Here’s the blog post about James Ishmael Ford’s book, Zen at the End of Religion: An Introduction for the Curious, the Skeptical, and the Spiritual But Not Religious, that got pre-empted by my detour into a recently discovered essay that I’d written more than 25 years ago.
I like Ford’s style. Warm. Informal. Non-dogmatic. You know, what I’d expect from a Zen practitioner. Early on he speaks about three forms of Zen that lie outside Buddhism. Jewish Zen and Christian Zen are two of them. They don’t interest me. Then there’s secular Zen, which is the Zen I resonate with most strongly. Ford says:
Secular Zen is a Zen stripped of all “religious” content. Or nearly all. I’ve found it wise to avoid being completely categorical. We humans seem to have a near endless capacity for exceptions to rules.
What secular Zen generally means is a conscious rejection of anything that might be perceived as supernatural. But it often includes stripping away any culturally identified elements such as bowing or chanting in ancient languages, or sometimes chanting at all. For good and for ill.
Secular Zen generally approaches the tradition as a psychological phenomenon. Each of these three aspects of non-Buddhist Zen are the product of a dialogue. For secular Zen the dialogue is with Western psychology.
Among the writers about Zen and psychology there are researchers like James Austin, author of many books starting with Zen and the Brain, and the first generation of western-born and trained practitioner teachers like Charlotte Joko Beck and Toni Packer. I’m very fond of Barry Magrid, a psychotherapist and successor to Joko Roshi, who offers Zen as a vital discipline within a psychological context.
Zen psychology brings a materialist assumption to the conversation. And with that, secular and psychological versions of Zen bring challenges to traditional religious language. They push those of us who practice Zen to meet the dichotomies, both perceived and real, between our received traditions and what actually presents in our lives.
I’ve only read two of the five sections of the book, so I’m not sure what sort of Zen Ford favors. My impression is that he is in between secular Zen’s rejection of Buddhist tradition and the full-blown supernaturalism of traditional Buddhism with its talk of past lives, rebirth, and such.
Ford has a chapter called “Four Noble Truths,” but he presents this foundation of Buddhism in a pleasingly modern fashion. Here they are. I’ll then discuss my reaction to the Four Noble Truths.
First. Human suffering, anguish, angst (Dukkha in Sanskrit). This is that visceral noticing of some disquiet that haunts us all. It points to the sorrow that haunts human existence. It is not having what we want, and not wanting what we have. This disquiet is a sense of dis-ease that shadows human life. More broadly, it’s the tension of all existence.
Second. We are composed of parts in constant motion. In truth we’re constantly being created and destroyed. While these “parts” are all insubstantial, our human minds perceive each moment in motion as if it were solid. When we hold too tightly (Samudaya in Sanskrit) onto that which is constantly changing we experience this disequilibrium. It’s the ultimate fallacy of our organizing brains. It serves us in many ways, but ultimately betrays us.
Third. The good news that we need not suffer this way. (Nirodha in Sanskrit). It is within our capacity to break the cycles of clinging and suffering. As some say, pain is unavoidable. But suffering, certainly the worst suffering, is optional.
Fourth. The path, the middle way (Marga in Sanskrit). Usually this is called the Eight-fold Path of Liberation. There is technical language: Right, correct, profitable View, Right Resolve, Right Speech, Right Conduct, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration. I’ve found it very helpful to divide these eight aspects into three parts. The middle way consists of Wisdom, Morality, and Meditation. We’ll return to this.
It seems to me that there’s nothing special about the first three Noble Truths. They are astoundingly obvious.
First. Of course life involves pain, suffering, distress, disquiet. Every person experiences this. Second. Of course we are constantly changing, as is life. That’s why we cling to cherished people, belongings, beliefs, and such. We want an anchor in an ever-shifting sea. Third. Of course there are ways to not cling and suffer so much. Love. Drugs. Psychotherapy. Alcohol. Sex. Rock and roll. Philosophy. Meditation. Friends. Howling at the full moon. All kinds of ways.
So I see the first three Noble Truths as having a sort of well, yeah, that’s obvious ring to them, especially in the way Ford describes them. Traditional Buddhism tries to make it sound like those three truths are some grand discovery of the Buddha, a revelation of sorts. However, simply put, they amount to life is tough, life is always changing, there are ways to make changeable life less tough.
The only noble truth that is unique to Buddhism is the fourth. And that one strikes me as unappealing. It’s just too damn hard, too dogmatic, too rigid, too complicated. Zen is much more appealing, especially in its secular form. Ford points to a simpler way at the end of his “Why Zen?” chapter.
