This will be part 1 of a two-part reflection.  Here we will reflect on the notion and the reality of Zen.  Part 2 will be titled, “Who am I?”, “Who is God?”—partially an application of Zen to two very big questions.

About ten years ago, in November of 2016 to be precise, I posted a reflection on the “problems of Zen.”  I dealt with the moral/ethical problems afflicting Zen Buddhism in the U.S. and Japan….as was also the case with so many other religious groups.  I also mentioned in passing the diminishment of Zen Buddhism in Japan—certainly still a very strong cultural and aesthetic presence in Japanese life but as a vibrant religious reality, only  a shadow of its former self.  In the U.S. it had too often become another activity or commodity for the modern consumer.  It was often reduced to “feel good” and “be more efficient” tools.   (Here’s a description of Zen from AI:  “In a lifestyle context, ‘Zen’ remains highly popular globally as a symbol of mindfulness, simplicity, and intimacy with one’s true nature. It is increasingly viewed as a practical tool for finding ‘inner peace’ in a high-stress, digital world.)  And finally I considered the scholarly academic community that was exploring Zen Buddhism, demythologizing and deconstructing the linguistic “scaffolding” of Zen and reducing it to its superficial structures.  (And there’s good money to be made in doing that!)  Now all of this is ok to be aware of, but I think I need to revisit the “land of Zen” and not neglect but explore a bit its real vitality, its Importance, albeit much neglected these days…and really ponder “the heart of the matter,” the real thing that is called Zen,  and to ponder its relevance even for us on the Christian contemplative path. 

Back then I used a long quote from one of Merton’s last written works, Zen and the Birds of Appetite, a key insightful text and a must-read for anyone wanting to get some sense of what real Zen is all about.  Merton made a sharp controversial claim: he delineated a distinction between Zen Buddhism and Zen.  This is a really big no-no for the academic scholars of Zen Buddhism.  In a sense these people are claiming authority through their methodology to determine “what is Zen” by explaining the phenomenon of Zen Buddhism.  The problem of interpretive authority is present in all religious traditions, but that’s a topic for another time.

Certainly Zen’s natural home is in Buddhism, and so we have a history and culture of Zen Buddhism (which can be scientifically and rationally investigated).  But Merton emphatically points out that whatever this “thing” we  label as Zen is, it is not reducible to, not explainable by, not encompassed by any of the cultural and religious structures and texts and institutions that carry the label of “Zen Buddhism”:  the monasteries and monks, the koans, the sutras, the roshis, the robes and bowing, even zazen itself, etc., etc.  Whatever Zen is it transcends all that and, as Merton suggests, can live and manifest itself in a completely different context.  The true Zen Buddhist knows this very well, and this is illustrated in a number of sayings.  One of the greatest Japanese Zen Masters, Dogen, said, “Whoever says that Zen is a sect/school of Buddhism is a devil”—in other words an agent of delusion!  An interesting analogical situation can be found in the classical Christian Desert Fathers where some of them discover the essence of “desert spirituality,” in persons without any “desert credentials.”  Here is a small piece of Merton’s  larger quote:

“To define Zen in terms of a religious system or structure is in fact to destroy it–or rather to miss it completely, for what cannot be ‘constructed’ cannot be destroyed either. Zen is not something which is grasped by being set within distinct limits or given a characteristic outline or easily recognizable features so that, when we see these distinct and particular forms, we say: ‘There it is!’ Zen is not understood by being set apart in its own category, separated from everything else: ‘It is this and not that.’…. We see from this that Zen is outside all particular structures and distinct forms, and that it is neither opposed to them nor not-opposed to them. It neither denies them nor affirms them, loves them nor hates them, rejects them nor desires them. Zen is consciousness unstructured by particular form or particular system, a trans-cultural, trans-religious, trans-formed consciousness. It is therefore in a sense ‘void.’ But it can shine through this or that system, religious or irreligious, just as light can shine through glass that is blue, or green, or red, or yellow. If Zen has any preference it is for glass that is plain, has no color, and is ‘just glass.’”

