The Zennist

The Unconditioned Light is Reality

Vidyamāna can mean what is actual or real vs. not being real or actual (avidyamāna).  From this we get a better sense of vidya and avidya.  The real is the unconditioned while the unreal is the cosmic illusion (māyā).  The illusion is always conditioned.  It is something constructed, i.e., an appearance that attracts us to it; to become conscious of it and thereby become embodied and bound to it.

"Avidya has vanished, vidya arises.  Gone is the darkness, arisen is the light, as it does for one who dwells serious, ardent and composed in the self” (Itivuttaka 99).

The newly awakened Buddha doesn’t see a total absence of external things including his thoughts.  The illusion doesn’t vanish in other words.  As the reader might guess, light has arisen but not light as we know it but, instead, āloka, a spiritual, transcendent light beyond the conditioned world.  That is what is missing in the all-too-human natural experience.  It is what Siddhartha awakened to.  It alone is real, unchanging, and unconditioned.

Although we should seek the unconditioned, if our life is to have any meaning, we always try to grasp it with the conditioned, that is, with darkness.  We seem to forever fail at trying to become enlightened.  We are still under the power of the cosmic illusion going from one existence to another without stopping.

Generating Bodhicitta

Our transformation from an ordinary human to a Bodhisattva involves two steps.  The first is the aspiration for enlightenment which seeks to generate (utpāda) bodhicitta (the enlightened mind) which is the pure, radiant spirit.  The first is bodhicitta only in its relative aspect. 

The second step is the generation of actual bodhicitta which is absolute bodhicitta.  The life of a Bodhisattva only commences with absolute bodhicitta.  This bodhicitta is like an embryo of the Buddha (buddhagarbha) growing towards full Buddhahood.

Interestingly, we find that when one first arouses (utpāda) bodhicitta, one already obtains complete and utter enlightenment.  This is according to the Avatamsaka Sutra.  Without the second step one is not a realized Bodhisattva. 

In today’s Dharma centers many Buddhists imagine they are a Bodhisattva; a kind and gentle, beneficent person who goes around doing good deeds for everyone; trying to save them.  Still, this is not what a Bodhisattva is.  First of all, a Bodhisattva has no human features.  According to the Śūraṅgamasamādhi Sūtra his body is hard, diamond-like, real, infallible and indestructible.  It does not contain either a belly, or stomach, or excrement, or urine, or bad odors or impurity.”

Few if any make it to the second step.  They are still very much attached to their carnal bodies, trying to reform them instead of transcend them.  They cannot understand that the body is unclean; that it is transient and unsubstantial; that it is the source of sinful passions.  According to the Vimalakīrti Nirdeśa Sūtra, “this body is a combination of aggregates, elements, and sense-media, which are comparable to murderers, poisonous snakes, and an empty town, respectively.”

The Spirit is Inconceivable but Knowable

The ideologists who dominate present day culture, whose knowledge is mainly derived from their sensations and feelings, are not at all concerned with what really exists much less the path of spirit.  They only seek to change what already exists such that it conforms with their feelings.  This means they suppress everything which might shake their ideology.  How far will their wishful fantasies take them?  We do not yet know.  Maybe this is new territory for humankind.

Although ideology shouldn’t be in Buddhism, it is not immune to it.  We see it in the aesthetically portrayed world of Zen which is sensuous knowledge whose goal is the beautiful experience which could be characterized as reaching a pure aesthetic moment without traces of agitation, trouble, tension, or instability.  But Zen is not entirely aesthetical so much as it is a path of inner purification and solitude where spirit is one day met with which transcends all concepts.

The outer practice of seated meditation which serves to buttress Zen aesthetically is only intended to reduce the body’s influence over the mind so that mind or thought can be stilled and stress reduced.  But Zen doesn’t end here.  This is not its goal.  One still has to reach the core or foundation of thought which is transcendent and unthinkable (無念) this being absolute spirit from which thought is composed (saṃskṛta).

The real world of Zen is not within the grasp of today’s culture with the exception that it has been altered for ideological consumption, that is, realized as the aesthetic moment of pure feeling, this being the emptying out of anxiety which is quiet sitting (宴坐).

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?).