The Zennist

The light shone in darkness

When the Buddha spoke of being liberated from the confines of the temporal body which was just an image (rupa), his followers, with the help of his power, were able to grasp this.  The Buddha’s power was like a lamp whose light shone in their darkened minds so that they might better understand his teachings.  For some, naturally, their mind was so darkened the could hardly make any progress.  Nevertheless, with the Buddha’s compassion it wasn’t difficult for many to attain nirvana.  The Buddha’s presence was always there making straight the path; clearing away the vines of deep rooted ignorance.

It is only after the Buddha’s death, laying aside his finite body in perfect nirvana (parinirvana), that things began to get confusing among is followers.  With Gautama no longer present—the light gone—darkness began to become greater than the light.  Those who still remembered his presence like Ananda were marginalized by new leaders who interpreted the Buddha’s discourses in different ways none of which showed a glimmer of illuminative compassion (mahakarunacitta).  

Thus, did the great compassionate light which the Buddha emanated, wane.  It gradually became like the light of a small candle eventually going out.  The Buddha’s followers, by habit, were more disposed to the darkness of the temporal world than the light of the transcendent world, svarga.  More and more they came to value elaborate and complicated treatises.  They turned to words and logic having failed to confirm their theories by meditation seeing, directly, what the Buddha saw when he became awakened.

The Buddha’s religion of the living was now turning into the religion of the dead.  While the Buddha’s funerary ashes were being venerated along with his words that were being set to memory—the true living spirit, which he brought into the world with his presence, was not enshrined or venerated.  Nobody could sense, anymore, the powerful light of compassion he once emitted which confirmed his teachings.  What came to represent him was, instead, a statue made of bronze or stone.

The light eventually disappeared because of the stronger habit of materialism blocked it out.  Buddhism eventually turned into something Gautama the Buddha never intended it to be, viz., a religion of monkish guardians who made sure that the belief in a spiritual self (atman) would never plant itself in the hearts of the people.  These guardians would repeat the mantra that all is impermanent, suffering, and without self; that nirvana is extinction, analogous with the flame of a candle gone out.

Along side of this view grew Mahayana Buddhism beginning with the Mahasanghikas whose understanding of Buddhism was decisively spiritual and appeared to worship the Buddha as a spiritual presence—not has a human being subject to sickness, old age and death.  They even considered the Buddha to be born with a manomayakaya, that is, an immaterial pneumatic body which was undefiled (an-âsrava).  While this seems absurd to those caught up in materialism, that is, to regard the Buddha as immaterial, for those who have witnessed the spiritual glory of pure Mind, it is not absurd to look at the Buddha as an allegorical representation of this pure Mind struggling in the human world to save it from its self-inflicted ignorance.

Even considering that the Buddha was human, the value of his teaching was not his moral character or teaching that the carnal body has no atman.  Any Buddhist who leans on this kind of view of Buddhism doesn’t understand the Buddha’s message—and perhaps never will.  They are caught up in materialism in which Buddhism is turned on its head; the Buddha being the ultimate materialist who tells the world that believing we are more than the sum of our biological parts is a belief of fools.  Quite the opposite, the Buddha taught that we are not our biological body; that the self, or the actual, interfaces with the body but is not in our biological body (rupa).  In a word, the body is not actual (anatman). Instead, the body is particulate (skandha) being surrounded and animated by the non-particulate universal Mind which alone is actual (atma).

Saddleback Church auto de fe

One form of religion I have eventually come to detest, strongly, is Christian evangelicalism which, to be sure, is a scandal both intellectually (being anti-intellectual) and spiritually (being dogmatic and authoritarian).  

One of the main elements of this scandal is that Christian evangelicalism harbors, what can only be termed, an inquisitional disposition where the auto de fe (Spanish for “act of faith”) becomes manifest in its political and personal judgments as if truth resided with it, alone, rather than with itself independent of mankind’s meddling and mischief.

This inquisitional disposition became apparent to me when Rick Warren of the Saddleback Church in southern California, conducted a televised auto de fa of presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain Saturday night, August 16, 2008.  

On the screen, before millions of Americans, Rick Warren transformed into America’s shlocky version of the Grand Inquisitor.  It was as if he were looking for a heretic who might eventually suffer the punishment of defeat this November if he failed to know Grand Inquisitor Rick Warren’s articles of evangelical faith!

