Real Zen for Real Life Course [2][6-7]

 Real Zen for Real Life Course Lecture Notes

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

Professor Biography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i

Course scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
LESSON GUIDES
===[1]
Lesson 1 What is Zen? recovering the Beginner’s Mind . . . . . . . . . 3

Lesson 2 The Zen Way to Know and forget Thyself . . . . . . . . . . 10 

Lesson 3 Zen Meditation: Clearing the heart-Mind . . . . . . . . . . 17 

Lesson 4 how to Practice Zen Meditation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 

Lesson 5 The Middle Way of Knowing What suffices . . . . . . . . . 34 

Meditation Checkup: The Middle Way of Meditation . . . . . . . . . . 42 

===[2]

Lesson 6 embracing the impermanence of Life . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 

Lesson 7 The True self is egoless . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 

Meditation Checkup: Lead with the Body and Physical stillness . . . . 62 

===[3]

Lesson 8 Loving others as yourself . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 

Lesson 9 Taking Turns as the Center of the Universe . . . . . . . . . 71 

Meditation Checkup: from Mindless reacting to Mindful responding 77 

===[4]

Lesson 10 Who or What is the Buddha? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Lesson 11 Mind is Buddha: if you Meet him, Kill him! . . . . . . . . . 87 

Meditation Checkup: Dealing with Unavoidable Pain . . . . . . . . . . 95
===[5]
Lesson 12 Dying to Live: Buddhism and Christianity . . . . . . . . . 97
Lesson 13 Zen beyond Mysticism: everyday even Mind . . . . . . . .104 

Lesson 14 engaged Zen: from inner to outer Peace . . . . . . . . . 112
Meditation Checkup: Dealing with Distractions . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 

===[6]

Lesson 15 The Dharma of Karma: We reap What We sow . . . . . . 120
Lesson 16 Zen Morality: follow and Then forget rules . . . . . . . . 127 

Lesson 17 The Zone of Zen: The freedom of No-Mind . . . . . . . . 133
Lesson 18 Zen Lessons from Nature: The giving Leaves . . . . . . . 138 

Meditation Checkup: Three Ways of Breathing in and out . . . . . . .144
===[7]
Lesson 19 Zen art: Cultivating Naturalness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 

Lesson 20 Zen and Words: Between silence and speech . . . . . . . 154 

Meditation Checkup: Chanting as a Meditative Practice . . . . . . . .160
===[8]
Lesson 21 Zen and Philosophy: The Kyoto school . . . . . . . . . . . 162
Lesson 22 Just sitting and Working with Kōans . . . . . . . . . . . .168
Meditation Checkup: Walking Meditation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
===[9]
Lesson 23 Death and rebirth: or, Nirvana here and Now . . . . . . 175 

Lesson 24 reviewing the Path of Zen: The oxherding Pictures . . .180 

finding a Zen Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189

===

EMBRACING THE IMPERMANENCE OF LIFE

LESSON 6

In his first sermon, after he taught the Middle Way, the Buddha explained for the first time the doctrine that became the framework for his other teachings: the Four noble truths. the

gist of these can be paraphrased as follows:

1. human beings suffer, especially from a deep-rooted spiritual or existential unease.

2. This suffering is caused by craving and ignorance.

3. it is possible to put an end to these causes of suffering and thus to attain the ultimate peace of nirvana.

4. The way to do this is to follow the eightfold Path of right view, intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and concentration.

This lesson focuses especially on the first two Noble Truths.

Overview of the Problem and Cure

• The first truth is that our lives are pervaded by duhkha. The term is often translated as “suffering,” but it is better rendered as “discontentment” or “unease.” it is the existential unease that we feel in the pit of our stomach when we are not being dishonest with or distracting ourselves.

• The first truth is an intervention—a moment of tough love asking us to face up to the problem. our resistance to admitting that deep down we are discontent is the first barrier on the path to peace.

• The opposite of duhkha is sukha, happiness. The job of Buddhas, and of bodhisattvas who aspire to become Buddhas, is to remove suffering and add happiness. But what is true happiness? all of us can list times in which we feel more or less happy. on closer inspection, we may realize that our moments of happiness are all too momentary.

• even the longer periods of happiness we experience are usually at least tinged with the worry that they won’t last very long. Perhaps this is why we seek more intense feelings of pleasure or semiconscious states of inebriation in our attempts to cover over this underlying unease.

