The Zennist

Zen's great escape from the cage of thought, language and concepts

The goal of Zen is the actual realization of ultimate reality.  This realization called kenshō is really about our escape from the invisible cage of thought which includes language and concepts. Ultimate reality viewed from within this cage is not ultimate reality anymore than the finger pointing to the moon is the moon, itself. Kenshō is only possible if we can break out of this cage, staging a prison break so to speak.  Those who have escaped from this cage are the only ones who know what the term "ultimate reality" is pointing to.  These are the Buddhas.

For Zen Buddhism, the koan is about a prison break from the invisible cage of thought, including language and the concepts words evoke.  In Zen, the signifier includes thought, language and concepts whereas the signified is the hua-tou 話頭, what is actually prior to thought, language and concepts being the real substance of the universe. 

In the West things are a bit different.  The signifier refers to a symbol, sound, or image whereas the signified is a concept which is distinguished from the sign. This difference is significant.  It is all still within the cage earlier mentioned.  That it is still within the cage is enough to make Zen almost impossible to understand from a Western perspective.

Looking at this matter further, we can see the difference between Zen and the West in Joshu’s ‘Mu’ 無.  It begins when a monk asks Joshu, “Has a dog Buddha-nature or not?" Joshu answers, “Mu!”  Mu means no.  Both the question and Joshu’s response belong to the invisible cage.  We could say that Mu is one of the bars.  But as for the real Buddha-nature, it is beyond the cage.  It is the hua-tou which is also true reality.  It is before the arising of a single thought, word or concept.

This is where the Zen adept has to go.  The adept is not interested in a conceptual interpretation of this koan through language.  In fact, that is the problem.  The koan has no answer other than personally to see the hou-tou. 

Put another way, in order to know our Buddha-nature we have to break out of this invisible cage which is represented by Mu; which acts both like a barrier and a checkpoint 關 through which we cannot pass owing to the fact that we are attached to words and the concepts they evoke. 

And would it be true to say that Zen is always showing us the invisible bars of this cage? Yes! But it is also saying that we have to escape from this invisible cage.  We have to effect a prison break! 

 

Zen is a barrier—only pure Mind can pass

At sometime in our brief life, in our study of Zen, we have to pass through the world of the conditioned to apprehend the transcendent (the unconditioned).  Metaphorically, in Zen it is like a gate or a checkpoint that acts as a barrier.  It will not permit us to go through to the other side which is unconditioned called the “no-gate”.

In Zen we come to face this gate with a special word of phrase like “Mu” or “One has it, the other hasn’t.”  It could even be Jōshū’s, “Go wash your bowl.”  We could repeat Mu for a lifetime and never would we be able to pass through the barrier gate to the no-gate.  Likewise with the various mysterious other phrases and gestures.

In working with these mysterious words and phrases that come from the Zen masters it’s like we are butting our heads against an invisible barrier.  No matter how hard we try—no success.  It’s also like we are approaching the edge of a dark and terrifying abyss, fearing to fall into it.  At this point, no one can help us.  We have become our own obstacle. 

The next phase is to further delude ourselves and imagine that we’ve solved a koan or at least can understand the sense of it.  Ironically, this is where most beginners are stuck making no advance whatsoever.  No matter how many koan books they've read even with good translations they are no closer to the no-gate.

We cannot gain access to the no-gate by words and concepts.  This means our ordinary understanding cannot enter.  This includes our intellect, too.  Not even a single thought can enter or silence and stillness.  If this is disheartening it is meant to be.  In Zen we are supposed to give up our presuppositions not cling to them.  You can have nowhere to run and no place to hide.  In truth, there is only one koan: See pure mind.

The thunderbolt (vajra) mind

Our awareness naturally receives the plurality of phenomena into itself, that is, into a passive unknowingness (avidyā).  This condition is also what we recognize to be connected with our individuality which is a kind of reaction to this influx.  Being thus individualized we are set off from others.  We have a distinctive character.  It is who we believe we are.

Many Buddhists seem to regard their awareness, even the awareness of awareness, as some kind of ultimate state.  It is not.  This awareness cannot behold the phenomenal world as empty of inherent existence.  In fact, it is just the opposite.  Everything is real for awareness insofar as everything seems to possess a unique nature which is a particular name and form (nāmarūpa) which in Indian philosophy arises as a differentiation within the original one.

