The Zennist

The tree of Chinese Zen

The tree of Zen still grows in China’s spiritual soil.  Those who have taken a cutting from this tree and have tried to graft it on to their native tree have not always been successful.  While the outer form of Zen can be imitated by any culture, grafting the living shoot of Chinese Zen onto native stock can prove a difficult task.  

Two prominent features strike me about the tree of Chinese Zen of which we need to be aware.  First, it is wholly mystical in which Mind, as pure spirit, is the alpha and the omega of Chinese Zen.  Secondly, the endeavor to realize Mind, or the practice, is both contemplative and provisional (S., upaya).  These features might seem simple enough until they become our standard for determining Zen heterodoxy—a heterodoxy that glosses over Mind or just ignores it.  Right now I want to dwell on why a shoot from the tree of Chinese Zen might not make it in the West.

About the first prominent feature on our Chinese Zen tree, the Chinese understanding of Mind, passed on from India, has no peer in the modern West.  The West is still overly fascinated with the life sciences including psychology.  Given this almost immovable position, the Mind of Chinese Zen cannot be grafted onto the stock of conventional Western science or psychology.  To attempt to do so leads in the direction of heterodoxy.  Mind is simply inaccessible to the butterfly net of Western science and Western methods of introspection.  Mind is certainly not a psychological thing.  Different stock is required.

With a complete lack of understanding of Mind and what is required of a Western Zennist to grasp, intuitively, the Mind of Chinese Zen, the second prominent feature on the tree, the endeavor to realize Mind, seems impossible to do.  How can someone strive to reach or comprehend Mind when they haven’t the slightest clue of what it is they are pursuing or, on the same score, they firmly believe Mind is something psychological?  

To give just one example of what it means to be clueless about the Mind of Chinese Zen is to look at the subject of koans.  To be frank, Western Zennists are simply out to lunch when it comes to understanding koans.  And why?  Because they do not comprehend what Mind actually means and its overarching importance in Zen.  Without exception, every koan is an expression of Mind.  Mind, also, shuts the door to koans.  Only the spiritually gifted can open this door.  

Make no mistake, koans are not little moral stories about how to live a happy Zen life.  They reveal whether or not we are guilty of a false understanding of Mind which, incidentally, can be expressed by many terms such as the Mind Ground, Void, Self-Nature, Suchness, or Bodhi.  Chang Chung-Yuan is not one of the clueless when it comes to understanding the importance of Mind in the koan (C., kung-an) in his book, Original Teachings of Ch’an Buddhism (1969).  He writes:

“The opening of another’s mind through one’s own inner light is called “the transmission of the lamp,” the lamp signifying the mind-light, enlightenment, transmitted from generation to generation, is the chief characteristic of the teachings of Ch’an. 

The Transmission of the Lamp, from which the texts in this book are taken, consists mainly of more than a thousand kung-an, expressions of the inner experience and illumination of enlightened men, from the ancient patriarchs and masters to the disciple of Fa-yen Wên-i in the tenth century.  Compiled by Tao-yüan in the year 1004, it is the earliest of the historical records of Ch’an Buddhism and is also the first and best source for the study of Ch’an” (p. xii–xiii).

In this same section, the author tells us of Ta-hui Tsung-kao (1089–1163), when he was a student, who made forty-nine attempts to penetrate the koan:  “The eastern mountain sails on the river.”  He then tells another story of an elderly monk who, on his ninety-seventh attempt, penetrated the koan he was given!

The difficulty in answering koans lies not with the koan, itself, but with our inability to fully realize Mind—which Zen is trying to get us to see by using koans.  Pushed to our wit's end, but not without knowing beforehand that we are supposed to have a gnosis of Mind, we have only one logical course of action to take in our practice, this being, awaken to Mind.

If no one in the West awakens to true Mind, then the vital shoot of Chinese Zen will not take hold on the Western tree and flourish as it should.  What will be worshiped as Zen will be a lifeless branch which will never flower or bear seeds.  This same lifeless branch will teach of a transmission other than a spiritual Mind to Mind transmission.

