The Zennist

Is "just sitting" the heart of Zen?

I just recently came across this from a biography about Joseph Campbell whose work in comparative mythology and comparative religion is familiar to many of us.

"Alan [Watts] thought that “just sitting” in meditation did not really define the Zen tradition, and yet that was exactly what Campbell had been told time and again in the Zen temples—“sitting” was the heart of Zen practice. Alan was more interested in the intellectual content of the doctrines, and in the koans—riddles with no logical answer—given as a kind of test to the Zen student" (Joseph Campbell: A Fire in the Mind: The Authorized Biography by Stephen and Robin Larsen).

What do we really mean when we say that “sitting” is at the heart of Zen practice in regard to Buddhism?  I doubt that it could be a form or method of worship (upāsanā) unless maybe one is worshiping the simple moment of just sitting.  But that’s pretty far-fetched—or maybe it isn’t! 

What we find in the Pāli Nikaya as regards ‘sitting’ is something like this (emphasis is mine):

"It’s when a mendicant has gone to a wilderness, or to the root of a tree, or to an empty hut. They sit down cross-legged, with their body straight, and establish mindfulness right there.  Just mindful, they breathe in. Mindful, they breathe out" (SN 54:1).

It seems to me that the term “just sitting” comes from Dōgen’s interpretation of Zen which supposedly he learned during his trip to China.  And for Americans who became interested in Zen this “just sitting” was their first introduction to Zen. 

As to its effectiveness, just sitting doesn’t appear to help the Zen adept to decipher the often complex discourses of the Buddha or help to answer koans.  But it is a great psychological tool if you are a Zen teacher in Dōgen’s tradition.  It’s like a sophisticated, adult version of a timeout that is usually given to a misbehaving child which is a temporary suspension of their activities.  For the adult it is a timeout so they can get a grip on their life—a temporary suspension of their monkey mind you could say.

I think Alan Watts was right in thinking that “just sitting” in meditation did not really define the Zen tradition which supposedly begins with Siddhartha using dhyāna to achieve enlightenment.  If anything, the Buddha’s Zen was a process which leads to a decisive separation (viveka) from sense gratification but is, nevertheless, a spiritual pleasure totally free of conditionality.  The Buddha-to-be upon remembering his first dhyāna when he was younger, which was a turning point for him said, “I am not afraid of that pleasure, which is apart from sensual pleasures and unwholesome states” (M. i. 246-47).

Reading 'about' Zen is the problem

Reading about Zen is not revealing the truth or secret of Zen which is the attainment it requires.  While Zen’s written word is ‘about’ Zen, the about-ness is problematic insofar as we are moving around the outside of Zen. 

We can envision the problem from a page out of a 13th century Zen text, The Gateless Barrier 無門關 consisting of forty-eight koans.  We can also render 無門關, Mumon’s Barriers, the barriers being the forty-eight koans.  We can further imagine these barriers to be doors in a circular castle the center of which contains the secret of Zen.  If we can manage to unlock any door, we discover Zen’s secret.

Reading about Zen will only keep us on the outside of the circular castle of Zen that surrounds its mystical core.  We can never enter its sacred interior this way.  Even if a good teacher reminds his students, citing from the four slogans of Zen that Zen, does not depend on written words (不立文字) it won’t stop the madness of some who insist upon reading about Zen too much.  Even Zen master Huangbo understood the problem with Zen being put into a textual form in which the essence of Zen is believed to be.  He said:

"If it [Zen] can be understood in this manner, then it isn’t the true teaching. If it can be seen in paper and ink, then it is not the essence of our order.”

Zen does not even rely on sitting in a prescribed manner on a zafu, ramrod straight, called, zazen (坐禪).  The problem it presents is, essentially, no different from reading a dozen or so books about Zen.  Neither can gain access to the hidden truth of Zen.  When Zen masters such as the Sixth patriarch Huineng attacked zazen it was an attack directed at just physical sitting which had turned into a lifeless ritual.

In addition, that Zen is meant to make us feel good either by reading about Zen or doing zazen only serves to mask what is really required of us: that we should be presuppositionless and open to allowing the absolute to enter us which culminates in the intuition of the absolute.  This is just saying in different words, that the realization of Zen’s secret rests upon the sudden stopping of all mentation which acts as a barrier.

Removing the illusion

Nirvana is not a meditative state, that is, a special psychological state we enter into which depends upon a certain kind of mental and physical process which is what zazen is about.

There is almost a certain kind of athleticism required to achieve this psychological state.  You could say, a harmony of mind and body.  But this is not what nirvana is.  It is a special term that points to a transcendental, unconditioned state, a state also which exists by itself (svabhāvadharma).

