MEDITATIONS
ON MEDITATION – A PERSONAL STORY
Anyone
who writes a paper, such as the ones presented at this conference on Buddhist
meditation, must answer an important question, which is, “Why did you write
it? What is the point of your
paper?” When writing my paper for
this journal, I confess that I did not ask the question until after the paper
was almost finished. I think I
should share with you my answer, up front, so to speak. I wrote the paper to clear up something
in my own mind: I am conflicted
about a dispute that has arisen recently in Buddhist ranks, largely in America
and Europe. People in Asia, for
thousands of years, have accepted Buddhism in whatever form they learned it,
without much dispute. In Japan the
various denominations go their own ways, for example, without arguing with each
other. But Westerners, it seems,
cannot.
We
Westerners only began to pay attention to Buddhist teachings about a hundred
years ago. We are babies in the
faith. The number of non-Asian
Buddhist scholars and priests presently active today cannot be large. Some of us have even been taken
seriously in Asia for what we have written about Buddhism. I am honored to be among them. Almost all of us began practicing the
religion and took Buddhist priest vows after studying Buddhism in books. But a rift has arisen in my own
Buddhist community that is gathering momentum and threatens to destroy the
advances that have been made outside of Asia.
At
issue is the question of whether it is permissible to call yourself a Buddhist
without accepting on faith all the tenets of the religion. One side says yes; the other says
no. Put directly, the question is
this: “If you do not believe in
reincarnation and other Buddhist teachings about what happens after death, can
you still practice meditation as recommended in most forms of Buddhism and call
yourself a Buddhist?” On the
liberal side, you can. On the
conservative side, you cannot.
Every
Anglo-European Buddhist priest I know was raised in a Christian or Jewish
family. Even those who were
non-religious before accepting Buddhism share the tendency we all have of
choosing sides. We are Westerners,
after all. We tend to fight wars
over religion. Our egos are very
big. It is our legacy. The dispute that inspired this paper is
between an ordained American student of Tibetan Buddhism and a fellow
scholar-priest with credentials in both Tibetan and Zen traditions, and who was
born in Scotland. The former has
charged the latter with misrepresenting Buddhist teachings. I use quite a bit of space in this
paper defending the accused simply because of my own background in Japanese Zen
Buddhism. My criticism of the
accuser should be seen in that light.
I am as guilty as he is of taking sides. I am defending myself,
basically.
Meditation
in the religions of Asia puts emphasis on reflection and transformation. The goal is insight, not obedience. It offers everyone, especially me,
liberation from my own small mind right now rather than my salvation from hell
after I die. Reflection and
transformation are expressed in various ways within Hinduism, and the Buddhism
that emerged from it. My time
spent studying both religions is about equal, but my experiential knowledge is
anchored in Buddhism, mostly in Kyoto’s Zen Buddhist temples where I have
trained for nearly fifty years. My
reflection on Asian meditation here, then, is focused on Zen meditation. In doing so I will give special homage
to Daisetsu Teitaro (D. T.) Suzuki, and consider the criticism of Zen by a
popular proponent of another Buddhist denomination.
Nowadays
lots of people practice Asian meditation of some sort. In the hippie days of the 1960’s, of
course, it was commonplace, and now meditation is at least known if not
practiced in all areas of society.
Meditation and yoga classes are taught everywhere. But when I was a little boy growing up
in Oklahoma only Indians engaged in meditation. My parents, both with advanced university degrees, were paid
by the U.S. government to teach in the Ft. Sill Indian School and keep records
detailing the welfare of Indian families living in Comanche County. The seasonal gatherings of local
Indians involved meditation and prayer -- usually accompanied by communal
dancing. Our family Bible has an
inscription dated one week after my birth in 1935, documenting my presentation
to tribal elders and “The Great Father.”
Ironically,
my parents’ job was to discourage such traditional ways and bring the Indians
into civilized American society by teaching classes in English, history, math,
mechanics and the Bible. My father
R. O. Webb also was a Church of Christ minister and U. S. Army chaplain. But he secretly tried to keep Indian
customs and languages alive. He
made sure the children sent to the school shared with him all the folk tales and
family ways they knew about before being brought to Ft. Sill from reservations
elsewhere in the country. For his
efforts, local Indian leaders honored my father shortly before he died, in
1970, with a big powwow celebration, attended by Kiowa, Comanche, Pawnee, Cheyenne,
Black Foot, Caddo and other Plains Indian tribes.
It
was in this setting, oddly enough, that I first heard of Zen meditation. I’ve told the story many times of how I
grew up fearing and hating the Japanese during WWII. They were the bad guys that my playmates and I pretended to
capture and torture to death. We
did that for years in the schoolyard.
And then the war was over.
I was ten in 1945. America had
won the war with Japan! I listened
to the radio reports and saw movie newsreels of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki. I needed answers. Every week I borrowed books from the
public library. That week I asked for a book on Japan.
The
librarian gave me a book called Zen
Buddhism and Its Influence on Japanese Culture, by D. T. Suzuki. According to the preface, the author
was working on the book about the time I was born, and it was published in
1938, well before the U.S. joined the war against Japan. Somehow that book was on the shelf in a
library near my home. Ironically, some
twenty years after the war, in 1964, Dr. Suzuki was one of my doctoral
dissertation advisors when a Fulbright scholarship took me to Kyoto University
for graduate studies. Looking
back, I can see that what he wrote about Zen in his book so long ago, and that
I read when I was so young, has stayed with me and is the foundation for
everything I subsequently have learned about meditation. (fn 1)
So
what did Daisetsu Sensei say about Zen meditation? I now know that what he wrote was highly personal, and much
of it must have sounded heretical to Buddhist scholars and priests of various
traditions. But I appreciate that
he cut to the chase, sailing across two thousand years of Hindu, Buddhist,
Taoist, and Judeo-Christian history, in order to tell his readers in a
convincing voice exactly how Zen came to be and how it works in the modern
world. Even as a child I was
enthralled.
