________________
ZEN TECHNIQUE
117 building of this bridge, yet all of it comes out of the enquirer's mind, for the greatest Master, even the Buddha himself, can only "point the Way”. None of the bridge material makes sense. “The masters asked awkward and unanswerable questions; they made fun of logic and metaphysics; they turned orthodox philosophy upside down in order to make it look absurd."1 The means varied with the questioner, for no two minds which came to the Master were quite the same in their slavery to conceptual thought or in the nature of the chains which bound them. "The Zen master is an adept in the use of a medium which directly points to his Zen experience and by which the questioner, if he is mentally ripe, will at once grasp the master's intention."2
Any device would do if it worked. "IfI tell you," said the Sixth Patriarch, "that I have a system of Law to transmit to others, I am cheating you. What I do to my disciples is to liberate them from their own bondage with such devices as the case may need.”8
In Japan, as in China, the most famous devices are the mondo, a form of rapid question and answer which sounds like sparks flashing between two terminals, and the koan, an enigmatic phrase insoluble by the intellect, which is often a compressed form of a mondo. Neither has any meaning for the rational mind. These, however, are but two of the countless "devices" used, and more, no doubt, are being invented.
All presuppose some degree of mental training, for it is obvious that enlightenment in any form implies the
1 Ibid, 28. 2 Philosophy, East and West, p. 113. 8 The Sutra of Wei Lang. p. 95.
