The Zennist

For all the wrong reasons

I am fast coming to the conclusion that those who are practicing Zen are in it for all the wrong reasons from using Zen as a means of self-help therapy, to using Zen as a lifestyle which helps the user to deal with both long term and short term goals.  Whatever the reason, many see Zen as a useful instrument for bettering themselves.  It is not to gain enlightenment or kensho.  Admittedly, kensho is given lip service but it is never taken seriously.  There is only a hypocritical respect for kensho.

Using Zen this way opens the door to people who are spiritually challenged so that real Zen ends up being severely compromised.  When I began to read about Zen through the eyes of D. T. Suzuki when I was 20 its attractiveness for me, very shortly, turned into a sense of excitement and mystery.  The mystery of Zen was, looking back, the most alluring part of Zen.  My needs at this period in my life were conflicted with what society offered me which I found unsatisfying to say the least.  Zen's attractiveness offered a soothing antidote.

The Zen I came to see, seemed to tell me that I had to study Zen with someone who knew more than I did.  This led me to an abbot who ran a small Zen temple in my home town.  Eventually, I came to study Zen  with him but over time I came to realize that the Zen in Suzuki's books was not the Zen I was being taught.  I was just being educated to become a gear in the machine of institutional Zen which, looking back, had become a funerary religion—just a shell of what it once was.

When Zen came to the West it was open to change, but not necessarily change for the best or representative of what was contained in the sermons of the old Zen masters.  Into it could be poured aesthetics and self-help psychology.  Especially, seated meditation (zazen) became a useful tool as did the psychologically trained Zen teacher (which was the case with the abbot I lived and studied with).

Like with what happened to Buddhism in the West in which nirvana and rebirth were eventually sidelined, Zen as I could see was becoming a path to psychological normalization—not kensho—which offered, in addition, a community of like minded practitioners led by a strong father figure.

The Buddha's source for his theory of rebirth

To insist that the Buddha's teaching of rebirth was pretty much shaped by earlier teachings of rebirth that were taught before Buddhism came on the scene is to commit the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc (if B comes after A, B is therefore caused by A).  In other words, the Buddha's teaching of rebirth might be original or other causes may be at work.  

In light of this, we should not straightaway accept at face value that rebirth was universally accepted in India before and during the birth of Buddhism. In the Vedas one sees traces of a theory of rebirth but nothing is worked out to the depth as it is in Buddhism.  The idea of rebirth begins to take shape in the early Upaniṣads; although it is still quite speculative.  

We should not neglect to mention popular materialist schools of India at the time of the Buddha which attacked religious teachings of post-mortem survival which would include cyclical rebirth as taught by the Buddha.  In particular the materialists were annihilationists which meant they were opposed not only to the Buddha's teaching of rebirth but to the eternalists who theorized an existent (asti) ātman based on one or more of the five khandhas/skandhas.

"Samaṇas and the brāmaṇas who envisage the ātman in various ways envisage either the aggregates of upādānakkhandhas or one amongst them" (S. iii. 46). 

In light of this, the Buddha was accused of being a materialist (nāsti ātman = there is no ātman ), teaching this doctrine to his students which, of course, he denied.  His teaching of anātman was mistaken for the outright denial of ātman when in fact the Buddha's teaching only denied that the five khandhas/skandhas were the ātman!  (It is rather strange just how modern Buddhist take anātman as a denial of ātman when discourse after discourse in the Nikayas the Buddha is denying that the khandhas are the ātman; these khandhas being suffering and murderous.)

The Buddha's theory of rebirth rather hinges on consciousness, that is, a mutable vijñāna which is the transmigrant.  This transmigrant has nothing to do with ātman and everything to do with the consciousness of the the khandhas/skandhas which is not the ātman.      

Removing the bushel over the light

Some scholars contend that if the Buddha had been marketing ātman as the cardinal doctrine of Buddhism then why, they ask, was its light hid under a bushel unlike with the ātman of Upaniṣads?  The single most important reason ātman was not stressed as much in Buddhism is the Buddha taught by way of what is not ātman, for example, the five skandhas (the psychophysical body) are not ātman inasmuch as they are imperfect being synonymous with suffering and impermanence.  More practical, the Buddha's teaching assumed ātman—but ātman as yet unrealized by those to whom he taught because of it being veiled by the psychophysical body.  

