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D.T. Suzuki's "Modern, Morality-Free" Zen?
Dakini
Veteran
In the opening to his paper, "Coming Down From the Zen Clouds", Stuart Lachs says that D.T. Suzuki promoted a non-traditional "modernist" interpretation of Zen. He "emphasized a Zen freed from its Mahayana Buddhist context, centered on a special kind of 'pure' experience, and without the traditional Buddhist concern for morality."
Buddhism without morality? Really? Did Suzuki really promote this? What about the precepts, did they play a role in this "modern" Buddhism? And what does "freed from its Mahayana Buddhist context" mean? Can anyone shed light on this?
Could it be that Suzuki's vision of Zen helped set the stage for some of the problems American Zen has suffered? How influential was he in that regard?
http://lachs.inter-link.com
Buddhism without morality? Really? Did Suzuki really promote this? What about the precepts, did they play a role in this "modern" Buddhism? And what does "freed from its Mahayana Buddhist context" mean? Can anyone shed light on this?
Could it be that Suzuki's vision of Zen helped set the stage for some of the problems American Zen has suffered? How influential was he in that regard?
http://lachs.inter-link.com
0
Comments
If any mystic would be dropped in another culture he wouldn’t be talking about the ethics of his religion very much; that’s not his favorite subject. He takes it for granted.
That doesn’t mean they think ethics are irrelevant; I suppose they just assume ethical notions are present already and don’t need to be emphasized.
For example, how many students have heard -- and perhaps repeated -- the argument that one tradition or another has a lineage that can trace itself unbroken back 2,500 years to Shakyamuni Buddha? Such assertions may serve to bolster one latter-day institution or purveyor or another, but collapse in the face of careful examination.
Stuart and I have batted things around from time to time. His point of view, if I get it aright, is that such fabrications do no one any good and, in fact, hamper an honest spiritual practice. My point of view is that spiritual formats are by necessity lies and fabrications from which, with time and practice, students learn to extricate themselves. Some lies are more self-serving and egregious than others, of course -- 'no-morality' might be taken as an example -- but I persist in my pig-headed point of view.
Just a small footnote to the subject matter here.
If you spend any time in an actual Zen organization with your eyes open, you realize quickly that the Zen as brought over by Suzuki and Watts and the early Western converts is highly idealized. It was in fact a Zen without morals, I believe. That didn't mean it was anti-morality, although its heavy emphasis on non-duality made it difficult to deal with. If good and evil are part of the dualistic illusion of samsara, then there is no inherently good or evil to the enlightened mind, only spontanious action, and thus the seeds of justification for any behavior.
If Lachs had been writing about Alan Watts (a writer and scholar of the same period, who was acquainted with Suzuki), it would have been a different matter!
I suppose we could all wax Jesuitical on this possibility, splitting one hair after another, but it seems to me that the experience of sneezing may shed some light on what an experience that is not concerned with morality might entail. Sneezing does not affirm or deny anything. It is simply sneezing. (If anyone doubts this, just try being a "Buddhist" or an "entomologist" or a "philosopher" or a "wise man" the next time you sneeze.) Unadorned experience is just unadorned experience. Whether anyone uses this premise for amoral or immoral activity (and there are examples of this sort of hogwash that Lachs points out) is up for grabs (see The Shimano Archive for example). I certainly think Buddhism would suggest (as it does in the 8-fold path) that moral behavior is to be preferred.
Just a little noodling.
In the paper, Lachs discusses how the Zen schools that are with us today came from a lineage that emphasizes sudden Awakening, believing that experience"to be so thorough, that the whole of the Buddha's path was realized with that experience. This view came to be known as 'sudden enlightenment/sudden cultivation'".
The other major trajectory in Zen held that after Enlightenment, it took years of integrating the insights of that experience into one's daily life, "which includes an awareness of other people's full humanity and our connectedness with them." Tsung-mi said, "Awakening from delusion is sudden; transforming an ordinary man into a saint is gradual". This school held that it took time and dedication, years, to cultivate the discipline and virtue of a Buddha, i.e. for an ordinary person's psychological development to catch up with the Enlightenment experience.
