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ZEN BUDDHISM with ideas? In the actual living of life there is no logic, för life is superior to logic. ... Zen is to be explained, if explained it should be, rather dynamically than statically. When I raise the hand thus, there is Zen. But when I assert that I have raised the hand, Zen is no more there". 1 “Be prepared," say the Boy Scouts, echoing Hamlet's "If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come It will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come:
The readiness is all." Hence the value of what Geraldine Coster calls "Sitting loose to life", a fluid adaptability to unyielding circumstance, attached to nothing, experiencing all.
"He who bends to himself a joy
Doth the wingéd life destroy; But he who kisses the Joy as it flies,
Lives in eternity's sunrise.” Security, to many the principal purpose of life, is seen to be as undesirable as it is impossible of attainment. Emily Dickenson is right.
"In insecurity to lie
Is Joy's insuring quality.” In brief, without thought of security or achievement, or any purpose, much less an ultimate goal, “Walk on!"
A third of the many symptoms of awakening Zen, and the last to be mentioned here, is a sense of "rightness". "All that happens happens right," said the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. “I know that the enterprise is worthy. I know that things work well. I have heard no bad news." Thus Thoreau, and they are brave and splendid
1 Ibid, pp. 283-84.
