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. 

the doorway to Zen is to be found on the right side of the brain

There is a tendency in Western thinking to get too much into unrealities whether it's mathematical unrealities or social unrealities like gender dysphoria, etc. Graduates I have met over the years, you might say, all graduated from the university of Never Never Land. 

Put another way, there is a gross under use of the right hemisphere of the brain and an over reliance on the left hemisphere.  In our future, we may well slay the human race because we have prohibited the use of the right hemisphere of the brain.

"The more we rely on the left hemisphere alone, the more self-conscious we become; the intuitive, unconscious unspoken elements of experience are relatively discounted, and the interpreter begins to interpret — itself" (Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary).

Immersion into Zen Buddhism calls on us to turn to the right hemisphere of the brain for answers.  The left hemisphere of the brain will not help the adept.  It only keeps one in the great circle of samsara. However, the reliance on the right hemisphere is a difficult undertaking.  It is like waking up from a trance in which you had no idea that you were in. 

I can say about the 20th century that one of its greatest and most malevolent advances was in propagandizing the public, keeping them in a low level trance while feeding their brains with useless trivia and misinformation.  This way the hegemony of the left hemisphere is maintained while ignoring the right. But this also explains why Zen Buddhism when it came to the West confused the outer form with Zen's essence which led to its decline if not it's popularity.

Briefly, Zen offered a ray of light that pierced through the dark mantle that was thrown over the Western mind.  But it didn't last long because primarily the people who pushed Zen Buddhism in the West were charlatans.

The sudden transcendence of presuppositions about the absolute

For us to have direct source knowledge or direct knowledge of the absolute, it demands that we become absorbed in the absolute, completely, so that there is nothing left of us.  Even our perception or consciousness (vijñāna) must go because it belongs to us. 

As strange as it sounds this is the way the absolute remains absolute.  As a thought experiment if, for example, the wave phenomenon wishes to know what pure water is then it must be absolutely waveless, in which case, no waviness can be detected in the water itself.  (The mere looking causes waviness.)

I think this helps to explain why enlightenment cannot really be transmitted, not in the way the average person imagines the process.  Let us imagine that A is absolute where B is the transmitter.  How is it to be transmitted to C?  The very act of transmission, itself, is non-absolute (anātman= wavy). 

The total and sudden transcendence of presuppositions about the absolute is extremely difficult to accomplish.  Without exception, people who take up Buddhism and with it Zen depend upon perception or consciousness.  This is their tool by which they hope to unearth enlightenment.  But they must also give up the tool. 

By the way, this is what koans (Hua Tou 話頭) are all about.  They are intended, in a way, to drive the student to their wits’ end.  To know the secret of the koan means that one has given up perception (vijñāna).  For a brief moment they became the absolute.

Who you are

True reality is already here, in fact, it has never left.  However, as we approach it with our ideas of what we expect it to be like, we become more confused.  The first road eventually branches off many, many times.  At this point, we are more lost and confused than ever.

Then the Buddha’s teaching comes along.  It talks about awakening to something that even Māra, the Buddhist devil, couldn’t recognize.  Little did Māra know that the Buddha gave up perceiver and perceiving (dual knowing).  He entered a transcendent state in which there was no division or constructs.

Māra, was in a way, a god of the six senses which required a perceiver and perceiving whether it was visual, auditory or even mental (manas) which includes the imagination and intellect.

Even if we take a voyage into our own mind we are more like the people in Plato's Cave facing an artificially constructed world, while the true light is always behind them, in such a way that they are unable turn around and see it. 

Our inner thoughts and emotions arise as do our mental images and what our various senses perceive.  We are facing an illusion not true reality.  Even our fleshy body we inhabit is an illusion.  Transcending illusion is extremely difficult.  Most will be unable to transcend illusion.  Nevertheless, it is important to start the journey of transcendence, of going beyond all illusion where you realize, finally, who you are.

The amazing maze

Pure Mind or absolute spirit is invisible to the six senses, most notably to the sixth which is manas which includes our imagination and speculations.  Thus, what we seek in the way of enlightenment hides and eludes us even while we read about it or contemplate it.  It will not show itself to us no matter how hard we try. 

Still those who have actually mastered Zen behold this spirit singularly and straightforwardly.  It comes suddenly and unexpectedly.  Yes, it’s like seeing something that you never thought was possible.  Before kenshō all your pathways came to dead ends.  The truth which you sought nonstop exceeded your cunning powers.  Strangely, it will awaken you.

Even now we, the unawakened, realize that we may have entered into a maze (since our birth) with no exit.  Maybe we should call it the maze of samsara.  This maze might as well be darkness.  Little do we realize that we are creating this maze.  Every birth we have experienced brought us into this maze from which there was no escape, only to find ourselves in another maze.

Every Zen koan that you study asks you, fundamentally, who put you in this maze?  You draw a blank.  You have no answer but lots of diversions.  I remember those hopeless nights by the kerosene lamp stuck in this maze.  And I also remember the night I broke down and knew I could not obtain enlightenment. How hopeless it was.  (I've met deluded people who even fake this crisis.)  But, figuratively speaking, the door suddenly opens and there it is.

Looking within and seeing darkness

Meditation is a great opportunity to look within and see the prison we have made for our self by desiring what is not our self.  It is a strange kind of darkness but a darkness, nevertheless, that keeps the light from coming in.  In a way, it is a true picture of our incarnated life a life that will one day be filled with a great deal of suffering. 

“Think that this body is like a plantain, a mirage in the hot season, watery foam, a phantom, a transformed body, the castle of a gandharva, an unfired brick, lightning, a picture drawn on water, a prisoner facing death, ripe fruit, a piece of meat, the warp on a loom which is about to end, and the ups and downs of a mortar. You should think that all created things are like poisonous food and that anything made is possessed of all worries” (Mahaparinirvana Sutra).

