The Zennist

Turning to our deluded self for help

Everyone, for the most part, treats their wish for kensho or enlightenment the same way: it's like wanting something that we think we really need—yeah, it will be good for me.  Bound up with this is the daily fact, I am not getting it.  Moreover, I haven't been getting what I need for a long time.  This is a very subtle problem if not also a very subtle form of self-delusion: the deluded trying to escape from their delusion.  

To maintain this delusion we have acquired a toolbox of clever, self-deluding tactics and strategies—not to get us out of our box of delusion—but to keep us trapped in it.  When 9/11 came, to give one major example, we used our special toolbox to keep ourselves in the delusion of, them Muslims did this.  Some said this was a perfect example of "cognitive dissonance" which is our mind's way of minimizing dissonance when the dissonance is something we can't handle.  Turning to Zen, we fixate on zazen as the only means to awakening.  We use our toolbox to keep us in this delusion.  In many more examples, we are turning to our deluded self to find a way out of our delusions.  

If I believe I want to see my true nature (kensho), I make sure I am the one who has to verify my true nature.  But who is this person?  It's the deluded guy!  This is not going to work.  And this is where 99% of the Zennists and Buddhists are stuck.  They don't want to look further at the deluded guy with his toolbox.  Our deluded guy is playing the part of the "chooser" as in, "Yeah, this temple looks really cool and that old Asian dude looks enlightened to me."  The problem is this deluded guy who is holding the toolbox of clever rationalizations for continuing on an errant path.  Truth be told, he's the problem and he has to be surpassed.  But this is really strong medicine.  Few can take it.  Most Westerners I have come across don't want to give up the guy with the toolbox.  They want him reformed.

Getting less and less serious consideration

Becoming more unpopular in Buddhism these days seems to be the Buddhist tenets of karma and rebirth.  More importantly, nirvana seems on its way out getting little if any serious consideration by secular Buddhists and the sitting Zennists who tend to be Dogen Zennists.  I guess this is the price we pay for living in a materialist age where death is believed to be final and whatever evil you may have committed in the past, is not counted against you.  Mainly, Buddhism is practiced these days in the West, including Zen, to help the individual cope with their day to day stress.  That's it. 

Personally, I think such views stem from an inflexible mind—a dogmatic mind.  There is something deeply wrong with such people, a special kind of personality disorder that cannot be corrected.  It is as if such people are hard-wired in the wrong way that is setting them on a course of self-destruction.  People are so attached to their corporeal bodies and the world they live in that it is impossible for them to envision anything beyond it.  Yes, it is true than many are in Buddhism seeking what help it can offer.  But in the end these people are more like parasites and vampires who live off of Buddhism only, in the end, to destroy it.

According to the Buddha there are only two types of people in the world.  There are the aryans and the pṛthagjanas which is to say, those who have encountered the supermundane and those who haven't.  One is an aryan who is a stream-enterer (śrotāpanna) and one is not.  The latter only see the conditioned world and not that from which it is made.  They are outsiders.  Nirvana is not for them.  Only samsara awaits them because this is what they are interested in and desire.  Such passages as these have no appeal for them:

"Whatever is there of material shape, feeling, perception, the habitual tendencies, consciousness [the five skandhas]—he beholds these things as impermanent, suffering, as a disease, an imposthume, a dart, a misfortune, an affliction, as other, as decay, empty, not the ātman.  He turns his mind from these things; and when he has turned his mind from these things he focuses his mind on the deathless element (amṛta-dhātu) thinking:  This is the real, this the excellent, that is to say the tranquilizing of all activities, the casting out of all clinging, the destruction of craving, dispassion, stopping, nirvana" (M. i. 435–36).

Even Bodhidharma, who the Zennists claim to be their founder (doubtful, they just hijacked the Lanka School), had this to say about nirvana.

