The Zen rebels: obscure hermits and existential reformers (part 26) - Subversive Zen

Danxia Tianran "Roasting the Buddha", painting by Sengai Gibbon (1750-1837)

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“Will the master go into hell or not?”  Zhaozhou replied.  “I entered hell long ago.”  The student asked him.  “Why did you enter hell?”
Zhaozhou: “If I don’t enter hell, who will teach you?”

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Enlightenment has always been taught as an eluding presence. Particularly in Japanese Zen and the Chinese equivalent, Ch'an, to which Zen originated from as a coherent school of Buddhism in 6th century China, brought to Japan in the 12th Century by Chinese monks. Within the hundreds of years of Buddhist imprint onto Japanese culture, the uniqueness of Zen has held fast as an integral part of Japanese life – from tea ceremonies, garden arrangements, hygiene and of course meditation, that despite it throughout the years, rising and falling in tune with a tumultuous Japanese establishment and rule throughout the centuries. It has been the rebels, iconoclast monks and reformers of Zen that drew it back to its core belief, the simplicity of the Dhyāna, seen as Zazen or sitting meditation.  The Koan and Zen riddles; setting in place their rejection of the institutionalism of Zen, to which many of these monks drifted and became hermits.  As a protest against a corrupt and watered down version of what Zen Buddhism entails;  the practise of understanding nature, whilst rejecting the imprint of nature as a permanence.  However it is this expression of enlightenment or Satori in Japanese, when Zen and Buddhism in feudal Japan became apart of the shoganic system of rule, which, under its more structured aspects were offering Satori as a selling point from the various Buddhist sects looking to attain favors by their Shogun rulers.  

In these various aspects of corruption that occurred throughout the ages in Japan, with Zen for hundreds of years being the main religion of Japan up to the Meiji Restoration (1868-1912), it was the many monks that sowed discourse aimed at the Zen influence in Japan, as a way of exposing, at least from a individualistic manner, of the  Zen establishment, which in turn it could be said, also added to the paradoxical aspects of Zen Buddhism, the stories and myths of these rebel monks.  But, the basis for a lot of the core aspects of questioning the esoteric aspects of Buddhism were derived from the teachings of a 7th Century Chinese Zen Master by the name of Linji Yixuan, to which, he was seen as the main proponent of relaying Ch'an (Zen) back to the 5th and 6th Century idealism of which the founder of Zen Bodhidharma personified. Linji Yixuan, known as Rinzai Gingen in Japan, was certainly the iconoclast, particularly when China during the various Dynasties and rulers, ensured, like Japan, an ongoing instability. With the jostling of various sects attempting to institutionalize religion in China, especially Buddhism, was seen by Linji Yixuan as a detraction from the true aspect of Zen Buddhist teachings, in which he had be famously quoted in saying “...If you meet a Buddha, kill him.” Linji Yixuan, who brought into the Ch'an teachings, his own imprint of the removing an attachment to words and concepts, thus further stripping away the ritualism of Buddhism.  That, from a Zen perspective, nothing can be attained or found outside from the self.  Everything is held within and in its understanding of the impermanence of things, will further assist the Zen student to source the original mind.  

The core aspect of the more iconoclastic impressions of Zen, is an embracing of the subversive not as a deviation to human suffering, but knowing, in its non duality, that materialism is all but fleeting.  Clinging to desire is perpetuating the pain of birth and death.  Sex and death have always had an intrinsic purpose in Japanese and Chinese culture, although at times controversial within the various teachings, more so with the aspects of the unorthodox Shingon and Tedai schools of Japanese esoteric Buddhist beliefs. Zen, within its more rebellious aspects, looked at sex as not as the subversive, but knowing what reality is and the suffering it can entail.  That as a  mediative focus the Hell State, in Zen beliefs is not a place described in esoteric teachings; rather it is a state of mind.  Which is important in defining the more rebellious aspects of Zen techniques to the esoteric counterpart, that the awakening or Satori is a personal experience and not found within a scripture or ritualized foundation.  It is of an event, neither sort after or prophesied in anyway.  An enlightenment achieved from simple human experiences, delivering to the Zen practitioner as a complete understating of reality.  It is in this moment in time, that clears away all doubt, confusion and fear.  Seen by these rebel monks and masters, although paradoxical, as a an embracing of sex and at times a subversive dialogue, as a way of letting go from the attachment to the material world.