Essays in Zen Buddhism
D.T. Suzuki
2,061 passages indexed from Essays in Zen Buddhism (D.T. Suzuki) — Page 26 of 42
License: Public Domain
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 954
Tao-hsin then demanded, “What is he that is contemplating? What is Mind that is contemplated?” Fa-jung was not prepared to answer such questions. Thinking that the visitor was a man of deep understanding, he rose from the seat and saluting him asked who he was. When he found that the visitor was no other personage than Tao-hsin himself whose reputation he was not ignorant of, he thanked him for the visit.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 634
When this lair is laid bare and turned inside out, Ignorance vanishes like frost in the sun. In fact, these two are one and the same thing, Ignorance and the idea of ego. We are apt to think that when Ignorance is driven out and the ego loses its hold on us, we have nothing to lean against and are left to the fate of a dead leaf blown away hither and thither as the wind listeth. But this is not so; for Enlightenment is not a negative idea meaning simply the absence of Ignorance.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1003
Hung-jên died, A.D. 675, four years[f100] after the Dharma was transmitted to Hui-nêng. He was seventy-four years old. But Hui-nêng never started his mission work until some years later, for in accordance with the advice of his master he lived a secluded life in the mountains. One day he thought that it was time for him to go out in the world. He was now thirty-nine years old, and it was in the first year of I-fêng (A.D. 676) during the T‘ang dynasty.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1465
When Tō-Impo (Têng Yin-fêng)[6.77] was pushing a cart, he happened to see his master Baso stretching his legs a little too far out in the roadway. He said, “Will you please draw your legs in?” Replied the master, “A thing once stretched out will never be contracted.” “If so,” said Tō, “a thing once pushed will never be retracted.” His cart went right over the master’s legs which were thus hurt. Later Baso went up to the Preaching Hall where he carried an axe and said to the monks gathered, “Let the one who wounded the old master’s legs awhile ago come out of the congregation.” Tō came forth and stretched his neck ready to receive the axe, but the master instead of chopping the disciple’s head off, quietly set the axe down.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1337
This contradiction, negation, or paradoxical statement is the inevitable result of the Zen way of looking at life. The whole emphasis of its discipline is placed on the intuitive grasping of the inner truth deeply hidden in our consciousness. And this truth thus revealed or awakened within oneself defies intellectual manipulation, or at least cannot be imparted to others through any of dialectical formulas. It must come out of oneself, grow within oneself, and become one with one’s own being.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 911
He who in pursuit of the shadow tires out the body, does not know that the body produces the shadow; and he who attempts to stop an echo by raising his voice, does not understand that the voice is the cause of the echo.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1349
So long as the masters are indulging in negations, denials, contradictions, or paradoxes, the stain of speculation is not quite washed off of them. Naturally, Zen is not opposed to speculation as it is also one of the functions of the mind. But Zen has travelled along a different path altogether unique, I think, in the history of mysticism, whether Eastern or Western, Christian or Buddhist. A few examples will suffice to illustrate my point.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 372
Of these, the one is a short collection of Dharanis, and the other which is the conclusion is known as the Gāthā chapter written throughout in verse and summarises the contents of the whole Sutra. It has, however, no paragraph making up the “regular ending” in which the whole congregation unites in the praise of the Buddha and in its assurance of observing his instructions. There is no doubt that these three new chapters are of later growth.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 582
In Ignorance knowing is separated from acting, and the knower from that which is to be known; in Ignorance the world is asserted as distinct from the self, that is, there are always two elements standing in opposition. This is, however, the fundamental condition of cognition, which means that as soon as cognition takes place there is Ignorance clinging to its every act. When we think we know something, there is something we do not know.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 664
The simile of mirror (_ādarśa_) may however suggest that the Buddhist attitude towards the world is merely passive and lacking in energising inspirations.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 391
According to the author, the anuttara-samyak-sambodhi attained by the Muni of the Śākyas, whereby he became the Buddha, is realisable by transcending the ideas of being and non-being (_nāsy-asti-vikalpa_). This being the fundamental error—this cherishing of dualism—must be got rid of as the first necessary step to reach the state of self-realisation.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1730
