If I go on like this there will really be no ending. Let me hope that one more illustration will sufficiently clarify my position in regard to the meaning of the term "chih" as was used by Shen-hui and Tsung-mi and by Zen people generally.

Ungan Donjoo (Yun-yen T'an-sh'eng, died 841 ), disciple of Yakusan and the teacher of Tozan Ryokai, [17] once made this remark to the congregation: "There is a man for whom there is nothing he cannot answer if he is asked."
Tozan questioned, "How large is his library?"
The master said, "Not a book in his house."
Tozan: "How could he be so learned?"
The master: "Not a wink he sleeps day and night."
Tozan: "May I ask him some special question?"
The master: "His answer will be no answer." [18]

　　 When the gist of these Zen mondoo is replaced more or less by modern phraseology, we may have something like the following:

　　 We generally reason: "A" is "A" because "A" is "A"; or "A" is "A," therefore, "A" is "A." Zen agrees or accepts this way of reasoning, but Zen has its own way which is ordinarily not at all acceptable. Zen would say: "A" is "A" because "A" is not "A"; or "A" is not "A," therefore, "A" is "A."

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17. Tung-shan Liang-chieh 洞山良價 , 809-869. See Ueda's Daijeten 上田一大字典, 205. The founder of the Zen school partly bearing his name.
18. The Transmission of the Lamp, fasc. 14, under Ungan Donjoo (Yun-yen T'an-sh'eng).

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　　 Our thinking on the worldly level is: Everything has its cause; nothing is without its cause; the causation works on and in all things. But Zen will agree with some Christians when they declare that God created the world out of nothing, or that God willed and the world came into existence, or that "To say that God created the world yesterday or to-morrow would be foolishness for God created the world and everything in it in the one present Now." [19]

　　 Mathematics has this: 0=0, l=l, l+l=2, and so on. Zen has these too, but it has no objection to the following either: 0=l, 0=2, 1+1=3, etc. Why? Because zero is infinity and infinity is zero. Is this not irrational and beyond our comprehension?

　　 A geometrical circle has a circumference and just one center, and no more or less. But Zen admits the existence of a circle that has no circumference nor center and, therefore, has an infinite number of centers. As this circle has no center and, therefore, a center everywhere, every radius from such a center is of equal length, that is, all are equally infinitely long. According to the Zen point of view, the universe is a circle without a circumference, and every one of us is the center of the universe. To put it more concretely: I am the center, I am the universe, I am the creator. I raise the hand and lo! there is space, there is time, there is causation. Every logical law and every metaphysical principle rush in to confirm the reality of my hand.

　　 According to Hu Shih, here is Fu Tai-shih (497-569) of the Liang Dynasty a historical non-existent, a fabricated figure out of some fertile Chinese Buddhist or Zen imagination. This phantom bodhisattva (tai-shih) has a gaathaa recorded in The Transmission of the Lamp on the spade which he has and has not in his hands and on the bridge which flows underneath Hu Shih's historically firm-set feet. In spite of Hu Shih's ingenious manipulation of the pen or brush, I see Fu the Bodhisattva working on his farm with a spade which must be fictitious, because the holder himself is fictitious. Is it not really wonderful and irrational that Fu the Bodhisattva, ghostly looking to Hu Shih's keen historical sight, does not vanish even when thickly enveloped in the heavy fogs over New York these winter mornings?

IV
　　 History deals with time and Zen does too, but with this difference: While history knows nothing of timelessness, perhaps disposing of it as "fabrication," Zen takes time along with timelessness, that is to say, time in timelessness and timelessness in time. Zen lives in this contradiction. I say, "Zen

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19. Meister Eckhart: A Modern Translation. Raymond Bernard Blakney (New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1941), p. 214.
 

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lives." History shuns anything living, for the living does not like to be grouped with the past, with the dead. And then he is altogether too much alive for the historian, who is used to digging up old, decayed things from the grave. It is different with Zen. Zen makes the dead live once more and talk their life anew. To be exact, there is no resurrection in Zen, because there is no birth, no death; we all live in timelessness. Chih means to become aware of this grand fact, which, however, does not seem to concern the historians.