The Elegant Beauty of Mindfulness

Every-Minute Zen

Zen students are with their masters at least ten years before they presume to teach others. Nan-in was visited by Tenno, who, having passed his apprenticeship, had become a teacher. The day happened to be rainy, so Tenno wore wooden clogs and carried an umbrella. After greeting him Nan-in remarked: "I suppose you left your wooden clogs in the vestibule. I want to know if your umbrella is on the right or left side of the clogs."

Tenno, confused, had no instant answer. He realized that he was unable to carry his Zen every minute. He became Nan-in's pupil, and he studied six more years to accomplish his every-minute Zen.

Every time I hear the word mindfulness, I chuckle because it reminds me of the lines from The Police song, Every Breath You Take:

Every breath you take
Every move you make
Every bond you break
Every step you take
Ill be watching you

Every single day
Every word you say
Every game you play
Every night you stay
Ill be watching you

Mindfulness, also known as right attention or right awareness is ones effort to remained focused on the mind's activities, the bodies actions and the world around them from moment to moment. This mindfulness of watching and awareness is such an extraordinary effort we can make in practice because of its basic simplicity and its many benefits, even outside of Buddhist philosophy. Its meant to be incorporated into our everyday lives as a living activity, focusing our energy and presence to here and now.


"Living in the moment can become a moralistic principle, a burden rather than a way to intensify life. The difference might depend on who takes the lead in the dance and who chooses the music. The soul is a community of many interior persons, many of them capable leaders. The ego is only one among them and probably should not always run the show. A good dancer or musician allows the music to take over, becomes absorbed in the complex harmonies and tempos, and is the servant of the materials at hand. The secret of a soul-based life is to allow someone or something other than the usual self to be in charge."
~Thomas Moore, Original Self: Living with Paradox and Originality

Mindfulness is that keen eye that sees the giant orange ball of flame that rises slowly above the chilled morning desert. It is that ear that hears the lovely whistle of the wind through the willing trees in an autumn breeze. It is the nose that smells the cleansing summer rain steaming off the hot black asphalt. It is the mouth that tastes the smallest seeds of a lush tomato freshly picked off the ripened vine. Its is the touch that feels the warm soft cheek of your lovers face. Most importantly it is the minds eye that understands all these words and thoughts come nothing close to be being what they are as experienced.

Prison of Purpose

In this life, weather we know it or understand it, our mind splits the world into its infinite objects and subjects, each with a purpose. If we don't know its purpose, we seek it out, place it in a generalization or categorize it into some logical box. The grass grows because of some seeds were sewn in the soil, nurtured by minerals and water, trimmed and maintained.

The tree roots into the soil, and is imbibed with the rays of the sun, transformed in the chlorophyll of the leaves. It grows and over time it shades this chair we bought, which is made from plastic, which is derived from some fantastic chemical composition. The chair allows us to rest under the shade of the tree, with the carpet like silkiness of the grass under feet, to ponder the meaning of the universe and ask over and over why we are here.

Our condition begins with our conscious mind, moving to and from, always labeling good or bad, purpose and reason for all the things around us. Somehow in this realization of being, we are aware of our mind, these thoughts, this ever changing body. We put a name to this being, give it titles, goals, ambitions and drives. We delve into this flesh, learn its parts, understand its manners and actions for each blood, tissue and bone that makes it up.

The tendency of the mind is to seek these purposes out, to search for those wonders that bring us pleasure and to avoid those dreadful things that bring us pain. Our mind objectifies anything and everything, viewing from the points of form, color, sounds and functions, to which we create its purpose.

Its the question that drives us mad, spurs humans to create even grander beings and notions of the divine, spawn beautiful prose about love and life , celebrates its beginnings and laments its end. You know the question just as I; for what is our purpose? Our mind just can't seem to view itself, to find its reason other than to place purpose on everything else. I see this as our prison, our exhausting human condition. The inability to place a purpose on mind and the reason of me, confuses and confounds us to no end.

Perhaps, our real problem is that the universe, this oneness, God or what not really isn't asking any question. We know reality, we are inexplicably immersed in it, part of it, forever embedded in this infinite moment. It seems to free ourselves from this this prison of purpose, we feel we need to find some logical answer to this question.

What if there is no question?

The Buddha Dogma

Do not believe in anything (simply) because you have heard it.
Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations.
Do not believe in anything because it is spoken and rumoured by many.
Do not believe in anything (simply) because it is found written in your religious books.
Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.
But after observation and analysis when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conductive to the good and benefit of one and all then accept it and live up to it.

Gautama Buddha, Kalama Sutta

My aim is always to practice zen with my eyes and mind open as it were, since there seems to be a human tendency towards religiosity, ideology and dogma - a tendency to become partial and to develop rigid ideas, to conform and engage in 'group-think'. Why shouldn't that apply to Zen? The last thing I want to do is become another religious nut. Sometimes I think I see Zen practitioners seemingly getting very attached to the trappings of Zen and I wonder if that's helpful. I try to just be my ordinary self and to assume as little as possible about Zen. I don't assume that Soto Zen is always the best way. For example, sitting in the lotus position works well for me, but conceivably there could be better ways. There's no reason to imagine that there's anything magical about the posture - anything that allows us to remain motionless, alert and quiet for a long time without too much tension or pain fits the bill. For all I know Mike Cross and Pierre Turlur might be right - maybe the Alexander Technique is better. I don't know, I've never tried it.

One criticism that gets levelled at Zen quite a bit is that it does not emphasise direct cultivation of compassion. The justification I've heard for this is that trying to act compassionate or cultivate compassion when it isn't sincere is artificial and hence a distortion of our true selves. We cannot force ourselves to act and feel compassionate. I think there is some truth in this. I have met Buddhists that have the same sort of forced over-sincerity and over-niceness that many Christians seem to have. To try to do this seems to be a recipe for repression and self-deception and that can't be healthy. This is borne out by my own earliest experiences with Buddhism.

