The Zennist

The narrative must be let go of, replaced by 'great doubt' (大疑)

Today, the narrative often precedes the reality it is supposed to represent.  The narrative, in other words, has superimposed itself over reality.  It is like the longitudinal and latitudinal lines on a map or on a world globe.  They are useful but not real.  Many things help to illustrate and solidify the narrative even ceremonies and rituals, or even a documentary about the big bang.  We seem to always fall for the deception.  

So where does true reality begin?  With a CNN news flash?  With unverified claims (opinions); with an event like 9-11?  But truth or true reality is almost always silent.  No narrative can pretend to speak for it.  No Zen teacher can hand it to us unmodified, the way it really is.  Even Zen master Dōgen used deception (the shisho document supposedly given to Dōgen by Rujing and now designated a national treasure by the Japanese government most certainly is a medieval forgery).

Still, we remain too easily persuaded by the narrative.  This can be more of a hindrance than a help.  We seem to have time for the narrative but not for the truth which is more difficult to attain.  It seems like you have to dig for the truth, which can be difficult, whereas the narrative is just handed to you.  You can learn all about Zen by reading books by Alan Watts — or can you?  But even Watts is skeptical of the "trickster guru" and may very well be such a person.  

In the matter of Zen, its own narrative prevents actual transcendence (kenshō) from manifesting itself and thus represents a dangerous form of idolatry.  In the study of Zen it conceals the most holy by claiming to practice it.  But how do you practice that which transcends all humanly efforts to reach it?  In other words, how do you practice hitting a target that neither you can see nor anyone else?  The narrative must be let go of, replaced by 'great doubt' (大疑).  This is a process of emptying-out not retaining.  Only then will clear light come which is the very substance of our ordinary thoughts.

 

We imagine that our thoughts come from the body

With our materialistic mindset it is easy to imagine that our thoughts come from the body; that somehow, mysteriously, the body has managed to make all these thoughts.  We could even say our thoughts are electro-chemical reactions that emerge from neural processes which depend upon the body.  At this point, our understanding of how thought is formed before it emerges is not known.  We only have hypotheses. 

Also, what Zen’s no-thought (無念) really means finds no answer.  It certainly does not come from daily blocking our thoughts; trying to smother them.  Only when there is just pure spirit, that is, Mind-only, is one released from the powerful seduction of thoughts.  Here lies the Buddha’s liberation.

Most everyone who is interested in Zen equate it with seated meditation.  I imagine that if you suffer from a light case of “akathisia” which is characterized by a feeling of inner restlessness and the inability to sit still, seated meditation might be helpful.  Seated meditation tends to produce a general feeling of quietude. 

But what does it mean to have the noble insight of revulsion…having arrived at the door to the deathless?  This is not some relaxed state of being.  With the deathless as its final goal Buddhism understands the deathless to be also unconditioned.  But our thoughts are not other than conditioned.  Now we can begin to see what Zen is aiming at by “no-thought”.  No-thought goes beyond the mortality of our body which is conditioned.

But we moderns will have none of this mumbo-jumbo (postmortem survival).  When our body dies along with our thoughts which we believe are electro-chemical we believe there is nothing beyond—certainly no such state as no-thought.  But Bodhidharma once said: “No-thought is nothing other than practice; there is no other practice. Thus you'll realize that no-thought is everything, and that extinction of the conditioned (nirvana) is nothing other than no-thought.”

Slouching more and more to the closed mind

There are many kinds of reformers.  Those who feel the need of introducing if not enforcing a better course of action with regard to the status quo.  This is what is hoped for in the mind of the reformer.  But any such reformation brings with it, its own set of problems, that is, unintended consequences. 

This is apparent when we look at the history of educational reforms starting with Horace Mann (1796–1859) who was perhaps one of the most influential of American educational reformers, going all the way to Allan Bloom with his book, The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students (1987).

No one can say today’s educational system is not without its problems many of which, arguably, came from the reformers themselves, especially, on the left of the political spectrum.  In other words, no reform can guarantee to solve the problems which it tries to address.  The problems continue and may even grow worse over time.  Most are simply swept under the carpet or ignored: see problem, say nothing.  Then a new narrative is put into place to hide the failure of the reform.

But now let’s look at Buddhism in America and then how it connects with our educational system. 

