Pillars of Zen the Road

¶ … Pillars of Zen

The Road of Trials: Zen and the Hero's Journey

Roshi Philip Kapleau -- to whom is credited, in large part, the introduction of Zen Buddhism to the west -- recounts in his seminal work, the Three Pillars of Zen, a series of conversations between a great Zen teacher, Yasutani-roshi, and an unnamed student who found himself beset on the road of trials. This student -- Student C. he is named, a 43-year-old man -- is presumably a westerner traveled to Hokkaido to participate in sesshin and take instruction at the feet of the master. Student C. finds himself in a place familiar to any devoted practitioner of Zen -- indeed to any walker of the path of Orpheus -- he is upon "the road of trials"

and surrounded on all sides by the delusions of up-dhis, the makyo and the great illusion of duality, he has come to the threshold of the portal of enlightenment, kensho, and finds as weary heroes have found before him that it is at this penultimate moment that the opposition to his realization rages strongest. Was it not only whence he had fixed himself firmly beneath the Bo Tree, just one step away from his enlightenment, that the Buddha was assailed by a very goddess? "Or do ye think that ye shall enter the Garden of Bliss without such trials as came to those who passed away before you?"

It is impossible for a the practitioner of Zen at this point, to not feel compassion for Student C, to recall moments when even at long last failure and resignation seemed most imminent; to weep and rejoice that a single sheep had been lost and now stands, amid doubt and dark, at the moment of being found.

The travails of the road of trials are especially poignant to the practitioner of Zen for whom the mysteries have been rationalized, the mysticism dispelled, and all that remains is a mythology of mind and science. Zen has been called the religion of the rational and as such, it is possible to present its doctrines as clear, delineated theories easily understood, followed, and agreed upon by most students. Yet, in time, it is exactly this rational accessibility -- perhaps the feature most resonant with the disenchanted western mind -- which becomes the greatest obstacle to kensho. The abstract understanding of kensho is possible through a theoretical education, but the realization of kensho requires that all theories be not just abandoned but indeed overcome. Student C. finds himself throughout this discourse at such a threshold: "You have a keen theoretical grasp of Mu," admonishes Yasutani-roshi, "a clear picture of it in your mind; now you need to take hold of it directly."

To do so, Yasutani-roshi advises Student C, "to actually experience Mu you must discard this portrait of it lodged in your mind."

The ultimate aim of Zen is "the experience of the numinous" formulated by Joseph Campbell in which the ultimate cause, the Face-that-is-no-face, is beheld and rejoined. It is an experience impossible to describe because it refers to something so basic as to exist altogether outside of language; the closest approach men may make to it is to give it a word -- call it kensho, or god, or nirvana, or what have you -- and yet this still is not the thing itself, but only an analogy to it. "The ultimate truth, being without attributes, cannot be contemplated by the mind."

And is not this precisely to what Yasutani-roshi refers when he says, "Only through unthinking absorption in Mu can you achieve oneness."

But unthinking absorption is difficult for the western mind trained in the rationale of Socrates, reared on the predictability of reproducible sciences, and especially so when the 'mythology' of the enlightenment to which that westerner approaches was sold to him couched in those same logical terms. Zen is a practice which rationally understands that kensho is not a rational experience, and yet guides the student towards that experience in the only way possible: rationally. What is referred to, the Face-that-is-no-face, is without attributes, yet it must still be described if it is to be approached.

This writer can well understand the difficulty of this particular up-dhis; one sets on a way because it seems to have been rationally defined only to find that the ultimate goal can only be realized by a complete abandonment of rationality. Rationality has no place, for though it can approach the numinous, it itself is incapable of fully realizing what no mind can grasp. Rationality, the original herald of the adventure's call, has transformed into the chief enemy along the road of trials. One is become one's own enemy -- the Enemy -- he who "as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour."

This writer hears the anguish in Student C's voice as he cries,

I understand all that theoretically. I can appreciate that if the sun disappears, I disappear, but I can't conceive that I am the sun or the whole universe.

To penetrate Mu one must divest oneself of the accouterments of the office of the self, which, for this writer and many other westerners, include the instruments of the scientist and the sophist. This writer is reminded of a myth which greatly assisted him on his own path towards a species of kensho: the tale is of the Annunaki, gods of the ancient Sumerians, and specifically of the goddess Inanna who, on her own road of trials, descended into the netherworld, as must all true practitioners of Zen. Before she began her journey, Inanna adorned herself with all the queenly jewels and raiment, the scepters and swords, of her godly office to protect and guide her on her way. Thus armed she was ready to start on the path to the "land of no return." Yet, as she entered that land, and as she penetrated each successive threshold of its depths, she was forced at each waypoint to divest herself of an article of her clothing if she wished to continue to the next trial. Until, naked, she finally embraced her sister, Ereshkigal, goddess of the underworld, and the significance of this moment has never, in this writer's estimation, been better phrased than by Campbell:

Inanna and Ereshkigal, the two sisters, light and dark respectively, together represent according to the antique manner of symbolization, the one goddess in two aspects; and their confrontation epitomizes the whole sense of the difficult road of trials. The hero, whether god or goddess, man or woman, the figure in a myth or the dreamer of a dream, discovers and assimilates his opposite (his own unsuspected self) either by swallowing it or by being swallowed. He must put aside his pride, his virtue, beauty, and life, and bow or submit to the absolutely intolerable. Then he finds that he and his opposite are not of differing species, but one flesh.

Herein is revealed the meaning of Yasutani-roshi's parable when he says to Student C:

What you are trying to do can be compared to this [pushing one hand against the other]. Once you realize Mu, you know that nothing can be opposed to it, since everything is Mu.