The Zennist

Sitting in a cesspit

I have mentioned this several times before, but just practicing will not help anyone to awaken to their Buddha-nature.  Practice is what you do after you’ve awakened.  It is like first finding a vein of gold then digging it out.  By samadhi after samadhi (the digging out of the gold) one removes the dross so that the light increases.  We do this by prajñâ, that is, discerning the real from the unreal.  If one has not first awakened to the real how is it possible to distinguish the real from the unreal?

The history of Zen Buddhism is also a history of those who expect to awaken by pursuing a particular practice such as zazen.  Just sit, and eventually you will turn into a Buddha!  But his is not the way it works.  We first have to have right view.  This means we have to catch a glimpse of the absolute—we first have to find our vein of gold, in other words.  No gold, no wealth.  Hours and hours spent doing zazen as if it might awaken us is all wrong.  This is why Zen master Chen-ching said: 

“As for those who sit in cesspits for no reason [do zazen], deceiving spirit and fooling ghosts, even if you killed a thousand or ten thousand of them and fed them to the dogs, what would be wrong with that?"

Attachment to the physical practice of zazen is  not the key we are looking for to open the door to pure Mind.  It can really be a form of self-deception.  The adept just sits, and doesn’t go beyond that.  But the light of Mahayana doesn’t reveal itself when we are seated or when we are moving.  Crossing our legs or turning our head left and right, the spiritual light is in no way affected or suddenly revealed.

We are dealing with an immense subtlety far beyond the reach of the physical world, one wherein even the subject and the perceived object are transcended.  Unfortunately, Buddhism, including Zen Buddhism is unable to specifically say, this is how you realize your Buddha-nature or the same thing, pure Mind.  Readers of this blog know that I became for want of a better term, obsessed with finding pure Mind.  I knew, in a way, what my maculate mind was all about.  I was in a via negativa search mode you could say.  Then one night, it happened.  I am living testimony that anyone can see their true nature.  After that, my real practice began.

 

The transcendental illusion

What does avidya or ignorance mean in the context of the 12-nidânas (links).  Well, that is an interesting question. Buddhists are all familiar with the 12-nidânas beginning with ignorance, followed by karmic impressions (samskâra), consciousness, subject-object, the sense organs, sense contact, sense experience, thirst, mental clinging, becoming, birth, old age and death.  

In his translation of the Madhyanta-vibhanga, Th. Stcherbatsky renders avidya with "transcendental illusion." Here is a snip of the meaty part.

Now this gets interesting. Avidya as the transcendental illusion is the a priori and necessary condition for human rebirth.  With vidya, on the other hand, no rebirth is possible.  Ultimate reality is disclosed to us.  The former covering by which true reality was hidden from us such that we were tormented, is removed.  We have obtained absolute knowledge by beholding the substance of the illusion.  The transcendental magic trick has come to an end. 

Before our gnosis or knowledge of the absolute, we were trapped in something like a circle of illusion which for us seemed inescapable.  It is something like a Mandelbrot fractal which is an infinitely changing phenomenal pattern that, at the same time, is self-limiting or bounded.  It is Hegel's bad infinite which is not encompassable.  We can't get out of it, in other words.   Truth be told, only gnosis of the absolute substance can encompass this bad infinite and thus conquer it.  Not surprising, science admits that it does not know what the substance of the universe is!  In is content to play in the fractal world of avidya, unable to encompass it.

Real meditation

From the last blog, in so many words, where I said that we are the absolute nature except that we do not recognize it, for obvious reasons this is where meditation or dhyâna comes into the picture (I think I have mentioned this before).  

Meditation is the way by which we come to recognize our true nature which involves gnosis.  To have this gnosis demands of us that we transcend the compositions of this nature.  It is a bit like not being mesmerized by the shape of something thus being able to see its substance, directly.  The shapes that surround us, our feelings and mental images, including our volitions and consciousness, are compositions of this immaculate substance of which we are, intrinsically, but are unable to recognize it.

If we were not this absolute nature, already, we would have no criterion by which to recognize it.  What we are suffering from is, therefore, spiritual amnesia.  By meditation we are trying to remember this nature.  When we recognize it, it instantly tallies with our criterion which thus far has managed to remain hidden beneath our consciousness.

