The Zennist

The missing chapters of Zen

Sung Ch’an or Zen as we know it, paints an almost perfect picture of the Zen lineage if we accept it at face value.  But with the discovery of early Ch’an documents hidden in a cave in western China in the desert oasis of Tun-huang/Dunhuang, during the early part of the twentieth century, the picture is not perfect at all. 

The importance of this discovery cannot be overestimated.  It is something like the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls of Zen according to Jeffrey L. Broughton who is the author of The Bodhidharma Anthology from which, incidentally, I have drawn most of my information for this particular blog.  Please buy his book!  You will enjoy it.   

If we can imagine a book about the history of Ch’an or Zen, several chapters would be missing.  Our book would begin with, let’s say, chapter three which is about Sung Dynasty Ch’an.  But then, one day, the first two chapters are discovered by someone digging around in a cave.  With the first two chapters we discover, to our chagrin, that the early formation of Zen is nothing like the later picture of Sung Ch’an—the one we are familiar with today upon which current Zen rests.

The oldest and first stratum of manuscripts discovered at Tun-huang were written on high-quality Chinese paper which was made of hemp.  Jeffrey Broughton lists the oldest Zen books on page 101 as follows:

The three Records of the Bodhidharma Anthology.

Former Worthies Gather at the Mount Shuang-feng Stupa and Each Talks of the Dark Principle (Hsien-te chi yü shuang-feng shan t’a ko t’an hsüan-li).

Treatise on Perfect Enlightenment (Yüan-ming lun).

Essentials of Cultivating Mind (Hsiu-hsin yao lun).

On Examining Mind (Kuan-hsin lun).

Three short treatises attributed to the fifth-century to sixth-century figure Seng-ch’ou: Dhyana Master Ch’ou’s Idea (Ch’ou ch’an-shih I); Dhyana Master Ch’ou’s Medicinal Prescription for Curing the Outflows (Ch’ou ch’an-shih yao-fang liao yu-lou); and Treatise on the Mahayana Mind-Range (Ta-ch’eng hsin-hsing lun).

Record of the Transmission of the Dharma Treasure (Ch’uan fa-pao chi; datable to sometime after 713).  

Record of t he Lanka Masters and Disciples (Leng-chia shih-tsu chi; datable to 719–20).

Some of these texts have been translated into Italian and English.  For example the Record of the Lanka Masters and Disciples can be found in J.C. Cleary’s book, Zen Dawn: Early Zen Texts from Tun Huang (another good book worth the reader’s time).

Those new to Zen and even old timers should read Broughton’s book, The Bodhidharma Anthology to get a feel for the Zen that doesn’t fit neatly into the Sung Zen mold or its carefully crafted lineage.  The Zen of the first missing two chapters has no real lineage, nothing in the way of zazen.  Everything seems to revolve around Mind and the mysterious or dark principle.  It is a very esoteric tradition.

 

A modest purge

It is my opinion, but if a special test were devised for Western Buddhists by which their philosophical views would be laid bare, we would find the bulk of these Buddhists to espouse the kind of materialism the Buddha rejected that, essentially, denies a transcendent self (since it couldn’t be perceived), along with karma and rebirth.

If these same Buddhists had been heavily steeped in Mahayana Buddhism which doesn’t shy away from proclaiming an absolute (e.g., Buddha-nature, Atman, Tathagatagarbha, Tathata, etc.), our test might come out much differently. 

It is only in later Abhidhamma literature, after a wave of schisms solidified into a number is sects after the Buddha’s passing, that we find an explicit denial of self which is mainly in the Theravada sect.  There is no such categorical denial in the early canon.  What many discourses teach is that we should not identify our self with what is not the self or anattâ.  For example, consciousness is not my self (na meso attâ).  In fact, nothing conditioned should I regard as my self.  According to the Buddha, “You should abandon desire for whatever does not belong to self” (S. iii. 78).  And what does not belong to self?  The entire conditioned world including the Five Aggregates (pañca-khandha).

Some Western Buddhist’s refusal to examine, fairly, what the Buddha actually taught and did not teach by a careful reading of the early canon, is not atypical.  Partly, the reason for this is Westerners before they come into Buddhism already lean towards materialism.  After they become Buddhists, they don’t want to learn that Buddhism really cuts against materialism in a huge way.  Incidentally, their set of values is more indicative of the typical materialist during the time of the Buddha who basically denies the self, karma and rebirth.

