"Tell me, Subhuti," said the Buddha Shakyamuni, "Have I as a Thus-Come One, a Dweller in Thusness, a doctrine about Enlightenment to teach?" Subhuti replied: "If I understand you correctly, there is no doctrine on the truth of Enlightenment that is teachable. This is because, as you have said many times, truth is not expressible, nor is it something that can even be said to be or not be. Since this is the case, all Buddhas are one with Thusness but do not teach about it." (Diamond Sutra VII)

The audacity of this topic is not lost on me. I know how impossible it is to take the topic too seriously. So perhaps we can all relax. I have had a rather wide exposure to the various Buddhist groups that have taken root in this country over the last fifty years, and have even planted some myself, but I do not restrict myself to any one of them, which may be the only reason I have been asked to present "the American view" here. Perhaps the editors assume that I will give attention to all the forms of Buddhism in America today. I find it difficult to speak with all the voices, but I will try. What I will say is part anecdote and part confession, and I feel sorry for my colleagues on the panel who must respond to this essay without hurting my feelings. (Just remember that good Buddhists temper wisdom with compassion!)

For many American Buddhists, the common ground between East and West has been the search for "enlightenment." Americans use a host of terms to refer to enlightenment, such as realization, awakening, liberation, awareness, selflessness, self-transcendence, freedom, Nirvana, and even salvation. Maybe we can add "happiness" to the list. I recently finished reading The Art of Happiness (Riverhead, 1998), which is attributed to the Dalai Lama and is indeed filled with responses that His Holiness gave to questions by Dr. Howard Cutler, a Phoenix psychiatrist, who tells us on p. 62 that "one simple truth seemed to shine through and illuminate every discussion: the purpose of our life is happiness." Students of Buddhism will probably come away from the book feeling a bit shortchanged, but they will also pick up on the subtext, which is that His Holiness is using the word happiness to refer to the search for enlightenment and even enlightenment itself.

The usual notion of happiness as a self-serving emotion is quickly dispelled when we read (p. 14-15): "Happiness can be achieved by training the mind... bringing about a certain inner discipline... identifying those factors which lead to happiness and those factors which lead to suffering...[and] eliminating those factors which lead to suffering and cultivating those which lead to happiness. That is the way [to happiness]." While the doctor keeps trying to talk about psychological health, His Holiness goes on in his inimitable way, talking about "the unsatisfactory nature of existence" and the "reason why reflection on suffering is so important" (p. 142) and later (p. 237) "afflictive emotions and thoughts [are] essentially distorted... [and] based on ignorance" or (p. 267) "fear based on mental projection." (Someone should write a book on what I call Tibetan Buddhist English! Whoever established the English equivalents for Tibetan Buddhist teachings back in the 19th century created a style that has not changed and that identifies English-speaking Tibetan Buddhists everywhere. I find it charming and can always hear the Indo-Tibetan accent when I read it.)

The point I am trying to get across here should be clear, even to non-Buddhists: the search for true happiness/enlightenment is a search for "self-transcendence," and not merely a search for physical or psychological health. In his critique of two books by modern psychologists who missed that point, L. A. Times music critic Peter Marin (11/2/97, p. 4) noted that in one particularly fine performance of Bach's Magnificence in D Major he "heard and inwardly entered the same spaces where thought sometimes goes and where one discovers a joy and freedom as extraordinary as anything found among life's great pleasures. It is this joy, this sense of passionate aliveness, this sense of something existing beyond the self, that ... many [people] ... do not seem to understand. But it exists, and it endlessly beckons us toward it in the way that all great loves attract us: not as a means to health or wholeness but because we hunger for all that is hidden there and for the truths contained within it."

The Tibetan teacher, Geshe Rabten, in a statement to his disciple B. Allan Wallace (Allen & Unwin, 1980, p. 118-119) equates enlightenment with an "awakening mind": "When thinking of the preciousness of human life and the difficulty of obtaining it [a reference to the teaching, very common in Tibetan Buddhism, that being born in the human realm comes only after countless lives in lower realms of being], I regret the great amount of time I have wasted... There were days when I neither studied nor meditated. In terms of the value of human life, one cannot afford to waste even ten minutes... Although I can claim no great or deep realizations, from my studies and experience I have concluded that the most important thing is to develop an awakening mind... 'which is enlightenment.'"

A tightly argued (and very Japanese) view on enlightenment comes from a Zen teacher I was fortunate to know, the late Dr. Hisamatsu Shin'ichi, who often used the Japanese word for enlightenment, satori , in his lectures even though the word is almost taboo on the grounds of Zen temples (1) because the concept itself is considered beyond description, and (2) because discussing it makes the speaker sound too much like he is claiming to be enlightened (which is not a claim anyone in Japan would make.) In his Chado no Tetsugaku (Risosha, 1973, p. 220) Hisamatsu Sensei bravely broke both rules: "Satori, that is to say enlightenment, or the full perception of emptiness, is not something that is bound by things, or spirit, or mind, or even by fully awakened beings [Buddhas]. It is absolutely without form, but is present in all form. While existing, satori is not bound by what has existed, what exists, or will exist, or even by its own timeless existence. Spatially it creates a world without boundaries. Temporally it constructs a history without beginning or end. Satori is Absolute Consciousness." (There must be at least three new synonyms for enlightenment here, but I really like the last one.)

For many East Asian Buddhist teachers Dr. Hisamatsu's enlightenment as absolute consciousness is simply a profound "awareness." Two such teachers were the 15th-century Japanese abbot Ikkyu (One Rest) and the 11th-century Chinese priest Po-yun (White Cloud), who both praised the "essential encounter" (sesshin ), or seated meditation period conducted in Zen temples, as the most effective way to reach profound awareness. According to Ikkyu's inscription on a hanging scroll in Dr. Hisamatsu's collection, Po-yun considered meditation itself to be enlightenment, which is often claimed in the Zen tradition. This is how Ikkyu's inscription goes: "[Po-yun said] the best way to enter full awareness is to participate in endless 'essential encounters' -- you must 'meet people and things in their perfection.' The ancients were aware of this, but it is a mystery to people today. Of all the seekers who sit in the cave of solitude, not one in a thousand reaps the full benefit of their encounters with their fellow creatures." Whenever I used to complain to Dr. Hisamatsu about my pain during a sesshin, or if I told him excitedly how good it was for me, he would say, "The moment you think 'this moment is just mine' is the moment that your training becomes impossible." In other words, sitting meditation is a time to encounter all creatures as oneself, and not, as many people assume, to go inward and shut others out.

