The Zennist

Emotions Cloud the Moon of Enlightenment

The word “emotion” proves a difficult word to define despite its wide use in conversation.  Emotions tend to be studied from the behavioral changes they produce.  A look at the seven emotions in Chinese Buddhism such as pleasure, anger, sorrow, joy, love, hate, and desire, they all serve to affect the body, psychosomatically, in various ways and degrees.  All the emotions we experience eventually culminate in distress/sadness (duḥkha) when the carnal body, which we have invested so much in, is on the verge of passing away.

In light of this, does Buddhism seek to eradicate the emotions or at the least try to control them?  It must be that there is an inherent danger in following our emotions too much which will lead to mistaken judgments and hinder our spiritual progress to the unconditioned.

This biological body that we inhabit symbolizes both spirit’s loss within itself and a means to the highest, i.e., nirvana by which spirit self-awakens to its own boundless nature.  In other words, life is a struggle inasmuch as it represents the sublation of innate error (avidya).  Tied up with this are countless false and mistaken judgments which bind us to error led by the emotions.

The work of drawing knowledge from our emotions (sensations and feelings) making them into judgments is an ideological process which I hasten to add dominates today’s closed-off thinking giving it its seeming certitude which means that it is not open to correction.  Thus the emotions develop into a method of authority but false nevertheless. 

In the face of this there can be no real spiritual progress. Unconscious evildoing has taken root no longer able to see certain facts which might undermine its drive for dominion.  This drive for dominion in determining and directing the actions of others is certainly at the core.  It cannot be easily removed as one might imagine.  It is hubris with impotency.  It easily turns into psychological cruelty.  It can be thought of as Nietzsche’s “will to power” or the daimonic in man (Rollo May).

The Buddha's Prescription for Happiness

Annihilation does not assume a state or special condition where something does not exist where normally it would in the example of a city without people but instead universal non-presence of the negated such as a self (P., natthattā). Anattā, on the other hand, can be adjectival referring to something ‘without self’ such as the five aggregates which belong to the demon Māra.  Natthattā and anattā are therefore different.  This difference is generally glossed over in most Buddhist circles but should’t be. 

The Buddha was not a self denier or an annilationist.  He said, for example, “This is the path by which those with great selves (mahattehi), great seers have fared” (It. 28—9).  Also it should not be surprising that nirvana shares most all of the characteristics with the supposed Hindu ātman.  In the Pali canon we even discover a number of times that it is in the very self that nirvana is attained (e.g., MN III.244).

The Buddha understands that ordinary people are identifying as their real self merely an aggregate of unreal constructs.  This misidentification proves to be their downfall; it is the real source of suffering.  Here the Buddha points out such a misidentification:

    “Monks, if people were to carry away, burn or do what they liked to the grass, sticks, leaves, and branches in this Jeta's grove, would it occur to you people are     carrying us away, burning us or doing what they liked to us?
    "Venerable sir, it would not occur to us thus."
    "What is the reason?"
    "Venerable sir, they are not our selves or our belongings."
    "Monks, in the same manner, form is not yours; give it up, it will be for your happiness and pleasantness. Feelings are not yours, give them up, it will be for your     happiness and pleasantness. Perceptions are not yours, give them up, it will be for your happiness and pleasantness. Intentions are not yours, give them up, it will     be for your happiness and pleasantness. And consciousness is not yours give it up, it will be for your happiness and pleasantness” (SN 22:33). 

Before the Buddha said this to his followers he also said: whatever is not yours abandon it.  Clearly a self composed of the aggregates is not our authentic self.  But we don’t abandon it.  We abandon the transcendent self instead!

In Zen Buddhism our authentic self or true nature has to be realized by us which is beyond all human mental activity.  Such activity is only a construction of spirit—not spirit itself.  Those who insist that spirit is also just a construct are lost.  They are incurable.  They believe the finger pointing to the moon is the moon.  These people tend to be annihilationists who don’t believe in the transcendent; who can only reach the limit of thought.

Looking for Nirvana in all the wrong places.

The first noble truth of suffering which concerns the five aggregates (skandhas) of form, feeling, perception, volitional formations, and consciousness is more about our discontent with our embodiment together with its limitations and uncertainties. 

For those of us who decide to embark upon the Buddha’s extraordinary voyage we seek what is beyond the body and even mentation (manas) which leads to the spiritual world.

Growing up, we find that our sensory awareness is always changing, never the same or stable.  There is no rest or ease to be found here.  The heteronomous world of cause and effect dominates us.  Nirvana is far away. 

For most people nirvana, which is unconditioned, is only something they can imagine.  They haven’t as yet developed the intuition which dispels ignorance and reveals the absolute.  They are limited by the countless shapes of thoughts which, in the end, only veil and conceal, unable to disclose the very stuff of thought which is universal, unthinkable and unconditioned.

Dreaming this is our only life

The empirical self is the self generally referring to one’s body as in ‘this is mine’, ‘I am this’, ‘this is my self’.  It is also the ‘me’.  In addition, our senses are for this self (the me) including mentality and it’s objects which is the sixth sense.

With such a bodily identification one has bought into the temporal system a tentative acceptance of this is all I am, there is nothing beyond this body after I die.  Religion with its afterlife is imaginary—not real. 

Taking this into account, can Buddhism convince such people that there is more to one’s life than just death at the end of its days?

The most persuasive arguments that there is postmortem survival come from near death experiences or NDEs not from Buddhist scripture which, by the way, speaks of rebirth and that consciousness (vijñāna) is the transmigrant from one life to the next.  Indeed, consciousness is one of the causes of rebirth and suffering as is deep attachment to what is conditioned, among other things.

Yet it remains that a social order comprised of consumers like ours isn’t likely to want to give up their attachments over such arguments even ones that rest solidly on NDEs even when their own arguments fall short while their emotions and their defiance slam the door shut on further discussions.

The real vehicle of suffering are the five aggregates into which we are thrown by our rebirth which we can’t seem to detach from.  This is also the meaning of samsara, that is, the seemingly endless cycles of death and rebirth.  In other words, rebirth is suffering insofar as we passionately cling to what is not our true self but instead cling to a false self (the me) which is empirical.

Denying Our Unconditioned Nature

In Buddhism it would be wrong to believe that the five aggregates are somehow aspects of the self (ātman) which is to say that the aggregates are at bottom the ātman.  This, by the way, was the view of Saccaka who was refuted by the Buddha. 

The Buddha (even today misunderstood) saw the aggregates as not being the ātman, but as something alien like an illusion we are attached to, and even evil (Māra).  The aggregates by any measure  are empty of self-nature, in other words.  They are something we should not identify with as being our self according to the Buddha; that if we did we would fall into samsara and with it great suffering.

But this is the time of a dangerous inversion where the emotions rule (ideology) and first-person gnosis is scoffed at.  As a result, a huge majority only experience a growing confusion within that cannot be easily allayed.  It could be said that the path to truth, or right view, has been cut off or hidden in the wake of this confusion.

 But despair also grows but is now disguised as hope.  At the same time there is also a stubborn refusal to face what one has become and change course.  One’s life, instead, consists in a search for hope even if it means carelessly turning a religion like Buddhism into something it was never meant to be which is a denial of the intrinsic, that is, a denial of an unconditioned primary nature.

Do modern Buddhists think in this direction?  That is, do they deny the intrinsic in man?  Some do I would argue.  It is a view beginners often harbor.  I am puzzled as to why.