Eventually I left Zen because ... many of the masters were just priests in their own traditions who only paid lip-service to enlightenment

[Guest guest]

Zen By Brian Adams

 

" This will be a long section on what I learned about Zen over a

period of 12 years or so, between 1968-80, from various Zen masters

at different centers. I will talk some about the various styles of

Zen meditation, koans, chanting and their impact on the mind, the

different absorptive states and all that kind of stuff, as it

happened to me. More on the subject of meditation and chanting can be

found in the " Practice " page, especially the Introduction to

Meditation section where there is a good overview of the entire

subject.

 

My spiritual life did not get serious until I left an awful Ph.D.

program in economics at Wayne State University in Detroit. I would

sit in classroom and listen to a history of economics lecturer in

stunned silence at the nonsense he passed on as worthy of

investigation at a graduate level. I had thought that in graduate

school someone would finally talk about what is real as opposed to

what I felt was the watered down version taught to undergraduates. In

fact, it was the same old thing but worse; many academics actually

believed that what they were saying was true, or at least relevant.

There was nothing there either; just empty conceptualizations.

 

My problem was that I did not trust that the supposed real was real.

There just seemed to be something wrong with the world as I saw it,

and I wanted to find out how and what it really was. I had looked

into philosophy, physics, science fiction, UFOs (common discourse

back then) and found them all empty of real, substantive content. I

found Eastern philosophy tantalizingly close to feeling true, but

very confusing as everyone seemed to have a different idea of what

mattered.

 

With this last effort a failure, I had no choice but to turn my back.

I began my career as a seeker, feeling somewhere, someone knew what

this was all about.

 

My first Zen teacher was Phillip Kapleau Roshi at the Rochester Zen

Center, who was much, much later to become a friend. He and Robert

both developed Parkinsons' Disease and we shared " recipes " for easing

the symptoms. I must say I was quite insane during that period of

time. My endless meditation and self inquiry using the " Who am I? "

questioning, began to manifest as an awakening of the Kundalini

energy, which was not gentle or kind. In fact, the visions and

trances became very frightening at times. All this is discussed

elsewhere on this site in greater detail.

 

My life took a turn for the worse when I went to Sasaki Roshi's

concentration camp-style Zen at Mt. Baldy Zen Center in the Winter of

1970-71, where I met some interesting monks, nuns, Leonard Cohen and

Ram Dass, who were all there as students at the time. I also saw a

lot of snow, and at 3:00 in the morning, snow is really cold when

walking bare-foot.

 

It was also worse because I went sane. The Kundalini experiences

slowed. Sasaki said many Americans came with that as their koan, but

this was too difficult an inquiry to begin with. He was right. I

never would have found the answer doing what I had been doing then,

which was the practices of Chinese monks a thousand years ago. I was

not questioning what I was doing. However, at Mt. Baldy, a whole new

realm of no-body and-mind experiences opened up.

 

At some point in a period of meditation, my " brain " would " freeze "

and I would feel as if I were going to sleep. Then, all of a sudden,

it felt like my mind had been flushed down a toilet and a whole new

reality appeared. I would disappear as a body mind and awaken into a

world of unity, where I was empty and filled with the sights and

sounds of the world. As Ken Wilbur would say, there were no

boundaries. This must have happened three or four times a day for all

the time I was at Sasaki's Zen Center. I never knew what to make of

these experiences of unity-consciousness, except to enjoy them. They

did not last. I asked myself was this the true reality revealed, or

just a special state-experience that meant little or nothing.

 

When the Kundalini experiences began in 1968, I felt great pain in my

upper back. I could feel that the rising energy was blocked. The

blockage was associated with an intense pain. The pain became much

worse from the constant sitting at Mt. Baldy. Others suffered from

circulation problems from sitting and the cold. The pain made me want

to stop, but the unity states made me want to continue.

 

At some point in your spiritual search, you have to get serious. You

drop the whole package of seeking and begin to ask what am I doing?

Why am I doing all this? What is it that I want? Why am I following

this practice? What do I expect will happen? Just because Joshu or

Bassui or Seung Sahn did X or Y, does that mean it will work for me?

What is awakening or self-realization? Who or what awakens to what?

What do these concepts mean in terms of observables or experiences?

What happens after enlightenment, whatever that was? Finally, one

asks, " Do I have the slightest clue as to what I am doing? "

 

Anyway, I was not thinking any of these things when in 1972 when I

gladly left Mt. Baldy to go to Los Angeles, which was much warmer

climatologically and emotionally. I was not yet ready to think in

this way investigative way. The spiritual search was joyful and

dramatic and I had not suffered from its effects enough to question

the whole business of seeking. I just blissfully followed the

examples and practices of thousand-year dead yogis and Zen monks.