In
the preface to a volume in a set of seminal books on Zen by R. H. Blyth, Suzuki
would write: “The aim of Zen is to
open the eye to the ‘supreme wisdom’ (aryajnyana),
that is, to awaken the inmost sense which has remained altogether dormant since
the beginning of the human consciousness.
When this is accomplished one sees directly into the truth of Reality
and confronts a world which is new and yet not at all new.” [fn 2]
In
1945 I knew by heart every answer offered to life-and-death questions by the
particular Protestant Christianity that shaped my childish view of the world. That was my Reality. But I had no clue about the things
Daisetsu Sensei wrote about. I
hung on every word in the ideas he presented, captivated by their breadth,
logic and compassion. And I vowed
I would go to Japan some day.
At
the beginning of the book that inspired me so, Suzuki asks, “What is Zen?” And he answers with a
nod to Buddhist history (and the Pali, Sanskrit, Chinese and Japanese languages
that informed it) and with the doctrine that lists meditation as the last of six
spiritual exercises -- known as paramita
-- which the historical Buddha taught his followers to practice in order for them
to reach the goal of self-fulfillment, i.e., enlightenment. Buddhist texts dealing with the sixth paramita describe it and give names to the
various levels of its achievement, which some Buddhist denominations (including
all of those in the Tibetan lineage) claim to be able to validate in each
practitioner.
But
Suzuki’s approach is to explain Zen not as a difficult, multi-level form of
meditation, but more broadly as a way of
life in which meditation plays a part. In so doing he removes almost all orthodox narratives of all
the religions on earth. He boldly
argues that you could be Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, Muslim or anything
else and still practice Zen. (That
alone probably gave me the courage some 67 years ago to keep reading his book.)
When
recounting how Buddhism came into China as a foreign religion, which was contrary
in many ways to the teachings of centuries-old Taoism and Confucianism, Suzuki suggests
that the “Taoist mind” of China’s antiquity was probably attracted to the
practical side of Zen Buddhism, or what he calls “its complete democracy.” Its “penetrating analyses and
speculations” may also have seemed compatible with Taoist ones, and better than
Confucianism’s society of the educated and land-owning class over peasants.
Instead
of striving for oneness with nature and immortality after death, as Taoists
did, or being reborn countless times in hopes of bringing enlightenment closer
and closer, as both Hindus and Buddhists believed they would, Suzuki suggests
that a Zen master often is skeptical about either possibility. He cites a case in which a believer in
reincarnation asked a Chinese Zen master what he expected to be reborn as in
his next life. The master said he
hoped to “work for the villagers” as an animal. He in effect believed in doing what needed to be done instead
of speculating over the unknown.
When
I read this story for the first time I found nothing enigmatic about it,
perhaps because this seemed to corroborate Christian teachings about the first
being last and the meek inheriting the earth. Indeed, the abbot of a Zen temple in Kyoto where I first did
some training criticized Christians (and indirectly, me) for having a
martyr-complex, because they seemed to make self-sacrifice the main goal in
life. He warned me that that was not the goal of Zen, even if Suzuki claimed it
was.
In
his book on Zen and Japan (and in many other books and articles) Suzuki cited many of these conversations
between Chinese Zen masters and their disciples. These cases are called koans,
which Suzuki refers to as “barriers” to full realization (satori, the Japanese word for enlightenment.) Koan “practice” began in China as formal exercises in which a
teacher and student “looked at the words” in temple records of conversations
between the first Chinese Zen teachers and their students. The word koan literally means “princely plan” – implying that in ancient
China the plans of a land-owning scholar contained wisdom that was beyond the
grasp of an ordinary peasant. The
word might be translated less literally as “spiritually advanced views.” The point of the training is for the
student to grasp the true meaning of the master’s words for themselves.
Only
the Rinzai and Obaku branches of Zen in Japan use koans in formal training of novice priests. Now, after experiencing
koan training myself (and providing
it in the Zen centers I established), I am convinced that koans all have practical moral lessons. But the majority view of them seems to be that they are
puzzles without answers, to be used as nonsense mantras that help us break
through linear thought. They do that, too. But they are loaded with practical advice about how to live
a useful life.
Let
me give one example of what I mean.
Zen masters in Japan assign koans
to their students one at a time, taking them from well-known koan anthologies. They often begin with “Joshu’s Mu” koan from the Mumonkan anthology [fn3], which involves a famous master, his
disciple and a dog. A 9th-century
Chinese master, the “Admonisher from the State of Zhao” (Joshu in Japanese),
was asked by one of his disciples if a dog had the Buddha Nature or not, to
which the master Joshu answered, “No!’
This account does not tell us what the disciple thought, but he probably
was puzzled, as any student of Buddhism would be, knowing that a basic premise
of Buddhism is that all beings are born with Buddha Nature (S. buddhatva, J. busshou), the potential for Buddhahood.
In
another account of the conversation, given in the same anthology, the disciple did
question Joshu’s “No” on scriptural grounds, which got him in trouble with
Joshu for being too attached to ideas.
So when the disciple asked the question again, Joshu replied “Yes!” The
disciple then asked “But how can Buddha Nature get into a lowly creature like a
dog?” Joshu’s response seemed a
non-answer: “The dog was ignorant.” Such admonitions from the famous Admonisher
from Zhao seem to relate somehow to Zen teachings about false opposites.