Rejecting what is not my ātman is much easier and more expedient than imagining what this mysterious ātman might be in the example of the Upaniṣads, and getting it wrong; having constructed a false ātman with the imagination.  Speaking of the samaṇas and the brāmaṇas during the time of the Buddha, the Buddha said they envisage ātman as one or more of the five grasping skandhas (S. iii. 46) which make up the psychophysical body. Clearly, the Buddha did not see it this way.  His awakening saw the ātman as spiritually distinct from conditioned reality including the psychophysical body.  Neither was ātman asti as something extended or existent nor was it nasti as not anything at all.  It was unique in this respect. 

The effectiveness of negation, that is, the Buddha teaching us by way of what is not our ātman, is because the unreal can be negated but never the real; so that what remains at the end of this process, is ultimately real.  This, also, is the truth of the via negativa.  If there was no non-negatable transcendent ground (ātman) to begin with, it would not be possible to say of each and every skandha, this is not my ātman. 

On the other hand, those who contend there is no ātman do so, mistakenly, from the standpoint of the five skandhas.  For example, taking the position of the first skandha, which is physical form, they see no ātman and so it is with the rest of the skandhas up to consciousness which they see as being bereft of ātman.  This they believe is solid proof that there is no ātman!  But this was not the position of the Buddha.  Rather it is the position of the nihilist who adheres to nāsti ātman (lit. there is no ātman).  Ultimately it is by the very self (praty-ātman) that nirvana is realized.  Lacking ātman how is attainment of nirvana even possible? 

 

Good beginner's questions

A good beginner's question is what is the awakened or enlightened mind of the Buddha?  A good first answer is that it is not the beginner's mind which is the mind of false imagination; which is in a not so happy and peaceful state these days.  However, the more the beginner studies to clear up their unhappy mind through Zen practice, they will eventually see some daylight.  They will discover that there are many names for the enlightened mind they seek depending on what sutra or Zen sermon they are studying at the time.  Zen master Yongming said, "One reality  has a thousand names."  This may lead to confusion if the beginner is in too much psychological pain and lacks a good teacher.  But the confusion need not overwhelm the beginner.  There is a simple solution.

What the normal beginner is really trying to achieve is kensho which is gnosis of the mind that is awakened.  This is all Zen is really about.  The rest of Zen is mired in formalism which seems to have forgotten the necessity of working towards and realizing kensho.  Since 1965, I have watched Zen in the West grow and become more formal and institutional.  What has not grown—and I dare say has stayed about the same is the understanding and seeking of kensho.  This is not good.

Another good beginner's question, is all this formalism in Zen necessary in order to realize kensho which Bodhidharma understood as being synonymous with Zen?  The answer is not so black and white.  Some of the formalism helps the beginner to focus his or her mind on the task at hand and not waver or backslide.  Every act in Zen has a symbolic reference that helps to orient the beginner in the right direction.  But this symbolic formalism is not actual kensho.  Here is where the problem is.  Without the steady drum beat of kensho in the background of Zen centers the formalism can end up being of no value or even destructive. 

Beginners are vulnerable to being led astray, or the same, led off course such that they almost never hear the word "kensho" mentioned; much less understand what it means.  This is not their fault but rather the fault of their teachers who are mediocre and sometimes more interested in Zen as a business catering to people who could not care less about kensho.  Teachers of Zen like Brad Warner mention kensho a few times.  He said, for example, "I've never experienced kensho, and I hope I never do" (Sit Down and Shut Up, p. 228).  This doesn't bode well for the future of Zen or beginners.  Chinese and Korean forms of Zen still manage to concentrate more on awakening than formalism bereft of kensho.  This is good.

Turning the tables on the critics and doubters

It is a truism to say that men do not welcome doubt. It is much easier to criticize and doubt what you don't care about—having no skin in the game, so to speak. Materialists and secularists can doubt religions including Eastern religions such as Buddhism and Vedanta. But they have already surrendered their souls to nihilism by doing so. Naturally, they have no problem with shattering the altars and shrines of alien philosophies and paths. But has their criticisms and doubts gone too far? 

