Real Zen for Real Life Course [7][19-20]

 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

===

ZEN ART:

CULTIVATING NATURALNESS

LESSON 19

This lesson discusses the Zen-inspired artistic ways called 

dō, which is the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese 

character for the term dao, as in Daoism. The lesson also 

talks about Zen gardens as one special form of Zen art, and it 

discusses some key concepts of Zen aesthetics. 

Cultivating Naturalness

• in Japan, art and culture are not typically seen as essentially opposed to nature and naturalness. The modern Zen philosopher

hisamatsu shin’ichi lists naturalness (jinen) as one of the distinctive characteristics of Zen art.

• hisamatsu is careful to distinguish this naturalness from mere unrefined “naïveté or instinct.” The artistic naturalness at issue here is “never forced or strained,” and yet that does not mean that it simply occurs in nature without human intention or effort.

• “on the contrary,” hisamatsu says, “it is the result of a full, creative intent that is devoid of anything artificial or strained.” it is the outcome of “an intention so pure and so concentrated … that nothing is forced.” hisamatsu concludes that it “is not found either in natural objects or in children. True naturalness is the ‘no mind’ or ‘no intent’ that emerges from the negation both of naïve or accidental naturalness and ordinary intention.”

• Culture allows us to actualize our humanity, and cultivation requires refraining from acting according to the arbitrary beck and call of every childish impulse and desire. and yet, the process of acculturation and humanization is not simply a departure from nature; it is rather the development of a specifically human capacity for participating in nature. This development requires a double negation: first a negation of uncultivated nature and second a negation of cultivated artificiality.

• in Japan, the cultural art forms known as ways provide patterns and practices for cultivating natural spontaneity, harmony, beauty, efficiency, effectiveness, and creativity. These include the ways of tea, flower arrangement, calligraphy, incense, and various martial arts. The masters and practitioners of these often understand them to be rooted in Zen.

• Japanese ways include three stages called shu, ha, and ri. These terms mean “preserving,” “breaking with,” and “departing from.”

We can rephrase them in terms of “conforming,” “rebelling,” and “creating.”

• The three stages can be seen in the discipline of monastic training as well as in the Japanese ways that are inspired by Zen. in working on a kōan, for example, one has to learn to see with the eyes and hear with the ears of the Zen ancestors in the stories before one is able to make the kōan one’s own and present one’s response to it in full confidence. and only after passing many kōans could one eventually become capable of creating one’s own.

Zen Gardens

• one of the striking characteristics of Zen is the way in which nature, naturalness, art,

and beauty are deeply interwoven with spirituality. in Zen, art, nature, and spirituality are intimately connected. This is why Zen temples and monasteries always include gardens.

• in a sense, Zen gardens can be understood

as an art of literally representing nature: not reproducing it in an essentially different medium, but rather representing the macrocosm of the natural world in a carefully curated microcosmic space.

Many famous Zen rock gardens are designed as microcosmic representations of the macrocosmic natural world: raked sand evokes oceans and rivers, rocks mimic islands and mountains, and so forth.

• These gardens do not replicate nature in an artificial medium. They are themselves part of nature. Moreover, the human artists who cultivate these gardens and the spectators who view and commune with them are not supernatural aliens but rather natural beings recovering a sense of their place in the natural world.

• Japanese gardens often use a technique called shakkei, meaning “borrowed landscape.” The natural environment is allowed to appear as the background and even as an extension of the garden. Conversely, the garden appears as a part of the whole of nature.

Borderlines that Connect and Separate

• for Zen, the idea of nondualism does not mean that there are no differences. rather, it means that the borders that separate things are at the same time the membranes that connect them. on the one hand, the border between the inside of a Japanese temple or house and the garden outside is clearly marked.

• on the other hand, this is a porous border; sliding doors open so as to allow the circulation of air between the inside and outside regions of the world. something similar can be said for the fences, walls, or hedges that demarcate where the cultivated garden ends and the uncultivated environment begins.

• The world is made up of singular and distinct things, persons, and events which are, at the same time, intimately interconnected. for instance, a location’s tearoom and its garden are separate and yet connected. each one is not the other, and yet each one cannot fully be what it is without the other.

Wabi Sabi: Imperfect and Impermanent

• The Zen arts also remind us of the impermanence of all things and of the interconnectedness of life and death. They remind us that we cannot truly live unless we acknowledge our own fragility and mortality along with the ephemeral uniqueness of all that we hold dear.

• since ancient times, the Japanese have celebrated the poignant beauty of the cherry blossoms not despite but rather because of their ephemerality. Bursting into bloom for just a few short days, the cherry blossoms are most beautiful as they flutter to the ground. Nearly everyone takes time out of their busy lives to sit and sing under the trees, bathing in their transient beauty.

• a more specifically Zen aesthetic is that of wabi-sabi, a phrase infamously difficult to translate. Wabi-sabi can be sensed in the rustic simplicity and solitude of a weathered mountain hut as well as in the handmade and well-worn implements of the tea ceremony. imagine, for example, a chipped ceramic tea bowl that is cherished for its unique imperfections and aged earthiness.

• The aesthetic sensibility of wabi-sabi affirms what Buddhism calls the three marks of existence: the insubstantiality and impermanence of all things and the sorrow that accompanies a yearning to transcend this ephemeral and imperfect world. yet as the Japanese philosopher Tanaka Kyūbun points out, wabisabi also expresses a radical reaffirmation of our mortal lives once we let go of any world-negating aesthetic or spiritual aspirations toward otherworldly transcendence.

• The Zen aesthetic of wabi-sabi reminds us to appreciate the lives of things and our own lives because of—rather than despite—the fact that they are fragile and ephemeral. it manifests a mature spirituality that does not flee from the impermanence and imperfection of our lives and all that we care about.

SUGGESTED READING

addiss, The Art of Zen.

Carter, The Japanese Arts and Self-Cultivation.

hisamatsu, Zen and the Fine Arts.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

1 Why does Zen think that, paradoxically, we need to cultivate naturalness?

2 how do Zen gardens enable us to experience the relationship between human art and the natural world differently?

===

ZEN AND WORDS:

BETWEEN SILENCE AND SPEECH

LESSON 20

Zen’s stance or stances toward language can appear to 

be highly ambivalent, paradoxical, and even at times 

contradictory. On the one hand, Zen masters repeatedly 

instruct their students to go beyond words. One must, they stress, 

holistically experience enlightenment oneself, not just read about 

someone else’s experience of it. On the other hand, Zen has 

produced more texts than perhaps any other Buddhist tradition.

Zen Texts

• Buddhism has no bible—no single infallible book of revelation.

it has hundreds of sutras, each proclaiming to be, in some sense, the words of the Buddha. and it has thousands of commentaries, philosophical treatises, and other types of writings. The Zen tradition alone has produced hundreds of volumes— and counting.

• The 9th-century Chinese Zen master huangbo hesitated to allow his lay disciple to record and distribute his teachings. in response to being handed a poem, huangbo responded: “if things could be expressed like this with ink and paper, what would be the purpose of a sect like ours?” some Zen texts even tell of masters tearing up sutras or burning the printing blocks of a popular kōan collection, urging their students not to get lost in the “entangling vines” of words and letters.

• however, such reticence or antipathy is only part of the story of Zen’s stance or stances toward language. indeed, striking affirmations of the expressive power of language abound in the Zen tradition. for instance, the 15th-century Japanese Zen poet Ten’in ryūtaku states this claim: “outside poetry there is no Zen, outside of Zen there is no poetry.”

Using Words to Point beyond Words

• To understand Zen, we must be able to understand both the limits and the expressive power of language. The Zen tradition often foregrounds the teaching that we need to first free ourselves from our linguistic strictures. it is said in this regard that words are at best like fingers pointing at the moon, not the enlightening moon itself.

of course, Zen teachers do not say that one should not read or listen to their teachings. as the modern Japanese Zen master yamada Mumon points out, “it is only because there is a teaching that there is something transmitted separate from it.” he suggests that the teachings are necessary but not sufficient for enlightenment.

• The 12th-century Chinese Zen master Dahui, who advocated the use of kōans rather than the practice of “silent illumination,” nevertheless stressed that the point of words is to point beyond words. This meant, for Dahui, to point back behind the differentiations of words to the mind that is the undifferentiated source of differentiations.

• No amount of intellectualizing about reality can help you solve the great problem of life and death, the problem of samsara. Dahui admonishes armchair intellectuals, saying, “your whole life you’ve made up so many little word games, when the last day of your life arrives, which phrases are you going to use to oppose birth and death?”

Midway between Silence and Speech

• Zen pushes us to go beyond language, yet it also insists that we must speak. Dahui pushes us to go beyond even a one-sided negation of words, saying: “This Matter can neither be sought by the mind nor obtained by no-mind. it can neither be reached through words nor penetrated through silence.”

a canonical reference to the transcendence of language is found in the Vimalakirti sutra, a highly revered text in the Zen tradition. The climax of this sutra is generally held to be the layman Vimalakirti’s “thunderous silence,” with which he demonstrates what it means to “truly enter the gate of nonduality” without using a word or even a syllable.

