Essays in Zen Buddhism
D.T. Suzuki
2,061 passages indexed from Essays in Zen Buddhism (D.T. Suzuki) — Page 29 of 42
License: Public Domain
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1259
7. Satori is not a morbid state of mind, a fit subject for abnormal psychology. If anything, it is a perfectly normal state of mind. When I speak of a mental upheaval, one may be led to consider Zen something to be shunned by ordinary people. This is a mistaken view of Zen, unfortunately often held by prejudiced critics. As Nansen (Nan-ch‘üan) declared, it is your “everyday thought.” When later a monk asked a master[f124] what was meant by “everyday thought,” he said,
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1263
8. We are supposedly living in the same world, but who can tell the thing we popularly call a stone lying before this window is the same thing to all of us? According to the way we look at it, to some the stone ceases to be a stone, while to others it forever remains a worthless specimen of geological product. And this initial divergence of views calls forth an endless series of divergencies later in our moral and spiritual lives. Just a little twisting as it were in our modes of thinking and yet what a world of difference will grow up eventually between one another! So with Zen, satori is this twisting or rather screwing, not in the wrong way, but in a deeper and fuller sense, and the result is the revelation of a world of entirely new values.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 290
What I wish to see here is that Śāriputra’s understanding of the doctrine of “origination and cessation” was not the outcome of his intellectual analysis but an intuitive comprehension of his own inner life-process. Between the Buddha’s Enlightenment which is sung in the Hymn of Victory and Śāriputra’s insight into the Dharma as the doctrine of causation, there is a close connection in the way their minds worked.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1431
Zen is to be explained, if at all explained it should be, rather dynamically than statically. When I raise the hand thus, there is Zen. But when I assert that I have raised the hand, Zen is no more there. Nor is there any Zen when I assume the existence of somewhat that may be named will or anything else. Not that the assertion or assumption is wrong, but that the thing known as Zen is three thousand miles away as they say.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 153
This takes place not only with regard to the personality of the founder but with regard to his teaching, and the result is an astounding complexity or rather confusion which sometimes prevents us from properly seeing into the constitution of a living religious system.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 405
The purport of these adjectives and phrases is that no conceptual interpretation is possible of Enlightenment or self-realisation and that the realisation must issue from one’s own inner consciousness, independent of scriptural teaching or of another’s help. For all that is needed to lead one to the attainment of Pratyātmāryajñāna is within oneself, only that it is in a state of confusion owing to wrong judgments (_vikalpa_) cherished and infused (_vāsanā_) in the mind since beginningless time.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 34
When a grown-up man looks back to these youthful days, he cannot but feel a sort of shudder going through his entire frame. The struggle to be fought in sincerity may go on up to the age of thirty when Confucius states that he knew where to stand. The religious consciousness is now fully awakened, and all the possible ways of escaping from the struggle or bringing it to an end are most earnestly sought in every direction.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1462
Jō released the scholar, saying, “If not for the intercession of his friends I would at once let him sound the bottom of the river himself.” With these people Zen was no joke, no mere play of ideas, it was on the contrary a most serious thing on which they would stake their lives.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1270
And then the whole body of the kō-ans systematically grading the progress of the spiritual awakening is the wonderful treasure in the hands of the Zen monks in Japan at present.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1715
Ummon seated himself in a chair before the congregation, there was a pause for a while, and he remarked: “Raining so long, and not a day has the sun shone.”
