The Zennist

Japanese phenomenalism and a donkey's jaw

According to Dr. Hajime Nakamura, learning to speak Chinese was extremely difficult for the Japanese; even for official students sent to China during the Heian period (9th–12th century) who were supposed to learn to speak Chinese.  How, for example, a Japanese Buddhist like Dôgen communicated with a Chinese monk was by writing out Chinese characters.  

Needless to say, for one reason or another, the Japanese more than often misrepresented original Chinese texts.  More importantly, Buddhism as introduced from China underwent many changes when, according to Dr. Nakamura, it entered Japan.

To understand just how Buddhism was transformed when it entered Japan requires that we understand, so to speak, the Japanese soul which, in a word, holds that the phenomenal world is the absolute which in a word is phenomenalism.  On this subject, in his book, Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples, Dr. Nakamura writes:

“In the first place, we should notice that the Japanese are willing to accept the phenomenal world as Absolute because of their disposition to lay a greater emphasis upon intuitive sensible concrete events, rather than upon universals.  This way of thinking with emphasis upon the fluid, arresting character of observed events regards the phenomenal world itself as Absolute and rejects the recognition of anything existing over and above the phenomenal world” (p. 350).

As a result of this kind of cultural view of reality, Japanese Buddhism, especially Zen, is not untouched by the phenomenalist view.  Dr. Nakamura continues:

"The way of thinking that seeks for the Absolute in the phenomenal world plays an effective role in the assimilation of the Zen sect as well.  The Zen Buddhism in Dôgen seems to have been influenced by the Japanese Tendai Buddhism.  This fact has often been alluded to by specialists but has not been fully explored.  Here I shall point out a few examples which reveal the phenomenalist way of thinking.  The Chinese translated “dharmatâ” in Sanskrit as “the real aspect of all things.”  This concept refers to the real aspect of all kinds of phenomena in our experience, and therefore is compose of two distinct contradictory elements, “all things” and “the real aspect.”  But Tendai Buddhism gave this phrase the interpretation which emphasized the “the real aspect is all things.”  Dôgen meant to say that the truth which people search for [in] reality, [is] nothing but the world of our daily experience.  Thus he says, ‘The real aspect is all things.  All things are this aspect, this character, this body, this mind, this world, this wind and this rain, this sequence of daily going, living, sitting, and lying down, this series of melancholy, joy, action, and inaction, this stick and wand, this Buddha’s smile, this transmission and reception of the doctrine, this study and practice, this evergreen pine and ever unbreakable bamboo’" (pp. 351–352).

It is not difficult to see where this is leading.  Dr. Nakamura observes that “For Dôgen...the fluid aspect of impermanence is in itself the absolute state.”  And thus we find Dôgen saying in the Shôbôgenzô, in the section on “Life and Death” that “impermanence is Buddhhood”!

For Dôgen and many other Japanese thinkers, but by no means all, the phenomenal world is the absolute.  It is not illusory.  Neither is there a beyond nor a higher mind.  What you see is basically the Buddha-nature.  According to Dôgen in the Shôbôgenzô, in the section on “Buddha Nature”:  “Since this is the way things are, to look at mountains and rivers is to look at Buddha Nature, and to see Buddha Nature is to see the jaw of a donkey and the muzzle of a horse.”  This, of course, cuts against Indian Buddhism where phenomena are considered to be illusory and empty such as the “jaw of a donkey.” 

Naturally, those who worship Dôgen’s brand of Zen will defend his phenomenalism.  I expect this.  However, it would be advisable to first read the the Mahaparinirvana Sutra which treats the subject of Buddha-nature and see how Dôgen’s words tally with the Sutra, itself. 

Zen actually goes this far

Man only perceives the phenomenon, the appearing thing, or what is revealed to his senses or psychological awareness.  But true reality, the unique substance of which the universe is composed, cannot be apprehended—at least not in the way a phenomenon can.  

Yes, we can speak about such a true reality and its relationship to phenomena, and even doubt it.  This is called metaphysics.  But it gets us nowhere.  We are staying on the shore of phenomena, speculating about the other shore where no phenomenal vessel has ever made landfall—and never will.

