Viewed historically, Zen is a form of Mahayana Buddhism that evolved from the original forms Buddhism that were established in India after the Buddha’s death around 2,500 BC. Many aspects of original Buddhism are retained in Zen, including respect for Shakyamuni Buddha and his teachings. However, the degree of transformation Buddhism underwent when it took root in China and evolved into Chan (later called “Zen” in Japan) is difficult to overestimate, resulting in a path of radical nondualism. Both the ultimate goal of practice and the means to achieve that goal changed so radically that it’s legitimate to question whether Chan is even Buddhism. If you want to walk the path of Zen/Chan, it’s essential to understand how it differs from original Buddhism.
Quicklinks to Article Content:
Disclaimers
The Place of the Buddha’s Original Teachings in Zen
The Necessity and Limitations of Hinayana Practice
The Radical Transformation of Buddhism into Chan
How Zen Differs from Original Buddhism
Avoiding Confusion in Zen Practice
Disclaimers
As I discuss this topic, it’s important that I clarify that I’m approaching it from the perspective of a Zen practitioner, not a scholar. There are many fascinating discussions in the scholarly literature about the evolution of Buddhism and Chan in China, including the observation that Chan was heavily influenced by Chinese culture and the native Taoist religion in particular.[i] However, I am no expert in Buddhist history, and I don’t think the history – the how of this story – is essential to my point. I’m interested in the result of this evolution and its relevance to us as Chan/Zen practitioners.
At the outset, I also want to clarify my use of terms. Chan is the name of the meditation school of Buddhism that arose in China, and Zen is the Japanese version of that name. I hope you won’t mind if I use both terms: Defaulting to Zen when I’m speaking of our practice more generally, because Zen is the term used in my lineage, but using Chan when I’m clearly talking about Chinese Buddhism and Buddhists.
A few times I will use the term “hinayana,” or “lesser vehicle,” as well, and I want to be very clear that I am not using this term to refer to original Buddhism or to modern schools of Buddhism that seek to remain true to the Buddha’s original teachings, such as Theravada. It’s true that early Mahayana polemicists sought to differentiate their new form of Buddhism from older, more traditional forms by disparaging them as “hinayana” compared to “mahayana,” the “greater vehicle.” Perhaps – given its negative history – it would be good to avoid use of the term hinayana entirely, but within Mahayana it has evolved to describe a limited mindset with respect to practice: Namely, practice based in dualisms such as pure and impure, better and worse, self and other, progress and failure, enlightenment and delusion.
Ironically, a Theravadin practitioner would probably respond to this list of “dualisms” by asking how Buddhist practice could possibly happen without them! This points to the essence of the difference between Zen and original Buddhism, and should remind us that it is inappropriate, mean, and unhelpful to make small-minded judgments about other people’s spiritual paths. If we are firmly grounded in our own practice, we can accept and appreciate that other paths may, at times, appear to be diametrically opposed to our own.
Finally, the arguments I make here about Zen – that it is the radical practice of renouncing dualism and embracing your true nature – can probably also be said to be true of other Mahayana paths such as Pure Land and Vajrayana. I don’t mean to exclude them and claim radical nonduality for Zen alone, I’m just writing this for a Zen audience.
The Place of the Buddha’s Original Teachings in Zen
There’s no denying that the Buddha’s original teachings are liberating and transformative for any Buddhist, including Zen practitioners. My first attraction to Buddhism was the acknowledgement of dukkha, or dissatisfactoriness, as an inevitable part of life when we rely solely on conditional things for happiness. The Eightfold Path gave me hope like none I had ever experienced before because it told you how to achieve the peace of mind Buddhism promised. I eagerly embraced vows of ethical behavior to give structure and meaning to my life. Meditation and mindfulness opened up whole new aspects of my experience as a human being and miraculously gave me the capacity to change.
When I got involved with a local Zen center, I learned plenty of things about the Buddha’s teachings, albeit from a Zen perspective. My teachers regularly referred to the Buddha’s life story as a helpful archetype for the spiritual journey. They used the term dukkha and spoke of the Four Noble Truths. Karma – behavioral cause-and-effect – was often discussed. We were familiar with the imagery of the Six Realms and used it to talk about problematic states of mind and the ways to liberate ourselves from them. We were taught that ethical behavior is a prerequisite for spiritual peace, just as the Buddha taught in the Eightfold Path. Original Buddhist teachings were often and freely quoted, such as the Buddha’s guidelines for Right Speech, or the Pali Canon story of Kisagotami being freed from her grief.
