Chapter 1: What is Socratic Zen and why does it even matter?

What happened to Socrates? He was a survivor with a lively spirit until he was executed. It was all going well enough, until it wasn’t.

Socrates was a poor, common man who fought for Athens in the Peloponnesian War in bare feet, fell into long trances at night in the battlefield, and then spent his time questioning people in the streets of Athens of higher rank in society than himself. He was a contradictory character who was clever and witty and annoying, and he found the weakness in the ego of pompous, self-inflated people. It was impossible to avoid or ignore Socrates in the streets of Athens. Maybe somebody would see Socrates coming and duck into a side street to try and avoid him, only to be engulfed in a herd of unruly sheep. Others might have seen him coming and stiffened to prepare and defend their honour. Afterwards, they might feel deflated or just lie to themselves and think they had proved Socrates wrong.

Although Socrates tried mostly to avoid political life, not always successfully, his questioning of people of power and influence was important to the experiment of democracy in Athens. If citizens have the power to rule themselves, then they should be wise enough to make wise decisions. But how would they learn to be wise and how could you tell if someone was thinking wisely or not? The question of what is a wise decision leads to the question of how to think wisely.

Socrates became a well-known public figure in Athens because he was controversial and antagonized important people, to the delight of others. In his time, theatre and public events were a significant part of the life and culture of Athens. The contribution of Socrates was to create the spectacle of roving, impromptu, intellectual street theatre when there were no cell phones or social media as distractions. Socrates might then be a relief for some, if an antagonist for others. And Athenians loved the spectacle of competition and conflict, in sports, in theatre, in politics, in trials, in chariot racing. The word “antagonist” comes from the Greek word which illustrates this passion of Greeks, the agon, the contest. Homer's long-winded poem the Iliad is a celebration of the agon with ships and chariots and swords. And when the gods are involved in an agon like the Iliad, everything takes longer and is more antagonizing and the poem achieves epic length. The seas are more sealike. The wind is windier. And you can feel the sand between your toes. So, Socrates enters the fray. He's Athenian.

The main tool of Socrates was the question, which is both a social and an intellectual tool to examine the mind of others. This is how Socrates impressed Plato and others and had an impact on their lives. The impact was so strong and the people who impacted were such good writers that they created a literature from this poor common man that has been influential for hundreds of years. It possible that the literature about Socrates will continue to grow and metamorphize and develop thinking that we can’t even predict now. What could that future be?

Sometimes, in his “elenchus,” his process of questioning, Socrates never reached a conclusion, which is what happens in the early dialogues written by Plato and is signified by the Greek word “aporia,” a situation that ends inconclusively in confusion and bewilderment. But that begins to change with time. In the meantime, in the early dialogues the elenchus never got beyond an inconclusive but strangely satisfying encounter of trying to define a well-known term.

The elenchus of Socrates became the spectacle of a spontaneous form of street theatre in Athens, in a city full of creativity and a competitive spirit, in drama, in comedy, in political ideas. Art, politics and sports were all a competitive “agon” or contest waged in public. A popular sport in Athens was watching and listening while Socrates demolished in the street the ego of an important person, usually in a genial way, but not always without a hurt and bruised ego. Still, an observer could leave feeling informed and having a story to tell others.

And so it went. It was a kind of blunt force trauma without physical assault and therefore hard to accuse Socrates of anything. Socrates just asked questions, good questions, probing questions, unlike others, who always seemed to have answer. It’s not a crime to ask questions, at least not most of the time, unless the questions plant dangerous ideas in the minds of others, which does happen. In a sense, that’s why Socrates was convicted and sentenced to death at 70 years of age. His practice of asking questions threatened some people and, as time went on, the list grew.

This is all very nice to know, what what does that have to do with a concept of Socratic Zen?

There’s the figure of Socrates and there’s Zen Buddhism. Why does it make sense to put them together.

It begins with the concept of a question, which we take for granted now. But, at some point, as language developed – maybe even before language – human beings would make statements and human beings would ask questions. How did that happen? What if it had never happened? What would it be like to live without being able to ask questions? As an experiment, what would happen if for one day you had to communicate without asking a question? Could you do that?

However the question originated, it is an incredible intellectual tool.

Questions can unlock new meaning. A sense of a deeper and deeper question can develop. We can can think with the assistance of questions. Our awareness of this way of thinking through questions was enriched by Socrates in ancient Greece, maybe 470 to 399 B.C. Thanks, Socrates. You have no idea the legacy you created. We even have dialogues with ourselves. Imagine that. Maybe one part of our psyche can be the Socrates and the other part the egotistical personality and together they have a conversation. In dreams, we are having conversations with ourselves. Even our dreams are a kind of conversation with ourselves.

