Tuesday 22 October 2024

8:10 am

Just like All-One when taken as the same as All-is-One,

so too is I-Mind to be taken as the same as I-am-Mind.
The word Mind is this context is the same mind that is
ordinary in the Zen Buddhist koan that identifies
ordinary mind as the proper way (the Dau). That koan
is intended as an aid for students of Buddhism who’ve
become committed practitioners of the art of seeing
into the self-nature1. If philosophers love knowledge/
wisdom then Zen practitioners love
being/everything/all (where “being” means the nature
of their own being). Parmenides was a bona fide
philosopher who wrote a poem Ihave re-entitled “The
Nature of Being” that he intended as an aid for
students of philosophy to discover that what can know
and what can be are one and the same - which is the
same as the All Oneness (Jan Assmann’s) of the
German post-Kantian hen-kai-pan (Cudworth’s
pantheistic 1678 English language original was hen-to-
pan) of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel.

If there be anything that qualifies as paradigmatic

incommens-urability then I suggest it is perhaps the
mind-body dialectic. Yes. Dilaectic rather than hard-
problem. Right away I can already see that the way
that the so-called “hard-problem” is usually raised, is
fraudulent due to the uncritical acceptance of the
dogmatc belief that Ray Tallis calls “neuromania” 2 .

Jerry Fodor says much the same in “Headaches have

themselves”, his 2007 LRB review of Galen Strawson’s
(editor) 2006 book “Consciousness and Its Place in
Nature: Does Physicalism Entail Panpsychism” 3 .

-fin-
1

Zen Buddhism
Selected Writings of D.T. Suzuki
edited by William Barrett
1956

Chapter 1
THE SENSE OF ZEN

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.

This body of ours is something like an electric battery in which a mysterious power latently lies. When this power is not
properly brought into operation, it either grows mouldy and withers away or is warped and expresses itself abnormally.
It is the object of Zen, therefore, to save us from going crazy or being crippled. This is what I mean by freedom, giving
free play to all the creative and benevolent impulses inherently lying in our hearts. Generally, we are blind to this fact,
that we are in possession of all the necessary faculties that will make us happy and loving towards one another. All the
struggles that we see around us come from this ignorance. Zen, therefore, wants us to open a "third eye," as Buddhists
call it, to the hitherto undreamed-of region shut away from us through our own ignorance. When the cloud of
ignorance disappears, the infinity of the heavens is manifested, where we see for the first time into the nature of our
own being. We now know the signification of life, we know that it is not blind striving, nor is it a mere display of brutal
forces, but that while we know not definitely what the ultimate purport of life is, there is something in it that makes us
feel infinitely blessed in the living of it and remain quite contented with it in all its evolution, without raising questions
or entertaining pessimistic doubts.

When we are full of vitality and not yet awakened to the knowledge of life, we cannot comprehend the seriousness of
all the conflicts involved in it which are apparently for the moment in a state of quiescence. But sooner or later the time
will come when we have to face life squarely and solve its most perplexing and most pressing riddles. Says Confucius,
"At fifteen my mind was directed to study, and at thirty I knew where to stand." This is one of the wisest sayings of the
Chinese sage. Psychologists will all agree to this statement of his; for, generally speaking, fifteen is about the age youth
begins to look around seriously and inquire into the meaning of life. All the spiritual powers until now securely hidden
in the subconscious part of the mind break out almost simultaneously. And when this breaking out is too precipitous
and violent, the mind may lose its balance more or less permanently; in fact, so many cases of nervous prostration
reported during adolescence are chiefly due to this loss of the mental equilibrium. In most cases the effect is not very
grave and the crisis may pass without leaving deep marks. But in some characters, either through their inherent
tendencies or on account of the influence of environment upon their plastic constitution, the spiritual awakening stirs
them up to the very depths of their personality. This is the time you will be asked to choose between the "Everlasting
No" and the "Everlasting Yea." This choosing is what Confucius means by "study"; it is not studying the classics, but
deeply delving into the mysteries of life.

