Real Life with Ryuei

Rethinking Skillful Means, Right View, Wrong Views, and Wrongly Held Views

Recently I have been challenged offline in such a way that I have had to rethink my approach to skillful means, ethics, right view, and the Lotus Sutra. The challenge came from a confrontation I had with someone who insisted that Zen Masters were able, upon attaining enlightenment, to dispense with all ceremonies and rituals and that drinking was perfectly ok for them, and that sitting in meditation for long periods of time was unecessary. I could see where he was coming from with some of this, but I also felt (maybe wrongly) that he was trying to justify a lazy, amoral, and iconoclastic approach that is not Buddhism. On the other hand, was I really concerned about what this person meant and/or what he needed to encourage his own actual practice and engagment with Buddhism, or was I just offended that he was insisting on a different understanding and approach than myself? Was I just trying to defend my own turf and credibility? Even if for the sake of argument I was totally right and he was totally wrong - what was my actual motivation? Was I just ego-tripping? Or was I negating him in no uncertain terms as a way of breaking and subduing his false views?

My subsequent conversation with Taigen about this really caused me to look at how fixated I am on my own opinions, my own self-estimation, my own consistency and credibility, my own "turf." But at the same time, I couldn't quite accept that Buddhists should have no fixed views, when the Pali Canon clearly emphasizes right view, let alone the Lotus Sutra and Nichiren. Or was I understanding right view and skillful means correctly? At the time I was struggling with this, I was writing my latest installment of my Rissho Ankoku Ron commentary which deals with three Buddhist parables about right view, wrong view, and wrongly held views - the parable of the blind men and the elephant, the parable of the snake, and the parable of the raft.

http://nichirenscoffeehouse.net/Ryuei/RAR26.html

And over this past weekend I made that the theme of my Dharma talk for the Buddha's birthday:

http://nichirenscoffeehouse.net/Ryuei/hanamatsuri.html

And at the same time I finished James Heisig's book "The Philosphers of Nothingness" about the Kyoto school philosophers, and in particular I was impressed with the philosophy of Keiji Nishitani and that also impacted me.

So here is what I am thinking of in no particular order:

1. I formerly identified right view with either the four noble truths (as it is defined in the Pali Canon) or with the One Vehicle or Eternal Buddha teaching of the Lotus Sutra. In other words - right view as a doctrinal commitment. But I now think I may have mislead myself.

2. What if right view is not a commitment to an idea or doctrine but to a particular way of letting go in order to be fully present and fully engaged with what is, as "vast and open as the sky"? Or as the Buddha said to Bahiya, "In the seen only what is seen, in the heard only what is heard..."

3. The four noble truths themselves are spoken of more as a strategy to act upon than a fourfold creed. In other words: one should reflect deeply upon suffering, cut off its causes, realize liberation, follow the eightfold path. It is a plan of action and not a set of propositions.

4. But that is just one possible plan of action for seeing and actualizing in ourselves the true nature of reality (and even putting it that way is just a skillful means). The Flower Garland and Nirvana Sutras have whole chapters devoted to alternate approaches to the four noble truths. Then there is the doctrine or rather rhetorical method of emptiness which is another approach to liberation, said to be consistent with but also going beyond the four noble truths. Each plan of action, or rhetorical strategy is a skillful means to attain liberation - a thoroughgoind non-attachment that is at the same time a freedom eliciting a compassionate engagement with all things. I even found this at work in St. John of the Cross, who page after page states that one must drop all attachments, images, ideas, and impressions - even spiritual ones. Even ones that come from God. For St. John asserts that those which come from God remain efficacious even if one does not cling to them, and in fact end up being self-defeating and misused to buttress our pride and ego if clung to. So I realized what the Lotus Sutra must mean to assert that all provisional teachings must not be accepted. It is saying what St. John of the Cross meant - let that which is true have its positive effect, but beyond that there is no need for self-conscious effort or clinging to it on our part. They are all rafts which can be left behind once they have served their purpose. Another way of looking at this is that each teaching is a thorn which is used to extract a thorn of attachment (whether to a worldly craving or spiritual doctrine or metaphysical obsession) and once extracted both are discarded.

5. And so if the previous skillful means are not doctrinal commitments or ideas but plans of action only useful insofar as they serve the specific purpose of realeasing us from attachments so that we can freely encounter and engage and unfold life as it is, then is the Lotus Sutra itself exempt from this? Does it teach doctrines or methods which are not simply a skillful means but good for all time? I used to think so, but now I am not so sure. Rather, I think the overall method of skillful means has been given a new scope. It has been turned back on the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha itself and in such a way as to open those up so they are no longer things to be clung to.

6. So the One Vehicle is not really telling us to be attached to a single vehicle over and against the others, but is telling us to let go of the concept of rival vehicles. It presents this positively by using the skillful means of a single vehicle bigger and better than the others. Taken literally this means clinging to the One and rejecting the others. But the full context of the Lotus Sutra shows that those of the other vehicles are not being rejected but are being reaffirmed and that all are a part of this One Vehicle precisely where they are as they are. This is even expanded to include the evildoer Devadatta and the 8 year old Dragon Girl. Nichiren talks of this as sokushin jobutsu - attaining buddhahood with this very body. So clinging to a One Vehicle vs Three is just more clinging, letting go of the rivalry or comparing of three in favor of a more embracing yet perhaps non-substantial unity is probably more to the point. What do I mean by non-substantial unity? In other words, unity or the one is not found in a fixed thing, but in the interplay, cohesiveness, and harmony of the many even in their respective positions and seeming opposition. They all empower each other in their respective roles to the extent that an all around letting go is prepared and actualized, but they fail to the extent they absolutize themselves.