Because Socrates was well known and was such a captivating personality, he naturally had friends and adherents, one of them the boy known now as Plato. Plato was so disturbed by the trial and execution of such an intriguing friend as Socrates that Plato devoted his life to writing dialogues to preserve the character and mental activity of Socrates. That was the “bios” or Greek word for life, which is found in our word “biography.” Others tried to do the same, like Xenophon, a significant military commander with the distinction of a name that begins with X, like Twitter does now centuries later.

Xenophon was a friend of Socrates in Athens and a skillful and popular writer in his time. But he made the choice of joining forces with Spartan and was exiled from Athens for that. But then being in exile can also be productive time for writing.

There were other “disciples” of Socrates, if that term fits, but none as smart as Plato as as skillful as a writer, still the accounts of others of Socrates add variations to the portrait of his bios. This leaves us with multiple Socrates and time will only multiply the versions more. Already there is a crowd of different versions of Socrates.

So, how do we understand and find the authentic Socrates in the midst of all the variations, including the Socratic Zen master? Who comes the closest to finding that unique spirit of the authentic Socrates – and does that even matter? Why do we have to know that for certain? What if a fiction of Socrates would have more value that a historically authentic Socrates? Could a fictional Socrates be a more valuable Socrates?

For now, consider that the power of the awareness of Socrates in Athens in his time does not explain the power and influence of Socrates and the Socrates of Plato on western thinking for thousands of years in western culture. Over the centuries, other influential thinkers revised and recreated their versions of Socrates, such as Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Hegel, Heidegger, Lacan. For sure, there will be more in the future than we don’t even anticipate now.

But, that still does not explain the power and influence of Socrates, nor has it explained yet what a Socratic Zen is. Some patience is required.

The culture of Athens was thriving in the west – east and west are always relative on a round planet, although not, hypothetically, on an absolutely flat planet with definite edges. In the east, Buddhism was also thriving. Buddhism, beginning with the first buddha, Siddhartha in India, maybe in the fifth century BC, would develop the new sprout of Zen Buddhism, beginning in China maybe 580-651 BC, a philosophy of life that depended on abandoning a narrow rationality for a life lived of examining questions. The Zen questions were intriguing and puzzling questions called chan in China and koan in Japan and may resemble the Socratic aporia, the end of a situation in confusion and puzzlement.

Now the point. Coincidentally – or not – both Socratic wisdom and Zen Buddhism come in the mental, emotional and spiritual experience of the question, not the answer.

But is that coincidence? Maybe. Maybe not. Coincidence is a mental point of view. If one person suffers misfortune after being cursed by another person, did the curse cause the misfortune, or is that a coincidence? Where do we see cause and effect and where do we not see cause and effect?

Or, as a more complicated example of possible coincidence, different people have similar mental abilities and emotions. If people on different sides of the world who have no contact with each other have the same thoughts and feelings, is that coincidence or some kind of connection? Is it telepathy? Is it unconscious influence? The current answer is that there is a universal mental structure for human beings. Some day that concept may change. But that seems reasonable to us now.

A specific explanation of some mental similarities is what the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung called archetypes. An archetype is a mental combination of factors that organize experience, thought and feeling.

Christian Roesler from Germany explains, “Archetypes are structural elements of the collective psyche and give psychics energy a defined form, which alone is formless and imperceptible.” (Roesler, C.G. Jung’s Archetype Concept, 6). More about the theory of archetypes and the possibilities later. If the theory of archetypes is true, what archetypes may be discovered in the future that we don’t even imagine now?

If human beings share universal mental structures, could there be a shared faculty and potential for inquiry? And, if so, could Socrates in his bios be the particularly strong embodiment of the potential for inquiry?

Continuing that theory, Socrates would not create the potential for inquiry and he would not necessarily be the full manifestation of it, but he would particularize inquiry in his own way, in his own bios, in a strong enough way that it attracts attention. Plato would then create the potential to transmit that manifestation to others, who could particularize it in their own way. That would happen because Plato transmitted the influence of Socrates through bios, biography. The Greeks were fascinated by the power of biography, as the excellence of the writings of Plutarch and Thucydides, show.

For the moment, let’s stay on the path of Socrates and Zen Buddhism and the idea that there might be a similarity between the importance they give to the question and the value of Socratic aporia and the koan to give importance to confusion and bewilderment.

Is the similarity between Zen Buddhism and Socratic wisdom a coincidence or does it come from a shared archetype? In other words, is Socratic wisdom a potential in the humankind that is an archetype that emerges most strongly in Socrates and then becomes recognized consciously?

And does that really matter?

If there is value in Socratic wisdom and if it is a valuable ability and potential in all human beings just waiting to be triggered, then that would be a huge benefit to our lives.

