Nothing Holy: A Zen Primer
by
Norman Fischer
1. A Zen Wave
Like ocean waters, intellectual currents
are always in motion. They churn up organic matter from below, creating and extending
powerful nutritional mixtures. When groups of people at a particular historical
moment begin to experience the world in a particular way, naturally they meet
and talk, ponder, read and write. They are open to diverse influences. Eventually
the energy of their discourse crests and breaks like a sudden wave, and soon people
around them find themselves affected. So cultures mix, dissolve and change.
In
this way, a Zen wave broke on North American shores in the middle of the twentieth
century. It probably didn't begin as a Zen wave at all, but rather as a reflex
to the unprecedented violence the first part of the century had seen. After two
devastating world wars, small groups of people here and there in the West were
beginning to realize, as if coming out of a daze, that the modernist culture they
had depended on to humanize and liberalize the planet wasn't doing that at all.
Instead it was bringing large-scale suffering and dehumanization. What was the
alternative?
In the early 1950's, D.T. Suzuki, the great Japanese Zen scholar
and practitioner, arrived at Columbia University in New York to teach some classes
on Zen. Suzuki was a magnet for the yearning that was at that time still underground.
The people who met him, attended his classes or were otherwise influenced by his
visit constitute a Who's Who of American cultural innovation at that period. Alan
Watts, whose popular books on Zen were hugely influential, was there. So was John
Cage, who from then on wrote music based on chance operations, on the theory that
being open to the present moment, without conscious control, was the essence of
Suzuki's-and Zen's-message.
Cage influenced Merce Cunningham, the dancer-choreographer,
who in turn influenced many others in the performance art field. The Zen-derived
notion of spontaneous improvisation became the essence of bebop, the post-war
jazz movement. For Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen and
the other Beat-generation poets, Zen was a primary source, a sharp tool for prying
the lid off literary culture as they knew it.
Within ten years, lively Japanese
Zen masters who, from their side of the Pacific, had also been dreaming a Zen
wave, were coming to America to settle. With the 1960's and the coming of age
of a new generation radicalized by the Vietnam war and psychotropic drugs, what
had been churning underneath for decades broke out in a glorious and exhilarating
spray. The first Zen centers in America were bursting with students willing to
make serious commitments right away. It was an exciting and confusing time, perhaps
unprecedented in the history of world religions.
I was part of this Zen wave.
The cultural undercurrents I have been describing took place during my formative
years. A student of literature and religion, I was sensitive enough to feel the
brokenness that lay under the placid social veneer of the American culture I was
raised in. So when I discovered Zen in the writings of D.T. Suzuki in the late
1960's, I was dumbstruck. Here was exactly what I needed, a completely new way
of experiencing the world. The uncompromising, experiential and immediate search
for meaning that Zen proposed, without need of doctrine or belief, struck a chord
in me. Like so many, I wasn't looking for a new religion: I wanted a way to blast
through the options that seemed available to me. I wanted real freedom. Zen promised
this.
So in 1970, I moved to California in search of Zen and an entirely new
life. I learned how to meditate. I practiced alone in cabins in the redwood forest
in Northern California for some years, until I saw that I needed to practice with
others. I began my formal Zen training at the Berkeley Zen Center, and, after
five years there, enrolled in Tassajara, the first Zen monastery in the Western
world. I have been practicing Zen full-time ever since.
2. Zen Roots
What
is Zen, and how does it differ from other schools of Buddhism?
Unlike Christianity,
in which early wild schisms led eventually to centralized control, Buddhism has
always been open-ended and various. While a few key concepts (like the four noble
truths, with their simultaneously gloomy and hopeful view of human nature) have
always held firm, methods, philosophies and interpretations have differed widely.