Real zazen or seated meditation is not about sitting but about trying to remember our true nature.  The only value in sitting is that it acts as a constant reminder for us to look for our true nature .  Hopefully, our teacher has helped us correctly to frame what we are looking for.   Maybe our teacher has told us that our true nature is transparently clear—so clear that it does not seem present, although it is.  These words will surely help.  If we eventually see this pure nature for the first time, the words of Zen master Huang-po will make our heart soar, “This pure Mind, the source of everything, shines forever and on all with the brilliance of its own perfection.”

The need to awaken

Most primordially, we are the Buddha-nature or the same, the absolute nature.  However—and this should be underscored—we do not recognize this nature (our basic avidya, or non-knowledge of it). What, instead, we perceive is not this nature, although at some level we believe otherwise.  Because of this contrary misperception we are trapped in compositions of this nature: from very fine to coarse.  Being thus trapped we bear the burden of what we adhere to in the belief that this is real; this is my true nature.  The Buddha says this is samsara which is the flowing on of unbroken bondage.  Samsara is, in addition, a moving away from self (i.e., our true nature) rather than a moving to self.

Making matters worse is the unbroken habit of moving away from our self by desiring and clinging to what is not our nature.  This gets rather complicated.  Because if we are moving away from our Buddha-nature, or true self, this being our avidya, which is primordial non-knowing of our true nature, we reach a certain point of absolute wrong belief and complete delusion. 

At this stage, it is hardly possible to convince people that their psychophysical organism has an unconditioned animative side (their true nature and self) which is spiritually independent of the animated psychophysical body.  I would go so far as to say that the people caught up in this state of mind are even hostile to Buddhism, or for that matter, any religion which makes spirit absolute.  I think a good historical case could be made that the world’s religions seem to always split up into spiritual vs non-spiritual.  In Buddhism the split is arya (those who are led by spirit) vs prithagjana or the secular.

I need to emphasize that an awakening or gnosis is required, even though, primordially, we are the Buddha-nature.  We must make our goal to awaken to its presence, directly, thus knowing what we truly are.  It is very much a gnosis; a rather profound and deeply moving one.   We can’t just believe that we are already awakened.  For we will  always identify with what we are not—never what we are.

 

Defending the lie

The French philosopher Voltaire once said that “History is a lie, commonly agreed upon” which is further to suggest that we might be suffering from cognitive dissonance.  The lie makes us feel good.  However, when someone exposes our once held beliefs to be, in fact, lies we will not allow this truth to be accepted by us.  We will launch a counter attack.  We will not let go of the lie that we once dearly held to be the truth.

The Buddhist scholar, Joaquin Perez-Remon (hereafter PR) who wrote the book, Self and Non-Self in Early Pali Buddhism (an abridged dissertation), overturned the commonly held belief that the Buddha was a self denier.  In the introduction to his work the author seemed surprised to learn that things were not as clear as he formerly believed when it came to self in Buddhism.  Gotama, the assumed self denier was no more of a self denier than Mahavira, the founder of the Jains or Patanjali who composed the Yoga Sutras.  

With his book published, PR became a target for Buddhist self denying scholars in the same way that the English historian David Irving became a target for ‘conformist scholars’ who painted a rather distorted picture of Hitler and Churchill—not based on hard evidence (e.g., intercepts, diaries, letters, etc.).  For the most part, their sources were each other becoming something like a huge daisy chain!  With regard to Buddhism, this daisy chain turns into something like judgment by consensus—not by way of evidence.

The Buddha never used the term anattâ (lit., not-the-self) in the way of a categorical denial of self which in Pali would be, natthattâ, i.e., there is not the self.  In the rush to prove the Buddha was a self denier Buddhist scholars neglected the term natthattâ, which means self denial, a position the Buddha rejects in the Ananda Sutta (S. iv. 400) when the wanderer Vacchagotta asks the Buddha whether the self exits (atthattâ'ti) or does the self not exist (natthattâ'ti).  

The rejection of the natthattâ position by the Buddha in the Ananda Sutta opens the door to the transcendent whereas the rejection of an existing self (atthattâ) by the Buddha closes the door to a worldly, determinate self taken to be one or more of the Five Aggregates.  

