The Zennist

Going beyond the extremes

A more concise and simple description of the Buddha’s enlightenment including the teaching to the five medicants (bhikkhū) comes from the Venerable Vaṅgīsa (S. i. 193) which goes:

The light-maker, having pierced right through,
Saw the transcendence of all stations;
Having known and realized it himself,
He taught the chief matter to the five.

Here the Buddha, that is, our light-maker or illumination-maker (P., pajjotakaro) has transcended or gone beyond all stations which are all stations of views and stations of consciousness according to the commentary.  Where this has to be realized is from within.  There is something we are not seeing because of our spiritual ignorance although it is omnipresent. 

In the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta the Buddha tells the five mendicants there are two extremes that should not be followed by those going into homelessness to win enlightenment. One is the extreme of hedonism (kāmasukhallikānuyogo) while the other is the extreme of asceticism (attakilamathānuyogo), exhausting/mortifying the physical body by various practices.  In giving up both extremes the Tathagata finds the middle way (majjhimā paṭipadā).

Without veering towards either of these extremes, the Tathagata has awakened to the middle way, which gives rise to vision, which gives rise to knowledge, which leads to peace, to direct knowledge, to enlightenment, to Nibbana” (S. v. 421).

Both the world of the hedonist and the ascetic are very much dependent upon the physical body.  One extreme gives into sensuality while the other denies it including the lustful body which is punished.  The world of the average person or puthujjana is more or less addicted to physical, sensual enjoyments.  This individual hopes to find happiness at a sensual level.  The ascetic, on the other hand, fears the sensual, knowing its pitfalls and limitation.  Still, this individual believes that mortification of the body with all of its lusts will bring about enlightenment.  But for the Buddha, uncovering the unconditioned (nibbana) is through mind/spirit—not through the physical apparatus.  One, in a manner of speaking, ‘sees’ the unconditioned, pristine absolute, suddenly.  

This is, in fact, the transcendent essence or substance from which the illusion is constructed.  It is a mesmerizing illusion the ordinary person faces and clings to in the belief it is true reality.  Seeing this essence is how the escape is accomplished.  One now goes to this rather than to the illusion which is never other than constructed.

Next Social Justice Warrior move: Should white people be banned from Buddhism?

I thought "secular Buddhism" was pretty bad: take everything religious out of Buddhism and that is the way Buddhism is supposed to be.  But it could go a step further I thought after I read this writer for Huffington Post, Matthew Terrell, who contends that white people should be banned from yoga. 

Excerpt:

Seriously folks, how hard is this to understand, and how often do we have to keep repeating it: White people are continuing to recreate colonialist violence with their cultural consumption. It has to stop. The only way to end systemic racism and insensitive problematics is to force everyone to stick to their own race when it comes to the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the art we appreciate, and the life we live. Anybody enjoying a cultural product that is not there’s—whether it be a eating traditional meal or wearing a sacred garment—is guilty of cultural appropriation. This violence must be stopped! You should only be allowed to enjoy the culture of your own race.

Is this satire? Mathew Terrell doesn’t say. This is not April Fool either. Apparently, the Cultural Marxism blog believes it is real and not satire. It spends a lot of ink criticizing this nutty, Social Justice Warrior (SJW) “cultural appropriation” article.

Something is not right with the world

It has not gone unnoticed but something is not right with the world and the way we look at it and ourselves.  We are still in the throes of nihilism and are likely to stay in this chaotic world for quite some time.  The great nihilist prophet Nietzsche (1844–1900) predicted as much.  He essentially said that there is no truth to be found, “there is simply no true world.”  And this is what precisely nihilism is for us.  Moderns are not only nonbelievers of a loving or warlike God on high, but also of truth, itself (e.g., enlightenment). 

From this there can only emerge a fundamental antagonism between individuals and communities.  Everyone is right; everyone is wrong.  There is simply no way to overcome this state of affairs. And with this fundamental antagonism, reason and unreason are pitted against each other.  Even what reason means becomes increasingly obscure.  Nothing intelligible presents itself.  The world we face is wrapped up in beliefs, personal emotions, opinions, sensuality and most of all our volitions.  Reason cannot enter here since nothing can decide our choice (volition) that can be reasonable, that is, having a basis in the true or its possibility.  Maybe even worse, reason eventually turns to casuistry.

