What Is The Goal Of Zen Practice?

As we work our way through the ten steps of this program, we will gradually begin to understand what the Augustinian monk Abraham of Santa Clara meant when he said: “He who dies before he dies does not die when he dies.”

Abraham’s quote echoes the words of the Buddha: “All that arises is of the nature of falling. That which does not arise does not fall.”

Both Abraham of Santa Clara and the Buddha shared the same insight: Only an independent self can live and die; where there is no independent self, there is no thing that can come into existence and there is no thing that can go out of existence.

If during our lifetime we can drop the notion of an independent self, our ignorance dies and we are free. We understand that there is no independent self created at birth, and no independent self capable of leaving awareness when a body dies.

However, we use the word “understand” with a caveat. The fundamental Buddhist doctrine of no self cannot be understood with a thinking mind. This “understanding” becomes clear in deep meditation. When we have sat by The Still Forest Pool for a long time, the jhanas arrive and we understand.

When we experience the jhanas, we leave the world of desire, the six worlds mentioned in Master Hakuin’s chant, and we arrive in the world of form. When we leave the jhanas and enter into the immaterial attainments, then we make it to the world of formlessness. Nirvana is even beyond that.

Amazingly to those of us who are still mired in the world of desire, one of the ten fetters that bind us to this desire realm is the desire to leave the world of form and to enter the world of formlessness! That is one of the higher fetters, experienced only by those in the neighborhood of Nirvana.

When we drop our desires and opinions, we have abandoned mortal thoughts of life and death. We wake up and realize that there is no independent self created at birth and destroyed at death. This is the truth of which the Bodhisattva known as the Christ spoke when he said there was a truth that would set us free.

When he said: “I and the father are one,” he was putting into words what he had realized, what all awakened sentient beings realize when they wake up. “I and the father are one” is just another way of saying: “All living beings are truly enlightened and shine with wisdom and virtue.”

It’s also another way of stating the ultimate truth: Anatta. No self. No separate self independent of everything else.

It is easy to understand how people who heard the Christ say those words could easily interpret them as being exclusive to him and to him alone. It is not surprising that they failed to understand the deeper import of what he was saying, and that they began worshipping him, trapped in their own delusions and lack of understanding.

If the Christ had said: “Wonder of wonders! I just realized that we humans and god are not separated from each other at all; in fact, we are one!” then he would not have been put up on a pedestal as the one and only human being that had become one with a god.

The Buddha, at the moment of his awakening, said the same thing that the Christ said at the moment of his awakening. The Buddha made it clear that he was a human being who had awakened; the Christ used words, perhaps put into his mouth by Paul, that led many to believe that he was not one of us. The Buddha made it clear that he was one of us. In Buddhism, the Buddha is respected or venerated, but he is not worshipped.

The Buddha does not own the truth, any more than the Christ or Abraham of Santa Clara. The truth just is. Those few who have experienced a truth that is beyond words experience difficulty in explaining what they have found to others. The others become their followers, their followers worship them or their words, and after a few generations their deep insight gets watered down to a few orthodox beliefs. The bath water remains, the baby is gone.

Zen Buddhism provides a practice that leads to the awakening of which Jesus the Christ spoke. Rote prayer (Lord, thank you for this day and its many blessings; be with the sick and afflicted, guide, guard and direct us for in Jesus’ name we pray, Amen) does not lead to awakening. Blind belief in a god, a savior, or a prophet does not lead to awakening. Singing songs in a church building, listening to sermons, and putting money in collection baskets do not lead to awakening.

Awakening requires active work. Buddhism lays out a daily path of practice that is active work and that leads to awakening.

Paradoxically, striving to awake never works. Enlightenment cannot be grasped or attacked. All we can do is create the conditions for awakening to occur. An authentic daily Zen practice creates those conditions.

If we were chained to the floor of a dungeon and were offered a trip to the top of the castle, we would take it. Once there, admiring the view of the valley, the river, the mountains and lakes, breathing the fresh air, hearing babbling brooks and the songs of birds, we would not choose to return to the dungeon if given the choice.

However, the point of Zen practice is not to lift us from a dark place into the light. That’s what self-help or self-improvement programs try to do.

