Jhana and Zen

Why is Zen called Zen, and why do Zen people and jhana people seem so wary of each other?

Here is a stitch on it.

zen (J.) < ch’an (C.) < dhyana (S.) < jhana (P.)

It’s just a transliteration. But that word ended up in really different places. On one hand, it’s a particular meditation practice in Theravada (i.e. Early) Buddhism. And it’s the name for a whole TRADITION like 1,000 years later.

(Zen inherited the Mahayana canon, but it also added and subtracted a lot, and it re-indigenized itself into a whole ’nother land/body/medicine system, so I actually prefer to classify it [if I must] as actually a whole “vehicle” in itself, as my teacher’s teacher sometimes did.)

This accounts for the radicalness of the difference. The Theravada Indian practice instructions are very philosophical and prescriptive about “jhanas” (there are several). Zen instructions kinda disdain even caring about such systems and classifications. Different WORLDS.

Still, if only to maintain some semblance of chronological linearity for the sake of argument, it makes sense to start with the Theravada construction of “the jhanas” to get a grip on what we’re even talking about here in order to consider the difference.

We’re talking about phenomena of seated meditation. The Theravada jhana teachings are practice instructions about steps in a process of intensifying while detaching from experience. Read Tasshin Fogleman’s post if you want to know what they are (I zone out, to be honest).

Before I get into what happened with Zen, I want to make clear that what I am ALWAYS saying is, people go about… you know, EXISTING… different ways, and the Dharma comes to all of them.

If you LIKE systems and words and lists and steps, GOOD. There’s a Buddhism for that.

Not everybody benefits from imposing conceptual maps on experience, though. In fact, some of us find it oppressive. hilariously useless. Like filing tax returns for fun.

But, as it turns out, we can intensify while detaching from experience in meditation, too!

In short, to fast-forward to the end here, it’s all the Buddha’s practice. Yay. We are friends again.

But there’s a wrinkle, which is that the non-conceptual Zen instructions are ALSO instructions, so everybody thinks they’re in a word fight about how to meditate correctly.

The classic rookie Zen move is to think you’re the topwit and not the dimwit when you say, “Your thing complicated, my thing simple, therefore my thing right.”

As though the implication of the word “zen” is that it means “actually, there’s only one jhana. not eight or whatever.”

That sounds EASY, doesn’t it? Whereas stepping carefully through manifold layers of subtle consciousness in order to realize what they obscure sounds hard. But ours is the EASY one, which means it’s the BETTER one.

Oh, sweet summer child. I hope you like getting smacked.

Let me divert just slightly to try some English out to illuminate the word “jhana/dhyana/ch’an/zen” itself.

The best I’ve been able to do is “absorption” in a sense specifically to do with consciousness.

This accounts for something the Theravada jhana map makes explicit, namely that jhana experience gets progressively less “subjective”-feeling as you go.

Zen describes “dropping off of body and mind,” and I believe these are descriptions of the same experience, basically.

So what’s the difference? It’s the “object” of meditation.

I do Zen, mind you, so I may be doing it wrong, but I actually find basic jhana instructions quite nice. They lead me right to something in my field of awareness that I can absorb right into. THIS is the simple version.

In Zen, rather than, like, a subway map, we’re given some toroid paradox.

Whatever it is. That’s zen.

Doing it? zen. Not doing it? zen.

Drop off body and mind in every single experience, over and over again, every time.

There isn’t ONE jhana. There are INFINITE jhanas.

Are the specific eight ones on the Theravada list real? YES.

✌️“real”✌️

Would it “be zen” to do formal mappy jhana practice? SURE.

It would also be zen not to.

You’re stuck, buddy. You can’t not be zen.

Can’t be zen either.

You, being, and zen are absorbed.

Sensei likes to say that Ch’an is a “misnomer.” That people with limited pre-Zen exposure to Buddhism saw Bodhidharma staring at the wall and were like, “Ah, he must be doing that ‘dhyana’ from the book,” and then it stuck.

I honor my teacher, but I think that’s not quite right.

To me, it is simply the case that absorption of small self into Big Self is the nature of things. Dhyana is like gravity. It’s what happens. Buddhanature.

There are things about us — our configurations — that lead the way into it.

Following them takes us where it goes.

I wrote all this because I’m tired of unnecessary distinctions in the way the Dharma is expounded. Everyone’s practice is a contingency. What they all have in common is that they reveal their teaching by dropping away.

I encourage you to drop everything.

See what falls and what doesn’t.