But, does Socrates then reach the fullness of Socratic wisdom or can if be developed further by others and, if it can be developed further, how? By comparison, has Zen Buddhism reached its fullness or can it be developed further?

And what about the questions in Socratic wisdom, like the canon of questions in Zen Buddhism? Have they reached their limit or is there the potential to expand further? The question of questions will be explored more in these pages later and, perhaps, some day be collected into a book.

For now, imagine that the similarity between the process of questioning in Socrates and the process of questioning in Zen Buddhism is that they both stress the primacy of the question over the answer. The primacy of the question in a pure and undogmatic Zen Buddhism is that the student learns through the experience of the question. The experience and the process matter the most. There is value in the state of confusion and bewilderment. Once an answer is reached, it’s time for a new question, for more confusion and bewilderment to continue the experience.

Compare that to Socrates. In the early dialogues written by Plato the conclusion is inconclusive, which doesn’t seem to bother Socrates or those with him. Presumably, the earlier dialogues are the closest to the spirit of Socrates. In western rationality, which stresses the primacy of the answer, which in turn promotes a need for dogma, Zen Buddhism is more difficult to understand, as is a Socrates who enjoys the primacy of the question and that kind of elenchus. For Socrates the inconclusiveness of the elenchus is still satisfying and a lot of ingenuity and evasion is required for western rationalists to try to make sense of that. So, Socratic Zen would be exploring this potential in the question beginning with Socrates and then tracing the navigation of this principle through western thinking. One form of thinking close to this is psychoanalytical theory, which is brilliantly developed by James Overholser, a teacher and practicing psychology, in his book The Socratic Method of Psychotherapy, about which more will be said later. Overholster captures the Socratic spirit. But a Socratic Zen goes even further.

But why not simply study Zen Buddhism?

You could. Do that. It could be very satisfying. Many people are doing that now in the West. Good for them. As Buddhism moves from country to country, from culture to culture, from east to west, it transforms itself, as Zen Buddhism does too. A Socratic Zen could be imagined like that, a transformation of the spirit of the Socratic elenchus in the west, where it should be. A big lesson in all this is how to avoid dogma like the plague of Athens of 430 BC. Thucydides caught the plague but survived. He blamed it on Ethiopians and said it caused lawlessness. In any event, dogma is a mental contagion that turns inspiring new ideas into stone and the Ethiopians aren’t to blame.

On an individual level in pure Zen Buddhism, as any undogmatic way of living should be, individuals find their own way, rather than memorizing and repeating the dogma. I have to say that having taught in a smallish university for 25 years, it is not easy to let go of dogma, of that style of teaching. It is easier and more economical to lecture to a crowded classroom than to pursue an elenchus and personal therapy with individuals. That’s why therapy doesn’t work by lecturing to a crowded room and neither does education. Socrates would be appalled at our universities. I know that from inside experience. Despite that, I did my best inside the system, but that doesn’t absolve me. It never does. And it is a challenge for me now to write about Socratic Zen without producing a new dogma. But is it worth trying, as long as a cup of hemlock isn’t involved. That’s when I might start to waver.

The literature of Zen Buddhism is full of inspiring, intriguing, bewildering questions. It’s a form of art to create a new and original Zen Buddhism questions. There is wonder and delight and magic in Zen Buddhism, in the questions, as long as they stay true to the spirit of Zen.

As an example, there’s a stimulating koan from Ross Bolleter, a Zen teacher in Australia. Paraphrased, his koan, adapted from the metaphysics of Australian Nyoongar aborigines, is: How do you live in the dimension of a dream world where the crow flies backwards? Questions can beget questions. What kind of a reality is a personal and yet universal dream world?

The koan, like a dream, is a lived experience. It is part of bios. When we wake, we forget our dreams, or at least they tend to vanish from our consciousness, but the mental and emotional experience of the vanished dream may still be influencing us unknown during the day. How much are we shaped by the dreams we have forgotten when we woke? Socrates may still be influencing us that way. If his influence originates in an archetype, then the deeper archetype underneath Socrates could influencing us without us being conscious of it.

For now, that’s a brief explanation of what a Socratic Zen might be. Maybe there are other explanations. There is more to think about, more questions to ask. This is a process. We may all be citi-zens of this life without knowing it. Should we be more bra-zen about it too?

Can we find in Socrates the inspiration to find our own particular embodiment of the faculty for inquiry, in our bios? What might that be in each of us? What genuine questions can we formulate? Can we create new koans?

.Email: socrateszen88@gmail.com

Socratic Zen forum on Meta (Facebook): https://www.facebook.com/SocraticZen/

Imagining Socrates. Original image by Shawn Thompson