Zen action zen person kasulis pdf




















One must learn just to observe without getting involved in them. That is, one must learn to dis-identify oneself with them. In the process of deepening meditation, one can roughly identify three distinct stages: the stage of concentration, the stage of meditation, and the stage of absorption.

In the stage of concentration, the practitioner concentrates, for example on the lower abdomen, establishing a dualistic relationship between the practitioner who is concentrating and the lower abdomen that is the focus of concentration.

This dualistic relationship is broken gradually as the practitioner moves into the stage of meditation. The activity of the ego-consciousness is gradually lessened, and the barriers it sets up for itself are gradually removed. There will be no separation or distancing between an object of the mind and the activity of the mind itself.

As the practitioner repeats this process over a long period of time, he or she will come to experience a state in which no-thing appears.

No-mind does not mean a mindless state. Nor does it mean that there is no mind. It means that there is no conscious activity of the mind that is associated with ego-consciousness in the everyday standpoint. In other word, no-mind is a free mind that is not delimited by ideas, desires, and images.

No-mind is a state of mind in which there is neither a superimposition of ideas nor a psychological projection. That is, no-mind is a practical transcendence from the everyday mind, without departing from the everydayness of the world.

Since then, various Western philosophers have attempted to capture human nature with this goal in mind by using ego-consciousness as a starting point as well as a destination in philosophy.

See Yuasa , — For this reason, Zen contends that physical nature and human nature must be sought in an experiential dimension practically trans-descending, and hence transcending, the standpoint of ego-consciousness.

As a result, paradoxes, contradictions, and even what appears to be utter nonsense abound in Zen literature. Therefore, we can say that Zen is an anti-philosophy in that it is not a systematization of knowledge built on the use of a discursive mode of reasoning anchored in the alleged certainty or transparency of ego-consciousness, one that follows an epistemological paradigm built on an ego-logical, either-or, dualistic mode of knowing.

This standpoint, as mentioned in the foregoing, relies on the discursive mode of reasoning to understand reality, while presupposing an ego-consciousness as the standard referential point. From this perspective for example, a distinction between the outer and inner worlds emerges, using a sensory perception as the point of reference. One of the salient characteristics of this standpoint is that the world appears to be dualistic in nature, that is to say, it recognizes two and by implication, many things to be real.

Epistemologically speaking, Zen observes that this renders opaque, or at best translucent, the experiential domains beyond the sensible world as well as ego-consciousness, both either taken naturalistically or by means of theoretical speculation. The inability to go beyond these experiential domains occurs because ego-consciousness is physiologically rooted in the body and psychologically in the unconscious.

This points to a philosophically important consequence. This logic thinks it reasonable to divide the whole into two parts when knowing or understanding reality. That is, when this logic is applied to the whole, it compels the user of this logic to choose, reasonably in the mind of the user, one part, while disregarding the other part s as irrelevant or meaningless.

It prioritizes one part at the expense of the other part s , while celebrating the exclusion. It champions one-sidedness in cognition and judgment as the supreme form of knowing and understanding reality. However, Zen thinks that this prioritization, this exclusion, violates a cardinal principle of knowing, for knowledge of anything demands an understanding of the whole. Either-or logic fails on this account. For example, if one maintains that the mind is real, one disregards the body as unreal, yielding an idealist position.

On the other hand, if one thinks the body is real, it disposes of the mind in the same way, favoring materialism as true and real, which is presupposed, for example, by natural science. Either position commits itself to reductionism. Here, questioning this practice and the consequences it entails, Zen instead speaks of mind-body oneness, an holistic perspective, as it abhors one-sidedness.

Zen finds that these two things impose on the epistemological subject a structuring that is framed dualistically and either-or ego-logically, as mentioned in the foregoing. Accordingly, this structuring unknowingly frames things to appear dualistically and either-or ego-logically to the epistemological subject, while extending the paradigm to itself for self-understanding as well as things other than itself in the same manner.

Consequently, the subject stands opposed either to the outer world e. Moreover, Zen notes that the subject cannot by definition become the object or vice versa, for they are distanced from each other either really or ideally. When one attempts to know her from the everyday standpoint, one relies on the language she speaks and her body language.

