Real Zen for Real Life Course [3][8-9]

 Real Zen for Real Life Course Lecture Notes

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

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

Course scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
LESSON GUIDES
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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 

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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 

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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 

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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
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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 

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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
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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
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Lesson 21 Zen and Philosophy: The Kyoto school . . . . . . . . . . . 162
Lesson 22 Just sitting and Working with Kōans . . . . . . . . . . . .168
Meditation Checkup: Walking Meditation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
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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

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LOVING OTHERS AS YOURSELF

LESSON 8

“ove your neighbor as yourself” is one of the Bible’s main teachings. It first appears in Leviticus and is repeated throughout the new testament. In Leviticus, god

commands his people to love immigrants as well as fellow Jews. Jesus goes even further, telling us to love our enemies:

you have heard that it was said, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But i tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your father in heaven.

some have seen this call to “love your enemies” as Jesus’s most innovative as well as most radical teaching. yet scholars have pointed out both biblical and non-biblical precedents. five centuries earlier the Buddha taught boundless compassion and loving-kindness. in the Metta sutta, we read:

as a mother watches over her child, willing to risk her own life to protect her only child, so with a boundless heart should one cherish all living beings, suffusing the whole world with unobstructed loving-kindness.

Based on such teachings of the Buddha, in the tonglen method of Tibetan Buddhist meditation, one cultivates compassion and lovingkindness, beginning with one’s mother and gradually extending to

even those whom one considers to be one’s enemies.Lesson 8 LovIng otheRs as youRseLF

What Did Jesus Mean?

• Like the ethical teaching of the golden rule, the spiritual teaching of overcoming the separation between self and other is not unique to the Buddha and Jesus. five centuries before Jesus, around the same time as the Buddha lived in india, Confucius taught a version of the golden rule in China.

• a millennium after Buddhism was brought to China, the 11th-century neo-Confucian philosopher Cheng hao wrote: “Benevolent people regard heaven, earth, and the myriad things as one body. Nothing is not oneself. if you recognize something as yourself, there are no limits to how far [your compassion] will go.”

• The neo-Confucians adopted the notion of being “of one body” with heaven, earth, and all beings from Zen. and Zen can be said to have gotten the idea in part from the foundational Daoist text, the Zhuangzi, which contains the following lines: “heaven and earth are born together with me, and the ten thousand things and i are one.”

• This idea was introduced into Chinese Buddhist thought in the 4th century by sengzhao, an early Chinese Buddhist philosopher who interpreted Mahayana Buddhist thought in Daoist terms, effectively laying the groundwork for the development of the Zen tradition. he wrote: “heaven and earth and i share the same root. The myriad things and i are of the same body.”

Tat Tvam Asi: You Are Your Neighbor

• in india, the stress on the underlying oneness of all life is found not only in Mahayana Buddhism but also in many ancient texts of hinduism. one of the first Western scholars to learn sanskrit and study the ancient texts of hinduism was Paul Deussen.

• Upon reading the Upanishads, the recorded teachings of the ancient hindu sages, Deussen wrote that the Upanishads contain the “formula” of tat tvam asi, which “gives in three words metaphysics and morals together.” The term tat tvam asi means

“that art thou,” or “you are that.”

• The word that in this usage indicates brahman, the divine source and unity of all things and all people. Deussen reasoned that tat tvam asi gives the answer to the question of why you should love your neighbor. you should do so because “you are your neighbor.”

A Refrain

• Tat tvam asi is a refrain in the lessons the sage Uddalaka gives to his son shvetaketu in the Chandogya Upanishad. Uddalaka uses a number of analogies to get his son to awaken to the divine oneness underlying all the differences in the world. for example, he points out the fact that all the different vessels and figures made out of clay differ only in “name and form,” but at bottom they consist of the same substance.

