By Eugen Herrigel
Note: This is an excerpt taken from the book, The Method of Zen, by Eugen Herrigel (Vintage Books, p. 101-116) To describe the “inner” experience with words and communicate with others is never easy if not impossible. This is often because experience and its expression does not match between people, especially in the case of Zen experience. So, we many give up to talk about it: Furyumonji- not using words. In my journey, I recently stumbled into these pages again - after having gone through fairly intensive meditative practices. Something resonates in me. I do not know what it is, perhaps words and experiences have not found a good match yet in me. Nevertheless, I thought this piece a good case of one individual’s expression of his earnest effort – that we may benefit from. - Kio Suzaki (5/7/03)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By remaining “steadfast in mind” the Zen adept has won a new basis for his life. His earlier gains have been considered and as inner change has taken place in him. From this vantage point new exercises in meditation may be attempted: with no definite theme, without a koan. He has got to the point where, even with no theme, his mind remains wide-awake. It is no longer directed to a set question but to something asked unspoken, to some ultimate question that cannot be put into words. It is a question, now, not of illumination through vision, but of illumination through at-one-ment.
The mind of the meditant is wide-awake. This means not just his mind but everything in him— body, senses, and mind all acting together in the field of power. He is as wide-awake as one who waits and listens, whose life depends on his listening. But not consciously listening (that would be too definite, too limiting); he listens without knowing that he listens. He is emptied of every thing, yet has no consciousness of emptiness. It is state that only a person with long practice of meditation can get into. Seen from the outside, the meditant is as if dead. Seen from the inside he is in a state of absolute freedom (emptiness), full and commpletely alive, tense, concentrated, yet with no tendency to release the tension in the form of images, but rather to be drawn, imageless, into the image- less field of power.
It may then happen that the meditant, now completely immersed, feels himself as in a dazzling darkness, that he experiences light-phenomena. I do not know what they mean or where they come from. But they are interim phenomena that disappear again and apparently have no significance. For they do not lead to anything. Afterward one feels shattered, exhausted.
But then the following thing happens (how, one does not know—or did one dream it?): you are swallowed as if by a whirlpool, sucked down to endless depths, and suddenly flung out again and brought back to yourself. It is like waking up with a jerk, and it -‘may be accompanied by an out burst of sweat. But this time you do not feel shattered. On the contrary, you feel invigorated, new born.
Thus you are brought back to yourself and to the world. After repeated experiences you realize:
What I sought lies in myself, and in all these things. The truth is this world, this thing here, that thing there—and yet it is not. Or: This thing here is the truth—and not the truth. It is something and yet not Being, it is no-thing and yet not Nothing. It is Being and Nothing, Nothing and Being: each is right, each is wrong, as soon as it is thought and uttered.
Thought bogs down, ties itself in knots. At an earlier stage it seemed as if the opposite and the non-opposite were two different things, regions apart! Now you have found, by experience, that the non-opposite “is” as little as the opposite. Neither exists for itself, each exists through the other. This is neither pantheism nor deism, implying neither a Cod who is immanent in the world nor one who transcends it.
And everything is now as simple and easy to understand as a game, and you are in full possession of sovereign freedom. This freedom does not mean being untouched by joy and suffering, love and hate, but feeling both of them intensely and yet remaining independent, not losing yourself in them, not being consumed by them. That is the difference between Zen and the life-denying attitude of the Stoic: in Zen you are above it all and in it all, and again not. Anyone who has got as far as that will be neither purified by suffering nor destroyed by hate, neither benefited by joy nor rewarded by love. He is rewarded, in that it is not he who is rewarded The tenor of his being is sheer goodness—the only thing that increases the more it is squandered—serenity, confidence, buoyancy. Everything that comes is right. He lives an exactingly unexacting life: like an ordinary person and yet in all things extraordinary, because in all things different. He acts rightly by instinct. He is not vain of his modesty. He has no complexes, can live from day to day and find complete fulfillment in each, quietly leaving the future in the darkness of fate.
