but most heartily laughing, declared, “How strange that every possible form of samadhi there is in the world is at the tip of a hair and I have mastered its secret meaning down to its deepest root!” What possible relationship could ever exist between the master’s kick and the monk’s daring pronouncement? This can never be understood on the plane of intellection. Nonsensical though all this may be, it is only from our habit of conceptualization that we miss facing the ultimate reality as it stands nakedly by itself. What is “nonsensical” indeed has a great deal of meaning and makes us penetrate the veil that exists as far as we stay on this side of relativity.

2

These “questions and answers” (known as mondō in Japanese) and the masters’ declarations which are now designated as koans were not known as such in the days when they actually took place; they were just the way that seekers of the truth used to become illumined and that masters of Zen resorted to for the sake of the questioning monks. What we may call a somewhat systematic way of studying Zen started with the masters of the Song some time in the twelfth century. One of them selected what is known as Jōshū’s “Mu!” (wu in Chinese) as a koan and gave it to his disciples to meditate upon it. The story of Jōshū’s “Mu!” runs as follows:

Jōshū Jushin (778–897, Zhaozhou Congshen in Chinese) was one of the great Zen masters of the Tang dynasty. He was once asked by a monk, “Has a dog the Buddha-nature?” Answered the master, “Mu!” “Mu!” (wu) literally means “no.” But when it is used as a koan the meaning does not matter, it is simply “Mu!” The disciple is told to concentrate his mind on the meaningless sound “Mu!” regardless of whether it means “yes” or “no” or, in fact, anything else. Just “Mu!” “Mu!” “Mu!”

This monotonous repetition of the sound “Mu!” will go on until the mind is thoroughly saturated with it and no room is left for any other thought. The one who thus utters the sound, audibly or inaudibly, is now completely identified with the sound. It is no more an individual person who repeats the “Mu!”; it is the “Mu!” itself repeating itself. When he moves it is not he as a person conscious of himself but the “Mu!” The “Mu!” stands or sits or walks, eats or drinks, speaks or remains silent. The individual vanishes from the field of consciousness, which is now thoroughly occupied with the “Mu!” Indeed, the whole universe is nothing but the “Mu!” “Heaven above, earth below, I alone am the most honored one!” The “Mu!” is this “I.” We now can say that the “Mu!” and the “I” and the Cosmic Unconscious—the three are one and the one is three. When this state of uniformity or identity prevails, the consciousness is in a unique situation, which I call “consciously unconscious” or “unconsciously conscious.”

But this is not yet a satori experience. We may regard it as corresponding to what is known as samadhi, meaning “equilibrium,” “uniformity,” or “equanimity,” or “a state of tranquility.” For Zen this is not enough; there must be a certain awakening which breaks up the equilibrium and brings one back to the relative level of consciousness, when a satori takes place. But this so-called relative level is not really relative; it is the borderland between the conscious level and the unconscious. Once this level is touched, one’s ordinary consciousness becomes infused with the tidings of the unconscious. This is the moment when the finite mind realizes that it is rooted in the infinite. In terms of Christianity, this is the time when the soul hears directly or inwardly the voice of the living God. The Jewish people may say that Moses was in this state of mind at Mount Sinai when he heard God announcing his name as “I am that I am.”

3

The question now is, “How did the Song masters discover the ‘Mu!’ to be an effective means leading to the Zen experience?” There is nothing intellectual in the “Mu!” The situation is quite contrary to that which took place when the mondo were exchanged between masters and disciples before the Song era. Indeed, wherever there is any question, the very fact of questioning implies intellectualization. “What is Buddha?” “What is the Self?” “What is the ultimate principle of the Buddhist teaching?” “What is the meaning of life?” “Is life worth living?” All these questions seem to demand a certain “intellectual” or intelligible answer. When these questioners are told to go back to their rooms and apply themselves to the “study” of the “Mu!” how would they take it? They would simply be dumfounded and not know what to make of the proposition.

While all this is true, we must remember that the position of Zen is to ignore all kinds of questioning because the questioning itself is against the spirit of Zen and that what Zen expects of us is to lay hands on the questioner himself as a person and not anything that comes out of him. One or two examples will amply prove the point.

Baso Dōichi was one of the greatest masters of Zen in the Tang dynasty; in fact, we can say that Zen really made a start with him. His treatment of questioners was something most revolutionary and most original. One of them was Suiryō (or Suirō), who was kicked down by the master when Suiryō asked him about the truth of Zen.1 On another occasion Baso struck a monk who happened to wish to know the first principle of Buddhism. On a third occasion he gave a slap over the ear to one whose fault was asking the master, “What is the meaning of Bodhidharma’s visit to China?”² Superficially, all these rough handlings on the part of Baso have nothing to do with the questions asked, unless they are to be understood as a kind of punishment inflicted on those who were silly enough to propose such vitally interesting questions. And the strange thing is that the monks concerned were not at all offended or irate. On the contrary, one of them was so overwhelmed with joy and excitement that he declared, “How most strange that all the truths given out in the Sutras are manifested at the tip of a hair!” How could a master’s kick on the monk’s chest effect such a miracle of transcendental nature?

Rinzai, another great Zen master, was noted for his giving the unintelligible utterance “Katsu!” when a question was asked. Tokusan, still another great one, used to wield his staff freely even before a monk opened his mouth. In fact, Tokusan’s famous declaration runs thus: “Thirty blows of my stick when you have something to say; thirty blows just the same when you have nothing to say.” As long as we remain on the level of relativity or intelligibility, we cannot make anything out of those actions on the part of the master; we cannot discover any sort of relationship between the questions that may be asked by the monks and what seems to be an impetuous outburst of an irascible personality, to say nothing of the effect this outburst has upon the questioners. The incoherency and incomprehensibility of the whole transaction are, to say the least, bewildering.

4

The truth is that what involves the totality of human existence is not a matter of intellection but of the will in its most primary sense of the word. The intellect may raise all kinds of questions—and it is perfectly right for it to do so—but to expect any final answer from the intellect is asking too much of it, for this is not in the nature of intellection. The answer lies deeply buried under the bedrock of our being. To split it open requires the most basic tremor of the will. When this is felt the doors of perception open and a new vista hitherto undreamed of is presented. The intellect proposes, and what disposes is not the proposer himself. Whatever we may say about the intellect, it is after all superficial, it is something floating on the surface of consciousness. The surface must be broken through in order to reach the unconscious. But as long as this unconscious belongs in the domain of psychology, there cannot be any satori in the Zen sense. The psychology must be transcended and what may be termed the “ontological unconscious” must be tapped.

