This is a long post. In part it's a reflection on a book I read a couple of years ago. My reflection isn't very structured and takes a lot of detours, reflecting on a period of depression after living in China for a year, and some experiences in my Zazen practice around that time (experiences that I place into the box of 'Makyo' now, but helped me and taught me a few things at the time.) I also talk about an interest in had in philosophical pessimism at that time, and how these things link together.
I don't think its reasonable to expect everybody, or even most people here, to read all of this post, so here's a short statement of my main points: Goallessness is great but might be a problem for some new meditators. Pessimism tells us something important about reality and can deepen our insight, but we should drop it when it's served its purpose. The rest is basically a long reflection on these concepts.
I was rereading some of John Gray's book 'Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals' recently.
It's a beautifully written book, weaving together many Western and Eastern philosophical ideas, and literary references together in a very playful and readable way. The main thread running through it is a rejection of Enlightenment ideas of Progress, and Ancient Greek ideas of 'The Good' as false absolutes/quasi-religious belief systems that underpin modern society. Instead he embraces a kind of pessimism. Not a dark, brooding, despairing pessimism, but a calm and curious resignation to things as they are.
Gray isn't claiming that we can't be good, caring people or do meaningful things with our time, but merely that the decline of monotheistic religion in Western society has been replaced by an often unacknowledged and unspoken, but equally strong and pervasive blind faith in the liberal-humanist notions of (big P) Progress and salvation through technology. These beliefs keep the wheels of society turning, but also create private discontent and cognitive dissonance because they don't fully correspond with reality. A cyclical view of time, as borrowed from Ancient Chinese culture, is mentioned as one antidote, or source of balance.
Buddhism and Taoism are also presented as skilful ways to learn to live well and wisely in the midst of a chaotic and uncertain world, without the leaning posts of Western dichotomies/absolutes/abstractions and a naïve faith in Progress. Ultimately Gray rejects Buddhism in favour of Taoism, as he views Buddhism as still concerned with a higher goal (nirvana) and with seeing absolute truth, or ultimate reality. Taoism, in Gray's depiction, acknowledges the illusory nature of the self and the phenomenal world, but denies the possibility of final liberation. It is therefore unconcerned with grandiose/absolute ends and instead focuses on the cultivation of a playful, vibrant and non-attached way of being in the world.
His readings of Buddhism seem somewhat superficial, but the overall scope of the book is impressive. Ultimately I disagree with his depiction of Buddhism and Taoism, but it raises some useful points to consider. It is true that Eastern philosophy has tended to focus more on how to live skilfully, and Western philosophy has been more concerned with finding the Truth. Obviously, there are notable exceptions in both cases, as is always the case when we're painting with so broad a brush. Many forms of Buddhism are in fact somewhat goal-oriented. A cursory read of the early Pali texts shows this clearly, as does the Rinzai emphasis on Satori experiences and the elaborate hierarchies and maps of Vajrayana practice. Aspects of Taoism that have been less explored by Westerners (or perhaps have survived the transition into modernity less successfully), such as the search for a magical elixir granting eternal life, certainly seem to be goal-oriented and concerned with absolutes. Nevertheless, within the historical context of East Asia, both traditions have informed the other in numerous ways, and have assumed a wide range of forms.
Soto Zen in particular is an example of a tradition that avoids clinging to false absolutes and abstractions, dropping goals, and engaging skilfully and playfully with this life in all of its beauty and imperfection. In some ways Shikantaza doesn't have 'ends' in the way that, for example, the 4 path Theravada model of Arahantship has, because it begins at the end. I read an opinion once that Zen begins at emptiness and arrives at form, whereas more linear paths start at form and end at emptiness. Either way, both aspects of reality are brought together and are seen to be the same. Equally, Zen, in the Soto tradition at least, begins with this messy reality, this body, these thought-patterns, as they are, without the support-structures of Vipassana noting categories, stabilising attention on the breath, mantras or visualizations. We observe everything that arises without any deliberate effort to concentrate or attain a meditative state. Eventually it is seen that all of it, inside and outside, is both 'me' and not 'me', and thus we see that form and emptiness are not different, and that there was never anything to gain or lose.
In this sense, the goalnessness as skilful means corresponds perfectly with the truth of the reality that Zazen clarifies.
