Inviting the Buddha Home 1

Introduction

There is a traditional Buddhist saying that if you meet the Buddha on the road kill him.  This is an ancient Zen koan which warns us to be very aware of our own hubris or pride.  Or to put it in more Buddhist terms to be very aware of  simplistic attachment, i.e., believing in our idea of what or who the Buddha is as such an idea is but a shadow of what or who he really is. The early Christian theologians also had a similar belief or doctrine which stated something to the effect that no definition of God exists that can capture who he is as his reality is too far beyond our ken.  If we think we can know God in our finitude, then we are extremely naive. In a sense, the road to God, the road to enlightenment, the way to Truth, the path to the Ultimate Good is just that, a path, a way, a pilgrimage, a journey in which, strangely the path or way or journey may be more important than the destination, or even more mysteriously all there is...  Or again maybe not.  The beauty of the whole quest is that while we journey ever onward, perhaps we really never know for sure whether or not that destination exists.  The beauty lies essentially and existentially in that mystery, and any human mind or even collection of human minds that declare to know anything for sure are deluded.  They have merely succumbed to their attachments to their own less profound ideas and have simply failed to slay the Buddha they meet on the road.  Similarly, I have also believed that our images of God must always undergo a constant iconoclasm, as no image can sum the Godhead up.

My copy of Brazier's book

In this and the next several posts I wish to take a cursory glance at some books on Buddhism that I have read over the last number of years.  Here I wish to discuss the book Zen Therapy: A Buddhist Approach to Psychotherapy by David Brazier, Robinson, London, 2001

Zen Therapy:

This book outlines both the similarities and dissimilarities between Western Therapy and Eastern Psychology.  David Brazier is that rare scholar who holds a doctorate in Buddhist psychology, is a practising psychotherapist and a spiritual teacher to the Order of Amida Buddha.  Further information on the latter can be found by clicking here and Buddhist Therapy.

Within the covers of this relatively short book (some 280 pages including bibliography and index) the reader will find a very good introduction to the tenets of Buddhist philosophy and practice, expressed within a more Western therapeutic framework.  In other words, Brazier manages to encapsulate the heart of Buddhism and the theory of Western Therapy within the space of this short enlightening work.

Okay, then, what did I like about this book?  Firstly, I loved his simplicity of style.  Brazier is a clear and precise writer.  One's mind is never befuddled by either terminology or woolly expressions. He tells us that Zen is rooted in experience, in our experience here and now, at this moment, or for me, this present writer, in this very moment as my fingers tap out these ciphers on the screen of my notebook. Brazier uses a lovely image, that of the formation of the pearl in the heart of the oyster.  Each of us, the author argues has to work with our own internal grit, with our own existential questions and to sit with them in zazen (that is, "sitting meditation") so that we may grow more spiritually, travel further along the spiritual road and perhaps someday discover our very own pearl of enlightenment.

Before explicating this image of grit and pearl, let me say that Brazier provides us with a very useful glossary of Buddhist terms at the end of his book.  The grit, he informs us, corresponds to what Buddhist philosophy terms dukkha which may be rendered as suffering, bitterness, bad states of mind, ill-being or if you like how evil manifests itself in our lives.  We often choose to ignore and deny the dukkha or simply give into it.  Ignoring (avidya) it keeps us in the realm of suffering (namely samsara).  However, when we work positively with the grit within or dukkha through sitting meditation then we can work to transform it.  Brazier calls Zen "the heart of all Buddhist practice." (Op. cit., p.14)

He uses further images and metaphors which also appeal to this reader, viz., that the role of Zen practice is to offer "dragon-riding lessons" [I have often heard it said that the function of therapy is to "tame our demons" another related metaphor or image.]  The pearl or inner life or eventual enlightenment may also be called our "true home."  Thich Nhat Hanh talks about the sound of the meditation bell as that which brings the listener ever inward to his true home. The profound peace we may eventually reach is called samadhi.  Another way of expressing this latter term is by the use of the term Still Pointedness of Mind or tranquil absorption.  

Brazier does not spare the reader any hard truths, a quality much appreciated by any discerning disciple of the path to enlightenment or truth.  He tells us that Buddhism is a religion without God (ibid., p. 19), or at least a conventional notion of God.  Nor does he offer any panacea for pain and suffering.  The human condition has to be faced and accepted before being transcended.  This is no easy path.  The road to accepting suffering as illusory, or as coming from our over-attachment to things is a long road indeed.  "When the Buddha himself was asked what his teaching was, he said that it was whatever led to the true cessation of suffering.  Buddhism, therefore, is also, and perhaps we may say primarily, a therapy." (Ibid., p.p. 19-20)

Another hard, or even harsh, thing our author Brazier informs us of is that the self, which practically all of us moderns promote, uphold, fight for and adore, if not obsess about, really does not exist.  Like the world, the self is an illusion or, more properly perhaps, a delusion or maya. For the Mahayana Buddhist, the self is māyā like a magic show and so are objects in the world. I have written about this elsewhere, especially in my sister blog Wellsprings. (See)

Brazier, as I have said, writes clearly and vividly and explains all terms as if to a neophyte, and for this the reader is truly grateful.  He is especially clear in his explanation of Buddhata or buddha nature, that is the inherent harmony of the self and others.  That never means that it can be part of someone or possessed by them. Rather it means that we all can participate in the cosmos and realise that the cosmos is in turn participating in us.  That is central to Buddhism, viz., the ultimate unity of everything and that our consciousness like a droplet of water will eventually drip into the overall universal oceanic consciousness on our death, if I may push the metaphor a little further here. Let me return to Brazier's words to supplement what I have said above:

Buddhata is a self-transcending tendency rather than a self-actualizing one;a longing to return to a state which inherently exists prior to our intoxication with our own importance, before our separation from the cosmos.  According to Buddhism, neurosis derives from self-seeking.  Its cure is a quest for original simplicity.  One of the central themes of this book is that Zen is the attempt to decondition ourselves.

If you, dear reader, are one such pilgrim on the road to original simplicity and enlightenment, then this is the book for you.  It is well worth the read and indeed well worth one's while meditating on its contents.