tr. John Blofield, ca. 1940. Originally written ca. 850 AD, by a disciple of Huang Po. Sturgeon: compare with Artaud’s letters. Q: Is it possible that Buddhism could save the schizophrenic?
27. Q: What is the Way and how must it be followed?
A: What sort of THING do you suppose the Way to be, that you should wish to FOLLOW IT?
Q: What instructions have the Masters everywhere given for dhyana-practice and the study of the Dharma?
A: Words used to attract the dull of wit are not to be relied on.
Q: If those teachings were meant for the dull-witted, I have yet to hear what Dharma has been taught to those of really high capacity.
A: If they are really men of high capacity, where could they find people to follow? If they seek from within themselves, they will find nothing tangible; how much less can they find a Dharma worthy of their attention elsewhere! Do not look to what is called Dharma by preachers, for what sort of Dharma could that be?
Q: If that is so, should we not seek for anything at all?
A: By conceding this, you would save yourself a lot of mental effort.
Q: But in this way everything would be eliminated. There cannot just be nothing.
[Consider the similarity between this last and Dostoevsky’s famous “If God did not exist, everything would be permitted.” Nothing in the Western world (so far as I know) resembles Huang Po’s- that is, Zen’s resolution to this issue.]
A: Who called it nothing? Who was this fellow? But you wanted to SEEK for something.
Q: Since there is no need to seek, why do you also say that not everything is eliminated?
A: Not to seek is to rest tranquil. Who told you to eliminate anything? Look at the void in front of your eyes. How can you produce it or eliminate it?
Q: If I could reach this Dharma, would it be like the void?
A: Morning and night I have explained to you that the Void is both One and Manifold. I said this as a temporary expedient, but you are building up concepts from it.
Q: Do you mean that we should not form concepts as human beings normally do?
A: I have not prevented you; but concepts are related to the senses; and, when feeling takes place, wisdom is shut out.
Q: Then should we avoid any feeling in relation to the Dharma?
A: Where no feeling arises, who can say that you are right?
Q: Why do you speak as though I was mistaken in all the questions I have asked Your Reverence?
A: You are a man who doesn’t understand what is said to him. What is all this about being mistaken?
28. Q: Up to now, you have refuted everything which has been said. You have done nothing to point out the true Dharma to us.
A: In the true Dharma there is no confusion, but you produce confusion by such questions. What sort of ‘true Dharma’ can you go seeking for?
Q: Since the confusion arises from my questions, what will Your Reverence’s answer be?
A: Observe things as they are and don’t pay attention to other people. There are some people just like mad dogs barking at everything that moves, even barking when the wind stirs among the grass and leaves.
What I like about this Zen approach is that it speaks to the reader qua seeker. When we read theory, philosophy - anything at all that we pick up and take the time to go through for some reason other than simple entertainment - we do so because we want to know something. This is what I found illuminating in Aristotle. He understands humans as characterized fundamentally by a desire-to-know. But Zen says that this precisely is the problem. Seeking is unfulfillable desiring, desiring is attachment, attachment leads to suffering. Buddhism is actually as logical as western philosophy — except it builds from its own set of premises (such as the first noble truth, dukkha, or, ‘life is discontentment.’) So again, the question: is this logic viable to us? Is it possible that seeking itself is our problem?
‘Consumerism’ is the word we apply to the mass marketed, corporate production culture (and all its new digital configurations and fields of outlet — by the way, a movie out now called ‘Paprika’ says that the internet is just a place to go to allow free span for one’s repressed desires). But American culture did not happen for no reason. It did not break onto the scene as an aberration of human ‘dignity’; nor ought we to consider the fact of its existence and ask what it means for ‘human progress.’ Consumerism is an attempt to figure a set of general human drives. The desire for novelty, the desire to possess; the appreciation for familiarity, the tendency to choose allies (every diet coke addict has chosen that product as an ally); the fascination with self-promotion and ‘betterment,’ our dangerous givenness to idolatry: all of these are satisfied by consumerism. Desire in general is the drive in question (we are desiring-machines, Deleuze and Guattari said). We love to hate the materialist. And it’s so interesting today that materialism is seen as a widespread affliction, even if, as such, it has no particular cure or appreciably diminutive effect on the human race. Ultimately, we understand that we are desiring creatures. It is something we cannot deny, and it is the utter promiscuity of materialism today, of rampant and easily-satisfiable flows of desire, that has made true Christianity impossible. We cannot submit materialism to an ethos. We can demand moderation, we can praise self-restraint: but shall our philosophy consist primarily of this? No– that has become impossible. (Nietzsche was indeed an antichrist.) And so we are left with the question of desire. What would a thinking of the Accountability of Desire look like? Is it necessary that we rethink in terms of virtue philosophy? (Benjamin Franklin, at a young age, wrote out a list of the virtues he wished to acquire in the span of his life.) Has a concept like virtue ever had a public value? Ought people to be taught to submit their desires to proceedings by an internal court, whereby they would somehow know, by some equally internal standard, the point at which restraint is ethically or aesthetically obligatory? To what extent is such internalism possible? When do we know that we are choosing virtue, as opposed to having been acculturated to do so? To what extent can it be said that we must revolt against the ideology wherein we are made to desire the repression of our own desires?
