Essays in Zen Buddhism : $b First seriesSuzuki, Daisetz Teitaro
Religion
Essays in Zen Buddhism : $b First series
Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro
Zen Buddhism
The foregoing sketch of Zen I hope will give the reader a general,
though necessarily vague, idea of Zen as it is and has been taught in
the Far East for more than one thousand years. In what follows I will
try first to seek the origin of Zen in the spiritual enlightenment
itself of the Buddha; for Zen has been frequently criticised for
deviating too far from what is popularly understood to be the teaching
of the Buddha as it is recorded especially in the Āgamas or Nikāyas.
While Zen, as it is, is no doubt the native product of the Chinese
mind, the line of its development must be traced back to the personal
experience of the Indian founder himself. Unless this is understood in
connection with the psychological characteristics of the people, the
growth of Zen among the Chinese Buddhists would be unintelligible. Zen
is after all one of the Mahayana schools of Buddhism shorn of its
Indian garb. Next I have tried to write a history of Zen in China after
Bodhi-Dharma, who is the real author of the school. Zen was quietly
matured and transmitted by the five successive patriarchs so-called
after the passing of the first propagator from India. When Hui-nêng,
the sixth patriarch, began to teach the gospel of Zen Buddhism, it
was no more Indian but thoroughly Chinese, and what we call Zen now
in the form as we have it, dates from him. The course thus definitely
given shape by the sixth patriarch to the development of Zen in China
gained its strength not only in volume but in content by the masterful
handling of it by the spiritual descendants of Hui-nêng. The first
section of the Chinese history of Zen therefore naturally closes with
him. As the central fact of Zen lies in the attainment of “satori” or
the opening of a spiritual eye, I have next dwelt upon the subject.
The treatment is somewhat popular, for the main idea is to present
the fact that there is such a thing as an intuitional understanding
of the truth of Zen, which is “satori,” and also to illustrate the
uniqueness of “satori” as experienced by Zen devotees. When we
understand the significance of “satori” in Zen, we may logically wish
to know something about the methods whereby the masters contrive to
bring about such a revolutionary experience, more or less noetic, in
the minds of the students. Some of the practical Zen methods resorted
to by the masters are classified under a certain number of headings,
but in this classification I have not attempted to be thoroughly
exhaustive here. The Meditation Hall is an institution quite peculiar
to Zen Buddhism, and those who want to know something about Zen and
its educational system cannot afford to ignore the subject. This
unique organ of Zen Buddhism however has never been described before.
The reader I hope will find here a subject interesting enough for his
thorough investigation. While Zen claims to be the “ultra-abrupt” wing
of Buddhism, it has a well-marked gradation in its progress towards the
ultimate goal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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