Zen and Interpretation

Some have said that Zen is radical empiricism. This is consistent with my sense that the goal of Zen practice is to gain an absolutely clear awareness of immediate experience, as free as possible from discursive interpretation. One might argue that all experience is interpreted; perhaps a structure of interpretation is, in fact, a condition for having experience. But this does not challenge the Zen project, which aims to avoid discursive interpretation. The most immediate possible experience maybe interpreted, but then it is this most primitive interpretation that Zen seeks. This is, perhaps, what it means to recover one's original face.

Does Zen promise awareness of absolute, objective reality? If "absolute, objective reality" means "reality as it is in itself, free from human or any other interpretation," then the answer must be "no." No human being can ever gain access to such a reality. If, however, "absolute, objective reality" means "the non-discursive, structure of immediate human awareness as such," then the answer might be "yes." Perhaps such a structure is a universal feature of all human experience and is thus "objective" in an attenuated sense, forming the basis of all possible phenomena, as they appear to human beings.