Zen for Oldies who are Dumb about Zen Say, This is just a modern expression of Zen!

Every item listed has its equivalent in Zen or the Tao! <http://www.marcandangel.com/2013/10/15/10-truths-you-will-learn-before-you-find-happiness/> 99.99% of so called Buddhists today have no real idea about Buddhism, particularly the Theravada Buddhists from Ceylon, Thailand & Burma. Everything worldly that Buddha taught is the equivalent of teaching children about Father Christmas. Once you lose the fear of death and stop clinging to things and concepts for comfort, you can similarly discard all worldly things that Buddha taught and like a university researcher go out and contemplate what is beyond the beyond, or what is eternal and unchanging and beyond birth and death, like that someone you discovered that is in you that has not changed even though your body has changed. That someone is not scared of death! It is the old withered body that is scared! See the experiment that I am suggesting below. Zen in essence does not rely on scriptures or words or concepts or ideologies. It just requires you to let go of your worldly mind to the extent that it depends or attaches or clings on or to your senses and brains. Zen wants you to reach the subconscious pure mind behind the worldly mind. As a simple start go back to a place or river that you have been to when you were young, and which had never changed. Just contemplate in silence without thinking but just observing like a fly on the wall. Eventually someone in you will see you as you are now and see the river as it is now, and that someone is the same person watching the river now and the one watching the river in your body when your body was that of a child. Welcome to Zen meditation! Love. Chuan. 21/10/13 Say and Seng, Just a rejoinder to what I mentioned yesterday in passing, about learning to discover the silent eternal observatory amorphous egoless self in you, when you are reminiscing at the same river, watching the same river, as you used to do when you were a boy, flow under the bridge, as it did when we were young. The same River Gombak is still there behind Chung Kwok Chinese School and Batu Road School, but the 3-plank cable wire footbridge across the river is gone, as is the Tamil Village. This point of spiritual self-realisation - that the real 'you' is not the worldly human physical mortal you that you daily see in the mirror, that mortal that eats, shits and have sex, but someone else blissful in equanimity and unchanging, that is just pure acute eternal consciousness - is what Zen is essentially all about. If Zen is beyond words or beyond worldly conception or description, it tells you that what is written in the Buddhist Sutras are just a 'mumbo-jumbo' of expedient means and human stories to appease and allay the worldly mind. In fact, they were just convenient mental pacifiers to appease and allay the fears of the mental Ego or worldly persona that we identify or see ourself as. Your egoless eternal self, which I shall call 'spirit self' for convenience, cannot be afraid of death, as it is unborn and undying. It is eternal like the river flowing under the bridge, unchanging and the same, even though it's alter human ego has grown old and will soon die, and probably is afraid to die!

We have a Zen saying, that in all his 45 years of preaching, Siddharta Gautama gave many lessons, but the Buddha did not say a single word. For, Zen is inconceivable; it is beyond human language. What is the basic routine in Zen practice? Simple. Whatever is the sense that entices your attention, contemplate on that sense or sensual enticement and realise or discover its true nature and characteristics. Take sound as the example. Listen, contemplate and realise. If there is no result or realisation, practise again. It is just like tai-chi or bonsai or kyudo or kendo or ikebana or making sushi. There is total focus and concentration and the mind is empty other than of the moment or the immediate experience at hand; in this illustration on the listening or hearing. It is active and not passive! Meditation is not going to be 'spiritual', if you just close off your mind and become totally thoughtless! That is practising to be a stone or dead wood. Take the sound of waves breaking in. This is Guanyin's favourite. There is a sound when the wave is born and when it slowly dies away. Like hitting the gong or giant brass bell at the ZenTemple. There is 'birth' and then 'death'. But amidst all the 'births' and 'deaths' of sound, in between there is a certain cosmic sound that is incessant and silent and undying in the curtain backdrop. When you are in a totally dark cave, there is this constant sound of the 'cicadas'. When you are alone in the jungle, this incessant noise is louder than Chow Kit Road at night! There is nothing louder than the proverbial sound of silence! Silence can be deafening! You repeat the Zen technique. See, contemplate and realise/if not practise again. Taste, contemplate and realise/if not practise again. Touch, contemplate and realise/if not practise again. Smell, contemplate and realise/if not practise again. Do, contemplate and realise/if not practise again. You will realise that all sensual impressions are experiential and temporal, i.e. they are not permanent and are strictly subject to how they work out or impact on the ego mind of yours. There is absolutely nothing objective and certain in life's worldly experience. It is instead rather uncertain and subjective and unpredictable like the weather. If you lack mental fortitude, then your mentations will enslave