The Zennist

The intimate offering

Once a monk asked Chao-chou what was the ‘intimate offering’ of the daughter of the Dragon King, in the Lotus Sutra, made to the Buddha. Mysteriously, answering his question, Chao-chou stretched forth both hands in a gesture of offering.

I am sure today’s modern Zen geniuses have Chao-chou’s gesture all figured out. Let me guess what they imagined the ‘intimate offering’ to be. Probably one modern Zen teacher would no doubt insist that Choa-chou’s gesture was the ‘offering of no offering’ because offering anything would be something and Buddhism is about nothing. This anwer is way off track. Another answer might be that Chao-chou is offering emptiness. This is off by a mile, too. Such answers are not intimate at all. They play with words. They only point to ignorance (i.e., the immediacy of awareness) which some in Zen, these days, take for enlightenment.

The most intimate offering of all would naturally have to be suchness (tathata). But what is suchness? If our mind is not fit to apperceive suchness, in the first place, we cannot actually give such an offering. We may certainly call our offering, “suchness” and play with words which is easy to do. But this is not authentic suchness. The Buddha would be very displeased with our offering because it is not real suchness. Real suchness is much more than words or word games. To experience real suchness is to know and to see the spiritual light of pure Mind.

When Chao-chou stretched forth both hands, he actually made the exact same offering as the daughter of the Dragon King. It wasn’t an empty gesture on his part. If the monk had an intimate knowledge of the daughter’s offering he would have certainly smiled upon receiving Chao-chou’s splendid offering! But of course he didn’t. He was clueless as are so many who practice Zen today.

Today’s Zennists are infected with Western thinking and beliefs. There is not supposed to be a superessential light which animates our body. It is all a figment of our imagination. Yet, the real goal of Zen is to apperceive this light. This is the so-called transmission of the light. What else might be transmitted besides spiritual light or suchness? And what else did the daughter of the Dragon King give except spiritual light?

If we wish to be able to make such an offering, we have to look elsewhere for suchness other than in our imagination. We might have to find a good Zen teacher like Chao-chou to help us. But he is going to scare the crap out of us because all our lives we have actually been running from suchness—we hate it. Indeed, to encounter a true teacher who is a light bearer is a frightening affair. His suchness finds nothing about us which is compatible with suchness.

Only by emptying out our corruption which makes us incapable of apperceiving suchness can we hope to see what the daughter of the Dragon King gave the Buddha. For a long time, according to the Lotus Sutra, the task will be to carry out the countless buckets of dung until we are worthy to receive the higher transmission, being able to give like Chao-chou.

Dream yoga

Dreaming is a subject in Buddhism that is treated much later. One of the uses of the dream is to test the depth of the Bodhisattva vow with regard to saving sentient beings. Since consciousness cannot distinguish the dream world from the non-dream world, the dream can be an important test of our deep commitment to saving sentient beings.

Key to understanding the full implications of this we might think of dreaming in this manner: Does my dream eventually resolve itself in which it turns from bad to good? For example, if dreaming that I am thirsty, am I able to find water in my dream, eventually? If I am naked, eventually do offerings of garments come to me and warm shelter? If I am with sick people, do they eventually become well? If confronted with the opposite sex, am I attracted? If my dreams do not resolve themselves in a beneficial outcome, the strength of the Bodhisattva’s vow is weak. But when our dreams turn from misfortune to fortune this would indicate a good heart that exists in the waking life and even in the life of the subconscious. This is the Bodhisattva heart.

The idea of dream interpretation does not enter the picture. It is irrelevant. What is being tested in dreaming is the strength of the predisposition of our consciousness to untangle itself from suffering. It is a kind of test to measure our sincerity and commitment to the Bodhisattva path. If in our dream, for example, most of our dreams work out for the best, then our waking life is moving in the right direction. We will even experience ‘good luck’ much of the time. This also means that upon our death we will be automatically reborn in higher worlds as if we were possessed of a wish fulfilling gem.

How we alter our dreaming so that the outcome almost always works out for the best largely depends upon our depth of introspection through which our connection with pure Mind is gradually deepened and increased. If we have not engaged with the pure Mind our future life is at risk. For it is by the influence of pure Mind that all ends well. But it is also by the influcence of pure Mind that our next life will be a good one.

Recently, I recall one dream in which I helped an aging man out of a car. He was so weak he could not stand up by his own power. I sat on the grass and held him. Then people came up to me asking for money. I saw my wallet open. It was empty. Then money came out of it. I looked to my left, the aged man on my lap was sitting next to me as a young man. This dream is not symbolic. It is not a prophecy of the future. It simply shows that in my daily practice, the force if it spills over into my dreams. In other words, my subconscious acts like a Bodhisattva making every thing right.

I think this approach to dreaming is the best approach. I gives everyone a chance to measure their practice. In other words, how deep is it? If one morning you can recall a dream that turns out beautifully, when it began as a nightmare, you are doing something right. Your practice is affecting the subconscious. That is a very good indication that you are on the Bodhisattva path.

