What is Zen really about?

In previous blogs I have only brought up the question, “What is Zen” a few times (I think I did one blog on it).  For the beginner, this may not sound like an important question, but in the time it takes to answer this question whereby we might really learn what Zen is, it is a very important question that needs answering.  The average beginner might believe they know what Zen is, but then they could very well be wrong.

It is not all that difficult to answer the question of what Zen is.  The first answer would have to be the historical answer, in this example, from the Encyclopedia of Religion (the author is John R. McRae a well known scholar of Chan/Zen Buddhism).

The Chan [Zen] school of Buddhism developed in China beginning in the sixth century CE, spread to Korea, Japan, and Vietnam beginning in the ninth century, and has moved to Europe, the United States, and other parts of the world in modern times. The name Chan (Seon in Korean, Thien in Vietnamese, and Zen in Japanese) is the Chinese transliteration of the Indian word for concentration meditation, dhyâna in Sanskrit and jhâna in Pali (and similar forms in other prakrits or vernacular Indian languages). (Brackets are mine.)

These facts are as simple as it gets.  Of course, these facts can all be unpacked requiring us to read several bookshelves of books!  But this is not necessary for either the curious or the beginner.

The next, and most important question, is what Zen is from the standpoint of the first-person as in, “What is Zen for me, personally?”  The best and most succinct answer comes from the 28th patriarch of Zen, Bodhidharma who said:

“And the Mind is the Buddha. And the Buddha is the Path. And the Path is Zen. But the word Zen is one that remains a puzzle to both mortals and sages. Seeing your true nature is Zen. Unless you see your nature, it's not Zen” (tr. Red Pine). (Emphasis is mine.)

Permit me to repeat the answer: Seeing your true nature is Zen.  Again, we can unpack this answer—which we should do, which will take us many years!  The historical answer doesn’t need that much unpacking.  But the answer for us does require ‘personal’ unpacking and clarification in a most deep and profound way.  

This “true nature” is just one of many epithets for what the Bodhisattva saw when he awakened and became Buddha (cp. Lalitavistara Sutra).  Other epithets include true Mind, Mind-ground, One Mind, pure Mind, unborn Mind, unconditioned Mind, radiant Mind, clear-light Mind, etc.  In this respect, Zen is seeing what the Bodhisattva saw who became awakened.  This is also what the fourth slogan of Zen says: see one‘s nature and become Buddha (見性成佛).  

These answers allow the beginner to choose whether or not to take the blue pill or the red pill (remember the movie The Matrix?).  If we just want to join a Zen center and, basically, just sit to help deal with our stress, we take the blue pill.  But if we really want to see our true nature, yup, we have to take the red pill.  There is no purple pill.

 

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[M]

From Han Shan's autobiography:

"Then, when I got up and started to leave, I stopped on the temple steps and looked amazed at the courtyard. A strong wind had started to blow, tearing leaves from all the trees. The air was filled with them! Yet, the leaves were motionless. They were just there, suspended in the air. And all was so serene! Finally I had perceived something with my Buddha Eye! So this was the whirlwind that destroys but does not move. And again I understood that the ego-mind continuously moves like a flow of air or water, **but what it sees is actually stable--a matix which all things pulse in and out of. Now I understood! My ego-mind had decided that a certain configuration of matter was leaf, and then my ego-mind had decided to string together a series of images and call this series movement: blowing leaves. In reality, there was no I standing on the steps. There were no steps. There was neither wind nor blowing leaf. My ego mind put arbitrary boundaries on matter and time, and gave things name and form. But reality perceived directly without my intervening ego mind, was nameless and formless and timeless!"