The point of Zen practice is to enable us to see, to experience the fact that the dungeon/death and the top of the castle/life are mind alone. The dance of life and death is a creation of mind. Remember Dogen’s words.

An enlightened mind is neither enslaved nor liberated. The middle way is neither up nor down, neither happy nor sad. Nor is it a bland nothingness; it is a fullness, a wakefulness beyond mere joy or bliss. One experiences bliss upon entering into that state beyond bliss and one experiences bliss again upon re-entering the mundane world.

Only the awakened reside in that state of Incomprehensible and Incomparable Enlightenment. Awakening happens when it happens. It cannot be forced to happen. We cannot practice Zen so that we can win enlightenment. We can only practice Zen with diligence every day to create the conditions that allow awakening to occur.

We do not practice Zen to save ourselves from some vengeful, angry god who gets so mad that steam comes out of his ears. We do not practice Zen to gain entry into some man-made vision of a Billy Graham heaven where the golf courses are really nice. We practice Zen to allow our original, undefiled self to awaken. If we practice Zen with diligence, we learn who or what we are. The bottom of the bucket falls out, and we awaken to a reality that has always been there but which no one can describe.

When a person awakens, that is the Second Coming. It comes unexpected like a thief in the night. When a person awakens, that person realizes that life and death, gods and devils, right and wrong, and every other dichotomy, are illusions created by the unenlightened mind.

Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction

I hesitate to mention MBSR because my belief is that Buddhist practice creates the conditions for enlightenment to occur. My unenlightened, judgmental mind tells me that MBSR demotes Buddhism to just another stress-reduction program in competition with yoga classes, tai chi exercises, and those twelve step programs. Ugh.

However, if a person is under so much stress that they can’t practice, then MBSR is available for such persons and it is probably better than other stress-reduction programs, as long as the practitioner does not grow to believe that Buddhism has no higher aim.

So somewhat reluctantly I provide a link to an MBSR program in howtopracticezen.com. Just don’t forget that Buddhism has much more to offer.

Years ago I was chagrined when Jack Kornfield wrote a piece saying that sometimes meditation could not touch the severe problems that some people had. He argued that those people need Western psychotherapy.

My first reaction was that it was outrageous to say that twentieth century Western psychotherapy could solve problems not solvable by Buddhist practice. (Even though I have no idea what psychotherapy is). But his article is well-worth reading; he is a deep, sincere thinker. I disagree with his conclusions but if you are having trouble with meditation practice, he may be speaking to you.

But one should return to Buddhist practices upon successful completion of MBSR or psychotherapy sessions. I am certain Mr. Kornfield would agree with that.

The rabbit that cooked itself

Although the term “Zen” is usually translated as “meditation,” the actual practice of sitting meditation is just a part of Zen practice.

Zen meditation is not the same thing as Hindu meditation where the practitioner recites a mantra with closed eyes in an effort to merge with some higher being.

The presence or absence of one or more higher beings is irrelevant in the practice of Zen. That allows Zen to be practiced by those who hold religious beliefs as well as by those who don’t.

Zen practitioners don’t recite mantras nor do they fully close their eyes completely during practice. Sitting meditation is called zazen, where “za” means “sitting.” The full practice of Zen includes zazen but it also includes much more.

To practice zazen, we place a square mat on a floor so that the leading edge of the mat is about a foot from a wall, center a round cushion atop the mat so that the trailing edge of the cushion coincides with the trailing edge of the mat, and then sit on the round cushion with back and head erect, eyes slightly open but unfocused, looking down with the eyes but not with the head.

We don’t move a muscle during the sitting. As the teachers say, if the body is moving, the mind is moving.

We remain alert and alive in the present moment, making no attempt to enter into a trance.

The Buddha sat outdoors, under a tree. He had no factory-made mats or cushions, although the early texts say he fashioned a cushion of grass. He had given up on his teachers; none of them could answer his questions. He was not satisfied with homilies such as: “Brahma is in control; just trust in Him.”

The Buddha vowed that he would sit in meditation until his questions were answered. He placed his faith in himself, not upon any external entity.

He paid attention to his breath as it flowed in an out and according to the Pali canon, on the morning of the seventh day he saw Venus and purportedly exclaimed: “Wonder of wonders, all living beings are truly enlightened and shine with wisdom and virtue. But because their minds have become deluded and turned inward to the self-centered ego, they fail to understand this.”

