The Zennist

Sowing seeds on barren land

Belief in our Buddha-nature, that we have the ability to actualize it and become Buddhas, has no prerequisite other than to have faith in the Buddha’s teaching then take up the practice to get there.  But many today don’t see it this way.  They need more than just faith in the Buddha’s teaching as a prerequisite.  What they want is tangible evidence beforehand that this nature is real before they have faith in it!

Trying to convince such people that we all have the Buddha-nature and we can actualize it by various practices laid out by the Buddha is an up hill battle and I am beginning to think, a waste of time.  It is like sowing seeds on barren land.  This attitude to me is more of a reflection of skepticism or the last of the five hindrances (pañca nivāraṇa) which is doubt.

People these days are almost anti-religious and have almost given up on the idea that there is anything above and beyond their corporeal body and a life of servitude to its sensual demands which is finalized in death.  It is a very bleak outlook.  Yet, on the other hand, the credulity of such people knows no limit when it comes to something they desire from recreation drugs to a big home in suburbia, or placing their belief in a political religion like Marxism and its versions which have come down to us all of which envision a utopia at the end of the road if only we can manage to remove the impediments to it.

This is credulity, maybe at its worst.  This kind of childish fantasy flies in the face of Buddhist thought that life is really an illusion insofar as it is wrongly interpreted by our senses which makes it seem vital and real, but upon deeper investigation is found to be different than expected.

For those who don’t wish to see that this is all an illusion and, as with any illusion, it is a deceptive appearance that is always changing—yes, I can understand the skepticism towards the Buddha’s message which asks us to see through the deception and see the real thus ending our life as prisoners in samsara.  But such people are shallow.

 

Finding the sacred presence

If I had to pick a word that represented my first lessons in Zen training it would have to be the word “sacralization” in which a person is sensitized to seeing the immediate world around them in a much deeper and more spiritual way. 

Everything I did from that time on involved a kind of deepening process whereby I became more attuned to my own behavior.  It could be making a pot of coffee for sensei, washing the dishes, putting firewood into the stove, or reading a sutra.  It was almost like I was imbuing everything and every action with a sacred character from turning a doorknob to putting on a new roof or just sitting and reading. 

Admittedly, sacralization is difficult to define but if one is fortunate to spend even a day or two away from the madding crowd in a Buddhist temple wearing robes and practicing mindfulness, a sacred presence starts to take shape.

It is impossible to sense this reading books about Zen Buddhism.  I know most people who are interested in Zen make some attempt at the sacralization of a space in their home or apartment by having a shrine.  They might meditate there or do full prostrations (Tibetan style) and do sutra reading and chanting. 

Becoming more spiritually sensitized so that the sacred character of the world around us grows is not an easy task.  It is also easy to become confused by what it means to sacralize the immediate world around us as if it is a kind of moral behavior—it is not. 

If we were Buddhas we would see that every action of ours, including our words in conversations, leaves a specific kind of imprint or mark which generates a particular aura around us which might be peaceful, hectic or even depressing.  Surrounded by this aura we are unconsciously reacting and living with what is contained inside it which is not sacred or spiritually edifying.  Hence, the need to become sensitized to the sacred. 

In most cases we are just dumping our unresolved problems into this dark aura such that over time the problems mount up so that we sense a kind of unease much of the time.  When the weekend comes we feel the urge to escape from our den.  But in the end we have to return to it.  The sacred peace found in the monastic life or living in retreat is not in our life.  Nor can we find much time to become sensitized to the sacred.   

 

 

Time is on my side, no it's not

If we are interested in Zen, what prevents us from having a sufficient aspiration for kensho (seeing our true nature)?  It might be believing that we have time on our side which we imagine allows us to become attached to worldly values and things to the point where Zen by comparison is more of a curiosity.  With this kind of attitude our aspiration is not as high as it should be.  We have more aspiration for sex and a BMW! 

This tendency can be corrected to a certain extent by meditating on the non-everlasting, transitory nature of this life. We don’t need books to teach us this. We only have to look around us to see how everything is always changing, and more than often not for the better. Change includes our family and friends. It even includes us—we are always aging.  A smooth face soon has wrinkles.  Black hair soon becomes gray. We are no longer the little toddler or the adolescent. We are growing old and will one day die. 

By meditating on the transitory nature of this life we will not delude our self into the false belief that we have time on our side and think more, seriously, about coming to know what is eternal, blissful and our true nature which survives the death of this temporal body.