From a Buddhist perspective, Christian evangelicalism serves as a good example of what true religion (saddharma) is not.  To be sure, it is not grounded in a temporal authority like Rick and Kay Warren, the Holy See, or even the Dalai Lama.  Instead, it is grounded in mind’s (citta) self-illumination in which mind awakens (bodhi) to itself thus to transform itself into active spirit as mahakarunacitta (lit., great-compassionate-mind).  

Such spirit is not something that can be imitated by a religious charlatan nor would one with this spirit ever become an inquisitor.  Indeed, the verdict has already been handed down to those who willfully desire to remain asleep to their Buddha-nature.  They shall suffer—and already suffer—proportionally, according to their willfulness to contravene spirit!

Perhaps the greatest scandal of evangelicalism is that abets the temporal, interceding for it against the spiritual calling which the hearts of the young sense when they begin to leave the family nest.  In this respect, Christian evangelicalism constitutes a dangerous interference.  It, in fact, inflicts a psychic wound that never heals.  

For a Buddhist, such action borders on killing which we understand as not the slaughter of a creature but, instead, the killing of prana (prâna-atipâtâd viratih).  To clarify this, the killing of prana is killing mind (citta) as vivifying-life reducing one to living in dread.

After watching Rick Warren’s evangelical auto de fe  I realized that in the public media nobody speaks for true religion as one might speak for peace and compassion instead of war and cruelty, or selfless giving as against exploitation.  For me, Warren’s religion stood for the status quo; of all that is wrong with modernity.

I gratuitously hasten to add this, but Rick Warren showed what a clever inquisitor he is.  We Buddhists, to be sure, are not dullards; we knew what was going to happen.  By a previous flip of the coin it was decided that Barack Obama should go through Warren’s inquisition first.  (Sherlock Holmes might inquire, why was the coin toss done so early—why not at the beginning of the program for all to see?)  

John McCain, obviously, had God on his side because otherwise he would be first to answer the questions put to him—and he wasn’t at the Saddleback Church where he was supposed to be, sitting in the cone of silence!  Curiously, John McCain was in route to the church so that he had every opportunity to listen to the questions put to Barack Obama and compose answers that would fill Grand Inquisitor Warren’s heart with delight and admiration.  In short, John McCain insured himself that he would not be politically burnt at the stake—but Obama would.  Yes, what a scandal this religion is.

Epiphany

The normal human baseline is simply the “bodily being” (hereafter, satkaya).  I just sense that I am of a bodiness, in other words.  The satkaya is a register of pain and pleasure.  It is the locus of my sensory being and awareness, too.  My thinking is even localized with satkaya.  Under this condition there is no way that I can sense the pure Mind; not without the latter affecting the baseline beyond its normal range by amplifying itself to a considerable degree.

For the sake of discussion, let’s imagine that my concentrative powers of mind (manas) are such that I can pass, as it were, through sensuous aggregation (skandha) of which I imagine I am and by doing so realize a change in my baseline as a result.  This change would be enjoyed as bliss, not to mention a feeling of physical lightness.  Thus, the satkaya would be realized to be contingent on the invisible power of pure Mind.  Mind, in a word, leads the way—not the satkaya.  

Furthermore, let’s imagine that I can now pass through my satkaya and the world my satkaya shapes through its senses so that I am no longer localized.  In this state I would be coalescing with Suchness  (Tathagata). There would be no ‘here and now’ as place and time.  There would only be universality (ekatva) in which the medium of pure Mind is acquired.  Pure Mind would be my actuality (atman).  What was formerly the world of particulars, including the satkaya, is beheld to be an illusion.  In the past, this was my entire focus, that is, the satkaya.  My baseline then was a static equilibrium of universal and particular.  As a consequece of this static equilibrium, I was only engaged with the satkaya.  I never realized the power of mind.

For ordinary beings their baseline is always the satkaya.  They have no interest in real change.  Real change might prove to be a frightening affair sensing their body being energized, its baseline being affected at its deepest roots.  But for every true mystic this is exactly what happens.  In fact, a true religious experience begins with the dethroning of the satkaya by the experience of pure Mind’s power to alter the baseline of the satkaya. This is the real meaning of “epiphany”.  The satkaya is no longer absolute.  It is realized to be contingent in the sense of depending on the animative power of mind, itself, which is universal.

