The Zennist

All things

There are really two kinds of dhamma (S., dharma), one which is empirical and conditioned and one which is transcendental.  Considering the transcendental dhamma, it can be dhammabhûta (dhamma incarnate), dhammakaya (body of dhamma), dhammacakkhu (eye of dhamma) or dhammabhisamaya (comprehension of the truth).  

This dhamma is not in the same as the empirical dhamma such as dhamma in both sabbe dhammâ anattâ (Dh, 279) (all things are not the self) and sabbe dhammâ nâlam abhinivesâya (S. iv. 50) (unfit to adhere to are all things).  To be sure, such a dhamma is not the same elevated dhamma to which the Buddha awoke.  

“The dharma obtained by me is profound, of deep splendor, difficult to see, difficult to understand, incomprehensible, having the incomprehensible as its scope, fine, subtle, the sense of which can only be understood by the wise” (Catusparisat Sûtra).

Also the adjective sabbe in the above passages, which is about the quality of dhamma, helps us to identify what kind of dhamma we are looking at.  To illustrate this, substituting man for dhamma, the subject “man” used with the adjective “brave” or the adjective “craven” helps us to know what kind of man we are dealing with.  So what did the Buddha mean by sabba?  The Buddha tells us that all or sabba refers to the senses, the eye and its forms, the ear and sounds, the nose and odors, the tongue and tastes, the body and tactile objects, the mind (mano) and mental phenomena.  He also tells us that he will teach the dhamma for abandoning the all or sabba. 

The transcendental dharma attained by the Buddha, to be sure, is profound, of deep splendor, etc.  It is not the same dhamma, which is empirical, as in all things are not the self, or unfit to adhere to are all things.  On the same track, if some Buddhists believe that the “dhamma” in sabbe dhammâ anattâ includes nirvana, then they are forced to make an exception when the Buddha warns, “abandon desire for whatever is anattâ/non-self” (S. iv. 49), otherwise nirvana will have to be abandoned!

Mundane and supermundane

It is no exaggeration to say that Western Buddhists have no idea that the so-called Noble Eightfold Path, the arya-ashtanga-marga, which is supermundane, is not meant for them, nor are the Four Noble Truths.  In fact, any Buddhist term that begins with “noble” which is ârya in Sanskrit and ariya in Pali, is not meant for them.  

Generally speaking, there are four kinds of recluses, viz., the sotapanna (current enterer), the sakadagamin (once returner), the anagamin (non-returner) and the arahant (one who has attained final sanctification).  All are nobles, not ordinary beings.

Not that much different, the life of a genuine Bodhisattva commences with bodhicittotpada, this being the arising of the mind that is bodhi.  It is a supermundane state which cannot, in anyway, be known by those still caught up in the mundane world.  In Mahayana Sutras Bodhisattvas are always present along with monastics and others.  But seldom, if any mention is made of an ordinary being, a prithagjana.

As I have mentioned on other blogs, the Buddha’s world is split into two distinct camps: the worldly person (prithagjana) and the noble spiritual person (arya).  One camp is bound down to conditionality, the other sees the unconditioned which is immortal.  One camp is stuck in samsara; the other is on their way to nirvana.  One camp mistakes the Five Aggregates for the self; the other does not.  This is a spiritual distinction.  One person is clueless as to what the Buddhist spiritual experience is (one of the Buddha attendents before Ananda was such), the other is not.

Nihilism of the worst kind

Nihilism is the loss of the sense of self or the same, the self becomes a problem in the same way aether is still a problem for most physicists.  It is safe to gather that the nihilist has completely lost the ability to distinguish the psychophysical organism from himself because there is no self for him—he is all organism.  Therefore, the words of George Grimm must feel strange to him if not something like a hard slap to his face.

