The Zennist

Cutting off conceptualizing

Q:  I was struck by your idea that koans are expressions of pure Mind.  Could you talk more about this?

A:  Sure.  It was koans that got me deeply interested in Zen.  The more I read them the more I realized I couldn’t answer them—not a single one.  Nevertheless, I was hooked on Zen.  Yes, it’s true that koans are the expression of pure Mind or the same, the Buddha Mind.  It’s just my own impression, but Western Zennists don’t fully understand this.  They take koans to be somewhat like riddles without realizing that the entire basis of Zen is about awakening to pure Mind.  Koans help us to do just that by showing us just how caught up we are in conceptualizing pure Mind which is the same as trying to conceptualize Gautama’s awakening whereby he became Buddha.

Q:  I take it that not just any teacher is qualified to use koans is that right?

A:  Right.  They have to be awakened to pure Mind.  Short of that one is taking a chance that they are not going to ever realize pure Mind.  It takes special skill to cut off a student’s habitual tendency to conceptualize pure Mind.  The skillful teacher as to put the student between a rock and a hard place with no other way out except to realize pure Mind.  Before he awakened to pure Mind one student made forty-nine attempts to answer the koan: “The eastern mountain sails up the river.”  Why so many times?  It’s because his teacher Yüan-wu who had already awakened to pure Mind was not about to let his student off the hook with some inferior grasp of this koan.  He wanted his student to really awaken.

Q:  Does everyone need to answer koans?

A:  No, not at all.  The early Zen masters didn’t answer koans when they were just students.  Chances are their teacher had the light.  The students were sensitive enough to pick it up thus realizing Mind’s dynamic power.  Once a Zen master said that the spiritual light of living beings originally had no obstruction.  When those obstructions are removed this light is there—it’s always been present.  It doesn’t take a koan to realize this.  But once you behold the light, you quickly see that koans are nothing more than ingenious expression of it in various ways from a shout, to saying Mu.

Q:  So when a monk asked a Zen master, “What is Buddha? and the Zen master replied, “Three pounds of burlap,” this is all related to pure Mind.  Right?

A:  Absolutely.  It is like me asking you to show me a chair, then the table, then the tree outside.  Then I ask you, show me pure Mind.  Suddenly, you freeze up, like what the fuck?  In that moment a well delivered slap across the chops might awaken you by crushing your conceptualizing habit for a split second—it throws you back to pure Mind which is not obstructed.

Q:  So the phrase “three pounds of burlap” could have easily been “dog shit” right?

A:  Yes, what ever cuts off your habitual tendency to conceptualize.  At that moment the answer is clear, that’s the Buddha which is pure Mind.  It’s not the burlap or shit.  It’s not Mu or the Buddha holding a flower up and blinking.  It’s not go wash your bowl.  It’s not a slap across the chops.  Still these things help to turn off the conceptualizing tendency when it comes to seeing pure Mind.  If it’s not turned off for a split second how will you possibly understand Bodhidharma’s profound words: “Not one of them understands the movement of his own hands and feet”?  You’ll never escape rebirth either, without awaking to pure Mind since it does not transmigrate.

The serious beginner

The smart beginner, if they are really serious about Buddhism, has to find a path that will lead to the realization of pure Mind. The Sanskrit term “mârga” is usually translated by the English word path or way.  We find this important term in the Noble Eightfold Path in Sanskrit as ârya-ashtânga-mârga.  Mârga comes from √MÂRG.  This root means seek, look for; search through, etc.

When cows look for water or green vegetation, they search and, at the same time, are making a path.  This search, if successful, produces a proper path for other cows to follow which will take them to fresh water.  The Buddha’s own path is sort of like this which led him to pure Mind whereby he became Buddha and led others on his path.  

At first, we have to have the right view or right idea of pure Mind in order to eventually actualize it which is right samadhi.  The additional components of this path which lie between right view and right samadhi help us to get to right samadhi so that we have a direct intuition of pure Mind.  

The additional components of the path are resolve (samkalpa), meaning (vac), actions (karmânta), livelihood (jîva), striving (vyâyâma), mindfulness (smriti).  These components are not to be taken as rules to follow.  They are important components of the beginner’s psychological disposition which will help the beginner to go from the proper view of pure Mind to its eventual actualization.  

What is obstructing the beginner’s ability to enter samadhi of pure Mind is, naturally, wrong view or the wrong idea of what Buddhism is really about.  On the other hand, one who has right view or the right idea, would not regard, for example, the Five Aggregates as pure Mind, or the same, the self. They would also correctly see nirvana (P., nibbânadassanam).  As we might acknowledge from this, right view or the right idea of what Buddhism is about is extremely important.  It is a very profound notion.