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1228
When thus all mentation is temporarily suspended, even the consciousness of an effort to keep an idea focussed at the centre of attention is gone, that is, when, as the Zen followers say, the mind is so completely possessed or identified with its object of thought that even the consciousness of identity is lost as when one mirror reflects another, the subject feels as if living in a crystal palace, all transparent, refreshing, buoyant, and royal.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 207
Thus his teaching ceased to be considered independently of its author, the truth of the teaching was so organically connected with the Buddha’s personality, the Dharma was to be believed because it was the very embodiment of Buddhahood, and not necessarily because it was so logically consistent or philosophically tenable. The Buddha was the key to the truth of Buddhism.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1733
And here Zen fully recognises degrees of spiritual development among its followers, as the truth reveals itself gradually in their minds until the “seeing into one’s nature” is perfected.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1689
The Zen masters, whenever they could, avoided the technical nomenclature of Buddhist philosophy, not only did they discuss such subjects as appealed to a plain man, but they made use of his everyday language which was the vehicle appreciated by the masses and at the same time most expressive of the central ideas of Zen. Thus Zen literature became a unique repository of ancient wisdom.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 610
The passage is indeed one of the characterisations of Arhatship, and when a fuller delineation of it is made, we have something like the following: “To him, thus knowing, thus seeing,[f60] the heart is set free from the defilement of lust, is set free from the defilement of becoming, is set free from the defilement of Ignorance.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 767
At least this was the way the earlier writers of the canonical books attempted to represent their master whatever their motives might be. This being the case, the idea of Enlightenment was not brought forward so fully and conspicuously in Hinayana literature as at once to command our attention.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 454
They must have their own way of interpreting the doctrine of Enlightenment as applied to their daily life, and they could not help creating Zen as an expression of their inmost spiritual experience.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 2017
[f155] This means Buddha who is supposed by Buddhists to have been the owner of a golden-coloured body, sixteen feet in height.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 570
The Buddha had to go over the same ground again and again, because he was in an intellectual _impasse_ through which he could not move further on. He did not repeat the process, as is originally imagined, for his own philosophical edification. The fact was that he did not know how to escape this endless rotation of ideas; at this end there was birth, there was decay and death, and at the other end there was Ignorance.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1162
In the Āgama or Nikāya literature we encounter so frequently with such phrases as “Atta-dīpā viharatha attā saraṇā anañña-saraṇā,” or “sayaṁ abhiññā,” or “Diṭṭha-dhammo patta-dhammo vidita-dhammo pariyogāḷha-dhammo aparappaccayo satthu sāsane”; they show that Enlightenment is the awakening, within oneself and not depending on others, of an inner sense in one’s consciousness, enabling one to create a world of eternal harmony and beauty—the home of Nirvana.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1325
The logical dualism of “to be” (_asti_) and “not to be” (_nasti_) is frequently expressed by Zen masters by such terms of contrast as are used in our daily parlance: “taking life” and “giving life,” “capturing” and “releasing,” “giving” and “taking away,” “coming in contact” and “turning away from,”[6.20] etc.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 117
Yê-sei (Hui-ch‘ing), of Basho (Pa-chiao), probably of the tenth century, once made the following declaration: “When you have a staff, I will give you one; when you have none, I will take it away from you.”[1.19] This is one of the most characteristic statements of Zen, but later Bokitsu (Mu-chi), of Daiyi (Ta-wei), was bold enough to challenge this by saying what directly contradicts it, viz., “As to myself, I differ from him. When you have a staff, I will take it away from you; and when you have none, I will give you one. This is my statement. Can you make use of the staff? or can you not? If you can, Tokusan (Tê-shan) will be your vanguard and Rinzai (Lin-chi) your rearguard. But if you cannot, let it be restored to its original master.”[1.20]
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1753
“And [I returned] from ‘I am I’ for the sake of an esoteric wisdom and external laws which were instituted that I might call [the people to God].”
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1834
7.21. 翠微無學嗣丹霞天然. 師因供養羅漢. 有僧問曰. 丹霞燒木佛. 和尙爲什麽供養羅漢. 師曰燒也不燒著. 供養亦一任供養. 又問供養羅漢. 羅漢還來也無. 師曰. 汝每日還喫麽. 僧無語. 師曰. 少有靈利底. (傅燈錄第十四.)
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1435
When Dharma was leaving China, as the legend has it, he asked his disciples what was their understanding of Zen, and one of them who happened to be a nun, replied, “It is like Ānanda’s looking into the kingdom of Akshobhya Buddha, it is seen once and has never been repeated.” This fleeting, unrepeatable, and ungraspable character of life is delineated graphically by Zen masters who have compared it to lightning or spark produced by the percussion of stones: 閃電光, 擊石火 (_shan tien kuang, chi shih huo_) is the phrase.[6.61]
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 860
“4. By ‘being in accord with the Dharma’ is meant that the reason in its essence is pure which we call the Dharma, and that this reason is the principle of emptiness in all that is manifested, as it is above defilements and attachments, and as there is no Self or Other in it. Says the Sutra: In the Dharma there are no sentient beings, because it is free from the stains of being; in the Dharma there is no Self because it is free from the stain of selfhood. When the wise understand this truth and believe in it, their conduct will be ‘in accordance with the Dharma.’
