Hey y'all, some people on this forum keep asking for a "book report", so I thought I would post my thoughts in an essay format. While this forum has a very strong sectarian commitment to ZMs, this essay explores how 'non-duality' serves as an operating principle of the sacred in different ways across the writings of Huineng, Linji, and Dogen (everyone's favorite! :D). Again, I am looking at non-duality as a unifying principle in these three spiritual teachers' writings, and making no claims about "real Zen" or anything about my own, personal spiritual beliefs. Hope you enjoy, curious to hear your reflections :)
NON-DUALITY AS THE SITE OF THE SACRED IN CHAN/ZEN BUDDHISM
Religious systems each propose an ordering of the universe which gives rise to various hierarchies by separating ideas, behavior, people, places, and words according to cosmological principles. This religious lens differentiates the world between the ideal and flawed, the spiritual and worldly, the “sacred” and “profane” (Durkheim, 34). For the Chan/Zen schools of Buddhism, non-duality exists as a central element in delineating the ‘sacred’ from the ‘profane’, as their soteriological models point towards a mind unhindered by discriminatory thinking as the defining mark of an enlightened being. This sacred non-duality takes on a plethora of performative and ritualistic styles across time and place in East Asian religious history, with multiple splintering religious traditions uniquely interpreting and realizing such sacred non-duality. This essay will examine seminal works by the Chinese Chan masters of Huineng and Linji, as well as the Japanese Sotō master Dōgen, as to parse the unique ways in which each master expresses their own particular sacred non-duality, and the performance and paradox such expression entails.
Within Huineng’s Platform Sutra, non-duality is characterized as an interiorized experience. The text repeatedly circles back to one’s own nature and mind, iterating time and again the interior experience as the primary ontological point for realization. For example, Huineng urges his followers “to take refuge in the three treasures in your own natures” (145), elucidating that each component of the Triple Jewel (Buddha, Dharma, Sangha) is to be relied on “in your own mind” (145). Another example is the conversation between Prefect Wei and Huineng wherein Wei asks Huineng to explain why Bodhidharma stated that Emperor Wu of Liang gained no merit from the building of temples and monasteries, to which Huineng replied that “\[seeing into your own nature is kung (merit)\]; straightforward mind is te (also merit) ” (156), indicating that virtuous external actions, without being coupled with an interior rectitude, are without spiritual merit.
While the precise content of this sacred interior is never explicitly elucidated within the text, the hagiographic opening to the Platform Sutra, and in particular the contrast between words and actions of Shen-hsiu and Huineng, can help illuminate how the contours of this sacred interior can be understood through the concept of non-duality. Shen-hsiu’s failing to enter the ‘Dharma Gate’ and inherit the Fifth Patriarch’s robes (131) point towards what constitutes a ‘profane’ mind within the Chan belief system. Prior to writing his poem, Shen-hsiu ruminates on the competing elements and ramifications of his actions, such as the pressure on him to write the poem from the sangha, his own doubt of his worthiness, how it might appear to the abbot if he writes the poem, what will happen if he doesn’t write it, etc. Mired within such conceptual proliferation, Shen-hsiu “thought about \[his predicament\] for a long time and was perplexed” (129). During this process, Shen-hsiu’s mind is riven with doubt, turbulent in its planning, divided by machinations and analysis. Accordingly, his poem reflects such dualistic thought: the Bodhi tree separates itself from other trees, the clear mirror separates itself from obscured mirrors, there is a ‘striving’ to polish it, and an aversion to the ‘dust’ of the world (130). The objects of his poem each stand apart, separate, sectioned off according to a dualistic notion of pure and impure.
The Chan innovation from early Indian Buddhist traditions within the delineation between pure and impure is to make distinctions themselves the indicator of pure and impure. Actions which are considered sacred are marked not by their separation from the impure, but by their transcendence of the very bifurcation between pure and impure. In this sense, the pure and impure for Chan is of a second order, making the internal meta-action of categorizing or non-categorizing the site for determining sacrality. This is exemplified by the interior experience of Huineng during his actions and decisions within his hagiography, which are consistently marked with directness, acceptance and immediacy, guided by an internal, natural, reflexive certitude, and absent of any wavering or hesitancy resulting from dualistic thought. He has an awakening, leaves his mother, sees the Fifth Patriarch, accepts his role threshing rice, determines to write his poem, hears the full Diamond Sutra from the master and at once becomes “immediately awakened” (133). For each of these events, Huineng does not dwell in cognizing nor categorizing; rather, his actions emerge as the proper, unhindered response to circumstances. His poem, in turn, reflects this interior state of responsive, non-dualistic stability: without a tree or stand, and knowing that “Buddha nature is always clean and pure”, dust cannot collect (130); that is, without dualistic thought, there’s no conceptual object to obscure nor be obscured and confusion is given no place to arise. This non-dualism means that all components of a person are fully integrated, without friction nor contradiction, and thus action freely and spontaneously emerges from the locus of a non-dual interior.
