The Zennist

We must learn to kick our own ass

Zen training in a monastery, at best, can prepare us for the long haul of trying to awaken.  Zen training has to be internalized as does, exactly, what we are seeking.  We cannot be forever dependent on a teacher.  The teacher’s mind cannot enter ours and change it.  We are the ones who must change.  If there is any ass-kicking, we must learn to kick our own ass.  We must discipline ourselves.  We have to practice awareness on our own.  We have to study on our own.  

Zen training is like boot-camp.  It is only for the purpose of equipping us with the skills and attitude, necessary, to seek enlightenment on our own.  It cannot give us enlightenment.  The best training (and it is rare) tells us that within us is pure Mind and that you have to intuit it.  Moreover, it will take a lot of commitment on your part.

What passes as Zen these days, in some circles, is watered down Zen.  It is Zen for the middle-class.  No one is really all that committed—yes, they are serious but not fully committed.  Many people who join urban Zen centers are just ‘hanging out: enjoying the fellowship; following the center’s special programs.  Such people are not like the Buddhist hermits in Edward Burger’s documentary film, Amongst White Clouds (2005).  The world of these Buddhist hermits is best described by Bill Porter who has spent most of his adult life in China.

“Throughout Chinese history, there have always been people who preferred to spend their lives in the mountains, getting by on less, wearing old clothes, working the higher slopes, not talking much, writing even less – maybe a few poems, a recipe or two. Out of touch with the times but not with the seasons, they cultivated roots of the spirit, trading flatland dust for mountain mist. Distant and insignificant, they were the most respected men and women in the world’s oldest society” (The Road to Heaven: Encounters With Chinese Hermits).

Sadly, Western culture hasn’t advanced to the level of not only tolerating hermits such as those who live in small retreats dotting China’s Zhongnan Mountain range, but it hasn’t advanced to a world view which is spiritual.  It is still mired in materialism.

These hermits have thoroughly internalized the required discipline.  They have accepted their fate.  They dare to look beyond, to where ordinary sensory consciousness cannot go; who are open to all clues; who are like spiritual detectives looking for the mysterious state of pure Mind which is, supposedly, right in front of them.

But don’t be disheartened!  It is first necessary to believe, fully, that you can awaken.  As I did, you will run into that unique person who gives you the clue you need.  Then, you will set your spirit to do the impossible.  You will not hesitate.  Then one dark night you will awaken.

Still waiting for the revolution

Beginning around the 17th century to the present a mechanical conception of Nature has ruled much of science.  But what has never been settled by science is the split between consciousness or mind (even agency), and the biological body together with its brain.  Even to this day, neuroscience is inexorably tied to the mechanical conception of Nature, especially, that humans are automata in the sense of being biological machines.  Neuroscience can't integrate consciousness with its one-sided theories.  

As I look around I strongly believe that the Western interpretation of Buddhism is still dominated by such a mechanical conception of Nature in the notable example of: There is no soul or agency—no doer of the deed.

Believing, deeply, in the mechanical conception of Nature also shapes our values.  It makes us anti-religious for one thing.  For example, most Westerners who take up Buddhism tend to reject the Buddha's ideas of rebirth and karma—even nirvana, because it rings of something supernatural which is usually, in their mind-set, tied to religion.  Or maybe it reminds these people of the time when the Catholic Church taught men to believe that the universe is God's creation and that everything is connected through his creation. 

Believing in a mechanical conception of Nature also gives us values which are insalubrious and corrupting; which lead to economic exploitation and to wars of annihilation (the major wars of the 20th century have been wars of annihilation).  It also gives us nihilism which supports moral relativism.  Having a mechanistic conception is not without a price just as the Medieval Catholic Church exacted a price for its beliefs.