Buddhism’s reformers are more like interpreter-gatekeepers who wish to make the words of the Buddha palatable for the general population who don’t have a mind for religious thought, in part due to reformers like Horace Mann who feared the passions that might be raised by the study of religion and also politics; only allowing a limited, watered down study of religion and politics in the curriculum.  This results in a false “openness” (closer to credulity or blankness) by keeping the mind closed, especially, when it comes to religion.

The educational system seems then to have been created and maintained as a kind of academic Peter Pan world for dreamers.  These young dreamers have avoided, thus far, a serious life which includes the depth of religious thought and a political landscape that affects wages and the options they might have by which to live a life without poverty.  Moreover, they have no idea of the risk and hardship behind important choices they will have to make in the future.  For them choice is somewhat of a triviality.  This may explain the phenomenon of Dr. Jordan Peterson but also the popularity of his book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos (2018). Peterson’s book comes on the heels of academia’s slide into the closed mind: a mind that refuses to acknowledge or live in the real world.

When today’s graduate steps into the real world for the first time with such a closed mind with its fake openness, they are shocked.  Over time, they can’t help but grow more resentful and vengeful because their promised entitled life is slipping away.  As a result of this growing problem, and even in some cases depression, they try out Buddhism or Zen only to find out that their mind becomes even more closed.  In other words, reality is never allowed to set in.  They try their best to stop it. 

A Dharma center or a Zen center is really a group of lost, close-minded people who huddle together in subconscious fear using meditation to overcome their immaturity.

The parts of Buddhism that are usually closed off to such people have to do with rebirth and the transmigrant who survives death, the self or ātman, attachment to this world of appearance, and the fact that nirvana is not third-person knowledge which makes its realization mystical in the sense of requiring spiritual intuition.  With the absence or playing down of these important components of Buddhism what is left?  It’s western Buddhism which to be honest is Buddhism in name only.

Become a knower of the unmade

A wave is shaped water.  Water is not wave dependent.  Whether waves arise or do not arise does not affect the water.  Drawing from this, in Buddhism, we can say that thought is shaped spirit, spirit being shapeless and luminous.  In no way is spirit dependent upon thought.  On the same track, we can say that the word “spirit” is not spirit.  It is just a signifier/sign — not the signified.  The signified is yet to be personally known.

It follows from this according to verse 277 in the Dhammapada, that all (sabbe) shapes (saṅkhāra) are impermanent (anicca).  Then we learn in verse 278 that all shapes are suffering (dukkha).

It logically follows from this that shapes are not permanent.  Any shape or aggregation such as the five aggregates of form, feeling, perception, volition, and consciousness are never permanent or eternal.  Then in verse 383 it says, having known (ñatvā) the dissolution of [all] shapes, a knower of the unmade (akataññū) are you, O Brāhmin.  Logically, our Brāhmin is also a knower of the shapeless eternal!

Beings, it would seem, are victims of their own ignorance and inability to distinguished between shapes and that or spirit from which shapes are made.  Even the finest thoughts or thought cannot unshape itself to reveal what it is made from.  Speculating on what is unmade is to be on a fool’s errand.  There is another process, one of abandonment— Zen's own via negativa.  Zen master Sixin Wuxin said it best.

"While still alive, be therefore assiduous in practising Dhyāna.  The practice consists in abandonments.  ‘The abandonment of what?’ you may ask. Abandon your four elements (bhuta), abandon your five aggregates (skandha), abandon all the workings of your relative consciousness (karmavijnana), which you have been cherishing since eternity; retire within your inner being and see into the reason of it.  As your self-reflection grows deeper and deeper, the moment will surely come upon you when the spiritual flower will suddenly burst into bloom, illuminating the entire universe.  The experience is incommunicable, though you yourselves know perfectly well what it is." 

This practice begins by living far away from the madding crowd and overcoming the five hindrances.  All the theoretical knowledge that we have gained it not going to help us.  It our retreat it will become, over time, an impediment.  It is a life of shape identification without ever meeting, face to face, what the countless shapes are actually composed from.  On such a foolish journey, one will never become a knower of the unmade.

Neither Buddhism nor Zen are a Tony Robbins event on the cheap

Where, exactly, is the end of suffering in Buddhism to be found?  First of all, it’s not about ending human suffering in the example of winning the lottery, overcoming depression, finding new meaning in an otherwise boring and irresponsible life, finding a new boyfriend or girlfriend, or getting a good paying job.  This is still suffering although on the surface it seems otherwise. 

