Zen is Buddhism stripped down to the spirit

I'm continuing to enjoy re-reading D.T. Suzuki's collection of writings in the 1956 edition of Zen Buddhism, a book that I've had for over 50 years (yeah, I'm old) and wrote about a few days ago in D.T. Suzuki on the Zen Doctrine of No-Mind. 

Suzuki is a pleasingly clear author. He also doesn't mince words, as you'll see below where I share some passages about the difference he sees between Indian and Chinese ways of thinking. The chapter I'm writing about today is "Zen in Relation to Buddhism Generally."

It helped me better understand why Zen considers itself to be the genuine heir to what the Buddha taught. 

The claim of the Zen followers that they are transmitting the essence of Buddhism is based on their belief that Zen takes hold of the enlivening spirit of the Buddha, stripped of all its historical and doctrinal garments.

But Suzuki starts off the chapter with a recognition that Zen can be off-putting.

Superficially, indeed, there is something in Zen so bizarre and even irrational as to frighten the pious literary followers of the so-called primitive Buddhism and to make them declare that Zen is not Buddhism but a Chinese anomaly of it.

I mentioned the seventh century Zen adept, Hui-neng, in my previous post. Suzuki says that he was chosen as the sixth patriarch of Zen because the fifth patriarch observed that of his five hundred followers, four hundred and ninety-nine understand well what Buddhism is, except for Hui-neng. 

This marvelous anecdote shows how different Zen is from other spiritual traditions. Zen practitioners clearly are intelligent and logical, notably including D.T. Suzuki. However, they are after the experience Buddhism offers, not a description of it.

And Zen arose as a reaction to the deification of Buddha after his death. 

The process of deification thus constantly went on until, some centuries after the death of the Master, he became a direct manifestation of the Supreme Being himself — in fact, he was the Highest One in the flesh, in him there was a divine humanity in perfect realization. He was Son of God or the Buddha and the Redeemer of the world.

…Indeed, the teaching is to be interpreted in the light of the teacher's divine personality. The later now predominates over the whole system; he is the centre whence radiate the rays of Enlightenment, salvation is only possible in believing in him as saviour. 

So Suzuki argues that the simple essence of the Buddha's teachings got covered up by a mass of supernaturalism, dogmatism, and theology. Zen seeks to recover the lost spirit of Buddhism.

When we wish to understand Buddhism thoroughly we must dive deep into its bottom where lies its living spirit. Those that are satisfied with a superficial view of its dogmatical aspect are apt to let go of the spirit which will truly explain the inner life of Buddhism.

This occurred in China, not India. Suzuki explains why.

To understand how the doctrine of Enlightenment or self-realization came to be translated in China as Zen Buddhism, we must first see where the Chinese mind varies from the Indian generally. When this is done, Zen will appear as a most natural product of the Chinese soil, where Buddhism has been successfully transplanted in spite of many adverse conditions. 

Roughly, then, the Chinese are above all a most practical people, while the Indians are visionary and highly speculative. We cannot perhaps judge the Chinese as unimaginative and lacking in the dramatic sense, but when they are compared with the inhabitants of the Buddha's native land they look so grey, so sombre.

Ouch! Guess I should have given a trigger warning to any Chinese readers of this blog post. Suzuki doesn't stop there. It gets worse.

The geographical features of each country are singularly reflected in the people. The tropical luxuriance of imagination so strikingly contrasts with the wintry dreariness of common practicalness. The Indians are subtle in analysis and dazzling in poetic flight; the Chinese are children of earthly life, they plod, they never soar away into the air.

Suzuki finds a lot to like in the Indian mentality, even though it isn't conducive to Zen.

The Indians found quite a novel way of illustrating philosophical truths that cannot be applied to analytical reasoning. They resorted to miracles or supernatural phenomena for their illustration. Thus they made the Buddha a great magician; not only the Buddha but almost all the chief characters appearing in the Mahayana scriptures became magicians.

And in my view this is one of the most charming features of the Mahayana texts — this description of supernatural phenomena in connection with the teaching of abstruse doctrine.

…At all events the above references will suffice, I believe, to establish my thesis that the reason for the introduction of supernaturalism into the Mahayana literature of Buddhism was to demonstrate the intellectual impossibility of comprehending spiritual facts.

But the Chinese had a better way. 

The Chinese have no aptitude like Indians for hiding themselves in the clouds of mystery and supernaturalism. Chwang-tzu and Lieh-tzu were the nearest to the Indian type of mind in ancient China, but their mysticism does not begin to approach that of the Indian.

…The Chinese genius was to demonstrate itself in some other way. When they began inwardly to assimilate Buddhism as the doctrine of Enlightenment, the only course that opened to their concrete practical minds was to produce Zen.

When we come to Zen after seeing all the wonderful miracles displayed by the Indian Mahayana writers, and after the highly abstracted speculations of the Madhyamika thinkers, what a change of scenery do we have here?

No rays are issuing from the Buddha's forehead, no retinues of Boddhisattvas reveal themselves before you, there is indeed nothing that would particularly strike your senses as odd or extraordinary, or as beyond intelligence, beyond the ken of logical reasoning.

The people you associate with are all ordinary mortals like yourselves, no abstract ideas, no dialectical subtleties confront you.

Mountains tower high towards the sky, rivers all pour into the ocean. Plants sprout in the spring and flowers bloom in red. When the moon shines serenely , poets grow mildly drunk and sing a song of eternal peace.

How prosaic, how ordinary, we may say! But here was the Chinese soul, and Buddhism came to grow in it.

When a monk asks who is the Buddha, the master points at his image in the Buddha Hall; no explanations are given, no arguments are suggested. When the mind is the subject of discourse, asks a monk, "What is mind, anyway?" "Mind," says the master. "I do not understand, Sir." "Neither do I," quickly comes from the master.

As the chapter draws to a close, Suzuki restates some key points.

The truth has many avenues of approach through which it makes itself known to the human mind. But the choice it makes depends on certain limitations under which it works. The superabundance of Indian imagination issued in supernaturalism and wonderful symbolism, and the Chinese sense of practicalness and its love for the solid everyday facts of life, resulted in Zen Buddhism.

We may be able to understand, though only tentatively by most readers at present, the following definitions of Zen offered by its masters.

When Joshu was asked what Zen was, he answered, "It is cloudy today and I won't answer." 

To the same question, Ummon's reply was: "That's it." On another occasion the master was not at all affirmative, for he said, "Not a word to be predicated." 

These being some of the definitions given to Zen by the masters, in what relationship did they conceive of Zen as standing to the doctrine of Enlightenment taught in the Sutras? Did they conceive it after the manner of the Lankavatara or after that of the Prajna-paramita?

No, Zen had to have its own way; the Chinese mind refused blindly to follow the Indian models.