I’ve been attending a Zen service on Sunday mornings here in Montclair now for a couple of weeks, and I’m rather enjoying it. I have been in group meditation sessions before, and I’ve generally enjoyed them. And Zen is nothing if not meditative. So I’m hoping to make this a part of my routine, at least once or twice a month.

But, Zen is also a very Buddhist thing. Some people cite Zen as a “container” whereby the practicioner may also pursue a more-theistic faith system (Christianity, Judism, Islam, etc.) without any great contradiction. And that may well be true, as Buddhism in itself isn’t terribly doctrinaire. In fact, Zen people seem to bill it as an “anti-intellectual” tradition, or perhaps better said, a “counter-intellectual thing” (since you don’t have to be a dummy to practice Zen; you just have to adopt the right attitude and viewpoint about the mind and its ways).

But still, even in the Zen ceremony, there are Buddhist trappings. There are the Buddha altars in the zendo, and there are Eastern-ish chantings and readings during the ceremony. A key reading is the Heart Sutra, which asserts some of the most difficult things to accept about Buddhism. Why? Because, there are a lot of “NO” and “NOT” statements in this Sutra, and very few positive statements.

That to me is the big problem with Buddhism: it is very contrarian (which is good, in itself), and it challenges many human illusions and values (sometimes quite rightly). And, at the other extreme, it promotes a very righteous, ethical way of living (which is also very good). But what does it put in between these two stances? Not much. The way of Zen is supposed to be slow, based on meditation and study with a “dharma teacher”; and not upon written philosophies and rules and doctrines, as the more theistic religions usually provide. That seems to work for a lot of people. But at first glance, and even on second and third, Buddism and Zen appear to be a “party of NO”. If you were to ask, what is the way, you might simply be told “no way, Jose”.

But ultimately, it seems to be a mind game, even though it denies being a mind game. You have to learn how to play this game, learn the subtleties (thus the practice of “koan study”, which are meant to “break the mind” thru illogic; but if the mind is completely broken, how can you then study or comment on some contradictory sentence?). One of the rules of this game is not to get hung up on intellectual consistency. For instance, when Buddists say “NO”, they don’t really mean “absolute NO”, as in the western intellectual tradition. They sometimes say that the western interpretation of “NO” is too abstract, too drastic. Western thinkers come up with an abstract concept of NO as the perfect vacuum, an infinite nothingness. But who has ever experienced anything perfect or infinite? Or no-thing?

OK, good point. All these “NO” statements are koans in themselves, inviting the western mind to “ease up” and put language symbols and cognitive interpretation into the context of real life experience. Something to be said for that. So long as you put it into context, and understand “the game”.