• Uddalaka does not deny that people and things really do differ in name and form. his point is that, on a deeper level, there is an underlying unity of the universe. it is not enough to see, like a scientist, that all objects are made up of the same interchangeable flux of mass and energy.

The truly enlightening moment comes when we realize the unity of the seer with all that it sees, the unity of subject and object, the unity of the self and the divine ground of reality—in hindu terms, the unity of atman and brahman. (The term atman is the word meaning “self” that the Uddalaka uses.)

Tasting the Oneness of All Life

• in one of Uddalaka’s lessons, he tells his son to get a wide pail of water and to put a lump of salt in it. The next day, after it has dissolved into the water, Uddalaka asks his son if he can see the salt. his son says no. he then asks him to taste the water, and of course he can taste the salt.

• Crucially, Uddalaka asks his son to taste it not just in one place, but in several different places in the pail. it is the same taste everywhere. relevantly, Zen masters talk about the “one taste” of reality and of drinking the water and knowing for oneself whether it is hot or cold. We cannot see the salt of life. We cannot tell whether the water is hot or cold by just looking at it. We have to taste it for ourselves.

• only when we have managed to taste the oneness of all life can we begin to also see it in the midst of all of our myriad differences. only then, says Uddalaka, have we attained that spiritual wisdom in which “we come to know that all of life is one.”

• Notably, the Buddha taught the anatman doctrine. as in english, in indian languages such as sanskrit and Pali, the prefixes a- and an- express a privation or negation. Therefore, for centuries, monks and scholars have tended to distinguish Buddhism from hinduism (or Brahmanism) by contrasting the Buddhist anatman doctrine with the hindu atman metaphysics.

however, the matter is far from this simple. To begin with, there were and are many different hindu schools of philosophy and religion, often with very different understandings of what atman signifies.

• The Buddha was most concerned with refuting the notion of an atman understood as an unchanging and independently existing soul-entity. yet Uddalaka is talking about the self that unites rather than separates us from others. although Uddalaka’s stress on oneness may not allow for the complementary stress on difference we find in Zen, we should recognize a real kinship between his teaching and at least an important aspect of Zen.

• some passages that are clearly reminiscent of Uddalaka’s teaching can be found in The Ten Oxherding Pictures, a Zen classic. in the texts appended to the second and third pictures, these passages can be found:

it is now clear that the many vessels are composed of a single metal, and that the body of the ten thousand things is your self.

hearing the voice, one gains entry and meets the source wherever one looks. … it is like salt in water, or like glue in paint.

Zen Teachings

• Zen stresses the uniqueness and irreplaceable singularity of things, persons, and events at least as much and as often as it does the oneness of everything. Zen teachings agree with the band U2’s lyrics, “We’re one, but we’re not the same.” yet what exactly does this mean?

To begin to answer that crucial question, this lesson turns to a statement by the modern Korean Zen master Kusan sunim, several parts of which could easily be misunderstood. he says that to awaken is to realize that:

This world, mankind, and all the animals are no different from oneself. This is precisely the “great self.” … and as we know that it is not possible to separate any component from the rest of the world, both objects and the relative self cannot really exist. Therefore, the ‘great self’ is precisely ‘no-self.’”

• The paradoxical statement that “the ‘great self’ is precisely ‘noself’” is another way of saying that the true self is egoless. in other words, atman, correctly understood, is anatman because the self that is being negated in the anatman doctrine is the self that sees itself as separate from the rest of the universe. The self that awakens to its unity with the rest of the universe is the true self.

• When Kusan sunim says that “both objects and the relative self cannot really exist,” by “really exist,” he means exist as independent, self-subsisting entities. as long as we think that this is what it means to “really exist,” then nothing really exists. however, we could turn the matter around and say that since no such independently self-subsisting entities exist, this must not be what it means to exist.

To Exist Is to Coexist

• The modern Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat hanh says that we need to revise the definition of the most basic verb in the english dictionary: to be. We may be enthralled by hamlet’s question of “to be or not to be,” but maybe we should question what it means to be in the first place.