Metaphysical speculation is for dreamers who don’t even realize they are dreaming.  Such speculation prevents us from becoming spiritual voyagers who dare to cross the ocean of phenomenality to the other shore which is devoid of phenomena, but is real nevertheless.  Many, in fact, fear to leave this shore so as to directly merge with the substance of pure Mind—our original face (Hui-neng).

In the West we are content to listen to a professor speculate, metaphysically, about ultimate reality.  There is no challenge in this.  Just sit and listen.  Our belief in this world, as we listen to the lecture, remains unshaken.  But Zen takes this one step further.  If there were such a person as a Zen professor he would drive his students out of the classroom after having just told them they must have a direct encounter with pure Mind, the absolute substance of the universe.  If not, they will flunk the course!  He would force his students, in other words, to become spiritual voyagers.

It is difficult for a Westerner to imagine that Zen actually goes this far, or even that Buddhism does.  But the Buddhist canon doesn't want us to become metaphysicians, pretending to have grasped ultimate reality.  It asks us to directly apperceive the transcendent reality that underlies the phenomenal universe—or better still, is the stuff from which phenomena is composed.

Real Zen is not to be found in a zendo, a classroom or an easy chair.  It involves a daring search for the noumenal other shore that might find us one day in a small cabin, alone, searching for the meaning of Mind; looking deep within ourselves to find the pristine other shore utterly devoid of phenomena.  It will be a time, to quote Nietzsche, “When you look into an abyss” until it is transcended making landfall where there is only absolute Mind. 

Genpo Roshi's big psychological mind

Genpo Roshi’s theory of Big Mind is not without its problems as regards Buddhism and Zen Buddhism.  But before I proceed down this trail, this paragraph taken from Dennis Genpo Merzel’s book, Big Mind, Big Heart is the corner stone of his theory.  It describes how the Big Mind process was born. 

“Then in June of 1999 something emerged.  For about nine months I had felt as if I were pregnant.  I knew something was growing within, but I had no clue what it was.  Around my fifty-fifth birthday, during one of my workshops, I was working with a young man, in front of a whole group—there were probably fifty or sixty people in the room.  I asked to speak to the voice of Big Mind, and at that moment the Big Mind process was born.  He was a beginner, he had never studied Zen, but when he began to speak it came across so clear, it just blew my mind—the clarity that he had.  I saw that he had made a shift.  The moment I asked to speak to Big Mind, he was there” (p. 32–33).

From what I can tell, it appears that Genpo’s Big Mind is a process of letting the higher person or psychological mind naturally come forth which Genpo also calls the “Non-Seeking Mind” in which we naturally and always speak as it.  Going even further, I would not be wrong to suggest that Big Mind is not far off from Freud’s superego which is a part of the psychic apparatus not caught up in the neurotic conflicts of which the id certainly is.  Nor is it unlike Martin Buber’s thou, a kind of Ultra-person. 

The main problem that comes to mind with Genpo’s Big Mind theory is not its therapeutic implications, but that it might lead to the mistaken belief that this mind is the same as the Mind (citta) that is expounded upon in Sutras like the Lankavatara and the Surangama, and in the subsequent works of later Zen masters like Gunabhadra, Bodhidharma, Hui-neng, Tsung-mi, Huang-po and others.  To oversimplify the matter, Big Mind is not Buddha Mind or the luminous Mind.   

Turning for a moment to the Lankavatara Sutra, since it was the main Sutra of Zen that established its characteristic teachings of Mind, unlike Genpo’s notion of mind, the Lankavatara Sutra understands Mind to be the fundamental substance of all phenomena.  This means that all phenomena, without exception, are compositions of Mind as a pot is the composition of clay.    

This is not the case with Genpo’s Big Mind which is a psychological mind.  It works as a part of a therapeutic process, much of which is owed to the work of Hal and Sidra Stone in the 1970s who created the psychological therapy of Voice Dialogue.  According to Genpo, “The Stones recognized that all you had to do was reveal the disowned voices, bring them to light by having a facilitator ask to speak to them, and they would once again be owned.  Genpo then goes on to say, “The Big Mind process also uncovers these disowned voices yet it is much more than that... it was the key that actually unlocked the door to the transcendent” (39–40).

