The Zennist

The difficulty of overcoming the difficulty

If the teacher has actually intuited the One Mind it is far easier for the student to also resonate with it, although it is still not easy.  In the example of the Buddha, there were far more who entered the stream than now.  If the teacher has not intuited, or the same, converged with the One Mind or Buddha-nature he or she is little more than a student farther up the path.  Making matters worse, the average person has no way of telling which teacher has and which teacher hasn’t actually realized the One Mind.  It is simply impossible.  The statistical odds of finding an awakened teacher to study with is remote.

Trying to make up for this, an institution of Buddhism is still very much limited.  It can teach the scripture and can encourage us to follow the monastic regula to the letter.  It can even teach meditation.  Yet, this will not open the treasure chest of Dharma.  Until the ocean-like waves of mind stop, all at once for a split second, we remain bound to the body of the five skandhas mistaking what is not the ātman for the ātman.

Suppose, bhikkhus, a dog tied up on a leash was bond to a strong post or pillar: it would just keep on running around and revolving around that same post or pillar.  So too, the uninstructed worlding [assutavā puthujjano] ... regards form as ātman ... feeling as ātman ... perception as ātman ... volitional formations as ātman ... consciousness as ātman ....  He just keeps running and revolving around form, around feeling, around perception, around volitional formations, around consciousness.  As he keeps on running and revolving around them, he is not freed from form, not freed from feeling, not freed from perception, not freed from volitional formations, not freed from consciousness.  He is not freed from birth, aging, and death; not freed from sorrow, lamentation, pain, displeasure, and despair; nor freed from suffering I say” (S. iii. 150).

The message is clear enough: we are fettered by the conditioned world beginning with our conditioned thoughts which have never once subsided.  The world we are looking at is the One Mind phenomenalized, turned into a fantastic appearance which includes our corporeal body which is constantly subject to suffering.  Those of us who want to study the teachings of the Buddha to see beyond the illusion often, carelessly, run to the first teacher or institution we find (as I did).  Over time, they find out that they haven’t really advanced—the longer they stay the worse it gets.  They haven’t even got to first base understanding the basic goal of Buddhism which is to awaken to the unconditioned (i.e., One Mind, Buddha-nature, ātman  etc.).  In one respect Buddhism is so simple and profound. In another, its simplicity hides it.

It seems like religious superstition

The late British science fiction writer Sir Arthur C. Clarke said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.  Applying this to Buddhism it goes something like this: The language of any sufficiently advanced introspective science is indistinguishable from religious superstition.  The reverse, of course, is not true that religious superstition is indistinguishable from an advanced introspective science.

It is not difficult to mistake the aims and methods of Buddhism as being born from religious superstition, in such examples as rebirth and karma.  This is the modern tendency which rests on materialism.  It understands almost nothing about thought and the substance or essence of thought.  Certainly, as I have observed, the modern mind has not come to the realization of the very substance of thought[s].  The modern uses his thoughts as if they were something external which further helps him to build up before his eyes a great fictional edifice which he deems to be true reality.

Our backwardness never sees itself until it sees what it previously believed was impossible, just as Lord Kelvin would have been shocked to see a helicopter who didn’t believe heavier-than-air flying machines were possible.  In the case of Buddhism to see, at once, the very substance of thought and with it the true nature of reality seems impossible for many who are new to Buddhism.  But the fact remains that we can see this substance or nature.  This is what the introspective science of Buddhism aims out.  One can think of the Buddha as somewhat like the first primitive man who discovered how to make fire—an ancient Prometheus.  Certainly, all were amazed to watch him make a fire.  But it wasn’t magic that made the fire.  Nor is it religious superstition that led to nirvana, or to the realization that consciousness is the transmigrant from one life to the next.