With the third truth, the Buddha promises a cure, not just a distraction. and with the fourth truth, he prescribes moral living and mindful meditation rather than time-killing diversions.

A Mismatch between Desire and Reality

• suffering is caused by the fact that our desires don’t match reality.

for example, a little boy craves an ice cream, but he doesn’t have an ice cream, and so he cries. another example: a young man wants more than anything to be a millionaire, but he only has $200, so he is miserable. The formula for suffering is always a mismatch between desire and reality. if our desire does not match up with reality, we suffer.

• This means that there are two possible strategies for overcoming suffering: We must either change reality to satisfy our desire or change our desire so that it matches reality. in any case, the crucial question is: Which desires should we try to satisfy, and which desires should we work on letting go of?

Change Reality or Change Our Minds?

• a few more examples may be helpful. imagine that you are a teenager, and your dream is to become a professional basketball player. you may think that, even though your ball skills are not yet good enough, you are willing to work twice as hard as your peers, so that in the end, you can fulfill your dream. yet at some point along the way, you may realize that no matter how hard you train, you won’t be able to compete at that level.

• at that point, you can either wallow in self-pity or rethink your dream, perhaps aiming to become a coach rather than a player. This discernment and flexibility may allow you to modify your desires in a way that leads you to your true calling—and maybe even to a greater happiness than you had imagined.

Now for a weightier example: imagine that you are gravely ill. if there is a treatment that can cure your illness, then you would be foolish not to undergo it, even, perhaps, if it involves serious side effects and a prolonged hospital stay.

• on the other hand, if you are terminally ill and there is simply no way to treat your illness, then accepting this fact and perhaps moving from a hospital back home or to a hospice, where you can better enjoy your last days while you psychologically and spiritually prepare for death, may be the better option.

• here is a different kind of example: a group of people go for a picnic in the woods for the first time. They have decided they are going to do this for lunch every day from now on.

• They are ready to sit down, but then they notice there are no chairs. They have a choice: They can work to change their environment or work to adapt themselves to the environment. in this case, they can cut down some trees and build chairs to sit on, or they can train their bodies to be comfortable sitting on the ground, perhaps in a kneeling or a cross-legged position.

• Many people raised in a Western or Westernized culture have encountered chairs everywhere they go: offices, schools, airports, and restaurants. even when camping, folding chairs are often present. as a result, people in such a culture tend to have rather stiff bodies that cannot comfortably sit on the ground.

• Traditional Japanese culture, by contrast, took the other route. They adapted their bodies to the environment, keeping them flexible such that they are comfortable sitting down on a relatively flat surface anywhere. recently, however, as more Japanese people sit in chairs more frequently, they too have started to have stiffer bodies.

This lesson’s purpose is not to downplay the benefits of changing the world to fit our wants, much less our needs. however, there are downsides as well as upsides to this approach, and, we should sometimes think about adapting ourselves to reality rather than trying to change it to fit our desires. This other way of dealing with the mismatch between our desires and reality is especially recommended when some stubborn fact of reality simply cannot be changed, no matter how hard we try.

From Suffering Change to Embracing It

• The Buddha was most concerned with deep kinds of psychological and spiritual duhkha. The first of these deeper levels of duhkha is the fact that we suffer change. We recoil at the thought that everything is impermanent. even our times of joy are tinged with an anxious awareness that they, too, will pass.

• however, even if we could prolong many of the events that make us happy, would we really want to? for instance, even the joyous embrace of a returning loved one in an airport would get old and awkward if it went on too long.

• The desire to be permanent, to be rid of impermanence, is a desire that should be let go of. it is not realistic, and when we really think about it, permanence is not desirable. We should accept impermanence. indeed, the more we can embrace it and affirm it, the happier we will be. experiences are desirable not despite but rather because they are impermanent.

• Japanese culture is especially attuned to the beauty as well as to the sorrows of impermanence. The cherry blossoms burst into bloom, and then just a few days later, fall to the ground. Their impermanence intensifies—rather than detracts from—their poignant beauty.

be most beautiful as they fall to the ground, fluttering in the wind and singing the swan song of their short lives. similarly, although we experience all of the night sky’s flickering stars as beautiful, it is more precious, we feel, to catch a rare glimpse of a shooting star.