Suzuki Sensei explained it this way, in
a later article, where he wrote:
“… to speak logically of things that cannot be put into logic …” or “to
bring into the ‘arena of logic’ things that go beyond logic is a necessary
teaching ploy, a method of instructing students of Zen. It is one way of understanding ‘holy
truth’ and is usually described as ‘the non-duality of the highest truth and
everyday truth.’” [fn 4] After
all, the 6th-century Indian patriarch of Zen himself, Bodhidharma, also
responded to such discussions of yes-no duality by equating emptiness with
fullness and the holy with the profane.
But for those of us raised to believe in dualities, the idea of the
non-dual is a hard teaching. We
seem to get caught up in logic. God’s ways and man’s ways are different and can
never be the same, we think.
One
of my Japanese Zen teachers came to my rescue by dramatizing the Joshu story in
a way I’ll never forget. He said
maybe a real dog was right outside Joshu’s room that day, a starving dog that
gave birth to several puppies and then died right in front of Joshu and his
disciple. Then, what if only one
puppy survived, blind and on the verge of death. What if that dog was the one the disciple was asking
about? And instead of worrying
about what Buddhism taught about Buddha Nature, maybe Joshu was trying to
admonish his disciple to wake up.
Just feed the dog!
At
that moment I think everything fell into place for me. Joshu’s words became like the
“Argh-h-h!” in a Peanuts cartoon.
He was telling his student in the best way he could that all of his
concerns were worthy enough, but that time was wasting! Those concerns were not enough. Somebody had to do something! It was then that I saw why none of my
Zen teachers, the abbots of the Japanese temples I trained in, wanted to
discuss anything about the Buddhist teachings behind this koan with me. They
were tired of answering my questions and knew I had given everything enough
thought.
At
this point I quit being critical of how this koan is always used in Japanese Zen temples. The training is very formal. At certain times during the day,
usually during a group meditation, the novice priests get up and line up in
front of the teacher’s room. Upon
entering they prostrate themselves in front of his seated form. He asks them what their koan is and what it means to them. In this case specifically, “What is the
meaning of Joshu’s MU?” They have
been told to “place his answer on your breath” and they do so – with moans like
cows mooing. I always found it
funny and felt even funnier the first time I tried to do it. [fn 5]
But
here’s the thing: each of us has
breath that animates our bodies while we are alive. We breathe in and we breathe out. In seated Zen meditation we gradually get used to turning
down the volume in our heads of the noises our brains make. We listen. We feel. And we
become more aware of everything. Koans provide answers that only each of
us can discover for ourselves. However,
with this koan of Joshu’s MU, there
is a special teaser that may leave us trapped in our thoughts.
The
Japanese word “mu” (無)-- pronounced “wu” in Mandarin Chinese -- means
“No”. At the same time it is used
in Buddhist texts to refer to the totality of reality, the Not-One-Thing, the
“I Am That” of the so-called Void, a gateway to enlightenment (S. nirvana,
J. satori). You have it at the end of every out-breath, which may be
your last! Mu can indeed stand for
enlightenment itself. But it also
means No. Words can get in the
way. Here, you think maybe No is a
trick. And that can lead you
nowhere. (Oh, no! Nowhere?
Everywhere?) You’d better just
shut up and listen to the universe, your home, and allow it to show you its
rewards and its needs.
OK. So you think you got it. Duality is a trap. But the question is, even after
understanding a koan intellectually,
how the hell does a trainee express TO THE UNIVERSE exactly how he (or she)
plans to FEED THE DOG? Do you do
it with words? By your
actions? How? This approach to meditation is very
much a part of the history of Buddhism.
It is found in the lineage that encourages you to trust your own Buddha
Nature. It is the very opposite of
the dominant Tibetan approach of reaching the same levels of Buddhist
meditation with a systematic method that is carefully described, level by
level, and buttressed at every turn by scriptural explanations (in Tibetan, of
course) of exactly how each level should feel.
Before
I touch on Tibetan Buddhism, and its very different views on meditation, I feel
obliged to say a word about the Japanese tradition of the priesthood and the
physical pain involved in training.
First, unlike Buddhism in other countries, Japanese Buddhism does not
require priests to be celibate. Most
novice priests are eldest sons of priests, so they have to be there to train
and carry on the tradition. They
have no choice. It is quite
unusual for an ordinary Japanese person (or foreigner like me), whose family is
not from a long line of priest families, to choose to be a priest.
Secondly,
there is the physical side of sitting in meditation in a Japanese Zen
temple. It is strict and very painful
at first. Even young Japanese
novice priests in their teens have trouble today. They are bigger than their fathers and grandfathers, and
less accustomed to sitting in the proper positions: full lotus (kekka fuza)
for meditation, and legs folded under the body (seiza) for everyday sitting positions. They may spend months just dealing with the pain signals
their bodies send their brains because of sitting in one position up to eight
hours each day, in intervals of 30-60 minutes.
Only
after novices learn to sit almost indefinitely “on top” of their pain will they
have to deal with the other thoughts and “barriers” (including koans) that will fill their heads. In my
experience, zazen is a tried-and-true
method of entering a world that all of us can visit, a world of dhyana, the deepest levels of reality,
which make us a bit kinder and understanding in a world filled with pain and
suffering, but leaves us otherwise unchanged. Some of us will be inclined to probe texts for meaning and
write down our thoughts about them.
But that doesn’t necessarily make us wiser.
