Buddhism

 We can better understand the notion of klesha or kilesa (Pali), which is often translated by “defilement”, by the compound upakkilesa (upa + kilesa) which The Pali-English Dictionary defines as “anything that spoils or obstructs.”  

But now we have to ask, what does upakkilesa spoil or obstruct? We find the answer to our question in the Kilesasamyutta (27) of the Samyutta-Nikaya of the Pali canon.  It is mind that is obstructed and obscured which obviously prevents it from directly apperceiving itself (this is the substance of mind which has always been devoid of defilements).  

Borrowing an idea from the Samadhiraja Sutra, when mind’s determination of itself is coarse, which in this case means it is defiled (kilesa-ized!), it always fails to resonate with itself as pure Mind.  As a result, it stays in samsaric bondage.

Making this bondage even worse, according to the Buddha, speaking in the Kilesasamyutta (S. iii. 234), the Five Aggregates or the same, the psychophysical body, is a kilesa/defilement of mind (cittasseso upakkileso).  

Such a body affords no refuge.  In fact, much of this body’s inner life is a beehive of secondary defilements consisting of anger, grudge holding, action which results from anger, the intention to harm, jealousy, pretense, hypocrisy, shamelessness, avarice, pride, lack of faith, laziness, depression and so on.  Incidentally, these defilements, while serving to bind us to samsara also can propel us into lower states of rebirth.

There is no exit from this self-created hell until mind, so to speak, passes through the defilements it has generated finally coming to rest in its own pure substance or nature.  Now at rest with itself as the absolute medium which transcends the configurations of the medium (and by implication, samsara), Mind sees everything like an ethereal flower.

“When thou reviewest the world with thy wisdom and compassion, it is to thee like an ethereal flower, and of which we cannot say whether it is created or vanishing, as [the categories of] being and non-being are inapplicable to it” (Lankavatara Sutra).

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The famous Chinese Buddhist monk, pilgrim, and translator, I-Tsing (also I-Ching) (635–713), spent over twenty years in India.  The Buddhism which he encountered he said was like a golden cane that had been broken into eighteen pieces (i.e., the sectarianism of postmortem Buddhism with its eighteen schools, or twenty depending on other sources).  Nevertheless, according to I-Tsing, the pure essence or substance of Buddhism remained unchanged despite the apparent outer changes.

There is no doubt that from I-Tsing’s time, when he lived and studied in India, to the present, much of the external side of Buddhism has continued to change and adapt to different cultural demands.  Whether or not the golden essence or substance of Buddhism remains unchanged is certainly up for debate.  What certainly has changed, looking at the West, is the teacher and pupil relationship.  The picture I-Tsing paints is a foreign one for us moderns.  Citing from Lalmani Joshi’s excellent work, Studies in the Buddhistic Culture of India (1987),

“Early in the morning everyday a pupil went, after having cleaned his mouth, to his teacher and supplied him with tooth-wood, water, washing-basin and a towel.  Then he went to worship the holy image and took a round (pradaksina) of the temple” (p. 129).

After the pupil made his round he returned to the teacher and had to make a salutation with clasped hands “touching the ground (with his head) three times” (ibid.) who then inquires as to his teacher’s health and so on.

During the real process of education the teacher taking a seat selects passages from the Buddhist canon that he finds suitable for the education of the pupil.  He then covers the material for the student leaving no stone unturned showing, in fact, great erudition in the process.  After this, the teacher examines the moral character of the pupil and if he finds transgressions he then makes the pupil seek the proper remedy so it won’t happen again.

After this, citing from Joshi’s book, 

“The pupil rubbed or massaged the teacher’s body, folded or pressed his clothes and often swept the apartment and the court-yard.  It was his duty to examine whether or not the water for his teacher was free from insects, etc.  Thus ‘if there be anything to be done, he does all on behalf of is teacher.  This is the manner in which one pays respect to one’s superior’” (ibid.).

The teacher, of course, wasn’t a prick.  He had great affection for his pupil.  Citing again from Joshi, according to I-Tsing, “In case of a pupil’s illness, his teacher himself nurses  and supplies all the medicine needed, and pays attention to him as if he were his child” (p. 129–130).