At the same time, everyone gets into Zazen for a reason. In the conventional sense, there is always an unspoken goal that we carry with us. We then drop this goal, in order to expedite our attainment of the goal.
The paradox is only resolved at the end, when we see that there is no end, and the goal was always-already achieved.
This unconventional relationship with goals has caused me some difficulty. For a long time I was drawn towards more structured Buddhist paths with clearly defined markers of progress. A few years ago, Zen seemed vaguely mystical and intriguing, but I wasn't able to get my head around the idea of 'just sitting' and dropping goals. It was only after meditating in the Theravada tradition that I could really engage with the goalnessness of Zazen. I have gone back and forth since then, but now Shikantaza makes sense to me and I feel no need to follow any Buddhist tradition outside of Zen (Rinzai and early Chan teachings are of interest, but it really seems apparent that Shikantaza is a complete practice in itself.)
The point I want to make here is that the simplicity and directness of Shikantaza can be problematic for new meditators of a certain disposition. Some kind of meditative scaffolding can provide the structures needed to develop the insights that make Shikantaza make sense. Other traditions make use of methods (or non-methods) that are similar to Shikantaza, but usually introduce them after various preliminary practices. I could've easily missed out on this Zen practice if my experiences in other traditions didn't lead me back towards it. I'm sure there are many others who gave Zazen a try, ended up moving onto more goal-oriented paths, and never found their way back into it.
Then again, maybe if I stuck with Zazen from the start, and just kept on sitting, things would've fallen into place on their own. Be that as it may, the real issue is that, my mind and personality being what they were at that time, I never would've stuck around long enough to find out.
I'm certainly not in a position to offer any solutions to this problem. And perhaps it isn't a problem at all. I don't know.
Now I want to talk about pessimism a little bit.
Gray's take on pessimism is interesting. He takes a hammer to many cherished Western beliefs, opening up a space in which it would be easy for nihilism to grow. He manages to avoid this trap by looking towards the Taoist sages as exemplars of a playful, immediate mode of existence that does away with delusions of certainty, attachment to past or future, and instead emphasises a life lived freely in the present. We don't need to renounce the world or suppress our desires - it is enough to just recognise the world as a mirage and enjoy it for what it is. This runs contrary to Schopenhauer's pessimism, in which we are perpetually dissatisfied and enslaved by the incessant and insatiable Will To Live (think desire, grasping mind) and can only attain liberation by retreating from the myriad things of the world and denying this will completely.
During a period of depression, the works of various pessimistic philosophers became very appealing to me. The descriptions of the human condition I encountered seemed like truisms. I won't go into detail, but there is much in common with the Buddhist idea of Dukkha. Ultimately, I arrived at the conclusion that these perspectives offer half of the truth, but, beyond a basic level of acknowledgement of suffering, do not need to be made explicit and reiterated over a prolonged period.
Before the lighter half of the truth begun to resurface, there was a demolition of all of the belief systems and certainties that propped up my persona. It really seemed that there was nothing to gain in this world. There was nothing to do and nowhere to go. At the same time, there was a perceiving subject that wanted a way out, some structure to cling to - a coherent worldview that explains things neatly, a higher purpose. But these views all seemed empty. Life if suffering. Human consciousness is a terrible accident. We're doomed to repeat our collective mistakes again and again. There was a lot of going back and forth - conceive of a new worldview that puts suffering into perspective and gives life shape and meaning; feel relief and lightness; see through this worldview as a mental construct, a coping mechanism with no bearing on reality; feel despair; repeat. At bottom, there was a sense of the void - the arbitrariness and meaninglessness of existence.
Later, it became clear that my suffering stemmed not from the absence of meaning, but from my need to find meaning. We are here experiencing things, and that's all we know.
I continued to sit with this lack of meaning, lack of goals, lack of anything to achieve. There was nothing to lose, and nothing more inherently worthwhile to do. I remember saying to myself inwardly 'nothing to do, nowhere to go' and just sitting on my zafu without expectations (interestingly, on a visit back to the UK earlier this year, I noticed a teacher at my local Zen group saying something similar at the beginning of Zazen.)
It was only then, with complete resignation, that the sense of a centre, a perceiving subject melted away, and there was just the experience of this moment, that I realised that the world and life are beyond good and bad. They just are. It was only when, for a while, the body and mind seemed to disappear, that the world appeared as it was.
