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As I write these words, fires, earthquakes and wars are raging, children around the world are hungry and in danger, refugees are fleeing oppression, homeless sleep in the streets, illness and death are our constant companions. It was so in the Buddha's time, and in the days of the old Zen Masters, and it remains so today. It is often a hard world. It sometimes seems hopeless.
And yet, here I am ready to offer a message of insight, liberation and hope, as did the Buddha and all the ancient Masters long ago.
Despite so much daily ugliness, true liberation and hope are ever possible ... In this very moment, as it always has been.
In fact, there are many roads to liberation, not only one: I am now finishing a recent and very readable history of Indian religions and philosophies by Prof. Long (LINK), touching on Vedic, Hindu, Jain and, of course, Buddhist thought in its several varieties, as well as other traditions of radical materialism and more. It is a basic introduction, so sometimes a little too simple and general in its descriptions and conclusions, but one thing is crystal clear: Most Indian schools addressed the question of suffering in this world and the place of human beings amidst it, and most reached very similar conclusions as to the source of suffering and the means of freedom from it. While there are smaller and larger differences and disagreements among these various creeds regarding the specific details and methods of liberation proposed by their respective thinkers and mystics, there is also clear and fundamental agreement at heart. Zen Buddhism, although a later development, is right there too.
What is this basic viewpoint (really, a "non-view" point) shared so widely?
Namely, this world is one of outward division, separated into individual beings, things and moments of time, including you, dear reader, who experiences a sense of being a personal, private self that daily bumps noses with all the other beings and things that appear apart from yourself. Our individual selves have great desires, concerns for what we see as our own selfish well-being and fears for our personal survival, as well as for the well-being of the other separate beings and possessed things to which we cling. Apart from the few radical materialists and true nihilists of old India (many of whom basically came to the conclusion that the world is just hopeless, so we should just make the best of it), the other schools share in the core insight that liberation is attained through knowing or attaining some state free of division, liberated from a separate self and, thus, from the accompanying desires, fears, concerns and clinging that a separate self is bound to have.
In a nutshell, it is the separate self that wants this and rejects that, which judges that life needs to be some other way, which weighs and experiences loss and gain, that knows frictions in its encounters with other outwardly separate beings and changing situations of the world, which divides events into coming and going including birth and death, which tastes days of sadness and days of happiness, which fears for the disappearance of the separate things and beings to which it tightly clings, which knows passing time and aging amid its mental measures of past becoming future, which dreams of what it desires and how it wishes things otherwise to be. It is our deluded mind which creates within itself our vision of a divided world, measures of time and change, and a sense of separate "self." In contrast, in Wholeness, there can be no "this and that," no change, nothing lost or which need be added, no frictions when no separate pieces to conflict, nothing more to desire, nothing which comes and goes amid Totality, thus not even birth and death or changes with time. In all these schools, realizing such a state is liberation.
As I said, these various scholars and sects vary in the details. The Jains, for example, a religious system very much resembling Buddhism in many other aspects, and many Hindus, spoke of souls which are the Wholeness but, somehow, become trapped in individual bodies in this divided, material world. Liberation comes through practices to free those souls, often involving radical self-denial, so that they may rejoin, or realize their already existing identity with, the Wholeness. In fact, various flavors of Buddhism have mixed and matched their approaches, for example, (a) seeing this world as ultimately hopeless and a place to fully escape, rather than a realm in which liberation can be tasted even during this life, (b) proposing meditation methods which quiet the mind and all thoughts extremely, in contrast to methods which allow us to see through the mind and thought even as they remain, (c) considering the human body as something to be strictly denied in its many passions and desires, or for human emotions and desires to be moderated and channeled in more positive ways, (d) describing the Wholeness as a reachable realm or state, or some intangible free of even location or name, (e) appraising liberation as something we can do ourselves, or instead as a path requiring assistance through faith, (f) or as something requiring many lifetimes, or that is possible in this immediate lifetime with wise insight. Even Zen Buddhist teachers through the centuries might lean more or less toward these various poles.
In all cases, the central goal remained the same, however: Freedom from this hard world (samsara) in order to realize the Unbroken, Unborn, Undying, Timeless, Frictionless. Except for a few particularly pessimistic nihilists and such, seemingly none of the philosophers and mystics described the Wholeness as some barren, dead and dull void or otherwise a meaningless state but, rather, as somehow a Great, Peaceful, Good, Free, Unbound, Timeless, Fulfilled state in which all the sharp and round, smooth or bloody broken pieces of this life are seen through or dropped away.
So, where might Soto Zen land amid all these varied ways?
Were I to summarize our Soto Zen Buddhist approach in such regard, at least as I have found it, it would be as follows, a wise "middle way" which unites and transcends all such poles and views/viewless:
Namely, this world has terrible problems, and also aspects of being like a mirage or dream, yet it is a "real" mirage and dream which is our life. Thus, we should see through it to the Wholeness even as we continue to live this life in its divided state, knowing the Wholeness and division as "not two," like two sides of a no-sided coin. In such way, we can see through the suffering separate beings, the violence and war, the homelessness and hunger, the sickness, aging, death and passing time even as, as Bodhisattvas, we seek to help the sentient beings to also see through the dream to realize liberation. Even while seeing through the fiction-non-fiction, we can do what we can to end the violence and war, homelessness and hunger, to cure the disease and live our days well amid this "true dream" that is our life. The best way to do so is a path of moderation and healthy desires, avoiding anger and violence, jealousies and other divided thinking even as we live amid the daily frictions of this complicated world. In fact, whether there are or are not lives to come, the key is to live gently, now, here, in this one. In living so, we encounter something sacred to this world and our lives, that the Wholeness is precisely the broken and separate pieces too, that one is just the other one in other guise, that every being, thing and moment is every other being, thing and moment. Samsara is escaped when one realizes so, lives so, even when one is up to their neck in it!
Such is our Soto Zen way and a good way to live ... in this world, engaged in this world, while seeing through the world at once.
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So, thus it is ... live this life, make it better where you can, act with peace and charity, simultaneously see through the dream of this world to Wholeness thoroughly free of all suffering and lack, make Karmic choices for a better tomorrow.
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Then, one is free, even in the hard world.
Gassho, J
stlah
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