"Through endless kalpas without beginning, whatever you do, wherever you are, that's your real mind, that's your real buddha. This mind is the buddha says the same thing. Beyond this mind you'll never find another buddha. To search for enlightenment or nirvana beyond this mind is impossible. The reality of your own self-nature, is the absence of cause and effect, is what's meant by mind. Your mind is nirvana. You might think you can find a buddha or enlightenment some­ where beyond the mind, but such a place doesn't exist."

What he means by nirvana is no longer of interest to the sitting Zennists.  Sitting will save them.  This is what they believe.  But this is not Buddhism.  It is Buddhism in name only.  Nirvana can only be realized when the wave-like formations we recognize as our thoughts stop.  This is a brief stop but a stop nevertheless.  In this brief stop we see the unborn Mind of nirvana or the same, the nirvanic Mind.  Now, suddenly, things have changed.  We know what all things are composed from whereas before we did not.  We had no way to detach. Now we can detach from the conditioned world of repeated birth and death.  We see the deathless element.  

Closing the door of imitation, behavior oriented Zen

Zen is not about learning a particular kind of exotic behavior.  Real Zen can't be imitated because what is uncovered in awakening or satori is pure Mind which is luminous and the very substance of phenomena including even our thoughts.  Having said this, probably, not everyone will agree with me.  Some I am sure think Zen is a matter of behaving a certain way.  They need to be corrected  When we read Daoxin's (580–651) advice to Farong (594–657) it is easy to see the thin end of the wedge begin to open the door of imitation, behavior oriented Zen.

"When there is not a single teaching left, then you are just left to abide in your own nature; with no need to worry about your behavior; no need to practice cleansing austerities; but just living a life without desires; with a mind without anger, without cares; completely at ease and without impediment; acting according to your own will; without needing to take on any good or evil affairs; just walking, abiding, sitting, and lying down; with whatever meets your eye being nothing other than the essential source; and all of it is but the sublime function of Buddha; blissful and without care."

Most of these kinds of stories (not all of course) seem to me to be the work of literati biographers.  No mention is made of the luminous Mind.  When a person has awakened to the luminous Mind it is not something that a person already awakened cannot detect.  It is also true that if a person awakens to this luminous Mind in some cave ten miles from their nearest neighbor the awakening is not without a specific effect.  To reach this unconditioned pure, luminous Mind is more than just being in a state where "there is not a single teaching left."  This is a state when one has come to their wits' end.  There is nothing more to grab hold of—you're grabbed out!  But you still haven't arrived!  

What Daoxin seems to be describing is being at our wits' end with nothing left to do—I mean, what can we do?  We've done it before.  It didn't work.  So we "live a life without desires; with a mind without anger, without cares."  So what?  There is still one final hurdle.  If a person has really, really, stopped patting the water down, so to speak, trying to push down the ripples on the mind-water—they will see the old Buddha face to face soon enough.  If not, they still have a long way to go.  They are still unconsciously patting down the ripples.  And what do I mean by this?  Such people are still trying to think and act their way to the luminous Mind.

Conditioned and unconditioned

There are really only two fundamental aspects or considerations of Buddhism, namely, the conditioned (saṃskṛta) and the unconditioned (asaṃskṛta).  We could put it this way, too.  There is phenomena like waves of water and the noumenon which is like pure water which is not wave-dependent which is first and prior to its wave phenomena.  Samsara, the 12-Nidanas, the three marks of existence, the senses and many more items such as the Five Aggregates (khandhas/skanhdas), fall under the heading of the conditioned.  Even practice falls under the heading of the conditioned although it leads to the unconditioned.  Nirvana, on the other hand, falls under the heading of the unconditioned. Here we find this distinction fairly obvious (emphasis is mine).

