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Z EN BUDDHISM
studied the subject profoundly, says, if I may summarise, that it is unwise for a Westerner to become “converted” to an eastern religion, because in the West we have our own roots and traditions, our own dharma to fulfil. We must therefore distinguish between the acceptance of oriental religious principles, and their method of application. The former are universal; the latter particular to the East, and possibly inappropriate to the West. “We have to discover our own way of applying those principles. . . ." This, however, is not an objection to Zen in the West; only to a blind adoption of its peculiar technique. On what are the other objections based? They all seem to come back to some of Jung's remarks in The Secret of the Golden Flower, or those of his translator, the late Dr. Cary Baynes.
Dr. Baynes is obviously right in pointing out the dangers of the unintelligent adoption and imitation of eastern practices (p. vii). And none will doubt his summary: “Mastery of the inner world, with a relative contempt for the outer, must inevitably lead to great catastrophes. Mastery of the outer world, to the exclusion of the inner, delivers us over to the demonic forces of the latter and keeps us barbaric despite all outward forms of culture." Eastern spirituality and western science, he says, instead of deriding each other, must learn to walk hand in hand. But he passes, then, from the general to the particular. Have not the discoveries of modern science, he asks, for example that the world of so-called matter is really a world of energy, led him to look to the contents of his own mind as the source of that energy? In his view it is “the need of understanding himself in terms of change
1 Pp. 71-72.
