The Zennist

Simple Buddhism

Essentially, the Buddha taught us that what animates this psychophysical body of ours is absolute and undying as compared with the animated (the five skandhas consisting of material shape, feeling, perception, volitional formations, and consciousness) which is subject to death. 

The animative is unconditioned; the animated is conditioned which means it is forever changing, suffering and lacking âtman (the animative-unconditioned).

Ignorance or avidya means that we cannot distinguish between the purely animative and the animated (by analogy we can’t tell the water from the waves).  In this state we cling to the animated believing it to be animative.  We are inverted.  By this inversion we are dragged along from one confused existence to another.

The cessation of conditioned existence and what it implies can only come about by seeing the unconditioned.

A solitary retreat

The less oxygen Zen gets from Buddhism the less Zen becomes.  It soon turns into a kind of one dimensional yoga of just sitting.  But fundamentally, Zen is not about sitting.  It is about awakening to our true nature which is pure and luminous; free of defilements.  This is what Buddhism tells us. We have to do more to get to a state of seeing our true nature.  Sitting is but a small part.

As I see it, we need to go into a solitary retreat.  We have to be alone—really alone—in which our higher self gains power over the lower self in a kind of sublime struggle.  When I lived alone without electricity, my nearest neighbor being 7 miles away, the Lankavatara Sutra and others like the Diamond Sutra had more of an impact upon me.  Their depth was more apparent.  Over time I gained confidence in awakening to pure Mind.  I knew this is what I had to do.  I couldn’t waste time anymore, setting aside this most important quest.

In this solitary retreat you are in nature’s vital world—not man’s often distorted and needlessly cruel  world.  Nature becomes active in helping you to achieve your goal of awakening only because you trust that every thing under heaven and earth wishes liberation as you do.  Nature sends you many signs.  Then eventually you come to your wit’s end, exhausting all your vain attempts at seizing pure mind.  Then and only then can you enter the gate.

Anticlimactic comedy

Zen isn't exactly, at this point in the West, in danger of turning into a punch line. It may never become such.  Still, this doesn't mean it cannot become a joke like a comedy sketch that abruptly ends or becomes deliberately anticlimactic. It is like the Gahan Wilson cartoon that shows what looks like two  Zen monks in meditation. One, who looks like the Zen master, says to the other, "Nothing happens next. This is it."  Yes, this is anticlimactic comedy.

There is nothing in Zen to prevent Zen from becoming anticlimactic comedy, a joke on itself.  It may have reached this point already.  There is always that part of Zen when we conclude, it’s a big joke intended to show us that seeking truth is a fool’s errand.  However, in my case it was anything but this.  In fact, what happened to me is so extraordinary that I can only reveal a little at a time.  Those who have visited me know what I am talking about.

All this prompts we to work at giving The Zennist reader confidence that Zen is for real. There is no fools errand here and no comedy.

Searching for competent teachers

Most of us if our life depended up it could not name sixty Western Zen masters let alone claim to have met all of them.  But a Chinese seeker of competent Zen masters did just this. His name was Ta-sui (834–919). 

Although I called on more than sixty prominent teachers, barely one or two had great perception. The rest hardly had the real true knowledge—they just want your donations.

Apparently, our seeker didn’t have too much success even though there was no lack of Zen masters.  In the West, we do not have a lot of Zen masters and we have to draw the unfortunate conclusion that, probably, most Zen masters in the West hardly have any real true knowledge.  By the same token, there is no lack of credulous students in the West.  This causes me to say a perfect storm can easily develop when the most incompetent Zen master and the most credulous student meet.  The best remedy for this unfortunate situation is do your research (some due diligence) before you decide that this Zen master is going to be your teacher.  If you choose not to you could be in real trouble. 

Bear with me

Recently, my wife has been in the hospital so please bear with me.  My time and energy has gone into helping her which means I haven’t had the time I would like to focus on The Zennist.  The difficult thing about writing The Zennist is coming up with ideas.  When I come across passages like this (this one is from Zen master Bankei) it is food for The Zennist.

“There is a time for reading the records of the patriarchs. When you read seeking the truth of the scriptures and records, you blind your own eyes; when you read with insight into the truth, they provide proof.”

