Skepticism, ordinary language and Zen Buddhism

to pursue Truth through intellectual explanations and traditional wisdom ... is not approved by Buddha, because there is a barrier as etherial as a gossamer garment, which prevents one's true nature from being revealed. Hence we Know that in all intentional thinking there is a separation from Ch'an as great as between heaven and earth.[11]

III 'TRUTH' AT THE ORDINARY LEVEL

Difficulties Mith the Above Views

When we come to ourselves after this dazzling display of dialectic we realize that, just as Sextus's procedure for attaining quietude is based on the dubious foundation of argument and equipollence, Chi-tsang arrives at the highest place by relying on the meaningless principle that dualities and extremes are to be avoided--meaningless because it involves the distinction between dualities and nondualities, and between extremes on the one hand, and the Middle Way on the other. Perhaps this is why Ch'an Master Hui-hai (c. 750), when asked about the significance of the term 'middle way', answered: "It signifies the extremes."[l2]

The Ordinary Level

The ordinary truth at the first level is one that concerns everyone. One coping with the world here, and dealing with worldly or ordinary truth, is operating, I shall say, at the ordinary level. Sextus talks about following a line of reasoning conformable to the customs, laws, and institutions of his society; and even Naagaarjuna, the father of the Maadhyamika philosophy, says:

For we do not speak without accepting, for practical purposes, the work-a-day world.[13]

At the ordinary level we use words like 'true,''real,' 'know,' 'skeptic,' 'skeptical, and 'cause'; we talk about tables and rocks, diseases and cures, but we need raise no questions that could be called philosophical. Thus when Chi-tsang says;

When it is said that dharmas possess being, it is ordinary people who say so. This is the wordly truth of ordinary people.[14]

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he is opening the way for a mistake. When we are firmly rooted in the ordinary level we will have no occasion to affirm this or to deny it. But ordinary people with little or no exposure to philosophy are easily led into metaphysics. And so when, by whatever device, the ordinary man is led to say "Dharmas possess being" (or that we perceive "material objects''), he is no longer speaking purely as an ordinary man, but as an ordinary man enticed into philosophical speculation--that is, as a philosopher. But let us put the question of who does metaphysics to one side. What Chi-tsang wants to convey is that by a dialectical progression we can arrive at the awareness of a place beyond philosophical and doctrinal conflicts and positions:

Only when both Buddhist and heterodoxical schools are taken out of sight and both the Mahayana and Hinayana are silenced can there be anything called correct principle. As this correct principle is understood, correct view will arise. And when correct view arises, then nonsensical discussion will cease.[15]

Where to Meet a Philosopher

Both Sextus and Chi-tsang start their therapy only after the first philosophical step has been taken by the ordinary man turned philosopher. They attempt to mo ve him beyond his dogmatism by employing methods of a kind that generated that dogmatism--Sextus countering arguments with arguments and Chi-tsang opposing counter-dogmas to dogmas (countering being with nonbeing). It is here that we can begin to see a difference between Sextus and the Maadhyamika philosopher on the one hand, and Wittgenstein, Austin, and, as we shall see, the Zen Buddhist on the other. For the latter three, in spite of their differences, all refuse to engage the philosopher at his own level, and try in various ways to bring him back to the ordinary level, at which they steadfastly remain.

Wittgenstein

We have already had occasion to note Wittgenstein's attitude toward philosophical problems and discussions:

For the clarity that we are aiming at is indeed complete clarity. But this simply means that the philosophical problems should completely disappear.[16]

In this passage from the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein was contrasting; his then current attitude with ideas he had expressed many years previously in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. But even in that earlier work he was highly critical of standard philosophical doctrines and discussions. There he had said that the correct method in philosophy would be to show anyone who wanted to say something metaphysical "that he had failed to give a meaning to certain signs in his propositions,"[17] and that "most of the propositions and questions of philosophers arise from a "failure to understand the logic of our language." They belong, he says, "to the same class as the question whether the good is more or less identical than the beautiful."[l8] He then