Until the anti-Newtonian revolution happens in Buddhism, Buddhism is not really Buddhism.  It is fake.  It is still mired in the Victorian interpretations of the past.  Buddhism, for anyone who has an open mind, is much closer to Quantum Mechanics [hereafter QM]. Just read Mindful Universe by Henry Stapp who is noted for his work in QM; who received his PhD in particle physics at the University of California.  

In fact, we might call the Buddha the first QM Muni!  Here D.T. Suzuki’s explanation of some leading elements of the Lankavatara Sutra is rife with allusions to QM such a the Alayavijñâna and Mind being akin to superposition. 

What really exists is mind, which is above all discrimination, that is, above logic and analysis. When this Mind which is designated in the sutra as the Alaya or Alayavijnana is discriminated by an erroneously self-created and self-reflecting agent called Manas, this world of particulars develops in its misleading fulness and richness (SLS, p. 99).

As I reflect back on the Pali Nikayas there are more such allusions to QM such as the unconditioned (nibbana) and the attâ/âtman that transcends the psychophysical body (the five khandhas) which means that we are fundamentally spiritual agents; not material beings.  As spiritual agents we glom onto our illusory, particularized projections setting ourselves up for further suffering.  We know of no other way of being. We are unable to see our true nature which is timeless, undying and unborn.

Nirvana by the wayside

Even though we read in the Pali canon  that “The Dhamma is taught by the Buddha for the sake of final Nibbana without clinging” (SN 35:75), modern day Buddhists feel little if any commitment to that goal.  As one secular Buddhist put it, he is not trying to attain nirvana, he’s just trying to find love and peace in this world.  

Who can knock that?  Love and peace?  Those seem like worthy goals.  Buddhism, in deed, can be beneficial—yet, not for the purpose it was originally intended.  It is being revised.  A new goal is being born.  You don’t have to have nirvana.

Buddhism can offer an escape for those who are tired of getting and spending; who are saddened by the world they live in, or just need a respite before plunging back into the rat race.  A person doesn’t  have to win nirvana or kensho.  It is just a matter of finding the right teacher for now, or going to a nice monastery with lots of friendly, caring people.  But why not consider nirvana or kensho which is about seeing our true nature?  It’s right in front of our nose!

I am puzzled by this attitude in which nirvana is almost ignored.  Trying to see what Siddhartha saw by which he became awakened, at least for me, was Buddhism’s cardinal message.  Buddhism also filled me with a sense of adventure.  But most of all, I felt drawn to the goal of winning nirvana as impossible as it seemed at the time.  Maybe in my previous life I was a monk.  I just knew that Buddhism was like a magnet.  I was irresistibly drawn to it.

Other Buddhists, I suspect, are still delighted with the world—the great toy box.  Perhaps nirvana is too cold and inhuman for them, which is why they don’t seem all that interested in it.  It could be that they imagine it is too difficult to attain.  Perhaps they imagine that being a Bodhisattva means not attaining nirvana.  Just be compassionate.  Or maybe it’s all just a matter of not very good karma.

 

Enjoying our human world too much

One third of our brain's cortex is engaged in vision—that's a  lot of brain! Our vision in this regard can't be simple like a camera. In fact, the camera theory of vision is not a good analogy. Vision is really a process of construction. Our visual world is a construction which takes about 1/10th of a second to create. Prior to this, there are no ready-made fixed objects out there, as we imagine, not even the 3D state which we take for granted.  

The pizza we are eating right now is a construction—in fact, the world we perceive is such a construction including space and time and all that falls within it. We have not evolved to see reality as it is; instead we see constructed useful illusions.  Our human perceptual system (the Five Aggregates) is incapable of seeing true reality according to the Buddha. As a psychophysical construct (the five skandhas) we see only our constructed all-too-human world with which we are deeply entangled and identified.  

When it comes to human evolution it has never been other than about fitness instead of seeking enlightenment.  What advances we’ve made in technology still revolve around Darwinian fitness.  We live, so to speak, still entrapped within the human biological sphere.  This sphere can be thought of as samsara.

