The Zennist

Zen can be looked at as a preliminary path

In many respects Chan/Zen can be looked upon as a preliminary path which is done in preparation for the attainment of kenshō 見性 which is the intuition of our true nature.  Zen is somewhat like military bootcamp which is a process of making the average person into a good soldier so they will be able to defend their homeland.  Zen is demanding like in the military but somewhat different insofar as it spends a great deal of time on the inner territory of the person and their mental activity.  Then, at some point the adept has to make a clearcut breakthrough, attaining the state of Buddhahood (buddhatā).    

To sum  it up, Zen is more about making us into good practitioners who will be able, eventually, to intuit their true nature which is the same as nirvana, including many other names such as the One Mind, true Mind or pure Mind to name just a few.  Zen in this regard is not the end but more about learning the means that will be used to reach the end.

The preliminary quality of Zen is best found in Jeffrey L. Broughton’s translation of Whip for Spurring Students Onward Through the Chan Barrier Checkpoints (Changuan cejin), which he published under the title, The Chan Whip Anthology: A Companion to Zen Practice.  Zen, that is, preliminary Zen, has its entire practice (gongfu) focused on intuiting our true nature (見性)  which is the fundamental basis of reality.

So now let's imagine someone has made a breakthrough and reached kenshō, then what?  Is their anything after enlightenment, in other words?  Well, yes there is—a huge amount.  This is from Treasury of the Eye of Truth Teaching Volume II by Thomas Cleary:

At that time a monk asked, “Is there any further cultivation for someone who is suddenly enlightened?”

Guishan said, “If one has truly realized the fundamental, that is when one knows for oneself. Cultivation and no cultivation are a dualism. Now though a beginner attain total sudden realization of inherent truth from conditions, there is still the habit energy [vāsanā] of beginningless ages which one cannot clear away all at once. It is necessary to teach that person to clean away the currently active streaming consciousness. This is cultivation, but it doesn’t mean there is a special doctrine to teach one to practice or aim for. Gaining access to truth from hearing, when the truth heard is profound, the immaculate mind is inherently complete and illumined, and does not abide in the realm of delusion. Even if there are a hundred thousand subtle meanings according to the times, this is getting a seat, wearing clothes, and knowing how to live on your own. Essentially speaking, the nominal ground of reality does not admit a single particle, while the ways of Buddhist service do not abandon a single method. If you enter directly at a single stroke, then the sense of ordinary and holy ends, the substance of being is revealed, real and eternal; noumenon and phenomena are not separate. This is the Buddha of thusness as such.

What is really happening is the adept, who has just had kenshō, is now like a baby lion that needs to grow up (the Bodhisattva's path).  He or she will go through many, many samadhis overcoming their habit energy as the luminosity becomes progressively stronger reaching a point when the everyday world the adept inhabits becomes completely filled with this mysterious luminosity.   

Change, real change, first comes from within

Buddhism is mainly concerned with the world inside of us and the mental activity going on.  This is where our problems have their beginning according to Buddhism.  The pains and joys we feel over time we have become deeply attached to.  When we feel pain we want a quick fix.  It could be with drugs or alcohol.  Or maybe we want to change what we imagine is bringing us this inner pain and grief.  Perhaps we imagine a political solution to our angst. 

We also want lasting joy and happiness, too; a chance to fulfill our dreams and sexual desires and to have a family.  We even try to imagine a happy life for ourself in the future; a world we are working for where there will be no pollution and everyone will be listening to the same music walking in lock step.

The bad news—this kind of attitude and perspective is not going to free us in the long run.  To be blunt, it is naive and immature. Things are only going to get worse, much worse, if we continue to think this way.  We are setting ourself up to crash and burn.  We have become closed minded and self-deceived among other things.  Our educational system can't help us either.  

