The Zennist

The courage to turn away

It takes a tremendous amount of courage to turn away from the habits of our culture, in addition to turning away from our own habits so that we might eventually see our true nature.  Such a turning away involves turning away from long established biases, presuppositions, memories, trust in sensory consciousness and a host of other things.  One cannot begin to approach gnosis of one's true nature carrying such things around.

Yes, intellectually we can all agree.  Still, this intellectual view, true as it is, is burdened by old habits—many not-so-good ones which are still with us—and huge.  Our spiritual wings cannot as yet lift the bad habits we've acquired, beginning in our childhood, and continuing to the present.  The burden is too great.  And it is here that our courage is called for.  We have to have the courage to dump all of this.  Our intellect is too weak to do anything, even though we know its judgment is correct.  Somehow we have to stop making excuses and start dumping all the heavy habitual garbage.

But I can imagine someone now asking, "But how do we get the courage?"  For that I don't have the perfect answer.  I just know that it takes a lot of little courageous acts which I hasten to add, is much different than rebellion.  Remember, this is about the courage to clean out our dump: the old biases, presuppositions, memories, etc.  This stuff for us has to be light enough to let go of.  We have to be able to say goodbye to it all sufficient to enable the pure subject to see the pure object thus overcoming the crippling mode of consciousness.

Making things worse is a lack of faith.  In other words, we are not quite persuaded that such a true nature or Buddha Mind is for real; only needing to be uncovered by right practice.  Incidentally, this is what pisses me off about modern culture.  I see it as highly destructive of a spiritual view of man.  We live under a materialistic regime that I dare say is evil to the bone.  If seeing our true nature requires lots of faith in addition to courage we won't find help in this present day materialistic regime.  The good news is that within the next hundred years the Newtonian world view will be over and with it the collapse of mechanistic science as we know it.  In the meantime, we have to renounce the modern world by seeing through its deceptions; most notably the fact that its ontology is materialistic: all phenomena is ultimately constituted of matter rather than mind (G., Geist).

One science to rule them all

Science is only an extension of the human senses and the human imagination in which case the knowledge derived could be wrong. We easily forget that big bangs and black holes are products of the human imagination.  They are fictions treated 'as if' they were real. Nevertheless, there is no direct sensory evidence for these kinds of phenomena. In school we are taught to believe in such things but not in the paranormal such as poltergeist phenomena which has been well documented.  Somewhat on the same track, while modern culture pretends to respect religion and spirituality, science dominates and is certainly privileged.  Our children don't learn from shamans about various plants but from school teachers who prepare the child in the basics of science.

As a society, we certainly encourage a separation between state and religion, including the spiritual, but no separation between state and science.  Science we could say, is the new religion of the state.  Granted the scientific spirit has helped to put an end to inquisitions, it may have only morphed into another forum which is scientific skepticism.  This consists of the practice of questioning claims by a requirement for empirical evidence.  But judging from the history of scientific skepticism it has, for the most part, been directed one-sidedly against the opposition in an effort to maintain the ruling paradigm.  Any new paradigm on the radar fast becomes a threat to the cultural and political power of the settled theory.  Dogmatism disguised as knowledge is more than often the result, not real knowledge.  In this regard, we are under an illusion of knowledge which is just enough to keep us from asking the right questions.

Not surprisingly, the rise of modern science coincides with colonialism. The heathen tribes and nations are conquered and made to adopt Christianity and science.  Then, eventually, science stabs religion and spirituality in the back and becomes the hegemon bringing with it wars of annihilation including unbridled economic predation with all of its ramifications in the form of globalism which is something out of J.R.R. Tolkien's world, the "one ring to rule them all."  And there you have it, modernity, which is presently trying to dilute Buddhism; hopefully, turning it into a religion that can be accepted by science.