Speaking
of words, brains, and pain, Tibetan Buddhism adores words, takes brains as
seriously as neurosurgeons, and abhors pain, especially in training. It is this vast difference between the
Tibetan and the Sino/Japanese approach to Buddhist meditation that is at the
heart of the rift between two groups of Western Buddhist converts. It is a dispute over both methodology
and philosophy. It brings into
question which method is faithful to the historical Buddha’s teachings. Which of the traditions is more
authentic? Western converts to
Buddhism want to know.
Dyed-in-the-wool Asian Buddhists don’t seem to care so much.
I know
few other teachers of Buddhist doctrine and practice in the Tibetan tradition as
impressive as B. Alan Wallace, whose writings are prolific and to be treasured
not just by people interested in Buddhism, but by anyone interested in the
history of religion and science.
His five volumes in the Columbia Series in Science and Religion will be
the lighthouse for those of us paddling our little boats of understanding to
the other shore. I have read his Mind in the Balance: Meditations in Science,
Buddhism, and Christianity (2009), and am well into his latest book, Meditations of a Buddhist Skeptic: A
Manifesto for the Mind Sciences and Contemplative Practice (2012).
His
arguments with Buddhists in other traditions remind me of the public debates
that my father and other Biblical scholars used to have. What are the essential New Testament texts
and what did they mean in the early church? Does it matter what they may mean today? Can you trust any scholar who does not
have a working knowledge of New Testament Greek as well as Latin and Aramaic
Hebrew? Wallace’s most recent public spat with Stephen Batchelor over
“distorted views” of Buddhism is my case in point. (fn. 6)
I
met Alan in 1980, when he accompanied H. H. the Dalai Lama to Seattle, and I
was on the committee arranging his appearances at the University of Washington,
Seattle University, and the Seattle Zen Center. Alan was still a robed monk, after studying in Dharmsala,
India and serving as one of the Dalai Lama’s interpreters for fourteen
years. After that Alan
distinguished himself as a scholar at Amherst and Stanford in physics, science
and religion. He is the founder/president
of the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies. (fn. 7)
It
is no surprise, considering what he has said and written about at length, that Wallace
disapproves of half-baked Buddhists.
In his words, he is “skeptical” of Buddhist groups that put practice
over study. From the Tibetan point
of view, that could be an apt description of Japanese Buddhist priests
(excluding those who are scholars, of course!) But, at the same time, Wallace criticizes any tradition that
reverses that process, putting study over practice. Alan demands of himself more intense study than any Tibetan
teacher I have encountered. His own
approach is rigorous study and practice, and his books convey the results in
compelling ways.
No
one should get the wrong idea when Wallace calls himself a Buddhist Skeptic,
meaning a doubter, because he is in fact a devoted Buddhist scholar and
practitioner who carries the flag for a rich Buddhist tradition. I take comfort in the opening sentence
of his Meditations, where he defines
his Buddhist skepticism in the Greek sense of “seeker” – in which case perhaps
we all (including him) are seekers following the historical Buddha’s admonition
to “learn through our own experience which theories and practices are wholesome
and which are unwholesome.”
That
English version of Shakyamuni Buddha’s exhortation some 2500 years ago contains
two essential characteristics of Tibetan Buddhism as it is known in the West. Reading, analyzing, and testing Buddhist
scriptures -- against one’s own experience and comparing that against the theories,
interpretations, and experiences of others, very much as scientists do – that strikes
me as the quintessence of Tibetan Buddhism. Also, the use of the English terms wholesome and unwholesome
(instead of true and false, right and wrong, wise and ignorant, etc.) comes
right out of the translation lexicon of B. Alan Wallace, whose elegant English fairly
flows over the page, amazing readers with its confidence.
It
often seems that Wallace wants to prove Buddhist teachings to be true by
explaining them with physics and neuroscience. But he demurs on that point by quoting philosopher William
James, to underscore the fact that faith trumps science where ultimate truth is
sought. James says our
“faith-ladder” can offer visions that deserve to be true, and that can make us
behave as if they were true.
Wallace concurs: “Without
such vision, Buddhism dies,” he says.
(fn 8)
That
being said, the Tibetan vision is complex, and the achievement of its goals is
demanding. Unlike a Japanese Zendo
-- where newly arrived novices are plopped down on cushions, their bodies and legs
pulled into position, long lists of temple rules and regulations given out
verbally (and expected to be memorized and followed immediately), with the meditation
leader’s horrifically loud “Die on your pillows!” ringing in their ears -- something
more humane and gentle is offered to the new students of Tibetan Buddhist
teachings.
General
accounts of Buddhism blandly point out that three types of Buddhism exist in the
world today: Theravada, Mahayana,
and Vajrayana. Theravada (Teachings
of the Elders) is practiced in south Asia, most notably in Sri Lanka and
Thailand. It is a monkish version of
Buddhism in which monks aspire to achieve (as closely as they can) what the historical
Buddha achieved, whereas the majority of the population lives separated from
monks but reveres them as though they were already Buddhas. There are
substantial national differences in Theravada as it is practiced in Sri Lanka,
Thailand, Cambodia, and Burma (Myanmar).
But
the various forms of Theravada practice are few in number compared to all the
forms of the so-called Great Vehicle Leading to Enlightenment, Mahayana
Buddhism. For Mahayana is the
dominant form of Buddhism in the world, covering all the rest of Asia, including
Japan. It is common to place
Vajrayana Buddhism, too, under the wide umbrella of Mahayana. But Tibetan Buddhists and others in the
Himalayas prefer to be placed in a separate category, as I do here.
(A
Japanese version of Vajrayana is at the core of Tendai and Shingon
denominations, but I find its focus to be more on iconography and ritual than
on doctrine.)
