The Zennist

It's not the monkey mind

Unfortunately, if one mistakes the monkey mind for the mind of suchness (which is not the mind of birth and death), the vehicle of Zen Buddhism will not go very far.  In fact it won’t move at all.  Just what is the monkey mind?  Here is what I was able to find.

“Just as a monkey swinging through the trees grabs one branch and lets it go only to seize another, so too, that which is called thought, mind or consciousness arises and disappears continually both day and night” (S. ii. 95).

We should recognize this monkey mind in ourselves and stop indulging in its monkey shines and deceptions.  With another look at Zen, many of us imagine this monkey mind can be tamed by zazen.  But this is only a temporary measure.  It does nothing to help us transcend such a mind and realize absolute Mind which is the very essence or substance of our thoughts.

Modern Zennists, of course, are free to cherry-pick their Zen and often do bringing in terms such as “ordinary mind” or “no mind” as if to say, the Buddha really taught the monkey mind which is also to say, the mind of ignorance is the enlightened mind.  This reflects a rather bad, anti-academic attitude amongst some Zennist since neither ordinary mind or no mind refer to the monkey mind.  What is the ordinary mind?

“Mazu used the term pingchang-xin (J. heijôshin or byôjôshin) in its authentic meaning, i.e., the mind (or self) of no defilement and no discrimination, and he contrasted it with another term, shengsi-xin (J. shôji-shin, "the life-and-death mind (or self)), which to Hisamatsu is nothing other than defilement. Critics of Mazu's thought fail to see this point” (Shin'ichi Hisamatsu, Gishin Tokiwa, Christopher Ives, Critical Sermons of the Zen Tradition, 152 n. 59).

As for the subject of no mind.

“No mind means that there is no deluded, foolish mind; it does not mean there is no mind to discern false from true” (Thomas Cleary, The Original Face, p. 24).

Buddhism and psychology

The first mass marketing of Buddhism and other Eastern religions came by way of the Theosophical Society which became what Helena Petrovna Blavatsky called "spiritual psychology" which we would call today, parapsychology.  

Despite the mass marketing in the West by the Theosophical Society, the real contents of the Buddha's teachings were still pretty much confined to academia and its theology libraries. It is only when Buddhism began to be looked at as an ancient form of Eastern psychology, dropping Blavatsky's "spiritual" that Buddhism started to take root in the soil of the West.  

I think credit goes to Carl Gustav Jung whose enormous prestige and popularity helped position Buddhism in such a way that it could enter mainstream Western psychology offering new remedies, such as meditation, to cure the nihilistic West of its decadence.  With Jung, here begins, we could say, the official psychologization of Buddhism.  But there is one problem.

Psychology is not without materialistic roots and maybe too much psychopathology.  In addition, with both empirical and rational foundations, it naturally tends to exclude, for example, mysticism and ontology. Still it admits humanistic psychology alongside of behaviorism and psychoanalysis.

It is with the general influence of humanistic psychology that Buddhism is remodeled into a kind of Buddhist psychology.  Looking at the shape of Buddhism today, mysticism and ontology are kept far away. Buddhism has gone from being a path to the transcendent, i.e., nirvana, to one of becoming a humanistic path in which man is his own end—not in Nietzsche's words as something to be surpassed which chimes more with Buddhism.

 

Breaking our ties with our former religion

I have long been suspicious of the motives of Western Buddhists when it comes to converting or choosing to become a Buddhist or a Zen Buddhist. It is somewhat like getting a divorce after a long marriage then, in only a few weeks, finding a new partner that will somehow make up for the loss.  All the while the new relationship is going on, one's mind is never without the thought of their former spouse.

In general, many Western converts to Buddhism and Zen never really get away from the religion they left behind.  Zen Buddhism often becomes a new kind of Christianity free of all the troubling elements of the former religion.  A secular Buddhist, for example, is really an agnostic or atheistic Protestant.  Instead of asserting the sovereignty of God it is the sovereignty of human nature that is asserted by the secular Buddhist.  These same Buddhists insist on man’s imperfect nature and his imperfect institutions; and maybe there is no privileged truth or privileged values.  Finally, for the secular Buddhist and Zennist there is the faith to doubt for the sake of truth which never seems to come.

We never get a clear unbiased picture of what the Buddha is really saying as long as we have not completely broken our ties with our previous religion.  On somewhat of a personal note, I don’t see Buddhism and modern Christianity as having much in common.  But from the side of Buddhism I can see elements in the older forms of Christianity in which it appears to be moving towards a Buddhist viewpoint.

