Myths to Live By

by Joseph Campbell

VII—Zen

  Fig. 7.1 — The Nanzenji Temple and Garden

  VII

  Zen

  [1969]1

  In India two amusing figures are used to characterize the two principal types of religious attitude. One is “the way of the kitten”; the other, “the way of the monkey.” When a kitten cries “Miaow,” its mother, coming, takes it by the scruff and carries it to safety; but as anyone who has ever traveled in India will have observed, when a band of monkeys come scampering down from a tree and across the road, the babies riding on their mothers’ backs are hanging on by themselves. Accordingly, with reference to the two attitudes: the first is that of the person who prays, “O Lord, O Lord, come save me!” and the second of one who, without such prayers or cries, goes to work on himself. In Japan the same two are known as tariki, “outside strength,” or “power from without,” and jiriki, “own strength,” “effort or power from within.” And in the Buddhism of that country these radically contrasting approaches to the achievement of enlightenment are represented accordingly in two apparently contrary types of religious life and thought.

  The first and more popular of these two is that of the Jodo and Shinshu sects, where a transcendental, completely mythical Buddha known in Sanskrit as Amitābha, “Illimitable Radiance”—also, Amitāyus, “Unending Life”—and in Japanese as Amida, is called upon to bestow release from rebirth—as is Christ, in Christian worship, to bestow redemption. Jiriki, on the other hand, the way of self-help, own-doing, inner energy, which neither begs nor expects aid from any deity or Buddha, but works on its own to achieve what is to be achieved, is in Japan represented pre-eminently by Zen.

  There is a fable told in India of the god Viṣṇu, supporter of the universe, who one day abruptly summoned Garuda, his air-vehicle, the golden-feathered sunbird; and when his wife, the goddess Lakshmi, asked why, he replied that he had just noticed that one of his worshipers was in trouble. However, hardly had he soared away when he was back, descending from the vehicle; and when the goddess again asked why, he replied that he had found his devotee taking care of himself.

  Now the way of jiriki, as represented in the Mahāyāna Buddhist sect known in Japan as Zen, is a form of religion (if one may call it such) with no dependence on God or on gods, no idea of an ultimate deity, and no need even for the Buddha—in fact, no supernatural references at all. It has been described as:

  a special transmission outside the scriptures;

  not dependent on words or letters;

  a direct pointing to the heart of man;

  seeing into one’s own nature; and

  the attainment thereby of Buddhahood.

  The word zen itself is a Japanese mispronunciation of the Chinese word ch’an, which, in turn, is a Chinese mispronunciation of the Sanskrit dhyana, meaning “contemplation, meditation.” Contemplation, however, of what?

  Let us imagine ourselves for a moment in the lecture hall where I originally presented the material for this chapter. Above, we see the many lights. Each bulb is separate from the others, and we may think of them, accordingly, as separate from each other. Regarded that way, they are so many empirical facts; and the whole universe seen that way is called in Japanese ji hokkai, “the universe of things.”

  But now, let us consider further. Each of those separate bulbs is a vehicle of light, and the light is not many but one. The one light, that is to say, is being displayed through all those bulbs; and we may think, therefore, either of the many bulbs or of the one light. Moreover, if this or that bulb went out, it would be replaced by another and we should again have the same light. The light, which is one, appears thus through many bulbs.

  Analogously, I would be looking out from the lecture platform, seeing before me all the people of my audience, and just as each bulb seen aloft is a vehicle of light, so each of us below is a vehicle of consciousness. But the important thing about a bulb is the quality of its light. Likewise, the important thing about each of us is the quality of his consciousness. And although each may tend to identify himself mainly with his separate body and its frailties, it is possible also to regard one’s body as a mere vehicle of consciousness and to think then of consciousness as the one presence here made manifest through us all. These are but two ways of interpreting and experiencing the same set of present facts. One way is not truer than the other. They are just two ways of interpreting and experiencing: the first, in terms of the manifold of separate things; the second, in terms of the one thing that is made manifest through this manifold. And as, in Japanese, the first is known as ji hokkai, so the second is ri hokkai, the absolute universe.

