Q&A: From Teacher to Student

I am working on a few new essays, but in the meantime, I wanted to post some answers I sent to a student in response to his questions about Buddhism. It’s been an honor to be a teacher in many ways. One of the greater honors is when students have an unbounded curiosity for a certain subject, and they trust you to be able to give them a reliable answer. That is a very good feeling. The questions and answers are below. They focus on the Buddhist approaches to the concepts of “pain” and “self.” Since adult life is always busy and hectic, I hope these satisfy any curiosities you may have as well before I get any more essays written.

Q: Buddhists believe that pain is a part of life, and yet their key goals are to break that cycle of suffering and escape. So which is it? Do they accept pain as what will inevitably happen or do they reject it and try to escape?

A: Buddhists do believe pain is a part of life, but that pain is a part of life mostly due to an error in our perception regarding our subjective world views and attachment to a sense of individuality/self that separates us from the rest of the living things around us. While the first Noble Truth of Buddhism is usually “Life is Suffering,” the translation never really does justice to the original statement. Here are the first two noble truths as laid out by the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama:

1. Life is dukkha

2. Dukkha arises from/is caused by tanha

Now, the original use of these words is important because depending on how you choose to focus on them it can create either a positive or negative interpretation of Buddhadharma (i.e., Buddhist philosophy). Dukkha can be translated as suffering, but is more or less meant as “unsatisfactoriness.” Same with tanha – it can be translated as “desire,” but is more akin to the word “longing.”

If I long for something, I want it, and if I cannot have it, then I find my life to be unsatisfactory, or in my direct terms, I suffer. And even if I still do obtain that object that I desired, then I may still be unsatisfied with it, because the only reason I thought it would make me whole in the first place was because I did not have that object. But now that I do, I realize that it didn’t really help me feel any richer or more like myself.

The fact that you want anything at all, that we long for certain things and then are eventually disappointed by them, arises from what Buddhists perceive to be a false sense of self. Insofar as what the “self” is, the “self” is usually what humans think is this unchanging, definable trait that helps others pinpoint exactly who we are. However, Siddhartha disagreed with this. He said there is actually no lasting permanent self – our senses, consciousness, and form are always changing and in flux, never staying the same. For example, you never have the same skin cells – they replace themselves every five years or so. So, in essence, you have a different body. This can be supported just by the simple fact of growing up – people grow taller, they have less bones, they start to lose their hair, etc. Nothing that people usually hold onto as definable or immutable qualities stay constant.

This is where the process of meditation comes in. Meditation as a tool is supposed to help people realize the intensely dynamic and fluid nature of reality and our thoughts. Because our idea of “self” comes from an error in our perception of our world, meditation is a tool Buddhists use to try to approach the world from a more objective/compassionate/fair basis (or what have you). Once we extinguish the idea of a constant self, we are getting rid of the longing/greed/desire that causes suffering in the first place. It’s essentially a shifting of our balance, so to speak. Instead of thinking “This is what I need,” or “I want this because it’s what will help me,” Buddhists try to think in broader terms, relating ourselves back to the world and to each other. Which is one of the major principles of Buddhist philosophy: interdependent co-origination. No living being is separate from another living being; no thing arises independent of anything else. Total and complete connection and change – these are the two main things we can start to observe about the world after we learn to change our perceptions.

Buddhists go deeper and deeper into this type of thinking to get out of the cycle of birth and death (samsara) in order to attain nirvana (trans.: extinction). Most people think nirvana is a blissed-out state, but it’s essentially taking the concept/idea of self and completely rendering it null and void. Once we transcend our selfish and subjective view of the world, we have a more enlightened nature of the world around us. Now, there are two schools of thought as your history teahcher may teach you about: Theravada Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism. Theravada (translated as “Way of the Saints”) is the closest we have to the original form of Buddhism in some ways – they believe in meditating to totally take themselves out of samsara, attain nirvana, and then teach others this “path towards enlightenment.” Mahayana Buddhism is a later form of Buddhism that encapsulates such schools as Zen. Mahayana Buddhists believe that samsara = nirvana, nirvana = samsara. In other words, enlightened nature is not different from the world as we know it in it’s truest sense.

Therefore, the entire goal of Buddhism is to take that life is suffering, which in turn is caused by a sense of desire, and cut off the idea of self (I, me, my) that causes this sense of incompleteness and unsatisfactoriness in the first place. So there is no running from suffering or desire – it’s just that we must cut off the root of it if we do not want to continue suffering.

Q: Do Buddhists think the ONLY way to avoid desire is just to remove “self” entirely?

A:

Your question: Do Buddhists think the only way to avoid desire to just to remove “self” entirely?

Subsequent point related to the question: Appears to be the total removal of all personality and characteristics.

Logical quandary: How can one remove the self?

Answer to the quandary: There is no self to remove.

What we are dealing with here appears to be a logical paradox – Buddhists want to get rid of the notion of self, but insofar as they recognize there is a self to vanquish, they are admitting as to the inherent existence of a self. Which is an argument that people have used in the last two centuries, especially Western philosophers and theologians, to negate Buddhist philosophy. However, Buddhism recognizes life to be inherently paradoxical. The fact that we believe in a self does not in-and-of-itself substantiate the claim of the self, only of our perception and opinion that there is a self – an opinion/perception that is inherently wrong. To negate self is not to negate something that inherently exists, but to negate the perception of it. Think of the notion of a self as a sort of mist/haze that blinds us to the existence, feelings, and lives of other human beings.

This mist/haze that is the idea of self is essentially cogito ergo sum – I think therefore I am. Buddhism can be said to approach cogito ergo sum in two ways: 1) Of course you think and therefore have a sense of self, the self is inherently an idea, and as long as you hold onto the perceptions, thoughts, and emotions we believe define our static notion of self, you will always believe in it and 2) To substantiate your sense of existence inherently on sense is to presuppose that there is actually no permanent self. Only as long as you can interact with a small simulacrum of the world will you ever be able to think you exist; once we stop interacting with the world, there is nothing. And, in it’s paradoxical fashion, Buddhism says no to both of these things, because both of these approaches boil down to what is referred to as solipsism – you can only ever know your self exists and nothing else outside of it.

So, given either interpretation, we are blinded to what Buddhists see as our true nature by stating: 1) Our thoughts create an illusory sense of self because we are overly attached to what they represent and 2) our sensory experience of the world can also be clouded by our perception and attachment to certain phenomena and what we associate with them. In essence, we have to realize that, simply because we see a snowflake as white with our eye, does not mean it is white. Snowflake = white. A = A. Just in the same way, we may see a piece of coal as black. Coal = black. B=B. However, whenever we think of a different animal that may have a larger spectrum of colors they are able to see, then the game changes. Let’s say a bird has a greater range of ultraviolet light able to be absorbed into it’s cornea and can see more colors than a human. To that bird, maybe the snowflake looks black. And all of a sudden, the piece of coal appears to be white. The equation is flipped. Snowflake = black. All of a sudden, A=B.

Which brings us back to the mist/haze of the self. We believe in the concreteness of the self insofar as we believe in the concreteness and absolutism of our experience as an individual being. We see the snowflake as white, therefore it must be truly white. I hold onto these thoughts, feelings, and memories as to who I am, therefore they must make up this person I know as Ryan. In reality, the color of the snowflake and the thoughts-feelings-memories we hold onto are both a type of mist/haze. As long as we are not able to look beyond the limit of our experience, we are thus continually mired in this illusory sense of an unchanging, unmovable self. Whereas all along the self never existed because it was an illusion created by an attachment to our experience of the world and of what makes up our mindstuff (scientific term right there).

This is where the Buddhist concept of sunyata (emptiness) comes into play. As we exist, things are inherently empty and void of any traits that could be said to define things as greater or lesser than the whole. In a way, sunyata has a lot to do with the Christian concept of kenosis (self-emptying). Kenosis is the idea that we have to empty ourselves of the notion of self before we are able to let the divine will as defined b Christian belief have a greater part in our understanding of the world. It is based on the self-emptying of Jesus Christ’s own nature at the Crucifixion – Jesus emptied himself of his divine nature to take on a fully human form (which, if you think about it, is itself a paradox of sorts: a man at once both fully human and fully divine. It would technically be considered impossible. Luckily, the faith tradition of Catholicism you participate in does have a lot more to say about this). Even in this sense, there is not a complete sense of self Jesus Christ himself has to hold onto – if his nature is fully divine as well as fully human, not only is he participating in his own pain as an individual person, but he is also participating in the drama of the universe as it continually unfolds and folds back upon itself – for if the divine is eternal, it would have to be even beyond a sense of self because it is beyond the phenomenal constraints of our universe.

Both sunyata and kenosis make one thing clear: our idea of self-nature and of true nature are beyond a rational sort of thinking. This is where the Zen Buddhist tradition of the koan comes into play (we can talk more about that later). But, to wrap it up nicely, both of these ideas find their middle ground in theologia negativa or negative theology. The best thing you can do to picture negative theology is to imagine a stained glass window with an image on it. The image is colorful and pretty and depicts a scene from a story, but it is not the actual nature of the stained glass window. So to better understand what the window is, you start to pick apart the painting that makes up the stained glass window. Bit by bit, you are left with nothing but a clear window with a bright light coming through it and reflected by it. And that’s what we are looking for by discarding the notion of self, of I-my-me – the bright light that is the truth behind the picture and the story it depicts.

Shobogenzo & 100% Authentic Truth: On Dogen’s Fukanzazengi & Makahannyaharamitsu

The myriad differences
Resolved by sitting,
All doors opened.
In this still place,
I follow my nature,
Be what it may. – Reizan

Let’s Try This Again 

Two years ago I wrote an analysis of Dogen’s Zenki (tr. The Whole Works) chapter of his seminal masterpiece Shobogenzo (tr. Treasury of the True Dharma Eye) with the intention of writing further analyses down the road. Then some things called “a job” and “marriage” and “home ownership” happened, and boy, does that take time away from still pretending like you can do nothing but write articles all the time. However, since today is my last day of summer break before going back to teaching for the 2018-2019 school year, I thought I would give it a crack at writing an analysis of some of Dogen’s lighter fare before I have to be surrounded by teenagers for three months.

Before We Even Analyze…

The last analysis I wrote had a section on the differences between how we understand the nature of philosophy in the West versus the East, mostly from the academic standpoint. This time, I want to make it clear that the translations we use are also important. Shobogenzo is a classical text that was lost to the public for centuries – it was circulated in internal Buddhist circles by and for those who thought they had put in the necessary rigor of practice to understand the text. Only in the late 19th century, as the text was rediscovered and “Religious Studies” and “Oriental Studies” were becoming rigorous academic disciplines, was there even an attempt by lay people to understand, analyze, and communicate the text.

Does this all sound boring to you yet? If so, good, you’re a sane person who likes doing normal person things, unlike me. However, if you’re like me and are interested in studying Buddhism, this kind of information is important to keep in the back of your brain – if you’re a person in a city that does not happen to have a large Buddhist presence, you are going to come to know the philosophy and teachings of Buddhism, it will be primarily through the texts. And if you want a decent understanding, you better get your hands on  decent text.