"And the Buddha, the rishi-bull, the guide, taught me of the impermanence of uprising and dukkha; of the unconditioned, of the cessation of dukkha, that are eternal; and of this path, not crooked, straight, auspicious.  When I heard (of) the Deathless place, the unconditioned, the Teaching of the Tathagata, the Unrivaled One, I was well and highly restrained in precepts, firm in the Dhamma taught by the Buddha, the most excellent of men.  When I know the dustless place, the unconditioned, taught by the Tathagata, the Unrivaled One, I right there reached the calm (supermundane) concentration.  That same highest assurance was mine" (Parmatthadīpanī Vimānavatthu-aṭṭakathā).

There is an old saying, all roads lead to Rome.  Well, in Buddhism the path leads to the unconditioned, that is nirvana.  Nowhere else.  The understanding that Buddhism teaches an unconditioned dharma which is the same as the conditioned dharma is, of course, absurd, and makes no sense.  It is a product of postmortem Buddhism, in particular Abhidhammas which are sectarian works.  This is certainly an attempt to get rid of the problem of ātman/attā which is outside of the purview of the conditioned Five Aggregates by suggesting that this passage pertains to the unconditioned (nirvana) as well as the conditioned, namely, All dhammas are without ātman/attā.  But this passage only pertains to the conditioned Five Aggregates according to the Dhammapada-aṭṭakathā, not the ātman which is apart from the conditioned aggregates (later ātman will become Buddha-nature).  Nevertheless, this is where some Theravada sects are leading their followers which is a destructive teaching and utterly false.  In the Udana-aṭṭakathāwe come across the following:

“that which is the unconditioned element, which has as its own nature that which is the antithesis of all conditioned things, such as earth and so forth, is nibbana [nirvana], for which same reason he (next) says “There, too, monks, I do not speak either of coming” (and so on)" (392).

We see that the unconditioned and the conditioned have distinct and exclusive natures (sabhāvas/svabhāvas).  The idea that dharma is a magical overarching term that includes conditioned things and unconditioned nirvana is a fallacy given the polysemic nature of the word "dharma" itself.  Nowhere is there such a "dharma" that can include both the conditioned (samsara) and unconditioned (nirvana).  Since Dharma can have, basically, four to six meanings context is important to keep in mind.  When the Bodhisattva awakened and became Buddha he spoke of the dharma that was unconditioned, namely, nirvana; not conditioned dharmas (sarva dharma).  In fact, in the Pali Nikayas there is only one unconditioned dharma (dhamma) this being nirvana (nibbana).   

Nirvana, the unconditioned, is not a meditative state like calming, but a state which exists by itself (svabhāva-dharma); which differs from all other things (dharmas) since it is unborn, undying, etc.  It is realized by practitioners by various conditioned methods/means, but its own state is by no means dependent on our realization of it.  It is somewhat like prospecting for gold.  The gold exists whether we find it or not—we don't suddenly make the gold, in other words.  We just discover what was always there.  

The armchair Zennist

The wonderful advances in computers and the Internet along with the iPhone, have made possible a proliferation of the armchair specialist, in this example the armchair Buddhist and the armchair Zennist who are a cousin of the armchair warrior.  Why typifies this armchair specialist, they have never committed themselves to the quest for enlightenment in a real and personal way.  In other words, they didn't sacrifice friends and family to take the mystic's journey into the hidden depths of the soul.  They've only managed to sit in front of a computer monitor and generate opinions.

Speaking on my own behalf, I only managed to enter the world of the armchair Zennist and the armchair Buddhist when I was already 50 having lived much of my life without the electrical grid and running water (I had four wells and a few buckets) including a small abandoned mine (my meditation mine).  I had already chopped a fair amount of oak wood and hauled lots of buckets of water from my wells.  I had meditated by streams and waterfalls and in my mine.  I used kerosene in my lamps so I could read at night.  I had no other direction but to seek pure Mind which I knew was hidden somewhere in my noggin.  This was my holy quest.  At the time I had no idea what a monitor was or the Internet.

