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ZEN TECHNIQUE
131 koan as an answer is manifestly satori,” which is the "seeing into one's own nature" of the teaching ascribed to Bodhidharma. Now the unconscious "the unglimpsable completeness of the man, "the matrix of all metaphysical assertions, of all mythology, of all philosophy (in so far as it is not merely critical) and all forms of life which are based upon psychological suppositions”, is not merely the "dark" half of the man; it is to the total man as the ocean to the drop, and the purpose and result of the koan technique is to break down the barriers which define the illusory self, and to let in the flood-tide of the universe. On the border, as it were, of the conscious and unconscious circles of the mind is born the Self which grows in proportion as the false self, the “anatta' self, dies down, as a fire dies down for want of fuelling. The disintegration of this illusory self, however, before the true Self, which progressively integrates the total man, is born, is filled with danger, and there must be a welldeveloped and reasonably stable mind on which the experiment of hastening nature may be safely made. Hence the need of a teacher to assist at the death of the false self and the birth of the true, for if the tension created in the mind for the Magnum Opus is wrongly directed, or held too long without the relief of satori, it may wreck the instrument.
All this, however, is only my own understanding of the koan technique and of Dr. Jung's remarks upon it, and the genuine student should study the two great minds for himself. The Essay entitled the Koan Exercise in Dr. Suzuki's Essays in Zen Buddhism, Vol. II, will give the Zen technique; the Foreword already quoted will give Dr. Jung's "reply".
