The Zennist

Explaining the almost impossible

What does it mean to obtain the original Mind?  Obviously, it can’t be put into words because it is beyond words.  Nor can it be conceived because it is beyond all manner of conceptions.  We can’t language our way to the original Mind or conceive our way there.

Here is what the problem is like.  Imagine that upon awakening after the Buddha transmitted him, Mahakashyapa realized that he had just gained a new sense.  It wasn’t like the faculty of vision or hearing, or even the faculty of thought (manas) (there are six  senses in Buddhism).  Let’s say this new faculty or sense Mahakashyapa acquired enabled him to see, directly, the absolute substance of the universe.  Everything, without exception, he could see was a composition of this substance or essence.  In a way, it was like the faculty of vision, but went way beyond it.  It cut through every one of the six faculties or senses.  We might even think of it as a transcendental faculty.  We might also call it the seventh sense (in any case it is the supreme sense or Buddha sense).

Carrying this further, in ordinary beings the seventh sense is dormant or sometimes partially open.  Nevertheless, beings have it—call it the Buddha-nature.  It is kept dormant by the overuse of the six senses.  In order to activate this sense, the six senses have to be made aware of by the practice of smriti (Sanskrit) or sati (Pali), which is often translated as ‘mindfulness’.  Mindfulness, in a way, neutralizes the bewitching power of the six senses which takes us closer to the seventh sense.  What is to be avoided is becoming mesmerized by any of the senses and their respective objects if one wishes to open the seventh sense.

Now, imagine the difficulty of explaining this sense or faculty, which has just been activated in you, to another person in which the sense is dormant.  This could be what the newly awakened Buddha faced.  This might be why he said: “And if I were to teach the Dhamma and others were not to understand me, that would be a weariness, a vexation for me.” 

Pointing to the Lankavatara Sutra

One can hardly disagree with Red Pine when he says, in so many words, that the hallmark of Zen, which is a sub-school of Buddhism, is that it is “pointing directly at the mind” (The Lankavatara, 3).  The mind, of course, that it points to is unpacked more clearly in the Lankavatara Sutra than in any other Buddhist Sutra.  This is also the Sutra that made Zen what it is, even today.  It was the Sutra that the legendary Bodhidharma handed to his Chinese disciple Hui-k’o into which was poured the ultimate mystery of Buddhism, hopefully, to take root in the already fertile soil of Chinese Buddhism.

Whether or not Bodhidharma really existed can not be answered with any degree of confidence.  But we can say that the Zen lineage begins with the Lankavatara Sutra and no other.  It even fostered a school called the Lanka School the head of which was Gunabhadra who died in 468.  It is Gunabhadra’s translation that Bodhidharma transmitted to hui-k’o.

Judging from the recondite quality and depth of the Lankavatara Sutra, modern Zen seems extraordinarily distant from the early formation of Zen.  Modern Westernized Zen appears to have lost itself in a world of pop psychology and sitting therapy which in no way can help the average practitioner to get closer to seeing the world from the standpoint of the Lankavatara Sutra which, I must say, is quite extraordinary.

To speak in somewhat of a Hegelian manner, the Lankavatara Sutra culminates in a perfect synthesis.  Just how this synthesis is achieved is remarkable.  Mind, unbeknownst (avidya) to itself, like a womb (garbha), has given birth to itself such that it becomes something, external and alien.  In other words, it confronts itself as 'other'.  What stands before it, including the psychophysical body, is imaginal but seemingly real and concrete.  Mind, as a result, becomes dependent upon the imaginal; locked into a relative, dependent existence with it.  This is its disharmony (duhkha).  Mind does not know that what appears before it is nothing more than phenomenalizations of itself.  In itself, it is the absolute substance which is never other than unconditioned, looking at its own compositions, as infinite as the stars in the heavens, this being the conditioned world.

Being a witness to the mysterious synthesis, as in the example of water with its waves, requires the help of the Buddhas which is called in the Lankavatara Sutra the Light of Mahayana.  The Buddhas impart to the adept their sustaining power displayed with the body, mouth, and words.  This is the real transmission which must always be from Buddha to the Buddha-to-be.

A simple test

Perhaps a simple test by which to determine if anyone is going to make it in Zen very far is to ask them if they like mysticism, and just what have they read which falls into the category of mysticism—say, for example, Plotinus.  

