The Zennist

Choosing tathagata Zen

The general tendency today is for Zen teachers to link Zen with more of their own modern understandings which, arguably, stray from the, predominantly, esoteric sermons of the older Zen tradition.  Most notably they get it wrong when they try to handle koans failing to understand that they are a play off of function (用) and (體) essence or in the Pali canon, conditioned (more at constructed or composed) and unconditioned (i.e., nirvana).  The whole point of koans is to get the student to awaken to the huatou (pre-word) which happens suddenly, when our mind becomes for a split second, unstirred, permitting us to see true reality as never seen before, beyond the ken of imaginal ideations (saṃjñā).  This revealed reality is essence. Its expression in Zen such a shouting, speaking, laughing, etc. are examples of function.  Think of essence as real fire and its expression as smoke.

I really can't blame today's Zen teachers especially those whose background is in Japanese Zen in which the stress is more on zazen than anything else.  I also understand that the world we all live in has been almost totally hijacked by materialism as if to say, there is no underlying reality or ground beyond what our senses pick up and what we think (our imaginal ideations).  But there really is.  And the Zen teachers of old, some of them, directly intuited this reality or "stuff" (tathatā) from which even our thoughts are composed.  Facing such a daunting barrier, the average person who wants to really study Zen, is going to have to learn to become more self-reliant.

Speaking for myself, I had to learn the hard way as did others.  By this I mean one must develop faith in their own ability to distinguish between bompu Zen or pṛthagjana Zen (i.e., worldling Zen) and tathagata Zen which can only be described as being totally spiritual in a very real sense.  Here is an example of what tathagata Zen is about: 

"The object of Ch'an training is to realize the mind for the perception of (self-) nature, that is to wipe out the impurities which soil the mind so that the fundamental face of self-nature can really be perceived.  Impurities are our false thinking and clinging (to things as real).  Self-nature is the meritorious characteristic of the Tathagata wisdom which is the same in both Buddhas and living beings.  If one's false thinking and grasping are cast aside, one will bear witness to the meritorious characteristic of one's Tathagata wisdom and will become a Buddha, otherwise one will remain a living being.  For since countless aeons, our own delusion has immersed us in the (sea of) birth and death. Since our defilement has (already) lasted so long, we are unable instantly to free ourselves from false thinking in order to perceive our self-nature. This is why we must undergo Ch'an training. The prerequisite of this training is the eradication of false thinking. As to how to wipe it out, we have already many sayings of Sakyamuni Buddha and nothing is simpler than the word 'Halt' in His saying: 'If it halts, it is Enlightenment (Bodhi)'" (Hsu Yun Ho Shang Fa Hui).

The so-called "impurities which soil the mind" are native to us so that removing these impurities, even for a split second (which is all we have to do) proves to be a daunting task.  For most people, their heart is not into such an onerous task because the path is not really a path in the usual sense of the word—at least not a path we can perceive.  It is more about getting to the brink of not stirring up our impurities; or experiencing a distraction so profound as to, momentarily, stop the impurities.  This distraction, in the example of Hakuin Zenji, can be the churr of a cricket or a timely shout.

A tool for removing us from bondage

The appearance of koan collections in the Song dynasty marks a shift in Zen teaching methodology or skillful means.  It is a move towards refined literary activity, which was termed "lettered Ch'an" or moji Zen.  Moji Zen was not a real advance in terms of skillful means.  It eventually led to a correction because such Zen was fast becoming more about poetry and making clever allusions to satori than personal accomplishment of actual enlightenment.  On the same score, one might say the same thing about trying to accomplish enlightenment by means of sitting meditation—just sitting on a cushion.  But how close or how far away are such practices when compared with actually seeing pure Mind?  I think one could argue that the means was turning into the end—the raft to the other shore was becoming the other shore!

Koans and sitting meditation might be useful tools in our Zen tool box but they are not the only ones.  Reading the Buddha's discourses might be just as valuable if not more since these discourses are composed in such a way as to alter our typical Western way of reading and thinking about texts forcing us to drop our former patterns of thought.  According to the Lankavatara Sutra,

Mahamati, owing to the functioning of the minds of sentient beings [. . .] religious discourses are given by myself and other Tathagatas, Arhats, Fully-Enlightened Ones in response to varieties of faiths on the part of beings, in order to remove them from [the bondage of] the Citta, Manas and Manovijnana, and not for the attainment and establishment of self-realisation which issues from noble wisdom.

