Tag Archives: Bodhidharma

To experience Zen-like awakening, try going the headless way

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By Brentyn J. Ramm

Source: Psyche

A prominent theme in Asian religious traditions such as the Advaita Vedanta and Zen Buddhism is that our everyday human experience is like a dream. The dream is that you are merely a person – a thing in the world bounded by your skin, a self that is separate from things and other people. But you are not separate from things and other people. And when you see through the illusion of separation, you become ‘awakened’.

In Chinese Zen Buddhism (Ch’an), a significant form of awakening experience is known as ‘Kensho’. This literally translates as ‘seeing one’s true nature’. In Zen, one’s true nature is often described as ‘empty’ – and at the same time identical with the given world. Kensho isn’t the end point of practice. It isn’t some supreme final state such as ‘enlightenment’ or ‘nirvana’ (if these states are even possible). Rather, it is the beginning, for awakening is in fact a life-long practice, never truly completed. This is the type of awakening experience that I am interested in here.

Hui Hai, an 8th-century Zen Master renowned for establishing a monastery and insisting on the importance of manual work, said that your true nature should not be sought externally. He described your true nature as follows:

Mind has no colour, such as green or yellow, red or white; it is not long or short; it does not vanish or appear; it is free from purity and impurity alike; and its duration is eternal. It is utter stillness. Such then is the form and shape of our original mind, which is also our original body.

Our true nature, then, is like a void. It lacks all objective qualities. It is shapeless, colourless, limitless, motionless. So how exactly does one see one’s own true nature, if it is so shorn of discernible features? The traditional method is to sit for many years in an intense meditation practice under the guidance of an experienced teacher. Unfortunately, most practitioners never experience ‘the void’. There is however a tradition in Zen of spontaneous awakening even in the absence of any meditation practice. This suggests that there is a far quicker and more direct means of awakening.

Early Chinese Zen masters referred to the need to ‘chop off one’s head’

Let’s look at a method of self-enquiry called ‘the headless way’, which provides a modern method of approaching awakening. These first-person experiments were developed by the English philosopher and mystic Douglas Harding in his influential book On Having No Head: Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious (1961). Harding grew up in a fundamentalist Christian sect in which he wasn’t allowed to go to the cinema and the only book he was permitted to read was the Bible. When he left the sect at 21, he was determined to seek the truth for himself and to be his own authority. The approach he developed was unconventional and can be considered a form of radical empiricism.

The key to his method is noticing that you cannot see your own head. Rather than looking out of a head, visually speaking, there is just a gap here. Indeed, early Chinese Zen masters referred to the need to ‘chop off one’s head’. Hui Hai claimed that he could teach nothing as he had no tongue to teach with. The heart sutra, which distils the essence of Zen teaching, states that ‘in emptiness there is no form, no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind.’ Zen masters also urge practitioners to recognise their ‘original face’ – another name for one’s true nature.

How does one see their true nature according to Zen? One of the best places to start is with the mysterious figure Bodhidharma, the First Patriarch of Zen, who reputedly brought Buddhism to China from India around the 5th century. A legend about him tells us that he attained enlightenment after sitting for nine years facing a cave wall, and also that he cut off his own eyelids to stop himself from falling asleep. Bodhidharma is attributed with the following verse, which is often thought to express the core of Zen teaching:

A special transmission outside the scriptures,
Not founded upon words and letters;
By pointing directly to one’s mind
It lets one see into one’s own true nature and thus attain Buddhahood.

How exactly does one directly point to one’s mind or true nature? Harding’s ‘pointing experiment’ assists in turning one’s attention within, starting with the exercise of pointing a finger literally to the spot from which you are looking. Note that if these exercises are not carried out, or if they are merely thought about, this article will make no sense. So please do the following:

Point at a distant thing, such as a wall. Notice its shape and colour. It is a thing that is extended in space. It is also opaque. You cannot see through it. Point to the floor. Again, notice the coloured expanse and its textures. Point to your foot. Again, it is a shaped and coloured thing. Point to your chest and notice its colours and shape and the movement from your breathing. Now point to where you are looking from. In your present experience, is there any colour here? Any shape? Any texture? Any movement? Are there any eyes, mouth or cheeks here? Are there any features of a person? Notice that this spot is totally lacking in any personally identifying characteristics. Is there anything at all here? Or is it just a transparent opening?