The Shobogenzo, depending on what translation you are reading, can seem like a mish-mash of philosophical jibber jabber or some of the most profound spiritual/intellectual teachings from the other end of the Pacific Ocean. So, instead of making you wonder where the hell I am getting this all from, here are a list of the most accessible translations you can find of Dogen’s master text:

1. Treasury of the True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dogen’s Shobo Genzo – Kazuaki Tanahashi (the big book you may see in most Soto Zen monasteries and zen centers in the States)

2. Master Dogen’s Shobo Genzo Series – Gudo Nishijima & Chodo Cross (one of the more definitive translations out there)

3. Shobogenzo: The Treasure House of the Eye of the True Teaching: A Trainee’s Translation of Great Master Dogen’s Spiritual Masterpiece – Rev. Hubert Nearman, O.B.C. (a free translation in PDF format by the Shasta Abbey – just in case you don’t want to pay for it)

4. Shobogenzo: Zen Essays by Dogen – Thomas Cleary (a translation of thirteen of the more seminal chapters of Dogen’s work – if you want an hope of studying the Shobogenzo during a bus ride to and from work, this is the book you buy).

Be my guest and take your pick – any four of these translations holds the spirit of the text as best as they can given the strains of translating Classical Japanese into English. And in analyses such as our own, it’s important to know we are using a reliable translation, or at least one reliable enough to be used in a college textbook. With all that said, we will be using translations by Thomas Cleary from Shobogenzo: Zen Essays by Dogen and Yuho Yokoi from the Zen Sourcebook traditionally used in college classrooms. In any future analyses, these are most likely the two guys whose translations I will be using. Plus, Fukanzazengi is not the only chapter we are using for this article today, but also Dogen’s Makahannyaharamitsu (Great Transcendent Wisdom) chapter from Shobogenzo as well. Since both chapters are so succint, but somewhat tie into each other, it will help shed more light on Dogen’s take on the importance of meditation to Buddhist practice. Now, without further ado…

Dogen’s Five-Star Yelp Review on Meditation

That’s not the actual translation of the term Fukanzazengi, but it could be. What it actually means is A Universal Recommendation for Zazen. Zazen is the term used most often in Japanese Zen Buddhist communities to describe the act of sitting meditation. It literally means “sitting meditation.” But there is a difference between meditating the way you may in a yoga class or in a Taoist circle somewhere on a college campus, and the way you do seating meditation in a zen center. For Dogen, zazen was more than just meditation. It was the act of enlightenment itself shining through the individual practitioner. Dogen, and Buddhists in general, adhere to the principle of non-duality, and therefore interconnectedness.

These two ideas culminate in the concept of interdependent co-origination. This term, to sum it up here as best as possible means that all arise, and are no separate from, each other. You arise from your parent, and your child arises from you, the same way a table may rise after carving a tree, and in the end, maybe your child will one day set a drink on that table the tree has become. Not only is everything connected, but their mutual creation and existence are inherently intertwined and a major part of the fabric of the universe.  By realizing this, we learn to accept that things are also not put into neat categories or separated from each other as easily as we may believe. “Ordinary People” and “Buddhas” are not two different things. In fact, they are the same thing. This nonduality, this interconnectedness regarding the conceptual frameworks in how we see ourselves and others is at the heart of zazen.

Ordinary People = Enlightened People

Enlightened People = Ordinary People

That’s Buddhist math, for you. Now, you may ask, where is zazen in that equation? Well, zazen itself is the equal sign. As Dogen himself said in Fukanzazengi:

Zen is not “step-by-step” meditation. Rather it is simply the easy and pleasant practice of a Buddha, the realization of the Buddha’s Wisdom. The Truth appears, there being no delusion. If you understand this, you are completely free, like a dragon that has obtained water or a tiger that reclines on a mountain. The supreme Law will then appear of itself, and you will be free of weariness of confusion. 

In the eyes of Dogen, to practice meditation is inherently the quality of an awakened being. If you had not been able to see your own Buddha nature in the first place, you would not have even started doing zazen in the first place. There is nothing to attain to or work towards because, due to the sheer fact of you existing in that very moment within the state of zazen, means you have attained the supposedly unattainable. As the last Bodhisattva vow states in Zen Buddhism: The Buddha way is inconceivable; I vow to attain it. The fact you are meditating while there are others that may seem much wiser and more put together than you does not mean you are somehow deficient. Earlier in Fukanzazengi, Dogen has this to say to that very thought possibly arising in your mind:

You should pay attention to the fact that even the Buddha Shakyamuni had to practice zazen for six years. It is also said that Bodhidharma had to do zazen at Shao-lin Temple for nine years in order to transmit the Buddha-mind. Since these ancient sages were so diligent, how can present-day trainees do without the practice of zazen? You should stop pursuing words and letters and learn to withdraw and reflect on yourself. 

The practice of the art of zazen does not mean we are deficient in our buddha-nature, but that we are learning how to fully embody it and realize it is there. Because it is by our own nature we forget we are enlightened and awakened beings in the first place. That is how we fall into delusion and craving. We believe there is something missing from us that needs to be filled either with expensive and fancy gadgets, with people, or even with drugs and alcohol. But that’s not true at all. You are already 100% Buddha because you are already 100% yourself. However, as Dogen pointed out, just like for Siddhartha and Bodhidharma, it’s going to take work to realize the 100% authentic truth we all are.

Dogen Thinks Wisdom is Dope

Wisdom is a big deal in all religious traditions – it is seen as that which is greater than any other type of intelligence, emotional or rational. Wisdom allows us to see things as they are, intuit as to the nature of the world and the actions of individuals, and may even give us a small glimpse into the infinitude of the divine if we are able to grasp the deeper knowledge of both texts and faithfulness. In certain religious and philosophical terms then, wisdom is in-and-of-itself the ideal. A quality or essence we can only grasp by learning not only the truth of human nature but that which we were attempting to grasp in the first place. But, as with all things cryptic and mystical, wisdom is not what we may at first believe it to be. This is where we get to the Socratic Paradox (yell that in your heads for added affect). While Socrates himself may have never said the words, what we gather from the writings of Plato is that, after constant searching, questioning, and debating, those who employ the Socratic method of philosophical inquiry are bound to come to the ultimate conclusion that I know that all I know is that I do not know anything.

Dogen just so happens to agree with the Socratic Paradox in his Makahannyaharamitsu chapter:

The time when the Independent Seer practices profound transcendent wisdom is the whole body’s clear vision that the five clusters are all empty. The five clusters are physical form, sensations, perceptions, conditionings, and consciousness. They are five layers of wisdom. Clear vision is wisdom. In expounding and manifesting this fundamental message, we would say form is empty, emptiness is form, form is form, emptiness is emptiness. It is the hundred grasses, it is myriad forms. 

As for the present monk’s thinking to himself, where all phenomena are respected, wisdom which still has no origination or extinction is paying obeisance. Precisely at the time of their obeisance, accordingly wisdom with available faculties has become manifest: that is what is referred to as precepts, meditation, wisdom, and so on, up to the liberation of living beings. This is called nothing. The facilities of nothing are available in this way. This is transcendent wisdom which is most profound, extremely subtle, and hard to fathom. 

When the monk or Buddhist practitioner realizes that wisdom is something to be obtained towards and pays respect and deference to it in the form of the Three Jewels (Buddha, Dharma, Sangha), then wisdom manifests itself. Wisdom is known in its conceptual and intellectual foundation as a thing. Through enough practice and insight into our original nature – that “100% authentic truth” I mentioned earlier – we start to realize wisdom has no inherent nature. In the same way in which we have no inherent nature. The five clusters/layers described in the passage – physical form, sensations, perceptions, conditionings, and consciousness – they are what we believe to comprise our true self. But we are not what we taste, touch, and feel. The “100% authentic truth” goes beyond the sensations we have that are all too willing to deceive us.

Clear vision is the only true faculty of wisdom Dogen knows we can aptly apply to it in our lifetimes. Especially through Buddhist practice. As Dogen essentially says later in the chapter, “The only way you even know wisdom is a thing is because you have the precepts, meditation, and metaphors of wisdom we talk about here in Zen Buddhism.” But wisdom does not exist because those things exist – wisdom is already there! Just as buddha nature is our ordinary nature, wisdom is inherently there in all aspects of the practice. Buddhist practice – and by extension wisdom in all of its varied forms – is the actualization of what you have always had inside you but doubted was there because either you or someone or something else told you it was not there in the first place. And to realize it, we need to learn to see it in every other aspect of our lives and the world – the hundred grasses/myriad forms Dogen points out.

One is All, All is One

Dogen starts to wrap up Fukanzazengi with one of the few succint statements of his eternally present nondualistic thinking patterns:

Zazen is a practice beyond the subjective and objective worlds, beyond discriminating thinking. Therefore, no distinction should be made between the clever and the stupid. To practice the way singleheartedly is, in itself, enlightenment. There is no gap between practice and enlightenment or zazen and daily life. 

If we think we know a lot, and start to examine those aspects of life we are not that knowledgeable about, we end up learning in the end we did not know as much as we think we did. Therefore, who is truly clever and truly stupid? If wisdom is something we can manifest through the different types of practice and discipline, then why are we looking outside ourselves for wisdom when it was there all along, in our day-to-day lives? Practicing the constant internal investigation that zazen is gives us the tools necessary to go beyond our opinions and notions of right and wrong, what is and what is not, and start to see the world with clear vision for the first time. Only when we have such clear vision, the essence of wisdom inherently within our “100% authentic truth,” can we start to see there is no division at all.

Zazen isn’t just meditation, it’s the here and now. It’s our unobstructed buddha-nature expressing itself effortlessly in every precious moment of this life.

Don’t know; just go straight. – Zen Master Seung Sahn

Hope in the Midst of Darkness

“Their world was a big, fantastic, crawling, exploding junk pile of despair. I will write her name with honor for seeing it so clearly and looking straight at it without remorse. Perhaps her way or irony was the only possible catharsis for a madness so cruel and so endemic.” – Thomas Merton

The world is on fire. Some would say the world has always been on fire, that civilization itself is a slow smoldering, until we are amid the ashes and ask ourselves how we got to that point. Others may think of the fire as something akin to the fire of ancient Rome, with a modern-day Nero looking down upon the flames plucking away either at his fiddle or his harp (technically, it would have been a cithara, which is a heavy wooden instrument of four to seven strings….you know what, I may be getting off topic). Either way, many seem convinced the flames may soon consume us, both literally and figuratively. With the polar ice caps melting at quickened rates, a rise of strong-arm nationalism across the globe, and a widening gap between the rich and poor, we seem in more dire straits than at any point in history.

The United States of America has voted in a leader who has displayed abject apathy regarding the principles the nation was founded on almost three hundred years ago. Syria has crumbled under the fist of its own leader, who would sooner destroy all under his rule than give up all he ever ruled. This has created an unprecedented refugee crisis and has let loose a clash of civilizations, of identities, and of ideologies. Christian and Muslim, white and black, democracy and demagoguery – conflicts of tribe and thought that have existed throughout history, but never on such a global scale. We face the challenge of a fundamental question that has been posed time and time again to various species – change or die?

