Naturalness and Spontaneity

Zen’s emphasis on naturalness and spontaneity certainly shows its Taoist roots.

But the basis for this emphasis is strictly Buddhistic.

It is the belief in the perfection of our original nature, the realization that the process of enlightenment consists merely in becoming what we already are from the beginning.

When the Zen master Po-chang was asked about seeking for the Buddha nature he answered, ‘It’s much like riding an ox in search of the ox.’

There are two principal schools of Zen in Japan today which differ in their methods of teaching. The Rinzai or ‘sudden’ school uses the koan method, as discussed in a previous chapter, and gives prominence to periodic formal interviews with the master, called sanzen, during which the student is asked to present his view of the koan he is trying to solve. The solving of a koan involves long periods of intense con- centration leading up to the sudden insight of satori. An experienced master knows when the student has reached the verge of sudden enlightenment and is able to shock him or her into the satori experience with unexpected acts, such as a blow with a stick or a loud yell.

The Soto or ‘gradual’ school avoids the shock methods of Rinzai and aims at the gradual maturing of the Zen student, ‘like the spring breeze which caresses the flower helping it to bloom’.5 It advocates ‘quiet sitting’ and the use of one’s ordinary work as two forms of meditation.

Both the Soto and Rinzai schools attach the greatest im- portance to zazen, or sitting meditation, which is practised in the Zen monasteries every day for many hours. The correct posture and breathing involved in this form of meditation is the first thing every student of Zen has to learn. In Rinzdi Zen, zazen is used to prepare the intuitive mind for the handling of the koan, and the Soto school considers it as the most im- portant means to help the student mature and evolve towards satori. More than that, it is seen as the actual realization of one’s Buddha nature; body and mind being fused into a harmonious unity which needs no further improvement. As a Zen poem says,

Sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.6

Since Zen asserts that enlightenment manifests itself in every- day affairs, it has had an enormous influence on all aspects of the traditional Japanese way of life. These include not only the arts of painting, calligraphy, garden design, etc., and the various crafts, but also ceremonial activities like serving tea or arranging flowers, and the martial arts of archery, swordsman- ship and judo. Each of these activities is known in Japan as a do, that is, a tao or ‘way’ towards enlightenment. They all explore various characteristics of the Zen experience and can be used to train the mind and to bring it in contact with the ultimate reality.

I have already mentioned the slow, ritualistic activities of:

• cha-no-yu, the Japanese tea ceremony,
• the spontaneous movement of the hand required for calligraphy and painting,
• the spirituality of bushido, the ‘way of the warrior’

All these arts are expressions of the spontaneity, simplicity and total presence of mind characteristic of the Zen life. While they all require a perfection of technique, real mastery is only achieved when technique is transcended and the art becomes an ‘artless art’ growing out of the unconscious.

We are fortunate to have a wonderful description of such an ‘artless art’ in Eugen Herrigel’s little book Zen in the Art of Archery. Herrigel spent more than five years with a celebrated Japanese master to learn his ‘mystical’ art, and he gives us in his book a personal account of how he experienced Zen through archery. He describes how archery was presented to him as a religious ritual which is ‘danced’ in spontaneous, effortless and purposeless movements.

It took him many years of hard practice, which transformed his entire being, to learn how to draw the bow ‘spiritually’, with a kind of effortless strength, and to release the string ‘without intention’, letting the shot ‘fall from the archer like a ripe fruit’.

When he reached the height of perfection, bow, arrow, goal and archer all melted into one another and he did not shoot, but ‘it’ did it for him. Herrigel’s description of archery is one of the purest accounts of Zen, because it does not talk about Zen at all.