Artscope | Online edition of Daily News

A news item about the reading habits of the younger generation in West was carried in the Daily Telegraph. It announced that Zen stories, poems and paintings have become quite popular as against the existing patterns of other creative forms. I was pressed to reemphasise the Zen creative concepts as I translated some Zen stories from English to Sinhala some years ago. I was inspired to do so as a result of a chance to browse some rare collections of Zen literature lying in Christmas Humphreys library at the Amaravathi monastery in Hammel Hampstead, UK.

Zen places great stock in the dignity of one’s work, regardless of how humble the circumstances are. It places great shock in the quiet performance of the duties one has in his world. If we are to reach a state of peace and joy, we must begin to like who we are, and what we are doing.

In the first instance my attention was drawn towards a collection of Zen stories, titled ‘Zen Flesh, Zen Bones’ (a collection of Zen and pre-Zen writings compiled by Paul reps, Anchor Books, NY first published in London in 1939)

10 bulls

This compilation includes four small books titled as ‘101 Zen stories’, ‘The gateless gate’, ‘10 bulls’ and ‘Centering’ published separately in 1939, 1934, 1935 and 1955 respectively. It is recorded that the first Zen patriarch Bodhidharma brought Zen to China from India in the sixth century. According to his biography recorded in 1004 by the Chinese teacher Dogen, after nine years in China Bodhidharma wished to go home and gathered his disciples about him to test their appreciation. It is also believed that the directness of Zen has led many to believe it stemmed from sources before the time of the Buddha, 500 BC. Zen comes from the Chinese word Ch’an meaning ‘meditation’. As defined by D T Suzuki (1870 - 1906), who has greatly popularised it in Western countries, Zen is ‘the Chinese way of applying the doctrine’ of the Enlightenment in our practical life.

Buddhist philosophy was carried to China in 520 AD by Bodhidharma, a Buddhist monk who deplored the waning of enthusiasm for the by now ancient teachings of the master and who taught they might be revised on new grounds. Here it underwent many internal and external changes. Authentic is in disagreement over the reason for the alterations. Some have said that it was not in the Chinese character to accept a philosophy whole and intact from another culture; others maintain that Buddhism was too abstract and remote for the more realistic Chinese mind. Whatever the cause, the fact is that Zen is a different school of Buddhism, with a different focus.

Zen Buddhism appeals to a wide range of people, from the farmer who must chase after wandering sheep and worry about this year’s wheat crop to the monk who devotes his entire life to the search for ultimate enlightenment. One salient point that Zen teaches is the fact that it is possible to liberate oneself from the pain of living. According to Zen Buddhism, however, it is not necessary to cut oneself off from the world in order to do so.

Finite existence

Zen begins by teaching as the necessity of accepting one’s life for what it is, at whatever point it is. You are suggested not to mourn for what is not. Not to live in terms of other times and other places. Not to be always wishing one were someone else, doing something else. Begin where you are, with the reality of your own finite existence.

According to Suzuki in ‘Essays in Zen Buddhism’ (1961), there is nothing mysterious in Zen. Everything is open to your full view. If you eat your food and keep yourself cleanly dressed and work on the form to raise your rice or vegetables, you are doing all that is required of you on this earth, and the infinite is realised in you.

Quiet performance

Zen also speaks of reality, of actuality being where we are when we are there. There is all the difference in the world between the direct experience of an object, a person, or an event and the mind’s idea of these things.

One of the most sensitive usages relating to the Zen practice is ‘Satori’ which explains the meditative mood in Zen. According to Suzuki, the life of Zen begins with the opening of ‘Satori’, which may be defined as an intuitive looking into the nature of things in contradistinction to the analytical or logical understanding of it.

Satori

‘Satori’ is also the brief an instant state of happiness one obtains or achieves through the inner realisation, of an outer happening. An example to illustrate this state could be explained only via a Zen stories. Following is one such example often quoted over the years: Nan-in, a Japanese Master during the Meigi era (1868-1912) received a university professor, who came to inquire about Zen.

Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring. The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. ‘It is full already Master. No more will go in.”

“Like this cup,” Nan-in said, “you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”

Moment of bliss

For the general reader, this short narrative which runs to a few lines may sound commonplace. But a sensitive reader may capture the moment of bliss embedded in it, which could be expressed as the ultimate and instant bliss, or Satori.

Most of these Zen stories were transcribed into English from a book called ‘Shaseki Shu’ (collection of stone and sand) written in the 13th century by the Japanese Zen teacher Maju (the non dweller) and from various books published in Japan around the turn of the 20th century.

In the West, most of these stories are known as short narratives linked to the meditative state of the mind which culminates in the self discovery. It is also recorded that Zen had had a major influence on the popular culture as well. The sense of unity, with nature, is vividly shown in Zen Buddhist paintings as well. Zen thought also had an influence on short poems like Haiku. One such poem goes as:

Once the Nobel laureate Hermann Hesse writing a letter ‘to a young colleague in Japan’ (1947) stated, ‘It should not be necessary to remind you for you are neither a savage nor a victim of faulty education, but an adherent of Zen Buddhism. Thus you have a faith, you have the guidance of a spiritual discipline that has equals in teaching men to admit light to open themselves to the truth.”

Anawaratha Sinhala narrative poem

The Sinhala narrative poem ‘Anawaratha’ by Dr. Prabhath Jayasinghe, who emerged as a poet in the nineties, will come out at the New Arts Theatre (NAT), University of Colombo on January 21 at 4.00 p.m. Dr. Liyanage Amarakeerthi of University of Peradeniya will speak on ‘Aesthetic and textual functions of narrative poem: in relation of Anawaratha, the Sinhala narrative poem.’

The narrative develops as an unending set of events viewed through the contradiction of harmony between an elderly person who had been expelled from his Motherland for a long period due to his engagement in anti-Government activities and a youth who experienced the dramatic occurrences within the country during the same period. The author’s first book ‘Niyatha Vivarana’, an anthology of poems, was published in the first half of the nineties.