The Zennist

Zen is a kind of revolutionary path?

In my old age I think I have met enough people to see that they harbor the not-so-apparen-belief that when they were born they were supposed to be born into a near perfect world which had no problems and no one would ever become poor, get sick or die. 

While they have physically grown into adulthood they've also grown in the amount of resentment they have as a result of their expectations not being true.  They are eager to do something about it while they are still young.

Some have decided to wage war against the more fortunate (the bourgeoisie?) on behalf of the world’s downtrodden. At the same time, they have failed to see that the only way to live in a world which is not of one’s dreams or fantasies, is to live open-eyed by compassion, which they can't do.

Affected by the same youthful egoism I decided to become a student of Zen Buddhism in 1965 rather than participate in the great leap forward, becoming a revolutionary on behalf of the downtrodden.  By that time I figured out that the human heart has both good and evil within it.  This means we can either choose to feed our heart the food of goodness or evil.  But we can also at the same time delude ourselves, eating at the trough of evil getting full on pleasures in the belief that all that feels good, is good.

The difficult thing for any youthful person to accept, wholeheartedly, is Buddhism’s noble truth of suffering.  And what exactly is suffering?  In practical terms it is our psycho-physical body that is suffering and will suffer greatly as we grow older.  The degree to which we cling to our psycho-physical body is the amount of suffering we will have to bear when it comes time to let go of it.  To refuse to let go is to fall back into the avidya of the womb. 

On the other hand, to have stopped clinging to our psycho-physical body, having transcended it by awakening to absolute spirit, is the end of suffering.  But this is almost impossible for any youthful person to realize.  Nevertheless, I took it upon myself to realize absolute spirit which is beyond the world of suffering.  But like most in my generation they chose to become, in someway, revolutionaries going so far has to rebel against everything (nihilism?).  Some, even believed that Zen was a kind of revolutionary path.  It is not.  It is a path of intuition that leads to where suffering no longer exists. 

Not a dualistic realization

Without consciousness (vijñāna) appearance (māyā, nāmarūpa) cannot exist.  In other words, the price of admission into our world of appearances or fantasyland is consciousness.  Without consciousness our universe and the earth on which we live and die cannot exist.  Consciousness preexists all appearance and yet it is bound down to it, unable to escape. 

In previous blogs I have gone over the fact that consciousness is always dual; it is not a universal essence or something like spirit, far from it.  If anything, it can roughly be described as the one divided within itself—a non-intrinsic illusory division.  Said again, this division is never other than unreal—an imaginary opposition.  Still it cannot be bridged even though it is illusory.  Even thinker and thought are opposed.  So here we get a taste of what Zen Buddhism is really about.

The barrier we face which prevents us from seeing what is beyond appearance is the duality inherent within consciousness.  Even the duality of realizer and realized must be transcended.  In most profound words there is only the transcendence of realizer and realized when the seeming duality contained within consciousness disappears into the original one.  The one, it turns out, has only realized itself as absolute.  But this is not a dualistic realization.  This is awakening (buddhatā).

Those who desire to awaken but cannot awaken are constantly caught within the trickery of consciousness.  This might explain why it is so difficult to explain the awakening of Siddhartha because he attained nothing determinant from it.  Nevertheless, Siddhartha transcended the illusion of non-enlightenment that consciousness produced.

The making of a diabolical world

In order to establish a diabolical world of samsara one must first change the perception of people.  In this direction, one need only make it impossible to make the right decision in the face of an impending interpersonal crisis. 

Nor does it matter how much good information people have in front of them, they are still unable to make the right decision about what to do.  In other words, all the information a person has access to they still don't know if it's true or false.  But this leads to a worse state of affairs, that is, the likely manipulation of good and evil.

Key in the manipulation of good and evil, is the ability to invent one crisis after another to keep the people from coming to any kind of rational way of overcoming the crisis which could, in reality, be only a made-up crisis.  Let’s call it for now a product of social engineering the source of which is carefully hidden from the public.

On this rather somber note our world is not the happy place we imagine it to be or could ever be in light of the fact that our way of life and our values could very well be manipulated by powers that we cannot see.  I am even more convinced that Zen is really no longer Zen.  It has been taken over by a certain kind of political ideology that controls certain groups of our society.

By the same token I am even more convinced that Zen or Chan as it was known in China acted as a means for harmonizing the two sides of the human brain, the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere.   Naturally, both hemispheres can become, overtime, antagonistic towards each other which may account for why civilizations weaken then fall.  This phenomenon is behind the thesis of psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist in his book, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World .  I see a certain irony in the subtitle which is the unmaking of the western world by over-focusing on the left hemisphere of the brain helped along by made-up crises. 

Returning to the original one

The price we pay for our dualistic perception (vijñāna) is living in an infinite unreality (samsara), a life which never returns to the original one.  In other words, observer and observed, subject and object never converge back into the original one.  Also, this duality is never in harmony; there is always a tension between the two.  Their difference from each other remains unresolved.

