Dokusan
- W. Grey Champion
- Dec 22, 2022
- 10 min read
Updated: 8 minutes ago
In Japan, dokusan is a private meeting of a Zen student with his master, providing the student an opportunity to demonstrate the state of his meditation practice. For background, readers must see my
book, Conjuring Archangel: Chronicle of a Journey on the Path, because the conjuring continues. Dokusan will present contributions selected from Anna's ongoing journal, with her kind permission and at her discretion, in the hope that the gathering of insight may prove helpful to others entangled in the nettlesome web of karma.
I observe, my darling, that you are increasingly fraught over circumstances in the world and the seemingly inevitable and accelerating deterioration.
I am indeed, Archangel. All over, even in my homeland where such things were so long unthinkable, tyrants ride to power on waves of angry, ignorant and cruel multitudes. Gone are reason and justice, let alone compassion. Perspective eludes me.
I understand, child. Foremost in this problem is the shock. For all your foresight, when conditions start unravelling in real time they are stunning, especially at your age.
Exactly, Guardian, but how to bear up?
Turn to the teachings, and the practice. Simplest is that kernel of wisdom Bodhidharma offered to the Chinese Emperor, summing up Buddha’s message in a question.
“Who are you?”
Correct. The quest for the true answer, the deepest answer, eclipses all the troubles in the sangsara, however great they loom. That answer reveals the timelessness of Self, the revelation that you as perceived are coming forth, in constant flux. And if you are ephemeral, what are these Wrathful Deities who threaten but chimera? Do you see, my precious?
Through your eyes alone, my Guardian.
There are of course other lenses through which to correct your perspective as you know, history being a major one. Our friend Grey has written about the rise and fall of civilizations and of the inherent tribalism in human nature. Even recent history tells of that strain of megalomania that flares up like a pestilence. But here again, the essence is void.
The big picture, the planet, the universe itself - finite or infinite? Either is illogical. Thank you, Guardian.
At your service, dear child, and please avoid all media deliberately created to produce outrage.
I’ll do my best.
Your closing statement, Archangel, in last week’s Dokusan surely was an understatement.
You mean my explanation of what prevents people from realizing the true nature of time and self?
Yes, Guardian, you named ego as the cause.
Allow me to elaborate then, my darling. You are indeed correct. There is no power in the dual realm that measures up to human ego, and it is not alone the survival instinct. People cling to the temporal self, a self that is not their own, as Buddha said, with the vain idea that their unique configuration must be immortal, or if not then immortalized. In company with their greed and arrogance, they suffer in deep darkness, when light is all around them.
They have self nature, my Guardian. It is just not their own.
Correct. Their human consciousness uniquely connects them to the universal mind, so that with enough insight many will feel an indwelling transcendence but mistake it for God or soul.
In other words, a being separable from self. But “this mind is not Buddha.”
Indeed, while it is that everyday being they have long known and loved that must be self.
Because “this mind is Buddha.”
Bravo, my precious! They cannot leap the abyss, child, until they realize they are already on the other side. Ultimately reality is boundless, timeless, and all perceived things, including oneself, are of this nature. Open your eyes to that and the abyss of nihilism evaporates.
What about the pleasures of the flesh, Guardian?
As you now, dear child, and as every person who lives long enough learns, pleasure is linked to pain in the dual realm. Consider the words of Tibetan master Milarepa upon his enlightenment.
“Nirvana and sangsara are dependent and relative states.”
Paradox. You are the leaf and the tree!
The trap of time, Archangel, surely is the most insidious and specious of all.
Absolutely, my darling, and that is because survival as a sentient being depends on it. Time itself is created by your perception of cause and effect, while the loss of such perception would put you at considerable risk.
So naturally it binds us inexorably.
I did not say that, child. Consider the Zen of archery.
Hitting the target without aiming.
Exactly, my precious. The archer realizes that the arrow hitting his target is not the one his bow releases - each event has its moment - and he is practiced at allowing his consciousness to step aside in deference to that mind beyond it. Indeed at times of sudden danger, people are reported to have drawn upon this ability to miraculous effect.
What of the specious nature of the time delusion, my Guardian?
