The Zennist

The bad logic of Buddhist materialists

It doesn’t matter how many Dharma centers a person attends, or how many Buddhist chat forums they’ve contributed to, the overarching tenor of modern Buddhism in the West is materialism.  Buddhism in the West only wears an Asian robe.  Beneath the robe is the heart of a materialist.  

One of the cardinal tenets of materialism, going back to the time of Gautama, is the nonbelief in a spiritual absolute which survives the death of the human being; which is unconditioned.  This dogma appears in Buddhism as the doctrine of ‘no self’.  Oddly, this dogma arises, supposedly, from statements made by the Buddha which simply cannot be construed as no self.  Here is one example.

“Bhikkhus, form is nonself [anattâ, lit. not the self].  What is nonself should be seen as it really is with correct wisdom thus:  ‘This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self.’  Feeling is nonself... Perception is nonself ... Volitional formations are nonself ... Consciousness is nonself.  What is nonself should be seen as it really is with correct wisdom:  ‘This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my  self [na meso attâ].’” (S. iii. 22–23). (trans. Bhikkhu Bodhi.  Brackets and emphasis are mine.)

Towards the end of this passage, we learn that not a single aggregate mentioned (there are five) is the self (attâ) of the Buddha!  This leads to an important question:  How does the Buddha know that each aggregate is clearly not his self?  It would be one thing to be a materialist who could not care at all about self or its survival; who assumes that when the body dies, that’s it.  But in the passage, the Buddha sees that it is very important to be able to distinguish his self from nonself (i.e., each one of the five aggregates).

At least we can say that for a Buddha he is able to distinguish his self from what is not his self, namely the Five Aggregates which comprise a human being.  The ability to discern between the self and what is not the self first requires that we fully know what the self is!  How else might we distinguish self from nonself without first knowing the self or attâ?

A materialist could not distinguish self from what is not the self.  The idea of self has no interest for the materialist, in fact.  The self is regarded as an epiphenomenon of the human body. For the materialist, nothing survives at death.  Buddhism does not teach this.  It runs counter to it.

Every discourse in which the Buddha teaches that the Five Aggregates, that make up the human body, are not his self, presupposes a self.  It is impossible to claim objects a, b, c, d & e, are not x, or non-x, without an accurate foreknowledge of x.  Without foreknowledge of self the discernment of what is not the self is impossible.

Learning about nirvana

Pop Buddhism seems, more than often, confused about nirvana.  It’s a subject hardly taken up in a Dharma center.  One gets the impression that modern Buddhists are more interested in meditation than learning about nirvana.  

Not atypical for pop Buddhism, in Stephen Batchelor’s book, Buddhism Without Beliefs, nirvana is all but ignored except two minor references.  Ironically, this particular book is heralded as a primer; as a work that has captured the essence of Buddhism.  This is rather odd since a general understanding of nirvana is pivotal, even for the curious, otherwise Buddhism makes no sense.  

Lacking a general understanding of nirvana, what pop Buddhism gives the general public is a procrustean treatment of Buddhism which serves the interests of Western materialism; not Buddhism.  What is chopped off in the modern Procrustean bed is nirvana and with it the transcendent which Buddhism aims at.

It is not an oversimplification to assert that ‘nirvana’ is all about the unconditioned (a better rendering of Pali asankhata is "increate").  This implies that nirvana is beyond the conditioned–it is transcendent.  In other words, nirvana is not something phenomenal that we can point to.  Nor is it something we can think about or make a mental image of.  In the commentarial works of the Pali canon it is said that “nirvana’s own nature is that of being unconditioned.  For therein no trace, even, of conditioned dharmas is witnessed” (Udanatthakatha).

The unconditioned is the true substance and basis of all that is conditioned, i.e., the phenomenal world.  Yet it is free from the effects of conditioning.  When our conditioned body perishes, the unconditioned is not affected.  As an example, a clay pot is conditioned from clay, the unconditioned.  If the pot should break, the clay is not made less although the pot is no more. 

