Machine Head: Zen Koans

Machine Head
The Koan's Transformative Power
By
Nicholas Sayers

Buddhism
May 7th, 2009
Professor Nancy Martin

Zen consciousness strives for the goal of breaking through the duality of the apparent world and responding to the fullness of emptiness. To do this, the Zen mind must break all subjective and rational thought, which leads to an awareness of nothingness. For centuries the method employed by Zen (more specifically Rinzai) was that of the koan, an absurdity that wears down the mechanical mind so one can experience satori. (Satori is the constant undoing of layers of illusion that reality presents the mind, which attaches to it.) Through the use of koans and the goal of satori, one can radically transform into a being connected intimately to the infinite emptiness behind all form. This connection to emptiness and all beings creates a consciousness without fear or duality, which leads the way to an unadulterated spiritual freedom.

A common method of Rinzai Zen is the use of koans. A koan is a puzzle with no apparent trick. This definition only scratches the surface. In practice, it is a way to exhaust rational thought or shock the mind out of the rational level. A Zen master will ask a student to explain the sound of one hand clapping. The mind has no rational answer for this and there never will be. However, through the deep act of trying to rationalize it, one will exhaust the rational. This opens the mind to a revelation. This revelation is satori. Satori is a flicker of enlightenment, where one sees beyond the rational and material. After the mind loses its rational thought process, a door is opened so that a Zen student can find the true answer which he seeks. One may attain satori only for an instant. Just because a person reaches satori once, this does not mean that he or she is enlightened.

Satori is an ongoing quest—one that will not end until death. It can be described as a light bulb flickering: when it is off the rational mind blinds the person, when it is on the light hits one and satori is attained for that instance, until the light is turned off again. In Zen Flesh, Zen Bone the story “Three Days More” depicts a student who returns to his master upset that he cannot answer what the sound of one hand clapping is like.[1] The master sends him back to keep meditating on the matter, but the student still cannot attain enlightenment. Finally, the master tells him that if he doesn’t have an answer after three more days, he should commit suicide. The student becomes enlightened on the second day. The impending doom of suicide shocked the student’s mind into letting go of the rational and finding the truth, leading to satori.

The roots of the pithy absurdity that is the koan trace back to the patriarchs of Ch'an Buddhism in China. Koan, or kung-an in Chinese originates from "the realm of jurisprudence in medieval China."[2] It means bench of a magistrate translated, which came to signify a record of a magistrate's decision on a case. The secular etymology was taken by Ch'an masters when they were commenting on "old cases," or "passages from the patriarchal records," because their ability to comment asserted a level of "rank and spiritual authority of the master."[3] A master's commentary was usually given in semiprivate or private environment, which is a precursor to the intense relationship seen between master and disciple in Japan. By asserting spiritual authority, the master now can be likened to a secular judge, because the master can gage and pass judgment on a disciple's quest for enlightenment. In these cases, being guilty is a state of ignorance and innocence "is equated to with awakening."[4]

Kung-an evolved to refer to written dialogues and judgments on students, which started to resemble a legal "standard" within Ch'an schools. The past judgments by masters became a way for new masters to weigh a disciple's progress with precedence. The idea of a master's commentary being used as a quasi-legal document in spiritual progress becomes problematic for Zen. In the Zen story What Are You Doing! What Are You Saying!, there is Mu-nan, an old master nearing death, who has a book which has commentaries and notes from the past seven generations of masters. This book is dear to Mu-nan and he wants to pass it on to his successor Shoju, who refuses the book many times. Finally Shoju takes the book:

The two happened to be talking before a brazier. The instant
Shoju felt the book in his hands he thrust it into the flaming
coals. He had no lust for possessions. Mu-nan, who never had
been angry before, yelled: "What are you doing!" Shoju shouted
back: "What are you saying!"[5]

If koans were being viewed as footprints "which monks could 'track,' tracing them back to their original" enlightened mind, then there is a threat of attachment to a sort of path to enlightenment, which is dangerous.[6]

During the Sung dynasty, Ta-hui changed kung-an study from a gradual search for the writer's enlightened mind through reading and contemplation in a rational manner to a "cultivation of trance states as a means of cutting of discursive thought."[7] Here the kung-an becomes shortened to a "contemplating phrase," which was used by practitioner to transcend intellectual thought and reach "sudden enlightenment."[8] The concept of sudden enlightenment carried over to Japanese Zen--most prominently in Rinzai--which is called satori. The progression of the kung-an in Ch'an Buddhism has influenced many key aspects of Zen practice. Although koans started off in a very different context they became short contemplating phrases. The koan, on the other hand, cannot be reduced to its social and literary contexts. The transformative aspects of it must be analyzed. As D.T. Suzuki puts it, "Ko literally means 'public' and an is 'a document.' But 'a public document' has nothing to do with Zen."[9]

Before examining what spiritual and psychological implications the koan holds for the Zen mind, the mechanical and categorizing nature of thought must be explored. From an early age the brain is trained to repeat processes so that life is more efficient. The brain is turned into a machine with categories of logic, which make it easy to communicate ideas to each other. This is essential for humans to live, but there is a collapse into this machine-like thinking that creates a conciseness, which loses its roots in boundless infinity. Zen consciousness sees consciousness as that obstacle.[10] When the mind is presented with true reality, it cannot experience it in abstraction, logic, or propositional language. That is why terms like the fullness of emptiness and infinity are used. The terms point in the direction of understanding that which is not understandable.[11] The mind only gets in the way of satori, because it tries to encapsulate it in human logic. The realization that one's consciousness is the consciousness of all things in an ocean of non-duality, cannot be realized by the brain because the brain perpetuates an agenda of attachment to the world through conceptualizations. The mind tells humans that nothingness cannot exist because they only see matter. That same mind tells one to reject something, which falls outside of a trained comfort zone.

