The Zennist

Zen really begins when the mind investigates itself

Our everyday world is the world of appearances.  It’s the world of shopping, of making sure Sam and Josie get on the school bus, installing a new furnace, washing the clothes and visiting mom and dad.  And many more things. 

The importance of this everyday world is, naturally, of great value to ordinary people—practical people.  What Buddhists call puthujjana.  Such people don’t wonder if there is a true reality that is more fundamental that exists behind appearances; or if what they perceive in their normal, everyday life adds up to an illusion that seems real but in the end is not.

These same people might do meditation.  For them it’s a way to reach a state of ease or imperturbability in which one is more calm than anxious.  But this is not really what Zen is about.  Zen wants to take us behind the world of appearances that we believe are so very real.  As we delve more into Zen, eventually, we learn from our study of Zen that it doesn’t employ the machinery of reason with which the intellect operates which we are so used to, which is still a part of appearance.

Zen really begins when the mind investigates itself—not through thoughts or thinking about what mind is (speculation), but when through intuition mind is its own witness.  This is extremely profound and subtle insofar as mind has to agree with itself, 100%.  Said again, this agreement is not through another or a difference from itself but only though itself.

In light of this, so much of Zen is about preparing our self to make the transition from our intellects which rely on reason to the investigation of mind by mind in which enlightenment is, eventually, achieved.  This is also the waking-up of mind becoming Mind or the true Mind 真心.  In the Śūraṅgama Sūtra we read:

The Buddha said: Ānanda and all of you should know that living beings, since the time without beginning, have been subject continuously to birth and death because they do not know the permanent True Mind whose substance is, by nature, pure and bright. They have relied on false thinking which is not Reality so that the wheel of saṃsāra turns. 

The coming of the boneheads

Over the years, I have found that chat rooms like the now defunct E-Sangha and more recent ones found on Reddit, give me a good sample of where the modern mind, as far as Zen and Buddhism is concerned, is coming from.  And I must say in all frankness, that the modern mind is adverse to enlightenment! enlightenment being a supermundane intuition whereby one, suddenly, converges with the absolute.  By the way, in his letter to Flaccus, Plotinus ranked intuition as the highest form of knowledge. 

Today, someone might ask, “How can I, personally, have this supermundane intuition?”  And if I were to tell them it is not by the intellect which lives in the world of reasoning, they would almost be dumbstruck.  But the fact is, one can only awaken to the absolute by a faculty superior to the intellect, that is, by entering into a state which suddenly converges with the absolute or the same, a supermundane essence, we would call the unconditioned Mind in Zen.

This intuition is one’s liberation from the dualistic trap of consciousness (and with it rebirth) better understood by the Sanskrit term, vijñāna.  The trap represents our need to see things in an observer, observed mode which is also subject and object knowing.  We never think that this dual-ness came from the absolute which is single—not two.  But this is where the intuition takes the adept who then finds that it is impossible to explain the one in terms of two!

If we could call our newly awakened adept a mystic, the modern mind sill insists that our mystic has to lay his cards, so to speak, on the table.  As moderns, we have to see what he is holding.  But this is not a card game and our mystic has nothing conditioned to show this person who asks.  Still the modern insists to see what our mystic as seen so he can decide whether or not to follow his or her path.  Is this being a bonehead?  Yes it is. 

But boneheads are interested in Zen and Buddhism because they think Zen can help them cope with their lives which I would argue can only help in a very limited way since these boneheads have a very low spiritual IQ, this being their karma (karma is our ability to more or less intuitively awaken—the less one’s ability the worse their karma).  For me, this is where modern Zen and Buddhism stands.  It is not a good place.

Does Soto Zen ignore enlightenment?

Zen’s history tells us that Dōgen in 1227, a former Tendai student, studied the Caodong tradition 曹洞宗 under Zen master Tiantong Rujing who was a student of Zhenxie Qingliao.  Understanding the purport of silent illumination 默照, which was then the main practice of Caodong, Dōgen afterwards returned to Japan to establish the Sōtō sect曹洞宗. 

What popular Zen history leaves out is where Caodong, during the time of Dōgen,  actually stood with regard to enlightenment. 

Before I look into this question, I should add that Caodong was founded during the Tang dynasty by Dongshān Lianjie eventually finding it way to two notable students of Zen master Danxia Zichun, viz., Hongzhi Zhengjue and Zhenxie Qingliao.  It would be Zhenxie Qingliao, and not Hongzhi Zhengjue, that was to be the major target of Zen master Dahui’s attacks against silent illumination which appeared to deny enlightenment.  Dahui was 12th generation of Linji/Rinzai school of Zen.  Incidentally, Tiantong Rujing, a Caodong master in Qingliao’s lineage, was the teacher of the Japanese Sōtō Zen master Dōgen.  One could go as far as to say that Zen master Dahui attacked the whole Caodong tradition for its uncritical reliance on the practice of silent illumination.

Noteworthy also, Zen master Dahui is linked to what is called kanhua Chan which relies on the use of the koan, but more so relies on the huatou which refers to the moment before the true Mind or Mind-ground is stirred by thoughts.  Thoughts or mentation, it is important to keep in mind, only serve to obstruct gnosis of Mind which is, naturally, devoid of thoughts/mentation.  With the sudden, unexpected cessation of thought comes the sudden revelation of Mind which is Buddhahood.  This is also seeing one’s true nature 見性, which makes up the fourth Zen slogan of Bodhidharma. 

Zen master Dahui’s overall attack was directed against silent illumination which he considered to be heretical insofar as it amounted to quietism in which one tries to become empty and still, this being taken to be enlightenment.  Of this quietism Zen (mozhao xie chan) Dahui said:

“They say that enlightenment is a construct and only tell people to sit like mounds of dirt rigidly assigned in rows, and teach them ‘quietude’ [jing]. They call quietude the roots and enlightenment the branches and leaves” (M. Schlütter , How Zen Became Zen, p. 117).

Zen master Dahui worked tirelessly to try and help those brainwashed by this kind of heretical Zen practice which he likened to sitting like mounds in the ghostly cave under the black mountain.  One example Schlütter gives in his book is that of an 83 year-old monk that Dahui eventually brought to great enlightenment.  But at first the old monk didn’t believe in enlightenment.  Another example was the nun Miaodao Dingguang who also did not believe in enlightenment except as a quietistic practice.

To reiterate, according to Zen master Dahui these people “do not believe there is enlightenment: they call enlightenment madness, or they call it secondary, or an expedient teaching, or an expression to attract [people to Chan teachings]” (M. Schlütter , How Zen Became Zen, p. 119).

It is not surprising to find that Dōgen fell into the trap of silent illumination and no-enlightenment given the fact that his teacher was Zen master Rujing who was a student of Zen master Qingliao.  Dōgen also rejected the term kenshō (seeing one’s true nature) which is the fourth Zen slogan of Bodhidharma.  According to Kenneth Kraft in his book, Eloquent Zen and Early Japanese Zen:

“Although he acknowledged Hui-neng's sudden enlightenment, he [Dōgen] also attacked the Platform Sutra for its endorsement of kenshō” (p. 92). 

Dōgen claimed the phrase, kenshō, was a work of forgery!

 

A brief history of Zen

In the Song dynasty, Zen masters were engaged in different kinds of practices which included the study of the Buddha’s discourses.  It was almost impossible to tell the Zen or Chan tradition from other Buddhist traditions. The only unique thing about Zen was its special lineage in which a special transmission certificate was issued to prove that the special transmission had taken place.  This was about the only proof that one was the Dharma heir of a certain Zen master.  This certificate, however, was only important if one were to serve as an abbot of a monastery. 

You could almost call this Zen “genealogy Buddhism” in which a direct link to someone in the transmission history was necessary; who would then be an actual member of the Zen lineage.  In this way, Zen had created for itself an iron clad lineage of Buddhas which spread widely throughout Asia. 

But with the discovery of the documents in the Chinese desert oasis of Dunhuang in 1900, the scholars could see that the so-called Zen lineage was a mythical construct by its mythographers which served, mainly, to legitimize the Zen tradition.  In other words, there was nothing transmitted except paper. 

