The Zennist

Not a dualistic realization

Without consciousness (vijñāna) appearance (māyā, nāmarūpa) cannot exist.  In other words, the price of admission into our world of appearances or fantasyland is consciousness.  Without consciousness our universe and the earth on which we live and die cannot exist.  Consciousness preexists all appearance and yet it is bound down to it, unable to escape. 

In previous blogs I have gone over the fact that consciousness is always dual; it is not a universal essence or something like spirit, far from it.  If anything, it can roughly be described as the one divided within itself—a non-intrinsic illusory division.  Said again, this division is never other than unreal—an imaginary opposition.  Still it cannot be bridged even though it is illusory.  Even thinker and thought are opposed.  So here we get a taste of what Zen Buddhism is really about.

The barrier we face which prevents us from seeing what is beyond appearance is the duality inherent within consciousness.  Even the duality of realizer and realized must be transcended.  In most profound words there is only the transcendence of realizer and realized when the seeming duality contained within consciousness disappears into the original one.  The one, it turns out, has only realized itself as absolute.  But this is not a dualistic realization.  This is awakening (buddhatā).

Those who desire to awaken but cannot awaken are constantly caught within the trickery of consciousness.  This might explain why it is so difficult to explain the awakening of Siddhartha because he attained nothing determinant from it.  Nevertheless, Siddhartha transcended the illusion of non-enlightenment that consciousness produced.

Returning to the original one

The price we pay for our dualistic perception (vijñāna) is living in an infinite unreality (samsara), a life which never returns to the original one.  In other words, observer and observed, subject and object never converge back into the original one.  Also, this duality is never in harmony; there is always a tension between the two.  Their difference from each other remains unresolved.

It is only the sages or the Buddhas who close the gap; who return to the original one and transcend the unreal.  They realize that the phenomenal world which is duality based constantly emerges from the one and returns to the one.  The becoming apparent (the created )and the return (the fleeting) are the stuff of duality.  Yet, intrinsically, nothing fundamentally arises and nothing fundamentally terminates.

During the intuition of our true nature, this being kenshō, the so-called realizer and the realized disappear.  You could even say that they've returned, suddenly, to the original one.  This mystical intuition cannot be put into the framework of an object or a subject.  In the sage’s return to the ordinary dual world for the purpose of teaching, nothing about true reality can be said without situating it in the dual which is inherent in all information conveying systems.

Going a little deeper, we could be looking at reality through our imagination (the sixth sense for Buddhism) which rests upon duality.  This means that our reality is not entirely real but a figment of our collective imagination which we have concretized/reified and emotionally loaded.  From this, philosophy and religion could be about how to live and survive in an imaginary world.  On the other hand, true religion could be how to realize the absolute one that is not imaginary, thus freeing oneself.

An illusory difference

In Buddhism, our English word consciousness is used to translate vijñāna.  It misses the mark completely.  Vijñāna means lit. in two parts knowing.  In Buddhism, it is a kind of antinomy which is more like a difference in the One from itself which is an illusory difference. 

In order to create and live in a virtual world vijñāna is necessary.  It is, so to speak, the price of admission.  It is responsible for our rebirth into a virtual world.  We would not be here today if it were not for this consciousness.

To keep us in this virtual world what is diabolically important to believe, we have one life and after we die that's it.  And here we come to Zen Buddhism in which intuition plays a prominent role in leaping beyond the confines of consciousness—a return to the One which is hidden from those deeply attached to consciousness. 

In perfect kenshō or gnosis realizer and realized disappear (so do the experiencer and experience) into the One or absolute Spirit.  This means that the illusory difference within the One which creates a virtual world has disappeared.  One learns how the magical trick is accomplished thereby breaking the magical spell.

Ordinary person Zen

The transcendent is beyond the road of thought and the road of words.  Such roads eventually run out of road.  This is where the road of Zen or the same, the road of intuition begins, but it's not an ordinary dirt road.  In fact, it is not a road of at all in the usual sense.  It begins when all of the roads have come to their end.

Upon reading these words, the average Zen student will still take the road of thought and the road of words.  But the end of these roads leads to a dead end with no more signs or directions.  Wandering around aimlessly is no way either.  On such a trek one can say they are exploring.  But what does that mean?  The Zen student is really lost with no sense of fulfillment.  He or she is running out of ideas:  There are no real options left. 

This is what comes from the practice of ordinary person Zen 凡夫禪 (bompu Zen).  These are people who have very little spiritual depth; who lack intuition (dhyāna).  Such people have no idea what it means to arrive at direct knowledge without reasoning or inferring, which in the case of Zen is direct knowledge of Buddha-nature.

