THE GOLDEN AGE OF ZEN
By John C. Wu
National War College, Taipei
1967, 332 pp., US$1.50
Reviewed by Tu Hsiang-yang
Zen is more than a thousand by any considerable number of years old. Yet its discovery people awaited the 20th century. Today it is having a vogue not only in Asia but also in the West. Those who study what amounts to a Chinese reinterpretation of Indian Buddhism attest that Zen has the power to smooth our jangled nerve ends in these tempestuous, trying times.
Professor Wu, who is working on a much-needed English-language biography of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, has chosen to deal with the origins of Zen and its development in the Tang period (618-906 A.D.). In the appendix he also tells of his friendship with the Japanese Zen master, Daisetz Suzuki.
Professor Wu is himself a Roman Catholic and there is a lengthy and interesting introduction by Father Thomas Merton of the Abbey of Gethsemani.
Father Merton fears that those of Judeo-Christian background will have trouble understanding Zen. That is a churchman's view. Thousands of Westerners haven't had such supreme difficulty fitting Zen into their cultural mosaic.
However, Father Merton summarizes the negative side rather well when he writes: "Zen is not a systematic explanation of life, it is not an ideology, it is not a worldview, it is not a theology of revelation and salvation, it is not a mystique, it is not a way of ascetic perfection, it is not mysticism as this is understood in the West, in fact, it fits no convenient category of ours. Hence all our attempts to tag it and dispose of it with labels ... must be completely incongruous and proceed from a naive assumption that Zen pretends to justify the ways of God to man and to do so falsely."
Zen - in fact the very Buddhism of which Zen is a part - can be described as based in and on personalized experience and as having little to do with the explanations and revelations so relevant to Christianity. For our day and time, Father Merton makes too much of Christian "experience" - which certainly is important historically but doesn't play a large part in the life of today's practicing Christian.
"Christianity is a religion of grace and divine gift, hence of total dependence on God," says Father Merton. Zen strives, he says, "to make man completely free and independent even in his striving for salvation and enlightenment. Independent of what? Of merely external supports and authorities which keep him from having access to and making use of the deep resources in his own nature and psyche."
"Zen ... resists any temptation to be easily communicable, and a great deal of the paradox and violence of Zen teaching and practice is aimed at blasting the foundation of ready explanation and comforting symbol out from under the disciple's supposed 'experience' ... What Zen communicates is an awareness that is potentially already there but is not conscious of itself."
Zen can be thought of in the same breath with semantics. We do not see the object but the symbol, the word, the picture in our mind's eye. Zen tries to see directly - to "look" rather than "think". So it is that most of the Zen stories are not to be comprehended in rational terms. The master holds out no answers for the disciple; the latter must find his own.
Professor Wu rejects the thesis that Zen is of Indian origin, and quotes Hu Shih's remark that Zen grew from neither Indian yoga or Dhyana (the school of meditation) but as a revolt against them. Zen is comprehended in a moment of insight, a lazar journey into reality, a direct and intuitive penetration of being.
Zen as we know it begins with Hui-neng (638-713), the Sixth Patriarch, whose teachings Professor Wu sums up with a so-called four-point program after warning that such a summary is impossible because "Hui neng's mind works intuitively, and his perceptions and insights are too much like a rapidly flowing stream to be damned up within the four corners of a formula". These are the points:
1. "Special transmission outside the Scriptures." He means that reality and truth can be transmitted only from mind to mind and that the Scriptures are only a prop or perhaps a push.
2. "No setting up of words and letters." This means an avoidance of dependence or attachment to the spoken or written word. Again, this is a reflection of Zen's insistence upon intuition.
3. "Point directly at man's mind." Hui-neng regards self-nature as the king' and the mind as land and minister. The king is perfect but the minister is not always loyal. Semantically, we cannot think of the real mind, because it is the latter that is doing the thinking. "In speaking of the mind, therefore, we are not really pointing directly at the mind, but at best pointing to the pointing." This leads to Hui-neng's stress on no-thought or mindlessness - "the seeing of all things with your mind without being tainted or attached to them".
