The Zennist

This iceless and deathless medium

A personal koan-like question might be anyone of the following:  “Who is thinking?”, “What is my original face?” or “Who is it that repeats the Buddha’s name?”  These questions and others seem to always take us to a door that we can’t manage to open which hides the right answer.  No matter how many times we bring up such questions, the door remains firmly shut.  Obviously, we have come to some kind of mysterious impasse which defies our ability to open the door and see the answer.  

What is keeping us from the right answer is that the answer is totally outside of our realm of being.  It will not be apprehended in a way we imagine it should.  What is required is a new way of approaching such questions.  

When we subvocally ask “Who is it that repeats the Buddha’s name?” figuratively speaking, we are creating mind waves (or if you prefer, mind vortices).  No doubt, you, the reader may have already guessed that the answer we are looking for is waveless.  In this respect, it does not consist of thoughts, subvocal sounds or even silence, all of which are waves.  

Now, I want you to use your imagination.  You are an ice being who lives at the bottom of a huge clear lake.  Wherever you look you can only see ice artifacts—never the water.  Whatever you think about is very fine ice.  As this ice person you are slowly dying (that is dissolving) which causes you suffering because you are so attached to this ice being.  

Wallowing in your angst, you’ve decided to read the teachings of the Great Awakened Iceman (the Buddha of course) who describes a pure medium that any ice being can yoke with which is deathless and free of iciness.  Next, you take up the question, “What am I?”

One day you chance to meet an ice Rishi who has yoked with this iceless and deathless medium.  Staying in his presence you suddenly become extremely frightened.  You sense that you are melting although there are no visible signs of it that you can see.  While you are obviously terrified, the Rishi just laughs!  He says that you have to merge with the pure water—not its frozen forms.  This makes no sense from your perspective.  So you decide after a great deal of thought to leave this crazy Rishi and study with a teacher who teaches the here and now of iciness.  

Forgive me dear reader for closing this with a bad ending.  But I know you are smart enough to realize that had you been that icy being, you wouldn’t have left the crazy Rishi.  But then you are an exception.  You are not like a common, run-of-the-mill (S., prithagjana) ice person. 

The symbolic lotus

 Unlike the water lilies that grow in the lake a few blocks from where I live, the lotus rises above the water on stems, some reaching as high as eight feet.  A lotus flower can, in addition, be up to ten inches in diameter.  It is truly a beautiful flower to behold which exhibits a great deal of diversity.  

Of this flower’s religious importance, we can say that the lotus symbolizes, generally, the manifestation or flowering (bodha) of purity from beginningless impurity or nescience.  But there are still other symbolic meanings besides this.  Citing from the book Mudra by E. Dale Saunders, the lotus is said to reproduce itself from its own matrix; not from soil.  Because of this, the lotus naturally becomes the “symbol of spontaneous generation (svayambhû).”  Svayambhu is used in the Lotus Sutra where it is translated as “self-born” which actually describes pure Mind.  In Kern's translation of the Lotus Sutra, i.e., The Saddharma-Pundarika, svayambhû appears in this passage:

“So am I the father of the world (lokapitâ); the Self-born (svayambhûh), the Healer, the Protector of all creatures.  Knowing them to be perverted, infatuated, and ignorant I teach them final rest, myself not being at rest.”

From the previous meanings of lotus, when seeing a statue of the Buddha sitting on a lotus dais we can interpret this as the awakening of Mind to itself such that it realizes its eternal, self-existent (savyambhû) nature which, in fact, is the very substance of the universe.

Still another meaning, the lotus is a symbol of compassion (karuna) which is connected with Avalokiteshvara (C., Kuan-yin).  

Turning back to the time just after the Buddha’s enlightenment, the lotus, by the Buddha, was used to illustrate the differences between sentient beings, some having little or no hope of grasping his sublime Dharma.

“According to tradition, after attaining enlightenment the Buddha hesitated to teach the Doctrine [Dharma].  He decided to do so mainly through a vision in which he saw Sentient Beings like so many lotuses.  Some had risen to the light and had no need of help; some were so deeply immersed that there was no hope that they would ever rise; some where near the surface of the water and needed but little assistance to come forth into the light.  He resolved, by spreading the Buddhist Doctrine, to bring the latter to full bloom” (Mudra, p. 163). 

