“The perennial philosophy” (Publication, 1945)
Year
1945
Text
Huxley, Aldous. The perennial philosophy. (New York, N.Y. ; London : Harper & Brothers, 1945). = (London : Chatto & Windus, 1946). [Enthält viele Eintragungen über Taoismus und Buddhismus].
https://archive.org/details/perennialphilosp035505mbp. (Hux2)
https://archive.org/details/perennialphilosp035505mbp. (Hux2)
Type
Publication
Contributors (1)
Huxley, Aldous
(Godalming, Surrey 1894-1963 Los Angeles) : Schriftsteller, Kulturkritiker
Subjects
Literature : Occident : Great Britain : Prose
/
Philosophy : General
/
References / Sources
Chronology Entries (2)
| # | Year | Text | Linked Data |
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| 1 | 1918-1962 |
Aldous Huxley and China : general. Quellen : Bailey, F[rederick] M[arshman]. China - Tibet - Assam : a journey, 1911 [ID D3517]. The life of Hiuen-tsiang. By Samuel Beal [ID D8377]. Benoit, Hubert. La doctrine suprême; reflections sur le bouddhisme Zen. (Paris : Le cercle du livre, 1951). Binyon, Laurence. The flight of the dragon [ID D28761]. Blyth, Reginald Horace. Zen in English literature and oriental classics. (Tokyo : Hokuseido Press, 1942). Chang, Chen-chi [Zhang, Zhenji]. The practice of Zen. (New York, N.Y. : Harper, 1959). Conze, Edward. Buddhism : its essence and development. (New York, N.Y. : Harper, 1959). Chinese philosophy in classical times. Ed. and transl. by E[rnest] R[ichard] Hughes. [ID D8333]. [Laozi]. Tao te ching. A new translation by Ch'u Ta-kao [Chu Dagao]. [ID D31459]. Evans-Wentz, W.Y. The Tibetan book of the dead [ID D31461]. Evans-Wentz, W.Y. Tibet's great yogi Milarepa [ID D31462]. Evans-Wentz, W.Y. Tibetan yoga and secret doctrines [ID D31463]. Chuang Tzu : mystic, moralist, and social reformer. Translated from the Chinese by Herbert A. Giles. [ID D7731]. Suzuki, Beatrice Lane. Mahayana Buddhism (London : Buddhist Lodge, 1938). Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro. Essays in Zen Buddhism. (London : Rider, 1950). Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro. The essence of Buddhism. (London : Buddhist Society, 1947). Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro. Manual of Zen Buddhism. (Kyoto : Eastern Buddhist Society, 1935). Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro. Mysticism : Christian and Buddhist. (New York, N.Y. : Harper, 1957). Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro. Studies in Zen Buddhism. In : Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro. Essays in Zen Buddhism. Vol. 1. (London : Luzac, 1927). Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro. The Zen doctrine of no-mind : the significance of the sutra of Hui-neng (Wei-lang). (London, Rider, 1969). Waley, Arthur. The way and its power : a study of the Tao te ching and its place in Chinese thought. [ID D8876]. Watts, Alan W. The spirit of Zen. (London : J. Murray, 1936). The secret of the golden flower : a Chinese book of life. Translated and explained by Richard Wilhelm [ID D1597]. Wu, Ch'eng-en. Monkey. Translated from the Chinese by Arthur Waley. [ID D8874]. |
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| 2 | 1945 |
Huxley, Aldous. The perennial philosophy [ID D31464]. Chap. 1 : The art thou. In the Taoist formulations of the Perennial Philosophy there is an insistence, no less forcible than in the Upanishads, the Gita and the writings of Shankara, upon the universal immanence of the transcendent spiritual Ground of all existence. What follows is an extract from one of the great classics of Taoist literature, the Book of Chuang Tzu, most of which seems to have been written around the turn of the fourth and third centuries B.C. Chuang Tzu [Zhuangzi] : "Do not ask whether the Principle is in this or in that; it is in all beings. It is on this account that we apply to it the epithets of supreme, universal, total. ... It has ordained that all things should be limited, but is Itself unlimited, infinite. As to what pertains to manifestation, the Principle causes the succession of its phases, but is not this succession. It is the author of causes and effects, but is not the causes and effects. It is the author of condensations and dissipations (birth and death, changes of state), but is not itself condensations and dissipations. All proceeds from It and is under its influence. It is in all things, but is not identical with beings, for it is neither differentiated nor limited." From Taoism we pass to that Mahayana Buddhism which, in the Far East, came to be so closely associated with Taoism, borrowing and bestowing until the two came at last to be fused in what is known as Zen… Yung-chia Ta-shi [Yongjia, Xuanjue. Yongjia da shi zheng dao ge lue jie] : "One Nature, perfect and pervading, circulates in all natures, One Reality, all-comprehensive, contains within itself all realities. The one Moon reflects itself wherever there is a sheet of water, And all the moons in the waters are embraced within the one Moon. The Dharma-body(the Absolute) of all the Buddhas enters into my own being. And my own being is found in union with theirs… The Inner Light is beyond praise and blame; Like space it knows no boundaries, Yet it is even here, within us, ever retaining its serenity and fullness. It is only when you hunt for it that you lose it; You cannot take hold of it, but equally you cannot get rid of it, And while you can do neither, it goes on its own way. You remain silent and it speaks; you speak, and it is dumb; The great gate of charity is wide open, with no obstacles before it." Chap. 2 : The nature of the ground. Lao Tzu [Laozi] : "It was from the Nameless that Heaven and Earth sprang; The named is but the mother that rears the ten thousand creatures, each