As mentioned on the podcast, our original intention was to cover Zen, but that seemed difficult without covering some of the history. Nagarjuna was a big influence on Zen, particularly in the "Reasoning" reading where he urges disassociation from even Buddhist doctrine itself, i.e. the transcendence of all views. That's the kind of mind-bending apparent self-contradiction that Zen is famous for.
Here's a quick clip of Nyogen Yeo Roshi talking about the illusory nature of the self and your experienced world:
Roshi here tells us to appreciate the beauty of the illusory world; we just don't want to get stuck in it. He argues that the present is an illusion because it's temporary, because the passing of time makes all events past unreal, because they can't be produced for reexamination in their fullness. (I don't find this particular point convincing in the least, myself.)
How do we bring the masses to enlightenment? We have to see that there really aren't any masses that need enlightenment. We have to see that we aren't really separated from everyone else, that we contain the whole. Now, this latter mystical sentiment isn't one we saw specifically in Nagarjuna: the self is an illusion, but realizing emptiness doesn't mean that we instead identify our self with the whole.
An influential figure in American Zen is the author Ken Wilber. In this video, Wilber refers to a "fundamental, authentic transpersonal self."
If we suspend belief in the existence (or even identification, apparently) of objects of experience, we are still left with "I amness." Somehow if we reflect on our past experience and the continuity between now and five hours ago, then we're supposed to conclude that this "I amness" was present even before my birth, which patently doesn't follow, nor does it even follow that because my thinking of the explicit recognition of my ego (i.e. self-consciousness) on past occasions that I was always self-aware.
On the contrary, it's highly in dispute in the philosophical literature whether all consciousness is in any sense self-consciousness. It's just that if we look back at a time when we were, e.g. really engaged in some activity and not thinking of ourselves, we first of all can't really recreate that experience to determine whether there was a sense of self there (so we could impute self-consciousness when there wasn't any), and second, the experiences where we were self-reflective will be the easiest to remember, as self-consciousness involves exactly the kind of rehearsal (it's like you're living the moment twice, both by experiencing it and thinking "I'm experiencing this," in effect taking notes on it).
As much as I can tell from some quick web research (and I welcome your corrections on this point), this "big self" idea came into Buddhism as part of the Mahayana tradition near the same time as Nagarjuna after the 2nd century A.D., but as usual historians are not sure about the date. It seems to be part of the Tathāgatagarbha tradition, with its chief text being the "Nirvana Sutra," and the idea is that we have both a conventional self and a Buddha self within us, where the Buddha self is that part of the Buddha that is identified with the whole of existence (recall Erik's comment on the podcast about the Buddha being unable to escape permanently from the world on ontological grounds: we're all fundamentally one, so unless we all go, he can't go either), so if we strip away the emptiness of the conventional self, what we're left with is not nothingness; in fact, what we've removed is our separation from everything.
I'm certainly interested in these potential shifts in identity and in mysticism in general, but as I'm sure I'll say many times when this comes up, if you have some mystical experience and become identical with the whole of creation, then when you come out of that, you should be able to tell me, for instance, how much money I have in my wallet, given that you were right in there hanging with my money as well as everywhere else in creation. Unless you can do that, then I'm not going to believe that you were literally infinite.
After the 1st vid, I can see why Buddhists weren’t the first to set foot on the moon. But suppose, somehow, they were. Would the fact that the past is an illusion be a good enough reason to forgo any efforts at returning the explorers to earth?
Hi Mark,
That was a good and polite takedown of Mr. Wilber. You’re quite right that any of the so-called enlightened who make claims of extraordinary insight should be subject to extraordinary skepticism. Frankly, his website should be subject to extraordinary skepticism – more like “I Am Big Ego.”
