115A: Addiction vs (A)theism — Atlanta Soto Zen Center

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Addiction is real —
Born of body, mouth, and mind;
Not invented here.

In this segment of UnMind we return to a subject — if it can be reduced to a mere “subject” — that I explored publicly many years ago, when I gave a series of talks on addiction and Zen under the rubric of “sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll.” Which, at that time, seemed to cover the waterfront of possible addictions. I took the position that, from the point of view of Zen Buddhism — perhaps as distinct from more traditional Buddhism, as well as other philosophical and religious systems — “It is all addiction.” Everything, including life itself, may be regarded as a kind of addiction.

Zen teachings have this kind of all-inclusive flavor, captured in such expressions as Master Dogen’s frequent use of “All things are like this,” following one of his many apt analogies.

The premise was, and still is, based somewhat on the American Psychiatric Association’s definition of an addictive substance — referenced from the then-current edition of the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” — which, if memory serves, defined an addictive substance as anything that, when withdrawn from an addict, results in a “significant degree of discomfort.”

Which would apply equally to air, water, food, warmth, and all the other hierarchy of fundamental needs as outlined by Maslow, perhaps extending to social or self-actualization needs — for acceptance, status, power, wealth and privilege, and so on, and finally, the need for transcendence — which is where Zen comes in, I suppose. In the context of a panoply of needs destructive to self and others, addiction to alcohol — while of historic and epidemic proportions, and thereby attracting a lot of the attention — may not be the worst, or most socially damaging, addiction to have to cope with. It depends.

Allow me to insert a caveat here, to counter the notion that some of the more controversial ideas that may come up in this discussion may have come from my root Zen teacher, Matsuoka Roshi. He made a few comments from time to time regarding human sexuality, for example; but we did not discuss at in any length or in great detail. And while he once gave a public talk on “LSD and Zen” at the local Y in Chicago, drugs were not a big item in his lineup of topics, either. He certainly was not obsessed with either sex or drugs, and had little interest in “rock n’ roll” — by which I meant the then American, now worldwide, addiction to “living large” — the “everything, all the time” wretched excess lifestyle captured in the lyrics of the popular song, “Hotel California.”

The few fragmentary comments I recall regarding sexuality included a self-effacing claim to have been a virgin his whole life. And that he regretted never marrying because he had no one to take care of him in his old age. He also pointed out that since I was “used to this” (i.e. sexual relations), I needed it; but since he wasn’t used to it, he didn’t. One day when I visited the Chicago Temple, I found him red-faced and giggling, as my senior dharma brother, Kongo roshi, mercilessly teased and regaled him with ribald tales of the kinds of sex acts that — according to Kongo, at least — gay men engage in. Kongo had that kind of merciless and sardonic sense of humor. But he could also be very tender and sympatico, to those who knew him well. He especially relished getting Sensei’s goat, especially on something that might be embarrassing to a traditional Japanese sensibility.

On another occasion, I happened to notice a Playboy magazine in Sensei’s bedroom, where we would store the donations from the altar, so I assume he had some curiosity about sex, in those days of nascent soft pornography, and wonder what he would have thought of the endless “cabinet of curiosities” of human sexuality on display on the internet today. I once overheard him comment, somewhat dismissively, when someone mentioned human orgasm: “Ha! Orgasm in every cell.” Which I took to be, possibly, a reference to satori. I did not inquire.

I suppose that sex can become an addiction, if pursued for pleasure or reasons other than procreation — which, some religious and philosophical systems seem to insist, is its only legitimate function. There seems to be sufficient evidence that porn can be addictive — testimony to the power of our imagination, translating pixels into lust. Which Buddha is said to have called a “snake amongst the flowers.” He also claimed to have been satiated with overindulgence and dissipation prior to his spiritual quest. As Shopenhauer reminds us, sexual desire is delusional: it is on behalf of the species, not us, personally.

Adherence to the monastic code of celibacy illustrates one extreme response to what is, after all, only biology. But the antipode, the sybaritic lifestyle emulated now — by elites from Hollywood to DC, indeed globally — saturates contemporary culture. Speaking of extreme lifestyles, the famous Tibetan teacher Chogyam Trungpa, in his 1970s classic, “Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism,” warns against this kind of obsessive-compulsive disorder subtly infiltrating and infecting your own, personal practice path.

In terms of drugs, some time before Sensei delivered his talk at the Y — the text of which, incidentally, we have not been able to recover — he and I were discussing my psychedelic experiences, when he quipped, with his usual sense of humor, “Maybe you will be my LSD master, and I will be your Zen master!” He showed none of the paranoid, over-the-top, dismissive rejection that I had heard were characteristic of his contemporary Zen luminaries of the period. In his talk on LSD and Zen, he admitted that the descriptions of psychedelic experiences, as compared to those of kensho — a Japanese word for Zen insight — shared certain similarities that could not be lightly dismissed.

But he insisted that we who follow Zen do not recommend indulging in drugs, in order to render hoped-for insight, especially under uncontrolled circumstances. For one thing, an ingested chemical might trigger a reaction that the individual may not be ready for, in terms of psychic maturity, and an understanding of what it might mean. He went on to say that in Zen’s sitting meditation, with insight developing over time in a natural way, one will be fully prepared for whatever happens in the natural course of things. But again, the drug revolution was not a major area of interest for him.