There was another, later experience. After sitting for a while and becoming calm, the boundaries of the body dissolved and there was a wide, inclusive awareness. This happens sometimes in Zazen, and can be nice, but isn't something to cling to or assign special importance to. It felt as though layers of self appeared to dissolve more and more in this awareness. Reality began to flash as though the lights of awareness were flickering on and off, but some subtle part of the mind continued to cling to the positive polarity. A voice uttered the sentence 'It's okay if I die right now, there is nothing to fear' or words to that effect, and the whole thing flickered out for a moment. This flickering out of experience corresponds to the experience of a 'cessation' in Theravada Buddhism, and is associated with the completion of one of the four paths. Interestingly, in the Theravada tradition (particularly in the Abhidhamma commentaries and the Vishuddimagga), there are three gates through which this experience can occur; impermanence, non-self and suffering. Although it seemed like my experience was similar to this idea, I later doubted it was exactly the same, because my day-to-day perception was not dramatically shifted. Things did, however, gradually get much better over a period of almost a year. There were ups and downs since that time, but I suspect that these experiences opened me up to seeing through the delusion of the self more clearly, and seeing that there is no need for goals, that this moment is already perfect and that a real and sincere openness are all that is required. I don't see it as a big enlightenment experience of any kind, although I thought it might have been for a while. What started to slowly happen, though, in the last year, is that the other side of the truth started to become apparent; that life is vibrant and interconnected and, indeed, there is nothing to achieve, but there are still countless wonderful and worthwhile things to do.
I still have a long way to go, and I know that my experiences will seem trifling to many people here. My purpose was to share some ideas about the link between goals, zazen and pessimism, based on my own relatively inexperienced practice.
I want to emphasise again that pessimism describes one aspect of reality but not the whole of it. It's definitely not something that should be focused on for too long. Nevertheless, for me, embracing this aspect of experience and fully surrendering to it created a space through which reality could be seen more clearly.
Pessimism, combined with a radical openness towards whatever arises, can be a way to see the emptiness of mental fabrications and goals, but also a way to see the emptiness of the causes of suffering and of the self that suffers. Ultimately, and paradoxically, it can reveal the beauty, the interconnectedness, the dynamic wholeness of experience. Only, of course, when combined with Zazen. It is Zazen that opens us up to the beauty and wholeness of experience, but our suffering can be fuel for the gentle (non) fire of Zazen, and, for me, a temporary bout of quite severe pessimism helped me to break down some of the processes that delude us into striving too much and believing in the existence of a separate self.
An aside: I think it's reasonable to say that the above points towards the idea that suffering can offer an opening to awakening if we sit with it and fully experience it. We see it clearly for what it is, and it breaks down and loses its hold. This view seems to be in line with basic Buddhist principles, but could also make things temporarily worse for some people, and might do more harm than good for people who are prone to certain mental health conditions. Perhaps for them a gentler path of calming the mind, doing normal therapeutic work, sleeping well, exercise and gently looking at their experience would be better. I mentioned my own difficulties starting Zazen a few years ago, and this raises another potential difficulty. Zazen ultimately offers a way to transform suffering, or allow us to see through it and beyond it, but this is a gradual process, and a requisite is that we have to sit with whatever we are going through and experience all of it unflinchingly. I can imagine this being overwhelming for some at the beginning if what they are going through is particularly heavy, and it could exacerbate things in the short term.
I'd be very interested in hearing from anybody who has experience of doing Zazen with depression, or anyone who has wrestled with pessimistic ideas and worldviews and came out of the other side one way or another.
Thanks for making it this far. And apologies if this post is incoherent or didn't say anything useful. I rarely post here and generally avoid writing about Zen or meditation. I generally feel that everything that is useful has already been written, the stuff that's really interesting doesn't fit very well into normal language, and I have a lot to learn and should avoid giving advice to others. I still think that is true, so take my ramblings with a pinch of salt!
Anyway.
