Real Zen for Real Life Course [5][12-14]

 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
===[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

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DYING TO LIVE: BUDDHISM AND CHRISTIANITY

LESSON 12

This lesson looks at the relationship between Buddhism and christianity. over the past century, there have been many christians who have taken up the practice of Zen

meditation without leaving the church. In fact, there have been a number of catholic priests who have become Zen teachers. there have also been many Protestant clergy and laypeople who have claimed that their christian faith is compatible with and deepened by their practice of Zen Buddhism.

Early Encounters and Misunderstandings

• in Japan, there is a tradition of esoteric Buddhism called shingon, which was founded by Kūkai in the 9th century. for shingon Buddhists, the dharmakaya is the cosmic Buddha called Dainichi Nyorai—the great sun Buddha that is the source of all light and life in the world. indeed, all reality is thought to be the manifestation of Dainichi.

• When the first Christians arrived in Japan in the mid-16th century, the Jesuit missionaries led by francis Xavier were told by their Japanese translator that the word Dainichi is the best translation for the word God. These early Christian missionaries thought that the Japanese must have already received a partial or corrupted version of the gospel of Christianity. for their part, the Japanese thought that the missionaries had come from the western land of the Buddha, india, and brought with them new doctrines of Buddhism.

• This period of mutual appreciation based on mutual misunderstanding ended after the missionaries were confronted with Buddhist—and in particular Zen—doctrines of emptiness and nothingness. additionally, the pivotal Buddhist doctrine of no-self sounded like the antithesis of their core belief in an eternal soul.

• for centuries following this fateful first encounter in Japan, Buddhism—and specifically its doctrines of no-self and emptiness—became an object of both fascination and fearful condemnation for Western philosophers and theologians. only in the 20th century was the prejudiced misunderstanding of these teachings gradually reformed. however, no-self and emptiness remain the most intellectually and emotionally challenging doctrines of Buddhism for Westerners to wrap their heads and hearts around.

What is God?

• a relevant question for this lesson’s topic is: What does it mean to believe in god? When we ask questions like this, we assume a lot. To begin with, we assume that we understand what we are asking. in this case, we assume that we know what the word God means and what it would mean to believe in god. another question is whether god is male rather than female. additionally, how could we tell?

• Buddhists, even Pure Land Buddhists, do not believe in a transcendent being who exists independent of the being’s creation. Zen Buddhism is most compatible with panentheism. The term panentheism means “all is in god.”

• Many biblical passages lend themselves to a panentheistic interpretation, such as when god says, “Do i not fill heaven and earth?” and when Paul affirms the idea that “in him we live and move and have our being.” such a panentheistic conception of the biblical god does not, after all, sound so very different from many Zen pronouncements.

Experiencing the Unborn Buddha-Mind

• Buddhism teaches that everything that is born must die. This is the law of impermanence. everything that exists because of the conditions that allow it to exist will cease to exist when those conditions no longer hold.

• The good news—the gospel of Buddhism—is that there is something on the other side of the door: a doorway through which we can pass if only we can shed the bulky armor we’ve vainly attached to the fragile shells of our egos.

Buddhism calls this something that is no-thing the unborn, unmade, and unconditioned. in a famous passage from an early sutra, the Buddha teaches:

There is, monks, an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned. if, monks, there were no unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned, no escape would be discerned from what is born, become, made, conditioned. But because there is an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned, therefore an escape is discerned from what is born, become, made, conditioned.

• Because there is the unborn, there is nirvana. The attainment of nirvana is the realization of the unborn. There was a tendency in early Buddhism to understand nirvana as somewhere beyond samsara—as a transcendent abode beyond this world of space and time.

• The Mahayana tradition, and especially the Zen school, brought nirvana back down to earth. The great 2nd-century Mahayana philosopher Nagarjuna taught that nirvana is not a different place to be; it is a different way of being here. Life in this world for the unenlightened is samsara, but for the enlightened, life in this same world is nirvana.

• Zen masters call on us to realize the unborn here and now. and they tell us that we can fully do this only if we cease perceiving this world of ceaseless change as one of birth and death.

• rebirth, in Buddhism, is first and foremost moment-to-moment rebirth. each moment of change is, in a sense, the death of an old form and the birth of a new one. The boiling water disappears as water to become steam. a teenage adolescent has to die to be reborn as a young adult, and so on.

• Thich Nhat hanh points out that modern science agrees with

Buddhism in this regard. he quotes the french scientist antoine Lavoisier as saying, “Nothing is created, and nothing is destroyed.” and he remarks that this is just what the heart sutra tells us: “one form of energy can only become another form of energy.”

• yet we constantly suffer from worrying about death while we are alive. We do not simply live here and now, but, haunted by thoughts of our mortality, we run ahead in anticipation of death. The german philosopher Martin heidegger even claims that this anxious anticipation of death is the defining trait of being human.

• But what do religions like Christianity really teach about life and death? Does Christianity simply promise our anxious egos that they can live forever? or, rather, does not its core teaching say that we must die to our egos to be reborn in the eternal life of Christ?

Views on Death and Rebirth

• The idea of an existential or spiritual death and rebirth is not at all foreign to religions such as Christianity. indeed, it is at the very heart of Jesus’s teaching. in the gospel of Matthew, we read: “Whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me.

Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” This teaching—that each of us must die to the old adam to be reborn in the true life of Christ—is repeated throughout all four gospels.

• Baptism is, as it were, a ritual drowning of the ego and resurrection of the true self. Perhaps one can even say that in the Christian tradition, Christ, as the incarnation of divine love, is the true self. This seems to be implied when st. Paul famously says, “i have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer i who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.”

• This core Christian teaching does not seem to be very far from the Zen master Dōgen’s teachings about life, death, and about enlightenment as a matter of “dropping off the body-mind.” Dōgen writes:

When you let go of both your body and your mind, forget them both, and throw yourself into the house of Buddha, and when functioning begins from the side of the Buddha drawing you in to accord with it, then, with no need for any expenditure of either physical or mental effort, you are freed from birth-and-death and become Buddha.

• it has been said that this particular text, and especially this passage, may have been composed by Dōgen for a Pure Land Buddhist rather than a Zen Buddhist audience because its language of letting actions come “from the side of the Buddha” rather than from one’s own efforts resonates with the Pure Land teaching of other-power more than it does with the Zen teaching of self-power. Be that as it may, Zen and Pure Land Buddhism are not as far apart as they are sometimes made out to be.

Conclusion

• The Dominican and german theologian Meister eckhart says that obedience is an imperfect releasement unto god’s will. as long as there is a duality between god and servant, there remains a trace of self-will that resists the one divine will. “Where there are two,” he says, “there is defection.” The purely good man is said to be “so much of one will with god that he wills what god wills and in the way that god wills it.” furthermore, in the final “breakthrough,” according to eckhart, “i stand free of my own will and of the will of god.”

• Ultimately, for eckhart, the complete abandonment of self-will also entails letting go of god’s will. one is then released into the “pure activity” of living “empty and free” and “without why.” in his most radical (and perhaps heretical) teachings, eckhart may be closer to Zen Buddhism than he is to either the orthodox teachings of Christianity or those of Pure Land Buddhism, which both preserve a distinction between the self and the higher or other power that it is called on to serve and be saved by.

SUGGESTED READING

Davis, “Naturalness in Zen and shin Buddhism.” habito, Living Zen, Loving God

Kennedy, Zen Spirit, Christian Spirit.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

1 What does Zen mean by the great Death, and why it is necessary to pass through this experience to truly live?

2 how is the idea of a spiritual death and rebirth in Zen comparable to similar ideas in Pure Land Buddhism and Christianity?

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ZEN BEYOND MYSTICISM: EVERYDAY EVEN MIND

LESSON 13

The 14th-century christian mystic Meister eckhart once said, “I pray to god that he may make me free of god.” he also said: “the highest and final letting go, of which humans are

capable, is letting go of god for the sake of god.” Much like Zen kōans, these statements boggle the mind—yet also, for many, inspire the spirit.

