Criticism > Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism > Buddhism and Literature - Western Literature

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WESTERN LITERATURE

R. H. Blyth

SOURCE: "What is Zen?" in Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics, Hokuseido Press, 1942, pp. 1-24.

[In the following essay, Blyth endeavors to find a definition of Zen by providing examples of the philosophy from English literature.]

Consider the lives of birds and fishes. Fish never weary of the water; but you do not know the true mind of a fish, for you are not a fish. Birds never tire of the woods; but you do not know their real spirit, for you are not a bird. It is just the same with the religious, the poetical life: if you do not live it, you know nothing about it.…

[Zen] is the real religious, poetical life. But, as Mrs. Browning says in Aurora Leigh,

The cygnet finds the water, but the man Is born in ignorance of his element.

Dôgen, (1200-1253) founder of the Sôtô Sect of Zen in Japan, expresses this more poetically:

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1. Introduction
2. Representative Works*
3. Eastern Literature
4. Western Literature
5. Further Reading
6. Copyright

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