Zen Buddhism

SR No.: 011121
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Christmas Humphereys
Publisher: William Heinemann LTD
Total Pages: 278
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 15 MB

Page 102

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IN SEARCH OF ZEN words. From the first experience of Zen is born a willingness to let things happen, a diminishing desire to control the universe, even though the purpose be to “rebuild it, nearer to the heart's desire". Action becomes increasingly "right action", done without haste or delay, without thought of self, without thought of merit or reward.
“He who pursues learning will increase every day. He who pursues Tao will decrease every day. He will decrease and continue to decrease Till he comes to non-action;
By non-action everything can be done."1 Yet herein lies the paradox of personality. As self dies out, the true self grows. Of the Tao or Zen it is later said, “When merits are accomplished it does not lay claim to
them. Because it does not lay claim to them, therefore it does
not lose them.” The secret lies in action in inaction, or inaction in action, as explained at length in the Bhagavad Gita. Deeds are done because it is "right" to do them, regardless of consequence, and merit, the results of right action which accrue to the doer as long as there is a "doer” to receive them, is a by-product which comes, like happiness, unsought.
Yet the habit of right action is itself presumably the result of previous lives of merit-producing action, by which the mind, increasingly lightened of the weight of personal desire, is slowly enlarged by the deliberate expansion, in range and depth, of its activity. I found in 1 Tao Te Ching, Chap. 48. 2 Ibid, Chap. 51.