The Zennist

The radical approach

For those who are led by their curiosity; who enjoy reading Zen literature in their spare time where they can safely attempt to decipher the recorded sayings of the Zen masters, there is no necessity for them to go into retreat in some mountain cabin or run off to some Buddhist monastery in Japan or China.  They can learn about Zen on Reddit by visiting a Zen subreddit or they can join some nearby Zen center community.  However, what they will gain from this approach will only strengthen their delusions.

For those of a different mind who are not comfortable with the superficial armchair approach they may wish to pursue Zen by becoming a scholar, learning several languages so they can avail themselves to primary sources.  From there they can do translations or historical studies.  The good news is they are still capable of undeluding themselves.

The more radical approach is to go live like a hermit in the mountains with a small number of Buddhist books and take a voyage within, making a great journey across the landscape of our deluded human mind and its ideas.  To be sure, this is the most difficult approach to Zen, that is, setting out to see our true nature face to face.  In fact, it is the only path that actually works.   

The difficulty of this approach is because we have two leaders in our brain.  One is our deluded mind; the other leader is the discourses of the Buddha or the recorded sayings of the Zen masters.  The two don’t often agree even though we may think otherwise.  Much of the problem that we face is that we are not conscious of the fact that we are always trying to force the round peg of Buddhism into the square hole of our presuppositions.  This, by the way, is not having an open mind but a very blinkered mind which wants to go in one direction which happens to be the wrong direction.  Eventually, with enough time the hermit reverses direction.  Faith in seeing one's Buddha-nature eventually pays off.

Like a huge wall

All the teachings of the Buddha may seem different at times but in truth they are in the long run intended to point to Mind.  If we think of the teachings as sections of a great map, with faith and discipline on our part, they can lead us to the treasure trove of Mind.  In this treasure trove is to be found the supernatural faculties.  Nothing is outside of Mind’s range.  In truth, there is Mind-only.

But we have never met this Mind face-to-face.  Our imagination is always trying to make a copy of this Mind but this is not the Mind of the Buddha.

If we wish to realize such a Mind as this, we first must acknowledge that what hinders our attainment of bodhi or perfect enlightenment is, foremost, our ideations of this Mind.  This is somewhat like a hungry person who hasn’t eaten in days and constantly thinks about food.  But these mental images of food do not take away the hunger.  Only real food can bring about the cessation of hunger.  But in the case of Mind the problem is much more difficult.  Our ideations of it are guesses.  We are not even sure that we are on the right track as to what this Mind is.  We are even willing to believe that this Mind could well be our ordinary mind or it could just the awareness of awareness.  But it is not.

We stubbornly fight to preserve our ideations.  Likewise, we argue with others who may try to convince us that we are on the wrong track.  What is apparent is that we may not have grasped that our constant generation of ideations is holding us back.  However, Mind is never touched by them.  They cannot affect it but they can make it more difficult to find.

Ideations about Mind, the more we indulge in them, can become like a huge wall which seems impossible to go around or to climb over.  So we just end up standing in front of it perplexed.  This is apparent with koans which seem, at times, impossible to comprehend.  Every practitioner, sooner or later, faces this wall—the impossibility of going through it.  Ironically, this wall is the practitioner's creation.

 

How mind comes to know itself

Mind is first, hence, the Sanskrit word eka-citta which can mean first or one mind. To be first, means that we cannot get behind mind.  There is nothing higher in other words.  Mind cannot, therefore, be known at this stage.  As a result of this state, everything that we perceive lies in front of mind as a mind composition which hides the uncomposed, primary (eka) Mind.  Even our most sublime thoughts and subtle grades of consciousness hide the primary Mind.     

In order for mind to see itself it must penetrate through the entire field of its compositions.  Every ‘thing’ has to be set aside or superseded, from the coarse to the very fine.  This process is somewhat like an airplane flying through a thick layer of clouds until it reaches the clear, blue sky.  When mind passes through all of its compositions only then does it meet itself face-to-face—that is, know itself for the first time.  This is what is called the Mind to Mind transmission.

