The Zennist

The primary basis, itself, which always remains unarisen

There is an implicit distinction to be made between what arises from the unconditioned, primary basis, and the unconditioned, primary basis, itself, which always remains unarisen (an ungraspable background so to speak).

During meditation, the advanced student often discovers this distinction.  Ordinary thoughts, i.e., the arisen, just don’t arise from themselves.  That’s absurd.  In fact, what we call our ‘mind’ (manas) is all our mental powers such as intellect, understanding, perception, sense, conscience, will, etc., which are constantly arising and changing.  Nothing here is the unarisen which is the unconditioned, primary basis. 

We can name the unarisen basis, the true self, and what arises to be what makes up the false self or anātman.

So the question is, would it be tenable to claim that forms or sights (rūpā) that have arisen are the true self?  No it would not according to the Buddha in the Chachakka Sutta.  We could further say that what has arisen is the false self.  This is true with the other senses as well, including the body (kāya) and the mind or manas.

In order to break our identity with the sensory world such as sight, sounds, smells, taste, the body and the mind or manas, the noble disciple has to become disenchanted (nibbindati) with all this, even craving.  This is like Zen master Dahui’s ‘great doubt’ 大疑.  It is only in a state of utter disenchantment that one eventually goes beyond, hence, merging with the unconditioned

Many who take up Zen are a pretty stubborn lot

It goes almost without saying that those who take up Zen meditation do so, not to become enlightened, attaining kenshō, but as a way to deal with the stress they face in their daily life. 

An in-depth study of Zen’s early development, like with Buddhism, finds that it aims at liberation from rebirth by means of transcending discursive thinking so that one is able to see the world the way it really is—not through the obstructing veil of one's all to human thoughts. 

The practice of meditation in this respect means to arrive at no-mentation 無念 in which discursive thinking suddenly and briefly stops.  This stopping reveals none other than true Mind which is one of many metaphors used in Zen for the absolute.  The purpose of Zen training is to arrive here, at true Mind, not just sit on a cushion trying to still the monkey mind.  Only then can rebirth and suffering be fully overcome.

But those today who take up Zen are a pretty stubborn lot.  They do as they please and if Zen doesn’t accord with their views, both political and psychological, Zen must adapt and therefore must change.  On the other hand, they like wearing robes and doing rituals and pretty much all agree that Zen is teaching us that our ordinary human mind of birth and death is the mind of a Buddha—even to realized that there is nothing to search for.  Sadly, these people have not learned Zen and stray far from the Buddha’s path.

They cling, almost unconsciously, to a false self always identifying it with their body and its needs.  As they see it, they do meditation to help ease the pain and anxiety of this false self.  This leads to a kind of materialist philosophy, namely, that meditation helps me to deal with my day to day problems and, eventually, when I die, that’s it.  No rebirth or anything more.  End of suffering!  Their strong belief that death is final—there is no real rebirth—is their escape hatch; their backup plan when all things fall apart.

A new Buddhism without evidence

Evidence can be a problematic term in Buddhism.  Who is it that determines how much evidence is required, that is, the strength of evidence?  This is what we need to know because he who sets the strength of evidence can make the amount of evidence required almost impossible to achieve.  For example, if I claim that the Buddha did not deny the ātman or in Pali, attā because to do so would make him an annihilationist, which he denied being, the evidence is pretty straightforward in the Ānanda Sutta (SN 44:10).  For those who presuppose that the Buddha did, in fact, deny the ātman, no amount of evidence or reason will suffice.  At this juncture we can become deceived—Buddhism turned into something it isn't.

When it comes to what can be described as a secular Buddhist book, Stephen Batchelor’s book, Buddhism Without Beliefs, a national bestseller, does not provide any evidence for his theory about Buddhism.  What he gives the reader is more of a proposal for a theory.  He makes his appeal to a particular segment of the Buddhist population who finds the Buddhist tenets of karma, rebirth and even nirvana troubling if not hard to swallow.  He tells the reader that karma is basically “intention”.  He doesn’t mention that the Buddha also told his monks,

“Bhikkhus, this body is not yours, nor does it belong to others. It is old kamma [karma], to be seen as generated and fashioned by volition, as something to be felt” (SN 12:37).

