Someone
looking at this title might see it and say, “Oh terrific,
Bodhidharma, Huineng, and (fill in blank with the name of whomever
the Great Teacher in your lineage is). But that's not the focus of this blog or Dharma talk.
The
first “Great” of Zen is “Great Faith”. There are a lot of Zen
“purists” that will say, “It's only about seeing your True
Nature. That's it. Period. End of story.” Are they parroting the
words of Bodhidharma or another Great Teacher who has said the same
thing, or have they actually realized their Buddhahood? One thing
that I have heard from the “purists” is that there is
unequivocally no “Faith” in Zen, or in Buddhism in general. No
“god,” no “faith” might succinctly sum up the point. This
simple statement may have originated in whatever it was that led to
Buddhist practice in general, and specifically to Zen. Rebelliousness
isn't necessarily detrimental to practice, and in fact can be
extremely useful, but even rebellion must be applied as skillfully as
any other element of practice.
If the
rejection is the blanket rejection of all “religiosity,” it makes
me wonder what the depth of their practice is, maybe who their
teacher is, and what their objective is in Zen practice. Rightly so,
they may come back with, “There is no goal in practicing Zen!”
Fair enough...maybe. Is this rather definitive statement the result
of reading, or realization? Are they secularists in Zen clothing? Is
Zen practice self-identified as “cool?”
My own
road to the Path isn't entirely unlike this. The religion in which I
was raised was unsatisfactory, and I started reading about numerous
other “spiritual” practices. When Buddhist collections showed up
on the radar screen, it was an amalgam—as much Buddha as
Bodhidharma, as much Milarepa as Mu.
What I found was that the writings that broadly fell into the
category of “Zen” were the ones that resonated with me, so that's
the direction I went. If I were going to join a Zen sangha, I was
willing to do whatever the Zen sangha did, in an odd twist of “When
in Rome.” My practice literally started as an act of faith. What I
was doing wasn't working, and I believed this Zen thing might. Then I
had faith in that Zen would. I went through my phase of sitting
zazen, as I was with a
Soto group at the time, and we did the chants in English and
Japanese, I heard words like mantra and dharani, we dedicated merit,
the whole gamut of forms that constitute practice. And at the time,
it was all real. All
the ritual must have been for some purpose, although I had no clue
what that was. But everything was directly associated with name &
form, and it took a while to shake that off.
Then,
as I suspect we all might, I went through the “thinking phase,”
where everything was an exercise in intellect. “Form was emptiness,
and Emptiness was form,” but only intellectually. It said it in the
Heart Sutra, so I said it. This still has its allure, and find myself
in it again more than I'd like to admit. Intellect as part of
skillful means, fine. Intellect as a means to boost my ego, to prove
I'm the smartest guy in the room, and other such “I”-oriented
results, no so skillful.
Then
came the “attached to emptiness” phase. I told myself that if I
were ever to give a Dharma talk, the first thing I'd do is knock the
statue of the Buddha off the altar, and hope that it broke into
84,000 pieces. We'd see how many people were still attached to their
superstitions, we'd see who was attached to “form.” Fortunately I
moved on from that idea long before ever giving a talk. In this phase
is where anything like “faith” was looked on with disdain, and
anyone who said it was looked on with pity.
At
some point, the harshest edges of attachment to emptiness wore off,
if only because I saw how unattractive a trait it was when I saw it
in other people, mostly in the form of Zenternet trolls.
Now, on
the one hand, we can say that there is absolutely nothing
upon which we can hang our hats in Zen practice. The Diamond Sutra
put it as, “All dharmas are no-dharmas, thus are they called
'dharmas'.” Think you have something to stand on, the Buddha swipes
it away even before your feet land. The Heart Sutra even dismantles
the Four Noble Truths and Eightfold Path: “...No suffering, no
origination, no stopping and no path...” So how could there be such
a thing as “faith,” and what possible purpose could it serve?
And
yet, The “Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment” speaks of
“faith-understanding” as the entry gate to practice. Asvagosa is
the purported author of “Awakening the Faith in Mahayana.” Third
Zen Patriarch Sengcan's Xinxin Ming is often translated as
“Faith-Mind Transcription.” Faith is all over Dogen's writings.
So “faith” is mentioned any number of times, and is still scoffed
at by some. For a practice that is rooted in the “here&now,”
there seems to be little room for faith. But it's there, even if we
don't call it faith, even if we deny that it's even there. We have
faith in the Buddha, faith in the Dharma, faith in the Sangha. But,
faith, as such, really needs no object in Zen . Ultimately, what we
have faith in is our own Buddha-Nature, and that it is possible for
us to realize it, so we have faith in ourselves.
This
is tempered by the second “Great” of Zen, “Great Doubt.” The
saying is, “Great Doubt, Great Awakening; small doubt, small
awakening.” With both Great Faith & Great Doubt, personal views
are dropped. With Great Doubt, the personal view (conceptual thought)
is to be destroyed by a kong-an. A huatou only leads to one
direction, to Great Doubt. It's the “no-this” of the pairs in the Diamond Sutra.
“If this is not-this, and only provisionally called this, that
means there really is no 'this,' then what is left?” Good question.
This is “Great Doubt,” when the rug everything we think we have
to stand on is pulled out right from under us. It need not be a
fearful doubt, just an issue of impermanence, maybe of perceptions
being empty. My views will change over time. My faith now is not the
same as when I started to practice. I can even have Great Doubt in my
Great Faith. Neither will take it personally.
In
the talk, I mentioned walking in the dark. My faith is that if I take
a step, there's going to be something for it to land on when it comes
down. My doubt is typified by my holding onto a chair or some other
object for support, because the faith is tempered by, “not always
so.” Taking the step anyway is where the third Great of Zen comes
in:
Great
Courage. In simple terms, it's what gets me to put my foot down even
if I can't see what, if anything, it's going to land on. When we do
anything that gets past our fear, anything that gets past our comfort
zone, that's Great Courage. You can put it in the same mix with
perseverance, diligence, effort, determination, whatever else may
work for you. In the Sutras, they are called “Fearless
Bodhisattvas,” not Bodhisattvas of convenience. As ZM Seung Sahn
would put it, “Practice, practice, practice for 10,000 years,
become enlightened, and save all beings.” And we do it, even though
we “know” that all Bodhisattvas are no-Bodhisattvas, all beings
are no-beings, and there is no saving to be done. If that isn't a
nice concise explanation of the Three Greats of Zen, I'm not sure
what is.
Click on the link for the Dharma talk.