Thought is a limited reaction to things around us, Zen does not want one to react; it wants someone to respond. "Response involves the whole being of man in his freedom and in his capacity to 'see' and 'move on'" while "reaction is nothing more than the mechanical, perhaps astutely and dishonestly improvised, answer of one's superficial self."[12] This is how a roshi, or master, gauges his students work on a presented koan. Is the student reacting to the absurd koan? Or is the student responding? A good indication of a reaction is trying to express the "answer" of a koan in words or logical thought.

Zen masters consistently keep their students in check by destroying preconceptions to better help them to release their mechanical thinking. There is one story where a student, Ma-tsu, was in deep meditation and his master asks him what he is doing and Ma-tsu replies "I wish to become a Buddha."[13]

Thereupon the master picked up a tile and stated rubbing it on a stone.
Ma-tsu asked "what are you doing, Master?" "I am polishing this tile
to make it a mirror," [the master] replied. "How can you make a mirror
by rubbing a tile?" exclaimed Ma-tsu. "How can one become a Buddha
by sitting in mediation?" countered the master.[14]

The master is trying to illustrate that satori cannot be contained in a systematic process. One who meditates to become a Buddha is missing the point. The setting of the goal is an attachment to a preconception of what a Buddha entails. In reality, everything is already inside the human psyche. Ritual can become the slave of the mind; this is what the koan tries to stop.

There is no answer to the question "what is the sound of one hand clapping?"[15] The intellectual mind cannot answer it. The brain will try with all its might to react to the koan by trying to solve the puzzle through rational thought.[16] This is perfectly normal. The koan wants the mind to ask questions and work hard because after a while, it is shocked or wore out, which shuts it down for an instant. This instant is satori. In the exhaustion of the brain "psychology must be transcended," which roots the individual back to the original nature of all being: nothingness.[17] In the moment one can respond with his or her entire being. By transcending the brain, one is delving into a purely spiritual experience where one is connected to the boundlessness of reality. Since the logical confines of words in this essay can do little to explain the experience of truly being present in reality, poetry must be sought. Basho writes:

The horse grazing on the bank
Seems to me black in colour.

I think it otherwise,
For its reflection in the paddy
Says chestnut-brown.[18]

At first, Basho's brain tells him there is a black horse in front of him. But he turns to reality for truth and sees the reflection of the horse in a paddy and notices the truth of things. This is like satori. To reach this, Basho must transcend what his brain is telling him by being in reality or out of the subjective. That is what the paddy presents to him: the experience of reality and truly seeing the horse. At first glance, the world is filled with things and matter, but when first glances are transcended, reality is seen for what it truly is. It is a pure experience where the entire self is surpassed and one can shed a layer of ignorance.
Satori does not promise the attainment of enlightenment; it is only a condition where a layer of ignorance is shed. Absurd koans help this happen by shocking the mind into satori. Once a koan is "mastered," it only opens more responsibility and intensity to shed more layers of ignorance. This experience does not mean that one can see past all matter into some dark void of existence on a different plane. It is:

...not a negation and annihilation of concrete existent beings.
It implies the complete acceptance of them as they are, but
with a totally transformed consciousness which does not see
them as objects, but which so to speak, 'gazes out' from the
midst of them. The final awakening of the Zen consciousness
is not simple the loss of self, but the finding of self in and through all.[19]

This transformation of the self hinges on the ability interconnecting features of nothingness.

To the Zen mind reality is nothingness, which is boundless infinity. This points to something "prior to either affirmation or negation."[20] By realizing nothingness, there is a deeper implication for the Zen mind, which is endless compassion for all existent things. If there is no particular self and all are a part of a universal connection to one another, then the enlightened being must transform. The spiritual transformation stemming from satori creates a new non-person inside all other things. Zen masters speak of the "unborn," which is the original nature before the phenomenal self is born.[21] This unborn or original essence is the root of all spiritual creativity and energy, because it is connected to nothingness, where potentiality is boundless. The satori experience connects one with this original nature, successfully rebinding them to the infinite realm. To be rebinded to nothingness opens the mind up to a deep realization that all others are a part of you. This leads to deep empathy. Thich Nhat Hahn speaks of realizing this compassion through mindfulness:

We are life, and life is limitless. Perhaps one can say that we are
only alive when we live the life of the world, and so live the
sufferings and joys of others. The suffering of others is our own
suffering, and the happiness of others is our own happiness...The
impermanent character of the universe, the successes and failures
can no longer manipulate us.[22]

The radical transformation the Zen mind is that of absolute freedom.

Spiritual freedom, or liberation, is the goal of all Buddhists. Zen can see this liberation in every moment through satori experiences, where one truly sees reality and sheds ignorance. Rinzai Zen also holds a constant state of freedom, contingent on the constant process of attaining satori.[23] Spiritual freedom to Zen is not like the freedom of the West where one is free from certain taxes on his or her will. To Zen "a person is free only when he is not a person. He is free when he denies himself and is absorbed in the whole."[24] This freedom is reliant on the realization of oneness with all things. The spiritual implications of this freedom extend a degree of responsibility for the enlightened mind, not so much a spiritual privilege. Zen freedom requires that "action then carries a sense of spontaneity, much like the spontaneous creative act of living nature."[25] This spontaneity most likely refers back to an mind operating without a why or agenda; a state of pure action and response. This most likely roots back to Taoist influence on Zen and the concept of wei wu wei.[26]

Wei wu wei literally means action with no action.[27] It is the way of life for people whom embody Tao--what Zen would call ontological Buddha-nature--without needing to embody anything. By letting Tao work in a person, wei wu wei happens without effort or any set goals. Every moment requires an action, which can either be seethed in personal desire or be of spontaneity and singleness of attention. The champion of wei wu wei sees the truth of the situation, while objectively discerning what creative action should be done. Therefore wei wu wei is to negate the refusal to attend to the need of the other or the situation. To do this, the Zen mind first needs to accept the truth of the situation by looking at it with spiritual attention, which is in no way attached to the social or the self.[28] After this, he or she will become alert to the situation and the consequences of acting. Without being alert to the situation, one may act rashly or with some sort of desire, which undermines the singleness. After the need is discerned, one will act according to the situation. One must act, because he or she knows that moments never come twice. With no goals in mind and the self pulsating with freedom, the good of the situation will be met through wei wu wei.

