Yes, But...

Just when you think you've finally wrapped around one of the teachings of the Great Way, you hear, "Yes, but..." And then you think you have an idea of what "Yes, but..." means, and then it's followed by another, "Yes, but..." And yet, for some reason, I'm somehow compelled to write something about it, although expecting that by the end of it that you'll see any answer might be misguidedly optimistic.

I'm one of those people that considers the "The a Heart Sutra" to be more important as a chant than a teaching piece of prose. That goes back to when I had absolutely no idea what any of it meant. "No eyes, no ears, no nose..." "OK, you say so, but I'm busy trying to follow the tempo of the wooden fish." I think it took me around 3 years before I could pronounce "Avalokiteshvara" without stumbling, and considering that's the opening of the Sutra, let's just say it's not a great way to start a chant. If nothing else chanting it (and any other chant for that matter) really forces the chanter into a state of pure concentration, intense listening, blending voices together at the same time as they're still individual voices if you listen closely enough for that also. "Form is none other than emptiness, emptiness is none other than form...." actually falls into the same category of, "Yes, but..."

The problem is that if it's left there, one might leave it as reifying both form and emptiness as "things." Either a teacher, or some serious spontaneous insight is required to get past that trap. My experience is that the Diamond Sutra has helped do that. The Vajra Prajnà Pàramità Sutra--the Diamond of the Perfection of wisdom, the Diamond that cuts through all delusion,  is a wonderful text, especially with a Great Teacher to help cut through it. Even the cutting through needs to be cut through. We can probably "get" the Two Truths of Relative and Absolute, at least on an intellectual level. Getting past that isn't so easy, yet it is fairly simple. Of course, most Zen teaching is actually fairly simple. Intellectual knowledge is nice, nothing wrong with learning things, unless one starts to believe that the knowledge is equivalent to wisdom. Bodhidharma pointed to that by reducing it down to True Nature, saying what that isn't as much as what it is. Just as the path of the Great Way involves fewer steps that more (none falling into the fewer category), Zen practice is reductive rather than additive.

The beauty of the Diamond Sutra is that it does pull that off, at least in my estimation. It's still verbal, and therefore limited, but the Buddha keeps peeling the layers of delusion away. At first slowly, then by the end, he doesn't just peel, he slashes with the Diamond Sword of Wisdom. The Buddha even says (a number of times) that memorizing spreading the message of just four lines results in substantial merit. Pick four lines out of 32 chapters, internalize them, and be able to explain them in an accurate way, and bingo, that's it. Granted, even doing that isn't so easy. Involving intellect and conceptual thought about it won't be of any value. They most certainly need to go under the Diamond blade.

Every talk I give it seems, ends up getting back to the Bodhisattva. Even if I don't plan on that, it ends up there. At a couple points, namely Chapters 17 & 25, the Buddha even slashes through the "Bodhisattva." Not only is it erroneous to think that there is such a thing (dharma) as a Bodhisattva, it's also erroneous to think that there either are, or are not beings, saving, and rescuing. He says that all beings are no-beings, "thus are they called 'beings'." Form, emptiness, then true vision. It's very much like ZM Seung Sahn's compass of Zen, starting with only viewing form as form, then moving on to "form is emptiness," then to "emptiness is form," and hitting 360 degrees at, "thus are they called 'beings'." It isn't just Relative and Absolute. It isn't just the non-duality of "no-self," it goes past that. Not only does it point to "not two,"  but it covers "not one" as well, then slashes that to that there aren't "one" or "two."

This on the surface may seem exceedingly paradoxical, and as a piece of prose, there is certainly no arguing that. It can also be profoundly disturbing on one level as well. Seeing the interdependence of all dharmas (the Absolute) and their lack of self, is one thing. But then one finds out that not only is the Relative delusion, but reifying the Absolute is as well. A Great Teacher of mine, when discussing the teaching of the Diamond Sutra asked me, "What does the Fearless Bodhisattva have to stand on?" After some fumbling through "this shore," "the other shore," and a few other conceptual answers, it finally came out: "Nothing." Another Great Teacher uses "beyond non-duality" as a way to put the same thing. This is disturbing! You finally get to the point of the Absolute, then you're told there isn't an Absolute. All those teachings of the Dharma you thought you could fall back on, not that either.