• The modern rinzai Zen master shibayama Zenkei warns us that Vimalakirti’s silence must not be misunderstood as silence in opposition to speech. indeed, earlier in the Vimalakirti sutra itself, a wise goddess reprimands the hinayana representative shariputra for remaining silent and for claiming that “emancipation cannot be spoken of in words.” The goddess teaches him: “Words, writing, all are marks of emancipation. … Therefore, shariputra, you can speak of emancipation without putting words aside.”

Ice Cream as an Analogy

• Whether Zen experience is expressed through speech or silence, the sense of what is said or not said may be only partially or not at all intelligible to those who are not acquainted with the reference—that is, with the experience itself. To make a crude analogy, one may read enough books about the differences between flavors of ice cream to be able to make a lot of sensible claims about them, but if one has not actually tasted those different flavors of ice cream, one does not really know what one is talking about.

• They may not have had scoops of ice cream 1,000 years ago in China, but they probably did have many flavors of dumplings. and they certainly did have hot and cold water. Cups of hot and cold water may look the same from the outside, but the experience of drinking them is very different, hence the Zen saying, “to know for oneself hot and cold.”

Therefore, we can understand why Zen masters would stress, in different contexts, both the limits and the expressive power of language. Taken on its own, a linguistic indication of an enlightening experience is like a sign saying that water is hot. yet taken in conjunction with the experience itself, linguistic expressions have the potential not only to convey but also to embody, evolve, and enrich the experience of enlightenment.

Exiting and Reentering Language

• The modern Zen philosopher and lay rinzai master Ueda shizuteru has written extensively on the question of language in Zen. Ueda’s illuminating interpretations of Japanese and Western poetry reveal both the limits and the expressive power of language. he shows how we can understand Zen’s apparent wavering between stressing either the limits or the expressive power of language not as a problem that plagues Zen but rather as a dynamic interplay that is essential to it.

• Ueda refers to the 17th-century Japanese Zen master Bankei as saying, in effect, that one must first “exit language” to attain the dharma eye with which to “exit into language” to understand and express the dharma in words. Ueda finds this bidirectional movement away from and back into language epitomized in the twin practices that lie at the core of the rinzai Zen tradition: zazen and sanzen, silent meditation and verbal interviews with a teacher.

The apparent contradictions in Zen between negating and affirming language can be understood as exhortations to participate in the interplay of this twofold movement. one must go beyond language to experience things afresh, and one must bring this fresh experience of things back into language.

• Philosophers since aristotle have pointed out that human beings are animals who are distinguished by their capacity for language. as hellen Keller’s remarkable story reveals, we cannot truly live as human beings without words. however, it is also true that we cannot live entirely enclosed inside them. rather, we live, as Ueda says, in the ceaselessly circulating movement of “exiting language and exiting into language.”

• Zen practice, especially the rinzai Zen practice of going back and forth between long periods of silent meditation and intense oneon-one interviews, slows down and intensifies this movement between exiting and reentering language. it is thus no surprise that this Zen tradition has spawned such an amazingly fresh and vibrant body of poetry and prose.

SUGGESTED READING

Davis, “expressing experience.”

heine, “on the Value of speaking and Not speaking.”

Ueda, “Language in a Twofold World.”

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

1 how does Zen both stress the limits of language and celebrate the expressive power of language?

2 What does Ueda shizuteru mean by exiting language and then exiting into language?

Meditation Checkup: Chanting as a Meditative Practice

the conclusion of Lesson 20 is a meditation checkup focused on chanting. to experience it in full, refer to the audio or video lesson. the following information serves as a summary of the checkup.

Background on Chanting

• all religious traditions involve forms of meditation, prayer, or worship that involve memorizing, reciting, chanting, or singing words. one reason is so that we can emotionally internalize, embody, and be inspired by the words rather than just intellectually comprehend them. To emotionally internalize them means to allow them to become what literally moves us from within.

• The most commonly chanted text in Zen and in Mahayana Buddhism generally is the heart sutra. Compared to the four great Vows, chanting this text is for many less a matter of cognitively than of reflecting on its content. however, many dharma books are devoted to elucidating the sense of the heart sutra, and many serious practitioners do infuse their chanting with an understanding of its core teachings.

• The conceptual meaning is least important in the case of texts termed dharanis, several of which are very regularly chanted in Zen temples and monasteries. in Japan, they are written in Chinese characters that approximate the sound of sanskrit words, regardless of the meaning of the Chinese characters themselves. it is less important to ponder a dharani’s meaning than it is to vocalize the sound intently and correctly.

MedItatIon checKuP: chantIng as a MedItatIve PRactIce

====

---

===