This fact seemed particularly significant to me, particularly insofar as
one of the factors involved in my own long-standing interest in Chan and
Zen Buddhism was the practice of transcending religious and cultural forms
to get at the heart of reality in itself by direct experience and direct
perception. While it is true that there are ritualized Zen cults with highly
cloistered and involuted attitudes, these are generally examples of
imitations described long ago in the classics of Chan and Zen, and as such
they do not impugn the validity of the original teachings themselves.
Cultism, scholasticism, and cultural traditionalism aside, I believe that
the essence of Chan is one of the most potentially useful elements of the
golden flower teaching; and of Buddhism in general, in the context of the
modern West. In addition to its psychoactive techniques, the psychological
and intellectual structures of Chan lore can be superlative analytic tools that
enable the mind to distinguish the inner patterns of things. Of course, their
ultimate value in practice depends upon how effectively they are employed,
as in their application to The Secret of the Golden Flower.
The theory and practice of the golden flower method do exist in Greek
and Christian tradition, but if they are to be usefully analyzed in secular
psychological terms, without an abundance of philosophical or religious
concepts, I believe this can be most easily accomplished by means of Chan
