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 narrative must be let go of, replaced by 'great doubt' (大疑)

Today, the narrative often precedes the reality it is supposed to represent.  The narrative, in other words, has superimposed itself over reality.  It is like the longitudinal and latitudinal lines on a map or on a world globe.  They are useful but not real.  Many things help to illustrate and solidify the narrative even ceremonies and rituals, or even a documentary about the big bang.  We seem to always fall for the deception.  

So where does true reality begin?  With a CNN news flash?  With unverified claims (opinions); with an event like 9-11?  But truth or true reality is almost always silent.  No narrative can pretend to speak for it.  No Zen teacher can hand it to us unmodified, the way it really is.  Even Zen master Dōgen used deception (the shisho document supposedly given to Dōgen by Rujing and now designated a national treasure by the Japanese government most certainly is a medieval forgery).

Still, we remain too easily persuaded by the narrative.  This can be more of a hindrance than a help.  We seem to have time for the narrative but not for the truth which is more difficult to attain.  It seems like you have to dig for the truth, which can be difficult, whereas the narrative is just handed to you.  You can learn all about Zen by reading books by Alan Watts — or can you?  But even Watts is skeptical of the "trickster guru" and may very well be such a person.  

In the matter of Zen, its own narrative prevents actual transcendence (kenshō) from manifesting itself and thus represents a dangerous form of idolatry.  In the study of Zen it conceals the most holy by claiming to practice it.  But how do you practice that which transcends all humanly efforts to reach it?  In other words, how do you practice hitting a target that neither you can see nor anyone else?  The narrative must be let go of, replaced by 'great doubt' (大疑).  This is a process of emptying-out not retaining.  Only then will clear light come which is the very substance of our ordinary thoughts.

 

Generating Bodhicitta

Our transformation from an ordinary human to a Bodhisattva involves two steps.  The first is the aspiration for enlightenment which seeks to generate (utpāda) bodhicitta (the enlightened mind) which is the pure, radiant spirit.  The first is bodhicitta only in its relative aspect. 

The second step is the generation of actual bodhicitta which is absolute bodhicitta.  The life of a Bodhisattva only commences with absolute bodhicitta.  This bodhicitta is like an embryo of the Buddha (buddhagarbha) growing towards full Buddhahood.

Interestingly, we find that when one first arouses (utpāda) bodhicitta, one already obtains complete and utter enlightenment.  This is according to the Avatamsaka Sutra.  Without the second step one is not a realized Bodhisattva. 

In today’s Dharma centers many Buddhists imagine they are a Bodhisattva; a kind and gentle, beneficent person who goes around doing good deeds for everyone; trying to save them.  Still, this is not what a Bodhisattva is.  First of all, a Bodhisattva has no human features.  According to the Śūraṅgamasamādhi Sūtra his body is hard, diamond-like, real, infallible and indestructible.  It does not contain either a belly, or stomach, or excrement, or urine, or bad odors or impurity.”

Few if any make it to the second step.  They are still very much attached to their carnal bodies, trying to reform them instead of transcend them.  They cannot understand that the body is unclean; that it is transient and unsubstantial; that it is the source of sinful passions.  According to the Vimalakīrti Nirdeśa Sūtra, “this body is a combination of aggregates, elements, and sense-media, which are comparable to murderers, poisonous snakes, and an empty town, respectively.”

We imagine that our thoughts come from the body

With our materialistic mindset it is easy to imagine that our thoughts come from the body; that somehow, mysteriously, the body has managed to make all these thoughts.  We could even say our thoughts are electro-chemical reactions that emerge from neural processes which depend upon the body.  At this point, our understanding of how thought is formed before it emerges is not known.  We only have hypotheses. 

Also, what Zen’s no-thought (無念) really means finds no answer.  It certainly does not come from daily blocking our thoughts; trying to smother them.  Only when there is just pure spirit, that is, Mind-only, is one released from the powerful seduction of thoughts.  Here lies the Buddha’s liberation.

Most everyone who is interested in Zen equate it with seated meditation.  I imagine that if you suffer from a light case of “akathisia” which is characterized by a feeling of inner restlessness and the inability to sit still, seated meditation might be helpful.  Seated meditation tends to produce a general feeling of quietude. 

But what does it mean to have the noble insight of revulsion…having arrived at the door to the deathless?  This is not some relaxed state of being.  With the deathless as its final goal Buddhism understands the deathless to be also unconditioned.  But our thoughts are not other than conditioned.  Now we can begin to see what Zen is aiming at by “no-thought”.  No-thought goes beyond the mortality of our body which is conditioned.

But we moderns will have none of this mumbo-jumbo (postmortem survival).  When our body dies along with our thoughts which we believe are electro-chemical we believe there is nothing beyond—certainly no such state as no-thought.  But Bodhidharma once said: “No-thought is nothing other than practice; there is no other practice. Thus you'll realize that no-thought is everything, and that extinction of the conditioned (nirvana) is nothing other than no-thought.”

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.

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.”

The Spirit is Inconceivable but Knowable

The ideologists who dominate present day culture, whose knowledge is mainly derived from their sensations and feelings, are not at all concerned with what really exists much less the path of spirit.  They only seek to change what already exists such that it conforms with their feelings.  This means they suppress everything which might shake their ideology.  How far will their wishful fantasies take them?  We do not yet know.  Maybe this is new territory for humankind.

Although ideology shouldn’t be in Buddhism, it is not immune to it.  We see it in the aesthetically portrayed world of Zen which is sensuous knowledge whose goal is the beautiful experience which could be characterized as reaching a pure aesthetic moment without traces of agitation, trouble, tension, or instability.  But Zen is not entirely aesthetical so much as it is a path of inner purification and solitude where spirit is one day met with which transcends all concepts.

