This paper attempts to view the current practice of higher education from Zen standpoint. It seeks to point out some of the defects of higher education, and to identify the gravest shortcoming of higher education as being an excessive scientism. Scientism lies in the belief that the scientific method should be applied in all fields of inquiry especially in higher education. Method of scientism is deeply rooted in abstraction. The modern mind represented by higher education has become addicted to abstraction. Although abstraction has given humans a dazzling power over life and nature, it has done so at the price of alienation from life. Therefore, this paper suggests that the greatest need of higher education is to move to a different-world view, and that one has to find one’s way back to a more concrete encounter with life in its totality. The payoff of the Zen way of doing education may be the reentry into life. The reentry into life hopefully can enable humans to attain not merely power over life but also power of life. Finally, it attempts to make a fivefold suggestion for higher education to implement.
