The Zennist

The psychopath and the icchantika

In the Mahaparinirvana Sutra the "icchantikas" (i.e., a species of being who can never attain Buddhahood) are deeply evil.  They don't believe that all beings have the Buddha-nature.  They wish to harm others.  They take pride in their twisted views, and live lives contrary to the Buddhist precepts.  Especially, the icchantikas conceal the evils they have done some of which are grave in nature.  Nor are they capable of repenting their sins.  As far as their spiritual capacity is concerned, they have "no capacity for saddharma" (true Dharma). The Buddha refers to icchantikas as "the incurable ones."  In fact, the Buddha it could be said regards them as the spiritual dead.  In this respect, killing an icchantika is of no karmic consequence according to the Buddha.

"For example, such actions as digging the ground, mowing the grass, felling trees, cutting up corpses, ill-speaking, and lashing do not call forth karmic returns. Killing an icchantika comes within the same category. No karmic results ensue" (T. vol. 12, p. 460b,11.17–19).

As far as Bodhisattvas are concerned, they still have great compassion for all beings, including even the antihuman like icchantikas.  In this context, the great compassion the Bodhisattvas demonstrates is intended to remove the non-beneficial character of sentient beings which prevents them from actualizing their Buddha-nature.  In fact, a Bodhisattva might even resolve to be reborn in hell, where icchantikas are being tortured, perchance they should repent in which case the Bodhisattva will be there to preach various dharmas to them “so that there may arise in them a moment of good roots”!  As we can see, despite the noble resolve of the Bodhisattvas to even go to hell to save them, icchantikas prove to be tough nuts to crack.  By and large, they are incurable.

Turning our attention to the modern world, it is not difficult to lump the icchantika up with the psychopath who lacks any measure of conscience and empathy—a person whom we might characterize as being “cold and calculating”.  One troubling aspect of a psychopath is that they seem to be quite sane.  But in reality they are anything but sane.  They have an insatiable appetite to be in positions of power in order to control others and psychically harm them.  Virtually, every hierarchical system is riddled with psychopaths.  Probably, the first recorded evidence of psychopathy came at the beginning of the 19th century.

"Pinel (1801) described the case of a young, spoiled adolescent who, in a fit of rage, threw a maid into a pit.  In the subsequent court case, Pinel made the plea that although the young man had no symptoms of a mental disorder, his behavior was so purposeless that he had to be considered insane.  Pinel uses two terms to describe this kind of insanity: manie sans delire and folise raisonante, which could be translated into modern English as "mental disease without symptoms of mental disease" and "sane insanity."  Cleckley (1941) reached the same conclusions: the behavior of psychopaths is so maladaptive that it can only be the manifestation of a hidden insanity” (Thomas A. Widiger, Dimensional models of personality disorders: refining the research agenda for DSM-V).

Today, more and more attention is being given to the dangers of psychopathy where in the world of business and politics, CEOs and political leaders are often discovered to be psychopaths.  A psychopath, in fact, can destroy a business or ruin a nation.  But they can also infect others with their psychopathy leading them to perdition, so to speak.  Being seduced, for example, by a rationalization for a preemptive military strike that will undoubtedly kill thousands of innocent people or the need to suspend civil liberties in the wake of a terrorist attack, is to have fallen under the spell of a psychopath or an “interspecies predator” as Dr. Robert Hare, who specializes in the study of psychopathy, defines them.

How the psychopath gains power over those with a conscience is perhaps more disturbing.  One of the most troubling of modern ironies is that those who believe they have a conscience often permit themselves to be undermined and ruled by psychopaths who have no conscience.  This, it could be argued, is the main cause of every form of modern injustice and abuse culminating in the holocaust during the second World War.  

From a Buddhist perspective, those who believe they have a conscience might be slowly and imperceptibly transforming into icchantikas, that is, psychopaths.  They are like someone driving the getaway car for a gangster who, while never actually committing the bank robbery, was nevertheless an important element in the success of the robbery.   The Buddha in the Mahaparinirvana Sutra lays out how the non-icchantika becomes an icchantika. 