In some respects, the teacher/pupil relationship that I-Tsing describes, while being strange for a modern is not totally oddball.  To be sure, the relationship is not like the teacher/pupil relationship in a modern high school or a university which is more or less authoritarian, imperious, and impersonal in the example of the film, The Paper Chase (1973). 

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When one tugs at a single thing in nature, one finds it attached to the rest of the world.

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It should be obvious that a language is much different from what it describes which leads to the conclusion that words, while being useful, can never describe something completely.  For example, the words “Dharma” or “Mind” can only point to the general direction of possible noetic experience in the case of Buddhism.  But to actually experience the full import of Dharma or Mind we would have to intuit, directly, their actual presence or nature.

With the seeming difficulty of conveying what Dharma or Mind means through words, as much as we can manage, language has to be put aside while we internally quest for the actual experience of Mind.  Especially with Mind, which is at the heart of Mahayana Buddhism; while language is very helpful and in some respects certainly necessary, the call to become directly acquainted with Mind means that, at some point, we have to put down our books and look within for it.  Only after finding it will Buddhist literature about Mind make perfect sense which amounts to a kind of test.  In other words, if our intuition is correct, the Sutras and other texts will read easily like the children’s book, The Little Engine that Could.  On the other hand, if our intuition is incorrect, such as believing “awareness” is Mind, the Sutras, Tantras, treatises, and commentaries, will hardly make any sense.

Those who cannot meet this challenge; especially those who have the desire to turn Buddhism into some kind of interpersonal teaching to help people cope with samsara, Buddhist literature which points to Mind, and for that matter the Dharma, will be of no real interest or use.  These are the same people who celebrate the iconoclasm of Zen as when, for example, Tê-shan took the commentaries of the Vajracchedikâ Sutra (The Diamond Sutra) and burned them.  What they seem to forget, however, is that Tê-shan only burned the commentary after he had a profound awakening into the nature of Mind with the help of the old woman at the tea house and Zen master Ch'ung-hsin.  (I am positive that after his awakening Tê-shan could easily answer the tea house keeper’s question put to him earlier about the nature of Mind.)

Although they are strictly not iconoclasts, I am especially miffed by some Buddhists whose teachings gloss over Mind or simply ignore it focusing instead on the interpersonal, or more specifically, interpersonal control, as if Buddhism is all about psychology.  Arguably, this really shows contempt for Buddhism and the real message of the Buddha found in its literature which I have to say is not about how to cope with samsara but, instead, how to transcend it.  The two are quite different.  Maybe this is another blog.

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Buddhism sees the human body and the phenomenal world as illusory.  This doesn’t mean that Buddhism denies the existence of phenomenal reality, just that it is not the way we presently imagine it to be.  The true reality of the world is much different, in fact, which makes our perception of it an illusory one.  According to the Lankavatara Sutra, “Generated things do not exist the way the immature discriminate them" (na bhavo vidyate satyam yatha balair vikalpyate). 

The world and our body, of course, appear to us as being real but then appearance is always deceiving.  Moreover, it is only when appearance becomes completely extinguished that we are finally able to see and to realize the Dharma-body, and of course, our Buddha-nature both of which are not an illusion. 

If we first understand what ‘illusion’ means it will be easy for us to understand further Buddhism’s position with regard to the world be believe is real, but isn’t.

First of all, illusion isn’t the same as a hallucination or a delusion.  With both of these trustworthy data is absent.  You might even say, for example, that belief in God is a kind of delusion since the determining elements are entirely imaginative.

Illusion, unlike a hallucination or a delusion, involves a mistaken interpretation which is based on reliable data in the example of Adelson’s checkered-shadow illusion which is not a mistaken perception but reflects, instead, our inability to realize and understand, fully, the mechanism that generates the illusion that squares A and B are different when in fact they have identical luminance! 

The essence of illusion, we could say, reveals a radical difference between what we immediately perceive and believe to be a fact, and the real process which underlies and produces it.  Another example of this is our three dimensional view of the world which arises from a two dimensional retinal image.  More profound, we have a real sense or impression of being in a body when in fact we are not in it at all.  Still, it is almost an unconquerable illusion that we are situated in a body.  But for a Buddha who has conquered this illusion, the true body (dharmakaya) precedes and is anterior to the illusory one.  The illusory one is continually arising and falling in front of us where no spatial separation exists between the primary transcendent body and the samsaric, arising and falling one.  Lack of spatial separation acts to make the illusion compelling and almost perfect.  We believe we are this body.  When we add craving to the equation, which acts to keep us in bondage to the body so that the body’s pain we even consider to be our own pain, stepping out of the illusion proves almost impossible.

