Zen Buddhism

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

Page 40

BEYOND THE INTELLECT 19 must be developed to the full before it can be transcended. But it must not attempt a task too high for it.
"As long as intellect is confined to its proper sphere of work, all is well, but the moment it steps out of it and invades a field which does not belong to it, the outcome is disastrous. For this stepping out means the setting up of the self as a reality, and this is sure to collide with our ethical and religious valuation of human life; it also runs contrary to our spiritual insight into the nature of things.”l
The intuition is the light which illumines the intellect. Unless there is an intellect the light will no more be seen than electric light is seen in the socket of a lamp which has no lamp. I do not apologise for repeating Roy Campbell's delicious lines On some South African Novelists: “They praise the firm restraint with which you write.
I'm with you there of course. You use the snaffle and the curb all right,
But where's the bloody horse?" How often does one meet with those who wish to proceed beyond the intellect, and yet have not developed an intellect to transcend? “If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim, If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same," as Kipling advises in that poem of profound philosophy, If --then you can use your thought-machinery, and the emotions and the senses, and enjoy their user, for you will have passed beyond their sway.
How shall we know when the intuition begins to awaken? The process, like the development of any other function 1 The Essence of Buddhism, SUZUKI, P. II.