The Zennist

Too agnostic

Can one become too agnostic?  I think the answer is yes.  This is the sense I get from reading Stephen Batchleor’s book, Buddhism Without Beliefs.  

First of all, it is important to lay out a few facts.  The Buddha, himself, was hardly an agnostic, nor was he a skeptic.  The Buddha was regarded as a "knower of all" (P., sabba vidû), a "knower of worlds", and a "knower of the path". He knew the beyond that transcended the material plane including birth and death.  Also, the Buddha is described as one who "knowing, knows and seeing, sees having become sight and knowledge" (M.i.111).

Switching gears, who is to be mainly credited with giving wings to our modern notion of agnosticism has to go to Thomas Huxley (1825–1895).  For Huxley agnosticism meant, "Sit down before the fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing."  In truth, Huxley's agnosticism was the guiding principle of the seeker who wished to know but did not know now. 

In light of Huxley's understanding of what it is to be an agnostic, we can say that as a Bodhisattva, the Buddha was like Huxley's little child.  However, after the Buddha's enlightenment he was no longer an agnostic by any measure. 

The above is quite different from Stephen Batchelor's understanding of agnosticism who understands that agnosticism "is founded on a passionate recognition that I do not know.”  

To recognize, passionately, that I do not know even steers away from Huxley's little child who may one day know.  Batchelor's idea—let’s be honest—is heading towards dogmatic agnosticism.  In other words, we cannot know.

In light of the previous, any trace or hint of dogmatic agnosticism is indefensible and contradictory.  In plain words, to know that we cannot know we would have to thoroughly know the unknown.  But this is contradictory.

To squander his spiritual capacity

A history of mankind’s spiritual progress in which actual spirit is recognized is one in which the material life plays an insignificant role.  Such a history, while fascinating for some, is not of particular interest to many.  

On the other hand, many are overawed by the material history of mankind—its seemingly great triumph.  But hasn’t this history been largely a history of war and suffering?  On this track, I found Konrad Lorenz’s words thought provoking.

“The ever-recurrent phenomena of history do not have reasonable causes.  It is a mere commonplace to say that they are caused by what common parlance so aptly terms 'human nature'.  Unreasoning and unreasonable human nature causes two nations to compete, though no economic necessity compels them to do so; it induces two political parties or religions with amazingly similar programmes of salvation to fight each other bitterly and it impels an Alexander or a Napoleon to sacrifice millions of lives in his attempt to unite the world under his sceptre.  We have been taught to regard some of the persons who have committed these and similar absurdities with respect, even as 'great' men, we are wont to yield to the political wisdom of those in charge, and we are all so accustomed to these phenomena that most of us fail to realize how abjectly stupid and undesirable the historical mass behaviour of humanity actually is” (On Aggression).

In all conscience, we can’t but find Lorenz’s thoughts on target.  Man’s history—indeed his life—is printed in blood.  His mighty edifices of civilization are a testament to his immense ability to squander his spiritual capacity on the bestial side of himself.  And where we find man’s religion (which is nothing spiritual) much of it is an elaborate rationalization for every conceivable kind of cruelty that a human brain can devise.

When Buddhism enters the stream of human history, everything about it takes on the form of a counter argument against mankind’s violent history and spiritual waste.  We are encouraged by the Buddha to renounce the common life of mortals who are locked into dullness, concupiscence, and hatred.  He exhorts us to find our true self; not confusing it with the prison house of flesh that binds us to suffering and death.  Even religion is attacked by the Buddha who says, “I count your God one among the unjust , who made a world in which to shelter wrong.”  All of mankind’s history the Buddha seemingly looks down upon.  There is for him, nothing great about mankind if he does not take up the spiritual path which alone can reveal the true immortal nature of human beings. 

Our infant temperment

From the time we are in our mother’s womb we are laden with desire but also with temperament which can range from inflexibility to almost trouble free adaptation.  