The danger in this trap of time is that people convince themselves willfully of a certain capacity of control, and as their human intuition informs them they have always been alive and always will be, they make the paradoxical assumption they will never lose control.
Taking the wrong message from the intuition, of course.
You scintillate tonight, dear child. The intuition should inform them that selfhood is not individual but transcendent. Then in time as they lose the capacity of control they fall into the deepest pit of nihilism - the dread of death.
Had they only found the Path, Guardian, on which there is no coming and going!
Ego stands in their way.
I overheard a conversation, Archangel, between two apparent strangers. The woman was a “flooder,” the psychology term for someone prone to tell the story of their life to anyone within earshot. Her second husband was sinking into dementia, and they no longer traveled because he would have no memory of the experience.
Surely her interlocutor was at least sympathetic, my darling.
He was indeed, Guardian, seeming to realize that she probably needed someone to talk to. His was an enlightened compassion in fact.
What was his reply, pray?
He said that the husband would still have the moment. She would have memories, he would have moments.
Was it kensho for you, child?
Exactly that, my Guardian. Like the monk who overheard the butcher say, “Every piece is the best piece.” It came to me that every moment is the only moment. However we judge the experience, moments come forth uniquely, never repeated. I had been thinking about terminal illness and how we might feel in knowing of approaching death, pining that we will not see another autumn, never again see people and places we have loved, while in reality nothing is or was ever repeated, including the mirage of self.
Excellent, my precious! In other words, you come from brilliancy and return to brilliancy.
And when I die, Guardian, like Bassui Zenji, I will exclaim, “What is this!”
I hope by then, my dear child, you will even see the meaning of it.
Can it really be possible, Archangel, to be liberated from the extremes of duality in the Sangsara, even through enlightenment?
There have been those of such advanced spirituality, my darling, who are thus liberated. Recall the Tibetan monk, led down from the mountain by his Chinese captors, singing hymns all the way. On the other hand, the Buddha himself was not free of the tribal passions that arose in his lifetime. I daresay the liberation you address is a delicate quality that must be continually tended to.
I try to keep that perspective in my mind, Guardian, but as is driven home by so many sources today, modern life contends against it forcefully, even irresistibly in some individuals.
Indeed so, child, some driven to violence by the fervor. These negative forces are deliberately intensified in today’s world.
And that fact drives the spike of outrage into any peaceful heart, my Guardian.
Of course, my precious, I understand. Yet only some are culpable of malignant influence, others are their victims, weak minds sickened by the rot of it and fallen into the bottomless pit of hatred. You, dear child, must hold fast to the deeper truths that keep you out of it.
For example.
“Violence doth recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit he has dug for another.”
We are living in a cesspool of hypocrisy, evil indifference, rising anxiety and hopelessness. Do we not approach a threshold of tolerance, a breaking point?
No doubt. It is the karmic realm, but in that also there is deeper truth of oneness, timelessness, singularity. Sit in the light of these truths, and have compassion for those in utter darkness - blind to it.
We have often discussed, Archangel, the very suggestive congruence of nuclear physics and Buddhist beliefs.
Suggestive indeed, my darling, yet we never observe a physicist give mention to any similarity, but for Capra in his book, The Tao of Physics. It is the quantum level that has stymied even the best scientists.
Exactly, the paradoxical defiance of Newtonian laws. The quantum particles give us a glimpse of the ultimate reality, don’t you agree?
Quite so, child, for example quantum entanglement, so called, when two particles a great distance apart are seen to influence one another.
What are we to make of it, Guardian? Do they have extra sensory perception?
Ha! You mean are they mind readers? No, as you said we see here the ultimate reality, which is oneness. The universe and all in it, ourselves included, is one, singular, universal mind, timeless, unbounded. And all is interconnected. Remember Brian Greene.
The Fabric of the Cosmos.
“Fabric” is the perfect description. But there is more to be seen in this quantum weirdness, my precious. It appears in experiments that an entangled particle may be seen to change in response to an observer measuring its twin. To illustrate: there is a pair of gloves in the drawer; you take out one which is for the right hand, and assume the one remaining is for the left; but meanwhile the one still in the drawer has changed to a right hand glove.
What does that tell us, my Guardian?
It means simply that the objective study of nature is ultimately impossible because the observer is indivisible from the observed - a mirror image will not suffice.
