The Freedom of Zen (eBook)

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The Highest Truth Is Not Difficult

“The highest truth is not difficult”, says Zen Master Seng-tsan. What do you make of that? In order to even learn a foreign language you have to make an effort. But to attain the Utmost, something of such gigantic proportions that my words are not enough to proclaim it to you – that should be without the slightest difficulty?

Yet let me tell you this: not only is the highest truth not difficult, but it is in fact the easiest thing in the world. But if you search for it in books, everything becomes very complicated and difficult.

You are seriously convinced that Zen is a toilsome matter. The truth is, however, it is very simple, yet your intellect cannot imagine how simple it is. For this reason you convince yourself that it must be very difficult, but it is only difficult due to the wrong preconceptions with which you approach it.

The wrong preconceptions are that you are searching for something that you can never find, however hard you try, since that which you are seeking is constantly present as your innermost possession.

That is why Zen Master Da-zhu (eighth century) says:

What you are seeking is your true, divine self, beyond space and time, and beyond birth and death. It is your true reality. You have never lost it, it is always there. It is just that you have covered it with the projections of your deluded thoughts. The highest truth you are seeking is directly before you and reveals itself in all forms and all appearances.

Everything is reality. Everything is a revelation of the truth. Nothing exists which is not a manifestation of the truth. And yet you smother reality with your notion of multiplicity and separateness. If you ask me, “Where does reality reveal itself?”, I could perhaps refer to this gong. I could also point to this lamp or to this picture. Everything that you perceive is reality, the highest truth, just as it is.

This “no preferences” would be, for example, if you say, “Here I am in beautiful surroundings, sitting by the sea, listening to the sound of the surf, smelling the wonderful salty air, hearing the cry of the seagulls – fantastic – this is a spiritual dimension.” And then on the other hand you say, “Now I am in a sleazy night bar with naked dancing girls, the smell of alcohol, and cheap perfume – this is the world of desire, this cannot be the truth.” Yet that is exactly the meaning of “making preferences”, which becomes your undoing.

The path I teach you is the “Tantric Zen Way”. This great Zen Way is not a way for small, limited minds. It is the path to Enlightenment in the midst of the world, in the midst of life’s daily demands. I have spoken of this at length in my book “The Great Zen Way”.

You can never find liberation by withdrawing yourself from the world to live in a monastery, just singing holy songs and sitting on your meditation cushion, staring at the wall, mindlessly as cattle. The Tantric Zen Way is the way of the “fire lotus”. It is the direct way to liberation, whilst preserving inner stability and serenity in the midst of external distractions.

This active Zen Way requires a decisive strong will, such that you retain your unshakeability of mind in all difficulties and joys of daily life. Whoever retreats from the world and then clings to this retreating, and is unable to live in the realm of passions without coming to harm, will neither be able to save himself nor others.

I would not point you along this way if I had not gone along it myself. My way to Enlightenment is completely out of the ordinary and is in no way in keeping with the generally accepted idea of a path to liberation. But I do not need to go into that here – you all know my story. Everywhere, no matter where, is the reality that you seek.

In the words of the apostle Paul, “Everything is filled with the fullness of God.” Everywhere, the glory of the divine being reveals itself. If you do not find it in the midst of daily life, in the world of desire, then you will also not find it in a Buddhist temple, a church or in any other “holy” place. Then it is just another illusion created by your conditioned, discriminating thought, and you only end up in fooling yourself. That is why Zen Master Lin-chi says:

You must rise above both of these – the profane and the sacred! Free yourself of every discrimination – you must not cling to anything!

This is absolute “non-discrimination”. Neither accepting nor rejecting. That is why Zen Master Lin-chi also says: “You have yet to take leave of the family!” What he means is: you still have not left behind your conditionings, patterns of behaviour, and modes of thought.

You continue to be a prisoner of all your stencils and fixations, and you are yet to abide in the cloudless clarity of the Mind, and thus you remain trapped in discriminating thought. In his work Hsin-hsin-ming, the “Seal of Faith”, Zen Master Seng-ts’an further says:

When you are free of wanting and hating, which means of accepting and rejecting, attachment and aversion, the highest truth reveals itself clearly and infinitely. It reveals itself when you no longer differentiate or make preferences.

Yin and yang belong together and complement one another. You cannot have one without the other. It would be just like wanting to have an electric current with no minus pole, just the plus pole. Or like wanting the sun to shine every day and never have rain again. Everything is the one reality; be it a pretty butterfly, be it a beautiful flower, or be it a pile of stinking dog shit on the road.

Why differentiate? Everything is one, for everything is an organic, all-encompassing whole, containing everything within itself – there is nothing you can remove. You can remove nothing, not even a speck of dust.

If you were able to remove anything from the universe – be it but a speck of dust – the entire universe would collapse. Even when you split an atom in a laboratory, this splitting merely transforms it into another form of energy. You cannot destroy anything, dissolve it, or make it disappear – you can only transform it.

Everything is the great Tantra – the great transformation. That is why Zen is about being in harmony with this all-encompassing transformation of the Tao. The entire universe is in constant motion. Be one with this motion, do not oppose it, and you will find yourself in Tao!

Simply do not differentiate, and you will see that everything is good, just as it is. Were it not so, that too would be good.

I know it is not easy to accept this truth, but in the end you have no alternative but to accept it – not in pessimistic resignation, but through inner insight. You can experience the world as a wonderful paradise, or you can experience it as hell, it is all up to you.

At the last Zen sesshin I told you of the encounter between Zen Master Hakuin and a Samurai: