Western Approach to Zen (217P)

A Western Approach to A Western Approach to By Christmas Humphreys This publication made possible with the assistance o f the Kern Foundation The Theosophical Publishing House Wheaton, 111. U.S.A. Madras, India/London, England ©Christmas Humphrey, 1971. Second Quest Printing 1985. All rights reserved. This book is copyright under the Berne Con vention. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, electrical, chemical, mechanical, optical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, with out the prior permission of the copyright owner. Enquiries should be addressed to: The Theosophical Publishing House, 306 West Geneva Road, Wheaton, Illinois 60189. Published by The Theosophical Publishing House, Wheaton, Il linois, a department of The Theosophical Society in America by arrangement with George Allen & Unwin Ltd., London. Library of Congress Catalog Number 72-764 2 8 ISBN: 0-8356-0550-7 Manufactured in the United States of America. Dedicated to the members of the Zen Class of the Buddhist Society, London Preface The major part of this work has been compiled from notes of a course carried out in the Zen Class of the Buddhist Society. The course was first held from September 1969 to March 1970, and then, more fully and based upon a written syllabus, from September 1970 to March 1971. To help the general reader I have, however, begun this volume with a series of chapters on basic Buddhism, followed by some on the Zen School of Buddhism. Only then have I introduced a description of the course itself with an eponymous chapter on ‘A Western Approach to Zen*, setting out my reasons for presenting it. Many of the earlier chapters have appeared in various Buddhist and Theosophical magazines, notably The Middle Way, the journal of the Buddhist Society, and I am grateful to the editors concerned. The chapters in Parts Three and Four have been written up from notes made for the Class. ‘Experiments in Zen* are reprinted from Zen Comes West. I claim no authority for a single statement in the book, nor for its thesis, and because the views and suggestions therein are based on personal experience I have given few precise references for the wide range of quotation. When I am putting forward ideas which may seem strange to the Western mind I find it useful to support my contentions with the words of other more distinguished writers, but I do not suggest that even their statements have the force of authority, and the exact source of any quotation therefore seems to me unnecessary. Quite half of these quotations come from the writing or remembered words of the late Dr D. T. Suzuki, who died in 1966 at the age of 95. He first visited the Society in 1936, and in 1946 I spent much time with him in Japan. Thereafter I was in constant correspondence with him as his London agent and helped to publish or republish a dozen of his major works. He visited the Society many times in 1953, J954 1958, and was of immense service to the Zen Class. He was to my mind the greatest Buddhist scholar with whom, in fifty years in the Buddhist field, I have come in contact, and on the subject of Zen his combination of learning and spiritual experience was unique. For me he was a master of Zen comparable with any of those whose words have come down to 9 A WESTERN APPROACH TO ZEN us, and for any proposition that I venture to advance the confirming words of the master ratify for me my own discoveries. A few poems have been interleaved with the chapters to express in verse what I often find it easier to say that way. Other poems intended for this volume have already appeared in Buddhist Poems (Allen & Unwin, I97i). I am grateful to all who have taken my original, ill-typed MS and reproduced it in intelligible prose; in particular Miss Pat Wilkinson, Miss Muriel Clarke, Mrs Dorothy Willan and Mr Hyde-Chambers, all of the Buddhist Society. There remains the vexed question of diacritical marks, and the right way to set out terms in oriental languages. As for the former I advocate the minimum or none, for we must learn how to present and use these words in Western form. As for the right way to use and present such terms as must be kept, for want of an English equivalent, I have angli cized as many as possible. As Buddhists in the West increase in number we must learn the manifold meaning of these words in the original and use them to enrich our language. Many have already come to stay. As for my wife, I