In any event, bear with me. All conditioned things are impermanent, unsatisfactory—and the good news, they are not our true self or the same, our Buddha-nature.

Consciousness as a means

A rough sketch of consciousness in Buddhism is that it is twofold or binary in that there is awareness and the object of that awareness. This consciousness is more at sensory consciousness. E.g. visual consciousness, auditory consciousness, olfactory consciousness, gustatory consciousness, tactile consciousness and mental consciousness (awareness of mental objects or dharmas).

Whatever we imagine our true or ultimate nature to be, it is not something apprehensible or conceived of by sensory consciousness.  It is not figuratively outside of it, either.  We could say that our true nature is the very substance of sensory consciousness in which sensory consciousness is its mode.  By our inability to see this substance we are stuck; you could even say, deluded, by the constant bewitching activity of consciousness. 

It is only with the instantaneous collapse of consciousness that our true nature appears followed by luminosity or clear light.  For the first time the Zen adept begins to see that sensory consciousness and its world is illusory.  The adept also sees the five skandhas or aggregates, which make up his psychophysical body as being unreal. Turning to the older Pali canon, physical shape is, by the Buddha, likened to foam, feeling to a bubble, perception to a mirage, impulses to a hollow plantain trunk, and consciousness to a magician’s illusion (S. iii. 142). 

Consciousness, like the magician's illusion deceives us most.  Off we go trying to see our true nature through consciousness.  But we are only deceiving ourselves.  Then years later we wonder why we haven't managed to see our true nature.  We are still in the dark, and likely will never see the light by relying on sensory consciousness as a means.

The minority report

The unconventional is always marginalized: marginalized in the sense of being  unimportant or in a powerless position to affect change in the conventional system.  However, the conventional world of settled beliefs is not always resting on a solid foundation.  I would go so far as to argue that our conventional view is generally a makeshift view because the alternative will adversely affect an established system of  power.  

I can think of a number of examples in which the unconventional view is suppressed because it is more persuasive, in terms of evidence to support its thesis, than the conventional view in the example of the big bang theory vs. the unconventional electrical/plasma theory of the universe. More to the point the unconventional threatens the conventional system of power.  This also applies to archeology or cancer research, for example . We might even say that there is always a persuasive minority report that is marginalized by the conventional systems of power.

When we look at Buddhism there is  somewhat of a conventional or settled view that dominates.  According to the conventional view, the Buddha attained enlightenment and by his enlightenment saw that the world was impermanent, painful and lacked a self and, more importantly, he saw that the cause of suffering was a belief in the self or the Hindu âtman.  

Contrary to the conventional view, The Zennist blog presents the unconventional view or the minority report.  According to The Zennist, the Buddha’s enlightenment was the realization of the unconditioned (nirvana) which transcended samsara (the unending cycle of birth and death).  By this realization, the Buddha saw that the conditioned world was impermanent, painful and was without âtman, the âtman being the true refuge.

Needless to say, the ongoing minority report of The Zennist blog is unwelcome.  It is saying that what we have taken refuge in is really the conditioned world, including our psychophysical bodies.  By default, with our implicit denial of the âtman or any unconditioned absolute we are only left with samsara.

A unique form of meditation

When we look at a gold ring, it’s shape, the feelings we have towards it, our ideas about it, our use and consciousness of it, all conspire together to make the ring into something which it is not.  It is only gold.  No matter in what shape we make a thing called a “gold ring,” the gold remains gold.

From this we can think of the conditioned world and our conditioned body we live in to be somewhat like the ring.  It consists of countless physical shapes, our feelings, our ideas, our intentions (e.g., going to work, having desires and hopes, etc.) and consciousness.  What remains unchanged is the substance from which these compositions arise which is free of them.

This substance is what the Bodhisattva awakened to who became the Buddha, who could then say, I am not anything conditioned and could also teach mankind not to identify with what you are not, this not myself being conditioned.  Perhaps, even more profound and astonishing, the Buddha realized that this substance is our self which we do not recognize first hand.  We are clinging to things that we are not in the wrong belief, “I am this.”

