I just finished reading The Way of Zen by Alan Watts. As the liner notes suggest, this might very well be the best English-language book on the subject – the most accessible combination of history and philosophy necessary for any attempt to understand Zen Buddhism. As much as a book is capable, of course! As Watts himself points out, Zen is first and foremost a deeply experiential phenomena that simply cannot be discussed or explained adequately using typical scholarly, scientific, or literary approaches.
Those who know do not speak;
Those who speak do not know.
…So how do you write about something that simply cannot be explained using words? Immersing himself in both Eastern and Western philosophies, Watts deliberately takes on the mantle of not fully belonging to either. By occupying this no-man’s-land, this liminal space, he has perhaps made of himself the perfect spokesman for such a difficult and sticky subject. (Or, perhaps he has no idea what he is talking about!)
Especially interesting to me is the final chapter, Zen in the Arts, which deals with haiku poetry, among other things:
In poetry the empty space is the surrounding silence… a silence of the mind in which one does not “think about” the poem but actually feels the sensation which it evokes – all the more strongly for having said do little.
By the seventeenth century the Japanese had brought this “wordless” poetry to perfection in haiku, the poem of just seventeen syllables which drops the subject almost as it takes it up… a good haiku is a pebble thrown into the pool of the listener’s mind, evoking associations out of the richness of his oen memory. It invites the listener to participate…
The development of haiku was largely tyhe work of Basho (1643-1694), whose feeling for Zen wanted to express itself in a type of poetry altogether in the spirit of wu-shih – “nothing special.” “To write haiku,” he said, get a three-foot child” – for Basho’s poems have the same inspired objectivity as a child’s expression of wonder, and return us to that same feeling of the world as when it first met our astonished eyes…
Basho wrote his haiku in the simplest type of Japanese speech, naturally avoiding literary and “highbrow” language, so creating a style which made it possible for ordinary people to be poets (183-184).
Watts, Alan. The Way of Zen. New York: Vintage Books, 1957.
Written 50 years ago (!), the book is obviously dated; in fact it reads much like the writing of some of Watts’ younger contemporaries, the Beats. But he is a gifted writer, able to put complex philosophical concepts into simple, everyday language. In The Way, Watts seamlessly blends ancient Indian and Chinese historical contexts with valid and interesting anecdotes and analogies.
A brief but favorable review of this book… and some further Alan Watts readings, essays, recordings, and so on…