I originally came across Mahayana Buddhism some years ago as an undergraduate. I was very intrigued by the philosophy and seemed to get some benefit from meditation practice, but I had reservations about it: I found nothing to make me accept the notion that we will be reborn when we die, it all seemed like wishful thinking and not very well thought out and I wasn't keen on all that devotion to Boddhisatvas and so on. I'm a healthily sceptical and logical person, and I'd spent far too long debating with Christian apologists to accept such ideas on faith.

Some of the practice seemed insincere - I felt I was trying to make myself be nice and compassionate and serene, when in fact deep down I usually felt quite different. Was it because I was a beginner? Was I being badly taught? Or was it inherent in the teaching? It was as if I was meant to sprinkle sugar on top of all the 'negative' but real feelings I had and as such seemed to be encouraging me to regard my true feelings as unacceptable and thus repress them and replace them with something more 'wholesome' but less sincere.

The Zen approach is careful self-observation through the practice of Zazen so that the attachments of the 'personal self' are eroded away leaving a nature which is selfless and naturally compassionate.

It's an interesting theory, and it certainly seems likely to avoid artifice, but I don't know to what extent it would cultivate compassion. Without a personal self is our nature really more compassionate? There are enough stories of abuse by American 'Zen Masters', support for Japanese pre-war imperialism by Japanese roshi and use of Zen by samurai as a tool of violence to give me some doubts about that. It's for this reason that I supplement my Zazen with Metta Bhavana meditation. In the context of self-awareness and an attitude of acceptance I really think it is possible to cultivate compassion without the problems I described above.

The reason that I practice Soto Zen is mainly because it is light on metaphysical, philosophical and supernatural speculation. For obvious reasons you do need to have confidence in the practice, but that's about it. The practice is very down-to-earth, 'stripped down' and simple. Its not about believing or disbelieving, it's about paying attention to the actuual reality of here and now. Being a natural sceptic, that suits me fine. Of course, to practice Soto Zen formally you have to do it in a certain way. You have to try your best to live according to the Buddhist precepts. Practice involves certain rituals, if you are ordained you should wear a rakusu, a kesa etc when you're at the zendo. Beyond that it doesn't really matter what you think (if anything) about the afterlife or karma etc.

Another thing I try to remain agnostic about is the nature of Enlightenment. I think its important not to idealise it or pin hopes on it. To me, 'Enlightenment' is just being fully present with perhaps a gradual loss of illusions over time.

Now, these provisional personal views are all part of a process of personal investigation, not dissimilar to scientific investigation, although exploring subjective areas which are difficult for science to access. Nevertheless, there are a number of scientific studies which provide compelling evidence for many claims made about Buddhist practice.

This empirical approach is also encouraged in the Kalama Sutta (quoted above), not that I needed Buddha to give me permission not to take him as an absolute authority, but it's just as well that this sutta exists since the tendency to religiosity and to represent Buddha as an omniscient god-like figure is strong in Buddhism. Those words at least give independent-mindedness a fighting chance.

Some Buddhists use the Right View/Right Understanding principle of the Eightfold Path as a club to hit free-thinkers over the head with. I don't have beliefs in rebirth after death or karma (as traditionally described) and am accused sometimes of not being a 'real Buddhist'. Apart from the fact that I don't care whether these people consider me a real Buddhist or not (in a sense its a relief if they don't) as far as I'm concerned rebirth and karma are merely the philosophical backdrop against which Buddha had his realisations. He did not originate these concepts - they were standard Vedic beliefs, which most people in India at that time accepted without much questioning. All Buddha did was modify the concept of reincarnation to rebirth to attempt accomodate his principle of anatta - the absence of inherent self. He also did not refute the existence of gods, although he described them as limited beings, subject to birth and death like everyone else and discouraged reliance upon them.

To suppose that Buddha was omniscient is an extraordinary claim for which there is no evidence. It's not even something that he claimed about himself. How could he possibly have known what happens before and after people die. Modern, well-educated, rational people who are scientifically literate may realise that visions or apparent memories about such matters do not constitute good evidence any more than they provide good evidence of Satanic child abuse or the existence of spirits or elves or extraterrestrials. Buddha did not have the benefits of a 21st century education. And for me at least, the notion of rebirth after death is rendered redundant by moment-to-moment rebirth ie. a realisation of no inherent self.

As far as I'm concerned, Buddha's key and original insights were interdependence/emptiness and causes of suffering and the method of liberation from it. It is an understanding of these principles which constitutes Right Understanding.

And what, monks, is right understanding? Knowledge with regard to sadness, knowledge with regard to the origination of sadness, knowledge with regard to the stopping of sadness, knowledge with regard to the way of practice leading to the stopping of sadness: This, monks, is called right understanding.

Magga-vibhanga Sutta, An Analysis of the Path

An author I can really recommend on the topic of agnostic Buddhism is Stephen Batchelor especially his book Buddhism Without Beliefs.

Now, before anyone misunderstands me, I'm not suggesting that Buddhism is whatever you want it to be. It has a good breadth of interpretation, from the most rational and science-friendly to the most religious. There are sects which insist on belief in karma and rebirth and sects for which such metaphysical speculation is redundant. But there comes a point where it will stop being Buddhism and start being something else.

You can read more about the Kalama Sutra here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalama_Sutra

This is adapted from a post originally published in my personal blog in 2006.

Why "Progressive"?

The word “progressive” implies a movement beyond tradition and dogma. I have chosen to connect this word with Pure Land Buddhism because I am convinced that this school of Buddhism has a pressing need to progress beyond some of its traditional doctrinal understandings and premodern supernaturalism to remain relevant for the intelligent and critical people of the 21^st century. I am aware that some of my views may offend my fellow Buddhists and I apologize in advance. It is not my intention to offend. Rather, this blog is an exercise in challenging some of the dogmas in Pure Land Buddhism which I see as obstacles in it becoming a relevant teaching for our modern time.

