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 main problem with westernized Buddhism and Zen

I was wondering a few years ago why westernized Buddhism and especially Zen did not comport well with the words of the Buddha and the Zen masters.  And then I came across Iain McGilchrist's works which explore the asymmetry of the left and right hemisphere of the brain.  His exploration also opens up a can of worms when the left hemisphere tries to undermine rather than cooperate and harmonize with the right hemisphere.

When our thinking is dominated by the left hemisphere of the brain it is like we're trying to understand Buddhism and Zen through certain pre-positioned algorithms.  Or simply fixed biases such as political correctness.  This of course shuts the door on an open mind which one needs to access the right hemisphere.

Accessing the right hemisphere of the brain is really about having access to direct intuition which is probably the best translation of what Buddhism and Zen mean, as regards “dhyāna.”  This is evinced clearly in Soothill and Hodous' Dictionary of Chinese Buddhist Terms.  Buddhism and Zen are intuitional systems.

Understandably, intuition is not mediated by reasoning or the sensory organs.  Yet, it doesn’t reject them.  They are useful, but intuition goes much further.  It transcends them.  The real danger that Buddhism and Zen face is when there is mistrust in the intuitional, and this is what is happening both in Buddhism and Zen.

It is as if our culture is teaching people the truth is always propositional and found explicit somewhere within the pages of human literature.  In other words, there is a proposition that we can test out to see if it accords with the left hemisphere.  We might agree with it and we might not.

For Buddhism, the right hemisphere has to first intuit the whole, that is, nirvana before any proposition can come out of it like, for example, nirvana is the end of all suffering.  The Buddha it could be said teaches from his awakening, not from human values or various cultural values.  Mankind's ultimate goal then is to awaken to the true nature of the universe upon which all things depend.

No escape from the virtual reality game?

Life is more like a journey into a vast virtual reality world.  Our body is the VR simulator (avatar) and we are mysteriously unified with it.  We can't distinguish the simulator character from our real self.  In this modern day and age most everyone assumes that the simulator is their self and when the simulator gets old and breaks down and eventually doesn't work they will also cease but this is not what happens.  Not according to Buddhism and of course Zen.

For me in a strange and beautiful way T.S. Eliot explains the path of Buddhism in these lines from his poem, Little Gidding.

And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

The Buddha knows that our exploring is taking place in an illusory world, a world today many would call a virtual reality game.  This virtual reality game is completely heuristic.  It serves only as an aid to discovering who we really are.  In other words, we are not who we imagine we are.  Our simulator character that passed through our mother’s birth canal is not who we are.

All that we know has become the game.  We can't see any escape from it.  By clever cultural diversions we are forbidden to speculate that there is a possible escape from this game.  But Buddhism doesn't agree with this.  In fact, we could even say it is the means by which to escape this virtual reality game, taking it to its limit then leaping beyond.

In the example of Hakuin 慧鶴, we suddenly converge with the absolute from where we originally started exploring the illusion long ago.  Yes, we intuit it.   

It is still ineffable and unknowable in the usual sense, but we have finally arrived.  We have reached a mysterious place where both perceiver and the perceived have been transcended suddenly, and all at once.

With the years we have left we come to understand how we became entrapped in something like a virtual reality game where the simulator was the human body of birth and death.  We also became aware of how we wrongly identified our true self with the simulator.

In addition, we also learned how desire for the simulator eventually lead to pain and suffering.  It is like we became intoxicated.  We couldn't get enough of the game.  Then the simulator began to break down.  We didn't know what we would do without it.  We just assumed that when it's ceased operating so would we.

Our passcode into this illusory world has always been consciousness which in Sanskrit is VIJÑĀNA.  It literally means in two parts knowing.  It is a kind of doubling of the one/eka like two mirrors facing each other.  What appears is always doubled (the product of the perceiver and the perceived).  It is not real (even the doubling is not real).  It is only an illusion that appears, not veridical reality.

Having entered the illusion with our passcode, becoming game players, our imagination is free to roam and choose any path it wishes.  At this point we are bound to the illusion:  we can see nothing else except appearances through a perceiver and the perceived combination which in our ignorance we are unable to transcend.

In the big VR game of human existence we are all gamers

In Buddhism it would be consciousness (vijñāna) that connects the player with the virtual reality game in which the player is embodied in its avatar.  In the Mahānidāna Sutta (DN 15) the Buddha is telling Ananda that it is consciousness that connects us to the simulation (nāmarūpa) that begins in the mother's womb.

Not only does consciousness survive death but it is integral to the VR game we call human existence. The most dangerous part of this VR game of human existence is that true reality is hidden by the game and the players. It is very much like Case V in the collection of Mumon's koans (無門関):

“It's like a man up the tree, hanging from a branch by his mouth; his hands cannot grasp a branch, his feet won't reach a bough. Suppose there is another man under the tree who asks him, 'What is the meaning of Bodhidharma's coming from the west?' If he does not respond, he goes against the wish of the questioner. If he answers, he will lose his life. At such a time, how should he respond?”