When the Buddha says of each aggregate such as form, feeling, perception, habitual formations and consciousness they are anattâ he doesn’t mean nathattâ (the self does not exist).  He means that these aggregates are not the real self.  He even tells his followers to abandon desire for anattâ (SN 22:68) which is to say more plainly, abandon desire for whatever is not the self—rather than the self.

Removing the lie, we learn that the Buddha did not, as we have been previously led to believe, deny the self but, instead, denied that the Five Aggregates (our psychophysical body) can be the self.  This means we have to look elsewhere for our true self.  It is not in the Five Aggregates; moreover, it is altogether transcendent.  The Buddha is certainly not a self denier who, instead, tells us to dwell with the self as an island (dîpâ) with the self as refuge (sarana).  (Both dipa and sarna are epithets for nirvana.)

Waking up to awaken

I really like to believe people are smart:  smart enough to understand some of Buddhism and where Zen is coming from.  I have a lot of sympathy for those who struggle to awaken.  I try as much as I can, using this blog, to inform people of what is going to be very useful for them when they decide to really bore into self-awakening.  

On this score, I hope that people who follow this blog don’t procrastinate too much.  An old Zen saying is you can’t dig a deep well just when you are thirsty.  By that time it is too late!  All of us are aging, we don’t have much time left to be procrastinating.  How many of us can really answer Zen master Yun-men’s three questions:

1)  What contains and includes the universe?

2)  What stops the flow of rebirth?

3)  What is the state of one wave following another?

These three questions are not that hard to answer (go to the Internet), but instructive enough to maybe help remind us of the real purpose of our life: to escape from samsara because if we don’t, we’re coming ‘round again!

We always have to be correcting ourselves, that is, reminding ourselves that it’s time to think about, where the heck is pure Mind that the Zennist keeps harping about?  This is a deadly serious question and demands a deadly serious effort on our part to look for it.  I wish I could shoot it through this blog, but I can’t (not yet at least).  The reader has to be master and student rolled into one—and maybe that is a good thing.  Indeed, a part of us always seems to know when we have been too lax.  We just have to heeds its call.

Finding ourselves in this situation, one  surefire way to go around in a circle and not make any real progress, is to follow too many dead words that make us feel good for a few hours, but in the end are like sucking on dry pottery shards to get water.  We can correct this by realizing that our search for pure Mind is for a real distinct object, although it is transcendent.  It is somewhat like distinguishing sunlight, itself, from the illuminated object.  In the case of pure Mind, it is much more difficult.  One awakens to their own substance or true nature, then sees the world as only a configuration of this substance.  This happens during bodhicittotpada (bodhi-mind-manifesting) or the light of Mahayana which I have discussed in previous blogs.  I cannot stress enough that this is not a subjective experience.  Anyone close to you gets to take an adventure, too!  It is a shared experience.

From the side of sheer joy, trust me that searching for your true nature is exciting.  There is something really to discover, although it is wholly spiritual.  It is what we really are and shall always be.

Koan Zen

The approach to koans has relied generally on two methods. The first is a literary method which is wen-tzu Ch'an (J., monji Zen). It accepts as a given that koans are interpretable which is to say, language is up to the task of cracking koans.  The second method is more subtle which is called k’an-hua Ch’an (J., kanna Zen).  It consists of investigating the hua-t'ou which might begin with Joshu's famous “mu” response or his “go wash your bowl.”  The goal here is to get beyond language and concepts, to what the hua-t'ou stands for which is "the real substance of the universe."  Only when this inscrutable substance is discerned is the whole intent and design of the koan finally revealed.

The aforementioned may serve to explain why Zen master Yüan-wu’s disciple, Ta-hui (both of whom were mainly responsible for developing k’an-hua Ch’an) failed in forty-nine attempts to solve,  “The eastern mountain sails up the river.”  Ta-hai had not attained the hua-t’ou of “The eastern mountain sails up the river.”  In other words, he had not directly connected with the source of his thoughts which is transcendent.  To be sure, the phrase “The eastern mountain sails up the river” came from somewhere—somewhere that eluded Ta-hui.  But what we are interested in is the unborn, the very source of this odd phrase.  This is pre-phrase or hua-t’ou.

