The Zennist

A Second Stroke

To all readers, 

The author of The Zennist has suffered a second stroke. He has been admitted to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta and is being treated with the best medical care available.  I spoke with him yesterday over the phone and he wanted me to remind his readers that the physical body is unavoidably subject to dissolution and disease. That while we inhabit it we become forgetful of our real body made of Spirit.

In this life we are in a battle, directing our attention to either the sacred (Arya) or the profane, common place concerns of sensuality. It is the spiritual path that unbinds us from the world of embodiment and suffering, leading to the end of evil. The Buddha has pointed out that Mara (evil) really is only this body of flesh and blood (the five skandhas). Also, the way to transcendence has been pointed out. The triumph of the Spirit is achieved when we awaken to the undying Light within our heart. Having been awakened we find that our spiritual nature is the real Self (Atman).  

I am a longtime student and friend of the author. I will post health updates on his condition when they become available. Thank you all for your support during this most difficult time.

Regretfully, Andy

What replaces religion?

The question that should be asked in these modern times is what replaces religion?  It should be fairly obvious that right now it is nihilism in which the soul has become a problem for itself.  Man no longer regards himself as being greater than the sum of his biological parts; he is simply a byproduct of those parts. 

In light of this, death has become the hard and difficult truth of nihilism.  It is our complete extinction (uccheda).  By death, we assume that the anatomical structure of the human no longer works, that is, no longer produces the sense of a self who is the operator of the body.

This also has also led us to political nihilism and, of course, moral nihilism and with it a kind of sexual perversity.  In addition, we have been taught to hate the religious path which is the quest for ultimate reality which is also immortality. 

If Buddhism has one central goal it is the quest for ultimate reality which is beyond the range of our human senses but not outside of our ability to directly intuit ultimate reality. 

We are only fettered by nihilism and for Zennists our drive to conceive of ultimate reality when we are told that it is inconceivable (無念).  What disappears during enlightenment is the subject-object condition/polarity that thwarts intuition.  With intuition the original one is reached before it is split into the illusion of subject and object (appearance).

We have two souls?

When we die our body (now a corpse) is no longer animated.  It has become incapable of producing any of its former activities which we called “life”. 

This lifeless body has no blood circulation, respiration, digestion, speech or thought.  Some will say that the soul has separated itself from the body but none of us know what this soul is.  We cannot see it now even when our body is fully animated. 

According to the Buddha this body is empty, there is nothing real about it.  It is a soulless thing.  A person who is greatly attached to this body is sunk in delusion; they are far from complete detachment where the unconditioned is revealed.  But since we are not detached we are still tied to the senses and their respective fields being subject to rebirth as a consequence of this attachment. 

The road to our eventual freedom is one that is transcendent that can only be accomplished by the refinement of intuition which leaps beyond the six senses, the sixth being the most difficult which is our bondage to thoughts (manas) and all this implies (yes, even imaginary thoughts). 

You could even say we have two souls.  One is conditioned, for example, the five aggregates (skandha).  The other is spiritual which transcends all things including the five aggregates.  It is unconditioned.  This soul is also the Buddha-nature 佛性.