 

 

The first church of Zen

I sometimes think American Zen centers are becoming more like Christian churches.  There is the flock, otherwise called the “Sangha” and the minister, the Zen master wearing his twenty pounds of robes who leads his flock in chanting the Heart Sutra and doing shikantaza (lit. just sitting).  The only “book” the Zen master reveres is Dogen Zenji’s Shobogenzo (lit. “Treasury of the True Dharma Eye”).  We can think of it as the New Testament of Zen—not Old Testament Zen, the sources for which are mainly Chinese and Indian.  

The only sacrament is doing shikantaza; always remembering that practice and Buddhahood are one and the same thing.  Each parishioner is instructed to do shikantaza as mindlessly as they can manage; in other words, do not use the frontal lobe which, by the way, is an important part of the brain noted for such executive functions as suppressing unacceptable social behavior, recognizing future consequences, and choosing between wholesome and unwholesome actions, to name just a few.  

The more a Zen parishioner does shikantaza the more Buddha they become.  If a person can manage to do shikantaza for only ten minutes before their back gives out—that is ten minutes of Buddhahood!  Faith in the efficacy of shikantaza to make us Buddhas just by sitting, I can’t stress enough, is as important to Zen as the Nicene Creed is to Christianity which still serves, to this day, as a measuring rod of orthodox faith which, incidentally, pretty much rubbed out the mystical side of Christianity.

One of the great Saints of the modern Zen church, Zen master Dainin Katagiri, helps us to see where the new Zen church with its New Testament are heading.  Pay careful attention to his words, Katagiri seems to be suggesting that the Buddha’s words are not to be believed completely lest we fall into the trap of mysticism.  (Italics are mine.)

“Buddhist faith includes understanding, practice and realization.  It is not a belief; it is not something that seems to be true, mentioned by somebody else.  Dogen Zenji warns us not to believe Buddha’s or the ancestors’ messages as the truth completely.  Even the Buddha and ancestors can make a mistake.  This doesn’t mean you should be arrogant and create Buddha’s teaching as you like.  We should accept the Buddha’s and ancestor’s teachings, but still keep our eyes open.  This is very important, because it’s pretty easy to fall into the trap of mysticism; there are lots of things we cannot know.  But if we totally accept something we don’t know, it becomes clear for us.  This is our practice: faith is to make the mind clear and pure” (Katagiri, Returning to Silence, p. 132).

We can’t help but note that when Katagiri says, “But if we totally accept something we don’t know, it becomes clear for us,” his words chime almost perfectly with the Christian Tertullian who said:  “It is believable because it is absurd, true because it is impossible.”  Besides other remarkable thoughts by Katagiri that faith is not belief, one cannot help but be amazed that faith alone will make the defiled mind clear and pure; thus we avoid the mystical trap of having to actually realize pure Mind.  We just sit, in other words.  Faith belief alone shall save thee.

 

Bodhidharma's wall

Bodhidharma, who is regarded as the First Patriarch of Ch'an or the Zen tradition, is sometimes called the wall-contemplating or wall-gazing Brahmin.  He is often depicted as sitting in a cave gazing at the cave's wall which he did, supposedly, for nine years! Most likely this is a fictional account devised by later Zennists to fill in the gap left by the elusive term "wall-gazing" which in Chinese is biguan/pi-kuan.  Heinrich Dumoulin gives us a better understanding of Bodhidharma's wall-contemplation.

"In an ancient text ascribed to Bodhidharma, his way of meditation is characterized by the Chinese word pi-kuan, literally wall-gazing or wall-contemplation.  Except for the word pi-kuan, the same passage is found in a Mahayana sutra; it reads: "When one, abandoning the false and embracing the true, in simplicity of thought abides in pi-kuan, one finds that there is neither selfhood nor otherness, that ordinary men (prthagjana) and saints (arya) are of one essence."  The sutra speaks of the "vision of enlightenment [chüeh-kuan]" at this point—an expression that also occurs in Zen literature.  Whatever the case may be, with the insertion of the word pi-kuan in this text (most likely taken from the sutra), the expression pi-kuan and the whole text indicated a manner of meditation that later generations typified as "Bodhidharma Zen" (Zen Enlightenment, p. 38).  