“It is necessary clearly to realize, i.e. to see that the corporeal organism is something entirely different from me. If I really comprehend this, I shall as a consequence realize that the beginning and the end of this organism are not the beginning and the end of myself, but merely of this very organism. The question arises, how it comes that I possess the latter. The answer is rather simple: I am in connection with my organism merely through my will. It is only this will which procures me me an organism, and it does so in the same and only way in which I procure whatever I want to possess, namely by grasping it: because I have the will for a corporeal organism I grasp the germ prepared by my parent, I cling to it for building up a corporeal organism. This process I repeat from time immemorial and I shall, if necessary, repeat perpetually; that is, as long as I have a will for a new organism when at the moment of death my actual body is snatched away from me” (Buddhist Wisdom, p. 10).

 Unfortunately, for a lot of Buddhists, Grimm’s words are a hard slap.  Many who have come to Buddhism are nihilists.  Buddhism has become a magnet for these nihilists who believe the Buddha taught the self is just a fictional construct, although he said no such thing.  According to the Buddha, it is the psychophysical body which, if anything, is a fictional construct.  We have even reified this fiction making out of it a false self (anâtman/svakâya) that seduces us; which leads us to countless rebirths of pain.  

The nihilist can no longer sense the real self which transcends the corporeal organism he cuddles.  This is, perhaps, a nihilism of the worst kind.  This nihilist doesn’t even know he has lost everything—who is there left to tell him?  When the Buddha beats the deathless drum, the nihilist hears nothing.  It is such a nothing that is the most deadly. 

When did Buddhism start paying attention to Vedanta?

Not infrequently, I encounter a Buddhist newbie informing me of the ills of Vedanta and how the Buddha fought against Vedanta and its theory of Âtman.  So I asked myself this question, “When was Vedanta first recognized as a separate school by Buddhists and by whom, in particular?” 

To my amazement I found this.  According to Hajime Nakamura, it was Bhavya (Bhâvaviveka) of the Madhyamika school, who lived between between 490 and 570, who first recognized Vedanta as a separate independent school who also brought a great deal of academic precision to the task of unpacking it.  Nakamura writes the following providing us with more details:

"Among the works of Bhavya, there is the Madhyamakahrdaya-karika, on which he himself wrote a commentary called the Madhyamaka-hrdaya-vrtti, or Takajvala.  Their Sanskrit originals were lost, but recently the Sanskrit manuscript of the Madhyamaka-hrdaya-karika was found.  Their Tibetan translation has been handed down in the Tibetan Tripitaka.  The work consists of eleven chapters.  Among them the sixth chapter presents and criticizes the doctrines of the Samkhya school; the seventh chapter, those of the Vaishesika; the eighth, the Vedanta; and, the ninth, the Mimamsa” (H. Nakamura, A History of Early Vedanta Philosophy, p. 183). 

Before Bhavya, Buddhists really didn't know or didn't care about Vedanta, enough to be critical of it and other schools.  But this fact, I am guessing, won’t stop Buddhist newbies from their mischief who believe the Buddha was on a mission to destroy the Âtman and make the future safe for scientific materialism. 

 

It's not at all Buddhism

Reaching the state of the unconditioned or nirvana means being detached (viveka) from all conditionality.  It is not, as some Western teachers believe, not something you achieve.  In other words, nirvana is not something in its own right.  It is about no longer chasing after success or some goal like going to Paris.  Frankly, this is pop Buddhist hogwash. Mathieu Boisvert, in his book, The Five Aggregates is generally correct when he says of nibbana (= nirvana),

“nibbana is not merely a meditative state, but a phenomenon which exists by itself (sabhâvadhamma).  As an ontological phenomenon, nibanna differs from all other dhamma in that it is unconditioned, unborn, undying, etc.”

Nirvana is not a made thing accomplished by years of sitting on one’s arse in a Dharma center.  It is really an unprecedented discovery of the primordial unconditioned, itself, or the same, the immortal element that is eternal (i.e., has no beginning or end).  