“[O]riginally worshipped the three jewels and various gods, but has changed since then, and now worships his own desires [instead].  He loved to give alms in the past but has now become miserly.  He was by nature moderate in his diet, but has now turned gluttonous.  He had an ingrained aversion for evils, but now looks on them with sympathy.  He was born filial and esteemed his parents, but now he has no thought of respect for his father and mother.”

Unlike the time of the Buddha, the modern age has learned diverse ways to turn the average non-icchantika into a committed icchantika/psychopath, but only because psychopaths are in positions of authority—and only because they’ve made the system that will insure the dominance of the psychopathic character.  

In spite of this, it has to be kept in mind that a psychopath’s greatest fear is the fear of being found out.  This especially occurs when the psychopath can no longer manipulate the information that insures his dominance; which reveals him to be an interspecies predator.

Permit me to stop there.

The other shore

I would be wrong to say that the voyage to the other shore (i.e., nirvana) is not a parlous crossing.  First of all, to make such a dangerous voyage we must surpass nihilism.  In short, we must have been nihilists, at one time, who became disgusted with nihilism.  If we are not, then looking back as mere nihilists will be crushing.  Nietzsche, in fact, warns us, 

"We have abandoned the land and gone aboard ship!  We have demolished the bridges behind us—more than that, the land behind us!  Now little ship!  Take care. . . .  Woe to you if you become homesick for the land, as though more freedom has existed there—when there is no more "land"!"

Yes, it takes lots of courage to cross the great ocean of samsara to reach blessed nirvana!  

To reiterate Nietzsche's warning, the greatest concern for those whom are crossing is that they will become, eventually, homesick and fondly look back to land.  This means that while it appears that they have devaluated everything, including the self, they have not grown sufficiently tired of their nihilism—enough, we might say, to seek a new reality that is unoriginated (abhuta) and increate (akata) that lies beyond the all-too-human wharf.

What led spiritual mariners of the past into uncharted waters was their unswerving belief in new, greater lands that surpassed human imagination.  What today leads so many nihilists down to the quay is not the search for new lands—far from it—it is the desire to stop the spiritual mariners from boarding ship, calling out to them, “There is no beyond!”   

I can easily detect the Buddhist nihilists who are still fond of the land of their birth even though they claim otherwise.  They are the ones who extoll the Void or the same, oblivion.  However, they are not real mariners.  They have yet to lay down the burden of nihilism.  They are still liable to becoming homesick for aimlessness.

I'm in my head

We think of ourselves as “being in our heads” since this is where the greatest concentration of sensation is for us.  The external or outer world has no such sensation.  We do not, in other words, sense ourselves being in other people’s heads the way we are in ours.

One of the problems with the “I am in my head” hypothesis is in what it assumes which amounts to the fallacy of begging the question.  It assumes that the point of origin of my self is in my head and not otherwise (it could be not fixed or the same, nonlocal).  This is similar to listening to a radio, all the time assuming that the original source of the music is in the radio.  Such an assumption is unaware of the fact that the radio is just an apparatus that amplifies a radio signal the origin of which could be hundreds of miles away.

If we think of our body as an amplifier and ourselves as primarily aether vibrating at a specific frequency, what would be gained by the effort of searching through the body for the source of our thoughts?  We would be on a fool’s errand, to be sure, since aether, like space, is everywhere and nowhere. 

From the standpoint of Buddhism, we are fundamentally the source of our thoughts, which is positionless.  Our thoughts arise as a result of the carnal body’s amplification process in which unawakened mind seems localized as “I am in my head”.  In this respect, the only problem we face is gloaming on to the condition of “I am in my head” which binds us to the finite life of the temporal body which ends in death followed by rebirth. 

Those who assume that the condition of in my headness is originary greatly err.  Why shouldn’t we assume, otherwise, that this is the effect of the animative power of Mind that is nonlocal and originary?  More importantly, why not assume that Mind is energizing my body which is spiritually distinct from the carnal body?  The truth of the matter is that being intrinsically pure Mind—not knowing what it is— I have become wrongly transfixed on what I animate—a dependent arising that is empty.  I have lost sight of my true position which is undying and positionless!  As a result of this blindness, I have locked myself into a samsaric vessel.