Lets fast forward now about 40 years.  Richard DeMartino.  He was a little-known professor of religion at Temple University and a true and profound student of Zen.  As a young man he himself was a close student and associate of D.T.  Suzuki, and later he wrote very little but was well-known and influential among the serious students of Zen including Merton but not at all in the realm of pop zen.  

DeMartino was deeply critical of the “business of Zen,” how it had been institutionalized in modern society and marketed.  He observed  that Zen had become a “thing” or a career path where people could make a living. It was a consumerist mindfulness: He argued that modern versions often package Zen as a “way to conduct yourself” or a set of behavioral guidelines rather than a radical transformation of the self.  The rituals of Zen have often replaced its actual essence: resolving the fundamental problem of human existence.

There is a well-known statement of his that in many ways hints at what Merton had said much earlier:

“The problem with Zen is that there is such a word.”

When I first saw this statement I immediately thought of this old Sufi saying:

 “Today, Sufism is a name without a reality, whereas before it was a reality without a name.”

DeMartino’s little statement is deep and rich in implications, and it probably would take a book to explicate all its nuances.  Here we will consult one of his  own students, Joe McSorley, to at least point us in the right direction:

“….I must address what Zen appears to be today and some of its pitfalls. What Dr DeMartino was trying to express in the above quote is that once you have a concept of something called Zen you are already lost. Today Zen has become a ‘thing’, a way to conduct yourself, a series of rituals and even a vocation at which you can make a living. This was all too apparent when I was in Japan recently and saw the disdain many locals had towards the business of Zen. I was quite shocked by it all. Now Zen is considered to be the practice of zazen, the koan or mindfulness….  I think Zen has become technique oriented instead of awakening oriented. Instead of delving into the heart of the matter, today’s Zen teaches technique, mainly meditation/zazen. Why has this become the main focus of Zen? Here I think it is good to look at two of the most essential stories of Buddhism. In the founding story of Buddhism, Siddhartha finds that a life of hedonism and a life of asceticism both fail at liberation from suffering. The story goes that he was so extreme in his asceticism that he lived on one grain of rice a day. He realized that this austere life was going to kill him so he gave it up. Upon reaching this extreme point, he vowed to sit under the Bodhi tree and not move till the problem was solved. The story does not say that he sat in meditation under the tree but that he just sat. He had meditated for years in the forest: what was different about what he was doing now? This is my question to practitioners of ‘Zen’. What is fundamentally different in his sitting under the tree as opposed to his years of practice in the forest?

“The second story is that of Dazu Huike approaching Bodhidharma. This is essentially the beginning of Zen and therefore most germane. After standing for days outside of Bodhi’s cave, he is finally approached by Bodhi. Bodhi asks, ‘Why are you here?’ and Huike replies, ‘My heart-mind is not at ease’. Bodhi replies, ‘The way is long and difficult’ and with that Huike takes out his sword and cuts off his arm thus proving his strong intentions and desperation. Bodhi accepts this and says, ‘What is wrong?’ And Huike replies, ‘My heart-mind is not at ease’ and Bodhi declares, ‘Hand it to me that I may pacify it!’ With that, Huike is awakened and liberated from his suffering. Now for the man to whom nine years of supposed wall-gazing meditation is the way, why doesn’t he tell Huike to meditate? All of Zen today is based on this idea of meditation, yet Bodhi himself didn’t tell Huike to meditate: how can this be? What actually happened at this encounter? This is the crux of Zen….  There is a spiritual materialism that exists in Zen and has for centuries. Monks competing on who was more ardent and tearing extra holes in their clothes to show their poverty. There is as much attachment to the robes and bald heads as any other person has to their persona. By cutting your hair and wearing robes you may be trading one form of attachment for another.