There are many kinds of thoughts we harbor and feed upon which in the long run work against the Mind of enlightenment (bodhicitta).  For example, there is the thought of attachment which has recourse to accepting a variety of desires.  Then there is the thought of non-attachment which has recourse to avoiding desire, strictly.  There is the thought of hatred which depends on aversion and the thought of practicing friendliness and avoiding unfriendliness.  There is the thought of stupidity which depends upon a lack of self- reflection and the thought of intelligence which depends upon great understanding.  There are many more kinds of thought.  But all such thoughts (some sixty) have to be transcended to reach the Mind of enlightenment.

Let’s be honest, most of us are incompetent and irresponsible when it comes to taking care of the world within us which is why we decided to become Buddhists joining a Zen Buddhist community or a Tibetan Buddhist community.  But even when we joined, most of us had our minds already made up about what we wanted and expected from Buddhism before we read a single page of a Buddhist discourse.  The majority of Buddhist practitioners don’t really want to adapt too much to Buddhism; not if it means change at a fundamental level.

If Buddhism has taught me anything over these many years that is applicable to today’s pseudo-crises it is this:  our first duty is to change ourself rather than trying to change what is outside of ourself.  I had to give up a lot to see what Siddhartha saw.  How else would I see it?  I wasn't looking for a situation where I wanted Buddhism to adapt to me.  That's going against the Way, the Way being a religious course which first acknowledges ultimate reality, then sets out to realize it. 

Christianity and Buddhism, a comparison

A comparison between Christianity (Protestantism) and Mahayana Buddhism would be a comparison between two metaphors for mankind’s unfortunate situation.  The Christian can be likened to dung covered in white snow (attributed to Martin Luther, though questionable) while for the Buddhist, man would be like the gold not free from its impurities or a dirty unwashed garment that just needs to be cleaned to reveal its intrinsic purity. 

The Buddha is telling us, using various similes and metaphors, that our self or Buddha-nature (this being most intrinsic in us) can be realized by us through various disciplines and practices that are effective in removing the adventitious defilements which make our Buddha-nature seem non-existent. 

For the Christian, during judgment, God will not see the sinner (the dung) but look at the righteousness of Christ (the snow) and declare the sinner righteous.  This is suggesting that God is somehow blind who only sees the snow and knows nothing or maybe doesn’t care about the dung-like human beings under the cloak of snow. 

From the above, it would seem that if good Christians, although intrinsically filthy, defiled and sinful, can cloak themselves in the image of Christ they will be judged righteous by God.  But in this respect, they are little more than self-righteous hypocrites; wearing the mask of righteousness but corrupt underneath (still dung).

If Buddhism were to teach Christianity a better path, it would say that all creatures potentially have the Christ-nature except that as humans we cling, tenaciously, to the flesh so that the Christ-nature which indwells within us seems absent; covered over by what is inimical to its realization, depriving humans of their spiritual nature and life.  Furthermore, it is by our own efforts and preference for God—the absolute and most intrinsic—that Christ is revealed to us, personally, in the form of a spiritual annoiting.

I realize that what I have said thus far might seem almost outrageous to a good Christian.  And for a western Buddhist, I am in error since I am not following their nihilist view of Buddhism which denies intrinsic purity in the form of an ātman or Buddha-nature (even though the Buddha said:  beings possess a Buddha Nature: this is what the ātman is). 

On a final note, the creature we call ‘man’ is really absolute but is playing a simulation game in which he has become embodied in his character having forgotten about his Buddha-nature.  This would apply to Christians as well who as Gods are caught up in a simulation game and are unable to turn the game off thereby discovering who they really are and have always been.

Artificial Intelligence's big problem

Artificial Intelligence (hereafter AI) cannot solve many problems or answer the question, “What is ultimate reality?”  Nor can AI mend a broken love affair or solve a Zen koan.  AI is not empathic nor can it see the big picture.  In fact, it is delusional to maintain that there is no adversity over which, eventually, AI cannot triumph which the AI fundamentalists believe. 

AI is a kind of updated medieval alchemy in which machines, it is hoped, will possess AI; which will be superior to the human mind, but more importantly, be capable of running our world, unerringly.  Mankind for the first time will create a paradise on earth—mythology will become our reality.  But this is really little more than science fiction. It will be Allen Newell's "land of Faerie” who is one of the pioneers of AI.

