If you think that you have finally understood what Zen is, you are making the biggest mistake in your learning. In Zen there is nothing to understand. Zen neither teaches nor shows; nothing condemns, approves, recommends, regulates or announces. Zen is not even a mystical experience, since it admits no experiencer, no apprehended presence.

Nothing.

Hence this book is not an "introduction" or "analysis", because there is nothing to introduce or analyze: Zen is what it is in a word or a thousand words, in a million years or in an instant.

Thomas Merton, who lived Buddhism "inside", is free from all suspicion of opportunism: his comments on the Zen experience, plus a non-wasteful dialogue with the famous Dr. Suzuki, make up a unique document of its kind.