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.