Within
all forms of Mahayana Buddhism there is the promise that the essences of
enlightened beings, whether historical or supernatural, are standing ready to assist
human beings escape from the cycle of rebirth and attain full realization of
what really is going on. Zen
basically says we can get there on our own (self-power, known in Japanese as jiriki.) Pure Land says we should admit
how difficult that is to accomplish by ourselves and humbly depend on a higher
power (tariki), namely, the Buddha
(Amitabha), or in specific texts such as the Lotus Scripture. Vajrayana offers us spiritually evolved
teachers, many of whom are reincarnations of past Buddhas, who show us how to personally
experience an awareness of the truth of all things leading to spiritual
liberation.
Before
going to Japan in 1964 I had read everything I could about Buddhism in English and
Japanese books (and a few things in Sanskrit and Chinese) at the University of
Chicago. After taking the post at
the University of Washington I met some Tibetan monks in Seattle, which had
become one of the largest Tibetan immigrant communities in the world after the
Chinese occupation of Tibet in 1959.
They were quick to further my interest in Buddhism with instruction that
would lead me step by step to my goal.
I expected something like that from my Japanese mentors, but what I
received was very different.
My doctoral
research centered on how the paintings of Chinese and Japanese Zen priests
became identified with the ruling military class (buke or samurai) in
Japan. I wanted to understand how
that connection came about, and in terms of religion, I needed to know how Zen
and other forms of Buddhism functioned at that time. I needed to examine
Chinese and Japanese documents and paintings kept in Japanese temples, dating
to the 16th and 17th centuries. My focus was on ink paintings executed by Toyo Sesshu (1420-1506),
his Chinese predecessors, and his followers, including the painters of the Kano
school, who were the official artists of the ruling military class.
Once
in Japan, my research advisors were professors at Kyoto University and abbots
of over three hundred Zen temples in the area that were built during my period
of interest. My questions to priests
were answered with polite suggestions that I sit in meditation before asking
any more questions. How long? Oh, two or three years! Academic advisers were willing to help
me find resources to explore the answers to my questions, but they agreed with
the priests that sitting (J. zazen)
was a good idea. My true motivation,
therefore, for what turned into a lifetime of zazen and Buddhist studies was not religion, but to make
connections between the art and the religion that inspired artists and their
donors during a relatively short period of Japanese history.
If
I had met a Tibetan teacher before I met Suzuki Sensei I might have taken the
path that Alan Wallace did. (The
timing was off: in 1945 few
Americans knew about Tibet and Alan had not been born.) But I find Wallace’s descriptions of
how our minds work and the correlations he makes to mental states described in
Indian and Tibetan Buddhist literature immensely useful. A metaphor that often appears when
Wallace describes what Buddhist practice is like, is that of setting out to
climb a tall mountain like Everest, which takes days of preparation, skill, and
determination just to make it to the base camp, and then more of the same for
the higher levels leading to the summit, representing full self-liberation.
A
basic starting point of Buddhist training for Wallace is approximately what
Japanese Zen priests regard as the time when you finally settle down on your
sitting pillow and get to work.
That is the state of shamata,
which Wallace calls “meditative quiescence,” consisting of three features: ethical discipline, meditation, and
wisdom. He compares it to building
a night-sky observatory in a place without obstructions (ethics), then setting
up a high-power telescope (meditation), and then using it to see the sky
(wisdom). (fn. 9)
He
puts emphasis on the telescope, which corresponds to the meditative state known
as samadhi, or meditative
concentration. In the practice of samadhi the mind is “calmly, continuously
focused inward and both body and mind are imbued with exceptional degrees of
pliancy and well-being.” For Wallace, samadhi
is superior to vipashyana (insight) meditation
because it is partnered with the two other features, viz., ethical
understanding and wisdom. (fn. 10) And he reminds us if we reach the first dhyana (meditative stabilization) level
we can sustain samadhi for a night
and day!
To
quote Wallace at length, “A great advantage of resting in this state of
meditative equipoise is that the five hindrances, or obscurations, temporarily
become dormant: sensual craving,
malice, laxity and dullness, excitation and guilt, and uncertainty. These hindrances obscure the essential
nature of the mind – the subtle, luminous continuum of mental consciousness
from which all ordinary states of waking and dream consciousness emerge… “ Only
correct practice, shamata practice,
establishes the mind “in meditative equipoise” leading to “renunciation and
compassion …” allowing us “to see reality as it is.” (fn. 11)
Going
further, simply “engaging in insight meditation alone, such as zazen and vipashyana” … even Vajrayana
insight practices “such as Mahamudra and Dzogchen” are misguided, says Wallace. Meditators who stop there are not as
far along towards the summit as they could be. They may think, “I’m already as ethical as I need to be for
advanced meditation practice,” but that is “like a surgeon who thinks, I took a
shower this morning, so there’s no need for me to scrub before entering the
operating room.”
Wallace
takes his criticism of inadequate Buddhist denominations right to their doors. “In
Zen practice, it is clear that even without having fully achieved shamatha, one may experience a
transitory realization (Jap. kensho)
of one’s Buddha nature” but such “breakthroughs … rapidly fade away.” “…
Mindfulness of breathing is commonly practiced in the Zen tradition to
stabilize the mind.” But, insight
acquired that way will “vanish as suddenly as it arose… The Japanese term “Zen”
translates from the Chinese Ch’an, which in turn derives from the Sanskrit dhyana, so it would be odd for such
meditative attainment to be overlooked in these schools.” (fn. 12)
Odd,
indeed. What’s wrong with those
guys anyway? How can they be so
stupid as to miss the boat? Is it
because Chinese priests misread the texts – for two thousand years? And deceived countless Japanese
converts to boot! Did only Tibetan
Buddhists get it right? Here is
where I lose patience with Wallace.
