The Zennist

Insidious machinations

I asked myself today, “What does a failed Buddhist seeker do when they can’t intuit pure Mind?”  I didn’t have to wait long to find the answer.  I just looked at a few Buddhist forums on the Internet.  They are always well stocked full of failed Buddhists.  Putting what I found into a paragraph it goes like this:

Trying to cognize the essence of Mind or trying to attain nirvana is nothing more than an illusion—a fool’s errand. We cannot know anything, but we can stop desiring to attain pure Mind or nirvana. There is no spiritual mountain to climb and no paths that will take us to the summit.  The real problem is dissatisfaction which is born of our desire, of wanting things, even nirvana.  It is far wiser to give up desire than pursue what, in the end, will inevitably turn out dissatisfying.  

If we had to characterize this with a name, it would be radical agnosticism, that we cannot know.  And in the face of being unable to know (in this case know or cognize pure Mind) the best we can do is just stop desiring awakening.  It ain’t going to happen.

Despite all the Buddhist records we have, especially in Zen, of people awakening to pure Mind, our failed Buddhist seeker—the ultimate wimp—has to make sure others are poisoned by his foul and rotting ideas.  This is somewhat like reading about self-made millionaires, then trying to become rich, but ultimately failing, only to write a book that nobody ever became rich!

Let’s face it.  Not everyone can awaken to pure Mind.  Not everyone can become rich.  Not everyone can become a great musician or scientist.  Awakening is not easy.  But to suggest that striving to cognize pure Mind or realize nirvana is, essentially, a fool’s errand is the insidious machinations of a diabolical intellect.

 

Don't take the bait

The administrator of the Buddhist Forum, an Internet discussion group, introduces prospective discussants to Buddhism by writing stuff like this.

“The ancient Vedic society from which Buddhism emerged understood the self or ego as eternal and unchanging -- the true essence of the nonphysical body. But Gautama Buddha believed that nothing was permanent, and change was the only constant. Therefore, according to the Vedic definition of self, the Buddha concluded that the self could not exist. Buddhism has since then been strongly centered around the idea that there is no such thing as the self. The consequences of this one precept are multitudinous, and informs the entirety of the religion's canon.”

Is any of this true?  Well, let’s find out.  Regardless of the mention of âtman or self in the Vedas which, for example, could mean no more than breath in the Rg-veda, there is no explicit denial of the self by the Buddha in the Nikayas and the Agamas.  On the other hand, there is no scarcity of negation by the Buddha when it comes to the Five Aggregates or pañca-khandhas.  We are not to regard any aggregate as our self.  The common refrain for each aggregates is invariably: This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my  self/na meso attâ.  We might also think of the Five Aggregates as being the temporal or conditioned self whereas what is not the aggregates is the unconditioned, true self, which truly we are. 

The problem the Buddha realized is not with the self but with what common people (puthujjana) imagine the self to be which is never other than impermanent which leads to suffering.  This, we might say, is the self the Buddha tells his followers is not the self (anâtman), which is none other than the Five Aggregates, all of which belong to Mara the killer.  According to the Buddha, the real self is the island and the refuge (D. ii. 100).

Next, did Gautama Buddha believe nothing was permanent; that even nirvana was impermanent?  No he did not.  Nirvana is transcendent reality.  It is what lies beyond phenomena.

“Monks, there is a not-born, a not-become, a not-made, a not-compounded.  Monks, if that unborn, not-become, not-made, not-compounded were not, there would be apparent no escape from this here that is born, become, made, compounded.  But since, monks, there is an unborn ... therefore the escape from this here is born, become ... is apparent” (Udâna 80).  

Nirvana is also changeless (anaññathâbhâvi) and immortal (amata). It does not rest on any other (appatittha); it is infinite (accanta). 

What are we to conclude from all this?  Beware of Buddhist forums.  Often their bait appears to be Buddhism to those who have never studied Buddhism, but what is being taught is materialism.  Also, keep in mind, too, that what is not the self or anâtman, cannot attain nirvana.  Nirvana is only realized by the inmost self or in Sanskrit, pratyâtma.  Said another way, conditioned reality will never uncover nirvana which is unconditioned. 

The quiet revolution of 1939

Even in great Buddhist countries like Thailand a quiet revolutionary movement goes on below the public’s radar.  It is concerned with the place of self or, in Pali attâ (in Sanskrit, âtman).  The typical Western Buddhist doesn’t pay attention to this, despite its boat-rocking significance and lasting implications.  I know I have blogged this before, but permit me to bring this again to the reader’s attention. 

