Zen Naturalism

Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality

2011-09-16T21:49:00.000-07:00

Well, Barbara Bradley Hagerty set out to find the evidence of God, and the Transcendent reality she hoped to find and -- guess what? She found it! She asserts she's a "journalist" and "reporter," but her awards as a "religion correspondent" tell me more that what she is is a believer looking for any evidence -- or lacking that, any justification to lower the bar for what counts as evidence -- for grounding her belief.

She often asserts her feeling that "There has to be more" than this, and her final crowning realization is: "Earth is not our home." The problem with most religionists is right there, in that five-word negation! They look at what they see and, not happy with it because it changes, seek something that is eternal. The imagined reality is, for them, more real and more valuable than 'just this.' There is no lack of awe in the fact that sub-atomic particles, come together to form molecules that assemble to form bacteria, monkeys, you and me!

She leans heavily on William James and his defense of faith and non-evidential belief basically because it makes her feel good! The ethics of such a 'will to believe' leaves much to be desired, and yet, credulous folk still seek solcace in such pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking!

I had hoped for more from this book based upon the title.

Brad Warner's "Sex, Sin and Zen" A kind of review...

2011-08-19T23:13:00.000-07:00

Brad Warner’s fourth book, Sex, Sin and Zen is thankfully a hell of a lot better than his last! It may not be as good as his first two, but it does offer plenty to think about. There is one trait that runs through his books that I do have an issue with, however. Though he will at times remind his readers that he is not speaking for all of Buddhism (in fact, he doesn’t speak for all of Zen!), he still falls into many generalizations and does indeed say things like “Buddhists believe….” when the truth is that "most" or "some" modifying what comes after would help the accuracy of what follows! Additionally, when he speaks for Buddhism, he all too often whitewashes the tradition or out and out offers wrong or misleading information.

Some examples:

1. Like many Zen teachers, he likes to talk up zazen as something ‘special’ or ‘unique,’ and perhaps not even ‘meditation.’ For instance, he says that most meditation is an attempt to “empty the mind” or “develop concentration,” while zazen has no goal and is not about concentration nor emptying the mind. While that is correct in how it is often taught and practiced nowadays, all one need do is read some of the old Chinese texts to see that they speak endlessly about “stopping the mind stream” and about developing various samadhis (which are nothing if not deep states of concentration!).
2. In response to the question: “Are Buddhists allowed to jack off?” he responds, “They’re encouraged to!” I’d LOVE to see him find a sutra where someone is encouraged to masturbate! Now, I want to be clear, I wholeheartedly endorse masturbation as a healthy and natural expression of sexuality. However, the Buddhist tradition generally sees it as unskillful (not sinful or evil) because of its sensual nature which it sees as tending to increase desire and craving.
3. He really blows it when he says “In Western culture we’ve been steeped in the religious view that sex itself is a sin. Whether it’s… within the bounds of holy matrimony or outside it…the act of sex itself is seen as a sinful activity.” This is plain bullshit wrong! First of all, in Judaism, sexual activity between married partners is a mitzvah (both a duty and a blessing) and in fact, the husband is required to make sure the wife is ‘pleasured.’ And even in Christianity, the whole point of it being called “holy” matrimony is that marriage is a sacrament, making married sex truly holy and sacred!
4. He repeatedly falls into the Zen error of speaking of some kind of “underlying reality” behind or grounding the subjective and objective aspects of experience. This monistic dhatuvada view is more Vedantic than Buddhistic, though it is an error that many in Eastern and Northern Buddhism fall into.
5. It’s become kind of “avant-garde” to criticize mindfulness and while there is some justification in the criticism of the “mindfulness industry” as it is now taking shape, there’s a lot of inconsistency and hypocrisy in the criticism. Brad says: “When you say, ‘I am mindful of (fill in the blank),’ you are already creating separation between you and your activities…This is the kind of separation we’re trying to uproot through our Zen practice.” Yet, only two pages earlier he writes, speaking of habits and attachments: “But once you become aware of them you find that you always have a clear choice whether or not to respond habitually…. If you can recognize your attachments, that in itself is very good…It’s useful to see your attachments for what they are, just thoughts inside your head.” Well, well, well. This is exactly the Third Foundation of Mindfulness! How would one become ‘aware’ of attachments and see them as mental formations without mindfulness?! Mindfulness is more than “paying attention,” which is what he seems to think it is, and because of his misunderstanding of sati, he argues that mindful sex would only bring about that ‘separation’ he seems to think mindfulness always implies.
6. His attachment to view leads him to say: “I’m not a fan of guided meditation. Meditation should never be guided.” Aside from the fact that guided meditation has its place and many have found it helpful, he can have his opinion, but he seems to go further in that absolutist condemnation.
7. He seems confused as to whether he really thinks Buddhism is a religion or not. He argues that it isn’t, that it isn’t even “spiritual,” but doesn’t explain how he can think of himself as a “monk,” or that Buddhism has its “clergy.” It may or may not have been a “religion” at the time of the Buddha and for those first few centuries, but it most certainly became one! Now, one can argue that they think that was an error, and many do as in the Secular Buddhism movement, but address the issue with more clarity next time, please!
8. He writes: “the powerful patricarchal religions of the modern world have mostly treated women like shit. Except for Buddhism.” I used to have such an idealized view until I actually met and practiced with Asian women! There are many books, written by women practitioners and academics that offer a more accurate portrayal of the lived actuality. A recent survey said that women fare best in Korea out of all the Asian Buddhist countries, where women have about 80 -85% parity with men! So, the BEST situation has women at 85% parity, and it goes down to less than 25% in other countries. This is a terrible historical situation, that thankfully, modern Western values are being brought to bear upon.
9. His weakest moment is in his handling of “right livelihood.” First, he snidely says that American Buddhists put more thought into other people’s livelihood and whether it is ‘right’ or not than into their own. This is just an example of loose talk, as I know people who, unfortunately, torment themselves with questions about their livelihood! But, he misses the boat right from the start on this topic when he says that the Buddha never offered any list of jobs or occupations that were disapproved of by him. Well, dear sir, what do we make of the following then:

"A lay follower should not engage in five types of business. Which five? Business in weapons, business in human beings, business in meat, business in intoxicants, and business in poison." — AN 5.177

Again, I actually really liked this book. I just have my own issues with Brad’s often all-too-loose scattershot teaching. And yet, this is all along with some really wonderful points, and even tender, thoughtful and compassionate ones at that! I went into this book with some trepidation – after the crapola he churned out in his third book – but I have to say I’d recommend this book to anyone curious enough about one Buddhist’s take on Sexuality.

What I Hate About Zen

2011-08-10T22:08:00.000-07:00

Over the course of my life, since my introduction to Zen Buddhism in 1974, I’ve read many books about Buddhism and Zen in particular. And perhaps that in itself is a problem! But be that as it may, I’ve never fallen into the trap of thinking that reading about Zen is what Zen is about. The reading has always been secondary to ‘practice.’

Yet, over the years, there have been quite a few things about Zen, and how it’s presented by its teachers and masters, that I have found distasteful, pig-headed, and quite frankly, morally and philosophically bankrupt. I’m not about to go into every one of these things here, but I am prompted to write after reading Zen In Plain English by Stephen Schumacher. The apparent sub-title of this book is Experience The Essence of Zen and in fact, the inner cover proclaims: “This book could well be called “The Zen of Zen.” It is not simply a book about Zen Buddhism; it is a direct expression of the Zen spirit itself.” What that means is expect posturing and obfuscation, and that is what you will indeed find here – along with some very good writing and explication. Zen is, truly, a mixed bag!

Schumacher studied philosophy, psychology and sociology, and then Japanology and Sinology, before heading off to Japan where he eventually “dedicated himself entirely to Zen practice.” From 1970 to 1975, his practice was within the Sambo Kyodan tradition, under the guidance of Yasutani Hakuuin Roshi and Yamada Koun Roshi. Schumacher is the editor and co-author of the Shambhala Encyclopedia of Eastern Philosophy and Religion: Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Zen.

My qualms with Mr. Schumacher’s book begins with the first paragraph of his “Prelude.” He writes, and already begins the all-too-typical Zen blustering against historical scholarship:

"This book is a presentation of Chan or Zen from the perspective of Zen. It is not an account of facts and events which occurred in the distant past, a record that is merely meant to correct from the point of view of an academic understanding of history. A historical approach, helpful as it may be for an understanding of the development of the outward form, misses the very essence of Zen – and on should not forget that it is one of the characteristics of Zen to steer as directly as possible, towards the essential.”

The first line warns us not to expect much more than the self-aggrandizing tendency of the Zen tradition. The second reminds us that Zen will not let “facts” or historical “events” get in the way of a good story! He offers a bit of pablum by saying the historical approach can be helpful for understanding the outward form, as if the outward form can be separated from its significance and meaning! The forms took shape because of and along with, certain ideological, cultural, and political constructions, and to deny this or to turn a blind eye to this reality is simply willfully ignorant.

But finally, the major point of my criticism is this notion of “essence.” At the very least, Schumacher should clearly define what he means when he uses the term, as it is one (and he should know, considering his philosophical studies) laden with connotation for westerners. And Buddhism is an un- or even anti-essentialist teaching! What is the “essence” of Zen and what is the “essential” it allegedly “steers us toward?”

On the very next page, he goes on to argue an essentialist perspective by denying that the historical, social and cultural conditions under which an ‘enlightened Asian’ has said or done something have anything to tell us about enlightenment! Awakening is to conditions; to be ‘enlightened’ is to be enlightened about something. One of the tendencies of the Zen tradition is to reify enlightenment into something ahistorical and acontextual. Schumacher asks “Can (Zen) help me to find my solution?” and answers: “It can only do so if it is more than history, if is transmits a truth that is independent of historical circumstances. And indeed, what is transmitted by the Zen tradition is a truth of a different order than that of the historical truth of the scholars.”

The first part of that statement is bullshit. Zen doesn’t transmit some ‘transcendent’ Truth with a capital T. The ground of Buddhism, the Four Noble Truths, are not some such Truth, but truths about circumstances that we need to nobly face in order to live wholesome, free, creative lives! The second part of that statement is typical Zen tradition self-aggrandizement. Now, I am not saying there’s no difference between the academic, scholarly approach to Zen and the practitioner’s approach. What I am saying is that they are not at odds, and that increasingly so we find practitioner-scholars whose practice does not seem to be threatened or undermined by their scholarship, and indeed who find it nourished and broadened by such scholastic understanding.

One example of this is his treatment of the supposed ‘dharma transmission’ from the Buddha to Mahakashyapa. Anyone who has read any Zen at all, knows the story: a large group (some accounts say 80,000) were assembled at Vulture Peak to hear the Buddha give a teaching. (If you’ve been to Vulture Peak, you know this is one hell of an exaggerated number!). As they all awaited the Buddha’s words, he stood there, and held up a flower and blinked his eyes. Kashyapa broke out in a smile, and the Buddha said: “I have the Treasury of the Eye of the True Dharma, the ineffable mind of nirvana. I entrust it to Mahakashyapa.”

The Zen mythos states that this was the first of a long line of dharma transmissions, first in India, then in China. There are many students of Zen who believe this is historically true. There are also many who, after years of believing so, have found out that this is pure legend, with no basis in historical fact, and have felt betrayed. That’s what you get when you pass along myth as “Truth.”

Now, let me be clear: I like this story of Mahakashyapa and believe it does indeed teach to a subtle, profound existential truth. And that I know it not to have actually happened doesn’t lessen this existential truth. BUT, also knowing that this story is a fabrication of the Chinese Zen school, pretty much as a strategy to gain “legitimacy” in the eyes of itself and other Chinese Buddhist schools, lessens the sectarian ‘one-upmanship’ that permeates the Zen school.

It’s clear the Buddha did not ‘entrust’ his Dharma to any one individual; that there were many enlightened practitioners; and that the Buddha exhorted his students to be rest in their own authority, as ‘lamps unto themselves.’

Listen to how Schuhmacher addresses this issue:

"If we are to believe the academic scholars of Buddhism, the lineage of Zen transmission… is a fake, a defensive lie. It is born out of the attempt by later Zen teachers, to justify their own claim to be authentic descendents of the Buddha through a lineage that was artificially constructed, a posteriori, to demonstrate an uninterrupted chain of ‘transmission of the light,’ from the historic Buddha to themselves. From a historic point of view, this may not even be completely erroneous.

Pull-eeeze! “It may not even be completely erroneous”???!!!! How ‘bitchy’ can one be? Does historical truth so threaten his faith that it has to be wrong? Of course, this is what we expect from someone (and a tradition) that likes to think of itself as ahistorical to begin with! Here again he seems to think that “a mere historical understanding of the transmission in Zen” misses “by far the essential truth of what the Awakened One taught.” Again he goes to his dearly beloved “essential truth” but it is Schuhmacher who is missing a deeper truth. If we close our eyes to the historical truth, we fall, hook, line and sinker for the political ploy of ‘transmission’ and cloud our eyes with mystic dust!

Philip Yampolsky writes: "To achieve the aura of legitimacy so urgently needed, histories were compiled, tracing the Ch’an sect back to the historical Buddha…” The whole lineage chanted in many Zen centers is more fabrication than literal truth. Indeed, the idea of lineage was Chinese manufactured, reflecting the more Confucian ideal of ancestor worship and the hierarchal stratification of Chinese society. In the Pali Canon it is explicitly made clear that the Buddha rejected naming anyone as his successor. The almost obsessive emphasis on lineage and authenticity of transmission found in Zen has led to much abuse, and ironically, we see its roots at the very beginning with the story of Mahakashyapa, and then further elaborated in the story of Hui-neng and Shen-hsiu.

But this is what the Buddha is reported to have said as he neared death, and was explicitly asked who would lead the sangha:

"The Dhamma I have taught has no secret and public versions: there is no ‘teacher’s closed fist’ about good things here. Surely it would be someone who thought this: ‘I shall govern the Sangha’ or ‘The Sangha depends on me’ who might make a pronouncement about the Sangha? A Perfect One does not think like that…each of you should make himself his island, himself and no other his refuge; each of you should make the Dhamma his island, the Dhamma and no other his refuge."

The concept of “lineage,” in the sense of meaning that every student and practitioner of the Dharma has learned from other students and practitioners, and that this line of succession goes all the way back to the Buddha in India is both unexceptional and true. It might even be accurate to call it a “truism.” And it works for our understanding and experience of continuity and connection.

However, lineage has come to mean much more than this in the Zen school. It has come to mean the “certification,” the “seal of sanctioned approval” of one Master’s enlightenment by another through a “mind-to-mind” transmission, modeled upon the example of Mahakashyapa, certifying the legitimacy of the succeeding teacher to be a teacher and leader of the Sangha. This practice can be seen as a means of ensuring that only properly certified and genuinely enlightened people are allowed to teach, which would be seen as a protection for those of us who are unenlightened from being exploited, or it can be seen as a system for maintaining priestly power and creating mystique.

It is obvious that the idea of transmission and lineage is intended to impart the aura of legitimacy, but this begs the question of why would a school or a teacher need such “legitimacy?” Presumably, the answer would be that what they have to offer is non-obvious. What they have to offer is something those of us who are unenlightened would be unable to evaluate. David Brazier, in The New Buddhism, gives the example of using the services of a greengrocer and a doctor. We do not ask to see certification from the greengrocer. We just ask if he has cabbages for sale if that is what we seek. But we do ask to see certification from our doctor because if we wait to see if he knows what he is doing through personal practical experimentation, it may be too late before we realize he is a quack! The lineage system puts Dharma Teachers in the same category as doctors and not in the same one as greengrocers.

Interestingly, Brazier points out that the Buddha put himself in the greengrocer category. “Come and see and try it out for yourself,” he said. If you like what I offer and it helps you to overcome suffering, use it. If not, not. The Buddha did not appoint a successor (although the Mahayana created the legend of the flower sermon to legitimize the idea of succession through Mahakashyapa). The Buddha did offer his opinion as to who was enlightened when asked about particular people. However, there is a passage where Ananda, seeming to pester the Buddha with this question, is told by the Buddha that Ananda could simply see for himself whether someone is enlightened or not, telling him that the test of one’s enlightenment and understanding is how well they follow the discipline. So it seems that the Buddha thought that the matter was obvious, not non-obvious. If a person was enlightened, you could tell from what he or she did. You could know them by their deeds.

After the death of the Buddha, differing camps began to arise, each with its own slant on the teachings of the Buddha. Once the Majority Group (The Mahasanghika, the spiritual ancestors of the Mahayana) began to express willingness to change the rules and the form, criterion other than orthodoxy was required to establish legitimacy. Lineage was grasped onto as a way of showing that while the way a particular school practices or teaches may not look like the way the Buddha did; it is directly descended from and derived from him. Lineage also implies that as all the changes were made by certified enlightened Masters, they are not only authentic and true, they are perhaps even improvements on what the Buddha taught and how the orthodoxy practices! That is to say again, lineage becomes a means of legitimizing the non-obvious.

This use and understanding of lineage is highly problematic. First of all, lineage is a form of “argument from authority” which Western logic regards as a fallacious argument. Just because someone holds a high position does not, of itself, ensure that he or she is right. The Buddha himself stressed this in his "Discourse to the Kalamas" when he told them not to believe and accept something just because of the position of the person who has told you it – including himself. Things are not true simply because the Buddha says it. They are true if they are true, and regarding things that matter, like birth and death and how to live a “noble” life, while we may need wiser folk to point it out to us, we still need to test what they say for ourselves. Sadly, humans like to shirk this responsibility and simply accept authority all too easily. Those societies based upon legitimization systems, such as the Roman Catholic Church, as seen most recently in their handling of the sexual abuse crisis, tend to work quite badly.

