The Zennist

Zen’s primary goal

I learned a long time ago that it is much easier to find out what Zen is about by reading a book on Zen (book Zen?) than it is to achieve kenshō seeing firsthand Zen’s secret.  One side favors the intellect while the other demands intuition, that is, the complete and total letting go of all presuppositions so that one is open to the arrival of truth.

The koans that students of Zen love so well are really talking to our intuition even demanding that we drop the intellect.  In fact, the more we try to use the intellect to answer the koan the more frustrating it becomes until we come to some kind of crisis where we have to accept that the koan has no intellectual answer.

If we are willing to accept the verdict that Zen is exclusively for our intuition and not for the intellect, we will go a long way in Zen and might eventually attain enlightenment.  On the other hand, the arguments against intuition will come exclusively from the intellect, that is, an intellect that refuses to be subservient to intuition and intuition's role in Zen. 

I have seen this countless times with people who argue trying to push an intellectual understanding of Zen which is really not in Zen.  Apparently, they are not aware that the intellect only involves conceptual understanding. 

Intuition, on the other hand, is the sudden act of coming to direct knowledge without reliance on the intellect.  If the intellect plays any role in Zen it is to wet our spiritual appetite for Zen.  But it should not be used to fulfill Zen’s primary goal of kenshō.

Coming to see it for myself

My uncle Ivan was a great deer hunter; he could see a deer where all other people only saw a forest of trees in the distance.  One day my uncle Ivan pointed out a deer to me in the far distance.  I couldn't see it at first, but I eventually saw the deer after relaxing my vision, not trying so hard to see it.

Did my uncle Ivan transmit the deer to me that I could not see at first?  Of course not!  Is enlightenment transmitted by teacher to student?  No, of course not.  So what is this Mind to Mind or spirit to spirit transmission all about?  It means intuitively we have seen this mysterious Mind or spirit as when I suddenly saw the deer in the distance, the same deer that my uncle Ivan saw. 

How easy is it in would be if a teacher could hand out enlightenment as if it were like an apple or some other kind of object but Zen does not work that way.  The student is required to pull themselves up by their own effort to the necessary condition by which to intuit pure Mind or spirit.  There is no other way. 

Today, most all Zen students fail to have an intuitive understanding of pure Mind.  And why is this?  Is it because they believe they need a certificate from a Zen master verifying their enlightenment?  I can assure you that it is something like that.  This is a kind of Zen materialism or spiritual materialism at its worst.  Zen masters refer to it as a “paper transmission.”

In other words, when one intrapersonally intuits the pure Mind, that is the transmission of Dharma.  That intuitive fact is the transmission that Zen speaks about.  It doesn't depend on a paper certificate given to you by a Zen master.  But then we might ask how can we trust that this person is enlightened if he or she doesn't have a paper certificate? If the student is stuck here they will never attain real satori.  Real satori is self validating. It is so unlike anything the human mind has ever beheld.  One must experience it personally. 

Crossing to nirvana

No one can build a raft for us except ourselves so we can safely cross a great expanse of water by which to leave this dangerous shore of suffering.  Building this raft means understanding the Buddha’s teaching (dharma) correctly.  Otherwise we will not really build a raft nor will we be able cross this great expanse of water.  How can it be otherwise? 

This is not like going to Zen center hoping to find a ready made raft or have someone help us build this raft.  It doesn't work like that.  We will not be able to cross. 

The Buddha’s teaching or dharma is one thing but to understand it correctly is quite another matter.  I hasten to say, there are many who are attempting to build this raft but don't succeed, much less put it into this great expanse of water and cross over. 

Even for those who are successful in crossing over this great expanse of water, they do not carry the teaching around as mere words but fully understand the ineffable spirit of the Buddha’s teaching. 