While the search for enlightenment links East to West, the reception of Buddhism in America has already involved some important transformations of the Asian pattern. To begin with, Buddhism has come to occupy a highly visible place in popular culture. In the last few years a wave of movies dealing with Tibetan Buddhism has brought Buddhist ideas to the top of public consciousness as has nothing I can remember. Largely because of those films, TIME even devoted a full cover story to "America's Fascination with Buddhism" (October 13, 1997). According to the article (which I will make many references to here and encourage you to read in full), some 1,200 titles will come up if you check books on Buddhism on amazon.com today; and presently there are about that many Buddhist groups or "teaching centers" in the United States (p. 75). Americans in general seem more interested in movie stars such as Richard Gere and Brad Pitt, or in living Buddhist saints such as the Dalai Lama or the gentle Vietnamese Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, than they are in Buddhist theology. But many Americans are deeply interested in Buddhist teachings and practices, and there is no question that American life today and life in other parts of the non-Asian world has been influenced by Buddhism.

Many within the American Buddhist fold would agree that a true American Buddhism has not yet developed, but that a distinct group of characteristics are slowly emerging. All forms of the Buddhist tradition seem present in America now, and while it is as difficult to get all of them to agree on which Buddhist teachings are essential as it would be to get Jews, Christians and Muslims to agree on the "true" teachings of their respective religions, all American Buddhists would probably agree with the TIME article that human problems stem from "the mind's habit of seeing everything through the prism of the self and its well-being." This in itself may seem at first to fly in the face of the Western religions' preoccupation with sin (disobedience to God), although if you substitute "selfishness" for "sin" the conflict begins to weaken. Buddhists sprouted from American soil might all agree on the need to live as selflessly as possible, so that the false view of the self can be replaced with the one that informs what Buddhists call enlightenment, or Nirvana. But even to get agreement on what exactly Nirvana is, or on a host of other issues, such as karma and reincarnation, is not possible. In fact, that kind of agreement would not be possible in the Asian Buddhist world, either, given the sectarian differences that have existed there for centuries.

Zen sects in particular often go about their business as though reincarnation doesn't exist as long as enough effort is put into the "now." And Chinese and Japanese Buddhists all receive a name at death that theoretically turns them into Buddhas, thereby allowing them to escape reincarnation and be properly honored -- as Buddhas! -- by their descendants. This sort of doctrinal tampering is ancient, and is by no means a modern invention, as the TIME article implies, but it does drive protectors of Tibetan orthodoxy like Prof. Robert Thurman of Columbia slightly crazy (p. 81.) I know of no movement inside Asia to even try such a thing as ecumenical Buddhism. But it is happening in the West (as the article notes on p. 80) at the late Maezumi Roshi's Los Angeles Zen Center (now under the leadership of Abbot Wendy Egyoku Nakao), in the meditation groups led by the Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh, in the Tibetan/Zen communities established by the late Chogyam Trungpa, and elsewhere.

I think I would look beyond doctrine to characterize what I see as some major differences between Buddhists in the old world (Asia) and new (including the U.S.), starting first of all with the letters' "search for self-realization," which seems always to have to do with total "freedom." Many Westerners have read things about Zen that offer the freedom they seek. Others, seeing Buddhism through Tibetan teachers, are attracted to a highly systematic theology accompanied by rich liturgy, ritual and mysticism. They, too, are promised an experience of freedom (which is to say enlightenment) more profound than anything they know. While some of these new Buddhists enter the priesthood, most remain very active lay practitioners who keep close contact with the priests, even training with them regularly.

Old world Buddhists, on the other hand, include priests who have chosen to enter the clergy, and have taken vows of celibacy (the Buddhist priesthood in most Asian cultures is like this); they also include Japanese priests who for the most part are born (or adopted as orphans) into the priest class, marry within the class, and carry on neighborhood temple responsibilities that their families have had for centuries. (While Japanese women from priest families can become priests, most marry and have children; if they do take priest vows they do not become wives and mothers, and unlike male priests, must be celibate.) The issue of a celibate priesthood is addressed in the TIME article, as the major difference between new world Buddhists and the old. But that is not the case if you take the Japanese tradition into account.

Of more importance, perhaps, is the fact that lay Buddhists outside Asia "practice" like priests, whereas lay Buddhists in Asia, do not "practice" like their Western counterparts, and indeed can be as jaded about the religion of their birth as new Buddhists were about the religions they grew up in. They rarely look beyond the customs (funerals, mostly) to ask what life means. They just live Buddhism in the same routine way that many Christians live Christianity when they attend church each Sunday (or only on Easter), or go to mass and confession. Meanings of things are taken for granted, and a sense of truth and order, and even personal redemption and peace prevails (which I admit does count for something.)

But in connection with the lay practice difference, I must say that the major characteristic of American and other non-Asian Buddhists, including priests and lay practitioners, is the reverential questioning that they bring to Buddhism as "seekers." They are constantly thinking and talking about Buddhism. As Richard Gere put it in the TIME article, "... our approach, because we're so new at it, has a certain eagerness and excitement that you sometimes don't see in the Tibetans [or other Asian Buddhists]. Westerners ask questions. They take notes." I wonder if that is not what always happens when whatever you're doing actually means something to you. In response to my request for her thoughts on American Zen, Abbot Wendy Egyoku Nakao of the Buddha Essence Temple (Busshin-ji) at the Zen Center of Los Angeles writes:

One of our biggest challenges is to discover what it means to live in community, much less a Zen Buddhist community. American Zen students come to the ZCLA seeking self- understanding ... which they usually interpret ... as psychological and emotional [and only later as] ... exploration of Self. They come seeking the meaning of life [and a place in a] community that addresses the pain of their alienation and need for a sense of belonging. [Finally] they come seeking peace, both inner and outer. In the course of this search, they encounter several themes characteristic of American centers [including first of all] the religion of their birth, which now has the possibility of being understood and appreciated from a very different place. Then they encounter the diversity of people, which challenges how deeply they realize inter- dependence and self as 'other,' [as well as] their notions of inclusivity: they are challenged to create forms that include the family (so that practice is not done at the expense of family), and to engage in the larger community and be of service to others. [Ultimately they must] ... address the concerns of 20th-century life, especially the issues of time, money, technology, etc.