The fact is that in the last sixty years there have indeed been some disturbingly significant examples of “legitimately authorized” Buddhist Masters acting in such ways that one must question the usefulness of lineage. I will only address one, and that is the case of Yasutani Roshi, one of Schuhmacher’s teachers, who received “transmission” and was legitimated by the lineage system of the Soto Zen School two months after publishing a book on Dogen which is full of militarist and anti-Semitic propaganda. The book uses the teachings of Dogen to support the war, deify the emperor, promote the superiority of Japan, foster anti-Semitism and encourage people to exterminate the enemy. Included in his commentary on the First Precept is the following passage: “Failing to kill an evil man who ought to be killed, or destroying an enemy army that ought to be destroyed, would be to betray compassion and filial obedience, to break the precept forbidding the taking of life. This is a special characteristic of the Mahayana precepts.” Thankfully, most teachers within the Buddhist world do not hold this non-obvious “special characteristic”.

The merits of a system that rewards someone such as this with its highest seal of approval and spiritual authority when he is confirmed in such warmongering attitudes are also non-obvious! It is clear that if the function and purpose of lineage is to offer a “guarantee” of someone’s enlightenment it has failed to do so – in this case at least. A guarantee that is unreliable is no guarantee at all. It seems to me that lineage, as an authentication system is not a system that was accepted by the Buddha and is not one he would have approved of. I believe that Buddhism is hindered, not served, by unnecessary mystification, and much of “transmission” and lineage reeks of mystification and obscuration. While I agree that people rarely become enlightened without spiritual teachers, it is ultimately the students who authenticate and authorize the teachers. An enlightened being is one who embodies the precepts, and if someone says they are above the precepts, they have not fully understood the Dharma.

What is perhaps even more troubling is the response of those who were given transmission by Yasutani to the uncovering of their teacher’s ideology. All seemed to defend Yasutani through various twists of non-obvious logic, but Jiun Kubota, the Third Patriarch of the Religious Foundation Sanbo-kyodan founded by Yasutani published an apology for his teacher’s expressions of support for war that still harbors what I feel is a dangerous doctrine. He states in his “apology” that Dharma and political ideology are two separate things and that Yasutani’s disciples were only interested in the dharma and not in the ideology. I reject this unequivocally. The task of the Dharma Teacher is, not to be perfect perhaps, but surely involves “imparting values, vision and inspiration that touch all aspects of the disciple’s lives.” The doctrine that says Dharma and social attitudes are unrelated is not what I understand to be the teachings of the Buddha. It both, once again, reeks of essentialist obfuscation and – ironically, considering how loudly the Zen school proclaims its nonduality – a fundamentally dualistic worldview: there’s Dharma, and then there’s everything else!

With both an historical consciousness and critical thinking, Zen Naturalism finds no shame in admitting it breaks from orthodoxy, and feels no need to apologize, nor create some form of external ‘legitimacy.’ If it is to have a legitimate function, that will be proved in the arena of practice, and nowhere else. It accepts what works, it is not afraid to critically evaluate tradition, nor does it shirk from creative innovation – if warranted. It is open-handed, and open-hearted and open-minded. There is a rejection of the elitism and ‘specialness’ of much of the Zen tradition that strikes me as a form of institutionalized ‘self-conceit.’ Basically, Zen Naturalism is free of what I hate about Zen!

Avatamsaka Zen

2010-09-08T18:08:00.000-07:00

“A student, through the inspiration of her teacher, instantly awakens to her true mind and realizes that she is ultimately no different from the Buddha. This occurs suddenly; it is the teaching of ‘sudden enlightenment.’ Hence it is said, ‘Originally, there is nothing,’ which means simply that one must not underestimate oneself, and lack confidence.
Even after attaining some realization, however, the student then relies on this awakening in order to cut off lingering mind-habits so that she can be fully transformed from an ‘ordinary person’ into a ‘sage.’ This development occurs gradually; it is the teaching of ‘gradual cultivation.’ For this reason is has been said, ‘one must polish the clear mirror from moment to moment.’ It is due to the student’s humility. This is why pride can be such a hindrance. Lacking faith in one’s own nature is the sickness of those attached to scriptural authority, whereas pride is the disease of those who practice only Zen meditation…”
“Capping Word:
The phrase, ‘must not give in and must not be proud’ can be viewed from two perspectives. From the simple perspective of the initial aspiration to awaken upon the Bodhisattva path leading to Buddhahood, it can be said that the cause already contains the myriad fruits of all the stages of the path including enlightenment itself. From the broad perspective of the Bodhisattva path, it can be said the fruits are inherent within the fundamental cause. In other words, all fifty-five stages of the path are already contained with a single act of initial faith.”
From The Mirror of Zen
By Grand Master Sosan
Adapted by Poep Sa Frank Jude Boccio
From translations by Boep Hoeng and by Mark Mueller

By Way of an Introduction

For almost as long as I have been interested in Buddhism, its thought and its practice, I’ve wrestled with some problematic aspects of the tradition, including contradictions and even, what to my mind at least, seemed like some misunderstandings of the Buddha’s teaching that had tainted the tradition. I hasten to add, ‘tainted for me.’ That some of these ideas had become doctrine within some of the sects is a given. I am just not so sure I’m willing to take them! And to add irony on to my situation in particular, I have, from the first, been drawn primarily to Zen, and at the same time, find myself at odds with a lot of its tradition!

So, what are my problems with Zen? There are quite a few, and many of them were addressed in various papers written as part of my Seminary training (such as this one) that either appear in this blog or will appear at some time in the future. For instance, the whole language of “patriarch-ism,” the issue of “transmission” and “authorization” which has been so abused, and the very fabrication of the myth of “lineage” back to the Buddha. Not to mention the “sudden/gradual” and other fraternal debates within the various schools of Zen are among those aspects of the tradition that I find distasteful. Ultimately, the core reason for all these issues and my distaste of them is the sectarianism and superior tone of much Zen polemic. Much of this Zen “grandstanding” has its basis in the politics of Chinese culture and the perceived need to establish “legitimacy” for the upstart, indigenous form of Buddhism. Of course, as all ‘things’ are empty of self-nature, Zen’s sectarian stance and superior tone is co-emergent with the sectarianism found throughout much of Chinese Buddhism which, to my mind, generally infected too much of East Asian Mahayana Buddhism.

What has appealed to me about the Korean Buddhist tradition is its history and general tenor of syncretism. Great teachers like Wonhyo and Chinul, in particular, have resisted the “one-practice” notion that arose in China, and which really took hold in Japan. While Korean Buddhism had its own petty squabbles over whether kyo (doctrine/texts) or son (meditation) was more important, again great teachers like the two noted above, as well as Grand Master Sosan, as epitomized in the excerpt from The Mirror of Zen quoted at the opening of this paper, enunciated what to my mind is a deeper understanding that is rooted in the core teaching of the Avatamsaka Sutra. A case may even be made that Korean Son Buddhism and Hwaom Buddhism are simply the same thing seen from two different angles.

Ironically, while Hwaom is usually considered as the philosophy behind Son practice, and Son is thought to be ‘anti-philosophical,’ the point I wish to make in this paper is that the teaching of the Avatamsaka itself points out the ultimate fallacy of thinking along such separatist lines. To read the Sutra is both practice and study. To sit in meditation is both practice and study. The Sutra is a description of the realization of practice. Practice is the functioning of the description. And reading itself is the functioning of the realization of practice. As the core teaching of the Sutra and Hwaom Buddhism enunciates over and over, all phenomena arise interdependently with interpenetration and no obstruction. Through reading the Sutra and sitting in meditation, this truth is made evident immediately, intimately, spontaneously and obviously.

The Avatamsaka Sutra & the Hua-Yen School

The Flower Ornament Sutra, (Avatamsaka in Sanskrit; Hua-yen in Chinese; and Hwaom-gyong in Korean) is one of the major Buddhist texts, perhaps the richest, most psychedelically grandiose of all Buddhist scriptures. Its language, filled with mesmeric repetition, incredibly sensual and overwhelmingly imagistic detail staggers the imagination and can bring the mind to a halt with its onslaught of verbiage in a way similar to how a hwadu, when really engaged, can feel like a snapping or breaking of the mind!

The legend tells us that the fullest extent of consciousness available to humankind, discovered by the Buddha and summarized in the Sutra, was beyond the understanding of even the most astute students of the Buddha. Realizing this, the Buddha spent his ministry teaching people how to prepare for this totalistic understanding of reality.

It wasn’t until centuries later that Nagarjuna is said to have recovered the lost teachings elucidated in the Avatamsaka. Because of his role in revitalizing the comprehensive teaching, Nagarjuna is regarded by many as “The Second Buddha,” and as an ancestor of all the major branches of East Asian Buddhism.

That’s the legend. In fact, we do not know with any real degree of certainty when or by whom the sutra was written. It is generally accepted by scholars that the text is a compendium of diverse writings from different hands within the Indian cultural sphere from the first and second centuries C.E. The text as a whole embraces a broad spectrum of material and cannot in any way be approached as a coherent philosophical discourse. It simply resists rigid systematization. Thomas Clary writes, “…it could variously be said with a measure of truth in each case that these teachings are set forth in a system, in a plurality of systems, and without a system.”

As is true generally of the great Mahayana scriptures, historical veracity is of little relevance in The Avatamsaka Sutra, although we do find the formulaic presentation of the teachings as having been revealed or occasioned by the meditations of the historical Buddha. The Avatamsaka Sutra, however, is mostly presented as being the discourse of trans-historical, symbolic beings representing aspects of universal and perfect enlightenment. The “character” of the Buddha shifts from an individual to a cosmic principle and the manifestations of that principle: Vairocana, or Mahavairocana, “the Great Illumination Buddha.” He does not hold the role of teacher in the Avatamsaka Sutra, but serves as an imprimatur of the teachings given by his retinue of advanced Bodhisattvas. We read about “the Buddha” as well as “the Buddhas” “representing enlightenment itself, the scope of enlightenment, or those who have realized enlightenment.”

Portions of this immense text were among the first Buddhist literature to be introduced into China beginning in the second century C.E. and The Avatamsaka Sutra went on to become one of the pillars of East Asian Buddhism. By the end of the fourth century at least a dozen separate translations from five books of the Avatamsaka had appeared. Translation work continued until there were more than thirty translations and retranslations of various books and selections from the sutra. The first comprehensive translation of the Avatamsaka was done under the direction of the Indian monk, Buddhabhadra (359 – 429) and the second, was completed under the direction of the Khotanese monk, Shikshananda (652 – 710). It is this latter version, more than ten percent larger than the earlier translation, and containing thirty-nine books, upon which Thomas Cleary based his English translation; the only full-length version in English as yet.

Eventually, a major indigenous school of Chinese Buddhism developed based upon the teachings of the sutra and named after the Chinese title: Hua-yen. This is an example of a feature unique to Chinese Buddhism. Unlike within the Indo-Tibetan Buddhist tradition, in China we see the development of schools based upon the study of particular sutras, or even just one sutra in particular. In the Tibetan tradition, for instance, it is felt that sutras are too difficult to understand without approaching them through a comprehensive grounding in Madhyamaka and Yogacara philosophy. It is thought that the sutras are too poetic, unsystematic, vague and apparently contradictory to understand. Once mastered, Tibetan philosophy is then used as a hermeneutical tool in order to comprehend the sutras. In the great Chinese schools, the philosophy arises out of the reading of the sutras.

The Avatamsaka Sutra as such, is not a philosophical discourse. It is not so much “about” something, as it is an attempt to portray the cosmos as seen by a Buddha, or very advanced Bodhisattvas. It doesn’t promulgate a systematic ontology, but rather gives us a description of the phenomenological experience of a Buddha or advanced Bodhisattva. The cosmos as experienced by such a being is called the dharmadhatu, the “Dharma-Realm.” This is not the cosmos as perceived by un-awakened beings, but is rather the cosmos seen correctly. It is the cosmos where all phenomena are seen as empty, lacking any substantiality or self-nature (sva-bhava). This cosmos is the Buddha.
Clearly know that all dharmas
Are without any self-essence at all;
To understand the nature of dharmas in this way
Is to see Vairocana.

Hua-yen thought then, is less “philosophy” then the systematic explanation of the dharmadhatu, this very cosmos we live in, as experienced by an awakened or awakening being. A suggestion made by others, with which I agree, is that it is perhaps more useful to consider the metaphysics underlying the description of the dharmadhatu in terms of its instrumental value rather than as a system of thought for its own sake or as an object of belief or ground of contention. This is the intention that lies at the heart of this paper: to view Hua-yen thought and expression as practical exercises (as praxis) in cultivating new ways of looking at things from different perspectives, “of discovering harmony and complementarity underlying apparent disparity and contradiction. The value of this exercise is in the development of a round, holistic perspective which, while discovering unity, does not ignore diversity but overcomes mental barriers that create fragmentation and bias.”

The T’ang dynasty (618 – 907) was a period of remarkable ferment in Chinese Buddhist history. It was during this period that the four major schools of Chinese Buddhism either arose or were formulated. These are the T’ien-t’ai, Hua-yen, Ch’an, and Ching-t’u schools. The first two are usually recognized for their philosophy and the latter two for their meditational practices, but as this paper points out, this is a simplified reductionism. All schools of Buddhism, like all traditions of Yoga, rest upon the integration of theory and praxis. In addition to these four main schools, the San-lun and Fa-hsian are noteworthy since the metaphysical and psychological teachings of these schools were largely subsumed into the four major schools. Elements of each of these schools appear in Hua-yen, which makes sense considering the totalistic world-view of Hua-yen.

The Hua-yen school’s founding rests upon the work of five eminent monks: Tu Shun (557 – 640), Chih-yen (600 – 668), Fa-tsang (643 – 712), Cheng-kuan (738 – 839 or 760 – 820), and Tsung-mi (780 – 841). These masters wrote commentaries on the Hua-yen, as well as essays whose purpose was to crystallize the ideas of the scripture for transmission within the Chinese cultural sphere.

Tu-Shun’s work is concerned with the resolution of emptiness and existence and the interrelationship of all things; he introduces the concepts of noumenon (li) and phenomena (shih) and their interpenetration, which became basic terms of Hua-yen discourse. Chih-yen studied with Tu Shun and also wrote a commentary on the Hua-yen and other articles on topics found in the scripture.

It is Fa-tsang, whose writings so powerfully conveyed the Hua-yen worldview, who is often considered the school’s true founder. In fact, the school is sometimes referred to as Hsien-shou, the honorific name bestowed upon Fa-tsang by empress Wu, who appointed him a “National Teacher.” Fa-tsang was a member of the committee assisting in the translation of the Siksananda redaction of the Avatamsaka. He was a prolific writer whose contributions included commentaries and many doctrinal works dealing with approaches to the teachings and presenting detailed outlines of Hua-yen dialectics and contemplative exercises. Many of these exercises are strikingly similar to the “thought experiments” utilized by contemporary quantum physicists.

The final two Hua-yen dialecticians, Cheng-kuan and Tsung-mi were well-versed in the teachings of Ch’an, and in particular, Tsung-mi wrote a famous “Comprehensive Introduction to a Collection of Expositions of the Sources of Ch’an” (Ch’an yuan chu ch’uan chi tou hsu) which analyzes various trends in Ch’an teachings in terms similar to Tu Shun and relates the Hua-yen, T’ien-t’ai, and Ch’an teachings to each other.

Finally, while the above five masters are considered the founders of the Hua-yen school, the layman Li T’ung-hsuan made a significant contribution to the movement through his writings that were highly esteemed by Ch’an Buddhists. In fact, there are Ch’an histories containing records of people having enlightenment experiences from reading his works.

After this, it was the masters of the Ch’an school who wrote texts utilizing much that had been introduced by these six men. Shih-t’ou His-ch’ien (700 – 790) and Ma-tsu Tao-I (709 – 788), from whom all the major sects of Ch’an were descended use many themes from Hua-yen such as relativity, the essential unity and subtle distinction of form and emptiness, the totalistic view of the “nature of things” and the practice of the “oceanic reflection concentration” which is what the holistic awareness which is the basis of the Hua-yen experience is commonly called.

So, to begin to delve into the realization of the dharmadhatu, Hua-yen requires a metanoia, which is translated as “repentance,” “spiritual conversion” or “fundamental change of mind,” but which literally means a “turning around in the mind.” It is a reversal of the conventional way of perception. The Sanskrit term, pratiprasava has this same meaning. It requires us to actively turn away from our conventional perception, and look as if for the first time at the world around us.

Hua-yen begins with the core teaching evidenced in the quote above, that “everything is empty” (sarvam shunyam). A teaching often misunderstood outside Buddhism as a form of nihilism, it was equally as misunderstood within Buddhism as the “inner essence of things which could be perceived with special training.” The proper way to see emptiness is as a therapy to put an end to all attachment to views and philosophies! Emptiness does not mean nonexistence. Equally important to understand, emptiness is not some inner essence of phenomena that exists independently of phenomena. Emptiness does not exist apart from existents and is not an entity or substratum of phenomena. In fact, as emptiness is a device for breaking our attachment to all views, it is emphasized that we must remember that emptiness is empty: it really has no separate, autonomous existence independent from phenomena.

Hua-yen practice allows us to “perceive” the emptiness of phenomena through the contemplation of relativity, interdependence, and impermanence. Scriptures are not intended to present doctrines to be accepted or rejected as dogma, but are functional directives to provoke thought and reflection. One simple exercise that enables one to glimpse emptiness is by considering phenomena from different points of view. This is the relativistic approach.