“The time of the end is the time of demons who occupy the heart (pretending to be gods) so that man himself finds no room for himself in himself. He finds no space to rest in his own heart, not because it is full, but because it is void. Yet if he knew that the void itself, when hovered over by the Spirit, is an abyss of creativity… he cannot believe it. There is no room for belief.” – Thomas Merton

Would you believe we have been here before, in histories real and imagined? Men waging war, beating their chests, cities burning and crumbling under the weight of our ego, the world on the brink because of our unwillingness to stare into the void and truly see what we are afraid to see. These are not new developments within our story, yet the story never repeats, it only rhymes. There are character traits that carry from one person to another, but the way the story plays out always comes with a new twist. And for every zig that comes, we can zag.

For every fire, there is a stream. For every dictator and government, there is a quiet place and a quiet peoples. For every moment in time where hope seems lost, there is the intervention of the sacred, whether we know it or not. While the history of great men, the history of the West, is a history of imperialist tendencies and abject racism that manifests within demagogues such as Donald Trump and Steve Bannon, the history we have of hope speaks of a different outcome.

“And he shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.” – Micah 4:3

There are moments in time that seem dark and dour, moments when we come to a crossroads where the world seems ready to burst at the seams and fall apart. The antithesis of those moments have manifested themselves in hope and radical amazement.  Walter Brueggemann, a leading scholar in Old Testament Studies, writes and speaks of the notion of “prophetic imagination.” That, in the Hebrew prophetic tradition, we have an example of men (and women) who go beyond the realm of philosophical inquiry in an attempt to understand the world and try to hit at the heart of things. A tradition that is in communion with a higher message than that of intellectuals, politicians, or the ego.

No matter what we are told by the men among us and the men who think they rule us body and soul, we have a feeling, a spark within us, that can never be extinguished and works against all we have been told to accept as part of our society. The message of prophetic imagination is not one of men predicting the future, which is what we usually associate the nature of prophecy with in terms of mode and intention. The message of the prophets is one of radical truth, of facing the reality of our situation and accept it so as to understand the true nature of our immediate reality as we have currently shaped it in our image. Then, when we have registered the reality, we hope. We choose hope.

“Hope is the refusal to accept the reading of reality which is the majority opinion; and one does that only at great political and existential risk. On the other hand, hope is subversive, for it limits the grandiose pretension of the present, daring to announce that the present to which we have all made commitments is now called into question.” – Walter Brueggemann

Hope is one way to embody a philosophy and perspective the great rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel coined as “radical amazement.” Radical amazement is the principal attitude toward life that Heschel says should be taken by men of spirit and religion, that we must have a wonder and appreciation for life. We lose that appreciation when we desire for ourselves, become bogged down in our differences and our conflicts instead of focusing on what brings us together and makes each of us unique and important to the whole of the world experience. A lack of wonder welcomes darkness and dourness, times when hope and wonder are needed most. Hope is what gives us the strength to see the world differently, radical amazement and wonder is what occurs when a better vision of the world is realized and lived through the power of hope.

The world is a mess, but keep in mind, being human is utterly messy. Being human is also utterly beautiful. The wicked and the wise live side by side at all times in history; kings and commoners, truth and falsities. Humanity embodies multitudes, contradictions, both dark and the light (Okay there Matt, getting a little too cliched there for me…). Being better, being our best selves, requires an intense amount of work. The perfection of the art of living means to constantly self-examine, to put our own interests aside and sacrifice what is best for the self and do what is best for the world.

Men of power and men of influence have not remembered that lately – but this should not come to us as a surprise. Even so, always try to be surprised, to be grateful. Surprised by our ability to gather and fight for a better world, to feed each other when we are hungry, to help each other when we are down. Embodying hope is exhausting, but necessary in the face of an abyss we may not come back from. We will make mistakes, we will falter, but as long as we have a drive for the good, we can embody the truth of our very essence.

There will always be men who crave power and destruction for the sake of their own ends. However, as long we embody hope that can lead us to awe of the world and the radical amazement needed to appreciate life, as long as we commit ourselves to deeds that make the world a little brighter in the midst of despair, we will ensure love prevails.

“It is not by the rare act of greatness that character is determined, but by everyday actions, by a constant effort to rend our callousness. It is constancy that sanctifies.” – Abraham Joshua Heschel

 

 

 

Deal with Yourself: Or Why MNDFLness is Bad for You

Recently, mindfulness has become the latest self-help craze in the United States, especially as it connects with Buddhist meditation practices. Writers at the New York Times have done a very good job of documenting the phenomenon of mindfulness throughout the past two years. As Virginia Heffernan has noted in her 2015 article on the matter, the word “mindfulness” itself was derived out of a sort of mistranslation of the Pali word sati, a word that more closely translates to “memory of the present” than simply the one word we now refer to as its replacement. As Buddhist practice became more popular throughout the ’60s and ’70s, so did its connections to “being more present,” and the general conceit and concept and well-being, both of which I would say Buddhism provides.

As the Buddhist Dharma came to the West, it essentially ran into capitalism. And certain enterprises and ideas that seek to help us escape the demands of a capitalistic society sure do have a way of becoming ensnared by that same economic structure. As Heffernan notes in the article, which I suggest you peruse quickly, mindfulness and the “well-being” it would lead to became a major industry under the Buddhist teacher John Kabat-Zinn, but I am not writing this to point the finger at any particular individual – the fingers have already been pointed at so many within the Buddhist community and in Buddhist scholarship. However, that’s why I mentioned capitalism – because capitalism makes us all complicit! Hooray!

Further adding to the research and analysis provided by his colleague Heffernan a year before, David Gelles writes in a 2016 New York Times article, mindfulness itself has become its own self-sustaining corporate entity of sorts. We have seen this with the commodification of yoga in the West (please, try and tell me it was not commodified, I will fight you), especially with Lululemon and their yoga-focused products. Because when you’re a yogi, you go to a high-end clothes store to make sure you are prepared to forgo all material comforts in the heart of India to become one with the Brahman. Companies, “meditation teachers,” and DVDs all provide courses to get you on the right track in life. Yet, one development in particular has caught my attention and the attention of many other Buddhists: MDNFL. Other than ridding their name of all vowels to appeal to the Millennial demographic that strives to be semi-illiterate, MNDFL describes itself as a meditation studio that “exists to enable humans to feel good.”

Now, I could continue to tell you more and bring up other issues and questions I have. Like, how does MNDFL have guided mantra practice when the meaning of the words themselves do not carry the historical or symbolic significance they are meant to within a temple or the proper Buddhist sectarian setting? Do any of these “meditation teachers” have the authority to guide Buddhist meditation by being the successor of a Dharma lineage, that is, have they received the utmost authority from Zen masters and Buddhist abbots to teach others the rigorous techniques of meditation. Or, boy, how much money do you want me to throw at you to give me the privilege to sit my ass down on a cushion, something I could do at home for free if I was not always getting so distracted by watching the X-Files on Netflix?

None of those questions matter because the first actual sentence, which I assume is the thesis and motivational statement of the company itself, is inherently wrong. Meditation does not “exist to enable humans to feel good.” Buddha never said to any of his followers that he wanted to make sure they had a place to decompress from their jobs after working at an online retailer start-up all day. Saint Anthony the Great, that most bad-ass of the Desert Fathers, did not go into the Egyptian Desert because he wanted to get a tan. Meditation, contemplation, prayer – these are not practices you start to intensely engage in for the sake of making yourself feel better.

In the words of Brad Warner, Zen priest and punk rocker extraordinaire: “Real wisdom is the ability to understand the incredible extent to which you bullshit yourself every single moment of every day.”

Mindfulness, meditation, yoga, centering prayer, etc., etc. – they are good for people. They really can be, if you believe in them and devote your time and energy to one of those practices. The fact is, being more aware of your surroundings and who you are as a person and being present in the moment are aspects of our being we need to recognize every day. They help to not only center and ground us, but to make sure we can participate in our life and in our conscious experience of the subjective or objective to levels we may consider to be almost 100%. It is better to be an engaged and participating member of life than go through our day-to-day grind in a haze, unaware of the ways we may be harming ourselves and others. This is no way to go through life.

However, this does not mean we can take these religious/spiritual practices and fit them into our framework of commodified consumerism we in the West are so used to engaging with. Spirituality, faith, religiosity – believe it or not, the principles of most major wisdom traditions do not jive very easily with late capitalism. We cannot simply consume the teachings of these religions to create a better state of mind for ourselves in the hope we come out a happier person. Because, in reality, meditation and mindfulness are not practices that are intended to make you think happy thoughts and replace all the negative, nasty feelings we have about ourselves with happy ones.

Not only that, but we cannot and should not tear away all that is essential to these mindfulness and meditation practices within the context of the wisdom traditions they belong to. As I write that sentence though, I know I am already too late, but the point still stands in my mind. Yoga itself uses mantras and positions that are divorced from the gods and worship ceremonies they are identified with in the context of Hindu spiritual practice, but that does not deter people from the practice. I have known a lot of people who have found out more about Hinduism and its teachings because of yoga, but there are still a majority of people who may practice without any knowledge of what the practices they are engaging with are really meant to do.

This goes doubly for Buddhism. Unlike Hinduism, Buddhism ascribes an exalted position to the lotus position of seated meditation. The lotus position was the same way the Buddha meditated when he sat under the Bodhi tree and found enlightenment. Not only that, but the position is ascribed with helping one achieve the state of nirvana, or “extinction,” meaning they may not come back after death after having found enlightenment. However, if you strip meditation of the context and concepts of rebirth, enlightenment, and nirvana, then in what context are you practicing meditation in? To feel good? What if that is not enough?

Meditation is a whirlwind of a mental and bodily exercise that makes us hallucinate, feel intense emotions, and reckon with the demons in our lives to an extent we are not used to dealing with. Saint Anthony the Great battles hordes of demons in the Egyptian waste before he came back a wiser man. Buddha confronted Mara, lord of temptation and personification of death for three days before he reached enlightenment under the Bodhi tree. Jesus pile-drived Satan all Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson-style in the desert after a forty day cage match.

If you want to feel good about yourself and be happy, that is your right as a human being. However, co-opting ancient spiritual practices and tearing away the contexts they are meant to inhabit to make them more palatable to a more modern and supposedly rational crowd does not mean you are stripping the practice of that which is inessential. In fact, you may be taking away the much needed environment and tools needed to make sure your journey into mindfulness will actually pay off in the long-run and make you a better person, not simply a person with a nice feeling in their stomach. Going into a “meditation studio,” you can escape the world and sit on a cushion for a fee every month to think happy thoughts. However, that studio and that nice little cushion may not save you from the thing you are actually running away from every time you might be entering MNDFL: Yourself.

To once again quote the Zen Buddhist teacher Brad Warner: “Zen tears away every false refuge in which you might hide from the truth and forces you to sit naked before what is real.”

Care less about feeling good, and start caring more about being good.