Nhat hanh’s suggestion is that, based not only on Buddhist philosophy but also on modern physics, we should redefine being as interbeing. “To be is to interbe,” he proclaims. in more familiar terms, we could say: To exist is to coexist.

• The term interbeing is Nhat hanh’s reformulation of the basic concept of the Buddhist philosophy of interdependent origination. More precisely, interbeing is a translation of a Chinese term, xiang-ji, which means “mutually to be.” in other words, it means that things which may seem to be separate and even opposed to one another in fact mutually belong to one another.

SUGGESTED READING

easwaran, the Upanishads, 176–200.

Loy, Nonduality.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

1 What does Zen mean and what does it not mean when it says that we should realize our oneness with everything?

2 Why does Zen suggest that to exist is to coexist?

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TAKING TURNS AS THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE

LESSON 9

Zen stresses not only the ultimate unity of the universe, but also the irreducible singularity of the different beings and events that make up the universe. not only is each person,

each life-stream, unique, but each moment of each life-stream, and each event of interconnection between life streams, is unique. everything—every event of interconnection at every moment—is unique. every event is a unique perspectival expression of the interrelated whole.

Unity in Diversity

• The lesson of multi-perspectival unity in diversity is given most vividly in the example of the jeweled net of indra found in the avatamsaka sutra. The universe is envisioned as a huge net, each knot of which contains a jewel that reflects and is reflected in all the others.

• Dushun, the first patriarch of the huayan school of Chinese Buddhism, a school that greatly influenced Zen, writes: “This imperial net is made all of jewels: because the jewels are clear, they reflect each other’s images, appearing in each other’s reflections upon reflections, ad infinitum.”

• each nondual event of reality holographically mirrors, in its own finite manner and from its own unique perspective, the infinite universe. it is important to bear in mind that, even if each singular event implies and mirrors the whole universe, it does so in an irreducibly unique and unrepeatable manner.

• The Zen masters in the literature of the tradition are a motley crew of unusually distinct characters. and the records of their encounters are filled with stories of playful competition and serious trickery, all for the sake of spurring one another along toward deeper insights into their oneness and their differences— into their unity in diversity.

The Mutual Exchange of Host and Guest

• The Zen phrase “the mutual exchange of host and guest” was taken up by tea masters who say that the point of the tea ceremony is not just for the tea master to be an excellent host to his or her guests. rather, the point is to make the guests feel so at home, so much on the same level, that a free exchange of these roles can take place in sharing and conversing over a bowl of tea.

The philosopher Ueda shizuteru writes that “the free exchange of the role of host is the very core of dialogue.” in a dialogue, sometimes it is proper to speak, while at other times, it is proper to listen. When your conversation partner is either too reticent or too talkative, it’s hard to engage in the give-and-take rhythm of a good conversation. additionally, Ueda writes:

on the ethical plane, the emphasis, obviously, falls on the moment of self-negation when the role of host or master is surrendered to the other. But this does not mean a one-sided sacrifice of self. at bottom it is a question of reciprocal exchange in “giving priority to the other.”

• in other words, in an ethical relation, each person is called on to be other-centered. only when people are willing to hold the

a transcendent theism that portrays god as wholly other and above us is common in the abrahamic traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and islam. however, there are also other ways in which theologians and mystics in these traditions have understood and experienced god.

• The Zen understanding of ultimate reality is closer to a panentheistic understanding of god. Panentheism understands all reality to exist within a god who is greater than the sum of god’s parts. Panentheism is distinct both from dualistic theism, which maintains the separateness of god and the world, as well as from pantheism, which tends to completely identify god and the world.

• although orthodox Christian theologies have tended to favor a more dualistic theism, there are many Christian theologians, mystics, and philosophers—in ancient and modern times—who have understood god in panentheistic terms. one can find a panentheistic conception of god suggested by many passages of the Bible, such as when Paul affirms the idea that “in him we live and move and have our being.”

