MURYOKO
'Infinite Light'
Journal of Shin Buddhism
Harold Stewart
Zen
Foremost among the authentic Oriental Traditions that the West has attempted to assimilate during recent decades has been Zen Buddhism. Zen was that form of Chinese Ch'an, itself a fusion of Indian Mahayana Buddhism with Taoist doctrines and methods, which was adapted to the Japanese temperament and feudal system. As the 'Religion of the Samurai', it was specifically employed for the mental, moral, and bodily training of the warrior caste in medieval times.
But many Western enthusiasts for what they imagine to be Zen have never actually come into contact with this branch of the Buddhist Tradition as it still exists and functions in the Far East. Not only have they received no initiation into one of the three main Zen sects, but they are acquainted with their doctrines and methods only from books written about Zen in European languages, often at second or third hand. Such dabblers and dilettanti are usually interested in Zen only as a philosophy - which relieves them of the task of ever trying to put it into practice. Those who have attempted to comprehend the paradoxes of Zen in this merely theoretical manner, without the indispensable instruction and guidance of a qualified roshi, or Zen master, have made certain in advance of their frustration and failure. Some have even tried to understand Zen while lacking in any knowledge of its development in Japan out of Ch'an in China or of the Mahayana Metaphysic in India from which both derived. But surely a solid grounding in the basic tenets of the Dharma is the primary prerequisite for any understanding or practice of more advanced forms like Zen or the Vajrayana, in which the overconfident self-initiated student is almost certain to go astray without guidance?
Those few who took the trouble to visit Japan and begin the practice of Zen under a recognized Zen master or who joined the monastic Order soon discovered that it was a very different matter from what the popularizing literature had led them to believe. They found that in the traditional Zen monastery zazen is never divorced from the daily routine of accessory disciplines. To attenuate and finally dissolve the illusion of the individual ego, it is always supplemented by manual work to clean the temple, maintain the garden, and grow food in the grounds; by strenuous study with attendance at discourses on the sutras and commentaries; and by periodical interviews with the roshi, to test spiritual progress. Acolytes are expected to develop indifference to the discomforts of heat and cold on a most frugal vegetarian diet and to abstain from self-indulgence in sleep and sex, intoxicating drinks and addictive drugs. Altogether Zen demands an ability to participate in a communal life as regimented and lacking in privacy as the army. Perhaps that explains the attraction of this Spartan regimen for a rebellious adolescence that secretly craves to be controlled by parental authority.
It has been accurately observed that racial solidarity makes of the Japanese a single family. Whereas their individual egos tend to be amorphous and vaguely defined, their group identity is tenaciously strong and cohesive in its purpose and effort, its participation in team-work and sharing of responsibilities, and its passionate loyalty and unquestioning obedience to the decision-making leader.
It is doubtful, then, even with the utmost tolerance, good will, and understanding, if any foreigner can ever be fully accepted and assimilated into such an ethnocentric community, for the simple reason that by birth he is not a Japanese. In particular, the monastic routine and communal life that are so congenial to the Japanese group ego usually prove intolerably irksome to our self-assertive individualists.
From the time of the novice's initiation, one of the aims of Zen training is to strengthen his moral and physical courage until he can withstand any hardship and has developed the resolution to meet death fearlessly at a moment's notice, so necessary in a future warrior. But the Zen master also seeks to build up his Japanese disciple's feeble sense of individuality, so that he can achieve freedom from his identification with the group. For only then can he face up to the awe-inspiring father-figure presented by the roshi, whom he should be able to confront and challenge intellectually, morally, and even physically, man to man. Not until the Zen master considers that his disciple has reached the requisite degree of initiative, self-reliance, and independence from conventional conditioning is he deemed ready to proceed to the next phase of his training: the gradual dissolution of the individual ego and the attainment of that selfless Insight that will win for the monk his inka, or certificate of Zen mastery, with the right to teach and train others.
Now it should be apparent that this first aspect of Zen training, which Westerners are also required to follow on induction into a Zen monastery, is precisely the method least suited to their spiritual needs and temperament. For thanks to their cultural indoctrination, most Westerners are initially suffering from elephantiasis of the ego. They soon find that their desires for food, drink, sex, sleep, and drugs assert themselves more strongly than before; and so they react rebelliously against the severe mental, moral, and physical disciplines of the monastic life. Recalling the Zen dialogues that they have read in books, they wish to treat the roshi at once as an equal, answering him back with impertinence and a disrespect for his superior rank, or even with physical assault. Such behaviour not only upsets the monastic routine but may even corrupt the Japanese monks, so that as a result of costly experience many Zen monasteries have now closed their doors to foreigners. Some applicants, who not only lack any vocation for the monastic life but suffer the disqualification of some neurosis or addiction that they believe Zen will cure, may experience hallucinations during their early attempts to meditate and may be compelled to discontinue the practice of zazen. Knowing little or nothing of the psychological problems and peculiarities of Westerners or even that their temperaments differ in many ways from those of the Japanese, the roshi is unwilling to go counter to the traditional training that has for so long proved effective for his own race, and so he naturally refuses to modify it to suit the foreign novice.