Thus, to realize nirvana is to see the unconditioned which is free of all conditionality and suffering. When our mind becomes, itself, pure and unconditioned, only then do we realize nirvana.  This is from The Questions of King Milinda which confirms what I have said.

Just so it is possible to point out the way to the realization of Nirvana, but impossible to show a cause for its production.  Could a man, who with his natural strength has crossed in a boat over the great ocean, get to the farther shore? – 'Yes, he could.' – But could that man with his natural strength bring the farther shore here? – 'No, he could not' – Just so one can point out the way to the realization of Nirvana, but one cannot show a cause for its production. And what is the reason for that?  Because that dharma, Nirvana, is unconditioned. – 'Is then, Nagesena, Nirvana unconditioned?' – So it is, O king, unconditioned is Nirvana, not made by anything.  Of Nirvana one cannot say that it is produced, or unproduced, or that should be produced; that it is past, or future, or present; or that one can become aware of it by the eye, or the ear, or the nose, or the tongue, or the body. – 'In that case, Nagasena, you indicate Nirvana as a dharma which is not, and Nirvana does not exist' – Nirvana is something which is.  It is cognizable by the mind.  A holy disciple, who has followed the right road, sees Nirvana with a mind which is pure, sublime, straight, unimpeded and disinterested" (Edward Conze, Buddhist Scriptures, 158-59). (Emphasis added.)

The closed mind of the beginner

To some degree, the beginner’s mind is a closed, prejudiced, arrogant mind.  The beginner expects to find that Buddhism agrees with its preconceived opinions.  The beginner doesn’t want to find out that Buddhism may actually go against practically all of his beliefs, or the same, the beginner’s prejudices.  

 Another problem with the beginner’s mind is that it resists change which means it will not open itself up to the possibility that it is wrong.  One notable example is rebirth. Westerners, especially, safeguard this prejudice.  Asians, for the most part, accept the idea of rebirth.  Trying to get Western Buddhists to change their prejudice towards rebirth is next to impossible.  This applies also to beginners.  While such a stubborn attitude is a product of introjection which, specifically, comes from materialism, Western beginners are, nevertheless, reticent to acknowledge this fact and become more open minded.

 Books like Shunryu Suzuki’s book, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, are not helpful either.  They only serve to delude the beginner even more as if there is something precious about a beginner.  The Mind of Zen, that is, the Mind attained by sages like Bodhidharma, is not the same as the mind of the novice or beginner (J. shoshin).  Far from it.

 The huge majority of beginners, with the so-called beginner’s mind, are curiosity seekers.  They make up the bulk of those who join Dharma centers.  These seekers are more interested in the Asian ambiance of a Buddhist temple and the personality of the teacher than the teaching, itself, which requires of us eventually to see the Buddha Mind.

Believe it or not it is possible to have a beginner’s mind and to have studied Zen for twenty years or more.  Even some Zen teachers have a beginner’s mind who have never managed to have the Mind that is awakened (bodhicitta). 

 We don’t begin to leave beginner’s mind until we look for the Buddha Mind.

 “The marvelous brightness of the Buddha-mind, by means of words, is able to enlighten people and deliver them from their illusions one by one. And when someone hears these words, and understands and affirms them, he will know for himself that the Buddha-mind's wonderful brightness surpasses even the brightness of the sun and moon. What an incalculable treasure your Buddha-mind is!” (trans. Waddell, The Unborn [2000], p. 68).

What the Buddhist path is really about

Trying to point out the Buddhist path (S., mârga) is somewhat like trying to point out the direction of time.  It can’t be done.  The Buddhist path doesn’t run in a particular direction.  In Sanskrit, the root word for path, MÂRGA, means seek, look for; search through; strive after; endeavor, and so on.  For example, the word mârgana can be defined as seeking.  Translating mârga with path is problematic since mârga is not a track.  

The Buddhist path is really about a particular kind of seeking that helps us to awaken to our Bodhi Mind of which, presently, we have no knowledge (avidya).  This should remind us of Zen’s famous ten oxherding pictures (J., jûgyû) in which the Buddha Mind is represented by the ox which which a herdboy is searching for.  For those familiar with these pictures they give us a good understanding of what a path or mârga really means in a Buddhist sense.

