The paper attempts to show how the life styles and methods of General Semantics and Zen complement one another. The goals of both diciplines are considered and found to be essentially the same.
There is a focusing on the ways in which Zen methods covertly encourage application of basic semantic principles such as: the symbol is not the reality for which it stands; reality is a process, Specifically considered are the Zen techniques of Zazen, Koan, and Mondo. These methods are viewed as ways to contact the non-verbal levels of experience, and as encouraging the insight that non-verbal reality cannot be comprehended with words.