after its kind. Truly, 'Only he that rids himself forever of desire can see the Secret Essences.' He that has never rid himself of desire can see only the Outcomes." In Chinese phraseology it is the Tao as it manifests itself on the level of living bodies. The bodies of human beings are affected by the good or bad states of their minds. What Eckhart describes as the pure One, the absolute not-God in whom we must sink from nothingness to nothingness is called in Mahayana Buddhism the Clear Light of the Void. What follows is part of a formula addressed by the Tibetan priest to a person in the act of death. The Tibetan Book of the Dead : "O nobly born, the time has now come for thee to seek the Path. Thy breathing is about to cease. In the past thy teacher hath set thee face to face with the Clear Light; and now thou art about to experience it in its Reality in the Bar do state (the 'intermediate state' immediately following death, in which the soul is judged or rather judges itself by choosing, in accord with the character formed during its life on earth, what sort of an after-life it shall have). In this Bardo state all things are like the cloudless sky, and the naked, immaculate Intellect is like unto a translucent void without circumference or centre. At this moment know thou thyself and abide in that state. I, too, at this time, am setting thee face to face." Chap. 3 : Personality, sanctity, divine incarnation. Hui Neng [Huineng] : "When not enlightened, Buddhas are no other than ordinary beings; when there is enlightenment, ordinary beings at once turn into Buddhas." Chap. 4 : God in the world. Huang-Po [Huangbo] : "The Mind is no other than the Buddha, and Buddha is no other than sentient being. When Mind assumes the form of a sentient being, it has suffered no decrease ; when it has become a Buddha, it has added nothing to itself." Huang-Po [Huangbo] : "When followers of Zen fail to go beyond the world of their senses and thoughts, all their doings and movements are of no significance. But when the senses and thoughts are annihilated, all the passages to Universal Mind are blocked, and no entrance then becomes possible. The original Mind is to be recognized along with the working of the senses and thoughts only it does not belong to them, nor yet is it independent of them. Do not build up your views upon your senses and thoughts, do not base your understanding upon your senses and thoughts ; but at the same time do not seek the Mind away from your senses and thoughts, do not try to grasp Reality by rejecting your senses and thoughts. When you are neither attached to, nor detached from, them, then you enjoy your perfect unobstructed freedom, then you have your seat of enlightenment." Mo Tsu [Mozi] : "The Sravaka (literally 'hearer,' the name given by Mahayana Buddhists to contemplatives of the Hinayana school) fails to perceive that Mind, as it is in itself, has no stages, no causation. Disciplining himself in the cause, he has attained the result and abides in the samadhi (contemplation) of Emptiness for ever so many aeons. However enlightened in this way, the Sravaka is not at all on the right track. From the point of view of the Bodhisattva, this is like suffering the torture of hell. The Sravaka has buried himself in Emptiness and does not know how to get out of his quiet contemplation, for he has no insight into the Buddha-nature itself." It is in the literature of Mahayana and especially of Zen Buddhism that we find the best account of the psychology of the man for whom samsara and nirvana, time and eternity, are one and the same. More systematically perhaps than any other religion, the Buddhism of the Far East teaches the way to spiritual Knowledge in its fullness as well as in its heights, in and through the world as well as in and through the soul. In this context we may point to a highly significant fact, which is that the incomparable landscape painting of China and Japan was essentially a religious art, inspired by Taoism and Zen Buddhism ; in Europe, on the contrary, landscape painting and the poetry of 'nature worship' were secular arts which arose when Christianity was in decline, and derived little or no inspiration from Christian ideals. [Yengo's Comment on Seccho]. [Yuanwu Keqin's comments on Xuedou Zhongxian ; Bi yan lu]. "Blind, deaf, dumb! Infinitely beyond the reach of imaginative contrivances!" In this, Seccho has swept everything away for you what you see together with what you do not see, what you hear together with what you do not hear, and what you talk about together with what you cannot talk about. All these are completely brushed off, and you attain the life of the blind, deaf, and dumb. Here all your imaginations, contrivances' and calculations are once for all put an end to, they are no more made use of this is where lies the highest point of Zen, this is where we have true blindness, true deafness, and true dumbness, each in its artless and effectless aspect. "Above the heavens and below the heavens! How ludicrous! how disheartening!" Here Seccho lifts up with one hand and with the other puts down. Tell me what he finds to be ludicrous, what he finds to be disheartening. It is ludicrous that this dumb person is not after all dumb, that this deaf one is not after all deaf; it is disheartening that the one who is not at all blind is blind for all that, and that the one who is not at all deaf is deaf for all that. 