Bowing to the Buddha

• The 9th-century Chinese Zen master huangbo taught that “if you would only rid yourselves of the concepts of ordinary and enlightened, you would find that there is no other Buddha than the Buddha in your own Mind.” huangbo is thus a strong advocate of what his successor Linji calls “killing the Buddha”—that is, smashing all idols and casting away all objectifications of the Buddha as someone or something other than one’s true self.

• yet at the same time, huangbo was known for having a protruding lump on his forehead from touching his head to the floor so often in his lifelong practice of making prostrations to the Buddha. Before one is enlightened, one bows down to the Buddha because one has not yet realized that one is the Buddha.

• after enlightenment, one bows down to the Buddha because that is still the appropriate thing to do. Not only is it an ongoing reminder to oneself of what one truly is—a Buddha who compassionately bows down in service to everything and everyone—it is also a teaching to those around one of how they too can realize and remember this.

The Disappearing and Reappearing Buddha

• The practice of prostrations was explained by the 14th-century Japanese Zen master Bassui in this manner: “as for the practice of bowing down before the Buddhas, this is merely a way of horizontalizing the mast of ego to realize the Buddhanature.” Bassui implies that once the “mast of ego” has been brought down, the currents of the vast sea of the Buddha-nature, our true self, will naturally take us where we need to go.

• once the mast of ego has been leveled, we no longer see the Buddha as outside us but rather as our true self.

our interconnected individual lives are waves on the great ocean of the Buddha-nature.

• Zen is not atheistic any more than it is theistic. it rejects religious ideas and images no more than it clings to them. We can, after all, become attached to the idea of having no attachments.

• a monk once asked huangbo’s contemporary Zhaozhou: “how about when one arrives carrying not a single thing?” in other words, he was asking: What more is there to do once one has let go of all attachments? Zhaozhou responded: “Cast that down!” he meant to let go of your attachment to the idea of having let go of all attachments.

Everyday Even Mind Is the Way

• When he was a student, Zhaozhou once asked his teacher, Nanquan, about what the way—the dao—is. Nanquan answered that the way is “everyday even mind.”

• The Buddha-mind that is attuned to the way of the world should not be understood as some special state of consciousness, though altered states of consciousness can and do often arise in intense periods of Zen meditation. They can be euphoric, alarming, merely odd, or completely overwhelming.

• even advanced practitioners can mistake them for genuine breakthrough experiences. They are not. They might be caused simply by prolonged sensory or sleep deprivation. or they may be caused by the sudden resurfacing of repressed memories or other unresolved psychological issues. one may need to deal with such psychological issues through therapy rather than meditation, and, if so, this course advises that one do that especially before engaging in the rigors of kōan practice.

• altered states of consciousness and mystical experiences are referred to by the term makyō in Zen, a term that translates as “devilish states.” They can be a good sign that one has attained a certain intensity of concentration, but they are bad insofar as they distract one or fool one into thinking that they are the aim of Zen meditation. They are neither good nor bad. They just happen. While you are meditating, just let them come and let them go.

• The teacher Tanaka hōjū rōshi has said that the Zen expression “everyday even mind” refers to a mind that is placid like a waveless surface of water—a mind that is bright like a spotless mirror.

This mind is able to reflect and respond to the vicissitudes of everyday life with spontaneity, sincerity, and compassion because it is not obsessed with its own agendas.

• in short, by everyday even mind is meant both the equanimity that does not get egoistically attached to or fixated on anything, and the engaged everyday mind that is thereby able to fully and fluidly attend to the infinitely complex and ceaselessly shifting way of the world.

• however, if we try to grasp the everyday even mind, the grasping mind turns it into an object of knowledge. But if we don’t somehow come to know it, then we simply remain mired in mindless ignorance. once again, enlightenment involves a kind of intuitive wisdom rather than an objectifying knowledge.

Everyday Chores are the Way

• Zhaozhou went on to become a famous Zen master, and he sought to return his students again and again to the everyday even mind. in a story that has become a famous kōan, a monk, having just entered Zhaozhou’s monastery, requests instruction.

• in going straight to the master rather than just a senior monk, he is no doubt asking for the highest teaching and probably also wanting to test the master to see if staying in this monastery would be worth his while.

Zhaozhou asks the monk whether he had already eaten breakfast. The monk replies, “yes.” Zhaozhou’s reply was: “Then wash your bowls.”

• on one level, speaking metaphorically as Zen masters often do, Zhaozhou may have been asking whether the monk had already had an initial experience of awakening—he is asking whether he already had his breakthrough breakfast, so to speak.

• if so, then he needs to “wash his bowls”—that is, he needs to wipe his mind clean of the pride of having attained something. at the same time, in a more direct and literal sense, Zhaozhou’s instruction to “wash your bowls” indicates that enlightenment is ultimately to be found right in the midst of the chores of everyday life.

Zen as a Path of Trans-Mysticism

• Zen is not ultimately a matter of mysticism in the sense of a transcendent or otherworldly experience that transports one beyond the humdrum of the mundane world. The path of Zen leads rather to a wholehearted and fully mindful engagement in the extraordinarily ordinary activities of everyday life.

• accordingly, the modern Japanese philosopher and lay Zen master Ueda shizuteru interprets Zen as a path of what he calls non-mysticism. Ueda was also a foremost scholar of Meister eckhart. in fact, he first coined his term non-mysticism while writing on eckhart before he applied it to Zen. although he was initially struck by the profound parallels between the two, in the end, Ueda suggested that Zen goes even further than eckhart does in shedding the residues of an otherworldly mysticism.

• Meanwhile, the term trans-mysticism can be used to explain his illuminating account of the circuitous path of Zen, a path which, in the end, brings us back to everyday life. The path of trans-mysticism entails a double negation—that is, a twofold process of letting go.

• To begin with, one must let go of one’s habitual identification with the self-encapsulated ego. in the end, one must let go of even the mystical experience of union with the divine. it can be helpful to think of this process as taking park in four steps:

1. The first step is the transcendence of the ego, which is common to all forms of religious experience.

2. The second step is the experience of union with the divine. This is often considered to be the hallmark of mystical experience.

3. The third step, the breakthrough beyond mystical union to an absolute nothingness, can be understood as a self-overcoming of mysticism.

4. and the fourth step, the return to egoless activity in midst of the everyday world, completes this self-overcoming process of trans-mysticism.

• The experience of union with the divine is the peak of mysticism, according to Ueda. yet both Meister eckhart and Zen take the ecstatic momentum still further, such that eckhart talks about “breaking through” the persona of god to what he calls the “silent desert of the godhead,” the ineffable origin and ground of reality that lies beyond all distinctions.

• it lies beyond the Trinity and even beyond the distinction between creator and created. since it is utterly beyond or beneath anything that can be defined or described, eckhart sometimes calls this abyssal ground of the godhead nothingness rather than being.

• Zen also prefers to speak of the ultimate ground or nature of reality in terms of nothingness rather than being. Ueda follows other modern Japanese Zen philosophers in speaking of an absolute nothingness that underlies or envelops even the distinction between being and relative nothingness.

• eckhart teaches us to see all things in god or in the light of god. however, Zen ultimately teaches us to drop all references to the Buddha as anything outside of the everyday. indeed, Zen urges us to return from an experience of mystical or meditative oneness with the one to an undistracted mindfulness of the many.

SUGGESTED READING

Davis, “Letting go of god for Nothing.”

Ueda, “‘Nothingness’ in Meister eckhart and Zen Buddhism.”

———, “The Zen experience of the Truly Beautiful.”

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

1 What is meant by the Zen teaching that everyday even mind is the way?

2 Why is it better to speak of Zen as a path of trans-mysticism than as a school of mysticism?

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Engaged Zen: from inner to outer Peace

L14

Zen is not about acquiring supernatural or supernormal 

powers. The way of Zen is instead a matter of putting our 

feet on the ground and awakening, step by step, to the 

present moment—to the wondrousness of mundane matters and 

the weightiness of everyday errands

The Mahayana Affirmation of Lay Life

• one of the distinguishing characteristics of Mahayana Buddhism is that it breaks down the dichotomy between priesthood and laity. an affirmation of the spiritual depth of everyday lay life is exemplified in the legends and sayings of Layman Pang.