The organic nature of Buddhism makes it difficult to explore a single aspect of Zen. That is how one starts with the koan and ends in the deep realization that all beings are connected. The historical development of the koan, from Ch'an to Rinzai, has confused and inspired scholars for a number of decades. With modern scholarship, one can trace the koan's root to its presentation today, but this only gets one so far. To really study koan, it must be seen in its transformative powers. It can exhaust and shock the rational mind, to let one see into reality as infinite. Satori leads to life where one can feel the happiness and suffering of all others, because one's own existence is reliant on all things. When one person suffers, all beings suffer. That is the boundless realization that koans can produce, which frees one from all presuppositions.

Bibliography

Foulk, T. Griffith. "The Form and Function of Koan Literature." In The Koan, by Dale S. Wright and Steven Heine, 15-45. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Fowler, Jeaneane, and Merv Fowler. Chinese Religions. Portland: Sussex Academic Press, 2008.

Hanh, Thich Nhat. The Miracle of Mindfulness. Translated by Mobi Ho. Boston: Beacon Press Books, 1976.

Kasulis, T.P. Zen Action, Zen Person. University of Hawaii Press, 1989.

Matsuo, Bashō. The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa. New York: Penguin Books, 1966.

Merton, Thomas. Mystics and Zen Masters. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1967.

—. Zen and the Birds of Appetite. New York: New Directions, 1968.

Mohr, Michel. "Emerging from Nonduality." In The Koan, by Steven Heine and Dale S. Wright, 245-279. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Nagatomo, Shigenori. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2006. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/japanese-zen/#ZenFre (accessed May 1, 2009).

Senzaki, Nyogen, and Paul Reps, . Zen Flesh Zen Bone. North Clarendon: Tuttle Publishing, 1985.

Smith, Huston. The World's Religions. New York: Harper Collins, 1991.

Suzuki, D.T., Erich Fromm, and Richard De Martino. Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1963.

Wright, Dale S. "Koan History." In The Koan, by Dale S. Wright and Steven Heine, 200-212. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

---

[1] Senzaki, Nyogen, and Paul Reps, . Zen Flesh Zen Bone. North Clarendon: Tuttle Publishing, 1985. Pg. 45

[2] Foulk, T. Griffith. "The Form and Function of Koan Literature." In The Koan, by Dale S. Wright and Steven Heine, 15-45. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pg. 18

[3] Ibid. Pg. 17

[4] Ibid. Pg. 19

[5] Zen Flesh Zen Bone. Pg. 80-81

[6] Wright, Dale S. "Koan History." In The Koan, by Dale S. Wright and Steven Heine, 200-212. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pg. 205

[7] "The Form and Function of Koan Literature." Pg. 23

[8] Ibid. Pg. 23

[9] Suzuki, D.T., Erich Fromm, and Richard De Martino. Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1963. Pg. 43

[10]Merton, Thomas. Zen and the Birds of Appetite. New York: New Directions, 1968. Pg. 38

[11] Kasulis, T.P. Zen Action, Zen Person. University of Hawaii Press, 1989. Pg. 133

[12] Merton, Thomas. Mystics and Zen Masters. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1967. Pg. 250

[13] Fowler, Jeaneane, and Merv Fowler. Chinese Religions. Portland: Sussex Academic Press, 2008. Pg. 205

[14] Ibid.

[15] Zen Flesh Zen Bones. Pg. 45

[16] Suzuki. Pg. 48

[17] Ibid. Pg. 49

[18] Matsuo, Bashō. The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa. New York: Penguin Books, 1966. Pg. 11

[19] Mystics and Zen Masters. Pg. 253

[20] Zen Action, Zen Person. Pg. 41

[21] Suzuki Pg. 19.

[22] Hanh, Thich Nhat. The Miracle of Mindfulness. Translated by Mobi Ho. Boston: Beacon Press Books, 1976. Pg. 49

[23] Mohr, Michel. "Emerging from Nonduality." In The Koan, by Steven Heine and Dale S. Wright, 245-279. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pg. 266

[24] Suzuki. Pg. 9

[25] Nagatomo, Shigenori. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2006. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/japanese-zen/#ZenFre (accessed May 1, 2009).

[26] Zen Action Zen Person. Pg. 36

[27] Ibid.

[28] Smith, Huston. The World's Religions. New York: Harper Collins, 1991. Pg. 208.

Mental Mystic 1

Third-eyes opened looking to the sky.
Consciousness manifests the reasonless,
objective Tao of the mind.
Sand of sanity slip through the hour glass
as beads of love drip to milk up the brine.
The Mental mystic’s electric influence enters the space.
The Shaman flies into the iris of the eye,
a ever receptive black hole of awareness.
By his hands we skip across the event horizon.
Leaving little ripples in the cosmos of the mind.

An ever falling into the ocean.
The chain of being the becoming,
Every moment another coming.
Kairos beckons.
The Mental mystic is always on time,
When it comes to the timeliness.
Negate the refusal to attend every moment of life
Time to swim in the ocean of love.
Time to drown in the becoming of the Infinite.

Back to the source.
Break the rationale mind,
Resurrected as a child laughing in a lotus plant
The Mental mystic sprinkles the petals in your heart.
Follow his blissful lute.
By which the dimensional gates are destroyed.
Close the eyes, plug the ears, hold the life’s breath.
The machine can only take you so far.
Break the mind and so you shall find.

Some forgot the empty hills in the heart,
Were once filled with a forest only evoked by art.
Mental mystic spread the seeds let the trees grow!
Alders, maples, pines, and elegant firs.
Turn back, break the reason
The fruits of what used to be are in season.
Remember Sophia, Agape, and Truth.

