Zen and Japanese Culture – Still Being Read 2010.03.10

Daisetz T. Suzuki.

Zen and Japanese Culture.

New York: Princeton University Press Bollingen Series #64, 1973. ISBN 0-691-01770-0.

Well, I have been continuing, albeit somewhat inconsistently, my reading Zen and Japanese Culture. It continues to fascinate, in a delicious pairing with Epictetus, and with C.G. Jung. Epictetus argues all that is important to live a happy (complete?) life is to willfully recognize those things in life over which we have the power of the will; Jung argues that the will is subject to the natural existence of the unconscious. Suzuki argues that the highest expression of Zen is to mindfully remove the mind, and to exist being an expression of capital 'N' nature! Hmmmmm. Seems like there are some philosophical hurdles here — which I am in the process of exploring. To begin that exploration I am writing out an example of each philosopher's philosophy, beginning with Suzuki.

Some may ask: How can the sword which implements the will to kill work out its function by itself without the willer's directive behind it? What originality, what creative work, can an inanimate mechanical tool be made to carry out all by itself? When a tool performs whatever function it is made to perform, can we say it has achieved something original? The point is this: When the sword is in the hands of a technician-swordsman skilled in its use, it is no more than an instrument with no mind of its own. What it does is done mechanically, and there is no myōyū discernible in it. 

Odd thought - this reminds me of the horse whisperer's comment about a 'dead' horse lacking spirit, on the episode 'The Dog Whisperer Meets the Horse Whisperer.' Suzuki continues:

But when the sword is held by the swordsman whose spiritual attainment is such that he holds it as though not holding it, it is identified with the man himself, it acquires a soul, it moves with all the subtleties which have been imbedded in him as a swordsman. The man emptied of all thoughts, all emotions originating in fear, all sense of insecurity, all desire to win, is not conscious of using the sword; both man and sword have turned into instruments in the hands, as it were, of the unconscious, and it is this unconscious that achieves wonders of creativity. It is here that swordplay becomes an art.

As the sword is not separated from the man, it is an extension of his arms and accordingly a part of his body. Furthermore, the body and the mind are not separated, as they are in the case of intellectualization. The mind and the body move in perfect unison,, with no interference from intellect or emotion. Even the distinction of subject and object is annihilated. The opponent's movements are not perceived as such and therefore the subject, so called, acts instinctually in response to what is presented to him. There is no deliberation on his part as to how to react. His unconscious automatically takes care of the whole situation (p146).

The last paragraph corresponds exactly with the Dog Whisperer's actions. He frequently comments that he is acting instinctively to what this particular dog presents to him as its particular course of treatment. Also, Suzuki's comment about the unconscious automatically taking care, reminds me tangentially of the submissive dog — it is instinctively acting as per the pack leader's mien and is happier to do it than to be the leader. And yet, it is not an act of unconsciousness, but one derived from consciously making the choice to not interfere with the natural instincts, to work with it. Again, I feel an intuitive link between TDW's comment that animals are striving to do something/anything in the service of their pack leader/master. This was strongly stated in the episode with the horse whisperer.


And, even more bizarrely, I am reminded of Krishna's admonishment to Arjuna, after Arjuna expressed reluctance to fight his relatives. Krishna pointed out that it would be unwise for him to turn away from his true nature, which is that of a warrior. Krishna's wisdom required that Arjuna fight his relatives, even if morally that was unwise, and to fight with is heart and soul and, if necessary, to kill them, because his fight was a right and just one. Arjuna refuses to fight against the greed destructiveness of his relatives, arguing that ...

The sins of men who violate the family 

undermines the constant laws

of caste and family duty
(1.41).

To which Krishna replied:

Look to your own duty;

do not tremble before it;

nothing is better for a warrior

than a battle of sacred duty
(2.31).

Odd connection of ideas. Stay tuned; I will be citing from Jung and from Epictetus.

