The Zennist

The narrative must be let go of, replaced by 'great doubt' (大疑)

Today, the narrative often precedes the reality it is supposed to represent.  The narrative, in other words, has superimposed itself over reality.  It is like the longitudinal and latitudinal lines on a map or on a world globe.  They are useful but not real.  Many things help to illustrate and solidify the narrative even ceremonies and rituals, or even a documentary about the big bang.  We seem to always fall for the deception.  

So where does true reality begin?  With a CNN news flash?  With unverified claims (opinions); with an event like 9-11?  But truth or true reality is almost always silent.  No narrative can pretend to speak for it.  No Zen teacher can hand it to us unmodified, the way it really is.  Even Zen master Dōgen used deception (the shisho document supposedly given to Dōgen by Rujing and now designated a national treasure by the Japanese government most certainly is a medieval forgery).

Still, we remain too easily persuaded by the narrative.  This can be more of a hindrance than a help.  We seem to have time for the narrative but not for the truth which is more difficult to attain.  It seems like you have to dig for the truth, which can be difficult, whereas the narrative is just handed to you.  You can learn all about Zen by reading books by Alan Watts — or can you?  But even Watts is skeptical of the "trickster guru" and may very well be such a person.  

In the matter of Zen, its own narrative prevents actual transcendence (kenshō) from manifesting itself and thus represents a dangerous form of idolatry.  In the study of Zen it conceals the most holy by claiming to practice it.  But how do you practice that which transcends all humanly efforts to reach it?  In other words, how do you practice hitting a target that neither you can see nor anyone else?  The narrative must be let go of, replaced by 'great doubt' (大疑).  This is a process of emptying-out not retaining.  Only then will clear light come which is the very substance of our ordinary thoughts.

 

We imagine that our thoughts come from the body

With our materialistic mindset it is easy to imagine that our thoughts come from the body; that somehow, mysteriously, the body has managed to make all these thoughts.  We could even say our thoughts are electro-chemical reactions that emerge from neural processes which depend upon the body.  At this point, our understanding of how thought is formed before it emerges is not known.  We only have hypotheses. 

Also, what Zen’s no-thought (無念) really means finds no answer.  It certainly does not come from daily blocking our thoughts; trying to smother them.  Only when there is just pure spirit, that is, Mind-only, is one released from the powerful seduction of thoughts.  Here lies the Buddha’s liberation.

Most everyone who is interested in Zen equate it with seated meditation.  I imagine that if you suffer from a light case of “akathisia” which is characterized by a feeling of inner restlessness and the inability to sit still, seated meditation might be helpful.  Seated meditation tends to produce a general feeling of quietude. 

But what does it mean to have the noble insight of revulsion…having arrived at the door to the deathless?  This is not some relaxed state of being.  With the deathless as its final goal Buddhism understands the deathless to be also unconditioned.  But our thoughts are not other than conditioned.  Now we can begin to see what Zen is aiming at by “no-thought”.  No-thought goes beyond the mortality of our body which is conditioned.

But we moderns will have none of this mumbo-jumbo (postmortem survival).  When our body dies along with our thoughts which we believe are electro-chemical we believe there is nothing beyond—certainly no such state as no-thought.  But Bodhidharma once said: “No-thought is nothing other than practice; there is no other practice. Thus you'll realize that no-thought is everything, and that extinction of the conditioned (nirvana) is nothing other than no-thought.”

The Unborn Plenum of the Deathless

Looking at the world from the standpoint of the conditioned there is no real unconditioned or so one might imagine (an absolute unconditioned medium from which conditioned things arise).  This is further to imply, there is no evidence of the unconditioned in terms of the conditioned which might prove to those who are skeptical there, indeed, is the unconditioned.

From Zen’s perspective, the unconditioned can only be arrived at by the complete cessation of the conditioned this being thoughts which make up the conditioned microcosm (mano/manas), i.e., mentation.  The world of Zen is an antidote for overcoming the conditioned from a microcosmic perspective; having a sudden and profound glimpse of the unconditioned which is the essence of thought.