Here one cannot know her in toto , let alone the destiny of her life-history, because she is shielded from an observer by the spatial-temporal density of her being. Zen maintains that the situation created by assuming this epistemological paradigm is not ideal, or real, for that matter.

An either-or logic ignores this interdependence, in part because it operates within a conceptual and linguistic space with the assumption that there is no temporal change. This assumption enables a thinker to establish the law of identity, namely that A remains the same with itself, or identical with itself. With this recommendation, Zen maintains that mind and body, I and others, I and nature ought to be experienced as one by those who remain in the everyday standpoint.

Otherwise, Zen fears that the practitioner will fall into one-sidedness, in which the knowledge claim ends up being partial, imbalanced, and even prejudiced. This is because Zen thinks the practitioner cannot achieve this negation simply by following either-or logic, or for that matter by following the intellectual process of reasoning, because both logic and reasoning intrinsically involve two things, for example, the thinker and the thought.

In other words, in the eyes of Zen, these methods lack consideration for the concreteness and immediacy of lived experience. This is in keeping with a general method of teaching in Buddhism, i. This complication is further compounded by the differences in the personality of Zen masters. To properly respond to this question, Zen thinks it important to determine whether it is posed with a practical concern or a theoretical concern in mind.

The difference allows a Zen master to determine the ground out of which this question is raised, for example, to determine if the inquirer is anchored in the everyday standpoint or in a meditational standpoint. Why does Zen insist on this? In so doing, the monk relativizes Buddha-nature qua being, while contrasting and opposing it with non-being. Buddha-nature is not something that the dog can have or not have ; Buddha-nature is not something contingent.

Nor do I expect you to reply that the dog both has and does not have buddha-nature. Nor do I expect you to reply that the dog neither has nor does not have buddha-nature. How do you respond to this? An appeal to discriminatory thinking based on the standpoint of [ego-]consciousness is of no use either. It is also unacceptable to appeal to bodily action, let alone to engage in a mere verbal exchange.

Do not swallow it where something is generated. This is, no doubt, an existential challenge to Zen practitioners, and so they make an all-out effort, staking life and death, because it guarantees them an embodiment of truth and freedom. In order to get an idea of this experience from a contemporary point-of-view, or from outside of Zen tradition, one may also consider out-of-body experiences.

It points to a practical transcendence from the everyday either-or, ego-logical, dualistic standpoint. In light of the outer-inner distinction Zen interprets the non-dualistic experience to mean that the distinction has been epistemologically collapsed, as it arises in such a way to respond to the dualistic perspective from which the outer and the inner worlds appeared.

Conceptually, Zen takes this holistic perspective to mean the de-substantialization and de-ontologization of any two polar concepts, such as one and many, being and non-being, universal and particular, absolute and relative, transcendence and immanence, and birth and death.

They are thrown into a holistic context of an interdependent causal series. For if thing-events designated by these terms are endowed with self-nature, they cannot enter into the series; what enters such a series is only an accidental attribute or property. According to the substantialistic or essentialistic ontology, nothing can really change. For example, criminals who want to correct their criminal behavior cannot change themselves if being a criminal is the essential characterization of their being.

This would pose an insurmountable challenge, if not impossibility, to a correction officer at a prison. This question points to an examination of the epistemic structure of how knowledge operates in Zen experience. Although it is lengthy, we quote it in full in order to provide a sense of how a Zen dialogue unfolds:. Suppose that there is a clear, transparent mirror. If it does not face a thing, no image is reflected in it.

To say that it mirrors an image means that because it faces something, it just mirrors its image. The disciple asks: If it does not face any thing, is there or is there not a reflection in the mirror?

The master replies: That the mirror reflects a thing means that it always mirrors regardless of whether it is facing or not facing a thing.

The disciple asks: If there is no image and since you do not give an explanation, how can all beings and nonbeings become an issue? Now when you say that it always mirrors, how does it mirror? The master replies: When I say that the mirror always mirrors, it is because a clear, transparent mirror possesses an original nature as its essential activity of always mirroring things.

The master replies: it sees no-thing. That is the true seeing. It always sees. Yanagita, , —3. Jinne conceives of a mirror in terms of two modalities: the mirror in and of itself and the mirror as it engages an object other than itself.

It is important to keep in mind that both are understood in light of their activity. What makes a mirror what it is is its activity of always mirroring, and when considered in and of itself, it possesses no specific image to mirror.