India was the first Buddhist country. Through the centuries, it gradually spawned
hundreds of sects and sub-sects, and thousands of scriptures, and tens of thousands
of commentaries on those scriptures. When Buddhism spread over Central Asian trade
routes to China, all this material came at once. The Chinese were blasted with
a cacophony of religious insight that was exotic, extravagant and, most importantly,
foreign. The Chinese had long cherished their own twin traditions of Confucianism
and Taoism and were resistant to ideologies introduced by barbarians from beyond
the borders of the "Middle Kingdom." There was also a severe linguistic
challenge for the Chinese in digesting the Buddhist message from abroad. The Sanskrit
language was so different from Chinese in sensibility and syntax that translation
was almost impossible.
Gradually, Indian and Central Asian Buddhism began to
be reshaped by its encounter with Chinese culture. This reshaping eventually led
to the creation of Zen, an entirely new school of Buddhism. (The word "Zen"
is the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese "Ch'an," which means "meditation."
Here we use "Zen" because it is the word generally used in the West.
Ch'an, though, did not come to Japan and become "Zen" until around the
eighth century.)
Bodhidharma is the legendary founder of Zen in China. He is
said to have arrived in China about 520. (Buddhism had by then been known in China
for about 400 years.) He was soon summoned to the emperor, who had questions for
him. "According to the teachings, how do I understand the merit I have accrued
in building temples and making donations to monks?" the emperor asked. Bodhidharma,
usually depicted as a scowling, hooded, bearded figure, shot back, "There
is no merit." "What then is the meaning of the Buddha's Holy Truths?"
the emperor asked. "Empty, nothing holy," Bodhidharma replied. Shocked,
the emperor imperiously asked, "Who addresses me thus?" "I don't
know," Bodhidharma replied, turned on his heel and left the court, to which
he never returned.
He repaired to a distant monastery, where, it is said,
he sat facing a wall for nine years, in constant meditation. A single disciple
sought him out, and to test the disciple's sincerity, Bodhidharma refused to see
him. The disciple stood outside in the snow all night long. In the morning he
presented Bodhidharma with his severed arm as a token of his seriousness. The
monk become Bodhidharma's heir, and thus began the Zen transmission in China.
So, at least, the story goes.
This legend illustrates Zen's style and values.
Zen is a pithy, stripped-down, determined, uncompromising, cut-to-the-chase, meditation-based
Buddhism that takes no interest in doctrinal refinements. Not relying on scripture,
doctrine or ritual, Zen is verified by personal experience and is passed on from
master to disciple, hand to hand, ineffably, through hard, intimate training.
Though Zen recognizes-at least loosely-the validity of normative Buddhist
scriptures, it has created its own texts over the generations. Liberally flavored
with doses of Taoism and Confucianism and Chinese poetry, and written in informal
language studded with Chinese folk sayings and street slang, Zen literature is
built on legendary anecdotes of the great masters. Buddha is barely mentioned,
and when he is he is often playfully reviled. "Old man Shakyamuni,"
the saying goes, "is only halfway there." Like most Zen masters, Bodhidharma
left little written material. But here are four Zen dicta ascribed to him, which
are always quoted to illustrate the essential Zen spirit:
A special transmission
outside the scriptures.
No dependency on words and letters
Pointing directly
to the human mind.
Seeing into one's nature and attaining Buddhahood.
This
shoot-from-the-hip Zen spirit appeals to the American mind, which is as iconoclastic
and anti-authoritarian as it is religious. In any case, it appealed to me and
to the many others like me who were and are looking for a direct route to awakening.
It has also appealed, over many generations, to millions of Buddhist practitioners
in the Far East, who, conditioned by the Taoism and Confucianism that had been
imported everywhere from China, could easy relate to the Zen message and style.
Although the Zen school created controversy at first in all the countries it spread
to, it eventually became by far the most successful school of Buddhism in China,
Korea, Japan and Vietnam. By the mid-1980's, the Zen traditions of all these countries
had been transmitted to America.
3. Zen Methods
Although Zen eventually
developed traditions of study and ritual, its emphasis on personal experience
has always made it a practice-oriented tradition. The practice is meditation.
