Sublime

Discourse on Method.

Sometimes I think my role as a Zen teacher comes down to being the one person in the room who says, “I don’t know,” when everyone else is sure they know what to do—or more often than not, sure they know what somebody else should be doing.

—Alan Watts, The Way of Zen

Rinzai Roku (a celebrated Zen text of the T’ang dynasty) and the teachings of Bankei, the seventeenth-century Japanese master who, for me, represents Zen at its best.

Philosophy, as I shall understand the word, is something intermediate between theology and science. Like theology, it consists of speculations on matters as to which definite knowledge has, so far, been unascertainable; but like science, it appeals to human reason rather than to authority, whether that of tradition or that of revelation.