The problem that Western Buddhism now faces is how to clear out the materialists; making it very clear that Buddhism is incompatible with materialism.  Without a modest purge, so as to set the record straight, the materialists who have somewhat taken over the reigns of Buddhism in the West will eventually become like the proverbial dog in the manger who will try to prevent others from learning about true Dharma (saddharma). 

 

Living in a false light

T.S. Eliot once observed that, "Humankind cannot bear very much reality."  This is especially true of spiritual reality.  Rather than setting out to see our own true nature which is present within us but hidden, it is much easier for us to create an external world of fictions, a creator God being the biggest of all human fictions. 

Each newly created fiction is opaque until there are so many there is only darkness.  This darkness, however, is a different kind of darkness than the prosaic mind knows.  It is a false light.  It illuminates the world of man’s fictions and makes them seem all too real.  It cannot be seen by those who have been baptised in these fictions; held fast to them. 

As long as the light-bringer (Buddha) has not arisen (Udana, VI, x)  one is content to live unknowingly as a prisoner in their fictional world, illuminated by false light.  However, this light, which is really darkness, has no effect upon spiritual light. Its only power is to induce a kind of blindness. 

In this blindness, humankind worships death. It believes death is liberation—it is the gateway to heaven or it is believed to be absolute finality.  But this death is another fiction of mankind.  There is only regeneration.  Each of us continues in the same direction as before, followig the false light.  

Still, the spiritual light is potentially present which is to say that it is within our grasp to actualize it.  But most do not elect to do so and awaken.  They don’t wish to see the light-bringer arise whose light is too powerful and strange for them to bear; which puts an end to the false light.

 

Freeing oneself from suffering

Ignorance or avidya has no beginning.  Along with this there is no awakening as we might reason.  If there is a beginning for us, the beginning is with suffering or duhkha.  If we examine to see what it is that suffers we believe that it is we who suffer or, in other words, I suffer.  But if we meditate on this, it is not really we or I who suffers.  We suffer because we cling to suffering or the same, we cling to a thing that suffers.  If we did not cling or adhere to the suffering thing or entity, we would not suffer.

Notice, there is a spiritual distinction to be made between my self and suffering.  Intrinsically, I do not suffer except that desire binds me to a thing of suffering, namely, this body consisting of material shape, feeling, perception, habitual tendencies and sensory consciousness (these are the five skandha or aggregates).  It is noteworthy to point out that the Buddha said:

Whatever there is material shape, feeling, perception, the habitual tendencies, consciousness—he beholds these things as impermanent, suffering, a disease, an imposthume, a dart, a misfortune, an affliction, as external (parato), as decay, empty, and not the self" (M. i. 435).

The question we need ask ourselves is why do we cling to what is impermanent, suffering, etc.?  If we fully knew ourselves, that is, fully knew that we are the very substance of all phenomena, why then cling to anything?  It would be unworthy (nâla) of us.  It is only when we are unable to behold our true self or nature taking, instead, what is unreal and empty to be our self or true nature, that we suffer.  This even includes taking what is sheer absence (abhava) to be our self or nature since absence is not what the self is.

Consciousness appears to be the coupling mechanism by which we come to interface with the things that suffer.  In this regard, the Buddha said,  “Where there is an object, consciousness has an abiding. When consciousness is so firmly established and developed, birth in a new sphere ensues” (S. ii. 65). From this it follows that consciousness has to be thoroughly weaned off of phenomena.  This is the only way the etiology of suffering can be abandoned (SA, 379, 103c19).  When the last stages of conditioned consciousness cease there is consciousness that is non-manifesting (anidassanam), infinite (anatam), and all luminous (sabbatopabham)” (D. ii. 223).  In the commentary (DA. ii. 393), this is said to be nirvana. 

 

Wrangling about the self

The wrangling that goes on over the subject of “not [the] self” or in Pali, anattâ might be much less divisive if certain questions were asked beforehand.  First,  to what in particular is anâttâ addressed?  Secondly, what is believed to be the self?  And is anattâ really a categorical denial of attâ or âtman?

