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Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki

MYSTICISM:
Christian and Buddhist

World Perspectives
George Allen & Unwin Ltd
London 1957
 
 

Contents

*  Preface

   Section One
*  1  Meister Eckhart and Buddhism .........
   2  The Basis of Buddhist Philosophy .....
*  3  'A Little Point' and *Satori* ........
*  4  Living in the Light of Eternity ......

   Appendices
   5  Transmigration .......................
   6  Crucifixion and Enlightenment ........

   Section Two
   7  *Kono-mama* ('I Am That I Am') .........

   Appendices
   8  Notes on '*Namu-amida-butsu*' ..........
   9  Rennyo's Letters .....................
   10 From Saichi's Journals ..............
 
 

Preface

This book has no pretension to be a thorough, systematic study of
the subject. It is more or less a collection of studies the
author has written from time to time in the course of his
readings, especially of Meister Eckhart as representative of
Christian mysticism. For Eckhart's thoughts come most closely to
Zen and Shin. Zen and Shin superficially differ: one is known as
*Jiriki*, the "self-power" school, while the other is *Tariki*, the
"other-power" school. But there is something common to both,
which will be felt by the reader. Eckhart, Zen and Shin thus can
be grouped together as belonging to the great school of
mysticism. The underlying chain of relationship among the three
may not be always obvious in the following pages. The author's
hope, however, is that they are provocative enough to induce
Western scholars to take up the subject for their study.

The author wishes to acknowledge his debts to the two English
translations of Meister Eckhart, the first by C. de B. Evans and
the second by Raymond B. Blakney, from which he has very
liberally quoted.

Daisetz T. Suzuki

New York, 1955
 
 
 

Chapter 1

Meister Eckhart and Buddhism
 

NOTE: There are two English translations of Eckhart, one British
and one American. The British, in two volumes, is by C. de B.
Evans, published by John M. Watkins, London, 1924. The American
translation is by Raymond B. Blakney, published by Harper &
Brothers, New York, 1941. Neither of them is a complete
translation of all of Eckhart's known works in German. Franz
Pfeiffer published in 1857 a collection of Eckhart's works,
chiefly in the High German dialect of Strassburg of the
fourteenth century. This edition was reprinted in 1914. Blakney's
and Evans' translations are mainly based on Pfeiffer edition. In
the present book, "Blakney" refers to the Blakney translation and
"Evans" to the Evans, Vol. I, while "Pfeiffer" means his German
edition of 1914.

1

IN THE following pages I attempt to call the reader's attention
to the closeness of Meister Eckhart's way of thinking to that of
Mahayana Buddhism, especially of Zen Buddhism. The attempt is
only a tentative and a sketchy one, far from being systematic and
exclusive. But I hope the reader will find something in it which
evokes his curiosity enough to undertake further studies of this
fascinating topic.

When I first read -- which was more than a half century ago -- a
little book containing a few of Meister Eckhart's sermons, they
impressed me profoundly, for I never expected that any Christian
thinker ancient or modern could or would cherish such daring
thoughts as expressed in those sermons. While I do not remember
which sermons made up the contents of the little book, the ideas
expounded there closely approached Buddhist thoughts, so closely
indeed, that one could stamp them almost definitely as coming out
of Buddhist speculations. As far as I can judge, Eckhart seems to
be an extraordinary "Christian".

While refraining from going into details we can say at least
this: Eckhart's Christianity is unique and has many points which
make us hesitate to classify him as belonging to the type we
generally associate with rationalized modernism or with
conservative traditionalism. He stands on his own experiences
which emerged from a rich, deep, religious personality. He
attempts to reconcile them with the historical type of
Christianity modeled after legends and mythology. He tries to
give an "esoteric" or inner meaning to them, and by so doing he
enters fields which were not touched by most of his historical
predecessors.

Firstly, let me give you the views Eckhart has on time and
creation. These are treated in his sermons delivered on the
commemoration day for St. Germaine. He quotes a sentence from
Ecclesiasticus: "In his days he pleased God and was found just".
Taking up first the phrase "In his days", he interprets it
according to his own understanding:

...there are more days than one. There
is the soul's day and God's day. A day
whether six or seven ago, or more than
six thousand years ago, is just as near
to the present as yesterday. Why?
Because all time is contained in the
present Now-moment. Time comes of the
revolution of the heavens and day began
with the first revolution. The soul's
day falls within this time and consists
of the natural light in which things are
seen. God's day, however, is the
complete day, comprising both day and
night. It is the real Now-moment, which
for the soul is eternity's day, on which
the Father begets his only begotten Son
and the soul is reborn in God. (Blakney,
p.212.)

The soul's day and God's day are
different. In her natural day the soul
knows all things above time and place;
nothing is far or near. And that is why,
I say, this day all things are of equal
rank. To talk about the world as being
made by God to-morrow, yesterday, would
be talking nonsense. God makes the
world and all things in this present
now. Time gone a thousand years ago is
now as present and as near to God as
this very instant. The soul who is in
this present now, in her the Father
bears his one-begotten son and in that
same birth the soul is born back into
God. It is one birth; as fast as she is
reborn into God the Father is begetting
his only Son in her. (Evans, p.209.)

God the Father and the Son have nothing
to do with time. Generation is not in
time, but at the end and limit of time.
In the past and future movement of
things, your heart flits about; it is in
vain that you attempt to know eternal
things; in divine things, you should be
occupied intellectually... (Blakney,
p.292.)

Again, God loves for his own sake,
acts for his own sake: that means that
he loves for the sake of love and acts
for the sake of action. It cannot be
doubted that God would never have begot
his Son in eternity if [his idea of]
creation were other than [his act
of] creation. Thus God created the world
so that he might keep on creating. The
past and the future are both far from
God and alien to his way. (Blakney,
p.620.)

From those passages we see that the Biblical story of Creation is
thoroughly contradicted; it has not even a symbolic meaning in
Eckhart, and, further, his God is not at all like the God
conceived by most Christians. God is not in time mathematically
enumerable. His creativity is not historical, not accidental, not
at all measurable. It goes on continuously without cessation with
no beginning, with no end. It is not an event of yesterday or
today or tomorrow, it comes out of timelessness, of nothingness,
of Absolute Void. God's work is always done in the absolute
present, in a timeless "now which is time and place in itself".
God's work is sheer love, utterly free from all forms of
chronology and teleology. The idea of God creating the world out
of nothing, in absolute present, and therefore altogether beyond
the control of a serial time conception will not sound strange to
Buddhist ears. Perhaps they may find it acceptable as reflecting
their doctrine of Emptiness (*sunyata*).

2

Below are further quotations from Eckhart giving his views on
"being", "life", "work", etc.:

Being is God... God and being are the
same -- or God has being from another
and thus himself is not God...
Everything that is has the fact of its
being through being and from being.
Therefore, if being is something
different from God, a thing has its
being from something other than God.
Besides, there is nothing prior to
being, because that which confers being
creates and is the creator. To create is
to give being out of nothing. (Blakney,
p. 278.)

Eckhart is quite frequently metaphysical and makes one wonder how
his audience took to his sermons --- an audience which is
supposed to have been very unscholarly, being ignorant of Latin
and all the theologies written in it. This problem of being and
God's creating the world out of nothing must have puzzled them
very much indeed. Even the scholars might have found Eckhart
beyond their understanding, especially when we know that they
were not richly equipped with the experiences which Eckhart had.
Mere thinking or logical reasoning will never succeed in clearing
up problems of deep religious significance. Eckhart's experiences
are deeply, basically, abundantly rooted in God as being which is
at once being and non-being; he sees in the "meanest" thing among
God's creatures all the glories of his is-ness (*isticheit*). The
Buddhist enlightenment is nothing more that this experience of
is-ness or suchness (*tathata*), which in itself has all the
possible values (*guna*) we humans can conceive.

God's characteristic is being. The
philosopher says one creature is able to
give another life. For in being, mere
being, lies all that is at all. Being is
the first name. Defect means lack of
being. So far as our life is being, so
far it is in God. So far as our life is
feeble but taking it as being, it excels
anything life can ever boast. I have no
doubt of this, that if the soul had the
remotest notion of what being means she
would never waver from it for an
instant. The most trivial thing
perceived in God, a flower for example
as espied in God, would be a thing more
perfect than the universe. The vilest
thing present in God as being is better
than angelic knowledge. (Evans, p.206.)

This passage may sound too abstract to most readers. The sermon
is said to have been given on the commemoration day of the
"blessed martyrs who were slain with the swords". Eckhart begins
with his idea about death and suffering which come to an end like
everything else that belongs to this world. He than proceeds to
tell us that "it behooves us to emulate the dead in dispassion
(*niht betrueben*) towards good and ill and pain of every kind",
and he quotes St. Gregory: "No one gets so much of God as the man
who is thoroughly dead", because "death gives them [martyrs]
being, -- they lost their life and found their being". Eckhart
allusion to the flower as espied in God reminds us of Nansen's
interview with Rikko in which the Zen master also brings out a
flower in the monastery courtyard.

It is when I encounter such statements as these that I grow
firmly convinced that the Christian experiences are not after all
different from those of the Buddhist. Terminology is all that
divides us and stirs us up to a wasteful dissipation of energy.
We must however weigh the matter carefully and see whether there
is really anything that alienates us from one another and whether
there is any basis for our spiritual edification and for the
advancement of a world culture.

When God made man, he put into the soul
his equal, his active, everlasting
masterpiece. It was so great a work that
it could not be otherwise than the soul
and the soul could not be otherwise
than the work of God. God's nature, his
being, and the Godhead all depend on his
work in the soul. Blessed, blessed be
God that he does work in the soul and
that he loves his work! That work is
love and love is God. God loves himself
and his own nature, being and Godhead,
and in the love he has for himself he
loves all creatures, not as creatures
but as God. The love God bears himself
contains his love for the whole world.
(Blakney, p.224-5.)

Eckhart's statement regarding God's self-love which "contains his
love for the whole world" corresponds in a way to the Buddhist
idea of universal enlightenment. When Buddha attained the
enlightenment, it is recorded, he perceived that all beings
non-sentient as well as sentient were already in the
enlightenment itself. The idea of enlightenment may make
Buddhists appear in some respects more impersonal and
metaphysical than Christians. Buddhism thus may be considered
more scientific and rational than Christianity which is heavily
laden with all sorts of mythological paraphernalia. The movement
is now therefore going on among Christians to denude the religion
of this unnecessary historical appendix. While it is difficult to
predict how far it will succeed, there are in every religion some
elements which may be called irrational. They are generally
connected with the human craving for love. The Buddhist doctrine
of enlightenment is not after all such cold system of metaphysics
as it appears to some people. Love enters also into the
enlightenment experience as one of its constituents, for
otherwise it could not embrace the totality of existence. The
enlightenment does not mean to run away from the world, and to
sit cross-legged at the peak of the mountain, to look down calmly
upon a bomb-struck mass of humanity. It has more tears than we
imagine.

Thou shalt know him [God] without image,
without semblance and without means. --
"But for me to know God thus, with
nothing between, I must be all but he,
he all but me". -- I say, God must be
very I, I very God, so consummately one
that this he and this I are one "is", in
this is-ness working one work eternally;
but so long as this he and this I, to
wit, God and the soul, are not one
single here, one single now, the I
cannot work with nor be one with that
he. (Evans, p.347.)

What is life? God's being is my life,
but if it is so, then what is God's must
be mine and what is mine God's. God's
is-ness is my is-ness, and neither more
nor less. The just live eternally with
God, on par with God, neither deeper nor
higher. All their work is done by God
and God's by them. (Blakney, p.180.)

Going over these quotations, we feel that it was natural that
orthodox Christians of his day accused Eckhart as a "heretic" and
that he defended himself. Perhaps it is due to our psychological
peculiarities that there are always two opposing tendencies in
the human way of thinking and feeling; extrovert and introvert,
traditional and mystical. The opposition between these two
tendencies or temperaments is often too deep and strong for any
form of reconciliation. This is what makes Eckhart complain about
his opponents not being able to grasp his point. He would
remonstrate: "Could you see with my heart you would understand my
words, but, it is true, for the truth itself has said it". (Evans,
p.38.) Augustine is however tougher than Eckhart: "What is it to
me though any comprehend not this!" (Quoted by Eckhart, Blakney,
p.305.)