To step through the looking-glass

Those new to Zen (I am speaking from my own memories) are, in a way, trying to step through the looking-glass (Lewis Carrol).  My philosophy teacher tried to explain it to me then gave up and told me to read D.T. Suzuki, which I did.  I was still confronting the looking-glass.  After I made my robes at the Zen Temple I imagined I had become Zen-ized.  To tell you the truth, despite my time with a Zen abbot I had not stepped through the looking-glass.  I had to do a lot more.  The message the Zen books conveyed to me was almost incomprehensible.  I was able to fake Zen like my teacher.  I could live in the moment fully aware without missing a beat.  But being mindful and alert was easy for me.  I didn’t see much of this in the Zen stories I read and studied.

To step through the looking-glass for me meant to seek what is beyond the ken of the conditioned world; certainly beyond my temporal thoughts and my internal dialogue.  It is not as easy as one might imagine.  I didn’t mind living with the Abbot but then I was too young to know shit from Shinola.  My immaturity was substantial which had to be corrected.  As fate would have it I left the abbot.  By  that time I understood that within my mind was the beginning of my spiritual journey—that suddenly, one day or one night, I would see my true nature.  This is when I stepped through the looking-glass.  The former world I saw was no longer the true world; nor yet did I see my true nature.  I was in limbo, so to speak.  This paradoxical condition forced me to look even deeper within my self.

This deeper looking I learned about in a lecture given by Nippo Shaku in 1969 at San Jose State College.  I couldn’t explain it at the time except to say that in my monkey mind was a mysterious, pure nature that I was not seeing and try as I looked during meditation and walking it just wouldn’t reveal itself to me.  Despite the odds I pushed on undaunted somehow knowing I was on the right track.  I eventually saw this mysterious nature.  I dare say far too many are unwilling to step through my looking-glass.  They are simply caught up in being aware and doing zazen.  That's not real Zen.

Life goes on and so does our consciousness

The people who brought us the theory of genetic determinism have been proven wrong.  These are also the people who believe that our brain produces consciousness, a theory that cuts against Buddhism, insofar as Buddhism teaches that consciousness is the transmigrant from one life to the next.  This takes us to the subject of NDEs (Near Death Experiences) where some scientists believe NDEs are bunk—being the hallucinations of an oxygen starved brain.  Despite their protests NDEs still continue with no mechanism being yet found in the brain to account for such experiences.  It is important to point out that only with the heart and the brain both flatlined that an NDE begins and then not in everyone. Those who try to induce an NDE by magnetic induction or by ketamine while the heart is beating and the brain active cannot induce a real NDE.  Time and time again NDEs occur only when the heart and brain are flatlined for a period of time.

What is remarkable is that during these NDE experiences, language and cognitive functions still work although our conventional concept of time and space are much different. Many other extraordinary things occur like meeting with former relatives and teachers who have died.  Some, during an NDE rise out of their lifeless body after which they are able to watch the medical staff below as they try to resuscitate their body.  None of this should be surprising for a Buddhist except for Western Buddhists who still cling to materialism; who somehow imagine that the Buddha taught a doctrine of materialism.  These kinds of critics, who believe they are just being skeptical, hide the fact that they have a counter-claim which is materialism. But this is not real skepticism—it is pseudoskepticism.  The real skeptic suspends judgement because of a lack of evidence but is still open to the possibility.

Buddhism is premised on ending rebirth by realizing what does not transmigrate which is truly who we are and have always been.  By this awakening, seeing true reality, the world then begins to become more illusory such that desire for it becomes, over time, much less.  As transmigrants or conscious agents, all of us have constructed a world by means of discrimination which is only Mind because Mind, itself, as the absolute, is not seen.  We are only able to see Mind through its constructions.  As a result, we have also deeply invested in our fabricated, constructed illusions, trying to make them concrete.  But this only deepens and intensifies the problem of rebirth.