Investing in the assumption that I begin in my head is not without major samsaric risk.  To help us give up our assumption that we are in our heads is what the Surangama Sutra helps us to master.  The aim of this Sutra is to point us towards the non-local Universal Mind (ekacitta).  In this Sutra, the Buddha shows Ananda that his grasp of such a Mind is wrong since it is based on his attachment to the illusory body and false thinking.  In the same Sutra, the Buddha explains to Ananda 50 false enlightenments based on the wrong understanding of Mind’s intrinsic positionlessness.

The desirer

A desirer is implicit in the Four Noble Truths although it is never stated.  The desirer is in reality mind in search of itself which doesn’t know itself as pure Mind although it is potentially.  As a consequence of this non-knowledge (avidya) the mind/desirer posits itself differently.    

In rebirth (pratisamdhi) the desirer engages with psychophysical existence (= Five Aggregates/skandhas), this taking place during biological conception.  The desirer has wrongly taken this kind of being to be itself as if to bring it happiness.  As a consequence of this mistake suffering arises for the desirer.  Thus, we are able to understand the importance of the Noble Truths.

Suffering is an endogenetic condition, this is to say, suffering is internal being now the desirer individuated in the Five Aggregates as in, “I am this.”  We can say at this point that the desirer is not actually suffering but only appears to suffer so long as it is attached to the psychophyscial being, strongly desiring such an existence.  Were the desirer, on the other hand, to perfectly connect (samadhi) with pure Mind, suffering could not arise relative to the degree of connection.

When we become aware of suffering, paradoxically, we seem to sense a part of us that is not suffering; that is almost coincident with the suffering part—but not quite.  This is really a binary condition of the desirer continually linking with the Five Aggregates, i.e., the psychophysical being.  We might otherwise call this craving in which the desirer deepens its engagement with the corporeal body.   To break this unnatural linkage is key to winning enlightenment.  Yet, this is not so easy to accomplish given the degree of craving.  

Also I hasten to inject this thought, that the desirer lacks satisfaction with the desired condition since desiring always falls short of enlightenment (sambodhi).  This is a metaphysical dissatisfaction since the desirer seeks itself which, in truth, is pure Mind—never the Five Aggregates.  The dissatisfaction propels the desirer from from one life to the next.

If the desirer can make a connection with pure Mind—if only for an instant—non-physical joy arises along with the cessation of desire.  At this point one becomes a Bodhisattva (P., bodhisatto) who is attached to Bodhi if we use the Pali definition of satta which can mean "being" and also "attachment" as in satto candaliya (trans., enamored of a low-caste woman).  At this stage the desirer, we could say, is now desiring to engage perfectly with Bodhi, i.e., samyak sambodhi.

The bulk of common beings (prithagjana) as desirers, are obsessed with the Five Aggregates.  By craving the aggregates such craving becomes even more intensified; not diminished.  Those common beings, on the other hand, who desire the transcendent, which resides above the temporal world, are those beings who are better able to distance themselves from craving and pursue truth.  

Fruits and vegetables vs. meat

There seems to be some evidence that neither the Buddha nor his followers were, in the modern sense of the term, “strict vegetarians”.  Still, they preferred that people not slaughter animals for them, but generally accepted most foods that were offered to them during their begging rounds.  

It appears that so-called ‘Buddhist vegetarianism’ was popularized only after the Buddha’s death (his parinirvana).  It became an important matter for Buddhists, beginning most likely after the efforts of emperor Ashoka (269–232 B.C.).

“The evidence given by the faunal remains of Nevasa shows that in the period when Buddhism propagated a vegetarian way of life and thereafter, vegetarianism was never generally accepted in India.  This is in accordance with the written sources.  It was Ashoka (269–232 B.C.) who during his reign regulated the slaughter of animals for food, and proclaimed that he had reduced the consumption of meat in the palace to neglectable proportions.  The Chinese monk Fa-hsien, who visited India in the early 5th century A.D., reported that all respectable people were now vegetarian, meat eating being confined to low castes and untouchables" (ed., de Leeuw & Ubaghs, South Asian Archaeology 1973).