Chasing after conditioned things has made us somnambulists.  We can’t wake up and see that which is unconditioned.  In fact, we don’t believe there is any such thing.  This might explain why Western Buddhists hardly ever dive into the subject of nirvana enough to make it worthy of their time (obviously, sitting on their arses is worth more).

Now, the most difficult thing to teach Western Buddhists is there is an unconditioned reality behind the veil of the conditioned.  They are not even convinced that the Buddha-nature is real let alone the unconditioned.  When we start adding up all the beliefs Western Buddhist have about what they imagine Buddhism to be, it’s not at all Buddhism.  It’s nihilism.

 

What if they're completely wrong?

Several years ago, the Buddhist scholar Stephen Hodge, a guy whom I have a great deal of respect for, remarked, “What if people like Nagarjuna, Chandrakirti and all their Madhyamika friends got it completely wrong and lying hidden at the very core of Buddhism is actually atta which they deny?”  I  gradually came to this conclusion after having spent a lot of time reading the Pali Nikayas trying to extract their recondite essence.  When I switched over to Nagarjuna it was one of the WTF! moments, or something like, “Where’s the beef?”

I didn’t find much if any Buddhism in Nagarjuna’s Mulamadhyamaka-karika.  I found much more Buddhism in Nagarjuna’s Maha-prajnaparamata Shastra with the help of K. Venkata Ramanan’s book, Nagarjuna’s Philosophy.  But here is a catch: scholars like Lamotte and others doubt that it is Nagarjuna’s authorship.  As a result, this side of Nagarjuna gets a short shrift when, for all we know, it was his centerpiece, without which, the Mulamadhyamaka-karika made little or no sense. 

 Nagarjuna is really two different people at times.  One time he is a Buddhist; the other a nihilist who leaves us with nothing but a negative dialectic that leads us to something like the Skeptic’s Ataraxia.  The Buddhist Nagarjuna will say things like the following:

“People who understand the meaning (artha) of the Buddhist doctrine and know the designation (prajñapti) say that the âtman exists. People who do not understand the meaning of the Buddhist doctrine and do not know the designation say that the âtman does not exist” (Maha-prajnaparamata Shastra ). (The bold is mine.)

Or,

“The true nature (tathatâ), the nature of phenomena (dharmatâ), the summit of existence (bhûtakoti), do not exist from the mundane point of view, but they do exist from the absolute point of view.  In the same way, individuals exist from the mundane point of view, but do not exist from the absolute point of view.”

The nihilist Nagarjuna will say things which the Buddha never said, for example, even liberation is like a dream which would be aburd since Gautama is Buddha, i.e., the awakened one.

“You have proclaimed that suffering born from desire and the other [poisons], as well as the klesas, the suffering of samsara, the completing of the [two] accumulations, and even liberation are like a dream” (Acintyastava, 27).

[You] have beaten the Dharma Drum [that resounds with deep] deep truth of shunyata.  [You] have blown the Dharma Conch, with the clear note of no own-being” (Acintyastava, 55) 

The Buddha’s drum is deathless (amatadundubhim, M. i. 171), not shunyata. In the Pali Nikayas the Buddha never once used the term sabhâva/svabhâva/own-being). 

The nihilist Nagarjuna at times appears to be asserting universal denial (sarva-abhâvât).  However, this is not emptiness—not the way the Buddha uses it.  Emptiness means that the empty thing like a jar, for example, must be present in order to assert that it is empty of some particular thing like dill pickles.  It would be the same with an empty wallet, a vacant lot, an empty class room, or Buddha-nature which is empty of conditionality.  If this is not the case then emptiness is meaningless.  It is only saying all is for nothing.  This leads me to say that before one gets too hooked on Nagarjunarism or even Dogenism, they first need to read the Nikayas to become thoroughly grounded in what the Buddha said and what the Buddha did not say. 

 

Nothing essentially different?

