The Zennist

Transmitted by the Buddha

The term Zen or in Sanskrit dhyāna is more about a process than the actual enlightenment of Siddhartha. Supposedly, Bodhidharma said: Seeing your true nature is Zen. Unless you see your nature, it's not Zen.

The process of Zen leads up to seeing or intuiting this nature or svabhāva. Still, this nature transcends even Zen and what the human imagination can construct. This is "book Zen" but also Buddhism. Words and the ideas they evoke are not the same as directly seeing one's nature. Far from it.

Zen as a process is more about getting the student to drop analytical thinking and turn to the direction of intuition. This is somewhat like shifting from over-reliance on the left hemisphere of the brain and shifting over to the right hemisphere where lies intuition which supersedes a jumble of ideas.

The difficulty of achieving intuition should not be underestimated. It is not easy to make the transition from analytical thinking to direct intuition.

The true transmission of the Dharma only obtains by a path of intuition or Zen. Our all-too-human efforts will fail, but that is not entirely a bad thing from Zen's perspective. This is coming to Zen's Great Doubt 大疑 in which all human efforts fail. It is only in this emptiness that one is for the first time open to being transmitted by the Buddha.

The context of Zen

The context of Zen it could be argued lies in the world of first-person realization in the example of Siddhartha sitting under the Bodhi tree. Just what exactly this realization was we cannot know unless we personally become awakened.  And this pretty much becomes in impossible challenge to overcome from a personal standpoint. 

Even with this realization it cannot be handed to another as if it were some kind of material object. Our scholars can write about Zen but direct intuition of Zen ever remains outside of normal human communication whether in academic circles or in religious circles.  Realization transcends the human being most notably consciousness or in Sanskrit vijñāna (lit. in two parts knowing).

A more accurate interpretation of Zen will show that Zen is essentially mystical dealing exclusively with intuition. The term intuition has been used to describe any process of acquiring first-knowledge that differs from conscious thought and bypasses the six senses and various modes of thought.  For the modern mind this is terra incognita.  In that regard one must be cautious but not overly cautious.  And one must be prepared to give up their hastily drawn maps of Zen's territory.

On the transcendence of the experiencer and the experience

There is a longing in the human heart for truth.  For most people it is hardly detectable.  For others like the Buddha, truth is better expressed as spirit which animates all creatures where in mankind finds itself hidden and overwhelmed by sensory experiences, the mightiest of which is the imagination.  Even birth and death are contained within the imagination so encompassing is its seeming power.

Yet, for all the experiences which have been shaped by the imagination they are still illusory, that is, māyā.  Without exception all illusions are conditioned which the unenlightened take to be real so that they are induced to cling to them. 

We might even say that all illusions are experiences and all experiences are illusions.  These experiences in Buddhism fall into five modes or patterns, viz., form, sensation, perception, volitional formations, and consciousness.  But truly they are illusory and empty.

We further believe these modes rest on a subjective experiencer upon which all things or phenomena are grounded.  With this subjectivity man thinks to have theoretical mastery over the world.  For man this is the highest truth but it is also the highest delusion.

However, the subjective experiencer can never become one with the object being experienced (the great delusion).  Fundamentally, all experiencing remains dual resting on subject and object, observer and observed, experiencer and experienced.

Buddhism's sublime teaching is founded on the transcendence of the experiencer and the experience, only then does one arrive at the original one before the split.  Only with the sudden dropping away of the experiencer and and experience is the truth finally revealed.  Then one returns to the experiencer and the experience. From that position the experiencer knows the limit; knows the utter impossibility of experiencing the absolute as an experiencer.

Meaning is not automatically in information

Our current worldview is enveloped in materialism which is a mechanistic way of looking at our existence but certainly not the only way. 

Likewise, meaning is enveloped by information.  But meaning is not automatically in information in fact it usually never is especially in Buddhism.  Information is conveyed interpersonally but meaning is strictly intrapersonal or first-person.  But here our worldview will not allow intuition shed its light on the information.

What Siddhartha realized intuitively was impossible to convey externally, that is, mechanistically.  Still, it was only information, still without meaning as he understood enlightenment.  From this we might briefly conclude that Buddhism sees the world not mechanistically but rather enveloped by absolute meaning.  But few are at this level.

This absolute meaning cannot be imagined or conceived of.  What appears is never other than an illusion of understanding.  This is very difficult for the modern mind to grasp or even accept out of a kind of tentative faith.  But this is where Buddhism is properly situated.

It is not for those who are dreamers; who want to imagine the Buddha as some kind of savior or Buddhism has some kind of savior religion religion where all we have to do is be obedient to the clergy and follow the rules.  Over the long haul this endeavor eventually fails, and I must say, Buddhism has not fared well.

Letting go of our way of thinking

Zen is trying to tell us that real intuition happens when we abandon the kind of thinking that created the problem in the first place.  This is especially true with koans.  They trap us into relying on our typical way of thinking that creates the problem.  Ultimately, the only way to solve the koan is to let go of that thinking.

Koans are either good or not so good depending on whether or not they engage us into relying on our typical way of thinking which we, ultimately, must learn to transcend.  It is like we have this illness that doesn't get any better.  In fact, everything that we do only prolongs the illness and in some cases makes it even worse.  The antidote that Zen proposes is to drop the way of thinking which keeps making this illness. 

Part of accomplishing this requires deep immersion.  This process doesn't require much explanation except that one has to be involved in trying to answer the koan.  Pretending to answer it by marathon sitting or other theatrical means will not work.  Zen wants the snake to devour itself.  The old ways of thinking must suddenly stop.

When the old ways of thinking suddenly stop there is no subject or object, no experiencer or experience.  Consciousness (vijñāna) suddenly comes to a halt.  We become the Buddha-nature suddenly and unexpectedly.

looking in the wrong places

When we look at our life from the inside it is certainly transitory and more tragic if not painful in the long run.  And in our journey of life we find nothing called a soul or self or the atman.  What we once thought was our self always turned out to be not our self.

But from this life did we learn the right lessons?  I think it is safe to say that we did not.  Neither did we find God or some kind of absolute.  And why?  Because we looked in all the wrong places.  As the Buddha pointed out long ago we looked into the conditioned to find the unconditioned.  We also looked into what is not the atman to find the atman.

Are we really that dumb, I mean, did we look in the wrong places?  Again, I will have to say yes.  The problem that Zen has always had to face is how does it correct people so they look in the right places for their atman or true self?  This atman is not to be found in material shape, feeling, perception, volitional formations or within consciousness.  And certainly not within the senses either which includes mentation (manas).

Yet, when the Zen student is presented with the idea of nirvana, that is, the unconditioned and no-thought (the unthinkable) the first thing they do is try to think about it, or construe it in a certain way that they can grasp it with the imagination.  But this is only a copy, not the real McCoy.  Zen, I am forced to say, does not often point to the right place.  And when it does, few directly apprehend what is being pointed to.

A lot of what Zen teaches us is how to overcome our self-inflicted errors.  But this is only hinted at — in fact, it is given in such a way that it requires intuition to solve the problem.  Interestingly, it is only intuition that has access to Zen's path.