Impermanence Is Buddha Nature

• some early Buddhist texts suggest that we need to transcend samsara, the world of impermanence, to attain nirvana. The Zen tradition, however, teaches that we need to embrace the here and now of life in this world, learning to let go of the

desire to leave this world behind. The 13th-century

Japanese Zen master Dōgen tells us that nirvana is to be found in the midst of the birth-and-death world of samsara. The Buddha-nature is not some timeless realm beyond this one, but rather, Dōgen writes, quoting the 8th-century Chinese Zen master huineng,

“impermanence is in itself the Buddha-nature.”

• as long as we crave permanence, it is difficult for us to appreciate this world of impermanence. We cannot change the impermanence of our lives. We can, however, wish it were otherwise or hope for an afterlife in which it will be different.

• The Buddha did not try to force anyone to believe anything they didn’t want to believe. indeed, he accepted the common belief in life after death, which in his society meant reincarnation in an earthly, heavenly, ghostly, or hellish domain.

• since it is one’s karma—one’s volitional thoughts and actions—that determine one’s reincarnation, the Buddha in effect suggested that we can live as long as we want. This is because it is the wanting, the craving for continuance, that assures that we will be reborn in this world or elsewhere.

SUGGESTED READING

Loy, Lack and Transcendence.

stambaugh, Impermanence Is Buddha-Nature.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

• What are the root causes of spiritual suffering, and how did the Buddha present himself as a “spiritual doctor” who could diagnose and offer a prescription for it?

• Why does the Buddha say that we need to embrace change rather than wish for permanence?

====

L7 The True Self is Egoless

We Crave to Be What We Are Not

• The deepest source of duhkha is the fact that we are not at ease with being the kind of beings we in truth are. We suffer from a subtle awareness that we are not the kind of beings we deeply crave to be. in a nutshell, we crave to be permanent and independent, and yet we constantly bump up against the fact that we are impermanent and interdependent.

• recall the formula for suffering:

suffering is caused by the gap between our desires and reality—that is, it is caused by

a mismatch between the way we want things to be and the way things in reality are. here is a simple three-step logical explanation of how our attachment to the idea of an independent and unchanging ego causes us to suffer:

1. We crave to be permanent and independent beings.

2. The reality is that we are impermanent and interdependent beings.

3. Therefore, we suffer from an existential dis-ease.

• our craving for permanence and independence is based on an ignorance of the way things are. insofar as we crave to believe that we are the kind of selves that we are not and cannot be, this ignorance is, in turn, based on craving.

our existential unease is thus caused by a ferocious feedback loop between craving and ignorance. our dis-ease is rooted in a willful ignorance. This is the Buddha’s second Noble Truth.

• The gospel, the good news of the Buddha’s teaching, is given in the Third Noble Truth: By abandoning craving—by eliminating ignorance—we can become enlightened and overcome the existential unease that plagues us. We can attain the peace of nirvana.

The Path to Peace

• in samsara—in living a life based on ignorance and craving—our minds are not at peace. Zen Buddhism teaches that the reason we are not at peace with ourselves is because we have never looked all the way into our own minds.

• in causing ourselves to suffer, we cause others to suffer, and vice versa. Because we do not understand ourselves, we do not understand our relations to others. We crave to control others and the world around us because we do not understand who we are and how we are related to others and to the world.

• Buddhism seeks to cut this tangle of ignorance, craving, and suffering by dispelling the illusion of a permanent and separate ego and revealing the true nature of the self. Whereas other Buddhist traditions take a more gradual and analytical approach to the question of the self, Zen kōans attempt to cut the knot in one fell swoop with the sword of insight.

• Zen meditation halls usually feature a statue of Manjusri, the bodhisattva of wisdom, who is depicted wielding the sword of insight. That sword cuts through the delusions of duality, the illusory sense of being separated from others and from the world.

The Anatman Doctrine

• The most challenging teaching of the Buddha is the anatman doctrine. The first issue is the question of how to best translate this term. should we translate the term anatman as “egolessness,” as “selflessness,” as “no-self,” as “no-ego,” or as “no-soul”?

