Tag: buddhism

Review: The Way of Zen

The Way of ZenThe Way of Zen by Alan Wilson Watts

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Alan Watts is considered by many as the bringer of eastern philosophy to the west, a Marco Polo or Carlos Castañeda of Zen and Buddhism. This honour is by no means unwarranted; I don’t think I’ve ever read anything on the subject which was this clear or in which the author read as if he really knew what he was talking about. Raymond Smullyan and Ray Grigg come close but Alan Watts takes the cake if only because he did it decades before anyone else. I honestly can’t think of anyone else who has notes on the subject in the original chinese ideograms (not that I’ve read that many books on all this) and goes into so much detail –sometimes just a bit too much– on all the different ideas and traditions. By the end it’s all come nicely together but the occasional trudging robs The Way of Zen from its fifth star. This guy obviously had had an inside look on everything he wrote about but at times his explanations were a bit too dense. Could it have been any other way?

Read The Way of Zen and feel as if you are one step closer to understanding the whole philosophy of Taoism, Buddhism and Zen. Understanding is not knowing and being mindful about it defeats the whole purpose, but it’s a start for going beyond the stereotypes and for actually trying to understand these completely foreign philosophies that are gradually disappearing even in their lands of origin. As Smullyan puts it: just read chapter 1 of The Way of Zen in which he introduces Taoism. If you like it, chances are you’re going to find the rest of the book equally agreeable, highlight- and nod-worthy.

I especially liked the parts in which he explained Zen’s connection to haiku, calligraphy and the ceremonial serving of tea. Quite nice and cosy.

It’s quite appropriate that this book played no small part in the cultural revolutions of the ’60s. One has to wonder though why no reconciliators of western and eastern mentalities haven’t really made a difference since.
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Review: The Tao of Zen

The Tao of ZenThe Tao of Zen by Ray Grigg

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

My copy of The Tao of Zen has a bit of a story. When writing my paper on Heidegger and Haiku I’d been looking everywhere on the Web for Taoism, Zen, and pages that would help me understand Eastern Philosophy. It wasn’t that I had no idea about what Taoism or Zen were. My interest has been long-lived to say the least; I’ve owned the I Ching and Tao Te Ching (or Lao Tzu) a few years now and have generally messed around with the ideas from time to time. That doesn’t mean however that I necessarily understood the point these books and texts were trying to make.

Then I found The Tao of Zen. “Zen is Taoism disguised as Buddhism. When twelve hundred years of Buddhist accretions are removed from Zen, it is revealed to be a direct evolution of the spirit and philosophy of Taoism.” I had felt at times that dogmatic Buddhism was somehow foreign to the Chinese environment but I couldn’t really put my finger on it. This sounded perfect!

I found a single used copy of The Tao of Zen on eBay and promptly bought it. It came all the way from the US, complete with underlining and side-notes in Chinese! I wonder who might have owned it previously and then decided to give it away to some online bookshop or whatever its trip might have been.

This book did everything I thought it would and more. It finally “cleared” the different concepts and beliefs of the various “Eastern Philosophies”, if such a thing is even possible in the end. It’s obvious that while yes, Buddhism does have a strong religious element in it that is sometimes not attributed to it by us Westerners, Taoism and especially Zen have only had such an element implemented by contemporary oversight. This book shows that, at their core, not only Tao and Zen are speaking of the same things, they ARE, more or less, the same thing.

The first part of the book shows the cultural and historical connections of Tao and Zen throughout the millennia, linking the traditions using citations and alternative readings of classic texts. To be honest I could not follow it very much, though it inspired confidence in me that Mr. Ray Griggs knows his stuff. The second part was a whole different story. It, too, inspired me. But the kind of inspiration you find when you read things you feel are essentially true, that have shed the veil off your eyes, that are, even though Taoism rejects the insignificant truth that can be conveyed through language it, words that ARE connected to some greater truth.

The Tao of Zen, by connecting the two, has taught me the fundamentals of both: Wordlessness, Selflessness, Softness, Oneness, Emptiness, Nothingness, Balance, Paradox, Non-Doing, Spontaneity, Ordinariness, Playfulness, Suchness. Each a concept and a chapter of the book filled with wisdom. Now I know what I must un-know. Now I can say with all honesty that this philosophy is something very wonderful and special that sounds true to my heart, a worldview that is fully compatible but totally absent from the Western world and, sadly, by extension, the lands that gave birth to it.

This book is so dense in deep meanings I could not grasp it all at once, so I’m sure I’m going to read it again, and again, and again, if only as a reference to Tao and Zen. It’s a rare book and one that I definitely want to keep. Whoever might want to read it however — and I think that everyone might find some kind of worldly connection in it — is free to borrow it from me. I’ll be more than happy to share the deep and elusive stuff cramped in this beautiful little tome!

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