The Zennist

Looking through our all-too-human cultural goggles

One thing that all Internet chat rooms that discuss either Buddhism or Zen have in common, the participants are trying to interpret Dharma through their culture.  A personal interpretation is not really personal.  It is cultural.  Very seldom does a chat room discussant realize that their 'personal view' which they endeavor to uphold is filled with cultural assumptions and opinions.  They are not really seeing Buddhism or Zen in the light of day on its own terms.  Of course, there are few things in modern culture that are starting to fall within the general framework of Buddha Dharma which help us to see Buddhism in its proper light both of which are coming from academia, most notably, the work of Donald Hoffman (Conscious realism and the mind-body problem).

There are two examples for me that are gradually putting an end to the West's three-hundred plus years romance with materialism.  These two are consciousness or mind is absolute—not particulate matter—and the end of our long held belief in object permanence.  Physical or objective reality doesn't exist in the way we imagine it exists.  According to the Lankavatara Sutra,

[To imagine] individual forms is wrong, it puts one in bondage; they are born of Mind due to the false imagination of the ignorant; based on the relativity they are discriminated. 

If anything, the individual forms we endlessly encounter and have to deal with are useful fictions.  By the same token, physicalist theories of objective reality are makeshift and unreliable; not to be trusted.  This includes physicalist theories of the mind-body problem which adhere to the belief that our human experiences are caused by objects such as neurons and the brain, in general.

The full moon that we see is certainly not true reality.  Instead, it is a species-specific perceptualization or in Buddhist terms, a composition.  The night moth on my front porch doesn't see the human composed full moon.  Its body, which is a unique structure, treats signal-information much differently than we humans could imagine.  As human beings, our protein structure treats signal-information peculiar to our  ownneeds.  Our eyes and visual field are much different than a moth's.  But, fundamentally, we are minds or the same, conscious agents such that we are always willing out and shaping our future existence.  Such an agency is, itself, undying while its countless, conditioned expressions are finite, consisting of birth and death.  According to the Buddha, this psychophysical experience of ours has been previously composed and willed out (cp. SA, 260, 65c-66a).  He calls it former karma.

With our present cultural prejudices, Buddhism and certainly Zen can only penetrate so far.  Both are limited to preaching to the choir—a very small choir.  Their adversaries are not small.  They do not wish to hear the message.  Physicalism is not going to leave the stage without a fierce, protracted fight.  Making matters worse, many of those who come to Buddhism and Zen do not accept the primacy of spirit or Mind; much less are they willing to surrender their belief in object permanence: that object reality is not an illusion. 

 

Only one victory

There are land sharks to be found even in modern Zen (maybe more like deceivers).  A Zen teacher can teach us meditation that is little more than a form of quietism.  But he will call it śamatha not realizing that śamatha, which is beyond the scope of most Zennists, is really one-pointedness of mind (citta-ekāgratā) in which the din of thoughts (citta) is transcended and Mind, as essence, is reached.  Meditation turned to quietism will not help the Zen adept to attain kensho which is about seeing one's true nature.  Bodhidharma said, on this subject:

To find a Buddha, you have to see your nature. Whoever sees his nature is a Buddha. If you don’t see your nature, invoking Buddhas, reciting sutras, making offerings, and keeping precepts are all useless.

I would add to this, doing a ritual form of zazen is useless.  This would be doing the exercise of seated meditation (zazen) and treating this as the same as seeing one's true nature or kensho.  Yes, you are officially a Buddha when you begin doing zazen some will tell you.  But this is not true.  Seeing our true nature is difficult.  Quietistic adherence to a sitting posture is not the key to finding a Buddha.

The fusion of zazen and enlightenment (kensho) was not taught before the time of Dogen who radically changed zazen; who it seems had little if any respect for Huineng's teaching of seated meditation or other teachers, for that matter.  The history of Zen informs us that awakening is central—not meditation.  Meditation is a means.  It is like a raft to the other shore.  Raft and yonder shore are not the same.  Zazen and awakening to our true nature or kensho are not the same, either.

Such sharks would claim they have good intentions when teaching meditation.  And perhaps they do.  But there are limits to their capacity as teachers; and they should be first aware of their own limitations and not go beyond them.  With regard to more advanced students they have no need for teachers.  They know well what they must do; they drive themselves, accordingly, not seeking rest in some illusion but push ever onwards beyond the deceptive images of the defiled mind.  They have only one victory in mind, that is seeing their true nature.