Thus he becomes a personality by being impersonal. He has no fear of death, for he has annihilated himself so often. And he knows that in death also he will be sublatus, elevatus, and conservatus—annihilated, exalted, and preserved (as a field of power). Personal immortality has ceased to be a problem for him.
But still the end of the way has not been reached, there are still further exercises to do. The Zen Buddhist is always on the way, and it may be that new experiences will come. Supposing he is one of the exceptions to whom more is granted than to others; supposing he has conscientiously gone on with his exercises and his zeal has not fallen off.
He will then reach a new mode of experience which, indefinable to begin with, proves to be qualitatively different from the preceding ones: a new way of being in nothing and of not-being in being. It is a new kind of happening, underivable from anything else, and it occurs quite spontaneously. His cooperation consists only in his readiness and receptivity.
This mysterious happening can only be hinted at, but the core of it will be missed. All images and comparisons stem from other levels of experience. And yet the mystic would have so much to tell us, just because he has so much to keep silent about.
First of all, the technique of meditation is now so perfect that sometimes only a few minutes are needed for complete immersion and concentration. Observers have established that neither the breathing out nor the breathing in is accentuated; both are balanced and equalized. It is true spiritual breathing.
The vehemence with which you are expelled from the Void (ek-stasis in the true sense) is mitigated; for longer and longer periods it is possible to repose in the depths of nothingness to which you had sunk. The Void no longer appears as dazzling darkness, as palpable silence; there are no words to express it. So ineffable is it that the only appropriate comment is inviolable silence.
You then experience a gradual return to yourself. Not, as in the first stage, with a feeling of elation, so that you have first to accustom yourself to the light of day and the plurality of existence as some thing irksome; not, as at the beginning of the second stage, like one wrenched out of a restless sleep, who struggles to remember something he has “left lying on the way,” as the Masters put it, and now seeks it everywhere in the things of this world. You are like one who, awaking after a deep, refreshing sleep, opens his eyes and takes it for granted that he will find his familiar world there again without a break, as though it could not be otherwise.
This, then, is the decisive thing—with no jerk, with no shock, you come back; you glide into existence as though no jump had to be made from here to there, from there to here.
This unexpected mode of experience is disturbing. You seek the cause in yourself, in insufficient concentration (the immersion comes so quickly). So you go on practicing conscientiously, knowing that racking your brains does not help. You have had to accustom yourself to so much, why not to this too? But even the most carefully prepared concentration—when you guard against distraction hours beforehand—leads to no other result. The inexplicable mode of experience remains.
You cannot question your teacher, for he has dropped the reins. At best he would smilingly remark: “The method of no-method!” So you have to rely entirely on yourself. Any further advance must be made without help or advice. Only a great Master could help, but he would refuse to do so on principle, because he would know that this is the turning point. If the pupil finds the way ahead the pinnacle will be reached. If not, he will remain a mere technician. Over and above all technique, genius must break through.
He would be infinitely alone and solitary were it not for the “ecstatic” experience of the Void, which catches and holds him. He can only continue ahead, undesiring, unpurposing.
However, his mind is taken off this disturbance by a new experience which comes to him in the midst of everyday life, quite apart from the state of concentration, and which is even more disquieting than the previous one. He finds he is becoming increasingly reluctant to intervene in the lives of others. It seems to him not only crude and tactless, but wrong. He develops something like an instinctive repugnance for it. His training has conditioned him to give heed to all such intimations, however faint, and not to counteract them—for instance, by an appeal to duty. He listens to a warning daimon, and senses an inner inhibition.
Why should this be? Has he wearied of his former zeal? Yet the fact remains: the more he progresses the more indifferent he becomes to baseness and meanness, and the less enthusiastic about what is good and exalted in man. He takes it all in his stride, like the weather. But why should that prevent him from helping?