Patriarch Zen

Perhaps first real Zen Sutra, but by no means the first, was delivered by Hui-neng who is regarded as the Sixth Ancestor, or the same and more common name, the Sixth Patriarch. Hui-neng’s discourse was called the Platform Sutra. It contains some of the key ideas about Buddhism which Zennists, of that era, felt were extremely important.

The Platform Sutra begins with teaching us one of those important key ideas. By means of a poetry contest to determine who will become the Sixth Patriarch, we come to learn what is acceptable as Zen practice for deluded people, and what is Patriarch Zen, which is the true teaching of Buddhism.

The Fifth Patriarch, who would later recognize two poems composed by Hui-neng as being worthy of Patriarch Zen, was very keen on having a positive intuition of Buddha-nature. The Fifth Patriarch was not one who was enamored with negation as a practice by which the Zennist learned the practice of removal, as it were, to remove defilements from pure Mind. The Fifth Patriarch exhorted his students to have an intuition of Buddha-nature and, thereby, directly see its indefectible nature. We might also see it in this way, viz., that it is more important to see the pure Mind, directly, than to worry about matters which are not intrinsic to its nature.

During the contest, the Fifth Patriarch realized that the Head Monk’s poem fell short of a knowledge of Buddha-nature. It still represented the negative method of removing defilements as if to clean the surface of a mirror. But when the Fifth Patriarch read both of Hui-neng’s poems, he realized that this was Patriarch Zen (although he pretended that both poems didn’t reflect an intuition of Buddha-nature). This perhaps explains why, upon his first meeting with Hui-neng, the Fifth Patriarch was impressed with Hui-neng, then an illiterate woodcutter. Hui-neng seemed to understand the positive implication of Buddha-nature. On the other hand, the Head Monk did not seem to understand the positive implication of Buddha-nature having not intuited it, directly.

In the centers of modern Zen, there is no teaching being given that comes close to Patriarch Zen. The practice is primarily negative. This extends from learning how to suppress thoughts, to controlling the body by putting it into an invisible meditative straightjacket. But this is not the recommenced practice of Zen—at least not in the Platform Sutra. According to the Platform Sutra, the practice of removing defiled thoughts and sitting leads to cases of insanity. The danger in making this the predominate practice of Zen is that eventually Zen will not even acknowledge Patriarch Zen. Teachers will transmit their students with Zen for deluded people. They will teach them to try an suppress their thoughts and just sit. Eventually, those who practice this way, because it is the wrong way, will call their Zen, Patriarch Zen and the Zen which discloses the Buddha-nature, the Zen of deluded minds.

Seeing Buddha Mind

The point of Buddhism is to just see. That’s all.

— The Zen priest, Steve Hagen

Hagen makes of the Buddha’s supreme awakening an intransitive one. Instead of seeing the enlightened object, the Buddha just sees! Of maybe the Buddha just feels. At any rate, Hegen is writing what I think amounts to patent nonsense. There is nothing in the canon of Zen Buddhism remotely connected with an awakening of just seeing. To present this as Zen amounts to a kind of religious fraud because it misrepresents what is before us as the Zen canon which contains no such theory. There is certainly no sense of just seeing in these mystical words of Fu Shan-hui (d. 569):

When you know the Buddha is within, and do not seek outside, then mind itself is Buddha, and Buddha is mind. When the mind is clear, you perceive Buddha and understand the perceiving mind. Apart from mind is not Buddha; apart from Buddha is not mind.

To simply see means nothing for one who walks the path of Zen to find Buddha Mind. Taking such a path must culminate with the experience of realizing the pure Mind, i.e., the Buddha Mind. This is the fundamental meaning of awakening—one has to awaken to the transcendent which is beyond mere seeing and mentation.

If one walks tirelessly towards this goal with every fiber of their being they cannot help but awaken. But they will not just see. Instead, they will apperceive a pure animative light which has always been naturally liberated; which has always been present with each of us trying to steer us in the right direction.

The ultimate source of the breath

When we try and think about pure Mind, this is not pure Mind. Nor is our body and mentations pure Mind. If we wish to practice breath meditation, following the breath is not pure Mind, either. The in-breath is not pure Mind, nor is the out-breath.

When a Buddha does breath meditation, his mindfulness is not directed to the breath. His mindfulness is directed to the ultimate source called parimukha. This is another name for pure Mind. In breathing in and out, the Buddha is said to be ever mindful of the ultimate source of breathing.

If we wish to practice the Buddha’s meditation the key is to be above the breath, as it were, returning to the source of breathing which is beyond the in-breath and the out-breath. From the angle of Zen, if we wish to return to our original face before we were born, it is the face prior to the breath which is transcendent.

While Buddhist teachers stress following the breath—where has the Buddha said that following the breath is right practice? Our true nature is beyond breathing. We should, instead, find the source within us which transcends the in-breath and the out-breath.

Since our consciousness is connected to the body through the breath, we must turn our consciousness away from the breath to the antecedent of breath. Our consciousness, with practice, can be mindful of the beginning of the in-breath and out-breath which is, so to speak, breathless. When we succeed in doing this we will understand why the Buddha is sometimes called the light bringer.