In fact, newborn infants fall into three categories of temperament:  1) easy; 2) difficult; 3) slow to warm up. Some infants, for example are difficult.  They’ve become unusually habituated or otherwise stuck to a particular stage of development.  Such a habit can be difficult to overcome.  For some parents this can be quite troublesome who may lack adequate parenting skills.  

For example, an infant might put up a great deal of resistance when it comes to eating solid food—not wishing to give up mother’s milk or formula.  They will often spit out the solid food as many as fifteen times. Such behavior is reflective, in general, of an infant’s determined inclination to maintain a kind of stagnant equilibrium in the face of natural mental and physical growth that is ongoing.  Adding to the problem is a parent who acquiesces to the infant’s wish to stay in their equilibrium.

As adults, our infant temperament is still with us—only submerged.  Some of us find change easy to deal with while others find change terribly difficult.  Still for others, it takes time to change.  But they eventually change being ‘slow to warm up’.

When as adults we wish to study Buddhism our temperament often plays a critical role in whether or not we succeed in making a significant breakthrough in understanding the difference between our commonplace mind, through which worldly discrimination operates, and pure Mind which is absolute and devoid of discrimination.

Especially for some, it is difficult even to accept the idea that the commonplace mind of sensory awareness cannot cognize the pure Mind.  They are deeply wedded to the belief that pure Mind lies within the range of sensory awareness and can be observed.  Moreover, they expect Buddhism to adapt to their perspective: that pure Mind should be something of which they can gradually become conscious.  But such an inflexible attitude will never get to first base in Buddhism.  Actually, their view represents the way in which they would like Buddhism to be which, therefore, assumes that Buddhism offers an easy, trouble free path.  But this is not the case.

The problems involved in realizing pure Mind, to be sure, go back a long ways—more notably to our very infant temperaments.  This may explain why Zen training is difficult for some and easy for others.  Many Zennists, in fact, have a difficult temperament and never get beyond sitting (zazen).  In this regard, they are unwilling to shed their habits so they can at least be open to the higher Mind which transcends the external world and the dualistic imagination. 

Radical profanation

Buddhism as we read it today has been significantly alloyed with modern ideas, most notably those found in modernity whose project includes the detranscendentalization religion so that what we have before us now as the sacred is something less than sacred that ultimately leads to nihilism.  

This trend chimes somewhat with Nietzsche’s prophetic vision of the coming of European nihilism which means “That the highest values devalue themselves.”  This prophetic vision, if we can call it that, comes  also with the new catholicism of materialistic science that supposedly embodies truthfulness.  It has decreed that religion, if not the world of the sacred, is of no value in the modern age just as something dead is of no value.  

But wait a minute.  There is something wrong with this picture.  It might be true that Western religion is all but dead trying to gain the help of science to resurrect it, but it is not true that Buddhism is dead.  

On the same track, if Buddhism appears to be dying or overly detranscendentalized in which it seems no longer spiritual to us but, instead, scientific, it owes this—doesn’t it?—to the influence of Western Buddhists who are closet nihilists—or heading in that direction?  

Why should we trust such Westerners?  Didn’t these same Westerners turn to Buddhism’s emptiness in their darkest hour who were overfilled with nihilism and a disgust for the sacred?  Even now, don’t they believe that emptiness means that there is fundamentally no spiritual absolute, since all is dependently originated and, therefore, finite?  And isn’t the proof of their doctrine this:  that in zazen we should find nothing that is not also found in the commonplace mind of the consumer who is drinking a cafè latte at a coffee house?

To be honest, we must call what is profane, profane.  To be sure, Buddhism is suffering from a radical profanation of its founder’s message by many Westerners (not all of course).  And speaking to Western Buddhists, shouldn’t Asian Buddhists remind them of Asian Buddhist history; that, in fact, in deep meditation the absolute is uncovered that is neither empty nor dependent?  

Indeed, the pessimism and joylessness that Westerner’s sense today in the marrow of their bones that leads them to nihilism and Buddhist emptiness is precisely the absence of the sacred that is daily pushed back by their perverse love of materialism.