In the end, however, present day science that is being taught in our major universities will be challenged.  It has failed to understand that truth is beyond the products of human imagination.  Over time, our present theories of physics, biology and genetics will be tossed into the waste bin where they belong.  And as this happens, Buddhism will, eventually, reign supreme.  Presently, this new world is still too frightening for the majority to accept who cuddle their old chains.  When these dark skies finally reveal the light which they have been hiding for centuries it will be too late for such people.  In the words of the Dhammapada, "Few are those amongst people, who have gone to the other shore" (85).

In the face of such insanity

Let's be honest with ourselves.  We still live under the occupation of a Newtonian—Darwinian fitness regime, despite the fact that it died long ago with the discovery that there is no matter in the universe—only energy (for want of a better term).  Even more, it may all boil down to what the Lankavatara Sutra said: "There is Mind-only, there is no visible world," which is saying that the visible world we perceive, when we really begin to look at it, disappears.  It isn't really there. 

Granted, that in this present life we find ourselves in, this illusory world which is really not there, is still relatively useful to a certain degree.  In previous blogs I have tried to show that the illusory condition works as the antithesis by which the absolute Mind sees itself when it suddenly sets aside the antithesis (its own creation).  This is the real meaning of Zen's sudden awakening—when suddenly the illusion is set aside in the time of a finger snap and we see Mind.  I hasten to add that the gnosis of Mind requires a total setting aside of the unreal which only comes when we have arrived at our wits' end in the pursuit of our true nature. 

Short of this crowning gnosis, we are stuck in our protein jumpsuits without a clue as to what this whole biological mass is, ultimately, composed from and how we are intrinsically free of it even though we are still in it.  Buddhism tries to tell us—but remember, we are hardheaded.  We don't take to listening to mumbo-jumbo, after all we still pledge allegiance to the Newtonian—Darwinian fitness regime.  We are not quite ready to leave our bi-plane for an antigravity flying saucer.  We have more useless battles in us to fight as we drive forward looking in our rear view mirrors of memory.  In this light, Zen Buddhism and Buddhism, in general, offer a kind of mental out-patient clinic for the marginally insane more than likely staffed by the insane.  Not surprisingly, Buddhist monks were known as  "healers of the mind" or the Greek equivalent, psychotherapists.  They played a vital role in the community of keeping it somewhat sane.

But given the tremendous power of our system of education which still continues to preach outworn ideas, what is being taught in Zen and Dharma centers in the West amounts to coping skills; in other words, how do I live in the Newtonian—Darwinian fitness regime without going insane?  And believe me, insanity is a major issue in this day and age in which the average person resists change almost to the hilt, but doesn't like the situation they find themselves in—in fact, hate it.  The only solution, then, is change by way of baby steps beginning with being aware of all the little things we do from turning a doorknob to slicing an onion, and doing lots of seated meditation; learning to be comfortable in our protein jumpsuit.  That is about all the West can handle until the complete overthrow of the Newtonian—Darwinian fitness regime which still funds many quasi terrorist organizations from the Military Industrial Complex to the Medical Industrial Complex.  Look around.  Notice all the unnecessary wars?  Look around again.  Notice that the leading cause of death is not by disease such as cancer but iatrogenic (induced by a physician).  More people die by iatrogenic means (783,936) than all the U.S. deaths in World War II (405,399).  Toleration of such figures is a sure sign of insanity.

In the face of such insanity on a global scale, Buddhism and other Indian religions are the only light left in an otherwise dark, dystopian world.  It can't be the religions of Abraham which preach: "The LORD is a man of war: the LORD is his name" (Exodus 15:3 KJV).  Nor can science be of help.  Science as it exist now only offers more of the same, a stronger and mightier Newtonian—Darwinian fitness regime with its sad statistics, which is hell-bent on destroying the earth.

Getting rid of the materialists

The West is suffering from a disease of the mind called "materialism" in which man is reduced to a soulless automaton of no real worth except as a wage slave.  Yet, the great majority of people don't buy into materialism which took sort of a great leap forward with the discovery by Watson and Crick of the DNA structure in 1953 which some believed was the main controller or brain of the cell.  Such scientists initially believed that we are preprogrammed by DNA.  However, this soon became a short lived hypothesis.  Materialism's great triumph soon fell down like a cheap card table.  It is nurture that leads.  Nature only makes specialized protein suits.