If Sensei could be said to be obsessed with anything, it was the transmission of genuine Zen practice to his adopted country. In many ways, he was the archetypal “man without a country” — no longer really Japanese, nor yet truly American, in the cultural sense. He was focused like a laser on zazen.

Allow me a brief overview of theism and atheism, and how they fit into the picture of addiction as a general principle, at least as I see it from my admittedly limited perspective. I am not apologizing here, nor being overly modest. I assume my layman’s perspective on religion to be as clear, if less informed, as anyone’s. Theological concerns are so broad and deep, yet intimately personal, that even the most deeply informed theories carry little more weight than those of the average person on the street.

To come to a conclusion about whether “God” exists or not, for example, reliance on erudition, scholarship, or any other credentialing process would have little if any relevance. By contrast, study of a tangible science, such as biology or botany, or astrophysics for that matter, would have a more rational, reliable relationship to evidence and logic, rendering some opinions more valid than others.

Let us return to addiction, and how I think it relates to conventional religion — manifested as theism, and its inverse doppleganger — atheism. This latter belief, more serious commentators than I have insisted, constitutes the strongest form of theism. Which notion, from a Zen perspective, smacks of that compelling, oxymoronic logic that most pithy Zen aphorisms share: both can be true at the same time.

As is the case with any addiction, the seductive quality of sensory pleasure or comfort associated with the drug of choice comes to bear upon one’s judgment as to whether its indulgence constitutes a positive or a negative. The addict has to wake up to the fact of being addicted, as a negative, in order to have the determination to go through withdrawal. We all have to hit bottom, and put down the shovel, before we can begin climbing out of the hole we have dug for ourselves.

Similar to the temporary effect of intoxication, belief in God can be comforting, which feeling naturally constitutes first-person validation. Karl Marx, the 19th-century German economist, remarked that religion — by which one presumes he meant all forms of theism — is the “opiate of the masses.” Quoting: “If people are to know and understand the real world, they must give up superstitious beliefs because they have a narcotic effect on the mind.” If the thought of God makes me feel warm and fuzzy, that may become prima facie evidence of the presence of God. A self-fulfilling prophecy, or tautology, proven by the all-encompassing feeling of wellbeing. This is not to deny the epiphany of the saints, however. And the testimony of Zen adepts suffers from this same lack of provability, or the inability to disprove its claims in any scientific, third-party manner.

Atheism, on the other hand, may give one the same comfy feeling as an unflagging certainty of faith in a loving God. Instead, it may provide a smug sense of superiority, especially over those who adhere to a blind faith in what may be dismissed as mere superstition; or a need to explain the unexplainable with a myth of creation; or a belief in the divine intervention of a benign deity, however contrary the evidence — of natural disasters, for example. However, if this secular insistence upon “believing in” only those things for which there can be indisputable evidence comes to dominate our worldview, many ordinary and extraordinary insights of modern existence would have to be abandoned.

Master Dogen’s frequent appeals to the compassionate consideration of the buddhas and bodhisattvas smack of this kind of theistic resort to something larger, a greater power, than oneself. And the notion of a cosmic Buddha, “Vairocana” by name, seems to differ mainly in the semantics, from the theistic concept of a creator god. None of which seems all that germane to the problem at hand, as Buddha was known to dismiss such speculation. Matsuoka Roshi questioned the wisdom of going all in on a future existence in an unproven heaven, rather than focusing on the daily life we are living.

I would submit that the teachings of Buddha were not intended as contrarian ideas to be debated against the prevailing views of the Hinduism of the time; nor would I offer them as arguments against the theistic dogmas of our time. Dogen’s teachings were certainly offered as correctives to the prevalent practices of the other Zen sects, such as the Rinzai school, apparently predominant in 13th century Japan. But this does not mean that the teachings of Buddhism are accessible only by adherence to the tenets of one school. What Zen Buddhism points at is unvarnished reality, which is not captured by an ideology or belief system. It is what it is, and coming to apprehend buddha nature directly does not depend upon the horse you rode in on. Atheism, theism, Buddhism, any “ism,” has no direct connection to the truth, as clarified in the ancient Ch’an poem Hsinhsinming—Trust in Mind [insertions mine]:

Now there are sudden and gradual [schools] in which teachings and approaches arise
With teachings and approaches distinguished, each has its standards
[but] Whether teachings and approaches are mastered or not
Reality constantly flows

It is this constantly-flowing reality that reduces all teachings, belief systems, ideologies and philosophies to clumsy, humble fingers pointing at the brilliant moon.

We have not really sated our innate desire for clarity, or resolved the dilemma of inherent confusion here, but may be encouraged to reconcile ourselves to the abandonment of any reliance on comforting opinions or beliefs in our dogged pursuit of resolution of this fundamental problem of existence itself.

Please join again next time, when we will persist in our endeavor, however futile, to withdraw from our addiction to understanding that which is beyond understanding.