contemporary Zen teachings whether Christian in orientation or Buddhist.　While this certainly offers a major educational opportunity, the question as to whether Zen itself is transmitted there remains an open and a confused one.　The debate begun at the Swedish conference continues and the questions it posed are not yet answered.

Language, Culture and Interpretation

　　Suzuki’s claims are rooted in a Zen discourse in which reading the Sutras is rejected, the teachings treated as irrelevant and even if one were to meet a Buddha on the way it would be advisable to kill him because any interaction would merely throw one off the path. The basic stance is well stated in the ancient characterisation of Chan by Bodhidharma, the Indian monk who brought it to China.

A special transmission outside the scriptures

No dependence upon words or letters

Direct pointing to the human heart

Seeing into one’s own nature.

Furthermore there are numerous stories like that in which the future Master Matsu is found meditating in traditional cross legged style.　His master asked him why he was doing it. “To become a Buddha,” replied Matsu.　At this his teacher picked up a tile and began polishing it.  “Why are you doing that?”  asked Matsu.  “I am polishing it to make a mirror.” was the reply.　Matsu said, “How can polishing a tile make a mirror?”  To which his teacher said, “How can sitting in meditation make a Buddha?” No gradual approach, even the traditional methods put forward by the Buddha himself, can in this view lead to enlightenment, only the sudden realisation on the solving of a koan can do it.

　　 And yet it takes little reflection to perceive that these very assertions are themselves embodied in texts, writings as voluminous as those on any academic subject.　Furthermore the

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emphases in these texts have a clear history, lines of doctrinal development and preferences for practice are easily located in the traditions of the contrasting Chan sects.　Even if we were to posit a completely non-cultural component in enlightenment, such an experience is clearly deeply embedded in traditions.　John Blofield in his study of Huang Po assumed that the great master would not be interested in history.　Wright (1998), shows that not only Huang Po but all Chan masters up to the present day are much concerned about the purity of the lineage of transmission concerning which disputes may easily arise.　Yet, in deference to Suzuki we do have to account for the paradox in the transmission of Chan; its obvious embeddedness in historical texts with its roots in transpersonal experience.

　　 Wright points out that any attempt at objective history is itself bound to fail.　History is a discourse profoundly determined by prevailing philosophical and political views; witness the rewriting of Indian history after the end of the British Raj.　The attempt to create history from legends of transmission is subject to similar processes, as recent studies of the Platform Sutra show.　There is a dialectic between past and present and history is simply a discourse interpreting the records and memories of a past time.　The purpose of Zen practice is to reach an experiential understanding of the basis of self as the source of mental suffering.　Personal experiences of self transcendence, by their nature beyond the reach of language, are not recordable as normal memories may be.　They transcend the person, go beyond the record and yet, being considered exemplary, are transmitted through records.　The famous encounter stories of Zen are records of meetings in which the dialectics of transmitting the transcendent are recorded as teaching devices.　While the moment of insight goes beyond language and history its expression as teaching is yet dependent upon them.　Without a hearing of stories no one would ever know where the signpost was.

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　　 If this relation between language, temporality and experience did not exist it would be impossible for the Masters even to speak of enlightenment as the outcome of an event in the past──the time when the Buddha sat down beneath the Bodhi tree.　Wright (1998) says:

A dialectical relationship between the practice of thought and Zen experience is essential to the tradition.　Thought pushes experience further, opens up new dimensions for it, and refines what comes to experience.　Experience pushes thought further, opens up new dimensions for thinking and sets limits to its excursions.　The brilliance of Zen thinking is its tentative and provisional character, the “non-abiding,” “non-grasping,” mind.　Knowing through thought that all thought is empty, Zen masters have explored worlds of reflection unavailable to other traditions──playfully “thinking” what lies beneath common sense.

　　 The Zen objection to Sutra reading and study lies in the perception that idealising theories and models of mind create forms of mental closure as “beliefs,” thereby preventing the exploration of experience that is itself the essence of the quest; an exploration that goes beyond language to where pre-theoretical and pre-discursive understanding operate.　Since the time of the Buddha the nature of the self has been the key problem.　A profound psychological analysis in phenomenological form underlies the practice and is treated at length in the La.nkaavataara Suutra of which Suzuki himself provides the major translation and commentary.　It is of course not essential for a practitioner to know this, he may simply practice, but the cultural roots exist for him within the meditation instructions he will be given or the koans he may be set.　Yet to abandon understanding for rhetoric alone may quickly become a confusing practice.