The Zennist

Never freed from the finite

The conditioned world including our physical bodies is also our finitude which is never other than limited and marked by imperfection.  It is certainly not the unconditioned which is absolute and infinite.  Our finitude is also empty and devoid of any essential nature.  In this respect, it is like an illusion or a mirage although we believe otherwise.  Some of us are also inclined to believe that when we die we are relieved of our finitude.  But change, decay and death only serve to reveal our finitude, not end it.  The finite continues which is the meaning of samsara.  And we are doomed to bear the burden.

To end this finite life of ours, we must renounce our finitude, that is, our conditionality.  Said another way, we have to abandon our attachment to the finite which means abandon whatever does not belong to the atman (S. iii. 78).  This culminates in a spiritual seeing wherein we, directly, behold the infinite, or the same, our true essence or atman.

The problem, including the burden the modern mind puts upon itself is this, it doesn’t want to renounce its finitude.  It believes its own finitude, including the finite world is lives in, is somehow self-perfecting (today we call this ‘progress’).  It will eventually reach some point in the stream of life where all that is finite resolves itself.  Believing this is possible, and by doing so fail to renounce the finite, puts us into a horrible position where not only have we renounced the renunciation of the finite, but we have also renounced any possibility of there being an absolute which is infinite.  We are like a dog tied by a leash to a stake who keeps running around and circling around the stake, according to the Buddha.  We are never freed from the finite.

It has to fit the narrative

Even before we read a single book about Buddhism or Zen Buddhism, we are prepared to form a tacit assumption about Zen based on the smallest familiarity with the material (let’s say that you just read Alan Watts).  I have to admit we come by this habit, honestly.  It’s all around  us.  Everyday we are like fish swimming in a world of countless assumptions.  These assumptions can also create a particular narrative or representation—like a story.  The narrative can grow and become extremely complex.  It also has its authors and gatekeepers. 

One such narrative I remember is the Indo-Aryan migration narrative.  Supposedly, over 3,500 years ago the Indo-Aryans migrated to India from the north in two waves displacing the earlier populations.  This theory, by the way, was proposed in mid-19th century by German linguist and Sanskrit scholar Max Muller who, for what it is worth, never set foot in India.

More contemporary narratives include the holocaust narrative, which is always fighting a constant battle with the revisionist historians.  Closer to home, there is the American slave narrative and much later, the Critical Race Theory (CRT) narrative.  There are numerous others such as how the west was won (the cowboy narrative) or the new world order.  There is even a narrative about global warming and climate change, not to mention the oil shortage narrative.  Then, of course, there is the all familiar golden age of Zen lineage narrative with its flame transmissions and koans.

The problem that I see with all narratives is they are, firstly, stories that have turned into dogma.  With the narrative, we assume that they are true when they are anything but true.  In one respect, narratives are not built upon facts but persuasion arguments, assumptions and opinions.  Then the narrative turns into a measuring rod or better said, the judge.  The facts which come before the judge have to fit with the narrative.  The narrative doesn’t need to fit with the facts no matter how many facts refute the narrative.  A simple rule for any narrative, the facts should be ignored or thrown out if they don’t fit the narrative.

Looking at the narrative of the golden age of Zen, most of it is born during the Song dynasty (960–1279), not the earlier Tang dynasty.  Still, this golden age supposedly took place in the Tang.  Scholars pretty much know the features of Zen before it was even coined Chan Zong in the late Tang and early Song by Zen master Zongmi.  It certainly doesn’t fit the golden age of Zen narrative which is still popular with beginners new to Zen Buddhism.

Getting past being just a beginner

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. 

From doubt to awakening

Zen master Dahui once said: "A great doubt will definitely be followed by a great awakening." In other words, it is only when we feel confused, frustrated, and uncertain— Dahui's biting the iron bar—that we are making the proper effort for achieving enlightenment or satori.  To be sure, we need to give this some thought.  There is something profound here.  For one thing, if you already know the answer, what’s there to learn or to be enlightened about?  I just found this in my notes the other day.

“When we tell you that 2 + 2 = 4, we are not communicating: You already knew that. You had no uncertainty, so we transmitted no information. Information is communicated only when the receiver is uncertain about the content of the message. The more uncertain the receiver, the more potential there is for information transmission” (Roy Lachman, C. Butterfield, and Janet L. Lachman, Cognitive Psychology and Information Processing: An Introduction, 136). (Emphasis is mine.)