Here is a short chapter (and another very short chapter) from Straw Dogs. I think it shows this relationship in a useful light. The italicised part at the end in particular sums it the idea of just looking at what is, without any reason or goal apart from looking itself. It also touches upon the difference in perspective between meditative traditions that cultivate ecstatic states and those that look at whatever is happening in the moment:
4
TURNING BACK
Searching for a meaning in life may be useful therapy, but it has nothing to do with the life of the spirit. Spiritual life is not a search for meaning but a release from it. Plato believed the end of life was contemplation. Action had value only in making contemplation possible; but contemplation meant communing with a human idea. Like many mystical thinkers, Plato thought of the world disclosed by the senses as a realm of shadows. Values were the ultimate realities. In contemplation Plato sought union with the highest value – the Good. For Plato, as for the Christians who followed him, reality and the Good were one. But the Good is a makeshift of hope and desire, not the truth of things. Values are only human needs, or the needs of other animals, turned into abstractions. They have no reality in themselves, as George Santayana points out:
All animals have within them a principle by which to distinguish good from evil, since their existence and welfare are furthered by some circumstances and acts and are hindered by others. Self-knowledge, with a little experience of the world, will then easily set up the Socratic standard of values natural and inevitable to any man or to any society. These values each society will disentangle in proportion to its intelligence and will defend in proportion to its vitality. But who would dream that spiritual life was at all concerned in asserting these human and local values, or in supposing that they were especially divine, or bound to dominate the universe for ever?
Through fasting, concentration and prayer, mystics shut out the shifting world of the senses in order to reach a timeless reality. Quite often they find what they seek – but it is only a shadow play, an arabesque of their own anxieties, projected onto an inner screen. They end as they began, stuck fast in the personal time of memory and regret. In modern times, the immortal longings of the mystics are expressed in a cult of incessant activity. Infinite progress … infinite tedium. What could be more dreary than the perfection of mankind? The idea of progress is only the longing for immortality given a techno-futurist twist. Sanity is not found here, nor in the moth-eaten eternities of the mystics. Other animals do not pine for a deathless life. They are already in it. Even a caged tiger passes its life half out of time. Humans cannot enter that never-ending moment. They can find a respite from time when – like Odysseus, who refused Calypso’s offer of everlasting life on an enchanted island so he could return to his beloved home – they no longer dream of immortality. Contemplation is not the willed stillness of the mystics but a willing surrender to never-returning moments. When we turn away from our all-too-human yearnings we turn back to mortal things. Not moral hopes or mystical dreams but groundless facts are the true objects of contemplation.
5 SIMPLY TO SEE
Other animals do not need a purpose in life. A contradiction to itself, the human animal cannot do without one. Can we not think of the aim of life as being simply to see?
Gassho,
SatToday,
Chris
I don't think its reasonable to expect everybody, or even most people here, to read all of this post, so here's a short statement of my main points: Goallessness is great but might be a problem for some new meditators. Pessimism tells us something important about reality and can deepen our insight, but we should drop it when it's served its purpose. The rest is basically a long reflection on these concepts.
I was rereading some of John Gray's book 'Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals' recently.
It's a beautifully written book, weaving together many Western and Eastern philosophical ideas, and literary references together in a very playful and readable way. The main thread running through it is a rejection of Enlightenment ideas of Progress, and Ancient Greek ideas of 'The Good' as false absolutes/quasi-religious belief systems that underpin modern society. Instead he embraces a kind of pessimism. Not a dark, brooding, despairing pessimism, but a calm and curious resignation to things as they are.
Gray isn't claiming that we can't be good, caring people or do meaningful things with our time, but merely that the decline of monotheistic religion in Western society has been replaced by an often unacknowledged and unspoken, but equally strong and pervasive blind faith in the liberal-humanist notions of (big P) Progress and salvation through technology. These beliefs keep the wheels of society turning, but also create private discontent and cognitive dissonance because they don't fully correspond with reality. A cyclical view of time, as borrowed from Ancient Chinese culture, is mentioned as one antidote, or source of balance.
Buddhism and Taoism are also presented as skilful ways to learn to live well and wisely in the midst of a chaotic and uncertain world, without the leaning posts of Western dichotomies/absolutes/abstractions and a naïve faith in Progress. Ultimately Gray rejects Buddhism in favour of Taoism, as he views Buddhism as still concerned with a higher goal (nirvana) and with seeing absolute truth, or ultimate reality. Taoism, in Gray's depiction, acknowledges the illusory nature of the self and the phenomenal world, but denies the possibility of final liberation. It is therefore unconcerned with grandiose/absolute ends and instead focuses on the cultivation of a playful, vibrant and non-attached way of being in the world.
