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Zen in the West Part II - Modern Japanese Zen in Western Spiritual Liberation

By Adrian Chan-Wyles (ICBI)

(Author’s Note: This article first appeared in the eJournal of the ICBI - Patriarch’s Vision - Winter Vol I. No. 10.)

Zen is freedom. Freedom is an amorphous concept that is necessarily interpreted from many different
perspectives. Whereas freedom is confusing – Zen is not. Whereas freedom is sought and fought for, and is
rarely recognised as being present – Zen is here and now. Whereas freedom is hard to acquire – Zen is not.
Freedom involves the intersection of many concepts, whilst Zen cuts-through all confusion, and yet the mind
that chases after sensations, and justifies this habit with sophisticated justifications, freedom appears easier
than Zen. This is because this type of ‘freedom’ is not free of attachment and the world is perceived upside
down and the wrong way around. This is the inverted mind that the Buddha defined as deluded and suffering
inducing. What is viewed as freedom in the deluded state is nothing other than the accommodation of the
prison walls of attachments and false views. In this state, true freedom such as that represented by Zen, is
mistakenly viewed as imprisonment. The deluded are happy in the prison cells of their mind, and pour scorn
on those Zen practitioners who are free of delusion. Whereas the Zen practitioner is free of all duality and
self-imposed limitations, the deluded sentient being makes a virtue of constantly running through the maze of
conditioned patterns of repetitive (and painful) behaviours, responses, reactions, and interpretations.

To understand what modern Japanese Zen has to offer the average Western practitioner, firstly its cultural
context within Japanese society must be understood. Ironically, and not without a touch of Zen humour – the
phenomenon of ‘Zen’ did not come out of thin air, or manifest within Japanese society as if from nothing! Like
everything else in society, Zen Buddhism has a discernible history of cause and effect in the physical world. It
offers a type of meditative development that is thought to have developed in ancient India through the spoken
teachings of the historical Buddha. A survey of the thousands of Buddhist sutras (which represent a written
record of his spoken teachings compiled decades after his passing), reveals an intricate matrix of mind-body
development – with the mind taking precedence over the body as the key area (or pathway) for channelling
developmental effort. The body is not discarded as such, but it is subjected to discipline so that its natural
urges (such as the desire for food, pleasure, and excitement, etc), are firmly controlled and eventually
quelled. This removes the natural desire-based urges of the body from drawing the attention of the mind
away from a contemplation of its own essence. The quelling of the bodily desires is the main purpose of the
Vinaya Discipline, and is a process repeatedly referred to throughout the sutras. However, it is also true that
the Buddha gave precedence to the Dharma-teachings contained within the sutras themselves, and that the
Dharma-teachings serve as the earliest premise of his method. It was only later that the Vinaya Discipline was
developed to resolve disputes that had arisen within the Ordained Sangha about what was, and was not
considered appropriate behaviour for a Buddhist monastic. Although these hundreds of rules are strict and

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designed to empower the Buddhist monastic to keep from the temptations of the world (thus ensuring a moral
purity worthy of reverence and respect from the laity), nevertheless, the Buddha is reported as stating that
the Ordained Sangha can abandon the Vinaya Discipline after his death, if they thought it appropriate to do
so. The monastic authorities at the time chose to retain this discipline, and it is this decision that has
primarily influenced the many Buddhist traditions in the world, with one or two notable exceptions. It has to
be point-out that eve the lay=precepts voluntarily followed by householder Buddhist practitioners are based
entirely upon the Vinaya Discipline. Even the various versions of the Bodhisattva Vows appear to be based in
essence on the spirit of the Vinaya Discipline, and yet in the background of it all, there still exists the
Buddha’s injunction that the Vinaya Discipline can be abandoned if it were thought necessary to do so, and the
understanding that the Dharma-teachings (i.e. Sutta-Pitaka) take precedence over the other two categories of
teaching – the Abbhidharma-Pitaka (developed much later by monkish authority) and the Vinaya-Pitaka.