Still, nirvana is realized by practitioners through a certain process just like gold is obtained by various kinds of extraction processes.  But the machinery by which the gold is obtained and the gold, itself, are quite different.  The reality of nirvana is by no means dependent on anyone's meditation technique.  In fact, nirvana has been around forever and remains such whether or not we awaken to it.

What Buddhist meditation is concerned with is removing the illusion that makes nirvana seem unattained—taking the veil which hides it away. 

In itself, nirvana is, naturally, already accomplished and doing its work.  On the other hand, we live in a subjective illusion so that meditation becomes necessary, not in order to establish nirvana (since it has always been with us), but to remove the illusion of non-nirvana.  This is what a successful meditation must do.  In a way, meditation is intended to exhaust the various human functions and self-deceptions whereby illusion is maintained and nirvana remains hidden.

 

Are some Buddhists trying to hide their annihilationism?

There are a number of troubling passages in the Pali canon which do not sit well with the doctrine of no self or in Pali anattā.  But the most troubling part is how Buddhists, who claim that the Buddha was a denier of the self or attā, separate themselves from the annihilationists who taught at the time of the Buddha, there is no self that in Pali is natthattā which, by the way, the Buddha rejects in the Ānanda Sutta (SN 44:10).

“And if, when I was asked by Vacchagotta the wanderer ‘how is it that the Self is not’, I had responded: ‘that the Self not’ [natthattā], then so I would have been siding fully with annihilationist Brahmins and ascetics.”

Some Buddhists have come up with clever ways of getting around the problem of annihiltionism (ucchedavādo) by adding a “conventional self” into Buddhism or an “illusory self” both of which are makeshift.  Hopefully, by this maneuver they can avoid any troubling thought that the Buddha taught a transcendent self that is not annihilated, that is, a self beyond the reach and range of the five aggregates or constituents (pañca-skandha). 

If it were true that the Buddha accepted a transcendent self this would certainly fly in the face of various Buddhist writers who contend that the self is not intrinsically real (implied annihilationism).  Who, in addition, also claim that a conventional self is all the Buddha meant by his use of self, which represents the temporal body which is perishable.  But this is not the flavor of what is happening here in the Alagaddūpama Sutta (M. i. 136).

But, monks, an instructed disciple of the pure ones, taking count of the pure ones, skilled in the Dhamma of the pure ones, well trained in the Dhamma of the pure ones, taking count of the true men, skilled in the Dhamma of the true men, well trained in the Dhamma of the true men, regards material shape as: ‘This is not mine, this am I not, this is not my self;’ He regards feeling as: ‘This is not mine, this am I not, this is not my self;’ He regards perception as: ‘This is not mine, this am I not, this is not my self;’ He regards the habitual tendencies as: ‘These are not mine, this am I not, this is not my self;’ He regards consciousness as: ‘This is not mine, this am I not, this is not my self;’ And also he regards whatever is seen, heard, sensed, cognised, reached, looked for, pondered by the mind as: ‘This is not mine, this am I not, this is not my self.

The logic that underpins the above requires a higher being or self that no longer believes or accepts the wrong view that the material body is the self along with the other four constituents which, unfortunately, was the view of Saccaka the Nigaṇṭha.  In other words, the five constituents (pañca-skandha) cannot be my real self since they are impermanent and suffering.

Logically, by definition, a true self cannot lead to any kind of affliction or ever be impermanent.  Nor is this self to be found in the five constituents.  On the part of the practitioner, there must be a total revulsion (P., nibbindati) towards each constituent by a higher and more fundamental self or mind (citta).

“Seeing thus, bhikkhus, the instructed noble disciple experiences revulsion [nibbindati] towards form, revulsion towards feeling, revulsion towards perception, revulsion towards volitional formations, revulsion towards consciousness. Experiencing revulsion, he becomes dispassionate. Through dispassion his mind is liberated. When it is liberated there comes the knowledge: ‘It’s liberated.’ He understands: ‘Destroyed is birth, the holy life has been lived, what had to be done has been done, there is no more for this state of being.’” (SN 22:59).

Here the self is now the mind which spiritually distinguishes itself from the constituents such that his mind is liberated which is another way of saying his self is liberated.    

How to identify demons (asura)

Most people today who tend to be arrogant intellectuals would easily fall into the category of an asura, ‘sura’ meaning ‘divine’ or ‘grace’, asura meaning an evil spirit, demon, or an opponent of the gods (deva) who is filled with hated and jealousy. 