This new attitude cannot be put down to a skepticism born of disillusionment, as if all effort to help had always been of transitory value. A little may rub off here and there, and when times are quiet it looks as though something lasting had been achieved. But in a crisis it is evident that man has remained unchanged—indeed, that unsuspected abysses have opened. All effort, therefore, is futile.
Nevertheless, the uneasy question arises: Why should he concern himself with improvements and changes of heart? Is not this the business of other authorities—parents, teachers? So why set up as a judge over secular institutions?
Hence there can be but one task for the Zen priest: to call forth the radical change, to facilitate it, not to meddle, and to pursue only this one goal. But—and here the inhibition makes itself sharply felt—not in the form of persuasion, insistence, and moral brow beating until the other person is caught. He no longer has the urge to be a fisher of souls, as if merit attached to the act of salvation and to the number of souls saved.
Help—but only by not turning to others, only by waiting until they seek my help of their own accord, until a little spark of longing flares up in them for a life in freedom and in the spirit, outshining their self-will. I do not give them what is mine, but what is theirs. It is as if they were availing themselves of my spiritual forces to become free: it is not I, but they, who intervene in their own existence, cut into their own flesh. Not my words, not my deeds, but my mere existence must convince them. The more un desiring and unpurposing I become, the more irresistibly do I draw those in whom—though they may not know it—the secret longing burns. But once they have made contact, they cannot draw back. It is as if a power, lord of us both, seized the other per son through me, directed him to me, drew him toward me. This alone leads us together and estab lishes a genuine contact, a contact in depth. Then there is no deception and no disappointment. Then a lasting change is called forth, not just a passing mood.
Ever sharper and more compelling grows the realization that being changed does not depend on the will, either of the helper or of the helped, but is destiny, fate. To one it is granted, in spite of him self; another fails, despite heroic efforts.
Thus the disinclination to intervene does not mean callously leaving people to their own devices, but helping by not helping, convincing by not convincing. Only then does help become masterly. This was the kind of help the pupil once received from his teacher.
This new experience would remain incomprehensible and disquieting did it not go hand in hand with another one, somewhat less drastic, which serves to clarify the structure of that experience.
The Zen priest’s attitude to everything has always been characterized by a renunciation of all categories of judgment. This is understood from the start. To be able to accept, with complete equanimity, the pleasant and the unpleasant (though the pleasant remains as pleasurable as ever, but is accepted like the weather), has always been rated a fundamental capacity which cannot be exercised enough. It has laid the foundation of a markedly impersonal and objective type of behavior. The capacity to discover, in purely receptive vision, the essential character of an event or object has been mentioned before, and its significance for the arts has been stressed. But such an attitude has long existed outside Buddhist mysticism and is therefore not exclusive to Zen. The calm rejection of all judgments is but a preliminary stage to a highly characteristic attitude of decisive importance. Negatively one can say that it lies beyond subjective-objective, personal-impersonaL The percipient behaves toward things neither subjectively nor objectively—indeed, he does not “behave” at all. When perceiving, he / feels as though the things were perceiving themselves, as though they were making use of his senses in order to attain the maximum fullness of being.
All this is far from being vague and nebulous. It may be so for the European, who cannot produce this state in himself without the preliminary exercises and thus cannot appreciate the fact that this mode of immediate awareness is absolutely clear and definite. So much so, indeed, that compared with it a perception which divides itself into conscious ness of the percipient and of an object must appear defective, derivative, and distorted.
Anyone who is able to experience, and be experienced, in this way argues more from the standpoint of things than of himself. He allows each thing to attain its full existence, as though it had a right to it. The Zen Buddhist can do this because his experience has given him a respect for everything that is, just as it is, including all living things. He meets it with a non-imposing of his own will, but at the same time he does not let himself be influenced by its will. He respects it as though it were a manifestation of that which underlies it, by which it is sustained. Everything that is, is embraced and sustained by the One—God, Nothing, All. Thus far he could subscribe to the formula of pantheism.