I hasten to add, that the various forms of modern religion are preservers of the satkaya.  They work by means of psychology and moral behavior—nothing else—to establish their system of belief.  Buddhism calls such religion pratirupakadharma, meaning literally, "counterfeit teaching" which is fair to aver, runs counter to epiphany by which the regal place of satkaya is overthrown in an instant.  The extent to which mankind goes to preserve the place of the satkaya is perhaps exemplified by the Inquisition and now with scientism, the latter almost pronouncing everyone mad who speaks of the immaterial as being necessary (for example, aether).

The fear of truth

What drives the general lot of mankind to pursue materialism, almost feverishly, is the fear of truth.  In lieu of this, the modern world raises up the altar of materialism, and especially technological progress, as being a semblance of truth.  But why should we trust this?  

Looking behind the modern facade of materialism, the idea of technological progress merely serves to conceal the fear of truth by putting a false truth in its place.  Furthermore, it begs the question that technological progress speaks for truth declaring that the tools that we use in life are higher than the very medium of life itself which is completely spiritual.  

So what is really happening is that modern man fears  truth because it will wipe away what he has long believed, thus far, to be truth.  In any event, at all costs he must prevent the questioning of what is today accepted as truth.  Along side of this is the implication that modern man fears to know the real truth of his truth. 

Being steeped in such fear, modern man is ever alert in his watchtower for those who might someday proclaim a different or higher truth; who also know how to shake the very foundations of materialism, questioning its authority and right to exist.  

Those who stand guard in the watchtowers of modern materialism are not like Plato's Guardians—far from it.  These are the skeptics who make sure nothing immaterial passes through the gates of materialism that might possibly liberate the multitudes who live in fear as if their souls were telling them that they are defending and preserving hell against heaven.

In politics, this turns out to be the preservation of the fear of truth by various forms and degrees of despotism in which the ascending arc of liberty and toleration eventually declines giving way to the ruthless control and monitoring of all human discourse and conduct.  

In religion, the fear of truth is in the form of dogmatism in which logos or reason excludes the mystical comprehension of truth as the realization of pure spirit which is the absolute medium of all.

As regards psychology, the fear of truth is the fear of deep introspection: a fear maintained by learning to thwart any inclination to ‘look within’ by indulging, instead, in consumerism, amusement, substance abuse, loveless sex, and various forms of sadomasochism.  The life of the modern soul is almost entirely one of running from introspection.

How this is overcome will have to be explained some other time.  Suffice it to say that truth is nothing to fear.  One who sees beyond the pale of materialism is, in fact, fearless for the reason that the nature of the true is absolute and undying.  The fear of truth—and fear and panic in general—is concern only for those who are materialists.  Indeed, they have feverishly over-invested in the temporal body becoming enslaved by its incessant wants and more so by the terror that it holds which include its possible disfigurement, torture, and certain loss in death.  

As the observant Buddhist will reflect, the fear of truth is what holds the fabric of modern society together.  The trembling, terrorized, aimless herd stays together only through its common fear—not its desire for true being.  Of this common herd, its leaders are of no avail being no different than the stragglers who follow behind the herd.  It is only when the invisible order of spirit is found, again, and cultivated, becoming the norm (dharma), that peace, compassion, and fearlessness arise.  Outside of this , there is no hope.

The simulacrum

In the ancient world a divine person had a spiritual body and a phantom body or simulacrum.  According to Ovid, just before Caesar was murdered, the goddess Vesta carried him off to the heavenly world of Jupiter.  What his assassins stabbed was his simulacrum.  Before that, it was said that the Helen of Troy Paris possessed was merely an "empty delusion" the real Helen being taken off to Egypt by the god Hermes.

For us moderns, the phantom body is our physical body.  This is the body that we consider to be real while, on the other hand, the idea of a 'spiritual being' is treated as if it were a phantom or delusion.  In other words, the reverse holds true for moderns.  This may go so far as to explain why some Buddhists totally reject a docetic interpretation of Buddhism along with the idea of atman.  Yet, without a doubt, the spiritual body takes center stage in Buddhism.

Buddhism follows the tradition of the ancient world with regard to bodies that are simulacrum and spiritual.  The Buddha's physical body or rupakaya, is a simulacrum while his spiritual body, the Dharmakaya, is his real body.  