From the book of Paul Williams, Mahayana Buddhism (pp., 125–28), in 1939 the Samgharaja (lit., ruler of the Sangha) of Thailand, who is the head of the national Samgha, gave up the accepted Theravada Buddhist notion of Non-Self (anatta) and switched to the doctrine of the Self (âtman), insisting nirvana (P., nibbana) is the true Self.  Citing an unpublished dissertation by P. Cholvijarn, Nibbana as Self or No Self (2007) Williams quotes the following from Cholvijarn’s dissertation:

“[T]he uniqueness of the Buddhist doctrine of anattâ [not-Self] is realised once attâ [the Self] has been attained.  The Buddha discovered that nibbana is attâ and only by doing so, was able to say that the five aggregates are anattâ.  The anattâ doctrine of the Buddha is the doctrine of only Buddhism because the Buddha realised attâ that is different from conditioned dhammas.  Nibbana is the purity of an object, it is void of defilements [cf. the tathagatagarbha] and once it is reached there is no more clinging.  As purity, it must [be] situate[d] within an object.  That object is self.  Anattâ is a tool that the Buddha uses for [his] disciples to reject the conditioned dhamma and to accept nibbana.  If nibbana is anattâ, then, nibbana is to be rejected and there would be no purpose in practising the Noble Eightfold Path.”

This is very pithy stuff.  The Samgharaja helped to shed light on the notion of no-self/anattâ.  We should reject what is not the self, for example, the aggregates (pañca-khandas/skandhas)—never the self.  He realized that the Buddha taught his awakening to his followers from the standpoint of attained self or attâ, in particular, that conditioned things or dhammas are not the self/attâ, this lack of self in Pali being anattâ.  For the Samgharaja, I am guessing, this was a Buddhist version of the Copernican revolution that the German philosopher Kant described in his Kritik der reinen Vernunft.  

How much easier to explain Buddhism if we assume that the teaching of the Buddha revolves around the self and, at the same time, woe unto those who, in their ignorance, seek the self in the conditioned or deny it completely (e.g., the annihilationists/materialists). 

Without such a revolution no real spiritual progress can be made in Buddhism since adherence to the doctrine of anattâ or no-self, only includes the conditioned—not the unconditioned which marks nirvana.  How we get from the conditioned no-self to unconditioned nirvana has thus far not been adequately explained by the proponents of anattâ doctrine. 

Liberation of the first-person

Buddhism's interaction with the West, as I can see, is on three fronts: 1) the materialistic sciences; 2) Abrahamic religions; 3) psychology.  I hasten to add, by no means is this list exhaustive.  This interaction really involves Buddhism’s right to exist as a path of salvation for the first-person.  In this respect, Buddhism in the West should not become a tool of the sciences, the current religions, or psychology. 

What characterizes all three is that they are not paths for the first-person.  They could not care less about self-discovery or self-uncovering which, incidentally, is unique to Indian shramanic traditions like Buddhism.  For the materialistic sciences, the first-person is of no real interest.  Hence, no path.  When we look at the Abrahamic religions, they too are without a path.  Any value the first-person might possess must be subordinated to God.  The first-person is really of no value when compared with the greatness of God.  Psychology offers no path, either, except a path to normal, culturally sanctioned behavior. The first-person matters not.  It is behavior that matters.

Buddhism’s path brings to the West a new way of being in the world which involves a path that leads to the liberation of the first-person who is no longer ignored or turned into some thrall to be manipulated.

To make this clearer, the discovery of self or the first-person is not a matter of looking in a mirror and saying, “That’s me.”  Far from it.  The self is absolutely primordial.  It doesn’t appear in a mirror.  It is the substance of the universe which is unable to directly cognize itself which, as a result, is forever lost and overwhelmed by the phenomena which confronts it.

As this path is concerned, it is a process of the first-person objectively realizing the first-person (samâdhi).  This realization occurs by penetrating through the shell of phenomena.  This penetration and finding of itself then becomes a return-to-self.  In other words, the universal substance realizes that the forms before it, which seemingly vex it, are nothing more than a distortion of the very substance, itself.  From this new vantage point, the universe is Mind-only, mind and the first-person being the same.

How to spot a real Zen teacher

Q:  How do I find a true Zen teacher?