For example, while walking down the street, I see (with perhaps some repugnance) a pile of horseshit, which I make sure to step around. But for the flies buzzing around it, it’s a meal and place to lay eggs. And for the organic gardener down the street, it’s rich and precious fertilizer. Through this reflection, we see that things do not have fixed, self-defined nature of their own; what they “are” completely depends upon the relationships in terms of which they are considered. Even if we were to say that the shit is the sum total of its possibilities, we still cannot point to some unique, intrinsic, self-defined nature that characterizes the thing in its very essence.

Hua-yen points out that the same is true of space and time. To me, a kitchen counter is at a height conducive to working on and preparing my meal, but to a toddler, it is an insurmountable obstacle to her reaching the cookie jar. And while a day to me seems short, to an insect with the life-span of 48 hours, a day is half it’s life. (This doesn’t even get to the relativity that Einstein himself remarked upon as to how an hour with a beautiful woman at a cafe seems so much shorter than an hour in a traffic jam!). It is the direct perception of the relativity of measurements of space and time that is a key to understanding the Avatamsaka Sutra’s wealth of “inconceivable” metaphors.

Again, we miss the point of this exercise if all we take it to be is abstract philosophy. The point of the exercise is to awaken us to the way that our conventional way of seeing and thinking of phenomena, as things being just what we conceive them to be, blinds us to the fluidity and myriad possibilities we would never otherwise see! Even worse, our conventional way of perceiving fosters prejudices and biases in our dealings with the world, leading to potentially disastrous consequences.

Since what a thing “is” is dependent on the context of its relationships, and all things are ultimately in relationship with all other things, then each and every phenomenon has an infinite array of definitions of identity. In terms of the practical, everyday world, therefore, what a thing “is” depends upon or exists in terms of an assigned definition that focuses on the possibilities considered relevant to the needs and/or interests or conditioning of a specific group or individual. This filtering narrows down from its infinite nature of possibility the “thing” as it is conceived. So, as humans, we all agree that a pen is a pen. For a dog, it may be a chew toy, but for us it’s a pen. The problems arise when we forget that its nature as “pen” is not an essence, but pure conception. No name or definition can ever encompass its reality.

Now, when we consider that the world as we conventionally experience it, is nothing more than conceptions based upon perceptions based upon sensations, we see that we have no direct evidence for anything phenomenal beyond sense! There is no going beyond sense except by inference. As Cleary summarizes his explication of emptiness: “We cannot therefore directly ‘apprehend’ the objective world; we can only reflect impressions. This ‘emptiness of ungraspability’ is among the major avenues of contemplation leading to authentic appreciation of emptiness.”

The question arises regarding the nature of that ungraspable “objective” world. Generally, Indian Mahayana Buddhism, especially in the Madhyamika of Nagarjuna, has been reluctant to try to say what reality is apart from our ideas about it. The teaching of emptiness, as stated above, is primarily a therapeutic intervention, emphasizing a way of knowing. Emptiness is not something to be observed in phenomena. If there is something which may be called the “absolute,” it is not some transcendental spirit, entity or substance that stands behind – or beneath as some kind of substratum – the world of appearance, “but is really the mode of apprehending the world about us; as T.R.V. Murti said, the absolute is intuition or insight itself (prajna).” Thus, I believe it is a huge mistake, made by many Buddhist practitioners, to speak of emptiness as akin to the Vedantic concept of Brahman.

The next teaching, usually associated with the so-called “Consciousness Only” school of Buddhism, and incorporated into Hua-yen teaching is the doctrine of the “three natures” (trisvabhava). According to this teaching, the three natures of all phenomena are: the nature that consists of being dependent on another, in other words, the interdependent phenomenal world as discussed above. It is the world as conventionally conceived, and so is called in Chinese, “that which is clung to by total conceptualization;” the nature of being discriminated, sometimes called relative nature; the dependent nature now bifurcated into subject and object; and finally, the perfected nature, also called the “true” or “absolute” nature. This is, according to Fa-tsang, nothing else but the dependent nature perceived or understood, apart from the discriminated nature. It is not that the dependent nature, which is the phenomenal world, itself changes, nor is it that through the arising of prajna is some previously hidden essence or spirit within the objects of perception revealed. The change is a metanoia – it has taken place in the perceiver; it is her new nondual perception which is of highest soteriological value and function.

The example Cleary uses in Entry Into The Inconceivable is of a chair. The object we call “chair” can be something to sit on, something to stand upon to reach a higher space, something to hang clothes on (no matter what our housemates may say) or to stack books upon; it may be pieces of wood and cloth or plastic; it may be kindling for a fire; food for termites, and even a weapon for self-defense. What it “is” depends on the definition and use to which it is put. The chair as “a thing in itself” is simply a mental construction. This is its “dependent nature.” The chair as a conditional existence, being dependent upon its materials and construction, as well as the factors that define it functionally as a chair is its relative nature. And the nonexistence of a self-existent, self-defined “chair” separate from these conditions is the real or absolute nature of a chair.

It is here that one aspect of the genius of the Hua-yen teachers shines brightly. It is axiomatic throughout the whole of Mahayana thought, that the awakening to the perception of seeing things in the mode of emptiness (prajna) leads to a higher affirmation, marked by skillful and clear-headed action (upaya) and profound compassion (karuna). However, there can be little doubt that many Chinese Buddhists (as well as contemporary Westerners) felt that there was something negative about the doctrine of emptiness. Indian yogic and spiritual culture (within which Buddhism, after all, arose) have traditionally (outside the Tantric traditions, anyway) sought detachment (moksha or liberation) from this world (prakriti). The goal was to get off the cycle of samsara and reach nirvana. Early Buddhist literature (including some Indian Mahayana) is replete with passages that portray physical functions and the body itself, as well as other natural objects, as repulsive. While it is true that from the standpoint of prajna the world is neither desirable nor loathsome, the common strategy for liberation was to devalue the common elements of experience.

While it is ultimately a matter of emphasis, considering that “emptiness” and “interdependent origination” are synonymous, saying that something was empty was often done as a way to break one’s attachment by devaluing it; to see it as something intangible, as no more than an impermanent mirage or illusion not worthy of one’s attention, totally incapable of supplying any lasting satisfaction. This strategy -- abused and misunderstood -- has led to the misconception that Buddhism is an “other-worldly religion,” “life-denying” or “world weary philosophy.” At any rate, as Francis Cook elaborates, Indian Buddhists used emptiness as a weapon to demolish ordinary value and significance in and of the world, and once so demolished, a higher value and meaning emerged, expressing itself in the selfless career of the Bodhisattva.

The problem with this strategy, is that the power and effectiveness of the Bodhisattva were won at the expense of those features of experience which are most prized by most ordinary people. However, there was a latent potential within this doctrine of emptiness for a more affirming and positive approach to liberation that was brought to the fore by Fa-tsang and the other Hua-yen founders.

The Hua-yen teachers essentially discussed the doctrine of emptiness similarly to the Indian masters with the main difference being one of emphasis. That difference is that the Hua-yen masters chose to emphasize the point that emptiness is interdependence. AND, simultaneously, they emphasized that interdependence is emptiness. So, even for the Chinese, emptiness functioned as a way to critique the conventional mode of perception and experience, thus devaluing it. However, at the same time that the perception of emptiness abolished the clinging and grasping after independently existent selves or substances, there also emerged from this metanoia a very positive appreciation for the way in which things relate to each other in identity and interdependence. The Hua-yen masters interpreted emptiness in a positive manner without concretizing emptiness as did some other Mahayana schools, but neither did they fall into the greater error of even greater attachment to the world, nor did they abandon the basic Buddhist understanding of conventional experience as delusive and painful. So, by “positive,” I do not mean to infer that they see emptiness as some positive force or entity. What I do mean, is that in its emphasis on interdependent being (what Thich Nhat Hanh calls ‘interbeing’), Hua-yen was able to retain a positive, even joyous, creative appreciation of the absolute value of each aspect of this being. It is this celebration of each thing in its suchness that has always been one of the main appeals of Zen to me. Hua-yen and Zen are not content with simply demolishing false views; they wish to both give some idea of the ways things look to a Buddha and to help us see this very world as the dharmadhatu for ourselves.

The difference between the Indian and Chinese approach to emptiness is one that has great consequences not only for the styles of the respective traditions, but also for the ways of practice. Its implications are profound, since it emphasizes that the absolute is not an order of being completely distinct from the phenomenal order. Whatever reality is, it tells us, it is right here now, able to be seen if we can cease to make false discriminations. Samsara is Nirvana; what changes is the way of perception. This is the metanoia that Hua-yen encourages. The phenomenal world of interdependence is capable of being seen as “impure” when under the spell of deluded perception or as “pure” when seen in the light of prajna. But to see it as pure, which simply means to see it in its real aspect, is to see it as the interdependence and identity of its parts. There is nothing insignificant, mean or inferior, there is nothing to despise within the whole of existence, when it is seen properly free of all self-interest. Everything matters! Every item in the cosmos – this dharmadhatu – is of value, for everything is empty, and because of this, every particular phenomena contains and teaches that reality which shines from its (empty) heart!

The Fourfold Dharmadhatu

The first two aspects of the dharmadhatu are the particular (shih) and the universal (li). Other terms used for these two aspects respectively are: phenomena and noumena, relative and absolute, apparent and real, difference and sameness, events and principles, and historical and ultimate.

The first of the pair (shih), the realm of phenomena or the particular, is where all things are seen as “things,” distinct and different. All the myriad phenomena that are experienced in the empirical or conventional world are of this realm. Things and events are seen here as distinct and independent objects.

The second aspect (li), is the non-differentiated noumenon, which for Hua-yen is emptiness – again, not as an entity but as the non-self nature of all phenomena. It is the universal oneness of reality: all phenomena are empty. Now, for Hua-yen and Zen, this ultimate reality, glimpsed in meditation, which is often considered the goal of spiritual awareness and practice, is only half of the practice. What is required by Hua-yen and by Zen is for the Bodhisattva to integrate the perception of emptiness into the ordinary, daily activities and reality of the realm of the particular (shih). This is because, as discussed earlier, the particular and the universal cannot be regarded as two separate realms. They are interdependent: form is emptiness AND emptiness is form.

In his essay, "On The Golden Lion," Fa-tsang uses the metaphor of the golden lion to describe the dharmadhatu of shih and li. The lion shape is the particular and gold is the universal. He tells us that gold, lacking any self-nature, can be fashioned into an object such as a lion. The gold is li and the lion shape is shih. The lion is gold; it is not that the lion emanates from gold. Gold only exists in form, in this particular case, the form of a lion. There is no such thing as gold without form that then takes on one form or another. The phenomenal is the noumenal in phenomenal form. This is the third aspect of the dharmadhatu, the non-obstruction of li against shih (li-shih wu-ai) that is also referred to as the “mutual, nonobstructing interpenetration of the universal and particular. This is the realm where li and shih are seen as the inseparable unity. The particular is seen as an expression of the absolute, and the absolute as the testimony of the particular. Neither can exist without the other, and so taken together, they become a more meaningful concept. If we patiently look into any aspect of our lived experience we will see that the universal can only exist in the context of some particular situation. And, every particular context, when fully perceived, is seen to express the total universal truth. The particular and the universal completely inter-are without hindering each other.

The lion shape is only a shape. In itself the lion is unreal; there is only gold. From the point of view of gold itself, nothing has changed; it is still gold. And it is equally true that since gold always has some shape, the gold as gold does not obstruct its shape or form. It is only through form that gold can be, even though from the point of view of gold there is no lion form.

Since there is only gold, Fa-tsang continues, then when the lion shape comes into existence it is in fact the gold that comes into existence. Only from the conventional perspective does this seem paradoxical. Hua-yen reminds us that gold always has a shape, but that shape is nothing in addition to the gold itself. So if gold takes on a lion shape it ceases to be gold in the shape of a bar, for example, and takes on the shape of the lion. So when we speak of “gold,” we must remember that this is conceptual shorthand for “gold in x-shape” (a bar) and that when the golden lion comes into existence, that is, gold in lion-shape, we can say that gold comes into existence. Nonetheless, whether the lion shape occurs or ceases the gold as gold neither increases nor decreases. From the ultimate point of view, phenomena are the unborn.

So in the third aspect of the dharmadhatu (li against shih), we see how the realm of non-obstruction is reached by reducing all phenomena into noumena, not as some undifferentiated whole, but as a totalistic harmony of all antithesis that is both dynamic and unimpeded. But the first three aspects of the dharmadhatu are ultimately explanatory devices to approach the fourth aspect: the mutual, nonobstructing interpenetration of the particular with other particulars, or the non-obstruction of shih against shih (shih-shih wu-ai). Here, each particular phenomenon can be fully present and complementary to any other particular phenomena. This insight leads to a vision of the world as a field of complementariness rather than a world of competitive, conflicting, disharmonious beings.

“The gold and the lion are simultaneously established; all-perfect and complete,” writes Fa-tsang. This statement can be interpreted as representing the principle of Non-obstruction of li against shih or as the Non-obstruction of shih against shih. In the first case, the gold is li and the lion is shih: the two are mutually penetrating into and identical with one another. But in the infinite dharmadhatu, each and every phenomenon simultaneously includes all the rest of phenomena and noumena in perfect completion, without the slightest omission at all times. To see one object is to see all objects and vice versa.

Perhaps the most well-known expression of this vision of the cosmos is the image of Indra’s Net. The whole universe is seen as a multidimensional net with jewels set at every point where the strands of the net criss-cross. Each jewel reflects the light reflected in the other jewels in all directions. All of totality can be seen in each of its parts. What Hua-yen tells us is that this is no mere fantasy, but the way the universe actually is. Given this, what can it tell us about living in the Net of Indra?

As reiterated throughout this paper, Dharma is about practice, but practice is not merely what we confine to our cushions, nor is it merely our ritual practices. The teachings must give rise to a way of living in the world. The Bodhisattva must first act as if the vision of the Hua-yen were a certainty. Its teachings feature a range of holographic samadhi instructions to help clear away limited preconceptions, foster fresh perspectives and expand the practitioner’s capacities by expressing the reality of interbeing.

Two of these samadhis are the “lion emergence” samadhi and the “ocean seal” samadhi. In the first, upon every single hair tip abide numerous buddha-fields containing a vast array of buddhas, bodhisattvas and liberating teachings. In the “Ocean Seal,” awareness is like the vast ocean surface, reflecting and confirming all phenomena in the universe. Waves of phenomena arise and distort its clear reflectivity, but as soon as the waves settle, the clarity is there.

Recitation of the Avatamsaka Sutra itself can open the mind to its visions and has been a long-respected practice, either for individuals or groups. But perhaps the most important way that the Hua-yen can help us practitioners is its emphasis on integration of glimpses into the ultimate with the particular difficulties and challenges of our everyday situations. In this way, we can avoid the trap of seeking and grasping at blissful absorption in emptiness. Attachment to the ultimate is considered the most pernicious attachment, but attending to the conventional realities of our world with the sense of awareness of the totality balances our practice and informs our sense of wholeness. Ordinary life is the way of the Buddha, and Hua-yen, like Zen, reminds us of this important, and often neglected or forgotten truth.

One Hua-yen tool for bringing the universal into our everyday experience, which I have found quite helpful, are gathas, mindfulness verses which include practice instructions to be used as enlightening reminders in all kinds of everyday situations. Thich Nhat Hanh calls them, “bells of mindfulness.” Specifically, Chapter Eleven of the Avatamsaka Sutra, “Purifying Practice,” contains 140 distinct verses to encourage mindfulness in a variety of circumstances from awakening from sleep, to the whole process of eating; seeing a large tree, flowing water, flowers blooming, a lake, a bridge; entering a house; giving or receiving a gift; meeting teachers and other kinds of people etc. These gathas use the various situations to encourage mindfulness and remind us of the fundamental intention to help ourselves and others more fully express compassion and wisdom. Here’s one example from the Avatamsaka Sutra:
If in danger and difficulty,
They should wish that all beings
Be free,
Unhindered wherever they go.

Traditionally, a selection of such verses has been recited in East Asian monasteries before and after bathing, brushing teeth, taking meals, using the toilet and many other activities. Thich Nhat Hanh and Robert Aitken have written versions of gathas to meet our contemporary environment, such as driving, using the telephone and surfing the internet. While studying with Thich Nhat Hanh, I was encouraged to make up my own gathas, especially for situations where I might fall into aversion, greed or delusion. Living in New York City at the time, I had a strong aversion to riding the subway. So I wrote the following gatha to use whenever the opportunity to ride the subway arose. I must say, it literally transformed the experience for me!
When stepping into the subway car
I look at all those with me
Black, White, Red, Yellow, Brown
We are truly all in this together.

Hua-yen descriptions of the dharmadhatu point to the experience of wholeness that is one of the joys of sitting practice. From the perspective of Zen, meditation practice is not about attaining some special, new state of mind or being, but rather about fully awakening to the inherent completeness of this present bodymind. Hua-yen and Zen point to the embodiment of this sense of wholeness in our everyday activities, and the expression of this perfection and clear awareness amid ordinary life.

The Korean Connection

The justly celebrated “Ocean Seal” (haein do) of Uisang (625 – 702) the first master of Korean Hua-yen (hwaom) Buddhism “has been acclaimed by Chinese, Korean and Japanese masters alike as being the most masterful distillation and condensation of Hua-yen thought.” Uisang’s “Ocean Seal” encapsulates both in form and content the core vision of the Hwaom school, which the Korean tradition calls the “round” (won), or “all-embracing” view. It is a poem composed of only 210 Chinese characters, arranged in 30 verses of 7 characters each, with 4 sides, 4 corners, and 54 angles, concentrically patterned like a winding maze. It is a literary mandala, beginning and ending at the center.

