The Zennist

Buddhas in an evil world

Over the years I have managed to accumulate about 395 pages of notes, not to mention 283 pages on the Pali canon alone.  As a general rule when I am reading what I find interesting becomes a note.  Just recently this note struck my fancy.

Buddhas do not appear when the human life span is between 100 and 10 years.  For humans are so depraved as to not be able to understand the teachings of the Buddha.  In Buddhism this is the time called the “Evil World”.  It consists of five corruptions: 1) corruption of life; 2) corruption of the environment; 3) corruption of the passions; 4) corruption of views; 5) corruption of living beings (inferior intelligence).  

This is a paraphrase from Akira Sadakata’s book, Buddhist Cosmology.  It is hard for me to take this at a literal level but I would say, and be correct, that Buddhas are not popular in a degenerate age when human beings lack the ability to respond to their teachings.  It doesn’t mean there are no Buddhas, it’s just that what they teach has no appeal.  This makes more sense and follows the Nikayas when, for example, the Buddha divided humans into two camps, the worldlings (puthujjana) and the nobles (ariya).  He was careful not to sow his seeds of wisdom upon those with minds like non-arable soil.  Somewhat on a different note, Plotinus would agree who said:

“It is not lawful of those who have become wicked to demand others to be their saviors and to sacrifice themselves in answer to their requests.” 

I think both the Buddha and Plotinus would agree that there are certain people who make excellent students and certain people who don’t.  In other words, don’t wast your time with bad students or with those who have no ear for the true teaching.  Such people neither have the temperament nor the good karma to grasp the core of the teachings.

Another aspect to this, if not a caution, comes from the Gospel of Matthew where it is said:

“Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.”

It seems to me that the more esoteric the teaching becomes, centering on the very ground of our being, for some strange and unexplained reason, it invites hostility.  In a less barbaric age than this age with its wars and genocide, I could easily say that during the arising of Bodhicitta the adept is directly empowered by Buddhas who are etheric—but nevertheless, quite real.  And what is more, the Sutras become clear as to their real meaning.  But as the reader already senses any teacher who seriously maintained  this, even though it is described somewhat like this in the Lankavatara Sutra, would become the object of malicious ridicule.

 

 

Trying to awaken

The substance of the fabric of existence is only Mind.  This Mind is most primordial.  Intrinsically, we are this Mind which is also the Buddha-nature or the âtman.  However, we do not realized this; nor do we recognize this Mind as we should.  Only a Buddha does.  

The word ‘Buddha’ just means to have awakened to this Mind having been, before, asleep—a deluded sentient being.  According to the Buddha a sentient being is one who delights or craves form (rûpa) becoming caught up in it.  More precisely, a sentient being is one who delights or craves the conditioned world, this includes their psychophysical body.

The most logical way to undo this terrible predicament is to find a helper to set us upon the right path, a path that will eventually lead us to awakening.  But finding such a helper is no small challenge since there are so many poseurs, many of whom are relatively honest but mainly deluded.  It is the deluded/sincere types who are perhaps the most troubling and numerous.  They are deluded in the sense that teaching the full realization of Mind is not the basis of their understanding of Buddhism—especially Zen Buddhism—while they appear sincere in their teaching, actually believing this is all there is.

The best helper is naturally our own mind wherein is hidden the true Mind we are seeking, or the same, our Buddha-nature.  But we must arise to the occasion, becoming self-reliant, being able to control our passions.  This means that we must be capable of taming our monkey mind and reducing our craving for conditionality; after all, we are striving to awaken to Mind which is unconditioned.

We have to put aside much of our worldly concerns and thinking.  We cannot allow ourselves to be overly seduced by the glitziness of this world.  Becoming mesmerized by it will only lead us in the wrong direction.  It is important to always remember that the conditioned world has no essence at all.  All our worldly thinking, worries, and concerns are really meaningless.  One day our flesh and bones will be no more while that which animated this puppet-like body will continue as blind as ever into new and different existences, unawakened.