The basic teachings of Pure Land Buddhism can be summarized thus: Knowing that in latter times, the spiritual abilities of human beings would degenerate, the historical Buddha Shakyamuni expounded the Pure Land scriptures to provide a way out for all human beings to attain salvation from this world of suffering. Shakyamuni described to his followers how many billions of ages ago, a monk by the name of Dharmakara saw the suffering of all sentient beings and he vowed to save them by creating a paradise (“Pure Land”) with the necessary conditions conducive for attaining enlightenment. The Pure Land that Dharmakara vowed to create would be a place where there would be no suffering and discrimination of any sort. It would be a realm where saintly and enlightened beings could hear the teachings of Buddhism and meditate peacefully without any distractions or danger.

The Pure Land scriptures tell us that after countless ages of practicing austerity and charity, Dharmakara attained enlightenment and he became a Buddha known as “Amitabha” or alternatively “Amitayus”. Amitabha and Amitayus are Sanskrit words and respectively, they mean “Immeasurable Light” and “Immeasurable Life”. According to the Shakyamuni of the Pure Land scriptures, Amitabha’s Pure Land is known as “Sukhavati”, or “The Land of Bliss”. Anyone who has faith in the compassionate vows of Amitabha and seeks rebirth in his Pure Land will be reborn there after this life and be admitted into the presence of Amitabha and the numerous enlightened beings in his Pure Land, to receive training for enlightened. Once enlightenment is attained, the citizens of the Pure Land will return to this world of suffering to save the sentient beings still trapped here.

In mainstream Pure Land Buddhism today, the Pure Land scriptures are accepted as the direct teaching of the historical Buddha and the Pure Land is often described as an actual place somewhere in the universe billions of galaxies away from our planet. The story of how Dharmakara became Amitabha is presented as a historical fact and Amitabha is an actual being living in his Pure Land. At the end of the devotee’s life, Amitabha and his vast entourage of bodhisattvas will come to deliver the devotee to Sukahavati. The vast majority of Chinese Mahayana Buddhism revolves around a religious devotion to Amitabha Buddha, expressed through chanting the Pure Land scriptures and meditating on the name of Amitabha in the hope that at the end of the devotee’s life, one takes birth in his Pure Land. Chinese Mahayana Buddhism also affirms that the devotee who constantly recites the name of Amitabha with faith and devotion can increase longevity and gain protection from demonic influences.

Pure Land Buddhism has an understandable appeal to many people. Human existence is finite. We have to go through many trials and tribulations. Even though we are not sure when or how, it is certain that we will die one day. Many people, myself included, are comforted by the idea of having a benevolent power to protect us and a place to look forward to in the afterlife. This fear of the unknown perhaps explains the vast popularity of Pure Land Buddhism in East Asia (it has almost completely died out in India, the land of its origins).

But we who live in the 21st century are faced with a dilemma when we encounter the basic narrative of Pure Land Buddhism as transmitted to us from premodern India and China. This dilemma is one between accepting the comfort of unverifiable faith and the nagging itch of reason that demands evidence. The Pure Land narrative, when taken literally, requires a human being to take a leap of faith based on something that cannot be verified. A literal reading of the Pure Land scriptures makes extraordinary claims that requires extraordinary evidence. Consider this: Someone informs you that there is a country somewhere in the world which is rich in all manner of natural resources, where its citizens lead carefree lives with everything necessary for their welfare and happiness paid for by the government. You are also informed that this country offers free citizenship to anyone in the world on condition that they swear allegiance to the country’s leader. Would you not be skeptical and demand empirical evidence for this country's existence? Yet there are Pure Land Buddhists who believe in the existence of a supernatural being called Amitabha who, upon their demise, will whisk them off to a literal Pure Land adorned by gold, precious stones and all sorts of magical sights and sounds even though there is no empirical evidence for such a realm.

Furthermore, there is considerable evidence that Pure Land Buddhism is not a teaching of the historical Shakyamuni, but rather a development of the Mahayana movement which most scholars acknowledge to have arisen centuries after Shakyamuni’s passing. The Mahayana scriptures that we have today resulted ffrom centuries of creation and evolution (from the 2nd century AD up until the 11th century AD) which explains why there are numerous versions of the same sutras. The Larger Sukahavtivyuha Sutra, which is the foundational text for Pure Land Buddhism, has survived in seven versions and there are noticeable differences between them. According to the Zhi Qian and Zhi Loujiachen translation, Dharmakara made 24 vows. The Faxian translation lists 36 vows. The Sanskrit and Tibetan versions has 47 vows while the Bodhiruchi and Sanghavarman translations both have 48 vows. The existence of a plurality of texts suggests a diverse process of creation as Buddhists strove to express their understanding of the historical Shakyamuni’s teachings into new narratives.

Another evidence that the Pure Land scriptures were not the work of a single person are internal and external textual contradictions. The seven surviving versions of the Larger Sukahavtivyuha Sutra are significantly different in content. Only the Bodhiruchi and Sanghavarman versions have a long preamble on the acts of the Bodhisattvas while the others do not. The Zhi Qian and Zhi Loujiachen versions have a long description of the Five Evils of the world, which is absent in the Faxian, Sanskrit, Tibetan and Bodhiruchi versions, although the Sanghavarman version has a short version. The Zhi Qian and Zhi Loujiachen version does not refer to Maitreya’s vision while the other five versions do so,

The Larger Sukahavtivyuha Sutra states that people who have committed the five heinous acts and/or blaspheme the Buddha's teachings are barred from rebirth in the Pure Land while the Contemplation Sutra (accepted by scholars as a work of non-Indian origin) contradicts this by stating that those who commit the five heinous acts can also take birth in the Pure Land should they repent at the end of their lives and trust in Amitabha. Pure Land teachers have traditionally reconciled this by saying that the apparent exclusion clause in the Larger Sukahavtivyuha Sutra was an ethical injunction to warn the sutra’s readers from committing these acts. But it seems to my mind that the more likely explanation is that the sutras were composed by different people with different ideas about who would or would not be excluded from the Buddha’s compassion, as embodied by the Pure Land.