Rev. Egyoku's name literally means "Essense of Jewel", but her teachers and students have taken advantage of the pun, "Egg Yolk," suggesting that she herself must reflect the essential teachings of Buddhism while somehow creating the egg white that comes from the specific culture she is in and that is essential to living Buddhism. Her challenge, in her words, is "to make the formal study of Buddhism (which most practitioners do not have a grasp on) ... part of a life of practice." If she meets that challenge the future of Buddhism is assured at the Buddha Essence Temple in Los Angeles. But who knows, maybe the meaning behind all of the activities of Buddhist groups in the West, which is to say the Buddha-Dharma, will be grasped in all its purity, only to be taken for granted, too, after a hundred years, and Western Buddhism then will be "merely" a cultural tradition without much meaning. I hope not, but since I usually find talk of the future not as useful as talk of the past (which in the case of Buddhist history is especially so, as I hope you will agree), perhaps we should now consider how Buddhism developed.

Some observers are probably worried by any revisions of Buddhist practice in the U.S. People who conceive of Buddhism as a single, coherent religious system, or, more concretely, as monks with begging bowls making their alms rounds each morning, are bound to think the worst of the developments I've described. But before we reach this conclusion we might ask ourselves if "Buddhism" as we have understood the term is not, at least in part, our own invention. At any rate, this is the argument that Stephen Batchelor makes in his brilliant study of the connection between Buddhism and Western culture, The Awakening of the West (Parallax Press, 1994), a work that I will make several references to in the rest of this essay. Like many outsiders (Batchelor grew up in Scotland and England), he became obsessed with Buddhist teachings, and fortunately for all of us, he has put his obsession to practical use by translating texts, training rigorously under excellent Tibetan and Zen teachers and writing about his experiences with precision and compassion. Batchelor and his wife Martine (herself a writer and teacher on Zen) presently live in a "nondenominational Buddhist community," and Batchelor directs Buddhist studies at Sharpham College, Devon. Despite the fact that I disagree with Batchelor on several points (which I will indicate when I refer to some of his other works), I consider him one of the most thoughtful and persuasive Buddhist teachers of our time.

I mention his history of Buddhism here and not other books on the subject because Batchelor convincingly shows that Buddhism as we know it today was put together, so to speak, by Westerners, seekers who tried to make sense of the bewildering patchwork of beliefs and practices in Asia by applying historical and philological methods to the subject. In other words, purists who want to maintain a careful division (as in "never the twain shall meet") between Asian and Western Buddhist practice may be surprised to learn how impossible that position is. It seems, you see, that for over two-hundred years the West has been reshaping Buddhist ideas and practices through the translations, annotations, collections, and analyses by Western scholars, many of whom have been on a personal spiritual quest that inspired their work.

One of the many interesting ironies of the Western encounter with Buddhism that Batchelor reveals has to do with the very first sacred Buddhist text to be translated (into Latin in 1724 by a French scholar): a fragment of a Tibetan version of an "obscure" teaching by the Buddha Vairocana on bringing sentient beings to enlightenment. Sounding very much like the Christian "Great Commission" ("Go ye into all the world and preach the Good News!"), the text suggests that once you understand the true nature of things (i.e., their emptiness, the truth that there are no separate beings) you should, out of compassion, explain this truth to others.

This early translation project is the first in a succession of efforts that Batchelor sees as part of the West's colonial aspirations to maintain its religious and economic positions of power in Asia. The first efforts (often made by members of the Royal Asiatic Society and its European counterparts) were frequently biased in favor of Christianity, and as such placed Buddhist teachings in an inferior position. But as time went on, men with anti-Christian agendas such as the French Sanskrit and Pali scholar E. Burnouf took on the daunting task of creating "Buddhism as an object of European scientific knowledge" (p. 242). Burnouf's Introduction to Indian Buddhist History, Doctrines and Texts of 1844 provided all of Europe with an amazingly comprehensive array of data, largely accurate even today, and was held up as superior to any information about Buddhism that could be learned from natives, who were thought to have corrupted the original teachings with their cultural traditions and superstitions.

Buddhist materials in Sanskrit and Pali were recognized as the originals from which Chinese, Tibetan, and Mongolian texts were translated in the early centuries of the Christian (or "common") era. And the Latin, French, German, and English translations, annotations, and studies of all of the material available proved to be inspiring not only to "rational" Western minds, but to the "romantic" Western minds of the 19th century as well. The latter tended to embrace Buddhism as a teaching that placed feelings over the reason proclaimed in both Christian dogma and modern science, and that in general justified the romantic preference for the subjective over the objective, the ideal over the real, etc. Whether actually inspired by Buddhist teachings or not, the writers Goethe and Schopenhauer, the artist Van Gogh, and the musician Richard Wagner (to name only the most famous of the Romantic Orientalists) professed great fondness for Buddhism.

With obvious distaste, Batchelor charts the direction that some romantic Western followers of Buddhism took in the "irrational and eclectic yearnings" of the Theosophical Society (p. 271). Founded in New York in 1875 by Olcott and Blavatsky (who in 1880 became lay priests in Sri Lanka), Theosophy includes Shakyamuni Buddha and Jesus Christ to a long list of historical masters who (p. 268) "appear periodically in the world to restore [the] underlying wisdom of humankind." Although this approach to Buddhist-and-Christian-like spirituality has spawned New Age religions galore and probably teaches a message that many Americans believe in (whether they are "card-carrying Theosophists" like Schoenburg, Kandinsky and Mondrian or not), Batchelor is quick to dismiss the movement, and points out with some satisfaction that the late Krishnamurti, who was actually raised by Theosophy's founders as the true Buddha of the Future (Maitreya), rejected his role in 1929, saying (p. 270) that truth was "a pathless land." Although Batchelor does not mention the American Universalist Unitarian movement, one presumes he would find its teachings on the same par with Theosophy.

Unfortunately, and irony of ironies, the romantic Buddhists opened the door for Nietzche's superior man, who triumphs over Buddhist dispassion, Schopenhauerian pessimism and Christian domination, and led Germany into the "racist nationalism" that proudly pointed to Aryan ancestors who lived in ancient India, making German culture older and superior to Greek culture. Many nationalists were convinced, as well, of the truth of the myth that Jesus spent sixteen years in India studying with Hindu and Buddhist priests, which then made the establishment of Christianity something German, even though Jesus was a Jew. Such nonsense brought the world to its knees less than sixty years ago. I think Batchelor is brave (and can sense that he was embarrassed) even to include it in his study of a religion of peace.