Pi-kuan is certainly a special kind of vision or insight which is not this worldly.  Jeffrey Broughton provides us with another angle on pi-kuan—a Tibetan perspective—one which is certainly more esoteric.

"Various Ch'an text were translated into Tibetan, one of the most important being the Bodhidharma Anthology, which in Tibetan is usually referred to as the Great Chinese Injunctions (Rgya lung chen po).  The recently discovered ninth-century Tibetan treatise Dhyâna of the Enlightened Eye (Bsam gtan mig sgron) contains translations of some of [Bodhidharma's] the Two Entrances, some material from Record I, and the whole of Record III.  Early on the Dhyâna of the Enlightened Eye gives summaries of four teachings known in early Tibet: the gradualist gate; the all-at-once gate (Chinese Ch'an); Mahayoga; and Atiyoga (Rdzog-chen).

The summary of Ch'an ends with a series of quotations from Ch'an masters, the first of whom is Bodhidharmatâra, the version of the name that is encountered in Tibetan sources: "From the sayings of the Great Master Bodhidharmatara [Bo-dhe-dar-mo-ta-ra]: 'If one reverts to the real, rejects discrimination, and abides in brightness, then there is neither self nor other.  The common man and sage are equal.  If without shifting you abide in firmness, after that you will not follow after the written teaching.  This is the quiet of the principle of the real.  It is nondiscriminative, quiescent, and inactive.  It is entrance into principle" (The Bodhidharma Anthology, p. 67). (Italics mine.)

The Tibetan lhan me is rendered, in the above, as "abides in brightness" but could easily be rendered "abides in luminosity" which pertains to the luminosity of Mind.  Abides in brightness serves to give Bodhidharma's words a profoundly spiritual ring which they deserve in light of the context of this sermon and others.  Following this, here is Red Pine's translation which is roughly the same as Broughton’s translation except for the problem with the wall!

"Those who turn from delusion back to reality, who meditate on walls, the absence of self and other, the oneness of mortal and sage, and who remain unmoved even by scriptures are in complete and unspoken agreement with reason" (The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma, p. 3). (Italics mine.)

Reason should tell us meditating on walls will get us no where in the spiritual scheme of things, but abiding in brightness or the luminosity of Mind certainly will.  We can think of this wall as being a luminous wall.  It alone represents true reality.  The wall’s nature is purely universal and dynamic from which all phenomena arise and return.  It is also thoroughly signless and empty—yet not empty of true reality.  It is only empty of the non-real or the same, empty of illusory phenomena.

On a slightly different note, Japanese Soto Zen took Bodhidharma’s wall-gazing quite literally.  This explains why Soto Zennists, to this day, still sit facing a wall when doing zazen.  In the Bendowa, Dogen firmly believes Bodhidharma sat nine years in zazen at the Shaolin monastery on Mount Sung facing a wall.  What Dogen is apparently not aware of is the term “zazen” doesn’t appear in the passage that contains pi-kuan.  Bodhidharma never sat in a cave, facing a wall doing zazen, in other words. 

 

 

 

Mountains and waters of gold

Many Western Zennists have the bad habit of believing that old Zen poems and sayings were composed by Chinese simpletons who were only trying to say, “Be in the here and the now.”  This is not so.  Anyone who thinks this way should take a long look in their bathroom mirror.  They could be looking at a real simpleton. 

When Zen master Ch’ing-yüan Wei-shin composed this  he was of a transcendent Mind—not a simple mind.

“Before I had studied Zen for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains, and waters as waters.  When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw that mountains are not mountains, and waters are not waters. But now that I have got its very substance I am at rest.  For it’s just that I see mountains once again as mountains, and waters once again as waters.”

The first part is a reflection of how difficult the path really is.  To be sure, this is no journey for simpletons or modern day Zen center Zennies.  When Ch’ing-yüan says that he saw the mountains as mountains, and waters as waters, he was really describing the naive mind.  Such a mind is firmly locked into naive realism, the view that sense perception gives us the complete truth about external phenomena.  Things or immediate phenomena, in a word, are not illusory.  But then the human eye can only see seven colors, roughly an octave, while the ear has a very limited range of hearing.  The naive realist is not only deluded by the senses, but he lives under the delusion that only what senses perceive is true.

