AN INTRODUCTION TO ZEN

AN INTRODUCTION TO ZEN

ZEN, a variety of Buddhism, now flourishes in Japan, and has infused
richness into almost all of Japan's cultural life. Before it took root in
Japan in the twelfth century, it had been for five hundred years one of the
great philosophical-religious movements in China. It has only recently been
discovered by the West, thanks to the books of Professor D. T. Suzuki and to
the fascination that Japan has exercised on so many American servicemen and
tourists.

Zen has been described as a mystical pantheism, a system of metaphysics
taught with riddles and blows, a sort of existentialist cult, a blandly
not-to-be-explained higher way of daily life. Zen is something of all of
these, but basically it is a variety of Buddhism.

Buddhism originated in India about 500 B.C. with the prince Siddhartha
Gautama, who gave up his family and his sheltered life which he discovered
could not protect him from old age, illness, unhappiness and death - to seek
a higher kind of life. After seeking wisdom from others and failing to find
it, he had his own revelation of a higher life; this came as he meditated
under the Bodhi-tree. Thereafter he taught the Truth that he had learned,
and around him gathered a group of followers that grew into the monastic
order still powerful in much of the Orient. He was known to his followers as
the Buddha, the Enlightened One.

Buddha taught that there is an eternal, endless universe of Absolute Being,
of which we are temporary incarnations. As such, we are subject to delusions
and temptations, pain and trouble, illness and death. But by studying to
find wisdom, living to do good, and concentrating to achieve control over
mind and body, we can escape from the dominance of the physical world, and
we can transmit a good inheritance of karma to our later incarnations. Karma
has been defined as \"that moral kernel of any being which survives death and
continues in transmigration.\"

Buddha taught that a succcssion of beings, each improving its common
inheritance of karma, can eventually rise to an existence entirely free of
this world: the state of nirvana. Buddha himself is said to have achieved
nirvana at his death - that is, permanent enlightenment in a state free from
rebirth.

A thousand years after Buddha, a monk from India came to China with a
modified Buddhism that was destined to become widely practiced in China, and
eventually in Japan, under the name Zen (from the Sanscrit Dhyana and the
Chinese Ch'an). This traveler was called Bodhidharma (Bodhi= enlightenment,
Dharma = Truthful Way), and is believed to have come to China in 520 AD.

Following Bodhidharma, Zen was transmitted through a body of monks and a
series of patriarchs - each patriarch leaving his robe and begging bowl to
his chosen successor as a badge of office. The sixth patriarch was a lowly
monk who was not a scholar: his selection confirmed the fact that by this
time Zen had become a way of life for the simple as well as for the studious
devotee. This was about one hundred and fifty years after Bodhidharma.

Zen is - without being worldly - a discipline more suited than classic
Buddhism to worldly men seeking a higher spiritual experience. It neglects
karma, reincarnation, and nirvana, but it still demands meditation,
Concentration and physical discipline. Its unique teaching is that
\"enlightenment\" may come to dedicated laymen, and that this enlightenment
may occur suddenly and intuitively not necessarily requiring years of study
and concentration.

The achieving of enlightenment in Zen is not at all a rational or methodical
process. It is completely non-rational, unexplainable, and intuitive. The
Zen training in concentration, in the characteristic cross-legged position,
and the Zen teaching of koans (non.iogical riddles and stories) are designed
to put the student in a state where he can abandon logic and make the leap
upward into enlightenment. In Japanese this state of enlightenment is called
satori.

In satori we are able to look beyond our immediate world into the universe
of original, eternal, Absolute Being often called the Great Emptiness -
which was before our world was formed, and will be after it disappears. In
this condition we lose our sense of Self, and know ourselves to be part of
the great Oneness of all. Knowing ourselves to be part of Absolute Being,
our ego and our problems of ego - sin, pain, poverty, fear -all dissolve.
This is salvation in Zen terms.

Having reached the state of satori, we become aware that everything in all
this world about us, all other living and non-living things, even our lowest
animal functions, are part of Absolute Being - and are thus essentially
holy. Mountains and rocks, trees and grass-blades, elephants and microbes,
all share equally in the Eternal.

This awareness permits us to go about our daily life with a new freedom, a
new sureness, a new sense of doing the work of Absolute Being even in the
smallest or dirtiest task of the present life. It is this sense also that
makes the tea ceremony in Japan a ritual of devotion; that makes a
seventeen-syllable haiku poem a universal statement of faith; that makes a
quick brush-drawing a gesture of piety in Eternity.

Beyond this awareness that all things are part of Absolute Being and share
its holiness comes a sense of the interpenetration of all things. Each of us
is the apex of a cone of past ancestors, and the beliefs, acts, and events
which determined them. Each of us also is a point from which a new cone of
individuals and events will arise, each in some part a product of what we
are. We are all a part of Absolute Being, and we are all a part of each
other.

This concept has been described in the allegory of Indra's Net: There is an
endless net of threads throughout the universe. The horizontal threads are
in space, the vertical threads are in time. At every crossini of threads is
an individual, and every individual is a crystal bead. The great light of
Absolute Being illuminates and penetrates every crystal bead; but also every
crystal bead reflects not only the light from every other crystal in the net
- but also every reflection of every reflection throughout the universe.

Thus we learn that we live in all other beings, all other things - and that
they live in us. Our lives are richer - and more filled with obligations -
than we ever knew before.

The following stories are from the annals of Zen - tales of past masters and
patriarchs, parables used in teaching, and koans used in freeing the mind
from logic. They cannot by themselves make you a participant in the Zen
experience, but they can give you pleasure as allegories and anecdotes, and
can give some savor of the intensity, spirituality, and tenacity of Zen
practitioners over the past thousand years and more.

The koan is a riddle without a logical answer. To the casual reader some of
these riddles, and the conversations which contain them, will seem utter
nonsense. But they have been preserved and revered for centuries by serious
men, so we must look decper. For the same reason we cannot dismiss as equal
nonsense the beatings given by masters to pupils who make reasonable
answers; or the intentionally idiotic commentaries written by the master
Mumon on famous koans.

The purpose of the koans, of the beatings, of the commentaries, is to break
the mind of logic. What the master wants of the pupil is not understanding
in any usual sense. He wants to \"burst the bag,\" and drive the pupil with
whole-souled precipitation into the Great Emptiness, the Great Stillness -
where all things stand without being touchable; where all sounds are,
without being heard.