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Zen in the Natural World: A Meditation on Awakening After Modernity

Zen in the Natural World: A Meditation on Awakening After Modernity

Last updated on: December 29, 2016 at 11:19 am by James Ford

Zen in the Natural World: A Meditation on Awakening After Modernity 2016-12-29T11:19:40-08:00 James Ford

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I’ve just read Seth Zuiho Segall’s contribution to the current issue of Tricycle, “A More Enlightened Way of Being.” I’m quite taken with it. A psychologist and teacher of psychology as well as a Zen priest, Dr Segall addresses the fact that a large percentage, I would even hazard possibly a majority of our Western convert Buddhists, do not adhere to the traditional Buddhist understanding of rebirth.

This issue has been a bone of contention at least from the 1997 publication of Stephen Batchelor’s Buddhism Without Beliefs, which is essentially a broadside against the traditional understandings of karma and rebirth. Sides have been taken and polemics have been hurled. And, all along the way some are simply trying to move forward in the light of the fact many, again, maybe most of a generation of convert Buddhists do not adhere to what many others consider a central tenet of Buddhism.

To the degree this assertion that many, maybe most convert Buddhists do not believe in a literal rebirth is true, it has numerous consequences to the whole Buddhist project, and most of all for the Buddhism of this subset community. In his article Dr Segall focuses on ethics and purpose and how this fundamental shift of perspective is playing out among our Western convert communities as a more naturalistic, and for some materialistic Buddhism begins to mature.

He points out the entire soteriological project (sorry, I went to seminary & it was expensive, and I need to throw those terms around once in a while) that is how we identify the core problem of life and address it shifts for Buddhism if we do not posit a literal rebirth. After all, the problem as we find it addressed in the Nikayas is a seemingly endless chain of rebirths experienced as an seemingly endless cycle of suffering. And with that the soteriological project, the healing, our saving from suffering is stopping the cycle.

If that isn’t the problem for more modernist Buddhists, what is being addressed? Dr Segall suggests we who fall into the modern or modernist bucket start with a personal inner disquiet, and so are more likely to say things like “I wish I were happier” or “I wish I were a better person.” I think many of of us actually ask even more pointed questions, like “why is there so much suffering?” or even, “why do I suffer so?” as well as “why do we all suffer so?” In fact that later question as a social approach to suffering is a particular focus for many convert Buddhists and is the source of engaged Buddhism.

I go farther and suggest that deeper question of suffering actually is the same problem for all of us who call ourselves Buddhist. And the core analysis remains the same. Our suffering, whether we see it as extending over lifetimes or a lifetime it arises out of our misunderstanding of who and what we actually are.

Dr Segall’s essay focuses the Aristotelian concept of eduaimonia, “human flourishing,” as what many of us of a modernist turn unconsciously assume as the actual project. He then proceeds to educate us about what that means, and does not mean, and further goes on to explore conflicts and possible corrections for us as contemporary Western Buddhists pursuing a wiser life within the frames of our time and place. I’m, as I said, quite taken with his reflection. And I commend the essay to anyone concerned with the rubber hitting the road in our contemporary and mostly Western Buddhism. I believe it is a real contribution.

But, he doesn’t explore what I find nags even more for those of us engaged in what I’m coming to prefer to call the naturalistic Buddhist project. If enlightenment, awakening isn’t the cure to the problem of endless rebirths, what is being fixed? I visit this question a lot. Particularly as a person of the Zen way. The whole project of Zen is awakening. So, what does that look like for us?

With Zen, whether traditional or modernist, we’re talking about a spiritual process, however it is a spirituality completely bound up with this actual lived in world. We are not just talking philosophically, about ideas disengaged from where we live. At the same time we need to not get too macro nor too micro in trying to understand what is going on. Going off into theoretical physics to understand Zen is a mistake, however interesting the apparent similarities are. And, trying to reduce it simply to the categories of contemporary Western psychology is equally a mistake.

While I fully embrace the scientific paradigm, I am also deeply aware it has shadows. For spiritual practitioners the major problem is reductionism and with that a bare materialism, which reduces our experience to a series of mechanical processes. While there is truth within these observations, they are not “it.”

Rather we’re called to a Goldilocks spot – echoing for me that tradition in Buddhism about how rare it is to be born human, and to be able to experience liberation. What we call “here.” Or, “this moment.” The point is that this consciousness is something that has been pointed to by people in many, possibly all cultures, in ways that resonate with if not exactly agree with people in other cultures. Cultural assumptions lard all our descriptions, as does the peculiar mix of our own genes and history.

It occurs right here in this world. No place else. And for me, I find it is best described, least obscured among religious texts, most helpfully presented in the Heart Sutra, specifically in the line “form is emptiness. Emptiness is form. Form is exactly emptiness. And emptiness is exactly form.” Within the Heart Sutra’s form and emptiness, its separateness and its oneness, and “seeing” both as more intimate than one, are at the heart of the project.

If we don’t cling too tightly to the words, or, to ourselves and our opinions, we find ourselves tumbling into a great not knowing that can inform who we are, and our choices in ways that are healthful, useful, and give our living and dying a sense that while the words do fail, and I’m flailing at how best to present, can be called meaningful. More, that can be the resting of the troubled heart. That is our saving.

