In my religious believing days, what happened during my morning reading time today would have struck me as a message from God. Or at least a message from the universe. Now, I simply view it as a coincidental message — turning to three books and finding that continuing where I’d left off reading resulted in a similar point of view.
Which, I suppose, isn’t all that surprising, given that currently I only read books with a naturalistic perspective. I want to embrace reality as it is, not as someone imagines it to be.
First I picked up James Ishmael Ford’s, Zen at the End of Religion: An Introduction for the Curious, the Skeptical, and the Spiritual But Not Religious. In his “Great Doubt, Faith, and Energy” chapter, Ford explains what these principles mean in Zen. His way of describing them was fresh to me and made a lot of sense.
Faith, or “the great root of faith,” or “great determination,” as one translation has it, is as if one is “leaning against Mt. Sumeru.” Sumeru is the sacred mountain at the center of things. As I take it, it means a confidence experienced when one physically touches a mountain with one’s own hands and feet, feeling the incline, noticing the dirt and plants, hearing the swoosh of a bird and perhaps the call of some animal that you can’t quite make out.
It’s the body-knowing of direct encounter. This is a letting go of the clouds of our minds and experiencing who we, you, and I are on the other side of our stories about ourselves and our separations… It’s as if the clouds that normally obscure our experience of the world have parted and we see things the way they are.
Really refreshing. This is hugely different from religious faith, as epitomized in a bumper sticker I saw on a car recently. It said something like “Blind faith in Jesus is actually clear seeing.” No, blind faith is faith in something for which there is no evidence, so it necessarily is blind. Blind faith is revered by religions because it gives them a hold over people that wouldn’t exist if they had to actually prove that what they’re promising is true, actually is.
Then Ford discusses doubt.
Yuanmiao says of doubt, “the great ball of doubt,” or “great indecision-and-apprehension,” that it is like one had done something in secret, something shameful, perhaps a crime, and you know you’re about to be exposed. Anxiety, a profound dis-ease. It is the existential dread that touches our hearts and sours everything. But now, here on the Zen way, it is also a path into the fundamental matter of who we are.
…Doubt can be seen as the knowing that we are mortal, subject to every failing. And in some very real way, our sense of who we are, in all our failings, is a curtain shading our joys… doubt is the knowing of our very ordinariness, our fragility, our hesitations.
This also is pleasingly real. We aren’t pure soul encased in the prison of our body. We are flawed ordinary very-human beings. Ford then turns to energy.
Energy, or “the great overpowering will,” or “great passionate intention,” or “determination of great fury.” Energy is easy to comprehend, dedication, purposeful engagement. Wrath is a more interesting translation, evocative of levels of engagement. It’s a kind of dynamism. As Yuanmiao tells us, it’s as if you’ve found the person who murdered your father. The feelings that envelope you perhaps wanting to strike him down with a sword wielded with all the force in your being. As with doubt being treated by images of guilt, I find this thirteenth-century illumination of energy as desire for revenge very helpful. I get it.
Picking up Robert Saltzman’s book, Depending on no-thing, I read a short chapter, “A block of stone.” Excerpt:
The only teaching that I can offer comes down to one simple point: no one can define for you who or what you are. No one. Not Buddha, not Jesus, not Ramana Maharshi, not Adya, not Rupert, not Eckhart, not Tony Moo, not yours truly. No one. It does not matter in the least what those people believed. All of them were or are human beings just like you. You must find your own mind, not learn to imitate theirs.
Today, in thinking about finding your own mind, I recalled the story of the sculptor who was exhibiting a work carved from stone — the image of an elephant, perfect in every detail.
“How do you manage to do that?” he was asked.
“Very simple,” he replied. “I take a block of stone, and just chisel away everything that does not look like an elephant.”
Well, that seems a useful approach to finding your own mind. Just chisel away all the beliefs imposed upon you as a child, religious and otherwise, whether you consider them true or not. Then chisel away all the beliefs about “reality” that you have acquired subsequently from authorities such as spiritual teachers, supposedly sacred texts, etcetera.
Keep chiseling until there is no acquired knowledge left. Keep chiseling until all that remains is what you actually feel, think, and observe right now in this very moment. That is what I mean by your own mind.
Lastly, I read a chapter, “World Peace,” in Toni Packer’s book, The Wonder of Presence: And the Way of Meditative Inquiry. These passages reminded me of what I’d just heard from Ford and Saltzman.