This interests me because I am coming to the conclusion that Western Buddhists and Zennists are, by and large, incapable of understanding mysticism, and that is a bad thing.  It means that they are really clueless about Buddhism and especially Zen.  From what I can tell, they view Buddhism and Zen as a kind of psychological therapy, not realizing that the goal of Buddhism is to realize the unconditioned. 

Although it should not be the rule, but often is, Dharma centers including Zen centers cater, almost exclusively, to people who are incapable of grasping what mysticism is all about and how Zen Buddhism is, actually, full-blown mysticism, Chinese style.  I believe it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to teach people Zen if they are blockheads when it comes to understanding mystical reflection.  It can only lead to problems.  Such a situation reminds me of a Sutra from the Buddhagarbha.

[A] blind person asks others, “What does the color of butter look like?”  A person answers, “It looks like snow.”  The blind person touches snow and feels the coldness of it, and he assumes that the color of butter is cold.  Another person answers, “It is like the wing of a swan.”  He hears the sound of swans’ wings and assumes that the color of butter is “oor-oor.”  Another answers, “The color of butter is like a conch.”  He feels the smooth touch of the conch and assume that the color of butter is smooth.  As a blind person cannot know color as it is, the Buddha-essence is also very difficult to realize (for anyone other than the realized ones) . . . .” (Longchen Rabjam, The Practice of Dzogchen, pp. 243-44).

Mysticism, as the above illustrates, is like a leap in which we must go from the familiar to something totally inconceivable and unfamiliar.  There is no way by which we can anticipate what the Buddha-essence is.  The mind that attempts to conceive of it is purblind.  It will have to be left behind on the mystical journey for the simple reason that the Buddha-essence is inconceivable.  How might one conceive their way to it?

Losing our scent for Buddha-nature

One of the main points of Buddhist practice is to eliminate the belief that our psychophysical body is the âtman, which according to the Mahaparinirvana Sutra is the Buddha-nature.  The way to eliminate the belief that my psychophysical body is the âtman is by looking at my physical shape (rûpa).  Is it changeless like the âtman or Buddha-nature?  The answer is, of course, no.  The same goes with our feelings, our perceptions, volitional formations, and sensory consciousness.  This is all transitory and unstable.

Hopefully, by doing this we will come to conclude that these aggregates cannot be our âtman, or the same, our Buddha-nature.  As long as we can’t get rid of our belief that the psychophysical body that we acquired at conception is our âtman, we will continue to suffer.  We have to stop clinging to it otherwise we will continue to suffer.  And just what is suffering?

“And what, bhikkhus, is the noble truth of suffering?  It should be said: the five aggregates subject to clinging; that is, the form aggregates subject to clinging [all the way to] the consciousness aggregate subject to clinging. This is called the noble truth of suffering” (SN 56.13).

It is not our âtman that is suffering but rather our clinging to that which is suffering, namely, the Five Aggregates of physical shape (or form/rûpa), feeling, perception, volitional formations and consciousness.  By interfacing with the psychophysical body, making contact with it, we experience its experience.  As we cling more to the psychophysical body, lured by its pleasures, we have deeper and deeper contact with it until we are overwhelmed by it.  At this stage our Buddha-nature seems altogether absent.  At this stage we are prithagjanas (worldlings) enjoying the dung-like happiness (mîlasukha) of the world.  We  have almost lost our scent for Buddha-nature.

The almost perfect trap of samsara

Samsara means to be trapped in the unending cycle of birth and death in which no apparent escape is discernible.  Everything in between the time of our birth and our eventual death is samsara which I hasten to add, doesn't end with our death.  Even if we hope for nirvana there is still only samsara.  The trap is almost perfect.  The only escape is by the realization of true Mind (pure Mind, bodhi Mind, etc.).  

Even though the Buddha's carnal body and those of the realized master's crapped out, both were anchored in the deathless nature of true Mind. They could clearly discern (prajñâ) the immortal from the mortal.  Death was unable to destroy true Mind.

Samsara is like a child making a sandcastle who is only aware of the castle, itself; who takes no cognizance of the sand from which the castle is made.  When the ocean waves eventually destroy the child's castle, the child is in tears.  The child doesn't see that the castle is nothing more than sand.  It is just a configuration of sand, in other words, or the same, a dependent origination of sand.  The birth of the sandcastle which results in its subsequent destruction is the creation of desire which ever seeks to transform the true into the false because of avidya (not knowing that the transformed is but a configuration of the true).