There is a lot to unpack here but the book, as I mentioned before, is more of a proposal about Buddhism and what it should be.  It  is not based on evidence.  So, how does Batchelor treat “rebirth”?

“Such a deep-seated sense of personal identity is a fiction, a tragic habit that lies at the root of craving and anguish. How do we square this with rebirth, which necessarily entails the existence of something that not only survives the death of the body and brain but somehow traverses the space between a corpse and a fertilized ovum?”

Based upon his proposal of what he would like Buddhism to be, there is no way to resolve the matter of rebirth since Batchelor believes there is no transmigrant, self or soul.  But wait a minute!  According to Rune E. A. Johansson, 

“We know that nibbāna was the end of rebirth and that the medium of rebirth was viññāṇa, the stream of conscious processes. Now, in nibbāna viññāṇa is said to “stop,” and thereby the kammic [karma] process, carried by it, also stops, and this is the end of rebirth” (The Psychology of Nirvana, p. 105).

Johansson has certainly given us some evidence as to what continues after our death and transmigrates, unlike Batchelor who is proposing  his own version of Buddhism in which rebirth can be set aside if you are uncomfortable with it.

So what does Batchelor propose nirvana to be?  Not much is the simplest answer.  He says:

“We could decide simply to remain absorbed in the mysterious, unformed,- free-play of reality. This would be the choice of the mystic who seeks to extinguish himself in God or Nirvana—analogous perhaps to the tendency among artists to obliterate themselves with alcohol or opiates. But if we value our participation in a shared reality in which it makes sense to make sense, then such self-abnegation would deny a central element of our humanity; the need to speak and act, to share our experience with others.”

So nirvana is no big deal—sort of like dying from a heroin overdose.  In fact, nirvana seems to conflict with our humanity which is the need to share our life experiences with others.  But according to the Buddha:

“Being unagitated, in the very self (paccattam) he attains complete Nirvana (parinibbayati).  Cut off is rebirth, the holy Brahma faring has been lived, what had to be done has been done, there is no more for this state of being” (S. iii. 53-54).

Nirvana, as we can see, gives deeply personal value and meaning to our life which before nirvana seemed meaningless.  Nirvana reveals a higher life that transcends our former life, freeing us from future rebirths.  Without nirvana, life has little or no real meaning in the long run except to repeat itself infinitely with infinite deaths and rebirths.

Who is taking refuge in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha?

The modern tendency in following the Buddha's path has been to end up facing nihilism where the very idea of a self becomes problematic.  Eventually, this changes into, did the Buddha affirm a self (attā/ātman) or deny a self?  The evidence shows that the Buddha denied a self related to the five aggregates in the example of Saccaka (Cūḷasaccaka Sutta) who believed the five aggregates were the self.  The Buddha told him they were not the self and gave various reasons as to why the aggregates could not be the self.  This seems, incidentally, where the problem with self began in Buddhism.

More importantly, the Buddha also never said “there is no self” (natthattā) which if he did would make him an annihilationist (ucchedavādin).  

So where does this leave us?  Maybe we need to answer these questions.  Who decides to study Buddhism, then quits his job, travels to South Korea or Thailand to become a monk? Who keeps the five precepts? Who is moving this body to the kitchen to make some coffee?  Who is experiencing suffering?  Who would like to realize nirvana? 

I think an incorrect answer would be to say it’s only the five aggregates that are doing all this or nothing whatsoever is doing any of this.  But this seems to be a hole that modern Buddhists have dug for themselves, and they can’t get out of it.  Nor will they stop digging which was the advice of the legendary cowboy Will Rogers who once said, “If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.”