To reiterate, Genpo is saying that the Big Mind process unlocks the door to the transcendent.  Here we arrive at a most critical juncture.  Now the important question is this, is the transcendent that Big Mind reveals the same as transcendent Mind found in the Lankavatara Sutra and other Buddhist works?  The answer has to be in the negative.  Or putting the question this way, is Genpo’s transcendent mainly about having certain important maturing experiences?  If this is Genpo’s idea of the transcendent, then this is not transcendence—not in the true sense of the word.  As a matterof fact, the transcendent of which Genpo seems to speak for, doesn’t get us beyond the pale of our psychophysical being, namely, the Five Aggregates which constitute the psychological self or satkaya.  Thus, as ever, we are still attached to the suffering machine, stuck in samsara.

At least in Buddhism, the Five Aggregates have to be transcended because they are suffering.  Moreover, they are regarded as attributes (skandha) while the substance is Mind which the suffering of the aggregates cannot reach so that liberation for mind will consist in its becoming fully itself as self-realized Mind.

Turning to Zen Buddhism, our initial awakening to Mind (bodhicitta) is what Zen teaches us to accomplish.  Having such an initial awakening, we can actually begin to shed our attachment to this illusory body and its attendant psychological phenomena.  Short to this, without a glimpse into what transcends the psychophysical, our efforts will be pretty much in vain.  Making this even worse is clinging to the belief that psychology can transcend the psychophysical.  It can’t.  As Siddhartha discovered before he became a Buddha it is by putting aside the psychological in meditation (dhyana), so as to transcend it, that final awakening was accomplished for him. 

A post script.  A number of years ago I read The Psychological Society by Martin Louis Gross.  The book covered just how much psychology had penetrated into every facet of American society.  It was a warning to me that eventually Zen would become psychologized.  Unfortunately, I was right.

In league with the Buddhist devil

Of those attached to the Five Aggregates consisting of physical form, feelings, thoughts, inclinations and sensory awareness, can we say they’re in league with the Buddhist devil, Mara the Evil One?  We sure can.  And this might go a long way in explaining why the Buddha, many times, said of the Five Aggregates, they are not my self.  The Buddha, unlike ordinary people (prithagjana), was able to break his attachment to Mara’s realm.  He fully realized that he was not any one or all of these devilish aggregates.

First of all, how is Mara defined?  Literally, in Sanskrit, Mara (with diacritics, mâra) means killing, slaying, slaughter.  So now, who is Mara the Evil One?  There are a lot of references to Mara in the Pali canon not to mention the Mahayana canon.  He is sometimes referred to as death itself, “the king of death” or “the lord of the realm of lusts”.  His other names include Papima (evil one), Kanha (the dark one), Adhipati (the chief), Antagu (destroyer), Maccu (killer), Pamattabandhu (friend of the indolent or the thoughtless).

Mara controls the whole of worldly existence which includes birth and death.  He oversees samasara, in other words,  He is opposed to nirvana.  There are five Maras (the reader will note that there is no Mara of the Atman or Self).  They are as follows:

1.  Mara of the Aggregates (khandha/skandha)

2.  Mara of Defilement (kelesa)

3.  Mara of Death (maccu)

4.  Mara of Karma

5.  Son of God Mara (devaputta)

Probably the most insidious of the five Maras is Mara of the Aggregates because he is our psychophysical body.  Instead of carefully identifying and analyzing each and every aggregate of the psychophysical body like form (rupa) or consciousness (vijñâna), rejecting them because they belong to Mara, we proudly believe that we have understood what the Buddha taught, namely, there is no real self!  At this point, however, we just became the thralls of Mara of the Aggregates—we've made a pact with the Buddhist devil, in other words.  We’ve been greatly deceived and shall remain such for as long as we insist that the rejection of self is more important than the rejection of the Five Mara Aggregates that make up our psychophysical body.

Mara is really lord of all traps for keeping us on the wheel of samsara so as to continually re-experience birth and death.  Mara, we might say, runs the Evil Empire; who is master of the dark side of the force.  The Buddha before his enlightenment has to fight Mara and his tenfold army, which includes the sons and daughters of Mara.  It is only through Mind and its immaterial powers that the Buddha is finally able to defeat Mara and his huge army.  This, of course, is nothing new to the literature of religious India such as the fight story between Lord Shiva and Kamadeva in the Mahabharata.  Finally, this excellent verse from the Lalitavistara Sutra:

Seeing the frightful transformations of Mara’s army,

The Pure Being recognizes the all as a product of illusion.

