According to the highest teachings of Zen which still flow down from the Lankavatara Sutra there is no external world apart from absolute Mind itself, although we would like to believe otherwise. This same Mind, when it fully recognizes itself (samadhi) realizes, at the same time, the triple world of existence is no more than a configuration of itself being in this regard an illusion. In other words, there is really nothing other than Mind; all else is empty. Just like gold which can be made into countless shapes there is nothing real except gold—the shapes are illusory.
Avidya (ignorance) and delusion rule us when we mistake what is unreal for the real, tenaciously clinging to the unreal because we imagine it to be real. This leads to samsara which we are bound to as long as we chase after and desire the unreal. The Lankavatara Sutra warns us that the world we elect to cling to is "the same as a dream" a subject the Buddha in the Lankavatara Sutra seems to never get tired of teaching.
Mahamati, it is like a man, who, dreaming in his sleep of a country variously filled with women, men, elephants, horses, cars, pedestrians, villages, towns, hamlets, cows, buffalos, mansions, woods, mountains, rivers, and lakes enters into its inner appartments and is awakened. While awakened thus, he recollects the city and its inner apartments. What do you think, Mahamati? Is this person to be regarded as wise, who is recollecting the various unrealities he has seen in his dream?
Said Mahamati: Indeed, he is not, Blessed One.
The Zen that comes to us today doesn't chime with the older, more advanced Zen that is found in the Lankavatara Sutra. Few modern teacher teach from the Lankavatara Sutra emphasizing that we stop clinging to the triple world which is dream-like. Instead, modern Zen seems to teach its flock how to cope with the modern world. It seems less like a dream in that respect while what is real is all but ignored. One gets the impression from modern Zen that we can make the dream a better, happier dream! There is even the belief that the dream state and the waking state are equally ultimate reality (Dogen)!
Such a position, however, is going in the wrong direction. It isn’t Buddhism. It offers to the serious student no refuge except a false one. Awakening to Mind (buddha) is the only true refuge.
"The world is the same as a dream, and so are the multiplicities of things in it; [the wise] see property, touch, death, a world-teacher, and work as of the same nature" (Lankavatarasutra).
At a friend's funeral in 1955 Einstein said to the widow:
"Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Albert_Einstein
Posted by: Bob Morris | August 29, 2011 at 08:59 PM
More support to what I wrote (that the Ultimate Truth is the non-duality of Ultimate and phenomena):
"One who has entered Chan does not see basic substance and phenomena as two things standing in opposition to each other. They cannot even be illustrated as being the back and palm of a hand. This is because phenomena themselves are basic substance, and apart from phenomena there is no basic substance to be found. The reality of basic substance exists right in the unreality of phenomena, which change ceaselessly and have no constant form. This is the Truth." (Chan Master Sheng-Yen)
The wise Chan master says here that there is no PHENOMENA and a MIND (or Ultimate Reality) existing separate from them.
But that the very UNREALITY OF PHENOMENA *IS* THE MIND. So Mind and Phenomena are two aspects of the same. The unreality of phenomena is the Reality of Mind.
Posted by: Imperishable Night | August 29, 2011 at 06:47 PM
Since your understanding of the buddha-dharma is way more advanced than mine, I won't dare to criticize you anymore. I already learned a great deal from you and I feel very happy that I can learn from this blog.
From what I read of Dogen, I got another impression; not that he doesn't separate Mind from phenomena; he does. But he also doesn't. Samsara is nirvana, nirvana is samsara. The state of complete non-duality I understand it to be found in Nagarjuna or Dogen. - But this is not the position of worldlings; wordlings see in phenomena reality; the Awakened Ones have seen phenomena do not really exist, and only Mind does; but then, transcended even that, and forgot their own Awakened state, and return to phenomena again, seeing the non-duality of Mind and phenomena. Support for this is found in Zen literature; in Huang Po, for instance. But anyway, Satori is so remote from my deluded state that I can't really comment on it. Still, Dogen is regarded as a Zen Master so we should be careful to dismiss him or say he is not compatible with the Sutras. In fact, there is more compatibility with Dogen and old Buddhism/sutras than Rinzai masters and the sutras. The stress on koans or non-linguistic teaching methods is totally different than anything in early Buddhism. While something very similar to Zazen (vipassana) was taught by the Buddha himself.
Dogen says everything in the three worlds is really just One Bright Pearl. This is one aspect. The aspect of absolute separation of Mind and phenomena. It's true, but it's not ultimate reality. Ultimate reality is neither Mind nor phenomena. I think this is what Dogen is saying; it's the ultimate expression that Nagarjuna and Dogen and the prajnaparamita sutras express, and goes beyond even the Mind doctrine; it's the Perfection of Wisdom.
The Korean Zen Master, Seung Sahn, explained these aspects of reality, and it's in this video, at 3:50 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7OYwYyYT6s
I'm mostly just parroting words from other people. I don't have authentic, genuine insight like you seem to have. But still, even this parroting may be beneficial; one has to parrot first, to get used to the terminology and so on ... to practice wielding a toy sword before grabbing the true sword of wisdom. This is what I'm doing, practicing with parroting and a wooden sword. If you criticize me, it will be very beneficial to me.
Posted by: Imperishable Night | August 29, 2011 at 11:28 AM