Still, it must be said that there are different types of Zen because there are different kinds of people with differing abilities.  In fact, this is a typical beginner’s mistake:  to think that Zen is Zen and that when you visit a temple you're talking to enlightened people.  Nevertheless, it could be a situation in which you are a fool amongst educated fools.  One should never underestimate one's stupidity or overestimate one's abilities. 

When the student of Zen knows he or she has run out of road, or comes to a dead end, that is the time when Zen really begins (because they are engaging with themselves intrapersonally).  In their heart of hearts they still love Zen Buddhism but they realize that they are getting no place in this particular tradition.

Removing a brick from the wall

From a Buddhist perspective the human being is over-preoccupied with their imagination which Buddhists regard as the 6th sense or manas.  This also includes the intellect which creates a world of ideas and concepts which fundamentally depend upon the thinking/generation of thought. 

All this acts as something like a prison in which the human being is located within.  Psychedelic drugs might help us face this wall which is more illusory than we imagine.  But ultimately we face the thought-made-wall with our thought.  We cannot pass through.  We are forever born and re-born inside this prison.  For Buddhists this is called samsara.

But most of us have heard of the word nirvana.  But what is nirvana?  Is it a kind of passive nihilism?  Could nirvana be like a hole in the thought-made-wall:  the disappearance of a single brick?  But what happens when a brick is no longer there?  What the wall hides is now revealed.  What comes pouring in through that hole, where a brick once was, is the pure light of spirit.

Many today are seeking while confined in ignorance (lost in error).  After all, this wall of thought is a kind of limiting ignorance.  All may even wish to understand.  Still, they only have the eyes of fish who can see everything in their watery world with the exception of the water they are in.  For the one who truly sees (a Buddha), those who are unawakened have eyes not fully open yet they appear open. 

We should not underestimate the power of the imagination or the manas.   The absolute or pure unformed spirit is contained (thoroughly hidden and must be uncovered) in the imagination while, at the same time, from the perspective of the sage, imagination is included within the absolute.

Going beyond thought

Intelligence plus intuition does not account for the intellect but it works for the Zen mind/wisdom.  The intellect lacks intuition.  It can only deal in ideas and concepts (it tends to be analytical in that regards).  While an intellectual may be brilliant he or she still has not managed to get beyond Mumon's barrier, that is, Mu.  Mu represents thought where thought is the great barrier that all Zen practitioners must face. 

Foremost, thought is a barrier to spirit.  It is what the Zen adepts must confront on the path.  During this confrontation, for intuition to be successful, thought must spontaneously dissolve on its own returning back to unconditioned absolute spirit or the same, pure Mind.  In Zen this is our original face (本來面目) where thought has not yet been formed.

Throughout the literature of Zen Buddhism there is a constant reference to this spirit in which there is no thought.  Interestingly, spirit can become congealed into thought but thought is never spirit.  Thought is never other than an illusion created from spirit. 

In the study of Zen we must break the habit of looking for this spirit by means of thought.  But most all Zen students haven't even come to this milestone.  They are still trying to put Zen's mystery into a particular thought.  But such an endeavor is always doomed to failure.

Zen has a history of being clever when it comes to bringing the student to spirit where thought is spontaneously dissolved; where only spirit remains.  But this assumes certain things the most fundamental being that the Zen teacher must be awakened.  Lacking an awakened teacher one must go into solitude cutting off their ties with the outer interpersonal world, transcending the overarching dyad of subject and object through intuition.

Imagination is in control and wants to stay in power

Our five senses and our power of judgment are more or less controlled by our imagination (manas) which happens to be the sixth sense in Buddhism.  The imagination sort of fills in the gaps where there is no reliable sensory data.  An example of this is when imagination is tied to architecture.  Mankind can build great cities and create a virtual but, nevertheless, practical world where humans can live and feel safe. 

To be sure, we can erect fictional worlds for the sake of survival when it is necessary to do so.  In other words, for practical purposes we have to accept certain kinds of fictions as if they are non-fictional reality.  But overtime the difference between fiction and reality loses its distinction.  We can no longer tell fiction from fact.  The full impact of our imagination now engulfs and controls us. 

Imagination’s various trends and fashions, including popular thought, or popular ideology, are not the exceptions but the rule.  The imagination is in control and wants to stay in power even if it means it will lead to chaos and the downfall of all.  To break the control of the imagination takes great skill.  It is not easy to do.  Guarding the imagination are the emotions which are fierce and bewitching.

