The Zennist

Deciding which way to go

There is so much mystery in Zen Buddhism that those who read and study it do so rely on a contemporary standpoint.  But it is almost impossible that Zen should speak for itself through modern ideas and various contemporary meanings we give to Zen’s words.  We have only ourselves to look into to begin to find the portal or the same the path of Zen.  Ultimately, Zen wants us to look within. 

The more we look within, there is a more subtle world to be examined but this examination is not about looking at something other than the onlooker.  The fundamental difference between the onlooker and the examined is precisely zero.  It is somewhat like saying the difference between thought and extension is precisely zero.  Still, we do not understand how there can be this zero difference.

Zen will suggest to us that this zero difference is spirit or absolute Mind before it becomes manifest as thought and extension.  Thus, in essence, there is zero difference.  At this point, what the adept is missing is the direct experience of spirit, itself, which is unthinkable and infinite.

Faced with a lack of experience, the Zen adept must either fish or cut bait.  The adept must either take up the more difficult mind, the religious mind, which works by direct intuition or gnosis, or take up the ecclesiastical mind which is observant and intellectual.  Most who come to this crossroad either consciously or unconsciously choose to go with the ecclesiastical mind.  It is here that the practitioner comes to see Zen as   consisting of robes, ceremonies and rituals, and seated meditation or zazen—and an institutional enlightenment.

The dualizing work of consciousness

If it is true as Dr. Donald Hoffman suggests in his book titled, The Case Against Reality, that matter and spacetime arise from consciousness, then what are we to make of this consciousness from a Buddhist perspective? 

The English word consciousness is often used in Buddhism to translate vijñāna.  Does consciousness work?  No, I don't think it does.  It leaves out something very important in vijñāna which is the dualizing work of consciousness itself:  there always has to be separation between subject and object as implied with the prefix “vi”.

It hardly ever dawns on the human mind, or maybe I should say human consciousness, that it is always looking at the world in two parts, that his, subject and object, or if you prefer, observer and observed.  During satori or enlightenment this duality is transcended.  The adept goes back to original, non-duality, or advaya.

Any trace of an ‘other’ or object is gone; there is no subject either.  In about 1/10 of a second duality has gone back into the original state.  In Zen we might call it One Mind or pure spirit or pure Mind.  In light of this, thought, which brings with it duality (thinker and thought) only serves to falsify and distort the original state which is absolute, inexpressible, and  indeterminate.  It transcends every kind of thought, thought being only a construction of spirit or the same, the One Mind.

 

The conditioned is empty

Śūnyatā should represent emptiness of essence/intrinsic nature (svabhāva) in what is conditioned.  On the other hand, the unconditioned is svabhāva.  Related, one should understand that ‘no-thought’ (acitta) is the domain of the supreme essential nature (paramārthikaḥ svabhāvaḥ) which is never other than unconditioned.  If this sounds confusing then perhaps the reader is reading these words with a nihilistic bias.

Unfortunately, the modern understanding of Buddhism is for the most part nihilistic and quite extreme.  The Buddha preached against nihilism.  He did not deny the transcendent or absolute spirit which was unconditioned and non-dual (advaya).  In fact, I should add that enlightenment or gnosis proves this.  One, in fact, attains this transcendent state which is totally unthinkable. 

Trying to explain this with words which give rise to thoughts is a fool’s errand that a good teacher, nevertheless, has to partake in.   Our human form is like the 305-meter-wide dish at Arecibo Observatory into which data enters but the absolute is not one of those things.  No matter how subtle our thoughts are, our thought/reasoning stops us from entering the so-called kingdom of heaven.

Times of uncertainty

We live in a time of uncertainty.  But haven’t all times been uncertain times?  We proceed with our everyday life being dependent on sensory perceptions that are incomplete and reveal, at best, only a fragment of reality.  To be sure, we have an incomplete picture of the reality we live in since the input of data leaves huge areas out of the picture, so to speak.  This makes us uncertain.

This uncertainty, if we don't think about it is, eventually, covered up by our imagination.  It gives us a kind of virtual/fictional reality which can be pleasurable and comforting at times.  Yes, too much uncertainty can be a problem as with too much certainty that, unbeknownst to us, is the result of the imagination filling-in the incompleteness. 

Probably the worst way of dealing with uncertainty is by having too much reliance on the imagination which can lead to delusional disorders in which people cannot tell what is real from what is imagined.  The dangerous side of this inevitably leads to political delusions that can be socially engineered by means of illogicality, that is, by spreading disorganized thought and communication.