'Li-lou does not know how to discriminate the right colour." When he is unable to discriminate between blue and yellow, red and white, he is certainly a blind man. He lived in the reign of the Emperor Huang. He is said to have been able to discern the point of a soft hair at a distance of one hundred steps. His eye-sight was extraordinary. When the Emperor Huang had a pleasure-trip to the River Chih, he dropped his precious jewel in the water and made Li fetch it up. But he failed. The Emperor made Ch'ih-kou search for it, but he also failed to locate it. Later Hsiang-wang was ordered to get it, and he got it. Hence: "When Hsiang-wang goes down, the precious gem shines most brilliantly; But where Li-lou walks about, the waves rise even to the sky." When we come up to these higher spheres, even the eyes of Li-lou are incapacitated to distinguish which is the right colour. "How can Shih-kuang recognize the mysterious tune?" Shih-kuang was son of Ching-kuang of Chin in the province of Chiang in the Chou dynasty. His other name was Tzu-yeh. He could thoroughly distinguish the five sounds and the six notes, he could even hear the ants fight on the other side of a hill. When Chin and Ch'u were at war, Shih-kuang could tell, by merely quietly playing on the strings of his lute, that the engagement would surely be unfavourable for Chu. In spite of his extraordinary sensitiveness, Seccho (Hsueh-t'ou) declares that he is unable to recognize the mysterious tune. After all, one who is not at all deaf is really deaf in his ears. The most exquisite note in the higher spheres is indeed beyond the ear of Shih-kuang. Says Seccho: "I am not going to be a Li-lou, nor to be a Shih-kuang, but "What life can compare with this?--Sitting alone quietly by the window, I observe the leaves fall, the flowers bloom as the seasons come and go." When one attains this stage of realization, seeing is no-seeing, hearing is no-hearing, preaching is no-preaching. When hungry one eats, when tired one sleeps. Let the leaves fall, let the flowers bloom as they like. When the leaves fall, I know it is the autumn; when the flowers bloom, I know it is the spring. Each season has its own features. Having swept everything clean before you, Seccho now opens a passageway, saying: "Do you understand, or not?" He has done all he could for you, he is exhausted, only able to turn about and present to you this iron-bar without a hole. It is a most significant expression. Look and see with your own eyes! If you hesitate, you miss the mark for ever. Yengo (Yuan-wu, the author of this commentary note) now raised his hossu and said, "Do you see?" He then struck his chair and said, "Do you hear?" Coming down from the chair, he said, "Was anything talked about?" Hui Neng [Huineng] : "A conscious being alone understands what is meant by moving; To those not endowed with consciousness the moving is unintelligible. If you exercise yourself in the practice of keeping vonr mind unmoved, The immovable you gain is that of one who has no consciousness. If you are desirous for the truly immovable, The immovable is in the moving itself, And this immovable is the truly immovable one. There is no seed of Buddhahood where there is no consciousness. Mark well how varied are the aspects of the immovable one, And know that the first reality is immovable. Only when this reality is attained Is the true working of Suchness understood." "When no-ming is sought after by a mind", says Huang-Po [Huangbo],"that is making it a particular object of thought. There is only testimony of silence ; it goes beyond thinking". In other words, we, as separate individuals, must not try to think it, but rather permit ourselves to be thought by it. The seventeenth-century Frenchman's vocabulary is very different from that of the seventh-century Chinaman's. But the advice they give is fundamentally similar. Conformity to the will of God, submission, docility to the leadings of the Holy Ghost in practice, if not verbally, these are the same as conformity to the Perfect Way, refusing to have preferences and cherish opinions, keeping the eyes open so that dreams may cease and Truth reveal itself. Chuang Tzu [Zhuangzi] : "The ruler of the Southern Ocean was Shu, the ruler of the Northern Ocean was Hu, and the ruler of the Centre was Chaos. Shu and Hu were continually meeting in the land of Chaos, who treated them very well. They consulted together how they might repay his kindness, and said : 'Men all have seven orifices for the purpose of seeing, hearing, eating and breathing, while this ruler alone has not a single one. Let us try to make them for him'. Accordingly they dug one orifice in him every day. At the end of seven days Chaos died." In this delicately comic parable Chaos is Nature in the state of wu-wei non-assertion or equilibrium. Shu and Hu are the living images of those busy persons who thought they would improve on Nature by turning dry prairies into wheat fields, and produced deserts ; who proudly proclaimed the Conquest of the Air, and then discovered that they had defeated civilization ; who chopped down vast forests to provide the newsprint demanded by that universal literacy which was to make the world safe for intelligence and democracy, and got wholesale erosion, pulp magazines and the organs of Fascist, Communist, capitalist and nationalist propaganda. In brief, Shu and Hu are devotees of the apocalyptic religion of Inevitable Progress, and their creed is that the Kingdom of Heaven is outside you, and in the future. Chuang Tzu, on the other hand, like all good Taoists, has no desire to bully Nature into subserving ill-considered temporal ends, at variance with the final end of men as formulated in the Perennial Philosophy. His wish is to work with Nature, so as to produce material and social conditions in which individuals may realize Tao on every level from the physiological up to the spiritual. Compared with that of the Taoists and Far Eastern Buddhists, the Christian attitude towards Nature has been