The Zennist

We then discover our true being

When avidyā (fundamental ignorance of true reality) looks into the perfect, luminous mirror of the absolute, what does it see?  Certainly not the luminous Mind.  Does it even recognize itself (that’s a hard question)?  I am inclined to believe that it doesn’t recognize itself, much less the mirror, i.e., the luminous Mind.

Taken altogether, our personal life and this world (loka) offers no escape only because they are always severely stricken by avidyā.  At best, we can hope for some brief respites before we have to walk through the mine field of our passing and be reborn into another form.

We have to rely on religion to lift us out of this morass which as history tells us, doesn’t always do a very good job.  Even the religion of nihilism which is the hatred of religious thought, mysticism, metaphysics, including the aesthetic of beauty, proves inadequate to the job.  And yes, even Judaism, perhaps the most cunning of all religions, proves to be a failure when it hedged its bets by conceiving of a God who is both the creator of good and evil (Isaiah 45:7).

Going back in recorded history, it was Buddhism that proclaimed it had found an escape from avidyā in which avidyā covered and concealed the luminous Mind so that the cognition of it could not take place.  What concealed this luminous Mind was taken by the Buddha to be our very conditioned existence that was a formation of the unconditioned luminous Mind. But how do we tell them apart?  What if we pursue the wrong thing?  What if we reject the unconditioned as being too nonsensical and impractical and, instead, pursue the conditioned?  But isn’t this where we are right now?  How do we overcome this?

In the immortal words of Plotinus, “Take away everything!”  Buddhism understand that if all we know is the conditioned, then taking it away, in the time of a finger snap, what is left is the luminous Mind which is absolutely simple.  We then discover our true being.

A Zen aesthetic

In my old age it is easy to become nostalgic which for me is a happy affection with the past when I was expanding my sudden glimpse into the mysterious Buddha-nature in 1969; what I like to call “pure Mind.”

Getting up early in the morning, seeing my breath, then walking on the cold floor barefooted to the wood burning stove is one of those many nostalgic moments.  Throwing some kindling wood on the hot embers in the wood burning stove followed by some split oak wood, then waiting for the fire to heat the stove, mixing the heated air with the cold air, was still another nostalgic moment.  There were many more such moments that made up my day from grinding coffee to rolling a cigarette. 

At the time my aesthetic awareness found delight in all these little things.  Yet, I had no electricity or running water.  I even had an outhouse (a three holer) which during the spring had a few golden poppies growing alongside of it.  But what I remember most is during the winter walking up to the outhouse only to find where I was going to sit was covered with a thin sheet of ice.

I was usually connected with pure Mind most of the time so that all these moments could be best described as making up what I shall call a  ‘Zen aesthetic’, something like looking at the full moon in the pond at night (yes, I did that too)—but not trying to grasp it, realizing where the real moon was.  Just marveling at the sheer beauty of this illusion.  Oh, I also recall a bullfrog and would delight in his occasional deep croaks (he lived by the spring house).

A Zen aesthetic, I should explain in a little more detail, comes after one has entered the path, beholding first hand the pure Mind which is never other than unconditioned.  Couple this with one’s present body of ‘former karma’ which is totally conditioned and you’re watching a puppet show—and you are the puppet.  Only the light, itself, is real not the names or the shapes.  You are this pure Mind gone forth through all illusions (This is the realization of the mind of light power — Avatamsaka Sutra).

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Evil in small steps

We like to think that evil just occurs all at once like some invading army that suddenly conquers us.  But evil can also conquer us in an insidious way by taking countless small steps to finally dominate us. 

In many examples we find ourselves bending over backwards to accommodate someone whose opinions—even their religious views—we disagree with.  In a way, if we don’t push back just a little, our psychic territory has just been occupied by these people.  A small step forward for evil has just won the day.  And given ten or twenty years, we will have been taken over by evil.

Have you ever heard of “political correctness” or “hate speech” or “equity” as in equal outcome?  How many small steps, backed by a lot of money, did it take for such, arguably, evil ideologies to invade our culture and even our own mind?  This is where we are at today with a lot of brainwashed college grads who even imagine Muhammad was like the Buddha or Jesus, and not a brutal warlord who had 28 males slaves and 12 female slaves!

