This is part of chapter 5 of Bahram Khozairy’s first published book, “Jeet
Kune Do to San Jieh Dao, From Darkness To Light”,
released in 1995.
Zen Buddhism
By: Bahram Khozairy
Copyright © 1995 by Bahram Khozairy. All Rights Reserved.
OVER
VIEW
The philosophy and the religion
of Zen is an offshoot of the Mahayana branch of Buddhism. As opposed to
Buddhism, Zen goes beyond Buddhist Scriptures, and therefore can be categorized
as an unorthodox cultic method of Buddhism.
Zen's origin can be traced as far back as about the 5th to 6th century
before the time of Christ in India, by a sage name Bodhidharma. Although, Zen did not get
fully developed until the year 1191 in Japan, the Rinzai
sect of Zen was formed by Eisai, and in 1227 the Soto sect was initiated by Dogen.1 The word Zen in Japanese means
"meditation," and is the same term as Dhayana in the Indian
dialect. Zen Buddhism includes the
practice of a seated meditation or zazen. According
to some of Zen's
practitioners and authorities,
"Zazen is the method of Zen meditation, which is done daily at specific times with occasional periods of
intense meditation lasting one week. The
goal is final enlightenment."2
"The
usual zazen posture is the full lotus or half-lotus
cross-legged sitting position on a specific type of round cushion."3
The final goal for a zenist is the arrival at the enlightenment stage known as Nirvana or Satori. However, according to
Richard Mathison,
"...one
can never achieve satori-the nonrational,
clear and intuitive understanding of reality-until he understands the exercise
of koan..."4
Now, Koans can be identified as the
jungle of verbal puzzles and semantics (numbers about 1700), which would
supposedly lead the zenist by his master towards the
ultimate enlightenment. The followings
are only a few examples of Koans:
(1)
"What was the appearance of your face before your ancestors were born?
(2)
"We are all familiar with the sound of two hands clapping. What is the sound of one hand?
(3)
"Li-ku, a high government officer of the T'ang dynasty, asked a famous Ch'an
master:
"A long time
ago a man kept a goose in a bottle. It
grew larger and larger until it could not get out of the bottle anymore. He did not want to break the bottle, nor did
he wish to hurt the goose; how would you get it out? The master called out, "O Officer!"
"Yes", was the response. "there, it's out!"5
So, it is obvious from the above
short survey of Koans, rationality, clear thinking
and logic has no place in the Zen's philosophy.
The nature of Zen's God is Pantheistic,
which means, God is all and all is God. Also in a sense, the zenist maintains the doctrine of Monism, which asserts, all is one and everything in the universe
belongs to only one reality, and they are composed of the same nature.
Moreover, the moralities and ethics of Zen are not based on the Divine
objective and absolute ethics; but rather are purely relative according to an
individual's taste, experience and opinion.
As Daisetz
Teitaro Suzuki writes in, "An Introduction to
Zen Buddhism,"
"...in
Zen, God is neither denied nor insisted upon;...When I say there is no God in
Zen, the pious reader may be shocked, but this does not mean that Zen denies
the existence of God; neither denial nor affirmation concerns Zen. When a thing is denied, the very denial
involves something not denied. The same
can be said of affirmation...Zen has no soul whose welfare is to be looked
after by somebody else and whose immorality is a matter of intense concern with
some people."6
From the above quotation, we can
discern that Zen can also be cataloged as an agnostic belief system. As a
result, the zenist has the responsibility to save
himself (self-salvation), by
accepting the four noble truths and following the eight fold paths of Buddhism.
The four noble truths are:
(1)
existence of suffering. (Birth, death, disease, old
age, not having what we desire and having what we do not desire are painful)
(2)
cause of suffering. (the
craving desire for the pleasures of the senses)
(3)
ending of suffering. (to give
up the use of our senses)
(4)
ending the suffering by following the Buddhism's eight
fold paths of:
And the eight fold paths are:
(1) right view
(2) right
resolve
(3) right
speech
(4) right
behavior
(5) right
occupation
(6) right
effort
(7) right
contemplation
(8) right meditation
Again, for the Zen followers,
the idea of sin and evil are irrelevant.
Alan Watt relates,
"For
Hindu thought there is no Problem of Evil.
The conventional, relative world is necessarily a world of opposites....