He is a genius, no question about it. But he can sound like some fundamentalist preacher on a
rampage. (Or quite frankly, like a reincarnation of old Joshu’s disciple!) His
confidence in his own reading of Buddhist texts seems unlimited. I remember asking in Sunday school if
all the people who were born before Jesus of Nazareth was born were going to
hell, as Christian texts suggest. My logic at the time was a small-fry’s
version of Alan’s: tight as a
drum.
Buddhism,
like most religions, admits we live in a dualistic universe and shows us how we
should live and die in it. The
desert religions that dominate the Western world tell us the duality is real,
that we must take the path of goodness, which is God’s path, and that there
will be a judgment at the end as to how close we came. Hinduism and Buddhism tell us to look
instead into our own minds, find the true nature of the duality there, and go
through its tunnel leading to a non-dual perfection. The tunnel is reincarnation, which is much longer for Hindus
than for Buddhists, and it stops in the realm of the Not Two, commonly called
enlightenment or liberation.
The
dispute between Zen and Tibetan Buddhism that conflicts me now has echoes in
the past. It always has been about
how we should navigate the tunnel to liberation. Can we do it once we intuitively reach the core of
consciousness, in a dream fashioned in China? Or must we distrust the core’s own reality and trust the
navigation manual (the vinaya) that
Indo-Tibetan travelers have preferred?
The dispute has its earliest origin in the second century, then bubbles
to the surface in the late eighth, and comes to a head in the 17th.
Ashvaghosa,
the famous Brahmin-born Sanskrit orator and musician is said to have beguiled
and converted huge crowds of Indians of all castes to Buddhism, including kings
and princes. His name implies that
even horses who brought riders to hear him wept for joy as he described the
core of consciousness, the alayavijnyana
(阿梨耶識), which gives birth to each
rebirth containing all seven of our sense consciousnesses (somewhat like the
Higgs boson “God Gene” of modern physics, which gives mass to particles that inhabit
our universe, including the ones that make up the structure of humans.) By
claiming that this alaya was
something to be trusted as inherently real (instead of unreal like our
dualistic and thus unreal senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, ideas,
and instincts), Ashvaghosa did come close to heresy.
This
hero at the beginning of Buddhist history in the Christian era even converted
the Westerners, the Kushans, who controlled much of India at the time. We used to think of Ashvaghosa as
having originated the Great Vehicle of Mahayana Buddhism, largely due to the
text known as The Awakening of Faith. But we now suspect that he was not the
author of that work. Instead, it
shows the hand of an anonymous Chinese writer, whose view of the alaya is shared by early Chinese Zen
(Ch’an) teachers.
Some
700 years after Ashvaghosa, a northern Chinese Zen monk by the name of Moheyan
(摩訶衍) was invited by the Tibetan
King to come face the wrath of Tibetan monks for his
“gazing-at-mind-with-no-examination” message. Some of the monks, who later developed Dzogchen meditation
in Tibet, were influenced. But
Moheyan was run out of town. Then,
in the 17th century the Fifth Dalai Lama outlawed this teaching
(called zhentong in Tibetan) and
punished its proponents. [fn13]
I
have to say, Ashvaghosa is my man, as he is for most Zen students (and was for
Dr. Suzuki.) My own self-satisfaction
with my understanding of Buddhism recognizes Wallace’s at a glance, but mine is
in religion and the arts; his is in religion and science. Music and science often produce
different kinds of brains. I cannot
prove that, of course.
I only know my artistic temperament grows uncomfortable around certain
brains. Even so, satisfaction is
where you find it, so I am not surprised that Wallace’s descriptions of samadhi (and beyond) match my experience
as closely as words allow. It
fascinates me, because the Zen tradition discourages me from writing about it.
Any
attempt I might make to describe deep meditation, and try to match my
experience with ancient Buddhist texts in any language is seen in Zen as self-serving
and at cross purposes with a quest for insight with some usefulness to the
world. As a child I found
myself in music. Not as a composer
but as a performer. My career as a
child piano prodigy (another story) did not allow me to write about the music I
performed or how I felt when I performed.
Performance held no attraction, but I lived to bring to life great music
through my mind, heart and fingers.
And I did. The little Bach C-major Prelude that every beginner learns
triggers my alayavijnyana every time
I play it. As does the Scriabin Prelude
in G-flat, which I expect will accompany my final liberation. When I played well (which I no longer
do) I assure you I had no sense of me at all. Eight hours a day at the piano
seemed normal. Countless composers,
compositions, and recitals: were
they played in dhyana? samadhi? kensho? What and who was realized? With thanks to Shakespeare’s Juliet, or
Gertrude Stein, a rose by any name is a rose.
What
many mystics, Buddhist or otherwise, call the True Self, lying “dormant since the beginning of the
human consciousness,” as Suzuki Sensei so beautifully put it, was awakened even
in my last public piano performance, in 1953, of Liszt’s Second Piano Concerto.
I remember sitting at the piano
for a very long time after it was finished, then thanking the orchestra, and
walking backstage. I played no
encores. The next thing I knew, I
woke up in a hospital bed, and was told I had suffered a nervous breakdown. And art, religion, love and Asian
studies – not necessarily in that order – appeared on my horizon that day.
My
own mellowing (another word for meditational bliss) came first through music
and art. Bringing great piano
compositions to life with my fingers was like conjuring up the souls of great
musicians. They lived. I disappeared. My fingers were having a field
day. But I was infinitely dead,
and deeply alive. Where I went
nobody knew. Not even I. The same thing happened when I saw
great paintings, or lost myself in the art of painting. I never talked about that. But when the ten-year-old me read
Daisetsu Sensei’s words on Zen meditation, I knew instantly what he was talking
about. Samadhi? Authentic? Inauthentic?
