The Zennist

Poisoned five times

Leafing through The Transmission of the Lamp (trans., Ogata) I came across an interesting dialogue between Bodhidharma and his disciple, Hui K’o.  Bodhidharma told Hui K’o the following:

“I have with me the Lankavatara Sutra in four scrolls which I will also give to you.  This contains the essentials of the Tathagata’s spiritual doctrine and allows all sentient beings to develop enlightenment.  Since I came here I have been poisoned five times, and each time I extracted the poison in order to examine it.  When it was placed on the stone, the stone was broken.  I became willing to leave southern India for this eastern land because I had a vision of the Mahayana (existing) in Shen State in Ch’ih Prefecture.  I sailed on the sea and crossed the desert to seek for a man for the sake of the dharma.  During my search I could find only people who were like stammering fools, but now I have gotten you and have transmitted the message to you.”

What got my attention was the fact that Bodhidharma was poisoned some five times.  Apparently, he was unpopular with one or more people who knew of his arcane Mahayana teaching; who thought it might be better for Buddhism if Bodhidharma were dead.  But such hatred didn’t stop with Bodhidharma.  After Bodhidharma had died at Lo River and was buried by Hui K’o, the latter decided to head north to teach Bodhidharma’s arcane doctrine only to encounter a similar problem as his late master.  

At that time in the north, there was a Zen master by the name of Tao-heng who had a rather large following.  When he had learned of Hui K’o’s teaching he remarked that it was the teaching of Mara the Evil One.  Subsequently, he believed it was necessary to terminate the propagation of Hui K’o’s teaching.  But Hui K'o's teaching proved stronger.  Having failed, Tao-heng then decided that it might be better for his own school if Hui K’o were eliminated altogether.  Zen master Tao-heng then paid an imperial guard to assassinate Hui K’o.  But even this didn’t work.  The assassin could not bring himself to slay Hui K’o when he drew his sword.  In fact, he awakened to the mysterious Dharma expounded by Hui K’o.  After that, Zen master Tao-heng apparently repented.

Incidentally, it was said of the teaching of Hui K’o that it was "obscure and dark".  Hui K'o eventually died without producing any heirs.

Trying to make sense of this, one cannot help but remember what happens to sages when they achieve notoriety among their so-called religious peers.  From the Buddha to Socrates—and to Jesus and his apostles, none have fared well because, in my opinion, they taught and practiced esoteric doctrines—especially, that our true nature is fundamentally free of the physical body.  

So why do their teachings draw such ire from their peers?  To be sure, the question is difficult to answer.  Part of the answer may lie in the fact that such sages like Bodhidharma and Hui K’o alienate themselves from the common beliefs and practices of religion which are only concerned with normative and semantic dimensions.  

We might also wonder if Tao-heng, and those who tried to poison Bodhidharma, may have feared a loss of personal authority which was entirely based on a normative and semantic understanding of Buddhism.  If we can accept this, then we can draw the tentative conclusion that those like Tao-heng were never actually interested in sounding the depths of true religion (saddharma).  They found it easier to prey on the credulous which was an easy means of gaining authority as well as wealth.

By comparison, authority for the Buddha, and of course, Bodhidharma, rests with absolute Mind, itself.  Such authority can never be human based since human experience is inconstant and ego-centric.  In fact, in true religion, we must always give up any personal ambition for authority, least we unwittingly worship ourselves which, therefore, makes religion false.  This becomes strikingly apparent after we gain an authentic glimpse into Mind.  This glimpse alone surpasses the human dimension rendering the question of human based authority almost laughable.

Attention

Manasikara is a mode of the mind or will which has to do with our attention.  We are generally, during our day to day transactions, giving our attention to something.  When a student is studying for a test in the university library, this is the manasikara at work.  The manas or attention is fixed (kara) on studying.  In the case of a male student, if an attractive female student sits across from him, all of a sudden his manasikara shifts to her!  She becomes his new focus.  

More specifically, manasikara is attention that fixes (kara) on a particular target or object.  This target might either be ayonisas or yonisas, respectively, non-fundamental or fundamental (the attractive female student would be in the category of ayonisas).  A better example, from the perspective of spirituality, ayonisas is what is phenomenal and superficial.  On the other hand, yonisas can be characterized as the ultimate matrix or medium from which phenomena originate.  