In Mahayana Buddhism, what causes one to be reborn with an asura disposition are, namely, their former deeds (karma) of hatred or enmity (dveṣa), self-conceit or arrogance (māna) and doubt or uncertainty (vicikitsā).  I would add to this a few words from the Iśa Upaniṣad substituting a Mahayana term Buddha-nature.

Asuras are slayers of Buddha-nature (ātman). They are enveloped in blind darkness and in death return to darkness.

We need to keep in mind that Buddha-nature is also the ātman in Mahayana Buddhism.

"All beings possess a Buddha Nature: this is what the ātman is. This ātman, from the start, is always covered by innumerable passions (klesha): this is why beings are unable to see it" (Mahaparinirvana-sutra [Etienne Lamotte, The Teaching of Vimalakirti, Eng. trans. by Sara Boin, London: The Pali Text Society, 1976, Introduction, p. lxxvii.]).

A kind of madness takes possession of the person who is of an asura disposition and, understandably, they don’t like anything that smacks of rebirth, otherworldliness, transcendence, a higher nature, and may even consider themselves to have always been enlightened. 

In his book (a great book for the home library), Vedic Yoga, The Path of the Rishi, Frawley sees the asura as a force that resists evolution.  Asuras are the powers of darkness and falsehood.  They also represent worldly ambitions.  They reflect the quality of aggression.  They don’t care about transcending samsara but want to conquer and enslave the world, instead.  They only know the carnal person which is bodily identity.  This is the self or ātman for the asura. 

From an archetypal perspective there is a constant power struggle going on, according to Frawley, between the devas (the higher planes of existence) and the asuras, the lower darker planes of existence.  Mankind’s fate is tied to this ongoing power struggle.  The force of the devas is not strong enough to win the battle since the main force rests upon too few rishis (P., Isi).  The Buddhas and the arhats were called rishi which in Pali is isi.  The term means one who goes beyond the mundane world by means of higher knowledge.

Returning to the One

We pursue sights, sounds, smells, flavors, tactile sensations and ideas.  All of these are in what you might call a dual pattern. These are the 12 ayatanas or senses and modes.  For example, sights are made up of the eye and visible objects.  Sounds rely on the ear and sound.  Smells are made up of the nose and odor.  Flavors rely on tongue and taste.  Tactile sensations depend on the body and touch.  Ideas depend on mentation and their respective objects.  As humans this is our limit.  This is also something like a huge cage that we can’t get out of since it is our limit and who we imagine we are.

If we were to free ourself from the subtle duality of the senses that encloses us in the world of samsara and thus gain liberation, we would be back, suddenly, at the origin or source before the appearance of a single thing or thought. This is what Zen master Huangbo is referring to when he said:

"A perception, sudden as blinking, that subject and object are one, will lead to a deeply mysterious wordless understanding; and by this understanding will you awake to the truth of Zen."

Whatever we may believe or not believe, all takes place from within this samsaric cage of the six senses which Zen teaches us how to escape from.  But if we remain unenlightened, we have not realized what transcends it, each of us will live our entire life inside this invisible cage only to be reborn in it again and again.  Few can intuit what is beyond it because the world of samsara is so powerful and captivating.

The most powerful sense of this cage for us is mentation, the manas, which consists of thought and ideas.  Even more, manas is all of our mental powers such as the intellect, intelligence, understanding, perception, conscience, will, etc.  It is what sets us apart from other creatures.  But it is still part of the cage.  Since mentation is so powerful it is also very deceptive.  It keeps us in the framework of duality: subject and object knowing (vijñāna).  By it we cannot return to the One.

 

The Buddha defeats Saccaka and his five aggregate atman theory

What prompted the Buddha to say of the five aggregates, namely, corporeality, feeling, perception, volitional formations and consciousness were not the self or in Pali and Sanskrit anattā and anātman?  The answer was people like Saccaka, a formidable debater, who was a follower of the Nigantha sect.  His position was this:

“All the plants and seeds that achieve growth, increase, and maturity do so depending on the earth and grounded on the earth. All the hard work that gets done depends on the earth and is grounded on the earth. In the same way, an individual’s ātman is material shape. Grounded on material shape they make good and bad choices. An individual’s ātman is feeling … perception … choices … consciousness.  Grounded on consciousness they make good and bad choices” (Cūḷasaccaka Sutta M. i. 230) (emphasis is mine.)

Another way to look at Saccaka’s position is as follows:

Rūpattā (the corporeal ātman), vedanattā (the hedonic ātman), sañnattā (the mental ātman), saṅkhārattā (the volitional ātman),  viññāṇattā (the cognitive ātman).