And once established, how long before these same evil ideologies began to enter the unlocked, back door of Buddhism?  It is certainly bad enough that Buddhism has its own set of problems that it must constantly deal with such as being misconstrued as a nihilistic religion or a religion that denies a fundamental or deep self.  These views, by the way, are the result of small steps taken by some Buddhists who are unaware of their nihilistic outlook on life and will continue this pattern unless they’re confronted.

Have faith in yourself not so much in a teacher

In our life, many things and events, including people we’ve met at some party in college or our professor, can teach us something about Buddhism, including inspiring books (for some of us it was Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha or books by Alan Watts).  And even a long hike in Yosemite can help. 

All this can act to set us off in the right direction to eventually become awakened to our true nature.  But foremost, we have to have our mind set upon awakening.  It has to be a real and substantial goal.  We can’t just be curious.  It has to go much deeper than that.  This means having the faith that our awakening can become a reality.  Also we must have the courage to stick with our faith come hell or high water as the old saying goes.

Oh, and yes, a Zen teacher is important, but how important?  If we decide to become a monk or a nun they can help us with the details such as how to wear and fold our robes and many other details many of which are external, mainly, for beginners.  But what they cannot do, although as beginners we tend to believe otherwise, is pour enlightenment into us, especially, if they are not themselves enlightened.  And we have no way of knowing if they are enlightened. 

Really, what matters most is not the faith that we put into some popular or local teacher, hoping that they will lead us to yonder shore, but how much faith and courage we have in ourselves that by looking within we can, one day, discover our true nature.  I would go so far as to say that great faith in a teacher means less faith in oneself.  Not even in the so-called golden age of Zen (if there really was such a thing) were teachers all that great. Most just wanted donations according to Ta-sui (834–919).  He also complains, "Although I called on more than sixty or more prominent teachers, barely one or two had great perception.”  

 

 

The source and sudden enlightenment 頓悟

I think I have mentioned this before or hinted, that while we can get behind our emotions and thoughts and all kinds of arisings in our mind, we cannot get behind their source.  For example, when we speak or think the source of our speaking and thinking is closed off to us.  Words and thoughts just come forth, mysteriously.  What is more, we take all this for granted.  It seems quite natural to us. 

But in the activity of generating all this we easily become attached to what has been generated and forget about the more complex matter of this source from whence it all arises which shows not the slightest trace of, itself, arising.  It seems that all these arisings that are happening in our mind, by their constant appearance, are serving to obscure the matter of the source.

And here is where I think Zen as a specialized form of introspection comes into the picture.  What if, suddenly, no arising of thought 無心 or the same, no arising of mentation 無念, took place?  What would remain?  If we think of thought, which is naturally conditioned, as being a disturbance arising from a field which prevents us from seeing this field, directly, then with the cessation of this disturbance the field would clearly be seen and this would be our mysterious source, now revealed to us.

Our all-too-human awareness is only turned to conditioned arisings whatever they might be from thoughts, emotionally toned feelings, physical pain, to the inner voice, etc.  But awareness is unable to get behind the source in order to be aware of it.  It can only observe what is arising from the mysterious source—not the source itself. 

The only way to converge with the source itself or, the same, to become intuitively cognizant of it, is with the sudden and total elimination of all the conditioned arisings which only act as a scrim that covers the source.  This is what Zen calls dunwu 頓悟, that is, sudden enlightenment which is closer to the notion of intuition in the sense of immediate revelation.

 

 

Zen is not really about sitting

Dhyāna which in Japanese is “Zen” is never connected exclusively with sitting or any of the other postures.  Still, it can be practiced in any of the four bodily positions:

Sitting (nishadana), lying (shayyā), walking (gamana) and standing (sthāna). Taken together they are called "dwelling" (vihāra).

It is said that the Buddha takes up these positions to frighten Mara's troops (mārasena) and so that his disciples will rejoice (pramodante) and enter into all kinds of dhyānas. 

The ancient purpose of dhyāna has always been to control and eventually overcome all mental disturbance.  With the sudden stopping of all mental disturbance a final state without mentation reveals itself, this being our true nature which is transcendent.  This is the same as the legendary Siddhartha’s awakening whereby he became the Buddha and passed his teachings down to others. 

The beginner’s practice of dhyāna is not the same as dhyāna that culminates in awakening to our true nature.  It consists mainly of sitting crosslegged on a special cushion. The Soto Zen school believes, however, that even if you are a beginner, just sitting, supposedly, in dhyāna called in Japanese “zazen” for a few minutes makes you enlightened!  One Zen teacher, Maezumi Roshi, in fact said, “when we truly do zazen, there is no distinction between practice and realization.”  