We know nothing about the person before it took up the game of human life and became a player who, subsequently, became entangled and enamored with the alluring richness of the game.  Now the player is thrown into this crazy game from which there is seemingly no escape.  Even death will not liberate the player who will take up another avatar only to continue with the game.

Without a doubt, each of us is immersed in our human VR game.  But now we have VR games being created on a regular basis whereby we are playing VR games in an overarching human virtual reality game.  It’s a game that seems so real yet when we look at it, honestly, without a biased mind, it is not unlike our VR games of today.  But there is one problem, we cannot escape the overarching human VR game.  Keep in mind that death is no escape.  But the game is escapable if we follow the Buddhist teachings, but even this is difficult.

Taking a deep dive into "who am I?"

Self-awareness is not the same as direct reception of the absolute through intuition/gnosis which is the aim of Buddhism.  Self-awareness means being involved with one's daily mental life, most notably, their thoughts, feelings, and their imagination. 

Also it is a limited awareness.  It only concerns the individual:  the being that passed through its mother’s birth canal, to the being that will one day die.

Another way to look at self-awareness, it means understanding myself in such away that I am reasonably certain that I know who I am without being involved in a, strictly, first person perspective.  Such a perspective is very much like the mystics of old who immersed themselves in the seeking of transcendent knowledge; who were also hermits.

To seek enlightenment involves first person immersion.  First person immersion is not accomplished by being just self-aware, as strange as this may sound to the modern ear.  It is like a deep dive into "who am I" in which one even surpasses self-awareness. 

Ultimately it is accomplished by giving up even the first person perspective in a moment of absolute helplessness in which there seems to be no more path, while at the same time, absolute openness prevails.  This leads to the moment of satori when, unexpectedly, Mumon's barrier 関 is transcended.  Zen's mystery is solved.

Buddhism has its share of boneheads

Buddhism, I am sorry to say, has its share of boneheads like any other religion.  You can find the boneheads in scholarly works and in common conversations among Buddhists on the Internet or in person.

Whatever our expectations about Buddhism happen to be we have to do enough reading, research, and thinking about the subject to see if our beliefs about Buddhism hold water or not.  Most of them don’t.  And when Buddhism doesn't match our expectations we dump it and find another religion that meets with our beliefs.

Much of the problem stems from the fact that our beliefs are difficult to give up.  For some people they are not going to give up their beliefs no matter what — and there lies the problem.

Buddhism's problem in the West is that many Westerners who are curious about Buddhism think that it is a form of religious nihilism in which some guy in India discovered that there is no soul, and nothing divine.  Life is all about suffering and learning to cope with it.  And when you die you're dead!

Buddhism for the serious and the mature is a different subject.  It is not about some guy in India who denied the Atman; who also denied the unending cycle of birth and death.  Far from it. 

Upon his awakening Siddhartha realized that the true self or atman is beyond the six senses and beyond all conditioned things.  Key to enlightenment is overcoming the dualizing consciousness or vijñāna.  Experiencer and experience are transcended.  Observer and observed are transcended.  Subject and object are transcended.

A prisoner in Plato's cave

So now you're a prisoner in Plato's cave.  You have no idea what's going on.  The reality before you is all you can perceive.  You don't know true reality.  You have no idea that escape from this world is even possible.  For all you know this is the true world, there is no other. 

Then you manage to read about some fellow named Siddhartha who escaped from this cave.  He claimed to have beheld the true world of divine light—not a false or reflected light but the light of lights.  But this is hard to accept much less believe in fully.

Your skepticism returns you to the shadows cast on the wall by a fire.

From a Buddhist perspective we are born and die within this cave countless times until we attain nirvana.  Putting this into another perspective we are born into an imaginary world and die in an imaginary world, being reborn in it countless times.  In the Assu Sutta the Buddha said:

“From an unfathomable beginning comes transmigration. A beginning point is not evident, though beings hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving are transmigrating & wandering on. Long have you thus experienced stress, experienced pain, experienced loss, swelling the cemeteries — enough to become disenchanted with all fabricated things, enough to become dispassionate, enough to be released.”

Death is certainly no release.  One is simply reborn into a womb or abides for a certain length of time in a more vivid imaginary world than the present one, call it a heavenly world.  Release can only be attained by intuiting what is unconstructed and unconditioned.  Nor can release be attained by the use of the imaginary mind which is a constructor of illusion.

The wave is not the water?

Unexpectedly you wake up in the morning before the alarm goes off.  You stare at the ceiling and realize that you will one day die.  So what do you do?  Go back to sleep or lie awake worrying about it?  Unfortunately, neither dreamland nor worry can̍t solve the problem, it goes much deeper. 

That evening after work you manage to find some degree of solace by going on the Internet.  You take comfort in the fact that many like you share the same problem.

