A major presupposition of ours

Everyone who takes up the study of Buddhism—and Zen—tries to understand it based upon their presuppositions.  Few can even imagine that Buddhism will challenge many of the presuppositions that they are holding on to.  The Buddha’s teaching cannot be comprehend except as we are willing to give up our presuppositions which we have brought with us in advance of our study. 

Everyone has a lot of known and unknown presuppositions in their life’s baggage—precious items that they don’t want to toss into the trash bin of life, at least not yet—not while they still  have their youth.

I am not surprised by all this when I find people arguing that when the Buddha said to Subhuti in the Diamond Sutra “there is not the slightest dharma that can be attained” he essentially was telling Subhuti that there is no enlightenment or anuttara-samyak-sambodhi—that’s the big secret.  But that is not what the Buddha meant or taught.  And the painful truth is this: we will never know what the Buddha meant because the reason we took up the study of Buddhism and Zen is because we are nihilists at heart.  We imagine that Buddhism is the perfection of nihilism.  Nihilism is a major presupposition of ours especially in today's world.  It is difficult to admit that we are fundamentally nihilists at heart.  So then it becomes my job to confront this presupposition among others.  And it usually never works out.  And where do these people go?  To other like-minded nihilists who call themselves Buddhists.

The clearer I lay out what the Buddha taught the more aggressive are the counter assertions of my opponets.  They are really defending nihilism.  Such people are dishonest.  Yet, they deny the transcendent.  They also deny that what animates this temporal body of ours is transcendent and really who we are.  They deny rebirth and the fact that consciousness is the transmigrant.  They deny karma, in particular, that this temporal body is old karma.  They even deny the central importance of nirvana in which it then becomes trivial.  But more important, they believe in emptiness which is just another way of saying in death I will be annihilated which is attained nihilism.

Comments

[Tim]

The keisaku will always be needed until we awake and ask no questions, have no thought, and post no Blogs. Gasshō

[n. yeti]

What do you expect? They are being taught by weird and freakish monks like Dosho Port who deny karma and rebirth.

[thezennist]

Nice thoughts—so true. I never liked postmodern thought in which I include nihilism. Those who came to it were like calfs still on the teat of humanist Marxism from the Second International.

[mathesis]

Nihilism is modern man's opium, the religion of defeatism and mental mediocracy, unalloyed charlatinism and sophistry which sometimes poses as "philosophy". It has not the slightest logical, philosophical or scientific basis but it serves as a kind of self-justification or self-gratification much like the "sour grapes" of the fable: "my life seems meaningless and too complex for my intelligence, therefore it must be the same for everyone else and for the whole universe itself". Such a person simply refuses to "see correctly" the world as it "really is" and the order the permeates things.