Breaking the grip of consciousness

Ordinary consciousness is a much more profound state of trance than the hypnotic state according to Dr. Charles Tart.  It is a consciousness that few wake up from; which continues on most of our lives.  We may protest because we believe that what we know and perceive is real when, in fact, it is not.  This consciousness according to the Buddha is like a magician's illusion.  We are so awed by the world illusion that we don't question how the trick is done.  We are unable awaken from consciousness seeing how it works.  We have, to a certain extent, been trained to fight off awakening. 

Instead of taking the blue pill described in the film, The Matrix, we have been in a trance since even before our birth.  No blue pill is necessary.  The modern world is much more diabolical.  If we wish to awaken from this trance or what Dr. Tart calls consensus consciousness and the consensus trance, we have to self-awaken which means, as the subject in consciousness, we must transcend abjectness, or the same, see the unconditioned Mind.  It is quite a daunting task since we are imprisoned by conditioned objectivity; unable to penetrate through this wall.

To break through the grip of consciousness, it comes as somewhat of a huge surprise to behold a pure object which is not really an object which, at the same time, swallows up we the subject in which is revealed the true state of reality.  In what seems like an instant we awaken seeing what we were unable to see before: seeing the substance or essence of phenomena. In seeing this essence, phenomena become empty.  In respect to our new position, it makes no difference whether things arise or cease.  The substance or essence is unaffected by either arising (becoming something) or cessation.  The unborn or unconditioned alone is reality.  Phenomena are just its expressions or functions.  Zen master Mazu will put it this way: "The conditioned is the function of the unconditioned; the unconditioned is the essence of the conditioned."

Consciousness is self-deception by which we, as the subject, mis-take some conditioned object to be essence, or the same, to be our self (ātman).  We as subjects are always trying to find the truth of our self as object in the form of: this is mine, I am this, this is my self.  The problem, however, is the object is never other than conditioned.  The subject ends up following the conditioned in the belief that he might one day discover his true self.  He never does—not in this manner.

Is Zen nonsense?

Can Zen koans and dialogues be put under the category of nonsense?  Thanks to a recent lecture I listened to on YouTube by Dr. Raymond Moody about nonsense (he plans on publishing a book on the subject), it is my opinion that Zen koans and dialogues fit comfortably into this category.  However, let the reader be cautioned: nonsense is not a negative term.  Far from it.  Moody argues against treating nonsense pejoratively.  In fact, we find nonsense in literature such as Alice in Wonderland, the Dr. Seuss children's books, nonsense poetry, some musical lyrics, etc.  Dr. Moody says there are seventy forms of nonsense found in literature. 

Cutting to the chase, looking at Zen as being a special kind of nonsense, Gary Zukav, in his book The Dancing Wu Li Maters describes "nonsense" in the right way which fits with Zen.

The importance of nonsense hardly can be overstated. The more clearly we experience something as 'nonsense,' the more clearly we are  experiencing the boundaries of our self-imposed cognitive structures. 'Nonsense' is that which does not fit into the prearranged patterns which we have superimposed on reality. There is no such thing as 'nonsense' apart from a judgmental intellect which calls it that.

People are unaware that language is there inside them before they open their mouth.  In a way, language speaks us.  All of us learned our native tongue in a theta brain wave state (hypnosis) when we were children.  In a way, nonsense may work to mark off the boundaries and limitations of language speaking through us in which words still have vague and imprecise meanings.  Zen dialogues can certainly seem nonsensical for example:

Someone asked, "All existences return to the One. Where does the One return to?"

Joshu said, "When I was in the Sei District, I made a cotton dress. It weighed seven pounds."

And,

Someone asked. "If people ask. 'What is the teaching of Joshu?,' what should I say?"

Joshu said. "Salt is expensive. rice is cheap."

Here Zen's nonsense is trying to point beyond the limits of words and what words typically mean for us.  Even with this special kind of nonsense, words and concepts remain a barrier difficult to leap over in the example of koans and their true meaning.  We can imagine we are doing so, but then we are stuck in our imagination as the default position from which there is no apparent escape.  That's not good enough for Zen.  We are still living in the dark.  Nevertheless, Zen's nonsense is intriguing.  Koans arouse our interest even though we can't seem to answer them.  We can't stop thinking about Zen nonsense even though our solutions are almost always unsatisfying.  Perhaps one of the most recondite forms of nonsense lies in the world of mysticism in which Zen should be included.

What is not yonder shore

We learn from the Buddha that the raft (his teaching) is a means to the other shore (nirvana).  The raft, itself, is not the other shore.  When we arrive at yonder shore we need not rely on the raft as before.  It only served as a means for our awakening.  Likewise, meditation is like a raft to the other shore which is part of the Buddha's teaching.  Meditation is not, itself, the other shore. 

Judging by the way Zen is practiced these days, in some respects, meditation is treated as if it were the other shore.

