The Zennist

A leap into the abyss

My personal view, neither Zen nor Buddhism are likely to survive in the West except in academic libraries and in small groups.  The West is just too fucked up right now.  Most people don’t believe that there is a fundamental, animative power that is higher than the senses and ordinary reason which is the basis of Buddhism.  Sure, it’s true that we all have the capacity to see it and thus awaken provided that we are not mesmerized by the shadows that make up our everyday world which are very dark shadows that are the ideology of materialism, which now appears to tolerate Islam which is a totally violent religion (hiṃsādharma).  I firmly believe that people are, to a large extent, living in a trance-like state of mind brought about by the continuous power of suggestion that comes in many different forms.  In addition, there is no sure means of getting people out of their trance like state. 

I could say at this point, that Western culture is very effective at teaching us sustained, disturbance free attention, which is the basis of hypnotic induction.  We develop such an attentional skill at an early age which, if we are going to be open to the power of suggestion, is a prerequisite (hypnosis is the result of suggestion).

Buddhism is about achieving something much more advanced.  It is an intuitive awakening from the world illusion; an illusion that the huge majority of mankind believe to be true reality.  They are thrown into this illusion which give them, essentially, one option, reproduce your kind just like rats do.  In this regard, man is no more than an animal.  His technology doesn’t peel back the illusion so he might see, firsthand, true reality.  It only helps mankind to increase the odds of species-specific survival.  It is Darwinian not enlightenment.

The expression “invisible hand” that Adam Smith used in his book, Wealth of Nations, refers to “unintended consequences” that can’t be foreseen as a result of some policy decision.  The outcome could be good, bad, or ugly.  This is where the West is at right now.  It’s policy decisions have brought about its likely destruction—a leap into the abyss. I saw this many years ago during my own personal awakening having realized that the vast majority of people are spiritual blockheads or in Pali, puthujjana (a common expression in Buddhist discourses).  Say what is true, and they will attack you like a rabid dog.  But give them what they desire and they will treat you like a blessed god.  What the West has done, as I see it, is to build its new order on the three poisons found in the teachings of Buddhism, namely, delusion, belligerence, and greed which are inimical to awakening.  In more blunt terms, it is garbage in garbage out.

There is more to mindfulness than being aware of things

I get the sense that the translation of the Pali term sati (S., smṛti), which is often rendered mindfulness, needs some work.  Mindfulness, in this case, is somewhat of a calque, and for that reason has limited value. Here Malunkyaputta responds to the Buddha’s teaching giving his understanding of it.

On seeing a visible form, being mindful [sati/smṛti] one is not attached to visible forms. One feels it with a detached mind and does not cling to it. One lives mindfully in such a way that when one sees a visible form and even experiences a feeling, [suffering] is exhausted, not accumulated.  For one who diminishes suffering thus, Nibbana is said to be near . . .  (S. iv. 75).

At first, the sense of mindful in Malunkyaputta’s words is something like awareness, that is, being aware of objects like the table in front of me or my coffee cup.  So, one just lives their life being aware of objects, right?  Wrong.  Buddhism’s sati/smṛti like the Greek term anamnesis (ἀνάμνησις) which means remembrance, recollection is saying something else.  Remembrance or recollection is direct recollection, a special kind of recollection that doesn’t rely on the intellect or the senses.   It is direct cognition of true reality, that is, a direct remembrance or recollection of true reality which has always been present.  We just couldn’t remember this reality.  Being mindful is recollecting true reality which is prior to visible forms, feelings, etc.  One lives recollecting this primordial reality.

It is also with sati that ideations (saññā/samjñā) or percepta can be overcome which if we can’t overcome we will be unable to reach the far shore of nirvana. Sati is what works on ideations to minimize their influence, in effect, to free us from them.  The Sutta-Nipata teaches both the practice of sati (768, 771, 855, 916, 933, 962, 964, 973, 974, 975) and dissociation from saññā/samjñā (792, 802, 841, 847, 874, 886).

“Therefore a mindful person should always avoid sensual pleasures. Having abandoned them he would cross over the flood, like one who had gone to the far shore after baling out this boat’ (771).

And,

“By him not even a minute perception [saññā/samjñā] has been formed here in respect of what is seen, heard, or thought. How could anyone in the world have doubts about that brahman, who does not adopt a view” (802).

