The more you talk and think about it,
the further astray you wander from the truth.
Stop talking and thinking,
and there is nothing you will not be able to know.
To return to the root is to find meaning,
but to pursue appearances is to miss the source.
At the moment of inner enlightenment
there is a going beyond appearance and emptiness.
The changes that appear to occur in the empty world
we call real only because of our ignorance.
When the Buddha was was near death he gave one last talk to to his nearest disciples on how to teach the dharma. He told them to not assert any position nor it's opposite, neither this nor that. He did not want his students to get caught on any single position in our dualistic way of thinking. Many people think that the Buddha's teaching of the "middle way" was a warning against the extremes of asceticism and hedonism, but in fact the teaching was much deeper. The middle way is the path between the assertion of any absolute positions. When I first drove West after growing up on the East Coast in a liberal family, I was driving up the coast of Oregon and I picked up two young guys who happen to work as loggers. They started telling me that East coast liberals-like my self, though they didn't know-would not unequivocally stand for any position. I have heard this complaint several times living in rural Washington. I will say unequivocally that this position is not the middle way. On the other hand in Soto Zen, which surprisingly I think is a little more intellectual then Rinzi Zen, there is often a concerted effort to see every issue and concept from several different positions.
Applying the middle way to the question, should we stop our thought or should we not stop our thought, we might answer neither should we stop thinking nor should we not stop thinking. Before, Seng Tsan told us not to be concerned with stopping thought now he is telling us to stop our thought. Can't he make up his mind? We must understand this issue in all it's subtlety and we cannot do this without experiencing not-thinking. Of course I have not permanently stopped my thought but I advocate the experience.
If we stop our thought do we truly come to understand everything? Don't think that stopping thought or enlightenment is something magical, only that it open up a whole new way of understanding. There is this incredible magical mythology that surrounds this experience we call enlightenment. In much of Asia "enlightenment" and the enlightened are pillars of religion and take the place of what are called in the Judeo-Christian tradition, saints and prophets. They are thought to have all sorts of magical powers. I have met many a student of Buddhism and Hinduism ( another enlightenment based tradition) who are sure that their teacher has magical powers The liturature of these traditions has ascribed all sorts of magical powers to the enlightened. The Buddha could read minds and tell the future, Millarepa the Tibetan yogi could fly and appear simultaneously in multiple places. Certainly we students tend to project our desires for ourselves upon our teachers.
I of course had read all sorts of stuff about great Buddhist Masters and had all sorts of ideas about enlightenment. The enlightened were supposedly all knowing and all seeing. And then when I had the experience and some understanding I understood, that yes I am all knowing and all seeing not because I as an individual know or see every specific thing but I know and see everything in general because I know and see everything as One. To perceive the world through the eye of non-duality is to be all knowing and all seeing. It is also to be everywhere simultaneously. Any yes I can fly because when I look up at a bird I see myself, my large self. This is not magic ( or maybe it is magic) it is just seeing things through a different lens.
With our minds constantly thinking many of us live in a confused and dissatisfied state of mind. The experience of quieting our minds in deep meditation relieves this confusion. In the state of not-thinking we experience an un-confused deeply satisfied state of mind. In this state of mind we know all we need to know and understand all we need to understand. There is one great power that comes with this state of not-thinking, clarity.
To return to the root is to find meaning,
but to pursue appearances is to miss the source.
Ha, now we return to the root? I understand this couplet in a couple of different ways. I once read a book that described consciousness as a series of concentric circles. the outside circle was our surface consciousness, The way we see and think about the world day to day. This outer circle is supported by other subconscious levels of consciousness. Just below the surface is a layer of thoughts that are so subtle that we are not aware we are having them yet we can become aware of them if we make a effort through a practice like meditation to watch our minds work. Below that layer are other layers. There are layers of memories and emotions that rarely if ever rise to the surface but still have an ongoing effect. There is a layer of genetically endowed personality and below that is a layer of genetically endowed instinct but still we are not at the center of the circle. The center of the circle we might describe as the root of consciousness. What resides in this root? Stripped of everything we might think that the root of consciousness is consciousness itself with nothing added, empty consciousness which reflects the world around but doesn't add any thoughts, not even a thought of an I who is conscious. In Zen we call this state of mind Mirror Like Samadhi. Many Zen practitioners think that this is the final goal but how could it be since it is without meaning. Seng Tsan says we are to find meaning if we return to the root. We must ask what comes before consciousness? So here you are sitting in mirror like samadhi and some one asks a question like, what comes before consciousness, and you look at the mirror like samadhi you are sitting in, there are no thoughts differentiating experience into this and that, I and not-I, and then you recognize the whole relm of experience as a single undifferentiated One and you recognize that this One is the root of consciousness. The root is the One. not some state of meditation. And now you understand and now you experience meaning.