To answer the first question, anattâ pertains to the Five Aggregates that make up the psychophysical organism:  the human being, in other words.  The aggregates are material shape, feeling, perception, habitual formations, and sensory consciousness.  These are said by the Buddha to not be the self or anattâ.  This negative answer pertains to those who believe the self is somehow connected with the Five Aggregates.  They believe the self to be something psychophysical which answers the second question.  For example, the self has a material nature, till we come to sensory consciousness in which it is believed the self has the nature of consciousness.  

But now we need to address the third question.  Anattâ is not the categorical denial of self.  The Pali term, natthatta is the categorical denial of self.  When the wanderer Vacchagotta, in the Ananda Sutta (S. iv. 400), asks the Buddha whether the self exists (atthattâ) or does the self not exist (natthattâ), the reader will carefully note that the Pali term natthatta is used, not anattâ.  Natthatta is a categorical denial of self, anattâ is used adjectivally.  It says, essentially, that each aggregate or khandha is not to be confused with the self.  

From this we need to ask a fourth question.  How did the Buddha respond to those who categorically denied the self such as the materialists?  Before we tackle the question, the materialist appears to believe that sensory perception is the only valid means of knowledge in which case there is no self since it cannot be perceived by the senses.  An important observation, the materialist position seems to be very close to the Theravada position which firmly believes that the Buddha did not teach a transcendental self (this is, however, changing).  On the same score, it should not be ignored that the Buddha was accused of being a materialist which, of course, he denied.  

As much as I have tried, I can find no discourses in which the Buddha is debating with a materialists where the topic is specifically the reality of the self or attâ. The same goes with someone who claims to have attained a transcendent self.  A more careful reading of the Pali canon, however, finds many compounds which include a positive self.  For example:  “He beholds the self purified (visuddhamattânam) of all these evil unskilled states, he beholds the self freed (vimuttamattânam)” (M. i. 283).

Not surprisingly, given the Buddha’s denial that he was a materialist, Buddhism—Buddhism in the West—has attracted materialists who adhere to the same outworn stance as India’s materialists:  that what I cannot perceive does not exist.  They deny this when confronted.  Nevertheless, their position is based on sensory perception (they maintain this is 'scientific').  On this basis, they need to come clean and think about dropping materialism or leaving Buddhism and stop being the proverbial dog in the manger.

 

The subtlety of dirt mixed with water

Imagine that you’re looking into a glass fish tank filled with the purest water.  There is only water.  Then you put a pound of fine dirt into the fish tank, mixing it well.  Then you wonder, can I still see the pure water?  The water has been obscured by adventitious fine dirt.  Yes, the water is still there but not like before.  If you had never before seen the pure water, the muddy fish tank would naturally be your starting point: the accepted norm, in other words.  It would follow that any thought of being able to filter out what is adventitious to pure water would be unthinkable.

We have to think of the Buddha’s great project as kind of like filtering out the fine dirt from our once pure water in the fish tank.  Granted that this is an analogy, which means it isn’t perfect, but it serves, nevertheless, to illustrate what meditation is really about and the problems the West has with it, not to mention Soto Zen’s emphasis on sitting.

In light of the previously mentioned, our muddy fish tank problem breaks down into two schools of thought.  Those who say that the muddy liquid we see is external and adventitious to the original water, and those who believe there is no such thing as pure water: the present fish tank condition is normal.  This is the way things are.

Turning to Buddhism, it also has two schools of thought which are a part of its long development.  There are those who understand that nirvana is really pure Mind which has freed itself from its former fixation on the adventitious nature of phenomena.  The other school of thought, is primarily focused upon the adventitious nature of phenomena, itself, that it is impermanent, suffering, and, more importantly, there is no self.  Somehow nirvana is supposed to come out of this.  But this nirvana is really only death that has been repackaged for public consumption.  One believes that death ends all.  

From the above, it is fair to say that the majority follow the second school of thought.  They are content to believe that this is the only world where, as much as we look, we will only find impermanence, suffering, and no self.  Yes, it is a hard, cruel world.  But death is the answer.  Just live your life as you see fit, keeping in mind that death is the great purifier—the cosmic shot of morphine. 

