102. Design & Zen Summary II

UnMind: Zen Moments With Great Cloud

Yes, universal!

Existence unlimited

to our perception

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In the last session we concluded the introduction to this summary of the intersection of Design Thinking and Zen by linking Buddha’s Four Noble Truths to my Four Spheres of Influence and Endeavor as encountered in daily life. The semantic model shown illustrates correlations between the Four Spheres — Universal, Natural, Social, and Personal — and the Existence, Origin, Cessation, and Eightfold Path to cessation, of suffering. We will explore the connections of each in order, in the next four segments. These include: Universal Existence, Natural Origin, Social Path, and Personal Cessation, all linked to dukkha, the Buddhist term usually translated as “suffering.” As we will see, it has a broader meaning.

Sometimes overlooked in considering the Four Noble Truths are Buddha’s admonitions, charges, or challenges accompanying each. We are to strive to “fully understand” the existence of suffering; to abandon its origin, usually interpreted as craving; to realize its cessation, hopefully in this lifetime; and to fully follow the Noble Eightfold Path to the realization of suffering. That’s a tall order.

But if we take the Design thinking approach, we can regard the prospect of fully understanding the existence of suffering as just another example of fully defining the problem, albeit the most intractable and elusive of all problems, that of existence itself. The proposition that existence is a problem, or should be regarded as such, is itself subject to challenge. But most religions and philosophies characterize our existence as a human being as a kind of test, from Job’s Old Testament lament, to the triumph of reasoning of the Enlightenment, and theism’s personal epiphany of being reborn, as well as Zen Buddhism’s potential of spiritual awakening — kensho or satori in Japanese. Of course, the usual caveat applies, that the approach to solving this problem in Zen begins and ends with experience on the cushion, or informed by that process of personal introspection. As we often emphasize in interfaith dialog with other clergy and students online, world peace can only come about through the establishment of personal peace. Zen’s pop-up exam takes place in zazen, pass or fail.

Another way to phrase the first Noble Truth is that Existence is of the nature of suffering. That is, dukkha may be regarded simply as inexorable change. Galaxies colliding in space is an example of Universal Existence of change. It is not personal, but a universal principle. Human beings are necessarily caught up in it, through birth, aging, sickness and death, and tend to take it very personally. This is why it is called “suffering.” But this suffering is too laden with emotional and sentimental connotations to fit the definition of a universal principle. Suffering in the Buddhist sense has a connotation of allowing, as in “Suffer the little children to come unto me,” paraphrasing a comment attributed to Christ. He is also quoted as saying that unless we become like little children, we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.

So in the face of universal change, we are reduced to the state of children. Innocent, perhaps, but still responsible for adapting to reality. We find examples of human suffering in all spheres of our existence, including personal issues of aging, sickness and death, which is also characteristic of the natural sphere, where our relationship to Nature is ever-more challenging, owing partially to our success as a species in dominating the planet and diminishing the resources of life support. But most of us are inclined to identify the sources of our suffering as social in nature.

These are all conjoined, as the pressures of living in modern society are certainly linked to the pressures of population. From stress on the commute to family unity at home, and comity at the office, much of our dissatisfaction with life in the fast lane stems from the fact that there are so many others queuing up in that same lane. And, of course, they are not usually as polite or considerate as you or I tend to be. In the modern idiom, they do not, or will not, stay in their lane, and out of ours.

Please excuse me if you have heard this before, but I think an experiment I read about is germane. The scientists involved simply took the classic rats-in-the-maze to a new level, adding more and more rats. At a certain point of overpopulation or crowding, the rats began attacking each other. In human terms, each began to blame the others for the situation. If memory serves, it revealed a kind of proportionality between the space available and the degree of occupancy, which may reflect a natural limit to the population of any species. There is a relevant question in Taoism, from the “Tao te Ching” of Lao Tzu if memory serves, which asks the question, something like, Which is more destructive — success or failure? The very success of a species may be akin to the growth of a virus, which finally exceeds the capacity of its host to sustain, leading to the death of the host but also of the parasite.