Also, a literal reading of the Pure Land texts can present several difficulties. In the Larger Sukahavtivyuha Sutra, we are told that Dharmakara existed immeasurable ages ago. But the story of Dharmakara is couched in cultural references from ancient Vedic India. In the sutra, Dharmakara is quoted as comparing the splendour of the Buddha Lokeshvaraja to Mount Sumeru. He also vowed to worship as many buddhas as “the grains of sand in the Ganges.” The idea of Mount Sumeru was from borrowed from Vedic cosmology and so the name “Ganges” also came from Vedic civilization.

A further indication of the historical origins of the Pure Land scriptures can be found in Dharmakara’s 26^th vow where he aspired to provide the body of Narayana for everyone born in his land. Narayana is a name for the Vedic deity Vishnu. The inclusion of this god and the above-mentioned references from Vedic culture indicates that the writer or writers of the sutra was not trying to tell their readers a literal event which took place billions of aeons ago. They were conveying a myth. The mythological nature of the Pure Land scriptures must be accepted as the basis of a Progressive Pure Land Buddhism.

Note: This is the first of a two part essay which has been published on my blog to discuss Progressive Pure Land Buddhism. The differences between the different versions of the Larger Sukhavativyuha Sutra were compiled by Luis O. Gomez in the appendix of his book The Land of Bliss - an excellent translation and commentary on the Larger and Shorter Sukhavativyuha Sutras.

The Face of God (Part 2 of 2)

I came across this article which ties in nicely with what I said in my earlier post The Face of God with regards to the duality between two views or aspects of the concept of God.

The concept has two aspects (one of which in Christianity has three faces - the Holy trinity). Some theists see God as having one aspect or the other, while most Churches see one as a manifestation of the other. The two aspects of God are:

Anthropomorphic

This is the more familiar concept of a personal God who feels, thinks and acts, who creates, who is jealous, who forgives, who smites enemies and who impregnated a virgin. This is similar to the polytheistic view of a personified deity as a powerful and manifested being which is 'in the world'. In Christianity, God manifests in three ways known together as the Holy Trinity - the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

Transcendent

This is the mystical view of God as the ineffable, unknowable, deepest source of reality, and which in some interpretations equals the sum total of existence.

As 'The All' God would appear to be indistinguishable from the deepest principles of physics (and/or the source of them if physics is a manifestation of something deeper). Some theists adhere to this view of God alone. Advocates of such a view include the philosopher Spinoza. The Vedantic school of Hindu philosophy sees Brahman in a similar way as the ground of all being.

Interestingly, this concept of - and mystical experiences of - this All or Ultimate seem to be the place where all religions meet. The differences are in the metaphysics produced in the act of interpretation. Even poly-theistic religions tend to have a more abstract 'greater god' of some sort, of which all other gods are manifestations. Non-theistic religions and philosophers have similar ideas, for example, the concept of the Tao and Buddhist concepts like Dharmadhatu. Schopenhauer's concept of the noumenon is also related. The linguistic philosopher Wittgenstein 'talks around' a reality which cannot be spoken of: "What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence" and went as far as giving a positive endorsement of mysticism "Feeling the world as a limited whole -- it is this that is mystical"

Some scientists such as have similar holistic but non-theistic concepts of the cosmos, which border on or even embrace the mystical.

A human being is part of the whole called by us universe , a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.

Einstein

When Hawking occasionally talks in terms of God it seems to be more in terms of a hypothetical omnipotent creator being.

And in their quests for a single unifying theory - and as a result of their research - scientists aknowledge the 'oneness' of phenomena, although this is a unity which is generally believed to be physical from top to bottom since, although science does not depend on it, there is to a large extent an unchallenged acceptance of the metaphysical philosophy of Physicalism (also misleadingly referred to as Materialism). Also this unity is to be understood primarily conceptually and mathematically rather than realised existentially.

The view of God as a symbol for the ineffable unutterable deepest reality or source of reality is easier to defend philosophically because such an 'entity' is being described largely in negative terms - it is that which cannot be spoken and about which therefore no claims can be made. Interestingly such a view of God (as the linked article above indicates) is that of a being which cannot truly be said to exist, since the transcendent cannot belong to the set of things that exist.

Some Jewish, Christian and Muslim Medieval philosophers, including Moses Maimonides and Pseudo-Dionysius, as well as many sages of other religions, developed what is termed as Apophatic Theology or the Via Negativa, the idea that one cannot posit attributes to God and can only be discussed by what God is not. For example, we cannot say that God "exists" in the usual sense of the term, because that term is human defined and Gods qualities such as existance may not be accurately characterized by it. What we can safely say is that God is not nonexistent. Likewise God's "wisdom" is of a fundamentally different kind from limited human perception. So we cannot use the word "wise" to describe God, because this implies he is wise in the way we usually describe humans being wise. However we can safely say that God is not ignorant. We should not say that God is One, because we may not truly understand his nature, but we can state that there is no multiplicity in God's being.

Source

Compare these statements with the negative philosophy of Buddhist philosophers such as Nagarjuna.

Neither from itself nor from another, Nor from both, Nor without a cause, Does anything whatever, anywhere arise.

Nagarjuna

In the Midhyamakakirikis, Nagarjuna attacks this attempt to absolutize Buddhist praxis by utilizing a system of logic that offers negative responses to four possible alternatives. Called the catuskoti, it is often depicted in the following form:

1. It is not the case that x is Ø.
2. It is not the case that x is not-Ø.
3. It is not the case that x is both Ø and not-Ø.
4. It is not the case that x is neither Ø nor not-Ø.

Nagarjuna uses this fourfold logic against a whole series of arguments ranging from causality, the self, the aggregates, production, destruction, permanence, impermanence, space, time, motion, and so forth. Against a particular view of causation, for example, Nagarjuna applies the catuskoti and concludes that dharmas (x) are not produced (Ø), not non-produced, not both, and not neither. Or, against a particular view of motion, he applies the dialectic and concludes that motion (x) is not moving (Ø), not non-moving, not both, and not neither.

source

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"Nagarjuna (c.150-250 CE) ... realized at a profound level the difficulties of carrying out Buddhist discourse in the medium of language, and the degree of attachment that could occur with even such subtle concepts as shunyata. Therefore he endeavored to prevent people from falling into the error of attaching to Emptiness as a "something" or as "non-existence."