Back to the fish tank.  With the proper filtering apparatus we can separate the pure water from the dirt.  Turning again to Buddhism, the Buddha tried to teach his followers how to distinguish pure Mind from its adventitious defilements by first believing that it can be done.  Thanks to my faith in the Buddha’s teachings I did it many years ago.  It is an epiphany hard to imagine but, nevertheless, one that is real and powerful.  Those who say it is not possible work for Mara the Evil One.  They may even wear Buddhist robes while wallowing in the mud of the world.  And they call this the Buddha's enlightenment. 

 

Finding nirvana

Do we find nirvana in the Five Aggregates (i.e., our psychophysical body) consisting of form, feeling, perception, volitional formation and consciousness, all of which are conditioned?  There answer is no.  So, should be conclude that nirvana is not real or, perhaps, a nice word for annihilation?  Again, the answer is no.  Nirvana is very real; it transcends the aggregates.  But no one who clings to conditions and compositions, such as the Five Aggregates, can behold and partake of it, first entering the current (sotapanna).

There are a number of things in Buddhism that are real but cannot be captured by the nets of the conditioned Five Aggregates.  We can't overlook this fact.  Some of these things are the self (âtman), the Tathagata, the unconditioned, the uncomposed, the dharmakaya, suchness, and the liberated Mind.

By comparison, things which can be captured by the nets of the Five Aggregates are various material forms and shapes, pleasant and painful feelings, mental images, habits, and sensory objects.  Through the Five Aggregates, our whole material world comes into existence, not to mention our suffering and our eventual death. 

 

The gifted practitioner

There are many grades of Buddhist practitioners from the clueless newbie who believes enlightenment is just around the corner, to a Buddhist practitioner living in a small hut made of stone in China's Zhongnan Mountain range.  The very best ones are busy at work trying to achieve gnosis (jñâna) of pure Mind or the same, suchness (tathatâ).  They realize that it is a serious lifelong endeavor. 

The West has no such tradition.  It even frowns upon it.  Such a tradition probably died with Plotinus.  Mind and/or consciousness is given short shrift in the West’s monophasic culture.  It is all but ignored in biology, for example.   It is sad to read what Western Buddhists believe the nature of Mind is. They have it confused with the fifth aggregate vijñâna which is sensory consciousness or just awareness.  What compounds the problem is Western arrogance: that one actually believes that direct gnosis of pure or absolute Mind is easy.  But given that pure Mind has zero in the way of distinguishing marks, the task of accomplishing direct gnosis is almost Herculean in difficulty. 

For a Westerner, at some point, they have to leave their intellectual world behind which treats the gnosis of pure Mind "as if" actually attained; which further leads, unfortunately, to a proliferation of ideations that are treated as if real.

The gifted practitioner, at at some point in his career, first realizes that primordially he is pure Mind or suchness (tathatâ) which is the very stuff from which everything is composed.  The problem he faces, however, is not an easy hurdle.  He cannot see pure Mind among his thoughts or externally; he is completely hampered by its phenomenalizations.  Yes, even the spring flowers growing by the stream, although beautiful to look at, block his vision.  Although it is everywhere present, the presence of the absolute hides in its utter purity so that it seems to be nothing in which only phenomena exist.

The most gifted practitioner realizes that phenomena have a limit whereas one’s (yet, unrecognized) intrinsic primordiality does not.  Pure Mind, before it has fully realized itself, when it becomes one pointed (ekâgra), can eventually pierce through the phenomenal veil and meet with itself (samadhi).  This is suggesting that one pointedness is never plural, being one and primary (eka).  In virtue of this, and being primary, one pointedness makes it way through the riot of mental phenomena (i.e., plurality) so that it returns to itself, which is an epiphany like no other.

In the mean time, our clueless self-indulgent newbie practitioner cannot even dream or imagine what the gifted practitioner has realized.  He is content to go to his local Dharma center and sit motionless on his arse, believing this is the Buddha’s path, arguing with anyone who disagrees with him.  While it satisfies his vanity he is deceiving himself.  He has no genuine intention of getting off the cosmic ferris wheel of samsara.

 

The mysterious glue of the muni

There is a mysterious glue that connects the Pali canon with the Mahayana canon.  This same glue holds each separate canon together.  But this glue is nothing conditioned; it is nothing that the psychophysical organism’s filters can trap and analyze.  What made Gautama the Buddha, that is, what he awakened to is this mysterious glue.  This glue is a metaphor for the absolute from which the all (sarvadharma) springs from and returns to.  It is nothing, to reiterate, that our psychophysical organism can capture and analyze.  It has no signs or special marks.  It is void.  It lies in the realm of mystery.   Those who establish communion with it are the mystics—the great munis (the ecstatic man) in the example of Shakya-muni.