If we are not seeking for our lost ox (Bodhi Mind) like the herdboy in the first picture, we are not following the Buddha’s path—we are outside of it.  Although this Mind is fundamentally present for us, we are the ones who are actually lost, not it.  Since beginningless time, we have only learned to turn away from this pure Mind so as to become completely lost.  Our thoughts which hide this Mind testify to just how lost we really are.  The first oxherding picture describes these thoughts as “endless wildgrass,” “rivers broaden, the mountains stretch on and the trails go ever deeper,” “evening cicadas shrill in the maples.” (Yamada Mumon, Lectures On The Ten Oxherding Pictures, 18). 

The Buddhist path is intended to take us on an inward seeking journey in which we must see our Bodhi Mind which is immaculate, real and absolute.  It is by first seeking Bodhi Mind like the herdboy that the path begins to appear for us.

Using the Buddha's discourses correctly

In point of time, religious experience should come prior to religious interpretation but for the most part it doesn't.  Still, one cannot, so to speak, reverse engineer religious experience by  just reading the canon of Buddhism.    

Who takes up the Buddhist path should understand that religious literature is only a standard like a plumb line by which to measure their progress towards spiritual awakening.  Underscoring this, religious literature cannot, of itself, awaken anyone as if reading a collection of the Buddha’s discourses (sutra) given by the Buddha will suddenly awaken one from their deep sleep of ignorance.

On the opposite end, rejecting or not studying religious literature as if it were not a standard of experience is foolish.  (Those new to Buddhism fall into this category.)  How then can we know if our religious experience comports with the Buddha’s own experience of awakening?  Without the plumb line of the Buddha’s discourses we will never know if our peak religious experiences are authentic as far as Buddhism is concerned.  This becomes patently obvious when, for example, modern Buddhists believe that awareness of the moment is enlightenment, or being in the here and the now, or just being aware.  Nowhere in the Buddhist canon are such experiences said to be enlightenment.

When we use the Buddha's discourses as standard by which to measure our own spiritual experiences we are using the Buddha’s discourses correctly.

Transparent consciousness

If we imagine that the consciousness which interfaces with our human body is transparent like clear glass then this consciousness, unknowingly, automatically identifies itself with the human body and its passions.  It has no idea that its own body is purely spiritual (this is the manomaya body, a subject found both in the Pali Nikayas and Mahayana Sutras).  Making this blind interfacing more vexing is our addiction to the pleasures of the human body.  The extreme addiction of this blindness leads to materialism.  Such a spiritual body is vehemently denied.   

Switching gears, as we might expect there is a marked difference between those who pass away addicted to the human body and those who have connected with the spiritual body.

“Because, there are two kinds of passing away—[the ordinary] discontinuous passing away and the passing away which is the inconceivable transference.  The discontinuous passing away belongs to the sentient beings, who have reconnection (pratisamdhi) [with sense organs].  The passing away which is the inconceivable transference belongs to the bodies made of mind (manomaya-kaya) of Arhats, Pratyekabuddhas, and of Bodhisattvas great beings, who have attained power, up to their reaching the terrace of enlightenment” (The Lion's Roar of Queen Srimala).

We can surmise from this that desire for the human body has, more or less, a blinding effect on consciousness, itself, which cannot detect an incorporeal body.  Suffering, thus, arises as a result of such desire which has riveted consciousness to the human body, or the same, the nâmarûpa (the 4th link of the Twelve Fetters/dvâdasha-nidâna).  As we might guess this leads to the enormous problem of rebirth.  

“Wise Protector, in the same way, after a sentient being dies, his consciousness will take birth again together with the elements of feeling, awareness, and dharmas” (Maharatnakuta Sutra).

 

Is zazen really meditation?