Those who are in the advanced stage of spiritual development are always fixedly attending (manasikara) to the fundamental medium (ayonisas) of all things which is unchanging.

Yoniso manasikara, it should be mentioned, is a necessary factor for stream-entry (S.v.347) whereby one, for the first time, experiences the animative principle of the physical body that falls under the category of yonisas.  To be sure, one cannot attend to the superficial (ayoniso manasikara) and expect to win nirvana.  It is only when we experience the physical body as being moved by a real and immaterial power that we enter the stream to nirvana.  More importantly, it is by yoniso manasikara that one develops and cultivates the Noble Eightfold Path, according to the Buddha.  Worth adding, “noble” or aryan refers to someone who is aware of yoniso; who can directly attend to it.

Heaven is real

In keeping with the abstract notion of ‘thermal death’, Helmholtz and Lord Kelvin calculated that our sun will only last about thirty million years since it lacks any kind of external energy source.  Obviously, the sun’s life has been much longer.  In fact, the notion of ‘thermal death’ is probably a plausible fiction.  

From a Buddhist perspective, things like the sun are mind generations; only the temporal form is finite whereas the animative principle (citta) is timeless and undying.  As a matter of fact, there is no thermal death for the source of the sun.  Something keeps, so to speak, recreating our universe—something greater than the sum of all temporal existences and their respective systems.  One can also, from a Buddhist standpoint, say that the earth is literally expanding in terms of size and mass.

Whatever this something is which is sustaining and growing things (we Buddhists know it as Mind), it transcends everything.  Still, it can be met with in deep introspection (dhyana).  We can even know it as our true nature which is independent of the temporal phenomenon we call the ‘human body’.  

Turning back to our earlier comments about the sun, its true position, which is not the one we see which lags behind it, emits considerably more power.  When the Russians N.A. Kozyrev and V.V. Nasonov aimed a specially adapted telescope at the true position of a particular star—not the one seen—its signal was much stronger than the visible star.  Its radiation was calculated to have a velocity several billion times the speed of light!  We Buddhist would call this radiance, svarga or sagga in Pali, being the true sun—not the one we see which is 8 minutes and 20 seconds later.  Svarga (P. sagga) a term used in Buddhism, is often translated by the word “heaven”.  Here is an example of its use from the Dhammapada:

“This world is blinded, few only can see here.  Like birds escaped from the net a few go to heaven” (174).

The word “svarga” in Sanskrit has the following meanings:  going or leading to the light or heaven, celestial; world of light, the heavens; heaven; heavenly bliss.  Svarga, also, may refer to the whole god realm (devaloka).

The world before it is materialized is svarga.  Good Buddhists who do good deeds go to svarga which, I hasten to add, is not like the final liberation the Buddha attained.  By contrast, to become materialized with a human body is to accumulate mass (skandha) thus enduring a much higher degree of suffering and disharmony as might be borne in svarga.  

That heavenly worlds (svargaloka) exist is evident by the fact that stars, like our sun, are contingent upon an animative principle that converts into mass and energy.  (The ideas of the late Russian astrophysicist N.A. Kozyrev lend credence to my statement.)  On this same track, I would go so far as to suggest that NDEs, known as ‘near death experiences’, in which a great light is seen is svarga.  This light is sometimes described as being seen as if at the end of a tunnel when one is near death.  Some who have had an NDE describe this light as a “beautiful bright light...which becomes you”.  This light has the feeling of peace and love.  The world seen in the NDE is described by one persona as an, “awesome brightness...with tremendous beauty”.

What we may gather from this is the spirit that animates this body of ours is coextensive with svarga.  We are never actually apart from it even though we live in stressed material bodies.  Also, we need to understand that svarga has many grades of being—the Buddha being foremost of all sentiency (sattva) (S.v.41-42).

A somewhat hasty coda to this, we should not, offhand, dismiss Buddhist religious works which speak of the heavenly Pure Land (sukhavati) of Buddha Amitabha (lit., infinite light), or states such as NDEs just because science is skeptical of such states of being.  Science has, itself, been consistently wrong in a number of cases.  For example, who today uses the Saturnian model of the atom?  And before this there was the cubic model (1902), followed by the plum-pudding model (1904).  One must, also, be skeptical of science, itself, and the scientific method which is based upon the fallacy of affirming the consequent.  

