Max Bartges 12/11/08 Dr. Katz Whats the Point?

An Examination of the Zen and Kabbalah Traditions

Looking beyond the rituals, festivals, hymns, traditions and so on, anyone considering him-or-herself to be religious, (or to be following a particular Spiritual path), has more than likely asked the question at least once, Why am I doing this? It makes sense that if one is to dedicate him-or-herself to a lifelong practice and study of a particular set of teachings, he-or-she must have resolved all doubts as to whether there are many fruits to be harvested from the first planted tree representing initiation, or rebirth as commitment, (i.e. faith). St. Thomas Aquinas, regarded by the Roman Catholic Church as its most authoritative theologian1, wrote this on the existence of God: But as Damascene says, the knowledge of God is naturally implanted in all. Therefore, the existence of God is self-evident.2 Through the lenses of two very distinct traditions, Zen and Kabbalah, one can examine how the universal intuition of an omnipresent Supernatural is formulated and molded into a distinct cultural zeitgeist attempting to answer the unanswerable: Whats the point? This question can be separated into two coexistent realms; that of the physical, and that of the spiritual, i.e. How will my faith benefit me in this life? vs. How will my faith benefit me in the afterlife?
1

Hick, John ed. Classical and Contemporary Readings in the Philosophy of Religion, Second Edition. Pg. 38 Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 1970 2 Ibid.

Examining Zen first, an insight from Chinese Zen Master Yoka Daishis Song of Enlightenment:

The great elephant does not walk on the hares lane Supreme Enlightenment goes beyond the narrow range of intellection; Cease from measuring heaven with a tiny piece of reed; If you have no insight yet, I will have the matter settled for you. 3

A reading of the first line suggests this: The path of a supernatural Enlightenment cannot be that of those who do not attain it: How can a man versed in the truths of an intellectual reality be expected to exist with those of a transcendental one? To quote D.T. Suzuki: The awakening [in Zen] is really the rediscovery or excavation of a long-lost treasureconsciousness in its ordinary scientific sense has no use; the whole being must come forward. 4 This leaves an inquisitor in a tough position because any attempt to visualize, verbalize, or even conceptualize Zen is automatically neither correct nor incorrect! the difference is meaningless. The goal is to unify a being that has been fragmented by experientially hyper-developing an image of tangible consciousness at the exclusion of the metaphysical Reality. And here one can see how the aforementioned assertion of St. Thomas Aquinas conflicts with the path of Zen: whether God exists or not is irrelevant: Christians and other theists seem to be

Suzuki, D.T. Manual of Zen Buddhism. Pg. 103 Grove Press, Inc., NYC. 1982 4 Suzuki, D.T. et al. Man and Transformation, Papers From the Eranos Yearbooks 5. Pg.179 Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey. 1972

unnecessarily busy in trying to prove God as objectively existing before they believe in him.5 So what, then, are the goals of Zen, taking into account both the physical and spiritual sides of the coin? To be. There is no Heaven and Hell, nor good and evil and thus the distinction between this life and another becomes hollow; the path of Truth is begun not with a state of mind or body but of being! Kabbalah is a practical guide for transforming chaos and fragmentation into unity and completion.6 This sentence seems at odds with what most of us relate to Kabbalah superficial celebrities on television sporting bracelets in an attempt to be trendy and allude to some undefined spirituality as a shoddy cover for an utterly artificial and useless existence. Delving deeper, however, one discovers that Kabbalah, using the Zohar as its main text, has been most closely associated with Jewish mysticism, but predates and transcends identification with any religion, nation, or ethnicity. 7 - A general theme in the history of Kabbalah is its progression from inaccessibility and suppression toward availability to humanity as a whole.8 {This point is actually quite controversial, the origin of the Zohar: it was either written in Israel in the second century BCE by Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, or in thirteenth century Spain by Moses de Leon, a Jewish writer.}9 But one must scan still further: what are the teachings of
5 6

Ibid. Pg. 187 Berg, Rav P.S. The Essential Zohar, The Source of Kabbalistic Wisdom. Pg. 261 Bell Tower, NYC. 2002 7 Ibid. Pg. 3 8 Berg, Michael. The Way, Using the Wisdom of Kabbalah for Spiritual Transformation and Fulfillment. Pg. 30 John Wiley and Sons, Inc., USA. 2001 9 Class Notes.