Indian Buddhism was transmitted to China through a slow process of physical migration and cultural
assimilation. As Buddhism was viewed very much as a ‘foreign’ (and primarily unwanted and unneeded)
religion in China, its Indian and Chinese practitioners were often subjected to intense official scrutiny to see if
their behaviour deviated from the cultural norms and standards expected of a highly civilised Confucian state-
system. As this was the case, the Vinaya morality of Buddhism was emphasised as a means to maintain social
peace and harmony within a feudal society. Monastic Buddhists were expected to follow the Vinaya Discipline
to the letter, or face being stripped of their ordained status (and in cases involving gross misconduct –
execution was not unknown), whilst lay-Buddhists in China were expected to behave in a manner that did not
involve any forms of immorality outside of normal lay-life. At all costs there was to be no Buddhist inspired
uprisings or rebellions, as such an occurrence was interpreted as originating outside of China, and initiated by
foreign powers that were using Buddhism as a means to infiltrate and destabilise the Chinese Confucian State.
These cultural considerations of moral purity (that were inherited from the Confucian notion of retaining law
and order within Chinese society), ensured that within China the moral teachings associated with the Vinaya
Discipline became prominent and standard for the practice of Chinese Buddhism. This even included imperial
edicts that banned the eating of meat by Buddhists, and the keeping of a strict vegetarian diet in China.
Therefore all forms of Buddhism within China were imbued with a heavy emphasis upon controlling its
practitioners through the official enforcing of Buddhist morality to a degree that might be viewed as excessive
from a more moderate Buddhist scholarly position. However, what this emphasis upon good behaviour
demonstrates is that Indian Buddhism successfully managed to integrate into a Confucian society that very
much viewed itself as ‘perfect’ and beyond any need for outside interference or influence. In this regard, the
spread of Indian Buddhism to China was highly successful and the distinctly ‘Chinese’ Buddhism that
developed, a unique contribution to world culture. Chinese Buddhism is in effect Indian Buddhism integrated
with Confucian thought, and Daoist influence.

Chinese Ch’an Buddhism spread to Japan around the time of the 13th century. At its arrival in Japan, and for
hundreds of years afterwards, the Chinese emphasis upon Buddhist monastics following a strict Vinaya
Discipline was respected and upheld by Japanese Zen Buddhists. In part, this was because the Japanese State
practiced a variant of the Confucian ideal, and was happy to accommodate a Chinese version of an ancient
Indian teaching, providing social order was not upset or compromised. Between the 13th century and the 19th
centuries, the Japanese authorities had a great respect for Chinese Buddhist culture, and Japanese
practitioners of Zen modelled their behaviour upon the Chinese Ch’an interpretation. However, within the
Japanese Buddhist tradition (and before the establishing as Ch’an as Zen in Japan), the Jodo Shinshu Sect (a
Pureland School) became prominent. This school was founded by the Japanese practitioner named Shinran.
He knew about the Vinaya Discipline – but took the position that following the rules of this teaching was
pointless if it became a matter of ‘attachment’ to morality. Shinran, therefore, married and raised a family.
For hundreds of years after, the Jodo Shinshu Sect in Japan was the only school that allowed its ‘monastics’ to
get married and not necessarily follow the Vinaya Discipline. Following the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the Jodo

