## 1. The Meaning of the Term *Zen*



The designation of this school of the Buddha-Way as *Zen*, which means
sitting meditation, is derived from a transliteration of the Chinese
word *Chan*. Because the Chinese term is in turn a
transliteration of the Sanskrit term *dhyana*, however,
Zen owes its historical origin to early Indian Buddhism, where a
deepened state of meditation, called *samadhi*, was
singled out as one of the three components of study a Buddhist was
required to master, the other two being an observation of ethical
precepts (*sila*) and an embodiment of nondiscriminatory
wisdom (*prajna*). *Meditation* was
picked as the name for this school because
the historical Buddha achieved enlightenment
(*nirvana*) through the practice of meditation. In the
context of Zen Buddhism, the perfection of nondiscriminatory wisdom
(Jpn.: *hannya haramitsu*; Skrt.:
*prajnaparamita*) designates
*practical, experiential* knowledge. Only secondarily and
derivatively does it mean theoretical, intellectual knowledge. This
is, Zen explains, because theoretical knowledge is a form of
"language game" (Jpn.: *keron*;
Skrt.: *prapanca*), i.e., discrimination through the use
of language, constructed as it is at least in part on
distinction-making. Zen believes that theoretical
reference *ultimately* carries no existential meaning for
emancipating a human being from his or her predicaments, for it
maintains that discriminatory knowledge of any kind is
delusory/illusory in nature. To this effect it holds that it is
through a practical transformation of the psychophysiological
constitution of one's being that one prepares for embodying
nondiscriminatory wisdom. This preparation involves the training of
the *whole* person and is called "self-cultivation"
(*shugyo*) in Japanese. It is a practical method of
correcting the modality of one's mind by correcting the modality
of one's body, in which practice (*praxis*) is given
precedence over theory (*theoria*) (Yuasa, 1987).


## 2. Zen's Methods: *Koan* Practice and Just Sitting



There are basically two methods utilized in meditation practice in Zen
Buddhism to assist the practitioner to reach the above-mentioned
goals, together with a simple breathing exercise known as
"observation of breath count" (*susokukan*);
one is the *koan* method and the other is called
"just sitting" (*shikan taza*), a form of
"single act *samadhi*." For example, the
former is employed mainly by the Rinzai school of Zen Buddhism, while
the latter by the Soto school; they are the two main schools
of this form of the Buddha-Way still flourishing today in Japan. In
the Rinzai school, the *koan* method is devised to assist
the practitioner to become a "Zen person" (Kasulis, 1981)
who fully embodies both wisdom and compassion. A *koan* is
formulated like a riddle or puzzle and is designed in such a way that
intellectual reasoning alone cannot solve it without breaking through
the barrier of ego-consciousness by driving it to its limit. This is,
Zen believes, because ego-consciousness is fortified by the shield of
a dualistic conceptual paradigm with all its attendant presuppositions
and conditions. The ego-consciousness of a given cultural and
historical milieu accepts that paradigm to be true in order to live a
life anchored in the everyday standpoint. 



According to Hakuin (1685-1768), who systematized
*koans*, there are formally seventeen hundred cases of
*koans*, and if sub-questions are added to them, a total
number of cases comprising the system would be roughly three thousand.
The Zen practitioner of the Rinzai school is required to pass them all
in a private consultation with a Zen master who checks the
practitioner's state of mind before he or she is granted a seal
of transmission. This transmission is said to occur "only from a
Buddha to a[nother] Buddha" (*yuibutsu yobutsu*).



*Koans* are accordingly grouped into five categories in a
most fully developed system: the first group is designed for reaching
*li* (suchness) (*richi*) or the body of truth
(*hosshin*), i.e., an enlightenment experience; the second
group for a linguistic articulation (*gensen*) of meditational
experiences in order to master the skillful use of language; the third
group for those *koans* truly difficult to pass
(*nanto*); the fourth group for the practitioner to make
an insight of *koan* experiences pertinent to daily life
(*kikan*) in order to embody a middle-way in which the
practitioner won't be steeped either in the state of meditation or the
activity of daily life; and the fifth group for going beyond the state
of buddhahood by erasing all traces of enlightenment in order to
achieve a traceless enlightenment (*kojo*).




The Rinzai school summarizes this process of self-cultivation in four
mottoes: "being a special transmission outside of the
scriptures," "having no dependence on words and letters,"
"pointing directly into [one's] human mind," and
"seeing into [one's] nature to become a buddha." (See,
for examples, *The Gateless Gate* and *The Blue Cliff
Record*.) While the first two phrases point to the fact of
discovering an extra-linguistic reality that naturally opens up in
meditational experience and of articulating it linguistically in the
"best" way according to the capacity of an individual
practitioner, the last two phrases indicate a concretization of the
original or inherent enlightenment (*hongaku*) in the Zen practitioner,
where the original enlightenment means that human beings are innately
endowed with a possibility of becoming a Buddha.



On the other hand, the Soto school, of which Dogen
(1200-54) is the founder, does not rely on an elaborate
*koan* system to learn to become a Zen person, but instead
follows a method called "just sitting" (*shikan
taza*). It refers to a single-minded, diligent practice where the
qualifying term "just" means the practice of meditation
without any intervention of ego-logical interest, concern, or desire,
so that the practice remains undefiled. This is a method of meditation
predicated on the belief that the Zen practitioner engages in the
practice *in the midst of* the original enlightenment. Or to
characterize it by using Dogen's phrase, it is a method of
"practice-realization." By hyphenating practice and
realization, the following implications are suggested: meditation is
not a means to an end, i.e., a means to realization, and thereby
Dogen closes a dualistic gap, for example, between potentiality
and actuality, between before and after. Accordingly, he collapses the
distinction between "acquired enlightenment"
(*shikaku*) and "original enlightenment,"
(*hongaku*) where the "acquired" enlightenment
means an enlightenment that is realized through the practice of
meditation as a means. With this collapsing, the Soto School
holds that practice and realization are non-dual in relation to each
other; they are "not two."



According to the Soto school, the meditational practice,
when it is seen as a process of discovery, is a deepening process of
becoming aware of the original enlightenment with an expansion of its
corresponding experiential correlates and horizons, and it is for this
reason called the school of "gradual enlightenment" or
"silent illumination." On the other hand, the Rinzai
school is called the school of "sudden enlightenment,"
because it does not recognize a process leading to enlightenment
(*satori*) as something worthy of a special attention; what
counts is an experience of *satori* only. Even though there is
the above difference in approach between Rinzai and Soto
schools, the outcome is the same for both insofar as the embodiment of
wisdom and compassion is concerned. This is because they both follow
the same practice of sitting meditation. Whatever differences there
are between the practitioners of the two schools in regard to the
linguistic articulation of their meditational experience, they arise
from individual practitioners' personalities, dispositions,
intellectual capacities, and/or linguistic abilities.


## 3. The Practice: Three-Step Process



When one engages in Zen meditation, Zen recommends that its
practitioner follow a three-step procedure: adjusting one's body,
breathing and mind. The practitioner follows these adjustments in the
order mentioned when he or she begins. When concluding a sitting
session, the procedure is reversed so that he or she can return to an
everyday standpoint. We now briefly explain these three steps in
the order mentioned.


### 3.1 The Adjustment of the Body



Generally speaking, the adjustment of the body means to prepare
oneself (one's mind-body) in such a way that one can achieve an
optimal state of being free. To do so, the practitioner needs to have
a proper diet, engage in appropriate physical exercise, and avoid
forming habits contrary to nurturing a healthy mind-body condition.
Specifically, however, when Zen mentions the adjustment of the body,
it has in mind seated meditation postures. There are two postures
which Zen recognizes: the lotus-posture and the half-lotus posture. A
long Zen tradition takes them to be effective for stilling the mind
and dissolving various psychological complexes and psychosomatic
disorders. However, if a lay practitioner cannot at first assume these
postures, they can be substituted initially by sitting on a chair with
the spine straight, as it can bring about a similar effect. The
adjustment of the body is necessary for the practitioner in order to
experience the practical benefits of doing meditation.


### 3.2 The Adjustment of Breathing



The benefits of Zen meditation are closely tied to the practice of
breathing. Generally speaking, Zen doesn't recommend any
complicated, strenuous breathing exercises as in Yoga. Zen's
breathing exercise is called "observation of breath count"
(*susokukan*). In this exercise, the practitioner counts
an in-coming breath and an out-going breath. Before counting the
breath, the practitioner breathes in through the nostrils and breathes
out through the mouth a couple of times. Then one starts counting
breaths, but this time breathing in through the nostrils and breathing
out through the nostrils. The breath count is performed while
performing an abdominal breathing: one brings in air all the way down
to the lower abdomen, and breathes out from there. This exercise has
the effect of infusing one's mind-body with fresh life-energy
and expelling a negative toxic energy out of the practitioner's
system. For this reason, it must be done in a place where there is
ample ventilation. A key to performing breathing exercises
successfully is just to observe the in-coming and out-going
breath.



