The Zennist

Following in the Buddha's Footsteps

Enlightenment for Siddhartha came by way of the complete sublation of the unreal or error (avidya) and with it the end of his samsara.  It wasn't that illusion or appearance just disappeared.  There is more to it. 

Error was assimilated into absolute spirit such that spirit dominated and naturally overshadowed it.  Siddhartha was a ‘seer’ of this new reality while the many were still caught up in the spiritless illusion who could only relate to Siddhartha’s insight, abstractly.

Such metaphysical abstractness always remains imaginal despite the possessor’s attempts to reify the abstraction.  The path of Zen is no exception.  The Zennist can fall prey to his or her own delusions just like any other seeker of the truth and often does. 

It is not that difficult to follow the demise of any religion.  The otherworldly or transcendent is eventually set aside or banned from the religion in which it once prevailed being at its core.  Over time, it gradually becomes more this–worldly and secular as it adapts to its secular culture.  In Zen, it is the veneration of sitting (zazen), a practice that is fundamentally external to the teaching.

Even Buddhism, over time, develops into an anti–spiritual teaching this being anātman which in sanskrit means, destitute of spirit or mind (Monier-Williams, Sir M. [1988]).  In original Buddhism, the Buddha’s followers were more like unlit candles that he could light.  With his passing they were just unlit with little or no chance of becoming self–enlightened.

The Unconditioned Light is Reality

Vidyamāna can mean what is actual or real vs. not being real or actual (avidyamāna).  From this we get a better sense of vidya and avidya.  The real is the unconditioned while the unreal is the cosmic illusion (māyā).  The illusion is always conditioned.  It is something constructed, i.e., an appearance that attracts us to it; to become conscious of it and thereby become embodied and bound to it.

"Avidya has vanished, vidya arises.  Gone is the darkness, arisen is the light, as it does for one who dwells serious, ardent and composed in the self” (Itivuttaka 99).

The newly awakened Buddha doesn’t see a total absence of external things including his thoughts.  The illusion doesn’t vanish in other words.  As the reader might guess, light has arisen but not light as we know it but, instead, āloka, a spiritual, transcendent light beyond the conditioned world.  That is what is missing in the all-too-human natural experience.  It is what Siddhartha awakened to.  It alone is real, unchanging, and unconditioned.

Although we should seek the unconditioned, if our life is to have any meaning, we always try to grasp it with the conditioned, that is, with darkness.  We seem to forever fail at trying to become enlightened.  We are still under the power of the cosmic illusion going from one existence to another without stopping.

Against the Stream

Desire pertains to the conditioned world of samsara not the unconditioned absolute Siddhartha realized.  From the moment of our conception in our mother’s womb desire has taken hold of us, that is, a powerful passion for what is external to our true nature.  We are confused, immersed and enclosed by this antithesis which is prison-like.  In the end, even death will not save us. 

The synthesis between the innate ignorance of our true nature and the world of appearance neither this life nor the next life (after death) can overcome through the force of desire.  The direction itself is all wrong.  Nothing truly will be gained by taking it.  What is gained is an accumulation of delusions which leads to a false authority that can never amount to truth. 

On the other hand, going in the opposite direction of desire is the most difficult way of all.  It goes against our natural inclination to seek and grasp at the conditioned—an important and key part of Darwinian fitness.  The Buddha was right to say:  “The way which goes against the stream is a profound one, very difficult to see.  Those who are afflicted with passion will not see it; they are enveloped by a heavy darkness” (Catuṣpariṣat Sūtra).

We were born into heavy darkness by our desire for the conditioned. We cannot see it as dreamlike or māyā like a Buddha does.  The pain which comes with living in a human form seems very real making the illusion that much more intense and serious.  The way the Buddha has given us is very difficult.  For Buddhism is all about transcending the conditioned world which includes birth and death.

