The Zennist

Devoid of intrinsic nature

Our Buddha-nature is not the same as dependently originated phenomena or things which are devoid of an intrinsic nature or true nature.  Buddha-nature exists in and through itself—not through others. It this sense, also, our Buddha-nature is absolute.  We can’t get behind it.  This means that our Buddha-nature is something seemingly hidden from us which we are unable to comprehend.  To be sure this is a mystery of the first order.  Only a few seek to voyage to this mysterious isle because the voyage is so subtle and requires all of one’s attention for its success. 

On the other  hand, dependently originated phenomena like this corporeal body of ours, are dependent on a variety of causes and conditions.  A thing which is the product of multiple causes and conditions, does not exist in and through itself like the Buddha-nature but, as was said earlier, exists through many causes and conditions.  These same dependently originated things are emptiness (śūnyatā).  Nagarjuna as a matter of fact says: “What is dependently originated (pratītyasamutpādaḥ) that we call emptiness (śūnyatā)” (M.K. 24, 18).   But this emptiness is closer to being synonymous with illusion, a mere appearance of the real—but not truly real.  On this score from the Lalitavistara Sutra we read:

Because he [the Tathagata] regards all things like illusion, mirage, dream, like the reflection on the moon in water, like an echo or double vision, he is called the one who knows the unfettered Dharma.

The illusion, the mirage, the dream—they are all emptiness.  The world we live in including our temporal body is also emptiness insofar as it is conditioned.  Even the thoughts that come before our mind’s eye are such.  As ordinary human beings who have not yet entered the spiritual stream, looking for our Buddha-nature we can only manage to see the dependently originated try as we might.  Our Buddha-nature eludes our attempts to grab hold of it with our thoughts.  Our apprehension of it is more of a question of directly seeing it without the middleman of thoughts-about-it.

Do I have it right?

Describing the media con game the late satirist George Trow said, “you make it easy for people to think they got it right.”  How sinister and manipulative is that?  You could also say, first, make people feel inadequate if not almost downright dumb at times (the first twenty or so years of their life).  Then come along with easy to understand knowledge and wisdoms so that they feel as if they got it right—make ‘em feel smug, too.  But this is no real education. 

No, we are not really expanding our minds.  Our education these days is more concerned with mind control or the manipulation of the masses to keep them looking in a certain direction rather than the direction they should be looking at for their health and well being.  Looking back on our lives, all that we have learned was only meant to facilitate the turning of the great wheel of exploitation, forcing the masses to adopt a consumerist lifestyle that keeps them at the level of prey.  At this point, we need to remember that knowledge is power—real knowledge that is which can be either good or evil.  Such knowledge as this is kept from the masses by keeping them disinterested in knowledge or giving them dribs and drabs of knowledge or pseudo-knowledge through the use of false narratives that are often repeated.   

If I look at today’s Zen through the spectacles of the just mentioned, a modern book about Zen has to make the reader “think they got it right” after reading it.  That’s the most important thing.  Moderns have to have that feeling of, I am right.  From beginner’s mind Zen, to everyday Zen, and to Zen just living in the here and the now or just sitting, it’s all intended to make the individual think they know what Zen is (you got it right).  But do the majority of Zennists have it right?  No, not in the slightest.  They’ve been deceived if they think that Zen is really about doing zazen or living in the here and the now.  Nor can most be convinced that their understanding of Zen is mistaken.  Their sinister and manipulative culture of deception has found its way even into Zen.  Yet the key is within their grasp.  But they have been taught to reject it—after all mind and consciousness come from the brain as does language.  And when the brain dies that's it, and we imagine this is right.

The age of cunning reason

One has to have a spiritual intelligence or acumen to pursue the truth of Buddhism.  This kind of intelligence has no value in our everyday world which requires more or less a kind of cunning reason which is a practical analytic intelligence.  It will make you money in the stock market.  It will help you get through college or do a dissertation.  Politicians and revolutionaries need it.  If you wish to succeed in the everyday madding world a lot of cunning reason is required.  On the other hand, if you wish to really understand Buddhism and Zen Buddhism cunning reason will become, eventually, your downfall.  The best that you can hope for is having the illusion of wisdom.