We know we are subject to sickness and old age and death. We know we are on a small rock spinning around a middling star, itself circling some massive black hole. And who knows? There are other motions, which might be other circlings.
And. Very quickly our little Newtonian universe begins to fall apart in the face of very strange things. Rising and falling, but even here, in strange ways.
Sickness, old age, death, and awakening. Meaning and meaninglessness are human constructs. Ways we meet the world. Not the world itself. The world of which we are a part.
So, what about when Zen, no matter what kind of Zen, every version of it falls apart? When it’s forgotten? It is, after all, found within human cultural constructs. Which change. So. Maybe not in our lifetime, but eventually.
It doesn’t seem hard to see a day when the word Zen is forgotten. At least for us to have an idea of that day. Vanished, along with other words we think pretty important at this moment. It all passes. Given enough time we humans will be no more. There will be a time when our little planet itself is consumed by our dying and expanding star.
So?
I find as I turn to what is, as I let go of the speculative part of this, and simply allow my being to be present, many feelings and thoughts race across my brain, electric currents flashing and sparking.
How strange, how strange! A miracle. Sung out of dying stars and the falling rain.
Just this is always just this. Even after the words have burned away The possible spiritual within religions.
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I’m baffled by Zen enthusiasts who don’t do zazen.
Yes, there are sects of Zen that favor scriptural study or koans, but they’re in the minority.
The vast majority of the Zen world says that zazen is the heart of Zen practice. There’s a reason for that. Zazen is what actualizes in living experience all that Zen rhetoric about dropping off body and mind, and seeing through the mind’s noise.
The paradox of zazen practice is that it’s initially painful, boring, and vexing as it reveals the roar of one’s mind. But in my experience, the benefits of zazen far outshine all of the discomfort. Even a short stint of morning zazen empowers me to do zazen all through the day. I’ve found serenity and balance in zazen practice that translates to all my activities.
How easy to we say we have ascended, even intellectually, beyond loss and suffering when these haven’t touched us, dnd then how surprised and depressed when they do? We are still attached to these things, including the dead philosophy of death, that knows no life, and flees moment by moment, another useless thought.
Our wisdom then is very short lived, another passing element of history, out of date and invalid long before we have “discovered” and “embraced” it.
Imagine clinging to a dead and lifeless concept such as Buddhism, or Zen in any form?
It’s clinging to a corpse. A corpse clinging to a corpse. Worse still, dust mingled with dust.
Great job!
@ Spence
Interacting with the late MCS I learned a important thing, apart from whether he had the intention to teach me that lesson, what I believe he did not.
Several times I wrote about that lesson … taking the small path , going through the small door as I use to label it.
That path, is to understand another person in how he or she came to act in a way, that is not acceptable to one, not enjoyable, or harmful etc …. the little door that Christ was going through when he said .. father, forgive them [the roman soldiers] as they do not know what they are doing.
These words should nor arise in my mind, let alone spoken as humans have no power to forgive .. yet they are psychological usefull and important as they draw a person away from his own feelings and thoughts towards the INTENTIONS etc of the wrong doer … in doing so one can come to the conclusion that a person has caused harm, without having any evil intention and or has no idea about the consequences of his or her actions.
People have their own personal motivation to engage with a spiritual practice and also when they turn their backs upon it.
Visiting with an Indian Satsangi a political engaged member of his family, I was informed about the fate of the dalit, the Indian low cast, It was horrible to hear how they were treated generation after generation by the “god loving Brahmins. From him I learned that this mis-conduct of the Brahmins in the name of god was the reason that many of them became atheists, Buddhists etc .. practices and teachings that guide people through life without refering to a God.
People can have solid reasons to feel uncomfortable with teachings and practices ..”in the name of god” …. hahaha
Hi Um
Such religious beliefs can also be empty words, and embracing a comfortable but lifeless concept. Moving from religion to religion, belief of God to belief of no-God, or Atheism to prayer all takes place in the derivative world of our own projection.
But within that dissoluionment is a sliver of light. The life none of us can claim to understand. Yet which compels us.
If we are always turning away from the hound of God chasing after us, fleeing and rejecting all things left and right, even in denial of ourselves, ever more refining those rejections of others we feel have hurt us and ourselves in the process, that speaks to unresolved dynamics. How can that bring us closer to reality?
But to embrace the pain? Embrace the suck?
Salvation.
The rest if these pretty and petty costumes are worthless. Yet people care so much for these costumes with no thought nor care for the health and happiness if the human beings wearing them.
Costumes? Dust to dust. Ashes to ashes.
@ Spence
Well .. one can blame people who are as you describe or not.
