{"id":5507,"date":"2015-06-29T16:34:39","date_gmt":"2015-06-29T21:34:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=5507"},"modified":"2015-06-30T20:38:25","modified_gmt":"2015-07-01T01:38:25","slug":"please-tell-me-oh-sensei","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=5507","title":{"rendered":"Please Tell Me, Oh Sensei"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I’ve been involved in American Zen for more than 5 years now. I’ve listened to and talked with a handful of “teachers”, and I’ve read various books and internet sites about Zen; what I’ve experienced seems pretty typical of Zen in the USA. <\/p>\n

But what is Zen really about? I can’t say that I’ve grasped it. Some teachers say that such befuddlement is a good thing. Sure, but is befuddlement helpful to my life? I’m not getting the sense that Zen is really making me a better person in any particular way. Just what is the point of Zen, of its rituals, of its teachings, but especially of its meditation, given that zazen seems to be the core of it? Most of the teachers I’m familiar with are psychotherapists, so it’s no surprise that they couch Zen in terms of achieving psychological health. <\/p>\n

But that seems just so “American”. Psychological health — was that what the ancient masters in Japan and China were after? Is that why the Jesuit priests from Europe in the 17th century got so interested and involved with Zen, why they seemed to respect it so much? <\/p>\n

Despite all the Americanizations to doctrine, most American Zen leaders and sanghas (i.e., meditation groups) strive for authenticity by adopting as many Japanese rituals and customs as possible. That includes some of the less desirable Japanese traits like rudeness (they call it “directness”). Sometimes it appears to me that Zen just gives certain people a license to be rude with others, to shout out orders like an Army drill sergeant. But hey, Zen (at least in Japan) has long had an attraction to warriors, so maybe this is not so surprising.<\/p>\n

In sum, I have a “filtering” problem. I’m trying to determine what in my Zen experience is truly Zen, and what is a Japanese cultural artifact? I grew up in the embrace of Catholicism, and I know that if a group of Martians tried to adopt Christianity based on what they could observe today, they would probably mix together a few shots of core Christian doctrine and tradition, along with many medieval and modern rubrics and adaptations (both in terms of ritual and doctrine) which are Euro-nationalistic. Some elements of Christian theology were absorbed from classic Greek philosophical ideas. It would be very hard to pick out just what truly was authentic to the earliest Christian communities and to Jesus himself. <\/p>\n

I have almost never heard any of my teachers give a good answer to the question of just why should a person sit in Zen meditation? I’ve all heard about counting breath, and I’ve read about the many physiological and psychological benefits that some people obtain from meditating. But no one seems to outline the expected process, what should happen, what is the idea behind sitting quietly for so long. About the best that I’ve come across (I read it, didn’t hear this from any of the teachers) is that intuition is involved, and intuition is not gained by study, analysis or direct mental exercises. <\/p>\n

Some writings that suggest that Zen is a practical version of Taoism and of old-school Indian Buddhism; Zen practice is a means to develop an intuitive<\/a>, internal sense of “the way of Nature”, the Taoistic “Way” (or the “Prajna” of Indian Buddhism, the transcendental wisdom) that can’t be grasped intellectually. And that thus explains the Zen disdain for intellectual study (although the whole koan thing isn’t all that different from any other mental exercise, even if it supposedly works to break the mind). The basic idea is this: by sitting silently long enough with an empty, un-occupied mind, you supposedly develop a natural sense of “the way” or the “Prajna”, and learn unknowingly how to live in accord with all the themes and purposes of the universe (thus, Zen implies a collective eschatology to everything that exists). <\/p>\n

As such, there is no scientific rationale to support what Zen ultimately supposes, even though the Zen psychologists attempt to layer on a modern psychological justification \/ rationalization. But the Asian old-school Zen didn’t have that available. Their Zen had to be non-scientific, metaphysical, trans-natural. Americans just don’t want to admit that fact, thus they don’t talk about it. But, the idea is to realize the Way “intuitively”, which is to be “soaked” in the ambient wisdom of the natural world around us. <\/p>\n

Going back to the common modern rationale that meditation is “good for you”, makes your life better, makes you calmer and less anxious– I’m not sure that meditation is working for me in that fashion. I’m also not sure that everyone else isn’t fooling themselves when they claim such benefits. The ancients masters proceeded in faith — they had the equivalent of a religious faith. They may well have possessed a FAITH in something that is a lot like God, but instead they called “TAO” and didn’t talk about too much more about it. They did not feel the need to capture and define it on paper. They felt that talk wouldn’t surround it and the mind couldn’t swallow it — it could only be realized unknowingly and intuitively.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, instead of just laying this out plain and simple, most Zen teachers and writers couch it in a lot of gobbledegook (which is akin to the Greek and medieval baggage that Christianity has obtained). Here’s an example of some typical American Zen-Speak<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Non-thinking is the pure state of no mental agenda, a state of mental silence and peace synonymous with Buddha nature. Dogen’s authentication is the practice of residing in non-thinking, once all mental agenda has been dropped. This represents a move away from the inherently agenda-laden state of the thinking and not-thinking mind, to the state of pure awareness that is non-thinking. If this state is cultivated and authenticated for a long enough period of time, one recognizes the pure state of reality that non-thinking not only represents, but allows to be seen clearly. In this state, intuitive thinking and living can arise in the mind without being hindered by compulsive mental thought. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If we cut thru the BS, the bottom line is that sitting quietly and emptying the mind as much as possible is supposed to give you some inner sense that you can’t get otherwise, and this sense will make you a better person and help you lead a more worthwhile life. That’s what the Americans just don’t seem to get about Zen (and thus they make Zen into whatever they think it should be). That’s the key question, if only you can get thru all the Zen gobbledegook. <\/p>\n

And what should the answer to that question be? No one I’ve ever known or read about thinks to challenge that notion. Well then, let me be the first. Can we really soak in wisdom and become better, more developed humans by just sitting there? <\/p>\n

The ancient Greeks seemed to think that virtue was something that didn’t just come naturally. If a human society was lucky, it would collect and form notions about what makes a person “good”, and would provide lessons and exercises and incentives to make people take the path of becoming “good”. Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics<\/a> is a prime example. To become good, truly good in the highest moral sense, you have got to work on it; we humans are very imperfect beings, we still have a lot of crude animal-like instincts. Thus, by ourselves, left to our own devices, we can rarely realize the goodest of the good.<\/p>\n

This is the debate that Zen people should be having — who is right, Dogen or Aristotle? Zen people buy into the Buddhist notion of “the Bodhisattva”, the saint-like person who serves others selflessly. This is what Zen meditation is supposed to achieve — i.e., turn people into Bodhisattva by uncovering their inherent Buddha nature (you can already hear the gobbledegook in this rationale). <\/p>\n

Can we really do this ourselves by entirely letting go of our rational thought? Or do we also need rational thought guided by collected social experience to lead us to goodness and Bodhisattva status? Personally, I like to meditate, but I really don’t see that it will turn me into a saint (or even a psychologically healthy and contended non-saint). But the Zen gobbledegook keeps on promising that this will somehow happen. <\/p>\n

What I really need to know, oh sensei, is just how can this be true. (With all due apologies to the martial arts adventure movies and shows).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been involved in American Zen for more than 5 years now. I’ve listened to and talked with a handful of “teachers”, and I’ve read various books and internet sites about Zen; what I’ve experienced seems pretty typical of Zen in the USA. But what is Zen really about? I can’t say that I’ve grasped […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,27],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5507"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5507"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5526,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5507\/revisions\/5526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}