A great Buddhist teacher like Ajahn Chah (Phra Bodhiñāṇathera) might tell us that meditation is a time to see what's inside our cage:  the cage of birth, aging, illness, and death.  As we might guess, looking within is a difficult task for those of us who are used to accumulating desires.  Yes, each desire keeps the light from penetrating the thick, impenetrable wall of our desires.  Such people will attain nothing in their halfhearted search. 

Beginners of meditation always believe that meditation is going to lead them to some profound vision.  What is really at work here is their imagination, not profound gnosis.  Meditation helps us to sober up from our last round of intoxicating desires.  It reminds us that we are still in samsara; we're not going to escape it by having a good time!

Still too burdened by consciousness

Materialism requires the splitting of the transcendent one into perceiver and perceiving, which we understand in the West to be consciousness or what Buddhists call vijñāna.(lit. in two parts Knowing).  Such materialist cognition cannot take place without a split in the original nature of reality which is indivisible.  The resultant split is an illusion, however.

The pluralization (including appearance) which results from the illusory split is not real relative to the indivisible one.  As fundamentally unsplit, nevertheless, we are immersed and enclosed in illusion to live as materialists.  The path and the goals we have chosen are strictly within the confines of illusion.

Put into Zen, with Mind-only (unsplit spirit) there is no real spacetime world.  Thus, the adept is released.  What hid the illusion making the world seem all too real is gone. 

Those who are new to the world of Buddhism will use their imagination to help them believe that the world they're in is illusory, but it doesn't work that way.  They have not actually gone beyond the vijñāna-split to see true reality.  It's like telling a mentally ill person just to imagine they're normal (trans-normal?).

Such people are incapable of gnosis, or the same, direct intuition of the unsplit absolute.  They are still too burdened by vijñāna.  This is where Zen’s way comes in.  Overtime it destroys the perceiver and perceiving dichotomy until the Zen adept has lost even perceiver and perceiving to rely on.  Suddenly and unexpectedly the adept beholds the original one.  Ox herding pictures illustrate this in VII, VIII, IX.

Mumon’s clever Mu trap

Our saviors, gods and lofty utopias will not save us from what we do not know, or from our own innate power to deceive ourselves.  We have the choice (P., sankhārā) to stay where we are, about which we know nothing, or go forward into something of which we know nothing (but imagine we do). 

Either choice brings us to the final trap which says it all about Zen koans, that they are unanswerable through human convention try as we might to force an answer from them.  No matter how much we ponder them we will always end up in Mumon’s Mu trap only to be reborn again and again in a samsaric cycle.

You must take my words seriously.  I am trying to help you escape from Mumon’s clever Mu trap.  That is all my book The Secret of Zen is trying to do.  Including Siddhartha, only a few Zen masters figured it out and even I figured it out. And I am on my last leg!

Seekers on this inscrutable path, what you seek will never match with the enlightenment which you seek!  It ever lies beyond the scope of perceiver and perceiving.  Think about Mu and you are at once lost. 

You must go to your wits’ end.  In a split second you’ll forget your dualistic consciousness and converge instantly with the Buddha-nature.  The released drop of water has become a boundless ocean of bliss.

At the core of the Heart Sutra 心經

Basically, the Heart Sutra/心經 is saying the world as viewed through the five aggregates is an illusion.  Do not cling to any of it but transcend it. Thus will bodhi be attained.  But what is this mystery of transcendence?

The Sutra is not telling us to cling to this mortal, conditioned world nor run away from it.  The solution to the problem is transcendence:  to go through all illusions and come out the other side!

But then we have to admit that all of mankind is worshiping at the shrine of samsara where we are always making sacrifices to this illusory corporeal body with its sensuous needs and extravagances. 

Maybe you believe that old pains can be washed away by new pleasures.  But this is not true. 

Illusion binds us to the same old patterns although each existence seems new and different.  We are always caught in the net of samsara because we are unable to transcend it completely.  Some of us get right to the edge of liberation then fall back.  Falling back is what we humans do best.  Always asking for forgiveness.  We even invent saviors to save us from ourselves and our own misdeeds.

The great mystery revealed

Buddhism (bauddham) soon loses its appeal when it goes beyond the six senses and especially the last sense which has to do with mentation (manas).  In this sense Buddhism is all about complete transcendence.

The ordinary person does not realize that the world they put together, including their body of birth and the environment it lives and dies in is a mental representation albeit very real looking. 

Key to locking on to this representation is consciousness (vijñāna) which is always dichotomous or the same, perceiver and perceiving.  Such consciousness is never absolute, most primordial or first.  This is reserved for spirit or ātman which excludes anātman (not spiritual, corporeal, empty of spirit).

Buddhism has changed significantly from what Siddhartha Gautama realized after he transcended consciousness.  Having merged with spirit, he could distinguish ātman from anātman.

He said that an anātman refers to the five aggregates, namely, material shape, feeling, perception, volitional formations, and consciousness.  They are always suffering and conditioned.  The most troubling aggregate is consciousness which I have said earlier is always dichotomous:  we are always stuck in the perceiver and perceiving mode.

It would safe to say that modern Buddhism is a distortion of what Siddhartha Gautama taught.  It nowhere approaches the problem of consciousness, especially, the transcending of consciousness which leads to the elimination of rebirth since consciousness is the transmigrant from one life to the next.

Consciousness is always an unresolved tension.  As mentioned earlier, it is the difference between perceiver and perceiving. There is a seeming unity between the two, even a harmony, but no transcendence of this duality.  As with the example of an asymptote, the line that continually approaches a given curve can never meet it.  When consciousness is transcended then is the great mystery revealed.