When I talk to friends and fellow Zen students like this I often get the objection that there is still an individual who recognizes the One that somehow the enlightened are suppose to be completely un-self-conscious and function as the One. But how could that be? We are humans beings and we think. We are not a lower level of animal that is conscious but not self conscious. If we understand that our root lies in the One then we must change our whole view of what we are and be reborn as that One. Of course we use language to express this and language is filled with dualism but never the less the underlying understanding is now non-dual.
If I remember correctly the book I mentioned called the center of the circle God Consciousness- it was a Hindu philosophical text. The author being a philosopher may have only had a concept of and never experienced the center of the circle but if understood correctly he was not wrong. Of course the word God is filled with all sorts of connotations for most of us but if we understand the meaning as the non-dual One we can call it God or Buddha or the Universe, what ever we want.
And our new reborn consciousness and self-consciousness is not something fundamentally different then our dualistic consciousness and self consciousness. Of course through our practice of meditation it is much quieter but now we have established a new foundation to understanding our self and the whole Universe. And this self consciousness which we once thought to be the root of our suffering is no longer mired in the delusion of an individual self but recognizes itself as the Universes own consciousness and self-consciousness.
My teacher often talks about how most people are pushed around by their senses. If we see things that are pretty we want them. If we experience enjoyable feelings we want more. Conversely we are repelled from experiences of ugliness and unpleasant feelings. This is called Karmic consciousness.
Karma refers to the principle of cause and effect including cause and effect as it works in our psychology. Many of us think of karma as a noun. We say we have this karma or that karma. It is some sort of attribute that causes our fate. A more sophisticated understanding is that karma are causal attributes of our psychology that determine our thoughts and actions in reaction to the events in the world around us. Our experiences and past actions are part of our karma but also our personality and yes the instincts we are born with. It is all a very very complex process. Some Buddhist thinkers have said that all our past experiences, thoughts and actions are like seeds that sprout to form our future experiences, thoughts, and actions (Yogacara School). This is how they describe the activity of karma. Since they believed in reincarnation and they thought that we are all born with karma that comes from past lives. Today we might call this our genetically endowed instincts and personality and understand that it is not a direct result of our personal past lives. Yet with the eye of non-duality we may also understand that the past lives of all beings on this planet is our personal past life and thus understand the process of evolution as the process of karma. And if we extend this understanding further we may think that our karma goes right back to the Big Bang or before.
Yet, when we sit in mirror like samadhi we sit unmoved by the events of the world around us, our consciousness is untouched by our karma. We see the world as it is but are not pushed around by the world. But mirror like samadhi is not something we can carry out into our every day lives as functioning humans. If we are to find a way to exist as functional humans we cannot do this by permanently stopping thought but by changing the foundation of our understanding. This is rebirth into the non-dual.
At the moment of inner enlightenment
there is a going beyond appearance and emptiness.
The changes that appear to occur in the empty world
we call real only because of our ignorance.
One of the foundational teachings of Buddhism is that everything is constantly changing, yet Seng Tsan seems to be saying that this is an illusion. Also the traditional Buddhist understanding of emptiness is that things are empty precisely because they are always changing. Here we have a different view of emptiness and a different view of change. This is the view from the non-dual in which things are empty of individuality because there is no individuality. And the change we experience is also empty and does not push us around because it is also seen from the perspective of the One.
I am not sure I would go so far as to say that things, and beings and change do not exist because what we call existence is the appearance of duality within the the non-dual. Suzuki Roshi had a nice phrase for this, "The Oneness in the duality." This is a perceptive shift which allows us to move within the world and not be pushed around by events.
Also don't think that this perspective shift can be separated from the practice of meditation because it is only through quieting the mind can we perceive the One. If we allow our dualistic thinking mind to hold sway then the non-dual perspective will just become a concept and eventually be burred by our dualistic thoughts. Remember what Seng Tsan wrote, "Be serene in the oneness of things." True Zen samadhi is not about not-thinking per-say but rather about sitting in the perception of the One which can only result from a quiet mind.
the further astray you wander from the truth.