 

 

 

 

Growing into Faith: Taking Responsibility for Truth

If my last article was an exhortation for people to take their time to become more educated about the topic of religion, this next article is the natural outgrowth of learning and growing – to take responsibility and act maturely.

Those were the themes I had in mind as I chose the picture above as the banner for this article. A photo of young Buddhist monks being presented at the temple for their ordination, these young monks will most likely spend their days reading scripture, traveling from monastery to monastery to learn from different teachers, and eventually settle down into one particular community, taking responsibility for the life of their monastic community and overall well-being of their home.

This is how most of us enter our faith tradition, as young children, unaware of the tradition or the teachings we are about to embody for the rest of our lives. This is not necessarily a bad thing; people baptize and initiate their children into various faith/wisdom traditions each and every day with the best of intentions that following the particular teachings of that tradition will help make them a good person. However, initiation into a certain faith can also be the result of an unquestioning adherence to family tradition and societal norms. The latter is not necessarily bad either, it just comes off as lazy.

I can hear what some people may be saying as they read that last paragraph.

“Not everyone has the time to learn as much about religion as you think they should learn.”

“Maybe they like the tradition they entered into, there’s noting wrong with that.”

“Why am I reading this article when I could be doing a hundred other more productive things with my life?”

Well, dear reader, you hit the nail on the head with that last one. As for the first two statements, I do not disagree. I am neither asking people to devote their free time to constantly reading books about religion and culture, nor am I asking people to abandon the faith and traditions they grew up with. Yet, there is a precedent set within the great wisdom traditions themselves, a precedent of introspection and dialogue that should be met as often as possible. The majority of believers do not want to engage in any sort of dialogue with their faith or what they believe. But if you are going to church, temple, or meditation every day without asking the hard questions, well…

Then you may not have any faith at all.

This is a question of profundity as much as it is a question of authenticity. Spirituality lends itself to profound experiences and profound conundrums, but it is whether we face the questions the profundity of the universe puts on us that defines the authenticity of both our beliefs and our being. As I said in the previous article, we need to educate ourselves, and in educating ourselves to have an open mind. Only by having an open mind are we bound to have an experience that is the antithesis of quiescent faith – we start to have a relation with the world. As the Catholic mystic Thomas Merton writes in his posthumous work Love and Living:

“The purpose of education is to show us how to define ourselves authentically and spontaneously in relation to our world – not to impose a prefabricated definition of the world, still less an arbitrary definition of ourselves as individuals. The world is made up of the people who are fully alive in it: that is, of the people who can be themselves in it and can enter into a living and fruitful relationship with each other in it. The world is, therefore, more real in proportion as the people in it are able to be more fully and more humanly alive: that is to say, better able to make a lucid and conscious use of their freedom.”

We could take this as a more theologically fanciful way of saying “the unexamined life is not worth living,” but that is not what Merton is trying to say. Spirituality/Religion/Faith/Shopping at Target is a realm of being and understanding we can only start to truly be involved with when we engage in the dialogue/dialectic it presents to us. Being in dialogue with your spirituality is to hold up a mirror to yourself – to engage with yourself and your own questions is to engage with God.

Therefore, the wiggle room for “God told me to do this,” or “God said stealing that Porsche was okay because that man did not really need it” (he didn’t really need it anyway, no worries, you’re in the clear) becomes nonexistent. As in, there’s no room for that bullshit. The realm of religiosity or spirituality does not afford us the convenience of leaving everything up to a higher power or say he was the reason we did everything in the first place. The primary issue with this way of thinking is that it lends itself to determinism, which, fine, I guess it’s totally not my fault I ate that whole pizza by myself, it was supposed to happen anyway. Secondly, this is the highest mark of a lack of maturity or growth. The practices and precepts people of faith follow are not there so we can rely on Christ, Buddha, Jehovah, or Guru Nanak Dev. They are there to help you become a fully realized, and possible even an awakened, person.

We have a responsibility to ask the difficult questions. We cannot be afraid to evolve and change as people. This fear of understanding just how quickly and abruptly we may change is what usually makes people slink back from engaging with difficult questions in the first place. However, it is fear itself that metastasizes into the traits that faith routinely works against. Fear leads to ignorance, ignorance leads to hate, and hate ultimately leads to suffering. If you want to become a Sith Lord, that’s cool, then I just laid out the path to your ultimate success for you without having to watch the prequels (you are very welcome, no thanks needed). As I said in my last article, we need to have open minds, and that means we must be open to change and open to the unknown. Only when we confront the situations of our life with open hearts are we able to radically respond in new ways and radically renew our relationship with the world.

The best example I can muster is one that the Father of Existentialism, Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) brings up in one of his more famous works, Fear and Trembling. In this work, Kierkegaard uses Abraham, the patriarch of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, as his main character. Usually taken as a model of great faith and fortitude, Kierkegaard gives us an altogether different individual. The Abraham we encounter in Kierkegaard’s writing is one that is constantly plagued by doubt and consternation as to the reason why his new deity has asked him to travel so far from civilization, only to give him a son in his old age so that he may sacrifice him as an offering to the divine.

Abraham follows through with carrying out the task (until he is told he does not have to sacrifice his son, that it was all a test), but all the time he is fearful of what may happen if he does not listen to this god and constantly questions the wisdom and sanity of what he is about to do. In this individual, in this model of the “dark night of faith,” we see a figure who is plagued by doubt and change and an inability to comprehend what he is about to do. But he takes responsibility for his actions and carries them out, wracked with guilt before the change of fortune at the end.

Life, and life lived through faith traditions, is messy. We do not always have the answers we may want or seek, but we must ask the questions necessary for not only our survival, but our growth as a people. Constant questions can drive anyone crazy, and that is not the point of this article, but we must learn to be mature and reasonable people in the midst of opaque and existential phenomena in our interior lives. We cannot pretend the situations and frames of mind we find ourselves in from time to time are enjoyable, or that there will be an invisible force alongside us to always get us out of a jam. The best way to grow is to engage with whatever faith you may hold, because only by communicating with the principles and foundation of our being are we able to possibly find the Truth we may have always been searching for, even if we never knew what we were looking for in the first place. You may be surprised what you find when you learn to shoulder the weight of what our faiths may entail.

“Come, seek, for search is the foundation of fortune: every success depends upon focusing the heart.” – Rumi

Let’s Stop Being Jagoffs: Study a Little More Religion

Disclaimer: This essay is by no means meant to be negative, simply reflective of the reality that I have dealt with over the past five years.

With that said…

The one subject you cannot talk to the majority of people about is religion. Either they do not get it, they do not want to get it, or they don’t give a rat’s ass. I wish I encountered the first and third more often, but the second option is usually the one I encounter the most. There are many subjects people do not want to be educated on, for some reason or another. People don’t want to learn another language because it may be difficult for them, people may not want to learn to cook something new because they are fine with eating meat and potatoes their entire life. Pick a realm of life, and there are bound to be people that are set in their ways, or who would like to spend their time learning other things.

But you would think that people would be more than willing to take five minutes out of their day to learn more about a subject the majority of people believe their eternal salvation or damnation hinges on.

Now, here’s the part of this essay where I have to qualify exactly what I am talking about:

• No, I am not talking about people who hold onto their faith for very personal, or sentimental, reasons.
• I am not talking about grandmas. Grandmas get a free pass in all matters of spirituality. In fact, call your grandma right now. If I was the Pope, I would totally declare it a mortal sin (i.e., a “totally uncool thing to do” for you non-Christians) to not call your grandma.
• I am not talking about fundamentalists and/or evangelicals. In fact, some of them know more about religion than you people because they care a lot. Hence the way they are grouped.

Who am I talking about? I am talking about you, dear reader, the person who has enough time to read this essay, but not enough time to read Seyyed Hossein Nasr’s Islam: Religion, History, Civilization or Karen Armstrong’s Buddha or Reza Aslan’s Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth (you…you should probably be writing these down…no, it’s okay, I’ll wait).

I have a very good example I want to cite: Bill Maher. Maher is a comedian that somehow convinced television producers he had the ability to comment on heavy and complex topics concerning the current state of the world. The latest incarnation of this partnership has been, and continues to be, Real Time with Bill Maher. Now, the reason why I cite Bill Maher (of all possible examples I could use) is because Bill Maher consistently says he stands for “liberal principles.” He says he stands for the best version of America that respects the ideals we were founded upon, or at least you can surmise as much from what Maher believes he stands for. However, time and time again Bill Maher will tell just about anyone that listens to him how much he dislikes Islam.

Like, guys, Bill Maher really does not like Islam, why are you not doing anything about it? As viewed in the video here, Maher will even tell Ben Affleck how much he does not like Islam (and, in return, Ben Affleck does not like Bill Maher, which is refreshing). The person Maher is flanked by in this video is Sam Harris, an atheist thinker who has some of his own problems. Why do I choose Bill Maher out of everyone to use as a prime example? Because he is a public figure that sets himself up as an example of discourse and understanding, but consistently fails to hold himself up to an educated standard. Though, none of this makes Bill Maher a special example. He is not alone. In fact, Bill Maher represents the populace of the United States as a whole, especially when we are still willing to fan the flames of ignorance and hate by rallying behind a candidate that talks about banning the practitioners of Islam and practically make Christianity the state religion (which is…you know…against the law, kind of).

Which brings me to my point: Guys, pick up a book.

I swear, books are fun. They’re like a cool movie for the inside parts of your head.

Learning about religion yourself is the only way you will start to know anything about religion that is worthwhile knowing. The spiritual leaders, the practitioners, and the priests, ministers, imams, rabbis, etc., will not help you. That’s not saying anything about them personally, but religious people are not in the business of making sure you learn everything about your beliefs or the beliefs of other religions. Their main role in life is to give people a nice fuzzy feeling in the middle of their chest one to two hours every week, and then make sure people take that nice fuzzy feeling and hope life does not knock it out of them before Friday comes along. If you want to know how Taoists conceive of the cosmos, or what exactly are the beliefs of the Australian aborigines, or how exactly Christianity turned from a Jewish reform movement into a full-blown syncretic tapestry of Judaic beliefs blended with Roman pagan organization, then you need to pick up a book yourself.

But the minute you pick up a book to learn about religion, the chance that everything you believed in that made you feel safe in the universe and gave you the idea that you have a purpose in some overarching plan in the universe is going to go away very quickly. Studying religion, philosophy, or theology is not the type of journey that will make you feel more secure. In fact, you study religion in order to doubt the status quo and ask the tough questions, to lay out all the options and potentiality before you and see what life may have in store for you. What I am trying to say in this paragraph is that, if you study religion, chances are you are not going to come out the same person as when you started, and you are going to have to learn to be okay with that.

The reason I am saying all of this is because, as someone who has spent almost the last decade of my life learning as much information about religion as possible, it is impossible to communicate what you believe. Or think. Or feel. Because religion is a topic and way of life with many paths and many interpretations that span millennia, and all some people know is the message they hear from their pastor or the books/videos they are told will help “educate” them in a way that will make them a stronger believer. And, in essence, religion is not so much about believing as it is about being. Being is not something that is easily communicated through the veil of culture, class, ideology, tradition, and community. So you may have a harder time communicating to people how you think and feel because you are studying a subject that is “weird” and kind of “uncool.” Which are the reasons we do not have enough people in this world that understand exactly just what religion/spirituality is, and what it aims to do.

