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English Pages 192 [202] Year 1961
ZEN: a By
ERNEST BECKER, Ph.D. The appeal
of
Zen
to a variety of
and
West-
erners
both
sionals
has been increasingly evident
dilettantes
and, to some, has
profes-
become a matter
of
concern. Zen typifies an Eastern approach to problem-solving that
is
at the opposite
pole from Western ideals: the
human
being, puppetlike, manipulates himself in
the hope of coercing his environment.
Steeped in a tradition of magical omnipotence, the Zennist seeks to bring other-
worldly power to bear on this-worldly problems.
To
the question "Does Zen hold forth
something of value to the West?"
this
book makes an unremittingly negative answer. Zen, Dr. Becker remarks., has thus far escaped unscathed from traditional
and
Western skepticism about irrational
antirational approaches to
human
understanding. In this book, he provides
a
much needed
tive.
clarification of perspec-
He gives a fresh view of Zen's origins (Continued on back flap)
3 1148 00019 1981
-
29^ B3952 61-2378J Becker Zen: a rational critique
Zen: A
DATE OCT
f
Rational Critique
Zen: A
Rational Critique
By
ERNEST BECKER,
Department of Psychiatry, State University of
Ph.D. New YorL
Upstate Medical Center
W-W-NORTON & COMPANY, INC
.
New York
Copyright
1961 by Ernest Becker First Edition
Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 61-7474
Printed in the United States of America for the Publishers by the Vail-Ballou Press
123456789
To
Douglas G. Haring
",
.
.
the teacher imparts the
6123783
spirit."
CONTENTS
Introduction:
The Appeal
1
The
2
The Zen Buddhist
3
The Zen
of
Zen to the West, 13
Psychotherapeutic Personality Change, 23 Conversion, 43
Discipline as a Psychotherapeutic
Process, 87
4
The
Historical
An 5
The
Background
of Zen:
Anthropological View, 102
Central Psychological Role of the Trance
in Zen, 119
6
Zen Cosmology and Zen Values, 133
7
The Thought Reform
8
The
Rebirth, 143
Psychotherapeutic Meeting of East and
West, 155 9
Conclusion, 173 Bibliographic Notes and References, 185
Index, 190
"The
state of
mind, the state of society
is
of a piece.
.
.
,
A society holds together by the respect which man gives to man;
it fails
power,
when
in fact, its
it falls
concept of
apart into groups of fear
man
J.
"The danger lieve
to society
is
and
is false."
BRONOWSKI
not merely that it should beis great enough; but that it
wrong things, though that should become credulous."
W.K.CLIFFORD
Zen:
A
Rational Critique
INTRODUCTION
The Appeal
of
Zen to the West
A living man who sits and does not lie down; A dead man who lies down and does not sit! After
all
these are just dirty skeletons.
The Westerner who finds some charm in Zen is often hard put to reconcile the antinomy, so foreign to his own traditions, between its poignantly esthetic musings about man and nature and its blatant denial of life. The purpose of this book is not to effect reconciliation, but rather to show that Zen really & S^SSSLS^ life, abnegation of the Western ethic of individuation and autonomy which was ,sp Jaboripusly fashioned by Mediterfa"ilBM^iviIization and is still too precariously grasped. It is a trite observation that knowledge accumulates so quickly and voluminously that we are con-
stantly forced to rediscover something long known which has been quietly buried under the silt of more up-to-date thought or more pressing research. Yet this is what seems to have happened to Zen. The credulous new generations have to start again at the beginning and learn things all over; and with an ever new spirit
animating their strivings, it is inevitable that they should choose to delight themselves with the wrong things.
13
Zen, Thought Reform, and Psychotherapy
Of
course "wrong things"
is
a highly relative phrase;
traditions. Curiously, right and wrong depend on social this is the one area in which proponents of Zen to the West have been most remiss: they have without exception claimed that Zen is not only in harmony with Western tradition, but is in fact in essence more Western than the Western Greek and Christian-Judaic traditions themselves. This would be amusing if it were accepted only among a handful of gullible poets harmthe idea has inlessly dispersed in espresso shops. But fected some unimpeachable Western professionals, and
psychotherapists who possess a good deal over individuals. purpose here is neither power to make light of Oriental esthetics, nor to quench any
among them
My
Qf
possible proselytizing by the Buddhist religion, but simply to look at Zen "in the round" in the hope that if
we can be purged
of childish
dependence upon
omnipotence, we might view our imperfect
magical achievements and impossible problems with a selfreliant adult realism. Those who turn to Zen expect it to grant the most impossible of all the things that life
cannot give: a ready solution to the ponderous task and social adjustment and this without
of personal
the exercise of reason! -yllhe
denial of
mind
is
as old as
Buddhism; at
least
Buddhism's impotence to do something tanto aid gible suffering humanity judging by the cities and slums and rural misery of Asia. It has become so as old
is
important for everyone to have a "personal belief" in our society, which is so mistrustful of "bad intentions," that
we seem
to question content only in the case of Marxism. And even the idea that Marxism can actu-
14
The Appeal ally
be accepted
of
as a religion in the
countries absolves
it
of
some
evil. I
Zen
to the
West
underdeveloped
do not
at all
mean
to imply that one religion is better than any other, but simply that all religions do have a conceptual content;
and the nonbeliever
interested in certain facets of a
creative ends needs religion for esthetic or artistically for its eschatology of salvaalso to know the
premises
Western psychotherapists however their professional understanding of the Zen negation of reason and understand it. logic is perverted, at least do tion.