Though these are simple instructions, they are difficult to execute
because the neophyte tends to become distracted. Present concerns,
worries, fears, and past memories often surface. Zen calls them
"wandering thoughts," which refers to any mental object
that prevents the practitioner from concentrating. If one wants to
make progress in meditation, this is one of the first things that the
practitioner must learn to overcome.



We now turn to the psycho-physiological meaning of the breathing
exercise. Ordinarily, we breathe sixteen to seventeen times per
minute, which we do unconsciously or involuntarily. This is because
under ordinary circumstances, breathing is controlled by the autonomic
nervous system. Neurophysiologically, the center where breathing is
controlled is found in the hypothalamus, in the mid-brain. The
autonomic nervous system is so-called because it functions
independently of our will. Zen breathing is a shift from unconscious,
involuntary breathing to conscious, voluntary breathing. This means
that Zen meditation is a way of regulating the unconscious-autonomic
order of our being. Psychologically, counting the breath trains the
unconscious mind and neurophysiologically, it trains the involuntary
activity of the nerves that control the function of the various
visceral organs. Here we find a reason why Zen recommends abdominal
breathing. Nerves are bundled in the upper part of the abdominal
cavity, and the abdominal breathing exercise stimulates this
bundle. As it does so, parasympathetic nerves still the mind.



This point is significant in learning to control emotion. Ordinarily,
we are told to control our emotion by exercising our will. This is,
for example, what Kant recommends. This method works to a certain
extent, but we expend our energy unnecessarily in exercising our
will. Think of a situation where one tries to submerge a ball in
water. When the size of the ball is relatively small, this can be
accomplished with little effort. But as the size of the ball becomes
larger, it becomes increasingly difficult. Analogously, a lot
of psychic energy is required to suppress one's deeper
emotions. There comes a time then when one can no longer hold them
down. Consequently, one may end up exploding in various ways, ranging
from personal fits to violent social crimes. If we observe a person in
an angry state, we will notice that such a person's breathing
pattern and rhythm is shallow, rough, and irregular.



On the other hand, if we observe a person in a peaceful state, the breathing is
deep, smooth, slow, and rhythmical. These examples show that there is a
strong correlation between the pattern and the rhythm of breathing and
a person's emotional state, or more generally, state of mind.
Zen breathing has a way of naturally heightening the positive
correlation between the activity of the autonomic nervous system and
emotion. Neurophysiologically, it happens that the center
where breathing is regulated and the region where emotion is generated
coincide. This means that the conscious breathing
psychologically affects the pattern of how one generates emotion, and
at the same time it also has a neurophysiological effect on how the
autonomous activity of the unconscious is regulated. We will now move
on to the third step involved in meditation.


### 3.3 The Adjustment of the Mind



Once the bodily posture and the breathing are adjusted, the
practitioner next learns to adjust the mind. This means that the
practitioner consciously moves to enter a state of meditation. In so
doing, the practitioner learns to disengage him- or herself from the
concerns of daily life. That is to say, one tries to stop the
operation of the conscious mind. However, if one tries to stop the mind by
using one's mind, the mind which is trying to stop itself is
still operative. In other words, it is practically impossible to stop
the mind by using the mind. Instead, Zen tries to accomplish this by
the immobile bodily posture and the breathing exercise. In this
connection, it will be informative to know how the practitioner
experiences breathing as he or she deepens meditation.



We can identify three basic stages: initially
the practitioner can hear the audible sound of the in-coming and
out-going breaths. This is rough and "gross" breathing.
This is followed by the second stage in which he or she can feel the
pathway of the in-coming and out-going breaths. Breathing at this
point becomes "subtle" in that there will no longer be
audible sound of the breaths but simply a stream of life-energy. In
the third stage there is no more feeling of the in-coming and
out-going breaths. When this occurs, the practitioner can settle into
a deeper meditational state. Also, it is significant to note that as
the practitioner enters a deeper state of meditation, the interval
between inhalation and exhalation is prolonged, i.e., the retention of
breath is prolonged, as the reduction of breathing activities
occurs.



Meditation trains one to sit face-to-face with one's self, while
creating a psychological isolation from the external world. With this,
one enters into an internal world of *psyche*. As the
practitioner attempts to enter the world of *psyche*,
various things start surfacing in the field of the
practitioner's meditative awareness. These are mostly things of
concern that have occupied the practitioner in the history of his or
her life, or things the practitioner has consciously suppressed for
various reasons. Initially, the practitioner experiences recent
desires, anxieties, concerns, ideas, and images that have surfaced in
his or her daily life. A psychological reason that the practitioner
experiences these various things is due in part to the fact the
practitioner has lowered the level of conscious activity, by assuming
the meditation posture, and doing the breathing exercise. This
mechanism is the same as when one has a dream at night. When the level
of consciousness is lowered, the suppressive power of
ego-consciousness weakens, and consequently the autonomous
activity of the unconscious begins to surface.



However, these desires, images and ideas are distractions insofar as
meditation is concerned. This is because in meditation you must learn
to focus your awareness on one thing. One must learn just to observe
without getting involved in them. That is, one must learn to
dis-identify oneself with them. In the process of deepening
meditation, one can roughly identify three distinct stages: the stage
of concentration, the stage of meditation, and the stage of
absorption. In the stage of concentration, the practitioner
concentrates, for example on the lower abdomen, establishing
a dualistic relationship between the practitioner who is
concentrating and the lower abdomen that is the focus of
concentration. This dualistic relationship is broken gradually as the
practitioner moves into the stage of meditation. The activity of the
ego-consciousness is gradually lessened, and the barriers it sets up for
itself are gradually removed. When the practitioner enters the stage
of absorption (*samadhi*), the dualistic framing of the mind
will be removed such that the mind starts structuring itself
non-dualistically. There will be no separation or distancing between
an object of the mind and the activity of the mind itself. 



As the practitioner repeats this process over a long period of time,
he or she will come to experience a state in which no-thing appears.
Zen uses the phrase "no-mind" to designate this state.
No-mind does not mean a mindless state. Nor does it mean that there is
no mind. It means that there is no conscious activity of the mind that
is associated with ego-consciousness in the everyday standpoint. In
other word, no-mind is a free mind that is not delimited by ideas,
desires, and images. No-mind is a state of mind in which there is
neither a superimposition of ideas nor a psychological projection.
That is, no-mind is a practical transcendence from the everyday mind,
without departing from the everydayness of the world.


## 4. Zen as Anti-Philosophy



As may be surmised from the foregoing explanation on Zen's
methodological stance, it is perhaps best to understand Zen as an
anti-philosophy if the term "philosophy" is taken to mean
the establishment of "the kingdom of reason." That
enterprise has been launched as an intellectual effort of the most
brilliant minds in Europe since the modern period to find new ways to
ground our conception of human nature, something beyond the
traditional Christian dogmas that had incorporated classic
Aristotelian and Platonic views. Since then, various Western
philosophers have attempted to capture human nature with this goal in
mind by using ego-consciousness as a starting point as well as a
destination in philosophy. For example, human nature has been
characterized in terms of ego-consciousness (Descartes), Reason,
Personality, Transcendental Subjectivity (Kant and Husserl), Life
(Dilthey), Existence (Existential philosophers such as Kierkegaard,
Jaspers and Sartre) and *Dasein* (Heidegger). (See Yuasa 2003,
160-61.)



By contrast, Zen's stance of "anti-philosophy"
maintains among other things that reason in its discursive use is
incapable of knowing and understanding *in toto* what reality
is, for example, what human beings are and what their relation to
nature is. For this reason, Zen contends that physical nature and
human nature must be sought in an experiential dimension
*practically* trans-descending, and hence transcending, the
standpoint of ego-consciousness. That is to say, it must go beyond
"the one" and "the two," as both of these
stances are prone to generate a one-sided stance, and hence incomplete
world-view. Instead, they must be sought in the depths of one's
*psyche* and beyond. For example, Zen Master Seigen
(Chin; Qingyuang, 660-740) expresses the process of
self-cultivation to the effect that: "Before the practice,
mountains are mountains, during the practice, mountains are not
mountains, and after the realization, mountains are [truly] mountains
[again]." In the meditational process of discovery then, Zen
moves from an ordinary, commonsensical standpoint to an extraordinary
standpoint, and with this transformation returns to the everyday
lifeworld, wherein no Aristotelian either-or logic is accepted as the
standard for knowing and understanding reality. As a result,
paradoxes, contradictions, and even what appears to be utter nonsense
abound in Zen literature. The *koan* method mentioned
above exemplifies this point. To cite just one such example:
"the river does not flow but the bridge does." If one
attempts to understand that by relying on an Aristotelian either-or logic
as the standard for understanding, one will be under the
impression that this expression is nonsensical or meaningless.



