My first koan, which emerged as a genuine happening, was given to me by Suzuki himself at the time of the 1949 East-West Philosophers' Conference. I was, at that time, young and fresh and full of spit and empirical tough-mindedness. Devoted to logic and philosophy of science, I was -- or so I thought -- carrying out in my way the program outlined by A. J. Ayer in Language, Truth and Logic. Before meeting Suzuki I had never heard of Zen, and what Suzuki had to say during the meetings of the Conference seemed to make no sense to me at all. I decided at first that he must be some kind of odd and offbeat mystic concerned with uttering the unutterable. Later, in contrast to what I was learning about Advaita, it seemed to me that Zen was not mysticism at all but, really, an odd form of pragmatic naturalism that could be improved, or possibly brought up to date, by removing its chosen air of paradox and deliberate mystification. Becoming more and more perplexed and disturbed toward the end of the Conference, I came, as it were, to the end of my rope. Leaning across the conference table in the direction of Suzuki, I asked what I took to be a real payoff of a question. "Sir," I said, "answer me just one question and I shall be content. Is the empirical world real for Zen?" Suzuki, it seemed to me, replied without a moment's hesitation : "The empirical world is real just as it is." I felt that I had struck home. This was no mystic but a tough-minded empiricist. I was elated. My elation, however, lasted hardly more than a few seconds. The arrow that had pierced my skin possessed a barb. For suddenly I was face to face with the question: If the empirical world is real just as it is, how is it when it is just as it is? Philosophers and scientists, East and West, had attempted to describe the empirical world just as it is -- the outcome was disagreement, conflict, and the canceling out of mutually incompatible descriptions. I turned the coin over. There it was, the empirical world, just as it is, beyond all manner of speech; and there, so clear in the morning light, were the traps, the nets, that encircled it on every side, designed to catch what mainly crept away.

　　 I had never done zazen. I had never practiced the art of archery. I had, however, surfed. I was once asked by an outsider what I thought about when riding in on the shoulder of a wave. My answer was immediate and direct: "I think about nothing at all. If I were to think I could not keep my balance." No two boards are the same, no two waves are the same, no two winds are the same, no two days are the same. Surfing is not a knowing but a doing. And when one surfs, the empirical world is real just as it is. Only afterwards, over one's shoulder, does not reflect. Although not a saint, it would appear that, face to face with Suzuki, I had kept an appointment. 　

p.94

　　 The mondos are many, and many of the classical mondos are familiar. But mondos, when they happen, are happenings; and there is all the difference in the world between a living mondo in which one is caught up and a dead mondo which lends itself only to dissection after the fact. During the 1959 East-West Philosopher's Conference, Suzuki was present again, older, to be sure, but with a vigor that defied his years. Some time during the second week or so of this Conference I learned from Van Meter Ames that Suzuki had arranged, outside the framework of the Conference proper, a number of Zen discussion meetings. Suzuki, Professor Ames indicated, would like me to be present. "Thank you," I replied; and I did not go. My presence may, in some manner, have been missed. The following week, possibly as an envoy from Suzuki, Kenneth Inada (a former student of mine, and at that time an advanced student at the University of Tokyo) informed me that there was to be another Zen discussion meeting and that Suzuki would like me to come. "Thank you," I replied; and once more I did not go. The third week Suzuki himself arrived on the scene and informed me that there was to be a Zen discussion meeting to which I was invited. I bowed and smiled. Suzuki bowed and smiled. Then we both laughed. Suzuki went his way and I went mine. I had been invited not once but three times. It was in the end as if the master and I understood on a level beyond analysis and discussion. I had been given my koan. Ten years later I had now lived through my mondo. If not satori, I had achieved, or so it seems to me, a measure of insight.

II
　　 Though mondos are happenings, meaningful when one is really caught up in them, not analyzed but lived through, the reports of mondos are not altogether beyond analysis, explication, elucidation so long as one remembers that the analysis of a mondo is not a mondo any more than the analysis of a poem is itself a poem. Poems, if they are to be analyzed at all, must be grasped from within in the dimension of sense, feeling, emotion, and imagination; and mondos, if they are to be explicated at all, seem to presuppose a unique kind of Einfuehlung. The student of Zen may have a favorite mondo; but one thing is certain -- if the student has one favorite mondo, he has many favorite mondos, and the explication of one mondo, however partial and personal, will lead him to the explication of another and another. There is really no termination. Suzuki, it seems to me, is wise. He provides us with mondos but resists, on the whole, complicated explication. I am certainly not as wise as Suzuki. I have a favorite mondo, presented by Suzuki without comment. Where he maintains a noble silence, I play the game of explication