Making Mirrors, Doing Nothing

There's a certain type of precious character that infests usenet and other venues in the online Zen landscape. He - and it's always males - arrogates superiority over practitioners who meditate and receive precepts, claiming such students misunderstand the Chan ancestors. He mocks the efforts of those who spend hours on the zafu seeking to realize their Buddha-nature. Quoting the Sixth Patriarch and Vimalakirti, he declares that we are already enlightened, and so meditation is worse than useless, keeping one in the delusion of being deluded by trying to quit delusion. Does he demean sincere practitioners as a means to proclaim his own lofty realization? Does he just want to excuse his own laziness? Most annoyingly, could he be right?

Those who vaunt this view like to cite this Public Case:

Ma-tsu Tries to Become a Buddha

Huai-jang asked [Ma-tsu], "Why are you sitting in meditation?"
[Ma-tsu] replied, "Because I want to become a Buddha."
Thereupon Huai-jang took a brick and started to polish it in front of [Ma-tsu's] hermitage.
[Ma-tsu] asked him, "Why are you polishing that brick?"
Huai-jang replied, "Because I want to make a mirror."
[Ma-tsu] asked, "How can you make a mirror by polishing a brick?"
Huai-jang said, "If I cannot make a mirror by polishing a brick, how can you become a Buddha by sitting in meditation?" [1]

Huai-jang implies, pretty clearly, that you cannot become a Buddha by meditating. So how do you become a Buddha?

In Mahayana Buddhism, the teaching is that in your nature you already are Buddha, along with all other beings. How can you become what you are? How can you find something that not only is closer than your breath, more intimate than your life, but the very whatever you are searching with? It's like a fish asking the fish-sage to tell it how to find the ocean, or a bird flying up, thinking it never reaches the sky.

Furthermore, methodology itself is a hindrance. If Buddha is at the core of being, if Buddha is the core of being, any activity at all may divert the attention of awareness away from the actuality that awareness is precisely the functioning of Buddha. Any intention to change anything at all instantly alienates you from full participation in this instant, wherein alone may Buddha be sought.

And further yet, to speak of what by nature is beyond words is obviously a problem. To convey information, words must be defined, their meaning walled off from what they do not mean, so that they may function in a matrix of logic and order. How can you define what all things come from and which has no boundaries, not excluding anything at all? Words cannot contain that which contains them.

At least, not ordinary words. Language has means to transcend itself. Poetry can mean much more than it says, and questions can open to vast spaces. Though no verbal instruction in how to proceed into that realm beyond words can be other than hint and suggestion, just a finger pointing to the Moon, the Zen ancestors got rather good at verbal devices that point beyond the limits of language. Since words mislead, they appreciated contradictions, even in the scriptures. Especially in the scriptures! The Zen School revels in self-refuting formulations, helping people to take no literal teachings too seriously. Such formulae as "Zen can be summed up in two words: Not Always So!" and "Things are not as they appear, nor are they otherwise" are very dear to the heart of the lineage. Turning the meanings of words and phrases around into deeper teachings is a revered tradition.

The Sixth Patriarch said,
"Learned Audience, what is sitting for meditation? In our School, to sit means to gain absolute freedom and to be mentally unperturbed in all outward circumstances, be they good or otherwise. To meditate means to realize inwardly the imperturbability of the Essence of Mind." [2]

So "sitting" and "meditation" are here given meanings that sound other than calming the mind with a still body in a cross-legged posture. Is that right? Let's make sure!