Typing these few words I am reminded of an interview with a lady many years ago , who told me here complete life history … after having heard what she had just told me .. for a while I gazed out the window, my mind was empty and I heard myself saying … I hope you understand, you did everything wrong you possibly could do wrong but if I would have had to walk in your shoes I would have acted in the same way .. upon she wept tears .. feeling a load was lifted from her shoulders.
Hi Um
“Many a man would rather you heard his story than grant his request.”
Philip of Stanhope
“Secular Zen” sounds reasonable. Nothing remotely new, secular Buddhism has long been a thing: but absolutely, secular Zen makes a great deal of sense.
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That said: I’m a bit unsure what difference there is between “secular Zen” per se, and secular Buddhism generally. I’m hoping the rest of the book will make that clear. Do please let us know, Brian, if it does.
To clarify, here’s what let me clearly explain what secular Buddhism, as I understand the term, means. That is, obviously it means Buddhism shorn of the supernatural bullshytte and other purely cultural purely traditional irrelevancies. But here’s what the _content_ of secular Buddhism would be:
There’s two elements to Buddhism. The actual praxis of it; and the conceptual elements it brings to the table. In secular terms, and shorn of the superstition and the purely cultural traditions, that would amount to:
The conceptual elements of secular Buddhism would amount to: (1) the Anatta deal; (2) the flux thing, the cause-and-effect thing (that is, the idea that this is _all_ there is to it; not just that this _also_ is); (3) the clear identification of suffering, and desire and aversion as the root of it; (4) the understanding — and no, sorry Brian, this understanding isn’t actually directly obvious — I was saying, the understanding, borne of actual experience, that desire and aversion can be gone beyond, and suffering removed; and (5) a clear conceptual understanding of the actual methods and the actual practices and the actual route via which #4 can be achieved — including mindfulness.
[Not saying we necessarily need agree with each and every bit of all of the above. But the above does comprise, along with any other essentials that I may have inadvertently left out, what the conceptual part of what secular Buddhism would amount to.]
And the praxis of secular Buddhism would be the actual practice of #5 above. And there’s lots of people, in the East no less than in the West, who do actually practice exactly this.
———-
Given the above, I was wondering what “secular Zen” might amount to, that is any different than secular Buddhism generally. And I’m curious to find out, Brian, if this book makes that clear.
After all, Zen is a subset of Buddhism. I don’t think it has any conceptual inputs beyond what its parent stream has already introduced, near a millennium and a half ago before Zen per se, or for that matter Chan per se, came to be as a distinct branch. And if there is, then again, I’m very curious to find out.
And as for the praxis of it: well, that’s simply doing what’s to be done, sans the mumbo jumbo and the bowing and scraping. That’s praxis, and by definition something that can only be practiced (and learned of in the abstract only as precursor to being practiced, or at least evaluated in terms of whether it is worth practicing).
———-
So yeah, that’s where I was coming from. “Secular Zen” makes sense. But I’m not very sure what it actually is. And I’m curious to find out, should this book clearly explain that.
One general comment, that isn’t about this post per se.
Speaking for myself, while sometimes I do comment to express agreement about some particular POV in some particular post; but often enough one doesn’t do that. I mean, if one agrees with something, finds it interesting, and doesn’t have anything substantive to add oneself: then one doesn’t usually, or often, simply comment to say “Yo, I like!”. That seems banal, and a waste of time, both of one’s own and others’ as well.
So that, those times when one disagrees, as well as those times when one seeks clarification (as in my comment just above), are usually the times when one does speak out.
Which might sometimes create a warped picture of one’s appreciation for this place, in someone that isn’t oneself, and doesn’t know what one thinks and feels.
Which is why I thought to come out now and clearly express, all over again, my appreciation of this place Brian’s got going; his literally selfless use of his own time and effort and money to keep this wonderful place up and running; as well as his sheer energy in reading so much of stuff of this nature — well beyond what I myself do, even though I’m hugely into reading myself — and in sharing his insights about such here, which lets us learn so much that we wouldn’t have come across otherwise. (And of course, we aren’t kids, neither physically nor mentally. So “learning” does not mean simply nodding our heads in agreement and reciting catechisms. It also includes contestation, and debate, and sometimes outright disagreement. But it’s all learning nevertheless, that one owes to this place, given this is where it all originates from, our thinking of these things at this time, so very often.)
———-
I’ve said similar before, and I thought to say it again now. Because given the current comment environment, which often comprises just mindless inanities or else dismissive snark, I can see how it can be majorly disappointing to someone that’s going out of their way and putting in so much effort, all to put all of this in front of us on a platter.
Which is why, once more, this clear expression of appreciation. And I’m sure I’m not the only one that thinks this way.
They’re all unappealing to me because I don’t believe in religion.
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