His readings of Buddhism seem somewhat superficial, but the overall scope of the book is impressive. Ultimately I disagree with his depiction of Buddhism and Taoism, but it raises some useful points to consider. It is true that Eastern philosophy has tended to focus more on how to live skilfully, and Western philosophy has been more concerned with finding the Truth. Obviously, there are notable exceptions in both cases, as is always the case when we're painting with so broad a brush. Many forms of Buddhism are in fact somewhat goal-oriented. A cursory read of the early Pali texts shows this clearly, as does the Rinzai emphasis on Satori experiences and the elaborate hierarchies and maps of Vajrayana practice. Aspects of Taoism that have been less explored by Westerners (or perhaps have survived the transition into modernity less successfully), such as the search for a magical elixir granting eternal life, certainly seem to be goal-oriented and concerned with absolutes. Nevertheless, within the historical context of East Asia, both traditions have informed the other in numerous ways, and have assumed a wide range of forms.
Soto Zen in particular is an example of a tradition that avoids clinging to false absolutes and abstractions, dropping goals, and engaging skilfully and playfully with this life in all of its beauty and imperfection. In some ways Shikantaza doesn't have 'ends' in the way that, for example, the 4 path Theravada model of Arahantship has, because it begins at the end. I read an opinion once that Zen begins at emptiness and arrives at form, whereas more linear paths start at form and end at emptiness. Either way, both aspects of reality are brought together and are seen to be the same. Equally, Zen, in the Soto tradition at least, begins with this messy reality, this body, these thought-patterns, as they are, without the support-structures of Vipassana noting categories, stabilising attention on the breath, mantras or visualizations. We observe everything that arises without any deliberate effort to concentrate or attain a meditative state. Eventually it is seen that all of it, inside and outside, is both 'me' and not 'me', and thus we see that form and emptiness are not different, and that there was never anything to gain or lose.
In this sense, the goalnessness as skilful means corresponds perfectly with the truth of the reality that Zazen clarifies.
At the same time, everyone gets into Zazen for a reason. In the conventional sense, there is always an unspoken goal that we carry with us. We then drop this goal, in order to expedite our attainment of the goal.
The paradox is only resolved at the end, when we see that there is no end, and the goal was always-already achieved.
This unconventional relationship with goals has caused me some difficulty. For a long time I was drawn towards more structured Buddhist paths with clearly defined markers of progress. A few years ago, Zen seemed vaguely mystical and intriguing, but I wasn't able to get my head around the idea of 'just sitting' and dropping goals. It was only after meditating in the Theravada tradition that I could really engage with the goalnessness of Zazen. I have gone back and forth since then, but now Shikantaza makes sense to me and I feel no need to follow any Buddhist tradition outside of Zen (Rinzai and early Chan teachings are of interest, but it really seems apparent that Shikantaza is a complete practice in itself.)
The point I want to make here is that the simplicity and directness of Shikantaza can be problematic for new meditators of a certain disposition. Some kind of meditative scaffolding can provide the structures needed to develop the insights that make Shikantaza make sense. Other traditions make use of methods (or non-methods) that are similar to Shikantaza, but usually introduce them after various preliminary practices. I could've easily missed out on this Zen practice if my experiences in other traditions didn't lead me back towards it. I'm sure there are many others who gave Zazen a try, ended up moving onto more goal-oriented paths, and never found their way back into it.
Then again, maybe if I stuck with Zazen from the start, and just kept on sitting, things would've fallen into place on their own. Be that as it may, the real issue is that, my mind and personality being what they were at that time, I never would've stuck around long enough to find out.
I'm certainly not in a position to offer any solutions to this problem. And perhaps it isn't a problem at all. I don't know.
Now I want to talk about pessimism a little bit.
Gray's take on pessimism is interesting. He takes a hammer to many cherished Western beliefs, opening up a space in which it would be easy for nihilism to grow. He manages to avoid this trap by looking towards the Taoist sages as exemplars of a playful, immediate mode of existence that does away with delusions of certainty, attachment to past or future, and instead emphasises a life lived freely in the present. We don't need to renounce the world or suppress our desires - it is enough to just recognise the world as a mirage and enjoy it for what it is. This runs contrary to Schopenhauer's pessimism, in which we are perpetually dissatisfied and enslaved by the incessant and insatiable Will To Live (think desire, grasping mind) and can only attain liberation by retreating from the myriad things of the world and denying this will completely.