Nevertheless, while we remain victims of this apparently insidious illusion with little or no hope of waking up from it, a way out of it is provided through the study Buddhism in which the Buddha never tires of telling us that the Five Aggregates or skandhas, are not our self.  These aggregates, according to the Buddha, are like foam, a bubble, a mirage, a plantain-tree (when the leaf-sheaths are taken away, no core remains), and a magician’s creation.  Likewise the world we perceive through them is illusory and empty like sky-flowers.

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Feet touch the damp Earth as green, wet leaves stick to well worn heels as they reach a small clearing on the edge of a forest. The smell of Earthy life fills lungs and relaxes muscles. A reverent hush rolls through the emerald forest and the silent figure stops to gaze up into the rain soaked branches just as a cool drop falls upon the fore head–the third eye. The person smiles, breathes deeply and methodically and slowly continues down the meandering path until they disappear into another dense stand of forest as quickly as they appeared. Somewhere a crow announces its arrival.

-By James R. Ure

PHOTO CREDIT: A misty morning on a section of the Appalachian Trail outside Blairsville on Blood Mountain, the trail’s highest point in Georgia. By Erik S. Lesser for The New York Times.

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Am I too freaking dumb to understand Buddhism?  As we might expect, most teachers of Buddhism would, if you put this question to them about yourself, say no.  However, there are a lot of assumptions that come with such a no.  If asked this question, I would tell the person who asked it that being too freaking dumb largely depends on how much work and time they are willing to put into understanding Buddhism on its own terms.  In other words, there is the assumption that someone will actually take the time to study Buddhism seriously which means they ain’t too freaking dumb.  

Often what makes it seem like we are too freaking dumb is, most likely, our impatience.  We easily become discouraged because we can’t figure out Buddhism in under two minutes! (If it takes longer than a commercial—forget it!)  If you are one of these impatient people you are freaking dumb, to be brutally honest.  

Another problem that keeps coming up, which makes us seem too freaking dumb is our closet full of a priori assumptions, mainly about the world and our perceptual grasp of it.  We refuse to believe that the world we see through our senses is not the real world.  But more importantly, we believe this carnal body with its sensory organs, through which the world is perceived, is who we are (it is not!).  Or we might even believe that there is nothing beyond this body; that when we die that’s it—it all goes back to the carbon cycle.

I should mention that our pride helps to make us freaking dumb, too, in which self-interest dominates; in fact, so much self-interest that we try to avoid anything that might disturb or break our sense of self worth (which no doubt is excessive).  Such pride is built from illusion; believing of the illusory, ‘I am this’ (P., eso aham asmi).  

Trying to be freaking dumb takes hard work!  Let’s not forget that.  We have to make sure that our teachers only teach certain things that agree with us lest the fictional world we carry about in our heads comes crashing down around us.  Perish the thought that our teachers might decide to teach us the discourses (Sutras) of the Buddha!  We even believe it is better to dumb down Buddhism, so much that we might believe living with a difficult person is nirvana or Buddhahood is how we deal with our boss or kids.

But maybe the problem has nothing to do with being freaking dumb.  The problem could be that, in our heart of hearts, we don’t really want to change—I mean, real change is difficult.  As I see it, the majority of people don’t want a religion to change them.  Instead, they are trying to find a religion or a philosophy that already agrees with their view of the world.  And for some, Buddhism seems okay as long as it is not taken up seriously.

I don’t think anyone is too freaking dumb to understand Buddhism; and it is the job of real teachers to teach people, first, they are more intelligent than they presently imagine; and they have a spiritual responsibility to utilize their brain, which is not going to be an easy task without sweat and tears. 

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I have from time to time heard of monks who can meditate in the freezing cold and maintain a warm body temperature, and those who have a high threshold for pain. Well, it seems that science has proven that meditation helps reduce pain.

