Zen for Happiness (快活禪)

When one thinks of Zen, the usual image that rises upon the horizon of one'd mind may well be that of a bald headed monk in a brown or black loose fitting robe sitting cross-legged in a lotus position with half or completely closed eyes inside some mountain cave or other or in an empty room somewhere inside a Buddhist monastery, with smoke rising in curly wisps from a metal joss stick bowl filled with the grayish powders of burnt ashes. One does not usually associate Zen with happiness. But that  impression was shattered last night. It was shattered by Dr. Ho Man Ying, Tina at a talk at the HKSHP. Dr. Ho is a Ph D who started studying philosophy and then went on to study Buddhism and is now the assistant head of the Hong Kong Institute of Buddhology. She obtained her Ph. D at the Chung Shan University and is now a lecturer at the School of Continuing Professional Education of HKU and of Chinese Cultural Studies at the Open University and has published a number of popular books on Buddhism.

Last night, she gave us a brief introduction on the usual Buddhist ideas about the Co-dependent origination of effects (緣生法), the causation of the standard 5 poisons of (五毒) greed, anger, ignorance, pride and doubt, the 4 Noble Truths (四聖諦) to the elimination of suffering  ie. Suffering, Accumulation, Removal and Extinction (苦集滅絕). To her there are many ways or upayas (法門/方便) in which we may arrive at Nirvana (湼盤), those on earth  or imperfect (defective) nirvana (有漏湼盤) and final Nivana or perfect or defect-free nirvana (無漏湼盤). Suffering is seen as a result of ignorance (無明) in the sense that we do not understand the true nature of our being ie. that everyone has Buddha-Nature( 佛性) something clear, bright, pure, peaceful and therefore happy. Happiness is defined negatively as the absence of pain and suffering. But normally, we are only able to achieve partial and brief happiness because our happiness do not usually last.

What we need to do to be happy is not just to" know" and "understand" that it is possible for us to realize our inherent birth right, our Buddha-Nature but how we may "in practice" prolong the intermittent periods of our ephemeral happiness and peace of mind and to make that condtion of enlightenment and peace permanent: how to make such a suffering-less and painless state endure so that we feel good all the time. I asked her how do we "know" we have got this so-called Buddha-Nature and that that is not really just another "concept" or "dogma" which Buddhists assert. Her reply was typically Buddhist. She said what we "know" is not intellectual "knowing" but "empirical" knowing.  I asked her whether what she termed "empirical" knowledge is equivalent to "experiential" or "existential" knowledge, a kind of direct knowing obtained in "practice" when we do meditation when we achieve a kind of "non-dual" type of awareness(覺) in which we do not attempt to "judge" whether the thoughts and images appearing in our mind are good or bad, beneficial or prejudicial to ourselves but merely observe their coming and going and without taking any "active" steps to "reject" or "expel" or "drive away" ideas we regard as "bad" or "an obstacle" or "interfering" nor to "follow" or get attched to them when they are considered good or beautiful because in the latter case they may become just another form of temptations (心魔), perhaps not as bad as temptation to evil thoughts but still bad. She agreed. In fact, that is what I found in my own meditation.

According to Dr. Ho, we may do meditations in many ways, sitting (坐禪) or "silent" (靜禪) way or "walking"  or "active" (行禪). What she learned from her master Happy Rinpoche, is a new technique of "rapid Zen" (快禪). Her master is now called "the happiest man on earth" and has written many books on how he achieved that. She told us that her master originally suffered from claustrophobia at age 13. When he accompanied the other masters to do "closed door meditation" (閉/封關), he could not function properly for a year. Then he finally decided to confront his fear and deal with it by confronting head on and observing it through experiencing it fully in meditation. He was completely cured of the phobia after three days!  In psychology, I think this is called voluntary "flooding": we "fully" face the object of our fear in all its modes, without escaping, without turning away and actually confront it directly and experience its full power in our body and discover through actual experience that it is not as terrifying or frightening or fearful as we first thought it was. He observed the most subtle and most minute changes in his own physiology and was thus instantly "cured" after three days, without welcoming it, but without rejecting it either, and finally without fear. In fact, the fear revealed its true nature, just something transient. It was just an emotion and like all emotions, they never last for any substantial period of time! It was nothing. It was empty. Thereafter he never experienced this claustrophobia again. It had completely disappeared: vanished into thin air! He merely observed and tried to understand how it affected him and that it was not as fearful as he previously thought. Knowledge and enlightment has saved him from his fear. 

