The Zennist

Zen is the path to gnosis

Yesterday I was doing more research into the subject of perennial philosophy.  It has a long history going back to Agostino Steuco (1497–1548) who was influenced by the neo-Platonic philosophy of Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499).

“For Ficino the path to gnosis, though perfected by Plato, had a distant origin, and he revived and refined the ancient notion of a secret, esoteric, and what Steuco would later call perennial wisdom, a prisca theologia, that had preceded and prepared for Christianity as the climactic Platonic revelation” (Michael J. B. Allen, Marsilio Ficino, p. xvi).

What caught my attention was the phrase, “path to gnosis” which I took to be just about where Zen Buddhism is coming from.  It is certainly not a path to moral excellence or a path of ‘just sitting’ in the belief that practice and enlightenment are one and the same thing. We might also understand that the word Zen, which comes from the Sanskrit word, dhyâna, helps us to clear a path that takes us to gnosis.

Gnosis, in the context of Zen Buddhism, would mean the knowing of our true nature which has many other names such as One Mind, in which case we would realize the One Mind which transcends samsara and certainly our corporal body together with its troubling and imperfect mentations.  The One Mind is described this way in the treatise, Awakening of Faith attributed to Asvaghosha.

"The Mind in terms of the Absolute is the one World of Reality (Dharmadhatu) and the essence of all phases of existence in their totality. That which is called "the essential nature of the Mind" is unborn and is imperishable. It is only through illusions that all things come to be differentiated. If one is freed from illusions, then to him there will be no appearances (lakshana) of objects regarded as absolutely independent existences; therefore all things from the beginning transcend all forms of verbalization, description, and conceptualization and are, in the final analysis, undifferentiated, free from alteration, and indestructible. They are only of the One Mind; hence the name Suchness. All explanations by words are provisional and without validity, for they are merely used in accordance with illusions and are incapable of denoting Suchness. The term Suchness likewise has no attributes, which can be verbally specified. The term Suchness is, so to speak, the limit of verbalization wherein a word is used to put an end to words. But the essence of Suchness itself cannot be put an end to, for all things in their Absolute aspect are real; nor is there anything which needs to be pointed out as real, for all things are equally in the state of Suchness. It should be understood that all things are incapable of being verbally explained or thought of; hence the name Suchness."

To fully appreciate the subtlety of the above words, gnosis of our true nature is necessary.  Short of gnosis, we must have complete faith in these words inasmuch as  they are describing an actual transcendent state otherwise called ultimate reality.  Incidentally, we can call this gnosis, gnosis of our true nature, One Mind, Dharmadhatu, the essence of all, the essence of Mind, Suchness, etc.  What is important for us is to attain gnosis of our true self or nature.  Without gnosis, Zen is not yet complete.  We still must seek.  To help the not-yet-awakened adept along, let’s say that Zen is the path to gnosis of our true nature.

Misleading questions

 With the right question we get the right answer.  But not all questions, just because they are questions, are intended to give us the right answers or better yet, the most important answers.  

If we wish an answer that befuddles the average person it must first begin with a question, while seeming to be straightforward and honest, is phrased in such a way as to mislead.  For example, if I ask, "What did the Buddha teach?" I can open up any book of the Buddha's discourses and say he taught, for example, the origin of suffering, or impermanence, or the 12-Fetters, and so on.  Asking a question like this is sort of like asking, “What does Walmart sell?”  Yes, it’s a stupid question.

The real direction we want, first begins with a question which asks, "What did the Bodhisattva awaken to by which he became the awakened one or buddha?"  We can even go a step further and ask, “Did the Bodhisattva awaken to a supramundane (lokuttara), unconditioned (asmaskrita) reality?”  This is certainly not unanswerable.  The answer is yes.  

The Bodhisattva’s awakening is the very foundation of Buddhism.  What the Buddha subsequently teaches is intended to lead the adept to this awakening.  On the other hand, a book like Walpola Rahula’s, What the Buddha Taught is intended to mislead.  Rahula never asks the important question, “To what did the Bodhisattva awaken to become Buddha?”  The book is little more than a sectarian book which, like most, never gets to the heart of Buddhism.

