Notes from

Sekkei Harada's The Essence of Zen

1. Is "Zen" difficult?
   
   
   Many people think Zen is something difficult. This is a misunderstanding. The Chinese character for "Zen" means "to demonstrate simplicity". As this character implies, Zen is an extremely clear and concise teaching.
   
   
   
   
2. What's the problem? Answer: You are the problem! Just "you, yourself".
   
   Or, as Harada puts it:
   
   
   Who is it that ... is entangled in troubles and complications to such an extent that it is impossible to move? Regardless of whether you live in the East or West, it is you yourself. The cause is nothing other than ignorance of the true Self.
   
         ... "Who are you?" ... In answer to the earnest desire to know the essence of oneself, which means to meet the true Self [aka "essential self"], Zen offers the search for that Self, and it can be undertaken anywhere at any time.
   
   
   
   
3. "small self " (or "me") {aka "ego-self"} vs "true Self".
   
   This is what the inner jacket of the book has to say:
   
   
       Open the book to any section and the underlying message of the master's teaching is quickly apparent. In order to attain true peace of mind, it is imperative that we forget the small self -- the grasping, demanding "me". This is by no means easy, but if we succeed, we will realize the true Self -- the Self without beginning or end, which transcends time and space and is one with all things.
       Harada's message is timely as well as important to people living in this present world of chaos and conflict. ...
   
   
   
   
4. Encountering your "true Self" (or "essential Self") via "Zen".
   
   Harada also wrote in the "Afterword" to his book:
   
   
         ... in our lifetime there is only one person we must encounter, one person we must meet as though we were passionately in love. That person is the essential Self, the true Self. As long as you don't meet this Self, it will be impossible to find true satisfaction in your heart, to avoid feeling that you lack something, or to be clear about things in general.
         To meet your Self is said to be the purpose of human life. It is also the objective in Buddhism. The shortest, most practical way to do this is through Zen.
   
   
   
   
5. What is "Dharma", "Buddha-dharma", "law of causality"? Tell me, what is "Zen" again?
   
   This is how Harada explains it, in the simplest way, about these (foreign, Japanese and Indian) terms:
   
   
   Zen [a Japanese term] can also be expressed with the words
   
   

   • "the Dharma" [an Indian-Sanskrit term],
     
     
   • "the Way" [which is a Chinese-Japanese term, also used by Jesus Himself and later by the early followers of the "Christ" or "Messiah" or "Mashiah" in Hebrew -- those early Jewish followers of Christ who were in Jerusalem never called themselves Christians but instead referred to themselves either as "followers of the Way" or as "Nazarenes", and perhaps even "Ebionites", ebionim being the Hebrew word for "the Poor"; it was the Christians in the city of Antioch who first came to call themselves Christians or "Christiens", i.e., followers of the Christ -- see Acts 11:26], or
     
     
   • "the [true] Self" [aka "essential Self"].

   
   
   Why [all these other names for Zen]? The reason is that the existence of all things on the planet Earth is the Dharma. All things come into existence through conditions, and they disappear because of conditions. This is what we call "the law of causality". There is absolutely no possibility of the intervention of the ego-self in this law. For this reason we call this law "Buddha-dharma", or Zen. Consequently, we can say that all things on Earth are completely equal because of this law.
   
         ... The only thing that is important is whether a person is now truly practicing in accordance with the law of causality, in other words, with the Way of the buddhas and the enlightened ones who transmitted the Dharma.
   
         ... The sufferings and deluding passions of human beings -- namely, greed, anger, and ignorance -- cannot be halted by reason or education. Only by awakening to the law of causality is it possible to stop them.
   
   
   
   
6. "Dharma", "Truth", "ego-self" {"small self"; "me"}.
   
   In the "Afterword" to his book, Harada wrote:
   
   
       The Chinese character for "Dharma" is written with the component of "water" and "to leave". As this character implies, water flows naturally from a high place to a low place. It means to experience the Truth, which is separate from the judgment and intervention of the ego-self. In other words, if you really know yourself, then you can use the world as a basis to decide what you want to do.
   
   
   
   
7. "Dharma (present reality)", "fantasy" [delusion], "suffering(s)" [anguish], "causality", "true Self".
   