Let’s not forget that materialism is a philosophical theory not a scientific one.  Materialism is not a brother of science, either.  Science only pertains to how we investigate the external world around us and also the internal world (this is where Buddhism comes into the picture).  Science cannot beg the question.  It has to investigate with an open and unprejudiced attitude.  If science discovers a more adequate model of what our world is really about, including ourselves, which involves the primacy of mind or consciousness, sobeit.  That is what we have to go with. And that's the end of materialism.  Thus far, science as no clue as to what the universe is made of.  It is still investigating.  It hasn't ruled out mind stuff. 

Turning to Buddhism, it has almost been hijacked by materialists who don't believe in a soul or ātman.  They still suffer from a number of false assumptions such as the universe is material which is 'some thing' that in the final analysis is, entirely, indivisible and partless.  For if the basis of our universe is infinitely divisible—we are looking at a spiritual universe. Another assumption of theirs is the primacy of DNA, the central dogma that neither mind nor consciousness are necessary.  In other words, we as conscious agents don't control our life, our genes do.  The worst assumption is Darwinian fitness ideology which is antithetical to the holistic and harmonious structure of our cellular, physical body.  The pain and suffering that we go through as individuals in the course of a finite life is a direct result of failing to understand how cellular life works and its ultimate dependence upon non-physical conscious agents.  These conscious agents, according to Buddhism, are what transmigrates from one life to the next in an effort to gain final, all-complete knowledge.  Buddhism will not long survive if the materialists are not purged from it soon.

Practice after awakening

Becoming awakened or enlightened is seeing, face to face, that which animates us which, in the ancient Vedas, was called the ātman and in Pali, attā which is actually a borrowing of Prakrit.  Buddhism expanded this very same principle referring to it as Dharma, luminous Mind, pure Mind, the unconditioned, nirvana, immortality, tathatā, dharmadhātu, Buddha-nature, bodhicitta, etc.  Seeing this principle firsthand was sudden, all at once.  The Buddha described the experience of pure Mind saying that it suffuses every part of his whole body, like a man whose head is covered by a white cloth with no part of his body untouched by the cloth.  Whereas prior to awakening the conditioned, psychophysical body's interference blocked gnosis of the luminous nature of Mind, now it is remembered.  The light is strong.

This is the very first authentic encounter with who we really are which is dynamic and animative.  There is no doubt about this.  All the words we use to describe it, however, fail.  All the senses we have as human beings also fail to perceive it.  Yet, there it is like an invisible sun.  It is the very substance of all that there is and will ever be and truly immortal.  But we also see how much habit-energy obscures it which still has power over us; which still calls out for food and sex along with countless cultural demands.  This psychophysical body of ours is what the Buddha called old karma.

As strange as it seems, our real practice can begin.  Zen master Zongmi said, to the effect, that having awakened true practice can begin.  As we repeatedly connect with our true nature (samadhi) it grows beyond the psychophysical body's former habits.  We, eventually, come to see that world not as humans from a narrow, personal perspective, but as awakened beings.  Korean Seon master Chinul gives us more insight into practice after we are awakened.

"As for people who have realized enlightenment, even though they may have expedient techniques as curative measures, they never have a thought of doubt and do not fall into affected habits, over a period of time they naturally attain perfect accord. The naturally real subtle essence is spontaneously silently aware, focusing on all objects with each passing thought while annihilating all afflictions in each passing state of mind. This is not distinct from fulfilling supreme enlightenment by equal maintenance of spontaneous concentration and insight. So even though formal concentration and insight are practiced by those with potential suited for the gradual approach, for people who have realized enlightenment they can be said to transmute iron into gold" (Cleary, Minding Mind, 48).