If you want to study religion like I did (which was through college), please, have an open mind and study a little bit of everything. If you want to study religion in your own way, still, have an open mind. We don’t need more Bill Mahers in the world. What we need more of is cool bearded philosophers and monks.

More beards is better for everyone.

Hope this rant was helpful. Let me know if you have any questions.

 

A Vision of Ferocity: My Journey through Symbolism with Fudo Myoo

“This Fudo Myo-o, whose name means “Immovable Wisdom King,” is represented with a sword to cut through our ignorance and a rope to bind up our emotions.” – Miyamoto Musashi

Fudo Myoo, the One & Only

Personal journeys with religious symbols can be harrowing.

There is a figure in Japanese history known as Yuten Shonin (1637-1718), or Saint Yuten. Yuten was a Buddhist monk of the Jodo sect who was not considered very intelligent or gifted in any way. He was particularly terrible at learning his sutras and prayers. His teachers were giving up on him, and he was becoming more desperate, eventually praying to the Buddhist Wisdom King of Japanese Shingon Buddhism known as Fudo Myoo (‘Acala’ being his original Sanskrit name). When he fell asleep after praying to Fudo Myoo, he had a dream of the Wisdom King approaching him, wrapped in a cloak of fire and with a severe look on his face.

In most if not all depictions of Fudo Myoo, he is always holding a sword, Kurikara. This sword is known for cutting through ignorance and delusion, purifying those it touches. With a swift flick of his blade, Fudo had shoved the sword down Yuten’s throat, purifying his body and mind with the fires of awakening. When Yuten woke up the next day, his prayer had been answered. He was now a monk with clear mind and direction. In the ensuing years, he would become an expert on the sutras and a master-class exorcist, renowned throughout all of Japan during the Edo Jidai (1603-1868).

I have a deep fondness for Fudo Myoo. Out of all the symbolic deities and representations of Buddhism, Fudo Myoo is my very favorite. His grimace, the flames that surround him, the sword and noose he bears in his hands – he is not your usual image when you envision Buddhism. He is scary, tough, and unforgiving, attitudes at odds with the picture of serenity, peace, and equanimity associated with Buddhism, and Japan, nowadays. Though if you talked to a Buddhist monk or practitioner, they may tell you of a Zen Master or two they have met that fit Fudo Myoo’s personality. He is a symbol the Western mind does not usually associate with Buddhism, nor one that Western minds usually embrace easily. If there are any types of Buddhism the Westerner readily participates in, it is usually a form of Zen or Theravada that is counter to the symbol-soaked world of High Church Christianity and Sunday School illustrated Bibles.

However, appearances are not everything. While Fudo may appear to be a demon at first glance, his mission is far from anything malicious. He is indeed wrathful, but only for the sake of protecting the Buddha Dharma. These figures are known as “Dharmapali,” literally “Dharma defender.” Interestingly enough, he is also the flip side of the Cosmic Buddha Vairocana, who is considered to be the embodiment of the universal nature of emptiness, thus making him the highest-ranking Cosmic Buddha. What this means is that Vairocana and Fudo Myoo are Buddhist representations of the highest divine powers in the cosmology of esoteric Buddhism. If you were to pick a name to equate with the modern concept of the Judeo-Christian God when it comes to Japanese esoteric Buddhism, it would be Vairocana. If you wanted to go a little more Old Testament, then you would look to Fudo Myoo. But the two are never the same (two religions in general rarely ever are). Where the Old Testament God would turn people to pillars of salt or banish them in the desert for 40 years for breaking his rules, Fudo would not cast you there simply because you broke rules – in fact, he may never give a reason at all why he threw you in the desert. But both would be going it for your own good.

Fudo is not a wrathful or spiteful entity, but the embodiment of that aspect of the “I’m doing this for your own good” mentality existent within the Buddhist tradition. He is protector and guide, symbol of wisdom far beyond the reaches of our normal comprehension. Fudo and his counterpart Vairocana represent the inherent oneness of duality – the reflection of the anger and peacefulness, the silence and cacophony that accompany true enlightenment. Before all else, a symbol is a reflection of those deepest truths of mankind and of the forces within his nature that guide him on the right path without his knowing. Fudo is the fiery and grimacing face of what it means to be compassionate and wise in a world that is unforgiving – sometimes, we just need a good kick in the ass. In this regard, Fudo represents a high ideal for the Buddhist practitioner – the passion within the calm, the resolve and fury that drive us to attain peace and concentration. Protector and defender, warrior and immovable obstacle for all those who wish to defile the pure embodiment of Buddha’s teachings.

   Coming to Terms with the Symbolic

There is a Thomas Merton quite from his posthumous work Love and Living I quite like:

“The vital role of the symbol is precisely this: to express and to encourage man’s acceptance of his own center, his own ontological roots is a mystery of being that transcends his individual ego. But when man is reduced to his empirical self and confined within its limits, he is, so to speak, excluded from himself, cut off from his own roots, condemned to spiritual death by thirst and starvation in a wilderness of externals. In this wilderness there can be no living symbols, only the dead symbols of dryness and destruction which bear witness to man’s own inner ruin. But he cannot “see” these symbols, since he is incapable of interior response.”

As Westerners, we live in a society greatly influenced by severe Protestantism. During the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, new Christian denominations railed against what they saw as the pageantry and idol-worship of High Church traditions, encapsulated within Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism. In the process, they made their churches devoid of imagery, preferring a direct relationship with God through plain means instead of using any sort of ritualistic or symbolic aspects of worship as intermediaries of sorts. This is far different from esoteric Buddhism, otherwise dubbed as ‘Vajrayana Buddhism,’ which freely uses imagery, ritual, meditation, dance, and pageantry to relate to their world and better connect to the enlightened aspects of it. One way this is done is by meditating on images of buddhas and bodhisattvas, gods and goddesses, demons and local spirits. These come in the form of serene beings, multi-limbed deities of destruction, or as artistic representations of universal truths, using pictorial language to describe an indescribable experience. These revolve around exercises done to achieve a relationship with the powers these images represent where you are able to identify yourself with, and ultimately come to understand through meditative exercises, the true nature behind these symbols and the nature of the universe.

The East and West are therefore different in certain respects when it comes to how they embrace their religiosity. Eastern spirituality has the possibility to be more colorful and emotional, while Western religion can be more austere and polite but no less evocative. Both of them revolve around images to some extent, but the way both spiritual cultures have embraced their symbols have been decidedly different. The West looks to their symbols as representations of historical and corporeal reality, seeking to ground their beliefs and spirituality in realistic terms so as to be able to understand it in concrete terms. The East has decidedly rejected historical consciousness. The view of intention meaning more than historical accuracy has created a spiritual culture, especially in Buddhism, where it is more important to analyze the message being communicated through scripture and imagery instead of worrying about whether someone actually said the words or not or actually existed.

Because of these cultural differences, we see the embracing of symbols and their power in very different ways. Westerners have slowly but surely lost touch with many of their symbols and figures and what they may represent within a spiritual context because of how we have historically moved away from understanding their context or intention. This is due to no negligence on the part of those who try their very best to communicate these symbols; they simply have been overtaken by secular ones. Probably the most popular medium through which we recognize secular symbols is through the concept of brands. Brands choose symbols that come to represent ideology and even profit margins, the symbol hiding the reality of the operation that has created the symbol. Meanwhile, in a place like Japan, the image of Fudo Myoo and other religious symbols like him may be seen all too often due to his popularity. Hell, he may even exist in a kawaii anime form.

While the role of religion is rather ambiguous and losing sway in Japan, temples and shrines still stand as monuments in the way the churches and temples of the United States do not. Buddhist temples in Japan have withstood for five hundred years or more, while churches only one hundred years old or younger in the United States have already been re-purposed as bars or concert venues. Symbolic reality and the way we approach it has changed drastically, but it remains vital and relevant to the human experience in every new form. The role of symbol is decidedly different depending on what side of the Pacific Ocean you are on, but no matter the geographical location or context, these symbols make all the difference in how we come to terms with understanding ourselves and our world.

Having said all this about the supposed disconnect between the East and West concerning symbols, I must say this: The West is a very scientifically minded society, and spiritual symbols are definitely not of the scientific variety. Not to say religion and science are necessarily in different categories, but a large Buddhist god with blue skin emblazoned in fire may not exactly equate well with a neurological understanding of the brain. Neurology itself has been important in understanding much of the science behind spirituality, but keeping in line with Merton, it is not the scientific connection with ourselves we are looking for, but the symbolic one. If we do not understand the symbols around us, we cannot begin to understand ourselves. The mind does not communicate with us through our subconscious by means of equations and diagrams, but through symbols and events we barely understand at times.

The collective consciousness Carl Jung studied intently always communicated itself through universal means, ways that everybody could understand. Before we had diagrams, equations, 3-D representations, etc., we had paintings and drawings. On the Caves of Lascaux are representations of the natural the way man best interpreted and envisioned it, and it is that connection with the natural our relationship with symbolic meaning brings us back to in the end. The symbol asks us to consider to not forget the bigger picture, that we see the forest for the trees, but also the trees for the forest. Enlightenment is simply not understanding on a macro scale, but also on a micro scale. As Carl Jung said of the religious symbol:

“It is the role of religious symbols to give a meaning to the life of man. The Pueblo Indians believe that they are the sons of Father Sun, and this belief endows their life with a perspective (and a goal) that goes far beyond their limited existence. It gives them ample space for the unfolding of personality and permits them a full life as complete persons. Their plight is infinitely more satisfactory than that of a man in our own civilization who knows that he is (and will remain) nothing more than an underdog with no inner meaning to his life.”

The lofty symbol insofar as it provides grounding, provides meaning. Conscious rationality and external symbols seek to consolidate man’s journey outwards, to ever greater heights. As Merton and Jung understand it, the internal spiritual symbol does the opposite, putting us in tune with what it is that lies within ourselves and our own consciousness.  Merton himself, belonging to one of the more contemplative Catholic monastic orders, the Cistercians, was a man who knew well what it is that is conjured in the mind of men and women when all other distractions are taken away. The monastery, that silent retreat in the hills and forests and deserts of the world, are close to nature, this attuning the mind and soul to an deeper recognition of the real than what may be found among the concrete and ambitions of urbanity. For Merton and others who took up vows of silence, the closest home they may have ever had in their years of service was their own center. But where does this put Fudo Myoo? Fudo IS the center.

Fudo Myoo, more than any other Buddhist symbol during my years of practice, has come to represent the truth of man’s inner nature and the mission of the Buddhist. He is the “eternal and immutable diamond” of the Dharma. Not only that, he represents the fearful and enigmatic recognition of the power of the symbol for the Westerner who embraces Buddhism. The Western practitioner is usually the type of Buddhist who is seeking to escape the more fantastical trappings of traditional spirituality. This was true for me as well. Being a teenager who encountered Buddhism, the stripped-down, take-no-prisoners style of Zen was refreshing after having practiced only Catholicism for so many years.

