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Zen Buddhism & the Arts

te of consciousness in which thoughts occur and move through the consciousness without leaving any trace. Unlike other forms of Buddhism, Zen holds that such freedom of mind cannot be attained by gradual practice but must come through direct and immediate insight (an experience that the Chinese call tun-wu and the Japanese term satori) (Rice 419).

Thus, Zen abandons both theorizing and systems of spiritual exercise and seeks to communicate its vision of truth by a method known as direct pointing. Zen teachers (and indeed all exponents of this system of thought) answer all philosophic or religious questions by non-symbolic words or actions; the answer is the action just as it is, and not what it represents. Typical is the reply of the Zen master Yao-shan, who, on being asked "What is the Way [of Zen]?" answered, "A cloud in the sky and water in the jug!" (Smith 134).

Hahn offers this example as a way to elucidate the mind of Zen Buddhism: The mind is like a monkey swinging from branch to branch through a forest (41). So that we do not lose sight of the monkey when it makes some sudden movement, we must watch it constantly and even try in some way to become the monkey (or in more colloquial parlance 'get inside the monkey's head') so that we can even begin to anticipate its next moves so that we do not lose sight of it. In the practice of Zen, the mind must learn how to contemplate itself, so that the act of thinking and the act of thinking about thinking become as unified and as inseparable as an object and its shadow.

Once the mind is directly and continually aware of itself, it is no longer like a money. There are not two minds, one which swings from branch to branch and another which follows after to bind it with a piece of rope (Hanh 41).

Zen students prepare themselves to be receptive to such answers by sitting in meditation (which the Japanese call zazen) while they simply observe, without mental comment, wh...

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Zen Buddhism & the Arts. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 08:20, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1690948.html