I sometimes wonder about the Soto Zennists who believe that Dogen’s insistence on zazen is really beneficial.  How can sitting one’s carnal body on a stuffed pillow aid one in achieving Buddhahood or even offer a glimpse into pure Mind?  First, what is the body that the Soto Zennist sits on a stuffed pillow?  According to the Mahaparinirvana Sutra we should,

“Think that this body is like a plantain, a mirage in the hot season, watery foam, a phantom, a transformed body, the castle of a gandharva, an unfired brick, lightning, a picture drawn on water, a prisoner facing death, ripe fruit, a piece of meat, the warp on a loom which is about to end, and the ups and downs of a mortar. You should think that all created things are like poisonous food and that anything made is possessed of all worries.”

As regards this body, it doesn’t matter what kind of posture we put it in, it is not an adequate vehicle to enlightenment—it cannot save us no matter how we treat it.  In fact, it belongs to Mara the Evil One; moreover, it is thoroughly empty of a self-nature.  It is also the non-self (anattâ) of the Pali canon which is suffering.

The body (including its mental life) is like a thick veil.  It prevents us from recognizing our true nature.  Granted, that we  implicitly have the nature of a Buddha (buddhadhatu), however, we don’t recognize it when we observe our body and the world the body inhabits.  Sitting on a cushion is not going to make our body less of an encumbrance so we can actualized our true nature.

Real meditation or dhyâna, that led to  Siddhartha’s awakening as the Buddha, is a subtle exercise that involves a search for absolute substance which is thoroughly immaculate, so much so, the careless adept is inclined to believe there is nothing, fundamentally, to search for.  But the payoff is directly meeting with this substance, which is realized to be luminous.  It is dynamic yet, in itself, it is empty of all adventitiousness—although, it is not spiritually separate from phenomena.  This is also known as the luminous or clear light Mind.  

Soto Zen’s zazen cannot accomplish this since it is directed at sitting, relying on the physical as if the physical body could somehow, like a brick or a clay tile, be polished into a mirror (i.e., luminous Mind). 

Koans: the west really doesn't understand them

Maybe koans are losing their charm these days.  Speaking for myself, I remember in the early 1960s when koans had me glued to that marvelous little book, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones which was put together by Paul Reps.  Back in those days, what I enjoyed about the koans, as strange as it sounds, is that while I tried to make sense out of them, I just couldn’t.  Still, despite this setback, they served to whet my appetite for Zen.  

It was only much later after I had a profound awakening to Buddha Mind (I hope to share this with the reader someday) that I fully understood the source from which these little gems were coming from.  Yes, it is Mind—Mind with a capital M as in Buddha Mind or One Mind (there are many other names for this Mind).  There is not a koan that doesn’t rest on Mind which, nevertheless, tries to hide this Mind in the ordinary.

The great Zen masters of the past could see the Buddha Mind in the ordinary.  When Zen master Joshu (C., Chao-chou ) stood up after a monk asked him, “What does the expression, ‘Our founder came from the West’ mean?” the nature of Mind was being directly shown to the monk, only he probably didn’t get it.  Most modern students of Zen can almost empathize with this monk, I am sure.

To be sure, everything Joshu did came from his awakening to Buddha Mind.  Likewise every great koan is born from this Mind which centralizes around the mysterious method of the hua-t’ou/hua tou which can mean ‘word origination’ or ‘thought’s origin’, or pre-voice.  Its main purpose is to get the Zen adept to turn their attention to the absolute source of their thoughts, including their internal dialogue.  This source, of course, is Buddha Mind.  The Blue Cliff Records (trans. Shaw) sums up the hua-t’ou this way:

“The real substance of the Universe, the ‘First Principle,’ that which is behind or beyond the Voice [hua] or expression of ultimate Truth, this ‘Pre-Voice’ [hua-t’ou] is transmitted only from heart [mind] to heart [mind], and no matter how great or holy or advanced in Enlightenment a man may be he cannot transmit it by means of words and phrases” (brackets are mine).

When the Zen adept finally connects with the origin of their thoughts or the hua-t’ou they will fully understand just how sublime Mind is which enabled Joshu to stand up trying to show the monk Buddha Mind.

