Zen Language, Thinking, and Reason

Zen Language, Thinking, and Reason

Contrary to certain popular anti-intellectual notions espoused by some within the contemporary Zen community, language, thinking, and reason – being dharmas as they are – are as essential to practice-enlightenment as every other actual element of Zen, including the practice of meditation (however that may be defined). Thinking people that have dismissed Zen because of popularized images of Zen's irrationality and antithetical attitude toward conceptual and intellectual endeavors are encouraged to reconsider Zen teachings - as expressed in its classic literature, rather than as “interpreted” by contemporary representatives. For genuine Zen masters are no different than the sages of any tradition sincerely interested in truth; thus, the classic records of Zen insist that authentic wisdom is only discovered (or evoked) by those with the true aspiration (bodhicitta) necessary for the sustained, wholehearted – and whole-minded – effort to grasp “the whole universe” (a dharma) as “a concept” (a dharma) once, twice, and a “third and fourth time” causing it to open here and now.

When, at this very moment, we glimpse the whole universe in ten directions, the situation is one that we have never experienced before: by grasping the whole universe in ten directions once and twice as a concept and a third and fourth time as a concrete thing, we cause it to open the gate of expedient methods.

~Shobogenzo, Shoho Jisso, Gudo Nishijima & Mike Cross

In this sense, the classic Zen masters are in full agreement with Blake:

Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or reason usurps its place & governs the unwilling.

And being restrain'd it by degrees becomes passive till it is only the shadow of desire.

~William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Only a sincere desire to settle one’s own doubts, a genuine aspiration for personal certainty can furnish us with the energy and skill to “investigate it three times over” – and once this is truly actualized, there is no doubt that cannot be resolved.

Now, without directing a question to anyone else, imagine your own doubt to be a statement. Treat it as the assertion of another person and investigate it three times over, and you may find that you are rid of it already. The aforementioned thought is not an evil thought; it is just a thought at a time before clarification. And at the time of clarification, there is no effort to get rid of this thought. Opening flowers and falling leaves are naturally opening flowers and falling leaves. Thinking in which it is thought that in the Dharma-nature there can be no “opening flowers and falling leaves, is the Dharma-nature itself.

~Shobogenzo, Hossho, Gudo Nishijima & Mike Cross

Obviously, one cannot find something that one does not look for, and it is equally obvious that one cannot look for something one does not know exists. Attempting to apply Zen methods without understanding the reason (dori) one is doing so (not as infrequent as one might imagine) is not likely to result in anything more injurious than a strained knee. However, as the history of Zen in the “West” demonstrates, the outcome of attempting to apply Zen methods with deluded, simplistic, or distorted understandings of the reason for doing so (as is often encouraged by pseudo-Zen teachers) is not always so benign. While the mental, psychological, and financial torments suffered at the hands of exploitive teachers and sectarian cults have been extensively publicized and remarked upon to be familiar to even the casual reader, a number of subtler occurrences even more destructive and pernicious has gone largely unchallenged.

The “subtler occurrences” I speak of are the promotion of doctrines and methods that foster views and practices that lead to antinomian behavior at one extreme and quietist escapism at the other.  As the very nature of these destructive elements make them insensitive to language, thinking, and reason, they are inherently resistant to detection and, more significantly, extremely unresponsive to curative treatment.

The nearly universal ignorance of the nature of mythical language inherent to the common world view in combination with the prevalence of nominalism is particularly revealing in this case. A number of metaphorical (mythical) Zen expressions have proven to be extremely effective “sound-bites” when ripped out of their living, mythological context, melted down, and cast into golden calves.

For example, consider the Buddhist teaching of “practical wisdom.” The Buddhist notion of practical wisdom involves the cultivation of “responsibility” (the ability to respond) wherein practitioners develop and refine the knowledge and skill to respond appropriately and naturally (rather than according to fixed codes or formulas) in the ceaseless unfolding of reality here and now. Some (metaphorical) Zen expressions designating practical wisdom (or aspects of it) are, “as it is” and “just this” (seeing things as they are, rather than assigning them to a category), “not knowing” and “don’t know” (avoiding the preconceptions and prejudices of fixed codes, dogmas, narrow-views, and biases). Stripped of their mythical significance such expressions (or variations of them) have become literal platitudes mouthed by whole communities of “Zennists.”

