The Zennist

We are afraid of the light

The Buddha in the Pali Nikayas said that whatever is well spoken is the word of the Buddha (A. iv. 164).  Although found not to be the words of Plato, these following words are well spoken:

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”

The context seems to be “spiritual light” or just spirit.  Spiritual light is known in both Buddhism and Christianity but certainly ignored in many contemporary forms of Buddhism and Christianity (Christianity acquired much of its spiritual knowledge from Buddhism thanks to Buddhist missionaries that came from India, at the command of the Buddhist king Ashoka [262–239 BCE] to places like Alexandria, Egypt).

Tragically, mankind seems to be afraid of the spiritual light these days which falls under the category of mysticism—a term not respected at all in the modern world which has taken a turn for the worse with respect to religious knowledge. 

Certainly, in my spiritual growth and development, spiritual light became central.  My first encounter with it was in 1969 then in 1976 in which I underwent what is called light of Mahayana, a term found in the Lankavatara Sutra.  This is nothing subjective.  It is a transfiguration of a spiritually blind person into one who sees and understands the spiritual world in its various contexts.

I see nothing unusual about a child being afraid of the dark and welcoming, each morning, the light of the sun.  But for an adult who practices Zen to set out and deliberately attack something like spiritual light, because the notion makes them feel uneasy, is a bit strange.  Here is something that makes them uneasy.  It’s from Zen master Yuan-hsien:

"The spiritual light of living beings originally has no obstruction, yet deluded feelings arise in confusion.  From this there are six sense organs within and objects of the six senses outside:  with the opposition of organs and objects, false consciousness arises uncontrolled, producing good and bad, initiating virtuous and evil actions”(Cleary, The Teachings of Zen, p. 185).

And what about these words from Zen master Yunmen?

“Every person originally has the radiant light—yet when it is looked at, it is not seen: dark and obscure!”

There is much more I could present, especially, from the Avatamsaka Sutra, but suffice it to say without the ‘light’, this being the Buddha Mind which is beyond time and space (i.e., our limited human perception), we have a dead religion in front of us.

American Theosophist, Alvin Boyd Kuhn, in his book, The Lost Light, gave future generations a way to measure their religious/spiritual progress or the lack thereof.  He wrote:

“Every religion apparently has begun at a high level and become corrupted until it stood in need of reformation and purification. Religions decay through atrophy of spiritual vision. Their course is marked by a blurring of the original light.”

Not only has modern religion, taken as a whole, blurred the original light but the blur has turned into blindness and with it contempt and hatred for this light—if not fear.  What has replaced this light is the cult of personality.  But the godman is like brass which is hidden by a thin film of gold.  

You cannot conceive the unconditioned through what it is not

Two very important and major terms in Buddhism are the conditioned (saṃskṛta) and the unconditioned (asaṃskṛta) or, the same, the composed and the uncomposed.  For us, they stand in a kind of odd relationship. 

Since nirvana is unconditioned, our attempt to bring it into our conditioned world (samsara), together with our conditioned thoughts and concepts, as if to lay hold of it and examine it, ain’t working for us.  It’s not working because we are always attempting to conceive of the unconditioned through the conditioned then wonder why it all seems so asymmetrical—nothing fits or corresponds.  We repeat this pattern many, many times.  Yes, this is a most difficult habit to break.  But it must be broken.

To have any success, we have to be, personally, put into a position where the unconditioned speaks solely for itself.  It would be a moment when we have suddenly stopped our terrible habit of always trying to conceive the unconditioned by way of the conditioned.  This is as much as saying, you cannot conceive the unconditioned through what it is not. 

This reminds me of the Buddhist story about the turtle and the fish used illustrate nirvana. 

There was once a turtle who lived in a lake with a group of fish. One day the turtle went for a walk on dry land. He was away from the lake for a few weeks. When he returned he met some of the fish.

The fish greeted him, "Mister Turtle, hello! How are you? We have not seen you for a few weeks. Where have you been?”

Mr. Turtle said, "I was up on the land, I have been spending some time on dry land."

The fish were a little puzzled and said, "Up on dry land? What are you talking about Mr. Turtle? What is this dry land? Is it wet?"

Mr. Turtle said, "No, it is not.”

The fish continued, ”Is it cool and refreshing?"

"No, it is not,” said Mr. Turtle.

"Does it have waves and ripples?"

"No, it does not have waves and ripples,” said Mr. Turtle.

"Can you swim in it? asked the fish.”

"No you can’t,” replied Mr. Turtle.

