Essays in Zen Buddhism: First Series

The Defilements (āsavā), or Oozings (lou)[3.2] as the Chinese translators have them, are three, sometimes four, in number. They are the Defilements of Desire (kāma), Existence (bhāva), Ignorance (avijjā), and Intellection (diṭṭhi). What kind of insight is it that destroys all these Defilements? And what is it that will be left in us after such a destruction? The answers may be anticipated to be thoroughly nihilistic, because nothing but absolute void will be seemingly the result of such destruction. Especially when we read a verse like the following (Sutta-nipāta, vv. 949 and 1099), we may reasonably be tempted to regard the teaching of the Buddha as absolutely negativistic:

But the fact is, from the spiritual point of view, that it is only after the destruction of the Defilements and a release from every form of attachment that one’s inmost being gets purified and sees itself as it really is, not indeed as an ego standing in contrast to the not-ego, but as something transcending opposites and yet synthesising them in itself. What is destroyed is the dualism of things and not their oneness. And the release means going back to one’s original abode. The insight therefore is to see unity in multiplicity and to understand the opposition of the two ideas as not conditioning each other but as both issuing from a higher principle; and this is where perfect freedom abides. When the mind is trained enough, it sees that neither negation (niratta) nor affirmation (atta) applies to reality but that the truth lies in knowing things as they are or rather as they become. A mind really sincere and thoroughly purified is the necessary preliminary to the understanding of reality in its suchness. As the result we have “ti yathābhūtaṁ pajānāti,” and this came later to be formulated by the Mahayanists into the doctrine of Thatness or Suchness (bhūtatathatā). The trained mind that has gone through the four dhyana exercises as prescribed in the Nikāyas further develops into what is known among the Mahayanists as the Ādarśa-jñānam (mirror-insight), which corresponds to the Bhūta-ñāṇa in the Anguttara Nikāya.

“Just, O king, as if in a mountain fastness there were a pool of water, clear, translucent, and serene; and a man, standing on the bank and with eyes to see, should perceive the oysters and the shells, the gravel and the pebbles and the shoals of fish, as they move about or lie within it: he would know: This pool is clear, transparent, and serene, and there within it are the oysters and the shells, and the sand and gravel, and the shoals of fish are moving about or lying still.”

The radical empiricism of the “Yathābhūtam” teaching of the Buddha is here graphically presented, which reminds us of the Buddha in the Itivuttaka, v. 109, describing himself as the spectator standing on the shore (cakkhumā puriso tīre ṭhito). To understand this simile intellectually will be sheer nonsense. The writer describes his mental attitude from a higher plane of thought which has been realised by him after a long training. Sambodhi or Enlightenment is the Buddhist term given to this realisation. The destruction of the four Defilements is the negative phase of the experience which is the insight to which the Buddha’s serene and translucent mind was directed and bent down. When the destructive activity alone is considered, Enlightenment is annihilating and negativistic, but when the insight opens to the suchness of truth, it is most emphatically affirmative. This is where lies that “matchless island possessing nothing and grasping after nothing, called Nirvana, the destruction of decay and death.” (Sutta-nipāta, v. 1094). Remember that what is here destroyed is decay and death and not life; for it is through Enlightenment that life is for the first time restored to its native freedom and creativeness.

The simile of mirror (ādarśa) may however suggest that the Buddhist attitude towards the world is merely passive and lacking in energising inspirations. This however betrays the ignorance on the part of the critic of the Buddha’s own life which was so unselfishly devoted for forty-nine long and peaceful years to the promotion of the general spiritual welfare of his people; not only this, but the critic has also forgotten to notice the extraordinary missionary enterprises of the Buddha’s disciples as well as their intellectual activities which developed into the Mahayanist school of Buddhism. Whatever this be, the charge of passivity against Buddhist weltanschauung is wrong even when it is considered apart from the historical facts of Buddhism. Passivity we notice in Enlightenment is merely apparent. As a general statement, a thing absolutely passive is unthinkable, unless it is a state of absolute nothingness without any kind of content in it. As long as Enlightenment is the outcome of a most strenuous spiritual effort, it is a positive state of mind in which lies hidden an inexhaustible reservoir of possibilities; it is a unity in which a world of multitudinosity is lodged. “Noisy go the small waters, silent goes the vast ocean.”f66 In the vast ocean of Enlightenment there is the silence of unity. The Avataṁsaka philosophers too compare it to the immense expanse of an ocean, calm and translucent, which reflects all the shining bodies of heaven, but where at the same time possibilities of roaring and all-devouring waves lie innocently embosomed.

