The Zennist

The stone age (1960s)

The point at which our imagination is free to roam is when it is stoned (being under the influence of a drug). Back in those days (the 60s) we shared a collective stoneness.  It transported us to the altar of the diamonic.  We chose sex and eros.  This was eventually followed by anger and rage—you could even say a desire for power (control). 

This was not the end of our journey.  Without really knowing it we have entered a hell.

There is one more lesson we must learn which we haven't learned yet.  You cannot attach and then let go — you must learn to transcend.  This is what the Buddha really taught us.  When Siddhartha began his quest for enlightenment it was to put an end to suffering but also the disturbed mind which allowed itself to get entangled in illusion.

But transcendence is not so easy, one must first intuit the transcendent.  The idea of a worldly, conditioned refuge is absurd.  Only the transcendent is the refuge. 

When the transcendent is intuited then one can begin the Bodhisattva’s path of transcendence.  The Bodhisattva can distinguish the atman from what is not the atman (anātman).  (Anātman can mean what is not spiritual, that is, something different from spirit like the corporeal which is not transcendent.)  In light of this but his words ring clear:  “Abandon desire for whatever is anātman” (SN 22:68).

But to speak frankly, Buddhists today whether in Asia or the West fail to understand this simple message.  The Buddha is asking us to abandon the unreal, what is not spiritual, the false, appearances, etc.

Our inability to distinguish the conditioned from the unconditioned

Desire begins with our inability to distinguish the conditioned from the unconditioned which is the state of avidyā (P., avijjā)—a kind of unwisdom.  With desire one is in an unbroken continuous state of being attracted to avidyā.  This is also the repeated cycles of birth and death or samsara which hasn't been broken by enlightenment, that is, seeing the unconditioned.

But there is more.  Both birth and death occur within the conditioned world (they are not unconditioned).  Even death cannot escape it.  From death we reenter the conditioned world.  It might even be a beautiful imaginary world with its gods, or a hell, or rebirth into another womb. 

Interestingly, today's nihilist after they die will just return to the womb.  (I am sure many nihilists will object to this.)  But this is what their strong belief in nihilism is all about, this being a return to the womb-like condition of avidyā. 

The point to be made is that we do not escape the conditioned world.  Birth and death are always within it even the worlds of the gods.  Like all things conditioned they are fundamentally imaginary but, nevertheless, more real than even our world.

The breakout from the conditioned is what the Buddhist journey is all about.  It is a difficult journey in the sense that to arrive at the unconditioned is to have given up all expectations and assumptions as to what the unconditioned is.  (Over the years I have encountered people who tell me they did just that but they never became enlightened!  Obviously they had some hidden expectations that they were not yet aware of.)

Transcending the world of thought

The human world with its unconscious dependence on mental images can easily lead to the worship of the ‘golden calf’ of thought—a worship that is almost unconscious.  The world of Zen, however, transcends the world of thought.  It is about pure spirit, spirit before it is cast into form, or before thought.

Especially, in the work of solving kōans, those unusual mysteries of Zen, kōans are inscrutable short of direct intuition of the absolute.  Try as the typical modern does by reading a book or two on kōans, no entry is gained in the mystery Zen hides.

The modern person is still trapped within the box of thought and with it all forms of semiotics.  One cannot think out of the box — one must first transcend the box and directly behold the truth face to face.  Then thinking can resume even the generation of thought.  But now, the awakened adept knows the true self.

What has one learned?  With the overreliance on thought there's always a dead end so that one is unable to leave the world of illusion by taking up thought.

Buddhism, the last religion

I think that ideology stems from the effort to secularize religion—bring it down to the fleshy emotions and passions thereby replacing gnosis.  What is gnosis about.  It involves transcending the power of māyā which belongs to the mind/imagination (manas). 

In this light, the secularization of Buddhism can only mean the conversion of Buddhism into an ideology. 

All significant concepts of the modem secular world are religious concepts that have been repurposed to fit with a globalist agenda where the self or intrinsic nature of man is lost.  This is what ideology is really about.  Lenin and Stalin used ideology to destroy Russia.  Mao used it to destroy China's ancient culture.