AFP, March 3, 2010

Montreal, Canada — ZEN meditation helps lower sensitivity to pain by thickening a part of the brain that regulates emotion and painful sensations, according to a study published recently. University of Montreal researchers compared the grey matter thickness of 17 Zen meditators and 18 non-meditators and found evidence that practising the centuries-old discipline can reinforce a central part of the brain called the anterior cingulate. “Through training, Zen meditators appear to thicken certain areas of their cortex and this appears to underlie their lower sensitivity to pain,” lead author Joshua Grant said in a statement.

Building on an earlier study, the researchers measured thermal pain sensitivity by applying a heated plate to the calf of participants. This was followed by scanning the brains of subjects with structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The MRI results showed central brain regions that regulate emotion and pain were significantly thicker in meditators compared to non-meditators.

James: This isn’t news to Buddhism because reports of over-coming pain have been known in Buddhist history for centuries. It is interesting though to see science proving it. It makes sense though that meditation, which regulates the mind would help reduce pain. There is clearly a connection between the mind and body, so it isn’t any wonder that Buddhists teach that oneness of body and mind through meditation and mindfulness opens the way for a calmer state of being. This is proving that through meditation one can literally rewire the brain, which surely has something to do with realizing long-term enlightenment.

I have noticed actually a higher pain threshold since beginning my Buddhist practice. I blew it off at first as being pseudo-science experiences but this makes me rethink that position. When I get tattoos I can sit through the pain to where at times it actually feels good!! I think that’s in part because I meditate while getting the tattoo. The first few tattoos that I got where quite painful and ironically enough that was a time before I was practicing Buddhist meditation.

This also makes me think of the pain experienced from doing sitting meditation when first starting out or when returning to a dormant practice. Because the more you practice, the less painful it seems to get:

“The often painful posture associated with Zen meditation may lead to thicker cortex and lower pain sensitivity,” Grant opined. Several of the meditators tolerated a maximum 53°C produced by a heating plate. They appeared to further reduce their pain partly through slower breathing: 12 breaths per minute versus an average of 15 breaths for non-meditators. “Slower breathing certainly coincided with reduced pain and may influence pain by keeping the body in a relaxed state,” Grant said in the earlier study. Ultimately, Zen meditators experience an 18% reduction in pain sensitivity, according to the original study.

James: If everything is interdependent and interconnected then clearly it makes sense that the body can be tempered by the mind when its steered in the right direction. The mind in my opinion isn’t entirely useless or bad as some Buddhists might believe. I see it as a wild horse that if tamed, it can accomplish some amazing things. After all, if we shut off the mind completely then we’d be piles of mush unable to be moved to practice compassion, loving-kindness and good will.

ADDENDUM: The blog just surpassed the 400,000 mark of visits–Thanks to everyone for all your visits, comments and conservations. Let’s keep it going!! Bowing…

~Peace to all beings~

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The Guardian’s Mark Vernon has a brief review yesterday of Stephen Batchelor’s latest book, “Confession of a Buddhist Atheist.”

Vernon notes that the “anti-religion” Christopher Hitchens comes out endorsing this new work, which seems a bit strange after writing in 2007 “of Buddhists as discarding their minds as well as their sandals.” Perhaps he’s taken the time to look a little more deeply into Buddhism (take note Bill Maher, Brit Hume, etc).

Batchelor, he describes as the “vanguard of attempts to forge an authentically western Buddhism.” Having read and enjoyed “Buddhism Without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening” as well as “Living with the Devil” I happily agree with this claim.

Vernon goes on: “For myself, as an agnostic, I was saddened that Batchelor has now definitively opted for atheism: the closure on the transcendent that decision represents felt like a partial turning away from his previous open efforts to discern the nature of things.”

Which of course got me thinking, is Buddhism (in the West?) or should it be (anywhere) atheistic or agnostic? A third option, one espoused by one of our fellow Buddho-Bloggers, Adam, is Apatheism. I tend to think that Adam’s view most closely hits the mark of the early Buddhist suttas. The Buddha just didn’t much care about God (Brahma), Gods (Devas), etc. He taught about them at times, such as how to reach the “Realms of Brahma” by practicing loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. He even equated this “Realm of Brahma” -if attained by these practices- with “release of the mind” (cetto-vimutti). While traditionally this is felt to be a step shy of awakening (bodhi / nibbana), at least one great contemporary scholar thinks they (tradition) got him (the Buddha) wrong: perfect loving-kindness etc is awakening (see “How Buddhism Began” for details).