To see beyond the phenomenal veil

Generally speaking, two things work together to cover up the soul or heart of Zen; even making a counterfeit Zen.  The first, which I have mentioned before on this blog, is Zen’s secularization.  The second is the institutionalization of Zen.  This reminds me somewhat of a great artist or sage who has recently died.  What his message was, over time, becomes gradually obscured, even turned into something else.  In order to keep his memory alive an institution is created.  All of his writings are housed in it.  This includes photographs and other memorabilia.  In the case of Zen, we can’t expect to be helped by studying a Zen which has been secularized, that is, a Zen which helps us to cope with the day to day world in which we learn, for example, that “If you live with a difficult person, that’s nirvana” (Joko Beck).  Nor will the institution be of much help.  It is just a place to gather and discuss various hypotheses about what Zen means or what Buddha-nature is.  It also serves to give us the illusion that our teacher is enlightened or at least we can be like him.

Finding real, unaltered Zen is like finding real gold which is no easy task.  For the average Zennist it is very difficult to understand how Reiun was enlightened when he saw the peach blossoms, or how Kyogen gained awakening on hearing some tile hit bamboo while he was raking, or Tozan on seeing his own reflection in the water became awakened.  Despite the difficulty in our understanding of this what has to be noted is that the satori or awakening is outside of secularization and institutionalization.  For some this is a bitter pill to swallow insofar as they have invested a great deal of time in the institution of Zen.  It is somewhat like going to ten years of dragon killing school only to find out there are no dragons.

The serious student of Zen should be concerned with what Kyogen realized or what Hakuin realized when he heard the churr of a cricket.  Something definitely happened.  These special moments which seem to open up the student to awakening are really moments when the last presupposition dies, so to speak.  The stirring of the mind suddenly stops.  And in the stopped state we see pure Mind which is the substance of the universe.  There is nothing more to see.  But the ramifications of this awakening, which will later unfold, are truly extraordinary.  This is the bhumis of the Bodhisattva.

I am absolutely sure that few will understand what I just blogged.  Most will find fault with it.  But when I was a budding Zen student it did matter to me what these Zen masters realized that made them masters.  Here we can see the real power of Zen that does not rely on being secularized or turned into and institution.  In fact, the institution is trying to tell us it cannot help us.  It is kind of like a place for the marginally insane who still have not understood that Zen wants us to see beyond the phenomenal veil that covers us and hides our Buddha-nature.

Secularism’s influence on religion

The blind spot of secularism is when it sets itself up as privileged, in the sense of being ‘scientific’.  What follows from this is a limited, oppositional discourse as if two great armies were facing each other in battle where only one can win.  Keeping this strict, uncompromising dichotomy on the part of the secularists is done because it gains them much needed attention.  The secularist can sell his message of, look at the wonders of technology and the freedom you have from religious persecution and its backwardness.  With this, the secularist becomes a warrior against all that is religious: a defender of technology, materialism, and hedonism.  Ironically, the secularist seems closer to occultist Aleister Crowley’s famous maxim, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.”

Sadly, the defenders of religious thought are too weak to show the secularists their wrong headedness, especially, that their diatribes against religious values fail to take into account the violent history of secularism in the example of Communism’s horrible Red Terror, not to mention its moral hypocrisy (do as I say, not as I do) granted to the secularist but not to those who practice a particular religion such as Buddhism. 

A more recent history of secularism’s influence on religion, one only has to look at the history of the vicious divide between religious Jews and secular, nationalist Jews (Zionists) in which religious Judaism is, systematically, being wiped out. The religious and spiritual goal of Judaism, Shiviti YHVH l’negdi tamid (I am mindful of the presence of G-d always), has all been but lost to the influence of secular concerns and ambitions.  Now the same kind of forces have taken hold of Buddhism ignoring the fact that Buddhism is about nirvana which transcends the secular world.  As far as Christianity is concerned, its secularization is almost complete with only a facade left.  A typical Christians shows off their Christianity but cannot say what Christ’s “kingdom of God” is because it is not worldly, that is, secular.

