The Zennist

The genius path: learning to hit a target no one can see

Today’s main problem with Buddhism and Zen is people are not clear as to what, exactly, Buddhism and its scion Zen are aiming at.  It seems to be like Schopenhauer’s genius target which no one can see but which geniuses like Siddhartha and others like him claim to have hit!

The public’s belief (those who are interested in Buddhism) is that something can be conveyed to them by which their lives can be made better.  But this is not true.  First of all Buddhism is fully a mystical path.  This takes us back to Schopenhauer’s genius target (it is also a mystical target).  Buddhism is about hitting it.  It is only a coincidence that Buddhism helps people.  It is really only designed for mystical geniuses.  And yes, the Buddha was a genius and an elitist. 

The Buddha made a sharp distinction between the worldly (the pṛthagjana) and those whose vision was capable of going beyond the world—hitting that invisible target.  This was the ārya-pudgala, the noble person who was on the spiritual path; who might be a stream-winner, a once-returner, a non-returner, or an arhat. 

Such people belonged to the triple-jewel sangha which made no distinction between men or women, lay or monastic since it was wholly spiritual.  In other words, it was not the monastic sangha or a Buddhist or Zen center which is for the worldly persons seeking liberation.

Until teachers tell the truth about Buddhism; that it teaches a mystical path Buddhist traditions like Zen will only become more confusing.  Eventually, like Christianity, Buddhism will become anyone’s opinion.  Enlightenment, that is, the attaining of nirvana will be something akin to a dead letter that has lost its intended meaning or purpose without being formally abolished.

Don't just fantasize about Zen

Imagine that there is a mountain climbing course in college.  Is it there to learn how to climb real mountains or just fantasize about what it would be like to climb a mountain without ever actually climbing one?  Most would agree that the course should be about learning to climb a real mountain like Mount Denali (formerly McKinley) in Alaska.

Next, let’s consider a Zen center.  Is it there to instruct those who attend on how to awaken, that is, see their true nature?  Or is this Zen center there to help people to learn how to do zazen (坐禪), perform ceremonies, and chant a Sutra?  But these practices have next to nothing to do with actual awakening.  They are part of a ritualistic reality, a reality that doesn’t challenge anyone.

If students of Zen bother to read the English translations of sermons by Zen masters from China, Korea or Japan, even Tibet, page after page speaks of the absolute using terms like pure Mind, One Mind, unconditioned Mind, unborn Mind, Mind ground, and so on.  These are spiritual terms which transcend the five skandhas and the six senses.  The intellect cannot transcend either the five skandhas or the six senses.  It is by a sudden leap of intuition that one is privy to Zen’s secret which Zen masters are always pointing to. 

Zen masters are looking at the world from the side of the absolute; not the side of the five skandhas or the senses, especially, the sixth sense which the intellect comes from.  But those who enter Zen centers want to know the enlightened mind from the side of their deluded minds — refusing to give up the latter.  The last thing they want to hear is some teacher telling them that Zen's great and profound secret will never be revealed to their intellect which is incapable of intuiting the absolute.

The illusion of duality

I have decided to begin this blog with an excerpt taken this from Art Hobson's paper, There are no Particles, there are only Fields. (Bold is mine.)

Field-particle duality exists only in the sense that quantized fields have certain particle-like appearances: quanta are unified bundles of field that carry energy and momentum and thus "hit like particles;" quanta are discrete and thus countable. But quanta are not particles; they are excitations of spatially unbounded fields. Photons and electrons, along with atoms, molecules, and apples, are ultimately disturbances in a few universal fields.

Sound familiar?  How about something from the Lankavatara Sutra, for example: Manifold are the waves evolved in the ocean; likewise indeed the Ālaya [ocean/field] sets in motion a variety of Vijñānas [waves/quanta]. (Brackets are mine.)

Going a little deeper, I am aware of my thoughts arising in my mind, or the same, I am aware of manifold waves of mentation arising from my invisible ocean mind which I have never directly intuited.

Notice the seeming duality?  Quanta and field; waves and ocean; mentation and unconditioned pure mind.  But is there really a separation between quanta and field, or waves and the ocean or even mentation and unconditioned mind or spirit?  It would seem to me that the duality is completely illusory.  There is always an implicit unseparatedness but no real separation (duality). 

Insisting that duality is somehow real and not illusory is a failure to understand how reality really works in which a field is primary and thus a first, then quanta appear.  In Zen, spirit (citta) is most primordial from which thoughts or mentation arise and appear.  Sentient beings always live a secondary existence; even speculating about the absolute through less than primary means.  They speak of duality because they can't see the unbounded spiritual field through which the seeming duality is deemed a fictional construct.  At every turn in their lives they experience contradiction and unresolvable separatedness; subject and object are never one.