Mind as spirit (citta) is certainly hidden and entangled with the imagination.  It is like a prisoner trying to escape.  Surprisingly, with the death of this illusory body and spirit’s rebirth (paṭisandhi-citta), also known as gandharva (P., gandhabba), it has no choice, or so it seems, but to follow the course of its downward fate. 

As we can see the purification of citta or spirit is essential since it is defiled having been mixed up with the imagination.  The minimum defilement of spirit is a thought.  Here we come to Zen's no-thought in Zen.  This is when the adept experiences freedom from the imagination and all that comes with it.

A continuity abides in all sentient beings

If we look deep enough within ourselves there seems to be an absolute continuity which abides in all sentient beings despite their differences from each other, including death (yes, this continuity surpasses death).  There are many names for it such as soul, One Mind, pure Mind, Buddha-nature, ātman, Spirit, or God (theos) or Christ. 

That we cannot conceive of this continuity with thought or by conceptualizing it, is to be expected according to the great mystics like Siddhartha.  Still, we try to do it which turns into religion, philosophy and metaphysics.  Here, we are using thought as an equivalent of the unthinkable and inconceivable. 

Thought is useful for our imagination which can be used to make a virtual world (ancient Rome, Paris, London or St. Petersburg are good examples) which we fall prey to in the sense of attaching to this architecture when there is nothing fundamentally real to attach to.

Ultimate reality is always found in this continuity although very few get that far so as to have direct knowledge of it.  Everything else is an appearance which is transitory, which is the snare of suffering, and is not real.  But we are already entangled in this snare during rebirth.  Joy is short-lived while suffering is long-term.

Religions like Buddhism and Christianity offer mankind an escape from the world of appearance.  But this escape usually becomes only hope which is just another kind of appearance (even secular progress rests upon hope). 

If there is any kind of escape it has to be direct intuition or gnosis of ultimate reality hidden in this continuity which entails a process of negation of all appearance including thought, upon which our human world is based.  And since there is nothing higher than ultimate reality there is no way to see it except to merge with it, completely.  This mergence, the noun, is absolute knowing but nontransferable (mergence cannot be transferred by teacher to student).

Deciding which way to go

There is so much mystery in Zen Buddhism that those who read and study it do so rely on a contemporary standpoint.  But it is almost impossible that Zen should speak for itself through modern ideas and various contemporary meanings we give to Zen’s words.  We have only ourselves to look into to begin to find the portal or the same the path of Zen.  Ultimately, Zen wants us to look within. 

The more we look within, there is a more subtle world to be examined but this examination is not about looking at something other than the onlooker.  The fundamental difference between the onlooker and the examined is precisely zero.  It is somewhat like saying the difference between thought and extension is precisely zero.  Still, we do not understand how there can be this zero difference.

Zen will suggest to us that this zero difference is spirit or absolute Mind before it becomes manifest as thought and extension.  Thus, in essence, there is zero difference.  At this point, what the adept is missing is the direct experience of spirit, itself, which is unthinkable and infinite.

Faced with a lack of experience, the Zen adept must either fish or cut bait.  The adept must either take up the more difficult mind, the religious mind, which works by direct intuition or gnosis, or take up the ecclesiastical mind which is observant and intellectual.  Most who come to this crossroad either consciously or unconsciously choose to go with the ecclesiastical mind.  It is here that the practitioner comes to see Zen as   consisting of robes, ceremonies and rituals, and seated meditation or zazen—and an institutional enlightenment.

The dualizing work of consciousness

If it is true as Dr. Donald Hoffman suggests in his book titled, The Case Against Reality, that matter and spacetime arise from consciousness, then what are we to make of this consciousness from a Buddhist perspective? 

The English word consciousness is often used in Buddhism to translate vijñāna.  Does consciousness work?  No, I don't think it does.  It leaves out something very important in vijñāna which is the dualizing work of consciousness itself:  there always has to be separation between subject and object as implied with the prefix “vi”.

It hardly ever dawns on the human mind, or maybe I should say human consciousness, that it is always looking at the world in two parts, that his, subject and object, or if you prefer, observer and observed.  During satori or enlightenment this duality is transcended.  The adept goes back to original, non-duality, or advaya.

Any trace of an ‘other’ or object is gone; there is no subject either.  In about 1/10 of a second duality has gone back into the original state.  In Zen we might call it One Mind or pure spirit or pure Mind.  In light of this, thought, which brings with it duality (thinker and thought) only serves to falsify and distort the original state which is absolute, inexpressible, and  indeterminate.  It transcends every kind of thought, thought being only a construction of spirit or the same, the One Mind.