their own culture faces and their clear formulations of the typical motives for the
interest of Westerners in various forms of Eastern spirituality. These interpretations,
however, remain on the level of assimilation. In other words, the interpretive
framework used is taken for granted, and therefore awaits a deeper analysis.
Between Zen and psychology, as I pointed out elsewhere (Muramoto 1983), there
are so far only a few meaningful dialogues because each of them has only insufficient
knowledge of the other, yet believes, without any serious reflection upon its own
possible prejudices, to know the other well. The primary concern in a dialogue is not
to prove which party is the greater, but to let the truth reveal itself through the dialogue
so that both parties gradually and mutually deepen their understanding of each other
and confirm their common ground. A dialogue is no competition or conquest but
an experiential process of the common participation in finding the truth, and
demands the confession that everyone knows the truth a little but not in its totality.
It is worthy of practice in our pluralistic world.
[First published in Psychologia 38 (1985):101–14.]
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