ZEN EXPLAINED IN WESTERN TERMS

***Following is a paper that I wrote and rewrote over a several-months-long period a few years ago. Finally I touched it up and turned it in as my final paper in a class at NYU taught by James Carse, an amazing man who was not only an excellent teacher but an excellent human being as well. I learned a great deal that semester, my first as a religious studies student at NYU. I've included his comments at the end more to ensure I have a copy of them in several places, but also to show that he really understood. I had at one point turned in this paper as a submission to a Philosophy Club journal that shall remain nameless, and the person in charge of the club and the journal sent it back with comments -- the person just didn't get it at all.
I highly recommend Carse's book Breakfast at the Victory: The Mysticism of Ordinary Experience about, well, life. Other books he's written are The Silence of God and an old one called Finite and Infinite Games which is about game playing and how important it is. Read Breakfast. Trust me on this. The publisher is HarperCollins (HarperSanFrancisco) and the ISBN is 0-06-251171-8.

Zen Mind
by Adam Levin
Brain, Mind and Soul
James Carse
New York University
Department of Religious Studies
Graduate School of Arts and Science
December 17, 1995

Zen Mind1

At the risk of engaging in meaningless chatter, this is
an attempt by a beginner to explain a little bit of Zen for the
Western mind. No-words do have an effect, but in the West we
sometimes need something else. Yün-men, I am sure, would
spare me sixty blows2 for this paper, but still
I persist. One day we all may truly understand, but until then,
here is my meaningless chatter. Do you understand? Yakity yakity
yakity.
Before a person studies Zen, mountains are mountains and waters
are waters; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains
are no longer mountains and waters are not waters; after enlightenment,
mountains are once again mountains and waters once again waters.
(Schiller 2)
The issue of Zen Buddhism with respect to the human mind
is a difficult one with which to deal. Ultimately, the Buddha
didn't answer speculative questions, preferring to deal with real
world, practical problems and solutions. At first Zen may seem
to be completely opposite rational, real world experience with
its paradoxical language and all the talk about emptiness and
no-thing-ness. In fact, Zen points directly down the path of true,
real understanding, and a true, undiluted, undeluded experience
of the universe.
Many laugh or shrug when approached with the idea of Zen.
In our time it has become a colloquialism for all that is paradoxical,
nonsequiturial or just plain strange: "I went to the phone
to call you, and the phone rang, and it was you! That's so Zen!"
Scientific circles ignore it, new age mystical circles embrace
it, and skeptical circles berate it. The philosophy and world-view
of "Zen" can apply to any religion, any philosophy,
and any science. But, what is Zen?
The question, "What is Zen?" is a difficult if
not impossible question to answer, just like the now infamous
Zen koan3, "What is Buddha?"4 And, as the answer, "Three
pounds of flax," shows, we have the answer right in front
of us. Perhaps the most frustrating and difficult answer is,
"What is not Buddha/Zen?" Like the beginning student,
we can get carried away with anatman -- not-self or emptiness
-- and immediately come to the conclusion that everything is Buddha,
all is One, and mountains are no longer mountains but everything.
Conversely, we can think that the emptiness of Zen Buddhism is
a nihilistic world-view in which nothing exists outside our own
perceptions, which are themselves sources of delusion. Where
can we really go from there? Perhaps only those who have reached
enlightenment know, because after enlightenment, mountains are
once again mountains. How so, if all is Buddha, or if everything
is nothing?
Buddhist teaching is full of the idea of emptiness. "All
is emptiness" is a statement that can be found in some of
the most important Buddhist writings. If all is emptiness, how
can all be Buddha? Is Buddha emptiness? Can emptiness be
anything? We feel, we see, and we "know" things exist,
so how can all be emptiness, unless we are not understanding what
Buddhists mean by emptiness.
Zen teachings point us toward emptiness and tell us that
there are several aspects to it, two of which are abstraction
and separation, or distinction. All is emptiness, nothing is
not-Buddha, because when we talk or think about anything, we are
only using references to the things of which we speak or
think. The abstractions, the references, which we use in our
words and thoughts are empty because they are not the objects
themselves. One might then ask, "Why is all emptiness if
we are only discussing abstractions?" We say all because
whenever we conceptualize, whenever we think about something --
anything -- we are abstracting. Everything in our minds is an
abstraction, not the thing. Paul Reps relates in story number
76, "The Stone Mind",
Hogen, a Chinese Zen teacher, lived alone in a small temple
in the country. One day four traveling monks appeared and asked
if they might make a fire in his yard to warm themselves.
While they were building the fire, Hogen heard them arguing
about subjectivity and objectivity. He joined them and said:
"There is a big stone. Do you consider it to be inside or
outside your mind?"
One of the monks replied: "From the Buddhist viewpoint
everything is an objectification of mind, so I would say that