Stop talking and thinking,
and there is nothing you will not be able to know.
To return to the root is to find meaning,
but to pursue appearances is to miss the source.
At the moment of inner enlightenment
there is a going beyond appearance and emptiness.
The changes that appear to occur in the empty world
we call real only because of our ignorance.
When the Buddha was was near death he gave one last talk to to his nearest disciples on how to teach the dharma. He told them to not assert any position nor it's opposite, neither this nor that. He did not want his students to get caught on any single position in our dualistic way of thinking. Many people think that the Buddha's teaching of the "middle way" was a warning against the extremes of asceticism and hedonism, but in fact the teaching was much deeper. The middle way is the path between the assertion of any absolute positions. When I first drove West after growing up on the East Coast in a liberal family, I was driving up the coast of Oregon and I picked up two young guys who happen to work as loggers. They started telling me that East coast liberals-like my self, though they didn't know-would not unequivocally stand for any position. I have heard this complaint several times living in rural Washington. I will say unequivocally that this position is not the middle way. On the other hand in Soto Zen, which surprisingly I think is a little more intellectual then Rinzi Zen, there is often a concerted effort to see every issue and concept from several different positions.
Applying the middle way to the question, should we stop our thought or should we not stop our thought, we might answer neither should we stop thinking nor should we not stop thinking. Before, Seng Tsan told us not to be concerned with stopping thought now he is telling us to stop our thought. Can't he make up his mind? We must understand this issue in all it's subtlety and we cannot do this without experiencing not-thinking. Of course I have not permanently stopped my thought but I advocate the experience.
If we stop our thought do we truly come to understand everything? Don't think that stopping thought or enlightenment is something magical, only that it open up a whole new way of understanding. There is this incredible magical mythology that surrounds this experience we call enlightenment. In much of Asia "enlightenment" and the enlightened are pillars of religion and take the place of what are called in the Judeo-Christian tradition, saints and prophets. They are thought to have all sorts of magical powers. I have met many a student of Buddhism and Hinduism ( another enlightenment based tradition) who are sure that their teacher has magical powers The liturature of these traditions has ascribed all sorts of magical powers to the enlightened. The Buddha could read minds and tell the future, Millarepa the Tibetan yogi could fly and appear simultaneously in multiple places. Certainly we students tend to project our desires for ourselves upon our teachers.
I of course had read all sorts of stuff about great Buddhist Masters and had all sorts of ideas about enlightenment. The enlightened were supposedly all knowing and all seeing. And then when I had the experience and some understanding I understood, that yes I am all knowing and all seeing not because I as an individual know or see every specific thing but I know and see everything in general because I know and see everything as One. To perceive the world through the eye of non-duality is to be all knowing and all seeing. It is also to be everywhere simultaneously. Any yes I can fly because when I look up at a bird I see myself, my large self. This is not magic ( or maybe it is magic) it is just seeing things through a different lens.
With our minds constantly thinking many of us live in a confused and dissatisfied state of mind. The experience of quieting our minds in deep meditation relieves this confusion. In the state of not-thinking we experience an un-confused deeply satisfied state of mind. In this state of mind we know all we need to know and understand all we need to understand. There is one great power that comes with this state of not-thinking, clarity.
To return to the root is to find meaning,
but to pursue appearances is to miss the source.
Ha, now we return to the root? I understand this couplet in a couple of different ways. I once read a book that described consciousness as a series of concentric circles. the outside circle was our surface consciousness, The way we see and think about the world day to day. This outer circle is supported by other subconscious levels of consciousness. Just below the surface is a layer of thoughts that are so subtle that we are not aware we are having them yet we can become aware of them if we make a effort through a practice like meditation to watch our minds work. Below that layer are other layers. There are layers of memories and emotions that rarely if ever rise to the surface but still have an ongoing effect. There is a layer of genetically endowed personality and below that is a layer of genetically endowed instinct but still we are not at the center of the circle. The center of the circle we might describe as the root of consciousness. What resides in this root? Stripped of everything we might think that the root of consciousness is consciousness itself with nothing added, empty consciousness which reflects the world around but doesn't add any thoughts, not even a thought of an I who is conscious. In Zen we call this state of mind Mirror Like Samadhi. Many Zen practitioners think that this is the final goal but how could it be since it is without meaning. Seng Tsan says we are to find meaning if we return to the root. We must ask what comes before consciousness? So here you are sitting in mirror like samadhi and some one asks a question like, what comes before consciousness, and you look at the mirror like samadhi you are sitting in, there are no thoughts differentiating experience into this and that, I and not-I, and then you recognize the whole relm of experience as a single undifferentiated One and you recognize that this One is the root of consciousness. The root is the One. not some state of meditation. And now you understand and now you experience meaning.
