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. 

On the transcendence of the experiencer and the experience

There is a longing in the human heart for truth.  For most people it is hardly detectable.  For others like the Buddha, truth is better expressed as spirit which animates all creatures where in mankind finds itself hidden and overwhelmed by sensory experiences, the mightiest of which is the imagination.  Even birth and death are contained within the imagination so encompassing is its seeming power.

Yet, for all the experiences which have been shaped by the imagination they are still illusory, that is, māyā.  Without exception all illusions are conditioned which the unenlightened take to be real so that they are induced to cling to them. 

We might even say that all illusions are experiences and all experiences are illusions.  These experiences in Buddhism fall into five modes or patterns, viz., form, sensation, perception, volitional formations, and consciousness.  But truly they are illusory and empty.

We further believe these modes rest on a subjective experiencer upon which all things or phenomena are grounded.  With this subjectivity man thinks to have theoretical mastery over the world.  For man this is the highest truth but it is also the highest delusion.

However, the subjective experiencer can never become one with the object being experienced (the great delusion).  Fundamentally, all experiencing remains dual resting on subject and object, observer and observed, experiencer and experienced.

Buddhism's sublime teaching is founded on the transcendence of the experiencer and the experience, only then does one arrive at the original one before the split.  Only with the sudden dropping away of the experiencer and and experience is the truth finally revealed.  Then one returns to the experiencer and the experience. From that position the experiencer knows the limit; knows the utter impossibility of experiencing the absolute as an experiencer.

Letting go of our way of thinking

Zen is trying to tell us that real intuition happens when we abandon the kind of thinking that created the problem in the first place.  This is especially true with koans.  They trap us into relying on our typical way of thinking that creates the problem.  Ultimately, the only way to solve the koan is to let go of that thinking.

Koans are either good or not so good depending on whether or not they engage us into relying on our typical way of thinking which we, ultimately, must learn to transcend.  It is like we have this illness that doesn't get any better.  In fact, everything that we do only prolongs the illness and in some cases makes it even worse.  The antidote that Zen proposes is to drop the way of thinking which keeps making this illness. 

Part of accomplishing this requires deep immersion.  This process doesn't require much explanation except that one has to be involved in trying to answer the koan.  Pretending to answer it by marathon sitting or other theatrical means will not work.  Zen wants the snake to devour itself.  The old ways of thinking must suddenly stop.

When the old ways of thinking suddenly stop there is no subject or object, no experiencer or experience.  Consciousness (vijñāna) suddenly comes to a halt.  We become the Buddha-nature suddenly and unexpectedly.

looking in the wrong places

When we look at our life from the inside it is certainly transitory and more tragic if not painful in the long run.  And in our journey of life we find nothing called a soul or self or the atman.  What we once thought was our self always turned out to be not our self.

But from this life did we learn the right lessons?  I think it is safe to say that we did not.  Neither did we find God or some kind of absolute.  And why?  Because we looked in all the wrong places.  As the Buddha pointed out long ago we looked into the conditioned to find the unconditioned.  We also looked into what is not the atman to find the atman.

Are we really that dumb, I mean, did we look in the wrong places?  Again, I will have to say yes.  The problem that Zen has always had to face is how does it correct people so they look in the right places for their atman or true self?  This atman is not to be found in material shape, feeling, perception, volitional formations or within consciousness.  And certainly not within the senses either which includes mentation (manas).

Yet, when the Zen student is presented with the idea of nirvana, that is, the unconditioned and no-thought (the unthinkable) the first thing they do is try to think about it, or construe it in a certain way that they can grasp it with the imagination.  But this is only a copy, not the real McCoy.  Zen, I am forced to say, does not often point to the right place.  And when it does, few directly apprehend what is being pointed to.

A lot of what Zen teaches us is how to overcome our self-inflicted errors.  But this is only hinted at — in fact, it is given in such a way that it requires intuition to solve the problem.  Interestingly, it is only intuition that has access to Zen's path.

Realizing the unimaginable

There are two questions we are reluctant to spend much time dwelling on.  There is the questions of what were we before we were born and what are we after we die?  Naturally, we are asking these questions from the position of having already been born and we are still not dead.  But what if these questions could all be answered from the perspective of imagination? 

In other words, what if imagination is not limited by either birth or death but is, so to speak, the theater in which births and deaths occur but also rebirth?  As for first-person experience of this I think near death experiences (NDEs) are pretty impressive. 

The infinite universe of imagination is difficult to fully grasp but not too difficult for us to assume that we are always reborn into an imaginary condition.  This could also mean that the very stuff from which the imaginary is built remains ever unimaginable despite the fact that it is very real and authentic.