Here’s a lively exchange between science writers John Horgan and Bob Wright on Ken Wilber and certain others of the self-proclaimed enlightened:
http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/22924?in=28:02&out=37:50
Note that John Horgan is not anti-Zen as such. He was impressed with the works of James Austin…
http://www.amazon.com/Zen-Brain-Understanding-Meditation-Consciousness/dp/0262011646
…and Stephen Batchelor:
http://www.amazon.com/Buddhism-Without-Beliefs-Contemporary-Awakening/dp/1573226564/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1287510387&sr=8-2-fkmr0
Not that John Horgan is any special authority, of course, but he brings a refreshingtly skeptical outlook to kind of neo-Buddhism that has made its way to the West. I like Bob Wright’s responses to Horgan as well.
Ken Wilber would ask you to do the injunction (Witness practice for at least 5 years), share your results with other people that have done the injunction (Apprehension) , share the results (Verification) and then model the deep structures of the shared apprehension (present an interpretation). Once you have done that, you can have an opinion on the non-dual/ I Amness claim. Otherwise you are actually the one with the big fat ego that chooses to believe his own grandiose claims of your own “logical” enlightenment.
But you’re not going to read ALL of Ken Wilber’s books (to give an informed opinion) or do the Zen practice for 5 years are you? Of course not – too risky.
Show me where Ken Wilber claims to be enlightened. In my experience he goes out of the way to say there is no such thing as an omega point and that you will always have the world of form evolving. He simply states his experiences. He refuses to call himself a teacher as well – he refers to himself as a pandit.
By the way – I love this bit in the rebuttal – i did a quick web search on ‘big self” – fucking hilarious – oh, please tell us all the wisdom you found on your web search Mr Authority on Buddhism. It is Big Mind and True Self by the way. They are nothing you can learn about by talking or reading about them… it is not a philosophy or an idea, it is an injunction / practice that results in a realization. The actual practice is – I am NOT this idea, thought, feeling, sensation, argument, etc…so it seems silly to denounce it as not being a very good argument / idea / sensation / thought towards truth?!
Ok, having these two videos together is rather unfair to the seriousness of the first.
It’s like showing the movie No Country for Old Men and then showing the movie Spice World (about the spice girls). They’re both movies, but i mean come on. lol
Saying that Roshi is arguing that the present is an illusion because it cannot be reproduced, is a little misleading. He’s not saying the past is an illusion solely because you cannot relive it or re-examine it ever again. He’s saying it’s an illusion, because it never really existed in the first place. What we see as “the past” is actually a collection of moments, that exist only in our interpretation of them in the moment we do our interpreting. It’s like reading a history book now and thinking that that’s what happened. It’s so not at all what happened. It’s merely a tiny glimpse at a tiny perspective of what was.
That’s the richness and fullness he’s speaking of. And it’s a richness and fullness that we cannot of actually observed. (limited mind, limited presence). So our understanding of the past, is limited and shrunken down to what we remember of what we observed. Which compared to what actually was, can really only be described as an illusion. (like looking at one puzzle piece of a 1,000,000,000 piece puzzle and thinking we got the picture).
I’m not sure how :
“We have to see that there really aren’t any masses that need enlightenment. We have to see that we aren’t really separated from everyone else, that we contain the whole”
Is at all a mystical sentiment. I fail to see any mysticism in that statement at all. And i think your labelling it as mystical, is a way of de-legitimzing a way of thinking you do not agree with. Which is fine, accept the way you are going about it, is totally antethetical to the way the line of thinking came about. You’re categorizing it as “mystical” or “magical” and therefore lacking reason, when it’s totally based in reason.
What he is saying, is that the entire world you see, is actually inside of you. It exists only in your brain, brought to you through your senses and understood by your mind. Everyone on the planet, is actually just your understanding of them. They’re not seperate from you, they are you. They only exist in your mind…..because that’s the only place they can exist. Because that’s where they are created, by your thoughts and feelings and understandings of who and what they are.
Your idea of right and wrong, seperation and togetherness, your idea of what constitutes logic and reason, love and hate…..everything, is all inside you. You may believe people out there, are out there…..but out there, is only out there because you see it as such. Your definition of what out there is, is yours. You created it. There is no out there, that isn’t your creation. Your idea of what out there is, is inside you. INSIDE. You cannot be aware of anything outside yourself……it has to physically occur inside you.