3

One of Eckhart's heresies was his pantheistic tendency. He seemed
to put man and God on an equal footing: "The Father begets his
Son in me and I am there in the same Son and not another".
(Blakney, p.214.) "The soul that lives in the present Now-moment
is the soul in which the Father begets his only begotten Son and
in that birth the soul is born again into God. It is one birth,
as fast as she is reborn into God the Father is begetting his
only son in her". (Evans, p.209.) While it is dangerous to
criticize Eckhart summarily as a pantheist by picking one or two
passages at random form his sermons, there is no doubt that his
sermons contain many thoughts approaching pantheism. But unless
the critics are a set of ignorant misinterpreters with perhaps an
evil intention to condemn him in every way as a heretic, a
fair-minded judge will notice that Eckhart everywhere in his
sermons is quite careful to emphasize the distinction between the
creature and the creator as in the following:

"Between the only begotten Son and the
soul there is no distinction". This is
true. For how could anything white be
distinct from or divided from whiteness?
Again, matter and form are one in being;
living and working. Yet matter is not,
on this account, form, or conversely. So
in the proposition. A holy soul is one
with God, according to John 17:21. That
they may be one in us, even as we are
one. Still the creature is not the
creator, nor is the just man God.
(Blakney, "The Defense", p. 303.)

God and Godhead are as different as
earth is from heaven. Moreover I
declare: the outward and the inward man
are as different, too, as earth and
heaven. God is higher, many thousand
miles. Yet God comes and goes. But to
resume my argument: God enjoys himself
in all things. The sun sheds his light
upon all creatures, and anything he
sheds his beams upon absorbs them, yet
he loses nothing of his brightness.
(Evans, pp.142-3.)

From this we can see most decidedly that Eckhart was far from
being a pantheist. In this respect Mahayana Buddhism is also
frequently and erroneously stamped as pantheistic, ignoring
altogether a world of particulars. Some critics seem to be ready
and simple-minded enough to imagine that all doctrines that are
not transcendentally or exclusively monotheistic are pantheistic
and that they are for this reason perilous to the advancement of
spiritual culture.

It is true that Eckhart insists on finding something of Godlike
nature in each one of us, otherwise the birth of God's only Son
in the soul would be impossible and his creatures would forever
be something utterly alienated from him. As long as God is love,
as creator, he can never be outside the creatures. But this
cannot be understood as meaning the oneness of one with the other
in every possible sense. Eckhart distinguishes between the inner
man and the outer man and what one sees and hears is not the same
as the other. In a sense therefore we can say that we are not
living in an identical world and that the God one conceives for
oneself is not at all to be subsumed under the same category as
the God for another. Eckhart's God is neither transcendental nor
pantheistic.

God goes and comes, he works, he is active, he becomes all the
time, but Godhead remains immovable, imperturbable, inaccessible.
The difference between heaven and earth and God and Godhead is
that between heaven and earth and yet Godhead cannot be himself
without going out of himself, that is, he is he because he is not
he. This "contradiction" is comprehended only by the inner man,
and not by the outer man, because the latter sees the world
through the senses and intellect and consequently fails to
experience the profound depths of Godhead.

Whatever influence Eckhart might have received from the Jewish
(Maimonides), Arabic (Avicenna), and Neoplatonic sources, there
is no doubt that he had his original views based on his own
experiences, theological and otherwise, and that they were
singularly Mahayanistic. Coomaraswami is quite right when he
says:

Eckhart presents an astonishingly close
parallel to Indian modes of thought;
some whole passages and many single
sentences read like a direct translation
from Sanskrit... It is not of course
suggested that any Indian elements
whatever are actually present in
Eckhart's writing, though there are
some Oriental factors in the European
tradition, derived from neo-Platonic and
Arabic sources. But what is proved by
analogies is not the influence of one
system of thought upon another, but the
coherence of the metaphysical tradition
in the world and at all times. ("The
Transformation of Nature in Art", p.201.)

4

It is now necessary to examine Eckhart's close kinship with
Mahayana Buddhism and especially with Zen Buddhism in regard to
the doctrine of Emptiness.

The Buddhist doctrine of Emptiness is unhappily greatly
misunderstood in the West. The word "emptiness" or "void" seems
to frighten people away, whereas when they use it among
themselves, they do not seem to object to it. While some Indian
thought is described as nihilistic, Eckhart has never been
accused of this, though he is not sparing in the use of words
with negative implications, such as "desert", "stillness",
"silence", "nothingness". Perhaps when these terms are used among
Western thinkers, they are understood in connection with their
historical background. But as soon as these thinkers are made to
plunge into a strange, unfamiliar system or atmosphere, they lose
their balance and condemn it as negativistic or anarchistic or
upholding escapist egoism.

According to Eckhart,

I have read many writings both of
heathen philosophers and sages, of the
Old and the New Testaments, I have
earnestly and with all diligence sought
the best and the highest virtue whereby
man may come most closely to God and
wherein he may once more become like
the original image as he was in God when
there was yet no distinction between God
and himself before God produced
creatures. And having dived into the
basis of things to the best of my ability
I find that it is no other than
absolute detachment (*abegescheidenheit*)
from everything that is created. It was
in this sense when our Lord said to
Martha: "One thing is needed", which is
to say: He who would be untouched and
pure needs just one thing, detachment.
(Blakney, "About Disinterest", p.82.)

What then is the content of absolute detachment? It cannot be
designated "as this or that", as Eckhart says. It is pure nothing
(*bloss niht*), it is the highest point at which God can work in us
as he pleases.

Perfect detachment is without regard,
without either lowliness or loftiness to
creatures; it has no mind to be below
nor yet to be above; it is minded to be
master of itself, loving none and hating
none, having neither likeness nor
unlikeness, neither this nor that, to
any creature; the only thing it desires
to be is to be one and the same. For to
be either this or that is to want
something. He who is this or that is
somebody; but detachment wants
altogether nothing. It leaves all things
unmolested. (Evans, with a little
change, pp. 341-2.)

While Buddhist emphasis is on the emptiness of all "composite
things" (*skandha*) and is therefore metaphysical, Eckhart here
insists on the psychological significance of "pure nothingness"
so that God can take hold of the soul without any resistance on
the part of the individual. But from the practical point of view
the emptying of the soul making it selfless can never be
thoroughly realized unless we have an ontological understanding
of the nature of things, that is, the nothingness of creaturely
objects. For the created have no reality; all creatures are pure
nothing, for "all things were made by him [God] and without him
was not anything made". (John, 1:3) Further, "If without God a
creature has any being however small, then God is not the cause
of all things. Besides, a creature will not be created, for
creation is the receiving of being from nothing". (Blakney,
pp.298-9.) What could this mean? How could any being come from
nothing or non-being? Psychology herein inevitably turns to
metaphysics. We here encounter the problem of Godhead.

This problem was evidently not touched upon frequently by
Eckhart, for he warns his readers repeatedly, saying: "Now
listen: I am going to say something I have never said before".
Then he proceeds: "When God created the heavens, the earth, and
the creatures, he did not work; he has nothing to do; he made no
effort". He then proceeds to say something about Godhead, but he
does not forget to state: "For yet again I say a thing I never
said before: God and Godhead are different as earth is from
heaven". Though he often fails to make a clear distinction
between the two and would use "God" where really "Godhead" is
meant, his attempt to make a distinction is noteworthy. With him
God is still a something as long as there is any trace of
movement or work or of doing something. When we come to the
Godhead, we for the first time find that it is the unmoved, a
nothing where there is no path (*apada*) to reach. It is absolute
nothingness; therefore it is the ground of being from where all
beings come.

While I subsisted in the ground, in the
bottom, in the river and fount of
Godhead, no one asked me where I was
going or what I was doing: there was no
one to ask me. When I was flowing all
creatures spake God. If I am asked,
Brother Eckhart, when went ye out of
your house? Then I must have been in.
Even so do all creatures speak God. And
why do they not speak the Godhead?
Everything in the Godhead is one, and of
that there is nothing to be said. God
works, the Godhead does not work, there
is nothing to do; in it is no activity.
It never envisages any work. God and
Godhead are as different as active and
inactive. On my return to God, where I
am formless, my breaking through will be
far nobler than my emanation. I alone
take all creatures out of their sense
into my mind and make them one in me.
When I go back into the ground, into the
depths, into the well-spring of the
Godhead, no one will ask me whence I
came or whither I went. No one missed
me: God passes away. (Evans, p.143.)

What would Christians think of "the divine core of pure (or
absolute) stillness", or of "the simple core which is the still
desert onto which no distinction ever creep"? Eckhart is in
perfect accord with the Buddhist doctrine of *sunyata*, when he
advances the notion of Godhead as "pure nothingness" (*ein bloss
niht*).

The notion of Godhead transcends psychology. Eckhart tells us
that he has frequent references in his sermons to "a light in the
soul that is uncreated" and that "this light is not satisfied by
the simple still, motionless essence of the divine being that
neither gives nor takes. It is more interested in knowing where
this essence came from". (Blakney, p.247.) This "where" is where
"the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost" have not yet made their
distinctions. To come in touch with this source and to know what
it is, that is to say, "to see my own face even before I was
born" I must plunge into "the vast emptiness of the Absolute
Tao".

"To see one's face which one has even prior to his birth" is
ascribed to Hui-neng (died 713), the sixth patriarch of Zen
Buddhism in China. This corresponds to Eckhart's statement which
he quotes as by "an authority": "Blessed are the pure in heart
who leave everything to God now as they did before ever they
existed". (Blakney, p.89.) Those who have not tasted wine in the
cellar (Blakney, p.216.) may put in a question here: "How could we
talk about a man's purity of heart prior to his existence? How
could we also talk about seeing our own face before we were
born?" Eckhart quotes St. Augustine: "There is a heavenly door
for the soul into the divine nature -- where somethings are
reduced to nothing". (Blakney, p.89.) Evidently we have to wait
for the heavenly door to open by our repeated or ceaseless
knocking at it when I am "ignorant with knowing, loveless with
loving, dark with light". (Pfeiffer, p.49.) Everything comes out
of this basic experience and it is only when this is comprehended
what we really enter into the realm of emptiness where the
Godhead keeps our discriminatory mind altogether "emptied out to
nothingness". (Blakney, p.88.)

5

What is the Absolute Tao?

Before we go on to the Zen conception of the "Absolute Tao" or
Godhead who sets itself up on "pure nothingness", it may be
appropriate to comment on the Taoist conception of it as
expounded by Lao-tzu. He was one of the early thinkers of China
on philosophical subjects and the theme of the "Tao Te Ching"
ascribed to him is *Tao*.

*Tao* literally means "way" or "road" or "passage", and in more
than one sense corresponds to the Sanskrit *Dharma*. It is one of
the key terms in the history of Chinese thought. While Taoism
derives its name from this term, Confucius also uses it
extensively. With the latter however it has a more moralistic
than metaphysical connotation. It is Taoists who use it in the
sense of "truth", "ultimate reality", "logos", etc. Lao-tzu
defines it in his "Tao Te Ching" as follows:

The Way is lake an empty vessel
That yet may be drawn from
Without ever needing to be filled.
It is bottomless: the very progenitor of all things in the world...
It is like a deep pool that never dries
I do not know whose child it could be.
It looks as if it were prior to God. (Chapter IV. Translated by
Arthur Waley, taken from his book "The Way and Its Power"
(London 1934). The last two lines and the succeeding quotations
are all my rendering. God here is distinguished from Godhead as
by Eckhart.)
 

There is another and more detailed characterization of Tao in
Chapter XIV:

When you look at it you cannot see it;
It is called formless.
When you listen to it you cannot hear it;
It is called soundless.
When you try to seize it you cannot hold it;
It is called subtle.
No one can measure these three to their ultimate ends,
Therefore they are fused to one.

