The Way of Zen - Alan Watts [55]
The contribution of Zen to Japanese culture has by no means been confined to bushido. It has entered into almost every aspect of the people’s life–their architecture, poetry, painting, gardening, their athletics, crafts, and trades; it has penetrated the everyday language and thought of the most ordinary folk. For by the genius of such Zen monks as Dogen, Hakuin, and Bankei, by such poets as Ryokan and Basho, and by such a painter as Sesshu, Zen has been made extraordinarily accessible to the common mind.
Dogen, in particular, made an incalculable contribution to his native land. His immense work, the Shobogenzo (“Treasury of the Eye of the True Doctrine”), was written in the vernacular and covered every aspect of Buddhism from its formal discipline to its profoundest insights. His doctrine of time, change, and relativity is explained with the aid of the most provoking poetic images, and it is only regrettable that no one has yet had the time and talent to translate this work into English. Hakuin (1685–1768) reconstituted the koan system, and is said to have trained no less than eighty successors in Zen. Bankei (1622–1693) found a way of presenting Zen with such ease and simplicity that it seemed almost too good to be true. He spoke to large audiences of farmers and country folk, but no one “important” seems to have dared to follow him.44
Meanwhile, Zen continued to prosper in China until well into the Ming dynasty (1368–1643), when the divisions between the various schools of Buddhism began to fade, and the popularity of the Pure Land School with its “easy way” of invoking the Name of Amitabha began to be fused with koan practice and at last to absorb it. A few Zen communities seem to have survived to the present day, but, so far as I have been able to study them, their emphasis inclines either to Soto or to the more “occultist” preoccupations of Tibetan Buddhism. In either case, their view of Zen seems to be involved with a somewhat complex and questionable doctrine of man’s psychic anatomy, which would appear to derive from Taoist alchemical ideas.45
The history of Chinese Zen raises one problem of great fascination. Both Rinzai and Soto Zen as we find them in Japanese monasteries today put enormous emphasis on za-zen or sitting meditation, a practice which they follow for many hours of the day–attaching great importance to the correctness of posture and the way of breathing which it involves. To practice Zen is, to all intents and purposes, to practice za-zen, to which the Rinzai School adds sanzen, the periodic visits to the master (roshi) for presenting one’s view of the koan. However, the Shen-hui Ho-chang I-chi records the following conversation between Shen-hui and a certain Ch’eng:
The Master asked Dhyana Master Ch’eng: “What method must be practiced to see into one’s own nature?”
“It is first of all necessary to apply oneself to the practice of sitting cross-legged in samadhi. Once samadhi is obtained, one must, by means of samadhi, awaken prajna in oneself. By prajna one is able to see into one’s own nature.”
(Shen-hui:) “When one practices samadhi, isn’t this a deliberate activity of the mind?”
(Ch’eng:) “Yes.”
(Shen-hui:) “Then this deliberate activity of the mind is an activity of restricted consciousness, and how can it bring seeing into one’s own nature?”
(Ch’eng:) “To see into one’s own nature, it is necessary