Light has to enter your eyes, sound has to enter your ears, your nerves have to record touch…….the same is true with any data. Any concepts you have about time or space, reality or the unreal….all came to you through your senses. Your entire construction of the universe, is totally made inside your mind. The masses included.
It’s really simple logic. In order to be aware of something, you must be aware of it. That awareness occurs inside your mind. It’s only reconizable to you, through your understanding of the thing you are aware of. Therefore, the very thing that you are aware of, is your own understanding. And i really don’t think anyone’s own understanding exists anywhere but insid their own self.
For example, it’s like when a mouse hears you walk into the room. It scurries away…….it scurries away, because its neocortex suddenly lights up with the sound it hears you make. It gets a picture in its mind of __________, but whatever that picture is, it isn’t you. You assume it must be you, because you’re the one walking in the room….but i assure you, if you were to look at what you look like in that brain of his, you wouldn’t call that you. The mouse didn’t run away because it knows you’re a bad guy or a good one, it didn’t run away because it knows what death is or life is, it didn’t run away because of you at all. It ran away, because of the picture in its mind that its own mind created. And in that mouse brain, is the only place whatever that picture of you was, existed.
Its understanding of you, has nothing to do with your understanding of it. Just like you would have no attachment to the picture it sees, the mouse would have no attachment to the picture of it, you see.
Doesn’t matter if it’s a mouse or another person or a rock or a tree. Or a movie or a song or an idea. All things, come from our understanding of them. And all our understanding, comes from ourselves.
(i mean you got to atleast agree, that your understanding of the world is inside you, i don’t see how that can be disputed……and so, logic follows that anything you understand, is also inside you)
Thanks for the elaborate response, Mike. However, this argument doesn’t work:
Premise: All information must either come in through my senses or be added by my mind to what comes through my senses.
Conclusion: Therefore, everything is just an invention of my mind.
A naive realist is going to say that what comes in through my senses is already for the most part accurate, correcting for optical illusions and such; we just need to be careful about what generalizations we foist on our sense data. There are problems with justifying this view, but it’s not obviously false just by “simple logic.”
A Kantian will say that though we really don’t know what the world is like in itself, given that we all have similar psychology, we construct the world in a like manner, which is sufficient to give it objectivity. A pragmatist will go beyond this and say that since this is the only viewpoint available to us, and it covers all of our practical and scientific needs, than we can ignore the constructivist part of this, except insofar as we, again, need to worry about something going wrong in specific perceptual cases.
Moreover, as Erik pointed out on the podcast, idealism of the type that you’re describing, where everything is a psychological creation, goes against Buddhist skepticism about the self. We can say that experience is constructed, somehow, but not that by sense organs and brain are doing it, because those things too are supposed to be illusory.
I was using the term “mystical” not to mean illogical but to express what I understand to be Buddhism’s position that the Buddha didn’t figure this out using logic (initially, at least) but through mystical insight: through an experience of oneness with all of creation such as is described in many mystical traditions.
Nagarjuna, however, is saying that you can arrive at Buddhist truths through purely intellectual reasoning, and that meditating intellectually on these truths will put you in a mindset to be open actually experiencing the true world as it is, i.e. actually seeing the emptiness in everything. I think Nagarjuna has some good arguments, but they go way beyond anything that this video mentions or what you’ve included in your post. For example, he goes through all of the options for what could serve as a substance or ultimate ground for existence and thinks they’re all incoherent; since we didn’t cover that sufficiently in the podcast, I’ll try to get a post up about that w/in the next few days.
Howdy,
I fail to see how my argument doesn’t work. I think you’re missing the point of my argument.
“A naive realist is going to say that what comes in through my senses is already for the most part accurate”
I think you might misundertand. You’re taking for granted the role you play in what comes in through your senses. For example, when light hits your eyes, it’s true that for the most part the picture your brain creates from the info. your eyes send it, will be the same as the picture mine creates. If we see a picture of Hitler, chances are we’re both going to notice his silly haircut. (point is, it will look the same to us both).