Most of us are already caught in the net of political delusions from global warming to a borderless world.  The power that religion once had has been taken away and handed over to the ideologues whose half baked ideas are infused with raw emotion so that they are unable to resonate with the truth.

During the late 60s the Zen that I eventually came to reject could be thought of as a halfway house for those who are in a kind of twilight zone, who would either see darkness or light.  Zen when I left it had chosen to go down a path to attain darkness in the sense of resting enlightenment on the subjective and absence (non-findingness).

Even doubt thought

Perhaps it is easier to understand what belief is by saying that it is for those who fear to know.  When one begins to grow tired of belief and say to themselves, “I must know,” there is a decisive shift and more of a difference when we finally know Nirvana (akatanññū).  The need for belief or faith has been surpassed (asaddho).  (This is clearly evident in verse 97 of the Dhammapada.)

Modern Buddhists I'm sure detest the term belief or faith.  It reminds them of religion.  They are of the mind to assert that Buddhism is not religious — it is a philosophy.  Yet, to be a Buddhist one still has to believe that Siddhartha awakened to something real and true having surpassed mere belief by direct intuition of the absolute, which I hasten to add, had nothing to do with sitting under a tree. 

If there is one practice in popular Zen that requires a lot of credulity, it is believing that by sitting in meditation you are a Buddha.  It is to be found in Sōtō Zen.  What is missing is intuition which has nothing to do with the physical ability to sit with legs crossed.  Intuition is concerned with overcoming the intellect which is unable to go beyond thought and of course thinking (the act of producing thoughts). 

For those like Zen master Dahui 大慧 he warned his students that they must ‘doubt’ words but I also believe that he said they must doubt thought, itself, which humans are deeply tied to; which is only a configuration of spirit (pure Mind, One Mind).

Escaping secular possession

Becoming a Buddhist monastic does not mean that a person is enlightened or might reach enlightenment sooner than a Buddhist hermit living in the mountains in a shack or in a cave.  It only serves to reveal one’s dedication to the Dharma which, naturally, could change over time depending upon the subversive influences of secular life.

And here we come to the main obstacle for anyone, either a Buddhist monastic or a lay person.  It is about facing the challenge of overcoming secular possession which tends to be insidious and not easily detected by the average person. 

Keep in mind, Dharma centers including Zen centers are mainly in large metropolitan areas which serve a very active secular population which presents a problem for the perpetuation of Buddhism since Buddhism has little to do with the secular life.  In short, Buddhism is being de-religionized.

The secular life is concerned mainly with Darwinian fitness:  Making a world suitable for human colonization.  In this regard, the modern world represents a kind of spiritual blasphemy.  Everything it touches it transforms into a secular reality—something for the senses and the intellectual imagination (manas). 

But neither the senses themselves nor the objects which the senses manifest and partake in is the problem.  It is the passion and desire which clings to the senses and their objects that is the problem which inevitably leads to suffering.  In other words, at the heart of secularism is passion and desire for the human senses and their objects.  Here we are possessed by an almost unbreakable attachment to a false self as compared with the actual self which transcends the senses and their objects.

Zen is an attack on thought itself

I think it is a truism to say that the player cannot be understood by analyzing the many card games invented, including the cards dealt to the player in a card game.  In that sense even our language cannot tell us about the user of language although I suspect there will be a lot of people who might disagree with me. 

It is convenient and practical for us to use language as if it were the truth; as if it could speak on behalf of the user of language.  In the case of Zen it is already aware that language is totally in adequate to penetrate the mystery of our true nature or the same, the Buddha-nature.  Words, in other words, can't speak for the speaker of words nor even the thinker of thoughts.

When I use the term thinking, in the sense of producing thoughts, I have no idea or any way of seeing just how thoughts are formed by thinking.  If I were to see the thinker before a thought is produced or, the same, at the precise moment a thought disappears, I might succeed in my endeavor.   

Not only is Zen a direct attack on the usefulness of language for getting to ultimate reality, but also it is an attack on thought itself which is the basis of our ideas and concepts.  In this sense, thought is like the quantum, the smallest amount of thingness that you can’t break into smaller parts or sub-thoughts. 

Thought is never ultimate reality.  If anything thought is congealed spirit, spirit being ultimate reality which is also absolutely universal, i.e., nowhere determinate.  In the practice of Zen thought is useful insofar as it is finite and subject to total cessation (nirodha).  The enlightening surprise for the Zen adept is when Mu/the barrier completely disappears (nirodha).  Only then is the Buddha-nature realized which is thoroughly universal and spiritual.