Their attack, if we stop and think about it, is clearly directed to the first-person where, for Zen Buddhism, the path of authentic religion begins. The critics would contend that there is no gateless gate or kensho which allows one to pass through the gate.  It is a fiction of one's imagination that cannot be proven by third-person science which lays claim to all knowledge and ultimately the brain where form, it believes, the first-person has its birth and death.

The regrettable bird's eye view of the dispute is that the critics of religion and the defenders are talking past each other.  There can be no end to such a dispute unless there is a profound shift in the way we view reality, such as in the past when we learned that the universe did not revolve around the Earth. Somewhat strange, just when the critics of religion were about to claim victory, Max Planck essentially said there is no matter. There is only spirit (Geist) and, moreover, we cannot get behind consciousness which implies consciousness does not come from the brain. He also said that everything that we regard as existing are postulates of consciousness.  As earth shattering as this sounds nothing he has said has yet been falsified.

Now the tables are being turned on the critics and the doubters.  The sacred ground of material science with its last weapon, mathematics, has received a devastating blow in the form of Quantum Mechanics.  There is no matter, there are only, in the words of Donald Hoffman, conscious agents.  The world we perceive through our senses and live in, is a construct of these conscious agents akin to our computer's GUI (graphic user interface).  In the words of the 19th century English mathematician and philosopher Kingdon Clifford, “The universe, then, consists entirely of mind-stuff." 

If a Buddha were running a Dharma center

If the Buddha were here today running a Dharma center, there would be nothing physically extraordinary about him.  We wouldn't see any thirty-two marks (which are immaterial, e.g., the ninth mark which is having the torso like a lion's, actually signifies that the Buddha looked after others with great care and concern).  He might even need a cane and have a few teeth missing.  Our romantic view of the Buddha can never, in any accurate way, portray the Buddha because the Buddha is the Dharma body which is transcendent which means it is permanent, reliable, completely pure by nature, completely liberated from all the sheaths of the kleśas, etc.  The only thing exceptional about this grizzled old dude who runs a Dharma center is what he beheld.  It was certainly profound and indescribable.

Having said this, there is no stopping ordinary beings from over-using their imagination, trying to imagine a human Buddha; even expecting their teachers to act Buddha-like which I hasten to add would be difficult to do since the Dharma body is outside of the range of human perception.  Its acts, if we may call them that, are transcendent.  Nevertheless, if our karma was good (good in the sense of being capable of becoming a Buddha) we would be in for a surprise meeting this old gaffer.  In a matter of a few minutes we would sense a blissful energy engulfing us, including our thoughts.  Just as our Dharma center Buddha is connecting, at all times, with the Dharma body because of all the right things he did to enter into communion with it, likewise, connecting with him because of our good karma, we directly experience this light, but not as strong; nor do we understand, firsthand, how to yoke with this effulgent body.

Even though the same light that animates us animates this old gaffer, which constitutes the Dharma body, he connected with it directly—we only connect with it indirectly.  It is somewhat like hanging around a wealthy person so that his confidence and manners rub off on us.  Still, we haven't made our own fortune even though we don't feel poor or in debt anymore.

Looking for enlightened teachers can only take us so far which is not far enough.  The rest depends upon us.  The part that depends on us is where our struggle begins.  It is the part that is almost totally deceived; which is mired in wrong preconceptions because we have not payed close enough attention to what the Buddha said.  Instead, we have paid too much attention to what he did not say.  We have been led too much by pop Buddhism and pop Zen which also paint a picture that Buddhism and Zen Buddhism is a lifestyle.  But where does such a lifestyle lead us, ultimately?  Sorry, but it is back on the wheel of samsara, maybe a little bit better on the next rebirth.  But that's nothing to celebrate.

The question of what is Buddhism?

The general question of, "What is Buddhism?" can be answered in a variety of ways from a simple dictionary definition, to a complicated historical one depending upon one's tastes.  There is, of course, a spiritual answer to the aforementioned question, one that is not often taken up, which goes in the direction of mysticism; which may even include such subjects as reincarnation and karma.  But for the purposes of this blog, I wish to define Buddhism in a profoundly mystical way which goes against the stream of current views which tend to be more or less anti-religious. 