A far deeper understanding of Buddhism is required of the builder of the raft.  This understanding does not lie with the intellect but direct intuition, and until this intuition comes the raft remains in the intellectual imagination.

ignorant of our enslavement

After World War II totalitarianism and technology combined to make a brave new world but one not quite the way Aldous Huxley envisioned it to be.  Still drugs and sexual perversity prevail which erases any sense that one is being enslaved.  Nevertheless, the vast majority of the population is already enslaved.  This follows Goethe insight in 1809 that: ”None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”

As we might expect, Buddhism has a more subtle definition or idea of what enslavement means.  In a nutshell, it means to be ignorant of the true knowledge that we are not these temporal bodies of suffering; that by our desire for them we have enslaved ourselves to them.  This enslavement means being no more than an instrument for observing and experiencing the world of samsara which is always suffering (duḥkha).  This idea is contained in Buddhism's Four Noble Truths (catvāri āryasatyāni).

Adding to this, we never escape rebirth (death is never final) and with rebirth comes the probability that we will be reborn into the world of samsara.  In the face of this, we try to counter it with optimism but the optimism is short-lived when disease and old age come over us and our once youthful bodies are no more.

The more foolish and immature among us ignore all the signs that life, if it were a play, means that everybody dies in the final act.  Human life is all samsara as when Shakespeare’s Macbeth reflected, “It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”  The only hope we have is to transcend this enslavement by recognizing its cause then by eliminating it (nirodha) through direct intuition of the absolute which transcends samsara. 

Our own postmodern brave new world is both bewitching and insidious.  By a dark genius it grows more and more with each passing day.  Is this hyperbole?  Tragically, no.  Our present day world gives us the illusion that universal happiness is possible but samsara prevails in the end.  If we do not cultivate the religious mind of transcendence there is no alternative to the dismal prophecy that our lives will never escape suffering. 

The side of the brain that makes politics and Zen difficult

As noted in an earlier Zennist blog, there is a natural antagonism in the human brain between the left and right hemispheres.  Eventually, this natural antagonism externalizes itself in the public discourse as a sharp political divide between the political Left and the Right. 

The left hemisphere of the brain creates a sort of self-reflexive virtual world (utopia) which only serves to bar reality and continue with its ideological fantasies which typifies the political Left, especially Marxism.  It is the right hemisphere of the brain that enables us to wake up and leave this fantasy world of the left hemisphere and deal with reality: the way things really are.

This view I suspect is a bitter pill to swallow but it is supported by scientific research.  Also, I hasten to add, there is a bias in the brain that favors the left hemisphere over the right hemisphere.  This bias involves two proteins, namely, Fgf8 and Nodal.  Their action ensures that when the antagonism develops, it usually favors the left hemisphere of the brain.  

In Zen’s intuitive path this means the harder we try to awaken to our true nature, the more we employ the left-hemisphere, and the more difficulty we encounter.  Paradoxically, once we stop forcing our self to awaken, satori comes to us spontaneously and unexpectedly, which Zen’s history reports.  Nevertheless, getting to that point is no easy matter or an easy cakewalk.  Satori is never easy.  We are usually deluded by the left hemisphere with its penchant for fantasy.  It is more at home with an unrealistic imagination which conjures up fake enlightenments. 

The left hemisphere can only deal with what it already presupposes: the world that it has already made for itself. This is not helpful when we elect to explore what we do not know which we seek to know.

Zen naturally favors the right hemisphere of the brain, with its greater integrative and unifying power that is constantly allowing itself to enter the world of the unknown to find and to know ultimate meaning on its own terms.  

Addiction and attachment

Modern culture has no problem with wallowing in the flesh.  In Buddhist terms this is the life that is addicted to the material world, sensations, ideations, choices and a dualizing consciousness.  In short, these are the five aggregates that belong to the Buddhist devil Māra.  I hasten to add that being addicted to something is different than being attached to something. Modern man is certainly addicted to his passions which comprise the five aggregates. 

