Maritain recognized that his article "L'expérience mystique naturelle et le vide" was a definite step forward in his understanding of the various ways of Knowing. He footnotes it as a refinement to the position on natural mysticism that he had taken in The Degrees of Knowledge, and it does, in fact, represent an important advance for the metaphysics of St. Thomas.

Although this article has not attracted widespread attention, it has had the good fortune to find two able commentators: Olivier Lacombe and Louis Gardet, especially in their L’expérience du soi, Etude de mystique comparée, and in Gardet's Etude de philosophie et de mystique comparées. And their commentaries on this experience of the Self, or void, are all the more enlightening because of Lacombe's expertise in the philosophical and religious life of India, which is matched by Gardet's knowledge of the world of Islam.

Their work allows us to put the reflections of Zen in the light of Thomistic metaphysics into a wider context. Once we make the distinction between a mysticism of the void and a supernatural mysticism of grace, we are in a position to see how they intermingle, interact and even disguise each other everywhere that men and women seek the Absolute. Our commentators find it not only in Hinduism and Islam, but in mystics like Meister Eckhart, in the Jesus prayer, modern poetry and philosophy, and so forth. In short, this natural mysticism is a fundamental possibility of the human spirit.

It will be worthwhile to briefly indicate some themes from Gardet and Lacombe that find parallels in the Thomistic analysis of Zen.

The intuition of being is not the same as the experience of the Self:

".. ce n'est que par une regrettable confusion de plans que l'on peut voir, dans sa saisie (négative) d'un "je" trans-empirique, une intuition métaphysique de l'être." (1)

"Autre chose est une philosophie de l'être et de l'acte d'être, autre chose la saisie par nescience intellectuelle de l'esse substantiel de l'âme, atteint par le vide vécu de toute "talité"." (2)

And neither is the experience of the Self Christian contemplation, although it can prepare for it and become animated by it.

"L'expérience du Soi constitue-t-elle, à la supposer complètement purifiée de toute scorie, une préparation valable aux degrés élevés de la spiritualité chrétienne? Prudentiellement parlant, la réponse doit être au moins réservée: trouver son repos dans la connaissance intellectuelle négative et expérimentale de soi-même, ou recevoir ici-bas les prémisses de la béatitude dans l'expérience caritative de Dieu connu par la foi théologale, ne sont pas des finalités homogènes, même si la connaissance de soi demeure ouverte au divin.

"Mais d'un point de vue historique, celui de la science des religions et des approches de l'âme humaine en quête du salut, hors les frontières de la révélation plénière, il semble possible, en distinguant d'ailleurs une pluralité de cas irréductibles, de former un jugement plus positif. Nous ne voyons pas de raison pour qu'une âme droite, entraînée par le dynamisme de la vocation universelle de l'humanité à la vie surnaturelle en Dieu, habitée et activée par une grâce secrète, ne puisse vivre une discipline de yoga particulièrement rectifiée comme un exercice vicaire de spiritualité en transmutation théologale. Le progrès dans la fidélité à la grâce se traduirait alors par un dépassement des fins propres de la mystique naturelle, et par une entrée, sans doute insensible et psychologiquement indécelable, dans les voies d'une expérience informée par la foi implicite mais vive, bien que sa source christique reste masquée." (3)

"S'il s'agit d'une foi vive, c'est-à-dire informée par l'amour théologal, on peut penser que la technique inchoative à laquelle il est fait recours ne saurait être à tout coup un obstacle aux grâces d'union surnaturelle. Dans une âme humble et toute donnée à Dieu, elle peut au contraire utilement aider à vaincre la dispersion, et même bruler d'inutiles retours introspectifs. Elle ne devient obstacle que dans la mesure où cette technique envahit le tout de l'âme, ce qui est toujours son risque; et substitue à l'humble remise de soi aux prévenances du Seigneur une assurance d'obtention garantie." (4)

Gardet has also examined carefully the inner nature of the experience of the existence of the self. Maritain had written:

"It is the substantial esse of the soul which is the object of (negative) possession; and by this negative experience of the self God is attained at the same time, without any duality of act, though attained indirectly. God being, then, not known "by His works," that is to say by His effects as by things known beforehand and which discursively make us pass to the knowledge of their cause, but God being known (1) by and in the substantial esse of the soul, itself attained immediately and negatively by means of the formal medium of the void; (2) in the negative experience itself of that substantial esse (just as the eye, by one and the same act of knowing, sees the image, and in the image the signified) - all this being the case, I think it is permissible in such an instance to speak of a "contact" with the absolute, and of an improperly "immediate" experience (that is to say, one wrapt up in the very act of the immediate experience of the self) of God creator and author of nature." (5)

Gardet comments:

"Nous devons prendre extrêmement garde ici au vocabulaire employé. Ce n'est pas en lui-même que l'influx créateur est atteint par l'expérience; il ne l'est qu'indirectement et médiatement, dans et par son effet. De même, il faut dire, croyons-nous: ce n'est pas Dieu en sa présence d'immensité qui est atteint expérimentalement, mais l'effet de cette présence dans une existence singulière. Disons, si l'on veut, que c'est bien l'acte créateur et conservateur de Dieu, mais dans et par son terminus ad quem. Si bien que Dieu auteur de la nature ainsi expérimenté, ne l'est pas seulement indirectement, mais aussi médiatement: par le medium, qui reste tel, de l'esse substantiel de l'âme. Il y aurait quelque risque de confusion à parler ici d'expérience "immediate," meme "improprement"." (6)

"L'expérience de la présence d'immensité de Dieu reste médiate, l'esse substantiel de l'àme - bien que non saisi comme limité, puisqu'aucun contenu conceptualisable n'entre en jeu - garde sa fonction de medium; c'est un pur exister qui est directement atteint, mais non pas l'exister pur, l'acte pur." (7)

While these metaphysical distinctions are not the language of Zen, neither are they antithetical to it. It is the esse of the Self, its very act of existence, that is attained negatively by means of the void of all concepts, but attained directly. But this esse has as its heart Esse, God from whom all existence comes and is, at this moment, being sustained. Whether we say this Esse is experienced in an "improperly immediate experience" wrapt up in the "very act of the immediate experience of the Self" or "mediately: by the medium of the substantial esse of the soul," we are face to face with a natural mystical experience of God. But since this is an experience devoid of all what or essence, then the experience of the esse of the soul and the Esse of God are fused together, and this fusion generates Zen's distinctive language in which essential distinction must yield to this nothingness, or existence manifesting itself everywhere.

In the Wan Ling Record, Huang Po (d. 850) says:

"When your glance falls upon a grain of dust, what you see is identical with all the vast world-systems with their great rivers and mighty hills. To gaze upon a drop of water is to behold the nature of all the waters of the universe. Moreover, in thus contemplating the totality of phenomena, you are contemplating the totality of Mind. All these phenomena are intrinsically void and yet this Mind with which they are identical is no mere nothingness. By this I mean that it does exist, but in a way too marvellous for us to comprehend. It is an existence which is no existence, a non-existence which is nevertheless existence. So this true Void does in some marvellous way 'exist'." (8)

Huang Po's true Void that "does in some marvellous way exist," together with the metaphysical commentaries on the mysticism of the Self, allow us to drink from a deep spring of metaphysical insight which can become an inspiration to wake the metaphysics of St. Thomas from its slumber and rediscover a living sense of the intuition of being.

EPILOGUE

Zen relentlessly pursues that fundamental that, the very esse, or to be, or existence, of the cypress tree, or cherry blossom, or of ourselves. And when that existence finally manifests itself, in a night of all concepts, it is clothed with a God-like splendor. The very tree, or blossom, or self, IS.

If only a breath of this fresh mountain air would blow through the metaphysics of St. Thomas, then it would awake. It would renew its words in the living fire of metaphysical seeing. Then it could repay Zen's gift with its own. It could help Zen ask those questions that have been always waiting in the heart of its silence.

NOTES