He made his project an exercise in consciousness that sought to free people from being limited in thought by the linguistic options of "this or that" and "existence or non-existence." He did this by taking Buddhist philosophical terms and putting them into his formula of "neither x nor not-x." According to this formula, existence is "neither empty nor not empty," "neither samsara nor nirvana." Nagarjuna's teachings are not something new ontologically speaking, but were developments toward a more advanced logical form that can be seen in his Madhyamaka-karikas.

source

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In these texts, he strove to stop the reification of the concept of emptiness by: (1) stressing the non-difference between emptiness and dependent origination; (2) by emphasizing the understanding of emptiness as a mental attitude which pays attention to the non-attachment to concepts and theories. That is, emptiness should not be made into a theory to be clung to (as are other philosophical and religious doctrines). According to Nagarjuna, he who does so is like "a customer to whom a merchant has said that he has nothing to sell and the customer now asks to buy this 'nothing' and carry it home."For Nagarjuna, emptiness should not be interpreted ontologically, but rather in the way of the parable of the raft: The Buddhist teaching (especially shunyata), is like the raft one constructs for the crossing of a river. Once the river is crossed, the purpose of the raft has been served. It may now be discarded.

The same is true of emptiness: it should not be held on to; one who does hold on to it will have trouble functioning in life. In this sense, emptiness could also be compared to a laxative: once the obstruction has passed, there is no need to continue taking it. Nagarjuna wrote extensively, and his teachings resulted in the formation of an Indian school called Madhyamika or the "Middle Way School."

source

Having their ineffable and speaking it

When debating with theists I tend to find that they oscillate between these two positions. God is treated as an existent thing in many ways - as an existent person - a moral agent with human-like attributes who performs acts and who has feelings and thoughts. This is the entity that proclaims the moral absolutes which theists use as justification not only for changing their own behaviour but at times for oppressing others and for acts of violence, in other words this is the 'fully knowable' God that enters the political arena.

When challenged about apparent contradictions in the supposed attributes of God or conflicts between those attributes and His behaviour theists often retreat their God into a 'cloud of unknowing' a place of free-form mysticism where paradox is not only permissable but a defining, positive sign of God's transcendent divinity.

Is this so different from the non-rationality of Buddhism, for example, the paradoxes of Nagarjuna or of Zen koans? I hear you ask.

Buddhism (correctly understood) does not claim to be or have an absolute truth, it can only ever be a finger that points at reality, which is ineffable. Buddhism is a provisional 'skillful means' and thus its attempts to influence the political, scientific or intellectual spheres are likely to be less absolutist and more tolerant. A Japanese Buddhist cleric historically explained the virtual absence of conflict between Zen and other sects as being due to it having no doctrine at all.

Many theists on the other hand want to have their cake and eat it. They want a God who is mysterious, transcendent, unknowable and unspeakable, yet will provide absolute support for their moral and metaphysical pronouncements. How do they get away with it? In Christianity, God is traditionally described in terms of the Trinity - the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are manifestations of God, which is nevertheless described as a unity and as 'infinitely simple'. This infinitely simple and unchanging being is supposed to be the active, willful source of all the complexity there is. It seems to me that only through a mixture of blind faith and a sort of mystical agnosticism that such a contradictory nature seems to be acceptable. These are the sorts of statements that I've heard from theists on this matter:
'God is unknowable and anything is possible with God.'
'I see and how can you know that?'
'It is possible to have partial knowlege of God'
'If you don't know what you don't know then how can you know what you know?'
'I just know.'

It is in this way that Christians emerge from their own 'cloud of unknowing' to make oh-so-confident proclamations about the nature of God and His will - to declare what is right and wrong, what is true and every so often to smite their own enemies or justify such actions.

Personally I don't have knowledge or experience of anthropomorphic or any other sort of deities and I tend to think that the ineffable is better handled by the likes of Wittgenstein "What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence" and by concepts of the Tao and Buddhist concepts of Dharmadhatu and Sunyata, since the 'emptiness', relativity and provisional nature of these concepts is pre-built, well-defined and well-accepted. It's interesting to note also that neither of these indicators of the ultimate is, correctly understood, transcendent since they refer to reality itself.

In my view God is the Tao, misunderstood and as we know

The Tao that can be told of is not the eternal Tao;
the name that can be named is not the eternal name.

This was originally published in my personal blog in 2006.
Photo courtesy of Reverend Brendan Powell Smith

The Face of God (Part 1 of 2)

Personally, I've never had a belief in God, and tended to believe that the Abrahamic (why do people say 'Judeo-Christian' and exclude Islam?) concept of God and 'His' supposed purposes were incoherent. That doesn't mean that I didn't have a strong sense of 'spirituality', it just means that I didn't attach it to a concept of an anthropomorphic creator being. It was nature/existence itself that awed me.

Some Zen teachers occasionally talk in terms of 'God' - even the iconoclastic Brad Warner sometimes does. The word is being used as a way of expressing a Buddhist idea in 'Western' terms. However, the concept used here is far from the Abrahamic concept of a separate, self-existent, supernatural and (always to at least some extent) anthropomorphic creator used by most theists. Personally I tend to think that it should be avoided to prevent confusion.

There are some people - mainly Christian-Buddhist hybrids (not sure how that works) and Christians looking for common ground who try very hard to show that Buddhism and Christianity are essentially saying the same thing. I think that ultimately there may be an element of truth in this, but I think that a great deal of damage is done to a concept such as Sunyata (emptiness) by trying to squeeze it into a God-shaped hole. I tend to think that the concept of God is, in part, derived from experiences of 'no-self' and 'oneness', interpreted as a cosmic event - a union between a discreet self (individual soul) and a discreet Absolute (Godhead). This is naive and simplistic compared with the subtlety and sophistication of Nagarjuna's concept of Sunyata and Dogen's (and others') descriptions of the relationship between relative and absolute. In Buddhism, the denial of a separate self (anatman) and a separate absolute (nirvana) are key concepts. The rest as far as I can tell is a naive search for explanations which will fit into our common-sense conceptual structure on the basis of faulty logic and blind faith.

