The Secret Book of Zen: Background, Practice and Instructions

ANNEX

Introduction

What if the world, as you now know it, were an illusion? What if it would only deceive you into thinking that this illusion is reality?

Most people live day after day in just such a world full of deception. Most of them feel powerless and abandoned by the world. Deep inside, they are very afraid, especially of death. They search for the meaning of their lives, and feel alienated, vulnerable and all alone. They want nothing more than to be able to enjoy life again in freedom and happiness.

Wouldn't that be wonderful? To recognize this world full of suffering and powerlessness as that which it is: an illusion? To finally start really and truly living life in a state of freedom? To find the meaning of life again, and to live without excessive fear or worry?

This is possible with Zen. Zen is one of the many communities in the schools of Buddhism. The above-mentioned permanently liberated state is called nirvana in Buddhism, and it can be reached in this life. The path to nirvana leads first to satori (awakening) and then to enlightenment. Zen is fundamentally not tied to any religion or belief. Zen is the essence of all spiritual and religious paths; even atheists can practice Zen.

Zen has rejected all dogmatic teachings for thousands of years. A Zen teacher or master will provide only guidance and instructions on how you can follow the path yourself. You must take the path alone. You will truly experience and understand Zen only when you start practicing.

For that reason, I have modified traditional Zen in this book so that you can practice it alone at home, and in this way, using your own strength, reach satori, enlightenment, and nirvana. I shall therefore unveil for you all the secrets of Zen in this book, in order to protect you from taking a wrong turn.

In doing so, however, I portray the Zen path in ways that are candid, and sometimes even harsh, in order to avoid misconceptions right from the start.

In this way you will know, as an interested party or prospective student, what to expect right from the outset. In this way this book will make its way into the hands of readers who are ready for and receptive to these bald truths. The Zen path initially seems difficult, hard-hitting, tough, and not suited to every student. However, once an individual has opted for and committed to the Zen path, that person will attain full and complete liberation.

Some of the elements comprising the method in this book, with which you can achieve better and faster results in Zen, are as follows:

-  The disclosure of all secrets of Zen, instead of secrecy

This can prevent students from taking a wrong turn and accelerates the pace at which they can follow the path.

-  Clear instructions instead of obfuscation

This can result in rapid progress along the path.

-  Mantra practice rather than traditional koan practice

As a result, progress can likewise be faster on the way to satori.

-  The use of psychological knowledge instead of philosophy in the work with ideas and karma

Although Zen has been closely linked to philosophy for thousands of years, this tends to impede rather than support students in their quest for liberation. The philosophy of the early 20th Century gave rise to psychology. Greater success can be achieved by using modern psychological knowledge.

-  A strict focus on the essentials rather than on sensory overload

This book will provide you with everything you need to follow your Zen path. No more, no less. To be successful, you categorically do not need anything not mentioned in this book.

Because this book has now opened the Zen path to liberation for you, you need only trust and work on yourself. This has been the aim of Zen for thousands of years, and what Buddha always intended to express with his teachings: free yourself!

You will certainly want to re-read this book several times while following your own path through the Zen process. Use it as a kind of manual. The Zen path cannot be taken by reading a book just once; instead, practical training is also needed. This book will certainly also provide much new stimulation for readers who already practice Zen. Of course, this book reflects only my own views on Zen. If you as a Zen student have already found your own method for yourself, stick to it. You should not switch between different methods. The same applies to readers who are already practicing under the guidance of a personal Zen teacher or master. Only he has known you as a student for a long time, and knows what is best for you at the present time.

Zen ultimately is and remains a path which you should follow with a joyous and loving heart. You decide how far and how fast you want to progress. While you are reading this book, this fact may sometimes be overshadowed by the abundance of information, methods, and instructions. Always keep in mind that you alone are your own best master. Listen to yourself and your inner voice; it alone will lead you to success. Do not be afraid to ask for help and support from a teacher or master in your area, if you need it. Every teacher or master will be happy to support you with help and advice as you follow your path.

What is Zen?

Zen assumes that all people are already enlightened. Therefore, when practicing Zen we do not need to seek or gain anything more. Our rational thinking mind prevents us from reaching this conclusion. For this reason, the Zen method assumes that the human mind has been filled, since earliest childhood, with false projections, constructs, and ideas. These ideas make us believe in an imaginary world. In this way we live in a dream world, without realizing it. This dream world causes suffering, grief, and pain. It creates the feeling in us that we are alienated from ourselves. It makes us depressed and moody. It prevents us from sleeping properly. It makes us suffer from performance anxiety. It leads to a lack of energy and to problems with our partners, children, parents and other people. It feeds our egos. It causes us to fear our own death. It makes us hate and kill.

