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This post might surprise the long-time Wild Fox Zen reader. When I rant and fume about the current state of practicing awakening in the Zen world, you see, I\u2019m usually primarily chiding those who claim affiliation with S\u014dt\u014d Zen and the so-called \u201cjust-sitting\u201d method. At the same time, I often hold up k\u014dan work as the more effective practice for kensh\u014d and post-kensh\u014d training.<\/p>\n
In the interest of being a more balanced reviler, in this post I\u2019ll address issues in k\u014dan teaching, and (mostly) blame the teachers for it. Yup, like D\u014dgen Zenji said,<\/p>\n
\u201cThis current situation is entirely the fault of the teachers, not of the students. Why? Because they guide their students along the branches of the tree, dispensing with its roots. Before they fully understand the Way themselves, they devote themselves solely to their own egotistic minds, luring others into the world of delusion. How regrettable is it that these teachers are unaware of their own delusion. How can their students be expected to know the difference between right and wrong?\u201d (1)<\/p>\n
As I was saying, I\u2019ll identify a few problems in k\u014dan training, highlight what I regard as the biggest bugger, offer an example from my teaching practice, and speculate about the causes of these issues, especially that biggest bugger. Along the way, I\u2019ll wonder if it is appropriate for householders to take up k\u014dan introspection.<\/p>\n
Click here<\/a> to support my Zen teaching practice via Patreon.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n First, though, this:<\/p>\n In my view, the k\u014dan method, including the refinements credited to D\u00e0hu\u00ec and later to Hakuin and his successors, represents the most powerful innovation in the field of waking up and practicing deeply since the time of Buddha Shakyamuni. Nothing I say below should be interpreted as arising from any place other than concern that those of us who are tasked with caring for this method and transmitting it to the next generation do so in such a way that its profundity and potency will be handed on.<\/p>\n The word \u201ckensh\u014d\u201d is used a lot in what follows and elsewhere in Zen teaching, so I will start with a brief discussion of what it isn\u2019t<\/span> and what it is<\/span>. \u201cKensh\u014d\u201d is not<\/span> an insight into the transparency of the delusional self, nor the observation of pervasive impermanence, nor an insight into no-self or emptiness. If the sense of subject and object remain, it isn\u2019t kensh\u014d.<\/p>\n These insights are all nice moments, of course, and may faintly verify the Way, but they utterly lack the power of a clear kensh\u014d.<\/p>\n In addition, kensh\u014d is definitively not<\/span> the belief that all zazen is the goal-less gateless gate \u2013 such is not realized without kensh\u014d. Even if you so<\/span> believe it to be true and have been selling such fake gold on the internet for decades, repeating yourself over and over and over, well, that doesn\u2019t make it so.<\/p>\n With kensh\u014d there is a shocking sense of freshness that arises simultaneously with a sense of how it\u2019s always been this way. It is the collapse of I\/thou, a radical, abrupt, and nondual embodiment. It is accompanied by a joy and energy that hasn\u2019t been felt before.<\/p>\n So, although people frequently have spiritual experiences and important insights, humans don\u2019t seem to kensh\u014d all that often. And the difference between \u201cinsights\u201d and \u201ckensh\u014d\u201d isn\u2019t a matter of degree, because kensh\u014d is qualitatively different from the insights I\u2019ve listed above.<\/p>\n If the personal experiences and spiritual insights or adamant beliefs that people frequently have were the same as kensh\u014d, why would Buddha have left home, done years of austeries, and finally sat down under the Bodhi tree? Why would Eihei D\u014dgen Zenji and Nanpo J\u014dmy\u014d Zenji have risked it all to go to China? Why would many generations of Zen practitioners trained as if their hair were on fire?<\/p>\n It\u2019s often said in Zen k\u014dan lore that most students will have a clear enough<\/em> kensh\u014d after about three years. However, in my view, three years is really hopeful. In any case, it\u2019s better to practice mu<\/em> timelessly. The initial kensh\u014d, afterall, is just the beginning of the process and more definitive awakenings are also a crucial part of ongoing training.