Reading Zen Buddhism is a lot like reading about the presidential election.
I'll explain.
I just finished reading Brad Warner's 300-page "Don't Be A Jerk" (2016), a commentary on Eihei Dōgen (1200-1253), and his four-volume work "Shōbōgenzō." Reading anything by Zen Buddhists is painful because so much of it doesn't make any sense. There is way too much of that "sound of one hand clapping" stuff. For example, "Shōbōgenzō" is usually translated as "The Treasury of the True Dharma Eye." Well, Welcome to Fruita (WTF)! What does that even mean, "the True Dharma Eye"? This is why reading anything about religion is just like reading about presidential politics - both are proof that humanity is bat-s**t crazy!
Where Zen differs from politics -- and perhaps this is true of religion in general -- is that occasionally you can come across some actual wisdom. For example, in Dōgen's titled "One Bright Pearl" he asks, "How could you not love the infinite colors of the one bright pearl?" Now keep in mind, according to Warner, Dōgen is talking about the entire universe. But aren't pearls mostly always white? So maybe Dōgen meant nacre or mother of pearl, the iridescent rainbow coating on the inside of abalone shells. Found on beaches all around the world, the colors are both marvelous and miraculous.
When you take that passage by Dōgen with Warner's commentary on it, where he says, "We experience the creation of the universe at every moment of every day," might give you pause to stop and appreciate the beauty all around us, especially since we are blessed to live in such a beautiful place as Colorado's Rocky Mountains.
Last night, it was cold, clear, and crisp. It was also a moonless night, and so the stars were super charged with some kind inner brilliance. There were so many different colors, all so bright, some twinkling, some shinning. The "infinite colors of one bright pearl" or Mother of Pearl? Or maybe an Opal? Or maybe that bowl of assorted semi-precious stones that you get to pick out for free when you buy something at Glenwood Springs' High Country Gems and Minerals?
"Zenners," as I like to call Zen Buddhists, don't like the idea of doctrines or dogmatics, but there are various themes that run through pretty much all of Buddhism. (There are many different sects/divisions/schools of Buddhism - just like there is in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, etc.) One of those Buddhist themes is "dependent origination," a term used both by Alan Watts (1915-1973) in his "The Way of Zen" and by the Dali Lama (1940-present) in his "The Essence of the Heart Sutra." It is an idea that everything in the universe is interconnected. So while no-thing has an intrinsic independent existence, only nothing (sunyata) does -- and the contronym is intended -- which is also a baby koan riddle. Nothing is real because only nothing is real. Get it? Welcome to Zen (WTZ)!
Interdependence extends even to the western obsession with the subject / object dichotomy. As Warner says, "Subject and object arise together." This might offend you or hurt your head if I say this, but according to Zenners, you are no different from the nature that surrounds you -- starry nights and annoying biting deer flies included. So in other words, the nasty presidential election that we all witnessed is just like the chaos that sometimes (or all the time!) exists within your own head. The Zenners whom I know are pretty good at accepting who and what they are. Christians -- not so much -- and that is why they need forgiveness (myself included). So there you go: Zenners and Sinners, what a lovely dialectic.
My hope is that somebody might check out one of the thinkers that I often mention in this column. I will throw a couple of names out there. One is that crazy Anglican Bishop George Berkeley (1685-1710) who, like Buddhist thinkers, could not accept an objective mind independent reality. His "Principles of Human Knowledge" (1710) is a short (75 pages) and easy to read. Basically he did not think that there could be a "real world" without a consciousness of it. This is similar to the "observer effect" in quantum theory. James Gleick does a nice job of capturing that idea in his "Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman" (see the chapter "Caltech"). So also does the Chāndogya Upanishad sum up the collapse of the subject-object dichotomy nicely in three immortal Sanskrit words: Tat tvam asi (You are that!)
So what are you? A little star or an annoying biting deer fly? A fire breathing, meat-eater or a tree-hugging vegan?
My favorite Christian philosopher, Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), says it perfectly in his "Pensees," when he says, "What sort of freak is man? How novel, how monstrous, how chaotic, how paradoxical, how prodigious! Judge of all things, feeble earthworm, repository of truth, pit of doubt and error, glory and refuse of the universe! Who will unravel such a tangle!" ("Pensee," 131)