The Zennist

On the transcendence of the experiencer and the experience

There is a longing in the human heart for truth.  For most people it is hardly detectable.  For others like the Buddha, truth is better expressed as spirit which animates all creatures where in mankind finds itself hidden and overwhelmed by sensory experiences, the mightiest of which is the imagination.  Even birth and death are contained within the imagination so encompassing is its seeming power.

Yet, for all the experiences which have been shaped by the imagination they are still illusory, that is, māyā.  Without exception all illusions are conditioned which the unenlightened take to be real so that they are induced to cling to them. 

We might even say that all illusions are experiences and all experiences are illusions.  These experiences in Buddhism fall into five modes or patterns, viz., form, sensation, perception, volitional formations, and consciousness.  But truly they are illusory and empty.

We further believe these modes rest on a subjective experiencer upon which all things or phenomena are grounded.  With this subjectivity man thinks to have theoretical mastery over the world.  For man this is the highest truth but it is also the highest delusion.

However, the subjective experiencer can never become one with the object being experienced (the great delusion).  Fundamentally, all experiencing remains dual resting on subject and object, observer and observed, experiencer and experienced.

Buddhism's sublime teaching is founded on the transcendence of the experiencer and the experience, only then does one arrive at the original one before the split.  Only with the sudden dropping away of the experiencer and and experience is the truth finally revealed.  Then one returns to the experiencer and the experience. From that position the experiencer knows the limit; knows the utter impossibility of experiencing the absolute as an experiencer.

Meaning is not automatically in information

Our current worldview is enveloped in materialism which is a mechanistic way of looking at our existence but certainly not the only way. 

Likewise, meaning is enveloped by information.  But meaning is not automatically in information in fact it usually never is especially in Buddhism.  Information is conveyed interpersonally but meaning is strictly intrapersonal or first-person.  But here our worldview will not allow intuition shed its light on the information.

What Siddhartha realized intuitively was impossible to convey externally, that is, mechanistically.  Still, it was only information, still without meaning as he understood enlightenment.  From this we might briefly conclude that Buddhism sees the world not mechanistically but rather enveloped by absolute meaning.  But few are at this level.

This absolute meaning cannot be imagined or conceived of.  What appears is never other than an illusion of understanding.  This is very difficult for the modern mind to grasp or even accept out of a kind of tentative faith.  But this is where Buddhism is properly situated.

It is not for those who are dreamers; who want to imagine the Buddha as some kind of savior or Buddhism has some kind of savior religion religion where all we have to do is be obedient to the clergy and follow the rules.  Over the long haul this endeavor eventually fails, and I must say, Buddhism has not fared well.

Letting go of our way of thinking

Zen is trying to tell us that real intuition happens when we abandon the kind of thinking that created the problem in the first place.  This is especially true with koans.  They trap us into relying on our typical way of thinking that creates the problem.  Ultimately, the only way to solve the koan is to let go of that thinking.

Koans are either good or not so good depending on whether or not they engage us into relying on our typical way of thinking which we, ultimately, must learn to transcend.  It is like we have this illness that doesn't get any better.  In fact, everything that we do only prolongs the illness and in some cases makes it even worse.  The antidote that Zen proposes is to drop the way of thinking which keeps making this illness. 

Part of accomplishing this requires deep immersion.  This process doesn't require much explanation except that one has to be involved in trying to answer the koan.  Pretending to answer it by marathon sitting or other theatrical means will not work.  Zen wants the snake to devour itself.  The old ways of thinking must suddenly stop.

When the old ways of thinking suddenly stop there is no subject or object, no experiencer or experience.  Consciousness (vijñāna) suddenly comes to a halt.  We become the Buddha-nature suddenly and unexpectedly.

looking in the wrong places

When we look at our life from the inside it is certainly transitory and more tragic if not painful in the long run.  And in our journey of life we find nothing called a soul or self or the atman.  What we once thought was our self always turned out to be not our self.

But from this life did we learn the right lessons?  I think it is safe to say that we did not.  Neither did we find God or some kind of absolute.  And why?  Because we looked in all the wrong places.  As the Buddha pointed out long ago we looked into the conditioned to find the unconditioned.  We also looked into what is not the atman to find the atman.

