It's great that a Zen master can be an atheist

[Before I get into the subject of this blog post, a note about keeping to the subject in comments on my blog posts. I just had to unpublish a comment on my previous post about the need to choose a religion, as the comment was related 100% to a defense of an outrageous action by the Trump administration that I wrote about last night on my Salem Political Snark blog. I'm fine with some mildly off-topic comments, but not those completely unrelated to the subject of a blog post, as that is highly confusing to anyone reading such a comment. What the heck does that have to do with this post?]

To me it's obvious that Buddhism not only doesn't require a belief in God, but is opposed to theism. Yes, there's a religious side to Buddhism. Some Buddhists view the Buddha as possessing miraculous supernatural powers. The Pure Land sect considers that a sort of heaven awaits after a believer dies. 

But on the whole, Buddhism is pleasingly God-free. Rarely do I come across references to God in books I've read about Buddhism. This is true of a book by Zen master Henry Shukman, Original Love, that I'm currently reading. However, Shukman fairly frequently refers to soul, which is uncomfortably close to God-talk.

That made me wonder a bit about Shukman's view of the supernatural, given that Zen is so down to earth and here-and-now oriented. Thankfully, I've come across some passages that reassure me about Shukman's non-godly credentials.

This is pretty damn direct.

And the levels of practice -- all they are, in fact, is levels of love. If this whole path of practice were not about love, then it wouldn't be worth it. But at the same time, love has no levels. Once we taste the love, on no matter which level -- mindfulness, support, or absorption -- we are well. We are okay, we are home.

And yet we can abandon ourselves more and more to love. So in another sense, there really are levels. But why love? Does that word indicate that this avowed "atheist" believes in some kind of universal love, also known as "God"?

On the contrary, the discovery of universal interconnectedness as an experience, not an idea, and of an all-inclusive dimension that makes us and all things one -- this is some kind of ultimate love, without any "supreme being" needed. Unless our connection to this love is the supreme being itself. 

Now, that last sentence does seem to open the door to God, albeit just a crack. But Shukman goes on to say on the next page:

So, yes, different faces of love. All we have to do is keep opening to them. And a time can come when we cross some kind of hump, turn a corner, or go over a steep slope -- something can happen where the center of gravity of our life tips from being located in the separate, anxious, lonely sense of me, to being more centered in the nameless love whose true face is always this moment just as it is.

Coffee cup. Morning light. Yellow pad. Pen getting a little sluggish, just one shade fainter, just one micrometer thinner in its line, as its reservoir of ink gets a little closer to being used up.

This is it. If you want to meet ultimate reality, encounter the supreme being, here it is. Right here. Right now. Staring you in the face, flooding into your ears, nudging you on every side -- table edge under your elbow, hard bench under your buttocks, warm barrel of pen in your fingers, and the whole spectrum of experience flooding in -- and there is nowhere to flood in from, and nowhere to flood in to. 

Instead, there is just this. Boundless. Perfect. Fully realized, fulfilled. Totally accomplished already. You. Your yourself. Forever this. 

And Shukman views the non-historical Buddha as inhabiting an imaginal realm that exists within human consciousness, not somewhere in a supernatural dimension of reality.

Religions clearly have archetypal figures -- entities who are said to inhabit an immaterial world, and come forth into intimate consciousness to guide and support their followers. That realm may be thought of as a supernatural place, a "heaven," where holy beings dwell, for example, but can also be construed as finding its home within a zone of the human unconscious that is both personal and transpersonal.

The word Buddha, for example, applies both to a historical figure who taught in northern India twenty-four hundred years ago, and also, especially in traditional Asian contexts, to a figure who dwells in an intermediate imaginal realm, real to its devotees but not flesh and blood, ready to be invoked as an agent of succor at any time or place.

In Christianity there is not only Christ but also Mary, and many saints besides, who occupy a zone equivalent to the mundus imaginalis. The very notion of a "heaven," where the saints, angels, and other divinities dwell, might be another term for the imaginal zone of consciousness.  