Noteworthy also:

“One who is detached from saññā/samjñā have no ties. One who is liberated through wisdom has no illusions. Those who have grasped saññā/samjñā and view wander clashing in the world” (847).

Just to conclude, mindfulness means more than just being aware.  It is the recollection of fundamental reality which allows us to distinguish root from branch.

 

What Zen really means in English

Zen has almost allowed itself to become a cult of sitters in which the central practice is sitting for various lengths of time all the way up to a sesshin 接心 (lit. connect [with] mind) which can go on for days or over a month—done all in a sitting posture.  The fault here is taking Zen literally as if Zen actually means “to sit.”  But Zen has nothing whatsoever to do with sitting. Zen is the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese character 禪 this being “Chan” which is an abbreviation of chan-na. The Chinese understood chan-na to sound very close to the Sanskirt sound of dhyāna which is often rendered in English by “meditation.”  But I disagree.

Zen or dhyana is much closer to the Latin intueri which means to look at or toward, to observe or contemplate; which is the basis of the English word “intuition,” .  According to the Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, intuition is described as “the act or process of coming to direct knowledge or certainty without reasoning or inferring”.  Hence, knowledge gained by the rational processes is bypassed for direct, unobstructed cognition.  This also includes bypassing the senses and memory.  In this regard Zen describes “direct intuition” of the absolute.  The Zens or the four dhyānas of the Buddha-to-be in the Pali Nikayas were not sitting practices but rather levels of intuition.  Switching gears, a celebrated and important Mahayana discourse of the Buddha during the formation of Zen was the Lankavatara Sutra.  Here is what it had to say abut the four Zens or dhyānas.  Notice, the sense here is not that of sitting but of intuition.

There are the Dhyana for the examination of meaning, the Dhyana practised by the ignorant; the Dhyana with Tathata for its object, and the pure Dhyana of the Tathagata.

This is my beef with “pop Zen” insofar as it tends to ignore the primary place of intuition which is about the direct observation of pure Mind or tathātā (眞如).  Sitting is not going to help us intuit pure Mind or reach the intuitive level of a Tathagata.  The emphasis that Japanese Soto Zen places on physical sitting is rather odd if not entirely superficial and misleading.  The development of intuition (Zen)—not sitting—led to Siddhartha’s awakening whereby he became Buddha.

Going beyond the world of biological fitness

Western science can only manage to look at the external world together with its properties as if such a world were ready made and really 'out there'.  This hides the fact that science is actually begging the question.  Science’s standpoint wrongly assumes human perception is veridical otherwise known as faithful depiction.  But from the Buddha’s standpoint there is, fundamentally, nothing out there.  What we perceive is māyā which is a false reality superimposed over true reality.  In our daily lives, the percepta are nothing more than mind based constructions.  But for most people it’s all quite real and sufficient. 

Mystics look within or in more modern terms, they are looking at the pixels on the monitor screen and in particular the programming.  What the mystic sees as the world which common mortals take to be real, and take for granted, is really a kind of virtual reality world, a world whose aim is biological fitness (the more fit an organism the more it is able to survive and to reproduce its kind). 

Everything the common person perceives through the body’s senses takes place within the biological fitness world which is not the true world—not even close.  Buddhism never tires of saying that the world we construct through the five skandhas, namely, physical form, feeling, perception, volitional formations, and consciousness are false and misleading.  It is not our atman (our true nature); it is rather anatman, that is, something we are not.

This leads to a troubling question for the common mortal hooked on and enclosed in the world bubble of biological fitness.  “If as Buddhism contends, the constructed world images we see through our five skandhas are not, ultimately, real then what are they good for?” The answer is still biological fitness.  That is what they are good for.  More pertinent, if you wish to become awakened you have to put aside the importance of biological fitness.  Rather it is something to transcend not glom onto as if to salvage in some way.  When Prince Siddhartha renounced the world leaving his wife Yasodhara and his son Rahula, meaning “the fetter,” he was renouncing the importance of biological fitness which for him was secondary to discovering the unconditioned: the true essence of reality.  

Of the better way of looking, it is looking within.