Is there another energy that is not born of idea and thought (leaving aside the powerful drive to survive)?
An amazing energy is set free in seeing clearly what is taking place here right now, not through beliefs or ideas, but born of simple, immediate presence. Out of this wondrous presence flows right action that is not controlled by thoughts no matter how kind or unkind, how peaceful or contentious they may be.
Seeing a fire can mobilize instant energy to put it out. Seeing a drowning person can move one to jump to the rescue. Immediate seeing is the energy of right action, with its wisdom and compassion.
So are we living separately from the world, or is the world simply a reflection of all our conditioned ways of living together throughout the millennia?… The best moments of our lives happen when we respond without premeditation out of the openness of our hearts, creating a space of peace and love.
…The tremendous realization that there is no separation dawns at the moment that the whole emotional network of stories about myself is quietly in abeyance, as though a plug was pulled. Being here with a clear, undisturbed mind is seeing the whole world as myself. Not as me or mine but as nothing divided — one community of an infinite variety of ever changing living beings.
When the mind is still in quiet presence, heaven and earth are open. Nothing is obstructing the view. A crow is calling — caw, caw, caw, caw. Wind is stirring among the quivering leaves. Breath is flowing. No thought of world peace. Nothing to pray for. Everything is here just as it is, in an indescribable way.
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What Saltzman describes here makes sense and is probably quite factual: – “The only teaching that I can offer comes down to one simple point: no one can define for you who or what you are. No one. Not Buddha, not Jesus, not Ramana Maharshi, not Adya, not Rupert, not Eckhart, not Tony Moo, not yours truly. No one. It does not matter in the least what those people believed. All of them were or are human beings just like you. You must find your own mind, not learn to imitate theirs.”
But I doubt if many want (or can) go down that road. As infants, we are exposed to countless beliefs along with social and cultural life explanations, and before having the mental capacity to question them, we can only thereafter search for answers amongst such self-sustaining systems.
We may like to think that we have found (or are on) the one true path, but invariably, on examination, it can be seen to be merely a continuation of the original assimilated ideas, explanations, etc. absorbed in our early years.
And, Tony Packer points to what arises in the present moment that is not born of idea and thought as she says: – “…seeing clearly what is taking place here right now, not through beliefs or ideas, but born of simple, immediate presence.” This ‘immediate presence’ is all we can ever really know: all else is second-hand knowledge, opinion and conjecture.
@ Ron E.
That being true as said by both Gentle man but the conclusion they draw upon that insight about things outside them needs not to be draw.
We are taught, language and culture in the way we were fed by our mothers as babies.
Eventaly we all learn that molk is not the only way to be fed with.
but that said, there is no reason why people should not consume milk and milk related products from other sources.
So yes What al was named by Saltzman as a path to follow is as the metaphor of the mnt everest. It can be climbed. There are people that find great fulfilment in doing that ..but … there is no reason to state or suggest that climbing is the only way to fulfill ones life and that it ought or should be done
So personal I do agree with Mr. Saltzman that we owe nothing to anybody and we do not need to follow in anybodies steps in order to go through life …but .. on the other hand there is nothing wrong either if somebody wants to follow a path that others have taken and accept their experience as a personal guidance
It’s a mistake to try to make people think because 90% of the time they’ll think wrong.
We get that you badly want Zen Buddhism to be non-supernatural, but it’s just not so.
That’s because Zen authorities define “mind” as transcendental. Buddha nature is ineluctably transcendental. It’s not physical. It’s not a matter of the brain. “Mind” in Zen is original mind, a non-dual awareness that goes beyond the physical body and brain.
Even Alan Watts agrees with this. You see Buddhism as non-theistic, but that’s not the same thing as non-transcendental.
If you want to be a hardcore atheist, fine. But if you want to write about Buddhism, then stop trying to fudge Buddhist concepts to agree with your atheist views. It doesn’t work.
@ Sant 64,,
>> ……. then stop trying to fudge Buddhist concepts to agree with your atheist views. It doesn’t work.<<
In the years I was associate with Sant Mat and talking to peole of different religious denominations, I found that peoplpe were trying to have it changed "their way".
Instead of acknowledging that they were not able and/or willing to follow this or that teaching, practice as it was they tried to change it.