Toying around with the waves of the medium

For a long time I have been toying around with the ideas of transverse waves, longitudinal compression waves, including torsion waves, etc., and the medium in which this all takes place.  We might think of our conditioned or phenomenal world, including our senses and internal dialogue, as being part of the world of transverse waves.  The longitudinal system would be karmic/volitional, not being as local as the transverse world.  The absolute would be, of course, the medium itself: our Buddha-nature. 

This scheme is not too far from the Lankavatara Sutra’s three self-natures or svabhavas.  The first self-nature is parikalpita which is our conceptually constructed everyday world. This is the superficial world, the world of reflected light that we believe is real.  This is the transversal world in which birth and death take place.  In is the world where sentient beings are trapped and reborn.  

The second self-nature is paratantra.  It is a matrix which lies below our imagined parikalpita world.  It is longitudinal. If the transverse is horizontal, then the longitudinal is perpendicular to it.   We might recognize it as the world of the paranormal, in one respect.  It is coordinate with the manomayakaya or the body made of will described in the Pali Nikayas. 

“And again, Udayin, a course has been pointed out by me for disciples, practicing which disciples of mine from this body (mentally) produce (another) body, having material shape, mind-made (manomaya), having all its major and minor parts, not deficient in any sense-organ” (M. ii. 17).

Our intentions or volitions constantly affect it.  The paratantric or longitudinal world is the world of our karmic formations.  It is the payback system in which every action on our part, directed to an other, eventually comes back to us.  The longitudinal system is a reciprocal field.   

If parikalpita is like the idea/name of a pot, paratantra is only the shape of the clay.  The clay element, itself, would represent the self-nature of parinishpana which is actual existence or the substance/medium of all paratantra.  One step further, parinishpanna is the absence of parikalpita in paratantra. Under this, we might imagine paratantra as countless torsion waves; a matrix of infinite variety—yet, of a single undying substance/medium.

Sinification of Buddhism

The Ch'an or Zen school is just as much a sinification of Buddhism as Hua-yen and the earlier T'ien-t'ai not to mention other Chinese Buddhist schools. One of the remarkable feats of sinification, in my book, is that the essence of Buddhism wasn't lost by the efforts of the Chinese sinicizers.  One could even argue that the core essence of Buddhism was significantly enhanced and popularized, bringing it well within the reach of the Chinese population including the Chinese literati who helped popularize Zen.  Helping the sinification was the adoption of Tathagata-garbha doctrine, that all sentient beings have the germ or seed of the Tathagata whereby they can become Buddhas if it is cultivated, correctly.  In other words, all creatures are potentially, Buddhas.  Robert Buswell, Jr. is insightful to observe this.

"To accommodate the lay practice of Buddhism, many of these new schools adopted a relatively minor strain of Mahayana thought that never developed into a formal school in India—that of tathagatagarbha (ju-lai-tsang 'embryo of Buddhahood')—as the basis of their doctrinal frameworks.  Tathagatagarbha doctrine conceived of all sentient beings as being already Buddhas and thus inherently enlightened" (Sudden and Gradual, p. 324).

At the heart of Chinese Buddhism is Tathagata-garbha which I hasten to add, has very positive soteriological implications unlike the negative not-self doctrine (anâtma-vâda).  This may account for why not-self doctrine is noticeably absent in Zen which, being only prevalent outside of the circle of Buddhist China's influence.  Zen was not without its Tathagata-garbha influence, its early school being named after the Lankavatara Sutra (a good book on Zen's early history is Cleary's book, Zen Dawn, which deals exclusively with the Lanka School of Zen).  Incidentally, D.T. Suzuki takes up the influence of Tathagata-garbha doctrine in his book, Studies in the Lankavatara Sutra.

It almost goes without saying this but Zen is clearly a product of sinification yet, remarkably, nowhere in this sinification do we find the fundamental essence of Buddhism removed.  Even in the later Sung period, Zen encounter dialogues (chi-yüan wen-ta), which are the bread & butter of koan practice; which are the tools of K'an-hua Ch'an, the bright pearl of Tathagata-garbha is still there, although not in the way the conceptualizing Zen practitioner wishes it to be.  The sole intent of these koan dialogues is to paralyze the conceptualizing intellect in such a way that mind is able to realize itself winning, finally, Buddhahood.