By comparison, the vajra-mind ('vajra' which can either mean ‘adamantine’ or ‘thunderbolt’) is the absolute, itself, which from its own side shows all phenomena to be inherently empty in the sense of being no more than an illusion (neither real nor absent) thus lacking an unchanging, inherent nature.  This multiplicity is not unlike the unceasing waves of the ocean which are really nothing as compared with the water, itself. 

The vajra-mind by seeing that phenomena are never other than fundamentally insubstantial and illusory always returns to itself so that it is never other than real and itself (vidyā).  The vajra-mind has transcended false reality in addition to a false self (individuality).  You might say that it has brought a mysterious light into the world that awareness, on its own, cannot know.  In this way, the vajra-mind begins to reveal both the infinite and the illusory.

Scholarly Buddhism has the wrong picture of Buddhism

Let’s imagine that you got a 2000 piece jigsaw puzzle at a garage sale for fifty-cents.  It was fairly old.  The box with secured with twine, and the picture on the box was of a forest with a lake and mountains in the background.  But when you began to put the puzzle together something wasn't right, you were having a great deal of trouble making the pieces match the picture on the top of the box. 

What you did not know is that the jigsaw puzzle had been put into a different box.  One somewhat like the original but not the original.  This, I sense, is where we are with Buddhism—scholarly, Buddhism.  We have all these pieces of Buddhism, but they only partially match the scholarly picture of Buddhism.

Okay, what does scholarly Buddhism have as its picture?

"According to Buddhist scholasticism, the self is purely the result of physical and mental processes, a sort of “mental fabrication” which has no ultimate reality. Awakening involves becoming aware of this illusory nature of the self. As the monk Nāgasena (second century BC) put it in his famous apologue: “Just as, when certain pieces of wood are assembled, we talk of a chariot; in the same way, when the five physical and mental components are present, we talk of the ‘Self’.” These five groups or “aggregates” (skandha), are impermanent and therefore contribute to the impermanence of the self. They are: form (or matter, rūpa), sensations (vedanā ), perceptions (samjñā ), mental formations (saṃskāra), and consciousness (vijñāna)” (Bernard Faure, Unmasking Buddhism, p. 48–49).

But this is misleading.  Actually, the Buddha taught that these five aggregates are not who we really are.  He did not teach, categorically, that there is not a self or in Pali natthattā. 

The aggregates are not our true self even though we might choose to believe, for example, that consciousness (vijñāna) is our self.  After all, sensory consciousness is very important in our daily lives.

According to the Buddha, recluses and Brahmins where some of the people who claim to see the self (ātman), but were actually only seeing the five aggregates of attachment which was not their self.  It hadn’t dawned on them that according to the Buddha we are to regard each aggregate this way: This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self.  We see this clearly in the Catuṣpariṣat-sūtra:

“Therefore then, O monks, whatever material form there is, past, future or present, inside or outside, gross or subtle, low or eminent, far or near, “all this is not mine, I am not this, it is not my self.  In this way it must be seen, in truth, by means of correct discriminative knowledge (prajñā).  And whatever sensation there is and whatever conception, whatever psychic conformations there are and whatever consciousness, past, future, or present, inside or outside, gross or subtle, low or eminent, far or near, “all this is not mine, I am not this, it is not my self.”

We can see that one is taught by the Buddha to wake up from mistaking as their self what, precisely, is not their self.  Few scholars in academia see Buddhism this way.  And why?  Because it has become somewhat of a taboo for Buddhist scholars to think that the Buddha implicitly taught a self, but not a self tied up with the five groups or “aggregates” (skandha) that are impermanent.  It's difficult to break old habits.

Getting to the heart of the Heart Sutra

I have used Conze’s translation. Where I have changed it, it has been italicized.

Avalokita, The Holy Lord and Bodhisattva, was moving in the deep course of the Wisdom which has gone beyond. He looked down from on high, He beheld but five skandhas, and he saw that they were empty of inherent existence.

Here, O Sariputra, form is emptiness and the very emptiness is form; emptiness does not differ from form, form does not differ from emptiness; whatever is form, that is emptiness, whatever is emptiness, that is form, the same is true of feelings, perceptions, impulses and consciousness.

Now I will explain this.  The five skandhas are only appearances.  They can be likened to images in a mirror.  We see them clearly and vividly in the mirror.  Still, we understand that they are not real. Though they appear, still they are inherently empty.  This is the nature of all conditioned reality which is nothing in itself.  This reality certainly appears, but all these appearances are never other than inherently empty. 