Goal of Heaven

I was standing there having a jolly time
a teenage boy with a gleam in his eye accused me of a crime.
He handed over a paper inked with a Cross.
The Christ-God seems to be the boy’s boss.
I open it up to see a huge number seven,
below it said “if you died today would you go to heaven?”
I better get the churches grace
And find my cross and bow in place.
The boy says “man you gotta get to the Garden.
All the dirt on your soul will be up for pardon.
Here eat this flesh and drink this blood.
Clear off all that sinful mud.”
I said “Boy, if all you wanna do is get up High.
Then your soul will surely cry.
I know you’re young man, but don’t be a fool.
God ain’t no tool.
I’ll pray for this illusion and fear to recede
so you can get rid of your spiritual greed.”

Brother's Keeper

Read the news
Deaths and starvations
A mind a man could lose
All for the pride of nations
Children playing in the belly of fatality
Women under the knife of circumcision
because of education with no morality
An oppressive future is envisioned
The seeds lay dormant in the minds of a child
The blood on his father’s hand will seem mild
When we see the poor
Do we hunger at the grocery store?
This old earth can feed all of Man
But the corporations have a whole another plan.
Now the God loving man throws his hands high!
Says where is my Lord? Oh, how can this happen?
Why do you God, Almighty, let the poor die?
Let women suffer?
Let man slay man?
Why are the swords not plowshares?
God looks down at man, maybe with a tear in his eye.
God bites his lip and mumbles, “why does man let man suffer so?”
“Are you not your brother’s keeper?”

Act

The world is turnin’
But the streets are burnin’
Busy at work this week
The bloated bodies start to reek
Of coy elicited proof
That your subjective world has no Truth
Ex nihilo this, ex nihilo that
A run on the treadmill won’t shed the fat
Swollen around your eyes
Blurring your neighbor when he dies
Yesterdays news
Governments abuse
Nothing can break the cycle
What was my score last time I checked FICO?
A world blind and bloated with wealth
A world burned and scolded in stealth
The horizon should be filled with fists
To let God know compassion still exists
Your Christian love doesn’t step out of the temple walls
How do you explain the weather when an angel falls?
Your blanket of relief
“God planned everything,” a comforting belief
We are not God’s puppets in a little sick game
Humanity as a whole is to blame
God gave us freewill
Adam and Eve were the first to take the suicide pill
The serpent is confusion in security
It’s will shrouded in obscurity
But oh, the fruits you shall receive!
If you just ignore what’s going on in Tel-Aviv
Did Moses rise against Pharaoh whose heart was stone?
Today, would he ignore it all and play with a phone?
Would the man going to Jericho die where he lay
If the Samaritan was having a busy day?
Would India be free
If Gandhi said “just let the British drink their tea”?
Go to Church and count your days
There’s no apocalypse no matter how hard the Holy man prays
Look over there Jesus on a horse of white
His sword covered in blood, but still shining light
Nonsense, no rapture is true
Just another excuse covering you
From the cold hard fact
That sometimes you must act.

Blessed are the Rich

Blessed are the rich.

Opium of the masses
God is the home shopping network
Pray for what you want to buy
Collect as much before you die.
Pray to win the lotto
Pray to the Lord Jesus-Buddha-Allah- like a dying motto.
Mix your consumption with your divine assumption

If God had a face I’d put him on the dollar.
If Jesus wasn’t on the Cross he wouldn’t be that much taller.
If God had a face I’d put her on a logo!
That’s right I said “her,” close your eyes and say no!

You’re so beautiful in your lambs fleece
Your sure to see the harvest feast.
God, you’re so blessed!
It brings a tear to my eye when I see that you have everything
Although you don’t feel a thing.

Does the spirit move?
In the souls of you who have something to prove?
Love your neighbor.
Love your Christian neighbor.
Blow the hell out of Muslims.
Love your Muslim neighbor
Behead those Christ followers.
Hey, lego my ego.

Where do we go?
Church, temple, mosque, the spiritual bank.
Buy my grace
By my face
Man, God tastes good when he gets you drunk.

Burn the Prophets, eat the sages, rip out the pages!
Dance on the bodies in ecstatic grace.
You do good to keep your power
Point and say “DIE HIPPY NEW AGE SCUM.”
What are they trying to tell you?
As you drop the ax.
“What did he just say?”
The gunshots make it hard to play.
“What does she mean?”
Hard to tell when she is so unclean.
God is love. I will love you all to death.
Shotgun’s cocked, black masks, and little bombs tick-tock.
God works better with nuclear war.

What happens when some silly man comes along and says
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”
Blow his head off.
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God”
Send that fool to the chair. Watch him fry.

God’s laments.
“How can you be God’s people if you hate God’s creations?”
Humanity.

 

The Tears Dried, and the Heart Died

Work is long,
Stress is hard,
Too much on your mind.

Your heart hardens and you go your own way.
Consume yourself with yourself.
A petty life among millions of strangers,
meanders further from the meaning.

Remember the family?
Your Father, your Mother, and your Kin
have not forgotten you.
Hold on to the fact you’re suffering is only for you,
When the world suffers along with you.
Keep your head down your eyes closed.

Why me? You cry at night.
Come back to us cry’s the world.
Where have you gone my sweet Soul, God whimpers.

So many things that distract.
Collecting gold in your fist,
More toys, less of this,
feeling when you experience something real.
A fleeting sunset, cold grass on your feet, or the touch of your mother’s hand,
can’t compare to this solitude, these toys, this drug, or all the wealth of the land.

When did you die to us? Sweet child when will you be born again?
The gravestone simply says “The Tears Dried, and the Heart Died.”

Dustin Huffer is back in Santa Saves Christmas

A Shawn Huffer Film

Taming God

God, who called out Abraham
or God the Christ bringer?
Maybe Allah whose secret word pierced Mohammed’s heart?
Or it could even be the Amida Buddha who turned enlightenment into salvation.
Which God is the God for you?
Krishna, Zeus, Apollo, Ganesha, Osiris?
After you organize you can fill in the details and look for proof.
The very proof that is contrary to God.
Reducing God to a context cannot be done.
He is not a theorem of creation or “proof.”
Divine Will cannot be condensed to a set of laws penned in a tome.
This sect, that sect. Which do you collapse into?
Koran, Bible, Bhagavad Gita, Lotus Sutra, I Ching, you better pick one.
Turn wisdom and beauty into laws and history.
Laws against the sheep of different flocks.
Beliefs bring violence.

