Zen can help here, surprisingly. Although pre-scientific, it anticipates this problem, for Zen teaches how to debunk without debasing. It shows how to keep mystery and wonder without dualism. When life on the level of everyday doings can be appreciated anew, then it does not lessen zest to be more naturalistic. To lighten the load, speed the work, increase leisure, need not be demoralizing as long as there is more than enough to do; to think when not doing; and to contemplate when not thinking. Zen seems needed to teach people to get through a shorter working week and day, with the fact in plainer view that they are only human, and buddhas only men.

　　 Zen is a way of keeping the sky high without leaving the ground, finding exalted language called for, yet less eloquent than silence. The secret is in seeing that man can use his need to reach all that he needs. The seeing comes in a flash, as in seeing a joke. Though it is the joy of salvation, it is funny -- unsuspected -- that the eternal is now, the universal here, the supernatural actual. What could be more comforting, or amusing? It clears the air with a thunderous guffaw. Then nothing is lacking. There is nothing to fear. There is nothing to do but what there is to do, be quiet, be glad that life is its own answer.

　　 This is what Dewey sees and says, though he mostly takes it for granted and goes on from there. Zen itself finds silence most appropriate to the basic insight, though finding endless things to say about it. But when the

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sign process gets under way it moves on to more and more that depends upon the use of words and other signs, in working out hypotheses and testing them, with consequences beyond the ken of Zen. The process appeals to the future in controlling the effort of the present. Here is the difference between Zen and Dewey. It is not just a difference of centuries, or between East and West, but between wisdom and science.

　　 If Zen could do better without science than men are likely to do without Zen, no matter how much science they have, the fact is that Dewey is not without Zen. Americans have something like Zen in their heritage, which we need to appreciate before proceeding with science. But science moves them on, whether they are ready or not. If they are to recover their balance under its impetus, they need to steady themselves with words they have heard, from Emerson to Dewey and Santayana. To recognize these words for what they are, it helps to see that they strike into the same vein as the wisdom of China and Japan.

　　 As science rests upon experience, good use of science begins with knowing the importance of the only reality men have: that of the passing moment -- not belittling it because it is theirs, or because men are only themselves. The Zen sages say that all men are buddhas. Then the Western land of America is the Pure Land, as much as any in the East or farther West. Here men can pass the tea. It may be whiskey instead, but it might as well be tea.

　　 Perhaps men need a time in a monastery before becoming householders, drivers, buyers and sellers: to learn to sit, to be clean of dust and clutter. It would do something for anyone to dust each leaf in a garden. To rake grains of sand, making them gleam in rows by a temple, would teach the value of doing nothing but what most needs to be done. If men could be more silent, they might delight more in speaking when spoken to. Then nearly everything in life might symbolize all there is. Serving tea does it very neatly. So can doing the dishes.

　　 The monastery day is a ceremonial version of what goes on in every household -- set apart in more silence, more order, more color. There is more meditation, but it concentrates the reflection which takes place everywhere about man's fate. The attempt to reach emptiness, to smooth out mind to no-mind, and talk to muteness, is to work through the superfluous to what is left. Strange questions and answers are pondered to stalk the mystery of life, which may be seized in a single word, as in repeating one of the names of the Buddha until it makes no sense, to get rid of conventional meaning and face the reality beneath. But it is warned that resorting to monastic devices may be self-defeating if allowed to become mechanical. The danger of the monastery is that its members may cease to be men in being monks.

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　　 Suzuki says, "... the object of Zen is to understand what life means."[15] Then its spirit is that of inquiry, and that is the spirit of Dewey. But he relies on science, which Zen originally and characteristically knows nothing of, or makes little of. And he seeks to be logical instead of flouting logic. He does not stick to traditional logic, which to him is good only for ordering what is already known. He works out a "logic of inquiry," in line with the pioneering of Peirce. The purpose, however, is to free and enrich immediate experience, which has no purpose but its own being.