Now, normally i’d start here by saying if i didn’t know who Hitler was and you did, then clearly we’d both be interpretting that image differently. When of course, obviously we would. (show a pic of Bin Laden in New York, versus the tribal region in Pakistan, that pic will mean different things to the different people)
But, it seems i don’t even have to go that far. Because if i show a pic of Hitler to you, and say to a 2 month old. How different do you think that picture is going to be? You’ll be seeing the same pic, but to you it will be Hitler and to the baby, it will be a blur. Now i’m sure your inclination is to dismiss this as a silly example…..but why is that? Why is the baby’s interpretation of reality, any less valid than your own? Or another way to put it, is why is the baby’s interpretation any more valid than your own? Or are they equally valid?
” Kantian will say that though we really don’t know what the world is like in itself, given that we all have similar psychology, we construct the world in a like manner, which is sufficient to give it objectivity”
Again, this assumes a lot. And it also greatly exaggerates the term “objectivity”. What objectivity? If we ourselves are the ones doing the selecting? I mean, “we” construct the world in a like manner? I assume this refers to humans. Like minded humans. Cancelling out people with autism or people under the age of__________, or over the age of _________.
Again, it’s typical self validation. I’m a good person, because i can find 5 people that agree i’m a good person. Or if you want to go further, i exist, because i can find a hundred million people who agree i exist.
That type of argument, depends on pre-established parameters. “we don’t know what the world is like itself” is where that sentence should of stopped. Anything beyond that, is just a desperate justification through volume. (the more people agree with an idea, the more right it is)
Which i mean? Does that really make sense? It surely seems to in many cases. (except perhaps in the case of american idol being a good show)……..but what if there was only 1 person left on earth. Would anything he thought be correct, because he was the only person that could validate or invalidate his own thoughts? What if that person had no ties to the past thoughts of other people? Then where would objectivity lie?
Again, this explanation seems to revolve totally on volume.
“A pragmatist will go beyond this and say that since this is the only viewpoint available to us, and it covers all of our practical and scientific needs, than we can ignore the constructivist part of this”
See, it seems to me, that this argument agrees with the first, that it’s wrong. “we can ignore” and “since this is the only”…….again, more self-justification. Which, has a mild stench of desperation.
I mean, i certainly agree that there is a collective view that we all take on certain issues. And the stronger that collection seems to be, whether through volume of numbers or volume of passion…..that view seems to be reality. But it’s not reality. It’s only reality insofar as it makes us feel certain about it. And where is that certainty contained, in our brains. In our head.
“need to worry about something going wrong in specific perceptual cases”
They’re all perceptual cases. How can you even argue this? Show me some reality that you don’t perceive?
” idealism of the type that you’re describing, where everything is a psychological creation, goes against Buddhist skepticism about the self. We can say that experience is constructed, somehow, but not that by sense organs and brain are doing it, because those things too are supposed to be illusory”
To be honest i’m not even sure what is being said here. It appears that you’re trying to use buddhist doctorine to invalidate my argument. Because the brain is supposed to be illusory, then reality must be illusory or because it’s created in the brain? Or the brain can’t create reality because the brain isn’t real?
“Premise: All information must either come in through my senses or be added by my mind to what comes through my senses.”
All information that you can be aware of. How can you be aware of something that hasn’t come in through your senses or been created by your mind?
“Conclusion: Therefore, everything is just an invention of my mind.”
Everything you are aware of. Including everything you think you are or aren’t aware of. (which is what you would call reality) ((because how can you talk about or measure or argue or reason things that you aren’t aware of))
“I was using the term “mystical” not to mean illogical but to express what I understand to be Buddhism’s position that the Buddha didn’t figure this out using logic (initially, at least) but through mystical insight: through an experience of oneness with all of creation such as is described in many mystical traditions.”
Alrighty. It came across to me, that you were using it in a derogatory way. But only because that seemed the only possible explanation for its use at the time. I guess in my mind, mystical=b.s.
Anyways, thank you for your lengthy response. I’m glad i accidently stumbled across your site the other day. It’s been fun and intellectually stimulating reading some of your posts.