Frustrated with Mr. Turtle's answers, the fish then said, "It is not wet, it is not cool, there are no waves, you can’t swim in it. So this dry land of yours must be completely non-existent, just an imaginary thing, nothing real at all."

Mr. Turtle said, “Well for you, that might be.” He left the fish and went for another walk on dry land.

This is somewhat like asking what concepts are required in order to have the proper concept of the unconditioned.  Do you see how absurd this demand is? Here “concept” is the world of the fish while the unconditioned is like the dry land. The simple fact is that we cannot really know the absolute through what the absolute is not.  To know the unconditioned is to give up the conditioned.

Buddhism's turn towards annihilationism?

If there is any real difference between primitive Buddhism and Brahmanism it is how each approached the absolute.  I hasten to add that the differences may not be all that great.  I would argue that Brahmanism may have approached the absolute by a cataphatic method (posit what the absolute is), but this is not entirely true since, for example, the Brahma Sutras state: Whenever we deny something unreal, it is in reference to something real.  This is certainly not completely cataphatic. 

Primitive Buddhism approached the absolute by the apophatic method (non-identification with conditioned things so as to reveal the unconditioned).  This is evident with regard to the conditioned psychophysical person which is a transmutation of material shape, feeling, perception, volition and consciousness, none of these constituents being my real self or ātman.  The Buddha taught his followers to reject what was not their self or ātman in order to be free from the perils of conditioned reality.

After the pari-nrivana of the Buddha and the subsequent rise of Buddhist sectarianism there came to be Anātmavāda this being the doctrine that there is no Ātman or the same, the doctrine that there is no absolute.  This seemed to be hardly different from ucchedavādā, the doctrine of annihilation, which was opposed by the Buddha.  By this, later Buddhism tried to differentiate itself from Brahmanism but at the risk of turning towards annihilationism.  

The dogma of Anātmavāda led to another problem, that of the doctrine of the empty or śūnyavāda which was supposed to mean that appearances are svabhāva-śūnya, that is, devoid of true or ultimate reality, being only configurations of true or ultimate reality.  By the same token, true or ultimate reality was prapañcha-śūnya, empty or devoid of pluralization meaning that true or ultimate reality was one and increate.

On the one hand, postmortem Buddhism masks ucchedavādā with Anātmavāda then later disguises a negative absolute in the form of emptiness doctrine or śūnyavāda.  However, after the Buddha's enlightenment he made no mention of either Anātmavāda or śūnyavāda.  In simplest words, the Buddha's awakening was the realization of the unconditioned, afterwards teaching the path leading to it (S. iv. 368).  It was also synonymous with the far shore, the deathless, the sublime, the amazing, nirvana, purity, the island, the shelter and the refuge (S. iv. 370–372).  Truth be told, Buddhism is very positive—a remarkable spiritual religion that would later send its missionaries to Alexandria Egypt and farther.  All this before the birth of Christ. (Later I hope to get into why much of Christianity stems from primitive Buddhism.)

Buddhism is for pioneers — not your docile types

Many pioneer types seem to like mysteries and the adventure that goes with it.  They are not your usual run-of-the-mill types who are far too docile to take up an adventure which, by definition, is often a dangerous or risky undertaking.  One could certainly lose, and lose everything. 

Zen for me became an adventure—a twenty year-old guy who fell in love with the mystery of Zen that seemed to say to his rational mind, “You can’t enter here—go away! Take all your intellectual baggage, too!”  And he responded, “But I want to see what the Buddha and these Zen masters saw by which they became awakened.”

From that time onward, every road I took turned into an adventure in which I had to lose in order to gain awakening into Zen’s great mystery.  What I lost were the components of a closed mind; a mind that was conformist and too eager to believe those in authority.  One road I took showed me that Zen masters (in my case an abbot) could be fakes—just an old gay man looking for a young male. 

Unbeknownst to me, I seemed to be following the Four Reliances Sutra (Catu-pratiśaraṇa-sūtra), one being “rely on the teaching, not the teacher.”  But perhaps the most difficult road upon which I had to lose everything was “rely on gnosis not worldly knowledge.”  The knowledge I had been using to grasp Zen could, in no way, get past Zen’s checkpoint which banned all that is conditioned.  These two reliances turned out to be the most important because you can’t understand the other two without them, the other two being “reliance on meaning, not on phrasing,” and “reliance on sutras whose meaning is already drawn out, not sutras whose meaning is to be guessed at.”

Losing everything to enter gnosis and uncover Zen’s mystery demands being totally open to gnosis of an absolute (yes, there really is an absolute).  It means also entry into Zen master Dahui’s “great doubt.”  This is total darkness before the dawn.