Buddhism with my friend

Yesterday a friend of mine wanted to talk about Buddhism.  She studies Shambhala which is sort of a made for Westerner’s spiritual path.  I don’t have any strong opinions about it one way or the other.  During the initial part of our conversation I got the feeling that she wasn’t a totally happy camper.  Much of the problem, from my perspective, is Buddhist organizations no matter how well run they are, don’t know Buddhism all that well.  This leads to confusion and dissatisfaction.

When I am with a person, it is not too difficult for me to not only tell them what the Buddha taught but empower them, at the same time, in the sense of putting into their psyche the seeds of future spiritual development.  You can’t do this with a book or even present it in a book.  Everyone is different.  What words block some people does not block others.

I explained to my friend the simple teaching of the Buddha.  We have an animative side (that’s us—who we really are) and the animated side which consists of our psychophysical body that came through our mother’s birth canal. The animative side is directly and deeply interfaced with the animated such that we only perceive the animated: our physicality and mentality.  This we believe is who we are.  And why not?  We’ve never met the animative which is to say, oddly, we’ve never met our true self!

This is where I come in.  I push back the resisting habits of the animated side (this is vasana or habit energy).  My friend then senses the animative or spiritual light which is really who she is.  This sets up the path for her to, over time, transcend the occluding day to day habits that make her true nature (the animative) seem nonexistent.  From here Buddhism can be laid out it all of its simple and elegant majesty.  But this is also where the real work comes in for my friend.  It takes serious dedication and awareness to free oneself from the clouds of ignorance which hide the animative sun, so to speak.

At this point, it needs to be underscored that if the Buddha, himself, empowered a person, pushing back most of the occluding habit energy, over time, it would all return.  There is no free lunch in Buddhism.  No quick fix.  One has to keep their eye on the animative light (which they really are) all the time which then acts to guide and regulate their conduct.  Thus, the animative side become strengthened while our former habits become progressively weakened which then become easy to transcend.

Missing the heart of Zen

As Hegel informs us in his Phenomenology of Spirit, sense certainty (Sinnliche Gewissheit) ,of all the certainties,  is the most inadequate.  It does not coincide with truth or absolute knowing. The sensory moment, this most inadequate of certainties, repeatedly cancels itself out to be followed by still another sensory moment which also cancels itself out, and so on.  This is not knowing at all.  

Unfortunately, this sense certainty; this living in the moment, is what some of today's Zen Buddhist practitioners take to be truth which is far from truth.  This is why it would not be in error to say this is a form of nihilism because there is no truth with the moment; only raw sense certainty.  If we stop here there will be no truth for us, no sambodhi.  Only samsara.

In what ever way we decide to gloss living in the here and the now, or living in the moment, we end up missing the heart of Zen which is a means of seeing our true nature (absolute knowing).  Living in the now doesn’t help us to find the right path to awakening, either.  It really puts us into a state of nihilism or the general acceptance of nihilism, in which a search for ultimate reality, is all but ignored.  If anything, such a search is not believed to be necessary.

Make no mistake about it, Western culture has fallen into nihilism.  It touches almost every facet of our collective existence from medicine with its inability to find the actual cause of the major diseases, to Buddhism, Zen, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and new age spiritualism (there are many more examples).  We are all left with hope, which is a special kind of faith that tomorrow’s newspaper headline will tell us of some great new discovery or advance that will change our lives forever.  Instead, what we see is things falling apart.  Our former values we cherished only deceived us.  Our history of triumph, has hidden the failures and the brutality.  Until absolute truth or knowing appeals to us—let’s face it—we are losing.