It is up, but it is not brightened;
It is down, but it is not obscured.
It stretches endlessly,
And no name is to be given.
It returns to nothingness.
It is called formless form, shapeless shape.
It is called the intangible.
You face it but you cannot see its front.
You follow it but you cannot see its back.
Holding on the Ancient Way (*Tao*)
You control beings of today.
Thus you know the beginning of things,
Which is the essence of the Way (*Tao-chi*).

When these quotations are compared with Eckhart's, we see points
common to both. Lao-tzu is expressing in his classical Chinese
way what the medieval Dominican preacher would talk about in his
German vernacular. Lao-tzu is poetical and concrete, full of
imageries, whereas Eckhart the theologian is more conceptual. He
would say:

"God has no before nor after".
"God is neither this nor that".
"God is perfect simplicity".
"Prior to creatures, in the eternal now, I have played before the
Father in his eternal stillness". (Evans, p.148.)

For comparison I will give another definition for Tao from "Tao
Te Ching", Chapter XXV:

There is something in a state of fusion,
It is born prior to heaven and earth.
How still! How lonely!
It stands by itself unchanging,
It moves about everywhere unfailingly.
Let us have it as mother [of all things] under the heavens.
I do not know its name,
But if needed call it Great.
The Great walks on,
Walks on to the farthest end,
And then returns.
Therefore the Tao is great,
Heaven is great,
Earth is great,
The ruler is great.
Within the realm there are four greats
And the ruler is one of them.
Man is earth when conforming to earth,
He is heaven when conforming to heaven,
He is Tao when conforming to Tao.
Let him thus conform himself to the suchness (*tzu jan*) of things.

R.B.Blakney remarks in his preface to the "Tao Te Ching"
translation that Lao-tzu's book fascinated him for many years and
that he finally could not help producing his own translation in
spite of the fact that there are already a large number of such
translations available. He suspects that every foreigner who at
all knows the Chinese language and can read Lao-tzu in the
original would feel the same as this new translator did. This
remark or confession on the part of the translator is highly
significant. In my view the fascination he feels about Lao-tzu is
not just due to the Old Philosopher's contribution to "the
literature of mysticism", but partly to the language in which it
is expressed. It may be better to say that the charm one feels
about Chinese literature comes quite frequently from visually
going over those unwieldy ideogrammatic characters with which
thoughts or feelings are made communicable. The Chinese books are
best perused in large type printed from the wooden blocks.

Besides this visual appeal of the ideograms there is an element
in the Chinese language which, while rare in others, especially
in Indo-European languages, expresses more directly and
concretely what our ordinary conceptualized words fail to
communicate. For instance, read the "Tao Te Ching", Chapter XX,
in the original and compare it with any of the translations you
have at hand and see that the translations invariably lack that
rich, graphic, emotional flavor which we after more than two
thousand five hundred years can appreciate with deep
satisfaction. Arthur Waley is a great Chinese scholar and one of
the best interpreters of Chinese life. His English translation of
Lao-tzu is fine piece of work in many senses, but he cannot go
beyond the limitations of the language to which he is born.

6

The following story may not have historicity but it is widely
circulated among Zen followers who are occasionally quite
disrespectful of facts. It is worth our consideration as
illustrating the way in which the Zen teachers handle the problem
of "Emptiness" or "absolute nothingness" or the "still desert"
lying beyond "this and that" and prior to "before and after". The
story and comments are taken from a Chinese Zen textbook
"Hekigan-roku" ("Blue Rock Collection") of the Sung dynasty of
the eleventh century. The text is studied very much in Japan and
some of the stories are used as ko-an (problems given to Zen
students for solution).

Bodhidharma, who is the first Zen patriarch in China, came from
India in the sixth century. The Emperor Wu of the Liang dynasty
invited him to his court. The Emperor Wu, a good pious Buddhist
studying the various Mahayana Sutras and practicing the Buddhist
virtues of charity and humility, asked the teacher from India:
"The Sutras refer so much to the highest and noblest truth, but
what is it, my Reverend Master?"

Bodhidharma answered, "A vast emptiness and no holiness in it".

The Emperor: "Who are you who stand before me if there is nothing
holy, nothing thigh in the vast emptiness of ultimate truth?"

Bodhidharma: "I do not know, your Majesty".

The Emperor failed to understand the meaning of this answer and
Bodhidharma left him to find a retreat in the North.

When Bodhidharma's express purpose of coming to China was to
elucidate the teaching of "vast emptiness" (*sunyata*), why did
he answer "I do not know" to the Emperor's all-important and
to-the-very-point question? It is evident, however, that
Bodhidharma's answer could not have been one of an agnostic who
believes in the unknowability of ultimate truth. Bodhidharma's
unknowability must be altogether of a different sort. It is
really what Eckhart would like to see us all have -- "transformed
knowledge, not ignorance which comes from lack of knowing; it is
by knowing that we get to this unknowing. Then we know by divine
knowing, then our ignorance is ennobled and adorned with
supernatural knowledge". (Evans, p.15.) It was this kind of
unknowing which is transcendental, divine, and supernatural that
he wished his imperial friend to realize.

From our ordinary relative point of view Bodhidharma may seem to
abrupt and unacceptable. But the fact is that the knowledge or "I
do not know" which is gained only by "sinking into oblivion and
ignorance" (Evans, p.13.) is something quite abrupt or discrete or
discontinuous in the human system of knowability, for we can get
it only by leaping or plunging into the silent valley of Absolute
Emptiness. There is no continuity between this and the knowledge
we highly value in the realm of relativity where our senses and
intellect move.

The Zen teachers are all unknowing knowers or knowing unknowers.
Therefore their "I do not know" does not really mean our "I do
not know". We must not take their answers in the way we generally
do at the level of relative knowledge. Therefore, their comments
which are quoted below do not follow the line we ordinarily do.
They have this unique way. Yengo (1063-1135) gives his evaluation
of the *mondo* ("question and answer") which took place between
Bodhidharma and the Emperor Wu of the Liang dynasty in the
following words:

Bodhidharma came to this country, via
the southern route, seeing that there
was something in Chinese mentality which
responds readily to the teaching of
Mahayana Buddhism. He was full of
expectations, he wanted to lead our
countrymen to the doctrine of
"Mind-alone" which cannot be transmitted
by letters or by means of word of mouth.
The Mind could only be immediately taken
hold of whereby we attain to the
perception of the Buddha-nature, that
is, to the realization of Buddhahood.
When the Nature is attained, we shall be
absolutely free from all bondage and
will not be led astray because of
linguistic complications. For here
Reality itself is revealed in its
nakedness with no kinds of veil on it.
In this frame of mind Bodhidharma
approached the Emperor. He also thus
instructed his disciples. We see that
Bodhidharma's [emptied mind] had no
premeditated measures, no calculating
plans. He just acted in the freest
manner possible, cutting everything
asunder that would obstruct his seeing
directly into the Nature in its entire
nakedness. Here was neither good nor
evil, neither right nor wrong, neither
gain nor loss...

The Emperor Wu was a good student of
Buddhist philosophy and wished to have
the first principle elucidated by the
great teacher from India. The first
principle consists in the identity of
being and non-being beyond which the
philosophers fail to go. The Emperor
wondered if this blockage could somehow
be broken down by Bodhidharma. Hence his
question. Bodhidharma knew that whatever
answers he might give would be
frustrating.

"What is Reality? What is Godhead?"

"Vast emptiness and no distinctions
whatever [neither Father nor Son nor
Holy Ghost]".

No philosopher however well trained in
his profession could ever be expected to
jump out of this trap, except
Bodhidharma himself who knew perfectly
well how to cut all limitations down by
one blow of a sword.

Most people nowadays fail to get into
the ultimate signification of
Bodhidharma's pronouncement and would
simply cry out, "Vast emptiness!" as if
they really experienced it. But all to
no purpose! As my old master remarked,
"When a man truly understands
Bodhidharma, he for the first time finds
himself at home quietly sitting by the
fireside". Unfortunately, the Emperor Wu
happened to be one of those who could
not rise above the limitations of
linguistics. His views failed to
penetrate the screen of *meum* and *tuum*
(you and me). Hence his second question:
"Who are you who face me?" Bodhidharma's
blunt retort, "I do not know", only
helped to make the august inquirer
blankly stare.

Later, when he learned more about
Bodhidharma and realized how stupid he
was to have missed the rare opportunity
of going deeper into the mystery of
Reality, he was greatly upset. Hearing
of Bodhidharma's death after some years
he erected a memorial stele for him and
inscribed on it: "Alas! I saw him, I met
him, I interviewed him, and failed to
recognize him. How sad! It is all past
now. Alas, history is irrevocable!" He
concluded his eulogy thus:

As long as the mind tarries on the plane of relativity,
It forever remains in the dark.
But the moment it loses itself in Emptiness,
It ascends the throne of Enlightenment.

(Yengo is given here in a modernized fashion, for original
Chinese would require a detailed interpretation.)

After finishing the story of the Emperor Wu, Yengo the
commentator puts this remark: "Tell me by the way where
Bodhidharma could be located". This is expressly addressed to the
reader and the commentator expects us to give him an answer.
Shall we take up his challenge?

There is another commentator on this episode, who lived some
years prior to the one already referred to. This one, called
Seccho (980-1052), was a great literary talent and his comments
are put in a versified form full of poetic fantasies. Alluding to
the Emperor Wu's attempt to send a special envoy for Bodhidharma,
who after the interview crossed the Yang-tzu Chiang and found a
retreat somewhere in the North, the commentator goes on:

"You [the Emperor Wu] may order all your
   subjects to fetch him [Bodhidharma],
But he will never show himself up again!
We are left alone for ages to come
Vainly thinking of the irrevocable past!
But stop! Let us not think of the past!
The cool refreshing breeze sweeps all over the earth,
Never knowing when to suspend its work".

Seccho (the master commentator) now turns around and surveying
the entire congregation (as he was reciting his versified
comments), asks: "O Brethren, is not our Patriarch [Bodhidharma]
to be discovered among us at this very moment?"

After this interruption, Seccho continues, "Yes, yes, he is here!
Let him come up and wash the feet for me!"

It would have been quite an exciting event if Eckhart appeared to
be present at this sermon which took place in the Flowery Kingdom
in the first half of the eleventh century! But who can tell if
Eckhart is not watching me writing this in the most modern and
most mechanized city of New York?

7

A few more remarks about "Emptiness".

Relativity is an aspect of Reality and not Reality itself.
Relativity is possible somewhere between two or more things, for
this is the way that makes one get related to another.

A similar argument applies to movement. Movement is possible in
time; without the concept of time there cannot be a movement of
any sort. For a movement means an object going out of itself and
becoming something else which is not itself. Without the
background of time this becoming is unthinkable.

Therefore, Buddhist philosophy states that all these concepts,
movement and relativity, must have their field of operation, and
this field is designated by Buddhist philosophers a Emptiness
(*sunyata*).

When Buddha talks about all things being transient, impermanent,
and constantly changing, and therefore teaches that there is
nothing in this world which is absolutely dependable and worth
clinging to as the ultimate seat of security, he means that we
must look somewhere else for things permanent (*jo*),
bliss-imparting (*raku*), autonomous (*ga*), and absolutely free
from defilements (*jo*). According to the Nirvana Sutra (of the
Mahayana school), these four (*jo-raku-ga-jo*) are qualities of
Nirvana, and Nirvana is attained when we have knowledge, when the
mind is freed from thirst (*tanha*), craving (*asava*), and
conditionality (*sankhara*). While Nirvana is often thought to be
a negativistic idea the Mahayana followers have quite a different
interpretation. For they include autonomy (*ga, atman*) as one of
its qualities (*guna*), and autonomy is free will, something
dynamic. Nirvana is another name for the Emptiness.

The term "emptiness" is apt to be misunderstood for various
reasons. The hare or rabbit has no horns, the turtle has no hair
growing on its back. This is one form of emptiness. The Buddhist
*sunyata* does not mean absence.

A fire has been burning until now and there is no more of it.
This is another kind of emptiness. Buddhist *sunyata* does not
mean extinction.