In other words, the discourses of the Buddha are not given to establish self-realization but to remove beings from bondage to thoughts, fancies and discursive thinking.  A good example of removing beings from bondage to thoughts, etc., can be found in the Śūraṅgama Sutra which, incidentally, has been influential in the study and practice of Zen.  This particular discourse helps us to distinguish between the false, conditioned mind of ordinary beings—what I like to call the monkey-mind—and the highest, or unconditioned Mind.  We often forget and take it for granted that the mind we have and use to understand the highest Mind, is the false mind.  Śūraṅgama Sutra proves to be frustrating for not only the beginner but also the seasoned veteran who still  has not managed to awaken to the unconditioned Mind.  The natural tendency is to keep using the conditioned, false mind to prepare the way for the intuition of the true Mind which never happens.  But this is not all that bad if it leads to going to one's wits' end which I have mentioned before.

A hermeneutics of contemplation

The term "hermeneutics" when I read it, tends to turn me off to any further reading of the subject especially when it comes to Buddhism.  Sure, I understand it is about interpretation and explanation of texts especially the Bible.  It was D. E. Schleiermacher (1768–1834) who established pretty much the discipline of hermeneutics and with it the problem of the hermeneutic circle in trying to understand the whole text by its parts and the parts by the whole.   

I think most of us are unaware that we put ourselves into a hermeneutic circle when reading Zen Buddhist texts, especially, koans. But what other way is there?  And most of us would like to leap out of this circle or just leap into something more than discursively thinking about Zen; trying to fit its odd, almost indescribable shape into a square hole that we are already familiar with.  With Buddhism, it seems to me, that it's shape is more describable and lends itself more the the hermeneutic project which combines with history.  But this opens it up to the hermeneutics of suspicion which denies any absolute whether divine or the unconditioned, in the example of nirvana.

Given the age we live in which is trying to shed itself of all religions, the hermeneutics of suspicion has found a home in "secular Buddhism," which assumes that religious consciousness, generally, always operates at a primitive, unscientific level—sort of at the level of magical thinking, and because of this, Buddhism needs to rid itself, as much as possible, of its mumbo jumbo such as rebirth. 

With such an eagerness to toss out the dirty bath water more often than not, the baby gets thrown out, too.  There is always a probability, in the example of Buddhism, that the hermeneutics of suspicion will not grasp the religious sense of the Buddha's awakening and it further implications.  The other problem is that the Buddhists who deploy the hermeneutics of suspicion assume that they understand what enlightenment involves which is not about awakening to the transcendent.

The hermeneutics of suspicion might be good for such matters as exploring the dangers of the military industrial complex (MIC) where a certain amount of mistrust of government is called for.  But as far as Zen Buddhism and Buddhism are concerned, this kind of hermeneutics will not work.  It is only by contemplation that Buddhism can be understood in its fullest sense; and from this we might conceive of a hermeneutics of contemplation in which Buddhism can only be understood through a personal revelation of universal spirit or Mind.  From this revelation, everything else falls into place including karma and rebirth—and even koans.  Here we can say the proof is through the revelation, itself, which is the culmination of an introspective science.

The real start of a better Zen path

When we listen to a radio all that we are hearing is the amplification of a specialized vibration of the aether.  What we are not hearing is the aether, itself, free and devoid of vibration.  Using this analogy, our average of 70,000 different daily thoughts (the good ole monkey-mind) can be thought of as a heterogeneous mixture of mind stuff (tathatā) vibrations into which we have fallen.  Taking this one step further, our conditioned world is a vibration of the One Mind—grant you, a highly complex one—but nevertheless a vibration. 

Intrinsically, what we are is this mind stuff.  But there is one major problem.  We don't recognize this mind stuff which is closer to silence than to our thoughts and internal dialogue.  We only know its vibrating patterns in the manner of our thoughts and mental images.  To think about this mind stuff is something like patting the waves of the water down to see waveless water!  It won't work.  We can't think our way to gnosis of this waveless mind stuff.  Nor can we settle down enough through various meditation/relaxation techniques to stop (nirodha) the vibrations.  In a way, finally, mind stuff has to intuit itself.  It is a matter of us not being bewitched by the vibrations of mind stuff; seeing our self in this continuing succession of changing vibrational patterns.  This is what meditation is really all about: a way to get us to see our self which is devoid of vibrations—the very stuff of the universe. 

