The Zennist

Can there be reincarnation without a self?

I have seen this many times, westerners new to Buddhism come to an Internet chat room like Reddit (which totally sucks) with the same fixed mindset.  For example, if the Buddha teaches there is no self, how can there be reincarnation?  Obviously, this person may have studied Buddhism for a few weeks or even a month.  Maybe more surprising are some of answers from scholars and monk translators.  Here is one from Bhikkhus Bodhi:

“The Buddhist term for rebirth in Pali is ‘punabbhava’ which means ‘again existence’. Buddhism sees rebirth not as the transmigration of a conscious entity but as the repeated occurrence of the process of existence. There is a continuity, a transmission of influence, a causal connection between one life and another. But there is no soul, no permanent entity which transmigrates from one life to another.” (Emphasis is mine.)

First of all there is no evidence in Buddhism that there is an absolute cutoff from the end of one life to the start of another life anymore than a wave ceasing and another arising are completely unconnected (it is through the medium of water that they are always, inherently, connected).

The careful research of Wijesekera published in the Journal of the American Oriental Society 84/3 (1964): 256, titled, The Concept of Viññāṇa in Theravada Buddhism, says:

“In view of such evidence the conclusion is difficult to avoid that the term viññāṇa in Early Buddhism indicated the surviving factor of an individual which by re-entering womb after womb (gabbhā gabbhaṃ: Sn. 278, cp. D.iii.147) produced repeated births resulting in what is generally known as Saṃsāra.”

In fact, the notion of a transmigrant like samsaric consciousness (not the self or ātman) connecting with a fertilized embryo (nāmarūpa) and after death reconnecting with still another embryo, is not outside of Buddhism.  It  is an important part of it.  According to K. N. Jayatilleke in his book, The Message of the Buddha:

“Man, according to the Buddha, is a psychophysical unit (nāmarūpa).  This is made up of three components - the sperm and the ovum which go to make up the fertilised ovum or zygote along with the impact of the stream of consciousness of a discarnate spirit (gandhabba) or what is called the re-linking consciousness (paṭisandhi-viññāṇa).”

We may even consider that thought (citta), mentation (mano) and consciousness (viññāṇa) are just particular modes or forms of spirit (tathatā) which only help to bind the worldling to samsaric consciousness and thus the cycle of rebirths.  There is, subsequently, no escape except to become a Buddha—Buddhahood being self-knowing spirit that alone is capable of saving sentient beings from the burden of too much suffering.

Death is not final

Rebirth and postmortem survival tend to be a subject that Western Buddhists are uncomfortable with just as they are uncomfortable with near death experiences (NDEs) and out-of-body experiences (OBEs).  It sort of rubs their fur the wrong way for some odd reason (most are nihilists, sad to say).  Now consider this passage which is a translation from the Pali by Bhikkhu Sujato:

"In the same way, take someone whose mind has for a long time been imbued with faith, ethics, learning, generosity, and wisdom. Their body consists of form, made up of the four elements, produced by mother and father, built up from rice and porridge, liable to impermanence, to wearing away and erosion, to breaking up and destruction. Right here the crows, vultures, hawks, dogs, jackals, and many kinds of little creatures devour it. But their mind rises up, headed for a higher place” (SN 55:21).

The bold line is translated by Bhikkhu Bodhi this way:

“But his mind (cittaṃ), which has been fortified over a long time by faith, virtue, learning, generosity, and wisdom—that goes upwards, gone to distinction.”

Bhikkhu Bodhi gives the reader a more accurate translation (both are good translations).  This is no ordinary, everyday mind of the ordinary worldling but one which has practiced the teachings of the Buddha for some time.  It just doesn’t die with the death of the body.  When the carnal body dies, it separates from it and goes to a higher place. 

Other passages by the Buddha state that it is consciousness that fares on after death. Neither mind (citta) nor consciousness (vijñāna) die. It is nihilism to believe they die with the physical body’s death.

If death were absolute and final, reaching the unconditioned, then death would be nirvana.  But nowhere does the Buddha teach this.  Birth and death are never other than conditioned and remain in samsara. There is no escape from the cycle of repeated birth and death short of nirvana i.e., the immortal. All are doomed by their spiritual ignorance/avidyā.

Buddhas know what the universe is made of

If a scientist said, "There is likely no God because of a lack of evidence,” the scientist would be on solid ground.  But if we ask this scientist, “Is what the universe made of material or immaterial,” he might guess then say it is probably material even though the question of what the universe is made of finds no answer in science.  All they can manage to pump out is a plethora of hypotheses.

The more we go down the rabbit hole trying to find what our universe is made of the more problematic our journey becomes even reaching a point where the material and immaterial seem confusing and almost indistinguishable.  This material reality may not exist in the way we imagine it to exist.  We are only looking at the world from inside the human body through its senses.  The world outside of our body could be much different and far more open as current research into NDEs suggests. 

Maybe what we call reality is only adequate for our daily lives which are always, more or less, conforming with the demands of Darwinian fitness.  We cannot venture beyond it or so it would seem.  But in the ancient India of the Buddha there were some courageous humans who attempted to venture beyond the rudimentary demands of Darwinian fitness.  They were known as rishi (P., isi) who attempted to go beyond the mundane world by means of mystical knowledge (jñāna).  For some of them there was no God because what they intuited was higher than any humanized God and certainly spiritual.

Those like the Buddha were able to find a way beyond the barrier of the human senses which confines mankind to a life of Darwinian fitness.  They have a spiritual mind which cognizes what is essentially unknowable to the ordinary, human mind.  In that regard, they know what the universe is made of.

Spirit in bondage to human appearance

Using the popular words of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin ( some say it was G. I. Gurdjieff who said this): "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience."  One might also consider it this way: "We are not human beings on a spiritual journey, we are spiritual beings on a human journey." 

I think the Buddha would approve of the above words.  On the other hand, the belief that somehow the human body gives rise to spirit which then makes spirit dependent upon the flesh, seems implausible.  It is even more implausible to believe there is no spirit—this is hopeless nihilism and maybe one of the worst sides of the human predicament.

Our real condition is always one of spirit in bondage to appearance which is never other than dependently originated and conditioned.

From a Buddhist perspective our human experience, which always ends up in death followed by never ending rebirth into still other forms, is never other than suffering in the final analysis.  Spirit is in bondage to form, feeling, perception, volitional formations and consciousness, namely, the five grasping aggregates (pañcupādānakkhandhā).  It is also spirit, which in bondage to the five aggregates, acts contrary to itself.  It is always betraying itself in other words.

 

 

The restoration of Zen

I am always looking for something to blog about that fits with The Zennist.  Today I was watching YouTube as some guy restored a Kenwood cassette deck X76 which he found on a beach while he was driving with a lot of other trash people had tossed away.

Then I asked the question, How might one restore Zen?  It would be a project of restoration, that is, of bringing Zen back to its former state.  But unlike the restoration of the cassette deck which was about disassembling it then cleaning all the components of the deck, repainting the housing, and finally reassembling it, Zen is more of restoring the goal of Zen and then restoring its methodology.

If anything that has turned Zen into some seaside piece of junk like the cassette deck, it is our corrosive misunderstanding of mysticism in addition to our failure to see it alive and well in Zen. 

No, Zen is not that far away from Plotinus or the negative theology of Dionysius Areopagita. 

To be sure, like the mystics Plotinus and Dionysius, Zennists who have had kenshō understand even when demonstrated by the Zen master's cryptic words or gestures it remains hidden and ineffable for us, and when conceived by our intellect, always unknowable and frustrating.  We see this when a monk asked Yunmen 雲門 this question: "Where do all the Buddhas come from?" Yunmen answered: "The East Mountain walks over the water."  Yet, this is what each and every koan is about for the faithless unawakened.  Koans hide a mystical path; only the awakened Mind sees the golden thread that runs through all of them. 

Zen’s kenshō, in mystical terms, is really the sudden joining of the transcendent (apophasis) and the immanent (kataphasis).  There is return to what is most primary and undivided.  With this is also the overcoming of the dualizing power of consciousness or vijñāna that keeps sentient beings in samsara.

With a mystical overview, Zen can be restored; all the corrosive misunderstanding from its present day body that is so harmful to it, removed.

The illusion of duality

I have decided to begin this blog with an excerpt taken this from Art Hobson's paper, There are no Particles, there are only Fields. (Bold is mine.)

Field-particle duality exists only in the sense that quantized fields have certain particle-like appearances: quanta are unified bundles of field that carry energy and momentum and thus "hit like particles;" quanta are discrete and thus countable. But quanta are not particles; they are excitations of spatially unbounded fields. Photons and electrons, along with atoms, molecules, and apples, are ultimately disturbances in a few universal fields.

Sound familiar?  How about something from the Lankavatara Sutra, for example: Manifold are the waves evolved in the ocean; likewise indeed the Ālaya [ocean/field] sets in motion a variety of Vijñānas [waves/quanta]. (Brackets are mine.)

