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New Wine in Old Bottles: A Review

by Robert Aitken

© 2000      

David Brazier, The Feeling Buddha: A Buddhist Psychology of Character, and Passion (New York: Fromm International, 1998).

David Brazier, Zen Therapy: Transcending the Sorrows of the Human Mind (New York: Wiley, 1996).

          David Brazier is learned in Buddhism, and has experienced the Dharma from the inside as a monk. However, he is also a psychotherapist, and his psychology finally carries the day. He takes Walpola Rahula in particular to task in an effort to show how he and other authorities (going a long way back) have led us astray with their commentaries. The Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path are illuminated, but it is a provocative light that casts shadows which ultimately bring at least part of his thesis into question. Here is Brazier's litany of what he considers to be the traditional errors:

1.       That the Buddha taught the cessation of suffering.

2.       That dukkha refers primarily to mental suffering.

3.       That the doctrine of rebirth is an essential implication of the Four Noble Truths.

4.       That passion and enlightenment are mutually exclusive.

5.       That buddhas are not sentient and do not have personal

           problems after their enlightenment.

6.       That the Eightfold Path leads to enlightenment.

7.       That attaining enlightenment necessarily takes a long time.

8.       That the Second Noble Truth is about the cause of suffering.

9.       That the Third Noble Truth is about bringing the cause of suffering to an end.

10.     That nirvana means extinction.

         All are mistaken, he says. The errors begin with misunderstanding the first of the Noble Truths. "Dukkha," Brazier explains, is not the subjective misery of "anguish" or "unsatisfactoriness," but "affliction," a term which English etymology renders as "something that strikes one down." Too strong an expression? Think of how very little things "get you down." Not too strong, I think. The big things too, like sickness and death, are afflictions. They happen to us.

          His case for "affliction" as a translation for "dukkha" is nonetheless problematic because the term can refer to inherent and congenital anguish that come with inheritance, early environment, and indeed the human condition. Einstein, it is said, did not speak until he was eight years old, and screamed bloody murder during much of his infancy. From the perspective of the young genius, things weren't at all the way they should have been. If we can stretch "affliction" to include things we are born and raised with, then maybe term is all right. Certainly there are problems with the other translations, and perhaps we should leave "dukkha" as it is, and treat it as an English word, like Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.

          Brazier confuses his already problematic case by translating "dukkha" as "suffering." This is too bad. "To suffer" is to "endure, allow, permit." To suffer fools gladly is to smile indulgently at their foolishness. A secondary meaning of "suffer" is "to experience pain." Both meanings conflate the First Noble Truth with the Second, mixing the unwelcome things that happen with the response to them.

          I have doubts also about Brazier's interpretation of the Second Noble Truth, dukkha samudaya, though he is correct, I think, in questioning the Second Noble Truth as simply "the source of suffering." Soothill and Houdus, in their A Dictionary of Chinese Buddhist Terms, translate "samudaya" as "arising, coming together." It is the everyday, every moment experience of pratiya samutpada--an inner emotion co-arises with things that happen. However, Brazier limits his case to things that are happening. How about the things that have happened, and our ancient emotional response to them, encapsulated in engrams that clog our arteries of vitality? How about the human condition itself? Certainly sickness happens, death happens, but how about their inevitability? That too is dukkha.

          When dukkha is broadened in this way, then Brazier's interpretation of the Second Noble Truth begins to be credible. The Second Noble Truth is not the source of suffering, but the coming together of affliction and response. Is the response a reaction to the affliction, or is it in harmony? That is the key question.

          Jean-Dominique Bauby wrote his book The Butterfly and the Diving Bell while paralyzed with a brain-stem stroke. He had the use of just an eyelid, and with that, and a communication system he and his caregivers worked out, he composed his story, letter by letter. That was a coming together of affliction and response. He was angry about his condition sometimes, but he used that energy. He was not simply reacting.

          Gandhi and King experienced oppression and became angry. Like children on the playground, they reacted emotionally to things that got them down. However, like Bauby, anger was not ego-centered for Gandhi and King. They were concerned with what Brazier calls the "big story." But big story or small story, the conventional  interpretation of the first two Noble Truths is indeed open to question. At the level of realization enjoyed by Gandhi, King, and Bauby, one does not experience anguish and then find there is a source of anguish. Affliction and response are fused. The energy of dukkha-samudaya redeems the self and all beings and world realization is enhanced a little. Gandhi, King, and Bauby found their own ways, The Buddha set forth his in the next two of his truths.

