erhaps as good a summary as any of the Sunm way is Stilgar s agreement with Leto II that doing \\hat is expected is the way one's sincerity is measured There was little room for novelrv in the sietch whose way of life was neither secular nor religious but simply the Fremen wav, the traditional way God, through ilm andftqh and shan a shows ZBNSUNNI, CULTURE 510 ZENSUNNI CULTURE the way, the tribe follows, those who swerve from the way do not serve the tnbe Tradition, the tried and true, was the core of the Sunni heritage All of this has been traced back through the fabled Maometh to Terra's Muhammed The Sunni branch of his followers with its Ulema and Usul and Mahdi, carried through the Fremen jihad Vestiges remain in the harshest of our own outpost territories, earned there by Muad'Dib's most enterprising wamors The ' Zen l part of the Fremen background, however, is harder to trace with confidence The ghola Duncan/Hayt is the best source of information, although there are statistical matches of moderate confidence with the O C B 's "Buddhism" and with today's "portal of the soul" believers Hie names "Ohashi" and "Nisai," connected with Zensunm origins, imply (because of hnguis tic evidence of transliteration from one of Terra's ideographic languages) an engraftment onto the Sunm trunk The new scion was clearly more individualistic and less direc tive of behavior than the mass of Sunni patterns It has proved feasible to work transformations (via regressive template matching) on Duncan Idaho-10208's attitudes and on some post-Arrakis commentaries, and therefrom to infer a great deal about the nature of "Zen " (Those who speculate that Zen provides all the answers to otherwise inexplicable Bremen matters merely substitute one mystery for another) The essence of Zen appears to be captured in Duncan Hayt's advice to Chani just before Leto and Ghamma were born "wait without purpose in the state of highest tension Do not be trapped by tibe need to achieve anything This way you achieve everything " The dou-bleness of poised extremes, of reconciled opposites, of both heightened and resolved inconsistencies, permeates this advice "Have no purpose, only thus will you achieve it'' Stilgar, thinking about what Gham's and Leto's and Jessica's horde of memories required of them, noted that "what works is mat which does not work," and associated such paradoxes with me old Fremen game of nddles whose answers lay id the question and the questioner, not in logic or evidence Leto pondered the paradox of 'knowing' it prevents learning, makes difficult the process that would seem to produce 'knowing in the first place Likewise, knowledge is use less without purpose, yet it is purpose which "builds enclosing walls ' walls that keep one from learning This awareness of para dox appears to encircle the core of Zen The Fremen treated night as refreshingly hopeful and day as intimidating, their life on Arrakis, and their rituals are rooted in a poison the spice, which extends life Surrounded by inconsistencies and paradoxes, more concerned about questions than answers, wary of purpose and achievement and success (mea surements against predictions), the Fremen reflect a significant Zen component in their heritage This fragment of their background appears to have supported the Fremen resignation to things as-they-are Self-disupline, acceptance avoidance of frustrating struggle are associated with Zen which does not prevent choice and action but permits little or nn prediction against which to measure achievement This tenet correlates with the words of Muad'Dib to the effect that prescience (being neither traditional nor passive) did not conform to the ordering of the Zensunm " In Zen, what you do is what you do, there is no scale against which to measure "success" or "failure " Similarly, individual Fremen were freed from responsibility-from accepting burdens of guilt "in the future"-in part because outcomes were not of their making Their rituals, said Ghanima, freed them from guilt, what may look in retrospect like a transgres sion can be ascribed to 'natural" (that is, not chosen) badness, or bad luck, or to a failure on the part of authority Zen traditions emphasized the present and the individual Final untangling of the strands of Sunni and Zen in Fremen culture may someday be possible the new archive discoveries will certainly help Both of the ancient traditions were warped and stretched by the Fremen adaptation to different environments particularly the drought of Arrakis Sunni ways taught community and long range destiny, Zen's withdrawal taught personhood and ac- ZENSUNNI HISTORY 511 ZENSUNNI HISTORY ceptance of situation Sunm was ripe for a "savior", Zen did not seek any outside agent Sunm was wary of change, Zen was willing to be flexible The record shows that die Fremen swarmed behind a mysteriously prophesied stranger who they hoped would lead them to just revenge en route to a watery paradise They were later skeptical about the religion erected in Muad'Dtb's name Such inconsistencies are hardly unusual in Galactic cultures Theoretical analyses of cultural undercurrents will never quite "explain" actual behavior An outline of the Fremen's Zensunm heritage, however, con jectural as it must be at this distance, does fill in some of the background behind Frernen activities on Arrahs C W Further references.