have not in the forty-five years of the Society’s life published a w’ord without her careful and often amending scrutiny. The karmic responsibility for all herein remains, however, mine. St John's Wood, 1971 T. C. H. 10 Contents Preface page 9 The Problem 13 Introduction 15 BASIC BUDDHISM 1 The Buddha 21 2 Four Noble Truths 29 Pleasure-Fain 41 3 Buddhism Teaches Rebirth 42 We Live in Animals 49 APPROACH TO BUDDHISM 4 Beyond the Opposites 53 Strange Discovery 61 5 If Life is One 62 6 Illumined Thought 70 7 The Wisdom Gone Beyond 76 From Brighton Pier 82 8 Living in Now 83 9 London Zen 89 10 A Note on Prajna, Dhyana, Samadhi 96 THE COURSE 11 A Western Approach to Zen 101 The Teacher Can But Point the Way n o 12 Phase One: ‘Unthink’ 112 13 Buddhism and God 119 14 Phase T w o :‘Stop Thinking’ 126 15 Meditation: An Interlude 132 Meditation 138 A WESTERN APPROACH TO ZEN 16 Phase Three: ‘Rethink* 139 17 Wisdom/Compassion 144 18 The Bridge 148 19 Phase Four: ‘Beyond Thought’ 152 EXPERIMENTS IN ZEN 20 Experiment in Zen 161 21 Further Experiment in Zen 167 22 Third Experiment in Zen 173 23 Fourth Experiment in Zen 180 An Approach to the Situation 185 Conclusion 191 Suggested Minimum Library for the Course 197 Brief Glossary 198 Index 200 The Problem 1. Zen Buddhism has arrived in the West. 2. Its form is that of the Rinzai Zen School which makes large use of the koan system. 3. There is no likelihood of a quantity of Rinzai Zen Roshis becoming resident in Europe or of a quantity of Europeans reaching the rank of Roshi. 4. It is not practical to expect large numbers of Western students to learn Japanese well, and to spend long years in a Japanese monastery. 5. How, then should the earnest Western student of Zen approach its goal, Zen experience, and its ‘maturing’ and application to daily life thereafter ? 6. I suggest a course of mind-development involving mind- control, the development of the intellect to its limits, the wakening of the intuition which produces what I here call illumined thought, and thus a mind prepared for the direct experience of reality achieved in Zen awareness. 13 Introduction This is not a clever book for clever people. It is, or is meant to be, a helpful book for ordinary people. It emanates from a Western mind living in the West that refuses to accept Zen as a Chinese/Japanese monopoly, or to regard as exclusive the Eastern approach to it. Western mentality is complementary to that of the East, neither better nor worse but profoundly different. It follows that the Western approach to Zen will itself be different from that of China or Japan. I believe that Zen Buddhism has something to give the West in its hour of spiritual need, something at present lacking which does not seem to be appearing in any other form. Zen teaching defines the limits of the intellect, and demonstrates that Truth, as distinct from changing doctrine, can only be known by the use of a faculty that operates beyond the reach of thought, a power known in the East as Buddhi or Prajna and in the West as the intuition. Thought must be used until thought can go no further, but when all has been learnt ‘about it and about’, there remains the actual knowing, beyond description, which is pure experience for the knowing mind. As a school of spiritual training Zen Buddhism— a term here used to include the Ch’an School of China and the Zen School of Japan— was founded in the sixth century a d to deflate the extravagance of Indian Buddhist thought and to drive the mind with earthy violence back to the origin o f‘Buddhism’, which is the Enlightenment achieved by Gautama the Buddha. The early masters of Ch’an sought the same personal direct attainment without scripture, ritual or formulated thought, and all Zen training is concerned with one thing only, aware ness of the Absolute within the heart of man. The West differs from the East in its emphasis on intellect. ‘Below* it, in psychic perception, and ‘above’ it, in the intuition, Truth may be found by the few; for the many the power of thought, extroverted into the world about us or introverted in psychology to study itself, stands supreme. Whether we regret or approve this state of affairs it must be accepted as a constituent of our present civilization. Yet the limitations of thought are becoming more and more obvious, 15 A WESTERN APPROACH TO ZEN and increasingly admitted by some of the greatest intellects of our time.

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