The wall screens the room: on this side there is a table, and on
the other side there is nothing, space unoccupied. Buddhist
*sunyata* does not mean vacancy.

Absence, extinction, and unoccupancy -- these are not the
Buddhist conception of emptiness. Buddhists' Emptiness is not on
the plane of relativity. It is Absolute Emptiness transcending
all forms of mutual relationship, of subject and object, birth
and death, God and the world, something and nothing, yes and no,
affirmation and negation. In Buddhist Emptiness there is to time,
no space, no becoming, no-thing-ness; it is what makes all things
possible, it is a void of inexhaustible contents.

Pure experience is the mind seeing itself as reflected in itself,
it is an act of self-identification, a state of suchness. This is
possible only when the mind is *sunyata* itself, that is, when
the mind is devoid of all its possible contents except itself.
But to say "except itself" is apt to be misunderstood again. For
it may be questioned, what is this "itself"? We may have to
answer in the same way as St. Augustine did: "When you ask, I do
not know; but when you do not, I know".

The following dialogue which took place between two Zen masters
of the T'ang dynasty will help us to show what methodology was
adopted by Zen for communicating the idea of "itself".

One master called Isan (771-853) was working with his disciples
in the garden, picking tea leaves. He said to one of the
disciples in the garden called Kyozan, who was also a master: "We
have been picking the tea leaves all day; I hear your voice only
and do not see your form. Show me your primeval form". Kyozan
shook the tea bushes. Isan said, "You just got the action, but
not the body". Kyozan then said, "What would be your answer?"
Isan remained quiet for a while. Thereupon Kyozan said, "You have
got the body, but not the action". Isan's conclusion was, "I save
you from twenty blows of my stick".

As far as Zen philosophy is concerned this may be all right, as
these two masters know what each is seeking to reveal. But the
business of philosophers of our modern epoch is to recognize or
probe the background of experience on which these Zen masters
stand and try to elucidate it to the best of their capacity. The
masters are not simply engaged in mystifying the bystanders.

To say "empty" is already denying itself. But you cannot remain
silent. How to communicate the silence without going out of it is
the crux. It is for this reason that Zen avoids as much as
possible resorting to linguistics and strives to make us go
underneath words, as it were, to dig out what is there. Eckhart
is doing this all the time in his sermons. He picks out innocent
words from the Bible and lets them disclose an "inner act" which
he experiences in his unconscious consciousness. His thought is
not at all in the words. He turns them into instruments for his
own purposes. In the similar way the Zen master makes use of
anything about himself including his own person, trees, stones,
sticks, etc. He may then shout, beat, or kick. The main thing is
to discover what is behind all these actions. In order to
demonstrate that Reality is "Emptiness", the Zen master may stand
still with his hands folded over his chest. When he is asked a
further question, he may shake the tea plant or walk away without
a word, or give you a blow of a stick.

Sometimes the master is more poetic and compares the mind of
"emptiness" to the moon, calling it the mind-moon or the moon of
suchness. An ancient master of Zen philosophy sings of this moon:

The mind-moon is solitary and perfect:
The light swallows the ten thousand things.
It is not that the light illuminates objects,
Nor are objects in existence.
Both light and objects are gone,
And what is it that remains?

The master leaves the question unanswered. When it is answered
the moon will no longer be there. Reality is differentiated and
Emptiness vanishes into an emptiness. We ought not to lose sight
of the original moon, primeval mind-moon, and the master wants us
to go back to this, for it is where we have started first.
Emptiness is not a vacancy, it holds in it infinite rays of light
and swallows all the multiplicities there are in the world.

Buddhist philosophy is the philosophy of "Emptiness", it is the
philosophy of self-identity. Self-identity is to be distinguished
from mere identity. In the identity we have two objects for
identification; in self-identity there is just one object or
subject, one only, and this one identifies itself by going out of
itself. Self-identity thus involves a movement. And we see that
self-identity is the mind going out of itself in order to see
itself reflected in itself. Self-identity is the logic of pure
experience or of "Emptiness". In self-identity there are no
contradictions whatever. Buddhist call this suchness.

I once talked with a group of lovers of the art on the Buddhist
teaching of "Emptiness" and "Suchness", trying to show how the
teaching is related to the arts. The following is part of my
talk.

To speak the truth, I am not qualified to say anything at all
about the arts, because I have no artistic instincts, no artistic
education, and have not had many opportunities to appreciate good
works of art. All that I can say is more or less conceptual.

Take the case of painting. I often hear Chinese or Japanese art
critics declare that Oriental art consists in depicting spirit
and not form. For they say that when the spirit is understood the
form creates itself; the main thing is to get into the spirit of
an object which the painter chooses for his subject. The West, on
the other hand, emphasizes form, endeavors to reach the spirit by
means of form. The East is just the opposite: the spirit is all
in all. And it thinks that when the artist grasps the spirit, his
work reveals something more than colors and lines can convey. A
real artist is a creator and not a copyist. He has visited God's
workshop and has learned the secrets of creation -- creating
something out of nothing.

With such a painter every stroke of his brush is the work of
creation, and it cannot be retraced because it never permits
repetition. God cannot cancel his fiat; it is final, irrevocable,
it is an ultimatum. The painter cannot reproduce his own work.
When even a single stroke of his brush is absolute, how can the
whole structure or composition be reproduced, since this is the
synthesis of all his strokes, every one of which has been
directed toward the whole?

In the same way every minute of human life as long as it is an
expression of its inner self is original, divine, creative, and
cannot be retrieved. Each individual life thus is a great work of
art. Whether or not one makes it a fine inimitable masterpiece
depends upon one's consciousness of the working of *sunyata*
within oneself.

How does the painter get into the spirit of the plant, for
instance, if he wants to paint a hibiscus as Mokkei of the
thirteenth century did in his famous picture, which is now
preserved as a national treasure as Daitokuji temple in Kyoto?
The secret is to become the plant itself. But how can a human
being turn itself into a plant? Inasmuch as he aspires to paint a
plant or an animal, there must be in him something which
corresponds to it in one way or another. If so, he ought to be
able to become the object he desires to paint.

The discipline consists in studying the plant inwardly with his
mind thoroughly purified of its subjective, self-centered
contents. This means to keep the mind in unison with the
"Emptiness" or "Suchness", whereby one who stands against the
object ceases to be the one outside that object but transforms
himself into the object itself. This identification enables the
painter to feel the pulsation of one and the same life animating
both him and the object. This is what is meant when it is said
that the subject is lost in the object, and that when the painter
begins his work it is not he but the object itself that is
working and it is then that his brush, as well as his arm and his
fingers, become obedient servants to the spirit of the object.
The object makes its own picture. The spirit sees itself as
reflected in itself. This is also a case of self-identity.

It is said that Henri Matisse looked at an object which he
intended to paint for weeks, even months, until its spirit began
to move him, to urge him, even to threaten him, to give an
expression.

A writer on modern art, I am told, says that the artist's idea of
a straight line is different from that of the mathematician, for
the former conceives a straight line as fusing with a curve. I do
not know whether this quotation is quite correct, but the remark
is the most illuminating. For a straight line that remains always
straight is a dead line and curve that cannot be anything else is
another dead line. If they are at all living lines, and this
ought to be the case with every artistic production, a straight
line is curved and a curve is straight; besides there ought to be
what is known as "dimensional tension" in every line. Every
living line is not just on one plane, it is suffused with blood,
it is tridimensional.

I am also told that color with the artist is not just red or
blue, it is more than perceptual, it is charged with emotion.
This means that color is a living thing with the artist. When he
sees red it works out its own world; the artist bestows a heart
on the color. The red does not stop just at being one of the
seven colors as decomposed through the prism. As a living thing
it calls out all other colors and combines them in accordance
with its inner promptings. Red with the artist is not a mere
physical or psychological event, it is endowed with a spirit.

These views are remarkably Oriental. There is another striking
statement made by a Western artist. According to him, when he is
thoroughly absorbed in a visual perception of any kind, he feels
within himself certain possibilities out of the visual
representation which urges him to give them an expression. The
artist's life is that of the creator. God did not take the world
just for the sake of making something. He had a certain inner
urge, he wanted to see himself reflected in his creation. That is
what is meant when the Bible speaks about God's making man after
his own likeness. It is not man alone that is God's image, the
whole world is his image, even the meanest flea as Eckhart would
say shares God's is-ness in its is-ness. And because of this
is-ness the whole world moves on. So with the artist. It is due
to his in-ness being imbued into his works that they are alive
with his spirit. The artist himself may not be conscious of all
this proceeding, but Zen knows and is also prepared to impart the
knowledge to those who would approach it in the proper spirit.
The is-ness of a thing is not just being so, but it contains in
it infinite possibilities which Buddhists call *te* in Chinese,
*toku* in Japanese, and *guna* in Sanskrit. This is where lies "the
mystery of being", which is "the inexhaustibility of the
Emptiness".

The following story of Rakan Osho, of Shoshu, China, who lived in
the ninth century, is given here to illustrate how Zen transforms
one's view of life and makes one truly see into the is-ness of
things. The verse relates his own experience.

It was in the seventh year of Hsien-t'ung [867 A.D.] that I
for the first time took up the study of the Tao [that is, Zen].

Wherever I went I met words and did not understand them.
A lump of doubt inside the mind was like a willow-basket.
For three years, residing in the woods by the stream,
   I was altogether unhappy.
When unexpectedly I happened to meet the Dharmaraja [Zen master]
   sitting on the rug,
I advanced towards him earnestly asking him to dissolve my doubt.
The master rose from the rug on which he sat deeply absorbed in meditation;
He then baring his arm gave me a blow with his fist on my chest.
This all if a sudden exploded my lump of doubt completely to pieces.
Raising my head I for the first time perceived that the sun was circular.
Since then I have been the happiest man in the world,
   with no fears, no worries;
Day in day out, I pass my time in a most lively way.
Only I notice my inside filled with a sense of fullness and satisfaction;
I do not go out any longer, hither and thither,
   with my begging bowl for food. ("The Transmission of the Lamp", fas.XI.)

What is of the most significant interest in this verse-story of
Rakan Osho's experience is that "he for the first time perceived
that the sun was round". Everybody knows and sees the sun and
Osho also must have seen it all his life. Why then does he
specifically refer to it as circular as if he saw it really for
the first time? We all think we are living, we really eat, sleep,
walk, talk. But are we really? If we were, we would never be
talking about "dread", "insecurity", "fear", "frustration",
"courage to be", "looking into the vacant", "facing death".
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Chapter 3

"A Little Point" and *Satori*

1

MEISTER ECKHART is quoted in Inge's "Mysticism in Religion" (p.39.):

The union of the soul with God is far more
inward than that of the soul and body...
Now, I might ask, how stands it with the soul
that is lost in God? Does the soul finds
herself or not? To this I will answer as it
appears to me, that the soul finds herself
in the point where every rational being
understands itself with itself. Although it
sinks in the eternity of divine essence, yet
it can never reach the ground. Therefore God
has left a little point wherein the soul
turns back upon itself, and knows itself
to be a creature.

An interesting controversy arises regarding "a little point"
referred to in this passage from Eckhart. I do not know where
Dean Inge found the passage. It would be desirable to know the
entire context where it occurs, if we would discuss the point
fully, but we can somehow proceed according to the extent of our
general knowledge of Eckhartian philosophy. One person insists
that Eckhart here tells us about the human impossibility of
reaching the ground of Reality or "the inmost core [*grund*] of
the divine nature". According to this interpretation, there is an
impassable gap between "every rational being" and "the eternity
of the divine essence"; God provides us, therefore, with "a
little point" whereby we rational beings are made to turn upon
ourselves and realize that we are after all finite creatures and
barred forever from sinking into "the core of God" or "the
essence of God".

The other person's way of thinking runs along the following line:
Judging from the whole trend of Eckhart's ideas as expressed in
his sermons, he does not necessarily mean here that the gap
between the divine ground and ourselves is absolutely impassable;
on the contrary, he implies that he himself crossed the gap and
came back to this side of rationality. This person will insist
that if Eckhart did not cross the impassable himself how could he
say that "God has left a little point" as if he were God himself?
Or, logically speaking, when Eckhart says that there is a gap and
that the gap is impassable, he must have already been there and
seen the gap and actually surveyed it and found it impassable.