From this, the fundamental problem Zen faces which confronts each student is to wean them off off of using thought, almost exclusively, to gain access to Zen’s crown jewel.  Instead, they must leap beyond the conditioned to gain access to the unconditioned.  How this is accomplished for each individual depends on how much they identify with the conditioned, in this case their mental world.  They must accept the fact that Zen demands of us a special cognition free from appearance and beyond mentation.

But even this insistence can be easily misunderstood.  It is difficult to grasp that thoughts as concepts represent something standing in place of the actual.  Our thoughts about enlightenment actually hide it.  Even the time we spend trying to see what Siddhartha realized by many hours of seated meditation only serves to obfuscate and confuse our quest.

From the Buddha's Perspective

As a thought exercise think of water translucently clear that has the potential to recognize itself but so far cannot see anything distinctive of itself.  There is nothing there or so it would seem.  However, in a state of agitation it sees something.  But these wave forms it sees are different from itself.  In fact they act to hide the water’s translucently clear presence.  This is implying that wherein there is no distinction there can be no kind of knowledge.

But this further implies that there has to be a separation between the knower and the known; that if there is no such division there can be no knowledge.  But in Buddhism absolute knowledge is different.  Such knowledge consists in getting rid of the illusion of separation.  But how does one do this?

Sub specie aeternitatis, there is not the slightest difference between the conditioned and the unconditioned.  But if we cling to the conditioned which is illusory, failing to realize the unconditioned nature, we are lost.  Making matters worse, our intellect bound up with the imagination will always lead us astray such that we can only imagine the unconditioned believing we have realized it.  But the truth is we have failed to liberate our self even with metaphysics not to mention all of its captivating thought forms.

The core of Buddhism is about awakening to the fundamental essence of thought, thought being the smallest building block of the conditioned.  No amount of thinking or speculation will liberate us.  The Buddha’s awakening went beyond this.  We are not there yet.  Yes, we have the potential to become enlightened but we must still actualize that potential.

A Finger Pointing to the Moon

Teachers of traditional Zen redeploy words and concepts to point beyond themselves to true reality that ultimately transcends composition (samskrita), that is, composed everyday reality.  When the word or concept is suddenly canceled out by direct intuition what remains is true reality before it is formed or composed into thought.

With today’s Zen, its various meanings are expected to precede the uncomposed reality its words are supposed to represent.  This is the mess contemporary Zen faces.  It is under a fictional “narrative” which is supposed to be Zen’s truth or ultimate fact.  No longer does one have to search within for this reality beyond words and concepts.  It even goes as far as to suggest ‘just sitting’ is enlightenment.

This is a huge barrier to understanding Zen.  It is a distorted Zen because it either sticks with sitting and/or sinks into an imitation of Zen: to copy it by words and actions.  Neither way calls upon us to abandon, thoroughly, reliance on the world of thoughts; to intuit what they are actually composed of.
This is why Zen teaches no-thought (無念).  To come to the abode of no-thought is like seeing the unformed clay before it becomes a brick.  Suddenly, the invisible light or formless spirit is intuited.  With this the sixth sense is transcended including all that which comprises it.

Teachers of traditional Zen use the Buddhist Sutras and Zen words to bring us to a specific intuition.  Those who have to rely on words to transcend words cannot hope to attain the fruit of Zen.  In their ignorance they make Zen into a celebration of ignorance.  One modern Zen master said,  “Wisdom is to see that there is nothing to search for.”

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).

Become a knower of the unmade

A wave is shaped water.  Water is not wave dependent.  Whether waves arise or do not arise does not affect the water.  Drawing from this, in Buddhism, we can say that thought is shaped spirit, spirit being shapeless and luminous.  In no way is spirit dependent upon thought.  On the same track, we can say that the word “spirit” is not spirit.  It is just a signifier/sign — not the signified.  The signified is yet to be personally known.

It follows from this according to verse 277 in the Dhammapada, that all (sabbe) shapes (saṅkhāra) are impermanent (anicca).  Then we learn in verse 278 that all shapes are suffering (dukkha).