During meditation, we should observe that each and every thought or subtle feeling that arises in our psychophysical body, which the Buddha calls, “old karma”, is but a mind-castle!  Our problem is that we don’t have a clue as to what all these mind-castles are composed from.  We are clueless as to the substance (tathatâ).

Mind the absolute

Mind, in Mahayana Buddhism, is always the absolute.  But this absolute or essence for us is only still an unawakened immediacy.  It has yet to fully recognize itself.  While Bodhidharma will say, This mind is the Buddha, he doesn’t say the mind of life and death is, or the defiled mind is the Buddha.  We still must, on our own, make it to the summit of Mind.  This is not a journey outside of us.  Far from it.  Our very mind right now has the potential to know itself, that is, to become Buddha or awakened.  Connected with this, enlightenment or the awakening of mind to itself comes after the sublation of error.  This involves mind overcoming its attachment to its phenomena which keeps it weak and deluded.

In order to awaken itself, mind must take a path in which it will have to set aside the untruths of itself before it reaches itself symbolized by the Bodhi-tree.  The journey on this path consists in mind encountering its untruths and setting them aside which is also mind's suffering.  But it is also mind's purification in which it is harmonizing and advancing towards itself which will then be the Bodhi Mind.

Ultimately, when mind has acquired the ability to always turn to itself (samâdhi), instead of always facing and depending on its phenomenal arisings, it is the Mind that is absolute Mind or Buddha Mind.  Nothing can defile it ever again.  This is the real beginning of the Bodhisattva’s path which will continue to unfold the richness of Buddha Mind until Mind turns all of phenomena; no longer being turned by phenomena. 

The beginning of the koan

The Zen legend begins with Bodhidharma, but it actually should begin with the Lanka School and its Lanka masters which make  up the Lanka lineage beginning with Bodhidharma (or Gunabhadra) followed by Hui-k'o, Seng-ts'an, Tao-hsin, Hung-jen and Shen-hsiu rather than Hui-neng. It is from this tradition, I would argue, that the idea of the koan emerges which might very well be the brain child of Ma-tsu.

Ma-tsu came from the Lanka School which was in Szechuen.  He later studied under the Sixth Patriarch's disciple Huei-jang.  According to Dr. Hu Shih, "The Lanka Sutra had taught that words were not necessary to express the truth and that any gesture or motion or even silence might be used to communicate a truth.  Ma-tsu developed this idea into a pedagogical method for the new Zen."  

For Ma-tsu, human actions were the function (yung) of our Buddha-nature. Knocking a student to the ground, snapping a finger, coughing, smiling, pinching a student's nose, paradoxical answers, were the function of Buddha-nature.  In other words, to be natural was the Way insofar as all human functions originated from Buddha-nature.

Essentially,  Ma-tsu's tradition believed everything is altogether true (chen) as contrasted with Northern Zen that believed everything is altogether false (wang). What both of these traditions failed to realize, according to Zen master Tsung-mi, is that essence (t'i) is most fundamental. It is the basis upon which enlightenment is validated, rather than function. Function is only the 'branch' and not the 'root'.  Realizing Buddha-nature is the root of the Bodhi-tree.  It supports what is manifested of the tree above the roots.

When  Joshu says “Mu” or “Go wash your bowl” this becomes a direct expression of Budhda-nature, that is, the function.  But for the student who  is the recipient of this oddball response to his question, it all seems strange and illogical.  The student doesn’t understand that he is only getting the function, not the essence.  He has to be forced to intuit the essence from the function, itself.  In addition, the teacher has to disallow any kind of literary solution.  The solution to each and every koan is realization of pure Mind.  This is the essence which is the imprimatur—nothing else.  It alone sacralizes the function.  Impostors beware!

Beyond conceptual Buddha Mind

I have come to the conclusion that many Zen practitioners do not understand the difference between a conception of Buddha Mind and Buddha Mind, itself.  When somebody mentions the word “Buddha” up pops a fuzzy mental image of a Buddha. It could be a Buddha made of concrete sitting in the garden under a tree.  It might be a Buddha statue on the shrine in our temple or Zen center.  It could be the mental image of some old guy with his begging bowl walking with his attendant Ananda.  

Whatever the concept, percept, mental image or idea, this is not the Buddha or Mind (both are used interchangeably in Zen).  The task that lies before us is to somehow get past all these internal Buddha perceptions.  We are only interested in what, exactly, generates these images which is absolutely pure and ungenerated.  Here, by the way, is where the Five Aggregates are transcended.  We can call it the âtman, the Dharma of the Buddhas or the Mind ground.  Names are not important.  It is only important that we are here which is independent rather than dependent as before.