Going a little deeper, I am aware of my thoughts arising in my mind, or the same, I am aware of manifold waves of mentation arising from my invisible ocean mind which I have never directly intuited.

Notice the seeming duality?  Quanta and field; waves and ocean; mentation and unconditioned pure mind.  But is there really a separation between quanta and field, or waves and the ocean or even mentation and unconditioned mind or spirit?  It would seem to me that the duality is completely illusory.  There is always an implicit unseparatedness but no real separation (duality). 

Insisting that duality is somehow real and not illusory is a failure to understand how reality really works in which a field is primary and thus a first, then quanta appear.  In Zen, spirit (citta) is most primordial from which thoughts or mentation arise and appear.  Sentient beings always live a secondary existence; even speculating about the absolute through less than primary means.  They speak of duality because they can't see the unbounded spiritual field through which the seeming duality is deemed a fictional construct.  At every turn in their lives they experience contradiction and unresolvable separatedness; subject and object are never one.

 

The conversion of the religious into the secular world

The Buddha's discourses give us mainly religious information.  That is their one notable feature.  The Buddha's discourses were never intended to provide us with accurate, verifiable historical information.  That Siddhartha awakened becoming a Buddha is, strictly, a religious claim that cannot be historically proven (keep in mind that 'religious' means  relating to that which is acknowledged as ultimate reality). 

Said again, a person who studies Buddhist history has no access to Siddhartha’s nirvana.  It should be obvious that history cannot describe the content of Siddhartha’s enlightenment whereby he became a Buddha. 

On the other hand, a person who studies the religious information set forth in the Buddhist canon is more likely to become convinced that Siddhartha awakened to the unconditioned-element (asaṅkhata-dhātu) as might others who follow Buddhism’s religious path.

Several days ago, I asked myself where, exactly, does secular Buddhism fit in with this?  It doesn’t seem all that religious to me.  If anything, it is the gradual conversion of the religious realm into the secular world. 

Next, there is no secular Buddhism embedded somewhere in the Buddhist canon.  All of Buddhism rests upon the awakening of Siddhartha.  But we know from the cannon that the Buddha made a distinction between secular people, namely, puthujjanas, meaning, the worldly, and his disciples, looking down on the former.

Then it dawned on me how might secular Buddhism work.  I came up with this: use the historical to undermine the religious.  As mentioned earlier, history has no access to Siddhartha’s nirvana.  How might a historical-critical perspective even engage with nirvana itself?

Nirvana, to be sure, is a transcendent experience which is wholly religious and personal (S., pratyātman).  History has no means by which to enter it as mentioned earlier.  But for the secular Buddhist, if Buddhism can be historicized, that is, made dependent on history as a basis of explaining Buddhism, then it logically has no need of the strictly religious for explaining Buddhism.

Laying this aside for a moment, Christianity succeeded to some degree in making Christianity seem dependent on history.  A historical record became the support for one’s faith even with the resurrection.  Hence, the New Testament has to be taken literally and less spiritually (i.e., gnostic).

But Buddhism does not go here since it rests pretty much upon a religious framework.  Buddhism’s history is better understood in a mythological light.  Mythology is the use of language to explain an inexplicable spiritual world, that is, a world that cannot be accessed by the senses but, nevertheless, is real lending itself to metaphorical language; the uplifting of our mind to spiritual things.  In the words of J.R.R. Tolkien “myths are largely made of ‘truth’.”  In other words, myths must rest upon a religious foundation.

But let us not forget, that the secular wants none of this!  The senses cannot go here much less even the emotions but still mythology has a great impact upon the human spirit.  Just look at J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and the three films Peter Jackson directed which gave us a cinematic glimpse into Lord of the Rings.  Even the earlier Star Wars films contained some mythology which the fans loved (the last three Star Wars films have been, largely, an attempt to destroy the mythological content, reducing Star Wars to a feminist narrative).  Mythology becomes successful when its foundation becomes largely truth in the example of the film, Matrix (1999) which appears to have a gnostic theogony behind it (I wonder of the Wachowskis read The Apocryphon of John?).

 

 

The agnostic gives up every preconceived notion to reach gnosis

I would have to say that the general public don’t find much difference between an atheist and an agnostic.  They might put it this way.  An atheist is a fanatical agnostic while an agnostic is just a cowardly, wimpy atheist.  Both, we can say, are not interested in religion. 

Most people who tell us that they are atheists really mean by this, I don’t believe in the God of the Bible, who interacts with us, intervenes in the world and answers our prayers.  Please don’t impose your religion on me. 