Why chose one?
God is not tamable by a religion or any organization.
He is not packaged and sold by any one set of metaphysics.
God is an untamable fire that burns his will into every man’s heart.
It’s your job to chisel away the stone and receive the fires.
Let the sparks melt away the ego.
Ego that makes your sect better than others.
You can’t have God unless you let go of all beliefs.
And answer as Abraham did when God called.
Boldly proclaim “Here I am.”
Don’t hide like Adam behind a tree.

With no beliefs and emptiness all you will have left is faith.
Faith is to patiently wait and consent to what is revealed.

So take a walk away from the church’s walls.
This path will be lonely, because the walls are thick and the preacher is loud
but don’t fear faith is all you need.

Now You're Living

The superior man says, “Every man dies, but not every man lives.”

The baby thinks “when I can walk, that’s when I’ll start really living.”
The child says “when I get in high school and have a car, then I’ll be living.”
The teen says “when I get to college, that’s when I’ll start living.”
The college student says “when I get a job and make some money, then I can start living.”
The worker says “when I get enough vacation time to go to Costa Rica, then I will really be living.”
The vacationer says “when I retire and can always be on vacation, now that will be the life.
The retiree says “if only I were younger I could really be living.”
The dead man’s skull says “I was once like you and you will soon be like me.”

When will you start living?

 

Rain Check

Ah, I once wrote of how you make me feel,
and how I love to make you feel.
Words danced as lovers do,
atop a bed of roses.
Rhymes hit their sensual noses,
like the aroma of strawberries lightly dipped in whipped cream.
The symphony of moans creates a
crescendo in a heart bending climax.

 

Ah I exhale and think of these musings,
as they spark a flame in my heart that burns my entire body.
After spontaneously combusting I contemplate
and I realize that I haven’t wrote
simple words for you,
pressed together in a sardine-can-like-fashion.

I write to you this rain check.
As my awareness of true love deepens
and we watch the years pass,
I run short of words.
The reason isn’t my limited vocabulary,
or a lack of eternal devotion to you.

Let me pose this to you:
The botanist can easily explain to you
the seed of a beautiful flower.
It is oval in shape and greenish brown in color.
Now require the botanist to explain the blooming flower.
How does one explain this?
It sprouts open with a violent desire to color the world
and bathe in the sun’s warm rays.
The colors slowly bleed into the pedals
as it is pollinated by fat buzzing honey bees.
Does this do the flower justice?
No, I say.

Now that our seed is blooming
I am charged with that question:
Can you explain the blossom of True Love?
The abstraction hits me.
My mind turns into a tornado of devotion
out of this tornado my words are muddled and short of brutish grunts.

So I will patiently wait,
until the tornado is a soft spring wind,
kissing the lips of a peaceful brook,
elegantly framed by two knotty oak trees,
one tree with an old rope swing,
where you glide through the air of my heart .

Childish

The Father above,
looks below.
The Mother below,
looks above.
Man is what they imagine together.

The Father being a prime creative force,
Lends us his infinite breath.
By which we get the soul.
The Mother being the nurturer,
Holds us in her womb and feeds us from her breast.
By which we get the body.

Man at one time loved the Father and respected the Mother.
Now man only loves himself.
His eyes were pointed up in awe of the Father
And his heart was filled with the Mother.
Now his eyes are straight ahead,
and his heart is nowhere to be found.

Man creates and takes as if he were the Father
and pillages and burns the Mother.
Technology outgrew man’s wisdom,
now the Mother is saying,
“I brought you in, I can take you out.”

The Father by nature is patient,
the Mother can’t afford to be.
For when we have eaten the womb and dried the breast,
enough will be enough.

The Mother will scratch the itch that man has become.
When the winds come, the oceans rise, and the sky falls,
Man will look back to the Father and beg him to stop the Mother.
The Father in his infinite wisdom will shrug,
and say “maybe the next time around.”

Thus our epoch ends,
So that a new one may begin.

Meaning in the Meaningless: Zen

 

A. Siddhartha Gautama transformed into Buddha—the enlightened one—after 49 days of intense meditations and the battle against Mara the Evil One. Once he achieved enlightenment, his first sermon explained the Four Noble Truths: life is dukkha (suffering), the root of all suffering is tanha (desire), to defeat dukkha one must destroy tanha, and to destroy tanha one must follow the Eightfold Path. Buddha did not speak of suffering in the physical sense, such as pain, hunger, and sickness. There is no way of escaping these human conditions. If there is no escape from these sufferings, then the last two Noble Truths are fallacies, because following the Eightfold Path does not prevent hunger. The dukkha Buddha refers to is suffering upon suffering, or suffering of the spirit. This pain roots from tanha, or desire. Here, desire means to fulfill the ego’s needs. The quest for personal fulfillment causes dukkha, because one sees the world in his or her own projections and not what is the case. If we only seek the satisfaction of our egos, we will suffer. This behavior will create a rift between the interconnectedness of the world and our own egos. To be content, one must seek and act as if one is connected to all others and one must work with compassion. Acting in compassion and not personal desire will limit material feelings and suffering will subside. In order to defeat the ego’s embellishment of desire or anger, one can look at his or her psyche objectively. This will put the mind and heart ahead of the ego so that it can be analyzed. Thus, one will learn to free themselves from the confinements of desire.