In our relative way of thinking, the finite is sharply
differentiated from the infinite, they cannot be made one, there
is no way of unifying them. But when we analyze the concept
closer, we find that one implies or participates in the other and
that because of the implication or participation the one becomes
separable from the other in our thought. Disintegration is
possible because of integration, and vice versa. It is in this
sense that the finite is infinite and the infinite is finite.

But here is a subtle point over which we must take care not to
slip: When we say that the finite is infinite, it does not mean
that the finite as it stands relatively as finite is infinite and
so with the infinite; they pass into each other and become one
when all ideas of relativity are wiped away. But we must be quite
cautious not to undertake this wiping away on the relative plane,
for in this case there will have to be another wiping away and
this may go on eternally. This is where many intellectuals
stumble and become victims of their own cleverness.

When they talk about an impassable gap and a point whereby we are
made to turn back, they forget that by this very talk they are
already crossing the impassable and find themselves on the other
side. It is due to their discriminating habit of thought that the
impassable is left on the other side while they are actually
there. We are possessed of the habit of looking at Reality by
dividing it into two; even when we have in all actuality the
thing we spend time in discussing and then come to the conclusion
that we have it not. It is due to the human habit of splitting one
solid Reality into two, and the result is that my "have" is no
"have" and my "have not" is no "have not". While we are actually
passing, we insist that the gap is impassable.

When Eckhart says that "God has left a little point", this is,
according to my understanding, to remind us of the fact that we
are all finite beings, that is, "creatures", and therefore that
as such we "can never rich the ground". But inasmuch as we are
"sinking in the eternity of the divine essence" we are already on
the ground. This is where we are God himself. It is only when we
*see* the "little point" left by God that we return to ourselves
and know that we are creatures. This *seeing* is splitting and
all forms of bifurcation take place and we are no more God, we
are no more, a, as Eckhart says, "One to one, one from One, one
in One and the One in one, eternally". This is "where time comes
in and all the properties of things which belong to time --
existing beside the timeless". (Blakney, p.81.) We all make time
sit beside timelessness. But why not time in timelessness and
timelessness in time?

2

"A little point" left by God corresponds to what Zen Buddhists
would call *satori*. When we strike this point we have a
*satori*. To have a *satori* means to be standing at Eckhart's
"point" where we can look in two directions: God-way and
creature-way. Expressed in another form, the finite is infinite
and the infinite is finite. This "little point" is full of
significance and I am sure Eckhart had a *satori*.

Eckhart's "little point" is the eye, that is to say, "The eye by
which I see God is the same as the eye by which God sees me. My
eye and God's eye are one and the same -- one in seeing, one in
knowing, and one in loving". (Blakney, p.206.) Eckhart says: "If
my eye is to distinguish colors, it must first be free from any
color impressions. If I see blue or white, the seeing of my eyes
is identical with what is seen". If the seeing is the seen and
the seen is the seeing, the "sinking in the eternity of the
divine essence" is the "reaching the ground", for there cannot be
any "ground" which "is beside the timeless", the ground is the
divine essence, and the sinking is reaching.

What makes us however think that Eckhart really advocates the
doctrine of impassableness is that here he seems to remind us of
our being creatures more than of our being one with God or our
coming from the core (or *grund*) of the divine nature. The
"little point" here referred to is made to turn us around back to
our finite creatureliness, but the fact is that the point can
readily be made to turn the other way leading us straight to the
Godhead. Eckhart calls the one who can achieve this wonder the
aristocrat (*Edel*), and defines him:

So I say that the aristocrat is one who
derives his being, his life, and his
happiness from God alone, with God and
in God and not at all from his
knowledge, perfection, or love of God,
or any such thing. Thus our Lord says
very well that life eternal is to know
God as the only true God and not that it
is knowledge that God may be known.
(Blakney, p.80.)

According to this, Eckhart distinguishes two kinds of knowledge:
one is to know God as the only God and the other is to know God
through knowledge about him. The second kind is "twilight
knowledge in which creation is perceived by clearly distinguished
ideas"; while the first kind is "daybreak knowledge" where
"creatures are known in God", and "in which creatures are
perceived without distinctions, all ideas being rejected, all
comparisons done away in that One that God himself is". (Blakney,
p.79.) Cannot this kind of knowledge be also the knowledge of
impassableness? Is this not what a man gets when the "little
point" makes him turn around God-way in which all creatures, all
distinctions, all comparisons, all ideas are done away with,
leaving God to be in himself and with himself?

Eckhart states in "The Aristocrat", from which the above
quotations are culled:

Neither the One, nor being, nor God, nor
rest, nor blessedness, nor satisfaction
is to be found where distinctions are.
Be therefore that One so that you may
find God. And of course, if you are
wholly that One, you shall remain so,
even where distinctions are. Different
things will all be parts of that One to
you and will no longer stand in your
way. (Blakney, p.78.)

Where distinctions are you cannot find "the One" or "Being", but
when you are "that One", "wholly that One", all distinctions or
all different things may be left as they are and will all be
parts of that One and offer you no hindrances, to use Kegon
phraseology. To tell the truth, however, distinctions can never
remain as distinctions if they were not made "parts of that One",
though as far as I am concerned I do not like the term "parts"
in connection with the One. "All different things" are not parts
but they are the One itself, they are not parts as if they, when
put together, would produce the whole. "Parts" is the treacherous
term.

Eckhart continues: "The One remains the same One in thousands of
thousands of stones as much as in four stones: a thousand times a
thousand is just as simple a number as four". This idea of number
is really at the bottom of the doctrine of impassableness. The
idea of distinguishing passable from impassable, or finite from
infinite, is derived from the notion of duality, of one divided
into two, and these two as standing absolutely against each
other, or as contradicting each other, or as irreconcilably
excluding each other -- which makes it impossible to go over to
the other. The One does not belong in the category of number, yet
the intellectually strained mind tries to pull it down to its own
level. Language is a useful means of communication and
expression, but when we try to use it for the deepest experience
man can have we trap ourselves and do not know how to extricate
ourselves. Eckhart is troubled in the same way as we see as we
can see in the following extracts.

I say that when a man looks at God, he
knows it and knows that he is the
knower. That as to say, he knows it is
God he is looking at and knows that he
knows him. Now some people wish it to
appear that the flower, the kernel of
blessing, is this awareness of the
spirit, that it is knowing God. For if I
have rapture and am unconscious of it,
what good would it do and what would it
mean? I cannot agree with this
position. (Blakney, p.79.)

According to this, Eckhart is apparently not satisfied with
merely knowing God and being conscious of this knowing on the
part of the spirit, for he goes on to declare that spiritual
blessing consists in absolutely being absorbed in God and not
knowing it at all:

For granting that the soul could not be
happy without it [that is, being
conscious of its own processes], still
its happiness does not consist in that;
for the foundation of spiritual blessing
is this: that the soul look at God
without anything between; here it
receives its being and life and draws
its essence from the core [*grund*] of
God, unconscious of the
knowledge-process, of love or anything
else. Then it is quite still in the
essence of God, not knowing at all where
it is, knowing nothing but God.

Evidently here Eckhart thinks that knowing is something between
the knower and God, that being conscious of God's presence is not
being "quite still in the essence of God", and therefore that
there is no foundation here on which spiritual blessing may be
established. In this Eckhart is quite right if the knowing of God
is to be understood in the way we generally understand knowledge,
as issuing from the relationship of subject and object. As he
says, "When the soul is aware that it is looking at God, loving
him and knowing him, that already is a retrogression, a quick
retreat back to the upper level of the natural order of things".
(Blakney, p.79-80.) To be conscious of knowing God is to know
about God if this knowing follows the ordinary way of
knowledge-process. But what kind of knowledge does he wish us to
understand by the knowledge referred to in the following
passage:

For a man must himself be One, seeking
unity both in himself and in the One,
which means that he must see God and God
only. And then he must "return", which
is to say, he must have knowledge of God
and be conscious of his knowledge.

What kind of knowledge does he mean here? In this knowledge is
there the division of subject and object? If this is the
knowledge of an absolute unity of God and man, what does this
"being conscious of his knowledge" imply? When Eckhart then tells
us that we "must have knowledge of God" and that we must
"return", does this mean that we after all give up "the
foundation of spiritual blessing" and retreat to the natural
order of things? What difference could there be between
"spiritual blessing" and knowledge of absolute oneness? In the
rapture of spiritual bliss preferable to "stepping beyond
creatures" or "jumping past creatures" and knowing God? (Blakney,
p.166.)

Eckhart quotes John, 19:12, "A certain nobleman went out into a
far country to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return".
"The nobleman" means, according to Eckhart, "a person who submits
completely to God, giving up all he is and has"; "to go out"
means that he "has nothing more to do with vanity... to the
extent that he is now pure being, goodness and truth"; and then
he has "daybreak knowledge in which creatures are perceived
without distinctions". But, according to Eckhart, this knowledge
is not enough, the nobleman is to be completely free from all
forms of knowledge. And then Eckhart continues, "There will be no
blessing except a man be conscious of his vision and knowledge of
God, but it is not the will of God that I be blessed on that
basis. If anyone will have it otherwise, let him do so; I can
only pity him".

Eckhart is here deeply involved in contradictions. He appraises
knowledge, then repudiates it, and finally takes it up again as
the thing desired. It is not apparently enough for the nobleman
"to go out" and he is advised "to return". In this process of
going out and receiving the kingdom, mere knowledge of the
oneness of God and himself is no more than knowledge *about* God.
Such knowledge, it goes without saying, is far from being
satisfactory to anyone who in all sincerity seeks God. The soul
must "look at God without anything between" and "receive its
being and life and draw its essence from the core [*grund*] of
God". But when this is accomplished the nobleman is "to return",
for he "must have knowledge of God and be conscious of his
knowledge". Eckhart seems to be using knowledge in two different
senses, one in a relative sense and the other in the absolute.
Hence this apparent confusion.

The real fact, however, is that as far as we are human beings we
cannot express in words our understanding of Reality in its
suchness. When we try to do so we are inevitably involved in a
contradiction. Eckhart says, "God's sight and mine are far
different -- utterly dissimilar". (Blakney, p.81.) Inasmuch as he
could make this statement in regard to God's sight as being
utterly dissimilar to our human sight, he must be said to have
had certain knowledge of God which enabled him to bring these
tidings to the human world from the other shore, from "the inmost
core of the divine nature in its solitude". (Blakney, p.81.) "If I
am to see color, I must have that in me which is sensitive to
color, but I should never see color if I did not have the essence
of color already". (Blakney, p.168.) Unless God was not already
with us, in us, we could never know how dissimilar or how similar
-- which is after all the same thing -- God was to us. In this
connection Eckhart quotes St.Paul and St.John: "We shall know God
as we are known by him" and again, "We shall know God as he is".
An image may be "dissimilar" to the object whose image it is, but
there is no doubt that it represents the original and to that
extent the image must be said to be "similar" to the original.
What makes the image an image is the presence in it of the
original and as such the image is just as real as the original.
The original sees itself in the image as well as in itself. Being
in "dissimilarity" must be said to be only in similarity. To
realize this is the meaning of "returning".

To quote Eckhart again, "The soul must step beyond or jump past
creatures if it is to know God". (Blakney, p.166.) But to know God
is to know oneself as a creature. To know God is "to go out" as
the Biblical nobleman does, according to Eckhart, and his
"returning" means knowing oneself as creature by knowing God.
When the soul knows God it becomes conscious of its oneness with
God and at the same time it realizes how "dissimilar" it is. The
"going out" is "returning" and conversely. This circular and
contradictory movement characterizes our spiritual experience. A
Zen master once produced a staff before the congregation and
said: "If you have a staff I will give one to you; if you do not
I take it away from you". The giving is the taking away, and the
taking away is the giving. Another master later gave his view,
saying, "You all throw your staffs down!" As long as the staff
crosses our way, the question of similarity and dissimilarity, of
passableness and impassableness will never be conclusively
settled.