Briefly, the Buddha’s path helps us to answer a koan.  We can’t get to the samadhi of the koan without first having the right idea about koans that they are a Zen master’s expression of pure Mind.  The beginner has to connect, for example, Joshu’s great Mu (no) with pure Mind or with other odd responses or gestures in other koans.  How are they related, in other words?  The wrong view of koans would be that they have nothing to do with pure Mind or our original nature.

One final thought about the Buddha’s path, in a three or six month retreat all the elements of the eightfold path work much better provided we start with the correct view.  At some point the beginner has to become a serious hermit (rishi).

A smart beginner

A beginner new to Buddhism usually wants to find a Dharma or Zen center close by.  For some unclear reason they believe they will learn a lot about Buddhism if they go there when in fact they will learn almost nothing.  They might as well quit after they learn the formal posture of zazen.  They could easily do zazen in their apartment, read the Heart Sutra—and for added benefit, read Paul Reps’ book, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones especially the 101 little Zen stories in the first part of the book.  All in all, this is not much different than a Christian going to church on Sunday who might believe they will learn a great deal about Christianity.  Unless they are a seminary student, it is highly probable that they won’t learn very much about Christianity.

Buddhist temples are not in the habit of teaching Buddhism as strange as this sounds.  The beginner is treated more like a spectator whose main job is to support the temple with their donations.  A typical American Zen temple might teach meditation, but this is under the category of rituals or observances.  Sitting still for under and hour is not real meditation or dhyâna.

Beginners need to jettison any romantic ideas they might have about Buddhism, especially Zen.  The odds are, the person who is regarded by them to be a Zen master knows much less than a university scholar of Zen Buddhism and spiritually, is certainly no Huang-po.  They idea that anyone who wears Buddhist robes; who also claims he or she is transmitted from so-in-so which makes them a genuine master of Zen is deluded.  A real master of Zen has seen the absolute or the same, pure Mind.  A fraud is someone who claims to be a Zen master who doesn’t teach the essence of Mind which the Sixth Patriarch taught.

A smart beginner doesn’t waste their time with Buddhist teachers who never mention the Mind and its importance in the study of Buddhism.  What is the payoff by attending a Dharma or Zen center that keeps everyone in the dark when it comes to Mind?  We can't forget that koans are based on the realization of Mind—they are its fundamental demonstration; zazen means to see into one’s original nature which is pure Mind.

Trust me, I know what I am talking about.  I wasted not a few years trusting in teachers who never mentioned pure Mind—who were clueless imbeciles.  I was even kicked out of a Tibetan group for asking a Lama about Mind.

The red reindeer

Q:  How effective are the various Buddhist practices in achieving an intuition or awakening of pure Mind?

A:  In the big picture, not very effective.  They work on trying to control the temporal life which is submerged in samsara; trying to reduce suffering.  Lets say, for example, that I try to control the three poisons.  I work on trying not to be deluded, or hateful, or greedy.  This doesn’t really get me to the other shore of nirvana.  It’s like trying not to avoid thinking about a green elephant by trying to keep my mental images ‘green elephant free’.  But I know what the rule says.  It says I can’t think of a green elephant.  By trying to eliminate ‘X’, paradoxically, I still need X.  I even reinforce it.  It’s somewhat like being an atheist.  I still need God in order to deny God.  There is no moral or thou-shalt-not path to the other shore.

Q:  I think am following you.  It makes sense to me, but how do we get to the other shore?

A:  By thinking of a red reindeer!

Q:  [Laughing] Are  you kidding?

A:  No.  Just think about it for a moment.  Most practices are built upon avoidance of something—the green elephant—or at least try to control certain kinds of behavior.  But awakening or sambodhi is positive—not negative.  I have to see pure Mind.  Not being an asshole will not get me to pure Mind.  Acting piously by trying to avoid impious behavior, will also not get me to pure Mind.  We have to be positive, hence, the red reindeer.  It’s much easier.  By trying to see pure Mind it is probable that I will reach the other shore.  Think of The Ten Oxherding Pictures.  The little oxherd boy is searching for the ox.  This is positive.  Working on koans is positive, too.  By seeing pure Mind we answer the koan.

Q:  I get the idea that we have to have someplace to go.  I just can’t drive my car thinking that by avoiding my hometown of Fresno I will get to the Land of Jewels.  Isn’t that right?

