Zen's barrier that has no door

As one might expect, Zen for the beginner is overwhelmingly an experience with the language of Zen, not the object which the words of Zen point to; which goes beyond language, including everything mental and physical.  Putting this in a slightly different way, what the words of Zen point to cannot be put into words or some kind of physical practice or structure.  

The words of Zen are about Zen—not Zen, itself.  They can only surround Zen’s mystery.  Even if one comes face to face with the profound mystery of Zen, what they've intuited cannot be transmitted to another as if it were something determinate. 

Bad  habits don’t give way easily.

Try as they might, beginners and even seasoned veterans can’t put down the crowbar of language.  They use it unconsciously to get to the heart of Zen.  This includes physical practices such as sitting on a meditation pillow.  This also includes following ‘external Zen’:  the religious structure that the culture has placed around the deep mystery of Zen.

This leads us to Zen’s barrier that has no door.  We can think of this strange barrier as our psychophysical totality.  Zen leads us to this barrier and invites us to enter.  But we are unable to pass through it because we see nothing else besides our psychophysical totality through which the external, humanized world appears.  Furthermore, we imagine that if we do pass through this barrier we will fall into some kind of deadly abyss!

Whether we are studying a Sutta from the Pali canon or a Sutra from the Mahayana canon, sooner or later we come to realize  the clear message of the Buddha:  that enlightenment or bodhi consists in transcending our present psychophysical totality which is Zen’s doorless barrier.  It is a powerful illusory barrier—a prison if you like—that keeps our Buddha-nature from recognizing itself in the welter of phenomenal experiences.  Every thought and experience that arises is the barrier.  Even the most subtle thoughts are the barrier.  To pass through Zen’s barrier requires extraordinary commitment, skill, and creativity.  What this all adds up to is this:  if we wish to pass through Zen’s doorless barrier we must have a first hand intuition of pure Mind which is the substance from which the barrier is composed.  Then we will meet our true self, that is the Buddha. 

 

Comments

[clyde]

Azanshi & Kojizen;

You write as if awakening is the end of the path. And it is in the sense that the Buddha said this about his awakening, "Birth is ended, the holy life fulfilled, the task done! There is nothing further for the sake of this world."

But it’s also just the beginning of living as an awakened human being. As I previously noted, the Buddha lived his life, not in isolation, but with his sangha, walking and teaching. So, what is interesting to me is how you, as awakened human beings live. Do you maintain your relationships to family and friends? Do you maintain your homes? Do you keep your day jobs? How about your relationships to co-workers and neighbors and shop keepers?

Do you manifest the wisdom and compassion of a Buddha in your activities?

[Bob Morris]

I'm beginning to suspect that Clyde and Azanshi are the same person.

[azanshi]

Clyde…clyde…you are constantly breaking new guiness records of spiritual stupidity. As I see it, the chance for you to become enlightened about your true buddha nature, in this lifetime or the coming, is probably not higher than you cutting yourself and spilling blue blood all over that nice carpet in your home. In other words, zero.

Take it from me, white boy, give up zen buddhism and try Islam instead. Who knows, naming yourself Mohammar Al-Yussuf with a large beard, 5 camels and 4 wives, might become you.

[Kojizen]

Clyde, Along with old Bodhi, you're beginning to sound more like a Christian. This is from Josiah Royce, The Problem of Christianity.

"Mysticism is the always young, it is the childlike, it is the essentially immature aspect of the deeper religious life. Its ardor, its pathos, its illusions, and its genuine illuminations have all the characters of youth about them, characters beautiful but capricious. Mature religion of the Christian type takes, and must take, the form of loyalty,—the loyalty which Paul lived out, and described. Loyalty fulfills the individual, not by annulling or quenching his individual self-expression, but by teaching him to assert himself through an active and creative devotion to the community."

[clyde]

Yes, of course, the Bodhisattva Vow to liberate all beings. But why bother, if one believes only the transcendent is worth bothering about?

Here’s another view:
“In each historical period, the dharma finds new means to unfold its potentials in ways precisely linked to that era’s distinctive historical conditions. I believe that our own era provides the appropriate historical stage for the transcendent truth of the dharma to bend back upon the world and engage human suffering at multiple levels—even the lowest, harshest, and most degrading levels—not in mere contemplation but in effective, relief-granting action illuminated by its own world-transcending goal.”

from A Challenge to Buddhists by Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi,
Buddhadharma, Fall 2007 http://archive.thebuddhadharma.com/issues/2007/fall/commentary.php

I believe both the transcendent and the world, as it is with all its pain and suffering, are worth bothering about. This is what the Buddha taught and Dharma practice leads to.