The Supreme Doctrine - neo-alchemist

ON THE GENERAL SENSE OF ZEN THOUGHT
artificial, of another symptom radically opposed to the symptom that is
incriminated. For example: a man arrives at the conclusion that his misery is
the result of his manifestations of anger, conceit, sensuality, etc., and he will
think that the cure should consist in applying himself to produce
manifestations of gentleness, humility, asceticism, etc. Or perhaps another
man, more intelligent this one, will come to the conclusion that his misery is
a result of his mental agitation, and he will think that the cure should consist
in applying himself, by such and such exercises, to the task of tranquillising
his mind. One such doctrine will say to us, 'Your misery is due to the fact that
you are always desiring something, to your attachment to what you possess',
and this will result, according to the degree of intelligence of the master, in
the advice to give away all your possessions, or to learn to detach yourself
inwardly from the belongings that you continue to own outwardly. Another
such doctrine will see the key to the man's misery in his lack of self-mastery,
and will prescribe 'Yoga', methods aimed at progressive training of the body,
or of feelings, or of the attitude towards others, or of knowledge, or of
attention.
All that is, from the Zen point of view, just animal-training and leads to
one kind of servitude or another (with the illusory and exalting impression of
attaining freedom). At the back of all that there is the following simpleminded
reasoning: 'Things are going badly with me in such and such a way;
very well, from now on I am going to do exactly the opposite.' This way of
regarding the problem, starting from a form that is judged to be bad, encloses
the searcher within the limits of a domain that is formal, and, as a result
deprives him of all possibility of re-establishing his consciousness beyond all
form; when I am enclosed within the limits of the plane of dualism no
reversal of method will deliver me from the dualistic illusion and restore me
to Unity. It is perfectly analogous to the problem of 'Achilles and the
Tortoise'; the manner of posing the problem encloses it within the very limits
that it is necessary to overstep, and as a result, renders it insoluble.
The penetrating thought of Zen cuts through all our phenomena without
stopping to consider their particularities. It knows that in reality nothing is
wrong with us and that we suffer because we do not understand that
everything works perfectly, because in consequence we believe falsely that
all is not well and that it is necessary to put something right. To say that all
the trouble derives from the fact that man has an illusory belief that he lacks
something would be an absurd statement also, since the 'lack' of which it
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