The Zennist

How do you tell if a Buddhist teacher is enlightened?

It is not uncommon for beginners to ask how do you tell if a Buddhist teacher is enlightened?  Given the fact that some teachers have, allegedly, groped their female students or used their authority to have sex with female students, it might be a good question.  Unfortunately, this is tantamount to asking how do you tell if a Christian minister or priest is Christ like?

I faced the same problem when I was a young dude.  Facing my teacher, I thought, or should I say, believed, that he was an enlightened Zen master and not just an abbot (he was only an abbot).  It turns out that he was a homosexual and I was not which created some tension.  The other monk who was there before I arrived, was the apple of the teacher’s eye.  My teacher, in other words was a predator of sorts.  But none of this quenched the fire of my enthusiasm for Zen—not in the slightest.  It was just another pothole in the road to nirvana.

From the side of not being a Buddha, which I was, there is no way that I could tell who had or had not achieved enlightenment.

Granted that what Gautama realized whereby he became "Buddha" is within each of us or as our Christian friends might say: the kingdom of God is within you. But do we, personally, see the state of being a Buddha, i.e., buddhatā, or see the kingdom of God within us right now? The answer is no. And why is it no? Because our thoughts, opinions and convictions act as a barrier which block our seeing.

It is with the recognition of this that Zen becomes both more interesting and profound.  Somehow we have to exhaust our thoughts, opinions and convictions.  They are only on the surface like small ripples on a pond.  They are also leading us astray because it is all we know. 

But there is still away.  It requires a retreat from everyone except yourself which means that you have to rely on your self to awaken—not some Zen teacher.  Now it is up to you to break through the barrier of your thoughts, opinions and convictions to see the true Mind which is unthinkable, beyond opinions and convictions.  In my example, it was a mistake on my part to assume my teacher was enlightened when he was only a  few yards in front of me on the spiritual path.  Do any of us really need a personal teacher, someone to hold our hand? No we don't.  

The mommy mind

We are all provided with what I call the “mommy mind” which is in us as far back as our memory goes. 

Remember your mother bore you in her womb.  It was in her womb that you met with your body of flesh.  In your childhood, your mother was the closest thing to you.

As a child, remember when you hurt yourself? While you are crying mommy hugs you, then looks at your knee.  She assures you that everything is alright even though you are releasing a flood of tears.  Next, mommy says to you let’s have some ice-cream.  You forget about your skinned knee.  Ice-cream sounds better!

Welcome to the mommy mind which over the first part of your adult years will be a significant part of your life.

The mommy mind, like your mother, is mainly concerned with nurturing your temporal body.  Put another way, the mommy mind cares for your temporal body and also encourages its growth and development.

As you grow up and get older, the mommy mind sees to your physical comfort and may even spoil you.  The mommy mind is always trying to keep you happy.  Any stress or anxiety you feel within yourself calls up the mommy mind to take care of the problem in the way your mommy did when you were a child, for example, feeding you comfort food.

But what about the daddy mind?

This is a tough question to answer.  I will have to go with my own memory at this point.  My daddy was like a phenomenon of nature when he entered the front door after work.  He was powerful and fearless (he used to be a professional boxer, even sparred with Jack Dempsey).  When he looked at you, he was really scanning your brain to see if you were growing up, or just staying stuck as a little boy with a mommy mind.  Later on in life as I grew to manhood my daddy mind finally kicked in.  I knew that life could easily become brutal and that one day I would die.  With this mind I learned to endure discomfort and physical pain.  It is with the daddy mind that I discovered Buddhism and went against the stream to try and see what the Buddha saw under the Bodhi tree.

As I look around at this generation I see the mommy mind as the dominant mind which seems to be at war with the daddy mind.  An understanding of how the two minds are coordinate has been all but ignored in favor of antagonism between the two minds.  This is the real tragedy.

Still, the mommy mind has to eventually give way to the practicality of the daddy mind because children grow up, always getting closer to the unpleasant side of reality.  And also, they begin to see life’s vicissitudes; that their bodies are fragile if not protected in the right way—and friends and family members die.  But wrongly they use the mommy mind to cope with life forsaking the daddy mind.  These are the same people who expect Buddhism to help them when their lives start to fall apart; wanting Buddhism to be their crutch when, truth be told, they don’t need a crutch.  What they need is more daddy mind which looks into the future; which tries to avoid behavior that eventually turns out to be a disaster.

But never really change inside

An interesting question hit me recently: How might one put on the appearance of changing but never really change inside, enough, to awaken to one’s true nature? 