Whatever. I only knew that
words were almost useless. And I had
found someone who knew that better than anyone. [fn14]
If
almost all words are useless, some are not. I’ve come to believe that to describe Buddhist enlightenment
in so many words is dangerous. Maybe our attempts to describe meditation and enlightenment,
like salvation, heaven, hell, and even God, should be prefaced with the warning
that they are in the category of things that are simply indescribable. Religious sages have tried to put such things into words
anyway. Mystics in Western
religions have offered God-centered definitions for centuries. Let me try one for Buddhism: We
are connected to each other and to every thing that is alive or ever has lived
in ways we cannot know until we examine ourselves the way the Buddha examined
himself; but we perceive ourselves as separate from others, and that blinds us
to the truth of things and makes us do and say things that miss the mark.
Better
yet, let me share with you something that the Rector of All Saints’ Episcopal
Church in Chicago, the Rev. Bonnie Perry, said in a sermon recently. When telling her listeners about the
intricacies of Christian doctrine, she said, “But you know, actually, the
Gospel isn’t worth a rat’s ass if it doesn’t change people’s lives.” As a Buddhist I feel sorry that rats
rank so low on her value scale.
But I think she may be onto something where the Buddha-dharma is
concerned: its teachings, too,
don’t mean much if our lives are not changed by it.
We
have to be very careful not to confuse our own intellectual understanding of
Buddhism with the gifts it offers us.
Regardless of the denomination that follows the Buddha-dharma and its
prescriptions for practice, and whether the practice is based on surrender to a
higher power or the personal responsibility to do it basically by ourselves, we
should keep our eyes on the goal: letting go of our misperceptions and actions
that benefit no one but ourselves.
Meditation as taught by Zen Buddhists and Tibetan Buddhists provide us
with two ways to change our lives.
But there are many more.
For example, the great Japanese teacher of Pure Land Buddhist teachings,
Honen Shonin 1133-1212), provided us with another, equally authentic way.
I
have always loved studying other languages, and I believe I learn things about
other people through that study that I cannot learn any other way. But I find the time spent arguing that
one Buddhist tradition is authentic and the others are false – or insisting on specific
English translations of Pali and Sanskrit terms over their Chinese, Tibetan,
Korean, and Japanese translations -- to be a great waste of time. Deciding that someone has reached a
certain level of meditation, even when that decision comes from a highly
evolved teacher, also makes me cringe.
Such decisions are by nature misleading if they are based on
conceptualizations expressed in words, in any language.
________________________________________________
[fn 1]
Dr. Suzuki was born in 1870 to a samurai family in
Kanazawa. The name given to him at
birth, as the fourth son, was Teitaro (貞太郎), or “Obedient
Good Boy”. The democratization of
Japan in 1868 took away the status that samurai families had enjoyed for
centuries. When his physician
father died, leaving his family destitute, the Pure Land Shin Buddhist
denomination of his mother’s family supported her and educated the children. D. T. Suzuki is regarded as the premier
spokesman for Zen Buddhism in the world today because of his many books on Zen in
English and other languages. But
he is disregarded by most Japanese Zen priests, who regard him to an outsider
because of his affiliation with Shin Buddhism. However, Soen Shaku, a Japanese
Zen priest who encouraged his disciples to study English and to share Zen
teachings with Westerners, took Suzuki on as a student in 1894 and gave him the
enigmatic priest name Daisetsu (大拙), which in
effect means “such a klutz.” As an
author writing in English, Dr. Suzuki adopted the name D. T. Suzuki, taking the
first letters of his birth and priest names to distinguish himself from all
other Suzukis.
In his twenties Suzuki became acquainted with many Westerners,
discussing religion and philosophy with them and living for extended periods in
their homes in Illinois and New York.
He and his American wife, Beatrice Erskine Lane, maintained homes in
both Japan and America, and their journal The
Eastern Buddhist was read world-wide.
As a professor in Kyoto at Otani University, the school affiliated with
Shin Buddhism, Dr. Suzuki linked up with other Zen Buddhist priests and
scholars (such as Hisamatsu Shinichi) who shared similar views on the value of
Zen in the world. The study of
world religions and their relationships to each other were explored through such
organizations as the Theosophical Society. Suzuki’s lectures in New York and London were wildly popular
during the 1950’s. At the same
time, his efforts in maintaining orthodox training in Zen meditation, even for
Westerners, and in the careful study of the writings of Shinran, the 12th-century
founder of Shin Buddhism, occupied Daisetsu Sensei right up until the end of
his long life in 1966.
fn. 2
Zen and Zen Classics,
Vol. IV (“Mumonkan”) by R. H. Blyth (Hokuseido Press: 1966). The Chinese Zen priest Wu-men (J.
Mumon) wrote this book in 1228, based on several centuries of student-master
encounters. The Japanese priest
Shinchi Kakushin (1205-1298) trained under Wu-men in 1253-54 and brought a copy
of the book back to Japan. It is one of a few well-known classics of the genre
available in Japanese and other languages. The bulk of those written in China
and Korea since the 13th century (including the four mentioned by
Suzuki in this preface) have still not been translated. In Japan the classic koan cases are normally given to
trainees orally, and in an abbreviated form. Reading the texts is in fact
discouraged.
fn. 3
Ibid., p.18-38. Reginald Horace Blyth (1893-1964) dedicated
this volume to “Suzuki Daisetz, the Greatest Japanese of This Century.” The two men were lifelong friends. Blyth
was an Englishman who went to India in 1924, and then took a university post in
Korea in 1925. While there he
studied Zen under a Japanese Rinzai master for ten years before moving to
Japan, teaching at the peer’s school (ShiGakko) in Kanazawa, where he first met
D. T. Suzuki. During the war he
was imprisoned, but after the war he served on Gen. MacArthur’s staff. As a professor at Gakushu-in he tutored
the Crown Prince (Emperor Akihito).
