Annotation by Mary Brown: A serious Zen student, poet and calligrapher. A woman of courage and insight. An old friend.
Frankly I am disappointed you will not be in Florida because you and Henry are nearly the only ones whose conversation I find concordant.
Thank you for sending "Zen Notes."1 I found it valuable and enspiriting. And it was beautifully done. It denotes no little being. For myself the emphasis is on opening and accepting. The eleventh commandment is "Listen."
I have read the book you suggested, Other Tongues—Other Flesh.2 It contains some useful material on symbols. It showed very clearly how prone we are to confine the infinite within the bounds of our own views. If you are interested in symbols, I call your attention to the following books: Myth and Christianity. Jaspers and Bultmann/ Symbolism and Beliefs. Edwyn Bevan/ Hero with a Thousand Faces. Joseph Campbell.
Symbolism is dangerous when a symbol is tied down and made into an idol.
What does Ejun mean?
It was good to hear from you. You are my essence friend and you must let me know how you are physically.
I do not know much about the political situation in Vietnam, but I feel convinced that force will not get anywhere; you cannot impress your "way of life" on others by killing them. However, I do not feel that the Vietnam situation is going to hold back forever the tide of evolution of our conscious growth, which is the ultimate aim of the Ground of Being. I believe that we are inevitably progressing from a nationalistic to a humanistic status.
I still cannot answer your very difficult letter, but I will as soon as I can collect my thoughts. The subject of suffering is a very difficult one for me and no doubt you can tell me more about it than I can tell you.
I showed your letter to Mary. She said she has suffered from a breathing tension and she has found that the thing is to accept the tension rather than try to fight it.
As to my difficulty, I have accepted it, just as one would accept an imperfect lawnmower. This may not help the lawnmower but the attitude helps the man.
To put the matter more scientifically (and at the same time realistically), we do not differ from the cell in having a "within" as well as a "without." Both can be described by the matter of which they are composed. But that is not enough. Their real being is represented by their structural pattern and functional possibilities. A cell (however imperfect in composition) pursues its inner function as far as it can, and so must we. As Rufus Jones said, "All one needs to do if he means to be 'humble', is to keep a constant contrast in mind between himself as he now is and that larger, truer, richer potential self which he all the time feels hidden away within himself."3
If we follow with ultimate concern our "within" way, tensions disappear or at least become immaterial.
Buffering has been defined in many ways, but I feel that it is beyond intellectual understanding and is a matter of being, ultimate concern and involving all parts of a man — not merely his intellectual center.
The magazine Life of July 8 has a very interesting picture of a gene, but it only emphasizes what I have said above, that its structure and pattern and functional features cannot be adequately set down. I believe that the purpose of all true art (including Zen art) is not to depict but to suggest (as in a parable) the "within," the functional possibilities of an object which has undoubtedly a material structure.
Mary and I were greatly moved by the triple article on Life and Death in the three Zen issues. You know that the Quakers also believe that silence is not a meaningless void and we were delighted by the Chinese endeavor to express this fullness of silence as "mute thunder." This is a new expression to me and seems very meaningful.
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