“I have encountered masters who will not in any way engage in a deep inquiry into what they teach. It is more about believing what they tell you or following their instructions. It is not about being driven deeper and deeper to the root of the problem. I have seen students expelled from Zen lectures because they dared to sincerely challenge the teacher in their quest for truth.  So there is this institution called Zen now that has its own culture, practices and awards, and that is not what I am in the least bit interested in. When I came to Zen decades ago, I had no idea what it was. I had a poison arrow deep in my being and needed it out. I was most fortunate to find a teacher who immediately and profoundly addressed the issue and never taught me ‘Zen.’”

In Christian monasticism St. Benedict says that a person “knocking on the door” of monasticism should be “tested” to see if he/she is “truly seeking God.”  No matter what words the aspirant uses, at that point there should begin a profound journey of discovery and awakening.  I emphasize the word “should.”  No matter what the aspirant says or truly sincerely believes, most likely the real message underlying his words is, “I have a problem, I am not happy (or some variant like I am deeply dissatisfied with life, I am filled with anxiety and insecurity, I need an identity, I want others to think well of me, etc., etc.), and so I need a new persona and I think that God will fill that need of mine.”  And as Merton has pointed out, too often our monasticism has provided a new persona, with new lingo thrown in, instead of a journey of discovery and awakening.  The same difficulty appears very often in Zen Buddhism also!  But now imagine an aspirant knocking on the door of a real Zen place.  And imagine the aspirant saying the same thing to a real Zen Master.  He/she would likely say something like  “Zen has no personas to sell or give.  And as for you, you do not have a problem, you ARE the problem.”  Ouch!  St. Benedict is a bit more gentle.  Zen aims sharply for the heart of the matter from the very first step, and here compassion does take on many forms that we might not recognize.

For many people, Zen is associated with some method, some practice, an awareness, a study, a mental tool of sorts, even a way of life.  No need to exclude any of these from Zen—they can be a critical part of one’s journey to awakening– as long as one has some clarity about what Zen is really all about.  What are you truly seeking? What is Zen after all?  Here Merton will help us, using some not so obvious symbolism:

“Where there is carrion lying, meat-eating birds circle and descend. Life and death are two. The living attack the dead, to their own profit. The dead lose nothing by it. They gain too, by being disposed of. Or they seem so, if you must think in terms of gain and loss. Do you then approach the study of Zen with the idea that there is something to be gained by it? This question is not intended as an implicit accusation. But it is, nevertheless, a serious question. Where there is a lot of fuss about “spirituality,” “enlightenment” or just “turning on,” it is often because there are buzzards hovering around the corpse. This hovering, this circling, this descending, this celebration of victory, are not what is meant by the Study of Zen — even though they may be a highly useful exercise in other contexts. And they enrich the birds of appetite.  The birds may come and circle for a while in the place where it is thought to be. But they soon go elsewhere. When they are gone, the ‘nothing,’ the ‘no-body’ that was there, suddenly appears. That is Zen. It was there all the time but the scavengers missed it, because it was not their kind of prey.”

Granted this is a bit enigmatic, but it does point us in the right direction.  As a way of getting to the heart of Zen, let us now ponder some historical/legendary/mythic moments in the story of Zen as it appears in its natural home and becomes Zen Buddhism:

1. When he was finally enlightened, Sakyamuni, the Buddha, would occasionally offer a kind of sermon or discourse.  One time he said nothing to the little gathering, only held up a white flower and looked at it.  Everyone was confused, except Mahakashyapa, one of his first disciples.  Mahakashyapa began to smile; he got it while the rest were clueless.  The Buddha then spoke up and proclaimed Mahakashyapa as his Dharma heir, and some legends have it that he was the First Patriarch of Chan/Zen.