In this regard, the Buddha did not so much teach of a self but that we should not identify with what  is not myself.  This is a road of dis-indentification with the conditioned world and the conditioned body, including the conditioned thoughts that arise.  This is a unique kind of meditation from where we all must begin.  Zen master Sixin Wuxin (死心悟新) sums it up best who said:

"While still alive, be therefore assiduous in practising Dhyana.  The practice consists in abandonments.  ‘The abandonment of what?’ you may ask. Abandon your four elements (bhuta), abandon your five aggregates (skandha), abandon all the workings of your relative consciousness (karmavijnana), which you have been cherishing since eternity; retire within your inner being and see into the reason of it.  As your self-reflection grows deeper and deeper, the moment will surely come upon you when the spiritual flower will suddenly burst into bloom, illuminating the entire universe.  The experience is incommunicable, though you yourselves know perfectly well what it is."

 

The Zen performance

 With the beginning of the Sung Dynasty which began in 960 and continued until 1279, Zen became increasingly antinomian.  We pass from the reclusive Zen Buddhist monk of the T’ang dynasty, in the example of Huang-po, to the Sung image of a brash Zennist burning an image of the Buddha or burning the commentaries to the Diamond Sutra and other such antinomian displays which, by the way, were never the norm.

The rise and portrayal of antinomianism in Zen is a learned behavior, or you could even say a learned performance. 

"Many literati viewed this kind of Chan performance as highly artificial and degenerate, hardly different from the dramatic entertainment offered by theatrical programs. They accused the Chan teachers of merely putting up a show, equipped with all the props and elements of a dramatic performance, thereby beguiling a captive but unsophisticated audience and vulgarizing the true Chan spirit. According to them, the Chan teachers were guilty of acting irresponsibly in ways that resembled actors in popular dramas, and they summarily dismissed their claims to a genuine Chan insight” (Mario Poceski, “Chan Rituals of the Abbots’ Ascending the Dharma Hall to Preach," in Zen Ritual: Studies of Zen Buddhist Theory in Practice, ed. Steven Heine and Dale S. Wright (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 108). 

It is amazing to me, after reading some of the texts of early Zen, including the Lankavatara Sutra, that anyone in their right mind would be impressed with these kinds of performances except a credulous audience.  On the same track, zazen, in my estimation, is no better than a kind of ritualistic sitting.  Sit quietly for a certain period of time and you’ve experienced Buddhahood! 

These external performances do not take us to the heart of Zen where begins the true work of realizing within our very being, the pure Mind which we discover the instant our incessantly fluctuating monkey mind stops in the time of a finger-snap.

Being dedicated in the midst of our troubles

Burdened with the precarious nature of our everyday world in which we can suddenly lose our job, become ill, or experience some other kind of crisis, it is not easy to make the effort to see our true nature.  

When faced with these  uncertain conditions, many of us make a bargain with ourselves: “Okay, when all this crap gets settled—maybe after I retire—I’ll take up the great matter of looking for my true nature again.”  There are other kinds of bargains, similar to this, we make all the time.  It is almost an excuse for why we are not dedicated to seeking out the pure or unborn Mind.  We may even take halfway measures like meditation for 20 minutes a day and leaving it at that, or just attend our local Zen center and do a Sesshin now and then.

There is no need to make such bargains, that is, to lessen our search for the mysterious ox (Buddha Mind, our true nature, pure Mind etc.) we seem to have lost somewhere in the jungle of our temporal mind.  What is important is our dedication to looking for our true nature in the midst of such troubling circumstances, not giving up for even a second.  It is somewhat like being in love going on a long journey to see our lover.  Whatever the odds might be, we believe we will overcome them. 

The realization of our true nature is not going to walk up to us and present itself to us when, temporarily, our troubles have been taken care of.  Far from it!  Bodhi or realization is only going to present itself to us after we’ve searched for it, and have finally come to our wit's end by trying to figure out what this Buddha Mind is like (still trying to conceptualize it).  Only then is it possible to see this, our true nature.  It matters not to our true nature if we are doing back-breaking work in a cannery or sitting at a desk, we still have to find this mysterious ox of ours in the jungle of our mind.  It takes a lot of dedication even in the midst of psychological disharmony.  You have to be, honestly, dedicated.