On Gudo's "Heart to Heart..."

[Ankai]

Reading "A Heart To Heart Chat" again. As I read this time through, I've come to where the Master is talking about Dukkha, and it seems (in this read-through,) that he's comparing the idea of "cessation of suffering" as applied in much of Buddhist thought to the same kind of false ascetism that Buddha rejected, leading to his discovery of "the middle way." Other thoughts? Am I reading him wrong?

[RichardH]

Hi Ankai. I'm just a student here, but my reading of Gudo is in accord with "cessation of Dukkha" as taught in other Buddhist traditions. There is discomfort and pain in life (otherwise there couldn't be comfort and pleasure) but that is not Dukkha. Dukkha is a rift between how things are, and how I want them to be, and feel. Dukkha can cease. It returns because I drift and grasp, but practice is an ongoing letting-go and ceasing of dukkha. As long as we are alive (ex-ist) there will be dukkha and the ceasing of dukkha, but it becomes more subtle, less heavy. There are some kinds of dukkha in my life that have ceased and will not return, fears and a confusions, because of practice and maturation as a human being. For instance death is not the bogeyman it once was. I no longer feel lost or estranged from life as it is. Therefore life feels open and Joyful for the most part, right in the middle of endless "problems".

That is how Gudo's writings speak to me. But please do take it with a grain of salt.

Gassho
Daizan

sat today

[Jundo]

Hi Ankai,

If I understand your question correctly ...

Nishijima had a nice definition of Dukkha [suffering in a Buddhist sense] and its connection to what he saw as "idealism" in that book ...

The [traditional Buddhist categories of] Four Sufferings of birth, old age, sickness and death represent an inability to attain a desired happiness during life. For example, we cannot escape the yearning for health and youth, although such cannot always be the case. We cannot live forever, or escape from death, although we might hope to do so. Each suffering is born from our inability to escape the longings and desires we each carry with us, an inability to accept life as it is. Each stems from our desire that life be some other way; it is our creation of idealized dreams of how we would otherwise wish life to be, how life should be, other than just what it is as we find it.

These longings, desires, wishes and such represent our dissatisfaction with the world as it is, and a dream of how we wish circumstances would be or should be to make us happy, We have a vision of an ideal life, a notion of what would make us happy once and for all if only it would come to be. Dukkha, suffering, may perhaps be better translated as dissatisfaction with how things are. That is, it is the suffering that necessarily arises in idealism, in idealistic thinking. The idealistic concept is always much better than the checkered world as we find it, here and now. So, it is not that the denial of a desire must necessarily result in suffering, but that idealistic philosophies and views have, inherent within themselves, a characteristic of suffering. In contrast, in Buddhism, which allows us to be content and fully at home in the world just as it is, and amid circumstances just as we find them, while simultaneously holding all the dreams and desires of an active life, in Buddhism, we might feel the sting of a desire denied to us, yet, in our simultaneous equanimity and acceptance of that fact, we merely observe, with objectivity and tranquility, the throb of the hard punch that life may have handed to us. There may be some pain, some sadness perhaps, but true suffering can occur only when we cling to the pain, wrap our minds around it, and refuse to observe it all from a tranquil stance of acquiescence. We may dream that the path of life would take us to the north, and we work step-by-step to travel north toward our goal. But, when life blocks our path, when the wind blows us onto a southern course, the Buddhist will accept that fact, will appraise the altered circumstances of life and plot a new route, a new direction, step-by-step.

I do not believe that the Buddha held that sickness, old age and death are the cause of suffering in and of themselves. Rather, he discovered that our refusal to embrace and allow sickness, old age and death, and to cling to and crave health, youth and life in their stead as our desired ideal, is the root of suffering. Dukkha, dissatisfaction, arises from sickness, but only when we refuse the condition; from old age, if we long for youth; in encountering death, because we cling to life; by loss, when we cannot let go; due to violated expectations, because we wished otherwise.

Nishijima also spoke of "materialism" as another extreme of traditional Indian philosophy before the Buddha ...

As the Buddha taught, falling one-sidedly into a materialistic viewpoint, and holding as too important the experiences of our senses, is also—just as with idealism—a way of thinking that is a source of suffering. We have to keep in mind that Gautama Buddha did not view the real world as a world of only pure physical matter lacking all meaning and value, as something cold and dead and meaningless. To see life and the world as, at heart, nothing but a collection of physical phenomena, this is too a source of suffering and delusion.

And, says Nishijima Roshi, the cure steps beyond and right through the extremes of "idealism" and "materialism" as found in traditional Indian philosophy before the Buddha. One meaning of "the Middle Way" in Buddhism is, not only moderation between extremes of our actions (such as having too much hunger or not enough to live), but also (and some scholars I have spoken to say Nishijima was generally right in saying so) between extremes of "other worldly. idealistic" and "overly this worldly, materialistic" philosophies as existed in India at the time.

To the extent that we human beings are living in a world centered on what we think, what we wish and dream, our thoughts, wishes and dreams, and our ideals, will be a cause of problems to us. And to the extent that we human beings are living in a world in which we are wrapped up in the material and what we experience through the senses, we shall revere one-sidedly the material and hold as overly important our senses. However, besides the worlds of thinking and of the senses, besides the perspectives of the ideal and the material, one additional, most important perspective exists for human beings: this is the world of action, of being and doing which accepts the world just as it is. It is the world that sweeps in and swallows whole both the ideal and the material, right here and now. It is called a world of action because this world is active now, is acting here and now, and we exist now, are acting here and now as an expression of that active world.

It is very nice but, frankly, I have sometmes spoken about Nishijima Roshi's interpretation of the "Four Noble Truths" as perhaps an example of his attempting a little too hard to fit his own personal theory ...

I have written from time to time about some of Roshi's beliefs that were a bit unique to him. He was someone who sat Zazen for 70 years, encountered great Balance and Clarity in Body and Mind, and then tried to express that Balance and Clarity in western philosophical terms and medical-physiological terms that might have been, well, a little his own language and way of putting things, and sometimes an awkward fit. Although a great Zenman, I do not think he was particularly an expert in Western philosophy or medicine, but tried to describe Buddhism in such ways. My teacher, like all Zen teachers before him, has tried to express in words the experience of Zazen that is ultimately beyond words ... and to do that, Nishijima Roshi has had two very good ideas about Zazen, and his own unique way to say it.

...

[For example,] his idea of Zazen as a practice of "Action" or "Pure Doing/Being", and Buddhism as a "realistic" philosophy beyond idealistic religions or materialistic philosophies. Below a description in a nutshell, although it is a bit more than this. It is actually a very sound description, but he tried very hard to fit the Four Noble Truths into that. I am not sure it was a good fit. You will have to read the book to see how he tried to do that. I do not know anyone in the many flavors of Buddhism who would express them as he did. On the other hand, the POINT he was trying to make about the Four Noble Truths is itself quite good. Further, even Nishijima said he was not trying to replace the traditional view of the Four Truths, so much as add another way of viewing them.

http://www.treeleaf.org/forums/showthread.php?13153-In-Memory-of-My-Teacher-Gudo-Wafu-Nishijima-Roshi-%28-re-issue-of-his-book-%29&p=147509&viewfull=1#post147509

Gassho, J

SatToday

[Kyonin]

Hi Ankai,

My take on Roshi's words is that yes, there is pain and conditions in life that can't be avoided because they are part of a single complete package. It's us who reject and make mental constructions on how things should be. We grasp on to those images and when we compare reality to what we idealized, dukkha comes.

Gassho,

Kyonin
#SatToday