The Zennist

Breaking the Spell of Desire

Desire is the passion to possess what is not intrinsically ours.  We are always affected by something external to us.  Depending upon the desire (which can be an intense emotion) we have, more or less, a susceptibility to being affected and thus, more or less, fall under the spell of the extrinsic.  Or so it seems.   

It is our misfortune that we desire the conditioned such as the five aggregates of physical form, sensation, perception, volitional formations, and consciousness.  Intrinsically, they are not ours.  Of each aggregate the Buddha said:  This is not mine, I am not this, this is not my self (netaṃ mama, nesohamasmi, na meso attā).

How difficult is it to give up desire for the five aggregates?  Very difficult—almost impossible for the typical human being who is deeply attached to corporeality, that is, all things (sabbe dhammā) which are not the intrinsic self.

Desire has made our life, at times, unbearable and miserable.  According to the teachings of the Buddha “By desire the world is bound.  By the removal of desire it is freed” (SN I.40).  In light of this, all that we have managed to do is to desire more and more conditioned things.  In all this, we have not managed to connect with our intrinsic self face to face.  At best we only connect with a representation of it.    

We are taught even as infants to desire.  It never stops.  Desire is both insidious and almost uncontrollable.  Our very thoughts attest to its power inasmuch as we are bound to them by desire.  What is more, they are our instrument of investigation, yet we are deceived by them.  They also constitute a limit that we cannot break through. 

The Transformation of the worldly Caterpillar into a Spiritual Chrysalis will birth the Butterfly Buddha

We like to explore new things, especially, new ideas.  In doing so we are really extending ourselves to other things and ideas not putting our personal biases aside.  We, unconsciously, interpret Buddhism and Zen in our own way.  As a result, both seem familiar to us.  There is nothing in either that is alien to our personal ideas or understanding.

On the same score, we are drawn to teachers who seem to share our ideas; who seem to represent the true Dharma.  But what most of us see and understand is really a reflection of what we expect Buddhism and Zen to be.  We are looking at both from our own side.  We have yet to peel away our own tainted and peculiar understanding.  We have yet to meet the Dharma on its own terms.  To do so requires a spiritual transformation.

It is interesting to note, that a caterpillar must digest itself before it can become a butterfly.  This digestion process digests everything except the imaginal cells:  the cells that help create the transformation that occurs when a caterpillar changes into a butterfly.

These special cells hold the potential for the butterfly body.  The immune system of the caterpillar, however, identifies the imaginal cells as threats and attacks them but to no avail.  Eventually, the imaginal cells stop acting as individual cells.  They become a multiple-celled butterfly that uses the digested caterpillar (a kind of soup in the chrysalis).

This transformation could be an exemplar for spiritual birth:  the digestion or transformation of the conditioned into the structureless unconditioned.  When there is no more of the conditioned to be negated (digested) the unconditioned is reveled free of distortion:  one intuits it directly.

Enlightenment is about the transformation of a human into a Buddha (one who is awakened to the unconditioned).  One has, essentially, digested the false self to reach the true self, that is, Buddha-nature. Those human beings who do not wish to go through this spiritual transformation can be likened to caterpillars!  They remain ugly with one purpose in mind:  to feed their appetite. 

The Folly of Saccaka the Jain

Throughout his teachings the Buddha said that we must not regard as our self or atman that which is not our self (anātman).  To do so is a case of misidentification.  It is only by ignorance that we misidentify what is not our self with our our self in the example of Saccaka. Saccaka believed:  “Form is my self, feeling is my self, perception is my self, choices are my self, consciousness is my self” (rūpaṃ me attā, vedanā me attā, saññā me attā, saṅkhārā me attā, viññāṇaṃ me attā).

Yet modern day Buddhists attribute the denial of self to the Buddha when it is really a nihilist proposition.  There is not a single statement made by the Buddha where he says, categorically, there is no self (in Pali, natthattā).  The problem is misidentification not denial.  