Ending the conflict in human consciousness

Communism, although it doesn't realize it, seeks to end the conflict in human consciousness between the asymmetry of the brain hemispheres which can develop into an antagonism (insanity).  Instead of bringing harmony, Communism only manages to load the dice in favor of the left hemisphere (manipulation rather than understanding).  In other words, there is no peace between the two hemispheres. 

Buddhism, although not its main goal, seeks to bring peace between the two hemispheres which more or less coexist in a kind of ongoing anxiety.  Buddhism's practice which focuses on dhyāna is intended to develop our intuitive ability which transcends the ordinary human mind (manas) with all of its anxieties.  But along the way, Buddhism often becomes lost in an intellectual (manas) labyrinth.

Zen, as a more direct form of Buddhism, knows well the problem with the intellect.  The intellect is manipulative not intuitive.  The intellect depends on the words and the thoughts or feelings they evoke.  But intuition in Buddhism works differently than the intellect.  Put one way, intuition is about coming to direct knowledge without reasoning or inferring.  It is direct and sudden.  It is also first-person knowledge of ultimate reality which has not yet been congealed/formulated into thought for the intellect to use. 

By another name it is pure spirit or the same, pure Mind which the Zen student comes to realize (kenshō).  This awakening is beyond the world of our thoughts and for that reason trying to put it into thought proves in adequate.  Hence, the great frustration with Zen.  We cannot manipulate it without making ourself look stupid in the long run.  We have to meet this pure mind or spirit on its own turf.

The central feature of Zen training

The resistance towards or a disregard for introspection that leads to intuition of spirit requires not a weak will but a strong, inflexible will.  Those who are fixated on the habit of forming thoughts, like the intellectual, will resist the authentic practice of Zen. 

If a Zen master is awakened, having directly intuited pure spirit or pure Mind, they can’t help but being identified (samādhi) with this spirit before it is congealed into a thought (this spirit you could even call the Buddha-nature).  In that regard, their mind operates differently than the mind of a non-awakened individual.  This we see in the Zen literature of koans.

A small dog, for example, is only an ensemble or composition of Buddha-nature—but not the nature or spirit itself which is uncomposed.  The Japanese word Mu (無) is only a formation of spirit not the spirit itself.  When we read the koan about the small dog of Jōshū (趙州狗子) and his reply Mu, our mind automatically looks for a Mu-thought.  We not only fail to intuit this unformed spirit or Buddha-nature, we remain stuck on the dog/狗 and Mu/無.

Getting the Zen student to give up their unconscious habit of forming spirit into various thoughts thereby missing direct intuition of spirit, is the central feature of Zen training.  Short of this, Zen is taken over by rituals and seated meditation which only act as a diversion.  Zen has essentially had intuition removed and re-interpreted.

At the core of all ideology

There was a time when we believed people could be possessed by the devil.  Modern man thinks he knows better.  There is no devil.  But what he does not know, this modern techno-man of ours, is that he can be possessed by ideas (also the emotionalization of ideas).  This is at the core of all ideology, especially, Marxism and its derivatives. 

In the same way that we are possessed by the belief that the psychophysical body is who we are, the ideologist believes that their ideas are greater than the reality of the everyday world.  What has been added to their ideas is the same emotional attachment they have to the belief (diṭṭhi) that the psychophysical body (sakkāya = own body) is who they are (or the five aggregates/khandhas). 

Transcending this emotional armature proves next to impossible.  To make matters even worse there is an additional shifting of emotions which make up the psychophysical body, to the ideas themselves.  They are reified to such an extent that they have a life of their own.  One is, so to speak, possessed by the devil/idea.

This was Zen’s important discovery that thought was the basis of all ideas/concepts; that we could liberate our self from thought (spirit as formed or congealed) thus being sanctified by spirit or pure Mind.  The student has suddenly entered the world of unbounded spirit where lies also the world of the Buddhas. 

I realize that what I am writing goes way over the heads of the ordinary person who might even be curious about Zen.  The modern disposition has not yet questioned, much less has acknowledged that all thought is the same insofar as it is only congealed spirit.  Needless to say, this lack is not my concern, so much as it is a problem everyone will face if they truly want to enter into the world of Zen. 

All lessons in Zen have to be learned the hard way in the depths of our being not outside of it as if to escape from it.  As we progress on the path of Zen it becomes more and more difficult not easier.  This is because we are sacrificing our once treasured beliefs going from the least to the most treasured this being thought.