7. The Buddha's life and even awakening is then subject to this logic of all-around skillful means as it was formerly constricted to the birth, death, and personality of Shakyamuni Buddha. But now the Buddha breaks open his own birth and death and awakening, and in fact does the same for us all, by saying that birth and death are themselves skillful means. Awakening as the sole property of a historical person at a particular place and time is also a skillful method. The reality of buddhahood is thus broken open so that it overflows without boundary without actually coming from anywhere or going anywhere. It is where it always was - in the moment of our letting go of a deficient concept of buddhahood that restricted it or reduced it to our usual dichotomies of now and then, here and there, self and other.

8. The Sangha is also broken open in chapter 15 when the Buddha rejects all the usuall suspects of Hinayana and Mahayana literature, and instead calls forth primordial bodhisattvas from "the space beneath the earth" to spread the Dharma. In other words, the constitution of the Sangha as conceived in Buddhism up to that point, whether the monastic Sangha or the Sangha of celestial bodhisattvas, is negated in favor of a Sangha that literally emerges as a grass roots phenomena. And is this a fixed Sangha that can be clung to as opposed to the previous one? Again, it is not. It is spoken of in such paradoxical terms and cosmic hyperbole that it becomes apparent that this Sangha manifests in and through and sometimes beyond any fixed conception.

9. But my problem arose again as I thought - what does this mean in regard to wrong views and wrong speech, action, and livelihood? The Buddhists and Kyoto philosphers of Imperial Japan totally capitulated to Imperialism and Emperor Worship. They sacrificed Buddhism for nationalism and submerged actual liberation by saying that is was a skillful means to worship the emperor, conquer Asia, and unsrupulously perform an unannounced pre-emptive strike against the USA and Britain. Is Buddhism, as D.T. Suzuki once asserted, something that is compatible with anything and everything - communism, capitalism, imperialism, national socialism? Can any actions be justified from murder to adultery, to theft, by appealing to the non-absolute nature of Buddhist precepts and teachings?

10. Upon further reflection, however, I realized that it was not Buddhism that failed. It was Japanese Buddhists who failed. And they failed for the same reason people of any religion fail. Most of them were more concerned with accomodating their tribe, culture, country, national ideaology and interests, than with what the Dharma is actually saying. The same goes for those who use Buddhism as a handy rationalization for their own lifestyle.

11. But what is the Dharma actually trying to do then if not set up an alternate absolute to the world's various economic theories, political movement, religious creeds, and personal lifestyles? I think what it is doing is presenting a huge set of methods for releasing us from one-sided views and attachments. If I might risk putting the bottom line into words - it is trying to assist us in discovering within ourselves a wholehearted engagement with life.

So for instance, in most circumstances we should adhere to the five major precepts of not killing, stealing, lying, committing sexual offences, or taking intoxicants. These are good ground rules. And each of them is a skillful means in terms of action that helps us look beyond our own immediate interests to the way our actions will impact ourselves and others both now and in the future. But even these most basic and humane rules are not absolutes. There may be times when killing will prevent greater harm. A Theravadin abbot once had to clear all the monks out of his monastery in order to fumigate it and get rid of the fire ant infestation that had become a health hazard. I once had to hack apart a rattlesnake that was creating a very real hazard at someone's front door. Those who bravely hid Jews from the Nazis during WWII had to lie about it. Sexual ethics turned into rigid absolutes have led to the murder and oppression of women throughout the Middle East and of homesexuals even in the US where fundamentalists have felt morally justified in persecuting and even killing them. Marijuana is clearly an intoxicant but it also has great medicinal value in relieving the nausea of certain other medications and in relieving glaucoma (supposedly). Sometimes those who are starving to death are justified in extralegally taking back food from those who have abused the law and/or their position to take more than is their just due (this was the argument of St. Thomas Aquinas). So it turns out that even supposedly foundational values are relative - but this does not mean they should be dismissed. It means that they are valuable not in rigidly holding them but in deeply hearing their warning to think about the consequences of our actions, our attachments, our self-serving drives. They are an effective skillful means for overcoming selfishness, cruelty, and greed, but if held wrongly can themselves serve our selfishness, cruelty, and greed.

12. Doctrines are the same way. They are not one-size must fit all dogmas, but stategies and methods that must be used with careful discernment and for the service of liberation and with the motivation of compassionate wholehearted engagement with the actual situation and the people in it.

13. I might paraphrase the Heart Sutra here and say right view is skillful means and skillful means is right view. They are not opposed because they are each other. Right view is not about holding a single view against all comers. It is about a whole view or wholehearted engagement and acting in accordance with it. And this acting in accordance is skillful means. And acting skillfully is right or rather whole view. And that is something I should have said at the start - each "right" in the eightfold path of right views, right intentions, etc. is not "right" as in "right and wrong." The actual word "samyak" actually means "whole" or "complete." So it is better to say compete or whole view which is of a great scope than partial views or wrongly held views.

14. But my last point is this - part of right view and skillful means embraces commitment and actually putting into practice that which has a greater scope. Just because something is a skillful means does not mean one should not be wholehearted about it within the scope of its applicability. And just because right view or complete view means recognizing the open endedness or relativity of various doctrinal approaches, does not mean that one discards them as having no weight. That is just another form of excluding and not seeing the whole picture.

I will end this here, but I am under no illusion that this is or even that there can be a final word on this subject. But greater scope or even more wholeness can certainly be brought in through in our inclusive inconclusivity.

Namu Myoho Renge Kyo,
Ryuei

Posted by Ryuei at April 13, 2005 03:18 PM