The Zennist

The religious institution

When religion becomes ecclesiastical this is the phase of the ‘religious institution’ which is ultimately controlled by the state.  Real religion, on the other hand, always begins with the mystic who, by the way, is not to be confused with the inspired prophet.  The mystic is always found to be outside of the formation of an ecclesiastical religion. 

India, especially, is noted for its mystics, that is, those who are in the ascetic milieu like the Buddha.  The idea of the “prophet’ is alien to the Indian mind although some believe that the “rishi" is the equivalent of a prophet who is a spokesman for God.  However, the term “rishi” from the lexicon Vacaspatya is defined as "rishati jnanena samsara-param” meaning one who goes beyond the samsaric [world] by means of knowledge.  This, by the way, is a good definition for a mystic.  A perfect example of the rishi is the Buddha who was called the “rishi-bull” (Vimanavatthu 16).  His awakening certainly went beyond (param) samsara.

Religions which have become ecclesiastical can battle with each other but mystics seldom do.  What unifies them and brings them together as one body is their direct experience of the supermundane animative principle which in ancient India was the Ātman which I hasten to add was never thought of as a ‘self’ or ‘individual’ but, instead, as a vital animative principle. 

This principle if realized and subsequently expanded into the human world becomes the basis for an extraordinary evolution of mankind whereby, eventually, matter is replaced by ‘mind’ or ‘spirit’ leading, eventually, to a much different world view than we are presently used to.  If we look far into the future, this would be something akin to a transformative human evolution from the world of the ‘biosphere’ (the sphere of living matter) to the ‘noosphere’ (the sphere of mind, a term developed by Vernadsky, LeRoy, and Teilhard).

One could argue that religion that has become too ecclesiastical, which drives out the mystical element, has gone too far.  Soon this institutional control eventually divides itself which may eventually give way to a reformation, though not always perfect, which continues to drive out the mystic element.

Today people still have need of their religious institutions in some form.  But this is transitioning to ideology which arises from a struggle for power, the basis of which is a system of thought that remains ungrounded, hence, the need for power.  By comparison Buddhism, which is mystical, is grounded; not ungrounded.  We can awaken to the absolute which in Buddhism is Mind—not as thoughts, but as the very substance or essence of our thoughts which is final.

Is the psychophysical body is evil?

A question was recently brought up as to whether or not the psychophysical body is evil (evil in the sense of harmful or tending to harm).  I said it was evil based on a number of different quotes from the discourses of the Buddha.  Here is one pertinent excerpt taken from the Yamaka Sutta (S. iii. 114) of the Samyutta-Nikaya:

"He [the uninstructed worldling] does not understand as it really is murderous form as 'murderous form' … murderous feeling as 'murderous feeling' … murderous perception as 'murderous perception' … murderous volitional formations as 'murderous volitional formats' … murderous consciousness as 'murderous consciousness’."

These five are the five khandha/skandha or aggregates which I have put in bold.  They, essentially, make up our psychophysical body.

Further on in this discourse we learn that the noble disciple does not become engaged with form, cling to it, and take a stand upon it as ‘my self’, ditto with the other remaining aggregates.  The we read:

"These same five aggregates of clinging, to which he does not become engaged and to which he does not cling, lead to his welfare and happiness for a  long time" (S. iii. 115).

As for a comprehensive list of the decisively negative and harmful aspects of the aggregates we find this which is from the Patisambhidamagga.

“The monk examines the five aggregates by their nature of impermanence, suffering, becoming ill, being like a boil, being like an arrow, hardship, becoming sick, being the other, being that which is decayed, bringing the bad, being evil, being dangerous, being an obstacle, being afraid, being that which is rotten, being not lasting, being without a resistance, being without a protection, being without refuge, being empty, being bare, being void, being an-ātman, being harm, having change as norm, being without an essence, the root of hardship, being like an executioner, being a decay, having āsava, being conditioned, being a victim of Mara [the evil one], having birth as norm, having aging as norm, having sickness as norm, having death as norm, having grief as norm, having lamentation as norm, having despair as norm, having sorrow as norm.”

This is not a happy picture.  The good news is that our true self or ātman (in Mahayana Buddhism, Buddha-nature) transcends these aggregates.  At the same time, the uninstructed worldling or puthujjana can cling to the aggregates as being representative of his self or ātman.  In other words, the uninstructed worldling can fall prey to the evil, harmful and murderous psychophysical body.

Further on in the Samyutta-Nikaya we come across this excerpt at S. iii. 189 which reads:

"When there is form, Radha, there might be Mara, or the killer, or the one who is killed.  Therefore, Radha, see form as Mara, see it as the killer, see it as the one who is killed.  See it as a disease, as a tumor, as a dart, as misery, as really misery.  Those who see it thus see rightly.  When there if feeling ... When there is perception ... When there are volitional formations ... When there is consciousness, Radha, there might be Mara, or the killer, or the one who is killed" (emphasis is mine).

