The Zennist

The Zen whip

Sometimes, I have to read a fair amount to material to do these blogs.  It is great when you come across some new material that is really good.  Of late I have been reading Jeffrey Broughton & Elise Watanabe’s new book, The Chan Whip Anthology: A Companion to Zen Practice.  If you were a Chinese student of the Lin-chi/Linji Zen, this is the handbook you might carry in your pack or in your sleeve.  It is truly an anthology.  It contains many selected passages from Zen literature and the discourses of the Buddha.  A student seeking kensho would find it useful to spur them on (oops, whip them on!).  A student of Dr. Broughton told me that Hakuin carried this book around in his sleeve.  This book from what I can see is one of those must-have-books.  I need to add, that for graduate students studying Chan/Zen it is also a must-have-book.  It has a scholarly component as well—a rabbit hole that you can go down if you wish to expand your knowledge of Zen and its practice.

For the average Soto Zen student who follows Dogen Zenji’s teachings this book may not be your cup of tea.  Unlike with Soto Zen, awakening or kensho is foremost in Lin-chi/Linji Zen.  One must whip themselves constantly to awaken from the sleep of the conditioned mind of birth and death so they might behold the supramundane, unconditioned Mind of which Huang-po speaks.  Just sitting does not make one a Buddha anymore than just standing or just walking.  

The seeker’s intent is to break through the mind of birth and death and behold the unconditioned Mind before it is stirred.  This takes a lot of energy which is the gongfu (kung-fu) of Zen, which The Chan Whip Anthology describes in the introduction.  Indeed, gongfu is the real practice of Zen which consists of sitting and working on the huatou (hua-t’ou).  The huatou is especially important in this book and much is said about it.  It is a word or a phrase in a gong’an (koan) that we lock onto which, ultimately, points to the real substance of the universe which is transmitted from Mind to Mind. 

Focus

What most Zen Buddhist practitioners lack is focus.  By focus I mean an inner commitment to awakening no matter what the cost to one’s presuppositions and vanity.  We might further add, such practitioners are more interested in their vain opinions than the truth.  They’ve even learned to suppress their gut feelings that they are fundamentally wrong about what Zen is really about.

Having such focus means that the individual is even willing to commit to the likely fact that everything they know is completely wrong.  This certainly can put one into great doubt.  The feeling is like being lost without any sense of direction.  In fact, a direction is no where to be found.  At the same time, the loss of direction is really suggesting that we must adapt to truth—and we haven’t.  We certainly cannot expect truth to adapt to us which is an insidious form of vanity that only gets worse. The focus has to be on the supranatural pure Mind which is one’s true nature.  The practitioner has to directly behold this mind on its own terms.  It involves a presuppositionless seeing.

If focus is a path, then it is an ancient path that we have to look for and sometimes clear away the vines that hide it.  What I further mean to suggest by this, such a path is not a path of our own making and choosing.  While it might be true that there are many paths to the summit of the mountain, it is also true that there are only a few tried and safe paths.  The rest eventually wipe out the seeker.

Instilling focus in the average practitioner is a difficult task.  It almost always doesn’t work.  Most practitioners are looking to please the teacher and the institution.  He or she is more worried about what they imagine the teacher expects them to do, so that they completely lose focus.  They put on a show, in other words, as if doing x and y will win them bonus points with the teacher.  Underlying this is chasing the certificate certifying that one is enlightened.  This is is vanity; not focus.

Just sitting is not ultimate.

Zen masters like Dahui/Ta-hui (1089–1163) didn’t put much stock in zazen.  Unlike Dogen Zenji,  Dahui didn’t absolutize zazen.  The use of a particular practice such as zazen depended upon the degree of the students spiritual illness.  As Zen master Hsu-yun ( Xuyun) notes:

"Ch'an [Zen] does not mean sitting (in meditation).  The so-called Ch'an hall and the so-called Ch'an sitting are only provided for people (who encounter) insurmountable obstructions (of their own) and who are of shallow wisdom in this period of decadence (of the Dharma)."

This is not to suggest that Zen masters, themselves, did not sit in zazen.  They did. Teachers like Dahui sat but had no attachment to the practice, itself.  It is not ultimate—we might even call it provisional.  Walking, for some, might be a better practice.  We need not absolutize any such physical practices.  On the subject of meditation, in Zen master Dahui's Second Letter in Answer to Vice Minister Chen he writes:

"When it is desirable to do quiet sitting, just do quiet sitting. At the time of sitting, you must not have any attachment to sitting and consider it as ultimate. At present the party of perverse teachers is prone to taking silence-and-illumination quiet-sitting as the ultimate dharma, misleading younger followers" (Jeffrey Broughton, The Chan Whip Anthology, p. 3.4).