In Buddhist thought, the world is a terrible place which one is reincarnated again and again through aeons of time, to form attachments to things and loved
into
ones and be separated remorselessly from them by an is not fundaimpersonal fate. The Buddhist protest eternal mentally against life. Life is not bad; it is the a
from desired objectr ^RaTTFTfie gainful separation is
an
entirely impersonal flux in,
which nothing really "exists" except attachment and desire. The Buddhist salvation is freedom from desire and hence from rebirth^he_Zen doctrine is that instantaneous freedom is achieved by uniting oneself with the eternal essence; liberation from the fetters of existence is possible in the here and now, not merely at death or in in
Zen except
some life to come. Nothing this
able to this end. thing, in fact,
Zen
is
important
tsafil^^
Most expendable
which must be effaced
liberation to take place
of
all
one
tfie
in order for the
i^hgjitt^
mind tojhou^^^
^^
*
rom 15
Zen, Thought Reform, and Psychotherapy
We
shall the very possibility of union with the cosmic. of this roots historical examine later the magical and idea.
r.The negation of mind in Buddhist thought is rather Westerners generally known, and undoubtedly many the West in it. of find Zen attractive because Many revolt
both against reason's obviously majestic crea-
tions for the
good
life,
as well as
solve problems of personal
But
less
well
its
utter failure to
contentment and
creativity.
known than
fundamental to any
the negation of mind, method appraisal of it, is the
and Zen
uses to proselytizel^Zen is basically a technique by to achieve a mental breakdown of people so that Its rethey can be made to accept a new ideology.
which
semblance here to Chinese thought reform can be conclusively demonstrated. Also not widely enough recognized
is
version
that Zen's propensities for ideological conalso inherent in many forms of
and reform are
a basic psychotherapy practiced in the Wqst. There is which identity in the coercive and regressive processes
Zen, thought reform, and various Western psychotherapies use to achieve reform or conversion goals,
A
system of belief may be offensive to some, but the Zennists themselves will be the most tranquil in a reappraisal of facts which have slipped from view, or remained in the special "scientific" dissection of a
province of ivy-overgrown inaccessibility. They will relay the burden of critical defense back to the source of attack, by branding this "conscious/' "fragmented/' and hopelessly "unspontaneous" treatment because as a typical example of its symbolism is "learned"
the "error" of attachment they seek to eliminate. 16
But
The Appeal
of
Zen
to the
West
the examination of facts does not permit reduction to the same innocuous relativity as the assumption of
emotionally validated
beliefs. If it did,
we
could sub-
firecracker-propelled garbage cans for space rockets, and effect a considerable saving in the national stitute
budget.
No
purposeful argument
mystic, becianoser inniltimat^^ untenable premise, he invokes
thought process to arrive at
c^be^^dwi&thQ^ the bankruptcy of
what he
"really
mea^s."
Besides, the mystical position has been bolstered by the recruitment of many intellectuals here in the West:
Jung
is
revitalist
logic
one of the foremost to have answered the "Who'll step out and declare" cry against
and
rational analysis.
the "universal unconscious"
To is
judge by his writings,
a vast repository of heal-
ing symbols, a psychic bank which has been accumulated through untold generations of evolution, and which lies at the disposal of mankind for healing purposes. Appropriately, the symbolic plasma of this bank seems to have been largely contributed by the East, in
the form of
tranquilizing_mgndgZdg religious represen tationsoF universal harmony which have only to be seen or imagined in order for a mental reintegration to take place. One is hard-pressed to imagine a universal hereditary unconscious; and serious scholars have long since turned to more profitable preoccupations
ever since the
abandonment
of the doctrine that char-
acquired by the individual in his lifetime can be passed on to his progeny. Freud observed in the
acteristics
early part of this century that psychoanalytic theowho form their own school bring their per-
reticians
sonal faiths with
them
Jung
is
religious,
Adler was 17
Zen, Thought Reform, and Psychotherapy a socialist.