The way of discovery

A university education really boils down to sticking with the past—don’t rock the boat of long established theories.  In light of this, a university does not teach students how to discover new truths which still lie hidden, from truths about physical reality to mysticism, that is, knowing my true nature.  A university can teach verification and even this is not without problems since scientific verification rests upon the fallacy called, affirming the consequent, also known as the converse error.  Universities can teach history.  But history is always being revised after other primary sources are found.  After we graduate, we will not discover any hidden truths about nature or ourselves if we don’t have a pioneer spirit setting out to make new discoveries which may supersede what we have previously learned in school.

Being a person who likes to discover new things, one is never content with settled theories which, after all are only theories!  Our pioneer will soon find that a journey of discovery is not a pleasant undertaking.  One needs to be prepared for battle, in other words.  The Buddha in fact said: “The way which goes against the stream is a profound one, very difficult to see.  Those who are afflicted with passion will not see it; they are enveloped by a heavy darkness.”  The truth is this: most everyone is enveloped in darkness including our leaders.  It is another example of the blind leading the blind.  Those who are looking to discover light in the land of darkness, eventually, have to put away much of their education about darkness being the highest truth.

In the example of Zen, in order to observe, directly, our true nature, a person must first of all learn to become their own subject.  Our true nature is not a publicly discernible phenomenon.  Thus, discovery must be turned inwards if we hope to comprehend what Zen master Bassui had discovered when he said:  “Your Mind essence is not subject to birth or death.  It is neither being nor nothingness, neither emptiness nor form-and-color.”  This, to be sure, is a difficult path of discovery—one of the most difficult insofar as the path is more about clearing away our delusions and our defense of those precious delusions which we greedily hang onto.

Meaning 101

That our lives should have meaning is not generally understood in this present day and age.  In the scientific world view meaning does not exist such as, “What is the purpose of this life I have been thrown into?” and “Who or what, fundamentally, am I?’  Such questions are outside of the scope of modern science which appears to be, at times, a defender of materialism, trying to crush anything outside of this limited world view.  According to this view humans are more like complex biological machines.  Their purpose is very basic.  They are to reproduce then eventually die—that’s it.

Emotional states which individuals often experience such as boredom, depression, and feeling dissatisfied, have no known etiology we are told.  It just happens to all humans.  But does anyone really believe this?  Such a bleak, cold vision as the modern vision, in fact, may well explain why we become bored, depressed, and feel dissatisfied, especially, to the point of absolute despair as death approaches.  I hasten to inject, that no one is immune to this not even the physicians, psychologists, and psychotherapists.

Let’s face it, our modern culture doesn’t have a theoretical framework by which to provide meaning for people.  Just buy toys, play games and have sex.  But then it only gets worse.  Enters, eventually, our “midlife” crisis in which meaningless begins to grip us.  At this point, for some of us, our search for meaning becomes more urgent.  More alcohol is used.  More drugs are used which is an absurd methodology as if heightened sensations equals meaning!  Are you fucking kidding?

But truth be told, if man chooses to live by bread alone life for him loses, eventually, all meaning.  What is most fundamental for us is what animates us; which we are constantly confusing with the animated, i.e., the bread.  The animative transcends our limited and unsatisfactory, distorted empirical realm.  Here and only here is meaning to be found and freedom from despair.

Overcoming the antithesis

We understand the notion of “antithesis” more as a contrast-to-self which the observer has come up against (anti); which is an impassable position (thésis).  This position in Buddhism is the entire conditioned world including the psychophysical body that we are coupled with.  Taking this a step further as related to meditation, the observer is really seeking direct gnosis of itself by trying to pass through the antithesis (i.e., what is not itself or anatman) such as mental constructs, ideations, fluid internal images. amorphous emotions, memories, etc. 

For Buddhism, the antithesis the observer faces is the psychophysical organism (the five skandhas) together with its constructed, sensory world.  No matter in which direction the observer turns there is an impasse.  The antithesis is a barrier.  In this regard, the antithesis is also antagonistic, hence, suffering or duhkha for the observer.