This school never explains how zazen, which is a physical practice, gets one to buddhatā  (the state of being a Buddha).  Why wouldn’t walking also work or standing in one place for a long time?

Dhyāna practiced by the ancient mendicants and Siddhartha, just before his enlightenment, was not so much a physical practice as it was about introspection leading to the direct intuition of the absolute.  Neither sitting nor walking or even lying down was an impediment to being in the mind of dhyāna if you understood what it meant to be in proper dhyāna. 

Materialism makes it difficult to market Buddhism

I sometimes think that if Max Planck, Erwin Schrodinger, Eugene Winger and Sir Arthur Eddington were still around they would agree that our universe is not so much a material universe as it is a mental universe or the same, Mind-only according to the Lankavatara Sutra.  But thanks to the effects of social engineering a lot of people still believe in a material universe and really shouldn’t. 

It’s true that it is difficult to let go of the concept of a material universe.  There will always be an argument going on in the world when somebody finally pounds on the table and says this is “matter” in response to the postulation of a mental universe.  But what has this guy really proven?  Only that the table resisted his fist.  There is still no matter, but there is resistance.  So what is resistance?

My dictionary says that resistance is an opposing force, that is, a force tending to prevent motion or other action.  Okay. Seems to the point.  So what is “force”?  Force is any action that alters or tends to alter a body’s state or rest or of uniform motion in a straight line. 

Thus far we have not found any fundamental matter in the world which is defined as a substance that is considered to constitute the observable universe.  And even if we did admit the existence of such a substance, for example, the Higgs particle which is believed to be the basic building block of the universe (which turned out not to be Higgs after all), how does it create the universe?  And from where does the human mind come into the picture? 

So far the way to deal with this problem is to deny that we have a problem. Then use the media to cover up the bad news.  What this does for Buddhism is make it difficult to market it because Buddhism is not materialistic.  In fact, it is 100% spiritual and even includes the ātman together with consciousness which is the transmigrant that goes from one life to the next (yes, there is rebirth).

The world will no longer be physical but, instead, mental

Well, my iMac just experienced the black screen of death.  I am glad that I have two iMacs. Why I am telling you this my blog for Monday was on the iMac that went dark.  Not too long after that, another idea popped into my head.  It was the words “materialism is not fundamental” which is essentially what Quantum Mechanics wants to say but it too cowardly to outright say it.  It would put an end to dogmas espoused by Hugo Elliott, “there exists no kind of spiritual substance or entity of a different nature from that of which matter is composed. . . .there are not two kinds of fundamental existences, material and spiritual, but one kind only. . . . (Burr and Goldfinger. eds., Philosophy and Contemporary Issues (1972), p. 259).  Truth be told we are not machines—not in the Buddha’s teaching. 

During the first part of the 20th century, the wave of mechanistic science was about to come crashing down on the West and with it the darkening of the Newtonian horizon.  The particle-material model of the universe was suddenly bedridden. The new kid on the block, Quantum Mechanics, seemed to be saying that the world we commonly experience through our senses is really an appearance which has no objective existence independent of the observer who may turn out to be very important.

The accepted belief that matter refers to all that exists outside of and independently of the observer remains a tentative theory in the face of Quantum Mechanics.  It may well prove in the future that the observer is not only extra-physical but creates our physical world in which matter is rather something derivative.

And if this is true, it doesn’t mean that our world is less real for us and that living in such a fictional or māyā like world is not without suffering.  Even if tomorrow some physicist said that our reality is a fictional creation of consciousness, which means it is fundamentally immaterial, but is real enough for all of its conscious agents, life as we know it would still go on as usual.  Darwinian fitness would still captivate us and be a major part of our life.

Thousands of years ago many believed in another fictional world.  It was a world in which the earth was flat and the planets, including the sun, circled the earth.  What is more, both types of knowledge worked.  Some would even argue, and rightly so, that we still accept the sun rises and sets although it doesn’t really do that.  Later this fictional world turned out to be illusory. 

From the perspective of Buddhism the world is an illusion and so is our psychophysical body which we adhere to in the belief that it is our true self although it is not.  It is all an illusion relative to enlightenment but still very real when our self remains, unenlightened, attached to the psychophysical body and knows no other way of existing.