Internet Zen newbies

Getting some of your Zen Buddhism from the Internet is really an okay thing to do.  There are a lot of great ebooks to be found, many of which are free while others can be purchased through Google (the major part of the Pali Nikayas can be found as Google ebooks which are well worth the purchase).  There is also Questia, an online academic library that I use all the time.  It is awesome.  For those who are serious about their Zen Buddhism, the cost for all this is not that much.  On the other hand, for the cheapskates, I assume that using some online Buddhist or Zen chat room is the answer which can be found on Reddit, for example, or some other Buddhist forum.

To go with the latter, let me say, is a huge mistake (the cheapskate route).  The rudiments of Zen Buddhism, and just plain Buddhism, cannot be learned by joining a chat room.  Chat rooms are not for inquisitive minds.  They are mainly for lazy newbies.

I have been around these kinds of Internet newbies since the first Netscape browser.  I know them well.  They are a most sullen bunch (yes, I said “sullen”) because they really don’t wish to study Buddhism and Zen Buddhism.  They want, so to speak, the quick fix.  Often, they are going through some  kind of mental crisis and are of the opinion that meditation will help them, as if their pattern of behavior didn’t matter at all!  This is a sorry ass way to learn Zen.  It’s not Zen at all.

When I studied Zen with my teacher I had to read Buddhist texts for at least an hour a day—bright and early in the morning.  Not that I understood all that I read (far from it) but I became familiar with the material, which is important.  Let me stress that reading is important; learning Zen by way of zazen is not good enough—it is just part of the picture.  It has to be supplemented by reading (hopefully the teacher knows the material, too).  Also I had to practice awareness all the time.  I would often get hauled on the carpet when my awareness faltered.  You learn to be aware of all that you do, or else.

Newbies, for the most part, bypass this.  There is no mental culture; no changing of old outworn patterns of behavior.  Just the same old stuff: garbage in, garbage out.  Moreover, they are unwilling to learn any new principles.   In this respect they are very conservative.  They cuddle their old patterns afraid to let go.  Most are incorrigible and argumentative.  No average or below average Zen center would put up with these people for a minute.

 

The barrier to the gateless

There are no artificial barriers or gates in Zen Buddhism that one has to pass through.  Yet, as the Mumonkan informs us, there is a barrier (關).  This is Joshu's "Mu," or for that matter any concept that looms before our mind's eye (one time Joshu said, "Yes," to the same question as to whether or not a dog has the Buddha-nature).  

Even though true reality is gateless (無門), a universe of concepts occludes the gateless true reality which is pure Mind.  These concepts of ours are looking for something to grab onto.  We are of the persuasion that the awakened Mind, is conceptual.  It can be roped like some calf in a rodeo show given enough rope and enough time.  But it never works out this way.  Our wanting to conceptualize the gateless true reality is a testament to man’s stubbornness and stupidity.

The remedy, as Zen sees it, for penetrating through the barrier of concepts that occlude the supreme vision, is not to meet that concept-barrier with still another such barrier, but to focus in on Mu, directly, because like every conditioned thing in the universe, there is a moment when it hasn’t yet arisen—it is unborn.  It is the non-conceptual, unstirred Buddha Mind.  This is called the hua-t’ou—let’s call it the ante-Mu.  There is no barrier here.  Not yet; not until we conceptualize another Mu again (and again, and again).  At some point we have to grow tired of conceptualizing; of holding onto the barrier Mu or any of the koan phrases which we believe we can answer conceptually.

Our temporal world, including our conceptual thoughts, is not continuous.  Our thoughts arise and perish.  The problem for us is we do not know from whence they arise and into what they disappear.  If we did, there would be no barrier.  We would instantly see that the Mu barrier which stands in front of the gateless is a composition of the true gateless reality which is pure Mind.  When we conceptualize, Mind is hidden from us—the still water is stirred, so to speak.  By awakening to pure Mind we discover the very substance of our conceptual thoughts.  Mu is just a mode of this substance. 

The high cabal and Buddhism

Much of the historical and scientific information, including religious information, people have stored in their heads is inaccurate if not downright wrong.  This misinformation is generally found to be accepted fact in mainstream media and polite society.  It is easy to see the prevalence of this misinformation in popular books or movies which, incidentally, often have a huge propaganda impact on popular culture.  Some books and movies, however, teach us not to trust, fully, mainstream views.  The preponderance of such popular misinformation, no matter how much and how well presented, cannot reveal truth.  

