The Zennist

Buddhism vs Islam

The Qur'an was supposedly “divinely revealed” for some twenty-two years to the illiterate Muhammad by the Angel Gabriel beginning in 610 AD.  The revelations he received were reported to family members and friends who either memorized them or wrote them down.  These revelations were not about an innermost realization or awakening, the kind  that Siddhartha experienced who became, subsequently, the “awakened one” or Buddha.  Nor could Muhammad’s revelation be attained by others as is the case with the Buddha’s awakening.  One can think of the Angel Gabriel as the middleman between God and Muhammad upon whom the latter depended. 

Here we can see a difference between Islam and Buddhism.  Muhammad requires a messenger sent by God.  By contrast, the Buddha through his own efforts awakens to ultimate reality of which there is nothing higher—not even God.  More importantly, the Buddha teaches us how to achieve his awakening.   He is a true teacher in this respect.  Muhammad’s revelation is different.  If we follow the Qur'an there is heavenly reward.  If not, there is punishment.  The Qur'an is comparable to the Bible but supersedes it according to its ‘believers’—almost to the point of being a fetish.  In this respect, the Qur'an turns into an idol made of words (i.e., a representation of God himself) that is worshiped by the faithful.  Imam al-Ṣādiq describes the Qur'an this way:

"Certainly, the Qur'an lives, and has not died; and it is existent just as the day and the night and the sun and the moon are existent. And it will exist for the last among us as it has existed for the first." 

Buddhism does not have such a “book” like the Qur'an.  It doesn’t need it.  No religious book can make letters and words an end in itself.  Their only value is what they point to which is beyond letters and words, which in the case of Buddhism, is the true nature of reality which is transcendent and unconditioned.  The teachings of the Buddha, even in book form, are likened to a raft for helping us to cross to the other shore which is certainly beyond letters, words, angels and even a creator god.  After we reach this yonder shore the raft is no longer of any use.  The Buddha’s teaching/dharma is for crossing over not for retaining.

The Qur'an, which is believed by its followers to be the absolute unchanging word of God, in the final analysis, is more human than holy and unchanging in which Muslims wage war, and during the early formation of Islam argued over what was scripture and what was not.  Buddhism on the other hand is always trying to rise above the delusions, the hostility and the sensual desires that confront human beings daily.  Buddhists also have no need of a creator god or his prophets.  The idea that humans are a product of some god is frankly absurd.  If we were made by such an all powerful god, wouldn’t we be like god since we are his offspring?  When a cow gives birth to a calf isn’t the calf still a cow?  All god based religions are inferior to Buddhism.  The Buddha asked, “If god’s wide power has no limit, why then is his hand so rarely spread to bless?  Why are god’s creatures all condemned to pain? Why doesn’t god give happiness to all?  Why, instead, do fraud, lies, and ignorance prevail?”

A vessel that is dirty

The beginner’s mind is not a baby’s mind which is still forming, taking in the immediate world around it and learning to communicate with it.  The beginner’s mind is more like a vessel that is dirty. No matter what is poured into this dirty vessel; no matter how pure or nutritious it is, it becomes contaminated.  Zen Buddhism, and with that, Buddhism, in general, cannot be poured into a mind fouled with delusion, hostility and desires that move contrary to the teachings of the Buddha.

The beginner’s mind is a mind that is defiled and contaminated by the conditioned world and its knowledge.  It is also a closed, limited mind that has been programed by its culture to believe in materialism.  Whatever the beginner has learned about Zen Buddhism chances are very good that it is wrong.  As we might expect, the beginner’s mind needs a certain kind of medicine to heal it; a curative practice to change its course at least to the point where there is less delusion, less hostility and less desire which the Buddha calls the three poisons.

The proper curative practice should first begin with staying away from the various sources of contamination as much as possible; it means also to break old bad habits which open us up to contamination.  For those of us who have served in the military and remember bootcamp, the proper curative practice begins with something akin to military bootcamp but differs in many other details since the aims are different.  The practice begins with an emphasis on what could be describe as focusing on small details and being mindful, day in and day out, with no let up.  It is also about, internally, observing our thoughts, our mental dialogue and images to see their arising, momentary persistence, and change; then their passing away.  But there is even more besides this, much more.  The beginner’s mind is no more capable of receiving the teachings of the Buddha than a little league baseball pitcher could pitch in the major leagues.

Who is free of the conditioned aggregates?