Few people attain this transmission having been seduced by a particular mind composition.  Just as music seduces the ear such people are seduced by an idea or belief which they cannot let go of.  Here, regrettably, the path ends when there is still a long way to go.  However, sometimes this stopping can be like a way station.  We must think of it as a place where we need to regain our strength for the long journey ahead.  But never should we completely stop. 

The great fig tree

Several months ago while I was on my walk I passed a fig tree loaded with ripening figs.  Suddenly, I thought of this samsaric body of mine as being like a little purple fig hanging on the branch.  Then imagining I was this little fig, I only knew the life of this little fig which would soon to ripen and drop. 

Unfortunately, this little fig had forgotten that it was, actually, the fig tree and not just the fig!  Moreover, this tree was connected with all the figs on the branches each in various stages of growth. 

In the same way we have forgotten what gives us life, that is, what animates this biological body of ours.  We take this ‘life’ too much for granted even subordinating it to the body and its often excessive needs.  Let’s call this life-giving animative power the great Bodhi Tree.  From it all life is given to every creature in the universe who use it to meet their biological needs.  But few if any of these creatures turn to this great Bodhi Tree and by turning to this infinite source realize nirvana becoming as a result, life givers and not life users who  are lost in the confusion of samsara.

 

Overcoming samsara

Saṃsāra is certainly an important and interesting Buddhist term.  Generally, it refers to the worldly or secular life.  As it relates to the afterlife of worldly beings it is metempsychosis, an endless succession of births and deaths from which there is no emancipation except by the attainment of nirvana which is realized by the very self or atman (pratyatman). 

Westerners who continue to dabble in Buddhism tend not to accept the inescapable judgment of saṃsāra while, nevertheless, being able to accept the three marks of existence, namely, that conditioned things are impermanent.  Karmic impressions (saṁskāra ) are unsatisfactory (duhkha). And all things are not the atman.  They do not, however, accept the converse and least of all that nirvana is immortal.  Such people have found no need for nirvana.

To live a samsaric existence is to live tautologically and groundlessly.  It is a life without real meaning that just keeps repeating itself; that never transcends itself sufficiently to escape the gravity of saṃsāra.  We know the routine—we’ve all lived it.  Such a life gives us false hope.  But sooner or later hope runs out.  We are eventually faced with overwhelming shock and devastation.

We don’t even care about preparing for such a catastrophe.  Still, hidden in the words of the Buddha is real hope, something very close to us.  First of all, we have to have faith that what animates this illusory body of ours is where nirvana is to be found—no other place.  And by means of dhyana (intuition) we can turn to it and behold it all it once.  It has many names such as pure Mind, Buddha Nature, the Pure Land, or bodhi but one fact concerns us: that we directly experience its illumination which lifts the shroud of saṃsāra.

No creator god but not anti-religious

It is true that the Buddha did not teach a doctrine of a creator god (issara-nimmana-vada) who is responsible for the origin of the universe. Nor did the Buddha teach that pleasure and pain is due to a creator god.  Suffice it to say, the doctrine of a creator god is by the Buddha put into the same category as those doctrines that deny karma or absolute determinism. 

Does then mean that the Buddha was anti-religious because he rejected the doctrine of a creator god?  No, because religion for the Indian mind, which is called “Dharma” is much different and broader than the modern, narrow concept of religion which is about worshiping and serving God. 

I hasten to add that there is no animosity on the part of the Buddha towards the Vedic tradition which moderns would consider to be religious.  Truth be told, Buddhists were greatly opposed to materialism and seemed only to want to reform the ancient Vedic tradition as it was spiritually centered as was Buddhism.

This takes me to a pet peeve of mine that Westerners who practice Buddhism tend to be for the most part anti-religious who also lean more to materialism.  Some, I have observed over the years, don’t like the Buddhist idea of karma or rebirth, for example, nor are they comfortable with any kind of absolute which they take to be the same as believing in God.  For me, such people are missing the core of Buddhism, completely, all because of their prejudices.  And I have not the patience to contend with their idiotic opinions.  I would rather spend my time with people who are in sympathy with me because where I am coming from is a direct personal experience that others can have.