At least for me, how strange that mysticism, which naturally requires a muni, seems to be left out of the modern day picture of Buddhism.  Pop Buddhism, all but ignores the role of the muni.  Scholarly works, not all of them of course, venture into alien lands of thought where no muni would care to venture or expect to find awakening.  

If we take for granted that the mystical experience is direct union with transcendent reality, which we would expect to be unconditioned, this is certainly where the muni goes and upon entering direct communion with it, presents his teaching afterwards—all connected by this mysterious glue.  Try as our scholars might to get a sense for this glue, it is not an easy task.  Its traces are almost too transparent—yet no scholar would admit the Buddhism has no such glue.  This, incidentally, is what makes Buddhism so intriguing and challenging.  But it is not for the curious or the dilettante.

When it comes to pop Buddhism the muni seems to have no seat in the house.  He is almost an outcast.  Buddhism is turned into a home for the depressed, the person whose lover just recently jilted them, the lost, the bored, and the addict.  In short, Buddhism is an outpatient clinic for the psychologically afflicted.  But this means that the major part of the Buddha’s teaching is being all but ignored.

The worse eventually comes when some elements of pop Buddhism elect to go down a road in which it posts signs which read, No Munis Allowed.  This is a radical, stripped down Buddhism with a new glue, a glue which is made to serve the needs of a secular society which is addicted to consumerism, hedonism, materialism, and scientism.  Especially, anything with the slightest scent of mysticism is to be rejected since it doesn’t directly serves the interests of the secular man.

But I dare say, the age of the muni will return.  Even now there are lion roars heard in the distance.  The Buddhas are nurturing, in secret, another bunch of baby lions who will one day beat the deathless drum and cause the ears of the secularists to burst.  It will be easy to understand Buddhism then.  We will say, “What a glorious religion!”

 

Fushiki Zen

From the last blog, I can see that The Zennist needs to get its ass in gear.  It can’t lay claim to “beginner’s mind”—that belongs to Zen master Shunyru Suzuki’s American style Soto Zen sect which is trying to appeal to deluded minds.  It can’t lay claim to Zen Master Joko Beck's "ordinary mind" or Genpo Roshi's "big mind."  Damn!  

What wait a cotton picking minute, there is something The Zennist can lay claim to.  I am sure the reader of this blog recalls the conversation between Bodhidharma and Emperor Wu of Liang when the latter asked Bodhidharma, "Who is before me?" and Bodhidharma replied, "I don't know (不識)." 

Yep, that’s it.  We have a new school of Zen.  It’s “I don’t know Zen.”  When a practitioner of Fushiki Zen (I don’t know Zen) is asked anything about Zen they just have to say, “I don’t know” and really pretend like they mean it.

I can see the money rolling in right now with the launch of Fushiki Zen.  I can see that Fushiki Zen will naturally appeal to all kinds of Westerners looking for the easiest and most simplistic route to nirvana; who are really too lazy to study Buddhism.

But wait a minute.  I did a lot of research about the Chinese character 識.  I went through William Edward Soothill’s magnum opus, A Dictionary of Chinese Buddhist Terms.  This term can mean the fifth aggregate (skandha), consciousness (vjinana), discrimination, distinguishing, perceiving, discerning, understanding, etc.  With the negative prefix, 不, the better rendering is “imperceptible”—not “I don’t know.”  This rendering fits within the context of the esoteric conversation that is taking place between Bodhidharma and Emperor Wu of Liang; moreover, it fits much better with the works attributed to Bodhidharma who was, by any measure, not your ordinary kind of guy.

Yes, indeed, the absolute or Buddha Mind is imperceptible.  If we want true merit then we have to comprehend it as impossible as it seems.  The comprehension of such a Mind consists of a pure gnosis (jñâna) which is marvelous and perfect.  Its substance is empty and aloof.  It cannot be found in the world.  This is sure not like “I don’t know.”  Well, maybe Fushiki Zen ain’t a bad term after all—I mean I was kidding before.  The more I think about it, Zen points to the absolute Mind which is truly imperceptible.  Sweet!