But in point of fact where the time-element rules supreme, this was not necessarily the case. As long as our relative minds are made to comprehend one thing after another by degrees and in succession and not all at once and simultaneously, it is impossible not to speak of some kind of progress. Even Zen as something possible of demonstration in one way or another must be subjected to the limitations of time.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 428
Such a conception of number and such a method of description would never have entered the Chinese mind. They are, of course, capable of conceiving long duration, and great achievements, in which they are not behind any nation; but to express their idea of vastness in the manner of the Indian philosophers would be beyond their understanding.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 726
Then said the master, “If not for you no one could see the truth: and if not for me no one could testify it.” It is often remarked by Zen masters that the holy congregation at the Vulture Peak is still in session. This however ought not to be confounded with the remembering of the past which is one of the miraculous gifts of the Buddhist saints. It has nothing to do with such memory, for in Enlightenment there are more things than are implied in mere time-relations.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1188
Yengo (Yüan-wu, 1063–1135) was one of the greatest teachers in the Sung dynasty and the author of a Zen textbook known as the _Hekiganshu_. His verse stands in such contrast to that of his teacher, Hōyen, and the reader will find it hard to unearth anything of Zen from the following romanticism:
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1532
However, the Zen ideal of putting up the monk’s belongings in a tiny box a little larger than a foot square and three inches high, is their mute protest, though so far ineffective, against the present order of society.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1964
[f111] This is spread before the Buddha and on it the master performs his bowing ceremony, and its rolling up naturally means the end of a sermon.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1756
“‘Where is no “to” _i.e._, the stage of ‘I am I,’ beyond which no advance is possible except by means of retrogression. In this stage the mystic is entirely absorbed in the undifferentiated oneness of God. Only after he has ‘returned,’ _i.e._, entered upon the third stage (plurality in oneness) can he communicate to his fellows some perfume (hint) of the experience through which he has passed. ‘An esoteric wisdom,’ _i.e._, the Divine providence manifested by means of the religious law. By returning to consciousness, the ‘united’ mystic is enabled to fulfil the law and to act as a spiritual director.”
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 284
It is said that they are the substance of the Dharma; if so, the Dharma may be said to be rather devoid of substance, and how could Śāriputra ever find here a truth concrete and efficient enough to turn him away from the old rut? The stanza which is noted for having achieved the conversion of not only Śāriputra but Maudgalyāyana, has really nothing characteristic of Buddhistic thought, strong enough to produce such a great result.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 785
In those days there must have been some necessity to invent such a legend for the authorisation of Zen Buddhism; for as Zen grew in strength the other schools of Buddhism already in existence grew jealous of its popular influence and attacked it as having no authorised records of its direct transmission from the founder of Buddhism, which was claimed by the devotees of Zen.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1144
These you must look after yourself.” Dōken expressed the desire to know what they were. “For instance,” said the friend, “when you are hungry or thirsty, my eating of food or drinking does not fill your stomach. You must drink and eat yourself. When you want to respond to the calls of nature, you must take care of them yourself, for I cannot be of any use to you.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 553
Tracing things to their origin or subjecting them to a scheme of concatenation is one thing, but to subdue them, to bring them to subjection in the actuality of life, is quite another thing. In the one, the intellect alone is active, but in the other there is the operation of the will,—and the will is the man.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 115
It may be interesting to readers in this connection to get acquainted with some of the methods[f8] used by the masters in order to open the spiritual eye of the disciple. It is natural that they frequently make use of the various religious insignia which they carry when going out to the Hall of the Dharma. Such are generally the “hossu,”[f9] “shippe,”[f10] “nyoi,”[f11] or “shujyo” (or a staff).[1.17] The last-mentioned seems to have been the most favourite instrument used in the demonstration of the truth of Zen. Let me cite some examples of its use.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1143
Sogen (Tsung-yüan), one of his fellow-monks, took pity on him and said, “I will accompany you on this trip and do all that I can for you. There is no reason why you cannot go on with your meditation even while travelling.” They started together. One evening Dōken despairingly implored his friend to assist him in the solution of the mystery of life. The friend said, “I am willing to help you in every way, but there are five things in which I cannot be of any help to you.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 844