Are we really that dumb, I mean, did we look in the wrong places?  Again, I will have to say yes.  The problem that Zen has always had to face is how does it correct people so they look in the right places for their atman or true self?  This atman is not to be found in material shape, feeling, perception, volitional formations or within consciousness.  And certainly not within the senses either which includes mentation (manas).

Yet, when the Zen student is presented with the idea of nirvana, that is, the unconditioned and no-thought (the unthinkable) the first thing they do is try to think about it, or construe it in a certain way that they can grasp it with the imagination.  But this is only a copy, not the real McCoy.  Zen, I am forced to say, does not often point to the right place.  And when it does, few directly apprehend what is being pointed to.

A lot of what Zen teaches us is how to overcome our self-inflicted errors.  But this is only hinted at — in fact, it is given in such a way that it requires intuition to solve the problem.  Interestingly, it is only intuition that has access to Zen's path.

The wonder years (wondering what happened)

Our youthful years have made us attached to something that we should not be so attached to.  We are not fundamentally this fleshy body.  We will journey through this body’s many changes and emotional ups and downs having to learn to let go of what we once held tightly to.  It's not an easy ride and can be quite painful.

The optimists among us are trying to make a bad situation seem better or, in the end, no problem.  But this is not the way Buddhism sees this human life.  Its frightful message is that when you release this body you will undoubtably take up another one.  The stream or current of rebirth only ends with nirvana.

Our dependence upon our fleshy body is profound, the degree to which is unknown to us in our day-to-day life.  Yes, we have to live and learn the last part being the most difficult because most of us never really learn.  It is this lack of learning that becomes our karmic burden which we cannot escape.  In fact, we are always learning the wrong lessons so that we never truly learn.

This optimistic side of us cannot read the future; it cannot see the big picture either.  It only amounts to wishful thinking.  The optimistic side is only attending to the needs of the temporal body.  It has a very bad track record.  Still we rely on it too much especially when things are not going our way.

When Buddhism comes into the picture for us, our ability to learn from its teachings is at a very low level.  We have no practical experience with how to live the right way.  Buddhism can teach us.  But a lot of the teaching involves our undivided attention and a willingness to face obstacles that we once feared which most people are reluctant to do.

Where does evil and corruption begin?

Evil and corruption begin in the human heart.  Think of the real cause of evil and corruption to be like a weakened spiritual system within the human heart, much like a weak immune system.  We have been feeding our human heart a lot of feel good nonsense.  And we wonder why we are caught in the web of evil and corruption.

Every human being has a natural predisposition towards good and evil without much wisdom to be able to distinguish one from the other.  In Buddhism this is the condition of ignorance or avidyā.  Even the finest education will not help us to do good and avoid evil.  Nor will following Buddhist regula enable us to distinguish between the unconditioned and the conditioned. 

Deluded perceptions of this world into which we have been cast at birth only serve to operate against us in the long run.  At best we can only hope to survive without having to bear too much pain.  Still, within us at the core of our being lies a continuity that ensures our rebirth, in fact, many more rebirths. 

Our strong desire for the conditioned has made us what we are.  This desire has given us much evil that cannot be easily dissolved by the goodness we have accumulated since it is so little.

We insist that we don't deserve it.  Yet, we know so little about our universe and even less about our Earth and ourselves.  Human history has perhaps more downturns than upturns.  Nations fail has do humans.  As long as we continue to believe that evil is external rather than watch over our own heart we will continue to fall prey to our own deep-seated ignorance.

Realizing the unimaginable

There are two questions we are reluctant to spend much time dwelling on.  There is the questions of what were we before we were born and what are we after we die?  Naturally, we are asking these questions from the position of having already been born and we are still not dead.  But what if these questions could all be answered from the perspective of imagination? 

In other words, what if imagination is not limited by either birth or death but is, so to speak, the theater in which births and deaths occur but also rebirth?  As for first-person experience of this I think near death experiences (NDEs) are pretty impressive. 

The infinite universe of imagination is difficult to fully grasp but not too difficult for us to assume that we are always reborn into an imaginary condition.  This could also mean that the very stuff from which the imaginary is built remains ever unimaginable despite the fact that it is very real and authentic.

It is also to be understood that this infinite universe of imagination is a bad infinite universe insofar as we are unable to escape from it.  This is to say, in other words, we must remain in it without any hope of finding a way out.  If there is any idea of a heaven in such a world it would be the loss of our memory of how long we have been trapped in it.  Every life would seem to be the first time and be the last time upon death.

