영성, 몸-마음, 젠더, 생태, 평화 Scapbook: Real Zen for Real Life Course [4][10-11]

2023/03/14

Real Zen for Real Life Course [4][10-11]

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

===

MIND IS BUDDHA:

IF YOU MEET HIM, KILL HIM!

LESSON 11

The Buddha is our true self, yet our ignorant egos stand in the way of realizing this. We thus see the Buddha as something outside ourselves, something that we can

believe in or not, and something that we can pray to and serve or not. We may even see the Buddha as something that we can one day become—but not as something that, deep down, we already are. as long as we see the Buddha as something outside ourselves, we can never see into the Buddha as our own true nature. this is why the founder of the Rinzai Zen tradition, the 9th-century chinese Zen master Linji, shockingly teaches: “If you encounter the Buddha, kill the Buddha!”

The True Buddha

• Linji’s point is that the socalled Buddha that one would encounter on the road somewhere—the Buddha that one would see as something or someone outside oneself—is not the real Buddha. in effect, he is telling us to smash all idols of the Buddha.

• The difference between an idol and an icon—that is, the difference between a false substitute and a genuine symbol—is crucial to all religious traditions. Jews and Muslims are stricter than Christians in forbidding all images of god.

• for centuries after the Buddha died, it was forbidden to make images of him. it was not until the 1st century BCe that Buddhists began to make sculptures and other images of the Buddha. They were inspired by greek sculpture and motivated by a compassionate desire to offer people a way to approach truths through beautiful and didactic forms.

• in the BBC documentary The Long Search: The Land of the Disappearing Buddha, the modern Japanese Zen master Ōmori sōgen, after practicing the martial art of sword fighting, bows to an image in an alcove. The narrator asks him, “is that the Buddha you are bowing to?”

• The Zen master answers that it is a form of Buddha, namely Kannon, the bodhisattva of compassion. he then adds: “When i bow to it, i bow to something in myself. That something i call compassion.” The image outside himself is merely a reminder of what, ultimately, he finds working in and through his own heart.

• The 9th-century Chinese Zen master yantou says, “haven’t you heard that what enters through the gate is not the family treasure?” in other words, whatever comes from the outside is not your true self. Buddha is nothing outside of one’s own heart and mind. one’s true heart-mind is the Buddha.

Buddhas are Unselfconscious

• The Zen master shidō Bunan gives this advice: “When one is compassionate and unaware of it, one is a Buddha.” and Dōgen—a quite philosophical Zen master—tells us that “When Buddhas are truly Buddhas, there is no need for them to be conscious of themselves as Buddhas.” Being self-conscious of oneself as a Buddha is somewhat like saying to oneself at a party, “i am really dancing so well, so natural and free.” That kind of selfconsciousness is a sure way to get out of the groove and step on one’s own feet.

The Zen school has also been called the Buddha-mind school. But what exactly is the Buddhamind that we can awaken to and realize as our true self? The 18th-century Japanese Zen master hakuin refers us to the traditional Mahayana Buddhist doctrine of the four types of wisdom. The Buddha-mind is said to manifest in these four ways:

as “great Perfect Mirror Wisdom, the Universal Nature Wisdom, the

Marvelous observing Wisdom, and the Perfecting-of-action Wisdom.”

• The first of these is the perfectly still, clear, and pure mind attained through deep states of meditation.

• The second wisdom of the Buddha-mind is the ability to see all things equally in this impartial light. all things are interconnected, and each one reflects the whole universe from its own vantage point.

• The third type of wisdom is the ability to discern differences: each thing is an utterly unique focal point of the universe, related to, yet different from, everything else.

• The fourth type of wisdom is the ability to put the awareness of both equality and difference into action.

Nondualism: Neither Idealism nor Materialism

• although it has been called the Buddha-mind school, the philosophy of Zen is neither an idealism nor a realism, neither a mentalism nor a materialism. it is, rather, a nondualism. The modern Zen philosopher Nishitani Keiji tells the story of the 10th-century Zen master fayan Wenyi.

• he was converted from a “consciousness-only” school of Buddhist philosophy to a Zen experience of nondualism when he was asked whether a big rock lying in the garden in front of him was inside or outside of his mind. fayan eventually realized that saying either inside or outside would not do justice to a direct and nondual experience of the rock.

• in such an experience, the rock is neither inside nor outside of the mind; the rock is the mind at that moment. Nishitani concludes that Zen nondualism can be captured no more by a one-sided subjective idealism than by an equally onesided naïve materialism.

• The universe is both mind and matter. Dōgen teaches that “there are two approaches to studying the Buddha Way: to study with the mind and to study with the body.” yet these two paths converge insofar as on the one hand, one discovers that “mountains and rivers, the great earth, the sun, moon and stars are the mind. … walls, tiles, and pebbles are the mind.” on the other hand, one realizes that “the whole world in all ten directions is this true human body.”

The whole truth of this nondual reality cannot be grasped objectively. indeed, such grasping always constricts its object and divorces it from the subject. it can be endlessly analyzed intellectually, but such analysis only breaks it apart into pieces which can never be entirely stitched back together without remainder, at least as long as the subject who is analyzing and reconstructing remains aloof from the object being analyzed and reconstructed.

• instead, holistic awakening is necessary. The practice of zazen is physical as well as psychological. The breath mediates these dimensions of the self as well as the inner and outer dimensions of self and world. Meditating on the breath holistically reminds us of the whole of reality.

What Is the Buddha?

• This lesson concludes with some famous kōans that deal with the question: What is the Buddha? Keep in mind that kōans and commentary on them are not trying to conceptually clarify an already settled doctrine. rather, they repeatedly push you to go one step further on a never-ending journey of deepening and developing experiential wisdom.

• after a practitioner named Mazu had become a Zen master, a monk once asked him, “What is Buddha?” Mazu answered, “Mind is Buddha.” in a comment appended to this kōan, however, the 13th-century Chinese Zen master Wumen chides: “Don’t you know that one has to rinse out his mouth for three days if he has uttered the word ‘Buddha’? if he is a real Zen man, he will stop his ears and rush away when he hears ‘Mind is Buddha.’”

in a sequel kōan in Wumen’s collection The Gateless Barrier, Mazu responds to the same question: What is Buddha? Mazu this time answers, “No mind, no Buddha.” Wumen approves, commenting:

“if you can see into it here, your Zen study has been completed.”

• The modern Japanese Zen master shibayama Zenkei explains: “earlier, [the monk] had come to Master [Mazu] seeking Buddha outside himself, and in order to break through his illusion [Mazu] told him, ‘Mind is Buddha.’ Now that [Mazu] sees that many disciples have become attached to ‘Mind is Buddha’ he says, ‘No mind, no Buddha’ in order to smash and wipe away their attachment to

‘Mind is Buddha.’”

• Mazu himself had clarified his apparently contradictory teachings. he responded to another monk who asked, “Why do you teach that ‘Mind is Buddha’?” Mazu replied, “it is in order to stop a baby crying.” The monk asked, “What is it like when the baby stops crying?” Mazu’s answer was “No mind, no Buddha.”

• one of Mazu’s successors commented, “‘Mind is Buddha’ is the phrase for one who wants medicine while he has no disease. ‘No mind, no Buddha’ is the phrase for one who cannot do away with the medicine when his disease has been cured.”

from the beginning, we are Buddhas. however, not realizing this, we seek the Buddha outside ourselves. The dis-ease we experience is of our own making. and even when we find a good teaching, we turn that medicine into a poison by objectifying the mind and attaching ourselves to the concept of Buddha.

• in conclusion, always keep in mind that the path of Zen proceeds by way of subtraction, not addition. although shopping malls, online markets, and even some temples are filled with trinkets and trophies of addition Zen, real Zen is subtraction Zen. Zen is not about adding new ideas and identities. it is a matter of freeing us from our fixations on the ones we already have.