This is not to say that nihilism is everywhere.  It is not.  But we can see it in what is sometimes called “cultural Marxism” where instead of looking at the settled economic theory as the main cause of our social problems (traditional Marxism) we look, instead, at the accepted culture of racism, for example, or the role of women in a male dominated capitalist society, or we look at the treatment of gays and lesbians, etc.  This is also “identity politics” which is centered on the struggle for a political voice by those who feel they have been marginalized by society.  Again, I have to underscore there is no reason here.  The struggle/conduct is based upon unconsidered impulse instead of prudence. To use Nietzsche’s term, it is a will-to-power which I tend to think of as dominion-over-other in which the marginalized strike back with no limit on their outrage—for they see it as getting justice.  This is echoed by Nietzsche when he says, “Every drive is a kind of lust to rule; each one has its perspective that it would like to compel all the other drives to accept as a norm (WP, 267).

Bending to the accepted norm is now accepting the MSM narrative which is still very much a will-to-power.  This is also true in politics as much as it is true in Buddhism where the current narrative appears to be about the corruption of Buddhist monks and their extremism towards Muslims when for example a BBC piece asks: Why are Buddhist monks attacking Muslims?  The author seems to forget that Buddhist monks know the history of Islam.  In India alone more that 80 million people were massacred by the sword of Islam (Negationism in India, Voice of India, New Delhi, 2002, p. 34).  For Buddhist monks and nuns in Myanmar the existential threat of Muslim jihad is very real and constant. There is no such thing as compromise in Islam. The Qur’an contains at least 109 verses that call Muslims to war with non-Muslims for the sake of Islamic rule.  In the face of this, what does a Buddhist monk do? Disrobe and become a Muslim?  The simple solution is don’t listen to these Social Justice Warriors (SJWs).  Their narrative is a will-to-power which could even be said to belie a deep-seated hatred of Buddhism on their part or harbor Islamophilia as in feeling sorry for the victim who is really not a victim.  So where are we? 

We have arrived back at nihilism (oh, that vicious circle).  We really never escaped.  In Buddhism, those who want to escape from nihilism go off into the woods and hope to awaken to the unconditioned (nirvana).  Here might be found truth—most fundamental and serene.  For the rest of humanity, the social order in time decays insofar as it is working against itself.  The builders are now the takers who know no limit to their greed.  Even the cover-ups don't cover anymore; the politicians look more like race car drivers with the names of their corporate sponsors emblazoned on their jackets, while the Buddhist teachers have no idea what Buddhism is really about nor for that matter does anyone who teaches religion.  As for our institutions of learning, they only want politically correct followers.  Think ahead too much and you end up like the late French immunologist, Jacques Benveniste.

Using profit in a moral way

Let’s imagine as a Buddhist you’ve discovered a new kind of disposable plastic bag which if buried is totally biodegradable in a matter of a week.  You’re wealthy because everyone wants your new bag—every grocery and department store in the world.  This takes us to a story in one of the Jatakas where the Bodhisatta who was ploughing in his field discovers a huge bar of gold after his plough accidentally struck it.  As one mass it was too heavy for him to carry so he divided it into four manageable parts. One part to live on, another to save (he buried it), another to barter with, and the last for charity and good works.

Lets further imagine that our Buddhist with his biodegradable plastic bag fortune decided to do, essentially, what the Bodhisatta did in the past, naturally, with some modification.  He takes care of himself and his family with a quarter of his fortune, invests a quarter in his company and with the other quarter bought other companies related to his interest, and used the last quarter to help further the Dharma, taking care of many monks and nuns.  The profit after break-even resulting from his unique discovery of a perfect biodegradable plastic bag has not turned into greed (one of the three poisons).  The profit seems to be used in a moral way.  Take away the moral side and our wealthy Buddhist is heading in the direction of greed. 

One day he decides to move his company to China because the cost of labor is cheaper and the taxes are so much lower.  This would increase his profit.  He also decides not to be charitable no longer using a quarter of his profit.  He divorces his wife and only gives a small portion of his profit to her and the children.  He spends most of this money on prostitutes and living, as we say in the U.S., ‘high off the hog’.  He ends up saving no money using it for his lavish life-style, instead.  Does this appear to be greed?