Such integration and its resulting responsiveness subvert the early Indian Buddhist notions dividing the sacred and profane, such as adherence to the vinaya, guarding the sense doors, or perfecting one’s bodily, verbal and mental actions. As a result of placing primacy on this internal state of non-duality, master practitioners were freed from the rigidity of precepts, and instead guided their actions from the energetic emanations of their own Buddhanature. Within Chan literature, these actions often were contradictory to the expected conduct or piety of a monastic order. The iconoclastic exterior result of Chan’s interior sacrality of non-duality is exemplified by the stories, antics and teachings of Master Linji, a Chinese Zen master who taught roughly a century after the time of Huineng. These stories are full of cursing, shouting and hitting - actions that are far departed from the bare, peaceful asceticism of early Indian Buddhist lineages. However, these stories all provide illustrations of the ways in which Chan’s sacred interior of non-duality manifests itself. For example, one story which depicts how such brash action can embody the enlightened mind is of the monk who asked Linji about the True-Man:
“Here in this lump of red flesh there is a True Man with no rank. Constantly he goes in and out the gates of your face. If there are any of you who don’t know this for a fact, then look! Look!”
At that time there was a monk who came forward and asked, “What is he like - the True Man with no rank?”
The Master got down from his chair, seized hold of the monk and said, “Speak! Speak!”
The monk was about to say something, whereupon the Master let go of him, shoved him away and said, “True Man with no rank - what a shitty ass-wiper!”
(Watson, 13)
These actions of cursing, shoving and grabbing a monk appear coarse and perhaps cruel, but they are all instances of externally manifesting an interior of non-duality. Linji is not constricted by propriety nor by etiquette; rather his actions emerge unobstructed, and through force and spontaneity, Linji is trying to shake the monk from the bonds of his own doubt and duality. The monk’s question of ‘What is he like — the True Man with no rank?’ already contains within it the dual structure between self and other: from the monk’s perspective, the sacred interior of Buddhanature is not something he has access to, but rather exists somewhere else, in some other person whom is known as ‘the True Man’. Linji, in the speed and force of his action, is trying to suddenly wrest the monk from his dualism, to shake him into a response that is true, immediate, authentic. The monk, though, caught in his self-consciousness and wanting to say the ‘right’ thing, hesitates, and the Master “shove\[s\] him away” (13), seeing that the moment of unmediated expression had been lost. Yet, within Linji’s perspective of non-duality, this doubtful stammering is, also, one expression of Buddhanature: the Buddhanature of being “a shitty ass-wiper” (13). That is to say, Linji wants the monk to know that you can’t escape or think your way to being a ‘True Man’; the ‘True Man’ is what is always present, even if the True Man is weak-willed and self-concerned, it is still the True Man.
This story further epitomizes the way in which Chan notions of the sacred contrast with traditional Indian Buddhist ideas of sacrality in regards to the body. Traditionally, the development of concentration within early Buddhism called for withdrawing from the sense world as to enter states of deep meditative absorption in which perception was clear and stable enough as to perceive the fundamental nature of reality. However, Linji states that the True Man “goes in and out the gates of your face” (13), meaning the True Man is the very phenomena entering and leaving from one’s sense doors. Linji is trying to call his disciples attention directly to sensory experience as the site of sacrality when he implores them to “\[L\]ook! Look!” and “Speak! Speak!” (13). There is no longer the division between the cultivation of concentration and wisdom — the mental aspects conducive towards early Buddhist salvation — and sense impingement, as such a division between the sense world and soteriology is based within duality. Thus, the manifesting of the sense world as it is becomes the very nature of the True Man, the very site of liberation. The monk’s hesitancy in responding revealed his mind’s complicating of things, his inclination to look elsewhere, and his imagining of something more, and in that hesitation, Linji saw that he had already lost the immediacy and holistic integration of the True Man.