There is a “high cabal” (Winston Churchill’s term) that runs many things; that acts, through various instrument such as the mainstream media.  It is like a censor of what the public is allowed to receive as fact or need not know.  This high cabal is more of a huge family—far larger than the Rothschilds— that has one general aim or drive, namely, a will-to-power; one might even think of it as a unconscious form of psychopathy.  Unfortunately, Buddhism gets caught up in it.  There is the public perception of Buddhism and Buddhism of the discourses (the Buddha’s words)—a Buddhism which is much more complex and esoteric, cutting against mainstream values.  This is the Buddhism that is never taught in Zen or Dharma centers. 

This esoteric doctrine of Buddhism, if we can call it that for now, doesn’t resonate well with the brainwashed minions of the high cabal who have been taught to doubt anything not having the stamp of scientific materialism on it.  For this reason, what Westerners believe Buddhism to be, is a distortion.  Even Buddhist scholars admit that they don’t know what the Buddha taught even though much of the early canon is accessible to scholars and to the average Buddhist.  Yet, it seems pretty clear that early Chinese Buddhism understood what the Buddha taught including the various Zen schools and before that Indian Mahayana Buddhism.  They all taught awakening to a transcendent essence or substance that came by various names such as Tathagatagarbha, One Mind, Buddha-nature, etc.  This helps us to see that what the Buddha taught in the early discourses was the unconditioned (nirvana) in contrast with the conditioned.  The conditioned side is the side of suffering, the unconditioned is not.  As long as we identify with the conditioned we suffer even though, intrinsically, we are unconditioned, although we are asleep to this truth.

The biggest roadblock to getting a good picture of what the Buddha taught is Western culture, itself; not the individual Westerner who is simply a victim of Western indoctrination.  The problem remains, however, how does one deprogram oneself; or how does one unhypnotize oneself who, in a knee-jerk way, hates and fears the the esoteric?

Learning what polluted mind means

When it says in the first verse of the Dhammapada, “If somebody speaks or acts  with a polluted mind suffering follows him,” we need to ask ourselves what is meant by a “polluted mind,”  for otherwise we will not what to reject.  If we look at the commentary to the Dhammapada (DhA 1:23) we learn what polluted (padutthena) means,

"Polluted by adventitious faults such as covetous impulses, and so forth. Original mind (pakatimano) is the bhavanga-citta which is unpolluted.  Just as when clear water is tainted by the external color blue flowing into it so that it is now determined to be blue water, and so forth, but earlier was clear water, in the same way mind (or thought) becomes likewise tainted by adventitious faults such as covetous impulses and so forth, but  not the earlier bhavanga-citta or new/beginning mind (navam cittam). Hence, has the Blessed One said, “Luminous, O monks, is this mind. It is by adventitious pollutants that is is polluted.”

When we look within, how much of our own thoughts are tainted, as if someone poured blue dye into a bucket of clear spring water?  We know this is true because we cannot see the luminous or pure Mind.  In our delusion, we believe the polluted, defiled mind is the pure Mind!  From the very beginning of our birth we have only perceived the dyed mind never the undyed mind, so to speak.

The commentary reads very close to the pith of Zen.  It also serves to explain where the path begins and ends for us.  At some point, in order to be successful in our practice, whatever our practice might be, we have to see the mind undyed, unagitated, and unpolluted in all of its luminous glory.  Halfway measures are not allowed.  All contrivances, ultimately, cannot lead us all the way to the end.  They are only helpful in getting us to the edge.

Until every fiber of one’s being has been fully exhausted in the inner search for pure Mind, only then does the pure Mind come into view on its own accord.  This is the only way it can be comprehended.  Comprehending Mind has never been achieved by any other means. 