In addition, conditioned things have no true inherent nature or svabhāva because this nature is always unconditioned.  Being unconditioned, it never appears just like my life force never appears although it can wiggle my fingers and use my body’s vocal cords.

In this respect, our world is very much like a dream that we may have had last night.  But in our dream, no matter how beautiful or frightening it was, it lacked true inherent existence.

Our five skandhas are only an illusion, you could say, including the world that appears through them.  And as with any such illusion there is nothing really there.  Yes, there is a true reality behind all this just like the basis of the mirror’s reflections is the reflective coating on the back of the mirror.  But we cannot see it.  We see only vivid appearances on the mirror’s surface.

Here is another interesting passage from the Mahāratnakūṭa Sūtra on the five aggregates/skandhas.

“Manjusri said, "The five aggregates constitute what we call the mundane world.  Of these, the aggregate of form has the nature of accumulated foam, the aggregate of feeling has the nature of a bubble, the aggregate of conceptions has the nature of a mirage, the aggregate of impulse has the nature of a hollow plantain,  and the aggregate of consciousness has the nature of an illusion. . . .If he is so liberated, he is not attached to mundane things.  If he is not attached to mundane things, he transcends the mundane world”.

These aggregates or skandhas are not more than a very vivid illusory phenomena devoid of an inherent nature.  By transcending the mundane world of appearance one sees and resides in their true inherent nature which they have actually always have been.  The spellbinding power of the the illusion has been overcome.

Realize what Zen masters realized rather than just sit

To understand the heart of Zen, that is, where Zen masters are really coming from, which also includes being able to understand early Zen literature, a person must realize what these masters personally realized.  This is called satori or the same, kenshō 見性. 

Without kenshō, Zen becomes something akin to an intellectual wild goose chase since kenshō doesn’t exist within any language.  If we are to see 見 our true nature 性 not a single word of any language can take us there. On the other hand, if I say, “Bring me my cup of tea,” we know what a “cup” is and where to find this cup of tea.  We learned about cups when we were children.  But we did not learn to see our true nature. 

If we have awakened to our true nature; if we now set about to describe this 性 to others we could use the word “One Mind” or “absolute.”  There are many such words in Zen we can use.  Nevertheless, what we are trying to describe still remains inexpressible, indefinable and ineffable.  It is above thought-constructions and can only be directly realized through a kind of mystical experience.

This is when the student of Zen soon meets a fork in the road for not all roads in Zen lead to kenshō.  He or she must decide on either pursuing kenshō until they see their true nature which is ineffable or follow the road of fake Zen which believes that sitting in meditation for hours upon hours and days upon days will eventually purify them to the level of a Zen master like Huangbo 黄檗.

If the student of Zen elects to go down the road of kenshō, the means employed for coming to this mystical experience depends largely upon the student’s intuitive abilities—not their intellect.  Clever people will always fail at Zen because they believe their intellectual prowess will help them to win the prize.  It won’t.  Intuition and the intellect are not the same.  Zen sees them differently.  One is  immediate apprehension of one’s true nature.  The other is to understand Zen by way of concepts or physical practices such as seated meditation. 

Also it needs pointing out that sitting meditation, which is a physical exercise, doesn’t make one more intuitive.  Intuition in Zen also demands faith in enlightenment and that kenshō is a real, attainable experience.  It's the heart of Zen.

Buddha did not preach against an ātman

Most of what is written about the so-called doctrine of not [the] self or in Pali and Sanskrit, respectively, anattā and anātman amounts to people writing in a trance; people who can’t seem to wake up from this dogmatic trance and think anew. 

The Buddha, it may come as a shock to many Buddhists, didn’t preach against an ātman.  He neither taught against such a category nor even implied it was bad.  He only taught people not to regard or view what is conditioned to be their real self or ātman. Nothing conditioned is the ātman—all conditioned things are, in fact, not the ātman including this perishable, corporeal body which we are thrown into. 

This might explain why in a Sanskrit dictionary anātman (अनात्मन्) can mean 1 destitute of spirit or mind, 2 corporeal, 3 not self, different from ātman, 4 the perishable body. 

Taking this definition to Buddhism, anātman is fungible with the five aggregates of 1 physical being, 2 feeling, 3 perception, 4 volition and 5 consciousness, which are transmuted into what we moderns would call the psychophysical individual.  This is the person who we think we are, who is reading this blog. But all this is not the self or who we really are.