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Shinshu approach to morality became widespread throughout Japanese Buddhism – including the Zen Schools.
Although many Zen monks and nuns continued as before and followed the Vinaya Discipline at the time, many
others switched to living what was effectively a lay-life whilst occupying the official position of a Buddhist
monk or nun. Within the Zen teaching, the act of seated meditation had always been prominent, even if such
a practice prior to 1868 had been believed to have been reliant upon a firm moral basis inherited from ancient
India, and transmitted through China. In this new era of what many Japanese thinkers interpreted as freedom
and modernity, the behavioural moral basis of Buddhism was separated from the developmental practices
associated with it. In this climate of radical change, the Japanese Zen Schools began to emphasis the ‘act’ of
mediation as being literally and symbolically ‘identical’ to the goal of complete enlightenment. Therefore it
nolonger mattered as to the nature of the daily activity, just as long as the mind controlling the physical
behaviours was permanently in a state of enlightenment. The Buddha obviously thought that the imposition of
a blanket Vinaya Disciple might be counter-productive for the spiritual development of his disciples, or he
would not have advised those same disciples that they could abandon its practice if they so agreed. On the
other hand, even if it is agreed that the teachings in the sutras (i.e. Dharma) take precedence over those
contained in the Vinaya, it is also true that many sutras (usually given in response to individual enquiries for
guidance), contain instructions about a disciplined practice that should be applied as part of the answer. It is
clear from the observation of this unfolding process in the sutras that the Buddha taught the same Dharma in a
number of different ways, to different people.

The interesting point about the Japanese approach to modern Zen, is that although the abandoning of the
observation of the Vinaya Discipline was the consequence of secular political developments in Japan, and not
the result of pressure to reform from within Japanese Buddhism itself, nevertheless, when the Buddhist
teachings are read in a certain light, there appears to be a doctrinal underpinning for its justification. As the
Buddha authorised the abandoning of the Vinaya Discipline in the sutras, the carrying-out of this instruction
cannot be strictly ruled a heretical act, as similar interpretations regarding the ‘plastic’ nature of morality
(and reality) are seen within the practices and instructions associated with the Tantric Buddhism of Tibet (as
recorded in the life stories of the Mahasiddhis) and other in places and teachings. In these Tantrayanic-type
practices, the use of sexual union is depicted not as a breaking of the Buddhist moral code, but rather as its
fulfilment. This is because the truly enlightened being abides in a psycho-physical state of the permanent
reconciliation of all duality. In this state there is no delusion to keep from, and no means to keep from it.
Even within the morally conservative Chinese Ch’an tradition, there is a point of development in the student -
beyond which the Ch’an master will not speak. It is as if the Chinese Ch’an tradition ‘hints’ at the freedom
expressed within the Tantric tradition, but dare not give voice to its reality because of the nature of social
order in China. As Ch’an Master Xu Yun (1840-1959), said on many occasions, when ordinary people are not yet
enlightened, they must, and they should, apply and follow the Vinaya Discipline to remedy the situation.
What happens after enlightenment? For Xu Yun he carried on as before – living the life of a simple Ch’an monk
who followed the Vinaya Discipline – even though he presumably had no need to do so. The Buddha did exactly
the same. When the Buddha was enlightened, he never re-engaged the ordinary ‘desire’ driven life of a lay-
person because he no longer possessed a desire mechanism that would function in the world, in that vulgar
manner. From a strictly Buddhist doctrinal perspective, it is probably the case that the Buddha gave
permission for already enlightened monks to abandon the Vinaya Discipline if they wanted to do so, as he
would never have given any advice that would endanger their Dharmic development. In any case, the sutras
themselves already contained ample guidance regarding mental and physical discipline. Another consideration
is that the idea that the Buddha gave permission for the Vinaya Discipline to be abandoned might be a later
edition to the Buddhist literature – the product of either intentional or unintentional altering of the meaning
of texts, or perhaps mistranslations or copying errors, etc. Modern academic research regarding the writing of
the Buddhist sutras show that texts underwent numerous editing procedures that ‘shifted’ meaning to suit the
various interpretations of the Dharma that were associated with the numerous Buddhist schools that developed
after the death of the Buddha. One obvious candidate for this process is the Buddha’s apparent misogyny and

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downplaying of the role of women – when in all other cases he thoroughly rejected the Brahmin attitudes of
his day.