Here the Buddha tells us where the end of suffering is to be found which is certainly not something appealing to the worldly human.

“There is that sphere (āyatanaṃ), monks, where there is no earth, no water, no fire, no air, no sphere of infinite space, no sphere of infinite consciousness, no sphere of nothingness, no sphere of neither perception nor non-perception, no this world, no world beyond, neither Moon nor Sun. There, monks, I say there is surely no coming, no going, no persisting, no passing away, no rebirth It is quite without support, unmoving, without an object,—just this is the end of suffering” (Udāna 80).

This ‘sphere’ can also mean an 'origin' or 'source'.  It could even refer to the absolute.  This is also what Zen seeks and finds in kenshō which is seeing our true nature which is also the end of suffering as far as the next life is concerned.  There will be no more samsara, in other words.

The Buddha’s idea of suffering and its end is not like that of the worldling.  It is the same with compassion.  This is why it is so odd to see Dharma centers or Zen centers becoming magnets for people with a variety of mental issues who are seeking some relief from their suffering. 

It’s kind of like, Have a problem?  Check out your local Zen center and learn zazen.  Problem solved.  But that is neither what Buddhism nor Zen are about.

Expecting Buddhism or Zen to be like a Tony Robbins event on the cheap where we learn to live a healthier and more purposeful life; where there will be a one-on-one coaching program, training systems and group workshops, etc., is not going to be found.  If anything, the thrust of Buddhism is to get the worldling to first accept that life, no matter how healthy or wealthy a person becomes is not going to end their suffering.  After the complete acceptance of this fact, the next step is to realize that sphere (āyatanaṃ) which can be a long process.

Was Dōgen's teaching missing was the last Zen slogan?

In an older blog I wrote that Zen’s history tells us that Dōgen Zenji, around 1227, a former Tendai student, had studied and received transmission in China in the Caodong tradition under Zen master Tiantong Rujing who was a third-generation disciple of Zhenxie Qingliao.  All this came under the heading of a meditation called ‘silent illumination’ which was then the main practice of Caodong. 

Satisfied that he had reached enlightenment Dōgen left China in 1227 or 1228 and returned to Japan to establish the Sōtō sect曹洞宗.  But what he brought back with him from China was not a Zen based on the four slogans of Zen attributed to Bodhidharma.  They were:  

A special transmission outside the teachings,
do not depend on written words,
directly point to the human mind,
see one’s nature and become Buddha.

What Dōgen was missing was the last slogan, the critical part being “see one’s nature” 見性, which in Japanese is kenshō.

Surprisingly, the four Zen slogans don’t mention anything like silent illumination or zazen which is a physical exercise.  Authentic Zen practice takes place in the human mind not in the body that came through the birth canal. 

We learn about the meditation Dōgen learned in China from the teachings of Qingliao, of whom Dōgen’s teacher Rujing was a third-generation disciple.  He taught,

“Without taking a step you should constantly sit in your rooms and just forget about the teachings.  Be like withered wood, or a stone, or a wall, or a piece of tile, or a pebble. Cut off knowing and understanding and be naturally vacuous and completely bright. You should not make the least bit of conscious effort here” (M. Schlütter , How Zen Became Zen, 154).

Nothing is said about the mind.  Qingliao seems to be suggesting that we make our body into a lifeless thing.  But how is that anything like Siddhartha’s awakening whereby he became a Buddha?

The reason that the third Zen slogan says “directly point to the human mind” is because this is Zen’s terrain where the journey takes place.  The goal of the journey is with the sudden and complete cessation of the conditioned human mind or the same, mental activity.  This is gnosis of our true nature or essence which is unconditioned.  It's like knowing all waves are compositions of water.  This is also the state of being a Buddha or buddhatā.   

 

Identity politics and Zen Buddhism are incompatible

Sorry folks, but we don’t live in a time when people are free from being crazy and even batshit crazy.  The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which was created in 1952, has certainly grown in size over the years.  A fifth edition was released in 2014.  (Maybe there is another one on the way, even larger.)

I think it is safe to say that the human race has a lot of crazies mixed in with the not-so-crazy people.  Worth mentioning also, entire nations have gone batshit crazy.  I have been glancing through Charles Mackay’s classic work, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841). He writes,

“We see one nation suddenly seized, from its highest to its lowest members, with a fierce desire of military glory; another as suddenly becoming crazed upon a religious scruple, and neither of them recovering its senses until it has shed rivers of blood and showed a harvest of groans and tears, to be reaped by its posterity.”

