The Zennist

Life: the extra-physical reality

For us limited bipeds, everything that we call real, unbeknownst to us, is a composition of a mysterious extra-physical reality or the same, a positive essence, but one totally unconditioned which lies beyond our sensory nets, so to speak. 

According to the Buddha, composed things, which are dependent arisings of this extra-physical reality, are not real.  Chasing after them is spiritually unsatisfactory and leads to rebirth and still more dissatisfaction. 

In order to be free from the dissatisfaction of chasing after things which are not ultimately real we have to gain access to the extra-physical reality which alone is real.  Unfortunately, owing to our ignorance, we have no access to it.

Buddhism is very good at advertising that it has the necessary tools which allow us to see this extra-physical reality from which all things are composed.  But as for the use of these tools, I am inclined to believe that we first need to have the correct overview of Buddhism (and that includes Zen).

If someone were to ask me what is the correct overview, one that is simple to understand, I would tell them that the difference between a vital functional being and a being that is dead, is life, life being the animative principle of force that animates us.  And while as living beings we show the effects of life active within us, we are far from meeting it face to face. 

If we get the overview down, correctly, then the tools will be used in a specific way to help us meet, face to face, life and with it experience direct communion with the extra-physical reality from which all things are composed.  Said again, all these tools such as dhyana will help us to uncover life which I hasten to add is undying and who we really are.

Getting past the monkey

Why do we read the discourses of the Buddha or read Zen sermons?  It boils down to this: We are trying to understand the essence of our wild mind which is like a monkey moving from one branch to another driving us crazy at times.  This essence which we are trying to understand is unmoving and absolutely, pure. 

Our mind’s eye draws a blank when it tries to locate this essence.  We can think of it as the stuff our thoughts are made of which, itself, is not a thought (it is unthinkable).  It can’t be imagined, conceived or even dreamed of, try as we might.  Yet, we still persist in trying to imagine it or conceive of it, even to think about it.

To subdue this monkey mind of ours, Zen masters have devised various methods such as zazen and koans. Do they work 100%?  No, not really.  They were devised for those of shallow wisdom in this ongoing age of decadence in which the spirit of the teaching of the Buddha is almost gone. 

In this age we are obstructed by worldly concerns.  People are restive, lacking any inner peace.  As we might expect zazen works to a certain degree.  And done on a regular basis like jogging it can calm the monkey.  But still we have further to go.  We have to clear out the concept forming intellect which cannot see this essence.  This is where koans come into the picture and are effective to a limited degree. 

But the best I believe is to engage as much as we can in looking for the pure Mind—this pure essence—within our own noggin, which is only revealed when the process of forming ideas about pure Mind collapse all at once.

Gnawing on a dry koan

Koans, for almost everyone will, eventually, become like a dry bone on a dry cattle range for a hungry dog. 

I remember many years ago at my dad’s ranch watching a dog gnawing on a sun bleached cow’s bone.  He kept gnawing on it and gnawing on it.  He wouldn’t let up in his effort to get the marrow out of it. 

Truth be told, the dog’s nose wasn’t lying, the scent of marrow was still there, but there was nothing in this bone that could satisfy the dog’s great hunger.

When tackling koans our intellect is not unlike the hungry dog that has found a dry bone.  Here’s an example.

A monk asked, "How does one escape hot and cold?

"Why not go where it is neither hot nor cold?" said Zen master Dongshan.

"What sort of place is neither hot nor cold?" asked the monk.

"When it's cold, you freeze to death; when it's hot, you swelter to death," replied Dongshan.

Dongshan, in one respect, threw all the Zen students in the future (our dogs) a dry bone.  You can envision these students gnawing on this bone.  But something tells them that no matter how many times they gnaw on this particular koan, their gut isn’t being filled.  They still don’t know their Buddha-nature.

But the dirty little secret of the koan, looking at Dognshan’s response, was intended to hook the student’s intellect then, hopefully, bring it into great doubt, this being, the loss of one’s confidence in the conceptual and intellectual approach to realizing one’s true nature. 

In this bone of a response by Dongshan, there is just enough marrow to hook the intellect.  The dog (i.e., the intellect) will eventually starve itself to death gnawing away, madly.  Then in the great death we will see what truly gives eternal life.

 

 

 

Breaking the chain of scientific materialism

What is scientific materialism of the mind as it takes place in the modern university? Buy an fMRI machine. Then get a crane and install this heavy piece of equipment in your department; then you can write lots of grants under the rubric of neuroscience.

Neuroscience, a species of scientific materialism, the way I see it, turns out to be persuasion by really neat and colorful images of the human brain. But this is all third-person knowledge (i.e., knowledge that excludes a knower) where by contrast, Zen Buddhism is all about first-person knowledge which cannot be reduced to third-person knowledge without significant cognitive loss.  And that is not good.

If we wish to explore the possibility of a connection between the two kinds of knowledge, maybe we have to look more at von Neumann's mysterious chain where matter gives way to mind which then becomes the privileged position (the measurement chain ends only when knowledge of the measurement is registered by an extra-physical factor).

“The problem, especially for the physicalist, is that no physical device can break the von Neumann chain because all physical devices are links in the chain.  Even the physical brain of the physicalist is just another physical link in the von Neumann chain.  The break in the chain that is sought cannot be a physical part of the physical chain” (Science and the Eastern Orthodox Church p. 86, edited by Professor Gayle Woloschak, Professor Daniel Buxhoeveden).

But academe is a long way off from letting the extra-physical mind (i.e., the knower) take over center stage.  Scientific materialism is dying out but it is not completely dead.  Its somewhat like the Maoist generation in modern China.  They are not dead but their stubbornness and lack of vision are still with China holding it back.  

The nub of the problem

I think it goes without saying that Buddhist scholars agree that nowhere in the Pali canon (the nikayas) does the Buddha give an unambiguous, outright denial of atta/atman.  All that the Buddha rejects is the belief that sees the atta/atman in the temporal and finite earthly personality referred to in Buddhism as the five khandhas/skandhas (aggregates).

That some leading scholars have become almost atman-deniers doesn't speak all that well of their critical thinking skills for reasons which I can only speculate.  Somewhat helpful, back in 2006 (on Wikipedia, Talk:Anatta/Archive2, most of the 99 pages now lost which I have, fortunately, managed to keep) the Buddhist scholar and translator Stephen Hodge wrote:

Here I shall first let you into a little secret. The majority of people who translate pre-modern/religious texts start out with a theory of meaning. They have consciously or unconsciously decided in advance what the text ought to say, especially if they are members of the same faith body that reveres the texts they are translating. Thus, in the case of Pali texts, most translators, like Bhikkhu Bodhi, Maurice Walshe or Nanamoli, adopt and apply the prevailing Theravadin assumptions to their translations.

And I think here is the nub of the problem: A failure to let the words of the Buddha speak, clearly, for themselves before drawing any conclusions.  Instead, Buddhist scholars “have consciously or unconsciously decided in advance what the text ought to say.”  Moreover, Buddhist scholarship has become a peer-to-peer echo chamber.

Those scholars who are not included in this echo chamber are soon forgotten—erased from public memory whose works are hidden in academic libraries which students rarely visit these days.

Clever expedients (upāya)

Buddhism is not without clever expedients or skillful means (upāya) which are all intended to get us to seeing, first hand, ultimate reality (not all people are capable of this achievement). 

Even nature uses skillful means.  As a matter of human growth, we have to begin by crawling, then pulling ourselves up, eventually, to become toddlers and so on. 

In the study of Buddhism, we begin as humans but must be skillfully trained to see that which animates this finite corporeal body of ours insofar as we believe, wrongly, we are these finite bodies.  Many of us, unconsciously, resist seeing what animates this corporeal body of ours!  In this regard, Buddhism deploys skillful means to attract and develop us.  Some of us are crawlers, others can stand and walk—even run.  Each will require different means.

It is even skillful means to sit in zazen and do ceremonies or pujas, or read the discourses of the Buddha and study koans.  Yes, these are only means and devices.  We are still far from the other shore but hopefully inching there slowly to the point where we finally understand that we have to have gnosis of pure Mind which is unconditioned.  Previous to this, we might have been clinging to a skillful means such as zazen or koans.  Now understanding what we must accomplish, we have a good idea now where to look and we look deeper than ever before.

Enforcing the precepts upon ourself

The five precepts in Buddhism are more like recommendations which is also to say they are not compulsory as if breaking them was sinful.  There is no “thou shall not.” The five precepts are as follows:

1. I undertake the training rule to abstain from the destruction of the vital principle (prana).

2. I undertake the training rule to abstain from taking what is not given.

3. I undertake the training rule to abstain from unrestrained sensuality.

4. I undertake the training rule to abstain from falsehood.

5. I undertake the training rule to abstain from intoxicants.

Although recommendations, this does not mean we can do as we please as practitioners.  What is clear from these precepts is that we are the ones who must enforce, more or less, the precepts upon ourself—not anyone else.  If we are serious practitioners we try to enforce the precepts more strictly than, say, the average person who is not a practitioner. 

For serious practitioners there is a payoff, it is learning to restrain their raw natures.  Practitioners are learning impulse control, you could say.  They are learning to resist various kinds of temptation.  In the end, this will be of great benefit to the practitioner and to others.

Looking for a priceless gem

The Buddha is trying to teach us that deep within us we have the Buddha-nature which is also the ultimate criterion.  The only thing equal to it, is itself.  All else is just a configuration of it which if we follow these configurations lose our way—suffering from spiritual amnesia. 

None of us can afford to be in a state of spiritual amnesia having forgotten what our Buddha-nature is.  We have to remember it.

Similar to this predicament we read in the Lotus Sutra the parable of a man having come to a friend’s house who became drunk and fell asleep.  While in this condition his friend gave him a priceless gem binding this gem in his garment so he wouldn’t lose it.  Finally sober the man travels further.  The Lotus Sutra says of this man:

[H]e goes to some other country, where he is befallen by incessant difficulties, and has great trouble to find food and clothing. By dint of great exertion he is hardly able to obtain a bit of food, with which (however) he is contented and satisfied.

Eventually, the old friend of that man who bound the priceless gem in his garment happened to see him again.  He says to his greatly impoverished friend,

How is it, good friend, that thou hast such difficulty in seeking food and clothing, while I, in order that thou shouldst live in ease, good friend, have bound within thy garment a priceless gem, quite sufficient to fulfil all thy wishes?

Then he shows the priceless gem to his friend who had no knowledge that the gem had been in his garment all along.  He became greatly overjoyed.  Subsequently, he became a very rich man, of great power, and in possession of all that the five senses can enjoy.

All of us have this hidden gem bound within us which we know nothing of.  The problem we face is we need to see it firsthand.  The Buddha’s teachings can help us see the Buddha gem provided that we are first, in earnest, and secondly have sufficient faith that the gem lies within us.

Zen gets us close to start looking in our garment for the Buddha’s priceless gem that isn’t an article of clothing which is to say from a spiritual point of view, we must look for the unconditioned Mind setting aside the conditioned five skandhas of physical shape, feeling, perception, volitional formations and consciousness.

Making Zen fit with our own ideas and understandings

I think it is true to a certain extent that when faced with a subject we know very little about we many times try to dumb it down, hopefully, to make it chime with our own ideas and understandings. 

Many years ago, the American journalist and scholar H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) noted in one of his articles, published in The Baltimore Evening Sun, that “every man prefers what he can understand to what puzzles and dismays him.”  I think this holds true, especially, for Zen Buddhism.

Given that Zen Buddhism is quite puzzling (just look at koans) the general tendency of the many (which includes the curious) is to put Zen into their own ideas and understandings.  In doing this, the risk of pulling Zen out of its own unique context and putting it into an alien one is quite high. 

Historically, Zen’s way of dealing with this problem was rather straightforward: Zen is not interested in your ideas or your understandings.  The tough part of Zen is dropping  all of our presuppositions about Zen and its goal which is to behold our true nature, directly.

Where it seems that the full force of our errant ideas and understandings come into play is with koans.  They sort of have an emetic quality to them!  They cause us to vomit up our ideas and understandings about what we imagine Zen Buddhism is all about.  But none of our slop fits no matter how much we hurl!  And if crazy means doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results we sooner or later see just how crazy we are when it comes to koans.  Hopefully, we stop doing the same thing over and over again.  I remember when I did exactly that.  I had come to my wits' end and knew it.  Only at that point, for the first time, did I allow the Way to teach me on its own terms.  

Getting to the gateless

Zen's gateless barrier 無門関 is no gate 無門 but nevertheless there is a kind of gate that prevents the Zen beginner from entering—a barrier 関 that a beginner must pass through.

So what is this barrier?

This barrier is really our beginningless (bad) habit of forming conceptions and intellectual constructions about the inconceivable awakened Mind. Making matters even worse, under this diabolical, spell we are unable to see just how we are deceiving ourselves.  By deceiving ourselves I mean that we are trying to catch hold of the inconceivable awakened Mind, which is unconditioned, with our concept laden mind which is never other than conditioned and deluded.

Zen presents us with many such gateless barriers that we cannot pass through and unbeknownst to us, we are the ones creating them almost non-stop. 

While truly the gateless 無門 is the gate of salvation which his beyond the grasp of our concept forming intellect we never cease, it seems, erecting one barrier after another in front of the gateless entrance to salvation.  Even knowing this, nevertheless, almost like a madman we keep repeating our mistakes.