you. Do not listen to and please forget all the different other explanations about Zen meditation, that you read or hear about, about sitting still, calmly and serenely under a coconut tree or whatever canopy tree. These people are mixing up mental or physical health or anti-stress practice with spiritual practice. Zen is about self-realisation. It cannot be taught! If you have never experienced an orgasm, no amount or reading can provide you with that experience!You have to be totally mentally alert and focused to cross over to the beyond into thin air like in the movie Matrix. Of course, it helps if you are mentally calm and in quiet surrounds. For the same applies when you are studying for your exams at university. But you are not going to pass your university exams if your mind is blank and thoughtless! Now, when I write to tell you that I am doing Zen meditation, you know what I am talking about. It is nothing insidious or religion-wise blasphemous. You will, when you ponder and contemplate in your spirit self, realise that you, Seng and I have been and will be close and intimate in our spirit selves. If that were not so, given the disparity in our worldly mortal ego selves, we would have had ample reason or opportunity or occasion to break up or even be envious or jealous of or hate each other, for reasons of incompatibility and the different disparate circumstances, worlds and life we are in and live. What is it that subconsciously tells us to 'close one eye' to our worldly misgivings about each other? Is it a sense of forgiveness or brotherly magnanimity on our part? I do not think so. There is something in each of us that subconsciously tells us to overlook the worldly 'hanky panties', faults, defects and misdemeanours of each other's worldly ego self. There is something called 'eternal love' of the 'spirit'! And spirit and substance must take precedence over form! And inexplicably, and I know it seems ridiculous, when we are not in a position to judge why life takes its course the way

it does, often in devious conspiracy or passionate intrigue beyond our better moral senses and mores, it is best not to say anything at all, particularly, when it is judgmental. Judge not lest ye be not judged! For eternity's sake and the call of the 'spirit', we take each other, in our mortal worldly self, as we are. In our next life, whatever our destiny might be, how we are placed, higher or lower, on the different rungs of the proverbial Jacob's Ladder; it would not matter, as we would still be close and intimate in our spirit selves; and whatever our worldly persona might be, in the next round, we would still be the Brothers Three! Love. Chuan. 22/10/13 Say and Seng When I woke up this morning I sort of regretted 'stirring the hornets nest'. Here I am, in good faith and out of dedicated sibling love, trying to make Zen easy and simple by leading you both to understand Zen by way of 'shortcut'. If Sakyamuni Buddha started at age 18 to search for the truth, and did not self-realise or got enlightened till he was 30, what do we hope or expect as lesser humans? What I am saying is that there is really no shortcuts as such. Not in the actual spiritual wisdom self-realisation bit. Let me first reiterate that Zen is about spiritual wisdom self-realisation. No matter how I lead you both by the hand, you still have to learn to pee to experience what the actual sensation of having a good pee feels like. I am speaking metaphorically! My description of how to pee and what a good pee feels like, if not personally realised and experienced, would just all be theoretical or hypothetical! Yesterday at some point I said - "You have to be totally mentally alert and focused to cross over to the beyond into thin air like in the movie Matrix. Of course, it helps if you are mentally calm and in quiet surrounds." Now I realise that that is as good as saying nothing! Now, I will be realistic and practical. When most Buddhist monks say that they are meditating to remove thoughts from their mind so as to be 'thoughtless' they are unbeknowingly wishful thinking. How can the human mind be thoughtless unless we were not yet born or we are already dead? We are born with a mischievous monkey brain. Our mind will always be mischievous like a monkey. It is not for nothing that we have the parody or allegory of Shee Imm Hoong (Monkey) with the metal band around his head to control his misbehaviour in the Buddhist fable of 'The Journey to the West'. Monkey had an 'Ego' problem. He aspired to be a god! His pilgrim's progress was about getting rid of his monkey 'ego'. As the sun rises in the East and sets in the West, the 'West' here represents our death. We are all on a journey that eventually ends up in our death. With our 'monkey' brain we cannot be thoughtless! It is impossible for a mischievous monkey to be thoughtless. By that I do not mean his lack of thoughtfulness or manners. We can only manage our thoughts. But how do we manage our mind and its fickle wandering thoughts? I will not be 'cheong hei' and will therefore get straight to the point about my recommended technique. Imagine that you are at the old Weld Road Swimming Pool. There is this plastic ball the size of a small sepak raga ball in the pool. Let that represent your 'thought'. You are trying to push that 'plastic ball' into the pool, representing your attempt to get rid of the unwanted 'thought'. But the 'plastic ball' keeps bopping up. This is what most of these meditating monks are doing. From the exterior they appear to be calm and serene. But in their interior, within the confine of their mind, they are sweatingly active beyond control and beyond description. Like the 'plastic ball' keeps bopping up, the thoughts keep coming back, driving the monks crazy! Sooner or later,