During a period of depression, the works of various pessimistic philosophers became very appealing to me. The descriptions of the human condition I encountered seemed like truisms. I won't go into detail, but there is much in common with the Buddhist idea of Dukkha. Ultimately, I arrived at the conclusion that these perspectives offer half of the truth, but, beyond a basic level of acknowledgement of suffering, do not need to be made explicit and reiterated over a prolonged period.
Before the lighter half of the truth begun to resurface, there was a demolition of all of the belief systems and certainties that propped up my persona. It really seemed that there was nothing to gain in this world. There was nothing to do and nowhere to go. At the same time, there was a perceiving subject that wanted a way out, some structure to cling to - a coherent worldview that explains things neatly, a higher purpose. But these views all seemed empty. Life if suffering. Human consciousness is a terrible accident. We're doomed to repeat our collective mistakes again and again. There was a lot of going back and forth - conceive of a new worldview that puts suffering into perspective and gives life shape and meaning; feel relief and lightness; see through this worldview as a mental construct, a coping mechanism with no bearing on reality; feel despair; repeat. At bottom, there was a sense of the void - the arbitrariness and meaninglessness of existence.
Later, it became clear that my suffering stemmed not from the absence of meaning, but from my need to find meaning. We are here experiencing things, and that's all we know.
I continued to sit with this lack of meaning, lack of goals, lack of anything to achieve. There was nothing to lose, and nothing more inherently worthwhile to do. I remember saying to myself inwardly 'nothing to do, nowhere to go' and just sitting on my zafu without expectations (interestingly, on a visit back to the UK earlier this year, I noticed a teacher at my local Zen group saying something similar at the beginning of Zazen.)
It was only then, with complete resignation, that the sense of a centre, a perceiving subject melted away, and there was just the experience of this moment, that I realised that the world and life are beyond good and bad. They just are. It was only when, for a while, the body and mind seemed to disappear, that the world appeared as it was.
There was another, later experience. After sitting for a while and becoming calm, the boundaries of the body dissolved and there was a wide, inclusive awareness. This happens sometimes in Zazen, and can be nice, but isn't something to cling to or assign special importance to. It felt as though layers of self appeared to dissolve more and more in this awareness. Reality began to flash as though the lights of awareness were flickering on and off, but some subtle part of the mind continued to cling to the positive polarity. A voice uttered the sentence 'It's okay if I die right now, there is nothing to fear' or words to that effect, and the whole thing flickered out for a moment. This flickering out of experience corresponds to the experience of a 'cessation' in Theravada Buddhism, and is associated with the completion of one of the four paths. Interestingly, in the Theravada tradition (particularly in the Abhidhamma commentaries and the Vishuddimagga), there are three gates through which this experience can occur; impermanence, non-self and suffering. Although it seemed like my experience was similar to this idea, I later doubted it was exactly the same, because my day-to-day perception was not dramatically shifted. Things did, however, gradually get much better over a period of almost a year. There were ups and downs since that time, but I suspect that these experiences opened me up to seeing through the delusion of the self more clearly, and seeing that there is no need for goals, that this moment is already perfect and that a real and sincere openness are all that is required. I don't see it as a big enlightenment experience of any kind, although I thought it might have been for a while. What started to slowly happen, though, in the last year, is that the other side of the truth started to become apparent; that life is vibrant and interconnected and, indeed, there is nothing to achieve, but there are still countless wonderful and worthwhile things to do.
I still have a long way to go, and I know that my experiences will seem trifling to many people here. My purpose was to share some ideas about the link between goals, zazen and pessimism, based on my own relatively inexperienced practice.
I want to emphasise again that pessimism describes one aspect of reality but not the whole of it. It's definitely not something that should be focused on for too long. Nevertheless, for me, embracing this aspect of experience and fully surrendering to it created a space through which reality could be seen more clearly.
Pessimism, combined with a radical openness towards whatever arises, can be a way to see the emptiness of mental fabrications and goals, but also a way to see the emptiness of the causes of suffering and of the self that suffers. Ultimately, and paradoxically, it can reveal the beauty, the interconnectedness, the dynamic wholeness of experience. Only, of course, when combined with Zazen. It is Zazen that opens us up to the beauty and wholeness of experience, but our suffering can be fuel for the gentle (non) fire of Zazen, and, for me, a temporary bout of quite severe pessimism helped me to break down some of the processes that delude us into striving too much and believing in the existence of a separate self.
