The Zennist

Waiting for Godot Zen

Certainly one of my favorite plays, Samuel Beckett’s play, Waiting for Godot, is most valuable because it often provides me with food for thought.

The title of the play pretty much tells you everything important about the play.  The main characters in the play wait for Godot to show up.  However, Godot never shows up.  In the meantime, the characters pass the time in conversation and encounters with two odd passerby.  

The play, itself, lacks what we expect a play to be.  The play offers us no clues as to whom Godot is or is not or whom he represents.  What we can be certain of is that Godot doesn't show up and the main characters, Vladimir and Estragon, continue to wait for Godot not sure he said he would even come.  We could even say that the thrust of the play is about waiting.

Godot, we might imagine, is Jesus, or it could be our search for enlightenment.  Along with this, there is also an almost unbearable sense of doubt in the play, but never quite getting to 'all is in vain'.  In this respect, the characters always live trapped somewhere between hopelessness and hope.

Looking at the current state of Zen or the state of modern Buddhism from this play, imagining that Vladimir and Estragon practice Zen, Zen has gone beyond waiting.  It has, instead, taken up 'sitting', accepting that just sitting alone is enlightenment (Godot?).  There is no longer any Godot or enlightenment to wait for.  There is nothing to be done except to just sit.  Such a Zen play would be entitled, Sitting is Enlightenment.

But our Zen play, just like Waiting for Godot, hasn't succeeded in getting rid of the unbearable sense of doubt nor the condition that the sitter is situated between hopelessness and hope.

 

How does one become enlightened?

Sometimes a beginner’s questions are a little off target but, nevertheless, offer food for thought.  Such is the question, “How does one become enlightened?”  First, a little of Buddhism 101.  Then I want to end not with how to get enlightened but with what we have to become enlightened about.  

Siddhartha never set out to get just enlightened.  Rather, he set out to find the end of suffering and more to the point, he set out to search for “the unborn, the undying, the unsorrowful, the stainless, the completely secure” (Ariyapariyesana Sutta).  

At this time in India there were many so-called “isms” just like in ancient Greece.  There were numerous speculative philosophies, asceticism, skepticism, materialism, hedonism, and much more.  None of these “isms” Siddhartha concluded, who tried some of them, brought an end to the problem of suffering.  Even practicing strenuous austerities for six years, brought no answer.  Finally, one day Siddhartha remembered as a young boy meditating (dhyâna) in a farmer’s field, realizing its effectiveness.  He said:

“This is the path of enlightenment which will lead to the disappearance of the miseries of birth, old age, sickness, and death.  This was my thought” (Lalitavistra Sutra).

Eventually, Siddhartha made it to the Bodhi-tree and taking a seat at its base vowed never to arise until he attained complete and perfect enlightenment.

To make a long story short, Siddhartha conquered the unskilled states of mind personified by Mara the Evil One, realizing the transcendent which is unborn and undying which, more specifically, is pure Mind.  Thus, did Siddhartha become awakened or “Buddha” to this Mind seeing all phenomena (sarvadharmâ) as mere configurations of Mind which really don’t exist the way unenlightened people imagine, who tenaciously cling to phenomena as if it were absolute.

Buddhism is not so much about ‘becoming enlightened’ as it is about awakening to pure Mind which is free of suffering.  Unfortunately, for beginners, neither modern Zen nor modern Buddhism spend very much time, if any, teaching what Siddhartha was enlightened about that brought an end to suffering.  What is taught beginners is more like one huge detour leading away from what Buddhism is really about.

 

Answering the great question

To begin to answer the great question of what is born, decays and dies requires of us a very careful introspective examination.  Some Zennists firmly believe the Buddha-nature gets born, decays and dies which means for them samsara is nirvana.  But the Buddha-nature has never been born as something conditioned.  So how can it decay, eventually to die?

What actually gets born, decays and then dies is the Five Aggregates consisting of form, feelings, perception, volitional formations, and sensory consciousness.  But let me pause here.  At this point we have to do some deep, profound thinking.  Although it is the Five Aggregates that are born, decay, and then die does this mean that we die as well?  The answer is, of course, no.  We only seem to be born, decay, and then die because we blindly cling to the Five Aggregates as if there is nothing else besides.

