Blyth is likely the most significant (but not the most famous) Zen scholar of the 1900's. Whereas D.T. Suzuki introduced Zen to the West, his writing always bored on attempts at academic interpretation that often obscured the point the original text was trying to make.
Blyth, on the other hand, as a Western from a Christian culture, struggled with the material he encountered from the Zen Masters... but Blyth made the best of it:
After his enlightenment by having the fire put out, Tokusan made a bonfire of his sutras. There is no account of any Christian being converted into burning the Bible. The only Bible that Christians have burnt is other people’s. Nirvana is the “blowing out” of the candle of life. Baptism is the Christian equivalent, but baptism is a prelude to resurrection, and there is no resurrection in Nirvana. So in Daruma’s wall-gazing, nothing seems to have come of it. Even Eno's enlightenment was an end in itself, but Tokusan and his own disciples, Ganto and Seppo have a liveliness which shows that Zen was not nihilism.
Submitted February 15, 2023 at 08:22AM by ewk https://ift.tt/H7Oz9PX
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