3

Eckhart's idea of the "little point" which God left in order to
make us turn back to ourselves and realize that we are after all
creatures is highly suggestive and full of significance. Most
readers are apt to regard such a statement as this as not really
touching their own spiritual experience but as something general
and impersonal which may be turned to a subject of philosophical
discourse. Of course there is no harm in this as long as the
statement is understood as reflecting one's personal experience
in the matter.

Eckhart's "little point", according to my view, is not just a
point which stays stationary. It moves or rather revolves and
this movement is taking place all time. That is to say, the point
is a living one and not a dead one. Therefore as soon as we come
to this point God may make us turn back toward creatureliness but
at the same time he does not forget to remind us of the other
side of the point. If the point is stationary and points just
one way, we cannot even turn back to ourselves and find ourselves
to be creatures. The reason we can turn back is because we can
move on and see into the ground (*grund*) of the divine nature.
In fact, while going back to our creatureliness we are all the
time carrying with us the ground itself, for we cannot leave it
behind as if it were something which could be separated from us
and left anywhere by the roadside and perhaps picked up by
somebody else. Creatureliness and Godliness must go hand in hand;
wherever one is found the other is also always there. To leave
one behind means killing the other as well as oneself. The
"little point" is a kind of axis around which we and God move.
This truth will be experienced when a man once actually reaches
the point. Then the problem of impassableness no longer remains
with him, he will never ask himself whether he can pass on or
not. He is what he was. To know the significance of the point one
must see it, for God did not leave it where it is in order to
make philosophers or theologians argue about its presence so as
to help them advance the theories already constructed in their
own minds.

Some may say that if the "little point" exists only to make us
realize that we are after all creatures, what is the use of
looking into the eternity of divine essence? We all know that we
are creatures even before we come to the "little point". This
is however no more than mere arguing for the sake of arguing. We
must remember that this seeing the "little point" makes the
greatest difference in the world. We are indeed different
creatures, we are not the same creatures any longer after our
encounter with the "little point". We are now creatures in God,
with God, not creaturely creatures. There are those who think
that the "little point" divides us from God forever, and that
when we are away from it we have eternally left God on the other
side of it. The fact is just the contrary. When we turned back to
ourselves after being accosted by the "little point", we have
captured everything around there and are carrying it all with
us. If things were otherwise we should all find ourselves deeply
buried in the emptiness of the Godhead, which means an end to our
creatureliness. For the fullness of the Godhead can only be
expressed in the creatureliness of all beings.

I do not think it is justifiable to use this "little point" for
the support of the doctrine of impassableness. In other places
Eckhart gives us statements quite contradictory to the idea of
the "little point". For instance, in one of his sermons, "Into
the Godhead", (Blakney, pp. 165 *at seq*.) we have the following:

As long as the least of creatures
absorbs your attention, you will see
nothing of God, however little that
creature may be. Thus, in the Book of
Love, the soul says: "I have run around
looking for him my soul loves and found
him not". She found angels and many
other things but not him her soul
loved, but she goes on to say: "After
that, I went a little further and found
him my soul loves". It was as if she
said: "It was when I stepped beyond
creatures that I found my soul's lover".
The soul must step beyond or jump past
creatures if it is to know God.

This sermon is given under the heading, "A little, and ye see me
no more", which means, according to Eckhart, "However small it
may be, if anything adheres to the soul, you cannot see me", that
is, God. And: "Every creature seeks to become like God. If there
were no search for God, the heavens themselves would not be
revolving. If God were not in everything, nature would not
function nor would desire be in anything". And this desire is no
see God in his naked essence.

If all the shells were removed from the
soul and all God's shells could be
takes off too, he could give himself
directly to the soul without reserve.
But as long as the soul's shells are
intact -- be they ever so slight -- the
soul cannot see God. If anything, even
to the extent of a hairbreadth, came
between the body and the soul, there
could be no true union of the two. If
that is the case with physical things,
how much more true it is with spiritual!
Thus Boethius says: "If you want to know
the straight truth, put away joy and
fear, confidence, hope and
disappointment". Joy, fear, confidence,
hope and disappointment are all
intervening media, all shells. As long
as you stick to them and they to you,
you shall not see God.

These are all significance and illuminating statements whereby we
can look into the core of Eckhart's philosophical thinking. He
never wants us to leave the Godhead behind, be just wants us to
leave our shells and also asks of God to take off his shells if
he has any except those we have put on him. Both we and God are
to be naked if there is to be a unification or identity of any
sort between the two. To be naked means to be empty, for the two,
God and creatures, can join hands only when both stand in the
field of Absolute Emptiness (*sunyata*), where there is neither
light nor shadow.

Let us consider other passages from Eckhart for our own further
edification on the subject. The following are from the sermon
with the title, "Distinctions Are Lost in God" (Blakney, pp.
203 *et seq.*):

Man's last and highest parting occurs
when, for God's sake, he takes leave of
God. St.Paul took leave of God for
God's sake and gave up all that he
might get from God, as well as all he
might give -- together with every idea
of God. In parting with these, he parted
with God for God's sake and yet God
remained to him as God is in his own
nature -- not as he is conceived by
anyone to be -- nor yet as something to
be achieved -- but more as an is-ness
(*isticheit*), as God really is. Then he
neither gave to God nor received
anything from him, for he and God were a
unit, that is, pure unity.

Statements like this must have struck Christians of his days as
most extraordinary, even blasphemous, and probably they may still
affect present-day Christians in the same way. But from the
Buddhist point of view they would not sound in any way strange or
singular or astounding. They are rather a routine expression of
Buddhist thought. Eckhart however does not stop here, he goes on:

God gives to all things alike and as
they proceed from God they are
alike... A flea, to the extent that it
is in God, ranks above the highest angel
in his own right. Thus in God all things
are equal and are God himself... In this
likeness or identity God takes such
delight that he pours his whole nature
and being into it. His pleasure is as
great, to take a simile, as that of a
horse, let loose to run over a green
hearth where the ground is level and
smooth, to gallop as a horse will, as
fast as he can over the greensward --
for this is a horse's pleasure and
expresses his nature. It is so with God.
It is his pleasure and rapture to
discover identity, because he can always
put his whole nature into it -- for he
is this identity itself.

Is this not a remarkable utterance of spiritual intuition on the
part of the author? Here, we see that God, instead of being left
behind the "little point", is right out on the greensward with
"his whole nature and being" in full display. He keeps nothing in
reserve. He gallops like a horse, he sings like a bird, he blooms
like the flower, he even dances like a young girl. Living among
the conventionally minded tradition-bound medieval Christians,
Eckhart must have felt somewhat constrained in his expression and
did not go so far as the Zen master would. Otherwise, Eckhart
might have had "the wooden horse neigh and the stone man dance",
with the same facility as the Zen master.

In one sense, this "little point" may be considered as
corresponding to the Buddhist idea of *ichi-nen* (*ekacittaksana*
or *ekaksana* in Sanskrit and *i-nien* in Chinese). Eckhart's
"little point", if I understand it correctly, marks the turning
point in the suchness of the Godhead. As long as the Godhead
remains in its suchness, that is, in its naked essence, it is
Emptiness itself, no sound comes from it, no odor issues form it,
it is "above grace, above intelligence, above all desire"
(Blakney, p.231.), it is altogether unapproachable, unattainable,
as Buddhist philosophers would say. But because of this "little
point" left by it, it comes in contact with creatures by making
"the soul turn back to itself and find itself and know itself to
be a creature". The time when the soul becomes conscious of its
creatureliness is the time when God becomes aware of his contact
with creatures. Or we can say that this is creation. In Sermon
28 we have:

Back in the Womb [The original German is
*in miner ersten ursache*. The
translator has substituted this term. I
do not know whether this is a happy
translation or not. -- D.T.S.] from which
I came, I had no God and merely was,
myself. I did not will or desire anything,
for I was pure being, a knower of myself
by divine truth. The I wanted myself and
nothing else. And what I wanted I was,
and what I was I wanted, and thus I
existed untrammeled by God or anything
else. But when I parted from my will and
received my created being than I had a
God. For before there were creatures, God
was not God, but rather he was what he
was. When creatures came to be and took on
creaturely being, then God was no longer
God as he is in himself, but God as he
is with creatures. (Blakney, p.228.)

The Godhead must become God in order to make itself related to
creatures. The Biblical God as the creator of the world is no
longer God as he was. He created himself as he is, by creating
the world. But even this God is not to be conceived in terms of
time. The chronological God is the creation of a relative mind
and as such we can say that he is far removed from the Godhead.
He is just one of the creatures like ourselves. Eckhart says: "If
a flea could have the intelligence by which to search the eternal
abyss of divine being, out of which it came, we should say that
God together with all that God is could not give fulfillment or
satisfaction to the flea!" (Blakney, p.229.) A chronological God
has to have the intelligence of the flea if he wants to delve
into the very being of the flea. The rising of this intelligence
in the soul, to use Eckhartian terminology, is the positing of
the "little point".
 
 
 
 
 
 

Chapter IV

Living in the Light of Eternity

1

ETERNITY is, as a philosopher defines it, "an infinite extent of
time, in which every event is future at one time, present at
another, past at another". ("The Dictionary of Philosophy", ed.
by D.D.Runes. NY: Philosophical Library, p.97.)

This is an interesting definition no doubt, but what is
"infinity"? "No beginning and no end"? What is time that has no
beginning and no end? Can time be defined without eternity or
eternity without time? Is eternity time going on forever in two
directions, past-wards and future-wards? Is time eternity chopped
in pieces or numbers?

Let us see whether a symbolic representation of eternity is more
amenable to our understanding or imagination. What would a poet,
for instance, say about it?

I saw Eternity the other night,
Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
  All calm as it was bright,
  And round beneath it, Time, in hours, days, years
Driven by the spheres,
  Like a vast shadow moved, in which the world
And all her train were hurled. (Henry Vaughan, "The World")

Henry Vaughan's lines, as Bertrand Russell points out ("History
of Western Philosophy", p.144.), are evidently suggested by
Plato's "Timaeus" in which Plato states:

Now the nature of the ideal being was
everlasting, but to bestow this
attribute in its fullness upon a creature
was impossible. Wherefore he [God]
resolved to have a moving image of
eternity, and when he set in order the
heaven, he made this image eternal but
moving according to number, while
eternity itself rests in unity; and this
image we call time. For there were no
days and nights and months and years
before the heaven was created, but when
he constructed the heaven he created
them also. (Dialogues of Plato, tr. by
B.Jowett. London. Vol III, p.456.)

Further, Plato goes on to say that the heaven and time are so
closely knit together that if one should dissolve the other might
also be dissolved:

Time, then, and the heaven came into
being at the same instant in order that,
having been created together, if ever
there was to be dissolution of them,
they might be dissolved together. It was
framed after the pattern of the eternal
nature, that it might remember this as
far as was possible; for the pattern
exists from eternity, and the created
heaven has been, and is, and will be, in
all time.

The heaven is eternity; and "the sun and moon and the five stars"
are "the forms of time, which imitate eternity and revolve
according to a law of number", and the moving images of the
eternal essence which alone "is" and not subject to becoming.
What we see with our sense is not the heaven itself, the original
eternal being itself, which is only in God's mind. If we wish,
therefore, "to live in the light of eternity" we must get into
God's mind. "Is this possible?" one may ask. But the question is
not the possibility of achieving this end, but its necessity; for
otherwise we cannot go on living even this life of ours though
bound in time and measurable in days and nights, in months and
years. What is necessary, then, must be possible. When the
Eternal negates itself to manifest itself "in the form of time",
it assuredly did not leave the forms helpless all by themselves;
it must have entered into them though negated. When the Eternal
negated itself into the moving, changing, sensible forms of time,
it hid itself in them. When we pick them up, we must see "the
shoots of everlastingly" in them. "Was" and "will be" must be
in the "is". What is finite must be carrying in it, with it,
everything belonging to infinity. We who are becoming in time,
therefore, must be able to see that which eternally "is". This is
seeing the world as God sees it, as Spinoza says, "*sub specie
aeternitatis*".