What is most interesting to learn last night is this rapid Zen. What this means is that we do very quick Zen: ie. stay relaxed, observe whatever is going on inside our mind, our bodies, without judging and then do our gentle best to return to a state of calm and serenity. I think this is a good and practical way under modern living conditions. We cannot be fully engaged in doing things every minute of every day of our waking life. There are bound to be moments when we take little snippets of time to relax, eg. after we have done a file, after finishing a particular task whether at home or in the office, after breakfast, lunch or dinner, whilst engaged in certain "automatic" or "no-thinking required" actions e.g whilst walking in the streets but not crossing the road . We can take a break, a one minute, two minute, 5 minute, 10 minute break for our mind not to do any conscious "thinking" and do as many "quick Zen" as possible each day. This makes a lot of sense  to me. Because we will have plenty of opportunity to do that. The Tai Chi master have also taught us the principle that we can practice whilst walking, standing, sitting and sleeping (行站坐臥, 無不用功).  I know from my study of psychology that when we engage in patterns of conduct which are repetitive, it will take less and less time for us to get to the optimum condition. The psychological or neurological reason is simply that with each repetition, it takes a smaller and smaler quantity of energy to kick-start the "triggering point" for the "automatic launch" of the "repeated sub-routine". In other words, the threshold for its launch becomes progressively lower with each repetition. This is in fact the age old principle of  "practice" (功夫). The more practice we do, the easier it becomes. There is a Western saying: practice makes perfect. Chinese folk wisdom has an equivalent saying,"familiarity makes for skill" (熟能生巧). The psychological explanation is that the "sub-routine" has switched its "mode of operation" (MO) from that at the "conscious" level to that at the "sub-conscious" or non or un-conscious MO.  The unconscious MO is fast because it does not involve having the relevant neural messages go through the loop of the forebrain loop or frontal cortex, which takes a great deal of time to do fine grained comparison and analysis. This is by far the gist of what I have learned from Dr. Ho's talk.

But learning about the "Quick Zen" is not the only thing I learned from Dr. Ho. I also got clarification from her on the relationship between emptiness or the void ((空性), karma (業) (the result of the action of different causes), the nature of reality l(物之本性) like the idea that everything has no substance ( in the sense of permanent substance)(物無自性) because of the operation of the principle of "dependent co-origination)(緣起性空). and the fact the although things do not have a permanent and fixed intrinsic nature belonging to themselves, they do have an apparent "effect" or "appearance" or appear as "phenomena" to our five senses (五根) viz. eyes, ears  nose, tongue  and body or skin (眼耳鼻舌身) corresponding to our senses of sight ( form colour, images , hearing ( sound, words, music etc), smell, taste, and touch (色聲香味觸) and if we add will (意 or 法) become six roots of temptation and confusion (六根) or (六境)(6 objects of our corresponding "sensory organs")  and therefore will assume a certain form (相) to our five senses (無體有相)  to give rise to 6 kinds of knowledge (六識) ie. 眼識耳識鼻識舌識身識意識) and 5 sources of suffering (五蘊) or body, sensation or feeling, images, conduct and cognition or knowledge obtained through the organization of the data from our various perceptive organs within our brain or mind.(色受想行識.). To our five senses, hunger is "real" even though hunger is a phenomenon! We do have a real need to do something about it. There is a hierarchy of what is "real" and what is "illusory". I also got a new angle on the essential Buddhist concept of Emptiness or the Void  (空). She links this idea to change. Everything is empty and an illusion (諸相諸法皆空)because of the operation of the principle of constant changes. This is very much like what the Taoists have always been advocating: that change (易) or (變化) is the only unchanging law of the universe and the normal state (常) of the universe. Things do not have their own nature because they cannot exist independently by themselves: everything is mutually caused by the "temporary" coming together of a number of other causes and as the different causes are constantly changing accordance to time, place and people, it cannot have a "permanent" or "fixed" nature and therefore is just a "concept" created by our mind or an illusion and therefore its true nature is empty (空). But fortunately, the Buddha thinks that every one is naturally endowed with and possesses three powers : the wisdom to be compassionate (慈慧), the wisdom to understand (智慧) and also power to improve (向力). Therefore there is hope of transcending all sufferings in this world and to arrive at nirvana for every one! And if we cannot realize them, that is only because of the obstacles (障) to their full realization. Once the obstacles are removed, our true nature will reveal itself. Wisdom will help us see the light that is within us. Wisdom is like a fire. It will burn away all obstacles to our understanding of our true nature to be happy and all the obstacles (無明障) that stand in the way to our realizing our inherent potential to be a Buddha ourselves. But to obtain wisdom, we need to to learn and after we have learned we must persist in training ourselves to remove the relevant obstacles until our constant awareness becomes second nature to us.

What is particularly useful is that she related a personal experience of how she actually arrived at enlightenment on a particular occasion. She has a master whom she had followed for a while. The master was always joking, full of fun, a sense of humor and generally very easy going but he was leaving. She went to the airport to see him off and felt very sad that he was leaving and it was uncertain whether she could see him again although after all the years, she had learned and intellectually realized that she should not get attached to him but she could not help feeling how she felt. She felt very grateful and was reluctant for him to leave. But after he left, it snowed. She was in her bedroom, still thinking about him. Then a thought struck her. She could merge her gratefulness and thankfulness into emptiness so that instead of it being a "personal" gratefulness, it became a "general" gratefulness as the snow melt into water and water will join the other elements of the earth and merge into the world. The gratefulness was still there but it had become a more universal sense of gratefulness. It has merged with the Void of the universe!