Comments

[manjit]

I suggest you deeply study the works of Henry Corbin, who if memory serves me correctly coined the term mundus imaginalis, and by extension his sufi mystic mentors Suhrawardi, Ibn Arabi etc, before you falsely portray the reality this is hinting at to be identical to the mindless and meaningless "atheist" reality you refer to.

It is a very deep and profound philosophical conception of an experiential reality, not the naive, simplistic, banal and reductionist materialist worldview. I believe I have commented on this over on the RSS forum many years ago.

"Reality is the line where rival gangs of shamans fought to a standstill"
~ Robert Anton Wilson

[October]

What is Real? It's the food you eat, that's real.Air you breath is real.
Real is this not them or that.
Once human consciousness realise it, it complete the purpose of being Human.
Untill then everything is illusion.

Levels. That's the secret. Once you take a step, there is no going back.

Everything is Real

[um]

@ Sant 64

Only THAT government is "good" ..that sees to it that the citizens are well:
- fed
- housed
- schooled
- protected
- looked after i.t.o. healthcare, food safety etc
and
- can earn a financial decent income
- their individual mental integrity is respected and safe in the public domain.

The rest is for people that need to raise their voice, use abusive language to make their point ...if they have one

[Ron E.]

As we know, Buddhism has many facets with a variety of beliefs. As far as I’m aware the basic ten-ant that they all have in common is the Four Noble Truths which consist of suffering, its cause, its cessation, and the path to end suffering.

The Buddha (is said to) have avoided metaphysical questions about the existence of God, eternity, soul etc., relying more on the matter which all questioners really exhibit – being that which drives their longings to be free of suffering.

After all, the only reality we can know is this present moment, what Shukman calls the here and now. Anything we add on to that is our own particular conditioning, our concepts. Which is why the Zen and Chan Buddhist practices often refer to ‘just this’ and ‘suchness’, emphasising the direct perceptions available to the senses.

Zen practice generally aims at allowing space for the student to see how the mind creates a thought-constructed world at the expense of actual experience – on what is appearing in the moment. Okay, so we need to pay attention to our thoughts and ideas if only in order to plan ahead, but they do not have to run our lives totally. To be able ‘take a step back’ from the habitual flood of thought is ad-dressed by the many injunctions to be aware, pay attention or just plain noticing the here now.

Although it can be fun (and stimulating) thinking and debating on metaphysical and abstract issues (and scientific issues), when it comes down to it, we only ever know the experience of ‘just this’ – then it’s gone and another ‘just this’ arrives which may be awareness of a passing thought, a shaft of sunlight, perhaps a pain.

We have to ask. “What’s the point of all this present moment stuff?” Well, from the Zen/Chan perspective, intrinsic in the Buddha’s Four Nobel Truths is the awareness that a thought and concept dominated world, when examined, is the main cause of mental anguish, of suffering.

I guess it’s up to us whether we choose to have either an agnostic, atheist or theist (or none) belief or leaning. Either way, that too is what is appearing in the moment so in spite of everything our lives go on. It can all be debated, but as I see it, our human debates and deliberations only play around on the surface of truth.

[um]

>> The Buddha (is said to) have avoided metaphysical questions about the existence of God, eternity, soul etc., relying more on the matter which all questioners really exhibit – being that which drives their longings to be free of suffering.<<

This did ring a bell ...as the word "questioners"reminded me of the type of questions that are made to the late MCS and his successor.

It has been my personal understanding that he too, avoided metaphysical issues. ..so much so that it made me say .."that he never said a thing, as he had nothing to say". What he did say, I mean unasked for, was the invitation to practice ..and reading about the life of Hon. Kodo Sawaki and his succesor Uchiyama Roshi, I found the same.

What reminden me of what one of the first representatives in Europe said ..."Sant Mat is pure zen" . ...hahaha ...how copuld I have understood such an remark in those days ...hahaha ...much coffee had to be drunk to get to it ..hahahaha

Hahaha ..on closer examination, the way the practice of Simran is presented and explained to the followers is even more obscure than in zen. It is like an IKEA peiece of furniture without a manual and many, many, different screws etc.

Those that do simran etc can come to understand a lot from these two Zen Teachers.