The Zennist

Sexual pleasure and rebirth

From Buddhism, as strange as it sounds, I have come to the conclusion that the meaningfulness of human life seems to rest upon the bedrock of the repetition of sexual pleasure and reproduction through repeated births and deaths. 

Sexuality is a bait that never grows old even though it brings sorrow with it and delusion.  Whatever cultural restraint is placed upon it there's no stopping it.  It can only be limited to a certain extent.

With each new birth not only is the framework of delusion passed on but also sexuality which even includes the newborn’s sexuality which extends nonspecifically over the entire infant.  While sexuality specific to reproduction has not manifested itself, it soon will.  In the infant it is there in all its potential and natural capriciousness/perversity.

The sexual drive is an every human being.  It is inserted in the very biological architecture of the human being.  Neither human culture nor human religions can contend with this power and hope to win in the end. This is why we see the birth of new cultures and new religions because the old ones have been defeated by innate sexuality that lives and thrives in biology.

Present day technology will do nothing in the long run to stop the eventual triumph of sexuality with the life of delusion that comes with it.  Soon the Dharma gives way to practical psychology and how to cope with the vicissitudes of daily life.  Most religions today minister to the flesh and the worldly imagination for both control and profit.

Mistaking our biological body as our true self is a grievous error

It is difficult to distinguish the lie from truth especially when truth and the lie are put together becoming information that obscure's the truth and deceives the reader. 

From Buddhist scholars to war historians assumptions which often lead to works of half-truths, where you can't tell the lie from the truth, are typical.

One might even say that the road to truth is never paved and could be mistaken for a modern highway leading to any number of towns and more deceptions.

For the curious reader of Buddhism and Zen much of what they read consists of half-truths.  For example, did the Buddha actually teach that there is no self or attā/atman (P., natthattā)?  No, of course not.  The Buddha is only telling us to "Abandon desire for whatever is not the self” (P., anātman).  We are only to reject whatever is not our true self this being dependent originations which are derivative phenomena that make up the biological body. 

Our entire biological structure originates from our parents and their parents, etc.  After the sperm joins the egg, our very perceiving follows a biological process that leads from the mother’s womb to birth, and develops on its own until the very death of the body.  Wanting to live again the perceiver takes up another body which can be formed in a woman's womb. 

This is the beginning of our wrong association with our biological body as if it is our true self and refuge.  To mistake our biological body as our true self is a grievous error according to the Buddha.  The truth of Buddhism is that the Buddha affirmed that the true self is transcendent and is beyond the biological person's grasp but still can be attained by an intuitive path. 

We are participants in consciousness

From Zen Buddhism's perspective we are participants in consciousness (vijñāna = dual/vi knowing/jñāna).  Mankind is a conscious being of extraordinary intelligence.  But what consciousness is derived from is unknown to this conscious-ness being. 

We cannot use consciousness to find the origin of consciousness.  What consciousness depends upon shall always be unknown to us if we use consciousness as our means to find ultimate reality. 

We are so immersed in consciousness that we have no idea where it begins and where it ends.  And being in this predicament we are unable to transcend it, much less understand what we are facing which is consciousness which will not allow us to transcend it on its terms.

Still, consciousness is giving us hints of the difficulty we are in which is the difference between the unenlightened and enlightened; between the ones who are immersed in consciousness and the ones who have transcended it like the Buddhas.

Also, this consciousness is in the form of what the unenlightened sometimes refer to as relativism, that is, observer/knower and object/known duality.  They are mutually dependent upon each other.  This is Buddhism’s dependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda). 

But ultimate reality, that is, nirvana is not to be found here.  The Buddha's is dependent origination only speaks to the conditioned not the unconditioned where consciousness is transcended.

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.

There is an underlying duality in our brain

There is an underlying duality in our brain between the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere.  While they tend to cooperate they can also not cooperate so that there exists an inharmonious tension between the two.  Needless to say, they both have their place:  one side leans towards the individual while the other side is towards the big picture that the individual dwells in. 

When the squirrel eats the acorn on my front lawn the squirrel also has to be aware of the hawk that could be circling overhead looking for a meal.  In other words, man's day-to-day life needs to be also aware of the big picture. 

Some big picture questions are:  Where is this life of mine going?  How do I know if I am on the right path?  Am I is really as smart as I think I am? 

There are many more such questions that arise from the big picture which relies on the right hemisphere of the brain.  We could even say for the religiously minded that the left hemisphere is oriented to the fleshy individual, whereas the right hemisphere is oriented to spirit or the divine.  It truly is Lord (S., Bhagavān) not the left hemisphere.

Leading a balanced life really means living a life where the left hemisphere has to be subordinate to the right hemisphere just like a ship must be subordinate to the direction of travel otherwise it will not get to its destination. 

Keeping with this, Buddhists have always subordinated the individual or left hemisphere of the brain to the Lord hemisphere or the right hemisphere.  The lodestar of the Buddhist is nirvana that is direct intuition of the unconditioned.  In so doing the Buddhist must also realize the perishable nature of the flesh; that it is suffering and there is no spirit to be found in it.

As history shows us, mankind is not all that interested in taking the right hemisphere seriously.  The pleasures of the flesh grab mankind's attention more.  In fact, mankind it seems is always trying to usurp the natural leadership of the right hemisphere, the Lord, that leads us to the other shore.

Buddhism, the last religion

I think that ideology stems from the effort to secularize religion—bring it down to the fleshy emotions and passions thereby replacing gnosis.  What is gnosis about.  It involves transcending the power of māyā which belongs to the mind/imagination (manas). 

In this light, the secularization of Buddhism can only mean the conversion of Buddhism into an ideology. 

All significant concepts of the modem secular world are religious concepts that have been repurposed to fit with a globalist agenda where the self or intrinsic nature of man is lost.  This is what ideology is really about.  Lenin and Stalin used ideology to destroy Russia.  Mao used it to destroy China's ancient culture.

Ideology then becomes more like a deceptive dream or vision.  It only brings with it misfortune.  It is far from being a beneficial vision.  But for those who have a powerful thirst and would even attempt to quench their thirst with salt water, such is the alluring power of the evil dream.

Ironically, evil is destroyed by the black-winged dream, the enticing vision that sinks one deeper into darkness.  This is where the secularization of religion (ideology) is leading us.  You might even call Buddhism the last remaining religion because it transcends thought and with it the imagination which keeps us bound to samsara's dreams.

Overcoming desire

The notion of desire is difficult to put in to meaningful words.  It can only be understood in a kind of haphazard way.  In Buddhism it is a mistake to understand desire as anything more than a preference for the conditioned.  One ,for example, cannot desire enlightenment because enlightenment is unconditioned.  It is beyond all expectations.

Overcoming desire by the sheer force of will is next to impossible. The very human body is constructed for the purpose of desire and to consummate that desire through procreation.  But from a Buddhist perspective desire can be transcended.  But this radically entails awakening to what is beyond desire, this being nirvana, or the same, the absolute which is unconditioned.

To pause and think about this, desire cannot be stopped except through transcendence.  The path of transcendence is to be found in Buddhism.  Here one must first awaken to their true nature or essence which transcends all conditionality (enlightenment is beyond all expectations, all things human, and conditioned).

None of this is meant to suggest that resisting desire or going along with desire are the same as transcendence.  We can only transcend desire when we see through it.  And what makes us able to see through it is the fact that we see, directly, the unconditioned which is desireless.

Those who have been taking the path of Zen (dhyāna) for a long time come to realize that the path is one of learning to let go of expectations about what the unconditioned is.  The adept goes to the end of their wits.  A desirelessness overtakes them.  But woe unto those who have put all of Zen's path into their imagination.  They will never come to illumination.

Falling into the imagination and with it the flesh

The Bible is not one book but a compilation of many books so that trying to find the red thread of Christianity is next to impossible.  Buddhism has not lost its red thread.  It's still very much alive and well.  But finding this red thread involves intuition and not one's mastery over words. 

What Siddhartha awakened to can only be found by direct intuition (Zen = dhyāna). It transcends words and the six senses; all conditioned things including even thought.  Still, it serves as the basis of all his discourses: they invariably hinge on that intuition.

Unfortunately, our secular age depends upon the flesh or in Buddhist terms, leading a conditioned life which guarantees continuation in samsara.  Most of us are aware of how the modern mind prioritizes things. Its first duty is to having a good time, followed by sex, then marriage and finally the baby!  Dharma is last.

With Christians it is about the same. God and prayer are there to get them out of jams due to their love of the flesh.  They hope to be constantly forgiven having yielded to the temptations of flesh.

Those who believe in the afterlife will only return to a world of imagination, the sixth sense.  While those who believe in absolute death or annihilation will go back to the womb from whence they came.  But Siddhartha taught us the transcendent which is the true antidote to desire by which we fall into the imagination and with it the flesh.

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.

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.