you wise up. You just leave the 'plastic ball' or your vagrant thought alone, from a safe distance. You just watch it, from a safe distance. Be like a fly on the wall! Whether the 'plastic ball' bops left or right or up and down, you just focus and keep it in line of sight like the Sikh Jaga, but from a safe distance. I keep saying 'from a safe distance' for good reason. We are normally dealing with our senses. You do not want to be too near as to be heated up with the 'passion'; and you do not want to be too far away, as to be wilfully reckless and take whatever comes, what we say in Malay - a 'tidak apa' attitude.You want get to a stage where you are like a prudent kindergarten teacher keeping a watchful sentinel eye on the children under her care in the play yard. You are watchful but your mind is not strained and stressed as if you are threading the eye of a needle. This is the stage where in Zen we say that you are not thinking but you are also not 'not thinking'. This is the sort of calm and passivity that is required to be achieved in meditation. But that itself is not meditation or the object of meditation or as often misunderstood, definitely not 'enlightenment'. Calming down in this manner is the equivalent of the warming up before we begin our kungfu class. This sort of calm and passivity is just the preparatory ground stage for the 'show', the stage before the curtain goes up, and therefore before the actual performance or action takes place. The point where the stage is set ready to go ahead with the show or performance is the stage where you are ready to start contemplation. The next question is a difficult one to answer. How do you contemplate? The simple answer is that you cannot use your worldly mind. You must not contemplate with worldly wisdom. It will get you nowhere. You must instead contemplate with spiritual wisdom. But how can one contemplate with spiritual wisdom when one has not awakened to the 'spirit'? This is the simple reason why hundreds of thousands of monks have failed to be 'enlightened' in the past! How do you 'awaken' in the 'spirit'? You are more likely to 'awake' in your 'spirit' if you are a good, humble spiritual person. It does not depend on your wealth, intellect, worldly knowledge or looks, race and religion. In Zen terms it is said that you have to keep polishing a very dirty mirror until it becomes clean and clear and reflective again. We are speaking in metaphorical terms of course. Basically the worldly ego mind is a corrupt mind, like a dirty mirror. It is 'corrupt' essentially because the worldly mind has an ego. To get to the spiritual mind you have to cleanse the worldly egoistic mind. Enlightenment is not about the worldly mind or the worldly ego getting enlightened. It is about the worldly mind awakening to the spirit mind or to the spiritual mind that is camouflaged by the worldly mind. In Christian terms we would say that you have to be persistent in seeking this 'spirit' or spirit mind or spiritual mind in you. Remember the Parable of the Three Loaves - the one where you wake up a friend for three loaves in the middle of the night - in Luke 11:5-13 - I mentioned it in last Sunday's discourse on the Parable of the Persistent Widow and the Unjust Judge 5 He (Jesus) also said to them, 'Suppose one of you has a friend and goes to him in the middle of the night to say, "My friend, lend me three loaves, 6 because a friend of mine on his travels has just arrived at my house and I have nothing to offer him;" 7 and the man answers from inside the house, "Do not bother me. The door is bolted now, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up to give it to you." 8 I tell you, if the man does not get up and give it to him for friendship's sake, persistence will make him get up and give his friend all he wants. 9 'So I say to you: Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. 10 For everyone who asks receives; everyone who searches finds; everyone who knocks will have the door opened. 11 What father among you, if his son asked for a fish, would hand him a snake? 12 Or if he asked for an egg, hand him a scorpion? 13 If you then, evil as you are, know how to give your children what is good, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!' Guess who the 'friend' you are seeking bread from might be? Yes, none other than your 'spirit' self! If you are persistent enough in your asking, searching and knocking, he (the friend - your 'spirit' self) will wake up. When he does you will be awakened in the spirit and have spiritual wisdom. Which is what Luke 11:13 is all about. The three loaves of course represent the Bread of