As long as modern Western Zen is not serious about looking into Buddha Mind (which seems evident to me), wrongly believing it is something subjective like one’s awareness, the koan will continue to be under valued and spiritually misused.  Therefore, I am glad to see that modern Zennists are getting interested in the hua-t’ou like Stuart Lachs with his paper, Hua-t’ou: A Method of Zen Meditation, and Zen master Ama Samy with his recent paper, Koan, Hua-t’ou, and Kensho . 

 

 

What dependent origination is really about

Dependent origination or pratîtya-samutpâda is by modern Buddhists sometimes confused with mutual dependence or interdependence which is more like the Vedanta term, parasparapeksa.  This notion has no real connection with dependent origination.  

The notion of dependent origination or the same, origination by dependence (on something else) is meant to inform us that the phenomenal reality we take for granted is fundamentally nothing it itself because it is a construction based on absolute Mind (we will get to this part later in this blog).  The key Sanskrit term for coming to this idea is pratîtya.  According to Edgerton’s Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Dictionary, pratîtya means dependent on, based on.  One interesting example he gives is: “on the basis of muñja or valvaja (grass), a rope is produced.”  This further suggests that the phenomenal reality we inhabit is nothing in itself (lacks an intrinsic nature or svabhâva) because it is based on a necessary antecedent without which the phenomenon (or phenomena) would not arise or be produced.

The ultimate basis of all phenomenal existence is the One Mind.  This is what the Avatamsaka Sutra essentially says in this passage: “The twelve links of conditioned origination are all dependent on the One Mind.”  Failure to realize or awaken to this Mind is ignorance or avidya.  This sets the wheel of samsara rolling along, so to speak, by which we become bound up with a fictional world that we believe is other than fictional.  Nevertheless, this is not true reality according to the Buddhas.  It is a deception and by it we are being deceived which causes us to undergo endless rebirths into countless forms of being.

Dependent origination really stands for non-ultimate existence, namely, origination and disappearance whereas, in sharp contrast, nirvana stands for non-origination and non-disappearance, that is, ultimate existence by which we see that things really don’t exist (apart from the One Mind).  According to the Lotus Sutra phenomena “have the nature of illusion and dreams ... they are pithless as the stem of the plantain, and similar to an echo.”

When we fully awaken to the One Mind we will enter a new world in which phenomena are like waves on an ocean of bliss (sukha).  Huge waves, nor a waveless ocean will diminish the bliss.  But until we fully awaken we shall remain sleepers living in a dream world of suffering: a world dependently originated and nothing in itself.

 

Ordinary beings and erring Buddhists

Ordinary beings (prithagjana) have an uncritical belief in the infinite variety of sensory phenomena in which everything, from a pine tree to a huge galaxy, is believed to be unique and real.  It is a universe of real 'somethings'.  These same beings believe this is fundamentally all there is.  Naturally, they deny an unconditional real essence or ultimate substance (tathatâ) since it would transcend the world they value and believe is real.

On the other hand, Buddhists err who who reduce the infinite variety of things down to being impermanent, suffering, not the self (ânatman) while, at the same time, implicitly denying an unconditioned reality which is permanent, blissful, the self, and pure.  Like ordinary beings, they are bound down to the illusory conditions of the world; ever its slave.  It is easy to infer from their literature that these Buddhists have never realized the true nature of reality which transcends their empty, conditioned world.  They are thoroughgoing pessimists. 

These same Buddhists go so far as to believe that nirvana occurs when the being composed of the Five Aggregates has gone out!  This, by the way, was the view of Walpola Rahula, a Theravada monk, who wrote the greatly popular book, What the Buddha Taught (the reader can find his strange theory on page 42).  Perish the thought that the Buddha, numberless times, claims that the Five Aggregates are “not my self” (na meso attâ).  We can surmise from the Buddha’s words that nirvana is independence from the Five Aggregates, all of which are conditioned, impermanent, and suffering—and certainly not self.  In fact, it is the very self (paccatta) that realizes nirvana as I have proven in other blogs.