As for “rivers of blood” let us not forget the words of batshit crazy Trotsky:

“The only difference is that this tyranny will not come from the right, but from the left, and will not be white, but red, in the literal sense of that word, for we shall shed such streams of blood that all the losses of human lives in Capitalist wars will shrink and pale before them.”

To avoid going, personally, batshit crazy we study the words of the Buddha — that is the normal approach.  But that is not what is going on today.  It’s called identity politics which in a nutshell is about marginalized groups trying to gain a political voice in society which is really a desire or need to overpower.  They have pretty much taken over the universities and have their eye on corporations.  Take away the abstract arguments, this is about crazy groups vs the not-so-crazy and who is going to win, politically, and dominate.  The crazies seem to be saying, “Respect me for the reason that I am crazy and a victim.  I have special needs that you (probably my oppressor) must meet or suffer the consequences of my wrath.”

If we go back to 2018 when Edward Brown, a Soto Zen priest, was kicked out of the San Francisco Zen Center for allegedly saying something he did not say (even the tape recording said he did not say what was alleged), and despite Edward’s daughter trying to save the reputation of her father, he was nevertheless given the boot by the Zen social justice warriors for offending “a queer woman and survivor of sexual violence” whose memory did not match with the tape recording (False Memory Syndrome is a major problem these days which became more public in 1994, following the submission of an amicus brief by a committee of concerned scientists to the Supreme Court of New Jersey).  By the time the Edward Brown incident happened Buddhist and Zen centers were already dealing more and more with the consequences of identity politics.  

Here was the confluence of identity politics and Zen.  This California Zen center, over the many years, had grown into something with the culture of a 60s California commune, the influences of a  Japanese Zen monastery, and an out patient clinic for the mentally afflicted.

Will Zen survive in liberal California?  Not very well.  It will still have the name Zen but that is as far as it goes.  Zen is about to be thrown into the dustbin of history — especially Dōgen’s oddball version of it that managed to establish itself in California, an incompetently run state with 144 billionaires and the highest poverty rate in the United States.

Despite the bad news, there is another Zen with kenshō (intuiting one’s true nature) as its end — not just sitting.  But it is not for the batshit crazy or the moderately crazy.  It requires intuition, faith in the teachings and courage to go through with the whole process.  Those whose problems are listed in the DSM 5 need not apply.

Can there be reincarnation without a self?

I have seen this many times, westerners new to Buddhism come to an Internet chat room like Reddit (which totally sucks) with the same fixed mindset.  For example, if the Buddha teaches there is no self, how can there be reincarnation?  Obviously, this person may have studied Buddhism for a few weeks or even a month.  Maybe more surprising are some of answers from scholars and monk translators.  Here is one from Bhikkhus Bodhi:

“The Buddhist term for rebirth in Pali is ‘punabbhava’ which means ‘again existence’. Buddhism sees rebirth not as the transmigration of a conscious entity but as the repeated occurrence of the process of existence. There is a continuity, a transmission of influence, a causal connection between one life and another. But there is no soul, no permanent entity which transmigrates from one life to another.” (Emphasis is mine.)

First of all there is no evidence in Buddhism that there is an absolute cutoff from the end of one life to the start of another life anymore than a wave ceasing and another arising are completely unconnected (it is through the medium of water that they are always, inherently, connected).

The careful research of Wijesekera published in the Journal of the American Oriental Society 84/3 (1964): 256, titled, The Concept of Viññāṇa in Theravada Buddhism, says:

“In view of such evidence the conclusion is difficult to avoid that the term viññāṇa in Early Buddhism indicated the surviving factor of an individual which by re-entering womb after womb (gabbhā gabbhaṃ: Sn. 278, cp. D.iii.147) produced repeated births resulting in what is generally known as Saṃsāra.”

In fact, the notion of a transmigrant like samsaric consciousness (not the self or ātman) connecting with a fertilized embryo (nāmarūpa) and after death reconnecting with still another embryo, is not outside of Buddhism.  It  is an important part of it.  According to K. N. Jayatilleke in his book, The Message of the Buddha:

“Man, according to the Buddha, is a psychophysical unit (nāmarūpa).  This is made up of three components - the sperm and the ovum which go to make up the fertilised ovum or zygote along with the impact of the stream of consciousness of a discarnate spirit (gandhabba) or what is called the re-linking consciousness (paṭisandhi-viññāṇa).”