According to the Buddha in the Udana, “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.”  We can think of that unborn as the hua-t’ou which is our only escape from the world of samsara which the phrase is meant to represent as with all such phrases.

With k’an-hua Ch’an we face an uphill battle trying to abandon our intellectual habits:  the insistence that koans have mundane answers just made for an ingenious intellect.  But the only possible way the Mind of Zen can be transmitted is by setting foot in the hua-t’ou.  Only there will we find the inner light that is called “the transmission lamp.”  

It is fruitless to take the path of wen-tzu Ch'an yet, unknowingly, this is what almost everyone is doing, certainly, Westerners who suffer from a great deal of intellectual arrogance.  This is why, for the most part, the koan tradition of China, South Korea and Vietnam has made little, if any, inroads into the West. 

More fundamental Zen

I still enjoy reading the works of Zen masters like Huang-po and before him Tao-hsin, including others, which never stop talking about Mind.  For example, Tao-hsin (Daoxin) said the following:

“The state of mind is lucid and pure.  As contemplation become increasingly lucid, and inner and outer become empty and pure, the nature of your mind becomes utterly tranquil just like this.

Although the nature [of your awakened mind] has no form, inner constancy always exists.  The mysterious spiritual power is never exhausted but always shines clearly.  This is called your Buddha-nature.  Those who see their Buddha-nature (chien fo-hsing) are forever free from [the stream of] birth and death, and are called “people who have transcended the world” (ch’u-shih-jen).  The Vimalakirti Sutra says: “Suddenly you regain the original mind.”  Believe these words!” (Early Ch’an in China and Tibet, p. 119).

Everything else in Zen pales compared with teaching about Buddha Mind—or should pale.  But the institution of Zen seems to put such teachings on the back burner or not on the stove at all.

Those who follow the institution of Zen can easily get caught up in sewing a rakasu which can symbolize lay ordination, making robes, and participating in various rituals one of the biggest being zazen.  Of course, the grand daddy of them all is to receive Dharma transmission from a reputable teacher.  This basically says that you are a Buddha—I mean you can’t get much higher than that.  But this is not seriously Zen Buddhism.  It is the institution of Zen that is selling the outer form of Zen or the same, rat meat under the sign of mutton.  

Awakening to one’s pristine nature is not so easy.  No institution can teach us how to do it no matter how many sesshins we participate in.  An institution can sometimes provide us with the inspiration or the means, but not a direct insight into Mind, itself, which comes by way of deep introspection done over a long period of time whereby one is eventually able to realize pure Mind.  What usually happens, instead, is that the average Zennist becomes bogged down in Zen center politics and practices, and all that pertains to.

I am sorry to say this, but most Zennists are only interested in a wading pool depth of Zen, which includes sitting in meditation for twenty-five minutes or so several times a week which can hardly be called profound (real zazen involves the mind, not the arse).  This is all they have the time and attention to get involved with because the mundane life they lead takes up so much of their time and energy.  But it doesn’t have to be this way.  There is plenty of non-wading pool depth Zen available to Zennists.  Why read Joko Beck or Brad Warner? when there is so much better stuff available like Mud & Water: The Collected Teachings of Zen Master Bassui that’s been translated by Arthur Braverman.  I could go on and on.  A serious Zennist could learn the Sanskrit alphabet so that they might look up Mahayana Sanskrit terms—or they could learn a little bit of Pali.  They could even learn Chinese or Japanese.

Nobody can learn the heart of Zen by just hanging around a Zen center and going along with the program.  There has to be more.  The student of Zen has to begin to ask fundamental questions like I did that set me on my search for pure Mind during the 1960s.  How much more fundamental can Zen be than searching for pure Mind from within ourselves while we sit in meditation in a small abandoned mine, cut firewood, or brew some coffee and roll a cigarette?

Religion of the cunning mind

The authentic history of Buddhism is spiritual, that is, the awakening of spirit to itself which is unconditioned, instead of conditioned.  It begins with our conditioned bodies, along with our thoughts that are tied to our bodies and the world our bodies live in, which confuse spirit; which make it seem like it is absent.  The one who fully awakens to this hidden spirit is a Buddha, or Arhat, who may or may not elect to teach others how to awaken.