  Now the consciousness of ji hokkai cannot help being discriminative, and, experiencing oneself that way, one is bounded, like the light of a bulb, in this fragile present body of glass; whereas in the consciousness of ri hokkai there is no such delimitation. The leading aim of all Oriental mystic teaching, consequently, might be described as that of enabling us to shift our focus of self-identification from, so to say, this light bulb to its light; from this mortal person to the consciousness of which our bodies are but the vehicles. That, in fact, is the whole sense of the famous saying of the Indian Chāndogya Upaniṣad: tat tvam asi, “Thou art That,” “You yourself are that undifferentiated universal ground of all being, all consciousness, and all bliss.”2

  Not, however, the “you” with which one normally identifies: the “you,” that is to say, that has been named, numbered, and computerized for the tax collector. That is not the “you” that is That, but the condition that makes you a separate bulb.

  It is not easy, however, to shift the accent of one’s sense of being from the body to its consciousness, and from this consciousness, then, to consciousness altogether.

  When I was in India I met and conversed briefly with the saintly sage Shri Atmananda Guru of Trivandrum; and the question he gave me to consider was this: Where are you between two thoughts? In the Kena Upaniṣad we are told: “There the eye goes not, speech goes not, nor the mind... Other it is than the known. And moreover above the unknown.”3 For, on coming back from between two thoughts, one would find that all words—which, of course, can be only of thoughts and things, names and forms—only mislead. As again declared in the Upaniṣad: “We know not, we understand not, how It should be taught.”

  In fact, as I should think everyone must surely have discovered in his lifetime, it is actually impossible to communicate through speech any experience whatsoever, unless to someone who has himself enjoyed an equivalent experience of his own. Try explaining, for example, the experience of skiing down a mountain slope to a person who has never seen snow. Moreover, thoughts and definitions may annul one’s own experiences even before they have been taken in: as, for instance, asking, “Can this that I feel be love?” “Is it allowed?” “Is it convenient?” Ultimately, of course, such questions may have to be asked, but the fact remains—alas!—that the moment they arise, spontaneity abates. Life defined is bound to the past, no longer pouring forward into future. And, predictably, anyone continually knitting his life into contexts of intention, import, and clarifications of meaning will in the end find that he has lost the sense of experiencing life.

  The first and foremost aim of Zen, consequently, is to break the net of our concepts—which is why it has been termed by some a philosophy of “no mind.” A number of schools of Occidental psychological therapy hold that what we all most need and are seeking is a meaning for our lives. For some, this may be a help; but all it helps is the intellect, and when the intellect sets to work on life with its names and categories, recognitions of relationship and definitions of meaning, what is inwardmost is readily lost. Zen, on the contrary, holds to the realization that life and the sense of life are antecedent to meaning; the idea being to let life come and not name it. It will then push you right back to where you live—where you are, and not where you are named.

  There is a favorite story, frequently told by the Zen masters, of the Buddha, preaching: of how he held up a sin
gle lotus, that simple gesture being his whole sermon. Only one member of his audience, however, caught the message, a monk named Mahākāśyapa, who is regarded now as the founder of the Zen sect. And the Buddha, noticing, gave him a knowing nod, then preached a verbal sermon for the rest: a sermon for those who required meaning, still entrapped in the net of ideas; yet pointing beyond, to escape from the net and to the way that some of them, one day or another, might find.

  The Buddha himself, according to his legend, had broken the net only after years of quest and austerity, when he had arrived at last at the Bodhi-tree, the tree (so called) of enlightenment at the midpoint of the universe—that center of his own deepest silence which T. S. Eliot in his poem “Burnt Norton” has called “the still point of the turning world.” In the poet’s words:

  I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.

  And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.4

  There, at that tree, the god whose name is Desire and death, by whose power the world is kept turning, approached the Blessed One to unseat him; and assuming his fair character as the inciter of desire, beautiful to look upon, he displayed before the Blessed One his three exceedingly beautiful daughters, Yearning, Fulfillment, and Heartache; so that if the one seated there immovable had thought, “I,” he would certainly also have thought, “They,” and been stirred. However, since he had lost all sense of the ji hokkai, of things separate from each other, he remained unmoved, and that first temptation failed.