The Song masters must have realized this in their long experience and also in the treatment of their disciples. They wished to break up the intellectual aporia by means of the “Mu!” in which there is no trace of intellection but only of the sheer will overriding the intellect. But I must remind my readers not to take me for an anti-intellectualist through and through. What I object to is regarding the intellect as the ultimate reality itself. The intellect is needed to determine, however vaguely, where the reality is. And the reality is grasped only when the intellect quits its claim on it. Zen knows this and proposes as a koan a statement having some savor of intellection, something which in disguise looks as if it demanded a logical treatment, or rather looks as if there were room for such treatment. The following examples will demonstrate what I mean:

Enō, the Sixth Patriarch, is reported to have demanded of his questioner: “Show me your original face you have before you were born.” Nangaku Ejō, one of Enō’s disciples, asked one who wanted to be enlightened, “Who is the one who thus comes to me?” One of the Song masters wanted to know, “Where do we meet after you are dead, cremated, and the ashes are all scattered around?” Hakuin, a great Zen master of modern Japan, used to raise one of his hands before his followers, demanding, “Let me hear the sound of one hand clapping.” There are in Zen many such impossible demands: “Use your spade which is in your empty hands.” “Walk while riding on a donkey.” “Talk without using your tongue.” “Play your stringless lute.” “Stop this drenching rain.” These paradoxical propositions will no doubt tax one’s intellect to the highest degree of tension, finally making him characterize them all as utterly nonsensical and not worth wasting his mental energy on. But nobody will deny the rationality of the following question which has puzzled philosophers, poets, and thinkers of every description ever since the awakening of human consciousness. “Whence do we come and whither do we go?” All those “impossible” questions or statements given out by the Zen masters are no more than “illogical” varieties of the most “rational” question just cited.

As a matter of fact, when you present your logical views of a koan, the master is sure to reject them, categorically or even sarcastically, without giving any ground whatever for doing so. After a few interviews you may not know what to do unless you give him up as “an ignorant old bigot” or as “one who knows nothing of the ‘modern rationalistic way’ of thinking.” But the truth is that the Zen master knows his business much better than you judge. For Zen is not, after all, an intellectual or dialectical game of any sort. It deals with something going beyond the logicalness of things, where he knows there is “the truth that makes one free.”

Whatever statement one may make on any subject, it is ineluctably on the surface of consciousness as long as it is amenable in some way to a logical treatment. The intellect serves varied purposes in our daily living, even to the point of annihilating humanity, individually or en masse. No doubt it is a most useful thing, but it does not solve the ultimate problem every one of us sooner or later encounters in the course of his life. This is the problem of life and death, which concerns the meaning of life. When we face it, the intellect has to confess its inability to cope with the problem; for it most certainly comes to an impasse or aporia which in its nature it cannot avoid. The intellectual blind alley to which we are now driven is like “the silver mountain” or “the iron wall” standing right in front of us. Not the intellectual maneuver or logical trickery, but the whole of our being is needed to effect a penetration. It is, the Zen master would tell us, like climbing up to the end of a pole one hundred feet long and yet being urged to climb on and on until you have to execute a desperate leap, utterly disregarding your existential safety. The moment this is executed you find yourself safely on the “full-blown lotus pedestal.” This kind of leap can never be attempted by intellection or by logicalness of things. The latter espouses only continuity and never a leap over the gaping chasm. And this is what Zen expects every one of us to accomplish in spite of an apparently logical impossibility. For this reason, Zen always pokes us from behind to go on with our habit of rationalizing in order to make us see by ourselves how far we can go in this futile attempt. Zen knows perfectly well where its limit lies. But we are generally unaware of this fact until we find ourselves at a dead end. This personal experience is needed to wake up the totality of our being, as we are ordinarily too easily satisfied with our intellectual achievements, which are, after all, concerned with life’s periphery.

It was not his philosophical training or his ascetic or moral austerities that finally brought Buddha to his experience of enlightenment. Buddha attained it only when he gave up all these superficial practices which hang around the externalities of our existence. Intellection or moralization or conceptualization are only needed to realize their own limitations. The koan exercise aims at bringing all this intimately home to us.

The will in its primary sense, as I said before, is more basic than the intellect because it is the principle that lies at the root of all existences and unites them all in the oneness of being. The rocks are where they are—this is their will. The rivers flow—this is their will. The plants grow—this is their will. The birds fly—this is their will. Human beings talk—this is their will. The seasons change, heaven sends down rain or snow, the earth occasionally shakes, the waves roll, the stars shine—each of them follows its own will. To be is to will and so is to become. There is absolutely nothing in this world that has not its will. The one great will from which all these wills, infinitely varied, flow is what I call the “Cosmic (or ontological) Unconscious,” which is the zero-reservoir of infinite possibilities. The “Mu!” thus is linked to the unconscious by working on the conative plane of consciousness. The koan that looks intellectual or dialectical, too, finally leads one psychologically to the conative center of consciousness and then to the Source itself.

5

As I said before, the Zen student, after staying with the master for a few years—no, even a few months—will come to a state of complete standstill. For he does not know which way to go; he has tried to solve the koan on the relative level but to no avail whatever. He is now pushed to the corner where there is no way to escape. At this moment the master may say, “It is good thus to be cornered. The time has come for you to make a complete about-face.” The master is likely to continue, “You must not think with the head but with the abdomen, with the belly.”

This may sound very strange. According to modern science, the head is filled with masses in gray and white and with cells and fibers connected this way and that. How can the Zen master ignore this fact and advise us to think with the abdomen? But the Zen master is a strange sort of man. He will not listen to you and to what you may tell him about sciences modern or ancient. He knows his business better from his experience.

