1. “Empty and Marvelous”

1.1. According to a Daoism principle, Beauty and ugly, good and evil cannot be separated. Good without evil is like up without down.

1.2. The only alternative to a life of constant progress is felt to be a mere existence, static and dead.

1.3. The illusion of the human mind is bound to a dualistic pattern: Good and evil, mind and body are separated.

1.4. Zen is a liberation from this pattern:

Zen teaches people:

1.4.1. To understand that life is not a pie or a barrel of beer, which you can take from some place else.

1.4.2. To understand that to succeed is always to fail-in the sense that the more one succeeds in anything the greater is the need to go on succeeding.

1.4.3. To understand that there is no position which is better than the other, a vacuum soon filled by the sensation of another in tolerable contrast.

1.4.4. To understand that the good and evil, the pleasure and the painful are inseparable.

To receive trouble is to receive good fortune;

To receive agreement is to receive opposition.

At dusk the cock announces down;

At midnight, the bright sun.

1.5.Zen and free choice:

1.5.1. Choosing is absurd because there is no choice. The flea who falls must jump, and the flea who jumps must fall.

1.5.2. Zen is not fatalism.

The difference between Zen and fatalism:

Submission to fate implies someone who submits, someone who is the helpless puppet of circumstances but for Zen there is no such person.

　

1.6. Zen thinking and dualistic mode of thought

Zen thinking:

1.6.1. Knower and the things to be known is the one. The causality in Zen’s understanding is “cheese and bread” and “bread and cheese.”

1.6.2. The nature of mind-body is inseparable. No “myself” apart from the mind-body which gives structure to my experience.

1.6.3. The relationship of subjects and objects is like the water-moon relationship-moon in the water. The event is caused as much by the water as by the moon.

1.6.4. “Self” is just an idea, a useful symbol. But it would be disastrous if identified with our nature.

1.6.5. There is no identification of a individual if words lost their meanings