“Trading Dialogue for Lodging” in Zen Flesh, Zen Bones illustrates a case of someone living with tanha and experiencing dukkha.[i] A dumb, one-eyed monk has a wordless argument with a wandering monk over lodging. The wanderer held up one finger signifying the Buddha, and the one-eyed idiot—not able to think beyond his own perceptions—thought that the one finger signified his one eye. The one-eyed man holds up two fingers to signify the wanderer has two eyes; the wandering man thinks he is signifying Buddha and his teachings. So the wanderer holds up three to show Buddha, his teachings, and his followers. Of course, the not- too-bright monk believes the fingers represent that they have only three eyes between them. Offended, he gets ready to punch the wanderer. The clenched fist shows the wanderer that the Buddha, the teachings, and the followers are all one. He feels that he lost the argument and departs. This story juxtaposes an individual who is able to look past his ego and who is not seething in suffering with someone who does live in suffering as a result of allowing a handicap to dictate how he perceives the world. The one-eyed monk is so caught up in his handicap, he become spiritually handicapped and limits his mind to the material. He cannot step back and think of himself objectively; he only lives within his perceptions.

B. A common method of Zen Buddhism is the use of koans. A koan is an absurdity with no apparent trick. This definition only scratches the surface. In practice, it is a way to exhaust rational thought or shock the mind out of the rational level. A Zen master will ask a student to explain the sound of one hand clapping. The mind has no rational answer for this and there never will be. However, through the deep act of trying to rationalize it, one will exhaust the rational. This opens the mind to a revelation. This revelation is satori, a flicker of enlightenment. This differs from the traditional emphasis Buddhism had on sutras. Sutras were studied scriptures that held guidelines on how to live life, commentary on reaching enlightenment, and other factors that provided organization for Buddhism. Sutras are on the side of learning about enlightenment and past Buddhas, which Zen dissented from. Zen held that there was no specific path to enlightenment and each person had to reach it by themselves via knowing through being. Zen’s goal was to bring Buddhism back to its original purpose, a therapeutic way to shed desire and suffering.

Satori is an ongoing quest—one that will not end until death. It can be described as a light bulb flickering: when it is off the rational mind blinds you, when it is on the light hits you and you attain satori for that instance, until the light is turned off again. In Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, the story “Three Days More” describes a student who returns to his master upset that he cannot answer what the sound of a hand is.[ii] The master sends him back to keep meditating on the matter, but the student still cannot attain enlightenment. Finally, the master tells him that if he doesn’t have an answer after three more days, he should commit suicide. The student becomes enlightened on the second day. The impending doom of suicide shocked the student’s mind into letting go of the rational and finding the truth, leading to satori.

C Satori is a flicker of enlightenment, where one sees beyond the rational and material. After the mind loses its rational thought process, a door is opened to a room where a Zen student can find the true answer which he seeks. Satori sheds the illusion of the moment so one can see what is the case. One opens to satori only for an instant and the more instances of occurrence, the more a person is free from illusions. Just because a person reaches satori once, this does not mean that he or she is enlightened. This would be in the realm of moksha, which is a termination of the world upon awakening. Satori for the Zen Buddhist does not terminate a person’s current understanding of things, but allows him or her to see clear for an instance by quieting one’s mental chatter. In no way does a moment of satori create a comprehension of the infinite; it simply clears up the finite for an objective view.

An example of satori is the Zen Flesh, Zen Bones story, “A Parable”.[iii] In this story, a man is travelling across a field and is chased by a tiger until he reaches a cliff where he grabs some roots and jumps off the edge. As he is hanging, the man notices another tiger is at the bottom of the ledge waiting for him to fall. Soon some mice come and start gnawing at the root. Amidst his apparent doom, he sees a strawberry and plucks it with his free hand. Without waving away the mice or trying to save his skin, he eats the strawberry and it is delicious. This illustrates satori, because every moment has a strawberry, and satori is this strawberry. A flash of truth is just as delicious as the last strawberry one will ever taste. The man with the strawberry was a man of quality over quantity. The situation destroyed his rational and emotional mind so that he may see what was in front of him. Two tigers, one above and one below, spells certain death, so why wrap yourself up in living minutes long by struggling when there is a strawberry in reach?

Critique

First of all, my critique of Zen is no way derived from knowing through being. When most people think of Zen, they think of a temple in the middle of the forest with a rock garden sitting in recently raked sand. This is because Zen has a tendency to leave the world behind. They remove themselves from—or perhaps transcend—the social world. By removing themselves from the world, they fall into their own world of absurdities. They call satori a flicker of enlightenment or truth, which may be correct, but when they induce it by stick beating or by cutting pinkies off it seems to fall into subjectivity. The world of truth doesn’t exist to them, because they trap themselves in the absurd, so that satori can be anything. There is a story in where a Zen master cuts a cat in half because two students can’t answer a question. Later, another student goes to his master and puts a sandal on his head. The master explains that his action would have saved that cat. Either the master is beyond any understanding I’ve attained or he is putting his own projections of absurd truth out on the world, so that a sandal on a head suffices as an answer.

---

[i] Reps, Paul and Nyogen Senzaki. Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. Tokyo: Tuttle Publishing, 1985. Pg. 46

[ii] Reps, Paul and Nyogen Senzaki. Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. Tokyo: Tuttle Publishing, 1985. Pg. 45

[iii] Reps, Paul and Nyogen Senzaki. Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. Tokyo: Tuttle Publishing, 1985. Pg. 38-39

No-Thing-Ness

 

A    Chuang-tzu’s critique of Confucian ju philosophy was that it dealt only with the world of the lesser Tao. Ju is the ability to be compassionate to others by practicing empathy. To live by this Tao, one must be able to do “good” without any selfish inclinations. The philosophy of Confucius is based in the world of objects. To follow the ju philosophy, “goodness” is turned into an object of desire. A man of the lesser Tao completely ignores the goodness in himself, which can operate through the greater Tao, and only looks to the external norms and laws to find the good. Chuang-tzu contends the man of greater Tao will see that goodness is endowed with existence and cannot be cultivated or taught by external norms. The pursuit of the lesser Tao leads to reducing goodness into something that is attainable. The more it is treated as an end, the less real it becomes through defining and training. This is because the greater Tao cannot be defined or trained. The greater Tao Chuang-tzu uses to critique Confucian ju philosophy is the infinite void around and in everything that exists. It cannot be taught, defined, or seen. If one has guidelines or ideals of doing the “good.” he or she will be acting according to their own consciousness, which is grounded in the lesser Tao. To let go of the want to do “good,” one must give no definition of “good” and simply wait for the time to act with spontaneity. The way to finding the good is to stop looking for it.