Yes, the Zen lineage was a great marketing ploy, to say the least, which helped to make Zen popular.  It also helped to gain patronage and power.  Still, the lineage from the very beginning wasn’t smooth.  In fact, it was highly contentious according to scholars.  There were a number of competing lineages, in fact.  Each had their own history.

Zen’s claim of legitimacy is, arguably, more fiction than historical fact.  Enlightenment cannot be handed down from master to disciple in the form of a certificate or some special ceremony like the Masons have.  The student either intuits their true nature which comes in a variety of different names or they don’t.  There is no in-between.  Also, it is important to understand that enlightenment is self-verifying, but not just any unique personal experience is enlightenment insofar as one can often talk oneself into an ‘experience’.

When we put aside the historical fiction and the transmission certificates we are left with two significant practices in Zen both of which aimed at being authentic which made up the real force behind Zen. 

One practice is called silent illumination Chan/Zen 默照禪.  Silent illumination as a Zen practice means to position one’s body and mind in such a way that silence or stillness grows as well as insight. This is what is meant by illumination.  However, strictly speaking, this is not enlightenment in the sense of kenshō 見性 which involves religious intuition or, the same, an epiphany which is the sudden manifestation of the essential nature of reality.

The other important Zen practice involves the koan 公案 or huatou 話頭 called kanhua Chan 看話禅.  In English this is,  introspective Chan, which leads to direct intuition of the huatou, the huatou being the source or origin of thought, which is empty of thought 無心.  To repeat what I said earlier, kanhua Chan involves religious intuition or, the same, an epiphany which is the sudden manifestation of the essential nature of reality. 

Koan practice puts the intellect into such a state that it temporarily cancels itself out.  Suddenly, there is no thought 無心—the intellect has disappeared. And, suddenly, the answer to the koan appears.  But this proves an extremely difficult practice since the answer to the koan is beyond the ken of the intellect. The koan, itself, is composed around a gesture or a word or phrase.  An intuitive leap has to be made into the absolute otherwise one will not be able to answer the koan.

 

 

 

The self in the biological machine

It is not too difficult for people to understand that every phenomenal thing is momentary but never permanent for if things were permanent then how could they cease to exist?  We accept that our conditioned world is momentary and in time, all of us will die having no power to stop our death.

Yet many people seem to believe that their self is really to be found in what the Buddhist call the five aggregates, i.e., the psychophysical organism, even though the teachings of the Buddha say that this corporeal aggregation is not the real self even though many believe otherwise.

What has happened to us is that we have wrongly identified with something like a biological robot in the belief that we are this robot which is the cause of our suffering.  It’s like the Buddha is telling us that we are not this biological robot, even though we inhabit it.  It is not our real and eternal self so we have to stop desiring it as if it is who we are.

But can we kick the habit of desiring it and see the real self?  That is  difficult to answer given the Western world appears to deny a ghost (G., Geist) in the machine which is not unlike the invisible radio signal in the radio which amplifies the signal.  Many of us seem to believe there is no ghost—only an evolved biological machine that will one day die and be the end of us. Some, to put it another way, believe the biological machine makes the ghost and when the machine falls apart, we are no more.

At least for Buddhism the machine is not a problem because the idea of matter or biological matter as we understand it doesn’t exist in Buddhism.  The biological machine, in other words, is a construct of Mind and its powers of discrimination.  All phenomena, in fact, are a phenomenalization of Mind (G., Geist)—there is only Mind (cittamatra). Take Mind away and there is nothing there.  Our real self stands, independently, above this for it has found itself, not through the study of phenomena, including the biological machine, but through meditation that reveals self to itself like the sun that reveals itself and everything else.

 

 

A huge part of us is a demon

We are inhabiting a system of conditioned being called the five skandhas or in Pali the five khandhas. (They consist of physical form, feeling, perception, volitional formations and consciousness.)  As presented in the cannon, they belong to the demon Māra which the Bodhisattva (Siddhartha) fought and defeated and later became enlightened after going through the four meditations (dhyānas). 