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thought that complete clarity could be attained by finding the hidden logical form of the ordinary sentences we use--when that form is revealed, nonsense is exposed at a glance. Clarity was to be achieved by analysis of ordinary sentences into ideal ones whose very structure showed exactly how they were related to reality. Anything not subject to such analysis was nonsense. In the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein held a similar idea of the cause of our confusion:

A main source of our failure to understand is that we do not command a clear view of the use of our words.[19]

But the clear view is to be attained not by analysis, but by closer attention to the neglected details of our language as it is actually used. Because we are not in touch with our actual use of language we feel no difficulty when it is extended beyond what its common sense will bear. The remedy, he came to think, was to get in touch with the everyday use (at the ordinary level) and stay there. Then philosophical questions disappear because their formulation is seen to make no sense.

When philosophers use a word--"knowledge", "being", "object", "I" "proposition", "name"-and try to grasp the essence of the thing, one must always ask oneself: is the word ever actually used in this way in the language-game which is its original home?--

What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use.[20]

This is done not by providing a theory, or a body of truths, but by "assembling reminders for a particular purpose."[21] These reminders are designed to help us attain a clear view of the use of our words. So, for example, when we are inclined to suppose that all games must have something in common, Wittgenstein simply reminds us of the great variety of things we call games and then invites us to find something common. He says, "Don't think, but look."[22] In his Blue Book we find a good example of his technique in a discussion of the question of whether or not thinking is "operating with signs."

If we say that thinking is essentially operating with signs, the first question you might ask is. "What are signs?"--lnstead of giving any kind of general answer to this question, I shall propose to you to look closely at particular cases which we should call "operating with signs".[23]

Sections of the Investigations often take the form of a dialogue, with one voice expressing an inclination to do philosophy and the other pulling it back into the ordinary level:

"I can only believe that someone else is in pain, but I know it if I am."-Yes: one can make the decision to say "I believe he is in pain" instead of "He is in pain". But that is all.-What looks like an explanation here, or like a statement about a mental process, is in truth an exchange of one expression for another which, while we are doing philosophy, seems the more appropriate one.

Just try--in a real case--to doubt someone else's fear or pain.[24]

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Austin

J. L. Austin's method is similar. He discusses with great perception and precision ordinary uses and philosophical misuses of such words as 'real', 'true', 'meaning', 'knowl,' 'illusion', 'delusion', and a host of others; and in each case he shows how problems crop up when we deviate from the ordinary use without a full awareness of what we are deviating from and Why.[25] In Sense and Sensibilia he takes on the philosophers' view that we never really perceive "material objects" but only "sense data." Analogous to Chi-tsang's suggestion that both orthodox and heterodox views be taken out of sight, and Wittgen-stein's desire that philosophical problems completely disappear, we find Austin maintaining that it is not one or the other of these terms that is objectionable, but both sides of the dichotomy:

One of the most important points to grasp is that these two terms, 'sense-data' and 'material things', live by taking in each other's washing--what is spurious is not one term of the pair, but the antithesis itself.

And he adds, in a footnote to this:

The case of 'universal' and 'particular', or 'individual', is similar in some respects though of course not in all. In philosophy it is often good policy, where one member of a putative pair falls under suspicion, to view the more innocent-seeming party suspiciously as well.[26]

Though Austin is one with many Buddhist thinkers who disapprove of standard philosophical dichotomies, his method of dealing with those dichotomies sets him apart. Chi-tsang, for example, engages in a dialectical process that leads him beyond the dichotomies, Others rely on "direct insight." Austin's method was more mundane. He thought that it was necessary to dissolve the dichotomies, and the worries they engendered, by "unpicking, one by one, a mass of seductive (mainly verbal) fallacies." What makes this appropriate for our investigation is his further remark that this "leaves us, in a sense, just where we began."[27] That is to say, it leaves us at the ordinary level, minus our philosophical problems.