This poem has been accorded such respect that in some of the kyo monasteries it has been awarded as a kind of certificate of achievement for monks who successfully complete their course of study. It is regularly chanted in some monasteries such as Haeinsa or Ocean Seal Temple in Kyongnam, Korea, as a dharani, with the intent of eliciting the supreme visionary experience of haein sammae or Ocean Seal Samadhi, the content of which includes both li-shih wu-ai and shih-shih wu ai.

According to Uisang’s poem, one enters the dharmadhatu, described variously as “round, interpenetrating, non-dual, unmoving but originally still, nameless, formless, and without distinctions, not attached to self-nature but manifested according to causal conditions, such that ‘One is in All and Many is in One.’” Thus, in one particle of dust is contained the ten directions, and incalculably long eons are identical to a single thought instant, whereupon particular phenomena and universal principle are completely merged without distinction and samsara and nirvana are harmonized together, although these interfusing and mutually identical realms are not confused but function separately… Thus, in accordance with the round-sudden teachings of Hwaom concerning original enlightenment and sudden awakening, the moment one begins to aspire with their heart, instantly perfect enlightenment is attained.”

Uisang arranged his poem so that both the first and last characters (Dharma and Buddha) are located in the center of the seal. His autocommentary says:
Question: For what reason are the characters at the beginning and end put in the center?
Answer: So to express that the two positions of cause and effect…in the dharma-nature school of Hwaom are both in the Middle Way.

In this elegant way, Uisang illustrates the key doctrine of Hwaom Buddhism that start and finish, or cause and effect are both in the same position in the Middle Way. They interpenetrate harmoniously free from all obstructions. In this way, the Seal illustrates the fundamental teaching of the Avatamsaka Sutra that the Fifty-two stages in the path of the Bodhisattva (i.e., Ten Faiths, Ten Abodes, Ten Practices, Ten Returnings, Ten Bhumis, Equal Enlightenment, and Wonderful Enlightenment) all interpenetrate without hindrance so that the very first whisper of faith through the elucidation of bodhicitta (the thought or aspiration to awaken for the sake of all beings) already contains as its contents all the subsequent stages. The first, last and all intermediary stages, representing past, present and future, all occupy the same position in the center of the Middle Way. It is this Hwaom doctrine, whereby a first stage Bodhisattva of newly arisen faith (the supposed ‘cause’) and a final stage Buddha of Wonderful Enlightenment (the apparent ‘result’) fully interpenetrate through unobstructed simultaneous mutuality, which establishes the foundation for the meditative experience of Sudden Enlightenment.

And with this, I conclude my paper with the original point expressed by Master Sosan: “In other words, all fifty-five stages of the path are already contained with a single act of initial faith.”

Resources

Chang, Garma C.C. The Buddhist Teaching of Totality: The Philosophy of Hwa Yen Buddhism. University Park & London: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1971
Cleary, Thomas. Entry Into The Inconceivable: An Introduction to Hua-yen Buddhism. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1983
Cleary, Thomas., trans. Entry Into The Realm of Reality: The Guide. Boston & Shaftesbury: Shambhala, 1989
Cleary, Thomas., trans. The Flower Ornament Scripture: A Translation of The Avatamsaka Sutra. Boston & London: Shambhala, 1993
Cook, Francis H. Hua-yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra. University Park & London: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977
Gimello, Robert M. & Peter N. Gregory. ed. Studies in Ch’an and Hua-yen. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1983
Gregory, Peter N. Tsung-mi and the Sinification of Buddhism. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2002
Gregory, Peter N. ed. Traditions of Meditation in Chinese Buddhism. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1986
Ko Un. Little Pilgrim: A Novel. Berkeley: Parallax Press, 2005
Lopez, Donald S. Jr. ed. Buddhist Hermeneutics. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1988
Mueller, Mark. trans. Mirror of Zen: A Korean Buddhist Classic. Seoul: Lotus Lantern Int’l Buddhist Center, 1995
Muenzen, Paul. trans. The Mirror of Zen, translated by Boep Joeng. Boston: Shambhala, 2007
Odin, Steve. Process Metaphysics and Hua-yen Buddhism: A Critical Study of Cumulative Penetration vs. Interpenetration. Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications, 1995
Park, Sung Bae. Buddhist Faith and Sudden Enlightenment. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983
Ravindra, Ravi. The Spiritual Roots of Yoga: Royal Path To Freedom. Sandpoint, ID: Morning Light Press, 2006
Williams, Paul. Mahayana Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations. London & New York: Routledge, 1989

Is the Body Beautiful

2010-08-09T09:34:00.002-07:00

Predictably, but nonetheless sadly, the ‘debate’ sparked by Judith Lasater’s letter to Yoga Journal in the September issue regarding certain ads featuring nude or semi-nude women has degenerated (mainly) into a discussion about nudity. On one hand, there are those yogis who are questioning the values implicit in advertising per se, and the use of the nudity of – let’s call it as it is – white, thin women to sell product. These yogis, and I am one, feel that the true transformative power of Yoga is in it’s critique of appearance over substance and of its criticism of the assumption of status-quo values in contemporary hatha-yoga, and in Yoga’s primary purpose of waking us up from conditioning. As the Buddha said, Yoga “goes against the stream.” Yet, unthinkingly, the purveyors of such ads – and their defenders – simply adopt and accept mainstream, status-quo values and then think they are being ‘progressive’ while those of us questioning this are ‘prudes’ or repressed!

I say this is predictable, because for years Yoga in this culture has been reduced to the movements and postures of hatha-yoga. As the 10th century Garuda-Purana warned, “if the postures of hatha are practiced outside the meditation of raja, the postures become an obstacle to liberation.” Today’s contemporary sell-out glorification of ‘the body’ only proves this. Yoga teaches us not to identify body or mind as 'self.' The physical-oriented approach to hatha-yoga so prevalent in the contemporary hatha-yoga movement all too often strengthens practitioners' identification with body. One problem with this, of course, is that whether from age, injury, or illness (not to mention death!) one day you will not be able to practice the postures you may have taken pride in achieving. What happens then?

Elsewhere I, and others such as Roseanne Harvey and Charlotte Bell, have tried to get the debate back on track by pointing out that the original letter and subsequent interview with Judith Lasater, were not about any particular ad or model, nor about nudity. As she says on her Facebook page, “‘Yes’ to nudity and the gorgeous human body; ‘no’ to using it to sell yoga!”

But here, I’d like to take a tangent and address this notion of ‘the body beautiful’ that even Lasater seems to accept, at least based upon the above quote. Is the body beautiful? Really? Is it only beautiful? What yogis like the Buddha point out is that such concepts themselves are conditioned and empty of any inherent nature or essence. For all those who think they are being progressive and perhaps even transgressive in arguing that these ads are beautiful because they portray the ‘beauty of the human body,’ I ask, “Really? Then why not portray a 64 year-old man with a bit of a belly-roll?” How about a nice nude shot of the character George Constanza from Seinfeld? Would you then argue for the ‘beauty of the human body? As much as I would like to think one would, why is it that I doubt it? Because our ideals of “beauty” are culturally and biologically conditioned. Folks somewhat facilely use abstract concepts and fail to see that they are caught in them.

And, for the sake of argument, let’s posit that they do see beauty in a 64 year old, round man (or even in George!), let’s analyze their position more clearly. They say the body is beautiful. I don’t argue that, but I do say we need to also remember (be mindful – the word sati, which we translate as ‘mindfulness’ actually means to remember) that it isn’t only beautiful and is often gross! This body they celebrate takes quite a bit of maintenance. Just go a week or two without bathing, and tell me how ‘beautiful’ you think the body is.

As everyone seems to be harping on Kathryn Budig, the model in an ad for a ridiculous product called “Toesox,” let’s look a bit more closely. Say you think she has lovely hair. What if you found even just one of her hairs in your soup? Would you feel the same about that hair? Considering that she is naked, how about if it were one of her pubic hairs? Still celebrating the ‘beauty of the human body?’

See, what Yoga offers us is a clearer, more complete understanding of reality. The surface and general form of the body we feel is beautiful because of our biological conditioning. Unfortunately, even in this day and age, most images of beauty presented by mainstream media are white, thin and female. This is cultural conditioning. But the great yogis point out that the body is inherently neither beautiful nor disgusting. As the Heart of the Prajnaparamita Sutra declares about reality, it is “Neither produced nor destroyed; neither pure nor impure; neither increasing nor decreasing.” Get that? Not pure; not impure. It’s the coming together of many causes and conditions that create what we think of as ‘beauty.’ And the coming together of other causes and conditions that create what we think of as ‘ugliness.’

The next time you catch yourself thinking someone has beautiful eyes, contemplate briefly if the beauty is really inherent in their eyes. Would you think they were beautiful if s/he plucked them out and handed them to you? Or is beauty created (conditioned or constructed) because they are in their ‘proper’ place, they are balanced and relatively symmetrical, and the rest of her face is pleasing etc. All phenomena arise interdependently. This is what is meant by 'form being empty.' We need to ask, “empty of what?” And the answer is “empty of an inherent self-essence.”

If we merely stop and proclaim the beauty of the human body, we fail to go deeper; we fail to see reality and so we get caught in grasping and clinging. Freedom – the purpose of Yoga practice, remember? – is to go beyond conditioning. This does not mean we stop appreciating the human form. What is changed is the quality of our relationship to the body, and to all beings. Going beyond the surface, we reach a much deeper intimacy. My wife told me of a dream she had years ago, before we had really made any commitment to each other. She dreamt her guts were spilling out, and she was experiencing some mortification that I was seeing them. And she felt an upswelling of love and gratitude as, with no sign of repulsion, I helped her to put her guts back in place. I share this only to offer a vivid image of the kind of unconditional love Yoga offers us. When she shared this dream image with me, I knew her intuitive mind had revealed a truth about my love for her. But in order to open to this kind of love, we need ‘to see things as it is,’ as Suzuki Roshi would often say. And advertising NEVER shows us things as it is!

Going Against The Stream: The Not-Self Teaching of the Buddha

2010-03-29T11:33:00.002-07:00

The Buddha is alleged to have said, in regard to the Dhamma he discovered, the following: “This Dhamma that I have attained is profound, hard to see and hard to understand, peaceful and sublime, unattainable by mere reasoning, subtle, to be experienced by the wise.” (MN: 26; 19, Ariyapariyesana Sutta, Bodhi, 2005: 69) He is also reputed to have said that his teaching and yogic practices “go against the stream.” (Levine, 2007: 17) By this it is meant that much the Buddha teaches, and what he asks us to practice, goes against the stream of our conditioning: the biological, environmental, cultural, and social conditioning we are all heirs to. His Dhamma is often what we might call, “counter-intuitive.” For instance, when we experience anger, the conditioned (natural) reaction to the discomfort and pain of anger is to either attempt to repress it or express it. Both strategies are designed to “get rid of it”: to avoid feeling the anger. But the Buddha suggests the third, counter-intuitive approach of feeling the anger non-reactively, in order to investigate its characteristics. In seeing the true nature of anger, he tells us that we can free ourselves from anger and find the freedom to creatively respond to the situation.
Most students do not want to hear this. They find it difficult to understand how opening to experience, just as it is, can ultimately lead to freedom. But of all the difficult to understand, subtle and profound teachings of the Buddha, perhaps none has presented as much difficulty as his teaching of anatta or not-Self. The idea that there is no Self to be found in phenomenal experience seems so counter-intuitive to most people that it borders on the nonsensical and irrational. But most of this difficulty is due to unquestioned assumptions, as well as misconceptions and misunderstandings of experience. The Buddha offers the teaching of anatta in order to question these assumptions and to make clear the misconceptions and misunderstandings through the yogic practice of mindfulness meditation.

Perhaps the most basic unquestioned assumption people tend to hold that is challenged by the teaching of not-Self is that they have a Self and they know what it is. Until they are asked what it even means to say “I have a Self,” or “I am a Self,” they have rarely given it much thought. When finally asked, they tend toward statements referring to an “inner life.” Cognitive scientists have shown that the felt sense of an “inner life” is based on a fundamental distinction between what they call the Subject and one or more Selves. “The Subject is the locus of consciousness, subjective experience, reason, will, and our ‘essence,’ everything that makes us who we uniquely are. There is at least one Self and possibly more. The Selves consist of everything else about us – our bodies, our social roles, our histories, and so on.” (Lakoff and Johnson, 1999: 268) For most people, what Lakoff and Johnson call “the Subject” is what they mean by the “Self.” Often, they distinguish this “Self” as their “True Self” from their “small self.”

Cognitive science seems to say that this “Subject/Self,” or as I notate it, “Self/self” distinction is far from arbitrary, but in fact expresses apparently universal experiences of an “inner life.” The metaphors for conceptualizing our inner lives are grounded in universal experiences (from learning how to manipulate and control objects as well as our body, to the disparity we may feel between our conscious values and the values implicit in our behavior, to the inner dialog and internal monitoring we engage in) that appear to be unavoidable, arising as they do from common experience. What is most revealing about this is that each metaphor conceptualizes the Self (Subject) as being person-like, with an existence separate and independent from the self (body/mind/social roles etc.). Thus the Self takes on a metaphysical import.

“…the very way that we normally conceptualize our inner lives is inconsistent with what we know scientifically about the nature of mind. In our system for conceptualizing our inner lives, there is always a Subject that is the locus of reason and that metaphorically has an existence independent of the body. … this contradicts the fundamental findings of cognitive science. And yet, the conceptualization of such a Subject arises around the world uniformly on the basis of apparently universal and unchangeable experiences. If this is true, it means that we all grow up with a view of our inner lives that is mostly unconscious, used every day of our lives in our self-understanding, and yet both internally inconsistent and incompatible with what we have learned from the scientific study of the mind. (Lakoff and Johnson, 1999: 268)

The neuroscience researcher, Antonio Damasio, in The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness, describes how the sense or feeling of an inner self that is conceptualized as “an observer, a perceiver, a knower, a thinker and a potential actor” arises. (Damasio, 1999: 10/11) Briefly, he asserts that first there is a totally unconscious “interconnected and temporarily coherent collection of neural patterns which represent the state of the organism, moment by moment” which he calls the “proto-self.” Then, a “second-order nonverbal account occurs whenever an object modifies the proto-self.” This “core self can be triggered by any object” but it too is transient, ceaselessly recreated for each and every object with which the brain interacts. (Damasio, 1999: 17/174)

However, the traditional notion of self is linked to identity and the collection of unique facts that characterize a person. Damasio calls this the “autobiographical self” that depends upon “autobiographical memory that is constituted by implicit memories of multiple instances of individual experience of the past and of the anticipated future.” (Damasio, 1999: 174) Each of the two higher order “selves” requires the lower order ones in order to manifest.

"When we discover what we are made of and how we are put together, we discover a ceaseless process of building up and tearing down…. It is astonishing that we have a sense of self at all, that we have – that most of us have, some of us have – some continuity of structure and function that constitutes identity, some stable traits of behavior we call a personality….

… the brain reconstructs the sense of self moment by moment. We do not have a self sculpted in stone and, like stone, resistant to the ravages of time. Our sense of self is a state of the organism, the result of certain components operating in a certain manner and interacting in a certain way, within certain parameters. It is another construction, a vulnerable pattern of integrated operations whose consequence is to generate the mental representation of a living being." (Damasio, 1999: 144/145)

From this apparently universal and inescapable intimation of an “inner self,” the notion of an indwelling “ghost,” “spirit,” or “soul” became part of many folk traditions. (Feuerstein, 1996: 17) In India, this led to the concept of the Ātman defined by Georg Feuerstein as:

“Self” or “self.” Since Sanskrit does not have capital letters, the context alone determines whether the empirical self, or ego personality (jīva) or the transcendental Self is intended…. The word ātman, though primarily a reflexive pronoun, has been used to denote the transcendental Self since the time of the ancient Upanishads. As such it is a key concept of Hindu metaphysics, notably Vedānta and Vedānta-based schools of Yoga…. The problem is that the Self is by definition not within reach of the mind and the senses…. As the archaic Brihad-Āranyaka-Upanishad (3.7.23) declares in a well-known passage, the Self cannot be grasped because it is the grasper, the seer of everything. In other words, the Self reveals itself only to itself. Hence the Shiva-Samhitā (1.62) states: “The renouncer of all volition certainly beholds the Self in the Self by the Self.” (Feuerstein, 1997: 42)

We are not who or what we think we are. This is the evidence of scientific research, as well as the hypothesis and assertion of the Indian religious/spiritual/yogic imagination. As Stephen Cope summarizes it, “the single most pervasive theme in yogic scriptures and folktales: Our true self remains deeply hidden, incognito, submerged beneath a web of mistaken identities.” (Cope, 1999: xix)

At the time of the Buddha, as it is now in many spiritual traditions, the spiritual quest was seen primarily as the search for, the realization of, and the liberation of one’s “True Self” (Sanskrit ātman; Pāli atta) from the misidentification with the “small self.” As we have seen from the above, the sense of an “inner life” led to the postulation of such an entity thought of “as a person’s permanent inner nature – the source of true happiness and the autonomous ‘inner controller’ of action.” (Harvey, 2001: 79)

"To feel that, however much one changes in life from childhood onwards, some essential part remains unchanged as the ‘real me’, is to have a belief in a permanent Self. To act as if only other people die and to ignore the inevitability of one’s own death, is to act as if one had a permanent Self. To relate changing mental phenomena to a substantial self which ‘owns’ them – ‘I am worried… happy… angry’ – is to have such a Self concept. To identify with one’s body, ideas, actions, etc., is to take them as part of an ‘I’ or Self-entity." (Harvey, 2001: 79)

The Buddha too, agreeing with the larger Indian tradition, taught that we are not who or what we think we are. However, he differed from them in saying that the Self sought by his contemporaries did not exist. By analyzing what we consider as a ‘being,’ ‘individual,’ an ‘I’ or a “self,” the Buddha came to the startling, counter-intuitive understanding that no such permanent, unchanging, independent, autonomous entity can be found to exist.