All this seems so clear and simple—and yet how much contradicts it, above all in relation to the human world (indeed, only in relation to this world). If it were not in a bad way, what need would there be of Zen? What need of this rigorous work on oneself to establish contact with the heart of Being?
But it is equally undeniable that, as the mystical experience runs its course, it takes on more and more clearly the following structure: Nothing takes the place of Being, and, just as unexpectedly, Being takes the place of Nothing.
Until one day, as the culmination of this experience, in which you are changed from something into nothing and from nothing into something, illumination comes: The Void is just exactly All. It is the very being of Being—and it is not; it is just simply Nothing—and it is not.
It is this thing here—and it is not; and this thing here is itself, and again it is not. In short, every single thing is the exponent of Nothing—and it is not.
Then that is the truth—so simple? So simple that compared with it the pantheistic interpretation— false though it be—seems complicated.
So it is for this that one has labored a life long— to stumble on something so simple! Yes, but one must add at once: this truth is a real, palpable thing. There is no doubt about its absolute certainty. You see it in a seeing that is not-seeing, a knowing that is not-knowing.
Anyone who has had this experience of illumination (in which Nothing illumines itself) will no longer even understand the meaning of questions asked out of theoretical curiosity: Why is Nothing the essence of Being, how does Nothing become Something? How Something becomes Nothing— one knows that from practical experience. Hence the Zen Buddhist’s rejection of all such speculations. The more uncomplicated the experience is, the better. So here too: let it be what it is, and not think that something must be added.
The Zen Buddhist is open to all and everything, without reserve—he has no dogmatic allegiances— and so also to science. Nor does he reject rationality as such, only its claim to play a role in mysticism.
Even in the simplest conditions he lives an immensely rich spiritual life. He cannot do otherwise. For he no longer lives “his” life: he is life to its utter most possibility—precisely by not being it himself. Every moment for him worth an eternity. He lives wholly in the present, in the here and now. Not in yesterday, not in tomorrow, and yet in them too, since they are the framework of human existence, of the flux of time.
Man’s Fall and Fulfillment
( Note: This is taken from the preceding pages p.100-101 of the same
book. This is less of description of”
inner" experience, yet, perhaps more comprehensive for our intellect. Still, the question of “So what?” is yet to
be answered as expression of Life - in our daily life.- -
Kio Suzaki)
How, then, did man’s fall come about? It began by his disregarding or misunderstanding the deepest purpose of his existence. No other creature is constituted by nature, as he is, not only to live spontaneously from the center of being, but, in spontaneous understanding of the whole of life, to reveal the secret of all existence. He has been granted the ultimate possibility of bursting the bonds of his individuality, of entering into intimate contact with everything that is, of encountering everywhere in the external world something akin to him, of perceiving in this kinship himself, and in this self becoming aware of the center of being, so that he lives as much as he is lived.
No other beings outside and below man live: they are lived. With the certainty of sleepwalkers they lead an existence turned in upon itself, and none of the relationships they enter into ever penetrates their consciousness. They have no way of opening themselves and remaining open, revealing themselves and being revealed. Whatever they do or suffer is without meaning for them. Namelessly existing, they re blissfully wrapped up in themselves, but they do not attain to conscious enjoyment of their existence.
On man, however, a new and unprecedented law is enjoined: to fulfill what was promised in his nature by inclining himself to all things and enveloping them in love where and whenever he meets them; in a love that does not reckon and calculate, but squanders itself and only grows richer and deeper in the squandering. Only in this way can he succeed in freeing himself, step by step, from the narrow prison of individuality in which be, like the animals and plants, is confined. In the end he is restored to himself as that which he really is: as the heart of existence, in which Being is made manifest
Reverence for all life is the formula of Zen Buddhism, and in this is hidden the secret of Zen.