Kabbalah, and how are they differentiated from a non-mystical approach to Judaism, Christianity, etc? Kabbalah is not a religion, but it is comprised of practical instructions, and it places high value in logic and science, but maintains the existence of God, as in orthodox practice. 10 Therefore, returning once again to our friend St. Thomas Aquinas, his contention does not conflict with the teachings of Kabbalah as such, but while St. Thomas would not allow any scientific inquiry on the subject, Kabbalists would likely welcome and use any evidence to support said teachings as it is impossible to prove that God does not exist. From the Zohar: With the beginning of the manifestation of the Creators will--that is, when the Creator desired to create the world--a hard spark made an engraving upon the supernal Light11 Confronting this postulate reveals several assumptions upon which it is based: firstly, there is an entity that can be intellectually understood as God. In the words of Master Daishi, this would imply that the mighty elephant and lowly hare walk together. Second, that this entity has emotions similar to humans in this case desire. Anthropomorphism of a divine entity creates a sense of connection, as in this biblical passage: Open for me an opening no more than the eye of a needle, and I will open for you supernal gates. 12 In other words, In times of need I am there for you, just ask. And third, that the creation was a singular occurrence: a singular God at a singular point in time created this singular universe. The purpose of this brief study, while not enough to fully grasp
10 11

Ibid. Pg. 3-10 Ibid. Pg. 26 12 Berg, Michael. The Way, Using the Wisdom of Kabbalah for Spiritual Transformation and Fulfillment. Pg. 117 John Wiley and Sons, Inc., USA. 2001

the entirety of the Zohar or Kabbalah, is to provide one important insight: although this is a mystical set of teachings it is still based upon the skeleton of orthodox religion. (In fact, the Zohar is a commentary on the Bible.) 13 In summery, then, what is the point of Kabbalah? What does the student hope to attain from studying this intellectual maze known as the Zohar? In this case the physical goals are two-fold: 1.) To stimulate the intellect through intense study of these dense teachings 2.) To achieve a life free from sin, evil and pain through study and practice of the teachings so that the spiritual goal of reaching heaven might be realized.14 Finally, now that both traditions have been contemplated separately it is possible to place them side-by-side and compare. Automatically, one fundamental difference comes to mind: the debate over the existence of God vis-vis creation. For Buddhists the creator of the universe of experience is not an external being, but your own Karma: the world is not in a state of being [but] in a state of becoming.15 This elemental soupon opens the door to theological disparateness: accepting the postulate of an intellectually accessible conception of God, (or god figure), is the natural precursor to a discussion of duality, i.e. good and evil, joy and pain, sin and righteousness, (although a Kabbalist would
13 14

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zohar Berg, Michael. The Way, Using the Wisdom of Kabbalah for Spiritual Transformation and Fulfillment. Pg. 32-33 John Wiley and Sons, Inc., USA. 2001; http://www.kabbalah.com/k/index.php/p=zohar/zohar&vol=23&sec=830
15

http://www.geocities.com/dharmawood/buddhism_creation.htm

likely argue that there can be no duality because the essence of divinity is found in every single thingnothing but it exists16, which practically speaking means that the be-ing of God allows for the concept of His non - be-ing, and further, evil is the non - be-ing of the be-ing of good, etc) In this Zen and Kabbalah are similar, but while a Zen viewpoint holds this oneness as a principle of intellectual relativity, (as in: A conceptualization of good or evil is meaningless
because that scope is too narrow to grasp Truth--there is no objectivity in that the mind must always be incomplete first, and subjective second. For example, let us examine the mathematical chestnut 2+2=4; in order to experience this equation, we must follow an arbitrary realization of what a 2 is based upon intellectual history stored in the mind, i.e. we cannot experience a 2 with our sense of smell, {or touch, or taste}, therefore the Truth of 2 is incomplete: we cannot see 2 as it Exists in the universe, but rather only as it exists within the archives of our universe and as a consequence must be subjective therefore, if no Reality (vs. reality) of good can exist, to question whether something is good is idle) a Kabbalist holds this oneness as a principle of Theological philosophy, or

in other words, intellectual inquisition is necessary in the pursuit of Truth because there is a finite definition of our universe based upon the existence of God. * In summation then, a small stone of understanding and context has been thrown into the ocean of Theological and Spiritual philosophy apropos their history through the selective vision of two distinct traditions, Zen and Kabbalah, and their answers to the transcendental question: Whats the point? In Zen practice the point is to realize a primordial potential, (not unlike Kabbalah), that
16 *

Shared Files. In the Zen tradition this paper is meaningless, which is why I was hesitant about writing one in the first place ; )

unifies existence into pure Enlightenment beyond any human understanding or conception, and in studying the Zohar one gains a closer relationship to God, a healthier, happier, meaningful life on this earth, and the promise of Eden when the grain of sand that is this consciousness is crushed into the infinity and nothingness beyond.