Buddhists often read that Nagarjuna in his Mulamadhyamakakarika (hereafter MK) said:

“Samsara is nothing essentially different from nirvana.  Nirvana is nothing essentially different from samsara” (MK 25.19).

And

The limits of nirvana are the limits of samsara.  Between the two, also, there is not the slightest difference” (MK 25.20).

If this were actually so, then the unawakened prithagjanas (ordinary beings) who live, struggle, and die in the world of samsara, only to be reborn again, would be no different than the Buddha who won nirvana.  Of course, this is absurd.  When we look at John Powers’ translation of the Samdhinirmocana Sutra it says: 

"[I]f the character of the compounded and the character of the ultimate were not different, then, because of that, even all ordinary childish beings would see the truth and, while still mere ordinary beings, would attain [the highest achievement] and would even achieve the highest bliss of nirvana.  Moreover, they would completely and perfectly realize unsurpassed, perfect enlightenment.”

The Sutra goes on to say:

“[S]ince ordinary beings are not seers of truth, they are merely ordinary beings.  They have not attained [the highest achievement], nor have they achieved the highest bliss of nirvana.”

Samsara stands for the dependently originated, cycle of repeated birth (being) and death (non-being).  Nirvana is not this kind of world. Here the Buddha teaches us what nirvana is.

“Monks, there  is a not-born, a not-become, a not-made, a not-compounded.  Monks, if that unborn, not-become, not-made, not-compounded were not, there would be apparent no escape from this here that is born, become, made, compounded.  But since, monks there is an unborn . . . therefore the escape from this here is born, become . . . is apparent” (Udana 80, 81).

It is contradictory to imply or say  that there is no essential difference between the conditioned world of samsara and the unconditioned absolute (nirvana).  Maybe from a semantic perspective, in which both are mere words which subsequently give rise to concepts, they are the same.  But the Buddha was not teaching semantics or linguistics to his followers; nor was he playing word games.  

Real nirvana is beyond the range of language and concepts.  Put another way, a concept of nirvana is not real nirvana.  It is actually still within the boundary of samsara.  We can appreciate this better by understanding that a concept of a bar of gold arises in our mind when we read, “bar of gold.” This is not real gold.  It is only semantic gold; it only relates to language, nothing else.  It cannot buy anything.

If samsara and nirvana are essentially the same why did the Buddha say this?

“And what is the noble search?  Here someone being himself subject to birth, having understood the danger in what is subject to birth, seeks the unborn supreme security from bondage, Nibbana; being himself subject to aging, having understood the danger in what is subject to aging, he seeks the ongoing supreme security from bondage, Nibbana; being himself subject to sickness, having understood the danger in what is subject to sickness, he seeks the unailing supreme security from bondage, Nibbana; being himself subject to death, having understood the danger in what is subject to death, he seeks the deathless supreme security from bondage, Nibbana; being himself subject to sorrow, having understood the danger in what is subject to sorrow, he seeks the sorrowless supreme security form bondage, Nibbana; being himself subject to defilement, having understood the danger in what is subject to defilement, he seeks the undefiled supreme security from bondage, Nibbana.  This is the noble search” (M. i. 162–163).

 

Does the son of a barren woman have the Buddha-nature?

Does it sound odd to ask, “Does the son of a barren woman have the Buddha-nature?” We could also ask, “Does a horned rabbit have the Buddha-nature?”  In contrast, it is important to ask, “Is the Buddha-nature empty of any and all fictitious phenomena such as the son of a barren woman or a horned rabbit, both of which, lack Buddha-nature?”  Yes, of course! 

But what about these questions?  “Does emptiness mean the negation or absence of Buddha-nature?  The correct answer is, no.  This emptiness only pertains to what is empty of Buddha-nature such as all conditioned things which are never other than impermanent, suffering and without self (self is Buddha-nature in the Mahaparinirvana Sutra).  Then does true emptiness mean devoid of all conditioned things except the Buddha-nature, itself, which is never empty?  The answer to this question is, yes.  (But we can only know this if we have realized the Buddha-nature.)

