The World as Just So, Part 16: The Decline of Modern Temples

Well, now, the essential of this whole system, as you see, is to use a hair of the dog that bit you for the cure of the bite. It's homeopathic. When people are under delusion they cannot be talked out of the delusion. No amount of talk could persuade anybody that his ego is an illusion, because he knows it's there. He knows I am I, and simply won't believe you if you tell him that this is nothing but posthypnotic suggestion.

So the only way to convince a fool of his folly is to make him persist in it. As Blake says, The fool who persists in his folly will become wise. Why, some psychiatrists I know—I know when they get a person who over-eats and is tremendously fat, the first thing they do is they make them put on fifteen more pounds. And get an alcoholic terribly drunk, oh, and sick, and just as awful as can be, you see? Really make him go at it, see? That's a method that's used. Sometimes works, sometimes doesn't; it's a rather desperate method, rather dangerous method. Zen is dangerous, too. People could easily go crazy under this sort of strain without a good advisor.

Well, it is clear, of course, that this method of Zen training is most unsuited to the modern age. And this is witnessed, too, by the fact that the temples are relatively empty. Myōshin-ji, the biggest one in Kyōto, is built to house 600 monks. There are only 80. And you might think that was quite a crowd, but it isn't—compared with the old days.

To young people in Japan today this is all incomprehensible. They see no point in it. A few—a few, yes, but they are mostly clergy's sons carrying out the family tradition, and that's very bad indeed. To be sent to a monastery, virtually. The only possible success can come for someone who goes because he feels that nothing else in the world will satisfy him. He just has to do it.

And so the traditions, as in all these ancient organizations, have become very fixed. A lot of it is meaningless. It is certainly not going to last; not in that form. It's falling apart right under our eyes. It's old and it's set in its ways.

Also, since the time of Hakuin, the kōans have been given fixed answers. That is to say, there is a sort of prescribed way in which to answer, and you've got to hit on the right one. And then, after you've answered it, you have to find a poem from a little book called the Zenrin-kushū, which means ‘the Zen Forest Anthology.’ And there are little couplets, and you've got to find one which represents the meaning of your kōan. I mean, you know, Take the four divisions of Tokyo out of your sleeve, nothing could be simpler. But some monk has recently threatened to publish all the answers to the kōans, so that the masters would have to get on their toes and invent new ones.

I know a rōshi who invents new ones, and the moment they open their mouths he stops them, No! No, no, nope! Too late! You know, he says—you could ask Christians, What's the first word in the Bible? And things like that. It becomes much more lively, you see, when there is this quick interchange of the teacher and the students. But—in modern idiom—who the devil wants to know about Joshu's mu anymore, or some ancient fellow's questions? Couched in language, incidentally—this is part of the problems they have—the language of these kōans is very archaic. I mean, What is the sound of one hand? Well, there's a Chinese proverb which says, One hand won't make a clap. So if you don't know that proverb—if that's a proverb that's in everyday use and I say to you, What is the sound of one hand? then it has some sense.

But there are all kinds of, shall I say, references—allusions—in the old stories, and they therefore don't necessarily fit our world, or the Japanese world of date. You have to take the kōans out of everyday life; things that are going on now, you see? It's like asking—what's that man who advertises Schweppes, commander... Whitehead—Why has commander Whitehead no beard?