"Zen"

Lance Kinseth, Radiance, 48”x60

THAT WHICH ZEN POPULARLY references is a sense of calmness to the point of sustained serenity in Zen mastery, a need for little from the everyday world, aesthetic simplicity, naturalness, and, increasingly, improved health from stress reduction and physiological changes brought about by a central activity of meditation.  These become possibilities that aspirants seek to develop into enduring attributes rather than rare occurrences.

These popular referents do not accurately describe Zen essence and can even be distractions.

Again, popularly, Zen begins with the mythical account of Siddhartha Gautama suddenly, and quite astonishingly, experiencing the morning star in a remarkable way.  All of the above experiences could be outcomes of such an experience, but they are, in and of themselves, superficial and not the primary point.

“Zen” references the experience of a primary point.  And this experience began before Siddhartha’s experience.  The Upanishads contains descriptions of a state of being to which Siddhartha was exposed in his dialogue and experimentation with “Upanishadists” who comprised a portion of wandering individuals rebelling against the sacrificial traditions of his time.  This state of being—awakening—appears in the oral and written records of a variety of cultures, some of which pre-date even the Upanishads.

Siddhartha’s contribution was a more authentic experience of a natural dimension of human experience—an awakened knowledge rather than an esoteric religious and/or psychic experience.  And it was far more than just a richer psychological dimension.  Paradoxically, Siddhartha’s contribution became housed in a religious tradition wherein he is envisioned as its founder.  Still, Siddhartha’s original experience became luminous at various rare points rather than obscured as a religious motif as it passed through various societies.  This original experience is the heart of Zen.

The Avatamsaka and Lotus Sutras are but my walking, staying, sitting, and lying.

Kyong Ho, from “Song of Enlightenment”

So, no dogma, no tradition, cutting through, what does Siddhartha suddenly experience, now, in this moment?

Gentle Zen

Indra's Net, fractal image

BASSUI WAS THE MOST encouraging of Zen teachers.  Instead of browbeating his students into realization, he coaxed and led them.

While you may apply great effort, the fact is…

Xuedou:

The river of Zen is quiet, even in the waves; the water of stability is clear, even in the waves.

Mazu:

You have always had it, and you have it now—there is no need to cultivate the Way and sit in meditation.

…to contemplate emptiness and enter concentration, is all in the province of contrivance.

The Way does not require cultivation—just don’t pollute it.

Everything offers the Way. 

Hongzhi:

Zen is buoyant and unbridled, like clouds making rain, like the moon in a stream, like an orchid in a recondite spot, like spring in living beings.

Why such force?  Why such cajoling and interpretation?  Why so many devices?  Rather than friction—perhaps some intent to be “frictionless” [Hongzhi].

Dahui:

Shy away from those who teach you to be like themselves, as they were taught to be like someone else.

Pushing obscures, like trying to push a river.  Zen teaching is as muted as a field of grass or river or hillock neither giving nor taking.  A field of grass or river or hillock is a good Zen teacher. A field of grass or a river or a hillock does not try to make you into anything.  When there is another who does not see you or hear you or simply a field of grass or a river or a hillock or a sparrow, calm and tranquil—after a time or instantly, like a field of grass or a river or a hillock or a sparrow, you finally may not see “you” or hear “you.”

            You have always had it… 

Sparrow is cloud floating West is path meandering East is upward-reaching branch.

Trying to push, such a terrain cannot appear.

Honzhi:

            ...shedding your skin…

No mirror, no place for dust to alight,

Then, the flow of calmness, tranquility, serenity

Why such force?

Zen Way

AS A WAY, “ZEN” could reference sitting, koan, sutra collections, art/lifestyle aesthetic—many popular things. 

What to do?  Which way/ways/methods?  If a way is akin to Zen Buddhism rather than pop-culture,

Zazen only?

Sutra & Koan & zazen?

No zazen?

Koan or no koan, or one koan, or many koans?