Get the relationship between Relative and Absolute? "Yes, but..." See that "form is none other than emptiness, emptiness is none other than form?" "Yes, but..." "Beings are no-beings?" "Yes, but..." The "nothing to stand on," the "absolute nothingness," the "beyond non-duality," that's where true freedom lies. It's "no-thing" to stand on. Comparing duality and non-duality is in itself dualistic. (Vimalakirti nailed it with "_____.") Of course, saying any of this also falls into "Yes, but...." But given the freedom of this freedom from not being concerned about all these concepts, allows us the freedom to go out into the marketplace with open arms, and save all sentient beings. Freedom? "Yes, but...." Freedom! The freedom to accept even, "Yes, but...

Click on the title to hear the Dharma Talk 

or go here:

https://soundcloud.com/onemindzen/yes-but

No-Bodhi-Knows 2.0

I seem to have inadvertantly dleted the original post, so here it is again...
I may as well start with a bit of an introduction:
I'm studying to be a Zen priest in the Five Mountain Zen order. I'd taken 16 Precepts (or 10, depending on who's counting), originally at the San Francisco Zen Center with Dairyu Michael Wenger. I sat with a Soto group that was affiliated with SFZC originally called Elberon Zen Circle, which changed to Monmouth Zen Circle/Compassion Ocean Sangha. That would be Monmouth County, NJ, USA.

I moved to bucolic Mercer County, also in NJ, and although Trenton is in Mercer County, where I am really is bucolic. There were wild turkeys in the yard a coupe days ago. There are deer around constantly. I'm amazed. There are also turkey buzzards, which are honestly ugly as hell (not to pick and choose on an appearance level, but YEESH), and their presence indicates that some poor woodland creature has gone on to prove its impermanence. I continued to travel half-way across the Garden State (tomatoes mostly, it would seem) to MZC every week. I was Ino & Doan. (Ino was once described to me as the "Liturgical Bouncer" and the Doan, at least in my case, prepped the altar, rang the bells and so on during zazen and services). Kotatsu John Bailes travels down from Massachusetts once a month to conduct a one-day sesshin with them, and he's a fine teacher. He's the one that told me to read Red Pine's Heart Sutra & Diamond Sutra translation/commentaries, and once I had done so, I asked him some questions. I'm OK with paradox; I quite enjoy it in fact. But...
(If you've never read either of these prime Mahayana Sutras, please do so if you're inclined toward the Zen path. If you continue on the path, you probably will at some point, so enter the stream, with or without raft. The raft is only a metaphor, and so is the stream, so drowning is unlikely. Unless you want to talk about metaphorical drowning, in which case, yeah, you probably will. But that's OK).

So, Kotatsu asks me, "What does a Bodhisattva have to stand on?" My original response was, "One side of the river," as in the be the boatman to ferry the sentient beings to the other side, in that great Bodhisattva, "After you," way that Mahayana Buddhism is all about. Nope, not the answer. Eventually, somehow the Buddha came to me: "Nothing." I got the Dharma gold star, at least it felt like it at the time. That simple revelation opened everything wide. "All dharmas are no-dharmas" actually made sense, and not on some intellectual level. It just made sense, like daytime is bright, night-time is dark. Mr. Kotatsu, great teacher. He asked questions, and I had to find the answer. He pointed, and after being initially entranced with the finger, saw the moon. He provided the raft, pushed it away from the shore, and I had to figure out at first whether to paddle, then how to paddle, and then to stop thinking about paddling and GET ON WITH THE PADDLING. Metaphorically, of course.

So here I find myself in Mercer County and Kotatsu only comes down once a month, and driving across the state to sit a couple periods and do a bit of walking meditation wasn't enough at the time. Yes, clinging, craving, desire, dissatisfaction with the present moment, etc., etc. In a word, dukkha. In other words, no surprise. But that dukkha led to my stumbling upon Original Mind Zen Sangha, my current home. I didn't even use a search engine to find it; I was thumbing through a newspaper, and it caught my eye. I've been there in Princeton since Week Two.