This all sounds so easy but this is because we always believe  that we have time on our side, enough to waste for many years.  Then in our sixties we can really get into Zen.  But as the Chinese say, this is like digging a well when you are thirsty.  The hidden meaning is that it is too late to dig that well.  You should have done it long ago.  But we never learn.

I started digging my deep well at twenty.  I quickly found out that Zen and the pursuit of enlightenment is an adventure like no other.  There was never a boring or dull moment.  Sure there was also a dark night of the soul.  I remember this time well.  But in the words of the late poet-songwriter Leonard Cohen who was a Zennist, “There is a crack, a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in!”  When in the darkness you see this mysterious ‘crack’ the light comes pouring in.  You’re amazed.  What is it?  And it keeps on coming until the dryness of spirit is quenched.  And all that was kensho.  And here begins the real path of Zen which is another adventure that far exceeds the previous one.  It is where you meet the Buddhas who sustain you which is described in the Lankavatara Sutra.

A path not in vain

Starting from their cabin a person is seen walking through a dense wooded area.  If we asked them where are they going they might answer to this place where there is a deep pool for bathing or to a special area where edible wild mushrooms grow.  In other words the path is not in vain.  They know where they are going. 

Now if I asked people who are interested in Zen where does the path of Zen go, they might answer with some kind of vague reply.  Few if any would answer, “The path of Zen leads to the discovery of our true nature.”  Vagueness, is to be expected.

I remember having just turned 21 and I still didn’t know where, let us say, the path of Zen was going.  I had read enough to be greatly curious about Zen; being in somewhat of an existential crisis at the time wondering about the meaning of life.  It seemed like Zen masters, before they awakened, also faced their own existential crisis and then through Zen practice, gained satori 悟り which transcended the crisis.  I wanted some of that. 

Right then and there I was making a path to satori although I must confess I don’t know exactly what this involved.  But here I was in a small Zen temple with an abbot and another monk sitting in zazen, chanting a sutra and doing lots of work with mindfulness, hopefully, to have satori which for me meant gnosis, in the sense of a spiritual realization.

Figuratively speaking, at that time the path began to end in fog.  Zen was also turning into a formal institution in which the path to satori became unnecessary.  That is when I discovered that Soto Zen did not have a path to satori.  Satori wasn’t the apex of Zen practice as far as Soto Zen was concerned.  Instead, means and end were welded together in ceremony (行事) such as formal zazen.  One just sat insofar as the posture was the same posture Gautama used to become a Buddha.  I didn’t see it this way.

Maybe two years later the path to satori appeared again.  I was certain, now, where it was going.  It involved me, personally, seeing pure Mind—not these thoughts that kept rising and falling in my head, but more in what they were composed of.  At that point the work was cut out for me.  It was a do or die situation.  Eventually, I hit pay dirt.

The strife (kali) of hatred

Herbert Marcuse, never without some of the DNA of Marx’s dark intellect says, “hatred of exploitation and oppression is itself a humane and humanistic element.” The problem with this is what do the ambiguous and, certainly, abstract terms “exploitation” and “oppression” really mean in one’s everyday life where as they say, the rubber meets the road? 

Personally, I think it is possible to live a meaningful life without falling into the Marxian mindset of always feeling that I am of a particular class always being exploited and oppressed and that the only way out is to destroy my oppressors and their world.  To be frank, I am more worried about being robbed at gunpoint by some thug at the ATM who is the real victimizer than some fictional oppressor like the 'bourgeoisie', ‘capitalism’ or ‘racism’.  Not too long ago I helped a woman get her purse back from a purse snatcher.  He was a real victimizer.  The woman was a real guiltless victim.   

According to Marcuse, hate is thoroughly institutionalized.  But is it really?  If I elect to put on the paranoiac goggles of Marcuse’s Marxian world, there is probably an oppressor under every stone.  It is amazing to me how we can train our minds to see things that are not there as if to say, “Please reality, stand aside—grant me my ideological hallucinations.”

The Buddhist world is a different world than the Marxian world vision that appears to have infected just about everything including our universities turning them into something akin to Marxist academies, where the ideological feminists, blacks and ecologists, not to mention the social justice warriors, are attempting to rid the university of any vestige of the oppressor that they have raised in their imaginations.