“[Bodhi-Dharma], the Teacher of the Law, was the third son of a great Brahman king in South India, of the Western Lands. He was a man of wonderful intelligence, bright and far-reaching; he thoroughly understood everything that he ever learned. As his ambition was to master the doctrine of the Mahayana, he abandoned the white dress of a layman and put on the black robe of monkhood, wishing to cultivate the seeds of holiness.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1323
The man over the precipice is caught in a dilemma of life and death, and there can be no logical quibblings. The cat may be sacrificed at the altar of Zen, the mirror may be smashed on the ground, but how about one’s own life? The Buddha in one of his former lives is said to have thrown himself down into the maw of a man-devouring monster, in order to get the whole stanza of the truth.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 360
To do away with consciousness so that nothing will disturb spiritual serenity was too negative a state of mind to be sought after by those who at all aspired to develop the positive content of the Buddha’s own enlightened mind. Tranquillisation was not the real end of dhyana, nor was the being absorbed in a samadhi the object of Buddhist life. Enlightenment was to be found in life itself, in its fuller and freer expressions, and not in its cessation.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 168
Whether Christ really claimed to be the Messiah or not is a great historical discussion still unsettled among Christian theologians. Some say that it does not make any difference as far as Christian faith is concerned whether or not Christ claimed to be the Messiah. In spite of all such theological difficulties, Christ is the centre of Christianity. The Christian edifice is built around the person of Jesus.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 788
A line of twenty-eight Indian patriarchs thus came to be established by Zen historians, while, according to other schools, there were only twenty-three or twenty-four patriarchs after the founder. When the historians had the need for the special transmission of Zen from the Buddha to Mahākāśyapa, they felt it necessary to fill up the gap between the twenty-third or twenty-fourth patriarch and Bodhi-Dharma himself, who according to them was the twenty-eighth.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1153
Below is the verse he composed soon after his achievement from which we may get an idea of his satori.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1614
It expects one to penetrate into the very depths of truth, and the truth can never be grasped until one comes back to one’s native nakedness shorn of all trumperies, intellectual or otherwise. Each slap dealt by Shōju stripped Hakuin of his insincerities. We are all living under so many casings which really have nothing to do with our inmost self. To reach the latter, therefore, and to gain the real knowledge of ourselves, the Zen masters resort to methods seemingly inhuman.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 943
The ultimate end of things where they cannot go any further, Is not bound by rules and measures: The mind in harmony [with the Way] is the principle of identity In which we find all doings in a quiescent state; Irresolutions are completely done away with, And the right faith is restored to its native straightness; Nothing is retained now, Nothing is to be memorised, All is void, lucid, and self-illuminating, There is no stain, no exertion, no wasting of energy— This is where thinking never attains, This is where the imagination fails to measure.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1290
But this is characteristic of Zen, this is where Zen transcends logic and overrides the tyranny and misrepresentation of ideas. As I said before, Zen mistrusts the intellect, does not rely upon traditional and dualistic methods of reasoning, and handles problems after its own original manners.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1251
In Zen there must be a satori; there must be a general mental upheaval which destroys the old accumulations of intellectuality and lays down a foundation for a new faith; there must be the awakening of a new sense which will review the old things from an angle of perception entirely and most refreshingly new. In dhyana there are none of these things, for it is merely a quieting exercise of the mind. As such it has doubtless its own merits, but Zen ought not to be identified with such dhyanas.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1685
As terseness and directness is the life of Zen, its literature is full of idiomatic and colloquial expressions. The Chinese as you all know, being such partisans to classic formalism, scholars and philosophers did not know how to express themselves but in elegant and highly polished style. And consequently all that is left to us in ancient Chinese literature is this classicism, nothing of popular and colloquial lore had come down to posterity.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 62
This is where Zen is most difficult to understand. Why this sarcastic vituperation? Why this seeming heartlessness? What fault had Ummon to deserve the loss of his leg? He was a poor truth-seeking monk, earnestly anxious to get enlightenment from the master. Was it really necessary for the latter from his way of understanding Zen to shut him out three times, and when the gate was half opened to close it again so violently, so inhumanly? Was this the truth of Buddhism Ummon was so eager to get?
