godot troubled by zen (intentionally lowercase)
Colbourne (colby@online.net.pg)
Tue, 17 Mar 1998 21:40:58 +1000
I have been reading a lot about Zen and Buddhism etc. and I am very
troubled. I have lots of questions and I am told that if you look for
answers you are already lost. I see Zen as the alternative to all
rational, conventional, logical everything. But if Zen is about lack of
rationality, then how does one rationally explain Zen, or it's purpose,
or it's practise or recommend it to others? How can one argue for the
employment of Zen when logic has been adbandoned? Couldn't it be, with
all the unprovable, unscientific spiritual advancements that are
allegedly achieved by meditation, that it is all no more than a case of
the Emperor's New Clothes? These people meditate and then they say
'Yeah, I experienced Infinite Consciousness. It was cool, eh?'. There's
no measurement of anything because it is all irrational, all unprovable.
Like 'Prove that you love your father', from 'Contact'. I'm not saying
that the whole meditation thing is a lie, what I'm saying is that if
there are no reference points in your spiritual advancement, etc. how
can you declare any form of progress or change? I find it impossible and
terribly frightening (my face is visibly squirming) at the thought of
being unable to define what occurs during meditation. I've attempted to
meditate before, maybe there's some sense of well-being but why so? I
thought that Zen was about the void, the unexplainable, the intangible.
Why must it follow that meditation leads to 'the light'. Couldn't the
void be a void of darkness? Of misery and anguish? Why must the absence
of thought automatically imply some sense of joy? Like the old, deaf
cigar dude in Raise High? He is happy, but why? Maybe the void is just a
void of sheer indifference, and the joy follows from the sense of apathy
that you alone share, while everybody else runs around concerning
themselves with the insignigficant.
Let us assume that you have taken a normal, run-of-the-mill teenager
about my age and you want to show him Zen. The first thing is, you can't
show it to him, you can't even tell him where to look, all you can do is
ask him a paradoxical question that is designed to produce a state of
mind that transcends logic, etc. If you turn this teenager away from all
the conventional, picket-fence values of mainstream society and thrust
him in front of the Zen void, is it meant to be an enlightening
experience? Is the absence of any value, reference points, explanations
or definitions meant to be a pleasurable acknowledgement? Must it then
follow that Zen is all about kindness towards others, love etc? When you
see Nothing, is the Nothing meant to be a great union of all things? Of
nature, life, love, etc? If the Zen master asks the student 'What is the
sound of one hand clapping?' what is the student meant to do? He is not
MEANT TO DO anything. If he acknowledges that there is no answer, is he
praised? Has he experienced Zen simply by attempting to address the
koan? From what I have been told of Zen any answer you provide, even no
answer, is always the correct one, because that's the answer that you
did or didn't decide. So essentially, isn't Zen just asking people to
turn away from the conventional, the logical, the material and find
their own answers, their own values? If so, then why is it generally
accepted that kindness and compassion are good attributes? I'm not
saying that they're not. All I'm essentially trying to say is that, if
Zen is about the inexplicable, intangible, nothing then why must the Zen
followers be so damn happy? Is that what they see in the void? Is that
what we're meant to see? Ah, but we're not MEANT to see anything, we
just see, or we just don't see. If Zen is the not study of the not
existent then wouldn't it be just as easy to abandon Zen and accept all
things conventional. I know it must be hard for you to explain Zen to
me, because it is inexplicable. I always thought philosophically, that
using logic you would inevitably arrive at Nietzsche, and no values but
if you followed your heart, soul, whatever, you would find love, etc.
Salinger presents me with so many things that make me feel *something*,
maybe it is inexplicable, but I am happier for having experienced it,
maybe because it is inexplicable. Maybe this is Zen, but can I turn all
my doings and thoughts to some system of living founded purely on a
Davega bicycle? Isn't Zen just the antithesis of all things expected,
ie, the firing squad that, having bound and gagged the condemned man,
turn their firearms on themselves? (hey, that sounds like a good idea
for a story). Maybe it's just humour. I've got some theory of humour,
one constituent of which is 'inversion'. Monty Python always inverts the
conventional, for example, the coal-miner son that comes home to argue
with his father, the poet. Father says 'Oh, isn't poetry good enough for
you? You're only good enough to work at the mines, eh?'. Or another
example might be a prostitute who pulls up in a mercedes to solicit a
business-man working the street corner. Is Zen just inversion of the
norm? I don't think so.
When you really, really, really break it down and you ask somebody what
they experienced in their meditation, and it is allegedly inexplicable,
then how do they answer? Do they say 'I accepted all things and I
experienced a sense of immense well-being'? What exactly are you meant
to meditate on? I was originally told that you were meant to think about
nothing. This may be possible, but my school Yoga teacher said 'Don't
meditate on a red alligator, don't meditate on a red alligator' and
consequently, we all thought about a red alligator. What he then said
was that you can't think of nothing, or eventually you just end up
thinking about thinking about nothing. So he suggests that you meditate
ON something, a mantra, a picture or something. Is this right? If I do
this, will I experience or see Zen (the unseeable)? It reminds me of
something Mayor Quimby once said 'It's time for us to face up to the
un-face-up-toable'. Maybe it's just better not to face up to it at all.
An Alternative to the above post might read:
ZEN - Why? But there is no why? Nor how. So why?
<<Please mail me back, is all this making any sense.
Suerte>>>
It makes sense, but I don't.
Godot.