The Zennist

The value of koan practice

Just a guess on my part, as far as the practice of Zen goes, koans seem to be very popular whereas zazen is kind of a labor: something physical that you feel you have to do which is not all that interesting at times. 

Supposedly helpful to our understanding of Zen, I am not that sure that koans are all that beneficial or necessary.  Before the Song dynasty (960–1279), koans as a specific Zen literary tool were not in use.  There were no doubt personal interviews and sermons but nothing in the way of the koan as we now know it.

If the koans that we have are somewhat like snapshot of a face-to-face interview between a student, who may have walked many miles, and a Zen master, the interview can’t be all that valuable for latter day Zennists.  A lot of personal context is missing such as the depth of the student’s learning at the time of the interview.  Here Bankei (1622–1693) presents the problem:

"When worthy Zen masters of the past dealt with those who came to them, every word and every movement were appropriate to the moment. It was a matter of responding to their students and their questions face-to-face. They had no other purpose in mind. Now, there's no way for me to tell you whether that was necessary, or helpful, or not."

Koans, to be sure, are ‘head scratchers’ but are they all that helpful or necessary to Zen?  Zen in its proper context is about seeing our true nature but how does this relate to koans?  Without further instruction by a competent Zen master on how koans work, to help the student attain their true nature, we are more or less working in the dark.

The attraction that koans have can even pose a danger for the average student.  In other words, koans can be taken the wrong way.  Granted, if we awaken to our true nature it doesn’t take us long to see the design of koans and how they skillfully demand of us kensho in order to understand them. 

This is so with the koan, Nansen Cuts the Cat in Two.  Nansen stopped the fight over a cat by the monks in the eastern and western halls by seizing the cat then demanding the monks say the ‘right word’ that would save the cat from being killed.   This is really a demand for awakening to our true nature.  If a single monk actually saw their true nature they would know, instantly, what to do showing the expression of Mind essence.  None could.  Later than evening when Joshu returned Nansen told him about the incident.  Joshu simply removed his sandals, put them on his head and walked out.  In effect, Joshu demonstrated the ‘right word’.  What is unfortunate about koans like this, we might wrongly assume that Joshu’s response was absurd—and this is the right word.  But it wasn’t absurd anymore than when the Buddha simply held up a flower and blinked transmitting the Dharma to Mahākāśyapa who just smiled.

If I were to put this same koan into a more transparent form which the readers are used to, it might be easier to see what is really going on.  Nansen is really demanding of the monks, demonstrate the animative principle and you will save the cat.  For Joshu it was easy to demonstrate this mysterious principle.  He simply put his sandals on his head and walked out—and let me add—the Buddha simply held up a flower and blinked transmitting the Dharma to Mahākāśyapa who just smiled.  (Emphasis is mine.)  What makes this even more true is to realize or awaken to this true nature, that is, the animative principle which is luminous.

 

Absolutely alone with nature

Today with smartphones we are abstractly connected with every other smartphone including a huge pool of information.  This connection can benefit us or not.  It is a unique matrix unlike the matrix of nature.  Nature, on the other hand, remains for us quite mysterious.  Our Earth, according to the Vedas, is the goddess (devi) Pṛthvī meaning the “vast one.”

The goddess Pṛthvī appears in early Buddhism as being the Buddha’s witness for enlightenment.  There is a particular Buddhist statue which shows the Buddha with the Pṛthvī touching mudra.

I have always sensed, personally, a great value in being alone with nature when I lived for a long time in the California foothills which are usually dry and hot with creatures like scorpions, rattlesnakes, coyotes, owls, quail, and deer to name just a few.  The beauty of the foothills is a different kind of beauty than living around the redwoods or being in Yosemite.   It is almost frightening and somewhat barren which hardly counts as beauty!  Still, in these foothills, I managed to first set foot in the precincts of pure Mind one dark night at my wits’ end when I had dropped all of my presuppositions.

