Essays in Zen Buddhism : $b First seriesSuzuki, Daisetz Teitaro
Religion
Essays in Zen Buddhism : $b First series
Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro
Zen Buddhism
Again, you and I sip a cup of tea. The act is apparently alike, but
who can tell what a wide gap there is subjectively between you and me?
In your drinking there may be no Zen while mine is brimful of it. The
reason is, the one moves in the logical circle and the other is out of
it; that is to say, in one case rigid rules of intellection so called
are asserting themselves, and the actor even when acting is unable to
unfetter himself from these intellectual bonds; while in the other case
the subject has struck a new path and is not at all conscious of the
duality of his act, in him life is not split into object and subject
or into acting and acted. The drinking at the moment to him means the
whole fact, the whole world. Zen lives and is therefore free, whereas
our “ordinary” life is in bondage; satori is the first step to freedom.
9. Satori is Enlightenment (_saṁbodhi_). As long as Buddhism is the
doctrine of Enlightenment as we all know from its earliest literature
as well as from its later one, and as long as Zen asserts satori
to be its culmination, satori must be said to represent the very
spirit of the Buddhist teaching. When it announces itself to be the
transmission of the Buddha-citta (_fo-hsin_) not dependent upon the
logical and discursive exposition in the canonical writings, either
Hinayana or Mahayana, it is by no means exaggerating its fundamental
characteristic as distinguished from the other schools of Buddhism
that have grown up in Japan and China. Whatever this may be, there is
no doubt that Zen is one of the most precious and in many respects the
most remarkable spiritual possessions bequeathed to Eastern people.
Even when it is considered the Buddhist form of speculative mysticism
not unknown to the West in the philosophy of Plotinus, Eckhart, and
their followers, its complete literature alone since the sixth
patriarch, Yeno (Hui-nêng, 637–713), so well preserved, is worth the
serious study of scholars and truth-seekers. And then the whole body
of the kō-ans systematically grading the progress of the spiritual
awakening is the wonderful treasure in the hands of the Zen monks in
Japan at present.
PRACTICAL METHODS OF ZEN INSTRUCTION
PRACTICAL METHODS OF ZEN INSTRUCTION
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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