Other examples include “nothing special” and “everyday mind” (metaphors indicative of the sacred or divine nature of even the most prosaic dharmas), “just sitting” (a mythic image depicting the self non-dually seated in/as the world; self/world), “no goal” and “letting be” (metaphors presenting the entangling potential of preconceived notions and unmerited expectations). We stated that the combination of factors involved in these destructive elements were “particularly revealing” because the actual result achieved by those practitioners that literalize these mythic expressions is literally “as it is” (i.e. literal) – thus, “not knowing” is literally not knowing (sheer ignorance), “just sitting” is literally just sitting (a mere physical posture), and “nothing special” is literally nothing special (average, typical, mundane, and mediocre).

Peace,
Ted

Thinking, Not-thinking, Nonthinking

Our body-mind is the universe arraying itself as our direct immediate experience here and now. Illuminating and clarifying this experience is one aspect of Zen practice and enlightenment, the aspect of thinking. Thinking is the analytic activity of immediate experience. Analytic consideration involves discrimination; contrasting and comparing various components of the unity of reality. As each instance of immediate experience is one with the totality of existence-time (uji), discrimination itself, as well as each of the various components are the true nature of immediate experience.

The reality that Dogen underscores with one of his favorite sayings, “nothing is hidden in the whole universe” constantly advances in and as each instance of immediate experience, whether it is verified in study and practice or not. Out thinking, communicating, and activity arises in harmony with our own actual state of enlightenment/delusion, which is, in a sense, our own unique form of systematic knowledge and understanding.

The structure or form of this systematic knowledge and understanding defines our characteristic attitude toward and response to the world. The accuracy of our understanding and the skillfulness of our speech, thoughts, and actions are exactly proportionate to our own self-awareness or lack thereof. The authenticity of our Zen practice is dependent on the degree to which “Zen” has become “our Zen,” this “our” is, of course, not the “our” of ego, but that of our true self. Any systematic knowledge and understanding that is not ours in this sense is only an idol.

Any system that does not arise from our true self is only an object of attachment that leads to bondage, stagnation, and ignorance. For Zen students, systems often become objects of attachment due to inadequate intellectual effort encouraged by dogmatic zealots and sectarian idolatry; any system that asserts its doctrines, truths, laws, or methods in “absolute” terms usurps the true self (Buddha) by halting the ceaseless advance into novelty.

Through my body, I have manifested the look of the Full Moon,
Thereby displaying the physical presence of all Buddhas.
My voicing of the Dharma has no fixed form,
For Its real functioning is beyond what is said, or how.

You need to realize that the genuine functioning of the Dharma is beyond any immediate display of what is said or how It is put. A genuine voicing of the Dharma has no set form.
Shobogenzo, Bussho, Hubert Nearman

If systems are dogmatized they become immune to logic, creativity, and common sense. Authentic Zen practice is always open-ended and fluid, never fixed and rigid. Zen realization, expression, and activity flows with and as the never-ceasing advance of the universe into novelty, Zen flows from the pivot-point of the true body-mind here and now; refusing to affirm the absolute significance of even the most revered doctrine or method. The true Zen system of actualizing enlightened wisdom is not a doctrine or a method, it is realized by thinking, not thinking, and nonthinking.

.

Peace,

Ted Biringer

Dogen, Shakyamuni, & Dualistic Views of Language, Thinking, & Reason

Our Highest Ancestor in India, Shakyamuni Buddha, once said, “The snowcapped Himalayas are a metaphor for the great nirvana.” You need to know that He is speaking metaphorically about something that can be metaphoric. ‘Something that can be metaphoric’ implies that the mountains and nirvana are somehow intimately connected and that they are connected in a straightforward manner. When He uses the term ‘snow-capped Himalayas’, He is using the actual snowcapped Himalayas as a metaphor, just as when He uses the term ‘great nirvana’, He is using the actual great nirvana as a metaphor.
Shobogenzo, Hotsu Mujo Shin, Hubert Nearman

Without seeing through the dualism of instrumentalist views of language, an accurate understanding of Zen remains impossibly out of reach. Any presuppositions (conscious or not) about words being mere signifiers, pointers, surrogates, or substitutes for “real things” (non-words) apart from themselves is inherently dualistic, thus prohibitive of the nondual experience of Zen practice-enlightenment.