If by now the reader of my blog is suddenly struck with the impression that a transition from practical analytic intelligence to spiritual intelligence lacks a bridge, they are not far from the truth.  It is a problematic that, in fact, plagues all religious life.  Each of us is a bridge builder, but our bridge is almost never completed.  Failure is almost the rule.  Making the problem more difficult, our present culture could not care less about building such a transitional bridge.  It is still recklessly determined to perfect cunning reason to become master of the heavens—lord of the universe.  As we can see, modern culture doesn’t have a lot of Buddhist monasteries where the transition from practical analytic intelligence to spiritual intelligence is possible; where our bridge gets closer to the other shore.

There is something terrible if not evil about a culture that rewards cunning reason, and on the other hand, purposely, neglects to give spiritual intelligence a place to grow and to thrive.  But perhaps this is understandable since cunning reason only eats from the trough of its selfish lust to the detriment of the many.  Moreover, at some level it knows that it is doing evil but will not stop or repent.  It has no regrets.  It always manages to find some justification for its malevolent actions.  It is a miracle that a few exist who have any such intelligence left; whose spiritual acumen and courage can overpower the bulwarks of a degenerate culture.  But then stranger things have happened by which great evil is overpowered.

The enchanting waves

The world we daily partake in, not to mention our corporeal body of birth and death, is a configuration of Mind according to the Lankavatara Sutra just somewhat like the ocean waves we see are the configuration of the element of water.  We are also aware of a wave/water logic most notably that waves are not things-in-themselves.  There is no wave-ity or a pure wave state independent of water.  Waves are a 100% water, water being H2O.  That we speak of waves and water forces an duality upon us which is really an illusion.  A rising and falling of water is not water becoming a difference-from-itself. 

Even physics is forced to question the particle, itself, which is only a configuration of an infinite field[s] (Art Hobson, There are no particles, there are only fields).  Physics, nevertheless, still finds the particle useful, but such utility isn’t often truth; nor will it lead us there since it creates duality and paradox.  For we conscious beings, determinate being or thing-ness is our particle, which makes up our corporeal life which is no less illusory and paradoxical.  Still, our life has a certain utility but that’s all.  True reality, if we which to find it, is non-particulate which means for us that it is not to be found in thought but rather in the very substance of our thoughts or in the words of the sixth patriarch Huineng, “True Reality is the substance of thoughts; thoughts are the function of True Reality.”

This brings us back to the aforementioned ocean waves and water.  Our thoughts, like waves, arise and fall back into this unknown oceanic Mind—a substance which in our state of avidya, we can neither see nor understand.  These waves are certainly enchanting.  Their diversity overwhelming.  But the waves lead us not to the water, but away from it.

Making Zen practical?

I thought of an interesting title for a modern Zen book, Making Zen Work in the Real World: How to Make Zen Practical.  Here, the subtitle shows us what the main title is really about. We have to fundamentally change Zen.  This fictitious book would be about junking Zen Buddhism.  No longer would we suffer trying to see our true nature or the same, see our Buddha-nature.  Zen would adapt to our everyday real world of job and family, politics and entertainment.  In other words, Zen is about learning how to live in the present—a livable present that aims at ordinary happiness.  It would also be a present that is practical in the sense of not caring anymore about some abstract, metaphysical truth. 

Living a livable, happy life, naturally, would mean that we have to accept many fictions as being true in order to enjoy such a life. This could be easily accomplished in many ways.  For example, by treating theories as fact as far as science goes.  On the subject of medicine a cure would be about the elimination of symptoms (palliation).  History would be revised in such a way that it supports our belief that the meaning of life is to live a livable, happy life; that at least we are always moving in that direction.  Religion would be eliminated.  The only personal practice is learning to be mindful and doing zazen at least ten minutes a day.

