The Zennist

Nothing is really existing

According to the Lankavatara Sutra (Suzuki’s translation) “the world appears to exist, but nothing is really existing.” This is true from the standpoint of Mind itself, the absolute substance.  

I know I have mentioned this before, but in the example of a clay pot or an elephant carved from wood, neither the pot nor the elephant exist apart from the clay or the wood.  And so it goes from the standpoint of absolute Mind.  The world we observe is a phenomenalization of Mind.  This becomes absolutely true for us when we realize Mind for the first time.  Until that time, we have to believe that what the Buddha is teaching us is true.  Nothing is really existing as if it were existing apart or separate from Mind itself.

This brings me to another point—a very important point. We have to have a real intuition of pure Mind.  This, I need to add, is what separates Buddhism from metaphysical and religious speculation.  Buddhists don’t have time to argue with some idiot philosopher or religionist who believes that Mind is not the absolute substance.  The Buddhist has attained the proper gnosis of pure Mind—the philosopher or the religionist is deluded just plain crazy.

 

The Zen moment with Grace Jones & Lady Gaga

The so-called “Zen moment” or “your moment of Zen” is when we are caught off guard, our cultural filters suddenly being ineffective.  At this exact moment we see something—or an event—as it is.  We might even say the Zen moment is seeing something as it really is rather than as it is  supposed to be according to our culture. 

Such moments, I need to add, help to put us onto a spiritual path so that we might one day come to realize that our all-too-human world is completely illusory.  It has no reality behind it or holding it up.  From a Buddhist perspective, it is starkly empty; a mere composition of Mind which is the only true substance of reality.

It this context, are the performances of Grace Jones or Lady Gaga expressive of the Zen moment?  To a limited extent one would have to say, yes (more so with the iconic Grace Jones).   At times their performances do catch us with all of our filters down around our ankles with our bare arses showing.

In such a moment words like “chic” or “avant-garde” also come to mind which might be considered, in some instances, to be branches growing off the trunk of the Zen moment.  Incidentally, none of this should be confused with Dadaism which was a post World War I cultural movement that ridiculed bourgeois society, mainly its art, cultural values and practices.  It signaled the beginning of postmodernism which is the truth of modernity showing its underbelly.

I need to say that not everything Grace Jones or Lady Gaga does expresses the Zen moment.  Far from it.  Only to the extent that they are able to neutralize our cultural filters, catching us off guard, can there be a Zen moment.  Short of the Zen moment, both can lay claim to being chic and avant-garde.  (I confess, I still enjoy Grace Jones.  She is certainly a tough act to follow even for Lady Gaga.) 

 

To what did the Buddha awaken?

When a Bodhisattva awakens they awaken to something.  We might say a Bodhisattva like Siddhartha awakened to the absolute (dharma) thus attaining nirvana, or he realized the absolute and thus attained nirvana or beheld the absolute and thus attained nirvana.  Of course, nirvana, itself, is a mystery for those not beholding and experiencing it directly.  Nevertheless, it is something very transcendent and real.  Here we read a description of it found in the Udana.

“Monks, there exists that condition where is neither earth nor water nor fire nor air: wherein is neither the sphere of infinite space nor of infinite consciousness nor of nothingness nor of neither-consciousness-nor-unconsciousness; where there is neither this world nor a world beyond nor both together nor moon-and-sun.  Thence, monks, I declare is no coming to birth; thither is no going (from life); therein is no duration; thence is not falling; there is no arising.  It is not something fixed, it moves not on, it is not based on anything (anârmmanam = it cannot be made an object of thought or sense).  That indeed is the end of Ill (dukkha).”

Unfortunately, nirvana in the hands of pop Buddhists seems to be of little or no importance.  According to Stephen Batchelor in his book, Buddhism Without Beliefs, this is what the Buddha awoke to.  

“The Buddha woke up to the nature of the human dilemma and a way to its resolution” (p. 6).

And,

“He awoke to a set of interrelated truths rooted in the immediacy of experience here and now” (p. 6)

Sorry, but this is not what the Buddha awoke to, or saw, or came to know, or plunged into, or delighted in.  By awakening to the absolute, a Bodhisattva like Gautama achieves nirvana and thus becomes the Buddha.

 

Another taboo subject for Western Buddhists

One-pointed of Mind samadhi, if perfected, whether one realizes it from the teachings of the Buddha, Patanjali, or Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, leads to a more profound attainment which Buddhists call bodhicittotpada (lit. bodhi-mind-arising) in which one sees the world, for the first time, from the perspective of an enlightened being (buddha).