For teachers like Dahui the most important thing is penetrating through the mind of birth and death—the antithesis—which if accomplished revealed the ultimate truth or the unchanging Mind-ground.  Yes!  This is the big fish we have to catch either by a net, or by a hook or other devices.  Even the right words can do it.  

This absolute we are searching for is buried deep within us being constantly covered up and hidden by our desires for conditioned reality.  When we break through the obstructions, which are like a cloudy sky suddenly revealing the sun, only then can we meet our self face to face.  Can sitting alone accomplish this meeting?  Can koans do it for us?  Not entirely.  Only when we have the ‘eye of copper and iron’ (the eye that sees through everything) can we finally see our True Self.

Changing our understanding

When we approach Zen or for that matter Buddhism, in general, we are never without some kind of ready made understanding, cultural or otherwise, which we believe is adequate for the work of interpretation.  We also take this understanding of ours for granted, most of which is commonsense understanding.  

Interpreting what we read and study, often doesn't require of us a radically new insight into our normal way of thinking about things; nor does it require of us gnosis of the transcendent.  This, I need to mention, is our self-understanding, a basic part of who we are as cultural beings.  Whatever we learn about Zen will always fall within the confines of our self-understanding.  Whatever me make of Zen, unless we are awakened, will always be grounded in our self-understanding which is understanding we have in advance of reading a book about Zen or trying to learn to sit in zazen.

And here we come to the problem with our understanding of Zen:  Our self-understanding, which is always in advance of what we read about Zen or Buddhism, is inadequate for the job.  Our self-understanding is only adequate for the conditioned world, and even that is limited to a great degree.  

To understand Zen means also to give up our self-understanding.  It is a weaning process.  Over time we have to give up the understanding that we, originally, brought to the table of Zen, our understanding in advance of Zen.  And let me tell you, this is not easy to do.  What is missing from our personal understanding is kensho, that is, seeing our true nature.  If we saw it, Buddhist texts and Zen texts would be easy to read, that is, understand.  But this would mean that our self-understanding has radically changed.  It also means that we went through a major spiritual transformation outside of the ken of our previous understanding and commonsense.

 

The luminous Mind

Luminosity (S., prabhâsvara) as it relates to mind in the example of luminous Mind is the objectification of mind, itself.  Mind is reflecting back into itself completely empty of extraneousness.  It is somewhat like the sun which by its own light fully reveals itself.  The luminous Mind is, thus, the only reality, everything else, including consciousness, is maya or illusory which cannot affect it.

Hitherto, mind was only understood in and through its modes, for example, consciousness or the intellect which attempts to apprehend it by way of  certain learned concepts.  Mind was never beheld luminously.  Mind lying beyond consciousness and the intellect could only be guessed at.  By awakening to Mind, directly, we understand that the awakened Mind supersedes consciousness and the intellect.  Only then does luminosity dawn for us.

Mind’s luminosity as a subject first appears in the Pali canon.

"Monks, this mind (citta) is luminous (pabhassara), but it is defiled by the adventitious defilements....Monks, this mind is luminous [when] freed (vippamutta) from the adventitious defilements.  This the educated noble disciple understands as it really is” (A. i. 10).

Mind’s agitation/defilements, or its waves, have suddenly stopped.  Mind, itself, is revealed.  At once, luminosity mysteriously pervades the entire body.  Nothing is left out.  Even our consciousness is under its presence.  This luminosity is not something the senses are able to detect except they, too, like consciousness, are under the influence of its presence.  Even our ordinary thoughts are pervaded by luminosity.

Zen Buddhism, hardly mentions this subject.  In Theravada, it is an indication that one has entered the stream to nirvana.  In the Lankavatara Sutra, this luminosity seems to be the apotheosis of Mahayana.

“Then, Mahamati, sustained by the power of the Buddhas, the Bodhisattva-Mahasattvas at their first stage will attain the Bodhisattva-Sabmadhi, known as the Light of Mahayana, which belongs to the Bodhisattva-Mahasattvas. They will immediately see the Tathagatas, Arhats, Fully-Enlightened Ones appearing before them personally, who come from all the different abodes in the ten quarters of the world and who now facing the Bodhisattvas will impart to them their sustaining power displayed with the body, mouth, and words.”

An aside, this happened to me 1976.  There is little if any exaggeration in this passage.  The whole time one is surrounded by what can only be described as super beings who impart a luminosity into you which is beyond anything you might imagine.  

Faith and inspiration

Faith in the Buddha’s teachings may not be enough.  It is like the faithful act of sitting in zazen believing we are getting somewhere when we are not.  Inspiration should, also, go along with faith.  We have to sense the power of inspiration from the teachings as complicated as they might seem in the beginning.  They  have to have a significant influence upon us, enough, so that we are willing to change, profoundly.