<\/p>\n Following the initial kensh\u014d and the lineage-specific checking questions, the student will then begin the long process of integrating and deepening their initial kensh\u014d. As Henry Shukman R\u014dshi put it, \u201cThe subsequent k\u014dans should be remarkably and wonderfully clear, and a great surprise for a student to find that the k\u014dans meet them in what they have awakened to.\u201d<\/p>\n It is the teacher\u2019s responsibility, then, to help the student find and work the edges of kensh\u014ding.<\/p>\n Most of my criticism over the years here at Wild Fox Zen has been about the just-sitting belief system. However, this being the human world, and me being a verified crabby old man, I\u2019ve got some criticism for the way the k\u014dan is often employed in the contemporary Zen world, too.<\/p>\n For example, some k\u014dan lineages have gotten so California-dreamy, Jungian, artsy, and out-of-touch with the simple Hakuinian model of kensh\u014d and subsequent training, that I\u2019m concerned that their new approaches minimize the possibility for students to clearly realize and actualize the great matter at hand. It seems that our tendency to level downward has enhanced the accessibility of k\u014dan practice and, at the same time, resulted in more people having less profound transformations.<\/p>\n Part of that enhanced accessibility has come at the cost of making k\u014dan practice into an easy-going way. You might think that Westerners were naturally more awake than the ancients, so that we kensh\u014d much more easily. If that\u2019s what you think, I encourage you to illuminate and drop your prejudice and think again!<\/p>\n One student who had practiced with another k\u014dan teacher recently told me, for example, that for them, passing mu<\/em> (their breakthrough k\u014dan) was not a significant experience. Well, simply put, it oughta be. Indeed, in the teachings it says, \u201cA familiar place is hard to forget.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition, I\u2019ve heard it said that the k\u014dan curriculum is just another way to study basic Buddhism<\/a>. Oh, dear! Study of the buddhadharma has it\u2019s place, for sure, but k\u014dan work is about breakthrough and post-breakthrough training \u2013 fully bringing to life what has been realized and studied \u2013 not an intellectual endeavor. Please! If study alone was the way through suffering, all the over-educated Zennies in the land would be totally purified and spend the day whistling the tune to \u201cSitting on the dock of the bay\u2026.\u201d And that does not seem to be the case.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve also heard it said that k\u014dan work is an exercise in miming. Oh, dear Buddha! For this view, I can only hold up the two fingers (either hand will do) \u2013 and I would not be signally \u201cPeace out,\u201d but \u201cthat\u2019s still two.\u201d And if someone brings their miming act to dokusan, they might hear, \u201cStop the Zen antics!\u201d<\/p>\n Finally, in another k\u014dan lineage, I\u2019m told that they\u2019ve abandoned assigning the mu<\/em> k\u014dan, because it\u2019s just too hard. They move students right into one of the k\u014dan collections without the student having kensh\u014ded, apparently oblivious to the fact that they\u2019re undermining the essential process of the Hakuinian model, showing wanton disregard for the received tradition with the accompanying arrogance that \u201cwe\u201d know better.<\/p>\n What is?<\/p>\n Here it is: students are not held on their first k\u014dan until they have a clear kensh\u014d so that they can then move through the subsequent training deepening and applying said breakthrough. Some k\u014dan teachers argue that a clear kensh\u014d isn\u2019t required, because the successive k\u014dans will magically (a word I\u2019ve actually heard used) do the work of either provoking awakening \u201cdown the road\u201d or maybe a student\u2019s practice will gradually deepen as they pass through the successive k\u014dans.<\/p>\n But how are you going to know? By peering into your crystal ball? I haven\u2019t seen either of these unfold reliably. In my view, without a clear kensh\u014d, k\u014dan work is likely to be about more Zen cosplay. Indeed, ideally, as D\u014dgen Zenji said (and I\u2019d apply it to work with the first k\u014dan), \u201cSuch a mu<\/em> is a sun with stone-melting power.\u201d (3)<\/p>\n Nevertheless, as Meido Moore R\u014dshi says,<\/p>\n \u201cThe first opening need not necessarily be very deep. But it clearly has to be kensh\u014d. And whether the recognition is shallow or deep, the student has to have sufficient confidence in it to then continue practicing with it as a basis. The first k\u014dan is called the barrier of the ancestors for a reason. And I don\u2019t want someone just to be intimate with the barrier, I want them to pass through it. We don\u2019t all do that with flying colors, true \u2026 but again\u2026 it\u2019s there, or it\u2019s not.