Thinking about Buddhism (and I include Zen), in the sense of a process of intellectual examination or investigation is something we do as beginners, and do it for a long time if we are serious beginners. The books we read are often written by people who have made a thorough, intellectual examination of Zen Buddhism in the example of D.T. Suzuki and others. Their perspective is important, even persuasive but it is not an awakening for us, far from it. We are still caught up in the process of an intellectual examination which we might be unaware of. So what is really going on short of awakening? I think the following hits the nail on the head.
"What we actually do instead is to take up hypothetically a higher standpoint— that is, a standpoint from which it seems as if we could "comprehend" the incomprehensibility" of the morally unconditioned. It is clear, however, that such a merely hypothetical reflection can never lead to objective knowledge” (Heiner Bielefeldt, Symbolic Representation in Kant's Practical Philosophy).
For the sake of discussion, if we think of ‘awakening’ as ‘objective knowledge’ a merely hypothetical reflection is not the same as awakening. It can’t lead us where we need to go. Thinking as beginners, we are always taking up higher standpoint, but only hypothetically. This means that we are only imagining a reality—not awakening. It is also an ‘as if’ comprehension, not an awakening seeing, directly, our true, unconditioned nature.
If we don’t see that this is what we are doing as beginners we are doomed to repeat it again and again. Oh sure, we can believe that our ‘as if’ comprehension is the real satoric event. But as we look deeper, something inside of us tells us that we have not comprehended the incomprehensible, that is, we have not actually awakened. Breaking out of this pattern, needless to say, is something a beginner has to do to get past being just a beginner.
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