It logically follows from this that shapes are not permanent.  Any shape or aggregation such as the five aggregates of form, feeling, perception, volition, and consciousness are never permanent or eternal.  Then in verse 383 it says, having known (ñatvā) the dissolution of [all] shapes, a knower of the unmade (akataññū) are you, O Brāhmin.  Logically, our Brāhmin is also a knower of the shapeless eternal!

Beings, it would seem, are victims of their own ignorance and inability to distinguished between shapes and that or spirit from which shapes are made.  Even the finest thoughts or thought cannot unshape itself to reveal what it is made from.  Speculating on what is unmade is to be on a fool’s errand.  There is another process, one of abandonment— Zen's own via negativa.  Zen master Sixin Wuxin said it best.

"While still alive, be therefore assiduous in practising Dhyāna.  The practice consists in abandonments.  ‘The abandonment of what?’ you may ask. Abandon your four elements (bhuta), abandon your five aggregates (skandha), abandon all the workings of your relative consciousness (karmavijnana), which you have been cherishing since eternity; retire within your inner being and see into the reason of it.  As your self-reflection grows deeper and deeper, the moment will surely come upon you when the spiritual flower will suddenly burst into bloom, illuminating the entire universe.  The experience is incommunicable, though you yourselves know perfectly well what it is." 

This practice begins by living far away from the madding crowd and overcoming the five hindrances.  All the theoretical knowledge that we have gained it not going to help us.  It our retreat it will become, over time, an impediment.  It is a life of shape identification without ever meeting, face to face, what the countless shapes are actually composed from.  On such a foolish journey, one will never become a knower of the unmade.

Was Dōgen's teaching missing was the last Zen slogan?

In an older blog I wrote that Zen’s history tells us that Dōgen Zenji, around 1227, a former Tendai student, had studied and received transmission in China in the Caodong tradition under Zen master Tiantong Rujing who was a third-generation disciple of Zhenxie Qingliao.  All this came under the heading of a meditation called ‘silent illumination’ which was then the main practice of Caodong. 

Satisfied that he had reached enlightenment Dōgen left China in 1227 or 1228 and returned to Japan to establish the Sōtō sect曹洞宗.  But what he brought back with him from China was not a Zen based on the four slogans of Zen attributed to Bodhidharma.  They were:  

A special transmission outside the teachings,
do not depend on written words,
directly point to the human mind,
see one’s nature and become Buddha.

What Dōgen was missing was the last slogan, the critical part being “see one’s nature” 見性, which in Japanese is kenshō.

Surprisingly, the four Zen slogans don’t mention anything like silent illumination or zazen which is a physical exercise.  Authentic Zen practice takes place in the human mind not in the body that came through the birth canal. 

We learn about the meditation Dōgen learned in China from the teachings of Qingliao, of whom Dōgen’s teacher Rujing was a third-generation disciple.  He taught,

“Without taking a step you should constantly sit in your rooms and just forget about the teachings.  Be like withered wood, or a stone, or a wall, or a piece of tile, or a pebble. Cut off knowing and understanding and be naturally vacuous and completely bright. You should not make the least bit of conscious effort here” (M. Schlütter , How Zen Became Zen, 154).

Nothing is said about the mind.  Qingliao seems to be suggesting that we make our body into a lifeless thing.  But how is that anything like Siddhartha’s awakening whereby he became a Buddha?

The reason that the third Zen slogan says “directly point to the human mind” is because this is Zen’s terrain where the journey takes place.  The goal of the journey is with the sudden and complete cessation of the conditioned human mind or the same, mental activity.  This is gnosis of our true nature or essence which is unconditioned.  It's like knowing all waves are compositions of water.  This is also the state of being a Buddha or buddhatā.   

 

The counterfeit teaching

I became a Buddhist in 1965. But I know for a fact that most who study Buddhism will never become enlightened — not in this life.  Maybe in a thousand more lifetimes!  Essentially, most people edit out Buddhism’s true teaching which creates a problem that only grows worse over time.