The Buddha basically told Saccaka that his five aggregates cannot be the ātman because they are impermanent which is contrary to the real ātman which, by implication, is permanent. Nor did the Buddha ever say that the ātman was impermanent. 

Logically, if any of these aggregates were to be the ātman then the aggregates should not lead to affliction.  But they do!  In other words, the real ātman would have power over the aggregates and could command them as it saw fit. But since all the aggregates are contrary to the ātman a person becomes afflicted by attaching to them which leads to suffering.

The same light illuminates both Buddhism and the Upaniṣads

What is the connection between Shinto and Islam as if to suggest they came from a common religious source?  I think we can be sure that they have no common religious source.  But can we say this about Buddhism and the Upaniṣads?  No we cannot.  They have, you could say, a relationship or a connection, maybe because the overarching context they operate from is the same and very ancient.  But I dare not say this in front of today’s Buddhists!  Why is that?

To answer the foregoing question it should be obvious that Buddhism, in recent memory, has been somewhat of a magnet that draws agnostics, atheists and most, notably, irreligionists (those hostile to religion) to its temples and centers. 

These types are usually westerners who lean heavily towards scientism; who don’t believe that man is, fundamentally, a spiritual creature just like a fish is an aquatic creature or a bird is a creature of the air.  Man, for these types, is a seeker of pleasure but in modern life is not finding it as hoped in a sufficient amount.  In fact, all that he finds is more and more daily displeasure and in some cases, downright suffering.  So he thinks that he’d better look into Buddhism to help with his daily irritations which bring him nothing but displeasure.  Maybe meditation would help.

And there you have it.  Our modern day western Buddhist. But what is missing in this pop view of Buddhism?  It is the very spiritual context of Buddhism, itself, that is missing which includes rebirth, karma and the pressing need to overcome samsara which is the repeating cycles of birth and death that individuals undergo without end unless they attain nirvana.

When you start comparing Buddhism with the Upaniṣads, contextually, they are very much the same.  In other words, both share a common framework such that when you peel away the superficial veneer the same light, so to speak, illuminates them both.  But this grand framework is nothing for the natural creature or better said, the biological creature.  It is for the spiritual person, the ariya (S., ārya), that is, one who walks the spiritual path. 

As we might expect, the Buddha was not an irreligionist.  The Buddha, in fact, recognizes the existence of many kinds of gods such as Indra and Brahmā, for example.  He was not a hater of gods but understood their place and their limitations (he spoke about some gods called ‘debauched in mind’ who only sought pleasure).  This was also with the Upaniṣads. We should not forget that the first and second chapter of the Samyutta Nikaya (The Connected Discourses) are discourses with the gods (devatā) and the young gods (devaputta).

The Buddha shifted the notion of god as the one supreme god (who was not a creator god) to the attainment of nirvana which is beyond even the mental construct of a supreme god.  In nirvana, any and all anthropocentric significance is superseded.  This includes prayer and worship.  This is not far from the Upaniṣads.  Yajñavalkaya says, “Whereby everything reduces to Oneness, who then is left to worship whom?”

With the attainment of nirvana, man is no longer the measure of all things.  Measurer and the measured return to the one source from which they first emerged.  In fact, this is their absolute truth which transcends their former relative positions born of discrimination.

Understanding the role of self or atman in both Buddhism and Upaniṣads is to see different levels of self.  What attaches to the human body of birth with all of its senses is a lower self.  It is the self looking at the world from the perspective of the biological body of birth as this is who I am which would be the bodily person or sakkāyo. But there is another higher self who makes choices acting as a controller.  This self decides to become, let’s say, a Buddhist.  It does meditation rather than go out with the boys to have some beers.  This is the protector or lord of the lower self which over identifies with the sakkāyo.  Then there is the innermost self (praty-ātman) which attains nirvana in which the distinction between nirvana and self disappear.  All this corresponds somewhat with the Upaniṣads in the forms of dehātman=sakkāyo; the jivatman= nātha self (protector or lord of self found in the Dhammapada); and paramatman (paccatta/praty-ātman).

The Upaniṣads speak of the pañcakoś or five sheaths which make up the bodily person, namely, the gross sheath, the breath sheath, the mind or manas sheath, the intellect sheath, and the bliss sheath.  The five sheaths are said to be impermanent (anitya).  This is not unlike Buddhism’s conditioned pañskandha or five aggregates which are never other than suffering and impermanent, that is, the bodily self (rūpa), the feeling self (vedana), the mental self (sañña), the volitional self (saṅkhāra), the self of consciousness (vijñāna).   These selves are not who we really are.  Of each one the Buddha says: this is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self.  In this regard, we transcend the pañskandha. We realize our transcendent position by attaining nirvana in the very self (praty-ātman).