In the Pali Nikayas it is said that the first noble truth of suffering is the Five Aggregates subject to clinging (S. v. 425) consisting of material shape, feeling, perception, volitional formations and consciousness.  This raises some interesting questions.  What if we did not cling to any of the aggregates being, instead, completely free of them?  Would there be suffering for us?  The answer would be, no.  Next, is there one who mistakenly clings to the Five Aggregates, but who is intrinsically free of these aggregates?  The answer would have to be, yes.  Perhaps the most important question, if the Five Aggregates are conditioned, is the one who is free of them unconditioned?  I think the answer would have to be, yes.

All these questions and answers resonate with the teaching of the Buddha when we take into account how we are to regard each of these aggregates.  This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my attā/ātman.  This should be interpreted this way: the unconditioned nature, which I am intrinsically, is not any of these conditioned Five Aggregates subject to clinging. 

Turning now to the Dhammapada, when we read verse 160 that the, “attā (ātman) is protector (nātho) of the attā,” isn’t the unconditioned attā protector of the attā which clings to the conditioned Five Aggregates?  It is certainly implied.  It is noteworthy to point out that the Buddha is called loka-nātha, savior or protector of the world.  It would not be unwarranted to say that the Buddha is also the attā that is nātha.

When the ātman clings to the conditioned Five Aggregates I think this is the evil that is done by the ātman, mentioned in the Dhammapada, which injures the fool.  Moreover, purity and impurity belong to the innermost-ātman (paccattaṁ/pratyātman)—not to the ātman under the dominion of the Five Aggregates.  It must follow that purification is on the side of the unconditioned innermost-ātman which is not under the dominion of the Five Aggregates.

Slower slugs in the grand slug race

Unfortunately forms of research are not very innovative.  At best, modern research is somewhat like putting another light bulb on the Christmas tree that has fifty light bulbs on it already.  By contrast, if a researcher accidentally learns that our conscious minds can influence water (HOH), leaving a particular memory in it which, in turn, can influence the cell through its membrane, this is considered to be quack science even though the experiment was repeated a number of times.  I could go on and on about the speed of innovation in science which progresses at the speed of a slug.

But this speed is not unique to the sciences alone.  It takes place in all fields worthy of study such as history, including Buddhism.  One can surmise from this that our world appears to be trapped in a sphere of stupidity, self-deception and a general refusal to change.  As a result, mankind is slouching to his own demise.  He doesn’t see what is happening even though, so to speak, he cooks the books to show that all is doing quite well which he knows is a lie.  Everyone is happy; the GDP looks like it might go up this year, etc.  And this is all done in the name of protecting a pet theory that has failed—something akin to the “Dead Parrot Sketch” from Monty Python’s Flying Circus (imagine John Cleese bringing in a dead theory such as free-trade for example).

I first followed discussion forums on the Internet before the Netscape browser.  And I can report to the readers here that Buddhism and Zen are some of the slower slugs in the grand slug race of progress.  Scholars and even some teachers have no idea what Buddhism or Zen is really about since most don’t accept the theory that Gautama, when he was just a Bodhisattva, achieved a mystical awakening by which he saw, firsthand, ultimate reality.  Anyone who posits such a theory, I discovered many years ago, is met with the accusation that this kind of rubbish is from the Upanishads and sounds too Vedanta despite the incontestable fact that early Buddhism neither mentions the Upanishads nor Vedanta.  If Buddhism seems similar to the Upanishads or Vedanta it’s because the Buddha and some of the Hindu (rishi) seers were birds of a feather—they both saw the same spiritual substance.  As the reader can probably guess I have little or no faith in progress.  I need a cup of coffee!

Picking daisies or chasing the White Rabbit?

Much of what I term as “pop Zen” is more like making a daisy-chain than chasing the White Rabbit (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland) which leads us to the inner world of self-deception which has to be transcended if we are to see, first hand, ultimate reality (this is kensho).  Picking our daisies is the external life of conditionality which goes against nirvana (the unconditioned).  It can be about joining a Zen or Dharma center, listening to a lecture by a teacher and doing some zazen.  It’s all quite boring and gets us no place in the final analysis.

If this is as far as some people wish to go—fine.  My advice is don’t go any further.  But making daisy-chains should not be the norm.  It’s all about following that White Rabbit down the rabbit-hole.  This is not only a spiritual adventure but a process of waking up from a dream by realizing what it is composed of.  Before awakening, I was the dream-maker: a builder of a world of dreams who became enchanted and desired more dreams.  But seeing, precisely, what all these dreams are fashioned from ends enchantment.