For the past fifty to sixty years, Buddhism has been at the center of the liberal Protestant Reformation towards the East so many spiritual travelers embraced as the opposite of the rigid, image-rich, monotone religious traditions they had grown up with. As I studied the history behind these trends, the more I came to realize and accept what seems now to be an all-too-evident truth: Americans accept what they like and throw out all the things they don’t want to understand or be a part of their consciousness. Buddhism was not the stripped down, Eastern Protestantism so many hippies and yuppies had been looking for. Buddhism is not some sort of sleek iPad design where there is no reflection of your inner self except some sort of white serene landscape. Buddhism is a traditional religion as well, and nothing screams traditional and uneasy as Fudo Myoo does.

Visions of Fire and Gumdrops Dancing in My Head

Being a Western Buddhist is like being that guy who always attempts a diet. You stay on the diet for the first two to three days, maybe even a week, but you eventually fall off the horse. Such is the Western practitioner’s relationship to meditation, especially of the sitting variety. In between graduate school, working two jobs, and my internship, there is not much in the way of free time for…well, much of anything. The meditation group I have attended for the last five years was not a consistent option for me any longer as I had to work in the evenings when I did not have class. This meant I had to find different ways to engage with Buddhist practice and meditation, so I looked up a few methods. One that caught my eye was mantra yoga. I thought it was interesting and easy to slide into, as I was used to remembering and reciting prayers as part of my Catholic school upbringing. I could recite a few mantras here and there on a bus ride home, counting each individual bead on my prayer bracelets to keep track. “Easy,” I thought, “I can do this anywhere I am!”

So I did. Sometimes it would be om mani padme hum. Other times it would be om ma ra pa cha na dhi. I found one in particular I enjoyed, a mantra connected to the esoteric Buddhist tradition known as Shingon that I had started to study: Om Vairocana hum. As I wrote earlier, Vairocana is a Cosmic Buddha, the Supreme One, presenting the highest ideal. As I chanted this mantra, something strange started to happen – visions of a Buddha clothed in pure light started to fill into m head. These were never in my head before, and they did not represent anything I had seen with my own two eyes before. But I knew who it was – Vairocana. My mantra yoga had slowly seeped into dream yoga. As my dream yoga continued, something else started to happen as well. Vairocana started to slowly, but ever so surely, change into Fudo Myoo.

“What the hell is going on?”

In trying to understand what was going on in my head, I called up a friend of mine who is more knowledgeable about these matters and explained the matter to him. “It sounds like synchronicity, my brother,” he said. “Jung talked about it. You’re delving into some deep stuff.” The guru had led me on the trail of another spiritual journey, as he had always done. I looked into the matter and found information regarding what synchronicity exactly was. I had studied Jung before, reading up on his works that dealt with the collective unconscious and his research on alchemy, but I never thought one of his teachings would actually be a reality in my life. Jung described synchronicity as “temporally coincident occurrences of acausal events.” He put it in better terms when he later also described it as an “acausal connecting principle,” which meant that the fact that I was seeing Fudo Myoo in my dreams had no explanations from my daily life that would suffice. In a way, it was simply happening. There had been no conversion experience, no large upheaval i the way I approached meditation, even with the turn to different methods. There was simply a connection, a connection I had to accept. After practicing Zen Buddhism for six years, I had delved headfirst into a type of Buddhist practice and symbolism that I had never even been aware of  up until there was a blue ferocious deity all up in my face.

The more I delved into the experience I had with Fudo Myoo, the less it seemed like synchronicity and the more it appeared to be what Jung termed “Incoincident.” Incoincident is when you find out that at what first appeared to be coincidence turns out to be connected – “It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backward,” Jung had said.

Awe. Jung said I had a poor memory. How sweet.

I had thought he came out of nowhere, but when you start to chant the name of Fudo’s Cosmic counterpart, Vairocana, then some strange things are bound to happen. But why was it not Vairocana that came to me in these “visions” then? I had not done anything that was special of actually called upon certain particular deities, because I don’t believe the power to call upon deities to invade your membrane exists in the first place. Then I started to dig deeper…and deeper…and deeper…

I had typed “Fudo Myoo Japanese Buddhism” into Google. This is the page that came up.

Turns out there had always been a connection between Fudo and myself, I had just accidentally flipped the switch to ON. What Buddhist minks on Mount Koya intentionally attempt to do some complete doofus in Pittsburgh had accidentally done through years of floundering through Buddhism. Born in 1993, Fudo was considered my patron saint of sorts in the context of Shingon Buddhism. Fudo protects all those born under the sign of the Rooster. That being the case, Fudo had more right to be in my head than I had initially thought – my Chinese zodiac sign gave me a natural predisposition towards the visage and symbol of Fudo Myoo. Coming to those who called upon him, or those he deemed needed him, Fudo is the Buddhist Wisdom King that seeks to protect the world from evil spirits and convert nonbelievers. However, I was neither an evil spirit (at least I don’t think I am), nor was I a nonbeliever, having practiced and studied Buddhism since I was fourteen years old. But, I did just start learning about Shingon Buddhism.

Shingon Buddhism is the only other school of Vajrayana (Thunderbolt Vehicle) Buddhism that exists other than Tibetan Buddhism. Tibetan and Shingon Buddhism have acclimated to their cultural trappings, but have their origin in the Yogacara school of Buddhism from Ancient India. While the practices of each have tended to become acclimated to their cultural surroundings, they both retain the practice of focusing on deities and sacred syllables. These manifest themselves in the manner of the Transformation Technique and Image-Manifesting Technique. The Transformation Technique begins with a practitioner focusing on a sacred syllable, in this instance it would be the sacred syllable of Fudo Myoo. After he focuses on the sacred syllable, he starts to transform it within his mind into an object associated with the deity, in this case it would be Fudo’s sword Kurikara. In this way, the practitioner themselves becomes Kurikara, embodying the nature of the sword to slice through evil and purify the Dharma. After the characteristics of Kurikara have been taken on by the practitioner, they then move on to visualizing Fudo himself. In visualizing Fudo Myoo, they learn to associate themselves with and gradually embody Fudo as well, merging themselves with the characteristics of the deity.

The Image-Manifesting Technique is itself a little more straightforward but more difficult to pull off. In this exercise, you subsume the body of the deity into your own. Imagine someone shrinking Fudo down to bite size and then eating him. After you have brought the deity into your own body, you are to imagine the deity taking your boy over, with the process happening in reverse, with the deity taking your body in his/her/it’s own. After you have gone through these two steps, they then merge – you are the deity and the deity is you. These are two different methods that are not supposed to make a human realize any sort of god-like powers, but to make the person more familiar with his or her own buddhahood, creating a conscious understanding of his or her own nature that leaves them more enlightened than they were before. Excluding any claims to enlightenment, I realized that I had fumbled my way into these two processes.

Utilizing visualization and chanting techniques as a way to supplement sitting practice, as well as using them in earlier instances of meditative practice throughout the years, probably helped lead to the moment where I started to envision Fudo Myoo. Fudo also being connected to me through my zodiac sign was only one of many other factors that may have brought the Wisdom King to the forefront of my mind. Focusing on sacred syllables and chants, which then turned into the bodies of Vairocana and Fudo perfectly fit the bill of the Transformation Technique, just not as it is usually achieved in the structured environment of the Shingon Buddhist Monastery. My own experiences have also made me realize how close the Transformation Technique is to the Image-Manifesting Technique, as the two easily bleed into each other if you stay conscious of the symbols your mentality has become accustomed to through practice. As the images of Fudo were always across from me in my mind, as the deity and practitioner usually face each other in the diagrams detailing the Image-Manifesting Technique, the practice of subsuming the other starts from there. This technique happens naturally through mindfulness and meditative practices, as long as your focus stays on the symbol that you have focused on or has revealed itself to you. Every time Fudo comes into my mind now, it is not simply Fudo himself that enters my mind, we are one and the same. Both covered in flames, both with blue skin, both carrying Kurikara. Words cannot express how awesome this feels!

If this sounds weird to you, do not doubt how weird it must have been for myself as someone who practices Buddhism but was never attracted to these esoteric practices. They always seemed far-fetched and rather antiquated techniques, ones that had their origin in what I believed to be outmoded forms of spiritual practice. I had been running away from symbols and their meaning, thinking they had no connection to my own experience and spirituality as I engaged with it from day to day. As with Jung, I came to see and experience symbols within the chambers of my own mind. As I engaged with these techniques more and more, I started to see Fudo as an expression of my own experience and consciousness, with Jung’s words once again ringing in my ears:

“…[this] light was my consciousness, the only light that I have. My own understanding is the sole treasure I possess, and the greatest.”

Fudo Myoo was my consciousness expressing itself and making itself known through symbols that I could come to understand and accept more than it if it was a Hindu or Jewish symbol. Yet, I still had to learn how to interpret and come to know what message my consciousness was trying to communicate through the figure of Fudo Myoo.

Symbols as Messengers

“Lay practice is not like a monk’s job – it is how to help other people. First your family, then your friends, then your country and all beings: helping them is your obligation.” – Seung Sahn

As I stated earlier in this essay, Fudo is considered a Dharmapali, a defender of the Dharma and making sure it stays pure through the ages. Fudo comes off as ferocious to keep the evil-hearted at bay and strike fear in them for not following Buddhist teachings. As Fudo Myoo is described here:

“Fudo Myoo has a scary appearance to be able to frighten people into accepting…salvation…he converts anger into compassion and cuts the ties of negative feelings and demons to liberate us from suffering through self-control. He…battles evil with his immovable faith and his compassion.” 

Fudo represents the tenacity and passionate purity of the Dharma expressed through Buddhism as it is practiced by those who follow the path laid out by the Buddha himself. The path of the Dharma is not always peaceful and serene, just like everyone else, Buddhists can be angry and frustrated. But it is the duty of the Buddhist to use these feelings and transform them. Especially of the lay practitioner of Buddhism, of which I am one. We need to use all the various feelings that well up in us any given day and transform them into bodhicitta – the motivation for enlightenment and for all beings, brought about by great compassion we have for all beings. All the anger and hate the circumstances of our lives outside a monastery may well up within our being have to be tempered and transformed into mahakaruna – great compassion. Once we are able to make mahakaruna the center of our practice, of our discipline, of our daily action, we need to use this to bring the message of the Dharma to the world, a message that is supposed to bring peace and equanimity to all sentient beings. Just as Fudo Myoo did for Yuten he does for all those who he is a symbol of Buddhism for – he purifies the negativity within us so we can use it for goodness and the benefit of our fellow men. If anything, my mind was able to use Fudo as a symbol of what the purpose of my lay practice was supposed to be, and how the life a lay practitioner leads is one where he defends and propagates the Dharma through his or her actions in a world reticent to accept the teachings of the Buddha and let go of its ego-fueled illusion.

