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ZEN BUDDHISM the man himself, and Zen appeals to it," but behind will stands desire, as the occult saying runs. Zen is a harnessing of the will to universal purposes, "attaching one's belt to the Power-House of the Universe," as Trine has called it somewhere. But the use which is made of this power depends on desire, and only the character of the man can say if the desire be that of the selfish or the selfless side of the driver of the machine. But the man of satori has learnt to relax desire, to "let go” into nondiscrimination and no-purpose. He just lets go and enjoys the serenity of letting go, of relaxing the tension of personal desire which causes, as the Buddha proclaimed, the great "sea of suffering" which all but engulfs mankind. As I have often felt, this holding apart the things which in fact are one is all very tiring! How delightful and how restful to summon the energy to drop it, as a piece of elastic drawn to its limits, and then let go!'
The sense of certainty, already described, is no less glorious, and it comes very often as a negative absence of doubt. There is nothing aggressive about it, and it seems to be linked with the "experience of transparency" of which Dr. Suzuki speaks. Referring to the Japanese love of nature, he says, “As long as we harbour conceptual illusions arising from the separation of subject and object as final, the transparency is obscured, and our love of nature is contaminated with dualism and sophistry."'1 Irrationalities now make sense; they are clearly seen through as the two sides of a piece of glass. “Black is white and white is black” becomes, from bosh, a simple statement of fact, and, "How is it that a man of great strength cannot lift his legs?” is easy to answer. Moreover, 1 Zen Buddhism and Its Influence, p. 230.