To be honest, we Zennies tended to employ original Buddhist texts and teachings when it suited our purposes, but we weren’t systematic or thorough about exploring or mastering them. We often ignored or glossed over certain teachings that seemed frustratingly complex to many people (such as the twelvefold chain of interdependent emergence), were explicitly focused on attaining the state of Nirvana (such as the seven factors of enlightenment), or encouraged people to renounce the world as quickly and completely as possible (such as the instruction to meditate on corpses in the Four Foundations of Mindfulness Sutra).
As I understand it, the words “systematic” and “thorough” describe exactly how a dedicated Theravadin practitioner would approach the Buddha’s teachings. Similar to the way Christians, Jews, and Muslims revere and focus on their holy texts, traditional Theravadins revere the Pali Canon. From their point of view, if it’s in the Pali Canon, the Buddha taught it or approved of it, and it’s a truth to be reckoned with whether you personally resonate with it or not. You can start to see the divergence of Zen from original Buddhism when you contrast this reverence for the Buddha’s words with the Zen view that the teachings of any subsequently enlightened person are as legitimate as the Buddha’s words. In fact, because teachings often need to be adapted to time and place to be understood, more recent teachings might even be more effective or valuable than the original ones.
I don’t know how many of the original Buddhist teachings I would have encountered if I were practicing a Chan monastery in China, or a Zen monastery in Japan, but my experience of encountering them is typical of the mostly-convert Zen practice centers outside of Asia. We adult converts, along with the teachers who developed our practice places, have access to the rich and varied texts and teachings of many forms of Buddhism. We aren’t limited to what our lineage teacher thinks is good for us, or to what is emphasized in our own tradition. Given our access, why wouldn’t we turn to the wisdom of the Buddha himself, even if we align ourselves with Zen?
The Necessity and Limitations of Hinayana Practice
As I mentioned earlier, in Mahayana Buddhism, the term “hinayana” (lesser vehicle) was once used to disparage sects who were trying to stay true to the Buddha’s original teachings but the term later came to be used to critique the practice of Mahayana Buddhists stuck in dualistic practice. Again, we should not use “hinayana” to describe any spiritual path, so I am not talking about Theravada or any other path when I use the term.
What is “hinayana” practice within a Mahayana Buddhist context? It describes our practice when we’re working for an outcome that we hope will be enjoyed by our small self and those around us. Although the term “lesser vehicle” sounds dismissive, practicing for results is an important part of what we do. We make time in our lives for meditation because it has beneficial effects on us. We aim to live more ethically because to do so causes less suffering for ourselves and others. We study the Dharma to open our minds and see through our delusions. We work to let go of our attachments and gain freedom from dukkha. We cultivate mindfulness so we can appreciate our lives and act more skillfully.
Working for an outcome in practice makes perfect sense from an ordinary perspective, but any of the efforts we make require an assumption – however subtle – that things as they are, ourselves as we are, are not sufficient. Something is lacking, or needs improvement, or needs to be fixed. Indeed, this is – more or less – the teaching of original Buddhism. According to the Buddha, our peace of mind is obstructed by kleshas, or defilements, such as greed, ill-will, and conceit.[ii] The process of recognizing and abandoning the defilements and cultivating positive qualities instead is long and arduous, requiring great dedication and multiple lifetimes of spiritual work.
I think it’s easy for us to relate to the Buddha’s framing of the spiritual path as one of gradual, challenging transformation of a troubled self into an enlightened one. Wherever we picture ourselves along that path, we appreciate that change is difficult and usually much slower than we might like. Through practice, we learn that we remain completely unaware of many of our delusions without diligent effort and the assistance of teachers and Sangha. When we contemplate what an enlightened Buddha would be like – wise, unperturbed, mindful, compassionate, confident, generous – we become acutely aware of how unlike a Buddha we usually are.
I have spoken to dedicated Theravadin practitioners, who follow the teachings and practices of the Buddha as preserved in the Pali Canon, and asked them about whether they find it discouraging that, according to the teachings, they are on a gradual path that will take many more lifetimes. (Only incredibly remarkable individuals are seen as having completed the path, and they are generally regarded as having already practiced for many previous lifetimes). The Theravadins say, basically, “What’s the rush?” They have deep faith in the efficacy of the Buddha’s path, and – as much as possible – set aside self-centered concerns about where they rank in terms of spiritual attainment.
