The Zennist

Allowing ideology to creep into Zen

I have been around westernized Zen since ’65.  There have been changes in this Zen.  One example, there are a lot more translations of Zen texts and many more academic papers on various aspects of Zen such as koans.  That is good.  But then there are not so good changes in which the core principles of Zen are dying out.  Zen centers and those who staff them have, over the years, allowed ideology to creep into Zen in the form of postmodernism.  This  certainly acts to overshadow the religious character of Zen which teaches Zen students how to find their true nature by means of intuition which, incidentally, takes a great deal of effort and commitment.

As a consequence, these Zen centers over the years have also turned into something like an outpatient clinic for those suffering from the negative symptoms of postmodernism, postmodernism amounting to an updated version of skepticism, and all this implies, which sets out to destabilize anything it can get its hands on without setting up a positive theory of its own.  This also includes the destabilization of even one's self-identity in which people become aimless and unhappy most of the time finding little or no meaning in their lives.  If postmodernism were a flag it would consist of three colors representing materialism, nihilism and ideology.

Because of postmodernism, authentic Zen is nowhere to be found in a Zen center these days.  In the meantime, westerners are of the opinion that Zen is non-religious, doesn’t require much commitment or effort except to sit in meditation once in a while expecting, over time, to become happier as a result.  

Even for those who decide to become Zen priests, they don’t often speak of kenshō or satori, if at all, because it’s something they haven’t attained.  Still they like to spread the mystique of Zen which then becomes something closer to the absurd insofar as what is taught by them is more confusing than insightful.

Resolving the puzzlement of Zen

Zen is not an interaction between a teacher and a student that is supposed to resolve the puzzlement of the student when it comes to things like koans or the strange gestures of enlightened beings as when the cook Weishan shook the door panel three times to demonstrate his Buddha wisdom. 

It’s simply a fact in Zen that the strange puzzlement about what Zen is really pointing to has to be personally resolved within the student.  As the Zen literature shows us, the student suddenly awakens to a reality completely different from the one he or she is used to being a part of. 

In this Zen environ, the teacher is only guiding the student to the student’s own inner world where words and concepts have their termination.  One cannot, in a conventional sense, go any further. Nevertheless, there is still more.  This is entry into Zen’s world. The teacher is helping the student to see the challenge they really face as regards Zen.

What goes on between the student’s ears is a world of thoughts which they have taken for granted.  The thoughts are always there but they are also always changing—never the same.  The student has to be taught by the teacher that the awareness of their own mental activity is the unawakened condition.  In other words, the student has never been aware of a sudden break with thought—a sudden and absolute halt if you like—in which even awareness itself disappears so that what is left is what in some circles of Buddhism is called the One Mind or the luminous Mind.

In this Mind there is no subject and object, no observer and observed, no awareness of other, and so on.  The two have returned, suddenly, to the original one which is indescribable and transcendent in every respect.  You can’t even get behind it.

The second and different reality

The awakening of Siddhartha whereby he became a Buddha, meaning one who is awakened, carries with it the suggestion of not only awaking from the dream of samsara but also awakening to a new reality that was not there before or seemed not to be there.  Just what this new reality was that Siddhartha came to realize, only a Buddha knows.  The rest of us can only speculate, trying to pull his awakening down into something we already know.  The more honest among us can only say that Siddhartha awakened to ultimate reality which is beyond the knowledge of mortals.  Schopenhauer offered perhaps one the best views for such an awakening.

“When we wake up from a dream that vividly affects us, it is not so much its disappearance (which convinces us of its emptiness) as the discovery of a second reality which lays concealed under that (of the dream) so deeply stirring us, and which now emerges.  We really all have a lasting divination or presentiment that also under this reality in which we live and are there lies hidden a second and different reality.  It is the thing-in-itself, the ΰπαρ (reality proper) to this όυαρ (the present life’s dream).”

For us, our present reality is treated as if it were the supreme standard by which to judge all other possible realities.  Few act towards it as if it were a dream  We catch a glimpse of what it means to question our supreme standard of reality when we look at NDEs (Near Death Experiences).  These experiences are still treated with some degree of skepticism by big science which is always trying to defend materialism, especially, that consciousness and what we are as humans is brain produced.  NDEs are a major problem for a materialist culture since they indicate the probability of postmortem survival.

