Enlightenment is Bullshit!

Welcome back to ZTT!  I hope you’ve been well since your last visit.  This time, I’ll be talking about enlightenment.  Before doing this, though, I want to share something.

If you try to talk about Zen, you will get into trouble with yourself.  This is because Zen is beyond words.  Now, some people are inclined to call it a “cop-out”.  To say that it can’t be talked about might just be a way of saying that you don’t want to expose your position because you know its weaknesses.  Sort of like saying, “Well, my religion doesn’t have to make sense, because God’s ways are higher than our ways.”  This doesn’t seem like fair play.

Even so, it is not very good to try to talk about Zen, to explicate its concepts to people not familiar with Zen practice and experience.  The reason for this is because to speak of anything is always and necessarily to stay silent about something else.  To reveal one thing is to conceal another.  Chinese wisdom calls this “using the part to conceal the whole”.  So to say one thing about Zen is to conceal something else.   So one could say that Zen is a liberation.  However, anyone who has Buddha Mind knows that there is really nothing to be liberated from and that liberation and captivity are not distinct.  So there seems to be contradiction. 

This is why it isn’t a good idea to talk about Zen.  Talk is karma, and karma is chains.  To talk about things, to reason about them, one must first label and categorize them.  At this point, the game is already up.  You have lost sight of what you want to talk about.  Whatever you will say about your subject will be incomplete and in need of qualification, because the universe cannot be split up into fragments and categories and then labelled.  Reality doesn’t fit into our little concept-boxes.  It always spills over.  This spilling over is  contradiction.  People like to think that reality doesn’t contradict itself, because if it did, they would not know what box to put it in.  But for some reason, everything is supposed to go into a box.  I don’t know why! 

People who do not practice Zen will, when hearing about Zen, accuse the speaker of contradictions.  Such people are trying to box up Zen, as they imagine they have boxed everything else up.  Those who practice Zen know that, if it is Zen, it will not fit into any box.  Indeed, if it is anything real at all, then it will not fit into any box.  But how do you explain this to someone whose own language actually consists of semantic boxes?  For this is what words are.  As soon as a baby is born, everyone wants to know, “Boy or girl?”  What they’re asking is what word they should use.  “He” or “she”?  But are sex and sexuality and gender really so clear-cut and simple as he or she, boy or girl?  Most would like it to be so, but it isn’t.  Reality spills over and out of the boxes labelled “boy” and “girl”.  

So do not talk about Zen.  If someone asks about Zen, just tell him that Zen is minding your own business and not asking stupid questions.  For this is what Zen is, after all. 

Now, I would like to talk about enlightenment.  Many people mistakenly believe that enlightenment is the goal of sitting in zazen.  It is not.  As I have said, sitting has no goals.  If it does, then it is self-defeating.  So it is no use striving for enlightenment by sitting. 

What, then, is enlightenment?  Why is it such a big deal? 

Enlightenment is not a big deal at all.  It is just being awake and aware, undivided from yourself and opposed to nothing.  There is no elation, no heavenly light, no sudden rare wisdom, no rush of spiritual ecstasy.  Nothing like that.  

Many people who start practicing Zen feel this pressure to become enlightened, as if the “point” of Zen practice were to make you into something that you are not.  This is absurd!  Zen is not becoming what you are not but being fully who you are.  If you sit in stillness and let your thoughts fall away, this is already enlightenment. 

However, if you strive for something more than this, then enlightenment will slip from your hands.  It is paradoxical to strive for a state of absolute non-striving, which is what enlightenment is.  So the harder you try for enlightenment, the further you will be from Buddha Mind.  But if you just sit serenely and comfortably, then you are enlightened. 

This is why I say that “Enlightenment is bullshit.”  As a beginner, you think enlightenment must be something special.  But it isn’t.  If you knew what it was, you wouldn’t even want it.  That is, if you were enlightened, you would then see that enlightenment is very ordinary and plain.  It is just seeing things as they are and letting them be. 

Enlightenment is also realizing that there is no difference between you and “the world outside”.  From childhood, we are taught to think that we are separate selves, isolated from an external world and relatively independent of it.  Zen practice helps us to realize that this separation and isolation is not real.  You are the world, and the world is you.  To start to realize this, try a simple experiment.  Get up and go to a place where you are not.  Do you see?  This is what is meant by the proverb, “Wherever you go, there you are.”  Also, everywhere you look, there you are.  You are the looker! 

I am tired of talking about Zen for today.  I have no idea what I will be talking about next time!

