________________
LET'S TRY IT!
215 For you and the problem are not two things in opposition but one thing; you are One, though still two, in Jijimuge. You are the problem and the problem is you. Where, then, is the problem? When the puppy and kitten fight on the hearth-rug you look down on them with serene, amused indifference. Do the same with problems of health and wealth and home and family. Get up; look up, and then look down at the hearth-rug. Where is now the problem which you so foolishly made?
The Zen way of getting the goose out of the bottle is, as we have seen, to appreciate the fact that it is already out. W. J. Gabb has applied this to western psychology. “Zen, as I understand it, use it and love it, is the address of the whole of my being to the circumstances of the particular situation in which I find myself. It is Zen itself that draws me forth, and Zen itself responds."1 Use Zen as the mathematician uses the symbol for infinity. He does not solve the symbol, but he uses it to solve all else.
It must by now be clear that we do not solve any problem on its own plane. How can we? The relationship between two things is a higher third. Rise to the plane where the distinction disappears and, the poles of the problem having vanished, there is nothing left to be solved. For a problem implies tension, a tearing of the self in two. But if the self be felt as one untearable whole, where is the tension between this part of it and that; where is the problem? In one sense the problem is never faced as such, for the life-strength, the flow of the river of life within you, is concentrated on a plane where the shrill, complaining cry of the opposites is no longer heard.
1 From the MS. of Studies in Zen Buddhism.