Deliberation & Controversy

A comparison of critiques by selected Zen Buddhist reformists as sketched in Crazy Clouds reveals sharply different directives, often in conflict:

Hakuin maintained that it was not always absolutely necessary to sit in meditation in a quiet place, but that it was essential to carry the koan about in one’s consciousness in all situations—active or static, noisy or quiet.  This state of nonconceptual awareness…

Bankei dismissed saddling oneself with a koan to provoke something akin to Hakuin’s greatly encouraged state of “Great Doubt.” Bankei suggested that the koans were ossified teachings of live moments, and that the koans might be abstractive in the contemporary moment and therefore not fit and possibly even misdirect.  Even more than Hakuin’s allowance for not sitting in zazen, Bankei was oriented more toward listening, for example, to birds (e.g., The nightingale is singing: the highest Zen) rather than sitting.

Bassui encouraged looking at koans, but not until one gazed into one own nature, and unlike Hakuin was critical of long-term koan study of various types of koans, with koans being no more than “fingers pointing toward the moon, but not the moon itself.”

Dogen is not included in the Crazy Cloud biographical sketches but is an example of a major reformist who would challenge any consideration of movement beyond zazen as the primary way of Zen with the point of Zen study being the shedding of body and mind.  Still, Dogen’s writings are studied and they are full of references to Chinese k’an-hua or gong-an, and his writings are deep Japanese koans in and of themselves [e.g., Shobogenzo]

Overall

Zen is not sitting, koan, sutra, precepts.  Zen is directly related to the sudden awakening experience of Siddhartha Gautama.  Zen is not strictly Buddhist, but has been remarkably “housed” in the Zen Buddhist sect.  The experience of Siddhartha was not the first human experience of awakening to an undivided fundamental reality, wherein “I” and “other” are fundamentally identical though on a phenomenal level distinct.

Koans, zazen, sutra do focus attention away from ruminating thoughts, (observing them appear and disappear that reveals their emptiness), then what?   To venture here, Bassui admonishes, You must advance beyond the stage where your reason is of any avail.

One does Zen for a reason. If the physical reality of a person comes and goes like thought and everything a person experiences, dropping this “you,” then what appears?  This is essentially the essence of the reason.

This effort to quiet and calm and use methods such as koan and zazen and sutra study is driven by a question, “What appears?  Hakuin says a question is unavoidably there and one should keep it day and night, and it is also true as Bankei suggests that saddling oneself with one or many questions can be potentially misdirecting.  Perhaps most effective, whenever the question appears, there is a movement toward answering—doing—rather than just keeping the question.  And so, sitting into zazen, for example, can be an answer of sorts, a response to a question.  By stilling, the impermanent coming and going of thoughts leads to an “answer” of less attachment to them as fundamental reality.

So lots of zazen, sutra, koan? Or one or the other? 

The ongoing reformation of Zen practice is full of controversy and deliberation.  Much of the voluminous written record of Zen consists of critiques of Zen “exercise,” generation after generation, rather than clarification of the core essence.

In the Sandhinirmocana-sutra, Siddhartha reportedly stated,

The ultimate truth cannot be expressed in words….has no representation

….transcends all thought and deliberation.  The ultimate truth of which I 

speak puts an end to all controversy,whereas thought and deliberation only 

operate in the realm of controversy. [Zen Essence, bold mine]

Foyan suggests, “There is not much to Buddhism—it just requires getting to the essential.”

…to contemplate emptiness and enter concentration, is all in

 the province of contrivance—and if you go on seeking externals,

you get further and further estranged. [Mazu]

You are busy every day claiming to study Zen, learn the Way, and interpret 

Buddhism, but this alienates you even further.  It is just chasing sound and 

form.  When will you ever stop? [Dazhu]

And the essential?

In Buddhism, the question goes back to where it all begins, suddenly:

What Does Siddhartha See? 

Siddhartha sees something profound, and it is not just suffering as attachment to thoughts and experiences that leads to psychological relief and physiological calmness.  His sudden experience resolves the suffering of not realizing fundamental nature that transcends psychological self and even culture, including “Zen.” Foyan suggests that there is no objective world and Yuanwu suggests that there are no parameters.