the stone is inside my mind."
"Your head must feel very heavy," observed Hogen,
"if you are carrying around a stone like that in your mind."
(65)
Although the monk realizes that abstraction is part of the
cause of misunderstanding and delusion, he doesn't yet grasp the
other part of the equation. The monk's head hurts because he
misunderstands what Thich Nhat Hanh calls interbeing:
"Interbeing" is a word that is not in the dictionary
yet, but if we combine the prefix "inter-" with the
verb "to be," we have a new verb, inter-be. Without
a cloud [to bring rain], we cannot have paper, so...the cloud...and
the paper inter-are...
Looking even more deeply, we can see we are in [the paper]
too....when we look at a sheet of paper, [it] is part of our perception.
Your mind is in here and mine is also....You cannot point out
one thing that is not here--time, space, the earth, the rain,
the minerals in the soil, the sunshine, the cloud, the river,
the heat. Everything co-exists with this sheet of paper....You
cannot just be by yourself alone. You have to inter-be with every
other thing. (3-4)
The monk thinks that because abstractions are empty, and Zen
Buddhism points past them, that he and the rock must be one and
the same -- the rock is only in his head. The monk is not really
wrong, but he doesn't understand why the rock is in his
head, nor does he see that the rock is also in front of him on
the ground. The rock inter-is with the monk, and the reference
to the rock, the abstraction, is inside his head. He doesn't
realize that he and the rock inter-are. The rock cannot exist
by itself; it must inter-be. This leads somewhat directly5 to
the idea of emptiness. It is empty, but the question, again from
Thich Nhat Hanh, now is, "Empty of what?"
"To be empty is to be empty of something" (Hanh
8). So, of what is the rock empty? The answer, according to
Hanh, is that it is empty of a separate self, a separate identity
or existence. The rock is in our head because it must be -- it
must inter-be. It cannot be a rock all by itself. It
is distinct, yet it inter-is with us and everything else.
There is a Zen proverb, "Everything the same, everything
distinct" (Schiller 55). All entities have the property
of interbeing, and they all have the property of being distinct
entities. Therefore, they are all the same in the sense that
they inter-are and are categorized, and they are also each a distinct
individual unit. The Zen saying, "Lovely snowflakes, they
fall nowhere else!" (Schiller 54) shows this idea. Is the
observer of the snowflakes really observing the only flakes in
the world? Obviously not. The observer is saying that these
particular flakes, those that he sees now, are distinct. They
cannot fall anywhere else because each is an individual entity,
but we label them all snowflakes. However, we must remember that
although they are distinct snowflakes, they also inter-are with
everything else. Zen is full of these seeming6 paradoxes to help
point out the relationship between entities themselves and the
references to them, and to show that all distinct, individual
things inter-are with everything else. With these seemingly paradoxical
problems, Zen Masters attempt to enable us to remove the duality
of separateness versus inter-existence -- there is no distinction
between the two: everything the same, everything distinct.
Other Zen koans, such as, "Why can't the person of great
strength lift up a leg?" (Aitken 133) and, "Why is it
that a person of great strength does not use the tongue in speaking?"
(Aitken 135) help us further to understand and to remove distinctions.
The strength is not physical, but rather is the strength of realization.
As Robert Aitken Roshi7 discusses in his book, The Gateless
Barrier,
"The person of great strength" is strong in realization
and in integrating realization into daily life. Athletes provide
an interesting analogy, and their writings can be very interesting
for the Zen student. When an athlete is "up," it is
as though he or she were floating, as well as driving hard. Hands
rise spontaneously to catch the ball, legs work naturally to run.
It is as though the player is in a dream....
What is great strength? I'm not sure I can put it in words.
It rings like a fine bell, however, and there is no mistaking
it. What is great weakness? It is a return to categorical thinking,
to summarizing, to generalizing, to abstracting. (133-134)
Although Zen itself is an abstraction -- it is empty of a
separate self -- we may use it to help us understand that everything
inter-is, but that everything is not the same.
Those who have attained enlightenment know it is not they alone,
as separate and distinct individuals, who speak or lift their
legs. Who, then, is it? It is everyone, everything.
Thus, not only is a name empty, but the entire notion of
"self" is actually empty of a separate self! The leg
is lifted, but no one lone, distinct being is lifting it. How
is this possible? Because "the person" doing the lifting
inter-is with everything else. My concept of being, my "self"
(that is, my ego, "I") is merely a reference to me,
and it is empty of a separate, individual identity -- it must
be, or rather inter-be -- or it wouldn't exist at all. This is
why a key teaching in Buddhism is losing your ego; that ego is
an abstraction that refers to you, and is empty. You must lose
your ego to understand yourself and the universe. Your ego creates
a distinction between you and that which is other, and so it separates
you from those things with which you inter-are.
You don't, however, want to "lose yourself" in