Accounts of Linji’s teachings frequently contain instances of shouting, often in response to questions around the essence of Buddhism . A shout channels unrestricted affect; it is a statement of presence, fearlessness, vitality. But, most importantly in regards to non-duality, it is a non-discursive statement in direct response to the paradox of non-conceptualization as a concept. As embodied by Huineng’s direct and effortless decisions within the Platform Sutra, non-conceptualization is the heart of Buddhism for the Chan lineage. However, to speak of non-conceptualization as a concept reifies it such that it becomes antithetical to itself: discourse of the non-conceptual conceptualizes the non-conceptual. The shout is an apophatic strategy to vividly demonstrate to the disciple how to enact, rather than conceptualize, the non-conceptual: the Chan shout is pure, non-dualistic responsiveness. The shouts says that the essence of Buddhism cannot be categorized, labeled nor delineated, it can only be directly manifested: KATZ!
Half a millennium later, the emphasis on non-duality as the site of the sacred within Buddhist thought continued to evolve in the Buddhist spiritual practices that had been transmitted to Japan. Dōgen (1200-1253), a spiritual leader during the Kamakura period (1185-1333) and founder of the Sotō tradition within Japan, expanded the boundaries of sacred non-duality with his notion of ‘practice-realization’, a concept which transposes the principle of non-duality onto the structure of the spiritual path. A spiritual practice which separates its end from its means has already inscribed division into itself, creating a dualistic vision between path and goal. For Dōgen, the very enactment of practice is the fruit of practice: the practice is the practice of realization, and what is realized is the realization of practice. Zazen and its liberatory fruit are enfolded within one another. From this perspective, “proper sitting authenticates the enlightenment that is already there” (Kasulis, 78). The inextricability between practice and realization can be compared to that of a doctor, such that “\[t\]o practice medicine is to be a doctor” (78). To do zazen is to be immersed in the activity of Buddhas, and as such to be embodying Buddhahood itself.
Dōgen’s earliest known work, the Fukanzazengi, translated to Universally Recommended Instructions for Zazen, eloquently expresses the sacralization of non-duality in the practice of zazen, as well as highlighting the paradoxical nature of non-duality as a determining quality between the sacred and profane. The work begins with a rhetorical question: “The way is originally perfect and all-pervading; how could it be contingent upon practice and realization?” (Dōgen, 532). This opening inquiry exposes the aporia at the heart of sacralizing non-duality: if sacredness is all-inclusive, how is it possible to separate the ‘sacred’ from the ‘profane’? That is, if everything is already abiding in its perfection, what is the purpose of practicing zazen? Dōgen clarifies this paradox by issuing the warning that “if there’s a hairs-breadth deviation, it is like a gap between heaven and earth; if the least like or dislike arises, the mind is lost in confusion” (532). As soon as one imposes an ideal, expectation or preference onto what’s experienced, thereby directing it towards something other than what is, the perfect and all-pervading way contracts towards this singular point of differentiation, and its holistic integrity is lost from immediate experience. In this sense, the universe’s perfection never fades, but the contraction of the mind towards the appearance of difference immediately obscures this perennial perfection.
Dōgen prescribes seated practice, zazen, as the antidote to these deeply embedded dualistic habits, these mental tendencies towards contraction. To practice zazen, Dōgen first instructs the practitioner on finding proper conditions, such as a quiet place free of distractions, loose robes, and an upright, alert posture. Once the body has settled, Dōgen directs the disciple to “\[t\]hink of not-thinking. How do you think of not-thinking? Beyond-thinking.” (533) These terse instructions point directly towards the centrality of non-duality in Zen’s conceptions of the sacred; the order of the mental actions to be taken up according to these instructions are arranged in progressively greater degrees away from dualistic thought. ‘Thinking’ is the mind’s ordinary means of conceptualizing, dividing and characterizing the world according to likes, dislikes, self and other. ‘Not-thinking’ is the negation of such ordinary thought, helping quell the ordinary proliferation of dualism, but still operating at a second-order dualism, resulting in a new conceptual meta-duality between duality and non-duality. The final cognitive step is complete liberation: moving ‘beyond-thinking’ — the place where one “put\[s\] aside the intellectual practice of investigating words and chasing phrases, and learn\[s\] to take the backward step that turns the light and shines it inward” (533). The attitude of ‘beyond-thinking’ “neither affirms nor denies, accepts nor rejects, believes no disbelieves…it does not objectify either implicitly or explicitly” (Kasulis, 75). This is a mind beyond all thought and non-thought, which simply abides in abiding. The salvific and sacred action of zazen is the actualization of pure experience, engaging with the world as it is, liberated from the constriction of conceptual filters, coloring, parsing - liberated even from the parsing between parsing and non-parsing.