The worthy adept

The worthy adept should regard the words of Zen masters, including even the words of the Buddha and patriarchs to be pointing to what is beyond the ken of human ideation and perception.

If the adept seeks anything from their words, hoping to perceive something determinate, the adept will be bound down by that which he or she possesses however subtle.  Seeking for anything brings only pain as a reward.  If the adept wishes to be free from such suffering, they should seek where thought and appearance are still unborn.

But how few are worthy adepts these days!

The many are seeking robes and transmission certificates.  They want to belong to a Zen organization living and working with fellow practitioners hoping that this path is the fastest route to awakening.  But the path to awakening is far too subtle for such people.  It requires the worthy adept.  One who already sees the path to be on the inside—not the outside.

Today’s college students are at too low a level to be considered as worthy adepts.  They lack both resiliency and a subtle mind.  Nor do they have sufficient faith in themselves and the transcendent.  Furthermore, they are brainwashed to believe that only what the senses perceive can be counted as true reality.

Still, eventually these people will wake up to the fact that life, the longer they live, only gets worse and maybe more of the Buddha’s path would have been better.  Oh sure there are many good days when youth is still with us but eventually the bad days find us. 

We soon become old and worn out by our youthful excesses.  Then we begin to think counterfactually as in what if I had done that instead of this? Or, if only we had stayed here and not moved, our lives would have been so much better, etc.  And perhaps the biggest example of counterfactual thinking, if I had to do it all over again I would have done such and such instead of that.

 

Getting to the highest practice

Putting on our clothes or robes early in the morning, drinking coffee or tea afterwards, then sitting in zazen is really not the highest Zen practice.  It’s a start.  Zen master Chinul once said:

Ordinary men are deluded: when donning clothes they only understand that they are donning clothes; when eating they only understand that they are eating; in all their activities they are deceived by appearances.

Yes, those who practice Zen are very much deceived by appearances even though they are in a temple or Zen Buddhist retreat.  What is missing in this practice is direct insight into what animates this body which can put on robes early in the morning and have a cup of tea, then sit in Zazen.  This is beyond the ambit of appearance.   It is not something our eyes can see.  It is unthinkable.  Yet if you witnessed it firsthand you would know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is what the Bodhisattva saw whereby he became the Buddha.  Being attentive to this is the highest practice of Zen.  This is Buddha, Dharma, and Saṃgha rolled into one.

This is the whole picture of reality—not just half of it which is mere appearance.  And this is the most important part of Zen, that we should know who, actually, puts on these robes early in the morning or who does prostrations in front of the Buddha statue or where our thoughts arise from and what they are made of.

The struggle with ideology

All generations from the ‘Traditionalists’ (born 1945 and before), Baby Boomers (born 1946 to 1964), Generation X (born 1965 to 1976), Millennials (born 1977 to 1995 which are Nielsen Media Research figures), and, presently, Gen Z  (born 1996 and later) share one thing in common, i.e., they are born and reared into a culture which, on the outside, appears to be changing yet despite the change has maintained a remarkable stability and adaptiveness if one bothers to look below the surface.

From a broader perspective, stability and adaptiveness emerge from a core of religion, philosophy, law and science to name the important elements of this older cultural core which lies below the surface.  To a certain extent this is a continuation of Greek and Roman culture.  We still have a deep understanding of these ancient cultures because the core of our culture is still connected with these older cultures.  Nor are they that far away from Indian culture—not as far as we would like to imagine (I would recommend taking a look at Thomas McEvillery’s book, The Shape of Ancient Thought).