There is no characteristic to it and hence no image appearing in it, i. In phenomenological terms, there is no thetic positing in this kind of seeing.

When a mirror, for example, reflects an image of a beautiful object, it does not make any discriminatory value judgment that it is beautiful. And neither does it make any discriminatory value judgment when it mirrors an ugly object. It mirrors thing-events as they are.

Moreover, Zen observes that the nature of the mirror is such that it does not change due to the kind of object it mirrors. For example, it does not increase or decrease in size in virtue of the fact that it mirrors an object. Because equality is the characteristic of this seeing, Zen speaks of the activity of this seeing as nondiscriminatory. Through this mirror analogy, Zen wants to point out what the minds of people are like in their original nature and activity.

Zen would respond that this objection ignores the fact that the ground of seeing is the bottomless ground that is nothing. He demonstrates a meticulous and empathetic reading of Dogen's Shobogenzo, particularly the difficult fascicles on genjokoan, bendowa, and uji.

Here, Kasulis has done a commendable job in "demythologysing" Zen Buddhism of the metaphysicalisms which have encumbered it since D. By reinterpreting such Suzuki-isms as "manifestation of reality" as the more accessible "presence of things as they are," Kasulis indeed makes Zen more consistent with its claim to repudiate metaphysics, or at least to reject blanket statements about unexperienceable Ultimates.

However, this very translation, "presence of things as they are," tends towards a naive realism so common in Sino-Japanese thought. The careful phenomenologist wants to "bracket out" the question of the reality of the objects of experience, and simply deal with experiences themselves.

Indian Buddhists like Nagarjuna would surely agree. But the Zen Ch'an tradition often strays into a naive realism which asserts that not only experience but its objects are externally real and objectively, knowable. Reflecting the vacillation of his sources, Kasulis is sometimes very clear that Dogen is a phenomenologist p.

But such apparent inconsistencies are rare, and do not significantly detract from the argument for the primacy of experience. In drawing the essential distinction between "not thinking" and 'without thinking," Kasulis analogizes "not thinking" to the state of the insomniac worrier who rolls over, takes a deep breath, and makes a conscious effort to blank his mind and stop all thought p.

He analogizes 'without thinking" to thoughtlessly saying "ouch" upon stubbing a toe, or to the one who gazes thoughtlessly over his lawn after mowing it. The insomniac example is a good example of "not thinking"-the conscious rejection of further conscious thought. The examples of "without thinking" are inadequate;let us see why. Clinical studies of Zen masters have shown that the Zen state is one in which there is no judgment,categorization, nor habituation of experience.

Kasulis is aware of the earliest of these studies Naranjo and Ornstein, , stating that "every click experience is a first click experience " to someone in this state of mind p. We grant that there is no self-conscious reflection in saying "ouch" or blankly gazing over the lawn, as Kasulis says. But the Zen person would do neither. For there is a component of emotional display in the "ouch" reaction, which the non-judgmental, non-categorizing Zen attitude precludes.

The Zen master's stubbed toe is fully experienced, but it requires no further verbalization. Nor is the dazed gaze of the weary lawn-mower, unintentional and self-forgetful as it may be, analogous to the undimming perceptual receptivity of the Zen master. These examples are misleading if they leave the impression that surprised or dazed unthinking moments Jap. Zen non-reflection is not the un-selfconscious thoughtlessness of the animal, the child, the insane, the exhausted laborer, or the fool caught off guard.

They all lack the unhabituating and continuous total awareness--the undimmed and non-verbal at-one-ness with their experience-that the Zen master attains through years of discipline. As Kasulis says, in Zen …reality is what is now happening—it is not outside our experience, but the construct being worked out in our experience. For Zen, this has the implication that reality is protean, always changing shape as soon as we come into contact with it and try to pin it down.

By living in the present moment, there is no longer the tendency to make reality into something static or reified. He considers two arguments.

Thus, I will not address it directly. Thus, every re- construction of reality necessarily encapsulates irresolvable oppositions. Then, if one finds it necessary to describe or analyze phenomena, one will be cognizant of which aspects the primordial experience are being highlighted and which hidden by distinctions.