Practice before awakening

There are a number of reasons why "practice" can deceive us, especially, when we still haven't awakened to pure Mind.  One reason that strikes me the most is relying on the practice of seated meditation (zazen) to open the door to kensho (i.e., seeing our true nature).  It is a superficial grasp of Zen that regards a posture dependent practice to be an adequate means towards kensho.  Meditation or dhyana is not about a sitting posture.  It is about coming face to face—all at once—with what animates our physiological body; breaking the hold the animated body has over us.  This requires some intuitive skills not to mention some profound introspection.  Yes, we do have to look within—I mean we are talking subtlety here!

What drives practice before we have attained kensho is a general sense of doubt coupled with our shallow understanding which envisages enlightenment to be just around the corner, so to speak.  Adding to this, we have also learned to lie to ourselves if we try to make a case for doing lots of seated meditation or believing there is no such thing as kensho—no profound experience of realizing pure Mind.  Lying to ourselves comes, I suspect, easiest. Korean Seon master Chinul gives us more insight into practice before we are awakened.   

"When practice is cultivated before awakening, then even if you work unremittingly, cultivating practice every moment, you will conceive of one doubt after another as you go along and will be as yet unable to attain nonobstruction. It will be like having something stuck in your chest, signs of uneasiness will always be present. If curative practices are developed to maturity over a long period of time, then body and mind seem lightened and eased of acquired pollution, but even though you are light and easy, as long as you have not cut through the root of doubt, curative practices are like stones placed on grass, you have still not attained freedom in the realm of birth and death. That is why it is said that when practice is before enlightenment, it is not real practice" (Cleary, Minding Mind, 47–48).

For those people who practice without kensho their doubt sometimes can turn into skepticism.  This is not good.  Doubt turned into skepticism, is difficult to put an end to.   Such practice at this point turns into the cultivation of bad karma.  Tangent to this, this is why I insist that the best practice for those still not awakened is a full retreat, living completely alone for a certain period of time (three months or longer).  No blame can be redirected to others.  We can't blame our teacher.  It is the first part of really learning to face ourselves—not in a negative way, but in an open and spiritual way always looking within going deeper and deeper finally coming to our wits' end, being thoroughly presuppositionless in which the discriminating intellect stops.

We are fundamentally a spiritual body

Looking at my human biology, I am interfacing with fifty trillion cells which I regard as, this is mine, this I am, this is my self.   I have no way of knowing I am other than this conditioned body of trillions of cells.  In other words, I am under the delusion  that this cellular entity is really, really me.  Everything about my 'cellular life' has, in fact, only served to reinforce the delusion of embodiment: this is mine, this I am, this is my self.  I even laugh at the idea that I am really an immaterial energy system locked onto a biological system which during the body's terminal phase I will decouple from in what is called a manomayakaya.

And again, Udayin, a course has been pointed out by me for disciples, practicing which disciples of mine from this body (mentally) produce (another) body, having material shape, mind-made (manomaya), having all its major and minor parts, not deficient in any sense-organ" (M. ii. 17).

Reading more about the manomayakaya in the Lankavatara Sutra we find this:

Thatness, Emptiness, Reality-limit (bhuta-koti), Nirvana, Dharma Substrata (dharmadhatu) are like the multiple bodies made of spirit (manomaya-kaya)—these are taught as being synonymous. (Lankavatara Sagathakam, X: 289-90 [vv. 185, 190-93])

As we can see, we are fundamentally a spiritual body except that we have latched onto a cellular system at conception and in the process of biological growth and development, have lost almost all remembrance of our spiritual state.  In this deluded condition we believe, as regards the cellular body, this is mine, this I am, this is my self.  Tragically, s such a belief only sets up a kind of Darwinian system which is vicious, lethal and short term.  Nothing higher can come out of such a system.  Nor does such a system come close to matching the cooperative biological system of our fifty trillion cells.

