The loss

 I dread the time when the world has lost its ability to understand spiritual truth and its personal value in a world of increasing nihilism.  If the world should lose its ability to understand spiritual truth or doesn’t care, this doesn’t mean that there is no truth.  Nor does it mean that there is no true Buddhism or true Zen Buddhism.  It only means that most people not only lack the ability to tell whether or not they are on the right path, but are clueless as to what a spiritual truth and a path to it is about.

This inability, we might judge, is something we should take notice of and consider treating as a form of psychopathology.  It entails not just an inability to interpret the discourses of the Buddha and the Zen masters but a refusal to engage with their words at the level of spiritual meaningfulness.  This is like someone who has an old VW bug who also has a huge repair manual at hand.  Yet when it comes to the simple operation of changing the oil, they can’t manage to do it—in fact, they are not aware of the requirement to change oil every so many miles.  In other words, this person is overwhelmed by an inability to transfer what the repair manual is saying to the VW engine itself.

Now, if we all grew up in a family that had VWs, and we watched our dad and mom repair their VWs, we would be masters of VW repair at a young age.  Likewise, if we grew up in a spiritual culture it would not be that difficult to understand what the unconditioned means from the conditioned, just as we might be able to distinguish the idea of a radio signal from the radio in a culture that used radios.

As we slowly descend to the great darkness of nihilism, the psychological value of spiritual truth will become increasingly apparent by its gradual loss just as the loss of water is made apparent by the individual’s thirst.  We are already experiencing this loss even though we are unaware of it happening.  And what we believe is sanity is really insanity.  Everything will be upside down.  

Comments

[Susan]

I think the reasons behind the "why bother with it?" attitude may be, first, because no one here takes religion particularly seriously, except for the fundamentalists. People just jump from one practice to another, choosing aspects they like and ignoring the rest. They identify with the name and the outfits, but there's no personal investment. What's really important is work, family, and TV. Second, there's no economic value attached to religion, and it doesn't aggrandize the ego. Third, there's the idea "religion = superstition" because you can't measure it or really transfer it. You can only try to persuade others to practice and believe as you do, so you yourself feel more secure in your beliefs.

I've often wondered about hooking people up to a polygraph and asking them questions about their beliefs, and maybe finding out what they _actually_ believe (or disbelieve!) I even wonder about my own Zen teacher, the one with a double PhD. He believes in spirits and dragons flying around? Those trillions of Buddha-worlds?

We in Zen communities need to have one bit of basic (not blind) faith: that within each one of us is a baby buddha, and that our job is to awaken it, and that it is possible for me personally to awaken. Entertaining doubt about that one thing--and I can certainly see it in others and in myself--totally messes up practice and keeps us in the cycle of samsara.