• in the early centuries of Buddhism and in so-called hinayana schools such as Theravada, up until very recently, meditation was for the most part practiced exclusively by monks and nuns. Laypeople would practice things like charity, especially in support of monks (and sometimes nuns), as well as morality: right speech, action, and livelihood.

• By doing these supposedly preparatory practices, lay people were thought to accumulate karmic merit, such that they would eventually be reborn as someone ready to leave home and devote themselves to the ultimately liberating practice of meditation. only if one was free from the chores of everyday lay life, it was thought, could one become a serious spiritual practitioner.

• The Mahayana reform movement called this way of thinking into question. The Vimalakirti sutra—a sutra composed around 100 Ce that became one of the most important for the Zen tradition— turns the privileging of priesthood on its head by having a layman be the teacher of monks.

• in the story of this sutra, the layman Vimalakirti has fallen ill, and the Buddha sends his attendant monks to pay their respects and to learn from him. The figure of the layman teacher Vimalakirti epitomizes the idea of the bodhisattva as an enlightened and enlightening being who, out of boundless compassion, remains in the world to work toward liberating all sentient beings from suffering.

• The Buddha sends both his hinayana disciples and his Mahayana bodhisattvas to Vimalakirti to inquire about his illness. Vimalakirti teaches them to free themselves from otherworldly aspirations and to find true spirituality in bodily existence and in the midst of the mundane activities of everyday life.

• a goddess appears in Vimalakirti’s room and teaches shariputra, one of the hinayana disciples, not to denigrate women’s bodies in particular. More than 1,000 years later, Dōgen tells his Zen community that they should “not discriminate between men and women” and that women are just as capable as men of attaining the highest enlightenment and becoming strong guiding teachers.

eight centuries after Dōgen, female Zen masters are finally being recognized, including Westerners such as Charlotte Joko Beck.

Meditation Retreats Are Not Escapes

• Vimalakirti teaches bodhisattvas that they must not think of remaining in the world to liberate others as a sacrifice of their own liberation, since such work in the world is in fact the highest form of liberation. Meditation should not be understood or experienced as an escape from the world. We need to be liberated not from the world of everyday life but rather from the desire to escape it.

• We do need to occasionally retreat from our busy routines and clear our hearts and minds. Meditation retreats are an exceptional way to do this. But we must be careful not to fall into the trap of escapism, especially as one gets past the initial physical and mental difficulties of meditation and begins to experience the deep peace and joy that it brings.

• Vimalakirti takes a step in breaking down the supposed dichotomy between meditation and everyday living when he reprimands shariputra for sitting in quiet meditation under a tree in the forest. “shariputra,” he says, “you should not assume that this sort of sitting is true quiet sitting!” rather, he goes on, “Not rising out of your meditative state of stillness and peace and yet showing yourself in the ceremonies of daily life—that is [true] quiet sitting.”

Being at Peace

• Vimalakirti’s criticism of shariputra’s attachment to practicing quiet and restful meditation in the forest is an important corrective to a tendency to view meditation merely as a means of escaping the noisiness and unrest of city life. Nevertheless, the contemporary Vietnamese Zen master and founder of engaged Buddhism, Thich Nhat hanh, recognizes that to truly bring peace to the world, we need to be at peace ourselves.

• for this, most of us need to at least occasionally retreat from the street to the cushion and cloister. in between such retreats, however, to the street we must return, now with more to offer. it is interesting to note that Vimalakirti is presented not just as a layman, but as a rich layman. it is said that he uses his immeasurable riches to bring relief to the poor. on a metaphorical level, it is said that the great wealth possessed by bodhisattvas is the holy Dharma, the teachings that they unstintingly give to others.

Peace and Justice: Which Is Primary?

• The idea that we need to “be peace to bring peace” may cut against the grain of our inclination to not waste time by sitting around and navelgazing but rather to get out there and change the world for the better. of course, it is important to fight for equal rights and justice and to upset the stability of the status quo when the status quo leads to peace for some at the expense of others. The fight for justice, after all, has the aim of eventually establishing a truer and more universal peace.

• yet sometimes we lose sight of that ultimate purpose of our fight, and we end up

COMPLEMENTARY

TEACHINGS

Thich Nhat hanh is among the Zen masters who view the core teachings of Christianity and Buddhism as complementary as long as we look deeply into them and, more importantly, sincerely put them into practice. as the subtitle of one of his books suggests, Jesus and Buddha  wanting retributive justice more than, or even instead of, peaceful coexistence. We want to right the wrongs that have been done to us and to others even more than we want to heal the wounds of the world.

• Bernie glassman is an american Zen master who for decades has pioneered the combination of Zen practice with social activism. on a retreat with glassman, the comparative theologian Paul Knitter confessed to being torn between feeling like he needed to sit in meditation and wanting to get up and go to el salvador to try and help stop the death squads.

• glassman responded, “They are both absolutely necessary.” and then he left Knitter with a kōan-like admonishment: “But you won’t be able to stop the death squads until you realize your oneness with them.” in effect, glassman was echoing Jesus’s core teaching: if we don’t learn to love not just our neighbors and our countrymen but also even our enemies as ourselves, we cannot truly bring peace to the world.

SUGGESTED READING

King, Socially Engaged Buddhism.

Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian, chapter 7.

Parallax Press, ed., True Peace Work.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

1 how does Mahayana Buddhism break down the barrier between retreating to the monastery and engaging in lay life?

2 What does it mean to say that we need to be peace to bring peace?

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Meditation Checkup: Dealing with Distractions

the conclusion of Lesson 14 is a meditation checkup focused on dealing with distractions. to experience it in full, refer to the audio or video lesson. the following tips serve as a summary of the checkup.

Discipling the Mind

• Dealing with distracting thoughts, like dealing with physical discomforts, is an important part of the practice of meditation. These are not prerequisites; they are part and parcel of the practice itself.

• The modern sōtō Zen master shunryu suzuki gives some very helpful advice: every time you catch your mind wandering and bring it back to the practice, this is nourishing your practice. returning again and again from mental tangents is what keeps the wheel of meditation in motion.

• another teaching suzuki rōshi gives in this regard is even deeper and broader. he says that if you want to control your mischievous mind, don’t try to control it. Do the opposite: give it a wide-open space in which to roam.

CHASING DISTRACTIONS

if you chase after distractions or try to chase them off, you will end up just feeding them more energy.

MedItatIon checKuP: deaLIng WIth dIstRactIons

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.

SUGGESTED READING

addiss, Zen Sourcebook, 35–42, 47–51, and 250–251.

shibayama, The Gateless Barrier, chapters 18, 27, 30, and 33.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

1 What do Zen masters mean when they say that “mind is Buddha”?

2 What does the Zen master Linji mean when he says to kill the Buddha if you encounter him?

Meditation Checkup:

Dealing with Unavoidable Pain

the conclusion of Lesson 11 is a meditation checkup focused on avoiding unavoidable pain. to experience it in full, refer to the audio or video lesson. the following tips serve as a summary of the checkup.

Posture and Bodily Rehabilitation

• Meditation can reveal how much posture matters. good posture improves our mental alertness, our mood, and so much more. sitting on the floor can improve one’s flexibility.

• it can be helpful to think of the practice of meditation as, in part, a practice of bodily rehabilitation. That will likely allow you to experience the physical discomforts involved along the way in a very different light.

• People tend to think of pain as a purely physical sensation. But the mental interpretation of the meaningfulness or meaninglessness of a painful sensation makes a huge difference in how people actually experience it.

• The meditator Drew Leder has explored and explained various valuable methods of dealing with physical pain. These include strategies of transcending as well as befriending the body.