I ask this because I have seen this happening on a regular basis in Buddhism.  It almost becomes a kind of kabuki theatre in which Zen students don their robes, do various ceremonies, sit in zazen, then later on—perhaps early in the morning— have sex with another member of the community.

Obviously, what is going on, the so-called outer person has changed.  Not only do they wear robes, even their mannerisms have changed and are very polished.  Then, at night, the unchanged inner person want’s to have sex.

In myself, I found that to understand what the Buddha was really teaching I had to struggle within myself.  It became a battle between the power of my cunning and deceptive intellect and somewhere deep within me the Buddha nature, buried by cultural conditioning, biological drives, and many other things not germane to the path.  Putting it mildly, one has to be obsessed with changing the inner person who is steering the ship in the wrong direction.  One has to push him aside, so to speak, the clear away his crap to allow the Buddha-nature a chance to manifest itself.

Zen without interpretation

Allow Zen’s satori to reveal its truth to you. Don’t try to impose your interpretation upon it. 

Yes, this sounds easy enough.  But the more we look into what this means for us, we want something to rest on, some kind of terra firma.  But there is nothing there for us to rest on, not even doing a lot of zazen.  It gives one the illusion of getting close to satori.  Still, it ends up becoming a dead-end.  Koans are even a dead-end which are only meant to wear out the intellect which uses thought as its main tool.

But what is happening with these dead-ends is we are being positioned in a certain way.  First of all, the search has to be within.  Our true nature or if you prefer, pure Mind, can only be found within the deepest recesses of our being.  Zazen doesn’t go far enough; neither do koans.  Also, don’t look for clever or witty answers.  You’re just deluding yourself.

I found myself, one day realizing that I had to go into retreat to look for this pure Mind.  Even in the solitude of my retreat, I was being further positioned to accept the fact that I could fail.  In fact, I even admitted to my self almost three months into my retreat, that I could neither understand the idea of pure Mind nor find it within the deepest recesses of my being.  I knew the taste of doubt, if not failure, and also realized my inability to find pure Mind.

So think about this.  You’re now between a rock and a hard place with no place to go.  The last thing you must give up is trying to impose your interpretation upon what pure Mind or your true nature is.  Zen, has finally positioned you where it wants you.  You're finally open.  You live waiting for a great mystery to enter and don't even know you are doing it.  You learn this after satori.

The journey to be awakened

Besides faith, Zen requires courage to prevent a loss of faith.  The goal of Zen is difficult.  Zen is not about driving your low emission car to your local Zen center to do zazen, being a part of a close-knit Zen community.  This is for people who have little or no courage; who are always agreeable and want to appear virtuous to others.

But how do you get to the fourth Zen slogan, the real goal of Zen, without faith and courage?  Do you even know what this slogan is?  Here it is: See your true nature become Buddha.

Does this mean anything to you, something perhaps profound and esoteric; a solitary path in the high mountains among the pines where only those of great faith and courage dare to become awakened?

It is here where no one else is, a golden chance to face your death while still alive; to break through its dark barrier, while still alive, and discover a mysterious unfading light like no other. 

Alone, fear behind you, your days are spent in deep study, trying all manner of ways to see this true nature which some call the luminous Mind, which has many other names.

During the day you search among the endless forest and sit by its delightful streams still looking within as you make your way in this forest.  At night you gaze at the star filled sky, still looking within for your true nature.  The days pass.  The wind turns cold and still no answer.  Still you look within.  You remember that this nature is described as unborn and pure, clear and bright.

Your courage never weakens.  It drives your faith even when there are heavy tears.  And then one day you accept the journey completely, even failure.  You deeply understand that awakening will find you.  What other way is there?  The truth is, you have come to its solitary world to be found.  Listen to the sounds of these pine trees.  This is where you will be found.  Still you look within, more times than you can count.  This is how to sit.  It is not like everyday sitting.

You have prepared the soil.  You have sown the seeds.  But you can’t make it rain.  Sure, you can jump around and pray to the clouds.  But rain comes of its own accord. 

In the example of Hakuin who had certainly prepared the soil and had sown the seeds—he was waiting.  One night he heard a series of churrs from a cricket hidden in the foundation stones of the temple while he was reading the Lotus Sutra.  Suddenly, he awakened to the profound Dharma!  This was during his forty-first year, during a spring night in 1726.

Do you see what is going on?  There is only so much you can do.  But whatever you can do, it must be sufficient so you can be found.  You will be awakened when the perfect moment comes.  That one drop of heavenly rain.