Schopenhauer’s “second reality” is what, not only, the Buddha is teaching ,which is implicit in this doctrine to anyone with an open mind, but it is also what Zen’s kenshō is about.  The discovery of this reality is quite astonishing to say the least.  In fact words totally fail.  They are like throwing eggs at a steel door to force it open!

Zen is not about sitting it's about intuition

It is true that there has always been a close association between Chan/Zen 禪 and meditation (whatever that term means in Zen's context).  But is the original term dhyāna, which the words Chan/Zen are meant to represent, just an exercise in crosslegged sitting that appears in most Buddhist traditions translated as meditation?  Why should the physical posture matter?  Truth be told, it shouldn’t matter. 

In looking through Soothill and Hodous’ Dictionary of Chinese and Buddhist terms they have decided that 禪 is an “intuitive School” which means that they also see dhyāna as intuition, not as crosslegged sitting.

The term “intuition” is used many times in the Dictionary of Chinese and Buddhist terms.  Here are some examples of what I mean (I have left out the Chinese characters except where I think they might be helpful).

Separately handed down; oral tradition; to pass on the teaching from mind to mind without writing, as in the Chan (Zen) or Intuitional school.

禪宗 dhyāna, meditative or intuitional sect, attributed to Bodhidharma about A. D. 527, but it existed before he came to China.

宗門 Originally the general name for sects. Later appropriated to itself by the 禪 Chan (Zen) or Intuitional school, which refers to the other schools as 教門 teaching sects, i. e. those who rely on the written word rather than on the 'inner light'.

拈花微笑 'Buddha held up a flower and Kāśyapa smiled'. This incident does not appear till about A. D. 800, but is regarded as the beginning of the tradition on which the Chan (Zen) or Intuitional sect based its existence.

南宗 The Southern sect, or Bodhidharma School, divided into northern and southern, the northern under 神秀 Shen-hsiu, the southern under 慧能 Hui-nang, circa A.D. 700, hence 南能北秀; the southern came to be considered the orthodox Intuitional school. The phrase 南頓北漸 or 'Southern immediate, northern gradual' refers to the method of enlightenment which separated the two schools.

律禪 The two schools of Discipline and Intuition.

馬祖 Ma Tsu, founder of the Southern Peak school of the Ch'an or Intuitional sect in Kiangsi, known as 江西道一.

教道 To teach a way, or religion; a taught way contrasted with an intuitional way; the way of teaching.

菩提達磨 Bodhidharma, commonly known as Damo, v. 達; reputed as the founder of the Chan (Zen) or Intuitional or Mystic School. His original name is given as 菩提多羅 Bodhitara.

傳心 To pass from mind to mind, to pass by narration or tradition, to transmit the mind of Buddha as in the Intuitional school, mental transmission.

意學 Mental learning, learning by meditation rather than from books, the special cult of the Chan or Intuitional school, which is also called the School of the Buddha-mind.

達磨宗 The Damo, or Dharma sect, i.e. the 禪宗 Meditation, or Intuitional School.

實大乘教 The real Mahāyāna, freed from temporal, relative, or expedient ideas; the Tiantai, Huayan, Intuitional, and Shingon schools claim to be such.

禪人 A member of the Chan (Jap. Zen), i.e. the Intuitional or Meditative sect.

禪宗 The Chan, meditative or intuitional, sect usually said to have been established in China by Bodhidharma, v. 達, the twenty-eighth patriarch, who brought the tradition of the Buddha-mind from

India. Cf. 楞 13 Laṅkāvatāra sūtra. This sect, believing in direct enlightenment, disregarded ritual and sūtras and depended upon the inner light and personal influence for the propagation of its tenets, founding itself on the esoteric tradition supposed to have been imparted to Kāśyapa by the Buddha, who indicated his meaning by plucking a flower without further explanation. Kāśyapa smiled in apprehension and is supposed to have passed on this mystic method to the patriarchs. The successor of Bodhidharma was 慧可 Huike, and he was succeeded by 僧璨 Sengcan; 道信 Daoxin; 弘忍 Hongren; 慧能 Huineng, and 神秀 Shenxiu, the sect dividing under the two latter into the southern and northern schools: the southern school became prominent, producing 南嶽 Nanyue and 靑原 Qingyuan, the former succeeded by 馬祖 Mazu, the latter by 石頭 Shitou. From Mazu's school arose the five later schools, v. 禪門.

