Buddhism: Practice Without Doctrine

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Practice Without Doctrine Dec 27th 2011, 16:36 I said in the last post that learning doctine without practice is unhelpful. What about practice without doctrine? In the West, often Buddhist meditation is separated from Buddhism and promoted for its therapeutic more than spiritual value. Today, all kinds of people are doing zazen or vipassana without bothering with the rest of Buddhism. I'm okay with that, by the way, as long as undiluted Buddhism remains available for those who want to seek it out. But here is something written by the late Robert Aitken Roshi that I'd like to toss out for discussion -- "My own teacher, Nakagawa Soen Roshi, once said, 'If I had to take an examination in Buddhism, I would flunk.'� This is the great weakness of Zen Buddhism, and he knew it. I was well along in my practice before I read my first book on general Buddhism and I was already teaching before I began to seriously look at the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. Some Zen teachers tell their students not to read, out of concern that they not speculate. I would much rather have speculation around me than ignorance. I feel passionate about this point. If you are a Buddhist, what does that mean? How do you understand karma? How do you understand rebirth? What is Dukkha? What is the Madhyamika? Who were the main teachers of Classical Buddhism after Shakyamuni? What was their teaching? Who were the first teachers of the Mahayana, or the Vajrayana? What was their teaching? The pursuit of such questions can enhance your formal practice and open many doors in your life. Don't neglect study." [The Practice of Perfection, pp. 71-72] I've said elsewhere that Zen traditionally doesn't teach the student much until they've been sitting zazen for a while and are beginning to get a clue about sunyata. Zen also isn't big on explaining things. Instead of teaching students a particular doctrine of rebirth, for example, the teacher will more likely suggest that rebirth is something you'll understand when you realize enlightenment. In the meantime, just keep an open mind. In my case, formal Zen studies most often focused on Dogen, the koan literature, and the Heart and Diamond sutras. The Pali Canon was a mystery to me until relatively recently. Of course, to study Dogen and koans and the Heart and Diamond sutras is also studying Shakyamuni as well as Nagarjuna, Shantideva, and other great teachers. But it's also the case that one can be a formal student of Zen for a long time and do a better job remembering the names of the Seven Dwarves than naming the eight parts of the Eightfold Path. My impression is that other traditions do a better job of providing a basic education to the newbies. But at least we were taught about sunyata. But now I'm finding people who aren't being taught the significance of anatta/sunyata, either. And, more unfortunately, every day I see people with half-assed understanding stepping forward to propose what Buddhism ought to be in the West. The teachers at my Zen center do conduct classes in basic Buddhism as well as Dogen, and I am not faulting them. But I do think Buddhist teachers in the West -- and maybe Zen teachers in particular -- need to consider the questions Aitken Roshi asked. I also think Buddhist teachers ought to be more assertive about defining Buddhism before it is irretrievably defined for us as some feel-good New Age pablum.

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