3.  The Irrationality of the Belief of Immortality.

Occidental minds believe in a mysterious entity under the name of soul, just as Indian thinkers believe in the so-called subtle body entirely distinct from the gross body of flesh and blood.  Soul, according to this belief, is an active principle that unites body and mind so as to form an harmonious whole of mental as well as bodily activities.  And it acts through the instrumentality of the mind and body in the present life, and enjoys an eternal life beyond the grave.  It is on this soul that individual immortality is based.  It is immortal Self.  Now, to say nothing of the origin of soul, this long-entertained belief is hardly good for anything.  In the first place, it throws no light upon the relation of mind and body, because soul is an empty name for the unity of mind and body, and serves to explain nothing.  On the contrary, it adds another mystery to the already mysterious relationships between matter and spirit.  Secondly, soul should be conceived as a psychical individual, subject to spacial determinations—­but since it has to be deprived by death of its body which individualizes it, it will cease to be individuality after death, to the disappointment of the believer.  How could you think anything purely spiritual and formless existing without blending together with other things?  Thirdly, it fails to gratify the desire, cherished by the believer, of enjoying eternal life, because soul has to lose its body, the sole important medium through which it may enjoy life.  Fourthly, soul is taken as a subject matter to receive in the future life the reward or the punishment from God for our actions in this life; but the very idea of eternal punishment is inconsistent with the boundless love of God.  Fifthly, it is beyond all doubt that soul is conceived as an entity, which unifies various mental faculties and exists as the foundation of individual personality.  But the existence of such soul is quite incompatible with the well-known pathological fact that it is possible for the individual to have double or treble or multiple personalities.  Thus the belief in the existence of soul conceived by the common sense turns out not only to be irrational, but a useless encumbrance on the religious mind.  Therefore Zen declares that there is no such thing as soul, and that mind and body are one.  Hwui Chung (Ye-chu), a famous disciple of the Sixth Patriarch in China, to quote an example, one day asked a monk:  “Where did you come from?” “I came, sir, from the South,” replied the man.  “What doctrine do the masters of the South teach?” asked Hwui Chung again.  “They teach, sir, that body is mortal, but mind is immortal,” was the answer.  “That,” said the master, “is the heterodox doctrine of the Atman!” “How do you, sir,” questioned the monk, “teach about that?” “I teach that the body and mind are one,” was the reply.[FN#183]

[FN#183] For further explanation, see Sho-bo-gen-zo and Mu-chu-mon-do.