As a matter of spiritual discovery, this really boils down to overcoming the powerful influence of our conditioned organism that we took birth in which is called ‘former karma’ (we made the bed, now we can lie in it). The pressing work before us, is to escape our predicament so we don't end up reborn in another body under the same conditions or something even worse.

A huge part of us is a demon—yes, it’s true.  Let’s put it this way: we are immediate with Māra.  The Tibetan Lamas say this demon is rooted in our primordial ignorance (avidya) which I hasten to add is always conditioned—never unconditioned.  Because of avidya we live in a world of confusion.  We can’t distinguish the conditioned (samsara) from the unconditioned (nirvana) which is our goal.

And who is helping us to stay confused and remain a demon?  Why it’s our close buddy Māra who is very good at overriding our conscience, so that lying and hypocrisy seems like a natural way of life, even though it is not natural, and needs to be corrected—which is what Buddhist training is all about!

Very good Buddhist teachers are good at showing us our demon nature; who make it obvious to us that we are not the good and holy person we imagined that we were.  And this is troubling for a lot of beginners who don't like to be admonished, who are frankly too immature at this point in their lives to be serious Buddhists.  About all they can do is seated meditation, take their meds to calm the demon down, and maybe join a Buddhist chat room.

 

Real meditation, the kind the Buddha taught

There is nothing unique about meditation in Zen Buddhism (P., jhāna; S., dhāyna).  In fact, it is taught in all Buddhist traditions and has been that way for a very long time.  Perhaps the only new twist, it is being taught to lay people who haven’t a clue as to what it really entails.  The meditation they practice has only a remedial purpose.  It’s deeper purpose, seldom taught to lay people, is simply to discover who the “breather is” (this would be the practice of breath meditation) or to discover the source and substance of mentation (this can only occur with the sudden cessation of mentation or 無念).

This is where meditation usually ends up these days—not advanced at all.  A kind of lay person’s Zen practice that goes no further.  It even applies these days to monks and nuns who are more serious than a lay person.   

For those who wish to venture deeper into the heart of Zen Buddhism—certainly not with a lay person’s shallowness—without the requisite awakening or kenshō, they are entering a world which cannot be fully unpacked by the intellect which can extend all the way to a philosophical understanding of Zen diving, intellectually, into the world of metaphysics. 

This is good for a while.  Hopefully, not too long.  At some point, the adept realizes that ‘talking the talk’ is not enough.  It’s too superficial.  One also has to ‘walk the walk’ which means actually having kenshō (we westerners love to ‘talk the talk’—entering into the world of metaphysics without ever awakening). 

At some point we have to discover that Buddhism, as far as meditation goes, demands of us that we achieve gnosis of the absolute, i.e., asaṃskṛta (the unconditioned) which is the very substance of things (dharmā) which are mere constructs of the absolute, itself.  This is what Zen is demanding too, but through the world of Chinese culture.

It is here that the lay person’s idea of meditation proves awkward and inadequate.  Real meditation, the kind the Buddha taught consists of setting aside all conditionality (saṃskṛta) so that only the unconditioned remains—which is what we really are.  All along, the conditioned world was never other than antithetical to us, i.e., marked by direct opposition to us in the form of suffering and disharmony.  Even our human body proved antithetical (old age and death).  To overcome this is where the real meditation is required—not the zendo type.

 

So what is so unique about Zen?

Zen Buddhism is coming to the where Yoga is right now, which is not the teachings of the sage Patanjali but really Hatha Yoga.  Haṭha in Sanskrit means, violence or force so Hatha Yoga is really about holding, by force, difficult and painful postures.  This doesn’t have anything to do with the Yoga of Patanjali. 

Likewise, today’s Zen seems to be putting an end to itself by its insistence on seated meditation which is taught in all schools of Buddhism going back to the time of the Buddha.  This only helps to erase the uniqueness of Zen.

So what is so unique about Zen as compared with other Buddhist traditions?