Blyth is buried next to Suzuki in Kamakura.
fn. 4
The Eastern Buddhist,
October 1977, p. 81-82. In order
to further emphasize the relationship of the holy and non-holy, Hisamatsu Shin’ichi
(1889-1980), one of Suzuki’s closest friends, put it this way: there is something in Zen that “strives
for the highest reach of the religious in the ‘non-holy’” (The Eastern Buddhist, May 1977, p. 4.)
fn. 5
In my experience, Japanese novices know going into the
abbot’s room that Joshu’s response should be their response, literally, even if
they know their meditation has not reached maturity. Putting some sound to a lengthy out-breath is thus a kind of
holding pattern. In temples
outside of Japan students sometimes try to give a conceptual, scholarly or
nonsensical response, which usually gets them dismissed at once. Manifesting for your self the awareness
of things is not easy.
fn. 6
Stephen Batchelor may be our generation’s D. T. Suzuki. The number of his books does not match
the master’s, but could someday come in second. He was born in 1953 in
Scotland, raised near London, and at 18 went to Dharamsala, India, where he
studied Tibetan Buddhism with Geshe Dhargyeye for ten years, then with Geshe
Rabten in Switzerland for five years, and after a couple more years as translator
for Geshe Thubten in Germany. During that time (in 1979) Batchelor was ordained
as a monk. In 1981 he went to
South Korea to train in Zen Buddhism under Kusan Sunim. There he met Martine
Fages, who had been ordained as a nun in Korea in 1975, and in 1985 the couple disrobed
and married, settling in Sharpham in Devon, England, where they lived
throughout the 1990’s, establishing a college for Buddhist studies and a
meditation center. In 2000 the
couple moved to Bordeaux, France, and they hold teachings all over the world
(see their busy schedule on his website: stephenbatchelor.org). Wallace’s review of Batchelor’s Confession of a Buddhist Atheist is in the
October 2010 issue of Mandala Magazine.
Batchelor’s response, “An Open
Letter to B. Alan Wallace,” is in the January 2011 issue.
fn. 7
fn. 8
Page 148 of Meditations
of a Buddhist Skeptic.
fn. 9
In Sino/Japanese Buddhist dictionaries, shyamata is 正受 (in Japanese, shouju)
and literally means “proper reception.” But other Chinese characters are listed
as synonyms: 定 (S. J. jou) meaning “stable or fixed”; 禅定 (J. zenjou) meaning “confident
meditation,” and even 三昧 (S. samadhi, J. sanmai) meaning “three foolish concerns,”
i.e., of birth, life, and death. Their
differences are noted, but not described in detail. They all refer to reaching a point of quiet awareness and
being able to see into the nature of things and avoid what Wallace calls unwholesome
obstructions. The Sino-Japanese word for “mind” is always used in the
definitions of what is being quieted and made aware. That word is what in Japan is called kokoro, which all Japanese take to mean the heart of humanity we
all share.
fn. 10
J. shikan (止観) – lit., stop and see; and other “seeing” meditations such as
sangan (三観) and kensho (見性) are supposedly more shallow,
according to Wallace. He follows Indo-Tibetan
tradition in the rankings of these levels as well as the terms in the previous
footnote. Suzuki Sensei always favored
the Chinese character 妙 (J. myou,
C. miao) above all others because it is
not a translation of an Indian term, and has the sense of “mystery” or “wonder” in English. But he insisted it was a mystery that
could be experienced in the here and now and at any time. I think it was his private word for the
most profound dhyana (i.e., Zen) of
all.
fn. 11
Meditations, p.
151
fn. 12
Ibid., p. 153
fn. 13
The Jonang School of Tibetan Buddhism, founded by Sakya
teachers in the 12th century, espouses the zhentong philosophy of emptiness, the religion’s core belief.
Jonang says that only the non-dual nature of the mind (the God gene) is
inherently real; everything else is marked by duality, and thus is not real.
Zhentong views have been criticized as unorthodox by all the main schools of
Tibetan Buddhism, but particularly by the Gelug School, the predominant school
for over 500 years. The orthodox
teaching on the subject is called rantong,
which says ALL phenomena are empty of inherent existence, and that nothing
(including alaya, the mind’s core
that is the source of all consciousness) is inherently real … OR (wait for it)
unreal. In short, rantong trumps, because both assertions
are seen to be groundless in the face of Buddhist teachings about reality. Today zhentong does not cause very many Tibetan Buddhists (except Alan
Wallace) much of a problem.
fn. 14
My admiration for Daisetsu Sensei is limitless, obviously. In fairness to B. Allan Wallace, his
criticism of Zen and Suzuki in particular is gentle compared to attacks by
other young Western scholars of Buddhism who have made it fashionable to
ridicule Suzuki because he “lacked formal transmission in a Zen lineage” and
created an “intellectualized, free-floating Zen.” Robert H. Sharf has made that charge with a straight face in
several books and articles, pointing also to the late Abe Masao and other Kyoto
intellectuals as creators of a “Zen of Japanese nationalism.” In as much as Suzuki was a life-long
teacher for me, and Dr. Abe was my landlord when I was a doctoral student at
Kyoto University, I can perhaps be excused from that discussion.
Glenn T. Webb
December 2012
