The Zennist

Personal survival after death

Another aspect of Buddhism that gets ignored is personal survival in which we take up a new life after death.  However, as long as we believe that consciousness is a product of the brain which then makes our consciousness brain dependent, the hope in survival after death remains a fantasy without much support.  Even the case for it made by such notables as Plato, Cicero, Giordano Bruno, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer are not persuasive.

Not a few times in these blogs have I said that in Buddhism it is consciousness or in Sanskrit vijñāna rather than the ātman that is the transmigrant which survives death and goes on to take up another life.  The ātman is the Buddha-nature, the absolute within us that we are blind to.  By the way, there is even a case that can be made for Hinduism that it is the jiva that is the transmigrant and not the ātman.

For both Buddhism and Hinduism what animates the corporeal body is not body-dependent but only seems that way because of our desire and attachment to the temporally limited corporeal body.

Perhaps more important than battling over whether or not there is reincarnation it would be better to make a case that we, as conscious beings, survive the death of the body and leave it at that.  Given the huge number of NDEs (near death experiences) in which the experiencer’s physical body is dead (i.e., flatlined), they describe, nevertheless, leaving their physical body, rising above it, even watching physicians trying to resuscitate it.

Buddhism has no argument with this phenomenon but still the West does despite the empirical evidence of NDEs.  Western neuroscientists assume that consciousness is produced in some way by the brain although they have not the slightest clue how it manages this amazing feat.  Thus, the many examples of NDEs run counter to their hypothesis that consciousness and the various conscious experiences are brain emergent.

For me, that some Western Buddhists have a hard time with accepting personal survival after death which leads to rebirth says more about how they distort Buddhism and wish it to be rather than accepting what the Buddha actually teaches.  It is almost like they are trying to take over the Dharma but not for the reason that they have anything to gain but just because they're very uncomfortable with authentic Buddhism.  I sense something diabolical in this activity.

The heart to heart dialogue

Most people, especially, the young tend to look at people in a external, largely superficial way.  E.g., what someone wears, how they keep their hair, their income, the car they drive, status, etc.  Relying on this kind of criteria would not do well if someone were looking for a Zen teacher or Lama.  The external person is of secondary value in Buddhism when it comes to looking for a teacher. 

What should matter for the student who is in a search for a good teacher is their own ability to have a heart to heart conversation which the student may not  completely understand.  Having close friends or buddies may not prepare the student, or have anything to do with what it means to have a heart to heart dialogue.  Needless to say this is a difficult topic for any Western student who is looking to study Zen Buddhism or Tibetan Buddhism for that matter. 

But now let’s look at this problem from the perspective of the teacher.  A real teacher sees people mainly through the heart (心).  Frankly, most Westerners tend to be more like children when it comes to the world of spirituality.  Their heart is closed off.  They are immature and unrefined.  Nor are they even aware of it.  Maybe the reason for this immaturity stems from their culture.  Foremost, they do not know how to communicate heart to heart. 

So what is this kind of communication really about?  Very simply this, if spiritual knowledge  is to be imparted from teacher to student, there has to be a psychical connection.  Some students have it—most do not.  When you take into consideration that the teacher’s goal is to introduce the student to what actually animates their corporeal body which is unconditioned they have to be, so to speak, on the same wavelength as the teacher.

Make no mistake about it, Zen and Buddhism, in general, is learning how to access the luminous Mind which is very real.  But much of the practice consists in weaning our self off many bad habits (vasana) and beliefs that have no place in Buddhism.  And the conversation or dialogue with the teacher is not yet heart to heart but tends to be closer to a parent to child dialogue.

Zen is always pointing directly to Mind

Authentic Zen is always pointing directly to Mind (真指人心).  Simple enough?  Well, the answer is, no it is not that simple.  In fact, Mind is not the same as our thoughts that are constantly arising and changing. 

Mind should be understood as the essence or substance of our everyday thoughts.  For us to see Mind involves a seeing that is completely devoid of thought.  In other words, the mysterious activity of producing thoughts has all of a sudden stopped.  Furthermore, this Mind the Buddha says is luminous.

Making matters worse, our various concepts about Mind, which are particular forms of thought, which stimulate further thinking, are not Mind.  Such a Mind is just a representation which is a product of thinking.  To reiterate, it's not the real Mind.

