The Zennist

Not so ordinary

Zen Master Mazu/Ma-tsu who most likely coined the term "ordinary mind" (平常心) had this to say about the ordinary mind which I hasten to add is anything but ordinary.

"The Way needs no cultivation, just prevent defilement.  What is defilement?  When with a mind of birth and death one acts in a contrived manner, then everything is defilement.  If one wants to know the Way directly: ordinary mind is the Way!  What do I mean by "ordinary mind?"  [It is a mind] that is devoid of [contrived] activity, and is without [notions of] right and wrong, grasping and rejecting, terminable and permanent, worldly and holy.  The [Vimalakirti] scripture says, "Neither the practice of ordinary people, nor the practice of sages, that is the Bodhisattva's practice."  Just now, whether walking, standing, sitting, or reclining, responding to situations and dealing with people as they come: everything is the Way" (Poceski, Ordinary Mind as the Way, p. 183).

Keep also in mind that Zen master Hui-hai, The Great Pearl said:  "the man who seeks for the Buddha outside of the human mind is a heretic; and he who clings to the view that the human mind is the Buddha is a devil" (trans. Sohaku Ogata, The Transmission of the Lamp, p. 199).

 

Dogen Zenji's dodge

A couple of days ago I happened to come across some interesting stuff while I was reading Dogen’s ideas about Buddhism in the book, Beyond Thinking, which has been edited by Kazuaki Tanahashi.  This Q&A especially caught my attention.

Question 6: Why, among the four bodily presences taught in the buddha's house, do you emphasize sitting alone, recommend Zen samadhi, and expound entry into realization?

Answer: It is impossible to know completely the methods by which all buddhas from the past practiced and entered realization, one after another.  It is hard to know, but if you look into it, all buddhas are engaged in zazen as the source of realization.  Don't look for anything else. 

This appears to be a dodge by Dogen.  First of all, we learn from Dogen that it is impossible to know the methods by which the Buddhas attained awakening.  But then Dogen is quite sure it was by sitting meditation, that is zazen!   Dogen uses the compound term "zazen" as if za/sitting posture imparted some special power to zen/dhyâna—which it doesn’t. In the Buddhist canon, particularly the older sections such as the Sutta-Nipata in which there are nineteen references to jhâna (dhyâna), sitting has no importance.  There is no such compound in other words.  

For Soto Zen—not Buddhism in general—the important part of meditation is just sitting (J., shikantaza). It is chiefly by sitting that we become Buddhas.  

For the new student, this is certainly puzzling.  Nor is it a correct picture of Buddhism.  Dogen seems to want the student to become like a Buddha statue which never changes position.  When Dogen says:

"You should know that the practice of zazen is the complete path of buddha-dharma and nothing can be compared with it."

The student can be assured that Dogen has no canonical basis for his assertion.  Dogen’s idea doesn’t even tally with those of other Zen masters who had a much different understanding of Zen or dhyâna in which posture wasn't primary.  

“While still alive, be therefore assiduous in practising Dhyana.  The practice consists in abandonments.  ‘The abandonment of what?’ you may ask.  Abandon your four elements (bhuta), abandon your five aggregates (skandha), abandon all the workings of your relative consciousness (karmavijnana), which you have been cherishing since eternity; retire within your inner being and see into the reason of it.  As your self-reflections grows deeper and deeper, the moment will surely come upon you when the spiritual flower will suddenly burst into bloom, illuminating the entire universe.  The experience is incommunicable, though you yourselves know perfectly well what it is” (Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism [Second Series], 8).

 

Losing the taste for dumb

As I did in the late 1960s, I hope always that someday the average Buddhist practitioner (it might be a Zennist or a Vajrayanist) will wake up enough to lose their appetite for dumbed down Buddhism of any kind.  

What keeps me enthusiastic as I write this blog is that a few people will see in Buddhism its essence—I mean what makes it stand heads above other religious traditions.  (Nope, not all religious traditions are the same, and not every path leads to the same mountain.)