"..the enlightenment experience indeed offers a true view of one' self-nature, but without exhausting selfishness. Some delusions, such as existential bewilderment, may be overcome by a deep experience. Other more deep-seated delusion such as craving, hatred and conceitedness can only be overcome by making 'that which we have seen a living experience and molding our life accordingly.'"
However, the second lineage died out, so the belief that sudden enlightenment automatically conferred moral insight and conduct on the experiencer came to be the form of Zen that survived to the present day, the implication being that Zen teachers today aren't required to spend years developing discipline. They can receive Dharma transmission and be qualified to teach after reaching a certain stage in their study and meditation, as soon as the teacher feels they've achieved certain insights. Lachs states in another paper that they aren't vetted as to ethical behavior.
- - - - - - - --- -- -- -
But to say that Suzuki represented a Zen that didn't believe in fostering discipline, compassion and virtue in its teachers is a very different thing from saying that "D.T. Suzuki and others have led people to believe that there was no prescribed Zen morality".
In Zen and Japanese Culture, Suzuki states that Zen "is extremely flexible in adapting itself to almost any philosophy and moral doctrine as long as its intuitive teaching is not interfered with." Again the emphasis on the satori experience almost in a vacuum, as the essence of Zen or all there is to Zen.
I understand the debate about whether sudden enlightenment does or doesn't require years of ethics cultivation. I don't understand the idea that Zen doesn't have a characteristic moral code, or any moral code.
(Thank you all for your responses so far.)
So I conclude from these comments that Lachs was overstating Suzuki's position, claiming that he didn't believe in a Zen that excluded morality. I'm curious to read that book, now. I can't imagine presenting any form of Buddhism without the precepts.
That's different, as I see it, from saying that Zen presents no ethical guidelines for practitioners and teacher in their daily lives. Lachs seems to be talking about politics and Zen, while making sweeping statements that imply that Suzuki didn't believe Zen addressed personal moral teachings. I find it extremely difficult to believe that any Buddhist scholar, writer or practitioner could believe that any form of Buddhism is divorced from ethics and "virtue", as the Buddha put it. Maybe Lachs doesn't mean it that way.
Could Demieville be putting words in Suzuki's mouth, claiming S. placed Zen "above all moral considerations"? What does that mean? What kind of a Buddhism is that? It reduces Buddhism to nothing more than the satori experience. That's not at all what the Buddha taught. If it's true that's what Suzuki believed (I'm not convinced anyone could believe such a thing, though I guess there's a precedent for that in the Mahayana idea that enlightened beings are above mundane morality), it seems nonsensical.
Instructive in this regard is Kubota Ji'un's apology for Yasutani Roshi's right-wing and anti-Semitic stances during World War II. "For the offense caused by these errant words and actions of the past master, I, the present abbot of the Sanbô Kyôdan, cannot but express my heartfelt regret." (http://www.thezensite.com/ZenEssays/CriticalZen/Apology.html).
But not every teacher is equally forthright and honest and courageous. Some fall victim to their own press or their own philosophies. It may be a pity, but it is also simply the truth. Quack, quack, quack. ... let's keep our eye skinned for what might be called the plain old duck-truth. No need for cynicism or fear or smarmy, knee-jerk revulsion.
My view is, just keep your eyes skinned for the ducks AND don't you do that.
hm...anti-Semitic. I guess that speaks to what Lachs says about the form of Zen that survived to modern times was a form that emphasized Enlightenment without the accompanying "cultivation" of discipline and ethics. What a worthless Enlightenment.
btw, according to historians, the Japanese believed the Jews were of superior intelligence, and had plans to appoint them as administrators of Manchuria.
Technically sila is part of practice. It’s part of the eightfold path and it’s in the precepts.
Hard to miss in any school of Buddhism.
But there’s the famous story about Bodhidharma and Emperor Wu in which Bodhidharma states “there is no merit” and “vast emptiness, nothing holy in it”.
I suppose Bodhidharma is trying to shake the emperor loose from his attempts of grasping enlightenment. (Or at least that’s the idea behind the story)
If we can’t grasp enlightenment maybe we can’t say much about how it relates to virtue either.