Now we come to the place that separates the worldling (prithagjana) from the Bodhisattva.  The worldling, and even the worldling Buddhists who might be a Zen teacher, is so hooked on the Five Aggregates, which is really their psychophysical body, that they can do scarcely else than follow it from cradle to grave.  As a result of following the Five Aggregates, their course is naturally to always re-become (punarbhava) in some new psychophysical condition thus to experience suffering again and again.  There’s no escape from samsara, in other words, without directly beholding the unconditioned (nirvana), that is, without transcending the Five Aggregates which are always conditioned.

In some older parts of the Pali canon we learn that consciousness, the fifth aggregate, is regarded as the transmigrant that re-becomes which means that consciousness is mutable, conforming to any aggregate formation.  Only in nirvana does the mutability of consciousness appear to cease when it finally rests in the unmanifest, infinite and luminous (D. i. 223), this liberated consciousness and pure Mind being one and the same. 

 

Going beyond profit and loss

Looking at the Chinese characters that make up the word, koan, we get the idea of a court, a trial, judgment and possible punishment.  The enigmantic stories or dialogues that make up koan collections, which are difficult to understand for Western Zennists, are an outgrowth of Chinese Ch’an’s (J., Zen) mystical exploration into the the recondite subject of pure Mind and bringing about its direct realization.  

Koans are not at all illogical or crazy if we have awakened to pure Mind.  If, on the other hand, we are one of those who is uncomfortable with the idea of spirit, yes, koans may seem to be weird.  So what I am about to say will probably make little or no sense.

Koans were born of pure Mind such that the composer [s] of the koan was, to some degree, awakened to Buddha Mind, enough to compose stories around it.  Mind is not only revealed in the koan composition but also there is bait fastened to a trap.  If we take the bait the koan’s judgment is swift.  Our answer turns out to be half-assed:  inadequate, nor convincing.  The verdict is, “You didn’t answer the koan—the punishment of samsara still awaits you.”  Here is just one example.  In koan case XXVI of the Mumonkan (trans. Blyth) we read:

Hogen of Seiryo went to the hall to speak to the monks before the midday meal.  He pointed at the bamboo blinds [Blyth in a footnote says they should have been raised].  At this moment, two monks went and rolled them up.  Hogen said, “One has it, the other hasn’t” [Blyth’s footnote to this reads:  “Literally, “One, profit; one, loss.”].

Yes, this is a head-scrathcher.  The koan forces us to think over, many times, the phrase, “One has it, the other hasn’t” as if this holds the key to unloking this mysterious koan (which, in fact, it does but not in the way we imagine).  Soon, doubt follows our attempts at trying to crack this phrase.  We read the koan again.  It dawns on us that maybe the bamboo blinds symbolize the defiled mind and lifting the blinds means seeing the pure Mind.  Still, this doesn’t tell us what pure Mind is really like?  In the end, we are left gnawing on the dry bone of:  “One has it, the other hasn’t.”

Mumon’s commentary offers us little if any help.  Maybe the koan is not really about profit and loss.  Okay—got it.  But what is this “single eye” business?  Is this one-pointedness of Mind?  Apparently, also, the teacher Seiryo failed to reveal the luminous Mind to the assembly.  Okay—that’t not difficult to accept.  But then when all starts to turn dark, out of compassion old Mumon lets us know the matter is all about Mind (brakets are mine).

When they are rolled up, the great sky is bright and clear [like pure Mind],
But the great sky [pure Mind] has no affinity with Zen,
To have nothing to do with the sky [Mind as a mental image] is better,
And never let the wind [that stirs the waves of Mind] through.

Let me say that Thomas Cleary translation is far better than Blyth’s.  Mind stands out much more as it should.

Rolling up, there’s utter clarity, penetrating space
But even space does not accord with our source.
Better to let go of everything, from space on,
For such subtle secrecy that nothing can get in.

For those who fail to see Mind in this and other koans, but claim to fully understand Zen, what do they really undestand?  It’s certainly not Mind.  It is really the Zen of wearing robes, following rituals, and dead sitting being always tethered to the Five Aggregates which hide Buddha Mind.  Thus, the bamboo blinds are never lifted. 

 

Going from samsara to nirvana

Samsara and nirvana are not in anyway separate like two physical objects.  In a way, they coexist in the same moment like wave and water or ripples and water.  Despite this inseparableness, the consciousness of sentient beings is almost always locked onto samsara—totally constrained by it.  In early Buddhism, consciousness also seems to be the surviving factor which re-enters (or perhaps better, ‘interfaces’ with) womb/embryo after womb/embryo (gabbha gabbham) in which repeated births are undergone, this being samsara.