Even putting aside all the issues of evidence and the validity of 'personal revelation', and all the problems of Biblical literalism, I find the concept incoherent. Here is a small selection of the questions I think the idea of God begs:

Why would an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent being use methods of improving his creations, which required great suffering, (existence, freewill, evil, evolution) with no sign of resulting improvement?

Why would a perfect being need to create humanity let alone need its love?

Events/changes require time to occur in, so how could the creation of space-time occur before there was any time for it occur?

The usual answer to these sorts of questions is some variant of 'God works in mysterious ways', but this comes back to How do you know He works in mysterious ways?, How do you know the Bible is infallibly true?, How do you know that God exists?, How do you know (enough to make claims about it) what God is like?. Blind faith - a personal feeling of conviction isn't valid, as demonstrated by the number of people who have absolute faith in their beliefs and yet who contradict each other or who are demonstrably false and/or insane. Faith in Buddhist practice, as I understand it, is of a more ordinary sort - like the faith of a climber in his ropes. The 'intuitive knowing' described about 'enlightened masters' is something else - 'knowing' is not quite the right word and it is not knowledge of anything supernatural or metaphysical - rather, it is just being fully attentive to reality, absent of certain illusions we have about it.

I find it interesting that the less literal the interpretation of Biblical and traditional explanations of God are - the more 'ineffable' they are, the less problematic they become, because such claims are less concrete. Instead of the jealous tribal god Yahweh who lives on Mount Sinai and smites the enemies of Israel, God becomes a cosmic source or principle beyond space and time, almost equivalent to the deepest laws of physics. A consequence of this is that the more anthropomorphic supposed 'purposes' of this entity start to become absurd. 'God is the unknowable source, the will of nature, the very ground of all being...and He hates gays.'

If God is a synonym for the deepest principles of physics, what word is left for a hypothetical being who answers prayers, intervenes to save cancer patients or helps evolution over difficult jumps, forgives sins or dies for them?

Richard Dawkins

I came across this excerpt and really enjoyed it. I know that 'Zen talk' can seem pretty bizzare so I've added my interpretations of what Seung Sahn said.

After one of the Dharma Teachers was finished with his introductory remarks, he asked those congregated to direct their questions to Zen Master Seung Sahn, Soen Sa Nim. One of the visitors asked if there was a God.

Soen Sa answered "If you think God, you have God, if you do not think God, you do not have God."
[God and the absence of God are mental constructs]

"I think that there is no God. Why do I have God if I think God?"

"Do you understand God?"

"No, I don't know."

"Do you understand yourself?"

"I don't know."

"You do not understand God. You do not understand yourself. How would you even know if there was a God or not?"

"Then, is there a God?"

"God is not God, no God is God."
[Apart from our mental contruction there is inherently no God or absence of God. Alternatively - the Ultimate (God) and nothingness/absence of inherent nature/interdependence are the same. ]

"Why is God not God?"

Holding up the Zen stick, Soen Sa said "This is a stick, but it is not a stick. Originally, there is no stick. It is the same with God for originally there is no God. God is only name. The same is true of all things in the universe."
[Conventionally sticks exist, but ultimately they do not, for their nature is dependent. The same is true for God.]

"Then is there no God?"

"The philosopher Descartes said, 'I think therefore I am.' If you do not think, you are not, and so the universe and you are one. This is your substance, the universe's substance, and God's substance. It has no name and no form. You are God, God is you. This is the 'big I,' this is the path, this is the truth. Do you now understand God?"
[All things (including 'God' and 'no God') are ultimately of one substance. Is this God? It cannot be named.]

"Yes, I think that there is no God, and I have no God."

"If you say that you have no God, I will hit you thirty times. If you say that you do, I will still hit you thirty times."
[By saying there is or there is not a God, the visitor is trapped by thought and language and unable to apprehend reality as it is before conceptual thought distorts it. Reality is not found at either of these extremes but in a non-conceptual 'Middle Road' between them. The threat of violence is just gentle encouragement.]

"Why will you hit me? I don't understand. Please explain."

"I do not give acupuncture to a dead cow. Today is Tuesday." replied Soen Sa.
[This is a waste of time. Forget all that abstract stuff - this is reality].

I just found this short little piece, which I also like:

Zen Master (to student): Do you know God?
Student: I don't know
ZM, Do you know Buddha?
Stu, I don't know
ZM, Do you hear the waterfall?
Stu, Yes
ZM, Just That.
[Forget your ideas about God or Buddha - the sound of the waterfall is the real 'God'/'Buddha' ie. ultimate reality, not some idea about something transcendent but reality itself]

This was originally published in my personal blog in 2006.
Photo courtesy of Reverend Brendan Powell Smith

Buddha on the Cross and Jesus under the Bodhi Tree

I was raised in a strict Catholic household and embodied with a strong sense of Christian tradition and culture. When I was about 8 years old, I remember this new student that came to our class, public school obviously, who was the son of some immigrants from Nepal. I made fast friends with the boy and before long we were talking and playing every day. I asked him which church he went to, to which he replied, none as he was Buddhist. He explained a little bit about this character Buddha to me and I just reckoned Buddha was a friend of Jesus.

Being 8 years old, I was prone to saying things in certain situations that were not, shall we say appropriate. One Sunday, after Mass, Father Cosby was greeting the congregation as they walked passed the doors to the parking lot. I tugged on Fathers gown and without hesitation I asked "Was Buddha there when Jesus was killed Father?" The smile on his face melted like an ice cube in an oven, his face turned blood red, and I swear I could feel his coal black eye's behind his coke bottle glasses eating a hole through my skull. I was ushered out the door quickly by my mother, and I never did get an answer from Father Cosby.

