Month: January 2018

I’ve been asked to comment on “True Nature” (as in, “a person’s true nature”).

Here’s a paragraph or two from Dispute over Infinity Divides Mathematics:

Infinity has ruffled feathers in mathematics almost since the field’s beginning. The controversy arises not from the notion of potential infinity–the number line’s promise of continuing forever–but from the concept of infinity as an actual, complete, manipulable object.

Assuming actual infinity leads to unsettling consequences. Cantor proved, for instance, that the infinite set of even numbers {2,4,6,…} could be put in a “one-to-one correspondence” with all counting numbers {1,2,3,…}, indicating that there are just as many evens as there are odds-and-evens.

The mathematician Poincare sums it up nicely for me (from Wikipedia, actual infinity):

There is no actual infinity, that the Cantorians have forgotten and have been trapped by contradictions.

(H. Poincare [Les mathematiques et la logique III, Rev. metaphys. morale (1906) p. 316])

I would say that the assumption of the existence of a completed infinite, as in “True Nature”, or “Dao”, or “God”, will result in contradictions, and such an assumption isn’t really required to benefit from the positive and substantive particulars in most of the wisdom teachings of the world.

At the same time, there’s a lot of useful mathematics that relies on the notion of a completed infinity for proof, and I would guess the majority of people on this earth find terms like “True Nature” useful as a means of orientating themselves in everyday living.

I think it is possible to talk about the boundaries of the senses, and somehow to perceive things that lie beyond those boundaries, and that perception may be characterized as “infinite” (as in “the infinity of ether”, the perception of the first of the non-material meditative states–bearing in mind that the non-material states are marked by “uniformity with respect to the senses”).

At least Gautama tended to describe things in mostly positive and substantive terms, as when he described how “the infinity of ether” was “the excellence of the heart’s release” through the suffusion of the world with “a mind of compassion”:

[One] dwells, having suffused the first quarter of the world with compassion, likewise the second, likewise the third, likewise the fourth; just so above, below, across; [one] dwells having suffused the whole world everywhere, in every way, with a mind of compassion that is far-reaching, wide-spread, immeasurable, without enmity, without malevolence.

(MN I 38, Pali Text Society volume I pg 48)

That’s kind of how “people who are moving around outside” sit with me, when I sit:

When you sit, the cushion sits with you. If you wear glasses, the glasses sit with you. Clothing sits with you. House sits with you. People who are moving around outside all sit with you. They don’t take the sitting posture!

(Kobun Chino Otogawa, “Aspects of Sitting–Shikantaza”, from jikoji.org)

That’s as close to the notion of a “completed infinity” as I like to get, because of the contradictions that will otherwise inevitably arise.

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What did Gautama mean by “the cessation of in-breathing and out-breathing”? The phrase occurs often in the Pali sermon volumes (along with “the cessation of perception and sensation”). Did he actually mean that the breath stops?

What Gautama meant can be established by cross-referencing the teachings in the sermons about what he referred to as “activities”.

Gautama’s truth concerning the origination of suffering placed “activities” between “ignorance” and “consciousness”:

Conditioned by ignorance activities come to pass; conditioned by activities consciousness, conditioned by consciousness name-and-shape, conditioned by name-and-shape sense, conditioned by sense contact, conditioned by contact feeling, conditioned by feeling craving, conditioned by craving grasping, conditioned by grasping becoming, conditioned by becoming birth, conditioned by birth old age-and-death, grief, lamenting, suffering, sorrow, despair come to pass. Such is the uprising of this entire mass of ill.”

(SN II 2, Pali Text Society Vol II pg 2–for more on the four truths, see the prior post, Zen, Part Three)

He defined “activities” as “determinate” bodily deed, speech, or thought (AN III 415, Vol III pg 294 and SN II 3, Vol II pg 4). The cessation of the activities constituted the cessation of speech, the cessation of “in-breathing and out-breathing”, and the cessation of “perception and feeling” (SN IV 217 Vol IV pg 146).

“The cessation of in-breathing and out-breathing” is therefore the cessation of determinate activity in the movement of breath, rather than the actual cessation of the breath itself.

A cessation of determinate or volitive activity in speech, body, or thought can be a wonderful thing, yet sitting down to experience such a thing is fraught with peril. So, for example, Shunryu Suzuki admonished Blanche Hartman: “Don’t ever think that you can sit zazen! That’s a big mistake! Zazen sits zazen!”

Similarly, Dogen quoted a koan:

Mayu, Zen master Baoche, was fanning himself. A monk approached and said, “Master, the nature of wind is permanent and there is no place it does not reach. Why, then, do you fan yourself?”

“Although you understand that the nature of the wind is permanent,” Mayu replied, “you do not understand the meaning of its reaching everywhere.”

“What is the meaning of its reaching everywhere?” asked the monk again. Mayu just kept fanning himself. The monk bowed deeply.

(Genjo Koan)

Maybe if the author of the koan had not added, “the monk bowed deeply”, folks would have thought that Mayu’s action in fanning himself was just old Mayu, continuing to willfully fan himself–I don’t know!

When Gautama said “for (one) knowing thus, seeing thus, there are no latent conceits that ‘I am the doer, mine is the doer’ in regard to this consciousness-informed body”, I believe he was talking about the day when Mayu discovered himself continuing to fan in the absence of any exercise of will to do so, and I’m sure the experience for Mayu had as much to do with breath as my experience of zazen getting up and walking across a room–everything to do with the breath, as a part of the wind that reaches everywhere!

To have such an experience requires “dying the great death”, a willingness to give up initiating activity to such an extent with regard to the body that the suffocation response is invoked, yet moment-to-moment relaxation and calm can be continued.