The Sixth Patriarch also said,
"The one-act samadhi (meditative state of concentration) is to keep the mind straightforward at all times, whether walking, standing, sitting or lying down. The Vimalakirti Sutra says, 'The straightforward mind is the site of enlightenment, and the straightforward mind is the Pure Land.' . . . Just practice the straightforward mind and refrain from clinging to any dharma (i.e., thing, object): It is this that is called the one-act samadhi. The deluded cling to the characteristics of dharmas and the name of the one-act samadhi, simply saying that sitting in a motionless posture and eliminating deluded thoughts without invoking a false mind is exactly the practice of the one-act samadhi. If it is so, it would be no different from being an inanimate object, [thus hindering] the Way, however. The Way (tao) must circulate freely; why has it become blocked and stagnant? When the mind does not dwell in any dharma, then the Way flows freely. To dwell anywhere is to be shackled. If the point were just to sit motionlessly, Vimalakirti should not have scolded Shariputra for sitting quietly in the woods."[3]

What happened between Shariputra and Vimalakirti? A juicy encounter worth repeating:
When Shariputra was sitting at the foot of a tree in the forest, absorbed in contemplation,Vimalakirti said to him,
"Shariputra, this is not the way to absorb yourself in contemplation. You should absorb yourself in contemplation so that neither body nor mind appear anywhere in the triple world. You should absorb yourself in contemplation in such a way that you can manifest all ordinary behavior without forsaking cessation. You should absorb yourself in contemplation in such a way that you can manifest the nature of an ordinary person without abandoning your cultivated spiritual nature. You should absorb yourself in contemplation so that the mind neither settles within nor moves without toward external forms. You should absorb yourself in contemplation in such a way that the thirty-seven aids to enlightenment are manifest without deviation toward any convictions. You should absorb yourself in contemplation in such a way that you are released in liberation without abandoning the passions that are the province of the world."[4]

There you have it! In no uncertain terms, the Sixth Patriarch, Bodhisattva Vimalakirti, and Master Huai-jang all say one should not practice seated meditation! Our obnoxious fellow is correct, much as admitting it may hurt our stomachs. But why have generations of monks, nuns, and laypeople in Asia ignored this teaching, to sit many hours each day for year after year?

What form of meditation is best for cultivating a straightforward mind that does not depend on sitting or any other form? Experience shows it easiest to develop in a crosslegged sitting posture in one of the lotus poses, still and quiet. Because it is so much easier to develop in a crosslegged posture, and because there is a danger of addiction to blissful states, a little warning to beware of dependence was and still is called for.

Let's hear from the Sixth Patriarch again:
"I will now teach you how to explain the Dharma without deviating from the tradition of our school. . . . Should someone . . . ask you about a dharma (i.e., teaching or principle), answer him with its opposite. If you always answer with the opposite, both will be eliminated and nothing will be left, since each depends on the other for existence."[5]

The Patriarch seems to have tailored his answers depending on the listener, and suggested his successors do the same. In this he was not different from the Buddha, who spoke to individuals in the context of their history and understanding, thus providing all those delicious contradictions in the surviving records of his speech. This habit of teaching according to the needs and abilities of the student even has it's own term - upaya, usually translated as "skillful means."

From the Buddha on, a teacher's tactic was to look into the questioner's views, which are what keep them (and us) in delusion. Whatever view we cherish, the teacher's job is to deny it and affirm its opposite, until all our views crumble.[6]

In the time of the Sixth Patriarch and Ma-tzu - and also our own - monks and lay practitioners often had the tendency to believe awakening would come from meditation. Such a view, with meditation and awakening as cause and effect, sets up a duality that perpetuates the problem. The solution is to realize there is no problem, best done by sitting for many hours to learn purposeless meditation, where awakening is no different from meditation or any other activity.

Our gadfly friend, who mocks our sitting practice as brick-polishing does us a great favor, and we owe him immense gratitude. But anyone derisively using quotes from ancient worthies in some literal and authoritative way had better be ready for derisive counter-quoting.[7]

Is there a way Ma-tzu could have answered Huai-jang's question that Huai-jang would not have disapproved of? Within a long walking distance of the monastery where Ma-tsu became teacher of multitudinous disciples, another master, the illustrious Shitou, also lived and taught. Sometimes Ma even sent students to him, and Shitou returned the favor. Among Shitou's best disciples was an interesting man named Yaoshan, who was asked the same question when meditating.