The greatest adversity we face, of which AI is of no real help, lies within us which includes among other things our closed-mindedness.  But more, we do not really know that much about the brain or how our reality is created and perceived by us although we would like to believe otherwise still adhering to variations of naive realism. 

I would argue that research into AI is only an attempt to duplicate the left hemisphere of the brain which is really its major problem.  All the blind optimism of the researchers left hemispheres will not save the AI project.  They haven't posed, seriously, if at all, the research question as to why there are two hemispheres of the brain which are almost separate and independent halves. 

Only recently have we found out what the right hemisphere of the brain does.  According to Iain McGilchrist from his book, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World: 

“The right hemisphere’s particular strength is in understanding meaning as a whole and in context. It is with the right hemisphere that we understand the moral of the story, as well as the point of the  joke. It is able to construe intelligently what other’s mean. . . .”

To speak about these two hemispheres of the brain in a Christian way, the left hemisphere is about the world of the flesh and all the flesh entails, while the right hemisphere is about the spirit.  From a Zen perspective, it is the right hemisphere that answers the koan, not the left.  It is the right hemisphere that connects with the Buddha Mind.  As far as the left is concerned, it can only attempt to describe, through language, the epiphany of Paul or the enlightenment of Siddhartha.  Still, the left hemisphere is incapable of realizing the transcendent.  McGilchrist puts it beautifully:

“The left hemisphere, isolating itself from the ways of the right hemisphere, has lost access to the world beyond words, the world ‘beyond’ our selves.”

It is the right hemisphere which has access to the transcendent and the divine—not the left.  Here it seems that the Buddha is speaking for the right hemisphere when he says:

“And because there is indeed a world beyond, the view of anyone that there is not a world beyond, it is a false conception of his” (M. i. 402).

The Buddha further says that those who convince others that there is no world beyond, that convincing of his goes against the true dharma.  Only those attached to the left hemisphere would believe that there is no world beyond, going against true dharma.

I would further argue that Chinese civilization, in its own unique way, had harmonized both hemispheres although they knew nothing about them.  We know, historically, Chinese civilization was not antagonistic towards the esoteric nor the transcendent the way modern culture is today in which the left hemisphere dominates trying to suppress, if not eliminate the right.  If it continues, all the pitfalls of the left hemisphere will become apparent such as a lack of empathy which is necessary for morality, and a marked inability to see the whole being fixated, instead, on the parts.  But also a power struggle will emerge in which the right hemisphere will try and instantiate harmony, eventually, taking the throne, since it is the natural and perfect leader.

What is ultimately real?

According to the Buddha, the world we live in is transient.   Whether we refuse to admit this or not, nevertheless our world, including this temporal body of ours, is always changing and impermanent, passing away in time; ceasing to exist, eventually.  It could be either very slow change or a sudden change from one state to another. 

The Buddhist doctrine of a transient world is the most salient example of what is unreal; a position difficult to refute. Why is this so?  It is because every thing is nothing in itself when we begin to examine it.  This thing before us is dependent upon other things.  It is a creation, constructed from many different elements.  Because of this condition, it is something that is not real in itself.  For example, the human body consists of trillions of cells, and various organs including a bone structure, muscles, tendons, etc.  It has many parts, in other words.  In addition, it also depends upon other things outside of it such as water and air, not to mention food.

“But this body, Aggivessana, which has material shape, is made up of the four great elements, originating from mother and father, nourished on gruel and sour milk, of a nature to be constantly rubbed away, pounded away broken up and scattered, should be regarded as impermanent, suffering, a disease, an imposthume [a source of corruption], a dart, a misfortune, an affliction, as other, as decay, empty, not-self” (M. i. 500).

Buddhism, rather than abide in the transient, is interested in what is ultimately real which does not change; which lies beyond our ever changing fragile human body together with the sphere of the six senses, viz., the eye and objects, the ear and sound, the nose and odor, tongue and taste, body and touch, the mental states with their mental objects.  To reiterate, none of this is ultimately real because it is transient.  While for us this transient world dominates, still there is something hidden behind all this which is increate and unchanging which is also unconditioned.  But try as we might to get to it, we fail because we are using the transient as our tool.  Our words, thoughts, ideas and theories fall short and will always fall shot.  Still there is a way to the real even while we seem to be in bondage to the transient.  The Buddha found it as did many after him, even in other traditions like Vedanta.

