Recently I came upon a web forum in which people were gushing that children were natural-born Zen masters, because they naturally knew how to "stay in the present moment" and be "spontaneous." When I pointed out that small children also tend to be self-centered and clingy -- which is not putting down children, but they are self-centered and clingy -- this didn't strike anyone as being relevant.
I did a web search for "what is Zen?" and found answers like "being fully present, right here, right now" and "a way of being." While there's some truth in such answers, they aren't really telling us anything about what makes Zen uniquely Zen.
Mindfulness is essential to all schools of Buddhism, not just Zen, and "a way of being" is kind of, um, vague.
And to add insult to injury, when I searched image banks with the keyword "zen" to find an image to go with this article, most of the images were of three things:
- People meditating, usually surrounded by a soft glow, but using Hindu or other not-Zen postures and mudras. They obviously were not doing Zen meditation.
- Buddhist monks, but most were not Zen monks. Yes, I can tell by the robes.
- Piles of rocks.
The piles of rocks are usually smooth rocks stacked in a tower. Exactly how piles of rocks represent "Zen" eludes me.
Everybody knows the word "Zen," but it's clear that most of us in the West still have no idea what Zen actually is. I've been a formal Zen student for a few years now, and the warm fuzzy feel-good answers to "What is Zen?" strike me as missing the mark. But what hits the mark?
For some basic historical background, see Zen 101: An Introduction to Zen Buddhism. Now, let's take a more intimate look at Zen.
Zen Is a School of Mahayana Buddhism
Mahayana is one of the two primary schools of Buddhism. The most significant doctrine separating Mahayana from the other primary school, Theravada, is the doctrine of sunyata, or emptiness.
Read More: Sunyata, or Emptiness: The Perfection of Wisdom
Having some grasp, even a wobbly one, of sunyata is essential to understanding anything at all about Zen, although you could say the same thing about other schools of Mahayana Buddhism as well.
However, Zen is distinguished from many other Mahayana schools by what I call its "sink or swim" approach to sunyata. Most schools teach sunyata gradually, or don't push it at laypeople much at all. Zen traditionally immerses students in sunyata teachings from day one, sometimes using practices such as koan contemplation to help them break through the limitations of beliefs and concepts.
Growing out of sunyata is the realization that we individuals are not separate and autonomous person-units. Instead, we inter-exist with all other beings. For this reason, Mahayana Buddhists don't consider "enlightenment" to be an individual achievement. The ideal of practice in all of Mahayana Buddhism is the bodhisattva, who vows to bring all beings to enlightenment. Living the bodhisattva vows is enormously important in Mahayana Buddhism, including Zen.
A Life of Vow
To me, it's the commitment to the bodhisattva vows that's so painfully missing from "live in the present moment" Zen. To truly be in the moment, free from all clinging, is to realize the self as everything and everyone. Or, in the famous words of Eihei Dogen (1200-1253) in Genjokoan --
"To study the Buddha Way is to study the self; to study the self is to forget the self; to forget the self is to be enlightened by the ten thousand things."
Buddhist practice, including Zen practice, is a process. A big part of the process is turning away from self-clinging in favor of a life of service to others. This happens as a natural part of the process, not because it's something you think "ought" to happen.
The Japanese Zen teacher Hakuin Ekaku (1686-1769) said, "From the sea of effortlessness, let your great uncaused compassion shine forth." Of this, Zen teacher Geoffrey Shugen Arnold said,
Compassion no longer requires effort. It's not you doing the right thing, helping someone out who's disadvantaged. You're no longer attached to the sense of self and other. From the sea of effortlessness, there's just effortless response. And from that place he says, "let your great uncaused compassion shine forth." This compassion is uncaused because there's no self present. True compassion shines forth like the rays of the sun, without conscious effort or any sense of doing; the sun just radiates light and warmth, a bodhisattva simply serves others.
That's Zen.
The Face-to-Face Transmission
There's a lot about Zen practice that becomes evident with experience but which is hard to explain to others. Although one certainly can practice Zen meditation, called zazen, by oneself, an I-can-do-it-by-myself approach to Zen training is a non-starter. It's a bit hard to forget the self when your ego is your teacher.
A traditional definition of Zen is "face to face transmission of the dharma outside the sutras." In other words, Zen is the process of teachers and students working together in a particular way, and it's not something you can get from books. This process is not a matter of transmitting knowledge from teacher to student. Instead, it's about teachers and students together giving life to the dharma.
Being part of this great tradition doesn't mean just showing up for meditation. It means giving to it as much as receiving from it. The process of teaching is complex and dynamic; teachers teach students, students teach teachers. Very often students teach each other. This process has continued through an unbroken lineage of students and teachers for many generations.
And this is how the living dharma has come to us. What's written in books is just a record of it.
My point is that engaging in this process of learning and teachings with others is the tradition. Zen is giving as well as receiving, without givers and receivers.
What about mindfulness? Yes, being in the present moment is part of the training, but by itself it's not necessarily Zen. And I still haven't figured out the piles of rocks.
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