As may be surmised, by relying on the above-mentioned methodological
stance, Zen Buddhism has produced an understanding of
reality--one's own self, nature with life activities and
human nature--quite different from those offered by Western
philosophy. Therefore, we can say that Zen is an anti-philosophy in
that it is not a systematization of knowledge built on the use of a
discursive mode of reasoning anchored in the (alleged) certainty or
transparency of ego-consciousness, one that follows an epistemological
paradigm built on an ego-logical, either-or, dualistic mode of
knowing. Yet, it upholds something *like* a philosophy that
springs forth through a reflective restatement of the practice, though
this "upholding" must be understood with a proviso that it
maintains, as mentioned in the foregoing, a "positionless
position." (Abe, 1989.) This is because Zen abhors
"holding onto" anything, which Zen considers a case of
"self-binding without a rope." Such a self-binding would
trap the Zen practitioner into a mode of attachment that is the source
of suffering and, consequently, would disrupt the sense of embodied
freedom it cherishes.


## 5. Overcoming Dualism



Accordingly, Zen demands that the practitioner overcome the dualism
operative in the everyday standpoint, which it speaks of by using the
phrase "not two." The use of the phrase "not
two" expresses Zen's proclivity to favor the simple and
the concrete, such that it is not expressed as a negation of
dual*ism*. This overcoming is an existential, practical
project, a goal for the Zen practitioner, although it is paradoxically
stated as "if you face it, it goes away." This is because
"facing" presupposes a dualistic stance. "Two"
in "not two" designates any "two" things
appearing from within the everyday standpoint, especially when it is
taken to designate an absolute sense of reality. This standpoint, as
mentioned in the foregoing, relies on the discursive mode of reasoning
to understand reality, while presupposing an ego-consciousness as the
standard referential point. From this perspective for example, a
distinction between the outer and inner worlds emerges, using a
sensory perception as the point of reference. One of the salient
characteristics of this standpoint is that the world appears to be
*dualistic* in nature, that is to say, it recognizes two (and
by implication, many) things to be real. Zen questions this standpoint
when it is used as the paradigm for daily living, including
philosophical thinking, for this standpoint accepts as its foundation
an individual's discrete "I" with a belief that
"I" am self-contained and self-sufficient, and therefore
am distinguished and isolated from other individuals and things of
nature, "I" am "here" and things, including
others, are "over there," creating both a psychological
and physical distance between them. Epistemologically speaking, Zen
observes that this renders opaque, or at best translucent, the
experiential domains *beyond* the sensible world as well as
ego-consciousness, both either taken naturalistically or by means of
theoretical speculation. The inability to go beyond these experiential
domains occurs because ego-consciousness is physiologically rooted in
the body and psychologically in the unconscious. This points to a
philosophically important consequence. Namely, once the practitioner
accepts this outer-inner dichotomy even provisionally, he or she is
led to accept as true a host of other "two" things that
are affirmed to be real, as is seen in pairs of opposites such as mind
*vs*. body, I *vs*. others, love *vs*. hate, good
*vs*. evil, and I *vs*. nature.


### 5.1 Logical Meaning of Not Two



Logically speaking, Zen explains that "two" things arise
because the everyday standpoint stipulates the above-mention
epistemological paradigm as the standard for cognizing the whole,
however the whole may be construed (Nagatomo, 2000, 213-44).
This logic thinks it reasonable to divide the whole into two parts
when knowing or understanding reality. That is, when this logic is
applied to the whole, it compels the user of this logic to choose,
reasonably in the mind of the user, one part, while disregarding the
other part(s) as irrelevant or meaningless. It prioritizes one part
*at the expense of* the other part(s), while celebrating the
*exclusion*. In so doing, it looks to the explicit while
becoming oblivious to the fact that the implicit equally exists as a
*supporting* ground for the explicit, where the explicit is
something "obvious" to the senses and the rational mind.
It champions one-sidedness in cognition and judgment as the supreme
form of knowing and understanding reality. However, Zen thinks that
this prioritization, this exclusion, violates a cardinal principle of
knowing, for knowledge of anything demands an understanding of the
whole. Either-or logic fails on this account. Moreover, it contends
that when this logic attempts to understand the whole, it
theoretically *reduces* the other to the one that is judged to
be true and/or real. For example, if one maintains that the mind is
real, one disregards the body as unreal, yielding an idealist
position. On the other hand, if one thinks the body is real, it
disposes of the mind in the same way, favoring materialism as true and
real, which is presupposed, for example, by natural science. Either
position commits itself to reductionism. Here, questioning this
practice and the consequences it entails, Zen instead speaks of
mind-body oneness, an holistic perspective, as it abhors
one-sidedness. However, it warns that as soon as "one" is
contrasted with "two" in a discourse, it is no longer
genuine and authentic, because once it is objectified linguistically
or reflectively, it slips into being an idea, an abstraction.


### 5.2 An Epistemological Meaning of Not Two



From the point of view of epistemology developed by modern European
philosophy, the "two things" are the subject who knows and
the object that is known. Zen finds that these two things impose on
the epistemological subject a structuring that is framed dualistically
and either-or ego-logically, as mentioned in the foregoing.
Accordingly, this structuring unknowingly frames things to appear
dualistically and either-or ego-logically to the epistemological
subject, while extending the paradigm to itself for self-understanding
as well as things other than itself in the same manner. Consequently,
the subject stands *opposed* either to the outer world (e.g.,
nature) or to the inner world (the world of *psyche*), or
both, and hence it promotes an *oppositional* mode of thinking.
Moreover, Zen notes that the subject cannot by definition become the
object or vice versa, for they are distanced from each other either
really or ideally. It depends on whether the "distance"
and "opposition" occur in space-consciousness or in
time-consciousness; an object appears to be "out there"
with space-consciousness, while it appears to be "in here"
as an immanent object in the field of consciousness in
time-consciousness. Suppose one applies this epistemological structure
in knowing others, for example, one's friend. When one attempts
to know her from the everyday standpoint, one relies on the language
she speaks and her body language. Here one cannot know her *in
toto*, let alone the destiny of her life-history, because she is
shielded from an observer by the spatial-temporal density of her
being. 


### 5.3 Zen's Meaning of Not Two



Zen maintains that the situation created by assuming this
epistemological paradigm is not ideal, or real, for that matter.
Hence, Zen says "not two." "Not two" is in
part a recommendation for experientially achieving oneness through the
practice of meditation, informing the holder of the "two"
of the narrow and limited scope of her/his understanding, where the
idea of oneness may, for now, be conceived at many levels, starting
with the physical, the subtle, and the *samadhic*.
Generally speaking then, Zen takes "not two" to designate
a negation of any "two" things that are affirmed to be
individually real, in which the perspective that realizes the place or
domain where two things occur is ignored. The dualistic standpoint
also ignores the logical fact that any "two" things cannot
be individually one because for one to *be*, it must be
dependent on, and interconnects with, the other one. An either-or
logic ignores this interdependence, in part because it operates within
a conceptual and linguistic space with the assumption that there is no
temporal change. This assumption enables a thinker to establish the
law of identity, namely that A remains the same with itself, or
identical with itself. With this recommendation, Zen maintains that
mind and body, I and others, I and nature *ought* to be
experienced as one by those who remain in the everyday standpoint. To
express this idea, Zen states that "Heaven and Earth share the
same root, and I and the myriad things are one (-body)." It
demands an *holistic* perspective necessary to achieve
knowledge that is genuine and authentic. Otherwise, Zen fears that the
practitioner will fall into one-sidedness, in which the knowledge claim
ends up being partial, imbalanced, and even prejudiced. Dogen
captures this by stating: "When one side is illuminated, the
other side remains in darkness." To characterize the dualistic,
either-or, ego-logical standpoint by borrowing Nietzsche's
phrase, Zen would say that it is "human, and all too
human." 



Care must be exercised in understanding the meaning of
"not" in the phrase "not two" however. Zen
insists that the "not" primarily refers to an existential,
practical negation of the "I," which the practitioner
achieves by "up-rooting the ego-consciousness," and in
turn yields, by implication, a logical negation as well. This is
because Zen thinks the practitioner cannot achieve this negation
simply by following either-or logic, or for that matter by following
the intellectual process of reasoning, because both logic and
reasoning intrinsically involve two things, for example, the thinker
and the thought. With either-or logic a mere logical negation involves
an infinite regress in negating the "I"; one who negates
the "I" retains the affirmative act of holding
"I" in the mind as that which negates. And when the
"I" further attempts to negate this affirming act, there
still remains an "I" who negates it and the process goes
on *ad infinitum*. For this reason, Zen recommends the
practitioner to "forget the 'I" when engaging
oneself in any action, be it a mind-act, bodily-act, or speech-act, as
is seen for example in both Dogen and Takuan (1573-1645).