In response to this, Buddhism, in a manner of speaking, is not interested in carpeting the entire world to protect our tender feet from the sharp and unseen rocks of oppression.  It bids us to make and to wear shoes—a much easier solution.  The emotional pains, especially resentment, for example, about somebody’s unmerited salary, is best healed by inwardly detaching from one’s fiery, reactive emotions and anger towards this person.  In the deeper judgment, life has not really betrayed us.  Maybe we have betrayed our self.  Sitting alone for just thirty minutes most resentment goes away but then it comes back, let's say in an hour or so, after we feed it again. 

I am reminded, too, that there is still compassion and hospitality in the world; that I can still smile and say hello to a stranger.  I certainly don’t have to learn how to hate which apparently is the life’s blood of the Marxist like Marcuse and Che Guevara who said “a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate.”

“There is no fire (aggi) equal to passion (raga),

no strife (kali) like hatred” (Dhammapada 202).

 

The inherent nature

In Sanskrit, the inherent nature of all phenomena is called dharmatā or the same, the true nature or essence.  Even our everyday thoughts that continually arise in our heads have an inherent nature or dharmatā.  The world of phenomena and our thoughts are all stemming from dharmatā which means that phenomena and our thoughts are one and the same through dharmatā. 

If the adept realizes the dharmatā of his or her thoughts they also, at the same time realize the dharmatā of all phenomena.  This is why kenshō is so important in Zen.  It is about realizing our inherent nature or dharmatā.

When people talk about the oneness or unity of things they are just generally playing with words.  On a personal note, such people remind me of a group of 60s hippies sitting around a camp fire smoking weed.  It is important to understand that all things, including our thoughts, are made one only through the realization of dharmatā, otherwise there is only a plurality of differences. 

The point is for us to personally realize dharmatā; also not to assume that we have already realized it or it is something easy to realize like, for example, awareness or just sitting in zazen for forty minutes.  This way of approaching realization is, frankly, a path for the unwilling, that is, those who are unwilling to drop their various interpretations of Buddhism which in no way connects with the big picture.

The trap and the pass key

A trap is a useful instrument depending on what you wish to trap.  The victim, as a rule, is deceptively misled into a device which allows entry but not exit.  Part of the trap is the bait which entices the victim into the device.  Looking at the trap through Buddhism, as sentient beings we are trapped even before we exit our mother’s birth canal.  What is more, we have no memory of how the entrapment was accomplished which is the process of continuous  rebirth, i.e., samsara.  We draw a blank to think about the origin of our entrapment.  We have no memory if it.

The trap in which we find ourselves is almost perfect.  There is no apparent escape from it.  We are always subject to being tormented in this condition.  The trap is the psychophysical body together with the outer world which surrounds it.  Said again, there is no exit of which we might perceive through our senses.  It seems that whatever we do only reinforces the trap adding to our frustration.  It is safe to assume that we are trapped—having taken Mara’s bait many times—in such a way that no matter how far we extend our range of vision and thought the trap is always one step ahead of us!

In Zen, the trap is simplified but it is still the same trap as previously discussed.  Now the trap we face is the no-gate barrier 無門関 which stands in the way of our escape.  Acting as a checkpoint, it bids us to enter provided we have, let us say, the pass key.  But where the hell is the pass key? 

The pass key is to be found within us which is covered over by illusion.  This is our true nature which is unconditioned which is the basis of the conditioned world we are trapped in through our psychophysical body.  See it, you can pass through the checkpoint.  Whereas before the illusion seemed impenetrable, now it is transparent.  All that we behold now is but a configuration of this mysterious nature.  Even our psychophysical body, i.e., the five skandhas, are also a configuration of it.

One more thing.  You really have to behold this mysterious nature—the pass key.  It is a very difficult task to accomplish.  Most will fail because of their karma.  Nor will the Zen of sitting disclose the pass key either.  Doing seated meditation is like giving a child yellow willow leaves as gold to stop its crying.

 

All religions are not equal

Many of the leaders of the EU, the UK and the US see all religions as being equal.  Islam, Judaism and Christianity are all equal they believe.  Also Buddhism is the same as Hinduism.  The list goes on.  But very seldom are things, human beings or religions ever equal.  That is just complete nonsense.  Even snowflakes while appearing the same, are different thus not strictly equal.

To think of all religions as being equal requires reductive thinking.  The first thing to do is to throw out all the differences reducing the religions to something like, they all believe in god.  Perish the thought that Buddhism, for example, doesn’t believe in some all powerful creator god or Allah.  So on that note, there cannot be equality with a religion like Buddhism. 

Islam, for example, doesn’t accept any religion except its own.  In fact it teaches to “fight those who do not believe in Allah” which would be Buddhism.  Truth be told, religions other than Islam are deemed inferior.  People of other religions were forced to convert to Islam against their will or were in many instances, put to the sword.  This is what happened in India, by the way. 