• These very different possible translations reveal that the true challenge is understanding what is meant by this doctrine. each one of these translations carries different nuances and evokes different reactions in us. for example, to Christians, a teaching of egolessness or selflessness sounds very familiar and commendable. But a doctrine of no-soul sounds like a direct challenge to one of their core beliefs.

• The Theravada Buddhist monk and scholar Walpola rahula, in his landmark and still widely read book What the Buddha Taught, deliberately translates the term anatman as “no-soul” to assert that there is a fundamental difference between Buddhism and religions such as Christianity. he says that, just as humans have invented the idea of god as a celestial father out of a desire for self-protection, they have invented the idea of an eternal soul or atman out of a desire for self-preservation.

however, some Christians, such as the Catholic priest and renowned scholar of Zen Buddhism heinrich Dumoulin, have found there to be significant similarities between Buddhist and Christian ideas about the self. responding directly to rahula’s interpretation of the anatman doctrine, Dumoulin writes: “This denial of the individual self seems to put Buddhism in clear opposition to Christianity. however, when we look more closely at what is meant by non-self, this opposition is softened.”

• Dumoulin reminds us that “the distinction between empirical ego and true self is also found in Christian religious experience. one of Christ’s central teachings is that one must

“lose one’s life in order to win it.”

The Buddha’s Silence

• even in the Pali canon, the early collection of sutras and other texts that are the basis of the Theravada tradition, the Buddha did not, in fact, unequivocally deny the existence of the self or atman. in a famous encounter with a recluse named Vacchagotta, he remained silent both when asked if there was a self and if there was not.

• evidently, the Buddha thought that Vacchagotta would have been misled by answering either yes or no to the question of whether the self exists. either way, regardless of whether he was told it exists or does not exist, Vacchagotta’s mistaken conception of the self would have been confirmed.

• The Buddha’s silence in response to Vacchagotta’s questions is pregnant with the teaching of what could be called the ontological Middle Way. it is analogous to the practical Middle Way that steers a course between the extremes of hedonism and asceticism. The ontological Middle Way steers a course between the extreme views of substantialism or

eternalism on the one hand and the opposite extreme views of nihilism or annihilationism on the other.

• ontology is an account of what there is in reality. for the Buddha, what exists is neither a world of separate and eternal substances nor a vacuous black hole of nothingness. What exist are interconnected processes.

• The Buddha taught that what exists is not nothing, but neither is it something, if by something we mean independent entities like the ancient greek notion of atoms. although modern

physicists still speak of atoms, for etymological reasons, they should have renamed the atom after they discovered it could be split because the term atom refers to what cannot be divided.

THINKING WITHOUT

A THINKER

The 17th-century french philosopher rené Descartes famously said, “i think, therefore i am.” Descartes tried to doubt everything to find something that he absolutely could not doubt—a solid foundation of certainty. With this phrase, he believed he found something indubitable. But the question remains: Did he? as the american pragmatist philosopher William James later said, when we introspect, we don’t in fact find a thinker but rather only a process of thinking. Descartes should have said that we can be certain that “thinking is going on” rather than that “i think.”

What physicists now say exists is a dynamic quantum field of interchangeable mass and energy—a field of interconnected processes rather than independent atoms. Not unlike modern quantum physics, the Buddha said that things come about and pass away in processes of “interdependent origination”—a translation of the key sanskrit phrase pratityasamutpada.

• in philosophical terms, both contemporary physicists and ancient Buddhists understand reality in terms of a process ontology rather than a substance ontology. The self, too, is a process. it is a process interlinked with all the other processes in the universe, including, of course, with other “process selves.”

The Life-Stream of the Self

• The Buddha refers to the five aggregates, which make up the life-stream of the self: bodily forms, sensations and feelings, perceptions and thoughts, dispositions and volitions, and consciousness of all of the other aggregates. These are all interconnected processes, not separate substances.

• They are always changing. our trains of thoughts and fleeting feelings are changing much faster even than our bodies are growing, regenerating, and aging. and all these moving parts of the self are interconnected with the five aggregates of other life-streams.

• The 2nd-century BCe Buddhist philosopher Nāgasena explained the anatman doctrine to a greek king using the analogy of a chariot. When we analyze it, we realize that a chariot is nothing but an amalgamation—an aggregate of wheels, axles, floorboard, and other parts. it is the same with the self, he said.