To recapitulate the idea of the Zen meaning of negation as expressed
in "not two," Zen sees its self-cultivation as involving a
thoroughgoing negation of the "I" to the point that no
problem, either existential or psychological, entrenched in the
"I" remains. Hence, we have Rinzai's phrase:
"if you becomes a master in any place, wherever you stand is
true." (Iriya, 1989, 70) Truth for Zen is not merely a matter of
formulating or uttering a propositional statement, but rather
*embodying* it by becoming, to use his phrase again, a
"true person of no rank," (*ibid*, 20) where
"no rank" designates the freedom of standing beyond social
or linguistic conventions such that a Zen person can use convention
freely. Equally important is Zen's contention that both logical
and intellectual methods are *abstract*, for they become
divorced from the actual reality of day-to-day existence. In other
words, in the eyes of Zen, these methods lack consideration for the
concreteness and immediacy of lived experience. This is because the
theoretical standpoint defines the human being who observes things of
nature from the outside, which can be characterized, by using
Yuasa's phrase, as a "being-outside-of-nature."
Instead, Zen maintains that the human being must be understood as a
being rooted in nature. To use Yuasa's phrase again, it is a
"being-in-nature." This point is well portrayed in
Zen's landscape paintings wherein a human figure occupies the
space of a mere dot in a vast natural scenery (Yuasa, 2003,
160-1).


## 6. An Experiential Meaning of Not-Two



How then does Zen articulate the experiential meaning of "not
two"? Throughout its long history, which spans from the sixth
century in China to the twenty-first century in Japan, Zen has
produced numerous ways of linguistically capturing a response to this
question, depending on what "two" things are thematized in
the Zen dialogue (Zen *mondo*). As a textual study, these
dialogues are a primary way for the non-practitioner to learn what
"two" things are by studying a discourse that unfolds
between a Zen master and his disciple. Moreover, this situation is
complicated by the fact that a Zen master's response is usually
tailored to an individual disciple's caliber. This is in keeping
with a general method of teaching in Buddhism, *i.e.,* speaking
to the caliber of a listener (*taiki seppo*). This
complication is further compounded by the differences in the
personality of Zen masters. Hence, Zen's responses to the above
question are as varied and numerous as there are Zen masters. In spite
of this situation, it is reasonably possible to provide a
*glimpse* into the experiential meaning of "not
two" by looking into a phrase that often appears in Zen
dialogues. This phrase is "no-thought and no-image"
(*munen muso*), whose experience points to practically
going beyond "not one" and "not two." 


### 6.1 Zen's No-Thought and No-Image



Upon hearing the phrase "no-thought and no-image," one may
wonder if there could be such a thing. To properly respond to this
question, Zen thinks it important to determine whether it is posed
with a practical concern or a theoretical concern in mind. The
difference allows a Zen master to determine the ground out of which
this question is raised, for example, to determine if the inquirer is
anchored in the everyday standpoint or in a meditational standpoint.
In the case of the former, for instance, Zen would respond by saying
that as long as the inquirer poses this question from within the
everyday standpoint with a theoretical interest, relying on either-or
logic, the inquirer cannot understand the meaning of "no-thought
and no-image," as intended by Zen. This is because to formulate
the question, "*Is* there or *is there not*
no-thought and no-image?" linguistically drives the inquiry into
a contradiction, for one cannot predicate "is" on
"no-thought" or "no-image." Only insofar as
"no-thought" or "no-image" is treated as an
idea in a linguistic space without consideration for its referent, can
one ask if "there is" or "there is not" such a
thing as "no-thought." In response, Zen maintains that
when "there is" or "there is not" is
topicalized in its tradition, it is not the same as "there
is" or "there is not" as understood from within the
everyday standpoint. Zen claims that neither "no-thought"
nor "no-image" can be linguistically or logically
apprehended from this standpoint. 



Why does Zen insist on this? Zen explains that both "there
is" and "there is not" (or more generally
"being" and "non-being") are intellectually
framed from within the everyday standpoint by accepting the
*oppositional* ontology where the meaning of "is"
is predicated on the meaning of "is not," and vice versa.
Therefore, Zen maintains that to understand "no-thought"
or "no-image" we need an experiential dimension that goes
beyond the oppositional thinking of the everyday standpoint. 


### 6.2 Zen's Nothing



Zen condenses "no-thought and no-image" into a singular
word "no" in keeping with its proclivity to favor the
simple, as this contraction allows Zen to expand the scope and the
meaning of "no-thought and no-image." This
"no," for example, is made pivotal by Zen Master
Joshu (Chin., Zhaozhou; 778-897). It is usually
rendered in English as "nothing" and has been presented to
the Western reader as if it is *the* central and cardinal
concept of Zen philosophy. At the risk of de-emphasizing other
important aspects of Zen such as how it understands the living
phenomena of nature, humanity's relation to them, and aesthetic
sensitivity, we will here focus on the scope and meaning of this Zen
"no" Wu .



This "no" appears in a Zen dialogue between Joshu and
a monk, in which is thematized an issue of whether or not a dog has
Buddha-nature. It reads as follows: A monk asks Joshu:
"Does the dog have buddha-nature?" He replies:
"No[thing]." The monk says: "All sentient beings
have buddha-nature. Why doesn't the dog have it?"
Joshu replies: "He has discrimination due to his
*karma*." Joshu's response of "no"
to the monk's question points to the latter's inadequate,
and hence also mistaken, understanding of being. However, as
articulated in the *Nirvanasutra,* Mahayana
Buddhism, of which Zen is an offshoot, asserts that all sentient
beings have buddha-nature. With this understanding in mind, the monk
asked the question, to which Joshu replied
Wu  ("no"). His "no" points to the
fact that the way the monk formulates his question regarding being is
predicated on an either-or logical understanding or an
affirmation-negation linguistic device. In so doing, the monk
relativizes Buddha-nature *qua* being, while contrasting and
opposing it with non-being. Buddha-nature is not something that the
dog can *have* or not *have*; Buddha-nature is not
something contingent. Joshu's "no" allows the
monk to *return* to the ground from which the idea of the
Buddha-nature springs forth as an essential characterization of all
beings. As such, Joshu's "no" points to a
transcendence of being and non-being. Insofar as Zen's
"no" is turned into an issue questioning the
*ground* of being, it is appropriate to understand it as
"nothing," and in fact as "absolutely
nothing," because the latter goes beyond the relative nothing
that is contrasted with being.



As Joshu's "nothing" has been made a
*koan*, numerous Zen masters have used it to test a
student's progress in meditation. In such a case, a Zen master
expects a monk to come up with his or her original response by
stipulating a condition: "I don't expect you to answer
that the dog has buddha-nature nor that the dog does not have
buddha-nature. Nor do I expect you to reply that the dog both has and
does not have buddha-nature. Nor do I expect you to reply that the dog
neither has nor does not have buddha-nature. How do you respond to
this?" This is a warning that a monk cannot rely on
Nagarjuna's tetralemma as an acceptable response,
namely the four possible ways of understanding thing-events insofar as
logic is concerned: "there is," "there is
not," "both 'there is' and 'there is
not,'" and "neither 'there is' nor
'there is not.'" This master is admonishing that as
long as a monk's response is framed from within the logic of the
everyday use of language, no answer is forthcoming. Here the reader
can sense that the scope and the meaning of "no-thought and
no-image" has been expanded to include the logical use of
language, not simply a rejection of oppositional thinking. 



A further expansion of the scope and the meaning of "no"
can be found in an instruction Zen Master Daie (Chin.,
Dahui;1089-1163) gives to his students, though it
is given *via negativa*--when they attempt to discover a
response to Joshu's "nothing" (Yanagita, 1974,
181-2). Prefacing his remark that "this one word [i.e.,
'no(-thing)'] is a cane that shatters numerous [instances
of] erroneous knowledge and perception," Daie instructs the
students not to take "no[thing]" in the context of being
or nonbeing by applying either-or logic. An appeal to discriminatory
thinking based on the standpoint of [ego-]consciousness is of no use
either. It is also unacceptable to appeal to bodily action, let alone
to engage in a mere verbal exchange. Not even a metaphysical response
will do either, for Daie states: "Do not throw it out into an
empty-void where there is nothing. Do not swallow it where something
is generated." To seek an answer in a text is also out of the
question. Daie demands that the practitioner come up with his/her own
original answer.