Eternity may be regarded as a negation as far as human finitude
is concerned, but inasmuch as this finitude is always changing,
becoming, that is, negating itself, what is really negative is
the world itself and not the eternal. The eternal must be an
absolute affirmation which our limited human understanding
defines in negative terms. We must see the world in this
affirmation, which is God's way of seeing the world, seeing
everything as part of the whole. "Living in the light of
eternity" cannot be anything else.

B.Jowett, translator of Plato, writes in his introduction to
"Timaeus":

Not only Buddhism, but Greek as well as
Christian philosophy, shows that it is
quite possible that the human mind
should retain an enthusiasm for mere
negations... Eternity or the eternal is
not merely the unlimited in time but the
truest of all Being, the most real of
all realities, the most certain of all
knowledge, which we nevertheless only
see through the glass darkly. (Ibid.,
p.396.)

The enthusiasm Jowett here refers to is not "for mere negations"
or for things which are "seen only through a glass darkly"; it
cannot come out of the human side of finitude; it must issue from
eternity itself, which is in the finitude, indeed, and which
makes the finitude what it is. What appears to be a mere negation
from the logical point of view is really the is-ness of things.
As long as we cannot transcend the mere logicality of our
thinking, there will be no enthusiasm of any kind whatever in any
of us. What stirs us up to the very core of our being must come
from the great fact of affirmation and not from negation.

2

Buddhism is generally considered negativistic by Western
scholars. There is something in it which tends to justify this
view, as we observe in Nagarjuna's doctrine of "Eight No's":

There is no birth,
   Nor is there death;
There is no beginning,
   Nor is there any ending;
Nothing is identical with itself.
   Nor is there any diversification;
Nothing comes into existence,
   Nor does anything go out of existence. (The Madhyamika-sastra,
"Treatise on the Middle Way")

What he aims at by negating everything that can be predicated of
the *Dharma* (Ultimate Reality) is to bring out thereby what he
terms the Middle Way. The Middle Way is not sheer nothingness, it
is a something that remains after every possible negation. Its
other name is the Unattainable, and the "Prajna-paramita-sutra"
teach the doctrine of the Unattainable. I will try to illustrate
what it means in order to clarify the deeper implications of this
contradictory statement. I shall repeat the story found in
Chapter II.

There was once in the T'ang dynasty in the history of China, a
great scholar thoroughly versed in this doctrine. His name was
Tokusan (790-865, Te-shan in Chinese). He was not at all
satisfied with the Zen form of Buddhist teaching which was
rapidly gaining power, especially in the south of China. Wishing
to refute it he came out of Szu-ch'uan in the southwestern part
of China.

His objective was to visit a great Zen monastery in the district
of Li-yang. When he approached it he thought of refreshing
himself with a cup of tea. He entered a teahouse by the roadside
and ordered some refreshments. Seeing a bundle on his back, the
old lady who happened to be the teahouse keeper asked what it
was.

Tokusan said, "This is Shoryo's [Ch'ing-lung's] great commentary
on the "Diamond Sutra" [a portion of the great
"Prajna-paramita-sutra"]".

"I have a question and if you answer it I shall be glad to serve
you the refreshments free of charge. Otherwise you will have to
go elsewhere".

"What is your question?" the monk asked.

"According to the "Diamond Sutra", 'The past mind is
unattainable, the future mind is unattainable, and the present
mind is unattainable'. If so, what is the mind which you wish to
punctuate?"

An explanation is need here. In Chinese, "refreshments"
(*t'ien-hsin*), literally means "punctuating the mind". I do not
know how the term originated. The teahouse keeper making use of
"the mind" associated with "refreshments" quoted the Sutra in
which the mind in terms of time is said to be "unattainable" in
any form, either past, present, or future. If this is the case,
the monk cannot have any "mind" which he wishes to "punctuate".
Hence her question.

Tokusan was nonplused, because he was never prepared to
encounter such questions while studying the Sutra along the
conventional line of conceptual interpretation. He could not
answer the question and was obliged to go without his tea. Those
who do not know how to transcend time will naturally find it
difficult to attain Nirvana which is eternity.

The unattainability of Nirvana comes from seeking it on the other
shore of becoming as if it were something beyond time or
birth-and-death (*samsara*). Nirvana is *samsara* and *samsara*
is Nirvana. Therefore, eternity, Nirvana, is to be grasped where
time, *samsara*, moves on. The refreshments cannot be taken
outside time. The taking is time. The taking is something
attainable, and yet it goes on in something unattainable. For
without this something unattainable all that is attainable will
cease to be attainable. This paradoxicality marks life.

Time is elusive, that is, unattainable. If we try to take hold of
it by looking at it from the outside, then we cannot even have
ordinary refreshments. When time is caught objectively in the
serialism of the past, present, and future, it is like trying to
catch one's own shadow. This is negating eternity constantly. The
unattainable must be grasped from the inside. One has to live in
it and with it. While moving and changing, one must become the
moving and changing. Emerson in "Brahma" sings of the eternal as
"one" in the changing and moving forms of time:

They reckon ill who leave me out;
   When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
   And I the hymn the Bramin sings.

Where "the doubter and the doubt" are one, there is Brahma as
"the pattern of the eternal nature", which is God himself. When
"the doubter and the doubt" are separated and placed in serialism
of time, the dichotomy cuts into every moment of life darkening
forever the light of eternity.

"To live in the light of eternity" is to get into the oneness and
allness of things and to live with it. This is what the Japanese
call "seeing things *sono-mama*", or looking into the
"as-it-is-ness" of things, which in William Blake's terms is to
"hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an
hour".

To see things as God sees them, according to Spinoza, is to see
them under the aspect of eternity. All human evaluation is,
however, conditioned by time and relativity. It is ordinarily
difficult for us humans "to see a world in a grain of sand, and a
heaven in a wild flower". To our senses, a grain of sand is not
the whole world, nor is a wild flower in a corner of the field a
heaven. We live in a world of discrimination and our enthusiasm
rises from the consideration of particulars. We fail to see them
"evenly" or "uniformly" as Meister Eckhart tells us to do, which
is also Spinoza's way, Blake's way, and other wise men's way,
East and West. Tennyson must have been in the similar frame of
consciousness when he plucked a wild flower out of the crannied
wall and held it in his hand and contemplated it ("Flower in the
Crannied Wall").

3

However difficult this way of looking at the world is, the
strange thing to most of us, or rather the wonderful thing, is
that once in a while we transcend the temporal and relativistic
point of view. It is then that we realize that life is worth
living, and that death is not the end of all our strivings, and
furthermore that what Buddhists call *trishna* (thirst) is more
deeply rooted than we imagine, as it grows straight out of the
root of *karuna* (compassion). One may say that *karuna* is the
Buddhist equivalent of love.

Let me cite a Japanese Haiku poet of the eighteenth century,
Basho. One of his seventeen-syllable poems reads:

When closely inspected,
One notices a *nazuna* in bloom
Under the hedge.

The nazuna is a small flowering wild plant. Even when flowering
it is hardly noticeable, having no special beauty. But when the
time comes, it blooms, fulfilling all that is needed of a living
being as ordered at the beginning of creation. It comes directly
from God as does any other form of being. There is nothing mean
about it. Its humble glory surpasses all human artificiality. But
ordinarily we pass by it and pay not the slightest attention.
Basho at the time must have been strangely impressed by it
blooming under a thickly growing hedge, modestly lifting its
tender head hardly discernible from the rest. The poet does not
at all express his emotions. He makes no allusions whatever to
"God and man", nor does he express his desire to understand "What
you are root, and all, and all in all". He simply looks at the
nazuna so insignificant and yet so full of heavenly splendor and
goes on absorbed in the contemplation of "the mystery of being",
standing in the midst of the light of eternity.

At the point it is important to note the difference between East
and West. When Tennyson noticed the flower in a crannied wall he
"plucked" it and held it in his hand and went on reflecting about
it, pursuing his abstract thought about God and man, about the
totality of things and the unfathomability of life. This is
characteristic of Western man.

His mind works analytically. The direction of his thinking is
toward the externality or objectivity of things. Instead of
leaving the flower as it is blooming in the cranny, Tennyson must
pluck it out and hold it in his hand. If he were scientifically
minded, he would surely bring it to the laboratory, dissect it,
and look at it under the microscope; or he would dissolve it in
the variety of chemical solutions and examine them in the tubes,
perhaps over a burning fire. He would go through all these
processes with anything, mineral or vegetable, animal or human.
He would treat the human body, dead or alive, with the same
innocence or indifference as the piece of stone. This is also a
kind of seeing the world in the aspect of eternity or rather in
the aspect of prefect "evenness".

When the scientist finishes (though the "when" of this is
unpredictable) his examinations, experimentations, and
observations, he will indulge in all forms of abstract thinking:
evolution, heredity, genetics, cosmogeny. If he is still more
abstract-minded he may extend his speculative mood to a
metaphysical interpretation of existence. Tennyson does not go so
far as this. He is the poet who deals with concrete images.

Compare all this with Basho and we see how differently the
Oriental poet handles the experience. Above all, he does not
"pluck" the flower, he does not mutilate it, he leaves it where
he has found it. He does not detach it from the totality of its
surroundings, he contemplates it in its *sono-mama* state, not
only in itself but in the situation as it finds itself -- the
situation in its broadest and deepest sense. Another Japanese
poet refers to the wild flower:

All these flowers of the fields --
   Should I dare touch them?
I offer them as they are
   To all the Buddhas in the
   Three thousand chiliocosms!

Here is the feeling of reverence, of mystery, of wonderment,
which is highly religious. But all this is not expressly given
articulation. Basho simply refers first to his "close inspection"
which is not necessarily aroused by any purposeful direction of
his intention to find something among the bushes; he simply looks
casually around and is greeted unexpectedly by the modestly
blooming plant which ordinarily escapes one's detection. He bends
down and "closely" inspects it to be assured that it is a nazuna.
He is deeply touched by its unadorned simplicity, yet partaking
in the glory of the unknown source. He does not say a word about
his inner feeling, every syllable is objective except the last
two syllables, "*kana*".

Yoku mireba          [When] carefully seen,
Nazuna hana saku     Nazuna in bloom,
Kakine kana!         The hedge!

"*Kana*" is untranslatable into English, perhaps except by an
exclamation mark, which is the only sign betraying the poet's
subjectivity. Of course, a Haiku being no more than the poem of
seventeen syllables cannot express everything that went on in
Basho's mind at the time. But this very fact of the Haiku's being
so extremely epigrammatic and sparing of words gives every
syllable used an intensity of unexpressed inner feeling of the
poet, though much is also left to the reader to discover what is
hidden between the syllables. The poet alludes to a few
significant points of reference in his seventeen-syllable lines
leaving the inner connection between those points to be filled by
the sympathetically or rather empathetically vibrating
imagination of the reader.

4

Western psychologists talks about the theory of empathy or
transference of feeling or participation, but I am rather
inclined to propound the doctrine of identity. Transference or
participation is based upon the dualistic interpretation of
reality whereas the identity goes more fundamentally into the
root of existence where no dichotomy in any sense has yet taken
place. From this point of view, participation becomes easier to
understand and may be more reasonable or logical. For no
participation is possible where there is no underlying sense of
identity. When difference is spoken of, this presupposes oneness.
The idea of two is based on that of one. Two will never be
understood without one. To visualize this, read the following
from the Traherne's "Centuries of Meditations":

Your enjoyment of the world is never
right, till every morning you awake in
Heaven; see yourself in your Father's
Palace; and look upon the skies, the
earth, and the air as Celestial Joys:
having such a reverend esteem of all, as
if you were among the Angels. The bride
of a monarch, in her husband's chamber,
hath no such courses of delight as you.

You never enjoy the world aright, till
the Sea itself floweth in your veins,
till you are clothed with the heavens,
and crowned with the stars; and perceive
yourself to be the sole heir of the
whole world, and more than so, because
men are in it who are every one sole
heirs as well as you. Till you can sing
and rejoice and delight in God, as
misers do in gold, and Kings in
Scepters, you never enjoy the world.