Some of the techniques Zen uses are mindfulness, concentration and meditative awareness. They help us break through to our true nature and the true reality of all things, overcome our fear of death, and live in a permanently liberated state. Therefore all we need to do initially is to let go of our confused ego-based mind state, break through this self-generated dream world, and recognize that we have already been enlightened the whole time.

Human beings have been seeking their true nature since beginningless time. The goal of Zen is to enable people to directly experience this true nature. This means that Zen offers the pure experience of people’s true nature, far removed from all illusions and delusion; it proves that direct experience is possible in this world. In Zen, man's true nature is called true nature, Buddha-nature, or emptiness. The term emptiness should not be understood as meaning the absence of something; instead, it refers to nature, principle, or primal ground. According to Buddha's teachings, not only people but all living beings have Buddha-nature at their core. Thus, all living creatures seek this liberated state of happiness and harmony. But it is only granted to us humans to reconnect with our true nature within us.

Our thinking-consciousness that separates us from our Buddha-nature is responsible for our confused projections and ideas. It plays a new film for us day after day, which mesmerizes us. This film consists of our thoughts and feelings, which, unbeknown to us, produce our ego. Since we are simply not aware of that, we are totally absorbed, spellbound, by this film which only makes us believe that we are seeing the true reality. With Zen, we learn to distinguish between that film and reality. Among other things, we learn to become observers of the film. The film is not true reality; true reality can only be found behind the scenes. True reality is free of all delusions and is devoid of such mere appearances. Once we have felt this deep inside ourselves through satori, and have seen right through it, we are truly awakened to the true nature of all things. That is why satori is also known in this book as awakening. A Zen student should therefore first try to achieve the state of satori.

In this book, I distinguish between the following important mental states of Zen, which must be experienced successively:

satori (awakening)

enlightenment

nirvana

Satori leads to an awakened state of consciousness. Most people try out Zen because they are afraid of death and want to clarify the question of the meaning of life itself. Instead of believing, they want to feel. They want to experience the truth within themselves. These questions are answered by the mystical experience of satori. Satori causes us to have a spiritual awakening and be one with the emptiness. Many students finish their Zen practice at that point; but for some, the experience of satori is not enough. They want more. Such students must undergo a mental purification stage after satori in order to attain true enlightenment and nirvana. Nirvana is synonymous with unshakable serenity, tranquility and peace. If you have an enlightened state of mind, it will support you in all life situations; all problems simply bounce off you. There are no real problems for those who are enlightened. If you can maintain this condition permanently, you have entered nirvana.

The path leading to enlightenment and nirvana requires that we let go. We must let go of old ideas, opinions, truths, behavior patterns, and convictions. We must let go of both our ego and our rational mind. We must let go of letting go, and ultimately of everything that we think is important, and of what still supports our lives. Once we have let go of everything, we can truly attain satori, enlightenment, and nirvana. After that, we are returned to living in a state of unimaginable riches and glory.

Deep down in the darkness,

Your true nature sleeps.

Dark shadows in the night

Block your way on the path.

Fearlessly you meditate your way

Along the path of no escape.

Dying there through time and space,

Your true nature awakes —

Your life is over,

And it begins here anew.

Jan Hendriksson

CHAPTER 1: Theory

Zen rejects all manner of teachings and dogma. In Zen, there is really nothing that could be taught to a student. Every person must discover Zen within himself. For this reason, Zen is quite hard for beginners to understand if it is explained without any concrete structure. Because Zen originally arose from Buddhism, this Buddhist framework will also be used in this book by way of explanation. Zen is categorically not Buddhism. But only when you have understood the basics of Buddhism can you approach and get to the heart of Zen.

Buddha was the founder of Buddhism. Buddha did not invent Zen; but his teachings without a doubt provided important preliminary work. After that, Zen developed from the original teachings of Buddha.

The Story of Buddha

When we speak of Buddha, we mean the historical Buddha Shakyamuni who attained enlightenment and is considered the founder of Buddhism. The word Buddha is translated as The Awakened One. It thereby refers to someone who has awakened in the sense of Buddhism. In this context, awakened means being awakened to the world as it really is, and not as we think it is. In Zen, the process of being awakened is called satori. The concept of Buddha is valid particularly for all Zen practitioners who have already attained satori, i.e. who have awakened. They can likewise achieve satori and become a Buddha.

The historical Buddha attained satori by his own efforts approximately 2,500 years ago. He used meditation to thoroughly examine the world in detail, and he worked to achieve satori and enlightenment himself. In this context, we refer in Buddhism to satori and enlightenment being attainable only by each individual himself.