For this reason the masters talk about Zen as little as possible, and throw its
concrete reality straight at us. This
reality is the "suchness" (tathata) of our natural, nonverbal world. If we see this just as it is, there is
nothing good, nothing bad, nothing inherently long or short, nothing subjective
and nothing objective. There is no
symbolic self to be forgotten, and no need for any idea of a concrete reality
to be remembered."7
Respond:
The philosophy and the cult of
Zen certainly lacks adequate answer to the life's
problems of sin, death, evil, suffering,
judgment, and morality. It is a
self-destructive and self-contradictory reasoning approach and philosophy. It
offers no objective criteria as a means for a person to test and measure when
his or her state of so-called Nirvana or Satori has
been reached. A person will never know
when he or she has reached the level of enlightenment, because there are only
subjective experiences that one has to go by, rather than objective and
absolute standards of truth. For the zenist to rely
on the human nature alone as a means of obtaining self-salvation, is an obvious
folly and paramount error; simply because, man is not pure by nature; his flesh
can not be relied upon solely because of his depraved
and fraudulent nature. In the book of
Romans chapter 3, verses 10 thru 12 and verse 23, we find,
"...THERE
IS NONE RIGHTEOUS, NOT EVEN ONE; THERE IS NONE WHO UNDERSTANDS; THERE IS NONE
WHO SEEKS FOR GOD; ALL HAVE TURNED ASIDE, TOGETHER THEY HAVE BECOME USELESS;
THERE IS NONE WHO DOES GOOD, THERE IS NOT EVEN ONE, ... for all have sinned and
fall short of the glory of God."
The Lord Jesus clearly
delineates for us, the contents of the human's heart, in such a trenchant and
graphic fashion, as to not leave any room for debate,
"That
which proceeds out of the man, that is what defiles
the man. For from within, out of the
heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, deeds of coveting and wickedness, as well as
deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride and foolishness. All these evil things
proceed from within and defile the man."
(Mark
7:20-23)
The Scriptures also inform us
that,
"The
heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can
understand it?"
(Jeremiah
17:9)
For the zenist,
there are no needs of a personal and loving God, who is willing to forgive sins
and offers salvation as a result of the ultimate sacrifice and death on the
cross. Because for the zenist, the
idea of morality, love as a sacrifice are purely relative and subjective. It is no wonder why Zen, which is a cult of
Buddhism, denies the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, Deity of the Lord Jesus
Christ, Death and physical bodily resurrection of Christ from the grave on the
third day, Salvation by God's Grace alone through man's faith alone, Sinfulness
of all mankind and the Bible as the only authoritative revelation of God for
mankind. As Dr. Walter Martin so beautifully characterizes Zen in his book, the Kingdom
of the Cults, as,
"the
most self-centered, selfish system of philosophy that the depraved soul of man
can embrace, for it negates the two basic principles upon which all spiritual
reality exists, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy
God with all thy heart with all thy soul and with all thy mind ... and thy
neighbor as thyself". (Matthew 22:37,39). For Zenists, it is
love of self first, last and always.
This is the core of Zen, which releases one from spiritual
responsibility and substitutes intellectual
enlightenment for conversion, and the absence of concern for one's fellow man
for peace with God. Historically, Buddhism has produced nothing but
indescribable conditions under which its subjects live. For in almost every area of the world where
Buddhism of any form holds sway, there stalks the specter of disease, hunger,
and moral and spiritual decay. The
peoples of the Orient are the slaves of their religions, and Buddhism, with its
egocentricity, inherently selfish concept of life and of responsibility to
society, is by all odds one of the greatest offenders. Let those who consider Zen as a superior form
of religious philosophy look well at its history and its fruit, for "by
their fruits ye shall know them." (Matthew 7:20)"8
Thus, based on our analysis and
our earlier surveys on this religion, we must infer that Zen Buddhism cannot
and does not depict the ultimate truth of reality and existence, and therefore
must be rejected as a true faith, religion or philosophy.
1. Bob Larson, LARSON'S NEW BOOK OF CULTS
(Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1989), p. 80.
2. Josh McDowell & Don Stewart, Handbook of
Today's Religions (San Bernardino, Ca.: Here's Life Publishers, Inc., 1983), p.
318.
3. Nancy Wilson-Ross is quoted by Josh McDowell
& Don Stewart, Handbook of Today's Religions, p. 319.
4. Richard Mathison is
quoted by Walter Martin, The Kingdom Of The Cults
(Minneapolis, Minn.: Bethany House Publishers, 1985), p. 263.
5. Quoted by Josh McDowell & Don Stewart,
Handbook of Today's Religions, p. 319.
6. Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki is quoted by Walter Martin, Kingdom Of The
Cults, p. 265.
7. Alan Watts is quoted by Walter Martin, The
Kingdom Of The Cults,
p. 266.
8. Martin, Kingdom Of
The Cults, pp. 269-270.