From what I can see it is a simpler overview of Buddhism, cutting to the chase, so to speak.  It holds out Siddhartha’s awakening as its ultimate aim.  According to the Lalitavistara Sutra, at the moment of dawn when the morning star arose, the Bodhisattva (Siddhartha) became a Buddha, teacher of gods and men.

Zen understands that awakening is sudden and direct; there is no gradual awakening.  More precisely, awakening occurs when our thoughts suddenly stop which then reveals Mind from which our thoughts arise. 

For Zen, Mind, as such, is a luminous vitality (prabhāsvara) which goes beyond the reach of subject and object knowing or vijñāna (consciousness).  All conditioned things originate from Mind including vijñāna, but Mind is increate and unconditioned.

Zen is always driving its students to awakening for only by awakening can one really understand the meaning of Buddhist subjects like the four noble truths, dependent origination, emptiness, and the noble eight-fold path and much more.  Without awakening we are just making educated guesses almost deluding ourselves into believing we understand what the Buddha understood.

Zen also understands that the thought producing intellect gets in our way so that we cannot enter the Dharma gate or the same, the no-gate 無門.  Thought in any form such as Mu 無 becomes a barrier 関 preventing us from entering the Dharma gate.  It is only by no-thought 無念, that is, the sudden stopping of thought (all mentation in other words) that we finally behold Mind by entering the Dharma gate, seeing what Siddhartha saw under the Bodhi-tree.

To go by way of the intellect

According to Zen master Dahui, the Buddha said,

"The Tathagata uses all sorts of similes to explain all kinds of things, but there is no simile that can explain this Dharma. Why? Because the road of intellectual knowledge is cut off: (the Dharma) is inconceivable."

To go by way of the intellect in trying to see our true nature or the same, to achieve kenshō, won’t work.  The intellect can, with some difficulty, help us to turn in the right direction—but getting there?  It is not the proper means.  Only intuition is. 

Most students, I dare say, don’t know when they are using the intellect and that it actually obstructs the Path insofar as the Path is beyond thoughts and concepts which are the tools of the intellect.  In other words, how can students hope to arrive at the state of inconceivable great liberation, which is unconditioned, by looking for it through the prism of the conditioned such as thoughts and concepts?  They can’t!

This is why the Buddha and the patriarchs were always admonishing their students for going the intellectual route, seemingly, unaware that they were doing this.  When I began Zen I had no idea of how intellectual I was, never failing to have some idea or concept of what Zen was about but then finding out later I was all wrong.

Today things are much worse.  Zen centers have turned more or less into out-patient clinics which means people with mental issues cannot take the Path until they get normalized. Another problem, is the over reliance on seated meditation which is often trying to compensate for not understanding that seeing our true nature (inconceivable great liberation) is an intuition—very sudden—but very, very profound.  The demands of intuition are different than for sitting or using the intellect.

Our thoughts suddenly coming to a halt

All the everyday thoughts we have are not a substance or essence. Thought is a mode of Mind, Mind being unthinkable but, nevertheless, the source and substance of thoughts. For Zen, thought then cannot know Mind. Yes, it can point to Mind, and does so in Zen literature, but thought cannot go there. To arrive at Mind (satori = Zen gnosis), we must go to where there is no arising of thought insofar as Mind is non-arising and totally invisible.

Sound weird?  It’s not if you begin with the One Mind, the primary source which is unconditioned and non-arising. 

Now, don’t try to imagine the One Mind.  It won’t work no matter how much you try.  What you’ve imagined is not the One Mind.  At best it is a copy or a simulacrum which is purely guesswork on your part—you could be way off and most likely are.

The practice that works in Zen to realize Mind (also the One Mind) depends upon whether or not we, as practitioners, are successful with our thoughts, suddenly, coming to a halt thus to reveal Mind.  But this cannot be forced either.  The will doesn’t work here.  Satori comes through direct intuition which is different than using the will.

When we, personally, behold Mind, this is called the transmission of the light denglu/燈錄.  It is a spiritual baptism.  From our thoughts to every part of our body, the blissful light now dominates us.  It is protector and lord (nātha).