Bodhisattva's career

 

 

 

The subject of Bodhisattva-hood is very esoteric.  One does it an injustice by regarding the state of Bodhisattva as being connected with anything human.  The Bodhisattva’s career, which begins when we have a profound insight into pure Mind, is that of the growth of a spiritual body apart from the physical body, that commences with the attainment of pramudita-bhumi.  One can think of this as initiation into the realm (bhumi) of spiritual light which is a gladdening conformation (pramudita).  Foremost, we must keep in mind that the Bodhisattva is not a physical person—this is what modern day Buddhists don’t seem to understand some of whom believe they are Bodhisattvas.  At least for Mahayana Buddhism the Bodhisattva has no human form.

 

“His [Bodhisattva] body is hard, diamond-like, real, infallible and indestructible.  It does not contain either a belly, or stomach, or excrement, or urine, or bad odors or impurity” (Shurangamasamadhi Sutra § 31).

 

 

We can think of the Bodhisattva as the formation of the natural animative principle into an independent totality which has been achieved by means of spiritual insight or gnosis.  We may also characterize it this way:  the animative light has directly come into communion with itself so as to become a self-contained spiritual totality.  In this sense it is an entity.  Heretofore, the citta or the animative principle was unknown to itself and completely dependent upon its phenomena.  This is our basic human perdicament:  that we cling to what is other than who we really are unaware of that which animates us.  

 

Describing such dependence, it would be like a great sentient ocean being wrongly dependent on its waves; so that with each wave that perished (death), this strange ocean should bear its suffering—in fact, bear the suffering of all dying waves!  What joy (pramudita), therefore, for this sentient ocean to realize that it has never died when it comes into communion with itself as pure water. (I have always been intrigued by Stanislaw Lem’s science fiction novel, Solaris, which is about such a strange ocean that covers a planet called Solaris.  This ocean is a single sentient entity that examines the deepest thoughts of those who came to observe it as scientists.  This is rather an ironic turn, e.g., that science should be observed and manipulated.  In any case, the novel is fascinating being reminiscent of the Alaya ocean in the Lankavatara Sutra.)

 

From the foregoing, the Bodhisattva’s career can be thought of as a continuing expansion of the first profound awakening of the animative principle to its very own nature.  This expansion, even with the culmination of Buddhahood, doesn’t really cease.  Hence, it becomes clear that the Bodhisattva’s real and abiding vow is to reveal this wondrous insight throughout the cosmos consequently quenching the pain of needless suffering for as long as it takes.  

 

 

 

 

Hakuin Zenji (1686–1769) was one of Japan’s great Zen masters.  His final awakening was when he was around forty-one.  It is said in his biography that one night as he was reading the chapter on parables from the Lotus Sutra upon hearing a sequence of churrs from a cricket that was in the foundation stones of the temple, Hakuin had a profound awakening.  

 

So what is such a realization like?  Well, first of all we have to realize what is obstructing our perfect view. According to Hakuin it is the discriminating mind.  This mind is always comparing things with itself using as its baseline the body.  When it hears of “the great boundless light” it compares this idea with what it already knows through the bodily senses.  It imagines a boundless light based on the lights it is already familiar with and so on.  This same mind is engaged in picture thinking.  But according to Hakuin: 

 

“When the discriminating mind is suddenly shattered and the enlightened essence suddenly appears, the filling of the universe with its boundless light is called “the great perfect mirror knowledge, the pure body of reality.”

 

 

Without the habitual presence of the discriminating mind interfering with us—instantly—we catch a glimpse of the perfect mirror which is called the Alaya, this being the passive side of pure Mind. According to the Buddha the Alaya is not dynamic; it simply reflects like a mirror; it is like a smooth waveless ocean, and so on.  In a word, it is like aether which stores all impressions or the same, informational torsion waves.  

 

In seeing this enlightened essence we saw the real Buddha (buddhadhatu), but the vision came too quickly and then seemed to leave (owing to our old corporeal habits). So we still have to cultivate this great and wonderful experience.  This takes many, many years.  In Zen we say, sudden awakening is followed by gradual cultivation.  In other words, the immediacy of awaking (the Bodhi seed) has to be mediated (grown into the Bodhi-tree).