Somehow Ch’ing-yüan managed to supersede this view.  He probably understood that the perception of mountains and waters arises according to the way the human body is constructed.  The perception of mountains and waters begins on the tissue of the human senses, tissue which is extremely limited as to what it can receive.  Then the sensory data gets worked up into a suitable humanized image.  Mountains and waters are mere constructed appearances, in other words.  By comparison, a housefly would be unable to see humanized mountains and waters.  This is because a creature like the lowly housefly is constructed differently than a human.  If a housefly were poetic, it might compose a poem about mountains of beautiful shit and mighty rivers of cow urine that it found in a feedlot one day.  

Long after Ch’ing-yüan began his study of Buddhism, he eventually came to a profound awakening.  He saw the  Bodhi Mind.  As compared with this Mind, he realized that the mountains and waters are empty like a mirage or a dream.  Mountains are not mountains; waters are not waters.  The only reality is Mind.  Although he knew this to be true, he was still hampered by the old habit of naive realism which he constantly had to overcome by negation so as to arrive, once again, at pure Mind.

Eventually, Ch’ing-yüan overcame the old habits of naive realism by long practice and many samadhis which increased pure Mind’s power over illusory appearances.  Now, only the brilliance of Mind stood out for him.  Just as they are, mountains and waters are configurations of this luminous Mind stuff as is the sun and the sky, ordinary words, emotions and thoughts.  Where in this mountain is there mountain-ness or where in the waters is there water-ness?  All is Mind-only.

After this, I imagine some believed Zen master Ch’ing-yüan acted like a crazy man.  But was he?  Heck no!  In a world of the willfully blind who also believe they are poor, Ch’ing-yüan was like a blindman who learned to open his eyes; who saw nothing but countless different shapes of gold.

 

 

Warning and suspension

E-Sangha, a controversial Buddhist forum that began in 2003 which was taken down by a hacker over a year ago, might be dead but its spirit still lives on by another name.  

Lucky me, I recently found another budding E-Sangha clone with virtually the same picayune over-moderation (there are nine global moderators) not to mention the usual assortment over-sensitive dorky supporters who will report any statement to the global moderators not couched in a dozen qualifiers and apologies.   

The name of the new E-Sangha clone is "Zen Forum International" which, ironically, was founded by some of the victims of E-Sangha’s draconian TOS policies.  Apparently, the only thing these victims learned from their bad experience with E-Sangha is that they are incapable of learning anything from experience.  Now moderators, they’ve become what they once despised most.  .

Almost like E-Sangha, ZFI mainly goes after three types of contributors:  those who don’t buy the dogma that Buddha outright denied the self; those who hold that Buddhism teaches mystical transcendence; and those who don’t kowtow to Dogen’s incomprehensible interpretation of Buddhism.  

Yesterday I was formally suspended from ZFI on some trumped-up charge.  The moderator said that I didn’t back up my claim that Dogen’s shiho document was a medieval forgery—which in fact I did back up!  (By the way, my name on ZFI is “Songhill.”)  Here is what I posted to back up my claim about Dogen which was posted on the topic of, “Dharma Transmission, Lineage, Integrity of Teachers” which, by the way, has since disappeared! 

Despite the claim in Eihei koroku no. 1.48 that Dogen returned from China “empty-handed” (kûshu genkyo), the “Shari sôdenki” indicates that he returned with the relics of Myozen, which were given away to a lay female disciple before Dogen’s arrival in Kyoto (DZZ III, p. 34 and DZZ VI, pp. 216–18). However, as William Bodiford has pointed out to me, the shisho document supposedly given to Dogen by Ju-ching and now designated a national treasure by the Japanese government most certainly is a medieval forgery (Steven Heine, Japanese Journal of Religious studies 30.102 [Spring 2003]). (Bold is mine.)

In addition to the fact that ZFI seems to have very little respect for scholarly works, they really don’t have any respect for the Sutras, either, or the Shastras or the commentarial literature.  Who decides what the Buddha said or did not say is left up to two Zen clowns masters who believe they have the final word on what the Buddha taught even though both of them are dunces when it comes to the Buddhist canon.  