What is evident in the above instructions is that the Zen practitioner
must tackle this "no[thing]" by mobilizing the
*whole* of his or her person in order to delve into the
*ground* of his or her personhood, where the
"whole" in question involves both the
mind and the body, both the consciousness and the unconscious. This
is, no doubt, an existential challenge to Zen practitioners, and so
they make an all-out effort, staking life and death, because it
guarantees them an embodiment of truth and freedom. In this context,
Zen metaphorically speaks of reaching the whole as "kicking
through the bottom of a bucket" to designate the ground of a
person, which Zen understands to be bottomless. That is, it
understands this ground to have "*no*" bottom,
i.e., it is a bottomless ground. To avoid the danger of interpreting
this ground nihilistically or relativisitically, the modern Japanese
thinker, Nishida Kitaro (1870-1945) adds that it is
*absolutely* nothing, where "absolutely" means
cutting off all pairs of polar opposites. (See the entry on
 Nishida Kitaro.)


### 6.3 Zen "Seeing"



The experiential dimension in which Zen's "nothing"
becomes understandable refers to a quiescent state of meditation in
which is arrested the activity of an individual practitioner's
ego-consciousness that functions in a close correlation with his or
her body. Upon reaching such a meditational state, the Zen
practitioner comes to experience an event generally known as
"seeing into one's nature" (*kensho*),
an initial *satori* experience. Although this phrase may on the
surface suggest a dualistic state, namely that there is something that
is called "nature," which the Zen practitioner comes to
see as an object. This interpretation occurs because
"seeing"is understood to be an intentional activity of the
practitioner. However, this "seeing" has a sense of
becoming visible such that "one's own nature" emerges in
the meditative awareness when the activity of ego-consciousness is
arrested. Once this experience occurs, the practitioner gradually
turns the seeing into one's nature (according to the interpretation
*vis-a-vis* the acquired enlightenment), or the
practitioner realizes that one's nature is seeing (according to the
interpretation *vis-a-vis* the original enlightenment).
The Zen tradition interprets "nature" to be
"buddha-nature," i.e., the possibility to be awakened from
fundamental ignorance. That is to say, to become a Buddha, and the way
of its being is designated by the term *tathata*, suchness
or a thing-event's being such *that* it is showing its
primordial mode of being. When this aspect of knowledge is emphasized,
Zen calls it "original" or "natural"
knowledge. In this connection, it contends that the
"seeing" is "not two," i.e., it is
non-dualistic in nature. 



To illustrate an experiential basis for the above observation, we may
cite another example, namely Dogen's enlightenment
experience. This will aid the reader to catch a glimpse of an
experiential meaning of "not two," for it is descriptive
of the experience itself. He expresses it as "dropping off the
body and the mind" (*shinjin datsuraku*). (In order to
get an idea of this experience from a contemporary point-of-view, or
from outside of Zen tradition, one may also consider out-of-body
experiences.) The experience of "dropping off the body and the
mind" informs us that the dualistic relationship between the
mind and the body *has disappeared* in meditational awareness
and by implication "I" and others, and "I" and
nature. Hence they are "not two." If the distinction has
disappeared, it implies that the Zen practitioner is thrown into a
non-dualistic domain of experience. It points to a *practical*
transcendence from the everyday either-or, ego-logical, dualistic
standpoint. 



In light of the outer-inner distinction Zen interprets the
non-dualistic experience to mean that the distinction has been
epistemologically collapsed, as it arises in such a way to respond to
the *dualistic* perspective from which the outer and the inner
worlds appeared. It understands this collapsing of the distinction
then to be the meaning of "not two," from which an
*holistic* perspective emerges. Conceptually, Zen takes this
holistic perspective to mean the de-substantialization and
de-ontologization of any two polar concepts, such as one and many,
being and non-being, universal and particular, absolute and relative,
transcendence and immanence, and birth and death. Zen's
observation is that each of the polar terms is non-dualistically
related to each of the other polar terms such that they are connected
with, interdependent on, and relative to, each other for their being
and meaning. They are thrown into a holistic context of an
interdependent causal series. And for this series to be operative, Zen
maintains, following Nagarjuna, that each of these terms
that enters the relationship is *empty* of self-nature, where
self-nature means a power to generate itself on its own without
dependence on anything. For if thing-events designated by these terms
are endowed with self-nature, they cannot enter into the series; what
enters such a series is only an *accidental* attribute or
property. According to the substantialistic or essentialistic
ontology, nothing can really change. For example, criminals who want
to correct their criminal behavior cannot change themselves if being a
criminal is the essential characterization of their being. This would
pose an insurmountable challenge, if not impossibility, to a
correction officer at a prison. Or, for that matter, anyone who wants
to correct one's own psychological characteristic or tendency,
particularly if it happens to be pathological, cannot succeed in such
self-correction if it is an essential characterization of one's
being. 



In order to give a still more concrete sense of what Zen-seeing is
like, we now return to the question of how Zen understands the
experiential meaning of "seeing into one's nature."
Zen's contention is that the bottomless ground is that which
non-dualistically "sees" when the practitioner experiences
the state of nothing (or no-thought and no-image). How then does Zen
articulate this "seeing"? This question points to an
examination of the epistemic structure of how knowledge operates in
Zen experience. For this purpose, the following Zen dialogue between
Jinne and Chosetsu concerning "no-thought" is
illuminating. Although it is lengthy, we quote it in full in order
to provide a sense of how a Zen dialogue unfolds:



> 
> 
> The disciple asks: Then what is it [i.e., no-thought]?
> 
> 
> 
> The master replies: It is nothing like "what is."
> Therefore, we can not explain "no-thought." The reason why
> I am speaking about it now is because you have asked about it. If you
> hadn't asked about it, there would be no need to explain it. Suppose
> that there is a clear, transparent mirror. If it does not face a
> thing, no image is reflected in it. To say that it mirrors an image
> means that because it faces something, it just mirrors its image.
> 
> 
> 
> The disciple asks: If it does not face any thing, is there or is there
> not a reflection in the mirror?
> 
> 
> 
> The master replies: That the mirror reflects a thing means that it
> always mirrors regardless of whether it is facing or not facing a
> thing.
> 
> 
> 
> The disciple asks: If there is no image and since you do not give an
> explanation, how can all beings and nonbeings become an issue? Now
> when you say that it always mirrors, how does it mirror?
> 
> 
> 
> The master replies: When I say that the mirror always mirrors, it is
> because a clear, transparent mirror possesses an original nature as
> its essential activity of always mirroring things. Analogously,
> people's mind is originally undefiled, and naturally possesses a
> superb light of wisdom that illuminates the perfect world of
> *nirvana*.
> 
> 
> 
> The disciple asks: Insofar as people's minds are originally like
> that, when do people get it?
> 
> 
> 
> The master replies: It just sees nothing.
> 
> 
> 
> The disciple asks: When it is nothing, what can it see?
> 
> 
> 
> The master replies: Seeing is not like something you can call a
> thing.
> 
> 
> 
> The disciple asks: If it is not like anything one can call a thing,
> what does it see?
> 
> 
> 
> The master replies: it sees no-thing. That is the true seeing. It
> always sees.
> (Yanagita, 1974, 132-3.)
> 
> 
> 



Unlike most Zen dialogues that are often enigmatic and puzzling to
people outside the tradition, this dialogue provides an explanation
that indicates what "seeing" is *like* in Zen
experience. This "seeing" is said to be "seeing
nothing or no-thing," and Jinne speaks of it by appealing to the
analogy of a mirror, although he makes a disclaimer that it cannot
adequately be explained in words. To get a glimpse of what he means by
"seeing," it is helpful to take note of the following
points regarding this analogy. Jinne conceives of a mirror in terms of
two modalities: the mirror in and of itself and the mirror as it
engages an object other than itself. It is important to keep in mind
that both are understood in light of their activity. He characterizes
the "original nature" of the mirror in and of itself as
being "clear, transparent" (or "undefiled"),
wherein it is said to *always* mirror. "Original"
means that it is not contingent on experience, while
"always" refers to the mirror's ceaseless activity
of mirroring. Whether "there is" or "there is
not" a specific object to mirror is a contingent matter for the
mirror in and of itself. What makes a mirror what it
*is* is its activity of always mirroring, and when considered
in and of itself, it possesses no specific image to mirror. There is
no characteristic to it and hence no image appearing in it, i.e.,
"no-thought" or "no-image." This is the
meaning of "no-thing or nothing" in the phrase
"seeing *no-thing* or *nothing*." In other
words, the mirror is turned into nothing, or to use the earlier
phrase, the bottomless ground is nothing except, epistemologically
speaking, its capacity to mirror, and even this capacity is rendered
"nothing" when it is in *no* use. 