The Secret of Ordinary Langtrage Philosophy

The remarks, questions, jokes, assertions, and, in general, the therapeutic writings of Austin and Wittgenstein flow not from a theory, a position that could be stated dogmatically, but rather from a particular way of looking at the world, an alert and self-conscious awareness of theirown linguistic behavior, and a very clear insight into the reality of language as a form of life and as inseparable from our day-to-day activity as touching or hearing. If we attain that vision, we no longer have an inclination to make (or even to take seriously) dogmatic or skeptical philosophical remarks such as.

Tables are (are not) real.
Dharmas are (are not) real.

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We never know the real shape of a cat.
We can never know if another is in pain.
We do not know if the honey is sweet "in its essence."
"All things are not things in the real sense."[28]

IV QUIETUDE AND EMPTINESS

Philosophical Quietude

When Sextus tried to bring on the attitude of nonassertion he was also attempting to bring on quietude. He says that he initially attained quietude "in respect of matters of opinion," which is to say that (at the least) he no longer worried about what things were really like. But sometimes he seems to be speaking about more than just cessation of bother from philosophical questions. Indeed, he defines 'quietude' as "an untroubled and tranquil condition of the soul" (1, 10). This requires a bit more than the cessation of questions about the nature of reality. So while there is a sense in which Wittgenstein and Austin also offer us quietude, we may wonder whether their quietude, the cessation of philosophical questions, is enough. I think it is not, for even if we are returned to (or firmly planted in) the ordinary level, it remains true that ordinary language (which Wittgenstein said is "all right"[29], even when used in an apparently non-philosophical way, contains much that is not conducive to an untroubled and tranquil condition of the soul. There are all the ordinary concepts of good and evil, right and wrong, praise and blame, insult, hate, fear, and the rest. Even if we employ these in the ordinary way--especially if we employ them in the ordinary way--we are in trouble. Wittgenstein and Austin can be seen as attempting to destroy philosophical (uses of) language, or philosophical concepts, and though Austin, in Now to do Things with Words, expresses an inclination to "play Old Harry" with "the value/fact fetish"[30] and Wittgenstein said that there can be no propositions of ethics, the typical effect of their writings is a quietude of a distinctly philosophical sort.[31] They say little of the quality of life that might result from any such quietude.

Concepts

Zen Buddhists are, of course, impatient with philosophical concepts. One master (Mu-chou Tao-tsung), sharing tea with a lecturer monk, informed him that he could not save him,

The monk: "I do not understand. Please explain, Master." The Master picked up a cream cake and showed it to him,
asking, "What is this?"
The monk said, "A material object."
The Master said, "You are the kind of fellow who boils in hot water.[32]

But it is not only philosophical concepts that the Zen Buddhist wants to eliminate, and not only concepts of good and evil and the like; he wants to do away with all concepts. One of the most emphatic of the masters who expressed this idea was Huang-po (d. 850). He said:

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Do not deceive yourselves with conceptual thinking, and do not look anywhere for the truth, for all that is needed is to refrain from allowing concepts to arise.[33]

Hui-hai talks about "right thinking," which he says is not thinking in terms of good and evil, sorrow and joy, beginning and end, acceptance and rejection, likes and dislikes, aversion and love.[34] More positively, he says:

You should know that setting forth the principle of deliverance in its entirety amounts only to this--when things happen, make no response: keep your minds from dwelling on anything whatsoever: keep them forever still as the void and utterly pure (without stain): and thereby spontaneously attain deliverance.[35]

Understanding without Thought

A mind empty of concepts, a still and undwelling mind, may sound to some like a rather frightening idea. The typical fear expressed is that without concepts one would be unable to function.[36] But if this fear cannot be dispelled by information about Zen in painting, the martial arts, and the tea ceremony, it surely cannot be dispelled by argument.[37] In his recent article "Wittgenstein and Zen,"[38] John Canfield explains that:

The advanced Zen practitioner, or Zen Master, does what he as a beginner was admonished to do, he lives free of thought. At the same time, he, like anyone else, will understand information presented to him, will understand and respond correctly to questions and requests, and so on.[39]

Canfield relates the Zen idea of "just doing something (with a mind free of ideas or concepts)" to Wittgenstein's notion of a practice. He shows that:

If language works in the way portrayed by Wittgenstein, there is no incompatability between living free of thoughts in the manner of the Zen Master, and participating fully, and with full understanding, in the day to day use of language.[40]

Canfield discusses and explains Wittgenstein's idea that thoughts (inner episodes) are neither necessary nor always available to explain language and intelligent behavior, and the Zen idea that they actually get in the way of those activities. But Wittgenstein does not go so far as Zen, nor, if I may put it that way, does he aim so high--he does not point to a silence beyond the elimination of philosophical concepts, a silence that cannot be disturbed even by words. One who has attained this level can, at least according to Hui-hai, engage in philosophical discussion without being stained;

One who has perceived his own nature will be right whether he says that those things are Praj~naa and the Dharmakaaya or that they are not, for he will carry out its function according to prevailing circumstances, without being hindered by the dual conception of right and wrong. As for someone who has not yet perceived his own nature, when he speaks of green bamboos, he forms a rigid concept of green bamboos as such; and, when he speaks of yellow flowers, he forms the same sort of rigid concept. Moreover, when he speaks of the Dharmakaaya, it becomes an obstruction to him, and he talks of Praj~naa without

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knowing what it is. Thus, everything he says remains at the level of theoretical ebate.[41]

And again:

Someone who has clearly perceived his own nature, which may be likened to a Mani-pearl reflecting all appearances, will be right if he says that the Absolute does undergo changes and equally right in saying that it does not. On the other hand, anyone who has not seen his own nature will, upon hearing of the changing Absolute, cling to the concept of mutability; or, upon hearing that the Absolute is unchanging, he will grasp at the concept of immutability."[42]

Conclusion

The ordinary language-philosopher aims at the lowest goal--freedom from philosophical worry. If one follows Wittgenstein and Austin he can stay out of philosophical difficulty. But for a more encompassing sort of tranquility one must look elsewhere. Sextus, in aiming at quietude (an untroubled and tranquil condition of the soul), aims higher; but by offering a suspicious method of attaining this--the method of countering arguments with arguments--he gives us possibly less than either Austin or Wittgenstein. The Maadhyamika metaphysician's method is intellectual in a different way, but like Sextus' it involves a measure of philosophical contention and argument. The goal is closer to that proposed by Sextus, but the method is necessarily restricted to those few capable of coping with extremely refined speculations. In contrast to all of these, the Zen approach is strikingly direct. When the Zen Master is confronted with philosophical speculation or with harmful conceptualization he appeals to no set trope or syllogism, but reacts spontaneously. D. T. Suzuki, in "An Interpretation of Zen Experience,"[43] offers an extended discussion of Daian's remark that the "conception of being and nonbeing is like the wisteria winding round the tree." He tells of Sozan who sought Daian out to ask:

When the tree is suddenly broken down and wisteria [that is, the conception of being and the conception of non being] withers, what happens?

Suzuki reports that when Sozan asked this question

The master threw up his mud-carrying board [he was building a wall] and laughing loudly walked away toward his living quarters.[44]

The direct response here, so typical of Zen, is entirely nonconceptual--some-times it works and sometimes it does not. It is not the content of the message that is important, it is the actual total effect on the listener. And, as a token of the move away from conceptualization, the "utterances" of the Masters came to include shouts and cries, slaps and silence, and we even hear stories of enlightenment arising spontaneously (as it must) at the sound of water or of a pebble falling. The Zen Master's utterances are no different from the sound of the water--both, with no conscious intentions and no thoughts, are capable of eliciting enlightenment from within.