The ineffable

That there is a mystic tradition in most religions in which the religious adept directly connects or yokes with an ineffable state of being—pointing above all to the undying—certainly begs the consideration that the mystic has connected with something very much universal which can’t even be called “God”.  Indeed, ‘ineffability’ is the key here, so that the speakable cannot apply which includes “God”.  

As we might judge, the so-called mystical experience even goes beyond language which is to say that while the finger can point to the moon, or we can write the word “moon” on a piece of paper, neither the finger nor the word we write can stand for the moon.  In this sense the finger or the word’s only purpose is to get our attention to look beyond.  

So far we might draw from this that God for the mystic is not God, nor is Tathagata the Tathagata for the Buddhist mystic.  Still, both the Christian mystic and the Buddhist mystic might have yoked with the very same thing.  Those who would argue against this do so from an effable or speakable difference but certainly not from the mystical experience itself.

In this emptiness

According to Mahayana Buddhism (at least part of it), true reality is beyond the range of ordinary thought.  Try as we might, our ordinary, everyday mind cannot grasp true reality which is transcendent.  Whatever our sensory oriented consciousness has glommed on to is, therefore, never actual paramartha-satya (transcendent reality).  At best it is a crude copy.  The realm of human knowledge, as a result, is confined to samvrti-satya, i.e., to the sphere of exoteric reality that conceals paramartha-satya.  

Phenomenal reality is also svabhava-shunya, that is, devoid of self-existence, self-existence being our true nature which is independent of phenomena.  However, no matter how much we look for the self-existent (svabhava) with our human senses or try inwardly to conceive of it, we can’t find it.  On the other hand, those who uncover the self-existent (svabhava) do so by way of the Buddha’s path which goes beyond the all-too-human path.  

It also holds true that because phenomenal reality is devoid of self-existence, phenomena such as the Five Aggregates are precisely the emptiness of the self-existent (svabhava).  This explains why in the Heart Sutra it says, “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.  In this context, form-emptiness & emptiness-form (the first aggregate/skandha) is what remains for we mortals when there is no transcendental insight into the self-existent.  Accordingly, we don’t see the Buddhas who are “eternal with regard to the svabhava-kaya because the svabhava is eternal without defilement” (Mahayanasutralamkara).  The world for we mortals is, understandably, emptiness—in a nihilistic sense—with nothing beyond.

Were we actually to see what is self-existent, that is, svabhava, there would be no aggregates (skandha) since they are transcended.  In this emptiness (shunyatayan) or absence, according to the Heart Sutra, “there is no form, sensation, no perception, no experience, and no consciousness.”  At the same time we would see the body (kaya) of the Buddha which is the svabhavakaya.

A special reasoning power

Buddhism recognizes that wisdom (prajñâ) is the capacity to distinguish the self (S., atma) from both the physical body and sensory consciousness otherwise known as the Five Aggregates (S., skandha).  In the Catusparisat Sutra, with regard to Five Aggregates, the Buddha says, "all this is not mine, I am not this, it is not the self (atma).  In this way it must be seen, in truth, by means of prajñâ.”

What is important to bear in mind is that wisdom is a special reasoning power that can distinguish between the incomposite world of spirit and the composite, skandhic world of phenomena.   

Of course, some sects of Buddhism don’t agree that wisdom goes this far.  In other words, wisdom has no special distinguishing function for discerning the incomposite since these same sects adamantly believe that the incomposite is an illusion.  Yet, whereas it is true that we are aware of the finitude of the Five Aggregates it doesn’t follow that the speaker of “all this is not mine” in reference to the Five Aggregates, is not implicitly incomposite and real.

Real wisdom, since it has the capacity to distinguish the self from all that is composite, means that wisdom, itself, is pure.  In the words of Seng-chao (5th century), "that prajñâ is pure, it means that the essential nature of prajñâ is really pure, fundamentally devoid of the knowing that apprehends deludedly.”  It hardly needs emphasizing that this essential nature is also positive and transcendent.  For the Zennist, it is the consciousness of what is beyond the temporal sphere of birth and death.  