There are many other similarities but the important thing is that a relation exists between the Upaniṣads and Buddhism.  The overarching  context of both is that we can only escape from suffering by realizing the transcendent and no other way.  As Dr. S. G. Deodikar point out in his book, Upaniṣads and Early Buddhism, “there is hardly any difference between original Buddhism and advaita of Upaniṣads.  No wonder that in due course, Indian epics ranked the Buddha along with the other incarnations or avatārs of Viṣṇu.”

Buddhism of the confused masses

So far, what I can tell from my unscientific survey of Buddhists who participate in a Buddhist site on Reddit, which is a social media content aggregation website, is that Buddhism falls easily into the general category of self-help psychology and materialism which contains strong elements of irreligion and other elements such as disbelief in rebirth or an afterlife.  Many of these people are also atheists but that is expected since atheists are usually irreligious.

Whether or not my opinion is true for the majority of all non-Asian Buddhists, I can’t tell.  But I suspect that it is an influential part.  In addition, this Buddhism is also political and I would guess supports many left of center views.

The part that I am troubled by the most is the disinterest in nirvana or you could even say disinterest in ultimate reality which Siddhartha had realized under the Bodhi tree.  Here are thirty-three epithets for this reality.  This is from the discourse titled Anāsavādi Sutta (SN 43.14–43).

"The unfashioned, the end, the effluent-less, the true, the beyond, the subtle, the very-hard-to-see, the ageless, permanence, the undecaying, the featureless, the undifferentiated, peace, the deathless, the exquisite, bliss, solace, the exhaustion of craving, the wonderful, the marvelous, the secure, security, nirvana, the unafflicted, the passionless, the pure, release, non-attachment, the island, shelter, harbour, refuge, the ultimate.”

These thirty-three epithets help to describe ultimate reality or the same the absolute which these days is of little or no interests to the pressing needs of the confused masses (saṅkārabhūta), that is, ordinary common people (puthujjana) who could not care less about deliverance from the rebirth cycles of samsara.  They simply don’t believe in it — problem solved.

This brings me to an observation of the ordinary common people who have a superficial interest in Buddhism.  Belief is everything for them.  However, it is a doubting kind of belief that feels it is okay to doubt certain Buddhist tenets.  If I don’t believe in it, it ain’t true!

You can see to where all this is heading.  A totally new kind of Buddhism.  Don’t worry about being reborn, there’s no such thing as rebirth.  If you have any psychological problems just practice meditation.  As for enlightenment, it is just learning how to get along with people you don’t like or maybe taking pleasure in watching a spider weave its web. 

The good news is this blog has more daily readers than the Reddit Buddhism site has. This could be a ray of hope for our side—a dawn.

Can there be any light for us?

Zen master Yuanwu (1063–1135) once said, “To transmit mind by means of mind, to seal true nature with true nature—this is like water being poured into water.”  This sounds simple and beautiful but only if we are pouring something into something.    

But what if we only go through a ritualized act of pouring?  Let us imagine that our Zen transmission vessel is even made of gold but it is empty including the vessels that are to receive the contents of this pouring?  As we can see, nothing is really being poured or transmitted.  It’s all fake.

One thing that is sadly lacking in Zen is the light.  If you were to meet a real Buddha or an awakened person, they emit a radiant field around them.  Those with not so good karma don’t sense it.  Those with good karma can hardly stand up since the presence of this strange light causes them to become very blissful.

This light plays a major role in Zen Buddhism but it is hardly mentioned.  Still, when a student happens to awaken on some summer night, about a minute later he or she begins to become bathed in this light.  It comes streaming in.  It can’t be stopped.  Can we call it a spiritual baptism?  Well, yes you could.

Was Zen master Linji lying when he said:

"The spiritual light manifesting through the six senses, has never been interrupted.  He who is able to perceive it can be an unconcerned man for the rest of his life."

Today we only imagine this wondrous light.  We don’t actually perceive it.  We are incapable of this feat.  We live in a world of fantasies and dreams.  We are asleep.  If we were to perceive this light, we might become frightened.  But why can't we perceive it?  It is because it is covered over with the darkness of materialism and our desire for conditioned things and pleasures.  Everyday we add more layers of darkness.  Until we break through this thick mantle of darkness how can there be any light for us?