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One day the master spoke to the assembly thus: "Imagine a man hanging over a precipice a thousand feet high. There he is holding on to a branch of a tree with his teeth. Neither his hands nor his feet can give him any support. Now let us imagine someone coming to him and asking, 'What is the meaning of the First Patriarch coming from the West?' If this man should try to answer he is sure to fall and kill himself, but if he makes no answer it will be said that he has ignored his questioner. What ought he to do?

The monk Chao stepped forward from the assembly and said, "Let us not discuss the man who is hanging from a tree, but the moment just before he got hung up there." The Master smiled but made no answer.[45]

NOTES

1.I use the Loeb Classical edition of the writings of Sextus, and the only text I cite is "Outlines of Pyrrhonism." References to this will follow the passage and the Roman numeral will indicate which of the three books of "Outlines of Pyrrhonism" the passage comes from. The translator,R. G. Bury says in his Introduction that "'Sceptic' in the original sense of the Creek term, is simply an 'inquirer' or investigator" (I, 34).

2.Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, third ed. (New York: The Macmillan Co.1968), 1:133.

3.Philosophers seem doomed to repeat these arguments eternally without really thinking about what they are trying to show. Concerning the stick in water, J. L. Austin, the British philosopher, asked: "Does anyone suppose that if something is straight, then it jolly well has to look straight at all times and in all circumstances? Obviously no one seriously supposes this. So what mess are we supposed to get into here, what is the difficulty?" Sense and Sensibilia (Oxford: The Clarendon Press. 1962), p.29. Confer herein. part III.

4.I refer to the works of Seng-chao and Chi-tsang included in Wing-tsit Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1963).

5.Wing-tsit Chan, in the appendix to the Source Book comments on the word 'fa' as a philosophical term and as the Chinese rendering of' 'dharma'. 'Dharma', he says, means "that which is held to" and though it is a difficuit expression to translate, covers: all things, with or without form, real or imaginary, the material or principle of an entity, something that holds onto its nature as a particular thing (p. 786).

6.In Chan, Source Book, p.367. We find Wittgenstein's ladder metaphor in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. trans. D. F. Peras and B. F. McGuinness, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul): 6.54 My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way. anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them--as steps--to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.) See also what Zen masters say in this regard. In John Blofeld's translation of the works of Hui-hai we read: The Dharma is beyond words, speech and writings. how can it be sought amid a plethora of sentences? This is why those seeking enlightenment forget all about wording after having arrived at the (real) meaning. Awakened to reality, they throw away the doctrine just as a fisherman, having caught his fish, pays no more attention to his nets; or as a hunter, after catching his rabbit, forgets about his snare. John Blofeld, trans., The Zen Teachings of Hui-Hai (New York: Samuel Weiser, 1972). Huang-po uses the same metaphor. See John Blofeld, trans., The Zen Teaching of Huang Po (New York: Grove Press, 1958), p. 55.

7.Chan, Source Book, p. 348.

8.Chan, Source Book, p. 360. Chi-tsang identifies the view of the "School of Original Non-

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Being"of Tao-an (312-385) as maintaining that "all dharmas are in their original nature empty and void,"and he says "this doctrine is no different from those taught in the Mahaayaana scriptures and treatises as well as by schools of Kumaarajiiva and Seng-chao" (p. 338). But, in fact, Seng-chao was not caught at this level, and in "The Emptiness of the Unreal," he criticizes the School of Original Non-Being by saying that it is "very fond of non-being" and "is nothing but a talk partial to non-being" (Source Book, p. 352).

9.My treatment of the dialectic here is defective and incomplete in a number of ways.Though it is clear that the worldly truth at the second stage can be represented:`├　B and ├　E' it is not　clear how to represent the higher truth at that stage. There were two possibilities:

(1) ├ ~B and ├~ E.

and

(2) ~├B and ~├E.

I decided to choose (2), since by adopting(l) we get a peculiar result when we arrive at the higher truth of the third stage, which, assuming that (1) is selected, comes out as.

