Zen Buddhism

SR No.: 011121
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Christmas Humphereys
Publisher: William Heinemann LTD
Total Pages: 278
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 15 MB

Page 78

THE NATURE OF ZEN BUDDHISM 57
doctrine which, running as a golden thread through the whole Mahayana, affects Zen Buddhism. The single aim of the Hinayanist became dual. Mahayana stood thereafter on two legs, Maha Prajna, supreme wisdom, and Maha-Karuna, supreme compassion for all living things. Of these Dr. Suzuki says, in a most illuminating phrase, that "the former sees into the unity of things; and the latter appreciates their diversity."1 He expands this in his latest work, The Essence of Buddhism, when talking of Jijimuge. "It is by the Great Compassionate Heart that the Kegon world of Jiji moves. If it were just to reflect one individual Ji after another in the mirror of Ri, the world would cease to be a living one, becoming simply an object of contemplation for the hermit or Arhat. It is the heart indeed that tells us that our own self is a self only to the extent that it disappears into all other selves, non-sentient as well as sentient. ...99 This mystical sense of union is, of course, found alike in eastern and western philosophy. Marcus Aurelius wrote in his diary, "Enter into every man's Inner Self, and let every man enter into thine." And John Donne's famous observation is in the same vein. "Any man's death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee."
The Bodhisattva, therefore, at first a name reserved for the few who had neared Nirvana, but later applied to all who vowed to live for the benefit of mankind, was raised as a nobler ideal than that of the Arhat, and the latter was covertly regarded as a selfish aim. Yet "in
1 Studies in the Lankavatara Sutra, p. 229. 2 The Essence of Buddhism, p. 55.