5. Ibid., p. 83.

6. Ibid., pp. 78, 83.

7. Ibid., pp. 99, 100.

8. Ibid., pp. 102.

9. Ibid., p. 74.

10. See Hu Shih, "Ch'an (Zen) Buddhism in China: Its History and Method," Philosophy East and West, III, No. 1 (April, 1953), 3-24; and D. T. Suzuki "Zen: A Reply to Hu Shih," ibid., 25-46.

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mediate experience in the familiar pattern, without interest in reform. But the striving, fighting philosophy of James and Dewey is more in the spirit of Zen's rejection of quietism than is Santayana's unperspiring detachment from mud and struggle, his mocking of the runner's heat. He is, however, more like Zen in keeping a semblance of the supernatural to express the poetry of existence, using an otherworldly vocabulary to do justice to this world. James and Dewey also recognize that mortal man needs to build himself up; but they see him doing it through co-operation with other men, and with the rest of the setting. If James wavered about leaving out the supernatural or cleaving to it, he was most consistent in saying: "... though one part of our experience may lean upon another part to make it what it is ... experience as a whole is self-containing and leans on nothing."[11] Dewey would say the same.

III.　　 BLENDING ZEN WITH SCIENCE
　　 Like the Zen Buddhists of China and Japan and the Greeks of Pericles, James and Dewey believe that life can be full and good in its own human terms. They depart from the wisdom of Zen, the Greeks, and Santayana in seeing that men can do more than make the best of life as it has been in the past. Dewey, even more than James, relies with Peirce upon the growing momentum and sweep of the sign process, especially in science, to carry on a continual reconstruction of the present, the past, and the outlook for the future. But, instead of leaving Zen behind, this may give Zen, too, a new prospect.

　　 As Zen remade Buddhism, and Dewey turned Hegelian idealism into social idealism, so a blend of Dewey and Zen is possible. Zen would need to add the realization that intelligence can remake the world. Zen was on the way, but only halfway, to this insight in declaring the bodhisattvas and buddhas, in their vast fantastic setting, to be "ourselves, and their doings our doings."[12] If Zen is reducing Buddhism to the human level, it is also raising that level, and laughing that language cannot be too fancy to fit what is plain. The more far-fetched, the more humorous it is to say that the buddhas and bodhisattvas are we, the more seriously it can be said. If that was too much to say before anyone knew the half of it, Zen was right that silence was best.

　　 Dewey, knowing as much as he knew after learning from James and

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11. William James, Essays in Radical Empiricism (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1947), p. 193.

12. Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism, Third Series, p. 83.

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Peirce, still was nearly silent about the Zen aspect of his own thought (at least before writing Art As Experience), apparently taking it for granted as too obvious to insist upon. So he was accused of being too practical and prosaic, keeping to problems of a limited sort. But no Zen man would see any limitation in his concentration upon the "pure experience" of William James to make more of it for more people.

　　 What else was celebrated by Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman? Or. by Santayana? What is the use of saying or doing anything except for the sake of having life and having it more abundantly, which Jesus said he came for? To him this was worth suffering and dying for. But, if we are for life, and all is for life, it will still be asked what life is for. The ancients of the Far East knew, and Americans from Emerson to Dewey knew, that life is its own end and answer.

　　 When this truth is put plainly it seems too plain. To appreciate it men need to seek it in the far past or on the far side of the world. The longest way round is the shortest way home when Westerners fetch from the Far East what is in their own Bible. The far-fetched truth is that the high is here, the eternal is now, the hard is easy, the yoke is light. St. Augustine said, "Have charity and do as thou wilt." A Zen master said: "No bondage from the very first, and what is the use of asking emancipation? Act as you will, go on as you feel -- without second thought. This is the incomparable way."[13]

　　 But, if the way is easy, it is not easy to find, or men would not have had to develop religion and philosophy, with all their discipline and meditation: Buddhism to Zen, Christianity to Hegel, Hegel to Dewey (by way of James); beyond life and down to earth; from East to West, from the West to the past, back to the lasting present; from simple to sublime to ridiculous, to laughter. If the East has stressed contemplation and has been lacking in action, the West, with its organized activity, has been wanting in meditation. Yet, there have been contemplatives here, doers there, and whole men in East and West.