Thinking, which is the activity of Mind, it should be clear, is also not Mind.  Mind comes prior to thinking.  Thinking stems from Mind whose product is thoughts/concepts.  This explains why in Zen, to see Mind, thinking (thought  production) has to stop sufficient to reveal Mind which is luminous.  Stopping thinking, I hasten to add, cannot be willed.  To do so is somewhat like patting down waves on a pond with our hand.  The process of awakening to Mind, eventually, if we do it right, is the spontaneous stopping of thinking (and with it the stopping of thoughts/concepts) thus revealing Mind with its luminosity.

If there is a problem it lies in not differentiating between Mind and our thoughts.  We can think about the idea or concept of Mind (representational thinking) but Mind, itself, is actually unthinkable.  In principle, atman and Mind (citta) are also the same.

Eating habits, attitudes and opinions

I am beginning to hold the view that our eating habits are much like the attitudes and opinions we hold, that is, we engage with what we like—not what, in the long run, is good for us.  Perhaps the comparison even goes further: we find it next to impossible to change and give up what we enjoy and makes us feel happy like little children.

I chose the analogy of eating habits because it is so much a part of our life, almost like breathing and drinking water.  When we celebrate a holiday or someone’s birthday, we haul out the tasty food.  When our life is in transition many of us use food to remind us of better times.  But it goes much deeper. 

As my old pappy used to say, “It’s not what you eat, it is what is eating you.”  And this is where I make the turn to the attitudes and opinions we hold dear that are very often not our own but that of our culture which could be very wrong; simply implanted into our heads at school or from the television.  These attitudes and opinions are somewhat like junk food.  They are everywhere but not of lasting benefit and help as we struggle through this life.  What is even worse, people expect us to think and to hold attitudes and opinions like they do—we have to be a part of the consensus.  There is sometimes a penalty if we don’t.

When we step into the spiritual world of Buddhism we have to dump our long held cultural attitudes and opinions that run counter to the fundamental teachings of the Buddha such as there is no transmigrant, no life after death and no such thing as karma.  If we don’t give up these opinions we are not being open minded or really studying Buddhism.  Maybe what we really want is to be able to have our cake and eat it, too.  Said again, we don’t really want to shed our cultural attitudes and opinions which run counter to the teachings of the Buddha.

Over the years, while I have seen an interest in Buddhism such as Zen Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism, I have also seen Buddhism get westernized insofar as we still can’t fully bring ourself to believing in nirvana, a transmigrant, a spiritual body that is deathless (dharmakaya), an afterlife, and karma.  About the only thing we like about Buddhism, in general, is meditation.  But Buddhism offers so much more.  At its most elementary level it teaches us that there is life after death; that this is one of many existences we will have as we go up the learning curve to reach the telos of full awakening by which the universe becomes our play ground.

 

The confused atman

In Dharmakṣema's version of the Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra we learn that the ātman is a state (dharma) that is true, real, eternal, self-governing, whose foundation is unchanging. 

I would add to this list that the ātman is unconditioned, this being also nirvana.  But permit me to say that the ātman is unconditioned for us only when it realizes nirvana which is unconditioned.

“he attains utter nirvana in his very self (S., praty- ātman).  He knows ‘Destroyed is birth, lived is the holy life, done is what was to be done, there will be no more of thus-conditioned existence” (M. i. 255-256).

The above suggests to me our very ātman that realizes the unconditioned/nirvana also becomes unconditioned.  Previous to this, before our awakening, it would appear that the ātman is unknown, or in a state of avidya since, for example, we have confused it with the five skandhas so that all of our values are relative to the skandhas. 

It is only when we attain complete nirvana that the unconditionedness of our ātman is finally revealed to us which has always been thus.  We learn, further, that we lost our way by thirsting for the conditioned, including a false self which is our temporal body.

The joy of awakening is that we learn of our true nature which is the ātman in addition to learning what is not our ātman; which is merely an illusion maintained by confused beings.

What is the truth?

If someone were to ask, “How does a Zen master point to the truth?”  It might be better to ask, “What is the truth?”  If the truth is beyond words as Zen believes, it is not too difficult to conclude that realizing the truth is not going to be easy!  Zen, will always show us the most difficult way!