: )
I didn’t present arguments above for the three views (naive realism, Kantianism, pragmatism); I was merely pointing out that it’s not a matter of simple logic that idealism (which is what you’re arguing for) is correct; there are other views held by people who devoted big chunks of their lives to thinking about this stuff, and I’m not going to be up for laying them all out here, though we have about four podcast episodes going through them in more depth if you’re interested.
My dividing the world into objects and faces and such whereas a baby does not is “more valid” than the baby’s because it works: because it enables me to, for instance, get food, recognize my family, and just about everything else, and a baby (and every other kind of animal) has a growth pattern that will under normal circumstances develop such object recognition and manipulation skills, and if it doesn’t, we regard it as screwed up. That’s not just a matter of arbitrary social convention.
Correct, I’m saying that if you think everything is illusory, then the brain and sense organs and the agent (i.e. you) are illusory too, so the theory that you are using your senses and concepts to distort reality is self-defeating. The most you can say is that reality is distorted, somehow, and you don’t know how, but that the explanations that we typically give for these things don’t make any sense because they involve self-contradictory concepts. This is what I take Nagarjuna’s view to be, whereas some other Buddhist schools (which I’ve not read into, though some are targets of Nagarjuna) are more straightforwardly idealist.
I’m not sure how to make myself clearer re. my issue with your argument. I’ll grant you the premise ( All information must either come in through my senses or be added by my mind to what comes through my senses), but it does not follow from that that everything that I experience is a fictional creation of my mind like my dream (an analogy that Nagarjuna uses several times). There are other opposing conclusions that are logically compatible with the premise, i.e. the three positions that I’ve mentioned but have not argued for. If you want to argue that idealism is the correct view, then skepticism about our experience is not going to be sufficient. Arguing that there are no objects in the world corresponding to the contents of our experience requires more than saying we don’t KNOW whether there are such objects.
One other thing, and please don’t take this as an insult, because this is just an observation that applies to several different Buddhist sources I’ve read or listened to:
Buddhists tend to think that if you don’t agree with them, then you just “don’t understand” the subtlety of their teachings, that you just haven’t thought enough about what perception actually is or how we contribute to our own experience. On the contrary, though there are cultural associations that make the actual ancient Indian stuff hard to understand, I’ve spent several classes sweating through the different epistemological options, and while I certainly think reading Nagarjuna adds significantly to the debate, my not agreeing with him doesn’t mean that I don’t get it; I think that there are some pretty knock-down arguments against idealism (a la Berkeley), which is why I can’t think of any modern philosophers that are idealists of exactly this sort, though certainly the idea that we construct reality in some way (individually and/or socially) is still a big deal.
Arguing that everything is an illusion, even other people, amounts to solipsism, which is even more extreme than Berkeley, who at least thought that mind qua mind was objective, i.e. all of our perceptions are emanations of the mind of God. (From your comment on Spinoza, Mike, I’m guessing that your version of Buddhism is closer to the latter than the former.)
Howdy,
you wrote: “My dividing the world into objects and faces and such whereas a baby does not is “more valid” than the baby’s because it works: because it enables me to, for instance, get food, recognize my family, and just about everything else, and a baby (and every other kind of animal) has a growth pattern that will under normal circumstances develop such object recognition and manipulation skills, and if it doesn’t, we regard it as screwed up. That’s not just a matter of arbitrary social convention. ”
Uh, yes it is a matter of arbitrary social convention. Moreso, it’s a matter of your take on arbitary social convention. The idea that it’s more valid, is just a point of view. You’re saying that getting food is important and following typical growth patterns is important, because it’s important. Infact, you’re saying it’s more important than the baby’s perspective, because the baby’s perspective will most likely shift into your own.
But, that’s again, you arguing from a particular point of view, that this moment in time now, is more important than the moment in time that you were a baby. It’s sort of like saying, the college educated me is more important than the me that was attending college, because i now have a job and can make more money and provide myself with more security…..and i know that’s more important than attending school, because everyone who attends school will move on to get jobs or we regard them as “messed up”.
Tell me, where does this importance come from? Why is it more important to gather food and recognize faces? Who is it more important to? And why? And how do you know this?
