ABSTRACT
In 'Experiment in Zen', which appeared in the May issue, I said that the cauldron of the Zen Class of the Society was bubbling mightily. It has now bubbled over into a further experiment, in the group consideration of individual problems, with no apologies to similar experiments in the field of psychology. Meanwhile, as the previous article only reported about half the answers to the first question paper, and as the remainder were if anything of a higher standard still, I have asked the Editor to let me have space for further comment. The keynote is still the intense virility of personal experience, with the authority of scriptures and well-worn phrases, and all 'isms, even Buddh-ism, left behind. I warned the class of the old and occult law by which any deliberate, planned and sustained effort to take the 'shadow' self in hand and to expand consciousness ahead of the average of one's friends and associates, produces its own fresh crop of dukkha (suffering), on the mental, emotional and even physical planes. And the troubles came, so thick and fast that I was glad that the sufferers were duly warned. There is indeed a need, as one writer puts it, 'to grade the Class and Circle and Group in respect of the teaching given and the exercises demanded with some kind of appraisal of psychological maturity'. But the suffering will be felt, whatever the grade, until the end of self. As the same writer elsewhere says, 'Only by dying to myself in the moment, to words, thought, and even to the desire to die, can Zen be revealed. Only then is the actor and the action one, and the problem and the solution the same'. For the material of the Zen search is life itself. The secret lies 'in accepting life as it presents itself. Again, 'the task of being alive is to live. To con-
template the futility of it all, and the suffering of it all, thus severing oneself from life, seems to me still a form of escape'. The same happy mind goes further, 'Zen is my way, and I shall go it because I cannot go any other. Besides, I like it. I do not have a goal to which to strive, but simply enjoy walking . . . the movement of the walking on is joy'. And as another points out, and psychologists would heartily agree, the walk is with the whole man. 'Because man strives to be whole he is not,' and we cannot leave the part of ourselves we loathe and despise at the foot of the hill while the 'better Self climbs to the top. 'When illumination comes it illumines all of us', and, as another says, 'the goal and the way cannot be different; one finds the way by treading it, one's spiritual forces by using them, and without humility and poverty one gets nowhere at all.' 'Zen,' says another, 'is in the living of the moment; it is not to be found anywhere, but comes from an unfolding centre'. Or, as yet another writes, 'the experience of Zen is within this life; Zen is here, not a state to be sought outside life. Religious activity is activity on the plane of daily life', which another caps magnificently with, 'I regard Zen as the religion to abolish all religion. The word religion means a rebinding . . . but Zen, at the supreme moment, swallows itself.