Yaoshan Does Nothing

One day, as Yaoshan was sitting, Shitou asked him, "What are you doing here?"
Yaoshan said, "I'm not doing a thing."
Shitou said, "Then you're just sitting leisurely."
Yaoshan said, "If I were sitting leisurely, I'd be doing something."
Shitou said, "You say you're not doing anything. What is it that you're not doing?"
Yaoshan said, "A thousand sages don't know."[8]



[1]From Sun Face Buddha
by Cheng Chien Bhikshu
Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1992

[2]From Sutra of Hui Neng, Chapter Five,
translated by C. Humphreys and Wong Mou-Lam
http://www.sinc.stonybrook.edu/Clubs/buddhism/huineng/huineng5.html

[3]From The Mandala Sutra and its English Translation, Section 14
Revised by Prof. Yang Zengwen
Taipei: Mantra Publishers 2004

[4]From The Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra, Chapter Three,
translated by Robert A. F. Thurman
http://www2.kenyon.edu/Depts/Religion/Fac/Adler/Reln260/Vimalakirti.htm

[5]From The Sixth Patriarch's Dharma Jewel Platform Sutra, Chapter Ten
English translation by the Buddhist Text Translation Society,
Commentary of Tripitaka Master Hsuan Hua
http://online.sfsu.edu/~rone/Buddhism/Platform%20Sutra.pdf

[6]For another example, old Lin-ji (Rinzai) gives his game away:
Master Lin-ji said,
"Students flock to me from all parts. I sort them out according to three kinds of root-ability. If a middling to low one comes, I snatch away the circumstance but leave him the Dharma. If one with a middling to high ability comes, I snatch away both the circumstance and the Dharma. If one with an exceptionally high ability comes, I snatch neither the circumstance nor the Dharma nor the man. And if there should come one whose understanding is outside the norm, I act from the wholeness without bothering about the root-ability."
From The Zen Teaching of Rinzai, Section 28
by Irmgard Schloegl
http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/zenrinzai.pdf

[7]Such people have been around a long time. Master Bassui Tokusho (1327-1387) decribed some in the Fourteenth Century, saying that, after they thought they had attained enlightenment, they "behave haughtily through lack of wisdom; engage eagerly in debates on religion, taking delight in cornering their opponents but becoming angry when cornered themselves; appear perpetually discontented while no longer believing in the law of causation; go about telling jokes in a loud, jabbering voice; deliberately disturb and ridicule those who study and strive earnestly, calling them clods whose practice is not Zen."
From "Bassui's Sermon on One-Mind and Letters to His Disciples"
Chapter IV of The Three Pillars of Zen
compiled and edited by Philip Kapleau
Boston: Beacon Press 1967

[8]From Zen's Chinese Heritage_
by Andrew E. Ferguson
Somerville: Wisdom Publications, 2000

Imbolc

I don't know why Imbolc should be my favorite of the eight pagan holy days of the quarters and cross-quarters. I like Beltane and Samhain just fine, but there is something special about February Second. Perhaps it's when the contrast is starkest, of the grim white desert where nothing is alive, save for the one who perceives that nothing is alive! Lost in the wind of a snowy field, where great elementals shuffle the weather for a new game of generations, the small flame of life in a huddled breast feels the profoundest of gratitude. We all love Yule because it's the rebirth of the Light and a promise of the return of summer, but it is only now that we know this on a biological level, in our cells. Some deep dark magic stirs, like a seed getting ready to prepare for initiating the preliminaries of germination. From now on, signs of spring are real and not hallucinatory -- soon the weeping willows will take on a golden glow over their leafless limbs, and soon thereafter the mapled hills tinge themselves subtly ruddy.

My friend and teacher, James I. Ford, Zen Man and the very icon of a New England Unitarian Minister, has a wonderful tribute to Brigid, the saint and the goddess, whose feast time is now, which is well worth experiencing. It's over at Monkey Mind Online, .