Of course the burden to realize the truth the Zen master points to, let’s call it “Mind,” rests mainly on the student’s shoulders.  For the teacher who has realized such a Mind (you could even call it Buddha Mind), they can only hit at it, maybe by asking a very profound question of the student, “What moves your hands and feet?”  This question, by the way, I have taken from the book, The Zen Teachings of Bodhidharma, which is translated by Red Pine.  It is a very good question because it puts the truth right in front of the student’s face.  But what can we as the student do?

Try as we might and being honest we can only say, “I don’t know!”  Sure, we can make a lot of guesses trying to be clever.  But what if the Zen master tells us that none of our answers are the right answer.  In that case, we are going to have to dig much deeper to realize Mind’s light.

If we are really interested; not just curious about realizing what moves our hands and feet, we might want to join this teacher’s saṃgha or community of seekers if he or she will have us.  Or we could go off on our own.  Maybe build a small cabin or live in a small trailer in the woods for a few months and look within.  Again, we might want to join another saṃgha that teaches Zen through seated meditation or zazen.

The decision is really ours.  Given our own previous karma, we might not be up to the task of knowing, exactly, what moves our hands and feet by which we walk home and wash the dishes.  In fact, the more we think about it the more difficult the task becomes.  Or maybe we don’t have enough faith that there is this light of Mind.  It just might be easier to do zazen—that should suffice.  Maybe just doing zazen is the truth.  That seems to be what Dōgen Zenji is saying.  But then what if he is wrong?  

What accounted for the success of Soto Zen during the Tokugawa period?

Enlightenment by doing seated meditation, otherwise referred to as zazen is what Western Soto Zennists believe Zen is about.  Having been involved in Soto Zen I can speak for them.  Yes it is true.  Back in the 1960s, in my Zen robes, I would sit in meditation several times a day with my teacher and the other monk.  Yep, I believed I was doing Zen! 

But during the Tokugawa period (1600–1867) was doing zazen the main attractor which accounted for Zen’s popularity at the time like it is today?  The answer is no.  So what accounted for the success of Soto Zen during the Tokugawa period?

The scholar Duncan Ryūken Williams has demonstrated in his book, The Other Side of Zen, things like healing, rain-making, protection from fire, and funeral services contributed to the overall success of Soto Zen.  Little if any of Soto’s success was due to zazen—and here is the kicker—nor was its success due to the teachings of Dōgen Zenji.  Dōgen’s works were read by only a minority of Soto priests.

What is going on in the West as far as Soto Zen is concerned, is that it has become the cult of Dōgen Zenji and consists in doing lots of zazen.  But also, in my humble opinion, Dōgen’s works have introduced metaphysics into Zen, for example, the notion of being-time (有時) without which things, supposedly, would not be things for everything is really being-time.  Being-time is also an activity, a flow.  Take that away, nothing remains.

Personally, I think Dōgen has missed the fundamental aim of Zen which is to see the kingdom within, that is, to awaken to our unconditioned Buddha-nature which is hidden from us by our preference for the external, conditioned world including our preference for the temporal body of birth and death.  All that this preference does is serve to hide our true nature.

More real and vivid than our life in this body

When we wake up from a dream which at the time for us seems very real, we wake up to a much more vivid reality as compared with the dream state.  On the same score, awakening to ultimate reality is a vivid state even more real and vivid than our life in this body.  After this initial, sudden awakening, words cannot describe this state anymore than while sleeping, being in a dream, we can describe waking up.

Might we gather from this that relative and ultimate are different?  Ultimate reality, i.e., the unconditioned, can neither be dreamed of nor conceptualized.  For us to be awakened, we must approach ultimate reality on its own terms—not ours.  Those who take the latter course of action are forever doomed to fail.  Simply put, there is a huge difference, in terms of vividness, between ultimate reality and our human experiences.  It is somewhat like reading about climbing Mount Everest and being, actually, there at the base camp having to start the climb.

Is doing zazen a vivid experience beyond our human experiences like awakening to ultimate reality?  The answer is no, it is not.  Let’s be honest, zazen is tantamount to sitting in a department of motor vehicles waiting room for an hour, listening for our number to be called so that we can get our license paperwork completed.