Teaching dumbed down Buddhism, that is, Buddhism that lowers the spiritual content of Buddhism, glossing over its most important elements like nirvana, is easy to do.  There is a whole world of dumbed down Buddhism out there including those who make a fair living out of teaching it.  Those who follow this blog know that path to be one for the puthujjana vehicle or if you like Sanskrit (and mine ain’t that good), prithagjana-yana.

There is no use fighting it.  Not even the Buddha,Gautama, could help the general lot of puthujjanas many of whom were monks and nuns.  However, there is some hope.  Not all is lost!  There are two kinds of puthujjanas.  There is one who lives in total darkness, the andha-puthujjana and one striving after his spiritual good, the kalyana-puthujjana.

I guess you could say that most of us here started out as andha-puthujjana.  Then one day we got tired of hanging around our andha-puthujjana buddies and became kalyana-puthujjana.  It dawned on us that Buddhism is really about awakening, awakening, that is, to something profound and transcendent.  This awakening even provides us with the key to unlock all those crazy Zen koans we  have been struggling with over the years.

Maybe dumbed down Buddhism offers a way of converting the andha-puthujjana to a kalyana-puthujjana.  Still, it needs to be underscored that real Buddhism begins with a profound intuition of pure Mind which puts one beyond the reach of puthujjana-dom.  Then this awakening is further expanded, requiring many years which, incidentally, is the perfection of prajñâ (insight/wisdom).

 

The highest kind of mentality

In some respects the Greek word theoria and the Sanskrit word dhyâna are almost the same.  Both generally refer to contemplation (L., contemplatio), but contemplation as esoteric which involves the highest kind of mentality (P., abhicetasika).

In the Greek sense, it is by theoria that the good, which is beyond being, is contemplated.  This includes the contemplation of the beautiful which is inaccessible to concepts of any kind.  

On the question of Buddhist dhyâna, it is by dhyâna that Moggallâna, a chief disciple, is said to enter other worlds so as to be able to report on the destiny of those who had died.  In addition, one in the forth dhyâna can be beware of the presence of devas (gods), and converse with them.  

As far as spiritual disembodiment is concerned, after the fourth dhyâna, a monk is said to have a clear observation of his consciousness as different from his physical body, but enveloped and bound by it.  On the same track, the Buddhist adept who is in the fourth dhyâna can make a spiritual body (manomaya) complete in all its limbs and faculties. 

What has been said thus far about contemplation, especially Buddhist dhyâna, is instructive for the beginner who at least will understand that Buddhist meditation (dhyâna) is just not about sitting on a zafu in some Zen center trying to keep still.

 

The problem with religious Buddhism

The most obvious difference between religion and spirituality is the former exists within a structured organization while the latter does not.  Another important difference to consider is that religion is generally materialistic whereas spirituality seeks a transcendent reality beyond the reaches of the material.  This is nowhere more evident than in Christianity where there is still an ugly divide between orthodoxy and gnosticism.

From what as been said so far Buddhism, we can say, was born out of spirituality—not religion.  And to the extent that it relies on a religious structure the spiritual content of Buddhism remains more or less hidden for those who follow it religiously. 

If I decide to visit my local Dharma center or Zen center, I am entering a religious organization that has structure.  There is hierarchy, too.  I will have to learn my place and follow my teachers.  So far this may appear okay but in my own experience of having been a member of several Dharma centers, the  spiritual message of Buddhism is very seldom taught if at all.  It is something you have to do on your own.

Sometimes organization and structure are necessary but in religion its seems almost counterproductive since it only serves to hide the spiritual content of religion.  On this same score, I have to say it is much easier to add organization and structure to Buddhism than spirituality.  It is easier to crank out conformists than spiritual seekers, in other words.

If anything, too much organization and structure inevitably end up laying the foundation for a kind of institutional insanity.  It is often the case that those who are most blind will be found leading the unsure blind.

