What is "zen" (lowercase)?
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| Shakyamuni Buddha (Rev. Seigaku) |
This is very easy to answer. In Japanese zen literally means "meditation" in the sense of "absorption" (Pali jhana, Sanskrit dhyana, Chinese chan or channa, Vietnamese thiền, Korean sŏn or seon, and Japanese zen). Absorptions are progressive states of stillness (samadhi), misleadingly translated as "concentration."
The connotation of this rendering is struggle, force, and effort, whereas "absorption" is the result of persistent balanced effort (sādhanā practice) but itself is effortless: It is not accomplished by "muscling" or "over-efforting" but rather by "letting go" and no longer "clinging" to things.
Absorption is a natural state of enhanced awareness because of the purification and intensification of consciousness, which is usually scattered, distracted, and beset by the Five Hindrances. Through persistent, steady, calm practice these obstructions are replaced by the Five Factors of Absorption (jhana'anga. "limbs of absorption"), detached tranquility, dispassionate observation, and mindful looking on or objective witnessing or simply watching, at first accompanied by a sort of "bliss" (piti, rapture, uplift, joy, enthusiasm, zeal), "happiness" (sukha), and "contentment" (santosha).
What is Zen (uppercase)?
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| There's really no need to overthink this (like this writer), but it may be better to demystify. |
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| Bodhidharma, South Indian monk in China |
"Zen" with a capital Z is a different story, for it may refer to the entire history and set of practices in the Japanese Mahayana Chan School originating in China, having spread to Korea and other parts of Asia and now the world.
Perplexing discussions of "emptiness" (shunyata) and "suchness" (tathātā) are more easily understood in the older texts of the Theravada.
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| The Wheel of the Dharma (8 spokes) |
In this Buddhist school, these terms refer to the "impersonal" (egoless) nature of all phenomena, particularly the Five Aggregates clung to as "Self" in the Heart Sutra, and the Dependent Origination (conditioned co-genesis) of all composite "things" (dhammas, phenomena).
What is NIRVANA?
What are those "things"? They are everything other than the only compact (noncomposite) item, the sole unconditioned element, which is called nirvana (Pali nibbana).
Nirvana, as our habitual logic might compel us to conclude, is not nothingness. Rather, it is the end of:
- all suffering/disappointment (dukkha, pain)
- delusion/ignorance (regarding ultimate things)
- further rebirth (in the "continued wandering on" of miserable samsara).
Nirvana is:
- the Deathless (Amata, Amrita, ambrosia)
- the unconditioned element
- the real (not marked by the Three Characteristics of all conditioned states)
- the peaceful, blissful, rest.
For anyone who's convinced that the Buddha never had anything to say about nirvana, there is this lovely description describing the indescribable, almost capturing the ineffable, or seeming to put words to that which is really beyond words.
These words are said as a corrective for everyone making the massive mistake of concluding that nirvana has to mean "annihilation, nothingness, non-existence, or the void," a pernicious wrong view.
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| Could anyone ever draw what can't be imagined? |
Anyone not yet convinced that the Deathless is not Eternal Life (but perhaps closer to the Ancient Greek term mistranslated as such, aion, as spoken of by the wise Gnostics) and the Unconditioned is just not like the conditioned (all those composite things utterly dependent on causes and conditions), the Buddha said more:
“Truly, there is a realm, where there is neither solid, nor fluid, neither heat, nor motion, neither this world, nor any other world, neither sun nor moon. This I call neither arising, nor passing away, neither standing still, nor being born, nor dying. There is neither foothold, nor development, nor any basis. This is the end of suffering" (Ud. VIII. 1 - The Immutable).
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