The Buddha says in the Mahaparinirvana Sutra:  "The rupakaya [the simulacrum] is the body of transformation manifested by skillful means and this body can be said to have birth, old age, sickness and death...The Dharmakaya [on the other hand] is eternal (nitya), blissful (sukha), and the self (atman) and true (shubha) and is perpetually free from birth, old age, sickness, death and all other sufferings...It exists eternally without change whether the Buddha arises in the world or not." 

In the Pali scripture, Digha-Nikaya iii.34, it appears that the Dharmakaya is synonymous with the body of “brahma” or the absolute.  The passage goes: “The Dharma-kaya, that is, the Brahma-kaya.”

When the Buddha died at Kusinara it was his simulacrum that disolved instead of the absolute or Dharma body (Dharmakaya).  This is why Ananda did not honor the remains of the Tathagata (Questions of King Milinda IV, 3, 4) for he understood that the Buddha is known by his Dharmakaya, not by his simulacrum.  This is, of course, a mystery.  And this is why we can say that Buddha never died at Kusinara but still lives.

Frugality

I firmly believe that learning to live a frugal life is part of living a spiritual life.  Several years ago (more than I care to remember) I lived without electricity and running water having to obtain my water from a well that was dug in 1887.  My nearest neighbor was five miles away—the nearest town about seven.

I remember one summer morning, which was turning out to be a very hot day, I decided to walk to town to get a few things.  I didn’t take any water with me.  While I was walking I thought of how the Buddha walked many miles daily.  I am sure he took his time chatting with everyone he met along the way.

Finally, when I got to this little town which is actually a small village, I walked into the general store and went to the back part of it.  I saw the local gaffers sitting around the old round table that was there when my dad trained as a boxer during the early 1920s.  With them was the guy who delivers the beer.  Everyone had a free beer and was having a good time.  The guy who delivered the beer asked me if I wanted a beer.  I said I did.  

When I drank that beer, I swore right then and there that this beer was the best damn beer that I had ever had.  Of course, I was hot and thirsty at the time which had a lot to do with my appreciation of beer which was like heavenly ambrosia to me!  My frugal life helped me to achieve this wonderful moment of which I was grateful!

After that, it was branded on my brain what I had always known but never realized, namely, frugality’s importance for the practice of Buddhism.  We must learn to live a frugal life shunning as much as we can the lavish life.  Such a life opens us up to not only beauty, but its greater reward is that frugality helps minimize distractions which only serve to lead us away from the Buddha’s path. 

A goodly portion of the evils in our world are hatched—not from those who lead frugal lives tied to the appreciation of beauty and spiritual wisdom—but are tied, instead, to living a lavish life always wanting more—a bigger home; a bigger car, etc.  These people are never satisfied with less, but always require more because unbeknownst to them their ravenous consumption occludes their spiritual eye which is connected with, also, the appreciation of the beauteous (in my case that beer).  As a rule, the more this eye becomes occluded the more they thirst and the more empty they feel.  Gradually, those who are addicted to living like this become spiritually blind.  The Buddha refers to them as the icchantika who forefeet their Buddha-nature through excessive want; who are like living corpses.

This leads me to say that the spiritual eye and the eye for the beauteous are one and the same eye because in the dawning moment of beauty is also the pure Mind from which the beautiful moment springs which could be a sunset or the sound of wind through the pine trees.  The artist is attuned to the beauteous moment—the sage to the creative light of mind from which beauty is born like the foam on the sea from which Venus arises in Botticelli’s famous painting.

To keep our spiritual eye 20/20 we need to consider the benefits of living in what can only be described as aesthetic frugality from which beauty and spirituality are possible.  I did this for over fifteen years and without a doubt it served to sharpen my spiritual vision and my sense of beauty. 

The cessation of suffering

Thinking in a Buddhist way, our aches and pains don’t just come out of the blue.  They, in fact, arise from certain things things we did previously.  I have known this for years.  Its practical application has be of tremendous value for me.  It has saved me from taking medications, for example (I take about a half dozen aspirin a year—that is it).

