The Zen Doctrine of “No-Method”

The case is made for a spectrum of methods in Western psychology transcending the normal dichotomy between the categories of quantitative versus qualitative methodology. Although the quantitative–qualitative continuum may be a sufficient representation of methods in the discussion of methodology within the reductionistic sciences, it fails to account for the phenomenology of the science-making process, itself, as a problem of consciousness within the developing human sciences, and also has little relevance for the way non-Western cultures view the problem of the relation of method to theory. A case in point is the problem of method as discussed in Zen Psychology. The act of freeing attention from its attachment to objective thought through the cultivation of wu, or no-thing-ness, is considered in Zen meditation and then applied to an analysis of the method of the koan, or nonrational riddle, which is designed to shock consciousness into a state of release through immediate intuitive insight. The conclusion is that possibly through such means psychologists in the West could free themselves from the overly rigid and narcissistic focus on methods of reductionistic empiricism as the only alleged standard for defining reality.