UnMind 94. Designing a Zen Worldview — Atlanta Soto Zen Center

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How to design Zen?
No need to redesign it —
It is already!

In this segment we will continue to explore the underlying or implied question of Buddhism: What is your worldview, exactly and in detail? And: How can you mount challenges to it? Again, there are multiple dimensions, or spheres of influence, to our world, namely the personal, social, natural, and universal. Also again, the influence we can have on these various spheres is a case of diminishing returns, as we move from the inmost personal dimensions of life to the outer realms of the world at large. And the relationship is asymmetrical — the outer dimensions can have a disproportionate effect upon the inner. Cases in point include mass shootings in the news again, and looming climate disasters.

“Didja ever notice...?” This familiar lead-in from standup comic routines is appropriate to any consideration of worldview, and to Zen and Design training. It is often the things we don't notice that trip us up, or get us in the end. Leaders of guided meditation — which zazen is not — will often use an expression such as “Notice that your anxiety triggers physical sensations, in your solar plexus…” Then they suggest what to do about it, such as “Hold that feeling…” et cetera. There is no real problem with this approach for newcomers, depending on the practice-experience of the person doing the guiding. But once one has been practicing meditation for some time, such guidance is not only not needed, it can be downright aggravating. We don’t need to be led by the nose to enlightenment. In fact it is probably guaranteed to get in the way. Zen recommends unguided meditation, with minimal instruction, and that mostly on the physical plane. Mental discipline will develop on its own eventually, in the most natural way, as body and mind cannot separate. Worldview can evolve but does not need to be guided.

Is your worldview accurate? The Eightfold Path lays out three constituents of daily practice. Right Wisdom, comprised of Right View and Thought; Right Conduct, meaning of Speech, Action and Livelihood; and Right Discipline in Effort, Mindfulness and Meditation. The first two form the axis of wisdom between our view and understanding of the reality we face. The second is the outer person, whose conduct is witnessed by others, and the third is the inner person, those things about us, good and bad, that may be hidden from the world. The theory is that by eliminating wrong views, we come to appreciate, and approximate, a worldview closer to Buddha’s own. This would then amount to the “right view” of reality, meaning one that is all-inclusive, not self-centered, and characterized by a balance of compassion and wisdom in our interface with, and reaction to, the four worldly spheres. The Path is thus a comprehensive outline or plan, a model of manifesting Zen in daily life.

Buddhism’s related teaching of the five Skandhas, or “aggregates of clinging” — beginning with Form, proceeding through Sensation, Perception, Impulse, and finally Consciousness itself — offers a complementary, complete model of sentient awareness. It may be considered an example of the science of the times, reflecting an intuitive grasp of biological sentience and its psychological aspects, or a design exercise in attempting to describe the discernible constituents of consciousness or worldview. Nowadays we can parse these differentiations to a nearly infinite level of detail, but the aggregate reality is still where we place our attention in Zen meditation.

The first four aggregates might be mistakenly interpreted as concepts, mere objects of differentiated consciousness. That is, we may think we are fully conscious of external forms as well as internal sensations, perceptions, and impulses. But we cannot be cognizant of all of them simultaneously, not at all times, when we are preoccupied with our mission of the moment. Sensation adapts to constant stimulus, and we can become numb to reality. “The world is too much with us” — shout out to William Wordsworth — and our adaptive reaction reflects the central line of his brief poem: “For this, for everything, we are out of tune; it moves us not.” In Hsinhsinming [Trust in Mind], Ch’an Master Sengcan reminds us similarly, “A hairsbreadth deviation and you are out-of-tune.”

On the other hand, we tend to focus our attention selectively. In doing so, we mistake our initial impression to be the way the world is, ignoring the greater reality: that the aggregates are also empty. This notion of emptiness — a translation of the Sanskrit shunyatta that may create as much confusion as clarity — is one of the most troubling for students of Buddhism and Zen. Without going into book length, perhaps the shorthand of comparing the nonduality of form and emptiness to that of matter and energy may give us the modern equivalent of the intuitive conception of 2,500 years ago. Form is that aspect of our worldview that we can perceive and conceive, its appearance as the material world, and emptiness is that invisible, energetic reality underlying the form, or matter. Science and Buddhism come to the same conclusion, that both things can be true at the same time.

We learn our worldview partly though agreement with our peers, as well as parents, teachers and others, unfortunately including politically-motivated ideologues. This may account for most of the mental objects of indirect conception that retroactively affect our direct perception. The extreme exemplified as traumatic memories leading to PTSD.