• a Zen Buddhist might even say that god is the kenotic or selfemptying core of our being; god is our true self. god is the love that is found within our own hearts, beneath the self-centered passions of the ego.

Waves and Water, Mountains and Earth

• The classic Buddhist metaphor for the relation between the universal Buddha-nature that we all share and the mental and physical traits that distinguish us from one another is that of water and waves. The different waves are always moving, intersecting and influencing one another, sometimes clashing and sometimes dancing together.

at the same time, they are all waves of the same water; they share the same still depths beneath their sometimes beautiful, sometimes violent splashing about on the surface. The water is the waves, yet it also transcends them in their depths.

• To realize oneself as the center of the universe requires, paradoxically, letting go of all self-centeredness. it requires that one recognize that everyone else is also the center of the universe. it requires recognizing that we are each a unique expression of a formless field. as the 15th-century Japanese Zen master ikkyū says, all things and persons come from and return to the formless “original field” of emptiness.

Being the Center of Attention

• The true dynamic of the self, teaches Ueda, entails two kinds of freedom: freedom from the self and freedom for the self. Both of these are realized in and through genuinely dialogical encounters with others. Ueda uses the Zen ideas of host and guest when he says, “The free exchange of the role of host is the very core of dialogue.”

• genuine dialogue—and indeed the manner of being in any relationship that is genuinely mutual—is a matter of the free exchange of the roles of host and guest. in other words, it is a matter of taking turns being the center of the universe.

SUGGESTED READING

Davis, “encounter in emptiness.”

Nishitani, “The i-Thou relation in Zen Buddhism.”

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

1 how does Zen stress our individuality and uniqueness at the same time as it stresses our unity or oneness?

2 What does it mean to say that we can take turns being the center of the universe?

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Meditation Checkup:

From Mindless Reacting to Mindful Responding

the conclusion of Lesson 9 is a meditation checkup focused on mindfulness. to experience it in full, refer to the audio or video lesson. the following tips serve as a summary of the checkup.

Nonjudgmental Awareness

• The key to the practice of mindfulness is the cultivation of nonjudgmental awareness of what’s going on in the present moment. according to the Buddha’s instructions for mindfulness meditation, after developing a concentrated state of mind by focusing on the sensation of the breath, one dispassionately observes other physical sensations, then feelings, mental states, and finally basic teachings that illuminate our experience of what the self is and what it is not.

• Novice and experienced meditators may on occasion experience rather intense feelings of pain or stiffness in their backs, knees, and other areas of their bodies. Try to patiently and nonjudgmentally attend to such painful sensations without adding excess mental anguish to the physical pain.

• Painful sensations generally cause people to mindlessly react by tensing up physically and mentally, which then leads to a stream of negative thoughts and interpretive evaluations. all of this makes these sensations feel much more painful than they actually are.

MedItatIon checKuP: FRoM MIndLess ReactIng to MIndFuL ResPondIng

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Background on the Name

• Buddha is not a proper name but rather an appellation that means “awakened one” or “enlightened one.” according to all Buddhist traditions, shakyamuni was neither the first nor the last Buddha.

• in a Japanese Zen monastery, such as shōkokuji, the lineage of enlightened teachers is chanted, beginning with six mythical Buddhas who preceded shakyamuni, then proceeding through the names of the indian, Chinese, and Japanese lineage, before ending with the previous Zen master of that particular monastery.

• although one does not typically refer to a living master as a Buddha in the Zen tradition, technically anyone who is fully enlightened is a Buddha. Because all humans are originally endowed with the Buddha-nature, we are all capable of becoming Buddhas. indeed, that is the whole point of Zen practice—to wake up to our true nature and become a Buddha in this very body.

• however, an individual flesh-and-blood person who is fully awakened to their true nature is not the only understanding of the name Buddha. To awaken to one’s Buddha-nature is to awaken to the fact that one’s true self is not confined to the flesh, especially if it is misunderstood to be dualistically cut off from the rest of reality.

