Thus far, like a typical philosopher, I’ve been trying to explain what Zen and Buddhism is—and, odd as it may seem, this is really quite the wrong thing to do. And, stranger still, if in these talks I succeed in giving you some sort of impression that you understand, that the whole problem has been made clear in words, I shall really have deceived you. Because, you see, part of the whole reason why life seems problematic to us, and why we go in for philosophies to try and clear it all up, is that what we are trying to do is: we are trying to fit the order of the universe to the order of words. And that’s, in a way, what I’m trying to do in making this whole question of Eastern philosophy clear.

I’ve said in previous programs that the real basis of Buddhism is not a set of idea, but an experience—and this, of course, is something altogether other than words. If you have, say, tasted a certain taste—the taste of water—you know what it is. But to somebody who hasn’t tasted it, it can never be explained in words. But the problem goes far beyond that. It’s basically that the whole order of the world is different from the very simple order of syntax, of grammar. And that while, on the one hand, the order of the world is extraordinarily complex, the order of words is really very, very simple. And therefore to try and explain life is really as clumsy an operation as trying to drink water with a fork.

But this is what makes everything seem so problematic. When we say we’re trying to make sense out of life, that means, in a way, that we’re trying to treat the real world as if it were a collection of words. Now, words have a meaning. You can look them up in the dictionary, and they mean something other than words. But you can’t look up actual people, or mountains, or actual stars, in a dictionary. They’re not in a dictionary. They’re not words. And therefore, they’re not signs. But the real difficulty that we encounter in trying to make sense out of life is that we are trying to fit a very, very complex order—life itself—to a very, very simple order, the order of words. And this involves us in all kinds of tangles and difficulties.

Now, in the Chinese language there are two terms which signify these two different orders, represented in two different characters. And the first character is tse. And this means “the order of things as measured,” “the order of things as written down.” And so, in one sense, this word has the meaning of “law.” Sometimes, when you speak of the law of nature. But the law of nature could never be tse unless we made an attempt to describe it, to write it down, so that we can think about it in words. But this word, as I said, only means “the order of things as we can think about them”—in words or in numbers or in some kind of measures.

Chinese language has another word for the actual order of nature, and this word is lǐ. This is a peculiarly interesting term, because its original meaning is “the markings in jade,” or “the grain in wood,” or “the fiber in muscle.” And it has been translated by the great student of Chinese thought, Joseph Needham, as “organic pattern.” But it refers to the kind of complex order that we see, for example, when we look at the stars and see a gaseous nebula. Something extremely indeterminate in its form. Or perhaps, again, when we look at markings in rock and see this glorious rippling which is incredibly difficult to describe, although easy enough to understand with our eyes and our feeling. But to try and put that kind of order into words is always beyond us, and it is for this reason that the attempt to make sense of life will always fail.

Now, this order of lǐ, of the infinite complexity of organic pattern, is also the order of our own bodies and of our own brains and our nervous systems. We actually live in terms of that order. For as I’ve often said, we don’t figure out in words or in ordered thoughts how we grow our own bodies, how we structure our bones, how we regulate our metabolism. And we don’t really even know how we manage to be conscious, how we actually think, and how we actually make decisions. We do these things, indeed, but the processes of the order of the physical body which underlie them are completely mysterious to us. And that means we can’t describe them—even though we can do them. I can open and close my hand, and a physiologist can tell me exactly how I do it in his physiological terms. But, strangely enough, that doesn’t really enable the physiologist to open and close his hand any better than I can do it, who don’t understand the physiology of the thing at all.

And so, you see, we are actually relying all the time upon this peculiar unintelligible—that is, unintelligible in words—form of natural order. It’s at the basis of everything we do. And even when we try to figure something out and describe it in words, make a decision on the basis of that, we are relying unconsciously upon a kind of order that we don’t figure out at all. And that order constitutes what in Chinese would be called our xing, that means our “basic nature.” And Zen Buddhism is described as the art of seeing into one’s own nature.

Now, you see, as we are ordinarily brought up in the process of education by our parents and by our teachers, we are very carefully drilled not to rely on our spontaneous functioning. We are taught very carefully to figure everything out—that is to say: the first thing we learn in life is the names for everything. And that teaches us to treat all the various things of the world as separate objects—a tree is a tree. And we are taught also to behave consistently, almost as if we were characters in a book. You know how the critics criticize a character in a novel very often. They say Mr. So-and-so, the author, doesn’t make his characters very consistent—as if they were actually consistent in life. And I think sometimes we take our cues for living from literature.

And therefore, since we are brought up to make sense of ourselves, to be able to account for ourselves—that is to say: to be able to rationalize our actions in words—we are always developing a kind of second self inside us, which in Zen is called the observing self. This is the self that, as it were, comments on us all the time, that asks, “Oh, what will other people say?” “Am I being consistent?” “Does what I do make any sense?” The sociologist George Herbert Mead called this the interiorized other. That is to say, we kind of have an interior picture of (a very general and vague kind) what the reaction to us is of other people. Now, that reaction is almost invariably communicated to us through what other people say and think. And therefore this becomes, as it were, interiorized as a second self who is commenting all the time upon what we’re doing.

