Gateway To Eastern Philosophy & Religion (August 2014)

From the book Gateway to Eastern Philosophy & Religion, excerpted and reprinted with permission from Good Karma Publishing, and available on www.gkpub.com.

Vertical and Horizontal

I’m going to read a statement from my Zen teacher. It has to do with Saigo and Daigo, the vertical and horizontal. Now we’re back on a different level. We’re not on a simple level. But there are many of you who meditate, and I think this will get across the idea.

“Some people have a small taste of the vertical, the unrelieved absolute. They then begin to go to lectures, read metaphysical books and argue with those who don’t share their opinion. They have naturally translated their small experience into terms that are familiar to them religiously, philosophically and psychologically. So they hear the voice of Jesus, or they see Krishna playing the flute, or get a glimpse of the Buddha with two attendants. This disturbs their lives because they now realize there is something more than their daily experience.

Others may have a complete vertical experience, and an overwhelming experience of oneness that takes them completely into the absolute, and makes it impossible for them to get back to their habitual daily lives. They now think transcendentally, and find everything in this world tasteless and meaningless. It is very difficult to live on in this fashion, even though this experience may have been joyous and almost ecstatic. Many who have this experience of the absolute are sure they have achieved the final rung on the ladder, and make no attempt to understand or integrate their experience. They may become renunciates and shun all worldly life. It is not a happy or fulfilling way to live. If the student has a good teacher, the teacher will see the dangers and lead the student along the way to complete integration. The student must go back to the market place, to be with humanity and, indeed, all life.

You remember the story about Chao Chou: When someone comes to the teacher carrying nothing, what should he tell him? Tell him to throw it out. That’s also what the teacher would say in light of a student’s experience of oneness. The teacher would say, “Forget it, go past that.” Without a teacher, students may persist in this condition, understanding much of eternity but little of today. They may long for release from this world into a state that they conceive, without realizing that that state is the state of their own minds. Having escaped samsara, and had a real glimpse of nirvana, they have not reached the point where they perceive that samsara is nirvana. The absolute is the relative. There is no need of escape, only integration. They are living in the vertical, which is steep and slippery and untenable in this world. If I said this to a person from one of the new religions, he or she would look at me as though I were crazy.

Those who follow a true teacher or who spontaneously have an experience when they perceive their own enlightenment, are able to make the complete circle and come back to ordinary life, which will now appear anything but ordinary. What need for argument when each thing is perceived as being true. Such a person has little desire for metaphysical discussion, and no desire to foist his views on anyone else. He no longer sees his experience as Christian or Buddhist, and will get to the point where he forgets his own enlightenment. Not wishing to be a teacher, he is a true teacher by example. There is no chance of his being hung up on words or written characters. The scriptures no longer serve a purpose since everything in life has become a scripture. Truly, the moon shines clearly in a cloudless sky. Yet there is turmoil, joy and suffering and he does not avoid these. The vertical and horizontal have been completely integrated. For how many does this happen?

One thing very interesting concerns the moment when the meditator perceives his own enlightenment. There’s a famous story in Zen Buddhism about the monk who, after many years of practice, entered to face his master. Something shifted, and the monk had a great Satori experience. He stood there overcome by it. The attendant said, “You’ve had your joy, now why don’t you bow?” So he bowed. And as he bowed, he perceived his own enlightenment. I’m not going to try to explain that to you. You’ll have to figure it out yourself. He perceived his own enlightenment and integration was possible for him. Otherwise, he might have wandered around in that state of enlightenment without even knowing about enlightenment or his own enlightenment. Then he’d be hung up.

I had a talk with Roshi about perceiving one’s own enlightenment. The monk had the enlightenment. Then, when the attendant said, “Why don’t you bow?” he bowed and perceived his own enlightenment. At that moment, there was no self, no individual self. People such as Paul Reps, for instance, always spoke in the third person. After making a statement, Paul would say, “Did Reps say that?” It is a method used to go beyond clinging to the self.