Comment:  That flower was the first Zen koan; Mahakashyapa’s smile was the second Zen koan.  Ponder these.  If you try to “solve” them, “figure them out,” analyze the situation, you will be totally lost.  The heart of Zen, what it’s all about, is always there, right in front of you.  There is nothing secret here, nothng hidden, nothing needing some special knowledge.  For centuries this truth will be repeated in countless Chan/Zen stories, sayings.

2. Bodhidharma, an Indian Buddhist monk, came to China a few centuries after Sakyamuni’s life.  Buddhism had already arrived at China and was not all that popular yet.  It is said that Bodhidharma was a follower of Mahakashyapa’s line—in other words, he “studied and practiced” what eventually came to be called Chan and when it got to Japan it was called Zen.  Bodhidharma was called upon to declare what his Buddhism was all about.  He produced this brief quatrain; and this became known as Zen Buddhism (or simply Chan in Chinese) and Bodhidharma came to be known as its First Patriarch of Chan:

A separate transmission outside the scriptures.

Not dependent upon words or letters.

Direct pointing at the human mind.

Seeing one’s nature and becoming Buddha.

Comment:  This  is where some academic people explode!  They say, “What do you mean, no scriptures, no words….Zen adherents have produced thousands of texts over the centuries, hundreds of thousands of words.”  And of course the scholars love to study all these writings and come up with all kinds of interesting things to say, and one can make a nice career in doing that.   But what they study is not Zen.  

3.  As Bodhidharma prepared to return to India(perhaps to die), he asked his four main disciples to express their understanding of the Dharma. 

Each disciple gave a different answer, and Bodhidharma responded by comparing their level of insight to a different part of his body: 

Daofu: He stated that the truth is neither bound by words nor entirely separate from them. Bodhidharma replied, “You have attained my skin”.

Nun Zongchi: She described the truth as a glimpse of the realm of the Buddha, which once seen, need not be seen again. Bodhidharma replied, “You have attained my flesh”.

Daoyu: He explained that the four elements are empty and the five aggregates do not exist, meaning there is nothing to grasp. Bodhidharma replied, “You have attained my bones”.

Huike, who was previously mentioned above by McSorley, stepped forward, bowed in silence, and returned to his place without saying a word. Bodhidharma declared, “You have attained my marrow”. 

Comment:  Huike became the Second Patriarch of Chan.

4. During the Tang Dynasty (around the 9^thcentury CE), which is sometimes called the “Golden Age of Zen,” there was a most peculiar and legendary Chan Master by the name of Qici (or Kaishi/Qieci…also known as Pu-tai).  He did not live in a monastery or as a hermit; he roamed the cities and the countryside of southern China as a mendicant monk.  He carried a large cloth sack over his shoulder, and from it he pulled out little gifts and food for the needy and children.  In later iconography he is depicted as a bald, portly man with a perpetual smile and exposed belly.  In modern day Chinese shops one can find little figurines of him with the label: “Laughing Buddha.”

In any case, Qici avoided all titles and had no disciples.  One day he met an “official” Chan Master who asked him, “What is the significance of Chan?”  Qici immediately plopped his sack down on the ground in silence.  Then the Zen Master asked him, “What is the actualization of Chan?”  At once Qici swung the sack over his shoulder and continued on his way.

5. Yamaoka Tesshu, as a young student of Zen in 19^th century Japan, visited one master after another with a certain futility.  He finally came to a master by the name of Dokuon.  Desiring to show his attainment and knowledge, he said, “The mind, Buddha, and sentient beings, after all,  do not exist.  The true nature of phenomena is emptiness.  There is no realization, no delusion, no sage,….”  Dokuon, who was smoking quietly, said nothing.  Suddenly he whacked Yamaoka with his bamboo pipe.   This made the youth quite angry.  “If nothing exists,” inquired Dokuon, “where does this anger come from.”

(in Zen Flesh, Zen Bones)

6. Modern day mondo (private meeting) with a Zen Master:

Actual questioner:  If you follow any way, you will never get there; and if you do not follow any way, you will not get there.  So I face a dilemma.