 A:  Most Zen teachers will tell you that a true Zen teacher must have verification from another true teacher and so on.  But then how do we know that any of the Zen teachers in this line really understand the Mind that Bodhidharma brought to China which is pure and undefiled?  Maybe their transmission has been more like adding water to milk until the milk is so diluted it's not even milk anymore.  Today there are few if any Zen teachers who actually understand that the Mind is the Buddha and that this is what Zen is all about—I mean finding this Mind for yourself.  For that matter, they don't understand koans either; including the fact that koans spring from pure Mind and point to it.  Since these Zen teachers haven't really discovered this Mind for themselves, in a profound way, Buddha Mind is almost meaningless for them.  They don't see how it operates in the koan.  If you collect all the sayings of the great Zen masters of the past, all their sermons point to the Buddha Mind.  They may call it different names like One Mind, pure Mind, or unborn Mind.  But it is the same thing as Buddha or awakened Mind.  I can say these teachers are transmitted because they recognize the supreme importance of pure Mind whereas today, Zen teachers are not interested in pure Mind.

Q:  Okay, let’s say I decide to check out a bunch of Zen temples in the U.S.  What should I look for to see if the Zen teacher is qualified to teach Zen?

A:  If it were me, I would looking for pure Mind.

Q:  But I don’t know what it looks like.  That is why I am looking for a qualified teacher.  Should I ask the prospective teacher what pure Mind looks like?

A:  That would be okay.  Listen to what he has to say.  Maybe he or she will just bullshit you hoping that you won’t press them too much for a real answer.

Q:  What else could I ask a prospective teacher?

A:  Ask a teacher that if he or she truly possesses the Treasury of the Eye of the True Dharma and Wondrous Mind of Nirvana, what did the Buddha transmit to Mahakashyapa besides just holding up a flower and blinking.  That should get their attention.

Q:  Do you know the answer?

A:  Yes, it’s easy for me after all these years but I am no modern day Zen teacher that is looking for students; nor do I particularly care for beginners who lack the necessary spiritual aptitude.  In the past I would send such beginners to Zen centers to get rid of them.  Today, I encourage them to get a good job, raise a family, and if, after that, they are still interested in Zen, read all my blogs. 

Q:  Well how about a little hint, then?

A:  Everyone is blocked by the Buddha’s flower and his blinking.  Then when Kashyapa smiled, many more became blocked by his smile.  Nowadays, Zen teachers are blocked by Zen’s external forms which includes everything from robes to zazen.  Giving you a hint, in light of this, depends a lot on how much you reject Zen’s external bullshit and look, instead, to what animates this corpse that you cling to out of habit.

Q:  I don’t think they teach that in Zen centers.  So, in other words, it is a waste of time to go searching for the perfect master.  But then what should I do?

A:  Every Dharma center I have been to is generally a buzzing beehive of politics and often scandal.  Nothing really comes out of such a mess in the way of awakening to pure Mind.  One seriously has to avoid such Dharma dumps.  It is better to live alone in a cabin in the forest for a couple of months searching for pure Mind.  Such a life clears up your head making the required intuition possible.  A person has to face themselves alone with little if any distractions.  Then they have to look inside their noggin for the total purity that is Buddha Mind (believe me, it’s there).  This search has to be relentless—you throw everything into it as if it were a life and death matter.  Then, you might get lucky.  Make your friends dead Zen masters and the Buddha.  Don’t be afraid to learn Buddhism without a human teacher clad in a Buddhist robe.  There are other kinds of teachers.  

Q:  This sounds discourageing.  What do you mean by other kinds of teachers?

A:  Don’t believe Buddhas are dead or a kalyanamitra (spiritual benefactor) is always flesh and blood.

The acceptance of spirit

Buddhism assumes the continuity of absolute spirit (ekacitta) which is infinite.  From this the notion of transmigration (punarbhava) is accepted as fact.  We are, primordially, absolute spirit which is coursing or transmigrating through its formations/distortions in an effort to find itself which involves a super cognition (sambodhi).  All of Buddhism, it can be argued, springs out of the continuity of absolute spirit which is attempting to cognize itself, thus transcending its forms, ending its transmigration, once and for all.

This is hard for the average person to accept, much less modern Buddhists who lean towards materialism.  But without faith in absolute spirit, no salvation is possible.  One is lost forever in transmigration trapped, as it were, in a fractal-like universe without limit or end.  On this note, death is certainly not an end (only for the deluded materialist).  It is an end only for our temporal body but not the animative side of it which is spirit.

