Zen Pessimism

Zen Mistake

“The strength of a person’s spirit would then be measured by how much ‘truth’ he could tolerate, or more precisely, to what extent he needs to have it diluted, disguised, sweetened, muted, falsified.”—Nietzsche

The truth is not worth knowing. Give up, and pick a sly religion—they all work. Perhaps there is freedom in the picking of an “opiate of the masses,” and then, a true believer, you are like a solider fighting for freedom but taking orders from a tyrant. Here is what enlightenment simply cannot do: make you walk through walls, fly like a superhero, or never die. You will never be happy, either. Given this warning, if you still cannot turn away, follower of words, instigated into a fight for truth, argued with like you’re in a heated criminal case pleading not guilty but being prosecuted for “causing and contributing to suffering,” what follows is an explanation of the truth, which I will also call Zen. “Meditation is a secular practice,” says poet/neuroscientist Abhijit Naskar, “not a religious practice.” The same claim can be made of Zen. 

The truth is like eating a tasty apple. What words can equal the experience of tasting the apple? In fact, it is the forbidden fruit of Zen that I will feed you. If other writers are right, you might not only not learn the truth of Zen from me, but be hopelessly damaged so that you can never “know” the truth, hopelessly stuck with only the thought of Zen in your mind, a pitiful imitation, only the philosophical argument, but not the actuality of Zen. That is the risk you take, I feelZen Pessimism it fair to say, if you continue to read. The mean Buddha beats you with a “wake-up stick” until you learn the truth. “To the heart and mind, ignorance is kind,” sings popstar George Michael: “There’s no comfort in the truth; pain is all you’ll find.” 

All I offer you is dignity. No transcendence. No bliss. And a diminished desire to live. A mistake? The truth? Freedom? This is why myths are so compelling, and I yearn for the days when I had delusions to puff me up. “If you haven’t wept deeply,” said monk Ajahn Chah, “you haven’t begun to meditate.” I did the work of praying to God, singing hymns, helping people, yet for some reason, this did not work for me. Many people, believers I know, find more faith, a deeper conviction, the longer they believe. They feel good, intoxicated, loved by God, heaven bound, and the good feeling is evidence for them that they believe in what is true, the Good News reaffirmed. 

Bad feeling, false; good feeling, true. Saved. Magnified, the enchanted world is where you live, not here—not insignificant, damned to oblivion, struggling. But I will tell you the truth: suffering is not worth enduring, not worth all the joys, the pleasures, the beauty, the love … no, not even love is worth suffering, not the suffering we endure, nor the suffering we cause. And I am not talking about dissatisfaction, but pain, suffering beyond Siddhartha’s medicinal Four Noble Truths, real agony. War, disease. The life outside the solipsistic mind. Craving is not irrelevant, but minuscule next to heart attacks or global warming. 

If you are like most people, you are indoctrinated into a particular religion when you are very young, literally just a toddler in most cases, clearly too young to defend yourself properly from this intellectual assault on your mind. Of course, these lies (or fictions) may be a gift that gives meaning to your life. But if this didn’t happen for you, or somehow the indoctrination didn’t take, you start to wonder if one of the other religions might be true. “Every exit is an entry somewhere else,” says playwright Tom Stoppard.

Which one is it? An Abrahamic faith? Scientology? Wicca maybe? But I will diabolically suggest that you ask another question, getting to the crux, and that question is this: what if all the religions are wrong? If you do this, reach beyond the stories, then the plain world is all that is left, all that is true, nothing supernatural, no cumbersome miracles, just butt-naked nature, only matter swirling around. No meaning. Think of all the sicknesses, for goodness sake. The need for food, water, and air. We are not spirits. We are animals, mammals, and that is all we are. No story to give us importance; truly, we are only what we are. “Anything more than the truth would be too much,” says poet Robert Frost. 

The key to Zen is to get the stories out of your head. Words are a kind of story, many of them ancient, many rich with details and multiple meanings … that we extemporize with every day. However, as linguist Alfred Korzybski says, “The map is not the territory.” Words are places on the map, and words strung together, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, essays, are merely directions (thoughts) using the map. When the mind-map is unused, and all that is left is the mind-territory, you have unhindered and direct access to the truth about yourself. 

Don’t say a thing. These words that I am usingZen Pessimism to describe Zen are not the same as the truth that they are representing. If you agree with the words, logically, and you only perceive the experience or meaning of the words themselves, you will not understand or recognize the non-language truth … about yourself. “Not thinking about anything is Zen,” says the Bodhidharma, the father of Zen: “Once you know this, walking, sitting, or lying down, everything you do is Zen.” 