It’s wonderful that our world includes many different spiritual paths, and that we have access to so many of them. Each of us can seek out and practice what resonates with us, hopefully finding a path we can trust that inspires us. For some of us, a practice based solely on a vision of gradual refinement and cultivation over lifetimes becomes discouraging, or seems to be lacking something essential, or both. While anyone who sticks with Buddhist practice has probably had rewarding experiences of what feels like progress on the spiritual path, such experiences can seem very minor indeed when we contemplate the awakened state of being we seek. Progress can feel grindingly slow, or even nonexistent. Our bodies and minds can seem engineered to obstruct our aspirations, generating so-called defilements like desire, aversion, distraction, and delusion faster than we can recognize and abandon them. We may lose faith in the practice or in ourselves. We wonder, “Could there be a better way?”
The Radical Transformation of Buddhism into Chan
I imagine that early Mahayana Buddhists in India asked themselves this same question, “Could there be a better way?” I picture them investigating their own direct experience and concluding that the path as presented in original Buddhism was profoundly liberating but lacked something. There was no denying the need to work on our character, but what about the sense we get, when we abandon defilements, that we are simply uncovering something pure and precious that has been there all along? What about the miraculous experience of reaching the limits of self-directed effort and letting go into a larger flow that carries us further than we ever could have gotten if we relied only on the discriminating direction of the small self? What about our sense of being part of something infinitely larger than ourselves? Our interdependence with each other and the natural world? Our periodic experiences of just-here-and-now being luminous and complete, along with the sense that this is how things really are, we just usually can’t see it because we’re caught up in a self-centered dream?
Early Mahayana Buddhists in India began incorporating new teachings, texts, and practices into Buddhism. These included the concept of innate Buddha-Nature and the practice of devotional reliance on something much greater than ourselves in the form of cosmic Buddhas who are ever-present and supporting our practice. Buddhism changed still further when it spread to China and encountered a radically different worldview than the Indian one of its birthplace. The prevailing Indian cosmology of the Buddha’s time (not exclusive to Buddhism) was that, after death, we are reborn. There are six realms of existence we might find ourselves in, due to our past actions, or karma. These realms range from hellish to heavenly and everything in between, but our stay in them isn’t permanent. Once our karma is exhausted, we will be reborn somewhere else. In every lifetime we are born ignorant of what came before and will experience all the joys and miseries of life over and over – repeatedly losing everything we love and succumbing to old age, disease, and death. The whole process is called the “wheel of samsara,” samsara meaning “wandering through.”
The average Indian who believed in rebirth was likely to be concerned primarily about how to be reborn in a fortunate set of circumstances after their death, but the ambitious spiritual aspirants of the time, including the Buddha, aimed to free themselves of the process of rebirth entirely. According to the Pali Canon, when the Buddha achieved complete enlightenment, he said, “This is my last birth.” The ultimate goal of original Buddhism, then, was called Nirvana, which means “blowing out” or “quenching,” referring to the end of delusive forces that drive us to be reborn.
Of course, any description of a culture’s worldview is an oversimplification, but the Chinese worldview differed in important ways from the cosmology of the wheel of samsara that Indian Buddhism adopted. The Chinese religious traditions of Confucianism and Taoism generally took a more this-worldly and life-affirming approach. Though very different from each other, both view the universe—including human beings, the natural world, and larger cosmic forces—as an interconnected whole. In Taoism, peace comes from aligning oneself with the natural unfolding of the Tao. In Confucianism, it comes from moral self-cultivation and fulfilling social obligations in accordance with Heaven’s order. The world is not inherently defiling or corrupt, but, when engaged properly, can be meaningful and enriching.
Chan evolved out of the meeting of Indian Mahayana Buddhism and Chinese religion and culture, emerging as a unique form of Buddhism when teachers began emphasizing meditation above all other practices. (Chan is the Chinese form of the Sanskrit word for meditative absorption, or dhyana, so Chan was known as the “meditation school” of Buddhism.) Meditation, they taught, is the primary practice that allows us to awaken to our true nature, and by extension the nature of reality. We see that we have no inherent, enduring self-nature, and ultimately are not separate from anything. When this happens, delusions naturally fall away, along with self-centered grasping and aversion. What remains is our Buddha-Nature, or naturally awakened nature. It is bright, open, selfless, and pure. When we give up looking anywhere else for happiness or redemption, we realize Nirvana is just here and now.