The escape from this sphere, naturally, demands that we ‘see through it’ so to speak.  If we don’t, then we are still living within the world of the human species, only to be reborn in it again and again.  But enlightenment is about seeing beyond this human sphere, or the same, seeing through it such that it is seen to be a composition of the One Mind.  It has no real existence—it’s an illusion.  Unfortunately, this is not were modern Buddhism is or wishes to go.  The prithagjana (profane) run the show, not the arya (spiritual persons).  Buddhism has been turned into a tool for the Darwinian fitness toolbox; another way to help us cope with our species-specific world which, at bottom, we still enjoy.  What the Buddha taught is still too advanced for us.

Dharma and dhamma

Generally, the Sanskrit word 'dharma' (in Pali dhamma) is often translated by the English word 'law' as in the order and law of the universe.  But this is by no means dharma's only meaning.  Dharma is one of those protean terms which finds no suitable English equivalent.  As we might expect, dharma has a variety of meanings depending upon the context in which it is used.  If fact, context plays an important part in understanding what the word dharma means.  

Besides 'law' or 'norm' dharma has other meanings such as 'teaching', and 'truth’ which is realized by the practice of the path.  It can refer to good conduct and a physical or mental phenomenon.  Still this is not exhaustive.  Dharma can also refer to the 'nature' or 'quality' of something.   

According to the commentary to the Dhammapada the Pali dhamma has four main usages as (1) virtue (guna-dhammâ), (2) religious discourse (desanâ-dhammâ), (3) canonical text (pariyatti-dhammâ) and (4) that which is without a living substrate, without a living soul (nissatta-nijjiva-dhammâ).

When we come across passages like this, we have to think about what dhamma means.

"Once more, your reverences, a monk’s mind is utterly cleared of perplexities about Dhamma.  That is the time, your reverences, when his thought [citta] stands fixed in the very self [ajjhattameva], settles down, become one pointed, is composed" (A. ii. 157).

Here below, dhamma has a different and negative meaning.

“When one perceives with wisdom that all dhammas are without a self then one turns away from suffering. This is the path of purification” (Dhammapada). 

In the commentary to the Dhammapada 'all dhammas' refers to the Five Aggregates which are the bad guys which, incidentally, belong to Mara the Buddhist devil.

What does mind (citta) mean in Buddhism?

The West’s idea of mind is not exactly the same as the Indian idea of mind or citta, especially when it comes to Buddhism  The West’s idea of mind is more about thinking and reasoning which includes the person’s conscious mental processes.  It might even be considered as an ordering principle.  This is not helpful for understanding what the word citta means (often translated as ‘mind’).  It is even less helpful to view mind as simply coming from the brain like smoke from a fire being in this regard an epiphenomenon.  Indian philosophy and, certainly, Buddhism did not regard the citta as something coming from the brain’s structure.

To get down to business, citta is the past participle of √CIT which means "the animating principle of life" (V.S. Apte, The Student's Sanskrit-English Dictionary, p. 208).  Western Buddhist scholars are still not here.  Citta is too mystical, perhaps.  They are still regarding citta as ‘thought’ in the example of bodhi-citta, meaning the “thought of enlightenment.”  But in truth, bodhicitta means the animating principle of life that has awakened to itself.  Formerly, it was a sleep; under the spell of its phenomena.  As Buddha, it has self-awakened.  There is nothing higher than this awakening to the very substance of life.  When we think of such Buddhist terms as unborn Mind, pure Mind, one Mind, unconditioned Mind, etc., such terms are describing the animating principle of life which has awakened to itself. Now we can understand what Bodhidharma meant when he said:

“Everyone wants to see this mind, and those who move their hands and feet by its light are as many as the grains of the sand along the Ganges, but when you ask them, they can't explain it.  They're like puppets.  It's theirs to use.  Why do they not see it?” (tr. Red Pine)

This is not a metaphysical understanding.  Far from it.  Believe it or not, one actually receives and experiences the animating principle in all of its power (in the Lankavatara Sutra it is called the “light of mahayana”).  Citta has awakened.  Beings who have awakened (called arya) radiate the life force.  As strange as it may sound, Buddhism only teaches this special awakening to citta.  