An aside: I think it's reasonable to say that the above points towards the idea that suffering can offer an opening to awakening if we sit with it and fully experience it. We see it clearly for what it is, and it breaks down and loses its hold. This view seems to be in line with basic Buddhist principles, but could also make things temporarily worse for some people, and might do more harm than good for people who are prone to certain mental health conditions. Perhaps for them a gentler path of calming the mind, doing normal therapeutic work, sleeping well, exercise and gently looking at their experience would be better. I mentioned my own difficulties starting Zazen a few years ago, and this raises another potential difficulty. Zazen ultimately offers a way to transform suffering, or allow us to see through it and beyond it, but this is a gradual process, and a requisite is that we have to sit with whatever we are going through and experience all of it unflinchingly. I can imagine this being overwhelming for some at the beginning if what they are going through is particularly heavy, and it could exacerbate things in the short term.
I'd be very interested in hearing from anybody who has experience of doing Zazen with depression, or anyone who has wrestled with pessimistic ideas and worldviews and came out of the other side one way or another.
Thanks for making it this far. And apologies if this post is incoherent or didn't say anything useful. I rarely post here and generally avoid writing about Zen or meditation. I generally feel that everything that is useful has already been written, the stuff that's really interesting doesn't fit very well into normal language, and I have a lot to learn and should avoid giving advice to others. I still think that is true, so take my ramblings with a pinch of salt!
Anyway.
Here is a short chapter (and another very short chapter) from Straw Dogs. I think it shows this relationship in a useful light. The italicised part at the end in particular sums it the idea of just looking at what is, without any reason or goal apart from looking itself. It also touches upon the difference in perspective between meditative traditions that cultivate ecstatic states and those that look at whatever is happening in the moment:
4
TURNING BACK
Searching for a meaning in life may be useful therapy, but it has nothing to do with the life of the spirit. Spiritual life is not a search for meaning but a release from it. Plato believed the end of life was contemplation. Action had value only in making contemplation possible; but contemplation meant communing with a human idea. Like many mystical thinkers, Plato thought of the world disclosed by the senses as a realm of shadows. Values were the ultimate realities. In contemplation Plato sought union with the highest value – the Good. For Plato, as for the Christians who followed him, reality and the Good were one. But the Good is a makeshift of hope and desire, not the truth of things. Values are only human needs, or the needs of other animals, turned into abstractions. They have no reality in themselves, as George Santayana points out:
All animals have within them a principle by which to distinguish good from evil, since their existence and welfare are furthered by some circumstances and acts and are hindered by others. Self-knowledge, with a little experience of the world, will then easily set up the Socratic standard of values natural and inevitable to any man or to any society. These values each society will disentangle in proportion to its intelligence and will defend in proportion to its vitality. But who would dream that spiritual life was at all concerned in asserting these human and local values, or in supposing that they were especially divine, or bound to dominate the universe for ever?
Through fasting, concentration and prayer, mystics shut out the shifting world of the senses in order to reach a timeless reality. Quite often they find what they seek – but it is only a shadow play, an arabesque of their own anxieties, projected onto an inner screen. They end as they began, stuck fast in the personal time of memory and regret. In modern times, the immortal longings of the mystics are expressed in a cult of incessant activity. Infinite progress … infinite tedium. What could be more dreary than the perfection of mankind? The idea of progress is only the longing for immortality given a techno-futurist twist. Sanity is not found here, nor in the moth-eaten eternities of the mystics. Other animals do not pine for a deathless life. They are already in it. Even a caged tiger passes its life half out of time. Humans cannot enter that never-ending moment. They can find a respite from time when – like Odysseus, who refused Calypso’s offer of everlasting life on an enchanted island so he could return to his beloved home – they no longer dream of immortality. Contemplation is not the willed stillness of the mystics but a willing surrender to never-returning moments. When we turn away from our all-too-human yearnings we turn back to mortal things. Not moral hopes or mystical dreams but groundless facts are the true objects of contemplation.
5 SIMPLY TO SEE
Other animals do not need a purpose in life. A contradiction to itself, the human animal cannot do without one. Can we not think of the aim of life as being simply to see?
Gassho,
SatToday,
Chris
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