The final tenet of Yoga philosophy is also alien in Japan: that the techniques of mysticism which it teaches transport the practitioner to ecstatic union with the Universe. Wherever the techniques of mysticism have been practiced in the world, whether by primitive peoples or by Mohammedan dervishes or by Indian Yogis or by medieval Christians, those who practice them have almost universally agreed, whatever their creed, that they become ‘one with the divine,’ that they experience ecstasy ‘not of this world.’ The Japanese have the techniques of mysticism without the mysticism. This does not mean that they do not achieve trance. They do. But they regard even trance as a technique which trains a man in ‘one-pointedness.’ They do not describe it as ecstasy. The Zen cult does not even say, as mystics in other countries do, that the five senses are in abeyance in trance; they say that the ‘six’ senses are brought by this technique to a condition of extraordinary acuteness.
The sixth sense is located in the mind, and training makes it supreme over the ordinary five, but taste, touch, sight, smell, and hearing are given their own special training during trance. It is one of the exercises of group Zen to perceive soundless footsteps and be able to follow them accurately as they pass from one place to another or to discriminate tempting odors of food – purposely introduced – without breaking trance. Smelling, seeing, hearing, touching, and tasting ‘help the sixth sense,’ and one learns in this state to make ‘every sense alert.’
This is very unusual training in any cult of extra-sensory experience. Even in trance such a Zen practitioner does not try to get outside of himself, but in the phrase Nietzsche uses of the ancient Greeks, ‘to remain what he is and retain his civic name.’ There are many vivid statements of this view of the matter among the sayings of the great Japanese Buddhist teachers. One of the best is that of Dogen, the great thirteenth-century founder of the Soto cult of Zen, which is still the largest and most influential of the Zen cults. Speaking of his own enlightenment (satori), he said, ‘I recognized only that my eyes were horizontal above my perpendicular nose ... There is nothing mysterious (in Zen experience). Time passes as it is natural, the sun rising in the east and the moon setting in the west.’ Nor do Zen writings allow that trance experience gives power other than self-disciplined human power; ‘Yoga claims that various supernatural powers can be acquired by meditation,’ a Japanese Buddhist writes, ‘but Zen does not make any such absurd claims.’
The Japanese thus wipe the slate clean of the assumptions on which Yoga practices are based in India. Japan, with a vital love of finitude which reminds one of the ancient Greeks, understands the technical practices of Yoga as being a self-training in perfection, a means whereby a man may obtain that ‘expertness’ in which there is not the thickness of a hair between a man and his deed. It is a training in efficiency. It is a training in self-reliance. Its rewards are here and now, for it enables a man to meet any situation with exactly the right expenditure of effort, neither too much nor too little, and it gives him control of his otherwise wayward mind so that neither physical danger from outside nor passion from within can dislodge him.