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ZEN BUDDHISM
Walk a thousand milesThere is always a beyond; But here is a frog
Here, beside the pond.
And they know of "poverty", that void in the centre of things which only Zen can fill. As Wordsworth wrote,
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"To sit without emotion, hope or aim, In the loved presence of my cottage fire, And listen to the flapping of the flame, Or kettle whispering its faint undersong."
Yet how much better is Kyorai's,
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'Yes, yes!' I answered,
But someone still knocked
At the snow-mantled gate."
But the counting of words is foolishness. As Blyth points out, "Words are many and the thing is one, but somehow it has got to be portrayed or suggested in words-but as a unity, not after the post-mortem of thought, not after the dissection of the intellect."1
Even the seventeen syllables of the Japanese haiku may be too many. But the cutting out of unnecessary words or brush-strokes leaves more room for Zen, and few poems written could not be improved by cutting, thereby leaving room for the reader to add his own experience.
Zen lives in humour. It is not humorous and it is not serious; it is Zen, but wit is born from the higher ranges of the mind, where the intuition tries its wings, and humour lies on the razor-edge of self and selflessness, where a man looks round at the back of his head and lifts himself up by
1 BLYTH, P. 412.