4. "See self-nature and attain Buddhahood." To perceive self-nature is to attain Buddhahood. In Hui-neng's view, "Our original nature is Buddha, and apart from this nature there is no other Buddha." Man's self-nature contains all; there is nothing else. By Buddhahood, Hui-neng means enlightenment; Buddhas are the enlightened.
Professor Wu takes up each of the Tang masters and tells something of the life and teachings of each. Then, in an epilogue, he presents what he calls "little sparks of Zen". For some, they will shed light; for others they may contribute to the confusion. For instance:
- A monk asked the master Ch'u-hui Chen-chi as he appeared for the first time as an abbot, "I hear that when Sakyamuni began his public life, golden lotus sprang from the earth. Today, at the inauguration of Your Reverence, what auspicious sign may we expect?" The new abbot said, "I have just swept away the snow before the gate."
- The masters of Zen often resort to the trick of putting their students in a dilemma from which there is apparently no outlet. When Tien was studying under Ming-chueh of Ts'ui-feng, the latter made an enigmatic statement: "Not this, not that, not this and that altogether!" That set T'ien-i wondering. As T'ien-i was reflecting on this, Ming-chueh drove him out by beating. This happened several times. Later, Tien-i was put in charge of carrying water. Once the pole on his shoulder suddenly split so that the pails fell to the ground, pouring out the water. At that very moment he was awakened to his self-nature and found himself out of the dilemma.
- The Zennists are so independent that they have often declared that they got nothing from their masters. As Hsueh-feng said in regard to his master Te-shan, "Empty-handed I went to him, and empty-banded I returned." Strictly speaking, this is true. No master would claim to have instilled anything into his disciple. Still, the master does have a necessary function to perform. When Shih-t'ou visited his master Ch'ing-yuan for the first time, the master asked, "Where do you come from?" Shih-t'ou answered that he was from Ts'ao-ch'i, where the Sixth Patriarch had been teaching. Then Ch'ing-yuan asked, "What have you brought with you?" Shih-t'ou replied, "That which had never been lost even before I went to Ts'ao-ch'i." Ch'ing-yuan further asked, "If that is the case, why did you go to Ts'ao-ch'i at all?" Shih-t'ou said, "If I had not gone to Ts'ao-ch'i how could I realize that it had never been lost?"
And so on.
The English-language literature on Zen is sizable and growing fast. Those who want to know something of the origins and what the masters said - rather than an explanation of what somebody thinks they meant - will want to read the Golden Age of Zen. In the wont of Taiwan typesetting and proofreading, the typographical errors are numerous, and the book would have profited from tighter editing. But these are minor faults and by Western standards (note the price on the U.S.-published volume reviewed below), Professor Wu's tome is a bargain.
NEGOTIATING WITH THE CHINESE COMMUNISTS
By Kenneth T. Young
McGraw-Hill, New York
1968, 461 pp., US$10.50
Reviewed by Chrles C. Clayton
Kenneth T. Young served as deputy U.S. representative during the Panmunjom talks with the Communists in 1953-1954 and as ambassador to Thailand from 1961 to 1963. He is now president of the Asia Society. Out of his experience with the Chinese Communists in Korea and his background in the U.S. diplomatic service he has written a significant and timely study of Red China's strategy of negotiation. In view of the Vietnam peace negotiations, this must be considered one of the most important books of the year.
Young's book also is of special interest for the Republic of China, because it treats in impressive detail the events that culminated in the Taiwan Straits crisis of 1958. The forces of the Republic of China, backed by U.S. naval power, broke the blockade of Kinmen and the Nationalist Air Force inflicted a decisive defeat on the Communists by downing 26 MIGs in one day. Much of this story is still vivid in the memory of the people of Taiwan, but Young sheds new light on the long diplomatic confrontation of the period.