If Buddhism is to serve as a guiding light out of the dark valley of spiritual blindness so that we might find our real Buddha-nature, then it is going to have to stop thinking like a modern structured religion.  I would rather see twenty-five people chip in fifty bucks or so a month and rent part of an old building, then use the place for discussions, conversations, and meditation; inviting anyone they wish to talk about a particular subject of Buddhism, and leave it at that.  Admittedly, this is not spiritual but neither is it religious.

 

Another look at the four noble truths

For a newbie, it should be fairly obvious that the Four Noble Truths (chatvari arya-satyani) should come at the beginning of their spiritual journey giving it direction.  Logically, it is difficult to imagine the Four Noble Truths as comprising the Buddha's actual awakening; after he recognized his mind had been liberated from the intoxicants (P., âsava) of phenomenal existence and ignorance (cf. M. i. 23).  In fact, the Buddha's mind had attained nirvana which is transcendent and immortal (P., amata); which is beyond suffering, its origin, its cessation, and the path leading to its cessation.  

If anything, the Four Noble Truths serve as a bare bones outline for the beginner—maybe also an oversimplified guideline.  But it lacks pertinent information about the Buddha's liberating insight (prajñâ) that came after the fourth meditation (dhyâna) with the destruction of the intoxicants.  Incidentally, some scholars have proposed that the Four Noble Truths may have been inserted by a later tradition.  It seems reasonable to assume that early Buddhism had no pressing need for the Four Noble Truths which was, instead, focused on meditation (dhyâna) and the subsequent destruction of the intoxicants which culminated in insight (prajñâ) and mind's liberation (vimukti).

Adding more credence to this, we learn that after Gautama had abandoned asceticism he sought another way of awakening.  He recalled the first meditation (dhyâna) he had experienced in his youth (M. i. 246).  Most likely it served as the basis for the other meditations which, at a later time, were lumped together into right concentration (samyak-samadhi) of the noble-eightfold-path (arya-ashtanga-marga).  We should also keep in mind that the Buddha was described as a meditator (P., jhâyin) who was engaged in meditative seclusion (P., patisallanam). 

 

A great divide

If you find yourself learning Buddhism mainly by sitting on your arse in a cold Zen center, which happens to be near your apartment or home, you’re probably doing okay, or so you believe.  You’re learning to become an ordinary Buddhist.

Well, if this is where you are at—sorry dude (or dudette)—you’re a lost cause.  Count yourself a puthujjanas (S., prithagjana).  Puthujjanas are followers of the Buddha but not members of the Triple Gem Sangha which is exclusively made up of spiritual initiates (P., ariysavaka; S., aryasravaka).  The spiritual initiates are the nirvana winners who free themselves from rebirth—not the puthujjanas.  

All this is an overlooked fact of Buddhism—not conjecture—if one has taken the time to read Peter Masefield’s scholarly work, Divine Revelation in Pali Buddhism.  More to the point, Masefield’s book lays out the evidence (and lots of it) that salvation in early Buddhism was limited, exclusively, to a spiritual elite—not the common followers, that is, the puthujjanas.

"It was the ariyasavaka alone who was in possession of right view in the sense that he had seen the impermanence of the phenomenal world, and the existence of a sanctuary lying beyond that realm of impermanence and also a path leading to that sanctuary.  Only the ariyasavaka is on the path leading to that sanctuary.  Only the ariyasavaka is on the path of nibbana, the path to the cessation of rebirth.  The puthujjana, on the other hand, lacking this vision of the ariyasavaka remains ignorant of the existence of that path.  He does not see things as they really are and instead remains attached to ensnaring sensual delights, treading at best the path of merit that leads to continued rebirth within samsara" (pp. xvii–xviii).