In the allegory of the bell a monk rings a bell for some bystanders and asks if the music of the bell came from the metal casting or the non-being inside the bell. Chuang-tzu would expect the Confucian to say that the sound came from the monk hitting it or the acoustics of the casting. Any answer they would come up with would be due to a science based in the world of objects or lesser Tao. Their methods of finding the “sound” would even be a fallacy because they would be using the rules of what constitutes a sound. They would desire to find “sound;” thus turning it into an object for attainment, which then renders any search for the real sound of the bell dead. Chuang-tzu, on the other hand, would not deny the phenomenal truths of the bell, but he would not hold that to be the standard of the bell’s music. He would contend that both the casting and the non-being (greater Tao) within the bell created the sound together. The bell would not be the bell if it did not have both non-being and casting together in the embodiment of a bell.

B Loa-tzu believed that to become a sage one must return to non-being, from whence all things came from. To do this, one must first take a step outside of one’s own subjectivity to realize there are other principles at work in the world. This would put a person among the world of being and recapture the self from the me. From here, the person must return themselves to non-being, or the greater Tao. Lao-tzu believes that with each person’s presence in being there is an essence that is a union of the finite and infinite. This essence can be called the I and is on the side of form, while our material or biological selves is the me. The me is on the side of matter and only exists in this world. A byproduct of its creaturely existence is that it cannot look back or comprehend the infinite. The I, on the other hand, can look into the infinite. Imagine the I tip-toeing on the small wall between non-being and being. It can turn its head towards the me or look back into the infinite. This is where the problem occurs. Given the me is the I’s way of being for a lifetime, the I will begin to identify with and collapse into the me. This stems from the I having preferences for the me’s career in the world. The I also understands that the me is a reflection of it as it undergoes change, so it has the tendency to say the me is the true self. This is a total collapse into the me. This fall of the I causes immense spiritual suffering, because the I gives the me imagined importance in the world, which puts the me at odds with anything that gets in the way of its wants. Lao-tzu saw this as the fall and contended that man’s I must return to its essential relationship with the me. This relationship is an objective observer with non-attached spiritual attention. The sages would be able to check their I’s so they don’t collapse in the existential. This way of living frees the I from the finite, which is the main goal of Lao-tzu’s teachings.

A cross has a vertical and a horizontal line intersecting. On this vertical axis is the I watching the me, which is walking along the horizontal part the of cross. This puts the I and me embodiment on the intersection of the cross. Soon the I wants the me to walk on the horizontal faster than the other me’s and it collapses into the me. Now, the only dimension to the embodiment is on the horizontal. Our original condition is to be on the intersection of the cross so the I and the me can be raised to heaven. Loa-tzu believes we must return to the cross by keeping the I out of the horizontal and by the I objectively willing the good of the me. This in turn will raise you to heaven or the greater Tao, which is non-being.

C Wei wu wei literally means action with no action. It is the way of life for people whom embody the greater Tao, without needing to embody anything. By letting Tao work in a person, wei wu wei happens without effort or any set goals. It is the essence of wei wu wei to be on the side of the offered destiny of a situation. Every moment requires an action, which can either be seethed in personal desire or be of spontaneity and singleness of attention. It may seem to the lay person that the Taoist is a pacifist even in the face of evil. The champion of wei wu wei sees the truth of the situation, while objectively discerning what moral action should be done. Therefore wei wu wei is to negate the refusal to attend to the need of the other or the situation. To do this, the Taoist first needs to accept the truth of the situation by looking at it with spiritual attention, which is in no way attached to the social or the self. After this, he or she will become alert to the situation and the consequences of acting. Without being alert to the situation, one may act rashly or with some sort of desire, which undermines the singleness. After the need is discerned, one will act according to the situation. The Taoist must act, because he or she knows that moments never come twice. With no goals in mind and the self pulsating with the greater Tao, the good of the situation will be met through wei wu wei.

An example of a man operating with wei wu wei is the parable of the Good Samaritan. A man on his way to Jericho was beaten near death and robbed. He lay in the street and a priest walked by him and instead of helping, he crossed to the other side. Then a Levite comes across the same beaten man and does the same as the priest. Finally, the Good Samaritan sees the man and bandages him up, then takes him to an inn, where he pays the innkeeper to bring him to good health. The Good Samaritan saw the man that people had avoided and accepted the truth of the situation, which was that without help, this man would die. After that, he becomes alert to the situation’s consequences, which without action would most defiantly scar his soul with bad karma. Lastly, he acted according to the need of the situation and the latent good was brought out of the situation. Jesus tells this parable to illustrate when to act as a neighbor should. Jesus was illustrating that one has to work on kairos time, which is how one must embody wei wu wei, to see past the chronologically mundane and see what needs to be done at that moment.

Critique on A

Chuang-tzu’s critique on Confucian ideals of virtue leaves out the fact that the heart of Confucianism is sincerity. In the Five Relations, one must sincerely be a father to a son, and husband to a wife, or a ruler to a subject. Before any liturgy or laws are followed, a person must already have the good working through them with sincerity. Confucians thought the laws would help people become sincere. Chuang-tzu’s critique of the Confucians isn’t fair because it ignores that Confucius saw good coming from sincerity, which was helped along by different Tao’s depending on one’s lot in life. Just because Confucius didn’t give sincerity some abstract and metaphysical source like non-being, doesn’t mean it does not come from the same place. The so-called hero of virtue could very well be operating on the greater Tao, because they are sincere in their dealings, which would transcend any ideals of the good, because sincerity creates these ideals.

