Homo SNAFUensis

According to Wikipedia's Chàn article, Zen's progenitors identified not one but two paths, or "entrances", to enlightenment. The first is via teaching, an intellectual process in which one reasons one's way to freedom. The second is practice, a Zen synonym for meditation and supporting effort.

This œcumenical perspective is undoubtedly Indian in orgin. Contemporary Hinduism, for example, recognises four equally-valid devotional systems, amounting in essence to four discrete religions, but all accepted as legitimate Hindu worship.

But modern Zenners will find that First Entrance challenging, given that intervening generations have rejected all but practice as authentic Zen. We may attend to teachings – particularly those given in-person by ordained masters – but we justify that as fuel for our Second Entrance zazen practice. (Although to be entirely candid, Soto for one has allowed a substantial whack of intellectual pursuit back in through the kitchen. So perhaps we should call the two Chàn approaches the Front Entrance and the Back Entrance.)

As for the Second Entrance, the Wikipedia entry illuminates four levels of primordial Chàn meditation:

• Practice of the retribution of enmity: to accept all suffering as the fruition of past transgressions, without enmity or complaint
• Practice of the acceptance of circumstances: to remain unmoved even by good fortune, recognising it as evanescent
• Practice of the absence of craving: to be without craving, which is the source of all suffering
• Practice of accordance with the Dharma: to eradicate wrong thoughts and practice the six perfections, without having any "practice"

The continuity here is stunning, as all of that's readily recognised in current Zen. If it's true that we've largely abandoned the First Entrance, here we are 1600 years later, still practicing the crap out of the Second.

And it's still working.

Proof that in spite of our comfortable fallacies, the human mind hasn't changed over the past several millennia. That all by itself is sufficient cause to mind the Ancestors.


(Photo courtesy of Kari Shea and Unsplash.com.)