The Zennist

Killing the Buddha

Zen masters of the T’ang period like Ma-tsu (707–786) considered Mind to be the essence of all the Buddha’s teachings (cp. Cheng Chien Bhikshu, Sun Face Buddha, p. 62).  Accordingly, sitting in meditation was not as important as awakening to the One Mind which is inherent in all of us.

Ma-tsu’s teacher, Huai-jang (677–744), well understood the difference between seated meditation as a means and the realization of pure Mind which is the fundamental substance of our psychical life which is the ‘stuff’ of our thoughts, mental images, emotions, desires, etc.  Seated meditation, in other words, is not entirely adequate to reach the luminous substance of Mind this being the real goal of Zen.  Huai-jang pointed out the danger of relying on seated meditation when he said:

“If you make (yourself) a sitting Buddha this is precisely killing the Buddha.  If you adhere to the sitting position, you will not attain the principle of Zen."

Huai-jang’s words strike hard against the theory of Dogen (1200–1253) and much of modern Zen both of which believe that just sitting is enlightenment and not “killing the Buddha.”  In light of this, we can’t help but conclude that Ma-tsu and his teacher Huai-jang understood the goal of Zen to determine the means—not the means to determine the goal which is the case with the sitting position.  I dare say neither Ma-tsu nor Huai-jang would find a modern Zen center to their liking in which so much emphasis is placed on trying to perfect the instrument instead of trying to realize the Buddha Mind.

 

 

Buddhism approaches X differently

"I have no picture of this electromagnetic field that is in any sense accurate." — Richard Feynman

 Scientific theories boiled down to their essence are just different ways of looking at X—still not knowing X.  This ‘looking’, it is important to add, is never without the help of instruments which operate to assist direct looking.  (We need to keep in mind what the basic definition of an instrument is.  It “is a means whereby something is achieved.”)  These instruments as means include ideas, logic, mathematics, and various apparatus such as a telescope which extend the senses—but all of them modify X in some measure.  

When Western science claims to know X, it is not X they actually know—not even a copy.  It is a changed and altered X that has been determined by the means, i.e., their instruments.  For example, in string theory (a theory of the beginning of everything) X is changed and altered by the instrument of mathematics, itself, so that we end up with 1 followed by 500 zeros as the number of string theories—neither proved nor disproved!

Buddhism, which approaches X differently than Western science, is concerned with viewing or beholding X without the help of any instruments.  This amounts to a getting rid of all opinions and reflections in such a way that X is allowed to be itself; certainly not as we imagine it or condition it to be through ideas and presuppositions.  This includes getting rid of simple immediacy or just being.  Even reliance on our senses must be gotten rid of.  It can be argued that sensory knowledge radically changes X so that X is never X but an illusion.  

To realize ultimate reality we cannot use any instruments, least of all the senses and our language.  To see the Dharma as the Buddha did or X is to behold it in its own right.  The West has a difficult time with this.  It wants to see X but on its own terms.  Such an attitude—an incorrigible attitude—only leads the West on a fool’s errand.

 

Dogen Zen and real Zen

Most of the Zen in the West is what I shall call for now “Dogen Zen” which follows Dogen’s practice of “just sitting” (shikantaza) which Dogen believed is synonymous with enlightenment.  In the West, there are variations of Dogen Zen from “Sanbokyodan” to the “Dogen Sangha”, to name just two.  

Despite nominal differences found in Dogen Zen most Western Zennists, it is fair to say, follow the teachings of Dogen and much less the teachings of the Buddha and Mahayana Buddhism.  One might even say, Dogen is their Buddha.  Incidentally, Dogen had utter contempt for the Zen sect itself.  He said of it that it “is a designation for Mara.  Those who use the devil’s terminology are the accomplices of the devil and not followers of the Buddha and the patriarchs” (Dumoulin, A History of Zen Buddhism [1963], p. 160).

