The Zennist: 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.