Looking back on my beginner Zen days from a considerable distance, a beginner puts a lot of trust in a teacher, and you could say, "the institution." This is not always a good thing given the almost sure fact that as a beginner we have a bad habit of misreading Buddhist texts and worse, misjudging teachers and institutions (I sure did). In Zen, we don't have a college professor who is going to read Hui-neng for us and break down ever line in Chinese so we might see what Hui-neng is driving at. Putting the robes and rituals aside, and I include even zazen, the beginner is sort of in a YOYO mode (i.e., You're On Your Own).
Like most beginners, I thought doing a lot of zazen and being aware was a major part of the Zen practice. But this is not as important as knowing, exactly, what Zen is aiming at in addition to knowing, that buried deep within my subject/object consciousness is the essence or criterion which, in time, will lead me to doubt all of my former beliefs and opinions about pure Mind, or the same, Buddha-nature. Said again, unbeknownst to me, my beginning Zen journey will find me comparing the immediacy of my primordiality (my potential Buddha-nature) with my various beliefs and opinions about pure Mind and Buddha-nature. This will eventually become a path also of despair—what I've called before, going to your wits' end.
A more mature beginner's Zen begins when we, seriously, take up the investigation of pure Mind, that is, directly seeing this mind before it arises or is stirred up into various shapes: seeing it unborn. As long as our mind is stirred and arising, it is a particular mind—not universal. We might even call it our monkey-mind which is hardly universal. If any good Zen teacher were worth their salt they would equip the beginner for the investigation which is tantamount to climbing a huge, dangerous mountain. Believe me, not all are cutout to do this. Pushing oneself as Hakuin Zenji did, for example, is not without a price to pay; nor is it without despair.
Success depends upon how well we understand what Zen is aiming at. The best teachers never let a sermon pass without telling all their students what Zen is really aiming at. All the rest is toddler stuff: changing emotional shit-filled diapers because such beginners are still resisting a journey called Zen that is a difficult and dangerous transformative journey. They are not ready to challenge themselves. Sadly, they have the Zen center as their crutch along with the teacher. At some time in their lives these baby birds have to leave the nest. If this were China, the best students would prepare for a long retreat of a couple of years. This is the climb which is also a great investigation in which the pure subject meets the pure object and for a split second, the subtle filters of consciousness reveal what they are made from which is the luminous substance of pure Mind.
thank you for the post.
can you say more on how or why this investigation can be dangerous?
Posted by: john | November 04, 2015 at 11:28 AM