The Way of Zen

by Alan W. Watts

Ideas and insights of the greatest fascination are appearing in some of the newer fields of Western science-in psychology and psychotherapy, in logic and the philosophy of science, in semantics and communications theory.

relation of Zen to Chinese Taoism and Indian Buddhism,

when one speaks from within a tradition, and especially from within its institutional hierarchy, there is always apt to be a certain lack of perspective and grasp of the outsider’s viewpoint.

Zen is above all an experience, nonverbal in character, which is simply inaccessible to the purely literary and scholarly approach.

To know what Zen is, and especially what it is not, there is no alternative but to practice it, to experiment with it in the concrete so as to discover the meaning which underlies the words.

characteristically Asian attitude of “Come and find out for yourself.”

Zen Buddhism is a way and a view of life which does not belong to any of the formal categories of modern Western thought. It is not religion or philosophy; it is not a psychology or a type of science. It is an example of what is known in India and China as a “way of liberation,” and is similar in this respect to Taoism, Vedanta, and Yoga.

The problem is to appreciate differences in the basic premises of thought and in the very methods of thinking, and these are so often overlooked that our interpretations of Chinese philosophy are apt: to be a projection of characteristically Western ideas into Chinese terminology.

for words can be communicative only between those who share similar experiences.

because we do not feel that we really know anything unless we can represent it to ourselves in words, or in some other system of conventional signs such as the notations of mathematics or music.

Thus the task of education is to make children fit to live in a society by persuading them to learn and accept its codes-the rules and conventions of communication whereby the society holds itself together.

In English the differences between things and actions are clearly, if not always logically, distinguished, but a great number of Chinese words do duty for both nouns and verbs–so that one who thinks in Chinese has little difficulty in seeing that objects are also events, that our world is a collection of processes rather than entities.

According to convention, I am not simply what I am doing now. I am also what I have done, and my conventionally edited version of my past is made to seem almost more the real “me” than what I am at this moment. For what I am seems so fleeting and intangible, but what I was is fixed and final. It is the firm basis for predictions of what I will be in the future, and so it comes about that I am more closely identified with what no longer exists than with what actually is!

It is important to recognize that the memories and past events which make up a man’s historical identity are no more than a selection.

For the very nature of conventional knowledge is that it is a system of abstractions. It consists of signs and symbols in which things and events are reduced to their general outlines, as the Chinese character jena stands for “man” by being the utmost simplification and generalization of the human form.

Abstraction is thus almost a necessity for communication, since it enables us to represent our experiences with simple and rapidly made “grasps” of the mind.

our conventional words and thoughts are reconstructions of experience in terms of abstract signs.

Thus communication by conventional signs of this type gives us an abstract, one-at-a-time translation of a universe in which things are happening altogether-at-once-a universe whose concrete reality always escapes perfect description in these abstract terms.

For we have two types of vision–central and peripheral, not unlike the spotlight and the floodlight. Central vision is used for accurate work like reading, in which our eyes are focused on one small area after another like spotlights. Peripheral vision is less conscious, less bright than the intense ray of the spotlight. We use it for seeing at night, and for taking “subconscious” notice of objects and movements not in the direct line of central vision. Unlike the spotlight, it can take in very many things at a time.

When we turn to ancient Chinese society, we find two “philosophical” traditions playing complementary parts-Confucianism and Taoism.

Taoism concerns itself with unconventional knowledge, with the understanding of life directly, instead of in the abstract, linear terms of representational thinking.

In certain natures, the conflict between social convention and repressed spontaneity is so violent that it manifests itself in crime, insanity, and neurosis, which are the prices we pay for the otherwise undoubted benefits of order.

To be free from convention is not to spurn it but not to be deceived by it. It is to be able to use it as an instrument instead of being used by it.

This might almost be called a major cultural catastrophe, because it weights the social order with excessive authority, inviting just those revolutions against religion and tradition which have been so characteristic of Western history.

We feel that we decide rationally because we base our decisions on collecting relevant data about the matter in hand.

the “rigorously scientific” method of predicting the future can be applied only in special cases-where prompt action is not urgent, where the factors involved are largely mechanical, or in circumstances so restricted as to be trivial. By far the greater part of our important decisions depend upon “hunch”–in

Every exponent of the I Ching knows this. He knows that the book itself does not contain an exact science, but rather a useful tool which will work for him if he has a good “intuition,” or if, as he would say, he is “in the Tao.”

The important difference between the Tao and the usual idea of God is that whereas God produces the world by making (weih), the Tao produces it by “not-making” (wu-wei i)-which is approximately what we mean by “growing.”

If the universe were made, there would of course be someone who knows how it is made-who could explain how it was put together bit by bit as a technician can explain in one-at-a-time words how to assemble a machine.

3aFor the Tao does not “know” how it produces the universe just as we do not “know” how we construct our brains.

Hsüan is, of course, a metaphorical darkness–not the darkness of night, of black as opposed to white, but the sheer inconceivability which confronts the mind when it tries to remember the time before birth, or to penetrate its own depths.

the mood of Taoism will remain incomprehensible; and the intellect will wear itself out. The Tao is accessible only to the mind which can practice the simple and subtle art of wu-wei, which, after the Tao, is the second important principle of Taoism.

The eyes and the tongue must be trusted to do the work by themselves.

The idea is not to reduce the human mind to a moronic vacuity, but to bring into play its innate and spontaneous intelligence by using it without forcing

It would be impossible, in their view, to believe oneself innately evil without discrediting the very belief, since all the notions of a perverted mind would be perverted notions.