Approaching Pain

• according to one Zen approach, in situations of unavoidable pain, the only way out is in. Like a bear caught in a bear trap, by fighting to escape the inescapable, people merely compound the pain. The only way out of inescapable pain is to go right into it.

MedItatIon checKuP: deaLIng WIth unavoIdaBLe PaIn

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
===[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

===

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?

===

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?

===

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

===

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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Real Zen for Real Life Course [1][1-5]

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

===

===

WHAT IS ZEN? RECOVERING

THE BEGINNER’S MIND

LESSON 1

Z

en practice aims to bring us down to earth—to the here and now of our real lives. It is largely about clearing our hearts and minds. actually engaging in this practice is vital

to understanding what it is all about. Zen meditation is a practice of clearing the heart-mind. Metaphorically, it is about emptying one’s cup.

Emptying One’s Cup

• The way of Zen itself is a matter of continually emptying one’s cup, clearing one’s mind, and returning to what in Zen is called the beginner’s mind. The 12th-century Chinese Zen master Dahui implores: “Do not lose the heart and mind of a beginner for an instant.” The beginner’s mind is an open mind. a know-it-all is incapable of learning anything.

• The greek philosopher Plato points out the paradox that in trying to learn about something new, we need to already have some knowledge of what we are looking for. otherwise, how would we even know what to look for, and how would we know when we’ve found it?

• The problem Zen calls our attention to is that we tend to think we know all too much about what we are looking for. The problem is that we have lost the beginner’s mind: our original and innocent openness to the world.

Debunking Medieval and Modern Reconstructions

• When we open a book on Zen, we need to ask ourselves: What is already in our cup? What preconceptions about Zen fill our minds and will perhaps get in the way of learning about it?

• in the West, Zen has connotations of being hip, cool, liberal, and progressive. in Japan, by contrast, Zen is usually associated with the severe discipline of a conservative religious establishment, while Christianity has connotations of being modern and even fashionable.

• The cultural appropriation of Zen in the West has often been insufficiently critical and self-critical. however, in Western academia these days, the pendulum has swung in the other direction. Today, the trend is to use historical and philological scholarship to debunk the spiritual and romantic image of Zen fashioned by earlier generations of writers, an image that still circulates in popular culture.

• in erudite books with clever titles like Chan Insights and Oversights and Seeing through Zen, this critical—and sometimes polemical—debunking is aimed in part at the ways in which asian and Western authors such as D. T. suzuki and alan Watts have presented Zen to Westerners. yet their critique is also aimed at the traditional self-conceptions and self-presentations of the Zen tradition throughout its 1,500-year history.

• applying the historical-critical methods of modern biblical studies, scholars of Buddhism have shown that canonical Zen texts were in fact written down and revised by later generations of monks rather than being literal transcripts of the words of the masters. however spiritually inspiring and philosophically rich such classical texts of the Zen tradition may be, we cannot read them as unbiased and unembellished historical records or as innocent of sectarian politics and other mundane motives.

• Taking Zen’s lessons seriously certainly need not mean that one is taking Zen’s lore literally. after all, the texts of the Zen tradition were not written as academic history books.

• When reading a parable, it does not matter so much whether the events actually happened exactly as they are being told—or even if they happened at all. for Zen Buddhism, historical narratives do matter. But what matters most to sincere Zen practitioners is

how the teachings embedded in those stories can illuminate and change our lives—not when, where, and by whom they were first taught and written down.

Modern Western Zen

• The living tradition of Buddhism has always been concerned with applying traditional teachings to the here and now of people’s real lives rather than with preserving them as relics in a museum or transcribing them as chronicles in a history book. We do not live in 9th-century China or in 13th-century Japan. We have a lot to learn from Zen masters who did live then and there, but in the end, we must apply their lessons to our lives here and now.

• Buddhism was first introduced to China in the 1st century Ce. Later, starting in the 6th century in China, Zen was formed by way of a creative synthesis of Buddhist teachings and practices imported from india with Chinese traditions, especially Daoism. Centuries after that, starting in the 12th century, Zen was brought to Japan.

• There, for eight centuries, it developed in conjunction with Japanese culture and sensibilities. over the course of the last century, Zen has been imported to the United states and other Western countries, initially from Japan and later also from Korea, China, and Vietnam.

• in the West, Zen has continued its development, now in dialogue with Western traditions such as german idealism, english romanticism, american transcendentalism, medieval Christian mysticism, and modern psychology. The teachings of Zen have been deployed in the West in opposition to both religious fundamentalism and antireligious secularism. Zen teachings have also been used to critique consumerism, technological destruction of and alienation from nature, and other perceived ills of the dominant and domineering worldviews and lifestyles of the modern West.

Realizing Zen: Here and Now

• Zen can only become real for us insofar as we allow this asian tradition to take root in our real lives in the modern Western and Westernizing world. The 20th-century Japanese Zen philosopher Nishitani Keiji liked to use the english verb realize since this word can mean both “to attain an understanding” and also “to make real” or “to actualize.”

• in this double sense, our task is to realize what Zen is. on the one hand, realizing what Zen is means understanding what it has been, and this requires opening our minds and trying our best to understand the teachings and practices passed down by Chinese, Japanese, and other asian masters. on the other hand, to fully realize what those teachings and practices can mean for us, we have to relate them to our real lives.

• Zen kōans are the often-enigmatic and paradoxical stories, dialogues, sayings, or questions assigned as topics of meditation and used to trigger and test a student’s awakening. To attain such an awakening, we are told that we must “interlock our eyebrows” with past Zen masters and learn to see with their same eyes.

• yet the Zen tradition also recognizes that its universal and timeless truths must manifest themselves differently for different people in different times and places. Zen is neither a matter of subjective opinion nor a matter of objective doctrine; it is a matter of universal truths manifesting in ways and words appropriate to particular times and places.

• The term real in the quest for “real Zen” thus cuts both ways. on the one hand, we are not trying to flee our present circumstances and transport ourselves back in time or to another land. Nor are we just interested in a detached study of the history of other people’s beliefs and practices. We want to know what Zen can mean for our own lives.

• on the other hand, we want to set aside our prejudices and preconceptions to open ourselves to what Zen masters who lived in the past have to teach us. We will inevitably need to meet them in the middle, so to speak, but getting there requires that we question our presuppositions about both Zen and ourselves. We especially need to be open to the possibility that Zen may be able to teach us about ourselves.

The Zen School of Buddhism

• The practice of Zen can be and has been undertaken by persons of all religious and secular worldviews. Zen meditation in particular is practiced today by many Jews, Christians, and people of other faiths, by people who do not consider themselves religious at all, and by many people who consider themselves spiritual but not religious.

• in his books Buddhism Without Beliefs and Secular Buddhism, the contemporary author and former Zen monk stephen Batchelor argues that the core teachings and practices of Buddhism do not depend on any religious beliefs or traditional rituals. accordingly, he thinks they speak to people today who are looking for a spiritual path without all the religious traps and trappings.

• on the other hand, a modern Japanese Zen master, yamada Kōun, used to tell his Christian students in effect that he wanted them to practice Zen to become better Christians—not to become Buddhists. some of those Christian students are Catholic priests and nuns who went on to become Zen teachers without ceasing to be Christians.

SUGGESTED READING

heine, Zen Skin, Zen Marrow.

McMahan, “repackaging Zen for the West.” suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

1 What really is Zen? how has it has been repackaged by advertisers and watered down in the pop culture of the West?

2 how should modern Westerners who are interested in Zen go about adopting and adapting its teachings and practices?

THE ZEN WAY TO KNOW AND FORGET THYSELF

LESSON 2

D

epending on the context, we introduce ourselves in different ways. For instance, one might introduce himself as a father, husband, brother, or professional in different

situations. We all carry around a number of identity boxes, and we habitually define ourselves and others with the labels on these boxes. In fact, life in society requires that we do so.

this lesson digs deeper than the kind of self-introductions found on a business card, webpage, or resume. It introduces the path of Zen as a path that begins with the injunction to know oneself.

