S Miling Y Our W Ay T Hrough P Uzzles
SMILING YOUR WAY THROUGH PUZZLES
The Buddhist Link
Hinduism and Buddhism are not identical teachings. But it is not possible to understand the New Spirituality without understanding a few of Buddhism’s cardinal doctrines, as well. The links in the previous chapter are to the Neoplatonism of Greek thought and to Hindu pantheism, rebaptized Sanatan Dharma. While Chopra and his Hindu critics can debate whether or not what he is promoting to westerners is Hinduism, the rising and continuing interest in Buddhism gives the New Spirituality double strength, since all the methods of reasoning change. Buddhism is the main branch from which many of the underlying assumptions in the New Spirituality come, more specifically, the branch of Buddhism known as Zen.
Original Buddhism followed from six underlying principles. It would take a great deal of space to study the intricacies of Buddhism and its offshoots. The classic work on Zen was penned years ago by D. T. Suzuki. A more recent excellent text on Zen is by Heinrich Dumoulin, Zen: Enlightenment: Origins and Meaning.
Four noble truths—the truth of suffering, the cause of it, the end of it, and the eightfold path—are the most popular concepts of Buddhism and the most often discussed. But that is far from understanding its intensely complex system. From these basic precepts there developed huge bodies of teaching, especially in the law of causality, also called dependent origination, and the ultimate elimination of suffering. From conception to reflection to thought to action to appearances, there is the explanation of the illusionary idea of a self and its perceptions of the physical world, and the interconnectedness of causes, which makes it all both emergent and circular.
Once Buddhism left India and expanded into the rest of Asia, this religion broke down, and the number of sects and subsects that developed boggles the mind. When it entered China, the character of Buddhism changed dramatically, as it did even further when it spread into Japan. Buddha probably would never have recognized it. The main divisions began a short while after the death of Buddha, when his followers split into two sects, Mahayana (Great Vehicle) and Hinayana (Little Vehicle) Buddhism. The leaders of Mahayana Buddhism considered a shorter route to attain nirvana as they felt more people would be able to reach that state through Mahayana than through Hinayana. Mahayana then further divided into six branches—Zen, Tian-Tai, Huayan, Fa-xiang, Clear Earth, and Mi.
Hinayana Buddhism came into its own in the fourth century BC and then gradually declined. The Hinayanist School claimed that only a small number of people really understood and followed the true teaching of Buddha. Although they claimed him as their teacher, because of the fact that he attained nirvana they considered him no longer a mere man. From the implicit deification of Buddha to his three body states and thirty-two appearances, the numerous and varied teachings that are part of Hinayana are divided and subdivided and microdivided. Hinayana is dominant in Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos. But even within those regions there are divisions and subdivisions. The Thai version does not ordain women monks, so the first Thai woman monk went to Sri Lanka to be ordained and then returned as a monk to Thailand. I met with her shortly after her ordination and had an extended discussion with her in Bangkok. It was a fascinating time. Her answers to my questions were quite intriguing. I shall save that for another day and another discussion.
Let me just tackle one key idea contained in many of the Buddhist schools of thought. The two poems below from the renowned Nagarjuna indicate the heart of the teaching of four subbranches in Mahayana:
To causes and effects was born control,
and to me there is nothing but emptiness,
even though its name is righteousness,
to me its name is false.
They were not born;
they were not dead.
They did not appear often;
Yet they do appear.1
One can see where all this is headed by grasping the key words, nothing, emptiness, appear, and that “aha!” moment of discovery as the enlightened mind would catch ultimate reality. The major exposition in Mahayana is of the word rupa, which literally means “a form” or “a body.” Here is the key verse: “Rupa is emptiness; emptiness is Rupa.” On that thought hinges everything else. So while for Solomon meaninglessness became a chasing after the wind, for Mahayanists anything physical became a chasing after the wind. Form and substance were two different things, so while we are preoccupied with form, in the end it is nothing more than mere appearance. Life in effect becomes as a crossword puzzle, where mystery, contradiction, clues, and answers posed as questions all play a part.
The most fascinating story of how questions of “what is real” are dealt with in Mahayana Buddhism comes from two episodes in the development of Chinese Buddhism. In one incident the emperor of the Qing dynasty, Shun-zi, asked a monk named Yu Lin, of the Zen branch, “Looking at my empire, my thoughts come. When I look at it again, my thoughts disappear. Do I have an empire or not?”
Yu Lin replied, “Sire, it is just like dreaming. It is there and it is not there.”
How, then, is all this phenomenon around us explained in Mahayana Buddhism, if all is empty and ethereal, there and not there at the same time? What’s the spinning top here? It is explained through the heart of human beings. This is actually called a “hearts-only” point of view in one of the sects of Buddhism. So much can be said here. Let me just sum it up with how this is translated in the transition of their successors. This is the second story.
The fifth ancestor, Hong-ren, of the Zen Buddhist subbranch, informed his disciples that he was going to choose his successor by means of a test. He asked his disciples to compete by writing a poem that they thought would please him the most. One of the disciples, Shen-xiu, who seemed the heir apparent, wrote:
The body is like a pipal tree.
The heart is like a mirror.
These have to be cleaned frequently
So dust will not cling to them.
Hong-ren looked at the poem and thought about it a moment and then said it was not good enough. A second disciple, Hui-neng, a worker who was just an orderly in the temple, took his shot at it. He wrote:
The pipal is actually not a tree,
The mirror also is a stand.