Whatever the reasons or justifications for the abandonment of the Vinaya Discipline by the Japanese Zen
tradition, the fact is that the deed has been done, and Japanese Zen exists today independent of the
essentially ‘Indian’ Buddhist morality (which was subsequently ‘amplified’ in intensity and meaning through its
association with the Confucian State of China). Needless to say, this differs markedly with the ‘morality’ led
and highly disciplined practice of contemporary Chinese Ch’an. This difference between these two
expressions of Indian Buddhism probably explains why Japanese Zen is popular in the West, whilst Chinese
Ch’an is hardly known, or mistakenly thought of as an unpopular form of Japanese Zen. Although methods
differ, the objective is exactly the same. For an essentially ‘Asian’, and therefore ‘foreign’ spiritual practice
to be accepted in the modern (and secular West), in many ways it has to be detached from the cultural
foundation of its past. As the West is abandoning the Judeo-Christian dogma that has dominated its
development for over the last one thousand years, science has taken the place of theology as the dominant
narrative. Western society has embraced logic and reason and relegated faith based theology to the realms of
the periphery of society, or that of individual personal choice. Of course, since the end of World War Two (and
the defeat of imperial Japan by the Allies), Japan has also been forced to develop in a new socio-economic
(and cultural) direction. With the revolutions of the 20th century in mainland China, modernity and post-
modernity have also emerged there as powerful driving forces, and yet within China, Buddhism is recognised
by the State, and the status of ordained monks and nuns projected under the law. This is a two-way process of
protection whereby an ordained monk or nun in modern China is legally expected to uphold the Vinaya
Discipline, or face legal action for failing to do so. This importance of status for Buddhism in China stems from
the early 1950’s, and Master Xu Yun’s interaction with the Chinese government. It was Xu Yun who single-
handedly rejected an appeal from a group of Chinese monks who had lived in Japan and abandoned the Vinaya
Discipline. On their return to China, they now had wives and children, drank wine and ate meat. Their
petition to the Chinese government stated that China as a nation was backward due to its reliance upon the
Buddhist Vinaya Discipline, and that by contrast Japan as a nation was advanced because it had abandoned this
essentially ‘foreign’ and ‘superstitious’ Indian tradition. Master Xu Yun (who was over 110 years old at the
time), rejected this assessment. His view was that the Buddha was fully and completely enlightened, whilst
these individual (and ‘corrupt’) monks were not. He further stated that the Buddha prophesised that in the
Dharma-ending age, his teaching will become distorted and abandoned as ignorance begins to hold sway over
wisdom. In China, Xu Yun explained, it has always been the tradition (inherited from the Buddha in India) for
ordained monks and nuns to strictly follow a vegetarian diet and the Vinaya Discipline. H was of the opinion
that Japanese Buddhists can do as they please – that these returning Chinese monks had broken all of the
Vinaya Discipline vows that they had taken in China (before going to Japan), and as such, should not be
listened to in matters of policy regarding the Dharma and its practice. This being the case, Xu Yun suggested
that the following of the Vinaya Discipline by an ordained monk or nun should be made legally mandatory with
legal ramifications if the vows are purposely abandoned or violated in anyway. The Chinese government
officials agreed with Xu Yun and eventually passed the relevant laws that still strictly govern the behaviour of
monks and nuns in China today. This means that it is illegal within Chinese Buddhism for a lay-person to refer
to themselves as a ‘monk’ or ‘nun’ if they have not formally ordained, and for an ordained monk and nun to
behave like a lay-person if they have already taken and dedicated themselves to following the Vinaya
Discipline. This explanation highlights the contemporary (and surface) differences between modern Chinese
Ch’an, and Japanese Zen. It is the description of a single root with two distinct branches – united but
different. Xu Yun’s decision in this matter stems from his good intention to save and preserve the Buddha-
dharma for as long as possible within the auspices of Chinese culture, by emphasising discipline. Japanese
Zen, on the other hand, has travelled a very different path, one that sees ‘Zen’ preserved not only within
Japanese culture, but due to its relaxing and abandoning of Indian morality, (a process that has enabled the
essence of the teaching to spread far and wide outside of Japan) and into the other cultures of the world.