A:  Yes.  That is what irked me about studying Zen.  Sitting so much in zazen was just a control issue.  I learned that I could keep still for twenty or forty minutes.  Big deal.  Never once did my teacher say, “Search for pure Mind.”  It is only during Bishop Nippo’s lecture at San Jose State that I realized that I had to seek, positively, like the little oxherd boy.  I had to find the ox of pure Mind in my jungle mind.  After a few years of reading D.T. Suzuki, I realized that real Zen is positive.  Other forms and practices of Buddhism are not as positive.

 

Secular Buddhism rejects Buddhism

Secular Buddhism, for the most part, rejects the aims of Indian soteriology which is redemptive; that we can escape the suffering of rebirth by attaining the deathless or amrita.  And to the extent that Indian soteriology is judged by secular Buddhists to be a part of Buddhism which, therefore, makes it an interpolation, secular Buddhism rejects traditional Buddhism.  This is what I think the secular Buddhist Stephen Batchelor is saying here:

“So embedded is this Indian soteriological framework in Buddhism that Buddhists might find it unintelligible that one would even consider questioning it. For to dispense with such key doctrines as rebirth, the law of kamma, and liberation from the cycle of birth and death would surely undermine the entire edifice of Buddhism itself. Yet for those who have grown up outside of Indian culture, who feel at home in a modernity informed by the natural sciences, to then be told that one cannot “really” practise the dharma unless one adheres to the tenets of ancient Indian soteriology makes little sense. The reason people can no longer accept these beliefs need not be because they reject them as false, but because such views are too much at variance with everything else they know and believe about the nature of themselves and the world. They simply do not work anymore, and the intellectual gymnastics one needs to perform to make them work seem casuistic and, for many, unpersuasive. They are metaphysical beliefs, in that (like belief in God) they can neither be convincingly demonstrated nor refuted. One has to take them on trust, albeit with as much reason and empirical evidence that one can muster to back them up” (Stephen Batchelor, “Secular Buddhism,” Journal of Global Buddhism Vol. 13 (2012): 89).

We must also conclude that the aim of secular Buddhism calls for a fundamental change in the content of traditional Buddhism, itself, which secular Buddhist believe to be metaphysical, if not, too Indian.  Seeking the truth so as to ‘awaken’ or sambodhi, is also rejected.  

"As soon as the seductive notion of “truth” begins to permeate the discourse of the dharma, the pragmatic emphasis of the teaching risks being replaced by speculative metaphysics, and awakening comes to be seen as achieving an inner state of mind that somehow accords with an objective metaphysical “reality.” This tendency becomes even more pronounced when “truth” is further qualified as being either an “ultimate” (paramattha) or a merely “conventional” (samutti) truth” (ibid., p. 92).

Also, we might draw from this that a secular Buddhist has no interest in playing around with koans so as to intuit a “disembodied spirit” (Batchelor’s words) which is beyond the reach of concepts and language; that somehow animates us.  Secular Buddhism is more about going with the flow of samsara, accepting suffering.

“To fully embrace suffering does not increase suffering, but paradoxically enhances your sense of astonishment at being alive. By saying “yes” to birth, sickness, aging, and death, you open your heart and mind to the sheer mystery of being here at all: that in this moment you breathe, you hear the wind rustling the leaves in the trees, you look up at the night sky and are lost in wonder” (ibid., p. 105).

What else can we expect Buddhism to be, except secular, if we assume that ‘authentic Buddhism’ had nothing to do with any vestige of Indian soteriology? Ironically, secular Buddhism, itself, is not without unproved assumptions about Buddhism.  Its gloss of Buddhism is not about the Buddha of the discourses but, instead, reflects a Western construction of Buddhism that has been going on since the 19th century which reflects Western concerns and values.  We are to believe, for example, that the Buddha fought against Indian soteriology, that is Hinduism, which is also a Western construction!  Thus, secular Buddhism boils down to a species of Orientalism.

The wonderful mystery of Zen

The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch Hui-neng is not without its mystical elements.  This is certainly so when it comes to the substance or essence of Mind which is brought out quite a bit in Wong Mou-Lam’s translation of the Sutra, entitled, The Sutra of Wei Lang (or Hui Neng) published in 1953.  This is the Sutra that I read when I first studied Zen with my teacher.

