Wisdom of Zen brings together a collection of stories and sayings that illustrate the sensibility that underlines this Buddhist tradition. While not intended as a comprehensive and systematic treatise, this volume provides a useful introduction to Zen's main philosophical positions.
Zen teaches that human experience has a dimension prior to the bifurcation of mind and body, or, in Yuasa's phrase, as a "being-in-nature." It also contends that this experiential dimension can be characterized as nondualistic, or "not two," when it is viewed without the constraints of either logic or intellectual reasoning.
The reason for this view is that the everyday standpoint stipulates an epistemological paradigm that considers it reasonable to prioritize one part of reality in order to understand it and, by extension, exclude the other parts. This is the root of the belief that there are two things in this world.
Zen asserts that this understanding cannot be derived from either-or logic or intellectual reasoning because such thinking divorces itself from the actuality of day-to-day existence, and thus loses its true and original meaning. This is the reason that Zen teaches its practitioners to study Buddhist scriptures, Chinese classics, and koan (public cases in which a Zen patriarch attained awakening or manifested it in novel and iconoclastic ways). It also places particular emphasis on studying public cases that involve enigmatic language or gestures. This is because these types of texts provide an opportunity for the Zen practitioner to "uproot" the ego-consciousness and achieve an existential negation of "two." Such an existential negation, however, is not achieved by adhering to either-or logic or by intellectual reasoning; instead it is accomplished through practice of the art of meditation.
Zen teaches that human experience has a dimension prior to the bifurcation of mind and body, or, in Yuasa's phrase, as a "being-in-nature." It also contends that this experiential dimension can be characterized as nondualistic, or "not two," when it is viewed without the constraints of either logic or intellectual reasoning.
The reason for this view is that the everyday standpoint stipulates an epistemological paradigm that considers it reasonable to prioritize one part of reality in order to understand it and, by extension, exclude the other parts. This is the root of the belief that there are two things in this world.
Zen asserts that this understanding cannot be derived from either-or logic or intellectual reasoning because such thinking divorces itself from the actuality of day-to-day existence, and thus loses its true and original meaning. This is the reason that Zen teaches its practitioners to study Buddhist scriptures, Chinese classics, and koan (public cases in which a Zen patriarch attained awakening or manifested it in novel and iconoclastic ways). It also places particular emphasis on studying public cases that involve enigmatic language or gestures. This is because these types of texts provide an opportunity for the Zen practitioner to "uproot" the ego-consciousness and achieve an existential negation of "two." Such an existential negation, however, is not achieved by adhering to either-or logic or by intellectual reasoning; instead it is accomplished through practice of the art of meditation.
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