What Is Zen?
Zen is just Zen. There is nothing comparable to it. It is unique
- unique in the sense that it is the most ordinary and yet the most
extraordinary phenomenon that has happened to human consciousness.
It is the most ordinary because it does not believe in knowledge, it
does not believe in mind. It is not a philosophy, not a religion
either. It is the acceptance of the ordinary existence with a total
heart, with one′s total being, not desiring some other world,
supra-mundane, supra-mental. It has no interest in any esoteric
nonsense, no interest in metaphysics at all. It does not hanker for
the other shore; this shore is more than enough. Its acceptance of
this shore is so tremendous that through that very acceptance it
transforms this shore - and this very shore becomes the other shore:
This very body the buddha, this very earth the lotus paradise.
Hence it is ordinary. It does not want you to create a certain
kind of spirituality, a certain kind of holiness. All that it asks
is that you live your life with immediacy, spontaneity. And then the
mundane becomes the sacred.
The great miracle of Zen is in the transformation of the mundane
into the sacred. And it is tremendously extraordinary because THIS
way life has never been approached before, THIS way life has never
been respected before.
Zen goes beyond Buddha and beyond Lao Tzu. It is a culmination, a
transcendence, both of the Indian genius and of the Chinese genius.
The Indian genius reached its highest peak in Gautam the Buddha and
the Chinese genius reached its highest peak in Lao Tzu. And the
meeting...the essence of Buddha′s teaching and the essence of Lao
Tzu′s teaching merged into one stream so deeply that no separation
is possible now. Even to make a distinction between what belongs to
Buddha and what to Lao Tzu is impossible, the merger has been so
total. It is not only a synthesis, it is an integration. Out of this
meeting Zen was born. Zen is neither Buddhist nor Taoist and yet
both.
To call Zen "Zen Buddhism" is not right because it is far more.
Buddha is not so earthly as Zen is. Lao Tzu is tremendously earthly,
but Zen is not only earthly: its vision transforms the earth into
heaven. Lao Tzu is earthly, Buddha is unearthly, Zen is both - and
in being both it has become the most extraordinary phenomenon.
The future of humanity will go closer and closer to the approach of
Zen, because the meeting of the East and West is possible only
through something like Zen, which is earthly and yet unearthly. The
West is very earthly, the East is very unearthly. Who is going to
become the bridge? Buddha cannot be the bridge; he is so essentially
Eastern, the very flavor of the East, the very fragrance of the
East, uncompromising. Lao Tzu cannot be the bridge; he is too
earthly. China has always been very earthly. China is more part of
the Western psyche than of the Eastern psyche.
It is not an accident that China is the first country in the East to
turn communist, to become materialist, to believe in a godless
philosophy, to believe that man is only matter and nothing else.
This is not just accidental. China has been earthly for almost five
thousand years; it is very Western. Hence Lao Tzu cannot become the
bridge; he is more like Zorba the Greek. Buddha is so unearthly you
cannot even catch hold of him - how can he become the bridge?
When I look all around, Zen seems to be the only possibility,
because in Zen, Buddha and Lao Tzu have become one. The meeting has
already happened. The seed is there, the seed of that great bridge
which can make East and West one. Zen is going to be the
meeting-point. It has a great future - a great past and a great
future.
And the miracle is that Zen is neither interested in the past nor in
the future. Its total interest is in the present. Maybe that′s why
the miracle is possible, because the past and the future are bridged
by the present.
The present is not part of time. Have you ever thought about it? How
long is the present? The past has a duration, the future has a
duration. What is the duration of the present? How long does it
last? Between the past and the future can you measure the present?
It is immeasurable; it is almost not. It is not time at all: it is
the penetration of eternity into time.
And Zen lives in the present. The whole teaching is: how to be in
the present, how to get out of the past which is no more and how not
to get involved in the future which is not yet, and just to be
rooted, centered, in that which is.
The whole approach of Zen is of immediacy, but because of that it
can bridge the past and the future. It can bridge many things: it
can bridge the past and the future, it can bridge the East and the
West, it can bridge body and soul. It can bridge the unbridgeable
worlds: this world and that, the mundane and the sacred.