What he found is that what we call a ‘being’ or ‘self’ is in fact a combination of ever-changing physical and mental forces or energies, which may be divided into five groups or aggregates (pañcakkhandha). (Rahula, 1974: 20) They are the ‘form aggregate,’ the ‘feeling aggregate,’ the ‘perception aggregate,’ the ‘volitional formations aggregate,’ and the ‘consciousness aggregate.’ The Buddha says: “So long as I did not directly know as they really are the five aggregates subject to clinging in four phases, I did not claim to have awakened to the unsurpassed perfect enlightenment…. But when I directly knew all this as it really is, then I claimed to have awakened….” (SN 22:56; III 58 – 61, Bodhi, 2005: 335)

In directly knowing the four phases of form, its origin, its cessation and the way leading to its cessation (and the same for the other four aggregates), the Buddha saw that all five aggregates are impermanent and conditioned, dependently arising upon causes and conditions and falling away with the falling away of causes and conditions. The view of “self” or “identity view” arises when the “uninstructed worldling” takes form as self, or self as possessing form, or form as in self, or self as in form. These same four possibilities are possible for each of the other four aggregates. When one does this with any one or any combination of the aggregates, identity view comes to be.

The Buddha offered a critique of this by saying that if any individual aggregate or combination of aggregates were self, they would not lead to affliction, and it would be possible to control them saying “Let my form be this; let my form not be this… let my feelings… let my perceptions… let my volitional formations… let my consciousness be this; … not this.” (SN 22:59; III 66 – 68, Bodhi, 2005: 341)

In another teaching, the Buddha compares form (the body) to a lump of foam; feeling to a water bubble rising and bursting on the surface of water; perception to a shimmering mirage; volitional formations to the trunk of a banana tree; and consciousness to a magical illusion. He says a wise person “with good sight” would inspect, ponder and carefully investigate these phenomena and would come to see each of them as “void, hollow, insubstantial.” He ends by saying that when this ‘emptiness’ of any essential core or substantiality is truly seen, the practitioner becomes disenchanted with the aggregates, which leads to dispassion and thus the release of grasping and clinging. And through dispassion, the mind is liberated. (SN 22:95; III 140-42, Bodhi, 2005: 343 – 345)

The Buddha’s not-Self teaching does not deny the conventional usages of the word ‘self’ as in reflexively speaking of ‘yourself’ or ‘myself.’ What we call a ‘being’ or a ‘self’ in this conventional manner is simply a consensual, convenient name or label we apply to the collection of the five aggregates, each and every one of them impermanent and constantly changing. There is nothing behind the changing flux, no permanent substance or entity that can be rightly called ‘I.’ There is an empirical ‘self,’ but no metaphysical ‘Self’ to be found. This is the ‘autobiographical self’ Damasio speaks of.

"A ‘person’ is a collection of rapidly changing and interacting mental and physical processes, with character-patterns recurring over some time. Only partial control can be exercised over these processes; so they often change in undesired ways, leading to suffering. Impermanent, they cannot be a permanent Self. Suffering, they cannot be an autonomous true ‘I’, which would contain nothing that was out of harmony with itself. While nirvāṇa is beyond impermanence and dukkha, it is still not-Self. Though it is unconditioned, it has nothing in it which could support the feeling of ‘I’-ness, for this can only arise with respect to the conditioned khandhas and it is not even a truly valid feeling there." (Collins, S., 1982, Selfless Persons: Imagery and Thought in Theravada Buddhism, pp. 98 – 9, as cited in Harvey, 2001: 80).

It is clear from the preceding that the Buddha, and the Buddhist tradition accepts the existence of a conventional, empirical ‘self’ understood to be the unique aggregation of physical and mental factors (the khandhas) that are individually and collectively impermanent, ever-changing, dependently conditioned. What is not accepted is that there exists within or without these physical and mental factors a permanent, independent, autonomous Self, individual or ‘I.’ There is no mover behind the movement; no thinker behind the thought.

This all seems to agree with the most contemporary findings of cognitive and neuro-science, as shown above. Science helps explain how the feeling that “Self” exists can arise based upon conditions. The Buddhist tradition also offers an explanation. Mahāyāna Buddhism built upon the not-Self teaching to emphasize the ‘emptiness’ of all phenomena of any self-nature (sva-bhava). That all phenomena are empty of self-nature means they are all inter-dependently arisen. That all phenomena are inter-dependently arisen means they are empty of self-nature. Contemporary physics tells us that because all phenomena are ‘coreless,’ each part of the universe contains the whole and each part depends on all the other parts. An object’s mass – it’s resistance to movement – comes from the influence of the entire universe. (Ricard, M. & Thuan, T., 2001: 70)

In the book, The Quantum and the Lotus, we ‘sit-in’ on a discussion between Matthieu Ricard, a Buddhist monk in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and Trinh Xuan Thuan, a professor of astrophysics. In an interesting and very telling exchange, Ricard begins:

R: Phenomena are interdependent because they coexist in a global reality, which functions according to mutual causality. Phenomena are naturally simultaneous because one implies the presence of the other. We are back with ‘this can only be if that also exists; this can change only if that also changes.’ Thus we arrive at an idea that everything must be connected to everything else. Relationships determine our reality, the conditions of our existence, particles and galaxies.

T: Such a vision of interdependence certainly agrees with the results of the experiments I’ve just mentioned…. This is extremely disturbing for physicists.

R: I think that we have a good example here of the difference between the scientific approach and Buddhism. For most scientists, even if the global nature of phenomena has been demonstrated in rather a disturbing way, this is merely another piece of information, and no matter how intellectually stimulating it may be, it has little effect on their daily lives. For Buddhists, on the other hand, the repercussions of the interdependence of phenomena are far greater.
The notion of interdependence makes us question our basic perception of the world, and then use this new perception again and again to lessen our attachments, our fears, and our aversions. An understanding of interdependence should demolish the wall of illusions that our minds have built up between ‘me’ and ‘the other.’ If not only all inert things but also all living beings are connected, then we should feel deeply concerned about the happiness and suffering of others…. Thus knowledge of interdependence leads to a process of inner transformation, which continues throughout the journey of spiritual enlightenment.

T: So the interdependence of phenomena equals universal responsibility. What a marvelous equation! It reminds me of what Einstein said: “A human being is part of a whole, called by us the ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.’” (Ricard & Thuan, 2001: 71 – 72)

The not-Self teaching offered by the Buddha is not meant to be a philosophy to adopt, a belief to accept or simply a ‘good idea.’ It is not, even, as such, a denial of the existence of a permanent Self. Like the body of the Buddha’s teaching, the not-Self teaching is meant primarily as a practical teaching aimed at the overcoming of attachment because the clinging and grasping after phenomena that are by nature impermanent, and ever changing, causes pain (dukkha) and is itself painful.

To grasp at not-Self and emptiness as concepts, failing to see that the teaching is just the means to accomplish the task Einstein refers to in the quote above, to break through what Georg Feuerstein calls “the Self-contraction,” can lead to much confusion and suffering. “In the Maharatnakuta Sutra, the Buddha says: ‘It is better to be caught in the idea that everything exists than to be caught in the idea of emptiness. Someone who is caught in the idea that everything exists can still be disentangled, but it is difficult to disentangle someone who is caught in the idea of emptiness.’” (Hanh, 1993: 33)
To engage with the teaching of not-Self, we must first bring into awareness what we may have unconsciously identified with as Self. Apparently, cognitive science shows us that all human beings develop a sense of some ‘inner self’ behind their thoughts, feelings, emotions, perceptions, consciousness and actions. This sense of self arises so naturally that we rarely question it. Once we bring the unquestioned assumption into the light of inquiry, we are then asked to carefully, mindfully observe all experienced phenomena until we can see for ourselves that nowhere can be found any such entity.

Many people, when they hear the Buddha’s teaching on not-Self and emptiness find this frightening and disturbing: “You mean I will cease to exist?” But as I’ve attempted to make clear in this paper, such a question itself is based upon the false assumption that an ‘I’ ever exists at all. The Buddha did not teach, as many spiritual traditions do, that we must destroy the self, but that this idea of a self is illusory to begin with, based upon ignorance of reality. When this ignorance eases, so too does our misperception of self. When that has been clarified, there is no basis for fear. Through continual practice we get to taste ‘drops of emptiness,’ intimations of freedom from the attachment to self. Either through many such ‘tastes,’ or through an intense and deep draught, one’s life may be transformed. Ultimately, it isn’t a matter of letting go of self or the idea of self, but rather, the idea itself dissolves, letting go of ‘you.’

The final step of the Ānāpānasati Sutta is patinissaggā, meaning to throw back or to give back. We give back or return everything to which we have been attached. The Buddha tells us that the highest understanding is to take nothing as self or belonging to self. In describing this step, Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu says “Throughout our lives we have been thieves. All along, we have been stealing things that exist naturally, that belong to nature, namely, the sankhāra. We have plundered them and taken them to be our selves and our possessions…. Don’t claim anything to be ‘I’ or ‘mine’ ever again!” (Buddhadāsa, 1997: 97)

Bibliography
Bodhi, B., 2005, In The Buddha’s Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the P āli Canon, Boston, Wisdom Publications

Buddhadāsa, B., 1997 Mindfulness With Breathing: A Manual for Serious Beginners, Boston, Wisdom Publications

Cope, S., 1999, Yoga and the Quest for the True Self, NYC, Bantam Books

Damasio, A., 1999, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness, NYC, Harcourt Brace & Company

Feuerstein, G. 1997, The Shambhala Encyclopedia of Yoga, Boston, Shambhala

Feuerstein, G. 1996, The Philosophy of Classical Yoga, Rochester, VT, Inner Traditions International

Hanh, N., 1993, Thundering Silence: Sutra on Knowing the Better Way to Catch a Snake, Berkeley, Parallax Press

Harvey, P. ed., 2001, Buddhism, London, Continuum

Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M., 1999, Philosophy In The Flesh: The Embodied Mind and it’s Challenge to Western Thought, NYC, Basic Books

Levine, N., 2007, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries, NYC, Harper Collins Publishers

Rahula, W., 1974, What The Buddha Taught, NY, Grove Press

Ricard, M. & Thuan, T., 2001, The Quantum and the Lotus, NY, Three Rivers Press

Embodied Zen

2009-09-05T06:18:00.002-07:00

I think it's safe to say that (early) Buddhism is to a fairly large extent, empiricist in its approach and general tenor. And I would also agree it is not the kind of empiricism found in Logical Positivism, nor for that matter, any other form of western philosophical empiricism. However, it is an empiricism that is conditioned by it's particular cultural/historical context, specifically the lack of understanding and knowledge that contemporary brain/cognitive science brings to light. Because of this, ontological assumptions were made based upon ‘experiences’ that may not be born out by recent empirical study.

Findings of cognitive science tell us that our bodies, brains, and environmental interactions provide the mostly unconscious basis for our sense of what is real. What cognitive science shows is that our sense of what is real begins with and depends upon our bodies, most especially our sensorimotor system, and the structures of our brains, which have been shaped by evolution and experience.

I would also agree that Buddhist meditative practices allow us to ‘go beyond’ our higher order concepts to a greater degree than perhaps most western scientists might agree possible (but perhaps with practice would understand), but I am convinced by the findings of cognitive science that categorization and primary order conceptualization, being a consequence of how we are embodied, cannot be ‘transcended’ or ‘left behind.’ Categorization is, for the most part, not conscious and rational; we categorize as we do because we have the brains and bodies we have and because we interact with the world in the way we do. In fact, not only do we not have full conscious control over how we categorize, we cannot have such control. Even when we think we are intentionally forming new categories, our neural unconscious categories enter into our choice of possible conscious categories. It is not merely that our bodies and brains determine that we will categorize; they also determine what kinds of categories we will have and what their structure will be.

For instance, the fact that we have muscles and use them to apply force in certain ways leads to the formal structure of our system of causal concepts. Yet, we often think of ‘causality’ as something independently existing in the world. Our concepts of causes, conditions, actions, states and change represent ontic features of the world. These concepts are taken literally, not metaphorically, yet cognitive science shows how these concepts are metaphorically constructed, emerging from everyday bodily experiences. They arise from human biology.

“Living systems must categorize. Since we are neural beings, our categories are formed through our embodiment, What that means is that the categories we form are part of our experience! They are the structures that differentiate aspects of our experience into discernible kinds. Categorization is thus not a purely intellectual matter, occurring after the fact of experience. Rather, the formation and use of categories is the stuff of experience. It is part of what our bodies and brains are constantly engaged in. We cannot, as some meditative traditions suggest, ‘get beyond’ our categories and have a purely uncategorized and unconceptualized experience. Neural beings cannot do that.” Philosophy In The Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, 1999, p. 19

What Lakoff and Johnson show is that these findings from cognitive science point out that our very concept of a disembodied mind arises from common, phenomenological experiences we all have throughout our lives. The very concept of the ‘unconditioned’ comes out of our embodied phenomenological experience. Our mistake, cognitive science seems to say, is we take it literally and draw some misguided conclusions. As they conclude, this has dramatic consequences for our understanding of religion and spirituality, which, in our culture – and throughout much of the East as well – has been defined in terms of disembodiment and transcendence of this world. What they (and I have long called for) is an alternative conception of embodied spirituality that begins to do justice to what people experience. There is another way – an embodied sense – to understand the experience of transcendence, of the ‘unconditioned’ or the ‘unborn.’ A mindful, embodied spirituality is a possibility, and I believe that the Buddhist practice (but I agree not tradition) can perhaps best provide a structure for creating it.

The Meaning of Duhkha for Zen Naturalism:A Revaluation of the Four Noble Truths

2009-07-12T17:59:00.003-07:00

In as much as Buddhism, which as the larger Yoga tradition of which it is a part, is a moksha-śāstra, or “liberation teaching,” Buddhism’s whole purpose is the cultivation of freedom from dukkha. The engagement with dukkha, thought of within the broad Yoga tradition as the existential situation within which living beings find themselves, is at the heart of all yoga practice. How dukkha is defined and conceptualized, and the myriad ways how one goes about addressing it, are intimately related, and are also at the base of many of the distinctions found among the various teachings throughout the Yoga tradition: Hindu, Buddhist and Jain.

As dukkha and our relationship to it are at the heart of all Yoga, including the Buddhist traditions, it is imperative to have a clear understanding of how dukkha is conceptualized, for this will determine first, whether there is anything we can skillfully and constructively do about it, which will further involve investigating its causes, and second, if we find we can do something about dukkha, we then need to examine what it is we can and should do.

Georg Feuerstein describes dukkha thusly:

Duhkha originally meant “having a bad axle hole,” but early on came to signify “sorrow,” “suffering,” or “pain.” According to the spiritual traditions of India, existence is inherently sorrowful. This doctrine has frequently led Western critics to summarily portray Indian philosophy as profoundly pessimistic. This typification is demonstrably misleading, however, since the avowed goal of Indian spirituality is the perfect transcendence of sorrow or pain. Indeed, most schools of Indian spirituality describe the ultimate Reality as utterly blissful. Sorrow, then, pertains only to the ego-ensconced individual, not to the Self. What more optimistic orientation could there be? (Feuerstein, 1997: 94)

Leaving aside for now Feuerstein’s commentary regarding the issue of Indian spirituality’s alleged pessimism, the nature of “ultimate Reality” and issues of the “Self,” we see that Buddhism shares with the larger Yoga tradition the notion, paraphrasing Feuerstein above, that existence is inherently dukkha.

At the Sanskrit-EnglishDictionary found at: http://www.srimadbhagavatam.org/downloads/SanskritDictionary.html,
is the following entry for duhkha, duhkham and dush:

duHkha = sorrow * = 1 mfn. (according to grammarians properly written {duS-kha} and said to be from {dus} and {kha} [cf. {su-kha4}]; but more probably a Prâkritized form for {duH-stha} q.v.) uneasy, uncomfortable, unpleasant, difficult R. Hariv. (compar. {-tara} MBh. R.); n. (ifc. f. {A}) uneasiness, pain, sorrow, trouble, difficulty; to be sad or uneasy, to cause or feel pain.

duHkhaM = distress

dush*= ind. a prefix to nouns and rarely to verbs or adverbs (Pân. 2-1, 6; 2, 18 Vârtt. 2 Pat.; iii, 3, 126 &c.) implying evil, bad, difficult, hard [488, 2]; badly, hardly; slight, inferior &c. (opp. to {su}),

And finally, The Digital South Asia Library, sponsored by the University of Chicago has the following definition for duhkha, and its related etymology of dus (or dush) and kha:

duhkha [ duh-khá ] a. unpleasant, fraught with hardship, wretched; n. pain, hardship, misery, suffering: -m, in., ab., °ree;-, with difficulty, scarce ly, hardly, reluctantly; -m âs, stand sorrow fully. (Digital South Asia Library, http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/romadict.pl?page=82&table=macdonell&display=simple,

dus°ree; [ dus- ] px. (=dush-) bad; wrong; hard.
http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgibin/romadict.pl?page=83&table=macdonell&display=simple

kha [ kh&asharp; ] f. [hole], spring, well.
http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgibin/romadict.pl?page=61&table=macdonell&display=simple

If we do accept the etymological roots of the word dukkha to mean “bad” or “wrong hole,” as relating to a faulty axle hole, we can get a visceral understanding of the feeling-tone associated with dukkha. A faulty hole in the wheel of an ox cart, for instance, would lead to a rather bumpy, unsettling and painful ride. If the bad hole were in a ceramic wheel, it would be quite difficult, if not impossible, to create anything truly beautiful and useful. The strain might even lead to one making a mess of things. As a metaphor for the human condition, it tells us that when we live ‘un-centered,’ out of alignment with truth or reality (to align a wheel is said to ‘make it true’), life is painful. It is difficult or impossible to make of our lives something beautiful and useful.

