from one illness only to fall victim to another. We can never be free from illness
that way. This in itself can be considered a most deep-seated illness.... I pointed
this out as the vicious cycle of psychoanalytic therapy. It is the fatal shortcoming
of psychoanalytic treatment. A truly thoroughgoing cure can only be achieved
by severing the root of all illness.
(cf. Meckel and Moore 1992:117)Zen Buddhist expressions such as ‘One cut, all is cut’ describe this complete and final,
total and immediate awakening. ‘Immediate’ here does not mean temporally sudden
or abrupt, but, literally, un-mediated: dukkha—the entire temporal-spatial complex
of self-world—has collapsed. Awakening cannot be a gradual, step-by-step process;
it is, naturally, total and immediate.
Thus, neither can it be approached through mere theory—nor through practice
in the ordinary sense of the self trying to do something. This is likened to trying to
free oneself while only becoming more tightly bound and entangled. In a very real
sense the self cannot go toward or approach awakening; we can only decisively come
from it, through self-awakening in which the root of dukkha has been severed once
and for all.
From No-self to formless selfSevering the root of dukkha has a positive as well as a negative significance. The basic
Buddhist teaching of ‘No-self,’ mentioned above, was given a more affirmative
rendering in Mahayana Buddhism, and especially in Chinese Zen. Hisamatsu
preferred terms like ‘true self,’ ‘original self,’ and ‘formless self’ because one is not just
breaking free from all conditioned forms, but rather realizing who I truly am—and
that I am originally so.
The same holds true for ‘dependent origination’ or ‘dependent co-arising’—the
basic Buddhist teaching that all things and events, internal and external, mutually
arise and cease while depending on conditions which are themselves interdependent.
In Zen Buddhism, dependent co-arising was transformed into ‘self-emancipated and
independent’ (doku-datsu mu-e). This is another key expression used often by
Hisamatsu, based on two terms found in The Record of Lin-chi (Japanese: Rinzai, the
leading Tang dynasty Zen master after whom Rinzai Zen is named).
‘Self-emancipated’ refers to being awakened by oneself; ‘independent’ means not
dependent on anyone or anything. In short, ‘self-emancipated and independent’ not
only declares that there is no substantial reality anywhere; it requires that one actually
awaken to this by and as oneself. Further, one then works freely and autonomously
as this living, active ‘Nothingness’ or ‘Emptiness.’
In their discussion, Jung emphasized the importance of the unconscious.
Hisamatsu countered by stressing the necessity to be liberated ‘even from the collective
unconscious, and from the bondage which derives from it’ (cf. Meckel and Moore
1992:111). Hisamatsu was not denying the relative value of psychotherapy for the
troubled self; rather, he was directly pointing out the need to awaken to our formless,
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