"Sitting Zen" (Japanese: zazen) has, as Bodhidharma's legend shows,
always been central in Zen training centers, where monks rise early each morning
for meditation practice and do long retreats consisting of many, many silent unmoving
hours on the cushion. Zazen is an intensely simple practice. It is generally taught
without steps, stages or frills. "Just sit!" the master admonishes,
by which he or she means, sit upright in good posture, paying careful attention
to breathing in your belly until you are fully alert and present. This sense of
being present, with illumination and intensity, is the essence of zazen, and although
there are many approaches to Zen meditation, they all come back to this. Life's
secret, life's essence, and the truth and power of Buddhist liberation all come
down to this intense and illuminated presence which is beyond words and concepts.
Though it cannot be explained, it can be experienced and expressed through the
daily actions of a Zen life.
Because the practice of intensive zazen is so
central, Zen practice is essentially monastic. That is to say, it depends on a
life that allows for long periods of concentrated meditation. In the Zen monastery,
life is entirely organized around sitting in the meditation hall. But zazen is
also understood to be something more than this sitting. It is conceived of as
a state of mind or being that extends into all activities. Work is zazen; eating
is zazen; sleeping, walking, standing, going to the toilet-all are zazen practice.
In Soto Zen, the Japanese school practiced extensively in the West, there is an
especially strong emphasis on this "moving Zen." Soto monastic life
tends to be highly ritualized, so as to promote concentration in all things. There
is, for instance, a special elegant and mindful practice, called oryoki, for eating
ritualized meals in the meditation hall.
Zen schools are more or less divisible
into those that emphasize a curriculum of verbal meditation objects-like koans-and
those that do not. Emphasizing daily life practice as zazen, Soto Zen centers
generally do not work with a set koan curriculum and method, though koans are
studied and contemplated. Because of this, Soto Zen has traditionally been criticized
by the koan schools (the best-known koan school is the Rinzai school of Japan)
as dull, overly precious and quietistic, in contrast to the dynamic and lively
engagement of the koan path. But the koan way also has its critics, who see the
emphasis on words, meaning and insight as working against real non-conceptual
Zen living. Koan training systems also have the disadvantage of fostering competition
and obsession with advancement in the system.
In koan Zen, contemplation of
a koan begins with zazen practice. The practitioner comes to intense presence
with body and breath, and then brings up the koan almost as a physical object,
repeating it over and over again with breathing, until words and meaning dissolve
and the koan is "seen." This practice is done in the context of an intensive
retreat led by a qualified Zen koan teacher, whom the practitioner visits several
times each day for an interview. In the interview, the student presents his or
her understanding of the koan (however lame it may be) and receives a response
from the teacher (however understated it may be) that reorients the search. Eventually,
with luck, diligence and a few judicious hints, the koan's essence is penetrated,
and the practitioner enters the interview room with playful joy, capable of answering
any sort of question about the koan, however non-conceptual or absurd the question
may seem. The responses to koans are traditional stock answers, and although some
real experience is generally necessary in order to "pass" a particular
koan, it is clear that one can pass many koans without necessarily undergoing
any significant spiritual transformation.
Like all systems, the koan system
can degenerate into a self-protective and self-referential enclosure. It's the
teacher's job to see that this doesn't happen, but sometimes it is not preventable.
There are many different systems of koan study, but most of them emphasize humor,
spontaneity and openness. The koan method is, at its best, a unique and marvelous
expression of human religious sensibility.
4. Zen Schools
Zen has had a
long and varied history in several different Far Eastern cultures. Each culture
has produced a tradition that is recognizable as Zen, but differs slightly from
all the others. Vietnamese Zen is the one most influenced by the Theravada tradition.