Zen’s so-called Mind to Mind transmission is certainly the transmission of something.  Not a material object, but more of a spiritual communication.  I will awaken, exactly, to what the Buddha awakened to.  But my awakening depends upon great uncertainty.  I have to know that I don’t know what this Buddha Mind is.  I am stumbling around confused, frustrated and in a deep pit of doubt.  As I have said before, I have to go to my wits’ end.  I even have to give up hope in sitting in formal zazen—as if this will help me to awaken to Buddha Mind.  I must even give up the belief that there is, fundamentally, no enlightenment which is still a holding on to something.

I was just thinking about a baby.  Maybe a baby has its own kind of great doubt.  With its baby doubt it is fully open to information, especially, language and what these odd sounds mean.  For the serious Zen student they need to be more like a baby than a scholar.  There is a mystery how a baby learns—from doubt to awakening as a human being.

The reports of Marxism's death are greatly exaggerated

Marxism didn’t die with the collapse of the Soviet Union.  It became cultural Marxism.  It is not even necessary for us to use the word “communism” because the outward form is impotent; its usefulness worn out.  What survives of Marxism is something other than the old critique of the capitalist economy.  Marxism has turned its gaze to the fountain of human culture, that is, to the human spirit manifested in its various outward cultural forms such as literature, art and music, for example. 

To be more exact, Marxism has turned its gaze to man’s inner being where each of us experiences; where we find our identity and with that identity become a conscious actor, who has a will, who can make choices, who finds value and meaning in certain activities which then becomes collectively expressed as culture. 

With this turn, or you could call it a sleight-of-hand move, Marxism has positioned itself to become the conscience and guardian of our identity which today we recognize as political correctness.  With the arising of political correctness comes also the arising of political power.  We believe we have the power to liberate ourselves, culturally, from the former world of the bourgeoisie (i.e., the capitalist class) which has deluded and oppressed us.  Key to accomplishing this is the narrative or the ’story’ which has the look of history; which is treated ‘as if’ true.  From this we are emboldened to begin our revolution; to correct all the wrongs of the world.

When cultural Marxism comes to Buddhism it comes in the form of Buddhist secularism which slowly gains power until it becomes the conscience and guardian of Buddhism for the West.  This is not surprising and yet, on the other hand, it is surprising for the reason that it happens within a very short space of time no thanks to the help from academia which is still under the spell of the Frankfurt School.  Out goes the old irrelevant, bourgeois Buddhism, in comes the new, secularized Buddhism which, not surprisingly, is approved by such Marxist toned Buddhist magazines as Tricycle.

If secular Buddhism had a manifesto it might say things like, “Secular Buddhism wants to help you to become more of what you already are,” or, “The Buddha’s dharma is not about belief or religion, it is about doing what you want to do.”  This kind of cognitively worthless writing can also be found in Stephen Batchelor’s book, Buddhism Without Beliefs, such as, “He [the Buddha] awoke to a set of interrelated truths rooted in the immediacy of experience here and now.”  The truth of the matter is that secular Buddhism does not want anyone to awaken to the unconditioned—it is all about staying conditioned, remaining a cog in the new nihilistic culture of ‘globalism’ which is just a nice way of saying totalitarianism.  The price of joining the globalist religious culture for Buddhism is dropping the transcendent.

Turning outward and making more poison

The body and the world we cling to is like a poison.  The more we cling to it the worse the poison becomes.  The poison I have in mind are the three poisons of moha (delusion, confusion), raga/lobha (greed, sensual attachment), and dosa (hostility).  These are three broad categories connected with our psychophysical body which afflict us and by us can be made much worse.  Zen master Torei put it this way.

Although in their fundamental nature buddhas and sentient beings are the same substance, no different, the directions of their minds are different. Buddha shine insward to illumine the basic mind, whereas sentient beings turn outward and get involved with myriad things. That is why sentient beings create greed and lust for things they desire, anger and rage towards people they dislike, and become fools by becoming congealed in their thoughts; confused and stupefied by these three poisons, they have lost their very fundamental mind.

It seems to me that many of the people I meet these days are poisoned or if you like, they’ve been blue-pilled.  It doesn’t take much for them to become hostile, because they are clinging to some deluded thought or emotion, or can’t seem to give up some kind of deep-seated attachment.   

In this election year I see more of it.  I have never seen anything like it before, I have to admit.  In fact, my neighbor of ten years called me a racist!  He seemed furious.  During our conversation, I told him that the industry of race-baiting, which is profitable for some, has been going on since the 1890s.  It was noted by Booker T. Washington who said, “Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”

I saw from my neighbor that a delusion tenaciously clung to is hard to let go of.  Moreover, it leads to hostilities, eventually.  Perhaps it is even worse with greed and sensual attachment which also leads to hostility if one has to part with their desired object.  In any event, I can see how the Civil War had its beginning.  I can only assume that nobody sat at the table and wanted to discuss how slavery might end peaceably.  But as history tends to show us those who were most invested in slavery; who made the most money from it; who had a lot to lose, didn’t want to give it up and were willing to get others to die to preserve it.  Even today, we don’t want to sit at the table and discuss the matters that divide us in an honest way.  So what goes on is a low-level cold war between individuals and groups who are poisoned. 

