The Way of Zen - Alan Watts [0]
AVAILABLE FROM VINTAGE
Behold the Spirit
Beyond Theology
The Book
Cloud-Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown
Does It Matter?
In My Own Way
Nature, Man and Woman
Psychotherapy East and West
The Supreme Identity
This Is It
Copyright © 1957 by Pantheon Books Inc.
Copyright renewed 1985 by Mary Jane Watts
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American
Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in
Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally
published in the United States in hardcover by Pantheon Books, a division
of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1957. First published
in paperback by Vintage Books in 1989.
The Library of Congress cataloged
the first Vintage Books edition as follows:
Watts, Alan, 1915–1973.
The way of Zen = [Zendō] / Alan W. Watts — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Parallel title in Japanese characters.
Reprint. Originally published: New York: Pantheon, 1957.
eISBN: 978-0-307-78434-6
1. Zen Buddhism. I. Title. II. Title: Zendō.
[BQ9265.4.W38 1989]
294.3′927—dcl9 88-40502
www.randomhouse.com
v3.1
To
TIA, MARK, AND RICHARD
who will understand it all the better
for not being able to read it.
CONTENTS
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
List of Illustrations
Preface
The Pronunciation of Chinese Words
Part One: BACKGROUND AND HISTORY
1 The Philosophy of the Tao
2 The Origins of Buddhism
3 Mahayana Buddhism
4 The Rise and Development of Zen
Part Two: PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE
1 “Empty and Marvelous”
2 “Sitting Quietly, Doing Nothing”
3 Za-zen and the Koan
4 Zen in the Arts
Bibliography
Chinese Notes
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Bodhidharma. By Hakuin Zenji (1683–1768).
Two views of the rock and sand garden at Ryoanji, Kyoto.
Bodhidharma and Hui-k’e. By Sesshu (1420–1506).
Haboku Landscape. By Sesshu (1420–1506).
PREFACE
During the past twenty years there has been an extraordinary growth of interest in Zen Buddhism. Since the Second World War this interest has increased so much that it seems to be becoming a considerable force in the intellectual and artistic world of the West. It is connected, no doubt, with the prevalent enthusiasm for Japanese culture which is one of the constructive results of the late war, but which may amount to no more than a passing fashion. The deeper reason for this interest is that the viewpoint of Zen lies so close to the “growing edge” of Western thought.
The more alarming and destructive aspects of Western civilization should not blind us to the fact that at this very time it is also in one of its most creative periods. Ideas and insights of the greatest fascination are appearing in some of the newer fields of Western science–in psychology and psychotherapy, in logic and the philosophy of science, in semantics and communications theory. Some of these developments might be due to suggestive influences from Asian philosophy, but on the whole I am inclined to feel that there is more of a parallelism than a direct influence. We are, however, becoming aware of the parallelism, and it promises an exchange of views which should be extremely stimulating.
Western thought has changed so rapidly in this century that we are in a state of considerable confusion. Not only are there serious difficulties of communication between the intellectual and the general public, but the course of our thinking and of our very history has seriously undermined the common-sense assumptions which lie at the roots of our social conventions and institutions. Familiar concepts of space, time, and motion, of nature and natural law, of history and social change, and of human personality itself have dissolved, and we find ourselves adrift without landmarks in a universe which more and more resembles the Buddhist principle of the “Great Void.” The various wisdoms of the West, religious, philosophical, and scientific, do not offer much guidance to the art of living in such a universe, and we find the