There are really two schools of Zen in this regard.  There is the school of Zen which believes that by doing zazen it will eventually turn into Buddhahood.  Then there is the school of sudden enlightenment in which ultimate reality is directly intuited.  The two schools are quite different although some would argue they are not.  As far as being vivid, doing zazen is often more about fighting off sleep, staying focused, keeping the back erect and dealing with pain.  In the early phase of Zen ānāpānasmṛti (mindfulness of breathing) was practiced while in zazen.  Still, this is hardly like seeing the Buddha-nature or kenshō 見性 which is the basis of authentic Zen.

Nihilism ain't Buddhism

I am always trying to find words to describe nihilism the way it should be defined, trying to use just a few words.  Lately, I have decided to define nihilism as the belief that man is only the sum of his anatomy or if you prefer, the sum of his body parts.  When those parts cease working, that’s it.  Beyond that, life has no real meaning.

From this we can say that anyone who comes to study Buddhism or Zen Buddhism holding the belief that we, as human beings, are no more than the sum of our body parts can never enter the sacred stream of Buddhism or Zen.  They are forever banned, in other words.  And I think this is fitting for they deserve the fruits of their belief. 

Those who see man in such a limited way (and I have met some) have unknowingly sentenced their own consciousness to the abyss; to facing the very wellspring of disharmony and suffering, being unable to pull back from their fall.  So why are people like this?  For example, why did Leon Trotsky say things like this?

“The only difference is that this tyranny will not come from the right, but from the left, and will not be white, but red, in the literal sense of that word, for we shall shed such streams of blood that all the losses of human lives in Capitalist wars will shrink and pale before them” (Aaron Simanovich, Memoirs, Paris, 1922, Molodaya Gvardiya, Moscow, No. 6, 1991, p. 55).

I have no empathy with his words.  At the same time, nothing has changed all that much in the human race.  We still have people like this in our world who are just as diabolical; and we still have no idea why such people become like this except to speculate about it.  For all we know those who have the greatest influence over the world have always been absolutely evil; who seem to profit from keeping people in ignorance and conflict.

In this regard, Buddhism wants us to see what, exactly, makes us greater than the sum of our anatomy which will also reveal how our spiritual blindness has, in the past, deluded us opening up the door of evil.  In fact, if we awaken we shall see that those who embrace nihilism are evil.  To borrow a line from the Lankavatara Sutra such people are “not to be spoken to, for they are offenders of the Buddhist doctrines.”

The Christian and Buddhist labyrinth

For want of a better way of putting it, Christian theology eventually turns into an intricate labyrinth as compared with Buddhism.  This is not meant to suggest, however, that Buddhism cannot become also a labyrinth.  The point I wish to make is that some religions are more labyrinthine than others, hence, making it difficult to find the way from the entrance to the center. 

More than often with our imagination we are over confident that the center is in view or close at hand.  But from the center-side, we are still far away from it and, at this rate, we are not likely to ever find the center! 

In the example of Christianity, as a Buddhist I want to reach its center in the same way that I reach the center of Buddhism which is the gnosis of the unconditioned (i.e., nirvana).  But what I am confronted with in Christianity is a variety of doctrines which, more than often, seem to turn into intellectual constructions which have little or no bearing, directly, on the spiritual life and gnosis.

Don’t get me wrong, I am overjoyed to read about the Hesychast mystic tradition of Eastern Orthodox spirituality in which the saint who is sufficiently purified attains divine union with the same light that was manifested to Jesus' disciples on Mount Tabor at the Transfiguration.  But realistically, how much of Christianity is here?

Turning to Buddhism, the “light/phos of Tabor” (Φῶς του Θαβώρ) is the luminous Mind of which the Buddha speaks in this passage.

“Oh! monks.  The mind is luminous when it obtains release from the adventitious defilements” (A. i. 10).

As a Buddhist, I would prefer that Christianity aim for the simple, that is, awakening to the light of Tabor by purification of the mind—at least begin here.  For without this awakening Christianity becomes a vast labyrinth that is not moving to the center so much as it has lost all sense of direction.  And the same applies with Buddhism if Buddhists don’t realize the luminous Mind, who then get carried away by the doctrinal which easily turns into mere intellectual constructions which are, certainly, not luminous.