But the Buddha also made fun of the Gods, including Brahma, suggesting that he was merely deluded in thinking of himself as the “creator” of all other beings (because he was the first to appear in his realm), and that he didn’t have the answers that the Buddha did regarding the ends of the world (universe). But Gods do also play a supporting roll in Buddhism throughout its history. It was a Brahma, Sahampati, that asked the Buddha to teach his Dharma, even though it was so profound that few would understand it. And the Buddha is said to have risen to Tusita heaven to teach his -then deceased- mother.

As one of, I assume many, in the West that came to Buddhism after a period of Atheism (and agnosticism, and anti-theism), I can appreciate the article’s discussion of Humanists (oh yea, I was one of those too) flocking to see and read Batchelor’s works. As a college student studying Buddhism, one of the most important lessons I received was that Buddhism is more a system of orthopraxis than it is of orthodoxy. What this means is that it is your practice that counts, not your beliefs. To me this suggests that Buddhism is ‘big’ enough to embrace theists (especially those of a mystical leaning), atheists, agnostics, apatheists, and others without contradiction. So our quarrels about correct understanding of God in relation to the path may be quite mistaken to begin with.

Thank you from the Progressive Buddhism bloggers

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 Hagiography literally means “sacred writing” but carries with it more of a technical meaning referring to a branch of literature dealing with biographies of religious persons usually inspired by veneration.  In the life of Dogen, for example, the hagiographical material portrays Dogen’s life in a certain way.  We read the life of Dogen as that of a Soto sect saint who fits the needs of Sotoshu.  

Other facts about Dogen’s life, especially about what he wrote are much more complicated.  Those who study Dogen in academia, if they wish to know the real Dogen, can’t allow themselves to fall prey to hagiographical accounts.  It also make sense for those of us who are interested in Dogen’s religious message that we read and study Dogen without biases or credulity avoiding, as much as possible, the packaged hagiography of a saint.  

It is almost a truism to say this, but hagiographical biographies of religious saints like Mother Teresa, for example, are really so much propaganda.  An idealized portrayal of Mother Teresa is useful in selling the dogmas of the Church—and Dogen’s hagiography helps to sell Soto Zen.  In some ways, hagiography is less important than what the particular saint means in his works as something objectively meant in the way of an assertion or at least a clear implication of one.  

If as a student of Zen we wish to find the real Dogen beyond the facade of hagiography, we have to examine what he said so as to find out what is meant.  And if we wish to understand Dogen by way of Buddhism then we must compare what he said (or meant) with the canon of Buddhism.  In doing this we may better be able to discover what Dogen was trying to market in 13th century Japan which, by the way, didn’t sell all that well.  But more importantly, we may find that Dogen’s Zen may not fully resonate with Buddhism.

For modern followers of Dogen, particularly in the West, what they have inherited from Japan is Dogen’s practice of “just sitting” (shikantaza) in which “sitting meditation” (zazen) is believed to be the only way to enlightenment.  This belief, I need to point out, rests on Dogen’s particular belief that “all existence is the Buddha-nature” even though this idea is not found in Buddhism.  This is somewhat ironic because Dogen said “the true intention of the Buddha can be found only in the Sutras”!

For beginners, it is easy to become mesmerized by all that comes with Dogen’s understanding of Buddhism and Zen.  It is also difficult to wake up from such a trance if we have neglected first to study the canon of Buddhism, especially the Mahayana canon, relying instead on Dogen’s works.

I realize that this might provoke the ire of those who exclusively follow the teachings of Dogen and Zen masters who believe in Dogen’s particular view of Buddhism.  But reason reminds us that we cannot practice Buddhism or Zen by looking only through Dogen’s spectacles.  We must first have the big picture, then see where Dogen fits in.  Beginners, especially, need to be cautious.  Following personalities like Dogen instead of the Dharma (i.e., the big picture) is a great mistake.  It will make spiritual progress almost impossible.  I can’t emphasize enough that veterans and beginners need to include Sutra reading and study along with their practice of ‘sitting’.  This means reading the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, the Lankavatara Sutra, the Lotus Sutra, and many others—including the Pali canon (Nikayas).  These are huge gold mines.  Personally speaking, I don’t find much gold in Dogen’s works.

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