But it was weird...they didn't face the wall. They walked counter-clockwise. They didn't do the Dogen-prescribed half-a-foot-length steps while walking. They didn't run back to their seats when walking was done. And they didn't use the Japanese words zafu, zabuton, zazen, kinhin, dokusan, etc. That's because it's not a Japanese-based Zen. In fact to be accurate, it's Seon (Korean Zen), but since this is the US, and everybody has heard of Zen and not Seon, we go with Zen. The Great American teacher is Seung Sahn, who came over from Korea in 1972 to spread the Dharma, and at least initially, to fix washing machines. Mighty weird stuff.

To top it off, OMZS did koans. Or kong-ans. Having been a shikantaza-sitting Soto guy for all those years, what did I know for kong-ans? I looked down on them, thought of them as mental masturbation, not Reality in and of itself. Note my switching between "we" and "they." "They" was then, "we" is now. (Fortunately there's no grammar-check, or it would have just exploded with laughter or pity). For all that I thought I "knew" about the Dharma, including that there is no-Dharma, I found myself in a quandary of dualism. Just sitting good, koans bad. Facing walls good, facing forward bad. Clockwise good, counter-clockwise bad. Well, maybe not bad, just heretical.

So now here I am, studying in an M.Div program at Buddha Dharma University, which the Five Mountain Order runs. I'm working on freaking kong-ans. Due to space reasons, I sit with my back to the wall, facing out. And Andre Doshim Halaw, the priest at OMZS, is naming me Abbot. Go figure. We're adding another night of meditation at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Princeton, in addition to the one we have on Sunday.

Since Zen is all about seeing one's True Nature, tearing away the veils of delusion that prevent us from realizing our own Buddha-Nature, I'll sum this up thus:
Can't wait to see what else I don't know! I think Sung Sahn might approve of that. But WHAT THE HELL DO I KNOW?!?

Made by Thinking

Zen Master Seung Sahn constantly tried to get his students to "wake up," that is to say, to realize their True Nature which exists before thought. He returned to "What is this? Don't know," in order for the student to see that thinking creates all dualities, that dualities lead to suffering, and that the "Don't Know" state was in and of itself enlightenment...but enlightenment that doesn't "know" it is enlightenment.

Huineng said, "You should not think of good and of bad; cut all thinking and all speech. Right now, what is your Master?'' Sin Hae bowed, saying, "I don't know.'' The Patriarch said, "Keep this 'don't know' mind at all times, and you will understand your Master.''
After the passing of a few years, Sin Hae said, "The 'don't know' mind is origin of Buddha and of my Buddha-Nature." Huineng said, "The 'don't know' mind is no name and no form. Why do you say 'the origin of Buddha and of my Buddha-Nature'?" Sin Hae just then understood, stood up, and bowed three full bows. He went to the South, and became a great Zen Master.

Hui Neng also described the state of no-thinking as being as dead as a rock. But as with the Buddha and Hui Neng, Seung Sahn would often use emptiness to counter a student's attachment to form, or use form to counter one attached to emptiness. Form and emptiness in and of themselves weren't necessarily the problem, it was the attachment to both or either that presented the hindrance, and that attachment was the end product of thinking.