Just like Saccaka we think of our earthly, human body that we were born with as being our self.  To this the Buddha said that physical form is not the self.  What is not the self should be seen as it really is with correct wisdom thus:  This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self.  This holds true for feeling, perception, volitional formations and consciousness.

But we moderns go one step farther, we also believe that our personal mind is somehow the product of our anatomical parts so that when our body dies so do we.  There is no postmortem survival, in other words.  We became interested in Buddhism because we believed that the Buddha taught there is no self or postmortem survival.  In this we are completely wrong.  Again, the problem is misidentification not denial.

Who we truly are is more fundamental than this body could ever be which, in our ignorance, we cling to like a drowning person grabbing at water.  But our human body is no refuge and neither is its death.  As long as we fail to see our unconditioned true nature rebirth in samsara is certain.

 

 

Interpersonal versus intrapersonal in Buddhism

The goal or scope of moderators on various Internet platforms such as Reddit, which among other things hosts a number of discussion groups and forums, is to shape emotions, motive, reasoning and behaviors, all of which can take on a certain ideological contour.

In this regard, ideology can be thought of as knowledge drawn from our sensations or feelings (i.e., emotional states) that can be transformed into political action.  Ideology makes possible justification for evildoing if only indoctrination at first (violence coming later).

Marx, for example, believed that he had ample justification on his side but it was only ideological certitude which for him would, eventually, bring about the highest antagonism of the proletariat (the exploited and oppressed class) against the bourgeoisie (the exploiting and ruling class) leading to revolution.  But modern society is no longer split between two warring classes. 

Hacking the information network of a culture so as to modify a person’s interpersonal relations doesn’t require a Marxian revolution.  Avoidance of certain traditionally excepted norms can be induced through an implicit demand for “political correctness”.  As a result, one may wish to avoid certain interpersonal transgressions that a group finds offensive.

Buddhism for the most part avoids all this since it is intrapersonal insofar as its path or way takes place within the individual mind or self in the general form of introspection and direct intuition.  Interpersonal relations are minimized and, ideally, have to be brought to a close through an extended solitary retreat.

Buddhism cannot long survive with the admittance of the interpersonal where it becomes decisive or crucial in a Dharma center.  Buddhism’s upending is hastened by a shift to the interpersonal in which the words of the Buddha are likewise shifted.  Eventually, behavior and ritual come to dominate practice.

Then with the interpersonal psychologization of Buddhism, over time, as opposed to its traditional intrapersonal teaching, Buddhism is secularized.  It exists in name only.

Being content with reification is not Zen's way

The tendency to reify our concepts runs deep in our modern culture.  We do it automatically without realizing it.  The noun “reification” comes from the the Latin res, thing.  When we reify our concepts we are trying to imbue them with realness — thingify them, in other words. 

If someone asks what Zen is they learn that it is seeing one’s true nature.  But this really says nothing about our true nature.  It might be thought provoking but this nature is still a mystery.  We have yet to intuit it directly.  That could take a lifetime. 

Those who are content with a reification of Zen will walk away believing that they fully understand it.  They might add that this true nature is simple sensory awareness or “just sitting”.  But they are just beating the cart and not the ox.  The cart doesn’t move.

Polishing a brick to make a mirror is a waste of effort.
So how can practicing Zen meditation to become a Buddha ever succeed?
Beat the ox or beat the cart—which should one do?
Using the false or using the true—which one will bring the dragon?
The mind-ground holds the seeds, but they need irrigation.
Our nature is like an untainted sky—clear for ten thousand miles.
The precious flower of samadhi is apart from all marks:
The wonder of its response, creation, and transformation is unfathomable.

Those who are content with a reification of Zen will walk away believing that they fully understand it.  This is using the conditioned to find the unconditioned.  Relying on concepts words evoke as if the concept is the intended reality is a grievous error.  Just as bad, is sitting in the body of birth and death imagining this to be the Buddha’s body.

