Yesterday I was looking at A. Charles Muller's book, The Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment: Korean Buddhism's Guide to Meditation, which has a commentary by the Korean Zen/Seon monk Kihwa (1376–1433) which I hasten to add is a great book for your Zen library. An interesting section is "The Four Maladies" which I found to be very timely especially in light of today's understanding of Zen. Basically, the four maladies are: 1) contrivance; 2) naturalist; 3) stopping; 4) annihilation. According to Kihwa:
"Contrivance" means "doing with intention" and implies the creation of all good dharmas. "Stopping" means "stopping of thought" and implies the cessation of all mistaken thoughts. "Naturalism" means "letting things follow their course" and implies going along with all that the mind creates, without grasping to "contrivance" or "stopping." Annihilation" means "extinction" and implies the destruction of defilements through the two emptinesses of mind and objects. Contrivance, stopping, naturalism, and annihilation are attitudes in which the practitioner should not get stuck. As soon as there is something to which the mind get attached, then there is an obstruction to enlightenment, and so it is called a malady" (p. 224).
Personally, I have seen all four of these maladies, each in their own unique form. Regarding contrivance it is attachment to the idea that doing zazen will reach perfect enlightenment. To be blunt, such a practice will fall short of perfect enlightenment. Besides the contrivance of zazen, naturalism is a great malady which seems to be prevalent among beginners. I have seen it in the form of learning to be in the here & the now; accepting things as they are; the everyday mind is the enlightened mind and so on. This is far from perfect enlightenment. With the malady of stopping, the adept, during meditation, is willfully trying to suppress his or her thoughts but to no avail. I see the malady of annihilation among students who take up the study of emptiness. They try to annihilate or erase all defilements of body and mind by seeing all this as just emptiness. But this endeavor never reaches perfect enlightenment.
Speaking personally, we all go through these maladies. I certainly did. But my foolishness didn't last long. I saw that I was on a fool's errand. So what was left for me? That is when it dawned on me to try to see the pure Mind in myself. Where was it hiding. In zazen I watched my thoughts. "Where are you pure Mind?" I wondered to myself is awareness this pure Mind. But awareness is just another word for the subject who is looking at his body and mind. No, there is something I am missing. So I went on like this day in and day out searching for the pure Mind within. I couldn't stop. I was obsessed you could say. Then one day I broke down. I knew from that moment on I was too stupid to see pure Mind. I had come to my wits' end. At that point I was about to pass the checkpoint and go through the no-gate gate.
smith: Reaching our wits' end means we cannot, in anyway, understand what pure Mind is. We've run out of ideas, so to speak. Our cunning reason has failed us. Reaching our wits' end also defies analysis. It is a state every seeker has to go through.
Posted by: thezennist | October 20, 2015 at 12:29 AM
having heard you speak about your own path to awareness, and as you say by reaching your 'wits end', I have a curiosity/question for you. By 'wits end' would you also define that as having reached a place within yourself of profound understanding and identification with utter humility?
Posted by: smith | October 19, 2015 at 04:14 PM