S^n is Weird
(S^n is typically spelled Seon and is more commonly known in the English speaking world as Zen)
I am by no means a a zen master but I’ve had my fair share of awakenings. In my coaching business I have been giving a lot of guidance around meditation and practice of Buddhism as if I was a zen master. Sometimes I doubt myself, and to be honest with you even as I’m writing this I’m conscious of some readers who know me and have been practicing Buddhism for way longer than I have. In these times I think of my favorite Buddha quote: “Tathagatha does not fear” and my favorite sutra, the Heart Sutra, also says “… for there is nothing to gain, bodhisattvas have no lingering in their heart and for they do not linger they are fearless …”.
One of my clients a few months ago told me “The puzzling zen guy is talking in riddles again”. Idiosyncrasy and weirdness tends to be a common trait found in zen masters and again, while I’m not proclaiming to the world I’m a zen master, I want to explain why we tend to talk in puzzles and riddles. But in order to do that I feel like I have to share my journey of awakening.
I have two distinct breakthroughs I remember in my journey of awakening. Although I credit most of my spiritual growth to my 108 bows, what actually led me to my big moments of awakening was actually in meditation. The first was on January 24, 2024 and I know the exact date because I post about my meditation progress on my discord server.
This awakening was important for me because it was the first time I actually lived through the experience that is described in the Heart Sutra. The Heart Sutra for the uninitiated is a sutra that basically says nothing exists and the typical idea of “nothing is real” that people get when they think of Buddhism originates from this text. The sutra famously argues that form does not exist, perception does not exist, mental images do not exists, actions do not exist, and cognition does not exist. Before that meditation session on January 24 this was an item of knowledge living in my head but on that day I had an excruciatingly painful meditation. But prior to this day I had a series of meditations where I just gave up midway because of the pain and the frustration caused by this was building up. Why couldn’t I bear the pain if I’m going to regret stopping the moment I stop?
So on the 24th I was determined to push forward and I sat with the biggest pain in my lower body I’ve ever felt. This is I think one of those times I’m thankful that I “trained” instead of “practicing”. Practice is lightweight and is meant to keep you at a casual mind so that you can do rituals on a daily schedule, and training is more committed and has you confronting more challenging situations. I’m used to training because of the combat sports I train so while other people take more comfortable and long roads to meditation like sitting cross legged or half lotus, I just forced myself to go full lotus since day 1 and the pain had accumulated to its peak that day.
In the first wave of pain (I always experienced pain in waves) I focused on my breath. In the second wave of pain the attention to the breath kept on getting sabotaged by the immense amount of pain so I resorted to calling Avalokiteshvara, who is the bodhisattva who comes to the aid of any person who is in suffering. Reciting that name over and over is a popular form of prayer in Korean Buddhism. So that wave passed, and in the midst of the third wave of pain I found myself reciting the Heart Sutra because repetitive prayers were not helping anymore. Line by line I traced my memory and spoke each word inside of my mind when I arrived at the line, “In the inherent void there is no form, perception, thoughts, action, cognition. No eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, no brain”.
The words “no body” was getting on my nerves. What the fuck Buddha, how is there no body when it’s clearly crying in pain right now? Who would be so stupid to write these senseless things? And at that moment I felt a surge of pain riding my nerves to my brain in the most literal way, and then it hit me: holy shit, what if these are just electrical signals that I learned to associate as pain? Because isn’t that literally what spicy food is? Isn’t that what people call “runner’s high”? Holy fuck, what if the experience I’m having isn’t inherently painful outside of me believing that this is extreme pain, unbearable pain?
This is when the Heart Sutra stopped being a text of knowledge to me and became a lived experience. There is nothing to call pain because it is an electrical pulse I decided to name pain for no reason other than other people having called it pain. Since this moment I stopped having frustrations in waves of pain. I learned how to observe myself going through waves of pain.
The next awakening was on June 8, 2024.
Again, some context leading to this day. Around this time I had met a lot of Buddhist practitioners who have engaged in the traditional Korean Buddhist way (Sǒn or Zen) and as a solo practitioner who just learned to practice Buddhism by myself, I felt a yearning to engage in more of that. And in traditional practices there are many stories of being able to meditate day and night, not caring for time nor comfort because the practitioner is in deep engagement with the self (this is commonly called samadhi).
So I wanted to be as fearless as that, to be able to meditate all night if I wanted to. But I always found this unconscious barrier when I went over 30 minutes. I was getting very adapt at observing pain but around the 33 minute mark I always found myself at a sort of a desperation point. I feel like I had no option but to open my eyes and stop. This is a bit different from the earlier quittings of meditation which were more like, I’m bored, let’s open my eyes. The 33 minute opening felt like a choice made for survival.