What is Zen? Part Three

Welcome back to ZTT!  Last time, I said that this time I would discuss enlightenment.  That will have to wait, because I’ve remembered another important part of Zen practice.  I would like to discuss it here.

In addition to sitting, Zen students work on what is called a koan.  A koan is like a puzzle.  It is a question given to the student, which the student must answer.  However, the answer cannot be just any answer.  It must be absolutely unique; it must emerge from the center of the student’s being and reflect his enlightenment. 

To illustrate my meaning, here are some examples of koans:

“Why is a mouse when it spins?”

“What is the difference between an orange?”

“Who is the Master?”

“What is your original face?”

“What is the sound of one hand?”

“Between night and day, where do sun and moon abide?”   

There are many other koans, some long and some short.  Every koan is the same.  It is the question, “Who am I really?”  The point of the koan is not to come up with a correct answer, as though it were a piece of arithmetic to be solved.  There is no correct answer to a koan.  The point is to become one with the question, so that it is asking you.   Eventually, if you are faithful in your practice, this will happen.  You will know the answer to your koan.  The answer will be whatever happens to come out of your mouth when someone asks you the question.  Or, the answer will be whatever you happen to do in response to the question.  The answer does not have to be in words.  Often times, in response to a question, a Zen master will hit a student upside the head or bat his shoulders vigorously.  The point of this is to regather the mind into a single point. 

The purpose of the koan is to frustrate the student by infiltrating his whole system of thought and sabotaging it from the inside.  It is designed to defy the little intellect that a person has set up as his fast-track to reality.  Again and again, the intellect will crash against the koan like waves against a rocky shore.  It does not give. 

After a while, either you give up on the koan and go back to playing the game, or you plumb the koan so deeply that you annihilate the difference between you and it.  Then you are enlightened.  You, the question, and the answer are all one and the same.  You and the universe are one and the same.  You and God are not two. 

Traditionally, the koan happens in a certain institutional setting.  This setting involves a Zen master (a roshi) and a Zen student.  The master assigns to the student a koan to work on while sitting.  At set intervals, the student comes to master with problems, concerns, and questions concerning his sitting-koan practice.  (These sessions are called dokusan.)  If the student feels ready, he will try to answer the koan.  Or, if the master wants to test the waters, he will suddenly throw the koan at the student and gauge his response.  Either the response comes from enlightenment or it doesn’t.  A Zen master can always tell whether or not a response comes from enlightenment or from thinking.  For example, one student was working on the koan, “What is your original face?”  While strolling in the garden one day, he found a large toad.  He stuck the toad down his sleeve.  Later, in dokusan, his master asked him, “What is your original face?”  At this, the student produced the toad from his sleeve.  The master shook his head.  “Too intellectual,” he said.  The point is that this student was trying to be clever or profound.  But enlightenment has nothing to do with cleverness or profundity.  If you are truly enlightened, you do not think about your actions.  You just do them. 

It might be asked whether it is feasible to practice Zen without a roshi, or master.  The answer is “Yes”.  The reason is that Zen masters are no more enlightened than anyone else.  They have nothing to teach!  Like Socrates, they are more like midwives.  Can a woman have a baby without a midwife?  Of course she can! 

This concludes the third blog.  Next time, I will discuss enlightenment.

What is Zen? Part Two

Welcome back to Zen Thousand Things!  I’m glad you returned.  In the previous blog, I discussed what Zen is by giving reasons why a person would practice Zen.  I said that a person would practice Zen because she is tired of the game (the rat-race) which we call Life.  We mistake this game for the whole of life.  Zen is a way of freeing yourself from this game, a way of stepping out into the larger (indeed, the infinite) life that is all around. 

In this second blog, I want to talk about Zen practice. 

The first thing to recognize is that Zen is not distinct from Zen practice.  First and foremost, Zen is practice.  This is one of the ways in which Zen Buddhism is distinguished from the major world religions, even the Buddhism of which it is a branch.  (In a later blog I will discuss whether or not Zen is a religion.)  Unlike the religions, Zen has no doctrine.  It does not involve assenting to propositions or believing in the “right” things.  Zen is only practice.  In fact, true Zen masters do not like talking about Zen.  This is how you know that I am not a Zen master.  Ha! 

So once you learn how to practice Zen comfortably and often, you can stop listening to people who talk about Zen.  In fact, you won’t even want to hear what they want to say.  “You’re full of bullshit,” is all you will think when people talk about what you, yourself, practice!  Have no fear; this will make less sense as we go on. 