Looking at the armchair Zennists, including Buddhists, which can be found in chat rooms, most of them are inclined towards the secular and tend to be somewhat anti-religious.  Most are males who are self-centered, hostile, lack self-discipline, and are opinionated with average to below average, real world social skills.  And that is just a few items; not even the worst.  They would never make it in your local Zen center or, for that matter, a military bootcamp. They are the dropout kind.  It seems that their raison d'être is rebellion for the sake of rebellion.  Judging their reading habits they are drawn to koans because they see them as being a kind of in your face dialogue in which the Zen master is the undisputed put-down artist.  Zen, they imagine, is a form of iconoclasm and decisively anti-Buddhist!  I am also of the opinion that secular Buddhism is supported by these types which would have never existed were it not for the Internet. 

I am not worried that such people are going to undermine Zen or Buddhism.  They are fringe—outside of normal Zen Buddhism and Buddhism, in general, and not very bright.  They only exist in the world of the Internet.  Still, it is important to know their type.  I have to say that the greater problem is not with the armchair Zennists but with the armchair Buddhists who have some power to secularize Buddhism outside of the Internet chipping away at its foundation in such a way that nirvana, rebirth and karma are put into storage.  We are not supposed to know that the dharma is taught by the Buddha for the sake of final nirvana without clinging (SN 35:75). The secular Buddhists treat nirvana as mumbo-jumbo something that a modern materialist society doesn't need.  After all, the mind is a product of the brain.

Having an open unmade up mind

Most of us know what the expression, "I made up my mind," means or "I haven't made up my mind."  When I say that I have made up my mind to study Zen I have made a particular decision.  The intensity and commitment behind such a decision can't be, completely, judged externally.  It could be just a matter of curiosity to study Zen.  Maybe buy a book or visit a Zen center and learn to do zazen.  In other matters, when I say I have my mind made up it might be in regard to my belief that Buddhism denies the Hindu Ātman or the Buddha really didn't teach reincarnation; it wasn't part of his original teaching.

Most Buddhists I have met these days have pretty much made up their minds that the Buddha denied the Hindu Ātman, in fact, the Buddha taught against it who taught, in addition, that we suffer because of our belief in ātman.  My question to such an inflexible position is, "What was your mind like before you made it up?"  I might also wonder, "What did it take for you to make up your mind?"  From these two questions my concern is why make up your mind?  What does the term an "open mind" mean?  It surely cannot mean to have a mind that is made up, especially, in light of the fact that the person has not read and studied the Buddha's discourses.  

In this day and age, we are prone to act on impulse and that includes making up our minds.  Living moment to moment, that is, living impulsively, also means we make up our minds without forethought and careful consideration in the example of ātman in Buddhism.  We don't spend hundreds of hours reading the discourses of the Buddha with a mind that is open. It is more often that we read an opinion by a partisan monk or teacher as to what the Buddha taught who have closed, made up minds, which means our mind is starting to close and become made up following their lead.

In this sorry state, my question is what does it take to open a made up mind—reverse it?  My hunch is that it will take a lot of work which is almost not worth it.  The best that can be done is to make such people uneasy; to show them that their position doesn't have a lot of evidence supporting it.  Still, you are dealing with someone who is inflexible; who ain't gonna budge.  They will even permit you to lead them to the water, but you can't bend their heads down to make them drink. Worth mentioning at this point, another name for a dogmatist is someone who has an inflexible mental attitude.  They will not drink of the water.  The worst dogmatist are those in academia who have invested much of their academic careers in a particular theory.  They will go to their grave with their minds made up even though the evidence is not persuasive enough to get beyond an assumption (e.g., Max Planck's assumption that Kirchhoff’s Law was valid when it was not).

It some matters it is okay to make up your mind.  In other situations it is not.  There are many examples I could give in which we rush to judgment with our minds made up, firmly, in the example of O.J. Simpson, when all the evidence, even DNA evidence, pointed to his 24-year-old son Jason.  Never heard of this?  Well, it's not surprising.  It is too easy to make up our minds when we shouldn't.  It is better to have an open, unmade up mind.