Know Thyself

• The 14th-century Japanese Zen master Daitō Kokushi called the practice of Zen an “investigation into the matter of the self.” such an investigation may at first seem unnecessary because we all tend to assume that we already know ourselves, and so we generally neglect to even ask the question, much less succeed in finding the answer.

• The injunction to know oneself can be found in many traditions, including the Western philosophical tradition that goes back to socrates. according to Zen, however, to truly discover what the

self is, we need a more direct path than

mere intellectual reasoning. The best not waste one’s time path to attain an intuitive knowledge on investigating

of ourselves is a holistic practice mythological stories

of meditation. of gods and other

unusual creatures. • Many Westerners are interested in Zen more out of a kind of curiosity about something that seems exotically foreign and mystical than out of a genuinely philosophical and spiritual quest for self-understanding. if such cultural curiosity were our sole motivation for learning about Zen, socrates would rightly scold us and tell us that we should first and foremost strive to know ourselves.

• another lesson from socrates also resonates deeply with Zen: socrates reminds us that a genuine quest for self-knowledge begins with the realization that we don’t already know who—or even what—we are. The journey to wisdom begins with an acute awareness of one’s ignorance.

• socrates’s teaching resonates around the globe with a line from the Daodejing: “To know that one does not know is best; not to know but to believe that one does is a disease.” another chapter of the Daodejing tells us, “Those who study [doctrines and rituals] increase day by day, while those who practice the Way, the Dao, decrease day by day.”

• instead of accumulating more and more information, Daoist sages practice letting go of unnecessary mental and emotional baggage, clearing their minds and hearts of all excess clutter, until they are able to wander freely in attunement with the natural way of the world. among the many teachings that Zen inherits from the Daoist tradition is this emphasis on a return to simplicity and naturalness.

Zen as a Path of Meditation

• Zen, in the end, is a path for all human beings who are sincerely interested in coming to know themselves. it is important to note, though, that despite some significant similarities, there are also some important differences between the path of Zen and that of other religions and philosophies. These are differences in methods and in results.

• Zen does not ask one to pray to or believe in an external god or Buddha. Like socrates, it stresses the importance of seeking knowledge rather than relying on blind faith. it especially stresses seeking knowledge of oneself.

• There are intriguing accounts of socrates standing motionless for hours, apparently absorbed in a meditative state. however, for the most part, socrates’s method was that of discursive rational inquiry, and he thought this was best done by disengaging the mind from the body. The Zen path is a more holistic one that engages the whole body, mind, heart, and spirit.

• Contrary to some popular opinions and partial teachings, Zen is not, in the end, opposed to rational thought. But it does teach that we need to dig down beneath the intellect by means of meditation, rooting intellectual knowledge in a deeper, more holistic wisdom.

• arguments must be based on insights. otherwise, they degenerate into self-serving sophistries or, at best, abstract theories with little impact on our lives. for the most enlightening, most life-changing insights, we need a method that engages the body, heart, and spirit as well as the mind. We need to root the intellect in an embodied-spiritual practice of meditation.

• as a school of Buddhism, Zen tradition traces itself back to shakyamuni Buddha, the man whose personal name was siddhartha gautama. he lived in india around 500 BCe. ever since shakyamuni Buddha attained enlightenment while meditating under the Bodhi Tree, meditation has played a vital role in all schools of Buddhism. it is especially

Buddhism’s Sutras and Zen Buddhism

• Buddhism has many traditions and schools, each of which is based on a particular sutra or set of sutras. all sutras claim to be the teachings of the Buddha, but they were all were written down much later. The earliest sutras, the ones that make up the Pali canon of the Theravada Buddhist tradition, were first written down four centuries after the Buddha died.

• The sutras that form the scriptural basis of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, which has thrived in central and eastern asia, were composed starting in the 1st century BCe, many being translated from sanskrit into Chinese by the end of the 2nd century Ce. When these scriptures were brought from india to China, the different schools of Chinese Buddhism distinguished themselves from one another by claiming that one sutra or another is the pinnacle of the Buddha’s teaching.

• The Zen school, however, is different. While Zen Buddhists do study and chant many sutras and other texts, the Zen school is unique in that it does not claim to be based on any written teachings but rather on the Buddha’s actual experience of enlightenment itself. This experience of enlightenment is said to be attainable by all human beings, insofar as the Buddha-nature or Buddha-mind is universal.

• in other words, all human beings have the same underlying nature and mind as the Buddha. yet this Buddha-nature or Buddhamind must be realized, awakened to, and actualized. The best method for doing so is the one that the Buddha himself used: meditation.

Fast the Mind, Forget the Self

• The legendary Daoist sage Zhuangzi, whose writings were particularly influential on Zen, spoke of a meditative practice of “sitting and forgetting.” he also referred to this as a practice of

“fasting the mind.”

• We need to unlearn our prejudices—our prejudgments about ourselves and others—so that we can open our minds to what is really there and therefore become at least a little more aware of the “spin” imposed on our experience of reality by our swirling thoughts, feelings, and desires.

• The problem isn’t that we don’t have a grip on reality. The real problem is that we generally have too much of a grip on reality, in the sense that we are willfully grasping the world and forcefully trying to reshape it to fit into the boxes we have fashioned. Meditation is a temporary relaxing of the attachment to our own edited version of reality.

Conclusion

• The self, Zen tells us, is empty. But emptiness here equals openness. To be open is to be responsive, and to be responsive is to be creative as well as compassionate. Creativity is not a forceful act of imposing one’s project on the world; it is rather a responsive participation in events of interactivity.

• great artists rarely claim sole authorship of their works. They speak of influence and inspiration, of losing themselves in the creative flow, of being spoken to by their materials and guided by their tools, and of gratitude to their supporters and their audience.

• only in the midst of all these interconnections can an artist do his or her part in producing good art. This is true of all of us in all that we do. in the end, we discover ourselves not by retreating from but rather by fully engaging in the interconnections that make up the world we live in.

SUGGESTED READING

Davis, “The Presencing of Truth.” Nishitani, “The standpoint of Zen.” okumura, Realizing Genjokoan.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

1 how does Zen’s method of investigating the self compare with that of socrates?

2 What does the Zen master Dōgen mean when he says that “to study the self is to forget the self”?

ZEN MEDITATION:

CLEARING

THE HEART-MIND

LESSON 3

T

he practice of seated meditation is termed zazen in Japanese. In Zen temples and monasteries today, there are many activities, such as chanting and prostrations, that take

place. nevertheless, zazen is the core practice. It is also the focus of this lesson.

The Point of Zazen

• The point of practicing zazen is to awaken to one’s original heart-mind. The term heart-mind is hyphenated because in Chinese and Japanese, the word for heart and mind is written with the same sinograph, or Chinese character: 心. These languages and cultures don’t tend to separate the locus of thinking and the locus of feeling. for Zen, an open mind entails an open heart, and vice versa.

• another way to think about the point of zazen is to look at it as a way to realize—to discover and allow to function—the clarity and purity of the original heart-mind that is already there, buried beneath our karmic baggage of egoistic delusions and desires. Karmic baggage manifests as the distracting thoughts, emotions, and desires that will probably

assault you as soon as you try to

 settle into a practice of meditation. THE BUDDHA-MIND

• in the beginning, you will The term Buddha-mind

likely experience meditation as a struggle. it is a very odd struggle, since it is a struggle between the part of you that wants to meditate and the part of you that does not.

means a truly awakened mind. another way to

think of it is as the original mind that we are trying to wake up to. Meditation is

That is the first moment of self- the most direct means of discovery: the realization that the uncovering and activating self is complicated and often at this Buddha-mind. odds with itself.

• Zen meditation is first of all about facing up to this complicated and self-contradictory nature of the self. Next, it is about digging down to the deepest and truest part of ourselves—our “original mind.”