Differences between Buddhism and Hinduism

Surprisingly, the differences between Buddhism and Hinduism might be less than we imagine.  Anyone, of course, can find differences if they choose to not engage with the depth of either Buddhism or Hinduism where the differences are less apparent.  This is not to say there are not differences—there are.  Perhaps one significant difference is that Buddhists do not believe in a creator god and all that such a god implies.  

“He who has eyes can see the sickening sight, Why does not God set his creatures right?  If his wide power no limit can restrain, Why is his hand so rarely spread to bless?  Why are his creatures all condemned to pain? Why does he not to all give happiness?  Why do fraud, lies, and ignorance prevail? Why triumphs falsehood—truth and justice fail?  I count your God one among the unjust , who made a world in which to shelter wrong” (Bhuridatta Jataka).

It is primarily with the notion the Self or Atman that there appears to be a broad ugly ditch between Buddhism and Hinduism.  But is there such a huge divide?  Much of the difference depends more or less on what Buddhist texts are read and how they are interpreted.  What, for example, do we make of this passage from the respected Lankavatara Sutra of the Mahayana canon?

"The doctrine of the Self [atman] shines brilliantly; it is like the rising of the apocalyptic fire [lit., the fire of the end of the world, yug-anta-agni], burning up the forest of Self-lessness, wiping away the faults of the heretics" (X: 359, vv. 762-771).  

I can’t imagine a Hindu disagreeing with the above passage or many passages from the Mahaparinirvana Sutra like this one:  “All beings possess a Buddha Nature: this is what the atman is.”  On the other hand, Buddhists, I would argue, tend to make assumptions about their own religion that are questionable, such as the role of the Self in which canonical evidence against it is not so black & white.

What is beyond dispute, which is evident from the old Buddhist canon (i.e., the Pali Nikayas and the Agamas) is that the Buddha is very concerned that we not identify with what is not-the-self which in Sanskrit is anatman and in Pali, anattâ.  The key notion here is that by identifying with what is not-the-self which are the psychophysical Five Aggregates or skandhas, we undergo needless suffering since these aggregates are synonymous with suffering.  On this score, Hinduism may not have any disagreement.  

The Self as being positive in the Pali canon and the Agamas, is certainly implicit and present when, regarding the Five Aggregates that make up our human body, the Buddha says of each aggregate, “This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self (attâ).”  In considering this, I think most Hindus would be in agreement with the Buddha on the grounds that the absolute or Self is affirmed by the via negativa or neti, neti.  To be sure, Hindus recognize that what is finite and transitory cannot be the Atman, or the same, cannot be my self.   

I hasten to add, that on the general notion of karma and rebirth both Buddhist and Hindu are in accord as they are in accord with the ideas of suffering and non-harming.

The most significant difference between Buddhism and Hinduism is with the notion of a creator god as earlier mentioned.  But I have to be cautious about this because in Hinduism there is nothing quite like the God of Abraham who creates the world in so many days who, I should add, creates both good and evil.  Citing from Hajime Nakamura’s book, A Comparative History of Ideas, Hindu thinkers also formulated a non-theistic universal principle which they called Sat (i.e., being).  It amounted to an impersonal absolute upon which existence depended.  In light of this, both Buddhism and Hinduism acknowledge an impersonal transcendent principle, or the same, ultimate reality. 

Dogen's branding of Zen

Dogen (1200–1253) studied Zen in China for several years.  The Zen he studied was under the guidance of Zen master Ju-ching of the Ts'ao-tung tradition (J., Soto-shu).  After a few short years of study with him, he then brought the Zen he studied back to Japan in 1227 to disseminate it.  

 

Above all, the Zen tradition Dogen brought back to Japan he believed to be its highest form—even superior to the Lin-chi tradition.  (Noteworthy, Dogen criticized the following Zen masters: Lin-chi, Te-shan, Kuei-shan, Yün-men, Yüan-wu.)  

 

By and large, Dogen’s Soto school is not without certain important sectarian positions, the basis for which supposedly points to Dogen’s Chinese teacher, Ju-ching.  But when we look at Ju-ching’s sayings is there any solid evidence that the Zen teachings of Ju-ching are as extraordinary as Dogen makes them out to be in later works like Shobogenzo in which Dogen appears to exaggerate the spiritual character of Ju-ching?

 

Before 1240, the Ju-ching in Dogen’s early works according to Carl Bielefeldt,

,

 

[...] is mentioned only rarely and is hardly singled out for special praise, let alone held up as the sole living representative of the true dharma.  Nor does Ju-ching's Ts'ao-tung heritage have any particular claim to the transmission of that dharma.  On the contrary, as we shall see, the emphasis, if any, is on the more common notion that the shobogenzo [treasure chamber of the eye of true dharma] has been handed down in all the traditions of Ch'an" (W.R. Lafleur, Dogen Studies, p. 29).