It’s almost like a koan in which you ask your self, “Who is taking refuge in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha?”  Certainly not the five aggregates that belong to Mara (the Buddhist devil) and certainly not a no self (natthattā).

Nirvana minus the rope and bucket

Like Saviṭṭha, if we are are fortunate enough, we can have a contextually accurate understanding of nirvana but, at the same time, lack personal (praty-ātman) knowledge (jñāna) of nirvana which is necessary if one is an Arhat.  Saviṭṭha knew that he was short of the mark when he said:

“I have clearly seen as it really is with correct wisdom, ‘Nibbāna [nirvana] is the cessation of existence,’ I am not an arahant [arhat], one whose taints are destroyed. Suppose, friend, there was a well along a desert road, but it had neither a rope nor a bucket. Then a man would come along, oppressed and afflicted by the heat, tired, parched, and thirsty. He would look down into the well and the knowledge would occur to him, ‘There is water,’ but he would not be able to make bodily contact with it. So too, friend, though I have clearly seen as it really is with correct wisdom, ‘Nibbāna is the cessation of existence,’ I am not an arahant, one whose taints are destroyed” (SN 12:68)

It appears that Saviṭṭha’s understanding was a cognitive understanding, involving conscious intellectual activity.  Yes, he could look down into this deep well and see the water but had no way of quenching his thirst since there was neither a rope nor a bucket.

At least Saviṭṭha could appreciate the difference between the inmost self (praty-ātman) attaining nirvana and a cognitive understanding of nirvana.  In other words, the reality of quenching one’s thirst is much different than imagining a moment when one’s thirst is quenched in which the cognitive approach dominates (when the triune of thought, experience, and senses take control).  One final note, there is a huge difference between intuiting the unconditioned (nirvana) and having cognitive knowledge of it.

California and the daimonic

I was born and raised in California.  My dad was born in Georgetown California in 1896 (yes, you heard it right).  My upbringing was more about meeting unusual and exciting people, some of whom were born in the 19th century like my wonderful aunts.  My aunt Hazel and her husband, Charlie, were in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906.  They had a little coffee shop at the time.   

As an adult, and just before that kairotic moment in my life when I was introduced to Zen in my philosophy class, who could not like California?  It was the 'golden state' or so it seemed at the time.  But all this has changed.  Something has happened to the golden state and it isn't good.

Everything that happened to me as far as Zen Buddhism was concerned was to my benefit.  It was more like a perfect alignment of what I believed, at the time, were mere coincidences including even a 43 foot tunnel, sometimes called an 'adit', in which to meditate.  But with my new Buddhist vision of reality that I gained at the end of the 60s, the 70s were morphing into something bizarre.

According to Rollo May, who was an American existential psychologist, the daimonic is found within every being as a natural urge to affirm itself.  The daimonic can be either creative and positive or quite the opposite, even demonic.  May contends that mythological figures like Satan, Lucifer, and many others had to be created in order to make human action and freedom possible.  Rollo May writes in a Foreword to Stephen A. Diamond’s book, Anger, Madness and the Daimonic:

“A special characteristic of the daimonic model is that it considers both creativity on the one side, and anger and rage on the other side, as coming from the same source.  That is, constructiveness and destructiveness have the same source in human personality.  The source is simple human potential” (emphasis is mine).

This human potential we can even find in the Biblical God who says in Isaiah (45:7-9 [KJV]), I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.

It seems evident now that California is being controlled by negative forces. And it made its choice, as I see it, during the 60s and 70s which, over time, has throughly ruined the transplant called Zen Buddhism that began in California with such people as Hodo Tobase and Shunryū Suzuki of Sokoji Soto Mission in San Francisco and Alan Watts including many others.

Much wiser in my old age and looking back, the demonic has clearly gained a foothold in California.  The creative force that was once California's is no longer present as it was in the past.  Many of those who are in power have succumbed to very negative forces and likely will not be able to overcome the evil they have allowed to grow.