Sengai, a nineteenth century Zen Master and head of Shufuku-ji, the first Zen temple of Japan, was forthright in his teachings. Once a rich man asked him to write a couple of benedictory words, to be treasured from generation to generation, for the continued prosperity of his family. Sengai obtained a sheet of paper and wrote on it: father dies, son dies, grandson dies. The rich man was exasperated and sought an explanation from the saint for shocking him thus.
It was not unusual for Zen Masters to deliver their message in sutras as sutras are easy to remember and poignant in their pithiness. Elaborating upon his death sutra, he assuaged the ruffled feelings of the peeved Dives* thus: "If your son should die, before you, this would grieve you greatly. If your grandson should pass away before your son, both of you would become broken-hearted. If your family, generation after generation, passes away in the order I have mentioned, it will be the natural course of life. And if somebody has earned enough merit to ensure a natural course of life, I call this real prosperity".
Sengai seems to underscore the point that untimely deaths, say from disease or hunger, are detrimental to the natural flow of life. This concept has found favour these days with Swami Ramdev who is intent upon building a prosperous India by eradicating disease and hunger. On a broader canvas, Sengai is reflecting upon a natural course of life for wholesome living. While Swami Ramdev advocates the practice of pranayam to root out these aberrations, Sengai offers the practice of Zen for achieving real prosperity.
Zen may appear exotic to us but it is not. It is our homegrown concept coming back to us after a long time, showcased in a Japanese basket. Zen is the Indian dhyan by way of China and Japan. Bodhidharma, a Pallav prince turned Buddhist monk, and twenty eighth in line from Buddha, took dhyan to China in the sixth century C.E. where it flourished as ch'an. Eisai, a twelfth century Japanese priest, made Japan home to ch'an in the form of Zen. Zen stripped of its frills is essentially dhyan, albeit informal.
Broadly speaking dhyan is of two types: formal and informal. In formal dhyan we sit in silence, in a comfortable pose, and practice mindfulness. Though meditation has come to be used globally as an equivalent of dhyan, it doesn't fill the bill. Mindfulness is the right word. Meditation means contemplation, reflection, rumination,even concentration while mindfulness is consciousness, awareness, alertness, wakefulness. Meditation needs an object to meditate upon but mindfulness is just the state of wakefulness, the state of being. In informal dhyan, we can work in the market place in a state of mindfulness, that is, alertness. Kabir calls it sahaj dhyan.
Both dhyan and pranayam happen to be part of Ashtang Yoga and they exist in a state of equilibrium with each other. If you practice pranayam with awareness, you pass into dhyan spontaneously. Conversely, if you happen to be practising dhyan, you may find yourself performing pranayam as well. But the big question is how dhyan contributes to bringing about a naturalness to our lives. Let me try to explain.
Psychologists tell us that our mind is nine parts unconscious and only one part conscious. This points to a very disturbing feature of our lives--we work with only 1/10th of our full potential of conciousness. All our decisions are taken with only a fraction of our whole potential. May be one big reason why we have brought our beautiful earth to the brink of extinction is that we work largely in a state of unconsciousness. Our unconscious is so stupendous, it overwhelms the tiny conscious. We have become so much used to backseat driving by the unconscious that we never suspect we are being remotely controlled by it.
The tiny conscious in us works only as a trigger to start a process and then the unconscious takes over. It is like a nuclear fission. Once started no power can stop it. We have no control over the tail-end. We use the word addiction for being overpowered by the unconscious. Be it alcohol, drugs, junk food, junk thoughts, we remain blissfully unaware that the unconscious is in charge of us. The irony is that we always think that we are the masters but the conscious in us is too niggardly to help us remain conscious for a long period of time. We just don't have the knowhow to remain conscious without a break.
Dhyan aims at upgrading our consciousness by enlarging the volume of our consciousness. Yes, it is possible to be fully conscious and annihilate our unconscious completely. Transforming the unconscious into the conscious is the real alchemy. When the dross in us is changed into burnished gold, we come to realise that awareness functions faster than a fast-track court as it dispenses cases on the spot. Decisions are taken on moment-to-moment basis so that there is no backlog left to be shovelled into the unconscious. Dhyan is the only way of distancing the watchman in us from our mind.
An enormous chunk of energy kept hostage as our unconscious gets released. A huge burden is lifted. We are freed of a constant drag on our energy. The released energy burns the desires that burn us. As a result love, compassion, harmony, steadfastness spring up. With the dissolution of the unconscious, the past is obliterated and so are the projections into the future. Only the present remains. In the present we can't help being our real Self as the present has no space or time for being unnatural. And if we remain pure like nature, nothing unnatural happens in our life. That is real prosperity a la Sengai.