In the middle of his Awakening (p. 275), after a thrilling ride that shows us how we got where we are, Batchelor allows us to know where he himself stands as a Buddhist when he says "...the Dharma in the West has been obscured by the grid of reason or twisted by the dreams of romanticism" ... but can now be presented fully through "oral transmission" of truth from teacher to student, so that "the pulse of the Dharma" can be conveyed through a "casual remark or gesture" of the teacher. Batchelor also relies (p. 369) on meditative practice as "the very ground upon which sane and loving engagement with the world is possible..." and dreams of "an individuated form of the Dharma ... in small autonomous communities of spiritual friendship... [that provide] an existential, therapeutic, democratic, imaginative, anarchic, and 'agnostic' Buddhism for the West." I know many American Buddhists who would find this dream quite compatible with their own, although some (like Prof. Thurman) would find the agnosticism (questioning the reality of karma and reincarnation) not Buddhist enough, and others (like me) find Batchelor's strict exclusion of Christianity and Pure Land Buddhism unnecessarily unkind. I also am uncomfortable (as Thurman is, for reasons other than mine) with Batchelor's idea (developed in his latest book) that experiences of self-transcendent, ultimate reality should not be sought and in fact are not possible. But I will comment on that later.

At the end of his book Batchelor marvels at the "rapid expansion of Buddhism" since the 1950's. But at the same time, having seen some "incomprehensible" behavior on the part of Buddhists in the new world, he confesses that "the sheer unpredictability of human behavior" has made it impossible for him to see what might happen after 1992. I, too, have seen enough oddities in American Buddhist communities to share Batchelor's sense of helplessness, and would never attempt to predict their future. But I have agreed to offer in this journal my own impression of what students of Buddhism, and Americans in particular, have done with Buddhist teachings and practices during my lifetime. I also will try to show how many non-Buddhist writers have written very Buddhist things from time to time, either because they were directly influenced by Asia or because their own religious and philosophical views taught them.

Stephen Batchelor predicts in his latest book, Buddhism Without Beliefs (Riverhead, 1997), that Buddhism in the West will take root in the spaces left open by our traditional religions. In particular, he sees Buddhism emerging as an atheist, or at least agnostic, alternative to the theistic faiths of the West. I wonder, however, if so neat a division will be possible to sustain. And I wonder, too, if we want to sustain it. Already a process of fusion is underway. Consider the case of two American students of the 13th-century Zen Master Dogen, writing in the latest issue (No. 39, Winter 1999) of Kyoto Journal. There they present a serious comparison of the lives of their source for ideal Buddhism and the American pop musician Bob Dylan, making the latter sound every bit the former's equal: "[we know] a great spiritual writer whose name has five letters beginning with "D" and ending with "n" -- but who ... [is] not Dogen." Such familiarity with Buddhist teachers is commonplace now, even outside the Buddhist centers scattered throughout the country. But that was certainly not the case when I encountered Buddhism for the first time. It was much closer to the "Orientalism" that " ... was and is not merely an obscure academic discipline... [but] is the means by which the West, for its own ends, constructs the East...[thus] helping the West define its own self-image" (Batchelor, Awakening, p. 235). In that sense I am quite happy to be an Orientalist.

I first met Dr. Daisetsu Suzuki in New York early in 1951 when he was eighty and I was fifteen. I was a piano student at Julliard, and he was lecturing at Columbia. He came backstage after one of my recitals. I had read the 1938 edition of his Zen and Japanese Culture right after the war, when I was ten, and told him so when he was introduced to me as "the famous Zen scholar, Dr. Suzuki." He praised my playing and invited me to visit Japan someday. At the time such a visit seemed unthinkable, but in 1953 I gave up my piano career, entered college, married in 1955, did six years of graduate work in Asian Studies at the University of Chicago (under Ludwig Bachhofer, Harrie Vanderstappen, Joseph Kitagawa, Mircea Eliade, Edwin McClellan, Eugene Soviak, and Herlee Creel), had a summer of "intensive conversational Japanese" at Columbia in 1962, and went to Japan on a Fulbright in 1964. Dr. Suzuki was "waiting" for me (his words), as my principal advisor, when I entered Kyoto University.

The materials for my study of the art and culture of the Keicho Period (1596-1614) were stored mostly in Zen temples dating to that time, and Dr. Suzuki (and my other mentors) insisted that I discipline myself with regular Zen sitting, as well as tea ceremony and calligraphy practice, in addition to my regular classes. It was Dr. Suzuki's gentle insistence (however brief: he died in 1966) that kept me sitting in Zen temples and in 1971 resulted in my being given the priest name An'myo Kangan (Cold Rock) by Miyauchi Kanko (Cold Radiance), whom I succeeded in the Kanzan (Cold Mountain) lineage. During a visit in 1978 to the first temple of the lineage in Su-chou, the late abbot of the temple, K'ung Han-hsing officially recognized my succession.

Between 1966 and 1988 I was training and teaching in Kyoto and Seattle (where I started the University of Washington Zen center), and made regular visits to China, Tibet, Korea and India. In terms of the practice of ritual tea (Chado), my wife Carol, our son Reg and I have trained exclusively in the Urasenke (the "inner" Sen family ) lineage descended from Sen Sotan, grandson of the famous Japanese 16th-century tea master, Zen priest, and political advisor, Sen Rikyu. Carol's tea name is Soki (Joy of the Teachings) and I am Sosei (Realizer of the Teachings). Since 1989 we have been at Pepperdine University, where I direct the Asian Studies Institute and she teaches tea. I am president emeritus of the Urasenke Los Angeles Branch, and I conduct Zen retreats and give lectures for various Buddhist temples and groups in the area. I presently am the president of the Malibu Optimist Club, Carol and I sing in the St. Aidan's Episcopal Church choir, and Carol does the Sunday flower arrangements for the Malibu Church of Christ.

Over the years I have put my entire family through my own quest for meaning and self- definition. I grew up in the Church of Christ tradition that is part of the Protestant "restorationist" movement led in the early 19th century by Barton Stone and Alexander Campbell (see Illusions of Innocence, by Hughes and Allen, Chicago 1988.) Both of my parents were Ph.Ds and as a child I had to learn to read scriptures in Hebrew and New Testament Greek. The college my wife and I attended is the small Church of Christ school in Abilene, Texas, now known as Abilene Christian University. So my quest for the meaning of life is rooted firmly in a Christian tradition that came out of the Enlightenment, which as Batchelor rightly points out, requires believers to justify themselves not in dogma but in "the higher court of reason" (p. 231).