There is no demon [Mara], no army, no beings;

  there is not even a self.

Like the image of the moon in the water,

  the cycle of the three worlds is misleading.

Good and evil friends

In Mahayana Buddhism it is not the teacher (sensei), Roshi, guru, or the Lama who is a key factor in the attainment of bodhicitta (a direct, face-to-face encounter with absolute Mind) but more properly the kalyana-mitra (lit. virtuous friend).  In this sense, the kalyana-mitra cannot be a teacher or a guru since both can only transmit what is external to the Buddha's profound Dharma which, for the ordinary mind, is incomprehensible.  For example, we might learn from a teacher a number of Sutras, going over the Sanskrit word for word, but this does not guarantee that for all we have learned in the way of Sutras and other practices that we will grasp bodhicitta from where the path of the Bodhisattva actually starts.  

It is the kalyana-mita who will shape our spiritual character so we can, hopefully, attain bodhicitta.  This shaping, I must add, can only come from a deep friendship in which there is a profound psychical link between the kalyana-mitra and the adept.  

Above all the kalyana-mitra teaches us to be fearless, fearlessness being necessary for the production (utpada) of bodhicitta.  Truth be told, a direct encounter with Mind (not the small psychological mind of which we are familiar) is a harrowing event insofar as the psychophysical body is surpassed which gives the feeling that one is dying when in truth it is death that is dying.

Who is opposed to the kalyana-mitra is the papa-mitra, i.e., the evil friend.  The latter does all in his power to devalue the importance of the production of bodicitta (bodhicittotpada).  We might even say that the papa-mita is like Bizarro Superman! (Oh do I remember as a kid in the 50s reading Superman comics then coming across Bizarro!).  A papa-mitra Bizarro code might read "Us do opposite of all spiritual things!  Us hate luminous Mind.  Us love materialism!  Is big crime to transcend Bizarro World of ignorance and suffering!"  

The papa-mitra problem is overlooked in modern Buddhism because the important spiritual message of Buddhism has not resonated well with modern culture—modern culture being a veiled form of nihilism.  Instead, the Buddha’s negative diagnosis of conditioned reality as resonated with many Buddhists—not transcendence in which immortality (amrita) is attained.  There is only impermanence, suffering, and no self with no mention of the transcendent beyond (param) except, perhaps, that mystic death is the new nirvana.  

To sum this up we can say that the kalyana-mitra always teaches transcendence while the papa-mitra teaches a veiled form of nihilism trying, at the same time to de-transcendentalize Buddhism stripping it of its spiritual content, especially, bodhicitta. 

Going beyond phenomena

Yesterday I was musing over the Vajracchedika-prajnaparamita Sutra, also known as the Diamond Sutra.  From this pericope in the Diamond Sutra: “Even a dharma is cast aside, much more a non-dharma,” I could see a more profound and esoteric meaning behind the Parable of the Raft which is found in the Alagaddûpama Sutta.  First let me provide the parable.

“Monks, as a man going along a highway might see a great stretch of water, the hither bank dangerous and frightening, the further bank secure, not frightening, but if there were not a boat for crossing by or a bridge across for going from the not-beyond to the beyond, this might occur to him: ‘This is a great stretch of water, the hither bank dangerous and frightening, the further bank secure and not frightening, but there is not a boat for crossing by or a bridge across for going from the not-beyond to the beyond. Suppose that I, having collected grass, sticks, branches and foliage, and having tied a raft, depending on that raft, and striving with hands and feet, should cross over safely to the beyond?’ Then, monks, that man, having collected grass, sticks, branches and foliage, having tied a raft, depending on that raft and striving with his hands and feet, might cross over safely to the beyond. To him, crossed over, gone beyond, this might occur: ‘Now this raft has been very useful to me. I, depending on this raft, and striving with my hands and feet, crossed over safely to the beyond. Suppose now that I, having put this raft on my head, or having lifted it on to my shoulder, should proceed as I desire?’ What do you think about this, monks? If that man does this, is he doing what should be done with that raft?”

“No, Lord.”

