The Zennist

One last barrier remains: the point of no return

On my youthful journey to see what Siddhartha saw and gain the necessary intuition of Zen masters I came to a place that you could call the point of no return in which reversal is not possible.  I came to realize that I was in Zen too far to give it up but I had also failed to uncover Zen’s secret having exhausted my all-too-human means for discovering Zen’s secret.

I had inadvertently put myself between a rock and a hard place.  I was stuck in a real life and death koan that I couldn't see the way out of.  Even an answer was not forthcoming of what a person should do in a situation like this. 

Looking back to that time I can see that this is the path of intuition that inevitably leads to a kind of cul-de-sac.  Human consciousness (vijñāna) can go no further.  Still, one last barrier remains which bars the way home.  But nothing can be done.

Finally this barrier unexpectedly disappears.  In that moment of disappearance, consciousness is not there anymore—still something is there, though not of an empirical nature which consciousness demands.  You have just merged with something that your six senses cannot perceive much less your consciousness frame.

Few practitioners get this far .  Instead, they substitute the experiences found in their imagination for enlightenment.  This is a process of reification where the imaginary becomes seemingly real.  It seems to work for a while but then fades away.  One has still not escaped avidya, that is, non-knowledge.

As strange as it sounds what we can measure or observe with the senses including the last sense which is the intellect/imagination is all an illusion—the seemingly real.  It is like turning a piece of lit incense in the dark so fast it appears to be a circle.  Yes, we humans are very good at creating virtual realities and deceiving ourselves.  But our consciousness demands subject and object, observer and observed, experiencer and experience.  But take away this consciousness one lonely night—there is much more that is beyond the grasp of human consciousness. 

Lost in appearances, looking in the wrong direction

We could call the Buddha the conqueror of appearances or the same, illusion.  His triumph was to overcome the human belief that our world is real when in fact it is unreal and painful.  We might even call our world a high definition illusion. 

Maybe the pixels in our illusory world that make it appear are, precisely, the smallest composition or combination possible which is a dyad (a unit = “as if” one).  This in Buddhism is vijñāna.

While the ‘I’ conceit is the first to arise in the mind of the seeker it is already combined into a unit.  There is an implicit dyad-ness in this unit.  When the inquiry “Who am I?” is pursued we can’t get beyond this dyadic condition.  Even being in the moment or in the here and now is this implicit unit but one dyadic, nevertheless.

We have reached, let us say, the minimal unit of appearance or the same a pixel.  In no way have we transcended it.  Here begins the so-called spiritual journey of the seeker.

With regard to all appearances whether outside of this body of flesh or inside of it, according to the Buddha, all this is not mine, I am not this, it is not my self or ātman.  So we might ask, “Who then am I?”  To find the right answer to this question is the most subtle journey of all.

Whether we call it nirvana, satori, or kenshō it means the same thing, we have arrived at the transcendent or tathatā.  I should add that this arrival cannot be shared with others least of all by language.  Language, we could say, is directional.  It cannot mysteriously produce the object of our search or transport us to the revelation of our Buddha-nature.  Our true nature is always here but we are always looking in the wrong direction.

First get the magic sword

Gaining direct insight into nirvana or the same, the unconditioned, is really the beginning of Buddhism not its end.  Why is this?  Transcendence of this illusory existence (samsara) is not possible if you don't first know what precisely to transcend.  You will eventually be deceived.  In the words of one Zen master, you'll be throwing away the eggs keeping the chicken shit.

This helps the paint a somewhat different picture of Buddhism than is presently marketed.  For example, one who has awakened to the unconditioned knows perfectly well that the five aggregates lack self nature (svabhāva) insofar as they are conditioned.  They are illusory, not real.

It's somewhat like being a great warrior who receives a magic sword which is able to slay all that which is illusory.  And there is a lot there to slay.

“If you want to achieve early fulfillment, brandish the precious sword given by the mind king and march right ahead: if you meet buddhas, kill the Buddhas, if you meet Zen masters, kill Zen masters, if you meet your parents, kill your parents, if you meet the masses of living beings, kill the masses of living beings.  Totally massacre everything animate and inanimate, all forms and appearances, mountains, rivers, and earth, all times and all places, good and bad, right and wrong, plus anything else that appears and disappears, coming and going through the doors of the six senses and the alleys of the seven consciousnesses.  Having killed it all completely, when you turn a flip and appear in the realm of cosmic space, you can be called a real hero.  When yo get to this point, you will not doubt that Buddhas and sentient beings, enlightenment and affliction, samsara and nirvana, heaven and hell, are all illusions” (Bannan Eishu 萬安英種).

But without this magic sword we can’t even slay our false, conditioned self (anātman) much less our imagined Buddha.  Of course, there are ignorant Buddhists who suffer from pride and hubris, who believe that they possess this magic sword, but they don’t.  They uphold the lineage of paper Zen with its paper transmissions but they have no real prajñā /wisdom sword.