In fact, the Buddha says:

"Monks, physical being is impermanent ... Feeling is impermanent ... Perception is impermanent ...Volitional formations are impermanent ... Consciousness is impermanent.  What is impermanent is suffering.  What is suffering is not the self.  What is not the self should be seen as it really is with correct wisdom thus: This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self [na meso attā’ti]" (S. iii. 45).

Now just imagine someone believing that the clothes they wear about daily is who they really are.  They might believe this hat is my head, this shirt is my torso, the gloves are my hands, these pants are my legs and the shoes are my feet.  We might say to this odd fellow, “Sir, this hat is not your real body nor are the rest of your clothes.”  But because he is strongly attached to his clothes he can’t seem to let go of his belief that his body are these clothes.

Are you beginning to get the picture of what the Buddha is really saying?  Don’t take anything which is conditioned to be your real self.  And if you asked the Buddha his reason, he would tell you that conditioned things, such as your corporeal body, are impermanent and liable to suffering and will eventually succumb to death. 

In light of the Nikayas, it is fake Buddhism that teaches that the Buddha, categorically, taught against a self when he really taught his followers not to identify with that which is not [the] self or anātman which, for example, are the five aggregates.  It is only when we dis-identify or abandon all that which is not [the] self that the self is finally revealed in its own light.  Such people "with self as protection [attadīpā] wander in the world, own nothing, are completely freed in every way" (Sutta-Nipāta, 501).

We are afraid of the light

The Buddha in the Pali Nikayas said that whatever is well spoken is the word of the Buddha (A. iv. 164).  Although found not to be the words of Plato, these following words are well spoken:

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”

The context seems to be “spiritual light” or just spirit.  Spiritual light is known in both Buddhism and Christianity but certainly ignored in many contemporary forms of Buddhism and Christianity (Christianity acquired much of its spiritual knowledge from Buddhism thanks to Buddhist missionaries that came from India, at the command of the Buddhist king Ashoka [262–239 BCE] to places like Alexandria, Egypt).

Tragically, mankind seems to be afraid of the spiritual light these days which falls under the category of mysticism—a term not respected at all in the modern world which has taken a turn for the worse with respect to religious knowledge. 

Certainly, in my spiritual growth and development, spiritual light became central.  My first encounter with it was in 1969 then in 1976 in which I underwent what is called light of Mahayana, a term found in the Lankavatara Sutra.  This is nothing subjective.  It is a transfiguration of a spiritually blind person into one who sees and understands the spiritual world in its various contexts.

I see nothing unusual about a child being afraid of the dark and welcoming, each morning, the light of the sun.  But for an adult who practices Zen to set out and deliberately attack something like spiritual light, because the notion makes them feel uneasy, is a bit strange.  Here is something that makes them uneasy.  It’s from Zen master Yuan-hsien:

"The spiritual light of living beings originally has no obstruction, yet deluded feelings arise in confusion.  From this there are six sense organs within and objects of the six senses outside:  with the opposition of organs and objects, false consciousness arises uncontrolled, producing good and bad, initiating virtuous and evil actions”(Cleary, The Teachings of Zen, p. 185).

And what about these words from Zen master Yunmen?

“Every person originally has the radiant light—yet when it is looked at, it is not seen: dark and obscure!”

There is much more I could present, especially, from the Avatamsaka Sutra, but suffice it to say without the ‘light’, this being the Buddha Mind which is beyond time and space (i.e., our limited human perception), we have a dead religion in front of us.

American Theosophist, Alvin Boyd Kuhn, in his book, The Lost Light, gave future generations a way to measure their religious/spiritual progress or the lack thereof.  He wrote:

“Every religion apparently has begun at a high level and become corrupted until it stood in need of reformation and purification. Religions decay through atrophy of spiritual vision. Their course is marked by a blurring of the original light.”

Not only has modern religion, taken as a whole, blurred the original light but the blur has turned into blindness and with it contempt and hatred for this light—if not fear.  What has replaced this light is the cult of personality.  But the godman is like brass which is hidden by a thin film of gold.  

Refusing to see the mystical in Buddhism

It doesn’t matter if it is Zen or Dzogchen or Buddhism, itself, from scholars to the beginner the emphasis is always to dumb the subject down to where there is almost nothing left in the way of the mystical, that is, direct gnosis of ultimate reality which, I hasten to add, is not to be confused with emptiness which only pertains to the insubstantiality of dependently originated things. 