 

It is more likely that later on Dogen found it necessary to make Ju-ching a vehicle by which to convey his own sectarian aims hopefully to add legitimacy his own brand of Zen.  When we take the plausibly real Ju-ching into account and compare it with the Ju-ching found in Dogen’s later works, the two are different.  Carl Bielefeldt offers us an interesting perspective on this.

 

“Whatever importance he [Ju-ching] may have had for Dogen, the fact remains that Ju-ching was not a significant figure in the history of Chinese Ch'an. Consequently, the standard histories of the school do not preserve his teachings. What is preserved, outside Dogen’s own writings, is limited to two brief records of his sayings, purportedly collected by his Chinese disciples but extant only in Japanese editions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Despite its late date, there is reason to believe that at least some of this material is authentic; and if it is, it raises serious questions about the historical adequacy of Dogen's presentation of Ju-ching's teachings. For the Ju-ching found here bears scant resemblance to Dogen’s “former master, the old Buddha” (senshi kobutsu). This Ju-ching never mentions the crucial doctrines of shikan taza and [just sitting] shinjin datsu-raku [cast off body and mind] and puts no particular emphasis on meditation practice, let alone on its identity with the shobogenzo. He does not assert his Ts’ao-tung heritage, nor is he critical of the Lin-chi tradition. He displays no marked dissatisfaction with current styles of Ch’an and, indeed, is rather difficult to distinguish from the bulk of Southern Sung abbots Dogen so despises” (Dogen Studies, p. 27).

 

It needs underscoring that one Ju-ching makes no mention of “just sitting” (shinkantaza) or the casting off of body and mind.  Nor does this same Ju-ching sound like a sectarian firebrand.  It is the other Ju-ching after 1240 whom Dogen writes about that is a charismatic character; who plays the role of one of China’s great Zen patriarchs.

 

 

A makeover for Buddhism

Necessary to a good makeover is first knowing the latest trends then reinventing yourself to conform with the latest trends, and repeat!  Just as this works for those who wish to look fashionable, it can work for Buddhism, too.  

Constantly Buddhists need to reinvent Buddhism because everything is in flux as Mr. Buddha says.  This means it is time for Buddhism to have a makeover which includes getting rid of the old hard-to-read stuff that tends to give the average modern Buddhist a migraine headache.  I mean who the heck needs a headache?  Buddhism is supposed to be about compassion, right?  

I guess what I am trying to say is Buddhism is getting old, wrinkly, and boring!  If it wants to attract more followers it needs to change its outward appearance.  In order to do this it needs to be more trendy and fun while still being Buddhism.  

Now, I don’t want to give the reader the impression that we need to fundamentally change Buddhism’s core teaching.  This is not my purpose.  I think Buddhism’s philosophy is really cool whatever it is.

However, with a good makeover Buddhism will attract a younger, better clientele which means Buddhism will become more popular.  So, are there any examples of successful makeovers in Buddhism?  In my opinion, two of the most successful makeover jobs in the circle of Zen Buddhism have been accomplished by Roshis Brad Warner and Genpo Merzel.  

Brad’s makeover makes Zen into “Hardcore Zen.”  In other words, there is nothing wimpy about this dude or his Zen.  It is kickass.  It is still Zen master Dogen’s shikantaza, i.e., just sit and instantly become a Buddha, but without all the Kabuki-like ritual bull crap that is attached to Zen in Japan.  

Genpo Merzel’s makeover is equally cool and trendy.  He has created an awesome path to nirvana with his Big Mind innovation.  It’s all about letting the higher person (the Buddha?) naturally come forth in the Zennist which Genpo also calls the “Non-Seeking Mind.”  (I am not sure if I am getting this right but I think Big Mind is about having two voices in your head instead of just one that always wants to party and do crazy, kinky things.  This other voice, when it pops up, lays out the way things really are to the voice gone wild.)

Well, there you have it.  Two examples of successful makeovers.  So let’s makeover Buddhism.  We can even rebrand it!  And if you think that today’s blog is a satire or a lampoon, well, you could be right. 

