Buddha alone together with Buddha

Buddha alone together with Buddha

 

According to Dogen reality is actualized by ‘Buddha alone together with Buddha’ (Yui Butsu Yo Butsu). Huike, the second ancestor of Zen in China, described the experience of this vision in these words:

 

For those who find this body of reality [dharmakaya], the numberless sentient beings are just one good person: the one person who has been there in accord with This through a million billion aeons.

Zen Dawn: Early Zen Texts from Tun Huang,  translated by J.C. Cleary, pp.39-40

 

Zen Cosmology: Dogen's Contribution to the Search for a New Worldview

 

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

The Truth of Buddha-Nature

The Truth of Buddha-Nature..

The truth of the buddha-nature is that we are not equipped with the buddha-nature before we realize the state of buddha; we are equipped with it following realization of the state of buddha. The buddha-nature and realization of buddha inevitably experience the same state together. We should thoroughly investigate and consider this truth.

Shobogenzo, Bussho, Gudo Nishijima & Mike Cross


Peace,
Ted

Genuine Aspiration & the Fallacy of Goallessness

Genuine Aspiration & the Fallacy of Goallessness
...
According to the Buddhist teachings on nonduality (emptiness and interdependence), attempting to divine the significance of Buddha nature by investigating the natural world is futile; any such significance revealed in the world is placed there by the mind’s interaction with it. The material world exists as the fabric from which we fashion a universe and a self; it is not an entity existing independently of us nor is it an objective aspect of us.

Also Buddhism asserts that submission, obedience, or conformity to an “other,” whether an individual, an institution, or even worse, “things as they are,” can only be achieved through the denial or suppression of particular aspects of our own true nature. The vision of humanity’s place in the universe portrayed by the Buddhist masters asserts that true human liberation can only be realized through the actual fulfillment of genuine human desire; full complete enlightenment (annutara samyak sambodhi).

According to the Mahayana sutras and shastras, aspiration (bodhicitta) for universal liberation is the true source of all desire. These teachings emphasize (especially in the Zen tradition) that submission to or compliance with any authority other than that of personal verification serves as an impenetrable barrier to liberation. If that “authority” consists of dualist or naturalistic notions about “things as they are” or “matters of fact,” followers not only obstruct their own liberation, they exchange their human potential for the existence of a beast. Dogen’s most severe attacks were aimed at “naturalism” for good reason; to adopt naturalistic views and practices advocating “detachment,” “goallessness,” “letting things be,” etc. is to sacrifice human intelligence and wisdom for cunning and calculation, compassion and mercy for objectivity and indifference, love and intimacy for the mere instinctual drive for physical pleasure and reproduction, and liberation for bondage.

To ascribe to an “objective” view of nature is to adopt a vision of purposelessness, ferocity, pitilessness, and chaos. Killing and eating and reproducing merely to kill and eat and reproduce. Objective nature brings fire, ice, floods, and plagues as easily and with as little intention or concern as it brings food, clothing, shelter, and companionship. No view of an “objective” world where things (dharmas) are simply ‘as they are’ (regardless of our conscious intentions and efforts) can be reconciled with the wisdom and compassion that characterizes the vision of Buddhism.

Authentic practice-realization requires us to make accurately understood, precisely directed, concerted effort toward specific goals.

The first such specific goal is to expand our capacity of perception beyond the fallacy of the subject-object split and thereby personally verify the truth of the Buddhist teaching refuting the existence of “objective” reality. Those that choose instead to conceive of and follow an elemental or impersonal Buddha, only succeed at the cost of subverting the very significance of Buddhism. The former approach is to expand the human capacity to perceive reality as it is; the latter approach attempts to reduce reality as it is to the undeveloped capacity of perception of the average unawakened human being.

But, it may be argued, if the stupid drive for mere survival envisioned by the “objective” view of nature is mercilessly bloody, it is innocently so; the eagle does not devour the eyeball of the living rabbit from malice, the parasite does not burrow into the fox’s eardrum from a desire to cause pain. The capacity for evil demonstrated by man far surpasses anything that can be witnessed in nature – what possible reasoning can Buddha offer for suggesting human beings are superior to other forms of life? The Buddhist reasoning is grounded in the doctrine that all evil has its source in the human capacity for self-restriction (ignorance, avidya); evil does not arise from human actualization – evil arises from a failure of human actualization. It is in the failure to actualize the inherent human capacity to rise above “objective” nature that causes the creative potential of humanity to stagnate and putrefy into the greed, hatred, and ignorance. The eagle and the parasite are incapable of envisioning a better world – even if they could wish for “more,” it would only be for “more of the same.” According to the Buddhas and ancestors, however, human beings are inherently equipped with the capacity to envision and realize greater possibilities of existence – up to and including universal liberation from old age, sickness, and death.

