________________
BUT WHAT IS ZEN?
IOI
If this does not make sense, or, what is better, illuminating non-sense, bear in mind that the late Sir Walford Davies once said to a choir of working men: "Whatever you do, don't try to sing this tune; just let it sing itself." After all, the humble hiccough arrives by itself, doesn't it?
"Zen lives in facts, fades in abstractions, and is hard to find in our noblest thought." I forget who said that, nor does it matter.
To appreciate its force it is necessary to analyse one's habitual use of consciousness, and to see how minute by minute most of us slide away from facts. We exaggerate them, symbolise them, like them or dislike them, sentimentalise or brutalise them, wrap them up or gloat about them, draw enormous meaning from them or stuff them into the background of the mind, there, if we can, to forget them. Seldom indeed do we accept them gratefully, learn from them, bless them and pass upon our way. The Master Bokuju was asked, "We have to dress and eat every day, and how can we escape from all that?” The Master replied, “We dress, we eat." "I don't understand you," said the questioner. "Then put on your dress, and eat your food," said the Master. And then what would he find? That there would be no Zen if he ceased to eat or dress. When hungry we eat; when tired we sleep. Why make a fuss about it, or a poem about it, or a castiron habit about it? Why do anything about it save to eat and sleep, or laugh, or love, or live? In the West our minds are filled with the meaning of things, with finding sermons in stones and a collect for the day in everything. Zen is usual life, lived in the consciousness of Zen, that is, in a state of mind in which the tension of the opposites is stilled, having been neither slain nor exorcised,