"The mind is that which knows the object! The object is that, which is known!
These two processes always arise and cease together simultaneously...
Neither inside, within, nor apart from, outside these two is any observer agent,
person, I, Me, or other assumed entity as a hidden variable, ever involved!
The mind is immaterial, formless and invisible. The object may be designated
or named 'material', 'physical', 'formed' and even 'visible' only and exactly
to the extent and in so far as it is experiencable by the mind!"~The Buddha
The Buddha himself taught that attachment to nama rupa i.e. "name & form" was a hindrance that would prevent one from attaining enlightenment. Name and form are merely constructs of thinking, and have nothing to do with that which is being named or identified. They are the essence of duality.
Nagarjuna states, "O Realizer of the Transitory World. Don’t have as objects of your mind.
The eight transitory things of the world:
Namely, material gain and no gain, happiness and unhappiness,
Things nice to hear and not nice to hear, or praise and scorn.
Be indifferent (toward them)."
All these things that Nagarjuna refers to are products of thinking, creations of the discriminatory mind. Seung Sahn might say along these same lines that gain and no-gain, etc. are made by thinking, are a separation between the one experiencing something, and making a value judgment of it. A person might think, "Gain is better than loss, so I'll strive for gain, and then once I've gained, I'll cling to that which I've gained, because that will result in my happiness, and it will last forever, and I will be eternally happy." This would be wrong on so many counts--better than, desire, clinging, not recognizing impermanence, and the "I." And all these are created by thinking, and all are impermanent and delusion.
Hua-yen Buddhism from China developed into Korean Hwa-om, and probably the major teaching of that school was the identity of all dharmas, i.e. that all dharmas are identical (not “identity” in terms of name and/or form). Fazang had his teaching to the empress using the metaphor of the golden lion statue not being separate from its golden nature, nor its nature as a lion statue. Seung Sahn used the cookie-dough teaching, that regardless of the different shapes forms may take, or the different names we might give them, when it is all distilled to its most basic original nature, it's all the same, it's all "Don't Know."
If a student gave “the same” as his/her answer to Seung Sahn's question “are...the same or different?” the answer that they are the same might have worked as incompletely as "different," as the Tao is "Don't Know," the before-thought instant. Again, the name-and-form implies a duality that will lead nowhere, attachment to “same” and “different” implies duality. And depending on where on the Zen Wheel the student was, either could demonstrate insight or delusion. Pencil may be pencil, book may be book, pencil may be book, and pencil may be not-book, to bring Nagarjuna's tetralemma in (partially). The only acceptable answer was however “Don't Know” was demonstrated, be it through “KATZ!,” slapping the floor, or if appropriate to the situation, through words. In the Relative, dharmas are different, in the Absolute, they are one and the same cookie cough.
Possibly the greatest example of "Don't know mind" is in the Vimalakirti-Nirdesa Sutra, where Manjusri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, asks Vimalakirti to give his own 'entrance into Non-duality', Vimalakirti's answer being the famous 'thunderous silence'. But is that any more "Don't know" than mosquito lands on arm, hand slaps mosquito?
After having taken this course and others, having heard numerous Dharma talks, and just from my own experience, I have come to certain conclusions. One way I have of looking at the way the mind often works is that there is direct experience, followed by the noticing of the experience, followed by the commentator describing the experience as if it were the sportscaster doing a play-by-play of the experience. This also leads to my observation that “Zen” is reflexively reacting to whatever situation one is in, and being acutely aware of the situation and the reaction, but without the commentary, and with not much more than a noticing that there was a reaction, and then letting go of both the reaction and the noticing. And this is all well and good, but only as an intellectual exercise.
Exercise is a good thing, it keeps one in shape mentally and physically, but it is no substitute for real action. A baseball player can swing in the batting cage or against a batting practice pitcher, but when the game is actually being played, thought has to go out the window and the reflexive response to the pitch has to take over, or all the practice is for naught. (In baseball, one can “fail” seven out of ten times in a real game and be looked upon as successful).
Life and death is not necessarily so forgiving as baseball. It is all about birth-and-death, and the suffering in between. Zen Master Seung Sahn's teachings weren't for the benefit of the individual to become “enlightened” for the sake of their own individual enlightenment. Any number of times he would urge his students to “become enlightened” in order that the enlightened one could save all other sentient beings as a great bodhisattva, to end their own suffering, and in turn the suffering of others. The “Sitting practice” of meditation would be of no more use than “Batting practice” in a baseball game if their practical application was limited only to the batting cage or the Dharma hall. To further grind this metaphor into the ground, one has to “step up to the plate,” and become actively involved in the daily, the mundane, the moment after moment opportunity to save all sentient beings, be it by holding a door open for someone else, feeding the hungry, or spreading the Dharma.
Meditation is most effectively practiced when sitting, standing, walking or reclining away from the cushion, when the distractions, the “noise,” and the obstructions are there to be seen as opportunities rather than impediments. But opportunity/impediment are just more dualities, thinking of how one perceives dharmas rather than the experience of them is placing yet another layer between one and his/her True Nature. When one realizes this True Nature, one is best equipped to help another, seeing that any distinctions between self and other, between good and bad, are artificial impositions that are directly related to "thinking about” reality, not Reality. In the Relative, words are a convenient, if provisional, way to help someone else. In the Absolute, there is no “someone else” and no helping to be done. But, as we live in the Relative, we use the convenient and provisional, the impermanent, the empty, and other expedient means to help others to realize their own True Nature, become enlightened and save all sentient beings. In order to do that, one must return to the “before-thought” state, the “Don't Know” state, where the natural action one takes would be to act with lovingkindness toward all others.