Till your spirit filleth the whole
world, and the stars are your jewels;
till you are as familiar with the ways
of God in all Ages as with your walk and
table; till you are intimately
acquainted with that shady nothing out
of which the world was made; till you
love men so as to desire their
happiness, with a thirst equal to the
zeal of your own; till you delight in
God for being good to all: you never
enjoy the world.

(Thomas Trahern (1636-1674) "Centuries
of Meditations", London, p.19.)

Such feelings as these can never be comprehended so long as the
sense of opposites is dominating your consciousness. The idea of
participation or empathy is an intellectual interpretation of the
primary experience, while as far as the experience itself is
concerned, there is no room for any sort of dichotomy. The
intellect, however, obtrudes itself and breaks up the experience
in order to make it amenable to intellectual treatment, which
means a discrimination and bifurcation. The original feeling of
identity is then lost and intellect is allowed to have its
characteristic way of breaking up reality into pieces.
Participation or empathy is the result of intellectualization.
The philosopher who has no original experience is apt to indulge
in it.

According to John Hayward, who wrote an introduction to the 1950
edition of Thomas Traherne's "Centuries of Meditations", Trahern
is "a theosopher or visionary whose powerful imagination enabled
him to see through the veil of appearances and rediscover the
world in its original state of innocence". This is to revisit the
Garden of Eden, to regain Paradise, where the tree of knowledge
has not yet begun to bear fruit. The Wordsworthian "Intimations"
are no more than our longings for eternity that was left behind.
It is our eating the forbidden fruit of knowledge which has
resulted in our constant habit of intellectualizing. But we have
never forgotten, mythologically speaking, the original abode of
innocence; that is to say, even when we are given over to
intellection and to the abstract way of thinking, we are always
conscious, however dimly, of something left behind and not
appearing on the chart of well-schematized analysis. This
"something" is no other than the primary experience of reality in
its suchness or is-ness, or in its sono-mama state of existence.
"Innocence" is the Biblical term and corresponds ontologically to
"being sono-mama" as the term is used in Buddhism.

Let me quote further from Traherne whose eternity-piercing eye
seems to survey the beginningless past as well as the endless
future. His book of "meditations" is filled with wonderful
insights born of profound religious experience which is that of
one who has discovered his primal innocence.

Will you see the infancy of this sublime
and celestial greatness? Those pure and
virgin apprehensions I had from the
womb, and divine light wherewith I was
born are the best unto this day, wherein
I can see the Universe...

Certainly Adam in Paradise had not more
sweet and curious apprehensions of the
world, than I when I was a child.

My very ignorance was advantageous. I
seemed as one brought into the Estate of
Innocence. All things were spotless and
pure and glorious: yea, and infinitely
mine, and joyful and precious. I knew
not that there were any sins, or
complaints or laws. I dreamed not of
poverties, contentions or vices. All
tears and quarrels were hidden from mine
eyes. Everything was at rest, free and
immortal, I knew nothing of sickness or
death or rent or exaction, either
tribute or bread...

All Time was Eternity, and a perpetual
Sabbath...

The corn was orient and immortal wheat,
which never should be reaped nor was
ever sown. I thought it had stood from
everlasting to everlasting. The dust and
stones of the street were as precious as
gold: the gates were at first the end of
the world. The green trees when I saw
them first through one of the gates
transported and ravished me, their
sweetness and unusual beauty made my
heart to leap, and almost mad with
ecstasy, they were such strange and
wonderful things. The men! O what
venerable and revered creatures did the
aged seem! Immortal Cherubims! And young
men glittering and sparkling Angels, and
maids strange seraphic pieces of life
and beauty! Boys and girls tumbling in
the street and playing were moving
jewels. I knew not that they were born
or should die; but all things abided
eternally as they were on their proper
places. Eternity was manifest in the
Light of the Day, and something infinite
behind everything appeared; which talked
with my expectation and moved my desire.
The city seemed to stand in Eden, or to
be built in Heaven. The streets were
mine, the temple was mine, the people
were mine, their clothes and gold and
silver were mine, as much as their
sparkling eyes, fair skins and ruddy
faces. The skies were mine, and so were
the sun and moon and stars, and all the
World was mine; and I the only spectator
and enjoyer of it. I knew no churlish
properties, nor bounds, nor divisions;
but all properties and divisions were
mine: all treasures and the possessors
of them. So that with much ado I was
corrupted and made to learn the dirty
devices of this world. Which now I
unlearn, and become as it were a little
child again, that I may enter into the
Kingdom of God.

5

Compared with these passages, how prosaic and emotionally
indifferent Zen is! When it sees a mountain it declares it to be
a mountain; when it comes to a river, it just tells us it is a
river. When Chokei (Chang-ching) after twenty hard years of study
happened to lift the curtain and saw the outside world, he lost
all his previous understanding of Zen and simply made this
announcement:

How mistaken I was! How mistaken I was!
Raise the screen and see the world!
If anybody asks me what philosophy I understand,
I'll straightaway give him a blow across his mouth with my *hossu*.

Chokei does not say what he saw when the screen was lifted up. He
simply resents any question being asked about it. He even goes to
the length of keeping the questioner's mouth tightly closed. He
knows that if one even tried to utter a word and say "this" or
"that", the very designation misses the mark. It is like another
master's bringing out before the entire congregation a monk who
asked him who Buddha was. The master then made this remark,
"Where does this monk want to find Buddha? Is this not a silly
question?" Indeed, we are all apt to forget that every one of us
is Buddha himself. In the Christian way of saying, this means
that we are all made in the likeness of God or, in Eckhart's
words, that "God's is-ness is my is-ness and neither more nor
less". (Blakney, p.180.)

It may not be altogether unprofitable in this connection to give
another Zen "case" where God's is-ness is made perceivable in the
world of particulars as well as in the world of absolute oneness.
To us the case illustrates the Eckhartian knowledge "that I know
God as He knows me, neither more nor less but always the same".
This is knowing things as they are, loving them in their
*sono-mama* state, or "loving justice for its own sake", that is
to say, "loving God without any reason for loving". Eckhart's
idea of justice may be gleaned from the following passages from
his Sermon 18 (Blakney, pp.178-182.):

"He is just who gives to each what belongs to him".

"They are just who take everything from God evenly, just as it
comes, great and small, desirable and undesirable, one thing like
another, all the same, and neither more nor less".

"The just live eternally with God, on par with God, neither
deeper nor higher".

"God and I: we are one. By knowing God I take him to myself. By
loving God I penetrate him".

Zen may look so remote and aloof from human affairs that between
it and Eckhart some may be persuaded to see nothing of close
relationship as I am trying to show here. But in reality Eckhart
uses in most cases psychological and personalistic terms whereas
Zen is steeped in metaphysics and transcendentalism. But wherever
the identity of God and man is recognized the Zen statements as
they are given below will be intelligible enough.

Hakuin (1685-1768), a great Japanese Zen master of the Tokugawa
era, quotes in his famous book known as "Kwai-an-koku Go" (fas.5.)
a story of Shun Rofu's interview with a well-seasoned lay
disciple of Zen. Shun (of the Sung dynasty) was still a young man
when this interview took place. It was the custom of this lay
disciple to ask a question of a new monk-visitor who wanted to
enjoy the hospitality of the devoted Zen Buddhist, and the
following once took place between him and a new caller:

Q. "How about the ancient mirror which has
gone through a process of thorough
polishing?"

A. "Heaven and earth are illuminated".

Q. "How about before polishing?"

A. "As dark as black lacquer".

The layman Buddhist was sorry to dismiss the
monk as not fully deserving his hospitality.

The monk now returned to his old master and
asked:

Q. "How about the ancient mirror not yet
polished?"

A. "Han-yang is not very far from here".

Q. "How about after the polish?"

A. "The Isle of Parrot [Ying-wu] lies before
the Pavilion of Yellow Stork [Huang-huo]".

This is said to have at once opened the monk's eye to the meaning
of ancient mirror, which was the subject of discussion between
him and Shun. "The mirror" in its is-ness knows no polishing. It
is the same old mirror whether or not it goes through any form of
polishing. "Justice is even", says Eckhart. For "the just have no
will at all: whatever God wants, it is all one to them".

Now Hakuin introduces the following *mondo*:

A monk asked Ho-un of Rosozan, a disciple of
Nangaku Yejo (died 744), "How do we speak and
not speak?"

This is the same as asking: How do we transcend the law of
contradiction? When the fundamental principle of thought is
withheld, there will be no thinking of God as Eckhart tells us,
"God [who] is in his own creature -- not as he is conceived by
anyone to be --- nor yet as something yet to be achieved -- but
more as an 'is-ness', as God really is". (Blakney, p.204.) What
kind of God can this be? Evidently, God transcends all our
thought. If so, how have we ever come to conceive of God? To say
God is "this" or "that" is to deny God, according to Eckhart. He
is above all predicates, either positive or negative. The monk's
question here ultimately brings us to the same form of quandary.

Ho-un of Rosozan, instead of directly
answering the monk, retorted, "Where is your
mouth?"

The monk answered, "I have no mouth".

Poor monk! He was aggressive enough in his first questioning, for
he definitely demanded to get an answer to the puzzle: "How could
reality be at once an affirmation and a negation?" But when Ho-un
counterquestioned him, "Where is your mouth?" all that the monk
could say was, "I have no mouth". Ho-un was an old hand.
Detecting at once where the monk was, that is, seeing that the
monk was still unable to transcend the dichotomy,

Ho-un pursued with "How do you eat
your rice?" The monk had no response.

(The point is whether he had a real understanding of the whole
situation.)

Later Tozan, another master, hearing of this
mondo, gave his own answer: "He feels no
hunger and has no need for rice".

"One who feels no hunger" is "the ancient mirror" that needs no
polishing, is he who "speaks and yet speaks not". He is "justice"
itself, the justice is the suchness of things. To be "just" means
to be sono-mama, to follow the path of "everyday consciousness",
"to eat when hungry and to rest when tired". In this spirit I
interpret Eckhart's passage: "If I were perpetually doing God's
will, then I would be a virgin in reality, as exempt from
idea-handicaps as I was before I was born". (Blakney, p.207.)
"Virginity" consists in not being burdened with any forms of
intellection, in responding "Yet, yes" when I am addressed by
name. I meet a friend in the street, he says, "Good morning", and
I respond, "Good morning". This will again correspond to the
Christian way of thinking: "If God told an angel to go to a tree
and pick off a caterpillar, the angel would be glad to do it and
it would be bliss to him because it is God's will". (Blakney,
p.205.)

A monk asked a Zen master, "I note an ancient wise man saying:

I raise the screen and face the broad daylight;
I move the chair and am greeted by the blue mountains.

What is meant by 'I raise the screen and face the broad
daylight'?"

The master said, "Please pass me the pitcher there".

"What is meant by 'I move the chair and am greeted by the blue
mountains'?"

"Please put the pitcher back where it was found". This was the
answer given by the master.
 

All these Zen *mondo* may sound nonsensical and the reader may
come to the conclusion that when the subject is "living in the
light of eternity" they are altogether irrelevant and have no
place in a volume like this. It is quite a natural criticism from
the point of view of an ordinary man of the world. But let us
listen to what Eckhart, one of the greatest mystics in the
Christian world, states about the "now-moment" which is no other
than eternity itself:

The now-moment in which God made the
first man, and the now-moment in which
the last man will disappear, and the
now-moment in which I am speaking are
all one in God, in whom there is only
one now. (Blakney, p.209.)

I have been reading all day, confined to my room, and feel tired.
I raise the screen and face the broad daylight. I move the chair
on the veranda and look at the blue mountains. I draw a long
breath, fill my lungs with fresh air and feel entirely refreshed.
I make tea and drink a cup or two of it. Who would say that I am
not living in the light of eternity? We must, however, remember
that all these are the events of one's inner life as it comes in
touch with eternity or as it is awakened to the meaning of "the
now-moment" which is eternity, and further that things or events
making up one's outer life are no problems here.

6

I quote again f