Nought is

This poem struck me as significant for the reason that it can be so easily misunderstood.  It should not be read so as to draw the conclusion that when one "sees nought" there is really nothing beyond phenomena.  It would be a huge mistake to believe so. Here is the poem in question.  It is from Garma Chang's book Teachings of Tibetan Yoga. The lines go as follows:

If one sees nought when staring into space,
If with the mind one then observes the mind,
One destroys distinction
And reaches Buddhahood.

This poem, to put it so we can readily grasp its essence, is saying that when one sees that which is utterly absent of phenomena which, of course, is pure Mind, then with the primordial pure Mind one observes the pure Mind.  

To be sure, there is direct apprehension of a fundamental reality, but the reality is completely empty of determination in the way of perceiving things normally—or any 'thing' for that matter!  Nevertheless we cab behold this reality in a real way.

To appreciate this perspective (not to mention its subtlety), sit in zazen in a fairly dark room then close your eyes. While you are doing this observe the eyes understanding that what you are perceiving, at the moment, are the eyes being neurologically excited so that you are not actually seeing the nought but the something—something of the eye.  And try as you might to see the nought—you only manage to see something because you are habituated to doing so.  

But from the angle of a Bodhisattva, they have passed through all somethings which is analogous to being in a plane passing through clouds when all of a sudden it enters  the cloudless sky.  As the Bodhisattva meditates in the dark, like you, he sees the eyes being neurologically excited—but sees more.  The Bodhisattva sees positive not-thingness which is pure Mind.  Thus, he sees pure Mind with pure Mind which is absolute confirmation (samyaksambodhi), i.e., Buddhahood.

While this all sounds terribly subjective it is a fact of reality for the Bodhisattva who, from his spiritual vantage point, looks upon humans as being vexed by their unbroken and fettering habit of having to see something (in fact, wanting to see something) failing to grasp that they can perfectly perceive the nought as a positive.  Whereas they remain bound owing to the strength of habit, the Bodhisattva has undergone a conversion (parâvritti) of his former attachment (âshraya) to mind-phenomena.  This amounts to deliverance (moksha) from the former condition.  

The difference between the Bodhisattva and ordinary beings is that the latter have not made a thorough inventory of their being.  Instead, they stubbornly cling to their prejudices and presupposition thereby limiting what they can perceive which is sensory.  But there is more to human perception than sensory perception.

Where's my happiness?

The economist Richard Easterlin back in 1974 was one of the first economists to report, based on his studies, that an overall increase in personal income did not lead to a proportional increase of happiness.  This leads to what he called the "hedonic treadmill" in which the effort to augment happiness becomes burdensome since there is no actual increase.  

By and large, happiness is difficult to achieve and maintain by means of a good income and high levels of consumption.  When we bring in health issues such as a life threatening illness or a disability, the evidence, indeed, suggests that poor health or a disability does have a lasting negative impact on one's happiness.  Moreover, as we age, the Buddhist 12th Nidana of "old age and death" has a great impact on our happiness which, for the most part, is negative.

Turning to the question of money; does more money make us happier, the evidence is pretty good that it doesn't.  Easterlin observes:

"But what happens to happiness as income goes up over the life cycle—does happiness go up too? The answer is no; on average there is no change. Consider, for example, Americans born in the 1940s. Between the years 1972 and 2000, as their average age increased from about twenty-six to fifty-four years, their average income per person—adjusted for the change in the price of goods and services—more than doubled, increasing by 116 percent. Yet their reported happiness in the year 2000 was no different from that of twenty-eight years earlier. They had a lot more money and a considerably higher standard of living at the later date, but these did not make them feel any happier." (Daedalus, Vol. 133, 2004).

Despite our tremendous effort on the "hedonic treadmill", the happiness gain is almost zero.  This can't be at all heartening for those wedded to the proposition that money buys happiness.  Still, this poignantly underscores what I mentioned earlier that happiness is difficult to achieve and maintain.  In fact, one might be happier to give up the quest for happiness as paradoxical as this might sound or at least redefine happiness, in this context, as being a state of feeling secure.

