No practice without Sutras

Continuing from the previous blog, i.e., What practice entails, let me first quote Zen master Tsung-mi on the importance of using the Sutras correctly.

“If one just depends on the sayings of the Buddha and does not infer for himself, his realization will be no more than a matter of baseless faith.  If one just holds on to direct perception, taking what he perceives for himself to be authoritative without comparing it to the sayings of the Buddha, then how can he know whether it is true or false.”

First, in a nutshell, what is Tsung-mi saying as regards the Sutras in the context of authentic practice?  He is saying that our intuition[s]—shallow or profound—must align with the Sutras.  If during our practice we find that a particular intuition of ours and the Buddha’s words, found in the Sutras, are miles apart then our intuition is probably incorrect.  If we refuse to go back to the drawing board, so to speak, with our intuition, in spite of it being at odds with what the Buddha said, then we are guilty to some degree of hubris.

Making no apologies for what I am about to say, a sizable chunk of pop Buddhist literature doesn’t tally with what actually the Buddha says in the Sutras.  Not wishing to name names, but when a Zen master suggests, in so many words, that their dog has achieved some kind of Zenic epiphany since the dog doesn’t worry about the meaning of life nor appears to care about being liberated, you almost automatically sense something isn’t right.

Again, when a modern day Zen master says that the aim of sitting in zazen is not to think you begin to wonder.  If thinking is so contrary to Zen then maybe what Zen practitioners require is a frontal lobotomy!  Where exactly in what Sutra does the Buddha tell his followers not to think?

If one is really practicing Buddhism, they have to spend a lot of time studying the Sutras, otherwise they are not authentic practitioners.  As I have tried to point out a number of times, Sutras are more like navigation maps.  It is exceedingly difficult to get from point A to B without them.  They are not by any comparison like the literature found in the Bible or other related works.  The Buddha was neither a prophet nor a messiah.  

We have to think of the Buddha to be more like an explorer of the inner man who finds his other shore which is beyond birth and death.  After finding this other shore, out of compassion, the Buddha, we could say, also leaves to posterity a lot of really great maps.  This means, of course, that we too have to become spiritual navigators.  We will have to weather many storms in our own small vessel—but at least the Buddha has given us all that we need to cross this vast ocean of suffering if we avail ourselves to his discourses and really ponder them night and day.

If we should chance one day to meet an authentic Zen practitioner let us imagine no other than some bespectacled rustic living in a small house or cabin reading Sutras; who then spends the rest of the day pondering over what he had just previously read trying to see what the Sutra is pointing to in is own mind.

Comments

[Ted Bagley]

I grapple sometimes; are words the pointer or is desire the pointer?
The "But...", fits though, for sure.

[NellaLou]

"Words are but a pointer..."

is the often used excuse to ignore the study of Buddhist texts.

But if one does not even bother to check the direction indicated by the pointer one is merely fumbling around.

Course correction is not a crime/sin/error/reflection of bad practice. It is a necessity.