and Zenby Alan Watts Chicago ReviewVol. 42 No. 3-4 1996Pp.49-56Copyright by Chicago ReviewIt is as difficult for Anglo-Saxons as for the Japanese to absorb anythingquite so Chinese as Zen. For though the word "Zen" is Japanese and thoughJapan is now its home, Zen Buddhism is the creation of T'ang dynasty China.I do not say this as a prelude to harping upon the incommunicablesubtleties of alien cultures. The point is simply that people who feel aprofound need to justify themselves have difficulty in understanding theviewpoints of those who do not, and the Chinese who created Zen were thesame kind of people as Lao-tzu, who, centuries before, had said, "Those whojustify themselves do not convince." For the urge to make or prove oneselfright has always jiggled the Chinese sense of the ludicrous, since as bothConfucians and Taoists--however different these philosophies in otherways--they have invariably appreciated the man who can "come off it." ToConfucius it seemed much better to be human-hearted than righteous, and tothe great Taoists, Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, it was obvious that one couldnot be right without also being wrong, because the two were as inseparableas back and front. As Chuang-tzu said, "Those who would have goodgovernment without its correlative misrule, and right without itscorrelative wrong, do not understand the principles of the universe."To Western ears such words may sound cynical, and the Confucian admirationof "reasonableness" and compromise may appear to be a weak-kneed lack ofcommitment to principle. Actually they reflect a marvelous understandingand respect for what we call the balance of nature, human and otherwise--auniversal vision of life as the Tao or way of nature in which the good andthe evil, the creative and the destructive, the wise and the foolish arethe inseparable polarities of existence. "Tao," said the Chung-yung, "isthat from which one cannot depart. That from which one can depart is notthe Tao." Therefore wisdom did not consist in trying to wrest the good fromthe evil but in learning to "ride" them as a cork adapts itself to thecrests and troughs of the waves. At the roots of Chinese life there is atrust in the good-and-evil of one's own nature which is peculiarly foreignto those brought up with the chronic uneasy conscience of theHebrew-Christian cultures. Yet it was always obvious to the Chinese that aman who mistrusts himself cannot even trust his mistrust, and musttherefore be hopelessly confused.For rather different reasons, Japanese people tend to be as uneasy inthemselves as Westerners, having a sense of social shame quite as acute asour more metaphysical sense of sin. This was especially true of the classmost attracted to Zen, the samurai. Ruth Benedict, in that very uneven workChrysanthemum and Sword, was, I think, perfectly correct in saying that theattraction of Zen to the samurai class was its power to get rid of anextremely awkward self-consciousness induced in the young. Part-and-parcelof this self-consciousness is the Japanese compulsion to compete withoneself--a compulsion which turns every craft and skill into a marathon ofself-discipline. Although the attraction of Zen lay in the possibility ofliberation from self-consciousness, the Japanese version of Zen fought firewith fire, overcoming the "self