Buddhists today, and I include practitioners of Zen, Dzogchen and the rest of what I shall term the ‘mystical paths’ all rely on the intellect which is the means by which we acquire temporal knowledge.  Yes, it even includes sitting in zazen for long hours and reliance on unawakened teachers. 

Unbeknownst to these practitioners following their intellect only inches them closer to a non-essentialist view of Buddhism when adepts find that they really haven’t gotten anyplace after twenty plus years of trying.  Their pursuit actually goes agains the essentialism doctrine of Buddhism which assumes an essence or nature as the common core of all beings which any individual can personally realize, what we have come to call “mystical.”

Realizing the animative principle

How do some Buddhists prove the prevailing theory that Buddhism teaches there is categorically and absolutely no self?  Thus far no evidence has been found in either the Pali Nikayas or the Mahayana cannon that the Buddha declares there is categorically and absolutely no self. 

It seems that the only proof is that today’s Buddhists cannot observe a self when they look for one within their heads. They have no recourse but then to go into an emotional argument where they mete out punishment, in some form, to those who disagree with them (I am a prime example). But this is somewhat like the simile of the blind man who declares there is no color.  This can be reduced to, “I do not see X” ergo “X does not exist”.

But the question these people fail to answer is in what discourse or discourses does the Buddha come up with the notion that there is, categorically, or the same, absolutely, no self or ātman?  Or did the Buddha just look out into the starry sky at night, and unable to see a self, declare there is no self?  Or looking within his own mind, observe that there is no self?

In the religious world of India the Buddha already knew what the special term self or ātman meant.  Predating the Buddha, Yāska in his hermeneutical work, Nirukta, defined ātman in several ways.  One definition for ātman was cetanatattva which I translate as “animative principle” (like the light of life in Christianity) given that cetana can mean “animate,”while tattva can mean “principle.” This fits precisely with what the Buddha had in mind insofar as ātman is not something the worldling can recognize.  The typical worldling is only aware of the conditioned world including his conditioned psychophysical body—not what animates it.  Such a person has never met, face to face, with the animative principle and likely never will.  Only Buddhas can do this.

Knowing what the ātman is from the Buddha’s standpoint he would certainly be able to tell his followers what it is not.  He will tell them that the ātman is not material shape, feeling, perception, volition or even consciousness (the five aggregates or skandhas).  Said again, the ātman is not the psychophysical organism. 

Furthermore, it is only with the complete cessation of one’s attachment to the psychophysical organism that one discovers the animative principle which is also described as luminous mind.  It reminds me of this passage from the Mahaparinirvana Sutra:

>“Due to impermanence, there arises suffering; due to suffering, what there is is void [insubstantial]; due to the void, what there is is non-Self. If there are impermanence, suffering, void, and non-Self, what does one kill? If Impermanence is killed, what there is is eternal Nirvana. If Suffering is killed, one must gain Bliss; if the Void is killed, one must gain the Real. If the non-Self is killed, one must gain the True Self. O great King! If Impermanence, Suffering, the Void, and non-Self are killed, you must be equal to me." I, too, killed Impermanence, Suffering, the Void, and non-Self, and I am not in hell. How could you fall into hell?"

Can you imagine what it would be like trying to teach this to today’s Buddhists?  I only dare mention it in The Zennist blog because Buddhists I have met, recently, are almost stark raving mad!  They are like brainless zombies.  It is somewhat like arguing with people who don’t understand how a radio works, denying that the radio amplifies the radio signal which is totally invisible.  Their understanding of the body is totally mechanical and extremely limited.  They would need an IQ of at least above 130 to even begin to comprehend Buddhism.  The few that have personally realized this animative principle for the first time are absolutely astonished — I sure was.  That was back in 1969 one lonely night.

The fake self and cagey Buddhists

What we believe our self or this person we look at in the mirror to be, is really a false or fake self.  It is the non-self or anatmān composed of conditioned phenomena, for example, the cells, the bones and organs of the body.  This non-self or fake self we have identified with is always subject to suffering in one degree or another.  In fact, the Buddha says yaṁ dukkhaṁ tadanattā (whatever is suffering is non-self).

Conditioned phenomena from which our fake self is composed is always passing away.  It is also insubstantial (P., asārato) and empty (P., suñña) being devoid of real essence.  This fake self is the opposite of the real self which attains nirvana.  The fake self can never be eternal or happy like the real self.

But today we learn from various cagey Buddhists that the Buddha taught against the self.  This is to suggest, oddly, that in the cannon no one personally attains nirvana although scripture in several places (five?) says that one "personally attains Nibbana" (SN 22:51)  So what then is Buddhism in light of this kind of belief of no personal attainer when there is clearly such an attainer in scripture?  I would have to say that this Buddhism is going down the road to nihilism.  However, our cagey Buddhists would not admit that they are actually espousing nihilism. 