curiously insensitive and often downright domineering and violent. Taking their cue from an unfortunate remark in Genesis, Catholic moralists have regarded animals as mere things which men do right to exploit for their own ends. Like landscape painting, the humanitarian movement in Europe was an almost completely secular affair. In the Far East both were essentially religious. Chap. 5 : Charity. Yung-chia Ta-shi [Yongjia, Xuanjue. Yongjia da shi zheng dao ge lue jie] : "Those who speak ill of me are really my good friends. When, being slandered, I cherish neither enmity nor preference, There grows within me the power of love and humility, which is born of the Unborn." Oriental writers would agree that this is true for many persons, but not for all, since there are some born contemplatives who are able to 'harmonize their starting point with their goal' and to embark directly upon the Yoga of Knowledge. It is from the point of view of the born contemplative that the greatest of Taoist philosophers writes in the following passage : Chuang Tzu [Zhuangzi] : Those men who in a special way regard Heaven as Father and have, as it were, a personal love for it, how much more should they love what is above Heaven as Father! Other men in a special way regard their rulers as better than themselves and they, as it were, personally die for them. How much more should they die for what is truer than a ruler ! When the springs dry up, the fish are all together on dry land. They then moisten each other with their dampness and keep each other wet with their slime. But this is not to be compared with forgetting each other in a river or lake. Lao Tzu [Laozi] : "Heaven arms with pity those whom it would not see destroyed." Our present economic, social and international arrangements are based, in large measure, upon organized lovelessness. We begin by lacking charity towards Nature, so that instead of trying to co-operate with Tao or the Logos on the inanimate and sub-human levels, we try to dominate and exploit, we waste the earth's mineral resources, ruin its soil, ravage its forests, pour filth into its rivers and poisonous fumes into its air. Chap. 6 : Mortification, non-attachment, right livelihood. Chuang Tzu [Zhuangzi] : "When Prince Wen Wang was on a tour of inspection in Tsang, he saw an old man fishing. But his fishing was not real fishing, for he did not fish in order to catch fish, but to amuse himself. So Wen Wang wished to employ him in the administration of government, but feared lest his own ministers, uncles and brothers might object. On the other hand, if he let the old man go, he could not bear to think of the people being deprived of such an influence." Rabi'a, the Sufi woman-saint, speaks, thinks and feels in terms of devotional theism ; the Buddhist theologian, in terms of impersonal moral Law; the Chinese philosopher, with characteristic humour, in terms of politics ; but all three insist on the need for non-attachment to self-interest insist on it as strongly as does Christ when he reproaches the Pharisees for their egocentric piety, as does the Krishna of the Bhagavad-Gita when he tells Arjuna to do his divinely ordained duty without personal craving for, or fear of, the fruits of his actions. Chuang Tzu [Zhuangzi] : "By a man without passions I mean one who does not permit good or evil to disturb his inward economy, but rather falls in with what happens and does not add to the sum of his mortality." Lao Tzu [Laozi] : "Push far enough towards the Void, Hold fast enough to Quietness, And of the ten thousand things none but can be worked on by you. I have beheld them, whither they go back. See, all things howsoever they flourish Return to the root from which they grew. This return to the Root is called Quietness ; Quietness is called submission to Fate ; What has submitted to Fate becomes part of the always-so ; To know the always-so is to be illumined ; Not to know it means to go blindly to disaster." Chuang Tzu [Zhuangzi]. "Suppose a boat is crossing a river and another boat, an empty one, is about to collide with it. Even an irritable man would not lose his temper. But suppose there was someone in the second boat. Then the occupant of the first would shout to him to keep clear. And if he did not hear the first time, nor even when called to three times, bad language would inevitably follow. In the first case there was no anger, in the second there was because in the first case the boat was empty, in the second it was occupied. And so it is with man. If he could only pass empty through life, who would be able to injure him ?" Chuang Tzu [Zhuangzi] : "'May I ask/ said Yen Hui, 'in what consists the fasting of the heart?' 'Cultivate unity,' replied Confucius. 'You do your hearing, not with your ears, but with your mind ; not with your mind, but with your very soul. But let the hearing stop with the ears. Let the working of the mind stop with itself. Then the soul will be a negative existence, passively responsive to externals. In such a negative existence, only Tao can abide. And that negative state is the fasting of the heart.' 'Then,' said Yen Hui, 'the reason I could not get the use of this method is my own individuality. If I could get the use of it, my individuality would have gone. Is this what you mean by the negative state?''Exactly so,' replied the Master. 