We are absolute spirit having a human life

Can we see or at least intuit true reality when we seem to be lost in illusory existence, including this body that came through our mother's birth canal?  Materialist say no but the Buddhas say yes.

According to the materialists we only have sensory knowledge to rely on.  But according to the Buddhists sensory knowledge, which includes mentation which is the 6th sense, can be transcended.

However mankind's science also falls within mentation, this includes his imagination, his fantasies, even his dreams.  From the six sense arise all kinds of fictions many of which are useful for staying alive in an illusory world in an illusory body.  Still, all sensory knowledge is relative knowledge not absolute.

Said differently, as we participate more and more in the illusory world through our illusory body we acquire relative knowledge.  But what lies beyond illusion and the relative knowledge that we depend upon?  We do not know because we have rejected absolute knowledge or the same, transcendent knowledge.

Man (S., manu) is a thinking creature who is immersed in a relativistic or illusory existence.  For man to transcend man requires that he go beyond himself:  beyond subject and object, beyond perceiver and perceiving, beyond thinker and thought, etc.  Transcendence itself cannot be imagined, to do so is to fall into the barrier of Mumon.

祖關不透心路不絶、盡是依草附木精靈。

If you do not pass the barrier, and do not cut off the way of thinking [all ways of knowing], then you will be like a ghost clinging to the bushes and weeds. (Brackets are mine.)

Foremost, Zen is about transcending this temporal life, intuiting at once the absolute before it is transformed into this illusory existence.  Echoing the words of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, we are absolute spirit having a human life. 

But to go back to spirit we must transcend all that is human.  As the reader may have noticed there is a subtle difference between letting go and transcendence.  Knowing this difference is crucial.

Meditation (dhyāna) is for those who practice transcendence.

How much we are deceived by her own ignorance and therefore have to rely on others based upon their authority is astonishing to say the least.  Add to this problem that we have come to believe that a hypothesis, like the sun and the stars revolve around the Earth.  But as Einstein pointed out it only takes one person to overthrow a hypothesis believed by many.

Suddenly we come to the problem of science by consensus.  We all agree this hypothesis must be true.  And then we come to Buddhism and the belief that the Buddha rejected any kind of absolute or ātman.  He was an agnostic and certainly not a mystic who transcended the thinking creature called man. 

But humans, especially, Buddhists have been deceived by their very ignorance.  The Buddha was a mystic who had transcended the thinking creature called man.

To come to the limit of man who is merely an instrument is to be absorbed, for an instant, in the absolute.  There is no man here or what man sought for.  It's all been transcended.  The barrier or stumbling block all along was man, this thinking creature, whose thinking is always dichotomous or dual.

It is impossible for a human being to return to the first principle by thinking dichotomously (vijñāna).  And this is what Zen is really about.  We have to let go of this two sided mind where there is a perceiver and perceiving which make up the fundamental part of the human being.

Meditation (dhyāna) is for those who practice transcendence.  This can mean:  what is most intrinsic in us seeks to go beyond what it faces in the way of being immersed in a temporal body with its imaginary thoughts (manas).

The practice of Zen or Buddhism, just going through rituals and the seated meditation, is not practice.  Nor is transcendence going on.  To get to dhyāna which is real transcendence, first involves exhausting dichotomous thinking (vijñāna); going to our wits’ end.

the doorway to Zen is to be found on the right side of the brain

There is a tendency in Western thinking to get too much into unrealities whether it's mathematical unrealities or social unrealities like gender dysphoria, etc. Graduates I have met over the years, you might say, all graduated from the university of Never Never Land. 

Put another way, there is a gross under use of the right hemisphere of the brain and an over reliance on the left hemisphere.  In our future, we may well slay the human race because we have prohibited the use of the right hemisphere of the brain.

"The more we rely on the left hemisphere alone, the more self-conscious we become; the intuitive, unconscious unspoken elements of experience are relatively discounted, and the interpreter begins to interpret — itself" (Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary).

Immersion into Zen Buddhism calls on us to turn to the right hemisphere of the brain for answers.  The left hemisphere of the brain will not help the adept.  It only keeps one in the great circle of samsara. However, the reliance on the right hemisphere is a difficult undertaking.  It is like waking up from a trance in which you had no idea that you were in. 

I can say about the 20th century that one of its greatest and most malevolent advances was in propagandizing the public, keeping them in a low level trance while feeding their brains with useless trivia and misinformation.  This way the hegemony of the left hemisphere is maintained while ignoring the right. But this also explains why Zen Buddhism when it came to the West confused the outer form with Zen's essence which led to its decline if not it's popularity.

Briefly, Zen offered a ray of light that pierced through the dark mantle that was thrown over the Western mind.  But it didn't last long because primarily the people who pushed Zen Buddhism in the West were charlatans.