After Hui-neng had his own poem put on the wall with the help of someone who was able to write, the Fifth Patriarch, impressed by the spiritual content of the poem, signaled Hui-neng to come to his room at midnight.  He thereupon expounded the Diamond Sutra to Hui-neng who hearing this particular verse, had his mind opened for a second time.  The verse went as follows:  “One should use one’s mind in such a way that it will be free from any attachment.”  The footnote to this found in 1953 publication goes as follows:

“’To be free from any attachment’ means not to abide in form or matter, not to abide in sound, not to abide in delusion, not to abide in enlightenment, not to abide in the quintessence, not to abide in the attribute.  ‘To use the mind’ means to let the ‘One Mind’ (i.e., the Universal mind) manifest itself everywhere.  When we let our mind dwell on piety or on evil, piety or evil manifests itself, but our Essence or Mind (or Primordial mind) is thereby obscured.  But when our mind dwells on nothing, we realise that all the worlds of the ten quarters are nothing but the manifestation of ‘One Mind’” (The Sutra of Wei Lang, p. 19).

This is quite mystical for the reason that we learn that all things we take for granted in our temporal world are just configurations or, the same, manifestations of the One Mind just like rope is a manifestation of muñja or valvaja (grass) or a pot is the manifestation of clay (this is the real meaning of dependent origination).  

This is not pantheism which is the belief that the universe conceived of as a whole is God.  In truth, the world is, so to speak, spun from the substance or essence of Mind, including our very thoughts; even our most subtle thoughts.  The Mind that sees that all things are just itself even when they are formed and twisted into ‘somethings’ which seem to be unique and different, is the true description of the Buddha Mind.  

On more of what it takes

Q:  I am always intrigued by your glimpse of pure Mind which The Zennist blog makes all important.  Could you tell us more about how you came to realize that such an intuition was all important?

A:  As I blogged several times, the lecture Bishop Nippo gave at San Jose State was a major turning point for me (you can check it out here).  Before that I did the usual Soto Zen stuff, made robes, chanted and sat in zazen.  Essentially, I was being trained to do funerals for Japanese Americans.  This is not the Zen that D.T. Suzuki wrote about.  What I was doing was more like pretend Zen.  I dressed up in robes and acted like I understood Zen—which I didn’t.  To make a long story short, after I read Suzuki’s translation of the Lankavatara Sutra at the temple, I realized I didn’t know shit.  A voice inside of me said that I didn’t know shit—and I wanted to know.  Koans still intrigued me which helped me to realize just how little I actually understood about Zen.  Soto Zen did not have koan study like Rinzai Zen.  It was basically sit on your ass—something the Buddha never taught as a means to awakening.  Even before Bishop Nippo’s lecture, I began to suspect that Zen was about seeing something rather mysterious and profound; some kind of intuition or satori was needed which at the moment I lacked.  Years later when I profoundly realized pure Mind and saw for myself just how it made all the pieces of the Buddhist puzzle fit together, I felt bad for all the beginners who were being cheated by teachers who were essentially teaching a false doctrine.  I knew they would never learn about pure Mind.  Ironically, pure Mind was like a huge elephant sitting in the great temple of Buddhism that nobody wanted to acknowledge was there.  And if you did decide to talk about it, you were considered crazy.

Q:  If, for example, I realized pure Mind would the koans all make sense?

A:  Yes, of course.  They all grow out of the direct intuition of pure Mind.  The Zen masters of old saw pure Mind in their normal, everyday actions with their students.  They tried to show it to them.  This pure Mind is a real power.  It can activate our vocal cords making them say Mu!  It can make us see mental images.  It can hold up a flower.  It can grin or brush crumbs off of our robe.  But looking for it as if it were a determinate thing is crazy.  When I say hammer you know what I am talking about.  But if I say pure Mind you hesitate because you’ve never seen it before.  For one thing it is not a physical object.  But if you have seen it, it is easy to know what makes you walk or move your hands.  Koans really bothered me.  Indirectly, they taught me that much of what I thought was Buddhism really wasn’t.  They helped to keep me honest.  Nowadays, not too many people are interested in koans.  But just about all of real Zen is koan-like.  

Q:  What special qualities do I need to see pure Mind?

A:  You have to be like an inventor who doesn’t give up until he has perfected his idea.  I can’t tell you how many times I poured over koans and reread Huang-Po’s great sermons as if to say, “What the devil is this guy talking about when he refers to Mind?  How can I see it?”  You have to throw your totality into trying to get the answer.  You can’t leave anything in reserve.  At some point you have to be stuck between a rock and a hard place where all seems impossible.  No answer, no matter how clever will work.  You are at your wit’s end in tears.  Now you are ripe for the picking.  But getting there is the real art.  Like I just said you have to throw your totality into the search—all of it.  You are lucky, I mean really lucky if you have a teacher that you really like and, at the same time, are scared shitless of; who knows this pure Mind and knows how to put you between a rock and a hard place.  Everyday is sheer hell with this teacher.  But you stick around.  They only way to earn his respect, is to realize pure Mind.  