Bodhidharma’s Definition of Zen

• a classic definition of Zen has been attributed to Bodhidharma, the semilegendary figure who reportedly brought Zen from india to China in the late 5th or early 6th century Ce. he is said to have characterized Zen with the following four phrases:

• Not relying on written words.

• a special transmission outside all doctrines.

• Pointing directly to the human heart-mind.

• seeing into one’s true nature and becoming a Buddha.

• Consider this as a takeaway message: The real point of Zen cannot ultimately be either expressed or grasped in the form of scriptures or in formulaic doctrines. Ultimately, the point of Zen can only be directly pointed to.

• it cannot be grasped through words and concepts, which are, at best, secondhand traces of someone else’s direct experience. it must be immediately experienced firsthand, and this is best done through the practice of meditation. real Zen must be realized through zazen. The point is not that texts and doctrines are untrue, but rather that, on their own, they cannot fully capture or embody the truth.

Three Levels of Wisdom

• one problem with relying on texts and teachings is that we mistake secondhand or thirdhand knowledge for firsthand experience and understanding. The Buddhist tradition has long recognized there to be three levels of wisdom: received wisdom, intellectual wisdom, and experiential wisdom.

received wisdom is acquired through reading traditional texts or listening to a trustworthy teacher and committing those doctrines to memory. attaining intellectual wisdom requires a more active and critical use of one’s intellect, such that one comes to a clear understanding of why a teaching makes sense.

• for instance, professors typically want students to start by carefully reading the assigned texts and attentively listening to lectures. But professors also want them to move from received to intellectual wisdom.

• even in the best-case scenario, however, much of the learning that happens in schools and universities stops at the level of intellectual wisdom. at best, this learning prepares students to go out into the “real world” and, through real-life experiences, to take the intellectual knowledge they attained in the classroom and turn it into the kind of experiential wisdom that changes their lives, allowing them to more positively affect the lives of those around them.

• The Buddhist tradition, at its best, promotes a holistic practice that includes, but is not limited to, intellectual thinking. it encourages practitioners to engage in embodied meditative practices and to let the teachings imbue their daily lives so that they reach the level of experiential wisdom. for it is only experiential wisdom that is truly liberating and life changing.

Zen Among Other Forms of Meditation

• The practice of meditation goes back more than 3,000 years in india, predating even the earliest scriptures of hinduism. The sixth chapter of the most famous hindu scripture, the Bhagavad gita, gives explicit instructions for practicing dhyana yoga, the spiritual discipline of meditation.

inspired by Zen and other asian traditions, some Christians have gone back to the Desert fathers to recover

• There are many different methods of meditation, and different methods naturally produce different experiences. There are also different motivations to meditate, including relaxation, improving concentration, and to focus one’s prayerful relation with god, among others. in Zen, one can meditate to live life more fully, with fewer attachments and with more freedom, flexibility, and concern for the wellbeing of all beings.

The Buddha taught two kinds of meditation: concentration and insight. Whereas some schools of Buddhism distinguish more sharply between the preparatory practice of concentration and the liberating practice of insight, Zen tends to view concentration and insight as two sides of the same coin: When the mind is cleared, settled, and focused, it naturally attains insight and manifests its innate wisdom.

• The Buddha taught the eightfold Path as the way to enlightenment. its eight limbs are grouped into three categories, which are broken down as follows.

The first category is wisdom, and it consists of:

1. right view.

2. right intention.

• The second category is morality, consisting of:

3. right speech.

4. right action.

5. right livelihood.

• Most relevant to this lesson is the third category, which is meditation. it consists of:

6. right effort.

7. right mindfulness.

8. right concentration.

• The term right effort here does not mean simply trying hard. it specifically indicates the meditative process of training the mind to let go of negative states of mind and cultivate positive ones.

Zen meditation aims to suddenly awaken us to our innate virtues of wisdom and compassion, from which we have become alienated through the “three poisons” of ignorance, avarice, and aversion—or, in stronger language, delusion, greed, and hate.

Subtraction Zen

•

Zen meditation is a matter of emptying or clearing the heartmind. it is a matter of subtraction rather than addition. real Zen is not about accumulating new tricks and trinkets, nor is it about putting on the robes and airs of a new persona; it is about shedding such acquisitive and self-aggrandizing desires and attachments.

• The other side of the coin of subtraction Zen is vow-vehicle

• at first, meditation can seem downright boring and unproductive.

after all, when one meditates, one is not really doing much of anything at all. indeed, the less the better. however, don’t flee from boredom. go all the way into it; go all the way through the bottom of boredom. The place of rest you seek lies beneath, not beyond, your restless mind.

• Zen meditation is a practice of pausing our busy lives so that we can clear out the busy mess of our minds. it is a practice of clearing, emptying, opening, cleaning, and purifying the heart-mind—or rather, it is a matter of waking up to its original openness and purity.

Beneficial By-Products

• While at its core Zen meditation is a method of subtraction, there is also a lot to be gained from the periphery of the practice. specifically, Zen meditation has the following wonderful side effects:

1. improvement in posture and psychophysical well-being.

2. increase in ability to concentrate.

3. Decrease in stress level.

4. increase in natural creativity and problem-solving ability.

5. recovery of sincerity and improvement in interpersonal relations.

• in taking time for meditation, one first of all learns to be kind to oneself. one calmly notices all the negative thoughts and feelings that have been tying one up in knots. No longer feeding them any more mental and emotional energy, one lets these negative thoughts and feelings drift off like storm clouds in the open expanse of a blue sky.

• Ultimately, the practice of Zen meditation awakens an inner confidence that is both firm and flexible. This confidence entails the kind of firmness that does not inhibit flexibility but rather makes it possible—like the axis pole supporting a seesaw or balancing a spinning top.

SUGGESTED READING

Cleary, Minding Mind.

omori sogen, An Introduction to Zen Training.

Uchiyama, Opening the Hand of Thought.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

1 how does Zen meditation compare to other forms of meditation?

2 What is the ultimate aim and what are the proximate benefits of practicing Zen meditation?

Attending to the Place or Environment

• even for an experienced meditator, it often takes 10 or 15 minutes to really settle into a meditative state, so it is not surprising that the minimum length of time for a meditation period in temples and monasteries is usually 25 minutes. Meditation periods in monasteries can be as long as 50 minutes or more, but this is appropriate only if it does not cause too much discomfort and if one is able to maintain concentration for that long.

• as for when to meditate, traditionally favored times are dawn and dusk. There is indeed something special about these twilight hours that belong neither to the hectic daytime nor to the slumbering nighttime. The earth and sky seem to emit their most meditative atmosphere at dawn and at dusk.

however, it is of course possible to meditate at any time of the day or night, so just find a time that works best for you. Transition times in your daily routine are often a good place to wedge in a meditation period. This also allows you to begin your next activity with a refreshed mind and disposition.

• finding and cultivating the right space for meditation is very important. although it should not be too cold or too hot, it is best to have exposure to fresh air. Natural sounds or even the white noise of city streets will likely not disturb you, but loud sounds and especially voices will, so it is best to find as quiet a place as possible. Quality incense that does not produce too much smoke can be very conducive.

• it is important that your meditative space be clean and uncluttered. The mind tends to reflect its environment, which is why you probably find that cleaning your room feels like you are also cleaning your mind. you may wish to have an image in your meditation space, such as a figure of the Buddha or a bodhisattva.

• Last but certainly not least, preparing the environment entails getting your cushions, bench, or chair ready. Various sitting positions are possible. The most important part of the posture is from the waist up, which will be the same whether you are sitting in a cross-legged or kneeling position. it will also be the same whether you are on the floor or on a chair.

• if you are going to sit on a chair, it is best to have one that is not too high or too low and that has a flat seat with firm padding. if you are going to sit on the floor, it is best if you have a large flat square cushion called a zabuton and also a smaller round or rectangular cushion called a zafu. These can be easily ordered from online stores. it is also possible to fold a blanket or two into the shape of a zabuton and to fold a beach towel or two into a zafu.