One must become the hunted—fully open to the unexpected and transcendent

There are a number of ways to describe enlightenment or satori.  Zen masters prove that.  One way, and much older, might be to describe it as the realization of the unconditioned.  So let us ask, what is the unconditioned?  According to the Buddha in the unconditioned no arising is evident, no vanishing is evident, and no change while persisting is evident. 

As strange as this might sound to the modern ear, to cross from the life of conditioned phenomena, including even our thoughts, nothing conditioned is observed, not one jot or tittle.  Yet, what is arrived at is absolutely profound and unexpected.  Only the unconditioned is observed which is not mere absence.  For the unawakened who are curious about Zen or who might be serious practitioners, this is frustrating.  In Zen it is said to be like trying to bite through an iron bar.

Before enlightenment, the unconditioned is covered over by thought constructions, all of which are conditioned.  This same covering is called māyā which is an illusion.  Māyā appears ‘as if’ real but lacks any real nature (svabhāva).  According to the teaching of the Lanka School 楞伽宗, the precursor of the Zen tradition, which is based upon the Lankavatara Sutra, our visible world has the appearance of a fata morgana or a magical city of the Gandharvas. 

Ordinary worldlings do not believe that their world, in to which they were born, is māyā—it is the only reality they contend.  And, as we might expect, relative to their world, the Buddha’s world must perforce, be false.  Why awaken to it, in other words, since nothing is actually there?

Reading about Zen and doing meditation is the general practice of modern day Zennists, but they have not accepted that enlightenment or satori is totally beyond the reach and range of their conditioned world and psychophysical body.  They have insufficient faith to make the critical leap into the world of great doubt where the conditioned hunt for enlightenment is given up and one must become the hunted—fully open to the unexpected and transcendent.

The first noble truth is much deeper

The first noble truth is deeper that just stating suffering as is often the case is Buddhist circles. The first noble truth is not just about suffering but what is suffering.

“And what, bhikkhus, is the noble truth of suffering?  It should be said: the five aggregates subject to clinging; that is, the form aggregates subject to clinging...the consciousness aggregate subject to clinging. This is called the noble truth of suffering” (S. v. 425).

What is suffering is what is called in Buddhism the five aggregates (pañca-skandha) which make up the psycho-physical organism we inhabit as a matter of our personal rebirth into it.

Now here is where it gets even more interesting. What is the origin or cause of suffering? It is attachment to the psycho-physical organism which is subject to suffering. How to escape this is the third and fourth noble truths, namely, cessation of suffering and the means to the cessation of suffering.

All of this assumes that there is rebirth and a conscious agent who is always getting born (the fifth aggregate). Consciousness in Buddhism is not like our modern concept. You can see it here in Sanskrit as vijñāna. "Vi" means in two parts. "jñāna" means knowing. This refers to a kind of bifurcated knowing in which the original one is split into subject and object, neither subject or object being the original one. The Buddha likens vijñāna to a magician's illusion.

In order to end suffering we have to cognize the original one before its bifurcation into consciousness. This world of ours is a grand illusion. It is an unfolding of consciousness and we are its conscious agents who keep inhabiting bodies subject to suffering. (The Neuroscientist Donald Hoffman's theory states that we are conscious agents. He further says: "Consciousness creates brain activity, and indeed creates all objects and properties of the physical world.")

Yes, this is all very esoteric. And people like me have used the Buddha's meditation in an attempt to awaken to this original one which transcends vijñāna, the magician's illusion.  A few are successful, the many are not being still ensconced in this grand illusion always hoping for a miracle, but always looking in the wrong direction.

 

Is there a world beyond this one?

Many self-professed W. Buddhists have what I shall call transcedophobia; moreover espousing there is not another world (para loka) beyond this one. One must ask, how do these same people deal with passages like this found in the Buddhist canon?

“Since there actually is another world, one who holds the view ‘there is no other world’ has wrong view. Since there actually is another world, one who intends ‘there is no other world’ has wrong intention. Since there actually is another world, one who makes the statement ‘there is no other world’ has wrong speech. Since there actually is another world, one who says ‘there is no other world’ is opposed to those arahants who know the other world. Since there actually is another world, one who convinces another ‘there is no other world’ convinces him to accept an untrue Dhamma; and because he convinces another to accept an untrue Dhamma, he praises himself and disparages others. Thus any pure virtue that he formerly had is abandoned and corrupt conduct is substituted. And this wrong view, wrong intention, wrong speech, opposition to noble ones, convincing another to accept an untrue Dhamma, and self-praise and disparagement of others—these several evil unwholesome states thus come into being with wrong view as their condition. — M. i. 402 MN 60 Apaṇṇaka Sutta

And what about the the passage? 