In times past, twice, pagan groups had approached me in email to ask to use a poem from my sometimes manifest personal Website, with the title Imbolc. Such flattery tends to win my assent. I though it good to publish the poem again here. Anyone can use it, providing they credit me and let me know.

Stay warm by your hearth, cherish your beloved ones, and finally dare to dream of spring.



Imbolc

It's not yet spring but you awake
the yearning in me that
will not wait for warm breezes

A candle in a cave--
in snowy fields, a lone prayer
for the town asleep below the hill

One stands at the ocean,
calling forth the tide
to rise once more in bay and blood

Two meet on a road in the dark
and walk into windless groves where
dryads keep to dream, and wait

The candle ignites the sky to pink--
the spirits stir within
the chambers of the twigs

Belief & Knowledge

Date: Sun, 15 Feb 2009 11:59:42 -0800 (PST)
From: Robin Edgar

Robin Edgar has left a new comment on your post "What do you believe in?":

Q: Do you believe in God?
A: No.
Q: So, you are an atheist!
A: No.

It occurs to me that this would be an appropriate response from someone who knows that God exists as a result of direct personal experience of God. . . Carl Gustav Jung being just one example amongst many others.

***

My response to Robin Edgar:

Correct in that one who knows has no need of belief, which is held to be a less certain state of mind than knowledge. But distinguishing knowledge and belief is very difficult, if possible at all.

Direct experience is certainly the best way to attempt certainty, but there is no way to acquire absolute certainty in a logically compelling way. At first glance, an epiphany, a personal experience of the divine, would seem to be absolutely convincing, but in its bare experience it belongs only to the one who has the epiphany. All others must be content with hearing about it, and, if it's important to do so, they must decide whether to believe or not, and how much. Even the person with the epiphany can question it, for people in dreaming, or in psychosis, can be utterly convinced of realities that fade with awakening or the reemergence of sanity. In my own experience, I have found it impossible to know for sure that one is not dreaming at any given moment.

Let me tell a little story, that I assure you is completely factual.


An adherent of Asatru named Dirk is indulging in some aquavit in a bar in Norway, when an interesting character shows up and sits on the stool next to him. The guy introduces himself as Odin and offers to buy him a horn of mead. Dirk is a modern man and will not simply take even a god's word at face value, though this fellow may certainly look the part and exude divine charisma all over the place. Although he gladly accepts the horn, he asks for some proof of godship before accepting that claim. Odin pulls out a deck of cards and starts shuffling. "Something more dramatic than a card trick," asks Dirk. Waggling his white eyebrows, the old man laughs, "As you say!"

The day turns dark, and the wind picks up, even inside the bar. The shimmering form of Freya appears hovering before our friend Dirk. Never has he seen any female so beautiful! She reaches out and he feels her hand take his. She says only, "Come!" and the bar and Odin disappear. Freya remains, but Dirk is no longer sure that he does. She leads him to spaces and places where wild fires roar with the heat of billions of exploding stars, and she takes him by still waters where peace is so profound you can heal all of eternity's heart's wounds. She takes him to her rainbowed bed and lets him make love to her until he forgets his humanity on the spill of amrita through his veins and out his loins. And then, Dirk spent and content, she takes him back to the bar where the funny old man with the white beard is chortling into his mead.

When Freya disappears and all is as before, he asks, "Better than a card trick?" After a moment to gather his wits, Dirk says, "Could be proof you're a pretty good hypnotist!" The All-Father shouts, "That's my boy!" and continues:

All we have, inside and outside of us, is appearances. We play a game of "as if," relying on consistencies as we perceive them, to gain the appearance of pleasure and avoid the appearance of pain. The truth lies behind a screen where the shadows of puppets play, and even if you could peer behind the screen, how can you know you see more than just more shadows?

Dirk nods and says, "Now I can believe you're the All-Father. Still a pretty good hypnotist, though."