All of this goes by way of confession that I am an annoyance, at age sixty-four, to Christian friends and relatives, and Buddhist friends, teachers and disciples alike, by my own self-identification as a Buddhist Christian. This obviously means that I have, like many Buddhists, the "quasi-theistic view of the Unborn" that Batchelor and other (atheistic?) Buddhists are "troubled by" (p. 373). To say that I come by this naturally is to say that I am a creature of my particular time and place. But is it more Buddhistic or more Christian to say that I am not troubled at all by any part of myself that is irrational, rational, atheistic, theistic, or anything else? I can tell you certainly that my acceptance of self as everything (or, if you insist, as nothing) was not easy to come by. It came directly out of a rigorous, daily sitting meditation practice, done in the Japanese style (zazen). Nothing else in my pre- Buddhist experience (with the possible exception of the long hours of piano practice I put in as a child) could have produced it. Training in Zen temples is supposed to toughen you up, make you less self-indulgent, and ultimately remove your greatest obstacle to enlightenment, namely, "yourself."

My first experience so many years ago with zazen in Japanese temples was dreadful: for the first few months, after fifteen minutes I would hyperventilate and throw up. But I was determined, even when priests in charge of me would indicate that I was a foreigner, after all, and should not expect to be able to sit well. That only made me more determined! Once I had worked through the physical pain of sitting still for hours on end in Zen temples in Japan, from time to time I was put in charge of novice priests, most of them in their teens, whose fathers had sent them to train with a master in their lineage. (Masters who are fathers almost never train their own children, for reasons every parent will understand!)

I remember one episode with such a youngster that illustrates the point of accepting everything as self quite nicely. On a bitterly cold but sunny winter afternoon, during temple chores, a young novice of eighteen (who at the time was under my supervision) was hard at work cleaning the wooden verandah (roka) on his hands and knees. His knuckles were cracked and bleeding from the cold and he resented the hardship. As he worked he complained aloud, addressing his remarks to me, rather contemptuously. I was just inside the building, rearranging the altar equipment from the morning service. While the boy was talking, the abbot (Roshi) entered the room and overheard his grumbling. When the boy finally noticed the abbot his tone immediately changed, and pointing to the pond and garden covered with sparkling snow, he remarked enthusiastically, "Good afternoon, Roshi! Isn't this view splendid? I would say this is truly wabi (a term referring to the true reality of things), or even a genuine manifestation of furyu (supreme beauty) and satori itself (the forbidden Japanese word for enlightenment)! Wouldn't you agree, sir?"

The old abbot walked over to him and gently put his hand on the boy's head, and said "Yes, that is wabi, but so is this!," at which point he shoved the trainee's head down into the pile of cold wet paper the boy was cleaning the floor with. The abbot went on to say that yes, the view was indeed a manifestation of furyu and a vehicle for satori, but so was the half-frozen paper, the object of the boy's disgust. "And don't you ever forget it!," was the abbot's parting remark.

Japanese Zen teachers are rough, but they get the job done. I think many Westerners have come to a similar point in their lives, sometimes through traumas as brutal as those induced in Zen temples, sometimes through gentler means. With your permission I would like to bring in a few authors and works that I have found particularly Buddhist, even if they are Christian, or something else entirely. You can be the judge as to the Buddhist character of their content. Batchelor would not see much value in this because by his definition (p. 276), "... to commit oneself to the Dharma of the Buddha is ...a choice to practice something outside the Judaeo-Christian-Hellenic tradition... The idea of a God who breaks into history to save human beings from their sins through the death of his only son makes no sense. Just as the vision of the Buddha releases one from the need to believe in such a self, so does it free one from the need for such a God."

This is pretty clear, I guess, but it leaves me out. And it leaves out the Buddhist scriptures that speak of a Buddha (Amitabha) who broke into history to save human beings from their ignorance in a paradise that is pure, i.e., without the slightest self-concern or residue of karma to create a problem for those whose faith has brought them to a devotional practice that requires giving the self up, with all of its confusions and misperceptions, to a full realization of ultimate reality, the ground of being itself. (Such a devotional practice I must add, is not all that different from initiations that I have experienced under Tibetan teachers, who personify aspects of the awakened mind with many, many Buddhas.)

For Batchelor to object so strongly to the Christian and Pure Land "theistic" practices reminds me of the case of the disciple of the 9th-century Chinese Zen master Chao-chou (Joshu) who objected that a blind and starving newborn puppy surely did not have the Buddha Nature (as Buddhism claims) and could not have the same chance that he had of reaching enlightenment. As every Zen koan-trained student knows, old Joshu responded with a long and breathy "Mu!", a word that every wide-awake student understands to mean: "Why the hell should you be concerned about whether you or the puppy reaches enlightenment at all? Get up and feed him!"

In other words, I would think that Batchelor, like Joshu, would know that both views (of existence or non-existence, attainment or non-attainment, etc.) are "bad views (kudrsti), because they are an obstacle to the wise person who desires the bliss (sukha) of the quiescence (upasama) of every conceptual elaboration. Such an obstacle causes the 'weak minded' ... to see things as existing or not existing and to miss the quiescence of the visible..." (Nagarjuna, MMK 5-8, Ames translation.) My point is that whether Batchelor is willing to accept me as a Buddhist because I believe in God or not is not a problem; but if he cannot accept me as himself there is a real problem with his Buddhism.

Joshu's disciple felt that he had a better chance of reaching enlightenment than the puppy, and Batchelor thinks people can't be Buddhists if they believe in God. But couldn't this obstacle be nothing but a bad view, or (as Dr. Toshihiko Izutsu put it in his remarkable lecture on "The Interior and Exterior in Zen Buddhism" at the 1973 Eranos Conference in Ascona, Switzerland), isn't this a "pseudo-problem... a distinction [having] no reality...[in as much as] it is nothing but a thought-construct peculiar to the discriminating activity of the mind..?" [ Eranos Foundation, 1975, p. 9-10.] Wouldn't the quiescence of the visible ("I believe this, you believe that") create the bliss that would allow the puppy to survive and the Dharma to spread?

Actually, one of Batchelor's earlier books, Alone With Others (Grove, 1983, p. 29 and 115), shows a much more tolerant attitude when he says that if we live in order to fully be, if we realize "the optimum mode of being -- of optimum being-alone and optimum being-with-others -- our whole life becomes religious... [and] the essential dynamic of religion can never be reduced to or identified with a particular system of beliefs or dogmas." Batchelor's most recent position is boldly presented in his latest book, Buddhism Without Beliefs (Riverhead, 1997), in which he makes it clear not only that he would reject any I-Thou theism but that mysticism of any kind involving "shattering insights into a transcendent Truth" (p. 5) are unwelcome; he also asks us (p. 108) to leave "religious orthodoxies" and have the courage to "respond creatively to the challenges of the new situation" we find ourselves in today. So what exactly is a religious life or the essential dynamic of religion?