About two years ago I came across the American mystic Walter Russell.  He said something about nature that caught my attention:

“You may command Nature to the extent only in which you are willing to obey her. You cannot intelligently obey that which you do not comprehend. Therefore I also say, ask of Nature that you may be one with her and she will whisper her secrets to you to the extent in which you are prepared to listen. Seek to be alone much to commune with Nature and be thus inspired by her mighty whisperings within your consciousness. Nature is a most jealous god, for she will not whisper her inspiring revelations to you unless you are absolutely alone with her.”

How true!  Early Buddhism was keen on forest-dwelling, that is, living absolutely alone with nature.  And then it is a matter of listening—really listening.

The extra-academic hermit

Some academic papers on Buddhism and Zen are helpful, some are not.  I have found a few that are—but just a few.  Many papers I have read are laden with too much jargon; some papers need to be edited much better, and most all of them are intra-academic, that is, they are addressed to other academics which are almost incomprehensible to non-academics. 

If I were a Buddhist hermit in retreat at China's Zhongnan mountain range, most academic papers on the subject of Buddhism would have no appeal to me because my way of looking at the discourses of the Buddha is extra-academic; I am trying to achieve direct intuition of what all these discourses keep pointing to. 

The odds of awakening to my true nature might be much better if I were a Buddhist hermit instead of an academic who has translated a number of important works.  For the hermit reading and studying scripture (buddhavacana) also demands the proper meditative experience (pratyakṣa) without which he is stuck with only baseless faith to rely upon.  The proper meditational experience is meant to resonate with the discourses of the Buddha to confirm the teaching, transcending faith.  An experience that doesn’t is not authentic.  And many are not authentic.

In the case of Zen, the satoric experience answers all the koans since koans are but the expression 用 of essence.  Koans are something that the academic mind has had very little success with—it has certainly given us no answer to a koan.

There will always be somewhat of a broad ditch between the academic understanding of Buddhism and Zen, and let us say, the hermit’s understanding and how they arrive at awakening.  The tougher path is the hermit's.  Becoming a Buddhist academic is far easier.

The mystic enters through lowly doors

If I were asked to characterize myself I would say that I am an American mystic.  I don’t have a scholarly interest in Buddhism or Zen which tends to dwell on the small, fine details in a attempt to get to the big picture or somewhere close.  This is somewhat like believing the more perfect we can make the translation relative to the translator’s view the closer we will get to the truth of what the text is really trying to say.

For me, in my mid-twenties, it became clear that Buddhism, including Zen, rested on a unique mystical experience—I was certain of it.  Achieving this mystical experience was critical especially in the study of Zen.  The academic world could not get near it.  Nor could the best translations bring a person this experience.  One of course one could fake this mystical experience or just presume they have had it at some point in the example of the Lotus Sutra.

“Also, Shariputra, these monks and nuns say they have already attained arhathood, that this is their last birth, that they have attained ultimate nirvana, and so they do not have the further aspiration to seek unexcelled, perfect awakening. You should know that these are all highly presumptuous people.”

Others might feel emboldened to dismiss awakening altogether like Dogen who said:

"Seeing the mind and seeing the nature is the animated activity of non-Buddhists." (Sansuigyo, SBGZ, vol 1, p. 219, BDK Edition).

Still, no one can change the fact that the huge bulk of Zen literature rests upon a special kind of mystical experience which is what makes Zen so unique and attractive.

In my own case, I was obsessed with seeing my “pure Mind” which I was convinced was to be found within my own noggin.  Luckily for me I didn’t stop until I saw it.  From that intuition and seven years later I had a profound mystical experience with Buddhas, something right out of the Lankavata Sutra  called the “light of Mahayana”(mahāyana-prabhāsa) which was responsible for putting me where I am today, especially, this blog.

America has had it share of mystics such as Walter Russell.  I can also appreciate the fact that  Americans, as a general rule, care more about material things than spiritual.  Maybe when he was still alive Walter Russell was somewhat popular.  But today, very few have heard of him because very few care about spirit or God anymore (Russell said “God is the invisible, motionless, sexless, undivided, and unconditioned white Magnetic Light of Mind”).

I cannot change my stripes.  I was born to become a mystic which is an onerous task given that I have to contend with people who are skeptical of the place of mysticism.  This probably implies that I don't get along with academic types.  Despite this, I still continue.

The secret of breath meditation?

I used to think that following the in-breath and the out-breath during meditation wasn’t enough information as explained in the Ānāpānasati Sutta (M. iii. 78–79).  Something was missing.  Then I came to the radical idea that the “breather” is antecedent to the breath itself.  This view for me produced a profound shift in meditation.  I could actually begin to sense a spiritual separation from the breathing.  Since breathing is conditioned and is connected with the five aggregates (skandhas) of physical shape, feeling, perception, volitional formations and consciousness it dawned upon me that Ānāpānasati Sutta might work at helping us detach from the aggregates especially the defilements. 

Recently, I found this passage which seemed to throw more light on the breathing and the place of the breather which is the attā/ātman (often translated by the English word self, a noun).

“What, Rāhula, is the air element? The air element may be either internal or external. What is the internal air element? Whatever internally, belonging to oneself, is air, airy, and clung-to, that is, up-going winds, down-going winds, winds in the belly, winds in the bowels, winds that course through the limbs, in-breath and out-breath, or whatever else internally, belonging to oneself, is air, airy, and clung-to: this is called the internal air element. Now both the internal air element and the external air element are simply air element. And that should be seen as it actually is with proper wisdom thus: ‘This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self.’ When one sees it thus as it actually is with proper wisdom, one becomes disenchanted with the air element and makes the mind dispassionate towards the air element” (M. i. 422–23).

It’s pretty straightforward, as with all the aggregates we also have to dis-identify with the breath.  The in and out breath are not my ātman. Thus we become disenchanted with the air element which makes the mind dispassionate towards the air element.  And here, perhaps, lies the secret of breath meditation.

The West at its core has become evil

Sorry, but I do not see Buddhism resonating that much in the West.  In China, Buddhism appears to be making a remarkable comeback in which true individual liberty is the outcome which stems from Buddhism’s critique of the finite nature of the world and man’s propensity for evil by which he is bound down to suffering.  Buddhism for China thus proves to be superior to the Marxist’s limited view of the world.  It will, eventually, bury it.

What hampers the West is that at its core it has become, fundamentally, evil.  In this regard, we do great evil to both ourselves and to others without being aware of it (e.g., the ongoing threat of nuclear war).  In doing so, we keep ourselves shrouded in ignorance/unawareness so that any chance of transcending it is just a dream—some would say, an impossible dream.  We never escape this subtle darkness. 

Over time, we eventually transform our everyday world into a place of evil, ironically, all in the name of goodness and peace—and yes, progress!

I would agree that sometimes we know when we are victims of evil but more than often the greatest evil we gladly follow thinking it to be principled and good until at the end we become smitten by it.

A perfect example is medical errors (i.e., iatrogenic deaths) which it is estimated kills 250,000 Americans each year making such errors the third leading cause of death.  The medical profession is telling us that we have to tolerate these figures in order to save lives.  Another example, is our appetite for wars.  The U.S. alone is engaged in something like 134 wars but has never declared war since 1942 which means there are no wars that it is engaged in!  Now we are ramping up for a nuclear war with Russia for reasons it would take a team of philosophers many years to figure out!

Trying to stay sane and at the same time avoid participating in an evil world is almost an impossible task given that we can find acceptable rationalizations for all kinds of marginally bad behavior or totally evil behavior especially at the very top.  Those at the top are, in many respects, psychopathic. 

Given this condition what, perhaps, keeps Buddhism from spreading is that Buddhism cannot be understood by those who are under the influence of evil—it makes no sense to them.  Even when Buddhism, under an academic light, is explained, it is turned into some kind of archeological curiosity.  The vital principle upon which Buddhism is based, is all but ignored.  

In the West’s efforts to understand Buddhism it first must be made evil!  Popular main stream Buddhism is not Buddhism at all anymore than a porcelain cat is a real cat.  The same is with popular main stream Zen.  You may enter the temples of Buddhism but much of what you will learn is quite external to Buddhism.  Your good experience in a number of years will eventually wear off.  You're back in the good old evil world of the past struggling anew to make a living and to make ends meet.

Not wanting to see the big picture

I have certainly investigated many Buddhist and Zen chat forums over these many years to see where people are coming from.  The vast majority of people who contribute to these forums don’t see Buddhism or Zen Buddhism, in particular, as a path leading to the transcendent where there is an actual, direct intuition of the absolute.

If one has seriously read Buddhist and Zen literature it is unambiguous that awakening is called for, especially, when it comes to Zen.  But not everyone sees it this way because not everyone when they read the discourses of the Buddha or Zen masters want to see the big picture which is awakening, i.e., becoming buddha.  The typical response is this: 

All beings are already enlightened.  There is no big picture, no realization, no awakening.

First of all the Buddha never said this.  The huge majority of Westerners who have taken up Buddhism and Zen Buddhism believing such nonsense will ultimately fail to see a path leading towards illumination.  It is not because awakening is so difficult.  The reason is they are stubborn.  They don’t want to change. In light of this, one is forced to convince them they are wrong.  And how far does that go?  Not very far.

Nor is it a question of being nice treating students like they were toddlers.  This doesn’t work either.  If you dumb down Buddhism and Zen you don’t have Buddhism or Zen anymore.

Just recently I met this person in the same spot three times who was riding a moped.  I thought to myself, this is important.  After we had pizza a few times he talked about the light radiating out of me and how much he enjoyed it.  With the exception of a few people who visit this blog who know what I mean, it is a rare occurrence to meet someone who enters the stream this fast.  Anyone who is deluded, hateful and greedy cannot sense this light.  This, by the way, is the way Buddhism and Zen are taught or should be taught, including Vajrayana.  Without this connection the teacher has, essentially, nothing to give and the student will receive nothing in return.

The oppressed and the oppressor

It maybe true to say that there is nothing in Marxism which specifically defines “cultural Marxism,” insofar as Marxism is more of an economic critique of the economy of the 19th century bourgeoisie.  Nevertheless, Marx saw the need for a revolution since Europe was in the throes of an economic crisis brought about, perhaps to some extent, by the bourgeoisie.  Given this condition, Marx saw the need to create the greatest antagonism between the proletariat (the working-class) and the bourgeoisie.  In other words, Marx wanted the proletariat to have power over its oppressors which was to be accomplished by a revolution.

And here, I think, is the way we come to “cultural Marxism” and its problem.  Oppression, its cause, arises from the dominant culture (strike bourgeoisie).  The oppressed (strike proletariat) are victims of the dominant culture.  The dominant culture must be overthrown by the oppressed which then gradually shifts power from the oppressor to the oppressed who then become new oppressors. 

The italicized portion is the problem that the operational logic of cultural Marxism faces.  It becomes revolution for the sake of revolution that seems to never end because the dialectic is inadequate. 

For the oppressed, truth is in the hands of the oppressor which is external to the oppressed.  Without being conscious of it, the transformation of the oppressed into a new kind of oppressor is to be sought for.  What advantage the oppressed saw in the former oppressor, he has now personally realized in the example of the Communist revolution of 1917 which turned out to be far worse than the Tsarist autocracy.  It accomplished nothing except destruction.  Revolution for the sake of revolution is, fundamentally, meaningless, hence, nihilistic.  The cultural Marxist is as dangerous as the older Communist.  They only see the world in terms of oppressed and oppressor.

For Buddhism, the lens of cultural Marxism sees it as a religion supported by the oppressors that needs to be radically changed getting rid of anything mystical or other-worldly which leads to a form of religious oppression (e.g. aryan vs. an-aryan).  Stephen Batchelor writes about a new Buddhism:

"Instead of authoritarian, monolithic institutions, it could imagine a decentralized tapestry of small-scale, autonomous communities of awakening. Instead of a mystical religious movement ruled by autocratic leaders, it would foresee a deep agnostic, secular culture founded on friendships and governed by collaboration" (Buddhism Without Beliefs).

But here again this particular view leads to another form of oppression, let’s call it oppression by secularism and secular consciousness.  By the way, one cannot read Stephen Batchelor and not sense something hidden, yet oppressive in his writings.  Like most of his kind he doesn’t wish to read Buddhism in its own context but only through a lens that seems more like the lens of cultural Marxism.  Thus, a revolution is born as a result, with Buddhists fighting Buddhists.  From this, one could almost summarize that cultural Marxism is totally diabolical.  In fact some have speculated on this, for example, Henry Makow, with his book, Satanic Possession: There Is Only One Conspiracy.

The materialist jerks

It would not be an exaggeration to say that the modern world has fallen or has started to fall under the spell of materialism with the addition of consumerism.  Who we are or how we define ourselves depends, largely, on material things and conditions, including the intractable belief that there are no immaterial things (it’s almost like saying if there were truly immaterial things I wouldn’t be such a materialist-consumer). In addition, who we are also depends on our power and capacity to consume—that takes money. 

Many of us would prefer not to be labeled as materialist-consumers.  This is not my raison d'être, in other words.  Yet our closets, attics, basements and rental storage spaces tell a different story.  We hang onto things—lots of things.

This sort of reminds me of the 1979 movie, The Jerk, in which Steve Martin played Navin R. Johnson a kind of idiot savant who was the Jerk along with Bernadette Peters who played his wife.  In one scene, after making a fortune then losing it, Navin apparently gives up his materialism.  He declares, “I don't want stuff … I don't need anything,” while leaving the room in his pajamas. But then he spies an old familiar ashtray.  “Except this ashtray, and that's the only thing I need is this.”  As he continues to walk to the door he notices other familiar items.  “Well, and this paddle game and the ashtray is all I need. And this, this remote control; that's all I need, just the ashtray, paddle game, and this remote control.”

To reiterate, of course, almost everyone dislikes the label of being called a materialist or to a lesser extent, a consumer.  Even billionaire philanthropist David Rockefeller who is 99 and has undergone six heart transplants as he clings to the psychophysical body claims to have given most of his money away whose current net worth is around 3.1 billion USD.

And then we have the Casey Neistats of the world, with their view: But the reality is no matter how much crap I buy, it doesn’t really move the needle on my happiness or sense of fulfillment.  True enough, Casey.  However, the needle that is always being moved is one of low grade happiness believing that real happiness and fulfillment is just around the next corner any time you want it—but not now since you are into low grade happiness.  But real happiness and fulfillment is never around the corner. 

The Buddha’s kind of happiness and fulfillment is orthogonal to the horizontal world of biological fitness.  The real problem for the huge majority of mankind, including David and Casey, is their hardcore disbelief in the immaterial world of absolute Mind so that they feel no need to pursue a life dedicated to seeing it.  So what is left is buying and enjoying expensive toys.  These days, few are like the young Siddhartha who renounced a kingdom of great wealth.

Peeling the pearl

Initial awakening to our true nature is followed by gradual cultivation which is the gradual removal of the dross which made our true nature seem absent.  This is why Zen master Heze Shenhui (684–758) said that sudden enlightenment is to be followed by gradual cultivation.  Entrance into ultimate reality is always sudden as a result of direct intuition. 

After intuition follows the cultivation of what we have intuited.  One doesn’t gradually enter into their true nature as is 5% now, maybe another 6 or 7% a year or so later and so on. About gradual cultivation, Zen master Mengshan 蒙山 said:

“This matter is like peeling a pearl. The more you peel it, the more radiant it gets. The brighter it gets, the purer it gets. Peeling a single layer is superior to several lifetimes of gongfu [effort].”

But first you have to find your great pearl!  One must open up many, many oysters until you find the one with a most priceless pearl.  Nor is there anything gradual about finding such a special pearl—you either find it or you don't.  There are many oysters and few great pearls.

Mengshan is also right about "peeling a pearl."