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Japanese Zen has spread to the West - this is an undeniable fact – but what is it that has actually spread? It
can be described as a form of Buddhist liberalism that has abandoned the Indian religiosity of its past. This
fits well into the contemporary West, which has also abandoned the Judeo-Christian religiosity of its past, thus
creating the cultural conditions for Western liberalism to positively encounter and integrate with Japanese
liberalism on equal terms. Of course, this process has not been a random one, and its success has been in
large part, due to the reconstruction of a post-WWII Japan very much in America’s image. Perhaps the
defining paradox that enables Zen to travel as it does is the fact that Japanese Zen is both ‘Japanese’, and yet
‘not Japanese’ simultaneously – as if Schrodinger’s Cat is sat (and not sat) on a meditation cushion at the
sametime. This ambiguous identity of Zen maybe juxtaposed with that of Ch’an – the latter of which is
undoubtedly ‘Chinese’ in nature. As the West loses its religious identity through a process of cultural
evolution, Japanese Zen (which seems both scientific and illogical all at once), has arrived to fill-in the void
that has been left with the demise of the Judeo-Christian tradition. As nothing is simple with Zen, the void it
fills-in is also the ‘void’ it creates. In this situation (that mirrors Heisenberg), nothing is certain anymore and
all is open to interpretation. Japanese Zen enlightenment is freed from its Indian religious foundation – as if
the superstructure has come loose (and independent of) its defining infrastructure. In this reality of
contingency (where nothing is certain), a monk is not a monk and a lay-person is not a lay-person – the
identities merge and lose their distinctive edges. When applying this blend of logic and non-logic, reality
cannot be pinned-down or limited to a process of either-or definitions – as truth becomes all-embracing and
non-definable. This is exactly the same enlightenment found within Chinese Ch’an tradition – but one
interpreted without the baggage of cultural history and identity. Even within the literature that describes the
enlightened state, there is precedent for this interpretation within the Chinese Ch’an texts. As the West has
its own infrastructure, it sees no need for anyother. This uncompromising attitude has made the cultural soil
fertile in the Occident for the arrival of Japanese Zen from the East – which ironically sees no need for any
form of concrete identity. However, as the West has been busy separating the mind from the body in its
academic development – that is the subject of psychology as distinct from physiology – Japanese Zen offers a
highly focused and precise use of the mind that abandons any need to control the body. This is not to say that
the body is not disciplined in anyway, but that the moral imperative associated with the following of Indian
precepts is simply not present by design. If the Buddha’s message can be condensed into its essential teaches,
it is that moral discipline (sila) creates the conditions for the development of a profound meditative practice
(dhyana). When dhyana (Jap: ‘Zen’) is firmly established, then this in turn creates the conditions for the
development of an equally profound knowledge AND wisdom (prajna). It is this profound wisdom which is the
key to enlightenment, and no enlightenment can be said to exist if it is not present. How, then, does the
modern Zen system work? It works through equating the ‘act’ of seated meditation with the state of profound
enlightenment. Seated meditation itself becomes the prime method of ‘moral discipline’ (sila), which
quietens the mind (dhyana), and realises wisdom (prajna). The act of Zen sitting achieves these things
simultaneously and all at once. The Buddha’s Vinaya Discipline becomes distilled into the posture, form,
position, balance, concentration, motivation, and direction of the practitioner’s mind as he or she becomes
focused upon the meditative method. When this subtle and unique balance is achieved, the experience of
time and space is radically altered and becomes universal – in other words, time and space cease to be just
about the insignificant individual existence ‘here and now’, and becomes a universal ‘here and now’ that
transcends all differences and simultaneously avoids the trap of reducing everything in existence to a dull and
self-limiting ‘sameness’. The modern Zen method can do this because the Buddha stated even in the earliest
teachings that the state of nirvana is ‘non-conditioned’ or ‘unconditioned’, despite the fact that he advocate a
very specific path toward its apparent attainment. This fact implies that all beings are already enlightened,
and that the Buddha’s method is simply one of removing the barriers of accrued delusion that obscure its
direct and instantaneous realisation. Zen becomes a highly focused means of ‘barrier removal’ and this can e
done through the concentrated doorway of seated meditation. More than this, however, but the behaviour of
the Zen practitioner outside of the training hall becomes not dependent upon an externally enforced moral

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code, but rather upon the maintaining of a self-sustaining inner attitude of enlightenment in everyday
activity. This is the manifestation of the so-called ‘Zen Mind’, a state of being that supersedes (and
integrates) all other expedient mind-sets. If the mind is correct, then it is logically thought that all actions
are a manifestation of this correctness, and by and large, Japanese culture accommodates this interpretation.

