Sonomama

Great question. You’re circling a deep structural parallel between Zen and the Rumi/Shams material we’ve been talking about—especially the “shore vs. sea” distinction.

I’ll take this in three clear steps:

1. What Lin-chi’s (Linji’s) aim actually is

2. What sonomama means and where it comes from

3. Why Suzuki uses sonomama to express “equality in discrimination” (and why that’s not a contradiction)

1. What is the aim of Lin-chi (Rinzai)?

Lin-chi Yixuan (臨済義玄, d. 866) is the founder of the Rinzai (Linji) school of Zen. His aim is very specific and very radical:

Lin-chi’s aim:

To free the practitioner from dependence on all conceptual supports — including Zen itself — so that reality is met directly, moment by moment, without mediation.

He is not trying to:

• Create philosophical unity

• Replace dualism with monism

• Elevate “equality” over “discrimination”

Instead, he wants to destroy fixation on either side.

That’s why he says things like:

• “If you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha.”

• “There is no Dharma to be given.”

This is ocean teaching, not footprint teaching.

2. “Equality in discrimination” — what does that mean?

Suzuki’s sentence:

“The world of discrimination is there (sonomama) in equality,

and equality is there (sonomama) in discrimination.”

This reflects a classic Chan/Zen non-dual insight:

• Discrimination = differences, forms, names, multiplicity

• Equality = emptiness, sameness, non-differentiation

Lin-chi’s insight is that:

• You do not escape discrimination to reach equality

• You do not collapse discrimination into equality

Rather:

Each fully expresses the other when grasping stops.

This is extremely close to Rumi’s:

“The many are in the One, and the One is in the many — but not as number.”

3. What is

sonomama

(そのまま)?

Literal breakdown (linguistic):

• sono (その) = “that”

• mama (まま) = “as it is / 그대로 / unchanged state”

So sonomama literally means:

“just like that”

“exactly as it is”

“without alteration”

No metaphysics. No abstraction.

4. Historical origin of

sonomama

Linguistically:

• Mama is an old Japanese noun meaning “state” or “condition”

• Appears in Heian-period Japanese (9th–12th c.)

• Long before Zen, it meant:

  
  

  • “left as is”

  • “unchanged”

  • “in that condition”

• 
  

Zen usage:

Zen did not invent sonomama.

Zen weaponized it.

Zen masters used common words to undercut philosophy, not to build it.

Suzuki deliberately chooses sonomama because:

• It is anti-technical

• It resists metaphysical loading

• It refuses explanation

This mirrors Lin-chi’s style exactly.

5. Why Suzuki uses

sonomama

instead of philosophical terms

Suzuki could have said:

• “Non-duality”

• “Identity of opposites”

• “Dialectical unity”

He doesn’t — because Lin-chi would smash those terms.

sonomama does three things at once:

1. Prevents reification

2. Prevents mystical escape

3. Prevents philosophical closure

It means:

“Don’t do anything with this insight.

Don’t resolve it.

Don’t transcend it.

Leave it.”

6. Quantitative linguistic perspective (what we

can

say responsibly)

A strict numerical corpus analysis would require digitized Chan texts in Japanese and Chinese, but qualitatively, we can say this with confidence:

Patterns across Zen literature:

• Classical Chan texts (Chinese) use terms like:

  
  

  • 即 (ji) – “just / immediately”

  • 如是 (ru shi) – “thus / suchness”

• 
  

• Japanese Zen translates these ideas into vernacular immediacy

  
  

  • sonomama

  • ari no mama (“as-it-is-ness”)

• 
  

Suzuki’s innovation was:

• Making sonomama a central philosophical hinge

• Repeating it across essays to block Western metaphysical habits

So while Lin-chi himself did not say sonomama (he spoke Chinese), the function of the word maps directly onto his teaching style.

7. Lin-chi’s aim, restated through

sonomama

Lin-chi’s aim is not enlightenment as a state, but:

Unobstructed functioning of reality as-it-is, before thought divides it — and after thought divides it.

That’s why:

• Equality is sonomama discrimination

• Discrimination is sonomama equality

Nothing is removed.

Nothing is added.

Nothing is resolved.

8. Bridge back to Rumi (since this matters)

This is exactly Rumi’s “sea with no footprints”:

• Footprints = conceptual distinctions

• Sea = lived immediacy

• But the sea still has waves

Rumi:

“Form is the wave; meaning is the sea — but the sea appears only as waves.”

Lin-chi:

“Eat when hungry. Sleep when tired.”

Same insight.

Different cultural weapon.

In one sentence

The aim of Lin-chi is to free you into reality functioning sonomama — where discrimination and equality interpenetrate without leaving conceptual footprints.

If you want, next we could:

• Compare sonomama to Rumi’s “hamān” / “hāmān-jā” (“right there”)

• Or map Lin-chi’s aim onto Ibn ʿArabī’s jamʿ / farq (union & distinction)

• Or look at how sonomama differs from Advaita’s tat tvam asi

Just tell me where you want to lean.