The good news is that the subject of consciousness, in its own right, which is much closer to God and to nirvana; which has so long been ignored by the natural sciences, is being seriously explored causing a kind of paradigm angst, at least for the particle-believers which may very well end up being fictions as compared with immaterial waves which chime more with consciousness.

Made for those who live alone

Being really alone is never easy to do whether it is staying in some retreat cabin in southern Oregon or staying in and old 1917 ranch house in the rolling hills of California.  Living like this, there is no one with whom we can share our ideas or chat with.  Reading the discourses of the Buddha or the sermons of Zen master Huangbo in this quiet world forces us into self-reliance.  As a result of such isolation, we must come to trust the deeper part of our self because this is where we are being led by the discourses of the Buddha and the Zen masters.  It is not quite like mountain climbing.  It’s more akin to descending into an abyss, a seemingly bottomless chasm in which we might eventually have to let go of our rope, the rope symbolizing our presuppositions.

Being alone, and being able to descend into this abyss found within our being, can’t be done in a room full of people or sitting in zazen in a monastery.  It’s really not that peaceful in a spiritual sense.  There are too many chattering monkey minds.  You can’t hear them but you can sense them.  There is a frenetic feeling in the air  But when you are alone, this disappears within a few hours.  Our body then begins to adapt.  Meditation brings with it more of a sense of descending, as it were, a going-down-into-myself.  The nervousness and and jumpiness soon abate.  This is when we begin to notice that there is a spiritual side to us which has managed to hide from us because of our monkey minds that go from one thing to another almost incessantly. In is only when we are alone does the spirit begin to reveal itself.

The language of Buddhism and especially Zen is made for those who live alone in a retreat cabin far from the madding crowd!  Its usefulness lies in having us discover within the depths of our being, that part of us which is not of the flesh; which has been hidden under a mound of cultural garbage.  It is unfortunate that the modern tendency towards Buddhism, in general, has been to transform it into a secular reality which throws out the spiritual content of Buddhism, the mystery of the Buddha holding up a flower and blinking so that only Mahākāśyapa understood, just smiling.

Meditation is a form of self-healing

If anything shines a light on the power of placebo effect it is meditation, this effect just being another name for self-healing.  In a word, meditation helps to jump-start the power of the placebo effect. It is important to keep in mind also that self-healing is a whole process, hence, the meaning of “heal” which is, to make sound or whole.  A Buddhist explanation of this effect begins with accepting that our fifty trillion or more cells, which make up our protein body, are influenced from outside of the cell’s membrane.  They are dynamically linked to the surrounding conditions and influences which include our consciousness.

Our consciousness is interfacing with the biological body since the time of conception in our mother’s womb. This consciousness is somewhat like our fingers on a computer keyboard (the cell membrane) giving our computer-body (the internal parts of the cell) its commands. The scope of this interfacing consciousness is beyond the biological body.  It has enormous power.  Unfortunately for us, this consciousness is quite biologically limited and species-specific.  It is also limited to a unique personal system or “my self.”

From the Buddhist standpoint, the trapping and limiting of this consciousness occurs when consciousness/vijñāna (the rebirth transmigrant or gandhabba) vibrates sympathetically with the nāma-rūpa (the embryo) during sexual intercourse when the sperm of the father-to-be yokes with the embryo of the mother-to-be.  One might characterize this as the fall from the immortal into the mortal or somewhat the same, the joining of the real with the unreal such that the real becomes greatly obscured—tied to the suffering biological system from which no apparent escape is seen except death.