Well … it is similar to the emotional blackmail in relations … IF you realy would love me, THAN you would xxxxx. Xxxxx always meaning doing whatever suited them
Brain, as a speaker for long years in the Sant Mat community must have encountered that tendency.
It takes quit some strength and god knows what more for guru's to ground themselves firmly against that daily onslaught demaning for change.
Hahaha one of the "weapons" mostly used is to make the other seen as authoritarian and not being a lovely person
“no one can define for you who or what you are. No one. Not Buddha, not Jesus, not Ramana Maharshi, not Adya, not Rupert, not Eckhart, not Tony Moo, not yours truly. No one. It does not matter in the least what those people believed. All of them were or are human beings just like you. You must find your own mind, not learn to imitate theirs.”
Then why do that to anyone else? If Jesus can’t define what is right for you why does the author?
And why constrain it to mind? Mind is the problem, not the answer
So if you believe what the author wrote for yourself, and you can find a way to believe it as a fundamental truth that applies to everyone else, maybe it actually does apply to you afterall. Maybe what is natural for you may be supernatural (and unrealistic) to someone else. Maybe you are living in the hallucination! No. It cannot be! You left the illusion long ago! Oh no! You went from one illusion to another!
That’s what mind is. An illusion making machine.
To say the other is wrong, or limited in their thinking and experience, to claim they are ignorant or naive, is also incorrect. You can pretend to know someone else’s experience, but that is your own imagination.
And what seems supernatural to you may just be very natural, part and parcel of the daily life of others.
What you are trying to eliminate in getting to natural, they disgarded long ago, and maybe not by hard work. Maybe the opposite. Maybe living in the state of unnatural, the state of dissociative intellect, was too hard for them. Though you must work hard now to disgard that, they had to give it up.
And then what happened? Inner light and sound! The Sea of Love. Not more intellect. Zero intellect.
“The Path of Intellect, the Yoga of intellect exhausts itself in the regions of intellect… The path of love is far beyond that.”
Swami Ji
@ spence T.
Your words ending with a quote of Swami Ji Mah. reminds me of the late MCS explaining that a Master has to take on some [imperfect] karma in order to function … in order to “relate” about the nameless etc one has to take on the garb of the mind.
Speaking the words of the mind it is difficult if not impossible to differentiate between the two.
Hi Um
Parallel to what Brian cites, it’s about giving up notions and letting what was always there, the natural stuff, come through.
But how impossible that is! It’s a process of peeling the onion one layer at a time. And when the onion making apparatus is trying to peel it also, well, it’s ridiculous. So proud are we to peel back layers when we are adding them! What the heck do we know about getting past our own tendencies, our own karma? We are bags of chemicals imagining ourselves as human beings. Quite delusional. We’ve been living in denial, lying to ourselves about being objective, rational, natural. Words words words, we wall paper over ourselves with them. We are professionals at denial. Who the hell do we think we are in talking about truth or God? We are just very temporary bags of chemicals. But we have no problem pinning medals and awards of greatness on ourselves. It is purely ludicrous.
@ Spence T.
We?!
How often did I not write that, If I was not fed with these things from birth on, starting with my mother, lovingly feeding me not only milk but also language an culture, followed by so many good willing teachers, I would never have known about these things.
And now de-programming myself or being de=programmed from that hearsay, there is no desire found inside me to know about these things and to search for them.
That said .. who has ever heard me use words, like love, doing this or that for the master etc etc … NO – BODY … as I never use them they even do not arise in my mind.
And as far as the “we” … I feel that nobody is to blame after all they did not bring themselves to live and whatever they are , have .. do, think and feel is just happening to them.
The “I” the “WE” are just convenient linguistic tools to point at were the action takes place, I does not say that the action originated there. …only in science it is convenient to think that way, so that they can calculate.
The crow is born a crow, live as a crow and will die as a crow … it has to be so … not even coffee is needed to understand these simple things, let alone inner experiences.
and .. while writing I was listening to this Raga beautiful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dh4E3oE3ezE&list=RDDh4E3oE3ezE&start_radio=1
I think the difference in our views, Um, is that I think acknowledging one’s own limitations and seeking to grow is natural. The crow destined to learn and grow and travel to new lands is going to do so. Crow is crow. And those who find that desire within themselves also are admirable. That urge was given to them, but subverted by the culture you speak of. Urge for something greater cannot be attributed to the work of swindlers, only misplaced effort to that end.
Nor to disrespect those who have no such desire. That crow was meant to stay as they were placed. If that is all their own careful introspection has uncovered.