 As far as this blog is concerned, I hardly dwell on this profound attainment because when we have authentic one-pointed of Mind samadhi, it is the magical key that will help us to eventually unlock the door to bodhicittotpada.  Naturally, I find it much easier to blog about how to see and engage with Zen and Buddhism correctly—at lest to have the right orientation.  

 Turning back to the matter of one-pointed of Mind samadhi it is a subtle subject to blog about.  Nevertheless, I have tried to cover it in various ways.  One major problem is we are not used to our mind being  an attainable, effective substance, as being fundamentally transcendent to the corporeal body.  We only know mind’s gross side, the common, ordinary mind.  

 To move to the accomplishment of one-pointed of Mind samadhi, the matter is like pure water trying to see itself only minus the waviness or ripples.  We must keep in mind that our ordinary thoughts are wavy or vibrations of Mind.  Said again, these thoughts are the movement of pure Mind; its temporalization/samsara.  This has to be overcome if we are to become Buddhas.

 With the attainment of one-pointed of Mind samadhi and the subsequent practice of it (in my case seven years) we are then open to an encounter with a kalyana-mitra (lit. virtuous friend) which may or may not be of this world (and often is not of this world).  This is the scary part—it takes a lot of courage.  For those who were taught that belief in such beings is mumbo jumbo it is rather a frightening event to encounter an immaterial kalyana-mitra.  But only with such an encounter can the empowerment of bodhicittotpada truly take place which the Lankavatara Sutra calls mahâyana-prabhâsa (lit. mahayana clear light).  Only then will the adept be further sustained by the power of the Buddhas to fulfill their spiritual career.

 As the reader can probably guess, discussing this subject is almost a taboo in polite Buddhist circles.  But I feel it is important to let meditation practitioners know that with the attainment of one-pointed of Mind samadhi they will be moving in the right direction towards Buddhahood.  It doesn’t matter if they are the film maker David Lynch, who is a Transcendental Meditation practitioner, some Vedanta practitioner or a Daoist or a Buddhist hermit living alone in the mountains of Zhongnan.  They hold the magical key with one-pointed of Mind samadhi.  When they are ready a kalyana-mitra will appear. 

 

Dogen the phenomenalist

When, for example, Dogen says, "What we call ‘Buddha Mind’ is synonymous with the three temporal worlds of past, present, and future,” Dogen doesn't understand that Buddha Mind doesn't behold a temporal world existing in its own independent right.  Buddha Mind is the absolute awakening to itself which means the temporal world doesn't actually exist.  The temporal world is an illusion or mâyâ.  

To suggest that the temporal world is in anyway real, thus putting it on a par with Buddha Mind, is like saying that Fa-tsang's lion, in his work, Essay on the Golden Lion, possesses real substance apart from the gold—well, it doesn't.  There is only gold which has been shaped and named “lion”; which is fundamentally empty of lions, etc.  

In addition, Dogen doesn't seem to comprehend, as he should, that a Bodhisattva does not train in any thing or settle down in any thing or dharma according to the Astasahasrika Prajnaparamita Sutra (The Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines, trans. Conze).  This is because things do not fundamentally exist.  This includes the human body and even the act of doing the ritual (J., gyôji) of zazen—even Dogen’s “jaw of a donkey and the muzzle of a horse” lacks true existence which he equates with Buddha-nature. 

This leads me to wonder how much Dogen has read of the Buddha’s teachings.  He seems off course in many of his observations.  Echoing Hajime Nakamura, I think Dogen looks for the absolute in the phenomenal which is a phenomenalist way of thinking (cp. Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples, p. 351). 

 

Zen mystics, Jeremy Bentham, and Buddhist crackpots

For the Zen mystic who is trying to realize pure Mind, he firmly believes that such an entity as pure Mind or Buddha Mind is a real entity; moreover it can be discovered, that is, directly apperceived—although not without a long and patient struggle.  This is very much a different entity than a “fictitious entity” which Jeremy Bentham describes as follows:

“A fictitious entity is an entity to which, though by the grammatical form of the discourse employed in speaking of it, existence be ascribed, yet in truth and reality existence is not meant to be ascribed” (Ogden, Betham’s Theory of Fictions [1932], p. 12).