The “blue sky” does not exist apart from the human mind. Even if we admit, for argument sake, that “waves” of certain lengths and frequencies exist independently of human beings, the actual experience (thus existence) of a “blue sky” could only arise if such waves interact with a human mind through a human eye. Thus, the reality of the blue sky and the words blue sky, are both produced by the exact same process with the exact same material: human experience. All “dharmas” (things, beings, events, etc.) are real particular things insofar as they are distinguished as particular things through human perception; the more distinctly they are perceived, the more real they are. We only perceive a blue sky insofar as we distinguish “blue sky” from “not-blue sky” (or “other than” blue sky). The words “blue sky” (and all their verbal and symbolic equivalents) are actualized simultaneously with the human perception of the “blue sky.”

Dogen says that Shakyamuni is speaking “about something that can be metaphoric” to emphasize that words are only significant insofar as they both contain, and are contained by (intimately connected) the real dharmas they describe (depict, portray, present). When Shakyamuni “uses the term” he is using “the actual snowcapped Himalayas” and “the actual great nirvana.” In the same way, we can only say “blue sky” meaningfully if we use the actual blue sky – the actual blue sky only becomes “actual” by being distinguished (thus, marked, or “named”) with the words “blue sky” (and their equivalents). Thus, the words (“blue sky,” “Himalayas,” and “nirvana”) are the actual dharmas (“blue sky,” “Himalayas,” and “nirvana”). For Dogen, any word that signifies or points to “something else” or “other than” is not an actual word (a real dharma); it is only a conceptual construct, an abstract notion. “A finger pointing to the moon” is not the same as “a finger pointing to something else,” nor is “the moon being pointed to by a finger” the same as “the moon not being pointed to by a finger.” The “actual moon” of “a finger pointing to the moon” is real insofar as it is “the moon” that is “pointed to by a finger.”

The term, or name of a dharma is its nature, its life; a dharma becomes a dharma (is actualized) by its being distinctly perceived, distinguished (described, discerned, marked, named, etc.). This is one of the reasons that Shakyamuni is the expression of Buddha nature in Dogen’s works; Dharma (truth) is expression (e.g. understandable explanations). That Dharma is “expression” means that Dharma is, only and always, “intelligible” (knowable, or comprehendible to the mind); the Buddha or ancestor is the being that “enlightens delusion,” “forms, emptiness,” or “fashions intelligibility” from the chaotic stream of ceaseless experience. The Buddha ancestor utilizes enlightened vision to transform general randomness, to actualize this particular thing from “thusness,” that particular meaning from “suchness.”

The view that the significance or meaning of a word exists somewhere outside of the word itself is based on the same kind of dualism that divides emptiness from form, mind from body, existence form time, and appearance from reality. Like all the myriad dharmas, the true “form” and the true “essence” of a word are never construed as two different things in Dogen’s Zen. True words, like all expressions of truth, are only and always fashioned by the creative force of the true human being (Buddha nature). The significance of a word, then, does not, and cannot exist in some “external world” apart from itself. For Dogen, a word (form) and its meaning (essence) constitute one and the same dharma (thing, being, event, etc.) as nondualistically as body-mind, existence-time, and practice-enlightenment.

Advocates of “correspondence” theories conceive of words as mere artificial (or provisional) “representatives” or “surrogates” of “real dharmas” that exist in the outside world (e.g. things, beings, events, etc.) or in the mind (e.g. ideas, concepts, thoughts, etc.). For such theorists, a word can have only one definite meaning, the one meaning that “corresponds” to a reality that exists “objectively” apart from the word. Dogen (and Buddhism) denies the nondual basis of such theories; for him the meaning or significance of a word is totally unique to its dharma-position. That is to say, the meaning of a word is unique to each actual instance of its appearance, depending on its particular context as well as the particular hearer or reader.

The speculative theorist that fails to see that the “dictionary meaning” of a word is an abstraction, and therefore general, and approximate, will fail to perceive the significance of Dogen’s (hence, Zen’s) expressions. For Dogen, a real word is a real dharma, and like all dharmas, its reality (in existence-time), and thus its meaning, is unique to each and every actual instance of its occurrence. Also like all dharmas, each word is a particular manifestation of the totality of existence-time – when one word is illumined, the rest of existence-time is darkened (thus present, potent). Herein lies the reason for the centrality of language in Dogen’s Zen; to Buddha ancestors a word, as a dharma-position, is a focal point of existence-time to which all sounds, forms, voices, expressions, and meanings radiate out from and return to – in short, a true word encompasses and is encompassed by the infinite potential of Buddha nature, and is therefore charged with an infinite potential of meanings.