(Eternal) Life. When you are given the Three Loaves, you are awakened in your eternal spirit! I did mention yesterday that contemplation on its own is just a process. You need to achieve they objective or result which I simply described as 'realisation' as in self-realisation. I could have called realisation 'enlightenment'. However in Zen there is no enlightenment of the worldly ego or worldly mind but rather the realisation by or awakening of the spirit in or from its illusion or dream or misconception or mis-identity that it is the worldly ego. But we can use the term 'enlightenment' loosely or limply as long as we know that there is nobody or entity getting enlightened as such. Sakyamuni Buddha spent 12 years sort of 'polishing the dirty mirror' before he got 'enlightened'. It happened like this. He looked up the sky and saw the morning star and then he was 'enlightened'! That was exactly what he was doing when he got enlightened. What ever the trigger or catalyst might be, in this case 'seeing the morning star', the catalyst has nothing to do with the 'enlightenment'. We know this from our chemistry class in high school about catalysts. On that fateful morning after 12 years of searching for the truth, the Buddha had already arrived at the knowledge about the Law of Cause and Effect. In Buddhist terms we call it. Interdependent Origination. When he saw the morning star he suddenly realised that what he saw was an illusion. It was not actually there. The morning star he saw was or existed only in the past. He further realised that whatever else he saw, the moment he saw it it was something from the past. It was the same with the other senses. It may or may not continue to exist in the 'present'! It was 'empty' in that sense. It was beyond 'grasp'. He then realised the inherent emptiness of interdependent causation. From this he then realised that the inherent identity of the worldly self or persona or ego was or is also empty. You and I, we are not real in that sense. We are 'empty' like a mirage. Of course we are real as among ourselves and within this world of interdependent origination or causation; but to an eternal being in a realm outside the realm of 'cause and effect' we are passing visages. We are just a or in a dream! I am giving the above explanation, so that you understand that contemplation must be done with spiritual wisdom and not worldly wisdom. If we were to go back to our example of cleaning the dirty mirror; the realm of interdependent origination resides in the reflections we see on the clean mirror surface. The reflections of a mirror are empty of permanent eternal self. If there is a permanent eternal entity as such it would be represented by the 'reflectivity' of the mirror. So, in Zen when we say that worldly existence is empty like a dream, like an illusion, we are speaking metaphorically of an eternal self in a realm outside the realm of the worldly ego, having a dream, that the worldly transient ego is just in the dream of the eternal self. A dream is not unreal. A dream is very real when you are inside that dream! It is in this sense that in Zen we say that there is no self or ego or soul in this world of dream of Samsara. Whatever is within the confines of the temporal dream has no relationship with the eternal 'dreamer'. In that sense the 'dreamer' is unborn and undying, unlike the 'actor' in the dream, to be born only to die! Love. Chuan. 23/10/13 Say and Seng, Today, something is urging or egging me on to continue on the Understanding Zen sessions. The more I reflect on what is out there in the bookshelves and bookshops I am reminded of all the 'nonsense' out there about spiritual enlightenment through Zen written by Western authors who really have no idea about the mysterious Tao. We have all these Zen practitioners, learning from all these books, who are doing no more than converting themselves to passive stones or

deadwood. In Zen we call that 'cooking stones'. Zen is not a New Age 'how to be happy thing'. In fact Zen has really nothing to do with anything in this human world. You cannot be 'worldly' Zen! But yet Zen is found in and exists all around us in this world, just that we are blinded to this fact! Zen is 'unworldly' in that sense! To find Zen you have to let go! That means you have to release the Zen in you into the Zen without, so that you are one in Zen with the so-called cosmic consciousness. Yes, it is true that Zen is advertised as attaining spiritual enlightenment without words or resort to scriptures. In that sense Zen is a real equaliser. It indicates that spiritual enlightenment does not depend on worldly knowledge or intelligence or cleverness or status. It has to do with the intuitive acumen of a humble unadulterated un-clinging unattached egoless mind. The 6th Patriarch of Zen, the subject of the Platform Sutra (the only Zen writing that is classified as a Sutra) was in fact an illiterate labourer. When we say in Zen that Zen has no need for words or scriptures we are doing so in an ex-post facto sense. It is like you just do not keep on reading your driving manual and that is about all you do, i.e. you never ever start to actually learn how to drive. It is the same with an instruction or study manual on how to play the guitar or how to dance the cha-chacha. It is the same with your tertiary education. All are theoretical highfalutin academic or technical or vocational knowledge of unproven or doubtful utility, if you do not test or field trial the practical aspect or go out in the real world and test for yourself whether or how the theory works. For instance, you would not know what love is unless your heart has been broken. You do not know what grief is until you have lost a loved one. Many people who succeed in life are people who have never been to university, other than the university of hard knocks. You do not need to be learned and clever to succeed in life. Destiny plays a part. You must have the right karmic profile from past lives. This means that you have to have the right karmic propensity, capability and capacity. It is the same with spiritual enlightenment. You need the right spiritual propensity, capability and capacity. And that is what Zen is all about as well. You stand a better chance of succeeding if you do not kick off with an ego or an egoistic attitude that