The Zennist

The purpose of Zen

For a beginner or a seasoned veteran of the zazen pillow it is appropriate to ask what is the real purpose of Zen.  If I flip through my copy of Shunyru Suzuki’s book, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind (1996) he tells the reader that the true purpose of Zen “is to see things as they are, to observe things as they are, and to let everything go as it goes” (p. 33).  Suzuki’s understanding of the purpose of Zen is a bit off, however.  It needs some unpacking.

To see things as they are is to see them exactly the way a Buddha sees them because that is truly the way things are!  On the other hand, to see things not as the are, means to see them with an unenlightened mind.  In a way, to see something as it really is, the way a Buddha does, is not see it!  Let’s take the example of looking at a gold lion.  To see the gold lion the way it really is, is to see that there is no lion.  There is only gold.  The lion is a superimposition.  Thingy-ness, in other words, like lions, trees, grass, and the lawnmower, does not fundamentally exist.  There is only Mind:  Mind which is the fundamental substance or Suchness (tathata).

From the foregoing, the real purpose of Zen should be to realize Buddha Mind which we are capable of realizing if we stop clinging to unrealities.  Only with such a Mind can we see the way things are, living accordingly.  I think a better definition of the “purpose of Zen” comes from Wood’s, The Dictionary of Zen.

“In China, Zen is also called hsin tsung, which means "the teaching of the Mind," referring of course to the Buddha-mind, with its Enlightenment.  This is really also the perfecting of the mind, for in the perfecting of the mind there is the discovery of the Buddha-mind.  This is the very central and essential purpose of Zen Buddhism” (p. 159).

 

Dogen and the tail to tail transmission

What is actually transmitted in modern Western Soto Zen, which almost exclusively rests upon the teachings of Dogen Zenji, is not difficult to pin down.  But first of all, it is not the classical Mind to Mind transmission because this transmission has nothing to do with Soto’s just-sitting-meditation (J., shikataza) in which the emphasis is not upon realizing Mind but, instead, is on a physical posture.

Ignoring the Mind to Mind transmission of classical Zen, what Dogen Zenji understood to be transmitted is sitting meditation (zazen, shikantaza).  Dogen, as a matter of fact, said:

"The correctly transmitted dharma from buddha to buddha and from patriarch to patriarch has always been just to sit...  This is very clear.  Zazen itself is already the ultimate posture of satori.  In other words, satori is just doing zazen" (Eihei Kôroku, vol. 4).

To be blunt, what Dogen is advocating is spiritually absurd.  The Buddha came eventually to reject, as the Bodhisattva, reliance on all physical meditational practices as a means of awakening.  This is part of the canonical record—it’s beyond dispute.  Such a rejection, by establishing, instead, the four dhyânas, is what made Buddhism unique in ancient India.  The dhyânas are solely for the purpose of gaining the transcendent, that is, Mind.

As I see Dogen’s method, his emphasis on the physical is a fortiori a denial of the spiritual path, itself, which alone leads to pure Mind that includes the seeing and actualization of our Buddha-nature.  

Related to Dogen, in an earlier blog I brought up the Aesop fable about a fox who tried, unsuccessfully, to convince his fellow foxes to give up their tails, so that he wouldn’t have to face the embarrassment of admitting to the other foxes that he lost his tail in a trap.  In this regard, I see Dogen as being like the fox who lost his tail except that he was successful in getting his fellow Zen foxes to cut off their spiritual tails which means, more to the point, he was successful in getting his fellow Zennists to cut off all spiritual access to pure Mind by taking up the physical practice of just sitting.