Western Commentary

This book should be of the utmost value to students of Buddhism, in particular in its elucidation of the Prajnaparamita hrdaya Sutra and its chapter on the development of Prajnaparamita thought. One could say that Prajnaparamita is to Buddhism what Sophia is to Christian thought – namely, a female image of grace and wisdom, a positive image of the creation, an image of interiority and intuition to balance the severe and mainly negative logic of the philosopher or theologian. I am not myself in any sense a qualified Buddhist scholar, so I cannot criticise the accuracy of Dr Conze’s commentaries. Nevertheless, Buddhism is today a living tradition. I know people who have cured themselves of serious mental disturbances by the Buddhist disciplines. No Christian thinker can afford to set aside the validity of the Buddhist approach to problems of attachment, since it is precisely attachment that exhausts and dismembers the souls of many in this destructively activist age. Many of our young people in particular, who may not be able to use the Christian disciplines, turn to Buddhism in search of a religion without dogma. The search is admirable; but Dr Conze’s remarks about Zen are designed to shed light on its dangers . . .

Zen was designed to operate within emptiness. When coming West it is transferred into a vacuum. Let us just recollect what Zen took for granted, as its antecedents, basis and continuing background: a long and unbroken tradition of spiritual ‘know-how’; firm and unquestioned metaphysical beliefs, and not just a disbelief in everything; a superabundance of Scripture and images; a definite discipline supervised by authoritative persons; insistence on right livelihood and an austere life for all exponents of the Dharma; and a strong Sanga, composed of thousands of mature and experienced persons housed in thousands of temples, who could keep deviations from Buddhist principles within narrow bounds . . .

It is the fundamental error of many Europeans to mistake these denunciations (by the Chán sect, of a too great complexity in Zen method) for a desire to do away altogether with traditional spiritual practices. Suzuki could not possibly have foreseen that . . . He was unfamiliar with Western irrationalist philosophy where the elimination of the intellect makes room for nothing more than the uninhibited assertion of self-willed instincts . . .

I think this kind of corrective is timely for the modern Westerner who follows the Zen road either for ‘kicks’ or from a genuine desire for spiritual enlightenment. Chán rose simultaneously with the Tantra; and Tantric Buddhism deals with the repercussions of traditional Buddhist practice on the unconscious mind, the disturbances which Hakuin referred to as ‘the Zen sickness’ – disturbances which are not signs of failure but like the creaking of rheumatic joints newly exercised that foretells their ultimate mobility. I believe that most help will come for modern Buddhists from the Mahayana page 663 side of the Buddhist fence, where the religious needs of ordinary people were catered for, where the mechanisms of the unconscious mind were codified and well understood, where transcendental intuition of the Absolute was the thing most sought after, and where the Bodhisattvas were the supreme examples . . .

‘Freed we shall free those beings who are not yet free! Comforted we shall comfort those beings who are as yet without comfort; Gone to Nirvana we shall lead to Nirvana those beings who have not yet got there! . . .’

Following Dr Conze, I quote from the Prajhnaparamita. His commentaries are difficult; but they will reward the attention of any who are drawn by the clarity and warmth of Buddhist thought.

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