If an argument is made trying to refute Zen, however clever it might be, it will always be insufficient, a rationalization and not a direct experience. Zen offers no argument for itself, no invalid deductions to refute. In fact, it can only be understood in the absence of arguments, without words, beyond logic, and absolutely no symbols. Here is the Bodhidharma once again, saying: “Not creating delusions is enlightenment.” 

I was thinking about how some teachers will advise you to meditate by counting numbers, and I now realize why I resisted this seemingly helpful suggestion. For example, the word “nine” is a word spelled “n” … “i” … “n” … “e.” This word has a meaning of (*********) these many quantities. If you think about this number while you are trying to empty your mind of words, which is necessary to experience Zen, you will be hindered by the word “nine.” Of course, all the other numbers are words with meanings, too. All distractions. How can you put words into your mind thinking you will get to a place in your mind of no words? It is an unlikely path for sure. 

The counting numbers suggestion might be a good way to meditate in general—as are meditating on thoughts of love and kindness, especially—but it is not a good way to meditate if you want to experience Zen, know the truth about yourself. Better to concentrate on the windy sound of the breath, the taste of the breath, the feeling of the breath going in and out of your body, your mouth, and your wheezing lungs. “Think with your whole body,” said teacher Taisen Deshimaru. No words. 

And feisty words will come, intruding. Just stop the thoughts—yet again and again, clear your head of words, and continue to concentrate on the breath. In fact, I think it is best not to count your breaths, but to consider each new breath the first breath—no, not even that, but the only breath. That is to say, the breath that is in the present giving you oxygen is the breath where your attention should be focused. Does the dog know how many balls it has fetched? Be like the dog. The mind without words or symbols of any kind. “The menu is not the meal,” said the notorious Alan Watts. 

Hunger must be fed. The mind devours calories … if you want to live. 

Zen is not a philosophy; it is not supernatural, nor mystical. It is ordinary. It is an undistracted experiencing of the mind-and-body for what it obviously and truly is without any opinions, lofty or low, expert or amateur, logical or complete gobbledygook, interfering with the palpable realization of the unspeakable truth: you must take a breath, you must. It doesn’t matter what you think. Or what you want to think. 

Freedom? Puffed up? “To live—is that not enough?” said master D.T. Suzuki. 

You cannot know Zen through an argument, and you cannot disprove Zen with an argument. You must stop arguing completely, and what remains is the obvious. Any argument made against this is like arguing that you do not exist—for even if the argument is logical, it is obviously wrong. You do exist. You know this without having to make a description with words. 

Experience.

Say nothing, silence your mind, and there you are. 

There is no status in knowing Zen; it is the most inconsequential thing if you know the truth; but life is a world of danger, ignorance guiding all your decisions, detached from perilous reality, if you don’t. Dogs are fine Zen masters. We could learn much from them. So are cats, and all the other animals, just as Zen as can be. “I have lived with several Zen masters—all of them cats,” said author Eckhart Tolle. Animals do not have words or tales, Bibles or Sutras, laws or customs, all confusing the obviousness of what they are. Their minds are all territory, and no misguided maps. We can be like that, too, wise as a dog. Shut down the word machine of your mind … only truth remains. 

Hunger is a great way to know Zen, especially if you are meditating in the lotus position and you slowly get hungry; then you know what hunger’s gnawing sting is without any explanation. You do not need to construct sentences to define your hunger. Hunger is the truth. Your body that hungers is the truth. Your mind that knows the hunger is the true mind. Try to tell yourself a story that feeds your hunger. You might have some brief success distracting yourself, convincing yourself that the hunger is pleasure, but not for long. You will eat, unless you are a hunger artist a la Kafka. Of course, the breath, and your physical need for air, undetached from reality by a story about mermaids, for example, is the more obvious route to Zen. Hunger works for me. 

Think of meat. Does the raw suffering of others, the death of sentient beings with muscles just like you, make you hungry? Does the Samurai, a Zen master by definition, feel any remorse or guilt for wielding a sword, causing suffering? Does the sad animal go to heaven that you kill? I regret, eat not only my words—know Zen. 

Zen is like science, hard science, which must conduct physical experiments to make factual claims, not merely make armchair arguments. Philosophers have made beautiful, profound arguments since the first philosopher Thales, but they still have more often than not been wrong. Sound arguments are unreliable. Only experiments can be trusted. Zen is a kind of experiment, an observation without the noise of words, stories, arguments, especially including self-talk, to interfere with a clear observation of the true mind, and the true existence. 

Stop asking questions. Violent in the too polluted air, turbulent in the too smoggy skies, a tornado hits your home, destroying your shelter, causing you brain damage. Think about it. No words. The wind gusts in your mind, but only a rude map of the wind. Farts, asshole. Wind, reality.