Some people and some groups can take their notions of morality very, very serious. I think it’s okay to be somewhat relaxed about it.
There’s a similar story (in some way) about Ma Tzu. He is meditating to become a Buddha and Huai Jang compared that to attempting to make a mirror out of a brick.
We can be relaxed about meditation too. We can’t grasp enlightenment with meditation either.
Being relaxed about virtue and about meditation is not the end of them.
imho
Sorry I cannot be more help.
As to anti-Semitism in Japan, I can imagine the Japanese thinking that Jews, with a long and sometimes overbearing tradition of intelligence, were very sharp indeed. But Japan allied itself with the Nazis during WWII, so perhaps politics won out over common sense.
I guess we're wrestled with this enough. The next step would be to read Suzuki's book that Quandarious recommended, to see what Suzuki actually says.
Thanks, everyone.
I guess we're wrestled with this enough. The next step would be to read Suzuki's book that Quandarious recommended, to see what Suzuki actually says.
Thanks, everyone.
Hey, Dakini: I didn't actually recommend the book. It was just that I remembered a couple of tiny, scattered references to antinomianism in it, and Suzuki's implied rejection of that. The book is a real chore to wade through, and, because it is written from the point of "pranjnaparamita", it is mostly gobbledegook (at least, it is to someone like me!)
However, as Emerson once wrote: a man can find nourishment in the broth of boots, if he has to. Something is gained (even by me) from wading through this series of essays etc. It had been on my shelf for about forty years, and a few weeks ago, I thought that it was time I read it. However, I think that from my point of view, maybe the money would have been better spent in buying some other work. It's your choice!
Did D.T. ever actually teach in the West? Is there anyone around the Buddhist boards who might have been a student?
Hello Dakini,
Good question. I am a teacher in Buddhism. I just started teaching a Zen course to students at my high school. Thus, your question is timely.
I have read a few books by D. T. Suzuki. I never get the impression that he advocated a lax kind of morality or any deviation from the precepts. However, within Chinese Buddhism, there is a common misconception that the Zen people do not care as much about traditional morality.
I think this is understandable, given that Zen is a product of a marriage between Buddhism and Taoism. In fact, Zen is much more Taoist than Buddhist. Compared to Buddhists, the Taoists are much more of a free spirit. There is also a kind of anti-morality in Taoism. This should be obvious to anyone who has read the Tao Te Ching. But it is important to understand why Taoism takes this very radical stance. The Tao Te Ching says that when the Tao is abandoned, there arises kindness and righteousness. Traditional morality can have a corrupting effect because it can become another form of ego pursuit. It is ego-gratifying to be considered to be a saint. Remember what Jesus said about the Pharisees?
It is for this reason that I am not in favor of moral education, which is popular in many schools. It is better to cultivate mindfulness and become aware of one's intentions in one's actions. It also helps to be aware of the consequences of one's actions. Karmic laws are universal. Zen people are not exempt from the laws of karma.
Hope this helps.
@Taoman Timely for you, but this thread is from 2012!
Very interesting about the role of Taoism in Zen, Taoman! Thanks! And what do you mean, "When the Tao is abandoned, there arises kindness and righteousness"? Isn't the goal to learn to follow the Tao?
And welcome to the forum, btw.
.
Great thread from the archives, just a moment ago for some . . .
:clap: .
Tsung-mi said,
Exactly so. There is a great story about a Zen student who goes to his teacher to have his awakening confirmed. The teacher says, 'Yes you are enlightened but how enlightened are you?'
Which lead us into quackery:
Again and again, we must learn discernment, person, persona and independent capacity, all different parts of the being. From awakening comes the capacity to be moral in a way suited to circumstances. Those circumstances are due to the sleep that the spiritual community of seekers are engaged in. That will be different, dependent on time, social norms of the group etc.
Worrying about whether Suzuki is a Zen motorcycle, a cream cheese or enlightenment cracker helps us as much as thinking eating chop suey will make us Chinese.
:wave: .