Buddhists, I hope, grasp the meaning of a fictitious entity—although I am inclined to believe they often don’t.  When I say, “Buddha Mind” this is not a fictitious entity—far from it.  Its particular use in discourse is really meant to refer to attained Buddha Mind which is a real entity (yes, some Buddhists have actually beheld Buddha Mind face to face).  A more down to earth example, when I use the word “moon” in a conversation, I mean the real moon, the one that I see when I walk down my driveway at night after putting out my recycling bins.  Moon is not a fictitious entiy like matter, motion and rest, or quantity and quality, or in jurisprudence, right and power.

Yet, I have to say this:  There are some Buddhist who are of the strong opinion that “Buddha Mind” is a fictitious entity or, indirectly, treat it as if it were, not actively seeking it.  These are the fringe Buddhist crackpots who peddle their garbage on Amazon and elsewhere trying to persuade the poor beginner that they really know what the Buddha taught! 

Without going into details, the gnosis of Buddha Mind or absolute Mind is real.  The power of this gnosis is almost physically overwhelming.  In the words of Kankharevata from the Theragatha (3), “See this wisdom of the Tathagatas; it is like a fire blazing in the night.”  This much doesn’t even describe half the experience.  And this is only the beginning of the journey.

What is happening today is Buddhist crackpots who believe Buddha Mind is a fictitious entity are trying to take over Buddhism even equating Buddha Mind with awareness or mindfulness.  Many good Buddhists which include Theravadins and Tibetan Buddhists are presently waging a silent war against these usurpers who almost admittedly have little or no faith in the Buddha’s teachings, let alone that nirvana is also a real entity like Buddha Mind.

 

Is Zen meditation just a ritual?

Zennists, sometime in the future (or hell, right now), are going to have to investigate the effectiveness of Zen’s rituals as they concern Zen’s ancient injunction to realize Buddha Mind or the same, realize our true nature.  I say this because rituals may not work as intended, that is, they may fail to evoke the necessary realization of the Buddha Mind.  A ritual might be, in fact, impractical when it comes to attaining gnosis of our true nature, but not entirely useless as far as beginners are concerned which is another topic.  

This leads me to a troubling question, is zazen just a ritual?  The answer shouldn’t be automatically, no.  Those who believe that the performance of zazen is completely without ritualistic underpinnings have, I would argue, not sufficiently looked deep enough, for example, into the impact of Confucian ritualism on the formation of Chinese Buddhism, including Zen, and also, Japanese Buddhism.  Given that zazen emphasizes the external performance of sitting “za”, and much less the esoteric “zen” or dhyana (P., jhâna) side, should be a warning flag that a ritual is being enacted.

Filled with some thought provking essays by ten Buddhist scholars the book, Zen Rituals, might open up a mini Pandora’s box by bringing to light the problematic of ritual as an effective means for bringing about realization of Buddha Mind among other things.  Here are just some examples from the book that might open a few eyes.

“For the Confucian ritualists, as for the later Zen Buddhists, ritual practice ranged in quality and depth from introductory levels to the most profound, and these differences were thought to be evident in the difference between an ordinary human being and the great sages.  At the outset, they assumed that ritual practice would entail discipline.  It would restrain the wayward inclinations of ordinary, undisciplined minds.  In this sense, ritual acted as an external constraint or pressure on the natural desires and uncultivated habits of those who had not yet been shaped by this order.  Confucians realized, however, that as ritual practitioners matured, they would internalize these constraints, altering the ways they understood themselves and the ways they lived in the world. For the sages dwelling at the most humane level, Mencius claimed, ritual practice effects a profound joy, one that accords with the deepest nature of human beings.  In this sense, ritual was the Confucian means for transformation and enlightenment, both of individuals in a culture and the culture as a whole” (p. 7).

“The ritual most frequently associated with Zen monastic practice is zazen, seated meditation.  Indeed, it is from this longstanding Buddhist ritual that Zen (Ch'an/Son) gets its name.  Although variations of Zen meditation rituals are substantial, most Zen monks engage in this practice at least two times each day, once in the morning and once in the evening.  During my brief stay at Eiheiji, we engaged in zazen ritual for approximately six hours each day divided into sitting periods of roughly forty-five minutes each, but this was an unusual amount of time at the temple in which lay people were invited for introductory training” (p. 8).

“Ritual practitioners proceed in the ritual "as if" things were different than they seemed before entering the ritual.  They imagine a state of affairs other than common sense would dictate and proceed as if something other than that were true.  Zen practitioners engage in zazen as if they were enlightened Buddhas, and in that act of imagination, something really changes” (p. 12).