Tribal members tend to share the same worldview, as well as the same language, as do citizens of modern nations. But when it comes to sensations and perceptions that are not broadly shared by the larger community, we must resort to our own means, and develop an original conceptual framework, and language, for them. This is characteristic of Zen. We all have to reinvent Zen for ourselves, for it to become real in our lives, and to have any significant effect on our direct worldview. “Not understanding the Way before your eyes, how will you know the path you walk?” as another Ch’an poem, Sandokai [Harmony of Sameness and Difference], challenges us to consider.

The “Dreamtime” of aboriginal Australians is an example of a significant tribal preoccupation not usually seen in modern society, thought to date back to some 65,000 years ago. It has been supplanted in our times by psychological studies of dreams, perhaps. Meditative insight would be another example from the Buddhist tradition, the closest parallel in Christianity being centering prayer, and the epiphanies of the saints. We do not pretend to know the complete process by which the formation of our worldview takes place. But we want to posit that in Zen, it is not as simple and straightforward as it may seem. Our current worldview may be skewed. As a comic asks, “Did you ever look at yourself in the mirror, first thing in the morning, and think: That can’t be accurate!” Your view of yourself, the person with whom you are most familiar in the world, may not match the reality. Especially as we grow older, this contradiction continues to gain more clarity and force. This challenges our sense of self.

Our sense of a separate self is reinforced by our perception/conception of being a being in an environment. We definitely perceive the boundaries of where we end and it, the environment, begins. Our skin, for example, the outer shell of our body and its largest organ — while obviously separating our insides from the outside — simultaneously connects us to the environment, and so stands as an example of nonduality. It both is and is not a barrier, a membrane through which we absorb and excrete various forms of energy such as sunlight and temperature, as well as moisture and other chemicals, in exchange with the local environ. The same may be said of all the other senses as well.

If we leave the building, and go outside, it seems that now, we are in a different environment, which would argue that the environment is separate. And indeed, we may experience different environments, simply by traveling around the world in which we live. However, no matter where or how far we go, the being-in-the-environment dyad is still present. There is no existence of being without accompanying environment. Again, Zen teaching is largely belaboring the obvious, once it is pointed out. Like the punchline of a cosmic joke.

Thus, the being and its environment are relatively separable, but absolutely inseparable. Once the latter conception becomes our new normal perception, we can see that with every move we make, the environment responds with a seemingly equal and opposite move. If we lean left, it shifts to the right. If we move forward, it flows backward, through our senses, notably the visual, the auditory, and the tactile, and perhaps more subtly, the olfactory and even gustatory, depending on circumstance. Running into a burning house, for instance, all the senses are likely to be fully engaged. This sense of unity with the surround is a more normal state of awareness than the sense of isolation that comes with sustaining the sense of a separate self, today heightened by social media. It is probably acute in primitive tribal societies, where sensing the environment is directly connected to immediate survival.

So what does all this Zen stuff have to do with Design? The personal, social, natural and universal spheres of existence cannot be separated, according to Zen, nor can they in terms of Design. We are challenged to design our life and our world in such a way as to optimize the positive influences we have on the surrounding spheres in which our personal world is nested, and to minimize the negative effects that we have on them, and that they have on us. The media, materials and methods by and through which we actualize our plan in order to achieve and maintain this design intent vary by the individual, the context, and over time. The teachings of Zen fit into this process as expressed in the “Dharma opening verse” recited before each presentation of teachings in a formal setting: “The unsurpassed, profound and wondrous Dharma is rarely met with, even in a hundred-thousand-million kalpas. Now we can see and hear it, accept and maintain it. May we unfold the meaning of the Tathagata’s truth.”

The verse is relatively self-explanatory. The vast time span indicated may sound discouraging, until you come to the phrase “now we can see and hear it,” meaning both now is the only time it is met with, but also, thanks to our good luck, we can look and listen to someone expounding this teaching. The “ accept and maintain” it part puts the onus on us to make an attitude adjustment of acceptance if we find we are resisting as usual, and if not, to maintain the teaching for the sake of ourselves and others. “Thus the realm of self-awakening and awakening others invariably holds the mark of realization with nothing lacking, and realization itself is manifested without ceasing for a moment” as Master Dogen asserts with his usual unshakeable confidence.

Seeing and hearing the true Dharma, another vintage Dogen expression, relies on this “mark of realization,” which is the crux of the matter of awakening to the truth, whether on the personal or social level. All we need do in order to avail ourselves of this Dharma, which has the connotation of “truth,” is to put the emphasis on realization rather than understanding, and look for its manifestation moment by moment. In this way our worldview becomes something that already is, rather than something that we need to achieve. A little fine-tuning is needed, that is all.