More recently,
the precious Zen
gift
Erich
Fromm's
gratitude for
from the East (these are his
directly traceable, as we shall see, to his conviction of the need for a greater spontaneity, a more
words)
is
total expression of the inner
man
than a culture ani-
mated by markets and Madison Avenue can give. The whole man to Fromm represents an original total potential which has been warped and channelized by the functional needs of a buying-and-selling society. Of course Zen is not limited in its appeal to those
who deny the value therapists.
of reason, or to apocalyptic psycho-
Zen answers the esthetic and
reflective
needs
of a variety of temperaments without suBjectmg them to complete conversion by means oFiEsrebifth method,
and without subverting clar% of tHnking. Zen enjoys favor in the West on many different levels, and its appeal defies ready explanationjlf o the philosophically minded, the Buddhist metaphysics of universal becoming has long provided rich conceptual fare; but this is not a new attraction, and Zen is only one of many speculative schools^ In the
West
synthesis
one
is
more modern
tempted
spirit of
East-
to use the epigram
is perhaps unfair Zen avows itself philosophically protean: in Japan Zen has been incorporated into Hegel, and in the West it has been equated with Kierkegaard, Existentialism, Faust, and Pragmatism. This is in the same spirit as Sri
"pooled ignorance*' but
it
Aurobindo's reconciliation of Indian spiritualism and European materialism.! Akin to the appeal of a philoobvious delight of the religious, mystical temperament in the submersion of telluric values, and even the conceptual ablation of a sophical esoterics
18
is
tfee
The Appeal
of
Zen
to the
West
universe of mind and matter. It is possible too to understand the creative becoming of Zen cosmology in a purely humanist sense; but this requires overlooking the core idea of and the susjiuddhi^n^ tained affirmation!^ Western
humanism
upholds. As for Zen's reputed manifestait is not enough realized that its in-
tions in the arts,
fluence on garden art, painting and poetry is more a post facto rationalization on the part of Zen adherents
than something historically
In Japan, Shinto is arts. Besides, the aesthetic response to creative forms need owe nothing to an understanding of Zen thought itself; anyone can appreciate: real.
the mother of the
A fallen flower Returning to the branch? It was a butterfly.
One
can be an excellent rock gardener and a Shintoist
as well.
But again, one does not begrudge Zen a historical connection with the arts in Japan these arts may well turn out to be a lasting contribution to an asphaltharried eye's need for a restful line and a rapport with nature, and there is no need to cavil at their proveni-
The most unwarranted aspect of Zen's appeal to West is the one which highlights the West's own critical bankruptcy. There are those who continue to ence.
the
impute to the East the ability to offer ready answers to the dilemma of man's existence, long after the East itself
I
West for more practically oriRomain Rolland's post-World War
has turned to the
ented approaches. poetic plaint
is still
typical:
19
Zen, Thought Reform, and Psychotherapy
Who, amid the disorder in which West
the chaotic conscience
struggling, has sought whether the fortycentury-old civilizations of India and China had not answers to offer to our griefs, models, it may be, for our
of the
is
1
aspirations?
The
unveiling of the Oriental
mind
initiated
by
excited nineteenth-century scholars is still not over; public translations oft esoteric texts have been given a i
new impetus by readers
M
_
_.
I'-
jiMLMMirt"'
'"'
1
the paperbacks. shelves
matter-of-factly to Joyce' Ulysses: the
Power next
A new generation of The Way and Its power to manipulate
magically resides in the vague, the mysterious, or simply in the uncomprehensible.
life
tractive because it
saying nothing; or,
purports to explain everything by when pressed, it offers in ultimate
mdescension arTenigmatic koan
:
A monk
asked, "All things are said to be reducible to the One, but where is the One to be reduced?" Chaochou answered, "When I was in the district of Ch'ing I 9 had a robe made that weighed seven chin! felt profundity strikes more the nonaspiring fact. Besides, the
In one's late teens the directly
home than
accumulation of punctilipus knowledge by one's elders seems stiff or irrelevant/The koanjs really an aggresviolent revolt against intellect.^. ErCummingS, so much in favor with college lias a poem wmcfi sive,
,
youtfi,
reveals that "feeling after the nature of
is first/'
and that he who inquires
things "will never wholly kiss you/' has validated the poet's insight: in an Psychoanalysis activity like kissing, regressive suspension of analytic
ihi a 2(f
preface to A. K.
Coomaraswamy's The Dance of
Siva, 1924.
The Appeal self-consciousness
formance. But
all
Zen
to the
West
in the service of ego-strong pernot a kiss. Is it an oedipally-
is
of
of
life is
infused blow that one strikes from his poetic retreat? "That's something you can't understand" is a defense against an overly-responsible world. a sullen, young Zen-inspired poet
When
known
who ma3e
thorough steeping in Zen prohis was fundity, admiring agemates to divulge urged by the "meaning of Zen/' he invariably deepened his reputation for profundity by responding with a painted smile an alternative to presenting a koan. Zen prohis unusually
vides the ultimate in lightly-resting armor: for the price of maintaining a silence infused with intensity,
one avoids having
t