With that question in mind, I feel ready to settle on one C. S. Lewis, whose musings are surely as Buddhist as they are Christian. (If you are not a Lewis fan I encourage you to become one.) I had only read the Screwtape Letters before going to Japan, but later, when I read the whole of Lewis with the mind and body of a Buddhist practitioner, I recognized a world that he and I had experienced together. I suspect that other Westerners who have "done Buddhism" and read Lewis feel the same. (Till We Have Faces, which I have only recently read, is my personal favorite Lewis book, but they're all miracles.) C. S. Lewis is not the only cozy cradle for Buddhism in the West, as I shall try to show, but he seems obvious.

What Buddhist Scriptures speak of as Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, Tathagatas, etc., are simply referred to by C. S. Lewis as "new men" who are the Next Step in the evolution of the human race, the step he refers to as Transformation: "... the new men are dotted here and there all over the earth... Every now and then one meets them... They love you more than other men do, but they need you less... [They can be recognized...] across every barrier of color, sex, class, age, and even of creeds... To become new men means losing what we now call 'ourselves'...[and] the more we get...'ourselves' out of the way... the more truly ourselves we become...what I so proudly call 'Myself' becomes merely the meeting place for trains of events which I never started and which I cannot stop...[for] I am not, in my natural state, nearly so much of a person as I like to believe...[and thus] there must be a real giving up of the self... Give up yourself, and you will find your real self." (From "Beyond Personality" in the 1952 Macmillan edition of Mere Christianity, p. 187-190.)

Now I must point out that I have left out all references here to the Christian mystery that informs all of Lewis' writings. Without them the thoughts ring true in a way that Dogen and even Subhuti would surely find familiar. Put them in and the only Buddhists who might recognize something Buddhistic about them would be the tens of millions of Pure Land Buddhists who feel much the way about the Buddha Amitabha and his vow that Christians do about Christ and God's grace. It is not surprising that Batchelor gives this form of Buddhism short shrift, since Pure Land Buddhism, like Christianity, comes too close to the theistic teaching that he dismisses but admits "had immense popular appeal" (p. 127). I'm pretty sure he does not consider Pure Land Buddhism to be Buddhism at all. (He is certainly not alone, but Pure Land believers do make up the great majority of Buddhists in the world!) Since I do consider Pure Land texts and practices to be legitimate expressions of Buddhism it perhaps is clear why my own musings would be solicited by the editors of a Pure Land Buddhist journal.

In this regard, however, I also should point out that precisely because Pure Land Buddhism and Christianity seem so similar, the "least" popular form of Buddhism for Westerners is Pure Land. They may accept the idea of countless enlightened beings in the universe, but devout Jews, Christians and Muslims don't so easily replace their Western deity of oneness (One God!) with an Asian one. Or, if they come from a background that is only nominally Jewish, Christian or Muslim, and most especially if they have had a terrible childhood experience at the hands of the teachers of those religions, then Pure Land Buddhism just sounds too much like the same old thing that they're turning their backs on. I have found that there is nothing quite as hateful as a disaffected Jew, Christian or Muslim who has become a radical Buddhist, i.e., one who proclaims, "there is no God in Buddhism!" and who is happy to "get out from under the monstrously oppressive God the Father" (Alan Watts, as quoted in TIME, p. 77.)

Most people in the West do not know that D. T. Suzuki was from a Pure Land priest family. His writings on the life and teachings of Shinran (1173-1262), the founder of Jodo Shin-shu, are well known in Japan but almost unknown elsewhere. Although Dr. Suzuki is famous in the West for his books on Zen, most of which are still being printed regularly today and continue to influence millions, he himself, probably because of his birthright, praised Shin Pure Land above all other forms of Buddhism. Because of both his Pure Land background as well as his personal bias in favor of Pure Land doctrine, almost no Zen priest in Japan has anything good to say about Dr. Suzuki. You would think they might at least be happy that the non-Japanese world came to hear of the Buddha-Dharma through this extraordinary man. But they don't see it that way. Furthermore, I find that my students consistently recoil at the Shin Pure Land teachings that I introduce them to via Suzuki Sensei's works. His Buddhism is, after all is said and done, theistic in doctrine and tone, and that presents a problem for some people, if not for me. In all his writings, whether on Zen or Pure Land, he uses the word "God" a lot.

Ontologically and historically speaking, as well as in terms of comparative theology (but not as far as the soteriology, or goals, of Buddhism are concerned), one must agree that Buddhism and its mother religion, Brahmanism/Hinduism, come out of an atheistic view of the universe. There is no Creator God who made the universe and operates on a personal level with each of His creatures in the Buddhist scheme of things. But even Buddhist texts remind us not to take final positions or any comparisons too seriously. As the historical Buddha said to his most persistent disciple, in the Diamond Sutra XXI: "Please don't imagine, Subhuti, that I as a Thus-Come One have it in my mind to present a teaching or doctrine. If anyone should say that I do they slander all Buddhas and cannot begin to explain what I teach. Truth cannot be told by a teaching or doctrine, but the words 'truth' and 'true' are used as words in what I say." In any case, I am no longer interested in sectarianism in any form. I've lived with it all my life. First it was this form of Christianity over that form. Briefly for me it was Buddhism over any other religion. Then it was this form of Buddhism over that one. Enough is enough!

It's the basic teachings of Buddhism and, much more importantly, the results of Buddhist practice that interest me (and, I think, other Americans who have allowed Buddhism, with or without other religions, to transform their lives.) In particular, I agree wholeheartedly with my former Seattle Zen Center colleague (and longtime Rutgers English professor) Kurt Spellmeyer, who wrote in a recent letter to me that "the lived experience of zazen transcends any particular religious idioms that we might use to explain it." Certainly nothing in my own experience has pushed me to the brink, forced me to face the unknown and unknowable, and ultimately has opened me up to the glory of sentient being the way zazen has. I know that I am everything that I can see, hear, taste, touch, know, or imagine, and I doubt that I could know that had I not been encouraged to get up early every morning, sit down, be still for a couple of hours, and be absolutely dependent on God's universe. Hisamatsu Sensei used to say that until a person reaches that point in their lives where nothing they can say or do has any value or consequence, they have not lived. The only problem to making such a practice truly available to everyone is sectarianism. To quote from Kurt Spellmeyer's letter again:

Sectarianism can prevent us from appreciating the full richness of the experience that zazen opens up to us. Perhaps this is the case with Batchelor when he enjoins us against seeking after the transcendent. Sectarianism also does violence to people if they feel that they must choose between, say, Zen and Jodo, or between Buddhism and Christianity, when the experience of awakening can revitalize both traditions at once. But sectarianism can be damaging not only tothe way we conceptualize our practice but also to practice itself. In my view, it has been responsible for many of the problems faced by Buddhist centers here in America, where exclusive loyalty to one tradition of practice often translates into exclusive -- and unquestioned-- loyalty to one's teacher.