Then I remembered what In-Goong Sunim of Jo-Gei Temple NYC had told me. “At first in your quest to find yourself you will keep doubting yourself. But as you continue you will learn how to keep going instead of stopping at every moment of doubt. Once you get the feel of progressing it will feel smooth and easy as you burn down the fuse of your true self. But after time passes you will encounter a door, and this door is different; it will feel like the door to death. It will be extremely daunting, and that is an understatement. But when you make the decision to open that door to your death, you will come into contact with your true inner self”.
This is in line with the teachings I’ve heard about killing the karma of oneself, going through a sort of death of the self. Buddha went through it in his final 49 days of meditation when he had 3 encounters with the devil, Jesus went through it in his temptations in the desert. The description aligned with what I wanted to pursue.
So on June 8, I sat down at night. I usually meditate in the morning but I made the commitment at night. I asked my wife to time me for 40 minutes because I was determined to come out of the meditation after 40 minutes even if I got crippled (I know, hardcore af). Then I started. The familiar waves of pain, now almost negligible, passed through me as if they were a random blow of the wind in a desert field. The time was slowly approaching the 33 minute mark, I could feel it in my body even without a timer. Then the moment ultimately came, the moment where I feel like I have no choice but to stop.
I knew that if I opened my eyes at this moment I would come to regret it. Because I’ve done it so many times. I always regret not being able to push beyond 33 minutes. It’s so silly, being at the crossroad of either dying vs. regretting living as soon as the decision is made. My mind was hazy, and literally could not think straight but fortunately I have become very used to getting a grip of myself. And I sat down with myself.
“Billy. You’ve been here literally every day for the past few weeks. You always stop right here. I’m asking you Billy, do you seek to come here, to this door, so you can quit? Or do you seek to come so you can open this door?”
I had come to open the door. I accepted that this is the moment I find out what happens. Tathagatha does not fear. Bodhisattvas do not linger and for they do not linger they have no fear. And so I did that day, and my wife told me it was time. I did not pant like I usually did. I did not moan like I usually did. I opened my eyes in the most peaceful way, like I had come out of a summertime nap and noticed my entire leg had been discolored due to lack of circulation. I had a meniscus injury at that time and that prevented proper full lotus but who the fuck cares? That’s not going to stop me.
And at that moment a stream of tears started flowing through my eyes. It was not due to pain, it was not due to frustration; it was due to coming into contact with what I truly am. A heart that can decide what it can be at any moment. It was no longer an idea in my head, but a lived experience. It was no longer this thing that’s supposed to be true once people get it, it was my life.
Now let’s go to the topic at hand today: why are sǒn masters so fucking weird? Well, it’s because sǒn cannot be taught as knowledge. Did my extensive knowledge of sǒn or the wisdom behind Buddhism give me this experience? No, I got the experience by fucking experiencing it. I want you to get this experience and if I could teach you it, I totally would. But I tried so many different approaches to teaching people this but it sort of takes you away further from the intended goal because teaching always tends to lead to knowledge by design.
Which is why sǒn masters tend to give you weird fucking puzzles. Why? Because statements come from external sources to land at your brain (to stay there), but puzzles reflect questions from your brain. Some of the most famous sǒn puzzles go like this:
Q: What is the Buddha? A: Hair on the front tooth.
Q: Buddha says everything has innate Buddha inside. Does that include dogs? A: No.
Q: What is love? A: I ask you. What is love? Q: … A: This is love. Q: … A: You ask me, I ask you. This is love.
As you read these you’re probably wondering, what the fuck? And you may just move on with your life. But suppose I told you that the answer to life is in these riddles. And also suppose that you happen to be intensely interested in the answer to life. So the only way to find out the answer to life which is already answered in nonsensical plain words, you need to go through a reverse engineering process of what the fuck this answer actually means.
First kisses feel great. They feel like fireworks in your lips while also feeling like the softest touch of life itself. This is an attempted explanation of what a first kiss feels like but you know that the actual experience of the first kiss, while it may resemble parts of those words, is completely different from the description of the first kiss. I want you to kiss your life, and I can only help you do that by making you love your life enough to try and want to kiss it. I can’t help you kiss your life by talking 24/7 about how to kiss your life and what it is like. Teach a man how to build a ship by making him love the sea, kind of a thing.
If you’ve had a recent encounter with me and were wondering why I speak in puzzles, I hope this gives you some context around my behavior.
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