          Nirodha, the third in the Buddha's noble sequence is also commonly misunderstood. It is not the act of extinguishing of the first; it is not the elimination of dukkha. Rather it is the bulwark to contain one's passion. Affliction is the spark, the response is the fire. When it is confined in a fireplace, fire gives us warmth and a sense of being at home. Beyond the bricks, however, it destroys the home and can raise hell. The way of confinement is the way of using the fire. Here is Brazier's interpretation of nirodha:

          Rodha originally meant an earth bank. Ni means "down." the image is being down behind a sheltering bank of earth, or putting a bank of earth around something so as to both confine and protect it. Here again we are talking about a fire. I find justification for this interpretation in Monier-Williams' A Sanskrit-English Dictionary, page 884, column 2, where "dam, bank, shore" are given as the etymology of "rodha."  Secondary meanings include "stopping, confining, surrounding," which still are a stretch from the conventional interpretation of "extinguishing, exterminating, destroying."

          Then the Fourth Noble Truth sets forth how to husband our passionate response to adversity. The fire is banked, and channeled in eight ways. This is marga, the path of Noble Truth.

          It is important not to pass too quickly over the Buddha's terminology here. Brazier draws our attention to why the Buddha used "nobility" and "truth" to identify his basic teaching: Noble means courageous. Calling suffering a noble thing does not at all mean that it is to be avoided or escaped from.... On the contrary, it is the flight [from suffering] which is undignified and shameful.

          It is undignified to indulge oneself to excess. It is undignified to get drunk. It is undignified to be involved in illicit sexual acts. It is undignified to hop from one entertainment to the next. It is undignified to be dominated by the pursuit of money and comfort. It is undignified to tell untruths to impress people. All these forms of indulgence are ignoble.

          True means real. When the Buddha says that affliction is a truth, he means that it is real. When he defines it, the examples he gives are very real, like sickness and death. I do not think he is saying that is something that can be escaped. Freed from the ignoble way, the Buddhist is empowered by fiery passion to walk the way of the Bodhisattva. Imperatives are no longer ego-centric, but flow forth through paths of authentic views, thoughts, speech, actions, livelihood, effort, recollection, and samadhi. With devoted practice on the path, grounded in samantha-vipassana, "at rest and seeing clearly," and with vows to focus Bodhisattva work, the Buddhist seeks out others devoted to the big story and engages with them to show the bowl and act appropriately and decisively in the broadest contexts.

          I have the sense that the Four Noble Truths are not fundamentally a sequence, as Brazier and as conventional Buddhism would have it. The four are really all of a piece: Dukkha is the Eightfold Path, Containment is the coming together of affliction and response. Afflictions are the Tao. The honorable way we walk this path perfects our character and saves the many beings.

          Besides the limits Brazier sets upon "afflictions," the confusing usage of the term "suffering," and the disproportionate stress on sequence and progression, I found a few other weaknesses in the book. The occasional reference to Zen is rarely on the mark, and the early chapters read as though they were directed to pre-teen readers. Persevere, however, and you will find your perspective enlarged.

          The Feeling Buddha has a lot going for it but Brazier's earlier work, Zen Therapy, is a horse of a different color. The author sets out to show the therapeutic power of Zen, but is not convincing, because his notions about Zen are derivative. He quotes Zen literature only occasionally, and then mostly in quite a discursive and explanatory way. For example, compare these two versions of Dogen's words in the Genjokoan:

To study the Way of the Buddha is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self; to forget the self is to be confirmed by the ten thousand things. To be confirmed by the ten thousand things is the dropping away of body and mind, and the body and mind of others. No trace of realization remains, and this no-trace is continued endlessly.

          This is my translation from Dogen's 13th century Japanese, using Hee-Jin Kim's Dogen Kigen: Mystical Realist as a crib. Here on the other hand is Brazier's version, quoting Jiyu Kennett:

          When one studies Buddhism, one studies oneself; when one studies oneself one forgets oneself; when one forgets oneself one is enlightened by everything and this very enlightenment breaks the bonds of clinging to both body and mind not only for oneself but for all beings as well. If the enlightenment is true, it wipes out even clinging to enlightenment. The two translations are recognizably from the same original, but the lack of precision in the Kennett version obscures Dogen's intention. For example, the phrase "enlightened by everything" slurs over the importance of the natural world in Zen practice. Though Brazier stresses the ecological nature of Zen, he does not follow through. Zen is unequivocally ecological, and is not a simply a matter of heart-to-heart transmission. It is not merely a matter of breaking the bonds of clinging, as the Abbidharma would have it. Let me share a bit from my own story to illustrate this point:

          When I was a young student at Ryutaku Monastery in Japan, my teacher Nakagawa Soen Roshi encouraged me to write haiku. Ambling along the trail behind the monastery one day, I passed a stone image of an arhat. Over the centuries, the figure had somehow lost its head, and as I paused before it, a butterfly alighted where the head would be. So I wrote:

On a headless arhat

a butterfly

alights.

