The Zennist

The transmission on Spirit Vulture Peak

The Zen koans begin with the Buddha on Spirit Vulture Peak imparting his awakening to Mahākāśyapa if not also checking him out to see if they were seeing eye to eye.  How did the Buddha do this?  He simply held up a flower then blinked. 

In response to the Buddha’s strange behavior, Mahākāśyapa just smiled.  But why did Mahākāśyapa smile?  Why not say something?  Apparently, Mahākāśyapa understood what the Buddha was up to.  He got the message. 

For those reading this koan for the first time this seems strange and puzzling.  Something is missing.  Why does one hold up a flower and blink and the other just smile?  We are not aware of what connects the two which makes up the mysterious Mind to Mind transmission of Zen.  

No matter how much our intellect tries to make sense of this, it cannot.  But Zen is not so stupid as to expect us to find some kind of hidden intellectual solution because what connects the two and gives rise to their strange responses transcends our all-too-human world with its grasping intellect. 

The unraveling of the koan[s] or "barriers" comes with kenshō (intuiting one's nature).  This one with Mahākāśyapa is no different . Every single koan without exception has been composed by a person who is awakened.  You are expected to do the same, that is, awaken!

What both the Buddha and Mahākāśyapa have in common in this koan is the Mind that is luminous (prabhāsvara) which is only met with when one actually awakens.  It doesn’t matter which koan is solved.

The heart of Zen is in this spiritual transmission even though, in all probability, it never actually took place.  It's a Zen myth, but an excellent one that helps us to engage with the mystery of Mind which is what animates our temporal bodies.  It is the Mind that the Buddha in the Pali Nikayas calls the luminous Mind.  It is also the Mind that is awakened or bodhicitta.

It's rather a well kept secret that Buddhist teachers, who are worth their salt, don't discuss this luminous Mind too much.  They understand that when the adept engages with this Mind, it is self-verifying and clearly reveals what was actually transmitted between the Buddha and Mahākāśyapa.  This, by the way, is the orthodox transmission which means that when we awaken to Mind, we are transmitted.  We also join theTriple Gem Sangha.  

Our senses cannot lead us to the unconditioned

It is the sense sphere or āyatana, consisting of eyes and visible objects, ear and sound, nose and odor, tongue and taste, body and tangibility, mental activity and mental objects, that binds us to the conditioned world—this shore.  This is the all that is aflame which the Buddha speaks about in the Āditta Sutta ( The Inflaming Discourse 35:28). 

But perhaps more important than the other five is the sixth sense which is mental activity or mano with its thought-forms (dharmā) which are inflamed such as thought (the activity of thinking), for example, angry thoughts or desirous thoughts.  But the mano can yield and often does, delusions, since the intellect comes from the mano which perceives thought-forms.

All this is, of course, conditioned and not otherwise.  Our mental activity or mano cannot, so to speak, lead us to the unconditioned promised land.  To a certain extent the sense sphere can be cleaned up by being aware of these senses not allowing ourselves to become inflamed and deceived by them.

All this is, however, not fundamental enough for Zen or for us.  We must go farther and deeper to no-mentation 無念 reaching what in the Lankavatara Sutra is called parinishpanna  (the highest of the three self-natures or trisvabhāva) this being perfect knowledge.  Parinishpanna also includes Suchness or tathatā being the universal substance of reality or the same, the One Mind.  It also needs to be underscored that this is not a fabrication of one's own imagination which can and does reify its contents so they appear as if real and convincing.

It seems that Zen is always fighting an uphill battle where part of Zen, in the example of the Sōtō school (曹洞宗), is trying to defend the mano including the rest of the sense sphere as if there is nothing higher.  This is the belief that the conditioned world is the Buddha-nature which is simply not true.  In the Sōtō school, the individual only needs to sit (zazen) trusting that they are already a Buddha.  In this regard, sitting helps the individual to see their Buddhaness and reinforce their certitude.  But this is staying in the illusion.

Koans help to overcome the intellectual approach to Zen

According to Peter Haskel, the author of, Bankei Zen: Translation from the Record of Bankei:

As Bankei saw it, the whole approach of koan Zen was hopelessly contrived. He rejected the need for familiarity with classical Chinese as an unnecessary encumbrance, and rejected the koan itself as an artificial technique. The original koans, he argued, were not "models," but actual living events. The old masters had simply responded to particular situations that confronted them, naturally accommodating themselves to the needs of the students involved. That was the business of any Zen teacher, to meet each situation on its own terms. There was no need to make people study the words of ancient Chinese monks when you could simply have them look at their own "cases," the way in which the Unborn was at work here and now in the actual circumstances of their lives. This was what Bankei called his "direct" teaching, as opposed to koan practice, which he referred to disparagingly as "studying old waste paper." The koan, said Bankei, was merely a device, and teachers who relied on it, or on any other technique, were practicing "devices Zen." Why rely on a device, he argued, when you could have the thing itself?

This is arguably true to a certain extent but under Zen master Dahui the koan was made to work against the Chinese literati whose devotion to Zen, by the way, helped to popularize it.  As seems to be the case from what I can tell, the literati had a penchant for making elegant interpretations of koans without so much as an iota of direct intuition of true nature which is who we really are at a fundamental level in sharp contrast with the temporal person who is born and dies. 

My view of the modern use of koans is that they help to overcome the discursive/intellectual approach to Zen, hopefully, to hasten the great doubt 大疑 which puts the adept into an intuitive position where kenshō is likely. 

A certain part of Zen is about reaching the summit of Zen in which one can go no farther.  This summit you could say is Zen through the six senses, especially, the sixth sense which is mentality (manas) that includes consciousness and thought.  But this is only preparation for intuition which is a mystical leap from the summit into a profound depth leaving all the intellectual accumulations behind and most of all, the six senses, which need to be purified which can become like thieves according to Bodhidharma.

A Buddhist look at victimhood

The first noble truth of Buddhism is suffering or as some translate, unsatisfactoriness.  There are other renderings in English we could come up with for the Sanskrit word duhkha such as uneasy, uncomfortable, unpleasant, difficult or unhappy; even disharmony. 

Also, it is important to add that the first noble truth are also the five aggregates or skandhas that make up our life, namely, corporeality, feeling, perception, volitional formations and consciousness which are duhkha. When these aggregates are afflicted or get out of kilter, owing to our degree of attachment to the aggregates, subjectively, we experience pain or unhappiness finding life difficult almost unbearable.

Looking at what makes a person a victim from a Buddhist perspective; who is in a noticeable degree of duhkha, is not an easy subject to smooth out and make it easy to understand or find clear and commonsense solutions. 

The complexity of what a victim is has been greatly expanded over the years to include all types of civil and criminal wrongs from birth to death that can give a person the mark of being a victim.  In deed, there has been a proliferation of victimhood status in recent years — all experiencing various degrees of duhkha.

Assessing the potential boundaries of what makes someone a victim and another person not a victim turns out to be a proverbial can of worms.  If someone decides to use the ATM in New Orleans at 2 a.m. in the morning and ends up beaten and robbed, shouldn’t this person have known better than to venture into a crime area at this time?  To what extent is the victim’s behavior responsible to some degree for the duhkha?  And what about general social harm against the citizens of a community when corrupt officials won’t enforce the laws on the books to insure public safety by getting rid of the so-called junkies who rob and attack people, in the example of San Francisco?  Aren’t they victims rather than the junkies?  And what about coming to a determination that no victimization had occurred, in the example of flipping someone off in traffic or calling someone at a political rally a fascist or a traitor?  But isn’t stalking someone such as a political leader or an actor or an actress an example of victimization?

All of us are potential victims and are more so when we put ourselves into situations in which victimization can likely occur.  It is also true that we can unconsciously victimize ourselves; walking into situations where we will become a victim.  And what about turning children into almost lifelong victims as a result of abusive parenting?

With cultural degeneration in which our cities are becoming increasingly unsafe there is a noticeable rise in victimhood and duhkha, not to mention victimizers who are predatory looking for victims.

The answer to victimization is not one single sure-fire answer but requires that we first accept the first noble truth of our human existence which is duhkha just as the truth of our birth is always death.  We even have to face the sad fact that we often turn ourselves into victims by our uncritical and uninformed views about our personal health, our general lifestyle, and our politics or the lack thereof.  We have a responsibility not to become victims which sounds obvious but we also have a responsibility not to exploit victimization turning it into a badge of status or a political opportunity.

At some point in our lives we will become victims  and maybe even a victimizer.  It all comes under the heading of the first noble truth but also the second which is our incessant clinging to the five aggregates or skandhas which make up our human life, namely, corporeality, feeling, perception, volitional formations and consciousness which are duhkha.  It is only Buddhism that can teach us to see beyond the five aggregates and escape becoming future victims.