“Again, some person, with the subsiding of thought and examination, enters and dwells in the second jhāna.... (3) With the fading away as well of rapture... he enters and dwells in the third jhāna. ... (4) With the abandoning of pleasure and pain, and with the previous passing away of joy and dejection, he enters and dwells in the fourth jhāna, neither painful nor pleasant, which has purification of mindfulness by equanimity. He contemplates whatever phenomena there pertain to form, feeling, perception, volitional activities, and consciousness as impermanent, as suffering, as a disease, as a boil, as a dart, as misery, as an affliction, as alien, as disintegrating, as empty, as non-self. With the breakup of the body, after death, he is reborn in companionship with the devas of the pure abodes. This is a rebirth not shared with worldlings” (A. ii. 128).

Notice that all four jhānas (S., dhyāna) are mentioned.  In the fourth jhāna the adept sees that the five aggregates, viz., form, feeling, perception, volitional formations and consciousness are corrupt.  They are empty and not our self.  And where does adept go who has attained the fourth jhānas when he or she dies?  It is certainly a world beyond this one.

Overcoming the two truths separation

According to some arguments I have followed in Buddhist chat rooms, there is a small band of rogue Buddhists who bring their darkness to Buddhism with regard to the two truths (satya), namely, a worldly conventional truth/reality (loka-saṁvṛti-satya) and an ultimate truth (paramārtha -satya).  Briefly, let me point out that this doctrine is not original only to Buddhism.  It is found even in the Upaniṣads.  In early Buddhism it is a distinction between nirvana and dependent origination or as I like to say, a distinction between the unconditioned and the conditioned.

But here is the problem with what this small band postulates. 

Given that worldly conventional truth is always conceptualizable and on the other hand ultimate truth is always unconceptualizable, unspeakable and unthinkable, how in Buddhism do we go from, let us say, the conceptualizable to the unconceptualizable?  It is impossible they claim.  One Tibetan Buddhist even posts: Moreover, even ultimate truth is merely a conventional truth.

At this point we have to be careful.  The doctrine of two truths is certainly liable to a gross misinterpretation in the hands of those who have not experienced bodhi or awakening.  The only adequate way of overcoming the separation is through dhyāna which is the only way to bodhi. Hairsplitting arguments will not do, no mater how elegant or clever.

It order to discover the ultimate, which is unconceptualizable, we have to abandon our habit of approaching the ultimate by trying to conceptualize it.  This is taken up by dhyāna which is a kind of Buddhist via negativa.  It confronts the self-obscuring effect of the concept forming process in a special way.  It begins with the simple understanding that thoughts and concepts are configurations of ultimate reality.  But more importantly, we are just as much a complex configuration of ultimate reality.  We have always been this ultimate reality, too, except that we have been mesmerized by the worldly conventional reality.  The solution is to transcend the cocoon of the worldly conventional reality that binds us—to de-cocoon.  To do this we have not only to set aside thought but pass through one thought after another.  We have to exhaust our love affair with thought in other words.  Only then will, eventually, the unconceptualizable be met with and be recognized by our fundamental being that is likewise unconceptualizable.  The father and son meet, so to speak!

 

Getting past the thought barrier

Our effort to understand and attain nirvana (an ultimate experience) is made difficult by our habit of trying to apprehend it by means of thought which nirvana is beyond.  We can’t think our way there, in other words. 

If I say nirvana is permanent (niccaṁ), ultimate happiness (paramsukaṁ) and eternal (dhuvaṁ), do these words get us any closer to nirvana’s realization?  No they don't.  This is because thoughts (the process of thinking) stands in our way.

In Zen Buddhism the unconditioned, which goes by many names which includes nirvana, is called the "no-gate" 無門.  But as we make our way towards this strange gate to enter it, we are blocked.  What stands in our way is the barrier/checkpoint 關.  Whatever we bring with us cannot pass through because it is conditioned, especially, our thoughts. 

In Zen the barrier of all barriers is the single word "Mu" 無.  Of course there are other barriers such as "The eastern mountain sails on the river,” which is almost impossible to get past.

These barriers are akin to baited "thought-traps". Such traps are actually intended to make us aware of our problem which is trying to attain the unconditioned by means of thought, which is conditioned.  We are assuming that the unconditioned, i.e., nirvana, is something thinkable.  It is not.

A good teacher can help us understand the more recondite side of Buddhism but he or she cannot pour nirvana into us. There is a barrier/checkpoint that each of us, personally, must pass through.  We have to make great effort.  Maybe after many years we will have “great doubt” from using thought to get past the barrier/checkpoint which never seems to work.  There is another way.  But first the darkness, then comes the light.