The Unborn Plenum of the Deathless

Looking at the world from the standpoint of the conditioned there is no real unconditioned or so one might imagine (an absolute unconditioned medium from which conditioned things arise).  This is further to imply, there is no evidence of the unconditioned in terms of the conditioned which might prove to those who are skeptical there, indeed, is the unconditioned.

From Zen’s perspective, the unconditioned can only be arrived at by the complete cessation of the conditioned this being thoughts which make up the conditioned microcosm (mano/manas), i.e., mentation.  The world of Zen is an antidote for overcoming the conditioned from a microcosmic perspective; having a sudden and profound glimpse of the unconditioned which is the essence of thought.

From this, the fundamental problem Zen faces which confronts each student is to wean them off off of using thought, almost exclusively, to gain access to Zen’s crown jewel.  Instead, they must leap beyond the conditioned to gain access to the unconditioned.  How this is accomplished for each individual depends on how much they identify with the conditioned, in this case their mental world.  They must accept the fact that Zen demands of us a special cognition free from appearance and beyond mentation.

But even this insistence can be easily misunderstood.  It is difficult to grasp that thoughts as concepts represent something standing in place of the actual.  Our thoughts about enlightenment actually hide it.  Even the time we spend trying to see what Siddhartha realized by many hours of seated meditation only serves to obfuscate and confuse our quest.

From the Buddha's Perspective

As a thought exercise think of water translucently clear that has the potential to recognize itself but so far cannot see anything distinctive of itself.  There is nothing there or so it would seem.  However, in a state of agitation it sees something.  But these wave forms it sees are different from itself.  In fact they act to hide the water’s translucently clear presence.  This is implying that wherein there is no distinction there can be no kind of knowledge.

But this further implies that there has to be a separation between the knower and the known; that if there is no such division there can be no knowledge.  But in Buddhism absolute knowledge is different.  Such knowledge consists in getting rid of the illusion of separation.  But how does one do this?

Sub specie aeternitatis, there is not the slightest difference between the conditioned and the unconditioned.  But if we cling to the conditioned which is illusory, failing to realize the unconditioned nature, we are lost.  Making matters worse, our intellect bound up with the imagination will always lead us astray such that we can only imagine the unconditioned believing we have realized it.  But the truth is we have failed to liberate our self even with metaphysics not to mention all of its captivating thought forms.

The core of Buddhism is about awakening to the fundamental essence of thought, thought being the smallest building block of the conditioned.  No amount of thinking or speculation will liberate us.  The Buddha’s awakening went beyond this.  We are not there yet.  Yes, we have the potential to become enlightened but we must still actualize that potential.

A Finger Pointing to the Moon

Teachers of traditional Zen redeploy words and concepts to point beyond themselves to true reality that ultimately transcends composition (samskrita), that is, composed everyday reality.  When the word or concept is suddenly canceled out by direct intuition what remains is true reality before it is formed or composed into thought.

With today’s Zen, its various meanings are expected to precede the uncomposed reality its words are supposed to represent.  This is the mess contemporary Zen faces.  It is under a fictional “narrative” which is supposed to be Zen’s truth or ultimate fact.  No longer does one have to search within for this reality beyond words and concepts.  It even goes as far as to suggest ‘just sitting’ is enlightenment.

This is a huge barrier to understanding Zen.  It is a distorted Zen because it either sticks with sitting and/or sinks into an imitation of Zen: to copy it by words and actions.  Neither way calls upon us to abandon, thoroughly, reliance on the world of thoughts; to intuit what they are actually composed of.
This is why Zen teaches no-thought (無念).  To come to the abode of no-thought is like seeing the unformed clay before it becomes a brick.  Suddenly, the invisible light or formless spirit is intuited.  With this the sixth sense is transcended including all that which comprises it.

Teachers of traditional Zen use the Buddhist Sutras and Zen words to bring us to a specific intuition.  Those who have to rely on words to transcend words cannot hope to attain the fruit of Zen.  In their ignorance they make Zen into a celebration of ignorance.  One modern Zen master said,  “Wisdom is to see that there is nothing to search for.”