Eventually your life of small, accumulated pleasures and sensual excitement begins to turn into anger and becomes more frustrating.  One day you happen to be in Moe’s Bookstore and have to go to the restroom.  While sitting there you read on the wall, the wave is not the water.  It doesn't make any sense to you but still you can't get it out of your mind.

Much of the greater story of Buddhism has to do with overcoming the allure of an imaginal world observing it with a mind under the domination of imagination.  Buddhism really consists of intuiting reality the way it really is before it becomes imagined.  No imaginary construct will suffice from the simplest thought to an elaborate and vivid world of great beauty.

How does this connect with the wave is not the water?  It is the same as, the ring or bracelet is not gold and the brick is not clay.  On the same score, your thoughts are in no way the pure Mind or absolute spirit which Siddhartha awaken to.  Still having a problem?

So what is the problem?  Buddhism says it's consciousness or in Sanskrit vijñāna, literally, in two parts knowing.  This is more at the division of the one (spirit) or the splitting of the one in which appearance is born which, nevertheless, remains intrinsically empty (śūnyatā).

Abiding in the world of appearance or the same, conditionality, we cannot reify any of this.  It always remains empty.  To do so is a fool’s errand.  The intention of Buddhism is to break us of this habit.  Nevertheless, Buddhism has its fools who then want to say that emptiness itself is the absolute just as Judaism and Christianity have their fools who try to imagine the divine through the flesh.

The stone age (1960s)

The point at which our imagination is free to roam is when it is stoned (being under the influence of a drug). Back in those days (the 60s) we shared a collective stoneness.  It transported us to the altar of the diamonic.  We chose sex and eros.  This was eventually followed by anger and rage—you could even say a desire for power (control). 

This was not the end of our journey.  Without really knowing it we have entered a hell.

There is one more lesson we must learn which we haven't learned yet.  You cannot attach and then let go — you must learn to transcend.  This is what the Buddha really taught us.  When Siddhartha began his quest for enlightenment it was to put an end to suffering but also the disturbed mind which allowed itself to get entangled in illusion.

But transcendence is not so easy, one must first intuit the transcendent.  The idea of a worldly, conditioned refuge is absurd.  Only the transcendent is the refuge. 

When the transcendent is intuited then one can begin the Bodhisattva’s path of transcendence.  The Bodhisattva can distinguish the atman from what is not the atman (anātman).  (Anātman can mean what is not spiritual, that is, something different from spirit like the corporeal which is not transcendent.)  In light of this but his words ring clear:  “Abandon desire for whatever is anātman” (SN 22:68).

But to speak frankly, Buddhists today whether in Asia or the West fail to understand this simple message.  The Buddha is asking us to abandon the unreal, what is not spiritual, the false, appearances, etc.

Our inability to distinguish the conditioned from the unconditioned

Desire begins with our inability to distinguish the conditioned from the unconditioned which is the state of avidyā (P., avijjā)—a kind of unwisdom.  With desire one is in an unbroken continuous state of being attracted to avidyā.  This is also the repeated cycles of birth and death or samsara which hasn't been broken by enlightenment, that is, seeing the unconditioned.

But there is more.  Both birth and death occur within the conditioned world (they are not unconditioned).  Even death cannot escape it.  From death we reenter the conditioned world.  It might even be a beautiful imaginary world with its gods, or a hell, or rebirth into another womb. 

Interestingly, today's nihilist after they die will just return to the womb.  (I am sure many nihilists will object to this.)  But this is what their strong belief in nihilism is all about, this being a return to the womb-like condition of avidyā. 

The point to be made is that we do not escape the conditioned world.  Birth and death are always within it even the worlds of the gods.  Like all things conditioned they are fundamentally imaginary but, nevertheless, more real than even our world.

The breakout from the conditioned is what the Buddhist journey is all about.  It is a difficult journey in the sense that to arrive at the unconditioned is to have given up all expectations and assumptions as to what the unconditioned is.  (Over the years I have encountered people who tell me they did just that but they never became enlightened!  Obviously they had some hidden expectations that they were not yet aware of.)

Transcending the world of thought

The human world with its unconscious dependence on mental images can easily lead to the worship of the ‘golden calf’ of thought—a worship that is almost unconscious.  The world of Zen, however, transcends the world of thought.  It is about pure spirit, spirit before it is cast into form, or before thought.

Especially, in the work of solving kōans, those unusual mysteries of Zen, kōans are inscrutable short of direct intuition of the absolute.  Try as the typical modern does by reading a book or two on kōans, no entry is gained in the mystery Zen hides.

The modern person is still trapped within the box of thought and with it all forms of semiotics.  One cannot think out of the box — one must first transcend the box and directly behold the truth face to face.  Then thinking can resume even the generation of thought.  But now, the awakened adept knows the true self.

What has one learned?  With the overreliance on thought there's always a dead end so that one is unable to leave the world of illusion by taking up thought.