禪法 Methods of mysticism as found in (1) the dhyānas recorded in the sūtras, called 如來禪 tathāgata- dhyānas; (2) traditional dhyāna, or the intuitional method brought to China by Bodhidharma, called 祖師 禪, which also includes dhyāna ideas represented by some external act having an occult indication.

禪法 Methods of mysticism as found in (1) the dhyānas recorded in the sūtras, called 如來禪 tathāgata- dhyānas; (2) traditional dhyāna, or the intuitional method brought to China by Bodhidharma, called 祖師 禪, which also includes dhyāna ideas represented by some external act having an occult indication.

The typical modern Zen center that engages in the exercise of crosslegged sitting seems to me far away from what traditional Zen was striving for which is direct intuition of Buddha-nature or the same one’s true nature.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Deshan lifts his hand Jian becomes enlightened

Where does philosophy end in Zen Buddhism?  From the literature, it would appear to end where knowledge that is acquired through words and concepts, i.e., speculative knowledge, cannot go any further.  But this is precisely where authentic Zen begins or should at least begin. 

The failure of philosophy to go any further, nevertheless, hoping to make some kind of profound intellectual breakthrough runs into Mumon’s barrier/checkpoint 關.  What does that mean for the Zennist?  About the barrier/checkpoing Mumon comments:

For the practice of Zen, you must pass the barrier set up by the ancient masters of Zen. To attain to marvelous enlightenment, you must completely extinguish all thoughts of the ordinary mind. If you have not passed the barrier and have not extinguished all thoughts, you are a phantom haunting the weeds and trees.

What Mumon is telling the Zennist is that their thoughts, which are the activity of thinking, are the barrier.  Looking at the problem from a deeper perspective, our thoughts, if they were to suddenly cease would instantly disclose pure Mind.  We would be right then and there, Buddhas.  On the other hand, to generate thought through philosophical speculation about Zen only acts to hide pure Mind. 

In trying to make sense of this odd enlightenment event at 645, it appears that as a matter of philosophical speculation we can go no further.  We are up against the barrier/checkpoint.

645.  When master Gaoding Jian first went to Deshan, he saw Deshan on the other side of a river, sitting on the riverbank.  He asked after him from across the river; Deshan beckoned him with his hand, whereupon Jian became enlightened.  Then he ran past to the side and didn’t cross the river; he returned to Gaoding and became an abbot (Treasurey of the Eye of Truth Teaching: Volume II).

Evidently, when Deshan beckoned Jian with his hand, something happened to Jian that was mysterious and profound.  To be sure, he broke through Mumon’s barrier/checkpoint passing easily through the no-gate or dharma-gate.  So what happened?

Some of you know what it was.  I sure know what transpired when Deshan beckoned Jian with his hand or what the Buddha’s holding up a flower and blinking was about.  There are many such moments when a monk suddenly sees the absolute.  In a tenth of a second Deshan caught Jian off-guard, all thought had ceased for him.  There it was.

 

 

 

Zen naturalism?

The average secular Zennist is close to believing that giving free rein to their thoughts and urges is the Way even when doing zazen.  This is living in the here and the now.  It is a kind of naturalism in which Zen's lifestyle is derived from nature.

People who find the soul of Zen to be found in naturalism don’t see Zen Buddhism as a means towards a mitigation of man’s spiritual ignorance including a mitigation of his natural desires which can easily cause him to lose what is characteristic of human beings: a kind of slow descent into the abyss.

With this kind of naturalism getting inserted into Zen, no longer do spiritual explanations of Zen suffice.  They are treated with a quiet contempt as if Zen has only been about a special kind of naturalism, almost like Taoism, in the example of Zen laymen Kanzan and Jittoku who supposedly lived during the Tang dynasty (618-906). 

Both Kanzan and Jittoku lived what you might call an unfettered lifestyle.  They were neither bound to Buddhist monastic rules nor the secular world with its unending demands.  According to Zen master Bukan 豊干 both had realized Buddha-dharma and to a much greater degree than the monks in his monastery.

Whether or not this is fiction or based upon real historical figures doesn’t matter.  What is of concern is to misunderstand and appropriate Kanzan and Jittoku, and even Bukan as representatives of Zen naturalism hoping to sidestep Zen’s underlying demand that we must intuit our true nature, this being kenshō.

Without the demand of kenshō this naturalism will eventually collapse into a kind of ontological nihilism in which there is no-truth-all-the-way-down which appears to be endemic in postmodern culture.

