The Zen ideal seemed so simple, even in its homelands, that it could be asked how the Zen life differed "from a life of instincts or a series of impulses."[20] The warning was necessary that Zen might degenerate into passivity if not for the constant reminder that it called for action. And moral

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19. D. T. Suzuki, The Zen Doctrine of No-Mind (London: Rider and Co., 1949).

20. Ibid., p. 111.

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anarchism had to be warned against as a possible consequence of transcending intellectualism. If men "should make their minds like a piece of lock be darkly ignorant,"[21] anything might happen, and certainly would, in Dewey's age of power and wrangling nations.

　　 Dewey can also be considered anti-intellectual, in his subordination of reasoning and problem-solving to the wholeness of immediate experience. But he sees that the joy of the immediate must be guarded by the far-flung sign process; also that much thought can be taken up into the enjoyment of the present, as in appreciation of art. No sharp demarcation is possible between reflective and non-reflective experience. Peirce took down the fence between inference and intuition. Suzuki himself is obliged, if not glad, to admit that mind and no-mind are continuous. Thus he grants that intuition and abstract reasoning coalesce, saying "praj~naa is vij~naana and vij~naana is praj~naa."[22] If Suzuki nevertheless prefers praj~naa, Dewey prefers aesthetic experience. As he must buttress the aesthetic with moral effort and intellectual considerations, so must Suzuki. Both are purposive and teleological in wanting to get on (or back) to doing what is felt to be worth while in itself, as much as that is possible. The problem is to instate the joy and peace of Zen in the West, and to reinstate it in the East, without being irresponsible. What price responsibility, if no Zen? To have Zen now, or even Santayana, we must have Dewey, too. But Dewey fails if he cannot justify Santayana's saying: "the happy filling of a single hour is so much gained for the universe at large, and to find joy and sufficiency in the flying moment is perhaps the only means open to us for increasing the glory of eternity."[23]

　　 There are passages in Dewey and Zen which are antithetical if taken literally, as there are many which offer mutual support across the gulf between past and present. But how literally should the extreme statements of Zen be taken? About their enigmatic meaning Zen scholars themselves differ. We should not forget that the humor of Zen may fool us. Some people find Dewey hard to read. But he is plan as a post, compared to Zen. In Zen a post may be a baffling thing.

　　 Suzuki seems to ignore this when he says: "To imagine that Zen is mysterious is the first grave mistake which many make about it."[24] But in the same book he says: "Chinese expressions, especially those used in

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21. Ibid., p. 113.

22. D. T. Suzuki, in Charles A. Moore, Essays in East-West Philosophy: An Attempt at World Philosophy Synthesis (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1951), p. 25.

23. George Santayana, The life of Reason (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1933), Vol. III, Reason in Religion, p. 270.

24. Suzuki, The Zen Doctrine of No-Mind, p. 138.

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connection with Zen thought, are full of significance which, when translated into such languages as English, loses altogether its original suggestiveness. The very vagueness so characteristic of the Chinese style of writing is in fact its strength: mere points of reference are given, and as to how to connect them, to yield a meaning, the knowledge and feeling of the reader are the real determinant."[25] The remark about translation seems gratuitous, unless to say that Zen is plainer in English than in the original, and that to make it plain is to betray it.

　　 Perhaps Dewey is too literal for Zen, too anxious to spell things out, though not always without humor. The men of Zen are more Socratic in leading on the interlocutor, teasing him instead of telling him. Their technique of question and answer (the mondo) may seem intended to trip the seeker, to teach him that there is no end to his quest. But the mondo has been an effective eye-opener. The aim is to awaken realization that experience is its own end and explanation, because there is nothing else, and that the attempt to set up something else will only falsify what there is. An absurd answer is a way of showing that a question makes no sense until the asker comes to his senses. Then as good a reply as any may be a blow with a stick. Silence may suffice except chat, having learned to speak and think, men have to work through speech and thought to get back to silence.

　　 The mondo dialogue, besides being used to suggest that experience fulfills itself, may be used as a koan, an exercise to test whether a person has arrived at Zen-insight or satori, which is to have the sense of reaching the utmost "Beyond" in "coming home."[26] What it comes to is release from anxiety, from being too concerned or calculating, realizing, instead, that the best spiritual cultivation is "not to practice any cultivation" but "to do one's tasks without deliberate effort or purposeful mind."[27]