\u201d<\/p>\n Passing through the barrier is also NOT necessarily accompanied with a lot of \u201cwoo-woo\u201d special effects. Kensh\u014d, again, is a radical, abrupt, nondual embodiment. Although kensh\u014d is often accompanied by special effects, they are not the functional heart of clear seeing. Culling out the verifying elements of the initial kensh\u014d becomes the first task of the checking process. It really isn\u2019t until after that process is complete that the kensh\u014d will be confirmed. That process isn\u2019t so much about an experience, actually, but about how the student can embody and bring it<\/em> into the nitty-gritty details of daily life.<\/p>\n Now, I\u2019ve pointed out previously, both here and elsewhere, that this checking process is one of the great virtues of the k\u014dan system, so I repeat myself, but it is very important that when engaged with full integrity the checking process helps the student practice awakening (aka, Great Compassion) with a depth and clarity that is lacking in all just-sitting approaches (as far as I know).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Oh, but I\u2019ve drifted back to reviling just-sitting approaches!<\/p>\n After teaching just-sitting Zen for about twenty years, I was authorized to offer k\u014dan introspection in the Harada-Yasutani tradition. One of the students that soon called on me had trained with a Zen teacher, now deceased, from the White Plum Asanga. The prospective student reported that over their fifteen years of training they had completed their lineage\u2019s k\u014dan curriculum, save the Five Ranks and Sixteen Bodhisattva Precepts. They were interested in completing the curriculum and asked if I\u2019d work with them.<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t sense from their energy and physical presentation the clarity and joy that I associate with kensh\u014d, so it seemed especially prudent to begin the process of working together by probing the depth of this student\u2019s kensh\u014d. And indeed, the student couldn\u2019t respond with clarity to even the first checking question for mu<\/em>.<\/p>\n In conversation, the student shared that they didn\u2019t remember kensh\u014ding \u2013 and again, if a person has kensh\u014ded, let me tell you, they remember! The student reported that \u201csomething\u201d had happened in dokusan with their teacher and that the teacher then quickly confirmed mu<\/em> and moved on. The student wasn\u2019t sure what had happened, but figured that the teacher knew best and so didn\u2019t question.<\/p>\n In moving into the successive k\u014dans, they reported that their experience of dokusan was to repeat the k\u014dan they were assigned, then make some free-dance-like gestures, and they\u2019d be moved on to the next case.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s be clear, it is generally not<\/span> in the student\u2019s best interest. Indeed, it might deprive the student of one of the most powerful, joyful, and meaningful experiences this human life has to offer \u2013 and deny them of a strong basis for the ongoing work of Great Compassion.<\/p>\n Why would a k\u014dan teacher then pass the student before they\u2019ve had a clear kensh\u014d? One explanation is that the Zen teacher themself was passed through the k\u014dan curriculum as in the above example, without a clear kensh\u014d. Given that after just fifty years (or so) of Zen in West, some k\u014dan lineages are into their sixth and seventh generations, and given that some teachers have many successors, it seems quite likely that this is at play at least some of the time. That is, this pace is generally just too fast for authentically engaging the deep work.<\/p>\n Another reason that Zen teachers pass students on their breakthrough k\u014dans without a significant kensh\u014d is that most students now are householders, and some Zen teachers exaggerate the possibilities for profound breakthroughs within monasticism and minimize the possibilities within the householder lifestyle. Unexpectedly, I\u2019ve found this to be true especially for teachers with little monastic practice, due in part, I suppose, to the prevalence of monastic practitioners kensh\u014ding in the Zen narrative and particularly in the k\u014dan literature. So even though some teachers have had a clear kensh\u014d themselves, they don\u2019t think it\u2019s possible for their householder students.