Fudo Myoo’s appearance also made me realize the importance of symbols and that running away from them in my life was futile. My brain, while eventually being able to comprehend and extrapolate upon abstract concepts, was never quite good at approaching the world through a logical and scientific lens. The religious, spiritual, and philosophical was always an easier way to approach the heavier ideas about life before I encountered them through the lens of science or math. Whether my mind veered one way or another, the symbols through which the abstractions of the universe are communicated would always be a constant. The idea of Fudo Myoo and what he represents being any less real than algebraic and geometric diagrams and symbols was false, a conclusion my post-modern mentality had already made about the older ways of the world. Just because a symbol seems less scientific or understandable makes it no less real and efficacious – in fact, if we have never encountered such a symbol, it may just give us the jolt we need. Symbols bring us back to the roots of a living, breathing tradition, the fruits of the human capacity to use inexplicable means to understand the world.

Symbols are a vital part of not only experimentation and communication with our own consciousness, but of grounding us in our experience of the world. We may spend days where we are grateful and selfless and others where we are selfish and angry, clouded by the needs and desires of our own ego-self. The symbols of our world can be archetypal, or as stated earlier, historical. They can lift us up out of the darkness of ego-self and make us realize the trials and tribulations of our own lives have been shared by others who have come before us. While we may not be monks or saints or great leaders of any sort, connecting with these symbols help us realize our capacity for greatness, to stand for truth and love in a world that desperately needs a lot of it. We can be the ones to give it to the world. Whether the symbol is an archetypal and metaphorical expression of certain aspects of our universe and our consciousness like Vairocana and Fudo Myoo, or an expression of real people, such as the saints or inspirational figures, they connect us with a fundamental aspect of life – ourselves and, in turn, each other.

 

 

Notes From The Classroom: Teaching Hinduism

“The moment I have realized God sitting in the temple of every human body, the moment I stand in reverence before every human being and see God in him – that moment I am free from bondage, everything that binds vanishes, and I am free.” – Swami Vivekananda

After a week of straight classes in Homestead, PA, I returned to the Social Studies classroom at Arsenal Middle School in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Lawrenceville on January 8th. I had been preoccupied with my own grad classes, so I did not know what to expect when I re-entered the classroom. I knew we were learning about Ancient India, but with how the last three units went (Prehistory, Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt), I assumed we would still be studying geography or agriculture. When my mentor teacher told me he had already introduced Hinduism to the students, I was surprised. I was also thrilled, because having majored in Religious Studies, Hinduism was something I could have fun with.

“My specialty,” I thought.

The Difficulty

India is a tough nut to crack in terms of teaching history. Not because the history is hard to figure out or learn, but because there is so much of it! The Indians developed very early on. There is evidence of plumbing technology in Mohenjo-Daro to rival Rome centuries before that western empire even existed. The Ancient Indians also figured out the Earth was round thousands of years before Europeans would stop thinking of it being flat by simply looking at the shadow of the Earth on the moon during an eclipse (though the concept of a Flat Earth was itself debunked in Europe long before Columbus sailed to America in 1492). Among these achievements, you have the various different empires, their rulers, those who conquered them, and so on and so forth until you get yourself caught up in a complicated cultural menagerie that is difficult to explain. Hinduism is not the least of those complicated subjects, one part of that being due to its continued relevance in the human psyche.

Unlike other religions that are taught in World History, Hinduism is not a dead religion. Sure, there may be those neo-pagan cults here and there that worship Ra or Baal, but for the most part, Ancient Egyptian and Ancient Mesopotamian religions do not hold the same sort of cultural capital they used to. This is exactly the opposite. As the centuries and then millennia have passed, Hinduism has only continued to excite the imagination of Indians everywhere more and more. From polytheism, to Upanishadic monotheism, to Bhagavan mystical theism, Hinduism and its belief structure has taken many forms over the lifetime of the religion, and just as no two Catholics practice their religion the same, there are definitely no two Hindus that practice their religion the same either.

Any teacher of comparative religion or theology would it difficult to explain Hinduism to adults let alone to middle school students. Here is a question to test my statement: What is the difference between brahmin, brahman, and brahma?

Answers:

brahmin – Vedic Hindu Priest

Brahman – The monotheistic understanding of God in Hinduism; the “Oversoul”

Brahma – The Creator god with three heads. Not predominantly worshiped in modern Hinduism

Those are the answers, but chances are there’s still plenty more about those words that need to be unpacked before you even start to understand what the difference exactly is between Brahma and Brahman, what the word “Vedic” means, and so on. Once again, like the history of India, the concepts and ideas of Hinduism are quite a lot to unpack as well. There are straightforward answers to many questions, but then there are those aspects of any religion that only become more nuanced and opaque as you delve deeper into them.

The Gateway 

Then how does one make Hinduism understandable to students in a middle school setting? It’s not like you can broach the topic of philosophy or theology when it comes to Hinduism with the students, or talk about the intricacies of yoga or the like. However, there’s a basis for everything, and Hinduism finds its basis in it many gods.

The answer to the question “How many Hindu gods are there?” is usually 300 million. Hinduism is not so much a syncretic (the combination of different schools of thought ) religion so much as it is a religion of synthesis. The disparate gods and goddesses of Indo-Aryan, Tamil, and various other cultures that existed in the Indian subcontinent have come together in one single religion, if you even want to call Hinduism a religion. Different gods from vastly different villages became placeholders for Vishnu or Indra, and the combination of different goddesses would culminate in deities such as Devi, the Mother Goddess of all. Surya, the Hindu sun god, who drove his chariot across the sky bringing the sun with him, is said to have even inspired the Roman sun god Sol Invictus, with the similarities in action and function being unlike other sun gods from Hellenistic areas. These different gods and goddesses bring flavor and create a gateway to teaching a religion and culture that otherwise may be alien. Unlike Christianity with its abstract idea of a Triune God, or the Buddhist concept of nirvana, the Hindu pantheon brings color and vivacity unlike other religions I have studied.

Kali, the goddess of death and warfare. Ganesha, the god of wisdom with the head of an elephant. Hanuman, the god of the apes and attendant to Rama, the avatar of Vishnu. Shiva Nataraja, the destroyer-creator who keeps the balance of the universe through acts of spiritual annihilation and rebirth. With images both serene and terrifying, Hinduism evokes the imagination through idols and artwork students do not see in their usual environments. To them, it’s a whole different way of approaching and envisioning religion and divinity. Whether you are in a public or private school, the students have reactions and connections to these representations you may be hard pressed to find when talking about other religions. Students do not often identify with ancient Egyptian or Roman gods. The only corollary I could possibly think of the fascination some students have with Greek mythology.

Greek gods are chaotic and narcissistic, representatives of an uncaring universe,  while Hindu deities themselves are essentially the universe. Whereas Greek gods do not play by the rules, Hindu gods enforce the rules by bending them. You can make this clear to the students through the plethora of fantastic stories that exist about Hinduism. Krishna, the cowherd who easily bested the strongest men as a child and whose mother saw the entirety of the universe when he opened his mouth. Or Rama, who broke the divine bow and defeated all the mortal men to win the hand of his wife-to-be, Sita. The Hindu gods do not interfere in the affairs of the world so much as they are a part of the order of the world. Whereas other gods are far off and living in places such as Mt. Olympus or the Underworld, the Hindu gods are a living part of the universe they helped create.

In this way, the Hindu gods are instantly more relatable for students and teachers alike. We can see the universal story of individuals, whether heroes or villains, play out in these ancient stories the way they may play out in their modern ones, just with different heroes in such figures as Batman or The Flash. The Hindu gods are a good way to explain difficult concepts and ideas we find throughout Indian history and culture, but also provide something that goes one step further – a living, breathing, and imaginative tradition of how humans have come to understand the universe and our place in it. Hindu gods and goddesses are continuing to help future generations become excited and curious about their world in their infinite and eternal capacity as teachers to us all.

Shobogenzo & Zenki: Dogen on Life and Death

Now that we have introduced our audience to the basics of what Zen may entail for the practitioner, we will dive right into one of the greatest minds Japanese Buddhism has to offer – Dogen Zenji (1200-1253). While Buddhist philosophy is dense, hopefully this exposure to Dogen and commentary on a single chapter of his magnum opus, Shobogenzo, will encourage those who read this not to be deterred if they ever encounter Buddhist philosophy in the future.

The Master

Dogen Zenji is the founder of the Japanese Soto school of Zen Buddhism, and one of the greatest philosophical minds to come out of Japan and the Zen tradition. Rehabilitating the Japanese Zen tradition after it was subsumed by the larger and more influential Tendai school of thought, Dogen traveled all the way to China to relearn Zen as it was practiced before being diluted by more esoteric schools of thought. China is the place where Dogen believed he would find Zen in its purest form.

From there, the rest tends to become history as they say. He returned to Japan, and immediately found push back from the Tendai religious authorities in the capital. In response, Dogen relocated his Soto school to Fukui Prefecture, where he established his first temple, Eihei-ji (Eternal Peace), then known as Sanshoho Daibutsuji (a possible reference to the four Buddhist guardians who used to protect the temple). At this place of residence he trained monks and wrote down the rules and philosophy for his school in the Eihei Koroku and Shobogenzo. Of these two texts, the latter has had the more definitive impact on Japanese and Western Zen.

The difficult part about explaining the Shobogenzo is that the Shobogenzo is difficult to explain in the first place. An altogether comprehensive document, the Shobogenzo is a cumulative and exhaustive synthesis of the ideas and teachings of a single Zen master over a lifetime of arduous work and introspection. On one level, it is simply another clandestine philosophical document in a long line of great Mahayana (“Great Vehicle”) Buddhist philosophy hearkening back to the Zen roots of Yogacara and Madhyamika thought.  On another level, the Shobogenzo is to Japanese and Buddhist philosophy what Hegel’s philosophy of phenomenology was to Existentialism and the Berlin school of thought – both redefining and definitive in many aspects.

Dogen was able to explain in the Shobogenzo what some Zen Masters had been teaching wordlessly to their students for centuries. As a document, it continues to be an expression of concepts and views that may have otherwise been lost over the eight hundred years that have passed since Dogen wrote it during the duration of his brief time in this world. Just as Hakuin, Ryokan, Kukai, and Ikkyu sought to recapture the spirit of Buddhism in Japan through their works, so Dogen sought to solidify the spirit of Zen he had found  in China for generations to come. And the funny part of this is that Dogen’s insight into the predicament that would befall later generations actually had some truth to it. High Buddhist Philosophy in Dogen’s own Soto school would fall to the wayside. When his work was found again in the nineteenth century, it brought philosophical thought back to the forefront of modern Japanese Zen.

The Shobogenzo was a much more esoteric text than it is today. Written in the classical Japanese language and calligraphy of the Kamakura Jidai (1185-1333), most Zen monks of the Soto school forgot how to read the text altogether. This issue was only compounded by Soto Zen’s turn to the more mystical Buddhist philosophy of one of Dogen’s successors, Keizan Jokin (1268-1325). Due to these and other internal issues, the text was lost until the nineteenth century, when Japanese scholars and Orientalists rediscovered the text and translated it into modern Japanese and then into other various languages. The rediscovery of the Shobogenzo led to a burgeoning interest in Dogen’s Soto philosophy among Japanese Buddhists and academics and eventually Western practitioners as well, though it would take them a while to get to a point of familiarity with Zen to even broach the Shobogenzo.

