Why Study Zen? Waterfalls Produces Bubbles

[Apologeticsislying]

Why Study Zen? The Waterfalls are creating Bubbles on the lower level of the pond where the water falls

When asked what is reality? A Zen response is What is the sound of one hand clapping? O.K., when asked once what is Buddha? The response was “Dried Dung.” (Alan Watts, Zen, New World Library, 2019, 1948 original publication: 61.). What thuh? What kind of rude answer is this?! Wait. Understand that “there is nothing artificial constructed in Zen.” (D. T. Suzuki, Zen Buddhism, Selected Writings, compliled by William Barrett, Image Books, Doubelday, 1996: 93). The secret of life is given in just 3 words only. “Renounce and Enjoy!” (Eknath Easwaran, The Upanishads, Nilgiri Press, 2nd ed., 2007: 53). What are we to renounce though? Everything of an intellectual logical and thinking view. Does this mean we are to become just stupid and brainless? Not even close. We are to renounce our attachments to ideas we have learned from others as if our lives depended on living those ideas or believing them as “the truth,” no matter how powerfully logical or energetically spiritually meaningful they may mean to us. Why? Because others words, others opinions are not our experience. And the only real is what we experience. Interestingly, and quite paradoxically, Suzuki shows that pure subjectivity is the only real objectivity there ever has been! (Zen Writings, p. 256). O.K., wait, lets unpack this because it is bound to be completely misunderstood.

In a scientific age hell bent on being objective, to hear subjective is the only objective sounds just ludicrous. But Suzuki guides us through the labyrinth.

“Pure subjectivity, instead of vaporizing realities, consolidates everything with which it comes in touch. Nature is no more something to be conquered and subdued. It is the bosom whence we come and whither we go.
There is, then, in the teaching of Zen, no escapism, no mysticism, no denial of existence, no conquering nature, no frustrations, no mere utopianism, no naturalism. Here is a world of the given. Becoming is going on in all its infinitely varied forms, and yet there is the realm of the transcendence within all these changing scenes. Emptiness is suchness, suchness is emptiness.”

What we see, smell, hear, feel, is what we get. Not a logical discussion using words about what it means or what it is, just the pure experiencing of reality as we are in it at the moment. Our problem is as Alan Watts has noted “We think the only things we truly know are those we can put into words.” (Out of Your Mind, Sounds True, 2017: 19) But this is completely false. We can taste salty water, and that very subjectivity is the truly only way we can understand it. We can describe it til the cows come home, and it is never the same as literally experiencing it ourselves by physically drinking it and swallowing it. The experience is the true objectivity, the words take us further away from the experienced reality. Saying “I drank the salty water,” simply does not capture the essence, the experience of the touch, the glass, the water, the taste, the swallowing, the stomach’s reaction, the mouth’s reaction, etc. The reality cannot be in the wordy description anymore than it can come from an expert in salt telling us about what it is like. That cannot even come close to the objective reality of doing it yourself. That is what Zen is all about, the experience. Words cannot convey the experience. Objective experience is the reality of drinking the glass of water, not reading a Ph.D dissertation about its taste, the effects on the body, the chemical composition of salt and water and how they physically interact, etc.

The Chandogya Upanishad teaches simply “Whatever you know is just words, said Sanatkumara, names of finite phenomena. It is the infinite that is the source of abiding joy because it is not subject to change. Therefore seek to know the infinite.” (Enkath Easwaran, The Upanishads, p. 139)

A wise man once said “to attempt to talk about, think about, or know about Ultimate Reality constitutes an impossible task…It is like a sword that wounds, but cannot wound itself; like an eye that sees, but cannot see itself.
A similar difficulty exists for physics in nay attempt to investigate the nature of energy. For there is a point at which physics, as much as metaphysics, enters the realm of tautology and nonsense because of the circular character of the task which it attempts – to study electrons with instruments which are, after all, electrons themselves.

Eddington described it well: We have perhaps forgotten that there was a time when we wanted to be told what an electron is. The question was never answered… Something unknown is doing we don’t know what – that is what our theory amounts to.

The point which emerges is that what we are counting on measuring in physics, and what we are experiencing in everyday life as sense data, is at root unknown and probably unknowable. These electrons, quarks, energy, the ideas of existence, energy, or even “Reality” are in some way queer. The very fact of not being able to know them makes them all the stranger. There is in all truth, an odd sense of mystery which comes from contemplating the fact that everything is at base something which cannot be known. Every statement that you make about this something turns out to be nonsense. And what is specially strange is that this unknowable something is also the basis of that which I otherwise know so intimately – myself.” (Alan Watts, Become What You Are, Shambala, 2018: 57-59)

Notice the catch here. What we describe in words, on greater magnification, is pure nonsense! It cannot be described. Words are inadequate to describe the extremely small scale. They are also inadequate to explain the really large scale of infinity. What has to happen is we have to experience in order to actually know. Know objectively. The Upanishads are designed to show us how to experiment so we may achieve the aim in this life, if the desire is serious enough to do so. They do not ask us to believe them. They say here is what we ended up with from our experiments, you try it and see what you find out. Zen is part of the process.

[Hagoth]

Thank you Apolog (I took someone else's cue for shortening your handle), this is fascinating.

The renouncing of intellectual learning is a concept that pops up in the Tao Te Ching from time to time, and one that I have had a hard time processing. Is it saying that ignorance is better than learning? It helped me to put it in context of Lao Tsu's time and environment. I think it's a direct response to the kind of scholarship that he saw in the Confucian scholars who were hyper-focused on details of law and ritual that really don't have any meaning in the bigger picture. I see an equivalent in the intensive Jewish studies of the Torah and Talmud and extreme focus on ritual that can consume peoples' lives without necessarily providing growth. I have returned to college in my old age (well, I'm 61) and although most of what I'm learning is enlightening and mind-expanding I do see a lot of internal academia that seems to be chasing its tail; historians who sit around endlessly defining what history is and isn't, philosophers arguing forever about the meaning of meaning...