Oh good, I'm not alone in being glad to see this resurrection either, thanks @Taoman !
I can immediately think up seven or eight really stupid moral laws already. Yeah I know that's not what is meant. One of the points I get is the warning against holding onto anything too tightly.
Another point is that it's good to know within yourself when you are holding onto something too tightly. For instance, I can be clamped on for dear life and almost in tears trying to convince my interlocutor that I am NOT attached at all.
When we humans grasp and cling, we can even turn morals on their ears AND go completely blind and deaf to boot.
Who says it doesn't? I always thought . . . no way.
Thanks for getting this thread revived. It seems I missed it when it was originally raised, as i think I joined this forum somewhere around Nov-11. May be I was totally new to what Buddha taught at that stage that I would not have even opened this thread at that stage, or may be I would have opened it, but I do not remember any content about this thread at all.
So today I read this thread - though due to my limited theoretical knowledge, even today I was not able to understand much of its stuff.
Anyways coming to the topic which @Dakini has raised regarding morality in Zen in D.T.Suzuki's teachings. I have not read D.T.Suzuki's teachings, so I cannot comment on it. But I have heard commentaries about Dogen's teachings of Shobogenzo, Genjokoan, Uji.
In some commentary I heard that initially when Dogen realized that the way his teachings' have been misunderstood by the Samurai class of Japan as that since everything is already Buddhanature, how can any moment be perfected by doing anything other than what has been done in that moment - so everything is ok? Then Dogen thought that due to this misinterpretation of his teachings, the Samurai class was creating much suffering. So Dogen revisted his teachings and added an essence of karma in his teachings, so that the lay community keeps the law of karma in consideration while acting. Indirectly morality was added, though i think in Zen, the 4 NT, 8FP are not directly been taught in Zen schools.
I think Zen approaches the matter by being more in the moment. Dogen's teaching of just sitting (Zazen) is in itself sitting Buddha and is in itself going beyond Buddha by non-thinking, which is thinking not thinking.
Moreover, the koans are made with the idea of getting rid of all ideas from the reader. Obviously attachment to ideas is to be let go of, when the idea itself has to be get rid of. Even idea to enlightenment is to be dropped. Moreover, Dogen said practice-enlightenment as one word, meaning practice is enlightenment and enlightenment is practice.
Moreover, Zen teaches that the truth cannot be known, not because we are stupid and truth is some great knowledgeable idea, but because truth is not that sort of thing which can be grasped. So the question comes why practice when the truth cannot be known and the answer is since we all already have Buddhanature and the only way it can be manifested is by practicing it, so it becomes a life long journey of practice to seek the truth, know it in the moment when it happens, but cannot be hold onto the next moment and as per Dogen, the practice of zazen is in itself makes a person into Buddha in that moment of sitting. Zazen is no different than activities of human life and all the activities of human life can become moments of zazen of non-thinking.
So I think from Zen perspective, morality comes as a by-product of the practice and not as a means that helps to start the practice.
@Cinorjer: Can you please look at my above post and please correct it, wherever my understanding of Dogen's teachings is incorrect above? Thanks for your help.
Oh, boy, where to start? What @misecmisc1 says about Dogen's variety of Zen seems accurate enough, to the extent it's possible to peg that frustrating genius down. His great insight is simple, in that for him the mistake is thinking you were practicing Zen in order to break through to enlightenment. To him, when you entered Zen meditation, you were in an enlightened state of mind and there was nothing else to achieve out there. The trick was to practice until you learned to remain in this state of mind always and in every situation. That was the hard part. It was, to a great extent, a criticism of the Satori as the defining experience of Zen Enlightenment.
But Dogen also stressed the Buddhism part of Zen Buddhism and held contempt for Masters who did not read and study the sutras. Those sutras would have included moral teachings. Dogen never had much to do with the Samurai or royal class of people, unlike some of the Buddhist sects who enjoyed the money and gifts of land and such that flowed in.