 

One of the lineages of Zen

Zen master Kuei-feng Tsung-mi (780–841) of the T’ang dynasty describes the different Zen lineages in one of his works (ten to be exact).  Surprisingly, one of the lineages he names is T’ien-t’ai, a name derived from the fact that Chih-i, the founder of T’ein-t’ai, lived on Mount T’ien-t’ai.  The Zen lineages that teach the direct realization of Mind-nature are, according to Tsung-mi, the highest level teaching.  One such lineage was T’ien-t’ai. 

According to Chih-i, the perfect and sudden meditation begins after the initial attainment of ultimate reality, or we could say, Buddhahood.  Buddhahood, itself, obtains when, according to Chih-i, "Mind sees itself." In fact, this is what Buddha really means: mind awakening to itself.  Mind, thus awakened, is the whole of the Buddha's teaching.  Mind is also the dharmadhatu or ultimate reality which is the nature of the Buddha. 

The importance of Chih-i (538-597) as far has his contributions to Zen should not be underestimated.  He was truly a genius in every since of the word.

“The noted Ch'an historian Yanagida Seizan has argued that the history of the Ch'an movement really begins when, at the time of the fourth and fifth patriarchs, Tao-hsin (580-651) and Hung-jen ( 610-675), an effort was made to find in Bodhidharma a source of authority older than Chih-i that could be used to establish Ch'an as a tradition in its own right, separate from T'ien-t'ai. Traces of Chih-i's thought are evident in the Platform sutra, and it seems that when Tsung-mi (780)-841) bent his efforts toward strengthening a rather deteriorated tradition of sitting meditation in the Ch'an school, he found it necessary virtually to copy a minor, but popular meditation text by Chih-i, the Hsiao-chih-kuan (Lesser Calming and Contemplation)” (Neal Donner, "Sudden and Gradual Intimately Conjoined: Chih-i's T'ien-T'’ai View," in Sudden and Gradual: Approaches to Enlightenment in Chinese Thought, ed. Peter N. Gregory (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987), 202).

It doesn’t take too much detective work to conclude that given the antiquity of T'ien-t'ai and its comprehensiveness even with regard to understanding the Sutras, Zen didn’t become Zen without being significantly influenced by Chih-i’s thought. This even includes Chih-i’s notion of emptiness which, in some respects, eclipses Nagarjuna’s understanding.  For Chih-i, middle-way Buddha-nature(chung-tao fo-hsing) is non-empty.  This tallies with the Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra in which “emancipation is the ‘not-empty'” rather than emptiness.  

Our big problem

When I say that my mind is empty or is without thoughts I am really saying that the true nature of mind is devoid of movement while, simultaneously, allowing movement in the form of thoughts, conceptions, etc.  To suppress thoughts doesn’t bring about the pure nature of Mind, or the same, mind that is unmoved which is substance.

If we were, somehow, able to go into the mind of a Buddha we would still be unable to see what he sees which is pure Mind which is the very substance of thoughts which are constantly arising and perishing.  No matter how long or how many times we viewed the Buddha’s mind we would be unable to see or connect with his pure Mind.

Somewhat ironic, we are this pure Mind or the same, we are this pure substance.  But here is the big problem.  We don’t recognize ourself in the world of thoughts, concepts, emotions and so on.  However, a Buddha does.  If everything were ice, he would see the water.  If everything were made of clay,  he would see the clay.  On the other hand, the unenlightened would only see ice shapes or different kinds of pots and other clay objects.  Turning to our complex world including the cosmos, the Buddha sees its substance, directly.  But in this profusion of complexity we do not.  We are baffled by the complexity.  Our only refuge from the complexity is our body and our thoughts, including our memories.