A final thought, everyday I publish this blog I thank the gods for it.  The development of the Internet blog helped, in my case, to take Buddhism out of the hands of the censors and the control freaks.  With this blog I don’t have to put up with Buddhist bullies who are working as hard as they can to de-transcendentalize Buddhism. 

 

We are not spiritually equal

Some, not all, modern Zennists tend to believe that Zen is somehow egalitarian and, for that matter, so is Buddhism.  For anyone who has spent a little time reading the history of Zen and Buddhism, its parent, this is almost laughable.  It is certainly disheartening, because it shows that the teachers of these Zennists are not teaching them properly.  

The Buddha of the Pali canon certainly distinguished between his ordinary followers, the puthujjanas, and those who were spiritually advanced, the ariya-savaka which, by the way, is often rendered, noble disciple.  Of the noble disciples, the lowest are the stream entered; the highest are the Arhats.  Does this sound egalitarian?  Hardly.  Human beings may be equal under the eyes of the law, and even that is debatable, but spiritually, human beings are not equal.  While the spiritual light of the Buddhas is certainly universal, not all see it or want to see it—certainly not those who are clinging to shadows like the Five Aggregates consisting of form, sensation, perception, predispositions, and sensory consciousness.

Turning briefly the the Mahayana canon, the Lankavatara Sutra lists for kinds of Zens or dhyânas.  Please note that this is hierarchical.  This is not egalitarian. 

Further, Mahamati, there are four kinds of Dhyanas. What are the four? They are: (1) Dhyana practised by the ignorant, (2) the Dhyana devoted to the examination of  meaning, (3) the Dhyana with Tathata (suchness) for its object, and (4) the Dhyana of the Tathagatas. 

Moving on to early Zen or Ch’an, Zen master Tsung-mi (780–841) described four major Zen lineages, his being the highest.  He used the analogy of a clear jewel when placed on a black background.  

According to Tsung-mi, one tradition of Zen believes in the clarity of the jewel but sees only the black background.  It concludes the jewel’s clear nature is obscured by the blackness which must be wiped away.  Another tradition of Zen believes that any background is the pure clarity of the jewel; the jewel, itself, cannot be seen.  The next Zen tradition believes the background, no matter what color, and the jewel are empty and unattainable.  The last tradition and the highest, realizes the clarity of the jewel so that no matter what background is present, the jewel is always seen.  There is nothing egalitarian here. 

In modern Zen, citing from The Encyclopedia of Eastern Philosophy and Religion, there are listed five kinds of Zen or meditative practice.  Beginning with the lowest they are 1. Bonpu Zen; 2. Gedo Zen; 3. Shôjô Zen; 4. Daijô Zen; 5. Saijôjô Zen.  (These can all be found on the Internet—I am too lazy to type them out!)  In regard to Bonpu Zen it is Zen practiced by people mainly for health benefits. There is no religious motivation; certainly one is not interested in attaining enlightenment. 

I hasten to add Buji Zen which is about the lowest on this totem pole.  This refers to people who when they read “all beings have the Buddha-nature” imagine they are like the Buddha.  Or they may believe that the Buddha’s way is just being in the here and now.  In many ways, Buji Zen is just another name for the Beat Zen of the early 1960s.  Many fall into the trap of Buji Zen who take up Dogen’s Soto Zen.  They take his words literally in the example of, “Seeing the Buddha-nature is seeing a donkey's jowls or a horse's mouth"! 

The history of Buddhism and Zen is not without spiritual elitism and other kinds of hierarchies.  There are religious ranks, especially in Japanese Zen.  If you are a new Rinzai Abbot you are at the bottom of the totem pole.  You’d better learn to kiss the arse of your superior or else.

There is much more I could add like the superiority of Mahayana over Hinayana, or the superiority of the Bodhisattvas over the Arhat and so on.

 

Zen, from standing to flying

Dharma transmission, lineage, etc. are the outward forms of legitimation.  They are not true Dharma (saddharma) in other words.  T’ang dynasty Zen master Tsung-mi is not unaware of this who said: "Dharma transmission from master to disciple is merely in accordance with the conventions of relative truth."

