Readings (1)

As I read through the preface, general introduction and first chapter of Bhikkhu Bodhi’s anthology of selections from the Pali, In the Buddha’s Words, I made note of the words, phrases, and passages that struck me as of particular interest to students of Zen. I will comment on them as time permits.

At p. 1, ¶2: Bodhi calls our attention to the fact that the purpose of the Dhamma was not to provide a comprehensive view of the world. The Buddha himself said that he was not a builder of systems, but an analyzer. Nevertheless, there was a clear aim to his teaching, which Bodhi identifies as “practical training, self-transformation, the realization of truth, and unshakable liberation of the mind.” As we shall see when we begin to examine the teaching and practice of Zen in more detail, those benchmarks are not always and everywhere applicable. Indeed, we are sometimes actively discouraged from looking at our practice in that way.

On p.2 Bodhi outlines the way he has organized the material, according to “the types of benefits to which the practice leads: (1) welfare and happiness visible in this present life, (2) welfare and happiness pertaining to future lives, and (3) the ultimate good, Nibbāna (skt., nirvāna).” The prospect of nirvana derives most of its limited appeal from the belief that unless ignorance and craving are extinguished, and the constituents of existence abandoned, one will endure an eternity of suffering. There are compelling reasons to consider that formulation problematical, mainly on account of the shakiness of the conceptual schema that includes action and its results (kamma-vipāka), renewed becoming (a. k. a., “rebirth,” punabbhava), and wandering in the realms of existence (samsāra). For now, suffice it to say that a growing number of Western Buddhists are inclined to focus on the first of the three benefits.

On p. 3 we find a discussion of the openness of the Buddha’s teaching, a matter which, as already noted here, seems to foreclose on the possibility of a leadership lineage such as the one first evoked by Chinese monks in the eighth century. In the same paragraph the process of testing the teaching is described as a “step-by-step procedure” and again, on the following page, as a “graduated path,” phrases that we should bear in mind as we proceed. The Buddha-Dhamma, which is “lovely in its beginning, lovely in its middle, and lovely in its ending,”(D.II, Mahalisutta) has the structure of a well-made path with plentiful guideposts and a destination that is forcefully proclaimed even though no one has come back from it to describe it. I briefly entertained the notion that nirvāna, like art (and Zen?), is hard to define yet recognizable when seen, but that thesis cannot withstand scrutiny. When the several Buddhist traditions are taken into account, we are faced with more than one conception of just what awakening (bodhi) and liberation (mokkha) are.

                                    (To Be Continued)