It is only the sages or the Buddhas who close the gap; who return to the original one and transcend the unreal.  They realize that the phenomenal world which is duality based constantly emerges from the one and returns to the one.  The becoming apparent (the created )and the return (the fleeting) are the stuff of duality.  Yet, intrinsically, nothing fundamentally arises and nothing fundamentally terminates.

During the intuition of our true nature, this being kenshō, the so-called realizer and the realized disappear.  You could even say that they've returned, suddenly, to the original one.  This mystical intuition cannot be put into the framework of an object or a subject.  In the sage’s return to the ordinary dual world for the purpose of teaching, nothing about true reality can be said without situating it in the dual which is inherent in all information conveying systems.

Going a little deeper, we could be looking at reality through our imagination (the sixth sense for Buddhism) which rests upon duality.  This means that our reality is not entirely real but a figment of our collective imagination which we have concretized/reified and emotionally loaded.  From this, philosophy and religion could be about how to live and survive in an imaginary world.  On the other hand, true religion could be how to realize the absolute one that is not imaginary, thus freeing oneself.

An illusory difference

In Buddhism, our English word consciousness is used to translate vijñāna.  It misses the mark completely.  Vijñāna means lit. in two parts knowing.  In Buddhism, it is a kind of antinomy which is more like a difference in the One from itself which is an illusory difference. 

In order to create and live in a virtual world vijñāna is necessary.  It is, so to speak, the price of admission.  It is responsible for our rebirth into a virtual world.  We would not be here today if it were not for this consciousness.

To keep us in this virtual world what is diabolically important to believe, we have one life and after we die that's it.  And here we come to Zen Buddhism in which intuition plays a prominent role in leaping beyond the confines of consciousness—a return to the One which is hidden from those deeply attached to consciousness. 

In perfect kenshō or gnosis realizer and realized disappear (so do the experiencer and experience) into the One or absolute Spirit.  This means that the illusory difference within the One which creates a virtual world has disappeared.  One learns how the magical trick is accomplished thereby breaking the magical spell.

From immaturity to maturity

Youth almost always with few exceptions eventually betrays its own causes and aspirations.  Such youth is not so much about being in a young, still developing body, as it is being immature where practical experience is lacking. 

Such immaturity suffers from the Dunning-Kruger Effect in which one is so incompetent that they don't know they're incompetent.  There are even shields youth puts up which prevents them from looking at their own likely incompetence thereby overcoming it to some degree.

This effect is not lost upon those who come to study Zen.  For the most part they are young adults who are making a transition from youth to maturity.  A lack of awareness governs their conduct as does a lack of conscientiousness.  It is not surprising that they often fail in the first stages of Zen which I would characterize as learning what Zen’s path is about.

As expected, learning about Zen Buddhism, at first, has to do with reading a lot of Zen literature and thinking about it.  But this is not the same as mastering Zen having walked its mysterious path finally overcoming one's spiritual ignorance; having met and passed through Mumon’s barrier (無門関) which is closed off to human thought. 

While it is true that human ingenuity can pass beyond the barrier of thought few are able to do this.  It is a feat like no other.  For a Buddhist it is like seeing the unconditioned (asaṃskṛta), directly, where spirit has not been formed into thought, that is, Mumon’s barrier. 

In other words, our own imagination and thoughts cannot pass through imagination and thought!  Whatever faces the barrier of imagination—it cannot pass through.  And whatever we think, nevertheless, is still a thought that cannot pass through.  The human mind produces thought while the mind of a Buddha transcends thought.  The youth and immaturity that come to Zen have to be forged into maturity and that is a difficult task. 

Ordinary person Zen

The transcendent is beyond the road of thought and the road of words.  Such roads eventually run out of road.  This is where the road of Zen or the same, the road of intuition begins, but it's not an ordinary dirt road.  In fact, it is not a road of at all in the usual sense.  It begins when all of the roads have come to their end.

Upon reading these words, the average Zen student will still take the road of thought and the road of words.  But the end of these roads leads to a dead end with no more signs or directions.  Wandering around aimlessly is no way either.  On such a trek one can say they are exploring.  But what does that mean?  The Zen student is really lost with no sense of fulfillment.  He or she is running out of ideas:  There are no real options left. 

This is what comes from the practice of ordinary person Zen 凡夫禪 (bompu Zen).  These are people who have very little spiritual depth; who lack intuition (dhyāna).  Such people have no idea what it means to arrive at direct knowledge without reasoning or inferring, which in the case of Zen is direct knowledge of Buddha-nature.

Still, it must be said that there are different types of Zen because there are different kinds of people with differing abilities.  In fact, this is a typical beginner’s mistake:  to think that Zen is Zen and that when you visit a temple you're talking to enlightened people.  Nevertheless, it could be a situation in which you are a fool amongst educated fools.  One should never underestimate one's stupidity or overestimate one's abilities. 