Buddha, that is Siddharta Gautama, is also known as Buddha Shakyamuni. The name Shakyamuni means The Wise One From the Clan of the Shakya. Shakyamuni is said to have lived in India in approximately 566-486 BC; the exact information is not available. According to the oral tradition, he lived in a rich family and was surrounded by wealth. His father protected him in the palace, completely isolating him from the outside world. In this way Shakyamuni lived in his own world and was unaware of the world beyond the palace. At some point Shakyamuni went on an outing outside the palace, where he encountered an old man, a person who was gravely ill, a corpse and a monk. Because he had never seen anything like that previously within the palace, he was deeply moved. His encounter with these people inspired him to contemplate ageing, illness and death. Shakyamuni realized that these and other kinds of suffering were ubiquitous and inescapable in life. The monk inspired him to leave his palace and seek a spiritual solution for suffering.

As is the case with all such stories, it is questionable whether it really happened this way. If you view it as a parable, you will notice that palace life represents self-indulgence and unrelenting self-centeredness, and that the first three encounters act as a mirror to everyday human life and suffering. The encounter with the monk represents the fact that a spiritual solution exists for these problems. Shakyamuni decided to seek this solution, and joined groups of like-minded people. Over time, Shakyamuni learned meditation techniques from different teachers which he could use to enter a trance state. However, he found these unsatisfactory. This was because when he left the trance state and returned to the normal state of consciousness, the everyday problems were once again ubiquitous. The trance state was merely a short-lived escape from reality. Shakyamuni wanted a permanent solution, namely the release from all suffering and problems. His teachers were unable to offer him this, so he turned to other methods. He learned how to use strict asceticism, self-abasement and breath control techniques, but they failed to bring him to his goal. They weakened him more and more, so that he finally gave up, narrowly escaping death. But his efforts were not in vain, for he realized that such extremes are useless.

Again, this part of the story can be understood as a parable: avoid the extremes, follow the middle path! Shakyamuni took this middle way between extremes, a lifestyle in which one’s own desires are not denied, but neither is too much attention paid to them. This insight is today still called The Middle Path of Knowledge or The Middle Way, and has become the main teaching of Buddhism. The Eightfold Path, an important part of Buddhist teaching, is considered the epitome of this Middle Way and will later be the topic in this book.

Shakyamuni once again started eating food, returned to the practice of meditation and quickly made progress. According to legend, he sat for years in meditation under a tree. One day he achieved satori, enlightenment and nirvana there, the complete release from all suffering, which he had sought for so long. For society at that time, this was downright stunning and revolutionary. Shakyamuni had awakened himself unaided to the true nature of all things, only by using the right observations of the world and the mind. He attained satori, enlightenment and nirvana in a single moment. Actually Shakyamuni was only now an awakened one, a Buddha.

Buddha stayed for several weeks in the place where he had attained enlightenment and meditated on his future. We can only speculate about his decision to teach his knowledge about the path of enlightenment to others. He probably did this because of his deep compassion for his fellow man. He went to Benares on the Ganges River where he met five of his old companions, who had turned away from him at that time when he had renounced asceticism. Now, they evidently realized the wonderful change that had happened to him. They remained with him and thus became his first students.

A short while later Buddha gave them his first discourses, the so-called sutras. One of the most important sutras presented by the Buddha is that of the Four Noble Truths, which will be discussed in the next section. Buddha's sutras addressed his enlightenment, the realization of true reality and the end of suffering. After hearing the first sutra, the five students recognized the profundity of Buddha's teachings and asked him to ordain them as monks. According to legend, all five monks achieved satori after hearing the second sutra.

The Buddha's teachings spread quickly and over time, produced increasing numbers of Buddhas. Thus began the triumphal advance of Buddhism, which spread over the centuries and millennia all the way to us. The Buddha himself allegedly reached 80 years of age and died near the place of his enlightenment. Before he died he spoke on many sutras, spreading his teachings.

The Four Noble Truths

The Buddha's teachings can be found in the so-called Pali Canon. This Canon is written in the middle-Indian language Pali, and it is the oldest cohesive recorded collection of Buddha's discourses. It is considered to be one of the most authentic sources that exist about his teachings. Because it was written only a long time after the death of Buddha, the original teaching has probably been changed due to oral transmission before being recorded in written form.

First, the original old quotes from the Pali Canon will be cited and then commented on in order to make them more understandable for you through the use of examples. Until his death, Buddha had in fact taught nothing other than these Four Noble Truths. All other elements of his teachings represent only more in-depth explanations of and notes on these truths. You should thus understand primarily these four noble truths.

This, oh monks, is the middle way (…), which brings about vision and recognition and leads to tranquillity, knowledge, enlightenment, and the extinguishing of the self.

The First Noble Truth - Life is suffering

Verily, oh monks, this is the noble truth of suffering: birth is suffering, old age is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering, being together with that which is unwanted and separation from loved ones is suffering, not getting what one desires is suffering; in short, the five categories of the factors of existence that cause attachment to worldly things are suffering.

