..续本文上一页all such designations. Hence there is no object in Zen upon which to fix the thought. Zen is the wafting cloud in the sky. No screw fastens it, no string holds it; it moves as it lists. No amount of meditation will keep Zen in one place. Meditation is not Zen. Neither pantheism nor monotheism provides Zen with its subjects of concentration. If Zen is monotheistic, it may tell its followers to meditate on the oneness of things where all the differences and inequalities, enveloped in the all-illuminating brightness of the pine light, are obliterated. If Zen were pantheistic, it will tell us that every meanest flower in the field reflects the glory of God. But what Zen says is "After all things are reduced to oneness, where would that One be reduced

　　" Zen wants to have one”s mind free and unobstructed; even the idea of oneness or allness is a stumbling block and a strangling snare which threatens the original freedom of the spirit.

　　Zen, therefore, does not ask us to concentrate our thought on the idea that dog is God, or that three pounds of flax are pine. When Zen does this it commits itself to a definite system of philosophy, and there is no more Zen. Zen just feels fire warm and ice cold, because when it freezes we shiver and welcome fire. The feeling is all in all, as Faust declares; all our theorization fails to touch reality. But "the feeling" here must be understood in its deepest sense or in its purest form. Even to say that "This is the feeling" means that Zen is no more there. Zen defies all concept-making. That is why Zen is difficult to grasp.

　　Whatever meditation Zen may propose, then, will be to take things as they are, to consider snow white and the raven black. When we speak of meditation we in most cases refer to its abstract character; that is, meditation is known to be the concentration of the mind on some highly generalized proposition, which is, in the nature of things, not always closely and directly connected with the concrete affairs of life. Zen perceives and feels, and does not abstract and meditate. Zen penetrates and is finally lost in the immersion. Meditation, on the other hand, is outspokenly dualistic and consequently inevitably superficial.

　　One critic (Arthur Lloyd, "Wheat Among the Tares", p.53) regards Zen as "the Buddhist counterpart of ”Spiritual Exercises” of St. Ignatius Loyola". The critic shows a great inclination to find Christian analogies for things Buddhist, and this is one of such instances. Those who have at all a clear understanding of Zen will at once see how wide of the mark this comparison is. Even superficially speaking, there is not a shadow of similitude between the exercises of Zen and those proposed by the founder of the Society of Jesus. The contemplations and prayers of St. Ignatius are, from the Zen point of view, merely so many fabrications of the imagination elaborately woven for the benefit of the piously minded; and in reality this is like piling tiles upon tiles on one”s head, and there is no true gain in the life of the spirit. We can say this, however, that those "Spiritual Exercises" in some way resemble certain meditations of Hinayana Buddhism, such as the Five Mind-quieting Methods, or the Nine Thoughts on Impurity, or the Six or Ten Subjects of Memory.

　　Zen is sometimes made to mean "mind-murder and the curse of idle reverie". This is the statement of Griffis, the well-known author of "Religions of Japan" (p.255). By "mind-murder" I do not know what he really means, but does he mean that Zen kills the activities of the mind by making one”s thought fix on one thing, or by inducing sleep

　　 Mr. Reischauer in his book "Studies of Buddhism in Japan" (p.118) almost endorses this view of Griffis by asserting that Zen is "mystical self-intoxication". Does that mean that Z…

《What is Zen

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