Everything is nothing but empty.
Where can the dust cling?
After reading this, Hong-ren selected Hui-neng as his successor. He had got it: If at its core everything is nothing, how can dust accumulate? As a sidebar, it is important to note that once Hui-neng was made successor, he hastily left for another town and changed his name, lest he be tracked down and the other disciples who were not chosen avenge his placement. His rupa had to escape, lest other rupas cornered his rupa and truly made what appeared to be, disappear.
But the story continues. Fifteen years later, Hui-neng, the sixth ancestor, went to Guangzhou, where he entered a temple. He turned his eyes and looked silently upon a banner that was blowing in the wind. Some claimed that the wind was moving and others claimed that it wasn’t the wind, that the banner was actually moving on its own. Hui-neng corrected them by saying, “The wind is not moving. The banner is not moving either. The hearts of the people are moving.”2
That lays the groundwork for determining what is real and what is merely apparent. It has everything to do with the filters of the person trying to perceive the difference and reality. It’s really not the wind. Nor is it the banner. It is the stand in the heart that may only pragmatically be called the mirror. This is the path of reflection, introspection, intuition, and of ultimately minimizing the rupa world. “All solidity was ultimately nothing.”
I cannot resist adding that if Mr. Chopra would like a word study, this is the place for it, not in the mangling that he does of biblical texts in his so-called word studies. As mentioned above, the word rupa means “a form” or “a body,” something solid. But ultimately, all rupa is illusion and nonessential. Here is a curious point I would like to raise. The Indian currency is the rupee, or sometimes rupaiyah, which is what the currency is called in Indonesia. The etymology for something that is nothing but has been made into everything that defines value, all in the name of spiritual truth, would make a book of its own. I don’t want to give away too much here, but you will see that propensity when Chopra comes to his study of some very profound texts in the Bible, while he seems to miss the obvious. But in this connection one can see with a smile that life has its material moments even when we pursue emptiness. Very interesting, indeed.
One very important link from Zen in “Weastern” Spirituality is the koan. What is a koan? American Buddhist Ruth Fuller Sasaki, who is married to a Japanese Zen master, says in the foreword to The Zen Koan,
The koan is not a conundrum to be solved by a nimble wit. It is not a verbal psychiatric device for shocking the disintegrated ego of a student into some kind of stability. Nor, in my opinion, is it ever a paradoxical statement except to those who view it from the outside. When the koan is resolved it is realized to be a simple and clear statement made from the state of consciousness which it has helped to awaken.3
Any time you see something very significant defined with a series of what it is not, you can be sure that the person defining it doesn’t really know how to tell you what it is. Here is one illustration of a koan at work:
One day when Yuan-wu had taken the high seat in the lecture hall, he said: “A monk asked Yun-men, ‘From whence come all the buddhas?’ Yun-men answered, ‘The East Mountain walks over the water.’ But if I were asked, I would not answer that way. ‘From whence come all the buddhas?’ A fragrant breeze comes of itself from the south, and in the palace pavilion a refreshing coolness stirs.”
Upon hearing these words, Ta-hui suddenly awakened to enlightenment. He became the Dharma successor to his master Yuan-wu.4
This is all so critical to understand if we are to fathom the very mystery and, yes, the numerous contradictions within the New Spirituality. These are the ideas that have helped to shape the present “Weastern” Spirituality. Here, for example, are the words of Elizabeth Lesser, a contemporary proponent of the New Spirituality:
If the purpose of meditation is to accept the way things already are, then how do we justify any striving at all? When I was involved in Zen meditation I was very confused by this dilemma. The concept of reaching “enlightenment” is a big part of Zen Buddhism. But so is nonstriving. So, which is it?… The answer, and this is the answer to many of the Zen koans, is both. I eventually came up with a slogan that put the question to rest for me: “Not either- or, but both, and more.”… And yes, the kind of work that it takes to reach enlightenment looks like a passionate form of doing nothing.5
When I read that, I couldn’t help thinking of a friend of mine who has recently retired. He told me that he has enjoyed doing nothing. “When my wife asks me what I did that day, I say ‘Nothing.’ The next day when she asks me what my plans are for the day, I tell her it is to finish doing what I did yesterday.”
Many years ago Reader’s Digest published a little story from a contributor who had been taking flying lessons. The instructor described in detail the steps one takes to land a plane when the engines have lost power on a dark night, ending with “If you like what you see, land.” The student asked what he should do in the event he did not like what he saw and after a pause was told, “Turn your lights off.”
When you end up with a koan to explain what life is all about, it is not the landing strip you are hoping for; put aside your natural reasoning and celebrate obscurity until the light is turned on inside. How that will happen depends on which school of thought you belong to.
There’s really something very sad about all of this. It is interesting that both Japanese and Chinese spirituality met the fates they did in their political climate. Horrific acts are committed when ethical religions provide only self-referencing points for conduct and koans to maintain the mysterious as dogma in order to obscure what is clear. Without the transcendent perspective, the mirror does distort the image. In fact, a hall of mirrors can wreak havoc with reality.
This Zen link of the koan and the main Buddhist link of rupa are woven into the fabric of the New Spirituality. Systemic contradictions hide under the guise of “both and more,” appearances are equivocated upon to suit the koan, and the koan is leveraged to sustain contradiction. All of this effort is to define something as “nothing” and “nothing” as everything.