Perhaps the poison of delusion is most present in us when we enter the temple of Buddhism.  Having been on Buddhist chat rooms since Netscape I learned very quickly that people have somewhat unconsciously decided in advance what Buddhism is so that it meets their particular needs.  This is delusion because the self or atman has associated with a construct/concept of what Buddhism is believed to be.  But the true teaching only permits us to yoke with what is unconditioned which requires as a means, meditation.  Meditation can be thought of as the penetration into the field of conditioned reality, to pierce through it so as to return-to-self/atman—a self-awakening, in other words.

The totality of the one substance

The work of meditation culminates in seeing, directly, the substance of our thoughts, this experience being sometimes referred to as kensho.  Seeing this substance, however, is somewhat different than suppressing thoughts as if we are trying to calm them down after some unexpected crisis (imagine that you recently lost your job).  Directly seeing this substance is final insofar as we are no longer clueless as to what it was—now we see it.  It is unmistakable.  It is important to remember that seeing the substance of our thoughts and calming them down are very different.

Ultimately, strange as it might seem to the conventional mind, the external world is outwardized thought, the substance of which is also the substance of our thoughts.  If the external world were not just thought in an outward form then seeing and personally realizing the substance of our thoughts would still find us in opposition with the outward world. 

The mysterious event of awakening or being enlightened is that thought both inward, as mentation, and outward, as the shape of the world, are transcended such that the totality of the one substance is revealed for the first time.  This substance is what Chan master Huangbo was referring to when his said: “This Mind, which is without beginning, is unborn and indestructible” and Huineng before him who said: “True Reality is the substance of thoughts.”

When the Zen adept awakens to the substance of his or her thoughts they do not understand, completely, that their world is also thought.  This insight follows later in which there is a profound, magnificent illumination.  One, so to speak, is immersed in a mystical light which both engulfs all possible forms of mentation and also the external world.  This light is what brings calmness to the inward world with its anxieties, frustrations, and fears.  Also, the external world loses it power over us.  Every place is the place of enlightenment (bodhimaṇḍa).  Keeping this in mind if there is a secret mission of Buddhism it is to make this light manifest throughout the world which would cause real changes.  Unfortunately, everyone gets the cart before the horse setting their mind on wishing for this light in the form of Maitreya.  It will never happen.  All are called upon to first begin from within with the realization of the substance of thought.

The rise of intellectual dishonesty

There is an epidemic of intellectual dishonesty going on in the media and in our universities in the various schools.  So, where am I going with this?  The first thing to notice is that the intellectually dishonest person doesn’t want their hypothesis or supposed facts to be contradicted—contradictory information is suppressed.  They present their hypothesis in a subtle, biased manner hoping to persuade the reader that what they’re presenting is true, for example, the Buddha denied the atman, or Islam is a non-violent religion, or the problem of black on black violence in the African-American community is the result of longstanding white racism.  The list of examples goes on from the alleged economic benefits of free-trade to the benefits of multiculturalism in the EU in which the contradictory facts have been suppressed.

For some nine years I have been warring against intellectually dishonest Buddhist writers and scholars including their thralls who believe such rubbish.  I have received a good education on how to spot an intellectually dishonest Buddhist.  Fortunately for Buddhism, it is pretty transparent when it comes to seeing who is dishonest and who is not.  The intellectually dishonest person is always trying to revise Buddhism; to make it adapt to the modern world.  The biggest challenge for such a person is what do you do with nirvana and how is it realized? 

The more difficult problem comes when we unknowingly embrace a lie as our foundation then attempt to build an edifice upon it.  The lie unconsciously embraced soon becomes our nemesis.  Paradoxically, persuaded and fueled by the lie, we become the agent of our own downfall.  In addition, we become intellectually dishonest trying to defend what we cannot defend but still, nevertheless, feel strongly compelled to crush our adversary with ill-will.  This eventually leads to a total collapse of the individual including the edifice of lies he has created and supports by dishonest means.  Recently, we just saw this collectively expressed in the Brexit to leave the EU.  The EU, itself, was born from a number of lies.  It has suppressed all of its failures to the point where it is becoming a totalitarian regime—a new USSR.