I have my way of explaining the situation, though perhaps unscientifically. The body may be divided into three parts, that is, functionally: the head, the abdominal parts, and the limbs. The limbs are for locomotion, but the hands have differentiated themselves and developed in their own way. They are now for works of creativity. These two hands with their ten fingers shape all kinds of things meant for the well-being of the body. My intuition is that the hands developed first and then the head, which gradually became an independent organ of thought. When the hands are used this way or that way, they must detach themselves from the ground, differentiating themselves from those of the lower animals. When the human hands are thus freed from the ground, leaving the legs exclusively for locomotion, the hands can follow their own line of development, which will in turn keep the head erect and enable the eyes to survey the more expanding surroundings. The eye is an intellectual organ, while the ear is a more primitive one. As to the nose, it is best for it to keep itself away from the earth, for the eye has now begun to take in a wider horizon. This widening of the visionary field means that the mind becomes more and more detached from sense-objects, making itself an organ of intellectual abstraction and generalization.

Thus the head symbolizes intellection, and the eye, with its mobile muscles, is its useful instrument. But the abdominal part where the viscera are contained is controlled by the involuntary nerves and represents the most primitive stage of evolution in the structure of the human body. The abdominal parts are closer to nature, from which we all come and to which we all return. They are therefore in a more intimate contact with nature and can feel it and talk with it and hold it for “inspection.” The inspection, however, is not an intellectual operation; it is, if I can say so, affective. “Feeling” may be a better word when the term is used in its fundamental sense.

Intellectual inspection is the function of the head and therefore whatever understanding we may have of nature from this source is an abstraction or a representation of nature and not nature itself. Nature does not reveal itself as it is to the intellect—that is, to the head. It is the abdominal parts that feel nature and understand it in its suchness. The kind of understanding, which may be called affective or conative, involves the whole being of a person as symbolized by the abdominal parts of the body. When the Zen master tells us to hold the koan in the abdomen, he means that the koan is to be taken up by one’s whole being, that one has to identify oneself completely with it, not to look at it intellectually or objectively as if it were something we can stand away from.

Some primitive people were once visited by an American scientist, and when they were told that Western people think with their heads, the primitive people thought that the Americans were all crazy. They said, “We think with the abdomen.” People in China and also in Japan—I do not know about India—when some difficult problems come up, often say, “Think with your abdomen,” or simply, “Ask your belly.” So, when any question in connection with our existence comes up, we are advised to “think” with the belly—not with any detachable part of the body. “The belly” stands for the totality of one’s being, while the head, which is the latest-developed portion of the body, represents intellection. The intellect essentially serves us in objectifying the subject under consideration. Therefore, in China especially, the ideal person is one rather corpulent in form, with a protruding abdomen, as is depicted in the figure of Hotei (Budai in Chinese), who is considered an incarnation of the coming Buddha, Maitreya.3

To “think” with the abdomen in actuality means to hold the diaphragm down to make room for the thoracic organs to function properly and to keep the body steady and well adjusted for the reception of the koan. The whole procedure is not to make the koan an object of intellection; for the intellect always keeps its object away from itself, to look at it from a distance, as if it were mortally afraid of touching it, not to say anything about grasping and holding it in its own naked hands. Zen, on the contrary, tells us not only to grasp the koan with the hands, with the abdomen, but to identify ourselves with it in a most complete manner, so that when I eat or drink it is not I but the koan who eats or drinks. When this is attained the koan solves itself without my doing anything further.

As to the significance of the diaphragm in the structure of the human body I have no knowledge whatever from the medical point of view, but my commonsensical understanding, based on certain experiences, is that the diaphragm in connection with the abdominal part has a great deal to do with one’s sense of security, which comes from being more intimately related to the ground of things; that is, to the ultimate reality. To establish this kind of relationship is called in Japanese kufū suru. When the Zen master tells you to carry on your kufū on the koan with your abdominal part, he means no other act than the attempt at a successful establishment of this relationship. It is perhaps a primitive or ante-scientific way of talking—this way of trying to establish a relationship between the diaphragm and abdomen and the ultimate reality. But there is no doubt, on the other hand, that we have become too nervous about the head and its importance in regard to our intellectual activities. At all events the koan is not to be solved with the head; that is to say, intellectually or philosophically. Whatever logical approach may seem desirable or possible in the beginning, the koan is destined to be finally settled with the abdominal parts.

Take the case of the staff in the hands of the master. He holds it up and declares, “I do not call it a staff and what would you call it?” This may look as if it required a dialectical answer, for the declaration or challenge is tantamount to saying, “When A is not A, what is it?” or “When God is not God, what is he?” The logical law of identity is here violated. When A is once defined as A, it must remain A and never not-A or B or X. The master would sometimes make another announcement: “The staff is not a staff and yet it is a staff.” When the disciple approaches the master logical-mindedly and pronounces the challenge altogether nonsensical, he is sure to be visited with a blow of the very staff in the hands of the master. The disciple cannot escape being driven into an impasse, for the master is adamant and absolutely refuses to yield to any amount of intellectual pressure. Whatever kufū the disciple is now compelled to make is all to be carried in his abdominal parts and not in his head. The intellect is to give its place to the will.

To give another example. The Sixth Patriarch demanded to see “the face which you have before your birth.” Dialectic is of no avail here. The demand corresponds to Christ’s dictum, “I am before Abraham was.” Whatever its traditional interpretation on the part of the Christian theologian may be, Christ’s is-ness defies our human sense of serial time. So with the Sixth Patriarch’s “face.” The intellect may try all that it can, but the patriarch as well as Christ will most certainly reject it as irrelevant. The head is now to bow to the diaphragm and the mind to the soul. Logic as well as psychology is to be dethroned, to be placed beyond all kinds of intellectualization.

To continue this symbolical talk: The head is conscious while the abdomen is unconscious. When the master tells his disciples to “think” with the lower part of the body, he means that the koan is to be taken down to the unconscious and not to the conscious field of consciousness. The koan is to “sink” into the whole being and not stop at the periphery. Literally, this makes no sense, which goes without saying. But when we realize that the bottom of the unconscious where the koan “sinks” is where even the ālaya-vijñāna, “the all-conserving consciousness,”4 cannot hold it, we see that the koan is no more in the field of intellection, it is thoroughly identified with one’s Self. The koan is now beyond all the limits of psychology. When all these limits are transcended—which means going even beyond the so-called collective unconscious—one comes upon what is known in Buddhism as ādarśanajñāna, “mirror knowledge.” The darkness of the unconscious is broken through and one sees all things as one sees one’s face in the brightly shining mirror.

