The Philosophical Debate Thread

[Mr. Charlie]

Zen

You know, a lot of people come up to me and say, “Hey Mr. Charlie, you’re a dude, a cool cat, a Zen master – what’s your secret?" Okay, that’s never happened. Haha.


Ahem. Okay. Take two. No more nonsense. Right. Rather than continue my lazy habit of posting videos in this thread, I’m going to explain what Zen means to me. Why? Because I want to. Because I think of Zen as the art of losing one's mind in order to become sane. And because Zen can transform one’s mind and thus their world. Because Zen is based more on experience and the scientific approach than on faith. Because Zen can make the ordinary extraordinary.


So what exactly is Zen? What does it entail? Well, good questions both, but a more pragmatic question is why would anyone adopt Zen? The short answer is to move away from bondage and towards freedom. Freedom from what?


Freedom from the reality prescribed to us. Life is not the serious, meaningful and purposeful affair society would have us believe. Meaning is man-created, and because we constantly look for meaning, we start to feel meaningless. But the moment we start seeing life as non-serious, as playful, the burden on our heart lightens. The fear of death, of life, of love - it all wanes. Zen gives us an alternative to the serious man. The serious man has made the world; the serious man has made all the religions. He has created all the philosophies, all the cultures, all the moralities, the systems, the rules; everything that exists around you is a creation of the serious man. Zen has dropped out of the serious world. It has created a world of its own which is very playful, full of laughter, where even great masters behave like children. So not to be bound by rules, but to be creating one's own rules - this is the kind of life which Zen is trying to have us live.


Freedom from fear and suffering. Zen teaches that once we open up to the impermanence of all things and the inevitability of our demise, then we can begin to transform that situation and lighten up about it. It teaches us that although loss and pain are inevitable, suffering is optional.


Freedom from the past and future. Zen lives in the present. The whole teaching is how to be in the present; how to get out of the past which is no more and how not to get involved in the future which is not yet, and just to be rooted, centred, in that which is. This really is the cornerstone of Zen practice. Nothing is ever done with an aim in mind, not even meditation, one meditates to meditate, one eats to eat, that’s all, no more, no less. As Zen Master Lin Chi put it "When it’s time to get dressed, put on your clothes. When you must walk, then walk. When you must sit, then sit. Just be your ordinary self in ordinary life, unconcerned in seeking Buddhahood. When you’re tired, lie down. The ignorant will laugh at this, but the wise will understand."


Freedom from knowledge. Modern mind has lost all capacity to wonder. It has lost all capacity to look into the mysterious, into the miraculous - because of knowledge, because it thinks it knows. Well Zen is a kind of unlearning. It teaches you how to drop that which you have learned, how to become unskilful again, how to become a child again, how to start existing without mind again. To quote Zen Master Ma-Tzu "The mind that does not understand is the Buddha. There is no other." Well this non-understanding mind is the mind Zen promotes.


Therefore the Zen disciple does not hanker for knowledge; he wants to be, not to know. He is no longer interested in having more knowledge; he wants to have more being. To quote another Zen saying "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few". What Zen does is return your mind to that of a beginner in order so that it can open to the infinite possibilities that exist and the realisation that ordinary life itself is miraculous. As the famous D. T. Suzuki put it "Zen opens a man's eyes to the greatest mystery as it is daily and hourly performed; it enlarges the heart to embrace the eternity of time and infinity of space in its every palpitation; it makes us live in the world as if walking in the garden of Eden". Eloquent words indeed, but also very true. To watch the clouds without thought is to love the clouds, to see the flowers without thought is to enjoy the flowers, to sweep the floor, to peel potatoes, to wash the dishes, to sit on a wall and watch the cows, even the most seemingly mundane activities become enjoyable when they are perfomed with am empty mind in full attendance.


Freedom from desire. Desires can never be satisfied. We all know this deep down. Even if we get what we want, we desire to keep it, and so Zen teaches to be empty. To look into the nature of things without want, without plan. Nothing is there to be done. There is nothing to gain. This is another cornerstone of Zen Buddhism, and indeed Taoism; one does not practise to gain. This flys in the face of Western thought and seems counterintuitive to many and so it’s worth expanding upon: one doesn't practice Zen with an aim to seek one's true nature or truth. That is not how to discover true nature. That is not how to discover truth. Both true nature and truth are ever present. So how does one realise them? By shedding that which keeps us from them – namely desire and illusion. So, yes, one has simply to be. Have a rest and be ordinary and be natural. We can say that the life of Zen begins, therefore, with the disillusion in the pursuit of goals which do not really exist - the good without the bad, the morrow which never comes, and the gratification of a self which is no more than an idea.


Freedom from ego. This is the crux. The meat and bones. Desire, suffering, knowledge, all products of the ego, but the ego is a phantom, nothing other than the focus of conscious attention, so to tackle fear, desire and the rest of it, one must tackle the ego.


This is no easy task. Indeed it's been described as the most difficult thing in the world, for it involves the abandonment of the self. It takes courage to abandon the self, it involves shedding things you like about yourself, shedding things others like about yourself, in short it means becoming detached and disentangled from the world - something that quickly manifests into isolation. As Buddha himself put it, "Those who commit to my teaching walk alone". And it’s this apect that is difficult or frightening to many. However, this is only an outward appearance, for deep down one feels a heightened sense of connection to every single thing, from a grain of sand to a pebble to a tree to a mouse to a human being to a cloud to a star. For ultimately it is the ego that stands between one's unity with everything.


That's all for now. I'll be looking into what Zen actually is next time. And what it is may surprise you. It ain’t gold. No. It's more like poo.