These conventional, outward forms of legitimation have their appeal.  They are everywhere present in Zen centers and Dharma centers.  They are solely for the benefit of the worldly (prithagjana) who still remain, so to speak, on the vestibule until they have gained sufficient merit to  realize that Buddhism, especially Zen, is esoteric—not mundane. 

Don't get me wrong Zen centers with their teachers play an important role in the spread of Buddhism. But such institutions are for individuals who find the esoteric side of Buddhism incomprehensible, but who are willing to be somewhat open minded.  Still, they are spiritual toddlers who cling to relative truth.  In this regard, Nietzsche hit the nail on the head when he said,

"He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying."

This brings up the importance of skillful means (upaya) or the same, the holy lie. To borrow from the Lotus Sutra (Chap. VII), Zen and Dharma centers are not the Isle of Jewels.  These Dharma centers serve only as rest stops for the many who "are tired, weary, afraid, and anxious", but they are not the Isle of Jewels.  At a certain point, when they are rested, the many will have to move on continuing the perilous journey through the dense forest.

 Much of the popularity of modern Zen stems from the fact that it presents itself as the Isle of Jewels.  What should be obvious, but isn’t, is the many who daily go to their local Dharma or Zen centers are not sufficiently rested to face the brutal fact that becoming a Buddha is not at all easy.  These same people even require a teaching that basically says, you are already a Buddha, especially when you sit.  Nietzsche might say that this is learning to stand—it is far from flying.

 

More Dogen avec croissants and coffee

“Original enlightenment thought” (J., hongaku shisô) is a term modern Soto Zen practitioners should not be unfamiliar with and how it relates to Dogen’s Zen which is being marketed in the U.S. and Europe.  

What original enlightenment means is that everything is inherently enlightened.  Enlightenment, accordingly, doesn’t come as a result of a long and difficult process of overcoming non-enlightenment which makes enlightenment seem unattained.  So who are those who are inherently enlightened?

“Not only human beings, but ants and crickets, mountains and rivers, grasses and trees are all innately Buddhas.  The Buddhas who appear in sutras, radiating light and endowed with excellent marks, are merely provisional signs.  The “real” Buddha is the ordinary worldling.  Indeed, the whole phenomenal world is the primordially enlightened Tathagata.  Seen in their true light, all forms of daily conduct, even one’s delusive thoughts, are, without transformation, the expressions of original enlightenment” (Stone, Original Enlightenment and the Transformation of Medieval Japanese Buddhism, p. 3).

So then, what is liberation?  It consists in merely having complete faith that one is the Buddha, i.e., fully enlightened.  A worldling or prithagjana, in other words, is born a Buddha.  In addition, we can gather from this that there is no ontological distinction between phenomenal things such as mountains and Suchness.  This leads to the belief that samsara is, in reality, the life of nirvana, despite all the pain found in samsara!  

Is this then a departure from Buddhism?  It certainly smells like it.  As a fit comparison, for Indian Buddhism enlightenment meant direct gnosis of what is beyond phenomena.  It was never equated with phenomena.  A Buddha is one who has been able to transcend phenomena—a worldling can’t.  A wordling only knows suffering and rebirth into more states of suffering.

While Dogen may not have agreed with some of the extremes of hongaku thought there is really no hard evidence that Dogen was a huge critic of hongaku either.  Dogen certainly didn’t criticize such an idea that the momentary arising and perishing of phenomena, which is samsara, is the Buddha-nature.  In fact, he believed it was.  More importantly, Dogen believed in the oneness of original realization and wondrous practice which is to say, in other words, sitting is enlightenment.  

Dogen, by and large, didn’t agree with Chinese Zen practices in which enlightenment came as the result of a long period of Sutra study and purification practices with the adept even going into seclusion for a long period of time.  In fine, Soto Zen is not like Chinese Zen.  

