UnMind 111. Analysis & Analogy — Atlanta Soto Zen Center

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You can analyze
Anything into nothing —
Apt analogy.

In this segment of UnMind we continue exploring the intersection of Design Thinking and Zen praxis. That last 10-dollar word we may take up in future under “Praxis & Practice.” They are not exactly synonymous. But for now I want to focus our attention on analogy, its usage in Zen teachings, and its reliance on the faculty or process of analysis, one of the most powerful tools of the human mind. In his seminal teaching, Genjokoan—Actualizing the Fundamental Point, Master Dogen makes a point of pointing out that he is using analogy in a very intentional way, to get his point across. After a long and varied passage — using firewood and ash to illustrate the relativity of time by analogy, then pivoting to the all-too-human experience and perception of birth and death as analogous to firewood and ash, followed by the famous section on the moon reflected in a dewdrop, further citing oceans and mountains as exemplifying the knowns and unknowns of duality versus nonduality, finally pausing to declare that “All things are like this” — he launches into an even longer passage on birds and fishes in their respective elements, ending with:

If the bird leaves the air it will die at once
If the fish leaves the water it will die at once
Know that the water is life and the air is life
the bird is life and the fish is life
Life must be the bird and life must be the fish

After this charming semantic reversal of conventional causality — citing life itself as the primary cause — he affirms that he is purposefully using analogy:

It is possible to illustrate this with more analogies
Practice-enlightenment and people are like this

“All things are like this” narrowed down to the nature of practice-enlightenment and people. He continues, finally arriving at the point of this series of analogies, addressing the “So what?” question:

Now if a bird or a fish tries to reach the end of its element before moving in it
this bird or this fish will not find its way or its place
When you find your place where you are practice occurs

actualizing the fundamental point

When you find your way at this moment practice occurs
actualizing the fundamental point

So the point of all this analogizing is to bring the person listening to the point of actualizing the fundamental point of Zen practice in their own space — “where you are” — and time — “at this moment.”

Note that “practice occurs”: it is not something that we do, not something that we can actually do. The etymology of “praxis” hints at this:

late 16th century: via medieval Latin from Greek, literally ‘doing’, from prattein ‘do’.

Just as Dogen points out, in Zazenshin—Lancet of Zazen, that the clarity of our original mind is “actualized within non-thinking” and “manifested within non-interacting,” here he indicates that the main thing we practice in Zen, in the form of zazen, is ultimately a form of “non-doing.” This idea also finds resonance with the first major Ch’an poem from the 7th Century, Hsinhsinming—Trust in Mind:

No comparisons or analogies are possible
In this causeless, relation-less state
Take motion in stillness and stillness in motion
Both movement and stillness disappear
When such dualities cease to exist
Oneness itself cannot exist
To this ultimate finality no law or description applies

It is difficult to embrace the idea that any so-called state of awareness would have no cause. It seems obvious that something, some set of circumstances, must be determining, to some degree, the state of mind we are in at all times. We might want to altogether abandon, or at least challenge, usage of the term “state” to identify a level of awareness on this order of comprehension. The apprehension of nonduality — or duality within nonduality and vice-versa — may involve a kind of realization that cannot even be regarded as a form of awareness. Here words fail.

Amongst the words that no longer have any real relevance or resonance, when the above kind of conclusion comes about as a result of Zen training, is the term “Zen.” At this point it seems we have come to the end of analysis, in that the utility of analytical thinking has become the futility of relying on a kit of tools that have reached the limit of their usefulness. The spirit of inquiry now returns to a more primitive or primeval level of sheer observation, in which language and labels no longer stick. My teacher described this aspect of Zen as something “round and rolling, slippery and slick.”

A well-known female Zen teacher named Toni Packer (1927-2013) was known for turning down the offer to succeed Philip Kapleau Roshi, one of the first generation of formally recognized American Zen priests and author of an early classic, “The Three Pillars of Zen,” one of the first Zen books I remember reading. I became aware of Ms. Packer when a young man who had been practicing with her community visited us in Atlanta back in the late 1980s or early 1990s, if memory serves.

He began questioning the way we were doing things, from our style of walking meditation to our exposition of the dharma, based his exposure to Packer’s approach to taking the Zen out of Zen, and who had written a book that he mentioned. I asked to read the book, which surprised him; apparently he assumed that I was set in my ways. After reading the book, I suggested he give a guest talk to the group, since he felt so strongly about the matter. During the talk, in which he ran down the litany of all the challenges to our way of practicing, the reaction in the room was, in effect, that he seemed to think he was the only person who had thought of these seeming contradictions, when in truth every one listening had been there, done that, in the history of their practice. Ironically, the whole point of Packer’s book was to admonish the reader to avoid falling into comparative thinking.

Comparative thinking is fundamental to analysis itself. It is difficult to imagine any kind of analytical process that does not involve some form of comparison. But if you arrogate to yourself the ability to judge the practice of others, and especially to challenge established communities of Zen practitioners, this is to make a fundamental error, a type of category error. It presupposes that the efficacy of Zen and the method of zazen depends upon the particular performative rituals and the environmental setting that surround and hopefully support the central practice of meditation.

If the effect of Zen depended upon specific details of group practice protocols, an argument could be made that one approach is probably and provably more effective than another. But this would not explain the enlightenment of some of the outstanding Ancestors, such as Huineng, who experienced profound insight with no history of practice or dharma study. Others had no substantial insight until they had left behind the formal practice altogether, beginning with Buddha himself. As Master Dogen himself instructed:

From the first time you meet a master
Without engaging in incense offering; bowing; chanting Buddha’s name;
Repentance or reading scriptures
You should just wholeheartedly sit
And thus drop away body and mind

While Dogen surely engaged in all of these activities, he recognized that they were peripheral, to the personal experience of insight, and meant to be supportive, to the central practice of zazen, the effect of which does not depend on the peripherals. Nor does the essential process of divesting ourselves of the social, cultural and personal baggage we have accumulated during our short lifetimes depend upon our powers of analytical thinking.

You cannot analyze your way to Zen’s insight; you cannot think your way to spiritual awakening. But that does not mean that analysis or thinking is the problem. It is our misunderstanding of the functioning, and consequent misuse, of this powerful tool that is likely to be our downfall. One of my mentors from the world of design science, R. Buckminster Fuller, defined human intelligence as our ability to extract general principles from particular case experiences. After so many repeat experiences of witnessing fast- and slow-moving entities — such as rabbits and turtles, or rafts and rocket ships — the child comes to know the meaning of “fast” as opposed to “slow,” as a universal operative principle not limited to any particular example. “All things are like this,” to coopt one of Master Dogen’s frequent tropes, which captures the general utility of analogizing.

Likewise, the sheer repetition of taking up the posture, breathing, and open awareness of the method of Zen, holds out the possibility that under such intensive observation, the constructed self will implode, revealing the underlying “true self,” the practitioner having successfully extracted the general principle from the many case experiences of engaging unfiltered awareness again and again and again.

In the next UnMind we will take up another universally operative principle — gravity — compared and contrasted with its more human aspect — gravitas — and their relation to Zen and Design Thinking. Meanwhile please recognize the relative futility of depending upon analysis in your Zen practice, especially in meditation. You might instead consider how zazen compares and contrasts, by analogy, with the other operative dynamics of your life, such as your profession, or health and wellness initiatives.