Dogen began his Buddhist career as a Tendai monk as did Nichiren and other noteworthy Japanese Buddhists during the Kamakura period.  He understood the basis of Zen to rest on the theory that everything, that is, all phenomena, is the Buddha-nature but then took one step further when he maintained that meditational practice (zazen, shikantaza) and enlightenment/realization are one.   More precisely, while beings  have Buddha-nature, innately, acquisition of the Buddha-nature can only be achieved by the physical act of cross-legged sitting (zazen).  With the physical body in the cross-legged position, Dogen believed the mind is likewise in the state of the Buddha.  It is only by means of seated meditation that innate enlightenment is manifested.

Dogen Zen, to be sure, is a simplification of Mahayana Buddhism.  But Mahayana Buddhism makes no mention of seated meditation or that zazen is one with enlightenment.  Nor is the physical practice of ‘just sitting’ (shikantaza) mentioned in the Mahayana canon or the Pali/Agama canon.  

Comparing Dogen Zen with traditional Zen, the latter is about Mind’s endeavor to realize itself and by doing so to distinguish itself (prajñâ) from its illusory phenomena thus winning emancipation.  In short, mind sets out to realize Buddha Mind which is not a phenomenon like our thoughts or, for that matter, anything like the Five Aggregate apparatus we call our body.  To realize Mind, Zen doesn’t rely on physical cross-legged sitting.  Rather, it is a process of awakening to one’s true spiritual nature which lies beyond the pale of the physical.  In fact, it was never the intention of the first teachers who brought Zen or Ch’an to China to teach just sitting as if sitting is enlightenment.  These teachers rightly taught Buddha Mind.  They wanted us to directly experience this luminous substance for ourselves.  Further, with such an awakening we shall see that all things are composed from it, being in this regard mere superimpositions like the snake superimposed on the rope.

It needs emphasizing that Dogen Zen is not about the importance of seeing Buddha Mind—it is about the practice of sitting.  When Dogen Zen is measured against the Buddhist canon, especially the canon of Mahayana Buddhism, it comes up short.  It is Mind that is the essence of Mahayana, according to the Mahayanasraddhotpadasastra (The Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana attributed to Asvaghosha), not zazen.  And this is acknowledged by all the Zen masters of the golden age of Zen. 

My advice to beginners is be aware of what your Zen center teaches.  If it teaches ‘Dogen Zen’ keep in mind its limitations and try to study other forms of Buddhism from Theravada to Tibetan Buddhism.  Don’t limit yourself.

 

Another look at Alan Watts' beat and square Zen including Zen

Alan Watts' essay, Beat Zen, Square Zen, and Zen, published in the spring of 1958 in the Chicago Review, takes a look at "beat Zen" and "square Zen".  Both beat and square Zen, it is fair to say, constitute a negative reaction to Zen's mystery:  a mystery which never ceases to escape culture's iron cage.  If we bear in mind that according to Watts, "Zen is above all the Liberation of the mind from conventional thought", neither the beat anti-culturist nor the square culturalist has a nose for authentic Zen, nor a legitimate claim to represent it. 

The beat mentality according to Watts is "a revolt which does not seek to change the existing order but simply turns away from it to find the significance of life in subjective experience rather then objective achievement."  Finding consolation in Zen, the beat Zennist imagines to have obtained a license if not to mention a justification for almost any kind of peak subjective experience as being satori.  It is somewhat different for the square Zennist.

The square Zennist Watt's informs us is on "a quest for the right spiritual experience, for a satori which will receive the stamp (inka) of approved and established authority.  There will even be certificates to hang on the wall."  Elaborating on what Watts said, square Zen places a great deal of emphasis on institutional conformity and authority held to be 'tradition' (C., tsung).  But behind this, the history of Zen and its literature paints a somewhat different picture.  It not the picture of a great institution like the Catholic Church but one of awakened beings who have beheld the same transcendent medium as the Buddha; who have in a nutshell, awakened to absolute Mind. 

Summing up the two Zens, Watts observes:

"Thus for beat Zen there must be no effort, no discipline, no artificial striving to attain satori or to be anything but what one is. But for square Zen there can be no true satori without years of meditation-practice under the stern supervision of a qualified master."