It is easy to dismiss the Buddha's discourses, studying them very little, reflecting that they are only a means for helping us cross to yonder shore of nirvana.  But not so with seated meditation.  Especially, in Soto Zen as we find it in Japan, as a practice it is both the means and the end.  Dogen Zenji in the Fukan Zazengi says, "To practice the Way single heartedly is, itself, enlightenment.  There is no gap between practice and enlightenment or zazen and daily life."  In his Bedowa, he states that, "In buddha-dharma, practice and enlightenment are one and the same."

In most Zen centers these days, the core element of Zen as a religious practice is, unquestionably, seated meditation.  It is where, so to speak, the rubber meets the road.  One's ability to sit in meditation is treated as one's understanding of enlightenment.  It's not about how many discourses of the Buddha a person has read and managed to understand.  Instead, it is about hours of sitting in seated meditation or zazen.  This is supposedly enlightenment.  But the road to enlightenment is not as easy as just sitting or reading the many discourses of the Buddha.  These are means to an end.  They are skillful means by which to help people cross the waters of samsara so that they might make it to the shore of nirvana.

To be sure, Siddhartha made it to the other shore.  He tried various means to get across.  All of them proved to be inadequate.  Eventually, he finally succeeded—at least in my book—by transcending the mode of consciousness seeing, directly, the substance (tathatā) upon which the mode of consciousness depends there being no other.  Indeed, the highest fruit of his meditation not only transcends meditation but all things because he knows the increate (akataññū).  This ends dependence on the discourses and sitting in meditation. 

The Buddha's non-conceptual compassion

Sentient beings could not have the potential for enlightenment if they did not have, already, a Buddha-nature to discover.  What prevents them from discovering this nature is they are deluded, following paths far from the Buddha-nature that lies immediate and hidden within them. The same is so with compassion.  They have the potential for discovering the effortless non-conceptual compassion of a Buddha that resonates with all sentient creatures, helping them to give up the path of cruelty (the opposite of compassion/karuna). 

The Buddha's compassion cannot be conceived of by those who have not yet discovered their Buddha-nature try as they might.  The compassion they imagine and exhibit is more akin to fellow-feeling, love or friendship.  It is still heavily tainted with conceptions such as, I love my children but I don't like Muslim children.  Such people even imagine that the Buddha's compassion which is pure and free of concepts is imaginary.  But for anyone who has awakened to the luminous Mind or their Buddha-nature this compassion floods their entire being.  Such people (I shall assume 99 percent of mankind) do not understand this effortless non-conceptual compassion of the Buddha which is like a pure light-field through which all things are interconnected; which alone truly gives life and is free from all forms of suffering.    

The Buddha not only taught sentient beings how to recognize their true nature or Buddha-nature, but he did so by means of his non-conceptual compassion.  Those who could sense his compassion at once awakened to his message.  Those who could not, struggled to harmonize with his teaching/compassion; whose understanding of his message only went so far—unfortunately, not far enough for most who are unwilling to give up their sacred cows.

The samadhi extraction process

Merely being shown that one possesses the ability to find gold is not enough. One must, first of all, find real goal then extract it and use the gold to dispel one's suffering as a result of poverty. In the same way, being told about the One Mind or being taught that the nature of mind is the enlightened essence is not sufficient.  We have to behold this One Mind, directly, by ourselves. When we actually converge with the One Mind, which is the transmission of Mind essence, what is important is to practice thereby attaining the more of it (the extraction process).

Putting the aforementioned in a different way, recognizing the One Mind doesn't make one a fully enlightened Buddha any more than simply discovering gold dispels one's poverty and hunger all at once. One must put the previous recognition of the One Mind to use which entails practice (the extraction process), that is, making the One Mind the more in contrast with our former habit-energy (vāsanā) which still dominates our decisions and life, binding us ever to the conditioned.  Therefore, the practice of right samadhi entails bringing up our initial gnosis of the One Mind again and again, day in and day out.  In this way we become the more, reaching true Buddhahood.

The Daśabhūmika Sutra is telling us that the Bodhisattva's 'enlightenment charge', for want of a better term, gets progressively larger as he advances by means of samadhis going from a hundred samadhis to a hundred million samadhis—the amount of samadhi constituting a stage.  Leaving the numbers aside, I think the important point is to see this practice as something like a gold mining extraction process: separating the gold from the rock that conceals it.  One could say that we are bringing the light into our lives leaving behind the darkness of ignorance; the light eventually becoming sun-like.