  Immediately, the Lord of Desire transformed himself into King Death and flung at the Blessed One the whole force of his terrible army. But again there was neither an “I” nor a “They” where the Blessed One sat immobile, and the second temptation also failed.

  Fig. 7.2 — Earth-touching Posture

  Finally, assuming the form of the Lord of Dharma, Duty, the Antagonist challenged the right of the Blessed One to be sitting immobile on that still point of the turning world, when the duties of his caste required him, as a prince, to be governing men from his palace. Whereupon the prince, in response, simply changed the position of his right hand, letting its fingers drop across the knee to the earth in the so-called “earth-touching posture”; at which summons the goddess Earth herself, who is Mother Nature, antecedent to society, and whose claims are antecedent too, spoke forth and with a sound of thunder made known that the one there sitting had, through innumerable lifetimes, so given of himself to the world that there was no one there.

  The elephant on which the Lord of Desire, Death, and Duty was mounted bowed in reverence to the Blessed One, and the army as well as the god himself disappeared. Whereupon the one beneath the tree achieved that night the whole knowledge of which I am here speaking—of himself as no “self,” but identical with the ri hokkai, transcendent of all names and forms, where (as again we read in the Kena Upaniṣad ) “words do not reach.”

  And when he had broken past the net of separate things, within which feeling and thought are entrapped, the Buddha was so struck by the mind-shattering sheer light that he remained seven days seated exactly as he was, in absolute arrest; then rose and, standing seven paces from the place where he had been sitting, remained gazing seven more days at the site of his enlightenment. Seven days again, and he walked back and forth between the places of his standing and his sitting; after which he sat for seven days beneath a second tree, considering the irrelevance of what he had just experienced to the world-net to which he was returning. Seven days more, beneath still another tree, and he meditated on the sweetness of release; then moved to a fourth tree, where a storm of prodigious force arose that ranged over and around him, seven days. The world serpent, ascending from its station beneath the cosmic tree, gently wrapped itself around the Blessed One, spreading its great cobra-hood above his head, protecting him as a shield. The tempest abated; the cosmic serpent withdrew; and for seven days, at ease beneath a fifth tree, the Buddha, considering, thought: “This cannot be taught.”

  For indeed, illumination cannot be communicated.

  Yet no sooner had the Buddha conceived that thought than the gods of the highest heaven—Brahma, Indra, and their angels—descended to the Blessed One to beg him, for the good of mankind, the gods, and all beings, to teach. And he consented. And for forty-nine years thereafter the Buddha taught in this world. But he did not, and he could not, teach illumination. Buddhism, therefore, is only a Way. It is called a vehicle (yāna) to the yonder shore, transporting us from this shore of the ji hokkai (the experience of the separation of things, the many bulbs, the separate lights) to that, yonder, of the ri hokkai, beyond concepts and the net of thought, where the knowledge of a Silence beyond silences becomes actual in the blast of an experience.

  And so, how then did the Buddha teach?

  He went forth into the world in the character of a doctor diagnosing an illness, to prescribe for his patient a cure. First he asked, “What are the symptoms of the world disease?” And his answer was, “Sorrow!” The First Noble Truth: “All life is sorrowful.”

  Have we heard? Have we understood? ”All life is sorrowful!” The important word here is “all,” which cannot be translated to mean “modern” life, or (as I have recently heard) “life under capitalism,” so that if the social order were altered, people then might become happy. Revolution is not what the Buddha taught. His First Noble Truth was that life—all life—is sorrowful. And his cure, therefore, would have to be able to produce relief, no matter what the social, economic, or geographical circumstances of the invalid.

  The Buddha’s second question, accordingly, was, “Can such a total cure be achieved?” And his answer was, “Yes!” The second Noble Truth: “There is release from sorrow.”

  Which cannot have meant release from life (life-renunciation, suicide, or anything of that sort), since that would hardly have been a return of the patient to health. Buddhism is wrongly taught when interpreted as a release from life. The Buddha’s question was of release not from life, but from sorrow.