Escapism can be good

Sometime in our life, hopefully sooner than later, we get the impression that we are gradually having to adapt to life in a well disguised madhouse, this being modern culture that is made to look like a funhouse.  At some point the funhouse is not fun anymore.  Personally, we find ourself doing the same things over and over again so that each time we do them, the fun becomes less.

At some time down the road it may dawn on us that it’s time to escape from our culture.  It is starting to look more like a madhouse than a funhouse.  In this madhouse, most people are too far gone to recognize what has happened to them or to do anything about it even if they did recognize what was happening. 

At some point, we conclude, and rightly so, it’s time to maybe think about escaping, to get as far away from the madhouse and the crazy people who inhabit it.  This maybe is the time when we read books about Zen and the life of various Zen masters.  But then we wonder if this is not another form of escapism.  But is escapism all that bad?

So what is escapism?  As simple as it gets, the idea of escape, from a Buddhist point of view, means to avoid future or imminent pain or misfortune.  For example, if you see a flashing warning sign as you drive warning you to take the detour on the right side of the road, this can be thought of as a timely warning, helping you to avoid an accident.  The detour on the right side of the road is the escape.   

We live in a world with many kinds of warning signs, not all flashing but warning us nevertheless.  There are many things we should avoid lest we bring harm to ourselves or to others in the near future or many years down the road of life.  In this regard, a sane culture should be escapist.  People should try, as much as possible, to avoid future suffering.  Here are a few examples.  Don’t drop out of school.  We’d better leave now a storm is brewing.  Cigarettes can be hazardous to your health.  Avoid unprotected sex.  Get your teeth checked and cleaned.  Don’t travel to this country there is a civil war going on.  Don’t drink the water.  There are many more examples.

There is nothing wrong with a Buddhist kind of escapism of becoming a monk or a nun for a few years so as to better know your self.  Far worse is to become a solid member of the funhouse that is actually a madhouse whereby we throw caution to the wind living the life of a cultural zombie or profligate.  Such a way of living does not bode well for our karma or our next life. 

Our search for the secret of Zen

We are in the habit of grasping.  We grasp things like a tool, for instance, which is natural to do. But we also try to grasp a concept or a meaning that a word is pointing to which lies beyond the word.  We automatically assume that a word’s meaning has a graspable, explicit meaning.  This is the problem we face in the world of Zen.  What Zen is pointing to, namely, our true nature is ungraspable. 

Like Tantalus’ grapes which move away from his grasp, the more we  try to grasp Zen from our own side, with all of its assumptions, the less we understand Zen from its own side which is beyond our range.

What Zen is trying to tell us is that we cannot grasp the secret of Zen.  To do so is to continually fail at Zen. Our search for the secret of Zen requires of us a new kind of attention or awareness that is totally open and not consciously directed.  This is the only way we can discover and unlock the secret of Zen.

This kind of attention is in sharp contrast to what I would call consciously directed attention that wants to ferret out the most adequate meaning or concept among all possible meanings, especially, when it comes to Zen koans.  But keep in mind that the adept has to be broken of the habit of using consciously directed attention.  Oddly, this is where koans help to wean the adept off of this bad habit, bringing the mind into a crisis, what in Zen is called “great doubt.”

Great doubt signals the shift to a new awareness, one that is totally open and not consciously directed.  It is a radical break with consciously directed attention that is habituated to looking for something to grasp, hence, to solve Zen’s secret using the wrong means.

With the crisis of great doubt, the looking-for-something, is no more.  In a way, it died.  It has been changed into an awareness that is totally open and not consciously directed.  It is so sensitive that when, so to speak, the Buddha whispers from on high, you hear it loud and clear.  This time there was nothing in your head blocking his mysterious transmission.

Meeting the Buddha for the first time

Let’s imagine that today you are meeting the real Buddha for the first time in some temple in the mountains.  You are looking at your notes one last time; you have your questions rehearsed.  It’s time to get into the car.  Several hours later you make it to the temple.  It’s still morning.  Everything is beautiful outside of the temple.  You’re quite nervous but still manage to relax.