A beginner's bad habit

One bad habit of beginners is trying to dumb Buddhism down, especially, Zen Buddhism.  First of all, beginners are those who have yet to see their true nature and awaken (i.e., become Buddha). This means that they could have been studying Zen for 20 or more years, practicing seated meditation.  Nevertheless, they are still walking the path to awakening—they still haven't arrived.  They have not yet grasped that Zen is about  this mysterious seeing—not about doing zazen.  All Buddhist traditions do seated meditation.  Only Zen comes forth and boldly says, "You have to see your true nature, now!  Stop screwing around!"  But this is the hard way.

So now enters dumbing down which is easy to sell to beginners. For example, just do seated meditation.  That's it.  Or just be aware of what you do, living in the here and the now.  That's it.  You are already enlightened because you have the Buddha-nature according to the Buddha.  That's it.  I am sure there are more examples such as our ordinary, worldly mind of birth and death is the Buddha mind!  Here, clearly, the concept constructing intellect is hard at work trying to assure us that there is not much to Zen or for that matter, Buddhism.  No major changes are demanded of us. 

No, we can't dumb down Buddhism or Zen.  It's a cold, hard fact that the path of Buddhism including Zen Buddhism is not a cake walk.  We will be challenged during the whole time.  We might even stray from the path, giving it up altogether.  Dumbing down the Dharma helps us to cope with the guilt of not doing our best; at the same time, it helps us to believe that we are baby Buddhas but Buddhas nonetheless. 

Not dumbing down Buddhism or Zen means to accept, first of all, that we don't really understand the Buddha's teaching.  Much of what we read, in fact, we don't comprehend.  So we just skim over it.  Our understanding can reach only so far; certainly not as far as a Buddha.  This means that we require lots of spiritual work until we can begin to understand the basics of Buddhism—not dumbed down of course!  This also means that the path we take will be a huge challenge for us; bringing our delusions, anger and desires to the surface which is painful.

The disturbed mind

Once Zen master Tsung-mi/Zongmi said:  “No-mind (wu-hsin) only means that the defilements have been eliminated from the mind.”  He was referring to a state in which absolute Mind is fully beheld by the adept in the time of a finger snap.  It is unmistakable and clear.  Like water without so much as a wave or ripple.  In other words, no-mind and pure Mind are the same.  One might even think of it as one thought canceling out another so that only the unstirred, pure Mind remains.

Until one directly connects with the mind empty of disturbances or the same, pure Mind, their mind is in a never-ending condition of disturbances which only serve to hide the luminous, pure Mind.  Such disturbances can be in the form of emotions, concepts, internal dialogue, the sensory fields and their respective objects, etc.  All things (sarva-dharmā) are, in short, mind disturbances.  To penetrate through this illusory, turbulent, disturbed field means to behold a state in which all “defilements have been eliminated from the mind.” 

After this special moment, the disturbances continue but with one notable difference: one knows that the disturbances are the composition of pure Mind.  There is no doubt as to this fact.  Here begins the path of purification: of gradually relying more and more on the pure Mind than being always moved by disturbances that take place in the defiled mind.  Over time one gradually becomes more and more identified with no-mind and less with the disturbed mind.

Can a system deceive us?

A system is a complex unity or combination of diverse parts in the example of the five skandhas or aggregates.  Likewise our biological body is a system.  Also a government is a system.  One might even think of an automobile as a personal transport system being an assemblage of interdependent parts joined together for a specific purpose. 

As with any system, who operates the system is what is most important.  Such a person can use the system for good or not so good purposes.  For example, a system of government populated by corrupt administrators is, likely, going to do evil.  The same applies to corporations.  The system, itself, is no guarantee that there will be no evil outcome.  Like our biological body which is a system, it cannot keep us from doing bad things.  Each person wills out good or evil.  From this we might conclude that reliance on a system is no insurance against corruption.  Capitalism or Communism run by caring people will, certainly, have different and better outcomes than the same systems run by scoundrels.

Changing the system to insure a good, harmonious outcome is about as stupid as changing our automobile for a new one when we can't seem to find the right way to San Francisco always ending up in Austin Texas.  In this example, the driver's sense of direction is the problem; not the fact that he or she is driving an old VW.  In the same light, our educational system works for the benefit of society when we have good teachers and administrators; not corrupt ones who, for example, turn the university into a grant chasing machine and teach dogma, not critical thinking.

Zen training also relies on a system which is no better than those who oversee and staff the system.  A student would benefit more by studying under some old codger who radiates the pure light than some hotshot teacher in charge of a huge Zen center who puts a great deal of emphasis on seated meditation by which he or she hopes to hide the fact that they haven't awakened (kensho).  In a way, a Zen institution as a system can deceive people.  Yes, the system looks efficient and well structured.  But if the teacher and staff are only one step above con artists or psychologists wearing Zen robes who have never realized their true nature, of what benefit can this system be for the student?