So asks the Buddha in the Mahāli Sutta: “When a monk knows thus and sees thus, would that make him ready to take up the question: Is the soul the same as the body, or is the soul one thing and the body another?” It is thus evident that the Buddha’s teaching always centered in the practical realisation of Enlightenment as “āsavem khata-ñāṇa,” insight that destroys the Defilements and releases one from every attachment (upādāna). He did not shun the discussion of the metaphysical problems merely because they were metaphysical, but because they were not conducive to the attainment of the ultimate end of Buddhist life which is the purification of spirit and not the display of epistemological subtlety. Ignorance was to be dispelled in our inner experience, and not by intellectually understanding the principle of dependent origination whether expressed as the Paṭicca-samuppāda or as the Ariya-sacca.

Viewing things “yathābhūtam” is, so to speak, the intellectual or noetic aspect of Enlightenment though not in the sense of discursive understanding; there is another aspect of Enlightenment which will be the subject of consideration here. I mean its relation to samadhi or dhyana. This is preliminary, as I said before, to the realisation, but it also shows that the realisation thus attained is something more than merely seeing into truth. If Enlightenment were just this seeing or having insight, it would not be so spiritually enlightening as to bring about a complete riddance of evil passions and the sense of perfect freedom. Intuitions could not go so penetratingly into the source of life and set all doubts at rest and sever all bonds of attachment, unless one’s consciousness were thoroughly prepared to take in the All in its wholeness as well as its suchness. Our senses and ordinary consciousness are only too apt to be disturbed and to turn away from the realisation of truth. Mental discipline thus becomes indispensable.

We must remember that the Buddha had this discipline under his two Samkhya teachers and that even after his Enlightenment he made it a rule for his disciples to train themselves in the dhyana exercises. He himself retired into solitude whenever he had opportunities for it. This was not of course merely indulging in contemplation or in making the world reflect in the mirror of consciousness. It was a kind of spiritual training even for himself and even after Enlightenment. In this respect the Buddha was simply following the practise of all other Indian sages and philosophers. This however was not all with him, he saw some deeper meaning in the discipline which was to awaken the highest spiritual sense for comprehending the Dharma. Indeed, without this ultimate awakening, dhyana however exalting, was of no import to the perfection of Buddhist life. So we have in the Dhammapada, v. 372: “Without knowledge (paññā, prajñā) there is no meditation (jhāna, dhyāna), without meditation there is no knowledge: he who has knowledge and meditation is near unto Nirvana.” This mutual dependence of jhāna and paññā is what distinguished Buddhism from the rest of the Indian teachings at the time. Jhāna or dhyāna must issue in paññā, must develop into seeing the world as it really is (yathābhūtaṁ); for there is no Buddhism in meditation merely as such. And this was the reason why the Buddha got dissatisfied with the teaching of his teachers; it, to use his own words, did “not lead to perfect insight, to supreme awakening, to Nirvana” (na abhiññāya na sambhodāya na nibbānāya saṁvattati).

To be abiding in the serenity of nothingness was enjoyable enough, but it was falling into a deep slumber, and the Buddha had no desire to sleep away his earthly life in a daydream. There must be a seeing into the life and soul of things. To him paññā or prajñā was the most essential part of his doctrine, and it had to grow out of dhyana, and the dhyana that did not terminate in paññā was not at all Buddhistic. The boat was to be emptied indeed, but staying in an “empty house” (suññāgāraṁ) and doing nothing is blankness and annihilation; an eye must open and see the truth fully and clearly, the truth (paramaṁ ariyasaccaṁ) that liberates life from its many bondages and encumbrances. (Majjhima Nikāya, 140.) Sings the Dhammapada again (v. 373):

As thus the aim of the dhyana exercises is to prepare the mind for the realisation of the paramasacca which destroys and liberates, and as the truth is realisable only by the awakening of the parama-paññā which is the knowledge (ñāṇa) that puts an end to all misery (sabbadukkha), the Buddha never fails to duly impress the importance of paññā on the minds of his disciples, for instance, in his general disciplinary scheme given to them under the three headings: śīla (morality), jhāna (meditation), and paññā (intuitive knowledge). Whatever supersensual pleasures one may experience in the jhāna exercises, the Buddha considered them to be far short of the ultimate goal of Buddhist life, every one of such pleasures had to be abandoned as it would entangle the mind and interrupt its ascending course to the awakening of paññā. It was through this awakening alone that the consciousness of emancipation or going back to one’s original spiritual abode could be attained. And by emancipation the Buddha meant to be free from all forms of attachment, both sensual (rūpaṁ) and intellectual (viññānaṁ). So says he in the Majjhima Nikāya, 138: Let not thy mind be disturbed by external objects, nor let it go astray among thy own ideas. Be free from attachments, and fear not. This is the way to overcome the sufferings of birth and death.