Many may feel that their lives are not really suffering, that they are happy. Perhaps this is also the case for you. Why does Buddha think that life is suffering? When we speak of suffering, we normally mean unhappy, hard times of sorrow, fear or illness. This is undoubtedly suffering. All readers who really feel no happiness, who live in a grey world, who feel badly treated by life, who feel that they have been thrown naked and defenceless into a cold world, will concur.

However, Buddha thinks of suffering as also including happy times, just those times where you are on Cloud Nine - which you, however, somehow cannot completely enjoy, because something seems to be missing. Even in the happiest times there is still a small voice that at some point makes us aware that happiness is certainly transitory. The voice wonders what might happen soon. For this reason you yourself are unable to give yourself fully to this current happiness -- you cannot enjoy the moment fully; instead, you find yourself waiting for that happiness to end. That is why you want to hang on to happiness.

Since you are reading this book, you are in some sense a seeker. Something within you, deep in your heart, tells you that your life, how it has been going so far, may still not have been everything it could have been. If everything in your life would be as it should be, you would be permanently happy. Even if you are actually happy at this moment, you sense or have already discovered from your life experience, that this feeling won't last. You must constantly search anew for happiness. You will be happy for a while, and your life is wonderful. At some point however, it may be after a few months or a few years, you will realize that happiness has faded. You feel as though you were constantly on the lookout: for a deeper truth, for your true nature or whatever else you may be searching for. You as a reader are, on the other hand, one of the few people who are even willing to, or intend to, perform such a critical self-review. Most people single-mindedly pursue happiness, without even being aware of this. They think they will find happiness in wealth and possessions, or in love. At first, this works well. These people have perhaps bought themselves something new, and it makes them happy. At least, that’s what they think. At some point, this new item is no longer new, but is now commonplace; with time it becomes boring, and people realize that the feeling of happiness is no longer as strong as it was. They discover that they feel less happy, and they begin the cycle of consumer happiness once again. They buy something again and think that this new acquisition will make them happy again.

Most people never examine themselves or really question the way they live. However, you as the reader have the feeling that there must be more, that this cannot be real life. Life cannot only consist of a repeated search for happiness and satisfaction. There must be something else, something constant.

This is exactly what Buddha means with Life is suffering. As long as everything in life is going well, it does not consist of suffering. Ultimately though, when it does not go smoothly for once, life will be suffering in one way or another. Life cannot be planned. Ultimately, everyone is striving for happiness. And happiness is perceived as consisting of those times that you do not suffer, when life is not suffering. Suffering does not have to be of a physical nature. Most of the time, it is an inner, gnawing feeling that each of us has somehow felt at one time or another. Buddha gives other examples, and the list could be endless: to be unhappy in love is suffering. Unrequited love is suffering. No longer being able to fully participate in life is suffering. Being lonely is suffering. Doing something that you actually do not want to do is suffering. To feel alienated from oneself is suffering. To lead one’s life with a sense of powerlessness is suffering. Not to know the meaning of life is suffering.

If you really want it, Zen will give you the opportunity to end this life of suffering once and for all, permanently. In his teachings, Buddha promises that suffering does not have to be endless; instead, it can be terminated at any time. He calls a life without any suffering nirvana and it starts with the state of satori, which leads to enlightenment. Buddha knows the way because he himself experienced and followed it.

The Second Noble Truth - the origin of suffering

This indeed, oh monks, is the noble truth of the origin of suffering: it is the thirst (…), the thirst of desire, the thirst of becoming, and the thirst for annihilation.

In life, suffering arises when, for example, the human ego does not get what it wants or it thinks that it is entitled to something such as love, material things or control. The fundamental problem is therefore that we always want to have something. We align our entire thinking and doing along those lines. The Buddha calls this greed. When we don’t get what we want, we begin to act destructively in life. Buddha calls this hatred.

Let us now examine greed in terms of examples. We want something, but don't get it. Every one of us is familiar with this experience, and it is painful. Initially we have the desire itself: we always want to have something, we always have desires or ideas of how the world should work. Desires that remain unfulfilled cause pain. Suffering does not arise from the desire itself, but only when we cling to this desire. When a person has a desire, he then absolutely wishes to fulfill it, and must exert control in order to fulfill. If the desire stays unmet, he will suffer if he continues to cling to that desire.

The list of selfish desires seems endless. One person wishes that work would finally end. Another wants to win the lottery. Others want to be healthy, to have a long life, to have beautiful weather, less stress at work, etc., etc., etc. You will recognize that some of these desires can be very trivial, everyday little things; but sometimes they can also be quite large ones. Ultimately there are always some wishes, ideas or expectations which we initially have. If they are fulfilled, we will always be happy for a limited time only, because we will always have an inexhaustible list of desires.

Our life is thus focused on having, instead of being. Most people are caught up in a cycle of desires and