The danger that Zen faces is the over reliance on seated meditation ignoring a systematic study of the Buddha’s teaching. On this blog, I have endeavored to show the reader over the years what the goal of Buddhism is and how it might be reached. Making this difficult, there is a lot of literature in Zen and Buddhism just like with any religion, but the bulk of it is not systematic. There are certainly a lot of parts in Buddhism but they are not brought into a system.
To illustrate the problem, let us think of the human body as a complex system where everything is interrelated. But if we were to spend our time just looking at the heart, or just one aspect of it, this would not be looking at the body systematically.
Much that is necessary to understand the Buddha’s enlightenment is missed in modern Zen because of Zen’s unsystematic approach just relying mainly on seated meditation to save the day. Some of this attitude is to be expected because authentic enlightenment is a rare event in Zen these days and all of Buddhism for that matter. It is much easier and more practical to stick with basic seated meditation.
But in my own investigations of Buddhism I have found the elegant simple which means Buddhism is beautiful and easily understood. It’s like looking at Mt. Ritter just outside Yosemite's southeast boundary (I remember this!). What is difficult is the climb—always the climb! If we are to get to that moment whereby Siddhartha awakened and became a Buddha—we have to climb! Buddhism is hard, subtle work. It takes courage, also. It’s not for people who just want to learn a few coping skills.
What the entire system of Buddhism rests upon is awakening to the unconditioned (asaṃskṛta) and the implications that follow and interrelate with this understanding. Nor is there any difficulty with understanding what the unconditioned is. No arising is seen, no vanishing is seen, and no alteration while it persists is seen.
What obstructs this awakening and is contrary to it is the conditioned (saṃskṛta). As for the conditioned, we are in it. The psychophysical organism, i.e., the five aggregates are all conditioned and so is this world we live in because an arising is seen and a vanishing is seen and its alteration while it persists is seen. We can infer from this that we have to set aside the conditioned by a kind of via negativa process which is sudden in the example of a profound intuition. Here is Sirimā recalling his awakening.
“When I heard (of) the Deathless place, the unconditioned, the Teaching of the Tathagata, the Unrivalled One, I was well and highly restrained in precepts, firm in the Dhamma taught by the Buddha, the most excellent of men. When I know the dustless place, the unconditioned, taught by the Tathagata, the Unrivalled One, I right there reached the calm [supermundane]. That same highest assurance was mine" (trans. Peter Masefield Vimānavatthu 16).
There is a simplicity to Sirimā's awakening. To be sure, it is unconditioned which transcends the conditioned. But it took an amazing amount of effort on his part. At the beginning when I brought up the term "systematic" it was not meant to exclude the elegant simple. The only complexity in Buddhism is our deluded thinking which always wants to see the unconditioned under the artifical light of the conditioned. And thus it follows that we never really transcend the conditioned, that is, samsara.
You've probably addressed this elsewhere, but I only recently came across your blog: What is the relationship of ordinary consciousness to the unconditioned? Ordinary consciousness feels vaguely unconditioned - that is, there is a sense of 'something' that is the same across my whole life. But, when I fall asleep, consciousness is absent, and so that which has a sense of something unconditioned is absent.
I think most people, when they think of the self or even the Self, think of their consciousness and/or personality. Consciousness is prior to personality, but the unconditioned must be prior to consciousness, since consciousness is not always present. I've heard that realized people can maintain awareness through deep sleep or being anesthetized, but I cannot relate this to anything in my own experience. What is this awareness that is unaffected by sleep, anesthesia, or even brain death?
Posted by: Jack | October 16, 2018 at 09:05 PM