6

The koan method of studying Zen, as I said before, started in China in the twelfth century with the Song masters, such as Goso Hōen (died 1104), Engo Kokugon (1063–1135), and Daie Sōkō (1089–1163). But its systematization took place in Japan soon after the introduction of Zen in the thirteenth century. In the beginning the koan was classified under three headings: prajna-intuitional (richi), actional (kikan), and the ultimate (kōjō). Later, in the seventeenth century, Hakuin and his followers amplified them into five or six, but in essence the older three still hold good. Since, however, the schema was completed, all the Zen students belonging to the Rinzai school nowadays study Zen after it, and the study is more or less stereotyped and to that extent shows signs of deterioration.

The typical and classical examples of the koan students are supplied by Bukkō Kokushi (1226–86) in China and by Hakuin (1685–1768)⁵ in Japan.⁶ The approach to Zen by those of non-koan systems is exemplified, as far as we have the record, by Rinzai (d. 867) in China and by Bankei (1622–93) in Japan.⁷ Scholars interested in the further psychological study of Zen are advised to peruse some of my works on the subject.

I would add a few words here. Jñāna is ordinarily translated as “knowledge,” but to be exact “intuition” may be better. I sometimes translate it “transcendental wisdom,” especially when it is prefixed with pra, as prajñā. The fact is, even when we have an intuition, the object is still in front of us and we sense it, or perceive it, or see it. Here is a dichotomy of subject and object. In prajna this dichotomy no longer exists. Prajna is not concerned with finite objects as such; it is the totality of things becoming conscious of itself as such. And this totality is not at all limited. An infinite totality is beyond our ordinary human comprehension. But the prajna-intuition is this “incomprehensible” totalistic intuition of the infinite, which is something that can never take place in our daily experience limited to finite objects or events. The prajna, therefore, can take place, in other words, only when finite objects of sense and intellect are identified with the infinite itself. Instead of saying that the infinite sees itself in itself, it is much closer to our human experience to say that an object regarded as finite, as belonging in the dichotomous world of subject and object, is perceived by prajna from the point of view of infinity. Symbolically, the finite then sees itself reflected in the mirror of infinity. The intellect informs us that the object is finite, but prajna contradicts, declaring it to be the infinite beyond the realm of relativity. Ontologically, this means that all finite objects or beings are possible because of the infinite underlying them, or that the objects are relatively and therefore limitedly laid out in the field of infinity without which they have no moorings.

This reminds us of St. Paul’s epistle to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 13:12) in which he says:8 “At present, we are looking at a confused reflection in a mirror; then, we shall see face to face; now, I have only glimpses of knowledge; then, I shall recognize God as he has recognized me.” “At present” or “now” refers to relative and finite time-sequence, while “then” is eternity, which, in my terminology, is prajna-intuition. In prajna-intuition or “knowledge” I see God as he is in himself, not his “confused reflection” or fragmentary “glimpses” of him, because I stand before him “face to face”—no, because I am as he is.

The ādarśanajñāna which reveals itself when the bottom of the unconscious, that is, of the ālaya-vijñāna, is broken through is no other than prajna-intuition. The primary will out of which all beings come is not blind and unconscious; it seems so because of our ignorance (avidya) which obscures the mirror, making us oblivious even of the fact of its existence. The blindness is on our side and not on the side of the will, which is primarily and fundamentally noetic as much as conative. The will is prajna plus karuna, wisdom plus love. On the relative, limited, finite plane, the will is seen as revealed fragmentally; that is to say, we are apt to take it as something separated from our mind-activities. But when it reveals itself in the mirror of ādarśanajñāna, it is “God as he is.” In him prajna is not differentiated from karuna. When one is mentioned, the other inevitably comes along.

I cannot help adding another word or two here. An interpersonal relationship is sometimes spoken of in connection with the koan exercise when the master asks a question and the pupil takes it up in his interview with the master. Especially when the master stands rigidly and irrevocably against the pupil’s intellectual approach, the pupil, failing to find what to make of the situation, feels as if he were utterly depending on the master’s helping hand to pick him up. In Zen this kind of relationship between master and pupil is rejected as not conducive to the enlightenment experience on the part of the pupil. For it is the koan “Mu!,” symbolizing the ultimate reality itself, and not the master, that will rise out of the pupil’s unconscious. It is the koan “Mu!” that makes master knock down pupil, who, when awakened, in turn slaps master’s face. There is no Self in its limited finite phase in this wrestlers-like encounter. It is most important that this be unmistakably understood in the study of Zen.

V. THE FIVE STEPS (GOI)

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A number of questions 9 were submitted to me—questions rising out of earlier sessions of this “workshop”—and as I went over them I discovered that most of them seemed to miss the central or pivotal point around which Zen moves. This made me decide today to say something further about Zen life and teaching.

Zen, we may say, is a strange subject about which we can write or talk for an indefinitely long time, and yet we cannot exhaust all its contents. On the other hand, if we so desired, we could demonstrate it by lifting one finger or by coughing or by winking the eyes or by uttering a meaningless sound.

So it has been stated that even if all the oceans on earth were made into ink, all the mountains into a brush, and the entire world changed into sheets of paper, and we were asked to write on Zen, Zen could not be given full expression. No wonder my short tongue, quite different from Buddha’s, fails to make people come to an understanding of Zen in the preceding four lectures.

The following tabular presentation of five “steps,” known as goi, in Zen training will facilitate our understanding of Zen. The “go” in goi means “five” and the “i” means “a situation” or “a rung” or “step.” These five are divisible into two groups: noetic, and affective or conative. The first three are noetic and the last two are affective or conative. The middle one, the third “step,” is the transition point at which the noetic begins to be conative and knowledge turns into life. Here the noetic comprehension of the Zen life becomes dynamic. “The word” takes flesh; the abstract idea is transformed into a living person who feels, wills, hopes, aspires, suffers, and is capable of doing any amount of work.

In the first of the last two “steps,” the Zen-man strives to realize his insight to the utmost of his abilities. In the last he reaches his destination, which is really no destination.

The goi is read in Japanese as follows:

1.Shō chū hen, “the hen in the shō.”