The Nondualism of Zen Compared to Original Buddhism
Chan came to be called a “sudden awakening” school, compared to schools of Buddhism that taught “gradual awakening” through the step-by-step spiritual cultivation over many years or even lifetimes. However, “sudden” versus “gradual” is, for the most part, a false dichotomy. The preceding paragraph about awakening to your true nature may sound nice, as if the process is simple and effortless. This is not the case at all. While a dramatic insight may occur in a sudden fashion, it’s almost always because you’ve put in many years of hard practice leading up to it. By the same token, practitioners of non-Zen paths will also experience important insights, sudden or otherwise. And, most importantly, any so-called “awakenings” we experience must be integrated and embodied in our life – a gradual process of step-by-step spiritual cultivation.
The point of the “sudden” versus “gradual” distinction, though, points to something important. If, at least in theory, you can awaken right now, suddenly, it means you already have everything you need. You already are who you need to be. The peace and liberation of the Buddhas is not something you can only experience after another lifetime or two of self-improvement. As the Buddha himself taught, dukkha is caused by our resistance to the way things are (that is, desire for them to be different). Zen sees “giving up our resistance” not (just) as a result of prolonged spiritual effort, but as something you do this very moment. Radical acceptance of just this leads to the end of dukkha, dissatisfactoriness or suffering. Radical acceptance of just me opens you up to perceiving the true nature of self.
The differences between Zen and original Buddhism could be said to stem from a fundamentally different view of the nature of practice. There is nothing in the Buddha’s teachings about our “true nature.” According to original Buddhism, our nature is the result of karma from our past actions, positive and negative. If we can be said to have a “true nature” in the context of the Buddha’s teachings, it’s that we’re vulnerable to the forces of greed, hate, and delusion but also have the capacity to practice and gain freedom from them. Original Buddhism celebrates an effective path toward wresting control of your human destiny; rather than being subject to the whims of fate and laws of karma, you can gradually train your body and mind and achieve greater peace and freedom.
The classic metaphor for the practice of original Buddhism is taming a wild elephant by tying it to a large stake[iii] (this metaphor is also employed in other non-Zen schools). The elephant keeps trying to escape but eventually gives up and becomes tame and cooperative. The stake and rope stand for the practice of mindfulness or meditation, and the elephant is our unruly mind and emotions. This metaphor is vividly employed by a disciple of the Buddha, Vijitasena, in the Pali Canon’s Theragatha (verses of the elders):
I shall fasten you, mind, like an elephant at a small gate. I shall not incite you to evil, you net of sensual pleasure, body-born.
When fastened, you will not go, like an elephant not finding the gate open. Witch-mind, you will not wander again, and again, using force, delighting in evil.
As the strong hook-holder makes an untamed elephant, newly taken, turn against its will, so shall I make you turn.
As the excellent charioteer, skilled in the taming of excellent horses, tames a thoroughbred, so shall I, standing firm in the five powers, tame you.
I shall bind you with mindfulness; with purified self shall cleanse [you]. Restrained by the yoke of energy you will not go far from here, mind.[iv]
In contrast, Zen encourages you to stop looking outside of your own, direct experience for the peace and freedom you seek – including looking to your spiritual practice to improve you or make you happy. It’s your very conviction that Nirvana is somewhere else that needs to be dropped, whether you imagine that it’s something you might be able to experience in the future, or that it’s a special state that can be attained only by spiritual athletes. Dropping your conviction that Nirvana is elsewhere isn’t about resigning yourself to the idea that perfect peace and freedom are impossible. Ironically, dropping your search allows you to realize your true nature and experience exactly the peace and freedom you seek. As 9th-century Chan master Lin-chi (Japanese: Rinzai) put it:
If you want to be no different from the patriarchs and buddhas, then never look for something outside yourselves. The clean pure light in a moment of your mind – that is the Essence-body of the Buddha lodged in you. The undifferentiated light in a moment of your mind – that is the Bliss-body of the Buddha lodged in you. [v]
And:
Followers of the Way, the first-rate fellow knows right now that from the first there’s never been anything that needed doing. It’s because you don’t have enough faith that you rush around moment by moment looking for something. You throw away your head and then hunt for a head, and you can’t seem to stop yourselves. You’re like the bodhisattva of perfect and immediate enlightenment who manifests his body in the Dharma-realm but who, in the midst of the Pure Land, still hates the state of common mortal and prays to become a sage. People like that have yet to forget about making choices. Their minds are still occupied with thoughts of purity or impurity.[v]
But the Ch’an school doesn’t see things that way. What counts is this present moment – there’s nothing that requires a lot of time. Everything I am saying to you is for the moment only, medicine to cure the disease.[vi]
Part of the Zen approach is the idea that you can trust yourself and the universe. Because you aren’t fundamentally separate from anything, when you release attachment to your sense of individuality you don’t fall into a void or succumb to moral relativism, you are supported and informed by everything. When you are in touch with the truth of things, compassion, generosity, and ethical behavior come naturally because the welfare of others isn’t separate from your own, and you are not motivated by self-centered fear and grasping.