 

 

The horns and the hairs in Buddhism

The Buddha divided people into two groups, those of noble character (arya) who were spiritually inclined, and those of a worldly character (prithagjana) who were attached to the conditioned world; who couldn’t conceive of a world beyond it if their life depended upon it; who also were like annihilationists who believe that when one dies, that’s it.  There is no rebirth.    

Those of a worldly character or disposition, over identify with the five aggregates of corporeality, feeling, perception, volition, and consciousness.  These aggregates which are never other than conditioned, constitute their life or in the Buddha's words, their dung-like happiness.  These are the same people that believe the Buddha taught that there is no self or atman.

Those who have a noble character, to use a modern analogy, are like someone who understands that the real source of the music from their radio is a radio wave which cannot be detected by the human senses.  Without it, the radio has no music to amplify and play.  On the same track, the great Zen master Bodhidharma said of these people:

Everyone wants to see this Mind, and those who move their hands and feet by its light are as many as the grains of the sand along the Ganges, but when you ask them, they can't explain it.

Those who have a noble character can look within their mind at high-resolution so to speak.  They know what their thoughts are, in addition to mentation, and mental activity.  If their teacher says that pure Mind is beyond thought, meaning it is totally empty of thought, those with a noble character understand and aim for this particular state which is kenshō.  They don’t keep their investigation at a metaphysical level which is still immersed in thought.  Those with a worldly character don’t get it.  They might even fantasize that the do which I dare say is not uncommon.

Buddhism and especially Zen are not so easily taught especially in group situations.  Once I went to a private lecture the Dalai Lama was giving on Dharmakīrti.  Needless to say it was uninteresting to the huge majority of people who attended the Dalai Lama's lecture.  He was more of a rock star to most people there, who just wanted to bathe in their fantasies about him.  To borrow a line from the sagely wisdom of India, the arya are like the horns of the bull whereas the prithagjana are like hairs on his hide, many.

What appears is empty and illusory

What appears is an illusion and also empty.  A non-appearing illusion is illogical.  The world we live in is an illusion but perfectly real for us because the illusion seems real and non-illusory from its own side.  But from the side of the absolute it is not only an illusion but empty of any substantiality which is why any of the five aggregates or skandha, like material shape, is said to be emptiness.  So now the problem is how do we break our attachment to what is insubstantial and empty even though it appears?

Presently, we take the five skandhas as the bedrock of existence, from our physical bodies (the first skandha) to consciousness (the fifth skandha).  This is what I meant earlier when I said that the illusion seems real from its own side, its criterion being always illusion or the same, appearance.  For example, relative to my physical body (the first skandha) of birth, the feeling (the second skandha) of either pleasure or pain doesn’t seem to be an illusion for me, yet it is an illusion, nevertheless.

Looking at the Heart Sutra, it is trying to tell us that appearances which make up our personhood, namely, the five skandhas, are empty and ultimately nonexistent from the side of buddhatā, i.e., the state of being a Buddha.  The fact that all appearances in our world are constantly changing indicates that they are devoid of inherent self-nature (svabhāva/ātman).

The reason that they are devoid of inherent self-nature is because they are dependent originations (pratītyasamutpāda).  Things appear in the way a pot appears from clay or a rope appears from the twisting of hemp.  In the pot there is no intrinsic absolute pot or pot nature, the same with the rope made of hemp.  In the same way, our thoughts which are constantly arising and changing are only configurations of pure Mind or the same the One Mind.  But let me ask you, “Is the thought of a house or a person you are in love with the One Mind?”  No, because they are different configurations or data streams of the One Mind.

But as long as we attach to appearances, for example, the five skandhas and even our most sublime thoughts, we remain trapped.  The only way we can overcome the hypnotic power of appearance, is to see or rather intuit our true nature (svabhāva). 

