Western Approach to Zen

Written by Christmas Humphreys, founding president of the Buddhist Society,London, and lifelong confidante and supporter of D.T. Suzuki - it is curious to weigh the gist of this book against the experience brought by two or three decades of experimentation with 'orthodox' Zen in the West. Despite his esteem for Zen - and Buddhism, generally, Humphreys felt certain reservations about adopting the outward form of such practices in the West, arguing that it was unreasonable and impractical to expect Westerners - living in the 20th c, to adopt forms of practice devised for Chinese Zen monks, living in 8th or 9th c. China. The concern here extended to prolonged periods of formal Za-zen, and also the more formalised aspects of training with the koan. Much of the thinking here derived from the fruitful bathos of Zen workshops at the Buddhist Society. Humphrey's position was not that Zen practice per se could be dispensed with, but that it ought to reflect Western needs and circumstances - bearing in mind the Buddha's own dictum: "work out thine own salvation with diligence." Quite independently of the Buddhist Society, London, and working far away in N. America, at least one Japanese Roshi - Nyogen Senzaki, arrived at conclusions similar to those of Humphreys, suggesting that Western Zen students might sit on chairs, rather than adopt a sitting posture they were unfamiliar with - or even unsuited to, constititutionally. In their bid to reclaim substance from style, or the living kernel from the outer shell of tradition, reformers are often at risk of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. To what extent that could be said of Humphreys, with any fairness, is a good question. The Buddhist Society had always had strong ties with the Theravada - and, as such, unlikely to foster anything flippant - in the name of Buddhism. Going by the 'letters' sent Humphrey's way from practicers at the Buddhist Society, some of which appeared verbatim in 'Zen Comes West,'a forerunner to the present text - it would be uncharitable to suggest that the letters therein reflected anything less than a genuine, focused quest for the truth. I suspect that - over the past thirty years, even the most 'conservative' proponents and adherents of Zen have had to take a fresh look at some of their practices. Still, that is another matter from declaring such practices to be superfluous. It is one thing to concede that certain Caucasian types don't seem happy doing formal Za-zen for anything longer than brief spurts, and quite another to suggest that formal Za-zen never constituted part of the daily routine in T'ang Zen temples. If anything, the tensions expressed in this book are still working themselves out. It is pretty evident that we are not going to see a kind of final triumph of the 'reformists' over the 'conservatives' or vice versa. It is more a question of levelling things out, letting them find their balance. In some areas, Western Buddhists are becoming more 'con