Awakening
and Zen
by
James Ishmael Ford
"In
the Western Zen scene today words like enlightenment, kensho, and
satori have been pushed to the background. Any emphasis on the
experience of awakening has been minimized. There are reasons for
this. And I think some of them are legitimate.
However,
that acknowledged, the great project of Zen is nothing less than
awakening. And, sliding over that, shifting the point to something
else, is making a terrible mistake...
As
it happened this minimizing of kensho was also the general stance
within the Soto school. In a delightful illustration of this Huston
Smith tells of visiting the “other Suzuki,” the renowned Shunryu
Suzuki Roshi:
When,
four months before his death, I had the opportunity to ask him why
satori didn’t figure in his book, his wife leaned toward me and
whispered impishly, “It’s because he hasn’t had it”;
whereupon the Roshi batted his fan at her in mock consternation and
with finger to his lips hissed, “Shhhh! Don’t tell him!’”When
our laughter had subsided, he said simply, “It’s not that satori
is unimportant, but it’s not the part of Zen that needs to be
stressed.”
In
fact others practicing within the Soto school would go much farther,
denying the experience itself or denigrating it or its pursuit as
nothing but a “gaining thought,” another dualistic trap...
So,
in a reaction to D. T. Suzuki’s many writings, and in particular
the focus found in that first book on Zen practice the Three Pillars
a baby was thrown out with the bath water. Zen without awakening is a
hobbled eagle. I suggest if we want Zen to be more than a mindfulness
practice that will get us an edge in whatever project we want an edge
in, we need to reclaim awakening as the central purpose of the
project.
Zen
is a spiritual process completely bound up with the actual world; it
is not meant to be a philosophy. Nor is it psychology. It is about
our awakening. And when awakening is brought together with our
practices and the precepts, we begin to see the contours of what Zen
actually offers to the world..."
"Kensho
means “to see,” and its related term is Satori, which means “to
know.” Both point to the great opening of heart and mind.
Sometimes, in Zen mostly, they’re synonyms for that big thing.
Although I’ve seen kensho to be used for lesser insights and satori
for either the big one or sometimes even for the cumulative place
that one on a path that attends to these things may at some point
find themselves.
The
reality is dynamic, even messy. And I like the term to be a bit
messy, as well. I suspect it cannot be fully described. But we can
take a stab at it. At least I’m going to here.
First,
I would like to hold up the big thing that is awakening as I
understand it. The deepest thing is a collapsing of one’s sense of
self and other and finding a place of radical openness.
The
rhetoric attached to this awakening is that it is a once and forever.
I have a sense of that. And at the same time I’ve seen in others
who have been recognized for their awakening as well as in myself
that it isn’t an escape from one’s place in karma. As the famous
Fox koan reminds us, awakening does not free us from the consequences
of our actions. It doesn’t even free us from taking actions in the
future that will have negative consequences. What awakening is, is an
existential stance of radical openness. It does not mean there are no
blind spots. It does not mean one is free of the play of those
endlessly arising constellations of grasping, aversion, and
death-grasping certainties. But, it does mean some part of the person
who has had this experience sees or knows the freedom as well as
being fully in the play of life and death. So, yes, once and forever.
And, no, not free from karma or even stupid or possibly evil
actions."
-
James Ford, Zen-teacher of Soto and Sanbo Kyodan schools
Quotes
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