The Zennist

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.

Using the intellect to solve koans doesn't help answer them

For Zennists who read and study koans (公案) the most obvious feature of a koan is that it cuts off what the intellect (manas) wants to do which is to unravel their seeming complexity.  But this is not all. 

Also koans allude to something transcendent which calls for an intuitive approach.  The transcendent is called in Chinese the huatou (話頭) which alludes to the ‘real substance of the universe’ or the ‘first principle’.  In short, the huatou is pure Mind before it takes the shape of thought (manas).

Those who insist on using their intellect to solve koans are getting no place.  If they have been working on one koan or several for five or ten years their intellect is not helping them.  It is an obstruction.  Joshu’s “Mu” is like bait for the intellect but also an obstruction called the “barrier of Zen.”  But every koan is, in fact, such a barrier.  Not only does every koan bait the intellect but the koan’s real goal is to exhaust the intellect—throw it into great doubt, paving the way for an intuitive breakthrough.

From the koan ‘Hyakujõ's Fox’, to koans like ‘Gutei Raises a Finger’, ‘Kyõgen's Man up in a Tree,’and the mysterious, ‘The Buddha Holds Out a Flower’ koans are bait designed to trap and destroy the intellectual approach to answering the koan. 

Having said that, I think Nietzsche would agree that a koan is a bait which man’s intellect cannot resist swallowing!  And for over a thousand years many have swallowed this bait to no avail only to be caught, cooked, and served on the plate of samsara.

Even those who warn the students of Zen that the intellect will not solve a single koan are either ignored or scoffed at.  But all this just serves to focus on the problem of our attachment to approaching Zen through the intellect rather than by intuition. 

Our problem is not unlike Alexander the Great’s frustration, who was challenged to solve the puzzle of the Gordian knot which bound a wagon's yoke to a pole with a large complex knot of vine twig without visible ends.  Almost at once, seeing the knot was virtually impossible for him to untie Alexander, perhaps by a spark of intuition, slashed the knot in two with his sword.

One of my favorite koans takes place when the monks assembled before the midday meal to listen to a lecture by Hõgen of Seiryõ.  He pointed at some bamboo blinds.  Two monks got up and rolled up the blinds.  Hõgen said, "One gain, one loss.”

Yes, this is great bait.  Try to resist it.  You can’t.  Explain it using your intellect.  You still have some doubt.

The right moment for kenshō

The adept in seeking enlightenment or kenshō, always mistakes the real absolute for a conceived absolute (one by way of mentation).  In other words, the adepts is mistaking a conceived ‘copy’ for the real thing.  Frustrated, eventually, the adept gives up their search and becomes a Buddhist scholar (just kidding). 

The adept’s very thoughts with which he seeks kenshō are neither the absolute nor unconditioned which makes the search seem almost too difficult if not absurd.  Still, the adept is not alienated from the unconditioned.  Kenshō is always possible but unlikely for those of little faith and even less courage to continue.

Looking within, the very source of our conditioned thoughts with which we seek kenshō, is unconditioned.  It has many names from pure Mind to Buddha-nature.  Yet, we can’t get behind it to be aware of it.  All we’re aware of and seem to know is our thinking which is not unconditioned—short of kenshō.  The fact remains, only the conditioned arises and is manifest appearing in front of us.  Defining the ‘conditioned’, the Buddha said, “an arising is manifest, a passing away is manifest and an otherwise-ness (contrast) in the persisting is manifest” (AN I.152).  If we have done a lot of meditation—yep, that’s self-evident.  We are never other than in the presence of the conditioned which is fungible with saṃsāra.

Yet, not only Siddhartha but a few Zen masters managed to attain kenshō.  Unexpectedly and suddenly, they beheld (i.e., intuited) the unconditioned.  To be sure, it was beyond the pale of the six senses and the five aggregates.

So, how did they do it?  They had faith in three things.  The first, is the faith that deep within them lies the very source of the conditioned which is absolutely unconditioned.  The second, is to recognize the conditioned which includes even the most subtle thoughts; never rely on the conditioned.  The third, only when one has thoroughly gone to their wits’ end as far as seeking the unconditioned with the conditioned is there the right moment for kenshō.

Do not mistake a ring or a bracelet for gold

Various conceptualizations or patterns of thought, including thought, are really shapes of spirit or Mind.  But wise Buddhists whose spiritual depth is great do not mistake shape for the substance or the actual content, itself, which is shapeless and most primordial.

We would not mistake a 'ring' or a 'bracelet' (i.e., shapes) for gold (the substance).  The world of the manas (the sixth sense) is never other than thought-shapes. Thought, including our everyday thoughts, cannot take us to dharmatā, i.e., what Siddhartha intuited, directly.