Various translations have been offered for the word dukkha: e.g. suffering, pain, unsatisfactoriness, anguish, unease, dis-ease, stress, ill, affliction, discontentment. It has been described as the feeling that ‘something is missing’ or just not right with things. Of all these different translations, “suffering” is the one that has been used most frequently by most teachers in the West.

But how did the Buddha himself elaborate on what dukkha is? The Pali Canon tradition states:

And what, monks, is the Noble Truth of ? Birth is < dukkha,> ageing is < dukkha,> death is < dukkha,> sorrow, lamentation, pain, sadness and distress are < dukkha,> Being attached to the unloved is < dukkha,> being separated from the loved is < dukkha,> not getting want one wants is < dukkha.> In short, the five aggregates of grasping are < dukkha >. (DN 22.18, Walshe, 1995: 344)

And in other places we find “illness” is also enumerated. (SN 56.11, Bodhi, 2000: 1844)

Looking at what is elaborated as dukkha in this passage attributed to the Buddha, we see that while it may be the most conventionally used translation of dukkha, the word “suffering” is ultimately inaccurate and misleading. At best, it is only appropriate in a general, inexact sense. Perhaps the main difficulty with translating dukkha as “suffering” is that “suffering” has primarily a psychological and emotional connotation. The oft-heard statement, made by many students and practitioners of Buddhism, that “pain is inevitable, suffering is optional” leads one to assume that the Buddha was talking only about mental suffering: anguish, dissatisfaction, unease etc. However, it is clear from the above that physical pain is indeed dukkha as well.

Peter Harvey points to this when, for example, he says that to say “birth is suffering” makes it sound either like suffering is something birth is doing, or that birth is a form of suffering, which he argues is not the case: birth and ageing “can only be occasions for or causes of suffering, which is an experience, a mental state.” (Harvey, BUDMO1, Session 7, Section 2.1) Re-reading the above quote from the Buddha, substituting “stressful” and “painful” for dukkha where Walshe has “suffering” gives a fuller and more accurate understanding.

I think it’s important to give some time to this, because of the prevalence of the psychologizing of dukkha we find so common in the west, as made explicit by Philip Moffit:

The Buddha’s teaching of the Four Noble Truths begins with the injunction that if you are to attain liberation, you must understand and fully experience how your life is entwined and defined by “dukkha,” meaning your mental experiences of discomfort, pain, anxiety, stress, instability, inadequacy, failure, and disappointment, each of which is felt as suffering in your mind. This teaching is often referred to as the “Truth of Suffering,” (Moffitt, 2008: 27)

While this understanding has its merit when dealing with mental anguish, when passages where the Buddha defines dukkha are examined, it seems to be missing an essential point. In fact, the psychological understanding of dukkha as the “mental experiences of discomfort etc.” listed by Moffitt as a reaction to birth, aging, illness, pain, not getting what one wants, being separated from the loved and attached to the unloved seems more a description of the “second dart” kind of dukkha that the Buddha describes in the Connected Discourses on Feeling:

"Bhikkhus, when the uninstructed worldling is being contacted by a painful feeling, he sorrows, grieves, and laments; he weeps beating his breast and becomes distraught. He feels two feelings -- a bodily one and a mental one. Suppose they were to strike a man with a dart, and then they would strike him immediately afterwards with a second dart, so that the man would feel a feeling caused by two darts. So too, when the uninstructed worldling is being contacted by a painful feeling… he feels two feelings -- a bodily one and a mental one.

“Bhikkhus, when the instructed noble disciple is contacted by a painful feeling, he does not sorrow, grieve, or lament; he does not weep beating his breast and become distraught. He feels one feeling – a bodily one, not a mental one.”(SN 36.6, Bodhi, 2000: 1264)

The Buddha’s disciple, Sāriputta, when asked “What is dukkha?” replies:

“There are, friend, three kinds of painfulness (dukkhatā): the painfulness of pain (dukkha-dukkhatā), the painfulness of conditioned things (sankhāra-dukkatā) and the painfulness of change (vipaiṇāma-dukkhatā). (SN 38.14; translation by Harvey, BUDMO1, Session 7, Section 2.2)

This understanding of the three types of dukkha is seen as pointing to the subtle aspect of dukkha that permeates even happiness (other than the happiness of nirvana) so that even happiness is declared to be dukkha. The point is that all happiness, other than that of nirvāṇa, is conditioned, limited and thus not ultimately satisfactory. The sheer fact of its impermanence is seen as dukkha. It is said that a subtle feeling of unease often accompanies happiness because deep down we know it is impermanent.

The matter becomes further complicated when samudaya, said to be the cause of dukkha is, examined. In its most succinct formulation, the Buddha says the origin of dukkha is craving (DN 22.19, Walshe, 1995: 346), specifically sensual craving, craving for existence and craving for non-existence. The word translated as craving is taṇhā, which means “thirst.” Harvey describes this craving as referring to “demanding desires or drives which are ever on the lookout for gratification.” He goes on to say that such craving leads to dukkha in three primary ways:

Firstly, they lead to the suffering of frustration, as their demands for lasting and wholly satisfying fulfillment are perpetually disappointed by a changing and unsatisfactory world. Secondly, they motivate people to perform various actions, whose karmic results lead on to further rebirths, with their attendant dukkha. Thirdly, they lead to quarrels, strife and conflict between individuals and groups. (Harvey, 1990: 53)

Thich Nhat Hanh points out that while the Buddha mentions craving as the cause of dukkha in the Discourse on Turning the Wheel of the Dharma, in an oral culture this is understood to be the first item of a list of afflictions (kleshas) used to represent the whole list. (Hanh, 1998: 21) Among these other causes are views, conceit and ignorance.

“Views” (diṭṭhi) refers to speculative view-points, theories, opinions, or perspectives, most especially when they lead to dogmatic and unyielding positions. Such clinging to views is seen as blocking the vital process of inquiry and awakening. When we are caught in our views, even if truth comes knocking at our door, we refuse to let it in. As Thich Nhat Hanh says, “Clinging fanatically to an ideology or a doctrine not only prevents us from learning, but also creates bloody conflicts.” He goes on to emphasize the importance of this point in reference to the First Precept (ahimsa or non-harm). “We usually think that killing occurs in the domain of the body, but a fanatical mind can cause the killing of not just one, but millions of human beings.” (Hanh, 1993: 22)

The Buddha placed a great emphasis on views of “Self,” which tend towards positing the existence of a substantial Self within the five khandhas (form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations and consciousness). Such views were said to lead to clinging identification with one or some combination of the khandhas as Self, and this attachment was a form of dukkha as well as a cause of dukkha. Even in advanced practitioners who have overcome such views, “conceit” as the sense of “I am” is said to remain in a vague, unspecified way.

In what is perhaps the Buddha’s core teaching of Conditioned Arising (paṭicca-samuppāda) variously translated as “Dependent Origination” or “Dependent Co-origination,” craving is said to lead to, or condition, grasping. This grasping is both for, and conditions, existence, which then leads to birth, leading to ageing, death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair. In short: dukkha!

While not technically considered a “first cause,” the whole chain of conditioning in one sense certainly, can be said to arise because of a fundamental mis-perception. Ignorance (avijjā), can be thought of as a kind of ignore-ance or, in contemporary language, “denial.” It literally means “not-seeing,” and what is not seen is ‘things as they are.’ Because of this fundamental not-seeing or ignoring of the reality of not-Self, the reality that all conditioned things are impermanent and not-Self, beings get caught in views of an existing Self, and then are compelled to act in ways to aggrandize the Self/self, protecting and defending what is ultimately at best an illusion of perception. Buddhism, like its other Yoga siblings, sees this spiritual ignorance as the fundamental cause or root of dukkha.

The question then becomes, whether things are dukkha in themselves, or only when craving for things is present. For instance, when we say ageing, or not getting what one wants is dukkha, are we saying that by its very nature, ageing or not getting what one wants is painful or stressful, or are we saying that ageing and not getting what one wants is only painful when there is craving for staying youthful and getting what one wants?

There have been varying responses to this question, with both perspectives seeming to be implied in the Pali Canon. Craving and grasping at anything most certainly leads to psychological pain or dukkha. This is true in that the very act of grasping and holding on are tension-filled and painful as well as that whatever conditioned phenomenon one might grasp and attempt to hold on to is by it very nature impermanent and subject to change. But the Pali Canon also seems to imply that “conditioned things are to be seen, in themselves, as dukkha in the sense of being limited and imperfect.” (Harvey, BUD01, Session 7, Section 2.5)

But some problems arise with this viewpoint, most notably that the concepts of “limited” and “imperfect” are themselves conditioned and lack any inherent, independent existence. It is most certainly possible to conceive of a viewpoint that does not see impermanence as inherently a limitation or imperfection. In fact, whole aesthetics of impermanence celebrate change. Again, it comes down to our pre-conceptions and grasping after what isn’t that underlies perceiving impermanence as necessarily dukkha.

Equating all conditioned things with inherently being dukkha leads to the idea that life itself is dukkha, which has led to a fairly common and persistent charge of pessimism made against Buddhism. In an essay on “The Four Nutriments of Life,” Nyanaponika Thera quotes a familiar saying from the Pali Suttas: “Only suffering arises where anything arises and only suffering ceases where anything ceases.” (http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/nyanaponika/wheel105.html)

Such an outlook can justifiably be called “pessimistic,” especially when it leads to the morbid perspective also found in the same essay:

The writer once visited large subterranean caverns which had long passages and high-roofed temple-like halls with huge stalactites and stalagmites resembling the lofty columns of a cathedral. For the convenience of the numerous visitors to the caverns, electric light was installed, and where the bulbs were low enough one could see around them a small spread of lichen, the only trace of organic life amidst the barren rocks. Life springs up wherever it gets the slightest chance through favoring conditions like warmth, moisture, and light. In the spectator's mind this little harmless proliferation of primitive plant life assumed the menacing features of a beast of prey that, having lurked long under the cover of darkness, at last got the chance for its hungry leap. (Emphasis added)
(http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/nyanaponika/wheel105.html)

One could just as well marvel at the wondrousness of life that can subsist and thrive in such conditions, but mainstream Buddhism, seeing life as inherently dukkha tends toward this ‘world-weary’ view of existence. This is of course compounded by the belief in rebirth, which posits an almost numberless round of births and deaths.
Interestingly, Thanissaro Bhikkhu, in his essay “Life Isn’t Just Suffering,” argues against the charge that Buddhism is pessimistic by denying that phenomena are dukkha in themselves:

Other discourses show that the problem isn't with body and feelings in and of themselves. They themselves aren't suffering. The suffering lies in clinging to them. In his definition of the first noble truth, the Buddha summarizes all types of suffering under the phrase, "the five aggregates of clinging": clinging to physical form (including the body), feelings, perceptions, thought constructs, and consciousness. However, when the five aggregates are free from clinging, he tells us, they lead to long-term benefit and happiness. (http://accesstoinsight.org/lib/modern/thanissaro/lifeisnt.html)

Ironically, Thanissaro comes off sounding like Moffitt when he continues to say:

So the first noble truth, simply put, is that clinging is suffering. It's because of clinging that physical pain becomes mental pain. It's because of clinging that aging, illness, and death cause mental distress. The paradox here is that, in clinging to things, we don't trap them or get them under our control. Instead, we trap ourselves. When we realize our captivity, we naturally search for a way out. And this is where it's so important that the first noble truth not say that "Life is suffering." If life were suffering, where would we look for an end to suffering? We'd be left with nothing but death and annihilation. But when the actual truth is that clinging is suffering, we simply have to look for the clinging and eliminate its causes. (http://accesstoinsight.org/lib/modern/thanissaro/lifeisnt.html)

This robust and confident call to action is a far cry from pessimism or world-weariness, but again seems to be addressing dukkha as merely psychological and ignoring the suttas that declare birth, ageing, death, being attached to the unloved, being separated from the loved, and not getting want one wants are dukkha, and not merely our mental distress at these phenomena.

Historically, the long-honored traditional way of understanding the Four Noble Truths (or as Harvey now prefers, “The Realities for the Noble Ones” Harvey, BUDMO1, Session 7) tells us that dukkha permeates life; samudaya is what causes the illness to arise. According to this understanding, the main cause is craving or grasping, sometimes even understood as desire. The Third Reality for the Noble Ones, nirodha, translated as “cessation,” tells us that dukkha can be absolutely ended with the letting go of craving. And we can do so by following a path (magga), taught by the Buddha as the Noble Eightfold Path.

The traditional formulation states that dukkha can be completely extinguished. Of course, even after the Buddha became enlightened, he got sick, was wounded, felt pain, and eventually died. Superficially, it would seem contradictory that he should suffer illness, pain and death (all forms of dukkha) if he were enlightened. The traditional understanding, especially in those Buddhist schools most influenced by Indian culture, such as the Theravada and Tibetan traditions, is that the Buddha meant that mental phenomena such as craving in one life gives rise to physical phenomena in another life. We are born into this life because of desire, craving and attachment in previous lives. The Buddha’s enlightenment meant that he would no longer be re-born into another life after he died in this life. You can see from this why so many have thought Buddhism to be a “life-denying” or escapist philosophy since our very birth and life is seen as dukkha, the result of previous desire and craving, (something seen as to be eradicated) and the goal is therefore to get off the cycle of rebirth and not be reborn again. This standard interpretation makes The Four Noble Truths into a metaphysical doctrine about cycles of life after life, and the great achievement of the Buddha was that he had finally reached a life from which he would not be reborn. The ultimate implication of such a metaphysic is that the best thing you can do with life is escape from it! Buddhism so understood may not be exactly “pessimistic” in that it sees an ending to dukkha as possible. But its postulating the cessation of dukkha as radically transcendent ultimately devalues life itself as something one seeks to escape from and avoid “falling into” again in future lives.

Some modernists, such as Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu, have rejected a literal, metaphysical or ontological understanding of rebirth and given the following re-interpretation based upon the “birth” and “death” of the sense of “I” and “mine:”

A single emergence of the feeling of “I” and “mine” is called one birth (jāti). This is the real meaning of the word “birth.” Don’t take it to mean birth from a mother’s womb. A person is born from the womb once and gets laid out in the coffin once. That’s not the birth the Buddha pointed to; that’s much too physical. The Buddha was pointing to a spiritual birth, the birth of clinging to “I” and “mine.” In one day there can be hundreds of such births. The number depends on a person’s facility for it, but in each birth the “I” and “mine” arises, slowly fades, gradually disappears, and dies. Shortly, on contact with another sense object, “I” and “mine” arise again. (Buddhadāsa, 1994: 86)

Buddhadāsa also agrees with the understanding that it is clinging, specifically clinging to “I” and “mine,” that is dukkha:

“Anything that has no clinging to “I” or “mine” is not dukkha. Therefore birth, old age, sickness, and death, and so on, if they are not clung to as “I” or “mine” cannot be dukkha. Only when birth, old age, sickness, and death are clung to as “I” or “mine” are they dukkha…. Only when there is clinging to “I” or “mine” do they become dukkha. With the pure and undefiled body and mind, that of the Arahant, there is no dukkha at all. (Buddhadaasa, 1994: 17)

Such an understanding seems more life affirming in that it denies that life is inherently dukkha, and by establishing cessation within life and not as some transcendent realm.
Another, more radical understanding has been offered by David Brazier:

“When the Buddha says that affliction (dukkha) is a truth, I do not think that he is saying that it is something which can be escaped. Quite the contrary. He is pointing out that it cannot be escaped. Dukkha is inescapable. To suffer affliction is authentic. It is real and it makes life real.” (Brazier, 1998: 51 – 52)

Obviously we can escape from at least some particular afflictions, at least temporarily. When hungry, we can eat; if we’re cold, we can wrap up etc. But there is no way to set up our lives so that affliction, pain or stress (dukkha) will not occur. A life with no dukkha is an unreal life, purely conceptual. Remember, even when the axle is centered in the wheel, there is friction, without which, the wheel could not roll. Movement and life requires friction. Resistance is necessary. The very process of life requires dukkha! Trees grow strong by way of resistance to the wind. The very nature of The Middle Way, and how the Buddha came to realize it, embodies this understanding. The Buddha had tried to escape dukkha, first through sensual indulgence, and then through self-mortification, and found no way out. But like the balanced wheel, he found a Middle Way, which brings us to the “Noble” aspect of the Realities for the Noble.

While not a very fashionable word nowadays (and not for lack of good cause, perhaps, given what we have been presented with as “nobility”) what is noble is what is worthy of respect. It is the opposite of something to be ashamed about. We know of, and have deep respect for, many people who bore great pain and suffering for worthy causes. Like the NYC firemen who rushed into the Twin Towers on 9/11/01, they may even have gone into situations knowing that they could very well be hurt or killed. The Buddha would often refer to himself as coming from the warrior caste. He knew that the honorable soldier faces hardship out of nobility: “the possessing of high or excellent qualities or properties.” (Woolf, 1975: 777)

A noble warrior is one who is courageous. It takes courage not to run away from dukkha. The Buddha called the truth of dukkha noble. Facing dukkha is the reality for noble persons. How could it be something to avoid or escape? As he says in his introduction to the Middle Way, it is ignoble to indulge oneself to excess, and it is equally ignoble to indulge in such self-mortification as extreme fasting and abusing the body in any way such as extreme exposure or flagellation. (SN 56.11) Both of these strategies have the avoidance of dukkha as their purpose.