Again, I am not a professional scholar, but I am convinced by the arguments of scholar and translator David Hinton that Chan and Taoism mutually influenced each other in profound ways. In The Way of Ch’an: Essential Texts of the Original Tradition, Hinton translates part of Bodhidharma’s “Blood-Kin Pulse Discourse” (better known as the “Bloodstream Sermon”[vii]) and then points out how Bodhidharma uses several terms central to the Taoism of his time. Bodhidharma, who traveled from India to China, is honored as our first Chan ancestor, and here is a passage attributed to him:
Buddha is a term from the language of India. Here in this country, we speak of original-nature awareness, pure awareness miraculous beyond words. Moving in accord with the loom-of-origins or integral to the ten thousand things in their vast transformations, eyes open wide in astonishment or glancing quickly, hand twisting or foot stepping: it’s all the miraculous pure awareness of your own original-nature.
That original-nature is exactly mind, and mind is exactly Buddha. Buddha is exactly Way, and Way is exactly Ch’an. And Ch’an—it’s just one little word, but no one can fathom it, not commoners and not sages. And we also say that to see original source-tissue nature is itself Ch’an. If you don’t see original source-tissue nature, there’s no Ch’an.[viii]
According to Hinton, Bodhidharma uses several Taoist terms in this passage (as well as elsewhere, throughout the writings attributed to him). When Bodhidharma says “Buddha is exactly Way,” “Way” is the Chinese character for “Tao.” Hinton writes:
Tao originally meant “way,” as in “pathway” or “roadway,” a meaning it has kept. But Lao Tzu reconceived it as a generative cosmological process, an ontological “path Way” by which things come into existence, evolve through their lives, and then go out of existence, only to be transformed and reemerge in a new form… Tao represents one of the most dramatic indications that Ch’an is a refinement and extension of Taoism, because the term Tao is used extensively in Ch’an with the same meaning.[ix]
In the passage by Bodhidharma quoted above, he uses a term Hinton translates as “loom-of-origins,” a Taoist word describing the Tao’s unfurling process.[x] Bodhidharma’s words “original-nature awareness” and seeing “original source-tissue” nature incorporate Taoist terms as well. Of “origin-tissue” and “existence-tissue” Hinton writes:
[Origin-tissue and existence-tissue] are… reality as a single tissue, undifferentiated and generative. Birth, giving form to the ten thousand individual things, is described as “origin-tissue coming together.” And death, the unraveling of individuation, is described as “origin-tissue scattering.” So the vast and ongoing transformation of things is the origin-tissue coalescing into individual forms and then dispersing back into a single undifferentiated tissue. And it is important for Ch’an that this tissue is the “thusness” we encounter every moment in our everyday life…[xi]
In Chan and Zen, the world – including the self and the mind – are not to be fought, overcome, purified, rejected, trained, or even transformed. Instead, we seek to accord with the true nature of things. This isn’t easy. It’s not the path of laziness. Truly renouncing dualism and embracing our true nature – our original source-tissue nature – takes effort and courage. Once we do this (or, more accurately, whenever we are able to do this), our limited sense of self drops away and the universe can move through us. In Taoism, this process is described with the terms tzu-jan, occurrence-appearing-of-itself, and wu-wei, or absence-action. Hinton says of wu-wei: “This selfless action is the movement of tzu-jan, so wu-wei means acting as an integral part of tzu-jan’s spontaneous process of Tao/Way: Absence burgeoning forth into Presence, and Presence dying back into Absence.”