Words, then, like all real forms (dharmas), display the attributes of real existents (a temporal form, or body) insofar as they are actually perceived (experienced) by human beings. True “perception” being synonymous, in Dogen’s Zen, with true activity, expression, and understanding, to perceive a word is to actualize the koan (genjokoan) here and now – “I” make the word what it is, the word makes me what “I” am. Thus, we can sense the wonder and urgency of Hee-Jin Kim’s words in, Dogen on Meditation and Thinking, as he forcefully reiterates one of the central principles resonating throughout his works; listen again to Kim’s refrain that so often goes unheeded:

Language, thinking, and reason constitute the key to both zazen and koan study within Dogen’s praxis-oriented Zen. The koan’s and zazen’s function is not excoriate and abandon the intellect and its words and letters, but rather to liberate and restore them in the Zen enterprise. In short, enlightenment is not brought about by direct intuition (or transcendent wisdom) supplanting the intellect and its tools, but in and through their collaboration and corroboration in search of the expressible in deeds, words, and thoughts for a given situation (religious and secular). Zazen and koan in this respect strive for the same salvific aspiration of Zen. The language of the old-paradigm koan (kosoku koan) becomes a living force in the workings of the koan realized in life (genjo koan). With their reclaimed legitimacy in Zen, language, thinking, and reason now enable practitioners to probe duality and nonduality, weigh emptiness, and negotiate the Way. Method and realization, rationality and spirituality, thinking and praxis, go hand-in-hand in Dogen’s Zen. Such is “the reason of words and letters” (monji no dori).
Hee-Jin Kim, Dogen on Meditation and Thinking, p.78

Please note that Kim does not deny the significance of satori or kensho (direct intuition) or suggest it be replaced by the “intellect and its tools” (i.e. language, thinking, and reason), but that the two need to collaborate and corroborate. Indeed, one obvious inconsistency of views asserting the nonessential or provisional role of “words and letters” is that the very “reason” of such assertions, which implicitly posit the irrationality of Zen (hence Buddhism), deny the possibility of their own validity.

Now, it is the infinite potential of meaning inherent to words that necessitates, and makes possible, the “search” and “striving”, in Kim’s terms, for the expressible and salvific expressions (deeds, words, and thoughts) of Dogen’s “praxis-oriented Zen.” As long as words are confined to the general meanings of dictionaries, they remain abstract potentials, possibilities so broad (infinite) that any significance they may have could only be considered vague at best. This is exactly similar to the state of sense experience in the absence of any organization or arrangement. And, just as the Buddha ancestor “fashions a universe” and “fashions a self” with the selection and arrangement of “bits and pieces” of existence-time, so she fashions expressions of truth with the selection and arrangement of words. Just as “bits and pieces” of existence-time only become real, particular things (dharmas) when they are actually fashioned, formed, or pictured, so the infinite potential of words only achieve real, specific meaning when they are actually fashioned, formed, or expressed.

Dogen’s profound insight into the infinite potential of words and letters would also helps to account for his apparent disfavor of systematic or formulaic classifications and devices. As mentioned previously, Dogen’s lack of any explicit use of Zen devices (e.g. Five Ranks, Positions of Host and Guest, etc.) in his own works probably has less to do with his rejection of their validity as expressions of truth and more to do with his view of the infinite potential language, and the absolute uniqueness of every true expression of Buddha nature.

Peace,
Ted

Self, True Self, Thinking, and the Senses

Self, True Self, Thinking, and the Senses

(A brief reminder--excerpted and slightly revised from a previous post)

Shobogenzo presents the “self” (and all particular dharmas) as the experiential or perceptible form, shape, or image of the “true self.” The true self of human beings is presented as the sole agent of and individual’s experience; the master, so to speak, of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, and thinking (the traditional “five senses” of western thought plus the cognitive faculties).

Identifying thinking as one of the senses decreases the propensity to identify the “self” (mind) with the “brain.” As a sense, thinking is only one of six faculties of a single human being (our true self). Therefore, beings with more or fewer senses than humans are equal in regard to the true self. This is seen in Buddhist teachings that ascribe additional senses to advanced beings of (e.g. to see past lives, others’ minds, remote events, etc.) and affirms the Buddha nature of beings with fewer senses like earthworms, and even beings without senses (i.e. the non-sentient).

Peace,

Ted