Unlocking the Koan with the Skeleton Key

Koans can be thought of as the adept facing the conditioned to realize the unconditioned.  The conditioned is also a barrier (関) that must be swept aside so the adept can intuit the unconditioned (that upon which the conditioned is based).  Koans in that regard are not answered in the sense of an interpretation because there is zero chance of getting the right answer.

The koan acts as a barrier to any and all conditioned approaches to its solution.  In a manner of speaking, there is no gate or a barrier for those who can see.  But coming to the direct intuition of the unconditioned is extremely difficult and subtle.  Few accomplish the journey.  This difficulty insures Zen’s eventual fall because the unconditioned goes deeper than any proof which only compels acceptance by what is inferior to truth itself. 

Koans exhaust the adept’s attempt to find a solution by conditioned means.  Yet koans are an allusion of the unconditioned.  They hint at it without revealing it.  The unconditioned hides in the conditioned.  The adept is forced to remove the veneer of the conditioned to arrive at the unconditioned.

“Knowing the end (khayaṁ) of the conditioned (saṅkhārānaṁ) you know the uncreated (akataññū) O Brahmin” (Dhammapada 383).

The willingness to transcend the conditioned is also to know that one is constantly being deceived by the conditioned.  Koans exploit our attachment and reliance on the conditioned in every way possible.  The adept is forced to meet the unconditioned on its own terms as it really is.

Following in the Buddha's Footsteps

Enlightenment for Siddhartha came by way of the complete sublation of the unreal or error (avidya) and with it the end of his samsara.  It wasn't that illusion or appearance just disappeared.  There is more to it. 

Error was assimilated into absolute spirit such that spirit dominated and naturally overshadowed it.  Siddhartha was a ‘seer’ of this new reality while the many were still caught up in the spiritless illusion who could only relate to Siddhartha’s insight, abstractly.

Such metaphysical abstractness always remains imaginal despite the possessor’s attempts to reify the abstraction.  The path of Zen is no exception.  The Zennist can fall prey to his or her own delusions just like any other seeker of the truth and often does. 

It is not that difficult to follow the demise of any religion.  The otherworldly or transcendent is eventually set aside or banned from the religion in which it once prevailed being at its core.  Over time, it gradually becomes more this–worldly and secular as it adapts to its secular culture.  In Zen, it is the veneration of sitting (zazen), a practice that is fundamentally external to the teaching.

Even Buddhism, over time, develops into an anti–spiritual teaching this being anātman which in sanskrit means, destitute of spirit or mind (Monier-Williams, Sir M. [1988]).  In original Buddhism, the Buddha’s followers were more like unlit candles that he could light.  With his passing they were just unlit with little or no chance of becoming self–enlightened.

The Unconditioned Light is Reality

Vidyamāna can mean what is actual or real vs. not being real or actual (avidyamāna).  From this we get a better sense of vidya and avidya.  The real is the unconditioned while the unreal is the cosmic illusion (māyā).  The illusion is always conditioned.  It is something constructed, i.e., an appearance that attracts us to it; to become conscious of it and thereby become embodied and bound to it.

"Avidya has vanished, vidya arises.  Gone is the darkness, arisen is the light, as it does for one who dwells serious, ardent and composed in the self” (Itivuttaka 99).

The newly awakened Buddha doesn’t see a total absence of external things including his thoughts.  The illusion doesn’t vanish in other words.  As the reader might guess, light has arisen but not light as we know it but, instead, āloka, a spiritual, transcendent light beyond the conditioned world.  That is what is missing in the all-too-human natural experience.  It is what Siddhartha awakened to.  It alone is real, unchanging, and unconditioned.

Although we should seek the unconditioned, if our life is to have any meaning, we always try to grasp it with the conditioned, that is, with darkness.  We seem to forever fail at trying to become enlightened.  We are still under the power of the cosmic illusion going from one existence to another without stopping.