“We might say that these forms of Zen meditation ritual are essentially the exercise or practice of attention in which abstracted states of mind, including important states like purpose, are set aside.  In order to stress this goal in meditation, some Zen masters claim that meditative rituals are "nonpurposive," that is, they are not done for any reason beyond the act of doing them.  Therefore, when asked what they are doing or what they hope to accomplish when they are sitting in zazen, Soto masters will often say that they are "just sitting" (shikantaza), and nothing more” (p. 14).

“Westerners interested in Zen, by the same token, are often attracted to the "practices" of seated meditation (zazen), manual labor, and doctrinal study but uncomfortable with the "rituals" of offerings, prayers, and prostrations made before images on altars” (p. 23).

“The East Asian Buddhist tradition itself has no words for discriminating what Westerners are apt to call "ritual" as opposed to "practice."  The Japanese term that comes closest in semantic range to "ritual" is gyôji, which I translate as "observances," but the term encompasses a very broad range of activities that Zen clergy engage in, some of which we might prefer to call "ceremonies," "procedures," "etiquette," "training," "study," "meditation," "work," or the "ritual sacralization of everyday activities" (such as eating, sleeping, and bathing)” (pp. 23–24).

The last excerpt is rather interesting.  If there is one term Western Zennists use almost ad nauseam it is “practice”—yet, strictly speaking, there is no such notion in Zen.  I have to laugh when I think about this.  Western Zennists would be terribly uncomfortable saying, “Well, I have to get back to my ritual.”  They much prefer saying, “I have to get back to my practice.”  This brings me back to my comment at the beginning of this blog that rituals may fail to evoke the necessary realization of the Buddha Mind.  At least in my own experience rituals, including zazen, prove inadequate when it comes to gnosis (jñâna).

 

Killing the inner voice

Reaching puberty, with its powerful drives, with the added burden of not having fully developed frontal lobes, makes it extremely difficult for young people to listen to their spiritual voice or even to discover it.  Just what this voice is, in brief, is always wordless; rather it whispers intuitions, the loudest of which says that the life we are presently engaged with is not the true life.  It is false.

In an attempt to kill this spiritual voice, culture provides its young inhabitants with a large supply of the three poisons consisting of moha (delusion, dullness, ignorance), dvesha (hatred, aversion), and lobha (greed, lust).  This generally comes in the socially acceptable forms of public education, the military/police, and consumerism.  All three try to wear a mask of sanity while history paints a much different picture of these institutions which should be obvious to anyone who can read.

Young people who wish to ‘drop out’ of the so-called rat race because their inner spiritual voice, to a limited degree, is able to override the narcotic effect of the three poisons have, perhaps, the toughest burden of all.  They have to overcome moha or delusion which, to my mind, is one of the most lethal of the poisons.  We might think of moha in the context of trying to un-brainwash oneself.  If you think about it how, being thoroughly brainwashed, does one overcome it?  It is not easy by any means.  Our system of public education is very effective when it comes to cranking out obedient followers who can carry rifles and credit cards.  

While popular religion, also, seems to dominate public consciousness, it has nothing to do with spirit, itself, or with the inner spiritual voice.  Popular religion, like public education, is only interested in keeping people in a state of moha—to kill the voice.  Therefore, it welcomes the young who will, eventually, become its victims.  I should mention that true religion’s major concern is with respecting the spiritual voice—popular religion is not even close.  This voice, by the way, is not from God, Jesus or any prophet.  Those who say it is are still drinking the first poison, moha—they are deluded. 

 

We the prisoners

Yesterday, I was watching the new updated television miniseries, The Prisoner (2009).  It is a remake of the 1967 British television series of 17 episodes which starred Patrick McGoohan who also co-created the series.  The Prisoner, one of the most innovative of television series being right up there with Twilight Zone, is not without deep philosophical underpinnings.  This is picked up by Keith Booker, in his book Strange TV, who observes The Prisoner (1967) is “roughly contemporaneous with the arrival of Continental “theory,” especially of a French structuralist and poststructuralist variety.”  Booker informs the reader that the French postmodern theory revealed that “the stable, autonomous subject of bourgeois ideology is a myth and that the individual subjects are not just controlled, but actually constructed by impersonal forces larger than themselves (such as “language”), forces that the subject can thus subsequently never entirely escape or resist" (p. 72).  This, to an noticeable measure, is exemplified by both television works of The Prisoner.  