If there is anything in modernity that is designed to destroy this ancient core it is ideology. To begin, an ideology is an assemblage of beliefs, conceptual abstractions and symbols, set into a narrative structure that vaguely implies key connections in such a way that it serves to recontextualize and  reinterpret social reality and motivate political action. In this regard, ideology is also a system of power, although entirely negative.  Two notable ideologies that come to mind are Islam and Communism the latter includes cultural Marxism.

Both Islam and Communism set their sights on world domination and I would add, world terror.  In the main, both are nothing more than anti-cultures which eventually collapse upon themselves without new conquests.  The life of Muhammad is that of a warlord who plunders the cultures around him.  Islam has nothing to do with religion.  It is a false religion insofar as it is spiritually empty. Islam is a cult of personality and terror but so is Communism with its history of mass murder in the USSR estimated to be somewhere around 56 to 62 million between 1928 and 1954.

Knowing all this, I see signs of ideology trying to enter into Buddhism.  The most notable example of an ‘ideologicalized text’ is Stephen Batchelor’s book, Buddhism Without Beliefs. By making subtle shifts which serve to recontextualize Buddhism, Batchelor is able to produce a new interpretation if not a new Buddhism. Batchelor observes:

The Buddha was not a mystic. His awakening was not a shattering insight into a transcendent Truth that revealed to him the mysteries of God (p. 5).

The Buddha made no mention of a creator god except to condemn such an idea.  But it can be argued with good evidence that the Buddha was, in fact, a mystic.  His awakening was a shattering insight into paramarthasatya or transcendent truth!

Batchelor appears to be telling us a new story of Buddhism, one which fits perfectly well with what I said earlier about ideology being set into a narrative structure—a descriptive story—which makes Batchelor an ideologue (Napoleon called ideologues, “dangerous dreamers”).  The fact that Batchelor’s narrative of Buddhism reduces nirvana to almost an ignoble status is certainly a red flag as to what is really going on.  We further learn from Batchelor that Buddhism was transformed into a religion when “in fact it might well have more in common with Godless secularism than with the bastions of religion.”  And maybe this is the truth of Batchelor’s project, to turn Buddhism into his personal vision but more, to destroy the religious content of Buddhism.

It matters not what generation we were born into, our deep cultural core is sufficient to find the truth and defend it.  This does not mean a struggle with ideology will not take place—it certainly will and as done so in the past for well over a hundred years.  This struggle reminds me of the battle in the Vedas between the gods and the Asuras who are said to know wisdom but on the whole are mischievous evil powers. 

 

Don’t end up being like those young fish

The late novelist and professor David Foster Wallace’s 2005 commencement address at Kenyon College begins this way:

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?"

This story I am inclined to believe produced a huge chuckle in the crowd.  It was a good joke.  But for we Zennists it perfectly explains today’s big existential problem. 

Like the young fish most people have never looked beyond the surface of the world that we live and toil in and will one day die in.  The idea that we live in an invisible spiritual medium sounds, well, crazy.  Sure, we accept radio signals which are configurations of an invisible aether which is like this medium still, the idea of a spiritual medium isn’t going to sell to the public.

Recently, in my Zennist notes I came across this.  The emphasis is mine.

One winter day Dōni made his way to a lecture series given by Zen master Tōrei (Enji, 1721- 1792), a leading disciple of the Rinzai master Hakuin. At one point in the sermon (which was open to both clergy and laity), Tōrei admonished his listeners: "Fish live in water without being aware of the water, and human beings live in the Wondrous Dharma without being aware of the Wondrous Dharma. First seek your own dwelling place" (Janine Anderson Sawada, Confucian Values and Popular Zen).

If Zen master Tōrei had been giving the commencement address at Kenyon College it certainly would not have been like Wallace’s.  After introducing the fish joke, Tōrei might have paused then speaking into the microphone said something like this,  “First you must seek your own dwelling place. Don’t end up being like those young fish.”

Unfortunately, the world is full of these young fish.  Young adults have a diploma and in some cases huge student loans to payoff.  The bulk of them could not care less about seeking their own dwelling place, that is, seeing their own true nature.  But a long time ago, a few of us did.  And that made all the difference.