When I look within, when I turn my attention 180 degrees from objects over there to where I am, I find that I am not a coloured, limited thing in the world, but rather a colourless, unchanging capacity for the world, exactly as described by Zen. Is this the much sought-after ‘void’ that is referred to by contemplative traditions across times and cultures?

When you were an infant, you did not recognise that face in the mirror as your own. It was just a baby behind some glass

A well-known story in Zen is of Tung-Shan’s awakening, in the 9th century, which also shows intriguing parallels with Harding’s observations. Once, as a child, Tung-Shan was reading the heart sutra with his tutor when he came upon the passage ‘no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind’. He was confused. He used his hands to feel his face and then asked his tutor why the sutra said they didn’t exist. His tutor told Tung-Shan that he could not help him, so Tung-Shan spent many years searching for a worthy master to explain this and other mysteries of the Dharma to him. One day he was crossing a river and saw his face reflected in the water. He saw where his face was in his lived experience, and he instantly had a great awakening.

Zen goes beyond words and letters, so merely thinking about this story would be against the spirit of Zen. To test this out directly in your own experience, please carry out the ‘mirror experiment’:

Look into a mirror. You can now see your human face. Notice where it is. In my experience, it is over there, a couple of feet away, not on my shoulders. Is this true for you? It is also facing the wrong way. It is looking in, rather than outwards. How many faces do you see? Two, or just one? Notice the shapes, textures and colours of that little face trapped behind the glass. By contrast, notice the lack of shapes, textures, colours and indeed boundaries to the spot you are looking from.

That face over there is your acquired face. When you were an infant, you did not recognise it as your own. It was just a baby behind some glass. It took many months to learn to identify with that face. You learnt to marry that visual thing over there with the ‘facial’ sensations you feel here, and hence you became boxed in (at least apparently so). Isn’t how you are for yourself – that is, your ‘original face’ – in total contrast to that little face in the mirror? In fact, as lacking any characteristics of its own, isn’t this ‘gap’ seamlessly united with the world? Couldn’t you equally say that your ‘original face’ is the given world itself?

All this might sound a little esoteric, so let’s look at one potential practical benefit of the ‘headless’ practice in the case of personal relationships. We think that we meet each other face-to-face, thing-to-thing. Of course, this is how it looks to others from the outside. But you relate to others from your first-person perspective, not from over there. The lived experience of being with others isn’t in fact of being face-to-face, but rather face-to-no-face. My face never gets in the way of the faces of others – including those you dislike. The ‘space’ you are looking out of has no preferences. It takes on everyone completely, no matter who they are, without judgement. Noticing this is a rather simple and concrete way to see that you are not, in fact, separate from others. In theory, this could provide a basis for true compassion towards others.

One can meditate for many years without seeing their own true nature. Most never do. The precision and apparent reliability of these experiments open up a form of Zen-like awakening to empirical investigation. Yet these techniques have so far received little attention from philosophers and scientists. (I describe these experiments and discuss their relation to Zen more fully in my recent article ‘The Technology of Awakening’.) The results of the experiments suggest that it doesn’t require a lifetime or many lifetimes to see your true nature. You can do so right now. It is simply to see who or what you are at this very moment – that which is seeing these very words.

Why you might consider the Buddha’s proposal

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By Jack Balkwill

Source: Intrepid Report

The Buddha was said to have predicted the day he would die. When that day approached, his followers, weeping, asked him to stay with them. “I’ve told you that life is about suffering,” he reminded them, “would you have me continue suffering?” With that, his followers let go and allowed their beloved teacher to die in peace.