My first reaction to the 2009 version of The Prisoner, which I put down in my notes, was this:  The trick is to make the prison big and spacious enough—hiding the bars— so that one has a false sense of freedom; so the inhabitants don't realize they’re prisoners.  As I thought about this more relating it to Buddhism and my recent reading of Vaihinger’s book, The Philosophy of “As If” (1925) and Jeremy Bentham’s, The Theory of Fictions, which is in C.K. Ogden’s book, Bentham’s Theory of Fictions (1932), I realized that our modern world is a fictional construct—if you like, a grand illusion—that is equally a grand diversion, always leading us away from the horizon of true reality as if truth is to be greatly feared.  It even provides us with the illusion of escape.

I certainly think it is true that modernity which began with the Enlightenment with its carefully crafted fictions found in science, jurisprudence, philosophy and psychology, to name just a few categories, has either consciously or unconsciously created a prison so immense and deadly, so as to cause us to wonder, like Number Six in, The Prisoner, shall I ever escape?  

This leads to the picture of the dystopic postmodern world which is actually the truth of modernity.  It is through postmodernism that we are able to see the illusion of modernity—the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain, so to speak.  But unlike Dorothy and Toto we have no home to go to since we are products of modernity.  We are in the condition of Number Six—we can’t remember our home except in bits and pieces.

The only real escape from the world Number Six has, which is not portrayed in either television series, is the mystical path that runs invisibly perpendicular to our palpably fictional modern world and its postmodern counterpart which is also a fiction.  But even the mystical path can become manipulated so that awakening is an illusion in the example of learning to live in the here and the now in which the person is unknowingly condemning themselves to a perpetual present which is a form of spiritual paralysis or the same, the skeptic’s ataraxia.

It should not surprise any of us that mysticism is almost a taboo for those who cuddle their chains and choose to live in a world built upon fictions.  The Christians hate it and not far behind are the pop Buddhists who are content to live in the surreal village of modernity that Number Six is trying to escape from teaching us that just sitting is all we have to do to be happy.  Incidentally, these same Buddhists want to argue that the Buddha’s path was not mystical despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.  And since they know they can’t win their only alternative is to expunge or simply ignore all that speaks of the mystical from the canon of Buddhism thereby guaranteeing a life of imprisonment and suffering for all those who come to Buddhism trying to escape. 

 

Leave true reality to Buddhism, not science

It is through our human action, that is, our human instruments, that we build up our human world with its highways, skyscrapers, and knowledge.  But the world we build through our instruments which include ideas, physics, chemistry,  and mathematics, for example, is not true reality.  We are merely substituting our human world for true reality—covering up the latter.  

As far as true reality is concerned our human world is false although immensely useful and practical for us.  I admit that bridges are doubtlessly useful, including paved roads, air conditioning, the electric light, computers, and so on.  Still, we need to be constantly reminded that utility is zero proof of true reality.  It is the great sin of science, in fact, that it believes its ideas are connected with true reality, for example, that the universe speaks and understands mathematics as we humans do.  Our ideas about the universe are strictly human. 

This brings me to what is becoming, as I see it, a growing problem in contemporary Buddhism.  It is the encroachment of scientism into the Dharma which is the belief that science is connected more or less with true reality—Buddhism much less.  But then nothing science has given us thus far is other than greatly useful fictions which help us to expand and enjoy our human world from building sausage machines to text messaging our friends.  No scientist today in their right mind still believes in matter except as a symbol which includes such terms as force, mass, field, etc.

Science is more precisely about maximizing utility as it pertains to our temporal human world.  As a caution, science should not pretend to see or claim to be able to approach true reality.  Sorry—but this is for mystics only; for those like Gautama who saw ultimate reality; who came to understand how beings continually suffer without conceivable end, and how they might free themselves from such bondage.  In fact, the better relationship of science and Buddhism is to let science take care of the practical side of life and let Buddhism take care of connecting with ultimate or true reality.  This would be a perfect marriage.  On this same track, the greatest evil I can imagine is for science to take the place of Gautama, then insist that Buddhist monks need to take a lot of science courses learning about the big bang, black holes, and other modern day scientific fictions.

Post script.  Please understand that all comments are usually and eventually posted except for those written by people hallucinating, writing in a private language, including those suffering from literary Tourette syndrome (LTS), spammers, and small children who somehow managed to get to this blog who want to discuss Bernard Bear (just kidding).