The particular expressions of sacred non-duality for each of these Chan/Zen masters is part of a rich and ancient tradition of sacralizing non-duality within East Asian religions thought. The centrality of non-duality within Chan can be traced to indigenous Daoist thought which continuously employed poetic language to blur the boundaries between opposites, such as the second verse of the Daode Jing, which states “the difficult and the easy complement each other; the long and the short offset each other…” (Robson, 87); or the stories of Zhuangzi which colorfully and whimsically describe the fortune of misfortune, such as the description of the cripple Shu (Man, Zhuangzi), or the relativity of all perspectives, as in the conversation between the River Elder and Ruo the Northern Sea God (Floods, Zhuangzi). Within other Buddhist schools, non-duality was of equal importance, such as the Tiantai writings of Zhiyi in which every mind moment is seen to contain the three-thousand possible realms, thereby embedding the quality of Buddhahood within all other realms, even the hell realms, thus making Buddhahood always discoverable in every moment depending on the vantage point from which it is viewed (Ziporyn, 143-77). In Japan, non-duality served as a key component to the soteriological structure of Shinran’s Pureland sect since: given that Amida Buddha’s vow was for those who were hopelessly lost on the spiritual journey and thus only applicable to those who had no choice but complete faith in the Primal vow, one’s own virtue becomes a hindrance to faith, and one’s hindrances become virtues of faith (Shinran). These brief examples illuminate the extent and variety of sacred expressions of non-duality within East Asia beyond the Chan/Zen traditions.
This essay moved chronologically through seminal writings from three of the Chan/Zen tradition’s most well-known masters, demonstrating the unique ways in which each embodied and accounted for a sacred non-duality. For Huineng, his non-duality originated as an internal experience which imbued his decisions with a natural ease and effortlessness. This particular realization sharply departed from early Buddhist notions of the sacred and profane by not categorizing individual phenomena according to pure and impure, but rather established a reflexive sacred/profane structure based on the meta-categorizing of the very act of categorizing. Such non-duality originated internally, and expressed itself in the direct, easeful and accepting manner in which his life’s events unfolded. A century later, Linji’s brash and unhindered actions fully embodied this sacred non-duality: his shouting, cursing, and violent action channeled an explosive and undivided spirit of compassion, the manifestation of his spiritual integration unrestricted by social norms. In addition, Linji placed focus on the sense doors as sites of awakening, thereby offering even further contrast to the meditative liberatory practices of early Buddhism. Dōgen’s innovation of ‘practice-realization’ applied non-duality to the structure of the spiritual path, collapsing the path and goal into a simultaneous expression of cultivation and authentication. These masters’ own understandings and enactments of non-duality fit within a larger constellation of religious thought within East Asia that consistently emphasized the cruciality of paradox, the reconciliation of supposed difference and the inversion of the predictable as critical elements within soteriology, placing them within an extensive cultural pattern of sacred non-duality.
FOOTNOTES:
- Kung and te (Hanyu Pinyin: gong and de; 漢語：功德）are the two composite aspects of ‘merit’; kung refers to achievement or skill, while te refers to virtuous power.
- See Watson pages 9, 14 and 15.
- Meditative sitting practice within the Sotō tradition.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Dōgen , et al. Dōgen's Extensive Record: a Translation of the Eihei Kōroku. Wisdom Publications, 2010.
Durkheim Émile. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. Translated by Karen E. Fields, The Free Press, 1996.
Robson, James. Daoism. W.W. Norton & Company, 2015.
Shinran. “The Tannisho.” Translated by Taitesu Unno, The Matheson Trust, 1 Jan. 1996, themathesontrust.org/papers/fareasternreligions/Tannisho-Unno.pdf.
Watson, Burton. The Zen Teachings of Master Lin-Chi: a Translation of the Lin-Chi Lu. Columbia University Press, 1999.
Yampolsky, Philip B. The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch: the Text of the Tun-Huang Manuscript with Translation, Introduction, and Notes. Columbia University Press, 1996.
Zhuangzi. “Man in the World, Associated with Other Men.” Translated by Donald Sturgeon, Chinese Text Project, ctext.org/zhuangzi/man-in-the-world-associated-with.
Zhuangzi. “The Floods of Autumn.” Translated by Donald
Sturgeon, Chinese Text Project, ctext.org/zhuangzi/floods-of-autumn.
Ziporyn, Brook. Emptiness and Omnipresence: an Essential Introduction to Tiantai Buddhism. Indiana University Press, 2016.
Submitted May 12, 2020 at 12:02AM by oxen_hoofprint https://ift.tt/2yCYYFK
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