“What should that man do, monks, in order to do what should be done with that raft? In this case, monks, it might occur to that man who has crossed over, gone beyond: ‘Now, this raft has been very useful to me. Depending on this raft and striving with my hands and feet, I have crossed over safely to the beyond. Suppose now that I, having beached this raft on dry ground or having submerged it under the water, should proceed as I desire?’ In doing this, monks, that man would be doing what should be done with that raft. Even so, monks, is the Parable of the Raft dhamma [dharma] taught by me for crossing over, not for retaining. You, monks, by understanding the Parable of the Raft, should get rid even of (right) mental objects, all the more of wrong ones” (M. i. 134-135).

What I came away with from the Diamond Sutra is another way of looking at the Parable of the Raft.  This new interpretation is that dharma should be treated as phenomena—phenomena in the widest sense of appearance including both subjective and objective appearance.  This would even include Buddhist scripture and our thoughts and ideas about it—in fact all of our training and endeavors to reach enlightenment.

With this in mind, the parable is really saying we are using phenomena to reach the beyond, or the same, the noumenon which in a Buddhist framework is the non-sensory domain of absolute Mind.  

It stands to reason that dharma or phenomena are useful just like the raft in the parable.  But when we reach the noumenal, how can phenomena be of benefit anymore?  Simply put, it can’t.     

We can even imagine that our raft is a huge nuclear powered ship which is very seaworthy. And because it is designed so well, we are able to reach the non-phenomenal other shore.  But once on the noumenal shore this great and powerful ship, not to mention our crossing, all seem like a dream.  This other shore, i.e., nirvana, transcends anything we might have imagined before we reached this shore.  Still, on this shore we are not annihilated.  Nor are we in anyway phenomenal either.

Where's Mind in modern Zen?

When I read classical Zen literature, I like to see how the Zen ancestors handle ‘Mind’ (not the small mind but the big one).  It tells me a lot about the depth of Zen in that period and obviously I learn just how important Mind was in the formation of early Zen.  

For example, recognizing the essence or nature of Mind which is utterly pure is what made Hui-neng the Sixth Patriarch of Zen.  There is no doubt.  What he realized was the very substance of this universe from which all things are composed.  If Mind were not this fundamental and primordial there would be no need to take up a quest trying to realize it.

The major problem that Zen faces today is that it doesn’t completely understand the importance of Mind in Zen.  To give one example, the late Zen master Shunryu Suzuki, referring to the “Zen mind” and also the “big mind” in his book, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, said “This mind is whatever you see.  Your true mind is always with whatever you see.”  But Zen master Huang-po had a different take on Mind.  (I wonder if Suzuki knew this?)  

According to Zen master Huang-po, Mind is unborn and it has neither form nor appearance.  If one sees something they’ve missed seeing Mind.  Huang-po also said that if Zen students do not awake to this Mind substance they will be seeking the Buddha outside of themselves.  They will forever remain attached to forms, pious practices and so on.

Going back to Zen master Shunryu Suzuki’s book, the Zen mind he writes about is the same as everything.  However, for some of Zen’s luminaries like Bodhidharma, Hui-neng and Huang-po, the Mind cannot be everything because all ‘things’ are changing—not unchanging which is the case with Mind.  

Modern Zen’s views about Mind are more than often confusing and makeshift or completely lacking.  Like God, Mind becomes in modern Zen Buddhism like the clown’s wax nose that can be shaped into any form.

On this same course, the treatment of bodhicitta (i.e.,the awakened Mind) is conspicuously absent in modern American Zen centers and their literature.  And when it is taken up, which is rare, it is is rendered, for example, as the “mind of love”!  Yet, bodhicitta’s importance cannot be overemphasized.  There can be no Bodhisattva stages without bodhicitta and by implication, no Bodhisattva and no Buddhahood!  Much to its credit, Tibetan Buddhism has a good understanding of bodhicitta and luminous Mind as well.  In other words, it is not hard to find bodhicitta in Tibetan Buddhist literature not to mention a good accounting of Mind.

Should, from all of this, we form the opinion that Zen never discussed the subject of bodhicitta, very early in the formation of Chinese Zen, we do find evidence of bodhicitta being clearly mentioned by none other than the Sixth Patriarch’s disciple, Ho-tse Shen-hui (684–758).