Emotions Cloud the Moon of Enlightenment

The word “emotion” proves a difficult word to define despite its wide use in conversation.  Emotions tend to be studied from the behavioral changes they produce.  A look at the seven emotions in Chinese Buddhism such as pleasure, anger, sorrow, joy, love, hate, and desire, they all serve to affect the body, psychosomatically, in various ways and degrees.  All the emotions we experience eventually culminate in distress/sadness (duḥkha) when the carnal body, which we have invested so much in, is on the verge of passing away.

In light of this, does Buddhism seek to eradicate the emotions or at the least try to control them?  It must be that there is an inherent danger in following our emotions too much which will lead to mistaken judgments and hinder our spiritual progress to the unconditioned.

This biological body that we inhabit symbolizes both spirit’s loss within itself and a means to the highest, i.e., nirvana by which spirit self-awakens to its own boundless nature.  In other words, life is a struggle inasmuch as it represents the sublation of innate error (avidya).  Tied up with this are countless false and mistaken judgments which bind us to error led by the emotions.

The work of drawing knowledge from our emotions (sensations and feelings) making them into judgments is an ideological process which I hasten to add dominates today’s closed-off thinking giving it its seeming certitude which means that it is not open to correction.  Thus the emotions develop into a method of authority but false nevertheless. 

In the face of this there can be no real spiritual progress. Unconscious evildoing has taken root no longer able to see certain facts which might undermine its drive for dominion.  This drive for dominion in determining and directing the actions of others is certainly at the core.  It cannot be easily removed as one might imagine.  It is hubris with impotency.  It easily turns into psychological cruelty.  It can be thought of as Nietzsche’s “will to power” or the daimonic in man (Rollo May).

The Buddha's Prescription for Happiness

Annihilation does not assume a state or special condition where something does not exist where normally it would in the example of a city without people but instead universal non-presence of the negated such as a self (P., natthattā). Anattā, on the other hand, can be adjectival referring to something ‘without self’ such as the five aggregates which belong to the demon Māra.  Natthattā and anattā are therefore different.  This difference is generally glossed over in most Buddhist circles but should’t be. 

The Buddha was not a self denier or an annilationist.  He said, for example, “This is the path by which those with great selves (mahattehi), great seers have fared” (It. 28—9).  Also it should not be surprising that nirvana shares most all of the characteristics with the supposed Hindu ātman.  In the Pali canon we even discover a number of times that it is in the very self that nirvana is attained (e.g., MN III.244).

The Buddha understands that ordinary people are identifying as their real self merely an aggregate of unreal constructs.  This misidentification proves to be their downfall; it is the real source of suffering.  Here the Buddha points out such a misidentification:

    “Monks, if people were to carry away, burn or do what they liked to the grass, sticks, leaves, and branches in this Jeta's grove, would it occur to you people are     carrying us away, burning us or doing what they liked to us?
    "Venerable sir, it would not occur to us thus."
    "What is the reason?"
    "Venerable sir, they are not our selves or our belongings."
    "Monks, in the same manner, form is not yours; give it up, it will be for your happiness and pleasantness. Feelings are not yours, give them up, it will be for your     happiness and pleasantness. Perceptions are not yours, give them up, it will be for your happiness and pleasantness. Intentions are not yours, give them up, it will     be for your happiness and pleasantness. And consciousness is not yours give it up, it will be for your happiness and pleasantness” (SN 22:33). 

Before the Buddha said this to his followers he also said: whatever is not yours abandon it.  Clearly a self composed of the aggregates is not our authentic self.  But we don’t abandon it.  We abandon the transcendent self instead!

In Zen Buddhism our authentic self or true nature has to be realized by us which is beyond all human mental activity.  Such activity is only a construction of spirit—not spirit itself.  Those who insist that spirit is also just a construct are lost.  They are incurable.  They believe the finger pointing to the moon is the moon.  These people tend to be annihilationists who don’t believe in the transcendent; who can only reach the limit of thought.

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.

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.