'Let me tell you. If you can enter the domain of this prince (a bad ruler whom Yen Hui was ambitious to reform) without offending his amour propre, cheerful if he hears you, passive if he does not; without science, without drugs, simply living there in a state of complete indifference you will be near success… Look at that window. Through it an empty room becomes bright with scenery; but the landscape stops outside. In this sense you may use your ears and eyes to communicate within, but shut out all wisdom (in the sense of conventional, copybook maxims) from your mind. This is the method for regenerating all creation.'" Mortification may be regarded, in this context, as the process of study, by which we learn at last to have unstudied reactions to events reactions in harmony with Tao, Suchness, the Will of God. Those who have made themselves docile to the divine Nature of Things, those who respond to circumstances, not with craving and aversion, but with the love that permits them to do spontaneously what they like ; those who can truthfully say, Not I, but God in me such men and women are compared by the exponents of the Perennial Philosophy to children, to fools and simpletons, even sometimes, as in the following passage, to drunkards. Chuang Tzu [Zhuangzi] : "A drunken man who falls out of a cart, though he may suffer, does not die. His bones are the same as other people's ; but he meets his accident in a different way. His spirit is in a condition of security. He is not conscious of riding in the cart; neither is he conscious of falling out of it. Ideas of life, death, fear and the like cannot penetrate his breast; and so he does not suffer from contact with objective existence. If such security is to be got from wine, how much more is it to be got from God ?" It is by long obedience and hard work that the artist comes to unforced spontaneity and consummate mastery. Knowing that he can never create anything on his own account, out of the top layers, so to speak, of his personal consciousness, he submits obediently to the workings of 'inspiration* ; and knowing that the medium in which he works has its own self-nature, which must not be ignored or violently overriden, he makes himself its patient servant and, in this way, achieves perfect freedom of expression. But life is also an art, and the man who would become a consummate artist in living must follow, on all the levels of his being, the same procedure as that by which the painter or the sculptor or any other craftsman comes to his own more limited perfection. Chuang Tze [Zhuangzi]. "Prince Hui's cook was cutting up a bullock. Every blow of his knife, every heave of his shoulders, every tread of his foot, every whshh of rent flesh, every chhk of the chopper, was in perfect harmony rhythmical like the Dance of the Mulberry Grove, simultaneous like the chords of the Ching Shou. 'Well done !' cried the Prince. 'Yours is skill indeed.' 'Sire,' replied the cook, 'I have always devoted myself to Tao. It is better than skill. When I first began to cut up bullocks, I saw before me simply whole bullocks. After three years' practice I saw no more whole animals. And now I work with my mind and not with my eye. When my senses bid me stop, but my mind urges me on, I fall back upon eternal principles. I follow such openings or cavities as there may be, according to the natural constitution of the animal. I do not attempt to cut through joints, still less through large bones. 'A good cook changes his chopper once a year because he cuts. An ordinary cook, once a month because he hacks. But I have had this chopper nineteen years, and though I have cut up many thousands of bullocks, its edge is as if fresh from the whetstone. For at the joints there are always interstices, and the edge of a chopper being without thickness, it remains only to insert that which is without thickness into such an interstice. By these means the interstice will be enlarged, and the blade will find plenty of room. It is thus that I have kept my chopper for nineteen years, as though fresh from the whetstone. 'Nevertheless, when I come upon a hard part, where the blade meets with a difficulty, I am all caution. I fix my eyes on it. I stay my hand, and gently apply the blade, until with a hwah the part yields like earth crumbling to the ground. Then I withdraw the blade and stand up and look around ; and at last I wipe my chopper and put it carefully away.' 'Bravo!' cried the Prince. 'From the words of this cook I have learnt how to take care of my life.'" The way in which any individual problem presents itself and the nature of the appropriate solution depend upon the degree of knowledge, moral sensibility and spiritual insight achieved by the individual concerned. For this reason no universally applicable rules can be formulated except in the most general terms. 'Here are my three treasures,' says Lao Tzu. ' Guard and keep them ! The first is pity, the second frugality, the third refusal to be foremost of all things under heaven.' Chap. 7 : Truth. Hui Neng [Huineng] : "There is nothing true anywhere, The True is nowhere to be found. If you say you see the True, This seeing is not the true one. When the True is left to itself, There is nothing false in it, for it is Mind itself. When Mind in itself is not liberated from the false, There is nothing true ; nowhere is the True to be found." Lao Tzu [Laozi] : "The further one travels, the less one knows." Wu Ch'êng-ên [Wu Cheng'en. Monkey.] : "'Listen to this !' shouted Monkey. 'After all the trouble we had getting here from China, and after you specially ordered that we were to be given the scriptures, Ananda and Kasyapa made a fraudulent delivery of goods. They gave us blank copies to take away; I ask you, what is the good of that to us?''You needn't shout,' said the Buddha, smiling.'… As a matter of fact, it is such blank scrolls as these that are the true scriptures. But I quite see that the people of China are too foolish and ignorant to believe this, so there is nothing for it but to give them copies with some writing on.'" Shih-t'ou [Shitou Xiqian] : "'What is the ultimate teaching of Buddhism?' 