Chan evolved its own ways of expressing the Taoist terms Hinton translates in accurate but sometimes awkward ways. What I recognize in his descriptions is my understanding of Zen as I have lived it, practiced it, and realized it. In Zen, you don’t take a wild elephant and tie it to a stake until it obeys your will. Instead, we believe you – the one who wants greater peace and freedom – is not separate from the elephant, or from the earth that supports you both. Our way is to sit quietly near the elephant, getting to know it, and gradually forming an intimate friendship with it. This taming doesn’t happen based on your agenda; in fact, an agenda will only slow the process down. It certainly doesn’t happen if you assert dominance over the elephant the second it comes close to you. Instead, over time, you and elephant become one – forgetting your sense of separateness from each other and even forgetting your separateness from the world.
I’m naturally biased as a Zen practitioner, so it may end up sounding like I think Zen is better than other paths when I portray our practice as naturally taming an elephant instead of training it by asserting your will over it. To honest, I do think my path is best! (Wouldn’t it be kind of sad if I didn’t?) But I can hold that thought while simultaneously recognizing that only a tiny fraction of humanity will ever agree with me. In fact, I know that the Zen path wouldn’t doesn’t work for most people.
Avoiding Confusion in Zen Practice
Most Zen I’ve encountered in the West is a mix of original Buddhism and Zen. This isn’t a bad thing; original Buddhism includes some of my favorite teachings and offers extremely effective practices for gradually transforming your body and mind. However, sometimes, at least for some of us, the mix of Zen and original Buddhism gets confusing. The two approaches may offer diametrically opposed instructions, leading Zen students to struggle just when they should be taking a courageous dive into radical nonduality.
When there is a blend between original Buddhism and Zen in a teaching setting, the tension between the approaches becomes most apparent in meditation – both in our daily zazen and in meditation retreats. It’s not at all uncommon for Zen teachers to recommend various kinds of concentration practices such as you would find in original Buddhism. This is generally in response to students who complain their minds are wandering too much, or that the content of their minds is troubling. Or it’s because students feel frustrated with the Zen way, feeling they don’t “get it.” Students may be told to count or follow their breath, or focus on sound, or other forms of meditation which involve a meditative object and a goal to quiet the mind. Further along in practice, or in a meditation retreat (or sesshin), a goal of awakening to deeper spiritual insight may be introduced.
Plenty of people, include Zen students, benefit from concentration practices and/or working toward spiritual insight in the way the Buddha taught. This approach may be attractive even to those of us primarily aligned with Zen because it’s so straightforward. It’s like many other things we have done in our lives: Deciding on a goal, learning how to work toward that goal, and then settling into the work. Periodically we can look up from our task and evaluate how much progress we’ve made and consider whether we should change anything about our methods in order to achieve our goal more quickly and completely. In our daily meditation or a retreat, we can ask ourselves whether our mind is getting quiet or not. We can take stock of how many of the profound Buddhist teachings we have come to understand – or not.
Some of us, however, resonate best with a completely Zen approach. Any effort to control our minds seems futile on a daily basis, and very challenging even in a meditation retreat. Trying to concentrate and rid ourselves of defilements only highlights our inadequacy, causing us to give up our practice or continue on while staying carefully quiet about how deficient it is. It might be that people who really need the Zen path have very willful, noncooperative, or clever elephants. When we try to tie our elephant to a stake, it easily escapes. Eventually, just the sight of the stake makes the elephant run away.
The unfortunate thing about blending original Buddhism and Zen when it comes to meditation is that the Buddha’s path is based in dualism while the Zen way requires you to renounce all dualism. When I say this, I don’t mean to say dualism is inherently bad. I hope I’ve made clear that paths like the Buddha’s are amazing, complete paths in and of themselves. However, I also hope you can see how difficult it would be to fully engage the practice of renouncing dualism completely while you are receiving teachings about the value of concentration, a quiet mind, the improvement of your emotional and mental states, and the attainment of spiritual insights.
A truly Zen approach to meditation, whether you are sitting shikantaza or working on koans, is based in the idea that there is nothing to be attained. There is nothing wrong with you. Nirvana is right before our eyes. Just look!