***

Now, maybe there is some direct way of knowing, bypassing the senses and any other medium. But how would the knower know this knowing is true? You can say that such knowing is self-validating, and I bet it sure is! But self-validation can also occurs in psychosis. You say this is not true self-validation? Please show me the difference!

This is one reason why traditions such as Zen set such high value on a teacher's validation of one's insights. Even so, a teacher's validation may be just another hallucination.

Give up the quest for certainty, I say . . . settle for a measure of consistency in your dreams!

What do you believe in?

Q: Do you believe in God?

A: No.

Q: So, you are an atheist!

A: No.

Q: Then what do you believe in?

A: As little as possible.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~O~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We tend to frame things we encounter into patterns familiar to us. Nowhere is it so obvious as when we regard other religions.

Once, at Sinte Gleska College in Mission, South Dakota, I perused the library for Lakota creation myths. As befits a large and socially complex people, there were several widely disparate stories.

A bit later, at Pine Ridge Reservation, I conversed with a fellow named Red Cloud. He pointed to the car in which his old girl friend sat, telling me she was visiting the rez from Sacramento, where she had moved to work. He told me the three teenagers in the backseat were her children. The youngest and the oldest, he said with chest-swelling pride, were his. Certainly a fellow with a broad view of things, though perhaps it was more a cultural thing than personal. I told him about the eleven different creation myths I had uncovered at Mission. Uh-huh, he said. Which did he believe? Unhesitatingly, he replied, All of them!

The general frame of the monotheisms of the Western culture sees religion primarily as what a person believes to be ultimately true of reality. What you believe determines your tribe, and vice versa. But you can sort religions in one particular way into those based on doctrine, and those based on pragmatic experience. Those that determine your membership in a flock determined by your submission and acceptance of a set of dogmas and the authority that promotes them, and those that are a path you follow by taking up a prescribed practice.

We are used to inquire about religious teaching with, Is it true? Of course, the answer is mostly No! with regard to someone else's religion. But with a religion like Buddhism, the emphasis is more on, Is it useful? Will it help me get down the road to liberation?

The romantic philosophic notion that what is most true is obviously the most helpful, might itself be true — if only proving something true or false were not so often so devilishly difficult, and fraught with distortions caused by emotional bias. Much easier just to try something and see if it works. Best of all is to see what works by transparent methodology and consistent analysis.

At least, that's what I believe.

The Newport Fish

The note on the scarf says:

DEAR FISH!

WE THOUGHT YOU LOOKED SO COLD SITTING HERE SO WE ASKED GRANDMA L. TO CROCHET YOU SOME FIN MITTENS AND A SCARF TO KEEP YOU WARM THIS WINTER. WE HOPE THIS WILL BE THE "FIRST ANNUAL DRESSING OF THE FISH" IN NEWPORT, VERMONT.

LOVE, YOUR FRIENDS
JANUARY 2008

Shy spring has hied back to the shadows of the snow-heavy trees. This is this morning's picture chez moi:

Signs of Spring

Last week, a flock of birds was wheeling and landing on the grain elevators by the railroad tracks in Newport. Last night, I saw these deer cavorting in a field as the sun lowered. Several days this past week had temperatures above freezing.

Perhaps, we can really think about spring without getting our hopes dashed?

The Border

This is the chorus to "Immigration Man" by Graham Nash:

"Let me in, immigration man
Can I cross the line and pray
I can stay another day
Let me in, immigration man
I won't toe your line today
I can't see it anyway . . . "


But you can!

This is a shot westward on Caswell Ave./Valley Rd, just east of Derby Line. The border is just to the right along the road at this spot. Lake Memphremagog is down there, invisible. Across the lake, that's the southern end of Bear Mountain, with the border slash highlighted by snow. And that where the fence will be, if we keep electing Republican oil executives for president.

The Canadians like us, mostly, but they think we're nuts for electing the people that we have.