Zen

In the centuries since the death of its founder in 483 B.C., Buddhism has had little direct impact on the Christian West. Today, however, a Buddhist boomlet is under way in the U.S. Increasing numbers of intellectuals--both faddists and serious students--are becoming interested in a form of Japanese Buddhism called Zen.-

In San Francisco and Los Angeles, Westerners turn out to hear lectures on Zen by Alan W. Watts, a former Anglican priest and now a professor at the American Academy of Asian Studies. In Manhattan, the First Zen Institute of America is holding three meetings a week for some 100 members. In an aromatic garden in Kyoto, the first Zen study center in Japan for Westerners was formally opened this month. Last week its builder, Ruth Fuller Everett Sasaki, Chicago-born widow of a Zen teacher, announced that enough new U.S. students were expected so that a new meditation hall would have to be built to accommodate them. And the current issue of Vogue tips off its readers that People Are Talking About "the Columbia University classes of the great Zen Buddhist teacher, Dr. Daisetz Suzuki, who sits in the center of a mound of books, waving his spectacles with ceremonial elegance while mingling the philosophical abstract with the familiar concrete."

Yes & No. Zen (meditation) is the form of Buddhism that is at the same time most appealing and appalling to the Western mind. It claims to be as practical as a Mack truck; it is certainly as anti-intellectual as a hooky-playing schoolboy, and often as humorous as a well-timed pratfall. But it also insists on the disconcerting necessity of saying yes and no at the same time.

Zen's legendary founder is Bodhi-Dharma, "the blue-eyed monk," who came to China from India in the 6th century A.D. Imported to Japan in the 12th century, Zen flourished so mightily that it eventually modified most phases of Japanese life, notably in the elaborate code of conduct called Bushido and in the arts of poetry, spinning, flower-arranging, swordplay, archery, and the famed, highly stylized tea ceremony.

In Zen the here-and-now moment is everything. Scriptures are snares for the mind's entanglement--a favorite Zen picture shows a Zen monk tearing up a Buddhist scroll. Even concepts are to be shunned as far as possible. "Emptiness" is looked upon by the Zen Buddhist as the closest thing to truth.

Zen has no theology--the existence of God is neither affirmed nor denied--nor liturgy, beyond the act of meditation itself. Hence there are no Zen churches or membership figures for the laity (there are an estimated 19,325 monks in Zen monasteries in Japan, plus 1.658 nuns). The practitioner of Zen is concerned only with enlightenment, which he calls satori. Enlightenment is often achieved by means that are shocking, in every sense of the word. A master may help his student to satori by hitting him with a staff (pang) or roaring at him (pang-ho). A less physical shock technique is the koan, a problem designed to shock the mind beyond mere thinking. "You know the sound of two hands struck together," goes one koan. "what is the sound of one hand?" There is no trick answer; each disciple must find his own. One monk replied by toppling over as though dead.

Either-Or. Columbia's 87-year-old Dr. Suzuki, whose weekly lectures attract a well-packed but mixed bag of serious students and cult shoppers, is one of the most respected religious leaders in America. His classes are drawing a wider variety as well as a larger number of students since the war. Painters and psychiatrists seem especially interested in Zen, he finds. Psychoanalysts, says Dr. Suzuki, his tiny eyes twinkling under winglike eyebrows, have a lot to learn from Zen: "They go round and round on the surface of the mind without stopping. But Zen goes deep." The main difficulty Westerners have with Zen, says Suzuki, is their habit of thinking dialectically--either-or. sub ject-object, positive-negative. Zen sees only one instead of two. "Westerners analyze things," says Dr. Suzuki, "but in the East we see a thing all at once and with our whole bodies, instead of just our minds."

Dr. Suzuki's lectures are lectures only; Zen is a way and must be taught from heart to heart, from master to disciple, if it is to be practiced. The real future of Zen in the U.S. depends on English-speaking Roshis--masters who have attained enlightenment. One of the most likely candidates is blond, ruddy Walter Nowick, 30, a World War II veteran, raised on a Long Island potato farm, who is now studying at Kyoto's Sokokuji Temple. Nowick rises each morning at four to meditate on a koan such as:

"A man hangs over a precipice by his teeth, which are clenched in the branch of a tree. His hands are full, and his feet cannot reach the face of the precipice. A friend leans over and asks him. 'What is Zen?' What answer should the man make?"

*Not to be confused with Shin Buddhism, a liberal, elastic sect which comprises most of the 60,000 Buddhists in the U.S., a majority of them West Coast Nisei.

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