Another Taoist saying reminds us that, When the blaming begins, there is no end to the blame, or some such admonition. What we see in politics these days is largely the blame game writ large, usually on a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t basis. Increasingly, decisions regarding spending decreasing resources are taken in this no-win kind of context. Even speaking out on a given issue, no matter what position one takes, is likely to bring down hostilities upon one’s head, from the cold waters of the social media. The very anonymity provided by the network fosters the tendency of many disgruntled fellow travelers to fire broadsides at every comment, no matter how reasonable or anodyne. The privacy of the original communication is often compromised, exposing the messenger to the mob, including searchable data such as the identities of their family members, along with contact and location information. Thus, the natural moan of stress and threat of living is amplified to a scream through the feedback process, like a mic and speaker facing each other. Humans are the worst enemy of humans.

When we turn from our social world — as restricted to human beings — to the natural sphere, we find other social animals, such as elephants and whales, who have their own networks, and presumably some level of stress emanating from them. Much more certainly they suffer from the dire circumstances in which they live as prey to other species, primarily the encroachment of humans on their turf, and as victims of the harvesting of ivory and other private parts for such human dalliances as trivial trinkets, and supposed aphrodisiacs. Our stewardship of the creatures of the Earth has demonstrated a downward curve for most of our history, but now that we are outnumbering as well as outmaneuvering our distant cousins, many are staring into the abyss of extinction. Which is where the Natural sphere is trumped by the Universal. From the perspective of the victim of extinction, it matters little whether the end comes as the result of a meteor or comet, or the slow erosion of viable food stocks and potable water. So-called “pets” and live exhibits such as zoos are the few remaining concessions to inclusion of lowly beasts in our social circle, now that the age of horsepower has long since passed.

When we look at the intersection of the Universal and the Natural, disregarding for the nonce the Social and Personal realms, we see that it is also not a respecter of persons, or dharma beings. The most awe-inspiring example may be the black hole, at least based on our current understanding of cosmic dynamics of change, dukkha on the largest scales we can envision. Whole galaxies, solar systems, stars, planets, moons and asteroids and all, provide the daily fare keeping the monster fed. We charmingly describe such processes with familiar tropes, such as that a black hole is “eating” its way through the universe, gobbling celestial bodies as we consume lesser animals and plants of the globe. A recent special on the blue whale identified them as the largest mammals to ever live on the planet — in the ocean, more exactly — as large as a Boeing 737. Yet they live on krill, one of the smallest animals on the planet. But the volume of their dining may be the closest living analogy to a black hole in the animal kingdom. Tens of thousands of tons of water in one gulp! Yet even this behemoth may be threatened with extinction, owing to the activities of the noisome human parasite.

In the face of such vast scales of existence, and with the looming threat of universal and natural chickens coming home to roost, through imminent climate change, the very idea that what we call suffering is indeed universal may be disturbing, even overwhelming. And as Master Dogen reminds us in Jijuyu Zammai —Self-fulfilling Samadhi, even if we manage to divest ourselves of our ignorance, and the “whole phenomenal world becomes the Buddha’s seal, and the entire sky turns into enlightenment,” even then “all this does not appear within perception, because it is unconstructedness in stillness, it is immediate realization.” So the frustration with the ungraspable nature of this truth is baked in. But we mustn’t forget the micro, along with the macrocosmos. The microcosmos is also the manifestation of the universal existence of suffering, just on the other end of the scale spectrum. It recalls a line from one of our beloved Ch’an poems, Hokyo Zammai [Precious Mirror Samadhi], by Master Tozan, founder of Soto Zen in China:

So minute it enters where there is no gap — so vast it transcends dimension
A hairsbreadth deviation and you are out of tune

I hear an unspoken “but” or “however” before this last bombshell — any deviation, however slight, and we are “out of tune.” Like tuning an old-fashioned analog radio dial, a little to the left or to the right, we get nothing but static. Only when we hit the frequency dead on in the middle, do we receive the transmission with clarity. If we persist in our meditation, we can hopefully penetrate beyond the Personal, Social and Natural barriers, all the way to the Universal, which is not only outside us at the furthest remove, but also inside us, at the most intimate. As Master Hakuin reminds, actually there is no “inner,” nor is there any “outer.” It is all clear, clean through. Spacetime is neither space, nor time.

In the next segment we will take a look at Natural Origin, the origin of our suffering through the craving of our body, our mouth, and our mind. Stay tuned.

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Elliston Roshi is guiding teacher of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center and abbot of the Silent Thunder Order. He is also a gallery-represented fine artist expressing his Zen through visual poetry, or “music to the eyes.”

UnMind is a production of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center in Atlanta, Georgia and the Silent Thunder Order. You can support these teachings by PayPal to [e-mail]. Gassho.

Producer: Kyōsaku Jon Mitchell