We may even consider that thought (citta), mentation (mano) and consciousness (viññāṇa) are just particular modes or forms of spirit (tathatā) which only help to bind the worldling to samsaric consciousness and thus the cycle of rebirths.  There is, subsequently, no escape except to become a Buddha—Buddhahood being self-knowing spirit that alone is capable of saving sentient beings from the burden of too much suffering.

The counterfeit teaching

I became a Buddhist in 1965. But I know for a fact that most who study Buddhism will never become enlightened — not in this life.  Maybe in a thousand more lifetimes!  Essentially, most people edit out Buddhism’s true teaching which creates a problem that only grows worse over time.

Over these many years I have met people who think that enlightenment is realizing Voidness or a No-self.  Some believe that enlightenment is just doing zazen.  Some who have read Alan Watts believe that enlightenment is more like a joke, trying to teach us there is nothing beyond this present condition.  Just accept it.  Others believe that enlightenment is just learning how to cope with life and its difficulties.

Add to the aforementioned, a teacher of Buddhism, to make ends meet, needs students. In this financial situation enlightenment is always just around the corner.  It’s been dumbed down in other words.  So the teacher smiles a lot.  But enlightenment is not all that easy.

We live in the Dharma ending age or the same, the degenerate age. The Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment says, for example,

"Good sons, all bodhisattvas and sentient beings of the degenerate age should separate from all illusory and false realms. By firmly abiding in separation from thought, you also separate from the thought of 'illusion.' You also separate from the illusion of 'separation.' You also separate from this separation from this illusion of separation. You will reach 'nothing to be separated from,' which is the removal of all illusion. It is like making a fire with two sticks. The fire blazes and the wood is consumed; the ashes fly away and the smoke vanishes. Using illusion to remedy illusion is exactly like this. Yet even though all illusions are extinguished, you do not enter into nothingness."

Our postmodern age is the degenerate age  With such an age comes the disappearance of the true teaching of Buddhism.  This is so because a counterfeit teaching gradually arises just like a problem with real gold arises when there is a proliferation of fake gold. 

The counterfeit teaching is about generating fictions and illusions about Buddhism; then becoming deeply attached to them. It is also about holding on to our false beliefs about Buddhism refusing to accept that it is a deeply mystical and spiritual tradition which is not fettered by words and concepts but, instead, teaches the human mind to look beyond itself to the true nature of reality which is the state of Buddhahood.

The coming age of the noble person (ārya-pudgala)

Many new Buddhists tend to think of the teachings as something like a smorgasbord (a buffet offering a variety of hot and cold meats, salads, hors d'oeuvres, etc.). You pick what you like out of the teachings and leave the rest. Hate the idea of reincarnation? Fine, just reject it. The Buddha would say that is okay. Hate the idea of karma? Cool, just reject it.

But truth be told, what goes on today in western Buddhism is postmodernism disguised to appear like Buddhism.  But it is not.  It is fake Buddhism.

In a postmodern world everything is breaking down.  We feel discontent.  It fills our day to day life with uncertainty and anxiety. At the back of our mind we are doubtful of belief systems even Buddhism.  We ask, “Aren’t all belief systems just social constructions?”

And behind it all we sense there is the workings of a virtue reality-creating machinery where its operators are always creating new realities, new narratives, and more and more pseudo events, right before our very eyes. What can we do about it?

First of all, we must accept that we don’t know either our strengths or our weaknesses.  We’ve never been tested.  We have never taken Siddhartha’s journey of enlightenment.  Right now, it seems that we are more like Humpty-Dumpty who can’t be put back together again. We are the ultimate fragmented person.  Can Buddhism put us back together? 

Buddhism for us begins when, in our darkest hour, we decide to leave the unholy chatter of the vox populi and the disintegrating cities of postmodernity relying, instead, upon our intuition seeking to realize what this age fears most:  to see within ourselves what our thoughts and concepts are made of, thus, to go beyond.  It is most high and luminous, primordial and unchanging; free of suffering and rebirth. 

With faith and courage we must believe this can be accomplished; that this is the real foundation of Buddhism and the quest of Siddhartha.  This is all we have or will ever have to help us with our escape from the lower worlds.  Who is it that dares to look deeply within and awaken?  It is only the noble person (ārya-pudgala).