The outer practice of seated meditation which serves to buttress Zen aesthetically is only intended to reduce the body’s influence over the mind so that mind or thought can be stilled and stress reduced.  But Zen doesn’t end here.  This is not its goal.  One still has to reach the core or foundation of thought which is transcendent and unthinkable (無念) this being absolute spirit from which thought is composed (saṃskṛta).

The real world of Zen is not within the grasp of today’s culture with the exception that it has been altered for ideological consumption, that is, realized as the aesthetic moment of pure feeling, this being the emptying out of anxiety which is quiet sitting (宴坐).

Slouching more and more to the closed mind

There are many kinds of reformers.  Those who feel the need of introducing if not enforcing a better course of action with regard to the status quo.  This is what is hoped for in the mind of the reformer.  But any such reformation brings with it, its own set of problems, that is, unintended consequences. 

This is apparent when we look at the history of educational reforms starting with Horace Mann (1796–1859) who was perhaps one of the most influential of American educational reformers, going all the way to Allan Bloom with his book, The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students (1987).

No one can say today’s educational system is not without its problems many of which, arguably, came from the reformers themselves, especially, on the left of the political spectrum.  In other words, no reform can guarantee to solve the problems which it tries to address.  The problems continue and may even grow worse over time.  Most are simply swept under the carpet or ignored: see problem, say nothing.  Then a new narrative is put into place to hide the failure of the reform.

But now let’s look at Buddhism in America and then how it connects with our educational system. 

Buddhism’s reformers are more like interpreter-gatekeepers who wish to make the words of the Buddha palatable for the general population who don’t have a mind for religious thought, in part due to reformers like Horace Mann who feared the passions that might be raised by the study of religion and also politics; only allowing a limited, watered down study of religion and politics in the curriculum.  This results in a false “openness” (closer to credulity or blankness) by keeping the mind closed, especially, when it comes to religion.

The educational system seems then to have been created and maintained as a kind of academic Peter Pan world for dreamers.  These young dreamers have avoided, thus far, a serious life which includes the depth of religious thought and a political landscape that affects wages and the options they might have by which to live a life without poverty.  Moreover, they have no idea of the risk and hardship behind important choices they will have to make in the future.  For them choice is somewhat of a triviality.  This may explain the phenomenon of Dr. Jordan Peterson but also the popularity of his book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos (2018). Peterson’s book comes on the heels of academia’s slide into the closed mind: a mind that refuses to acknowledge or live in the real world.

When today’s graduate steps into the real world for the first time with such a closed mind with its fake openness, they are shocked.  Over time, they can’t help but grow more resentful and vengeful because their promised entitled life is slipping away.  As a result of this growing problem, and even in some cases depression, they try out Buddhism or Zen only to find out that their mind becomes even more closed.  In other words, reality is never allowed to set in.  They try their best to stop it. 

A Dharma center or a Zen center is really a group of lost, close-minded people who huddle together in subconscious fear using meditation to overcome their immaturity.

The parts of Buddhism that are usually closed off to such people have to do with rebirth and the transmigrant who survives death, the self or ātman, attachment to this world of appearance, and the fact that nirvana is not third-person knowledge which makes its realization mystical in the sense of requiring spiritual intuition.  With the absence or playing down of these important components of Buddhism what is left?  It’s western Buddhism which to be honest is Buddhism in name only.

Become a knower of the unmade

A wave is shaped water.  Water is not wave dependent.  Whether waves arise or do not arise does not affect the water.  Drawing from this, in Buddhism, we can say that thought is shaped spirit, spirit being shapeless and luminous.  In no way is spirit dependent upon thought.  On the same track, we can say that the word “spirit” is not spirit.  It is just a signifier/sign — not the signified.  The signified is yet to be personally known.

It follows from this according to verse 277 in the Dhammapada, that all (sabbe) shapes (saṅkhāra) are impermanent (anicca).  Then we learn in verse 278 that all shapes are suffering (dukkha).

It logically follows from this that shapes are not permanent.  Any shape or aggregation such as the five aggregates of form, feeling, perception, volition, and consciousness are never permanent or eternal.  Then in verse 383 it says, having known (ñatvā) the dissolution of [all] shapes, a knower of the unmade (akataññū) are you, O Brāhmin.  Logically, our Brāhmin is also a knower of the shapeless eternal!

Beings, it would seem, are victims of their own ignorance and inability to distinguished between shapes and that or spirit from which shapes are made.  Even the finest thoughts or thought cannot unshape itself to reveal what it is made from.  Speculating on what is unmade is to be on a fool’s errand.  There is another process, one of abandonment— Zen's own via negativa.  Zen master Sixin Wuxin said it best.

"While still alive, be therefore assiduous in practising Dhyāna.  The practice consists in abandonments.  ‘The abandonment of what?’ you may ask. Abandon your four elements (bhuta), abandon your five aggregates (skandha), abandon all the workings of your relative consciousness (karmavijnana), which you have been cherishing since eternity; retire within your inner being and see into the reason of it.  As your self-reflection grows deeper and deeper, the moment will surely come upon you when the spiritual flower will suddenly burst into bloom, illuminating the entire universe.  The experience is incommunicable, though you yourselves know perfectly well what it is." 

This practice begins by living far away from the madding crowd and overcoming the five hindrances.  All the theoretical knowledge that we have gained it not going to help us.  It our retreat it will become, over time, an impediment.  It is a life of shape identification without ever meeting, face to face, what the countless shapes are actually composed from.  On such a foolish journey, one will never become a knower of the unmade.

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.