You premise seems to be that it “works”. But works to what end? Other than yourself, who validates this end? And if you yourself, didn’t validate it, then ask yourself if you’d even be arguing this point?
I mean look at this sentence: ” I’ll grant you the premise ( All information must either come in through my senses or be added by my mind to what comes through my senses), but it does not follow from that that everything that I experience is a fictional creation of my mind ”
That sentence totally depends on your definition of fictional. And I ask you sir, how did you come to define what fiction is and isn’t?
I’m not arguing for idealism. And i’m certainly not arguing for Solipsism. I can certainly see how you would take it that way……but you’re confusing my argument as a whole, rather than a part.
I’m merely stating that because information occurs inside of you, that that is it’s origin as you know it. I’m not validating that information as the only correct information…………and i’m not saying that it’s more correct or less correct than any other information. I’m not saying that the universe outside you is less knowable or more knowable……..i’m merely using the possibility of the difference that conventionally exists between the two, as a vehicle to explain why attaching values to things outside yourself is in a way, absurd.
You’re assuming that i’m saying that the opposite is true, that one must therefore attach values to things within, but that to is just a vehicle.
Values themselves can be let go. Understanding itself, can be let go.
Do you need to do this? I can’t answer that for you, as you define need.
Is it right/correct to do this? I can’t answer that for you, as you define right/correct and wrong/incorrect.
Since all this discussion has been centered around Nagarjuna’s “great vehicle”, I must point out that Nagarjuna’s intent is for that vehicle to be abandoned. So to, is that the intent of my argument.
you wrote: “One other thing, and please don’t take this as an insult, because this is just an observation that applies to several different Buddhist sources I’ve read or listened to:
Buddhists tend to think that if you don’t agree with them, then you just “don’t understand”
Oh i agree with that. LOL
I would say though, that a buddhist might say that it’s certainly because a person doesn’t understand.
What i mean is, is that all misunderstandings or arguments, would be very short if one understood only the perspective of the other.
What i mean by that, is that you cannot have passion divorced from reason, nor can you have reason divorced from passion. Some arguments have a little more passion than reason and some have a little more reason than passion, but essentially they all boil down to perspective.
That’s kind of my entire point here. We chose our perspectives (not literally, i’d say they’re more thrust upon us) but the point is, we decide the passion for our reason and the reason behind our passion.
All validation, is self-validation.
If it wasn’t, and i mean this, how could anyone with the capability of tying their own shoes….argue against global warming. Or say, evolution.
Anyways, to answer your question my form of Buddhism is to abandon “my” “form” “of” “Buddhism”.
Alrighty, thanks for you’re replies. As usual, i’ve found them interesting and entertaining.
I’m looking forward to hearing your take on Spinoza part 2.
Sorry for posting on such old stuff, but I thought I’d chime in to point out that the topics Ken Wilbur talks about are his own ideas and are not at all representative of mainstream Zen Buddhism (or any kind of Buddhism). I’ve heard several Zen teachers criticize the notion of “Big Self” precisely because it relies on a dualistic “Small Self”, when in fact Emptiness really means that neither are the case, as you all pointed out very nicely.
I would also reject the notion that oneness with all things is impossible unless I know how much change is in your pocket. If I am one with you, then it is sufficient for you to know how much change is in your pocket and me mine. Even in a non-Zen context I can be said to be one with myself despite not knowing how many cells are in my body or how many freckles I have on my back. I don’t think this kind of oneness requires omniscience to exist in every part of the whole; it is enough, I think, to say that the Whole is omniscient insofar as it by definition includes all conventional substance and concepts. Regardless, this “Whole”, as Nagajuna would say, is just another concept, like training wheels to try to better understand Emptiness, and it too is ultimately just another manifestation of Emptiness.
At any rate, words break down for this kind of discussion, as you all mentioned, but I don’t think this is just a cop-out. Zen is a tautology because if it is beyond concepts, any concepts with which you try to disprove it are wrong by definition. But unlike other systems, in Zen this is borne out to it full logical conclusion. That is to say that any dogmas, conventions, rituals, or anything else that might be touted as “truth” are instead acknowledged to lack any ultimate conceptual weight. I think Judaic religions try to make similar tautological arguments, but they then impose various rules and dogmas that violate their own logical assumptions. Zen avoids this by accepting that all is Empty.