Zen explains the fact that the mirror "just *sees*
no-thing or nothing" when its act of seeing is mobilized in
"facing" a thing. The adverb "just" is
crucial. "Just" here means without discrimination, without
superimposition, without projection, or in short, without positing an
ego-consciousness as that which sees. In phenomenological terms, there
is no thetic positing in this kind of seeing. Zen maintains that these
characterizations obtain because the Zen practitioner "kicked
through the bottom of the bucket," a practical transcendence. In
other words, Zen's contention is that there is no
*determination* whatsoever in the mirror's activity of
"just seeing." That there is no determination means to Zen
that because the bottomless ground is nothing, it does not impose form
on things that are mirrored. When these qualifications are taken
together, Zen interprets "just seeing no-thing or nothing"
to mean seeing or mirroring things without discrimination, that is,
with a sense of *equality*. When a mirror, for example,
reflects an image of a beautiful object, it does not make any
discriminatory value judgment that it is beautiful. And neither does
it make any discriminatory value judgment when it mirrors an ugly
object. It mirrors thing-events as they are. That is, the mirror does
not take any stance of likes and dislikes; it does not take a stance
of "for" or "against." It is non-egological in
mirroring each thing equally.




 Moreover, Zen observes that the nature
of the mirror is such that it does not change due to the kind of
object it mirrors. For example, it does not increase or decrease in
size in virtue of the fact that it mirrors an object. (Bankei, for
example, expresses it as the "unborn.") It remains as it
is in its original nature of always mirroring, which highlights the
fact that it is clear and transparent. Because equality is the
characteristic of this seeing, Zen speaks of the activity of this
seeing as *nondiscriminatory*. Yet, because an object is
mirrored as object, whether beautiful or ugly, Zen considers the act
of mirroring to be a "discernment." Therefore, Zen
characterizes the "seeing" in "seeing no-thing or
nothing" in its act-aspect as a discernment
*vis-a-vis* nondiscrimination (*mubunbetsu*
*no funbetsu*). This, Jinne says, is "true seeing,"
which is non-discriminatory wisdom (*prajna*).
Through this mirror analogy, Zen wants to point out what the minds of
people are like in their *original* nature and activity. Zen
summarizes all of the above characteristics of seeing by employing a
simple phrase: "motion in stillness"
(*seichu* *no do*). However, an objection may
be raised against Zen's holistic, non-dualistic
"seeing" or "mirroring," namely, the objection
that if there is something that is mirrored, does that not still imply
a dualistic epistemological structure? Zen would respond that this
objection ignores the fact that the ground of seeing is the bottomless
ground that is nothing. What appears against mirror
*qua* nothing is just an object. In such a seeing, the object
*alone* shines forth. Hence, it is characterized, to use
Nishida's terminology, as "seeing without a seer."
(See the entry on 
 The Kyoto School, Sect. 3.3.)
 Below, we will explore further the structure of how things appear in
Zen.



Although it may sound paradoxical, Zen maintains that this ground is
also a fount of creativity. Because there is no *determination*
in the ground, it is pregnant with many possibilities or meanings to
be realized. Zen maintains, via the influences from philosophical
Daoism, that this creativity is in the same order as that of nature,
for the practitioner reaches the *original* source prior to the
distinction between the outer world and the inner world. (Hence, Zen
understands, as was mentioned in the foregoing, the human being to be
"a being-in-nature.") 



It often uses the phrase "no-mind" (*mushin*) to
generally designate the above experiential dimension. However, Zen
does not mean it to be a mindless state, much less losing the
mind. Nor does it mean a disappearance of the mind. Rather it
designates a dimension of experience in which the
ego-logically *discriminatory* activity of the mind
disappears. This may be illustrated in terms of seeing things that
occurs in a deep state of meditative absorption, where
"seeing" means becoming visible as mentioned above. Zen
adepts are said to acquire a power of meditation
(Jpn.: *joriki*), which is related to abilities like
clairvoyance, clairaudience, and retrocognition. These abilities
coincide with those of two of the three night-watches on the night of
historical Buddha's enlightenment experience. Once such a power
becomes available to the meditators, they intentionally focus on
seeing whatever they want to see. This is an activity of
ego-consciousness, but after settling into a deeper state of
absorption, the person's ego-conscious activity ceases and an
image appears from the unconscious in response to the meditator's
intention. This is because the unconscious has an autonomous activity
that works independent of conscious will. This occurs once the
meditator eliminates or lessens the oppositional and conflicting
relationship between the consciousness and unconscious. If,
however, the meditator tries to see an image by relying on his or her
ego-consciousness, the image which has surfaced in the field of
meditative awareness immediately disappears, because the meditator
slips back into a dualistic state from the non-dualistic state. The
meditator must remain in a non-dualistic state in order to see what
appears in the field of meditative awareness.




Philosophically speaking, we can characterize this experiential event
that the Zen practitioner trans-descends into, and hence transcends,
the ego-logically discriminatory activity of the mind. Zen
contends that this arises due to adhering to "name-form" (Jpn.:
*myoshiki*; Skrt.: *namarupa*). This
transcendence results in a rejection of the belief that there is a
reality corresponding to a name, or generally that there is a reality
corresponding to a linguistic activity. Through the state of no-mind,
Zen observes that each individual thing that is mirrored is recognized
for the first time to *be* individual *qua* the
individual with a sense of equality that is due to other individual
things. 


## 7. Zen's Understanding of Time and Space



Given Zen's seeing as articulated above, one may raise the next
question: how does Zen understand time and space? Are they
significantly different from time and space as conceived by many other
theories of time and space? In what follows, we will briefly provide
how Zen understands "here and now," "zero-time and
zero-space," and "an integrated time and space."


### 7.1 Here and Now



In spite of, or rather because of, the above-mentioned experiential
dimension of Zen-seeing, Zen insists that the Zen practitioner plant
his or her feet in the everydayness of "here and now." In
this respect, Zen philosophically advocates a position of "not
one," where "one" here means remaining in the state
of meditative absorption. Otherwise, it fears that if the practitioner
remains in the stillness of meditation, while suspending judgment on
action, it falls into one-sidedness, a source of prejudice and
misunderstanding of reality. How then does Zen understand "here
and now"? In this connection, one may reasonably ask: "how
far and wide is 'here' and how long is
'now,'" when Zen speaks of "here and
now." Are they each limited by a present perceptual experience?
In the case of "now," for example, is it an internal
phenomenon of consciousness that allows the practitioner to experience
time sometimes as a "memory" (or retention) and some other
times as "anticipation" (or "protention") in
the ever flowing stream of "present" (e.g., as described
by St. Augustine, Husserl and Merleau-Ponty)? And in the case of
"here," is it delimited by the practitioner's
spatial range of perception within the sensory field, situating the
Zen practitioner as the point of reference? (There is in both cases a
suggestion of involvement of the autonomous activity of the
unconscious, of which Zen demands we must stand outside.) Zen's
response to both of these questions is a resounding "Yes!"
and "No!" however contradictory it may
sound. "Yes," because the practitioner, while living,
cannot depart from the "here and now," because he or she
is incarnate, in which case time and space is always experienced as
"here and now." "No," insofar as the
perceptual model implies an ego-logical "human, all too
human" stance (Nietzsche) with its attendant limitations, even
though Zen does not exclude this model as long as it is not delimited
by the dualistic, either-or ego-logical perspective. In the everyday
human world that is "here and now," Zen maintains that
"*riddhi* and [its] wondrous activity all shoulder water
and carry firewood" where "*riddhi*" refers
to a power that naturally becomes available to the practitioner
through the practice of meditation. 


### 7.2 Zero Time and Zero Space



Zen however thinks that the preceding is still a partial understanding
of "here and now." To fully understand it, it is helpful
to examine the following often-quoted phrase, as it is particularly
illustrative. Zen demands that the practitioner "show
one's original face before one's parents were born."
This demand points to an experiential dimension *prior to* the
bifurcation between the subject and the object--and hence
"not two"--where "prior" means negation
of the spatial-temporal ordering principles such as in Kant's
understanding of time and space as *a priori* forms of
intuition. It points to a non-dualistic experiential dimension that is
zero-time and zero-space, by which Zen means that neither time nor
space is a delimiting condition for Zen-seeing. In zero-time there is
no distinction between past, present, and future, or between
"before" and "after"; in zero- space there is
no distinction between the whole and its parts. One can also say that
both time and space, experienced from the point-of-view of the
everyday standpoint, is *relativized* when zero-time temporizes
and zero-space spatializes, where zero time and zero space
characterize the bottomless ground. Accordingly, Zen contends that
zero-time and zero-space are the natural and primordial being of all
things including human beings, for they are all grounded in it. Taking
these points together, the Zen enlightenment experience suggests a
*leap* from a causal temporal series. 