Now, the difficulty of this is that—although it’s exceedingly important for all purposes of civilized intercourse and personal relationships to be able to make sense of what we’re doing, and to make sense of what other people are doing, and to be able to talk about it all in words—this nevertheless warps us. I mean, you know how we all admire the spontaneity and freshness of children. And then it’s regrettable but necessary that, as a child is brought up, it becomes more and more self-conscious, and it loses its freshness. And, more and more, the human being seems to be turned into a creature calculated to get in his own way. He gets in his own way because, as I’ve explained, he’s always questioning himself. He’s always trying to fit the order of his nature into the order of sense, the order of thoughts and words. And therefore he loses his naturalness, he loses his spontaneity. And for this reason we admire in very, very great people—whether they be sages or whether they be artists—a return in their mature life to a kind of child-likeness and spontaneity and freshness where they don’t bother anymore: what are people thinking, what are people saying?

You know, I was once having a talk with a friend, and we were discussing the kind of conversation where people bring up the question of the latest best-seller: “Have you read it?” And when I was about twenty years old, twenty-three, and so on, I always thought, “Oh, I have to say I’ve read it, even if I’ve read only a review.” Because somehow I would be shamed if I hadn’t. And he said, “You know, I’ve gotten to the stage of life where I don’t have to bother about that sort of thing at all anymore. If I haven’t read it, I haven’t read it. So what?” I mean, this is the simplest sort of example of the way a person, after a while, comes to accept his natural self.

Now, the process of educating people may be likened in a way to a procrustean bed. You know that gentleman in Greek mythology called Procrustes? He had a bed for overnight guests. And if they were too long for it, they were chopped down, if they were too short for it, they were stretched. And this always involved some injury to the overnight guest. And in the same way, the process of upbringing involves some warping of our nature. And Zen and Buddhism in general have as their objective a curing of this inevitable disease which we contract as a kind of poisonous byproduct of being civilized. You know, it’s like you salt meat to preserve it. But when you want to eat it, you have to soak the salt out of it. And so, in the same way, the barrier of awkwardness, of self-consciousness, can be taken away. And so you might say the objective of Zen is to restore a person to his original naturalness, his original spontaneity.

Now then, when a Zen master, then—who is such a person; who has regained his own naturalness—is asked such a question as, “What is the fundamental meaning of the universe?” he answers [clap]. In other words, he just acts. And the whole literature of Zen is full of extraordinary stories of this kind. For example, a student came to one of the old Chinese masters, whose name was Zhaozhou, and said, “I understand that when the body dies and crumbles away to dust, there is one thing that remains. What is that one thing?” And Jōshū said, “It’s windy again this morning.” On another occasion another student came to him and said, “I’d like to have some instruction in Buddhism.” And Jōshū said, “Have you had breakfast?” “Yes.” “Then go wash your bowl.” Period. Another old master was asked, “What is the entrance to the path?” He said, “Do you hear the mountain stream?” “Yes.” “There’s the way to enter.” And still another was up in front of a group of students one day, about to preach a sort of sermon. And just as he was opening his mouth to start, a bird was singing on a nearby tree. And so he waited and let the bird sing. When the bird finished he said, “The sermon has ended.”

The whole literature of Zen is full of tales of this kind—of apparently amazingly nonsensical responses to perfectly sensible philosophical or moral or religious questions. I mean, supposing in a Christian church a preacher got up and, after saying the preliminary invocation, remained dead silent for five minutes, and then walked down from the pulpit, or clapped his hands together and disappeared, or threw something at the congregation and said, “That’s it!” We would think he was out of his mind. And yet, in Zen this makes better sense than anything. Because the question comes from the order of words, the answer comes from the order of nature; from lǐ.

So is this the matter of saying: well, Zen is a kind of cult of whimsy, caprice, and uncontrolled spontaneity where we learn to act just as we please; anything goes? No, it’s not that. It is rather this: that we are so unaccustomed to acting with spontaneity that we have no faith in it, and therefore we don’t (as it were) acquire practice in the use of spontaneous action. We are only practiced in the use of deliberate action. And what Zen proposes to do is to give us training in the practice of spontaneous action. For at the basis of all Chinese thought there is a profound trust or faith in the natural functioning of our own mind-bodies. That is to say: it would never occur to them to make sense that we should mistrust our own nature, that we should say man’s nature is fundamentally depraved and unreliable. Because if that were true, we would not even be able to trust our own mistrusting. And then we should be tied up in an entirely vicious circle. To do anything at all, man has to be able to trust himself, and therefore to trust his own spontaneous functioning.