It is impossible for us to know whether animals experience anything like human doubt, but it seems unlikely that even the more advanced animals wonder why things happen as they do or wish things could be different – much less commit themselves to bringing about the changes they desired. When so-called Zen teachers advise followers to be “goalless” and teach them to practice simply “being aware of the world as it is,” or “just sit and let things be as they are,” etc. they are advocating and fostering a doctrine with a very specific goal: the goal of giving up humanity and adopt the life of a mere beast.

As human beings mature and come to realize they can imagine a reality better than the one they exist in, they cannot help but feel a sense of frustration.

The naturalist and the pseudo-Zen cultist advocate meeting such frustration with acceptance of and submission to the “facts of life.” They proscribe practices designed to cut out or eradicate those aspects of humanity that facilitate the power to envision and create, while fostering the diseases of self-doubt and fear that lead to compliance and conformity to the “way things are.”

Authentic Zen masters, like all true sages and visionaries, point in the opposite direction. Where the timid and servile attempt to escape the suffering of unfulfilled desire by eradicating, diminishing, or suppressing aspects of themselves (thus of Buddha), the sage overcomes suffering by clarifying and actualizing the genuine goal of that desire. Thus, the vision of Buddhism is centered on the truth verified by Shakyamuni Buddha; not only is it possible to envision and actualize a better world, it is possible to actualize a realer world. As all real dharmas are mind-forms (mental images) all mind-forms are real dharmas.

In Buddhism, “samsara” (the round living-and-dying) is the world of suffering in which beings are in bondage to old age, sickness and death. “Nirvana” is the world of liberation from suffering (the round living-and-dying) in which beings overcome old age, sickness, and death. The former is the realm of craving (unfulfilled desire), the latter the realm of satisfaction. For the dualist or pseudo-Zen cultist that sees some things (dharmas) as “real” and “unchanging” and other things as “illusory” or “provisional,” samsara is conceived as something ugly, delusory, temporary, etc.; samsara is something to be escaped, eradicated or overcome. Nirvana, on the other hand, is conceived of as pure, blissful, real and permanent; nirvana is something to be attained, achieved, or realized.

Now, of course, in the Buddhist doctrine of samsara and nirvana – samsara is truly as the Mahayana sutras say, the wheel of living and dying, the realm of suffering; nirvana is, as Buddhism asserts, liberation from the wheel of living and dying. However, this doctrine, like all Buddhist doctrines, is only genuine when samsara and nirvana are actualized as real dharmas through experiential realization. As real expressions of Buddha nature, samsara and nirvana are experienced in genuine practice-realization as nondual – samsara/nirvana.

Simply put, living and dying is what nirvana is, for there is nothing to despise in living and dying, nor anything to be wished for in nirvana.
…
This living and dying is precisely what the treasured life of a Buddha is. If we hate life and want to throw it away, that is just our attempt to throw away the treasured life of Buddha. And if we go no farther than this and clutch onto life and death, this too is our throwing away the treasured life of Buddha by limiting ourselves to the superficial appearance of Buddha. When there is nothing we hate and nothing we cling to, then, for the first time, we enter the Heart of Buddha.
Shoji, Hubert Nearman

By relying upon our physical body and spiritual abilities, we turn the mundane into the sacred, and by relying upon their effects and consequences, we surpass Buddha and transcend Ancestor. By relying on these causes and conditions, we take hold of dirt and transmute it into gold. By relying upon effects and consequences, we receive the Transmission of the Dharma along with the robe.
...
The Gate of Skillful Means is the unsurpassed meritorious functioning of the fruits of Buddhahood. It is the Dharma that resides in the place of Dharma and It is the form of the world as it constantly manifests. The Gate of Skillful Means does not refer to some momentary skill.
...
‘To open the Gate of Skillful Means’ means to point to the genuine Real Form of things. Even though we chop time up into moments of beginning, middle, and end, pointing to the genuine Real Form of things covers the whole of time. The underlying principle of momentarily opening the Gate of Skillful Means involves opening It by opening the whole universe. At the very moment when you catch sight of the opening of the whole universe, it will be something that you have never encountered before. By our grasping once or twice at an intellectual concept of what opening of whole universe is and then grasping at it for a third or fourth time as something real, we cause the Gate of Skillful Means to open. Accordingly, it may seem that the whole universe is identical with opening the Gate of Skillful Means, but it appears to me that an immeasurable number of whole universes have each taken a small piece from the opening of the Gate of Skillful Means and have made that small piece into the form that each universe displays. But their grandeur is due entirely to their being encompassed within the present discourse.
Shobogenzo, Shoho Jisso, Hubert Nearman

Peace,
Ted