It is also to be understood that this infinite universe of imagination is a bad infinite universe insofar as we are unable to escape from it.  This is to say, in other words, we must remain in it without any hope of finding a way out.  If there is any idea of a heaven in such a world it would be the loss of our memory of how long we have been trapped in it.  Every life would seem to be the first time and be the last time upon death.

I think all of this expresses the Buddhist idea of saṃsāra and also nirvana which is beyond the ken of saṃsāra.  This reminds me of what Nagarjuna said:  The ultimately true nature of the Tathagata eternally stays.  The world of imagination is constantly changing, it never stays eternally.  We only transcend the world of imagination when we intuit our true nature.

The problem that everyone sooner than later faces

The pressures we feel remind us that the world has its problems and so does our life we have been living since birth.  But being young and healthy keeps us optimistic in most cases.  I am feeling happy what could go wrong?  The problem that everyone sooner than later faces is what do you do when reality finally confronts you with the finitude of your life?

For some of us it is a wake up call; for many others it adds up to a kind of ongoing depression that becomes more difficult to live through.

For some of us this wake-up call leads to religion or studying Buddhism while for many others they become more or less addicted to sex, drugs and alcohol.  What all these routes have in common is they rely on hope and the imagination.  But what if there is a place we all fear to go to when even hope and our imagination must be transcended?

In the final analysis, Buddhism prepares us to go to this place after our large net of hope and imagination fail to catch the big fish!  But to get to this place we must first have a great deal of hope and a good imagination.  We must keep casting our net over these waters again, and again until one day we accidentally fall down becoming entangled in our net.

So that we don’t deceive ourselves we must go through this last process in solitude, like a hermit.  It is a desolate world where self-deception does not triumph and is easily seen through.  Forsaking all hope and the imagined, only then can we become open to the singular way.  Maybe one night we see what truly lies beyond the burning house.

Enlightenment stopped by consciousness?

The Buddha taught that the false self (the self of the five aggregates) is not our true self.  But then how does a Buddha wean people off of their attachment to the false self?  The simple answer is not easily!  Culture with its dominant assumptions prevails, many of which act as a barrier to finding our self.

While it is true that the Buddha taught us to abandon desire for whatever is not the self, namely, the five aggregates, this is not enough to take us to the other shore which is never other than unconditioned.  Our attachment to the false self remains strong. 

Regrettably, the interpretations of modern Buddhism have shifted the Buddha’s message to the belief that he taught that there is no self.  Just reject the self that's all you need to do.  It's just a construct.  But he never said to reject or abandon the self.  He said, more precisely, abandon desire for whatever is not the self.

The truth of human life is that it is a grand illusion from which we have been unable to find an escape.  Death is no more than the passage from one illusion to another.  A continuity of consciousness exists which the Buddha says is like a magician’s illusion.  The continuity of consciousness also guarantees a subject and object duality which is inimical to enlightenment.

The central problem that we face is not the problem of self, whether or not it is real or just a construct, but the problem of consciousness or vijñāna. It guarantees the continuity of this life to yet another life and many more. 

What enlightenment is really all about is overcoming this consciousness thus being able to converge, directly, with the true self.  This process is always stopped by the imposition of consciousness which splits and distorts the original one into subject and object which then beholds a pluralized illusory World.

Transcending misidentification

Fundamentally, what Buddhism is trying to tell us is that who we really are cannot be found within the psychophysical being, that is, the five aggregates (P., pañcakkhandha).  Our search in other words will be in vain.  It is only with the transcendence of the psychophysical being that one returns home, so to speak, and finds their true identity.  All the rest is misidentification.

Transcending misidentification, however, is no easy task.  It cannot be accomplished through the intellect or by the imagination.  These are the only tools we have or are aware of.  Delusion is our world.  Who we are is who we are not.  We are constantly deceiving ourselves.  It is like we have the sense of making forward progress but we're only going around in a circle.

All this is implicit in the literature of Buddhism although at first it doesn't seem like it.  In our eagerness to understand Buddhism we often misread it.  The Buddha’s message gets mixed up with our own expectations of what we imagine Buddhism to be.  In other words, we don’t read Buddhism with an open mind.

For Buddhism, a human being is illusory or void in the sense that it is comprised of the five aggregates (form, feeling, perception, volitional formations, and consciousness).  These aggregates can be characterized as impermanent, suffering, and without a self.  In this light, nirvana is the transcendence of these aggregates; logically, the awakening to our true nature or self. 

One must consider also that this transcendence includes the transcendence of subject and object or the same the experiencer and the experienced.  Enlightenment or awakening is not a matter of me experiencing the absolute.  It is really a matter of me transcending myself and its journey to experience what it imagines the absolute is.  You in the absolute become single for about 1/10th of a second!  

Caught in the trap of this consciousness

It seems paradoxical to say this but desire for conditioned things and desire for enlightenment (the unconditioned) are virtually the same.  How is this so?  Suffice it to say that according to Buddhism we operate in a world of duality that is subject-object consciousness or vijñāna.

