The Ordinary Buddha
Collated by Paul Quek (e-mail: paulquek88@yahoo.com), in SingaporeThe ideal man of Indian Buddhism is clearly a superman, a yogi with absolute mastery of his own nature, according perfectly with the
science-fiction ideal of "man beyond mankind."
But the Buddha or awakened man of Chinese Zen is "ordinary and nothing special"; he is humorously human ....
We like this because here, for the first time, is a conception of the holy man
and sage who is not impossibly remote, not superhuman but fully human, and,
above all, not a solemn and sexless ascetic.
Furthermore, in Zen the satori [ enlightenment ] experience of awakening to our "original inseparability" with the universe
seems, however elusive, always just round the corner.
One has even met people to whom it has happened, and they are no longer
mysterious occultists in the Himalayas nor skinny yogis in cloistered ashrams.
They are just like us, and yet much more at home in the world, floating much
more easily upon the ocean of transience and insecurity.
-- Adapted from Alan Watts,
"Beat Zen, Square Zen, and Zen", Chicago Review (1958)
[ italics and underscore added ]