the sense of losing your identity. The idea is not to become
"self-less" nor even to become "not-self".
The Buddha said,
He who thinks that upon enlightenment there is self is wrong.
If he thinks there is not-self, he is likewise wrong. If he
thinks there is neither self nor not-self, he is wrong. And if
he thinks there are both self and not-self, he is still wrong.
Aren't these the only four possible answers? No. If you
are caught up in self and not-self, you have not attained enlightenment,
you have abstracted, categorized, and separated the self. When
"self" and "not-self" are meaningless as separate
things, when they no longer are distinct, when they inter-are,
then you have it.
If abstraction is so wrong, and all language and thought
are merely abstraction, you might be inclined to say that we should
shut ourselves up and stop communicating -- stop thinking -- if
there are so many problems with it. To understand Zen, you say,
it seems that one must give up rational thinking. Zen Masters
tell us to "stop thinking", don't they? One must throw
out logical precepts and formal constructs and ignore the tools
which we use extensively in our study of the universe. Thus,
Zen, along with the rest of the universe and with our tools to
describe and understand it, is rendered completely useless to
us because of the absence of any way to interpret and process
it, for we can only understand things using logic. To that I
must reply, "Ah, so des'ka?"8
Perhaps there is something that we are missing. In fact,
it seems obvious that either Zen is a load of rubbish or those
of us who have not had satori9 "just don't get it."
How can we understand Zen? How can we understand anything?
Why do we face so many problems in finding the meaning of Zen?
This last question, in fact, gets to the heart of the matter.
It is exactly meanings that are the point of Zen. How is it
that humans understand things? The brain, working in complex
ways, receives information through the senses and processes it.
Much of the time, we are receiving information that is removed
from the actual referent (as mathematical symbols or words in
a book). We receive information which is already abstract (words,
numbers, etc.), and we must process it to understand the thing
to which the word or symbol refers. When we do experience something
(that is, we receive not abstract information but concrete sense
perceptions), the brain processes it, abstracts it, categorizes
it, and files it away. One person can talk about a certain "tree"
and describe it in detail, but another may not fully understand
the experience of it until he comes in contact with that particular
tree. A person who knows the abstract idea "tree" would
understand in part, categorizing this tree with other trees, but
that does not bring the second person to a complete understanding
of the specific tree in question.10
Some experiments in neuro-psychology are very relevant to
a discussion of Zen, mind, and abstraction. It seems that when
the corpus callosum -- the jumble of fibers connecting the left
and right hemispheres of the brain -- is severed (a last-resort
surgery for epileptics), several interesting phenomena develop.11
If a patient is blindfolded and told to feel something with her
left hand (controlled by the right brain), she knows exactly what
it does but cannot name it. She can describe the object in detail,
including what color it ought to be. With her right hand, she
can label it but isn't sure about anything else, like what its
use may be. The left brain contains the abstraction, the label,
whereas the right brain contains the actual experiential information
-- what an object feels like, what it looks like, what it's used
for, etc. The experiential information filed away in a person's
right brain cannot be communicated. So, from the tree example
above, the second person could not possibly understand the first
person's experience of "tree" without experiencing the
exact same tree as the first person (except, of course, that the
second may not agree with the first person's subjective understanding,
but would at least be able to understand how the first person
arrived at that understanding).
Does Zen then suggest that abstraction is bad? No. Zen
is not a set of criteria for judgment. It is another way of looking
at the universe that, when added to what we already have, gives
us the most complete look at the world around us. Added to and
not in place of? Absolutely. When our understanding is only
by way of abstractions, we are at the very beginning. A mountain
is a mountain because I call it a mountain, even if I have never
climbed one. As I progress, I replace my concept of mountain
with Zen, and the mountain is no longer "mountain" and
the waters are no longer "waters". There is no way
to describe them, but I experience them and they become a part
of me. I climb the mountain, I experience it, and I feel it become
part of myself, filed away in my right brain. Once I truly understand,
then "mountain" is in fact a mountain, although I know
that the mountain by itself simply is, and I call it "mountain"
-- that link between the left and right hemispheres has been completely
controlled and understood.
A parallel can be drawn to learning languages. As a student
whose primary language is English learns Latin, she must translate
the Latin words one by one into English to understand them. Then,
her brain links the English word with the object to which it refers.
However, as she continues learning the language, new associations