Risk of Destiny

And God said,” Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” – Genesis 1:26

With God’s breath, life was given to man. The Divine dreamed that man would find the Kingdom within his own heart. All of us were given unique fates at birth. Our fates are unchangeable factors of life, such as socioeconomic status, family, and nationality. With each fate, there is a destiny. Destiny is a call to reach beyond fate for a greater quality of living. This will raise a person above the mundane, fated life and into the spiritual, destined life. Each individual must accept or reject the destiny God offers. When seeking destiny, humans will know when it is discovered because their hearts will be opened to the essence of their life’s purpose. By recognizing our nature and essence, we become in the likeness of God. These are “God’s dreams for us,” as Robert Lawton states.

As a consequence of God’s dreams, we find man’s insecurity in the form of questions. Am I doing the right thing? Am I taking the right path? Do I even have a path? I have felt these insecurities before. To understand and overcome them, I began seeking my original purpose, which I believe is to tell stories. In my life, the greatest risk is not understanding God’s dreams for me. By cultivating myself with formal education, I will be better equipped to confront life’s spiritual and moral challenges. With this ability, I will not only be born in the image of God, but I will be more in his likeness.

This is our original nature, but we frequently find ourselves astray and must realign with our true purpose. This journey to be ourselves is the riskiest, as Lawton purposes. Lawton points to how easily people lose their nature in the face of worldly stresses. Adam’s fall in Genesis is an ideal example of the risk involved. After he ate the Forbidden Fruit, God’s first question was “Where are you?” God placed Adam in Eden with an original nature and a destiny to stay in the likeness of God. When he ate the fruit, he fell from his nature, thus falling away from God. God poses this question as an exclamation of betrayal, rather than a query of his physical location or an inquisition of his psyche. This is the root of our insecurity: falling away from our nature and God’s dreams for us.

On our journey, there are many attractions that lead us in circles. Social exploits and economic comfort can make us turn from the spiritual path we are set on. In today’s climate, we seek a socially acceptable path to “getting a good job,” and if we are lucky, early retirement. Trading one’s nature to please the masses is the bane of morality and God’s dreams for us. A poet, for instance, is born to a business-owning father. The child loves words and wants to weave them into beautiful songs. One day, the child tells his father that he wants to be a writer. His father, being a man of business, will steer the child away from this foolish, unprofitable profession. The father chisels away at the child’s nature until he has become the same statue of a man. By defying his nature, the child becomes an adult who wanders in spiritual darkness. He transmutes the Kingdom is in heart to stone.

In my journey, there are innumerable risks that lie ahead. For many college students, they expect the greatest dangers to be found in the questionable behavior of their peers, as well as themselves. The use of destructive intoxicants and predominance of sexually-driven relationships mark the stereotypes of the college youth. These things hold little sway over me. The risk I am concerned the most about is the one people don’t usually see. I fear the choice to settle for economic gain rather than treading the path of being one’s self. Today success is marked by a person’s ability to gather money and resources. Albeit most become financially successful through hard work and personal sacrifices, their hard work becomes negligible in comparison to their wealth. I can already feel the pressures from friends and family, encouraging me to obtain a degree that quickly unfolds into a profitable career. My risk comes from the temptation to be “successful” in the eyes of the masses.

I want to tell stories. More specifically, I want to tell stories through film. Trite phrases and clichés aside, this gives me a true sense of happiness. Not the emotional happiness derived from the taste of something sweet or the soft feeling a woman’s touch. It is something deeper in my soul that beckons to me, “Nick, tell them a story.” I am at risk of losing this voice, not because it will leave me, but because I won’t listen. I could settle for becoming a career, or I could stride through the path that was set in front of me and become myself.

Such is Water

Three great waterfalls
Always in turmoil and rapids
Yet, always water
Science surges in one stream
Spirit drifts in another
Humanity flows between them
Humanity feels the urge to flow to one or the other

Patience reveals
Three waterfalls pour into one tranquil lake
Such is water, such is life

Riches of Rags

Draped in riches
Covered in gold
The Holy Men, they will pretend to be
Of spirit and love
Spectacle is all you will see

The true love comes from men in rags
Happiness is being free of greed
See the riches of rags
Look to the past, look to the meaning
Of what the poor men spoke
For it changed kingdoms once before
May it do so again.

Death

Something as beautiful as birth
Is mirrored by death
The death of a flesh vessel
Fashions a stench and turns the eyes away
Man can’t see past the vase and the flower
To see the void which holds the water, the true beauty
The life giver

One must love the death
As they love the birth
Do not mourn the flesh
Rejoice for the soul
For the creation was a gift to the world
And the ascension is a gift to the universe.

 

 

*wrote this one for my family-in-law's dog after it died. Bye Rush.

Sunshine

One act of love
Planted the seed of the galaxies
Let there be
And there was
Soon humanity was born
All with a piece of infinite love
Imbued in their essence

Open your gift and love
Let the sun of your soul shine on the hearts of others
When the sun sets
Darkness will come
Keep the fire burning
Because the world is still turning
Only by the grace of His devotion
Keep the world spiraling and the sun shining
By Loving

The Philosopher’s Insomnia

In the bedroom there is an awkwardness
it resembles a joke at a funeral.
Funny it may be,
but oh-so inappropriate.

The celluloid love stories only show a place of sanguinity
Lovers bask in blue moon light giggling as if the walls themselves were comedians
Or they have the sweetest, most choreographed, faux sex the world has seen.
Never silence, never that awkward feeling

Never that tidal wave of nausea which locks you down
Never does the bed seem to sprout hands that pinch your legs.
Rarely does the ceiling turn into a maniacal serial killer waiting to cut your heart out.

Soon the existential tragedy sets in and you lack a view of reality.
I wish for metaphysics.
Because I want to believe in Love.
All I get is blank sheets of ice
as Sartre crucifies Plato
and Nietzsche’s mustache replaces God.

In the void of human silence I bask
It makes a hot summer’s night
fill with a chill that aches the bones.
Breath starts to fog
As my heart freezes over

Is this the ice age of Love?
It’s time to build a fire.