I spent the rest of the day relegated to my room and I sure was angry at this Buddha fellow.


Dr. Marcus Borg is a fairly controversial figure in the Christian community, considered a fairly liberal voice in the progressive Christian movement. Dr. Borg has made many comparisons between Christ and the Buddha and has attempted to show them as living traditions and bridge the gap between the two cultures.

Jesus and Buddha: The Parallel Sayings uncovers the shared wisdom of two of the greatest spiritual teachers of all time by placing quotations from their teachings side by side to illuminate their similarities. Let's start by talking about the historical parallels between the lives of Jesus and Buddha.

One of the big similarities is that both Jesus and Buddha, around age 30, have a dramatic religious experience that transforms them and launches them into their public lives as teachers and ultimately founders of religious traditions -- even though I do not see either one of them as seeking to found a religious tradition. For the Buddha, [this transformation] comes in the form of an enlightenment experience under the Bodhi Tree which is clearly a mystical experience of some kind. And for Jesus, it is his relationship with John the Baptizer who, according to authors of the New Testament, seems to have functioned essentially as the spiritual mentor of Jesus. Jesus undergoes what William James might have referred to as a "conversion experience" at age 30 -- not conversion from Judaism to something else -- but a conversion within a tradition where religious energies become the very center of your life. According to the Gospels, Jesus has a vision at his baptism which is a paranormal experience certainly and then goes on this wilderness quest which is a classic example of a vision quest or quest for enlightenment. Both Jesus and Buddha have transforming spiritual experiences that they each sought after. And ofcourse, the other huge parallel is that both Jesus and Buddha become teachers of an enlightenment wisdom.

The whole Article can be found here.
http://www.gracecathedral.org/enrichment/interviews/int_19980217.shtml

He isn't the only one to try and draw the traditions of the two spiritual men closer together. The famous Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, in his book 'Living Buddha, Living Christ' attempts to persuade the two communities to come to some common spiritual ground. Hanh describes how the two religions are more alike than most think when pushed down to the core foundations of both.

To me, religious life is life. I do not seee any reason to spend one's whole life tasting just one kind of fruit. We human beings can be nourished by the best values of many traditions. (pg.2)

It is good that an orange is an orange and a mango is a mango. The colors, the smells, and the tastes are different, but looking deeply, we see that they are both authentic fruits. Looking more deeply, we can see the sunshine, the rain, the minerals, and the earth in both of them...If religions are authentic, they contain the same elements of stability, joy, peace, understanding, and love. The similarities as well as the differences are there. They differ only in terms of emphasis. Glucoise and acid are in all fruits, but their degrees differ. We cannot say that one is a real fruit and the other is not.(pg.111)

Jesus told us to love our enemy. ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ This teaching helps us know how to look at the person we consider to be the cause of our suffering. If we practice looking deeply into his situation and the causes of how he came to be the way he is now, and if we visualize ourselves as being born in his condition, we may see that we could have become exactly like him. (pg. 83)

People kill and are killed because they cling too tightly to their own beliefs and ideologies. When we believe that ours is the only faith that contains the truth, violence and suffering will surely be the result.

THICH NHAT HANH, Living Buddha, Living Christ

I think, in our Western Buddhist tradition, it is important to cultivate these bridges between not only Christianity but all other religions that find at their core peace, understanding and the pursuit of truth. However, I think it is just as important that we as Buddhists do not let the fundamentals of our practice to become too diluted or distracted from our core teachings. The key is not conversion to either, but an understanding and respect for both.

I know this topic is not only controversial, but has been touched on by many others on both sides of the discussion. How do you see the modern Buddhist community reaching across the street into other religious communities?

Is there a place for verbal abuse in Buddhism?

Zen author Brad Warner is as well-known for his colourful insults as he is for his teaching of Zen. His writing is funny, entertaining and often insightful, but his interpretation of what constitutes true Buddhism is narrow and exclusive, rejecting the vast majority of what goes by the name of Buddhism in the West and in Asia. Those who teach some version of Buddhism that he regards as 'phoney' are subjected to all sorts of insults and mockery. His latest volley of attacks on Genpo Roshi for example mock his Big Heart Circle retreats as Big Fart™ Circle. In the past he has publicly referred to other Buddhist teachers as 'butt-buddies' and a student who left a retreat early as an 'asswipe'.

The lineage I practice with (Deshimaru Soto Zen) is closely related to Brad's and I've never seen this sort of behaviour or attitude anywhere else. People can be quite direct sometimes and they tend not to put on pretenses, but I've not seen anyone act or encourage others to act in this way. The attitude I'm familiar with is non-dogmatic and inclusive with emphasis on open-minded, open-hearted, non-judgemental observation and responsible behaviour.

Zen monks don't observe the full Vinaya precepts, they keep to a much smaller set of ten precepts. The sixth precept is generally translated as 'Do not criticise others'. Brad Warner will have made a solemn vow to keep this precept. Interpretation of precepts vary from teacher to teacher, but the explanation I was given would certainly have excluded Brad's behaviour. According to Brad it only means that you shouldn't criticise others behind their backs or criticise them for not following the precepts. In response to criticism, Brad said:

...the precepts are only to be used as a guide to gauge our own behavior — not the behavior of others. I said this before but I cannot stress it enough. When the precepts are used to judge the behavior of others we're back into the same sick game every religion plays where we are the morally righteous and the unbelievers should change their ways. Buddhists must never be like that.

....It's also absolutely un-Buddhist to point at another person and say that person is breaking the precepts. You cannot know what the precepts are to someone else. Trying to insist that others live up to your interpretation of the precepts is a recipe for misery anyway.

This rings true, but surely it's also absolutely un-Buddhist to mock and slander other people too? The precept is to encourage us to be non-judgemental not used as a shield to protect us from people who are accusing us as being judgemental. This sort of thing becomes a vicious circle. The best thing is to avoid slandering people in the first place.