We can see from the above that our Buddhist plastic bag baron has been infected by greed.  Everything he does is for the sole purpose of personally delighting in sensual joys and experiences.  He could not care less about the long term consequences of his behavior or the society he conducts his business in which he uses as a mere means to enrich himself.  Nor does he realize that greed is not a strategy let alone a business strategy.  Greed leads to further excesses which end up benefiting a small minority at the expense and harm of the huge majority.  A bird’s eye view of this from Kant’s categorical imperative: “act as if the maxim of our action were to become by our will a universal law of nature,” and we can see that corporate greed is truly a recipe for global economic disaster.

From spiritual tradition to a western Zen center

In a wit like Zen Buddhism, there is not much to talk about in Zen except its history which is a long and complex one.  Much of Zen is arguably a well constructed myth emerging from the Song dynasty as was the idea of a Zen lineage 禪宗.  Modern Zen scholarship has come a long way since D.T. Suzuki and Dr. Hu Shih.  At this point, the picture of Zen is sufficiently clear that its popularity was not a grass roots phenomenon but came from the literati.  They had the leisure to indulge in the amusing conundrums of Zen.  Still, there was a small hardcore of Zennists who kept the faith alive; who did have profound insights and tried to help people see the light, so to speak. 

Today most Zen centers rely on the Song dynasty myth of Zen with its Zen transmission from teacher to student, although the transmission was never called “Zen transmission.”  It is a Mind to Mind transmission or the same, a spiritual transmission by which the adept awakens, suddenly, to the spiritual light that moves his hands and feet to use Bodhidharma’s words.  This is not a subjective experience although I am sure some would argue that it is who are trying to minimize the importance of sudden awakening.  Zen centers today are not so much interested in awakening to pure Mind as they are in teaching seated meditation or zazen.  This is why people come to Zen.  They are hoping to learn how to meditate as a way of dealing with their worldly, psychological problems.

The Zen center experience seldom if ever speaks to the question of what Zen really is, which should be quite easy which also, I hasten to add, explains meditation.  Zen is about seeing our true nature according to Bodhidharma.  This also means that meditation is a penetration through the rind of mental constructs to see, first hand, that which is unconstructed; which is immaculate and luminous.  This last part is not for the average person who joins a Zen center because most of these kinds of people are looking to use meditation as a tool to deal with their personal problems.  They don’t believe in an absolute such as pure Mind or Buddha Mind.

The most important part of Zen is not its history but reaching kensho whereby we see our true nature, suddenly and spiritually.  But not all Zen teachers agree with this certainly not some of those like Brad Warner who practice Soto Zen.  Others in the newer Zen tradition of Sanbô Kyôdan put much greater emphasis on kensho.  It is a kind of contrast to the Western Soto tradition of just sitting believing this act alone is sufficient.  I would argue that Sanbô Kyôdan seems more on track than Soto Zen.

Conceptually constructed copies of our true nature

The idea that there can be such a thing as a constructed permanent Dharma or the same, a constructed unchanging nature or essence (svabhāva) is an important barrier that Buddhists have to overcome but often don’t.  When, for example, I think of the enlightened, permanent nature, this thought of mine is really the outcome of a constructing process.  It is a dependent origination.  Subsequently, what I’ve come up with is nothing more than a copy of the original.  In no way, then, is this copy the ultimate truth because what I’ve come up with has been conceptually constructed, a process of which I am unaware of being engaged in.

On the road to truth or the true substance, which is unconstructed, the biggest barrier is the mentally constructed truth or essence.  In the face of this, pride if not a kind of personal arrogance, gets in our way such that we will not admit to ourself that a view of the absolute is not the absolute.  Now enters the stories of the Zen masters of old whose only purpose, you could say, is getting us through the earlier mentioned barrier that we haven’t been able to overcome—beating our heads against it!  Whether such teachers actually existed is open to dispute.  Nevertheless, we can say that “Zen masters” are those special individuals who can help us to stop unconsciously positing conceptually constructed copies of the true nature in most unconventional ways.

Everyone who awakens has to get past this barrier.  Hopefully, we learn that things are not always as we conceive or imagine they are.  They are totally different!  The real work of uncovering the unconstructed truth or essence which lies beneath the constructed truth or essence, may even require more than the generous slap or shout of a Zen master who detects us conceptualizing; who tries to break this nasty habit of ours.  This goes back to what I said earlier in this blog about pride or personal arrogance.  This is a psychological problem that is—I hate to say it—an additional barrier.  Having, personally, faced people like this I can only smile.  It is a smile of, “You’re hopeless right now.”  And I see a lot of these kinds of people.  They are just, at this time in their lives, not open to the prospect of going beyond their bad habit of unconsciously positing conceptually constructed copies of the true nature.