As for the third Zen which Watts doesn't seem to take up although it is mentioned in the title, this is not Zen in the abstract—this is Zen that has been handed down to us in literature which paradoxically is always pointing to that which transcends the Buddhist canon, namely, the Buddha's very own enlightenment.  This, to be sure, is a profound mystery which goes beyond the subjective pale of human experience and its institutions; which is the heart of Zen.

 

Who am I?

If I ask the question, “Who am I?” seeking to know who is exactly asking this question, I will not find the answer I am looking for because I expect the answer to be something determinate—even if a mere thought.  Because of my demand for the determinate no possible repetition of the question will serve to reveal the questioner because, in truth, the questioner is fundamentally no-thing—never a determinate thing.  

From the perspective of a Bodhisattva, who is asking the question is much different than for an ordinary person.  It is clear to the one who has entered the stream or the Bodhisattva that the questioner is utterly transcendent.  Not only is the questioner utterly transcendent but the Bodhisattva has realized this transcendent, primordial nature, trying to perfect it by eliminating the obstructions that hide it so that it becomes more outshining.

In a Kafka way of looking at this matter, the problem is somewhat like a television in search of the signal that it is designed to amplify.  Now if we accept that what is fundamental is the television signal, then the television's search for a signal becomes a futile one since the signal is not television-like—it transcends the television, in other words. 

As strange as it sounds, the signal will have to awaken to itself by detaching from the television set by saying to itself: “This is not mine, I am not this, this is not my self.”  (If this sounds familiar, it should be, it is a phrase from the Pali canon used many times by the Buddha.)

It is important to keep in mind that the question “Who am I?” does have a very real answer but it cannot be found in the Five Aggregate/psychophysical body, consisting of form, feeling, perception, volitional formations and sensory consciousness.  It is far more subtle, in fact, hyper-subtle. 

 

Transmitting the absolute medium

In the apocryphal account found in The Record of Transmitting the Light (J., Denkoroku) where the World-honored One holds up a flower and blinks in front of Mahakashyapa to transmit the Treasury of the Eye of the True Dharma and Wondrous Mind of Nirvana, there was essentially nothing transmitted.  Gold need not transmit gold or water transmit water, or for that matter, air or space need not transmit air or space.  The Buddha and Mahakashyapa, we are to understand, awakened to the absolute medium of existence which had been in front of their noses all along.  The exchange between the two was theatrics.

Until each of us sees this medium which in Zen is to merge with the original face we remain clueless as to what is transmitted.  Even if we study Zen at a Zen center and get an institutional transmission which entitles us to wear some fancy robes we are not spiritually transmitted because we haven’t the foggiest idea what enabled the Buddha to hold up a flower and blink or what enabled Mahakashyapa to smile.  Only the Black Dragons know this who have encountered face to face the ultimate medium of existence which the Buddha called “profound, of deep splendor, difficult to see, difficult to understand, incomprehensible, having the incomprehensible as its scope, fine, subtle, the sense of which can only be understood by the wise.”

Despite my words, cunning humans who have infiltrated the sacred precincts of Buddhism will attempt to tell beginners that Zen is not difficult at all, just sit.  That is all you have to do.  But Zen is much more than sitting.  According to Zen master Jakushitsu the “investigation of Zen is for realizing the nature of Mind.”  This ‘nature’ of Mind is not to be confused with Mind’s myriad phenomenalizations which are like ocean waves.  The nature of Mind is the absolute medium which is never phenomenal.  By bringing up a single thought or concept we hide this medium.

Those reading this blog I hope get lucky.  Maybe one day watching a football game or watching their kids play suddenly all mind phenomena will stop.  In an instant, they will  behold the medium or the nature of Mind that enabled the Buddha to hold up a flower and blink and Mahakashyapa to smile.