We might argue back and forth that Mara’s aggregates, which are also murderous, can be saved from sin and error.  But this is not likely since our self or ātman already transcends the murderous, Mara aggregates even while we cling to them out of ignorance.  And this is where meditation steps into the picture.  It is the means by which our latent self awakens meeting, face-to-face, the unconditioned which is beyond the aggregates.  It is only by passing through an-ātman, i.e., the aggregates, does the ātman fully recognize itself, this being the state of nirvana.

Major cracks in the West's very foundation

Our intelligence in the West is mainly applied to reason, or the same, the faculty of explaining nature, often simplistically.  From here we move into the natural sciences where we have what we believe to be an understanding of nature.  Judging from the results, however, science did not actually explain the phenomena of nature, it merely described it.  A case in point was electricity.  From Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) to Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) and the present, electricity cannot be fully explained. 

Electricity’s actions can be described using the analogy of water through pipes but that is inadequate in the long run.  What electricity is, essentially, still waits to be discovered. And if our sun and the rest of the suns of the universe are proven to be basically electrical (the SAFIRE project’s mission) and not just hydrogen bombs in the sky, what then?  Are we willing to admit that our entire explanation of the universe is wrong and that much of what science holds to be settled is largely unsettled?

I dare say the West is undergoing a huge change that will shake its very foundation.  Not only in science but our very perception of the world will be affected.  Major cracks in this foundation have already appeared but has thus far been covered over by the skillful use of propaganda and indoctrination which has been increasing in our intellectual academies otherwise known as universities!

Buddhism and Hinduism, in this earthquake, are the two religions that can accept the cracking of the West’s foundation and reveal a more solid foundation, one based upon Mind or spirit which means that our universe is fundamentally spiritual—not material.  In light of this, we are spiritual beings not clock-work like robots.  We cannot be mechanically duplicated.

Looking at this from the perspective of our normal, everyday life in which we seek out what is most useful for us, we have only managed to engage in our world through our emotions and sexual drive.  We lack the necessary intelligence (but certainly not cunning reason) to enter, adequately, the true world of Buddhism and what it offers. 

Sadly, we want Buddhism to be our daddy or mommy and cater to our wants and needs.  But Buddhism wants us to use our intelligence in a unique way and rely much less on the intellect. In a nutshell, the former is concerned with gaining direct knowledge (e.g., seeing our true nature) while the latter deals with giving reasons or explanations.  The two are quite different.  Another example, koans require great intelligence to solve them, not the intellect.  It is the overuse of the intellect that keeps the adept from solving the koan.  It is this intellect, also, that keeps the wheel of suffering turning and our intelligence declining.

 

 

 

Dharma and Logos

Translating the term “dharma” is not without problems.  It doesn’t just mean the teaching of the Buddha.  It has other meanings such as good conduct or behavior.  It can refer to the truth as in the clear and spotless vision of the truth or the ‘dharma body’ (dharmakaya).  It can mean nature or characteristic as in the nature or characteristic of things to arise and fall away.  Dharma can mean natural law or order of the universe.  Dharma can mean a mental or physical thing in the example of unwholesome mental states or things or phenomena in general.

If we were looking for a suitable equivalent in Western philosophy, my guess is that we would have to consider Logos to be the West’s Dharma.

In the Greek tradition we find that the logos is to the illness of the psyche as medical treatment is to the illness of the body.  It is not out of the way to see the teachings or Dharma of the Buddha to be also healing; as a cure for our corrupted embodiment in the psychophysical body (the five skandhas).  The human being, both physically and spiritually is in a condition of dis-ease where the Buddha is the great physician who has come to heal us.

Logos can mean the governing principle of the cosmos.  It can also mean a discourse or a speaking and even silence since, according to Pythagoras, silence is logos.  The Stoic philosophers identified logos with the divine animating principle that pervades the cosmos.

I could go on and on with unpacking both Dharma and Logos.  They are both polysemantic and ambiguous.  The context often tells us which definition to use. So be aware.

 

 

 

 

 

Some Zennists still harbor a mechanist view of the world

Most Zen Buddhists are still trying to put the round peg of Zen into the square hole of European philosophy which still harbors, among other things, a mechanist view of the world which goes back to the seventeenth century. Granted that this is an oversimplification, this philosophical view holds that the universe is completely reducible to mass and motion.  Materialism and reductionism, I hasten to add, are closely linked with this view.

Such a view, however, does not appear to include living things such as self-animated beings with minds or even, oddly, the electrical force which is a billion, billion, billion, billion times more powerful than gravity.  Still, this has not stopped even proponents of AI (artificial intelligence), for example, who come from the camp of anthropic mechanism. 