What makes this so difficult is that this nature is most intrinsic and fundamental—the supreme source and basis.  We can’t get behind it either.  At the same time, it is the ultimate criterion (the Buddha-nature) looking at all appearances to see if they match with the ultimate criterion, which is not an appearance (thoughts and concepts fall into the category of appearances).  When there is, so to speak, a perfect match as when the ultimate criterion meets the ultimate non-appearing tathatã (suchness) becoming one or single (eka), escape is finally realized—the Buddha's enlightenment.  One is awakened.  The reality that we adhered to and thought was not an illusion is unmasked for what it really is: empty and illusory.

 

Some wrong ideas about the Buddha’s teaching

It stands to reason that the Buddhism of Siddhartha Gautama is much different than the Buddhism of today.  What accounts for this is that over time wrong views eventually find their way into Buddhism when, in fact, they were never part of Buddhism.

Two such wrong views come to mind which are: the Buddha denied the self or the atman and there is no rebirth taught in Buddhism because there is no atman in Buddhism. 

As far as both are concerned there are no actual utterances made by the Buddha where he states, unambiguously, there is no atman or there is no rebirth which in Pali is punabhava. 

If, in fact, the Buddha had taught there is, ultimately, no permanent, unchanging ‘self’ or atman the Buddha then would be teaching the doctrine of annihilationism (ucchedavada).  This doctrine was taught during the Buddha’s time.  This doctrine believed there is no self which in Pali would be rendered natthattā meaning there is not a self.  This evident in the Ānandasutta (44:10) which if read in Pali is quite evident. 

When Vacchagotta asked me whether the self does not exist absolutely, if I had answered that ‘the self does not exist absolutely’ I would have been siding with the ascetics and brahmins who are annihilationists.

Ahañcānanda, vacchagottassa paribbājakassa ‘natthattā’ti puṭṭho samāno ‘natthattā’ti byākareyyaṃ, ye te, ānanda, samaṇabrāhmaṇā ucchedavādā tesametaṃ saddhiṃ abhavissa.

On the matter of self, the Buddha’s teaching was quite different.  He taught that the conditioned five aggregates are not the self or atman, and that we should regard each aggregate thusly: ‘This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self.’  This is not a denial of self.  It is an implicit affirmation of self insofar as the five aggregates belong to Mara, the Buddhist equivalent of the devil.  A monk during the time of the Buddha would have been seen as being stark raving mad to deny the self by using the five aggregates as the criterion.

The Buddha taught that unenlightened people always regard what is not their self, namely, the five aggregates, as being their self.  They are never other than inverted.  The Buddha once taught a person named Radha to see the five aggregates as Mara, as the killer. This means that unenlightened people are unconsciously attached to evil.

How do many Buddhists today handle this problem?  From what I have personally witnessed, they double down and get really angry.  But never once have they provided a single word by the Buddha where he categorically declares there is no atman which in Pali is, natthattā.  As for the fact that the five aggregates are essentially evil their anger gets worse when they read this:

[He sees] the five aggregates as impermanent, as painful, as a disease, a boil, a dart, a calamity, an affliction, as alien, as disintegrating, as a plague, a disaster, a terror, a menace, as fickle, perishable, unenduring, as not protection, no shelter, no refuge, as empty, vain, void, not self, as a danger, as subject to change, as having no core, as the root of calamity, as murderous, as due to be annihilated, as subject to cankers, as formed, as Mara's bait, as connected with the idea of birth, connected with the idea of aging, connected with the idea of illness, connected with the idea of death, connected with the idea of sorrow, connected with the idea of lamentation, connected with the idea of despair, connected with the idea of defilement (Paṭisambhidāmagga II 238).