Much of what the public takes to be Buddhism is, however, not Buddhism but rather an interpretation of the Buddha’s discourses which can, in a number of ways, be wildly off the mark.  When Zen master Hui-hai says that those “who cling to the view that the human mind is the Buddha are a devil” he means what he says because the human mind is conditioned having not yet achieved realization of the unconditioned.  Since it has not, it remains a cunning mind, one that is quite ingenious but, nevertheless, unable to comprehend the necessity of spirit and that the fundamental ground of the world is spiritual.

The history of religion, particularly in the West, has largely been ‘religion of the cunning mind’ — there is nothing spiritual about it.  This mind is very good at escaping and eluding its most profound nature.  Where it refuses to enter is where begins Buddhism’s dhyâna which leads to the realization that the substance of the world is spiritual or the same, Mind which is absolutely unconditioned.

For the last three hundred years this cunning mind has grown much stronger such that our views of history and science are little more than convincing fictions—but fictions, never the less—which only serve to lead us away from ourselves; not to ourselves.  We certainly live in the world of the big lie, especially when it comes to Buddhism which has been turned into nihilism.  All is in vain!  This is especially so with Zen Buddhism which means: Take life as it is; beyond its external form there is only the absurd.  

When I think of what has happened to me since I began my Buddhist journey it has been quite extraordinary, perhaps for the simple reason that I found no use for the cunning mind.  I would be willing to wager that anyone who really, really rejects the cunning mind will also make great strides in their spiritual development; more than they can imagine.  Believe it or not, the human mind is geared to transcend itself.  But it is never given a chance to do this, for the most part, because we don’t permit ourselves to leave Plato’s cave (the human mind).  We prefer to stay bound in such a way that we cannot turn our mind to look upon the true world.  Our cunning mind prevents us. 

The mystical element

The term mysticism, although not quite a taboo subject for Westerners is not well received in some Buddhist circles including some Zen circles, even though, arguably, Buddhism falls under the category of mysticism along with Zen.  According to Zen Buddhist historian, Heinrich Dumoulin, “The mystical element is an essential part of Buddhism.”  The realization of this ‘mystical element’ is not without the means of dhyâna which in Chinese is Ch’an and in Japanese, Zen.  Dhyâna is what enabled Siddhartha to attain Buddhhahood, who saw this profound mystical element after he gave up his ascetic practices, finding them inadequate.

“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).

Why the lingering problem with accepting that Zen Buddhism is straightforward mysticism, is that a number of Western Buddhists have not been sufficiently weaned off of materialism.  They still follow the sulphuric light of materialism which dominates modernity.  This materialism has a subtle dehumanizing effect upon the modern person including their spiritual sensibilities.  Man, it is assumed, is only the sum of his anatomical parts being something akin to a biological machine.  He is not greater than this sum. Hence, any mystical experience, if anything, is a form of autosuggestion!  According to modern thought, the mystic Plotinus surely was deluded when he said:

"This is the soul's true end, to touch that Light and set It by Itself, not by another , by itself, Which gives it sight as well. It must see That Light by which it is enlightened; for we do not see the sun by another light than his own. How then can this happen? Take away everything!"

However, the great mystic Plotinus is not far from Buddhism which speaks of the radiant Mind and clear light Mind, etc.  A beautiful example of such a description appears in the Dashabhumika Sutra. 

“Again, O son of a good family, thou hast now one light, it is the light that sees into the real nature of all things as unborn and beyond discrimination.  But the light of truth possessed by the Tathagatas is as regards its infinite mobility, activity, and manifestation, beyond all measurement, calculation, comparison, and proportion.  Thou shouldest rise thy intention towards it in order to realise it.”

Believe it or not, there are Buddhists who have not only experienced such a light but have taken everything away in order to realize it—everything conditioned, that is, where everything is finally seen as a configuration of this marvelous, eternal light.  But while materialism has taken hold of the modern soul, skepticism has taken a hold of modern reasoning which is skeptical of any claim of transcendence—perhaps the most important part of mysticism.