'You won't understand it until you have it.'" Hui Neng [Huineng]: "This truth is to be lived, it is not to be merely pronounced with the mouth. … There is really nothing to argue about in this teaching ; Any arguing is sure to go against the intent of it. Doctrines given up to controversy and argumentation lead of themselves to birth and death." Chuang Tzu [Zhuangzi] : "Great truths do not take hold of the hearts of the masses. And now, as all the world is in error, how shall I, though I know the true path, how shall I guide ? If I know that I cannot succeed and yet try to force success, this would be but another source of error. Better then to desist and strive no more. But if I do not strive, who will ?" Between the horns of Chuang Tzu's dilemma there is no way but that of love, peace and joy. Only those who manifest their possession, in however small a measure, of the fruits of the Spirit can persuade others that the life of the spirit is worth living. Argument and controversy are almost useless; in many cases, indeed, they are positively harmful. But this, of course, is a thing that clever men with a gift for syllogisms and sarcasm find it peculiarly hard to admit. In Wu Ch'eng-en's extraordinary masterpiece (so admirably translated by Mr. Arthur Waley) there is an episode, at once comical and profound, in which Monkey (who, in the allegory, is the incarnation of human cleverness) gets to heaven and there causes so much trouble that at last Buddha has to be called in to deal with him. It ends in the following passage : [Wu Cheng'en. Monkey]. "Til have a wager with you,' said Buddha. 'If you are really so clever, jump off the palm of my right hand. If you succeed, I'll tell the Jade Emperor to come and live with me in the Western Paradise, and you shall have his throne without more ado. But if you fail, you shall go back to earth and do penance there for many a kalpa before you come back to me with your talk.' 'This Buddha,' Monkey thought to himself, 'is a perfect fool. I can jump a hundred and eight thousand leagues, while his palm cannot be as much as eight inches across. How could I fail to jump clear of it?' 'You're sure you're in a position to do this for me?' he asked. 'Of course I am,' said Buddha. He stretched out his right hand, which looked about the size of a lotus leaf. Monkey put his cudgel behind his ear, and leapt with all his might. ' That's all right,' he said to himself. ' I'm right off it now.' He was whizzing so fast that he was almost invisible, and Buddha, watching him with the eye of wisdom, saw a mere whirligig shoot along. Monkey came at last to five pink pillars, sticking up into the air. 'This is the end of the World,' said Monkey to himself. 'All I have got to do is to go back to Buddha and claim my forfeit. The Throne is mine.' 'Wait a minute,' ne said presently, 'I'd better just leave a record of some kind, in case I have trouble with Buddha.' He plucked a hair and blew on it with magic breath, crying 'Change!' It changed at once into a writing brush charged with heavy ink, and at the base of the central pillar he wrote, ' The Great Sage Equal to Heaven reached this place.' Then, to mark his disrespect, he relieved nature at the bottom of the first pillar, and somersaulted back to where he had come from. Standing on Buddha's palm, he said, 'Well, I've gone and come back. You can go and tell the Jade Emperor to hand over the palaces of Heaven.' 'You stinking ape/ said Buddha, 'you've been on the palm of my hand all the time.' 'You're quite mistaken,' said Monkey. 'I got to the end of the World, where I saw five flesh-coloured pillars sticking up into the sky. I wrote something on one of them. I'll take you there and show you, if you like.' 'No need for that,' said Buddha. 'Just look down.' Monkey peered down with his fiery, steely eyes, and there at the base of the middle finger of Buddha's hand he saw written the words, 'The Great Sage Equal to Heaven reached this place,' and from the fork between the thumb and first finger came a smell of monkey's urine." And so, having triumphantly urinated on the proffered hand of Wisdom, the Monkey within us turns back and, full of a bumptious confidence in his own omnipotence, sets out to refashion the world of men and things into something nearer to his heart's desire. Sometimes his intentions are good, sometimes consciously bad. But, whatever the intentions may be, the results of action undertaken by even the most brilliant cleverness, when it is unenlightened by the divine Nature of Things, unsubordinated to the Spirit, are generally evil. Lao Tzu [Laozi] : "Learning consists in adding to one's stock day by day. The practice of Tao consists in subtracting day by day : subtracting and yet again subtracting until one has reached inactivity." Chuang Tzu [Zhuangzi] : "Fools regard themselves as awake now so personal is their knowledge. It may be as a prince or it may be as a herdsman, but so cocksure of themselves !" Chap. 10 : Grace and free will. Lao Tzu [Laozi] : "The Valley Spirit never dies. It is called the Mysterious Female. And the doorway of the Mysterious Female Is the base from which Heaven and Earth spring. It is there within us all the time. Draw upon it as you will, it never runs dry." Lao Tzu [Laozi] : "It was when the Great Way declined that human kindness and morality arose." Chinese verbs are tenseless. This statement as to a hypothetical event in history refers at the same time to the present and the future. It means simply this: that with the rise of self-consciousness, animal grace is no longer sufficient for the conduct of life, and must be supplemented by conscious and deliberate choices between right and wrong choices which have to be made in the light of a clearly formulated ethical code. But, as the Taoist sages are never tired of repeating, codes of ethics and deliberate choices made by the surface will are only a second best. The individualized will and the superficial intelligence are to be used for the purpose of recapturing the old animal relation to Tao, but on a higher, spiritual level. The goal is perpetual inspiration from sources beyond the personal self; and the means are * human kindness and morality,' leading to the charity, which is unitive knowledge of Tao, as at once the Ground and Logos. Chuang Tzu [Zhuangzi] : "Shun asked Ch'eng, saying, ' Can one get Tao so as to have it for oneself?' 