Biologists tell us that our cells live for no more than a few days to about seven years; the building blocks of our bodies are constantly dying off and being replaced. The only cells that live much longer are neurons, but a physicist would tell us that even neurons are made up of constantly changing subatomic particles flashing in and out of existence in a field of interconnected mass and energy.

• There is not a self in the sense of an independent and permanent substance. But there is one in the sense of the self-reproducing and shifting pattern of a stream of interconnected processes. The problem is that we misunderstand the process-self as a substanceself. This is the problem of what the Buddha calls grasping, clinging, or attachment.

• it is a problem rooted in the feedback loop between ignorance and craving; it is a problem of willful ignorance. We might say that we want to know ourselves. But in reality, we crave to maintain our ignorance—including an ignorance of this craving that is keeping us in the dark.

• The true self is the self that has shed light on itself by cutting the tangle of ignorance and craving. Mahayana Buddhist traditions, and especially Zen, suggest, in particular, that the true self can be characterized as “ungraspable” and as “interconnected.”

The True Self Is Ungraspable

• The 9th-century Chinese Zen master Linji famously speaks of “the true person of no rank who is always going in and out of the face of every one of you.” Who you really are is not your status in a company or in society; it cannot be reduced to the ranks you hold or the roles you play. indeed, it cannot be objectified in any way whatsoever.

The root problem is not just that we are looking for the self in all the wrong places. it is that we are looking for it at all, as if it were some thing, some golden golf ball, so to speak, hidden in some crevice of our brain or in some artery of our hearts.

SUGGESTED READING

abe, “The self in Jung and Zen.”

Dumoulin, Understanding Buddhism, chapter 2. rahula, What the Buddha Taught, chapter 6.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

1 What is the anatman doctrine of Buddhism?

2 how does Zen understand the teaching of no-self to be compatible with the teaching of the true self?

Meditation Checkup:

Lead with the Body and Physical Stillness

the conclusion of Lesson 7 is a meditation checkup focused on the body and stillness. to experience it in full, refer to the audio or video lesson. the following tips serve as a summary of the checkup.

Leading with the Body

• it is very helpful to lead with the body. you cannot completely control the body, but you at least have more control over the body than you do over the mind. With some success, you can order the body to be still, but if you try to order the mind to be still, that usually just riles it up all the more.

• even if we can sometimes get our minds to be relatively still for a few minutes, this does not straightaway pacify our turbulent emotions. When the mind stops racing for a minute or two, we might realize that, underneath the thinking mind, the emotional heart is anxious and unsettled. Through a prolonged practice of meditation, our emotions become calmer and brighter. even then, however, the deepest dimension of ourselves—the spirit—is not yet fully at peace.

• in a practice of meditation, we can best attain stillness and peace in this order: first the body, then the mind, then the heart, and finally the spirit. Lead with the body—with physical stillness. That may take a considerable amount of effort and commitment, but you can do it.

MedItatIon checKuP: Lead WIth the Body and PhysIcaL stILLness

• Then, attending to the breath, trust in the process. Let the breath be the bridge that it is; let it circulate like a fluid connecting tissue between the different physical, psychological, and spiritual dimensions of your being.

• as you attend to the breath, your physical stillness will create the condition for your mind to eventually calm down. Mental stillness, in turn, will allow the emotions to slowly settle and relax. Then, gradually—or perhaps even suddenly—you will one day attain the spiritual peace you deeply desire. This will happen at least periodically, and maybe someday more or less continually.

Committing to Leading with the Body

• Leading with the body includes committing to physical stillness for the duration of each sitting. if you have a problem like a severe leg cramp, by all means, move. But otherwise, it is important to commit to refraining from all voluntary movements during a sitting.

• involuntary movements, like sneezing, are fine. Let them come and let them go, like anything else beyond your control. you’ll find that they don’t truly disturb you or other meditators around you.

• Voluntary movements, though, are distracting, and they can easily become addictive. once you start to adjust your posture or scratch an itch, it easily becomes a habitual fidgeting. Like opening a big bag of potato chips, it’s hard to know when to stop or how many seconds to wait before going for another.

• if you are allowed to move whenever you want, you may be externally free, but not internally. you will be at the mercy of urges your body throws at you to fidget, scratch, adjust, or otherwise move about and remain unsettled.

MedItatIon checKuP: Lead WIth the Body and PhysIcaL stILLness

===