We can say that dharmatā (essence, inherent nature) is outside of texts which is covered by the second verse of the Zen quatrain which is: do not depend on written words (不立文字 ).  We have to aim for direct intuition or gnosis of dharmatā.

So a time comes in the life of every devoted student when they become overwhelmed by the various shapes of thought.  Still, they haven’t come close to realizing spirit or dharmatā.  But have their teachers forewarned them that even a single thought is still hiding dharmatā?  How is this thought-shape stripped away?  With more thought?

More and more thought (the process of thinking) leads to discursiveness.  But the intuitive, which is opposed to the discursive, does not function by formulating abstract concepts and then arguing on this basis to a conclusion which is the way discursiveness works.  Enlightenment is attained by means of immediate intuition.  Nagarjuna, in his Mahāprajñāpāramitaśāstra, says that “non-discursiveness is the seal of the Dharma (dharmamudrā)”.

Zen's superficial believers

Does convincing evidence always have to come before our belief (most likely it doesn’t)?  Or does our belief come first followed by our search for evidence?  Or maybe our belief, at this point, is just an evidentless trust that our belief is true. 

It seems, or should seem obvious, that belief is a kind of immediate certitude that is limited and uncritically accepted, but still can be easily changed or even, stubborningly, resist change.  The worthiness of evidence may not be all that critical in the beginning of belief.   

As to the ‘belief holder’ they are seldom addressed or even asked the reasons for their particular belief, for example, “Why do you believe that when you die that's it — no postmortem survival?”  Or another example, “Why do you believe that Mary loves you Paul?  You had a few drinks with her at the tavern; she kissed you on the cheek — so what?”  Such beliefs can leave the belief holder searching for words.

Turning to Buddhism, belief in it usually comes to the average person as more of a hypothesis, something proposed to be believed in but not yet believed in.  More study is needed to accept the tenets of Buddhism which might not be fully understood, properly.  On the other hand, a college class on Zen, for example, might make one curious enough to begin to believe that Zen is about a special kind of gnostic awakening (this is what happened to me).

Marketing Buddhism or Zen to the public is more about the acceptance of a special kind of hypothesis that demands a different way of living and viewing the world.  Much of what is proposed amounts to a not-so-apparent-argument against the present day culture in defense of Buddhism, although it may not seem like it. 

Most likely many people are not happy with nihilism: the overall meaninglessness of their everyday life that will tragically end in death.  They want to try something else, for example,  Maybe I should learn how to meditate.  Sounds good.  How many will stop here believing in seated meditation but advance no further?  My guess, many.

The real difficulty is to get these superficial believers to see that Zen is not really about sitting and meditating but coming into direct contact with the animative principle of life this being Spirit or Mind which is undying.  In the words of Bodhidharma:

“Everyone wants to see this mind, and those who move their hands and feet by its light are as many as the grains of the sand along the Ganges, but when you ask them, they can't explain it.  They're like puppets.  It's theirs to use.  Why do they not see it?”

Lots of people believe in Buddhism or Zen but few believe deeper, that enlightenment can be personally achieved.  They go to a certain point then stop.  They are not interested in the teaching found in the Lankavatara Sutra, the Avatamsaka Sutra, or the Lotus Sutra which is an enlightenment greater than sitting on a zafu for forty minutes, maybe less.  They have other beliefs that do not accord with Buddhism.

The genius path: learning to hit a target no one can see

Today’s main problem with Buddhism and Zen is people are not clear as to what, exactly, Buddhism and its scion Zen are aiming at.  It seems to be like Schopenhauer’s genius target which no one can see but which geniuses like Siddhartha and others like him claim to have hit!

The public’s belief (those who are interested in Buddhism) is that something can be conveyed to them by which their lives can be made better.  But this is not true.  First of all Buddhism is fully a mystical path.  This takes us back to Schopenhauer’s genius target (it is also a mystical target).  Buddhism is about hitting it.  It is only a coincidence that Buddhism helps people.  It is really only designed for mystical geniuses.  And yes, the Buddha was a genius and an elitist. 

The Buddha made a sharp distinction between the worldly (the pṛthagjana) and those whose vision was capable of going beyond the world—hitting that invisible target.  This was the ārya-pudgala, the noble person who was on the spiritual path; who might be a stream-winner, a once-returner, a non-returner, or an arhat. 

Such people belonged to the triple-jewel sangha which made no distinction between men or women, lay or monastic since it was wholly spiritual.  In other words, it was not the monastic sangha or a Buddhist or Zen center which is for the worldly persons seeking liberation.

Until teachers tell the truth about Buddhism; that it teaches a mystical path Buddhist traditions like Zen will only become more confusing.  Eventually, like Christianity, Buddhism will become anyone’s opinion.  Enlightenment, that is, the attaining of nirvana will be something akin to a dead letter that has lost its intended meaning or purpose without being formally abolished.

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.