Zen and Japanese Culture - Being Read 2009.11.10

There is some evocative and challenging writing in this book! Suzuki transcribes a letter written by a Zen abbot Takuan Sōhō (1573-1645) to Yagyū Tajima no Kami. Here's an interesting excerpt from that letter:

...

The mind is not to be treated like a cat tied to a string. The mind must be left to itself, utterly free to move about according to its own nature. Not to localize or partialize it is the end [goal] of spiritual training. When it is nowhere it is everywhere. When it occupies one tenth, it is absent in the other nine tenths. Let the swordsman discipline himself to have the mind go on its own way, instead of trying deliberately to confine it somewhere.

Suzuki comments.

The main thesis of Takuan's letter to Yagyū Tajima no Kami is almost exhausted in the passages translated more or less literally above. It consists in preserving the absolute fluidity of the mind (kokoru) by keeping it free from the intellectual deliberations and affective disturbances of any kind at all that may arise from Ignorance and Delusion. The fluidity of mind and Prajñā Immovable may appear contradictory, but in actual life they are identical. When you have one, you have the other, for the Mind in its suchness is at once movable and immovable, it is constantly flowing, never 'stopping' at any point, and yet there is in it a centre never subject to any kind of movement, remaining forever one and the same. The difficulty is how to identify this centre of immovability with its never-stopping movements themselves. Takuan advises the swordsman to solve the difficulty in the use of his sword as he actually stands against his opponent. The swordsman is thus made to be constantly faced with a logical contradiction. As long as he notices it, ,that is as long as he is logically minded, he finds his movements always hampered in one way or another — which is suki [literally means any space between two objects where something else can enter - a psychological or mental suki is created when a state of tension is relaxed - footnote16], and the enemy is sure to avail himself of it. Therefore, the swordsman cannot afford to indulge in idle intellectual employment when the other side is always on the alert to detect the slightest suki produced on your part. You cannot relax and yet keep the state of tension deliberately for any length of time. For this is what makes the mind 'stop' and lose its fluidity. How then can one have relaxation and tension simultaneously? Here is the same old contradiction, though presented in a different form (107-9).

What struck me as I was transcribing this — but which didn't when I first read it — is the caution it is suggesting

in our use of logic to solve living problems. Is it absolutely true that to be fully alive means living with a 'relaxed-tension' between two mutually opposed states? Hmmm. What does this mean for trying to solve, with intellectual logic only, problems with seemingly opposed solutions? My experience within a bureaucratic corporation is that the circumscribed logic of accountancy and MBAs that is being applied liberally is killing the company much like the medicine 'logic' of blood-letting killed Lord Byron. How did a friend put it? 'To save an airline, a consortium of accountants would look to reduce costs and so fire all the pilots and stop buying fuel.'

And it seems to me that this relates to one of the key principles in Jung's ideas about a healthy balanced life requires a reconciliation between the opposites via some kind of transcendent experience as described in Symbols of Transformation and elsewhere.

Just a thought.

Zen and Japanese Culture - Being Read 2009.10.08

Zen and Japanese Culture is turning out to be a fabulous read! And with near perfect synchronicity-petit timing! While writing a response to Tolstoy's essay berating Shakespeare as a hack writer — to understate Tolstoy as transcribed by Orwell — I came across in Zen language an amazing and colourful affirmation of my argument. And one that also affirmed George Orwell's chastisement of Tolstoy — even as Orwell with at best ambivalently praised Shakesepare. I came across Tolstoy's polemic via Orwell's response to it in Vol 2 of his collected short works. (I will be blogging this bit of doggeral when it's done.)

But even without it being a great supporting argument to my own perverse sense of things, it is a nice bit of writing to promote thoughtless thought.

4

There is a famous saying by one of the earlier masters of the T'ang dynasty, which declares that the Tao is no more than one's everyday life experience. When the master was asked what he meant by this, he replied, "When you are hungry you eat, when are are thirsty you drink, when you meet a friend you greet him'. This, some may think, is no more than animal instinct or social usage, and there is nothing that may be called moral, much less spiritual, in it. If we call it the Tao, some may think, what a cheap thing the Tao is after all!