in her brain are built slowly. Eventually, the Latin words have
direct links to their respective objects, and using the language
becomes much easier. Zen requires us to re-evaluate those links
and make as direct a connection as possible to the objects themselves.
In fact, mysticism's "becoming one with the object"
is doing exactly that: removing abstractions and understanding
interbeing.
Children begin their life journey in a world without abstractions.
Scientists believe that children don't gain the ability to abstract
until several years after their birth. Thus, in the beginning
they are in an ideal position, simply experiencing everything.
They can't communicate it, however -- they have no tools for
doing so. Once they grow older, they are taught abstractions
and how to abstract, and this allows them to communicate with
the rest of the world. However, this can cause them to lose touch
with that experiential form of understanding. Zen is the attempt
to get back to that realm in which we can communicate nothing
and don't need to. That is why Zen is ultimately nothing: the
thing that is no thing, the formless form.
This is primarily what makes Zen so difficult to talk about.
It goes beyond abstractions to the thing, and in talking about
the thing, one abstracts. By definition, then, one cannot "talk"
about Zen12 -- one must experience it, and so we engage in zazen,
meditation which the Zen Roshis describe as "just sitting".
The enlightenment, the realization, is that everything is real,
everything is distinct, and everything inter-is. When we talk
about anything, we must realize that we are separating ourselves
from it. 'A' is 'A' and can only be 'A', regardless of how it
is referenced. However, once we reference 'A', we have removed
ourselves from it, and that reference is empty unless others have
as complete an understanding as we do, and we understand the non-duality
of interbeing and distinction.
Zen is a "middle way", and we must recognize it
as such. Abstractions are necessary, and that is why even the
Masters know mountains are mountains. Zen is one indistinct part
of a whole paradigm of understanding -- the most complete experience
of reality. With only one of either abstraction or experience,
one's understanding is only partial. The goal of Zen is to understand
reality completely by experiencing it as well as categorizing
and abstracting it. It could be said that Zen's motto is, "Live
in reality, not in a model." The abstractions that exist
in our brains are models for the reality around us. Through Zen
we can become part of that reality and therefore understand it
fully. Through the abstractions that we can then use after
we understand reality, we can communicate more fully than we ever
could.
The connection between the right brain, which is responsible
for filing away the pure experiential information from our senses,
and the left brain, which is responsible for immediately processing,
abstracting and categorizing that data, is a delicate balance.
The lack of communication between the two hemispheres of the
brain in a subject with a severed corpus callosum clearly demonstrates
the important connection between experience and abstraction.
It is both of these together that utilize our entire brain, and
therefore there should exist a balance between the two forms of
knowledge, abstract and experiential.
In Zen, one is not asked, nor required, to stop half of one's
brain from working. What we ideally want to do is to take control
of our automatic abstraction process. By doing so, we can more
fully understand the objects to which abstractions refer -- the
universe.
To abandon Zen is to lose all to which our symbols refer,
and that leaves us with emptiness -- only abstractions. To abandon
the abstract completely for direct experience gives us everything
-- but we can do nothing with it. We must form the balance to
understand fully.
It is all well and good for me to say this, and some people
upon reading this may say, "Aha! Of course! Now I understand."13
I promise you this: if it were that easy, Zen Masters would not
have spent so many centuries beating students with sticks and
yelling "Mu!" at them, and students would not have spent
so many long years of zazen trying to understand it. In order
to understand Zen, one must transcend the abstract notions of
what Zen is (though only after understanding those abstract ideas)
and just do it. Only then can one fully understand that things
are -- and inter-are -- and that's all. Through zazen, one meditates
on this idea of experiencing without abstracting. To take meditation
even further, if one can be in that meditative state constantly,
then one is fully experiencing and understanding one's surroundings.
Thinking about not-thinking can only be accomplished without
thinking (Aitken). This does not mean one should stop all brain
activity (if we did, we'd be dead!) -- only that one should take
control of that automatic abstraction and categorization process.
Meditation is that attempt to slow and control the abstraction
process. It is not meant to replace thinking, but rather to balance
out the constant flitting of the mind and enhance the experience
of life.
Zen attempts to put us in perfect contact with the rest of
the universe -- with reality. It doesn't put us in contact with
our idea of the universe or our concept of reality.
It puts us in contact with that which is the universe,
that which is reality, so that we can more fully understand
our ideas, concepts and references to the universe and to the
one ultimate reality -- that everything inter-is.
ENDNOTES