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 2035
Gensha (Hsüan-sha), in water, 277; on self, 277; on transparent crystal, 277f.; on the murmuring of a stream, 278; and a piece of cake, 278; on Chu the national teacher, 288fn.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1954
[f102] This is a constant refrain in the teaching of the _Prajñāpāramitā Sūtras_—to awaken one’s thought where there is no abode whatever (na kvacit pratishṭitaṁ cittaṁ utpādayitavyam). When Jōshu called on Ungo, the latter asked, “O you, old wanderer! how is it that you do not seek an abiding place for yourself?” “Where is my abiding place?” “There is an old temple ruin at the foot of this mountain.” “That is a fitting place for your old self,” responded Jōshu.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1112
When Mind is not understood, it is absolutely of no avail to recite and discourse on idle literature. If you want to seek the Buddha, you ought to see into your own Nature, which is the Buddha himself. The Buddha is a free man—a man who neither works nor achieves. If, instead of seeing into your own Nature, you turn away and seek the Buddha in external things, you will never get at him.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1441
One day Ōbaku Kiun (Huang-po Hsi-yün)[6.63] ascended the pulpit, and as soon as monks were gathered, the master took up his staff and drove them all out. When they were about all out, he called them, and they turned their heads back. The master said, “The moon looks like a bow, less rain and more wind.” The staff was thus wielded effectively by the masters, but who would ever have thought of a cane being made an instrument of illustrating the most profound truth of religion?
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1330
Did he not really understand Buddhism? Or is it that not to understand is to understand? This is also the philosophy of the _Kena-Upanishad_.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1074
Hearing this, the sixth patriarch remarked: “That is no enlightenment but leads one into a state of bondage. Listen to my gāthā:
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1551
The wooden blocks are clapped, thanks are given, and the monks leave the room in orderly procession as they came in.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 841
We have no means to ascertain the reliability of the documents thus made use of, and then the authority of the _Biographies_ is not absolute. Therefore, the only profitable method of judging the respective merit of the two versions is to compare them from the literary point of view and see what light such comparison will shed on the nature of each.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1222
If so, this place must be 2,000,000,000 miles away from where the sun rises; and how is it that as soon as it comes up, its rays lose no time in striking my face?’ I reflected again, ‘The rays of my own eye must travel just as instantaneously as those of the sun as it reaches the latter; my eyes, my mind, are they not the Dharmakāya itself?’ Thinking thus, I felt all the bounds snapped and broken to pieces that had been tying me for so many ages.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 2005
[f145] Dharaṇī is a Sanskrit term which comes from the root _dhṛi_, meaning “to hold.” In Buddhist phraseology, it is a collection, sometimes short, sometimes long, of exclamatory sentences which are not translated into other languages. It is not therefore at all intelligible when it is read by the monks as it is done in the Chinese and Japanese monasteries. But it is supposed to “hold” in it in some mysterious way something that is most meritorious and has the power to keep evil ones away. Later, dharanis and mantrams have grown confused with one another.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 105
But it is only after such pain and turbulence that all the internal impurities are purged and one is born with quite a new outlook on life. It is strange that Zen grows intelligible when these mental struggles are gone through. But the fact is that Zen is an experience actual and personal, and not a knowledge to be gained by analysis or comparison. “Do not talk poetry except to a poet; only the sick know how to sympathise with the sick.” This explains the whole situation.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1941
The philosophy of the Prajñāpāramitā can never precede Zen, but must always follow it. Buddhist scholars like those at the time of Dharma are too apt to identify teaching and life, theory and experience, description and fact. When this confusion is allowed to grow, Zen Buddhism will cease to yield an intelligent and satisfactory interpretation.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 548
“As on a crag, on crest of mountain standing, A man might watch the people far below, E’en so do thou, O Widsom fair, ascending, O Seer of all, the terraced heights of Truth, Look down, from grief released, upon the nations Sunken in grief, oppressed with birth and age. Arise, thou Hero! Conqueror in the battle! Thou freed from debt! Lord of the pilgrim band! Walk the world o’er, and sublime and blessed Teacher! Teach us the Truth; there are who’ll understand.”
