Zazen, Art, and Oscar Wilde

Some Westerners have dismissed Buddhist meditation practice as navel-gazing, implying that it is self-absorbed and lacks practical value. This dismissive attitude often stems from a perception that meditation involves excessive introspection without tangible outcomes.

But it may be precisely such a useless and unpragmatic activity that the West needs. It is an antidote to our anxiety-provoking result-obsessed culture.

In his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde said, “All art is useless.” A young man named Bernulf Clegg read this and wrote to the author to ask him to clarify. Wilde replied:

A work of art is useless as a flower is useless. A flower blossoms for its own joy. We gain a moment of joy by looking at it. That is all that is to be said about our relations to flowers. Of course, man may sell the flower, and so make it useful to him, but this has nothing to do with the flower. It is not part of its essence. It is accidental. It is a misuse. All this is, I fear, very obscure. But the subject is a long one.

Oscar Wilde’s Letter to Bernuf Clegg

Meditation is “useless,” just as fine art or a flower is “useless.” The Chinese Taoist philosopher Chuang Tzu said, “Everyone knows the use of the useful, but no one knows the usefulness of the useless.” He told several parables about…