We would not be off the track by saying that Buddhists were more concerned with avoidance of eating meat than with promoting the consumption of fruits and vegetables as the main part of one’s diet.  This emphasis is especially recognized in Mahayana Buddhism for example, in the Brahma’s Net Sutra.

“A disciple of the Buddha must not deliberately eat meat. He should not eat the flesh of any sentient being. The meat-eater forfeits the seed of Great Compassion, severs the seed of the Buddha Nature and causes [animals and transcendental] beings to avoid him.  Those who do so are guilty of countless offenses. Therefore, Bodhisattvas should not eat the flesh of any sentient beings whatsoever. If instead, he deliberately eats meat, he commits a secondary offense.”

The Buddhist contribution to the popularization of vegetarianism is highly commendable.  We now know that an abundant intake of fruits and vegetables on a daily basis is essential for the maintenance of optimal health.  But more importantly, by implication, we know that the so-called “Western diet” made up of animal proteins, sugar, fats, and refined grains such as wheat and rice, is inadequate and correlates with a rise in such diseases as Diabetes Type 2 and heart disease.

The single most important nutritive factor in fruits and vegetables is what are called, phytochemicals (phyto = plant), ascorbic acid (i.e., vitamin C) being a primary example.  Researchers have, over the years, found thousands of such phytochemicals.  An ordinary tomato, for example, contains no less than 10,000 different phytochemicals!  Without a sufficient supply of phytochemicals we expose our body to disease.  On the other hand, with an adequate supply of phytochemicals, diseases which might otherwise arise because of their absence are eliminated.

By understanding the importance of phytochemicals in the human diet the necessity to rely on the Western diet is greatly diminished.  On the matter of our health, the choice between a hamburger steak with a side dish of kale or a hamburger steak with fries, the former wins hands down.

Without filters

The textual or bookish world of Buddhism, which comes alive in front of our mind's eye when we begin reading, is thought to be where pristine Buddhism can be found.  But this world we envision—the textual world—doesn't present anything to us of spiritual content.  

By us, this textual world has been filtered in such a way that the real features of Buddhism are missing.  And it goes without saying that we are unaware of this filtering process.  

Contrary to what we might believe, our minds are not naturally geared to assimilate Buddhism anymore than we can pickup of violin and begin playing a composition of Vivaldi.  In other words, it takes lots of practice to get rid of our filters which often stubbornly refuse to budge.  Making the task even more difficult, we are expected to intuit something named “pure Mind” which is so transparent and inconceivable, that it almost defies comprehension.

In light of the foregoing, the textual world of Buddhism is an easier place to live!  However, a cautionary note has to be added.  We cannot exclusively model our pursuit of Buddhism on what we derive from our reading of Buddhism.  To do so would be like living in Cloud-Cuckoo Land.  To escape this fate, to a certain extent, we must open up our mind and heart to the possibility of being informed by pure Mind, itself, if only to receive a trace of it.

While the foregoing might sound almost oddball, the only road available to us for discovering what lies beyond our complex filtering system, in this case pure Mind, is a road of learning that teaches us how to disassemble our filters.  

As for those moments when we are able to disassemble a filter or two, this is called in Japanese, kensho.  While kensho means literally to see [our] nature, it is more kindred with the English word “understanding” as in the “understanding/kensho of a particular Buddhist idea” or, “Do you understand/kensho how to do this?” which carries a verbal sense.  

In light of this, it is often the verbal kensho that we encounter after we are finally able to disassemble a filter of ours thus being able to kensho what a Zen master meant.  By “meant” we are referring to what the Zen master actually ‘had in mind’ finally being able to see or kensho it.

One of the major understandings or kensho we can have is to directly sense the animative power of pure Mind so as to understand or kensho these words by Zen master Lin-chi:

“The clean pure light in a moment of your mind—that is the Essence-body of the Buddha lodged in you.  The undifferentiated light in a moment of your mind—that is the Bliss-body of the Buddha lodged in you.  The undiscriminating light in a moment of your mind—that is the Transformation-body of the Buddha in you.”

Short of such a kensho we will not know exactly what Lin-chi actually meant being unable to detect this clean pure light in ourselves that is utterly transparent and animative.  And so we keep working to get rid of our filiters so one day we can kensho this pure light.

