Throwing out the baby

The proverb which warns us that we might be throwing out the baby with the bathwater in some of our undertakings is an old one but always timely.  When Zen came to the West with the baby and the bathwater, understanding what is the essential meaning of Zen became important.  For example, is zazen the baby, that is, the meaning of Zen, or the bathwater?  Are Zen’s various rituals and observances which, by the way have never been unique to Zen, the baby or the bathwater?

Certainly, it is a fact that there have been periods in Zen’s history when Zen has undergone a reformation:  something getting tossed out, in other words.  As we might expect, the reformers have always maintained that their intentions were of the noblest kind.  Still, inadvertently, they may have tossed out the baby with the bathwater in their zeal.

Modern Zen has not escaped the problem of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.  If you check in at your local Zen center, you may not be aware that your modern Western Zen center may have thrown out something resembling the baby with the bathwater insofar as seated meditation or zazen appears to be the centerpiece.  But real Zen, according to contemporary Zen master Joshu Sasaki, is not about sitting (cp. Zen Notes XX, No. 8).

Looking back to the early history of Zen it was not regarded as a school based on seated meditation.  During the Sung period, a number of Zennists argued that Zen or Ch’an was a synonym for the Buddha Mind (fo-hsin).  Zen has nothing to do with sitting and everything to do with realizing Buddha Mind.  In fact, dhyana from which the words “ch’an” and “zen” are derived is not about sitting.  Sitting is not contained the the accepted Buddhist Sanskrit definition of dhyana. 

An example of the Zen baby that has been tossed out along with the cultural bathwater is evinced in the words of Zen master Szu-hsin Wu-shin of Huang-lung (1044–1115):

“While still alive, be therefore assiduous in practising Dhyana.  The practice consists in abandonments.  ‘The abandonment of what?’ you may ask. Abandon your four elements (bhuta), abandon your five aggregates (skandha), abandon all the workings of your relative consciousness (karmavijnana), which you have been cherishing since eternity; retire within your inner being and see into the reason of it.  As your self-reflection grows deeper and deeper, the moment will surely come upon you when the spiritual flower will suddenly burst into bloom, illuminating the entire universe.  The experience is incommunicable, though you yourselves know perfectly well what it is” (Suzuki, Essays in Zen Buddhism (1933), p. 8).

As the reader can see, true dhyana (the baby), to a large extent, has been tossed out of modern Zen (read, for example, the books of late Zen master Joko Beck).  Furthermore, dhyana has nothing whatsoever to do with sitting.  It has everything to do with abandoning our psychophysical body and the material world to which we cling so that we might behold pure Mind thus realizing that all things are illusory and unreal.  There is only Mind, in other words.

 

Comments

[clyde]

Azanshi; I wish you well on your path.

[Azanshi]

The Clydeinator wrote;

"Azanshi; What is your spiritual practice? What do you recommend to others?"

My practise is unworldly. Don ´t bother to ask how and where. It´s way over your head.

You know, Java Junkies hilarious comments about your deplorable lack of wisdom are quite entertaining. Sure made me laugh. Anyone who tries to distort the dharma as much as you do, Clyde-boy, is surely dumb. I mean dumb as the guy, who after having purchased a gun at the nearest shop, tried to shoot his shadow for pointing a gun at him! Now if that is not real dogen-zen, what is?

[Kojizen]

Imperishable light, the poem by Zen master Ch’ing-yüan Wei-shin is:

“Before I had studied Zen for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains, and waters as waters. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw that mountains are not mountains, and waters are not waters. But now that I have got its very substance I am at rest. For it’s just that I see mountains once again as mountains, and waters once again as waters.”

Until one gets the very substance they can't grasp the third.

[Imperishable Night]

The Shobogenzo is not easy to understand. The guy you quoted arbitrarily defines what is the "Japanese character" and then deduces that Dogen, since Japanese, had to be like that, too. It's a joke.

The first step to understand Master Dogen's ideas is to make distinctions between "three steps":

- mountains are mountains, rivers are rivers;

- mountains are not mountains, rivers are not rivers;

- mountains are again mountains, rivers are again rivers.

Different Dogen's chapters reveal different facets of the Buddha-Dharma.

Zennist stresses only the "mountains are not mountains; rivers are not rivers" part, ad nauesam. Now, it's not bad that he does it, because it's PRECISELY what is missing in Western pop Buddhism.

But that position, too, is not the ultimate one. The ultimate is the "traceless Enlightenment", the "mountains being again mountains", or "Mind being nothing else than mountains and rivers". - This is the hardest to achieve. As Kodo Sawaki puts it: "No sickness is more difficult to cure than satori." - That is to say, people who can't forget their own "enlightenment" or their own transcendent experiences.

It is not that in Dogen, we don't find the Mind doctrine or transcendent claims. Far from it, anyone who spent 10 seconds with the Shobogenzo should see that. But that Dogen speaks from the perspective of transcending both "phenomena" and "that which is beyond phenomena".

All this is not Dogen's invention but rooted in Zen tradition.

[clyde]

Azanshi; What is your spiritual practice? What do you recommend to others?