Q:  Let me ask you a dumb question.  Does realizing pure Mind solve most of our problems?

A:  Let me put it this way.  Realizing pure Mind is the end of life as a worldling or puthujjana.  It is the beginning of the authentic Buddhist life.  You still have to shed all of your worldling bad habits which are like clouds hiding the sun you just saw in the way of pure Mind.  You still have to have bodhicittotpada, that is, the generation of the Mind that is bodhi.  This is when you literally meet the spiritual Buddha or Buddhas who empower and sustain you; who will give you a view of their world for a few weeks that will blow your socks off.  They will point out the Bodhisattva path to you and help you to master it.  The journey is a long one but well worth it.  There is never a boring moment.

Q:  I had no idea there is so much that one has to do—and it seems so difficult.  What if you have a family you’ve dedicated your life to, or have a business you putting a lot of time and energy into?

A:  I can’t really answer that.  I just know that when I was introduced to Zen by my philosophy professor, I was addicted.  Even though I didn’t understand anything about Zen, I couldn’t give it up.  Sure, I could do other things but at the back of my brain was Zen.  No matter what I did Zen was there.  That is what counts.  These days Zennist are content to sit on their asses, sew robes, act pious, and preach useless drivel which has no bearing on the realization of pure Mind.  Their minds are not on Zen.  Pure Mind is the key to open the door of Buddhism.  Those who don’t have the key can’t possibly understand a word of Zen much less Buddhism.

Zen litmus test

To understand the literature of classical Zen and to appreciate its beauty and profundity, is to view it through the realization of pure Mind or Buddha Mind (these terms are just metaphors for the absolute).  Where such discerning insight (prajñâ) is lacking, symbolized by Manjusri, Zen is difficult to lay a hold of, intellectually.  It seems almost irrational although it is not—not from its own side.

Truth be known, we are pure Mind.  But such a mind as this is not an object we are familiar with.  We don’t recognize it no matter how hard we try.  Nevertheless, by great effort on our part, we have to discover it—see it, directly, for ourselves.  Then once seeing it, we can follow the sermons of the old Zen masters, perhaps grinning most of the time.

To get a sense of what I mean here is some material from Albert Welter’s book, Yongming Yanshou’s Conception of Chan in the Zongjing Lu (2011).  With pure Mind this is easy stuff.  Without it, not so easy. 

To present a framework for correct understanding, a kind of litmus test for correct Chan practice that is in accord with Buddhist teachings and principles, Yanshou present ten questions.  Affirmative responses to the following indicate that one's Chan practice is faithful to Buddhism.

1. Do you thoroughly understand seeing [one’s] nature, as if delineating and contemplating phenomenal forms similar to someone like Manjursri?

2. In everything you do—whether encountering situations or dealing with externals, seeing phenomenal forms or listening to sounds, raising a foot or lowering a foot, opening the eyes or closing the eyes—do you illuminate the implicit truth [ zong ] and comply with Buddhism?

3. Do you read the teachings of each age and the statements of former patriarchs and masters, listening deeply and unafraid, completely understanding the truth in all of their teachings and not doubting it?

4. In response to different [types of] difficult questions and all manner of trivial queries, are you able to provide [answers] according to the four kinds of eloquent responses and completely resolve the doubts that others have?

5. At all times and in all situations, does wisdom shine forth unhindered and does thought after thought pass perfectly, without encountering a single dharma that is able to cause obstruction, or being interrupted for even a single instant?

6. In all the occasions that present themselves to you in the external realm, whether contrary or agreeable, good or bad, do you resist [the desire to] elude them [on the one hand] and are you always conscious of destroying [any attachment to] them [on the other]?

7. Within the realm of the mind and its objects comprised of a series of one hundred dharmas, do you get to see the extremely subtle essence-nature and the original point of rising of each and every [dharma], without confusing them with the circumstances of birth and death and the organs of sense and their objects?

8. Regarding the four types of behavior—walking, standing, sitting, and lying—do you address others respectfully and exercise restraint when replying? And when wearing clothes and eating food, performing and carrying out [tasks], do you understand the true reality of each and every grade [in rank]?

