In Alan Watts’ book, The Spirit of Zen, a 1960 Evergreen Edition, the author writes the following:
“Zen is so markedly different from any other form of Buddhism, one might even say from any other form of religion, that it has roused the curiosity of many who would not ordinarily look to the ‘unpractical’ East for practical wisdom” (p. 17).
Is this true that Zen is different from any other form of Buddhism? One could certainly make a good case that it is true but never a good enough case to say that Zen is not Buddhist. It would be wrong to say that Zen is not Buddhist because it burned a commentary to a Buddhist discourse, burned a wooden statue of the Buddha to keep warm, and killed a cat to stop an argument between monks.
For those who have neglected to read some of the important works found in the Pali canon or have not studied the Mahayana literature, sufficiently, which can be mind boggling, it strikes me as arrogant to assume that Zen might have created itself.
Where Zen’s originality lies is not in its difference from Buddhism, for example, found in the Pali Nikayas and in Mahayana scripture but rather the means it uses to realize Gautama’s enlightenment for which the Zen tradition is aptly named. The means or method relies on intuition which is the process of coming to direct knowledge of the absolute.
The goal of Zen has always been for the Zen adept to see what Siddhartha realized who then became a Buddha. It has never been other than this. But these are modern times where historical facts are ignored where even modern Zennists can say that they don’t believe in rebirth or accept karma; who also don’t accept nirvana as being all that important. They just want to learn to sit in zazen—that's all. For these people, zazen is just another tool they can use when their hedonistic desires and expectations are not being met, and they have to face reality, i.e., the first noble truth of suffering.
Watts was just an entertainer.
Posted by: dave b | July 18, 2019 at 09:34 PM