I don’t agree we can denigrate willing and interested students, those who don’t make claims for other people. but maybe we can discourage those who claim to know what is there for others, or claim nothing is there for anyone. Or make statements of those who have seen it differently than they. That would be to overstep their own capacity as students. Given that students is all we can be
@ Spence T.
>> I think the difference in our views, Um, is that I think acknowledging one’s own limitations and seeking to grow is natural. <<
NATURAL?!
That is and has never been my understanding.
As CULTURAL beings we learn … we learn language, the concepts that are used to see, communicate and live in a society and culture, we go to school[s], we learn a profession …etc etc … of course we do … but that doesn't change the natural being nor add to it … for the natural being there is nothing to learn. ….. UNLESS the two are as one … the cultural human is seen as the natural human
Humans have all sorts of identities infused into them or ingested during their lifetime, identities for which the kill and have themselves killed. WHY?! Because they look upon themselves NOT as just HUMAN having this or that role to play, having to wear the mantle of this or that society [class] and culture.
Then you use the the adjective … ADMIRABLE.
Who has to do the admiration and who is worthy of that admiration. Since when could and should a tree, a crow or human be admired for something that was not of his or own doing?! The Creator, has been said to say in Genesis that he "SAW that things are good as they are" There is no mention that he can or should alter or add to .. would that not be blasphemy?
The urge was GIVEN to them.
Given by whom spence …. That something that brings everything to life?! Or …OR … The parents … The society .. The culture and ultimately …the Ego … ahankar .. the "I the ME and MINE" YES, again and of course "MY hand" can learn many skills but that does not change "THAT hand"
I do not know why you use the verb "denigrate" in answering me. If it suggest that I am doing such a thing, you are projecting .
WE are STUDENTS:
Is the same as saying that "I am my IDENTITIES, my ROLES" … in fact that is an abstract variation of saying "I am my body, etc "…or … the [sinful] slip of the tongue of an young men not able to find the right words saying that the late MCS was a "brilliant psychologist" … he was not, … hahaha … not even a guru … he was not admirable but one could certainly feel at ease in his company.
@ Spence
What helped Spence, in retrospection, that I was raised bi-cultural and bi-lingual. Refusing the cultural and social “forces” to chose between them, one in preference of the other, i found myself unwilling ..AND .. unable. There and then, the seeds must have been planted for understanding that humans … ARE …. not their ..IDENTITY … they have one, like i have “clothes { material and abstract]” that are suitable in the environment, the society and culture where I happen to spend my days
Hahaha ..social and cultural , i consider myself to be this and that and are considered to be this and that by others …but .. as a [natural] being “i am”…a ….NO-thing …NO-body …that appears to be a SOME-thing and SOME-body for the time being
Things are what they are
seldom what they look like
let alone how they are seen
Enough is enough, let me close that word-tap and have coffee.
With reference to Ford’s Great Ball of Doubt, in Chan (Chinese Zen), they refer to ‘Shattering the Great Doubt. To this end, they engage with a koan, a nonsensical story or saying that echoes our own doubts, where we ask, “What am I? Who am I? What is life for? What is its purpose? Why am I here?” And so on. Studying the koan can lead to a dropping away of mind-made questions, to the realisation that brings about the seeing of ‘just this’, the ‘present moment’ with all that can ever really be known – that is, through perception – rather than our habitual mind-filled speculations.
As Buddha said (allegedly), “The past is already gone, the future is not yet here. There’s only one moment for you to live, and that is the present moment.” And “All descriptions of reality are temporary hypotheses.” He also referred to our reluctance (or almost inability) to see what is always before us: “Change is never painful, only the resistance to change is painful.”
I also read somewhere that the Buddha’s enlightenment phrase was: “House builder, I have seen through you; the rafters are fallen down and will be no more.” Very similar to modern-day ideas of the ‘self-structure’ that we assume is a reality rather than a construct.
We will make of all these stories what we will, though all our ideas, answers and beliefs may simply be our resistance and avoidance of being with the plain old reality of ‘just this’, the perception of thoughts and feelings as they arise.
CHANGE ….
Chancge …. is … RELATIVE!!
In my observation the arguments on CoC always come down to the existence or non-existence of a supernatural realm, how to establish one way or the other and whether it matters.
Does anyone advocate blind faith in some authority? If so, which and why?