My first contact with Buddhism's ideas came through remarks in some novels by Aldous Huxley. There a protagonist lays out the possibility of humans experiencing in this life the oneness of what I would later speak of as enlightenment. My learning of that prospect was of lasting import for me, its significance signaled by the fact that throughout subsequent undergraduate and postgraduate days I carried in my wallet a listing of the Four Nobel Truths and the Eight-Fold Path. At Brown too I felt the pull of Buddhism's power, as manifested in a larger than life wooden Buddha statue housed in the museum of the RISDI art school.
I entered my days of teaching philosophy at Cornell with a lively, long established sympathy for the care and feeding of a "mystical" way of life, nourished once again by Aldous Huxley's siren voice. He promised a chemical shortcut to the achievement of oneness. It was the days of magic mushrooms, peyote, and LSD. I awoke one day to find on my doorstep a box of peyote buttons sent quite legally as ornamental cacti by the Texas Cactus Growers Association. The buttons, dried, pulverized and put in capsules formed the crucial component of some subsequent peyote parties (involving many from the philosophy department!). And yes the buttons seemed to have the promised result. There is a painting in the Freer art gallery in Washington showing a Zen master strolling along unburdened by the fact that he carries a frog in his hair. Ingesting some thirty or so capsules made me understand that painting: here is what it must be like to live in oneness. Or so I thought, as I carried on my quest for enlightenment via chemistry.
Things change. Entering the library at Cornel I saw posted a dust jacket announcing a new book, The Three Pillars of Zen, by Philip Kapleau. It was its "practice" aspect that spoke to me. Past Zen books (and I knew many) wrote enticingly of Zen and its mysteries but left the reader hopelessly looking across an infinite expanse — the big gap between words and reality. Kapleau promised a way to go beyond words to the wonderful realm of "kensho" — the Japanese word for an initial contact, a first taste of oneness. Work hard with great effort and oneness may be yours. As I had followed Huxley I now followed Kapleau, becoming an acolyte. I wrote to him (he was still in Japan) and established contact with his branch of North American Zen, one heavily responsive to its Japanese roots. Kapleau's teacher Yusatani Roshi was staying in New York. It was in 1966 that I took the bus from Boston to Manhattan and had an interview with the Roshi. He gave me a koan to work on — the usual beginner's one concerning whether a dog has the Buddha nature. (Answer: "Mu!") Through my Kapleau/Yasutani connection I learned of a weekend silent retreat in a New York suburb, which I took part in. I recall tears of gratitude that welled up at the thought that the work of these Dharma brethren had made the retreat possible.
Backed financially by Chester Carlson (the inventor of zerox) Kapleau established a Zen center in Rochester New York. I soon became an ardent member of Kapleau's Sanga. Its initial task was to establish a series of weekend retreats. These I attended faithfully, driving up from Boston for each one. While still in Cambridge I had thought to find a way to move, family and all, to Japan to do Zen with a master, but Kapleau talked me out of it, on the ground that I would have great difficulty finding my way in that radically different culture. Instead I continued to pursue the Zen I found in Kapleau's Rochester Center. For example in the summer of '67/'68 he set up a month long training period which I, leaving Abby and children behind, took part in.
My life shifted radically in the academic year of '68—'69 when I found myself living in Toronto and a tenured philosophy professor at Erindale College, a campus of the University of Toronto. My engagement with Zen carried on strongly. I arrived in Toronto symbolically bearing a small bell used to time periods of meditation. It came with a warrant from Kapleau to establish a Toronto Zen center as a Rochester affiliate, which I did, helped by Kapleau students imported temporarily from Rochester. We rented and refurbished Zen-style a house in East Toronto. ("Not very prepossessing" was Kapleau's comment when he duly came to inspect the product of our work.) The Toronto Zen center flourished in those and subsequent years, under guidance from Rochester. I did my part, helping in various renovations as the center moved here and there, and several times traveling to Rochester to attend seven day retreats. These were mounted in Zen boot camp style, with fixed sitting times mandated, and the liberal use of the kiosaku — a flattened stick employed, by striking on the shoulders, to keep the participants at fever pitch of awareness.
In those years I accepted the Buddhistic tenants that I and my fellow seekers held. This led to some marked cognitive dissonance, arising from a conflict between Buddhism and my own long held adherence to a weltanschauung rooted in science and empiricism. The religion-marked culture I had unthinkingly adopted — once boyhood’s Catholicism was left behind and one moved among one's friends, colleagues, and favorite authors — had no room for the defense of several Buddhist tenants. Empiricism seemed a bad fit for Buddhist ideology. I thought to finesse this dilemma by appealing to the idea of faith. I told myself I could accept ideas like rebirth and karma, by assigning their truth to the realm where faith held sway. On the one hand empiricism, on the other faith — just keep them separate. In retrospect my would-be resolution seems like cheating — but this appeal to faith was the best I could do. And so a tad uneasily I counted myself a Buddhist. The uneasiness, however, was just in the realm of ideology, of thought; my practice remained strong: what continued was a fruitless search for kensho, held under the battle cry "this" (what I presently experience) is not it. For how could my present mind state, full of distracting thoughts, be that marvelous mystical oneness I had been seeking lo those many years? And yet my various "mystical" oriented teachers over those decades had all insisted that yes this indeed is it. Calling on what I took to be my direct experience I stubbornly insisted that this nonetheless is not it.
