How much of Zen master Dōgen’s zazen relies on a special kind of auto-suggestion, the kind developed by Emile Coué ( 1857-1926) and others?
For Dōgen, Buddhism, that is, the Buddha’s enlightenment, relies on zazen. It does not transcend zazen. Dõgen believed that the Buddha transmitted zazen. What is passed on from person to person then is no other than just sitting or, in other words, the transmission of sitting Buddha. Zazen and the state of being a Buddha (S., buddhatā) are the same.
But this is all Dōgen’s own interpretation. It is not even exegesis but much more eisegesis where Dōgen reads into Buddhism his own ideas. Not any of it can be found in the oldest discourses of the Buddha or even in the later Mahayana canon.
Zen as the practice of jhāna (Pali) and dhyāna (Sanskrit) only makes awakening to the unconditioned more likely. The odds are in one’s favor so to speak. Zen is thus limited and conditioned. Zen is only a practice of de-conditioning, to the point where direct gnosis can take place within us, this being religious intuition or kenshō.
Turning to auto-suggestion, all of it is the work, mainly, of our imagination, not so much the will which imagination easily dominates. According to Emile Coué auto-suggestion relies, first of all, on imagination and, secondly, the results to be expected which fall within physical possibility. Thus, according to Coué one is the slave of suggestion and if we don’t take command of it, we then become the victim of it. Our conscious mind is thus limited and in a dangerous position. What lies below it is larger and more powerful.
Look at the power of a frenzied mob where imagination and physical aggression link. Think about the seductive power of pornography, or a harlequin romance novel. Both rely on the link between our imagination and the sexuality of our physical bodies. Or just imagine sucking on a lemon. Your mouth will almost instantly start to water.
People are drawn to zazen because they imagine it will help them with life’s problems — and they are Buddhas when they physically meditate according to Dōgen! They expect the positive to happen to them, and will tell you so after they do zazen for twenty or forty minutes. But this is just auto-suggestion. It can become a very powerful form of it also.
Real Zen meditation—not Dōgen’s—involves a process of deconditioning us from bodily enchantment and attachment; seeing the body as a mere lump of foam (pheṇapiṇḍa). In light of this, sitting with our body ramrod straight on a zafu doesn’t make us a Buddha. Becoming a Buddha is about seeing our true nature or kenshō. What really counts is our detachment from our body; not being over-involved with it. This means also being dispassionate towards its pleasurable and painful feelings.
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