 

I met there in rapid fashion: Thich Tien-An, Maezumi Roshi, Seung

Sahn Soen Sa, Song Ryong Hearn, Kozan Roshi, the Dalai Lama, Trungpa,

Sakya Tenzin, the Karmapa, Muktananda and a dozen others. I was

ordained in 1972 along with the present abbess of the International

Buddhist meditation Center, Rev. Karuna, and later by the ever-

energetic, completely self-confident and fearless Zen Master Seung

Sahn.

 

Eventually I left Zen because it was too emotionally cold. I felt

that many of the " masters " were just priests in their own traditions

who only paid lip-service to enlightenment. One abbott told me that

Buddhism was a way of life as opposed to my concept, that Buddhism

was what Buddha did: transcend life and death, matter and spirit

through deep meditation which beget deeper understanding and

enlightenment, whatever that was. In fact, most of the Asian monks I

met never or rarely meditated. Instead, they studied Buddhist texts

and lived a life of several hundred monastic vows. The prevailing

concept of Theravadin Buddhism--as I saw it in practice--is that you

gradually worked your way to enlightenment over a dozen, or a hundred

dozen lifetimes, so you could not expect it this time. In the mean

time, be a good fellow.

 

In fact, in many temples I visited, I had no idea what the monks were

doing. They would hang around the dining room and talk about

everything but enlightenment, meditation or truth. Rather, they would

talk about food, make jokes about some other or another monk or

temple, and generally do nothing.

 

It was mostly the Westerners who meditated and burned with a desire

to reach the absolute. Unfortunately, many of us emulated the ways of

Zen monks of thousand years before because we didn't know better.

 

Traditional Zen was heavy with an emphasis on practice, from

meditation, to chanting to koan work. The intent was awakening, but

the many forms of practice seemed to miss the point for most of us.

The appropriate contemporary " pointers " were not there. We had no

foundation to enable us to extract the cultural elements of Buddhism,

such as in Japan, Korea and Tibet, from what would be the " correct "

practice or understanding, for each ourselves to awaken.

 

Kozan Roshi aptly put it when he said that unless you learn Chinese

language, culture and history, you cannot understand Zen. Koans are

as much cultural/language artifacts as expressions of the essence

of " enlightenment. " Therefore, the question arises, is enlightenment

only a language or cultural artifact? That is, is there any

constancy, stability, or reality associated with the concept?

 

Heavy with failure to attain a great enlightenment despite the most

rigorous training one can imagine, and because of the emotional

coldness I felt in Zen, I fell into the warm embrace of Siddha Yoga

as taught by Swami Muktananda and channeled by my favorite Swami,

Shankarananda. Shankaranada's Satsangs were as sweet back then, if

not as powerful as those of Muktananda himself. He assures me they

are even better now.

 

After Muktananda, came Robert, who was a bird of a different feather

altogether.

 

The next time you get to talk to any master, pin him or her down. Ask

if there is enlightenment, and if there is, was it an experience or

something else for them. If it was an experience, what was it? How

did it change him or her, or did it? Was there the coming of an

understanding more than an experience? How does it affect how he or

she currently perceives or understands the world and him or herself.

See if he bobs and weaves or starts talking philosophy or uses

tenuous terms such as bliss, universal love, self-realization or

awakening without explaining what the terms mean. Nisargadatta and

Robert never talk about their actual awakening experience, but they

do talk about what their world is like. They speak about going beyond

the world even while in it. They speak not of love, but solving the

problem of life and death itself.

 

The Heart Sutra ends with the phase, " Gone, gone, gone away, gone

entirely away (beyond the stream of life and death.). " "

 

Brain Adams

www.itisnotreal.com/

 

----

 

There is a lot of fake spirituality wherein a supposedly enlightened

person, recognizing they do not exist, stops using the word 'I' and

substitutes phrases like: 'this person', 'this body/mind mechanism',

or 'we', or a referral to themselves as Zero, M.T. Mind, or in the

third person, such as 'Charlie'.

 

I have no idea why they do this. Though one sees I and the world as

illusory, non-existent, who is this person announcing his/her

nothingness to? That is, why announce non-existence to a non-existent

audience? There is a posture of teaching, of another to which you are

teaching by eliminating self-referral. But this is a game. In real

life, that is, the dream we appear to live everyday, this kind of

pretense only creates confusion.

 

Robert referred to himself in private as I, as did Ramana and

Nisargadatta.