This means that the modern Japanese Zen practice – with its emphasis upon seated meditation over a
multifaceted approach to spiritual development – frees the Zen method to travel far and wide in an easily
usable format within other cultures. This has proven particularly successful outside of Japan both before and
after WWII. In fact, so popular has Japanese Zen become in the West, that historians have often fallen into
the trap of conflating Japanese Zen with Chinese Ch’an – as if the former created the latter, and developed
the erroneous academic habit of interpreting Chinese history through the Japanese perception of it. This is
because whereas modern Japanese Zen appears both ‘secular’ and ‘logical’ in its simplicity to the Western
mind, Chinese Ch’an (with its insistence on preserving and following a ‘Confucianised’ version of Indian
Buddhism) does not. To the contemporary Western mnd, Japanese Zen appears ‘universal’ in its teaching,
whereas Chinese Ch’an simply appears ‘Chinese’ and is difficult to understand due to its unfamiliar and very
different cultural presentation. This is despite the fact that specifically anti-Japanese and anti-Chinese
racism emanating from the USA (and other Western countries) was more or less of an equal intensity until the
end of WWII. Even in that unwholesome psychological and physical climate, Japanese Zen took root in the
West in a manner completely unexperienced by Chinese Ch’an. After WWII, Zen became ever more popular
and more or less mainstreamed in the US due to that county’s Cold War policy of reconstructing a Capitalist
Japan to serve as a bulwark between Communist China and American interests in the Pacific area. Today,
Japan has become a liberal democracy very much in accordance with the American model (albeit with
Japanese characteristics), and part of this process has been the maintenance of an agitated political stance
toward mainland China – the perceived enemy of the USA. This has led to the resurgence of nationalism in
Japan, and the wholesale importation of Japanese technology and cultural trends into the US. Despite the
fact that the US has hundreds of thousands of Chinese people living within its borders (with some of those
families having been in the US for hundreds of years), there exists a general ‘anti-Chinese’ sentiment within
mainstream US culture. This has meant that Chinese cultural influence has been prevented from
mainstreaming due to its rejection (as the enemy within) by the US political system. Due to this sense of
rejection, the indigenous Chinese population has had to exist in an insular manner, quietly practicing its
culture side by side with many other ethnic groups, whilst simultaneously not daring to assert any overt
influence beyond the borders of its own communities. An ironic symptom of this reality is that with the
opening-up of mainland China today, many Americans are able to travel to China to directly participate within
and learn from Chinese culture – whilst simultaneously ignoring, or being completely unaware of the fact that
Chinese culture exists all around them in their native America. This American political policy of ‘pro-
Japanese’ against ‘anti-Chinese’ has ensured that Japanese Zen has received implicit and explicit political
support in the US for its assimilation into mainstream Western culture – despite protestations from various
Christian groups. Chinese Ch’an does exist in the USA amongst immigrant Chinese communities, and some
non-Chinese Americans have discovered and engaged this as of yet untapped potential source, but by and large
the US media perpetuates the false image that Chinese culture only exists in China – adding the further caveat
that anything that comes out of China cannot be trusted. Chinese culture that is hundreds of years old in the
USA is simply written out of history, and the indigenous Chinese of the USA treated as if they do not exist.
This leaves the field open only to the preferred cultural influence of Japanese Zen – a teaching that emerged
from a country that fought a vicious and racially motivated war against the USA only around 70 years ago (a
war, incidentally, within which China was an alley of the US against Japan). These facts may be juxtaposed
with the reality that for hundreds of years, Chinese migrants into the USA have directly helped to build the
infrastructure of the USA, and economically assisted its developed. American born Chinese soldiers have also
fought (and died) in the US military. Of course, these observations are not designed to ignore the plight of
Japanese-Americans (who were also born in the USA), who saw their families rounded-up and placed in US