 

According to Hakuin, this seeing is not perfect since it is unmediated—not fully worked out.  Hakuin says, “Your power of shining insight is not yet fully mature.  Therefore, if you don’t cultivate practice, you will be like a merchant who keeps his capital and doesn’t invest it.”  And so begins the hard work of the Bodhisattva saving sentient beings (sattvadhatu). 

 

Having seen the Alaya we are still unsure how this insight came about.  This is why Hakuin calls this stage the “the gate of inspiration”.  He says our shining insight is not strong enough.  We’re still subject to all kinds of weaknesses and afflictions.  It is only when we peel away layers and layers of our predispositions for corporeal attachment that we eventually discover also our straightforward Mind which is eternally shining forth.  This is the dynamic side we missed when we saw the passive mirror-like Alaya.  

 

Generally, I don’t discuss this insight because it is too subtle and likely to confuse many people.  Yet, we have to uncover the dynamic side of Mind—not just the passive Alaya side.  Hakuin speaks of it as shining through our senses.  For example, he says, “When you see something, shine through it.  Shine through the Five Aggregates that make up your body.”  All that confronts us we much shine through according to Hakuin.  This is a very esoteric teaching.  But I can say that the dynamic power of the shining through is very real when you discover it.  It needs underscoring that this is not a mental exercise as one might imagine shining through something.  It is a real ability.  

 

One day, when the pure shining meets the pure passive mirror, having passed through all things, you can only guess what will happen.  It is utterly profound.  Mind now perfectly interpenetrates itself in which Mind sees itself as independent (before it was dependent).  This event radiates and branches out invisibly (the Bodhi-tree).  We have to keep in mind that the Buddha did not aim to enlighten a few old baldies—this is a lower teaching.  The Buddha found a direct means to increase the light in the world—to help mankind evolve to a higher form of being.

The death of God

Nietzsche's pronouncement of the death of God was not original but, nevertheless, its implication was profound.  With Nietzsche's pronouncement the multitude began to open their eyes. They were horrified at what they saw and attacked the bearer of the bad news who took refuge in madness.  Yes, they realized, their eidolon was finally dead.  

But even before Nietzsche’s pronouncement, the great clay idol of God had fallen from its pedestal breaking into millions of shards.  Unconsciously, the theologians were panic stricken even before Luther.  God had become reduced to a pile of shards—much of which was dust.  Also came the frightening verdict that God could not be resurrected into his original form.  But there is still more which is good for those who don’t require idols.  

The substance from which the original idol of God was fashioned holds the secret of the highest truth.  Nietzsche did not see this substance.  He was overly fascinated by the spectacle of the idol's destruction and the rush of holy fools desperately trying to put the shards back together as if it were some kind of enormous puzzle.

Long ago the Buddha discovered the pristine substance from which all idols are made; which, eventually, have their shattering.  And he pondered for a long time in profound meditation on how to teach mankind to escape from being enchanted by his very own creations.  

Then the Buddha opened up a path that revealed how to break the bewitching power idols have over us, especially divine ones.  But in the end, even Gautama the Buddha’s own followers made an idol of him as lower men (prithagjana) are wont to do.  Nevertheless, some of his followers were not so enchanted.  The understood the true teaching (saddharma).  They beheld the superessential light from which all things (sarvadharma) are made; which is unaffected by birth and death.  Turning to this they taught and practiced the great means (mahayana) that eventually leads to the emancipation of all beings which is truly free of birth and death. 

The conversion

Non-aryans (anaryan) (those who have never beheld the animative principle) make the Five Aggregates the referent.  Put into a more practical context, non-aryans make the human body together with its senses the referent.  Such a referent is always changing; never the same.  Whatever mood a person is in, that becomes the referent.  When a Zen master speaks of pure Mind, the referent for the non-aryan is not pure Mind but, instead, their bodily being (satkaya) and, particularly, how they feel or think of themselves.

Thinking about this, when discussing pure Mind how is it possible to get people to give up using the referent of the human body which is fickled?  Without question, anyone new to Buddhism always uses their physical body for the ultimate referent.  They have never gone through—let us say—a conversion of referents.  As a result, they have no faith or confidence in the nature of the Buddha Mind and eventually give up the practice of Buddhism.  In a way, they are using the teaching of the Buddha for goals he never intended.  They believe Buddhism is supposed to satisfy their particular needs; make them happy or relieve them of their anger and depression.  However, without a radical change in the referent nothing is really going to change.  