'Your very body,' replied Ch'eng, 'is not your own. How should Tao be?' 'If my body,' said Shun, 'is not my own, pray whose is it?' 'It is the delegated image of God,' replied Ch'eng. 'Your life is not your own. It is the delegated harmony of God. Your individuality is not your own. It is the delegated adaptability of God. Your posterity is not your own. It is the delegated exuviae of God. You move, but know not how. You are at rest, but know not why. You taste, but know not the cause. These are the operations of God's laws. How then should you get Tao so as to have it for your own ?'" Chuang Tzu [Zhuangzi] : "Ch'ing, the chief carpenter, was carving wood into a stand for musical instruments. When finished, the work appeared to those who saw it as though of supernatural execution ; and the Prince of Lu asked him, saying, 'What mystery is there in your art?' 'No mystery, Your Highness,' replied Ch'ing. 'And yet there is something. When I am about to make such a stand, I guard against any diminution of my vital power. I first reduce my mind to absolute quiescence. Three days in this condition, and I become oblivious of any reward to be gained. Five days, and I become oblivious of any fame to be acquired. Seven days, and I become unconscious of my four limbs and my physical frame. Then, with no thought of the Court present in my mind, my skill becomes concentrated, and all disturbing elements from without are gone. I enter some mountain forest, I search for a suitable tree. It contains the form required, wliich is afterwards elaborated. I see the stand in my mind's eye, and then set to work. Beyond that there is nothing. I bring my own native capacity into relation with that of the wood. What was suspected to be of supernatural execution in my work was due solely to this." Fra Angelico, for example, prepared himself for his work by means of prayer and meditation; and from the foregoing extract from Chuang Tzu we see how essentially religious (and not merely professional) was the Taoist craftsman's approach to his art… The industrious bird or insect is inspired, when it works, by the infallible animal grace of instinctby Tao as it manifests itself on the level immediately above the physiological. The industrial worker at his fool-proof and grace-proof machine does his job in a man-made universe of punctual automata a universe that lies entirely beyond the pale of Tao on any level, brutal, human or spiritual. Chap. 12 : Time and eternity. In the idealistic cosmology of Mahayana Buddhism memory plays the part of a rather maleficent demiurge. 'When the triple world is surveyed by the Bodhisattva, he perceives that its existence is due to memory that has been accumulated since the beginningless past, but wrongly interpreted ' (Lankavatara Sutra). The word here translated as 'memory' means literally 'perfuming'. The mind-body carries with it the ineradicable smell of all that has been thought and done, desired and felt, throughout its racial and personal past. The Chinese translate the Sanskrit term by two symbols, signifying 'habit-energy'. A hundred years ago, hardly anything was known of Sanskrit, Pali or Chinese. The ignorance of European scholars was sufficient reason for their provincialism. Chap. 15 : Silence. Lao Tzu [Laozi] : "He who knows does not speak ; He who speaks does not know." Chuang Tzu [Zhuangzi] : "A dog is not considered a good dog because he is a good barker. A man is not considered a good man because he is a good talker." Chap. 16 : Prayer. Yung-chia Ta-shih [Yong jia da shi] : "So long as you seek Buddhahood, specifically exercising yourself for it, there is no attainment for you." Chap. 20 : Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum. Chuang Tzu [Zhuangzi] : "The Grand Augur, in his ceremonial robes, approached the shambles and thus addressed the pigs. 'How can you object to die? I shall fatten you for three months. I shall discipline myself for ten days and fast for three. I shall strew fine grass and place you bodily upon a carved sacrificial dish. Does not this satisfy you?' Then, speaking from the pigs' point of view, he continued : 'It is better perhaps, after all, to live on bran and escape from the shambles.' 