A revulsion towards consciousness

Consciousness (P., viññâna; S., vijñâna) is by no means, in Buddhism, absolute.  It is conditioned; not unconditioned (e.g., nirvana).  Consciousness is impermanent and suffering. It is also murderous, and upon physical death is the transmigrant by which the karmic process continues over many life and death cycles (samsara). 

"Just as a silkworm makes a cocoon in which to wrap itself and then leaves the cocoon behind, so consciousness produces a body to envelop itself and then leaves that body to undergo other karmic results in a new body" (Maharatnakuta Sutra).

And, 

"When the consciousness leaves the body, it carries all the body’s attributes with it.  It assumes an [ethereal] form as its body; it has no body of flesh and bones.  Because it has the senses, it has feeling and subtle memory and can tell good from evil" (Maharatnakuta Sutra).

Because consciousness is so fundamental for us humans we can't really envision transcending it.  For many it becomes absolute.  But looked at from a spiritual perspective it is not a reflection-into-self, which is samadhi, that is, absoluteness realized.  It is a reflection-into-other, other being always difference in which the thirst for error continues.  This difference is the active, unsettled disparity of karmic formations which is the third nidâna of the Twelve Fetters or dvâdsha-nidâna and the fourth aggregate (skandha) of the five skandhas.  According to the Buddha, the worldling or puthujjana is unable to experience a revulsion towards consciousness, thus, is unable to be liberated from its most subtle coils.

Making matters even worse, the home of consciousness, according to the Buddha, is the element (dhâtu) of physical shape (rûpa).  It desires physical shape and is, thus, seemingly, forever bound by physical shapes.  The Buddha says this is "one who wanders about frequenting homes [for consciousness]" (S. iii. 9).  But also the other four aggregates (skandha) are also homes for consciousness such as the element of feeling, perception and volitional formations (SN 22:3).

There is a spiritual significance to the use of the word "homeless" which means to live a life that is detached from the five skandhas.  The Tathagata, we need to be reminded, is  “called one who roams about homeless” insofar as he has cut off, at the root, his ties with the five skandha (S.iii.10).

 

Religions of words and truth

All religions are not the same.  They can be quite different.  Buddhism, for example, is a religion based on truth, that is, of seeing ultimate reality which is beyond words.  The religions of Abraham, on the other hand, are religions based upon the word of God.  God supposedly speaks to prophets who, in turn, relate his message to their followers.  The prophet is the divine middleman, so to speak.

The Buddha doesn't want us to depend upon words except as they point to what is beyond them.  For example, the word, "Lake Tahoe" points to a real lake that is not man-made but nevertheless quite real.  The Lake Tahoe sign points to the the real Lake Tahoe which is even beyond the name we give to it. The name is only for the purposes of communication.  

The Buddha, by his discourses, wishes us to intuit, directly, our true nature which becomes apparent when our mind is no longer stirred.  Such a mind is the awakened mind or Buddha Mind.  It is mind, as essence, in its native unborn purity.  It is the very substance of all that we are presently perceiving in the way of phenomena including our thoughts that we constantly reflect upon.

The scriptures of Buddhism are not the same as, say, the scriptures of Christianity.  Yes, it is true that both scriptures are held to be sacred by the faithful.  But they are quite different in other respects.  The Buddha wants us to see what he saw when he became "Buddha."  He does this through his teachings which come by way of words.  At the same time, he doesn't want us to cling to words and thereby miss what he is pointing to.  He tells his monks,

"Bhikshus, having known the parable of the raft, you should abandon even the Dharma, how much more that which is not Dharma!" (M. i. 135).

Always, at the back of what he teaches, the Buddha wants his followers to come and see what he saw.  There are no commandments of a God to obey—no thou shalt nots; there is nothing to be obedient towards other than to find within oneself what the Buddha found by which he became awakened.

It this is not your cup of tea which means you are not up to looking deep within yourself to see what the Buddha saw whereby he became awakened, then Buddhism is probably not your religion.  Look elsewhere for salvation because Buddhism demands of us that we look within past language and scripture.