Dives*= 1. A Biblical rich man. 2. Any rich man. (pronounced Daiveez).
Om Shantih
Ajit Sambodhi
It was not unusual for Zen Masters to deliver their message in sutras as sutras are easy to remember and poignant in their pithiness. Elaborating upon his death sutra, he assuaged the ruffled feelings of the peeved Dives* thus: "If your son should die, before you, this would grieve you greatly. If your grandson should pass away before your son, both of you would become broken-hearted. If your family, generation after generation, passes away in the order I have mentioned, it will be the natural course of life. And if somebody has earned enough merit to ensure a natural course of life, I call this real prosperity".
Sengai seems to underscore the point that untimely deaths, say from disease or hunger, are detrimental to the natural flow of life. This concept has found favour these days with Swami Ramdev who is intent upon building a prosperous India by eradicating disease and hunger. On a broader canvas, Sengai is reflecting upon a natural course of life for wholesome living. While Swami Ramdev advocates the practice of pranayam to root out these aberrations, Sengai offers the practice of Zen for achieving real prosperity.
Zen may appear exotic to us but it is not. It is our homegrown concept coming back to us after a long time, showcased in a Japanese basket. Zen is the Indian dhyan by way of China and Japan. Bodhidharma, a Pallav prince turned Buddhist monk, and twenty eighth in line from Buddha, took dhyan to China in the sixth century C.E. where it flourished as ch'an. Eisai, a twelfth century Japanese priest, made Japan home to ch'an in the form of Zen. Zen stripped of its frills is essentially dhyan, albeit informal.
Broadly speaking dhyan is of two types: formal and informal. In formal dhyan we sit in silence, in a comfortable pose, and practice mindfulness. Though meditation has come to be used globally as an equivalent of dhyan, it doesn't fill the bill. Mindfulness is the right word. Meditation means contemplation, reflection, rumination,even concentration while mindfulness is consciousness, awareness, alertness, wakefulness. Meditation needs an object to meditate upon but mindfulness is just the state of wakefulness, the state of being. In informal dhyan, we can work in the market place in a state of mindfulness, that is, alertness. Kabir calls it sahaj dhyan.
Both dhyan and pranayam happen to be part of Ashtang Yoga and they exist in a state of equilibrium with each other. If you practice pranayam with awareness, you pass into dhyan spontaneously. Conversely, if you happen to be practising dhyan, you may find yourself performing pranayam as well. But the big question is how dhyan contributes to bringing about a naturalness to our lives. Let me try to explain.
Psychologists tell us that our mind is nine parts unconscious and only one part conscious. This points to a very disturbing feature of our lives--we work with only 1/10th of our full potential of conciousness. All our decisions are taken with only a fraction of our whole potential. May be one big reason why we have brought our beautiful earth to the brink of extinction is that we work largely in a state of unconsciousness. Our unconscious is so stupendous, it overwhelms the tiny conscious. We have become so much used to backseat driving by the unconscious that we never suspect we are being remotely controlled by it.
The tiny conscious in us works only as a trigger to start a process and then the unconscious takes over. It is like a nuclear fission. Once started no power can stop it. We have no control over the tail-end. We use the word addiction for being overpowered by the unconscious. Be it alcohol, drugs, junk food, junk thoughts, we remain blissfully unaware that the unconscious is in charge of us. The irony is that we always think that we are the masters but the conscious in us is too niggardly to help us remain conscious for a long period of time. We just don't have the knowhow to remain conscious without a break.
Dhyan aims at upgrading our consciousness by enlarging the volume of our consciousness. Yes, it is possible to be fully conscious and annihilate our unconscious completely. Transforming the unconscious into the conscious is the real alchemy. When the dross in us is changed into burnished gold, we come to realise that awareness functions faster than a fast-track court as it dispenses cases on the spot. Decisions are taken on moment-to-moment basis so that there is no backlog left to be shovelled into the unconscious. Dhyan is the only way of distancing the watchman in us from our mind.
An enormous chunk of energy kept hostage as our unconscious gets released. A huge burden is lifted. We are freed of a constant drag on our energy. The released energy burns the desires that burn us. As a result love, compassion, harmony, steadfastness spring up. With the dissolution of the unconscious, the past is obliterated and so are the projections into the future. Only the present remains. In the present we can't help being our real Self as the present has no space or time for being unnatural. And if we remain pure like nature, nothing unnatural happens in our life. That is real prosperity a la Sengai.
Dives*= 1. A Biblical rich man. 2. Any rich man. (pronounced Daiveez).
Om Shantih
Ajit Sambodhi
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