So science will never understand the behavior of quanta.
Bingo, dear child! Isn’t it delicious? Chew on it when you start to fret.
Climate change has brought considerable dissonance into the weather, Archangel. This year, for example, we appear to be having an early autumn, blazer weather since late August.
Surely unsettling, my darling, and heat may yet return. This karma has been at work for centuries. Now it matures.
Just as I age, Guardian, compounding my many worries. All my life, fall has been my favorite season, bringing new energy. Instead I am lethargic, and painful.
I understand, child; an excess of causes sets off a cascade of terrible effects: one joint after another becomes arthritic; one tribe after another joins the barbaric hostilities, destroying cities, slaughtering innocents; one nation after another falls to an incompetent tyrant, businesses fail, shelves are empty.
And I can no longer even rouse myself from sleep, my Guardian! Yet fatalism seems such a copout.
Keep your perspective, my precious At the personal level, I daresay you have never known an old woman who was not in constant pain of some kind - an aortic aneurism say, sciatica, blindness, deafness, insomnia.
I know, Guardian, and we limp along as best we can.
As for the state of the world, now seen piling on to the natural calamities of the human condition, even those in a position to do something of material assistance are far too late in all probability.
We go back then to Grey’s first essay.
Indeed, dear child, to the unslakable primal drives and the inevitable result of an insupportable human population.
How then, Guardian, do we define fatalism?
Synonymous with realism - but don’t let on. Calm yourself, be patient. All will be revealed!
The roiling seas of anxious and fraught emotions that we discussed here two weeks ago, Archangel, are bound to grow worse when the outrageous conditions causing them are set to last for years to come.
Of course, my darling, and the countless numbers of people being affected in such dangerous ways have not the Buddhist perspective I suggested to you.
The singular nature of self. Still, Guardian, here we are, tossed about on these dangerous seas of emotion, tried sorely, driven to God knows what, depression at least, violence at worst.
And both will be seen in abundance before long, child. This cruel caste of people coming to the fore, not only in your nation but throughout human society, is doubtless a consequence of the eight billion struggling to survive on a small and dying planet. Yet I will remind you of one more thing about emotions, which you must know well.
They are caused by neurochemicals in the brain, arising through karma.
The operative word you need, my precious, is tides - tides in the brain - and what does a tide do?
It rises and ebbs.
Exactly. When you become extremely agitated by the latest outrage or sickened in the witness of consequent suffering, be assured the tide will recede in time and so be patient.
What about a tsunami, Guardian?
Even that extremity, due to an earthquake in the ocean, will settle at last, though as a metaphor for extreme emotion it yields the appropriate violence. Suzuki’s prescription for imperturbable composure…
“Because we have no need of excessive joy.”
… is equally applicable to excessive agitation. Then there is that remedy of your English grandmother, my love.
Ah yes, my Guardian, tea!
(10)There can be no more paradoxical Zen story, Archangel, than that of the master who told his monks one day that this mind is not buddha, and the next reversed the statement.
“This mind is buddha.” Which is it, my darling? Did he change his mind after a goodnight’s sleep?
No, of course not, Guardian. It is a paradox, because both statements are true.
Exactly, he was challenging his disciples to wrestle with that reality. It is the very matter we see arise in meditation, when we try to suppress the wayward thoughts of our daily concerns, wanting them to clear the way for that clear sky mind that lies deeper. But then we realize that the trivial, mundane things which we depreciate also “come forth.”
Is this realization bound up also with ideas of self?
Indeed it is, child. The idea of the temporal persona of an individual nature, perhaps even separable from some superior aspect of self, is dualistic error. Self comes forth - tathagata, timeless. The same reality that all things come forth - this mind and that mind being in essence one mind - is likewise the reality of self - this mundane self and the other which you persist in feeling is superior and separate. No, by no means! they are the same self.
But there are multiple individuals, my Guardian.
Ah, yes! And I do believe our friend Grey is this very day posting on the subject of fractals and their ubiquity in nature. The extravagant fecundity of nature, its “expanding symmetry”, are the metaphor of ultimate reality bursting forth. There are multiple individuals, all of One Self.
Brilliancy!
None other, my precious!