An addiction is much more difficult to give up than an attachment; in fact, the majority of people who try to give up their addiction or addictions fail.  A relapse is often the case.  Even moderation of an addiction is difficult to achieve for the addict.  For those addicted to the flesh they want to save the flesh.  Ultimately, they have no real intention on giving up their strong addiction to the emotions which the flesh arouses. 

Having a passion for Buddhism is really the antidote for our addiction to the five aggregates.  With this kind of passion we see the aggregates as foreign to our true nature.  This nature or essence prompts us to attain gnosis of it, which is a sudden and direct intuition of this essence.

This is like the difference between a teenager who is addicted to drugs and sex versus a teenager who has a passion to become a pilot.  As we come to see, an addiction brings us down while a passion, in the higher sense, can elevate us above the need for an addiction which leads to a downturn.

But not all who take up Buddhism or its variants have this kind of passion and will likely not succeed.  Such practitioners still harbor a deep addiction for the life of the five aggregates which includes the ways of the world.  By comparison, giving up an attachment is relatively easy we do it every day.  We don't eat the same food day in and day out or wear the same clothes day in and day out.  If someone cuts in front of us on the freeway our anger is short-lived.  We detach from it.  So we roughly understand what detachment means.  But a life of addiction to the five aggregates is far different.

Transcendence is all that is necessary

There is an antagonism in the inner life of man in which his brain even struggles with itself.  More exactly, there is a biological opposition between the two hemispheres of the brain which causes this asymmetry and with it an unsettledness which cannot be overcome (duḥkha?).  

At this point you might be wondering where does Buddhism, and for that matter Zen, fit in?  There is a transcendent world (lokuttara) beyond this unsettledness. If you wish to catch a glimpse of it (satori) you must go through a rigorous training which helps to make this world accessible (i.e., the making of the religious mind).  It involves belief in the midst of doubt, faith in the way or means, and above all, intuition/gnosis of ultimate reality. 

Spoken about earlier, this antagonism in which the inner life struggles with itself, cannot be overcome except to transcend the corporeal person which is only an instrument for perceiving samsaric phenomena.  This specific use will not yield to anything except an instrumental use.  The instrument user is not in the equation.  The human mind is in a privileged position to detach from the corporeal instrument.

The antagonism within the inner life of man cannot for too long be neglected without serious repercussions.  Research has shown that a competition exists between the two sides of the brain that causes this antagonism.  Harmony is not the answer — transcendence is all that is necessary.

Life is not free from servitude to the organism

Life in a biological organism is constrained by the organism itself.  Life, in this regard, is not free from servitude to the organism.  The want of food, water, sexuality, all belong to the organism.  Buddhism is not a religion that wants us to be servants of the corporeal being because it is so limiting and painful, misleading our vision to what is only finite and transitory.    

Because of mankind's ingenuity we are able to give our self leisure by which to think more about the world that is constraining the greater part of mankind’s life.  We are also able to get a glimpse of the authentic religious life where the greatness of spirit is first encountered by direct  intuition.

Of the estimated 37.2 trillion cells that comprise the human body not a single cell knows what gives it life.  Nor does the human brain.  The tendency of humans to name it “God” or “spirit” without direct intuition only leads to the dominance of the sign over the signified, something the intellect does quite often if not all the time. 

This intellectual treatment of religion is in fact the beginning of the demise of the religious life, a life that is more about opening up the way for direct intuition of the absolute rather than conceptualizing it, either through speech or the written word.

That we are constrained by the organism means we are embodied including our thoughts.  As far as we know our body will not give us a way out of this limitation.  We are doomed to repeat this condition in countless variations.  Ultimately, our biological organism cannot free us because we are unable to transcend it.  The act of transcending it is intuition. 

Health Update

The author is currently recovering at Emory Hospital. There has been a tentative discharge date set for the 15th of this month. We hope to bring you new articles on the path beginning in a couple of weeks. Thank you all for your support. The Zennist wishes a blessed New Years to all.