The Way of Zen

In terms of immediate perception, when we look for things there is nothing but mind, and when we look for mind there is nothing but things. For a moment we are paralyzed, because it seems that we have no basis for action, no ground under foot from which to take a jump. But this is the way it always was, and in the next moment we find ourselves as free to act, speak, and think as ever, yet in a strange and miraculous new world from which “self” and “other,” “mind” and “things” have vanished. In

In terms of immediate perception, when we look for things there is nothing but mind, and when we look for mind there is nothing but things. For a moment we are paralyzed, because it seems that we have no basis for action, no ground under foot from which to take a jump. But this is the way it always was, and in the next moment we find ourselves as free to act, speak, and think as ever, yet in a strange and miraculous new world from which “self” and “other,” “mind” and “things” have vanished. In the words of Te-shan:

Only when you have no thing in your mind and no mind in things are you vacant and spiritual, empty and marvelous.

In Zen a man has no mind apart from what he knows and sees, and this is almost expressed by Gochiku in the haiku:

The long night;
The sound of the water
Says what I think.

And still more directly–

The stars on the pond;
Again the winter shower
Ruffles the water.

Haiku and waka poems convey perhaps more easily than painting the subtle differences between the four moods of sabi, wabi, aware, and yugen. The quiet, thrilling loneliness of sabi is obvious in

On a withered branch
A crow is perched,
In the autumn evening.

But it is less obvious and therefore deeper in

With the evening breeze,
The water laps against
The heron’s legs.

In the dark forest
A berry drops:
The sound of the water.

Sabi is, however, loneliness in the sense of Buddhist detachment, of seeing all things as happening “by themselves” in miraculous spontaneity. With this goes that sense of deep, illimitable quietude which descends with a long fall of snow, swallowing all sounds in layer upon layer of softness.

Sleet falling;
Fathomless, infinite
Loneliness.