Zen Buddhism

Author(s): Christmas Humphereys
Publisher: William Heinemann LTD

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ZEN BUDDHISM
the Kegon School have dared to advance beyond the Ring-pass-not of Indian thought. “Thou art THAT," said the Brahman philosophers; "there is no more to be said." But the Kegon School went further: "The fundamental idea of Buddhism is to pass beyond the world of opposites, a world built up by intellectual distinctions and emotional defilements, and to realise a spiritual world of non-distinction which involves achieving an absolute point of view. Yet the Absolute is in no way distinct from the world of discrimination, for to think so would be to place it opposite the discriminating mind and so create a new duality." Mutual identity, in brief, is not enough. “Thou art THAT" is far from final, for there are still two things, though identical. How can we understand that the two are at the same time One, yet several; that just as the part exists by reason of the all, so it does not cease to exist as a part by reason of its being the all? The intellect can toy with the concept; only the intuition can understand. “The one must be found in the two, with the two, and yet beyond the two, that is to say, non-distinction is in distinction and distinction is in non-distinction. . . . It is by this double process only that the intellect can transcend itself. But this state of a "perfect, mutual, unimpeded solution”, -the Kegon term is Jijimuge—though intellectually conceivable can only be intuitively experienced. It is the state of "Suchness", a term much used in Buddhist philosophy. In it both "thou” and “THAT” exist, as two and as one, and the cycle, or circle is complete. But to