A better resolution of the conflict between empiricism and Buddhist ideology became possible through the person of Toni Packer, one of Kapleau's advanced students. She was considered to be one of those in line to take over the Rochester Center when Kapleau retired, but there was a problem. After much soul searching Toni came to the conclusion that she could no longer consider herself a Buddhist. This did not sit well with Kapleau, nor with a good portion of the Rochester/Toronto Sangas. They could accept Toni's gradual steps toward lightening the traditional Rinzai Zen severity of practice, but cutting the tie to Buddhism was unacceptable. So each Sanga member had to make a choice — Toni or Kapleau. I chose Toni.
What did Toni bring with her she gave up her allegiance to Buddhism? For one thing she and her followers designed and built a meditation center in the Finger Lakes district. There retreats were offered markedly different in some ways from the Rochester version: no compulsory timed sitting, no shoulder striking, no being intensely driven. But on the positive side a continued adherence to certain essential features of Zen, in particular its foundational and all overshadowing quest for kensho and enlightenment.
Buddhism without the Buddha. Springwater's silent retreats were from the first open to everyone, of whatever ideology — for example that offered by Catholicism. This inclusiveness allows a reconciliation of Buddhist tenants with my down home empiricism.
There are five beliefs common to the major Buddhist sects:
How does a secular Buddhism measure up? As for point 1, it smacks of metaphysics: its truth or falsity is of no pragmatic concern; a secular Buddhism can safely discount it. As for 2 and 3 my secular weltanschauung need neither defend nor reject them. Rather as is the case with Toni's attitude toward Catholicism they can simply be left to the side. Toni's concern is focused elsewhere. The "practice" of a secular Buddhist's aim — one's target — is simply awareness: awareness of whatever is before the mind/body.
As for 4 and 5 I appeal to the inexplicable. That there is no self, that neither you nor I exist, seems obviously wrong. But a secular Buddhism carries over from Buddhism proper the inexplicable conviction — to be realized in a moment of enlightenment — that this long cherished belief in the I is an illusion. We trace with trepidation this I-centered narrative — yet hope to find a way out, a path through the gateless gate.
Point 5 — the all important one — Brings us again to the unexplainable. Some empirically minded writers have sought to understand enlightenment by appeal to the brain. To be enlightened is to be in a certain brain state. Now, we understand "brain state" but it is wrong to assume we understands the other term, "enlightenment." Mystics of the kind Huxley deals in emphasize the incomprehensible nature of enlightenment. To define enlightenment as a brain state ignores the fact that one part of the defining pair makes no sense. On might as well have said that gobbledygook is a brain state.
Where does all this leave the secular Buddhist? What is his or her world like? It is what science and common sense (these on a good day) tell us it is like. For example Darwin is right and his deniers wrong. But in addition to home truths and empirical findings a secular Buddhism acknowledges another realm — not truth but the beyond truth to, as we might say, the transcendental, the mystical. My own sympathy holds to that possibility. Over these many years I have sought to follow the Buddha's injunction: be a lamp unto yourself.
There are however further aspects of my secular Buddhism. A central one is the idea that Buddhist practice takes place in a context. It's not a matter just of words but something much wider and deeper. There is for example the Sanga, whose devotees help support one another in the quest for kensho and who carry on (or who seek to) a life that reflects basic Buddhist ethical principles, such as right livelihood. And most forcefully there is the centuries-old Zen aesthetic of poetry and art.
To count oneself a secular Buddhist, as I understand the term, is, for one thing, to set to the side common Buddhist ideological assertions while retaining the core ideas of no-self and enlightenment. Again, these doctrines are by no means the whole of the story. Beside words there are acts, carried on in the light of a compassionate adherence to Buddhist-like ideals. Words fade in the light of the existence of that enormously rich "chopping wood and carrying water" which — ideally — a would-be secular Buddhist carries over into everyday life.
Zen, despite its sometime dismissal of the power of mere words, nonetheless holds to an ideology. If one were to seek to defend a secular version of that religion it could be asked: what form of Zen is being changed? For of course there are several, most prominently Soto and Rinzai. What, ideological speaking, is the Buddhism I seek to present here? At the level of systems of belief there may be little difference. But a recent collection of interviews, (Cypress Trees In The Garden, edited by Richard McDaniel) of contemporary Zen teachers seems to divide the associated Zen Centers roughly in two. In one the emphasis is on seeking wisdom, meaning by that the quest for kensho. In the other the stress is on compassion. Where does that leave a secular Zen? In one respect the answer goes back to Toni Packer’s innovations in her Springwater Center, such as abandoning the keisaku. I no longer think the path to enlightenment goes through pain and straining effort. In the wisdom/compassion dichotomy I have referred to there is no need to choose one at the expense of the other. After all it is belief — mere belief — we are dealing with here.
Where does this leave me? To keep an eye out for Kensho and an open mind aimed at compassion — in that way carry on my long time journey toward that gateless gate.