Zen practice (and therefore Zen itself) consists of zazen, which is sitting meditation.  Now, “meditation” is not exactly the right word.  To meditate is to focus the mind entirely on a particular object or sensation in the hopes of becoming one with the object or sensation, to recognize yourself as not at all distinct from that object or sensation.  This is like zazen, but it isn’t zazen.  So from now on I’m not going to talk about meditation.  I will just say, “sitting”. 

Zazen sitting is not just sitting.  Traditional Buddhists recommend the lotus posture, or the half-lotus, or the quarter-lotus.  If you look up “lotus position” on the internet, you will find plenty of guides and suggestions, so I’m not going to cover them here.  In truth, it doesn’t matter how you sit, as long as your body meets certain crucial conditions:

1) Back straight.

2) Chin down.

3) Butt-cheeks pushed outward.

4) Centered in the tanden, the triangle just below the navel. 

5) Hands rested somehow in lap.

6) Eyes relaxed, unfocused, neither open nor closed.

Every guide to sitting will strongly recommend that you have a large cushion, with a smaller pillow on it for your butt.  A yoga mat and a standard pillow would do fine, I imagine.  Also, to begin with, it’s best to sit in a relatively quiet and bright place.  As your practice strengthens, it is actually recommended that you sit in a place more full of distraction.

Now, sitting is the most important part of Zen.  In fact, as I’ve said, it’s the only part of Zen.  The rest is just commentary or bombast or fluff.  (Including this delightful Blogspace!)  So it’s important to know what we are trying to achieve when we sit.  Ready?  Here we go…

ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!  And if you don’t get this, or if you don’t like it, then you might as well leave right now. 

When we sit, we just sit.  There is no goal, no end.  Even the goal of not having a goal is not a goal.  No goals.  Think about a frog.  When a frog sits, does it sit for some reason?  No.  It just sits.  So when you sit in your comfortable, stable posture, just sit there. 

The reason for this is that keeping a goal in mind causes you to strive for that goal.  To strive for a goal is to play the very game from which Zen is the liberation!  What will happen is you will not reach the goal to your satisfaction; you will become frustrated with your practice; you will second-guess your sitting.  This is to wrap chains more tightly around you rather than to wind yourself out of their embrace. 

When sitting, that little thing which you call your mind should be allowed to drop from view.  Ordinarily, when you’re playing the game of life with everyone else, your mind is like a bucket of muddy water that is constantly being sloshed around.  It is always clouded and never clears, because it is never allowed to be still.  When we sit, we still our minds.  Our thoughts fall slowly away, leaving only a pure mind, like clear, clean water. 

There are other ways of putting this.  When sitting, it is said that we have Buddha Mind (or Awake Mind or True Mind), as opposed to Ordinary Mind (or Sleeping Mind or Confused Mind).  If I take a piece of chalk and hit the board with it many times all over, this is like Ordinary Mind: diffuse and chaotic.  However, if I take a piece of chalk and make a single dot on the board, this is like Buddha Mind: concentrated and at one with itself.  When we sit, we make our mind a single, strong point, undivided against itself.  This is enlightenment. 

I will have more to say about enlightenment in the next blog.  For now, do not look for it while you are sitting.  Do not hope for it.  Just sit.  The fact is that you are already enlightened!  So if you keep an eye out for enlightenment, it will be like watching out the window for a friend who has already arrived and is sitting at your table.  You are so busy watching for him that you fail to enjoy his company as he sits there with you!  When you sit, just sit in stillness.  Don’t watch out the window for enlightenment’s arrival.  It will never arrive, because it is already here!  But you will not see this at first. 

Another important thing to consider while sitting.  Your thoughts, your mind, should fall away.  However, you should not cast them down or out.  Don’t push them out.  Just let them fall.  Some people are hell-bent on eliminating their thoughts, and so they exert their minds in trying to let their minds fall.  This is just crazy and self-defeating.  So what do you do? 

Just sit.  Don’t think.  Don’t even think about not thinking.  Thoughts will come, and when they do, just let them pass by.  Do not push them away or pull them close.  Do not throw them or hang on to them.  Do not curse them or bless them.  Do not dwell on them.  Do not dwell on not dwelling on them.  Just let them be thoughts and let them fade out.  

Again, your mind should be like water.  Your thoughts are like reflections in the water.  If a bird flies over a river, it will be reflected over the surface of the water.  But as soon as the bird is gone from the sky, its reflection is gone from the water.  The river’s surface does not try to retain the bird’s image; it lets it go when it is gone.  