I've given sectarianism up. But it is alive everywhere in the world, and that I see as a problem. I am troubled that Buddhist converts/practitioners in America have shown such an eagerness to accept the master-disciple relationship and to stand in awe of masters who are regarded as enlightened. With the possible exception of Pure Land Buddhism, Buddhist tradition does indeed insist that teaching and learning the truth (the Buddha-Dharma) only take place between a qualified teacher and an obedient student. But the student's approach to the teacher in Buddhism ranges from the worshipful to the merely respectful. A Tibetan teacher can indeed be regarded as a living Buddha or Bodhisattva (like His Holiness the Dalai Lama), which is to say the reincarnation of an enlightened being who out of compassion has elected to take on human form again to work in the world of delusion. In other words, such a teacher is no longer the captive of reincarnation, which is the seemingly endless recycling of self-concern and its influence (karma) in all forms of life. Almost never will such a being admit to being enlightened, despite all the acclaim, because to make any distinction between self and other is antithetical to the enlightened state. Tibetan teachers may, of course, just be highly evolved beings, and in Thurman's words, "supported in vows of celibacy and poverty, divorced from everyday life and supported by a community of lay members." But they too are revered as "the true motors of devotion and keepers of the flame" (TIME, p. 81), without which true Buddhism cannot exist.

On the other side are the Pure Land ministers, whose job is the relatively undramatic one of providing members of a congregation with education in the earthly and eternal bliss that awaits them in the transcendent, karma-free land of the Buddha of Infinite Light and Life, Amitabha), and the the prayer-like techniques (Nembutsu) that assures the devout practitioners access. In the middle are the Zen masters who have served as great task-masters whose efforts (and charisma) often inspires (in the late and beloved Christian Brother Thomas Merton's words, found in his Zen and the Birds of Appetite, p. 140) "a breakthrough, an explosive liberation from one-dimensional conformism, a recovery of unity which is not the suppression of opposites but a simplicity beyond opposites... where the bottom drops out of the world of factuality and of the ordinary."

Modern Pure Land, in all its forms (and I know of no temple of any Buddhist sect in China that does not incorporate Nembutsu in its practice), is not only the least authoritarian form of Mahayana Buddhism, but also the most ecumenical. Pure Land teachers today seem willing to try anything that might lead people further to awakening. They also are the least likely to become doctrinaire, despite the aggressive sectarianism of some Pure Land teachers in the past. I know of no Pure Land teacher in Japan, China or in the U.S. or Europe today who has been worshiped or has inspired such blind obedience as have Tibetan and Zen teachers. Ironically, while the worship and obedience accorded the latter seems culturally controlled in Tibet, China, Korea, and Japan, this aspect of blind obedience has gotten out of hand with some of the teachers once they left their environment. There have been some peculiar (and to me reprehensible) cases in North America, Britain and Europe where one or two Tibetan teachers and far too many Japanese Zen teachers have abused their authority (perhaps because they had been given too much of it.) This has always been puzzling to me. How could such behavior be tolerated in a society like mine? On the one hand I was raised to question everything, be respectful and kind to others, and to be true to myself, all of which Buddhism surely supports. And yet I have seen disciples suffer unduly (and I am not talking about the physical and psychological pain of a rigorous practice) when their teachers manipulated them psychologically or sexually in the mistaken belief that they were promoting spiritual development. Even if I agree (and I do) that ultimately any behavior may "not matter" and should not be a source of attachment, there are certain limits, even in Buddhism. American Zen teachers in particular sometimes seem to forget the Vinaya, the Rules (ritsu), including those that shape the path to enlightenment, the Six Perfections (ropparamitsu), as though they were not important as practical expedients.

But enough criticism! By and large the transmission of Buddhism outside of Asia has been done with great wisdom and compassion, and has brought untold insight into the hearts of its followers. I especially appreciate the hard work all of those behind-the-scenes translators, those working today (such as Bukkyo University's very own Dr. Joji Atone) as well the pioneers of the past, who have struggled with Asian and Western languages to make Buddhist teachings accessible. I have faith in the maturity of younger practitioners who have made the cultural transition themselves and can see what needs to be done, not only to bring more sensitivity to the process of adapting Buddhism from one country to another, but also to correct the mistakes of the past.

One outstanding example of such spiritual bridge-builders is Okumura Shohaku, priest and head of the Soto Zen Education Center in Los Angeles. He not only has worked tirelessly to translate works by his teacher, Uchiyama Kosho (and the ultimate teacher of all Soto Zen followers, Dogen Zenji), but he has also managed to work with many American students of Zen, spreading the Dharma face to face. His most recent work appeared alongside a critique, published in three parts in the Soto School's English-language Zen Quarterly (Winter-Summer 1998), of the "History of the Soto Zen Mission" (Soto-shu Kai-gai Kai-kyo ten-do shiki) in China, Taiwan and Korea during the first half of the 20th century. Although Okumura did not write the critique, I think it is indicative of the liberal spirit emerging in traditional Asian Buddhism. I can only stand up and cheer when reading the writer's blistering indictment (Summer 1988, p. 9) of his own Soto School (1) for taking part "in pacification and imperialization activities while supporting such activities as spiritual training, women's associations, [and] Japanese language education" and (2) for forcing Japanese "religious views, customs and ceremonies on those people [supposedly in the care of Soto foreign missions before and during the Pacific War] with the help of the Japanese military powers." I would also add a hearty "Amen!" to his conclusion: "These [misuses of religion] are matters for all religious people to think about, to regret deeply, and to criticize in no uncertain terms."

Rudyard Kipling claimed that East and West were culturally too far apart to ever meet. I suppose my feeling is that in reality they never have been apart. Rev. Okumura is one example of an Asian whose understanding of Eastern traditions has been changed by his encounter with the Western legacy of critical questioning in the public sphere. In a recent letter to me he wrote, "When I was a student at Komazawa University in the late 60's and early 70's during the Vietnam War, so many things were happening. Many students were involved in the anti-war movement, but I was busy studying Yogacara (Mere Ideation ) Buddhism. I felt I needed to make my [Buddhist] attitude clear [within] the anti-war... peace movement." Okumura found himself in sympathy with Western peace activists and discovered modern Buddhist critics of the war in his own country, such as Ichikawa Hakugen, whose book on "responsible" Buddhists (Bukkyosha no Senso Sekinin ) led Okumura to investigate Japanese Buddhist missionary activities in Korea. He concluded that he "had a negative feeling against Japanese Soto School missionary activities before and during the war." Okumura did not learn that in seminary.

