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Form is emptiness. Emptiness is form.

The first thing to understand about Zen is that it is not any sort of doctrine, belief system, prescription, cosmology or philosophy. Zen has nothing to do with truth and falsity, nothing to do with finding the right answer, that one belief that corresponds to external reality. (The same is true of Zen's little brother, Discordianism.) Because of this, it is perhaps best not to regard Zen as a sect of Buddhism.
Zen is simply seeing reality just as it is, just as it reveals itself to consciousness at every instant:

A monk asked his master, "How can I realize the truth?"
The master said, "Do you hear the stream that is running by?"
"Yes."
"Enter there."

(There's an interesting convergence here with phenomenology, which Heidegger defined as "letting that which shows itself be seen".)

Zen is about getting behind or beneath or beyond (or whatever spatial metaphor you choose, all are equally false) all beliefs, thoughts, concepts and psychological hang-ups so that Being itself is seen. Strip away every concept and there is just the basic is-ness of reality. This is necessary because we are so damnably clever that we spend all our time manipulating concepts and symbols and words, so that we come to live entirely in the symbolic world and never in the real world. We eat menus instead of meals and then wonder why we're not satisfied by it.

Look around you. See the colours, but don't name them. See the shapes, but don't descry things in them. Hear the sounds, but don't worry about what they are. Stop conceptualizing and thinking. Just let the world go on worlding. Do this and you have entered a state of consciousness called meditation, the direct perception of non-conceptual reality.

Here and now, in reality, do you see such a thing as a "self" listening to those sounds? Can you really say that there is an internal "self" perceiving an external world? Isn't there just one Happening, neither external nor internal? Can your mental life exist without objects of perception? Can perceived objects exist without a perceiver? Obviously, in reality as revealed to consciousness, there is no "you" that is seperable from the objects that you perceive, just as a mirror has no image of its own, only the images of the things it reflects.

It's surprising - isn't it? - what doesn't exist in non-conceptual reality. The self does not exist, no things exist, no divisions exist, no events exist, the past and the future do not exist. There is just primordial is-ness, a single undifferentiated Happening which cannot be contained in any name, because it is not a concept. It is always here and never there, always now and never later, always this and never that. Different words have been tried: God, Tao, Brahman, Kia etc. but all these words are false, because all words refer to concepts and again, reality ain't a concept. This is why Lao-Tzu said that "the Tao that can be spoken of is not the true Tao". It is sometimes called the void, emptiness (in Sanskrit: sunyata) the Qabbalistic zero or Nothingness, not because it is absent, but because nothing can be said of it, it has no attributes and is entirely and majestically inconceivable.

An anarchist and a conservative can read the same newspaper, but they'll take completely different messages from it, you dig? This is because we interpose all kinds of beliefs, preconceptions and habits of thought between ourselves and the world (again, paralleling Heidegger). In Timothy Leary's terminology, we are constructing reality-tunnels for ourselves. So long as we are doing this we will never be in relation with reality itself. Zen means experiencing reality directly, without intellectual twisting. Zen art, especially haiku, aims to show things as they are, in their original simplicity and perfection. William Blake wrote, "If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is - infinite." Zen is nothing other than cleansing perception of hang-ups, concepts and beliefs so we can see the Tao, or what is called in Qabbalah "the boundless light".

So the Zen mind is a mind without fixed beliefs, without attachments, a mind that flows from moment to moment without becoming attached to anything. It is a mind without hang-ups (in Sanskrit: klesha, in Japanese: bonno).

Chuang Tzu said:
The perfect man uses his mind as a mirror
It grasps nothing. It rejects nothing.
It receives but does not keep.

A sword cuts, but it does not cut itself. Likewise, the Zen mind deals with things without getting tangled up in self-consciousness.

The nature of reality is to always be now. There is no past nor future; they are only concepts. This much is obvious. So in Zen we never try to get anything, never try to become anything, never try to go anywhere. This is firstly because Zen consists in realizing that you already have it, you're already it and you're already there. So wishing and waiting for some point down the line when things will be perfect is merely a distraxion from reality, a distraxion from Now. The World is Expecting Too Much. Secondly, there is no "self" which can put forth effort onto an external world; there's only the one Happening. Any effort to change your environment by putting forth effort perpetuates the illusion that you are seperate from your environment.

This means that you cannot achieve Zen illumination by any effort you make, by anything you try to do. Zen means never striving to do anything.

"Doing nothing" (in Chinese: Wu-wei) does not mean lying under your bedsheets with the lights off; it means never putting forth effort. It means effortless, spontaneous, unselfconscious action that is not directed towards a goal. When we dance, we aren't trying to get anywhere, we are just moving for the sake of moving. In Western magick, this would be called acting without lust of result. "For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is in every way perfect." Lin-Chi once said, "Just act ordinarily, without trying to do anything in particular. Move your bowels, urinate, get dressed, eat your rice, and if you get tired, then lie down. Fools may laugh at me, but wise men will know what I mean." And Jesus puts it beautifully in Matthew 6:26-34:

“See the birds of the sky, that they don't sow, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns. Your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren't you of much more value than they?
Which of you, by being anxious, can add one cubit to the measure of his life?
Why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They don't toil, neither do they spin, yet I tell you that even Solomon in all his glory was not dressed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today exists, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, won't he much more clothe you, you of little faith?
Therefore don't be anxious, saying, 'What will we eat?', 'What will we drink?' or, 'With what will we be clothed?'
For the Gentiles seek after all these things, for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.
But seek first God's Kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these things will be given to you as well.
Therefore don't be anxious for tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. ”

As lilies grow their own clothes without putting forth effort, so humans, once they free themselves from hang-ups, acheive their True Will without putting forth effort. As Lao-Tzu said, "The master does nothing, yet he leaves nothing undone." (See also: Do Easy) It should go without saying that in Zen, as much as in Thelema, there are no moral rules or codes of conduct. Moral rules restrict and stultify the mind; Zen frees it.

This doctrine of wu-wei is essential to the martial arts. It is impossible to react to an attack by thinking about it, because by then it is too late. The only way to deal with the immediacy of the fight is to give up effort and just flow with the demands of the moment, you dig? Because you are the moment and its demands, you dig?

In this doctrine of doing nothing there is no need for the darkness of Indian Buddhism and Hinduism. Indian religion shrinks away from every desire, moaning that all desire leads to suffering. Zen, on the other hand, affirms that everything is already perfect, so there is no need for desire. Isn't that much more pleasant?

(In this article there is absolutely nothing true.)

Category: Religious, magickal and philosophical movements