The Zennist: True knowledge is first-person

Buddhism, especially in the Zen tradition, is based on first-person knowledge, that is, seeing our true nature (kensho). This kind of knowledge is rooted in what a person really is (not what they imagine they are). What we really are is only found after we peel back the layers and layers of what the Buddha calls 'adventitious āsavas/defilements' so that we are able to see, for the first time, the true ground of reality of which we have always been but did not know it.

These āsavas are not quite related to morality. We can think of them as intoxicants that we are addicted to which bind us down to the worldly life so we never know who we truly are. There are four in number: concupiscence, becoming, speculation, and non-knowledge (avidya). Summed up, these āsavas only appear when mind has not achieved purification. When our mind has become purified only then is it liberated (vimutto). Liberated, it can spiritually distinguish between Buddha Mind and mind under the spell of āsavas.

Liberation is always first-person knowledge, not so-called 'objective knowledge', for all to see, which is third-person oriented. Third-person knowledge refers to persons or something (an instrument) that is other than the first-person. It does not require of the knowledge seeker, direct, first-person experience. Nevertheless, third-person inquiries and investigations even curious investigations seem to demand, implicitly, the transfer of first-person knowledge to third-persons which always results in cognitive loss. It may well be that Buddhism and Zen Buddhism are doomed to loose their importance in a culture that prides itself on third-person knowledge; that, at the same time, implicitly despises and belittles first-person knowledge.

Ironically, people whose orientation is towards third-person knowledge are generally impressed by the outer religious trappings of Buddhism and Zen Buddhism, from temples and monasteries, to robes, rituals and ceremonies, to certification. None of this has anything to do with first-person gnosis of one's true nature. As a result, the history of Zen in the West is not without its huge share of betrayals, the greatest of which is forcing kensho to enter through lowly doors or not at all.