But for the original OP, Suzuki came from the Samurai class, although by then the families were poor and it didn't mean much anymore. He was a great translator, but I think several criticisms of his writings are deserved. First, he did idealize the practice and history of Zen in Japan. He also idealized the Samurai class. Suzuki was a nationalist and there's no getting around it. That was the culture and teaching he came from.
Perhaps more damaging, he gave the impression that Zen could not be expressed in words and that true expressions of an enlightened mind had to sound like nonsense. To Suzuki, an enlightened mind was beyond logic or comprehension by the non-enlightened. This is Zen as mysticism. Dogen would have intensely disagreed with Suzuki on that, as would many of the Zen masters.
I guess my own thinking is that Zen doesn't teach morality, but it doesn't disagree that a moral life isn't necessary. I once heard my old Zen teacher say that Zen without Buddhism is just Taoism.
This is helpful, Cinorjer. So Zen doesn't teach the precepts? It's mainly about meditation practice, and achieving a breakthrough of Enlightened insight? What you describe in the first paragraph I quoted sounds like Suzuki was in to the "crazy wisdom school" of Buddhism.
Funny how even Zen can have so many differing branches. It would be a hard sell saying Thich Nhat Hanh doesn't teach morality. But then he is also into non-sectarianism so...
So is Zen basically amoral?
Heh. Saying Zen does or doesn't do just about anything is problematic, considering the freedom it gives the Zen Masters to incorporate anything into their teaching that they feel is necessary. However, the Precepts are certainly an important part of Zen practice today and I assume all Zen monks, like Buddhist monks everywhere, had to take vows that included the precepts along with other oaths of behavior. So monks were certainly aware that moral behavior was expected as part of a Buddhist life.
I think in Suzuki's case, what we have is a strong streak of anti-intellectualism. Considering that a bio of the man shows he lived in the academic world, was a Professor, and either taught or lectured all his life, that seems incongruous. Yet upon further reflection, that also means he had a perfect view of the short-comings and failures of the intellectual approach to peace and happiness. He could see where the life of the academic was flawed when it came to spiritual satisfaction, and so a Zen practice that claimed book learning was unnecessary appealed to him. In any case, it certainly gave meaning to his own life.
FWIW, Huang Po did the same. So did a lot of the old masters! It's just a particular way of teaching IMO. It doesn't mean a zen practitioner can go around killing and stealing and it's no big deal.
I agree. At the( his) monastery we cover the precepts and morality. Sometimes when Zen comes up here...I can't/don't relate. But your right...I think he's a group all his own....hahaha...which is why he catches heat for some stuff....it's understandable...
Indeed, the goal is to follow the Tao. However, the problem is that all the talk about morality would not get us there. My earlier quote is from Chapter 18 of the Tao Te Ching. It says "When the Tao is abandoned, there arises kindness and righteousness. When people prize wisdom, then great hypocrisy appears."
We can understand this better by referring to Chapter 3 of the Tao Te Ching. It says, "Don't prize virtues, so that people will not compete to be virtuous. Don't value the rare goods, so that people will not steal."
This relates well with the Zen koan of "Not thinking about the good. Not thinking about the evil. What is your original face?"
It is for this reason that Zen does not explicitly teach morality. Morality can be another ego trap.
Morality can be another ego trap.
As can the absence of morality. Though on balance I'd rather be among moral people.
I think in Taoism, in a basically moral society, talking about morality is superfluous.
When you need to begin to talk about morality, it's a sure sign that society is no longer moral.
Taoism is a moral system but there's a fine line to cross to be a moralist which is distasteful according to Lao Tzu.
The following are parts of an essay by Lao Tzu on "Tao as a moral principle or virtue"
So it isn't that Taoism and Zen do not promote morals so much as imply that with right understanding, morals do not need cultivating because they will naturally arise.
So it isn't that Taoism and Zen do not promote morals so much as imply that with right understanding, morals do not need cultivating because they will naturally arise.
Yes, and I think you can look at the precepts both as a foundation and a result of practice.
Let's put it this way. Look at the religions that supposedly stress morality as an important element of the practice. How's that worked out for them, when it comes to people actually following those moral rules? While individual Zen Buddhists have occasionally strayed from the Precepts, overall has it made any difference that the focus is almost entirely on individual meditation, not social behavior?
