It's hardly Buddhism or Zen
If I were young again, say about twenty, Zen and Buddhism would bore the hell out of me. Buddhism and especially Zen have become over the years—let’s face it—a self-help cult. And that really bores the hell out of me.
I thank the gods that I got turned onto Zen in the early 60s. That was back before the psychologists got their hands on it, including the self-helpers. Zen, especially, was still in the category of mysticism. A person interested in Zen Buddhism went in search of enlightenment—not a psychologist in robes, aka, Mr. Roshi.
The present state of Buddhism in the West, including Zen, is hardly Buddhism or Zen. And maybe this explains why it is so boring. There isn’t a Buddhist blog or a nonacademic Buddhist publication in which I can’t find a number of factual errors—some of them quite bad the most egregious being that the Buddha categorically denied the self despite the fact that the entire Mahaparinirvana Sutra is dedicated to a Buddhist atman!
Westerners who decide to take up Buddhism are mainly responsible for both Buddhism and Zen going downhill at such a rapid rate. The problem is, they have a kind of God complex. They think they’re entitled to alter what the Buddha said or ignore as much of the Buddha’s teaching as they so desire and still call themselves Buddhists.
It’s the God complex side of this matter that irks me the most. It is fairly easy to correct wrong opinions, factual errors, and misstatements with actual citations from the Buddhist canon. It ain’t so easy to correct personality disorders such as, for example, psychopathy which tends to be found in our prisons and in the top levels of corporations—and yes, even in Buddhism. But this aside, why do Westerners think they are entitled to change Buddhism around—or Zen—to fit with their often crazy ideas of reality?
So far I have seen these changes in Buddhism which have nothing to do with Buddhism. (Needless to say there are more, but this is all I could come up with for now.)
1. Buddhism is agnostic. (No it ain’t.)
2. Buddhism follows the main tenets of physicalism and the physical sciences. (Really? Boy that is news to me. Let’s have some citations as proof.)
3. Buddhism doesn’t believe in a self? (Then why did the Buddha in the Pali canon call the self the noble witness?)
4. The world of samsara is really nirvana (Oh boy, here we go again. In the Vishesacintabrahmapariprcca Sutra it says: “Samsara is Nirvana, because there is, when viewed from the ultimate nature of the Dharmakâya, nothing going out of, nor coming into, existence, [samsara being only apparent]: Nirvana is samsara, when it is coveted and adhered to.”)
5. We already have the Buddha-nature (i.e., we are Buddhas). (According to the Mahaparinirvana Sutra sentient beings only have the Buddha-nature potentially in the example of cream that can be made into butter with the right process.)
6. We must sit in zazen because Shakyamuni sat in zazen for six years before he became awakened (No he didn’t. For six years he practiced austerities (i.e., tapas) with five ascetics which didn’t work.)
7. Practicing awareness is basically what Buddhism is about. (Sorry, not true. Fundamentally it is about being aware of the luminous or pure Mind; of getting in phase with it instead of being always in phase with samsara. This isn’t easy to do.)