The dark universe

Some days my intuition for connecting with some obvious implications ain’t so good.  On other days it works great.  Just recently I came across this which awakened my intuition: 

“Normal matter—the stuff of trees, animals, people, rocks, air, planets, gas, and stars—makes up only 4 percent of the universe.  Strange as it may seem, 96 percent of the universe seems to be made of two ingredients that no one understands.  What is dark matter?  Nobody knows.  What is dark energy?  We know even less about that” (Ellen Jackson & Nic Bishop, The Mysterious Universe).

It never dawns on most of us that the 96 percent of the dark universe might be eternal insofar as it appears to be increate (according to the Buddha only created things are impermanent, and suffer, etc.).  Moreover, it is beyond the mental and physical nets of science which have been constructed from the leftover 4 percent which have been specifically designed for capturing data about the 4 percent!  Talk about being in a box.

We Buddhists would call life in this 4 percent box, life in the transitory and suffering Five Aggregates.  From the perspective of the dark universe life in this box is empty, and as the Buddha has said, it is not myself.  Indeed, what is myself—the real side of me—must refer to the dark universe of 96 percent of which modern science admittedly knows nothing.

On the subject of thinking, I suspect that our all-too-human cunning reason only deals with the 4 percent material universe, while our intuition has a direct channel to the universe of 96 percent—which at the moment is not being used by most humans.  On the other hand, those who elect to use this intuition we refer to as shamans or mystics and may include some of our far out scientists.

A post script to this, some newer estimates are that 75 percent of the universe is dark energy while 23 percent is dark matter leaving only 2 percent which is our visible universe. 

The aware child

One of the main differences between Buddhist parents and non-Buddhist parents is that the latter places obedience to the fore of child development whereas Buddhist parents emphasize awareness (apramatta: awareness, not careless, conscientious, undistracted, attentive).

Children learning to be aware of what they do in play or in school is much different than being the subject of a rule system.  What needs to be emphasized is that children who are aware are also empathetic—but they can also understand rules although rules are not primary whereas awareness of others and self is.  If we think of compassion, care (apramatta) towards others is necessary.

When children who have never been raised in an enviroment of awareness grow up they are often easily distracted (pramatta) showing, also, little or no care towards others.  But worse, they seem to have little or no ability to meditate.  In this regard, the Buddha says in the Dhammapada, “Meditating (dhyana/zen-na), the one who is aware (apramatta) obtains great bliss” (27).  

Teaching a child to be aware is not difficult if we ourselves are also aware.  The payoff of an aware child is they can be trusted under all circumstances to make the wisest choice.  This means they can enjoy their play, as much as enjoy exploring the world around them being conscientious.  They also tend to follow a path of harmony and avoid people who are unaware and somewhat brutish; who are slaves to their senses.

Buddhist paradigms

Hinayana and Mahayana Buddhism speak, in many ways, to a problem with competing paradigms—not so much in terms of the Buddha’s discourses themselves, but in terms of different understandings of his discourses.  The result has been incommensurability inasmuch as both sides have no common base of accord except in the superficial.   

If a paradigm shift were to occur, in Kuhn’s notion of a paradigm shift, “one group or the other must experience conversion”.  This says that one group must surrender their former paradigm having recognized it to be a subset of a more encompassing and coherent paradigm.  Such an example is the shift from the physics of Newton to Einstein in which the latter includes the former as a subset.

However, no such shift has occurred in Buddhism.  According to Mahayana Buddhism, the hina vehicle (Hinayana) is fundamentally deficient (hina) in its comprehension of Buddhism representing only a subset of the greater (maha) teaching.  

To see the world in a Mahayana way is to have transcend the illusion that persistently hides the fact that the world is only a phenomenalization of pure Mind and nothing beyond this.  From this vantage point we have no need to grasp Buddhism in terms of nirvana vs. samsara which is a deficient (hina) understanding because such a standing misses absolute Mind.