The Various Traditions of Buddhism

• after shakyamuni’s death, or parinirvana—his ultimate attainment of final nirvana—in the 5th century BCe, his teachings were passed down orally for several centuries. over time, a schism arose leading to a major split between more conservative groups of Buddhists and more liberal or innovative ones.

• eventually, around the 1st century BCe, a movement that referred to itself as Mahayana, meaning “great Vehicle,” emerged. adherents of Mahayana came to derogatorily refer to the more conservative schools as hinayana, or “Lesser Vehicle.”

• it was thought that whereas adherents of hinayana aspire only to become arhats—accomplished sages who have liberated themselves from samsara—adherents of Mahayana aspire to be bodhisattvas, or enlightening beings who vow to liberate all sentient beings. Keep in mind that this is the Mahayana version of the difference between itself and the schools it calls hinayana.

• The so-called hinayana schools mostly died out, except for the Theravada, or “Doctrine of elders,” school, which still thrives today in sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, and elsewhere. The Mahayana traditions spread to and still thrive today in central and eastern asia.

• in Tibet and Bhutan, Tantric or Vajrayana schools took root and flourished. in China, Korea, and Japan, Zen and Pure Land Buddhist schools, among others, developed distinct traditions. Theravada and Mahayana schools coexist in Vietnam.

• along with the arhat versus bodhisattva ideals, another major difference between the so-called hinayana schools and the Mahayana schools concerns their understandings of the name Buddha.

• a bodhisattva is someone who aspires to become or is well on the way to becoming a Buddha. according to the hinayana understanding, only an especially gifted person, and indeed only one such person in an entire eon, is capable of becoming a Buddha. The Mahayana traditions, by contrast, teach that everyone should aspire to eventually become a Buddha, which means that, to begin with, everyone should aspire to become a bodhisattva.

•

The Mahayana image of the bodhisattva is that of someone who is on the verge of entering nirvana but who, out of compassion, turns back, forsaking their own complete liberation to work tirelessly on behalf of the liberation of all sentient beings from suffering.

• for the Pure Land Buddhist schools, amitabha (also known by the Japanese name amida) only became a Buddha on the condition that it would enable him to most

The Three Bodies of the Buddha

• relevant here is the Mahayana doctrine of the trikaya, or “three bodies,” of the Buddha: the nirmanakaya (or manifestation body), the sambhogakaya (or enjoyment body), and the dharmakaya or Truth Body of the Buddha. only the first of these three bodies, the nirmanakaya, refers to a flesh-and-blood body.

• The prime example of a nirmanakaya is shakyamuni Buddha. such an enlightened person is seen as a manifestation of the wisdom, compassion, and other virtues of the universal Buddha-nature.

• hinayana Buddhist schools also developed a two-body doctrine to explain the difference between the mortal flesh and blood of shakyamuni Buddha and the immortal virtues and truth or dharma to which he awakened. When they depict the Buddha in a statue, the physical form represents his rupakaya (or form body). The sometimes enormous size of the statue and the special marks, like long earlobes and the protrusion on the crown of his head, signify the virtues and verities of his dharmakaya (truth body).

• Meanwhile, a sambhogakaya is the celestial embodiment of a Buddha who over eons has accumulated an enormous surplus of karmic merit and who is able to aid others in overcoming obstacles on their way to enlightenment. his saving graces are enjoyed by earthly bodhisattvas through their meditative practices of visualization. Those who have faith in his grace are directly transported to his Pure Land after death.

Amida Buddha and the Pure Land

• The most famous sambhogakaya is amitabha—that is, amida Buddha. as the literal version of the story goes, a bodhisattva named Dharmakara became amida Buddha through eons

of spiritual practice. epitomizing the bodhisattva spirit of compassion, Dharmakara vowed from the beginning not to become a Buddha unless and until it meant that he could save anyone who sincerely called on his name.