The word "Buddhism" is really about the distinctive practice of awakening from the slumber of our lower nature that is blindly espoused to our species-specific world and seeing, directly, the living essence of our universe.  This essence or substance is free of conditioning being in this sense immutable, simple (not plural), perfect, free of suffering, and so on.  To reach this state requires, as practice, the transcendence of all that is mutable, suffering, lacks ātman and much more, including transcendence of the working of our conditioned consciousness.  Only then will this mysterious essence bloom for us, illuminating the universe.

Beholding this essence for the first time, in which mind is pure and luminous, this luminosity suffuses every part of one's body, even their thoughts, like a person whose body is completely covered by a white cloth.  No part is untouched.  This is not the discovery of some alien substance but it more like the subject which has found itself, also, as object.  At this point, both subject and object disappear.  There is Mind-only or the pure Mind.

Some who read this will find it hard to understand.  Some will even go to war against it or ridicule it because if this is all true, they've wasted their lives; who only know the way to dusty death (Macbeth).  This age is a perilous one.  Not because there is some great outside danger but because mankind is being led by those who have stopped searching for truth; who, in every way, are anti-religious.  In addition to this, the great complexity of this civilization has not made the truth easier to seek, but quite the opposite.  It is even more difficult to find.  In this regard, knowing what Buddhism means is important.  It has a path that leads to truth against all the negative forces that presently confront the individual.  

What Buddhism is really driving at

While it seems to be the settled truth that Buddhist literature has established that there is no ātman, it remains only an opinion having almost no evidential basis.  What Buddhism is really driving at is don't mis-take the psychophysical organism to be your ātman. To do so is wrong. This is called the view that the five skandhas are the ātman, namely, satkāya-dṛṣṭi. 

Consistently, the Buddha teaches his followers that every skandha from material shape to sensory consciousness is to be regarded this way: This is not mine, I am not this, this is not my ātman.  This negation is intended to dispel the theory (dṛṣṭi) of satkāya.  Such a negation also implies an implicit affirmation of ātman.  For example, if I say, "These are not my books," there is the implicit affirmation that I have books. It's just that these particular books are not mine.

We can only behold our implicit ātman, directly, by first abandoning everything that is not ātman.  This is getting rid of the view that the five skandhas are the ātman.  When Buddhists concentrate their efforts on attacking ātman they are on a wild goose chase.  Rather, they should come to be thoroughly acquainted with each of the five skandhas in their present rebirth body.  

First, they must see material shape by looking at their physical body.  Next comes feelings which they must examine from painful to pleasant feelings.  After this comes saṃjñā which is almost impossible to translate into English.  It pertains to signs, ideations, notions, concepts, mental images, impressions, and perceptions.  We have to see saṃjñā in our heads, so to speak.  After this is volitional formations which might be thought of as making karmic impressions (they construct the conditioned).  This is very subtle.  Still more subtle, there is sensory consciousness which is conditioned; not to be confused with infinite consciousness which is the same as nirvana.  Sensory consciousness is the most subtle of the skandhas which are not our ātman. 

One senses from this a kind of meditation, a getting to know your illusions, which is then followed by dis-identification as in: This is not mine, I am not this, this is not my ātman.  It is by these skandhas that all conditioned things seem to be present to us.  This, however, implies, that we are actually prior to them although we seem to be after them; being dependent.  One could also say that we are embodied, that is, invested with the five skandhas which leads to, satkāya-dṛṣṭi.  It doesn't have to be this way.    

 

Being deceived by appearances

Appearances are themselves empty in the same way that appearances in a mirror have no reality apart from the mirror. Whether or not the mirror reflects things or is blank in a dark cave does not change its power.  We can think of mind to be like a mirror.  All that we see externally and within our being depends upon mind.  In themselves, things have no true, inherent existence.  There is no "table-ness," or "house-ness," for example. Even though there are countless appearances of things, they are, nevertheless, empty and illusory.  Like in a dream, we experience things and people.  Yet, upon awakening we realize that it was only a dream.