you are smarter or cleverer or kinder or more charitable and therefore better entitled to achieve spiritual wisdom. It might in fact take many, many life times to cultivate goodness, humility and egolessness. But nevertheless you require an intuitive egoless acumen to see things as they really are. That comes down to realisation, from something deep within your soul. Who knows what journeys our soul has traversed in past existence? Zen is simply awakening to and realisation of things as they really are. That is what is meant by spiritual enlightenment in Zen. If one lacks spiritual propensity, capability and capacity, then perhaps one needs a good spiritual mentor or adviser or guru as a prop. Having said all these, it does not mean I am saying that all books or worldly knowledge or learning or Buddhist Scriptures are of no use. That is not the salient or key point. The critical point is that these factors are not essential or totally relevant. Let me explain. It is like the raft you used to get across the river. Once you have landed on the other shore, it is then of no use to carry the raft on your back everywhere, as you walk on land. Similarly you do not cling and be stubbornly tied to present scientific knowledge if you are researching into the unknown frontiers of science. In Zen, you do not want to be hamstrung. Everything is debatable, negotiable and totally 'at large'. So, what happens when you have Buddhist monks 'blindly' totally absorbed and lost in the literal words or literal meaning of the scriptures. Their mind is not totally free and open-minded! They are aping like monkeys or repeating like parrots. They are not enquiring! There can be no spiritual contemplation without enquiry! They are treating Zen as a religion. Zen is not a religion! In Zen, when Buddha obstructs your mind, you have to kill the Buddha! You would not kill the a Buddha if Zen were a religion! You would not kill the Buddha if Buddha was God! Mind you, I am just talking about Buddha obstructing your spiritual contemplation. Buddha is just the Teacher or Enlightened One. The word 'Buddha' comes from 'Bodhi'. You know how it is with some lecturers at university who keep harping on their theories and obstructing your own ideas as the new Young Turk on the turf. You dismiss that lecturer and his theories from your mind.

The same thing can be said about Taoist monks totally entangled by how many ways they can assemble or configure the hexagrams in I Ching or manipulate the chi or chakra channels. The Tao cannot be set in cement and entrenched in a fixed set of jigsaw puzzle pieces or dominoes. These Taoist monks are so lost and hemmed in by the 'trees' around them that they cannot see the 'forest'. They are lost in a self-made maze in the jungle, just going around and around in circles. Or, like a camel chasing the mirage in the desert. These Taoist monks and their hocuspocus might bestow a better fung shui or better destiny for you in the world of samsara, the world of 'cause and effect', but there is no way in hell that they can extricate you from the world of samsara. They are not in the same league as Zen. Zen or the Tao cannot therefore be learned or studied. It has to be realised through personal contemplation and experience, no matter how many life times it takes. It is in that sense that there is no enlightenment for instead the Zen or the Tao will find you, when you as the 'fruit' is ripe for picking. You are 'ripe' when you lose your 'ego'. An 'ego' can never get enlightened. We speak of Zen as spiritual enlightenment, yet nobody gets enlightened in Zen! Zen is parabolic! In Zen we say that to see the truth, you have to see inversely, that us like seeing indirectly through a mirror. We will talk more about the 'mirror' effect later. In a theoretical sense, the worldly ego and the worldly mind are barriers to Zen practice. In a practical sense, at the shop floor level, two major factors stand in the way of Zen practice - (1) our worldly clinging, attachment and lust and desire, in other words our being subservient to and being enslaved by our worldly senses of the Ego and (2) our fear of death of or losing our physical persona - our Ego. At our age, when time is 'short', in the sense that we know that death might come calling us any day now, I am only suggesting the obvious, when I say we should focus our Zen contemplation on or about 'death'. I do not mean it in the Christian sense of salvation, of going to heaven, because Zen is not a religion or faith. Zen is just about individual personal spiritual enlightenment. There are no rules or words or rituals or mores. As long as you personally realise spiritual enlightenment, who cares how you go about or manage it. It has to be by way of mentally active contemplative meditation, whether it be through taichi, chi-kung, bonsai, ikebana, kyudo (archery), chado (tea ceremony) or in modern commercial terms, ethical business practice. There are no hang-ups, whether you succeed or not. It is all about practice, cultivation and seeking and trying. It is all in the quality of the effort or endeavour. You are rewarded for the quality of effort rather than the result of the effort. It is your own personal game of solitaire. Nobody can play the game for you. They might give advice etc but you have to putt or drive the golf ball yourself, like in a game of golf. But you require undaunted perseverance. Now let us get started on the contemplation of the death of our physical self or should I say the visage of our physical self. Of course I am assuming that we have realised that we have an