In a higher, much more evolved world we would become aware of the spiritual body by which we couple with the biological body of birth and death.  The fear of disease and death would be overcome which would mean the present human world as we know it would end like a bad dream.  We would have much different powers and abilities when we take into consideration that our fifty trillion cells add up to seventy trillion volts, 1.4 volts per cell.  Regrettably, we are a long way from this new human species.  The good news, it is through Buddhism that we will reach it.

The only escape

For those not awakened to unconditioned Mind the world they see is hardly like ocean waves or like images seen in a mirror, or the experience of dreaming.  For them, first of all, the unconditioned Mind is not seen; what is seen, instead, is only the conditioned, external expression of the unconditioned Mind.  This is to say, it is our visible world with all of its awesome power, danger, vividness and attractiveness, including our body of birth with its senses and its eventual death.

The only escape from such a predicament, which brings us more than often perplexity and confusion, is not to accept things as they are, but to see, firsthand, the very substance of reality from which the image of the visible world is composed; which is an illusory representation of the real.  Only then is detachment a reality inasmuch as one becomes less and less bespelled by the visible world. We now see what all is composed from.  While looking impressive and foreboding the visible world is "sound and fury signifying nothing."  It is a grievous mistake to ignore the transitory nature of the conditioned world automatically reifying it beyond its illusory quality.

Yet, it seems that the world is dedicated to the suppression of the Buddha's truth.  As a result, things are far worse than they need be—you'd swear a madman was king of the world who only wanted to increase suffering and spiritual blindness.  Unless you are young with a healthy body and a good brain, life becomes increasingly more difficult and cruel over time.  There is even what you might call an imposed 'spiritual free zone' around us where conversations become shallow; where the topic of conversation can often border on the inane.  In the face of this, the light of Buddhism shines out faintly.  Still, the strongest go forward into this twilight and because of their courage things over time begin to change for the better.

Based on my own spiritual life, each person I came to realize has more power within them than they can imagine.  They can certainly awaken.  They just have to avoid the five hindrances which are: 1) sense-desire; 2) ill will; 3) sloth and torpor; 4) restlessness and remorse, and 5) doubt/skepticism.  All these problems come in little moments throughout the day and when they do we have to stop giving them so much oxygen.  If we are successful, this develops increased levels of self-control over time.  And this self-control is important because so much of our time should be dedicated to meditation by which we attempt to come face to face with our Buddha-nature.

Zen's middle way

What is Madhyamaka (middle way) really about according to Zen?  Phenomena, both external and internal, are the result of seeing the absolute or unconditioned through the mantle of our presuppositions, discriminations, including the body, itself, all of which are conditioned.  It is somewhat like looking at white light through a prism seeing only rainbow colors—not the white light.  In other words, we are facing and looking at the unconditioned (i.e., nirvana) through a prism or through a glass darkly.  We never see it directly.  Paradoxically, we attach to what is altered and imperfect.

What we are really attached to is a world that is a dependent origination of the non-arisen, unconditioned.  A derivation.  Furthermore, this means that phenomena, as alterations, are illusory; they do not fundamentally exist in the ultimate sense.  This includes our mental formations as well.  They only appear to be real because we have never seen the essence from which they are composed.  In fine, if one is caught up in conditioned phenomena one will never be able to see their Buddha-nature.

By simile, phenomena are like ice sculptures of animals.  We say that this ice sculpture is a lion, this is a dog, this is an eagle, etc., all because of discrimination.  But there is only frozen water—that's the truth or dharma.  Now, if this frozen water were bliss and the conceptions and shapes that we see and cling to, such as a lion shape, are the absence of bliss, we could say that we are not in a full state of bliss.  Since childhood, having identified with the shapes more and more we have become their very emptiness or absence.  This is materialism.  Such a condition is never blissful and free of pain.  Without knowing it, we have become slaves of a terrible master going from one phenomenal existence to another with no end in sight.  On this note, one immediately thinks of the Buddha's notion of thirst which is coupled with the need for water but the victim only finds it salty which drives the thirst even more.

