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ZEN FOR THE WEST
209 cannot help sufferers from organic spiritual disease, but it can help the spiritual neurotic who thinks himself spiritually incapacitated, or appears to be so to outsiders, but who in fact is only suffering from hyper-function of his intellectual capacities, combined with infantile development of his intuition. This is specifically a disease of civilisation, and the vast majority of civilised persons may be correctly diagnosed as being too clever by half. The Kingdom is not to be entered by those who are possessed by their possessions. ..." Alan Watts is right when he says that "Eastern doctrines are confessedly psychological rather than theological. Their intention is not to provide a satisfying explanation of the world and a theological sanction for morality; they exist simply to provide a technique for the soul's enlightenment.”2
If religions are otherwise used they tend to become not aids but hindrances to spiritual growth. Jung has already been quoted on the subject. Even stronger is the famous Letter X in The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, where the Master describes religion as "the chief cause of nearly two-thirds of the evils that pursue humanity ever since that cause became a power". It is all too easy to erect a scaffolding whereby to climb to the sun, and to end by making it a useless mountain of material which all but extinguishes the light.
Why, then, do notable minds consider that Zen will never be suitable to the West? We have seen good reason to the contrary; what is the ground of objection raised, and has it any validity?
In The Meaning of Happiness Alan Watts, who has 1 W. J. GABB. From a MS. 2 The Legacy of Asia and Western Man, p. 21.