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1634
Says Christ, “When thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth; that thine alms may be in secret.” This is a “secret virtue” of Buddhism. But when he goes on to say that “thy Father who seeth in secret shall recompense thee,” there we see a deep cleavage between Buddhism and Christianity.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 128
Next I have tried to write a history of Zen in China after Bodhi-Dharma, who is the real author of the school. Zen was quietly matured and transmitted by the five successive patriarchs so-called after the passing of the first propagator from India. When Hui-nêng, the sixth patriarch, began to teach the gospel of Zen Buddhism, it was no more Indian but thoroughly Chinese, and what we call Zen now in the form as we have it, dates from him.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 392
The error comes from not perceiving the truth that all things are empty (_śūnya_), uncreated (_anutpāda_), non-dualistic (_advaya_), and have no immutably individualistic characters (_niḥsvabhāvalakshaṇa_).
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 31
Love hitherto dormant deep in his heart lifts its head and causes a great commotion in it. For the love now stirred demands at once the assertion of the ego and its annihilation. Love makes the ego lose itself in the object it loves, and yet at the same time it wants to have the object as its own. This is a contradiction, and a great tragedy of life. This elemental feeling must be one of the divine agencies whereby man is urged to advance in his upward walk. God gives tragedies to perfect man.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1676
Every available opportunity was thus used intellectually to enlighten earnest seekers of the truth. These discourses, sermons, exhortations, and short pithy remarks so characteristic of Zen are recorded in its literature, the bulk of which indeed consists of nothing but these. While claiming to be above letters, Zen is filled with them, almost overfilled. Before giving some of such sermons, let me digress and say a few words about the Chinese language as the vehicle of Zen philosophy.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 993
But if one were really enlightened enough to take charge of the important position of spiritual leadership, could not a combined effort of master and pupil withstand all the opposition? Perhaps, even enlightenment could not stand against human passions so irrational and elemental. I cannot however help imagining an attempt on the part of the biographers of Hui-nêng at the dramatisation of the whole scene.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 851
When one, abandoning the false and embracing the true, and in simpleness of thought abides in _Pi-kuan_ 壁觀, one finds that there is neither selfhood nor otherness, that the masses and the worthies are of one essence, and firmly holds on to this belief and never moves away therefrom. He will not then be guided by any literary instructions, for he is in silent communion with the principle itself, free from conceptual discrimination, for he is serene and not-acting.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 127
While Zen, as it is, is no doubt the native product of the Chinese mind, the line of its development must be traced back to the personal experience of the Indian founder himself. Unless this is understood in connection with the psychological characteristics of the people, the growth of Zen among the Chinese Buddhists would be unintelligible. Zen is after all one of the Mahayana schools of Buddhism shorn of its Indian garb.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1953
[f101] These accounts, whether truly historical or not, concerning the controversy between the two leaders of Zen early in the T‘ang dynasty prove how heated was the rivalry between the North and the South. The _Sermons of the Sixth Patriarch_ (_Fa-pao-tan-ching_) itself appears as if written with the sole object of refuting the opponents of the “abrupt” school.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1666
When the spirit is all purged of its filth accumulated from time immemorial, it stands naked, with no raiments, with no trappings. It is now empty, free, genuine assuming its native authority. And there is a joy in this, not that kind of joy which is liable to be upset by its counterpart, grief, but an absolute joy which is “the gift of God,” which makes a man “enjoy good in all his labour,” and from which nothing can be taken, to which nothing can be put, but which shall stay for ever.
Essays in Zen Buddhism, passage 1902
[f51] Cakkhu literally means an eye. It is often found in combination with such terms as paññā (wisdom or reason), buddha, or samanta (all-round), when it means a faculty beyond ordinary relative understanding. As was elsewhere noticed, it is significant that in Buddhism, both Mahayana and Hinayana, seeing (_passato_) is so emphasised, and especially in this case the mention of an “eye” which sees directly into things never before presented to one’s mind is quite noteworthy. It is this cakkhu or paññā-cakkhu in fact that, transcending the conditionality of the Fourfold Noble Truth or the Chain of Origination, penetrates (_sacchikato_) into the very ground of consciousness, from which springs the opposition of subject and object.