The same is true of a mirror.  A mirror will reflect whatever is placed in front of it.  Ugly or beautiful, big or small, light or dark: mirrors are not at all selective about what parts of the world they will reflect.  They just give back whatever comes along.  Your mind should be like a mirror.  It should not pursue things to reflect, and it should not reject those things that come along.  Likewise, do not pursue or reject any thoughts. 

Here is another practical recommendation.  If you are a beginner to zazen (to Zen), then start out by just counting your breaths while sitting.  Inhale and exhale, with emphasis on the exhalation, and count every exhalation.  Count to ten exhalations, then start over.  The point of this is to aid you in concentrating on your breathing.  Breathing is the essence of Zen.  To practice Zen is to sit, and to sit is to breathe.  In and out, continuously.  How many unspeakably wonderful things you will learn by just focusing on your breathing and becoming one with it! 

In-breath and out-breath are the same: they are both breathing.  You cannot have you without breathing.  But what you inhale from and exhale into is not the little thing you have always called “yourself”!  Because you are breathing, and because you breathe in the world and into the world, you learn that you and the world are not different.  This is the beginning and end of zazen.  But don’t think about these things.  It will not help but only hurt. 

So zazen is having No-mind.  No-mind is the same as Buddha Mind.  But how, you ask, can No-mind be Mind?  The real question is how what you have always called your “mind” can be Mind!  Suppose I show you a bucket of water that is all intermixed with dirt and sand.  I say, “Here is a bucket of water.  Drink up!”  You will make a disgusted face and say, “That is not water.  That is mud!  I won’t drink, thank you.”  In the same way, you look at your head full of thoughts and say, “Oh, what a mind I have!”  But that is not mind.  That is mud!  Muddy Mind!  

When you wake up, when you let your mind fall away, when you let your dust settle, then you will see clearly.  Through muddy water you cannot see the fish that swim the river-bed.  Through a cloud of dust you cannot see a friend approaching.  Through a grimy mirror you cannot see your own face.  Why, then, do you suppose that through a mind muddy with thoughts, dusty with desires and fears, and grimy with speculations, you can see anything at all?

What do you see when you see clearly?  Just what is in front of you.  What the hell else would you see?

But here is the important thing: to see means just to see.  Do not look.  Do not think about what you see.  Do not name or label what you see.  Do not try to make sense of what you see.  These are all self-defeating acts.  As soon as you try to see around a thing, to see what it really is, to name it or categorize it, to fit into a conceptual scheme, to make sense of it – then you have lost it for good!  Do not scrutinize, do not strain, do not second-guess.  Just see! 

This concludes my second blog.  Next time, I will discuss enlightenment.

What is Zen? Part One

Welcome to Zen Thousand Things!  This is a Blogspace where words are thrown around concerning Zen practice, Zen principles, and the relation of Zen to philosophy and to other religions.  If you happen to have stumbled into this bright corner of Cyberspace (and you must have, right?) and find any of this interesting, pertinent, or repulsive, I invite you to leave a comment.  I prefer long comments; if your comment is short, at least make it dense. 

Before moving on, I should make it clear that I know absolutely nothing about Zen.  I will not call myself a Zen Buddhist, because it feels funny to talk about myself that way.  I do practice zazen (sitting meditation), but I do not do it in order to become enlightened.  If I am sitting, it is only because I’m not doing anything else at the moment.  All of which is to say that I do not pretend to be an authority on Zen.  For reasons that will (I hope) become less clear, the very idea of an authority on Zen is a little ridiculous. 

Now, what is Zen?  Essentially, Zen is nothing.  It is important, however, that the novice be ignorant of this fact.  Zen must initially appear to be something.  This is the point of Zen teaching and practice: to make Zen appear to be something rather than nothing, so that the people who are so inclined will practice it and find out that it is nothing.  In fact, that is partly the purpose of this Blogspace.  At this very moment I am trying to convince you that Zen is something fascinating and rewarding.  I hope it’s working.  Because Zen is very fascinating and very rewarding.

Historically speaking, Zen is a beautiful hybrid of Buddhism and Taoism, which in turn are indebted to Hinduism.  Technically, Zen is a branch of Buddhism, and so it shares important elements with Buddhism.  The most important of these is the answer to the question

WHY IN THE HELL SHOULD I DO IT?

