Post by Admin on May 3, 2018 7:07:18 GMT
"Western thought has changed so rapidly in this century that we are in a state of considerable confusion. Not only are there serious difficulties of communication between the intellectual and the general public, but the course of our thinking and of our very history has seriously undermined the common-sense assumptions which lie at the roots of our social conventions and institutions.
Familiar concepts of space, time, and motion, of nature and natural law, of history and social change, and of human personality itself have dissolved, and we find ourselves adrift without landmarks in a universe which more and more resembles the Buddhist principle of the 'Great Void.' The various wisdoms of the West, religious, philosophical, and scientific, do not offer much guidance to the art of living in such a universe, and we find the prospects of making our way in so trackless an ocean of relativity rather frightening. For we are used to absolutes, to firm principles and laws to which we can cling for spiritual and psychological security. This is why, I think, there is so much interest in a culturally productive way of life which, for some fifteen hundred years, has felt thoroughly at home in 'the Void,' and which not only feels no terror for it but rather a positive delight. To use its own words, the situation of Zen has always been– 'Above, not a tile to cover the head; Below, not an inch of ground for the foot.'
Such language should not actually be so unfamiliar to us, were we truly prepared to accept the meaning of 'the foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head.' "
-- Alan Watts (1957) The Way of Zen, "Preface"
Familiar concepts of space, time, and motion, of nature and natural law, of history and social change, and of human personality itself have dissolved, and we find ourselves adrift without landmarks in a universe which more and more resembles the Buddhist principle of the 'Great Void.' The various wisdoms of the West, religious, philosophical, and scientific, do not offer much guidance to the art of living in such a universe, and we find the prospects of making our way in so trackless an ocean of relativity rather frightening. For we are used to absolutes, to firm principles and laws to which we can cling for spiritual and psychological security. This is why, I think, there is so much interest in a culturally productive way of life which, for some fifteen hundred years, has felt thoroughly at home in 'the Void,' and which not only feels no terror for it but rather a positive delight. To use its own words, the situation of Zen has always been– 'Above, not a tile to cover the head; Below, not an inch of ground for the foot.'
Such language should not actually be so unfamiliar to us, were we truly prepared to accept the meaning of 'the foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head.' "
-- Alan Watts (1957) The Way of Zen, "Preface"