After he became enlightened, he remembered having lived before. He remembered lifetimes as a human, but he also remembered lifetimes as an animal. He remembered being a rabbit who saw a holy man starving to death, a man who would not kill a rabbit even to save himself. The rabbit that would become the Buddha after many more lifetimes threw himself onto the monk’s campfire, cooking himself alive, so that the monk could eat him without violating his vow not to kill.

We westerners read such stories and think: Well, Buddhism sure is a crazy Asian religion. If you can believe a rabbit could recognize a monk in trouble, and then do a bunny hop into a campfire to painfully immolate himself for the benefit of that monk, you can believe anything. You can certainly believe in multiple lifetimes if you can believe the rabbit story.

Yet the story of God becoming a man through a virgin birth and suffering an agonizing death inflicted upon him by people capable of mind-boggling cruelty because he taught people to love God and each other, only to be resurrected after three days and then rising into heaven on a cloud after promising to return to earth at some future unspecified date to reward believers in him with eternal happiness and unbelievers with eternal torment is deemed plausible by westerners.

It isn’t hard to understand why the Chinese told the Jesuits that Christianity sure was a crazy western religion.

Sniper

In the spring of 2009, I saw a pickup truck with “My boss is a Jewish carpenter” on one bumper and “This vehicle will be unoccupied in case of Rapture” on the other.

Centered on the glass behind the passenger compartment was the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor (the logo of the Marines), under which appeared the word:

SNIPER

I wanted to pull the guy over and ask him if he could detect any incongruity between his bumper stickers. War is a Racket and it takes stupid people to proudly participate in one.

If your job is to shoot people you don’t know in the head using a high-powered rifle having a telescopic sight, and if you are so proud of that job that you openly advertise it, and expect a heavenly reward for your actions, this program (howtopracticezen.com) was published just for you.

If you have a less aggressive role to play on this earth, perhaps you’ll understand this course a little easier than someone who is hostile to the very idea of a human family, not to mention a family that includes non-human sentient beings as well.

Regardless of where we stand on the spectrum having on one end a fierce individuality, together with the anger, hatred and fear that comes with it and boundless freedom and kindness on the other end, this course will allow us to repent of our old ways and to realize the Buddha nature buried within us. Some may have a little more digging to do than others but everyone has the Buddha nature within them.

Those who proudly proclaim through their bumper stickers that they are demons living in a dungeon can awaken in the twinkling of an eye if they would just empty their cup, if they would just drop their opinion that they are involved in a noble fight against people who need to be shot.

 

 

The Ninth Fetter

The Ninth Fetter

The unenlightened mind suffers from agitation. A mind that is not agitated is a mind at rest. Although there are many techniques for quieting the mind, Buddha Name Recitation works for most people. The name Amitabha has a certain charm that brings feelings of peace and quiet to those who chant it.

Dharma Master Chin Kung says that hurricanes and tornadoes are caused by ignorance, i.e. sakkaya ditthi, floods are caused by greed, fires by anger and earthquakes by agitation, the ninth fetter. If it is true that our mental states create the world we live in, as the Dharma Masters say, then we would do well to chant Amitabha and reduce the agitation we create.

Perhaps millions of Californians will some day congregate along the extent of the San Andreas fault and chant the name of Amhitabha. But are they the only ones who can sooth the savage fault, created by agitated minds? Why can’t all of us practice Buddha Name Recitation for the benefit of everyone who lives near a fault line, anywhere on this planet and other planets? We can expand our Buddha Name Recitation to benefit sentient beings throughout the universe, and the parallel universes while we are at it.

As our benevolence expands to incorporate all that is, our agitation should diminish accordingly. As our agitation subsides, so will our ignorance, greed and anger. Then we can see the reduction and disappearance of earthquakes, windstorms, floods and fires, respectively.

The Dharma Masters teach that the agitated mind rushes towards every new thing that it encounters; it has the curiosity of a cat. It gets bored easily and then rushes off to see the next new thing. And that process never ends. New age people, ignorant of the Buddhadharma, are into flower essence one day, rainbow power the next, and pyramids after that. They find the never ending parade of new stuff to be fascinating. They never learn that the secret to enlightenment is never found in the external world of objects, health cures, self-help books and gurus. Their continuing interest in such things is nothing but evidence of agitation.

