What the Buddha's Master Taught Him

Ānāpānasmṛti – zazen, more or less – was the practice the Buddha's own instructor taught. It's a fairly mutinous, fundamentalist take on the subject, for a time and place where meditation had, as Christian Meditation master Laurence Freeman would later warn, become freighted with liturgy and expectations.

To this day, similar straightforward, unmuddled models are typical of contemplative schools across religions. For the Great Sangha, the primordial source of instruction is the Ānāpānasmṛti Sutra, according to which the entire form amounts to following the breath and addressing bodily drives, with an eye to drawing them down to a functional minimum.

This is still canon Zen, with allowance made for minor variation among schools and individuals.

Of course, this being Buddhism, we also immediately undertake to audit proper application of this too easily-memorised method against a multi-level numbered diagnostic, to wit, the Seven Factors of Enlightenment.

Your performance steps include:

• Smṛti, or mindfulness, leading to consciousness of objective reality, and – in direct contradiction to current Zen teaching – contemplation of dharma teachings.

• Dharmapravicaya, or analysis, employment of which leads to insight.

• Vīrya, or disciplined perseverance (note the relationship of this Sanskrit word to "virility"), i.e., consistent repetition of sitting.

• Prīt, joyful transport, which happens if you're doing it dutifully. (And more importantly, doesn't if you're not.)

• Prashrabdhi, peaceful abiding, though that's the opposite of caring about literally any of this. Leading to:

• Samādhi, an abiding state of mindful awareness.

And finally:

• Upekshā, detachment. You no longer invest in winning or losing, unseduced by the myriad delusions of separate existence, material progress, or personal esteem. Also described as "the death of ego".

It's possible I was a bit irreverent up there, but in fairness to myself, there's just something absurd about "don't-knowing" in seven explicated stages; refusing to admit that out loud amounts to dishonesty. Still, as a rough guide, the Seven Employee Improvement Goals are worthwhile; informed contemplation of same can in fact keep your head in the game.

As long as they don't become the game.

And according to the Buddha, the practice of ānāpānasmṛti in this fashion ultimately leads to the Big W: the release from suffering.

Which teaching is exact, per my experience.

For short periods, anyway.

But I'm not done yet.


(Photo courtesy of Mattia Faloretti and Unsplash.com.)/span>

The Truth About Wolves and Dogs

"When a shepherd goes to kill a wolf, and takes his dog to see the sport, he should take care to avoid mistakes. The dog has certain relationships to the wolf the shepherd may have forgotten."

This line, written by Robert Pirsig in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, is incisive; equal to an revolutionary treatise, all by itself.

Reading it again, I'm reminded of several points of insight I've encountered in my past. For example, when I was a history undergrad, one of my professors described how America's white master class had forcibly converted captive Africans to Christianity in an attempt to render them docile and compliant. When, he said, the preacher fetched up against the many accounts of enslavement in Jewish scripture – accounts which rarely or never present it in a Godly light – he assured his enslaved congregation that those passages didn't mean what they seemed to mean; that they couldn't possibly understand such esoteric teachings.

"Of course, " said Dr. Francis, "this was complete nonsense. Those people knew full well what those Old Testament writers were talking about."

Later I encountered bitter capitalist denunciation of syndicalism. "Unions don't belong in The System!" they pouted. "They want to overthrow the free market!" Communism / socialism / atheism / totalitarianism / repression-depression-recession, fa-la-la-la-la.

But we lumpen learned unionism from capitalists. We implicitly understand such notions as monopoly, cornered markets, object value, possession, and the ethical justifications for acting in one's own interest, other considerations be damned. That the boss wants to kill this wolf is understandable. That he believes we've forgotten who the wolf is, is demeaning at best.

And then, of course, there's Bodhidharma. He said, "Just sit."

Literally.

That's his whole teaching.

All of it.

But in the fifteen-odd centuries since he said it, all manner of fa-la-la-la-la (or bup-po-so-en-jo-raku-ga-jo) has accrued on that small, inornate pedestal. Which was predictable; as I've quoted elsewhere, "Meditation is simple. That is why it so easily becomes complicated." You have to expect that, and accept it, and I do.

So now Zen has become a large corporate entity, complete with the usual demand for compliance, deference, and obedience, which has at length led to full-circle condemnation of Bodhidharma in some quarters. Or at least of others of his nation.

"You can't," we're assured, "possibly understand such complex, esoteric teachings."

And yet I meet more and more sheepdogs who smile and bow when we pass.

Brothers and sisters who know full well what the Old Man was talking about.


(Photo courtesy of Elxan Ehsan oğlu Qəniyev and Wikimedia Commons.)