'But then,' he added, speaking from his own point of view, 'to enjoy honour when alive, one would readily die on a warshield or in the headsman's basket.' So he rejected the pigs' point of view and adopted his own point of view. In what sense, then, was he different from the pigs?" Chiang Chih-chi [Jiangh Zhiji (1776-ca. 1833)] : "While the Right Law still prevailed, innumerable were the converts who fathomed the depths of the Dharma by merely listening to half a stanza or even to a single phrase of the Buddha's teaching. But as we come to the age of similitude and to these latter days of Buddhism, we are indeed far away from the Sage. People find themselves drowning in a sea of letters; they do not know how to get at the one substance which alone is truth. This was what caused the appearance of the Fathers (of Zen Buddhism) who, pointing directly at the human mind, told us to see here the ultimate ground of all things and thereby to attain Buddhahood. This is known as a special transmission outside the scriptural teaching. If one is endowed with superior talents or a special sharpness of mind, a gesture or a word will suffice to give one an immediate knowledge of the truth. Hence, since they were advocates of 'special transmission', Ummon treated the (historical) Buddha with the utmost irreverence and Yakusan forbade his followers even to read the sutras. Zen is the name given to this branch of Buddhism, which keeps itself away from the Buddha. It is also called the mystical branch, because it does not adhere to the literal meaning of the sutras. It is for this reason that those who blindly follow the steps of Buddha are sure to deride Zen, while those who have no liking for the letter are naturally inclined towards the mystical approach. The followers of the two schools know how to shake the head at each other, but fail to realize that they are after all complementary. Is not Zen one of the six virtues of perfection ? If so, how can it conflict with the teachings of the Buddha? In my view, Zen is the outcome of the Buddha's teaching, and the mystical issues from the letters. There is no reason why a man should shun Zen because of the Buddha's teaching ; nor need we disregard the letters on account of the mystical teachings of Zen… Students of scriptural Buddhism run the risk of becoming sticklers for the scriptures, the real meaning of which they fail to understand. By such men ultimate reality is never grasped, and for them Zen would mean salvation. Whereas those who study Zen are too apt to run into the habit of making empty talks and practising sophistry. They fail to understand the significance of letters. To save them, the study of Buddhist scriptures is recommended. It is only when these one-sided views are mutually corrected that there is a perfect appreciation of the Buddha's teaching." Chap. 24 : Ritual, symbol, sacrament. The Buddha of the Pali scriptures would certainly have answered this question in the negative. So would the Lao Tzu of the Tao Teh King. In the Orient the systematization of mental prayer was carried out at some unknown but certainly very early date. Both in India and China spiritual exercises (accompanied or preceded by more or less elaborate physical exercises, especially breathing exercises) are known to have been used several centuries before the birth of Christ. Chap. 25 : Spiritual exercises. The period of mental prayer is to begin with intense concentration on a scene of Christ's passion; then the mind is, as it were, to abolish this imagination of the sacred humanity and to pass from it to the formless and attributeless Godhead which that humanity incarnates. A strikingly similar exercise is described in the Bar Jo Thodol or Tibetan Book of the Dead (a work of quite extraordinary profundity and beauty, now fortunately available in translation with a valuable introduction and notes by Dr. Evans-Wentz). The Tibetan book of the dead : "Whosoever thy tutelary deity may be, meditate upon the form for much time as being apparent, yet non-existent in reality, like a form produced by a magician Then let the visualization of the tutelary deity melt away from the extremities, till nothing at all remaineth visible of it; and put thyself in the state of the Clearness and the Voidness which thou canst not conceive as something and abide in that state for a little while. Again meditate upon the tutelary deity ; again meditate upon the Clear Light ; do this alternately. Afterwards allow thine own intellect to melt away gradually, beginning from the extremities." Chap. 27 : Contemplation, action, social utility. In cases where the one-pointed contemplation is of God there is also a risk that the mind's unemployed capacities may atrophy. The hermits of Tibet and the Thebaid were certainly one-pointed, but with a one-pointedness of exclusion and mutilation. It may be, however, that if they had been more truly 'docile to the Holy Ghost,' they would have come to understand that the one-pointedness of exclusion is at best a preparation for the one-pointedness of inclusion the realization of God in the fullness of cosmic being as well as in the interior height of the individual soul. Like the Taoist sage, they would at last have turned back into the world riding on their tamed and regenerate individuality; they would have 'come eating and drinking,' would have associated with 'publicans and sinners' or their Buddhist equivalents, 'wine-bibbers and butchers.' For the fully enlightened, totally liberated person, samsara and nirvana, time and eternity, the phenomenal and the Real, are essentially one. His whole life is an unsleeping and one-pointed contemplation of the Godhead in and through the things, lives, minds and events of the world of becoming. There is here no mutilation of the soul, no atrophy of any of its powers and capacities. Rather, there is a general enhancement and intensification of consciousness, and at the same time an extension and transfiguration. No saint has ever complained that absorption in God was a 'cursed evil'. 'The sages of old,' says Chuang Tzu, 'first got Tao for themselves, then got it for others/ There can be no taking of motes out of other people's eyes so long as the beam in our own eye prevents us from seeing the divine Sun and working by its light. |
Cited by (1)
| # | Year | Bibliographical Data | Type / Abbreviation | Linked Data |
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| 1 | 2007- | Worldcat/OCLC | Web / WC |
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