The moment has arrived when you get to meet this Buddha.  Finally, all your questions will be answered to your satisfaction.  This is a dream come true for you.  But all that transpires is seeing the Buddha sit looking at you.  Pleasantries are exchanged, of course, but that is all.  The Buddha just sits there and now you begin to feel awkward.  Then you interrupt the silence to ask your first question, “What is enlightenment?”  Still the Buddha doesn’t say a word.  He just sits there.

So what is really going on?  It’s simple.  The Buddha is radiating what could be described as the light of Mahayana mentioned in the Lankavatara Sutra or if you prefer he is radiating clear light Mind.  But here is the rub.  You sense absolutely nothing, zero, zip, zilch, nada. Why?  Because you are spiritually blind that’s why.  You are only connected with your conditioned psychophysical body and the temporal order—that’s it.  Your questions and what you believe Buddhism to be have nothing to do with what the Buddha is radiating (which you don’t sense).  But more importantly,  what he is radiating is the teaching!  He can’t help but radiate this mysterious light.  He is like the sun in the sky shining on all things.

After you’ve seen the Buddha, the head monk says to you, “When I first met the Buddha I was so blissed out I could only bow.  It was amazing.  It is still that way every time I come near him.  More and more I am learning about it.”  You don’t know what to say to the head monk because you sensed nothing.  The head monk could be pulling your leg for all you know.

Everything in the teachings of the Buddha is designed to get you to understand this light from its own side which you converge with during awakening — the Mind to Mind transmission which is spoken about in Zen.  In fact, when the Buddha held up a flower and blinked whereupon Kashyapa smiled, both their actions were only a manifestation of this light in the same way that smoke tells us there is fire somewhere.  Both were fully one with the light.  According to the Avatamsaka Sutra:  Manifesting spiritual power while among the masses, he [the Buddha] radiates light to make them wake up, revealing the realm of the enlightened.

 

Different Buddhisms that are wrong

Short of the actual intuition of one’s true nature which is sudden, which happens to be the goal of Zen Buddhism, there still are, and have been in the past, those in Buddhism who have interpreted Buddhism differently. 

Mentioned in the last blog, one might follow Zen master Dahui’s war against Caodong’s quietism or Silent Illumination Chan 默照禪  which was subsequently taken up by Dōgen which he turned into Japanese Sōtō Zen,  a Zen that doesn’t accept the idea of intuiting or seeing one’s true nature, i.e., kenshō.  Dogen sadly never understood what Siddhartha realized under the Bodhi Tree, and the purpose of Bodhidharma's mission to China, including the basis of all koans.

Some other Buddhist traditions have argued that ultimate truth is necessarily a mere absence.  This was the standpoint of the Sautrāntika in which nirvana was considered to be unreal or the absence of passions and even a kind of non-existence (abhāva) being the total absence of every thing.

Turning to Tibetan Buddhism, Tsongkhapa consistently argued that the ultimate truth or reality is necessarily a mere absence.  To be more concise, ultimate truth is the absence of inherent existence.  No matter how far and deep the adept looks within they will find no inherent existence in things—call it a state of non-findingness.  This means that things or dharmā exist in a conventional way only.  Everything for us is dependently arisen there being no such thing as an inherent existence or even an unconditioned nature or even nirvana.  You might almost say that it is absence or conventional existence all the way down!

But then such theories shut out Buddha-nature which is an underlying ontological reality, totally without thingness or appearance and certainly unconditioned.  Buddha-nature, as a pure, dynamic essence, abides in all living beings who suffer in the world of samsara.  Buddha-nature is certainly more than mere absence or quietude attained by crosslegged sitting ramrod straight on a cushion. 

I see Buddha-nature not as something new which has been added to Buddhism but more of a necessary correction by which to reestablish traditional Buddhism which  was more than just telling everyone that there is only impermanence, suffering and insubstantiality. In other words, learn to enjoy your doom 'cause you can't escape it.

What for me made the Buddha’s teaching so powerful was his teaching that within each of us is a spiritual germ that can be conceived by us—call it an immaculate conception.  It is a direct intuition by which we give birth to a Buddha body that we eventually transform into which is free from the travails of samsara.

In my own life, trying to see what Siddhartha saw, I intuited something beyond this world—unbelievable by today's values.  Still it happened.  I cannot change that.  And I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we all have the Buddha-nature.  It is not an absence, or empty as in nothing. It is ultimate reality whereas this world of ours is not real in comparison with it.  Another name for our world is samsara.  It both deceives us and is illusory.  It is not our refuge.  Cling to this world at your own peril.