Let’s face it, the really real world is irrational for us.  To this day science has no idea what the universe is made of. Nature is still a mystery.  It defies our commonsense understanding and most of our expectations.  But its irrationality doesn’t prevent us from building homes to live in and having families and being engaged in our species-specific tasks, notably, making our world livable which can only be done in the present—in this life.  This is as far as Zen should go.  The Zen of Bodhidharma or Daoxin is of no help to us anymore.  It is not practical.  But is this Zen? The answer is, no.  It a Zen that is only interested in conventional truth, not ultimate truth.  Most humans don’t have the courage to look through and beyond the superficial veil of this present life.  But real Zen requires it.

Part of my inspiration for this blog (a satire) came for Im Kwon-Taek’s film, Mandala (1981) which is a darn good Zen flick.

 

More like an eel

R.H. Blyth wrote that, “Zen is not philosophy and has no philosophy,” going on to suggest to the reader that Zen is impossible to define, even in a general way.  I have always sensed something wrong with this way of presenting Zen because it is so close to the heart of the skeptic who finds satisfaction in being more like an eel than a human being.  I just don’t find this attitude in the words of Zen master Daoxin (580–651) who may very well have been the real founder of Zen, who said:

Although the nature [of your awakened mind] has no form, inner constancy always exists. The mysterious spiritual power is never exhausted but always shines clearly. This is called your Buddha-nature. Those who see their Buddha-nature (chien fo-hsing 見佛性) are forever free from [the stream] of brith and death, and are called “people who have transcended the world.” (transl. David W. Chapppell)

To the question of what is Zen, Daoxin might have said, seeing your Buddha-nature (見佛性), or something like, transcendence of the cycles of birth and death, i.e., samsara.  Why would he play the eel to questions concerning awakening?  On the other hand, I can see some beginner or fake Zennist playing the part of a slippery eel who wishes not to be caught; who really has nothing profound to say about Zen because he has never, in his entire life, awakened to what the Buddha awakened to. 

To be sure, there is very little honesty in much of Zen these days which, to my way of thinking, is necessary to get to even first base.  Rigorous self-honesty can be like a compass keeping us on the right path so that we don’t end up on some tortuous path that is devious and crooked by which we end up deceiving ourselves.  We should always keep in mind that the tendency to become self-deceived is great when we begin the study of Zen.

Zen writers like R.H. Blyth and I include, Alan Watts, want their readers to understand as much as they do.  But we should not draw from their efforts that they understood very much about Zen.  There is something eel-like to their style of writing.  Certainly, they understood more than the average person no one can dispute that.  They were also very skillful writers.  But they never said what the Fourth Patriarch Daoxin said who came from a Buddhist tradition; who never left it.

The illusory seems so real

Does the realization of pure Mind or Nirvana take us out of the world, eventually, so that we end up in some kind of blank state devoid of anything for an eternity?  The immediate answer is, no.  So what happens when we directly intuit the unconditioned (nirvana, pure Mind, etc.)?  I can put it simply by saying there is a conversion from seeing the world as real and final and seeing it as an illusory fact which comes as a result of seeing, so to speak, of what things are composed.  The Saṁdhinirmocana Sutra explains the matter this way.

“Son of good lineage, for example, a magician or a magician's able student, standing at the crossing of four great roads, after gathering grasses, leaves, twigs, pebbles or stones, displays various magical forms, such as a herd of elephants, a cavalry, chariots, and infantry; collections of gems, pearls, lapis lazuli, conch shells, crystal, and coral; collections of wealth, grain, treasuries, and granaries.

When those sentient beings who have childish natures, foolish natures, or confused natures—who do not realize that these are grasses, leaves, twigs, pebbles, and stones—see or hear these things, they think: 'This herd of elephants that appears, exists; these cavalry, chariots, infantry, gems, pearls, lapis lazuli, conch-shells, crystal, coral, wealth, grain, treasuries, and granaries that appear, exist.

Having thought this, they emphatically apprehend and emphatically assert in accordance with how they see and hear. Subsequently they make the conventional designations: 'This is true, the other is false.' Later they must closely examine these things.