When I get a physical injury, for example, I review what I did physically during the past three days.  I can remember one time when I moved the wrong way and—wham!—I pulled a muscle between my shoulder blades.  Well, I started thinking, “What did I do previously?”  Then it suddenly dawned on me:  I had washed the windows of my bedroom which overworked a certain muscle group.  (I had not done this for some time I can assure you.)  Knowing this fact, right then and there, the pain almost went away.  It seems that there is a mysterious link between our ability to rightly assess the real cause of pain and its cessation.  To be sure, it gets rid of apprehension and fear.

In the same way, when we really come to know what actually brings about our suffering we become unburdened; almost free of it.  It is an extraordinary feeling of genuine release.  

While the illustration of my pulled muscle is an apt example, it is not far off to suggest that for almost every other problem we have, there is an antecedent cause that led to its arising.  It could be from drinking dirty water, to eating too much, or just procrastinating.  Even the failure of a great company or a nation can be attributed to antecedent causes.  The term the CIA uses, which I like, is “blow-back” which implies that we are the agent of our own problems.

Most regrettably, we humans hold on to the terrible belief that we should experience no blow-back in our lives from the things we’ve done previously no matter how careless they were; that, in fact, we should be forgiven for all of our incautious actions which, in truth, we brought upon ourselves.

But no one is above the law of cause and effect.  And everyone must observe the proper limits of every action making sure they don’t become excessive which, incidentally, is what “evil” suggests in its English etymology.  But indeed we moderns are excessive!  And then when the blow-back comes back upon us, we try everything we can to avoid seeing the real cause.  

It is astonishing to see just how patently stupid we are sometimes.  We refuse to take responsibility for our actions which led to this particular consequence—moreover, we refuse to learn from our past mistakes.  It will be the epitaph of modernity that it never learned anything from its mistakes and, instead, dispensed a lot of medications.

The sufferant's escape

The problem with contemporary Theravada Buddhism as Mahayana Buddhism understands it, is that it moves in the direction of annihilationism.  In whatever manner Theravadism choses to present its theories, it does so by laying siege to the sufferant in the guise of no-self, dogmatically stating that because the corporal entity (P., khandhas) is without a self, there is categorically no self.  But this is a logical error.  The fact that X does not contain Y does not mean that Y is nonexistent.  Truth be known, Y might be elsewhere.

In light of the above, what, therefore, can Theravada Buddhism’s soteriology be except a strange kind of mystical suicide?  This will be seen in this koan which I have constructed to illustrate the point.

A man is in a house with five rooms (the Five Aggregates).  The house has no exit or windows.  The house suddenly catches fire.  The occupant has no way of putting out the fire that will soon engulf him and the entire house.  So the question is, how does he escape his fate?  To be sure, he is a sufferant and cannot even bear the thought of such a death.  Now Mahayana knows the answer and how to save the occupant.  The Zen masters of old could answer this koan easily.  But can a Theravadin teacher answer the question, solving the koan?

Probably one of the most ridiculous answers would be just to sit and accept the conflagration, awaiting happy nirvana!  But as Mahayana Buddhism judges it, such an answer is far from the truth.  Like the expression, “thinking out of the box” so also must one think out their liberation from the fiery world of materialism.

It is a grievous error to assume that the Buddha ignored the sufferant.  He did not.  The Buddha realized that suffering arises from the sufferant’s inability to see the true ground of reality, sometimes called, Tathagata-garbha that is akin to a universal receptacle (âdhâra) of samsara and nirvana which is unchanging (nitya), fundamental (dharma), and eternal (shâsvata).  Instead, the sufferant clings to the samsaric disturbances of the Tathagata-garbha in the form of the physical body.  Central to the Buddha’s teaching is teaching the sufferant how to break their sympathetic connection with the carnal body—to achieve nirvana by, instead, turning to the unchanging incorporeal nature of the Tathagata-garbha.

Practice the right way

Practice is not about going through the ritual of sitting in meditation for a certain period of time like working out at the gym.  Far from it.  Practice is disciplining our mind to study the Buddha’s words hopefully to get a glimpse of the nature of mind, itself.  If we don't achieve a glimpse into the pure nature of mind, itself, we are only prolonging our stay in samsara. 

I can remember years ago when, for the winter season, I cut firewood often engaged in practice.  With my chain saw and fuel secured to my backpack frame that I had adapted for such a purpose I went looking for some good fallen trees that were sufficiently dried out that would make good firewood. While I was walking I usually worked on a problem about the nature of mind in my head—something that I had read in a Sutra the night before or I had be struggling with for a long time.  In a word, this is the way to practice the right way.