2.Hen chū shō, “the shō in the hen.”

3.Shō chū rai, “the coming from the shō.”

4.Ken chū shi, “the arriving in the ken.”

5.Ken chū tō, “the settling in the ken.”

The shō and the hen constitute a duality like the yin and yang in Chinese philosophy. Shō literally means “right,” “straight,” “just,” “level”; and hen is “partial,” “one-sided,” “unbalanced,” “lopsided.” The English equivalents will be something like these:

The Shō	The Hen
The absolute	The relative
The infinite	The finite
The one	The many
God	The world
Dark (undifferentiation)	Light (differentiated)
Sameness	Difference
Emptiness (sunyata)	Form and matter (nāmarūpa)
Wisdom (prajna)	Love (karuna)
Ri (li) “the universal”	Ji (shi) “the particular”
(Let “A” stand for shō and “B” for hen.)

(1) Shō chū hen, “the hen in the shō,” means that the one is in the many, God in the world, the infinite in the finite, etc. When we think, the shō and the hen stand in opposition and cannot be reconciled. But in fact the shō cannot be the shō nor can the hen be the hen when either stands by itself. What makes the many (hen) the many is because the one is in it. If the one is not there, we cannot even talk of manyness.

(2) Hen chū shō, “the shō in the hen,” complements (1). If the one is in the many, the many must be in the one. The many is what makes the one possible. God is the world and the world is in God. God and the world are separate and not identical in the sense that God cannot exist outside the world and that the one is indistinguishable from the other. They are one and yet each retains its individuality: God is infinitely particularizing and the world of particulars finds itself nestled in the bosom of God.

(3) We now come to the third step in the life of the Zen-man. This is the most crucial point where the noetic quality of the preceding two steps transforms itself into the conative and he becomes really a living, feeling, and willing personality. Hitherto he was the head, the intellect, in however exacting a sense this might be understood. Now he is supplied with the trunk with all its visceral contents and also with all the limbs, especially with hands, the number of which may be increased even up to one thousand (symbolizing an infinity) like those of Kannon the Bodhisattva. And in his inward life he feels like the infant Buddha who uttered, as soon as he came out of his mother’s body, this pronouncement: “Heaven above, earth below, I alone am the most honored one.”

Incidentally, when I quote this utterance of the Buddha, scientifically minded people may smile and say: “What nonsense! How could a baby fresh from its mother’s body make such a deeply philosophical statement? Utterly incredible!” I think they are in the right. But we must remember that while we are rational beings, I hope, at the same time we are the most irrational creatures, fond of all kinds of absurdities called miracles. Did not Christ rise from death and ascend to heaven, though we do not know what sort of heaven that was? Did not his mother, the Virgin Mary, even while alive perform the same wonder? Reason tells us one thing, but there is something besides reason in every one of us and we readily accept miracles. In fact, we, the most commonplace sort of humanity, are also performing miracles at every moment of our lives, regardless of our religious divergences.

It was Luther who said, “Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise.” It was Hyakujō who, when asked what was the most wonderful thing, replied, “I sit alone on the peak of Mount Daiyu.” Mount Daiyu is where his monastery was located. In the Chinese original no reference is made to anything or anybody who is sitting; it is just “Alone sit Daiyu Mount.” The sitter is not discriminated from the mountain. The aloneness of the Zen-man, in spite of his being in a world of multitudes, is remarkable.

Rinzai’s “true man of no title” is no other than the one who is at this moment in front of every one of us, most assuredly listening to my voice as I talk or my word as I write. Is this not the most wonderful fact we all experience? Hence the philosopher’s sense of “the mystery of being,” if he has actually sensed it.

We ordinarily talk of “I,” but “I” is just a pronoun and is not the reality itself. I often feel like asking, “What does ‘I’ stand for? As long as ‘I’ is a pronoun like ‘you’ or ‘he’ or ‘she’ or ‘it,’ what is that which stands behind it? Can you pick it out and tell me, ‘This is it’?” The psychologist informs us that “I” is nonexistent, that it is a mere concept designating a structure or an integration of relationships. But the strange fact is that when the “I” gets angry, it wants to destroy the whole world, together with the structure itself for which it is the symbol. Where does a mere concept derive its dynamics? What makes the “I” declare itself to be the only real thing in existence? The “I” cannot just be an allusion or a delusion, it must be something more real and substantial. And it is really real and substantial, because it is “here” where the shō and the hen are unified as a living identity of the contradiction. All the power “I” has comes from this identity. According to Meister Eckhart, the flea in God is more real than the angel in his own right. The delusive “I” can never be “the most honored one.”

The shō in shō chū rai is not used in the same sense as in shō chū hen or in hen chū shō. The shō in Shō chū rai is to be read together with the following chū as shō chū, meaning “right from the midst of shō as hen and hen as shō.” Rai is “to come,” or “to come out.” Therefore, the whole combination, shō chū rai, means “the one coming right from the midst of shō and hen in their contradictory identity.”

If we establish the following formulas where shō is A and hen is B, the first step is

and the second is

The third then will be

But as the third signifies the turning point of the noetic into the conative and of logic into personality, it is to be formulated in the following way:

That is to say, each straight line is to change into a curve indicating movement; and we must remember that, as this movement is not a mere mechanical thing but is living, creative, and inexhaustible, the curved arrow is not enough. Perhaps we might set the whole symbol in a circle, making it represent a dharmacakra, the cosmic wheel in its never-ending revolution, thus:

Or we may adapt the Chinese symbol of their yin and yang philosophy as a symbol of the Shō chū rai:

Rai in shō chū rai is significant. Movement is indicated here, together with shi in the fourth step, ken chū shi. Rai is “to come out,” and shi means “in the process of reaching the destination,” or “to be moving toward the goal.” The logical abstraction, Logos, now steps out of its cage and becomes incarnated, personalized, and walks right into a world of complexities like “the golden-haired lion.”

This “golden-haired lion” is the “I” who is at once finite and infinite, transient and permanent, limited and free, absolute and relative. This living figure reminds me of Michelangelo’s famous “Christ on Judgment Day,” a fresco in the Sistine Chapel. But the Zen “I,” as far as its outward manifestations go, is not at all like the Christ, so energetic and power-wielding and commanding. He is meek, unobtrusive, and full of humility.

