Essays in Zen Buddhism : $b First series — John Shaqi
Essays in Zen Buddhism : $b First seriesSuzuki, Daisetz Teitaro
Religion
Essays in Zen Buddhism : $b First series
Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro
Zen Buddhism
What is the relationship between Enlightenment and Nirvana? How did
Buddhists come to realise Arhatship? What convinced them of their
attainment? Is the Enlightenment of an Arhat the same as that of
the Buddha? To answer these questions and many others in close
connection with them was the task imposed upon various schools of
Hinayana and Mahayana Buddhism. While they quarrelled much, they never
forgot that they were all Buddhists and whatever interpretations they
gave to these problems they were faithful to their Buddhist experience.
They were firmly attached to the founder of their religion and only
wished to get thoroughly intimate with the faith and teaching as were
first promulgated by the Buddha. Some of them were naturally more
conservative and wished to submit to the orthodox and traditional way
of understanding the Dharma; but there were others as in every field of
human life, whose inner experience meant more to them, and to harmonise
this with the traditional authority they resorted to metaphysics to
its fullest extent. Their efforts, there is no doubt, were honest
and sincere, and when they thought they solved the difficulties or
contradictions they were satisfied inwardly as well as intellectually.
In fact they had no other means of egress from the spiritual impasse in
which they found themselves through the natural and inevitable growth
of their inmost life. This was the way Buddhism had to develop if it
ever had in it any life to grow.
While Enlightenment and Nirvana were closely related to the conception
of Buddhahood itself, there was another idea of great importance to
the development of Buddhism, which however had no direct connection
apparently, though not in its ultimate signification, with the
personality of the Buddha. This idea naturally proved to be most
fruitful in the history of Buddhist dogmatics along with the
doctrines of Enlightenment and Nirvana. I mean by this the doctrine
of non-Atman which denies the existence of an ego-substance in our
psychic life. When the notion of Atman was ruling Indian minds, it
was a bold announcement on the part of the Buddha to regard it as the
source of ignorance and transmigration. The theory of Origination
(_pratītya-samutpāda_) which seems to make up the foundation of the
Buddha’s teaching is thus finally resolved into the finding of a
mischievous “designer” who works behind all our spiritual restlessness.
Whatever interpretation was given to the doctrine of non-Atman in
the early days of Buddhism, the idea came to be extended over to things
inanimate as well. Not only there was no ego-substance behind our
mental life, but there was no ego in the physical world, which meant
that we could not separate in reality acting from actor, force from
mass, or life from its manifestations. As far as thinking goes, we can
establish these two pairs of conception as limiting each other, but
in the actuality of things they must all be one, as we cannot impose
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