ABSTRACT
The modernist vision of Zen based on the priority of pure experience echoes, mutatis mutandis, the conventional understanding of mysticism within the Western religions. The appeal to art or aesthetics among scholars of Japanese culture and religion Zen, in particular invariably involves an appeal to intuition and an implicit critique of abstract thinking and rational thought. A number of writers have tried to show that this non-rational approach to existence is distinctively Japanese. The center of mystical religion is the mystical experience, which at its highest development dominates the consciousness, excluding all awareness of words, nature, even of the mystic's own self. This 'mystical' reading of Zen has been criticized by a number of scholars, such as Robert Sharf and James Whitehall. Sharf notes that in modern Zen, the 'heart' of Zen does not lie in its ethical principles, its communal and ritual practices, or its doctrinal teachings, but rather in a private, veridical, often momentary 'state of consciousness'.