Huang Po writes “In the true Dharma there is no confusion, but you produce confusion by such questions. What sort of ‘true Dharma’ can you go seeking for?” Dharma means the set of principles by which you choose to live your life. It mainly signfies ‘the teaching of Gautama Buddha,’ but in its abstract sense, used here by Huang Po, it refers to the state of mind in which one has released oneself from attachment and dissatisfaction. Huang Po thus informs us: all of your schooling, learning, and any form of striving whatsoever will pay you no large benefit. Yes, it is good to be a good person. Yes, you gain insight through words. But language and its mental counterpart, conceptual thinking, are part of the illusory artifice humankind constructs around itself to be able to use the world technologically (according to a craft) and teleologically (in pursuit of final ends). The ‘true Dharma’, therefore, does not involve that type of thinking. (Question: in Heidegger’s speak, does this mean that we should seek a point of view from which the present-at-hand, rather than the ‘ready-to-hand,’ is foremost to our sight?) We are not to ask questions. According to Zen, we ought just to sit. The theory stems from the combination of Taoism with a concise mystical reading of the Buddha’s transmission of the Dharma to the second (Indian) patriarch, Mahakasyapa. One of the main ideas of Zen is that this transmission from master to disciple, or patriarch to patriarch, is a mind to mind transmission. It does not take place through words. And yet, — and this is the glamorous, uncrackable contradiction — that transmission can be sparked by words. A ‘turning word,’ the moment of satori: one is enlightened in a flash, suddenly, and often enough, this flash is initiated by the master’s spoken teaching. Some monk read a line from the Diamond Sutra and Hui-neng, the sixth (Chinese) patriarch, was enlightened. (”What was that line?” See my essay below, called ‘A Thesis of the Public.’) Others are enlightened by the sound of a pile of firewood crashing. And the Buddha is enlightened by a night of meditation under the Bodhi tree. What does all this mean? What do we do with our questioning? Is desire a questioning? Questioning a desire? Is seeking the same as desire? Is seeking itself the drive which underlies discontentment? (And are any of you discontent enough to still be reading this?)
The text concludes: Q: Since the confusion arises from my questions, what will Your Reverence’s answer be?
A: Observe things as they are and don’t pay attention to other people. There are some people just like mad dogs barking at everything that moves, even barking when the wind stirs among the grass and leaves. Very quick, very simple. And this is why I ask whether it could cure the schizophrenic. Schreber talks about how he was made to sit still for hours. His tormentors would make him sit motionless and feel his environment, listen to the vulgar cacophony of voices with their demands, meaningless phrases of rote, and even pleas for forgiveness and help. Stillness, perhaps, did not work for him. But perhaps to know that everything, all artifice, is illusory, perhaps to understand this non-conceptually, to understand this implicitly and in its most pre-literate immanance… but is this possible? Is seeking just the pitfall of life? Is it not the beauty? What about Nietzche? What about Dionysianism: philosophy with a sledgehammer: gaya scienzia: amor fati? What about an aesthetic life? What about literature? If we choose failing, if we choose rather to value something at a cost, rather than to deny the mold of our attachments, can we ever be happy? Is happiness the aim? Is there a split at the very center of the human individual between desire and… something else? Is the desire for immortality the underlying archetectonic for all action? And quite wonderfully, if it is, is meditation not an application of our time to one and the same end as all vulgar dispensations, just with some ‘noble cause’ attached as a header to the contract? Is Buddhism the will to repression? And if it is, - or even if it isn’t, even if it is something beautiful, something truly enlightening - ought we to be more interested in cultivating our will to power?
June 10th, 2007 | #
p.s.: to elucidate the distinction between Nietzsche’s philosophy (dionysianism, gaya scienzia) and Buddhism: the latter seeks to quell desire, or at least to reduce the time you spend desiring, and thus to lead you to a state of mind in which you respond to situations spontaneously, rather than out of bondage to this or that preconceived whim. (One more question to add to the confusion: Is all desire just a whim? Is the universe a capricious waif?) Nietzsche, rather, wants a proliferation of desire. He wants desire to be raised to a level of infinitude. Quoting The Gay Science 341:
The greatest weight- What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: “This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence? even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!”
Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: “You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.” If this thought gained possession of you, it would change you as you are or perhaps crush you. The question in each and every thing, “Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?” would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?
The key phrase is “Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?” Would Buddhism not laugh at this ‘eternal confirmation and seal?’ Would it find it wise? I find it to be antithetical to Buddhism.
June 11th, 2007 | #
p.s.: to elucidate the distinction between Nietzsche’s philosophy (dionysianism, gaya scienzia) and Buddhism: the latter seeks to to quell desire, or at least to reduce the time you spend desiring, and thus to lead you to a state of mind in which you respond to situations spontaneously, rather than out of bondage to this or that preconceived whim. (One more question to add to the confusion: Is all desire just a whim? Is the universe a capricious fellow?) Nietzsche, rather, wants the proliferation of desire. He wants our desire to be raised to a level of infinitude. Quoting The Gay Science 341:
The greatest weight.? What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: “This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence? even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!”
Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: “You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.” If this thought gained possession of you, it would change you as you are or perhaps crush you. The question in each and every thing, “Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?” would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?
June 11th, 2007 | #
that is a confusing maze, but it is such a great enunciation of the problem that faces people like us, at the top of an imperially consumerist (materialist, whatever) society. Should we be seeking release from it? In the name of justice, perhaps, or maybe the environment? should we be seeking anything? One problem i find myself having with the use of popular Buddhism in elite American culture is that it seems to cover anti-materialism in an apolitical blanket, removing my peers from any sense of responsibility for the physical (political) injustice that their privileged position is a result of. But reading your words made me think that this is the exact opposite of what Zen should be or could be doing for us: it could be providing us a method of stemming the materialist tide.
You asked whether we should be trying to do that, and that’s a good question that never gets asked. To me, that question gets into the realm of political economy, because, as i’ve been doing in the last paragraph, I tend to look at these issues through the lenses of social justice. However, in taking that approach, I forever submit myself to a worldly, materialist worldview, and I see this inherent contradiction now (though I didn’t when I started that sentence). But that aside, I think that seen this way, the answer has to be “yes,” we do have a responsibility to cut down on consumption. the gross overconsumption of material resources by America leads us into an economic environment which demands war, imperialism, wholesale destruction of the natural world, and endlessly on. This economic environment forces us to ignore our professed national ideologies of freedom and democracy, because in order to feed our insatiable hungers, we must depend on the private sector to make the laws which *actually* govern our lives. Not that I personally do a great job of conserving resources–better than most Americans, much worse than most Humans.
Let’s see, there’s a fantastic quote in Gravity’s Rainbow, which I just finished rereading. I wonder if I can find it. shit i can’t right now, I’ll post it when I find it.
one last thing: perhaps a submission to Nietzche’s demon would be the ultimate act of zen. hold on my mom really needs the computer, i’ll finish that thought later.
June 11th, 2007 | #
http://fat-cat.co.uk/fatcat/release.php?id=44
(There is officially such a thing as Deleuzian music. Read the review and listen to tracks. And while you’re there, go ahead and check out every artist on the label. Apprently there’s this thing going on called ‘post-rock’…)
Jed, I know you have more to say, but one quick comment on your comment. I agree with everything you say about consumerism. But I’m also saying we need to deassociate that term, step back from our immediate connotative recognition of it — we are consumers by nature. We are consumptive. Therefore, when I say ‘do we need to stop up consumerism’, I’m not talking about material resources (oil and whatnot). I’m not even talking about Sony plasma screen HiDef TVs and soda cans. I’m equating consumerism as a word with ‘attachment’ or ‘desire,’ as it would be understood by Zen. The question is whether desire itself is undesirable. And if not, what sort of philosophy do we offer to the world which states how desire ought to be treated with — both from the perspective of personal betterment and that of social justice.
June 11th, 2007 | #
Deluzian music sounds pretty good! but i wonder if more people have been making deluzian music without knowing. Actually, when I think about what deluzian music might be (oh, I’m just thirty pages in to Anti-Oedipus, alex. I’m pretty excited about how absurdly perfectly it mirrors Gravity’s Rainbow. Perhaps too well), I think maybe some forms of improvisational music where the communication is just really flowing between band members, and the rhythm is just pumping, and then bam! the drummer switches it up with little warning, and everyone has to adjust, and that’s where it gets transcendant.
i forgot what else I had to say earlier. Something…um…oh, maybe absolute submission to the material drudgery like Neitzche’s demon proposed, would be a good way to attain zen-enlightenment because then you’ve resigned any attachment you had to free will and success. Because the demon also proposes a repetitive, absolutely fatalistic existence, like in the shitty movie Groundhog’s day. Well, maybe if you were the guy in Groundhog’s day, but instead of resisting it like he did, you simply allowed yourself to be taken along, removed from desire or expectation, maybe that would count as enlightenment. Echoes of the bhagavat-gita.
You’re right to point out that we are inherantly consumers as people, and therefore need to define our terms about consumption. But I don’t think you can really disassociate flashy material goods from material resources; the reason America consumes so much material resources is flashy consumer goods. Lexus SUV’s, etc. I think you have to look at it as a matter of net consumption. The abstract zero would be, for example, a subsistance farmer (farming sustainably) consuming, food, but only what he produces from the earth, so a zero net consumption. But the postcapitalist economy takes us so far away from that it ceases to make a difference–a man “produces” by shuffling around digital information, but consumes steak every night.
OK but that still doesn’t hit your fundamental point, there. all humans desire, so is it worthwhile to try to rid ourselves of desire? It’s a question we all have to answer for ourselves, individually, I guess. I can’t come up with generalizations. I decided that for me, it is not worthwhile to rid myself of desire completely; I just don’t want to feel guilty for my every action i the world. I also don’t have enlightenment as a goal for myself. Early in your discussion, you dismissed the idea of moderation pretty quickly. It might not be the most watertight philosophical argument, but it’s a good ideal to live by.
June 11th, 2007 | #