The practical application of this is clear.　Consider the life of a wood, the insects depend on the foliage, the birds depend on the insects, falcons depend on the small birds, the trees depend on humus which comes from the remains of living creatures.　There is here a complex system well researched in ecology through the application of systems analysis and cybernetics to structures such as woods, organisms, digestive processes etc.　Yet we still affirm quite logically that all these events are “empty.”　Systems analysis was foreshadowed centuries ago in the thought of these Chinese sages.

　　 Here then is a powerful vision as to how emptiness expresses itself in forms.　In meditation one may take up many aspects of the

p.578

same phenomenon and through seeing their inter-dependence and lack of inherent existence allow them to merge into one understanding or experience.　When the self also participates totally in that experience that one thing becomes uncharacterisable.　Experience thus becomes empty, yet as soon as thought reappears the categories reestablish themselves.　An emphasis in Dharma understanding on emptiness must necessarily also invoke form.　The two are co-dependent.　Meditation implies action and vice versa.

　　 Master Tung-shan in T’ang Dynasty China formulated a similar teaching known as the Five Ranks that depict the integration of opposed dualities as may occur in the practice of meditation.　The first rank places the relative within the universal: the second places the universal within the relative; the third is the principle of emerging from the universal (i.e. the appearance of the ten thousand things from a unified sense of emptiness); the fourth is an integration of the particulate and the universal in one vision in which however their separation is still apparent; the final rank is unity itself without divisions.　Each rank is never the less present in all the others.

　　 Europeans appear to have had little to do with such an inclusive picture of Dharma.　Perhaps our civilisation is somewhat tired after all the strains of this century and inclined to opt for the better known or apparently safer routes.　In the USA a more exploratory attitude predominates which, although it may sometimes seem a little naive to European eyes, is also often highly creative showing a way forward that is not in contradiction with a full understanding of tradition.　John Daido Loorie, Abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery in New York State has written a wonderful little book (1999) in which the above principles of “holographic” interdependence are shown to be basic to an understanding of wilderness and hence to all environmental study.　Quoting Thoreau and Snyder he reveals an American vision of the wild that echoes in

p.579

striking ways the Avata.msaka inspired Mountains and Rivers Sutra of Dogen and Tung-shan’s realisation on seeing his reflection in the water of a stream.　“I am not it yet it is all of me.”──a profound metaphor for the relations between sentience and the universal.[3]

　　 Loorie emphasises that the key to this understanding is no mere philosophy but rather an intimacy with insentient things, a feeling of closeness between oneself and the flowering of daffodils in spring or the falling leaves of autumn, between oneself and the mountains that are always moving, rocks, stones, and trees.　To develop such intimacy requires stepping beyond our dualistic, romantic aspiration and its culture of individualism.　A certain sort of empathic imagination is needed for such an act, an imagination stimulated by meditation on the diversity in unity that Chan Dharma can inspire.　Here we have an outreach from Zen to the problems of the environment that face us all and which need urgent attention.

Chan and the Future of European Zen

　　 Zen in Europe is currently a patchwork quilt of somewhat competitive perspectives with much invested in contrasting metaphysical positions and ancient loyalties to church or humanistic faiths.　While good Zen practice is cultivated in many centres the Dharma upon which Chan relies and its Buddhist history is poorly understood and in some cases ignored largely as a consequence of accepting Daisetsu Suzuki’s pan-religious mysticism.

　　 Chan as presented by Master Sheng-yen can provide an important corrective through an emphasis on the anchoring of Zen practice in Zen Dharma and the proper investigation through intellect and experience of what that actually may be.

p.580

　　 It remains of course unclear how attractive such a position may become in Europe.　Tolerance of diversity between contrasting perspectives as well as between Buddhist and Christian exponents must be nurtured and sustained.　Yet there is a real danger that forms of “inclusivism” that align meditation practices with Christian or Humanist mainstreamings may vitiate the entire Enlightenment project as understood by the Masters.　Helen Tworkov’s (1994) warnings from the USA apply to Europe too.　Yet, even if it is at first only a minority who pursue the Chan way with its inherent difficulties as well as depth, the distinctive value of Chan as an open, well argued, perspective on the place of sentience in the universe, may well begin to win debates to create a much more sure footed unity of understanding and practice than at present obtains.