The final analysis: we have to put down this mantle or dark glass we keep holding up even for a split second.  It will do no good to discuss the matter with those who fear or revolt against the idea of putting away this mantle.

The human side of the Buddha

More than often when we read about the Buddha he appears to be a supernormal person.  In the Pali Nikayas we find the supernormal Buddha but more than often we run into a human Buddha.  I like to think of the Buddha as having a human side bearing his last corporeal body but also a supernormal side in virtue of having realized the dharma.  In the Catuṣpariṣat Sūtra we read:

"The dharma obtained by me is profound, of deep splendor, difficult to see, difficult to understand, incomprehensible, having the incomprehensible as its scope, fine, subtle, the sense of which can only be understood by the wise."

Obviously, the dharma the Buddha obtained was not a stack of sutras but the realization of the absolute which went beyond the senses of his corporeal body.  One had to see this dharma face to face, directly.  Seeing this transcendent dharma was, therefore, the real body of the Buddha—his dharmakaya—not his corporeal body that aged and became ill which was seen by his followers and by his detractors.  If we happened to run into such a person his followers said was a Buddha he would be physically like any other person and perhaps even frail. 

The Buddha we learn from the Nikayas suffered from back pain and stomach problems probably due to the severe austerities he practiced for six years before he awakened.  During his final days he probably died from dysentery.  In one discourse we learn that Ananda while massaging the Buddha's limbs said to him:

"It is wonderful, venerable sir!  It is amazing, venerable sir!  The Blessed One's complexion is no longer pure and bright, his limbs are all flaccid and wrinkled, his body is stooped, and some alteration is seen in his faculties—in the eye faculty, the ear faculty, the nose faculty, the tongue faculty, the body faculty" (S. v. 216).

It appears that the Buddha sometime after his awakening was not in good physical health. He required people to help him.  Ananda, the Buddha's first cousin who was the same age as the Buddha, eventually, became the Buddha's personal attendant twenty years after the Buddha's awakening.  Previous to Ananda becoming the Buddha's attendant, the Buddha had eight attendants.  The Buddha complained about them.  Sometimes they wouldn't mind him or had dropped his robe and bowl going away and leaving him.

Our vision of the Buddha, that everyone venerated him doesn't seem to have been always the case.  To be sure, the Buddha had those in his community who didn't see eye to eye with him.  Devadatta was one.  He wanted to take the place of the Buddha as leader of the community.  In fact, he went to the Buddha suggesting that the leadership of the community be turned over to him because of the Buddha's decrepitude.  Later, Devadatta incited Ajatasatta to kill his father Bimbisara, while he, Devadatta, would kill the Buddha.

Over time, some of the monks were becoming incorrigible in the sense that they were difficult to admonish being also impatient and did not accept instruction respectfully (S. ii. 208).  From Mahakassapa we learn about the deterioration of the monastic sangha in his question to the Buddha:

"Venerable sir, what is the reason, what is the cause, why formerly there were fewer training rules but more bhikkhus were established in final knowledge, while now there are more training rules but fewer bhikkhus are established in final knowledge?" (S. ii. 224)

Some of the Buddha's followers left the order because things were not as they expected.  Some returned to the secular world in the example of Phagguna Bhikkhu and Ariṭṭha while others joined other groups.  Sunakkhatta, an earlier personal attendant of the Buddha, left the order because the Buddha did not perform any miracles or explain the beginning of the world.  There were others who met the Buddha but were not convinced of his enlightenment.  Not always was the Buddha given alms.  In addition, he was criticized for a number of things such as making women childless because men elected to renounce the worldly life.

There are other instances which I could describe.  Judging from this less than perfect picture of our human Buddha this tends to prove that our all-too-human Buddha was the real deal.  Still, we have to be very cautious at this point.  We can't say that the Buddha was just an ordinary guy.  What made him extraordinary was his awakening whereby he realized the absolute, the dharma.