To convert from using the referent of the human body (satkaya) to that of pure Mind is the crux of authentic training.  We have to keep in mind that the bodily referent includes language, ideas, and even experiences, all of which have to be set aside.  Even for those who believe in God, God has to be jettisoned who is little more than an empty metaphor.

What starts to become apparent, if we decide to make ourselves available for such a conversion, is that it will probably come as the result of some great crisis; something almost akin to an NDE (near-death experience) which, incidentally, Dr. Kenneth Ring explores in his book, Heading Toward Omega.  This, I hasten to add, is more or less what happens in satori or kensho which is a radical conversion of the old referent to the new one (Christians would understand this has a change from the old covenant to the new covenant or testament).  This new referent comes under the special Buddhist term, samyagdrishti or right view, which is a radical shift of view (drishti) that is aligned (samyak) to pure Mind.

As we might expect, not everyone is enthusiastic to take up such a journey of conversion.  It is much easier to follow our ever changing body.  This referent suits most people who are content to wallow in the non-aryan.  But this is exactly why the world is always in a state of upheaval because the referent is constantly changing and conflicting with other such referents.  The Buddha, because he saw the pure Mind “medium” from which the world was composed, found the true way to end suffering by converting from the bodily referent to the referent of pure Mind. 

Munan Zenji

Japanese Zen master Shido Munan was born in 1603 and died in 1676.  Munan was highly venerated by Zen master Hakuin Zenji (1685–1768) who was the teacher of Hakuin’s teacher, Shoju Etan.  Of all the Japanese Zen masters, Munan had an extraordinary grasp of Mind.  It stands to reason because he spent a long time on the path not being merely content following form, or words and letters, but understanding that seeing Mind and cultivating it is of the greatest importance.  Like all of the best Zennists, Munan fully understood the importance of Mind in Buddhism (not to be confused with mind which is in a constant state of disturbance owing to the perturbations of carnal existence).  

For Munan, in a nutshell, Mind is Buddha in which one fully awakens (bodhi) to their fundamental or original Mind (the primordial undisturbed Mind) which verifies itself as only it can.  Thus, one goes from a state of corporeal sleep to awakening to Mind upon which all things are based.

Munan understood that real practice meant getting rid of the obstructions that prevent us from knowing the original Mind in its own natural state, undisturbed.  He also realized that even after we have attained an initial glimpse of Mind (satori), we still have to practice, continually, removing as much of the remaining obstructions as possible. Accordingly, Munan said:

“If you can really get to see your original Mind, you must regard it as if you were raising an infant.  In whatever you do such as walking, standing, sitting, lying down, be aware of Mind so that everything is illuminated by it, so that nothing of the seven consciousnesses (vijnana) soils it.  If you can keep him [the new born Mind] clear and distinct, it is like an infant growing up becoming equal with the father.”

Raising this special infant means paying attention to it more and more—not the desires of the body.  Munan regarded the body as the cause of delusion, and satori as seeing the Mind as being fundamentally free of the body.  We may draw from this that the more we practice, correctly, the more the original Mind should become outshining so that the body becomes less and less of a burden for us.  In this way, we see the truth of birth and death which only affect the body—never the original Mind.  Indeed, the original Mind is empty, unborn, and bodiless.

Blinded by God

In an advanced religion (yes, not all religions are the same) the idea of God is superseded.  This is not because the idea, in particular, lacks scientific proof or is impractical, but because the idea of God is realized to be a serious case of misapprehension.  

What prophets called “God” or religions of the past worshiped as the “supreme deity” was the animative principle that enlivened the physical body.  Upon catching a glimpse of it, in their human-all-too-human ways, prophets attributed human characteristics and values to this animative principle that were not part of its nature.  As a result of this misapprehension, the animative principle turned into the metaphor, God, that is, something said for an other—the other being completely transcendent.  

This metaphor, which is language based, then grew and extended itself branching off into numberless subaltern metaphors so that the idea of God, essentially, became a grand empty metaphor in which the religionist supplied his or her own context, making their experiences the referent.  This is precisely the inversion of true religion (saddharma) in which we attempt to find the absolute in our human experiences (keep in mind that language is characterized by absence and must be filled by us) .  As a result, religion eventually becomes anthropomorphic and irrational—it’s a great scandal.