Consequently, Zen contends that "here and now" is enfolded
in both zero-time and zero-space. This means that one time contains
all times and one part contains the whole, as in the case of a
holographic dry plate in which each part contains the whole. (See the 
entry on 
 Japanese Philosophy, Section 2.2.)
Seen in
this manner, "now" for the Zen person is a temporalization
of zero-time, while "here" is equally a spatialization of
zero-space, even though he or she may be anchored in the perceptual
field of "here and now" as understood above. In other
words, for the Zen person both "now" and
"here" are experienced as an expression of thing-events in
their suchness, because, as mentioned in the foregoing, Zen takes
zero- time and zero-space to be the original abode of thing-events.
Caution must be exercised here, however. Zen's zero-time should
not be confounded with the idea of eternity standing outside a
temporal series (Thomas Aquinas's or Newton's
"absolute time," for example) by means of a logical or intellectual
transcendence, nor should the zero-space be identified with
a Newtonian-like "absolute space" wherein there is no
content of experience. In other words, Zen does not understand time
and space by imposing a formal category on them, by
presupposing *in advance* a form-matter distinction, which
indicates an operation of the discursive mode of reasoning by
appealing to the either-or, dualistic, and ego-logical epistemological
structure. 


### 7.3 An Integrated Time and Space



Just as importantly, Zen maintains that time and space are lived as
*integrated* space-time in the interfusion of a concrete
temporalization and spatialization. For example, Dogen speaks of
it as "being-time" (*u-ji*) to indicate their
inseparability; being cannot *be* apart from time, and time
cannot *be* apart from being, where a being spatializes through
the process of temporalization, and where it temporalizes through the
process of spatialization. This is a concrete
spatialization-temporalization that is lived without any intellectual
abstraction, reflecting the Buddhist position that everything,
without exception, is impermanent. Zen abhors an intellectual
abstraction that merely *thinks* time and space. This is
because the Zen person rides on the rhythm of living nature. That is,
"here and now" is one experience (and hence "not
two"), and for this reason they should be designated as
"here-now." 



In living this integrated, living space-time, Zen does not understand
time to be a quantifiable (the move prepared by Aristotle's
understanding of time as the measurement between before and after) and
homogeneously punctuated unit (i.e., the clock time of natural
science). Nor does it conceive of it as a linear progression from past
to future through the present, although it does not exclude them
insofar as they are useful for everyday life. The negation of the
linear idea of time also includes the negation of the idea of time as
symmetrical and reversible, because in the Zen experience of
space-time, a teleological intentionality, an "in order
that," is absent. Yet Zen does not accept time as a
"fleeting image of eternity" (as in Plato). Zen
understands time to be living. According to Zen, theories of time
built through conceptual abstraction are distanced and separate from
the immediacy of "here-now." 



Space, too, is neither a container (as with Newtown's
"absolute space") nor an *a priori* limiting
condition (as in Kant), nor the place of displacement for the volume
of an extended thing (as in Aristotle). Rather it is a *living*
space. Dogen for example captures this sense of space as
"the bird flies the sky and the sky flies the bird." In
this statement Dogen recognizes the independence of the sky and
the bird, but also recognizes that the sky and the bird each become
themselves only through their interdependence. In other words, what
makes this space a *living* space is the dynamic,
interdependent, bilateral play of both bird and sky, from which the
living space-time as the continuum of "here-now" emerges
as an ambience, where each of the terms entering the relationship
through the activity is granted a full recognition of their being.
This is because the Zen person lives the dynamic activity of
non-dualistic "coming-together" of "the two,"
whether this "two" happens to involve the
"betweenness" of two individuals, individual and nature,
or individual and trans-individual. 


### 7.4 The Structure of Things Appearing



Given Zen's mode of seeing, which is non-dualistic in nature,
occurring in zero-time and zero-space, one may ask how things appear
to the Zen mind under these conditions. We can interpret Zen's
nondualistic experience epistemologically as that experience which
arises from a nondiscriminatory state of meditational awareness. To be
more specific, nondiscriminatory awareness signifies that it is the
foundational background, as articulated in the foregoing, that is
bottomless or nothing, and as such does not participate in
discriminatory activity. However, when a thing appears, a
discrimination occurs on this foundational, though bottomless,
background. Because it occurs on this foundation, it does not distort
the shape of things to appear along with its force. We have designated
its activity as discernment vis-a-vis nondiscrimination. It may
also be characterized as nondiscriminatory discrimination, in order to
capture a sense of how things appear in meditational awareness. In
such awareness no ego is posited either as an active or a passive
agent in constituting the things of experience, as this awareness
renders useless the active-passive scheme as an explanatory
model. This awareness lets a thing announce itself as a
thing. Therefore, it avoids, on one hand, the idealist position,
including Husserl's intentionality model in which a thetic
meaning-bestowing activity is assigned to the act of consciousness. 
On the other hand, it also rejects the British empiricist's stance in which
the epistemological subject is considered a passive 
*tabula rasa* upon which attributes are impressed. These
implications are suggested because Zen's
nondiscriminatory/discriminatory awareness arises out of the state of
no-ego in which no projection from the unconscious and no
superimposition of intellectual ideas occur in the field of meditative
awareness. 



Moreover, because things are experientially "constituted"
in this manner, we can interpret the epistemological structure of
appearing to be such that things appear in the field of meditative
awareness without presupposing Gestalt psychology's distinction
between foreground and background. This is because the ego is turned
into nothing in the state of nondiscriminatory discriminatory
awareness, and hence no-ego, where this nothing is paradoxically a
background that is not the background at all, because it is a
*bottomless* background. To use Nishida's terminology
again, the nondiscriminatory/discriminatory awareness is an act of
"seeing without being a seer." Or, to use the terminology
of phenomenology, the bottomless background or the background of
nothing is the stance in which the noetic act is rendered nothing.
Accordingly, the noematic object is allowed to announce iteself
without an intentional constitution by the latter. This is the meaning
of "no projection" and "no superimposition"
mentioned above. It consequently opens up a bottomless horizon, on
which a noematic object announces itself *in toto* as a
phenomenon.



This opening up simultaneously accompanies, as mentioned in the
foregoing, a de-substantialization and de-ontologization of the things
of experience, because there is no act of the ego that substantializes
and ontologizes them; substantialization and ontologization both arise
as a consequense of anthropomorphic activity that is intricately tied
to the discursive mode of reasoning. Consequently, we are led to
conclude that the things of experience announce themselves *in
toto* without concealing anything behind them. This is because
there is nothing in the bottomless background to determine or delimit
how things appear. Zen uses such terms as "suchness" or
"thusness" to designate it. For example, Dogen
captures it by stating in "the Buddha Nature" fascicle
that "nothing is concealed in the universe."



In order to see how the above-mentioned structure of appearing
operates under the conditions of zero-time and zero-space, we must
capture a sense of a temporal-spatial awareness reflective of the
nondualistic experience. We previously discussed zero-time
temporalizing and zero-space spatializing in which temporalization is
spatialization and spatialization is temporalization, as in
Dogens theory of "being-time," wherein there is no
formal separation between the two. Hence,
neither time nor space is conceived to be a container. Rather, they
are expressions of things "thing-ing" the primordial mode
of their being. This thing-ing of things springs from zero-time and
zero-space. One must stand on ground zero to see the
"thing-ing" of things where there is no temporalization
and no spatialization of things.


## 8. Returning to the Everyday Lifeworld: Not One



If we are to stop at sketching what Zen-seeing is together with its
understanding of time and space as an integrated space-time, there is
the danger of fixing the stance thus "obtained." (Although
we must keep in mind that Zen "obtains" the stance of
"not two" in such a way that it cannot be obtained, for in
the non-dualistic dimension nothing can be "obtained.")
Zen recognizes at the same time that any stance that is fixed is
one-sided and partial. It will deprive Zen, for example, of an
opportunity to utilize Zen-seeing in the actions of everyday life. For
this reason, Zen insists that the practitioner move to the stance of
"not one." What then is Zen's stance of "not
one"? This question affords the reader, for the purpose of the
present article, to get a glimpse into Zen's movement from
"not two" to "not one," although in actuality
this movement operates in a dynamic bilateral movement between
them. This movement is symbolized in Zen by a circle, an image of the
whole, which is also an image of perfection. Insofar as
"one" is a negation of "not two," "not
one" then brings the Zen practitioner back to the everyday
lifeworld, the world of multiplicity that is ordinarily constructed
ego-logically and dualistically. 