By recognizing the limitations of language and conceptualization, one can use them without being misled by them. There are several important points to note about it. Third, part of being wise about it is recognizing that one is necessarily distorting or obfuscating experiences that are otherwise primordial or non- conceptual.

Let us begin to push back against these claims by applying the lessons from earlier regarding concept employment. One might say that the central concept that the unenlightened employ is that of Self.

Importantly, this reification of self occurs not simply in lingo-conceptual thought, or written or verbal descriptions as Kasulis seems to imply, but centrally in how one actively engages the world. However, as has been pointed out earlier, enacting enlightenment, enacting emptiness, requires going beyond both form and emptiness.

One does not linger in form, nor does one linger in emptiness, but rather, as Okumura puts it, one expresses both sides in a single action. What kind of action s? Actions that embody the concept of emptiness, which means embodying a cluster of concepts that simultaneously take one beyond form and emptiness such that form and emptiness are not enacted as though they were themselves separate concepts, i.

These concepts are further connected, through relations of identity and conditioning, to concepts such as Buddha, Dharma, Buddha Nature, karma, and still others. Part of the challenge at this point is to say something right or useful about the way certain rule-governed patterns of acting are sufficient for the employment of these concepts. There is not the space to look in detail at each of the concepts in the cluster of emptiness. I will focus on letting go, cause and effect, and compassion.

The roots of their driving forces are the center of all the unwholesome actions. That is why lay practice is difficult. Leaving the household is similar to going out into an empty field where there are no people. They can keep their minds unified and free from thinking.

As their thoughts inside retreat, their affairs outside also disappear. People seek wealth, profit, fame, and desire comfortable clothes and furniture. Such pleasure is not true comfort, wanting profit brings no satisfaction. While begging food in a patched robe, in motion or stillness the mind is always unified. The eye of wisdom observes the reality of all things. The wisdom of understanding is serene, incomparable in the three realms.

We must be careful here. It occurs within a particular context extended over time, namely, the context of sincere Zen practice. Part of Zen practice is the habituation of what we might call sorting activities into letting go and not letting go, i. Activities of attachment are unskillful in regard to the soteriological end of enlightenment. The point, I take it, is that letting go is an action, a gate a way , into actualizing Buddha; moreover, letting go branches out in myriad ways, discerning wholesome actions, ones that embody enlightenment.

In other words, through embodying certain activities, e. As with all dualities, one must transcend them, including the duality of letting go and grasping. What I wish to dispute is the claim that Kasulis makes that the concepts of cause and effect somehow must be transcended if we are to achieve an understanding of how things really are. What a pity! Things are deteriorating and the ancestral way has degenerated. Those who say does not fall into cause and effect deny causation, thereby falling into the lower realms.

Those who say Do not ignore cause and effect clearly identify with cause and effect. When people hear about identifying with cause and effect, they are freed from the lower realms. Do not try to escape this. Do not doubt this. In the story a man who was teaching at the time of Kashyapa Buddha told a student that someone who practices completely no longer falls into cause and effect. When the time is ripe, buddha nature manifests. Expounding it, practicing it, realizing it, letting go of it, missing it, and not missing it are all cause and effect over time.

Manifesting a [buddha] body and expounding dharma with the buddha body—this is buddha nature. Further, it is to manifest a tall dharma body and to manifest a short dharma body. Constantly being a sage is impermanence. Constantly being an ordinary person is impermanence. To say that those who are constantly sages or ordinary people cannot be buddha nature is a limited view, the narrow thinking of foolish people.

Their understanding of buddha falls short. Their understanding of buddha nature falls short. But further, we identify with cause and effect because that is what a Buddha is, what a Buddha does this is and does are not separate.

One learns the meaning and employment of all these concepts that form the cluster of the concept of emptiness in the context of Zen Buddhist practice. The concepts are not centrally about descriptions of reality, but rather their employment is the embodiment of reality as it is, namely, emptiness. One translation of which is: Beings are numberless; I vow to awaken them. Delusions are inexhaustible; I vow to transform them. Dharmas are boundless; I vow to comprehend them. The awakened way is incomparable; I vow to embody it.