Of course, “just looking” isn’t what we think it is. Zen takes great effort, it’s just not the kind of effort we’re used to making. As the 13th-century Zen master Keizan says in “Zazen-yojinki:”
Zazen is not based upon teaching, practice or realization; instead these three aspects are all contained within it. Measuring realization is based upon some notion of enlightenment – this is not the essence of zazen. Practice is based upon strenuous application – this is not the essence of zazen. Teaching is based upon freeing from evil and cultivating good – this is not the essence of zazen…Teaching is found in Zen but it is not the usual teaching. Rather, it is a direct pointing, just expressing the way, speaking with the whole body.[xii]
You can’t practice this kind of Zen halfway. You can’t renounce dualisms only when you like how your meditation or practice are going, remaining ready to pick up a dualistic practice like concentration whenever you think your mind has gotten too busy. You can’t wait to embrace your true nature because it isn’t pure or disciplined or enlightened enough yet.
I have been practicing for 30 years and have struggled at times to allow some of the teachings of the Buddha to go in one of my ears and out the other without them troubling me. My most fruitful practice has come from letting go and trusting Zen – renouncing dualism and embracing my true “origin-tissue” nature, but it can be difficult to ignore anything the great Buddha himself taught, especially because so much of it is useful to us and the people around us!
I realize not all Zen communities and teachers mix original Buddhism and Zen in the way I’ve described. Perhaps you have had the good fortune to study with a teacher who sticks to Zen with ferocity – stubbornly refusing to accept any of your claims of inadequacy or the necessity to look elsewhere for Buddha. If you have struggled at all with the apparent contradiction between dualistic Buddhist practice and Zen, I recommend you start by recognizing the difference between the two. Then go ahead employ dualistic methods whenever you find them helpful. In fact, much of your practice takes place in the relative world where it’s essential to gradually train your body and mind to achieve greater peace and freedom. Let this effort, however, take place within the larger context of Zen and remember there is nothing to be achieved. As Huang Po, a Chan master from the 7th or 8th century, put it:
Our original Buddha-Nature is, in highest truth, devoid of any atom of objectivity. It is void, omnipresent, silent, pure; it is glorious and mysterious peaceful joy—and that is all. Enter deeply into it by awaking to it yourself. That which is before you is it, in all its fullness, utterly complete. There is naught beside. Even if you go through all the stages of a Bodhisattva’s progress towards Buddhahood, one by one; when at last, in a single flash, you attain to full realization, you will only be realizing the Buddha-Nature which has been with you all the time; and by all the foregoing stages you will have added to it nothing at all.{15} You will come to look upon those aeons of work and achievement as no better than unreal actions performed in a dream.[xiii]
Endnotes
[i] See, for example, China Root: Taoism, Ch’an, and Original Zen by David Hinton.
[ii] “Vatthupama Sutta: The Simile of the Cloth” (MN 7), translated from the Pali by Nyanaponika Thera. Access to Insight (BCBS Edition), 30 November 2013, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.007.nypo.html .
[iii] “Dantabhumi Sutta: The Discourse on the ‘Tamed Stage'” (MN 125), translated from the Pali by I.B. Horner. Access to Insight (BCBS Edition), 30 November 2013, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.125.horn.html .
[iv] “Vijitasena” (Thag 5.9), translated from the Pali by K.R. Norman. Access to Insight (BCBS Edition), 4 August 2010, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/thag/thag.05.09.norm.html .
[v] Watson, Burton (Translator). The Zen Teachings of Master Lin-chi. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1993. Page 24.
[vi] Ibid, page 34.
[vii] See Pine, Red. The Zen Teachings of Bodhidharma. New York, NY: North Point Press, 1987.
[viii] Hinton, David. The Way of Ch’an: Essential Texts of the Original Tradition (p. 323, 324). Shambhala. Kindle Edition. Page 130.
[ix] Ibid, Page 323.
[x] Ibid, Page 325.
[xi] Ibid, Page 324.
[xii] Zazen Yojinki, in Loori, John Daido (ed). The Art of Just Sitting: Essential Writings on the Zen Practice of Shikantaza. Boston, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2004.
[xiii] Yun, Huang Po His. The Zen Teachings of Huang Po: On The Transmission Of Mind (p. 35). Hauraki Publishing. Kindle Edition.