This leads me to briefly touch on the proposition that the monastic life, in which ‘security’ seems to be more pronounced, is probably the happier life.  It is certainly a life with more time for the individual so that he or she might devote their precious human energies towards the unearthing of their Buddha-nature.  But the monastic life also offers a community of like-minded friends not to mention a support group in time of trouble.  Of course, the monastic life is not without its pitfalls such as having an administration that is tyranical—run by a psychopath. But this can be remedied by instituting a form of governance that is geared towards democracy; that steers clear of cultism or, the same, the cult of personality.

It may well happen in the future that religious communities offer the greatest access to happiness—not consumerism or wealth accumulation.  While such communities are not without their own set of problems, happiness is given a greater chance to succeed where the needs of community security are met and the individual pursuit of spiritual wisdom is strongly encouraged. 

Book Review

The word “Zen” has almost become synonymous with the direct activity of contemplation whether it be in archery, motorcycle maintenance, fundraising, writing, eating, or running.  The essential point of Zen is to direct the mind to itself reaching the pure lucidity of mind, itself, in this case the higher Buddha Mind.  Incidentally, this is why early schools of Zen treated Zen as being synonymous with Buddha Mind.

From this we might say that the closer Zen gets to discovering the sheer lucidity of Mind, the more authentic becomes Zen.  On the other side of this, when Zen moves to golfing, as in ZenGolf, there is not much authentic Zen to be found.

It is also true to say that learning to look within and thus to contemplate our psychological world in order to master it, is also Zen.  To be more precise, it is beginner’s Zen which can involve the years beginning with late adolescence to middle age.  But it is Zen nevertheless which is perhaps one of its most exciting aspects in which we make a firm commitment to the spiritual path (marga) and stick to it in this life and in the next.

A few books on the market illustrate this kind of Zen.  Offhand I can think of John Blofeld’s book, The Autobiography of a Western Buddhist or even Alan Watt’s book, In My Own Way.  I assume there are others.  Their usefulness for the beginner cannot be underestimated insofar as such works are autobigraphical.  

The recent book by Jaimal Yogis entitled Saltwater Buddha fits this category.  Raised for a while in the great San Joaquin Valley Jaimal, a junior in high school, decides to leave home taking a one-way flight to Hawaii.  He leaves his parents a note which says he will be “somewhere in the world” but plans to call them when he gets there.  

Of course Jaimal’s journey has all the obvious marks of a ‘rite of passage’ without the formal rites.  On such a journey, the immature self (the sixteen year old), is not really the mature Jaimal found at the end of the book.  It is only by the loss of the adlosecent self that is entangled with his parents’ introjects that Jaimal begins to find the authentic Jaimal.  

Jaimal begins to accomplish this task by learning how to surf—but not on his terms but according to the ocean’s; the spiritual beauty of Hawaii; and the chance mentors he is fortunate enough to meet who help him cut away his immature self.

At this point, I should say that we learn in the book that Jaimal did formally study Zen which was of great benefit to him.  But such training means almost nothing if a person lacks the intuitive maturity to appreciate the real depth of Zen (and it is quite deep).  Achieving such maturity is greatly encumbered by the immature self which acts as a detour that leads us away from our true self, the Buddha-nature.  This immature self doesn’t want to surrender its attitude or its perspective.  But in Jaimal’s case he seemed eager to shed it, so that the more he did, the more mature he became—ready to look even deeper into his being than before.

Such adversity is not always bad if one uses Buddhism as their guide.  I dare say that so many young people might have spiritually benefited more in their rite of passage by reading, say, Blofeld’s The Zen Teachings of Huang-Po or as Jaimal did, spend some time in a Zen monastery.  The discipline, alone, is useful, but perhaps more useful is to constantly be forced to look within and shed the immature self.  

Saltwater Buddha is well crafted and engaging.  I would recommend this book for young people who are in their own particular rite of passage and for the young at heart.