zero hour

as the center of all things

As the ancient master Rinzai Roku, used to warn his students that they did not have enough faith in themselves, he would also berate them for letting their minds gallop around in search of something which they had never lost, and which is "right before you at this very moment".

Awakening is primarily a matter of having the nerve- the courage to "let go" without further delay, having unwaivering faith that one's natural, spontaneous functioning is the Buddha Mind.

"There is no place in Buddhism for using effort. Just be ordinary and nothing special. Relieve your bowels, pass water, put on your clothes and eat food. When you are tired, go lie down. Ignorant people may laugh at me, but the wise will understand. As you go from place to place, as you regard each one as your own home, they will be genuine, for when circumstances come you must not try to change them. Thus your usual habits of feeling, which make karma for the Five Hells, will of themselves become the Great Ocean of Liberation" ~Rinzai Roku

This is not a philosophy of not looking where one is going; it is a philosophy of not making where one is going so much more important than where one is, that there will be no point in going.

The Life of Zen begins, therefore, with the disillusion with the purist of goals which do not really exist: the good without the bad, the gratification of the self which is no more than an idea, and the morrow which never comes. For all these things are a deception of symbols pretending to be realities, and to seek after them is like walking straight into a wall upon which some painter has, by the convention of perspective, suggested an open passage.

In short: Zen begins at the point when there is nothing further to seek, nothing to be gained. Zen is most emphatically not be be regarded as a system or journey of self improvement, or a way of becoming a Buddha.

In the words of Rinzai Roku, "If a man seeks the Buddha, that man loses the Buddha". 

For all ideas of self-improvement and becoming or getting something in the future relate solely to our abstract image of ourselves. To follow them is to give ever more reality to that image. On the one hand, our true, non conceptual self is already the Buddha and needs no improvement. In the course of time it may grow, but one does not blame the egg for not becoming a chicken; still less does one criticize the pig for having a shorter neck than the giraffe.

What is therefore to be gained from Zen? It is called WuShih (Japanese Buji), or "nothing special", for as the the Buddha says in the Vajracchedika:

"I obtained not the least thing from unexcelled, complete awakening, and for this very reason it is called- Unexcelled Complete Awakening".

Long before the origins of the Zen School, Both Indian Yoga and Chinese Toaism practiced "watching the breath". If we look at man as process rather than entity, rhythm rather than structure, it is obvious that breathing is something that he does, and thus is- constantly. Therefore grasping air with the lungs goes hand in hand with graping at life. Just as there is no need to TRY to be in accord with the Tao....no need to try to see, to try to hear, to try to feel; so it must be remembered that the breath will always take care of itself.

This is not a breathing "exercise", so much as a "watching and letting" of the breath, and it is always a serious mistake to undertake it in the spirit of a compulsive discipline to be practiced with a goal in mind.

This way of breathing (Za-Zen) is not for special times alone. Like Zen itself it is for all circumstances whatsoever. Each in its own way, every human activity can become a form of Za-Zen. The application of Zen in activity is not restricted to the formal arts, and, on the other hand, does not absolutely require the specific "sitting technique" of Za-Zen proper.

Zen is a liberation from time. For when we open our eyes and see clearly, it becomes obvious that there is no other time than this instant, and that the past and future are abstractions without any concrete reality. However, it is not as if the superficial consciousness (your ego) were one thing and the "original mind" (your god) another- for the former is a specialized activity of the latter. And the latter is the source of the former. Thus the superficial consciousness can awaken to the eternal present if it stops grasping.
That of course is not my own entirely original thesis, but rather my interpretation of Alan Watts.

Poeple interested in Buddhism, who have never heard of Alan Watts, usually aske me- Why that book? He wasn't a Buddhist or a Zen Master in any specific school, was he?

Here is my responce- Watts is quite clear; he never claimed to be anything other than what he was, a man who spent most of his life dedicated to the study of the history and practice of Buddhism in it's many forms. He spent his life eating and breathing with Buddhists from schools in every major country with a long Buddhist history. But never joined any one of them, because once you join you are bared from explaining anything to anyone  outside of that school. His goal was not to popularize, but rather to clear away the mundane misunderstandings that were prevalent in his day, and persist through till ours. Two examples: re-incarnation and the wheel of Karma are commonly misrepresented here in the west- the idea that you have a unique soul that is individually reborn in different bodies and at different era's is NOT what the Buddha taught. What the Buddha taught is that there is NO individualized soul- there is only Atman. And all living things, indeed all of the universe, is that same Atman. A singular entity of consciousness is at the center of each and every one of us, and it's that same entity that is manifesting the entire universe. Thus, no one person could be "reincarnated" as described above because "we" already are, have been, and will be all people that have ever lived, everyone that is living now, and everyone that will ever live.

Stated in the sinmplest form possible: We are all the same person, in different bodies, so what is there to re-incarnate?

The wheel of Karma does not represent improvement over many lives, the wheel represents every moment, here, now, in this life. That is what Alan Watts was all about- clearing away the misleading cultural baggage and getting down to the real core of what Buddha experienced, what enlightenment is and is not, and how we can discover our own Zen practice, regardless of who we are, what we have studied, or where we live. The challenge that Watts set out to conquer in "The Way of Zen", was about separating the cultural aspects that each nation brought into the Buddha's teaching when it took root in each of those communities (ie- that re-incarnation thing was actually from the Ancient Hindu religion, the one the Buddha renounced when he gave up his life as a royal prince of India) in order to get to the real core of meaning in what the Buddha experienced. The secret behind that is that it's all here and now, there is nothing to attain, there is nothing to strive for, there is only being here and now. Honestly, for a westerner who seeks to understand, this book clarifies the fact that the lesson is in the experience, not in the trappings of any particular school of Buddhism.

For anyone wanting "to be a Buddhist" who is not born inside any of the Asian cultures that already have an established school of Buddhism, this is the book to read, and know intimately. If you just want to learn the other culture's chants, and buy the other cultures icons, by all means, have at it. But if you want to comprehend how to let go of your ego (which is the only things that any and all of those practices are about) then you don't need to go much further than Mr. Watts and his book.