Normally, the outcome of the struggle is the "Everlasting Yea," or "Let thy will be done"; for life is after all a form of
affirmation, however negatively it might be conceived by the pessimists. But we cannot deny the fact that there are
many things in this world which will turn our too sensitive minds towards the other direction and make us exclaim with
Andreyev in "The Life of Man": "I curse everything that you have given. I curse the day on which I was born. I curse the
day on which I shall die. I curse the whole of my life. I fling everything back at your cruel face, senseless Fate! Be
accursed, be forever accursed! With my curses I conquer you. What else can you do to me? . . . With my last thought I
will shout into your asinine ears: Be accursed, be accursed!" This is a terrible indictment of life, it is a complete negation
of life, it is a most dismal picture of the destiny of man on earth. "Leaving no trace" is quite true, for we know nothing
of our future except that we all pass away, including the very earth from which we have come. There are certainly
things justifying pessimism.
Life, as most of us live it, is suffering. There is no denying the fact. As long as life is a form of struggle, it cannot be
anything but pain. Does not a struggle mean the impact of two conflicting forces, each trying to get the upper hand of
the other? If the battle is lost, the outcome is death, and death is the fearsomest thing in the world. Even when death is
conquered, one is left alone, and the loneliness is sometimes more unbearable than the struggle itself. One may not be
conscious of all this, and may go on indulging in those momentary pleasures that are afforded by the senses. But this
being unconscious does not in the least alter the facts of life. However insistently the blind may deny the existence of
the sun, they cannot annihilate it. The tropical heat will mercilessly scorch them, and if they do not take proper care
they will all be wiped away from the surface of the earth.

The Buddha was perfectly right when he propounded his "Fourfold Noble Truth," the first of which is that life is pain.
Did not everyone of us come to this world screaming and in a way protesting? To come out into cold and prohibitive
surroundings after a soft, warm motherly womb was surely a painful incident, to say the least. Growth is always
attended with pain. Teething is more or less a painful process. Puberty is usually accompanied by a mental as well as a
physical disturbance. The growth of the organism called society is also marked with painful cataclysms, and we are at
present witnessing one of its birth-throes. We may calmly reason and say that this is all inevitable, that inasmuch as
every reconstruction means the destruction of the old regime, we cannot help going through a painful operation. But
this cold intellectual analysis does not alleviate whatever harrowing feelings we have to undergo. The pain heartlessly
inflicted on our nerves is ineradicable. Life is, after all arguing, a painful struggle.

This, however, is providential. For the more you suffer the deeper grows your character, and with the deepening of
your character you read the more penetratingly into the secrets of life. All great artists, all great religious leaders, and
all great social reformers have come out of the intensest struggles which they fought bravely, quite frequently in tears
and with bleeding hearts. Unless you eat your bread in sorrow, you cannot taste of real life. Mencius is right when he
says that when Heaven wants to perfect a great man it tries him in every possible way until he comes out triumphantly
from all his painful experiences.

To me Oscar Wilde seems always posing or striving for an effect; he may be a great artist, but there is something in him
that turns me away from him. Yet he exclaims in his De Profundis: "During the last few months I have, after terrible
difficulties and struggles, been able to comprehend some of the lessons hidden in the heart of pain. Clergymen and
people who use phrases without wisdom sometimes talk of suffering as a mystery. It is really a revelation. One discerns
things one never discerned before. One approaches the whole of history from a different standpoint." You will observe
here what sanctifying effects his prison life produced on his character. If he had had to go through a similar trial in the
beginning of his career, he might have been able to produce far greater works than those we have of him at present.

We are too ego-centred. The ego-shell in which we live is the hardest thing to outgrow. We seem to carry it all the time
from childhood up to the time we finally pass away. We are, however, given many chances to break through this shell,
and the first and greatest of them is when we reach adolescence. This is the first time the ego really comes to recognize
the "other." I mean the awakening of sexual love. An ego, entire and undivided, now begins to feel a sort of split in
itself. 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. The greatest bulk of literature ever produced in this world is but the harping on the same
string of love, and we never seem to grow weary of it. But this is not the topic we are concerned with here. What I want
to emphasize in this connection is this: that through the awakening of love we get a glimpse into the infinity of things,
and that this glimpse urges youth to Romanticism or to Rationalism according to his temperament and environment
and education.

When the ego-shell is broken and the "other" is taken into its own body, we can say that the ego has denied itself or
that the ego has taken its first steps towards the infinite. Religiously, here ensues an intense struggle between the finite
and the infinite, between the intellect and a higher power, or, more plainly, between the flesh and the spirit. This is the
problem of problems that has driven many a youth into the hands of Satan. 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. Books are read, lectures are attended, sermons are greedily taken in, and various religious
exercises or disciplines are tried. And naturally Zen too comes to be inquired into.

How does Zen solve the problem of problems?