Let me pause here, and go back to what I said earlier about not being able to settle down enough.  When we combine the fact of inner silence, which is still a vibration, and couple this with, in my example, meditating in an abandoned copper mine—although not perfect, we soon get the message of our true self trying to intuit itself which is empty of vibration.  Taking this approach for weeks on end does produce a profound change in our psyche.  Still it is not perfect but the product is far better than sitting in a Zen center with other people; everyone's psychic field mixing together creating a melange of irreality.  For me it was better because I was always awake, not slipping into a kind of theta brainwave state which is easy to do, for some odd reason, when one is in a group.

The silence achieved by me was always in the background which, when combined with coming to my wits' end, this being the checking of the discursive intellect, became the real start of a better Zen path which one night became a sudden intuition of the vibrationless.

There is no part of his body untouched by the white cloth

When in Buddhism we come to discuss or try to understand ultimate reality we have to keep in mind that it is not something mentally constructed or imagined.  We also have to keep in mind that mental constructions come in various grades from the coarse to the very fine and subtle.  This does not mean that seeing ultimate reality is not effective, that is, incapable of bringing about an effect.  It can and does.  Here, the Buddha is explaining to us what this effective experience is like.

Again, a monk who attains the fourth jhāna [dhyāna] has no suffering or happiness because happiness and suffering are eliminated and his former sorrow is eliminated. There is only equanimity which purifies mindfulness. The pure mind suffuses every part of his whole body, like a man whose head is covered by a white cloth. There is no part of his body untouched by the white cloth" (M. iii. 94).

If we had never seen fire before, going to a fire school we might see pictures of fires and set our mind to imagine being in one.  But the real fire comes from the striking of a match or seeing wood burn where we can feel the heat.  This is our tejo-samadhi!  Another example, it is like looking directly at the sun for an instant, only to have our vision changed by the sun's rays.  In this order, first comes the sun then the almost blinding effect. Seeing ultimate reality is somewhat the same.  First we get a glimpse of it, then we sense it producing its effect upon our psychophysical body in which no part of our body, including our thoughts, remains outside of its influence.

The big mistake Western Buddhists make is in believing there is no gnosis of a real unconditioned object (vastu).  There is.  And the result of yoking with it does produce an effect that we can sense, although we cannot be conscious of it in the way we are conscious of sensory objects.  Truth be told, during gnosis we meet our actual, primary nature, face to face, which is interfacing with the body but is not of it.  This interfacing has been the result of an attaching which is so deep that we are unable to distinguish our self (the animator) from the animated body.  This is a state of assimilation which is avidya or ignorance.  The more we desire/attach the more we assimilate so as to become like the conditioned body, never our self—always other.

With such a gnosis, we can reverse the process of assimilation/avidya.  It is like realizing: here is the unconditioned; here is the conditioned, this is my self; this is not my self.  This is also like the ocean: here is the water; here are the waves. The latter is the illusory expression of the former.

Not everyone one who studies Zen needs a Zen teacher

The idea that one is supposed to have a Zen master to study Zen with is not something the old Zen records talk about very much.  Sure, Chinese monks visited various Zen teachers, but it becomes somewhat of a stretch of the imagination to assume that Zen masters are Buddhas and we have to find one or we will never achieve enlightenment.  According to Dr. Hajime Nakamura:

[Zen master] Tsung-mi (780–841) taught that only those who were inferior in their spiritual capacities had to depend upon a teacher. This point is directly contrary to the case in Japan, where devotion to or reliance on an individual teacher was and is strongly emphasized" (Nakamura, Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples, 256). (Brackets are mine.)

I think Nakamura is right. It is correct to say that those with good spiritual capacities don't require a teacher.  Turning to those of us who have been in a Japanese Zen tradition, we can bear witness to the belief that we require a teacher.  In my case, I stuck with a teacher who had many faults, one major one being he didn't really understand the message of Zen.  I stayed with him because that is what I thought Zen demands.  But it doesn't.  Zen is not supposed to be a cult of personality.  Ask your question of the teacher.  If you don't like what the teacher says, move on.  Visit a lot of teachers, including Tibetan Lamas.  Visit a while, but pay attention to the path and your responsibility to personally awaken to your true nature.