There is an old story about a farmer who travels many miles to consult with the Buddha. Upon sitting at the Buddha’s feet, he tells the Buddha that he has 83 problems. The Buddha asks him about his problems. The farmer begins, “Well, I’m a farmer, and I love to farm. But last year we had a drought and we almost starved to death because of the meager harvest. This year, there was too much rain, and many of the crops were destroyed.”
The Buddha sat and sympathetically nodded his head. “Yes, go on.”
“Well, I love my wife very dearly, but I find myself growing bored and looking after other women.”
The Buddha continued to nod his head and encouraged the farmer to share his troubles.
“I have a son and a daughter. They’ve made me very proud. But they’re stubborn, and don’t take my advice,” the farmer continued.
After delivering his long litany of problems to the Buddha, he asked, “So can you help me? I hear you are a great teacher.”
The Buddha responds, “Well, it’s true you have 83 problems, and you haven’t even mentioned others like the fact that you are growing old and that you will die, and that everyone you know and love will also grow old and die.”
The farmer was aghast. Why wasn’t the Buddha helping him? Why was he loading on even more problems?
Then the Buddha said, “I cannot help you with any of those problems. But perhaps I can help you with the 84th problem.”
Exasperated, the farmer asks, “What is the 84th problem?”
“You want a life with no problems,” replied the Buddha.

We would like a life with no problems. Ideally, we would not grow old, infirm and die. We would not have to deal with such unpleasantness as losing our teeth, our eyesight growing dim, bad breath, wrinkles, graying and balding hair, let alone tumors, miscarriages, and the fact that, as the Golden Archies sing, “the number of ways to die is infinite.” (Gothic Archies, 2006)

The traditional Buddhist teachings tell us we can avoid all these problems by never being born again; by escaping from the wheel of life into nirvanic bliss. Other spiritual traditions offer visions of heavens where we’d always be surrounded by the pleasant and beautiful. And because it’s not how our life actually is, we are often led to feel shame. Many people actually feel shame when the body does something innocuously natural like fart, or when bellies make gurgling noises, when skin wrinkles or becomes diseased! And because of this conditioned shame, huge amounts of money, time and energy are expended trying to deny the fact that we are not “perfect,” distracting ourselves in myriad ways. Whole industries, anti-aging products, and body enhancing surgery, are devoted to this vain pursuit. The Buddha tells us that “imperfection” is real and we do not need to feel ashamed. It is “perfection” that is purely conceptual and unreal. And because we’ve fallen for this deluded conceptualization of “perfection,” we then conceptualize the real world we live in as “imperfect!” In fact, facing dukkha is noble and ennobling. Not turning away, and not exacerbating it, is the noble response taught by the Buddha. This noble response to existential reality is enlightenment itself. It is transcending the conceptual duality of “perfection” and “imperfection” and embracing just this, life as it is, perfectly imperfect!

This means we do not have to wait for some “ideal conditions” in order to practice enlightenment. The Japanese Zen Master Dogen (1200 – 1252) repeatedly teaches the identity of practice and enlightenment. We do not practice in order to reach awakening: practice is awakening and awakening is practice. His text, Shushogi, signifying “the meaning of enlightened practice” begins with the following words:

“The most important question for all Buddhists is how to understand, with a completely clear appreciation, birth and death completely. Buddha (enlightenment) exists within birth and death. Then birth and death vanish (as a problem). Birth and death (as reality) are nirvana. All you have to do is realize that birth and death, as such, should not be avoided and they will cease to exist for then, if you can understand that birth and death are nirvana itself, you will not seek nirvana by trying to avoid birth and death. This understanding breaks the chains that bind one to birth and death. This is the way to be free from birth and death. This is the most important point in all Buddhism.” (Yokoi, 1976: 58 / Brazier, 1998: 55)

If we understand “birth and death” as dukkha, then the above passage is telling us that Buddha (awakening) exists within dukkha. Seeing this clearly, dukkha stops to exist as a problem. Birth and death, as reality, are nirvāṇa. Problems exist only in relationship to our agendas. The noble life, the awakened life, is living one’s life just as it really is. It is in this sense that, the Buddha is reported to have said upon his awakening, according to the Zen tradition, “How marvelous, each and every being, just as they are perfect and whole, lacking nothing!”

We want birth, health, youth, pleasure, success, clarity. But life is what it is: birth and death, health and illness, youth and ageing, pleasure and pain, success and failure, clarity and confusion. An authentic life cannot be one in which we are desperately trying to have one half of the totality and not the other half. Dukkha is not a problem keeping us from happiness. The idea that Buddhism leads to happiness is correct. That it does so by eliminating dukkha is questionable. The Buddha taught the truth of drishta dharma sukha viharin: “dwelling happily in things as they are.” (Hanh, 1998: 22)

With this understanding of dukkha, a new interpretation of samudaya is offered. Rather than understanding samudaya as the cause of dukkha, samudaya is seen as the second step of a four-step process that leads to the wholesome (awakened) life. (Brazier, 1998: 124)

Traditionally understood as what causes dukkha to arise, the second half of the word, –udaya, means “to go up,” “to arise” or “be drawn out,” deriving from ut meaning “up.” (http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/contextualize.pl?p.0.pali.1605304) The first part of the word, sam, has “with” or “together” among its most basic meanings. (http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgibin/philologic/contextualize.pl?p.3.pali.1444698) This differs from the etymology offered by Buddhaghosa in the Visuddhimagga, where he similarly says sam denotes ‘coming together’ and u denotes rising up, but says aya denotes a reason. (Ñāṇamoli, 1999: 501) But as note 4 points out, aya as “reason” is not found in the Pali Text Society dictionary in this sense. (Ñāṇamoli, 1999: 823) As the compound word, samudaya, we get “coming up along with” or “co-arising,” or what we might call “response” or “reaction.” Dukkha samudaya can thus be understood as that which arises in the presence of dukkha. The First Reality for the Noble Ones relates to what happens to us, and The Second Reality concerns the feelings that are provoked by dukkha. That they are noble and true means there is nothing wrong, accidental or shameful about this situation.

As we have seen, the Buddha calls the feelings that arise with dukkha, the longing for things to be otherwise, taṇhā, meaning “thirst.” While mostly understood as “craving,” we should not forget the literal meaning is “thirst.” Taṇhā refers to the field of experience we call feelings, emotions or passions. I emphasize that as Noble Truths, or truths understood by noble persons, the Buddha can be seen as telling us that emotions are natural and as such pose no problem. However, problems do arise from how we respond to them; what we do with them, or from our attempts to avoid having them.

Taṇhā is the natural urge to move away from or to eliminate pain (dukkha). Even the amoeba moves toward food and away from what threatens it. Without the instinct to move away from pain we could not long survive as individuals or as a species. This is why the Buddha used the word “thirst” and not “craving.” Thirst is natural. You don’t feel ashamed of being thirsty on a hot summer day. Why feel ashamed of your natural proclivity to have emotional reactions?

The problem with emotions arises with how we relate to them. For instance we’ve been told that to suppress a feeling like anger correlates with the incidence of cancer. This led to the belief that it was healthy to express our anger, vent and “let it out” until it was discovered that those who vent their anger are more prone to heart disease. What to do? The Buddha points out that to suppress or express are both attempts to avoid or eliminate actually feeling the feeling! Actually opening to the raw experience is both noble and healing. Like the Buddha’s offering to help the farmer with the 84th problem, he wishes to show us how to avoid piling unnecessary suffering on top of the unavoidable reality of dukkha.

Strong emotions, passions such as grief, anger, fear, lust and greed are like fire. The spark that ignites the fire releases stored energy. When we lose a loved one, it is not just the absence of the loved one, but all the energy that is contained in the history of a long relationship that is released as grief. Generally speaking, our reaction to affliction, the experience of dukkha, is often out of all proportion to the event itself because of this release of what has been stored up in us. When such a fire is fanned, it has the sense of urgency and the compulsion of a raging thirst. It is extremely uncomfortable and in the moment feels like it will never end. It is at just such times as these when we may do something impulsive that can bring more pain to ourselves and to others.

The Buddha offered a strong image to convey this. He says that lepers sometimes experience intense itching. There is really nothing that can be done to prevent the itching. The itching is dukkha. The leper may experience a craving or thirst to be free from the itching that is so powerful that he will put his arm into a fire because, though it burns away his flesh, it relieves the itching for at least a short time. In order to escape a temporary affliction, the leper inflicts upon himself an even greater affliction that will cause suffering for years to follow. Like the leper, when we are in the grip of intense craving for things to be other than they are, we may act in ways that cause us to be seriously burned.
(MN:75 http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.075x.than.html#leper)

However, the fires of our passions need not be destructive. They need not be feared. Anyone who has faced the cleansing flame of grief knows how strengthening and healing it can be. It is like the process of smelting ore into precious metal. Passion can inspire, enliven and sustain us. When engaged, dukkha can be a source of learning and growth, though it is easy to forget this in the midst of the fire.

In the midst of the fire, we are likely to pursue one of three strategies: we seek and grasp after pleasure, we seek to create a new life or way of being, or we seek oblivion. The Buddha tells us that we should let go of operating from these three strategies, which is not the same as letting go of the feelings.

When we are faced with dukkha and the feelings that arise, the first strategy of grasping after pleasure is known as greed, grasping and clinging. We seek pleasure as a way to distract ourselves. In order to avoid feeling affliction, we grasp after some temporary relief like the leper who puts his arm into the fire, and we end up exposed to serious harm. In fact, the most serious harm we do is often the result of our attempts to avoid or run away from dukkha.

The second strategy is to seek a different life, to have things be different. This aversive reaction is called anger or hate, and takes the form of blaming. We blame ourselves: “If only I were thinner, then I’d be happy.” “If I made his salary, then I’d be secure.” “If my meditation were deeper, then I’d not be upset by anything.” Or we blame others: “If it weren’t for my husband, I’d have the perfect marriage.” “If it weren’t for my boss, I’d love my job.” “If it weren’t for the traffic noise, I could have a deeper meditation.”

And finally, in seeking oblivion, the poison of delusion, many of us reach for the bottle, or joint, or whatever our drug of choice is. It might be television or exercise, and it might even be meditation practice with which we intoxicate ourselves, seeking the peace of oblivion, looking for the ‘yoga buzz.’ Indeed, many people misunderstood nirvāṇa as a kind of spiritual oblivion. Commonly translated as “extinction,” it was said to refer to the extinguishing of fire. Many translate it as “to blow out.” David Brazier offers a different translation:

In fact, the word means ‘without-wind.’ Nir means ‘out of’ or ‘without.’ Va means ‘wind…’ Wind is what makes fires dangerous. Everybody who listened to the Buddha would have understood this. We need the fire, but we need it under control. A fire extinguished is no use to anybody. (Brazier, 1998: 85)

When we understand the meaning as “without wind,” we see that it isn’t at all about putting the fire out. Wind makes fire dangerous, but without wind, the fire is useful. The Buddha’s instructions for living a noble, awakened life and the meditation practices he taught, offer us the opportunity to become masters of the fire. The Korean Zen Master, Kyong Ho (1849 – 1912) taught: “Don’t ask for perfect health – that’s just greed: make medicine from the suffering in sickness. Don’t hope to be without problems – that’s just laziness: accept life’s difficulties. Don’t expect your path to be free from obstacles – without them the fire of your enlightenment will go out: find liberation within the disturbances themselves.” (Brazier, 1998: 58 – 59)

With this understanding, the Third Reality for the Noble Ones, nirodha also gets a fresh interpretation. Often translated as “cessation,” a perhaps more accurate meaning of nirodha is “confine,” “restrict,” “enclose” or “contain.” (http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/romadict.pl?page=88&table=macdonell&display=simple) Rodha originally meant an earthen bank, dam or blockade, with the denotation of “holding back, restraining, and shutting up in” (http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/romadict.pl?page=136&table=macdonell&display=simple) and ni means “down.” If you’ve ever gone camping and made a fire, you know this image as the earth and stone bank with which you surround the fire in order to confine it and keep it from spreading disastrously.

It is a wonderful realization that the Buddha, a true son of Yoga, can be seen to have revamped the fire imagery of the Vedas and the fire cult of the Brahmins, in a way similar to the UpaniṢadic sages. Rejecting the overt practice of the priests who ruled over the fire sacrifice, the Buddha taught a different, interiorized mastery of fire.

Fire is, and has served as, a worldwide symbol of power, energy, passion, and emotion, and is closely associated with the idea of spirit. Fire is both useful and potentially dangerous. Spirituality is the art and practice of mastering our fire. Wind is what makes fire dangerous. The bank of earth we place around a fire protects it from the wind dispersing the fire or from putting it out completely. If we want the most useful fire possible, we build up the bank and cover the fire so that it is nearly completely contained by making an oven. Wind is channeled in an ordered way. Now the fire can even smelt ore and shape metal, melt sand and make glass, and cook food. The fire is now extremely useful for channeling it to a variety of skillful and beautiful ends. Nirodha means to protect the fire from the wind so that it is rendered useful and safe. Nirvāṇa means safe from the wind.

In order to create the heat necessary to smelt metal, the fire needs to be regulated, provided with a proper flow of air, and the energy needs to be harnessed so that it doesn’t leak out and dissipate. When applied to spiritual energy this is the practice of Yoga. This is the practice of yoking, or restraining one’s conditioned reactivity. We all have enormous potential that is all too often frittered away on trivial pursuits, conflict, distraction, and destruction. The Buddha wants us to harness this energy for the good of all beings.

His Third Noble Truth tells us that nirodha is the complete containment or restriction of our reactivity, our impulsive reactions or thirst that arise when confronted with dukkha. The practice of yoking is to refuse to dwell on or cling to the object of our thirst. And, it is by bringing conscious awareness to our breath – the “wind” that we begin to yoke our reactivity.

There were without doubt some traditions at the time of the Buddha, as well as before and since, that sought extinction. But the Buddha’s Yoga is not about annihilating or repressing the energy of our passion. It challenges us to the conscious direction of that energy. Nirodha means to contain, not to destroy or extinguish. By containing fire, civilizations arose. By containing our inner fire, our passion, we can transform our world.

The way to contain the energy of our feelings is not by suppressing them but by letting go of our attachment to the object of the feeling. This is a primary distinction one must learn to see. Feelings are forms of thirst or craving and it is always a thirst or craving for something. The cause of craving is affliction, or dukkha, but rather than look to the affliction we are all too quick to place our attention on the object of our craving that often has no direct connection with the cause of affliction. The Buddha’s yoga asks us to notice as soon as a craving arises, and then unhook from the object of our craving. It takes “gumption,” as Henepola Gunaratana says, to restrain the hand that reaches for the craved for object, but that effort allows the opportunity to look into the real driving factors at work.

We need not give up our desiring, but rather we let go of our attachment to the object of our desire. We take the backward step from our conditioning, and in that step find the possibility of freedom and creativity. We create the opportunity to respond creatively. By returning to the still point within, there is stillness and passion. We are alive to the movement within the stillness, and when we act, we do so from the stillness within the movement.

Magga means “path,” and traditionally is seen as the path that leads to awakening; to the cessation of dukkha. With the naturalistic understanding presented here, dukkha is not ended. It remains a fact of life. Our relationship to it, however, is radically transformed. We can indeed use each of the eight limbs of the Noble Eightfold Path as “prescriptive” of how to act in the world, and in so doing, make transformative changes in how we relate to dukkha. However, the path is also descriptive of the awakened life that naturally and authentically enfolds when our feelings, our passions have been yoked. So understood, the Middle Way is not the means to eliminate dukkha. It is the noble result of facing dukkha and working through what dukkha provokes in a wholehearted, courageous way. This path includes both “no” and “yes.” We say no to being taken over by our conditioned reactivity, and yes to facing our lives just as they are.

The eight limbs of the path are generally presented in English as: Right View (or Understanding); Right Thinking (or Intention, Aim, or Resolve); Right Speech; Right Action; Right Livelihood; Right Effort (or Diligence); Right Mindfulness: and Right Concentration (sometimes Meditation). Another, perhaps more helpful way of thinking of samyak (the word translated as “right”) is as meaning “complete,” “whole,” “coherent,” “congruent,” “proper,” and “appropriate.”

Samyak has the implication of “all flowing (or moving) in one direction.” (http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/romadict.pl?page=173&table=macdonell&display=simple) This emphasizes the idea of congruence, coherence and coalescence. When looking at a river, we’ll see that the current in the middle flows swiftly. The water is powerful because it all flows in one direction. It is unified. If you watch the water at the edges of the river, you’ll see it move in vortices, and crosscurrents. One possible interpretation of the term “Middle Way” is this sense of unification of energy, all flowing together, not wasting energy or being divided against oneself. The Middle Way is not some meek compromise. It is living an authentic, congruent life of integrity.

While this interpretation of dukkha and its significance for practice is certainly rejected by traditionalists, I believe it offers a congruent way to understand practice and offers a way for a naturalist approach to liberation. I fully realize it will not satisfy those looking for transcendence and the cessation of dukkha. There are many of us who do not feel the need, see the reality, nor value such a traditional, transcendental understanding. This re-valuation is for them.

Bibliography

Access to Insight: Readings in Theravaada Buddhism,

Bodhi, B., 2000, The Connected Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Sa.myutta Nikaaya, Boston, Wisdom Publications

Brazier, D., 1998, The Feeling Buddha. NY: Fromm International

Buddhadaasa, B., 1994, Heartwood of the Bodhi Tree, Boston, Wisdom Publications

Digital South Asia Dictionary,

Feuerstein, G., 1997, The Shambhala Encyclopedia of Yoga, Boston, Shambhala

Gothic Archies, The, 2006, The Tragic Treasury: Songs from A Series of Unfortunate Events, “The World Is A Very Scary Place,” NYC, Nonesuch

Zen Naturalism and Sutras

2009-04-15T14:36:00.002-07:00

Zen Naturalism is a path of inquiry. As such, it avoids dogmatic fundamentalist statements. It has as its base the spirit of non-attachment from views, the spirit of personal inquiry through meditation and through the techniques of science and the scientific method, the spirit of appropriate and skillful means.

