Buddhism The Great Person And Small Person
For these reasons Zen proposes to call man Buddha-natured or
...
The Application Of The Law Of Causation To Morals
Although it may be needless to state here the law of causatio...
Missionary Activity Of The Sixth Patriarch
As we have seen above, the Sixth Patriarch was a great genius...
The Beatitude Of Zen
We are far from denying, as already shown in the foregoing ch...
The Second And The Third Patriarchs
After the death of the First Patriarch, in A.D. 528, Hwui Ko ...
The Resemblance Of The Zen Monk To The Samurai
Let us point out in brief the similarities between Zen and Ja...
Do Thy Best And Leave The Rest To Providence
There is another point of view which enables us to enjoy life...
Everything Is Living According To Zen
Everything alive has a strong innate tendency to preserve its...
The Introduction Of The So-to School Of Zen
This school was started by Tsing-Yuen (Sei-gen), an emine...
Buddha The Universal Life
Zen conceives Buddha as a Being, who moves, stirs, inspires,
...
The Bad Are The Good In The Egg
This is not only the case with a robber or a murderer, but al...
The Next Step In The Mental Training
In the next place we have to strive to be the master of our b...
Origin Of Zen In India
To-day Zen as a living faith can be found in its pure form on...
Life In The Concrete
Life in the concrete, which we are living, greatly differs fr...
The Progress And Hope Of Life
How many myriads of years have passed since the germs of life...
Wang Yang Ming O-yo-mei And A Thief
One evening when Wang was giving a lecture to a number of stu...
Enlightenment Implies An Insight Into The Nature Of Self
We cannot pass over, however, this weighty problem without sa...
The First Step In The Mental Training
Some of the old Zen masters are said to have attained to supr...
Bodhidharma And His Successor The Second Patriarch
China was not, however, an uncultivated land for the seed of
...
Poetical Intuition And Zen
Since Universal Life or Spirit permeates the universe, the po...
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Zen And Idealism
Next Zen makes use of Idealism as explained by the Dharmalaksana
School of Mahayana Buddhism. For instance, the Fourth
Patriarch says: "Hundreds and thousands of laws originate with mind.
Innumerable mysterious virtues proceed from the mental source." Niu
Teu (Go-zu) also says: "When mind arises, various things arise; when
mind ceases to exist, various things cease to exist." Tsao Shan
(So-zan) carried the point so far that he cried out, on hearing the
bell: "It hurts, it pains." Then an attendant of his asked "What is
the matter?" "It is my mind," said he, that is struck."
Appendix, chap. ii., 'The Mahayana Doctrine of
Dharmalaksana.'
Zen-rin-rui-shu.
We acknowledge the truth of the following considerations: There
exists no colour, nor sound, nor odour in the objective world, but
there are the vibrations of ether, or the undulations of the air, or
the stimuli of the sensory nerves of smell. Colour is nothing but
the translation of the stimuli into sensation by the optical nerves,
so also sounds by the auditory, and odours by the smelling.
Therefore nothing exists objectively exactly as it is perceived by
the senses, but all are subjective. Take electricity, for example,
it appears as light when perceived through the eye; it appears as
sound when perceived through the ear; it appears as taste when
perceived through the tongue; but electricity in reality is not
light, nor sound, nor taste. Similarly, the mountain is not high nor
low; the river is not deep nor shallow; the house is not large nor
small; the day is not long nor short; but they seem so through
comparison. It is not objective reality that displays the phenomenal
universe before us, but it is our mind that plays an important part.
Suppose that we have but one sense organ, the eye, then the whole
universe should consist of colours and of colours only. If we
suppose we were endowed with the sixth sense, which entirely
contradicts our five senses, then the whole world would be otherwise.
Besides, it is our reason that finds the law of cause and effect in
the objective world, that discovered the law of uniformity in Nature,
and that discloses scientific laws in the universe so as to form a
cosmos. Some scholars maintain that we cannot think of non-existence
of space, even if we can leave out all objects in it; nor can we
doubt the existence of time, for the existence of mind itself
presupposes time. Their very argument, however, proves the
subjectivity of time and space, because, if they were objective, we
should be able to think them non-existent, as we do with other
external objects. Even space and time, therefore are no more than
subjective.
Next: Idealism Is A Potent Medicine For Self-created Mental Disease
Previous: Zen Is Not Nihilistic
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