The idiom “jumping the shark” is generally used to refer to some misguided attempt to add new life to something no longer popular. Involving Zen with identity politics is one such example of jumping the shark Zen. Let me back up and say, this is not an overt involvement but a quiet involvement; one that almost goes undetected.
Identity politics is one of those things that's easy to see but hard to define. One writer defined it as the struggle for political "voice" by marginalized groups in society. In other words, I want control over the discourse about who I am and what I need from society to make me happy. Even deeper, I don't want you to label me as a psychiatric disorder!
Today, Zen, including Buddhism in general, are facing an influx of people who are attached to identity politics; who feel that they no longer have a voice but hope to find a voice for their identity in Zen or Buddhism. In answer to this wish, I can only say that Zen will not give you a voice for your identity but will rather take it away from you!
Whether it's gender or sexuality Buddhism doesn't want us to identify with the five aggregates (skandhas) of physicality, feeling, perception, karmic formations, or consciousness. This much is very clear in Buddhism or should be. These aggregates, by the way, are conditioned. Attachment to them means being swept away by the flood of samsara.
We humans suffer from a bad case of mistaken identity, identifying with what is conditioned rather than seeing, firsthand, what is unconditioned, that is, nirvana. What is unconditioned is pure spirit or Mind; what is conditioned is thought which is congealed spirit. But few understand this. More people, in fact, disbelieve this. As we can see, teaching Buddhism or Zen is an uphill battle. It is difficult to give up one's identification with a figment of the imagination. Incidentally, this is where “power” kicks in (a fight for control over the discourse).
Those misled by identity politics need power. Who they believe they are, are also convinced they need to control others for fear others will control them. One constantly feels bereft of power and status. They think of themselves as victims.
Buddhism pushes its students to get past identification with a false self comprising the five aggregates. The student must regard the five aggregates as not their self. In the Paṭisambhidāmagga, to help the student get past the five aggregates, it says:
See the five aggregates as impermanent, as painful, as a disease, a boil, a dart, a calamity, an affliction, as alien, as disingegrating, as a plague, a disaster, a terror, a menace, as fickle, perishable, unenduring, as not protection, no shelter, no refuge, as empty, vain, void, not self, as a danger, as subject to change, as having no core, as the root of calamity, as murderous, as due to be annihilated, as subject to cankers, as formed, as Mara's bait, as connected with the idea of birth, connected with the idea of aging, connected with the idea of illness, connected with the idea of death, connected with the idea of sorrow, connected with the idea of lamentation, connected with the idea of despair, connected with the idea of defilement.
There are a few these days in the circle of Zen or Buddhism who will tell the student that these aggregates are evil and that the reason they are not our self should be obvious. In fact, it is our very self (paccatta) which realizes nirvana according to the Buddhist canon.
Clyde:
While your preconceptions about Bodhidharma are historically incorrect (yet another example of the hagiography and spiritual blindness so common to Western Zen which upholds an "image" to cling to such as Zen being the same as "finding peace" or "knowing compassion" or "social engagement"), this is most certainly the case in contemporary "dharma transmissions" which are essentially hollow and spiritually DEAD rituals which can only deceive the ignorant.
This idealized vision you seem to have about Zen being a monolithic "tradition" steeped in a kind of mysterious Asian authenticity which can only be handed from teacher to student ignores that Zen itself is based on one foundational premise which can be simplified as a method of training/purifying the mind in order to know one's own self nature.
A teacher is only necessary if one lacks the spiritual insight to accomplish this meditation/contemplative practice on one's own (as Bodhidharma himself pointed out in one of his sermons). Because this practice is defined by investigation of the nature of one's own mind, with NO intermediaries, there likewise can be NO attainments and NOTHING attained in so doing. Such concepts are devils words and have nothing to do with the practice of dhyana! Anyone who dreams of attainments is already embarking in the wrong direction entirely.
I invite you to look a little deeper into these matters because to say the very least, to go blindly following unenlightened teachers is precisely why there have been decades of scandals and corruption in contemporary Zen centers (all of which is no surprise to the spiritually aware who recognize the evil times we live in).
I invite you to review this insightful critique of some of these topics, specifically the myth of the Zen teacher, whose hooks you have so deeply swallowed, much to your own spiritual confusion:
https://web.stanford.edu/~funn/RichardBakerMyth.pdf
Posted by: n. yeti | February 18, 2021 at 04:07 PM
Jung; May you know true compassion.
Posted by: clyde | February 18, 2021 at 01:45 PM
Clyde: The so-called Zen lineage belongs to mythology. According to Eric Greene:
"The notion of a special lineage descending from Bodhidharma seems to have first appeared only in the late seventh century, more than a a hundred and fifty years after Bodhidharma's death. Thus, from a historical and analytical point of view, there are many figures, such as Bodhidharma himself and his immediate disciples, who we should not consider as "Chan masters" [chanshi] even though they were integral to the mythology of the later Chan tradition" (Another Look at Early "Chan": Daoxuan, Bodhidharma, and the Three Levels Movement).
The first to conceive and name a 'Chan lineage' 禪宗 was Zongmi (780–841).
Posted by: TheZennist | February 18, 2021 at 01:30 PM
Yeti; May you find peace.
Posted by: clyde | February 18, 2021 at 12:57 PM
Zennist; Here’s the thing. I’m not challenging your enlightenment, but I am challenging that you’re presenting an original/true Zen Buddhism. I accept the conventional definition of Zen as a Buddhist tradition with a set of teachings and practices as originally taught by the legendary figure, the First Zen Patriarch, Bodhidharma. The conventional view is that his teachings and practices were passed from teacher to student with various lineages forming as Zen spread from China to Japan, Korea, and Viet Nam, and now to the West. So, as conventional and imperfect as the system is, it is Zen Buddhism. Unless I missed the information, I don’t think the Zennist is within the Zen Buddhist system. That doesn’t imply anything about the Zennist’s attainments, only that he is outside the Zen Buddhist establishment.
Regarding the Zennist’s understanding and his expression of these, I agree with some and have a different understanding of others. Based on my limited familiarity with established Zen teachers, I think my views would match the overwhelming consensus of those Zen teachers.
That said, take care and be well.
Posted by: clyde | February 18, 2021 at 12:55 PM