¡°Zen has no special doctrine or philosophy, no set of concepts or intellectual formulas, except¡± ¡ª wrote Zen priest Daisetz T. Suzuki (1870-1966) in ¡°Zen and Japanese Culture¡± (1959) ¡ª ¡°that it tries to release one from the bondage of birth and death, by certain intuitive modes of understanding peculiar to itself.¡±
This is puzzling. ¡°Intuitive modes of understanding¡± escape the ready grasp of minds fed on ¡°concepts¡± and ¡°intellectual formulas.¡± ¡°Release from the bondage of birth and death¡± is equally elusive. It¡¯s not the ¡°Western¡± intellect¡¯s view of things, nor that of most modern Japanese, whose thought processes, regardless of Zen¡¯s shaping influence over many centuries on traditional Japanese culture, are more ¡°Western¡± than Zen.
In Zen, everything is not. Which seems to mean: nothing is. But doesn¡¯t. Because nothing, too, is not. Likewise life, death, self, I, you, subject, object, mind, thought. None of it is. It¡¯s all nothing. Which itself is not.
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