### 8.1 Zen Person



For the Zen person, the move from "not two" to "not
one" is an issue of concretely instantiating in the everyday
lifeworld what is experienced through the stance of
"not two." This point, for example, is well illustrated in
the following Zen dialogue between Zen Master Ungen (Chin.
Yunyan, 780-841) and a fellow practitioner,
Dogo (Chin., Daowu; 769-835). When Ungen is making
a cup of tea, the dialogue runs as 
follows:



> 
> 
> Dogo: To whom are you going to serve the tea you are preparing? 
> 
> 
> 
> Ungen: There is the person who wants it.
> 
> 
> 
> Dogo: Can't the person who wants it make the tea
> himself?
> 
> 
> 
> Ungen: Fortunately, I am here to do it for him. 
> (Ueda, 1981, 165-66.)
> 
> 
> 



This dialogue points to an activity of "trans-individual
*qua* the individual," where the
"trans-individual" designates a Zen person with
nondiscriminatory wisdom, while the "individual"
designates those who remain in the everyday lifeworld.
(In the above quote, the former is designated by the phrase "the
person," while the latter by the pronoun "you.")
However, in the everyday human lifeworld, the
"trans-individual" cannot "make the tea
himself," because he is not incarnate like the individual who
remains in the dualistic, either-or ego-logical, everyday standpoint.
This is because he or she is one who follows the non-dualistic,
non-ego-logical standpoint having practically transcended the former.
This creates the dilemma of how to be trans-individual while assuming
the form of an individual. If this is not properly dealt with, Zen
warns that it results in developing a pathological condition or a
*mana*-personality. For this reason, Ungen says
"fortunately 'I' am here to do it for him."
Here, Zen conceives of the relationship between the individual and the
trans-individual as one, i.e., "not two," and yet they are
"not one." Insofar as both the trans-individual and the
individual refer to the same person (in the above quote,
"I"), they are "not two," but insofar as their
stances operate differently, they are "not one"
("I" and "him" in the quote). "Both
individual and trans-individual" designates a harmonious
assimilation of the two stances, a consequence of which is a person
who can avail him or herself of both of these perspectives, i.e., the
dualistic world of the everyday life and the non-dualistic world of
"not two." On the other hand, "neither individual
nor trans-individual" refers to a person who cannot be pinned
down or delimited by linguistic means. In spite of, or because of
this, such a person is a carrier of freedom who goes beyond these
perspectives, i.e., a person in whom the trans-individual and
individual *have disappeared* in action, in which case the
individual *qua* trans-individual is no longer
*ordinary*, but extraordinary. Yet, he or she is quite ordinary
in appearance. All of these points are synthesized into a Zen
*person*. 


### 8.2 Zen's Freedom



How then does the Zen person, thus understood, live freedom? The term
that Zen uses to express the idea of "freedom" is
"*jiyu*" and it consists of two characters:
"*ji*" meaning "self on its own," while
"*yu*" means "out of." When they
are used together as a compound, the phrase as a whole designates an
action arising *out of self on its own*. This action then
carries a sense of *spontaneity*, much like the spontaneous
creative act of living nature. This idea of freedom is foreign to the
Western intellectual tradition, however. For example, consider how
freedom is defined by British empiricists like John Locke. According
to Locke, freedom (or to be specific, liberty) is defined as a lack or
absence of external constraint. According to this model, freedom is to
express an ego-desire save in the name of will arising from an
individual in "the state of nature" where and when there
is no external constraint. By contrast, because it arises out of the
self on its own, where the self in Zen is a groundless ground that is
nothing, Zen's free action is not delimited by ego-desire,
because it arises out of nothing. It "kicks through the bottom
of the bucket," that is, it purifies all the
"defilements" interlaced with the activity of the
ego-consciousness, as well as the personal and collective unconscious.
For this reason, there is no issue involved in the Zen person's
action that addresses the will of ego-consciousness. For what
motivates the Zen person to action is a *thrust* he or she
feels, surging from the creative source in the bottomless ground.
Moreover, the Zen person does not experience, as Nietzsche has it,
"bad-faith" or "self-deception" when
explaining a motivation for action as a rationalist would, because a
rationalist must rationalize an irrational desire rooted in the body
and the unconscious. (See, for example, Nietzsche's *Beyond
Good and Evil*.)



Does this mean then that the Zen person has eliminated the demand of
instincts or desires? If they are *eliminated*, the Zen person
would turn into a living corpse. Such a person can perform no action,
let alone a *free* action. Obviously then, the Zen person does
not eliminate them, but rather transforms them into
"non-defilements," into a higher spiritual energy. We see
a heightened spirituality upheld by Zen master Baso (Chin.,
Mazu; 709-788), which he insists to be concretely
expressed in the everyday lifeworld. He expresses it by
phrasing it as "the mind as it is is the way." (Yanagita,
1974, 147.) This statement, "the mind as it is is the Way"
(*heijoshin kore michi*) is sometimes rendered in English
as "the everyday mind is the Way." This rendition can be
misleading if we ignore Baso's qualification that this
"everyday mind" operates without defilements such that it
is not "[entrenched in the *samsaric* cycle] of
birth and death," and moreover that it is not dominated by a
teleological intentionality, i.e., it negates the "in order
that." Otherwise, there is a danger of interpreting Baso's
statement as promoting an evil naturalism. That is, whatever a person
desires in the state of "nature," i.e., "the
everyday mind," is the expression of the Way. There is no
problem of a misinterpretation then, as long as Baso's
"everyday mind" is understood to mean the mind which is
freed from "the *samsasric* cycle of birth and
death," and yet it is the mind which is concretely instantiated
in the everydayness of a human everyday lifeworld. 



Let us see how Baso's idea of "the mind as it is is the
Way" is carried to a highly artistic action, whether it be a
performance technique of martial artist, dancer, actor/actress or
musician. Takuan's reflection on this point is illuminating. He
speaks of a "nondiscriminatory knowledge" realized in
action as "immovable wisdom": "It [immovable wisdom]
moves as the mind is wont to move: forward or back, to the left, to
the right, in the ten directions and to the eight points; and the mind
that does not stop at all is called immovable wisdom." (Takuan,
1986.) Zen's free action is predicated on the fact that the mind
"does not stop at all," what Takuan paradoxically calls
"immovable wisdom." Here one can discern an echo of
Jinne's mirror analogy. Takuan calls it "immovable"
because the mind remains absolutely still (i.e., not two) in the
*midst* of action, like the stationary shaft of a top. Such a
mind does not fluctuate in its center, in the deep region of
*psyche*. In this state, because the mind moves in such a way
that it does not dwell on anything, there is no obstruction for the
mind to move freely. 



Generally Zen describes the freedom of bodily movement as
"stillness in motion" (*dochu* *no
sei*) and is contrasted with "motion in stillness." It
is noteworthy that "stillness in motion" cannot accurately
be analyzed by appealing to the active-passive scheme, which
presupposes a dichotomy as a proper method for understanding. However
contradictory it may seem, this is a description of how Zen
understands its freedom as expressed through an integrated mind and
body. In order for this sense of freedom to be embodied, however, Zen
emphasizes that a performer of any kind repeatedly undergoes mind-body
training. Takuan calls this the "body's
*learning*,"--that is the core meaning of
self-cultivation--because in the "body's
learning," both the mind and the body are brought to action in
one integrated whole. (The "body's learning,"
neurophysiologically speaking, is closely related to an activity of
the cerebellum in conjunction with the hippocampus, although it is not
only that.) When a skill or performing technique is learned through
this method, one's own body moves freely as it is habituated to
move without waiting for a command from the mind. This describes a
freedom of action in a Zen person for whom the mind is completely
assimilated into the object-body, while the body is equally rendered
into the subject-body. They are one. At such a time, Takuan says, a
spiritual life-energy of psychophysiological nature, called
"*ki*," permeates "one's
body"--an energy that cannot be delineated by either the
mind or the body (Yuasa, 1993). In this connection, Zen also speaks of
Zen's free action as a purposeless purpose, as an actionless
action, for neither the purpose nor the action arises from the
everyday consciousness which sets up a purpose or a goal for action.
Zen calls it "*samadhi*-at-play," where there
is no individual *qua* the trans-individual, but what there is
is just "play," for the Zen person is *absorbed* in
the activity when engaging a thing of the everyday
lifeworld. In short, Zen freedom designates a term of
*achievement*. What Zen says about freedom of action has an
implication for every action people perform in daily life, from the
simple act of opening a door to the magnificent play of a great
athlete or performer of any kind. In them, Zen contends however, the
spirituality of a performer must be expressed. Zen extends an
invitation to all of us to act in this way, so that our quality of
life will be enhanced with a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment,
free from stress and anxiety.


## 9. Concluding Remarks



This article has articulated a Zen Philosophy, though as
anti-philosophy, by thematizing such topics as "overcoming
dualism," "Zen-seeing," "Zen's
understanding of time and space," "Zen person," and
"Zen freedom," and in the process has noted a sense of the
movement from "not two" to "not one." This was
to indicate Zen's sense of achieving personhood. Zen's
methods of meditative practice are concrete ways for an individual to
become a Zen person by awakening to the fundamental reality in the
everyday human lifeworld. In so doing, it teaches us to
participate in the whole, and to express freedom in daily action, by
showing one's "original face" right here-now and
right in front of one's eyes. 



In closing this entry, a cautionary remark is in order, however: all
of the preceding accounts are simply a *heuristic* way of
conceptually articulating Zen philosophy. Or to use a Zen phrase, this
conceptual articulation is only "a finger pointing to the
moon," where Zen insists that there should not be a confounding
of the moon with a finger. In Zen language, the moon metaphorically
designates an experience of enlightenment and the finger a linguistic
or reflective endeavor.