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 968
And therefore when Zen came to be fully established under Hui-nêng and his followers, it had nothing further to obstruct its free development until it became almost the only ruling power in the Chinese world of Buddhism. We must carefully watch how Hui-nêng came to be Hung-jên’s successor and where he differed from his rival school under Shên-hsiu.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1566
The monks have not enough clothes to put on, not enough food to indulge in, not enough time to sleep, and, to cap these, they have plenty of work to do, menial as well as spiritual. The outer needs and the inward aspirations, if they work on harmoniously and ideally, will finally end in producing fine characters well-trained in Zen as well as in the real things of life.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 10
Zen in its essence is the art of seeing into the nature of one’s own being, and it points the way from bondage to freedom. By making us drink right from the fountain of life, it liberates us from all the yokes under which we finite beings are usually suffering in this world. We can say that Zen liberates all the energies properly and naturally stored in each of us, which are in ordinary circumstances cramped and distorted so that they find no adequate channel for activity.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 985
First, what necessity was there to make Hui-nêng an unlearned rustic in contrast with the erudition and wide information ascribed to Shên-hsiu? Or was Hui-nêng really such an ignoramus as could not read any thing written? But the _Fa-pao-t‘an-ching_,[4.53] a collection of his sermons, contains passages quoted from such Sutras as the _Nirvāna_, _Vajracchedikā_, _Laṅkāvatāra_, _Saddharma-puṇḍarika_, _Vimalakīrti_, _Amitābha_, and _Bodhisattva-śīla-sutra_.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 546
“This that through many toils I’ve won— Enough! why should I make it known? By folk with lust and hate consumed Not this the Truth[f52] that can be grasped! Against the stream of common thought. Deep, subtle, difficult, delicate. Unseen ’twill be by passion’s slaves Cloaked in the murk of Ignorance.”[f53]
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 890
The answer was simple enough, and clear enough too, but the pious and learned Buddhist Emperor failed to grasp the spirit pervading the whole attitude of Dharma.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 342
The Buddha knew this very well, and he endeavoured to produce knowledge out of meditation, this is, to make wisdom grow from personal, spiritual experience. The Buddhist way to deliverance, therefore, consisted in threefold discipline: moral rules (_śīla_), tranquillisation (_samādhi_), and wisdom (_prajñā_). By Śīla one’s conduct is regulated externally, by Samādhi quietude is attained, and by Prajñā real understanding takes place. Hence the importance of meditation in Buddhism.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 587
Therefore, it betrays an utter ignorance on the part of Buddhist scholars when they relegate Ignorance to the past in trying to explain the rationale of the Twelvefold Chain of Causation (_paṭicca-samuppāda_)[f57] from the temporal point of view. According to them, the first two factors (_angāni_) of the Paṭicca-samuppāda belong to the past while the following eight belong to the present and the last two to the future.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1642
Rinzai’s way of expressing himself in regard to this point is quite violent and revolutionary. And if we were not acquainted with the methods of Zen teachings, such passages as are quoted below would surely make our teeth chatter and our hair stand on end. The reader may think the author simply horrible, but we all know well how earnestly he feels about the falsehoods of the world and how unflinchingly he pushes himself forward through its confusion worse confounded. His hands may be compared to Jehovah’s in trying to destroy the idols and causing the images to cease. Read the following, for instance, in which Rinzai endeavours to strip one’s spirit off its last raiment of falsehood.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1770
_Seeing the Cow._ He finds the way through the sound, he sees into the origin of things, and all his senses are in harmonious order. In all his activities, it is manifestly present. It is like the salt in water and the glue in colour. [It is there though not separably distinguishable.] When the eye is properly directed, he will find that it is no other thing than himself.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 525
The Buddha’s Enlightenment and Nirvana were two separate ideas in his life as it unfolded in history so many centuries ago, but from the religious point of view they are to be regarded as one idea. That is to say, to understand the content and the value of Enlightenment is the same as realising the signification of Nirvana.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1312
Nothing is stereotyped in Zen, and somebody else may solve the difficulty in quite a different manner. This is where Zen is original and creative.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 501
The Zen masters therefore did what they could not help doing and made free use of the living words and phrases of the day. Does this not prove that in China Buddhism through Zen ceased to be a foreign importation and was transformed into an original creation of the native mind? And just because Zen could turn itself into a native product, it survived all the other schools of Buddhism.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1748
“‘Your stay with the master has not covered much space of time, and you are already feeling grudge against him. The air will not hold even a fragment of your body, nor will the earth support one member of yours. How then could you ever think of treading on empty space and riding the wind?’