<\/p>\n Given the way most Zen students practice within the Zen center model, it is unlikely that they will have a clear kensh\u014d. If a student has not aroused the Bodhi Mind and Great Doubt, sits much less than an hour or two a day, participates in few retreats, meets with their teacher (if they even work with one) only occasionally, and doesn\u2019t engage in other practices aside from half-hearted mindfulness in daily life (or in short, just not practicing as if their hair were on fire), it is<\/span> un<\/span>likely<\/u> that they will generate the stability and intensity required for kensh\u014d.<\/p>\n It\u2019s like expecting to get rich by buying a Mega Million ticket. It could happen \u2026 but you are hundreds of times more likely to get struck by lightning.<\/p>\n Why, then, assign k\u014dan? Another practice, like working with the breath or the Ten Line Kannon <\/em>might be more appropriate for most people doing householder practice like this. As Tetsugan Sensei often says, \u201cWhat\u2019s the hurry? Give students the necessary time to establish the basics or k\u014dan work is a waste of time.\u201d<\/p>\n Nevertheless, the general assertion that householders cannot breakthrough in a powerful and clear way is false. There are many examples both in the old days and in our contemporary Zen world. See my We Are All This Luminous Mind: The Possibility and Importance of Awakening<\/a> for contemporary examples. For historical examples and a critique of the gender-bias in stories about awakening see The Hidden Lamp: Stories from Twenty-Five Centuries of Awakened Women<\/em><\/a> and this excellent interview of one of the books editors, Zenshin Florence Caplow, by Sh\u014dren Heather at SparkZen<\/a>.<\/p>\n Finally, to quote Meido Moore R\u014dshi again, \u201cMonastic or householder, it really isn\u2019t relevant here. Householders, too, can cook and breakthrough. Why make excuses for them?\u201d<\/p>\n Our Vine of Obstacles Zen<\/a> is intentionally designed for householders to breakthrough, and for post-breakthrough training within the context of householder life. We offer practices specifically designed for the pre-kensh\u014d period, and some that align with the traditional body practices available within the Soto tool kit. However, many of these practices really work best in monastic life and\/or during in-person sesshin. So, we also emphasize practices which the online modalities are particularly good at facilitating.<\/p>\n that k\u014dan teachers pass students on the initial k\u014dan without a clear kensh\u014d, and perhaps the most pernicious, is in order to meet the teacher\u2019s needs to be liked, to have successful students (and successors), and\/or to build a large(r) organization.<\/p>\n To this point, an old Dharma friend often said, \u201cIf you teach Zen and need a friend, get a dog.\u201d<\/p>\n This applies, in my view, to any needs a k\u014dan teacher might try to meet through their students.<\/p>\n So, dear k\u014dan teachers, you might need more than one dog.<\/p>\n (1) Eihei D\u014dgen, Guidelines for Studying the Way\u00a0<\/em>(Japanese, Gakudo yojinshu<\/em>), #5.<\/p>\n (2) Eihei D\u014dgen, Guidelines for Studying the Way\u00a0<\/em>(Japanese, Gakudo yojinshu<\/em>), #6.<\/p>\n (3) Eihei D\u014dgen, Sh\u014db\u014dgenz\u014d<\/em> \u201cBussh\u014d\u201d, trans Abe and Waddell. Modified.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 This post might surprise the long-time Wild Fox Zen reader. When I rant and fume about the current state of practicing awakening in the Zen world, you see, I\u2019m usually primarily chiding those who claim affiliation with S\u014dt\u014d Zen and the so-called \u201cjust-sitting\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[310,6,146,406,409,34],"class_list":["post-9774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-householder-zen-practice","tag-koan","tag-post-kensho-training","tag-rinzai-zen-buddhism","tag-sanbo-zen","tag-soto-zen-buddhism"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat is kensh\u014d?<\/h2>\n
How long will it take for a sincere student to kensh\u014d?<\/h4>\n
The problems with k\u014dan work today<\/h2>\n
D\u014dgen Zenji said, \u201cThose who seek the Way should not look for easy training.\u201d (2)<\/h4>\n
And yet all of these are not the<\/em> most widespread problem<\/h2>\n
An example of how k\u014dan work can go wrong<\/h2>\n
Why do teachers pass students on their first k\u014dans without a clear kensh\u014d?<\/h2>\n
And, they have a point.<\/h4>\n
The final reason<\/h4>\n
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