The Zennist

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?).

 

 

Can you handle the truth?

In the 1992 film, A Few Good Men, a memorable exchange takes place when Navy Lt. Kaffee asks Marine Col. Jessep:  I want the truth! and Marine Col. Jessep forcefully responds:  You can’t handle the truth! 

In a number of ways, it is true that most of us can’t handle the truth.  Looking directly at truth can either be totally frightening which means that it is something we want to avoid at all costs or looking at truth can, literally, be enlightening.  In both cases, it takes courage to face the truth.

Handling the truth about ourselves and our world takes a long time—some never manage it.  Many new to Buddhism have a hard time handling rebirth, that after a person dies, they will be reborn into some other form.  Other Buddhists I have met over the years, can’t handle the truth that within us is the unconditioned which is eternal and undying.  When it comes to Zen, many Zennists I have met can’t handle kenshō but believe sitting in zazen is the natural unfolding of Buddha nature.

Eventually, it gets down to a battle, a contest of wills, in which a preponderance of evidence, like in the film, does matter and makes Navy Lt. Kaffee’s arguments better than Marine Col. Jessep’s persuasion argument. 

But also, evidence can be untrustworthy especially in science where evidence is derived from models or when correlations are confused with causation.  After all, science fundamentally deals with causation, not with hypothetical models or as if causation.

In Buddhism the truth is in us which we have to realize.  It is Buddha-nature which, essentially, is no different than the ātman (the animative principle) or Christianity’s, “God [is] Spirit/pneûma]” (John 4:24). But this truth has to be seen face to face—really seen.  We have to go through the crucible of transformation out of which the truth is finally realized and accepted.  Can we handle it?  Most can't.

A kind of all-too-real seductive matrix

We can think of consciousness, which is the fifth skandha of the five skandhas or aggregates, that the Buddha likened to a magician’s illusion, as the mechanism of illusion.  Consciousness is also what gets reborn as we go from one existence to next (consciousness is the third nidāna/cause, starting from avidyā in the list of the 12-nidānas or the tenth cause starting from jarāmāraṇa/old age and death). 

In later Buddhism, consciousness appeared to grow in importance becoming the ālayavijñāna, that is, the “abode or store-house of consciousness” (it could be plural, too) which is said, according to D.T. Suzuki, “to store all the memory of one's past deeds and psychic activities,” in the form of vāsanā or “habit energy.”  It seems to me that vāsanā plays an important role in keeping us in the confines of the ālayavijñāna in which we ever remain victims of the magician’s trick which is always hidden from us.  For us, the world we live in and hold dear and will one day die in seems very real. 

There is yet, for us, no parāvṛtti in the ālayavijñāna, which would be a major change from being caught in the magician's enchanting sphere of consciousness to being, actually, liberated from it (not just imagining).  According to Suzuki,

To gain this inner perception, a man retires into a solitary spot all by himself, and, by applying himself assiduously to abstract meditations and deep reflections, his inner sense (prajñā) or self-knowledge (svabuddhi) begins to shine out from underneath the residual accumulation (vāsanā) of the past thoughts, affections, and deeds since time immemorial.

Unfortunately, most of us are not like the wise adept who lives a solitary life struggling to have the required change/revulsion or parāvṛtti so that he or she might escape from the insidious power of the ālayavijñāna.  The wise adept also knows that there is no end to rebirth without the victory of parāvṛtti.  According to the Lankavatara Sutra, 

“When a revulsion (vyāvṛtti, generally parāvritti) takes place, the citta [Mind] is disengaged from turbidity; as it understands all existence, I state that the citta is the Buddha."

Short of parāvṛtti, the sincere student, who is not yet disengaged from their impure mind; who has not gone to a solitary spot, should begin to see that this world is not a real refuge—far from it.  It is a place of suffering.  Of our revulsion towards it, it must begin with accepting the fact that we are living in a kind of all-too-real seductive matrix (remember the 1999 sci-fi movie?).

 

Excess is the nutriment that evil needs to grow

Today, the average modern who rides their car or bicycle to work, has little or no real sense of what evil is (I have covered the meaning in this blog ).  Unless it is depicted in some Hollywood horror movie or in the example of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), the average person is pretty much in the dark. 