As long as there is the slightest trace of attachment anywhere, outwardly or inwardly, there remains the substratum of selfhood, and this is sure to create a new force of karma and involve us in the eternal cycle of birth-and-death. This attachment is a form of obsession or illusion or imagination. Nine of such self-conceited illusions are mentioned in the Nikāyas, all of which come out of the wrong speculations of selfhood and naturally lead to attachment in one way or another. They are the ideas that “I am,” “I am that,” “I shall be,” “I shall not be,” “I shall have form,” “I shall be without form,” “I shall have thought,” “I shall be without thought,” “I shall neither have thought nor be without thought.”f67 We have to get rid of all these maññitams, arrogant, self-asserting conceptions, in order to reach the final goal of Buddhist life. For when they are eliminated, we cease to worry, to harbour hatred, to be belabouring, and to be seized with fears,—which is tranquillisation (santi), and Nirvana, and the seeing into the reality and truth of things. When paññā is awakened in us, morality is abandoned, meditation left behind, and there remains only an enlightened state of consciousness in which spirit moveth as it listeth.

The well-known simile of the raft (kullūpamaṁ)f68 which may seem somewhat unintelligible to some of the Buddhist critics who are used to an altogether different “intellectual landscape,” is a good illustration of the Buddhist teaching of non-attachment. The teaching, “Kullūpamaṁ vo bhikkhave ājānantehi dhammā pi vo pahātabbā, pageva adhammā,” (Like unto a raft all dharmas indeed must be abandoned, much more un-dharmas!), is really the most fundamental keynote running through the whole course of the history of Buddhist dogmatics. The philosophy of Prajñāpāramitā which is considered by some quite deviating from the spirit of primitive Buddhism is in no way behind in upholding this doctrine of non-attachment, for instance, as we see in the Vajracchedikā Sūtra. In fact, the theory of Śūnyatā as expounded in all the Prajñā-sūtras is no more than philosophising on the doctrine of non-attachment.f69 The Vajracchedikā has:

“In the simile of a raft do I teach my doctrine to you, O monks, which is designed for escape, not for retention. Listen attentively and remember well what I am going to say. Suppose that a man coming upon a long journey finds in his way a great broad water, the hither side beset with fears and dangers, but the further side secure and free from fears, and no boat wherewith to cross the flood nor any bridge leading from this to the other shore. And suppose this man to say to himself: Verily this is a great and wide water, and the hither side is full of fears and dangers, but the further side secure and free from fears; and there is neither boat nor bridge to take me from this to that further shore. How if I gather some reeds and twigs and leaves and bind them together into a raft; and then, supported on that raft, and labouring with hands and feet, cross in safety to that other shore! Accordingly, O monks, suppose this man to gather together reeds and twigs and leaves and branches and bind them all together into a raft, and launching forth upon it and labouring with hands and feet, attain in safety the other shore. And now, the flood crossed, the further shore attained, suppose the man should say: Very serviceable indeed has this my raft been to me. Supported by this raft and working with hands and feet, I am safely crossed to this other shore; how now if I lift the raft up on my head or lay it upon my shoulder, and so proceed whithersoever I wish! What think ye, O monks? So doing, would this man be acting rightly as regards his raft?

“And what then ought this man to do if he would act rightly as regards the raft? Thus, O monks, ought the man to consider: Truly this raft has been serviceable to me! Supported by this raft and exerting hands and feet, I am crossed in safety to this further shore. How now if I lay this raft up on the bank or leave it to sink in the water and so proceed upon my journey? So doing, O monks, the man would be acting rightly as regards his raft.

“In like manner also do I teach my doctrine to you in the simile of a raft, which is meant, O monks, for escape and not for retention. Understanding the simile of the raft, O monks, you must leave dharmas behind, how much more un-dharmas!”f70

The teaching of the Buddha may now be summed up as follows: Seeing things thus or “yathābhūtam” is the same as the attainment of perfect spiritual freedom; or we may say that when we are detached from evil passions based upon the wrong idea of selfhood and when the heart grows conscious of its own emancipation, we are then for the first time fully awakened to the truth as it really is. These two events, seeing and being freed, are mutually dependent, so intimately that the one without the other is unthinkable, is impossible; in fact they are two aspects of one identical experience, separated only in our limited cognition. Paññā without jhāna is no paññā, and jhāna without paññā is no jhāna. Enlightenment is the term designating the identification-experience of paññā and jhāna, of seeing “yathābhūtam” and abandoning the dharma-raft of every denomination. In this light should the following be understood: