The Zennist

Buddhism is more than dependent origination

Buddhist scholars like Hakamaya Noriaki and Matsumoto Shirō created a tempest in an academic teapot a few years ago with “Critical Buddhism” (hihan bukkyō). 

In my opinion, they were looking at Buddhism while wearing blinders so that they only saw the Buddha’s teaching of “pratityasamutpada” (P., paticcasamuppada), often translated by the words “dependent origination.”

I must say, it wasn’t the crown achievement of the Buddha’s life.  Nirvana was which was achieved by dhyāna wherefrom Zen historically begins, Zen being Japanese for dhyāna. 

On that note, I am indebted to Pande's book Studies in the Origins of Buddhism which made possible the following points.

1. According to Pande, reality revealed itself to Buddha in two aspects, namely, dependent origination and nirvana (P., nibbana).

2. To perceive dependent origination is to perceive the world of becoming which is suffering. This world is impermanent and therefore not real in any sense of the word.  It only appears such.

3. Nirvana is the logical counterpart to dependent origination.  It should be interpreted as the Absolute (the most essential)—the eternal and infinite principle.

4. In simpler terms dependent origination is the conditioned whereas nirvana is the Unconditioned.

If we adhere just to dependent origination as I think our Critical Buddhism scholars appear to be doing then how is nirvana compatible with and related to dependent origination when it is clearly at odds with it?  One stands for the finite, temporal order, the other is infinite, its nature being outside of the ambit of dependent origination. 

It is not all that amazing to sit under a fig tree only to discover the world is finite, full of suffering and that when you die, that’s it.  However, it is rare and amazing to discover a transcendent reality that is deathless; that is intuitively accessible (by dhyāna) to anyone if they are willing to put in the time and energy to do the required work.  For me this is what Buddhism is about in a nutshell.  By the way, some of the comments have been very good. 

Is Zen a religion?

Religion without the existential question is not really religion.  It sinks into something external and almost trivial; almost like a performance in which we are religious actors.  We do various observances and ceremonies. We learn to hide in uniformity and conformity.

The existential question concerns first-person knowledge and experience, for example, who am I (essentially)? Or it can be something like, what is the meaning of life (its essence)? or what happens when I die?

The existential question starts as a certain kind of thought about oneself that turns into a special kind of question. In this, I am thinking about myself as myself.  I am even trying to look beyond my thinking into sheer no-thought where the subvocal “myself” is still unmanifest.

So, can Zen Buddhism answer the existential question making it a religion?  The answer is yes insofar as it provides the necessary answer to various kinds of existential questions when we have seen our true nature (kensho).  At the least, Zen Buddhism opens up an existential dialogue so that we may come to realize ourself or at least get oriented to the proper direction of inquiry: a looking within you could say.

Coddling our inner monster

We humans have certainly, throughout history, proven our ability to make a good situation worse, turn peace into war, wealth into poverty, and wisdom into foolishness.  And when we have some leisure left we waste it upon the trivial, not caring about looking within for true reality which has been shrouded over by our many mistakes. 

The Buddha put it well when in the Dhammapada he said, “You who are shrouded in darkness, why do you not seek the light?” (146)  Perhaps the reason is that it takes a long time to seek the animative spiritual light, the kind the Buddha sought when he was only a Bodhisattva.  It is much easier just to seek food, find a mate, procreate then die and hope there is nothing further (certainly not rebirth).

I dare say the human tendency will be always to bring to ruin that which is the highest and most noble while, at the same time, entirely ignoring the spiritual side—to smother it to death.  And if by chance we cannot kill it, we will make sure that we dumb it down, sufficiently, so that it ends up becoming quite mundane—maybe just a matter of living in the here and the now while still doing all the things we ever wanted to do. 

Let’s face it, most of us are degenerate having fallen from the physical, mental, and moral standards that we hold to be important.

Soon we reach a point where we either descend into drugs (by physician or by street vendor) or we find a Tony Robbins, a yoga teacher, a Zen center, a Tibetan Lama, or any popular guru.  The dirty little secret that we don’t want to hear when we undertake this kind of path, is we are looking for the easy way out—the quick fix.  And why are we doing this?  We don’t want that part of us to be challenged which is always fucking us over.

In a way, we are trying to protect this fragile little monster inside of us.  If our sensei or teacher gets too close to this part of us we don’t want to be revealed or challenged we will find a way to escape.  Escape is easy.  And our escape mechanisms operate almost at an unconscious level.  We have no idea that we really don’t want our fragile little monster to be exorcised!  Where would we be without it?

Over the  years, watching people interested in Zen Buddhism come and go I also watched Zen Buddhism change in an effort to try and accommodate itself to people who didn’t want to have that part of themselves challenged which is fucking them over.  I can’t do anything about that except stay out of the way of such people.   

Now here is a warning.  We are at a period in human history where we can no longer afford to pity our fragile little inner monster becoming like a helicopter parent always making sure it is protected; that it won’t be confronted lest it is forced (painfully so) to pull itself up by its own bootstraps.

The Buddha was pissed at Sunakkhatta

I think most of us on our spiritual journey assume that enlightenment is a kind of edifice, albeit a mental edifice constructed from the practice of moral behavior and various ideas.

In the Mahasihanada Sutta we learn that Sunakkhatta left the Buddhist order because the Buddha did not have any superhuman states, in addition to the fact that the Dharma the Buddha claimed to have realized had been hammered out by reasoning.  In other words, Sunakkhatta wanted superhuman states and not receiving them from the Buddha, quit. He wasn’t impressed with the idea that the teaching of the Buddha simply led to the destruction of suffering.

What caught my attention is Sunakkhatta claimed that, “The recluse Gotama teaches a Dhamma [merely] hammered out by reasoning” (M. i. 168), which of course the Buddha denies; moreover that asserting such Sunakkhatta would end up in hell.  To put it mildly, the Buddha was pissed and rightly so.

It is easy for the beginner and even the veteran to have assumed from the very beginning of their study that doing Buddhist things such as meditation, practicing awareness, living in the here and the now, and taking particular vows and trying to live by those vows is pretty much what Buddhism is all about.  But it is not.  Such a life is not even close.  It just makes is somewhat easier to accept the fact that gnosis of a transcendent state (nirvana) is what the Buddha is teaching.  This state cannot be reasoned or thought out.  One cannot, so to speak, behave their way to this transcendent state which, incidentally, is beyond suffering. 

Awakening to this transcendent state is just that, an awakening to something the adept has never experienced before; something outside of the entire human biological sphere.  By analogy (a crazy one I admit) it is like a radio signal realizing that all of the music comes from itself, not from the radio which only amplifies the signal.  Prior to this, the radio signal only knew of the radio and its parts—it did not know that it even existed.

When the adept sees what the Buddha saw, any idea that this transcendent state is subjective—something he created and reasoned out, is put aside.  It simply is not true.

 

The power of our minds

Our various human systems of thought which we see, for example, in the sciences and in mathematics are complete fictions but nevertheless useful, practical human fictions which first begin in the mind as imaginary fabrications and then later develop into useful thoughts and concepts—and even machines and other such devices. In fact, all that we receive as external stimulus is moulded by the mind and does not really exist outside of it in the way we think it does.

Mind in this regard we can think of as a creative, formative force which alters what it receives but does not know the very essence or nature of what is being changed and altered. We can perhaps infer to a limited degree what this essential nature is which science and Buddhism attempt to do.  But for the most part this becomes only knowledge (hopefully useful) which still does not allow us to directly apprehend the thing in itself before it is modified.

Buddhism, like other ancient Indian religions, wants to make direct contact with fundamental reality before it becomes changed and altered by our mind into a secondary reality which meets the needs of biological fitness.  For it is believed we will discover, in so doing, that things we take for granted, even the world outside of us, exists only through us, the primary agents (mind or conscious agents).   In other words, according to the Lankavatara Sutra, “The triple world is no more than one's own mind” (svacitta-matrāṁ-trai-dhātukam).

This modern age as we might guess is not close to  understanding, as an indisputable truth, that the world before us and our temporal bodies are mind creations.  Maybe in a million or so years we will have evolved into metaphysical beings in which death and rebirth have lost their power over us such that we do not in anyway suffer.

The different schools of Zen

The average run-of-the-mill person doesn’t see the transparent and luminous Mind anymore than they can see radio waves swirling about in the air.  Whereas they might accept the latter on faith (after all they play a radio) the thought of highest mind being transparent and luminous is almost ludicrous even if you try and teach them by an analogy in this example.

Imagine a pane of perfectly transparent glass is placed upon a colored piece of paper.  The paper could be, yellow, blue or black.  Whatever color this pane of glass is placed upon it appears to be that particular color because the transparency of the glass is so flawless and perfect.  Now with regard to our ordinary thoughts which, let us say for the sake of discussion, are many colored, we only see our ordinary, many colored thoughts—not the pure, transparent and luminous Mind.

If we happen to be one of those rare people who has the faith that there is such a Mind, it would prove a very difficult task to see, personally, such a Mind.  Nevertheless, let’s further imagine that we have made up our mind to study Zen and see this Mind.

The first Zen school we go to believes in the transparent and luminous Mind but sees only the color—not the Mind.  It could be any color such as yellow or blue.  But more importantly, while the school teaches the transparent and luminous Mind, it also believes that the Mind’s clear nature is obscured by color which must be wiped away.  So we try this school for several years.  Then decide it’s time to move on.  We are not getting any place.

The next Zen school believes that any color such as yellow or blue is the transparent and luminous Mind although the Mind, itself, cannot be seen.  Even though it is a very popular Zen school in which everything you do is an expression of this Mind we decide, nevertheless, to move on.  Something is missing. 

The third Zen school we attend believes that no matter what the color is, including the transparent and luminous Mind, both are empty and unattainable.  It doesn’t take us very long—maybe a month—to leave this Zen school even though it is very popular with materialists. 

The last Zen school we visit we decide to stay.  It teaches direct gnosis of the transparent and luminous Mind so that no matter what color is present, the transparent and luminous Mind is vitally present and first.  When we meet the teacher we are surprised by sensing a magnetic like field around him.  When we leave the temple we have to grab onto one of the pillars on the outside.  The teacher comes up to us and laughs, patting us on the back.  He says, “I see your body senses the luminous.  That’s good.  Come back tomorrow for your Dharma name.”

Awakening to the mysterious

When we look at a piece of iron that has not been magnetized and one that has we really cannot see the difference between the two.  It is only when we put the two together that we see a difference.  One piece has a magnetic power the other does not.

The reason that I bring this up is because too much emphasis is typically placed on ‘external attributes’ of the enlightened Zen master.  This person wears robes, check.  He or she has a Dharma transmission certificate, check.  This person can sit in zazen for a long time, check.  This person smiles a lot and seems very friendly, check.  People like this person, check. 

But as with the example of the magnetic iron, the real transmission claimed by Zen is invisible.  Neither robes nor a Dharma transmission certificate mean anything.  You can’t see what is transmitted but you can sense a strong magnetic field of a realized master.  It’s not a little faint amount but a strong amount.  After all, seeing our true nature is tapping into the power of Mind, itself.

I am sure this comes as a surprise to some only because their teachers never told them anything about this.  This is the first time they’ve heard that awakening to our true nature is awakening to a kind of mysterious dynamic state which is unchanging in sharp contrast to everything else that is always changing. 

From this mysterious vantage point we can watch our physical being mature and grow old like a fig ripening on the Ficus religiosa.  We just realized that we are this great tree and not so much the fig that will drop one day.  We stand with the old masters having passed through Zen’s barrier 關.

Real gongfu (kung fu)

All of us are living confined within the great matter of birth and death and I would add, face even more cycles of birth and death.  Few of us take into consideration how birth and death are to be transcended; that within each of us is the embryo of the tathagata which is outside of the cycles of birth and death which we have not as yet intuited so as to see it, directly. 

Most of us believe that there are more pressing matters right now: feeding our families, paying off our college loan, putting money aside for our retirement and so on.  We have no time to consider what in Zen is called keeping an eye on the huatou (看箇話頭), the word huatou 話頭 meaning pre-thought or ante-word which is pure Mind before it is stirred by thinking.  Seeing this Mind is also spiritually seeing, directly, the tathagata embryo.

Maybe, from a guilty conscience, we will do zazen.  But just sitting cross-legged is not all that effective for breaking through the matter of birth and death.  Keeping an eye on the huatou, that is, looking within to see pure Mind is better.  But it ain’t easy.  As the reader can understand, staying glued to keeping an eye on the huatou much of the day is not going to happen, not with a mind filled and engaged with worries and desires. Nevertheless this is the practice of Zen called gongfu (工夫) which refers to the non-martial arts use of the term.  It means any expenditure of time and energy in study and/or practice.  Doing both zazen and keeping an eye on the huatou is Zen gongfu.

Still, we have to do it because awakening to pure Mind means, above all, we are able to transcend the great matter of birth and death..  And what you imagine it to be is nothing at all like actually accomplishing this awakening.  

Mastering the fourth Zen (dhyana)

The fourth dhyana is achieved with the immovability of the mind (cittāiñjyatā). In a split second the waves of mind cease, completely.  But not by the adept’s effort.  The adept cannot, by their will, effect cessation.  To do so would be like trying to pat down waves which would end up making more waves.

What I am describing is somewhat analogous to making an exhaustive search for your car keys.  Then your friend happens to call you up, an old buddy you haven’t heard from in a long time.  The conversation goes on for well over an hour.  Afterwards, you walk to the kitchen and there are the car keys right on the table pushed up against a bowl of fruit.  This also happens with names.  You can’t think of this person’s name, then the next day it comes to you.

Our will seems to be the problem which is impatient.  It wants the car keys right now!  It wants to recall the name right now!  In my own example I wanted to see the pure Mind.  I knew it was there but try as I might I just could not see it until I completely surrendered searching for it coming, finally, to my wits' end.  I couldn’t do anymore searching for pure Mind because I had already searched in that direction many times.  Just let me say that it took me some five years to get to this place. 

Arriving at our wits' end, the immovability of the mind happens—right out of the blue.  The gateless barrier is dropped and you enter.  Your body becomes flooded by clear light but you cannot describe it.  It has no color or form or even feeling.  Still it is there.  From this point the real journey begins, i.e., true practice.  According to Zen master Zongmi, “If one practices without having awakened, it is not true practice.” 

Tossing away spirituality

Just recently Hollywood director Martin Scorsese said that "we shouldn't toss away spirituality". He said this in connection with his film Silence which was released on Dec. 23. The film is based on Shusaku Endo’s 1966 novel of the same name.

I am guessing that Scorsese has a much different view of spirituality than I have.  I have never found the Catholic faith, which the film is about, to be spiritual—not in the way Buddhism is which asks us to realize, directly, what animates this bag of flesh and bones we’ve been thrown into since conception. 

Looking at Christianity through the lens of spirituality a Buddhist might see the ‘passion cross’ as representing the carnal body upon which the soul is nailed by its powerful desire for things of the flesh.  Ultimately, the lesson here is man is not flesh but spirit such that to crucify oneself is to spiritually distinguish the spirit from the flesh and its sins; thus to save the soul from further agony.  Of course, this is a spiritual interpretation but one not far from Buddhism in which Buddhists seek to end suffering by realizing nirvana which, said another way, is the liberation of mind or spirit.  One thus becomes free from being bound down to the conditioned psychophysical man having to undergo the cycle of birth and death again and again.

I think a long time ago the Catholic Church did away with interest in spirituality.  Their focus became fixed on the passion of Christ—not the spirit in its own right as the holy.  It becomes thus that as one suffers one is somehow made holy.  As a consequence, there grows a confusion between spirituality and suffering.  But one’s suffering, in Buddhism, does not lead to holiness.  Far from it.  Gaining access to spirit is accomplished by insight, by seeing it face to face.