There is a downside to sticking with one teacher when another teacher (as was the case with me) could make the lightbulb go off in your head in one lecture which helps to set you in the right direction.  Books can be our teachers, also, and even this blog!  The real danger with sticking with one teacher, he or she might not be on the path.  Our fate then becomes coupled with their fate—and that ain't a good thing.  Even during the early development of Zen in China—its so-called "golden age"—it was slim pickings when it came to finding good teachers.  Most just wanted donations. Ta-sui (834–919) complains, "Although I called on more than sixty or more prominent teachers, barely one or two had great perception."

Transcending the breath

We should think of our "inbreath" as life and the "outbreath" as death since a corpse does not breathe.  Our breathing in a way, represents the cycle of life & death.  Also, our psychophysical body, in this respect, is a concrete phenomenon of life & death.  The fifty trillion cells in our body are being born and are dying.  So now, where does meditation fit into this picture? 

From the Buddhist perspective the answer is quite simple: meditation is not about the in or out breath—it's really about transcending the breath, as it were, finding the sweet spot where the inbreath and outbreath gain no entry.  More specifically, meditation is also about the source (mukha) of our breathing.  In the process of meditation, one is to be mindful of the outside source (pari-mukha) which is antecedent to the breath which, in fact, animates the entire psychophysical organism.  Being mindful (sati), we are to observe the impurity or foulness of the corporeal organism together with composite things so that we are able to escape from being, overly, yoked to the corporeal organism as if we were dependent upon it. 

The problem is not so much about our psychophysical organism, itself, but the degree to which we yoke ourselves to it.  Being mindful of the outside source, which is purely animative, we diminish the heaviness of the yoke.  We see that our fifty trillion sattvas (cells) that make up the body depend on the parimukha.  By being mindful of the inbreath and outbreath—not following either—we are, in effect, reclaiming our natural mind or the same, our Buddha-nature.

For the run-of-the-mill person (puthujjana) they are their inbreath and outbreath.  They, unconsciously, follow the breath.  They are also their heart beat.  They are their physiology, in other words, or said another way, “this is mine, this I am, this is my self.”  Such a condition constitutes desire for the finite organism; including an unwillingness to let go; having assumed this is me, this I am, this is my self.  But something far different happens when we can dis-identify with both the inbreath and outbreath, trusting that we are the outside source of our breathing and for that matter, outside of the realm of the psychophysical organism.

So far a tentative hypothesis, if we look at our body, the pineal gland receives the input from the parimukha.  It, itself, is not the source, but like an antenna it receives it.  I hasten to add, that DNA is not the prime mover since it cannot activate itself, that is, turn itself off or on.  It just represents the blueprints.  Agency and activity lie outside of our body.  Call us "breath animators" but still we are neither the cycle of breathing nor the psychophysical body.  In order to have an effective meditation, we need to identify with the input signal which transcends the breath which is never other than antecedent to the inbreath and outbreath.

 

The cellular saṃgha

If the fifty trillion cells in our body were to adopt the Newtonian-Darwinian model which still governs our present day world, we would be either dead or in the process of degeneration both physically and psychologically.  With the fledgling science of epigenetics we are just beginning to see that the cells of our body cooperate with each other.  Together, our cells are more like a giant saṃgha (in traditional Buddhism the saṃgha or community is for spiritual persons irrespective of their position as monastics or lay people).  It is fair to say that a Newtonian-Darwinian model is hostile to the cooperative nature and health of our cells.

Our cells are in constant communication with a surrounding energetic 'field' which interfaces through the cell's membrane.  Such a field can be thought of as something like radio waves which our cells pickup and adapt to.  In addition, our cells are also being constantly bathed in our blood which might contain dangerous fats, tobacco, caffeine, alcohol, medications that may in time cause us harm, and many other toxic chemicals.  Our medical system could not care less about the health of our cellular saṃgha—not with 783,000 iatrogenic deaths a year which is the leading cause of death—not heart disease or cancer.

Judging from the news, a new dawn with epigenetics and behavioral epigenetics is beginning to spread its light into the land along with the practice of meditation and mindfulness where science is finding, much to its amazement, that meditation and mindfulness cause significant health benefits along with the placebo effect which is just another name for "self-healing."  But now a chorus of people need to say, "It's the field, stupid, not the DNA."  We have to change it. Our fifty trillions cells are fighting a tough war against toxic chemicals and ideas such as the Newtonian-Darwinian model and the lie of genetic determinism all of which are degrading our collective health and causing the lowering of our collective IQ.  We are fast becoming like the characters in Mike Judge's film, Idiocracy (2006) only because of our corrupt ideas of reality.