Also, from the Lankavatara Sutra, we learn that, “There is no...duality of dharma and adharma; there is no time, no Nirvana, no dharma-essence.”  In fact, it is by maintaining pure Mind that the bewitching power of temporal reality ebbs away.  It is only when mind is bewildered by reflecting into its own habit-energy (vasana), which is the basis of phenomena, that pure Mind is lost and with this loss begins samsara.

In contrast to this, the deficient vehicle (Hinayana), falls into antitranscendentalism which is skeptical of an absolute.  Hinayanism is against any position that undermines the three marks of conditioned existence namely, 1) impermanence; 2) suffering; 3) the lack of self.  Hinayanism is adamant that there cannot be something higher which is unconditioned; which is permanent, etc.  We might summarize their position by saying that hinayanism rightly understands that all conditionings (samskara) are not absolute but greatly err in drawing the conclusion that there is no absolute.

Theoretic consciousness

Not all thinking gets us to the absolute (bhutatathata).  In fact, most religious thinking is at a theoretic level or the same, it is theoretic consciousness. 

In Buddhism we could say that our 'theoretic consciousness' is related to the 'I-percept'.  More specifically, the I-percept is the sense of myself that is actually the immediacy of the Five Aggregates.  It is, in other words, the sufferant.  The Buddha was aware of this problem when he said of the Five Aggregates, “all this is not mine, I am not this, it is not my self."  He wished his followers to transcend the I-percept.

One step up, taking us beyond theoretic consciousness, we arrive at transcendental thought that has for its content the absolute, itself.  Such thought is Bodhicitta or cittotpada which can be described as the first initial insight into pure Mind.  

Transcendental thought goes beyond the I-percept of theoretic consciousness since the I-percept still relates to individuality.  In transcendental thought, I am directly turned towards the absolute thus gradually becoming absorbed in it.  This jibes with, "To the Buddha I go for refuge" in a very real sense.

At the level of transcendental thought the denial or the negation of the I-percept is possible because we know now what the absolute is, directly.  On such a path I am also transcending theoretic consciousness.  I am converging, in other words, with pure Mind that is now willing towards itself instead of a willing to otherness (alterity and opposition).

Turning back to theoretic consciousness, it can easily become a trap—especially in Buddhism when the I-percept is taken as the immediacy of blankness or the empty and all else is taken as the negated, i.e., the unreal.  This seems like it will pass inspection as being transcendental-like.  But it doesn’t.  Hence, the trap.

More on the trap, it is such when the individual (the I-percept) wills against absorption which, ironically, leads to self-absorption!  In self-absorption, the I-percept wills to itself as against all alterity including even one’s own thoughts.  I believe we find the symbolism for this in the Lalitavistra Sutra when the Bodhisattva (the Buddha to be) for six years was practicing terrible austerities becoming, eventually, self-absorbed in the meditation of Asphanka (without life, inanimate) in which he took on a corpse-like appearance.

It is worth adding that theoretic consciousness is better able to attain transcendental thought when the I-percept is absorbed—not in itself as against alterity—but absorbed in the search for, and convergence with, the universal animate (= pure Mind).  Describing this in various ways Bodhidharma says:

"The Buddha said people are deluded. This is why when they act they fall into the River of Endless Rebirth. And when they try to get out, they only sink deeper. And all because they don't see their nature. If people weren't deluded, why would they ask about something right in front of them?  Not one of them understands the movement of his own hands and feet.  The Buddha wasn't mistaken. Deluded people don't know who they are.  Something so hard to fathom is known by a Buddha and no one else. Only the wise know this mind, this mind called dharma-nature, this mind called liberation. Neither life nor death can restrain this mind. Nothing can. It's also called the Unstoppable Tathagata, the Incomprehensible, the Sacred Self, the Immortal, the Great Sage.  Its names vary, but not its essence.  Buddhas vary too, but none leaves his own mind” (trans. Red Pine). 

Of course to some Buddhists who are tightly bound in the trap of theoretic consciousness, in particular those wedded to the school of emptiness (Shunyavada), the foregoing by Bodhidharma might seem unbuddhist if not more kindred with Vedanta.  But then they have arrived at little more than an antithetic state of being.  For this reason, they never cross the ocean of birth and death nor do they arrive at nirvana.  They  have become nihilists.