Attending to the Body

• Now that you’ve attended to your environment, it’s time to turn your attention to your bodily position. Be sure to wear loose and comfortable clothing. if you are going to sit on a chair, perch yourself on the front of the chair without leaning against the back, with your knees at a 90° angle and with your legs perpendicular to the ground. if this is difficult for you, then you can sit all the way toward the rear of the chair so that your back is supported in an upright posture.

• a normal cross-legged position is not good for meditation.

This is for two reasons. one is that it doesn’t provide a stable base. The other is that it does not support a naturally straight back, so it cramps the deep-breathing space of your lower abdomen.

• all of the recommended cross-legged positions require some flexibility. however, bear in mind that you should be careful to avoid any intense joint pain or excessive discomfort. your body position should not distract you more than it helps you to get into a state of ultimately peaceful concentration. for details on several types of cross-legged positions—including the Burmese, half lotus, and full lotus positions—refer to the audio or video lesson.

for many people, cross-legged postures are not viable options. you may want to try a kneeling position. in Japan, sitting on your heels with your legs folded under you is called seiza, which means “correct sitting.” This is how one sits on formal occasions.

• The drawback to seiza is that your legs will probably quickly fall asleep. in this case, there are two ways you can take the pressure off of your legs in a kneeling position. you can take the zafu, turn it vertically, and slide it between your legs. alternatively, you can acquire a wooden kneeling bench, which is placed over your calves. Many meditators find these supports to work very well.

• in all of these positions, you should establish a naturally straight back. To begin with, use your back muscles and straighten your back. you can likely hold this artificially straight position for a few minutes, but eventually, your back muscles will start aching. Therefore, you need to find a way to let your spine, not your muscles, do the work.

• This course recommends that you leave the back straight and bend forward from the hips until your buttocks starts to lift off the zafu, bench, or chair. Then, rock back slowly onto the zafu, bench, or chair, releasing all of the tension in your back as you return to an upright position. Try this technique a few times, and you should find that it allows your back to remain straight with a slight arch in your lower back, while also allowing you to relax your back muscles. relax all of the muscles in your shoulders and back and let your spine do the work of holding you upright.

• hold your left thumb with your right hand. Then, clasp your right hand gently with the fingers of your left hand. rest your clasped hands in your lap, snuggly tucked up against your lower belly.

The next thing to attend to is the head. it is best to slightly tuck your chin in when you meditate. alternatively, pull a tuft of hair on the crown of your head upward toward the ceiling. This sets the head in proper alignment with the spine. Make sure the head is not tilted either to the left or to the right and that it’s not bending forward or back. your ears should be over your shoulders, and the tip of your nose should be over your belly button.

• in Zen meditation, one leaves the eyes open, though you can lower the eyelids halfway. if you are sitting on the floor, let your vision naturally settle on a spot on the floor about four or five feet in front of you. Let your vision settle six or seven feet in front of you if you are sitting on a chair. Be sure that the spot is right in the middle; otherwise, over time, it will cause your body to lean left or right.

Attending to the Breath

• The breath is the great mediator of the mental and material aspects of the psychosomatic self and of the inner and outer dimensions of self and world. By meditating on the breath, you will discover that it conjoins and pervades the physical, emotional, and cognitive aspects of yourself. Deep breathing with the lower abdomen calms the emotions and clarifies the mind.

By meditating on the breath, you will discover that it is a respirational exchange of inside and outside. if you attend to the breath, it will be a constant reminder that you are not an isolated individual but are intimately connected with the world around you. Breathing in, you inhale the world; breathing out, you exhale the self.

Attending to the Mind

• as a beginner in meditation, you should simply focus your mind on the breath. a relevant technique here is counting the breaths. Called sūsokkan in Japanese, the method of counting the breaths has for centuries been a basic practice of Zen meditation, and it is the practice this course recommends you start with. it is also a practice you can always return to. here’s how you do it:

1. after you are physically situated, take a deep breath and then forcefully exhale all of the stale air out of every crevice inside you. you can repeat this preparatory step two or three times if you wish.

2. Then, with your mouth closed and your tongue pressed gently against the back of your upper front teeth, relax all of the muscles of your lower abdomen and let yourself naturally breathe in deeply.

3. Next, breathe out more slowly through the nostrils until you have exhausted all the air.

4. Then, let your body naturally turn from exhalation back to inhalation. it is important to breathe naturally. as you relax your lower abdomen and mindfully attend to the breath, it will naturally deepen of its own accord. eventually, the breath may become at times very subtle and even shallow. Let it do what feels natural.

5. When you’re ready, begin counting one number per breath. While exhaling, silently count one number for the duration of the outbreath. Keep this up until you have counted to 10 with 10 breaths. Then, simply begin again with one. When your mind wanders and you lose track of which number you are on, gently yet firmly bring yourself back to the practice and begin again at one.

SUGGESTED READING

Buksbazen, Zen Meditation in Plain English.

Loori, Finding the Still Point.

Maezumi and glassman, On Zen Practice.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

1 how should the body be positioned when meditating?

2 What should one do with the mind when meditating?

THE MIDDLE WAY OFKNOWING

WHAT SUFFICES

LESSON 5

I

t is impossible to understand Zen Buddhism without learning something about the teachings of the Buddha. the Buddha always geared his teachings to whomever he was addressing at

the time. Following his example, this lesson provides explanations of basic Buddhist teachings geared toward an audience of 21stcentury Westerners interested in learning about Zen Buddhism and possibly in applying its teachings and practices to their lives.

The Middle Way

• The very first lesson the Buddha taught was the Middle Way between indulging and repressing sense desires. To understand the Middle Way, it is necessary to understand how the Buddha arrived at this insight through many years of his own experiences and experiments with both extremes of hedonism and asceticism.

• The person who became the historical Buddha was siddhartha gautama, who was born in the 6th century BCe around today’s border between india and Nepal. Commonly accepted dates for his life are 563–483 BCe.

• his father was the ruler of a small kingdom, and he wanted to make sure that his son took the political rather than the spiritual path. for that reason, he kept him sheltered and shielded from all the miseries of life.

• Up until the age of 29, siddhartha lived a life of extreme privilege and luxury. he was not exposed to any of the suffering caused by even such unavoidable matters as old age, sickness, and death.

• however, on three unannounced excursions, siddhartha witnessed three sights. on the first excursion, he saw a very old man, hunched over and barely able to walk. on the second excursion, he saw a very sick person whose flesh was covered with open sores. and on the third excursion, he saw a corpse being carried on a berth in a funeral procession.

• siddhartha was profoundly disturbed by the sights of old age, illness, and death that he witnessed on his excursions outside his pleasure palace. in each case, he asked his attendant if these things would happen to him. in each case the answer was: yes, they will eventually happen to you.

wandering mendicant. This was a spiritual

seeker who, from the peaceful smile on his face, seemed to have already found something. This fourth sight inspired siddhartha to leave home in search of a way beyond suffering—not just for himself, but for everyone.

•

Leaving home required some great sacrifices. Prince siddhartha gave up his social standing and all his possessions; he left the pleasures and protections he enjoyed behind his palace walls. in an even more demanding sacrifice, he left his family, including his wife, his son, and his aunt, who raised him. eventually, he did come back for them, and they joined his sangha, his community of practitioners. in the meantime, it must have been very hard on all of them.

Liberating All Sentient Beings from Suffering

• siddhartha wanted to find a path beyond suffering so that he could show it to others. he wanted to wake up, to become a Buddha, so that he could wake others up. even before leaving home, siddhartha became keenly aware of the suffering of his fathers’ servants, who toiled under harsh conditions in the fields. he freed them at once. he also released the oxen from their harnesses.

• incidentally, Buddhists are concerned with the liberation from suffering of all sentient beings—that is, all beings who can feel, not just humans. although the Buddha did not teach absolute vegetarianism, he did prohibit his followers from killing animals.

• Physical freedom from external constraints is by no means a guarantee of spiritual freedom from internal bondage. in fact, people who are free to do whatever they want can end up just becoming a slave to their wants. We must attain internal as well as external freedom, and that requires spiritual discipline.