Some philosophers and theologians talk about the Oriental “Silence” in contrast to the Western “Word” which becomes the “flesh.” They do not, however, understand what the East really means by “silence,” for it does not stand against the “word,” it is the word itself, it is the “thunderous silence” and not the one sinking into the depths of non-entity, nor is it one absorbed in the eternal indifference of death. The Eastern silence resembles the eye of a hurricane; it is the center of the raging storm and without it no motion is possible. To extract this center of immobility from its surroundings is to conceptualize it and to destroy its meaning. The eye is what makes the hurricane possible. Eye and hurricane conjointly constitute the totality. The quietly floating duck on the surface of the lake is not to be separated from its legs most busily moving, though unseen, under the water. Dualists generally miss the whole in its coherent concrete totality.

Those who think dualistically are apt one-sidedly to emphasize the motile aspect or the visible fleshy aspect of reality and, ignoring everything else, to attach to it the greatest importance. For instance, ballet dancing is characteristically a product of the West. Rhythmical movements of the body and the limbs go on most briskly in all their harmonious complexities. Compare them with the Japanese Nō dance. What a contrast! The ballet is almost movement itself, with the feet hardly touching the ground. The movement is in the air; stability is conspicuously absent. In Nō the stage presents quite a different spectacle. Steadily, solemnly, as if performing a religious rite, keeping his feet solidly on the ground and his center of gravity in the abdominal parts of his body, the actor steps out from the hanamichi to the expectant gaze of the audience. He moves as if not moving. He illustrates the Laozian doctrine of the action of nonaction.

When we were discussing Sullivan’s idea of anxiety [in the foreword], it developed that anxiety could be of two kinds, neurotic anxiety and existential anxiety, that the latter was more basic, and, further, that when the basic anxiety was solved the neurotic one would be solved by itself.10 All forms of anxiety come from the fact that there is somewhere in our consciousness the feeling of incomplete knowledge of the situation and this lack of knowledge leads to the sense of insecurity and then to anxiety with all its degrees of intensity. The “I” is always at the center of whatever situation we may encounter. When, therefore, the “I” is not thoroughly known, such questions and thoughts as follows never cease to torment us:

“Has life any meaning?”

“Is all really ‘vanity of vanities’? If so, is there any hope of taking hold of what it is truly worthwhile to attain?”

“I am thrown into the whirlpool of brute facts, all given, all limited, all absolutely definitely unchanged, etc. I am helpless; I am the plaything of fates. Yet I long for freedom; I want to be master of myself. I cannot make my choice; yet a decision, one way or another, is imperative. I do not know what to do. But what am ‘I’ who really stands at the back of all these puzzling and harassing questions?”

“Where then is the secure ground I can stand on without any sense of anxiety? Or, what is ‘I’? For I know ‘I’ may be the secure ground itself. Could this be the fact which I have not been able to discover so far? The ‘I’ must be discovered. And I shall be all right!”

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Shō chū rai has already given the answer to all these thoughts, but when we come to the fourth step, Ken chū shi, we shall know more about the “I” in its intense activity, which, however, is no-activity. This will, I hope, become comprehensible when we come to the fifth and last step, where the Zen-man would reach his final goal. He is found there innocently sitting covered with dirt and ashes.

(4) With these remarks let us move on to the fourth step. In fact, the third and the fourth are intimately related and the one cannot be taken up without the other.

Inasmuch as the Zen-man is logically or noetically minded, he is still conscious of the shō and the hen and may feel like referring to their contradictory identity. But as soon as he steps into the Ken chū shi, he is out of the hurricane’s eye and has plunged himself into the midst of the storm. Both the shō and the hen are cast away to the four winds. The man is now the storm itself.

Ken means “both” and refers to the dualism of black and white, dark and light, love and hate, good and bad—which is the actuality of the world in which the Zen-man leads his life now. While Shō chū rai still reminds us of something in the preceding two steps, Ken chū shi has altogether left them behind, for it is life itself shorn of its intellectual paradoxes, or rather, it includes indiscriminately, undifferentially, or better, totalistically, everything that is intellectual or affective or conative. It is the world as we have it with all its “brute facts,” as some philosophers take them, irrevocably facing us. The Zen-man has now “set his feet” (shi) right into them. His real life starts here. This is the meaning of Ken chū shi: “He has now come into the midst of dualities (ken).” Here, really, in all actuality begins the Zen-man’s life of love (karuna). Jōshū Jūshin, one of the great Tang Zen masters, had his monastery in the mountains noted for a natural stone bridge. One day a monk visited Jōshū and said: “O Master, your stone bridge is noted all over the empire, but as I see it it is nothing but a rickety log bridge.”

Jōshū retorted, “You see your rickety one and fail to see the real stone bridge.”

The monk asked, “What is the stone bridge?”

Jōshū: “Horses pass over it; donkeys pass over it.”

Jōshū’s bridge resembles the sands of the Ganges, which are trampled by all kinds of animals and incredibly soiled by them, and yet the sands make no complaint whatever. All the footprints left by creatures of every description are effaced in no time; and as to their filths, they are all effectively absorbed, leaving the sands as clean as ever. So with Jōshū’s stone bridge: not only horses and donkeys but nowadays all kinds of conveyances, including heavy trucks and trains of cars, pass over it and it is ever willing to accommodate them. Even when they abuse it its complacency is not at all disturbed. The Zen-man of the “fourth step” is like the bridge. He may not turn the right cheek to be struck when the left one is already hurt, but he works silently for the welfare of his fellow beings.

Jōshū was once asked by an old woman: “I am a woman and the life of womanhood is very hard. When a child, she suffers to obey her parents. When she is old enough, she marries and has to obey the husband. When she is very old, she obeys her children. Her life is nothing but obeying and obeying. Why is she made to lead such a life with no period of freedom and independence? Why is she not like other people who go even without the sense of responsibility? I revolt against the old Chinese way of living.”

Jōshū said, [Let your prayer be:] “others may have all they like. As regards myself, I go on with the lot assigned to me.”

Jōshū’s advice, one may protest, is no more than a life of absolute dependence, which is not at all the spirit of modern life. His advice is too conservative, too negative, too self-effacing; there is no sense of individuality. Is this not typical of the Buddhist teaching of kṣānti, passivity, nothingness? I am no advocate of Jōshū.