Over these many years I have met people who think that enlightenment is realizing Voidness or a No-self.  Some believe that enlightenment is just doing zazen.  Some who have read Alan Watts believe that enlightenment is more like a joke, trying to teach us there is nothing beyond this present condition.  Just accept it.  Others believe that enlightenment is just learning how to cope with life and its difficulties.

Add to the aforementioned, a teacher of Buddhism, to make ends meet, needs students. In this financial situation enlightenment is always just around the corner.  It’s been dumbed down in other words.  So the teacher smiles a lot.  But enlightenment is not all that easy.

We live in the Dharma ending age or the same, the degenerate age. The Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment says, for example,

"Good sons, all bodhisattvas and sentient beings of the degenerate age should separate from all illusory and false realms. By firmly abiding in separation from thought, you also separate from the thought of 'illusion.' You also separate from the illusion of 'separation.' You also separate from this separation from this illusion of separation. You will reach 'nothing to be separated from,' which is the removal of all illusion. It is like making a fire with two sticks. The fire blazes and the wood is consumed; the ashes fly away and the smoke vanishes. Using illusion to remedy illusion is exactly like this. Yet even though all illusions are extinguished, you do not enter into nothingness."

Our postmodern age is the degenerate age  With such an age comes the disappearance of the true teaching of Buddhism.  This is so because a counterfeit teaching gradually arises just like a problem with real gold arises when there is a proliferation of fake gold. 

The counterfeit teaching is about generating fictions and illusions about Buddhism; then becoming deeply attached to them. It is also about holding on to our false beliefs about Buddhism refusing to accept that it is a deeply mystical and spiritual tradition which is not fettered by words and concepts but, instead, teaches the human mind to look beyond itself to the true nature of reality which is the state of Buddhahood.

Recently banned for one day

The reddit moderators sent me this DM:

This is a temporary ban as a warning. Please do not promote "oneness" or a "higher self on this subreddit", whether or not you think it is implied by the sutras.

It's quite astonishing for people who are familiar with the Pali Nikayas and Mahayana Sutras like the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra, for example, which is all about the self or atman. Here is a passage from this Sūtra:  

"The Buddha said: "O good man! "Self" means "Tathagatagarbha" [Buddha-Womb, Buddha-Embryo, Buddha-Nature]. Every being has Buddha-Nature. This is the Self."

There is nothing to be found in the Pali Nikaya where the Buddha categorically claims that there is no self which in Pali is natthattā which I hasten to add, also happens to be the doctrine of annihilationism which the Buddha rejects!  He says to Ananda,

“Had I answered, ‘There is no self (natthattā),’ this would have been siding with those ascetics and brahmins who are annihilationists” (SN 44.10). 

A contemporary of the Buddha, Ajita Kesakambali, who was one of the great annihilationists basically taught that there is no self for the reason that the person is composed of material elements and that with death all this is annihilated.  Thus, the idea of a transmigrant was out of the question whereas for the Buddha, consciousness (vijñāna) was the transmigrant that survived death.

Then the question comes up, "Who or what realizes nirvana if there is no self?"  The answer is not all that difficult.  It is the very self or in Pali paccatta what attains nirvana.

"He [thus] dwelling contemplating impermanence in those feelings, contemplating dispassion, contemplating cessation, contemplating renunciation, does not grasp at anything in the world, and not grasping he is not perturbed, not being perturbed he attains utter nibbana in his very self.  He knows ‘Destroyed is birth, lived is the holy life, done is what was to be done, there will be no more of thus-conditioned existence" (MN I.255-256).

So I am been banned for a day by the great moderators (gatekeepers) of reddit who felt I was a threat to the docile sheep who come to reddit Buddhism to post pictures of their Buddhist shrines, tell us about their depression and PTSD, and wonder if Buddhism can help them which would be much cheaper than going to a psychologist. These people are not from my generation. I am 74. I took Buddhism as my path in 1965 and have had one heck of a great adventure.  Those who visit this blog I consider part of my Buddhist family and mavericks like me.