• he achieved this, it is said, and he now sends down into the world his rays of light—beams of wisdom and compassion—from his Pure Land. insofar as we call on his name and utterly rely on his grace or “other-power,” we can be reborn in this paradise.

• yet the Pure Land is not simply a paradise to be enjoyed. rather, it is a land that is free of all the physical and psychological obstacles to attaining enlightenment and becoming a Buddha ourselves. in the Pure Land one can, for example, hear Buddhist teachings whenever one wishes and understand them without difficulty. in short, amida Buddha’s Pure Land is an optimal training ground for people to quickly and easily become Buddhas.

Merit Transfer, Other-Power, and Pure Land

• The idea of merit transfer was very important for the development of Mahayana Buddhism. in the beginning it was thought that by doing good deeds and spiritual practices, one could either enjoy the fruit of this good karma in this life, or one could save up this merit and spend it on attaining a better rebirth for one’s next life.

• early on, the idea developed that one could also dedicate one’s karmic merit to someone else, with an example being to assist a deceased loved one to attain a better rebirth. as with other teachings, Mahayana Buddhists radicalized and universalized the idea of merit transfer. The scholar Paul Williams writes that “in [the case of] Māhāyana … merit transference is always for the benefit of all sentient beings, usually in order that they may all attain perfect enlightenment.”

• This radicalized and universalized idea of merit transfer leads to the idea of a Buddha working on behalf of all sentient beings by way of establishing a Buddha Land or Pure Land. according to the earliest recorded teachings maintained by the hinayana schools, shakyamuni Buddha claimed to be nothing more than a person who had awakened to what it really means to be a person.

• he can teach us to do the same, but in the end, we have to do our own work. We have to study, live an ethical life, and meditate on our own, by means of our own effort. No one can do these things for us.

• By contrast, the Mahayana tradition of Pure Land Buddhism says that you can reach nirvana by taking a piggyback ride on the broad shoulders, the great Vehicle, of amida Buddha. indeed, according to shinran, the only way anyone has ever been able to get to nirvana is by the grace, the other-power, of amida Buddha.

• This is reminiscent of a Christian story about a man who, before he found Christ, always felt like he was walking alone, leaving only one set of footprints in the sand. after he found Christ, he always felt like there were two sets of footprints; he felt that Christ was his constant companion on every step of the journey of his life.

• But then, he fell on hard times, losing his job, his health, and his loved ones. Looking down, wondering how he could continue to keep walking, he again saw only one set of footprints. Why, he cried out, had Christ left him alone when he needed him most?

• however, then he heard an inner voice: “i have not left you alone, i am carrying you.” This Christian story about relying on a higher power to carry us through the lows of this life resonates deeply with Pure Land Buddhism.

The Truth Body of the Buddha

• Zen Buddhists do not usually speak of other-power, nor do they think of the Buddha in terms of a celestial sambhogakaya. it could be said that Zen Buddhists rely on self-power, but, unlike the Pure Land point of view, they do not think of this self-power as a form of ego-power.

• rather, they think of it as the power that naturally emanates from the true self, not as the willful force of the delusive ego. This true self is neither outside oneself nor limited to the borders of our physical bodies or mental processes. The true self is our Buddhanature. in other words, the dharmakaya of the Buddha—the ultimate truth of who and what the Buddha is—is the ultimate truth of who and what we are.

SUGGESTED READING AND VIEWING

BBC, The Long Search: The Land of the Disappearing Buddha.

harvey, An Introduction to Buddhism.

Williams, Mahāyāna Buddhism.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

1 What are the three bodies of the Buddha, and how does this compare to the Christian idea of the Trinity?

2 Who is amida Buddha for Pure Land Buddhists? how does Zen understand the ultimate sense of the Buddha to be the true self rather than either a historical person or a transcendent savior?

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