Pop Zen is less about seeing ultimate reality and more about trying to have our cake and eat it too.  Such Buddhists are still very much enchanted by the illusions which surround and bind them to this world, even though they sit in zazen believing to have escaped just a little.  A Zen community can just become an echo chamber.  An enclosed system of people making daisy-chains instead of following the White Rabbit down his hole.  Nobody in such an enclosed system benefits, however.  It is like one hand is on the doorknob trying to open the door while the other is pushing against it.

The Buddha taught substance

Some modern Buddhist assume (and wrongly so) that the Buddha never taught of a substance, or the same, the essential nature of reality, let alone its realization.  But he did.  It is otherwise called tathata, sometimes translated as Thatness or Suchness in English.  It is also synonymous with the eternally-abiding (sthitita), the self-regulating reality (niyamata), realness (bhutata), truth (satyata), pure Mind, unconditioned Mind, etc.  These names are not as important as the realization of tathata which even if realized remains a mystery insofar as it cannot be communicated to others who are unrealized.

I should add, that the phenomenal world we see, including our psychophysical body, is a composition of tathata which means phenomena do not really exist, fundamentally, from their own side.  They are empty, in other words.  At best phenomena are fictions or illusions that seem to be real.  If we elect to dive into them so as to find their ultimate ground we won’t find anything.  We will come up empty, again and again. 

Still, many of us are not quite convinced.  We just cannot accept the fact that everything we are now seeing is dream-like and illusory.  Despite our wishful thinking, it’s just a phenomenalization of tathata  or the same the unconditioned.  No matter what composition or thing we see it’s made from tathata.  It is the only reality.  Buddhaguhya, who wrote the commentary to the Mahavairocana Suta, said that tathata is the intrinsic nature (svabhava) of the mind which is enlightenment (i.e., bodhicitta).  From this we can surmise that enlightenment is awakening to our seeing that the cosmos is, in fact, a configuration of tathata.  

A bridge is unnecessary

If kensho is the direct realization of our true nature which is inconceivable and supermundane, how do we go from a conceivable true nature which is mundane to the real inconceivable true nature?  Maybe explained in an easier way: how do we go from the conditioned to the unconditioned?  How is the gap bridged in other words?

This makes me think of how the gap is bridged between waves and the element of water, itself, or the vibrations of the aether that are a particular AM radio signal and the unvibrated aether?  In this context the answer is easy.  First, there is no real gap.  Second, we only have to stop the waves and stop vibrating the aether.  Water becomes just water and aether, just aether.

All attempts to conceive our true nature which is inconceivable is somewhat like trying to still water waves by patting the water.  When kensho happens in Zen, as I have mentioned a few times in previous blogs, the Zen adept has gone to their wits’end.  For a split second they simply stopped patting the water.  Their pesky thoughts fell back into ekacitta, the waveless primordial Mind.

The idea of building some kind of a bridge between the conditioned and the unconditioned, or the conceivable and the inconceivable is not where the Buddha is coming from.  To the horror of some Buddhists, Buddhism is monistic or as the Lankavatara Sutra puts it, Mind-only.  Difference is illusion or māyā, which has also the power to enchant by which we forget the primordial Mind.  Lost in māyā we fall into the world of samsara from which there is no apparent escape.  The escape is subtle—not easily understood by those ensnared in illusion.

The various tiers of Buddhism

You have to understand that there are a number of levels of Buddhism.  Tier 1 is the moment of Siddthartha’s awakening (bodhi) whereby he became the Buddha.  This is a mystery for the simple reason that it cannot be directly shared—only indirectly—and then with a great deal of difficulty because of the human tendency to misunderstand.  The body of the Buddha’s teachings spring from tier 1 but they are not in themselves tier 1. 

Tier 2 is when we come to the deep personal conviction, after studying the Buddha’s discourses, that Buddhism demands of us that we personally awaken to ultimate reality which can only be uncovered within us by dhyāna (deep introspection) which is a removal process.  This means transcending mental confusion and mental distractions which brings about, all at once, the revelation of pure Mind.   

Tier 3 has not arrived at tier 2—and knows absolutely nothing about tier 1.  Tier 3 is mainly concerned with external, perfunctory practices, moral behavior, reading and chanting scripture, translating, participating in discussions about Buddhism, etc.  The life of a monk or a nun would be also included in tier 3. 