If we were in the midst of an evil apocalypse, the average person wouldn’t be able to see it.  They wouldn't have a response to it.  And why?  It is because the majority of the people have become evil!  Sound crazy?  Let’s think about it.  From the blog previously mentioned The Zennist wrote,

Evil then is about going beyond limits.  In the example of eating, it is gluttony or it is alcoholism which is an addiction to liquor.  It could also be substance abuse.  Add to this all manner of sexual excesses.  We could even throw in plastic surgery—people who are obsessed with how they look!  There are thousands of examples of people who are excessive, hence, evil although each and everyone would deny that they are consumed by evil.

The allowance of excess is the nutriment that evil needs to grow and proliferate.  An evil people must look at progress as a matter of going beyond limits.  Each generation must encourage more excesses tearing down the previous limitations to excess. 

Slowly but surely, evil grows and spreads.  In my home state of California I could see it happening every year.  The San Francisco I knew as a young boy in the 1950s was dead and gone having embraced excess.  The psychedelic generation of the 1960s I recall was also an excess in the sense that LSD-25 was viewed as a shortcut to enlightenment.  “Hey man, just dop this little blue tab—it’s fucking far out.” 

This kind of excess was no short cut to satori or enlightenment.  At that time it was a wrong turn off the Dharma highway that led to some hippie commune where Gabby fucked some guys that night in the glow of a bonfire.  And now things have become a lot more evil (e.g., huge pedophile rings).  And the Dharma is almost finished except around here.  Buddhists I have met are hardcore materialists.  But maybe this is just the darkness before the light.

Digging the grave of Star Wars

I saw the film Star Wars by George Lucas, back in 1977 when it first came out.  What impressed me most about it was the so-called Force, a mystical energy field that could be thought of as the hidden essence behind all religions.  But there was, in addition, a “dark side” which was antithetical to the Force, although in some respects those who had become truely one with the Force had great power over those who relied on the dark side.

Both in Buddhism and Christianity there is a dark side which is a major part of these religions.  In Buddhism it is Māra, the evil one.  In Christianity it is Satan.  Māra has dominion over the psychophysical organism, namely, the five aggregates of physical form, feeling, perception, volitional formations and consciousness.  In the Māra Sutta we find this:

"When there is form, Radha, there might be Mara, or the killer, or the one who is killed.  Therefore, Radha, see form as Mara, see it as the killer, see it as the one who is killed.  See it as a disease, as a tumor, as a dart, as misery, as really misery.  Those who see it thus see rightly.  When there if feeling ... When there is perception ... When there are volitional formations ... When there is consciousness, Radha, there might be Mara, or the killer, or the one who is killed” (S.iii.189).

In Christianity, which is somewhat different, man is totally flesh because he is a fallen being under the dominion of Satan who, like Māra, is a corrupting power in us that shouldn't be in our body but nevertheless is.  The presence of Satan is full of lusts which is to say, the lusts are of the flesh not of the spirit or the animative principle.  As long as we hanker after the flesh we are subject to Satan’s power.  In this body of flesh there is only sin and death which is the same with Buddhism’s five aggregates.

Both Buddhism and Christianity understand their evil ones, Māra and Satan, to have the power to possess us but who have no power over those who are truly awakened so that in the end, evil is transcended.

In Star Wars, the dark side seeks dominion over the universe.  It has already saturated and mingled with the Force so as to weaken the effectiveness of the Force if not to completely conceal it in darkness.  It is up to the Jedi Knights who represented the light side of the Force, to keep those of the dark side in check.

Overall I was intrigued by George Lucas’ concept of the Force.  But from my own spiritual experiences, much more could have been done with the Force and the struggle between the light and dark sides of the Force in subsequent films.  Sadly, Mr. Lucas sold the Star Wars franchise in 2012 to Disney who is already digging the grave of Star Wars together with its wonderful concept of the Force.  It appears like the dark side has finally won out—but not entirely.  There is something going on—a real war against the dark side.  The future of our world is in a precarious state right now. Un uestionably, something is going on q.