9. When listening to claims that there are Buddhas or there are no Buddhas, there are sentient beings or there are no sentient beings, do you sometimes applaud them and sometimes refute them, sometimes agree and sometime disagree, with a firm unwavering mind?

10. When you hear about how all the different kinds of wisdom are able to clearly fathom how nature and form complement each other, how li and shi are unhindered, how nonexistence and existence are one and the same phenomena and do not reflect the origin [of phenomena] itself, and how the thousand sages appear in the world, can you avoid doubting it?” (pp. 86–88).

This reminds me a little of the The Three Gates of Yunmen.  They are as follows: 1) What contains and includes the universe? 2) What stops the flow of reincarnation? 3) What is the state of one wave following another?

 

 

Unfiltered words

When I first came across Zen Buddhism, like most people, I tried to put my own spin on it, that is, interpret it through my own set of experiences and ideas.  I knew Zen signified something.  But if Zen satori were a fish, it wasn’t going for my signifier hooks.  I read a lot of D.T. Suzuki and Alan Watts.  However, the more I read I realized that the mysterious Zen fish wasn’t going for their signifier hooks either.  What Zen really signified was a complete mystery.

I think it is a truism to say that we can't help but interpret any religious discourse or teaching through our own set of experiences and ideas. However, the problem with interpretation is that we can’t manage to keep our own views separated from what the founder is saying. 

Christianity is a perfect example.  Last year I read Elaine Pagels' book, The Gnostic Paul: Gnostic Exegesis of the Pauline Letters. From her book I learned that modern Christianity is not built upon exegesis but, instead, for well over a thousand years, has been built up on years of eisegesis which is the interpretation of a text by consciously or unconsciously reading into it our own ideas.

We Buddhists are not far behind our Christian friends when it comes to consciously or unconsciously reading our own ideas into the Buddha's discourses, especially Zen (this is so when we try to understand what koans saying).  Most pop Buddhism and pop Zen books these days are a reflection of eisegesis. Almost all of them get a free pass because their readers are satisfied with the interpretation, not realizing that it is just an interpretation which has very little or no basis. 

Perhaps ironic, we human beings seem to always find the religion we are looking for. The problem is, it is not what the founder actually intended.  We have revised it to our liking.  Eventually, our religion becomes all-too-human—in some cases, no better than no religion.  Allowing a religious teaching, in this case Zen, to speak to us directly without putting our spin on it is a difficult practice to accomplish.  But only then is the possibility of satori open to us when we let the words enter our hearts unfiltered.

Another Zen scandal

The latest Zen Buddhist sexual scandal concerning Joshu Sasaki recently hit the pages, so to speak, although it has been around for not a short amount time.  Adam Tebbe recently covered it in the Huffington Post.  It comes in a line of similar scandals, some widely known others not so well known.  Some are still going on.  

I think we all agree that religious scandals are nothing new under the sun, especially those which are sexual.  Looking at Zen, there is an unpleasant side to such scandals, if you’re the victim, and a not so unpleasant side which opens the door to ambitious Dharma heirs who can take off on their own, teaching their own version of Zen now that the big honcho has fallen.

All this leads to the question, “Is this really Zen?  And what should Zen really be about?”  I think for most Westerners, interested in Zen, a present day Zen institution like AZI (Association Zen Internationale/International Zen Association) is considered to be orthodox Zen.  Naturally, I beg to differ.  If we strip away the layers of structure, there is not much Zen there to examine, at least not the Zen that makes it possible to know our original nature which is central to Buddhism.  This nature, I hasten to add, unties all knots,  It causes koans to fall by the wayside.  And makes those who sit in zazen look like cloth draped over a pile of dung.

Such a structure make sexual misconduct more difficult to uncover and certainly makes it more likely to occur.  Given enough time and experience, religious institutions know how and where to bury the bodies of scandal.  As we might expect nothing really changes as far as institutions go.  Nor is one really going to learn how to answer koans or have a basic understanding of what Zen is really about.

It is more likely that we would find Zen in China's Zhongnan Mountain range where Buddhist and Daoist hermits live which I mentioned before in an earlier blog about Edward A. Burger’s documentary film, Among White Clouds.  On the same score, it has always been my observation that Buddhist Dharma and Zen centers have to be run like businesses which naturally have a heavy influence on how Zen is packaged presented to the public which tends to turn Zen into pop Zen.  Underlying this, not enough glitz; and presenting Buddhism at the graduate level, nobody is interested—and no cash flow.  So Zen has to have glitz and be dumbed down to just sitting.