Friends, you have all been able to come here so that you can all generate the unsurpassable bodhicitta. It is extremely difficult to encounter the Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and true spiritual compatriots. Today you are going to hear something you've never heard before. In the past you never encountered it, but today you have.

The Nirvana Sutra says, “The Buddha asked Kasyapa, ‘Would it be difficult to throw a mustard seed down from Tusita Heaven and hit the point of a needle on the earth below?’ Bodhisattva Kasyapa replied, ‘It would be extremely difficult, World-honored One.’ The Buddha told Kasyapa, ‘This is not difficult. For the correct cause and the correct condition to meet—this is what is difficult!’

“What are the correct cause and the correct condition? Friends, your generation of the unsurpassable bodhicitta constitutes the correct cause. For the Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and true spiritual compatriots to cast this unsurpassable bodhicitta into your minds such that you achieve the ultimate emancipation constitutes the correct condition. For the two to meet is excellent. You must each and every one of you generate bodhicitta! 

Since you have already come to this ordination platform to study the perfection of wisdom, I want each and every one of you to generate the unsurpassable bodhicitta both mentally and orally and to become enlightened to the cardinal meaning of the middle way in this very place! (John R. McRae, Seeing Through Zen, 55–56)”

Modern Zen, is seems to me, spends too much time trying to satisfy its clients; trying to meet their expectations, in other words (whatever these expectations might be); and while doing so neglects the important duty to be faithful to Mind.

Psychopathy in Zen

Among character or personality disorders such as alcoholism and drug abuse, psychopathy is perhaps the most insidious.  If evil had an ideal personality it would be psychopathy.  It would also be at home in modern religious institutions.

More than any other personality disorder, psychopathy bears the mien of sanity, masterfully.  Because it bears it so skillfully, only a well trained psychologist with long experience can detect the psychopath behind the mask of sanity.  Usually, it is only after the psychopath does his damage that words come to mind like, "I never thought he was that kind of person.  I am shocked.  Someone should have known!"

In all this, we must keep in mind that a psychopath can be and often is very charming; who is also quite vain giving an aura of pseudo-confidence.  Besides this, a psychopath is very manipulative.  He also finds it difficult to be truthful and sincere.  Above all the psychopath has no sense of guilt or remorse—they lack a conscience.  Nor does the psychopath accept responsibility for his actions.  The psychopath also doesn't understand the meaning of 'interpersonal relationships'.  As a result of this, they engage in promiscuous sexual behavior.  The list goes on of psychopathic traits.

While many psychopaths are in our prison system, others are not.  Many psychopaths are to be found in the business world.  They are also in the military and also in religion.  This, of course, leads to the question: what do they really want?  According to Dr. Andrew Lobaczewski the psychopath "enjoys making others suffer.  Just as normal humans enjoy seeing other people happy...the psychopath enjoys the exact opposite."

Of psychopaths in religion, there is no shortage.  There are many examples I could bring up.  And while it seems like an odd place for a psychopath to be, religion is not without its benefits and rewards especially when it comes to manipulating and taking advantage of people, ultimately, to delight in their suffering.

Just the other day I received an email from Stuart Lachs.  He has a new paper out that is jointly written with the owner of the The Zensite.  The title of it is The Aitken-Shimano Letters.  What I find interesting in the paper is that it provides a good example of psychopathy in Zen, although the authors do not ascribe psychopathy to anyone nor even mention the subject.  What I hope the reader draws from this paper is that all that glitters is not gold.  Just because a Zen master wears robes and has a lot of fawning students, one should never draw the conclusion that this person is the Buddha who has thoroughly awakened to pure Mind.

Finally, it is on track to say that the institution of Zen is very susceptible to being taken over by psychopaths, so that what is derived from the study of Zen doesn’t amount to much.  In fact, what one will often come away with in their study of Zen is a sense of betrayal.  And this you would expect when a Zen teacher or Roshi is a psychopath.  Here is the link to The Aitken-Shimano Letters Click here.

Revising Mind in Buddhism

Some Buddhist scholars reduce the Buddhist notion of Mind to the faculty of knowing—knowing, to be more precise, as discursive knowing.  But this is not how Mind is used in Zen and in particular, the Lankavatara Sutra.  Mind, especially in the Lankavatara Sutra, is treated as the absolute substance of all.  Evidence of this particular meaning of Mind is also suggested throughout the Mahayana canon, and the important Shastra, The Awakening of Faith in Mahayana which is attributed to Ashvaghosa.