As a matter of fact, ultimate reality is not insubstantial or empty.  It is unemptiable precisely because it is substantial.  It is the really real.  This is what the serious adept tries to realize.  Coming to the realization of ultimate reality is a removal or a abandoning process (abandoning the insubstantial) at which point the adept comes to realize ultimate reality which, all along, has been hidden beneath layer upon layer of adventitious defilements.  

My dissatisfaction in all this is with those who try to secularize the spiritual element that is at the core of Buddhism.  They act as if they are doing us a favor by trying to reveal the true teaching of the Buddha when they are only helping to destroy Buddhism!  You’d swear that there exists a secret order of demons on this planet whose sole purpose is to ruin Buddhism or for that matter fuck over any authentic spiritual system!

Of course the big question is, why!  It almost seems like a psychopath’s dream come true, a person who enjoys destruction.  “Wow, this is working fine—I think I will fuck it up!” “Gosh, that’s a nice barn you just built my friend.” A week later the barn is burnt to the ground.  “You are such a pretty little girl.” In a few weeks the little girl is molested (it happened to Louise Brooks the famous silent screen actress).  Most of us remember the 1984 film, Amadeus, which was more about the Italian composer Antonio Salieri's rivalry with Mozart.  In the film, Salieri is drawn to Mozart because of his genius. Finally, Salieri has to murder Mozart.

I am always astonished by those professed Buddhists who stubbornly refuse to see the mystical in Buddhism; who have dumbed it all down to a life dedicated to just sitting meditation and living in the here and the now. They don't even accept the tenet of rebirth.  But this person by acting this way has told me that they are spiritually incompetent.  Still, they are smart enough to argue like some self-willed teenager with his parent, but not smart enough to remotely understand Buddhism other than superficially.

You cannot conceive the unconditioned through what it is not

Two very important and major terms in Buddhism are the conditioned (saṃskṛta) and the unconditioned (asaṃskṛta) or, the same, the composed and the uncomposed.  For us, they stand in a kind of odd relationship. 

Since nirvana is unconditioned, our attempt to bring it into our conditioned world (samsara), together with our conditioned thoughts and concepts, as if to lay hold of it and examine it, ain’t working for us.  It’s not working because we are always attempting to conceive of the unconditioned through the conditioned then wonder why it all seems so asymmetrical—nothing fits or corresponds.  We repeat this pattern many, many times.  Yes, this is a most difficult habit to break.  But it must be broken.

To have any success, we have to be, personally, put into a position where the unconditioned speaks solely for itself.  It would be a moment when we have suddenly stopped our terrible habit of always trying to conceive the unconditioned by way of the conditioned.  This is as much as saying, you cannot conceive the unconditioned through what it is not. 

This reminds me of the Buddhist story about the turtle and the fish used illustrate nirvana. 

There was once a turtle who lived in a lake with a group of fish. One day the turtle went for a walk on dry land. He was away from the lake for a few weeks. When he returned he met some of the fish.

The fish greeted him, "Mister Turtle, hello! How are you? We have not seen you for a few weeks. Where have you been?”

Mr. Turtle said, "I was up on the land, I have been spending some time on dry land."

The fish were a little puzzled and said, "Up on dry land? What are you talking about Mr. Turtle? What is this dry land? Is it wet?"

Mr. Turtle said, "No, it is not.”

The fish continued, ”Is it cool and refreshing?"

"No, it is not,” said Mr. Turtle.

"Does it have waves and ripples?"

"No, it does not have waves and ripples,” said Mr. Turtle.

"Can you swim in it? asked the fish.”

"No you can’t,” replied Mr. Turtle.

Frustrated with Mr. Turtle's answers, the fish then said, "It is not wet, it is not cool, there are no waves, you can’t swim in it. So this dry land of yours must be completely non-existent, just an imaginary thing, nothing real at all."

Mr. Turtle said, “Well for you, that might be.” He left the fish and went for another walk on dry land.

This is somewhat like asking what concepts are required in order to have the proper concept of the unconditioned.  Do you see how absurd this demand is? Here “concept” is the world of the fish while the unconditioned is like the dry land. The simple fact is that we cannot really know the absolute through what the absolute is not.  To know the unconditioned is to give up the conditioned.