Looking at Buddhism from this particular vantage point, when it comes to comparing it with other religions, doesn’t find too many if any peers.  This is partly because not too many religions accept the primacy of spirit which means the world is not a creation of a creator got but, instead, is a discrimination of spirit which continually fails to recognize itself in its forming activity.  This loss of spirit’s sense of itself,  which falls within each of us; which drives us onward to chase after the derivative forms of spirit, is our ignorance and our suffering which cannot be undone without first, the acceptance of spirit as being ultimately real. 

Turning Buddhism upside down

There is no scriptural warrant for arguing the Buddha denied, categorically, the self or âtman.  Peter Harvey, recognizes this fact also who writes that “the early sources used by the Theravada are bereft of any such explicit denial.  The idea that Buddhism, 'denies the self', though, has become a commonplace of Religious Studies” (The Selfless Mind, p. 7).  The assumption that the Buddha denied the self, to my mind, serves more than any other misunderstanding of Buddhism, to make it almost impossible to understand.  It turns Buddhism upside down. 

If any thing that is remarkable about Buddhism is that it straightaway takes as a given the first-person.  It is only from this basis that we can begin to make spiritual progress, that is, to separate the first-person from what is not the first-person, namely, the anâtman or in Pali, anattâ.  Anâtman, in other words, is the false self or simply, what is not myself.  The Buddha wants us to truly understand that this temporal body of ours, including our thoughts, is not who we are (we are always the first-person).  From the Buddha’s enlightened perspective, we transcend all this, although it is difficult for us to realize this, since we are not yet awakened.

Viewing this temporal body of mine, including my thoughts, it is impermanent.  Since conception, it has been constantly changing along with my thoughts.  There is nothing permanent about it.  It has suffered, too.  It has never once been totally free of suffering and the eventuality of death.  Because of this, my temporal body, including my thoughts, cannot be an adequate refuge for me.  Only the first-person or âtman can be a refuge.  But in my confused condition I am not yet liberated (nirvana) from adhering to the temporal body.  This explains why the Buddha said this:

“Therefore, Ananda, stay as those who have the self as an island (attadîpâ), as those who have the self as refuge (attasaranâ), as those who have no other refuge; as those who have the dharma as an island, as those who have dhamma as refuge, as those who have no other refuge” (D. ii. 100). 

The Buddha never tells anyone to take the anâtman, or what is not the self, as refuge for various reasons.  It is always the self or the first-person which is our refuge.  In the commentaries, the self is a synonym of island (Sasaki, Linguistic Approach to Buddhist Thought, 60) so we can read the following as meaning our self or the first-person and Nibbana as the attained first-person.

“There is an island, an island which you cannot go beyond. It is a place of nothingness, a place of non-possession and of non-attachment. It is the total end of death and decay, and this is why I call it Nibbana [ the extinguished, the cool]” (Sutta-Nipata 1094).

Reflecting on this, truly we cannot go beyond self/island.  It is truly a place of no thingness which transcends our temporal world.  To fully realize the substance of self is liberation or nirvana.  Not to realize it is to attach to the false self or anâtman which is not an island. 

Was Buddhism influenced by the Jains?

Some pop Buddhists are always looking for a way to reject the transcendent in Buddhism, as if the Buddha were just any ordinary person—a kind of ancient Stephen Batchelor.  When anything transcendent in the Buddha’s teachings pops up, they cry, “It’s Hinduism!”  End of discussion.  Here is example of what they would characterize as being  Hindu influenced.  “Man should not give up the self, he should never surrender the self” (S. i. 44) . Or:

“Like the surge of a great ocean, so also birth and old age will roll over you.  Do make a firm island for the self, since there is no other refuge to be found for you” (Theragatha, 412).

First of all, these pop Buddhists present no evidence that the Buddha categorically rejected the self or âtman ( P., attâ).  However, there is sufficient scriptural warrant to say that the Buddha rejected what is not the âtman or self, as any sober person can see who has bothered to read the Pali Nikays.  What is not our self, namely, anâtman, which we should reject and transcend according to the Buddha, is the psychophysical body (pañcaskandha).  

Sounding, at times, like they are half crazy, some of these pop Buddhists reject, for example, the Buddha-nature because it seems like the Hindu âtman!  According to them, Mahayana Sutras like the Mahaparinirvana show a lot of Hindu influences.  But, where is their evidence?  They really have none.  Even the term “Hindu” means almost nothing. It’s a Western term which is Persian.