And just what is nihilism?  According to Donald Crosby, expert on nihilism and author of the book, The Specter of the Absurd:

“I stipulate that nihilism be conceived primarily as existential nihilism, i.e., as a denial of meaning in human life (or state positively, as the conviction that human life is pointless and absurd).”

But isn’t this exactly where Buddhism is today—being almost pointless and absurd with regard to its denial of self?  Certainly we can put Zen into that category.   To be more charitable lets just call Buddhism, for now, “existential nihilism” which means that as observers we have not observed a self.  Personally, this means that as I look within myself, I observe no self!  But this is totally absurd if you consider it logically.  Who is this observer (if not a self)?  Who says that there is no self (if not a self) ?  Who argues against the self (if not a self)?  What these Buddhists fail to see is that the Buddha never denied the self, he only denied that the self is the insubstantial five aggregates which are synonymous with suffering.  They are not the self, in other words.

 

The real crown jewel of Buddhism

Do most Buddhists and for that matter Zen Buddhists, if at all, discuss or even mention the fact that Mara is the five aggregates (P., khandha; S., skandha), who is the equivalent of the Buddhist devil?  Let me also say that Mara is an important part of Buddhism.  We can learn a lot about what Buddhism is and is not by studying Mara. 

Rarely, in Buddhist publications have I seen Mara and what he is all about mentioned.  In Walpola Rahula’s book, What the Buddha Taught there are a lot of references to the five aggregates but not a single one, from what I can see, telling the reader that these five aggregates are also Mara. 

"At Sāvatthī. Seated to one side, Venerable Rādha said to the Buddha: “Sir, they speak of this thing called ‘Māra’. How is Māra defined?” “Rādha, form is Māra, feeling is Māra, perception is Māra, choices are Māra, consciousness is Māra. Seeing this, a learned noble disciple grows disillusioned with form, feeling, perception, choices, and consciousness. Being disillusioned, desire fades away. When desire fades away they’re freed. When they’re freed, they know they’re freed. They understand: ‘Rebirth is ended, the spiritual journey has been completed, what had to be done has been done, there is no return to any state of existence’” (Mārasutta, S. iii. 195).

On the part of Walpola Rahula, is this just a mere scholarly oversight — an accident?  No, not if you are writing a serious book that is to have any credibility. 

However, if you can manage to sneak it by, i.e., not mention that Mara is the five aggregates for what reason might someone like Rahula do this?  I have one likely answer.  It is to maintain the false belief that not-self is the crown jewel of Buddhism and that self or ātman was rejected by the Buddha. 

However, simple logic should tell us that if, in fact, the aggregates are Mara—which they are—and these aggregates are also not the self—which they are—which in Pali and Sanskrit would be, respectively, anattā and anātman, then we have a major problem with the crown jewel.  It’s a fake.  Not only does the not-self belong to the five aggregates but by implication it belongs to Mara. Yes, the not-self is Mara!

Let’s be honest, the Buddha never taught a not-self or no-self doctrine.  He only taught us to reject it, that is, abandon desire for whatever is not the self (S. iii. 178).  But don't you think it strange or at least odd that so many people who are curious about Buddhism may have learned a false doctrine?  Was this just a coincidence in which there is no apparent concerted effort to distort the Buddha's teaching? And when we get to the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra which states, clearly, a Buddhist Ātman doctrine, why has it been such a stumbling block for many Westerners?

The simplest answer for now is that there has been a gross misinterpretation by Buddhist monks who sold their misinterpretation to western scholars but really have no leg to stand on when you plug Mara into the equation and the fact that the five aggregates of form, feeling, perception, volitional formations and consciousness are Mara, which by implication means that Mara is also not [the] self or anātman.  This surely cannot be Buddhism's crown jewel.  So what is the real crown jewel?  It is the attainment of the unconditioned or nirvana by the very self (P., paccatta; S., pratyātman).

 

Bodhidharma probably never sat gazing at a wall for nine years

Bodhidharma, the Indian Buddhist teacher who is regarded as the First Patriarch of Chan or the Zen Buddhist tradition, is sometimes called the "wall-gazing Brahmin."  However, from older, primary sources such as the Dunhuang manuscripts we learn that Bodhidharma probably never existed in the way we imagine he did.  He was most likely a fictional character.  A lot of what we believe is Zen's history is really the product of Zen mythographers in the Song dynasty.

