This curious statement seems to abound with paradox. It is a little
reminiscent of this surefire cure for hiccups: "Run around the house three
times without thinking of the word 'wolf'." Zen is a philosophy which seems
to have embraced the notion that the road to ultimate truth, like the only
surefire cure for hiccups, may bristle with paradoxes.
Ism, The Un-Mode, and Unmon
If words are bad, and thinking is bad, what is good? Of course, to ask this is
already horribly dualistic, but we art~ making no pretense of being faithful
to Zen in discussing Zen-so we can try to answer the question seriously. I
have a name for what Zen strives for: ism. Ism is an antiphilosophy, a way of
being without thinking. The masters of ism are rocks, trees, clams; but it is
the fate of higher animal species to have to strive for ism, without ever
being able to attain it fully. Still, one is occasionally granted glimpses of ism.
Perhaps the following koan offers such a glimpse:^7
Hyakujo wished to send a monk to open a new monastery. He told his pupils
that whoever answered a question most ably would be appointed. Placing a
water vase on the ground, he asked: "Who can say what this is without calling
its name?"
The chief monk said: "No one can call it a wooden shoe."
Isan, the cooking monk, tipped mer the vase with his foot and went out.
Hyakujo smiled and said; "The chief monk loses." And Isan became the
master of the new monastery.To suppress perception, to suppress logical, verbal, dualistic
thinking-this is the essence of Zen, the essence of ism. This is the Un-
mode-not Intelligent, not Mechanical, just "Un". Joshii was in the Un-
mode, and that is why his 'MU' unasks the question. The Un-mode came
naturally to Zen Master Unmon:^8
One day Unmon said to his disciples, "This staff of mine has transformed
itself into a dragon and has swallowed up the universe! Oh, where are the
rivers and mountains and the great earth?"
Zen is holism, carried to its logical extreme. If holism claims that things
can only be understood as wholes, not as sums of their parts, Zen goes one
further, in maintaining that the world cannot be broken into parts at all. To
divide the world into parts is to be deluded, and to miss enlightenment.A master was asked the question, "What is the Way?" by a curious monk.
"It is right before your eyes," said the master.
"Why do 1 not see it for myself?"
"Because you are thinking of yourself."
"What about you: do you see it?"
"So long as you see double, saying 'I don't', and 'you do', and so on, your
eyes are clouded," said the master.
"When there is neither 'I' nor 'You', can one see it?"
"When there is neither 'I' nor 'You', who is the one that wants to see it?"9(^254) Murnon and G6del