The average seeker is really seeking, if you can picture this, with a butterfly net trying to catch air.  This seeker is having no success because the seeker’s imagination holds onto the belief that air is something the butterfly net can trap.

Buddhism will say that we cannot seek the unconditioned with subject-object consciousness.  Enlightenment is not an experience for the experiencer or knowledge for a knower.  We are still stuck in a dualizing  mode.  Still stuck in Samsara.  Without the transcendence of this dualizing consciousness we cannot hope for an escape.

A brief aside, most of us recall the the Ten Oxherding Pictures (十牛圖) that were first popularized in China during the Song Dynasty.  What is significant here is that one of the stages is a circle in which oxherder and the ox have both disappeared.  In other words, the Zennist has converged with the primordial one so that there is no duality left.  The other term for this convergence is samādhi.

Returning to the one (P., ekatta) is always possible but the chances are zero if we go by way of our dualistic consciousness or vijñāna.  At some point in our spiritual career we must confront this duality which is in Zen called the great doubt 大疑.

Of course, it almost goes without saying, but our passion/desire for life is our greatest obstacle.  Facing this, we modern people always try to meet the challenge by serving God and mammon at the same time (appearing outwardly moral but craving wealth and power on the inside). 

This dualistic consciousness is also diabolical.  It always betrays us.  Even our immature hope that death will clear our sins away betrays us.  Even when we think to our self, well, I will just let go of this dualistic consciousness.  We are caught in the trap of this consciousness.  Paradoxically, we cannot grab the object or fully let go of the subject.  A path of intuition is the only answer by which we transcends both subject and object suddenly.

A book, The Secret Of Zen

Back in the early 60s, if I went into a bookstore in Berkeley or San Francisco and bought a D.T. Suzuki book about Zen I might pay close to $3 for the paperback book.  In today's money the same book would be $26!  For all that money whether in the 60s or 2021 Zen still remains incomprehensible for the vast majority of people who buy books about Zen.  Even the translations, no matter how accurate they are and close to the original, most remain incomprehensible for the majority of the curious.

Since 2007 I have endeavored to write about Zen in The Zennist blog from my own awakening back in 1969.  Notice, that I used the word “about” which means for me an approach through language to the exactness of my intuition.  My endeavor has not be an educated guess or a probe into the unknown to find Zen’s truth.  Far from it.  My word-arrows always hit the target.  It is just that the target remains invisible and incomprehensible for the many!  Yes, my arrows are clearly visible for all to see except for the target.

For the last three years or so I've been working on a book.  I had amassed a considerable amount of quotes from the Buddha’s discourses including  quotes from Zen masters.  But these quotes were not intended so much for a book as they were proof that what I was saying about Buddhism and Zen from my own awakening were in fact true. 

When I wrote the book I found it unnecessary to do much quoting.  I already understood where Zen and for that matter Buddhism was coming from.  The book in a way expresses what I would want to be told by a great teacher where the second part of the book is about my personal journey into the mysterious land of Zen where lies its secret.

With the help of Otomo, an old student of some 17 years, the book, The Secret of Zen was recently put on the Amazon's Kindle and Books.  There might be a few errors here and there but the bulk of the book stands ready to read and enjoy.   I really hope that the reader will one day be able to see the target that I look at every day and find no problem hitting the bullseye.

The transition from the exoteric to the esoteric

It may be true that Zen Buddhism is something that we can teach ourself but that doesn't mean it is easy to learn.  It's like teaching oneself mountain climbing.  The transition from reading about mountain climbing to actually climbing a mountain can be very dangerous.  In fact, the odds are that our big climb will only be a foothill.

The greatest risk that a person encounters in Zen Buddhism is their innate capacity to delude themselves about its meaning.  This can be accomplished in a number of different ways from going to a bad teacher, to listening to bad advice or misreading Zen literature recontextualizing it to meet with our expectations.  But with any learning curve there is difficulty, this means failure is always more likely than less likely.

Add to this the fact that many of us don't have the ability to rise up from our failures.  Instead, we hunker down and try to make the best of our failures.  But at the back of our mind we know that we haven't got what it takes to overcome our setback.  We want sympathy from others knowing full well that we cannot sympathize even with our own reasons for the setback. 

Most of us hope that with a minimum of effort we can accomplish the goal of Zen being satisfied that we have completed its path.  But this is little more than wishful thinking — enlightenment on the cheap.  Zen requires much more of us if we are going to overcome the barriers which keep us from enlightenment.  The real problem then becomes not so much from the outside (exoteric) but our own ability to take a profound look at the inside (esoteric).  It is really on the inside that the path of Zen begins.  This is not to say that the path is only subjective but rather it is to say to the Zen student, Zen is intuitive.