(3) ├ ~ B and├ ~ E, and ├ ~ ~ B and├ ~ ~ E.

This is a fourfold assertion rather than an escape from assertion and nonassertion. Another problem (which I do not take very seriously in this context, but which might bother some) is that I have disregarded the standard (and logically correct) interpretation of 'neither p nor q' when p and q are complex (conjunctions). Standardly 'Neither (A and B) nor (C and D) is represented:

(4) ~ [(A ‧ B) v (C ‧D)].

which computes out as.

(5) ~(A ‧ B)‧~ (C ‧ D)

And that is equivalent to.

(6) (~A v ~B) ‧(~C v ~D).

But I am interpreting 'Neither (A and B) nor (C and D)' as

(7) ~A‧ ~B‧ ~C‧ ~D.

The problem of making clear (and even of understanding) what is going on here is a difficult one.　In his comment on Chi-tsang in Original Teachings of Ch'an Buddhism (New York: Vintage, 1971),　Chang Chung-yuan says that the higher truth at the third stage is:

both notbeing and not nonbeing, and neither notbeing nor not nonbeing. (p. 11).

How this results can be seen in the chart he gives us on p. 35:

common truth
higher truth

(1) being (1) nonbeing
(2) both being and nonbeing (2) neither being nor nonbeing
(3) both being and nonbeing and neither being nor nonbeing (3) both not being and not nonbeing and neither not being nor not nonbeing.

That is:

(1) B (1) ~B
(2) B‧ ~B (2) ~B‧ ~ ~　B
(3) (B ‧ ~ B) ‧ (~ B ‧ ~ ~ B) (3) (~ B ‧ ~ ~ B) ‧ (~ ~ B ‧~ ~ ~ B)

I could not make any sense out of the three stages until I introduced the idea of "assertion" and　adopted alternative (2) rather than alternative(l). The above treatment seems to employ something　closer to (1) than to (2), but it agrees with my treatment in ignoring the standard interpretation of　'Neither (A and B) nor (C and D)'.

10. In Chang Chung-yuan, Original Teachings of Ch'an Buddhism, p. 11, pp. 32-33.

11. Chang, Original Teachings of Ch'an Buddhism, pp. 284-85.

12. John Blofeld, The Zen Teaching of Hui-Hai, p. 72.

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13. This is from his "Averting the Arguments." in Frederick J. Streng, Emptiness. A Study in　Rrligious Meaning (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1967), p. 224. See also Ives Waldo, "Naagaarjuna　and analytic philosophy," Philosophy East and West 25 (July 1975): 281-90. Waldo cites Bhaavaviveka on the topic of worldly truth:

We also accept the conventional reality which (everybody) in the world unanimously accepts as　real. For in worldly experience, origination through causes and conditions is accepted as real.　Therefore reality of the conditioned elements, i.e., of the eye organ, etc. is brought under the　category of samv.rti-sat [the truth of ordinary discourse]. Everyone including shepherds and cowherds know this. Since we make our experience from the standpoint of ultimate reality we never　contradict the actual experience of the world. (p. 285)

I think this is what Seng-chao is talking about when he discusses the statement: "The dharmas have neither existence nor nonexistence."

As we go into the matter, when we say that there is neither existence nor nonexistence, does it　mean to wipe out all the myriad things, blot out our seeing and hearing, and be in a state without　sound, form, or substance before we can call it absolute truth? Truly [absolute truth is] in accord　with things as they are and therefore opposed by none. The false is regarded as false, and the　true is regarded as true, and therefore their nature cannot alter the absolute truth. In Chan, op.　cit., p. 353.

For one final example of truth at the ordinary level see the story cited by D. T. Suzuki in his article　"Mondo" in Studies in Zen (New York: Delta, 1955).

A company of monks came, and Daizui asked: "What would those who have mastered Zen call East?" The monks' leader answered: "It is not to be called East." Daizui shouted: "O you dirty-smelling ass! If you do not call it East, what do you call it?" There was no answer.