Even after all this talk about the Shobogenzo, it’s historical origins and implications, you probably are left wondering about it. If this text is so important to philosophy and Buddhist thought, then, as a possible philosophy major or Buddhist who is reading this article, why have you never heard of it? There are two immediate answers to that:

1. Western philosophy has had a tendency to focus on analytic philosophy for the last three decades, even ignoring their own traditions found within Continental philosophy. This alone is damaging enough to Western philosophy and its survival within the popular mindset.
2. Western Buddhism does not tend to hit upon the larger philosophical topics and authors of the religion, such as that of shunyata (emptiness) and Nagarjuna. This is due to Western Buddhism’s inordinate attention on mindfulness and self-help. In my opinion, this has cost Western Buddhism the respect of those interested in philosophy and has brought about a great deal of reliance on ceremonialism, clericalism, and even worse, pseudo-buddhism. Meditation is the root of Buddhist practice and is an important part of the philosophy of the Buddha himself, but familiarity with Buddhist thought has to be ingrained in the Western community if it seeks to continue for generations to come.

As a person who grew up Catholic, many people find it difficult to ultimately leave behind the ideas and ideals of Catholicism because of the ingrained philosophical tradition that exists within that religion. Just as Catholics become familiar with their own philosophy, Buddhists need to know their own traditions and ideas if they are to pass on a living, breathing tradition that continues to edify and enervate the Western mind. It is for this sake that I am starting this series of commentaries on the Shobogenzo. Others have come before (shout-out to Brad Warner), but the number is few and there need to be those who continue the tradition of engaging with these texts so as to transmit the message to the next generation. Zen may be a tradition of wordless transmission, but it is through the medium of word that man continues to engage with his world. So, for the sake of engaging with the world and engaging with the Shobogenzo, the first of hopefully many “Zen Millenial Shobogenzo Commentaries” is underway.

Dogen’s Shobogenzo: Zenki Commentary

First off, I am by no means an expert on the Shobogenzo. I have not dedicated my “entire life” to studying it because I haven’t lived much of life yet and there are many more things I want to do other than read the works of one, singular person. I write as a spiritual practitioner and everyday person writing for spiritual practitioners and everyday people. My commentary and essays are informed by personal experiences and thoughts and insights I have meditated on.

In the Zenki, there is a passage we can isolate to get to the heart of what Dogen is attempting to tell us:

“The Great Path of the Buddhas, in its consummation, is passage to freedom, is actualization. That passage to freedom, in one sense, is that life passes through life to freedom, and death too passes through death to freedom. Therefore, there is leaving life and death, there is entering life and death; both are the Great Path of consummation. There is abandoning life and death, there is crossing over life and death; both are the Great Path of consummation.

Actualization is life, life is actualization. When that actualization is taking place, it is without exception the complete actualization of life, it is the complete actualization of death. This pivotal working can cause life and cause death. At the precise moment of the actualization of this working, it is not necessarily great, not necessarily small, not all-pervasive, not limited, not extensive, not brief.

The present life is in this working, this working is in the present life. Life is not coming, not going, not present, not becoming. Nevertheless, life is the manifestation of the whole works, death is the manifestation of the whole works. Know that among the infinite things in oneself, there is life and there is death. One should calmly think: is this present life, along with the myriad things concomitant with life, together with life or not? There is nothing at all, not so much as one time or one phenomenon, that is not together with life. Even be it a single thing, a single mind, none is not together with life.”

What Dogen is proposing is nothing if not revolutionary in a way: life does not happen without something to do the living.

1. Life & Death

What are the implications of this view?

Was there not life when the Big Bang occurred? Did not the smallest molecules an single-celled organisms live?

Were not the dinosaurs alive in a more ferocious manner than we could ever fathom?

What is it that makes our experience and relation to life any more pronounced and extraordinary than for those creatures who came before us?

The answer to these questions is that, yes, beings and creatures other than humans have lived and will continue to live, but it is our conscious act of living that gives life that quality of consciousness in the first place. Our actions and being are a part of what defines the use and nature of time and space. Our mere existing is actualized buddhahood, because to awake ourselves to a sense of being, to a sense of “The Now,” is to be fully immersed in all the threads of action and intent that have brought us to this very moment. This leads into one of Dogen’s more radical conceptualizations: being-time.

There is a lot that goes into the concept of being-time, but for now, let us interpret it as the fact that there is no time or moment without something there experiencing the time or moment. If it was not for the quality of something being in the first place, there would be no sense of time that we could hold onto in the way we may experience it every day. Hence, “actualization is life, life is actualization.” Only in the presence of life , and death, can time and moment take on form and action.

Which brings me to an earlier part in the passage:

“…life passes through life to freedom, and death too passes through death to freedom. Therefore, there is leaving life and death, there is entering life and death…”

As I pointed out in my earlier essay, there is a way of looking at Zen as “the great work of life and death.” These words and what they mean to us – life and death – carry a lot of weight within Buddhist doctrine. In looking at this aspect of Dogen’s Zenki, we may want to pay mind to the Mahayana Buddhist philosophy spelled out in the brief Heart Sutra:

“All things are empty:
Nothing is born, nothing dies,
nothing is pure, nothing is stained,
nothing increases and nothing decreases.”

Pay close attention to the second line of this passage from the Heart Sutra. “Nothing is born, nothing dies” – surely this must be a mistake. We see things come into this world of existence and depart from it all the time. What do Buddhists mean when they say they believe nothing is born and nothing dies? Life cannot be non-life, and death cannot be non-death. Out of all the assurances we have in this world, it is that we come into it alone and we leave this world alone. However, ask yourself – what is it that perishes? Do you perish? Does the Jeffery, or Miranda, or Gerald that people knew, is that what perishes?

Or does this concept we have of a static, unchanging self at the center of constantly changing phenomena have a flaw in it somewhere?

When Dogen says “life passes through life to freedom” and “death passes through death to freedom,” these are not simple statements admonishing us to live a good life or to die like a hero. Instead, it asks us to go a step further and realize the thin boundary between what we view as definite states of existence and non-existence may be fuzzier than we had imagined before. In fact, the boundary we thought existed between these two states may not exist in the way we imagine it at all. When we live, we have to contrast it with the extreme opposite that we think of, and that is death. However, death itself is simply a consequence of being alive, and guess what, being both lifeless and deathless was the antecedent to our lives as we currently live them. What Dogen, and Buddhist philosophy in general, is trying to make us see is that the labels we put on ephemeral states do not make the states themselves any more lasting or concrete. They are simply one among many types of states of being in this universe that come and go. To be free, we must live a life not beholden to the concept of life, just as we should not die beholden to the concept of death. While Zen strips our consciousness down to the basics – which life and death are – it also makes us go one step further. To peer over the cliff into the vast expanse below to glimpse what we were too afraid to look at before. Zen makes us look at what may lie beyond life and death. Just as it says at the end of the Heart Sutra:

“Gone,
gone,
gone over,
gone fully over.
Awakened!
So be it!”

2. “The Whole Works” 

The word Zenki itself is a Japanese term meaning “the whole works.” In this sense, talking about life and death for Dogen is not a morbid subject, but a discussion of all that Buddhist practice encompasses and reveals through the quieting of the mind and working through the illusion we have set up for ourselves. When we talk about the whole works, we want to refer to a passage from earlier:

“The present life is in this working, this working is in the present life. Life is not coming, not going, not present, not becoming. Nevertheless, life is the manifestation of the whole works, death is the manifestation of the whole works. Know that among the infinite things in oneself, there is life and there is death.”

To build on it, here are two other sections from later in Zenki:

“…the principle of in life the whole works appears has nothing to do with beginning and end; though it is the whole earth and all space, not only does it not block the appearance of the whole works in life, it doesn’t block the appearance of the whole works in death either. When the whole works appears in death, though it is the whole earth and all space, not only does it not block the appearance of the whole works in death, it doesn’t block the appearance of the whole works in life either. For this reason, life doesn’t obstruct death, death doesn’t obstruct life.”

“In the manifestation of the whole works these is life and there is death.”

When we look at these passages as a whole, not only do you the reader now have a practically complete picture of Zenki in Dogen’s Shoogenzo, but you have access to a critical core tenet of a Buddhist understanding of the world: interdependence. Interdependence is a nifty way of saying that all things are united, but instead of simply being united, they are formed because of the interaction of these forces in the world, and contain a bit of each other as well. If that sounds Taoist to you, well then, congratulations, because Taoism is in Zen’s DNA from it’s days as Ch’an in China. Just as there is yang in yin, and vice versa, in the Tao, each thing in the universe contains its opposite.

This may seem odd to us:

“Does peace contain war?”

“Does a dog have a part of a cat?”

“Does vanilla ice cream have a part of chocolate ice cream in it?”

Dogen is not making this point by accident. The issue may have been just as difficult for his students to grasp eight hundred years ago as it is for us today. When he points out that life does not obstruct death, death does not obstruct life, and that the whole works exists in both, he is showing that interdependence is not a viewpoint that settles for simplistic notions of one thing literally being within another. What interdependence makes us realize is that we are in a complicated relationship with our surroundings. Just as a mother and father take care of the child, so do the sun, rain, trees, and ground take care of us by providing us nourishment and new life. The crux of interdependence is all things are intimately connected. All things are in relation to another. If this is true, where do I begin and the other thing/being end?

In answering this question, we see interdependence naturally seeps into the philosophy of shunyata, or emptiness. Emptiness, in the Buddhist sense, has a lot in common with the Buddha’s conceptual model of anatman (non-self). Interdependence and emptiness, as Buddhism largely does, puts aside the notion of self. This “self” we believe in is a construct of our opinions, views, knowledge, and more. The life we are currently living is predicated on the notion that there is some thing that is actually there to experience itself, and the world around it, this whole time. If we have the courage to let go of this sense of self, this “ego-I,” then we penetrate into a deeper truth – the stuff behind the self. The mishmash of threads and circumstances that have brought us to this particular body, in this particular time, in this particular place, on this particular day. Once we are privy to these aspects of self, of what has come together to make this self, we see these particularities and pick them apart, thread by thread. When the threads that made you up have unraveled, what is left of what is it that we are? For many, this is where Zen practice starts.

However, Dogen is also attempting to say something else through his Zenki chapter as well. That is, while the idea of self is illusory and ill-advised, being itself is something that is actually there. While there is no self that may be there, in the end, we continue to be. All the people we have been and all the people we have met; all the situations and events of our life; all the books we have read and experience we have gained – all of these things are caught up in one another. There is no separation between any of it. While our idea of who we are and how we continue to live and die may be revolutionized, we continue to be and never stop being. Everything that has ever been and ever will be – that is contained in us. It is contained in the universe. You are the universe. Dogen is asking you: How does it feel to be the universe, to be the whole works?

Well, go on – how does it feel?

The Shobogenzo translation that was used for this essay was from Thomas Cleary’s book, “Shobogenzo: Zen Essays by Dogen (1986)”