Different Desires

• Most of our activities are motivated by the pursuit of one or the other of pleasure, profit, power, and prestige. We all want these, and in fact, we all need a certain amount of all four to be happy. But this raises some questions: are they all we need? Do they deserve all of our attention and energies?

• in hinduism, four legitimate aims of life are recognized. The first two are pleasure and wealth. The third is moral duty. yet pleasure, wealth, and duty are not enough. especially in our evening years, says the hindu tradition, we should increasingly turn our attention to the ultimate aim of life: spiritual liberation. This is called moksha in hinduism. Buddhism sometimes uses that term, but in general calls it nirvana.

• The hindu doctrine of the four life aims is helpful insofar as it recognizes that we have different kinds of desires and that they are all natural and legitimate—as long as they are kept within their proper bounds and measure. There is nothing wrong with a moderate pursuit of pleasure and wealth as long as this pursuit does not overshadow and override the higher aims of morality and spirituality.

• The Buddha spoke of the four immeasurables, or boundless attitudes, of loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. These are called immeasurables because we can never have an excess of them. on the other hand, there are some unwholesome desires that should be utterly abandoned. hatred, jealousy, the desire to hurt others, and so forth, fall into this category.

• Many desires, however, belong to a third category: those that we should learn to have the right amount of. These include, for example, desires for food, sleep, and sex. There is nothing wrong with the desire for food when the body needs nutrients.

But an excessive desire for food is unhealthy.

• an excessive, inordinate desire is called a craving. and it is craving, not desire as such, that the Buddha says is the cause of suffering. altruistic desires are to be engendered, and egoistic cravings are to be eliminated. But the third category of desires, desires that are proper in the right amount, is the trickiest. This is where the Buddha’s first teaching of the Middle Way comes into play.

Experimenting with Extremes

• on his way to becoming the Buddha, siddhartha personally experimented with both extremes of indulging and quashing desires. growing up in an overprotective pleasure palace, siddhartha lived the life of hedonism. Later, during his preenlightenment period of extreme asceticism, siddhartha nearly starved himself to death.

• images of siddhartha after he became the

Buddha generally depict him with a healthy body mass index. images of the Chinese Zen figure Budai, the so-called happy Buddha or laughing Buddha, seem to go too far in the opposite direction. The symbolic point of this plump figure is to counteract images of Buddhism as world-negating and aloof from society.

• in certain matters, it can be difficult to know when to stop—to know when one has had enough. extremes are easier to pursue: either more is better, or less is more. examples include strict abstinence versus sex addiction or being a workaholic versus living a life of leisure. The world seems to be constantly offering us such binary choices between extremes. The Buddha says that we need to learn to say no to both extremes and to find the right balance between them.

The Middle Way Pendulum between Extremes

• The Buddha is not alone in advocating a Middle Way. in ancient greece and medieval Christianity, one of the cardinal virtues was moderation.

• The tendency to excess, including the spiritual arrogance that the greeks called hubris, is related to a lack of self-knowledge. only if one knows one’s limits can one know how much is enough and how much is excessive.

• We seem to have lost a sense of this virtue of moderation. admittedly, teaching temperance won’t be the best stimulus for a capitalist economy—an economy which thrives not just on satisfying desires but moreover on creating cravings. But reviving this teaching of temperance is nevertheless necessary for us to cultivate a more balanced lifestyle.

• it is not by deleting all desires any more than it is by multiplying them that we can find balance in our lives. Kobayashi rōshi—who, as of this course’s taping, is the abbot of shōkokuji monastery in Kyoto—has compared the Middle Way to riding a bicycle. it is only by pushing down just the right amount and with just the right rhythmic timing on the left and right pedals that we can maintain our balance and move forward down the road.

• it can be helpful to think of the Middle Way as a passageway— an opening that leads beyond our life of swinging between extremes on the hedonism-asceticism pendulum. only if we find this passageway, the Buddha taught, can we pass from samsara, the state of suffering, to nirvana, the state of peace and true happiness. if we try to get there by steering too far in the direction of either hedonism or asceticism, we will hit a wall and won’t be able to pass through this opening in the middle.

SUGGESTED READING

heisig, “sufficiency and satisfaction in Zen Buddhism.” Loy, The Great Awakening, chapters 2–4.

Kohn, “The Life of the Buddha.”

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

1 Why did the Buddha reject both extreme hedonism and extreme asceticism?

2 how does the Buddha’s Middle Way teach us to be satisfied with what suffices?

Meditation Checkup:

The Middle Way of Meditation

the conclusion of Lesson 5 is a meditation checkup focused on the Middle Way. to experience it in full, refer to the audio or video lesson. the following tips serve as a summary of the checkup.

Bodily Posture

• Meditation involves finding a physically balanced posture. after you get situated on your cushion or chair, you can fine-tune your posture by letting gravity help center you, such that you are sitting perfectly perpendicular to the floor.

• To do this, while leaving your back straight, very gently initiate a rocking movement forward and backward. as soon as you have initiated the movement, let go, release control, and witness how gravity and your body harmoniously work together as the rocking movement decreases little by little, coming to rest at a perfectly balanced point. Next, repeat this process by initiating a side-to-side rocking movement.

• once you come to a balanced still point, notice how this subtle fine-tuning of your bodily posture affects your mental poise. you might even feel as if all the forces in the universe are cooperating to allow you to sit in this relaxed yet upright posture, as if everything is literally conspiring with you as you begin your meditation on the breath.

The Cosmic Mudra

• an excellent way to stay attuned to the balance of the Middle Way during meditation is to hold your hands in a special position called the cosmic mudra. Place your right hand on your lap, palm facing upward. Then, place your left hand on your right hand, also with the palm facing upward. finally, touch your two thumbs together so that your hands form a circle.

• While you meditate with your hands in this position, you’ll find that when you are tense, your thumbs press together and point upward. When you are distracted, your thumbs drift apart. and when you are drowsy, your thumbs droop downward. however, when you manage to maintain a relaxed alertness, a concentrated mindfulness, your thumbs remain gently touching, effortlessly keeping the form of the cosmic mudra.

Dealing with Agitation and Lethargy

• as your meditation practice progresses, you’ll find that your mind is tranquil but alert—zoned in rather than zoned out. if your mind is agitated or if you are sleepy, it is difficult to meditate. sometimes, you may just need to lay down and take a nap. other times, you may need to get up and deal with a problem that is bothering you. Then, sit down to meditate when you are, relatively speaking, less drowsy or preoccupied.

• inevitably, however, at least mild forms of agitation and lethargy will beset you at times while you are meditating. Don’t get frustrated. rather, take these problems as reminders of why you need to meditate; take them as encouragements to devote yourself to a more regular practice of meditation. Most of all, bear in mind that dealing with a racing mind or drooping eyelids is not just preparation for meditation; it is part and parcel of the practice itself.

• in practicing meditation, you are negotiating the Middle Way. sometimes, you will feel like you can’t sit still; other times, you will feel like you can’t stay awake. yet you will find that the more you sit, the sitting corrects these tendencies and naturally brings you back onto the Middle Way.

• it is helpful to focus on and count your breaths. if you are sleepy, you can experience the in-breath as enlivening—filling you with all the energy of the universe. on the out-breath, you can muster your spiritual energy and silently bellow out each number, as if you were refilling the whole world with the vitality of that breath.

• on the other hand, if you are agitated, you can experience the breath as mentally calming and emotionally soothing. relax into each out-breath, extending the number with an attitude of infinite patience, letting go of all the tension in your face, jaw, neck, shoulders, and back. Let the in-breath happen without any effort; just relax the muscles in your lower abdomen and let the smooth air fill you with calm.

• in these ways, you can counterbalance whichever extreme you are tilting toward by concentrating on the breath. While meditating, let the breath lead you down the path of the Middle Way. you’ll also find that, at other times—since whatever else you are doing, you must also be breathing—the breath will be there to help keep you balanced.

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