Suzuki says both are right, but he also asks "What else could East be called?" (pp. 169-70)

14. In Chan, Source Book, p. 360.

15. Chan, Source Book, p. 365.

16. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, I, 133.

17. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 6.53.

18. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 4.003.

19. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, I,122.

20. Wittgenstein, I, 116.

21. Wittgenstein, I, 127.

22. Wittgenstein, I, 66.

23. Wittgenstein, The Blue Book (New York: Harper, 1958), p. 14.

24. Wittgenstein, Philosophicall Investigations, I, 303.

25. a. 'Real' is discussed in Sense and Sensibilia, chapter 8, pp. 62-77. b.'True'is discussed in"Truth,"in J. L. Austin, Philosophical Papers (Oxford: Oxford University Press,1970), pp.117-133.In this article his "definition" of 'true' simply tells us the conditions　under which a statement is said to be true.

c.'Meaning' is discussed in "The Meaning of a Word," Austin, Philosophical Papers, pp. 55-75.

d. 'Know' is discussed in "Other Minds," Austin, Philosophical Pnpers, pp. 76-116.

e. 'Illusion' and 'delusion' are treated in Sense and Sensibilia, pp. 22 ff.

26. Austin, Sense and Sensibilia, p. 4.

27. Austin, Sense ann Smsibilia, pp. 4-5.

28. This last remark comes from Seng-chao and is found in Chan, Source Book, p. 353.

29. Wittgenstein's remark that "ordinary language is all right", which occurs in the Blue Book(p. 28) has often been misinterpreted. Wittgenstein is not the linguistic conservative he is often　criticized as being. He makes this remark after having just pointed out that many words don't　have a strict meaning, but that this is not a defect. He then raises the question of an "ideal　language" and says that this wrong for it "makes it appear as though we thought we could improve　on ordinary language. But ordinary language is all right." Both Wittgenstein and Austin were　willing to acknowledge that we can't take ordinary language always at face value (see Philosophical

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Investigations,I,132-133, and Austin's "A Plea for Excuses," in Philosophical Papers, pp. 181-185),but they usually stressed the way in which it is all right. In this case what is said to be all right,and not to need fixing up, is the lack of precise meaning found in the case of many words. If the goal of language is to describe the world (as it is sometimes naively thought), then no　matter how much we improve or tidy up our language, we will never attain that goal. The only　perfect "description" of the world would be a mirror image or a perfect replica (on any scale)--but then how do we distinguish between the world and its description?

30. J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962), p. 150.

31.When Wittgenstein said that there cannot be propositions of ethics this was within the context of the Tractatus, where he hoped to "signify what cannot be said by presenting clearly what can be said" (4.115). This is a pretty complicated matter, but I will just say that although Wittgenstein lived his philosophy as much as any other philosopher I can think of, he seemed not　to have realized in his daily life the quietude his view, extended slightly in the direction of Zen,was capable of providing. He is typically, and not uncorrectly, pictured as a troubled and tormented　soul, and his letters bear out this picture, as they reveal his attachment to the concepts of good　and evil.

32. Chang, Original Teachings of Ch'an Buddhism, pp. 111-112.

33. Blofeld, The Zen Teaching of Huang Po, p. 33. Here are two more illustrations of Huang-po's rather extreme attitude: If you can only rid yourself of conceptual thought, you will have accomplished everything (p. 33). Only one entirely liberated from concepts can possess a body of infinite extent (p. 74). 　

34. Blofeld, The Zen Teaching of`Hui Hai, pp. 49-50.

35. Ibid., p. 78.

36. Richard Taylor illustrates this fear nicely when he discusses and criticizes what he takes to　be the Stoic idea of "apathy." He imagines beings who either do not move at all, or who wander　around bumping into trees and things because they have no desire not to. See his book Good and　Evil (New York: Macmillan, 1970), pp. 68, 124.