In Zen they say that words point at the Moon (a symbol of Enlightenment), but are not Enlightenment themselves We can all agree that one cannot drive a car by talking about it all day, although you can get a pretty good idea of what you need to do. Only by driving the car can you really learn, and in the same way, Zen (or Buddhism) is essentially a practice and not a philosophical system. It’s not to say you don’t understand (which Mike rather rudely suggested!), because you obviously do, but in Zen they say that you understand with the body and not with the mind.
Finally, as a cultural note, “Roshi” is a Japanese title meaning “Old Master”. In Japan it’s usually reserved for super distinguished people, but in the U.S. silly new-age people who don’t know Japanese just call everyone Roshi. Anyway, that weird dude in the first video’s last name is actually “Yeo”, and Nyogen would be his “Dharma name” (cheesy Japanese names that you get when you become a monk).
I thought it humorous (I must confess not on a practical experience) when I read the following in TM’s book, Zen and the Birds of Appetite:
“If it is true [if we read Zen in its pure state, as metaphysical intuition], then we must admit it is perfectly logical to admit, with the Zen Masters, that ‘Zen teaches nothing.’ One of the greatest of the Chinese Zen Masters, the Patriarch, Hui Neng (7th century A.D.), was asked a leading question by a disciple:
‘Who has inherited the spirit of the Fifth Patriarch?'(i.e., who is Patriarch now?)
Hui Neng replied: ‘One who understands Buddhism,’
The monk pressed his point: ‘Have you then inherited it?’
Hui Neng said: ‘No.’
‘Why not?’ asked the monk.
‘Because I do not understand Buddhism.’
This story is meant precisely to illustrate the fact that Hui Neng had inherited the role of Patriarch, or the charisma of teaching the purest Zen. He was qualified to transmit the enlightenment of the Buddha himself to his disciple[s]. If he had laid claim to an authoritive teaching that made his enlightenment understandable[emphasis] to those who did not posses it, then he would have been teaching something else, that is to say a doctrine about enlightenment. He would be disseminating the message of his own understanding of Zen, and in that case he would not be awakening others to Zen in themselves, but imposing on them the imprint of his own understanding and teaching. Zen does not tolerate this kind of thing, since this would be incompatible with the true purpose of Zen: awakening a deep ontological awareness, a wisdom-intuition (Prajna) in the ground being of the one awakened. And, in fact, the pure consciousness of Prajna would not be pure and immediate if it were a consciousness that one understands Prajna” (pg47-48).
Needless to say, I am looking forward to the Zen group.
Forgive my bringing back this long preserved topic, I think much of the point has been missed.
From the naive realists perspective, there is them, inhabiting the body, observing the world out there.
Once you realise the world you see is actually made up of for example, light, sound waves, etc, then this places you and the world one step removed from each other, the world being a kind of imprint which you see.
Then, you realise that light stimulates the retina and is transduced into neural impulses which are interpreted and that imprint is assembled within perception in consciousness, so that now instead of there being a world out there which you see, there is now a world “in here” within consciousness or awareness, and you find yourself as the witness of this inner world, still distinct from it, yet having no characteristics.
Finally, after looking for yourself as this witness, distinct from the inner world imprinted in awareness, and not finding anything, you come to realise that you are awareness itself, and the inner world is actually appearing within you, as waves appear in an ocean as an analogy, not distinct in substance from an ocean. You which is awareness, are usually so lost in the inner world, along with its accompanying thought story, and never ending todo list, you don’t realise you are actually awareness itself.
The one you take yourself to be is actually an appearance within awareness, which is your ‘big self’ nature.
Now that is the oneness.
It doesn’t mean you are actually one with the things in themselves, which can never actually be known, only through appearances.
So just because I am actually this inner world, doesn’t mean I know how much pocket change you have, unless that information is already contained in this inner world.