Essays in Zen Buddhism

by Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki

My poverty this year is poverty indeed;

In my poverty last year there was room for a gimlet’s point,

But this year even the gimlet is gone.”

Later, a master called Koboku Gen (K‘u-mu Yüan)[7.41] commented on this song of poverty by Kyōgen in the following verse:

“‘Neither a gimlet’s point nor the room for it,’ some sing; but this is not yet real poverty:

As long as one is conscious of having nothing, there still remains the guardian of poverty.

I am lately poverty-stricken in all conscience,

For from the very beginning I do not see even the one that is poor.”

Ummon was not poverty-stricken, but lean and emaciated; for when a monk asked him what were the special features of his school, the master answered, “My skin is dry and my bones are sticking out.” Corpulence and opulence have never been associated with spirituality, at least in the East. As a matter of fact, they are not inconsistent ideas; but the amassing of wealth under our economic conditions has always resulted in producing characters that do not go very well with our ideals of saintliness. Perhaps our too emphatic protest against materialism has done this. Thus not to have anything, even wisdom and virtue, has been made the object of Buddhist life, though this does not mean that it despises them. In despising there is in a large measure something impure, not thoroughly purgated; as true Bodhisattvas are even above purity and virtuousness, how much more so they would be above such petty weaknesses of human being! When the Buddhists are thus cleansed of all these, they will truly be poverty-stricken and thin and transparent.

The aim of Zen discipline is to attain to the state of “non-attainment” (cittaṁ nopalabhyate) as is technically expressed. All knowledge is an acquisition and accumulation, whereas Zen proposes to deprive one of all one’s possessions. The spirit is to make one poor and humble—thoroughly cleansed of inner impurities. Learning, on the contrary, makes one rich and arrogant. Because learning is earning, the more learned, the richer, and therefore “in much wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.” It is after all “vanity and a striving after wind.” Zen will heartily endorse this too. Says Laotzŭ, “Scholars gain everyday while the Taoists lose everyday.”[f152] The consummation of this kind of loss is “non-attainment,” which is poverty. Poverty in another word is emptiness, śūnyatā. When the spirit is all purged of its filth accumulated from time immemorial, it stands naked, with no raiments, with no trappings. It is now empty, free, genuine assuming its native authority. And there is a joy in this, not that kind of joy which is liable to be upset by its counterpart, grief, but an absolute joy which is “the gift of God,” which makes a man “enjoy good in all his labour,” and from which nothing can be taken, to which nothing can be put, but which shall stay for ever. Non-attainment, therefore, in Zen is positive conception, and not merely privative. The Buddhist modes of thinking are sometimes different from those of the West, and Christian readers are often taken aback at the idea of emptiness and at the too unconditioned assertion of idealism. Singularly, however, all the mystics, Buddhist or no, agree in their idea of poverty being the end of their spiritual development.