Unfortunately, to reduce Mind down to the faculty of knowing misses the whole tenor of Buddhism which is primarily concerned with a Buddhist practitioner’s switch from their present state of being, a kind of phenomenalism, to the realization of the actual substantive nature of reality itself, this being the luminous Mind (prabhâsvara-citta). 

The overarching difficulty with trying to see this world from the side of absolute Mind lies with our inability to get out of our present interpretive mode of being which takes sensory awareness to be primary, including the knowledge derived.  Such a mode as this doesn’t take into account that trying to grab reality with both sensory hands, for the sake of the sensory body, is not fundamental enough for Buddhism although it is believed to be such.

Non-modern, traditional Buddhist literature is hardly tired of telling us this when it attempts to describe the nature of Mind; trying, at the same time, to keep our bad interpretive habits at arm’s length.  Thus, Mind is said to be empty, for example.  This means that Mind is empty of all sensory determination—but by no means empty of itself.  Mind is said to be nonexistent like space (akasha).  This means that Mind has no mass; nor is it dimensional.   Mind’s phenomena are said to be like an image in a mirror.  This means that Mind is like the substance of a mirror, in the example of mercury, upon which shapes are manifest. 

I have always urged those new to Buddhism and even seasoned Buddhist practitioners to be somewhat wary of today’s popular forms of Buddhism and especially teachers who never treat Mind as it should be treated.  In fact, conspicuously absent from American forms of Buddhism—primarily Zen—is Mind’s cardinal importance which is key to the correct interpretation of Buddhism.  Instead, what is put in place of Mind is psychologism together with a view that meditation should only serve a therapeutic, psychological role.  Such a trend, to say the least, is dangerous bordering on revisionism in which Buddhism is significantly modified to fit within a modernist outlook.

The real act of Zen

Just a couple of days ago Zen master Brad Warner made one of those ‘food for thought’ comments (at least in my book he did).  He wrote in his blog:

“People imagine you could teach Zen via the Internet because they imagine that Zen is an intellectual philosophy, they imagine that the words are the philosophy. But they aren't, not anymore than the words in a blog about basketball are the real act of playing basketball”(to read this particular blog Click here) .

I choose to take what Warner said this way, that the essence of Zen transcends discursive thinking.  But more, the Internet, like reading a book about Zen, can only get you so far.  Sometime in your life, if you wish to master Zen, authentically, you have to live the life of a rustic, while racking every fiber of your being to try to understand what pure Mind is, hopefully, one day, to stand in its presence, face to face.

Now, let me take this one step further.  You can’t learn Zen in a monastery or from a Zen teacher, either.  Yes, it is true that you will learn something.  You will learn rituals, perhaps how to make a robe, to be obedient, trusting and a lot of other things that go together to make up an institution.  However, none of this will grant you an insight into pure Mind which is the chief aim and heart of Zen.  Even if the Zen teacher has gained a profound insight into pure Mind such an insight cannot be transferred.  Even the Buddha could not transfer his awakening to another.

The aforementioned, of course, hints at a sharp distinction between the institution of Zen and the realization of Mind, itself, which transcends the precincts of the institution.  Incidentally, it is not off base to mention that Soto Zen master Manzan Dohaku (1636–1715) was of the firm belief that an individual does not need an enlightenment experience to receive Dharma transmission.  In other words, in institutional Zen you don’t have to be enlightened to be a Zen master.

Just like there is a huge difference between philosophical Taoism and religious Taoism, Zen Buddhism, it can be argued, developed outside of the institution and was only later ‘institutionalized’.  This means for the serious practitioner of Zen that a radical transformation has to take place within them, which doesn’t necessarily depend on the institutions of Zen.  In other words, it is not required that you go to China, Korea or Japan to uncover pure Mind.  However, if you wish to be a part of the institution of Zen you can’t do it on the Internet, by reading books, or sitting in zazen in some cabin ten miles away from your nearest neighbor.  You must join an institution of Zen whether it is AZI, Sanbo Kyodan, or some American Zen institution.