During meditation, our awareness (the subject side of consciousness) is somewhat able to limit its infatuation with the body (the object) and the world constructed through it (the object side of consciousness).  In a way we are trying to get back to our disembodied, unconditioned state of being if not to at least enter into a state as peaceful as when we were in our mother’s womb when the object-side was far less powerful and influential.  One particular form of Buddhist meditation, ānāpānasati (breathing awareness) involves having our awareness being before or prior to inhalation and exhalation.  This is based on the principle that, intrinsically, what we are transcends the range of the physical body.  Thus, being before or prior to inhalation and exhalation is a kind of withdrawing process which as the practice continues over time the more of us becomes the less of what brings us suffering.  Meditation then becomes a form of self-healing as we work our way back to the whole which is before the fall into our limited corporeal body which eventually must perish.

The importance of the za in zazen

When Zen students are unable to see the moon of bodhi to which the word-fingers are pointing, it is important to keep their minds occupied.  So these students must learn and practice zazen which is not so much about sitting as it is keeping what they’ve learned in zazen during standing, walking and lying down.  Students who practice zazen then stop when they get up off their cushion are not really practicing zazen.  This problem is somewhat like those Christians who go to church on Sunday; who act pious and holy.  Then when Monday rolls around they are no longer Christians.

Although they can’t see what’s happening, Zen students who do zazen, since their attention is no longer directed outwards, are looking inwards more than during standing, walking (including running) and lying down.  When we look at the Chinese characters for zazen the first character “za” 坐 represents two people sitting on the earth facing each other.  We can also view 坐 as meaning self-introspection which in the context of advanced Zen is the pure subject seeing the pure object from the basis of ultimate reality such that subject and object disappear (become illusory) so that there is only ultimate reality. Za, in other words, doesn’t means just “sit.”

The overall goal of zazen for the fledgeling Zen student is getting them used to self-introspection which is the truth of Zen or dhyana.  It is about turning the light (the animative principle) back to its universal source.  This helps explain what Zen master Ejo meant when he said: “So we should know that this light is the universal illumination of matchless, peerless great light completely filled with infinite meaning.”

The universal source or sublime light is the truth of Buddhahood.  The student begins the challenge of meeting this light with the practice of zazen.  Hopefully, one day, they will connect with this light.  They will see it in the time of a finger snap.  Their body will become engulfed in its luminosity—a kind of Buddhist baptism.  From that moment onwards, every word by the Buddhas and the Patriarchs will be seen as pointing to this.

The importance of nirvana

The overall notion of nirvana is not often mentioned in Zen literature especially in pop Zen literature.  Yet without understanding it neither Zen Buddhism or just Buddhism make any sense.  Buddhism then opens itself up to being revised and subsequently turned into something it is not.  The importance of nirvana is made very clear when the Buddha says that his Dharma or religion is taught for the sake of final nirvana without clinging (SN 35:75).  This can also mean that nirvana is a personal gnosis of the unconditioned.  It is only in the sense of this personal gnosis that we can begin to understand nirvana.  “Personal”, I hasten to add, in this context means relating, directly, to ātman this being absolute spirit of which we truly are.

In Buddhist literature we sometimes find nirvana treated as being inexpressible in a commonsense manner.  E.g., “I realize nirvana but it is not something determinate that I can share with others.” It is not subjective either, or the same idiosyncratic.  Nor is nirvana subject to a beginning, modification or decay.  It is also deathless (amṛta).  More importantly, as I noted earlier, nirvana is to be realized, personally, within the very self which in Pali is, paccattaṁ.  Where else might you realize it if not in your innermost being?  It is also worth mentioning that nirvana is beyond the pale of the Five Aggregates which consist of physical form, feeling, perception, volitional formations and consciousness, which are not our true self or ātman being a kind of illusory, fake self that we mistake for our real self which is spiritual.

There are a number of negative and positive descriptions of nirvana such as mentioned earlier the deathless.  It is said to be imperishable (acyuta), unchanging and endless (ananta), also unborn and uncreated. Not subject to aging, etc.  On a positive note, nirvana is peace (śama or upaśama).  It is also bliss or felicity.  Zen master Huangbo says perfect Nirvana is the “sudden understanding that one's own nature is original Buddha and True Mind.”