I may certainly want to change—who doesn’t?  But if I am not in someways inspired beyond the level of just having faith in the Buddha’s teachings I may not have the ability to change very much.  Inspiration, by the way, shouldn’t be confused with enthusiasm or the drive of a restless fanatic.  With inspiration one becomes profoundly moved, enough to change.  There is a positive quality to this.  Something speaks to us from the beyond or it might be our better angel, still, the message, although arcane, is one of promise and not just mere hope.

We meet the inspired types occasionally like John Blofeld or Red Pine.  There are others I could add to this short list like Charles Luk or Thomas Merton.  In my own case I would have to say that inspiration moves one to change, inwardly.  In the example of Zen Buddhism, I was moved to pursue what seemed, maybe to others, to be the impossible dream.  But in my own mind and heart, the inspiration became so strong so as to ignore almost everything around me except this marvelous quest.

My inspiration, eventually, led me to finding what I must look for inside of myself.  At that point I became relentless in my inward search for pure Mind.  I had no other options except to become directly acquainted with this Mind.  It became clear to me that Zen masters talked about an awakening to pure Mind.  This further strengthened my resolve.  If they could do it, then so could I.

 

Transcending the irrational

One physician recently said that “irrational greed” is destroying the health care system.  The more money we, collectively, spend on health care, illness continues to be on the rise and shows no signs of abating.  I tend to agree.  And then I thought what if modern culture is gradually growing more “irrational,” irrational meaning lacking powers of reasoning or comprehension.  Are we becoming less and less governed by reason, allowing our worst angels to rule us?  Certainly, our health care system is one salient example (I just recently witnessed this with my wife).

In the empirical sciences the irrational has long kept science driving forward looking in the rearview mirror.  That is not a way to discovery.  Only now is the old empire beginning to crumble along with such irrational theories as big bang including its black holes.  What is emerging is a universe that is holistic and interconnected at all levels.  There is no such thing as empty space: an utter void between galaxies.  Our universe is alive.  It is the expression of mind (G., Geist).

In light of this, interpretations of Buddhism have, over the many years, also become more irrational making less and less sense in light of the Buddha’s discourses.  One example of this is secular Buddhism which is a clever catch word for revisionism which allows for a modification of the Buddha’s discourses.  The Buddha is made to no longer teach the unconditioned to those who have the capacity (and the good karma) to realize it.  Instead, he becomes the world’s first great psychologist who has found a technique to help us cope with our suffering.

The irrational prescription for suffering from these secularists can be summed up this way.  Suffering is the symptom of running away from birth and death, especially, from the present moment—so don’t run away.  Accept your finitude.  But what does this have to do with the first noble truth that suffering is the psychophysical organism (the five skandhas) or the same, all conditioned things?  From the Buddha’s own enlightened perspective the most rational thing to do is to stop clinging to the suffering organism by realizing what is not suffering, namely, the unconditioned or nirvana.  After seeing it, one, in a manner of speaking, goes to it.  One thus dis-identifies with the conditioned world of suffering by identifying more and more with the unconditioned!

The good news in all this, more and more people are willing to say that the king has no clothes; their power of reasoning is not disturbed by the irrational propaganda.

 

What he awakened to

When Siddhartha, then a Boddhisattva, awakened (became Buddha) he had this to say:

“The Dharma I have realized is deep, hard to see, hard to understand, peaceful and sublime, beyond mere reasoning, subtle, and intelligible to the wise. But this generation delights, revels, and rejoices in sensual pleasures. It is hard for such a generation to see this conditionality, this dependent arising.  Hard too is it to see this calming of all conditioned things, the giving up of all substance of becoming, the extinction of craving, dispassion, cessation, Nibbâna.  And if I were to teach the Dharma and others were not to understand me, that would be a weariness, a vexation for me” (Ariyapariyesana Sutta).

This Dharma the Bodhisattva realized comes by many names or epithets.  They all point in some way to the transcendent: a world we don’t see, especially, those of us who are clinging to the conditioned world. These epithets include the unconditioned (asankhata), the end (anata), the truth (sacca), the other shore (pâra), the subtle (nipuna), the everlasting (dhuva), the invisible (anidassana), peace (santa), the immortal (amata), the blest (siva), purity (suddhi), freedom (mutti), the island (dipa), shelter (lena), the refuge (sarana), the beyond (parayana) and nirvana.  Of these epithets (there are more such as the absolute, [kevala]) the unconditioned (asankhata) is one of the more important ones.

The unconditioned is in sharp contrast to our conditioned world including our thoughts and concepts by which we connect with conditioned things and various ideas of those things.  This contrast is because the unconditioned is substance while the conditioned is mode.  To begin to approach the unconditioned is to embark upon a path that minimizes the powerful influence of the conditioned.  It is also about allowing ourselves to adapt to the unconditioned.  The Buddha set a course for us to follow to the unconditioned.  The first thing we must do is believe in the unconditioned enough to strive after it.

Absolutizing the wrong thing

Absolutizing nonself (anattâ), as if it meant something in contrast to the so-called Hindu âtman, is largely based on an assumption that is not found in the Buddha’s discourses.  The Buddha’s use of nonself or in Pali, anattâ, is always referring to what is impermanent and suffering; moreover, it refers to the Five Aggregates of material shape, feeling, perception, volitional formations and consciousness all of which belong to the demon Mara and are murderous.  The Buddha even tells us to abandon desire for nonself.  

This wrong use of nonself is really operating from the side of empiricism, empiricism being the practice of making the senses and sensory consciousness the sole criteria and judge.  If the âtman is something unconditioned, beyond the pale of the senses and, certainly, beyond sensory consciousness, the âtman cannot be.  The nonself says so!  In other words, there is nothing beyond the sphere of empiricism.  In this regard, the entity or individual made up of the empirical Five Aggregates (the nonself) is who realizes nirvana which is simply death.  We do not see a dis-identification and liberation from the Five Aggregates such that we are our self and not what is not our self.  But this is exactly what the Buddha teaches!  We are not the aggregates. We can also attain the deathless element.

If we go farther down the rabbit hole of nonself, there is an anti-religious element in it, as well. This anti-religious element includes mystical knowing by the via negativa which is about emptying out what is not my self.  In short, we are supposed to believe that there is no transcendent to realize in this interpretation of Buddhism.  Maybe this explains why Buddhism became popular with Westerners—but for the wrong reason.  The bulk of Westerners take Buddhism to be a religion of empiricism which wages a war against the evil Hindu âtman as if the âtman is not primary in Buddhism even though it alone realizes nirvana!

This war, if we may call it that, eventually organizes itself into secular Buddhism in which any vestige of transcendent Buddhism has been carefully scrubbed or just ignored.  What is marketed is self-help psychology, seated meditation, and other forms of palliation.  But this only adds up to epistemological nihilism.  The dead end of one's life becomes all too apparent: all goals and meaning are relative.  Psychological suffering still remains.  There is no dawn, only darkness. Secular Buddhism only hastens the end.

What is eternalism all about?

I don’t know if Ananda K. Coomaraswamy said that, “Buddhism is most famous today for everything it originally never taught.” Even if he didn’t say this, it is nevertheless true that Buddhism, as conceived in the average practitioner’s mind, is Buddhism in name only.  This is especially true when it comes to the subject of the âtman or there being the unconditioned transcendent at the core of the Buddha’s teaching.

Those with whom I argue on this subject are quite adamant—and quite convinced—that the Buddha was dead set against the Hindu âtman.  The main thrust of their argument is that the Buddha denied the view of eternalism (sasvatadarsana) which in their mind refers to anyone who believes in a transcendent self.  In a previous blog, contrary to this, I pointed out that an eternalist is one who believes that the Five Aggregates (khandhas/skandha) are eternal.  This agrees with the commentary to the Udana (Udanatthakatha).   

“They declare material form to be the self and the world, stating such to be not only the self and the world but also eternal; they declare sensation ... perception ... the formations ... consciousness to be the self and the world, stating such to be not only the self and the world but also eternal” (trans. Masefield, The Udana Commentary, p. 882).

This makes a lot more sense insofar as the Five Aggregates are what I like to call the bad boys of Buddhism.  They are not only murderous, but they belong to Mara the Evil One.  Given this, we shouldn’t identify our self with the Five Aggregates.  Those who eternize something such as the Five Aggregates which are impermanent, suffering and not the true self are the eternalists.  

The point the Buddha is trying to make is that the Five Aggregates are not imperishable; nor is he advocating the view that all things perish without rebirth which is ucchedadarsana or the view of nihilism.  Nowhere, in fact, does the Buddha deny the self; only that we should not identify with that which is not our self in the example of the Five Aggregates.  To do so throws us into rebirth.  On this very subject Nagarjuna agrees with me who says:

“Two types of dristi: the view of eternalism (sasvatadristi) and the view of nihilism (ucchedadristi). Sasvatadristi is an adherence of the mind (cittaksanti) which holds the five aggregates (skandha) to be eternal (nitya); ucchedadristi is an adherence of the mind which holds the five aggregates to be perishable. Beings often fall into these two wrong views. The bodhisattvas who have suppressed them within themselves are also able to suppress them in others in order to establish them in the Middle Way (madhyama pratipad)” (Mahaprajñâparamita Sastra, VOL. I, Chapter I — XV p. 340).

Understanding what eternalism means is not too difficult.  But what it is not is the belief in a self or âtman.  Yes, the Buddha was against both eternalism and nihilism; but he never says abandon desire for what is the self.  He never taught this.