Seeking for realisation in Yoga and Zen

The Indian tradition never launched invasions outside India. They didn’t have this mania for conquest of the world. The kingdoms within India before it was unified, under Ashoka, did fight. So their job was to be active, have responsibility and they had to practice generosity, especially, sacrifice and tapas, this austerity. Then, when there’s a glimpse of realisation of the cosmic Lord, whom they all have to worship, they have to do their actions in worship of the Lord, to try to come into touch with this cosmic flow. When they do that and they have a flash of this cosmic intuition then they may become monks. The monks give up all human rights. They’re pacifists and most of the traditions were wandering traditions in India, but monasteries were established from the time of the Buddha. The Buddhist order, the Jains established monasteries and so did the followers of Shankara and those monasteries still exist, many of them. So, there was this idea that the king, as in the Gita, without renouncing, but internally renouncing action, his actions could become those of the cosmic force. He would no longer be acting, but it would be acting through him and then he would be a renunciate. But Shankara expected that many of them would give an external picture of renunciation by becoming monks and by adopting this robe and the single staff and shaving the head and so on.

In Buddhism the stress was on becoming a monk and it was thought that you could not obtain nirvana unless you did become a monk. The best the lay-people could do would be to qualify themselves to become monks. But there wasn’t all of this tremendous difference when the Mahayana – the Northern school of Buddhism – began to encourage lay Buddhists to seek for realisation, instead of simply seeking for heaven as they had done. The Buddhists, in general, don’t like to talk about God because the moment you do, they say people form a picture of this old, irritable man in heaven, setting down impossible rules and then condemning people for not following them. So, they try to avoid this. They speak sometimes of the cosmic life. And they talk of the Absolute which is beyond all attributes, beyond all descriptions. That is seen through the human mind as having these semi-divine attributes of the cosmic intelligence and so on. But, in general, especially in China and Japan they avoided [it], because they don’t have the intellectual acuteness of the Indian tradition. They try to avoid being too specific and so the tradition is self-power and by that alone. You must not pray to some external God, but in actual practice there’s not quite so much difference. They do sometimes talk about inviting the Buddha into one’s heart.

Titles in this series are:

Part 1: Yoga, Zen and Peace

Part 2: Ethics and the Cosmic Self

Part 3: Desires beyond our needs are ghosts

Part 4: Gifts, sacrifice and austerity

Part 5: The merchant’s way

Part 6: The job of the King

Part 7: Seeking for realisation in Yoga and Zen

Part 8: The way of praying the cosmic current

Part 9: Melting Ice

Part 10: No distinction