Zen as a way of life

Zen as a way of life is above all a matter of experience, rather than of intellectualism. In Suzuki's Zen and Japanese Culture, the author presents a number of examples of the Zen way of life. Suzuki tells one story in which a Zen monk was asked "How deep is the river of Zen?" As Suzuki writes: "The reference to the river arose out of their encounter taking place on a bridge. The Zen monk . . . who was noted for his direct actions, lost no time in replying, 'Find out for yourself,' and offered to throw the questioner from the bridge" (Suzuki 1973, 5).

In other words, words are not as trusted by the Zen Buddhist as they are by members of other religions. In fact, it is often argued that Zen is not a religion at all, but rather a means whereby the individual can attain enlightenment only by first discarding all the various accoutrements and dogmas which burden traditional religious as well as philosophical approaches to life. Words are to be used, but not accepted as ultimate reality. As we read: "Zen is not necessarily against words, but it is well aware of the fact that they are 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 an empty abstraction. It is for this reason that Zen neglects reading or reciting the sutras [the basic holy t

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y. There is a close connection between the two aforementioned essentials --- meditation and the koan. Hoover writes of two schools of Zen which differ on this matter. One school champions the koan method, while the other favors the so-called Silent Illumination approach. As Hoover writes, "The issue seems to have boiled down to the matter of what one does with one's mind while meditating. (One group) advocated . . . Silent Illumination (and the belief) that enlightenment could be achieved through sitting motionless and slowly bringing tranquillity and empty nonattachment to the mind." This same school believed as well that "koans were recognized to be useful in preserving the original spirit of (Zen), but their brain-fatiguing convolutions were not permitted to disturb the mental repose of meditation." The koan school, on the other hand, "believed that this silent meditation lacked the dynamism so essential to the sudden experience of enlightenment. (This) approach to enlightenment (was) called Introspecting-the-Koan (Zen), in which meditation focused on a koan" (Hoover 178-179). In many modern schools, the koan remains an important part of the Zen way of life. Suzuki writes that a koan is "generally some statement made
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Approximate Word count = 3148
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page)

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