The aggregate-person

According to the Buddha, the aggregate-person consisting of five constituents, is believed to be our self.  It is the body we presently have that came through our mother’s birth canal.  The Buddha said that it consists of material shape, feeling, perception (also ideation), volitional formations and consciousness.  Some believe the aggregate-person or a few of the aggregates are infinite or eternal, in the example of consciousness.  Others believe the aggregate-person is finite, that when the aggregate-person dies, that’s it—no more existence (we are annihilated).

The aggregate-person that we seem doomed to cling to, according to the Buddha, is unreal.  For example, our physical shape he says is like a clump of foam.  Feeling, he goes on to say, is like a water bubble; perception is like a mirage; volitional formations are like a plantain tree, and consciousness is like a magical illusion.  He taught that this aggregate-person is not who we really are; to identify with it is a grave mistake.  As a matter of fact, we must abandon desire for the aggregate-person which is not our real self.  

The aggregate-person does not reflect the true nature of reality.  Its perceptual system is limited to the species, itself, as is the perceptual system of a common house fly.  In this regard, the aggregate-person as an instrument of discovery can give us no real insight into true reality.  It is only through the transcendence of the aggregate-person: by surpassing it, that we are capable of seeing reality as it is.  One deludes themselves to believe that the aggregate-person is what the Buddha wished to save, or tried to help to see the truth.  He only wished to untangle us from the aggregate-person, this being the state of nirvana or the same, our very self (he even called it the great self).

Waking up from refined opinions

For those who lean towards materialism the question, couldn’t life be just a physical property? has great importance.  And why not?  Even though it is begging the question, so much of our world seems physical or the same, material.  In light of this, could our mind which perceives, feels, thinks and has goals, be nothing but a physical property of the brain? 

From the standpoint of neuroscience which, for some, appears to be the new reigning champion of scientific progress, it is not hard to come to the conclusion that our mind is nothing but the brain, surrounded by a protective layer of bone.

But how is proof possible insofar as the scientific method, itself, is based on the fallacy of “affirmation of the consequent” (a implies b) in which all of its hardcore evidence actually adds up to a refinement of opinion?  But the truth is this: the scientific method is only a method.  It gives us educated opinions, good guesses, hypotheses, models; but not incontrovertible proof.

No matter how we slice it, it is the same, that is, opinion.  In fact, there is a whole spectrum of opinions, from uneducated opinions to highly educated and refined opinions.  Even the fruits of the best application of the scientific method can, and often do, end up as refined opinions, e.g., the universe is 13 billion years old, give or take a few billion years.  I hasten to add that there are other countervailing refined opinions which challenge this opinion. There was no big bang.  The universe is electrical/plasma—even, ultimately, a configuration of mind.  It’s always been here.  No God or big bang is necessary. 

The secular Buddhist crowd that shoves “it’s not backed by science” in the face of Buddhists who are open to rebirth and karma, not to mention transcendent nirvana, are under the spell of opinions, not proof.  To claim, for example, that consciousness or mind is emergent or is an epiphenomenon of the brain, is to say really nothing of importance.  This is only a refined opinion.  Such Buddhists need to wake up from the spell that the scientific method is infallible.  It is not without major flaws—it limps along.  Just because the street in front of our house is wet doesn’t mean it has rained.

 

Finding a Zen master is not required

When we look at the history of Zen that begins with Zen literature of the Song dynasty, there is a genealogy of transmission, namely, the Records of the Transmission of the Lamp (published 1004).  On the other hand, this genealogy is not developed in the documents found in the caves of Dunhuang—a much older Zen.  Because of this, we learn that the idea of a teacher to student transmission and, hence the requirement of a Zen teacher, is not taken up in the way we might expect.  For example, this is how the Sixth Patriarch looks at the matter (his Platform Sutra is from the caves of Dunhuang being pre-Song).