The aforementioned amounts to a punch in the gut for the conformist Zen center zennie.  But more of a punch in the gut is that fact that the old Buddhist canon (Nikayas) is rife with proof of a spiritual division between ariyasavaka and puthujjana.  Later on, in Mahayana Buddhism, the division goes even further.  It is between ariyasavaka and Bodhisattvas, a genuine Bodhisattva having had bodhicittotpada (the generation of mind that is bodhi) which is perhaps more difficult to accomplish than the ariyasavaka’s stream entry. 

 

Not by sitting

For those who practice Soto Zen's zazen, they are more or less instructed by teachers that zazen is not about waiting for something spectacular to happen.  Enlightenment happens the minute one learns sit correctly.  According to Dogen, zazen is the enlightened practice of the Buddhas, here and now.  This is to say that if you learn to sit correctly in a Soto Zen center, you too can be a Buddha!   

Dogen's teaching of Buddhist meditation, who also believed that zazen was “transmitted from Buddha to Buddha,” finds no unvarnished precedent in the old canon of Buddhism or even in the Mahayana canon.  Certainly, one can find the word meditation (P., jhâna; S., dhyâna) in the canon but never the compound sitting-meditation.  On the same track, the notion of shikantaza (lit. just sitting) is altogether absent from the Buddhist canon.

Dogen doesn't even take into account that the Sixth Patriarch Hui-neng understood that truth is to realized by mind not by sitting or just sitting (shikantaza).  The record shows that Hui-neng said: “The Truth is understood by the mind (hsin), and not by sitting (ts’o) in meditation" (Suzuki, The Zen Doctrine of No-Mind, 36).

If one expects to see what the Buddha saw it will be with a well trained mind; not the ability to sit for long periods of time stewing in Mara the Evil One’s psychophysical (pañca-skandha) machine.  In this regard, we have the capacity to see beyond our embodied condition—we shouldn't rest content with it.  

Dogen’s treatment of zazen is too concrete and fetishistic.  Do those who practice Soto Zen zazen check out Dogen's claims, for example, that zazen was transmitted from Buddha to Buddha?  In what discourse did the Buddha say this?  Was it in the Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra or any other major Mahayana Sutra?  I don't think so.  Here, in fact, is what the Lankavatara Sutra has to say about dhyâna/meditation in general.

“Further, Mahamati, in order to go beyond the Dhyanas, the immeasurables, and the formless world, the signs of this visible world which is Mind itself should be discarded. The Samapatti leading to the extinction of thought and sensation does not enable one to transcend the world of particulars, for there is nothing but Mind. So it is said:

176. The Dhyanas, the immeasurables, the formless, the Samadhis, and the complete extinction of thought (nirodha)—these do not exist where the Mind alone is.

177. The fruit of the Stream-entered, and that of the Once-returning, and that of the Never-returning, and Arhatship—these are the bewildered states of mind.

178. The Dhyana-practiser, the Dhyana, the subject for it, the destruction, the seeing of the truth, —these are no more than discriminations; when this is recognised there is emancipation” (trans. Suzuki).

 

A certain amount of hubris

The American Zen master Zentatsu Richard Baker, the Dharma Successor of Soto Zen master Shunryu Suzuki, said after he was transmitted by Suzuki—and not surprisingly—”you are no longer a Buddhist; what you do is Buddhism” (Michael Downing, Shoes Outside the Door, p. 19).  

Wow, talk about a bad case of hubris.  But then aren’t some contemporary Zen masters playing Buddha, like Baker, in the sense that whatever they do they believe is Buddhism, no matter what?

Of course I can criticize someone who believes they are the Buddha in virtue of a transmission they received from their teacher.  But they won’t accept the fact—and it is a fact—that the Buddha of the Pali canon didn’t transmit anyone.  And as I have mentioned before on The Zennist blog, the Buddha never transmitted his true teaching to disciples like Mahakashyapa, Revata, Subhuti, and others, according to the Avatamsaka Sutra. (Cleary, Flower Ornament Scripture, p. 1146).  In fact, the entire Zen transmission is a fiction.  How is it possible to transmit awakened or Buddha Mind?  It is like air.  Nobody possesses it nor can it be handed over to another.