1 Although the books in the bibliography were
the particular sources used for this paper, the koans and stories
within actually appear in many, many collections of Zen teachings.
I particularly recommend Robert Aitken's The Gateless
Barrier and Paul Reps' Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. The first
is a collection of Zen koans first published by the Master Wu-men.
Aitken Roshi has translated the koans and Wu-men's comments,
and has added his own wonderful and enlightening commentary, giving
just enough information to make us wonder, but not giving away
the essence of Zen. The second book is a compilation of three
smaller books, 101 Zen Stories, another version of The
Gateless Gate, and a collection called 10 Bulls. The
Schiller book, The Little Zen Companion, is a small compilation
of stories, koans and sayings from Zen Masters of the past and
present, from East and West, without any commentary except for
a few explanations of terms and past Masters.
Back

2 Aitken Roshi in The Gateless Barrier,
page 100, has:
Tung-shan came to see Yün-men. Yün-men asked him,
"Where were you most recently?"
Tung-shan said, "At Ch'a-tu."
Yün-men said, "Where were you during the summer?"
Tung-shan said, "At Pao-tzu Monastery in Hu-nan."
Yün-men said, "When did you leave there?"
Tung-shan said, "August 25th."
Yün-men said, "I spare you sixty blows."
[Tung-shan does not understand where he was at fault.]
Why, if he was not punished, was he at fault? The answer
is that he was, in fact, punished. By not receiving blows, which
are experiential by nature, he was unable to reach satori,
or enlightenment. As will be seen later, that experience is at
the heart of Zen, which is why in many stories and koans one reaches
enlightenment after a traumatic experience such as a blow. Had
he been given the blows, he may (and probably would) have had
some sort of satori. He was not far enough along and wasn't
ready yet.

While I have your attention in these endnotes, I'd like to
relate another story from the forward by Paul Reps to his book,
Zen Flesh, Zen Bones:

The first Zen Patriarch, Bodhidharma, brought Zen to China
from India in the sixth century. According to his biography recorded
in the year 1004 by the Chinese teacher Dogen, after nine years
in China Bodhidharma wished to go home and gathered his disciples
about him to test their apperception.
Dofuku said: "In my opinion, truth is beyond affirmation
or negation, for this is the way it moves."
Bodhidharma replied: "You have my skin."
The nun Soji said: "In my view, it is like Ananda's
sight of the Buddha-land--seen once and forever."
Bodhidharma answered: "You have my flesh."
Doiku said: "The four elements of light, airiness, fluidity,
and solidity are empty [i.e. inclusive] and the five skandhas
are no-things. In my opinion, no-thing [i.e. spirit] is reality."
Bodhidharma commented: "You have my bones."
Finally, Eka bowed before the master--and remained silent.
Bodhidharma said: "You have my marrow."
Old Zen was so fresh it became treasured and remembered.
Here are fragments of its skin, flesh, bones, but not its marrow--never
found in words.

