We do not deal this harsh critic of ZEN by Arthur
Koestler in all points but what he is saying about Herrigel and Suzuki is
absolutely correct.
Arthur Koestler –
"Neither Lotus nor Robot" – in: Encounter, Vol. XVI, London 1961, 59
Neither Lotus nor Robot
In the November issue of ENCOUNTER, John Strachey accused me, rather
flatteringly, of having started “with Darkness at Noon... the
literature of reaction... the retreat from rationalism... a reaction
against five hundred years of rationalism and empiricism; against, in
short, the enlightenment. That is its scandal.” In the December issue, Mr.
Christmas Humphreys, Q.C., accused me of the opposite crime, of being too
much of a rationalist to share in the "intuitive delights" of his
particular brand of mysticism, i.e., Zcn. I am not complaining,
falling between two stools may be preferable to settling down, if both of
them smell of dry rot.
That
Western rationalism has acquired that smell is evident, and tacitly agreed
by all participants in this controversy. It seems equally obvious, and
inevitable, that a culture threatened by strontium clouds should yearn for
the Cloud of Unknowing. My point was that the simple abdication of reason
in favour of a spurious mysticism does not resolve the dilemma; and I have
tried to prove that both Yoga and Zen, as practised to-day, are
spurious and degenerate. I am grateful to Professor Jung for his
authoritative endorsement of this diagnosis, and not only for personal
reasons; his statement will help to dispel the fog. With the remainder of
his article, defending intuition against the monopolistic claims of logic,
I am in full agreement; he apparently did not realise that this was the
starting point of my book (and implied in its title, The Lotus and the
Robot).
Mr.
Christmas Humphreys objected to my being only concerned with Zen in Japan and not in China. But Chinese Zen, which
went into decline some five hundred years ago, is virtually extinct; and it
is the Japanese brand, packaged for export by Professor Suzuki, that is
dumped on the West. Then he quoted Suzuki himself to show that Zen should
be tied neither to Japan
nor to China,
because it "has its own life independent of history." Now that
statement is true of any system of ideas, but no longer true when that
system becomes embodied in a church, cult, or school; and the only
contemporary embodiment of Zen is Japanese Zen, as Mr. Humphreys well
knows. So why quibble?
AND
WHY MUST the Master and his pupils write book after book to explain that
Zen cannot be explained, that it is "literally beyond thought, beyond
the reach of thought, beyond the limits of the finest and most subtle
thinking," in a word, that it cannot be put into words? We know that
not only mystical experience defies verbalisation; there is a whole range
of intuitions, visual impressions, bodily sensations, which also refuse to
be converted into verbal currency. Painters paint, dancers dance, musicians
make music, instead of explaining that they are practising no-thought in
their no-minds. Inarticulateness is not a monopoly of Zen; but it is the
only school which made a philosophy out of it, whose exponents burst into
verbal
diarrhœa
to prove constipation.
In
medieval Japan and
earlier in China,
Zen fulfilled a vital function as a deliberately amoral and illogical
antidote to the rigours of a hierarchic, crampeds, elf-conscious society.
Its motto was: reverse the paradox of the centipede, don’t think, just
walk. That’s good advice to the centipede, but very bad in societies which
tend to run amok. In the form in which it is taught and practised to-day,
Zen spells intellectual and moral nihilism. The first, because the emphasis
is not on marrying intuition to reason but on castrating reason. And the
second, because its moral detachment has degenerated into complacency
towards, and complicity with, evil. As the Master himself tells us:
Zen
is... extremely flexible in adapting itself to almost any philosophy and
moral doctrine as long as its intuitive teaching is not interfered with. It
may be found wedded to anarchism or fascism, communism, democracy…. (Zen and Japanese Culture - London 1959, p. 63)
What
is one to think of an "intuitive teaching" that can be
"wedded" to the mystique of genocide? By virtue of its
anti-rationality and amorality, Zen always held a fascination for a
category of people in whom brutishness combines with pseudo-mysticism, from
Samurai to Kamikaze to Beatnik. Mr. Humphreys is an exception; but the case
of Herrigel (Zen in theArt o[ Archery), mentioned in Professor
Scholem’s letter [in this number, p. 96] is typical. He was the star pupil
among Western converts both before and after his Nazi career. In Dr.
Suzuki’s preface, written in 1953, to "’this wonderful little book by
a German philosopher," there is no mention of that past and no word of
apology; instead the Master has the sweet gall to tell us how, through the
practice of archery, the mind is brought into contact with the ultimate
reality... "childlikeness" is restored after long years of
training .... When a man reaches that stage of spiritual development, he is
a Zen artist of life .... He is the showers, the ocean, the stars, the
foliage. – And the gas-chambers.
WHEN
THE ARCHER had gone to Valhalla, Frau
Gustie, his faithful and formidable widow, published a companion volume
about Zen in theArt o[ Flower Arrangement, with another gushing
preface by Dr. Suzuki in which reference was made to "the lilies of
the field whose beauty was not surpassed by Solomon." It is time for
the Professor to shut up and for the Western intelligentsia to recognize
contemporary Zen as one of the "sick" jokes, slightly gangrened,
which are always fashionable in ages of anxiety.
Debunking
is not an inspiring job. When John Donne wrote, "T’is all in pieces,
all cohesion gone," he was uttering an earlier "strangled
cry." He also wrote, "With a strong sober thirst, my some
attends"; and that thirst cannot be quenched by hooch.
Arthur Koestler
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