While atheists don’t want any religion imposed on them, there is more to the agnostic position than meets the eye.  To become a sincere agnostic, a person needs to be honest and open minded and not be arrogantly confident.  Thomas H. Huxley who coined the word agnostic in 1869 said:

"Sit down before the fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.”

Huxley’s words are not far from Buddhism with its unique voyage of inner discovery.  Given that Buddhism is fundamentally gnostic this means that the adept has to begin by being an engaged agnostic!  It is the preconceived concepts and notions that the adept clings to that makes it impossible to reach gnosis or intuition of the absolute.  

Buddhism and its various schools has always been about having gnosis of the unknown, directly intuiting it.  One intuits what has always been unknowable and inaccessible to mentation which in Zen is called no-thought 無念.

Welcome to the bone heap world

This following discourse by the Buddha from the Itivuttaka (Iti 17) is titled, Bone Heap (Aṭṭhi-puñja).  For me, it describes our Earth as something like a massive bone orchard — no, it's not a happy discourse.  Our birth and death add up to zero which best describes saṃsāra.  But also this discourse talks about the "four noble truths" as being our hope, you could say.  But what is really being said as regards these truths?

The first noble truth is about the suffering of the five aggregates subject to clinging that make up our human life, namely, material shape, feeling, perception, choices and consciousness.  The second noble truth tells us why we suffer.  It is because of our desire and holding on to these five aggregates.  Logically, it is by the stopping or the removal of desire for these five aggregates that we are released from suffering.  But this release rests upon a special path by which we attain direct cognition or intuition of the unconditioned which is nirvana.

The Buddha is calling on us to transcend, completely, the five aggregate person which we know as our carnal body of birth.  We have over identified with it, believing it is who we are.  However, it really hides our true being or nature which is the animative principle this being the clear-light Mind which is unconditioned.  It is our unbroken desire for these aggregates that is our problem.

Sadly, nobody cares anymore about the Buddha's message and what the "four noble truths" really mean.  Materialism dominates our world.  People actually believe that when they die, that's it!  Some of these people want to practice Buddhism.  But they lack the necessary spiritual ability and may never attain nirvana in many rebirths of suffering because of their disbelief in the transcendent.

 This was said by the Lord…

“Bhikkhus, the skeletons of a single person, running on and wandering in saṃsāra for an aeon, would make a heap of bones, a quantity of bones as large as this Mount Vepulla, if there were someone to collect them and if the collection were not destroyed.”

The bones of a single person
Accumulated in a single aeon
Would make a heap like a mountain—
So said the Great Sage.

He declared it to be
As great as Mount Vepulla
To the north of Vulture’s Peak
In the hill-fort of Magadha.

But when one sees with perfect wisdom
The four noble truths as they are—
Suffering, the origin of suffering,
The overcoming of suffering,
And the noble eightfold path
Leading to relief from suffering—

Having merely run on
Seven times at the most,
By destroying all fetters
One makes an end of suffering.

 

 

The inevitability of death with no chance of rebirth?

It seems obvious to assume that death is inevitable relative to birth.  Something has to be conditioned and born for death to happen, eventually.  So let’s back up and begin with that night in the back of the SUV at the side of the road, or some hotel room during our honeymoon. 

After successful conception, an incarnating entity or gandhabha enters the mother’s womb to undergo a trimester process of bonding itself with the developing fetus (this is the activity of rudimentary desire).  In time, a newborn emerges from the birth canal of the mother and everyone lives happily ever after.  Well, not really.  Let me unpack this.

In Buddhism, the term gandhabba (S., gandharva) is used to denote a particular state of samsaric consciousness (P., viññāṇa).  Such a consciousness is a doubling of the one (eka) into subject and object knowing (P., ñāṇa) or the same, observer and observed knowing.  Because this implicit duality found in consciousness is never transcended, except in nirvana, birth and death and rebirth are, with rare exception, inevitable for humans.  Consciousness is the transmigrant from one life to the next.  It doesn’t die.  We could even call it the bad infinite.

Knowing this is important in Buddhism so as to avoid an unsatisfactory rebirth after our inevitable death. 

The sad and tragic thing about modern culture is we lead sloppy, unspiritual lives not caring about our own next life after this one in addition to rearing children in such a way that they grow up having learned maladaptive patterns of behavior which neither benefit them nor make for a good society. 

Buddhism tries to correct this as much as it can but it is undercut by the modern disposition of skepticism: the tendency to disbelieve something that doesn’t agree with one’s own personal narrative.  The only thing believed in seems to be the inevitability of death with no chance of rebirth.