Buddhists should be secretly fighting this war against the Newtonian-Darwinian model, smiling, and shaking hands with its spokesmen but all the time supporting the new paradigms such as Quantum mechanics, epigenetics, the plasma-electrical model of the universe, and conscious realism (Dr. Donald Hoffman).  The alternative is more of the same and possibly a sixth mass extinction with the loss of seventy-five percent of species in a short period of time.

From zazen to flying

The best of Zen teachers didn't want their students to wrangle over what constituted the Buddha's awakening.  Zen was never meant to be a debating society.  It is a doctrine of enlightenment according to D.T. Suzuki.  It is not through words and the concepts they evoke that we will finally succeed in seeing our true nature.  This approach, we can say, is a conditioned approach and will only take us so far.  It includes zazen and engaging in various rituals and moral practices.  Such practices, in some respects, can even go to strengthen—not weaken—our attachment to the conditioned psychophysical body (the five skandhas) if they are not handled correctly.  These practices are to be looked upon as skillful means; as mere teaching devices that are, eventually, outgrown by the serious student.

But until these teaching devices are outgrown, they have to be followed.  Even a certain amount of wrangling has to be engaged in if only to see the futility of such debates.  Nietzsche said it best when he said,

"He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying."

If we wish to become Buddhas, that is, become fully awake to our Buddha-nature we have to learn how to first stand.  We cannot fly into flying.  This points out one of the major problems with reading Zen literature.  The tyro gets the impression after reading a few sermons by a Zen master like Huang-po that they are just about ready to fly. Yup! I don't need to do no stinking zazen; follow the precepts and practice mindfulness.  This may even lead further to, there is no actual awakening.  Just live in the here and the now.  My ordinary monkey-mind of birth and death is the way!

The tyro can even be told by a modern Zen teacher that there is no need to seek.  We need only cease seeking and by doing such come back to ourselves which is in the here and the now.  Well, this opinion just cut out flying.  In other words, just standing is the Way.  But just standing can lead to stumbling: faltering through a lack of right knowledge and experience.

If we are to prepare for flying after having become very good at standing there are other teachings we have to learn which are not about standing but teach walking, running and climbing—then dancing until one day we fly!  It is only flying that is unconditioned.  The rest have been various grades of conditionedness.  To fly, we must stand on the precipice of the past and leap into the luminous spirit.  Yes, we do have wings for this kind of flight.  But paradoxically, these wings will not carry us aloft until we leap.

Transcending the old Zeitgeist

We are still living under the sulphuric light of the 20th century. It proves difficult to escape its Zeitgeist as we are very much still persuaded by its lies and deceptions.  This is an age when spirit is under siege; where Newtonian mechanics has reached its apogee.  What follows from this is that man is treated more as an automaton.  In our medical schools, the student is even educated to become a spokesperson for the genetic victim theory which stems from Francis Crick's and James Watson's explanation of the structure of DNA which supposedly is the book of life—a book that condemns man to a life of genetic determinism.

Despite the fact that there are many serious chinks in this DNA armor, one being the fact that DNA cannot turn itself on or off which means it is more like a blueprint in need of a contractor to express it, deluded minds still require this simpleminded theory.  And why?  It is an effective excuse by which to hide one's lack of sufficient intelligence to uncover the real cause of disease which has more to do with the total evil of our Zeitgeist than with any DNA molecule. 

If I had to put this Zeitgeist into Buddhist terms it would be the time of Mara the Evil One.  Everything is aimed towards degeneration and destruction; reducing mankind to the level of automaton slaves who are made into victims by and for the benefit of a small cabal of predators who run this world; who are more like reptiles with a bare consciousness, than mammals with self-consciousness!  The sad part is that one has to fight an uphill battle to spread the Dharma—not with those who fund and spread this dark curriculum—but with the dispirited, brainwashed victims.

In contrast with this rather bleak picture, in my mystical journey into the wonders of Buddhism which began long ago in 1965, I have seen the possibility of a new world in which spirit is as normal as the air and water we need and use to sustain our life.  I have shared the most spiritual part of my journey with the readers of The Zennist which attests to the Buddha's presence in the world which for me becomes the standard by which to judge this world and the great evil it has committed in its war against spirit.  But I also see many who are preparing to take down this old world and raise one of felicity and light hence ending the reign of darkness and evil.  As far as Buddhism and Zen Buddhism are concerned, there is still a long journey ahead to restore, completely, Buddhism to its rightful place as a cosmic religion which embraces all of life and all creatures.