Presently, some believe (and I include myself) that we are on the verge of putting an end to over three hundred years of mechanism: a philosophical doctrine that holds that natural processes and especially the processes of life are mechanically determined and capable of complete explanation by the laws of physics and chemistry.  This doctrine, I need to add, is linked with “Scientism” the philosophical claim that all knowable reality is only knowable by science.

In its present role, the intellect under the category of ‘reason’ is used to support the philosophy of mechanism.  But I propose that the intellect is a double edge sword.  It can be used, effectively, to destroy any vestige of mechanistic reasoning, either by mathematics or by experiment and in the example of Buddhism, by direct gnosis of the animative principle that runs our corporeal body.  But this has not yet happened.

The temples of Buddhism and especially Western Zen centers are still bowing, unconsciously, to the god of mechanism which is manifest in extreme skepticism towards an afterlife and an immaterial animative principle (atman, Buddha-nature, unconditioned Mind, etc.).

 

 

Becoming authentic Bodhisattvas

It is my impression, and not without a lot of evidence over the years, that modern Zen practitioners regard themselves as Bodhisattvas.  But I wonder how they deal with passages like this from the Mahayana canon?

“His [the Bodhisattva’s] body is hard, diamond-like, real, infallible and indestructible. It does not contain either a belly, or stomach, or excrement, or urine, or bad odors or impurity” (Śūraṃgamasamādhisūtra).

Frankly, the Zen practitioner would be wrong to understand the Bodhisattva in a literal way; as a human who took Bodhisattva vows.  And what about the birth of the Buddha-to-be, the Bodhisattva?  Below, we don’t find any sign of a normal child birth.

“Why is not that side of the Conqueror's mother rent as she is delivered of the Best of Men, and why does no pain ensue ?

Tathagatas are born with a body that is made of mind [manomāyeṅ rūpena], and that is why the mother's body is not rent and why no pain ensues” (Mahavastu).

Is it possible that we are not to understand such words as these at a literal, human level which are, instead, anagogic having a spiritual meaning?  It may well be the truth that Buddhism is one big spiritual allegory about the birth and unfolding of our own spiritual body—a real event—but something so profound that it requires a mythological treatment.

What is missing in the modern Buddhist context is the spiritual life.  Modern Buddhism has overly psychologized itself.  Its new mission, as I see it, is to help people get in touch with their basic humanness, showing some degree of compassion.  But this is a long way from awakening to our spiritual substance and becoming authentic Bodhisattvas.

No such thing as equality of outcome in Buddhism

I was just doing a little bit of research on the notion of “equality of outcome” (sometimes called “equality of result”) which is an egalitarian idea that believes we must eliminate material inequalities between individuals.  To accomplish this goal involves the transfer of wealth from those who have a lot of wealth, to those who have less so that all have an equal amount.  If this were a marathon race everyone would end up winning and all would receive the same prize.

This is not quite the same as “equality of opportunity”.  An example of this kind of equality would be a free education for all children from K thru 12 and a free college education.  But what about children who go to better private schools or go to better private colleges?  It seems that they have better opportunities.

A bitter pill to swallow, humans cannot make utopias and when they try, more than often, their utopias turn into dystopias in the example of the former Soviet Union.  The best that we can do is to keep making adjustments and tweaks to the system then step back to see if they work as intended and if not, go back to the drawing board.

Switching gears to Buddhism, there is no such thing as equality of outcome.  We are not already Buddhas according to the Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra and the path to Buddhahood will not likely be successful for everyone who tries.  Any Buddhist who says otherwise errs.  Few monastics and lay people during the Buddha’s time became aryans (those who had entered the stream).  Most remained anaryans (lit. not-aryan).  This is all proven in Peter Masefield’s book titled, Divine Revelation in Pali Buddhism.

The dumbing down of Buddhism so that everyone can pass through the gates of egalitarianism is certainly an abomination which is like handing out certificates of participation as the equivalent of a college degree.  Buddhism is about sacrifice, for example, overcoming the five hindrances.  If you can’t manage this you will likely have many rebirths before you can.

Like Buddhism but not rebirth

Many Western Zen Buddhists, and in general, Western Buddhists have a real problem with rebirth, that is, the idea that after this death we will be reborn.  Usually, the first thing they throw out is, how can their be rebirth if the Buddha denies a soul or ātman?  If you point out to them that there is no unambiguous denial of the ātman in Buddhism and, instead it’s with consciousness that there is the production of future renewed existence, they are forced to their fallback position, viz., I don’t believe in rebirth.

All along these people did not accept Buddhism’s idea of rebirth but because they liked other aspects about Buddhism, they held their nose and practiced Buddhism.