 

Letting go of our Western fictions

Over the years, I have found that hardly anyone becomes a successful Buddhist realizing even for a split second pure Mind without first letting go of their belief in Western ‘truth and knowledge’, which includes science (especially mathematics).  In one word, it is all a grand ‘fiction’—but a useful and important fiction—but a fiction nevertheless!  (This is why I have done a few blogs on Stephen Batchelor.  He is one of those purblind Western Buddhists who can’t see through the West’s fictional curtain; who believes Buddhism needs to be Westernized!)

A philosopher I have only recently discovered; one who can be of great value in helping Western Buddhists dump the West’s grand fictions is the German philosopher Hans Vaihinger (1852–1933).  His important work is entitled, The Philosophy of ‘As if’: A System of the Theoretical, Practical and Religious Fictions of Mankind (1925).  I have copied the following section from Fears and Symbols: An Introduction to the Study of Western Civilization (2001) by Elemér Hankiss.  It will help the reader of this blog to get a good grasp on where Vaihinger is coming from.

According to Vaihinger, fictions are constructs of the human mind and imagination: concepts, classifications, relationships, logical devices, and 'laws'.  They are ideas which have no counterpart in reality, but which enable us to deal with it better than we otherwise could (Ansbacher and Ansbacher, 1956, 77).  They are tools, catalysts, guideposts, which help us orient ourselves and survive in this world.  They constitute a scaffolding around an unknown reality.  They must be discarded "if no longer needed", that is, after they have helped us to handle—and not necessarily understand—the piece of reality in question.  They are not 'true' in the sense of 'adequately representing reality'.  They misrepresent reality, they are 'errors', but "expedient errors...of great practical value", without which we could not control reality (Ansbacher and Ansbacher, 1956, 83; Vaihinger, 1924, 108, 145).

From among the many examples analyzed by Vaihinger, let me mention the lines of longitude and latitude: they do not exist in reality but are indispensable instruments for navigation.  The parts of the day, 'morning' and 'evening', or the very concept of time as we use it, not to mention our everyday concept of space, are constructs without which we could barely have survived.  Zero-degree centigrade is also a useful but artificial construct, just as the rules of logic, the juristic fiction of laws, utopias, or works of art are fictions, but useful fictions.  Myths and religions, the concept of the 'soul' in psychology, and the concept of human freedom in philosophy are, according to Vaihinger, fictions, but also indispensable preconditions of moral responsibility and social coexistence (Vaihinger, 1924, xiii, 28, 147).

Vaihinger states that fictions appeared relatively late in the history of European thought because their existence implied "an emancipation from immediate perceptions and from the belief that thought is identical with reality".  Plato recognized the fictional character of myths, and Aristotle that of some mathematical abstractions.  In scholastic philosophy, the nominalist school emphasized the fictional character of ideas.  But "fictions were first extensively employed from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, particularly in the fields of mathematics, physics, sociology and philosophy" (1924, xvi, 135–42, 145, 153)" (pp. 277–278).

One thing that Buddhism does is it helps us to get off the Western “scaffolding around an unknown reality” so that we might be able to set foot on this unknown reality or Suchness—a reality scaffold-free.  For those Buddhists who are afraid to let go of the Western scaffolding; who fight with those of us trying to pry their fingers loose, I only have this to say, “Your fears are unnecessary.”

 

Different meditations

As we might expect, Japanese Rinzai Zen has a different take on “sitting Zen” (zazen) than Japanese Soto Zen.  It has the ring of a metaphor—not a rigid practice that is totally dependent upon putting the physical body into a sitting posture.  

 Rinzai Zen master Daikaku (1213–1279), who was Chinese, came to Japan with several of his disciples and  spent thirty-three years teaching.  He says of sitting meditation that it “is the inner mind of the enlightened ones.”  He next goes on to say, “The essence of sitting meditation is the nonproduction of a single thought” which he defines as “what is known as the original essence of the mind.”  Following this he says that, “If you merge with this original essence, this is called the realization of thusness of the reality of things.”  Thusness, I need to add, pertains to the fundamental substance of reality, this being Mind, which is like space but only spiritual not material.  