With contemporary Zen masters we are almost always dealing with varying degrees of hubris, a specific hubris which mistakes the depth of human nature for Buddha-nature.  Hubris is thus also a lack of wisdom, that is, the inability to distinguish between human nature and Buddha-nature.  There is also a tyrannical side to hubris.  Hubris makes tyrants.

Zen in the West has certainly not be able to keep hubris out of the ranks of its teachers.  A certain amount of pride is first required which then leads one to overestimate their spiritual accomplishments, who then gains power in the way of Dharma transmission.  This is nothing less than a path to ruin.

 

Red Pine's translation of the Lankavatara Sutra

Yes, right next to me hot off the press is a translation and commentary of The Lankavatara Sutra by Red Pine (Bill Porter).  First, let me say that if anyone is expecting this new translation to remove the scales from their eyes, forget it!  It ain’t going to happen.  (By the way, I have been reading the Sutra for several days.) 

The Lankavatara Sutra (hereafter, LS) shall always remain more or less impenetrable but not because of the grammar or the language.  It shall always be more or less impenetrable because the newbie who takes it up as a study has no profound insight into the nature of Mind (i.e., Mind as substance) or even what Buddhism is really about.  

First of all the LS is meant for Bodhisattvas.  To get into the Bodhisattva club it is first necessary to initially realize the Mind that is bodhi (S., bodhicitta).  No initial realization—no club membership.  Without this important and necessary step it is extremely difficult to see where the LS is going since it is for advanced Bodhisattvas.  

Making matters worse, the LS lacks a unifying story like some Sutras.  Given this problem, a system might seem absent.  Still, there is something that holds the LS together.  More importantly, it is not theoretical, in the sense of laying down some kind of abstract philosophy, but rather appeals to the gnostical side of us.  

Turning to Red Pine’s translation, and very much like Suzuki’s translation, what we are straightway presented with is the mystical transformation (paravrtti) of King Ravana’s consciousness.  Let’s call it for now a super gnosis.  What is important during Ravana’s gnosis is “he realized what appeared was nothing but the perception of his own mind.”  He then “found himself in a realm free from such projections.”  

This is no run-of-the-mill gnosis but one in which King Ravana becomes profoundly transformed; who sees the world the way it really is which is “the realm of nothing but mind” which is “something the foolish don’t know / bewildered by false projections”.  By the same token, this gnosis is not subjective.  There is not a single case in the LS in which mind is a subject of an activity such as thinking or perceiving.  Mind is really absolute substance (tathata)—not subject—when mind is set free (Red Pine and Suzuki, XLIII).  As such, the everyday world is illusory and dreamlike—only Mind is real.

Switching gears, for now I don’t find Red Pine's translation to be any better than D.T. Suzuki’s translation as if he were able to magically erase the difficulties such a text brings with it which speaks of a profound gnosis.  This is evident if the reader has both translations and follows the chapters.  Let me add that Red Pine’s commentary proves helpful but so is D.T. Suzuki’s Studies in the Lankavatara Sutra, not to mention Florin Giripescu Sutton’s book, Existence and Enlightenment in the Lankavatara-sutra, and Auke D. Forsten’s marvelous work, Between Certainity and finitude: A Study of Lankavatarasutra Chapter Two. 

One more thing.  I believe Zen began to go downhill when, by choice, it began to ignore the importance of the LS.  Early Zen, of course, did not ignore the LS.  In fact, it was pivotal to its extraordinary development because it was transmitted by Bodhidharma to Hui-k’o who became the Second Patriarch of Zen.  Without the Lankavatara Sutra no Zen, in other words.  If Red Pine’s translation serves a worthy purpose it will be to remind the present day generation of Zennists just how far they have strayed off the path, indulging in far too much ritual and sitting.  Keep in mind that the Second Patriarch predicted that “the understanding of this Sutra will become superficial after four generations.  How utterly lamentable.”