The answer is that there is no reason that you should practice Zen.  Zen does not command or seek you.  It simply waits for you.  When you come to it, Zen is there for you.  In this way, Zen is like a river, which will never wind its way to your mouth but will wait for you to find it or stumble upon it.  Then you drink.  When you’re done, you leave.  But more about this later. 

If there is no reason that you should practice Zen, then what are the reasons that you would practice it?  Zen, like its progenitor Buddhism, is what Alan Watts has called a “way of liberation”.  You practice Zen in order to be free.  You do not practice it in order to become good, or to be right, or to be acceptable, or even to be happy.  You do it to become free. 

So what can Zen make you free of?  Many people are frustrated with their lives.  Most of what they feel is confusion, anxiety, worry, grief, sadness, and so on.  These people run in circles that never land them anywhere.  For every three steps forward, they take two steps back.  This can happen anywhere: in your family, your career, your marriage, your spiritual quest, your philosophical quest, your life as a student, and so on.  Your life is a complicated and frustrating jumble of paradoxes, with you – the walking contradiction – right smack in the middle and totally out of control.  What’s going to happen to you?  Where will you end up?  Will you just drift aimlessly until you die?  If not, then how are you going to pull yourself up by the bootstraps and overcome all these obstacles looming so darkly between you and the life that you really want?  After all, you are so inadequate: so ugly, so stupid, so slow, so lazy, so this and so that.

This is making Zen sound like a self-help program for people with low self-esteem.  That’s okay, because it is.  At the same time, it is not.  Don’t worry; this will make even less sense as we move on.

Zen is not just for people without confidence in themselves.  For instance, I happen to think I am the greatest thing since sliced bread, but I practice Zen.  Also, people with low self-confidence can always find another way than Zen to get where they are going.  

There are many ways of putting Zen.  Here is one: Living your life is much like playing a game.  Some play to win, some play for the fun, some play because they can’t find anything better to do.  Some people, whether or not they are good at the game or whether or not they are “winning” the game, don’t like the game.  Why do they not like the game?  Because all they feel is frustration and pain and exhaustion, and they have this hunch that the only way to get rid of these feelings is to stop playing the game.  After all, is there anyone so good at the game that they are free of frustration and pain and exhaustion?  No.  So what good will it do you to master the game?  The problem is not how you’re playing the game but that you’re playing the game in the first place.  And it’s not like you elected to play; somebody or something just sat you down at the table.  Is that really fair?  Hmmm. 

Zen practice is not about getting good at the game.  Instead, it is about stepping out of the game altogether.  “But wait,” you ask, “isn’t that like suicide?  If you stop playing the game of life?”  This is where Zen practice has much, and nothing, to teach you.  To step out of the game is not suicide, it is freedom.  Why is this?  Because the game is an illusion!  You think that life and the game are identical because the game is all you were ever allowed to know about life.  You think the game is all of life because it has always been all your life was all about.  If you’ve ever seen the film “The Truman Show”, you’ll know what I’m talking about.  Truman (played by Jim Carrey) is the star of a documentary television show.  The show is his whole life, starting from the day he is born.  The fact that his life is a TV show is kept secret from Truman.  Consequently, all his life he believes that the enormous set around him is the whole world, that the actors around him are his friends and family, that he is living a private life.  The drama of the film takes place as Truman begins to get the hint that something isn’t right.  He is learning, slowly but surely, that his life is a sham, that he is the victim of an all-encompassing deception.  In the end, Truman sails out to the end of what he thought was the whole world: a simple concrete wall.  And outside of the wall?  The real world, of course!  Much bigger than the show’s little set. 

Like Truman, you are the victim of an all-encompassing ignorance.  You have mistaken a little, fabricated world for the whole big, real world!  Since you were young, you’ve been told who you are and “how it is” by people who were told when they were young who they were and “how it is” by people who were told when they were young who they were and “how it is”, and so on.  “Who you are” and “how it is” are just very long, strong chains wrapped around you.  The more vigorously you move, the harder you strive, the tighter they get. 

Zen practice can free you of these chains.  It can break you loose from this false little world in which you’ve always lived and which only frustrates you.  It may be that you like your false little world and the chains have grown comfortable.  That’s okay, too.  There is no pressure to practice Zen.  If there were, then Zen would be part of the game rather than a way out of it, because all pressure comes from the game.   If you ever get sick of playing the game, Zen is waiting, like a river. 

Now that I’ve discussed why someone would practice Zen, next time I will discuss what Zen practice consists of.   If you are at all interested, come along!  If not, then thanks for dropping by!