It is through the purification of mind (citta) in which its non-perturbed, pure nature is immediately beheld that consciousness is suddenly conscious of nirvana (tathata, etc.) which is free of samsara.  Now consciousness is no longer constrained by samsara.  It is aware of something else.  The Buddhist adept is, for the first time, conscious of absolute Mind’s purity which is without any perturbations.

From the aforementioned, we could say that nirvana is samsara when there is only consciousness of the world of mind-perturbations which are ever changing and unsatisfactory.  On the other hand, when samsara becomes nirvana it is when we are conscious of pure Mind, itself.  With this attainment we come to realize that mind-perturbations are nevermore than illusory; being mere compositions of Mind itself. 

 

The maker of the house

It is a Buddhist truism that desire (P., tanhâ) exceeds death which means that for us, when we die, desire is still active.  There is nothing that can stop desire, including death, or so it seems.

Desire, which is the ‘house maker’ (gahakaraka) mentioned in Dhammapada verses 153 & 154, is responsible for unceasing rebirth.  As S. Radhakrishnan correctly observes, commenting on these two important verses in his translation of the Dhammapada:

“The builder of the house is craving, tanhâ.  It is the cause of rebirth.  If we shake off craving there is nothing to bind us to the wheel of existence” (p. 110).

Adding to his words, it is desire for or the craving for the Five Aggregates which is responsible for our suffering.  End desire, in other words, for the conditioned house of the psychophysical body (i.e., the Five Aggregates/skandha), in which we are embodied, and you put an end to suffering.  

The end of desire comes when mind (citta) attains to its unconditionedness, i.e., the luminous Mind.  By doing so, it is no longer a desirer/maker, desiring and creating its own suffering.  We could further say, this psychophysical house is seen to be Mind-only.  It is an illusion—one, nevertheless, which brings us suffering in proportion as we desire it and its artifical worlds.

 

A discourse without Mind

In my blog, “The blockhead years” I noted that “Mind has been virtually ignored in the modern Buddhist discourse” which should be obvious to those of us who have studied Vajrayana Buddhism and the sermons of the Chinese and Korean Zen masters.  Mind is almost on every page.  

I suspect the main reason Mind has been absent from the modern Buddhist discourse is because mindfulness and awareness have taken over the spot.  But these two terms tend to be used in a psychological context except for mindfulness when it is used to translate smriti which has a highly technical meaning that eclipses the English word, mindfulness.  

With Mind stricken from the modern Buddhist discourse, Mind as the absolute medium of existence is stricken, too, including the realization of Bodhicitta.  By comparison, one cannot discuss Vajrayana Buddhism, that is, Tibetan Buddhism, without discussing the two forms of Bodhicitta, viz., Bodhicitta aspired to and Bodhicitta attained, not to mention luminous or clear light Mind.

More telling of Mind’s absence in the modern Buddhist discourse becomes apparent when we look at how Western Zennists handle koans.  To be frank, these Zennists just don’t get koans, that is, they are clueless about the real purpose of koans and what they are fundamentally based on.  At this point, I will only say that if one has truly awakened to Buddha Mind all the koans point to it, without exception, and do so ingeniously.  

Especially, with regard to Zen, without Mind being included in the modern Zen conversation and practice, much of what the old Chinese Zen master’s taught makes hardly any sense—and the koans become nonsense.  What is replacing the older works of Zen—and the core teaching of Buddha Mind—is modernist claptrap which points to the here and the now, which becomes a kind of aesthetic phenomenalism.  Such phenomenalism views phenomena as Buddha-nature so that everything we do from peeling onions to sitting on our ass in zazen half asleep becomes a manifestation of Buddha-nature.  This, to be sure, is not the right path to Buddha Mind.

 

The meaning or goal of Zen

When a beginner asks a question like, “What is the meaning of Zen?” or “What is the goal of Zen?” their question has merit inasmuch at it helps to expose either the depth or shallowness of modern Zen and especially those who, while pretending to know something about Zen, actually know very little.

When the answer to such questions takes the form of something like “to put an end all suffering” or “to become one with the universe” surely the beginner has a sneaking suspicion that such answers ring hollow.

No doubt the correct or formal answer to such questions, which keeps to the general context of Zen, is to be found within the four slogans of Zen which supposedly have their beginning with the legendary Indian Buddhist monk, Bodhidharma (but if truth be known, they were put together as the four slogans during the Sung/Song dynasty).  The slogans are:

A special transmission transcending the canon;
Without dependence upon words and letters;
Pointing directly to the mind of man;
Seeing into one's nature, realizing Buddhahood.

