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ZEN BUDDHISM
sleep, and all assemble daily. To this extent the Zen sect is the Meditation sect of Japanese Buddhism, but the meditation practised therein is far from the contemplation of the abstract usually implied in the term. There is here no Indian Yoga, no development of the Siddhis, the spiritual powers which all possess but which are dormant in the average mind. Nor is there Bhakti Yoga, the devotion to the Beloved which purifies and lifts the emotions to a higher plane; nor is there Karma Yoga as a deliberate exercise, though the outcome of even the lower stages of satori is to produce "right action”, in the sense of the Bhagavad Gita, whereby "the perfect act has no result”. The Zen-Do is the home of the koan exercise, the concentration of mind and heart and will on the breaking of the bonds of the intellect, that the light of the intuition may illumine the mind, and the domination of the opposites be broken once and for all.
The life of the monks encourages three virtues: simplicity, purity in the sense of spiritual poverty, and the cult of beauty as a faculty of the mind, and all are plainly visible. Their persons, their homes and the monastery grounds are scrupulously clean; possessions are cut to a minimum; their whole life is a round of cheerful, strenuous effort in most beautiful surroundings wherein the whole of the man is directed, fiercely and utterly, to one end, satori, the attainment of direct, im-mediate awareness of the world of non-discrimination wherein the stream of life runs joyously and boundlessly and free. · Comparison with a western "priest" is obvious. The Zen monks take no vows; they may leave their particular monastery or the monastic life at will. They marry, and the minor temples within the greater curtailage are
