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The Quarterly Newsletter of The Zen Center of Denver
Lotus in the Flame Temple
Fall 1999

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Zen BUDDHISM
The opening talk given by Sensei before the Rohatsu 1997 sesshin.

At this time, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Zen practitioners all over the world are participating in the Rohatsu sesshin commemorating the Buddha's Supreme Enlightenment that changed the world forever. The Rohatsu sesshin is often characterized by severity. It is the sesshin at which people vow to make greater effort, to go the extra mile, by way trying to requite a debt of gratitude to the Buddha Shakyamuni. At some temples and monasteries the sitting rounds are longer and every day another round is added to the daily schedule culminating in all-night or late night formal sitting.

Zen did not appear as a result of spontaneous combustion. Like everything else, it is the effect of a prior cause. That cause is Siddhartha Gautama, or Shakyamuni Buddha.

In Asia the general population has elevated Shakyamuni Buddha to the position of a deity and pray to him for favor, thus missing entirely the teaching of the Buddha. In the West however, there is a tendency to denude Buddhism of its religious content, which also destroys Buddhism entirely. Perhaps due to disenchantment with Judeo-Christian traditions there is interest in Zen as a kind of secular transcendental psychology. People want the Zen without the Buddhism. They want to get enlightened but have nothing to do with religion as they perceive it. This "psychologicalization" of Zen Buddhism could mean its demise.

Once when I was discussing this matter with Robert Aitken Roshi, I said that Philip Kapleau Roshi, when asked whether it was possible to do away with all religious forms in the practice of Zen, said that he supposed that would be possible, but that it would be like drinking skimmed milk when you could be drinking whole milk. I said that I thought that Kapleau Roshi was right about this. Aitken Roshi said, "If I were asked if Zen could be conveyed without religion, I would simply say no. It is not milk without the cream. The breast is dried up." So both of these teachers are very clear about the desirability and necessity for Zen to be practiced in a religious context.

The first definition of the word religion in the dictionary is, "A concern with the unseen." The religious experience is a mystery beyond the pale of reason, logic, concept, and imagination. It cannot be confined within a psychological or philosophical paradigm.

One teacher recently said, "Pure awareness is what we truly are. We are not the different states and feelings, moods and tempers succeeding one another. All of it comes and goes lightly, cloud-like, without leaving a trace, when thought doesn't identify with any of it." Although articulate and eloquent, this is the worst kind of reductionism. Bodhidharma said, "Self-nature is inconceivably wondrous." When Emperor Wu asked him, "Who are you?" Bodhidharma did not say, "I am pure awareness." He said, "I don't know."

The Rohatsu sesshin is about Buddha; the historic Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama or Shakyamuni, the archetypal Buddha, the Tatagatha, and Buddha Nature, the immaculate, perfect mind which is at the core of all existence. "Buddha Nature pervades the whole universe existing here and now." The Diamond Sutra says, "If you search for me through form and color you cannot see the Buddha." How shall we see the true inconceivable and mysterious formless ground of ourselves and all existence? Not by practicing psychology.

In this country, there is a danger that the greater will be absorbed by the lesser. This 2500-year-old religion based upon the profound spiritual awakening of the Buddha is in danger of being reduced and absorbed by a western psychological tradition in its infancy.

Many people at our temple will never come to Vesak, the ceremonies and celebration of the Buddha's birth, or the Buddha's Enlightenment Ceremony or the Buddha's Parinirvana Ceremony. They don't see the relevance. They want the Zen without the Buddhism. This is a profound mistake.

For us, the Rohatsu sesshin is largely for the purpose of putting the Buddha at the very heart of our tradition and cultivating a truly religious sensibility in our work of spiritual awakening. For this we turn to myth, legend, and archetype as well as history. So let us open to our extraordinary religious tradition, which is the expression of the life of a truly remarkable religious giant, Shakyamuni Buddha.

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