We are on a fool's errand if we expect to experience our foundational, true nature, which is pure Mind, in the world of appearances.  There is no such Mind in a crowd of people, or the evening sunset, or a forest of trees.  These are like reflections on a mirror.  Only the mirror is real.  Zen wants us to see the Mind (the mirror itself).  We should not tarry in the world of appearances, nor be misguided by our monkey mind and our emotions.  These are evil counselors.  We have to break our terrible habit of listening to their advice, especially, when it comes to seeing our true nature!

I know these words might be like sunlight to bats who require darkness.  But what else is there to say except that most of us are being constantly deceived by appearances which, while being very real and painful for us, have no true nature. 

In Bhavasaṅkrānti Sutra it speaks of a man who is dreaming; who in his dream sees men with courtesans sporting with each other.  The Buddha then asks king Bimbisāra if the people in this dream were really existent?  The king answers in the negative.  The Buddha then goes on and asks the king if the man who had the dream, who is now infatuated with a beautiful female in the dream, is wise or not?  Again the king answers in the negative saying that the beautiful female seen by the man in the dream is ultimately empty of reality; there is no having this beautiful courtesan. It only leads to exhaustion to dwell on her since she can't be possessed.  And so it is with all the appearances of this worldly life.  It, also, is like the man's dream.  All appearances (dharma) are only provisional or false names.  Nothing is really obtainable.  Thus, all appearances are empty being originated from discrimination (vikalpa). Such discrimination is also empty.  To tarry in this dream-like world taking it to be real is called samvṛti-satya meaning mundane truth. Those who see through the deception of mundane truth follow the Buddha's teaching which teaches paramārtha-satya, meaning absolute truth.

Beware of religious teachers most of them are all-too-human

Zen is not without its share of useful myths, hopefully, to inspire us to seek the truth. This might be challenged.  But I could argue that much of what we imagine Zen to be is certainly mythology, created in the Song dynasty which includes most of the classical Zen teachers being something akin to hagiographic fantasy characters.  It is only recently that much of Zen's popular history has been exposed to have been mainly a Song creation—still, a very useful one at that.  But such a well constructed myth will only take the individual so far.

One joins in this myth when they elect to seek a good Zen master to study under.  I certainly did this as did others of my generation and many more after that as Zen began to become more popular.  At the time, I had no idea that the story of Zen was like so many fingers pointing to previous, ancestral fingers, all the way back to the Buddha who had, so to speak, seen the moon (saw ultimate reality).

My teacher was one of those fingers who was pointing to ancestral fingers who really didn't know anything profound.  He was certainly not enlightened although at the time I believed he was.  Credulity was my middle name.  I had no idea, although I saw them sleeping together, that my teacher and the senior monk were lovers.  As the senior monk later confessed to me, our teacher was gay and used his position as a Zen abbot for less than noble purposes.  The senior monk was having role identity problems.  He left to get his head straight.

Not too long after the senior monk left I was told to leave by the abbot because I had a girlfriend.  It seems that the previous vows I took were not about not having sex but about the gender one has sex with.  

Before I was told to leave, Togen Sumi, the Bishop of Soto Zen in America, visited our little temple in Stockton California and gave the abbot's temple a clean bill of health for having the Buddha statue at the right height and having a proper bell from Japan, etc.  The abbot and Sumi really clicked as I could see.  I later found out, Sumi was also gay like my teacher.  He also used his position for less than noble purposes as did my teacher.  Sumi was also a drag queen!

The reader's imagination can fill in the rest.  I didn't put in the more shocking parts.  This leads me to say that the world of Zen teachers is not a pure one or the idealized one the credulous seeker hopes to find.  In fact, the odds of finding a Zen teacher who belongs to a Zen institution, who is awakened to the One Mind, is extremely low.  

At this point, the bottom line is beware of religious teachers most of them are all-too-human.  More of an insight into Zen teachers, the late abbot of Anraku-ji in Osaka told me, "Being a Zen abbot is learning how to fake being the Buddha for an hour."  I don't expect any of what I said will stop the march of the credulous to Zen centers for instruction.  It is easy to deceive people.  Almost everyone does it these days.  Our very educational system, its purpose, is to produce credulous followers of the social order.