 Again, quoting a Zen patriarch, Daikaku says, “Walking is also meditation; sitting is also meditation, speaking, silent, active or still, the body is peaceful.” 

 One more thing of interest concerns practice—a very important term thrown around by Western Zennists.  We learn from Zen master Daikaku that practice is unnecessary “if you know the fundamental reality” which he further goes on to say is like the cure of a disease in which the medicine is no longer needed.  This is not the case with Soto Zen.  Soto Zen advances the fiction that practice and enlightenment are identical so that one has to practice zazen endlessly to stay enlightened.  This is quite absurd.  It’s an idea not found in the Buddhist canon.

 

 

Letting go, falling into Suchness

It is fundamental to Zen that the person who is committed to its process give up the strong belief that Suchness or tathata  (i.e., spiritual substance) is perceivable as something determinate for sensory consciousness.  It is not.  The direct penetration into Suchness is a mystery; moreover, it shall ever remain a mystery even while we stand in its presence, awakened. 

To reiterate, Suchness attained will always remain incapable of being adequately described or perceived by our senses, including consciousness.  Put a different way, when we step off of our psychophysical scaffolding onto Suchness, Suchness will still be a complete mystery except that we are now this mystery.  What we will see as a result of this stepping off is the psychophysical qua the psychophysical because we are no longer psychophysical scaffolding anymore.  In the words of Zen master Goso:

“The sweet melon is sweet even through the stem;
The bitter gourd is bitter even to the roots.”

The world, including this psychophysical body of ours, is a much different world from the standpoint of the mystery of attained Suchness.  A huge thing like a galaxy is now the huge body of mysterious Suchness—a photon is now a small body of mysterious Suchness.

With satori, the so-called abyss that we once feared, we have become.  Looking now from the vantage point of the abyss or Suchness, we really come to see what ‘clinging’ means and what drives it.  This reminds me of the fifth koan, Kyogen Mounts the Tree, in Paul Reps’ book, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones.

"KYOGEN SAID:  “Zen is like a man hanging in a tree by his teeth over a precipice.  His hands grasp no branch, his feet rest on no limb, and under the tree another person asks him:  ‘Why did Bodhidharma come to China from India?'

If the man in the tree does not answer, he fails; and if he does answer, he falls and loses his life.  Now what shall he do?”

Of course the obvious answer is simply to let go.  But now we come back to the beginning of this blog about the process of Zen.  The average person, as they look into the terrifying abyss of Suchness, demand to know what this Suchness is before they commit themselves to letting go.  But this can’t be done.  For those who have let go; who have converged with the mysterious, undying ground of Suchness—being Suchness, itself—they can only laugh at such stupid demands as they pull out a saw, or grease the scaffolding so the adept will slip off of it and fall into the mysterious abyss of Suchness.  

 

Mexican Coca-Cola and Zen

If Zen Buddhism were Coca-Cola, Western Zen would be like the high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) type served in a plastic bottle.  The real Zen, still found in some parts of China and Korea, would be like Mexican Coca-Cola made with cane sugar and served in a thick glass bottle that has a real old-fashioned metal cap on it.  

Those, my age, who can still remember drinking Coca-Cola back in the good old days (before 1980)  say Mexican Coca-Cola is the real deal; authentic to the last drop.

I find it interesting how we turn away, or are easily led away, from tradition, all for the greater profit and glory of the company or the institution, when it doesn’t have to be this way.  In the case of Western Zen it turned away from the mystical side of Zen, that is, realizing our nature and becoming Buddha (C. chien-hsing ch'eng-fo) deciding, instead, to go the route of self-help psychology which, frankly, has nothing to do with the tradition (C., tsung) of Zen Buddhism. 

I am sure not everyone will agree with me.  There is a big market in self-help Zen which essentially teaches that zazen is a panacea for all of our worldly troubles.  Just sit!  But I prefer the old fashioned Zen of Tsung-mi and Huang-po, to mention just two names.  Their Zen is spiritually more satisfying just like Mexican Coco-Cola is more satisfying than the HFCS kind in the plastic bottle.