eternal self that continues on permanently, after our death. Remember the exercise that I suggested in my first email about going to inspect the river that you used to observe when you were young. In the same vein, in contrast let us contemplate on what it is (with or in us) that is dying. Look through and over childhood photographs of yourself and family and friends over the years. Observe and contemplate how your face and mien has physically changed and your hair or hairline as well. When you fear death, it is either because you have not realised that it is only your physical body or 'vehicle' or 'attire' that is dying (and therefore you have not realised that you have an eternal being or 'spirit' in you that will not die, 'spirit' is used here because you cannot see it) or you cling so much to and identify so stubbornly and steadfastly with your worldly physical persona of an Ego that you do not want to accept its eventual and inevitable demise. How can your visage, your Ego, your worldly persona, be the real 'you'? The 'you' that you see reflected in the mirror, is exactly what you see that is dying. It is 'dying' because it is changing or is subject to change. It is only a reflection or a mirage! If you have microscopic or x-ray eyesight, so that you can see all the minute changes, you will know that every second your visage, that is

the visual 'you', is and are changing and dying. It is like a dream or changing clouds of flowers in the sky. Every passing second your body is a different persona. Your persona is dying every second! That is why in Zen we say that we should not proceed further in our exploratory contemplation on death unless we fully understand that when we are born, our physical body is already starting to die. The day we are humanly born, the same day we start to humanly die! Your human journey is no more than a virtual reality karmic journey of a dream! If you do not have the right perspective, you will divert from the target of spiritual liberation by a thousand millennia. What is reflected in the mirror is also correspondingly reflected in your mind. Pause and think. That is how optics work. Check with a friend who is an optometrist if you doubt what I say. Your 'mind' is like a mirror. You do not actually see with your eyes. The eye is just an organ of sight or the optic lens but you actually only see through the image that is reflected in your mind. Pause and contemplate. If the person in the mirror is not you then it would be equally true that the person in your 'mind' is also not you! It is the same reflection. Reflect fully so that you understand this logical point. So, contemplating death (of your physical visage or worldly persona) is not so difficult after all is it? What is more difficult is contemplating who the real eternal spirit in you is or are. What is what Westerners think of as the 'soul' like? This requires a more difficult exercise. This is what we describe in Zen contemplation - when you are inside the mountain of darkness where are you? Or, in Zen this is tested through the koan - what was your original face before you mother gave birth to you? We all know who Professor Stephen Hawkins is. He is the New Age Einstein. He is a scientific genius and a brilliant mind. However he is sadly speaking trying to find out who God is through science, by seeking the M Theory. If God is inconceivable how can you possibly seek God through scientific conceivability? But that is not necessary bad since Zen is not a religion or faith. Zen is not about God or about a Creator. Zen requires you to test all ideas and all possibilities. This freedom of spiritual enquiry is paramount and absolute. Unless the truth can be tested, it is not the truth inherent in Zen. To get to the inconceivable requires you to establish all the conceivable. To get outside the 'dreaming', you have to exhaust all that is conceivable within the 'dreaming'. So, we still require the perseverance in scientific research and enquiry by quantum physicists like Professor Stephen Hawkins. Why am I mentioning him? Except for his brilliant mind, he cuts a forlorn figure because of his physical handicap. He has to speak through an electronic voice box, he is basically totally paralysed, suffering from motor neuron disease. Imagine however if someone were in a relatively worse capacity when compared with Professor Stephen Hawkins. Imagine someone physically incapacitated who cannot see, hear, feel, taste or smell; but his mind is still intact and totally acute. Such a hypothetical person is as close to physical death as we can put in. Totally mentally aware and alert but in 'total darkness'. Near death experience is a bit like that. Why? Because I know. I have been there and back! Initially you still have images in your mind. In my case it was like the movie reel going backwards relaying a flashback of one's life, until you get back in time to the sedate joyful bliss of childhood with one's mother. Then comes total darkness, when the 'movie' stops. In total darkness you see only total darkness - just pitch black darkness. The initial intense claustrophobic fear however soon turns to calm silent nothingness, as if the senses have stopped sensing anything. There is sensual numbness. There is no sense of anything, just quiet complacency and thoughtless vacuity. Total acute awareness of nothing, of emptiness and darkness. And then just as sudden, the darkness becomes total clear lucid formless brightness or luminosity of light. Remember what Mother told us about Maternal Grandfather when he was dying and was on his last breath. He was telling Mother - "I am going, I have to go." "Go where?" Mother asked him. "Over there, the man with the green clothing is calling me to go through the brightly lit door." Maternal Grandfather could have been delirious and delusional. Who knows? Still, that was what Mother said happened. Why am I relating the above? I wanted to illustrate from my personal experience what Zen