And what do I mean by 'truly good friend' [kalyana-mitra]? Someone who understands the teaching of the Supreme Vehicle and who points directly to the true path is a truly good friend, a great intermediary, a guide who helps people see their nature. All good teachings can only come about due to truly good friends. The buddhas of the Three Periods and the twelve divisions of the Canon are fully present in this nature of yours. If you can't realize this by yourselves, you need to find a good friend to show you how to see your nature. But if you realize this by yourselves, you don't need to look for a good friend somewhere else. And if someone insists that you have to find a good friend somewhere else before you attain liberation, that place doesn't exist. You will attain liberation when you meet the good friend inside of your own mind. But as long as your mind is full of confusion, delusion, and mistaken views, even the instruction of an external good friend won't be able to save you (tr. Red Pine Sec. 31 | brackets are mine).

Hui-neng is not telling us it is first necessary to find a Zen teacher.  The present day need to find a Zen teacher by which to get transmitted so one might become a reputable member of the Zen lineage is not fully developed and implemented until the Song dynasty.  On the same track, this is probably what prompted Dogen to go to China.  He needed to obtain what is technically called an “inheritance certificate” without which he had no future in Japan with regard to Zen.  As it turns out, Dogen's transmission document proved to be a medieval forgery (Steven Heine, Japanese Journal of Religious studies 30.102 [Spring 2003], p. 32).

Yes, Zen is about seeing one’s true nature but finding a Zen master is not required.  I found a truly good friend when I found Bishop Nippo Shaku (1910–1991), a Nichiren Bishop!  No certificate is required.  You are fully certified when you first see the luminous Mind.  

Looking for loopholes

Most beginners who tend to be insincere; who are more curious about Zen than dedicated, approach it as if they were lawyers looking for loopholes!  This attitude is not one of being open to radical change.  In fact, this kind of beginner expects Zen to agree with him which means, basically, no change!

Nothing about Zen is supposed to be understood with common sense because it is based on uncommon sense.  I would not be wrong to say that Zen expects us to do the impossible; and if it seems, at times, too difficult, it is because it is difficult.  Even studying with the best possible teacher doesn’t make the goal of Zen easy.  We still have to see our true nature first hand whether a teacher is present or not.  More importantly, the standard for determining the worthiness of our insights has to tally with what the Buddha said.  Zen master Torei (1721–1792) said:

“I ask students to focus your eyes and look—what season is it now? Time is precious. In order to test the teachings you've attained, I've brought up a number of Buddhist scriptures and treatises. Examine carefully and see whether or not what you have attained accords with the scriptures and treatises. If it is disparate or contrary to the scriptures and treatises, your view is biased and also shallow and simplistic” (The Undying Lamp of Zen).

This is not what those who are looking for loopholes wish to read who are of the mind that kensho is something akin to a toy prize at the bottom of the Cracker Jack box.  It’s not a prize or something external to us.  Zen (or more at Zen training) is a means which enables us to see our true nature instead of pursuing what we are not, then wondering why our life is unsatisfactory and sometimes downright depressing.

When we turn away from the real aim of Zen which is to see our true nature or kensho and do everything but try to see this nature which is also our Buddha-nature, we start to invent another Zen.  This involves looking for loopholes which is a means to escape the hard work that Zen requires.  For example, reading about the life of a particular Zen master, we might conclude that Zen is about learning to live in the moment or just about being aware.  Some might even go so far as to believe that Zen is about being natural, doing whatever you feel like doing; not carrying about anything; being almost antisocial in the example of Zen master Ikkyu.  What these loopholes have in common, they have nothing to do with the Buddha’s enlightenment.