The modern disposition to deny rebirth in which our consciousness takes up another form after our death is one of the major tenets of materialism.  A contemporary of the Buddha, Ajita Kesakambali, taught what we might call today a form of materialism. The individual is composed of earth, water, fire and air which, after the death of the individual, return to their raw state.  There is no future life for us let alone the idea of rebirths.

Admittedly, some amount of faith is required of those new to Buddhism who are unfamiliar with the Buddhist idea of rebirth that after the death of the physical body, consciousness inhabits another form based upon one’s previous karma.  To altogether deny rebirth or try to alter its meaning in a way that makes it acceptable to the Western mind which embraces scientific materialism is somewhat underhanded.

The way Westerners I have met react to the Buddhist idea of rebirth deserves notice.  For one thing it is too skeptical and, secondly, it is a refusal to give the idea of rebirth some measure of sincere thought and reflection with an open mind.

Seeking truth in a postmodern, relativistic culture

Truth, in the sense of discovering what is most primordial, unchanging and undying, is not important in a postmodern, relativistic culture.  Such a culture believes that we have no way to step outside of ourselves to see reality as it is before we anthropomorphize it, converting it into all-too-human concrete images we are familiar with which make up our life-world; which comes under the heading of Darwinian fitness. 

Seeking truth or ultimate reality is not even a part of the life of the academy—at least not at this time.  Seeking truth or ultimate reality is a Buddhist thing.  But there is not all that much Buddhism in the thousands of colleges and universities these days. 

Oh how glad I was to have left modern culture after discovering and taking up Zen!  My basic attitude to the college life was get as far away from it as I could manage.  I wasn’t interested in any correspondence theory, between my beliefs and whether or not they corresponded accurately with the external world or the beliefs of a  particular group. 

Although I had not achieved kensho, Zen Buddhism seemed to have a certain kind of profound beauty about it in which nature seemed to speak to me in a most mysterious way when I was alone with her.  I grew to have no fear of being alone with nature.  I seemed to sense that nature would help me. 

Zen, I came to realize, was a way or means to the sacred that was somewhere buried deep inside of me, covered up by layers upon layers of cultural lies and deceptions.  If anything, with Zen I had struck some ancient chord which was outside of my memory but, nevertheless, was still connected with me but at a very deep level.

All this is missing in our culture I later came to realize, sadly.  But for me, at twenty-four, it was a most exciting passion.  I wanted to see what the Buddha saw.  And if it meant getting rid of layers upon layers of lies and deceptions I would do it.  I had to see what was most true.  I had to awaken.

The barren soil of the West

China was not a barren land for the growth and development of Buddhism.  In fact, given the development of Confucianism and Daoism it was quite fertile.  Even when the Chinese language is taken into consideration, putting Sanskrit into Chinese characters and thought was a task that the Chinese were capable of.

Cultures do have their differences and these differences may or may not be crucial to presenting Buddhism as it is meant to be understood.  China had the right culture for Buddhism to prosper.

Certainly, the late Thomas McEvilley’s great book, The Shape of Ancient Thought, which took him over thirty years to put together demonstrates, adequately, that what we call the West which has been erected on the foundation of the ancient philosophies of Greece is quite compatible with Indian and Buddhist philosophy despite the modern tendency to steer away from this foundation—perhaps to build a new one.  This tendency or inclination exists only because European philosophy has not been faithful to ancient Greek philosophy.  McEvilley observes that,

“Greek Philosophy has, in effect, been forced into the mold of European philosophy, when in fact it had a great deal more in common with its contemporaneous Indian thought” (p. 491).

It is this forcing into the European mold that Greek philosophy becomes gradually changed so that, as a result, we lose our spiritual sense finding it difficult to understand just where Buddhism is coming from.  The European soil that Buddhism is forced to grow in is one of scientific materialism (also scientism).  According to B. Alan Wallace in his book, The Taboo of Subjectivity:

"The central aim of science is to understand and control the objective, physical world; yet the subjective mind, with its powers of observation and reasoning, is, awkwardly, the fundamental instrument of scientific inquiry. With their ideal of absolute objectivity, in which all subjective influences are excluded, the advocates of scientific materialism have sought to exclude the subjective elements of even the human mind."

Another name for the subjective side is “first-person knowledge” which I would argue played a major role in Greek and Indian philosophy.  Also it is worth keeping in mind that scientific materialism, with its one-sidedness  is an unproven philosophical claim.

I don’t hold much hope out for Buddhism or Zen Buddhism.  Sure they will always be around but in a highly altered form with little or no spiritual content.  Nirvana and kensho will be seldom discussed in Buddhists and Zen circles.  The emphasis will shift to the psychological and humanistic Marxism with an underpinning of nihilism.