Transcending the psychophysical

According to the Buddha ‘a speaker of Dharma’ (Dhamma in Pali) is one who teaches Dharma for the purpose of revulsion (S., nirvid) towards the psychophysical constituents or the same, the Five Aggregates, leading to fading away and cessation of the psychophysical.  (The Five Aggregates consists of form/rupa, feeling/vedana, thought/samjñâ, inclination/samskâra, and sensory consciousness/vijñâna.)

Such a speaker of Dharma is really telling us that our body from birth, including even our mental functions and sensory consciousness, make up the target of revulsion.  Eventually, revulsion becomes the state of non-clinging with the fading away and transcendence of the psychophysical which is also nirvana (S. iii. 163).  

By no longer clinging to the psychophysical shell, one is thoroughly freed from suffering because suffering and the psychophysical are the same (S. iii. 158).

Switching gears somewhat, very few teachers these days, if any, can be said to be ‘a speaker of Dharma’.  On the same note, very few seem wise enough to realize that we are intrinsically free from the psychophysical except that we habitually crave it which creates the illusion that I am this psychophysical being.  It is a kind of self-entrapping process, in other words.

Today, instead of speakers of Dharma we have speakers of coping, coping in the sense of learning to except samsara and more importantly, acknowledging that I am this body—but that when it dies, this is nirvana for me!  But learning just coping is not taught by the Buddha in the Pali canon or the Mahayana canon.  This is something modern which has been added to Buddhism.  Perhaps it is what the populace wishes to be taught who still crave the psychophysical being; who are looking to have their cake and eat it too (i.e., have the Five Aggregates but not suffer). 

The unholy birth of nothingness

The religion the West has today—all of it—was born from an unholy religious suppression going as far back as Roman Emperor Constantine who wanted “one God, one religion."  In Constantine’s Rome, the temples and shrines of the pagans were desecrated and demolished.  Many of the works of the pagans were thrown into bonfires.  Even the Christian Gnostics suffered the same fate as did the pagans.  As we might suspect, even the name “pagan” was coined by those who both hated and feared the old Mystery religions and, on their once sacred ground, erected the new churches of Christianity. 

After this sacrilege, with nothing opposing the new Christianity born in Nicaea, the notion of spirit died as well.  Religion, subsequently, was made into a spiritless shell by the victors.  Sadly, it still remains this way.  Pertinent to this, Elaine Pagels, an authority on early Christianity, reminds us, “It is the winners who write history—their way.”  She is certainly correct.  Those who helped destroy the pagan religions wrote a new, revised history, not to mention the fact, they also created a new religion.  This dark legacy continues.  It is orthodox to believe there is no real spirit, or ways of accessing it, called by the pagans, the “inner mystery.”  “Spirit” is just a figure of speech, in other words. 

When Buddhism was taken up by the West, it was put into the hands of this dark orthodoxy made up of clergy, philosophers, and those in academia.  With Buddhism, the West believed they had found a truly unique unspiritual religion that taught, among other things, humans have no soul.  Without even reviewing much of the Buddhist canon, they were quite sure that Buddhism taught, essentially, nothingness.  It is not surprising that we find one of Western orthodoxy's greatest philosophers, Hegel, saying of Buddhism:

“Nothingness [Nichts], which the Buddhists have made the beginning principle for everything and the final goal and the ultimate end of everything, is this same abstraction.”

To be sure, with having a mere shell for a religion which altogether lacks an inner mystery, it is easy to project, unconsciously, the nothingness of one’s own religion, as Hegel did, onto another religion like Buddhism.  What else might account for calling Buddhism nothingness or seeing it as a form of Indian nihilism except projection which is a defensive mechanism by which to protect oneself from some underlying horror that has been long repressed?  And speaking of repression, didn’t Mother Teresa once confess, “I am told God loves me, and yet the reality of the darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul.  I have no faith”?  What is better evidence than the words of Mother Teresa.  She is honest.  She had the courage to reveal what has been repressed; which has been at the core of Western religious orthodoxy since Constantine.  It is nothingness and a continuing crisis of faith.

In much of the early literature of what the West had to say about Buddhism, in which Buddhist source material is relatively quite small, much of the description of Buddhism seems born of projection—Western projection.  

Ironically, we may learn more about Western values from scholars and Western Buddhists who write about Buddhism than we might learn about actual Buddhism.  Mainly, what we have learned thus far is to accept that, in the words of Mother Teresa, “there is nothing but emptiness & darkness.” 