Secretary of State John Foster Dulles is quoted as saying, shortly before his death, "that cession of the offshore islands to Communist China would have led to disaster. Communist China would have begun its objective of driving us out of the Western Pacific, right back to Hawaii and even to the United States". Young adds that Dulles would have recommended the use of nuclear weapons at that time if it had been necessary.
The first half of the book is devoted to what the author describes as "the longest established permanent floating diplomatic game" in modern history - the more than 130 informal talks between Red China and the United States at Geneva and Warsaw. While "virtually empty of results", Mr. Young believes they have been "full of consequences" and have provided Washington with more continuous diplomatic contact and diversified dialogue with Peiping than has been given to any of the other non-Communist Western nations. The full story has never been told and much of it must still be pieced together, since the official record is secret.
While Red China did, in the author's judgment, receive some benefits from the talks in the period between 1953 and 1958, overall Peiping suffered a major setback. Instead of obtaining American withdrawal from Taiwan, Peiping "generated a greatly increased long-term deployment of American ail-inclusive forces into the Taiwan area". Young writes: "From this standpoint the Warsaw talks produced a strategic miscalculation and diplomatic blunder of major proportions for Red China."
For the United States and the free world, the talks provide some valuable lessons for negotiating with Communist China. These are pertinent in judging the current effort to reach a peaceful settlement regarding Vietnam. One basic point to remember, the author believes, is that while the democracies value the dignity and rights of the individual, the Red Chinese view individuals and prisoners as hostages to be used for bargaining purposes. As he puts it, "The state is all important, while individuals are only instruments or resources to be used for achieving its goals."
Communist-style negotiations, he warns, are aimed at the capitulation, not the accommodation of an enemy with whom there can be no lasting coexistence. Temporary agreements may be permissible, but they should never lose sight of Communism's ultimate goal, which is "total, inevitable defeat and destruction of United States 'imperialism' ". Whether, when and what to concede without loss, he adds, is the sternest test of nerves for the American negotiator.
The Warsaw talks provide an example of Mao and Chou En-lai's diplomatic strategy. They have consistently sought to use the talks for propaganda purposes. At the outset, the two sides agreed that nothing would be made public without mutual consent. This was violated by the Chinese Communists whenever they believed it was to their advantage. As at Panmunjom, they frequently resorted to insult and abuse. But the American policy of firmness and refusal to be drawn into diversionary issues thwarted Peiping. Not only did the United States and Nationalist China administer a decisive setback to Red China in Asia, but Mao was denied recognition, the elimination of American trade restrictions and the admission of Red China to the United Nations.
In his final chapter Young takes a long look into the future. As long as the man across the bargaining table is a Maoist or neo-Maoist, he suggests, all the free world negotiators can do is to "sit tight and talk straight" knowing that there will be no result. The best course, in the author's opinion, is not to try to figure out what is in the Chinese Communist mind but to concentrate on making sure that the Communist "is left in no doubt as to what is in the American mind for the present and for the future too."
The ultimate hope, he believes, is that Red China will change. New pressures and changing situations will be brought to bear. Wise policy will therefore take advantage of the new and the unexpected. "The machinery should be kept for listening, probing and proposing when the time comes," he writes. While he is careful not to become involved in the Republic of China's role, the inference is plain that Taiwan can playa significant role in the future. Admittedly the stakes are high. As one American newspaper commented after Red China's third nuclear explosion: "No nation can be allowed to roam the world as a lone wolf with hatred in its heart and hydrogen bombs at its command."
This is a thoughtful and sobering book. It is significant, not only for the new material it brings to light on Red Chinese diplomacy but also as a guide for the free world in Vietnam and elsewhere in Asia. It is the seventh volume in the series on "The United States and China in World Affairs" sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations with a grant from the Ford Foundation.