When I talk to friends and fellow Zen students like this I often get the objection that there is still an individual who recognizes the One that somehow the enlightened are suppose to be completely un-self-conscious and function as the One. But how could that be? We are humans beings and we think. We are not a lower level of animal that is conscious but not self conscious. If we understand that our root lies in the One then we must change our whole view of what we are and be reborn as that One. Of course we use language to express this and language is filled with dualism but never the less the underlying understanding is now non-dual.
If I remember correctly the book I mentioned called the center of the circle God Consciousness- it was a Hindu philosophical text. The author being a philosopher may have only had a concept of and never experienced the center of the circle but if understood correctly he was not wrong. Of course the word God is filled with all sorts of connotations for most of us but if we understand the meaning as the non-dual One we can call it God or Buddha or the Universe, what ever we want.
And our new reborn consciousness and self-consciousness is not something fundamentally different then our dualistic consciousness and self consciousness. Of course through our practice of meditation it is much quieter but now we have established a new foundation to understanding our self and the whole Universe. And this self consciousness which we once thought to be the root of our suffering is no longer mired in the delusion of an individual self but recognizes itself as the Universes own consciousness and self-consciousness.
My teacher often talks about how most people are pushed around by their senses. If we see things that are pretty we want them. If we experience enjoyable feelings we want more. Conversely we are repelled from experiences of ugliness and unpleasant feelings. This is called Karmic consciousness.
Karma refers to the principle of cause and effect including cause and effect as it works in our psychology. Many of us think of karma as a noun. We say we have this karma or that karma. It is some sort of attribute that causes our fate. A more sophisticated understanding is that karma are causal attributes of our psychology that determine our thoughts and actions in reaction to the events in the world around us. Our experiences and past actions are part of our karma but also our personality and yes the instincts we are born with. It is all a very very complex process. Some Buddhist thinkers have said that all our past experiences, thoughts and actions are like seeds that sprout to form our future experiences, thoughts, and actions (Yogacara School). This is how they describe the activity of karma. Since they believed in reincarnation and they thought that we are all born with karma that comes from past lives. Today we might call this our genetically endowed instincts and personality and understand that it is not a direct result of our personal past lives. Yet with the eye of non-duality we may also understand that the past lives of all beings on this planet is our personal past life and thus understand the process of evolution as the process of karma. And if we extend this understanding further we may think that our karma goes right back to the Big Bang or before.
Yet, when we sit in mirror like samadhi we sit unmoved by the events of the world around us, our consciousness is untouched by our karma. We see the world as it is but are not pushed around by the world. But mirror like samadhi is not something we can carry out into our every day lives as functioning humans. If we are to find a way to exist as functional humans we cannot do this by permanently stopping thought but by changing the foundation of our understanding. This is rebirth into the non-dual.
At the moment of inner enlightenment
there is a going beyond appearance and emptiness.
The changes that appear to occur in the empty world
we call real only because of our ignorance.
One of the foundational teachings of Buddhism is that everything is constantly changing, yet Seng Tsan seems to be saying that this is an illusion. Also the traditional Buddhist understanding of emptiness is that things are empty precisely because they are always changing. Here we have a different view of emptiness and a different view of change. This is the view from the non-dual in which things are empty of individuality because there is no individuality. And the change we experience is also empty and does not push us around because it is also seen from the perspective of the One.
I am not sure I would go so far as to say that things, and beings and change do not exist because what we call existence is the appearance of duality within the the non-dual. Suzuki Roshi had a nice phrase for this, "The Oneness in the duality." This is a perceptive shift which allows us to move within the world and not be pushed around by events.
Also don't think that this perspective shift can be separated from the practice of meditation because it is only through quieting the mind can we perceive the One. If we allow our dualistic thinking mind to hold sway then the non-dual perspective will just become a concept and eventually be burred by our dualistic thoughts. Remember what Seng Tsan wrote, "Be serene in the oneness of things." True Zen samadhi is not about not-thinking per-say but rather about sitting in the perception of the One which can only result from a quiet mind.
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