While it might seem that Buddhism is about nothingness or the same, emptiness and the absence of a soul, the arguments for these positions, which are often captious, have been for the most part untenable in light of what the Buddhist canon actually has to say.  We know for a fact that the Buddha, by his very own words, was against nihilism and only meant by emptiness extrinsic emptiness—not intrinsic emptiness.  In looking at the self, the Buddha was not against the notion of the self or atman but only that we should not identify with the Five Aggregates as being our self!

To conclude these thoughts, it is worth saying, spiritually speaking, that we are still in the Dark Ages.  Even though Buddhism is the light—we are still with eyes wide shut seeing only nothingness.

Wearing robes does not make us spiritual

It is not widely known by Buddhists (and sure as heck, non-Buddhists) that the division between clergy, consisting of monks and nuns, and laity, is strictly social—not spiritual.  What I mean by this is that the distinction between clergy and laity is one between ‘social actors’ each playing a different external role; each with specific duties and—yes—even dress.  In light of this, it doesn’t follow that a monk or a nun is a noble disciple (S., arya-sravaka; P., ariya-savaka).  In fact, it is not requisite that one become a monastic to win nirvana.  

Yet, it matters to the Buddha’s real teaching whether or not an individual is a noble disciple.  Beings, in fact, who are not noble disciples will never reach the other shore of nirvana.  And being a noble disciple begins with a profound spiritual insight into the Buddha’s sublime Dharma, not otherwise.  

Therefore, in no way should we imagine that having a shaved head and wearing robes makes anyone a noble disciple, i.e., spiritual.  Nor should we hold the opinion that laity can never attain a high spiritual state of being, even becoming an Arhat.  As a matter of fact the Buddha said that “A man is not easily known by outward form nor should one trust a quick appraisal” (S. i. 79).  So why should we judge a monk, for example, to be anymore than a social actor who is playing a role defined by an elaborate rule system?

When we look at the real division between individuals in Buddhism, it is always a spiritual division.  The noble disciple, i.e., the arya-sravaka, who is spiritually higher than an ordinary person (prithagjana), might very well be a mother of three children, a truck driver or a nun.  By the same token, a monk of twenty years might still be an ordinary person, that is, a prithagjana, who is spiritually blind.

What primarily makes the disciple different than the ordinary person who, according to the Buddha is “blind, lacking vision, unknowing, unseeing” (S. iii. 140), is the view and knowledge of the transcendent; who has also realized that the Mind (citta) is radiant (A. i. 10).  In his book Divine Revelation in Pali Buddhism, Peter Masefield offers the following passage from the Samyutta-Nikaya which sheds even more light on the notion of arya-sravaka (P., ariyasavaka), i.e., the noble disciple.

"He is called, monks, an ariyasavaka who possesses (right) view, who possesses vision, who has come to this true Dhamma [Skt. sad-dharma], who sees this true Dhamma, who is endowed with the knowledge (ñânena) of the sekha (i.e., a sotapanna, sakadagaminor anagamin), who is endowed with the wisdom (vijjiya) of the sekha, who has attained the Dhamma-ear, who has the ariyan [aryan] insight of revulsion, who stands having arrived at the door to the Deathless [Skt. amrta]" ( S. ii. 43 = 44 = 58 = 79; cp S. ii. 80).

To reiterate, the spiritual categories of the noble disciple and the ordinary person render the social division between clergy and laity insignificant.  But more importantly, the spiritual category of the noble disciple is found throughout the Pali canon in great abundance which is made up of lay men and women.  

Next time we meet a monk or a nun, we shouldn’t jump to conclusions about their spiritual attainments most notably about being a noble disciple.  Chances are they are prithagjanas and will always remain such.  But most of all we need to work on our own prithagjana nature, hopefully, to move beyond it by becoming a noble disciple.  We shouldn’t allow our social roles to delude us into believing we are something we are not.

The canon of self-help Buddhism

When I first began studying Zen Buddhism in 1965, books about Zen were not many.  The little library at the temple where I studied may have had about thirty or forty books.  D.T. Suzuki and a few other scholars were the main source.  They stuck pretty much with the accepted canon of Buddhism.  

What I shall call the canon of self-help Buddhism was still in the wings.  Christianity, of course, led the way when looking for antecedents and models for such a canon.  The Bible can be considered to be the oldest self-help book in the world with numberless self-help spinoffs such as the famous, The Power of Positive Thinking (1952) by Norman Vincent Peal.  What typifies such books is they are usually written by authors outside of the mental health profession.  Such books offer guidance that any person reading the book might find useful to help them with their psychological struggles.  If I were to come up with the canon of self-help Buddhism it might include examples like these listed below.