  So then, what would be the nature of that state of health which he not only had envisioned but himself had already achieved? That we learn from his Third Noble Truth: “The release from sorrow is nirvāṇa.”5

  The literal meaning of this Sanskrit noun nirvāṇa is “blown out”; and its reference in the Buddha’s sense is to an extinction of egoism. With that, there will have been extinguished also the desire of ego for enjoyment, its fear of death, and the sense of duties imposed by society. For the released one is moved from within, not by an external authority: and this motivation from within is not out of a sense of duty, but out of compassion for all suffering beings. Neither dead nor having quit the world, but in the full knowledge and experience of the ri hokkai, the enlightened one moves in the ji hokkai, where Gautama, after his enlightenment, taught to the great old age of eighty-two.

  And what was it he taught? What he taught was the Way to release from sorrow, the Eightfold Path, as he termed his doctrine, of Right Views, Right Aspirations, Right Speech, Right Conduct, Livelihood, and Effort, Right Meditation, Right Rapture.6

  But should you ask to know what the Buddha meant exactly by the term “right” (Sanskrit samyak, “appropriate, whole, complete, correct, proper, true”), you would learn from the various answers of authorities that the interpretations of the Buddha’s teachings rendered by the various schools of his followers do not always agree.

  The earliest disciples of Gautama followed him literally in his manner of life, quitting the secular world as monks, entering the forest or going into monasteries to engage in ascetic disciplines. Their way was the way of jiriki, “own effort,” leaving the world and by dint of great spiritual effort wiping out desire for its goods, fear of death and deprivation, all sense of social obligation, and, above all, every thought of “I” and “mine.” The Buddha himself, in his life, had seemed to represent that negative way; and the monastic life has remained to this day a dominant force throughout the Buddhist world.

&nb
sp; However, some five hundred years after the Buddha’s life and passing (whose dates are now given generally as ca. 563–483 B.C.)—at just about the time, that is to say, of the opening of the Christian era in the West—there appeared in the Buddhist centers of North India a new trend in the interpretation of the doctine. The protagonists of this later view were certain late followers of the Master who themselves had achieved illumination and could appreciate implications of the doctrine that had been missed by the earliest disciples. One did not have actually to leave the world as a monk or nun, they had found, to win the gift of illumination. One could remain in life, in the selfless performance of secular tasks, and arrive no less securely at the goal.

  Fig. 7.3 — Kuan-yin

  With this momentous realization, there moved into the center of Buddhist thought and imagery a new ideal and figure of fulfillment: not the monk with the shaven head in safe retreat from the toils and tumult of society, but a kingly figure, clothed in royal guise, wearing a jeweled crown and bearing in hand a lotus symbolic of the world itself. Addressing himself to the world of our general life, this figure is known as a Bodhisattva. He is one, that is to say, whose “being” (sattva) is “illumination” (bodhi), for as the word buddha means “awakened,” so bodhi is “awakening, awakenment.” And the best-known, most largely celebrated, great wakeful being of this order is the beautiful saint of many a wondrous legend known in Sanskrit as Avalokiteśvara. The name is generally understood to mean “The Lord who regards the world [in mercy].” The figure appears in Indian art always in masculine form; in the Far East, however, as the Chinese goddess of mercy, Kuan-yin (Japanese: Kwannon); for such a being transcends the limits of sex, and the female character, surely, is more eloquent of mercy than the male.

  The legend of this Bodhisattva tells that when he was about to achieve complete release from this vortex of rebirths that is our world, he heard the rocks, the trees, and all creation lamenting; and when he asked the meaning of that sound, he was told that his very presence here had given to all a sense of the immanence of nirvanic rapture, which, when he left the world, would be lost. In his selfless, boundless compassion, therefore, he renounced the release for which he had striven through innumerable lifetimes, so that, continuing in this world, he might serve through all time as a teacher and aid to all beings. He appears among merchants as a merchant, among princes as a prince; even among insects as an insect. And he is incarnate in us all whenever we are in converse with each other, instructing or mercifully helping.