          I was young in my practice as well as in years, and simply set down what seemed to be a bizarre confluence. Soen Roshi praised the verse, however, saying that it expressed a profound truth which I would understand later. Indeed.

          A monk asked Chao-chou, "What is the reason Bodhidharma came from the West?" Chao-chou said, "Oak tree in the garden." The monk said, "Please don't teach me by outside objects." Chao-chou said, "I don't teach you by outside objects."

          A familiar case from The Gateless Barrier. Intimacy is the key to understanding it, of standing under it and making it your own. The oak tree in the garden is not an outside object. In the same way, the butterfly on the headless arhat models Dogen's point. The ten thousand things advance and confirm the self, but only when one is completely headless. The peak experience of the wild duck, sounding off as Ma-tsu twists Pai-chang's nose, uncovers the true ecology of the human spirit. This kind of point does not appear in Zen Therapy.

          We live in a beautiful world, and nirvana is not somewhere else, as Brazier says. However, only once does he take up a natural event as something ultimately crucial to the practice. Seated before Kennett Roshi for the first time, he is at a loss to respond to her challenge, "Anything to report?" Finally, he says, "The birds are singing."

          The Roshi smiles, and that's nice, but I miss the follow up. Unlike Hsuan-sha, she does not say, "Enter there." Unlike Bassui, she does not ask "Who is hearing that sound?" So Brazier is left in his psychological realm in which the natural world is environment, but is most certainly not the teacher it was, say, for Wordsworth in his early years.

          Recently I conjured up a fictitious dialogue about Zen and psychology:

Student: "Can Zen and psychology be synthesized?"

Roshi: "They already are."

Student: "What's the upshot for Zen?"

Roshi: "Old traumas get poked."

Student: "How about psychology?"

Roshi: "Chao-chou gets used."

          For sure, Zen students can benefit from psychology. I benefit from psychology, and use it freely. Even in my retirement I consult a wise therapist in Hilo who helps me when I get stuck. In her pleasant way, she echoes my words, and in reflecting back on their possible significance, I can sometimes poke old traumas and release their noxious gasses. Brazier's Abbidharma fascinates my students here at Kaimu, and I see xerox copies of the pages circulating around. But Chao-chou gets used, that is to say, the old masters and their messages are exploited to make psychological points.

          Zen is not psychology, it is poetry, as R.H. Blyth was always saying, and poetry at its best is not constrained by the human skin. Nor is Zen. Both are the psychology of the world, beyond the world. "I saw eternity the other night," Henry Vaughn remarks matter-of-factly, "in which the world,/ and all her train were hurled." Or as Hakuin Ekaku put it,

Boundless and free is the sky of samadhi,

bright the moonlight of wisdom.

This very place is the Lotus Land,

this very body the Buddha.

          The world and worlds beyond and all their train are in fact the self. The self is boundlessly enlarged. Both experiences can be vastly therapeutic for the personal psyche. Yung-chia calls the Buddha the king of doctors, but he was speaking as a Chinese, who, let's face it, expanded Buddhist psychology and ethics to the ultimate Tao, the way of heaven as the path of the pilgrim.

          Hsueh-feng said, "The whole great Earth is like a grain of  rice in size. I cast it down before you. You can't find it  as you're in a black lacquer pail. Ring the bell, gather  everyone to look for it." When such a message decapitates a student, I bow in acknowledgment that everything has been thrown away, and only the Lotus Land remains.

          Of course, it is very important for everyone, including Zen students, to be in touch with their feelings, and to be in good mental and emotional health. Shibayama Zenkei Roshi once said to me that Zen is for people who are in excellent mental health. I sometimes refer students to a therapist, and at one point quite a string of them saw the same therapist regularly, and he served as a kind of second teacher. I have no brief against Abbidharma in any of its forms, including modern psychology.

          Moreover, I have long felt that Theravada Buddhism augments Zen practice, and have over the years encouraged certain students to attend Vipassana retreats Sometimes the students don't come back to Zen practice, and that's fine. Vipassana practice is complete in itself.

          But tell me, "When your body has separated into its four elements--earth, water, fire, and air--where do you go?" Tou- shuai demands an answer. I demand an answer. Anything to report?

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