   Harada also wrote in the "Afterword" to his book:
   
   
   Most people do not know that the Dharma (present reality) is separate from human thought. For this reason, they assume that what they think and perceive is reality. In this way, they create "a fantasy" [a delusion] by thinking that something that cannot be perceived is reality. Attachment to this delusion and chasing after it result in various sufferings [or "anguish", a la Stephen Batchelor]. To be deluded by the sufferings of birth, old age, sickness, and death is not to be deluded by these realities but rather to be deluded within the thought of the ego-self. Birth, old age, sickness, and death are also the Dharma as it is apart from the thought of the ego-self. Measuring the realm of causality -- which is birth, old age, sickness, and death -- by the standard of dualistic thought of the ego-self is why problems such as suffering [anguish] arise.
   
   The Dharma of birth, old age, sickness, and death has absolutely no relation to the true Self. They appear and disappear, appear and disappear, and that's the end of it. If you are one with conditions, there is absolutely no need for resolution. The reason we lack complete confidence that we can arrive at a resolution to the problem of life and death is that we blindly believe in causality and, at the same time, we approve of our own way of thinking. We understand that present reality appears because of causality, but because of the weakness of our belief in causality being separate from the thought of the ego-self, our habit of measuring the present condition with standards of the ego-selfremains and does not disappear.
   
   The path expounded by Buddha is simply to accept birth, old age, sickness, and death as your own reality and not to interfere with that reality by using the thought of the ego-self.
   
   
   
   
8. "Buddhism", "Dharma", "liberation", "ego-self" {"small self"; "me"}, "nature of reality", "dualistic thought" {"discriminatory thought"; "ego-self thought"}.
   
   In Harada's "Afterword" to his book, he gave a brief description of what the Historical Buddha discovered:
   
   
   Buddhism is the teaching of the Dharma, which Shakyamuni Buddha expounded after his liberation. This was not a conclusion he arrived at within the realm of ego-self thought, whereby reality is perceived as objective and thought is used to determine what reality is. Rather, Buddha discovered the nature of reality by liberating himself from discriminatory and dualistic thought and became reality itself. For that reason, his teaching of present reality is far different from the sort of explanation of reality that depends on knowing and not knowing (dualistic thought), which is generally prevalent in the fields of religion, philosophy, physics, medicine, "ego-self", and and biology.
         The reality that Shakyamuni Buddha revealed was reality itself, the nature of completely assimilated reality, which is what we refer to as "the Dharma". The teaching that Buddha expounded was that the existence of things with and without form is separate from human thought. All things appear because of conditions, and all things disappear because of conditions. The appearance and disappearance of things has absolutely no connection with the true Self. As all things are formed through conditions, they have no center or substance. For that reason, things are constantly changing (are impermanent), have no beginning and end (are selfless), and cannot be perceived (are formless).
   
   
   
   
9. What is "Zen sickness"?
   
   Here is how Harada explains it:
   
   
   As you know, Zen and the Buddha-dharma developed in the different cultures of India, China, Korea, and Japan. The different forms that appeared from the varied cultural backgrounds attest to the functioning of the law of causality. Unfortunately, Zen practice itself has fallen into self-centered habits. This is a Zen sickness (a sickness of thinking you are not sick), which is difficult to be aware of. It can cause great harm, and at present it is a sickness that is widespread in the Zen world, both in Japan and abroad. ...
   
   
   It is clear to a Charismatic Christian like me, that four to five hundred years after the death of the Historical Buddha, Satan has hijacked Buddhism when he turned it into a "religion"; note the use of the present perfect tense in "has hijacked" -- why? because Buddhism as a religion continues to be hijacked by Satan.
   
   Similarly, Satan has hijacked the Church that became an official religion of the Roman Empire in the 4th century AD and then turned it into an instrument that plunged the planet Earth (or at least much of it, especially in Europe and those parts colonised by Europeans) into the so-called Dark Ages that historians speak about (from about late 4th century or early 5th century, to about the mid-15th or mid-16th century or so) until God started the restoration via Martin Luther King's "The just shall live by faith (and not by works)" Reformation movement -- and then continued the restoration of grace with the Methodist, then in the early 20th century, God restored laying of hands, healings, prophecies, miracles, speaking of tongues, etc. via the Pentacostal movement of the early 20th centry (especially via revivalist events such as the Azuza Street revival) and later the Charismatic movement of the late Sixties.
   
   Again, Satan has hijacked other organisations, religions, and movements, such as the Free Masonry in Europe and US, "Taoism" in China, and the numerous cults prevalent in many countries.