Ideology then becomes more like a deceptive dream or vision.  It only brings with it misfortune.  It is far from being a beneficial vision.  But for those who have a powerful thirst and would even attempt to quench their thirst with salt water, such is the alluring power of the evil dream.

Ironically, evil is destroyed by the black-winged dream, the enticing vision that sinks one deeper into darkness.  This is where the secularization of religion (ideology) is leading us.  You might even call Buddhism the last remaining religion because it transcends thought and with it the imagination which keeps us bound to samsara's dreams.

Hope and a great miracle but no intuition

History is a kind of biased hindsight that can be used for a variety of purposes from a warning about our likely future to criticism of the present, or help make possible a utopia.  History is also so much dross with very little gold if any.  History can be very persuasive with its collection of selected facts, hearsay, and documents.  But when we find the gold we toss the dross away.  But sometimes not knowing what gold is we toss away the gold and keep the dross. 

In religion we have done this, I suspect, many times.  We have kept the words but not the spirit.  It gets tossed out first.  Too soon our teachers become, at best, well intentioned charlatans who are far away from wisdom and not even close to awakening to their true nature.  The end of religion comes when the blind lead the blind.

In a world that is still infatuated with materialism the intrinsic worth of religion is not well appreciated, in fact, it is for the most part rejected.  Unfortunately, the modern mind does not see much value in intuition which is at the heart of Buddhism and Indian religions like Vedanta.  (Only through intuition is transcendence possible; short of this one stays within the confines of the great illusion, that is, samsara.)

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are still very much dependent on history.  At the same time, their followers are open to the miraculous which only serves to suppress intuition which transcends the imagination.  What is left is only hope in the great miracle to come which never comes.

Overcoming desire

The notion of desire is difficult to put in to meaningful words.  It can only be understood in a kind of haphazard way.  In Buddhism it is a mistake to understand desire as anything more than a preference for the conditioned.  One ,for example, cannot desire enlightenment because enlightenment is unconditioned.  It is beyond all expectations.

Overcoming desire by the sheer force of will is next to impossible. The very human body is constructed for the purpose of desire and to consummate that desire through procreation.  But from a Buddhist perspective desire can be transcended.  But this radically entails awakening to what is beyond desire, this being nirvana, or the same, the absolute which is unconditioned.

To pause and think about this, desire cannot be stopped except through transcendence.  The path of transcendence is to be found in Buddhism.  Here one must first awaken to their true nature or essence which transcends all conditionality (enlightenment is beyond all expectations, all things human, and conditioned).

None of this is meant to suggest that resisting desire or going along with desire are the same as transcendence.  We can only transcend desire when we see through it.  And what makes us able to see through it is the fact that we see, directly, the unconditioned which is desireless.

Those who have been taking the path of Zen (dhyāna) for a long time come to realize that the path is one of learning to let go of expectations about what the unconditioned is.  The adept goes to the end of their wits.  A desirelessness overtakes them.  But woe unto those who have put all of Zen's path into their imagination.  They will never come to illumination.

A paradoxical path

The words of the Buddha are not sufficiently explanatory to bring one to enlightenment (nirvana).  The reason for this is easy.  It is because enlightenment goes beyond language and, for that matter, human thought.  It is truly unthinkable and inconceivable.

In one sense enlightenment exists for humans but in another it does not exist in the way it humanly appears when, through 'subject-object dualizing’, it seemingly appears yet remains nevertheless empty of true reality when at the same time true reality transcends it.

Is this extremely difficult to wrap our heads around?  Yes it is, because the simple fact of language is that it can, for example, describe a mountain but it cannot bring us to its summit.  The Buddha, for that matter, is more like a mountaineer than a scholar who reads and studies many books.

What is called the Buddha’s path is the path of summiting where we, all at once, converge with the unthinkable and the inconceivable.  It needs to be said that with this convergence there begins also the work of transcendence which is the bodhisattva’s path, that is, undoing what our desires have acquired and sought refuge in—saving our sentiency from future rebirth.