I should mention that the explicit notion of antithesis is not mentioned in Buddhism or at least it doesn’t seem to appear in the way the West understands it.  However, it is implied.  Also, I think there is a solid basis for the introspective observer (the atman) which is dissatisfied with the antithesis it faces which is the conditioned psychophysical organism including the sensory world constructed through it.  The Buddha teaches his followers many, many times that atman is not to be identified with the five skandhas which are synonymous with suffering and impermanence.  Most Buddhists ignore the importance of this point having been stung by the venom of anatman believing that the Buddha was an atman-denier for having maintained that the psychophysical organism is not the atman!  In doing so, they miss all of Buddhism!

From the big picture looking down, the antithesis is heuristic which means Buddhism is neither world denying nor world affirming.  The antithesis serves mainly as a useful means for the atman by which it discovers itself leaving its innate ignorance rising to omniscience.  The antithesis is really a transitory configuration of the thésis which further implies that Buddhism is fundamentally monistic.  The samsaric configuring is such that atman cannot see itself in its own right.  But if the configuring halts for a split second atman meets with itself in which all distinction is transcended. 

The wise Jakob Böhme once said, “For in the one only substance wherein there is no division there can be no knowledge.” From this I saw the absolute necessity of the antithesis and its vital role which was expanded later in Mahayana and Vajrayana.  I hasten to add one more point, the anataman is the antithesis which is overcome by the atman.  This for me is why Buddhism today is not really Buddhism at all but merely a counterfeit copy.  Those Buddhists who fight with me, trying to absolutize anatman are really, without knowing it, defending materialism which I dare say is a philosophy of fools.

Some concluding thoughts.  The only way to overcome the antithesis is by Buddhism or a Buddhist related teaching in the example of Vedanta (advaita) or Yoga (Patañjali).  Certainly Plotinus must also be included as well as others perhaps even Dionysius Areopagita, for example.  What is central here is henosis/theosis which is really the self returning to itself having overcome its antithesis.

The ancient psychotherapists

Psychotherapy has been around for thousands of years.  It is not a recent development of modern culture if we define psychotherapy as the treatment of mental distress.  Shamans, medicine men and women, and sorcerers were psychotherapists.  Aśvaghoṣa refers to a Buddhist monk as "manaso bhiṣak,” that is, a physician of the mind, or if you prefer a psychotherapist.  These psychotherapists used herbs, mantras, and most of all, used the placebo effect to effect healing.  Unlike Western psychotherapy, traditional psychotherapists didn’t divide the spiritual from the rational or mind from body.  The traditional psychotherapist we could even say, understood that the health of our cells largely depends upon epigenetic factors.  For example, bad water and stress are not good for cells.

Western psychotherapy is mainly stuck in 19th century physical and biological models which it refuses to leave.  It totally ignores the spiritual side of traditional psychotherapy in the treatment of mental distress, one obvious example being the placebo effect and meditation.  To this day, Western psychotherapy still employs ECT (Electroconvulsive therapy) which is done under general anesthesia for people severely depressed or suicidal.  Some people will undergo several hundred treatments which attests to ECT’s inability to cure the problem, adequately!

Besides traditional psychotherapy as a means to heal common mental distress, there were the ancient mystical traditions found in the Vedas, the Upanishads, Buddhist and Yoga sutras, that go back thousands of years.  They were deeply concerned with longterm human suffering, that is, human suffering as being entrapped in the cycles of birth and death.  They proposed that such suffering can be reduced and even alleviated by understanding karma and by overcoming ignorance of one’s true nature.

One serious error the West makes when judging ancient mystical traditions is to confuse them with the Western notion of religion which is centered on an all powerful creator god.  In fact, they are worlds apart.  The ancient mystical traditions seek to awaken to the hidden true nature that is fundamental in each living being whereas religion is concerned, chiefly, with obedience to a deity, winning its favor, and seeking its aid.  The ancient mystics divided human beings into two distinct groups, those capable of understanding the essence of mysticism and those who couldn’t.  Presently, the West appears to be gradually succumbing to a demonic (S., asura) religion which is Islam in which rebirth is forever, unhappy. (The Buddha only taught gods and humans—not asura possessed beings.)

A new dark age?