I think all of this expresses the Buddhist idea of saṃsāra and also nirvana which is beyond the ken of saṃsāra.  This reminds me of what Nagarjuna said:  The ultimately true nature of the Tathagata eternally stays.  The world of imagination is constantly changing, it never stays eternally.  We only transcend the world of imagination when we intuit our true nature.

A withdrawal from the intense addiction of experiencing?

Enlightenment is not a social construct.  There's nothing to be constructed; it only needs to be uncovered because it is already present.  What needs to be transcended are the five aggregates (pañca skandhāḥ) which comprise the experience of form, sensation, perception, volitional formations and consciousness. 

All such experiences are an illusion (māyā).  They comprise the world of suffering.  These five experiences amalgamate into the grand illusory experience I call my self, the experiencer.  But with all such experiences they are illusory.  Yes, it's true that experiences seem real and substantial but they are not. 

Fundamentally, there is no ontological truth to be realized by way of experience.  But this is not to say or to suggest that Siddhartha did not uncover the truth so as to awaken to something profound, beyond even the realm of experiencing.

But then the question needs to be asked how does Siddhartha propose to teach his wisdom to people who are addicted to experiences who may even imagine that enlightenment is some kind of super experience?  Obviously, there has to be some kind of withdrawal from the intense addiction of experiencing.

Without a withdrawal from experiences, especially sensuous experiences, one is simply accumulating more addictive behaviors.  The path that Siddhartha took to achieve Buddhahood was a path of gradually weaning himself off of experiences which tied him more to world of flesh and becoming.

The problem that everyone sooner than later faces

The pressures we feel remind us that the world has its problems and so does our life we have been living since birth.  But being young and healthy keeps us optimistic in most cases.  I am feeling happy what could go wrong?  The problem that everyone sooner than later faces is what do you do when reality finally confronts you with the finitude of your life?

For some of us it is a wake up call; for many others it adds up to a kind of ongoing depression that becomes more difficult to live through.

For some of us this wake-up call leads to religion or studying Buddhism while for many others they become more or less addicted to sex, drugs and alcohol.  What all these routes have in common is they rely on hope and the imagination.  But what if there is a place we all fear to go to when even hope and our imagination must be transcended?

In the final analysis, Buddhism prepares us to go to this place after our large net of hope and imagination fail to catch the big fish!  But to get to this place we must first have a great deal of hope and a good imagination.  We must keep casting our net over these waters again, and again until one day we accidentally fall down becoming entangled in our net.

So that we don’t deceive ourselves we must go through this last process in solitude, like a hermit.  It is a desolate world where self-deception does not triumph and is easily seen through.  Forsaking all hope and the imagined, only then can we become open to the singular way.  Maybe one night we see what truly lies beyond the burning house.

Enlightenment stopped by consciousness?

The Buddha taught that the false self (the self of the five aggregates) is not our true self.  But then how does a Buddha wean people off of their attachment to the false self?  The simple answer is not easily!  Culture with its dominant assumptions prevails, many of which act as a barrier to finding our self.

While it is true that the Buddha taught us to abandon desire for whatever is not the self, namely, the five aggregates, this is not enough to take us to the other shore which is never other than unconditioned.  Our attachment to the false self remains strong. 

Regrettably, the interpretations of modern Buddhism have shifted the Buddha’s message to the belief that he taught that there is no self.  Just reject the self that's all you need to do.  It's just a construct.  But he never said to reject or abandon the self.  He said, more precisely, abandon desire for whatever is not the self.

The truth of human life is that it is a grand illusion from which we have been unable to find an escape.  Death is no more than the passage from one illusion to another.  A continuity of consciousness exists which the Buddha says is like a magician’s illusion.  The continuity of consciousness also guarantees a subject and object duality which is inimical to enlightenment.

The central problem that we face is not the problem of self, whether or not it is real or just a construct, but the problem of consciousness or vijñāna. It guarantees the continuity of this life to yet another life and many more. 

What enlightenment is really all about is overcoming this consciousness thus being able to converge, directly, with the true self.  This process is always stopped by the imposition of consciousness which splits and distorts the original one into subject and object which then beholds a pluralized illusory World.