Let Jōshū answer, in a way, this objection when he expresses his own idea thus:

Someone asked, “You are such a saintly personality. Where would you find yourself after your death?”

Jōshū the Zen master replied, “I go to hell ahead of you all!”

The questioner was thunderstruck and said, “How could that be?”

The master did not hesitate: “Without my first going to hell, who would be waiting there to save people like you?”

This is, indeed, a strong statement, but from Jōshū’s Zen point of view he was fully justified. He has no selfish motive here. His whole existence is devoted to doing good for others. If not for this, he could not make such a straightforward statement with no equivocation whatever. Christ declares, “I am the Way.” He calls others to be saved through him. Jōshū’s spirit is also Christ’s. There is no arrogant self-centered spirit in either of them. They simply, innocently, wholeheartedly express the same spirit of love.

Somebody asked Jōshū, “Buddha is the enlightened one and teacher of us all. He is naturally entirely free of all the passions (kleśa), is he not?”

Jōshū said, “No, he is the one who cherishes the greatest of all the passions.”

“How is that possible?”

“His greatest passion is to save all beings!” Jōshū answered.

One of the great Zen masters of Japan describes the Zen-man’s life at this point as follows:11

The bodhisattva would revolve the identity-wheel of opposites or contradictions: black and white, dark and bright, sameness and difference, the one and the many, finite and infinite, love and hate, friend and foe, etc., etc. While in the midst of clouds and dust, infinitely variegated, the bodhisattva works with his head and face all covered with mud and ashes. Where the utmost confusion of passions rages in its indescribable furies, the bodhisattva lives his life in all its vicissitudes, as the Japanese proverb has it, “seven times rolling up and down, and eight times getting up straight.” He is like the lotus flower in flame, whose color grows brighter and brighter as it goes through the baptism of fire.

The following is the way Rinzai describes his “man of no title”:

He is the one who is in the house and yet does not stay away from the road, he is the one who is on the road and yet does not stay away from the house. Is he an ordinary man or a great sage? No one can tell. Even the devil does not know where to locate him. Even the Buddha fails to manage him as he may desire. When we try to point him out, he is no more there, he is on the other side of the mountain.

In the Lotus Sutra we have this: “As long as there is one single solitary soul not saved, I am coming back to this world to help him.” In the same sutra Buddha says: “A bodhisattva would never enter into final nirvana. He would stay on among all beings (sarvasattva) and work for their edification and enlightenment. He would see to it that he was not to shun any amount of suffering if it were at all conducive to the general welfare.”

There is a Mahayana sutra called the Yuimakyō (Vimalakīrtisūtra), the principal interlocutor here being a lay disciple of Buddha and a great philosopher. Once he was reported to be ill. Buddha wanted one of his disciples to go and inquire after his health. None accepted because Yuima was such an invincible debater that none of his contemporaries could beat him. Monju (or Mañjuśrī) was willing to carry out Buddha’s commission.

When Monju asked Yuima about his illness, the latter answered, “I am ill because all beings are ill. My illness is curable only when they are cured. They are constantly assailed by Greed, Anger, and Folly.”

Love and compassion, we can thus see, are the essence of Buddhahood and bodhisattvaship. These “passions” make them stay with all beings as long as there is any one of them still in the state of unenlightenment. A Japanese proverb says: “To this world of patience they come and go for eight thousand times,” meaning that Buddhas and bodhisattvas would for an indefinite number of times visit this world of ours, which is full of unendurable sufferings, just because their love knows no bounds.

One great contribution the Chinese made to Buddhism is their idea of work. The first conscious effort to establish work as an aspect of Buddhism was made about one thousand years ago by Hyakujō, the founder of the Zen monastery system in distinction to other Buddhist institutions. Before Hyakujō the Buddhist monks were devoted chiefly to learning, meditation, and observing the Vinaya precepts. But Hyakujō was not satisfied with this; he aspired to follow the example of Enō, the Sixth Patriarch, who was a farmer in southern China and earned his living by cutting wood and selling fuel. When Enō was allowed to join the brotherhood, he was assigned to the back yard, where he pounded rice, prepared kindling, and performed other menial work.

When Hyakujō organized a new monastery exclusively for Zen monks one of his rules was to work; each monk, including the master himself, was to engage in some manual, menial labor. Even when he was getting old Hyakujō refused to leave off his gardening work. His disciples worried over his advanced age and hid all his garden implements, so that he would no longer work as hard as he used to. But Hyakujō declared, “If I do not work I will not eat.”

For this reason, one thing which characterizes the Zen temples and monasteries in Japan, as well as in China, is that they are kept clean and in good order, and the monks are ready to take up any sort of manual labor, however dirty and undesirable it may be.

This spirit of work is perhaps deeply ingrained in Chinese minds since of old, for, as referred to in my first chapter, Zhuangzi’s farmer refused to make use of the shadoof and did not mind doing any amount of work just for the love of it.12 This is not in accord with the Western and, indeed, the modern idea of labor-saving devices of every description. When they have thus saved themselves from labor and gained plenty of time for their pleasures or other employments, modern people are busy making up all sorts of complaints about how dissatisfied they are with life, or inventing weapons whereby they can kill thousands of human beings by simply pressing a button. And listen to what they say: “This is the way to prepare for peace.” Is it not really wonderful to realize that when the fundamental evils lurking in human nature are not destroyed and its intellectuality alone is given free rein to work itself out in the way it likes, it exerts itself to discover the easiest and quickest way of annihilating itself from the surface of the earth? When Zhuangzi’s farmer refused to be machine-minded, did he foresee all these evils coming a little over twenty-one or twenty-two centuries after him? Confucius says, “When small men have plenty of time at hand they are sure to devise all kinds of evil things.”

Before concluding this, let me give you what may be called the cardinal virtues of the bodhisattva or Zen-man. They are known as the six paramitas:

i.Dāna (charity)

ii.Śīla (precepts)

iii.Kṣānti (humility)

iv.Vīrya (energy)

v.Dhyāna (meditation)

vi.Prajñā (wisdom)

(i) Charity, or giving, is to give away for the benefit and welfare of all beings (sarvasattva) anything and everything one is capable of giving: not only material goods, but knowledge, worldly as well as religious or spiritual (knowledge belonging to the Dharma, the ultimate truth). The bodhisattvas were all ready to give up even their lives to save others. (Fantastic stories about the bodhisattvas are told in the Jataka Tales.)