A magic wand is lacking to help such people overcome this bad habit.  In the meantime, they occupy themselves with learning yoga (hatha yoga) or they join a Dharma center with a properly deputed Zen master or Lama.  Hopefully, the placebo effect will carry them along helping them to feel good about themselves for a while.  Still, they are wasting a valuable part of their lives.  It would be better, as I have said a number of times before, to go into retreat—face yourself and how you delude yourself.  Exhaust all of your clever presuppositions.  Go to your wits’ end.

Lacking that unborn supreme security

In the aryan (P., ariya) quest described in the Ariyapariyesana Sutta the Buddha-to-be sees the unborn supreme security from bondage which is nirvana; which is deathless and transcendent.  Here, bondage refers to the temporal world which is subject to decay and death.  But few these days take up the aryan search in a serious way.  They prefer the unaryan quest which never fails to end in decay and death.  They manage to find all kinds of excuses such as religious ones, for example, that when I die I will go to heaven.  They even find non-religious excuses, that when I die, that’s it.  Then there are all kinds of distractions from pleasure seeking to just surviving, day to day, not knowing if I am going to die tomorrow.

The modern, cultural narrative will have nothing to do with an aryan quest.  The narrative only reinforces the unaryan.  I would argue that those who maintain this narrative not only fear such a quest but this fear subconsciously drives the narrative—it’s its fuel.  The narrative they favor is the quick fix or a religion that guarantees instant salvation if you just join its ranks and obey its rules.  But this is just a sophisticated con game, one in which we are putting our Buddha-nature, that is, our potential to become enlightened in jeopardy by following various paths that are intended to delude us spiritually.

This brings up the question of evil (excess) which is latent in everyone; which if given oxygen, so to speak, will turn an individual into a self-destructive monster or worse, become a destroyer of others.  We certainly see this today in people who lack self-control being too weak to manage their own day to day life; who end up bringing themselves to ruin as a result, not to mention their families.  We also see this in the true believer, in the example of the devout Muslim, who lives for jihad; who also has no problem killing gays.  A rather dark note on this, without being committed to the aryan quest, even partially, the world for each of us will grow darker, not lighter.  Collectively, trying to escape from it, we will only plunge ourselves into a new dark age.

Adding more confusion

Modern Buddhism is somewhat like a person going deer hunting and coming back with a dead cow.  This is the norm.  It happens because our cultural presuppositions about Buddhism have little to do with Buddhism; they only add more confusion.  Buddhism arose from within the land of India.  Before he awakened becoming Buddha or a muni, Gautama was a seer/seeker in the śramaṇa tradition in which the adept has renounced the life of a householder for an ascetic spiritual life.  Thus far, all scholars can tell us there is nothing quite like this in the West.  Sure, they can go back to ancient Greece and look, but by and large the spiritual world from which Gautama became a great muni and a Buddha (one who is awakened to true reality) has no parallel in the West.

The Buddha describes the śramaṇa tradition of which he was a part of, that it consisted of those persons “who come to the knowledge of the dhamma on their own, not having heard the truths before” (Sañāgarava Sutta).  Related to this, we find in the Ariyapariyesana Sutta the newly enlightened Buddha encountering a Ajivika ascetic name Upaka.  He tells Upaka, among other things, that he is “untainted by an existent,” but also that he is “self-taught”.  Being self-taught resonates with the śramaṇa tradition which is an inward seeking and seeing: seeing the true nature of reality as opposed to being always tainted by existents; chasing one illusion after another which is what the secular, householder life is all about.

For the modern Buddhist practitioner (and I include the average Zennist) there is somewhat of a confused understanding of the śramaṇa path which was absorbed into Buddhism. This is because, for the most part, the modern practitioner has not actually—in their heart of hearts—renounced the worldly, householder life which today means having a good job, a nice home, a nice spouse, a couple of nice kids, and two nice cars in the garage (one day hopefully a BMW).  They are still holding out for a kind of spiritual compromise by which they can pursue the śramaṇa path and still, at the same time, have a family enjoying those things which come with this kind of life.

Judging the matter as a whole, we cannot serve two masters at the same time: the holy and the secular.  If we try to, we will only end up secularizing the holy, hence, the confusion and coming back with a dead cow instead of a deer.  And no matter how many hunters say their dead cow is a deer, it is still not going the change the fact that a cow is not a deer even if our teacher assures us we have a deer.  In respect to this, much of the life of a Dharma center is directed more or less towards assuring the group that becoming awakened is relatively easy.  It just takes time for our cultural presuppositions to melt away, if they ever do.

