Dogen, William Blake, and Hee-Jin Kim - 9 Full Bows

9 Full Bows to Dogen, William Blake, and Hee-Jin Kim...

Indeed, Dogen seems to embody the qualification of the ideal teacher that Confucious had in mind when he said: “He who by reanimating the Old can gain knowledge of the New is fit to be a teacher.”
Hee-Jin Kim, Dogen on Meditation and Thinking: A Reflection on His View of Zen, p.xi

The ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged & numerous senses could percieve.
William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

I am not hoping to present a system by which to study Dogen—there is none.
Hee-Jin Kim, Eihei Dogen: Mystical Realist, p.11

Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of & enslav'd the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects: thus began Priesthood;
Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales.
...
Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast.
William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Dogen “reanimated” the archaic tradition of meditation. It was a hermeneutic imperative for him to live on the boundary where ancients and moderns met and engage them in dialogue. He now challenges us to do the same in a task that has no end. Perhaps that is the only way we can move beyond the ancients (including Dogen himself), and ultimately move beyond ourselves the moderns (and postmoderns).

In view of this, throughout the present work, I situate myself methodologically and hermeneutically at the intersection of Dogen’s Zen and our contemporary crisis, in an attempt to facilitate mutual communication and understanding as emphatically and critically as possible.
Hee-Jin Kim, Dogen on Meditation and Thinking: A Reflection on His View of Zen, p.xi

Thank you William Blake, Eihei Dogen, and Hee-Jin Kim for the wisdom to see the mythical, experiential, ever-advancing reality beyond the literal, speculative, and fixed forms and codes. Thank you even more for your courage to point out that the emperor was indeed a bit underdressed.

9 Full Bows

Ted

Zen Iconoclasm: Apocalypse (Revelation)

Like every long lived scientific and religious tradition, the history of Zen includes numerous examples of persecution and hostility wreaked upon its visionaries by the orthodox authorities that we have identified as “devotees of the conventional perspectives of science and religion.” Also in common with other scientific and religious tradition, many of the Zen visionaries escaped suppression during their lifetimes only to be subjugated by the devotees of orthodoxy in death – most commonly by means of that well guarded trump-card of institutions everywhere – interpretation.

When expressions of truth fail to pitch us out of our familiar surroundings, fail to engender wonder or dread, awe or rapture we can be sure our conditioning has been effectively implemented. The kind of conditioning that serves to veil truth, rather than reveal it is designed by cunning rather than intelligence, its aim is exploitation rather than cultivation. The methodology of such conditioning, which Blake calls “Priestcraft,” is deception, and it agents are the servants of fear and greed called the devotees of orthodoxy. Despite its comprehensive reach and effectiveness, the primary means of this Priestcraft is simple; reduce expressions of truth – the images and figures of myth and metaphor – to mere signs, indicators, historical facts, and literal definitions. If the alchemists of the “opiates of the masses” have revealed any truth, it is that concocting “interpretations” that classify, categorize, codify, or otherwise reduce expressions of truth to systematic generalizations is extremely effective for redirecting human awareness from the reality (i.e. dharmas) plainly before them to conceptual notions in support of orthodox authority. This method so effectively embalms dead forms that encouraging dissection, amputation, eradication, and detachment (of or from the self) has become a distant second as a method used by devotees of orthodoxy.

When the moon in a Buddhist scripture is defined as a symbol for enlightenment, the image of a Zen koan explained as an allusion to emptiness, or the sayings of a Zen masters described as expedient devices, expressions of truth become dispossessed of authenticity, thus of liberating potential. Such definitions and explanations subjugate the exceptional and visionary to the mediocrity of orthodox standards by reducing the paradoxical, multifaceted figures of myth and metaphor to stereotypes and generalizations that conform to established principles and codes of institutional convention. Thus, species of pseudo-Zen long ago established by sectarian and institutional authoritarians, under the pretence of “interpretation,” continue to be widely perpetuated. This method of mummification has been so successful that even the iconoclasm of Zen has been effectively reduced to a convention of the dullest and most witless kind – manifest as an infantile exaltation of vulgarity, crudity, and anti-intellectualism.

In contradistinction to its sophomoric imitations, authentic Zen iconoclasm is a subtly refined rhetorical art, proficiency in which requires years of diligent cultivation. Even with sustained cultivation adept performance may not be realized, though cultivation is still necessary for increasing an accurate appreciation of Zen iconoclasm, as well as the significance of Zen rhetoric generally. For Zen iconoclasm is not so much the result of methodological development as it the result of mythological (metaphorical) insight. Its insight into the metaphorical nature of the self provided Zen with a clear understanding of the vastness of our inherent creative potential, the capacity to actualize reality (i.e. dharmas) through (by means of) the six modes of human experience (seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, and thinking). While it is this capacity that facilitates all human experience, it can only be activated deliberately (consciously) by those awake to true nature, that is, through practice-enlightenment. While all eyes (ears, noses, etc.) participate in the actualization of the forms they see (hear, smell, etc.) it is only the Dharma-eye (Dharma-ear, Dharma-nose, etc.) that can actively (consciously) influence this process of actualization. And, as previously discussed, this “active influence” is exerted through the mythopoeic capacity of human beings, the capacity to transmit wisdom from mind to mind (Buddhas alone together with Buddhas) through the figures of myth and metaphor (self-expressions of Buddha-nature).

Clearly seeing the true metaphorical nature of the self (nondual with the world, self/world, thus all dharmas) clearly reveals the true dangers of ontologically reifying the self through conceptualization or literalism. Here then we would point out that Zen iconoclasm is not confined to those instances wherein it appears in eccentric, shocking, deviant, and sacrilegious words and deeds; rather, Zen iconoclasm permeates the whole corpus of Zen literature. For, in light of its vision of the self as root metaphor, the injurious potential of substantiating the self through dualistic literalism could “literally” not be overstated. For what this light reveals is that reality itself is iconoclastic by nature. Thus, the dark humor, subversive tone, shocking images, and similarly unorthodox aspects of Zen expression are not only the deliberate application of deeply cultivated skillful means; they are inherent characteristics of expressions of truth (self-expressions).

Our statement that “this light reveals that reality itself is iconoclastic by nature” will be clearer when we later explore the significance of existence-time (uji); here, then, a brief explanation on how the light of true nature demonstrates the inherent iconoclasm of reality will have to suffice. If all dharmas are self-expressions, each dharma is a unique instance of existence-time, therefore each dharma is by nature iconoclastic. The very actualization of a dharma is a shattering, a casting-off of every possible preconception; in its “becoming,” a dharma advances the whole of existence-time. In Dogen’s terms, the actualization of a dharma is the “total exertion of a single thing.” As seen in light of existence-time, each dharma actualizes a unique, once-in-an-existence-time dharma-position, a particular location-moment manifestation (in and as experience here and now). The becoming of each dharma is a manifestation of what was (previously) not-manifest, thus its manifestation is not simply iconoclastic in itself (in that it destroys any and all preconceived images, containers, forms of itself) it is the iconoclastic “kalpa-ending conflagration” (i.e. the Buddhist version of the apocalypse). In short, each and every particular thing, being, and event actualizes an apocalypse/revelation of the universe, utterly destroying the old world (which, in lacking that dharma, was a totally different world), and giving life to a completely new world (the first world ever to contain that dharma).

...

Peace,

Ted

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