People can commit great sins in the name of morality. Just something to think about.
I think the problems arise when morality is said to be something which we must learn from anything other than experience or even worse, something we are incapable of without the fear of punishment.
Maybe "morality" is the wrong word then. I meant I would rather be around people who keep the precepts.
Then the teaching should be about ego traps, not about avoiding morality. Morality (or "virtue", as the Buddha called it) is a guide and a discipline. If someone gets ego-involved with it, that's another problem.
So, in Taoism, lying, stealing, taking advantage of people is irrelevant? Help me out, here.
edit: Oh, I see by @ourself 's post that the goal in Taoism is to foster a mentality by which one naturally wouldn't be drawn to to do any of those things. Interesting.
You and me both. There's a certain relaxed, peaceful vibe in the air when I'm in the right group.
The "Sutra of 42 Sections" was the first Sanskrit work to be translated into Chinese, and Christmas Humphreys is of the opinion that it contains the core principles of Ch'an, then Zen Buddhism.
It has many sources, with a strong redolence to the Dhammapada, and in several of its forty-two sections there are inequivocal references to the Buddhist precepts, as will be noticed by anyone reading the different versions of the Sutra I have added at the end.
The first translation of the Sutra into English was by Soyen Shaku, a Buddhist Abbot and teacher of Suzuki, who incidentatlly collaborated in the translation.
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/forum/f27n01p01_the-birth-of-zen-buddhism.htm
"The earliest Buddhist Scriptures to be translated into Chinese were a collection of sayings culled from a number of Sutras, or Discourses, the collection being known is The Sutra of 42 Sections, which may be described as a Hinayana work modified to express the views of Mahayana adherents. This was not Zen. It was, however, a prelude to its birth, for it was the Chinese genius working on the raw material of Indian thought which, with contributions from Confucian and Taoist sources, produced, with Bodhidharma as mid-wife, the essentially Chinese School of Ch'an or, as the Japanese later called it, Zen Buddhism.
Suffice it to say that the two main schools of Buddhism are as the two sides of a coin. All that is relatively stressed in one is discoverable in the other in a less developed form; and the two are one in the sense that men and women are one, two sides of a human being. The Thera Vada, now to be found in Ceylon, Burma, Siam and Cambodia, is certainly the older School. It is more orthodox, clings harder to the wording of its Pali Canon, emphasizes moral philosophy and the prime importance of the individual's working out his own salvation before he attempts to "save" his neighbor or the world. If it is puritan in its cold insistence on character-building, it is yet suffused with the sweetness of a reasonable, unemotional pursuit of a Way which leads — did not the Blessed One prove it abundantly? — to the heart's desire, that peace which comes when the heart is empty of desire, and self is dead.
The Mahayana adopted all of this, but added upon these broad and, some say, all sufficient premises a vast erection of emotion-thought which flowered in time in the intuitive white light of Zen. [...] The Buddha, from a man who attained Enlightenment, came to be viewed as the Principle of Enlightenment which dwells in all. As such his forms were multiplied, and fast on the heels of iconography came ritual; a moral philosophy became a religion. The metaphysical heights of Indian thought were climbed, equaled, and finally surpassed. The Bodhisattva, he who dedicates his life and the fruits of life to his fellow men, replaced the Arhat, he who strives for his perfection before he presumes to lead his brother on the Way. Compassion was raised to equality with Wisdom; the depth of the Thera Vada was turned to an expansion of interest which embraced all living things."
http://huntingtonarchive.osu.edu/resources/downloads/sutras/01earlyTexts/The Sutra of 42 Sections.pdf
http://www.buddhagate.org/Teachings/Sutras/documents/sutra_of_42_chapters_sutra_v1.3.pdf
http://www.sacred-texts.com/journals/jras/os19-14.htm
Rule based morality set in stone, sura, Śīla or sutra does not have the fluidity of the higher perspective found in the Way. It may be a base that washes away or a rigidity that stands in the Way to be washed away . . .
Yo Taoism. Way to go. :wave: .