Zen's non-Buddhist connotations

There are many books about various kinds of Zens, for example, Zen of Hoarding, The Zen of Oz, The Zen of Social Media Marketing, The Zen of Listening, The Zen of Mountains and Climbing, The Zen of Gambling and so on. None of these various Zens are Zen Buddhism.  They are considered to be Zen outside of Buddhism or gedozen (This term is from Zen master Tsung-mi's Five Zens which appear in his Ch'an Preface).

This proliferation of various kinds of Zen which are not connected with Buddhism is noted in the Encyclopaedia Britannica Online Academic Edition: 

"In popular usage, the modern non-Buddhist connotations of the word Zen have become so prominent that in many cases the term is used as a label for phenomena that lack any relationship to Zen or are even antithetical to its teachings and practices."

The popularity of Zen as a term that can be affixed to almost anything, even breast feeding, may well have affected its once noble place as a sect of Chinese Mahayana Buddhism. Presently, anyone's idea of Zen suffices as Zen even though it has nothing to do with Buddhism.  Zen, at this point, can easily breakaway from Buddhism or even appear to be connected with Buddhism although it has nothing in common with the Buddha's teachings.

Modern Zen, in some ways, can become so 'psychologized' that it eventually becomes stripped of its mystical, ontological roots which have traditionally asked the seeker of wisdom to discover their true nature which lies hidden from them such that they are unable to intuit it, directly.  Zen then becomes a kind of self-help psychology; a particular way of dealing with our day to day problems.  There is no consideration of awakening to our true nature, nor do we care to undertake such a journey.  Zen turns into a practice of salvaging our all-too-human ordinary lives moment by moment; never getting beyond samsara. 

 

Getting away from materialism

There are some people who are inclined to believe that Zen meditation may help them with their depression.  I think it is true that meditation may help for a while but mainly because of the placebo effect it offers in the beginning.  I am beginning to see that depressive states are related to materialism.  Grades of depression could likely be a hangover from the materialist life.

There is evidence that suggests that a materialist orientation, which places value in having possessions and the status image they project, may lead to experiencing low levels of well-being; even creating a kind of vicious circle: the more depressed I am, the more I consume which leads to more depression.  Even consideration of the future possession of desirable consumer goods may have negative effects not to mention reduced social involvement (a feeling of being alone).  So far I have not come across any research which indicates that a life which revolves around materialism leads to positive outcomes.

Those who undertake Zen as a kind of therapy for their depression would be strongly advised to wean themselves off of materialism as much as they can.  Stop being a consumer of goods, assuming they add a sense of well-being when, in fact, they don’t.  For the stronger among us, we need to fast, that is, abstain from becoming caught up in consumption.  Only then does the spiritual life become possible for us.

Yonder shore and the moon

The Buddha never advocated any kind of Sutra worship.  His discourses and those of his disciples were expedients.  The most famous is the Parable of the Raft (M. i. 134-135).

“Depending on this raft and striving with my hands and feet, I have crossed over safely to the beyond. Suppose now that I, having beached this raft on dry ground or having submerged it under the water, should proceed as I desire?' In doing this, monks, that man would be doing what should be done with that raft. Even so, monks, is the Parable of the Raft dhamma [dharma] taught by me for crossing over, not for retaining. You, monks, by understanding the Parable of the Raft, should get rid even of (right) mental objects, all the more of wrong ones.”

Another kind of parable, if we may call it that for now is found in the Surangama Sutra (Taisho 945).

“This is like a man pointing a finger at the moon to show it to others who should follow the direction of the finger to look at the moon. If they look at the finger and mistake it for the moon, they lose (sight of) both the moon and the finger. Why? Because the bright moon is actually pointed at; they both lose sight of the finger and fail to distinguish between (the states of) brightness and darkness. Why? Because they mistake the finger for the bright moon and are not clear about brightness and darkness.”

Another finger/moon illustration is found in the Lankavatara Sutra.

As the ignorant grasp the finger-tip and not the moon, so those who cling to the letter, know not my truth.

While these examples are pretty clear as to their intent, most Zen students either cling to the tip of the finger or believe putting away the finger or not crossing to yonder shore is all that Zen is really asking them to do in addition to 'just sitting'.  This is a prevarication of the teachings.