The Buddha was one of the first sages to witness the animative principle, naturally, letting it unfold itself on its own terms in which it, alone, became the referent.  This discovery by the Buddha went beyond all previous religion.  Indeed, what can one say about this animative principle that animates even language?  As a result of his discovery, the Buddha realized why we suffer.  We suffer because we crave other than the animative principle, itself.  The only way to live a good and righteous life is to live in accordance with the animative principle (dharma)—or at least learn to live in a way so as to make its apprehension possible in this very life.  All else, to be sure, is error and folly.

Needless to say, even when confronted with the truth of the Buddha’s awakening, many who follow other religions are hardened against fundamental change.  They will insist that there is a God despite the fact that ‘God’ is an autonomous and empty metaphor.  Rather than give in they will even argue that the Buddha’s absolute is really God  To be sure, there is a huge amount of resistance going on.  Beneath the surface, true believers have poured all of their human experiences into the empty metaphor of God—their vanity will not permit them to give it up.  Even some sects of Buddhism are resistant, refusing to acknowledge that our bodies are animated by a higher animative body (manomayakaya) despite the Buddha discussing it in the oldest parts of the Buddhist canon (M.ii.17).

But for those who have directly intuited the animative principle, there is no doubt that God is irrelevant.  The true referent is the animative spiritual light that animates this bag of bones.  It alone decides what is truth and what is patent nonsense.  And how can this be wrong?  Every word, every thought, including our mental images, is made of this luminous medium—it cannot be the subject of human evaluation.  No prophet can escape it or hear it; no amount of preaching from the pulpit can affect it or summon it forth.  It is immune to the sting of change and death.  It is the ultimate refuge there being no higher.  But what is most amazing, it intimately abides with us.  It is our craving for the physical which is our problem.  Such craving blinds us so that we cannot find the light; and in this blindness we suffer countless rebirths.

Relative to what?

When Western Buddhists remark that they practice meditation, I wonder sometimes what they really mean by it?  I can understand the practice of hatha yoga.  Practice has to be relative to something practiced.  The practice of hatha yoga is relative to certain physical exercises and the flow of prana through them.  But to what, in particular, is the practice of meditation relative?  Is it just sitting?  Is this what the practice of meditation is relative to?  In my estimation, Szu-hsin Wu-shin (1044–1115) explains to what the practice of meditation (dhyana) is relative.

“While still alive, be therefore assiduous in practising dhyana (meditation).  The practice consists in abandonments.  ‘The abandonment of what?’ you may ask. Abandon your four elements (bhuta), abandon your five aggregates (skandha), abandon all the workings of your relative consciousness (karma-vijnana), which you have been cherishing since eternity; retire within your inner being and see into the reason of it.  As your self-reflections grow deeper and deeper, the moment will surely come upon you when the spiritual flower will suddenly burst into bloom, illuminating the entire universe.  The experience is incommunicable, though you yourselves know perfectly well what it is.”

Of course the “spiritual flower” is bodhicitta in which we experience the first blossoming (bodha) of undisturbed Mind (citta)—Mind that is luminous and unlocalized.  

Turning our attention to the assiduous work of the practitioner who understands that Zen’s foremost goal is catching a glimpse of Mind but has not arrived at the spiritual flowering, the practice has to be relative to the continual belief that such a flowering is more than likely.  I hasten to add, there is hardly a story in Zen literature where the Zennist isn’t fixed on the idea of awakening (satori).  This also extends to other forms of Buddhism as well.

I may sound like a parrot repeating this over and over again, but everyone new to the spiritual quest should, first of all, understand what is the goal of the quest and likewise the goal of meditation.  Otherwise, we will always be on a fool’s errand—and this is not good.  

Concerning the matter of a teacher’s responsibility in making the goal plain from the outset, too many teachers fall short of this, especially when it comes to meditation practice.  They very seldom emphasize that virtually all Buddhist practice is relative to seeing the original mind.  Moreover, they leave out the part of what a thunderous, life changing experience it is.  To use an old Buddhist saw, it is like suffering from years of poverty then suddenly finding a jewel of great wealth.