Zen Without Jargon | Part VI
Friday, July 31, 2009 at 6:45AM If find it comical at times that the words Buddha and Buddhism, a term implying clarity can be made utterly murky. I get questions all the time like, "Is Buddhism a religion? Is Buddha considered a god? Can I practice Buddhism and my religion at the same time? Hey, didn't some body say, If you meet the Buddha kill him, so whatever I do is okay isn't it?" These are just a few and there are many more that people have.
Please keep in mind my usual disclaimer. Anything I say is based on my experience and is not meant to be authoritative. It's one person sharing with another.
When people ask me about the word Buddha, I often encourage them not to get hung up on the word or think it's strange and mystical, cause It's not. A basic translation of the word that tend to work well is "One who is Awake," but I always like to add, "360 degrees." As for the other notions and ideas, Buddha is not a god. I myself sometimes say, "Buddha is a presence or State of Mind, nothing inside or outside. It's a way of Being that often will not match so-called normal intellectual formulations. It's way past that"
Is Buddhism a religion? Not in the traditional sense since the word religion also implies "God." Buddhism Itself is as I mentioned before a Way of Being or Practice and as such doesn't bother with the notion of is or is-not God. One of my friends Bo once said, "In the East, they never had a word for not God, so they never bothered arguing about stuff like we do here."
I know a lot of people who are ordained Zen Buddhist and yet they consider themselves rock solid Christian's, Jewish person's, Quakers, etc... People are often surprised when they find out that I believe very much in Jesus Christ and the principles that He expressed, those principally being and expressed as Love, Compassion, Kindness, Honesty, Openmindedness and Willingness.
I must be honest, I'm not into a lot of the stuff that people have seemed to have liberally added, which is exactely what people do with regard to Buddhism. People manage to put stuff and attribute meanings to it that aren't really there. It's for this reason that there tends to be so much distortion. There's too many words and ideas but not enough Practice.
My experience has been that Every One and Every Thing has the Buddha Nature, without fail. The difficulty has been that the State of Awakened Mind is largely used, unexpressed or not actualized, within our society. If you asked me how I can tell, I'd say look at what we value, look at how we treat each other, look at how we tend to feel. There can be no other explanation than we have been asleep for a long, long time. We can do better, but to actualize what is "better" ourselves is a choice, a practice and a way of life. Nothing mystical there.
If you are somehow suffering, and I turn away or avert my eyes and pretend that I don't see YOU, I'm not expressing awakened, unified Mind. If I am more interested and living in distraction of various addictions, that renders my incapable of being fully present and aware. In those distractions are gaps, distance and time. We becomes actualized is a dream, fantasy or illusion, not an Awakened mind. Things can get really muddy and dense.
Awakened/Buddha Mind is not as complicated as we'd like to make it to be. I've heard Genjo Marinello Osho say, "It all out. It's all shining. It's shouting at us from every corner. The pieces are all out on the table. Nothing is hidden. There is no mystery." For some reason I believe him. It's true. There's no sense in pretending otherwise.
If we are really interested in answering the questions, What is Buddha, Buddha Nature, Buddhism or what does it mean to be Buddhist, It's time to sit. It's experiential not intellectual. As John Daido Loori pointed out in a talk he gave, he said "In 2,500 years only one person ever came to enlightenment by reading. It was the Hui-Neng the Sixth Patriarch who heard the words of the Diamond Sutra (he was illiterate)." That said, Zazen, zazen, zazen and overtime, if we can manage to let go of what we think we know, we can wake up.
If we really want to get past the jargon, we have to stop putting things on the table that really isn't there. Bassui Zenji put it best when he said, "If you don't come to realization in this present life, when will you? Once you have died you won't be able to avoid a long period of suffering in the Three Evil Paths. What is obstructing realization? Nothing but your own half-hearted desire for truth. Think of this and exert yourself to the utmost." Buddhism is not about how smart we are but rather something else. Please sit and find out.
Hands Palm to Palm,
Jaye Seiho Morris, Curator
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Reader Comments (3)
I am often told that Buddhism was too complex. I am still stunned whenever I hear this. The problem with Buddhism is that westerners are used to having a Bible or some main Holy Book and Buddhism does not have one central book. It's got a whole library. Its so easy to get hung up on difficult concepts and philosophy rather than on the practice of Buddhism itself.
Zen, doesn't help this issue with koans and vague platitudes. I practice Zen but I understand how much of a pain all the literature can be. So I usually recommend the following:
Read the 4 Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path and Dhammapada. Meditate for whatever time that you can during the day (15 min is better than nothing). And since we living in the middle of nowhere, I suggest a few blogs to follow.
3/4 of Zen practice is ingoring all of the stuff out there that is Zen.
Zen should never be complex to a novice. People often miss this point when explaining it to newbies.
Buddhism as I have encountered it seems overwhelmingly complex. I now practice alone.
But what wonderful advice in that comment:
"Read the 4 Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path and Dhammapada. Meditate for whatever time that you can during the day (15 min is better than nothing). And since we living in the middle of nowhere, I suggest a few blogs to follow".
That should keep me going for another 50 years. Appreciated!
If I have been of any service, I'm grateful for that opportunity. It sounds like you have really captured and harmonized with the right attitude. All those people who are making Buddhism seem, mystical, esoteric and complex are pole-vaulting over fly poop. Zen/Buddhism is not complex. We can make it hard, but it's really not.
Hands Palm to Palm,
~Seiho