Tossing away spirituality

Just recently Hollywood director Martin Scorsese said that "we shouldn't toss away spirituality". He said this in connection with his film Silence which was released on Dec. 23. The film is based on Shusaku Endo’s 1966 novel of the same name.

I am guessing that Scorsese has a much different view of spirituality than I have.  I have never found the Catholic faith, which the film is about, to be spiritual—not in the way Buddhism is which asks us to realize, directly, what animates this bag of flesh and bones we’ve been thrown into since conception. 

Looking at Christianity through the lens of spirituality a Buddhist might see the ‘passion cross’ as representing the carnal body upon which the soul is nailed by its powerful desire for things of the flesh.  Ultimately, the lesson here is man is not flesh but spirit such that to crucify oneself is to spiritually distinguish the spirit from the flesh and its sins; thus to save the soul from further agony.  Of course, this is a spiritual interpretation but one not far from Buddhism in which Buddhists seek to end suffering by realizing nirvana which, said another way, is the liberation of mind or spirit.  One thus becomes free from being bound down to the conditioned psychophysical man having to undergo the cycle of birth and death again and again.

I think a long time ago the Catholic Church did away with interest in spirituality.  Their focus became fixed on the passion of Christ—not the spirit in its own right as the holy.  It becomes thus that as one suffers one is somehow made holy.  As a consequence, there grows a confusion between spirituality and suffering.  But one’s suffering, in Buddhism, does not lead to holiness.  Far from it.  Gaining access to spirit is accomplished by insight, by seeing it face to face.

We are the walking dead

In one respect, we can think of consciousness as the mortal soul which always finds itself in mortal rebirths; which has no recollection of the immortal soul or atman—certainly nothing higher than its own immediate predicament.  In a manner of speaking, the immortal soul or Buddha-nature is non-existent or dead for consciousness.  

What consciousness does not know is that according to the Buddha, during intercourse between the potential mother and father, another being, this being non-local consciousness, becomes captivated and enveloped in biological substance, that is, the embryo.  Again it enters into the mortal realms of life, the anatman, i.e., the perishable body (in Sanskrit anātman can mean the perishable body), which is unable to see atman.  Consciousness, in this regard, we can think of as the illusion making machine but with a self-trapping mechanism by which sentient beings never gain freedom from rebirth cycling.  As subjects they are always attached to their objects even adapting to their object conditions.

To break out of this vicious circle is to first accept that it is doable; that this vicious circle is not all there is.  This might not be as easy as it seems since much of modern culture (if we can call  it that) is geared to an appallingly limited outlook.  We are born, we work and reproduce like rats then we die—that’s it.  But that is not it, at least not for Buddhas and other advanced beings.  The material world is a trap in which the true world is hidden from us.  We are the walking dead, dead to the true world and our true nature.

Making Zen practical?

I thought of an interesting title for a modern Zen book, Making Zen Work in the Real World: How to Make Zen Practical.  Here, the subtitle shows us what the main title is really about. We have to fundamentally change Zen.  This fictitious book would be about junking Zen Buddhism.  No longer would we suffer trying to see our true nature or the same, see our Buddha-nature.  Zen would adapt to our everyday real world of job and family, politics and entertainment.  In other words, Zen is about learning how to live in the present—a livable present that aims at ordinary happiness.  It would also be a present that is practical in the sense of not caring anymore about some abstract, metaphysical truth. 

Living a livable, happy life, naturally, would mean that we have to accept many fictions as being true in order to enjoy such a life. This could be easily accomplished in many ways.  For example, by treating theories as fact as far as science goes.  On the subject of medicine a cure would be about the elimination of symptoms (palliation).  History would be revised in such a way that it supports our belief that the meaning of life is to live a livable, happy life; that at least we are always moving in that direction.  Religion would be eliminated.  The only personal practice is learning to be mindful and doing zazen at least ten minutes a day.

