Sometimes I feel that Western philosophy, especially since the Enlightenment, has too often come to resemble the conifer plantations common to commercial forestry: useful, yes, and in their way productive, but almost barren, sterile. On the other hand, the philosophies surrounding Taoism – including Chan Buddhism and its Japanese descendant Zen – seem more like old growth forests, rich in natural diversity, fluid, resilient, fertile.

Of course it would be easy to romanticise such a distinction, as often seemed to happen during the early days of Zen’s growth in the West, and its influence on the Beat movement – Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums being the obvious example. But the partitioning of Western academic philosophy into e.g. metaphysics, philosophy of mind, phenomenology and so on contrasts powerfully with more organic, experiential approaches.

I am no philosopher, needless to say, so in a sense I shouldn’t say such things; but I am someone most of whose intentional (c.f. Daniel Dennett’s idea of the intentional stance!) life has been given to a sort or sorts of contemplative practice, and so in a sense to the attempt at living out of some kind of philosophy or another. Over the years it has become clearer to me that “the Tao as an ontological ground… the One, which is natural, spontaneous, eternal, nameless, and indescribable… at once the beginning of all things and the way in which all things pursue their course” (Wikipedia) is just the simplest, least superstitious way to understand what is to be found in just sitting, apophatic meditation, or what you will. (The Sōtō Zen expression shikantaza, untranslatable as it is, is probably the closest I can get!)

So, sitting still, we can see that the self is not a thing but a pattern, not an object but a movement among the leaves, not other than the way things come and go. Just as sitting still is an entirely pointless thing to do, so too the Tao has no purpose. You couldn’t use it for anything, and yet it is before all that is, and holds the source of the farthest stars. Empty, all it is is inexhaustible.