The Fundamentals Pt. 1: Taking the First Step...
Where I introduce new readers to Zen Buddhism from a historical, psychological, and philosophical point of view.
“All wrong-doing arises because of mind. If mind is transformed, can wrong-doing remain?”
— Siddhartha Gautama Buddha
For many reasons, the average person born and raised in the Western world has a very limited understanding of Buddhism and its various branches. If you live in America, you’d sooner encounter the word Zen slapped on all manner of lifestyle products — beauty supplies, spa packages, and so on — than from an honest account of this deeply profound topic. Before tackling such a complex subject, it's best to have a firm understanding of a few key terms and concepts. For the sake of introduction, I will provide only a cursory explanation of each; later, we will delve deeper. For now, let’s generate a simple roadmap to get us started.
Buddhism is regarded as one of the world’s oldest and largest religions; while the word religion isn’t fully accurate, its teachings do serve a spiritual function as they address some of the most long-standing problems of human existence, namely the concept of suffering and its causes. We all have an experiential understanding of suffering because it is a basic fact of life — we feel grief and frustration when relationships end, as we grow old and frail with time, and when our plans for the future are thwarted, to name a few. According to Buddhist theory, suffering accompanies the experience of being human in part because of desire and ignorance. We suffer from desire when we crave for things that we do not and/or cannot have, such as eternal life or endless happiness. We suffer from ignorance when we do not observe the state of the world as it truly is, specifically the incontrovertible reality that nothing lasts forever. Due to our need for comfort and immediate gratification, we grasp for the objects of our desires at the expense of our own well-being, the well-being of others, and even the health of the planet itself. Despite all efforts, the things we wish to hold onto inevitably slip through our fingers. As a result, we grasp even harder and plunge deeper into delusion and pain. The good news is that we have within ourselves all the necessary prerequisites to become enlightened and escape the cycle of suffering.
In Buddhism, there are many practices that are prescribed as an “upaya”, or skillful means to achieve enlightenment. The art of meditation is one of the most commonly taught and widely practiced of these means. As there are myriad schools of Buddhism, there are likewise myriad forms of meditation; some involve mental visualization (common in Tibetan Buddhism) while others call for total absorption on a single object such as the breath or a mantra. Zen is a form of Mahayana Buddhism that originated in China over 1,500 years ago, though today it is most closely associated with Japanese culture. As a school of Buddhism, it is devoted to cultivating the mind in order to understand its true nature and relieve suffering for one’s self and others. The principal method for mental cultivation is a seated meditation style known as Zazen. In a departure from other schools of Buddhism, Zen strips away all of the bells and whistles and leaves behind only the essentials; while other subgroups recommend chanting sutras (the Buddhist form of scripture) and various rituals, Zen considers these to be secondary to the more important task of practicing zazen. With the use of this unique method of mental training, we allow the activity of our minds to settle and, in doing so, develop a deeper understanding of ourselves and the world. With greater understanding of the way things truly are, we free ourselves from delusion and experience enlightenment.
With this basic primer in place, we can now discuss a few concepts that you will, by necessity, encounter multiple times throughout my work. In the previous paragraph I gave you a very simple explanation of zazen; in terms of importance, it is the overarching concern of all Zen theory and practice. As such, I’ll devote an entire post and significant portions of this publication to exploring its various features. Since zazen is a method for focusing one’s mind, we ought to cover precisely what we mean when we use the word ‘mind’ in the first place.
From the perspective of Western philosophy broadly speaking, the elements that comprise the human organism are divided into two categories – body and mind, each separable and distinct. The body is material, which is to say that it exists as an object in the external world. The mind, by contrast, is immaterial and personal, so its presence is felt internally. Despite its seeming immateriality, the mind forms an essential part of our experience of being. In simple terms, the body is made of flesh, blood, and bone, while the mind is made of thoughts, feelings, and sensory perceptions.
Mainstream contemporary neuroscience identifies the mind as a product of the nervous system – a network made up of the various tissues of the brain, the spinal cord, and over 7 trillion nerves that travel throughout the body to receive input from – and create impressions of – the external world. These impressions provide us with useful information about the varying contours of our local environment such as whether something is hard or soft, hot or cold, light or dark, food or poison, etc. From these inputs, our nervous system informs our experience of the world and of self accordingly. Every sensation you’ve ever had, both painful and pleasant, arose with the help of nerve activity. One of the mind’s other basic functions is to create a language out of the signals provided by our peripheral and central nervous system. The psycholinguistic aspect of the mind produces many forms and we can use a variety of words to describe them; thought/thinking, emotion/feeling, and perception are all appropriate, though each has their own subtle differences.
One of the most interesting things about the human mind is the simple fact that we can live our entire life completely unaware of its inner workings yet function fairly well nonetheless. We take for granted that the nearly-invisible operation of the mind goes on automatically without much (if any) conscious action on our part. Occasionally we intervene in the process, as when we're asked to think of something specifically or narrow our focus to a single task for a period of time. However, the mind will often resume processing and commenting on the goings-on of everyday life, simply on its own. We call this type of thinking discursive because it is characterized by a reflexive stream of thoughts that digress from one thing to another rather than remaining absorbed on a single subject. Discursive thought is essentially an inner monologue; many of us — if not most — experience this internal chatter as a “voice in our head”. Our thoughts also have a recursive quality, as when our mind keeps repeating the same train of thought over and over. Rumination, a type of repetitive thinking that occurs in people with anxiety and depression, is a classic example of recursive thought.
While a significant amount of thinking is involuntary and has the primary purpose of helping us navigate and understand the external world, we also possess psychological mechanisms to interpret our inner state, most commonly known as emotion and feeling. Emotional experience involves the presence of a physical sensation in the body accompanied by a flood of thoughts in the mind that describe the dynamic of what we feel. For example, when we say “I’m sad” or “I’m happy”, we are describing an internally felt sense that results from a bundle of causes and effects that have some emotional valence — that is, some importance to our sense of identity. The entire process of emotional experience is admittedly more complex than I’ve just described. For now, we merely want to establish some simple ways to distinguish thought from feeling. The two ultimately arise together and work in tandem, though.
So, we have these two basic modes that are distinct in some ways yet ultimately interconnected; we think, and we feel, each causing the other to occur. All of our thoughts and feelings help give us the impression of our experience as uniquely ours. In the language of psychoanalysis, these elements form the “ego” — our sense of ourselves as an individual, separate entity. We attach the labels I, me, and mine to things that define our sense of self. The practice of Zen requires that we become aware of our ego and observe it without discrimination or judgment. If we lack this type of awareness, we risk spending our lives unconsciously acting on the whims of what we think and feel, like a flag that’s pushed and pulled in whatever direction the wind blows. In order to escape the powerful current of the ego, we must initially train our minds through techniques that improve concentration and self-awareness. I have a firm belief that zazen is one of the most effective means to do so and, in The Fundamentals Pt. 2, I will provide instructions for you to begin the practice for yourself.
Interesting points on Buddhism. Thanks for sharing.