teaches about 'consciousness'. When you do not have something to use as a reference, when you read in the Buddhist Scriptures about guarding the six doors or entrances from the six thieves, about there being no 'self', about everything being just what it is, being conjured or concocted by the mind, about there being nothing beyond consciousness, about form being empty and that emptiness is also form, and various other metaphors, and the Buddhist Scriptures are indeed replete with colourful metaphors and phrases, they are not only mind-blogging but are totally impossible to make worldly sense of. The six sense organs are the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and the mind. Imagine each to be like a camera, hearing aid, breathing apparatus or equipment or electronic device or whatever etc. To each you now relate or associate with its corresponding consciousness e.g. seeingconsciousness, hearing-consciousness, smelling-consciousness, tasting-consciousness, feeling or touch or body consciousness and last, mind-consciousness. Try not to think scientifically or biologically but spiritually. See the different consciousness like a 'spirit' or like an electrical spark of energy of life. So with a blind man he cannot see because he has a defective eye organ or 'camera', but that does not mean he does not have seeing-consciousness. To see, you need to have a functional eye organ and the 'spirit' or 'energy spark' of seeing-consciousness. Think the same way about the other consciousnesses. Take the case of a healthy man who died in a car accident. Let us say that he has lost all his six consciousnesses, i.e. including his mindconsciousness, because the electro-graph or brain scan shows no brain activity pattern. But his otherwise good working functional eyes are then quickly transplanted to a blind man. Assume that the eye-operation is successful. The blind man can now see. He can now see because his good seeing-consciousness is now connected to an operative viable eye organ, replacing his previous defective unfunctional eye organ. When you read the Surangama Sutra and come to the point where Buddha says that eye seeing is not really seeing, he is saying that the 'real' seeing is from the seeing-consciousness. To spiritually see, you have to see with your seeingconsciousness. Whether we are dealing with organ transplants or even cloning or even genetic modification, Zen accommodates all rational proven ideas and changes. Descartes's famous declaration - "I exist, therefore I am" is very Zen. Zen accepts all possibilities in the 'dreaming' or imagination of and out there in the world of samsara. It is because of changing 'reflections' and imagery that we have 'form' out of emptiness and 'form' that is essentially empty, like a dream. If it were not for the temporal nature of change, there would be no 'dreaming', or possibility to extricate oneself from the 'dream'. Evolution is change. Invention is change. Cloning is change and can simply be explained as an effect of derivative consciousness from the donor. If nothing changes there would be no relativity or duality in samsara. If Zen cannot accommodate and cannot reconcile and fit in with what is found tested and conceivable, what chances has it got to lead us to the inconceivable? How would we transcend beyond the transient temporal ever-changing kaleidoscope realm of the 'dreaming'. The world and the universe and the cosmos and beyond are conceivable within the different levels of consciousness. For all worldly and scientific will always be a subset of spiritual knowledge. The two are not incongruent! To spurn or reject science on the basis that God created everything is blasphemy! If God is to be represented by anything it is that God is knowledge! No, not just human worldly knowledge but Spiritual Transcendental Knowledge! Nothing is beyond imagination and nothing is beyond dreaming. We are what we are, ego and all because we dream! Dreams can come true. They are all manner of seeds of dreams planted and grown out in our different levels of consciousness. They all have or relate to different karmic consequences. Think and contemplate. We like to think we can control our being. But to what extent or extant? Are you really in control when you start dreaming and as to what ensues in a dream? Your real life is like that! It is no more than a replica of a dream and what would transpire in a dream. Consciousness is hard to control! Prayers will not help. Zen is not about prayer and devotion! We are not in control (unless we set out to control our 'monkey' of a mind) and therefore or thereby we suffer the karmic consequences of our consciousness. Spiritual enlightenment is difficult because you seek to go beyond the beyond! Yet, it is very simple, when the truth