I am sure most beginner’s eyes are drawn to the last two slogans which contain the answer they are really looking for.  In a nutshell, the real meaning or goal of Zen is to look within ourselves so as to be able to see, directly, our true nature, attaining thus, Buddhahood.  

Looking at this from a Western religious perspective such a goal easily falls within mysticism but minus theistic interpretations.  This kind of mysticism which is unfolded in the Buddhist canon, is the distinguishing (prajñâ) of our true nature from the psychophysical body (Five Aggregates), the latter being man’s mortal part which is subject to death and again birth (punarbhava).  What, in addition, we can draw from this form of mysticism is there is no dependence of any kind on doctrinal allegiance.  As is easy to prove, the Buddha put direct awakening—not doctrine—before all else, that is, seeing one’s true nature.  Zen remains true to the Buddha’s intent where looking into one’s true nature is made the goal.

 

Saving all sentient beings

One of the clues to saving all sentient being lies in the Diamond Sutra (Vajracchedika-prajñâ-parâmitâ Sutra), a Sutra which helps to reveal the Buddha’s Diamond Mind which is the fundamental Mind of all Buddhas.

While the yet-to-become-a-Buddha Bodhisattva is overwhelmed with the task of saving all sentient beings, Buddhas, on the other hand, do not suffer from this difficulty.  No matter how great the number of sentient beings in samsara, it is more like a huge dream to them.  In other words, a Buddha does not see sentient beings the way a Bodhisattva does—a fledgling Bodhisattva we add.  

A Buddha realizes that all sentient beings are not apart from the profound state of bhutatathata, that is, ultimate reality.  Putting it otherwise, this means that the totality of beings is of one primordial substance which is Mind.  When a sentient being arises such that we determine (samjñâ) “here is a sentient being,” what we are beholding is but a composition of absolute Mind (ekacitta), a composition not actually real.  Although such a composition seems to have an independent existence of its own, possessing an ego or a personality, it is nothing apart from ultimate reality (bhutatathata).  Since a Buddha abides in ultimate reality, and sees things accordingly, he beholds not a single being which is unsaved. 

I hasten to add that this is a real attainment.  It’s not playing with words.  From the time a Bodhisattva first beholds Mind (bodhicittotpada), eventually to becoming a Buddha, his way (bhumi) has been one of becoming more of Mind, hence, progressively giving up his former attachments to mind phenomena, which includes the perception (samjñâ) of sentient beings, which was never more than illusory.

 

A hyper-subtle positive medium

Nirvana has never been identified with the three marks of existence, namely, impermanence, suffering, and lack of self.  Nor has nirvana been identified with the Five Aggregates (i.e., the psychophysical being) which constitutes the first noble truth of suffering.  He who would hope to find nirvana has to seek it where the Five Aggregates are not.  Hence, it cannot be found in form, feelings, perception, volitional formations, or sensory consciousness.  It lies elsewhere than in the human world.  This explains why nirvana has other names like moksha (emancipation), vimukti (liberation), nihsarana (escape), viveka (detachment), lokuttara (supermundane), nibbuti, (rest), acyuta (imperishable), kevalam (the only), anidassanam (the invisible), amata (immortal), satyam (truth), param (supreme), etc.  

From the aforementioned we can say without hesitation that nirvana is a positive state; something real but not temporally so, the way phenomenal objects are, all of which are impermanent, etc.  When the Buddha in the Sutta-Nipatta says “Where there is no-thing (akiñcanam), where naught is grasped (anâdânam)” this is unconditioned reality; moreover it is a positive no-thing reality that is absent of phenomena.  According to the Buddha, “There is not measure to him who has gone to rest (i.e., nirvana); he keeps nothing that could be named.

At this point it is worth mentioning that it is easy to fall into the state of mind that conceives nirvana to be indeterminate absence.  But for those who take this all too common road they are not properly treating nirvana as a positive, which can only be acquainted with through gnosis and deep meditation.  To really approach nirvana one must first totally believe that nirvana points to a hyper-subtle, positive medium which because of our ignorance, we continually fail to recognize. And rather than firmly believe it is real, instead, we toy around with all manner of conceptualizations about nirvana which would be like King Arthur's Knights sitting around drawing pictures of what they imagine the Holy Grail to be like rather than actually setting out to find it as if it were real!