Our psychophysical body is not easy to let go of by which we interact with the world around us.  It is who we are, or so we imagine because of our close contact with it beginning at birth.  The Buddha in the Pali Nikayas tries to tell us we are not this human body of ours consisting of physical shape, feeling, perception. volitional formations, and consciousness.  He even goes so far as to tell us that our body is a demon (Mara) and it is murderous.  But still we cling to it as if this is really who we are, intrinsically.

All of us are fooling ourselves if we believe that the conditioned world we look upon through our body is going to give us a clue as to what pure Mind is.  On the same score, we are fooling ourselves in attempting to conceive of this pure Mind.  Our concept of it is a poor copy—not the real thing.  The worst mistake we make is to deny there is such a substance as pure Mind.  We are the proof if only we realize our true nature.

 

The two Zens

The bulk of people who decide to study Zen do so mainly for psychological reasons.  They could be college students or people who lead a stressful life and hope that the practice of Zen can help them.  If sitting in seated meditation can help them, that’s okay.  It is better than nothing and doesn’t involve taking medications.

When we look at Zen this way, the teachings of the various Zen masters looks different than it really is.  The so called “gateless gate” we must pass through could be our pride or arrogance or some other kind of psychological fault such as anger.  

In what can be called traditional Zen the gateless gate is Mu (no).  Mu is the formidable barrier of the Gate of Zen.  Backing up a little, we are to ponder Zen master Joshu’s Mu which was a response to the question, “Has a dog the Buddha-nature?”  We are to transfer our entire being into this one word so that we might see the hua-t’ou, which is pure Mind before it is stirred by Mu, from which Mu came to be our barrier and will eventually disappear back into the hua-t’ou.  Sound too esoteric—not what you expect Zen to be?  I understand.

If we wish Zen to help us psychologically we might decide to go to a Soto temple a few miles away.  Maybe it can help us to deal with our psychological frustrations, not to mention, at times, our emotional pain.  We might learn Dogen’s strategy which consists of four points of view. 

1. Non-calculating or non-pondering

2. Just sitting with correct bodily posture

3. Dropping off body and mind

4. Just sitting or shikantaza

With a good teacher these four points can be expanded so that practicing them on a daily basis will bear fruit, perhaps enough to take the edge off one’s immediate psychological problems, provided they are not too deep.

Of course this is not going to permit us to answer Mu, so that we might pass through the gateless barrier old Joshu set up for us.  This requires an entirely different attitude, one which has a sixth sense, so to speak, for the profound (yes, the esoteric) and also possesses a heaven soaring spirit that is willing to tackle what seems almost impossible; sticking with it for years if necessary.  No quick fix here.

Here we can see two Zens. (Yes, you can take your pick.)  One is the traditional Zen which is totally mystical and one which is oriented to psychology, trying to help people cope with their stressful lives which are the result of many things, for example, wanting too much or lacking self-control.

Experience or realization?

Beginners, and even veterans of Zen, often confuse experiences with realization.  This is not discussed that much in Zen Buddhism.  There is a fine line between experiences and realization.  More than often someone who as been practicing zazen for a long time, even a beginner, has had a meditative ‘experience’ even many such experiences depending on how long they’ve been doing zazen.  But this is a far cry from realizing our Buddha-nature or realizing pure Mind (other terms are used besides these).

According to some teachers, experiences generally consist of bliss, clarity of mind, and an absence of troubling thoughts and emotions, not to mention many other kinds of experiences.  One may even call this a heightened state of physical and emotional well being.  Still, there is no liberation because there is no realization of what transcends conditionality wherefrom suffering arises—even these blissful experiences.

The realization of one’s true nature or pure Mind is never an experience, strictly speaking.  Neither is nirvana.  To seek some kind of ecstatic experience in Zen Buddhism soon becomes a trap.  To seek the realization of one’s true nature, on the other hand, is not a trap.  When the realization of our true nature or pure Mind is accomplished we only have to meditate on this.  It, alone, is capable of liberating and disentangling us by dissolving all that got us into this samsaric mess!