Many schools of traditional, mainstream Buddhism base thier teachings on various collections of sutras. For instance, the Theravada school found throughout Southeast Asia bases their understanding of Buddhism upon what is referred to as the Pali Canon. Most Mahayana schools of Buddhism either base their understanding on one single text, like Nicheren Buddhism which is based upon The Lotus Sutra, or a small collection of texts such as Pure Land Buddhism which bases its teachings on the Three Pure Land Sutras. Other schools like Zen are influenced by texts such as The Lankavatara Sutra and the Avatamsaka Sutra, and especially the Platform Sutra, as well as various other texts uniuque to the Zen tradition.

Zen Naturalism does not consider any sutra or group of sutras as its basic scripture(s). Zen Naturalism draws inspiration from the essential teachings of the Buddhadharma as found in all the sutras, interpreted through a Naturalist understanding. Thus, Zen Naturalism also draws inspiration from the continuing discoveries of western science.

Zen Naturalism does not accept the systematic, and often hierarchical arrangements of the Buddhist teachings proposed or endorsed by any school of Buddhism. Zen Naturalism is committed to realize the spirit of Dharma as found in the various interpretations over time and across cultures.

Along with accepting sutras from the various traditions as valuable and worthwhile studying, Zen Naturalism is also open to finding inspiration from texts of non-Buddhist traditions, both religious and secular. Zen Naturalism considers the Dependent Origination of Buddhism and the various schools of Buddhism throughout its history as the necessary means for keeping the spirit of Dharma alive. As a further development of this process, Zen Naturalism sees itself as a 'new' form of Buddhism reflective of a contemporary, western understanding of the world, the cosmos and life itself. It recognizes that it too will change as new understandings replace old understandings. Keeping the "Don't Know Mind" is essential in keeping this open-ended inquiry from solidifying into a rigid, dogmatic creed of beliefs.

This spirit of inquiry, this spirit of commitment to all forms of action that can sustain questioning, insight, and compassion, is considered to be more important that any Buddhist institution or tradition.

Is Zen Naturalism a Religion?

2009-02-18T22:15:00.002-07:00

The question may arise, “Is Zen Naturalism a religion?” And of course, the response completely depends on how “religion” is defined. Richard F. Gombrich, in his excellent book, Theravada Buddhism: A social history from ancient Benares to modern Colombo, mentions a monk who told him, “Gods are nothing to do with religion.” For all Buddhists, gods are powerful beings who are seen as capable of granting worldly boons, but who themselves are not omnipotent nor omniscient, nor are any seen as a creator. And, like all other beings throughout the world system, they are subject to birth, decay and death.

For Buddhists, religion is a soteriology. Religion is a matter of proper understanding and practice of the Dharma with the purpose of attaining liberation which is seen as the complete eradication of greed, hatred and delusion. For traditional Buddhists, a person who accomplishes this is truly happy – the only happiness which is not transient and conditioned. For such a person, once the body dies, he or she will not be reborn, and thus will never have to suffer and die again. As Gombrich makes clear, “For Buddhists, religion is what is relevant to this quest for salvation, and nothing else.”

This soteriological approach to religion is akin to yoga, and the words themselves have a similar meaning. Religion comes from the Latin religio which means ‘to bind back’ and yoga has the meaning of uniting or yoking. Such a religion is often characterized as a ‘path.’ While Gombrich states that such a religion is primarily one of belief, I think it more accurate to say that the only belief needed is one that agrees with the hypothesis that life as commonly lived and thought about is a state of delusion and bondage, and that it is possible to wake up to truth or reality. Then, a kind of faith is required that is open to testing the practices to see for oneself. It is actually less an orthodoxy than an orthopraxy. And this has been true, historically, for Buddhism. Splits in the sangha were generally based upon differences in practice and not in doctrine.

Another kind of religion is one Gombrich calls “communal” and is characterized as a pattern of action, solemnizing major milestones in a person’s life such as birth, puberty, marriage, and death as well as celebratory rituals, benedictions etc. It is more social and centered around the ordering of society.

Hinduism, while giving forth various soteriologies, is primarily a communal religion, conceptualized and codified in Brahmanical law books. For instance, marriage occupies the most important position among the sixteen sacred rites of India, after which, one is seen as entering into the householder’s stage of life. The Buddha couldn’t care less about marriage, and in fact saw it and all other aspects of communal religion as something to be left behind as having nothing to do with liberation – and even, in fact, being obstacles to it! For most of its history, Buddhism had no such rite as a Buddhist wedding.

So, Zen Naturalism is, and can be considered, a kind of ‘secular religion’ or yoga as it too is soteriological at base. Only here, liberation means to be liberated from our conditioned reactivity and false identifications. It is not the world-wary attempt to leave the world altogether that is found in early traditional Buddhism. But also, as a contemporary movement, and one that does not reject the world, it is also a ‘communal religion’ that celebrates life in community and society. As such, it calls for active engagement to better life and the world for all beings. And rituals of celebration are designed to create meaningful relations among the various beings and experiences of the world.

In any event, Zen Naturalism does not need to seek meaning and validity in any transcendent realm. Zen Naturalism leaves most metaphysical questions open, including whether there is anything truly existent that is ‘metaphysical.’ That this may mean we must re-define 'physical' is also an open question.

A Response to Andrew Olendzki on "Papanca"

2008-03-21T08:57:00.002-07:00

Andrew Olendzki has written an article on “papañca” (proliferation) and, like all his work, it is simply wonderful. Showing just what papañca is, its pervasiveness, and that it is just this aspect of our mental experience that we are working with in meditation provides a valuable clarification of practice. It is just here that we find a basis of commonality across all Buddhist traditions. In the Pali Canon, we hear the Buddha say, “In the hearing let there just be hearing…” and so on. In Zen, we say, “Take the backward step” from proliferation to “just this.”

All Buddhist meditation has as its purpose, “seeing things as they are,” or as Suzuki Roshi famously put it, “seeing things as it is.” Mr. Olendzki writes, “As the mind moves through the stages of assembling experience, from awareness to perception to conception to proliferation, it moves farther and farther into the realm of micro-construction. At each step we see less of things as they are and more of things as we construe them to be. Meditation practice works to reverse this process.”

I agree with this analysis of the situation and his description of practice up to a point. Too often we speak rather glibly about seeing things “as they are” and Mr. Olendzki’s use of the phrase “awareness itself” creates a kind of new "ghost in the machine."

Such phrases, and I use them myself, can ultimately lead to a reification of something that is better understood as dependently originated. Cognitive science shows us how awareness is constructed at every level. Since we are neural beings, our experience is categorized (constructed or conceptualized) from the cellular level. Categories are part of our experience from the first stage of contact, “the simultaneous coming together of a sense organ, a sense object, and a moment of consciousness that cognizes one by means of the other,” as Mr. Olendzki writes. His further assertion that “This basic awareness is merely an episode of knowing, carrying no content or qualities of its own” goes a bit further than the evidence provides. As George Lakoff and Mark Johnson write in Philosophy In The Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought, a book I believe every practitioner should read – if for no reason other then to be challenged to look deeper into their own concepts – “Categorization is not a purely intellectual matter, occurring after the fact of experience. Rather, the formation and use of categories is the stuff of experience. It is part of what our bodies and brains are constantly engaged in. We cannot, as some meditative traditions suggest, “get beyond” our categories and have a purely uncategorized and unconceptualized experience. Neural beings cannot do that.”

I do believe that what vipassana meditation can and does do, is get us back out of the “stuff” we add on to the first knowing, but to assume that first knowing is truly “things as they are” is itself to be adding on a thought or conceptualization. This is why I prefer (as more accurate) the translation of the Mahayana poem, “Trust In Mind” that begins “The Great Way is easy for one who is not attached to picking and choosing (preferences)” rather than “The Great Way is easy for one who does not pick and choose (has no preferences).” We seem to pick and choose at the neuronal level before we are even aware that we’ve done so. Even the amoeba categorizes (picks and chooses) the things it encounters into food and nonfood, what it moves toward or moves away from.

We can, I believe, go beyond our attachment to intellectual concepts, but this is not the same as saying we can go beyond all concepts as neural structures that allow us to mentally characterize our categories and reason about them. It is not merely that our bodies and brains determine that we will categorize; they also dictate what kinds of categories we will have and what their structure will be. “In the hearing, let there just be the hearing,” but let us not forget that we have ears (and eyes and so on) that work in certain very definite ways and not in others. Hearing "itself" hears only some things, and not others. There is no hearing "as it is" that is not dependently conditioned. And that is enough to realize in order to live "freely" in this conditioned world.

Yours In Dharma,
Pobsa Frank Jude

2008-01-29T17:34:00.000-07:00

As both a Yoga teacher and a Dharma teacher, I feel moved to respond to two articles in the January 2008 issue. While appreciating Shambhala Sun's publishing an interview with Hatha-Yoga teacher Rodney Yee, I am dismayed, once again, to find yoga conceptualized as postural practice! To ask if one "began yoga before beginning meditating" perpetuates this misunderstanding. Sadly, Rodney only offered a half-correction when he said, "in some ways yoga is meditation." Until recently, if you spoke of "yoga and meditation" in India, you would be met with the perplexed query, "But are they two?" For millennia before the arising of Hatha-Yoga, yogis (such as the Buddha) practiced yoga primarily by meditating. Patanjali's Yoga-Sutra is a concise model of yogic practice that would be extremely familiar to any Buddhist practitioner (who practices yoga every time she takes her seat on the cushion). This is especially so for a practitioner of vipassana. Patanjali’s definition of yoga is a description of meditation. It wasn't until just about 1,000 years ago that the postures (asanas) westerners now think of as "yoga" began to be practiced as a separate form or tradition of yoga known as "Hatha-Yoga." If one practices asana without the foundation of meditative mindfulness, you may be exercising, but it is not yet yoga. I believe this point is an important one to reiterate because a more accurate understanding of the relationship of Buddhism to the larger Yoga tradition helps us to see the family resemblances as well as the differences with greater clarity and appreciation.

I am also happy to see Shambhala Sun take up the very important issues raised by the so-called "new atheists" in "Mind, Matter, or God?" I too wish these writers would engage with the particular issues raised by the various Buddhist traditions and not limit themselves to the "Big Monotheistic Three."

However, I feel I must respond to erroneous statements made by Joan Sutherland Roshi and Ajahn Amaro. Roshi opens with the assertion that "belief per se tends not to be a central concern for Buddhists." This oft-made contention was one of the factors that drew me, a "scientific materialist" to Buddhism many years ago. But all too soon, I found much disguised -- and not so disguised -- theistic thinking presented by the various Buddhist Traditions. Roshi herself falls back on a belief that is itself not universally accepted within all Buddhist traditions (the Trikaya doctrine) when she says that the atheist writers fail to take account of "all three of the kayas." I was taken aback when she further says, "... they have lots of trouble with the sambhogakaya, the realm of the supernatural, the transpersonal, a fluid world between the other two, where things don't quite have solid form yet, a realm of dreams, imagination, art and creativity. To them, this is simply the realm of superstition, and therefore they deny sambhogakaya experience which is a vital part of who we are."

I believe Roshi presents a confused description of the sambhogakaya by conflating it with "dreams, imagination, art and creativity." And I wonder how does she arrive at the notion that science denies "dreams, imagination, art and creativity"? In fact, science studies these phenomena and has repeatedly shown their naturalistic basis. Does she really believe that dreams, imagination, art and creativity are based upon the supernatural? Would she then say Buddhism requires a belief in the supernatural? Wouldn’t this then make Buddhist thought a dualistic system, setting up the supernatural over and against the natural? It is true that naturalists or scientific materialists do not accept the existence of the supernatural; but in any case, there is simply no need to postulate some supernatural realm merely to explain the existence of dreams, imagination, art and creativity!

I have found it interesting that many Buddhists (including teachers) tend to denigrate the theistic beliefs of the Big Three, and then substitute "mind" or "buddhanature" as some salve for their wounded egos wishing to assert some fundamental difference between what we "truly are" from "nature." Despite Melvin Mcleod’s insulting dismissal, (“I don’t think anybody, no matter what they argue intellectually, actually believes their subjective experience doesn’t have some nonmaterial basis…”) I do indeed believe just that. His inability to imagine the heartfelt understanding of others is yet another subtle form of religious intolerance. My spirituality rejects all forms of “supernaturalism.” It seems to me, every so-called "spiritual" tradition that valorizes some postulated "non-material realm" ends up devaluing the material! You can hear the disdain for matter when he writes, "You don't have to believe in God to think you're more than just cells." I for one, stand in mute awe that "just cells" (which in fact, as inherently empty, are not and can not be "just cells" independent of the totality, and therefore neither are we -- science and Dharma both agree on this) are indeed among the myriad natural causes and conditions of just this radiant suchness! I don’t see how this diminishes us as humans – or as Buddhas! Perhaps an outdated understanding of matter is at the base of such sentiment? In response to his apparently rhetorical question, “So is this goodness, this human nature, purely material…?” I would recommend Michael Shermer's excellent The Science of Good and Evil for a completely naturalistic, evolutionary explanation for the origination of morality that can be shown to predate religion.
Ajahn Amaro also shows the confused thinking about what science really is and how it operates that is all too typical of many non-scientists, as shown by his contention that "what makes scientific materialism, which would aptly describe the atheist view, unrealistic and therefore unappealing is the incredible conceit that sooner or later we'll have the whole thing figured out." Could there perhaps be some projection at work here? I have found many Buddhists who feel that the Buddha “figured it all out” long ago, and that we should just accept all he is alleged to have taught uncritically. Oh, they say we are not to just accept, but question the teaching, but despite the Buddha’s clarion call for free inquiry, it has been my experience that many teachers and practitioners leave large areas of Buddhist doctrine exempt from such questioning. While I totally agree with Ajahn Amaro that the Buddha encourages inquiry, and that we don’t need to figure it all out, the Ajahn's assertion that "Scientific materialists are often frightened of uncertainty and not knowing" is absurd.

Scientists work happily with the understanding that all claims to any validity for both data and theory are provisional. Here's the physicist Richard Feynman on the subject: "I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong. If we will only allow that, as we progress, we remain unsure, we will leave opportunities for alternatives. We will not become enthusiastic for the fact, the knowledge, the absolute truth of the day, but remain always uncertain. In order to make progress, one must leave the door to the unknown ajar."

Not only are scientists not afraid of uncertainty, they find life, purpose, and even a sacred truth in the uncertainty which they find lacking in religious certainties, and dogma. Here is Ann Druyan speaking of Carl Sagan: "He never understood why anyone would want to separate science, which is just a way of searching for what is true, from what we hold sacred, which are those truths that inspire and awe. His argument was not with God but with those who believed that our understanding of the sacred had been completed. Sciences's permanently revolutionary conviction that the search for truth never ends seemed to him the only approach with sufficient humility to be worthy of the universe it revealed. The methodology of science, with its error-correcting mechanism for keeping us honest in spite of our chronic tendencies to project, to misunderstand, to deceive ourselves and others, seemed to him the height of spiritual discipline. If you are searching for sacred knowledge and not just a palliative for your fears, then you will train yourself to be a good sceptic." I think it a sad commentary on our culture that this noble word has become something of a pejorative. It simply means "thoughtful" from the Greek skepscepticus and its Latin derivative, scepticus means "inquiring" and "reflective."

Again, it is ironic that Ajahn Amaro would assert that materialists (atheists) are frightened of uncertainty and not knowing when as you can see from the quote above, it has long been a common argument of the atheists that it is the religionists (particularly theists) who fear the unknown and seek palliative solace in their "absolute truths." I don't think we can deny that the appeal of most religion for most people is the definitive, absolutist answers that end up leading to the intolerance we see all around us. In light of the current troubling state of political discourse we are witnessing, where presidential candidates are being asked how they believe the “truth” of the Bible, perhaps the results of a 1999 Gallup poll need to be pondered. The poll asked "If your party nominated a generally well-qualified person for president who happened to be X would you vote for that person?" with X representing Catholic, Jew, Baptist, Mormon, black, homosexual, woman, and atheist. Six of the eight received more than 90 percent approval, with only 59% saying they'd vote for a homosexual and only 49% voting for an atheist!!!

I agree, based upon my own experience, with Ajahn Amaro when he says that Buddhadharma and Buddhist practice can help us to "greet uncertainty as the well of potential" and that "when we meet the unknown from a place of selflessness or self-effacement, then it is not frightening but rather full of wonder." And I also affirm that this is true of the scientific method as well. The very process of "doing" science requires one to accept and abide in "Don't Know Mind." In fact, I have found that it is much easier for Buddhists (including teachers) to pay mere lip service to Don't Know Mind, while abiding in a variety of unquestioned doctrinal beliefs that seem designed to give easy comfort.

I would like to conclude with the following quote from Carl Sagan's Gifford Lectures, where he succinctly states the position of scientific materialism: "I think this search does not lead to complacent satisfaction that we know the answer, not an arrogant sense that the answer is before us and we need do only one more experiment to find it out. It goes with a courageous intent to greet the universe as it really is, not to foist our emotional predispositions on it but to courageously accept what our explorations tell us."
This is the kind of Dharma I can fully accept and practice with integrity.

Yours in Dharma
Rev. Pobsa Frank Jude Boccio
www.mindfulnessyoga.net