The history of Japanese Buddhism gives one conspicuous example of self-sacrifice on the part of a Zen master. It was during the political period known as the Warring Era in the sixteenth century when Japan was torn into a number of independent dukedoms which were controlled by the warring lords. Oda Nobunaga came out the strongest. When he defeated the neighboring Takeda family, one of the latter took refuge in a Zen monastery. The Oda army demanded his surrender into their hands, but the abbot refused, saying, “He is now my protégé and as Buddha’s follower I cannot give him up.” The besieging general threatened to burn the entire monastery, together with the occupants. As the abbot was still unyielding, the edifice, consisting of several buildings, was put to flame. The abbot, with a few monks who were willing to join him, was driven up to the second floor of the tower gate, where they all sat cross-legged. The abbot, demanding that they express whatever thought they had on this occasion, told his devotees to prepare for the last moment. Each gave his view. When it came to be the abbot’s turn he quietly recited the following lines, then was burned alive with the rest:

For the peaceful practice of dhyana (meditation)

It’s not necessary to go to the mountain retreat.

Have the mind cleansed of the passions,

And even the flames are cool and refreshing.

(ii) Śīla is observing the precepts, given by Buddha, which are conducive to moral life. In the case of the homeless ones, the precepts are meant to maintain the order of the brotherhood (sangha). The sangha is a model society the ideal of which is to lead a peaceful, harmonious life.

(iii) Kṣānti is generally understood to mean “patience,” but it really means patiently, or rather with equanimity, to go through deeds of humiliation. Or as Confucius says, “The superior man would cherish no ill-feeling even when his work or merit is not recognized by others.” No Buddhist devotees would feel humiliated when they were not fully appreciated, no, even when they were unjustly ignored. They would also go on patiently under all unfavorable conditions.

(iv) Vīrya etymologically means “virility.” It is always to be devoted and energetic in carrying out everything that is in accordance with the Dharma.

(v) Dhyāna is retaining one’s tranquil state of mind in any circumstance, unfavorable as well as favorable, and not being at all disturbed or frustrated even when adverse situations present themselves one after another. This requires a great deal of training.

(vi) Prajñā. There is no corresponding English word, in fact, no European word, for it, for European people have no experience specifically equivalent to prajñā. Prajñā is the experience a man has when he feels in its most fundamental sense the infinite totality of things, that is, psychologically speaking, when the finite ego, breaking its hard crust, refers itself to the infinite which envelops everything that is finite and limited and therefore transitory. We may take this experience as being somewhat akin to a totalistic intuition of something that transcends all our particularized, specified experiences.

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(5) We now come to the last step, Ken chū tō. The difference between this and the fourth is the use of tō instead of shi. Shi and tō mean, in fact, the same action, “to arrive,” “to reach.” But according to the traditional interpretation, shi has not yet completed the act of reaching, the traveler is still on the way to the goal, whereas tō indicates the completion of the act. The Zen-man here attains his object, for he has reached the destination. He is working just as strenuously as ever; he stays in this world among his fellow beings. His daily activities are not changed; what is changed is his subjectivity. Hakuin, the founder of modern Rinzai Zen in Japan, has this to say about it:

By hiring that idiot-sage,

Let us work together to fill

the well with snow.

After all, there is not much to say about the Zen-man’s life here, because his outward behavior does not mean much; he is all involved in his inner life. Outwardly he may be in rags and working in the capacity of an insignificant laborer. In feudal Japan, unknown Zen-men were frequently found among the beggars. At least there was one case of this nature. When this man died, his bowl for rice, with which he went around begging for food, was accidentally examined and found to have an inscription in classical Chinese that expressed his view of life and his understanding of Zen. In fact, Bankei, the great Zen master, himself was once in the company of the beggars before he was discovered and gave his consent to teach one of the feudal lords of the day.

Before concluding, I will quote one or two mondo characterizing Zen and hope they will throw some light on the preceding accounts of the Zen-man’s life. Perhaps one of the most noticeable facts in this life is that the notion of love as it is understood by Buddhists lacks the demonstrative feature of eroticism which we observe strongly manifested by some of the Christian saints. Their love is directed in a very special way toward Christ, whereas Buddhists have almost nothing to do with Buddha but with their fellow beings, nonsentient as well as sentient. Their love manifests itself in the form of ungrudged and self-sacrificing labor for others, as we have seen above.

There was an old woman who kept a teahouse at the foot of Mount Taisan, where was located a Zen monastery noted all over China. Whenever a traveling monk asked her which was the way to Taisan, she would say, “Go straight ahead.” When the monk followed her direction, she would remark, “Here is another who goes the same way.” Zen monks did not know what to make of her remark.

The report reached Jōshū. Jōshū said, “Well, I’ll go and see what kind of woman she is.” He started and, coming to the teahouse, asked the old lady which road led to Taisan. Sure enough, she told him to go straight ahead, and Jōshū did just as many another monk had done. Remarked the woman, “A fine monk, he goes just the same way as the rest.” When Jōshū came back to his brotherhood, he reported, “Today I have found her out through and through!”

We may ask, “What did the old master find in the woman when his behavior was in no way different from that of the rest of the monks?” This is the question each of us has to solve in his own way.

To summarize, what Zen proposes for us to do is: To seek Enlightenment for oneself and to help others attain it. Zen has what may be called “prayers,” though they are quite different from those of Christians. Four are generally enumerated, the last two of which are a kind of amplification of the first two:

i.However numberless all beings be, I pray that they may all be saved.

ii.However inexhaustible the passions be, I pray that they may all be eradicated.

iii.However immeasurably differentiated the Dharma is, I pray that it may all be studied.

iv.However supremely exalted the Buddha-Way may be, I pray that it may all be attained.

Zen may occasionally appear too enigmatic, cryptic, and full of contradictions, but it is after all a simple discipline and teaching:

To do goods,

To avoid evils,

To purify one’s own heart:

This is the Buddha-Way.

Is this not applicable to all human situations, modern as well as ancient, Western as well as Eastern?