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I'm Kevin Solway,
and today I'll be examining some of the teachings of Zen Buddhism.
Before I start I'd like to make very clear that my
criticism of modern Zen teachings don't necessarily have any reflection
on the teachings of the Buddha or on
any wise people who may have existed in the past,
such as Hakuin, who may have identified as a Zen teacher.
This video is purely about the teachers
of today, here and now. I've previously dealt with the view
of consciousness and rebirth that's found in
mainstream Theravadin and Tibetan Buddhism.
Now it's the turn of Zen.
Unlike
the other schools of Buddhism, Zen Buddhists generally don't get involved in
any kind of
philosophical reasoning. I think it's because
reasoning is difficult, and it's so easy to make mistakes.
However, sometimes they have a go at it,
such as in this example: "Zen Buddhism
is not a materialist doctrine. It does not hold
that mind
or consciousness is an epiphenomenon of the brain,
or that it is an emergent property of the brain,
or that it is grounded in the material world.
So, same old story.
The mind is independent of the material world.
So it doesn't matter if we eat poison for food,
or if we're run over by a bus, since it's not going to have any
effect whatsoever
on the mind. The material world
is inherently messy. Every moment that passes,
things a dying in painful, messy,
and often unpredictable ways. I believe this is why
modern Buddhists want to divorce themselves from the material world.
And in its place they've constructed
a fantasy world, where the mind is
independent of the physical world, where everything works according to plan,
and the pattern of your consciousness is guaranteed
to continue, even though
Nature might want to crush it to a pulp. Just as
Christians generally start of first with a creator God,
and don't ask any questions as to how that got got there,
many Buddhist start of with consciousness,
and don't ask how it got there. "We start off
first with consciousness. Consciousness is primary,
because we can't know anything except for consciousness."
"We can't know anything, except for consciousness."
That's actually not true. Reasoning tells us that consciousness
must have a cause.
Reasoning points to something that is a cause
of consciousness. In this way
we can indeed know something other than consciousness.
"Karmic activity - that is willful intention on our part -
causes the consciousness to continue in a single-stream.
He said "Willful intention
causes the consciousness to continue in a single stream".
Shakespeare's Hamlet says
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
than are dreamed of in your philosophy". If Nature
has determined that your consciousness will come to an end -
in any recognizable pattern - as though
vaporized - or alternatively
that the stream of your consciousness will split into a thousand
divergent streamlet's, then nothing is going to stop that from happening.
Your consciousness is only a very small part the whole picture.
Moving on to our next example,
if you've ever seen politicians being asked questions by journalists,
you'll have noticed that they almost never answer the question that's asked of them,
but instead give an answer that suits themselves,
about an entirely different subject.
One sees exactly the same thing with Buddhist teachers everywhere.
If a Buddhist teacher actually answers a question that's asked,
it's usually only by accident, because the teacher didn't understand the
question.
Naturally enough, Zen teachers often get asked about reincarnation.
Does the Zen master believe that consciousness continues,
intact, into another life?
"So here's the secret about reincarnation.
There's no past, and there's no future.
The past and the future do not exist.
So that's the secret of reincarnation.
Reincarnation means 'wake up, just now'."
Great. So when asked "Zen master what would you like for dinner?
Would you like the soup, or rice, or are you not hungry?"
He'll answer "Here's the truth about dinner.
The past and the future do not exist.
Dinner means wake up, just now."
What a load of baloney.
So we've already heard "the truth" about reincarnation,
here's another Zen master with
"the truth" about reincarnation.
"Do you know where you're coming back after you die?"
"No."
"So that's the truth about reincarnation."
So, the truth about reincarnation, according to her
is that we don't know where we'll be coming back after we die.
Well that's very diplomatic,
I must say. It certainly creates a lot fewer enemies than saying that you don't
believe it.
This "don't know" mind
is something that's cultivated by a lot of Zen people.
Unfortunately, while there are a lot of things we genuinely can't ever know,
Zen people don't know a lot of things that
can be known, and which they would do well to know.
They use the phrase "don't know"
as an escape clause, or a "get out of jail free" card,
to avoid answering difficult questions,
that require a thoughtful answer. Here is another example:
"There's an old story where somebody goes up to a Zen master and says
'Is there life after death' and the Zen master says
'I don't know'. And the guy says 'What do you mean . . . you're a Zen master . . . you're an enlightened
master . . . how can you not know
whether there's life after death?' And the Zen master says 'I'm not a dead Zen master'."
That was and unhelpful answer,
since you can't know anything when you're dead. You can only know things
when you're alive.
And despite the fact that the Zen master was
indeed alive when he gave his answer, he still didn't know.
It's a cop-out. There's a lot more that can be said on the subject of
rebirth or reincarnation. I personally think that the Buddha's teachings of
rebirth has nothing whatsoever to do with physical birth and death.
The Buddha was a philosopher, not a scientist.
The subject of physical birth and death,
and whether or not a particular individual has
the consciousness of another person who died, is a questions for the scientists.
The only birth we should be concerned with
is the birth of the ego, which happens every moment that the ego exists in us.
The only rebirth that wise people escape
is the rebirth of ego, or delusion.
They don't escape physical life,
and nor to they escape physical death. When people ask me what happens
after physical death,
I sometimes say "What happens to a candle flame
when it's snuffed out?".