The sudden transcendence of presuppositions about the absolute

For us to have direct source knowledge or direct knowledge of the absolute, it demands that we become absorbed in the absolute, completely, so that there is nothing left of us.  Even our perception or consciousness (vijñāna) must go because it belongs to us. 

As strange as it sounds this is the way the absolute remains absolute.  As a thought experiment if, for example, the wave phenomenon wishes to know what pure water is then it must be absolutely waveless, in which case, no waviness can be detected in the water itself.  (The mere looking causes waviness.)

I think this helps to explain why enlightenment cannot really be transmitted, not in the way the average person imagines the process.  Let us imagine that A is absolute where B is the transmitter.  How is it to be transmitted to C?  The very act of transmission, itself, is non-absolute (anātman= wavy). 

The total and sudden transcendence of presuppositions about the absolute is extremely difficult to accomplish.  Without exception, people who take up Buddhism and with it Zen depend upon perception or consciousness.  This is their tool by which they hope to unearth enlightenment.  But they must also give up the tool. 

By the way, this is what koans (Hua Tou 話頭) are all about.  They are intended, in a way, to drive the student to their wits’ end.  To know the secret of the koan means that one has given up perception (vijñāna).  For a brief moment they became the absolute.

Who you are

True reality is already here, in fact, it has never left.  However, as we approach it with our ideas of what we expect it to be like, we become more confused.  The first road eventually branches off many, many times.  At this point, we are more lost and confused than ever.

Then the Buddha’s teaching comes along.  It talks about awakening to something that even Māra, the Buddhist devil, couldn’t recognize.  Little did Māra know that the Buddha gave up perceiver and perceiving (dual knowing).  He entered a transcendent state in which there was no division or constructs.

Māra, was in a way, a god of the six senses which required a perceiver and perceiving whether it was visual, auditory or even mental (manas) which includes the imagination and intellect.

Even if we take a voyage into our own mind we are more like the people in Plato's Cave facing an artificially constructed world, while the true light is always behind them, in such a way that they are unable turn around and see it. 

Our inner thoughts and emotions arise as do our mental images and what our various senses perceive.  We are facing an illusion not true reality.  Even our fleshy body we inhabit is an illusion.  Transcending illusion is extremely difficult.  Most will be unable to transcend illusion.  Nevertheless, it is important to start the journey of transcendence, of going beyond all illusion where you realize, finally, who you are.

The amazing maze

Pure Mind or absolute spirit is invisible to the six senses, most notably to the sixth which is manas which includes our imagination and speculations.  Thus, what we seek in the way of enlightenment hides and eludes us even while we read about it or contemplate it.  It will not show itself to us no matter how hard we try. 

Still those who have actually mastered Zen behold this spirit singularly and straightforwardly.  It comes suddenly and unexpectedly.  Yes, it’s like seeing something that you never thought was possible.  Before kenshō all your pathways came to dead ends.  The truth which you sought nonstop exceeded your cunning powers.  Strangely, it will awaken you.

Even now we, the unawakened, realize that we may have entered into a maze (since our birth) with no exit.  Maybe we should call it the maze of samsara.  This maze might as well be darkness.  Little do we realize that we are creating this maze.  Every birth we have experienced brought us into this maze from which there was no escape, only to find ourselves in another maze.

Every Zen koan that you study asks you, fundamentally, who put you in this maze?  You draw a blank.  You have no answer but lots of diversions.  I remember those hopeless nights by the kerosene lamp stuck in this maze.  And I also remember the night I broke down and knew I could not obtain enlightenment. How hopeless it was.  (I've met deluded people who even fake this crisis.)  But, figuratively speaking, the door suddenly opens and there it is.

Looking within and seeing darkness

Meditation is a great opportunity to look within and see the prison we have made for our self by desiring what is not our self.  It is a strange kind of darkness but a darkness, nevertheless, that keeps the light from coming in.  In a way, it is a true picture of our incarnated life a life that will one day be filled with a great deal of suffering. 

“Think that this body is like a plantain, a mirage in the hot season, watery foam, a phantom, a transformed body, the castle of a gandharva, an unfired brick, lightning, a picture drawn on water, a prisoner facing death, ripe fruit, a piece of meat, the warp on a loom which is about to end, and the ups and downs of a mortar. You should think that all created things are like poisonous food and that anything made is possessed of all worries” (Mahaparinirvana Sutra).

A great Buddhist teacher like Ajahn Chah (Phra Bodhiñāṇathera) might tell us that meditation is a time to see what's inside our cage:  the cage of birth, aging, illness, and death.  As we might guess, looking within is a difficult task for those of us who are used to accumulating desires.  Yes, each desire keeps the light from penetrating the thick, impenetrable wall of our desires.  Such people will attain nothing in their halfhearted search. 

Beginners of meditation always believe that meditation is going to lead them to some profound vision.  What is really at work here is their imagination, not profound gnosis.  Meditation helps us to sober up from our last round of intoxicating desires.  It reminds us that we are still in samsara; we're not going to escape it by having a good time!