And for this reason, Zen Buddhism (historically, in China and Japan) has provided, as it were, the Zen monastery as a protected area in which this training can take place. Now, of course, I’m not right, exactly, in referring to it as a monastery. Because this is not a place which is a home for monks in our sense—that is, for people who take life vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. It’s rather more like a school, a training school or a seminary, where a student goes for a limited period for training in the art of Zen under circumstances which are protected. And thus the head of this sort of an institution is a Zen master. This is an old painting by Soga Jasoku, a Japanese painter, of the great Chinese master Linji. Look at that man! Tigerish, fierce, forbidding. Or consider a modern type: this is a living Zen master in Kyoto today. A serene, slightly humorous, powerful man completely at ease. Or this: Sokei-an Sasaki, who taught Zen in the United States for very many years. A master—but not a master in the ordinary sense. Because, in a way, he has nothing to teach. He has no system of doctrine. He really is a master created by a student, by a person seeking out such an individual because he seems to have this peculiar serenity, lack of self-consciousness, unproblematic way of life, to ask him: what is it all about? Will you please accept me as your student?

And so here a prospective student comes to a Zen monastery and asks to be admitted. And the answer is invariably: we don’t take anybody new here. There are lots of people here as it is, and there isn’t enough rice to go around. In any case, what would you study Zen for? What is there to study? There’s nothing to teach. And so he has to sit and wait, humbly and patiently, with his head on the steps, until the people inside, the master, feel like getting around to admitting him. This is, of course, a test of his sincerity, and it’s putting it up to him. You know the saying “anybody who goes to see a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined?” There are several double takes in that. And, in the same way, anybody who sticks his neck out and applies to study with a Zen master has applied to be taught what can’t be taught.

So, eventually, they let him in. And here he comes for his first interview with the master. And in this interview the master doesn’t tell him anything, and he simply asks him a question. You know, it’s not quite a silly question to get a silly answer. But if you want to know what the problem of life is, if you want to know the solution to it, the master asks him in effect, “Who is it that wants to know?” “Who are you?” But he may put it in the formal style of what is called kōan, which means a Zen problem for meditation, such as: “What is the sound of one hand?” Or, “Before your father and mother conceived you, what was your true nature?” In other words: who are you? Show me “you.” Don’t just give me a theory as to who you are, an idea, but demonstrate by an actual act which will show me your genuine, naked self.

And so the applicant goes away, and he learns to sit and meditate. It’s no good for him to think out intellectually the answer to this problem. Any kind of intellectual answer will be rejected. I remember a friend of mine was studying in Japan, and he got rather desperate. And as the answer to this question, he took a bullfrog in to the master and presented it with a bullfrog. And the master’s only comment was, “Too intellectual.” Deeper still than that, he has to find out: who am I? In other words, in the presence of this rather tiger-ish master—who is very much an authority figure for Chinese or Japanese people—he has to perform an absolutely natural act.

Now, you know how it is when you try to do something naturally: it is always a fake. Of course, the monk doesn’t spend all his time meditating. The regimen of the Zen monastery also includes labor, chopping wood, gardening, and all kinds of work to maintain the life of the community. But all the time he does this, he’s supposed to go on puzzling, puzzling, puzzling: how to present the master with some act that will answer the kōan, some act that will reveal his original self—that is to say, his purely spontaneous functioning.

And so, every so often, he goes in for an interview with the master, called sanzen. Here is a drawing by Zenchū Satō of the student confronted with the master. The master, there, with his big stick—not to punish him, but, as it were, to see if that student can be fazed. Here he comes. The student sits in the room and repeats the kōan he’s been given: “Before your father and mother conceived, what was your original nature?” And then he has to answer, like that, immediately, without a slightest deliberation. And the teacher is sensitive to the least bit of hesitation, the least bit of artificiality—the least bit of, as it were, contriving an answer.

And so the student lands in this terrible dilemma: everything he does to present the master with an answer is wrong. Time and time again he goes in, but it’s wrong. And at last he gets into a state of mind where he doubts everything. He doubts the ability of his intellect to solve these problems. He doubted that almost from the beginning. He doubts his own inner capacity to arrive at an answer spontaneously. He doubts his own reflex reactions to come out with, as it were, a spontaneous answer. Nothing that he can do is right. And this state is called technically in Zen the “great doubt.” And the master works to bring about that state.

Now, you see, when you get to the situation where you doubt everything you do, and you have no longer any confidence in yourself, what is happening is that your ordinary trained-in way of acting—acting deliberately—is being undermined. And when you come to the point that nothing you can do is right, suddenly there is a flip in consciousness, which is called in Zen satori, or “sudden awakening.” And at that moment the observing self—the self which comments on one’s self all the time, the self which obstructs—dissolves and disappears. And the flip is that, whereas everything I did was wrong, now it’s alright. And the monk becomes unobstructed, free as the clouds. And that is why a Zen monk is called unsui: “cloud and water.” For he drifts like cloud and flows like water.