Michel Foucault and Zen: a stay in a Zen temple (1978)
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Originally published in the Japanese Buddhist Review Shunju and translated by Christian Polac in Umi, no. 197, August-September 1978, pp. 1-6, as `Michel Foucault et le zen: un séjour dans un temple zen´. The following English translation is based on the text from Dits et écrits, which contained the following introductory note: `Working on the history of the Christian discipline, M. Foucault wished to understand better the practice of Zen and was invited to spend some time at the temple of Seionji at Uenohara, in the area of Yamanashi, where Master Omori Sogen led the meditation room. An editor of the Buddhist review Shunju recorder a number of interviews with the bonze which are translated by Christian Polac.
It is not that religion is delusional by nature, not that the individual, beyond present-day religion, rediscovers his most suspect psychological origins. But religious delusion is a function of the secularization of culture: religion may be the object of delusional belief insofar as the culture of a group no longer permits the assimilation of religious or mystical beliefs in the present context of experience. Michel Foucault (1962), Mental Illness and Psychology, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1976.
Foucault:
I don´t know if I am able to follow correctly the rigorous rules of a Zen temple, but I´ll do my best. I am very interested in Buddhist philosophy. But, this time, I didn´t come for this. What interest me most, is life itself in a Zen temple, that is to say the practice of Zen, its exercises and its rules. For I believe that a totally different mentality to our own is formed through the practice and exercises of a Zen temple. Just now, you told us this is a living temple which is different from traditional temples. Do you have different rules to other temples? 2
Priest:
I want to say that this is not a temple that is representative of Zen culture. In this sense, the temple is perhaps not sufficient enough. There is an expression which says that “Zen represents man”. We have here a number of monks who follow with ardour Zen in itself. Living Zen means that.
Foucault:
As concerns memories of my first visit to Japan, I have rather a feeling of regret to have seen nothing and to have understood nothing. That absolutely doesn´t mean that I wasn´t shown anything but that during and also after I had made my tour to observe many things I felt I hadn´t grasped anything. For me, from the point of view of technology, a way of life, the appearance of social structure, Japan is extremely close to
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Chapter eight: Religion and culture: Michel Foucault (A bonze or Japanese priest.)
the Western world. At the same time the inhabitants of this country seem in every way a lot more mysterious compared with those of all other countries in the world. What impressed me, was the mixture of proximity and distancing and I couldn´t get any clearer impression. Priest:
I am told that almost all your works are translated into Japanese. Do you think that your thoughts are understood enough?
Foucault:
I have no way of knowing how people interpret the work that I have done. It is always a great surprise to me that my works have been translated abroad and even that my works are read in France. To speak frankly, I hope that my work interests ten or a hundred people; and, if it is a question of a larger number, I am always a bit surprised. From my point of view, it´s that my name, Foucault, is easy to pronounce in Japanese; for example, much easier than Heidegger. That is a joke of course. I believe that somebody who writes has not got the right to demand to be understood as he had wished to be when he was writing; that is to say form the moment when he writes he is no longer the owner of what he says, except in a legal sense. Obviously, if someone criticizes you and says that you´re wrong. Interpreting badly your arguments, you can emphasise what you wanted to express. But, apart from that case, I believe that the freedom of the reader must be absolutely respected. A discourse is a reality which can be transformed infinitely. Thus, he who writes has not the right to give orders as to the use of his writings. I don’t believe that I write an oeuvre in the original and classical sense of the word. I write things which seem usable. In a word, usable in a different way, by different people, in different countries in certain cases. Thus, if I analyse something such as madness or power and that serves some purpose, then that’s enough, that’s why I write. If someone uses what I write differently then that’s not disagreeable to me, and even if he uses it in another context for something else, then I am quite happy. In this way, I do not believe that I am the author of an oeuvre and the thought and the intention of the author should be respected.
Priest:
I have been told you are interested in mysticism. In your opinion, do mysticism and esotericism mean the same thing?
Foucault: Priest:
No.
Do you think that Zen is Japanese mysticism?
Foucault:
As you know, Zen was born in India, developed in China and arrived in Japan in the thirteenth century. I don’t believe therefore that it is totally Japanese. Rinzai 3 is a Zen priest whom I like a lot and he´s not Japanese. He is neither a translator of sutra nor a founder of Chinese Zen, but for me I find he is a great Zen philosopher. He is from the nineteenth century, isn’t he? I read the French translation by Professor Demiéville, who is an excellent French specialist on Buddhism.
Priest:
It seems that most Chinese specialist believe that Zen Buddhism came from China rather than from India. 3
(Lin Chi Rinzai, died in 867. One of the greatest Zen Masters of the Tang dynasty.)
Foucault:
The Zen which came from India is perhaps a little mythological. It´s probably to link Zen to the Buddha himself. Zen in India isn’t very important, and certainly it developed strongly in China in the seventh century and in Japan from the thirteenth, isn’t that so? Priest:
What do you think of the relationship between Zen and mysticism?
Foucault:
I believe that Zen is totally different from Christian mysticism, but I think that Zen is a mysticism. That said, I don’t know Zen well enough to defend this conviction. It might be said in any case that there is virtually no point in common with Christian mysticism, whose tradition goes back to St Bernard, St Teresa of Avila, to St John of the Cross. It is completely different. When I say mysticism, I use the term in the Christian sense. What is very impressive concerning Christian spirituality and its technique is that we always search for more individualization. We try to seize what´s at the bottom of the soul of the individual. “Tell me who you are”, there is the spirituality of Christianity. As for Zen, it seems that all the techniques linked to spirituality are, conversely, tending to attenuate the individual. Zen and Christian spirituality and that of Zen are comparable. And, here, there exist a great opposition. In Christian mysticism, even when it preaches the union of God and the individual, there is something that is individual; because it is a question of the relation of love between God and the individual. The one is he who loves and the other is he who is loved. In a word, Christian mysticism concentrates on individualization. On Zen meditation
Foucault:
With so little experience, I can´t say precisely. Despite that, if I have been able to feel something through the body´s posture in Zen meditation, namely the correct position of the body, then that something has been new relationships which can exist between the mind and the body and, moreover, new relationships between…//