Let’s look at this from another perspective.  Is fool’s gold always devoid or empty of real gold?  The answer is yes, it is always empty of fool’s gold.  Then, is real gold altogether devoid or empty of fool’s gold?  The answer is yes.  But how do we know fool’s gold is always devoid of real gold?  Pssst.  It is because we absolutely know what real gold is. 

Believe it or not, this same reasoning applies to the self and what is not the self or anattâ/anâtman.  What is not our self is our psychophysical body, made up of material shape, feeling, psychic impressions, volitional formations and, lastly, consciousness.  These five parts we can identify through introspection.  We know this to be true only because we have realized true self by which we know what self is not.

 

What dreams are made of

A dream is a false reality that we can wake up from.  Only then do we realize it was all a dream.  However, without waking up we go from one dream to another.  There is never a waking up, so to speak.  

Our life (maybe I should say lives) is a series of dreams that we never, actually, wake up from.  Only a Buddha is awakened from the dream.  Not even death can be thought of as the end of dreams in which we see true reality for the first time.  Death, itself, is part of the dream; so is rebirth.  

While it is true that awakening is waking up from the kleshas, the Sanskrit term klesha or in Pali, kilesa, is not so easy to define.  This term means affliction or torment.  Defining klesha as defilement seems to be inaccurate.  We can think of klesha as arising from our deep involvement in the dream that we believe is our life.  Thus, we can suffer from the kleshas of desire (raga), anger, delusion (moha), arrogance (mâno), and pride.  We might call these klesha essential dream-enforcers whose job it is, is to make the dream seem real and to keep the Buddha’s truth from us.

When we normally dream, our dreams, as a rule, seem so real at the time.  We even experience some of the kleshas, and more.  Waking up from our dreams in which we just dreamed that we flunked out of college—what a relief to know we graduated with flying colors!  The brief pain we felt in the dream is completely erased.  When we awaken from our very life to discover it is just a dream we see our dream as a formation of mind-stuff, to borrow Kingdon Clifford’s term.  To this formation there is only name and form.  We only know this having penetrated through the name and form veil, meeting with ourselves—our real nature—for the very first time.  We are awakened at this point because we see what dreams are made of.

 

The outsiders

A more accurate idea of a what a puthujjana (S., prithagjana) is, in one word, is profane.  In the religious sense a putthujjana is someone who has not entered the supermundane path—someone who is not a srotâpanna (a current winner).

So hyper-subtle and supermundane (lokuttara) is the Buddha’s path, that few can actually enter it.  Neither Buddhist monastics nor Buddhist laypersons are automatically non-puthujjanas.  Far from it.  Unless they have won the current (srotâpanna) which leads to nirvana, they fall into the category of puthujjana whom the Buddha called outsiders (bahiro).

“In whom, monks, altogether and in every way there are not these five faculties [faith, wisdom, energy, mindfulness concentration which are all supramundane], of him I say 'An outsider (bahiro), one who stands on the commoner's (puthujjana) side’” (S. v. 202).

The puthujjana naturally and unconsciously takes his psychophysical body to be his self, a kind of naive realism you could say. It is the measure of all things for him. The puthujjana also understands his self was born and it will die.  For the Buddhist who is not a puthujjana he doesn't see his self as the self which is born and will die.  There is a subtle difference between a mundane self and one that is supermundane.  This explains why the Buddha rejected the Five Aggregates as being the actual self. 

In addition, puthujjanas perceiving their psychophysical body are affected by permanence, pleasure, and a sense of 'self' which the Buddha calls "distortions" (vipallâsa). Because of these distortions beings become established in psychophysical body (pañca-khandha).  One can only describe this as getting embodied—certainly not dis-embodied which would fall under nirvana.