Zen Master: Let that dilemma be your way!

Ordinary human consciousness is characterized by a dualistic mode of awareness (here I will follow DeMartino’s explication).  In all our knowing and in all our awareness we are locked into a subject-object matrix.    There is the “knower” and there is the “known,” and these are two.    Everything we are aware of, everything we “know,” stands as an “object” apart from us, “outside” us.  In fact this is the beginning, the first level of our selfhood—the discrimination between “I” and all else which is “not-I.”  I—not-I is a fundamental dualism which encompasses many other dualisms which we will need to unpack a bit in part two.  But first lets get back to the problem of the self, the root problem of human existence.  We are not only aware of the world “out there,” but we also have an awareness of the fact “that we are aware.”  In other words, self-awareness– this is what we call our ego-self, seemingly  the person that we are.  But here is a most serious problem.  DeMartino:

“Man’s ordinary, reflective consciousness of himself—or his self-consciousness—is problematic in the Zen view because it is a dualistic subject-object (the knower-the known) mode of consciousness.  For ordinary human consciousness—whether of itself or whatever—is a mode of consciousness in which the subject or ‘that which is conscious’ ever stands outside of or apart from the object or ‘that of which it is conscious.’  In its reflective consciousness of itself, therefore, the ordinary ego-self can know itself only as an ‘object-known,’ but never as a ‘subject-knower.’  The ordinary self, consequently, does not—and can not—know itself completely or ‘truly.’”   The predicament of the human ego-I, its root problem, and its fundamental inner contradiction is that the ego-I is always both bound to and at the same time alienated from both itself and the world.  The paradox is that it is always the “outsider” in everything It faces, even its own self.  In a very real sense it is a “stranger” to its very self.  This has enormous implications for Christian contemplative spirituality and for much, much more.  We will explore all this and more in the next posting.  Suffice it to say that Zen shatters this dualistic consciousness; or, to put it more gently, it leads one to the resolution of this all-pervasive dualism through an awakening to the “self-less Self,” what DeMartino calls the True Self–which is an all-pervasive, awesome, perhaps best- designated as “supra nondualism”—about which much to say in part two.  The ego-I cannot “achieve” or “attain” or “realize” this through all its efforts because it is by nature dualistic, and so every effort will be awash with dualism.  All it will get you is a notion of nondualism, an idea in your head, a feeling….  In a manner of speaking that kind of self-consciousness has to die—what the Sufis call “fana” and Zen calls the “Great Death.”  This subject-object matrix where the “I” views itself and the world as separate objects, leading to inherent alienation and  what the Buddhists call “suffering,” “dukkha,” dissolves into a profound awakening where the fractured “I” is overcome to realize a state that is prior to the subject-object split.   Just a hint of the next discussion….but this is in ancient Christian terminology termed as a “return to Paradise” (where human beings lived in deep harmony with all within and with all without).   For now we will content ourselves with a marvelous description by D. T. Suzuki of what this awareness brings about:

“The Zen approach is to enter right into the object itself and see it as it were from the inside.  To know the flower is to become the flower, to be the flower, to bloom as the flower and to enjoy the sunlight as well as the rainfall.  When this is done, the flower speaks to me and I know all its secrets, all its joys, all its sufferings;  that is, all its life vibrating within itself.  Not only that: along with my ‘knowledge’ of the flower I know all the secrets of the universe, which includes all the secrets of my own Self, which has been eluding my pursuit all my life so far, because I divided myself into a duality, the pursuer and the pursued, the object and the shadow.  No wonder that I never succeeded in catching myself, and how exhausting this game was.  Now, however, by knowing the flower I know my Self.  That is, by losing myself in the flower I know my Self as well as the flower.”

And I shall conclude with a lovely line of poetry from one of China’s great poets during the Tang Dynasty, Li Po, or sometimes known as Li Bai:

“We sat together, the forest and I, merging into silence. Until only the forest remained.”

To be continued….