The dominion of consciousness

Trying to understand consciousness (S., vijñāna) in Buddhism can be difficult.  One can think of it as the binary mode of absolute Mind or tathatā, Mind in the form we recognize as subject & object.  This mode is certainly deceptive.  The Buddha likened it to a magician's illusion.  We think of consciousness as being the limit, there is no higher.  But this is wrong.  Mind as substance is the highest which is the fundamental teaching of the Lankavatara Sutra which was the basis of the early formation of Zen Buddhism.

As subject we live through our body and the world its senses perceive, this being the object.  Pain and death of the body, the objects, are tied to the subject.  Even in sleep we cannot escape consciousness.  When we fall asleep, the body's senses are greatly reduced as compared with the normal waking state. Our object then becomes the sleeping body.  In deep sleep the subject faces the body's world we know as dreaming. But usually the body as object has the senses pretty much closed down so that the subject is objectless.  When we were in our mother's womb we were subjects in new bodies as objects, the senses being diminished to almost nothing detectable by the subject.  During birth we were thrown into objectivity with our senses being stimulated to a much greater degree than in the womb.  A coordination process between subject & object grew and developed, adapting to the environment; the greater emphasis being on the objective. 

In the subject & object relation each side can influence and condition the other to a certain extent and degree.  In Darwinian fitness subject & object work to reproduce the human species; to keep it safe from harm so that it might further reproduce.  Buddhism goes contrary to this trajectory, i.e., infinite reproduction, by transcending consciousness realizing, directly, the substance from which subject & object are composed.  This is achieved by meditation in which, so to speak, pure subject and pure object meet revealing the luminous Mind (the substance/essence).  It is through the realization of Mind that the tyranny and dominion of consciousness is overcome.

Putting down the bag, folding hands

A statue that we see quite often in a Chinese restaurant is the rotund "Laughing Buddha" otherwise named, Budai (布袋).  He was a very Zen-like character.  One story about him goes like this:

"Once there was a priest who walked in front of the Master (Budai). The latter touched him on the shoulder, whereupon he turned his head. The Master said "Give me a cash." The priest said, "If you first tell me a word of Truth, I will give you a cash." The Master put his bag on the ground and folded his hands." (transl. Helen B. Chapin)

Most people who read this think it's pretty cool.  Some Zen students or their teachers imitate it by lifting up their staff then putting it down or by doing other odd things.  None of this gets to the heart of what Budai was expressing.  When Budai sat his big bag down then folded his hands, in essence, he did the exact same thing as the Buddha did when the Buddha simply held up a flower then blinked and in response to this, Mahākāśyapa just smiled.  Both of their actions appear to be physical but both saw what ordinary people could not see, the dynamic universal substance (體) that animated both of their physical functions (用).  Does this sound preposterous?  Well, it is not.

We always have to keep in might that the Buddha had a very simple and elegant teaching.  There is the conditioned reality consisting of phenomena including our bodies all the way to our consciousness.  Attach to this and you are in deep doo-doo.  You will enter samsara never to escape from it.  Then there is unconditioned reality known sometimes as nirvana.  No, you cannot see it or sense it.  It is beyond the reach and range of sensory consciousness (sorry).  It is primary, first, original—we can call it the One Mind (S., ekacitta).  In Zen this becomes essence (or if you like, substance) with function as its expression.  On this same track, Zen master Hui Hai says:

"This functional manifestation proceeds from the fundamental "substance" and it is by means of it that we return to that "substance". Since "substance" and manifestation are one in reality, the fundamental and its manifestation do not differ from each other." 

Back to our rotund Budai.  He was continually aware of this unconditioned essence which he called "Mind" which he said is the most intelligent and the most spiritual thing.  Budai said of Mind that it is continual movement (i.e., dynamic), moreover, self-existent (absolute) ; and there is nothing which it is not.  It is before one's eyes, the true great way, yet one sees not a hair of it—how strange.