To present a balanced account, it is only just to mention that 'official' Zen, whilst faithfully preserving its own traditions to the present day, has become somewhat desiccated and moribund. This is mainly because of its rigid monastic structure and the Confucian moralism that was first introduced by Zen monks returning from China in the Middle Ages. Soto Zen, it is reported, has produced no major exponent in more than two hundred years. By the late nineteenth century, Rinzai koans had tended to become a set catechism with stereotyped answers, and the spontaneity and humour of earlier Zen had been largely lost, except among a few eccentric non-conformists on the fringe of the tradition.
Few modern Japanese feel any vocation for this rigorous Zen training, and fewer still possess the physical and mental stamina needed to stay the whole course. There are now said to be more Zen novices in training in America than in Japan ! But even under ideal monastic conditions of tranquillity and seclusion, twenty to thirty years or even longer of daily practice may be needed before that existential break-through known as kensha can be achieved. How many Westerners have that much time, patience, concentration, and endurance to spare? During the past quarter of a century in which the West has toyed with the idea of Zen, how many who have made the attempt have actually succeeded in attaining satori by Zen methods? Is Zen really a practical possibility for anyone compelled to live in the modern world ?
It is indeed regrettable that Zen, often in dubious interpretations accommodated to contemporary assumptions and prejudices, has been so over-publicized in the West. In America especially, it has enjoyed a popular vogue and even degenerated into an antinomian cult among those who mistook it for some Oriental variety of nihilistic existentialism. An anarchic generation has even tried to subvert it into a secular method for attaining 'instant liberation' without trouble or effort, while remaining attached to their egotistical delusions and indulging their sensual desires to the full. It is the old confusion between liberty and licence, renewed with the adolescence of each generation. Needless to add, this modern Western caricature has nothing in common with authentic Zen as it was originally practised and as it still survives in the Far East.
Much of this modernized Zen Buddhism is really an attempt by Westerners to have Zen without Buddhism. It aims to eliminate from Zen any metaphysical or religious content and, by reducing it to merely human psychology and physiology, make it acceptable to the currently received heresies. The ultimate absurdity is reached with experiments to measure satori quantitatively by using the latest technological gadgetry. Such an approach to Zen betrays the sciential obsession with quantification of qualities and involves a metaphysical confusion between Existence (Samsara) and pure Non-Being (Nirvana), whose nonduality can only be realized on reaching perfect Enlightenment. But Buddhahood is a state unattainable by the pseudo- rituals of scientific method, which was devised to evaporate the truth, leaving only a residue of facts.
No names will be mentioned here, but the reader should be on his guard against those unscrupulous Occidentals (and a few Oriental imitators) who have never received an inka and have even been expressly forbidden to teach by their Zen masters in Japan, but who, despite this prohibition, have set themselves up as self-styled roshi in the West. Their true motives are betrayed by two signs: they indulge their lust for power by ruling their institution like petty dictators; and they sell their spiritual instruction for money. The teaching of a genuine spiritual master is always free to all comers; and the fact that such pseudo-roshi charge fees for attending their classes is alone sufficient to disqualify them. Caveat emptor.
Because of its propagation by the English works of D. T. Suzuki, Zen is now generally the only one of the ten major Buddhist sects still extant in Japan of which the Western layman has ever heard. Few are aware that it is not Zen but the Pure Land schools that can claim the largest number of adherents among those Japanese who still profess and practise some form of the Dharma. The two main schools of the Pure Land Tradition, Jodoshu and Shinshu, together represent the most widespread and influential movement in Japanese Buddhism since the Heian period.
Not only in books written in his native language for Japanese readers but also in his last works in English, D. T. Suzuki stressed that it is not Zen, as one would have expected from its chief propagator and apologist, but Shin Buddhism, the recitation of the Name with Faith, that is to be 'Japan's major religious contribution to the West'. Could this have been because, after a lifetime dedicated to an attempt to transplant Zen to the West, Suzuki had finally realized, on witnessing the distortions and aberrations that it has suffered there, that its doctrine and method were not truly suited to the Occidental temperament and society ?