Your discussion of objective vs. subjective learning is really interesting to me. I'm taking a qigong class. The teacher uses a lot of Chinese "medical" terminology that is difficult for me to take seriously. A few months ago I would have written it off as silly and embarrassingly non-scientific. I am currently taking a class on the philosophy and history of science, which is really helping me in a lot of other aspects. Likewise, I was always quick to write off Aristotelian and Ptolemaic physics as silly and useless, and in light of modern science they are, but I have learned to appreciate them in the sense that these guys were describing real phenomena and doing a pretty good job of coming up with explanations for the universe based solely on what they could perceive with their own senses. It took a telescope to really bust it open. In the same way, ancient Chinese physicians and philosophers were finding ways to explain real observational phenomena and developing systems that were internally cohesive.

Here's an example. After a certain exercise in my qigong class the instructor said. "Stop. Just take a moment to be still and feel your body. What you are feeling is chi (qi) flowing along your meridians." The amazing thing was that I FELT it. It was real. I'm sure it's a physical sensation that I have experienced a million times but never noticed as anything unique or significant. But someone long, long ago did notice and provided an explanation that fit their world view. It's little things like this that make me realize I have been missing a lot of what goes on around me.

Kind of like this selective attention test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo

If you follow the instructions you don't even notice the one truly strange and unexpected thing that's happening. I'm realizing more and more that this is how our relationship with reality works. You have to learn how to stop seeing only what you are given permission to see before you will even be able to perceive what's really going on.

Is that's what this idea of renouncing intellectual thinking and logic is all about?

[Apologeticsislying]

For the most part yes, what we focus on is what we end up becoming, at least mentally.

I think the theme of ignoring everything else except what you experience is a device to get you to quit believing what are for 99% of what we learn are someone else's mere opinion. The facts and reality are few. Truly seriously. The philosophizing takes us further away from the reality, not getting us closer, since it is using words, which cannot get us to the real experience. Our being alive in the moment, and being in full attention of the moment (as often as we can practice this) is the ONLY reality one experiences. The past is gone, the future is not here, only the moment is always here, so that is where to live. Instead of accepting the various descriptions of what reality is based on words in history, philosophy, religion, science, etc., Zen is saying live it. Live it directly right now in front of you in the world. It's like the Chinese sage said when he was asked What is Tao? Tao is everyday mind. Dow is not thinking about something written 50 years ago, it is what we are doing and thinking right now. If dishes need washed, wash them. If clothes are dirty, clean them. If you are sleepy, sleep. The way is perfectly natural at the moment. It is definitely different than we have been thinking of reality here in the West.

[RubinHighlander]

For the most part yes, what we focus on is what we end up becoming, at least mentally.

I think the theme of ignoring everything else except what you experience is a device to get you to quit believing what are for 99% of what we learn are someone else's mere opinion. The facts and reality are few. Truly seriously. The philosophizing takes us further away from the reality, not getting us closer, since it is using words, which cannot get us to the real experience. Our being alive in the moment, and being in full attention of the moment (as often as we can practice this) is the ONLY reality one experiences. The past is gone, the future is not here, only the moment is always here, so that is where to live. Instead of accepting the various descriptions of what reality is based on words in history, philosophy, religion, science, etc., Zen is saying live it. Live it directly right now in front of you in the world. It's like the Chinese sage said when he was asked What is Tao? Tao is everyday mind. Dow is not thinking about something written 50 years ago, it is what we are doing and thinking right now. If dishes need washed, wash them. If clothes are dirty, clean them. If you are sleepy, sleep. The way is perfectly natural at the moment. It is definitely different than we have been thinking of reality here in the West.

Have you explored any of the alternate realms of your mind via the ancient magic molecules of the fungal variety? That has changed my perspective on reality, the universe, and existence in some profound ways. Postmo, I've lost a lot of interest in man made philosophies, especially those telling me how to live my life.

[Apologeticsislying]

I haven't but the day is coming....... the day is coming......after all did not the Lord make it all? Surely he wouldn't make something bad would he?

[Lucidity]

Zen is part of the process.

As a fellow student of non-duality, I’m curious if you have looked into proponents of the “direct path”, with teachers such as Rupert Spira and Francis Lucille.

When my shelf collapsed I was fortunate enough to already have dipped my toe in with Alan Watts’ The Way of Zen and Buddhism served to ease my fall. It's truly been a joy to moved through the various buddhist schools, Theravada, Zen, Dzogchen, and then back to Zen. Thomas Negal’s, What is Like to be a Bat, gave me that ah ha moment that I realized we simply have no way to get outside of our own experience, and a deep exploration of that experience was like a cosmos unto itself.

Interestingly, it was Advaita Vedanta that has helped me to understand Buddhism, or more specially the non-duel core at the heart of Buddhism. Although practice in Zen is very direct, Zen is notoriously abstract in its approach. I prefer the direct practice found in Zen and Dzogchen over the dancing around the core precepts that occurs in Theravada. Although I feel Theravada is very useful to developing Shamata.

After reading and listening to Rupert Spira, reading Suzuki Roshi’s Zen Mind Beginners Mind, and Philip Kapleau’s The Three Pillars of Zen was a revelation. It really started to click. The common threads connecting these ancient traditions of inner exploration started to emerge.

I would recommend Rupert Spiras:

https://www.amazon.com/Transparency-Thi ... B24HNZ7JFC

https://www.amazon.com/Light-Pure-Knowi ... B24HNZ7JFC