A thousand years after the Buddha’s death, a monk known as Bodhidharma is said to have brought a version of the Buddha’s philosophy from India to China, where it became known as Ch-an. There is no scientific evidence that Bodhidharma ever existed, but I believe he did, the evidence being the existence of Ch-an, which spread to Korea as Sen, and later to Japan as Zen.

Bodhidharma emphasized the Buddhist opposition to what they call the three poisons—hatred, greed and delusion—defining in three words everything which holds mankind back from constructing a heaven on earth. Understanding this enables adherents to define the causes of suffering and address them.

The Buddha had set out as a young man to discover the cause of suffering, and how to end it. Decades of failed attempts did not deter him. He tried to bring about suffering on himself, but told followers this did not work. Finally, he discovered that intense meditation was the answer to that which he was seeking.

Buddhism is said to have a hundred-thousand sects, but Bodhidharma’s philosophy is one of “Northern School” Buddhism, or “Mahayana” Buddhism, and is about living one’s life to make a better world by opposing hatred, greed and delusion with the goal of ending the suffering of others.

The Buddha was said to have laughed when a follower asked him if he were a god or prophet come to teach them, admitting only that “I am awake.” His Mahayana followers believe he was an enlightened person, with no supernatural powers. The Buddha said that anyone may become so enlightened, primarily through deep meditation, in which one comes in contact with the inherent wisdom of the universe.

Within this philosophy of opposing hatred, greed and delusion to perfect one’s world, there is a teaching that all of us have a role to play should we become aware (the first spark of enlightenment). The belief is that if one meditates long enough, one will discover that role. There is no perfect purpose, nor one better than another, so one person realizes a need to feed the hungry, another furthering the cause of world peace—there are countless ways to relieve suffering in the world.

In this philosophy one recognizes that we are here to make a better world in some way, not to accumulate wealth, or power, or fame, which are seen as delusions by Buddhists.

And so it is that we live in a world where there are thousands of heroes who go unrecognized, driven by a need to make this world a better place. Many may be unaware that they are practicing this engaged form of Zen. They are in the shadows, away from the spotlight of mainstream media. Much of what they do is anathema to the teachings of the establishment.

War, for example, is glorified by the establishment’s mainstream media, because the powers behind mainstream media—its owners, board members and advertisers—make a lot of money from war (through their expanded financial portfolios), and wealth is all that concerns our ruling plutocrats. Guests invited on the cable news networks to discuss wars are often retired generals, many of them on the boards of “defense” companies which profit from war. One does not see peace activists giving the other side, only one side is allowed on all of the TV networks, the side promoting war, guiding the beliefs of the masses.

Watching cable news channels for months one is not likely to see a story about world hunger, a daily problem around the globe. The hungry do not buy products, so are of no interest to the TV “news” networks, existing as they do to profit from the sale of products.

There is a massive amount of work to do in easing suffering that lies outside of mainstream media’s viewpoint.

In my meditation classes I finish my basic course with a discussion about “engaged meditation,” said by many meditation masters of the East to be the highest form of meditation. One meditates on one’s chosen role, sometimes for months, until one discovers one’s chosen role in contributing toward making a better world—free of hatred, greed and delusion.

One student asked me if her work at a battered women’s shelter was a good choice. I replied, of course, if that is what you need to do. Another asked if working at an animal shelter was worthwhile, it seemed to her that it might somehow be a lesser cause than working to end human rights [abuses] or some of the other causes. I replied that of course it is a worthy cause—anything that eases suffering in the world.

We live in a laissez faire capitalist empire in which hatred, greed and delusion are emphasized as ideals. One is told by one’s TV news to hate the Russians, Chinese, Iranians, Venezuelans and North Koreans. One is told that to be successful, all that matters is that one acquires large sums of money at any cost to the public interest. One is told that one’s taxes should go to supporting a worldwide empire which serves the plutocrats against the interests of the masses.

The Buddha would have laughed at all of this, pointing out that following the messages of the mainstream press is delusional. Instead, he would tell you that you have a purpose, and you can find it by meditating deeply on what your role should be in making a better world. Imagine the world we could have if more people did this, united in making a civilization dedicated to ending suffering.