Siddhartha brings a question and experiences something that is NOT what anyone expects to discover.  Siddhartha was always making “I,” but unexpectedly experienced “what you see when you are not making you”—The all-embracing mind that does not come into existence with the body or die with the body’s destruction, yet suffuses every act of seeing, hearing, smelling, speaking, moving.” [Crazy Clouds, in discussing Bassui]

How much zazen or koan study or none of this or precepts or no precepts is really not the heart-place to dwell:

It is essentially direct experience from a basic query—perhaps a phrase from a Buddhist sutra such as Dwelling nowhere, bring forth that mind or a non-Buddhist one like Bassui first asked, “What is my own mind?” or later and less of a “you-oriented” query, Who is the master of hearing?

Dwelling nowhere, mind can’t come from you,

Then perhaps the clack of a stone, a chirp, spilled water, the flash of a sparrow’s wing, a black crow on winter ice, or a small phrase of sutra,

Like Hui-neng, or numerous people even before Siddhartha and outside of Buddhism, suddenly awake, nothing special, inherent.

Dwelling Nowhere

Dwelling nowhere, bring forth that mind.

No Gap Between

Considering the Wild Fox koan where a Zen master falls into the body

 of a fox for five hundred years, Dogen questions, “…Just what is the

 subject that falls and just what is the object fallen into?”

In response, Dogen turns the question and brings it back home:

“What form and color does the universe that has continued from the past

have in the present?”

Dosho Port, Keep me In Your Heart A While [from Dogen,

“Great Practices” (Daishugyo), in Gudo Nishijima and Chodo

Cross trans., Master Dogen’s Shobogenzo, Book 4]

“Before you think who you are, you are you,’ means you are exactly

 the universe, exactly, harmoniously intimate, no gap between.”

Dainin Katagiri, in Dosho Port, Keep me In Your Heart A While

Despite The Buddha's Warnings

Despite the Buddha’s warnings, his insistence on the individual experience of these truths by means of meditation, and despite his advocacy of a “middle way” that shunned asceticism as much as it did hedonism, Buddha’s practice became a widely doctrinal system, caught up in rituals and scholasticism.  After his death, his disciples split up into sects, many advocating the very means and ends against which their teacher had warned.

….The tendency of students, however, to revert to dependence on gods, the Buddha, and the “holy” scriptures persisted.

            Perle Besserman & Manfred Steger, Crazy Clouds

Today:

A]            Taking care of the psychosocial realm: for example:

 Fire, Tenderness and Awakening (Race, Sexuality and Gender)

Transforming Depression and Anxiety Through Mindfulness and Compassion

Meeting Trauma and Finding Balance

Zen Approaches to Sickness& Dying

Queer Dharma Group

Four Perspectives on Dharma: Therapy, Spirituality, Science and Religion

Buddhist Psychology

Zen Therapy

The Awakened Writer

                         San Francisco Zen Center 5/13/15

Another characteristic of contemporary Buddhist practice, encouraged by Dharma centers, is to combine meditation with other practices--community circles, twelve-step programs, psychotherapy, martial arts, shakuhachi, drawing, pilgrimages to holy sites, clowning, writing, yoga, cooking, and/or precepts as Moses' commandments.  Whatever the teacher or influential community members happen to be interested in is combined with Buddhadharma and some as the true way, perhaps augmenting the center's membership with people who aren't really interested in traditional dharma practice.  Dosho Port, Keep Me In Your Heart A While

or meditation as mindfulness training that emphasizes awareness, compassion and well-being

B]            The centrality of rules, etiquette and hierarchy.

Meditation, enlightenment, teacher-student relationship, celibacy, lay practice, gender, nature, social convention, leadership hierarchy/administrative roles, sexuality, the play of family/children, socio-political involvement [activism, environmentalism, racism, homelessness, militarism, mental health, illness, nationalism, warrior, anarchism, eccentricity, indigenous/alien], ritual [sutra recitation, chanting, prostration, eating, walking, clothing, sitting form, degree of asceticism in practice—endurance, striking, fasting], public education, retreats, community activities, ecumenism, funding/financial issues

This is quite different from:

            The body is not the bodhi tree, mind is not a mirror stand, nothing to polish

with no place for dust to alight.