I think that constructive, open-minded criticism can be healthy in that it exposes our views to the experiences, and analysis of others. However, criticism that is attached, and narrow-minded can be like an intoxicant that increases egotism, intellectual vanity and hostility, all of which are forms of clinging and delusion. Also, not criticising others is a good 'house rule' for maintaining social harmony in the place of practice, which itself helps with the practice.

The justifications that Brad Warner gives for acting in the way that he does is that he is exposing false teachings and that this is how he really feels and that to act differently is 'phoney' and that being phoney is the same as being a hypocritical charlatan or that being phoney leads to repression and passive-aggressive behaviour. This isn't Buddhism as taught either by Buddha or Dogen. This sort of argument can be used to justify pretty much anything. There's no support for the idea that not acting out all our anti-social impulses ie. acting as a socialised human being leads to greater harm later on. He is placing 'authenticity' ie. his attachment to 'punk' credibility above any harm he does other people. Unsurpisingly his blog comments section is full of conflict - with people challenging Brad's controversial teaching and others attacking those who criticise him.

Some of his defenders argue that Dogen himself criticised others quite heavily, comparing practictioners of Nembutsu (chanting the name of Amida Buddha for salvation ie Pure Land Buddhists) to 'croaking frogs'. Well, firstly Brad isn't Dogen - he doesn't have the understanding of Dogen to be able to arbitrate what does and doesn't constitute 'True Buddhism'. Secondly, while Genpo Roshi does advocate a controversial new method he isn't suggesting we chant for enlightenment. Third Dogen's criticisms, even in the context of the religious conflict and competition of Japanese Buddhism are significantly milder and more reasonable than Brad's.

The Zen way is neither amoral nihilism nor is it repression. It means at least trying to live according to the precepts and taking the Bodhisattva vows sincerely. Things like selfishness, vanity and arrogance are not rationalised as 'authentic' they are faced as part of our practice. How do these delusions arise? And why do we cling to them? By releasing the tight grip of the personal mind we can naturally understand other people better and treat them with kindness.

I’ve Anticipated my Expectations

When asked to talk about a substantive teaching that is relative to the everyday, modern person, without hesitation, I firmly say “Anticipations and expectations.” Many times our experiences of what we encounter in our everyday world are shaped by our pre-conceived notions; weather based on someone else’s experiences or on some commonly held belief. How many times can you remember saying, “Yea that was much better/worse than I thought it was going to be!”


Personally, it is difficult for me to render up some memory of an event that had met every expectation that I had placed on it before that event even occurred. How we end up feeling about something and how things end up turning out in life are always relative to everything else, the things we can see and the things we can’t. When we take a moment to reflect on this fact, we can easily see how this is true. Yet it is a stark, unforgiving fact we forget time after time.

In the trivial type events of our lives, going to see a movie, seeing a concert or watching a sporting match, our anticipations and expectations become nothing more than a guide to talk about the experience and some measure the event. What we fail to see is that our mind creates these expectations and anticipations for every sort of encounter in our everyday world. Moment after moment we find ourselves pleasantly surprised or inversely frustrated and let down, since this entangled mesh of the mind’s future never really turns out to be so true.

Imagine, we place these kinds of anticipations and expectations on things such as other people’s feelings, emotions and actions. We place labels such as love and hate, create bias and bigotry, view good vs. evil and see them all as right or wrong. Can you see how confusing and turbulent the world can seem and how quickly it can become so unsatisfactory and frustrating? In Buddhism, these terms are known as Karma, Samsara and Dukkha.

The up’s and down’s of life are always going to remain with life, no matter how hard we try to create some state of unchanging perfection. Indeed, the harder we try to stop our mind’s turbulent reactions and thoughts, the more ‘dukkha’ we inevitably encounter. Perhaps, if we can just begin to slow down, take a moment, breathe and remind ourselves to keep these anticipations and expectations in an honest perspective, maybe we can start to find some relief. An open mind expressed into any moment is ready for any eventuality that is encountered.


GO REDSKINS!! KICK THE COWBOY’S ASS THIS WEEK!!!!!................bet ya didn’t expect that or the kitten picture, did ya?

Quantum Physics and the Oneness of Reality

Physicists over the past 100 years have stumbled across some of the most bizarre and intriguing phenomena created in laboratory experiments. Today, some of these experiment phenomenas are still simply unexplainable by scientists and remain some of the most controversial cosmic mysteries. Many theories have been extended to try and put this mysterious nature of reality into some nice neat equation and interpretable parity. As of yet, reality hasn't been willing to be captured by simple ideas that can be placed into some epic textbook of everything. Perhaps, as Buddhists, we have a slightly different take on this weird and strange thing they call the nature of reality.

The Double Slit Experiment (Explanation)



So, just the act of being present and watching matter, changes the entire course of it's behavior? Interesting, isn't it?

Quantum Entanglement - (Explanation)



Wait! Physicists are saying that all matter and energy that 'is' and constitutes reality aren't really separate and distinct objects? So the change of one part in some aspect affects everything else in the universe?

The exotic oddness doesn't stop here!

The Brain, Creation, Realization and Time Reversal Symmetry (Partial Explanation)



When we start to watch our mind and the world around us, moment by moment, with the honest eye of a scientist, it is possible to start to understand all of these absurd and outlandish phenomenas that science can't put into a simple textbook explanation or equation. Have no illusions, what we begin to understand can be frightening to some at first, but nevertheless, cosmically and universally profound.

Buddhism, in a relative sense, can begin to bridge this gap between science, religion and philosophy. Science is beginning to see that we must study the mind and its workings in conjunction with studying natural phenomena. We are very fortunate to live in this moment, to be part of this great evolution of spiritual thought and scientific endeavor. Its no miracle to see these things if we watch and are mindful of the nature of transiency. In fact, I think miracles aren't luck or divine or mystical, just dependent arising.

"The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. The religion which based on experience, which refuses dogmatic. If there's any religion that would cope the scientific needs it will be Buddhism...."
~Albert Einstein