If anything, early Buddhism was influenced, mainly, by Jainism—not Hinduism.  It can be argued that Jainism appears before the Vedas although there is no hard evidence.  Nevertheless, early on there were religious practitioners in ancient India who were always anti-ritualistic and strongly ascetic given to performing austerities (tapas).  Were these early practitioners the Jains?  They very well might have been.  Next, take the example of transmigration which is often believed to be Hindu. There is very good evidence that the notion of transmigration appears first in Jainism—not in the Brhandaranyaka Upanishad, which is later.

Separating Buddhism from Jainism, including the Jain Order of Pârshva (Pârshva attained nirvana in 777 B.C.), is not an easy matter.  I will go so far as to say that Buddhism appears to be, in some respects, a form of Jainism, but Jainism without severe austerity, substituting in its place, the four jhânas or dhyânas as the correct and uniquely Buddhist means to nirvana (nirvana is also a Jaina goal).

Accepting the historical fact that Buddhism developed and grew alongside of Jainism and shared many of its terms and principles, the assertions of the pop Buddhists that some elements of Buddhism are Hindu influenced have no real basis.  

Miracle tales and being shit free

I came to the opinion a long time ago that religion, in general, is man’s attempt to give meaning to the suffering he eventually finds in life.  In short, it’s an attempt to bring a small amount of order out of a lot of chaos even if the order is fictional and imagined.

Some religions do this well, but they have to sell miracle tales in order to do it based around a fictitious, almighty character.  Religious salesman know how gullible people are who have been kicked around by life’s misfortunes.  So miracle tales do work in the way of a placebo effect, especially seemingly impossible ones like bringing the physical body back to life after it has been buried for a long time. 

By comparison, Buddhism is not an easy religion to sale for the average religious salesman.  The Buddha is essentially saying, “Yeah dude, life is shit.  You’re born and then you die with a lot of pain in-between.”  For those who are shopping for a religion, Buddhism (early Buddhism, that is) doesn’t have any great miracle tales.  What early Buddhism tells us is that the Buddha transcended the shit.  The part of him, before his awakening, that was glomming onto the shit, found itself, after awakening, shit free.  No longer would he lock onto and interface with a life of samsara expressed in and through the human body.

The problem with religions that rely on miracle tales, especially those which need an almighty god, they have to control the critical faculties of man’s spiritual nature that has the ability to accomplish what the Buddha accomplished.  Such miracle religions find the enlightenment of the Buddha to be an anathema because it locates the absolute as transcending the world.  Contrary to this, they need people to believe the absolute is in the world and will one day show up and make everything right.  But it never does.

For Buddhism, the absolute is not something in the form of a miracle god or a creator god.  It is the first-person that is absolute but is unable to recognize itself; so it attaches to things not itself in the belief they are itself.  By doing so, it imprisons itself, continually.   It lives a life of delusion going from one illusory condition to the next.  It cannot awaken because it takes dreams to be reality.  It it is completely inverted.

 

Taking nirvana seriously

Relative to our temporal world and our own temporal life, the question of “What is nirvana?” has no concise, significant meaning for us.  Truth be told, it is not oblivion, or annihilation.  It is not a special kind of ego death after which we are released from suffering.  Western scholars who have tried to make sense of nirvana are aware of the problem of defining nirvana.  To be sure, there is a diversity of interpretations.  These interpretations can be, more or less, influenced by certain philosophical predilections.  Despite  these seeming differences there is some agreement in general. 

What we learn from the discourses of the Buddha is that nirvana is beyond existence and nonexistence.  It is understood to be in stark contrast with our world of temporal appearances.  It is certainly in stark contrast with dependent origination.  Hence, nirvana is completely transcendent.  

Nirvana, which involves a transcendent realization for the adept, presents a problem for popular Buddhism and its followers.  While the scholarly world has not ignored nirvana, where Buddhism is marketed to the general public, nirvana has been, for the most part, given mostly lip service.  On the same score, transcendent signifiers such as the One Mind, pure Mind, Buddha-nature are also not taken up a seriously as they might be.  The public, who is interested in Buddhism, is often simply unaware that nirvana is the alpha and omega of Buddhism.   

It is easy to forget that the Buddha taught that nirvana is the goal of the holy life since the appeal that Buddhism has these days is mainly that of a tool which helps us to cope with the tension of daily life.  What this reveals is that many modern followers of Buddhism are still very much caught up in samsara; who are unwilling to let it go sufficiently to make nirvana their goal; not just giving it lip service.