Let’s face it, the really real world is irrational for us.  To this day science has no idea what the universe is made of. Nature is still a mystery.  It defies our commonsense understanding and most of our expectations.  But its irrationality doesn’t prevent us from building homes to live in and having families and being engaged in our species-specific tasks, notably, making our world livable which can only be done in the present—in this life.  This is as far as Zen should go.  The Zen of Bodhidharma or Daoxin is of no help to us anymore.  It is not practical.  But is this Zen? The answer is, no.  It a Zen that is only interested in conventional truth, not ultimate truth.  Most humans don’t have the courage to look through and beyond the superficial veil of this present life.  But real Zen requires it.

Part of my inspiration for this blog (a satire) came for Im Kwon-Taek’s film, Mandala (1981) which is a darn good Zen flick.

 

A satire on Buddhism? Yeah!

Yesterday, I imagined The Onion, which does news satire, doing a satire on Buddhism.  It would be about an upcoming conference for soul-denying Western Buddhists who are also interested in getting rid of the Buddhist tenets of rebirth and karma in an attempt to bring Buddhism into the 21st century.  

The conference would also host Buddhists who are secular humanists, physicalists, anti-religionists, atheists, agnostics, anarchists, and nihilists.  The conference would be led by Stephen Batchelor and Sam Harris both of whom are persuaded that the Buddha is trapped in the religion of Buddhism and needs some help escaping from its superstitious, and Hindu past.

The conference could begin with two minutes of hate (remember the scene in the film, Nineteen Eighty-Four?).  Hatred would be directed towards Buddhists in the past such as the Pali translator Mrs. Rhys Davids who proposed, to the contrary, that the Buddha did not deny the soul.  

“Ignorant Buddhists to-day uphold the ‘no-self’ doctrine, largely because they see in self, ‘selfishness’.  Historically they are utterly wrong.”

Members of the conference  would chant, "No soul! No soul! No soul!" while watching a picture of the bespectacled Mrs. Davids appear on a large screen followed by the picture of another Pali translator, I.B. Horner, George Grimm, and many others such as the great Japanese Buddhist scholar Hajime Nakamura.

The conference might continue with bright and colorful fMRI scans of the brain showing that there is no soul.  Just clumps of biological matter.  This is where the soul and consciousness come from.  When the biological system shuts down because of some incurable disease or ceases to function because of old age, nothing continues.  All one's sins and crimes go unpunished.  There is no karma or rebirth. 

I still haven't figured out a name for this conference. 

The death of clock-work consciousness

The world has changed, radically, with regard to consciousness/mind.  The materialist version of consciousness, or perhaps better, the clock-work version, is in the morgue.  It is dead.  This means the general dogma that consciousness is somehow a by-product of the brain has been quietly superseded.  The only problem is that there has been no formal and well publicized burial of this antiquated dogma. Pop science still believes—especially in the field of neuroscience—that consciousness is an epiphenomenon.  Some scientists have made themselves defenders of the clock-work version of consciousness. 

This backwardness is due in large part to a failure to understand the implications of QM (quantum mechanics) and what it has done to the clock-work mentality that still thrives in academia.  Over-simplifying the story somewhat, over a hundred years ago physicists, looking for the ultimate physical explanation of reality stumbled, inadvertently, into consciousness (something like William Kingdon Clifford's 'mind-stuff').  This was a shock.  In the words of Niels Bohr, "Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real."  At this point the implications became huge.  Following this discovery two distinct schools of thought faced each other in a huge paradigm war.  On one side, there are those defending the clock-work, mechanical version of reality and those on the side of QM who go so far as to say that forms of consciousness is all that science has observed (there is no physical reality), and we are conscious agents (Dr. Donald Hoffman).

Turning to the public, they are hopelessly behind the learning curve.  Their minds are disposed to a clock-work, mechanical vision of reality.  Moreover, they are the willing stooges of the neuroscientists who are defenders of the old faith who tell us that our consciousness is brain generated — and no! there is no life after death; no Near Death Experiences, and no psychic abilities.

As mentioned earlier, there has yet been no public burial of the materialist version of consciousness.  But it seems the time is getting closer.  When it happens, we will accept that consciousness survives the death of the psycho-physical body and that we can entangle with higher forms of consciousness and, regrettably, with lower forms (bad karma).