Bodhidharma could very well be a composite of several Indian Buddhist masters such as Dharmatrāta, Buddhabhadra and Buddhaśānta.  According to Chi-Chian Huang (1986 dissertation) Zen master Heze Shenhui added “Bodhi” to Dharmatrāta creating a new name, “Bodhidharmatrāta, a name found in early Zen literature such as the Lidai fabao ji, and in Tibet (keep in mind that Zen came to Tibet).  Later, “trāta” was dropped, and we have Bodhidharma.

But more importantly, Bodhidharma probably never sat gazing at a wall for nine years! 

Bodhidharma’s so-called wall-gazing 壁觀 (wall-vipaśyanā/insight) was not so much about sitting in the lotus posture gazing at a wall but more about insight into the adamantine absolute.  Heinrich Dumoulin says that “Zen masters of later centuries saw it [壁觀] as an expression of the awakened spiritual state, hard as stone.” This seems likely when one recalls the Diamond (vajra) Sutra (Skt. Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra).  Vajra in Sanskrit can mean adamantine, hard,  impenetrable.  

Bodhidharma is more like the figure of Christ insofar as any attempt to see him as a real historical figure is almost doomed.  History, here, appears to be more mythological, based on speculation which, nevertheless, contains much religious truth.  But like the importance of Christ to Christianity, Bodhidharma personifies a unique Buddhist tradition.  Zen would not be Zen without him.

 

 

Facing our passions

The somatic side of us is in a constant state of breakdown and reconstruction whereas the deepest part of us, which is psychical and extra-somatic, seems unchanging and constant.  It is also invisible to the senses.  This is the part we can’t get at.  It defies observation.  We only observe conditioned arisings such as our thoughts and feelings or the inner voice.

With the arising of the existential question of, who am I? we are only aware of the question, try as we might to see its source.  It always ends up that we have no direct perception of the actual source (wherein lies the answer).  Still, something deep within us tells us that we know this as yet unobserved source.

In the meantime, we have to face our passions which stem, it appears, from the somatic part of us.  As every human soon realizes as they mature, nature has made sexual desire the strongest and most exciting of our feelings, which is difficult to control.  By comparison, sexual non-gratification, while we are young adults, seems to be the most dismal and depressing part of our life. 

But if we were to take away the sexual side which, by the way, being in your 70s or 80s manages to do, our psychical and extra-somatic being—the inner person—becomes much more apparent and pronounced.  But then we have only a few years left in the flesh by which to take advantage of this situation.  And that is not going to work in most cases very well.  Starting Buddhism at this time is like digging a well when you are thirsty.

If we are going to get involved in Buddhism when we are young adults (which we should do), we have to focus on controlling our sexual passions and especially the urgent need for sexual gratification.  This is not easy.  It is just one more obstacle in our way but no doubt one of the biggest since it can divert us from the path.  It also needs to be kept in mind that the ways of the world in which our sexual passions can come to fruition runs contrary to Buddhism's path so that when we enter this world we have to be on guard so to speak.

The Western view of man is not the same as Buddhism's

I have noticed over the years that empirical science, when it comes to the human being, is operating under the bias of third-person knowledge, looking and observing the human being from the outside to the inside.  However, most of the data is from the outside.  To really look at the inside of a human being one must enter the world of first-person knowledge.  But so far this is impossible.  As close as empirical, outside-to-inside observation can go is maybe an fMRI scan of the brain, assuming that the first-person somehow originates from brain tissue.

On the other hand, Buddhism is just the reverse.  We are observing man from the inside to the outside, who lives within a bio-physical body with its senses, observing feelings, ideations, volitions and consciousness.  Moreover, it is understood that we have, out of ignorance, identified with all these constituents as being our self although not one of these constituents is our self which is extra-physical.

Much of the reason that Buddhism still remains a mystery to the West is that the West treats man as a physical object whereas Buddhism treats man as an ‘inwardly dwelling, extra-physical being’, that is, a sattva, a term which has a spiritual connotation.

The difference between the two positions is striking.  One imagines scientists looking at an fMRI scan of the brain, studying the  cerebral cortex in the belief that the brain somehow transforms matter into consciousness.  In the other, we can imagine Siddhartha sitting in meditation awakening to the very essence and truth of the universe which is Mind (G., Geist); seeing that all phenomena are configurations of Mind—configurations, that are empty, being only illusions.

In the case of morality, the Western view encourages duplicity and hypocrisy insofar as individuals are judged by certain external signs which then allows them to hide their real intentions.  In Buddhism, moral behavior begins within, with one’s ability to control their sensual passions and desires, including greed and hostility.