There is very little correspondence between Buddhism and modern culture.  Modern culture, in this day and age, is still under the spell of attaching, unconsciously, to outer reality, i.e., phenomena, looking for that pot of gold.  This is a grievous mistake because being fixed, solely, on the outer as if this is where truth lies puts us under the unconscious power of the raw Id which is a mass of formless life impulses which man, as a potentially thinking and spiritual creature, has not yet mastered which acts as a barrier to comprehending true reality as the Buddha did.  As a result of placing all of our eggs in the basket of external reality, we may come to a place in time where this Id attains some measure of autogenesis which will appear to be unstoppable.

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age" (H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu).

As I blog this, I realize that it is easy to pooh-pooh my words.  But this is where science is weakest; where it cannot go since there is no instrument at its disposal for measuring the collective will of man as to how far man as erred, by pursuing the outer form of reality looking for truth.  History, of course, informs us to a degree of our failures provided that we are looking at primary sources and not propaganda.  If we are trained to look for the rise of a culture which is at the beginning stages of manifesting the Id—or one already in this hell—it is easy to find the evidence. 

One such example is Liberia which has experienced cannibalism. A brief history, Liberia was founded in 1847 as a homeland for a “movement back to Africa,” a place of freedom for former American slaves.  The Liberian constitution was drafted in Washington, and the capital city Monrovia was named after President Monroe.  All of this has collapsed.  And more will  happen all over the world simply because we have put all value on the outer man—not the inner man.  It is as if some demonic power were running everything.  Another example, the emerging globalist culture in the EU and the U.S. where the rise of the Id is occurring.  Just look at the religion they now support and nurture.  It is Islam!  But why Islam with its 1400 year history of putting, it is estimated, 270,000,000 people to the sword?  As a Buddhist I am appalled.  This is madness.

But this is where we are, and Buddhism is not saving the day.  It has very little impact on modern culture save a few people sitting in zazen.  It is not prepared to fight Islam and the globalists who fund it and turn a blind eye to its terrorism.  Even the most cursory reading of Islam doesn’t paint a nice picture.  The globalist are moved by a strange, dark power which is making Buddhism almost irrelevant.

Under the power of delusion

This is Zen master Zongmi’s ten levels of delusion with a dream simile in parenthesis.  We need to keep in mind that to be under the power of delusion means that we pursue the unreal in the mistaken belief that it is the real and worth pursuing.

1.  All sentient beings possess the true mind of original awakening. (Wealthy nobleman, endowed with both virtue and wisdom, is inside his own house.)

2.  Having not yet met a good friend as a guide, inevitably from the outset there is non-awakening. (He falls asleep in his own house and forgets who he is.)

3.  As a natural consequence of non-awakening, thoughts arise. (The dream that arises as a natural consequence of sleep.)

4.  Because thoughts have arisen, there is a seer lakṣaṇa. (Thoughts in a dream.)

5.  Because there is a seeing, an organ body and world falsely manifest themselves. (In his dream he sees himself in another place in a condition of poverty and suffering, and he sees all sorts of likable and dislikable phenomenal visayas.)

6.  Unaware that the organ body and world have arisen from one's own thoughts, one grasps them as real existents—this is called Dharma grasping. (While in the dream he inevitably grasps the things he sees in the dream as real things.)

7.  Because one has grasped dharmas as really existent, just at that very moment one sees a distinction between self and others— this is called self-grasping. (While dreaming, he inevitably believes that the person who is in another place in a condition of poverty and suffering is his own person.) 

8.  Because one clings to the notion that the four elements of earth, water, fire, and air constitute a self-body, naturally one comes to love visayas that accord with one's feelings, wanting to adorn the self, while one comes to despise those visayas that are contrary to one's feelings, fearing that they will vex the self. Feelings of stupidity make all sorts of calculations and comparisons. (In his dream he also desires agreeable events in the other place and hates disagreeable events.) 

9.  From these come the creation of good and bad karma. (In his dream he either steals and murders or practices kindness and spreads virtue.) 

10.  Once karma comes into existence, it is impossible to escape. It is like a shadow trailing a form or an echo trailing a voice. And so one receives a form of karma bondage suffering in the six rebirth paths. (If in his dream he steals and murders, then he is apprehended, put into a wooden collar, and sent to prison. On the other hand, if he practices kindness and obtains rewards, he is recommended for office and takes his position.)

Source:   The Zen Canon: Understanding the Classic Texts, ed. Dale S. Wright and Steven Heine (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 31–32