Those who have not penetrated into the depths of our consciousness, including both the conscious and unconscious, are liable to hold such a mistaken notion as the one just cited. But we must remember that, if the Tao is something highly abstract transcending daily experiences, it will have nothing to do with the actualities of life. Life as we live it is not concerned with generalization. If ti were, the intellect would be everything, and the philosopher would be the wisest man. But, as Kierkegaard points out, the philosopher builds a fine palace, but he is doomed not to live in it — he has a shed for himself next door to what he constructed for others, including himself, to look at.

...

The Tao is really very much more than mere animal instinct and social usage, though those elements are also included in it. It is something deeply imbedded in every one of us, indeed in all beings sentient and non-sentient, and it requires something altogether different from so-called scientific analysis. It defies our intellectual pursuit because of being too concrete, too familiar, hence beyond definability. It is there confronting us, no doubt, but not obtrusively and threateningly, like Mount Everest to the mountain-climbers (11-2).

Zen and Japanese Culture - Begun 2009.09.30

What a great find!

Actually, I found this at the same time I found The Art of Living By Epictetus, A New Interpretation. The cover shown here is not of the edition I purchased.

Here is the book's publication details:

Daisetz T. Suzuki.

Zen and Japanese Culture.

New York: Princeton University Press Bollingen Series #64, 1973. ISBN 0-691-01770-0.

A previous owner, from the heartfelt inscription, gave it as a gift to a loved one:

To Lief

from my collection —

with Love, Joan, July 1990

This is a big book, beautifully filled with monochrome prints of Japanese art from the 8th to 18th century.

And it has some beautiful writing!

For example, in Suzuki's description of the Noh play 'Yama-Uba' he describes love:

... Yama-uba, literally 'the old woman of the mountains,' represents the principle of love secretly moving in every one of us. Usually we arre not conscious of it and are abusing it all of the time. Most of us imagine that love is something beautiful to look at, young, delicate, and charming. But in fact she is not, for she works hard, unnoticed by us and yet ungrudgingly; what we notice is the superficial result of her labour, and we think it beautiful — which is natural, for the work of love ought to be beautiful. But love, herself, like a hard-working peasant woman, looks rather worn out; from worrying about others her face is full of wrinkles, her hair is white. She has so many knotty problems presented for her solution. Her life is a series of pains, which, however, she gladly suffers. She travels from one end of the world to another, knowing no rest, no respite, no interruption ... (419-20).

And, to my great surprise and pleasure, he has included a couple of small extracts from Chuang-Tzu in a translation I haven't seen before, as well as many Zen stories. In particular I thoroughly enjoyed the 'Swordsman and the Cat' that a quick Google found transcribed on Menno Rubingh's website (that until now I did not know existed).

I am quite sure I won't be reading this book from cover to cover, but dipping into it, sipping it, allowing what ever synchronistic energies are extant on any particular moment in time guide my hand and eyes. And, oddly enough, I have already stumbled across an equivalency in Suzuki's description of Zen and the ideas of Constructive Living as presented by David K. Reynolds, and hence also The Dog Whisperer! Now that can't help but be an example of projecting into everything the idea that become fixated in the mind.

Zen is not necessarily against words, but it is well aware of the fact that they are always liable to detach themselves from realities and turn into conceptions. And this conceptualization is what Zen is against. ... Zen insists on handling the thing itself and not just empty abstractions. It is for this reason that Zen neglects reading or reciting Sūtras or engaging in discourse on abstract subjects. And this is a cause of Zen's appeal to men of action in the broadest sense of the term...(5).

Okay, the link might seem weak, but CL and TDW both advocate living in the moment, attending to what needs doing in the here and now without dw

elling on thoughts/remembrances of what was or fearing what might be.

And I also was pleased to see that Suzuki has included art

work by the famous Japanese swordsman, Miyamoto Musashi,

because I have delighted in his manual on the art of the

sword, called A Book of Five Rings, or, in Japanese script,

as calligraphed by Musashi,

Go Rin No Sho.