Does religious toleration have room for intolerant religions?

With the influx of Muslims into Western cultures the notion of “religious toleration” takes on a new meaning in which government permits more religious diversity with the implication that such diversity might also include religions that are incompatible with others—even hostile.  In light of this, does religious toleration also have room for intolerant religions which seem to say, my religion, which is Islam, commands me to subjugate the followers of other religions or faiths? (Let’s not forget that, historically speaking, Islam had no toleration for religions other than its own.)

Presently, there is a heightened interest if not a heated controversy as to the problems of religious toleration and with it, religious diversity.  Should, for example, the government tolerate religiously inspired hostility against the national culture and its customs in which the latter is being taken over by an alien religious culture?  Today, one gets the distinct impression that some of the new Muslim immigrants are not at all receptive to getting along with the new culture they are, supposedly, to be a part of.  In light of this, it seems rather obvious that religious toleration has its limits; that it cannot permit intolerant religions to have their way which are antagonistic to the principles of democracy and personal liberty.

Governments which fail to maintain their principles and their culture; who have become, in fact, too tolerant of religions which are, at their very core, inimical to other religions, not to mention the very culture that supports them, have all but lost their authority and respect.  The political thinking which seems responsible for this disintegration is found in “political correctness,” “multiculturalism,” and “identity politics,” all of which have no actual philosophical basis except that they are systems of personal power.  We should note that it is not so much about rule over one’s self (the Buddha’s “self is protector of the self”) but rather it is raw self-will and all this entails.

Adding to the previous, in 2010 Chancellor Angela Merkel admitted that a German multicultural approach had “utterly failed.”  But I would add something former Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurscany said, “There is not much choice. There is not, because we have fucked it up (elkúrtuk). Not a little but a lot. No European country has done something as boneheaded as we have.”  Personally, I am beginning to see that boneheadness rules us, presently (just look at the EU).  For a long time we have let the boneheads run our world.  Yes, it is all fucked up (elkúrtuk) and we are just finding out how much.

Outside but still trapped inside

By a careful study of what are called the five aggregates (pañca-kkhandhā) or the five clinging aggregates (pañca-upādāna-kkhandhā), that by clinging to these aggregates they become for us sustenance or a fuel that sustains our passions, etc., we come to realize that the aggregates are not who we really are.  Clinging to them is the origin of our suffering, in fact.  Unbeknownst to us, we are outside of their domain—yet, we seem to be completely trapped in these aggregates, unable to escape from them.

What is hard for some Buddhists to understand is that we are greater than the sum total of the five.  This is what it means to be outside of their domain.  Ultimately, we are not affected by them.  But then we are not at any ultimate level.  We are deeply entangled with these aggregates.  They are our sustenance (upādāna).  Our physical body, the first aggregate, is very important to us.  If you are a young woman you want to be attractive.  Your biological window of opportunity will be open only for a short period of time.  If you are a guy, you want to be strong and attractive.  The body is very important. In this vessel, beneath the first aggregate’s skin we have the aggregates of feelings, perceptions, volition and perhaps most important of all. our consciousness.

When we die, our consciousness will resonate and couple with another form.  We may become a human again or a super-being (deva).  But most likely we will become a human having no choice but to repeat many of our mistakes again having learned very little from the last life.  If this all seems like a trap, it is.  We are actually victims of our own blind discriminations and actions.  We have the ability to transcend the trap but the nature of the trap is its power to deceive us and keep us trapped.  And deceive us, it does.  This is why the aggregates are said to belong to Mara the Evil One, the Buddhist devil.

The teaching of these aggregates and what they really mean is important.  They also help to incapsulate the teachings of the Buddha in a very concise way. Sadly, for many Buddhists they believe the teaching about the five aggregates is meant to deny the self or atman in this example:

Bhikkhus, form is nonself [an-atman].  What is nonself should be seen as it really is with correct wisdom thus:  ‘This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self.’ Feeling is nonself... Perception is nonself...Volitional formations are nonself...Consciousness is nonself.  What is nonself should be seen as it really is with correct wisdom:  ‘This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my  self’ (S. iii. 22–23).

This is saying, very simply, that my intrinsic self is not an aggregate.  It is free of Mara’s trap.