37. Hui-hai says that when we cease wrong (that is, conceptual) thinking, we will attain the state　of "nothing to perceive." His explanation of this notion is revealing:

Being able to behold men, women, and all the various sorts of appearances while remaining free　from love or aversion as if they were actually not seen at all--that is what is meant by 'nothing　to perceive'.

It means beholding all sorts of forms, but without being stained by them as no thoughts of love or aversion arise in the mind. Blofeld, The Zen Teaching of`Hui Hai, p. 51.

He continues with some remarks about "the eye of an ordinary person" that need, but do not here get, further consideration.

38. John V. Canfield, "Wittgenstein and Zen," Philosophy, October, 1975, pp. 383-408. Thanks to Manny Pace for pointing this article out to me.

39. Canfield, "Wittgenstein and Zen," p. 385.

40. Canfield, "Wittgenstein and Zen," p. 403. Often philosophers define 'concept' in terms of the ability to use a word correctly; and when this, rather than something more mentalistic or Platonistic is what is meant by 'concept', then even Zen Masters have concepts. See Canfield, "Wittgenstein and Zen," p. 401.

41. Blofeld, The Zen Teaching of Hui Hai, pp. 104-105.

42. Blofeld, Tire Zen Teaching of Hui Hai, p. 96.

43. D. T. Suzuki, "An Interpretation of Zen Experience," in Studies in Zen, pp. 61-84.

44.Suzuki, "An Interpretation of Zen Experience," p. 62.

45.The master is Hsiang-yen Chih-hsien, and this comes from Chang, Original Teachings of Ch'an Buddhism, p. 223.

46. In his comment on this paper Dr. Mitchell made three points which raise questions of great Interest.

a. He pointed to a possible metaphysical foundation for the Zen silence. Unlike the ordinary

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language-philosopher who simply refrains from making metaphysical judgments, the Zen Buddhist responds to the "affirmative realization that sa^msaara is nirvaa^na."

b.He contrasted a skeptic who might simply refrain from making moral judgments, thereby achieving a measure of tranquility, with the Buddhist who "overcomes 'dissatisfactoriness' by replacing ignorant craving with compassionate wisdom as a basis of moral judgments."

c.He stressed the Buddhist idea of faith (which overcomes doubt)--faith, namely, that "troubles(Klesas) are the actual 'seeds of Buddhahood'." And he emphasized the methodological value of the struggle with doubt as an avenue to enlightenment.

There is, of course, truth in the claim that the identification of sa^msaara and nirvaa.na is a vital part of Zen Buddhism, but there is a Further, and more difficult truth in the idea that ultimately even these two concepts (sa^msaatra and nirvaa.na) must be eliminated--and what becomes of the identity then? Second, and similarly, there is no doubt that Buddhists and even Zen Buddhists say things that sound very much like moral judgments. But there is also no doubt that they say things that suggest that these are not taken quite seriously. Hui-hai, whose writings are not free from talk about good and evil, right and wrong, says

For I have learned to reach that mind of mine
Which basically transcends both right and wrong.
Blofeld, The Zen Teaching of' Hui Hai,

p. 80.

This is a conflict that has caused me a lot of concern, and at present I do not know what to make of it, except to suggest that perhaps when a Zen Buddhist uses a word like 'good' or 'bad' he is either (a) lapsing from his Zen Buddhism, or (b) speaking in words he knows his audience will understand. The third point, concerning doubt and faith, also needed to be made. But it seems to me that perhaps the doubt, and the faith that overcomes it, are for the Master, analogous to Sextus' tropes. Mitchell refers to the words of a contemporary Roshi, who maintained that Zen faith does assert "that human nature, all existence, is intrinsically whole, flawless, omnipotent--in a word, perfect." This can easily cause great doubt and wonder in the minds of those of us to whom things still appear to be quite otherwise; but, are these actually claims that the Master is making about something called "human nature," or even more generally, about something called "existence." Or are his remarks a refined 'He!' for those whose needs are met more by a puzzling and apparently false indicative assertion than by a slap or a shout?