When those sentient beings who do not have childish or foolish natures, who have natures endowed with wisdom—who recognize that these are grasses, twigs, pebbles, and stones—hear and see these things, they think: 'This herd of elephants that appears does not exist. These cavalry, chariots, infantry, gems, pearls, lapis lazuli, conch-shells, crystal, coral, wealth, grain, treasuries, and granaries that appear do not exist. But, in regard to them there arises the perception of a herd of elephants and the perception of the attributes of a herd of elephants, the perception of wealth, grain, treasuries, and granaries and the perception of their attributes. These magical illusions exist.” (transl. John Powers)

I should stress that it is not just a matter of assuming the world to be illusory.  One must see it that way which only occurs after one first sees from what thoughts are composed, their ‘stuff’ so to speak.  From that point onwards a gradual dissolution of our former real world takes place.  It becomes over many years more like thought and certainly illusory.  Although the illusory appearance of the world is not infrequently noted by the Buddha, it is this way only for those who have penetrated through the veil of conventional reality (saṁvṛiti-satya) reaching yonder shore of ultimate reality (paramartha-satya).  Illusion, itself, is the truth of conventional reality, a reality that without awakening we wrongly take to be absolute, denying any reality beyond its reach and range.  In a way, nirvana always makes the conditioned world illusory in virtue of the fact that we have realized the substance from which the illusory world is composed.  This further opens up as bliss as opposed to pain.

 

Viewing the Mind as common ground

Most Western scholars hold more or less to the view that the role of Zen in Tibet (the transmission of Zen to Tibet began in 755) was not that great and that it was later kicked out owing to a terrible debate between the Zen master Heshang Moheyan (Ho-shang Mo-ho-yen), who lived and taught in Tibet, and the Indian Buddhist monk Kamalaśīla.  

This debate lasted for about three years.  Heshang Moheyan was subsequently banned to Dunhuang and Kamalaśīla was soon after murdered. The conjecture which surround this debate cannot be also the final verdict of the Dunhuang documents which contain valuable information about Zen’s influence in Tibet and Zen's early formation.

Reflecting on what I have read on the subject trying to boil it down to something useful for the average Zennist, where Tibetan interests and Zen interests appear to come together is on the matter of "viewing the mind" (Tibetan Buddhism: Reason and Revelation, pp. 66–67) which for Heshang Moheyan was the spiritual praxis of Zen, itself, (we can see that Zen has not become zong-ized [vāda], that is, turned into a doctrine or chan-zong which happened around the time of the Song period).

If we just stop at “viewing the mind” (kanxin 看心) (Mind in the absolute sense which is immaculate) then it is not difficult to find common ground between Chan, Dzogchen and Mahamudra. If there are differences they are cultural and skillful means—not intrinsic differences.

Still looking at the finger and not the moon

When the Buddha says that mind (citta) is by nature shining but that it is afflicted by adventitious defilements (A. i. 10), he is also suggesting that our thoughts can become diseased; moreover, that language can become disease as well as the institutions that depend upon language.  More to what I wish to address:  modern culture uses and reinforces a language that has become, over time, more and more diseased but for the reason that our thoughts have become confused and maculated from looking only at the finger—not the moon the finger is pointing at.

This is a kind of inner blindness that has mistaken representational thoughts of the moon to be the real moon, or the thought of fire to be real, caloric fire.  Ironically, most of us admit they suffer from this problem.  Such a blindness is somewhat like an obese person admitting their problem, even acknowledging that it is dangerous and will likely shorten their lifespan but who can’t stop overeating.  Their weight problem has become an abstraction.  They have lost touch with reality.  With such a problem, losing weight can never be a real fact.  The overweight person’s thoughts are diseased. 

Representational thinking is the modern disease.  It is no longer dealing with reality but thought constructed realities.  By the same token, our true nature or pure Mind shall ever remain an abstraction.  We approach it with a mind that has been long diseased; with thoughts that represent pure Mind, but have no way of actually linking with’ pure Mind.  We even know that we have come to this dead-end many times.  Cutting to the chase, shouldn’t satori mean the complete overcoming of the representation of pure Mind seeing it in its own light?  Shouldn’t we stop looking at the finger and look at the moon instead?  It only takes one moment for representational thinking to stop if done, correctly, and in the one moment behold the sheer invisible, luminosity of pure Mind.