We in the West may undertake a comparable revision of our own history. We may discover, in fact, that we have had "Buddhist" ancestors all along. For me any list of these ancestors would have to include the people cited below, as well as the people already mentioned. Their insights into Buddhism (and life's meaning in general) are valuable precisely because they represent a truly international view."

Ah! If only one could really know!" cried Knecht. "If only there were a doctrine -- something in which one could believe! Everything is so contradictory, and there is no certainty...Is there no truth then, is there no true and valid doctrine?" ... "Yes, there is truth, my dear boy," [the Master] said at last. "But the doctrine that you desire... does not exist.

Do you recognize the author? Dear Hermann Hesse, who has influenced so many of us on this side of the Pacific that we even put his Steppenwolf on the reading lists for our high school kids. This selection, however, comes from his Magister Ludi, in M.Savill's translation (Ungar Press, 1949, p. 76.)

At the end of his interesting What Makes Life Worth Living: How Americans and Japanese Make Sense of Their Worlds (California, 1996, p. 253-255), American anthropologist Gordon Mathews says, with heartbreaking sadness, "I kept hoping, subconsciously, that someone [I interviewed] might indeed teach me what life ultimately means -- only to find that, of course, nobody knew any more than I did." He concludes: "If I knew with certainty that the pain of life had no meaning other than itself, as dumb pain, would I bother living this life? Certainly not... We can't know why we were put on the planet... we can only shape our shaped lives from the array of cultural conceptions around us, choose carefully our meanings and our potential transcendence, and live our lives as if those meanings were real." At "some level," he says, we probably all will come to see "that there is no perspective from which transcendent truth can be known."

This position is pretty close to the one the great English Zen student R. H. Blyth arrived at before taking his own life in 1964. However, Blyth and his works, known to many students of Japanese Buddhism (and praised in Frederick Franck's 1978 book on Zen), were filled with comparisons of Zen and Christian teachings, much as my remarks are here. Unfortunately, Blyth lived a very troubled life. He, too, was befriended by Suzuki Daisetsu Sensei, who encouraged him in his struggle with self-definition (am I Christian? Buddhist?) as he did me. But my sense of Blyth (to whom I am deeply grateful) is that even if he didn't recognize it himself, he indeed reached a perspective from which transcendent truth can be known.

Whether it is through zazen, prayer, or just being wide awake, I believe transcendent truth can be known by any of us, briefly or forever. As Hesse said in his Demian (Bantam, 1965, p. 89): "There's an immense difference between simply carrying the world within us and being aware of [doing] it." But if we take on that very difficult task of awareness we can join our voices in the melancholy chorus that Hesse wrote as his dedication to Demian: "I wanted only to try to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?"

Oscar Wilde put much the same thing this way in his De Profundis (recalling what Matthew Arnold called "the secret of Jesus"): "...whatever happens to another happens to oneself, and if you want an inscription to read at dawn and at nighttime, and for pleasure or for pain, write up on the walls of your house in letters for the sun to gold and the moon to silver, 'Whatever happens to oneself happens to another!' Christ's place indeed is with the poets ...imagining that he could bear on his own shoulders the burden of the entire world..." (p. 66-67). The thing is, I think "bearing the burden" here means more than Wilde (or many Christians) may realize. I think Hesse understood it with his suggestion that we need to be aware of what "carrying the world within" really means.

I have no doubt at all that Meister Eckhart understood. As Reiner Schurmann put it in his review of Dr. Suzuki's Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist (1957), which is included in the appendix to his Meister Eckhart (Indiana, 1972), "Suzuki does suggest that satori (the Japanese word for enlightenment) consists in 'looking into our own nature.' This is very convincing [by Eckhartian standards], as the spark is not only that which sees in us, but also that which is seen. The following line [from Suzuki] could have come directly from Eckhart's sermon 'Jesus Entered': 'Let us once see into our own original nature and we have the truth, even when we are quite illiterate, not knowing a word.'"

Finally, my favorite Buddhist poetic reference to enlightenment comes from Japan's own de Saint-Exupery, Miyazawa Kenji (d.1933). Miyazawa speaks not about the ancient world, but about modern industrial society, which he often describes in fairytale language as a world created by the West but now one which will soon be the fate of the whole globe. He understood all too well that we are all modern now, and that we are all struggling with the same sense of isolation, violence, depression, meaninglessness, anomie, etc., created by secular, industrial society. Listen to this passage from Night Train to the Stars, where a character has a conversation with the mysterious voice that often speaks in Miyazawa's stories:

"I wonder why I feel so fed up?" [he] thought. I ought to make my mind more pure and moreopen. Far away beyond the bank over there, I can see a small, blue, wispy fire burning, quitesilent and cold. I must let it teach me how to keep my own mind peaceful." Pressing his burning, aching head between his hands, [he] gazed in the direction of the fire.

"Ah, isn't there anybody who'll stay with me all the way?" [he] thought. ...I'm really fed up!"

His eyes filled with tears again... and then, from behind him there came the gentle voice, like a cello, that he had heard so many times before.

"Whatever are you crying about? ... Your friend's gone off somewhere very far away. It's no use your looking for [him]... anymore... [He] can't go along with you. And everybody's [like him]. Whoever you meet, they're all people you've eaten apples with or ridden on trains with any number of times. So the best thing to do, just as you thought a while ago, is to seek the greatest happiness for others ... [You'll] have to account for all your disconnected ideas from beginning to end [eventually, but] you can make do with what you've got [right now]... Just hold on tight to your ticket. From now on, you're not in a dream train any longer." [Excerpts from the translation by John Bester in the Kodansha English Library, 1987, p. 70-91.]

Life is but a dream, and that's a fact. But if you believe in the holy miracle of that dream, the one your ticket is for, and if you enter it and come to know it from the inside out, you are sure to bring me and everyone else into a state of grace, however defined, that will spread compassion and forbearance throughout the world. You do not have to be in a monastery, training under a famous master, to accomplish that.

My advice to all of us is to do whatever we have to do to make this whole world our monastery, and everything in it our teacher. If that is not what William James meant by "religious optimism," through which passionately loyal religious persons everywhere would learn to "use" their faith without caring in the end what it taught in details or even if the details were true, I don't know what it is.

Copyright(c) by 1996-2001 Jodo Shu Research Institute