Indeed, Zen's marrow cannot be found in words.
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3 The Little Zen Companion has,
The Koan:
Perhaps no aspect of Zen is as puzzling and yet intriguing
to Westerners as the koan. Or as misunderstood. A koan is not
a riddle, nor is it a paradox designed to shock the mind. Instead
it is an integral part of a system honed over centuries to help
bring the student to a direct realization of ultimate reality.
Taken from the Japanese ko ("public") and
an ("proposition"), the koan can be a question,
an excerpt from the sutras, an episode in the life of an ancient
Master, a word exchanged in a mondo, or any other fragment of
teaching. There are some 1,700 traditional koans in existence.
A mondo is a dialogue about Buddhism or an existential
problem among Masters or between a Master and student.
Back

4 The question and the answers that follow appear
in most books on Buddhism, including those listed in the bibliography.
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5 Does anything really lead directly to anything
else in Zen? Well, yes, everything, in fact!
Back

6 "Seeming" because, upon closer inspection,
the paradox melts away and we are left with something which makes
perfect sense. As mentioned in note 3, they really aren't paradoxes
at all. The challenge of Zen is in seeing this.
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7 The Little Zen Companion has, "Roshi
-- a venerable teacher, whether a monk or layperson, woman or
man."
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8 Japanese for, "is that so?" In
The Gateless Barrier,
A young woman whose parents owned a food store lived near
Munan. Suddenly, without any warning, her parents discovered
she was with child. She would not confess who the man was, but
after much harassment at last named Munan.
In great anger the parents went to the master with the accusation.
"Is that so?" was all he would say.
After the child was born it was brought to Munan. By this
time he had lost his reputation, which did not trouble him, but
he took very good care of the child. He obtained milk from his
neighbors and everything else the little one needed.
A year later the young woman could stand it no longer. She
told her parents the truth -- that the real father of the child
was a young man who worked in the fish market.
The mother and father of the young woman at once went to
bring the child home. They apologized profusely to Munan and
asked his forgiveness.
Munan only said, "Is that so?"

Aitken Roshi tells us,

In Japanese, "Is that so?" is Ah, so des'ka?
It is not actually a question at all but the mildest kind of
temporizing [that is, complying with the occasion and yielding
to prevailing opinion]. It carries no defensiveness, or projection,
and is repeated on every possible occasion. Munan was temporizing.
"Let's see how this comes out," he might have been
thinking. "Meantime, here is a little mouth to feed."
He absorbed the responsibility, and if that involved blame from
others, well, that was their problem.

In the West we tend to use temporizing phrases as a stall
tactic, making others uncomfortable or suspicious. In the East,
the flavor of temporizing is much different. It is considered
respectful and polite to avoid aggression, confrontation and accusation.
One is not trying to contradict the other -- rather, one tries
to give the other a chance to explain, and accepts that explanation
instead of arguing.

It is an admirable quality to be able to accept what life
gives you without fighting it -- to be so at peace with the world
that whatever happens can be taken in stride. One shouldn't take
this too far, of course (justice must be served in the case of
wrongdoing), but we can certainly learn something from Munan's
example.
Back

9 That is, enlightenment.
Back

10 This, of course, ignores the idea of subjective
experience. Obviously both observers of the tree won't have exactly
the same experience of the tree. However, the second person
must have a more full understanding of the tree after experiencing
it, and can at least understand the first person's point of view,
even if the second person doesn't agree with it.
Back

11 The following information is taken from "The
Infinite Voyage" which aired on the Discovery Channel on
Wednesday, February 22, 1995.
Back

12 Which made it awfully difficult to write
this discourse!
Back

13 In fact, if you think you understand it now,
go back and read this paper again.
Back
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Aitken, Robert. The Gateless Barrier: the Wu-men Kuan.
San Francisco: The North Point Press, 1991.
Hanh, Thich Nhat. The Heart of Understanding. Berkeley:
Parallax Press, 1988.
Reps, Paul. Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. New York: Anchor
Books, 1989.
Schiller, David. The Little Zen Companion. New York:
Workman Publishing, 1994.