If we in the West wish to borrow from the complex world of Zen culture, we must first begin to train and intensify our powers of perception. In this regard, one is tempted to speculate that the Japanese must have learned to turn these powers down as well as up. How else can one explain the Japanese ability to ignore so much of the blight of modern civilization while maintaining a national fetish for such purely aesthetic phenomena as cherry blossoms? As Donald Richie observed, "Japan is the most modern of all countries perhaps because, having a full and secure past, it can afford to live in the instantaneous present."0 Alongside all the aesthetic indignities of the twentieth century, the ancient sense of taste appears to have survived undiminished. A concern for beauty is still very much a part of everyday life in Japan. Whereas the appreciation of art is usually the pursuit of a privileged few in Western countries, in Japan the aesthetic quality of everyday objects is commonly acknowledged to be fully as important as their function. It is not uncommon to discover a rustic day laborer arranging flowers, practicing the tea ceremony, or fashioning a garden in his spare time. The peasant may be as sure a judge of tea bowls as the prince. Even the match boxes from the sleaziest bars are minor works of art, as are bundles and packages from even the most modern commercial establishments. A sense of beauty is not considered unmanly; indeed, it is regarded as essential to the good life, harking all the way back to the virile _samurai_. Zen culture's primary lesson is that we should start trying to experience art and the world around us rather than analyzing them. When we do this, we find that everything suddenly comes alive. If we can take this power of direct perception, sharpened by the devices of Zen art, back to everyday activities, we will find a beauty in common objects that we previously ignored. Flowers--indeed individual petals--become objects of the most intense loveliness. When we see the world with a Zen-honed awareness, our sense of the beauty in objects supplants our desire to possess them. If we allow the ancient creators of Zen culture to touch our lives, we open wider the doors of perception. * * * References CHAPTER 2 THE PRELUDE TO ZEN CULTURE 1. "The Diary of Murasaki Shikibu," from Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan, trans. Omori, Annie Shepley, and Kochi Doi (Tokyo, 1935; reprint ed., New York, AMS Press), p. 147. 2. The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon, trans. Ivan Morris (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), p. 40. 3. Ibid., p. 214. 4. "The Diary of Murasaki Shikibu," p. 74. 5. The Kokin Waka-shu, trans. H. H. Honda (Tokyo: Hoku-seido Press, 1970), p. 35. 6. See Wm. Theodore de Bary, ed., Sources of Japanese Tradition, vol. 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958).