And this saving does look a bit different than when the concern is ending a chain of lives, and is instead focused on the mess that is us, you and me, here, in this place. For one we find awakening is experienced and lost, itself an oscillation that continues throughout our lives. One kensho after another, discontinuous moments in a flood of experience that connects it all. And satori? Words fail. Words burn away. And in our moment we can recall the memory of our cells and the blood circulating within our bodies. But, recalled as dream, as something vague and difficult to grasp.

For me the greatest danger in the traditional descriptions is that it, and its supporting literature suggests we can have a transcendent moment that takes us away from our conditioned existence. Worse, the way to this is often described as disentangling from the mess of the world. In practice this takes us away from our bodies and tries to get us to live in some spiritual realm uncontaminated.

The words of the Heart Sutra, the guidance of the majority of the Zen ancestors, and my own experience points in another direction. And I find it at the heart of our contemporary emergent Zen. There is no uncontaminated or, for that matter, there is no contaminated. So, there are two errors. One is thinking there is nothing but a mechanistic world, a clock wound up at some time in the immemorial past that is clicking along inexorably. This is the world of form is all that there is – a bare materialism. The other error is to deny the material world in favor of some ethereal other place. Here we have a spacious and beautiful and peaceful realm with no distinctions of high or low – a total otherworldliness.

A third place is to create a hierarchy of experience, with a lower material and a higher spiritual, sort of a ladder to heaven. This image is in fact common in the Buddhist literature. But, it is rife with possible misunderstanding. But the Heart Sutra and the lineage of Zen teachers all correct these errors. The sutra tells us that compounded and uncompounded are one thing.

It sounds like a logical fallacy, where “a” cannot also be “b.” A plain description of it is that there are no substantive things, everything exists temporarily within causal relationships. Things are real, but they are temporary. And we find that perspective the Buddhism of the Pali scriptures. The Heart Sutra and the Zen way is offering a next step. Beyond simple logical calculation, beyond lists of what is and what is not. Here we move from syllogism to metaphor, here we find pointing and invitation. Here we are invited to taste that water and tell for ourselves whether it is warm or cool.

This is not sophistry. It is that all things are in flux, and the flux itself is every individual thing. The empty, open, boundless is exactly the same thing as the constrained, divided, broken, sorrowful, and joyful. This is the “just this” of the just this we’re called into.

And, its encounter is a lifetime practice. Yes, there are moments of deeper insight, even deepest insight, and it all is part of something that continues on. So, we have another problem of language. Our experiences small and large of stepping away from the conventions of our lives are so wondrous that our expressions about them can be so vastly over the top. And, more problematically these enthusiasms can mislead. And even more complicatedly mislead both others and ourselves.

As I look at my life I see this way is really following the vermillion thread ever more fully encountered. There are no things in any permanent sense. Rather there are moments, joining other moments, which, because we have been lucky enough to be born with brains that can do it; we can experience separately and together, consciously. Or, really, consciously enough. So, sometimes I see it clearly. Other times not at all. I have been walking the way for more than forty years. I’ve had small and great insights. I have succumbed to the blandishments of ego and desire and I’ve seen deep and true. And, each moment is just a moment. And in the aggregate I feel a gradual deepening, an arc into the depths of being.

This naturalistic Zen Buddhist way has given me my life. And, I remain endlessly thankful. And. I know its a path, to cite a popular paraphrase of Eihei Dogen, that is one continuous mistake. And so there’s that other popular Zen saying, one the Korean master Seung Sahn liked to repeat, “fall down nine times, get up ten.”

This said, as human beings we tend to follow some patterns. For instance, if we’re not terribly damaged, most of us are pretty clear on our separation, our individuality. What we miss is our universality, how we are connected, and connected so intimately that we can call ourselves, and everything together, “one.” Although our Buddhist tradition actually pushes this more specifically, saying while “one” can be a useful metaphor, it is also ultimately misleading.

Rather we in all our particularities are all bound together within what is ultimately an openness, a boundlessness. However, for many reasons, again some of my scientific friends suggest whys for, that part which is our sense of the universal, one, boundless, is recessive in our consciousness. For the most part this seems true to me. The gift that we call awakening comes with noticing the opening. And wisdom comes with its integration.

I find it critical to reassert that this insight is in no way owned by Zen or even by Buddhism. That is another insight enjoyed within the naturalistic expression of the Buddha way. Everyone, everyone, can and frequently does find it. While my own initial experience was within the confines of a traditional Zen ango, an intensive ninety-day monastic experience, and one, I think in a book largely about koans I want to point out did not emphasize koan introspection practice, I also know two Zen teachers who had their first taste of the larger world as children, one was nine, the other was eight. I know of another who says he genuinely feels his first insight, if measured as disrupting his view of isolation and leading him on toward the way, came with an LSD trip in his sophomore year at college. I’ve known others who have found this insight on a walk in the woods, working in a soup kitchen, and in the middle of war.

Kensho, satori, awakening is in fact a natural eruption of the heart. One could even say it comes as a gift, or an accident. We don’t earn it. We can’t make it happen. Rather it hits us like a bus hitting a pedestrian crossing a street.

And. And. And. We need awakening. Without this our lives are meaningless. We are lost in the mists of our imagination, our fears and desires the only reference. And, I think it important to note how Zen without kensho, satori, is a lovely philosophy, but very little more.

And, similarly, any emergent naturalist Buddhism must take awakening into account. We need to drink the water and taste for ourselves whether it is cool or warm. We, each of us, need to find this experiences, although experience is an inadequate term, we need, each of us, to find this place for ourselves.

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