Being intellectually dishonest is a normal way of life for most people these days who, in addition, follow the herd.  The mainstream media (MSM) including the social media are full of intellectually dishonest people.  They don’t want to sit down at the table, so to speak, and have the facts, which they have been suppressing, smack them in the face.  No, of course not.  This dishonest person isn’t prepared to see the sun of truth.  He prefers the night in which all cats are grey in addition to always being in control.

Racism made me do it: the failure of BLM and other such movements

Should Buddhists care about the movement Black Lives Matter (BLM)? Probably not insofar as BLM’s politics are strictly racial rather than moral and spiritual.  Becoming a better human being who is able to follow the Buddha’s path, hopefully, to attain nirvana in this lifetime is what Buddhism offers.  This is a spiritual path; certainly, not a political path with a racial agenda.

Buddhism is also concerned with ends and means.  Buddhists do not believe a noble end can justify the use of an ignoble means.  Look at the religion of Islam, for example, which believes the end justifies the use of ignoble and cruel means, for example, terrorism.  The present day Muslim, in order to live and become productive in the modern world, is forced to give up the aims of his violent religion.  BLM (the movement, not the organization) which is not as bad as Islam by a long shot, nevertheless, is deploying an ignoble means because it believes that ending racism warrants such confrontational actions. 

But is racism really the problem facing the African-American community?  Or is the BLM exploiting the African-American community by proclaiming that all the African-American community’s problems stem from racism?  Well over a hundred years ago Booker T. Washington (1856–1915), An African-American educator and advisor to presidents of the United States had this to say:

"There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs—partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs."

Such Black movements which claim the African-American’s problem is due, strictly, to racism do not seem to care about the consequences when one takes up such a belief.  For one thing, individual responsibility and moral behavior suffer as a result.  Any conduct, even violent criminal conduct including murder, can be blamed on racism.  But the troubles of the African-American community have little if anything to do with racism in the final analysis (but don’t tell that to a black Buddhists like Pamela Ayo Yetunde).  It has to do with the powerful influence of a particular, out of control, subculture within the African-American community which runs away from individual responsibility and moral behavior; which, in addition, doesn’t understand the golden rule; and wants to be taken care of just because they have been told they are hapless victims of racism.  This attitude is summed up in Taleeb Starkes’ two books, The Un-Civil War: Blacks vs Niggers: Confronting the Subculture Within the African-American Community and, Black Lies Matter: Why Lies Matter to the Race Grievance Industry.

From a Buddhist perspective, the problems facing the African-American community cannot be solved by going to the default position of racism.  This is a huge copout.  Change can only come about by such things as a radical improvement in child rearing practices from the third trimester to age seven followed by an educational system that has high expectations for their students in which schools will no longer be seen as feeders into the prison system.  It must be understood that our mind has enormous power over the fifty trillion cells of this body we inhabit.  Because Buddhism has understood this for some 2,500 years, Buddhist-asian juveniles as an example exhibit very little if any criminal behavior unlike subculture black juveniles (the black author Starkes calls them juviNIGGERS).  Buddhist-asian juveniles show a great deal of individual responsibility and moral behavior as compared with black juveniles who have one mantra in their head, racism made me do it.  Clearly, Buddhism works—blaming one’s failures on racism doesn’t work.  Buddhism and BLM (the movement) are worlds apart.

Mistaken liberation

One of my friends sent me a response from a Buddhist.  The last part of the response caught my attention which I thought was rather odd.

Liberation, according to the Buddha, is not meant to transcend the world, but to lift us out of our ignorance about the nature of things and how they function.

What this person is getting at is the world is suffering, impermanent, always changing, and there is no atman.  While it is true that the Buddha said this, it is not true that knowing this is liberation.  Liberation is about transcending the conditioned world.  It is about realizing what is not suffering, not changing and what is our atman which is the only refuge available for us according to the Buddha.  To be sure, there is no refuge in the Five Aggregates (our psychophysical body).  The aggregates are never other than suffering and impermanent—nor are these aggregates a refuge like the atman.

If you are a person disposed to nihilism you are going to look at Buddhism with a limited view—certainly, not the right, full view.  After you’ve searched and searched for the truth, ultimately, you conclude that this life is for nothing.  Eventually, you die—that’s it.  The big blank.  I find it difficult to talk people out of this nihilist view of life.  One of my friends is a neuroscientist who insists that consciousness is made by the brain and that when the body dies, so does our consciousness (consciousness in Buddhism is the transmigrant from this life to the next).  I certainly can’t bust down the door of this person’s mind and shoot this crazy view who has them hostage.  I am just hoping they will grow out of such a view.

Many Buddhists these days have no idea what Buddhism is really about.  Liberation consists in seeing the unconditioned which is undying.  But in order to do this we have to break our ties with the conditioned—stop clinging to it as if it were the only reality.