It is difficult for us to accept the fact that we can directly intuit the source of our conceptions, hence, getting beyond their limitations.  We make it almost impossible to do so by continually being fixated on all manner of perceptions from bare emotional ones to ideational ones.  Our defiled mind, as the Buddha calls it, never stops interfering with our spiritual progress.  It is almost untamable.  At the back of all this, our Buddha-nature (still unrealized) is interfacing with all of this craziness, unable to get past it so that it might recognize itself.  This would be the example of the pure subject meeting the pure object.  But as long as the impure subject tries to imagine a pure object of  its own devising, nothing succeeds.  This is not pure enough.

Of course, every time we hear words like “Buddha-nature,” “Dharma,” “Bodhicitta,” “satori,” this triggers a web of concepts connected with other webs of concepts.  We look more and more for suitable meanings, not realizing that we are moving further way from direct intuition of Buddha Mind.  But this is all within the iron wall of conventionality which can only investigate to the level of concepts or ideas.  Conventional thinking as never produced a Buddha.  To discover true reality or Buddha Mind we have to go beyond conventional thinking.

 

An old guy who smiles a lot

For Westerners who are interested in awakening to Buddha Mind, not just using Zen Buddhism as a means of handling day to day problems, finding the right teacher can, over time, prove to be a daunting task.  If we were in China visiting one of China’s great sacred places such as the Zhongnan Mountains, we might run into a number of old hermit monks or nuns.  Are any of them capable teachers?  How do we tell?

If we had good karma, let’s us imagine meeting an old Buddhist hermit in his eighties. When we come close to him, all of a sudden we begin to feel very blissful, for no apparent reason.  This bliss is not weak but, in fact, very strong.  This would tell us right off the bat that this old hermit had awakened to Buddha Mind and that we are of sufficient virtue to get in phase with it.  It is by this experience, that this old hermit will teach us Buddhism and what the terms actually mean just from this experience.

Furthermore, we come to find out that when we depart from this hermit’s cottage, our blissful feeling only lasts for a couple of days.  In other words, our bad habits are reasserting themselves which, like clouds, cover the sun of Buddha Mind.  Once again we meet the old hermit, but this time decide to stay with him for a week.  We pitch our tent only to experience this bliss again.  Truth be told, it is the hermit who is sustaining us.  He has the ability to push back are not so good habits helping us to see the presence, if not the power of Buddha Mind over us.

All of this means that we still have to remove the obstructions within us that make Buddha Mind seem unrealized.  The greatest teacher in the world cannot remove our obstructions for us on a permanent basis.  Being in his presence and sensing the light only means we have sufficient good karma to resonate with this person.  Those who lack sufficient karma might see this hermit as just an old guy who smiles a lot.  This was actually what happened when the Buddha was alive.  Not all of his followers sensed this light.  Those who were so fortunate to be able to, eventually realized nirvana.

Koan and hua-t'ou are the same

Zen master Ta-hui (Dahui, 1089–1163), it can be said, helped to popularize the koan (Pinyin Chinese, gongan).  Important to note, the term hua-t’ou which I have mentioned in previous blogs was treated, at one time, as being synonymous with the word koan (gongan).  Later, it is Ta-hui who made a distinction between the two.  This fact led to the formation of what is called “introspective Zen” (kanhua chan) although this term was used before Ta-hui.

The koan/hua-t’ou practice, rightly understood, involves focusing on the hua-t’ou which is what the koan story is all about.  Hopefully, there occurs a breakthrough in which the hua-t’ou is revealed.  The goal of the koan/hua-t’ou is not to understand the koan intellectually, which Chinese literati did, but by introspection through dhyâna, to uncover the hua-t’ou which is our true nature.  According to The Blue Cliff Records the hua-t’ou means the following:

“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).

In order to get to the first principle the practitioners must leave behind every manner of conceptual thinking going to the very source of all which is prior to concepts and language.  Short of this, no awakening is possible.  Koans, as a consequence, degenerate into intellectual games.  

The koans, put another way, were intended to reveal pure Mind.  For the Zen teacher who had awakened to the pure Mind, his behavior must have seemed almost crazy as he demonstrated Mind to an unawakened student or questioner.  However, if we were awakened, the antics of the Zen teacher would become, at once, both hilarious and subtle.