As for rebirth or punabhava many who take up the practice of either Buddhism or Zen Buddhism are uncomfortable with the idea of rebirth.  In their mind, they figure that since Buddhism denies the self, therefore, there is no transmigrant from this life to the next.  No self; no rebirth! No problem.  But this is not true.  The self is not the transmigrant in Buddhism that goes from one life to the next.  It is consciousness which in Sanskrit is vijnana which means something like 'dual knowing' in which a subject-object relation is implicit.  This is the transmigrant.  This is also the fifth aggregate after corporality, feeling, perception, and volitional formations.  The Buddha even likened consciousness to a magician’s illusion.  This is summed up quite well from this passage.

"Just as a silkworm makes a cocoon in which to wrap itself and then leaves the cocoon behind, so consciousness produces a body to envelop itself and then leaves that body to undergo other karmic results in a new body" (Maharatnakuta Sutra).

 

Today's Zen is not the Zen of Dahui

Dahui Zonggao (1089–1163) is a very important Zen master right after Sixth Patriarch Huineng for the reason that his awakening, which was profound, gave him what he needed to get to the nuts and bolts of how koans or cases were actually meant to work and how they should be used; that if used properly, can lead to an authentic enlightenment experience; which happened for many of his time. 

Besides his great advance as to how koans are to be used, Dahui was also very critical of the practice of silent illumination 默照 in which the adept sits in a rigid posture, not uttering a word; being totally still.  According to Dahui, these practitioners do not actually believe in enlightenment and call enlightenment “madness” being only secondary to sitting. According to Dahui:

“The say that enlightenment is a construct and only tell people to sit like mounds of dirt rigidly assigned in rows, and teach them “quietude” (jing 靜).  They call quietude the roots, and enlightenment the branches and leaves.”

Achieving such tranquility or quietude 靜 rested on maintaining a devout attentiveness durning the sitting posture until tranquility was achieved.  Tranquility  implied that the previous unmanageable emotions and desires had calmed down, sufficiently, that they could be said to be under the adept’s full control.

But in itself, such quietude 靜 is not enlightenment; certainly not the enlightenment of Siddhartha.  For Dahui, it acted more as a limit if not a dead end that fell short of seeing one’s true nature—Siddhartha's enlightenment.  What we see today which calls itself Zen is not the Zen of Dahui.  It's the Zen of silent illumination 默照 in which the adept sits ramrod straight on a black pillow or zafu trying to achieve tranquility which they believe is enlightenment.  To reiterate, this is not enlightenment or kenshō insofar as the emphasis is placed on the psychological side rather than on the Zen side which is direct intuition of one's true nature (kenshō).  

Minds already made up as what to expect from Zen

One of the biggest problems in Zen are with those people who want to study Zen but who have their minds already made up with respect to what they believe Zen is supposed to be.  In that regard, they only want to learn what reinforces their personal beliefs.  Nor could you say such people have an open mind either.  It is rather shut and limited.

I would not call such people beginners.  And the more I think about it, I don’t like the word “beginners” when applied to Zen although I have used it many times.

Of those people who have their minds already made up as what to expect from Zen most believe that Zen is about sitting crosslegged with their backs ramrod straight and their hands placed in a special way.  They also believe that the Zen teacher is enlightened and that what he or she says is true as regards Zen and also Buddhism.

The real problem with such people who have their minds made up already, who are either new to Zen or have been a member of a Zen community for many years, is the teaching of Zen wants the student to have an open mind which is not made up, and also a mind that is capable of opening itself up to something profound and mystical; which relies upon intuition rather than upon reason and physical practices. 

A student of Zen has to at least understand the right context of Zen which is about gaining enlightenment and not so much about sitting still as if enlightenment somehow grows out of prolonged sitting.

But I dare say, few want to go down the path of having to actualize enlightenment.  This is an intuitive path.  It was taught by such Zen masters as Yuanwu and Dahui going back to Bodhidharma.  Most people who want to study Zen believe it is safer to go with what is popular; what others are doing in the way of Zen practice which is zazen, literally, to sit in Zen in which the main emphasis is on sitting; not so much Zen or dhyāna which is the Sanskrit term that Zen is based upon which actually means “intuition”.  An interesting aside, the school of Zen 禪宗 is rendered as the Intuitional School or Mystic School according to the book, A Dictionary of Chinese Buddhist Terms.

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