When the student of Zen knows he or she has run out of road, or comes to a dead end, that is the time when Zen really begins (because they are engaging with themselves intrapersonally).  In their heart of hearts they still love Zen Buddhism but they realize that they are getting no place in this particular tradition.

Removing a brick from the wall

From a Buddhist perspective the human being is over-preoccupied with their imagination which Buddhists regard as the 6th sense or manas.  This also includes the intellect which creates a world of ideas and concepts which fundamentally depend upon the thinking/generation of thought. 

All this acts as something like a prison in which the human being is located within.  Psychedelic drugs might help us face this wall which is more illusory than we imagine.  But ultimately we face the thought-made-wall with our thought.  We cannot pass through.  We are forever born and re-born inside this prison.  For Buddhists this is called samsara.

But most of us have heard of the word nirvana.  But what is nirvana?  Is it a kind of passive nihilism?  Could nirvana be like a hole in the thought-made-wall:  the disappearance of a single brick?  But what happens when a brick is no longer there?  What the wall hides is now revealed.  What comes pouring in through that hole, where a brick once was, is the pure light of spirit.

Many today are seeking while confined in ignorance (lost in error).  After all, this wall of thought is a kind of limiting ignorance.  All may even wish to understand.  Still, they only have the eyes of fish who can see everything in their watery world with the exception of the water they are in.  For the one who truly sees (a Buddha), those who are unawakened have eyes not fully open yet they appear open. 

We should not underestimate the power of the imagination or the manas.   The absolute or pure unformed spirit is contained (thoroughly hidden and must be uncovered) in the imagination while, at the same time, from the perspective of the sage, imagination is included within the absolute.

Going beyond thought

Intelligence plus intuition does not account for the intellect but it works for the Zen mind/wisdom.  The intellect lacks intuition.  It can only deal in ideas and concepts (it tends to be analytical in that regards).  While an intellectual may be brilliant he or she still has not managed to get beyond Mumon's barrier, that is, Mu.  Mu represents thought where thought is the great barrier that all Zen practitioners must face. 

Foremost, thought is a barrier to spirit.  It is what the Zen adepts must confront on the path.  During this confrontation, for intuition to be successful, thought must spontaneously dissolve on its own returning back to unconditioned absolute spirit or the same, pure Mind.  In Zen this is our original face (本來面目) where thought has not yet been formed.

Throughout the literature of Zen Buddhism there is a constant reference to this spirit in which there is no thought.  Interestingly, spirit can become congealed into thought but thought is never spirit.  Thought is never other than an illusion created from spirit. 

In the study of Zen we must break the habit of looking for this spirit by means of thought.  But most all Zen students haven't even come to this milestone.  They are still trying to put Zen's mystery into a particular thought.  But such an endeavor is always doomed to failure.

Zen has a history of being clever when it comes to bringing the student to spirit where thought is spontaneously dissolved; where only spirit remains.  But this assumes certain things the most fundamental being that the Zen teacher must be awakened.  Lacking an awakened teacher one must go into solitude cutting off their ties with the outer interpersonal world, transcending the overarching dyad of subject and object through intuition.

Wokeism vs Siddhartha's awakening

Does the political term being woke carry any trace of Siddhartha's awakening under the Bodhi tree whereby he realized absolute spirit which is unconditioned?  The answer is, of course not!  Wokeism comes from a political ideology.  It does not require the religious mind which seeks the attainment of ultimate reality.

Still, wokeism is somewhat like a religion insofar as it contains a redemption narrative which seems to speak to people who feel resentment:  that they have been taken unfair advantage of (it's the opposite of gratitude).  With this, wokeism offers to restore to people what secular society has been unable to provide because it has been dominated by a white male patriarchy.  But unlike with religion in wokeism there is no forgiveness for the wrongs done to other people which still must be avenged (resentment never ends). 

The religious mind has its narrative arc, too.  But overcoming the misfortunes in one’s life is not through pointing the finger at society, but through first recognizing that the human heart contains both good and evil which is cloaked in ignorance.  Until the cloak of ignorance is removed, good and evil remain a problem that begins in every individual.

Complicating this matter if we lack enough empathy then it follows that everything we do is selfish.  We might unconsciously treat others with contempt or even injure them to get our way.  Having our away is of paramount importance.  This cloak of ignorance that all beings have makes possible both good and evil but seldom realized by the doer.

In fact, there is an ongoing struggle going on beneath this cloak.  In the midst of this struggle we are not sure whether we are becoming good or becoming gradually more evil.  It is only when the cloak of ignorance is removed so that the light comes in that we can truly see what is good and what is evil thus avoiding the latter.

But in the world of wokeism where the cloak of ignorance has not been removed good and evil are relative to each other so that they become confused.  Doing good which ends up as evil or doing evil because the cause is good are both possible and likely.