The Zennist

The machine is a configuration of spirit

I take British philosopher Gilbert Ryle’s “ghost in the machine” as leaving us with the assumption that the machine, i.e., our brain is real and the ghost, i.e., consciousness or mind, is some sort of illusion or fiction that is fundamentally unreal. 

Looked at from a Buddhist perspective, this picture is much different.  The machine is an illusion: a mere configuration of spirit.  By intuiting spirit, directly, as it really is which is unconditioned, we escape any chance of being trapped in a machine since it is an illusory creation.

I think this is still difficult for the bulk of humanity to understand and accept the “ghost” (G., Geist).  It is also what makes Buddhism so difficult to comprehend.  But I dare say there is no teaching of the Buddha that would admit to our bio-machine being real, and spirit being an illusion.  Some scholars might not agree with this.  But their prejudices have put a veil over the obvious.  Not only can’t they see that Buddhism denies the pañca-skandha (five aggregates/the machine) as being real, they will not admit that that atman or animative principle is the absolute in Buddhism which comes in various names.  This is a kind of deep structured delusion that is unable to understand.

Ultimately, for Buddhism, there is Mind-only.  There is no visible world, bodies or brains.  The things we perceive arise from discrimination.  The are fundamentally empty—an illusion.   

 

 

Moving closer to reality

Facing reality sort of begins in our 20s, maybe the mid 20s.  This reality at that time is a long way off.  It is about as far from us as Mount Everest.  But our reality is not Mount Everest.  It is more like a dangerous and terrifying precipice otherwise called “death.”  As we grow older, we soon discover that we are gradually moving closer to reality.

At 70 we can begin to see the faint outlines of this reality, i.e., the precipice.  We guess that it might either be a launching point for vertical flight or a less than desirable fall into a doom of which we have no foreknowledge.

Youth, naturally, is not all that concerned with reality.  It is entering into the apex of Darwinian fitness—a powerful urge to procreate and build a safe haven for offspring.  At this stage in life as far as youth looks ahead they don’t yet see reality (the precipice). 

Yes, we can read about it and can conceive of it.  But for us it is still somewhat of a fantasy.  But then we see old people and eventually sick and dying people like the young Siddhartha before he awakened to the truth of life and became Buddha.  Still, we are not that affected.

Science tells youth that perhaps in the future people will live longer.  A new drug will be found that extends life almost indefinitely which I hasten to inject is pure hogwash.  But youth still likes to dream.  It easily takes hogwash for truth; even enjoying a kind of ‘as if’ truth which is a complete fiction.

Still, year by year we are moving closer to reality: man’s natural finitude.  Even in our 40s and 50s the procreative drive is still somewhat of a monster for us—difficult to control.  Just look at Anthony Weiner, America’s a sex hound.

Money and power are the various means by which we can avoid looking at reality.  The more money and power we have the more we believe we are almost immortal.  The spokesperson for such deluded people is Hollywood—a place of dreams and delusions.  Buddhism is far away from from this.  It teaches us first, to face reality.

To realize or not to realize nirvana

Nirvana is certainly experiential but its essence or substance remains, nevertheless, indescribable.  Words merely point to it.  In that regard they are very limited.  They cannot get us to what they’re pointing to when it comes to nirvana. 

It is also a mistake to assume that nirvana is altogether negative.  In Buddhism’s long history, nirvana is held to be, fundamentally, positive, experienceable, and supreme. Some say that nirvana is like the moon covered by clouds.  It only becomes visible when the wind dissipates the clouds which made the moon seem like it was not there.  In this sense, illusion hides nirvana and because our temporal world is an illusion it, more than anything, hides nirvana as if it were not there.

Among modern Buddhists, the belief that one can realize nirvana has changed into there is no need to realize nirvana—problem solved.  A modern Buddhist who has gone to college; who has learned a lot of new words and abstract notions; who has been taught to be always skeptical could not care less about nirvana.  Any vestige of a religious mind has been driven out of this person.  In one respect, this person is like the Communists of old who were essentially anti-religious. 

We might wonder if modern man has become somewhat of a new kind of barbarian insofar as he appears to be overly skeptical of anything spiritual, such as religion, by which man hopes to see beyond the world of his biological organism.  One of the great ironies of this new century is that while a new kind of barbarism is growing which rejects both the spiritual and the beyond, in the past some men of science during the 20th century discovered the necessity of an extra-physical factor; a substratum of everything which is of a spiritual substance.  Now when these two sides face each other there is an almost intolerable tension that begins to develop.  One must either accept or deny that the only true process of measurement is the non-physical mind measuring the physical, biological brain.  If we accept the non-physical mind then the attainment of nirvana is a worthy goal and those who would deny this are surely fools, but fools who will not cease their hatred of the spiritual.

You will get somewhere if you sit long enough?

There is certainly a little Zen to be found in Lewis Carroll’s marvelous books, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass.  Just today I was reading Alice’s conversation with the Cheshire-Cat.  The part that I found interesting which I thought seemed to touch upon pop Zen begins:

"Cheshire Puss," she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little wider. "Come, it's pleased so far," thought Alice, and she went on. "Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to walk from here?"

"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.

"I don't care much where—" said Alice.

"Then it doesn't matter which way you walk," said the Cat.

"—so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation.

"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."

Modern or pop Zen, a least for me, really tries to avoid giving Bodhidharma’s definition of Zen much weight, viz., Seeing your true nature is Zen.  More like the Cheshire-Cat, today Zen teacher avoids telling us the precise meaning and direction of Zen.  If there is a direction he is silent.

Modern students don’t seem to care that much about the ‘Zen of seeing one’s true nature’.  Yes, they do care a great deal about getting somewhere which is not necessarily about intuiting one’s true nature.  This somewhere I propose is doing zazen.  They believe this will get them somewhere if they do it long enough which is to keep on arriving, paradoxically, where Zen is not.  If, on the other hand, I see my true nature I am always arriving where Zen is.  All that I do from sitting to washing the dishes is an expression of this luminous nature.

The mirror

A number of analogies were used in the early formation of Zen such as the mind is like the sun covered by clouds.  Although we cannot see the sun nevertheless it is there even if hidden. 

Another analogy is the mirror. The adept must focus on the mirror’s bright, reflective surface instead of the images that appear on the surface.  This is not so easy using a modern mirror.  The images on the mirror’s silver surface mesmerize us such that we cannot see the imageless silver. 

It is somewhat the same with the outer world we perceive and the inner world of our thoughts and feelings.  We don’t see the pure luminous nature of Mind.  And why?  We are so mesmerized by the images of the outer and inner world we fail to see it. Were we to, all-at-once, see this luminous nature it would be somewhat like this passage from the Kayagatasati Sutta:

The pure mind suffuses every part of his whole body, like a man whose head is covered by a white cloth. There is no part of his body untouched by the white cloth.

Unfortunately, we don’t see this pure luminous nature.  We are only privy to the outer and inner appearances that we take for anything but an illusion.  Our search for our pure luminous nature no longer commences because we don’t believe that it is real.  So the problem seems solved for us.  But little do we realize that we have bound ourselves to samsara, never to escape.