The Backdoor to Enlightenment: Eight Steps to Living Your Dreams and Changing Your World by Za Rinpoche and Ashley Nebelsieck

A Mindful Way: Eight Weeks to Happiness by Jeanie Seward-Magee and Thich Nhat Hanh (Foreward)

Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears by Pema Chödron

Everyday Zen: Love & Work by Charlotte Joko Beck and Steve Smith

The Tibetan Art of Serenity: How to Conquer Fear and Gain Contentment by Christopher Hansard 

Sweeping Changes: Discovering the Joy of Zen in Everyday Tasks by Gary Thor

Zen in Touch: The Seven Factors of Living Happiness by Khai Thien

White Collar Zen: Using Zen Principles to Overcome Obstacles and Achieve Your Career Goals by Steven Heine 

Zen and the Art of Anything by Hal W. French, Marianne Rankin and Kwang-ming Wu

Everyday Dharma: Seven Weeks to Finding the Buddha in You by Willa Miller

The Mindfulness Workbook: A Beginner's Guide to Overcoming Fear & Embracing Compassion by Thomas B. Roberts

A Truthful Heart: Buddhist Practices for Connecting with Others by Jeffrey Hopkins

Personally, I have nothing against the authors or these books.  The problem as I see it is that Buddhism, and Zen in particular, is not fundamentally about self-help which means these books offer no real insight into Buddhism, itself, if this is what an average beginner is seeking.  In fact, there is more about the fundamentals of Buddhism to be found in the Encyclopedia Britannica Online (Academic Edition) than any self-help book might offer. 

One misconception about Buddhism that may lead to a proliferation of such books is that Buddhism is 'this worldly' which, by the way is not true, so that it offers a practical approach for how the average person might deal with the problems of everyday life.  But the average person is not on the Buddha's list of those who make it to nirvana.  Much less are the bulk of his discourses addressed to the average, worldly person or "prithagjana".  

In Sanskrit, a prithagjana is defined as someone of the lower class.  This is in contrast with the Buddhist arya-sravaka or holy person which we see often translated by the term "noble disciple".  Needless to say, this subject is hardly addressed in modern circles of politically correct Buddhism.  It is troubling for obvious reasons, because it makes Buddhism read elitist—which in fact it is!  This elitism, however, is based upon one's spiritual aptitude—not on gender or being a monastic.

While I will not argue against the pragmatic use of Buddhism to help the average person cope with the vicissitudes of mundane life which, by the way, is all part of skillful means, I will say, however, that real Buddhism goes quite beyond what the canon of self-help Buddhism has to offer.  Therefore, it behooves the exceptional beginner to look into the traditional canon of Buddhism which includes the Pali Nikayas and the Mahayana canon.  Personally, I like both of the canons.  They are equally subtle and both help open the door to pure Mind which transcends the mundane.

The heart of meditation

Speaking in a non-technical way, Buddhist meditation is both an exercise in concentration and, more importantly, an exercise of linking with the very substance of thought, itself.  Both, I need to mention, work hand in hand.  It is true to say, also, that meditation proceeds from the psychological to its eventual transcendence.  This means that we have transcended the stream of deluded thoughts by directly entering the spiritual substance from which all thoughts are made which is undying.

Of course there are dangers inherent in meditation if we put more emphasis on the outer form than on the inner, introspective process of meditation which is its heart.  One such danger is to one day find that we have only engaged with the outer form of meditation, which consists mainly of sitting.  Hence, the danger.  This brings me to say meditation has ceased being what it is supposed to be.  With such an emphasis on the outer, meditation turns into a practice which is both perfunctory and hollow.  As it stands, this is not Buddhist meditation, but something else.

To reiterate, the chief objective of meditation is to get us over the barrier of thought by introspectively penetrating through it, reaching the spiritual substance from which it is composed.  This substance is pure Mind which is thought-less because it is the very stuff of our thoughts.  Passing through this barrier is what the future Buddha, Siddhartha, did by meditation or dhyâna.

Passing through the barrier of thought, however, doesn't mean the world, as we know it, suddenly disappears or becomes empty.  Far from it.  In a nutshell, right meditation delivers us from the tyranny of thought and its illusory creations such that for the first time we are able to see and to live in true reality which is an unending field of illumination and bliss (i.e., nirvana).  We experience that all things, i.e., the illusions, are of Mind-only (cittamatra).  They exist but they are not real.