The Religion of the Samurai: A Study of Zen Philosophy and Discipline in China and JapanNukariya, Kaiten
Religion
The Religion of the Samurai: A Study of Zen Philosophy and Discipline in China and Japan
Nukariya, Kaiten
Buddhism -- China; Buddhism -- Japan; China -- Religion; Human beings -- Origin; Japan -- Religion; Zen Buddhism
An illusory mind tends either to regard body as Self and to yearn
after its material interests, or to believe mind dependent on soul as
Ego. Those who are given to sensual pleasures, consciously or
unconsciously, bold body to be the Self, and remain the life-long
slave to the objects of sense. Those who regard mind as dependent on
soul as the Self, on the other hand, undervalue body as a mere tool
with which the soul works, and are inclined to denounce life as if
unworthy of living. We must not undervalue body, nor must we
overestimate mind. There is no mind isolated from body, nor is there
any body separated from mind. Every activity of mind produces
chemical and physiological changes in the nerve-centres, in the
organs, and eventually in the whole body; while every activity of
body is sure to bring out the corresponding change in the mental
function, and eventually in the whole personality. We have the
inward experience of sorrow when we have simultaneously the outward
appearance of tears and of pallor; when we have the outward
appearance of the fiery eyes and short breath, we have simultaneously
the inward feeling of anger. Thus body is mind observed outwardly in
its relation to the senses; mind is body inwardly experienced in its
relation to introspection. Who can draw a strict line of demarcation
between mind and body? We should admit, so far as our present
knowledge is concerned, that mind, the intangible, has been formed to
don a garment of matter in order to become an intelligible existence
at all; matter, the solid, has faded under examination into
formlessness, as that of mind. Zen believes in the identification of
mind and body, as Do-gen[FN#180] says: "Body is identical with mind;
appearance and reality are one and the same thing."
Bergson denies the identification of mind and body, saying:[FN#181]
"It (experience) shows us the interdependence of the mental and the
physical, the necessity of a certain cerebral substratum for the
psychical state-nothing more. From the fact that two things are
mutually dependent, it does not follow that they are equivalent.
Because a certain screw is necessary for a certain machine, because
the machine works when the screw is there and stops when the screw is
taken away, we do not say that the screw is equivalent of the
machine." Bergson's simile of a screw and a machine is quite
inadequate to show the interdependence of mind and body, because the
screw does cause the machine to work, but the machine does not cause
the screw to work; so that their relation is not interdependence. On
the contrary, body causes mind to work, and at the same time mind
causes body to work; so that their relation is perfectly
interdependent, and the relation is not that of an addition of mind
to body, or of body to mind, as the screw is added to the machine.
Bergson must have compared the working of the machine with mind, and
the machine itself with body, if be wanted to show the real fact.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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