Chpt 1, fn. Pages not available in Kindle ebook. Emphasis mine. That is, there is the Bodhisattva as a way of practicing Buddhism, i. He is: "One who perceives the cries of the world," … This bodhisattva is regarded as the parent of all buddhas. Do not assume that this bodhisattva has not mastered the way as much as buddhas. See Leighton , the book in general for information on the bodhisattva ideal, and chapter 7 in particular for more on Avalokiteshvara.

We do not dissolve into the other when we act compassionately, embodying the Bodhisattva Ideal. That is, b is achieved through the kind of selflessness expressed in the cognitive, affective, and embodied aspects of compassionate activity. We will see below in detail what is meant by reconciling these opposites, including what is meant by the reconciliation of the sentient and insentient.

We have explored several aspects of emptiness—letting go, cause and effect, and compassion—and seen how they are both embodied and interdependent, the latter as one would expect, not simply with one another but with the other central concepts that cluster with emptiness, such as Buddha Nature. Enlightenment is the continuous practice of letting go of both form and emptiness while simultaneously affirming them both in how one engages and navigates the world.

Those who act in an unwholesome way decline, and those who act in a wholesome way thrive. There is not a hairbreadth of discrepancy. If cause and effect had been ignored or denied, buddhas would not have appeared and Bodhidharma would not have come from India; sentient being would not have seen Buddha or heard the dharma. With that in mind, let us note that usually held to be concomitant to the claim that the lingo-conceptual apparatus occludes the true nature of reality emptiness, for example is the claim that reality as it really is is ineffable.

We see this conflation in the two lines above from Kasulis. One notion of the ineffable I call necessary ineffability. Something is necessarily ineffable if it must be inexpressible or undescribable using our lingo- conceptual apparatus because that apparatus necessarily distorts or occludes the true nature of what is experienced. This view implies, of course, the denial of conceptualism as it says that the experience of enlightenment must be free of the lingo-conceptual apparatus if it is to be truly experienced.

Something, an experience, for example, is generatively ineffable if a description of it, if an attempt to express it using our lingo-conceptual apparatus, a fails to convey every aspect of the experience such that b one hearing the description does not know for themselves what it is like to experience that which is described. In other words, words are often inadequate for generating the experience in the one who does not have it but merely hears the description words.

The resistance of the koan to words is no stronger than the resistance of the aroma of a cup of coffee to verbal expression… To know the sensation of hot and cold is one thing; to explain it to one who does not know it is another. The experience of the realization in a koan is not intrinsically indescribable, but only indescribable relative to the repertoire of experiences of the people conversing.

When I speak of the aroma of a cup of coffee and the sensation of hot and cold, other people know what I am talking about because they, too, have smelled coffee and felt the sting of hot and cold. But if I should speak of the taste of the durian fruit, the Southeast Asian fruit with the nauseating smell and the wonderful taste, few Westerners will understand what I am talking about.

Hori , 11 57 I do not quote this passage thinking there is nothing problematic about it. But it nicely illustrates the issue with generative ineffability. If you have never experienced coffee, then all my possible 55 Kasulis, While necessary ineffability is contradicted by my denial of the two dogmas of Zen, namely, my denial that enlightenment is centrally a special kind of experience, one that is free of concepts, generative ineffability is not contradicted.

The first is his creative use of language to push the boundaries of the ineffable. The entire assembly was silent. Mahakashyapa alone broke into a smile. This, along with the robe, is entrusted to Mahakashyapa. The Buddha presents a flower and blinks. Mahakashyapa alone knew how to respond, smiling, not speaking. In line with the argument of this paper, we can think of both the Buddha and Mahakashyapa as embodying central Buddhist concepts and thereby expressing their understanding to one another.

But just as with explicit uses of words to express understanding, the conceptual content of what is expressed is generatively ineffable. The reason for this is that the teaching by words is shallow and limited to forms, so the Buddha used no words, took up a flower and blinked.

This was the very moment of presenting intimate language. But the assembly of innumerable beings did not understand. That is why this is a secret language for the assembly of innumerable beings. Mahakashyapa did not conceal it means that he smiled when he saw the flower and the blinking, as if he had already known them; nothing was concealed from him.

This is a true understanding, which has been transmitted from person to person. There are an enormous number of people who believe in such a theory.

They comprise communities all over China. The degeneration of the buddha way has resulted from this. Those who have clear eyes should turn these people around one by one. Although they know that words have form, they do not yet know that the World-Honored One does not have form.



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