The practice of zazen can bring about a variety of, seemingly, profound experiences.  This means that zazen can produce in us changes in our previous assumptions about ourself and  others; it can even change how we look upon this impermanent world of ours and react to it.  These transformations, if we can call them that are, nevertheless, experiences—not a realization of our true nature or pure Mind.  These experiences are still well within the world of conditionality.  They don’t go beyond this limit.  Only the realization of our Buddha-nature, which is unconditioned, does this.

First, take off the blinders

The West knows a lot of historical facts about Buddhism but, for the most part, seems to understand little.  It is the same with Zen Buddhism.  The problem is not corrected by studying in China, Japan, or even South Korea.  The crux of the matter is that unlike the Chinese, the West has little or no sense of the mystical nor even a willingness to correct the problem.  We should not forget that at the time Buddhism entered China’s borders, China already had a highly developed indigenous religious culture which was mystical in orientation.  

The U.S. has no such longstanding developed religious culture like China’s.  The same goes for Europe.  In this regard, the West has an occluded third eye when it comes to the mystical.  This is apparent when we look in the West for a first-person science that involves introspection as a means to uncovering ultimate reality.  There is none.  There is certainly nothing approaching China’s Taoism.  

The cultural blinders that the West was wearing when Buddhism, and Zen Buddhism crossed the Pacific only allowed it to see Protestantism, secularism, and scientific materialism.  But more, Western culture was also in the process of slowly disintegrating after a half century of brutal wars followed by an extended Cold War.  Unbeknownst to the West, it was slowly moving towards meaninglessness in which the meaning of life is lost, but camouflaged as progress.  Given the cultural blinders and the angst some in the West  sensed, Zen Buddhism seemed capable of offering something new—maybe a way to deal with meaninglessness. 

Still, we are not like the Chinese when Buddhism first crossed its borders.  The West’s problems are much different.  For one thing we in the West are faithless and overly skeptical of religion in general. Adding to the difficulty, the West has put all of its faith in science which is a case of the blind leading the blind, fully convinced they are sighted!  The West even has its science gods like Einstein who doesn’t compare with Lao Tzu or the Buddha.  

Neither science nor materialism can give us refuge from the constant threat of living meaningless and empty lives.  Nor can science or materialism lives annul the fear of death.  Something much more is required.  Buddhism and especially Zen Buddhism when it came to the West offered a means and still does.  But it cannot be implemented as long as we want to wear our cultural blinders which won’t allow for the mystical by which we explore the depths of our being for our true nature.

Life goes on for us

When it comes to the question of the recollection of former existences (pûrvenivâsânusmriti), there is an important question raised by Johannes Bronkhorst as to whether or not the Buddha’s awakening originally just mentioned knowledge of the destruction of intoxicants (P., âsava), omitting memory of former lives and knowledge of the births and death of beings.  This is very important if you can imagine. 

“The majority of versions of the long account of the enlightenment of the Buddha describe three insights:  memory of earlier lives; knowledge of the births and deaths of beings; knowledge regarding the destruction of the intoxicants. Only the third insight has an obvious connection with liberation, which consists in the destruction of the intoxicants. The first two insights make the impression of having been added to the text which underlay these versions, and which was therefore without these first two insights” (Bronkhorst, The Two Traditions of Meditation in Ancient India [1993], p. 119).

Bronkhorst, on the next page, informs the reader that in the Madhyama Âgama (T. 26 p. 589c14-23) which is a Sutra of the Sarvâstivâdins, there is only mention of the “destruction of the intoxicants.”  There is “no mention of earlier lives and the knowledge of the births and deaths of other beings”.

This doesn’t rule out further becoming (S., punarbhava; P., punabbhava) after the death of the corporeal body in which the transmigrant is consciousness or vijñâna (never âtman/attâ).  The vijñâna at death is laden with karmic impressions or samskâra which we might think of as akin to a radio signal in search of an antenna to resonate with again.  The antenna would be the nâmarûpa (name-shape) which is the third nidâna of the 12-Nidânas (ni-dâ — to bind down).  To briefly sum  this up, life goes on for us in the form of vijñâna after our death but it is not necessary to know who we were in the past.  However, it is necessary to live this life, properly.  It is not the last.