It tends to be gentle in expression and method, to emphasize purity and carefulness,
and to combine Zen with some Theravadin teaching and methodology. In China, Zen
eventually became the only Buddhist school, inclusive of all the others, so contemporary
Ch'an includes many faith-based Mahayana practices that existed initially in other
Buddhist schools, especially faith in and repetition of the name of Amida Buddha,
the savior Buddha who will ensure rebirth in an auspicious heaven to those who
venerate him. Korean Zen is the most stylized and dramatic of the Zen schools,
and also the most austere. Korean Zen includes prostration practice (repeated,
energetic full-to-the-floor bows of veneration) and intensive chanting practice,
and has a hermit tradition, something virtually unknown in Japanese Zen.
Within
each of the Asian Zen traditions there are several schools, and within schools
the styles of individual teachers often differ greatly. Still, it is remarkable
how essentially similar the various teachers within a particular Zen "dharma
family" can be in personal style and mode of expression, even though, paradoxically,
each one is quite distinctive and individualistic. This uncanny fact-radical individuality
within the context of shared understanding-seems to be an indelible feature of
Zen.
5. Lineage and Teacher
A key Zen story, shared by all the schools:
Once Buddha was giving a talk on Vulture Peak. In the middle of the talk he paused
and held up a flower. Everyone was silent. Only Mahakasyapa broke into a smile.
Buddha then said, "I have the Treasury of the True Dharma Eye, the ineffable
mind of Nirvana, the real form of No Form, the flawless gate of the Teaching.
Not dependent on words, it is a special transmission outside tradition. I now
entrust it to Mahakasyapa."
This story, however historically unverifiable,
represents the beginning of the Zen transmission, said to start directly with
the Buddha. The story tells us two things: first, although the Buddha taught many
true and useful teachings and techniques, the essence of what he taught is simple
and ineffable. Holding up a flower is one expression of this essence. Second,
the very simplicity and ineffability of this essential teaching requires that
it be handed on from master to disciple in mutual wordless understanding. There
can't be a Zen training program with exams and certifications, with objectives,
goals and demonstrable, measurable mastery. While wordless understanding seems
a bit mystical and precious, it may not be as strange as it seems. We are all
familiar with the transformation that takes place in apprenticeship and mentorship
relationships, processes that involve a wordless give and take between individuals,
and in which something quite hard to define is passed on. My own teacher once
made me a calligraphy that read, "I have nothing to give you but my Zen spirit."
Although the "Zen spirit" may be hard to define, measure and explicitly
verify, it can be appreciated when you feel it.
I referred to "dharma
families" in Zen. These are lineage families, and lineage is a key element
in Zen training. While Zen practice can be done without benefit of a teacher,
having a teacher is important, and, in the end, crucial if one is to realize the
depth of Zen practice and make it completely one's own. Although the Zen teacher
must embody Zen and express it in all his or her words and deeds, a Zen teacher
is not exactly a guru, a Buddha archetype at the center of a student's practice.
To be sure, respect for and confidence in the teacher is essential if one is to
undergo the transformation in consciousness that Zen promises. But the Zen teacher
is also an ordinary, conditioned human being, simply a person, however much he
or she has realized of Zen. This paradox-that the teacher is to be appreciated
as a realized spiritual adept and at the same time as an ordinary individual with
rough edges and personality quirks-seems to go to the heart of Zen's uniqueness.
Through the relationship to the teacher, the student comes to embrace all beings,
including himself or herself, in this way.
In Asia, lineages through the generations
tended to be separate and usually opposing congregations. It was typical in the
early days of the transmission of Zen to the West for teachers of different lineages
to be scornful of each other. There were centuries of tradition behind this prodigious
failure to communicate. Thankfully, in the West there is now much more sharing
between the various lineages. In recent years in America, two organizations have
been created to promote warm communication between the Zen lineages: the American
Zen Teachers Association, which includes teachers from all lineages, and the Soto
Zen Buddhist Association, that is made up of teachers of the various lineages
of Soto Zen, the largest Zen tradition in the West.