Muslims would be the last to accept the notion that all religions are equal!  Yet we see Europeans bending over backwards to be hospitable to newly arrived Muslims even though the arrivals are anything but friendly to their hosts.  Right now, the EU and the UK are becoming war zones with more and more violence on the part of Muslims being directed to their hosts. 

I dare say, Europeans are suffering from some kind of madness as are some Americans especially black Americans who regard Islam as the champion of anti-slavery when it was quite the opposite. Islam, in fact, was perhaps the world’s greatest enslaver.  It is estimated that Islam enslaved over 28.7 million Africans.  It is also estimated that Muslims killed 120 million Africans to get these slaves many of them being sent to the Americas.

Many in the West refuse to take off their spectacles that make religions seem equal—then these same people forge ahead with a strange utopian vision, something not unlike Comte’s religion of humanity, brought up to modern standards, but still with Comte’s idea that feeling guides action which also stands above reason.  This is insanity, and I dare say that many of the leaders of the EU and the UK are quite insane.  It is only a matter of time before civil war in Europe raises its ugly head (the French have had 10,000 troops in the streets for two years—it hasn’t worked to stop the violence).

Craving is about escape

Does man crave because he is entrapped in a temporal body and the outer world which this temporal body inaccurately perceives adding up to a substantial illusion?  If this is the case how does one dispel such an all encompassing  illusion except by making a passage through the illusion which seems at first to be impassable.

Craving which I forgot to add is a powerful desire for something.  Craving is thrust upon us from the time we are infants, and perhaps even earlier.  We cannot un-crave at will.  Oh sure, I admit that we can resist craving to a small degree.  We can practice holding our breath and even try fasting.  We can forgo sex and lead a pure life.  But craving is always present, especially biological craving.

On that note, if I am alone in retreat practicing the Dharma, isolated from everyone, craving appears to me to be somewhat different than just a desire for something.  When I turn inward to examine it I can see what it is trying to do.  Craving is about escape.  I can see that this escape is directed outward to the illusion, not inward where it ends.  If I feel empty and hungry and a little bored, maybe I should get a pizza.  If I feel lonely all the time, how about someone to hold and share my life with?  If I suffer from self-loathing, why not end my miserable life or stay drunk for the rest of it? 

In order to change the old escape plan by, instead, looking within eventually beholding that which is non-illusory and unconditioned, requires commitment and work.  This will demand a major shift in an individual’s life patterns.  It requires a radical change of behavior.

Joining the military, going through bootcamp is one example of changing our behavior.  Suddenly becoming homeless after many years of living the middle-class life is another.  Becoming a Buddhist monk or nun is another example.  In these examples and many others, there is a radical change of behavior but Buddhism goes much deeper and tries to change the escape from the outer to the inner; to seeing what is immortal and unchanging thus to place our life on a path that goes beyond the seemingly impassable barrier of samsara.

We are naturally impious

Just yesterday I was listing to a song on Brian Wilson Presents SMiLE album (2004).  The name of the song was Child is the Father of the Man.

"Child is the Father of the Man" is a line from William Wordsworth's poem, "My Heart Leaps Up". The poem I came to learn did provoke some controversy. The poet William Blake objected to the phrase "natural piety" which appears in the last line of the poem. Blake believed that man was, instead, naturally impious.  I am guessing, but I think his objection was that man is quite capable of showing ignorance or disrespect for the truly sacred, even transforming himself unknowingly into a beast. 

From a Buddhist perspective the child is by no means innocent, in the sense of the child being a little Buddha. Rather, each newborn child bears the karmic burden of their previous life and its iniquities.  This is in contrast to the modern idea, held by some, that children are born innocent and this innocence must be preserved and protected by the parents and the community.

To be honest, I have seen enough parents who hold to the view of the innocent child which doesn’t last long.  Sooner or later, the karmic direction of the child or adolescent takes hold of them.  Then the adolescent grows into an adult and becomes the parent.  At that point, Wordsworth’s natural piety—if it ever was there—is replaced by reality and with it a struggle.

From all this I have to say, beware of attributing innocence where it is not.   On the same score, all beings have the Buddha-nature but only potentially.  Not actually.  And that means a lot because we can do very bad things in spite of having this nature.  William Blake had the more sober, realistic view.  At times, Wordsworth was too much of an incurable romantic.  One who looks at life while walking with towering stilts.