In my case, I tried to keep my mind  engaged in thinking about various notions found in Buddhism such as ‘dependent origination’ or ‘emptiness’.  On some days, I might have a great intuition on emptiness or mind (citta).  Sometimes, while I was cutting firewood, I could hardly wait to get back to the ranch house and test out my understanding by reading a number of key passages the Buddha had given on the subject.  

On the other side of this,  it is worth emphasizing that it is easy to become distracted by the events of the world, as it were, to get caught up in money and politics.  This brings up a more crucial aspect of practice, that is, one’s ability to get back to studying the important notions of Buddhism after becoming distracted.  

To be sure, the ordinary world is too much with us.  Normal human life, itself, is a very powerful distraction.  Many who wish to follow the Buddha’s teaching and practice don’t usually succeed in the long run.  More than often, they fall by the wayside.  They may practice for a certain period of time—a couple of years let’s say—but eventually they either fall into a perfunctory kind of practice or they find something else more to their liking which is, nevertheless, a distraction.  Such people don’t really have their heart into thinking about what the Buddha taught.  Many are still too spiritually immature.

A few weeks ago I happened to read something a great Tibetan Lama said.  He kept emphasizing seeing into the nature of mind.  I knew, exactly, what he was talking about because I have seen pure MInd.  But what if I had been a young student who was very immature—on my own—who didn’t comprehend just how much weight should be placed on devoting one’s time and energy into trying to see the nature of mind which is pure and unborn? (Believe me this is very important.)  How long would it take this student eventually to become discouraged falling prey to the distractions of the material world?  

What is important to keep in mind is that even if we become discouraged, it is also practice to break the spell of being discouraged.  We have to open up a Sutra and study with renewed dedication.  But we also have to learn patience.  This is something very difficult for the modern mind that is easily distracted and discouraged.  Oh...and learning patience in the midst of impatience is part of practice, also. 

Reversing time

Causation (that is, how effects are produced) is implicit in Buddhism but not as a theory which lends itself to semantic determination.  It needs underscoring that the Buddha was a real mystic—not a maker of metaphysical theories.  This implicity is spiritual and, therefore, ineffable.  

For those awakened, the transcendent spiritual medium as the implicit cause, converts into the consequent through craving with no reversibility on the part of the consequent.  There is only a succession of consequences which boils down to impermanence.  

On an everyday level, as we experience this condition through our senses, we are always perceiving the consequential, temporal world, i.e., samsara. From a different aspect, as spirit, we are falling into time transforming into mass/energy entities (satkaya) which is our normal human body.  

To escape this down falling condition we must reverse time, going back to zero (shunya) time.  This involves intuiting the timeless, pre-fall state of the spiritual medium, itself, which is eternal and non-local.  

On the question of reversing time, going back to zero, spirit must correctly imagine (samyagdrista) itself, timelessly.  This is, incidentally, the first part of what many Buddhists refer to as the Noble Eightfold Path.  

Then, after spirit rightly conceives (samyagdrista) itself, it then begins to progressively dissolve its desire for further temporality, working backwards to zero time (i.e., embodiment reversal).  This reversal of the temporal condition, it needs underscoring, takes a very long time to accomplish, but it can be done.  

By reversing our temporal condition, spirit becomes increasingly distinguished from the temporal body.  This is called “wisdom” or prajñâ, in which spirit is continually distinguishing itself from the temporal body more and more. (This is also disembodiment and nirvana—though not final nirvana.)

What is hard to imagine for us is that from the moment of our conception in our mother’s womb we have, as spirit, been converting spiritual being into time and the same, samsara.  This is difficult for us to imagine because we can’t envision the spiritual side of ourselves as timelessly detached without being, in some degree, already detached.  

Only when the first moment of detachment/disembodiment occurs and we sense the power of spirit or pure Mind, directly, can we get a good grasp on the fundamental truth of real causation and how, as this spiritual medium, we have fallen into dependent origination, going serially from one birth to the next.

While all this sounds pretty heady.  It isn’t.  We simply have to believe that we are causing ourselves to become time entities and that this can be reversed by following the Buddha’s path.