6. Taking the Path of Zen
in the West
I've said that Zen is essentially monastic and depends on the intensive
practice of sitting meditation. In the West, however, most Zen practitioners are
not monastics. While this may seem strange, it is not at all strange if we consider
"monastic" to be an attitude and a level of seriousness, more than a
particular lifestyle. Unlike Zen laypeople in Asia, whose main practice is to
support the monastic establishment, Western Zen lay practitioners want to understand
Zen deeply and to practice it thoroughly, regardless of what their life circumstances
may be. In this sense, all Western Zen students are "monastic," regardless
of their life circumstances. All of them do some form of monastic-style training
within the context of their lay lives. They sit meditation regularly, either at
home or at a local temple, attend retreats and live their daily lives with full
attention (or at least coming as close to this as they possibly can). They take
lay or priest vows, and even sometimes enter monastic training at one or more
Zen centers for periods of time.
While there is a great deal of variety among
the many American Zen centers, in general their programs are open to the public,
encouraging all who want to practice Zen at whatever level they wish to practice,
but emphasizing committed, ongoing practice-gradually entered into-as the main
road. For someone who is interested in taking up Zen practice in America, the
approach is not difficult: surf the Web or the phone book, find the location and
schedule of the Zen establishment nearest to you, show up, and keep showing up
as long as it suits you. Eventually you will learn the formalities of the local
Zen meditation hall (most groups offer special instruction for beginners), and
if you feel comfortable you will continue to attend meditation when you can.
Eventually
you will sign up for dokusan (private, intense, formal interview with a teacher).
At some point you will hear about a one-day sesshin (meditation retreat) and you'll
try it out. You'll no doubt find it a daunting and at the same time uplifting
experience. After some time you'll be ready to attend a seven-day sesshin, and
that experience will feel like a real breakthrough to you, regardless of how many
koans you do or do not pass, or how well or poorly you think you sat. Sesshin
is a life-transforming experience, no matter what happens.
From there, if
you continue, you will deepen your friendships with other practitioners. These
relationships will seem to you, oddly, both closer and more distant than other
relationships in your life. Closer because the feeling of doing Zen practice together
bonds you deeply, and more distant because you may not exchange personal histories,
opinions and gossip as you might do with other friends. As time goes on you will
establish a relationship with one or more of the local Zen teachers, and you will
find these relationships increasingly warm and important in your life, so much
so that perhaps some day you will want to take vows as a lay Zen practitioner,
joining the lineage family.
If you go on practicing, as the years go by you
may attend monastic training periods at one of the larger centers. If your life
permits, you might want to stay at this center for a while-perhaps for many years,
or for the rest of your life, eventually taking on the teachers and lineage there
as your primary lineage. Or you may come back home and continue your ongoing practice,
going back to the larger training center from time to time for more monastic experiences.
Or, if it is impossible for you to get away from your family and work life for
longer than a week at a time, or if you do not want to do this, you will continue
with the practice of weeklong sesshin, and that will be enough.
It is also
possible that you do not ever want to go to week sesshin, and that Zen classes,
one-day retreats, meetings with the teacher from time to time, and the application
of all that you are learning to the daily events of your life is the kind of practice
you really need for your life, and that nothing more is necessary.
What will
all this effort do for you? Everything and nothing. You will become a Zen student,
devoted to your ongoing practice, to kindness and peacefulness, and to the ongoing
endless effort to understand the meaning of time, the meaning of your existence,
the reason why you were born and will die. You will still have plenty of challenges
in your life, you will still feel emotion, possibly more now than ever, but the
emotion will be sweet, even if it is grief or sadness. Many things, good and bad,
happen in a lifetime, but you won't mind. You will see your life and your death
as a gift, a possibility. This is the essential point of Zen.
Norman Fischer
is founder of the Everyday Zen Foundation and a former abbot of the San Francisco
Zen Center. He is the author of Taking Our Places: The Buddhist Path to Truly
Growing Up and Opening to You: Zen-Inspired Translations of the Psalms