Buddhism is the next phase of human wisdom which is far above the primitive words of Hugo Elliott.  We will look back upon our primitive beliefs like we once did understanding the illusion of the flat earth.  We will see that bigger picture that we are spiritual creatures and gain control over appearance.  The world will no longer be physical but, instead, mental.

The importance of first-person knowledge

When a person awakens to the very essence or substance of thought, reaching pure Mind which is devoid of mentation, i.e., mental activity, this realization is first-person, not third-person.  It cannot be shared like a conventional object, although two people enlightened recognize a connection.  Even the attainment of nirvana is first-person which in Pali is paccatta and in Sanskrit praty-ātman, both meaning the “very self,” or “inmost self.”

Why is this important?  Because Western Buddhists generally believe in only one kind of knowledge this being third-person knowledge.  As close as they will allow to first-person is autobiographical personal facts such as information relating to one’s birth, schooling, jobs, criminal record, etc.

If you’ve made a claim of having had kenshō, which is first-person, then it is demanded of you extraordinary proof which is always something third-person like a certificate.  This is only fair some might argue.  Don’t we demand proof that a person is a qualified surgeon before they can operate on a person?  But in this situation, surgical skills have already been demonstrated, third-person, through a kind of medical apprenticeship program.  As a student you have to work with a qualified teacher-surgeons in a specialized type of surgery.

In spite of this problem, first-person knowledge in terms of mentation has to be admitted by all.  We all have an inner voice, thoughts, mental images and feelings.  Just precisely what they are from one individual to the next is where we differ.  We are able, so to speak, to get behind our mentation so as to have an awareness of it—of what is going on in our heads.  But what we are unable to do is get in back of behind.  This would be the primary, inmost self or paccatta.  But this is what enlightenment achieves.  And this is accomplished by the sudden negation of mentation.  The adept enters into an indescribable state of oneness (ekatva).  Even consciousness (vijñāna), which is bifurcated knowing, has returned to the one.

One more way of looking at this, if we can imagine a substratum of our mentation it would be pure Mind or the same, the unconditioned Mind.  All mental activity arises from the substratum of the Mind which is universal.  This is something along the lines of the late quantum physicist David Bohm’s ultra-holistic “Implicate Order,” which he describes as an “unbroken wholeness of the totality of existence as an undivided flowing movement without borders.”  He further says:

In this flow, mind and matter are not separate substances. Rather, they are different aspects of one whole and unbroken movement. In this way, we are able to look on all aspects of existence as not divided from each other, and thus we can bring to an end the fragmentation implicit in the current attitude toward the atomic point of view, which leads us to divide everything from everything in a thoroughgoing way (David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, 14). 

Bohm's Implicate Order adds a measure of credibility to the validity of Buddhism's first-person knowledge in which I would argue that the Buddha's awakening had direct insight into Bohm's order in which thought and matter returned to the original whole or one which cuts against the current fragmentalist view of reality which still dominates the sciences and impacts our way of thinking in an unrealistic, negative way.

We are in a continual state of mentation

The early formation of Zen was directed to the intuition of pure Mind, understanding that mentation was a barrier to the student’s awakening, hence, the idea of wu-nian 無念 which means no-mentation which is the same as no-thought 無心. 

This is somewhat analogous to waves and water.  The waves illustrate delusive thinking which is always conditioned whereas the pure element of water, which is unconditioned, illustrates the Buddha-nature or pure Mind.  The former depends upon the latter.  The former is only a particular configuration of the latter.  According to Zen master Mazu, The conditioned is the function of the unconditioned; the unconditioned is the essence of the conditioned.

In our everyday world we are in a continual state of mentation or thought which is never other than conditioned—never unconditioned.  The intensity varies throughout the day. 

By electing to study Zen we’ve admitted that our mental life is giving us problems and we would like some peace of mind.  When we decide to study Zen we find that learning zazen helps.  But as taught in Zen centers zazen is incapable of getting to wu-nian.  This is because people today who teach and practice zazen generally fail to understand that real meditation is closer to intuition, a direct acquaintance with wu-nian which reveals the pure Mind.  It is only when our thought waves suddenly come to a halt that we are able to see our true Mind and Buddha-nature.  Truth be told, wu-nian is no other than seeing the Buddha.

For the average practitioner of Zen they are content with just learning zazen.  They find no need to aim for the intuition of pure Mind by the cessation of mentation 無念.  Anyway, that’s way too difficult for them because they would have to give up their lifestyle of conspicuous consumption.