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Zen and Pragmatism(5)

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29. William James, Some Problems of Philosophy (New York, London, Bombay, and Calcutta: Long mans, Green, and Co., l911), pp. 47-48.

30. See D. T. Suzuki, Zen Buddhism and its Influence on Japanese Culture (Kyoto: The Eastern Buddhist Society, 1938).

31. D. T. Suzuki, "Zen: A Reply to Hu Shih," p. 40.

32. D. T. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, Third Series (London: Riderr and Company, 1953) , Plates XIX and XX.

33. D. T Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, Second Series, p. 217.

34. "Ch'an (Zen) Buddhism in China: Its History and Method," p. 18.

 

 

p. 27

through philosophy is necessary if we are to live to the limit, because it is an expression of life which makes a world of difference, "without leaving a trace" except within. Suzuki's way of putting it is to emphasize Hui-neng's "seeing into one's own Nature" and to say: "This Nature knows no multiplicity, it is absolute oneness, being the same in the ignorant as... in the wise. The difference comes from confusion and ignorance." That is why "we must be instructed" until we can "by ourselves see into the Nature." [35]

   Though preceded by strenuous preparation, suddenly seeing into our Buddha-nature may then seem to do away with thought and striving. Suzuki suggests that we should emulate "the lilies of the field and the fowls of the air" by living a purposeless life, "letting the evil of the day take care of itself." [36] But a purposeless life, if it is to have positive meaning, is free of any purpose except that of being absorbed in living. This is well expressed as "living without a trace." But it is part of many a "traceless" day to deal in some fashion with evil, even for the fowls and lilies, though they neither toil nor spin. They fly and grow. And Suzuki's allusions to the sixth chapter of Matthew are somewhat inaccurate and misleading. The evil of the day is not said there to take care of itself, without out thinking about it, as he suggests. [37] It is the morrow that Jesus tells us not to worry about, with the warning that "the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself." Following this sentence he says, "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," plainly meaning that we have enough to do in coping with the evil at hand, without inventing any such presumptuous problem as trying to add a cubit to our stature by taking thought. But there will have to be thought, at least tomorrow. Not that we should not face the troubles we have, but that we should not borrow more before the time comes. If parts of this passage can be read to mean that men should neither toil nor spin, and if the sense is that we should cultivate some gaiety and insouciance through faith in life, the question still remains whether Zen can or ever intended to rule out of life anything so everyday as dealing with evil by thought and effort.

   In the depth of Zen experience, a mountain, after ceasing to be a mountain, is again a mountain. The bird, the me, the flower, is each itself once more. And the market is in its place among the things that are. The tumult and the shouting, the captains and the kings, come back again. Also, the old need to eat and sleep, to live and love and try to do so more humanly. There is the unceasing need to alleviate misery through compassion and


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35. D. T. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, First Series (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1949), pp. 217, 218.

36. D. T. Suzuki, "The Philosophy of Zen," p. 7.

37. Ibid.

 

 

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intelligence, and to make more available the appreciation of mountains, flowers, and all the wonder of the nature that we share, which must include the far landscapes of philosophy, the adventures of art and science, all within 'suunyataa. "When we the reasoners realize that 'suunyataa is working, in reasoning itself, that reasoning is no other than 'suunyataa in disguise, we know 'suunyataa, we see 'suunyataa, and this is 'suunyata knowing and seeing itself.... 'Suunyataa knows itself through us, because we are 'suunyataa." [38]

   Unless "reasoning" is to be restricted unrealistically (and what is Zen if not realistic?) to pre-scientific thinking, scientific research must be 'suunyataa in disguise. What in human experience can be left out of 'suunyataa when Suzuki identifies it with tathataa and says that tathataa is "the viewing of things as they are?" [39] One would expect him to say, then, that for Zen any life, including the good life, is found in these things viewed as they occur. But he shies away from the naturalistic implication of what would seem to have been his position, because the actual life of man is largely practical and teleological as well as temporal, and he wants to say that Zen is above all this. "Zen transcends time and, therefore, teleology also." [40]

   Is a Zen interpreter obliged to be logical? Suzuki has said: "Paradoxical statements are... characteristic of praj~naa-intuition. As it transcends vij~naana or logic it does not mind contradicting itself; it knows that a contradiction is the outcome of differentiation, which is the work of vij~naana." [41] But, unless discussion of Zen and its praj~naa-intuition is to be dismissed as worthless because they am the work of vij~naana, the consistency appropriate to such work is to be expected and not to be denied value, even the value of praj~naa; for Suzuki says that "praj~naa is vij~naana and vij~naana is praj~naa." [42] And: "Whenever praj~naa expresses itself it has to share the limitations of vij~naana... praj~naa cannot escape vij~naana." [43]