Dogen’s version of Soto Zen was shaped by Japanese Tendai ideas, for example, dharmatâ which in Sanskrit means “the real essence of all things.”  Tendai twists dharmatâ to mean “the real essence is all things.”  This is a major difference.  In light of this, Dogen’s Soto wasn’t created out of the blue, it came from the soil of Tendai.  It reads with the same strangeness of Japanese Tendai which is more reflective of Japanese culture and values than Buddhism.  Nor was Dogen’s Soto Zen not influenced by Chinese Zen, especially Silent Illumination in which sitting dominates, a practice not found in the Buddhist canon and one especially criticized by other Chinese Zen schools.  In many respects, one can say of Dogen’s Zen it is a departure from the Buddhism found in the Pali and Mahyana canons.  The assertion by Dogen that “Death and life are the very life of the Buddha” is not something the Buddha ever said nor implied.

Enter cautiously into Japanese Soto Zen.

 

The Zen cult of personality

For various reasons, some imported Zen traditions from Japan turn into a cult of personality.  Soto Zen master Shunryu Suzuki is a particular Zen personality who has an entire Zen Buddhist cult-ure built around his memory; who, by the way, was not an extraordinary Zennist—he was no Huang-po.  It is the same with Soto Zen master Taisen Deshimaru whose opinions of himself are certainly inflated while, in addition, his knowledge of Buddhism is questionable.  After his death by pancreatic cancer in 1982, his organization became, some would argue, a personality cult. 

"Pictures of him hang everywhere. Every morning after Zazen a procession is made to his grave where people bow before his picture. The omnipresent veneration of master Deshimaru reaches far beyond the measure of respect one usually and reasonably would feel for his ancestors. In my view, there are clear signs of a personality cult. Sometimes newcomers complain about this, too. It is astonishing how powerfully and effectively Deshimaru managed to "implant" himself into his followers' minds” (Zen in the West).

What we should pay particular attention to is the general notion that drives the cult of personality.  This will help us to assess Zen organizations.  The cult of personality seems to boil down to a particular kind of hero worship of such an extreme, that the follower becomes a blank personality, a nothing that is.  

It is easy to see that the religious qualities of the religious cultic personality are constructed in the reciprocal relationship with the followers.  Who this religious person really is, is largely irrelevant.  Through the reciprocal relationship, the religious leader becomes a personification of the religious ideology of the group, if not the emanation of the unconscious mind of the group.  

All self-initative; all love and goodness; all that I am capable of accomplishing for myself, is emptied out of me and put into the cult of personality.  It is a huge, yet subtle transference of one’s immediate spiritual content and vitality into the religious leader who might be either dead or alive.  

Now the emptiness and hopelessness I feel inside myself is assuaged when I look upon the image of Shunryu Suzuki, for example, or read his book, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.  Perish the thought that I am in a cultic trance and that I am not spiritually advancing.

 

Why can’t we have better Western Zen abbots?

Recently a highly respected Western Zen abbot said:

"Shakyamuni Buddha taught that there is no permanent self (atman). This insight distinguished him contemporary Hindu teachers.  He taught that a human being consists of Five Aggregates or skandhas and nowhere in each aggregates was to be found a self or a soul.  Human beings are only conditioned elements."  

This is frankly incorrect.  The Buddha never once taught the self was impermanent.  On the contrary, he taught that Five Aggregates, which are our psychophysical body are impermanent, and that our self has nothing to do with them!  In the passage below which is taken from the Samyutta-Nikaya of the Pali canon, please note that each aggregate is impermanent.  Finally, also please note that it is incorrect to regard any aggregate as my self.

Bhikkhus, form is impermanent ... Feeling is impermanent ... Perception is impermanent ...Volitional formations are impermanent ... Consciousness is impermanent.  What is impermanent is suffering.  What is suffering is nonself [yam dukkham tad anatta].  What is nonself should be seen as it really is with correct wisdom thus: ‘This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self’ [na me so atta].  When one sees this thus as it really is with correct wisdom, the mind becomes dispassionate and is liberated from the taints of nonclinging.” (S. iii. 45).

In the commentary (atthakatha) to the Udana it says:  “The five khandhas are impermanent, (whereas) nibbana, which is the cessation of the five khandhas is permanent” (329, trans. Masefield).

By implication, the self is permanent along with nirvana since both transcend the aggregates or khandhas!  If, on the other hand, we cling, to one or more of the five khandhas, we are in deep doo-doo.  Bottom line, we are okay, but we should not cling to the Five Aggregates!