When we learn to stop paying attention to all the silly distractions that come our way, we loosen the ninth fetter. With nine of our fetters loosened, we are in the neighborhood of Nirvana.

Tags: The Ten Fetters

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 8th, 2010 at 10:55 pm and is filed under The Ten Fetters. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Ignorance – The Tenth Fetter

Ignorance – The Tenth Fetter

The last and final fetter that an arahat breaks in order to realize nirvana/nibbana is the fetter of ignorance of the Four Noble Truths. Funny, but among the first things we learn of when studying Buddhism are the Four Noble Truths. Yet these truths are the last things we learn. As the last of the fetters, ignorance of the Four Noble Truths is the only thing that stands between an arahat-to-be and nirvana.

It is quite obvious that to break this fetter we have to cultivate. No amount of book-learning, as the old folks say, will suffice. Cultivation is hard work and it can be painful but if we are to free ourselves of the last fetter, we have to cultivate.

What awaits us when this last fetter is broken and we are completely free of all ten fetters? There is no “us” to be free. What is nirvana like? It is unlike anything we know and every second spent pondering what it must be like is a second that would have been better spent in cultivation.

We need to study the ten fetters in order to become familiar with them. Only when we know what we are up against can we cultivate wisely. To recognize the presence of a fetter is to begin to overcome it.

Here’s a review of the ten fetters:

1. Sakkaya ditthi – the belief in an independent self;

2. Doubt;

3. Attachment to rites and rituals;

4. Sensual desire;

5. Ill will and hatred;

6. Attachment to meditative bliss arising from forms;

7. Attachment to meditative bliss arising from formlessness;

8. Conceit;

9. Agitation; and

10. Ignorance of the Four Noble Truths.

About the only way we can become intimately familiar with these ten fetters is to contemplate them every day. A true cultivator looks at these ten fetters every day and vows to break free of them. However, we do not need to think in terms of fighting to break free of ropes or other things that bind us. Instead, we contemplate the ten fetters and watch them evaporate into nothingness when confronted by the heat of cultivation.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 12th, 2010 at 10:02 pm and is filed under The Ten Fetters. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

The Heart Sutra and sakkaya ditthi

The Heart Sutra and sakkaya ditthi
Thursday, June 10th, 2010

Nor is there pain or cause of pain

or cease in pain or

noble path to lead from pain,

not even wisdom to attain,

attainment too is emptiness.

Why so? Because it requires sakkaya ditthi, a wrong view of self, to own pain. To believe that pain has a cause and can end implies that pain has entered into the life of a self. To believe that Buddhism provides a path that leads from pain is a mortal thought, i.e., pure sakkaya ditthi. To think that wisdom can be attained creates a separation that was never there.

If there are no two things, there can’t be attainment on one hand and non-attainment on the other. Samsara and nirvana cannot be divided into two things. Therefore, there can be no path that leads from samasara to nirvana.

When we sit, we are not following a path that leads from pain so that we can put an end to pain. We just sit, and drop everything. We drop philosophying and we drop belief systems, including Buddhism. That is how we drop the self on the one hand and the outer world on the other.

The Buddha taught no-self because the Brahmins of his day were teaching that there was a mighty god out there somewhere whom they called the atman. The atman was eternal and unchangeable and the goal of meditation was to merge with that atman. The Buddha merely pointed out that nothing is eternal, permanent, and unchangeable. So he said that we people, just like the imaginary atman, also lack permanence and are subject to change. “No-self” just means that no one has a permanent, unchanging self. Nothing can be found that is a permanent, unchanging self.

The concept of no-self thus doesn’t mean that you have no eyes, no ears, no tongue, body, mind. It means that those things are not you. Nothing that can be defined is you. To believe otherwise, as all of us do, is sakkaya ditthi. So we sit. But we sit not to escape from pain or to attain wisdom. Drop the idea that you are practicing Zen. How could something that is ever changing practice Zen?

Don’t engage in such endless mental gymnastics. Drop everything!

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