Tier 4 can be characterized as “pop Buddhism.” Here, individuals (more at beginners) hesitate as to whether or not to take up tier 3.  They have a lot of wrong opinions about Buddhism and about life in general.  They tend to be young and immature who haven’t graduated from the college of hard knocks yet.  Most are still incorrigible and defensive with more youth than wisdom.  Still, they see the writing on the wall.  Life is not going to get any better as they leave home.

The lost mythology of deception

I also read other things besides Buddhist literature only to find they open up other Buddhist ideas worth blogging about.  Just recently, I hypothesized that much of the good literature from novels, poetry, plays, etc. is fragmentary.  Each work I began to believe was part of an ancient mythology that had been lost to us.  Then one day, because I am somewhat of a J.R.R. Tolkien fan, I had a literary satoric event. I realized that Tolkien with his works, The Silmarillion and, The Lord of the Rings, had rediscovered this lost mythology. 

Evil is not so much about doing bad things that harm life and well-being, that are easily recognized .  It is far more diabolical and powerful.  As I read the first part of The Silmarillion, evil, personified by Melkor (also known as Morgoth), appears to undermine Eru Ilúvatar or The One’s grand thought/creation; Melkor being no less than an antithetical thought/creation (negative unity). 

Melkor surely is evil but evil in what way?  The answer, by his ability to beguile, deceive and lie.  He is somewhat like Mara the Evil One in Buddhism who is able to deceive us making even a representation of the Buddha.  The psychophysical body is also Mara’s and all that it beholds through the senses.  It deceives us into believing it is the true self or ātman so that we cling to it.  Mara also deceives others into believing there is ultimately no true self since it cannot be seen in the psychophysical body.

When we come to Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, the main character, if we can call it that, is the One Ring which is really a deceiving power, deceiving all the other ring bearers.  It is totally evil and has only one master who is the Dark Lord Sauron who wants to bind all in darkness.  One who bears this evil ring is gradually deceived by it, the greatest deception being that of power but power in the Buddhist sense of producing the effect of abhāva which means absence or privation.  Such power inevitably leads to one’s destruction and annihilation.  Ironically, we could say that this evil must eventually destroy itself so that in the end the “flame imperishable,” also the “secret fire,” of Eru Ilúvatar is revealed.  Eru’s creations can eventually lead to this revelation but only by heroic spiritual effort and struggle can we overcome the power of deception.

Zen has a definition

When we have no definition of a term like “Zen”one may then, personally and selectively, make up any definition we see fit.  This is certainly the case with Zen these days.  It tries to avoid defining itself, or the same, my personal definition of Zen is okay.  This is sort of like the definition of pornography given by Supreme Court Justice, Potter Stewart who said, “I know it when I see it,” and in the case of Zen, “I know what Zen is not.”  Of course Zen does have a definition.  Bodhidharma, for example, defined Zen this way: Seeing your true nature is Zen.

An more technical definition of Zen is that it is the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese character 禪 which is the Chinese rendering of the Sanskrit word dhyāna which roughly can be translated as meditation, the aim of which is to realize Buddhahood.  Recently, some hare brained author published a book, entitled, Not Zen.  The author describing his book on Amazon writes,

Buddhism is not Zen. Mindfulness is not Zen. Zazen meditation is not Zen. Zen is a name that began with Bodhidharma and includes the Zen Patriarchs of China and the Masters that followed him, such as Huang Po and Joshu and the others in the Mumonkan, and even Tung Shan. They taught no practices, no means and no attainment.

Here, the author avoids any clarification of Zen especially when it comes to the definition of Zen.  In this respect, Zen becomes almost meaningless even avoiding meditation which clears away the obstructions in our own minds which prevent us from seeing, directly, our true nature.  Traditionally, the core of Zen is 明心見性, that is, illumination of Mind seeing one's true nature.  This only happens when the everyday deluded mind suddenly stops for a split second.  At that point one realizes the original Mind which is our true nature.  Further describing this true nature the Samādhirāja Sutra says:   

The true nature (svabhāva) of all phenomena is non-arisen (abhāva), signless, markless, unmanifest, not disappearing, inexpressible by letters, empty, quiescent from the outset, pure by its very nature.

  Zen, in deed, does have a definition—an aim.  By it we come to see, ultimately, what our thoughts are made of.  This is the substance of this universe from which it is composed.