In the first place, Zen proposes its solution by directly appealing to facts of personal experience and not to book-
knowledge. The nature of one's own being where apparently rages the struggle between the finite and the infinite is to
be grasped by a higher faculty than the intellect. For Zen says it is the latter that first made us raise the question which
it could not answer by itself, and that therefore it is to be put aside to make room for something higher and more
enlightening. For the intellect has a peculiarly disquieting quality in it. Though it raises questions enough to disturb the
serenity of the mind, it is too frequently unable to give satisfactory answers to them. It upsets the blissful peace of
ignorance and yet it does not restore the former state of things by offering something else. Because it points out
ignorance, it is often considered illuminating, whereas the fact is that it disturbs, not necessarily always bringing light
on its path. It is not final, it waits for something higher than itself for the solution of all the questions it will raise
regardless of consequences. If it were able to bring a new order into the disturbance and settle it once for all, there
would have been no need for philosophy after it had been first systematized by a great thinker, by an Aristotle or by a
Hegel. But the history of thought proves that each new structure raised by a man of extraordinary intellect is sure to be
pulled down by the succeeding ones. This constant pulling down and building up is all right as far as philosophy itself is
concerned; for the inherent nature of the intellect, as I take it, demands it and we cannot put a stop to the progress of
philosophical inquiries any more than to our breathing. But when it comes to the question of life itself we cannot wait
for the ultimate solution to be offered by the intellect, even if it could do so. We cannot suspend even for a moment our
life-activity for philosophy to unravel its mysteries. Let the mysteries remain as they are, but live we must. The hungry
cannot wait until a complete analysis of food is obtained and the nourishing value of each element is determined. For
the dead the scientific knowledge of food will be of no use whatever. Zen therefore does not rely on the intellect for the
solution of its deepest problems.

By personal experience it is meant to get at the fact at first hand and not through any intermediary, whatever this may
be. Its favourite analogy is: to point at the moon a finger is needed, but woe to those who take the finger for the moon;
a basket is welcome to carry our fish home, but when the fish are safely on the table why should we eternally bother
ourselves with the basket? Here stands the fact, and let us grasp it with the naked hands lest it should slip away--this is
what Zen proposes to do. As nature abhors a vacuum, Zen abhors anything coming between the fact and ourselves.
According to Zen there is no struggle in the fact itself such as between the finite and the infinite, between the flesh and
the spirit. These are idle distinctions fictitiously designed by the intellect for its own interest. Those who take them too
seriously or those who try to read them into the very fact of life are those who take the finger for the moon. When we
are hungry we eat; when we are sleepy we lay ourselves down; and where does the infinite or the finite come in here?
Are not we complete in ourselves and each in himself? Life as it is lived suffices. It is only when the disquieting intellect
steps in and tries to murder it that we stop to live and imagine ourselves to be short of or in something. Let the intellect
alone, it has its usefulness in its proper sphere, but let it not interfere with the flowing of the life-stream. If you are at
all tempted to look into it, do so while letting it flow. The fact of flowing must under no circumstances be arrested or
meddled with; for the moment your hands are dipped into it, its transparency is disturbed, it ceases to reflect your
image which you have had from the very beginning and will continue to have to the end of time.
Introduction
Essays in Zen Buddhism: First series 1927
D.T. Suzuki

About The Book

“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,” writes D. T. Suzuki. In fact, until 1927, when he published the first volume of his Essays in Zen Buddhism, the
Western world had little knowledge of this unique school of spiritual development which uses many systems of
philosophy, psychology, and ethics in its own technique for self-understanding and self-enlightenment.

Included in this volume are his famous study, “Enlightenment and Ignorance,” a chapter on “Practical Methods of Zen
Instruction,” the essays “On Satori—The Revelation of a New Truth in Zen Buddhism” and “History of Zen Buddhism
from Bodhidharma to Hui-Nêng (Yeno),” and his commentary on “The Ten Cow-herding Pictures” which have long been
used in Zen to illustrate the stages of spiritual progress.
2

the appeal to the brain,

as revealed through the latest science,
to explain our behaviour

You are your brain

we are our brains

the mind or soul is housed in the brain

the thesis that every aspect of my consciousness

is in my brain
and that that organ
is the seat of my consciousness

In a way, I’m quite sympathetic to all that. I think it’s strictly true that we can’t, as things stand now, so much as
imagine the solution of the hard problem. The revisions of our concepts and theories that imagining a solution will
eventually require are likely to be very deep and very unsettling. (That’s assuming what’s by no means obvious: that
we are smart enough to solve it at all.) Philosophers used to think (some still do) that a bit of analytical tidying up
would make the hard problem go away. But they were wrong to think that. There is hardly anything that we may not
have to cut loose from before the hard problem is through with us.
Headaches have themselves
Jerry Fodor
Review of Consciousness and Its Place in Nature: Does Physicalism Entail Panpsychism? by Galen Strawson et al.
October 2006
LRB Vol. 29 No. 10 · 24 May 2007