Getting over the hump of worldly Zen

Zen is seen to consist of five Zens according to Zen master Zongmi (Tsung-mi) with the highest being Supreme Vehicle Zen (上乘禅) or in Japanese, Saijojo Zen.  For our purposes, we might call Saijojo Zen "ultimate Zen" which includes one-pointedness of Mind and Bodhicitta (the mind that is bodhi).  Ultimate Zen is mainly characterized by "realization" (J., kensho) without which Buddhahood is impossible.  

This is in contrast with the intellectual attitude which is constituted by knowledge seeking and pondering in addition to methods for restraining the afflictive emotions such as zazen.  Here, I hasten to add, worldly thoughts and emotions still dominate although somewhat less than for the average untrained person.  It might surprise some to hear this, but this is pṛthagjana (J., bompu) Zen.  This is worldly Zen without kensho, but it can go quite far in terms of practice.  

A teacher like Soryu Forall comes to mind who trained in Japan with Shodo Harada Roshi.  He has probably logged in more zazen time than most.  Some 25,000 hours according to his bio.  Still, this can be classified under the rubric of pṛthagjana Zen because so much of it is silent about kensho which neglects the realization of the luminous Mind.  It tends to be sympathetic with neuroscience which is materialism's last stand, claiming that mind is created in the brain.  It is worldly in a number of respects and certainly not transcendent.  Pṛthagjana Zen is where most of us start from.  But by no means should we remain here.  

Getting on the path of ultimate Zen means spiritually growing up so that pṛthagjana Zen has outlived its usefulness.  Despite hours sitting in zazen and many psychological insights which help us to tame Mr. Id, we still don't understand the recondite teachings of the Buddha in Mahayana—and we barely understand what is going on in the Pali Nikayas.  Sure, we can dismiss it.  But that is just a cop-out.  We are capable of so much more.  We have just sold ourself short.  To get us over this hump greater faith is required of us.

A path to the unconditioned

The Buddhism of the Pali Nikayas and certainly Zen Buddhism dwell on the unconditioned through its various synonyms.  It's opposite, the conditioned, describes not only our world but the psychophysical organism we inhabit and wrongly take for a refuge.  To be specific, the Five Aggregates (P., khandhas; S., skandhas) are conditioned and, by implication, the self or ātman is unconditioned since the Buddha teaches that our self is not anyone of the aggregates which are conditioned.  On this same track, to realize nirvana means to see our self which is beyond the covering of the conditioned. Here in the Samyutta-Nikaya (S. iv. 369) we find an apt description of the taintless (anāsavaṃ) which can apply to nirvana, the mind and ourself (sayaṃ). 

 "The unconditioned, the end, the effluent-less, the true, the beyond, the subtle, the very-hard-to-see, the ageless, permanence, the undecaying, the featureless, the undifferentiated, peace, the deathless, the exquisite, bliss, solace, the exhaustion of craving, the wonderful, the marvelous, the secure, security, nirvana, the unafflicted, the passionless, the pure, release, non-attachment, the island, shelter, harbour, refuge, the ultimate."

In Zen Buddhism our goal is to see our true nature, this seeing being kensho which is just another way of saying we've, personally, realized the unconditioned.  The path leading to the unconditioned is not, in essence, unlike the path described in the Pali Nikayas which is signless being absent of any trace of the conditioned including the born, the become, the made, etc.  We should note that our journey to truth is not pathless, far from it.  There is a path but it is a path not dependent on signs being ultimately void of the conditioned.  From Zen's angle, when Mind is completely—all-at-once stilled—we behold the unconditioned aspect of Mind.  To reach this aspect of Mind is rightly nirvana.  It is permanent, without suffering and ātman (Buddha-nature).