becomes apparent. In Zen, we say, the truth reveals itself when you realise that the moon that you see in the sky is similar (in spiritual terms or characteristics) to the reflection of the moon on the surface of the pond! Of course, if you are not involved in Zen, you will not be seeing consciousness as different components or having different levels. Later I shall describe the eight levels of consciousness that the Buddha taught out of convenience or expedient means. That is not to say there are only 8 types of consciousness. In multilevel and multidimensional terms there could be 84,000 levels or perspectives! Who knows? We do not have the benefit of a spiritual micron microscope. Do not get hung up on numbers however, as in the Four Noble Truths, the Eight-fold Noble Path and the Twelve Causal Links etc etc in Buddhism. These are all expressions of expedient means. They are all mere 'rafts' to get you across to the other shore. In the absolute of eternity, numbers are meaningless! In the not-form not-formless inconceivability of eternity, language, words, concepts, doctrines and labels are meaningless! When you can express the Tao in words, it is no longer the Tao! If you are not into Zen, you would see all broadly as one totality of consciousness. Thus in medical or biological terms a man is dead when he has lost all or total consciousness, i.e. none of the organs are working. In Zen the five senses' consciousnesses are numbered 1st to the 5th consciousness. The mind-consciousness, the 6th consciousness relates to current thoughts and mental operations whereas the heart relates to sub-consciousness and the conscience and intuition. In that sense the heart represents the 7th consciousness. In Zen we have an 8th consciousness called the Alaya-consciousness or Storehouse-consciousness. Do not pre-empt and be confused at this point that the 8th consciousness, the Alaya Storehouseconsciousness might be your eternal spirit. It is not, for the simple reason, that it is not pure and luminous. It is that which is tainted and contains all the embedded residual karmic residue of the false self-ego, the person that you see in the mirror, who will continue to be reborn or reincarnated in another form or clothing, from one life time to another, in the world of samsara. That is your 'Ego'! That false self-ego is not a real self. It is born only to die a certain death. It is thereby a mirage and an illusion! This 'form' that you see in the mirror is empty, is empty of a permanent 'self'. It is a no-self. In that sense within the world of samsara, there is no 'self'. That is what the Buddha meant when he said that there is no self! Our real eternal self should be unmoving, unchanging, and should not be going through cycles of birth and death! Remember what Jesus said about the 'unclean spirit with his seven more evil companions' in Matthew 12:4345? Well, the 'unclean spirit' is the 8th consciousness or the Alaya Storehouse-consciousness, and the seven more evil companions are the 1st to 7th consciousnesses described above. These are comprised in the 'angels' going up and down Jacob's Ladder! Because the eight consciousnesses all relate to the false Ego, they are in fact 'changing' and therefore false consciousnesses. These eight false consciousnesses are however real within the dream world of cause and effect, the world of samsara. We 'sow' or effect 'causes' when we are enticed, tempted, seduced, provoked or encouraged by our six senses, the six doors or the six thieves. To diminish the consequences of the Immutable Law of Cause and Effect or You Reap What You Sow, we have to learn to control our 'monkey' mind and its subordinates the five senses. Controlling the mind-consciousness, the 6th consciousness is the major step to controlling our intuition and sub-consciousness and conscience (the 7th consciousness) and eventually defeat the false self-ego that is the Alaya Storehouse-consciousness (the 8th consciousness). Once you defeat the false ego-self of the Alaya Storehouse-consciousness, all the changing consciousnesses are transcended. You transcend the world of samsara, and you will be home and dry, and what remains that is unmoved, unchanging, untouched and unruffled by the 'dreaming' within the world of samsara, is your eternal self, your 'eternal spirit', which is just pure essence of permanent and unchanging base or source consciousness and lucid luminosity! This is the real consciousness unlike the false consciousnesses. This is your eternal self-nature or your original face or your Bodhi-nature or your spirit son of God. This is the inconceivable!

I shall end with the Buddhist fable of The Journey West, as it is an integral part of our childhood. The Zen journey is like The Journey West. Why West and not East? The sun rises in the East and that represents 'birth'. The West represents 'death' as in the setting sun. Tripitaka, the 'monk' represents our Bodhi-nature. Monkey or Shee Imm Hoong as we know him, represents the false Ego, as in the 6th to 8th consciousnesses. Monkey has an ego and wanted to be a god or deity. The fact that 'ego" is all in the 'mind' is illustrated by the metal band around his head that Tripitaka uses to rein Monkey in when he gets egoistic. In basic terms Zen contemplative practice is about reining in our ego-mind. Pigsy or Chu Pak Kwai as we know him represents our greedy, lustful and lazy nature. Sandy or Sah Ching as we know him represents our beginning or origination in the 'dreaming'. He represents water or the metaphorical 'mirror'. We are in fact comprised of all of Tripitaka, Monkey, Pigsy and Sandy. They represent our different states or levels of consciousness. Isn't Zen wonderful and profound! All worldly beings of course evolve or originate from water. Our mind is always all over the place, because we have a 'monkey' in our 'mind'. Do you know that if you cannot get a human organ for a transplant you can substitute it with a pig organ? What wonderful childhood we had! Love. Chuan 2/11/13