Enlightenment is difficult and so is Buddhism

 The difficulty of comprehending Buddhism (I include Zen Buddhism) is, naturally proportional, with what enlightenment is.  If we believe that enlightenment (samyaksambodha) is being always mindful of what we are doing in our daily lives instead of daydreaming, then the discourses of the Buddha would likewise be quite simple as well as the sermons of Zen masters.  But this is not the case.  The subtlety of enlightenment, its unconditioned nature, is reflected in a complex, difficult to understand literature.

People who believe Buddhism can be adapted to the needs of modern culture, it just needs to be dumb-down somewhat, are people who believe that the Buddha’s enlightenment was simple.  It might only mean that we meditate a few times a day or practice mindfulness when we brush our teeth or peel a potato.  But the simplification of Buddhism to just being mindful does not comport well with either the discourses of the Buddha or the sermons of the Zen masters.   

The enlightenment of the Buddha including the kensho of the Zen masters, in terms of what they actually realized, cannot be easily explained since enlightenment is beyond our thinking, thinking in the sense of having a conversation with oneself.  Even ‘thinking silence or calm’ is far from the shore of enlightenment.  The truth of the matter, there is something quite profound to directly recognize.  The realizer is perfectly intimate with it, but cannot share it in anyway because it is non-empirical.

The popularity of Buddhism and Zen should not be an excuse to make enlightenment and what it actually signifies other that what is presented in the discourses of the Buddha.  It is allowable, however, to summarize enlightenment as awakening to the unconditioned which transcends our empirical, conditioned world.  This doesn’t add anything to what the Buddha has already said in his discourses.  In fact, we can reduce almost to a summary the most important parts of Buddhism.  There is no justifiable reason for dumbing down Buddhism and Zen so that their original context is gone, favoring, instead, a modern context. 

Comments

[Susan]

If Buddhism is true, then it can't be destroyed. If it's a false religion, then it deserves to go. But corruption is another matter because corruption can creep into everything. Very shallow awakenings can disguise themselves in a seeker's mind as deep enlightenment, and motivate the production of one tedious "Zen" book after another. We need to keep our eyes on the prize and look to the old masters who kept to the pure narrow way. I keep going back to Hakuin Zenji's "Four Ways of Knowing of the Awakened Person" called "Hakuin on Kensho", with commentary by Albert Low. This is very pure, condensed Buddhist teaching, with no nonsense about it.

[n. yeti]

"This will happen only in the distant future, when my teaching is waning. In those days, there will be many greedy, shameless bhikkhus, who for the sake of their bellies dare to preach the very words in which I have warned against greed! Because they desert the Truth to gratify their stomachs, and because they sided with sectarians, their preaching will not lead to Nibbana. Their only thought as they preach will be to use fine words and sweet voices to induce lay believers to give them costly robes, delicate food, and every comfort. Others will seat themselves beside the highways, at busy street corners, or at the doors of kings' palaces where they will stoop to preach for money, even for a pittance! Thus these monks will barter away for food, for robes, or for coins, my teaching which leads to liberation from suffering! They will be like those who exchanged precious sandalwood worth a fortune in pure gold for rancid buttermilk."

[The Zennist]

n. yeti:

Nothing you've said is an exaggeration. I wish it was.

[n. yeti]

It is even worse than dumbing it down for a modern sensibility (since in humanity's arrogance our species presumes it has it figured out the universe through what can be seen, measured, and empirically shown, but cannot defeat the simplest of glandular desires or cut off unwholesome mental outflows at the root).

There is a sizeable army of evil doers who seek to destroy the Buddha-dharma through infiltration and subterfuge, bending the wonderful dharma into grotesque shapes and attempting to putrify that which is untainted. These destructive menaces hope to wring dry the fabric of Buddhism of all salvific essence and convert it to a mummy wrapper to embalm and entomb any hope of attaining unsurpassed awakening.

Giving succor to unclean views which emerge from the defiled garbha, the sublime teachings are stripped of their mystical significance and those who adhere to the true dharma are ridiculed or marginalized as slightly daft, quaint, or simply antiquarians who no longer have a place in the splendid world of Mara. Monks who once turned away from the world to refine their inward gnosis now preach hedonism, write blog posts encouraging canine toadyism, and seek to enrich themselves through exploiting the weak-minded in what amounts to an unending annuity from their followers. Today's "dharma heirs" espouse such flat out nonsense that I am flabbergasted they can even call themselves Buddhists.