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Concentration Camps during WWII (at a time when Hitler supporting German Americans were allowed to roam
around the US exercising their democratic right to ‘freedom of speech’). The point is that although Zen was
known in the West prior to WWII, the negative treatment of Japanese people in the US, (and Japanese culture
in general), was very different to that positive treatment manufactured by the US political system post-WWII.

Japanese Zen has been allowed and encouraged to become an incredible vehicle for trans-cultural spiritual
development. It has even managed to enter the realms of psychology and be taken seriously as a genuine
method of psychological development whereby the practitioner pursues a path of disciplined self-analysis
which is periodically assessed by a qualified Zen teacher. A steady genre of literature has developed within
Western popular academia which purports to investigate the apparent connection between the Zen meditation
cushion, and the psychologist’s couch. Of course, the underlying reality is that both disciplines operate
through the agency of the analysis of the mind, even though the Zen tradition in far older in its Indian
origination. With the separate moral imperative removed, the modern Japanese Zen tradition as it has
materialised outside of Japan, is unencumbered by notions of concretised and preferable behaviour on the
physical plane. Like psychology, it now deals only with the human condition as it existentially manifests. This
like a doctor treating whatever symptoms the patients bring to him, with the efficacy treatments themselves
not being dependent upon the moral behaviour of those who are ill. In other words, science appears to work
regardless of the presence or lack of any moral imperatives. As moral systems are associated with religious
beliefs, the strength of modern-day Japanese Zen Buddhism is that it is in reality also a trans-religious vehicle
for self-cultivation that does not require a ‘belief’ in any outside agency to work. This is exactly the point
where modern Zen intersects with modern science. Western practitioners who have moved beyond traditional
organised religion, (and have been broughtup in the West acculturated toward scientific reasoning), can turn
to a Zen practice which offers all the allure of religion (without being religious), as well as the certainty of
advanced or superior knowledge. The wearing of robes, the shaving of heads, the undergoing of ordination
rituals and assuming of Japanese names, of course, all mirror exactly the medieval rituals and practices
associated with the Christian church and Christian monasteries. What is important about this observation is
that although this is true, it is also true that modern Japanese Zen Buddhism is not historically Christian, and
therefore offers a transitory mechanism for secularised Westerners to both ‘through off’ the old religion of
Christianity, and to embrace a ‘mind-led’ method of self-development that seems to all intents and purposes
to be scientific in nature. Although all the physical aspects of religion are indulged in, the mind is free from
the vehicle that conveys and facilitates its development. This observation confirms the post-modern and
contingent state of Zen Buddhism. It has become a method of self-development that is also self-deleting. This
statement can be viewed in a number of surprising ways. The Buddha taught that any notions of a permanent
self (in relation to matter and its ever changing processes), are not real. Although Zen has thrown-off the
Indian morality of early Buddhism, it certainly has not thrown-off the core of Buddhist philosophy. Therefore
to ‘delete’ any notions of the ‘self’ through Zen self-cultivation is exactly correct – but this principle is correct
in another way. The vehicle of modern Japanese Zen Buddhism creates and dissolves itself every single
second. For it to be effective as a vehicle that ‘frees’ everyone absolutely, then Zen cannot be a vehicle
which permanently exits. Although it is true that Zen certainly exists in Japan and has done so for hundreds of
years, it is also true that the outer conventions known as ‘Zen’, are only to be perceived as flickering light. If
Zen is viewed as anything but ‘empty’ of all ‘emptiness’, then it betrays itself and ceases to perform its
liberating function.

©opyright: Adrian Chan-Wyles (ShiDaDao) 2016.

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